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.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
The Most In-Demand Marketing Tech Skills
http://www.cio.com/article/2449009/careers-staffing/158055-The-Most-In-Demand-Marketing-Tech-Skills.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet’s Original Sin
It’s not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/
The fiasco I want to talk about is the World Wide Web, specifically, the advertising-supported, “free as in beer” constellation of social networks, services, and content that represents so much of the present day web industry. I’ve been thinking of this world, one I’ve worked in for over 20 years, as a fiasco since reading a lecture by Maciej Cegłowski, delivered at the Beyond Tellerrand web design conference. Cegłowski is an important and influential programmer and an enviably talented writer. His talk is a patient explanation of how we’ve ended up with surveillance as the default, if not sole, internet business model.
We ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolkit: the pop-up ad.
Think of it as an advertising future, or perhaps the world’s most targeted ad.
Demonstrating that you’re going to target more and better than Facebook requires moving deeper into the world of surveillance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pop-up ad man: SORRY we made such a ‘hated tool’, netizens
Brands bummed out by SEXY FUNTIMES
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/15/pop_ad_creator_says_sorry_for_upsetting_world/
In a confessional in The Atlantic, Zuckerman admitted:
Along the way, we ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolkit: the pop-up ad. It was a way to associate an ad with a user’s page without putting it directly on the page, which advertisers worried would imply an association between their brand and the page’s content.
Specifically, we came up with it when a major car company freaked out that they’d bought a banner ad on a page that celebrated anal sex. I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Farewell ‘Pure’ Exact Match, AdWords Will Soon Require All Campaigns To Use Close Variants
http://searchengineland.com/farewell-pure-exact-match-google-will-soon-force-campaigns-close-variants-enabled-200615
Today Google has announced that in late September, AdWords advertisers will no longer have the ability to de-select close variants. All campaigns will now include these variants, something that advertisers could previously opt out of. The way close variants will work is completely the same as it has been since 2012.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This 19-Year-Old Lost $46,000 Because Google Says He Didn’t Follow Their Rules
http://www.businessinsider.in/This-19-Year-Old-Lost-46000-Because-Google-Says-He-Didnt-Follow-Their-Rules/articleshow/40397472.cms
By December 2013 so many people were clicking on MesTextos’ ads that Sami’s Google account hit $46,000.
But then he learned that if you’re an AdSense partner and you don’t run ads on your site exactly the way Google wants, the search giant will punish you.
Google cancelled his account and returned all the money he had earned to his advertisers.
Sami is furious about the money he earned and then lost. Although this is an extreme example – a huge portion of Google’s client base consists of individual publishers making only a few hundred dollars a month – it does typify one of the frustrations Google’s own clients have dealing with Google.
Google is currently being sued in the U.S. over allegations that it suddenly and without explanation withholds ad money from website publishers once their sites become successful. And the company is the subject of an infamous, and obviously fake, conspiracy theory that any publisher who makes $5,000 or more per month is banned from the system right before their checks are paid.
In an email Google sent to Sami, Google claims MesTextos was incentivizing or forcing people to click on ads in order to use the site, which is against the rules; Sami denies that.
Google’s sales staff and its AdSense compliance people don’t necessarily coordinate, of course.
Sami says he begged and pleaded with Google, but he cannot figure out what Google thinks is wrong with his site.
On the one hand it’s a straightforward case: Google publishes its rules, and Sami allegedly broke them. But, as we’ve noted before, Google has a PR problem here: AdSense can be complicated. The basic rules are 2,500 words long.Sami says he begged and pleaded with Google, but he cannot figure out what Google thinks is wrong with his site.
On the one hand it’s a straightforward case: Google publishes its rules, and Sami allegedly broke them. But, as we’ve noted before, Google has a PR problem here: AdSense can be complicated. The basic rules are 2,500 words long.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study: Ad-Free Internet Would Cost Everyone $230-a-Year
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/08/21/1320251/study-ad-free-internet-would-cost-everyone-230-a-year
Several readers sent word of research into the cost of internet content without ads. They looked at the amount of money spent on internet advertising last year in the U.K., and compared it to the number of U.K. internet users. On average, each user would have to pay about £140 ($230) to make up for the lost revenue of an ad-free internet. In a survey, 98% of consumers said they wouldn’t be willing to pay that much for the ability to browse without advertisements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon Prepares Online Advertising Program
Retailer Developing Ad Sales Program in a Challenge to Google and Microsoft
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/amazon-preps-a-challenge-to-googles-ad-business-1408747979-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwMjEyNDIyWj
Amazon.com Inc. is gearing up to more directly challenge Google Inc.’s dominance of the online advertising market, developing its own software for placing ads online that could leverage its knowledge of millions of Web shoppers.
“Amazon could use the data it has about buying behavior to help make these ads much more effective,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst at researcher IDC. “Marketers would love to have another viable option beyond Google and Facebook for their advertising.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here Is Yahoo’s Native Ad Network
Content Recommendation Box on Vox Media, CBS Interactive Sites Includes Yahoo’s Ads
http://adage.com/article/digital/yahoo-s-native-ad-network/294679/
Yahoo is bringing its native ads to other publishers’ sites.
Last year Yahoo adopted the low-hanging-fruit version of native advertising, a form of ad that aims to mirror surrounding editorial content. Unlike BuzzFeed’s sponsored listicles or The New York Times’ brand-penned posts, Yahoo’s native “Stream Ads” more closely resemble Facebook’s Sponsored Stories in that they refashion display ads as content links within its sites’ content streams. Now Yahoo is extending these ads outside of its own properties through a content recommendation system that helps publishers promote their own stories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Assault on Google’s DoubleClick Coming This Fall
https://www.theinformation.com/Facebook-Assault-on-Google-s-DoubleClick-Coming-This-Fall
Few people thought much of Atlas when Facebook acquired the advertising technology company from Microsoft last year. Microsoft had bought Atlas in 2007 as part of its ill-fated $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive, and sold it to the social network for pennies on the dollar.
But a revitalized Atlas with new capabilities and new leadership has risen from the scrapheap to become a key piece of Facebook’s strategy for challenging Google’s dominance of the online advertising business.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“What you need to keep in mind is three letters. CVC. Compelling Viral Content. You’ll have the media eating out of your hand. Nobody knows who you are – so you can take advantage of that. Make friends with some of the Western hipsters on the coolest new websites, like Perez Hilton, or VICE. And finally, don’t forget irony. If you want to break through to a Western audience, make some playful ironic references to their favourite movies and TV shows. Just never forget: think #engagement.”
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/24/steve_bong_no_i_will_not_code_for_the_caliphate/
Tomi Engdahl says:
When it comes to chasing clicks, journalists say one thing but feel pressure to do another
http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/08/when-it-comes-to-chasing-clicks-journalists-say-one-thing-but-feel-pressure-to-do-another/
Newsroom ethnographer Angèle Christin studied digital publications in France and the U.S. in order to compare how performance metrics influence culture.
Online media is made of clicks.
Readers click from one article to the next. Advertising revenue is based on the number of unique visitors for each site. Editors always keep in mind their traffic targets to secure the survival of their publications. Writers and bloggers interpret clicks as a signal of popularity.
The economic realities underpinning the click-based web are well documented. Yet much work remains to be done on the cultural consequences of the growing importance of Internet metrics.
In other words, all media sites now rely on web analytics to make editorial decisions. But this does not mean that they all use and interpret metrics in similar ways. In fact, each editorial department makes sense of traffic numbers differently. There is not one but several “cultures of the click.”
I find that journalists are particularly likely to have conflicted reactions to metrics when working for publications with high editorial ambitions facing financial instability. In this case, writers criticize the chase for clicks, but also understand online success as a signal of professional value.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Twitch CEO: “Entire Website” Is a Native Advertising Hub, Not a Store
http://recode.net/2014/09/08/twitch-ceo-entire-website-is-a-native-advertising-hub-not-a-store/
Twitch is already good at selling people on games, but it’s not interested in selling the games directly.
That’s the word from CEO Emmett Shear, asked at TechCrunch Disrupt about how the company plans to integrate with its new owner Amazon. Although its viewers may not think they’re watching ads, he said game developers and publishers are warming to the idea of livestreamed games as native advertising.
“Our entire website, in some ways, is a native advertising unit for videogames,” Shear said.
Those game creators, of course, want to sell more copies of their games, and Twitch is working with them to get better at driving viewers to “buy” links, Shear added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Make Sure Your Social Marketing Isn’t ‘Junk’
http://www.cio.com/article/2602931/social-media/how-to-make-sure-your-social-marketing-isn-t-junk.html
Your customers are growing tired of all the marketing being thrown their way on social media, says Forrester analyst Kim Celestre, who offers a list of five different ways brands can offer utility marketing.
As the old and oft-repeated saying goes: half of all the effort and money spent on advertising is wasted, they just don’t know which half.
Social media doesn’t change that scenario so much as it amplifies what out-of-control junk marketing looks like. Any marketing that fails to provide value to a consumer is junk and there’s a lot of it making the rounds on social media.
“The reality is most of us don’t listen because the message doesn’t pertain to us,” says Kim Celestre, senior analyst at Forrester. “The fact is, your audience is getting impatient with the marketing you’re putting out there.”
Social data can inform utility marketing strategies, but brands must also be sure to look beyond standalone programs, she says. Building a community that promotes utility requires detail and attention to every potential social medium.
As a quick takeaway, Celestre provides five ways brands can offer utility marketing:
Become a trusted agent and establish the brand as an intermediary between itself and other related brands.
Solve a customer’s problem and consider how your brand can help solve adjacent, but still relevant needs they may have.
Get out of the way by helping your customer skip steps during their research and purchase consideration process.
Automate mundane tasks and determine how your brand can provide immediate value.
Fulfill a need that the customer doesn’t even know they have.
Of course social media isn’t just for brands, not in the traditional sense at least.
The goal and the platform are the most important components
Understanding that what works on Snapchat is going to be something completely than what works on LinkedIn may sound obvious, but it’s crucial to keep in mind as plans are implemented.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Essential SEO Terms You Should Know
New to SEO? Understand the lingo with these 10 fundamental SEO terms.
https://www.titan-seo.com/NewsArticles/seo-terms.html
If you’re new to SEO, you’ll find that the terminology is a language all on its own. Improve your SEO vocabulary and knowledge with these 10 essential SEO terms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why do contextual ads fail?
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2690822/security0/why-do-contextual-ads-fail.html
Companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon violate our privacy in order to show us relevant ads. So why do their ads miss the mark?
Hackers take our privacy away when they breach the companies we do business with.
Governments take our privacy away when they conduct mass surveillance or industrial espionage.
And companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon take our privacy away when they harvest our personal data and monitor our online and offline actions to serve contextual ads and content to us.
With contextual advertising, you’re not the product. Advertisers don’t own you. They usually don’t even get to know who you are. The companies selling the advertising theoretically (and algorithmically) display ads to you if you meet the advertiser’s criteria.
Personal data harvesting for contextual ads and content should be a beautiful thing. Companies monitor what you do, where you go, who you interact with and what your interests are. They do it privately and securely
t doesn’t always work that way, but that’s how it’s supposed to work.
What’s wrong with the public anxiety about this scenario? People are mostly concerned about the privacy violation.
The real problem with this scenario is that is we’re paying for contextual ads and content with our personal data, but we’re not getting what we pay for.
The strongest consensus was that Facebook advertising is off target and almost completely irrelevant.
Google search sometimes gets it right, as do a few other Google services. But those experiences are rare. More often, the ads miss the mark.
Advertising on Google Search and in Google Ads on Amazon and other websites mostly seems to promote things that I’ve looked at or already purchased.
And it’s not just advertising, but content, too. Google and Facebook algorithmically filter what you see in your Circle Streams or News Feed, respectively.
he ugly reality is that we have granted permission for companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon to have access to countless points of personal data, from our location and our actions to our relationships and our interests. And we did it in exchange for relevant advertising and content.
We’re doing our part. Why can’t the personal-data-harvesting companies do theirs?
The problem isn’t that we’re giving up all our personal data. The problem is that we’re giving it up for nothing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Opens Its Mobile Ad “Audience Network” To All Advertisers And Apps
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/07/facebook-audience-network-ads/
After announcing its mobile ad network at f8 in April, Facebook today officially launched “Audience Network” and started letting any advertiser buy any third-party app host ads powered by its targeting data. The big new detail is that Audience Network isn’t a separate set of ad inventory from what’s available in Facebook’s own apps and site with a direct buying interface. Instead, it’s “a simple way to extend Facebook advertising buys across mobile apps to increase relevancy for people, yield for publishers, and results for advertisers” using the same Facebook biographical, interest, and activity targeting data, according to Audience Network’s product manager Sriram Krishnan.
Helping Local Businesses Reach More Customers
https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook-local-awareness
For many local business owners, marketing is just one of the many duties they must tackle every day. That’s why we built a new feature to make advertising for local businesses easier and more effective — local awareness ads.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Native advertising effectiveness research | The Wall Blog
Mexican wrestler proves pre-roll ads have (almost) zero effect
Read more: http://wallblog.co.uk/2014/10/08/mexican-wrestler-proves-pre-roll-ads-have-almost-zero-effect/#ixzz3FdA9wkts
Nielsen has released a report (using a video involving a Mexican wrestler from American brand Jarritos) showing that if you click on a video because you thought it looked interesting, then there’s a high probability that you’ll think positively about the brand that made the clip. But if the ad simply showed up as a 15- or 30-second pre-roll ad before a video you were waiting to watch — that is, you didn’t have any choice but to see it — the ad was only marginally more effective than if you’d watched no ad at all.
Comparing Resonance for Native and Pre-roll Video Ads with Real-time Metrics
http://25h4pl1p8r9f2fc6of24zpt71dz2.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Nielsen_Sharethrough_Jarritos_CPG_Case-Study_NativeAdvertising.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Is and What Isn’t Native Advertising
http://www.linksmart.com/what-is-and-what-isnt-native-advertising/
Native advertising is not simply another term for “advertorial,” a type of sponsored story that has been around for a long time. While this type of sponsored story could be considered one type of native advertising, this newer form of promotional strategy incorporates many other types of brand-produced content. With so many new platforms to choose from including video and social media channels, there is no reason for brands and publishers to restrict their understanding of what native advertising can involve.
“Despite all the hype, native advertising is one method for marketers to use content to engage with readers in a way that is more effective than standard advertising.” The effectiveness of native advertising for revenue generations is precisely why publishers are becoming increasingly more interested in leveraging this type of promotional content, which can be broken down into three main categories as described below.
- See more at: http://www.linksmart.com/what-is-and-what-isnt-native-advertising/#sthash.gsulXwf8.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
CMOs Are Missing Out on Mobile Marketing Opportunities
http://www.cio.com/article/2692879/cmo-role/cmos-are-missing-out-on-mobile-marketing-opportunities.html
Credit: Thinkstock
CMOs may say they adding mobility into their digital marketing mix, but many haven’t even defined objectives yet. What should CMOs be doing and how can CIOs help?
Hey CMOs, how goes your mobile marketing efforts? Probably not well. Marketers struggle to define mobile objectives and manage their mobile performance, says Forrester. CIOs better listen up, too. You can help CMOs deliver on this missed mobile marketing opportunity.
It’s a big opportunity to drive revenue, as well as a chance to improve the CIO-CMO relationship.
CMOs might claim they’re adding mobility into their digital marketing mix, but a good chunk of them — 29 percent — are still experimenting with mobile measurement techniques. Many marketers haven’t even defined objectives yet. Few use emerging tools to track and analyze mobile user activity across channels.
“Fifty-seven percent of marketers we surveyed do not have defined mobile objectives,” writes Forrester analyst Thomas Husson in a blog post.
That’s a lot of digital marketing opportunity falling by the wayside. There’s no question CMOs need to get out in front of mobility, but how?
Measuring mobile traffic is merely the beginning.
Marketers need to understand how mobile users are navigating the app, in order to improve the user experience. They need to identify publishers and ad networks that drive qualified traffic, in order to get the most out of their mobile marketing spend. They need real-time analytics to segment mobile customers, in order to target certain customers during critical moments, such as when they enter a geofence.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The evolution of audience buying
http://digiday.com/sponsored/workflow-automation/
Over the last couple of decades, technology has had a massive impact on consumer behavior and media consumption but, until recently, had almost no impact on how advertising is purchased and sold. Somewhere along the line, media fragmentation outpaced the ad industry.
The typical ad agency’s media planning and buying processes were designed in a time where we had five TV networks and a couple of dozen print magazines. It didn’t translate well to the consumer Internet where fragmentation created headaches and extra work for media buyers. As digital media budgets grew, so did the number of rows on the spreadsheets used for building media plans and the number of bodies required to manage them. The goal was to achieve audience scale for the advertiser, but in doing so many agencies nearly crippled themselves with the cost of human resources.
About 10 years ago, the ad network model allowed publishers to monetize unsold inventory, making it easier for buyers to build to scale. This helped a little, but it was still a solution void of tech innovation. We also saw ad tech vendors pop up everywhere. They offered something different but still relied on field sales teams to drive revenue, feeding off the buyer’s insatiable appetite for the next new thing. These were manual workflow solutions responding to the market’s need for more effective audience buying. We were still missing out on the promise of technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WTF is programmatic advertising?
http://digiday.com/platforms/what-is-programmatic-advertising/
Programmatic ad buying has changed the face of online advertising, but there’s still confusion around what it actually is. Here’s a primer, in plain English:
What is programmatic ad buying?
“Programmatic” ad buying typically refers to the use of software to purchase digital advertising, as opposed to the traditional process that involves RFPs, human negotiations and manual insertion orders. It’s using machines to buy ads, basically.
Why does programmatic advertising matter?
Efficiency. Before programmatic ad buying, digital ads were bought and sold by human ad buyers and salespeople, which are expensive and unreliable. Programmatic advertising technology promises to make the ad buying system more efficient, and therefore cheaper, by removing humans from the process wherever possible. Humans get sick, need to sleep and come to work hungover. Machines do not.
Programmatic technology will probably mean there are fewer ad buyers in the world, but it could also allow both marketers and sellers to spend more of their time planning sophisticated, customized campaigns instead of getting bogged down in bureaucracy.
Real-time bidding is a type of programmatic ad buying, but it isn’t the only one.
Is programmatic “the future of ad buying”?
Probably, yes. It’s impossible to tell what portion of advertising is now traded programatically, but it’s definitely on the rise. Some agencies now say they’re eager to buy as much media as possible through programmatic channels
Tomi Engdahl says:
Media People: The New Yorker’s David Remnick
http://www.wwd.com/media-news/media-features/media-people-the-new-yorkers-david-remnick-7974707
WWD: What are your views of native advertising? Do you run them on your site?
D.R.: We run all kinds of ads, as long as they are clearly marked as advertising when there’s ever a question. I think advertising is advertising. If it’s 100 percent clear what it is, then, with certain exceptions, I can live with that.
What I object to is tricking the reader and blurring the lines so that unsuspecting readers, thinking that they are getting something that is assigned and edited by the editorial side, are getting something quite different. They are getting an advertisement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WSJ: Search Engines Ignoring FTC Rules About Labeling Search Ads
Article asserts search engines intentionally deceiving consumers.
http://marketingland.com/wsj-search-engines-thumbing-noses-ftc-paid-organic-labeling-103665
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has implicitly issued a challenge to the FTC. Covering alleged non-compliance with the FTC’s 2013 directive to improve the demarcation between ads and content, the WSJ reports that paid ads have become more difficult to distinguish from “organic” results over time.
Using third party experts, the article asserts that paid search ads in the last couple of years have become nearly indistinguishable from organic content. The claim is that search engines are effectively thumbing their noses at the regulatory body.
Danny Sullivan is also quoted describing the FTC as “a toothless tiger.”
Representatives from Google, Bing and Yahoo all issued variations on the same statement: we’re following the rules and distinguishing ads and content clearly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Circular Marketing
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324340&
Years ago, I tried to describe integrated marketing to a smart and savvy technology entrepreneur. He couldn’t understand what I was talking about.
Integrated marketing? The idea that marketing should have a one simple and straightforward message developed to capture the attention of the company’s target audience — chip designers in this case — was a foreign concept to him. I could see the boredom as I tried to explain that an integrated program ensures that the advertising, direct mail, public relations, website, and signs at events had the same look, feel, and message. When I moved on to describe how effective it could be to balance between the different approaches to each, I lost him completely. It just wasn’t an intuitive concept and, evidently, I certainly wasn’t making it any clearer.
Looking back at the definition of integrated marketing from those years, and comparing it to today’s various marketing programs, there really is no difference.
An example of outbound marketing would be advertising in a print magazine or newspaper. It would be one-way communications
Inbound marketing offers a means for two-way communications between the company and prospects like the engineers and managers who read EE Times, creating a “pull” effect where prospective customers seek out the company.
No matter. Keeping the messaging balanced and consistent is a constant theme through both. Hold on, you’re saying. Twitter and Facebook have different goals than our corporate blog. Nope. The overall goal should be to promote the company in a positive way. The objective would be to effectively communicate a consistent message through all the channels we have available today. The tactics could be to have the website content rich, augmented by tweets, blogs, articles, news releases, and so on. Of course, everyone has a different voice and perspective, but marketing needs to make sure it’s the same message and that everyone’s working toward the same goal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Should journalism worry about content marketing?
Corporate brands now compete for audience with an aggressive storytelling strategy
- See more at: http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/should_journalism_worry_about.php?page=all#sthash.CVUeKxH9.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fall of the Banner Ad: The Monster That Swallowed the Web
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/technology/personaltech/banner-ads-the-monsters-that-swallowed-the-web.html?_r=0
Twenty years ago last month, a team of well-meaning designers, coders and magazine publishers inadvertently unleashed on an unsuspecting world one of the most misguided and destructive technologies of the Internet age: the web banner ad.
If that is an exaggeration, it is only a slight one. The first banner ads — those long rectangular ads at the top of a web page — looked innocent enough; a half-dozen spots for a variety of large companies, including AT&T, Volvo and Zima, they made their debut on HotWired, the web offshoot of Wired Magazine, on Oct. 27, 1994. People who took part in their creation say the first banners were a resounding success, garnering adulation from readers and advertisers.
But their success birthed a monster that went on to swallow the web whole and has created two decades of havoc. “It’s almost like a prank that was played by the technology industry on the media industry 20 years ago,” said Chris Dixon, a technology investor at the firm Andreessen Horowitz who has long lamented the reach and permanence of the banner ad.
These days, finally, the banner ad is in decline. That is because the web, the medium in which it has thrived, is also in decline. Today we live in a mobile, social world, spending most of our time online using apps that load faster and are much prettier and more useful than websites. Instead of banners, many of these apps, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, make money through ads that appear in users’ social feeds, rather than off to the side of the page.
But what’s so bad about banners?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meet The Network Of Guys Making Thousands Of Dollars Tweeting As “Common White Girls”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/the-parody-twitter-illuminati
The Twitter illuminati that made “Alex From Target” an overnight sensation can drive millions of clicks with a simple retweet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
acebook reducing promotional posts from Pages in News Feed is just the latest blow to businessesFind
Facebook Will Curtail Unpaid Ads by Brands
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/technology/facebook-to-cut-unpaid-posts-by-marketers-on-news-feeds.html?_r=0
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s executives are not terribly worried about upsetting people these days.
Flush with cash and a high stock price, Facebook recently shocked investors by saying that it planned to spend billions of dollars on projects that might never generate any profits.
And on Friday, the company told marketers that if they wanted to reach customers on Facebook, they needed to buy an ad.
The social network announced that starting in January, it would change the rankings of some posts made by marketers, such as pitches to install a new mobile app or tune into a TV show, to reduce the number that appear in the news feeds of its 1.35 billion global users.
Even posts from big advertisers that spend millions of dollars on Facebook ads will vanish from the news feeds of their fans unless they turn them into ads.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
“The idea here is to give people more accessible information about how Facebook works,” said Erin Egan, the company’s chief privacy officer.
Facebook Tries to Explain Its Privacy Settings but Advertising Still RulesNOV. 13, 2014
“It’s a clear message to brands: If you want to sound like an advertiser, buy an ad,” said Rebecca Lieb, a digital advertising and media analyst at the Altimeter Group.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook to clamp down on promotional posts in order to sell more ads
Good news for users, bad news for businesses
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2381704/facebook-to-clamp-down-on-promotional-posts-in-order-to-sell-more-ads
THE SOCIAL NETWORK Facebook has said that it will clamp down on ‘promotional posts’ showing in users’ News Feeds, likely in a bid to sell more ads.
Facebook said that, beginning January 2015, users can expect to see less promotional posts. It claims this decision comes after users complained about seeing too many posts on their News Feed urging them to buy a product, install an app or to enter a competition or sweepstakes.
Facebook said in a blog post: “Our goal with News Feed has always been to show people the things they want to see. That’s why we often look to people on Facebook to tell us how we can improve.
News Feed FYI: Reducing Overly Promotional Page Posts in News Feed
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/11/news-feed-fyi-reducing-overly-promotional-page-posts-in-news-feed/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The most memorable brand wins and fails of 2014
http://mashable.com/2014/11/18/brand-wins-fails-2014/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Forrester Says Marketers Are Wasting Resources on Facebook, Twitter
http://marketingland.com/forrester-says-marketers-wasting-resources-facebook-twitter-108376
Because of low reach and engagement on the major social networks, report suggests that brands should build their own communities and leverage other social sites.
Marketers looking to build stronger connections with consumers typically turn to social media industry leaders Facebook and Twitter for their outreach. But those are the wrong places to be looking, according to a new report by Forrester Research.
So few people actually see posts from top brands on Facebook and Twitter that focusing heavily on those networks can be a waste of time, money and resources, Forrester vice president and principal analyst Nate Elliott concludes in the report titled “Social Relationship Strategies That Work.”
“It’s clear that Facebook and Twitter don’t offer the relationships that marketing leaders crave,” Elliott wrote. “Yet most brands still use these sites as the centerpiece of their social efforts — thereby wasting significant financial, technological, and human resources on social networks that don’t deliver value.”
The issue according to Elliott is anemic reach and engagement. In February, Ogilvy reported that top brands’ Facebook posts reached only 2% of their fans. That has likely fallen further and with last week’s Facebook announcement that it will further throttle promotional posts, the trendline hasn’t yet hit bottom. Organic reach on Twitter is just as low, the report says, citing “multiple industry sources.”
Engagement is even worse. Only .073% of top brands’ Facebook fans interact with each of their posts on average; for Twitter the average is .035%.
An On-Site Alternative
Instead of spending social capital on Facebook and Twitter, Elliott suggests that brands add community building features on their own websites, noting a Forrester survey that showed U.S. adults were three times as likely to visit a business’ site as to engage with its Facebook page.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firefox drops Google as default search engine, signs five-year deal with Yahoo —
Default search engine for Firefox in Europe remains Google, Yandex in Russia, Baidu in China —
Mozilla CEO: It Wasn’t Money — Yahoo Was The Better Strategic Partner For Firefox
http://marketingland.com/mozilla-ceo-yahoo-better-firefox-partner-108539
Mozilla CEO Chris Beard says when presented with deals of “equivalent economics” to power search in Firefox, Yahoo was the better partner.
The official line from the Mozilla blog post about the deal helps parse what being a good strategic partner seems to be.
New Search Strategy for Firefox: Promoting Choice & Innovation
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-innovation-on-the-web/
Tomi Engdahl says:
White Papers: Key to B2B Enterprise SEO Power
http://downloads.digitalmarketingdepot.com/DMD_1407_Key2B2BSEO_display.html?utm_source=selml&utm_medium=display&utm_content=cui&utm_campaign=auddev
Enterprise marketers, particularly in the B2B space, often find content development for SEO a difficult proposition. The company’s thought leaders are often afraid of committing to a writing schedule. And the marketer is trying to get others to “squeeze in” content, essentially “off the books.” With no reward, why should anyone help with the difficult, thankless work of writing white papers? The trick is for the marketer to take advantage of three key tactics:
• Appealing to the ego
• Re-purposing
• Transcription
Tomi Engdahl says:
Want to STUFF Facebook with blatant ADVERTISING? Fine! But you must PAY
Pony up or push off, Zuck tells social marketeers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/15/facebook_news_feed_promotional_page_posts/
Facebook has warned marketing types who use the free-content ad network to tout brands through so-called “promotional Page posts” that they will soon be extirpated.
The Mark Zuckerberg-run company put admen on notice yesterday in a blog post that made it clear that Facebook will only allow brands to promote their own gear if they pay for the privilege.
Advertisers have been using Pages to promote their goods, which in turn has clogged up Facebook’s News Feed. The firm naturally sugar-coated its latest strategy by saying that it wanted to offer a better experience to its users.
News Feed FYI: Reducing Overly Promotional Page Posts in News Feed
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/11/news-feed-fyi-reducing-overly-promotional-page-posts-in-news-feed/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook’s plain English data policy: WE’LL SELL YOU LIKE A PIG at a fair
All the rest is just waffle
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/13/facebook_plain_english_privacy/
Facebook hasn’t actually changed its fine print outside of a few minor tweaks that it has already announced – a proposed new version is here. The new “privacy basics” web page is an attempt to paper over that scary language.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Contributor will let you pay a monthly fee to see select websites without ads
http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/20/7255779/google-contributor-will-let-you-pay-to-see-sites-without-ads
Chances are good that most of your favorite websites are almost entirely supported by advertising. In exchange for free content, the thinking goes, you have to view some ads — but Google is trying to shake up that model a bit with a new system it’s calling Contributor. Instead of dealing with ads, those who use Contributor will donate between $1 and $3 a month to see Contributor partner sites without any advertising. That money goes to the participating sites, though it’s not clear if Google is taking a cut — or if you’ll need to donate that much per site you visit.
As of today, only a handful of partners have been announced by Google: Mashable, The Onion, Science Daily, Imgur, WikiHow, and Urban Dictionary. However, Google claims that these sites represent only a “few” of the partnering sites for Contributor, though there’s no word on who else is taking part yet.
Contributor by Google
An experiment in additional ways to fund the web.
https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/
Today’s Internet is mostly funded by advertising. But what if there were a way to directly support the people who create the sites you visit each day?
Introducing Contributor by Google.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Millennials Want: Black Friday, Cyber Monday Edition
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2014/11/26/what-millennials-want-black-fridaycyber-monday-edition/
Millennials may be “digital natives,” but more of them intend to shop on Black Friday than on Cyber Monday in 2014, according to a study by the Olympia Media Group.
Marketers everywhere are searching for the Holy Grail of marketing to millennials. In anticlimactic fashion, Burns suggested that no such grail exists.
“Many times brands don’t truly understand their customer,” Burns told me.
“They act as if millennials are one homogeneous group and they put some [generic] strategy in place for them.”
Indeed, past research by the Boston Consulting Group and others has shown that millennials, a $1.3 trillion market annually, have a different relationship with brands than older generations do.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Potential Pot of Gold in Mobile Marketing
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324796&
Fasten your seat belts. Marketing via mobile devices will be $15 billion industry in 2019.
The billions of smartphones and tablets out there represent a captive audience for marketeers. However, mobile marketing is relatively new and has been slow to take off.
Reasons for the slow ramp up include inertia that comes with any new media, as companies rely on tried and tested methods until the results demand change, through to inexperience and a lack of understanding on how to implement new marketing strategies within a new medium. Further, in such a scenario companies have little experience to draw from and end up throwing a lot of proverbial mud against a wall to see what sticks.
It appears that for mobile marketing we are entering a phase of steady growth and today have a fairly good base of experience to draw from. In its latest report, market research firm MarketsandMarkets is currently forecasting that the global mobile marketing market will grow from $4,314.5 million in 2014 to $15,287.4 million by 2019, at a CAGR of 28.8%. North America is expected to be the largest market, while Europe and Asia-Pacific (APAC) are predicted to experience increased market traction, during the forecast period.
One caveat to all this is really based in the end-user experience, which today in many areas is not good when it comes to data services. Even 4G, in many areas is not delivering the speeds it is supposed to. Consequently, the success of mobile marketing, will to some extent depend on mobile networks delivering more robust 4G services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook, Google, And Twitter’s War For App Install Ads
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/30/like-advertising-a-needle-in-a-haystack/
An unexpected consequence of our love of apps is that now there’s just too damn many of them. The app stores are overcrowded, leaving developers desperate for a way to get their games and utilities discovered. That is why the app install ad has become the lifeblood of the mobile platform business.
Big brands aren’t the only ones to suck up to anymore. No one buys a car or Coca-Cola on their phone, at least not yet, so proving the return on investment of mobile ads to these businesses is tough. There is one thing people will instantly plop down a few bucks for on the small screen, though: Apps.
Lured by billions in app install ad spend per quarter and hoping to grow that pie, Facebook, Twitter, and Google have stepped up. But to win those dollars, they have to buddy up to developers.
Before the big platforms redefined their roadmaps to pry open developers’ wallets, a slew of independent ad networks ruled the space.
Google saw the potential of mobile advertising and bought the big dog AdMob in 2009 fro $750 million, while Apple acquired Quattro Wireless and launched its own ad network iAd in 2010. Both ran app install ads, but those weren’t their sole focus. It wasn’t until 2012 when the real landslide shift from desktop usage to mobile happened that Facebook wised up.
Facebook’s mobile monetization platform strategy had been a bit far-fetched: Hook developers up with social sharing APIs, and hope users pushed their content from Facebook-connected apps back to the web or mobile News Feed to where Facebook shows ads.
But app install ads let Facebook use its consistent mobile app traffic to turn things around.
Why App Install Ads Work
The web’s decline is dragging the banner ad towards its grave. On mobile, there’s no room for a shotgun approach of riddling the small screen with tiny, low-quality, poorly targeted marketing messages.
Instead, mobile ads are often shown one at a time. That means better targeting goes a long way. This has allowed platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to outcompete the independent ad networks like Millenial Media by combining powerful personal data with native app install ad formats that blend into their content
While many would like to see banners ads die a painful death, app install ads are some of the only banners that can succeed on mobile. That’s because app install ads have two big advantages on mobile compared to traditional brand ads
With the app stores just getting more cluttered, developers began pouring cash into the ad format.
Simply selling ads would have been a missed opportunity, though. Driving installs is so important to developers that, lacking operating systems, Facebook and Twitter built their mobile platform strategies around app ads. The goal: provide high-quality services and tools to developers in order to form relationships that lead to ad buys.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Potential Pot of Gold in Mobile Marketing
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324796&
Fasten your seat belts. Marketing via mobile devices will be $15 billion industry in 2019.
The billions of smartphones and tablets out there represent a captive audience for marketeers. However, mobile marketing is relatively new and has been slow to take off.
Reasons for the slow ramp up include inertia that comes with any new media, as companies rely on tried and tested methods until the results demand change, through to inexperience and a lack of understanding on how to implement new marketing strategies within a new medium. Further, in such a scenario companies have little experience to draw from and end up throwing a lot of proverbial mud against a wall to see what sticks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Just Admitted More Than Half Of The Ads It Serves Are Never Seen
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-display-ad-viewability-study-2014-12#ixzz3L0qnibEi
Online ad viewability is a hot topic in advertising right now, as marketers are becoming more aware (and concerned) that many of the ads they buy online are never actually seen by people.
Advertisers are also shifting to pay only for ads that have actually been viewed, as opposed to those that are just being blindly served. That’s why Google has released a study analyzing its display ad platforms using its Active View technology, such as DoubleClick, to explore which factors affect ad viewability. It wants to show the market it is taking the issue seriously — and that it is responsible enough to admit that even its own platforms don’t deliver 100% of the time.
The results seem staggering: Advertisers are potentially throwing half of their budgets away every time they pay for display ads. Some 56.1% of all the impressions served on the Google display platforms could never have been actually seen because they were served outside of the browser window.
5 Factors of Viewability
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/infographics/5-factors-of-viewability.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jack Marshall / Wall Street Journal:
Google study finds 56.1% of display ad impressions it served never appeared on screen
5 Viewability Findings From Google
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/12/03/5-viewability-findings-from-google/
Tomi Engdahl says:
AdNauseam
http://dhowe.github.io/AdNauseam/
As online advertising is becoming more automatic, universal and unsanctioned, AdNauseam works to complete the cycle by automating all ad-clicks universally and blindly on behalf of the target audience. Working in coordination with Ad Block Plus, AdNauseam quietly clicks every blocked ad, registering a visit on the ad networks databases. As the data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user profiling, targeting and surveillance becomes futile
AdNauseam is a browser extension designed to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from surveillance and tracking by advertising networks. Simultaneously, AdNauseam serves as a means of amplifying users’ discontent with advertising networks that disregard privacy and facilitate bulk surveillance agendas.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Your In-Store Shopping Affects the Ads You See On Facebook
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/12/11/2222222/how-your-in-store-shopping-affects-the-ads-you-see-on-facebook
Facebook has made several acquisitions over the years to help advertisers target their ads and extend their reach. Custom Audiences is one such targeting tool, allowing retailers to match shoppers in their stores with their accounts on Facebook.
How your in-store shopping affects the ads you see on Facebook
http://www.itworld.com/article/2858515/how-your-instore-shopping-affects-the-ads-you-see-on-facebook.html
While many activities have migrated online, Facebook is still eager to know how its users shop in physical stores.
That information helps companies figure out if their ads are effective, and whether to follow up with other ads. Did you buy a bike in that shop but no helmet? Maybe next day in your News Feed you’ll see an ad for one.
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With more than 1.3 billion users, it’s no surprise many businesses feel they have no choice but to advertise on Facebook. But companies want to know their ads work, and most purchases still happen in physical stores, not online.
Facebook sees an opportunity there. Connecting the dots between the ads users see and the purchases they make in stores is a key goal of its advertising efforts, and its working hard to improve the connections, executives said Wednesday at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
The company has made several acquisitions over the years to help advertisers target their ads and extend their reach.
“Our match coverage is very, very high,” he said. “We can see quite a bit of the purchase history.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Erin Griffith / Fortune:
Evan Williams: Medium’s key advertising sales metric is not page views, but time spent on page
Evan Williams: On billionaire-backed journalism, Shanley Kane, and the problem with vanity ad metrics
http://fortune.com/2014/12/15/qa-evan-williams-medium/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Twitter Debates Whether to Hit Autoplay on Videos, and Here’s Why
Brands love it, but would users protest? By Garett Sloane
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/twitter-debates-whether-hit-autoplay-videos-compete-facebook-161933
Twitter is weighing a difficult decision, one that not only could disrupt the traditional order of things at the social network but also may well be the key to keeping up with Facebook and YouTube: to hit or not to hit autoplay on video.
Twitter is divided over whether to allow videos to simply start playing when users scroll over them. It is a feature already adopted by Facebook, but one that scares Twitter purists who don’t want it to stray farther from its text-based roots, according to industry insiders with knowledge of the company’s video strategy.
“It’s an argument that’s happening—a tug of war,” said one.
Twitter remains cautious, even though video has become an important tool for the service as consumers and brands have embraced it.
The debate over autoplay is not a trivial one—it would be a major shift on a platform still struggling to find the right formula to appeal to the widest number of consumers.
In a worrying sign just last week, Instagram surpassed Twitter in the number of total users—300 million versus 284 million. Facebook-owned Instagram also has tremendous video potential.
Since launching autoplay earlier this year, Facebook has been catching up to YouTube in views. In September, Facebook said it was showing 1 billion videos per day. The Twitter source, who has seen the latest numbers, said that figure has already grown to 3 billion.
The insider added that the completion rate—where viewers watch the entirety of a video—is “mind-boggling,” suggesting that autoplay is a winning strategy and something Twitter ought to implement, even at the risk of upsetting some users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: Digital ad spend to match TV by 2019
http://www.ooyala.com/videomind/blog/report-digital-ad-spend-match-tv-2019
Digital ad spend is forecast to increase 15% in 2015, with research saying it will equal ad spending on television by 2019.
The report, from Magna Global, said mobile and social media will drive 2015 spending on digital to $163 billion, with mobile ad spending expected to jump 45% next year compared to a 72% increase in 2014.
That mobile spend will continue to slow – reaching 36% growth in 2016 – as smartphone and tablet penetration increases and the market becomes nearly saturated.
“This year, next year, if you do the math, almost all the growth is from mobile,” Vincent Letang, Magna Global’s executive director for global forecasting, told Bloomberg. “Especially in the home, for casual users and for entertainment purposes, tablets and smartphones are making great progress.”
The researcher said ad spend on TV will grow 3% next year and 6% in 2016.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andrew Marantz / New Yorker:
How Emerson Spartz builds viral sites that grab Facebook traffic using headline testing and other people’s memes
The Virologist
How a young entrepreneur built an empire by repackaging memes.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/virologist?currentPage=all
young people using technology can “build movements to create change.” This is not Spartz’s specialty. “I basically have only one speech,” he told me. “It’s about how to make things go viral. I have personal preferences about how I would want those principles to be applied, but in practice they can be used for pretty much anything.”
Spartz is twenty-seven and has been successfully launching Web sites for more than half his life.
Odom described Spartz to me as “inspiring” and “legitimately awesome.”
In 1999, when Spartz was twelve, he built MuggleNet, which became the most popular Harry Potter fan site in the world.
Web development is a low-overhead enterprise, especially when you live with your parents. MuggleNet made hundreds of thousands of dollars through advertising, and Spartz funnelled his earnings into a new company: Spartz, Inc.
After graduation, they started building rudimentary Web sites, sometimes as many as one a month: GivesMeHope (“ ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’—the twenty-first-century, Twitter-style version”); Memestache (“All the Funny Memes”); OMG Facts (“The World’s #1 Fact Source”). Many of the sites fizzled out; others gained a following. When Internet culture developed a fascination with “fails”—news bloopers, errant autocorrects—Spartz created a site where users could post funny mistakes from Facebook (Unfriendable), a site featuring gaffes from television (As Failed On TV), and one about garbled text messages (SmartphOWNED). When the data indicated that optimism was attracting more visitors than Schadenfreude, Spartz let his “fail” sites languish and focussed on promoting GivesMeHope, a repository for anonymous, uplifting anecdotes.
When he was growing up, Spartz said, his parents made him read “four short biographies of successful people every single day. Imagine for a second what happens to your brain when you’re twelve and this is how you’re spending your time.”
The offices of Spartz, Inc., are in a loft space with polished-cement floors, bright-red walls, a hammock, and an aquarium full of sea monkeys. Games are everywhere—Xbox, Blokus, Ping-Pong—but I never saw anyone playing them.
Employees communicate with one another through instant messages. They almost never talk out loud, and there are no office phones. When something must be discussed face-to-face, staffers arrange to meet in one of several conference rooms ringing the central space.
Most of Spartz’s old sites are still online, but, because their content is user generated, they run largely on autopilot. The company now devotes much of its attention to promoting Dose, which in November received thirty-three million page views.
Much of the company’s success online can be attributed to a proprietary algorithm that it has developed for “headline testing”—a practice that has become standard in the virality industry.
“We spend a lot of time doing a lot of back-end things, a lot of tweaking,”
On a whiteboard behind him were the phrases “old media,” “Tribune,” and “$100 M.” “The lines between advertising and content are blurring,” he said. “Right now, if you go to any Web site, it will know where you live, your shopping history, and it will use that to give you the best ad. I can’t wait to start doing that with content. It could take a few months, a few years—but I am motivated to get started on it right now, because I know I’ll kill it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
What you need to know to make successful YouTube marketing videos for your brand
http://blog.revfluence.com/2014/12/04/what-you-need-to-know-to-make-successful-youtube-marketing-videos-for-your-brand/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Super Bowl Commercials With Hashtags Slipped To 50% In 2015
Facebook was the most mentioned social network with four; Snapchat made its debut.
http://marketingland.com/super-bowl-commercials-hashtags-slips-50-2015-116658
Fifty percent of 2015 Super Bowl ads carried hashtags, a bit of a slip from the record 57% during the 2014 game. Facebook was the social network most mentioned, though mentions of specific social networks were again very sparse.