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While many schools have recently let students out for summer break, back-to-school (BTS) shopping is already top of mind for marketers. This season, eMarketer estimates about $50B will be spent on retail ecommerce sales, including a wide range of products and categories from apparel and electronics to school and office supplies. eMarketer’s recent report explains […]
Believe it or not, there are many people who don’t consume digital advertising in silos. While digital marketers are continuously trying to identify how and when an action on a certain device will turn into a conversion, consumers are jumping back and forth between mobile, desktop and tablet, taking their purchase path in different directions […]
If you’re the CMO of any business, you’re likely aware of popular search strategies and how search can take consumers along the purchase journey from intent to action. According to Fleishman-Hillard and Harris Interactive’s 2012 Digital Influence Survey, 96% of consumers worldwide indicated that they searched for information about brands or products on the internet, […]
Advertising is always most effective when it is well integrated into the customer experience. Over this past year, programmatic buying and native advertising (both popular buzzwords in our industry) have taken two very different approaches in enabling marketers to create engaging and relevant experiences for their audiences — one by using data, and the other […]
There are a few “signs of the times” that most retailers would agree on: Online sales as a percentage of total sales is growing for all retailers Amazon is a competitor for all retailers Showrooming — the practice of looking at something in a store and then buying it cheaper online — is becoming increasingly […]
There have been a flurry of recent articles stemming from a new study by Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) about how ad value spikes when data is used to boost relevance. Ensuing articles have gushed that “advertisers pay three times more for cookie-based ads” and “advertisers will pay a substantially higher premium for interest-based ads.” Part […]
You visit your favorite retailer’s website. Upon your arrival, the site drops cookies on your browser. Next thing you know, you’re seeing a television ad promoting deals available via the retailer’s mobile app. And before you know it, you are accessing information on your mobile device and then visiting the brick-and-mortar store. As you browse […]
With the incredible amount of data available these days, plenty of brands have figured out how to gather, mine and utilize it to engage with consumers. According to a McKinsey report, 15 out of 17 industry sectors in the U.S. have more data stored, per company, than the U.S. Library of Congress. However, there are […]
It’s been reported that Google is working on its own online identifier system, called AdID, which could replace the third-party cookies used by marketers to track people’s online behavior, better targeting their advertising efforts. Google’s AdID would be transmitted to advertisers and ad networks that have agreed to basic guidelines, which would give consumers more […]
The digital industry is at a crossroads as social, mobile, display and search advertising become increasingly essential to marketing budgets. As a result, the intersection of these channels has forced marketers to view digital as less of a customer acquisition channel, and more of a platform for branding, increasing customer retention and building lasting relationships. […]
This past July, Twitter followed in Facebook’s footsteps with the announcement of retargeting. In a company blog post, Twitter said that they would begin experimenting with a way to make ads on Twitter more useful to its users in the United States by displaying promoted content from brands and businesses users have shown interest in. […]
Once your brand strategy is in place, there is nothing more critical and basic than making sure that potential customers see your ads. This is why the viewability debate has created such a furor among marketers, agencies, and the industry as a whole. There has been a massive increase in display advertising over the past few […]
I’ve been in the digital advertising and technology business since the 1990s, and since day one, I’ve heard two refrains over and over again: Time spent on desktops is still much greater than the dollars spent reaching the audience using them. This is the year of mobile. My reaction to this has been: Nod sagely, […]
TV advertising is one of the most effective means of increasing brand awareness; and, despite the heightened use of ad-skipping devices, marketers continue to allocate ad dollars in massive amounts to television. But, as digital starts to deliver similar products, there has been a debate raging about measurement. Nearly One-Third Of Online Display Ads Aren’t Seen […]
More and more Web browsers are blocking the use of third-party cookies by default, a development which has sparked a fierce debate in the digital ad industry. Firefox is the latest browser to make the announcement, forcing marketers, ad technology companies and ad agencies to discover another means for reaching consumers with targeted advertising. This […]
Premium inventory. What exactly does that mean? We think we all know: it’s that custom ad placement on ESPN.com, or the full-page takeover on NYTimes.com. Some of us may think a gaming site like IGN is premium; others may disagree. Overall, the basic premise is that premium inventory is the media found on a well-known […]
According to a recent comScore study of a dozen major brands, including Allstate, Ford and Kellogg’s, 31 percent of online ads go unseen by consumers. Recently, I moderated a panel of experts in the field, and they all said they’d seen typical rates of unseen ads coming in at over 50%, and, in the worst […]
In today’s increasingly data-driven world, it’s interesting that there remain a number of misconceptions and hesitations surrounding big data. The most significant misconception is that many marketers refer to big data as a thing when it is simply a trend. While some marketers are wary of it, others are excited and ready to use the […]
It’s been an explosive year for the ad industry, particularly in the online sector. From ad targeting’s important role in the presidential election, to Facebook’s recent IPO, online advertising is continuing to grow and evolve in our ever-expanding digital world. As 2012 winds down and we head into the New Year, I have included a […]
While 2012 isn’t entirely behind us just yet, many exciting things have happened in the digital space over the last twelve months that will have an impact on advertising in the New Year. Ad targeting has played a tremendous role in online advertising, and we have the abundance of available data to thank for this. […]
The media business is nearly as old as mankind. We started writing on tablets and scrolls millennia ago; the telecommunication business was then invented in the 18th century; and the computer business grew out of the 2nd World War, later popularized in the 1970s. Media Linked As One But as separate as these three media […]
Last month, Google’s famously streamlined white homepage was plastered with something different: an animated banner ad. Since Google has been credited as an ad-free (or, at least, display-ad-free) search engine, the animated banner ad for the Nexus 7 Android tablet came as a bit of a shock to both Google users and the wider industry. While this […]
As with buying stocks, timing is everything when it comes to leveraging data to reach your target audience. Today, brands have the opportunity to capitalize on the abundance of inventory and data available to plan their marketing initiatives. When combined with media, these ingredients create the perfect recipe to apply targeted advertising to seasonal events. […]
To date, branding has often been associated with billboards, magazine spreads and million-dollar TV spots. In online advertising, this translates to large media buys with premium publishers, including spots such as site sponsorships and homepage takeovers. However, where do data and ad targeting fit into the branding equation? Is there a place for branding campaigns […]
Digital advertising is on the rise, which is good news for us — the people that live and breathe in the online world. However, as audiences migrate to digital media, better creative and more strategic ad placement is necessary. In today’s digital world, there is one point that must not be overlooked: not all digital […]
There is an abundant amount of digital inventory available to brand advertisers looking to purchase ad space, but what is the best way to spend ad dollars? On one hand, there is premium ad space that is well known to everyone. Think ESPN.com or NYTimes.com. You know what you’re buying, you can integrate your content, and […]
Recently, the topic of attribution has been taking some heat, as agencies and clients try to determine the best way to assign value to various advertising channels. While some are more willing to accept different models than others, all marketers must embrace this movement immediately. I’m going to focus here only on digital media — […]
When most people think, “search,” they automatically think Google. Well, think again. New data reveals that Google and its fellow search engines are not the only search game in town. We recently hosted a webinar with comScore focused on search data, which examined search activity happening across core search (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) vs. non-search […]
If I were a Facebook advertiser, I’d probably still be holding meetings and sending emails about how to strategize around Facebook’s marketing conference late last month. Rightfully so. There’s a lot to digest. What’s interesting here isn’t so much what was announced, which was better mobile experience for advertisers, bigger ads and better targeting. What’s […]
There’s nothing like a white-hot economy, or a white-hot sector, to create marketing geniuses. Notice that there are a lot of well-known social media geniuses these days. The financial service sector seems to have a shortage of them. Which is not to say there are none. It’s my belief that the very smart executives shine […]
First things first. Let me start by confessing that I run a search-oriented digital ad business. Before you think that this is just another flogging of search retargeting, indulge me one sentence. I’m here to tell you that the hottest area of Internet advertising is display ads. Really. I know it from three very credible […]