There’s much debate over just what “native advertising” means. Talk to enough publishers, however, you’ll find agreement on one thing: it isn’t banner ads.
15 Alarming Stats About Banner Ads article tells the story of current state of banner ads. The banner ad is now 18 years old. It has become a symbol of all that’s wrong with online advertising: it stands out as an intruder on webpages; and it is mostly ignored by readers.
Here are some facts picked from 15 Alarming Stats About Banner Ads article:
1. Over 5.3 trillion display ads were served to U.S. users last year. (ComScore)
4. Click-through rates are .1 percent. (DoubleClick)
5. The 468 x 60 banner has a .04 percent click rate. (DoubleClick)
6. An estimated 31 percent of ad impressions can’t be viewed by users. (Comscore)
8. 8 percent of Internet users account for 85 percent of clicks. (ComScore)
9. Up to 50 percent of clicks on mobile banner ads are accidental. (GoldSpot Media)
10. Mobile CPMs are 75 cents. (Kleiner Perkins)
And yet banner continues to be a bulwark of the online advertising system. Many publishers would like to change that.
Native advertising is hot right now, even if nobody seems to know exactly what it is. Native advertising appears to mean different things to different people.
One definition: “a form of media that’s built into the actual visual design and where the ads are part of the content.” This Infographic Explains What Native Advertising Is and Summary of Native Advertising and Native Monetization 2011 – 2013 articles give a more detailed view.
You could summarize: Native advertising is the politically correct term for advertorial. Or rather, it’s an upgrade, the digital version of an old practice dating back to the era of typewriters and lead printing presses.
328 Comments
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Friend $174.17: Facebook ‘Fans,’ ‘Likes’ Are Worth Big Bucks For Brands, Study Says
http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-friend-17417-facebook-fans-likes-are-worth-big-bucks-brands-study-says-1220381
A new study suggests that Facebook “friends” are worth a lot more than a bunch of social media posts.
Syncapse, a social intelligence company, conducted new research that suggests that each individual “like” or “friend” a brand receives generates about $174.17 for that brand, Business News Daily reports. The number represents a 28 percent increase over the 2010 value.
In the study, Syncapse observed more than 2,000 Facebook users who had liked or friended a brand. By analyzing dynamics such as product spending, loyalty, page recommendations, media value acquisition cost, and brand affinity, the company was able to determine that the average Facebook friend, or “fan,” was worth $174.17.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yahoo Rolls Out Its Own ‘Native’ Ad Format
http://adage.com/article/digital/yahoo-rolls-native-ad-format/241181/
Yahoo reorganized its homepage in February around an infinite “stream” of content, personalized for the user by their declared or implied interests. Now that feed is getting ads, so-called “native” formats called “Yahoo Stream Ads” that will appear in the feed, whether on the desktop, tablets or mobile phones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESPN: The Magazine Puts a Print Spin on Sponsored Content
Sidebars to feature advertiser’s logo
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/espn-magazine-puts-print-spin-sponsored-content-148990
Branded content has gotten plenty of attention as it’s taken off online where the division between editorial and advertising real estate can be fuzzier (see: Forbes, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Gawker), but publishers have shied away from using similar strategies in print. Now, ESPN: The Magazine is taking a page from electronic media by letting an advertiser incorporate its logo into editorial content.
Starting with the magazine’s 15th anniversary issue this week, ESPN will run an editorial sidebar bearing the words “Cold Hard Facts presented by Coors Light” at the top. The ESPN edit team will have full control over the sidebars; MillerCoors won’t have final approval or get to preview the content ahead of time, according to editor in chief Chad Millman. The partnership is set to run in select issues through the end of 2013.
Millman said he saw the partnership as a way to catch up to other media platforms that are “moving at a faster pace. Sometimes as a magazine, you feel like you’re playing with one hand tied behind your back because we’re committed to legacy rules that, from a personal perspective, I just don’t think are relevant anymore.”
Suzanna says:
Post writing is also a fun, if you know afterward you can write otherwise it is difficult to write.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Efficiency Bad For Digital Display?
http://www.adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/is-efficiency-bad-for-digital-display/
As a data hound and an early adopter of AppNexus, the idea that advertisers can achieve highly granular levels of targeting and utilize algorithms to impact performance is right in my wheelhouse. Today’s ad tech, replete with 300 companies that enable data-driven audience segmentation, targeting and analytics, is a testament to the efficiency of buying ads one impression at a time.
But what if driving efficiency in display actually does more harm than good?
Today’s RTB practitioners have become extremely relentless in pursuit of the perfect audience. It starts with retargeting, which uses first-party data to serve ads only to people who are already deeply within the customer funnel. No waste there. The next tactic is to target behavioral “intenders” who, according to their cookies, have done everything but purchase something.
But what if we’re serving ads to people who are already going to buy? Is efficiency really driving new sales, or are we just helping marketers save money on marketing?
To me, it seems like online display wants to be more and more like television. Television is simple to buy, it works, and it drives tons of top-funnel awareness that leads to bottom-funnel results. We know branding works, and even those who didn’t necessarily believe in online branding need look no further than Facebook for proof.
With its Datalogix offline-data partnership, Facebook conclusively proved that people exposed to many Facebook ads tended to grab more items off of store shelves. It just makes sense. So why are we frequency-capping audiences at three, or even 10? I can’t remember the last time I watched network television and didn’t see the same car ad about 20 times.
So what is true performance, and what really drives it? For most businesses, performance is more profit; in other words, the notion that a sales territory currently generating 100 sales a day can achieve 120 sales a day. That’s called profit optimization. If I can use advertising to create those additional 20 sales, while still making a profit after expenses, then that’s a winner. Meanwhile, RTB makes it cheaper to get the 100 sales you already have but doesn’t necessarily help you get the next 20. Getting the next batch of customers requires spending more on media to drive more top-funnel activity.
Part of the problem is that RTB doesn’t take into account how real-life sales actually happen. Sure, audience-buying technologies know what type of audience tends to buy a given product and where to find it online, but frequency-capping and a lack of contextual relevance keep them from effectively selling to new buyers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Web Display Ads Often Not Visible
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324904004578537131312357490-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwMTExNDEyWj.html
The old adage in advertising—that half the money is wasted but no one knows which half—turns out to be as true for the digital world as it ever was for traditional media.
An astounding 54% of online display ads shown in “thousands” of campaigns measured by comScore Inc. between May of 2012 and February of this year weren’t seen by anyone, according to a study completed last month.
Don’t confuse “weren’t seen” with “ignored.” These ads simply weren’t seen, the result of technical glitches, user habits and fraud.
The finding implies that billions of marketing dollars are being poured down a digital drain. Last year, $14 billion was spent on online display advertising, estimates eMarketer, 40% of all online ad spending.
Advertisers can blame both technical snafus and more nefarious factors for ads going nowhere. Technical issues include ads being displayed on part of a browser not open on a computer screen—such as when an ad appears at the bottom of the screen and surfers don’t scroll down. Another problem: Some ads load so slowly that the Web surfer switches off before the ad comes up, says comScore.
And then there is fraud. A significant number of display-ad “impressions” often paid for by marketers are based on fake traffic. Malicious software makes a website think a person is actually on a page and ads are served up to that fake visitor. In other scams, ads show up on several Web pages but they are hidden behind a window on a website that is the size of a pencil point, according to comScore.
ComScore deems an ad visible when at least 50% of the ad is visible for at least one second on laptops and desktop computers.
The study doesn’t include ads that appear on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, which have their own set of challenges when it comes to measurement and visibility.
Tomi Engdahl says:
comScore Releases ‘2013 Europe Digital Future in Focus’ Report
http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/3/comScore_Releases_2013_Europe_Digital_Future_in_Focus_Report
“European consumers are more digitally-engaged than ever before and their usage of mobile, internet-enabled devices is re-defining the media landscape,” said Paul Goode, Chief Advisor Industry Relations for comScore in Europe. “Advertisers, agencies and media owners need to understand the rising number of multi-platform consumers and the more complex digital ecosystem that has developed over the past years. Insights about key trends and underlying drivers enable clients to manage their digital investments effectively.”
1 in 3 display ad impressions were never seen, according to comScore’s European validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) charter study conducted between March and August 2012.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If The Pageview is Dead, Now What?
http://www.digiday.com/publishers/if-the-pageview-is-dead-now-what/
Sam Slaughter of Contently elegantly argued that the pageview as a metric of traffic is failing both publishers and advertisers. In an environment where one piece of inventory can become six with little cost and the click is more important than the content, publishers find themselves selling a commoditized product with collapsing prices.
Brand advertisers are similarly ill-treated. They ask for their target’s time and attention and instead are given a count of how many server loads occurred. They ask to advertise around engaging content, but publishers sell them a unit of value related not to the content, but the provocativeness of the link to that content. Once a user has clicked on the link, no matter how misleading, no matter how good or bad the content, the monetizable act has occurred and the brand should pay up.
So if pageviews are killing us, now what?
Any new metric for brand advertising has two jobs. For brands, it must hew to their goal of capturing their target audience’s attention. For publishers, it must be a unit of scarcity that enables premium prices for their inventory.
The metric that comes closest to that is simple: time.
For brands, time measures how successfully a publisher is capturing the attention of the audience they desire.
Traditional metrics would say that campaign was a success, time calls bullshit.
For publishers, time is the one unit of scarcity on the Web
That long-form piece that holds someone’s attention for 10 minutes is worth far more than the content farm piece dashed off by the intern’s intern.
Advertisers have always rightly mistrusted traditional measurements of time on site. The naive and still predominant method of counting the difference between timestamps on consecutive pageviews is only marginally better than the careful application of saliva to finger in a windy environment.
tomi says:
Rich Media Advertising…Good or Bad?
http://jic-designs.com/2013/07/08/rich-media-advertising-good-or-bad/
Rich ads are a form of advertising that Google (and other search engines) allows on their third party search network. This means that you won’t be reaching directly to a potential client on a Google website search. Instead your rich media will appear on other websites. There is great potential here for driving visitors to your site, if you have the right kind of business that is.
I have mixed feelings about the third party search network in Google’s offerings.
Movies, Flash content, and GIF’s all make up what is considered rich media advertising. In Google’s own words:
With rich media, you can have ads that expand when users click or roll over, for example, and there are extensive possibilities for interactive content, such as HD video or even the ability to click to make a phone call.
If you’ve been to any article or recipe sites you know what Rich Media Advertising is. Rolling over the wrong word or image suddenly starts a flash movie or video/audio clips. If done poorly they can be in a word, annoying. However, if done correctly click through ratings can double or triple.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Map of Native Advertising Companies on the Web
http://saydaily.com/2013/07/a-map-of-native-advertising-companies-on-the-web-.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital Marketing Goes Both Ways – Angry Customer Buys Promoted Tweets to Bash British Air
http://technologyadvice.com/wp-content/themes/newta/digital-marketing-goes-both-ways-angry-customer-buys-promoted-tweets-to-bash-british-air.html
A disgruntled British Air customer decided to take matters public after the airline lost his father’s luggage. The man, who goes by the twitter handle @HVSVN, bought promoted tweets using Twitters’ self-serve ad platform in the UK and New York markets on Monday night, according to Mashable. His warning for fellow travelers can be seen on the left.
For businesses, the incident goes to show that social media marketing can be a double edged sword. Not only can companies reach users with new levels of accuracy and precision, but users have been given the tools to spread their own messages about brands as well – positive or negative.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The New Yorker Goes Native
http://digiday.com/publishers/new-yorker-native-advertising/
In January, when the Atlantic ran sponsored content on behalf of Scientology, the media world went apoplectic. Last month, when the New Yorker began experimenting with sponsored content, no one made a peep. Times have changed.
Like many publishers before it — from the digital kids at Gawker and BuzzFeed to the more traditional types at the Atlantic to Forbes — the New Yorker has begun running content on behalf of brands. But unlike those who set the stage a year or so ago, there has been little fanfare around that fact that one of the most prestigious publications in print has gone native.
This isn’t exactly the New Yorker’s first foray into native advertising. A 1941 back-issue had a version of native. But, as Andrew Sullivan noted, back then it was more clearly flagged as an “advertisement.”
Sponsored content can be a good thing for the magazine, said Molly Sugarman, who helps brands create content as vp and managing director of Horizon Media’s Treehouse division.
“They have a very unique value proposition,” she said. “And I hope they realize that and don’t try to dilute their value to try and create a model that’s working for other people.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Publishers Should Embrace the FTC’s Native Advertising Workshop
Despite what the pundits say, there is no reason to be skeptical… Yet.
http://www.foliomag.com/2013/why-publishers-should-embrace-ftc-s-native-advertising-workshop#.Uj_tBz9sUik
Lately almost everyone in publishing has been talking about native advertising. Right? Well, the Federal Trade Commission wants to join in on the conversation, too.
On September 16, the FTC announced that it is holding a workshop on December 4 to “explore the blurring of digital ads with digital content.” In an official release the FTC stated the following:
Increasingly, advertisements that more closely resemble the content in which they are embedded are replacing banner advertisements-graphical images that typically are rectangular in shape on publishers’ websites and mobile applications. The workshop will bring together publishing and advertising industry representatives, consumer advocates, academics, and government regulators to explore changes in how paid messages are presented to consumers and consumers’ recognition and understanding of these messages.
A conversation between the FTC, publishers, consumer advocates and academics about transparency guidelines gives native advertising the legitimacy it needs to become a domesticated practice. What that means, however, is that publishers and advertisers will need to work together to create dynamic advertorial content that is not deceptively presented as editorial.
Self-Regulation Still Rules
Keep Calm
It’s All About Trust
Fearing how the FTC could transform native advertising implicitly suggests that publishers are shrewdly engaging in deception. In other words, if publishers believe in native advertising, and believe they are presenting dynamic ads that can be clearly identified, then they should have nothing to worry about.
Conversely, if publishers are knowingly getting away with taking advantage of consumers, then the FTC should step in. It’s a case of basic ethics, in that no matter how successful something is, it should be changed or stopped if people are mislead or cheated.
Horan says that for publishers, “trust is at the foundation of the relation between consumers.” Therefore, if native advertising is going to be one of the new standards for generating revenue, then publishers and advertisers must adhere to basic guidelines and best practices while maintaining transparency. Otherwise it will become nothing more than digital snake oil.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Politico’s Mike Allen, native advertising pioneer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/11/20/politicos-mike-allen-native-advertising-pioneer/
Introducing: The “Playbook” game!
Politico Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen writes “Playbook,” a daily e-mail newsletter featuring stories from Politico and other outlets, various “exclusives,” tips and birthday notices. It also carries “messages” from big companies and trade associations hoping to reach “Playbook’s” audience of influentials.
One of the hottest issues in journalism today is “native” advertising, the tricks that publishers deploy to elide the domains of journalism and advertising. BuzzFeed has sustained gray-bearded criticism for its boundary-defying listicles. The Atlantic earlier this year ran a native ad from the Church of Scientology that inflamed its audience and prompted an apology and a review of Atlantic procedures for approving ads. Forbes, The Washington Post and the Huffington Post are also experimenting with this approach to funding journalism.
It’s about time that Politico’s Allen got his due as a native-advertising pioneer.
Tomi says:
New York Times Expects Digital Ad Growth in 2014
Native Ads Will Help Fuel the Gains
http://adage.com/article/media/york-times-expects-digital-ad-growth-2014/245617/
New York Times CEO Mark Thompson intends to restore growth to the company’s digital advertising revenue next year after recent declines, he told a meeting of investors Tuesday.
To spur growth, the Times is introducing branded content solutions for advertisers, according to Mr. Thompson, who spoke at UBS’s media and communications conference taking place in New York City.
“There’s no in principle reason why giving advertisers an opportunity to get long and sophisticated messages to users can’t happen in the context of The New York Times,” he said.
Such ad products, which a Times executives has also referred to as native advertising, have faced scrutiny from various corners of the media world. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission hosted a workshop where publishers and advertisers discussed native ads, which more or less mimic the editorial content that surrounds it, ahead of possible government oversight.
But Mr. Thompson promised “utter clarity” and “zero confusion” between what is advertising and what is journalism. “We will be developing solutions that meet those pretty testing targets,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Will Now Only Charge For Ads That People Can Actually See
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-to-sell-viewable-ad-impressions-2013-12?op=1
Google took a major step toward pleasing its advertisers Thursday by announcing it will now sell display ads based on viewability, a metric that will allow marketers to pay only for ad slots users are likely to see.
As we’ve mentioned in the past, it’s estimated that nearly half of all online advertisements are placed in spots where users aren’t able to see them, meaning that brands were often paying for ad impressions that were either too far down on a page to be seen by a human being or fraudulently hidden behind other content.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers
Hosted images mean better privacy, faster load times, and less competition for Google.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail-blows-up-e-mail-marketing-by-caching-all-images-on-google-servers/
Ever wonder why most e-mail clients hide images by default? The reason for the “display images” button is because images in an e-mail must be loaded from a third-party server. For promotional e-mails and spam, usually this server is operated by the entity that sent the e-mail. So when you load these images, you aren’t just receiving an image—you’re also sending a ton of data about yourself to the e-mail marketer.
Loading images from these promotional e-mails reveals a lot about you. Marketers get a rough idea of your location via your IP address. They can see the HTTP referrer, meaning the URL of the page that requested the image. With the referral data, marketers can see not only what client you are using (desktop app, Web, mobile, etc.) but also what folder you were viewing the e-mail in.
But Google has just announced a move that will shut most of these tactics down: it will cache all images for Gmail users. Embedded images will now be saved by Google, and the e-mail content will be modified to display those images from Google’s cache, instead of from a third-party server. E-mail marketers will no longer be able to get any information from images—they will see a single request from Google, which will then be used to send the image out to all Gmail users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Golden Era Of Spam Comments Has Ended
http://www.theawl.com/2013/12/the-new-spammer-panic
The search engine optimization community has spent the last two years in a panic. SEO people flood our Internet with spam links and fake Twitter bots and paid traffic, to help bad websites look more popular than they are, to deliver fake viewers to web ads.
They now spend their lives on the run, Google nipping at their heels. Their biggest project? Removing all the spam links on websites like this one—the spam links that they put there.
In early 2011, Google issued an update to its search algorithm—they called it “Panda”—that elevated social media and news sites. Sites both big and small, usually spammy and sometimes not, saw major decline in their Google traffic. Companies like About and Mahalo and eHow cratered. Google said they wanted for “the ‘good guys’ making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded.”
In spring of 2012, Google moved on from Panda to Penguin, which further refined that goal, though still the updates sometimes had a negative effect on non-spam sites, cutting traffic to older and larger sites.
But it was the Penguin 2.1, released in October, that sent spammers to the bitter edge; now they can’t repent fast enough for their spammy sins.
Essentially, the more your site is linked to across the web, the higher Google will rank you, and links from sites that are similar to your own are better than links from sites that have nothing to do with anything. Over time, the quality of those links has become more and more important.
But: what’s the easiest way to place a link on a site you don’t own? Why, it’s blog comments.
So the black hat spam folks who spread these links across the Internet have reversed course. The Awl, and other websites like it, receive email after email each day from companies requesting that we help them clean up their presence in the comments, deleting links posted by fake accounts, the log-in information for which has long been lost or never recorded.
“The average drop was from page one to page five in Google,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ad Age Survey: What Advertisers Really Think About Twitter
http://adage.com/article/digital/ad-age-survey-advertisers-twitter/245675/
There’s little question that Twitter’s initial public offering in October was a success, but what about its ad business? Still a work in progress, but with plenty of upside, according to Ad Age readers.
Between late November and early December, Ad Age conducted its fourth major survey of marketer attitudes toward social media in conjunction with RBC Capital Markets. This time, 953 execs at marketers, agencies and media companies weighed in on Twitter.
What we found is that Twitter is viewed much like Facebook was in the summer of 2012: While many advertisers use it as a marketing channel, only a minority actually place ads there.
Among the respondents, 70% currently use Twitter as a marketing channel and 80% say they plan to use Twitter in the next 12 months. But only 46% say they’ve ever bought an ad on Twitter, whether a promoted tweet, trend, account or an “Amplify” TV deal.
So while they might have a social media staff or even a real-time newsroom, they’re spending their Twitter budget on personnel, not on advertising.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Welcome to the Internet of Thingies: 61.5% of Web Traffic Is Not Human
And here’s how to build your own little traffic bot, even though you shouldn’t
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/welcome-to-the-internet-of-thingies-615-of-web-traffic-is-not-human/282309/
It happened last year for the first time: bot traffic eclipsed human traffic, according to the bot-trackers at Incapsula.
This year, Incapsula says 61.5 percent of traffic on the web is non-human.
Now, you might think this portends the arrival of “The Internet of Things”—that ever-promised network that will connect your fridge and car to your smartphone. But it does not.
This non-human traffic is search bots, scrapers, hacking tools, and other human impersonators, little pieces of code skittering across the web. You might describe this phenomenon as The Internet of Thingies.
Because bots are not difficult to build. In fact, it’s so simple that a journalist (who has not learned to code) can do it.
I do it with a ($300) program called UBot Studio, which is an infrastructural piece of the botting world. It lets people like me program and execute simple scripts in browsers without (really) knowing any code.
So, the goal is mimicking humans. Which means that you can’t just send 100,000 visits to the same page. That’d be very suspicious.
So you want to spread the traffic out over a bunch of target pages.
if the botting process is done subtly, no one might think to check what was going on. Because from a publisher’s perspective, how much do you really want to know?
And indeed, some reports have come out showing that people don’t check. One traffic buyer told Digiday, “We worked with a major supply-side platform partner that was just wink wink, nudge nudge about it. They asked us to explain why almost all of our traffic came from one operating system and the majority had all the same user-agent string.”
The point is: It’s so easy to build bots that do various things that they are overrunning the human traffic on the web.
Now, to understand the human web, we have to reckon with the logic of the non-human web. It is, in part, shady traffic that allows ad networks and exchanges to flourish. And these automated ad buying platforms — while they do a lot of good, no doubt about it — also put pressure on other publishers to sell ads more cheaply. When they do that, there’s less money for content, and the content quality suffers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Bad Apples of Digital Media
http://digiday.com/etc/10-bad-apples-in-online-advertising/
The online advertising industry is full of incredibly talented, smart and fun people. I’ve been involved with it for over a decade myself and have made life-long friendships with many of my colleagues because of our mutual respect for one another and off-kilter senses of humor. (Queue Larry David.) Having said that, as the industry has grown over the years and more people have joined, it was inevitable for some bad apples to get through.
The Sleazy Affiliate Marketer
The Thought Leader
The Newly Cool Nerd
The Retweeter
The “CEO”
The Humble-Bragger
The Recent Grad Media Buyer
The “I Worked All Night on This” Idiot
The C Student
The Hot Chick
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Awesome Onion Spoofs of Digital Media World
http://digiday.com/brands/5-awesome-onion-spoofs-of-digital-media-world/
The ad industry tends to talk in ways that baffle civilians. Sometimes it pays to have reminders of that. Thanks to The Onion, we do.
The Onion does a great job of spoofing these digital media news stories, and points out what should be pretty obvious. For example, how ridiculous and obnoxious sponsored content can be. See below for five great digital media industry spoof articles and click through to The Onion for the full stories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
15 Facts Brands Should Know About Reddit
http://digiday.com/brands/15-facts-brands-should-know-about-reddit/
Reddit bills itself as the front page of the Internet.
The problem is it has yet to build a media business match. The social news site attracts a notoriously fickle audience that tends to react negatively to run-of-the-mill online advertising. The site has shied away from the typical Internet advertising, choosing instead to allow brands to sponsor links on both the homepage and subreddit pages, which are topic-specific pages, like this one for advertising. Not many big brands have run campaigns there. Instead, Reddit has sold to niche marketers
Tomi Engdahl says:
Native advertising is the new paywall in media economics – but is it here to stay?
http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2014/jan/05/native-advertising-paywall-transparency
Many digital publishers have placed it at the heart of their business strategy – but there are concerns over transparency
In 1917, the American Federal Trade Commission settled a case with the Muensen Speciality Co., over an ad for its vacuum cleaner, which it presented as a favourable newspaper review. It was the first case where “advertorials” (or “native advertising” as they are now known) were identified by regulation in the US. Today you might expect to see something similar, but in the form of a viral link circulated round your social network, entitled “13 vacuum cleaners that suck in the wrong way, and one that doesn’t”.
Native advertising is not a new trend for 2014. It is already hotter than a delicious burrito from Chipotle
It is already clear, though, that native advertising is the new paywall in media economics. An opportunity for new wealth creation coupled with almost as much anxiety over whether its implementation will be of long-term benefit or detriment to the media it supports. A stream of money controlled by publishers rather than a gargantuan bottom-feeding sales robot is enormously appealing. In digital advertising the problem of robotic sales networks and ever-expanding inventory has driven the price publishers get for advertising ever lower.
The most admired new wave digital publishers – Buzzfeed, Vice, Quartz – already have the creation of native advertising as part of their central business strategy, but it has in the past made more traditional institutions nervous. That too is changing.
Separating the church of editorial from the state of advertising is more difficult in digital media; everything is necessarily melded together more closely, and the context or “furniture”, which is hard to miss in a newspaper or during a broadcast, is stripped away as files zip round the web. The anxiety over transparency is understandable, particularly when it comes to vulnerable markets and toxic products, like loan companies, insurance schemes, lobbying and gambling products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The New York Times Embraces ‘Organic’ Ad Strategy
http://digiday.com/publishers/new-york-times-ad-strategy/
This week, The New York Times takes the wraps off its first Web redesign in five years. Along with the new look, the paper is rethinking its ad strategy, embracing the current trend toward weaving ads more closely with editorial content.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Should Facebook ‘Likes’ Count As Commercial Endorsements?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/01/07/1754253/should-facebook-likes-count-as-commercial-endorsements
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook hit with lawsuit over “Like” ads – user says he never “Liked” USA Today
http://gigaom.com/2014/01/10/facebook-hit-with-lawsuit-over-like-ads-user-says-he-never-liked-usa-today/
Summary:
Have you ever seen an ad on Facebook and wondered if your friend really does “Like” the product? A new lawsuit raises questions about those Like ads.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If native advertising is so harmless, why does it rely on misleading readers?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/25/yahoo-opens-gemini-native-advertising
It’s hard to read the latest gimmick for infusing a dying industry with cash as anything other than journalism selling its soul
The devil walks into a bar and sits at a table with eight newspaper and magazine publishers plus one strange little fellow
One by one the publishers raise their hands. The Economist. Forbes. The Atlantic. The Huffington Post. The Washington Post. Time Inc. The New York Times. And, most recently, Yahoo.
And that is the story of native advertising, the latest gimmick for infusing a dying old industry (and a sickly new one) with desperately needed cash. It’s a neat trick – and, if you’ll permit me to switch metaphors, I use that term advisedly.
The key word here is “somewhat.” Basic publishing ethics dictate that the fake articles be printed in clearly different type fonts and column widths, be enclosed by borderlines and be identified prominently as advertising. By contrast, as native advertising is most often practiced – and as the Federal Trade Commission has very much noticed – publishers allow their advertisers to run content strikingly similar in look and style to the real editorial. The label “advertising” is almost never applied. Instead they use confusing wiggle words like “sponsored content” or, even more obscurely, “from around the web”. The result is not merely deceiving to readers, it bespeaks a conspiracy of deception among publishers, advertisers and their agencies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Display Ad Glasnost: Google And Russia’s Yandex Connect On RTB
http://www.adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/display-ad-glasnost-google-and-russias-yandex-connect-on-rtb/
Russian search engine Yandex and Google have agreed to give their respective advertisers mutual access to the real-time bidding (RTB) ad exchanges. Under the agreement, Google’s clients will have access to the advertising inventory offered by publishers in Yandex’s Advertising Network (YAN), while Yandex’s clients will be able to bid on display ads on Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IAB: $43 Billion In 2013 Digital Ad Revenue, Mobile Doubles
Apr 10, 2014 at 11:26am ET by Greg Sterling
http://marketingland.com/iab-43-billion-2013-digital-ad-revenue-mobile-doubles-79687
The IAB has just released its annual report on US digital advertising. The trade association said that Q4 2013 revenues hit $12.1 billion, and full year revenues were $42.8 billion, beating broadcast TV (though not TV in total) for the first time.
The 2013 numbers grew by 17 percent over 2012.
One of the highlights, mobile ad revenue hit nearly $7.1 billion, doubling from last year’s $3.4 billion. Digital video also grew significantly to reach nearly $3 billion. Search, which continued to be the largest single category of online advertising, saw revenues of $18.4 billion or 43 percent of total 2013 revenue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Great Unwatched
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/business/the-great-unwatched.html?_r=0
Some of the biggest names in Internet media have been gathering in New York City at the third annual Digital Content NewFronts, a pitch-a-thon where companies like Yahoo, AOL and Crackle — and, yes, The New York Times — trumpet their digital platforms to brands eager to reach consumers via online video ads.
According to the standard spiel, ads in this medium are alluring because they can be aimed at specific audiences. They can roll in front of content that people want to see. They exist in the digital space where coveted demographic groups are spending more time.
It’s an enticing portrait, but one that glosses over an essential question: Is anybody watching?
By many estimates, more than half of online video ads are not seen, either because they are buried low on web pages or run in tiny, easily ignored video players on those pages, or run simultaneously with other ads. Vindico, an ad management platform company, deemed 57 percent of two billion video ads surveyed over two months to be “unviewable.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yahoo launches mobile-first native ads with larger photos, will be marked as sponsored across its products
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/05/12/yahoo-launches-mobile-first-native-ads-larger-photos-will-marked-sponsored-across-products/
Tomi Engdahl says:
NYT Readers Spend Same Amount of Time on Paid Posts as News Stories
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/05/14/nyt-readers-spend-same-amount-of-time-on-paid-posts-as-news-stories/
Readers of the New York Times are spending roughly the same amount of time on advertiser-sponsored posts as on news stories, according to Meredith Levien, the executive vice president of advertising for The Times.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Foresees Ads On Your Refrigerator, Thermostat, and Glasses
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/05/21/1852216/google-foresees-ads-on-your-refrigerator-thermostat-and-glasses
“We expect the definition of “mobile” to continue to evolve as more and more “smart” devices gain traction in the market. For example, a few years from now, we and other companies could be serving ads and other content on refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google: An Explainer
http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized-google-192168
Tomi Engdahl says:
Advertising is invading to cars
Electronics chock-full of cars offer advertisers a new type of channel
Had to advertising coming into the car , then the fulfillment of a dream , or worst nightmare , it’s happening already . Advertisers are always looking for new ways to use the data in order to target the automotive advertising directly to the drivers.
As social media and search services , as well as calendars cars are increasing, more and more advertising tailored to the driver’s preferences and needs , Connected Car Expo event manager Andy Cryc says. According to him, this type of advertising can be successful if it is carried out without disturbing the driver.
The ads are already allocated to the drivers. Last year, published in the Magellan SmartGPS device has a Foursquare integration, which sends offers. Kiip Mojio launched a $ 149 -priced device that connects to the car’s OBD system. It will collect the car and the weather conditions , for example, real-time information to a mobile phone application that sends data to the advertiser so that driver get promotions based in the received information.
For advertisers, the smart car is the user’s operation and location of telling a great web browser.
This is exactly what makes the California-based Aha Radio, which monitors the car’s location information to provide offers through dash.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/mainonta+tunkeutuu+autoihin/a988843
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Looks Beyond YouTube For Video Ad Dollars
Video Publishers Would Sell Their Inventory Using Google’s Ad Tech
http://adage.com/article/digital/google-youtube-video-ad-dollars/293539/
Google has a new message for premium publishers: “Hey, let us help you sell your video ads.”
Partner Select will not be a free-for-all open to any publisher looking to make a penny off their video clips. Google is only inviting a certain number of publishers to sell their pre-roll and mid-roll ads.
Already the dominant in search and display, Google wants to stake a similar claim on the digital video ad market. Through YouTube, Google netted 20.5% of the $4.15 billion U.S. online video ad market in 2013, according to eMarketer estimates. Google still has untapped supply on its video service
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Introduces “Google My Business,” A New One-Stop Shop To Help Business Get Found Online
http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/11/google-introduces-google-my-business-a-new-one-stop-shop-to-help-business-get-found-online/
Google announced a suite of tools this morning for business owners, offering them a one-stop shop to update their business information, add photos, read reviews and, of course, use Google+. The service, called “Google My Business,” seems to be aimed at those who have yet to figure out how to “get on Google” so to speak; in fact, there’s a button that even uses that same expression.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google wants to put ads on car dashboards and refrigerators
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Computer_Systems/Standalone_Mobile/Google_wants_to_put_ads_on_car_dashboards_and_refrigerators.aspx#.U5rJMyhsUik
Tech-giant Google always seems to be one step ahead of the game, and right now it’s envisioning a future where it can send ads just about anywhere, including watches, thermostats, car dashboards, and even on refrigerators.
Just last week, Google sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission revealing its hopes to place marketing messages in ad-free objects. The company, which is just one of many who are swooping into the Internet of Things, revealed that its expectation is to have its users viewing ads on an increasingly wide diversity of devices in the future.
Google already started placing its Android mobile operating system into cars through partnerships with automakers, and is also pushing it on smartwatches through an optimized OS called Android Wear. In January the company announced the Open Automotive Alliance with Audi, GM, and Honda, all of which are committed to developing Android-powered dashboards. That same month, Google bought Nest, the smart thermostat manufacturing company for $3.2 billion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wikipedia Strengthens Rules Against Undisclosed Editing
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/06/16/wikipedia-strengthens-rules-against-undisclosed-editing/
Beginning Monday, changes in Wikipedia’s terms of use will require anyone paid to edit articles to disclose that arrangement.
“we’re not an advertising service; we’re an encyclopedia.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data Doppelgängers and the Uncanny Valley of Personalization
Why customized ads are so creepy, even when they miss their target
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/data-doppelgangers-and-the-uncanny-valley-of-personalization/372780/
Personalization purports to be uniquely meaningful, yet it alienates us in its mass application.
Throughout history, new technologies provoke moral panic and anxiety—in part because those technologies upend our understanding of time, place, and ourselves. But as we adopt and domesticate them, these technologies become integrated into our lives and embedded in the cultural fabric. The more time we spend time with our data doppelgängers, the more familiar they may become.
Tomi Engdahl says:
We Have No Idea If Online Ads Work
The Internet has given us an ocean of data. Turns out, most of it is pretty useless.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/06/online_advertising_effectiveness_for_large_brands_online_ads_may_be_worthless.single.html
Sitting in the future search giant’s offices, he listened in dismay as its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and its CEO, Eric Schmidt, detailed the many ways their company could track and analyze the effectiveness of online advertising. This could not possibly be good for business, Karmazin thought. It had always been nearly impossible for marketers to tell which of their ads worked and which didn’t, and the less they knew, the more a network like CBS could charge for a 30-second spot. Art was far more profitable than science.
A decade later, someone finally seems to be, well, messing with Google’s own bag of tricks. Last year, a group of economists working with eBay’s internal research lab issued a massive experimental study with a simple, startling conclusion: For a large, well-known brand, search ads are probably worthless. This month, their findings were re-released as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research and greeted with a round of coverage asking whether Internet advertising of any kind works at all.
“We know a lot less than the advertising industry would like us to think we know,” Steven Tadelis, one of the eBay study’s co-authors, told me.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner Rolls Out Digital Marketing Transit Map
http://www.adexchanger.com/data-exchanges/gartner-rolls-out-digital-marketing-transit-map/
In what ways do the various components of digital marketing intersect and how can a company use that knowledge to its advantage? Gartner asked itself those questions and came up with the “Digital Marketing Transit” map, which resembles the map of the London Underground, with color-coded routes bearing names like mobility, analytics, and ad tech snaking out of the “Digital Marketing Hub.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Every digital trailblazer needs a reliable map
http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/digital-marketing/transit-map.jsp?prm=gml-tm-a
The digital landscape covers a wide, complex territory. To plan and manage technology effectively, digital marketers need to understand the inherent relationships between diverse operational areas, applications, technologies and vendors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Bursting Social Media Advertising Bubble
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/06/23/184252/the-bursting-social-media-advertising-bubble
The mantra went that unlike traditional web-based banner advertising which has been in secular decline over the past decade, social media ad spending — which the bulk of new tech company stalwarts swear is the source of virtually unlimited upside growth — was far more engaging, and generated far greater returns and better results for those spending billions in ad bucks on the new “social-networked” generation. Sadly, this time was not different after all
Tomi Engdahl says:
Social Media Fail to Live Up to Early Marketing Hype
Companies Refine Strategies to Stress Quality Over Quantity of Fans
http://online.wsj.com/articles/companies-alter-social-media-strategies-1403499658?ru=yahoo?mod=yahoo_itp
Companies have invested money into social media sites, but brands are learning that racking up fans and “likes” is not the same as minting sales.
“Fans and follower counts are over. Now it’s about what is social doing for you and real business objectives,” says Jan Rezab, chief executive of Socialbakers AS, a social-media metrics company based in Prague.
When many companies joined Facebook in the late 2000s, they used it as another brand website where they provided links, contact information and monitored consumer gripes. Then, they got caught up in the numbers game, trying to rack up raw masses of fans and followers, believing they were building a solid marketing channel. But that often wasn’t the case.
“Social media are not the powerful and persuasive marketing force many companies hoped they would be,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is time spent a better metric than pageviews? Upworthy says it is, and open-sources its code for attention minutes
http://gigaom.com/2014/06/23/is-time-spent-a-better-metric-than-pageviews-upworthy-says-it-is-and-open-sources-its-code-for-attention-minutes/
Both digital publishers and advertisers are trying to come up with a more accurate way of measuring the value of a reader than just raw pageviews or uniques. Upworthy says its “attention minutes” metric is better, and it has opened up the code for anyone to use
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Touts 1 Billion App Links Served, Adds Support For Mobile App Ads
http://marketingland.com/facebook-touts-1-billion-app-links-served-adds-support-mobile-app-ads-89665
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Buys LiveRail to Grow Its Video Ad Business
Platform serves publishers like MLB, A+E By Garett Sloane
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/facebook-buys-liverail-grow-its-video-ad-business-158719
Facebook is buying video ad platform LiveRail and giving it control of a network that powers advertising for high-profile publishers—online and on mobile. LiveRail delivers video ads to websites and apps for Major League Baseball, A+E Networks and Dailymotion, among other properties.
“LiveRail also helps marketers by providing them with access to premium video inventory and the information that they need in order to decide where to show their ads,” Facebook said in its announcement. “What LiveRail ultimately offers is a complete advertising solution for video publishers.”