Tag Archives: mobile

Next to Now: Video Ads Take Their Place at the Front of the Stage

As video options expand far beyond YouTube, Spotify joins the fray with new video options. Where does this leave advertisers?:

“In a world where video ad inventory is at a premium, premium content to place against it is just as valuable. So if you’re the one creating the content that viewers want to see, then you’re definitely in the catbird seat, as companies like Spotify and others expand their scope into the video space. That means that Spotify will need a strong video advertising offer, particularly in the mobile space, as creators will only stay on board for as long as they’ are seeing the ROI.”

Paul Ford’s highly entertaining, informative, and looooooong piece on coding might come in handy before your next meeting with that new marketing start-up.

SnapChat takes the stage in Cannes with some advice: shoot your video vertically.

Facebook makes sure their engineers are keenly aware of user experience in different countries and communities and with different devices and connection speeds: It’s important for everyone in the advertising industry to think through the user’s experience.

Related: Last week’s link to Guardian piece calling out the Cannes advertising juries on giving awards to agencies that are more successfully marketing their wares to other people in advertising than they are to the people who might actually buy the product on offer.

Nieman Labs is one of many business news outlets to report on the ad blocking capabilities of the iOS9 release, and the dangers of ad blocking for content providers—not to mention the advertisers who love their audiences, which, obviously, includes us:

“A blow for mobile advertising: The next version of Safari will let users block ads on iPhones and iPads”

Another study about the effectiveness of TV, this one from CBS:

“In cross-platform campaigns, TV soundly trumps digital in both spending and reach.”

Photo of the stage at the 2015 Tony Awards (c) Sarah Moses

Next to Now: Keep Your Eyes on Instagram and Pinterest

While last week’s BEA got everyone in publishing talking about the feast of great new books coming out—including new novels from Jonathan Franzen, Garth Risk Hallberg, and Ottessa Moshfegh—the advertising and tech worlds kept their eyes on developments with Instagram and Pinterest. Here’s a sampling of some of the press for anyone too busy recovering from BEA to keep up with it all.

Instagram opens up its ad platform:

Business Insider gets into the increased ability to target: 

“On Tuesday, the photo sharing service, which Facebook bought in 2012 for $1 billion, announced that by this winter, it will begin to use more data from your Facebook profile to target you with more relevant ads.”

The New York Times writes about the revenue generating potential of this move:

“Collectively, the expanded advertising options signal that Facebook is becoming serious about making money from Instagram, which has a younger audience than the main Facebook social network, whose core users are middle-age mothers.”

 ClickZ goes a little deeper into the targeting options this move is opening up:

“Instagram is also enhancing its targeting beyond demographics like age, location and gender. By working with Facebook to reach users based on interests, as well as consumer data that businesses already have, the photo-sharing platform plans to help advertisers tailor their messages so users see ads based on the things they care about.”

As a bonus, here’s a little infographic about optimal Instagram posting strategy.

 

Pinterest adds a buy button.

The New York Times reports on this:

“Pinterest does not plan to make money off e-commerce the traditional way, by taking a cut of retailers’ transactions. Instead, the company said, it would make money selling promoted-pins advertisements to retailers, who can then insert buyable pins into those ads.”

 ClickZ has a question:

“Pinterest has unveiled transactional pins. Will its ‘Buy Button’ work better than Twitter’s and Facebook’s version?”

TechCrunch quotes the Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann on the need for a better mobile transaction experience (a need Pinterest is trying to address with transactional pins):

“Right now since everyone uses their phone, but it’s still a pain to buy things. There are fiddly menus, you have to squint to see the images.”

Business Insider on the mobile first approach to this development:

“Pinterest found that 85% of people who use Pinterest were doing it from their phones. So, the team made the buying experiences as mobile-friendly as possible. Buy buttons will roll out on iPhones and iPads by the end of the month, with the desktop experience and other phone operating systems, like Android or Windows, coming soon after.”

A few interesting articles from the week that have nothing to do with Pinterest or Instagram:

“Emails are definitely the new old blogs.” A round table on the past, present and future of the email newsletter.

Several paid and free content distribution channels worth knowing about.

Local search goes mobile, desktop search drops:

“eMarketer expects mobile to overtake desktop for US search ad dollars this year . . . At the same time, there will be 156.4MM mobile phone search users in the US, representing 49% of the population.”

A great piece on art, advertising, and design intelligence in posters from Hyperallergic.

 

 

Next to Now: BEA Edition

Here’s what we’re reading this week in ad tech and online trends that matter to the book publishing industry.

In a coup, would this be a strategic guerilla base? Is somebody who looks like Gary Shtynegart getting better treatment than you? Take the quiz to find out if you are at BEA or the world’s worst airport! (via LitHub)

Mary Meeker, Mary Meeker! The latest edition of the most prominent internet trends report is out. We particularly like what she has to say about the evolution of content discovery (slide 7), business growth in sharing businesses over product businesses  (slides 120-123), and “Key Design Concepts that Have Made a Difference” (slides 182-184)

Hub Spot breaks out the top eight charts from the Meeker report, including acceleration in mobile video watching, increase in vertical viewing (thanks to mobile), and the increased male usage of Pinterest.

Where social meets search:

“Facebook has begun testing a feature that offers reviews from publications like Bon Appétit, Conde Nast Traveler, and the San Francisco Chronicle to rival Yelp’s crowdsourced reviews.”

Assuming this works well, can a version involving books be far behind?

The press discovers the book business (must be BEA again):

“Publishers embrace ‘bookiness.’”

Relevant clickbait, “7 Bookstores Too Beautiful for Words.”

The best thing about this Snapchat article (*another* Snapchat article?) is the chart about social network user share, by age group.

Podcasts are broadening the reach of public radio (this good news for podcast advertisers, too): “NPR podcasts are reaching younger, more diverse audiences.”

Photo of the Javits pigeon published on Twitter by Patrick Brown

Next to Now: Start-of-Summer Edition

Got some time on your hands as you head into the long weekend?
Here’s a list of good, quick reads on book-related advertising. This week featuring video on Spotify, new ads on Pinterest, thoughts on why calendars suck, & more . . .

 

Looking to sell directly? YouTube gets an upgrade to allow for shopping within videos.

When “Listen up” cross-fades into “Take a look”: Spotify moves into video.

ALL ABOUT PINTEREST:

Benedict Evans shows how the roles of PC and Mobile computing have switched:

“…We should rather think of the PC as having the basic, cut-down, limited version of the internet, because it only has the web. It’s the mobile that has the whole internet.”

Should you develop an app or a Web site? It all comes down to your relationship with the consumer.

When a debate about calendars turns into a debate about workflow, creativity, and getting things done:

“All calendars suck. And they all suck in the same way. Calendars are a record of interruptions.”

Tips on retargeting and why it’s important:

“Only 2% of traffic converts on the first visit to a website. I repeat, 2%.”

 

 

Next to Now: Grow Your Presence

 

Mobile ads are sucking up our data plans (says mobile ad blocker, Shine): “Shine estimates that, depending on your geography, ads are using up 10-50% of user’s data plans (and not to mention sucking up battery life, and making load times slower.)”

Despite Concerns, Interest in Mobile Audience Targeting Rises.

Pandora or Spotify? Spotify or Pandora? In the race for digital music subscribers, it’s a two-horse race. We know who has the most listeners. But the scrap for the best listeners is ongoing.

From the brilliant Web scourers at Dark Matter: “File under ‘what we all knew already, but can now prove with data’ : Pinterest is a great predictor of life events.”

If personalization seems “invasive and robotic” to your customers, just call it “relevancy.” Easy peasy! (We would file this under ‘marketing hooey,’ a language we think does a disservice to consumers, clients, and the marketing agencies that practice it. Stop trying to outsmart customers, and start treating them like you’d like to be treated. Is that so hard?

Facebook carousel format now available for mobile app ads. We’re looking forward to trying this out!

 

 

Mad. Sq. Art: Teresita Fernández

Next to Now: What Do You See on the Horizon?

This week’s feature image is from Teresita Fernández’s “Fata Morgana” up now at Madison Square Park.

Good news for advertisers who need more room to work with on mobile: Phablets on the march. (via Benedict Evans) #mobile

New Pew data suggests the mobile tide has turned: “At the start of 2015, 39 of the top 50 digital news websites have more traffic to their sites and associated applications coming from mobile devices than from desktop computers”

(via Benedict Evans) #mobile

“Brands to Spend More on Original Digital Video but Worry about Its ROI”: This is particularly an issue for book publishers who have tighter budgets than many businesses. We’ve been through the cycle of producing a lot of video but not always seeing the return on investment. Until there’s a cheaper way to do it (and there will be soon, we bet), book publishers will probably be relatively low on the scale of video ad spending, even though video ad performance is always tops. #video

There’s a new Snapchat share feature for Discover. #mobile

Facebook creates “native ad” template that runs “programmatically.” At a certain point these terms become meaningless. #native #programmatic #meaningless

“Are newsrooms going to behave more like advertisers?” They already are (and in some ways, not all but some, this is a good thing). #mobile

Snapchat “Discover” ads down to 2 cents per user. We’re not sure how this Discover platform is working—it started off strong but the numbers fell off pretty quickly—but it’s worth watching. #mobile #social

Updates to Facebook, Snapchat, and Google mobile ad platforms, worth watching. #mobile #social

Type as eye candy! We like. #mobile #design

Next to Now: What Are You Building?

A Week in Reading Book-Related Ad Tech, Link by Link

For the Week Ending May 1, 2015

New data on who’s gaming now. This has been true for a long time but it’s always worth reminding people (and by “people” we mean ourselves): teen boys aren’t the only one’s gaming. Also, there’s new data on how people are gaming, which is important to note:

Smartphones may have been used less than PCs and consoles among gaming households in the ESA study, but among the population as a whole, mobile is far more popular.

#gaming

 

Laura Olin has been running an amazing, unclassifiable newsletter, every week something different, for a while. She’s just started doing it under the auspices of The Awl. Here’s where you can find out how to subscribe.

#email

 

In the rush to reach audiences on mobile, don’t forget desktop. While a large percentage of purchase research is done on mobile, the bulk of online buying still happens on desktop—behaviors that point to the importance of cross-device targeting.

#mobile

 

Snapchat’s Discover traffic drops. That’s not surprising. The question is how will it evolve as the platform matures.

#mobile

 

“Creatives need more data” says this article lead—but what the creatives really say is that they need more time and money.

#data

 

Is Joseph Mitchell still one of the all-time greats in creative non-fiction if his non-fiction was more “fiction” than “non-”?

#publishing

 

Good news from Hulu: Subscribers up 50% in 2015, Total streams up 77%, New investments in content, Programmatic and Custom ads coming.

#video

 

“At NewFronts 2015, BuzzFeed introduced POUND, which allows advertisers to track distribution across social media, and a new distribution analytics platform to show how videos perform over time.”

#data

 

Do you have a strategy for interacting with readers during “micro-moments”?

#mobile

 

With Viacom’s “Vantage,” is TV media buying getting the data boost we’ve been waiting for? “Vantage is a bit of like a computer dating service. The client inputs the sort of traits it looks for in a customer, and Vantage’s proprietary algorithm spits out a list of shows where the two are most likely to intersect.”

#tv #data

 

Amazon experiments with ads on Kindle. Among the new ad offerings, William Boyd writes a “brand-relevant” story sponsored by Land Rover, distributed for free on Kindle.

#native

 

An interesting new mobile video ad unit—with content keyed to the article the user is reading. The more relevant tech can make our ads to users the better.

#mobile #video

Next to Now: The Week in Reading Links

Reading in book-related ad tech for the week ending April 17, 2015

April 11, 2015

The rise of messaging: Big 4 messaging app users now equal big 4 social network users.  #mobile

April 13, 2015

How the New York Times is becoming a mobile-first company according to Marc Frons, SVP, CIO NYT. (Via Benedict’s Newsletter No. 107) #mobile

90% of attendees at Coachella (600k people last year), use iPhones. Does this tell you more about iPhones or Coachella?(Via Benedict’s Newsletter No. 107) #mobile

“79 Theses on Technology for Disputation.” (Via Alexis Madrigal’s “Real Future”) #metatech

“The Cost of Paying Attention.” Cluttered environments that leave people feeling anxious is neither good for the people we’re advertising to, nor is it good for the products we’re advertising. It’s worth heeding even if (especially because?) this guy is taking aim at the ads that our bread-and-butter.  (Via “79 Theses…”) #metatech

“Surveillance as the normative form of care.” And, I’d add, as the normative form of education, marketing, policing, etc. etc.  (Via “79 Theses…”) #metatech

Six reasons to advertise in newspapers. For one, print newspapers index much higher for reader engagement and trust. #print

April 14, 2015

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is producing a series of videos in which contemporary artists talk about a piece in the Met’s collection that holds resonance for them. The latest features Nayland Blake talking about a work from Mali: “So much of its meaning as a sculpture is bound up, not in what you can see on the outside, but what it contains within.” #art

What moms want. Mother’s Day discovery tips from Bing researchers. (True, no one uses their search engine, but their research is top notch. Via Click Z’s “De-Averaging Moms” post) #moms #targeting

April 15, 2015

Speaking of surveillance: Is this the location-based advertising we’ve been waiting for? Tracking not just where you’ve been on the Web, but where you’ve been in real-life. #mobile #targeting

Ray Ozzie on what the rise of messaging means for work flow is worth listening to (even if it’s real purpose is to serve up his new app, Talko) #metatech

Native Advertising, by the numbers.  #native

The numbers on native mobile ads are (not surprisingly) good: “Research released in October 2014 by Polar showed higher clickthrough rates (CTRs) for native ads run on mobile compared with desktop in the US and UK. Average CTR for native placements on tablets was 0.28%, and smartphones were right behind at 0.27%. Meanwhile, CTR for desktop native ads was just 0.15%.” #native #mobile

April 16, 2015

“Gaming content remains one of best ways to reach young men.” Data from YouTube show how deeply pervasive gaming culture is, and how to reach the market. #gaming #targeting

Why it feels good to hear, read and watch stories, and why podcasts are particularly good at hooking us in. #podcasts

Playlist targeting comes to Spotify. Target readers of health books during their “Workout” playlist, cookbooks during their “Cooking” playlists, how-to readers during their “Cleaning” playlists, and more. #targeting

Everyone wants in on the video ad sales boom, even print magazines. And in a nifty meta-moment, the article about the ad features a video of the magazine playing the video. #wowfactor

Click Z works the numbers on why email remains the workhorse of digital marketing strategy. #email

Business Insider’s shameless with the click bait, but for advertising people these “Best of 2014” digital campaigns are great inspiration.   #inspiration

 

 

 

Next to Now: The Week in Reading Links

The Week in Reading Ending April 3
March 30, 2015

Digital natives would just as soon read it in print. 

March 31, 2015

Mobile messaging apps are the one category of app that retains its users. While current advertising options are beyond the reach of most book publishers. We’re watching this space closely for developments in ad products and lower prices.

Here’s another reason to think about messaging apps:  Over 50% of WeChat and Snapchat users are Mobile Shoppers. So get your mobile commerce on. (Via @PeterMcCarthy)

Here’s an interesting piece in the UK’s Bookseller about the potential connections between video game publishing and book publishing. Its insights about production and marketing are not applicable to all kinds of publishing, of course (no insights are true across a field as diverse as book publishing), but it’s worth thinking through.

As an advertising agency, we’re in the business of knowing as much about the users we’re sending ads to as possible. As an integral part of the book publishing ecosystem, we’re committed to both free speech and privacy.  In both those roles, we were keenly interested in this interview between two brilliant legal scholars with a literary bent. It serves as a strong corrective to the endless praise for Big Data, secret algorithms, and behavior-shaping policies. (via Alexis Madrigal’s Real Future newsletter)

This ad industry news reflects broader trends and also is good news for one of Verso’s ad partners: WPP keeps up the acquisitions, adds to Xaxis’s capabilities with mobile-first company Action X.

Is it time for the ad industry to lose its reliance on cookies?

Media buyers are planning on upping programmatic spend by 21% this year, but media suppliers (web publishers, etc) said they only expected to boost their programmatic sales by 4% this year. Something’s gotta give, and it’s probably the quality of the impression.

The New York Times is ready to boil down the news to one sentence to better fit new devices. How do you write a one-sentence news story, as distinct from a headline and a teaser? That might be a good new class to teach in J-School.

April 1, 2015

You should take notes by hand, not on a laptop. (Via everyone, but we saw it first from @timoreilly)

April 2, 2015

Eric Greitens gives a mid-air reading from his book Resilience, then helps an ailing passenger with techniques from the book. People, this is how you do an event.

Great interview with design star Michael Bierut. Love the 100-day project! (Via Dark Matter by Almighty)

“Capitalism is at its core a diverse, intimate network of human and non-human relations.” Doesn’t sound so bad when you put it that way. Here’s a new perspective on what they heck we’re all doing at work every day from “A Feminist Manifesto for the Study of Capitalism.” (via Alexis Madrigal’s Real Future newsletter)

“I still read the newspapers and scream every morning.” Seymour Hersch thinks we’ll be OK in a world where BuzzFeed and Gawker are the future of journalism. Also, we’ll always have the New York Times.

“A team losing a game is not a ‘disaster.’” The AP Stylebook gets real about hackneyed sports cliches.

Next to Now: A Week in Reading Links

Union Square - Spring Tulips

Links for the week ending March 27, 2015
March 23, 2015

Good piece on designing for how we read. It’s about designing responsive web sites, but has implications for anyone who’s making consumable information (including book ads!). Via @hawkt.

March 24, 2016

How’s your mobile strategy coming? According to this article in eMarketer, “Mobile Will Account for 72% of US Digital Ad Spend by 2019.” They think this will come about because of “consumer usage” (you think?) and better ad formats (an agency can hope!).

March 25, 2015

“It’s go-time for Facebook Auto-Play Video ads.” It’s a great format, but you have to have the chops for it.

Here’s an ad to inspire you. And by “inspire” we mean literally (“inspire: To draw in by the operation of breathing; to inhale”). It’s made out of water vapor you can breathe in, or blow away.

OK, OK, we admit it: this Fran Lebowitz interview is pretty great. (Via everybody on Twitter)

Good thinking on responsive design from the Associate Director of Audience Development at the NYT. I remain a pro-responsive design guy, but his arguments are worth a good think.

Great tips on setting the stage for productive feedback, useful for any creative enterprise, including ads! Via @Almighty

March 26, 2015

A new report on the US Digital Display Market says Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo own nearly half of all digital display ads now, and more to come.

CJR has a good take on Facebook’s move to take control of more news content, and its relationship to Snapchat’s Discover platform. 

The CJR also has a good piece on podcasts that lays out the landscape for producers, listeners, and advertisers:

“But the real reason established media companies are starting to take podcasts seriously has more to do with the nature of their listeners. Podcast consumers, according to Edison Research, listen to an average of six episodes per week. Once they find a podcast they like, they tend to be devoted. The medium feels intimate. Unlike the audience online, which tends to click through and then bounce away quickly, podcasts draw people in for the duration of the episode. They feel a deep, personal connection with the hosts.”