Category results for "Advertising"

Reuters’ Digital News Report Finds Social, Mobile on the Rise but Video Flat

June 17, 2015 DCN

The Reuters Institute 2015 Digital News Report’s global tracking study (20,000 news consumers in 12 countries) offers robust findings on consumer news consumption.

The U.S. country-specific data (2,295 news consumers) identifies Online—which includes social media—as the main news source (43%) compared to TV (40%), Social (11%) and Newspaper (5%).

Among Reuters’ key findings:

In terms of accuracy, TV is still viewed as best (36%) source for accuracy versus Online (30%).
Overall, U.S. news consumers are still skeptical of the news media at large – 32% trust in general and 56% trust my sources.
The paradigm for access shows Smartphones as essential for news consumption – at 41% from 31% in 2014.
In fact 26% of U.S. news consumers claim their smartphone to be their main device for accessing news. In contrast, tablet usage at 21% only grew 2% from 2014 and only one in 10 cite as their main device to access news.
Growth in mobile news alerts doubled, 13% in 2015 from 6% in 2014.
14% of news lovers, the heaviest user group, access news content 5+ times per day.
Interestingly, video news consumption is flat at 30% compared to last year.
Top barriers to video notes “I find reading more convenient (39%)”, “I would like to watch on a bigger screen and Pre-roll ads tend to put me off (23%, respectively).”
The minority of news consumers (11%) pay for digital news access, averaging $10 (median) per month. It is important to note that just over than two-thirds (67%) report that they “would not pay whatever the price.”
Not surprisingly, social media plays an important role on how news consumers find news (35%) from 30% in 2014. In fact, 35% use social media as their starting point for news.
News consumers feel plagued by digital advertising resulting in almost half (47%) regularly using ad-blocking. As digital news try new creative ad models such as native and sponsored ads, there is concern among users of blurring the lines between editorial content with brands.

Download the full report for greater depth, a range of country-specific data and access to a great essay (page 101), “Attitudes to Sponsored and Branded Content.”

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

4 Tips for Improving Programmatic CPM

May 27, 2015 DCN

The premise that the rise of automated buying and selling through programmatic technology would have a negative impact on a publisher’s’ ability to increase—or even maintain—their CPM rates is continuing to erode. Many were surprised to learn that the 2013-2014 CPM trend for social, mobile and display across programmatic ad platforms was one of growth, not decline.

As the click declines from its position as the metric of prominence, contextual data, viewability and high impact opportunities for engagement have become increasingly valued and sought after by brands. Today, marketers increasingly realize that “you get what you pay for” but they expect that price tag to come with the same scale and efficiency programmatic technology delivers. So how can publishers use data and technology to command premium pricing for the premium experiences brands want—and consumers expect?

Here are four strategies publishers can adopt to not simply survive, but thrive, in a programmatic world.

Make your audience and contextual site data available and visible to buyers. Move beyond offering standard cookie-reliant targeting with contextual technology. Real-time, page-level contextualization of your content increases the likelihood that a person sees an ad that’s relevant to them—delighting your audiences and the buyers who want to reach them. Contextual analysis at the page-level will enable you to offer audience segments interested in that content at greater scale, beyond 1^st party and 3^rd party cookie pools. Contextual data can help increase yield and revenue by showing the value of inventory buyers would normally overlook.

Upgrade your site to support more advanced ad functionality and cross-screen delivery. Large-format, high-impact ad sizes are designed to help brands get their ads noticed and have been shown to improve interaction rates, increase time spent and improve brand recall. The IAB recently released research showing that consumers find Rising Star ads more engaging and more informative than standard units. This makes them especially valuable to brands, who tend to bid higher on these formats. With an estimated 60% of web traffic coming from mobile, it goes without saying that your site should be mobile optimized. It’s worth spending the time and money to upgrade your site internally, or many technology partners can help you integrate new ad formats and optimize for mobile experiences quickly and easily.

Understand how much of your content is viewable—and make sure you can deliver against it. Viewability is moving from “nice-to-have” to “must-have” in a buyers mind. Make sure you know how much of your inventory is viewable and provide transparent reporting against that number to clients. Publishers who can offer a pricing model that incorporates viewability (e.g vCPM) will emerge the winners, as brands will pay a premium for guaranteed viewable inventory. An easy way to get started is to ask your monetization partners if they have viewability-tracking and reporting tools to layer on your current offering—some even offer this as a value-add service.

Adopt a “test and learn” approach to programmatic partners. Don’t accept the status quo from your current monetization partners. As the programmatic landscape matures, earlier pain points of integrating new technology partners are starting to subside as onboarding and operational processes have become standardized. There’s no such thing as a “one size fits all” programmatic partner, so don’t be afraid to test multiple providers concurrently to compare performance; leverage the real-time nature of programmatic to find the right solution that will help ensure a premium for your unique audience and content.

This isn’t the first time publishers have been forced to evolve alongside major industry change, and it most certainly won’t be the last. By 2018, more than 80% of display ad dollars will be transacted programmatically. Publishers that adapt to this new way of doing business and embrace the innovation it spurs will be the ones to reap the benefits.

Darline Jean is the Chief Operating Officer for PulsePoint, responsible for shaping product strategy focused on enhancing the company’s premium programmatic and content marketing solutions. Before joining PulsePoint, Darline was President and Chief Executive Officer of The About Group where she was responsible for the strategic direction of the business unit of The New York Times Company that includes About.com, CalorieCount.com and ConsumerSearch.com. During her tenure as President and CEO, she significantly increased the company’s revenue and led the sale of About.com from The New York Times Company to IAC in 2013. Darline has also held the title of Chief Operating Officer of About.com and Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer of the About Group.

Prior to The About Group, Darline held various financial leadership positions with Thomson Media, a division of Thomson Financial. She began her career with Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising in New York.

Advertising | Perspectives | Research | Revenue

Bad Ads: Research Shows They May Cost More Than They’re Worth

May 14, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

No one likes to click a link on a tantalizing bit of content only to be assaulted by a barrage of intrusive and annoying advertising. That fact is as in your face as a blinking pop-up ad prompting you to punch a monkey to win an iPad. And unless it’s the result of fat fingers, you aren’t clicking these annoying ads; you are hitting the back button as fast as you can to find a more pleasant place to consume content. And here’s the part that should send a chill down the spine of premium content publishers: Microsoft research has found that they’re not just bad in customers’ eyes; there’s also a high cost to be paid by the publishers that run them.

The research, The Economic and Cognitive Costs of Annoying Display Advertisements, set out to better understand the cognitive impact of annoying ads on users, and also to quantify the economic cost of annoying ads for publishers. Let’s just say their findings are more than a little jarring. The research shows the economic cost of “annoying” ads is about .153 cents each (for the revenue wonks, this works out to a $1.53CPM). Given that Turn reports that more than 53% of all online ads sell for between $.10 and $.80CPM and we know premium publishers typically earn around $1.35CPM from open exchanges, a little math paints a disturbing picture. We’ve always known digital ads can impact users and the bottom-line but not in the wrong direction.

If you believe the research—undertaken by an impressive team of researchers whose experience includes work for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft—then publishers need to know that running ads which site visitors find to be irritating, annoying, inappropriate or offensive has a significant net cost, both to brand value and the bottom line. Private marketplaces reinforce this need for brand safety for all. Chasing page-views and impressions at scale has diminishing returns and makes a sites more vulnerable to bad ads. What this means is that by running these ads, often to maximize sell-thru rate of your inventory, you’re actually chasing short-term revenue rabbits without understanding where that rabbit hole leads.

The Microsoft researchers conclude that “the practice of running annoying ads can cost more money than it earns.” That’s right: a site might be better off not running ads at all because of the net loss they will incur if some or all of their ads are perceived as bad by their users. A site or app actually needs more quality content and premium ads to make up for the economic loss from bad ads.

As is the case with bad advertising, we all know great ads when we see them. And research shows that there is a “halo effect” to advertising that is positioned within the context of a strong media brand with quality content, so it only stands to reason that the reverse would be true: that there would be a negative effect to a media brand associated with bad advertising. Microsoft’s research confirms this, finding not only that people notice annoying ads and complain about them, they are more likely to abandon sites on which they were present. Interestingly, in the presence of annoying ads, people had to work harder to understand content that contains annoying ads. In other words, they’re distracting and a general nuisance to user experience.

Again, it’s very important to note this isn’t simply about low-quality dating ads, yellow-teeth and belly-fat ads. Media companies need to consider the subtle and long-term effects that any ad running on their sites may have on user retention and revenue. The alarming rise of Adblocking software adoption makes clear that customers are fed up with poor advertising experiences. And once customers are driven to this extreme, they are taken out of the ecosystem for everyone, good and bad advertisers alike. Already 41% of 18-29 year-olds in America have opted-out of digital advertising altogether by installing an adblocker.

But we can’t simply take the lazy position that “people just hate ads.” It simply isn’t true. And the Microsoft research backs that up. We can also clearly see examples of superior advertising and content experiences on Vox and Conde Nast sites, among many others. Premium publishers like the members of DCN who focus on high-quality content, premium, well-lit experiences and brand-safe environments should be well-served as this all shakes out because they are laser focused on creating great customer experiences that are only enhanced by the relevant, quality advertising experiences that support all of the terrific content that they enjoy.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

NewFronts 2015: It’s All About the Video – and Tech

May 7, 2015 Mark Glaser, Founder and Publisher – MediaShift

There was a time when the NewFronts were considered a side show to the Upfronts, almost a joke. What’s the point of buying digital ads “ahead of time” when there is infinite inventory online and no real schedule?

But things have shifted considerably in the past few years. The NewFronts, now in their fourth year, were a serious blow-out party, with 33 presenters – up more than 50 percent since last year – threatening to outshine the Upfronts. And what has been the catalyst? Video, of course. Because now everyone from Yahoo to WSJ to Vox has their own video shows. So that makes the NewFronts much more like Upfronts, with seasons for shows – even if those shows can be binged instantly, in some cases.

And the numbers can back them up. Numbers always help. For instance, more than 68 percent of marketers and agency executives expect their digital video ad budgets to increase in the next year. And guess where that money is coming from? That’s right, from the Upfronts, with money moving away from traditional cable and broadcast television. But IAB honcho Randall Rothenberg argues that it’s our understanding of and relationship with television that’s changing — not “television” itself.

“The princeling that’s replacing television … is television,” he wrote in a piece for Adweek.

“Linear TV” and “Internet TV” may be two sides of the same coin, but a definite theme coming out of this year’s NewFronts is that digital is a “better ad buy” than ordinary television, especially among the coveted millennial audience. Research firm eMarketer expects digital video-ad spending to grow by 30 percent and hit $7.8 billion in 2015.

Original Shows and Tech

So just like at the Upfronts, many NewFronts presenters announced new series – a whole lot of them. Time Inc., for example, announced four new streaming-video series. And Yahoo announced 18 new series, in part to help attract interest to its digital magazines, which have lots of native advertising. Conde Nast also announced plans to release more than 2,500 new original videos in the coming year. Even Vox Media announced several new digital video series, as well as a few renewals for current popular ones.

It seems the key to monetizing digital video is to first have enough of it before you can really reap the benefits. But Vox went further, licensing its content management system — already well known in media circles — for outside use. That’s a huge incentive for an agency like DigitasLBi, which announced both a production partnership with Vice and a deal with Vox that will allow it first dibs on Vox’s native ad platform, Chorus for Advertisers.

Native Ad Ideas

But it’s not enough to just to sell shows. Many publishers also pushed their native ad tech solutions. Yahoo talked about its native-video ad program that can help it “integrate sponsored-video segments into its homepage, digital magazine and apps.” Yahoo also announced video-app install ads through which marketers and developers can promote apps — both on Yahoo and thousands of other apps.

Meanwhile, BuzzFeed announced its new technology, Pound, aimed at demystifying social sharing habits and how content goes viral. As BuzzFeed wrote in a blog post about Pound, “traditional web analytics are fundamentally unable to capture what actually happens on the social web today.” Not only would Pound help BuzzFeed better figure out stories you’d share with your friends and families, and the stories they’d be most likely to share, but it’s also a chance to see how the data collected from Pound could help produce more shareable sponsored content.

And maybe that’s the approach that will really set apart the NewFront digital folk from the Upfronts – offering not just some original web shows, but also the technology to help advertisers reach and engage those audiences. TV isn’t dead by any means, but the digital upstarts are making serious inroads.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

Programmatic: Both the Villain and the Hero

April 30, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

Nothing makes a narrative more compelling than a villain: evil that must be overcome so the hero can prevail. Maybe that’s why every few years a new nefarious buzzword arises that both energizes the digital media industry and rattles the cages of the establishment. But the business of digital media is just not as tidy as a formulaic series. The real problems are complex. And the bad actors aren’t parading their final 15 minutes of fame on Dancing with the Stars, they are lurking in the shadows, profiting from marketers’ best intentions and the great content created by others. While the story of programmatic is barely a few years old, the plot lines are deep and we’re clearly still early in the first season.

It wasn’t too long ago that programmatic was referred to as the latest chapter in digital media’s “race to the bottom.” The word was associated with everything bad in the digital advertising supply chain because it started off as a murky pool of third parties offering marketers an easy way to reach massive (if dubious) audiences and for publishers to offload “remnant” inventory at bargain basement prices. Unsold inventory from great brands mixed with a whole lot of garbage—the old ad network model. This (thankfully brief) period in the story of programmatic did little for anyone besides intermediaries—though it did help draw attention to the fact that digital advertising processes were ripe for change.

The reality is that programmatic emerged as a response to the complexity of the digital ad buy and has evolved into a way to automate as much as possible, making digital media easier for marketers to buy and potentially more profitable for publishers. Our research shows that forward thinking media companies have wisely jumped into the programmatic fray in order to address marketers’ desire for efficiency while also leveraging their first party audience data to deliver highly targeted, efficient and impactful campaigns.

Yes, a whole lot of programmatic inventory is still remnant but that is starting to change as more premium inventory becomes available for programmatic buys. In fact, a growing number of our members are starting to see programmatic guaranteed and preferred deals that rival direct deals in terms of CPMs. The big difference is that the programmatic deals—those that have pre-agreed prices and guaranteed high-quality inventory—offer automation of the back-end processes.

As representatives for the digital content brands that marketers trust, it is our responsibility to shine a light on any “trust parasites” in programmatic and to work with advertising and agency partners to maximize their confidence in the value they will receive when they put money into programmatic. The rise of programmatic direct and private marketplaces offer an example of how this is taking shape. And right now, buying direct from a trusted premium publisher is the best way to execute a programmatic campaign without risk.

Villain’s and heroes aren’t what we need to focus on in the story of digital media. However we do need to recognize that there’s a lot at stake here if all of the players don’t work together to educate the market, given the predictions that programmatic will dominate digital advertising within a few years. If you are one of the few still debating whether or not to embrace programmatic: Stop now. Automating the bidding, buying, securing and execution of an ad campaign in real-time using machines rather than paper and humans is a no-brainer.

If you put on your marketer cap, it’s fairly obvious. Do you want your ads to be viewable meaning actually show up in the active window? Absolutely. Do you want your ads to be in front of humans rather than bots? Um, of course. Do you want your ads to run in a clean, well-lit brand-safe environment? Yes, please. Do you want all of the above as easily as possible? Bring it on.

With every change, every challenge comes an opportunity to step up and “save the day.” And there are few better examples of the opportunity for digital innovation than programmatic. Get on board and let’s drive this narrative forward.

Image credit: kosmolaut.

Advertising | DCN-Research | Research

Practical Tips for a Programmatic Future

April 29, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Digital Content Next (DCN) released insights into the future of programmatic advertising based on in-depth interviews with executives at 10 digital content companies from DCN’s membership including Vox, The Weather Company, Business Insider and CBS Interactive. “Practical Tips for a Programmatic Future” offers a behind-the-scenes peek at these organizations and details how they have prepared for a future with an expected continued rise in programmatic spend. DCN’s key takeaway—that programmatic is not a channel but a broad set of automation and efficiency tactics that can be employed across a range of inventory—is one of the valuable insights from the white paper.

Vendor partnerships are important

Integration with constantly-evolving players in the ad tech stack is what makes building ad technology in-house prohibitive; all interview participants said they are not pursuing internal solutions and will instead rely on vendors.

Learn and grow with the buy side

Most executives interviewed stressed the need to proactively talk to clients about their programmatic capabilities, as they are often unaware of them or how they can benefit their marketing campaigns.

Enable and incentivize your sales team to embrace programmatic

Automation will not diminish the importance of sales relationships. Half of those interviewed said they are starting to see large buys that include some programmatic component; therefore, it is important to educate and enable account executives to have conversations about programmatic with clients.

Designate programmatic expert(s) on your team

Digital content companies interviewed have created new roles for programmatic specialists. Broadly there are two types of functions that programmatic specialists will have to perform: (1) supporting the direct sales team; and (2) managing vendor and platform relationships.

Leverage first-party data and other organizational resources

Programmatic specialists will need to work closely with engineering, analytics and data science teams to build out data capabilities and products.

To view the White Paper, click here.

To view the Press Release with a longer summary, click here.

Advertising | Perspectives

Viewability 100% Guaranteed from Nativo and Moat

April 23, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Viewability concerns have sparked a flurry of discussion, particularly around what should qualify as a viewable ad impression. The current standard, as established by the Media Ratings Council (MRC) last year, is for 50% of the ad to be in-view for at least one second. Not surprisingly, many marketers are calling for 100% viewability, despite the MRC’s expressed opinion that this is not yet feasible. Well, maybe not feasible for everyone, but some organizations are already striving to deliver.

Native advertising technology company Nativo has just teamed up with SaaS analytics and intelligence firm Moat to guarantee 100% viewability on native advertising for brand advertisers. According to Chris Rooke, Nativo’s SVP of Strategy and Operations, viewability has always been one of Nativo’s unique differentiators and this partnership is in keeping with that value proposition. Rooke says the company has traded media on a viewable CPM (vCPM) basis for years and built its technology stack to support both vCPM and CPM charge metrics from the start, which allows publishers to transact on whatever definition of viewability the client dictates.

The Moat partnership, he says, “represents the next step in this evolution by allowing third party verification. This closes the loop and ensures that equitable value can be realized by all stakeholders.” While Nativo’s standard offering aligns with the current MRC standard, the company can provide 100% viewability guarantee, verified by Moat, for a premium.

Not surprisingly, Jonah Goodhart, CEO and co-founder of Moat says that he hasn’t come across an ad buyer yet who “who believes they should be buying ads that are not there.” He points out that viewability is not format- or platform-specific and that it is clearly “reasonable that marketers want their ads to be seen across all formats and platforms.” The good news for native advertising content, says Goodhart, is that it is one of the most likely formats to be viewable.

Rooke says Nativo opted to partner with Moat because it was an early mover in the area and the first vendor the MRC accredited to accurately track viewability on dynamic in-feed units. The move is intended to be proactive by allowing brand advertisers to track viewability and reconcile against Nativo’s internal data. Nativo has also fully integrated Moat attention analytics into its platform, which Rooke believes “provides massive value to both sides of the supply chain.”

Though Nativo exclusively offers viewability pricing to its clients, the company currently sees only a small percentage of marketers buying the rest of their media on a viewable basis. However Rooke predicts that an increasing number of marketers and agencies will transact on it as more inventory is accessible on a viewable basis and third party verification becomes more broadly reliable.

Goodhart finds that content providers—from native to mobile, to video and even connected TV—are increasingly “pushing for viewability metrics.” He also sees signs that they are looking for other meaningful metrics, such as attention. And on the buy-side, he emphasizes that viewability doesn’t guarantee a successful campaign.

Rooke agrees, saying that “viewable units obviously perform better than non-viewable, but we find that it’s the quality of the promoted brand content and its contextual alignment to the surrounding editorial that ultimately determine how well a client’s initiative will perform.” Goodhart notes that marketers and publishers must continue to drive toward a world where viewability is a given, “that’s where we’ll get into effectiveness and solving for larger goals. Viewability—and humanity—are first,” says Goodhart, “but what comes next is where it will get very interesting.”

Advertising | Industry-Research

Marketer Perceptions of Mobile Advertising

April 1, 2015 Research Team—DCN

More than three-quarters (76%) of brand marketers consider programmatic buying in mobile advertising to be an important development, but despite this enthusiasm, relatively low numbers of marketers are currently purchasing ads programmatically, according to a new study commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence and conducted by Ovum.

The report also spotlights another development of interest to brand marketers: advertising opportunities with new-generation connected devices. Connected TVs generated the most enthusiasm (73%), followed closely behind by connected cars (69%), and wearables (66%), mobile marketers that rate themselves as fairly or very experienced at mobile seeing even greater potential for these new platforms (80% connected TVs vs. 78% connected cars vs. 75% wearables).

Key findings of Marketer perceptions of mobile advertising (Third Edition) include:

Marketers expect that their spending on mobile advertising will increase over the next two years: 14% anticipate it will rise by more than 50% while 57% expect it to rise by less than 50%.
About one-third of mobile advertising spend is substitution from other channels, with print media hit hardest (58%), followed by PC digital and TV.
Marketers in our 2014 survey show a high level of satisfaction with the results
of their mobile marketing activities. The majority is either satisfied (50%) or fairly satisfied (37%) while a further 8% completely satisfied.
Marketers show a strong interest in mobile programmatic, as 41% agree that it will help them reach target audiences. However, relatively few are actually buying mobile inventory programmatically today: 18% via private exchanges and 17% via open exchanges.
Marketer uneasiness over potential data privacy issues is pronounced. 37% of respondents in 2014 cited privacy as a very important issue compared to 22% in 2013.

Advertising | Industry-Research

comScore Looks at Shifts in Digital Consumer Behavior

March 30, 2015 Research Team—DCN

comScore has released its 2015 U.S. Digital Future in Focus. The report provides a year in review of the major shifts in digital consumer behavior that occurred in various online sectors, including mobile, social media, video, advertising, search and e-commerce. Furthermore, it examines what insights can be gathered from these trends and what that means looking forward to the year ahead.

From the report:

While most of the growth in digital media consumption over the past four years has occurred on smartphones (up 394 percent) and tablets (up 1,721 percent), these mobile platforms are not eating into aggregate time spent on desktop, which has still grown 37 percent over this time period. The digital media pie continues to get bigger and Americans engage with screens during more occasions throughout the day than ever before.
Across every age demographic, there is a substantially higher percentage of multi-platform and mobile-only internet users than the previous year. More than 3/4ths of all digital consumers (age 18+) are now using both desktop and mobile platforms to access the internet, up from 68 percent a year ago. Mobile-only internet usage is also becoming more prevalent, driven largely by the 21 percent of Millennials who are no longer using desktop computers to go online. Meanwhile, the 55-years-and-older consumer segment is actually the fastest growing faction of mobile users, increasing its combined multi-platform and mobile-only share of audience from 60 percent to 74 percent in the past year.
Because people prefer different devices depending on the online activity or task, the desktop vs. mobile skews by content category can vary widely. Categories such as Photos and Maps are more often than not used on the go, lending themselves to heavy mobile usage, while the Portals and Business/Finance categories comparatively index much higher on desktop devices. Although Portals function as an accessible hub of information on desktop, the mobile environment is markedly different where apps have taken on the role as the gateway to the web.

Key topics covered in the 2015 U.S. Digital Future in Focus report include:

The implications of an increasingly multi-platform digital population
The fastest growing digital media properties and mobile apps
The continuing disruption of mobile in all facets of digital
How the major social network audiences stack up against each other
Digital advertising’s transition to transacting on viewable impressions
The continuing growth of online video and emergence of mobile and over-the-top video
How total web searches are distributed among desktop, smartphone and tablet devices
The unrelenting growth of digital commerce and emergence of mobile commerce

Advertising | Industry-Research

Mobile Ad Spend to Overtake Desktop by End of 2015

March 27, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Mobile advertising will soon capture the majority of digital ad spend, according to a new report from Marin Software, provider of a cross-channel performance advertising cloud. Driven by rapid consumer adoption of mobile devices, and a corresponding surge in mobile ad clicks and conversions, the report finds advertisers will spend more on mobile than desktop ads by the end of 2015.

The benchmark report, “Mobile Advertising Around the Globe: 2015 Annual Report,” includes statistics and trends uncovered through an examination of the Marin Global Online Advertising Index.

Findings from Marin Software’s Global Mobile Advertising Report include:

Mobile device adoption amongst consumers continues to grow relative to desktop. Consumers spend more time and attention on mobile devices than desktop now,1 and advertisers have been shifting spend away from desktop towards smartphones and tablets to reach consumer attention. Due to this digital advertising paradigm shift, mobile advertising budget is predicted to exceed desktop advertising budget by end of 2015.
Consumers are more likely to use mobile devices for product research than desktop. Smartphones and tablets are used by consumers for research and represent the top of the funnel, while desktops are where they go to convert.
With 40% of all online adults starting an activity on one device and ending on another, it’s important to retarget ads seen on mobile to desktop or tablet in order to ensure maximum view-time by engaged consumers. Use a third party tracker to track users across device and channel to fully optimize advertising spend through retargeting ads.
However consumers are still much more likely to convert on desktop. Desktops are still the primary conversion-driving device; however research has shown that many consumers use mobile devices as upper-funnel research, and convert in-store or on desktop. Mobile conversion attribution for these cross-device and offline conversions must be tracked and recorded to properly create the link between mobile clicks and conversions.

Advertising | Revenue

Edmunds Signals Advertising Shift With Programmatic

February 19, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Edmunds.com had an enviable problem: A wide range of brands wanted to advertise on the site but were being crowded out by big-pocketed automakers who love to spend on their highly-contextual pages. It’s no surprise that car makers wanted access to the Edmunds audience; according to Datalogix, 59% of U.S. car shoppers use Edmunds.com, and more than half of visits to its website result in a purchase. To increase opportunities for non-endemic brands to reach its desirable audience, Edmunds began to experiment with programmatic last year via private exchanges. And 2015 has brought a partnership with Krux – a data management platform (DMP) – to help them deliver across all digital screens and sources and continue to expand Edmunds’ advertising and content capabilities.

According to CEO Avi Steinlauf “Edmunds has embraced audience-based marketing by redefining our entire premium ad product offering.” This includes everything from page-based placements to audience-based placements for all of the company’s directly-sold, guaranteed onsite ad inventory. A key aspect of its new offering is the ability to reach the Edmunds audience offsite on other websites.

To establish this “audience-based advertising platform,” Edmunds.com turned to Krux to enable real-time tracking and audience segmentation of its audience. Krux also provides a platform to safeguard against the unauthorized use of audience data including strict adherence to industry standard consumer privacy policies.

Consumer protection is an essential component of this initiative. As Krux CEO Tom Chavez put it, “Like any publisher with valuable people data, Edmunds doesn’t want their data cast into the winds or transacted in dark rooms by frenemies who take liberties.” As such, Krux focuses on providing fine-grained controls that allow Edmunds to provision its data only to named players on times, terms, and conditions of their choosing. According to Chavez, “This requires an end-to-end approach that first detects and monitors if and where their data is leaking, and second enables them to point and send it to trusted partners in a friction-free, policy-managed fashion.”

The shift in its ad strategy is in response to what Steinlauf describes as “the ad industry’s increasing need to reach relevant audiences and provide more effective, tighter messaging to consumers.” This is achieved by offering marketers who directly buy ad inventory on Edmunds, a license to retarget those same audiences by activating them for retargeting on their programmatic buying platforms (DSPs).

As a second-party data provider for automotive OEM clients, Edmunds is able to work more collaboratively with these OEMs as well as with agencies to develop new types of ad campaigns or to increase the ROI of current ones. And, for dealership clients, Steinlauf says using these audience segments overlaid with geo-targeting data “provides an exciting opportunity to serve as a key component in their cross-channel digital marketing efforts.”

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

IAB Says 100% Viewability Measurement is Not Yet Possible

December 16, 2014 DCN

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today released the “State of Viewability Transaction 2015,” a position paper offering the digital media and advertising industries guidance on how to manage the shift of digital media’s “audience currency” to 100 percent viewability. During this ‘Year of Transition,’ the IAB recommends 70% as the best threshold for buyers and sellers (upping the standard from 50%, which the Media Rating Council (MRC) called for in March of this year).

To foster stronger collaboration and build trust throughout the entire media ecosystem, the IAB recommends that marketers, agencies, and publishers adhere to seven principles during 2015, which it outlines here.

“The entire industry came together to provide true accountability through a single viewability measurement. At this point in time, it’s critical that all parties adhere to the MRC standard and provide for a period of transition while the systems catch up. On behalf of all premium publishers, I commend the IAB’s shepherding the industry through this phase.”

—Jason Kint, CEO, Digital Content Next

Read the IAB’s entire “State of Viewability Transaction 2015” statement.