There’s much debate over just what “native advertising” means. Talk to enough publishers, however, you’ll find agreement on one thing: it isn’t banner ads.
15 Alarming Stats About Banner Ads article tells the story of current state of banner ads. The banner ad is now 18 years old. It has become a symbol of all that’s wrong with online advertising: it stands out as an intruder on webpages; and it is mostly ignored by readers.
Here are some facts picked from 15 Alarming Stats About Banner Ads article:
1. Over 5.3 trillion display ads were served to U.S. users last year. (ComScore)
4. Click-through rates are .1 percent. (DoubleClick)
5. The 468 x 60 banner has a .04 percent click rate. (DoubleClick)
6. An estimated 31 percent of ad impressions can’t be viewed by users. (Comscore)
8. 8 percent of Internet users account for 85 percent of clicks. (ComScore)
9. Up to 50 percent of clicks on mobile banner ads are accidental. (GoldSpot Media)
10. Mobile CPMs are 75 cents. (Kleiner Perkins)
And yet banner continues to be a bulwark of the online advertising system. Many publishers would like to change that.
Native advertising is hot right now, even if nobody seems to know exactly what it is. Native advertising appears to mean different things to different people.
One definition: “a form of media that’s built into the actual visual design and where the ads are part of the content.” This Infographic Explains What Native Advertising Is and Summary of Native Advertising and Native Monetization 2011 – 2013 articles give a more detailed view.
You could summarize: Native advertising is the politically correct term for advertorial. Or rather, it’s an upgrade, the digital version of an old practice dating back to the era of typewriters and lead printing presses.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
The Humble QR Code Is Being Disrupted… And Going Dotless
http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/18/dotless-qr-codes/?ncid=rss#.utwu3c:IKEd
Many in the West are still dumbfounded that QR codes are a thing. Well, heads-up, the humble QR code as you know it is being disrupted. At least that’s according to Visualead, an Israel-based startup backed by Alibaba that announced a new ‘dotless’ format today.
Alibaba, which invested ‘millions’ in an undisclosed round for Visualead in January, is among the first to trial dotless QR codes.
“This is the next step from the visual QR code. Our development is based on feedback that we got from the market,” Alva said, “And it will make codes more obvious for consumers to interact with.”
Taking a step back for a second, QR codes are big business in Asia, and particularly China, where they are a key mechanism for facilitating online-to-offline commerce — take a ride on the Beijing subway and marvel at how many codes are included in ads. Alva claimed that visual codes can be four times more effective at getting a response from customers.
Like anything, however, introducing a new standard takes time. Alva is optimistic that getting Alibaba on board will help dotless codes gain adoption with greater speed.
“In one day we can penetrate hundreds of millions of devices [via Alibaba’s Taobao app],” he said.
http://www.visualead.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unilever global SVP Marc Mathieu hails implant as ‘next frontier’ to smart watches
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/05/14/unilever-global-svp-marc-mathieu-hails-implant-next-frontier-smart-watches
Smart watches will pave the way to the “next frontier” in connectivity which could see the rise in popularity of implants, according to Unilever’s global senior vice president of brand marketing Marc Mathieu.
“People are always on, never offline. That is the next frontier. Now we have it on our wrist, but I would be surprised if we don’t do it in an implant form pretty soon. Why have it on your wrist if you can have it permanently in you?” he said.
He pointed to the rise of mobile, social media and increased consumer demand for content, along with the internet of things as just some of the catalysts prompting a radical change in how marketers build their brands.
“The question is how do we ensure we bring the consumer on the journey with us in this world that is changing? It’s easy for us to think technology first, not people first. We must remember we are doing our job as marketers for people first,” he said.
People pull in brands like Apple because of iTunes, and Google with search, maps and email “multiple times and on our terms”, Mathieu said.
“The audience is not listening to you any more. we need to think about that in terms of how we build brands in the future,” he added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Adblock Plus launches Adblock Browser: Firefox for Android with built-in ad blocking
http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/20/adblock-plus-launches-adblock-browser-firefox-for-android-with-built-in-ad-blocking/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s New Universal App Campaigns Push App Promotions Across Search, YouTube, AdMob, Display
New campaign type is designed to give developers big scale for minimal work.
http://searchengineland.com/google-adwords-universal-app-campaigns-push-ads-221813
Google will unveil a new campaign type designed specifically for app marketers at Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference, which kicks off Thursday.
Dubbed Universal App Campaigns because the ads automatically reach across Google Search, mobile app network AdMob, sites in the Mobile Display Network and YouTube on iOS and Android devices and the Google Play store on Android.
Developers can set up and launch the campaigns either through AdWords or the Google Play Developer Console. Think of it as AdWords Express for Developers with scale and pricing based on outcomes rather than clicks.
Once the campaign is set, Google dynamically generates the ads and bids based on the developers’ CPI targets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Erin Griffith / Fortune:
How Facebook quadrupled its video traffic in one year to 4B video streams per day, and is reshaping advertising — How Facebook’s video-traffic explosion is shaking up the advertising world — Cenk Uygur can pinpoint the day he realized that Facebook FB video was going to rewrite his business model.
How Facebook’s video-traffic explosion is shaking up the advertising world
http://fortune.com/2015/06/03/facebook-video-traffic/
Facebook’s video traffic has reached 4 billion daily views, making the social network YouTube’s first real rival in online video—and an even tougher contender in the battle for digital ad dollars.
The video didn’t strike Uygur as anything special—just a typical example of his network’s progressive news commentary. But by lunchtime, it had racked up 7 million Facebook “impressions,” or people who saw it in their Facebook News Feed. By the time he finished eating, it had added another million. He looked again when he arrived at his Los Angeles office: 9 million, total. And after he taped a show: 15 million. A day later, 18 million people had seen it. The day after that? Twenty-three million.
In recent months that kind of “oh, my God” moment has occurred for video creators around the world. News site BuzzFeed’s video views on Facebook grew 80-fold in a year, reaching more than 500 million in April.
Seemingly overnight, video uploading and viewing have exploded on Facebook, where users now watch 4 billion video streams a day, quadruple what they watched a year ago. It’s happening because the social network’s engineers, quietly and with little fanfare, have retooled Facebook’s interface to make video easier than ever to watch and share. In February 2014, only a quarter of all videos posted to Facebook were uploaded directly to the network, while the rest came from YouTube or other video sites, according to analytics company Socialbakers. By a year later, the ratio had flipped: 70% of Facebook’s videos were uploaded directly.
These may sound like minor technical distinctions, but tiny changes make a huge difference when you’ve got 1.4 billion monthly active users.
Americans spend on smartphones, and Facebook drives nearly a quarter of all web traffic. The company’s recent video improvements will likely push those numbers even higher.
Facebook has already proved that it’s a quick study in the ad world. Mobile advertising, a meaningless sliver of its business three years ago, made up 73% of its $3.3 billion in advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2015. It’s the main reason Facebook’s total revenue has roughly tripled over that stretch, and it’s the driver of the network’s current $226 billion market cap and gaudy 40% operating profit margins. Video, especially mobile video, could blow up just as dramatically for Facebook, offering a gateway for advertisers to reach digital consumers in the format that most closely resembles television
Tomi Engdahl says:
James Risley / GeekWire:
Amazon brings Minions ads to delivery boxes, marking its first advertising deal on packaging … Your next Amazon box might double as a billboard. The company has started sending boxes featuring advertisements for the new Minions movie — the first non-Amazon ads to appear on the company’s delivery boxes.
Amazon brings Minions ads to delivery boxes, marking its first advertising deal on packaging
http://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-brings-minions-ads-to-delivery-boxes-marking-its-first-advertising-deal-on-packaging/
Your next Amazon box might double as a billboard. The company has started sending boxes featuring advertisements for the new Minions movie — the first non-Amazon ads to appear on the company’s delivery boxes.
The yellow boxes with yellow characters from the Despicable Me franchise started arriving on doorsteps as early as Wednesday last week. There are at least three different ads, each tied to a different box size and starring a single Minions character. The box also has the July 10 release date and a special link to a Minions page on Amazon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab:
A blow for mobile advertising: The next version of Safari will let users block ads on iPhones and iPads
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/06/a-blow-for-mobile-advertising-the-next-version-of-safari-will-let-users-block-ads-on-iphones-and-ipads/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ad Tech Firms Find Venture Capital Funding Is Running Dry
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/06/10/ad-tech-firms-find-venture-capital-funding-is-running-dry/
It’s a tough time to be raising money if you have the words “ad” and “tech” close together in your business plan.
Executives in the advertising technology sector and venture capitalists who are versed in the space say the climate for fundraising has shifted from one where dollars were flowing freely to one where getting additional funding is getting tough.
“It’s almost evaporated,” said Venky Ganesan, managing director at Menlo Partners. “These companies are struggling to even get meetings.”
Ad tech is often used as a catchall term that encompasses a range of companies aiming to make online advertising more automated and scientific. Some firms simply sell ads for thousands of websites using Web technology, while others have built Wall Street-like ad exchanges through which machines buy ads without human involvement. Still other ad tech companies promise sophisticated ad-targeting using data and powerful algorithms.
Of the many ad tech companies that have launched over the last half decade, few have demonstrated the rapid growth that many early-stage investors had hoped for.
“They have a lot of frothy values, and haven’t delivered the kind of multiples that reflect those values,” Mr. Patricof said.
Billions have poured into ad tech companies in recent years, but that’s rapidly changing.
“The investment community moves in waves, and ad tech is certainly not at a peak right now,” said Joe Medved, partner at SoftBank Capital. “Ad tech has become synonymous with relatively low margin, campaign-driven models, which yields poor exit multiples.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Michael Sebastian / AdAge:
Media companies avoid “advertising” when labeling native ads, favor “sponsored”, “promoted”
Media Brands Shy Away From the A-Word, When It Comes to Labeling Native Ads
An Analysis of Two Dozen Companies Found A Variety of Terms Is Used
http://adage.com/article/media/media-companies-label-native-ads/298944/
Media executives insist their native ads are always clearly labeled to avoid confusing readers over which articles came purely from editorial staff and which content an advertiser paid to produce and run.
But an analysis of two dozen news and lifestyle sites, social media platforms and popular mobile apps shows that none of the companies that rely on this strategy for ad revenue actually refers to them in a way most recognizable to consumers: advertisement.
Instead, they lean on a variety of terms, such as “sponsored,” “promoted” or “presented by.” That’s partly a reflection of the regulatory landscape. The Federal Trade Commission called publishers down to Washington, D.C. in December 2013 to discuss native advertising, but they simply advised media owners to make clear that something is an ad. The organization stopped short of issuing a mandate on exactly how the ads should be labeled.
A native ad is a piece of content — could be text, video or a collection of images — that more or less looks like a site’s editorial work except an advertiser actually paid to create it. A July 2014 survey from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PR firm Edelman found that only 41% of consumers said native ads on a general news sites were clearly identified as paid for by a brand.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jason Del Rey / Re/code:
With buy buttons, tech giants run the risk of alienating retail partners and will face challenges integrating payments and inventory systems — Why ‘Buy’ Buttons Will Pose Big Challenges for Google, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter — One year ago, the idea of shopping directly from Google …
Why ‘Buy’ Buttons Will Pose Big Challenges for Google, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter
http://recode.net/2015/06/14/why-buy-buttons-will-pose-big-challenges-for-google-facebook-pinterest-and-twitter/
One year ago, the idea of shopping directly from Google, Pinterest, Twitter or Facebook was mostly unheard of. Today, these companies are hoping it becomes one of the hottest Internet trends over the next year.
Within the last 11 months, all four of these massive digital platforms have announced plans to either test or introduce some version of a “Buy” button, salivating over the chance to turn their social networks and discovery platforms into shopping malls as well. A new battleground for the consumer Web has come into sight and these players are coming for your wallet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Oculus and Cardboard Are Going to Rock the Travel Industry
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-19/how-oculus-and-cardboard-are-going-to-rock-the-travel-industry
As advertisers jump on VR, it may just be a matter of time before you can rack up air miles, virtually
This is advertising on steroids.
Marriott calls this a “4-D” experience, and its one of the latest innovations in virtual reality. Delivered via an Oculus Rift headset inside a special Teleporter station, this experience is part of the hotel chain’s “Travel Brilliantly” campaign. You feel as if you’re in a movie playing 360-degrees around you, all above you, underneath your feet. You don’t direct it like a video game but instead hold on and go for the ride.
It very well might be the future of travel.
“The secret sauce,” he says, “is in 4D, because being on a vacation affects more than just your eyes and ears.” So when you step onto the beach you smell the salty air (via a synced scent release), or when you tunnel through a wormhole you feel the ground shake (via motion signals and a rumbling platform).
Relegated to geeky fantasy for years, VR hardware is suddenly cheap, portable, and there for the travel-brand taking. For his next off-the-record project for Marriott, he’ll be using $199 off-the-shelf Gear VR headsets by Samsung to view a Galaxy 6 or Galaxy Note 4 smartphone running Oculus software.
“It’s a race right now for content. If you’re first, you win.”
Travel companies such as Thomas Cook, Qantas Airways, and Destination BC in Canada are also creating their own promotional VR videos. And they say this is just the beginning.
“We see virtual reality as an innovation that will change the travel business,” says Marco Ryan, chief digital officer for Thomas Cook Group, a U.K.-based tour operator that began testing VR content last year to boost sales. “The closer you get to the destination, the more excited you are to have that experience”—i.e., buy that experience.
VR is not changing what customers actually experience on a trip. At least, not yet.
Currently, in 10 select Thomas Cook store locations in the U.K., Germany, and Belgium, you can strap on a Gear VR headset and try your tour before you buy
The next step, according to Ryan, is to go beyond brick-and-mortar stores and deliver VR brochures into homes.
Together with a VR company called Visualise, Thomas Cook has begun gathering “excursion” videos. They’re filmed with a 360-degree, specially designed rig of GoPro cameras, which the company made itself before Google unveiled its commercial version of a similar 16-camera rig called Jump at last month’s I/O conference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Pushes Advertisers to Employ Data More Effectively
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-22/facebook-pushes-advertisers-to-employ-user-data-more-effectively
Facebook Inc. is pushing advertisers to be more strategic with the vast data the social website has on its 1.4 billion users.
The company is encouraging more creative tactics, such as distributing different versions of the same ad depending on a viewer’s interests, said Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s vice president of global marketing solutions. She’s also preparing marketers for the opportunity to use Facebook’s targeting data for ads on Instagram, the photo-sharing application owned by the company.
Facebook will highlight the efforts in meetings with clients and ad agency partners at the Cannes Lions festival in France this week, the largest annual global gathering of advertisers and marketers. The company is seeking to increase its share of the $145 billion global advertising market that EMarketer estimates at 8 percent.
The mission is that “the creative community really starts to learn and understand the power of our data,” Everson said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How the next Java update could make Yahoo your default search provider
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2940572/how-the-next-java-update-could-make-yahoo-your-default-search-provider.html
Next time you’re prompted to update the Java software on your computer, pay attention or you might become a Yahoo user without realizing it.
The search company has cut a deal with Oracle to promote Yahoo search alongside future updates to Oracle’s Java technology, which runs on most PCs. Starting this month, when people are prompted to update to the next version of Java, they’ll be asked if they want to make Yahoo their default search engine on Chrome and Internet Explorer.
The box to reply in the affirmative will be checked by default, the Wall Street Journal reported, so those not paying attention might find themselves using Yahoo search even if they didn’t mean to.
CEO Marissa Mayer announced the deal at Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday. It’s the latest partnership the search company has signed to promote its services.
How the next Java update could make Yahoo your default search provider
http://www.itworld.com/article/2940575/enterprise-software/how-the-next-java-update-could-make-yahoo-your-default-search-provider.html
Yahoo has cut a deal with Oracle to promote Yahoo alongside its Java technology
The deals are intended to grow Yahoo’s meager share of the search market. At the end of April, Google led the pack with 64 percent of desktop search traffic in the U.S., followed by Microsoft with 20 percent and Yahoo with less than 13 percent, according to comScore.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:
Microsoft exec says Bing is a multibillion dollar business that pays for itself
Search Beats Display: Microsoft Says Bing Is Sustainable & Standalone Multibillion Dollar Business
http://marketingland.com/microsoft-bing-sustainable-standalone-multibillion-133779
A rare reveal as Microsoft exit the display ads business highlights what a powerhouse Bing search apparently is.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Martin Beck / Marketing Land:
Facebook adds signals to News Feed video rankings, will now take into account actions like activating audio and watching videos full screen
http://marketingland.com/facebook-expands-beyond-like-comment-share-in-ranking-video-in-news-feed-133740
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Maxwell / 9to5Google:
YouTube introducing new channel cards, improved notifications, creator forum, more
http://9to5google.com/2015/06/29/youtube-new-channel-cards-subscription-notifications-creator-community-more/
Amongst those who regularly publish content to YouTube, the video site is known for picking favorites and being a black box in terms of the communication it holds with the community when it comes to anyone other than the site’s biggest stars. The company has as of late been trying to change that perception, though, by using the YouTube Creators channel as an outlet to recognize and acknowledge the feedback and concerns of its users. Today it published a new video outlining changes and new features coming soon to the video platform.
Brian Marquardt, a Group Product Manager at YouTube, says that YouTube is building a “simple new way to opt-in” from the YouTube mobile app to get mobile notifications whenever your favorite creator(s) publishes a new video. Right now the options for managing email and notification subscriptions are only easily accessible from the desktop website.
Cards on YouTube are a way to add an extra layer of interactivity to a video by, say, including a link to a project on a crowdfunding website from directly within the video player.
YouTube says that they’re working on making it easier to access the subscriptions feed from the YouTube mobile app, so you can quickly get to the new videos from those you care about most.
YouTube Creator Studio is YouTube’s app through which creators can manage their accounts on the go. The app includes the ability to respond to comments, update the details and settings for each video, and monitor channel performance through an analytics section which includes a detail breakdown of how each video and the channel as a whole is doing
One highly requested feature from creators is the ability to easily upload and update custom thumbnails for their videos from mobile, which will likely appear in the Creator Studio app
“We like to experiment,” says YouTube Communications Manager Mariana De Felice. “To see how far we can take the online video experience.” She’s talking, unsurprisingly to some, about 360-degree video. The addition of 360-degree support on YouTube is something we’ve already known about for some time now and was demoed by Google during its unveiling of the Project Jump VR camera. If virtual reality really is the future of entertainment, YouTube is getting in early to make sure it can be a home for this content as it starts to be produced.
The company will soon be launching an official forum for finding collaborations and sharing advice with other YouTubers, and providing direct feedback to YouTube.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A blow for mobile advertising: The next version of Safari will let users block ads on iPhones and iPads
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/06/a-blow-for-mobile-advertising-the-next-version-of-safari-will-let-users-block-ads-on-iphones-and-ipads/
Think making money on mobile advertising is hard now? Think how much more difficult it will be with a significant share of your audience is blocking all your ads — all with a simple download from the App Store.
Adblocking is coming to the iPhone with iOS 9.
Adblocking — running a piece of software in your web browser that prevents ads on most web pages from loading — has moved from a niche behavior for the nerdy few to something mainstream. A report from 2014 found that adblock usage was up 70 percent year-over-year, with over 140 million people blocking ads worldwide, including 41 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds. You can understand why that would be troubling to the publishers who sell those ads. But until now, adblocking has been limited almost entirely to desktop — mobile browsers haven’t allowed it.
What this means is, when iOS 9 launches in the fall, you’ll be able to go to the App Store and download an extension that will block ads on most news sites.
Is there any chance that won’t be incredibly popular? The desktop version of Safari currently allows a variety of custom extensions, and what’s the most popular? Hint: It’s called AdBlock.
For me, the arguments for using ad blockers range from the unconvincing (dude, information wants to be free) to the reasonable (I don’t need dozens of tracking beacons on every webpage) to the downright understandable (poorly built ads slow my browser to a crawl). I don’t use an ad blocker, but I do block all Flash by default for performance reasons, which accomplishes some of the same ends. The best arguments for adblocking are even stronger on mobile than they are on desktop — bandwidth and performance and battery life are all at a premium.
This is worrisome. Publishers already make tiny dollars on mobile, even as their readers have shifted there in huge numbers. To take one example, The New York Times has more than 50 percent of its digital audience on mobile, but generates only 10 percent of its digital advertising revenue there. Most news outlets aren’t even at that low level.
If iOS users — the majority of mobile web users in the U.S., and disproportionately appealing demographically — can suddenly block all your ads with a simple free download, where is the growth going to come from? (By the way, a version of Adblock Plus for Android just came out a couple weeks ago, though it appears to be more limited than what Apple is allowing.)
Maybe I’m exaggerating the potential impact here. (Talk me down!) Maybe people won’t download the free app at the top of the Most Downloaded list that promises to make their websites load more quickly, more beautifully, and using less data. But use of ad blockers has done nothing but rise, particularly among young users, and people are about to be given an easy way to do on the devices they use most. For the many news companies who are counting on mobile advertising for their future business model, I don’t see a way that this change won’t shave off a real slice of mobile advertising revenue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:10 minutes ago
Microsoft’s ad business withered because it tried to beat Google in search, overspent on aQuantive, and had warring factions in its organization — Autopsy: Why Microsoft’s ad business withered
Autopsy: Why Microsoft’s ad business withered
http://digiday.com/publishers/autopsy-microsofts-ad-business-whithered/
On Tuesday, Microsoft said that it was handing over its ad sales business to AOL, capping off the company’s gradual retreat from the space. With the deal AOL (now owned by Verizon) controls Microsoft’s ad-supported businesses, including MSN.com, Outlook and Xbox video. It doesn’t, however, touch Microsoft’s Bing search business, which the company isn’t letting go of.
Microsoft’s foray into advertising can be called a misstep if you’re feeling charitable and a major strategic blunder if not. The company was long thought a sleeping giant of the ad business, constantly making big pronouncements, seemingly having every advantage to serve as a counterweight to the growing power of Google, and even garnering the goodwill of advertisers and publishers alike wary of Google’s growing might. And yet, with a whimper this week, Microsoft beat a hasty retreat from an ad market it once seemed poise to dominate.
Advertising was a bad fit for Microsoft’s culture and business.
Microsoft, at its heart, is a software company. While the company spent nearly a decade chasing tablets and smartphones, those businesses didn’t exactly mesh with Microsoft’s core business of selling software licenses. The new Microsoft under CEO Satya Nadella is more focused and is shedding non-core businesses — including advertising.
“The margins in advertising are also much lower than software licensing, which is extremely lucrative, so even though Microsoft may have wanted to have a stake in the growth of the Internet, it would have dragged down overall margins even if it had been moderately successful,” said Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson.
“They were always chasing somebody and not really succeeding. With advertising, Microsoft never had a unique vision of its own,” Tillinghast said.
The disastrous aQuantive acquisition was, well, disastrous.
No singular event epitomized Microsoft’s advertising missteps more than its bungled defensive acquisition of display ad company aQuantive. Scooped up for $6 billion just a month after Google bought DoubleClick for nearly half the price, aQuantive was Microsoft’s largest acquisition before it spent $8.5 billion on Skype in 2011. But the acquisition never lived up to its price tag, to put it mildly. In 2012 Microsoft posted a $6.2 billion write down for aQuantive’s assets, which “did not accelerate growth to the degree anticipated,” as Microsoft said at the time.
Microsoft’s advertising challenges were larger than just advertising. The company’s management structure has long had a reputation for fostering competition over collaboration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Brands Doing Cool Things on Instagram
http://digiday.com/brands/5-brands-doing-cool-things-on-instagram/
While brands always like to flock to the new platforms, not every platform is a great fit for every brand.
Instagram was definitely a shiny new object when it first came out, and many brands rushed onto it but soon realized it wasn’t quite right. Here are five examples of brands (and only one is a fashion brand) that are doing cool things on the social picture-sharing platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Most Underrated Digital Marketing Tactics
http://digiday.com/brands/the-most-underrated-digital-marketing-tactics/
Bright shiny object syndrome is a known condition to afflict many marketers. Digital media is great at producing the Next Big Thing, hyped to no end by blogs and social media gurus. It’s why you see suggestions that Snapchat might be a huge area of opportunity for marketing.
Yet for many marketers, the most important thing is staying focused on the tried and true while keeping an eye on emerging opportunities. That means doing the blocking and tackling of digital media, whether it’s through email or search engine marketing. Digiday asked top digital marketers for their take on which digital media opportunities are underrated.
For me, the most underrated digital marketing tactic is email. Email has long been shunned as a “has been”
Search-engine marketing is now taken for granted, but it is an important tactic
Optimizing one’s website for organic search activity. It’s not that it’s ignored, but it’s not fully understood by many webmasters as to how to optimize.
The most underrated tactic is that brands need to behave, sound and act like human beings on social media
Email marketing. While many brands today are enamored by social media and other newer marketing channels, standard email marketing, which has been around for over 20 years, is one of the most effective means of communicating your brand identity and generating sales.
Digital is such a different medium than print or TV, and consumers want to engage with a brand the same way they engage digitally with other human beings. There is nothing funnier, more interesting, or more engaging than the unique perspectives, insights, and commentary that others post online.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Desperate For Ad Data, Twitter Offers Animated Balloons For Your Birthdate
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/06/what-advertising-demographic-are-you/
Twitter’s ads would work a lot better if it knew how old you are. So in an obvious data grab, Twitter will show animated balloons on your profile when it’s your birthday if you’re willing to give it your birthdate. You can see what the balloons looks like on comedian Kevin Hart’s profile.
Twitter’s minimalist sign-up flow seems to be coming back to bite it. All it asks is for a name, username, and email or phone number. That made it super quick to register an account, which is helpful on mobile. But without gender, age, and other demographic info, it’s difficult to accurately target its ads to the people businesses want to reach.
You’ll soon be able to go to Twitter.com and edit your profile to add your birthdate.
Way back in 2010, Facebook made one of its smartest moves ever by pushing people’s biographical information to the top of their profile where everyone would see it. This strongly encouraged users to fill theirs in, keep it current, and remind friends if their data was missing or out of date. That fueled the rapid ascent of its ad targeting engine and its ongoing financial success.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dan Levine / Reuters:
Amazon must face trademark lawsuit by high-end watchmaker Multi Time Machine, which claims search results were misleading users
Amazon must face trademark lawsuit over search results
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/06/us-amazon-com-lawsuit-trademark-idUSKCN0PG1VP20150706
Amazon.com Inc must face a trademark lawsuit brought by a watchmaker which says the online retailer’s search results can cause confusion for potential customers, a federal appeals court ruled.
MTM Special Ops are a military style model of watches which are not sold on Amazon’s web site, according to the court ruling. If an Amazon shopper searches for it, however, Amazon the site will not say it does not carry MTM products.
Instead, Amazon displays MTM Special Ops in the search field and immediately below the search field, along with similar watches manufactured by MTM’s competitors for sale.
MTM alleged this could cause customers to buy from one of those competitors
“We think a jury could find that Amazon has created a likelihood of confusion,” the court wrote.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
Staff changes in the video department at The New York Times signal ambitions of higher digital ad revenue
Long road ahead for the Times’ video ambitions
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2015/07/8571735/long-road-ahead-emtimesem-video-ambitions
The New York Times has come a long way since it created a video department 10 years ago, but it still has a long way to go before video becomes a significant part of its business.
The changes come as the Times is eager to carve out a bigger piece of the U.S. advertising market for digital video, which is expected to hit $12.82 billion by 2018, up from $5.81 billion last year, according to eMarketer. Newspaper companies and web publishers alike are racing to make more money in this space, which is attractive because it is appealing to users and can be sold at much higher rates than digital display ads.
Video is considered a ripe growth area within the Times, which has seen its core print advertising revenues contract sharply over the past 10 years. Still, in 2014 it came in at under 10 percent of digital advertising revenues, or less than $18.2 million out of $444.7 million in total company revenues.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm update is changing the value proposition for search ads — Google’s mobilegeddon moves hitting marketers, sites — Adobe data shows that the gap between what marketers are paying Google for search advertising and what they are getting has expanded courtesy of mobile changes.
Google’s mobilegeddon moves hitting marketers, sites
http://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-mobilegeddon-moves-hitting-marketers-sites/
Adobe data shows that the gap between what marketers are paying Google for search advertising and what they are getting has expanded courtesy of mobile changes.
Among the moving parts:
Google’s move to prioritize sites that look best on the small screen—known as mobilegeddon—has lowered traffic 10 percent to sites with lower social engagement.
Gaffney said the mobile changes didn’t have an immediate impact, but now “low mobile sites are starting to feel the pinch and it’s just beginning.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mollie Vandor / The Twitter Blog:
Twitter’s new data dashboard shows users which devices have accessed their account, login history
http://blog.twitter.com/2015/a-new-dashboard-to-help-you-monitor-and-manage-your-twitter-account
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed:
Facebook tests shops within Pages that bring entire shopping experience from product discovery to checkout inside Facebook
Facebook Takes Big Step Forward On Commerce, Builds Shops Into Pages
A test with the potential to transform online commerce.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/facebook-takes-big-step-forward-on-commerce-builds-shops-int#.hcPLgBYj1
Facebook wants to be more than a place to socialize, share, and discover content. It wants you to shop inside it as well.
The company is building out shops within Facebook Pages, essentially mini e-commerce sites that give businesses a chance to set up second homes within its walls. The shops are still in the testing phase, but some already feature “buy” buttons that allow the entire shopping experience to occur within Facebook — from product discovery to checkout.
“With the shop section on the page, we’re now providing businesses with the ability to showcase their products directly on the page,” Facebook product marketing manager Emma Rodgers told BuzzFeed News.
Facebook does not currently take a percentage from product sales on its platform, but the company’s history does contain instances where it’s rolled out products with favorable terms for businesses only to roll back those terms when it decides it needs to make more money. Companies, for instance, once paid Facebook to build up likes on their page so they could communicate with their “likers” in their newsfeeds. But then their posts stopped showing up as often, so they were compelled to pay to reach the same people with advertising. Given the size of the commerce pie, the temptation to circle back and monetize will be there.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rick Webb / Medium:
Banners are useful for brand marketers despite “fraud”, because they’re cheap and effective for raising awareness
Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter
A Message from brand marketers to publishers
https://medium.com/@RickWebb/banner-fraud-doesn-t-matter-fc84413fe59c
Here’s a message on behalf of brand marketers everywhere.† We know about banner fraud already. We just don’t care. Seriously. It’s fine. I mean, you got us into this mess years ago, and sure, it was kind of annoying, but you know what? It is what it is. To your immense credit, you have adjusted prices downward as you’ve made banners an ever-increasing s**tshow, so, actually, it’s totally cool. We like them.
That’s right. I said it. We like banners. So stop telling us that they are useless. Everyone does not hate banners. You’ve thrown, god, what is it, something like 400 different, new, “better” ad formats at us now. But we keep buying banners. It’s time everyone accepted the truth: we’re not buying banners from you because it’s the only thing you can sell us, we’re buying banners from you because they’re cheap and they work.
That’s right. I said it. Banners are awesome.
We don’t care about clickthroughs.
Secondly, banners are still little billboards.
We’ve known about banner fraud forever and we’re cool with it.
We know that most banners aren’t seen by humans. We’re okay with it. Because they’re so stinking cheap. And, thanks to your article, they’re gonna get cheaper. Thanks!
Okay, now on to the main point:
Fixing banner fraud isn’t going to do us any favors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Martin Beck / Marketing Land:
Twitter adds new advertiser tools to make it easier to target ads based on events — Twitter’s Event Targeting Helps Marketers Zero In On Live Audiences — New ad tool will take the guesswork out of targeting people following live events on Twitter.
Twitter’s Event Targeting Helps Marketers Zero In On Live Audiences
New ad tool will take the guesswork out of targeting people following live events on Twitter.
http://marketingland.com/twitters-event-targeting-helps-marketers-zero-in-on-live-audiences-136225
Tomi Engdahl says:
Running Your First Social Media Campaign? Use This Checklist
http://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-campaign-checklist/
Social media campaigns have proven themselves to be up to 60 percent percent more effective than traditional advertising campaigns. So why aren’t more brands running them? Launching your first social marketing campaign can seem daunting. There are a lot of moving parts and factors to consider. That being said, if you’re prepared, social media campaigns can actually be simple—even fun to build.
Get a campaign builder
Before you launch any kind of social marketing campaign, you’re going to need a campaign builder. If you use a social media management platform, using a campaign builder is a very similar experience.T
The best campaign builders for UGC should, at a minimum, allow you to:
Curate your fanbase’s creativity via hashtag(s) or mentions
Moderate, approve, ban, or download UGC
Aggregate photos, videos, and/or Tweets onto a centralized page
Create galleries where fans can vote, comment and share to encourage further engagement
One social marketing technique that campaigns can help you explore is social commerce. At its most basic form, social commerce is when companies populate a shoppable catalog with user-generated photos and videos of their products. It’s a great way to turn all that UGC into actual sales.
Identify your campaign idea
Once you’ve got the platform, it’s time to pick up your markers, find a whiteboard and start thinking about your fanbase, your company, and how to celebrate them with your first social marketing campaign.
Ask yourself:
What do your fans love about you?
What do you wish your fans had a better understanding of?
Why do you love your fans?
And who are they when they’re not buying your products?
Design and launch
Armed with your idea, it’s time to build out your campaign.
There are a few key components that your campaign has to have. It’s got to have a name, a home, and a set duration. Some campaigns, like social galleries, can be permanent fixtures, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
Promote the heck out of your campaign
And with just one click of a mouse, your campaign is live. Give yourself a minute and a half to be pleased before you get right to work promoting it.
Static promotion is an important first step.
No matter where you’re hosting the campaign, promote the campaign where your fans are. If you use a social media management tool, you can build out a queue of promotional Tweets and statuses for your official channels. But it’s important not to rely exclusively on automated messaging. Fans want to be interacted with. Reach out to the entrants as soon as you get their submissions, whether that’s a form-fill, photo or opinion.
Promoting your social marketing campaign in your newsletter by email can be very effective. Rather than blasting your subscribers with an email exclusively focused on the campaign, make the campaign the first order of business in the next issue of your existing newsletter.
End the campaign
The end of your campaign is not the end of the checklist.
If your campaign can be won, choose your winner. Whether this is by a randomized draw or careful deliberation, make someone’s day and pick a name. The final outcome of the social marketing campaign should be announced as soon as humanly possible. You’d want to know if you won a social marketing campaign, after all.
As soon as that announcement goes up, reach out to everyone who entered the campaign. Thank them, and offer them an exclusive coupon, unless you already did on the campaign’s Thank You page.
If you ran a poll or a quiz, forward the results over to a blog writer and create one more piece of shareable media. If you ran a gallery to collect UGC, review your aggregated content.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jet.com Runs Into Turbulence With Retailers
Home Depot, L’Oreal and others pull brands from new discount website
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/jet-com-runs-into-turbulence-with-retailers-1438899476-lMyQjAxMTI1NzA3NjMwNjY2Wj
Dozens of the nation’s largest retailers including Macy’s Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Home Depot Inc. have quickly moved to disassociate themselves from new discount retail website Jet.com.
The retailers complained to Jet after discovering it had placed links to their sites without permission, promising its own members cash back for making purchases after clicking the links.
A comparison of Jet’s website on July 1 and on Tuesday reveals that more than 100 brands owned by at least 70 different companies have been removed, most in the week after the company’s July 21 launch.
Jet launched its online marketplace two weeks ago, promising millions of discounted products in exchange for a $50 annual membership fee. The site is aiming to undercut Amazon and other big retailers.
Membership fees are intended to be Jet’s only source of profits, so the company’s goal is to entice millions of people with cheaper products, whether sold from its own warehouses or through partners
The affiliate program is where the retail brands appear under a section of Jet’s website called “Jet Anywhere.”
Jet Anywhere is also a way to encourage other retailers to sell products directly through Jet by showing them that the site can bring them customers, said Jet founder and CEO Marc Lore.
The extra boost to gross merchandise value could help Jet raise additional capital since, according to people familiar with the matter, it is using the figure as a yardstick to measure progress in pitches to investors.
Typically a company like Jet will sign up individually to join companies’ affiliate marketing programs, a process that can be time-consuming. To jump-start Jet Anywhere, Ms. Landsman said it automatically enrolled hundreds of sites with the help of an intermediary, VigLink Inc.
That made it more difficult for merchants to see that Jet was the ultimate source of clicks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Maxwell / 9to5Google:
Sources: Google to launch affiliate program for Google Play, initially movies and music, apps and hardware to come later
Exclusive: Google planning an affiliate program for Google Play, starting with Movies & Music
http://9to5google.com/2015/08/10/google-play-might-soon-get-official-affiliate-program/
Google is working on launching an affiliate program for Google Play similar to the one Apple runs for its own digital content stores, a source briefed on the matter has told 9to5Google.
Affiliate programs provide content creators with a way to monetize their work beyond traditional methods like display ads and subscriptions, by allowing them to link to product sales pages and earn a commission each time someone purchases the product using their unique link.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Scott / New York Times:
PageFair study claims ad-blocking, regularly used by 200M people worldwide, will lead to $22B of lost ad revenue this year
Study of Ad-Blocking Software Suggests Wide Use
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/study-of-ad-blocking-software-suggests-wide-use/?_r=0
Guillermo Beltrà spends a lot of time surfing the web.
Yet like many avid Internet users, Mr. Beltrà hates the annoying pop-up advertisements that litter many websites. “It’s just very cumbersome,” he said.
So like a growing number of people, Mr. Beltrà, a Spaniard who works for a consumer protection organization in Brussels, decided to block them by downloading software for his desktop browser that removed any online advertising from his daily Internet activity.
While he acknowledged that advertising was often the primary source of income for many websites, Mr. Beltrà said he remained wary of how much data companies were collecting on his online activities.
“If I don’t know what data is being collected on me, I’d rather block it,” he added.
Mr. Beltrà is just one of an increasing number of Internet users who are taking sophisticated measures to sidestep efforts by broadcasters, publishers and advertisers to sell their wares online.
Ad-blocking will lead to almost $22 billion of lost advertising revenue this year, according to the report, put together by Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-based start-up that helps companies and advertisers recoup some of this lost revenue. That represents a 41 percent rise compared to the previous 12 months, and the levels of ad-blocking activity now top more than a third of all Internet users in some countries, particularly in Europe, the report said.
Gaming, social network and other tech-related websites were most affected by ad-blocking software, the report added.
The numbers come as tech companies, publishers and advertisers grow anxious that their efforts to reach users through increasingly sophisticated online advertisements are having little effect. While companies spend billions of dollars each year on these Internet marketing efforts, analysts say people often overlook them while looking at online content — and many are now turning to ad-blocking software to remove online ads once and for all.
“What’s causing grave concern for broadcasters and advertisers is video advertising, which is some of their most valuable content, is starting to be blocked,” said Campbell Foster, director of product marketing at Adobe. “That’s a really scary prospect.”
Almost 200 million people worldwide now regularly use ad-blocking software, the report said. About 45 million of them are in the United States
Companies like Eyeo, a tech company based in Cologne, Germany, that is behind the popular Adblock Plus browser plug-in, have garnered global followings. The start-up says it now has roughly 60 million active users worldwide, but has courted controversy by allowing some advertisers to bypass the blocking software and regain access to users — for a fee.
Currently, only a small fraction of ad-blocking comes from mobile devices, according to the Adobe/PageFair report. But analysts say developers are working on plug-ins for smartphone Web browsers
The 2015 Ad Blocking Report
http://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/
We find that not only has ad blocking continued its fast growth on desktop, but it has also leaped onto mobile in Asia, and will soon go mobile in the West with the upcoming launch of content blocking on iOS.
Ad blocking estimated to cost publishers nearly $22 billion during 2015.
There are now 198 million active adblock users around the world.
Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months.
US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.
UK ad blocking grew by 82% to reach 12 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Marco Arment / Marco.org:
The profusion of privacy-violating web trackers invalidates the already-shaky theory that ad-blocking violates an implied contract — The ethics of modern web ad-blocking — More than fifteen years ago, in response to decreasing ad rates and banner blindness, web advertisers and publishers adopted pop-up ads.
The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
http://www.marco.org/2015/08/11/ad-blocking-ethics
More than fifteen years ago, in response to decreasing ad rates and banner blindness, web advertisers and publishers adopted pop-up ads.
People hated pop-up ads. We tolerated in-page banners as an acceptable cost of browsing free websites, but pop-ups were over the line: they were too annoying and intrusive. Many website publishers claimed helplessness in serving them — the ads came from somewhere else that they had little control over, they said. They really needed the money from pop-ups to stay afloat, they said.
The future didn’t work out well for pop-ups. Pop-up-blocking software boomed, and within a few years, every modern web browser blocked almost all pop-ups by default.
A line had been crossed, and people fought back.
People often argue that running ad-blocking software is violating an implied contract between the reader and the publisher: the publisher offers the page content to the reader for free, in exchange for the reader seeing the publisher’s ads. And that’s a nice, simple theory, but it’s a blurry line in reality.
By that implied-contract theory, readers should not only permit their browsers to load the ads, but they should actually read each one, giving themselves a chance to develop an interest for the advertised product or service and maybe even click on it and make a purchase. That’s also a nice theory, but of course, it’s ridiculous to expect anyone to actually do that. Publishers are lucky if people even read the content with any real attention today, let alone the ads around it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Brings Auto-Play Video Ads To Apps In Its Mobile Ad Network
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/11/we-bring-the-data-you-show-the-ads/
Facebook’s making a killing with its native, in-feed, auto-play video ads, and now it’s going to let other developers earn money off them too. Today Facebook announced that it’s opening up its own best-performing ad units to publishers that show Facebook’s Audience Network ads to monetize their apps. Facebook says Audience Network publishers using its native ad units get 7X better performance than on their traditional banner ads.
These new ad formats include auto-play video, as well as its multi-image Carousel Ads that can give deeper looks at a product or tell stories, Dynamic Product Ads that retarget users with items they’ve considered buying elsewhere on the web, and more traditional interstitial Click-To-Play Video Ads. Some users might find these flashy ads annoying, but at least they’re well-targeted and run properly.
Facebook’s spent years improving its ad user experience so videos don’t stutter when you scroll.
Facebook originally announced its Mobile Audience Network ad network at F8 back in April 2014. For years, other analysts and I had expected Facebook could earn a lot more money if it used its trove of personal info to target people with ads while they’re using other apps.
By October, Facebook opened up the ad network to all apps. When users who are logged in to Facebook visit an app on the Audience Network, they get shown personalized ads sold by Facebook that are targeted based on that person’s Facebook info like their age, gender, interests and activity. Facebook takes a cut for doing the targeting and gives the rest to the app developer who doesn’t have to hire their own ad sales team.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UK police are waging war on piracy sites’ funding — and it’s working
http://uk.businessinsider.com/operation-creative-piracy-73-percent-decrease-pipcu-2015-8?op=1?r=US&IR=T
Most big piracy sites don’t charge their users a fee, but are still able to profit off of copyright infringement. Why? Because the operators plaster their pages in advertising.
But British police now say they are making major headway in tackling this: On Wednesday, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) announced that Operation Creative, launched in 2013, has led to a 73% decline in advertising “from the UK’s top ad spending companies on copyright infringing websites.”
As part of Operation Creative, PIPCU created a kind of blacklist, the Infringing Website List (IWL). Sites hosting illegal content that do not engage with the agency when approached will be placed on the list, which is then circulated with Operation Creative partners and those in the ad business so they know not to advertise on those sites.
Household brands inadvertently advertising alongside illegal copyrighted content has long been a problem online.
Companies often rely on automated, programmatic advertising processes to place their adverts around the web. But if not properly policed, it can result in their ads appearing next to objectionable or illegal content. A 2013 report by the Digital Citizens Alliance estimates that advertising brought in $227 million in revenue for piracy sites.
“The criminals behind these sites are making substantial sums of money from advertising,” said PIPCU chief inspector Peter Ratcliffe, “and inadvertently brands and advertisers are funding this online crime.”
Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/operation-creative-piracy-73-percent-decrease-pipcu-2015-8?op=1?r=US&IR=T#ixzz3iftK8iRF
Tomi Engdahl says:
How would you describe today’s consumer?
http://returnpath.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/the-path-to-data-enlightenment.pdf?sfdc=701000000006Zh7
Reaching consumers has never been easier than it is today… and at
the same time, it has never been more difficult.
The average consumer is exposed to hundreds of marketing
messages through dozens of channels each day. Information
overload is a fact of life, and nowhere is this more evident than
in the inbox. According to our research, the average consumer
receives more than 500 marketing messages in a given month and
opens fewer than one in fifteen.
This overwhelming volume also makes it challenging for consumers
to distinguish legitimate marketing email from phishing messages.
A recent study shows that 23 percent of recipients will open a
phishing message, and 11 percent will open attachments contained
in the phishing messages.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook struggles to sell advertising in India
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/12/us-facebook-india-ads-idUSKCN0QH0E220150812
Facebook is trying to lure skeptical advertisers in India with features such as free email support for questions about advertising and advice on increasing sales in a bid to boost revenue from its second biggest market.
Facebook has 132 million users in India, trailing only the 193 million in the United States, according to the company, and the country is critical for the Menlo Park, California, social network’s global expansion.
But so far, the payoff has been small: Facebook earns 15 cents per user in India every quarter, compared to the $7 to $8 it makes on each U.S. user, according to analysts.
But the world’s largest social network says it has seen early signs its efforts are working. The company unveiled a new type of ad designed specifically for India last year, called “click to missed call.”
Users click a button on an ad, which automatically calls an advertiser. The user hangs up – to save them the charge for the call – and the advertiser calls back with a pre-recorded message.
TV ADS
But Indian advertisers still overwhelmingly flock to television ads and remain skeptical of the value of advertising on social media, analysts and business executives said.
“Advertisers in India are not warmed enough to social media as a concept of marketing,” said Shah, the Counterpoint analyst.
“We really need to help them see how Facebook pages and advertising will help grow their businesses,” said Andy Hwang, Facebook director of small- and medium-sized businesses for Asia Pacific.
For instance, the company advises businesses to create interactive Facebook pages and use Facebook Messenger to interact with customers as a way of increasing sales.
Getting more Indian users “drives success, or at least the perception of success,”
More than 90 percent of Facebook’s Indian users access it through mobile phones, but the Facebook app uses more data than most are able to pay for and Internet connections can be patchy. So the social giant developed Facebook Lite, which uses less data, for India and other emerging markets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
After Years Of Restraint, Facebook Tries Allowing GIFs In Ads And Page Posts
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/20/facebook-gif-ads/
Facebook refused to fill its site with flashy animated banner ads for a decade. Zuckerberg thought these interrupted the user experience, and could stunt growth. But after reaching near ubiquity and acclimating users to video ads, today the company tells me it’s relaxing its standards and starting to allow businesses to post GIFs as ads and Page posts.
Wendy’s and Coca-Cola’s Brazilian brand Kuat are the first businesses with the ability to share them. Wendy’s ad shows a salad being constructed, while Kuat’s is basically the rainbow-shooting poptart meme Nyan Cat with a brand name slapped on.
Facebook Ad GifGIFs can’t go in the tiny sidebar ads Facebook is phasing out, only “Boosted” Page posts, which make up most of the ads you see in your feed.
The social network started supporting GIFs in user posts starting in May, but hadn’t allowed businesses to try the hip graphic interchange format all the kids are Tumbling over.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘A gusher of money’: Google testing video ads in search results, industry sources say
http://digiday.com/platforms/gusher-money-google-testing-promoted-video-ads-search-results/
Google is testing promoted video ads in search results, a format that could bring more brand dollars to marketing there, according to a number of sources familiar with the company’s product road map.
The search video ads are in a limited test right now and have come up in discussions between Google and the ad industry, according to these sources. The video ads would be the next step in Google’s evolution of search advertising, which started as simple links but increasingly include photos and other media formats.
“What used to be narrowly defined as search is being turned on its head,” said one digital marketing executive. “Google is finally getting away from just having three lines of text. Video ads have taken over mobile, Facebook and YouTube, and Google is thinking about how to integrate them into search.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Droga: ‘We’ve moved from selling originality to selling processes’
http://digiday.com/agencies/david-droga-weve-moved-selling-originality-selling-processes/
The rise of digital has thrown the ad industry into a state of flux, and there is perhaps no place that is more keenly felt than in the agency creative department. For agency creatives, the new normal is a faster pace that is more about banner ads and pop-ups than longform ads masquerading as “films.”
For David Droga, creative chairman at independent agency Droga5, this has meant rejiggering the organization and processes of his agency to make sure it’s keeping up with client demands — while refusing to give in to doing advertising that’s just disruptive without being creative.
Clients and agencies operate at markedly different speeds.
It’s pretty tough to be a client, and marketers are often frustrated with agency partners that don’t achieve the results they want. That’s one reason there has been a wave of marketers building up in-house agency capabilities. “It’s got to be pretty hard to be a client. A lot of the time you’re buying processes and it’s smoke and mirrors,” said Droga. One reason is how slow the agency world still moves: “No other industry works harder at being lazy than advertising. Clients want to get through the rhetoric and jazz hands and get to the thinking. And a lot of agencies aren’t set up to embrace the new world of the industry. They still make money by being traditional and moving slower.”
Agencies don’t know how to be creative.
It’s hard to find a creative pop-up ad. When asked, even Droga couldn’t think of one off the top of his head. For agencies, that has meant a race to innovate that uses the hot new platform just for the sake of it, said Droga. “Just because an option exists doesn’t mean you have to do it,” he said.
The ad industry could learn a lot from entertainment.
Two years ago, Droga5 sold a 49 percent minority stake to Hollywood talent agency William Morris Endeavour, citing that there was a lot the two industries could learn from each other. “The entertainment industry definitely moves faster and is less strategic than us. They’re more fireworks and we’re more lighthouse,” said Droga.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The decline of Flash is well and truly underway. Media publishers now have no choice but to start changing the way they bring content to the web. Many of them are not thrilled about the proposition (change is scary), but it will almost certainly be better for all of us in the long run. “By switching their platform to HTML5, companies can improve supportability, development time will decrease and the duplicative efforts of supporting two code bases will be eliminated.
Farewell To Flash: What It Means For Digital Video Publishers
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/23/farewell-to-flash-what-it-means-for-digital-video-publishers/#.ojwuxm:hzaa
It’s been more than five years since Steve Jobs wrote his infamous “Thoughts on Flash” letter citing the high level of energy consumption, lack of performance on mobile and poor security as the reasons his company’s products would not support Adobe Flash technology. Finally, it appears we’re getting closer to the curtain closing on Flash.
Not too long ago, Flash powered a high percentage of the Internet’s vast array of video content. Today, that number is lower. But make no mistake, there are still many Flash-powered multimedia items on the web, including graphics, videos, games and animations, like GIFs, a preferred method of expression for millennials and adults alike.
We’ve been watching HTML5 impede on Flash for a while, and it’s now taking center stage, establishing itself as a predominant creative format, validated by the recent moves by Google and Mozilla that are only helping to accelerate that transition.
What Does The Change Mean For Publishers?
In spite of all this, for digital-video publishers, excitement may not be the initial emotion evoked by Flash‘s funeral. With the goal of increasing browsing speed and reducing power consumption for users, Google’s Chrome desktop browser announced their formerly opt-in setting that pauses plug-in content that isn’t considered essential to the webpage will become a default setting by early September.
This means that if publishers don’t upgrade their format specification, some or all of their video content may no longer be available for people to view; this will certainly affect viewer loyalty and monetization efforts.
For example, Flash video ads served in a desktop Chrome browser will load in a paused state, then the user will have to click the ad for it to play. These ads will still register as impressions. However, it won’t take long for programmatic buyers to scale back their bids on video ad inventory garnering a high number of impressions with no quartiles.
Publishers need to urge their buyers to prepare for the upcoming Flash-pocalypse because, despite the publishers‘ level of preparation, if their buyers don’t have the proper HTML5 creative assets, it will impact their ability to transact, having an impact on publisher revenue and the ability to successfully implement advertiser campaigns.
How Publishers Can Prepare
The most crucial thing for publishers is going to be ensuring that their advertisers and demand partners (ad networks, ad exchanges and advertisers) are providing and hosting HTML5 ad creatives moving forward.
The Impact
For publishers, one of the biggest wins of Flash‘s depreciation comes in the form of engineering resources saved. Historically, video publishers have always wanted to pick a standard, but the reality is, they haven’t been able to because of the aforementioned VPAID issue.
They’ve essentially been forced to use Flash to keep their ads business running — but also support an HTML5 code base. This means that any software management, maintenance and updates they make, like bug fixes, must be addressed in both code bases, which is very time-consuming from an engineering standpoint.
A major concern for publishers today is the amount of media consumption that’s occurring in mobile environments. They need to prioritize providing the best possible experience on mobile, and the decline of Flash and movement to HTML5 will do just that, as Flash has never worked well on mobile.
Time spent on mobile devices is still climbing steadily; according to eMarketer, U.S. adults will spend more than 5.5 hours per day with digital media in 2015, the majority (2:51) of which will be spent on a mobile device.
Popular desktop browsers, like Chrome, revoking their support for Flash, is a catalyst for HTML5 becoming digital-video advertising’s format for the future.
A Win-Win-Win
I believe that a Flash-free world will be better for everyone. HTML5 is conducive to the direction media consumption is heading and will positively affect people’s digital-video viewing (a primary concern for today’s digital publishers), creating a better overall Internet experience. It also takes less bandwidth than Flash to run, making it much more efficient for battery life on consumer’s devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finnish startup found gold well in the hotel industry
Finnish startup award winning Visualizer to implement the condition that the start knob has to succeed need to find a strictly limited thing and be in the top of the world. Pair-year-old company specializes in the hotel industry to meet the needs created by the web platform on content management and delivery.
“We want to be in business, where the visual trend ridden the crest of a” responsible for the company’s sales Hakuli Joel says.
“We also digitalise the entire service process,”
Hakuli and Kaitala speak of strong emotions for storytelling. Visualizer platform enables hotels to develop and customize slideshows for different uses, such as meeting clients or holidaymakers. Presentations user can navigate through the images one state to another, watch videos, and turned over panoramas. Also on the ground with direct access to the maps images.
“When the iPad came in 2010, consumer behavior has shifted more than images. The tourist trade, it is natural, since prior to arrival image is based on figures from, “says Hakuli.
It is essential to analytics that tell you how website visitors behave. It has already produced surprises.
“Analytics to generate insane amount of useful information. One director of an international chain, I almost fall off my chair when I told what is the most watched chain room. It was a standard room in Oulu”
Visualizer’s customer base already includes industry-leading hotel chains such as Holiday Inn, Best Western, Radisson Blu and Barcelo. Individual customers include Klaus K and Haikko Manor. Total users have about 350 different hotels.
According to him, a typical user can earn the invested capital back to the base a couple of months. “If the hotel has 150 rooms, it is able to sell that day two room class upgrades on our platform enables.”
In the spring Visualizer received the prestigious Red Herring Europe award. It was named in Europe one hundred most promising young technology companies.
Visualizer technology was originally developed by Tampere-based JJ Net Group, which was released a panoramic presentation platform. Now it will continue its platform for the development and maintenance of a technology partner.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/suomalainen-startup-loysi-kultasuonen-hotellialalta-3329056
Company web site: http://www.360visualizer.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why an Instagram Tweak Spells the Beginning of a Multibillion-Dollar Industry
http://recode.net/2015/08/19/why-an-instagram-tweak-spells-the-beginning-of-a-multibillion-dollar-industry/
Last week, Instagram — the image-based social network with more than 300 million users — made a change that barely received notice outside the tech world. It officially switched on its API, or application programming interface, for ads.
The reaction, or lack thereof, was predictable. APIs aren’t generally the stuff of front-page news. On a technical level, the change means that ads can now be posted on Instagram by just about anyone, using online tools that plug directly into the network. On a practical level, it means that the Internet’s newest advertising behemoth is officially open for business. Thanks in part to the new API, Instagram’s current mobile ad revenue of $595 million a year is expected to rocket to $2.8 billion by 2017 — leaving even giants like Twitter and Google in the rearview mirror in the U.S. market.
For marketers, Instagram has long been a coveted target. The network is believed to have passed Twitter and LinkedIn in terms of active users, and to now be second in size only to Facebook (its parent company) among U.S.-based social platforms. Moreover, while growth at Twitter and Facebook is largely plateauing, Instagram expanded at an incredible 50 percent clip in 2014. And its users are considerably younger than those on other major networks: A full 44 percent of people on Instagram are 18-29, versus just 23 percent on Facebook and 33 percent on Twitter.
Reaching those users through advertising, however, hasn’t been easy. Instagram has been famously cautious in rolling out ads.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jonathan Mayer / Web Policy:
AT&T hotspot at Dulles Airport tampers with HTTP traffic to inject third-party ads from WiFi monetization firm RaGaPa — AT&T Hotspots: Now with Advertising Injection
AT&T Hotspots: Now with Advertising Injection
http://webpolicy.org/2015/08/25/att-hotspots-now-with-advertising-injection/
While traveling through Dulles Airport last week, I noticed an Internet oddity. The nearby AT&T hotspot was fairly fast—that was a pleasant surprise.
But the web had sprouted ads. Lots of them, in places they didn’t belong.
Some ad-supported websites, like the Wall Street Journal, were also emblazoned with extra marketing material.
Curious, and waiting on a delayed flight, I started poking through web source. It took little time to spot the culprit: AT&T’s wifi hotspot was tampering with HTTP traffic.
The ad injection platform appears to be a service from RaGaPa, a small startup. Their video pitch features “MONETIZE YOUR NETWORK” over cascading dollar signs.
When an HTML page loads over HTTP, the hotspot makes three edits. (HTTPS traffic is immune, since it’s end-to-end secure.)
Those scripts, in turn, import advertising content from additional third-party providers.
AT&T has an (understandable) incentive to seek consumer-side income from its free wifi service, but this model of advertising injection is particularly unsavory. Among other drawbacks: It exposes much of the user’s browsing activity to an undisclosed and untrusted business. It clutters the user’s web browsing experience. It tarnishes carefully crafted online brands and content, especially because the ads are not clearly marked as part of the hotspot service.3 And it introduces security and breakage risks, since website developers generally don’t plan for extra scripts and layout elements.
Recent experience with advertisement injection is telling. When a Marriott property was spotted deploying similar technology, it immediately reversed course. The handful of U.S. ISPs that have dabbled in advertising injection appear to have backed off. Earlier this year, Google conducted a comprehensive study of advertising injection, and yanked nearly 200 misleading extensions from the Chrome Web Store. The closest common practice, to my knowledge, is injecting hotspot status indicators—and that’s also proven extraordinarily controversial.
The legality of hotspot advertising injection is a messy subject. There are a number of colorable arguments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joel Rosenblatt / Bloomberg Business:
‘Spam King’ Sanford Wallace pleads guilty to sending 27M+ unsolicited Facebook messages, faces up to three years in prison, $250K fine
Facebook ‘Spam King’ Guilty for Sending 27 Million Messages
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-25/facebook-spam-king-guilty-over-27-million-messages-u-s-says
A Las Vegas man pleaded guilty to sending more than 27 million unsolicited messages through Facebook Inc. servers after gaining access to about 500,000 accounts on the social network, according to prosecutors.
Sanford Wallace, 47, known as the “Spam King,” admitted to his mass spamming in 2008 and 2009 while pleading guilty Monday to fraud and criminal contempt, San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said in a statement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Online Advertising Works
… and how to control it!
http://leonov.org/post/122144798210/how-online-advertising-works?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=blog
Online advertising is broken. Advertisers think they know us by tracking where we live, what websites we visit, what products we buy, etc.
Data collectors and advertising companies collect and sell information regarding your health, credit worthiness, search history, location, DMV reports. They build rich consumer profiles on every person online and offline. All of this data is used to sell you stuff in what is called “real-time bidding”. Here’s how this process works
All of this loss of privacy, and advertisers still get us wrong – when was the last time you saw an ad for something you actually wanted? This “surveillance advertising” not only doesn’t work, but actually makes people hate online ads!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Choc Factory sends website app pluggers to page two mobile cesspit
But it’s 2015 and nobody cares about Web apps
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/02/choc_factory_sends_website_app_pluggers_to_page_two_mobile_cesspit/
Google is demoting mobile websites with full screen app advertisements possibly consigning it to the cesspit of the internet that is search result page 2.
The move will target websites that splash large ads plugging an app with little close buttons that are hard to tap with fat fingers.
Choc Factory engineer Daniel Bathgate says the offensive sites that continue to host the interstitials will be demoted from November 1.
“After November 1, mobile web pages that show an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content on the transition from the search result page will no longer be considered mobile-friendly,” Bathgate says.
“This does not affect other types of interstitials.
“As an alternative to app install interstitials, browsers provide ways to promote an app that are more user-friendly.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
FTC and Machinima settle YouTube Xbox shill content situation
Videos endorsing the Xbox One were paid for
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2424595/ftc-and-machinima-settle-youtube-xbox-shill-content-situation
THE US FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION (FTC) has rained down punishing blows on Machinima, an online video-based gaming business, because of the presence of paid-for Xbox One promotional content.
Xbox One promotional content is pretty widely available – ask anyone who has an Xbox 360 and access to its menu screen – and advertising is an acceptable thing. However, misleading advertorial is not acceptable, and the FTC, a US watchdog that deals with this kind of malpractice, ain’t having it.
The FTC said in a blog post that a cluster of outfits were involved in the deception. It was led by a PR firm called Starcom MediaVest Group and was based on the Machinima promise of some 19 million online views.
“When people see a product touted online they have a right to know whether they’re looking at an authentic opinion or a paid marketing pitch,” said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “That’s true whether the endorsement appears in a video or any other media.”
The company will, for example, be asked to make any connection between cash and content obvious through onscreen information. Machinima will be under surveillance for three months and had better be on its best behaviour.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Instagram Ads Go Global, Including New 30-Second Commercials
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/08/all-grown-up-and-ready-to-make-money/
Instagram is done experimenting and is ready to ramp up ad revenue. It’s making three big changes today to attract marketing dollars from around the world and other ad mediums. Finally, Instagram will make back the money Facebook spent buying it.
First, today Instagram ads become officially available in 30 more countries including Mexico, India and South Korea, and will be on sale globally by the end of September.
Second, Instagram is now courting television and online advertisers with more standardized formats and buying options. Instagram will allow advertisers to run 30-second video ads, rather than just 15 second ones, and use landscape dimensions instead of just squares.
Instagram is also debuting a new buying option called Marquee that lets advertisers “own a moment” and reach a huge swath of the user base quickly.
To prove the ads work, Instagram cites some examples:
Gilt Group’s campaign drove an 85% increase in app installs
Furniture retailer Made.com saw a 10% increase in order value versus its benchmark
Game developer Kabam was able to acquire users who played longer and spent more
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Independent publishers are collateral damage in the war over ad revenues between Google, Apple, and Facebook
Welcome to hell: Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook and the slow death of the web
By Nilay Patel on September 17, 2015 08:32 am Email @reckless
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/9338963/welcome-to-hell-apple-vs-google-vs-facebook-and-the-slow-death-of-the-web
So let’s talk about ad blocking.
You might think the conversation about ad blocking is about the user experience of news, but what we’re really talking about is money and power in Silicon Valley. And titanic battles between large companies with lots of money and power tend to have a lot of collateral damage.
iOS 9 came out yesterday (in fits and starts) and with it, support for content blockers in iOS 9. There is already a little cottage industry of ad blockers available, and you should definitely try one or two — they will radically improve your mobile web experience, because they will… block huge chunks of the web from loading.
Those huge chunks — the ads! — are almost certainly the part you don’t want. What you want is the content, hot sticky content, snaking its way around your body and mainlining itself directly into your brain. Plug that RSS firehose straight into your optic nerve and surf surf surf ’til you die.
Unfortunately, the ads pay for all that content, an uneasy compromise between the real cost of media production and the prices consumers are willing to pay that has existed since the first human scratched the first antelope on a wall somewhere. Media has always compromised user experience for advertising: that’s why magazine stories are abruptly continued on page 96, and why 30-minute sitcoms are really just 22 minutes long. Media companies put advertising in the path of your attention, and those interruptions are a valuable product. Your attention is a valuable product.
Now, here’s the thing about the web, and in particular web ads: the biggest provider of ads on the web is Google. In particular, Google runs an ad server called DoubleClick for Publishers, or DFP. DFP is huge, and it serves ads for basically every major publisher: Vox Media and The Verge use DFP. BuzzFeed uses DFP. ESPN uses DFP. If you are seeing advertising on the web, there is a real chance it’s being served to you by DFP.
Then, in addition to DFP, Google runs the web’s largest ad exchange, AdX. DFP lets publishers serve their own ads, while AdX is responsible for those programmatic ads that follow you around the web. Those are the three biggest categories of web advertising revenue — premium display, native, and programmatic — and Google has a huge stake in all of them.
In fact, there’s no other company that’s managed to monetize the web quite like Google has through the power of DFP and AdX. The web has always been Google’s native platform, and DFP means that the web is also Google’s revenue platform — users search for things using Google, see Google search ads, and then land on content that is further monetized by Google DFP and its ad exchange. This is basically the foundation of Google’s entire business: Google makes the lion’s share of its money on search, and Google search doesn’t work if the web isn’t searchable, so Google has a huge interest in making the web profitable for media companies, so they can search all that content.
But what’s happening now is that attention is shifting fast from desktop browsers — where Google’s Chrome is dominant (and supports ad blocking!) — to mobile browsers. In particular, to Apple’s Mobile Safari, which dominates usage statistics on mobile.
And with iOS 9 and content blockers, what you’re seeing is Apple’s attempt to fully drive the knife into Google’s revenue platform.
But taking money and attention away from the web means that the pace of web innovation will slow to a crawl. Innovation tends to follow the money, after all! And asking most small- to medium-sized sites to weather that change without dramatic consequences is utterly foolish. Just look at the number of small sites that have shut down this year: GigaOm. The Dissolve.