Category: Digiday

Ad blocking may save digital marketing from itself

Every so often, the ad industry enters a panic mode tied to a subconscious self-loathing. Last year, Facebook slashed the organic reach of brand posts making ad gurus fret: Can social media work as a marketing platform? (Admit it, we always wondered.) Today, the issue is the use of ad blocking software to stop banner ads from popping up on screens. Digital marketers already struggling with viewability, ad fraud and low ad-response rates are shriveling in the cold realization that their audience may all go away.

I say, bring it on.

Ad blocking could be the best thing that has happened to the ad industry in years. It will make the remaining communications universe work better, encourage marketers to be more relevant and give publishers an incentive to back down from too much clutter.

But before we evaluate the positives, it’s worth asking how far ad blocking will go…

10 Ways to Fix the Unseen Video Ad Problem

Just when digital marketers were getting excited about comScore’s latest report, which showed U.S. online ad spending reaching a record $12.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013, fueled by video advertising, The New York Times had to go rain on the parade. This past Sunday, in a piece titled “The Great Unwatched,” the Times pulled no punches in explaining how most digital video ads are never seen.

Yes, the problem of digital ad placement is real. Ad platform Vindico found 57 percent of digital video ads were not viewable. ComScore estimates that 54 percent of all digital ads are never seen. And this week, the Association of National Advertisers suggested digital placement is still so shoddy the industry needs a new “measurement mandate” to solve the mess…

The Evolutionary Psychology of Digital Clutter

The dream of tech companies is to knit together a seamless, integrated system for our gadgets, phones and TVs that works for humans and one data pool that assists marketers. This is why Amazon, Apple and Google keep attempting to build a single interface to rule the digital screens spread throughout your home. The only problem: Humans don’t want that.

In the 1960s, anthropologist Edward T. Hall and psychologist Robert Sommer discovered three distance fields in which humans take in the communications…

Don’t Fall For The ‘Invisible Ads’ Charade

If you work in digital, every few months you hear of another study pointing out most digital ads are never seen. Commentators with antipathy toward banners respond with blog posts such as “Astounding News from Moronsville,” in which the charming Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman wrote, “You simply cannot make this s**t up.” Alas, you’d think Zuckerberg would walk away and start an auto body shop.

Nope. Global digital ad spend is predicted by eMarketer to rise to $132 billion in 2014. Why? Because it is working better than comparable advertising channels.

Facebook Ads Are Killing it. But Why?

On the burning fields of digital media, where everyone knows click-through rates have fallen to horrific lows in the 0.07 percent range, a strange bright flower is growing. Facebook’s new in-stream ad units are generating unheard-of click-through rates of 1 percent or higher. Is Facebook giving away the store?

Native Advertising is Bad News

Native advertising is a more insidious encroachment into consumer media content than any prior form of advertising. Billions of banner ad impressions may annoy readers, but they don’t misdirect users by disguising the source of the message — and this is exactly what native does. If publishers and marketers aren’t careful, they are going to poison the well of digital ad communications by breaking consumer trust.

First, understand why publishers are so tempted to make native their future…

A Marketer’s Gameboard for Predictive Analytics

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What works best: Shorter or longer ad units?

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Why Did Tim Cook Launch the Apple Watch?

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Learn How Google Patented Crowd Personalization.

What can you do with a room filled with mobile? Read our report on Google’s effort to pull data on preferences up from a crowd.

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Most Online Video Ads are Unseen. Let’s Fix That.

A recent study found that 57% of all online video ads are not ‘viewable.’ Download our whitepaper showing 10 ways marketers can solve this puzzle.

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Learn The 7 Steps of Advertising Measurement

If you are a marketing executive facing the challenge of making advertising work, download our free whitepaper using the form at right to learn seven steps for improving ad campaign performance. We discuss how to prioritize marketing metrics; collect only the data most important in optimizing campaigns; and how to build a “forward-facing dashboard” that allows you to control future results.

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Redesigning Government to Meet Change.

Federal agencies are under more pressure than ever before. Ripples from the 2016 election, past recession, and changing audience needs make it harder than ever to plan for results. Here, we explain a new organizational theory that will help government agency managers structure teams and outside partners — to improve performance in today’s volatile world.

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