Ad Fraud: “This conversation is good for players of stature.”

foliomag.com

Why advertising will gravitate to established companies over time.

It's true, probably, that you could talk about digital advertising every day and not cover all the critical aspects of it. Last week, I wrote about how the whole sprawling, fast-moving digital ad industry feels, poorly structured, unformed, and fast-and-loose with rules. All of those things are true, and it's not certain what the catalyst will be to improve things. 

It's hard to imagine how and when a world with rampant fraud, declining CPMs, sleazy ads and sleazy click bait sites, ad blocking on the increase, will mature into a stable, coherent business. Maybe more important than all of these things is that consumers don't really like online advertising. That's a more fundamental challenge. 

At any rate, in this environment, there are plenty of realities that are relevant to the magazine industry. Here are a few:

1. The growing concern around fraud means that strong and established companies will ultimately win out. Hearst Magazines President David Carey told me this week that he believes that the focus these days on ad fraud is good for companies that care deeply about their reputations. "Advertisers will spend with companies they know will be here five years from now and 25 years from now," Carey said. "This conversation is good for players of stature."
2. Programmatic creates increased efficiency in at least a couple of ways. Last week, I recounted how only perhaps 25 cents on every dollar spent on digital advertising actually results in an ad being viewed by a human. That may be true, but in some uses of programmatic, it's pure remnant space, so that 25 cents represents a major increase over zero, and that's a good thing for publishers. Interesting thought. The other way programmatic advertising is efficient, is that because it's real-time buying, media companies monetize their traffic spikes. Predicting viral content is hard to do. Buying is done based on impressions, which are sold on the basis of predictable averages. When a story gets hot, an advertiser either gets bonus impressions or the space goes unsold. Programmatic selling mitigates that. 
3. Programmatic has plenty of junk in it. The marketer may think they're buying media executives on the West Coast on Thursday afternoons, so why is the In-N-Out Burger joint's night manager on the file?

Paid Search Driving Traffic To Retail Sites; U.S. Not The Goldmine

mediapost.com

Nearly two in every 100 visits to online shopping sites globally arrive via paid-search campaign. In the U.S. about 1.84% of the visits to shopping sites come from paid search.

The U.S., Japan, Canada, and Russia receive a lower share of traffic from paid-search campaigns, compared with the global average, according to a study released Thursday by SimilarWeb.  

The benchmark report analyzed a sample of 2016 worldwide desktop traffic data, comprised of about 3.8 billion combined organic and paid-search visits in eight verticals including clothing, consumer electronics and sportswear.

Brazil had the highest share of traffic from paid search at 4.14% during the study, followed by India with 3.75%; France at 3.04%; the U.K. with 2.33%; and Germany at 2.02%.

Among shopping categories, Home & Garden Web sites took the highest share of desktop visits from paid search at 3.95%, followed by Sports at 3.81%, and Jewelry at 3.07%.

The reports notes that U.S.-based Home Depot, Wayfair, Bed Bath and Beyond, along with France’s Leroy Merlin and Castorama, and Australia’s Bunnings are six brands in the Home and Garden category that made the Top 10 lists for organic and paid keywords leading traffic to sites.

The keywords Home Depot drove 5,133,000 visits; followed by wayfair at 1,716,000; bed bath and beyond at 1,557,000; maison du monde at 906,000; and Bunnings at 749,000 rounded out the top five.

Paid and organic traffic contributed about 48.53% of worldwide desktop traffic for the Sports category, Direct follows with 28.41, Referrals at 16.95%, social at 3.36, Display at 2.36%, and mail at 0.38%.

Consumers searching for Nike and Under Armour Sports products often search for outlet stores like "nike outlet" and "under armour outlet" to find less expensive and discounted goods will drive up the cost per click. Higher CPC rates are shown for keywords of a brand’s specific searches such as "Nike Air Max," or "curry 2."

Combine the paid-search traffic with display advertising and Sports-related Web sites averaged a 6.17% in desktop traffic, followed by Clothing at 4.34% and Home & Garden sites at 4.27%.

Sports Web sites at 2.36% saw the highest share of global desktop traffic from display advertising alone, followed by General Merchandise at 1.92%, and Clothing at 1.67%.

8 Enlightening Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

adweek.com

In recent days, we've seen interesting data points from Instagram, Periscope and Amazon. 

The last several days were full of intriguing data points from the realm of digital marketing.

Here are eight numbers that caught our attention:

1. Mamma mia, Instagram!

Last week, we found out women love social media. This week, Instagram revealed that 93 percent of moms access its network at least once per week, with 68 percent doing so daily. What's more, more than half of mothers on Instagram follow businesses.

2. Facebook is still about likes

Unmetric, per The Social Times, looked at 10 of the top brand Facebook posts (based on the data vendor's proprietary engagement score) from Feb. 25 to March 5. The mission: to see how the social platform's new reaction buttons—such as Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry—are performing for marketers.

Its research entailed posts from Nissan, Mini Babybel, Bertolli, Windex, LG Mobile, Giorgio Armani Beauty, Arby's, Rebel's Market, LittleThings.com and US Cellular.

The stats show that 93 percent of all interactions are still Likes, while Love is used 4.6 percent of the time.

3. Livestreaming comes of age

Periscope celebrated its 1-year birthday by revealing that it broadcasted 200 million livestreams, and that 100 million of those real-time videos were made in the last three months. 

4. Bedside buttons 

On Thursday, Amazon said orders via its Dash buttons have increased 75 percent in the last three months. By pressing the Wi-Fi-enabled buttons, Amazon Prime members can quickly order household goods for home delivery. 

The Seattle-based e-retail giant released buttons for 78 brands Thursday, including Red Bull, Energizer, Illy Coffee, L'Oréal Paris Revitalift, Slim Jim, Clorox and Trojan, the condom company.

So now folks don't have to stand in line at the grocery store to buy rubbers—they can do it without getting out of bed.  

5. Official global hashtags

Trademarks specialty company Thomson CompuMark says that in the last five years 2,898 applications have been filed globally to trademark hashtags. And last year alone, 1,398 applications were filed worldwide to trademark hashtags.

6. The real social happens @work

The influencer marketing player Experticity, buzz-focused company Keller Fay and University of Pennsylvania Wharton School professor Jonah Berger teamed up to run a survey to suss out the volume and impact of recommendations from the average consumer versus an influencer. The study, which polled more than 6,000 people in the U.S., unearthed this interesting tidbit: 53 percent of influencers' recommendations happen while they are at work, compared to 19 percent of the general population's product suggestions.

7. Is there a delivery bubble?

Last week, DoorDash announced it had raised $127 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital, with Khosla Ventures and Charles River Ventures also participating. A report from The Wall Street Journal referred to the development as a "down round" that was a struggle to accomplish.

With DoorDash competitors like Postmates, Instacart and Favor also vying for investors' and consumers' dollars, one must wonder if there is a delivery startup bubble afoot. 

8. What marketers think about

A study from Epsilon last week showed that millennials are receptive to emails from retailers like never before. The stat below from Salesforce shows that marketers already knew that.

Programmatic: the keys to unlocking the next frontier

fourthsource.com

Programmatic can no longer claim to be the bright young thing in the digital advertising world. In fact, it’s the new normal: the bulk of digital display advertising that is bought and sold in the world’s key markets, including the US and Great Britain, is done so programmatically. But this ubiquity is unchartered territory, and the industry is now asking itself: what does it mean to be the default option for the advertising industry?

Programmatic still has huge growth potential, provided it can continue to evolve and enhance what it offers the industry. Specifically, there are five areas that need to be addressed in 2016.

1. Counter perceptions of ads being intrusive and irrelevant

The rise of ad blocking has been a big shock to the programmatic ecosystem. As consumers become progressively less willing to accept disruptive or irrelevant ads, programmatic campaigns need to be implemented in a more sophisticated (and better targeted) way. The industry must also be mindful that with the rise of mobile advertising, consumers begrudge ads all the more that appear unsolicited on their smartphones using up costly data packages.

Better use of frequency capping across devices, serving ads at times of day when consumers are more receptive to making a purchase, and making more effective use of dual screening are just some of the ways ads can be less intrusive. In addition, companies across the media value chain need to invest more in understanding their audience, beyond cookies and basic supporting metrics.

2. Investing in content

Native advertising will also play a significant role in the future of programmatic, with the value of native formats expected to double to almost $60 billion in three years.

Although it sounds simple in principle, getting native right is an art. You need to understand in detail who the target consumer is and what makes them tick; this goes way beyond which sites they have visited and their age or gender. A publisher can help, but ultimately advertisers will need to draw on third party data that reveals the attitudes, motivations, product/brand use and leisure activities of people attached to a specific media brand.  Above all, consumers hate to feel duped, so there is a balancing act to be carefully struck between making content not feel like an ad, whilst at the same time being honest with the consumer that this is paid-for activity.

3. Growth through automated guaranteed

The media industry may have embraced programmatic as its default buying option, but there is still a desire for more simplicity, accountability and a fairer distribution of ad spend. As a result, automated guaranteed, in which deals are negotiated directly between buyer and seller, and pricing and inventory are guaranteed, will drive future growth in programmatic.For automated guaranteed to work, the media buyer must identify exactly where they want their ad to be placed, using a trusted third party data source. Some agencies are choosing to invest more in ad tech, moving tech in-house to gain more control of the workings and value of online campaigns. We’re likely to see others follow suit over the next 12 months.

4. Real action on fraud and viewability

One of the biggest challenges to the industry is ad viewability, and this year we’ll see refined standards and certification to combat poor visibility and fraudulent bot traffic. This isn’t an issue that can be solved overnight but pressure from advertisers is finally starting to yield results.Targeting not in a solely audience-led way, but identifying which mix of branded online inventory represents the best match for the audience being targeted, can at a stroke resolve much of the fraud/viewability conundrum. This means not only evaluating how well specific inventory reaches a target in terms of overall numbers, but also how well the inventory fits with the advertiser’s brand values and positioning and thus its likelihood to engage, not just reach.

As viewability issues are overcome, the remaining genuine traffic will inevitably demand higher prices. Publishers and creators of quality content stand to see greater revenue but advertisers, although they will see less wastage, must also pay more for the limited supply.

5. Better cross-device targeting and tracking

Fragmentation in accessing digital media on different devices makes it very difficult for cookie-based programmatic advertising to achieve a unified view of the consumer. Trading desks and other ad tech platforms have attempted to address this in two ways: deterministically, through registration data when users are ‘logged in’; and probabilistically, through assumed activity based on factors such as geo-location of devices.

Over the next year, the advertising industry will need to invest significant time and energy in finding solutions that give media buyers and sellers confidence that they are meeting their campaign aims, even if cookies cannot achieve this. Consumer habits in relation to digital advertising consumption are changing with ever increasing rapidity and the industry needs to be more agile and proactive than ever in order to take advantage of the opportunities this consumption affords.

7 Things Most People Don’t Know About Most Digital Marketing Leaders

huffingtonpost.com

Chances are there are some people in the digital marketing space that you respect and appreciate. Whether it’s their innovative ideas, past successes, or great-quality content, you have benefited from their insights and improved your skills because of them.

But what you see on their Instagram feed or their blog doesn’t tell the whole story. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at some of these digital marketing leaders.

1. They have an area of specialty.

Go ahead and think of a “digital marketing leader” — the first one that comes to mind.

What are they best known for? What is their primary skill?

Most digital marketing leaders specialize in one area or another. For example, there are those who are experts at social or SEO. Even in these broad arenas of specialization, the leaders have smaller niches.

Kim Garst, for example, is an expert in social media. She narrows this focus to social selling, and her primary area of expertise is Facebook.

Of course, most digital marketing leaders excel in several areas. In this way, they embody what Rand Fishkin described as the “t-shaped web marketer.“

2. They are very vocal about things.

One of the guaranteed paths to leadership is being vocal in your arena. How did these digital marketing experts become recognized for their leadership? They talked, blogged, chattered, published, and kept advancing their online voice.

Here are some areas in which they are vocal.

• Trends - Breaking news, new technology, major changes
• Opinions - How they feel about the condition of the industry
• Depth - Detailed and comprehensive information in their given area of expertise
• Social - Actively engaged with their social communities on those topics

Specifically, though, how does this play out? Most digital marketing leaders whom I have observed grew their leadership by following this process:

• Personal blog: Publish high-quality content for a small niche
• Guest blog: Expand to reach other audiences with this message
• Grow a social media following: Along with the consistent publication of articles, they are amassing followers
• Interviews: The leader becomes recognized for his or her expertise, and is sought out for interviews
• Public Recognition: The leader gets nods on Who to Watch blogs, or Top Ten lists of personalities and marketers.
• Speaking engagements: The leader’s growing reputation elicits invitations to speak at industry conferences

At the same time, the leader is growing a successful business and using that success to fuel his or her leadership.

3. They don’t know everything.

Just because someone is a “digital marketing leader,” doesn’t mean that they know everything there is to know about digital marketing.

• An SEO leader might not be deeply familiar with YouTube engagement
• A social media expert may have very little awareness of conversion rate optimization
• A paid searchguru might not be at ease discussing content marketing best practices

4. They outsource a lot of their work.

Leadership requires a lot of time. There are Twitter discussions to be a part of, blogs to write, a business to run, speaking engagements to travel to, multiple social media accounts to manage, visuals to design, outreach to participate in, email marketing messages to create, and a host of other tasks.

How do these people do it all?

They don’t. Most likely, they have a skilled team of digital marketing specialists who carry out much of the work. Some of the leaders whom I know also own digital marketing businesses. The same employees who carry out client work also have a role in helping the leader grow his or her personal brand.

This makes a lot of sense, especially since the leader’s personal brand is a source of leads for the business.

5. They know how to communicate effectively.

Digital marketing leadership is about effective communication. How else can you gain a following (and hold it) unless you are communicating with purpose and professionalism.

Obviously, most of this communication consists of content. What forms of content? Here are the modes of communication that many digital marketing leaders prefer.

• Personal blog
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

Effective digital marketing leaders are also embracing Google+, Periscope, YouTube, and Snapchat, of course; but these platforms have fewer engaged followers than the ones mentioned above.

6. They taught themselves.

How do you learn “digital marketing?” Although there are plenty of great certifications and online training courses, these leaders did it the good old-fashioned way — personal effort, lots of endurance, and experience.

The best way to learn is by doing. These digital marketing leaders put their knowledge into practice and built businesses based on what they learned. Together — their knowledge in practice and the growing business — gave them a larger platform and more leadership.

7. They’re still learning.

Leadership is not a place of repose. It’s a place of continual evolution, active learning, and intentional growth. The leaders I respect the most are those who still grapple with the big questions, try to answer them, and share their knowledge publicly.

Conclusion

For the most part, digital marketing leaders are simply more vocal about their industry, and have been consistent about publishing content in their niche.

If you aspire to leadership in your niche, I applaud you. Sure, you’ll have some haters. (Every leader does.) But there is something profoundly rewarding about being able to help a larger audience learn, succeed, and grow their businesses.

Dynamic Creative In A Programmatic World

mediapost.com

As marketers get savvier at collecting and leveraging data, the opportunities around personalization messaging—also known as dynamic creative optimization—are evolving. In the last 10 years, the industry has reached the point where display advertisements can be dynamically assembled in a split second based on consumer data, context, and inventory availability, among other factors.

Most marketers agree that this highly tailored approach to advertising is here to stay. But now it's imperative to understand the importance of the accuracy of the underlying data that drives the placement and the creative display.

Unifying Programmatic With the Creative

Dynamic creative allows marketers to deploy an infinite combination of creative elements in order to create highly customized advertisements. But if the targeting and the creative aren’t tightly aligned, an ad can easily miss the mark. It's very important that the creative match the accelerated speed that ad buying and serving has achieved in the programmatic era.

Traditionally, creative teams haven't been as involved in the technical execution of advertising. This has left a significant gap between those who conceive of marketing messages and design elements, and the technical teams or agencies that leverage data, execute ad campaigns and manage dynamic creative optimization.

But Ben Kartzman, co-founder and CEO of dynamic creative optimization platform Spongecell, sees programmatic and dynamic advertising capabilities moving closer to synchronization: “Over the next 12 to 18 months, I think executive creative directors will adopt that mantra and philosophy—and build briefs with programmatic creative in mind, rather than simply adding it on," he says.  If he is right (and I think he is) let's examine the impact in some key areas.

Improving Retargeting with More Nuanced Segmentation

Retargeting is a commonly used practice that is often powered by dynamic creative: brands retarget people who visited their site, added something to their cart (but perhaps failed to check out), or demonstrated some other interest in the products or services offered. The retargeted ad includes a dynamically assembled presentation of the products (or products) the shopper just browsed, in the hopes of enticing them to buy or consider again.

The easiest retargeting route is to hit all browsers, product clicks and cart abandoners with a similar series of dynamic ads (featuring the products they recently viewed). However, some marketers can get much more granular about how they segment users for retargeting. For example, we found that by segmenting searchers (shoppers who searched their site for specific terms) and browsers (shoppers who browsed certain product categories), the search segment performed much better in  retargeting campaigns.

We think searchers may be closer to actually making a decision and purchase, whereas browsers may just be exploring what's out there, and not necessarily ready to pull the trigger. However, without tracking, segmenting and testing their retargeting campaigns based on shopper’s behavior and browsing patterns, companies wouldn't have been able to optimize their dynamic creative campaigns based on these unique visitor segments.

Better Look-alike Modeling

The goal of retargeting is to get someone back to your site and convert them into a customer. But how do you reach someone who hasn't actually abandoned a cart, clicked a product or even visited your site in the first place? Many marketers are now using dynamic creative to target new people who are in the right market for their product or solution, but may have not fully revealed it yet via their online activities.

This process, which most marketers refer to as "look-alike modeling," involves using your own first-party data as a "seed set" audience, and then running a model across an outside, third-party set of data to identify "look-alikes" with similar attributes to your seed set. The new audience should include people who have never purchased from you or visited your site, but share similar same behavioral, demographic, attitudinal and/or geographic characteristics as people who have bought from you before.

Although many brands have already begun experimenting with look-alike modeling, the winners in the future will be those with richer data signals and advanced methods for segmenting their seed sets. These carefully segmented seed sets can be used to power more effective dynamic advertising campaigns, which are tailored based on the goals of the campaign and behavior of the audience.

Companies can even create different visitor segments based on "browsers" and "buyers" by separating out a seed set of high-propensity buyers, who are then modeled into a larger audience much more likely to purchase. On the other hand, brands that run a special seasonal deal could segment out a seed set of "deal-seekers" who would respond well to discounts and coupon codes.

Dynamic creative is only as powerful as the data behind it. The data not only tells marketers which ad units to buy based on who will see the messaging, it also helps determine what that messaging will look like. It's an optimal situation whose goal is to serve consumers an ad that resonates and drives conversions. 

Mobile advertising not turning off consumers as smartphone use jumps: Nielsen

smh.com.au

Australians spend more than 28 hours per person per month browsing on mobiles, versus 24 hours on computers and less than 20 hours on tablets. Photo: Glenn Hunt

People are not as annoyed by mobile advertising as you might think, according to Nielsen, which has released a new audience measurement system aimed at capturing the total digital audience that advertisers could reach in Australia.

The research for online advertising industry body the Interactive Advertising Bureau shows that Australians spend more time browsing websites and apps on their smartphones than on any other device.

They spend more than 28 hours per person per month browsing on mobiles, versus 24 hours on computers and less than 20 hours on tablets, according to Nielsen.

The share of website viewing on smartphones has more than doubled, to half of overall viewing, in less than three years.

That is even though 18 million people use computers to browse the web versus 13 million browsing both websites and apps on smartphones – which have less screen "real estate", increasing the risk that advertising could be intrusive

"I thought I might see a lot of short sessions on mobiles in the data, perhaps where people are annoyed by the mobile advertising early on, but we don't see it," said Stuart Pike, Nielsen's head of digital audience measurement for South-east Asia, North Asia and Pacific.

'Quite acceptable'

"So the lesson for me is that there can be a lot of talk about how disruptive advertising is, or how it 'gets in the way', or this or that, but there's no real evidence to support that based on what we are seeing.

"The mobile experience must be quite acceptable for the majority of people because we are seeing a lot of people heavily involved on their mobile device with the way things currently are."

Monique Perry, head of Nielsen's media industry group, predicted increased investment in mobile advertising as a result of the new data. "What this tells you is that there are lots of occasions and lots of minutes that people are engaging with mobile devices. It's not like you're cramming a very small amount of time with these ads," she said.

Nielsen and the IAB have fused their longstanding online ratings for computer use with their more recent mobile ratings, in an effort to give publishers more visibility to they way their audiences have grown across digital devices.

Turning booming digital and mobile audiences into profit is proving difficult for some publishers.

DRM

Nielsen and the IAB, whose hundreds of members include Fairfax Media, News Corp, Google and AOL Platforms, hope their delayed Digital Ratings Monthly (DRM) system will give advertisers and agencies a more transparent measure of digital audiences and therefore more confidence in their online investments.

"DRM better reflects the fast progress Fairfax Media has made in growing digital audiences, particularly via mobile, ranking Fairfax as Australia's most popular publisher of quality digital content and journalism, reaching almost 11 million people," said Tom Armstrong, commercial and marketing services director for Fairfax Media, owner of The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

The photography category received the biggest boost in audience as a result of Nielsen fusing its data, almost doubling in size, helped by the popularity of apps such as Google Photo and Samsung Photo Editor.

But it was the communication category, which includes Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and WhatsApp, that provided the biggest surprise to researchers, tripling in terms of total minutes of usage spent as a result of Nielsen combining its mobile and desktop data.

"It was really in those instances where we have publishers or apps with such a strong mobile presence that we saw just how large they have grown. Things like Snapchat which has come into the mix, which are mobile-only applications that have got huge amounts of time being spent on them and huge levels of engagement," said Alex Smith, Nielsen's digital product manager, south-east Asia, North Asia, Pacific.