Articles by: "Research Team—DCN"

Global Mobile Advertising Revenue 2014

August 14, 2015 Research Team—DCN

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and its Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB Europe, and IHS Technology report that global figures for mobile advertising revenue which rose 64.8% to $31.9bn (€23.9bn) in 2014 from $19.3bn (€14.6bn) in 2013. They find that this growth is being driven by continued shifts in consumer usage patterns and industry innovations.

According to the IAB, the global figure of $31.9bn (€23.9bn) for 2014 is made up of these regional shares:

North America: 44.9% ($14.318m / €10,781m)
Asia-Pacific: 36.5% ($11.627m / €8,754m)
Europe: 16.6% ($5.306m / €3,995m)
Middle East and Africa: 1.2% ($379m / €286m)
Latin America: 0.8% ($239m / €180m)

Among the key findings:

Growth year-over-year was led by North America, which saw a 76.8% leap over the 2013 figures.
All regions grew by more than 50%.
Mobile display continues to show the highest growth at 88.1%, overtaking search as the dominant segment.
Search represented 46.1% of the total global mobile advertising revenue in 2014.
Display represented 47.4% of the total global mobile advertising revenue in 2014 at $15.1bn (€11.4bn).
Mobile search followed, up 55.%, taking a 46.1% share.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

What Marketers Think of Big Data and Internet of Things

August 10, 2015 Research Team—DCN

2nd Watch surveyed 500 IT and marketing professionals in large and midsize companies regarding the use of big data, Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-based data warehouse technologies to support digital marketing plans and programs. The results indicate growing confidence in the use of these technologies and success deploying them. 2^nd Watch has released an infographic that provides top line results from its research.

Among their key findings:

50% of respondents are likely to expand use of big data to support digital marketing.
24% use data to power campaigns and promotions
47% say that big data-base digital marketing campaigns have been effective for meeting customer engagement and demand generation goals
53% say it’s likely they’ll expand IoT-based digital marketing programs
Nearly 20% are being very aggressive this way, and another 27% plan to begin an IoT project for digital marketing soon
29% leverage the IoT to better understanding of customer preferences

Industry-Research

Homepage Layout Matters

July 28, 2015 Research Team—DCN

The Engaging News Project from The Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, has released new research that analyzed what happens when people are delivered the same news content presented in different ways. Some of the 2,671 participants browsed a site with a classic newsprint layout, while others looked at a page with a contemporary, modular and image-based layout. The same 20 articles, drawn from mainstream news media coverage about evergreen subjects, appeared on both sites.

Key takeaways from the Online News Presentation research include:

Unique page views increased by at least 90% when participants viewed the contemporary homepage compared to the classic homepage.
Recall of details from the articles, although low for all participants, nonetheless increased by at least 50% when participants viewed the contemporary homepage compared to the classic homepage.
Study participants rated the contemporary site more positively than the classic site.
Where the articles appeared on the page affected article recall more consistently than whether people clicked on the article.

The results show that people accessed more pages, appreciated, and learned more about the information contained in news articles when browsing a website with a contemporary homepage compared to a website with a classic homepage. These differences did not vary depending on the respondents’ age, education, or level of political knowledge.

Industry-Research

CMOs Report that Content Marketing is Effective

July 24, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Spredfast partnered with The CMO Club to survey over 200 Fortune 500 CMOs from around the country. They were asked questions about their biggest priorities, their challenges for 2014, and what they have found to be the best ways to engage their audiences. As they report, “with attention so fractured, it’s not surprising that 95% of CMOs surveyed are relying on content marketing to engage their audiences every step of the way.” And, not only do the majority of CMOs think this tactic gets results, they’re allocating budgets accordingly.

95% said that content marketing is important to their business in 2014.
66% of CMOs surveyed expect their content marketing efforts to yield a positive ROI in 2014.
95% of CMOs say that they believe “creating and finding new, timely, and engaging content is one of my biggest challenges in 2014.”
87% find social media to be the most engaging digital medium for serving real-time content

The full study offers additional comments from these CMOs including what they are focused on, the challenges they face, and what can be done to overcome said challenges.

Advertising | Industry-Research

U.S. Programmatic Display Ad Revenues Totaled $10.1 Billion in 2014

July 21, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Programmatic buying and selling of online display-related advertising generated $10.1 billion in 2014, comprising 20% of last year’s overall internet advertising revenues ($49.5 billion) according to the first-ever IAB Programmatic Revenue Report, prepared by PwC US. This figure represents approximately 52% of display-related advertising in 2014 ($19.6 billion), while non-programmatic display-related revenues accounted for the remaining 48% at $9.4 billion.

As David Silverman, Emerging Company Services Practice Co-Leader of PwC, points out in the report, “over the last several years, publishers and advertisers have continued to adopt programmatic buying and selling of digital inventory into their media strategies; however, within the complex programmatic ecosystem there has been a lack of consensus around the definition of programmatic and its associated types and formats and the size of the programmatic market in comparison with the overall internet advertising market.”

For the purpose of this study, programmatic was defined, but not universally accepted, as “machine based buying and selling of digital media including auction based methods like RTB and private marketplaces as well as the automation of direct sales, sometimes called programmatic direct.”

Highlights from the IAB report include:

Open auctions made up approximately 70% of the programmatic revenue in 2014.
Display banner ads made up approximately 80% of programmatic revenues in 2014, but the findings demonstrate that mobile and video formats will take more of advertiser and publisher budgets and inventory over time
Ad tech revenues represented approximately 55% of the programmatic revenue pie in 2014 and approximately 45% of programmatic revenues ultimately found its way to the publishers.
The majority of programmatic inventory was bought and sold through Open Auctions, but the report predicts a shift to other types (i.e. Private Auction, Unreserved Fixed Rate or Automated Guaranteed) in the next few years.
Programmatic revenues from ad tech outweighed those from publishers in 2014.
Programmatic buying and selling are moving forward; however, sizing the programmatic industry will continue to be a challenge until standardization and increased transparency become more apparent.

Industry-Research | Video

Solving Digital Video Advertising’s Premium Dilemma

July 15, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Recent research commissioned by Teads and conducted by Forrester in May 2015 notes that while digital video advertising continues to show strong promise for marketers, agencies and media companies there are a few notable challenges that must be resolved in order for it to deliver value for everyone involved.

Five key findings from the report, conducted among 529 advertisers, agencies and media companies in Argentina, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Span, UK and US:

1. All market participants expect digital video spend to increase in the next two years.

2. Lack of premium inventory — and disagreements about the definition of premium — hold back video’s
growth.

3. Video is still a work in progress to fulfill its promise.

4. Advertisers, agencies, and media companies must build an accountable, transparent video ad market.

5. Outstream advertising offers one solution to these challenges.

Industry-Research

Native Ads Increase in Popularity and Price

July 6, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Research from Business Insider Intelligence finds that native ads perform better than non-native ads and so command higher prices.

The report from BI Intelligence examines each of the different native ad formats and looks at spending trends for each. BI finds that spending on native ads will reach $7.9 billion this year they predict that it will grow to $21 billion in 2018. According to BI, Social will remain the biggest slice of this spending but native-style display will grow its share rapidly.

According to the report’s author, Mark Hoelzel, key takeaways include:

Social native ads will account for the biggest share of native ad revenue during this time period, but native-style display ads will grow the fastest.
Social-native, including Facebook News Feed ads and promoted tweets on Twitter, will draw a majority of native ad revenue between 2013 and 2018.
Native display ads, like the splashy native ads on Yahoo’s news pages and apps, will see the fastest ramp-up.
Sponsored content, like some of the paid stories and sections on BuzzFeed and The New York Times (and Business Insider), has also attracted considerable attention.
Native ads perform better than traditional display. This is particularly true on mobile. Desktop native click-through rates (CTRs) averaged a respectable 0.15%, while native-mobile ads had CTRs over 1%, according to recent data from Polar Media Group and Celtra, respectively.
Consumers hold a generally positive attitude toward native advertising, according to survey data, but advertisers and publishers must ensure that ads are relevant and are purchased by trustworthy brands to avoid the risk of any mainstream backlash.

Industry-Research

Kantar Finds Overall Ad Spend Down 4% in Q1

June 30, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Total U.S. advertising expenditures declined 4.0% in the first quarter of 2015 to $37.4 billion, though core spending only declined 2% according to data released by Kantar Media. Paid search advertising was the winner in Q1, climbing 7% year-over-year, while desktop online display expenditures declined 8.7% during the same period.

Spending by the ten largest advertisers declined 10.6 % in the first quarter of 2015, to $3,709.8 million. Notably, the year-ago period includes the Sochi Winter Olympics, which affects ad-spending comparisons.

Kantar reports that expenditures for the ten largest advertising categories declined 5.8% in the first quarter of 2015 to $18,697.8 million, with eight out of the ten categories experiencing reductions. The two exceptions were Telecom, with growth from satellite and TV advertisers counterbalancing reduced investments by wireless service providers, (up 3.8%) and Pharmaceuticals (up 9.6%).

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Liquid Audiences Impact Content and Marketing Strategies

June 23, 2015 Research Team—DCN

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and YuMe have published a new white paper “Digital Advertising Audiences: The New ‘Liquid Consumer’ Paradigm,” which collects creative, brand, agency and publishing leadership to provide insights and guidance on navigating the new “liquid audiences” that discover content across a range of mediums, devices and platforms. The report demonstrates that the need to reach the “liquid consumer” has strong and specific implications for the creation, organization, distribution, and measurement of content.

The report highlights key ways that “liquid audiences” should impact content and marketing strategies. Among them:

Definitions of “audience” must evolve – currently-used gender/age definitions no longer suffice
Unsurprisingly, “social” and “mobile” are crucial, but both embrace a wide array of meaning and nuance, which marketers must unpack to build successful strategies
Understanding how someone navigates to content can be critical to connecting with that consumer
The industry’s fixation on KPIs and standard metrics can distract from the more important goal of building fan-bases
The line between “marketing” and “content” continues to fade – it’s all storytelling

The complete “Digital Advertising Audiences: The New ‘Liquid Consumer’ Paradigm” whitepaper is available for download.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

MMA Releases Guidance Report on Location Audience Targeting

June 15, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Drawing from its SMoX Study, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has released a new Guidance Report entitled, ‘Location Audience Targeting’. From the report:

Mobile has changed the way we think about digital audiences. Before the advent of the ubiquitous mobile phone, traditional marketing and advertisement strategies that were “location based” had a very different meaning than “location based marketing” does today. Options for location-based mobile audiences have expanded far beyond the simple geo-fence campaign, and offer both sophisticated targeting options and insights on reaching the consumer on their mobile device with the right message at the right time.

No longer just a tool for “in the moment” targeting, major brands are now leveraging the rich contextual information that location provides to create highly-targeted audience segments, enabling them to strategically target consumers at specific points in their day, not just when they’re within close proximity of a brand’s store or restaurant. For many major brands, the use of audience targeting is still a fairly new tactic, yet one that is predicted to explode in popularity in the coming years due to its ability to yield an incredibly high lift in store visitation (SVL), particularly when used in combination with more common proximity targeting tactics such as geo-fencing.

Detailing how brands like Denny’s, Goodwill and Walmart are using audience targeting to increase store visitation, the report builds on an earlier MMA white paper released in February. The Report provides key insights and takeaways on:

How to create location based audiences
Leveraging the data behind location-based audience.
Incorporating non-location data to enrich profiles
Guidance on optimal ad formats and creative
5 case studies detailing how brands are using audience targeting

Industry-Research | Video

IAB Survey Finds Mobile Consumers Worldwide are Watching Long Form Video

June 9, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Mobile screens are becoming more popular for streaming longer-form video, according to “Mobile Video Usage: A Global Perspective,” a new survey of consumers from 24 countries around the world who watch smartphone video, published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Whether short or long or in-between, substantial numbers of video viewers report their video consumption on smartphones has increased year-on-year in all of the study’s participating nations, with the most prominent upticks being seen in the U.S. (50%), Canada (42%), New Zealand (42%), South Africa (42%), and the U.K. (40%). This trend is also impacting traditional television viewing across the board, with consumers in China (37%) and Singapore (35%) reporting the highest incidence of watching less TV due to streaming more on mobile.

Among the IAB’s key findings:

36% of respondents said they watch videos that are 5-minutes or longer on their phones daily or more frequently.
22 % of respondents who watch traditional television regular doing so while watching video simultaneously on their phone.
At 62%, YouTube topped the list of common ways mobile video viewers discover digital video to watch on their phones. Social media ranked second at 33%.
Nearly half of respondents overall (48%) said that they “only” or “mostly” leverage mobile apps to stream video on their phones, with the UK (63%), Brazil (60%), and Turkey (58%) leading the trend.
By contrast, across the survey sample only 18% said they “only” or “mostly” use mobile websites to view video.
More than a quarter (28%) of viewers across the participating countries said that they often see ads on mobile video that they’ve already seen on TV.