Google Kills Off Flash, Reminds Advertisers Of Deadline

mediapost.com

Google will officially stop accepting Flash file uploads from advertisers on Thursday across its display ad network in favor of HTML5 ads.

The change will set the bar for rich-media, dynamic and interactive experiences that have been shown to generate a 29.5% higher brand lift than their static ad counterparts, according to an Interactive Advertising Bureau 2015 Rising Star study. 

Earlier this year Google wrote in a post that on June 30, 2016, advertisers will no longer have the ability to upload Flash ads into DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager, or AdWords. Then on Jan. 2, 2017, Google will stop all Flash ads from running through its platforms.

Google moved to HTML5 partly as a way to improve Web site page encryption, but it seems that Israeli researchers have already found a "significant security vulnerability" in Google's technology.

Similarly, Microsoft announced that it would automatically pause Flash content in the Windows 10 Edge browser that is not central to the page, such as in games in an effort to force the adoption of HTML5 in animation.

Brett Zucker, Monotype SVP of product management and marketing, said "this is a positive move because it gives advertisers the ability to keep rich media ads without being beholden to a particular technology known to be insecure."

"Security, standards and user experience on mobile devices are the most important points," Zucker said. One report, however, suggests that HTML5 will not stop malvertising because the primary root "lies with the advertising standards (VAST and VPAID) developed in 2012." Kevin Townsend points to a report from GeoEdge that explains since these standards allow advertisers to receive data about the user, they allow for third-party codes to be inserted inside the ad. The third-party code opens door for bad actors to perpetrate malicious activities, i.e. insert malicious code.

JavaScript is the base language for HTML5, per the report, so malicious code can be packaged in HTLM5 with little difficulty.

Where the Future Lies for Programmatic Advertising

performancein.com

It’s clear that automated advertising trading has quickly become a driving force for real-time marketing. According to the IAB, programmatic now accounts for about 60% of all digital spend in the UK, with 87% of advertisers and 93% of agencies engaging in programmatic buying.

But in April this year, my CEO and the co-founder of AppNexus, Brian O’Kelley, declared the death of it. In an article published in AdAge, he described it as “an obsolescent technology built for the one-dimensional and monolithic internet of Eudora and Netscape.”

The internet of old revolved around a one-way communication stream for email and desktop web browsers, and programmatic technology was built to generate efficiencies and reach audience segments at scale. Now, however, it encompasses everything from machine learning and the 'internet of things' to GPS and real-time data analytics. Digital advertising needs to evolve to keep up with the interconnectedness and personalisation of today’s internet.

Programmatic technology has often resulted in poor online user experience, driving a growing number of consumers to adopt ad blockers, and is undermining the entire business model of the internet. It has therefore become crucial that we help publishers deliver a world-class and frictionless experience on their site. And to achieve this, we need to think far less about programmatic, and far more about programmable.

In fact, we are now entering a new era of digital advertising that reflects an internet that is far more seamless, efficient, hyper-intelligent and unlimited in its opportunities than programmatic ever was. It’s made up of three pillars: real-time data, learning algorithms, and partner ecosystem.

Real-time data

The Programmable Age approaches data in a completely different way. Before, data was limited because it was so fragmented and carefully shielded, and it didn’t allow marketers to tailor or personalise products down to the individual (you, me).

The programmable internet ensures that the exchange between technology platforms and consumers is multichannel and dynamic – the opposite of before. In this integrated ecosystem, data can transform how different conversations inform one another in real-time.

In this new era, marketers can create a data loop to drive marketing, whereby they can monitor the performance of a campaign, and then use the learnings to drive new marketing behaviour. In this context, it’s vital that marketers own and control their own data, as they need to establish a continuous cycle of test and learn. If they were to give up their data to walled gardens they would essentially hand over the keys of their castle. They have to own, use and learn from their data if they want to thrive in the long-term.

Learning algorithms

Human intuition is the most powerful algorithm in the world. We are much better at connecting disparate concepts together than computers. We can design creatives, craft messages, invent products, categorise things, understand how different kinds of people are likely to respond to certain stimuli.

Algorithms that combine customer data and marketers’ intuition can generate extraordinary outcomes. It’s time for advertisers to leave granular optimisation to computers, and focus instead on how best they can leverage their intuition and data to add unique value to the digital advertising ecosystem.

Partner ecosystem

Programmatic advertising heralded the start of digital ad buying, involving automation and data-driven decision-making. This will continue, but as it does, it will move away from automating the delivery of static creative, to providing marketers and advertisers the opportunity to reinvent how they engage with customers.

In the Programmable Age, marketers will be able to leverage their data to create their own algorithms and operate in an open ecosystem with partners who can enrich what they do, and help them create fluid, relevant and bespoke experiences for every user.

Brands that don’t have their own algorithms and deliver custom messages to their consumers will risk letting their competitors do it instead.

Marketers need to realise that the future is programmable – it’s not a coincidence that Twilio, a programmable platform, was one of the first tech companies to IPO [initial public offering] this year. And while marketers should take advantage of the multitude of opportunities the programmable internet opens up, those of us working on the frontline of the ad tech industry need to advance technology to help marketers make the most of and shape this consumer internet.

Tips for clutter-free advertising in the digital era

forbesindia.com

To transform the way ads have been programmed so far, one will need to pay close attention to the existing metrics and re-evaluate different brand strategies. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Clutter has become synonymous with the advertising industry in recent times and this extends to all realms of marketing, offline and online. There is an increasing trend of being greeted with an explosive assortment of ads when one logs onto a website. These ads transcend genres of -commerce, consumer goods, tourism, hospitality, and more. While views on these ads may be relatively high, the recall seems to be questionable in many cases. In this scenario, tracing the consumer’s preferences for brand advertisements becomes extremely difficult.

Herein, we aim to address the simple question of how a brand must aspire to break clutter and switch to viewability of the content rather than served impressions, which has been the conventional way of running ads within the industry.

To transform the way ads have been programmed so far, one will need to pay close attention to the existing metrics and re-evaluate different brand strategies. The traditional route for marketers adopting online ads has been banners, images, audio, and video. The measurement was based on served impressions, i.e., the countable times that an advertisement gets fetched from the source, irrespective of whether it was clicked or not.

Viewable impressions, on the other hand, are measurable to a more accurate degree. For an impression to be counted as viewable, at least 50 percent of it must be visible to the user for a minimum of one second. This provides for ‘some versus no’ value, but does it justify the money spent behind it? According to a study conducted by ComScore, 54 percent of the display ads that are up on the website are actually not seen and this is despite the fact that some of them cost a lot.

It is implicit that advertisers would be interested in posts which guarantee a decidedly higher viewability, so publishers offering such inventory will be at an advantage too. There’s another bonus to this because measurable data of this sort will make it easier for rate comparison of different brands among multiple publishers.

While served impressions have been working well towards adding higher numbers to charts and creating a presumption over the total awareness created through it, there are three primary concerns:

• If the targeted user leaves the page before it loads completely, he/she will miss the ad.
• A lot of search and display ads are placed at the bottom of the webpage, so if the user does not scroll all the way down, it’s a lost cause for the advertiser.
• If a proxy server, crawler or spider opens the page, there is no certain way to ascertain the measures.

In order to ensure visibility and derive the right returns on your investments, you must plan your advertisements with the right placement and communication. Here are a few things that advertisers must keep in mind when attempting to stand out from the clutter of ads:

1.       The right placements: Avoid the footer unless you have something absolutely gripping that would take away the attention from the content of the website onto your ad.

2.       Invest in the masthead: If money can buy you space, it’s the masthead that will draw all the attention. However, ensure you have something captivating to showcase as most readers are used to ad placements and know which areas to turn a blindspot on.

3.       Beat the system: Advertisements placed in between the content are another form of ensuring they get seen, especially on websites that load in parts. This is a tactic being used by major players in the market currently due to the views it generates.

4.       Gain insights on websites: Not all websites operate the same way towards delivering views or clicks. Ensure you’re able to gain insights on what works on a website and customise your strategy to deliver a different delivery system for each portal.

5.       Content is king: The way you creatively package your content will go a long way in grabbing eyeballs. One size does not fit all, so don’t replicate your other marketing activities directly onto digital, but create something that breaks away from the clutter and not only drives interactions but also recall.

6.       Keep a mobile mindset: Most people are consuming content on-the-move these days, hence a mobile optimised strategy is the need of the hour. Mobile optimised sites will guarantee a good experience regardless of the device that is being used. By ensuring the use of responsive and mobile-friendly templates that resize ads according to the devices where it is being viewed, the viewable measures of the ad can be enhanced.

7.       Keep experimenting: While banner ads and takeovers have been there for ages, there are new forms of providing viewable impressions that go a long way. Native advertising has given rise to a more organic and acceptable form of content absorption and brand recall. Being non-intrusive and telling a story like an advertorial would help towards higher views and recall value. Similarly, rich media content provides for higher levels of engagement and shareability for a brand, with marketers revelling in the return on investment it delivers, if done well.

With advertisement forms rapidly evolving, your strategy is incomplete without researching what works for your target audience and delivering a customised plan of action. To break away for the clutter of advertisements and to ensure you receive eyeballs and recall, the right amount of innovation and creativity must be put in to produce content that goes a long way in giving you the right bang for your buck.

LinkedIn Is Launching Programmatic Advertising for Display Ads

adweek.com

LinkedIn is beginning to offer real-time bidding for advertisers

LinkedIn is beginning to offer advertisers the option to buy display ads programmatically for desktop devices.

Marketers will be able to buy display ads through an open auction or through LinkedIn's Private Auctions, using first- or third-party data along with LinkedIn's targeting of audience segments—such as visitors of the LinkedIn home page—on the professional network.

Testing began in the third quarter last year with tech advertisers for both software and hardware, as well as other industries such as telecoms and financial services.

According to Russell Glass, LinkedIn's head of products, the service is part of a two- to three-year overhaul of the company's ads business in order to simplify and extend advertising on the platform. He said the scale of LinkedIn's professional network across the Internet, combined with a logged-in audience is attractive to business-to-business marketers.

"We don't want to reinvent the wheel," he said in an interview. "We want to build table stakes capabilities into our platform in a way that highlights our differences, but is kind of what marketers have come to expect."

For example, the LinkedIn Account Targeting product launched in March, which allows marketers running native ads to target user profiles based on which companies they're trying to reach.

According to the company's first-quarter 2015 earnings announcement in late April, advertising through LinkedIn Marketing Solutions grew 29 percent year over year to $154 million. Sponsored content now accounts for 56 percent of that total revenue.

While today's announcement is the first time LinkedIn has offered programmatic for display ads, it's already been offering the service for sponsored content—a key part in the company's advertising business that grew 80 percent year over year in the first quarter. Like a majority of its competitors, mobile is now accounting for more than 50 percent of total traffic.

And then there are the numerous possibilities of how LinkedIn might utilize the capabilities of Microsoft, which announced earlier this month its plans to acquire the professional network for $26.2 billion—one of the biggest tech industry deals in history. Glass wouldn't go into details about what kind of products might be in the pipeline. However, while some industry experts guess the combined company would be in a better position to compete with CRM giants like Salesforce, there could be plenty of advertising benefits as well.

"If you think about Microsoft being the world's leading professional productivity cloud and you think about LinkedIn being the world's leading professional network, it doesn't take much of a leap to think about the opportunities that are possible by bringing those two things together," he said.

But while advertising revenue is growing, that growth could slow down. According to a report earlier this year from eMarketer, LinkedIn—which now has 430 million users—has one of the slowest growth rates, with ad revenues expected to grow 20.5 percent this year and 17.8 percent next year. Competitors like Twitter and Facebook are on tract to grow much faster, with Twitter ad revenue expected to grow 45 percent in 2016 and Facebook to grow 31.5 percent, per eMarketer.

However, in 2015, LinkedIn had one of the fastest mobile growth rates in the U.S., with mobile revenue rising 170 percent. This year, eMarketer projects it will be closer to the national average, growing at 35.4 percent and putting it behind Facebook and Twitter.

"The bigger you get, the harder it is to grow," Glass said when asked about the slowdown. "And at the same time, we're still growing at a hyper growth tick. I think that is really driven by the unique nature of this platform, and the differentiating nature of what we can deliver to marketers, particularly in our audience and our content."

How to Analyze Your PPC Lead Data (With 15 Mini Case Studies)

verticalmeasures.com

If you have been properly optimizing your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, or have an agency doing it for you , you should be generating leads. After all, that is why you are advertising…right? What most advertisers (and agencies) forget about is optimizing after the phone call or form submission.

What if lead quality is poor?

What if you can’t close a sale?

Not all leads are created equal, and there are several ways to reduce low quality leads. However, you must learn from your leads.

Once you start tracking your leads through the PPClifecycle, you will need to gather enough data to be able to segment. You may now ask – how much is enough data? This really depends on how you segment your data.

Below are 15 different ways to analyze your PPC lead data with some guidelines on how much data you need. While the technique of analyzing these segments may seem redundant and findings may be linked with other analysis, the point is to show a small portion of the many ways you should look – and learn – from your data.

Length of Sales Cycle

It’s extremely important to consider the length of your sales cycle when segmenting lead quality. That’s because a business that closes leads in one day will analyze data differently than a business that takes 6 months to close a lead.

For example, a solar company that typically closes a lead in a week will need to take that time into account before determining lead quality. If a potential customer clicked on their ad and filled out a “request for information” form, they’ll need to wait until their sales team has had a chance to talk to that person, set-up an appointment for an estimate, and even purchased or leased the solar equipment before they can gauge the true quality of that lead.

Phone vs. Form

One of the many questions we receive regarding landing pages is:

“Should I put a form on the landing page or just a phone number?”

This question is usually followed up with “It depends.”

It depends first on the type of services or products you are marketing. If you provide urgent services, such as a DUI lawyer or a plumber, a phone number should probably be more prevalent, but not all services are that easy. For the rest, we recommend both, then we can learn the intent of both phone calls and form submissions and therefore attribute value to those actions.

We analyzed 8 months of lead data from one of our clients, a solar company. The call-to-action was “request a free quote.” Because it would be reasonable to assume someone may submit a form or call for a quote, both were on the page.

What we found was that people who picked up a phone and called turned from a lead to a sale at a rate almost 29% higher than form submissions. From here, we focused more of our efforts to drive phone call leads to increase close rate and increase revenue – the real reason you are spending money on advertising.

Day of the Week & Time to Follow Up

Like you would segment your PPC data in AdWords or Bing by day of the week, this is a great way to know what day leads are more likely to purchase. For example, for one client we looked at, the close rate on leads depended on when they became a lead.

As you can tell from the table above, weekdays have a significantly higher close rates than weekends. Now there could be several reasons why this could be: intent could be different between days, sales team working hours, and average time to follow up.

After presenting this data to our client, we were told that leads that came in during the weekend were not usually followed up by a sales member until the following Monday, compared to typically a same day follow up. Leads that were followed up with on the same day (weekday leads) closed at twice the rate of leads that were followed up between 24 and 48 hours of becoming a lead (weekend leads).

Location

When thinking about how business relates to location, most people think about demographics such as income or interests. While this may be a good indicator for most businesses, it is important to look even deeper. For example, let’s say you own a plumbing business and your lead data maps to the graph included below with three different zip codes that you service.

One of the first observations you may make is that the average revenue per service in zip code 1 is by far the highest. Questions you should ask:

·         Is this because they love spending money on plumbing? Probably not.

·         Does it mean the customers in that zip code make more money? Maybe.

Without doing the actual plumbing work, you probably wouldn’t be able to make sense of this. It is possible that the plumbing issues in zip code 1 are more severe due to larger tree roots in that area, causing broken pipes and more expensive work. You may also find out that the sinks and garbage disposals in several neighborhoods in zip code 2 were poorly designed, causing issues more often, but a cheaper service. You can then target your ads more specifically to generate leads in certain zip codes that provide the best PPC ROI.

Form Answers

One of the more unique and interesting ways we have analyzed data is according to how leads fill out landing page forms. Having access to landing page data can definitely be beneficial in many ways, but have you ever thought about qualifying leads based on asking one simple question on your landing page form?

Take for example our client in the insurance industry. We added a simple question on the landing page form process asking “How Can We Help?” This question was fairly uninvasive to our prospects, but allowed us to learn a lot. We were able to score the leads that were sent to our client’s offline sales team to assist in prioritizing their follow up.

The form options and results can be seen in the table above. By collecting data based on how users filled out the answer to this form field, we were able to confirm that those who selected “just browsing” options were information seekers and were higher up in the funnel, while those who selected an option related to needing coverage had an immediate need, and they eventually lead to more revenue for the client. Read more about this in our full PPC Case Study, “Attributing Offline Leadsto AdWords Sales.”

Keyword/Ad Group

Depending on the amount of data you have for each, you can choose to analyze your leads by keywords or ad groups. In a perfect world, we would know the value of each keyword and to know that value we need to track sales back to the keyword. Fortunately for the same insurance client from the case study above, we had enough keyword data on their most basic keyword. The difference between the two keywords is their match type, which makes a significant difference. The results from the study below show the same keyword, one phrase match and the other exact match.

This is huge! That is an 80% difference in close rate between two keywords. Moving forward, the value for the exact match keyword is much higher than leads coming from the phrase match keyword.

Landing Page

While there are several ways you can A/B test landing pages, one of the most common is testing copy. One of our favorite tests is “qualifying” vs. “benefits” copy.

For example, let’s say you are advertising for a new service that a client has to meet certain requirements such as annual revenue, # of employees, etc. Qualifying copy may include something like “You may qualify for this new service if..” then a list of customer requirements. Benefits copy will typically just list the benefits a client would receive from the service.

This is an example where not analyzing your lead data could really cost you. This is because if you ignore close rate and only look at cost per lead from each page, you would likely move forward with the wrong page. The leads from the qualifying copy page close 2 times more often than the benefits copy page. Moving forward with the qualifying copy page could lead to almost 40% more revenue!

The difference in close rate is likely due to the qualifying copy setting better expectations. This is also the reason why cost per lead is higher: it weeds out more of the low quality leads.

Time of the day

Depending on your product or service, analyzing your lead data by time of the day may make sense for other reasons than how quickly you follow up with those leads. It may come down to the intent.For example, if you are a DUI lawyer, a phone call lead at 2am may be more likely to become a client than someone in the middle of the day. The lead coming in at the middle of the day is likely in the research phase and looking for a lawyer for their DUI last week. The intent here is different and may help you better spend your advertising efforts in the middle of the night.

Lifetime customer value

Knowing your lifetime customer value is important if you offer a product or service that customers are likely to use more than once or you have several products they can come back and purchase. To calculate this metric, you need to know the average value of a sale, the typical number of recurring transactions, and the length of time that someone usually remains a customer.

After looking at an entire years of data for a training video client we found that on average, a customer would purchase 4 videos throughout their lifetime. This can give you more leverage with your cost-per-lead goals since a customer that is likely to purchase from you again in the future, has an overall value that is actually greater than the value of their initial transaction.

Display Placement

For campaigns with heavy budgets in display ads, it is important to look at where your leads are coming from. Answer these questions:

·         What site were they on when they see your ad?

·         Do the demographics of the visitors of that site matter?

·         Does the content on that site make a difference?

For one of our clients, the goal was to generate email sign-ups for an email lead nurturing process that sold our client’s training videos. With a large volume of data spanning over a year, we noticed that some display sites sent leads more cost effective than others. But we also were able to determine anaverage number of repeat sales from each display placement. Also, as a customer progresses through the training videos, they saw an increase in price per video.

Looking further into the display placements on ehow.com, we found that the content on those pages were much more relevant to our client’s business. This lead to not only a higher average number of repeat sales, but because the videos got more expensive, the customers with more repeat sales also had an increase in average revenue per sale.

Type of Lead

When it comes to types of leads, such as someone looking for a free quote vs. a free guide download, it is important to know the value of each lead. In the example below, the close rate for free quote requests is significantly higher (as it should be) than free guide downloads. This again is due to the intent behind the actions taken. Only looking at close rate, wouldn’t you just focus your advertising budget on generating free quote requests? Probably.

Taking it a step further is where the difference in cost-per-lead comes in. Because the cost-per-lead is so low for free guide downloads, in theory, it would make more sense to allocate your budget to these leads rather than free quotes. There may be several other variables to consider before completely changing your strategy such as length of sales cycle.

Sales Team

Sometimes the intent from your leads is all relatively the same. When you are still seeing poor performance, look at your sales teams. After several months of running PPC campaigns for one of our clients, a franchisee of a larger home contracting company, we observed that they couldn’t get their leads to close.

When looking at the sales teams between their franchise and another, we noticed their close rate was significantly lower than the other franchise. The appointments were coming in at roughly the same rate, but the sales were low. When speaking with corporate, we found that Sales Team A had not yet received corporate sales training. This happened to be a broken internal process, not an advertising issue.

Service Type

If you’re the type of company that offers multiple services, you may find that one service is more profitable than others. For example, if you do both plumbing and HVAC work, it’s possible that you receive more requests for one service, such as emergency plumbing, while other services, such as replacing an air conditioner, result in a higher profit. It’s important to know which services provide the most overall value so you can allocate more of your marketing money toward those services.

Campaign Type

Advertisers often use different types of ads for different purposes. For example, search ads are a great option if you’re just getting started with your advertising campaigns and have a limited budget, while display ads are great to increase yourbrand awareness. Typically the best approach is to test using both types of ads and determine which generates the most conversions at the best cost. This also may imply a different intent from your visitors and leads from each campaign type and therefore have a different close rate.

These are just a few examples of how you can successfully segment your PPC lead data to determine which types of leads are converting better and are more profitable. Knowing what to look for and how to analyze your data appropriately will ultimately help you make better business decisions that positively impact your bottom line.

Three Facebook Trends CMOs Should Lean Into Now

forbes.com

(Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)

No one can deny the critical role Facebook has played in revolutionizing media for consumers. As a CMO of a large consumer-tech company, I also see firsthand how it’s changing how brands and people connect. As mobile takes on a bigger role in our lives and concurrently, ad blockers rise and disrupt traditional display advertising, Facebook is emerging as the main space for brands to engage with people.

Facebook is a different beast than traditional advertising avenues. Print, TV and even display ads undergo dramatic change only every decade or so; Facebook introduces a significant shift every six months. As marketers, we must evolve our Facebook strategies to continue to be successful. After this year’s F8 conference, that means leaning into three new strategies to maximize ROI:

Don’t shoot the Messenger, use it (it’s got 900 million monthly users)

Facebook’s big bet on Messenger is key for marketers. Chat has already overtaken SMS: Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp’s combined 60 billion messages a day vastly exceed the world’s 20 billion daily SMS messages.

Mobile chat is not some far-off future, it’s right now and here to stay. Your marketing investment should reflect that. At Shutterfly, Messenger gives us the opportunity to connect one-to-one with customers on a channel they use every day. Plus, taking customer service conversations off of our public page helps us protect the brand.

The next evolution of Messenger is chatbots, which will allow brands to offer excellent customer service that’s convenient to your customers and more efficient for your CS teams. The key to strong chatbots is making sure that they are high quality and accurate. We’ve already seen the dangers of bots not being finely tuned. Quality bots equal quality customer service equals happy customers more likely to engage with your brand.

Meet your new focus group: Facebook

Brands have long used Facebook as an effective way to get feedback and input from fans, but many advertisers have been hesitant to test ads on Facebook. Now, with Facebook’s ever-improving targeting abilities, savvy brands can leverage Facebook as a way to test all types of content, whether its end destination is Facebook or not.

For example, our Shutterfly team recently trialed a new type of creative on Facebook – all lifestyle images and no product, a very new approach for our brand. The response to these emotive images was so significant that they are now the centerpiece of a new campaign that will live on several channels outside of Facebook.

I encourage marketers to see Facebook as a modern focus group. Social users tell us who they are, what they like and what other brands they like. Facebook makes it easy to assemble a panel by distilling those attributes into easily targetable profiles. Granular targeting and easy A/B testing capabilities make it an ideal platform to test new copy, try out a new voice, play with new imagery or reach a whole new audience.

Don’t be stingy with budget for video creation – it will pay off if you do it right

Facebook is encouraging brands to trial video and recently released a slew of new video features and capabilities for brands to explore; Rights Manager, Live Video and 360 Video offer new ways for you to reach customers through video and feel confident that your content is protected from repurposing.

Video is high risk, high reward. To make the most of Facebook’s new features, marketers will need to increase their investment in content creation and ensure that all video produced is awesome. Sure, lots of companies are doing video, but very few are doing it well. 62% of consumers are more likely to have a negative perception of a brand that published a poor quality video.

Our team continues to invest in video because of its proven user engagement, not to mention that capturing life’s moments is what our company was founded on. That means going beyond repurposing TV ads: We optimize video specifically for Facebook mobile. Mobile video needs to be a “thumb stopper” and stop a user from continuing through the rest of his feed. Our video strategy and execution isn’t perfect – yet – but we evolve, test and learn every day.

There are myriad parts to a successful omnichannel campaign in today’s marketing landscape – no one program can do it alone. But in the horse race of new channels, platforms and outlets, Facebook continues to find new avenues for marketers to target and engage people cost-effectively. Smart marketers will lean into the platform, with eyes wide open for who might take the lead next.