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  • Mobile Local Ad Revenue Expected To Triple Over Next Five Years

    Mobile local ad revenues in the U.S. are expected to hit $4.5 billion this year, according to a new report from BIA/Kelsey. That would be a massive increase over last year, which saw $2.9 billion.

    And that’s really just the beginning. The firm is projecting mobile local ad revenues to more than triple over the next five years, reaching as high as $15.7 billion in 2018.

    It expects mobile ad spending in general in the U.S. to reach $11.4 billion in 2014 and $30.3 billion in 2018. By the end of that year, it says, locally targeted mobile ads will be 52% of overall mobile ad spending in the U.S.

    “Advertiser demand will be driven by natural market forces to follow undervalued inventory,” said Michael Boland, senior analyst and VP of content at BIA/Kelsey. “Mobile advertising’s appeal includes higher performance, clearer ROI, tangible conversions and a shorter purchase funnel. These qualities of mobile content and advertising present a rare alignment between typical mobile user intent and advertisers’ stated objectives.”

    Tactics like geo-fencing, click-to-call, and click-to-map are helping drive up spend on mobile local advertising, according to the firm.

    BIA/Kelsey expects mobile search ad revenues to grow from $4.3 billion in 2014 to $10.9 billion in 2018, native social ad revenue to grow from $3.3 billion in 2014 to $9.9 billion in 2018, mobile display (app and mobile web) ad revenue to grow from $2.4 billion in 2014 to $6.1 billion in 2018, mobile video ad revenue to grow from $1.1 billion in 2014 to $3.1 billion in 2018, and SMS ad revenue to grow from $332 million in 2014 to $381 million in 2018.

    Image via BIA/Kelsey

  • IAB: Online Ad Revenue Overtakes TV For First Time In U.S.

    The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released its latest Internet ad revenue report, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It finds that interactive ad revenues for 2013 hit an all-time high of $42.8 billion, exceeding broadcast TV advertising ($40.1 billion) for the first time ever. It saw a 17% increase from the previous year’s $36.6 billion.

    IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg said, “The news that interactive has outperformed broadcast television should come as no surprise. It speaks to the power that digital screens have in reaching and engaging audiences. In that same vein, the staggering growth of mobile is clearly a direct response to how smaller digital screens play an integral role in consumers’ lives throughout the day, as well as their critical importance to cross-screen experiences.”

    Q4 revenues were $12.1 billion, up 17% from $10.3 billion in Q4 2012. This is also up14% from the previous quarter’s $10.6 billion.

    Mobile saw triple-digit-growth, hitting $7.1 billion for the year, and accounting for 17% of 2013 revenues. Digital video saw $2.8 billion for the year, up 19% from the previous year. Search revenues were $18.4 billion in 2013, up 9%. Display ad revenue for the year was $12.8 billion, up 7%.

    “Our survey confirms that we are fully in transition to the post-desktop era,” said David Silverman, Partner, PwC U.S. “Triple digit advertising revenue growth from mobile devices contrasted the more tepid 8 percent growth from traditional computer screens. This is simply a reflection of the change in how and where consumers are viewing their information—on the go!”

    “Digital marketing generates large reach and many possibilities to create impact across consumers’ purchase consideration processes, both critically important to advertisers as they seek marketing investments that have value ” said Sherrill Mane, SVP, Research, Analytics, and Measurement at the IAB.

    You can find the full report here.

    Image via the IAB

  • Is Google’s Paid Search Query Removal Worth Panicking About?

    Google announced that it is extending its secure search efforts to paid search, and that it will remove queries from referers on ad clicks originating from SSL searches on Google.com. In other words, the reason you’ve been seeing keywords “not provided” in Google Analytics now applies to Google ads.

    What do you think of Google’s decision to extend this to paid search? Let us know in the comments.

    A previous report had indicated that Google would eliminate data for third-parties, but as Larry Kim of Wordstream points out, paid seach query data “is not dead.”

    “Stop panicking,” he writes. “Google has been cracking down on who can access search query data for several years now in a few ways – enforcing terms of service on how the data may be used, and limiting access to a smaller number of third-party vendors who implement a required minimum functionality (RMF). Basically, in order to have access to the query data, you need to be a legit software company that has built a functioning AdWords management platform. If you were an SEO agency that used to have an AdWords API token, it’s probably been shut down over the last few years, and if it hasn’t already been shut down, it won’t last long. If Google was going to stop providing this data to all 3rd parties, then that would be new/surprising.”

    “Legit third-party AdWords management platforms (like WordStream, Marin, etc.) will continue to function as normal,” he adds. “Also, if you just use AdWords and no third-party platform, nothing has changed there either. Let’s not overstate the impact of this announcement.”

    So what did Google actually announce?

    “Advertisers will continue to have access to useful data to optimize and improve their campaigns and landing pages,” writes AdWords product management director Paul Feng. “For example, you can access detailed information in the AdWords search terms report and the Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries report.”

    “The AdWords search terms report (previously known as the search query performance report) lets you see search queries that generated ad clicks along with key performance data,” he adds. “And the Search Queries report available in Google Webmaster Tools provides aggregate information about the top 2000 queries, each day, that generated organic clicks.”

    For those using the query in the referer for generating reports or automated keyword management, Google now suggests using the AdWords API Search Query Performance Report or the AdWords Scripts Report Service.

    For those using the query in the referer for customizing landing pages, Google is suggesting using the keyword that generated the ad click rather than the query. The Keyword and match type, it notes, can be passed to your web server by using a ValueTrack parameter in your destination URLs.

    “We understand that some partners may need to make changes to their systems and operations, but we think that this is the right path forward for the security of our users searching on Google.com,” says Feng.

    It’s interesting that it has taken this long for Google to determine that this was the right path considering that Google started doing this with organic search like three years ago. Back in 2011, when Google rolled out secure search as the default for signed-in users, product manager Evelyn Kao wrote:

    What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic. If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.

    The company has often been criticized for an apparent double standard when it comes to secure search. It has always maintained that the changes were made to protect the privacy of users, but when people were paying for that information, well, that was different.

    Google actually hinted that such a change was on the horizon last month when Amit Singhal spoke at the Search Marketing Expo:

    He didn’t really help us to understand why Google has changed its mind, but he did acknowledge that the search ands ads teams had been talking to one another about the subject.

    Back in the fall, we looked at data from NotProvidedCount.com, which saw the rise of “not provided” queries for sixty sites at about 74%, on a steady increase:

    It’s risen even further since then. As of the time of this writing, it’s at over 80%.

    As far as paid search goes, it sounds like marketers, for the most part, aren’t panicking too much.

    “This impacts mostly those who don’t use those tools [those suggested by Google above] or who relied on basic Google Analytics and/or old fashion technology,” writes Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable.

    “It just means that people will have to start doing what they should have been doing all along,” writes Ryan Jones in a comment on a Search Engine Land post.

    Do you agree? Is Google making the right move by removing queries from referers on ad clicks? Let us know in the comments.

    Note: This article has been updated in light of further discussion.

    Image via NotProvidedCount.com

  • Report: Twitter’s Ads ‘Consistently’ Deliver Higher Click-Through Rates Than Facebook’s

    Resolution Media released a new report looking at social advertising trends, which found that advertisers invested 127% more in Facebook than in Twitter in 2013. The gap could narrow, however, as businesses voice their frustration with Facebook, and Twitter launches more ad capabilities and formats.

    In fact, according to the report, “many industry sectors” already substantially increased their Twitter investments over the course of 2013. Twitter, it finds, also “consistently delivers” a higher click-through rate than Facebook, though impressions and clicks cost significantly more on Twitter.

    Following are some charts comparing advertising on the two, as featured in the report:

    For further analysis and commentary surrounding these graphs, check out the full report.

    Facebook is currently trying to get more small business advertisers on board having recently set up a small business council for advocacy and product improvement. Twitter, is said to have fifteen new types of ads on the way.

    [via MediaBistro]

    Images via Resolution Media

  • Google Reportedly Expanding ‘Not Provided’ To 3rd-Party Paid Search

    Update: OK, this just happened.

    Last month at the Search Engine Marketing Expo (West), Google’s Singhal said there would soon be an announcement related to changes with the controversial “not provided” issue.

    Google implemented secure search a few years ago, and by doing so, stopped providing publishers with keywords searchers use to find pages on their sites. It has, however, continued to show such data to advertisers, which is one of the controversial parts. The apparent double standard has often been brought up by members of the SEO industry, but historically Google has pretty much brushed it off.

    Singhal didn’t specify what Google would be announcing, but his words seemed to suggest that getting rid of the data for advertisers may have been the news.

    Now, reports are coming out that Google is taking the paid search data away from third-parties. A.J. Ghergich (via Search Engine Journal) says Google will cease supplying 3rd parties with paid search query data, but that reports within AdWords will remain unaffected.

    “This will also have an affect on website analytics packages but we’ve not yet heard about anything with Google Analytics,” he writes. “Services that use this query data may have no way to access it anymore.”

    He says that his sources received a notice about the change directly from Google, and that he has read the document himself. The change, he says, is expected in the next few weeks.

    If this is really all Singhal was talking about, it’s not going to do much to curb criticism over the double standard accusations. Google has maintained that the switch to not provided is about user privacy, but has continued to give it to those willing to pay.

    Image via YouTube

  • Disqus Is Now Including Sponsored Comments

    Disqus announced that it has been testing Sponsored Comments for the past month, and that it’s now expanding the new ad unit so that “it’ll be more likely that you come across” one. Here’s what one might look like:

    Disqus ads

    If you use Disqus, but have ads turned off, you don’t have to worry about them appearing.

    This follows another ad format Disqus launched earlier this year called Featured Comments, which let publishers highlight things at the top of a thread.

    “Because Disqus now helps websites make money from engagement and discussion, a natural question came up – can we use the concept of Featured Comments in order to allow brands to reach specific audiences? This was the idea behind Sponsored Comments,” Disqus says in a blog post.

    “Sponsored Comments let businesses deliver a message to the people they need to reach,” it adds. “A Sponsored Comment can use all types of media to get their point across, just like any other Disqus comment. But they’re not part of the discussion happening on that thread or community itself. That’s too disruptive. So instead, they’re pinned to the top of the discussion environment where things are just getting started. It’s like movie previews. It’s not the thing you came for, but if done well, it adds a little bit to your experience without being intrusive. We’re testing whether or not we can make this true.”

    Early reaction to the ads is generally positive. Users seem to appreciate that they respect the sites that turn off ads. People are interested in targeting options and potential clickthrough rates.

    Image via Disqus

  • Can Facebook Win Over Small Business Advertisers?

    Facebook has over 25 million Pages run by small businesses. Facebook’ s global director of small business Dan Levy announced that stat in November. As organic reach continues to decline for all kinds of Facebook pages, the company is trying to get more small businesses paying for reach.

    Do you advertise on Facebook? Has it been effective? If not, do you intend to give it a try? Let us know in the comments.

    Facebook recently put together a group of twelve small businesses to form the Facebook Small And Medium Business Council. It’s made up of owners of businesses in the fields of plumbing, restaurants, education, gardening, theaters, shopping, etc.

    It’s modeled after a similar concept Facebook has had in place with larger brands since 2011.

    The idea, based on what Facebook advertising communications manager Elisabeth Diana told AllFacebook last month, is that the council will boost advocacy, and help collect feedback on how to make Facebook’s business products (presumably including its advertising platform) better for small businesses.

    According to Fortune, “a good deal” of Facebook’s $7.9 billion in 2013 revenue came from small and medium-sized businesses, though as it notes, the company doesn’t break out the percentage coming from such advertisers, so that’s obviously speculation.

    As you’re probably aware, it’s getting harder and harder for Pages to get their posts seen in the News Feed without paying. Facebook visibility has basically become a pay-to-play game after years of the social network providing free exposure that small businesses could use to get their messages out, build their followings, and reach their most loyal customers. That kind of thing is simply a thing of the past not. At least on Facebook.

    According to AdAge, this was unsurprisingly a major point of discussion when Facebook’s small business council met last month. The article quotes Jim Donio from Eagle Theatre, one of the council’s businesses: “The challenge is how to get businesses to understand the value that’s there, since they weren’t paying for it at all and now they’re going to have to.”

    It also quotes Levy, who has built up a team of “hundreds” of people doing outreach to small businesses whose ads are “under-performing”:

    All the traditional things people think about — like a sales channel through YP or a call center — they’re all good, but we’re dealing with a scale that’s really unprecedented. And trying to figure out how you unlock that is intellectually fun, but really hard.

    Meanwhile, we keep hearing about how brands are dissatisfied with the results they’re getting from Facebook ads. Facebook is all but forcing businesses to pay for ads, and there’s a lot of question about just how effective the channel really is.

    There certainly are some success stories. That Fortune article, for example, talks about a consignment store owner who saw a sales boost from a targeted promoted post, and these are no doubt the kinds of stories the council and Levy’s team will be trying to play up with prospective small business advertisers.

    “Martinovic is one of Facebook’s most successful small business advertisers,” the Fortune article goes. “She once paid thousands of dollars to put ads in local papers and have her business featured on the tourists maps the town produced. But in the past year, she’s quit all that. Instead, she budgets $5 a day on Facebook, and a couple times a week she invests $40-60 on a boost.”

    She makes $23 for every $1 spent on the site, and saw a 30% jump in sales since using Facebook, it says.

    Whether stories like this will win over skeptical businesses, however, is another question. Facebook might do well to give more stats representative of those 25 million businesses at large and for individual business types. The council should be able to help with that.

    As the article says, “ the lion’s share of the business community is not spending ad dollars on Facebook. Yet.”

    But it’s only been recent months that businesses have had their organic reach almost completely stripped away from them. They’re being faced with the question of whether to give in, and give Facebook their money for some exposure, or to simply look elsewhere, and put more focus on Facebook’s competitors like Google and Twitter.

    Last week, we saw one business opt for the former, and shut down its Facebook presence after amassing 70,000 fans. Research has also been coming out in favor of Google+ for marketing and after-the-click engagement. It’s going to be very interesting to see if more brands begin to steer clear of Facebook altogether.

    Do you own or work for a small business? How do you feel about the way Facebook is pursuing its strategy? What is your business’ reaction? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via Facebook

  • Honey Maid Doesn’t Give a Damn About Appeasing Anti-Gay Trolls

    Back in March, Nabisco’s Honey Maid graham cracker brand decided to celebrate love and family in all its various forms with an ad entitled “This is Wholesome.” The tagline was “everyday wholesome snacks for every wholesome family,” and the 30-second spot featured couples and families from all walks of life–including an interracial family and gasp, a gay couple.

    Outrage ensued. Not from everyone, of course, but from the type of people who are usually outraged by this sort of thing. You know, bigots. It was as predictable as the uncovering of an anti-gay Republican’s gay sex scandal. Like clockwork, the comments started pouring in on YouTube and “family values” blogs across the country.

    Professional outrage machine One Million Moms joined various other outraged groups to protest the ads. They urged Nabisco to “pull this liberal commercial immediately and remain neutral in the culture war.” Grrr, love and family. Simply disgusting.

    “We recognize change is happening every day, from the way in which a family looks today to how a family interacts to the way it is portrayed in media,” said Gary Osifchin, senior marketing director for Honey Maid parent company Mondelez, at the time of the initial backlash. “We at Honey Maid continue to evolve and expand our varieties to provide delicious, wholesome products so they can be a part of everyday moments of connection in a world with changing, evolving family dynamics.”

    From that statement, it was clear that Honey Maid and their parent company were going to stand by their ad. But now, they’ve decided to give a nice, large, slightly curved middle finger to all the haters. It comes in the form of a new ad, entitled “Love”:

    Yep, looks like they printed out all of those negative YouTube comments and turned them into an art installation of the word “love,” thus rendering them completely inert. Honey Maid DGAF.

    Yes, I am aware that all of this, in the end, is about selling graham crackers and these are, at their basic form, advertisements. But you do have a company with a bottom line holding firm to their message, and in our culture of bullshit outrage and even bullshittier instant apologies, the importance of having a backbone should never be under-emphasized.

    Image via YouTube

  • Google Discusses New Campaign Type For Display Network

    Google hosted a “Hangout on Air” today about getting better performance out of Search Network with Display Select. This is a new hybrid campaign type, which the company says drives 35% better ROI for advertisers compared to the old Search and Display Networks campaign.

    In the hangout, Google Display Network product marketing manager Katie Hamilton speaks with Rich Griffin, the director of search engine marketing at Wordstream. They talk about what types of customers should try this campaign type, as well as some “success stories” and best practices.

    There’s also a Q&A.

    Image via YouTube

  • Infographic: Publishers Can Increase Revenue With Better Big Data Analysis

    Infographic: Publishers Can Increase Revenue With Better Big Data Analysis

    Yieldex has put out a new infographic about how publishers can stop missing out on lost revenue opportunities with more accurate forecasting. It analyzes how big data analysis of online ad inventory can result in more accurate forecasting and optimization, which it says can increase ad revenues up to 35% a year.

    It makes three main points: partial or inaccurate data hurts a publisher’s bottom line, selling audience rather than content lets publishers overcome massive online ad inventory overlap, and using optimized forecasting vs. ad server forecasting alone puts millions of ad dollars back on the table.

    Take a look:

    Last week, we looked at a report that found a lot of businesses are struggling with using big data, though it is a top priority.

    Image via Yieldex

  • YouTube Gives Brands Their Own Creator Playbook

    Google announced on Monday that it has created a new YouTube Creator Playbook for Brands.

    YouTube has had a “Creator Playbook” for years. It includes tips, best practices and strategies to help marketers build their audiences on the world’s largest video site. Now, brands get their own version.

    The Playbook is 100 pages long. Among its contents are: an introduction; steps to build a content plan; guiding principles; fundamentals to create content people love; tips on developing a programming strategy; optimization tips (metadata, thumbnails, annotations, playlists, channel experience); tips for promoting with paid media; tips for amplifying content through social media; tips for measuring; tracking tools overview; and glossary.

    In a blog post announcing the new Playbook, Vanessa Pappas, Global Head of Audience Development at YouTube does some mythbusting. Common myths, she says, include: Virality is the only measure of YouTube success; I can only be successful on my own; All videos must provide utility; People will watch my video where I want them to; and To keep viewers interested, I need to constantly reinvent my videos.

    “The most successful creators release episodic series to generate high sharing and viral activity, as one video will often break out and then introduce massive audiences to the entire series,” she says. While you should optimize your own channel for discovery, authentic collaborations with YouTube creators can be a hugely impactful way to help new viewers discover your brand.”

    “Don’t get us wrong, how-to and informational videos play a key role in a content strategy, but tapping into the cultural moments and memes that your audience is a part of on YouTube is an integral part of reaching new viewers,” Pappas says. “In reality, a significant percentage of your audience will discover your video from a social feed, search result, or a related video placement. You’ll know you’ve done your job when every episode of your show can be fully appreciated by a first time viewer.”

    This is a sample of the types of advice you can expect to find in the Playbook.

    Google says the original Playbook has helped over 2 million creators crow their audiences.

    Image via Google

  • Twitter Reportedly About To Launch App-Install Ads

    Twitter reportedly has a new mobile ad product in the works, which may launch in the coming weeks. It’s an app-install ad format, which would enable developers to get users to click to download their applications.

    This comes from Bloomberg News, which cites “people with knowledge of the matter”.

    The ads would reportedly appear in users’ Twitter feeds on their mobile devices, and would direct them to the advertiser’s page in a mobile app store where the app can be downloaded.

    Facebook has had such ads for roughly a year and a half, launching them in October of 2012. By the end of that year, the ads were already being used by 20% of the top grossing iOS apps.

    If brands really are growing “disillusioned” with Facebook, they’re going to want to see some more options come to market.

    According to Bloomberg’s sources, Twitter has been testing the new ads for at least a few weeks and one advertiser participating in tests found the ads to be “as effective” as Facebook’s.

    Twitter isn’t commenting on the ads.

    Image via Twitter

  • Gamers May Actually Prefer Freemium, Shows Report

    For the past few years a new pricing model has begun creeping into the games industry. Beginning on mobile devices, the so-called “freemium” model gives players a taste of a game for free while plastering the title with ads or holding back crucial gameplay elements or items behind paywalls.

    For some developers the freemium model has been a fantastic success. Games such as Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans have become cash cows for their developers through sales of optional power-ups or other in-game resources. The Angry Birds franchise grew on the back of large in-game ad banners. And now the freemium model is beginning to show up on PC and console game titles, often in multiplayer titles such as League of Legends.

    Despite protests from the traditional gaming crowd that most freemium titles are, by definition, broken and manipulative, the money these titles can bring in tells a different story: many gamers prefer their games to be free. A new report from research firm IHS and website WildTangent today confirmed as much.

    The report shows that 86% of WildTangent gamers surveyed by those companies prefer games to be free but with ads rather than pay upfront for a game without ads. Another 79% of those surveyed stated that they “like” receiving virtual items from ad clicks.

    The companies using the freemium model are seeing encouraging statistics as well. Value exchange ads in games were seen to increase the number of times players put extra money into a game by 120%. In-game ads are also more interactive, with the survey showing that game ads account for two times as many post-ad actions as live TV ads.

    Of course, these results mirror a segment of the gaming community that is already playing freemium games and in many cases does not have much experience with game titles outside of the casual mobile or online titles. Even so, the group makes up a growing contingent of overall gamers that will only grow as growth in the tablet and smartphone markets continues.

    “The research shows that gamers embrace value exchange ads, which demonstrates the progress the industry has made with advertising in and around video games,” said Christine Arrington, senior games analyst at IHS. “As gamers become more accustomed to in-game advertising, it becomes essential for brand marketers to find creative ways to use value exchange advertising while developers must ensure gamers have easy access to these offers.”

  • AOL Launches Programmatic Ad Platform ‘One’

    AOL Launches Programmatic Ad Platform ‘One’

    AOL has rebranded AOL Networks to AOL Platforms, and announced the launch of One, a cross-screen programmatic ad platform, which combines the teams and technologies behind Adap.tv, AdLearn Open Platform (AOP) and MarketPlace, and lives under the AOL Platforms brand.

    Here’s the official description for One:

    ONE will be the first platform that empowers brands with a holistic view of the consumer’s journey through the marketing funnel, and makes that insight actionable, in real-time on the platform. Development on ONE is underway and customers will be able to start using portions of the platform later this year. The single, unified platform takes media planning and management to a new level, with predictive analytics that provide immediate insights on metrics like reach, frequency, and performance, and post-campaign insights that look across all screens and formats to deliver immediate impact on brand metrics. It is completely format, screen and inventory agnostic – from video, display and TV, to tablet, desktop and mobile devices, to reserved and non-reserved inventory across AOL or any other publisher or media source.

    IPG Mediabrands plans to be the charter agency network partner for One. The news was announced at ad:tech in San Francisco.

    AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said, “AOL has spent the last four years building platforms to facilitate the efficient and effective flow of advertising dollars to digital. We build brands – our own, and those of more than 22,000 publishers in our global network and the thousands of marketers we work with daily to help them accomplish their business goals in today’s fast moving, dynamic market. On the platforms side of our business, as machines automate more media decisions across TV to digital, we are well-positioned to help advertisers, agencies and publishers realize the true value of data-driven advertising.”

    Bob Lord, CEO of AOL Platforms added, “Our industry has developed too many niche offerings and specialized services over the last 25 years, and chaos in ad tech is at an all-time high. The inefficiencies, ineffectiveness and expense of managing multiple teams, tools and metrics for display, mobile and video, across all devices, are stifling.”

    “The holy grail of marketing is helping marketers understand how direct response and brand budgets can interact together,” he said. “With the goal of driving economic efficiencies and media effectiveness, ONE ensures that data drives media selection and allocation, pricing and creative. It is the integrator of media across every screen and the automator of decisions that have long not needed human attention. I believe a platform like ONE – that is open and that doesn’t discriminate – will win.”

    “Our mission is to foster an open, global ecosystem that simplifies digital adverting, enabling customers to efficiently leverage the entire technology and data ecosystem,” Lord said. “Customers who have a commitment to an external partner for a piece of the ad tech stack will be able to integrate and plug that solution into our platform giving advertisers and publishers alike incredible flexibility with elements like data and attribution to join and manage all of their investments on a single platform in real time.”

    ONE will be sold as an enterprise solution, and will be used by AOL itself as its dedicated programmatic platform.

    Image via AOL

  • Kantar Media Compares 2013 Ad Spend Growth Across Media, Looks At Top 10 Advertisers

    Kantar Media has a new report out indicating that U.S. advertising expenditures increased 0.9% last year, driven mainly by large advertisers. Expenditures finished the year at $140.2 billion, with ad spending during Q4 up 1.6% year-over-year.

    Spending among the top ten advertisers reached $15,964.4 million, up 6.6% from the previous year with Pfizer putting in the highest growth rate.

    Check out the comparison between channels:

    As you can see, display ads showed strong growth compared to the rest.

    “Advertising growth eased in 2013 without the stimuli of Olympic and political spending. However, the market still registered a gain for the fourth consecutive year,” said Jon Swallen, Chief Research Officer at Kantar Media North America. “Although the macro theme of ad dollars moving to digital media still generates much discussion, another significant but less recognized trend has taken hold. The ad market is currently being carried by the Top 1000 advertisers who, as a group, are steadily spending more while the long-tail of small-sized marketers is sharply cutting back.”

    Here are the top spenders, according to the report:

    And the top categories:

    More analysis by channel, advertiser and category here.

    Images via Kantar Media

  • Google Analytics Gets Video Campaigns Report For TrueView Ads

    Google just announced the launch of a new Video Campaigns report in Google Analytics focusing on TrueView ads. Users will be able to use the report to see the “detailed effects” of their TrueView campaigns on their web traffic and revenue.

    When it’s available, you’ll be able to find it under Acquisition > AdWords > Video Campaigns. Data will show up in the report after about 24 following your creation of an auto-tagged TrueView ad in AdWords.

    “This report has the familiar look and feel of the other AdWords reports but includes TrueView-specific metrics like Paid Views, Cost Per View, and Website Clicks. There are also new metric groups like Engagement, which helps you understand how users engage with your video and your website,” says Google Analytics Product Manager Jon Mesh. “Using this newly available data, you can fine-tune your TrueView campaign settings to optimize for views, clicks, or goal conversions. You can also segment the reports by Ad Content or Video, helping you analyze the quality of your video creatives in the context of your website goals.”

    “In addition, since TrueView ads are often more brand-focused, traffic they generate to your site will often be indirect traffic,” he adds. “In order to analyze this type of traffic, check out the new Google Display Network Impression Reporting pilot, which can help you understand conversions that resulted from unclicked impressions or video views. With this report, it’s possible to see how your TrueView ads are generating value beyond just direct clicks; you can dive deeper to understand how impressions, views, and clicks all contributed directly or indirectly to conversions on your site.”

    The new report is rolling out to Google Analytics over the next few days.

    Earlier this month, Google announced some upcoming changes to TrueView ads, which will go into effect on April 15th. More on those here.

    Image via Google

  • Report: Native Advertising Flourishing (Especially In Social)

    It’s no secret that native advertising has been on the rise. According to a new report from eMarketer, it has been “flourishing” across social media channels, content portals, news sites, video-sharing sites, and streaming services. It’s giving a great deal of the credit to the growth in mobile use of all of these types of services.

    The firm recalls December data from BIA/Kelsey, estimating that native ad spending on social media would grow to $5 billion in 2017 (from $3.1 billion this year). They’re saying it will be as much as 42.4% of all social ad spending.

    Also in December, a report from Kontera found that native advertising consumption had jumped significantly over the previous few months, going from 7% in June to 44% in November.

    eMarketer reports, “For media publishers, native advertising represents an opportunity to reverse the tide of flat or declining revenues. eMarketer estimates US print ad spending will decline from $32.16 billion in 2014 to $31.29 billion in 2018. Digital ad spending on newspapers and magazines will increase to $8.41 billion by 2018, from $7.48 billion in 2014, but these gains will still leave the industry essentially flat for the forecast period. With these numbers as a backdrop, it’s easy to see why media companies are so eager to create new revenue streams through native ads.”

    One very interesting takeaway from the firm’s research, as Ad Age points out, is that native ads are actually helping display sales.

    In December, the IAB released its Native Advertising Playbook (which they just followed up on with the In-Image Advertising Primer).

    The playbook is aimed at giving marketers a consistent framework for the discussion surrounding native ads. It was released as the FTC put them in the spotlight, and warned publishers about illegal ones.

    The full eMarketer report is available here.

    Image via Kontera

  • Infographic Looks At Viewable Impressions’ Impact On Brand Lift

    Adconion Direct recently partnered with DoubleVerify and Millward Brown Digital to analyze the impact of viewable impressions on changes in brand lift. They’ve presented their findings in a new infographic.

    “One interesting finding the research uncovered that it’s not just enough to ensure your inventory is viewable, but that time ‘in view’ is a critical measure to increase brand lift and campaign performance,” a spokesperson tells WebProNews.

    Image via Adconion Direct

  • Facebook Stops Letting Pages Automatically Promote Posts

    A little over a year ago, Facebook added a feature to Pages to give admins the ability to automatically promote page posts, in order to help the Page get more likes. Now, it seems that Facebook is taking this feature away.

    AllFacebook shares a screenshot it was sent by a reader, which shows a dialogue box telling the Page admin, “To make sure you’re only boosting your most important content, we no longer automatically promote new Page posts.”

    In the comments of that report, another user said they saw the feature going away as early as March 11th, and another said their Facebook Ads rep confirmed that the feature would be removed, noting that it had already been removed from the agency profile dashboards.

    Facebook has made a lot of changes to its Ad platform over the past year, since the feature was first introduced, in an effort to simplify things. In June, the compay announced it was getting rid of over half of its ad units.

    While this move perhaps eliminates some simplicity for advertisers who didn’t want to have to think about what exactly they were promoting day-to-day, it does fall in line with Facebook’s other initiative of enhancing the quality of the content users find in their News Feeds, even if its methods leave a great deal to be desired.

    Earlier this week, Forrester’s principal analyst Nate Elliott blogged about how brands are becoming “disillusioned” with Facebook both on the paid and organic side of things.

    Still, Facebook’s share of the global ad market is growing rapidly.

    Image via Facebook

  • Brands Are Probably Overusing Facebook Hashtags

    #Brands #need #to #stop #being #so #hashtagheavy.

    Simply put, your Facebook posts are way less engaging when you overuse the hashtag. Sure, hashtags can be a great tool for brands to utilize across a wide range of social platforms-but when it comes to Facebook, less is more.

    Socialbakers crunched some data from over 200,000 brand posts on Facebook on found that the moment brands start to load up on hashtags in their post, the fewer interactions they receive.

    “Be careful about how many hashtags you use in your brand’s posts. Just as using too many hashtags is generally considered bad form on personal profiles, it applies doubly for brands. As we said before in our report on Instagram, abusing hashtags is bad practice, and a major red flag for users, regardless of network. We looked at branded Facebook posts from last month, and our findings support that consensus,” says the social analytics company.

    Just how much does your brand’s post suffer from over-hashtagging?

    Well, the average number of interactions with posts containing 1 or 2 hashtags was 593. When a post had 3 to 5 hashtags, the interactions dropped to 416. Posts crowded with 6 to 10 hashtags only received 307 interactions on average.

    And posts bogged down with ten or more hashtags only got 188 average interactions. It’s a smooth slope down for brands who over-hashtag.

    You have to make those hashtags count. Make sure they’re capitalizing on a trending topic, so your post has a greater chance of getting caught in Facebook’s trending stories net.

    Of course, getting users to interact with your posts requires the user actually seeing your post. Once a certainty, it’s now incredibly hard for brands to organically reach their followers with content. And the super bad news is that it’s probably going to get worse.

    Image via Flickr Creative Commons, Davis Staedtler

  • Pinterest Ads Aren’t Going To Be Cheap

    Pinterest Ads Aren’t Going To Be Cheap

    It looks like advertising on Pinterest is going to be pretty costly, at least at first.

    The company first announced its forthcoming ads back in September, and began testing Promoted Pins shortly thereafter, but only in search results or category feeds. And again, these were only tests. We’ve yet to see the real product come to light.

    When we do, which will presumably be in the near future, we can expect to see some big name brands.

    AdAge reports, citing three executives briefed on the company’s ad pitch, that it is seeking spending commitments between one and two million dollars, and is looking to price CPMs between $30 and $40.

    AdAge reporter Cotton Delo likens Pinterest’s strategy to that of Instagram, which he notes “tested its first ads last fall with brands like Burberry, Levi’s and Lexus and has emphasized high-quality imagery and been slow to bring new advertisers into the fold.”

    Here’s what Promoted Pins look like:

    As you can see, they are clearly labeled “Promoted Pin”.

    While they may only appear on search results and category pages for now, it remains to be see whether they will make their way to users’ home feeds.

    Pinterest has been working on a personalization feature, which could eventually come into play.

    While separate from the ads, Pinterest recently launched a dedicated feed for e-commerce pins, which provides another way for businesses to get some action from the site.

    image via Pinterest