The Human Context Can Unlock The True Value Of Mobile
December 18th, 2014 - 12:06 am By Mister Bots
Mister
Bots
“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community.
Today’s column is written about Heather Menery, vice president of emerging solutions at PubMatic.
There are many debates today surrounding mobile and display: Are they now one and the same? Should we still have dedicated, separate budgets or simply merge mobile and display together?
Although it’s clear that we must manage all these channels in an integrated and efficient way, mobile still has unique qualities that set it apart from others. Users, for example, behave very differently on their mobile devices than they do on laptops. We can also take advantage of mobile’s unique attributes, especially in the programmatic space.
The key is in understanding that the value of mobile is ultimately captured in the human context: a person’s location, activities and intent.
Our mobile devices accompany us everywhere, from our first morning coffee run to the workplace, business lunches and happy hours, before ending up on our nightstands as we go to sleep. While traditional display ads are presented in the context of the activity on the device, such as the web page being read or game being played, mobile ads become more effective when they reflect the context of the person’s activity. The ability to use location to make inferences about what people are doing and what they might want based on that activity is far more valuable than the on-device context in which the ad itself is shown.
These Tech Disruptions Will Reshape Advertising
December 8th, 2014 - 8:45 pm By Jay Stilla
"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
While the term “disruption” has become a bit of a cliché, there’s no denying that technology is radically reshaping the ad industry. Investments in programmatic-powered ad campaigns are climbing, enabling agencies, brands, publishers and even broadcast players to realize significant value from automation.
And as programmatic technologies continue to evolve – fueled by increasingly massive amounts of data – the benefits will move far beyond just process efficiencies to impact every aspect of advertising, from media selection and creative execution to how TV advertisers serve data-enhanced campaigns.
With all of this in mind, I expect to see three developments in 2015.
What is programmatic buying?
What is programmatic selling?
What is real-time bidding?
What is ‘Big Data’?
What is an algorithm?
>>>>>> More Industry Thinking
This Week's Top 10
Datalogix To Be Acquired Soon, Nielsen Seen As Likely Buyer
Update: Datalogix Wants $1B, Adobe Kicks Tires
How The Old Ad Nets Are Upgrading
These Tech Disruptions Will Reshape Advertising
Don’t Believe The Lies About Digital Media
Google Viewability Benchmark: More Than Half Of All Ads Aren’t Seen
Hulu’s Peter Naylor On The Future Of Streaming Video
TubeMogul Dives Into Linear With 'PTV' Offering
Dear Apple: So, You Want To Be A Programmatic Player? Listen Up
Industry Execs On Ad Servers And The Value Of Proprietary Tech
Events
You Won’t Find Your Best Customers At The Bottom Of The Funnel
TopBots.BlogSpot.Com
ADVERTISING More: Features Advertising Blogs
Meet The 22 Most Influential Advertising Bloggers
TopBots.BlogSpot.Com
DEC. 8, 2014, 8:25 AM TopBots.BlogSpot.Com
Goodreads’ 30 million members save books to their “want to read” shelves, write reviews and share recommendations with friends.
Started as a place to help readers find books through real-life friends, it’s since become a social destination for people connecting with online and offline friends, attracting 45 million unique visitors a month.
The trove of data from these readers attracted the likes of Amazon, which acquired the company in April 2013 for a reported $150 million.
“We’re in this unique position of having deep targeted data on 30 million book lovers,” said David Creechan, VP of ad sales. “This genre and intent-based data allows us to create custom targeted display and email campaigns.”
Besides display and email, Goodreads’ social component – a book rated five stars by a friend will be noticed by all those in her circle – enables brands to “build an earned media component” into campaigns, Creechan said.
Goodreads operates as an independent subsidiary of Amazon, important for the book publishers that run campaigns on the site – and who are often at odds with Amazon. “We have great relationships with book publishers,” Creechan said.
But despite its independence, Goodreads is leveraging Amazon Media Group to explore opportunities to work with advertisers outside the publishing industry
Ford Audiobook Club
Earlier this year, Goodreads created the “Ford Audiobook Club,” a collaboration with the Amazon Media Group, Amazon-owned Audible.com and Ford, which wanted to reach women between 25 and 45 who listened to audiobooks.
Goodreads looked at its trending data to identify books on the cusp of being big that would resonate with Ford’s target audience. Their first selection was “#GIRLBOSS,” by fashion entrepreneur Sophie Amoruso. The author would join readers for a discussion of the book at the end of the month.
Decline In Organic Reach Changes Facebook’s Value Proposition For SMBs
December 8th, 2014 - 4:50 pmBy TopBots.BlogSpot.Com
sumallFacebook’s declining organic reach has plagued small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) since it tweaked its algorithm about eight months ago. A study by analytics platform SumAll, released in October, highlights exactly what that fallout looks like for smaller advertisers on Facebook.
Because Facebook’s algorithm change reduces the reach of Facebook posts, it has made it easier for click farms, or people paid to like pages, to flourish. Unfortunately, click farms reduce the number of potential customers or fans a business can reach with each message.
“And that, in turn, is driving up the cost relative to the effectiveness of using Facebook as a tool for small businesses to publicize and advertise themselves,” said SumAll head of business development Scott Pollack. “This is basically spoiling the pool.”
SumAll embarked on this research when it noticed that cost per action and cost per acquisition on Facebook had steadily increased, Pollack said.
Using data pooled from The Loop Loft’s pages, SumAll found that cost-per-action (which includes likes, comments and conversations) increased 417%, from $0.05 to $0.24. The cost of acquiring a new site user rose 492%, from $0.20 to $1.16. The Loop Loft saw CPMs rise 70.4%.
While The Loop Loft saw a direct correlation between Facebook activity and new users going back to 2012, the correlation began to drop off in 2013, when The Loop Loft noticed it was acquiring more likes, but not more revenue. “We started digging into the data in around September and released the analysis towards the end of October,” said Pollack, “hence the last three months being excluded. Then we just ran a year-over-year comparison versus the same period last year.”
MAGNA Report: CPGs Kick Digital Ad Spend Into High Gear
December 8th, 2014 - 9:27 amBy TopBots.BlogSpot.Com
DPGA new report from Interpublic Group's MAGNA Global media research and buying arm reinforces earlier predictions that consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands would invest as much as $7 billion in digital advertising by 2018.
According to MAGNA’s 2015 Global Advertising Revenue Forecast, released Monday, verticals like CPG and pharmaceuticals, which once invested more heavily in traditional channels such as TV and shopper marketing, are increasing digital's share of their overall media mixes.
“Large mainstream brands,” as the MAGNA report described it, historically lagged in digital ad investments, but have begun to move past the exploration stage “due to the availability of new solutions allowing marketers and agencies to manage and monitor digital spending” in a more precise and transparent manner.
These tools include attribution and reporting, brand safety and advanced audience targeting tools, according to Vincent Letang, director of global forecasting for MAGNA Global.
Brands’ use of data to improve campaigns has catalyzed digital as a complement to, rather than replacement for, larger branding campaigns. Thus, more brands are buying on impressions (CPM) vs. clicks (CPC) or more performance-based pricing, contributing to the $21 billion allocated toward data-automated transactions this year.
Read the rest of this entry Tomorrow When the full Article is Finished TopBots.BlogSpot.Com
ad blog power list 2012
There are too many advertising blogs. Way too many. Ironically, considering their topic is communications, most of them are unreadable thanks to a combination of poor content and loopy design.
TopBots.BlogSpot.Com scoured more than 300 marketing blogs to see which are actually must-reads. We narrowed them down to just 22 (not counting Business Insider Advertising, of course!).
Email This Post Email This Post
Data: The Center Of Media’s Biggest Custody Battle
December 8th, 2014 - 6:00 amBy TopBots.BlogSpot.Com
John-donahue"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
Today’s column is written by John Donahue, CEO at White Lightning + The Judge's Son
The promise that marketers have been making for the last 15 years – that data will transform advertising by increasing efficiency and yield while lowering cost – is finally coming to pass. Programmatic and data-driven buying have come to the forefront of the media business for everyone from small businesses to giant CPG manufacturers.
Since it takes data to power programmatic buying, the value of data keeps rising. And because data is more valuable than ever, everyone wants to be at the center of the data universe. Agencies, publishers, brands and tech companies are all fighting to amass as much of it as possible.
And In This Corner…
This battle royale for data ownership makes sense, in part because different players tend to see data in terms of a giant, zero-sum game of king of the hill. There seems to be a belief that the company who owns the data will win. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Home Is Where The Engagement Is: A Chat With Coldwell Banker
December 8th, 2014 - 12:20 amBy Jay Stilla & Mister Bots
SeanBlankenshipWhen real estate franchise Coldwell Banker conducted a consumer satisfaction survey last year, the company was presented with a few home truths.
The most jarring finding was that 87% of respondents felt like there was room for improvement in the home-buying and selling process. Add to that the fact that 64% of those surveyed said that if they were selling a house, they’d be more likely to work with a real estate agent who let them share their own videos, photos and personal stories with potential buyers.
Sean Blankenship, SVP of marketing at Coldwell Banker, realized he and his team had some work to do.
“When more than 80% of consumers say that a part of the process is broken, you have to find a better way to do things,” Blankenship told AdExchanger. “Sellers simply didn’t feel like they were allowed to be involved in the process of marketing their own home.”
At the beginning of November, Coldwell Banker launched a digital platform that embraces the seller perspective. Sellers are invited to share content, including stories about their home and personal memories, through a mobile-friendly digital interface where they can connect more directly with buyers. It’s a storytelling play with a digital spin.
“Starting this year, we’ve really started to focus on what we can do to bring customer engagement into the digital sphere,” Blankenship said. “Right now, we have a mobile-first strategy. Pretty soon, we’ll have a mobile-only strategy.”
TopBots.BlogSpot spoke with Blankenship about what’s happening in Coldwell’s digital house.
Dark Social; Programmatic's The Word
December 8th, 2014 - 12:03 amBy Mister Bots
darksocialHere's today's AdExchanger.com news round-up... Want it by email? Sign-up here.
Deepest Darkest Social
Alexis Madrigal, who coined the term “dark social” in reference to untraceable web traffic on social sites, issued an update on the phenomenon in a piece for Fusion. According to data from Chartbeat, Madrigal says most of that traffic is percolating from Facebook’s mobile apps. “The takeaway is this: if you’re a media company, you are almost certainly underestimating your Facebook traffic,” Madrigal writes. “The only question is how much Facebook traffic you’re not counting. The bad news is that, if you didn’t know before, it should be even more clear now: Facebook owns web media distribution.” Gigaom has more.
Spotify Queues Up Local Targeting, Courtesy Of Triton Digital
December 5th, 2014 - 1:11 pmBy Jay Stilla
spotSpotify is getting into the local ad game, courting brands with a platform that helps advertisers geotarget audiences in the US. The music streaming service will debut its Spot Radio Platform for brands on Jan. 1.
The tool is backboned by Triton Digital, a marketing service to the media industry and a tech provider whose clients also include NPR, Pandora, CBS Radio and rdio. Triton’s tech, Webcast Metrics Local, offers market-level reporting and insights on the listening behaviors and engagement rates of Spotify’s more than 50 million monthly active users.
Triton Digital’s Webcast Metrics Local is MRC-accredited, and pulls data from census stats, omitting samples, surveys and panels by measuring listeners’ activity directly.
“Triton can measure on an exact level how many people are attached to a stream, whether that’s nationally or by market, and they can go deeper by ZIP code,” said Spotify’s Brian Benedik, VP of advertising and partnerships in North America. “Unlike the traditional radio measurement, which is panels and surveys, Triton has come to the market with an exact measurement, which is clearly valuable for the digital community.”
Benedik called the release “a natural evolution” of the company’s ad business in the US.
“Up until now, on the digital and on the radio side, we’ve only worked with brands to target national campaigns across the US,” he said. “Whether that’s through media or Spotify’s open API, we’ve been activating audience on a national level.”
“Now, we’re opening up a new demand source by moving in the geotargeted, local game,” he added. “It diversifies us quite a bit and makes us friendlier to the advertising community. And it points to Spotify maturing as a business.”
Q & A
December 7th, 2014 - 12:01 pm Written By Jay Stilla
DavidKarandishAnswers.com, a knowledge resource site, has evolved from a basic wiki to a publisher and marketing tech provider.
“We’ve made a lot of positive changes to the site,” said David Karandish, CEO of Answers.com, “have added support for Facebook, Google+ and Twitter for [gated] logins (Answers.com now has over 180 million registered users) and turned the Answers home page into a news feed on trending Q&As on subjects and categories consumers are interested in.”
Answers.com, whose parent Answers Corp. was acquired in August by funds associated with equity firm Apax Partners for an estimated $900 million, is investing in technology and sales talent to drive new revenue opportunities.
Answering The MarTech Call
Despite its tech investments, Karandish still sees Answers.com as more of a publisher and platform and less of a marketing tech provider.
However, when Answers.com acquired analytics company ForeSee for $200 million last December, it inherited 1,200 enterprise software customers, many of which are Retail Top 100 companies.
AT&T, for instance, uses ForeSee to run customer experience analysis on its U-verse and mobile sites and compares its scores against an aggregated index based on its competitors’ first-party data.
ForeSee wasn’t Answers.com’s first tech acquisition. It gained a content syndication platform via its 2012 acquisition of online merchant review site ResellerRatings. It then acquired Webcollage and Easy2 Technologies in the spring and summer of 2013, companies that provide a cloud-based platform for interactive product listings on retail sites.
