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Content marketing, ad blocking and other trends that rocked digital publishing in 2015

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2015 was as existential as they come for digital media and advertising. Some of the biggest stories that captivated the industry represented tough questions that have been brewing for years but are no longer avoidable.

So which of these stories captivated the industry? We analyzed 5,600 articles from industry trades that were published between Jan. 01 — Nov. 11, and the approximately 4 million resulting page views to determine which topics resonated most, and when.

General Findings

  • Content Marketing accounted for the most overall page views of the trends analyzed in 2015.
  • Mobilegeddon generated the most page views/story (which we can use as a measure of “degree of interest” in a topic), then effectively vanished from people’s minds.
  • After its initial splash in May, Facebook Instant Articles seemed to vanish from the radar until Fall, when it wasrolled out to more publishers and more users.
  • News that Programmatic accounted for 20% of all 2014 digital ad spend got the industry’s attention in July.

The Ad Block Problem
The conversation about ad blockers reached fever pitch in September, as news broke that Apple’s iOS would let users install ad blockers and that some ads could avoid being blocked… for a price. Advertising Week Sept 28 — Oct 2, was essentially an unofficial summit on how to deal with the rise of ad blockers.

The Mobilegeddon That Wasn’t?
After the initial news about Google changing its algorithm to reward more mobile-friendly pages in its search engine results, interest in Mobilegeddon quickly died down as people realized its impact was minimal or indeterminate on their business.

Fig1Mobilegeddon

Content Marketing Becoming the Norm?
Content marketing is now a routine part of industry coverage, and has been for the last couple of years. Unlike the other trends in this analysis, interest in content marketing was less subject to dramatic spikes and dips, growing steadily throughout the year as marketers focused on tips for doing it better, planning for 2016, and its overall growth in the industry.

Native Interests
Native advertising generated its interest in relation to two developments: Snapchat announcing the creation of a native ad agency with a handful of media companies at Cannes Lions, and Advertising Week, where Ad Blocking dominated the conversation. Native advertising began to resurface as an alternative for brands and publishers.

Facebook Instant Articles
After making waves with its initial announcement and launch of Instant Articles — which hosts a publisher’s content directly in the News Feed — radio silence ensued for the duration of the summer, leaving many to wonder if it was getting off to a slow start. Then in September, Facebook added more publishers to Instant Articles, and in October, rolled it out to all iPhone users, which re-ignited interest.

The spike in intrigue over Facebook Instant Articles perfectly embodies a tough question publishers have been mulling for years but is no longer avoidable in 2015: at what point do I pull back on trying to pool audiences on my own site and invest more heavily in reaching new audiences where they already congregate?

Naturally, the reaction to Facebook’s offer varied, as some wondered how far Facebook would go in using publisher content to fuel their growing media empire, while others urged caution in how much content should be Instant vs. Owned.

But perhaps lost in the shuffle was Facebook’s own justification for presenting a publisher’s content to users in this way, the same justification Google used in its push Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) push.

Fig2FBInstant

A Better User Experience
It almost always comes down to the user.

From the ongoing discussion on what native advertising should look like, to the initial panic over “mobilegeddon,” at heart is how to work towards an Internet consumers are almost uniformly pleased with. In a way, the popularity of both ad blockers and content marketing are symptoms of that ideal.

Brandon Carter is a Content Specialist at Outbrain (@brandedcarter @Outbrain). He began his career as a staff journalist for the Maine weekly ‘The Coastal Journal’ before moving to New York and joining the product licensing divisions of Peanuts Worldwide and Sesame Workshop.

Perspectives | Research

Preparing for 2020: Getting to Know the Millennial Woman

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Are we ready for the year 2020? In only five short years, the millennial generation will be the largest, most influential generation we’ve encountered. They will represent the majority of the work force, account for two-thirds of all first-time home buyers and represent over $2.5 trillion in spending. While leading millennials have already embraced this “adult” life, trailing millennials will be following in their footsteps by the year 2020. What will this mean to publishers and marketers? Will millennial women follow their Gen-X and Boomer parents in their buying behavior and decision-making? Or will the advancement of technology – including smartphones, social media in the ‘always on’ world – dramatically change how we engage with them?

This is an important question for Meredith where our cornerstone content has been home, health, family, food and lifestyle for women inspired by our brands. For generations – including the Boomer’s sexual revolution of the sixties to the excess of the eighties and the Gen X generation who grew up alongside the progression of the online world as a mass media – Meredith content has evolved to meet her needs for the milestones and moments in between. We are constantly seeking new ways to help them search our recipes, get inspired by our home decoration ideas and share our parenting tips. Our “Women 2020” research initiative was designed to deliver targeted, data-driven insight on key audiences for both us and our marketing partners and brands through the lens of life stages and the influence of technology.

Here are a few key takeaways from this year’s Women 2020 report:

The Millennial Mindset
Millennial women are optimistic about their futures and, not surprisingly, are focused on issues close to home, i.e., themselves. The majority feel they will be happier, more fortunate and have more opportunities in five years. According to these millennial women, the most pressing issues facing women today are weight acceptance (27%) and wage equality (25%), very different than the more worldly boomers who see wage equality and domestic violence as the top issues facing women, with weight acceptance of much less importance (9%).

The Mobile Generation
Given the technology at their fingertips – literally – it’s only logical that smartphones and laptops are the millennial women’s chosen device to access the internet. Gen-Xers and Boomers also choose laptops as their #1 go-to device, but less than half of Boomers claim that their smartphone is the primary device to connect. This is especially evident when it comes to shopping. More and more women – led by millennials – are going online prior to shopping to look for sales, coupons and price comparisons and staying on line in the store. Specifically, when shopping for food, more than a quarter of millennial women are looking for coupons and using a grocery list app. Clearly, engagement with women as they prepare to shop is uniquely different than the Boomer’s we have helped navigate for years. Meredith’s recent acquisition of Qponix (a Grocery Server technology) allows us to serve her all of the content she is looking for in one place on our sites. We will be rolling this out to other categories, including beauty, as a result of this growing trend.

Media Sources & Roles
The list of media options and information and entertainment sources seems to have no limit, but that’s not an issue for millennial women (concurring with recent MomTrak research from Meredith’s Parents Network) who continue to add to the list of sources they turn to. No wonder it’s hard to get their attention! Each media fills a unique role. The primary reason women turn to online sources is as “a good source of learning” and a way to get “detailed information.” However, when focusing on millennial women, the #1 reason they go online is to keep them “informed and up-to-date”, in other words online is a key information source. When it comes to TV, all generations agree: it’s “pure entertainment” and TV “relaxes them.”

Women of all ages also agree on the main reason they rely on magazines. Magazines offer a sense of control (“can glance through quickly or read through thoroughly) and allow them to “unplug and disconnect from technology.” Perhaps the fear of missing out (FOMO) is being replaced with JOMO (the joy of missing out) and printed magazines are the solution.

Social media continues to grow as an integral part of women’s lives with nearly all women visiting Facebook at least once a week. Millennials and Gen-Xers also rely regularly on YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest, offering a constant reminder to marketers to be sure to share relevant content everywhere she is, when she wants it. Trailing millennials are always on the lookout for the next new social sharing platform, with video-based offerings, such as Vine and Snapchat, playing a starring role. Blurring the line between content and marketing is accepted by these younger women, but authenticity and transparency is key – they will be skeptical otherwise (in fact 65% of millennials told us that they believe their friends & family have lied on social media – brands, watch out).

In line with their optimistic focus, they appreciate a playful tone and are more likely to share when the content is delivered with humor and a realistic reflection of themselves. Women in general are known to be “sharers” but due to the growth of social networking, sharing, recommending, reviewing and posting is a natural next step for millennials after buying or using a product. But social networks aren’t the only place where women share – in person or on the phone remains the dominant mode of sharing in the three categories covered in this study (beauty, food and home). Meredith takes this eagerness about sharing to heart. In fact, it’s the driving reason behind the relaunch of Allrecipes.com as a social media network for foodies, rolling out this fall.

Are we ready for 2020? We are already using insights from “Women 2020” continue to inform our editorial content strategy, our acquisitions and the products and programs we bring to market. As a company with over a century of engagement with women on what matters most to them, we know that it is critical to continually evolve to meet the next generation’s needs.

Britta Cleveland (@minibcw) is the Senior Vice President of Meredith’s Research Solutions group, a position she has held since 2004. She is responsible for all of Meredith’s National Media Brands, including three of America’s top 10 in terms of circulation: Better Homes & Gardens, Family Circle and Parents and the Meredith Digital network which includes leading women’s websites, such as allrecipes.com and parents.com Prior to joining Meredith, Britta was the Director for Advertising Research at Reader’s Digest, and for the 15 years prior she worked on the advertising agency side of the business in the NY offices of Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising and held media planning positions in the San Francisco offices of Foote, Cone & Belding and Dancer, Fitzgerald, Sample.

Perspectives | Research

3 Steps You Can Take Now to Make the Digital Ecosystem Safer

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We’ve all seen the headlines and statistics:

Advertisers will lose $6-10 billion to bots in 2015.

More than half of ad impressions are not seen.

A quarter of all video impressions are fraudulent.

Brands are not safe from bots and invalid traffic.

As an experienced digital auditor, the Alliance for Audited Media goes behind the scenes to examine the sources and systems of the underlying issues plaguing the digital advertising ecosystem. In a new  white paper series, we delve into the issues of viewability, fraudulent and invalid traffic, and brand safety and transparency. All from a side you might not have read yet—the auditor’s perspective.

Based on our research, there are steps that all industry players – media buyers, vendors and publishers – can immediately take to make the digital ecosystem a safer place. Here are three takeaways that you can put to work today:

1. Prepare for 100 percent viewability
eyeOn the surface, viewability is a logical goal that seems readily attainable. Publishers should serve ads that can be seen by a human. Reality is far more complicated, of course. Different publishers work with different vendors. And different vendors—even those that are accredited—can use different measurement methodologies. Add in issues with browsers, screen sizes, ad delivery mechanisms and things quickly get very complicated. The industry is working toward solutions, but in the meantime, here’s what you can do now to prepare for 100 percent viewability:

Media Buyers: Know where your ads are going and where they ran: Work with reputable publishers and networks. Talk with vendors about measurement methodologies to better understand discrepancies. Demand audited systems and data to ensure you’re able to transact with trust and transparency.

Vendors: If you’re considering an MRC accreditation against the viewability standards, schedule a pre-audit engagement – now required by the MRC – with an independent third party to cost-effectively prepare your technology and processes for compliance with industry standards.

Publishers: Evaluate the advertising real estate on your pages and optimize placement for the best opportunity to be measured and seen. Disclose to clients which viewability solutions you employ and prepare them for possible discrepancies and reconciliation methods.

2. Recognize that not all invalid traffic is fraudulent but all fraud is invalid
spiderThere are several very good reasons a website may have for generating invalid traffic including internal traffic or test environments. But there are many more ways a site can generate fraudulent traffic, here’s what you can do to combat it:

Media Buyers: Ask your media partners how they detect invalid traffic. Only use vendors and technology partners certified to industry guidelines. Agencies should take the additional step of following the IAB’s best practices for workflow, campaign set-up, site tagging and measurement processes.

Ad Networks and Exchanges: Vet your inventory and continuously monitor it for changes. Provide advertisers with site-level information about where ads are running and who is seeing them. Become certified to IAB guidelines. Build brand safety technology into the ad server or domain engines that participate in RTB.

Publishers: Use internal controls to monitor traffic increases and implement ad tech solutions that are certified to industry standards. Perhaps most importantly, become certified against the IAB Quality Assurance Guidelines, which offer a framework for brand safety and trust throughout the industry.

3. Eliminate the bad players hiding behind good technology
lockProgrammatic media buying has allowed advertisers to more precisely target audiences while helping publishers sell more inventory. It’s also created another avenue for potential fraud in the digital ad supply chain. Here’s what you can do to stop fraud:

Media Buyers: Only use exchanges that work with legitimate, validated publishers and take steps to refuse buying low-quality inventory. If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Vendors: Get audited to IAB guidelines. Those vendors that comply with IAB measurement guidelines believe in providing accurate, reliable and consistent measurements every day.

Publishers: Avoid the temptation of buying undesirable traffic to fulfill commitments to advertisers. “Cheap” and “quality” traffic rarely go together.

The fact is that there’s no single answer to the issues facing digital advertising—but accountability and transparency are the foundation of any solution. Know your vendors and media buyers beyond just a name on a screen. Have a conversation and reach an understanding before a campaign begins. Support the work of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) to add background checks and weed out the bad actors before they gain entrance. 

Each of us can and must play a role in bringing transparency to the digital media ecosystem. If all sides of the industry come together against those that are infecting the system, we’ve got a real chance of creating a safe marketplace where everyone can transact with trust. Read AAM’s entire  digital white paper series to learn more about the industry initiatives at play and find your role.

Guenther is vice president of digital auditing services at AAM. As a founding partner and vice president of ImServices Group—an Alliance for Audited Media company—he has more than 25 years of experience in digital technology auditing. Guenther has been instrumental in helping develop many of today’s key standards and practices for the interactive advertising marketplace including the IAB’s Quality Assurance Guidelines, various IAB Measurement Guidelines (including the MRC Viewable Impression Guidelines) and the IAB’s Ad Campaign Measurement Process Guidelines to name a few.

In 2014 AAM and ImServices merged. Guenther leads the integrated digital audit team in helping clients address fraud detection and prevention, ad delivery verification, viewability and brand safety through platform certification audits, independent validation through the IAB’s Quality Assurance Program (QAG) and MRC accreditation support that includes pre-audit assessments, a step now required by the MRC.

Perspectives | Research | Revenue

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

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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.

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DCN-Research | Research

Practical Tips for a Programmatic Future

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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.

Marketing | Research | Revenue

comScore Versus the Bots: New Booklet Tackles Non-Human Traffic

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As the digital ad spend rises, so does the amount of non-human traffic online. That is no surprise to Brian Pugh, comScore’s SVP of Audience, who has been tracking the issue for about 15 years. In those early days, says Pugh, no one wanted to talk about it; non-human traffic was one of the internet’s dirty little secrets. The bad news is that has grown a lot since then. The good news is that today people are discussing it openly and solutions are emerging to address the problem.

To fuel on-going discussion around these issues comScore recently released a booklet on Non-Human Traffic, which provides a clear overview of the issue as well as how a failure to address the problem causes inaccurate audience measurement, which negatively impacts the entire value chain. “Over the last 18 months, the issue has been talked about much more openly,” says Pugh, “because brands are becoming more sophisticated and aware.” And while viewability has been in the spotlight for a while, Pugh sees issues of fraud moving to the fore “because before you can judge if an ad is really viewable, you need to know if the viewer is human.”

comScore has been working to address the issue of fraud since the launch of its Media Metrix product in 2001, and the company’s acquisition of MdotLabs last summer signaled a significant push to weed out fraudulent traffic in order to accurately measure and report on audiences. MdotLabs co-founder Timur Yarnall joined comScore as SVP and anti-fraud evangelist, to help educate the industry and marketers, many of whom still think viewability is all they have to worry about.

The reality is that non-human traffic undermines the integrity of every performance and effectiveness metric. And this is not just a buy-side issue, at least in part because the growth of the digital advertising industry must be predicated on trust. Yarnall points to comScore’s recent launch of Industry Trust as another effort to increase transparency around problems in digital advertising, but also “to highlight the good things happening in the industry and not just provide fodder for the next shocking story.”

PercentNHTcomScoreIndustry Trust is intended to enable trustworthy programmatic transactions by providing a rating of ad inventory quality. Pugh says that the popularity of programmatic ad buying has further escalated fraud with bad actors delivering non-premium inventory by “claiming to be another site.” Low-quality sites impersonating a high quality publisher in order to steal ad sales is known as Domain Laundering and is one of the issues covered in the new comScore booklet. “This sort of thing is much too easy right now,” according to Pugh, who believes that more transparency and accountability are essential to strengthen the ecosystem. “Content is still king,” says Pugh. “The best audiences are going to be around great content so of course there are going to be fraudsters out there trying to impersonate the best publishers.”

The Non-Human Traffic booklet doesn’t touch upon the issue of third-party traffic sourcing, an area of much concern to publishers that was raised in the ANA White Ops report “The Bot Baseline: Fraud in Digital Advertising, which found that sourced traffic display inventory was almost five times more likely to be fraudulent.  While Pugh says he has seen cases of publishers trying to hide that sort of traffic in the past, these days they are becoming increasingly aware of the negative effects and are working hard to ensure that third-party traffic comes from reputable sources, thanks in part to vocal industry leaders such as AdWeek’s Mike Shields. Ultimately, he encourages publishers to continue to place a premium on building quality audiences, “If you are a publisher, you have to get traffic to your site. No, all sourced traffic isn’t bad, but the old saying you get what you pay for applies here.”

While both Yarnall and Pugh note that scammers continue to change their tactics in order to counteract the anti-fraud measures put in place by publishers, they also highlight the creativity coming from the media, marketing and measurement side of the equation in addressing these issues.  What’s key to staying ahead of what’s sure to be an on-going issue is the sharing of information and continued efforts by leaders in the industry to shine a light on the problems as well as the victories in combatting fraud and non-human traffic. And while fraud will never be entirely eliminated, Yarnall’s goal is to make it much harder and more expensive for fraudsters to exist.

Industry-Research | Marketing | Research

Sharethrough Takes A Neuroscience Perspective to Look at Mobile Native Advertising

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Sharethrough, a software company that enables leading websites and apps to manage their in-feed, native ads, commissioned a study “A Neuroscience Perspective: Asessing Visual Focus, Message Processing & The Ability To Strengthen Associations Through Mobile Native Advertising” from Nielsen to determine how consumers visually process mobile ads. What’s interesting about this particular study is that instead of the usual survey-based research, it applied eye tracking and neuroscience—the study of subconscious reactions in the brain—to mobile advertising.

According to Sharethrough:

Unlike survey-based mobile measurement, which evaluates a consumer’s conscious reactions to ads, neuroscience taps into the brain’s subconscious reactions as well. This is critical: the subconscious is the motivating force behind many of our actions, including which brands we buy from.

To understand the effectiveness of mobile advertising, the study (conducted in accordance with Nielsen’s proprietary methodology) compared native ads and banners, both placed in-feed. Nielsen worked with five premium advertisers, including Boeing, creating mock ads from similar creative elements that were optimized for each format. Study participants were shown a video simulating the experience of scrolling through an editorial feed. The feed is paused and the participant is shown either a native ad or an in-feed banner. Using a combination of EEG data— measurements of neural activity in the brain—and eye tracking, Nielsen quantified where and how the participants’ focus was being directed.

Among the key findings, which Sharethrough explores in more detail, are:NativeAdBrain

  • Native Ads Appear to Receive Two Times More Visual Focus than Banners
  • Banners Are Processed Peripherally
  • Native Ads Are Being Read
  • Native Ad Headlines Can Be Optimized to Trigger Associations
  • Brand Assets Impact Brand Resonance Lift

Quartz’ Alice Truong takes a look at the research in her article:
Scientific proof that no one pays attention to banner ads

Industry-Research | Research | Revenue

FreeWheel Q4 2014 Video Monetization Report

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FreeWheel, a Comcast-owned ad serving platform servicing many major TV and cable networks and online video services, including A&E Networks, Discovery Communications, ESPN, NBC Universal and Univision, has released its Q4 2014 Video Monetization Report.

The report found that 2014 digital video growth was driven by ultra-premium content – new seasons of shows and live streaming. This was closely related to growth in TV Everywhere authenticated viewing.

Key findings include:

  • Live viewing grew 297% year-over-year, driven by strong growth in Sports streaming and News simulcasts.
  • First-run broadcast shows attracted far more viewers this quarter than the year prior, as seen by a 67% increase in digital video ad views.
  • Over-the top (OTT) streaming devices, overwhelmingly used for long-form and live viewing, overtook tablets, accounting for 8% of all video ad views.
  • Authenticated viewing grew 591% year-over-year, as 56% of all video ad views on long-form and live content now come from behind authentication walls.
Marketing | Perspectives | Research

More than Millennials and Mobile: Looking Behind the Headlines of Multiscreen Preferences

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Not since the introduction of the television have entertainment and media consumption shifted so rapidly.  It’s easy to overgeneralize that this rapid shift in media consumption means that everything goes mobile (particularly for younger audiences). However research we released last week in our Getting Audiences Right report, shows that the real headline is the extent of audience fragmentation across both media consumption and shopping behavior.

Nonetheless, this is not a disorganized fragmentation, rather we see that screen engagement coalesces around two organizing principles: the generation which an audience is a part of (we studied Millennials, GenX and Boomers) and the digital task which an audience member will perform.

MBgenerationaldeviceusageThe Audience Generation
Generation is so important in how we understand media consumption and channel receptivity, because generation rolls up not only life stage events (career, children, and retirement), but also a set of beliefs that that cohort holds about itself (consider, for example, a 2010 Pew Research poll that asked audiences of these generations if they thought their own generation was unique, about 60% of Boomers and Millennials said yes, in contrast to half of Gen Xers). These life events and world views influence generations’ preferences for channels, devices, and even how they purchase.

In our Getting Audiences Right Research we see three generational trends emerge:

  • Millennials have moved to mostly mobile (particularly smartphones) and have moved away from traditional entertainment channels (like network and cable TV) for more curated entertainment (like Netflix and YouTube);
  • GenX is task-dependent and gender plays more of a role for men in entertainment consumption than any other generation (for example 68% of GenX men report using YouTube on a weekly basis compared to 47% of GenX women).
  • Boomers, who often pride themselves in their facility with and use of technology (31% of them shop online via their laptop more than once a week and 18% shop online with their smartphone once a week) still prefer traditional channels for entertainment (cable TV is still the screen they’re most likely to watch on a weekly basis — 68% of women watch cable on a weekly basis and 62% of men).

The Task at Hand
Nonetheless, in the consumer path to purchase, all generations lean towards PCs as the device of choice.

Even Millennials rely heavily on PCs and laptops for shopping activity. The largest proportion of Millennials had searched or purchased consumer packaged goods using their laptops/PCs (39%) and the same was true for consumer electronics (36%) and financial services (31%)

GenX was most likely to use a laptop/PC for all purchase paths and were particularly strong adopters of laptops for the search or research of consumer packaged goods (49% of GenX had purchased or researched consumer packaged goods on their laptop in the past 6 months, compared to 27% having used smartphones for the same). Interestingly, GenXers use of tablets for CPG search/purchase was higher than that of other generations (20% of GenXers had used a tablet to research or purchase consumer packaged goods in the past 6 months).

Finally, Boomers shared a preference for laptops (54% of them have used a laptop in the past 6 months to search/research consumer packaged goods, 46% for consumer electronics and 41% for researching or purchasing travel).

All audiences stated that the primary drivers of their screen preference were screen size and the performance and speed of the device. However, our research also reveals that task time plays a large role in screen preference. Almost all audiences (81%) prefer to complete a five minute task on a smartphone. However, that percentage drops to 43% for tasks over 10 minutes.

The Message for Marketers
Task and generation are so important because advertising is much more successful when contextualized and when the advertiser’s call to action can be heeded without switching tasks (or devices for that matter). We think that these findings give rise to the following three considerations for marketers:

  1. The marketers who are beginning to consider how time shifting and on-demand viewing affect their full communication plan will be a step ahead, particularly with audiences under 50 (GenX and Millennials). The use-case for YouTube may be easier to grasp as marketers begin to understand the elements of good pre-roll, but the marketers who understand the role of advertising and the type of advertising that is effective in over the top will have an advantage.
  1. GenX is the perfect generation for experimentation with a brand’s media mix, because GenXers still consume traditional television content (though more on cable than network TV), but have also moved to emerging channels like over the top (OTT). Given GenX’s omnichannel behavior, marketers must consider the ways in which messages can be sequenced across the channels. They must also be mindful of whether the content running on the channels ladders up to the branding objective for that channel.
  1. Even though mobile resonates with younger audiences, Millennials (and the emerging Gen-Z (audiences under 18) still lean to laptops for lower funnel purchase behaviors. Continued expansion of and investment in the PC/laptop consumer journey is still essential in achieving maximum digital ROI.

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Note: Millennials: Born after 1980 (18 to 34); Gen X: Born 1965-1980 (35 to 50); Boomers: Born 1946-1964 (51 to 69)

McGoldrick_CPJoline McGoldrick is a Research Director at Millward Brown Digital.  Joline was an early member of the Dynamic Logic Team, beginning in 2001 and is well versed in studying how audiences respond to Digital advertising.  Joline is a product designer and marketer and a frequent speaker and panelist on understanding the digital audience experience.  Joline’s work has been featured in Forbes, Adweek, AdAge, the Economist, Media Post, and Mobile Marketer and she has spoken at conferences including the ARF, MRIA, OMMA, MRMW, the Market Research Event and AdTech.

Joline is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Carnegie Mellon University

 

Innovation | Research

Takeaway from Edelman’s 2015 Trust Barometer

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Mike Casey, US Head of Strategic Planning at Edelman presented insights from the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer as part of a sponsored breakfast at the ANA Brand Masters Conference last week.

“Building trust is essential to successfully bringing new products and services to market, and building trust in new business innovations requires that companies demonstrate clear personal and societal benefits, behave with integrity and engage with customers and stakeholders throughout the process.”

Key takeaways include:

  • Search engines are the most trusted form of media for millennials for breaking news.
  • Trust in the technology sector overall and cloud computing in particular is down.
  • Engagement is a multiplier, transparency and third-party validation is integral to innovation.  Trusted innovation = [discovery + benefit + integrity] Engagement.
  • Brand sustainability and be good do good will win.
  • Trust comes alive through great ideas and activations.
  • Brands that don’t contribute to greater good lose trust .

TrustFormula In the age of innovation, it is more important than ever to focus on the greater good.  Businesses must bring an agility and nimbleness with a multi-stakeholder and global view for discovery that offers a personal and societal benefit. They must embody attributes that build trust in any company, which is accomplished chiefly by having ethical business practices, managing risk, treating employees well and operating responsibly as a good corporate citizen. This will lead to trusted innovation–the kind of innovation that has the best odds of success.

Marketing | Research

ANA Finds Marketers Will Increase Native Spend, Ethics Essential

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Citing contextual relevance as the main benefit, 63% of marketers plan to spend more on native advertising over the next year according to the ANA’s (Association of National Advertisers) 2015 survey report “Advertising Is Going Native.” Eight in 10 marketers surveyed by the ANA employ native advertising via articles, and roughly six in 10 use native video and photos. Consistent with earlier DCN research among media companies on best practices in native advertising, the ANA found that “Disclosure and transparency are major concerns about native advertising that keep respondents up at night.”

According to the ANA:

  • Two-thirds of respondents agree that native advertising needs clear disclosure that it is indeed advertising. Only 13 percent feel that such disclosure is not needed.
  • Both the publisher and the advertiser have a responsibility to ensure disclosure.
  • Three-fourths of respondents feel that there is an ethical boundary for the advertising industry when it comes to native advertising.
Industry-Research | Research

TRUSTe: 79% of consumers are concerned about about the idea of personal information collected by smart devices

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The newly released TRUSTe’s  2015 U.S. Internet of Things Privacy Index focuses on the Internet of Things (IoT) and captures consumer attitudes and concerns on privacy, security and data collection through smart devices.

Read more:
Press release
Infographic