Category results for "Industry-Research"

Industry Research

Fake news fools most of the people most of the time

December 13, 2016 DCN

American adults are fooled by fake news headlines approximately 75% of the time. Those likely to turn to Facebook for news are more likely to think fake news headlines are correct than those using other platforms according to a survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs for BuzzFeed News. Consumers find it difficult to filter out fake news headlines without the necessary background filled-in, particularly in social media channels. Interestingly, consumers are even likely to believe fake news headlines that don’t necessarily fit with their ideological beliefs.

Almost one-third of respondents recalled at least one of a selection of fake news headlines from the election. In comparison, 57% of respondents recalled at least one of the real news headlines tested in the survey. Interestingly, consumers who identified themselves as Republican are more likely to think fake election news stories are very or somewhat accurate. Eight in 10 Republicans rated fake news headlines as accurate (among those they recognized), compared seven in 10 Democrats.

The fake news headline recalled by the largest number of respondents, 22%, is the story from the website the Denver Guardian, “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide.” The highest awareness for a true news headline was at 34% of respondents for recalling Trump “absolutely” requiring Muslims to register.

One of the highest recalled true news headlines was the CBS News post-election story about Donald Trump stating he will not accept a presidential salary, “Donald Trump on Refusing Presidential Salary: ‘I’m Not Taking It.’” More than half of respondents (57%) recalled seeing this headline. Another news headline with a 90% accuracy rating, among the 157 respondents who recognized it, was the New York Times op-ed “I Ran the CIA. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton.”

Respondents rated the fake news story “FBI Director Comey Just Put a Trump Sign on His Front Lawn,” with the highest overall accuracy rating. Among the 186 people who recalled seeing it, 81% said it was very or somewhat accurate.

News headlines tested:

FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide (Fake, 22% recall)
Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement (Fake, 19% recall)
Donald Trump Protester Speaks Out: “I Was Paid $3,500 to Protest Trump’s Rally” (Fake, 19% recall)
Donald Trump Sent His Own Plane to Transport 200 Stranded Marines (Fake, 14% recall)
FBI Director Comey Just Put a Trump Sign on His Front Lawn (Fake, 10% recall)
Donald Trump on Refusing Presidential Salary: “I’m Not Taking It” (True, 57% recall)
Donald Trump Says He’d “Absolutely” Require Muslims to Register (True, 34% recall)
Trump: “I Will Protect Our LGBTQ Citizens” (True, 27% recall)
Barbara Bush: “I Don’t Know How Women Can Vote” for Trump (True, 25% recall)
Melania Trump’s Girl-on-Girl Photos from Racy Shoot Revealed (True, 23% recall)
I Ran the CIA. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton (True, 11% recall)

Consumers frequently see fake news in their social media feeds according to another survey on fake news conducted by Morning Consult, a media and technology. They found that amost one-third of respondents (31%) reported seeing a fake news story online more than once a day. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said they started to read a story online only to realize it was fake.
In terms of social platform usage, participants of the Ipsos survey cited Facebook as the most popular with just less than half (47%) visiting Facebook multiple times per day and another 15% report visiting once a day. YouTube was the second most popular social platform. Twenty percent stated they visit YouTube multiple times per day and 11% visit once a day. The fact that fake news headlines are often remembered and said to be accurate by a strong number of consumers points to the fact that consumers have a difficult time discerning between fact and fictional news on social media.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Ad-spending growth will slow in 2017

December 7, 2016 DCN

Magna Global, GroupM and Zenith forecast lower to flat sales growth with more sales dollars working in digital for 2017. Magna Global attributes slower growth to current economic and political insecurity as well as the lack of a major recurring event (i.e. Presidential election or the Olympics). GroupM adds that slower growth rates are due to energy pricing as well as political concerns.

Magna Global also reports that next year’s growth rate would be the lowest in 15 years excluding the recession in 2008-2009. Even with slow growth rate All three agencies presented this week at the USB Media and Communication Conference. While the analyses and forecasts, they provide insight into the factors at hand impacting the global and local advertising marketplace.

Key highlights from each of the agency’s forecasts:

Magna Global predicts overall ad growth for the global marketplace is 3.6%, reaching $510.7 billion, compared to this year’s growth rate of 5.7% pace, reaching $493 billion.

S. growth is expected to align with global slowing to 3.6%. This year U.S. advertising sales grew by close to 7% to $180 billion, it’s strongest growth in 12 years. Discounting political and Olympic spending ($3.5 billion), ad growth for 2016 would have been 5.1%.

Digital ad sales will lead the marketplace with market share of 40% ($202 billion), compared to linear TV ad sales ($186 billion, 36%). Digital will continue to grow to win 50% of the market by 2021 ($299 billion) while linear TV will level off at $195 billion (33%).
Digital ad sales (52% share) will be comprised mostly of mobile, driven by usage of mobile devices.
Digital growth this year was also driven by video formats (+35%) and social formats (+43%), while search banner ad sales declined (-5%).
Google and Facebook, will continue to dominate search and social, controlling more than half (54%) of the total digital advertising market compared to 44% a year ago.

GroupM forecasts overall ad growth for the global market at 4.4% to $547.3 billion in 2017, close to growth rate of 2016 at 4.3% ($424.5 billion).

S. will continue to trail the global pace at 2.6% growth ($193.6 billion) in 2017 from the 3.1% growth ($188.7 billion) forecasted this year.
Digital advertising will capture 72 cents of every new ad dollar and TV 21 cents in 2017, growing from 77 cents and 17 cents, respectively, this year.

Zenith forecasts the growth at 4.4% (reaching $566 billion), flat compared to 2016.

S. ad spending will grow to 4.3% (close to $190.8 billion) from 3.5% ($182.6 billion) in 2016.
Social media’s increased usage will account for 20% of all Internet advertising in 2019, up from 16% in 2016.
Mobile advertising growth slowed down to 48% in 2016 compared to 94% growth in 2015 and will grow an average of 26% each year between 2016 and 2019
While television still dominants the ad market, accounting for 36% of total ad spend in 2016, the Internet is expected to overtake television to become the largest advertising medium in 2017.
Desktop Internet advertising will continue to decrease at an average rate of 4% per year as advertisers follow consumers to mobile.

All three agencies still see television as an important channel for branding. Online video can also be a good branding vehicle but it doesn’t yet have the massive or broad reach of television. The agencies also agree that print’s (newspapers and magazine) share of global spend will continue to decline year to year. Zenith forecasts the rate of decline at 4% to 5% each year between 2016 and 2019.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Everyone talks about audience engagement. But what does it really mean?

December 6, 2016 Clare Carr, Vice President of Marketing—Parse.ly

In this year’s Reuters Institute Digital News Project report, “Journalism, Media and Technology Predictions 2016,” Author Nic Newman said that this will be the year of audience engagement—with more than half of all respondents in his study acknowledging that improving audience engagement would be the highest of their priorities in 2016.

And true to this prediction, online media has seen a rise in the title of Audience Engagement Editor. Sites want to know how long readers have engaged with their articles. And above all else, the question remains how to harness this engagement and turn it into results: action, loyalty, monetization.

But what do we mean when we talk about audience engagement? And possibly more important: Do we all mean the same thing?

Digital publishers’ current approach to measuring engagement
Parse.ly surveyed thousands of digital media professionals, asking them to share their definitions of “audience engagement.”

From the 130 plus responses, we learned a majority of digital publishers are measuring audience engagement. Nearly 77% of survey respondents considered the ways their organizations measure engagement to be average or better.

Perhaps one reason that digital publishers are so confident in how they are measuring audience engagement is that they have more access than ever to analytics that can help them to better understand their audience. While some publications have a clear sense of how to use this data to help meet their goals, other media outlets are struggling because they don’t have a universal sense of what goals they are trying to reach.

That’s one reason that there’s no common definition for “audience engagement” among publishers—or even within organizations. Over half of the survey respondents said that their organizations don’t have an agreed upon definition.

These two findings seem to be at odds. How can publishers be active and confident in their measurement methods but unsure of what exactly they’re measuring?

Do we need a common definition for audience engagement?
One explanation could be that many publishers have access to analytics tools but aren’t necessarily setting a common goal for which metrics to measure.

The survey results showed that many publishers considered shares and engaged time to be the best representations of engagement. Rather than settling on one “golden” metric for defining audience engagement though, many publishers combined multiple metrics, such as “page views per visitor” or “shares plus comments.”

Furthermore, while only 28% of digital publishers considered “offline impact” a representation of engagement, many respondents (when asked to share anecdotes that represented particularly good examples of audience engagement) talked about audience engagement as a personal relationship or interaction with readers.

Take a look:

“Personal replies that make me smile or think.”
“A two-way relationship with the people in our community.”
“To interact in any way with the content or the author — write a comment, answer a poll, follow the author, share, etc.”
“When our audience responds with a question, especially.”

Getting on the Same Page About Audience Engagement
A recent audience engagement webinar with panelists from Hearken, MediaShift, and Parse.ly touched on the importance of settling on a common definition within an organization, whether that definition involves one metric or many.

Parse.ly CEO Sachin Kamdar explained, “It’s probably important that you talk with everyone at your organization around how you want to define engagement. But tied into that…is you’ve got to be able to measure it, too.”

He continued, “So, picking the right metrics—and again, that might be a multitude of metrics that are important to you—can help you align your goals of engagement with how you can measure and that can lead towards success.”

Clare Vice President of Marketing at Parse.ly, which partners with digital publishers to provide clear audience insights through an intuitive analytics platform. She writes and speaks about all the ways companies can use digital analytics to improve their operations and reach their audience goals. Prior to joining Parse.ly, Clare spent five years on the publishing side as the Director of Marketing and Online Operations at Greentech Media. Previous to that, she did digital marketing and business development at ThePoint.com, the precursor to Groupon, and Venus Zine. Originally from Ohio, she graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Environmental Sciences.

Industry-Research | Video

What you need to know about digital video advertising in 7 charts

December 5, 2016 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Okay, let’s start off with an obvious—but critical—fact: Just about everybody’s watching digital video. According to comScore, almost every demographic watches some form of digital video each month.

That said, it is clear from the comScore chart that there are segments that are consuming more than others. And, According to Defy Media, consumers aged 13-24 watch 12.1 hours of video per week on YouTube, social media and other free online sources, and another 8.8 hours weekly on Netflix and other subscription-video services. (That’s more than two and a half times the 8.2 hours weekly they spend watching television.)

While few of these younger viewers adore advertising, they are much more amenable to a brief sponsorship announcement or product integration is than the traditional preroll.

In its 2016 Digital Ad Spend Study, the International Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported that Digital Video and Original Digital Video budget allocations resulting from the NewFronts event have steadily increased over the last 3 years. Their research finds that ad spending on original digital video programming has increased 114% since 2014 and, on average, marketers and advertisers are spending more than $10 million annually on Digital Video, representing an 85% increase from 2 years ago.

According to Statista, there’s still plenty of room for growth, though. Statista analysts expect the digital ad market to grow at an average rate of 10.9% over the next five years, with social media and video advertising outpacing the overall market’s growth. And while search marketing is forecast to remain the largest share of digital advertising, it is predicted to rise about 57% whereas video is expected to experience an 80% increase.

While marketers find video to be among the most effective content type used in content marketing initiatives, they also rank creating it as among the most difficult, according to a report from Ascend2 and its Research Partners. Customer testimonials, explainer/tutorial videos and demonstration videos are ranked as the most effective types of video content marketing, per Ascend2’s research.

Time of viewing affects ad effectiveness. Online video advertising seems be most effective between the hours of 3 a.m. and 12 p.m., according to a study from cross-platform video advertising firm YuMe. They saw this trend across all age groups including millennials, Generation X, and baby boomers.

Mobile will be the biggest driver of digital-video ad spend over the next few years according to BI Intelligence. They found that US digital-video advertising revenue from PC- and mobile-based video ads will top nearly $5 billion this year, and grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.9%.

Industry-Research

Social media is a daily touchpoint for most Americans

November 29, 2016 DCN

Social media is part of Americans every day routine with a majority stating that they get their news through social media. In fact, half of the Americans turned to social media to learn about the 2016 presidential election reports Pew Research Center’s Social Media Update 2016, which was based on a national survey of over 1,500 adults.

The present state of the social media landscape includes 79% of Americans using Facebook, more than double the number of its nearest competitor, Instagram (32%). Other top social media platforms includes 31% of Americans use Pinterest, LinkedIn (29%) and Twitter (24%). In terms of reflecting the total U.S. population (including those consumers who do not use the internet), 68% of all U.S. adults are Facebook users, 28% use Instagram, 26% use Pinterest, 25% use LinkedIn and 21% use Twitter.

Facebook clearly remains the most dominant social media platform out there. It is the strongest social platform of the five included in this study among online young adults, Eighty-eight percent of adults 18-29 use Facebook; followed by Instagram at 59%, Pinterest and Twitter at 36%, each, and Linkedin at 34%. Facebook is also gaining traction among older adults, ages 65+. Close to two-thirds of adults ages 65 plus now use Facebook.

Facebook is a daily habit for most of its users with 76% visiting the site daily and of the daily visitors, 55% visiting multiple times a day. Interestingly, 56% of online adults use more than one of the five social media platforms included in this study with the highest duplication of usage on Facebook. This means that 95% of Instagram users, 93% Twitter, 92% Pinterest also use Facebook.

Social media apps are also popular among close to three-quarters of Americans (72%) using smartphones. Twenty-nine percent of smartphone owners use general-purpose messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Kik. Almost one-fifth (24%) use messaging apps that automatically delete sent messages, such as Snapchat or Wickr, and 5% use apps that allow people to anonymously chat or post comments, like YikYak or Whisper.

Users are often motivated to use social media platforms for their communal and social offerings. Social platforms easily remove communication and interaction barriers and allow users to communicate and share news with like-minded people. The social networks do even more to attract and engage users in these areas such as new in-app search functions, embedded content and live streaming video. These features (as well as an ever-expanding menu of new ones, along with an emphasis on the mobile experience are important as key platform differentiators in the marketplace.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Mobile marketing is huge. But how are marketers supposed to make it work?

November 28, 2016 DCN

In the wake of this year’s U.S. presidential election, it’s admittedly difficult to place a whole lot of confidence in data of any kind (regardless of which side of the political isle you reside). Fortunately for us digital marketers, one or two percentage points don’t often have monumental effects on our campaigns. More often than not, we pursue initiatives knowing that online is still an emerging channel, and—warts and all—is still more effective than its offline counterparts, even considering its weakness when it comes to reporting and performance data. Indeed, no matter the not insignificant margins-of-error we digital marketers know to be real and plan for, we also know that online channels provide us with superior insights and performance causality as compared to their offline brethren.

And it’s with these realities top-of-mind that we delve into this issue of Industry Research, where we examine the 2016 Global Mobile Trends Report, produced by Kantar Millward Brown and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). These organizations undertook the research, which encompassed MMA’s Global Smarties and Cannes Mobile Lions finalists, to identify mobile marketing trends, and understand the business impact of a winning mobile campaign.

Marketers of every stripe know that mobile-related activity on the internet exceeded desktop sometime around 2014, and has been on an upward trajectory ever since. Yet, though mobile has been a hot topic for several years, marketers continue to struggle to make it work successfully. And with good reason: The ecosystem is evolving at warp speed, so there are no absolute best practices to follow. The Kantar-MMA study provides tips and tricks for how to make the channel work for you. Here’s what you need to know.

Mobile Delivers on Branding Initiatives

Takeaway: Be open to using mobile platforms in new ways to renew your brand’s relevance among your target

Marketers flocked to the digital channel initially for its amazing tracking and conversion abilities. As the channel has evolved, stratification naturally occurred. Today, digital segments — organic search, paid search, display, email, etc. – have been defined and categorized for different jobs. And mobile, for the foreseeable future at least, is emerging as an effective branding tool.

Marketers Have Shifted Mobile Efforts from Sales to Equity & Engagement

Takeaway: Top performers consider deepening consumer engagement as important a mobile campaign objective as increasing sales

The study illustrates case studies from Samsung and Sony Pictures to show the impact that mobile techniques can deliver on mobile efforts aimed at getting consumers involved. Samsung used a campaign to get iPhone users to experience the Galaxy S6. Sony relied on mobile advertising to engage consumers about an upcoming movie (Goosebumps), which eventually landed in the #1 spot during opening weekend.

Mobile-First Campaigns Out-Perform Mobile Bolt-Ons

Takeaway: Mobile forms a creative cornerstone and can be bolstered by other channels

To say ‘great mobile campaigns put mobile as the cornerstone’ may seem redundant, obvious, or both. But mobile ads only accounted for about ⅓ of the U.S. marketplace last year. While mobile is growing faster than desktop (50%+ annually, versus ~5%), desktop will continue to be the majority digital advertising channel for at least a few more years.

So for all of the focus on mobile by Google and the other digital titans, mobile advertising is still adolescent and a needs to mature aggressively in order to evolve into a digital marketing best practice. In the meantime, sophisticated marketers who develop a genuine understanding f the channel will reap benefits until others catch up.

Tim Bourgeois (@ChiefDigOfficer) is a partner at East Coast Catalyst, a Boston-based digital consulting companyspecializing in strategic roadmaps, digital marketing audits, and online marketing optimization programs.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Omni-channel marketing is a must this holiday season

November 22, 2016 DCN

Early holiday indicators demonstrate that marketing to the hyper-connected consumer is necessary. The bar is set high to deliver a compelling, contextual and consistent brand experience across all communication channels. Why is omni-channel marketing so critical this holiday season?

Compared to last year, 6 in 10 consumers report that they will shop only online this holiday season, two-thirds of consumers will shop both online and offline and only 34% will shop mostly in-stores reports Yahoo’s Holiday and Search Insights 2016 report. In all, 37% of consumers said they will shop more online this year than a year ago.

Key findings include:

Holiday shopping is an omni-channel experience

79% of consumers plan to purchase holiday gifts both in store and online

Shoppers are relying more and more on mobile as a “go-to” resource during the busy shopping season

On Black Friday, share of searches on mobile devices increased from 26% year-over-year

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the busiest shopping days of the year, many will not shop on these designated shopping days

29% of holiday shoppers plan to stay away from shopping during Thanksgiving Week

As brands look to create multichannel promotions, it’s important to maintain their brand authenticity. Brands should stay true to the consumer experience across the multiple marketing channels as a key differentiate in the holiday fury.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Survey reveals how marketing pros make data-based decisions

November 22, 2016 DCN

Marketing has become a data-driven function and its success hinges on whether marketing managers can reliably measure the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives. The key to achieving this lies in our ability to collate and analyze diverse datasets so we can make informed decisions based on quantifiable information.

Success, among today’s marketing pros, means improving the bottom line and deepening customer relationships, while keeping teams in tune with an evolving marketplace.

A recent study by Ascend2 surveyed some 50,000 marketing professionals in an attempt to address the hot topic of marketing data management, revealing how marketers currently compile and reference their various data sets.

Most important data management goals

The three most important goals of marketing data management are:

improving ROI measurability
improving data quality
increase data use/accessibility

Data addresses many of the challenges facing marketers.

Crafting and adapting a marketing strategy to changing circumstances can be difficult with a lack of data. Predicting and preparing effectively for negative trends becomes much harder with poor insights. Even reporting to senior management or investors without sufficient data can create additional obstacles to gaining support for further campaigns.

This is where data can provide a lot of support. Ascend2’s research has found that 54% of professionals believe that data helps marketers arrive at “more accurate decisions.” Marketing data management can help managers guide their activities through real life decisions and marketing scenarios.

“I speak with marketers all the time who tell me the same thing – if you’re really going to be agile with your messaging and distribution strategies, then you need the ability to see what’s happening, across all channels, at a glance,” said Ben Carpel, CEO of Cyfe, a solution for creating performance monitoring dashboards.

Managing successful strategy
Managing strategy is directly connected to data management. More efficient use of data enables marketing managers to access it and make informed decisions based on it, quickly and easily.

Roughly 60% of the Ascend2 respondents reported that their use of data makes substantial contributions to the success of their overall marketing activities. In contrast, only 40% of companies and professionals rated their work “somewhat unsuccessful” or “very unsuccessful.”

“With data coming from so many different places, it can be difficult for a company to develop a consolidated view and an integrated approach to cross-channel marketing,” wrote Kerry Reilly, Adobe Campaign’s director of product marketing, in a recent op-ed. “It requires too much data maneuvering, the data’s not always in sync, and there’s lots of room for error.”

Outsourcing data management
Producing and managing this data can be a complex task, requiring highly skilled and analytical talent. Many companies don’t have this niche expertise inside of their organizations, leading to heavy reliance on SaaS, outsourcing to service providers or embarking on long-winded hiring processes.

Results from the Ascend2 study indicate that a lot of data management is provided by third-party organizations, while 64% of companies outsource all or part of their marketing data management. Only 36% of businesses manage their own marketing data in-house.

The modern marketing function is in a state of flux, and emerging data solutions put pressure on marketing leaders to constantly adapt to changing requirements. Despite this uncertainty, it is crucial that business units have a clear understanding of where the responsibility for data lies.

This is a fundamental imperative in day-to-day management activities, as 54% of businesses allocate data management and analysis to their marketing departments, whereas the other 42% share it between departments or even only with IT department.

Effective data and resources
Nearly all companies in the same study (97%) agreed that the effective use of marketing data is increasing. Marketing data management is a trending topic, and it’s constantly evolving.

In some cases, marketing data is being used to maximize profitability. Earlier this year, McKinsey demonstrated how tweaking prices by 1%, as informed by smart data modeling of marketing trends, has the power to boost operating profits by 8.7%.

There are many advances in the world of resources and tools within the data management space, allowing marketers to get closer to the data and deeper into its quality. Access to real-time and predictive data is currently a trending demand.

“Real-time data is critically important. Otherwise, business leaders may be making decisions off data that is no longer relevant,” notes Suzanne Mumford, head of marketing for the Google Analytics 360 Suite. “The business landscape changes so quickly, and stale data may inadvertently lead to the wrong decision.”

Data-driven marketing wins
Data-driven strategies are becoming more popular in the world of marketing, yielding campaigns that are more calculated and therefore primed to deliver effective, measurable results.

Relying on data for marketing decisions makes for superior visibility, more strategic planning and a better-equipped team, which is transforming the strategic marketers’ approach.

Joe Liebkind is a Berlin-based writer. He has worked with startups in sales and marketing roles in Berlin and New York. Find him on Twitter.

Advertising | Industry-Research

In-stream and Sidekick are preferred mobile ad formats

November 16, 2016 DCN

Each year the mobile ad industry introduces new creative formats. These formats, both new and old, play an important role in the user’s experience and impact advertising effectiveness. To understand each ad format effect, Kargo, a mobile advertising platform, partnered with MediaScience, a neuroscience research firm, to analyze consumers’ responses to four mobile ad formats through their eye movements, biometric responses and attitudinal changes.

The research found that bigger ad formats are not always better on mobile and In-Stream and Sidekick ad units offer both strong consumer appeal and higher ad effectiveness. Interestingly, while Interstitial ads appear to offer higher brand recognition than Adhesions and Sidekicks, they also over-indexed as disruptive, annoying and intrusive.

Key findings from the study also include:

Adhesion units (adheres to the bottom of the screen and stays with users as they scroll down the page) are viewed as the most common mobile ad unit, and are easily avoided by users. While Adhesions are perceived as less intrusive than Interstitials, they received much less visual attention than all other tested ad formats.
In-Stream units (appears within the stream of editorial content) provide users with the opportunity to focus on mobile ads at their own discretion. In-Stream units perform similarly to Interstitials in visual attention, but outperform them in visual retention. In-Stream units are not thought of as disruptive, annoying, or intrusive.
Interstitial ads (served between content pages) appear to have received the most negative biometric response and negative ad evaluations. They are viewed as disruptive, annoying, intrusive and not well-placed.
Kargo’s Sidekick unit (a silhouette appended to the side of the screen, provides continued visual attention) performed like the other ad formats in visual attention without annoying the user. The Sidekick ad unit, like In-Stream, ranked best among users in terms of overall liking of the ads.

Overall, results of this study suggest that In-Stream and Sidekick units may be the most effective for mobile advertising, among the four ad formats. Both ads hold visual attention and are memorable without the intrusiveness of Interstitials. It’s important to connect both the rational and emotional appeal so the ad attains positive attention and offers users the freedom of managing their environment.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Interstitial ads shown to alienate, not engage

November 15, 2016 DCN

More than 50 years later, the wisdom of Herbert Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian professor and philosopher who famously observed in 1964 that “the medium is the message,” continues to strike a chord, underlining the inextricable link between the mechanics of how companies deliver their message and the influence these messages have on customer behavior and brand perception.

It’s all about engaging in a way that adds value to the “conversation” — and the rules of engagement that held true for the delivery of more traditional content and communications go double for mobile. It’s a medium where evidence is mounting that advertising and marketing approaches that merely retrofit online display advertising to smaller screens are patently out of sync with the requirements of consumers in the “mobile moment.”

Consider the findings of a recent report published by PageFair, which documented the meteoric rise in the use of adblocking technology on mobile devices. Studies like this document a clear disconnect between what content companies want to deliver and what consumers are willing to accept. However, most studies, including the PageFair research, draw from empirical data, not user surveys, to explain people’s growing fatigue with mobile advertising. Until now precious few have dared to delve into the real and root cause of brand affinity, or frustration.

This is where a new report by neuromarketing companies True Impact and Neurons Inc., and commissioned by MediaBrix, an in-app mobile video advertising platform for brands, breaks new ground, documenting the “how” and “why” behind consumers’ negative response to interstitial ads.

The Brand Receptivity Neuro Lab Study, which was designed to help marketers understand how consumers react to and engage with different ad formats, relies on technology to monitor people’s neuro and biometric responses before, during and after the delivery of a mobile ad. Respondents were wired up to neurometric and physical eye-tracking devices, and each consumer was asked to complete a post-exposure interview and survey.

The aim was to explore how different methods of delivering the same ad inside a mobile app (also known as an in-app ad) impact respondents’ receptivity to advertising. To test this hypothesis researchers measured the emotional and physiological impact (heartbeat, attention and the feeling of “wanting” that drives urges and decision marking) messages from two brands, MillerCoors’ Smith and Forge Hard Cider and a popular CPG brand, had on respondents during their sessions on a gaming app.

Among the findings:

Viewers were twice as likely to have a negative emotional response to a full-page interstitial ad than to an embedded, opt-in ad format. Pupil dilation, heart rate and other biometric data revealed that full page video interstitial ads aroused the brain’s “fight-or-flight” center, which explains why interstitial ad viewers also focused 22% of the time they did spend looking at the ad searching for the “X” button to close down the ad altogether. In contrast, respondents “actually watch the embedded, opt-in units,” with close to 90% of viewers watching the full 30-second video, compared to only 25% of viewers watching an interstitial ad.
Embedded, opt-in ad viewers don’t just watch the ad; they also spend three times as much time fixated on the brand creative and they’re 8 times “more cognitively engaged” with ad message.
Overall, embedded, opt-in ad viewers spend 9.5 times more time “understanding/considering the embedded value exchange offered by the ad” than they do considering the interstitial ad unit. This deep engagement with embedded, opt-in ad units resulted in 70% of those viewers remembering the product and 73% understanding the brand offer. For viewers who experienced interstitial ads the results were 40% and 49% respectively.

Significantly, the study found that embedded, opt-in ad viewers are also more motivated. Motivation, which is a key brain imaging metric refers to the feeling of “wanting” that ultimately drives desire and decisions. High motivation levels in the brain therefore imply purchase intent and action.

“Those who experienced the contextual ad unit [embedded, opt-in ad unit] had four times a feeling of motivation according to neurometric measures,” the study concludes. In total 25% of embedded, opt-in ad viewers said the ads made them want to keep using the app.

This is a far cry from the “fight-or-flight” reaction triggered by full-page interstitial ads — and should send alarm bells ringing in board rooms everywhere on the planet, according to Richard Kosinski, MediaBrix President & Global CRO. “The key message is that the interstitial, the most common ad format, is also the format that users find most annoying and disruptive,” he explains. “Publishers need to consider formats that do not create a negative experience for their readership.”

He urges the industry to “rethink ad delivery and ad format” and remember the core importance of the user experience they deliver, not just the content.

The explosive growth of mobile apps — and the increase in the amount of time consumers spend on them daily — turns up the pressure on publishers to rethink mobile advertising and how they monetize their content. “Eyeballs have clearly shifted to mobile and mobile apps and publishers have to focus their efforts on creating a good user experience for their audience,” Kosinski says. “Our research shows that just running interstitials on mobile and in apps isn’t the way to achieve this.”

This dovetails with the 2016 U.S. Mobile App report released by audience measurement company comScore. It estimates that mobile now represents “almost two out of three digital media minutes.” As a result, mobile apps are approaching 60% of total digital time spent by consumers by platform.

Kosinski, a 25-year veteran in the media business who has held a variety of senior roles at brands including The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo!, CNET, Quantcast and Westwood One, advises content companies to rethink mobile ad creatives, not abandon them. The positive response by respondents to embedded, opt-in ad formats suggests that consumers might whole-heartedly embrace monetization models that reward them for watching a video, for example. “The result is a better experience for the consumer, who gets to read the article behind the pay wall, and higher engagement and higher CPMs for the publisher that enables this value exchange,” he says.

Opt-in ad experiences put consumers in control, but it’s not enough for publishers to change their creative message. They should also embrace the formats and delivery mechanisms proven to provide a positive user experience. This milestone study doesn’t just provide the industry with valuable blueprint to improve ad receptivity, human attention and brand recall. It bravely delves into the emotional and physiological traits and triggers publishers must understand to ensure their message (and marketing) is truly aligned with the mobile medium.

Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Revenue

Mobile now accounts for almost half of all digital ad revenue

November 9, 2016 DCN

Digital advertising revenue increased to $32.7 billion in the first half of 2016, increasing 19% from the same time period a year ago, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Internet Advertising Revenue Report. The shift to mobile advertising was a key driver in the increase of digital ad spend. In fact, mobile advertising revenue totaled $1.6 billion, a 178% increase from the same period in 2015. Mobile advertising now account for 47% of all online ad revenues for the first half of 2016, up from 30% the prior year whereas desktop video ads remained the same at 13% of total revenue.

Among the key trends reported:

Display

Total display-related advertising (mobile + desktop) is up 26% to $13.9 billion and accounts for 43% of all internet ad revenue.
Display-dollars are also shifting to mobile: Mobile display is up 78% to $7.6 billion while desktop display is down 7% to $6.3 billion.

Video

Total digital video ad revenue (mobile + desktop) is up 51% to $3.9 billion.
Video now accounts for 12% of internet ad revenue for the first half of 2016, up from 9% in HY 2015.

Social media

Ad spend on a whole for social media increased to $7 billion, up 57% from one ago.

Other key findings

In terms of pricing models, performance-based pricing, defined as cost-per-click, sale, lead, acquisition, or application (e.g., credit card application) or straight revenue share (e.g., percentage of commission paid upon sale), continues to lead although slightly declined to 65% of total revenue in HY 2016.

CPM/impression-based pricing increased up to 34% of revenues in the first six months of 2016 from 32% in HY 2015.

Hybrid pricing, defined as any mix of impression-based pricing plus performance-based compensation within an ad campaign, declined to 1% of total revenues in HY 2016, down from the 2% reported in HY 2015.

The report also stated that digital ad spending is becoming more concentrated with the top 10 digital ad-selling companies accounting for 74% of online advertising revenues in Q2 2016. The 10 companies were not disclosed in the report.

Many are forecasting that digital advertising will continue to be a larger and larger share of overall revenue generation for businesses. The question is who is capturing the increased profits? In an article in the Financial Times, Anna Nicolaou notes that “Google and Facebook have capitalised on the rise of the smartphone, swallowing the lion’s share of digital advertising revenues. In the US, 85 cents of every new dollar spent on digital went to the two companies in the first quarter of 2016, according to Morgan Stanley.”

Peter Kafta of Recode also offered insight the companies capturing the profit margins. Kafta’s shared the individual analyses done by Jason Kint’s, CEO of Digital Content Next, and Brian Wieser’s, an analyst at Pivotal Research, each illustrating that Google and Facebook account for 85% and 90%, respectively, of every dollar spent on digital. Their analyses also indicated that while Google’s and Facebook’s captured significant growth of ad revenues, the rest of the digital marketplace is diminishing.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Six things we now know about native advertising

November 2, 2016 DCN

It has been a few years that native advertising is being actively placed in the market. With the year-end approaching, it’s a good time to take stock of what we now know. At MediaRadar, we’re now not just tracking native ads, but also studying how native is bought & sold, and are coming to a view of what is best practice. Posted below are some of our key findings.

Native, a saturated market? Surprisingly the market is not yet saturated. Over Year 2016 we’ve tracked a median of 610 new advertisers buying native, for the first time ever. This is substantial. And we’re finding native ads across b2b, enthusiast, regional, and science media. Native is no longer for certain large consumer sites.

Renewal rates. To provide an average here would be misleading. In fact what we see is polarized renewal rates. Out of the ~1000 websites that sell native, most have low renewal rates, under 30%. This is going to make scaling up native advertising a significant challenge. In contrast, there are a few dozen firms that are very focused on client success. They enjoy renewal rates above 70%. This includes some of the best performers, including brands like Quartz (QZ.com).

Campaign packaging. We observe that it’s exceedingly rare to see native advertising running stand-alone. It’s much more common that native advertising runs as part of a broader campaign. The most common campaign is to run display for 30 days, then 30 days of both native and display, and then a final month of display.

Duration analysis. Across 16,998 brands that have placed native over the past 2 years, the most common is one month only. It’s surprisingly brief. Just under 20% of brands are running campaigns for six months.

Programmatic vs. Direct. In the past two years we’ve seen the rise of programmatic native – both display and in video. Without question, the product is marketing different than direct native. Programmatic native is display advertising that looks-and-feels like editorial. However, these ads don’t typically link to sponsored editorial. In contrast, direct native does. This is the kind of programming that Buzzfeed, Forbes, and Huffington Post are especially so well known for. Posted below is an overview of the massive growth we’re seeing from some of the leading programmatic native companies. This includes name native exchanges such as Nativo, TripleLift, Sharethrough, Bidtellect, Teads, Unruly, and Giant Media.

Recommendation. Native advertising renewal rates correlate tightly with campaign duration. Those winning six-month deals have the highest average renewal rates, with the lowest renewal rate variance. In surveying those most successful publishers we heard consistent feedback: Require clients to commit to longer term deals. This gives you, the publisher, more time to course-correct, to respond to client needs, adjust creative, adjust marketing support, to absolutely make sure that you’re helping the client meet their campaign objectives. This, more than anything, drives up renewal rates.

Number of programmatic advertisers placing in the year 2016

Todd Krizelman is Co-Founder and CEO of MediaRadar (@MediaRadar). Growing up near the epicenter of technological innovation in Palo Alto, California encouraged him to become an entrepreneur and co-found of one of the world’s first social media sites, theGlobe.com. Krizelman also held leadership positions at Bertelsmann’s Gruner + Jahr and Random House. With his expertise in ad sales and innovation, Krizelman joined veteran web architect, Jesse Keller, to found MediaRadar in 2007.