Monthly Archives: November 2015

Next to Now: Giving Thanks Edition

Next to Now, , , , , , ,

 

We’re getting this week’s Next to Now out a little early so you can focus the rest of the week on family, friends, food, and giving thanks.

 

A STORY ABOUT HUMAN GENEROSITY (AND AD TARGETING)

This is first of all a moving story about a person in need reaching out and another person responding. But, in the context of this blog of marketing links, it’s also a reminder that serendipity in advertising can sometimes deliver results more powerfully than the acutest targeting.   

#targeting

 

MARKETERS SAY OTHER PEOPLE’S EMAILS WASTE THEIR TIME

An eMarketer survey reveals that U.S. marketers find excessive emails are tied with wasteful meetings for the biggest thing that’s getting in the way of doing their work. No comment on their own fondness for sending emails as a successful marketing tactic.

#email

 

SNAPCHAT’S AD BUSINESS IN TROUBLE

That is, it’s in trouble given its $16 billion valuation:

“Snapchat lost more than $128 million in the first 11 months of 2014, according to a financial statement leaked earlier this year, which also showed Snapchat had revenue of $3.1 million. Its advertising business began in mid-October. Tech media outlet Re/code estimated that Snapchat’s revenue could reach $50 million in 2015.”

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has stated that he is not in favor of hyper-targeting his users with ads, but that might have to change if he wants to make good on the promise investors saw in his company.

…which may be a reason there are signs that Snapchat’s loosening up its data restrictions. 

#snapchat #social

 

SERIAL PODCAST ON PANDORA

Streaming successful podcasts such as Serial on Pandora has a major advantage for advertisers over downloading—with streaming we can see click throughs and collect data. With downloaded podcasts, the ads have no ability to click through. If you were hoping to advertise on Serial through Pandora, however, you’ll have to wait until next year: Warner Brothers and Esurance have locked up the slots for Seasons 1 and 2.

#podcast #streaming #pandora

 

BILL SIMMONS

Is it a coincidence that the acronym for the Bill Simmons Podcast Network from ex-ESPN gadfly Bill Simmons is BSPN?

#podcast

 

GAWKER SHIFTS AGAIN

Once the shining star of internet snarkiness, Gawker has been publically wrestling with its own identity a lot recently. Their new turn is to politics. We’ll see if the grande dame of snark can pull it off.

#gawker

 

WHAT’S BETTER FOR VIDEO ADS, FACEBOOK OR YOUTUBE?

A study by Reebok compared the same video buy across Facebook and YouTube–comparing cost, view-throughs, and engagement rates. The results seemed to favor YouTube, but suggested a combination by might be better still:  

“The results showed that combining YouTube and Facebook buys is the most effective method for marketers. Reebok shared the data during Adweek’s Executive Lab, which was sponsored by Pixability, in New York on Thursday.

    YouTube had a higher video view rate (23.6 percent of people who scrolled past the video viewed it versus Facebook’s 5.4 percent) and video completion rate (20.4 percent versus Facebook’s 4.5 percent) as well as a lower cost per view. But Facebook had higher engagement.”

#video #facebook #youtube

 

THE FIRST VR ADS HIT FACEBOOK

Facebook puts that $2B purchase of Oculus Rift to work with a first look at virtual reality ads for brands such as AT&T, Nestle, Mondelez, and Samsung.  

#vr #facebook

 

ARE GIFS THE FUTURE OF ADVERTISING?

No, but they’re a great way to get attention right now—especially if you have a video-based phenomenon to market that has lots of moments you can edit, share, and plug into a gif search engine under “YOLO,” “What’s up,” or “OMFG.” The money quote comes from Riffsy CEO David MacIntosh”:

“Three to five seconds is the new three to five minutes.”

#creative

 

CATS ON MOTOBIKES

You’d think IAMS marketers would have it easy: cute cat and dog .gifs all day long. Turns out they’re not just churning the content out, but thinking carefully of editing spots to work differently on different media. A cute cat video for TV needs to run differently than a cute cat video on Facebook. Same shoot, different edit.  

#video #facebook #cats

Next to Now: Improve Your Social Life Edition

Next to Now, , , , , , , , ,
This weeks’s Next to Now includes links to articles on standing out on Snapchat, partnering with Instagram, and checking out an experiment that gives people a real, human stake in an outdoor ad campaign. 
HOW TO STAND OUT ON SNAPCHAT

This article gives a good primer about strategies to get a presence on Snapchat without shelling out the $750,000 per day spend. We’ve noticed that many of our clients are on board with recommendation number one: Replace your Twitter Avatars with Snapcodes.

#social #snapchat

 

INSTAGRAM ANNOUNCES PARTNER PROGRAM

Instagram announces a partnership with forty outside companies to help with various phases of Instagram advertising: from planning and execution to content partnerships. This Business Insider article talks about what this means. 

#social #instagram

 

EXTREME OUTDOOR

Reality TV meets outdoor advertising with an Xbox campaign: eight people are standing outside on a London billboard undergoing arctic blasts and continual video streaming while viewers can vote on what kind of conditions they should be subjected to. Last one standing “wins.” The real winner, of course, is Xbox.

#creative #outdoor

 

MILLENNIAL MOMS BUY ON MOBILE

According to this eMarketer article, mobile is the way to reach young moms, not just with information, but increasingly with buy links:

“According to September 2015 research by Roth Capital Partners (ROTH), almost half (46.8%) of mother internet users ages 20 to 35 primarily made digital purchases via their mobile phone or tablet.”

#mobile #moms #millennials

 

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRAND AND DIRECT MARKETING?

This Seth Godin article articulates the difference between brand and direct marketing in a way that might have seemed self-evident 20 years ago, but has become increasingly clouded in a world filled with data where every ad budget has to respond in some way to data. This is a crucial question for book publishers, which used to be 100% clear that they were doing brand advertising — leaving the direct marketing to booksellers. But in the world of digital advertising and direct selling by book publishers (however low a priority it remains) those distinctions are getting cloudy.

#advertising

 

DON’T WORRY ABOUT BEATING AD BLOCKERS, WORRY ABOUT BETTERING YOUR GAME

The IAB makes the case that ad blocking is best addressed not by blocking ad blockers, but by fixing the “pain points” that cause people to want ad blockers: slow loading pages because of tracking software, roll-overs, endless surveys, etc.

#adblocking

 

SNAPCHAT GAINS ON FACEBOOK IN VIDEO

This article in the FT reports that Snapchat is generating 6 billion video views on its app every day. This is triple what they were seeing in May, and approaching FB’s 8 billion video views per day. This article in Business Insider is where you can read about it if you’re not an FT subscriber. 

#video #facebook #snapchat

 

PANDORA AIMS TO IMPROVE MOBILE USER DATA

As desktop use (and therefore use of cookies) declines, Pandora is taking steps to get better at identifying users on mobile devices.

#pandora #targeting

Next to Now: “Fall Back” Edition

Next to Now, , , , , , , ,
With the end of Daylight Savings Time on Sunday, we enter the homestretch of the year. Here’s some of what we’ve been reading this week—looking forward even as we “fall back.”
SHOULD FOLLOWER COUNT DETERMINE WORTH?

It’s a question that depends on context. For regular everyday products like shoes, toasters, or books, the answer is a clear yes—more followers means your promotional dollar goes farther. But for “high art”—where value is supposedly determined by long-term aesthetic value more than short-term commercial ups and downs—the question becomes more complicated. A Dutch artist is playing with this line, and in the process reveals some uncomfortable truths about what’s behind some of those large follower counts.

Related from AdWeek: “How Celebrities’ With the Best Instagram Engagement are Helping Brands.”

#social #instagram #caveatemptor

 

SERIAL IS COMING TO PANDORA

The next edition of the revolutionary podcast “Serial” will be running on Pandora. That means there should be many more ways to advertise on it than through a single sold-out sponsorship. They aren’t saying when the second season will start yet, but Pandora has announced that season one will be available for listening as of Nov 24.

#mobile #pandora #serial #podcast

 

APPS OR BROWSERS?

In all the debate about whether the present and future of mobile is in apps or on browsers, it’s good to see an article that draws distinctions. That is, it depends. And in some cases, especially news, readers are split:

“For example, 36% of respondents said they mostly used apps to read entertainment news. But 37% said they mostly used a browser. For human interest stories, 36% turned to apps and 38% to mobile browsers. And for science or technology news, the breakdowns were identical, at 38% each.”

#mobile #browsers #apps #news

 

WILL LOUSY CREATIVE SPOIL INSTAGRAM FOR THE REST OF US?

As Instagram opens up its API, some marketers are afraid of the coming wave of ads. Will a billion terrible ads ruin our sandbox? The answer, as always, is to make creative that’s the best fit for book, reader, and audience platform.

#mobile #adtech #bepartofthesolution

 

PROGRAMMATIC OUTDOOR

Google recently announced a test of adding outdoor billboard inventory to their DoubleClick system. While there are various programmatic options available to us among current outdoor companies–including geo-fencing and app network buys tied into outdoor displays–the scale of Google’s reach make this a potential game changer. According to Business Insider,

 

“If the project proves successful, advertisers might soon be able to buy billboard ads using Google’s DoubleClick technology, which will pull in historical and real-time data signals — including audience, weather, travel information, sporting events, and scores — to decide which creative messages to display, which billboards to display them on, and the best time for them to run.”

File this under experiments to watch.

#outdoor #programmatic #experimentstowatch #media

 

BOOMERS UNDER-INDEX FOR SMARTPHONE ADOPTION

Next to Now focuses on the near-future of marketing, but it’s worth remembering that our bread-and-butter work comes from selling books right now to readers who are buying them right now.  And that means the Boomer generation. So it’s worth noting that Boomers are not as easily reached with mobile marketing as the Millennials. Only 42% of Boomers own a smartphone, and those that do own a smartphone do not live through it to the extent that younger generations do. Worth considering when you’re putting together a media plan.

#mobile #boomers #media

 

“BUSTLE HAS A BABY”

A nearly-slightly-but-not-all-the-way-snarky article on the New Yorker’s site announces that Bustle (a site and magazine we like a lot) is starting a new website for millennial moms, Romper. Bustle’s managing editor, Margaret Wheeler Johnson, provides the money quote:

“The media talks about millennials as if they are the kids, and, actually, they’re having kids.”

Good point.

#millennials #moms #media

 

THIS MUST BE SERIOUS

Even Facebook’s worried about ad blockers. From a new regulatory filing:

“Revenue generated from the display of ads on personal computers has been impacted by these technologies from time to time. As a result, these technologies have had an adverse effect on our financial results and, if such technologies continue to proliferate, in particular with respect to mobile platforms, our future financial results may be harmed.”

#adblocking #facebook