Tag Archives: native

Next to Now: Advertising Week Edition

Today is the final day of the 2015 Advertising Week, so the studies and new ad product announcements have been coming in fast and furious. Here is a selection of the news that we think will help book publishers reach their marketing goals in the coming year.

 

YOUTUBE ADS BECOME SHOPPABLE

YouTube is rolling out an ad product that makes any video shoppable—not just videos that you produce, upload and control, but those from other sources as well. This is a great opportunity to drive sales whether it’s directly to a retailer or to a page that offers several retail options.

#video #youtube #direct

 

PANDORA V. SPOTIFY

The two streaming services have proven to be very strong venues for advertising books. While they are similar in many ways, their differences are at least as important when planning your ad campaigns. When considering one service versus the other for an ad campaign, this article in Adweek is a good place to start:

“Pandora’s radio-like service is based on data—including email addresses, ages and gender— collected from 250 million registered users . . . 85 percent of listening is done on mobile, which is used as a major selling point in convincing brands to buy more smartphone and tablet-size promos. Unlike Pandora’s model, Spotify is an on-demand service that lets music fans listen to playlists or a series of songs . . . 50 percent of Spotify’s streams come from users physically pressing play.”

#streaming #pandora #spotify

 

ARE GAMING CONSOLES THE NEW CABLE TV?

Adweek says yes:

“Just as cell phones evolved into smart mobile devices capable of replacing laptops and desktop computers, gaming consoles have a chance to make cable boxes obsolete. In-console consumption habits have jumped in recent years, per Nielsen. On Xbox One, 51 percent of users watched video on-demand in 2014, up from only 26 percent of Xbox 360 users back in 2010. Likewise, 42 percent of PS4 gamers used streaming subscription services like Netflix and Hulu compared to just 23 percent of Playstation 3 users back in 2010.”

 

#gaming #targeting

 

REACHING MOMS WITH VIDEO

Google makes the case that YouTube is a great way to reach moms, especially through how-to and DIY videos:

83% of moms search for answers to their questions online. And of those, three in five turn to online video in particular.”

#video #moms

 

BEN EVANS ON ADVERTISING ECOSYSTEMS

This 16z podcast features a fascinating conversation between Chris Dixon and Ben Evans about the advertising ecosystem: they touch on payment systems, first-rate journalism bundled with 3rd-rate ad products, user identity, and native advertising (“ads that people actually like”), and how ads have increasingly become unbundled from content.

#advertising #native

 

 

COMSCORE MOBILE REPORT HIGHLIGHTS

Highlights include:

  • All forms of usage are growing: desktop (+16%), mobile app (+90%), and mobile Web (+53%).
  • Mobile now represents 62% of all digital time spent.
  • App usage time skews toward smartphones for Millennials and tablets for older demos.
  • Mobile audience growth is being driven by mobile Web properties which are bigger and growing faster than apps.
  • Millennials mobile usage time is devoted to social, video, music, and communications.
  • Mobile ads work: they cause brand lift 2-3x greater than that of desktop ads

#mobile #data

 

IAB UPDATES AD GUIDELINES

Reflecting the industry shift away from Flash and toward HTML5, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has updated industry guidelines for the first time since 2013.

#creative #HTML5 #IAB

 

EXPAND YOUR LINKEDIN AUDIENCE

HubSpot has a simple step-by-step instructions on how to extend the reach of your LinkedIn posts with a sponsored post.

#social #linkedin

 

GOOGLE NOW ALLOWS YOU TO TARGET WITH EMAIL ADDRESSES

Google announces “Custom Match” which allows you to use email addresses you have have collected to target users through the Google ad network. Perhaps even better, Google also now allows you to use this first-party data to reach similar audiences (or “look-alikes”), who match the characteristics of readers who have signed up to learn more from you . . . but who themselves may not have heard of your book.

#retargeting #lookalikes #google

 

CINNABON GOES AFTER ORGANIC SNAPCHAT GROWTH

Cinnabon is using its marketing strength on Twitter and Instagram to grow its Snapchat presence (and reach the channel’s coveted Millennials) without paying for Snapchat ads;

“To help build a dialogue with teens going into the new effort, the brand hired two popular Snapchat creators—Danny Berk and Evan Garber—to take over its account and then ask fans to submit pictures of sweets last week. Within a couple of days, the brand gained 2,000 Snapchat followers.”

#social #snapchat #organicgrowth

 

CTR BENCHMARKS

We are often asked what average click-through rates are, and the truth is the number changes constantly depending on the year, the format, and the category. That said, Verso display ad campaigns tend to average at least a .10% CTR. An April 2015 report from Google suggests that we’re beating the industry average by a good forty percent.

#data

 

TARGET DISPLAY ADS TO OPT-IN CUSTOMERS

Verso partner AdRoll announces integration with Mail Chimp to allow you to use your opt-in email lists to target users with display ads.

#email #display

 

STREAMING IS GREAT FOR CUSTOMERS, BUT NOT SO GREAT FOR THE BOTTOM LINE

Books and Music are often too easily conflated, but it’s impossible to miss the fact that the same week that saw Oyster collapse, a new study reveals that vinyl LPs bring in more money than Spotify, YouTube, and Vevo combined.

#streaming

 

AN ARGUMENT AGAINST 3RD PARTY DATA COMPANIES

Cory Doctorow outlines some of the issues that have led to the growth of ad blocking and the three-way battle for control between Web publishers, advertisers, and users, and pointing the way to a possible solution.

#adblocking

Next to Now: Bird on a Wire Edition

This week’s links are dedicated to the idea that, whatever its form—voice, image, written word, or metadata—the art of advertising is the art of communication.

 

THE BANNER LIVES

According to programmatic powerhouse AppNexus, ads seen on desktop computers still see the majority of ad impressions compared with mobile. The positives to the platform — especially marketer familiarity and having a bigger canvas to work on — mean it’s still the go-to platform for most digital ad campaigns. On a side note, the journalist for ClickZ reports one of the desktop advantages being its click-through rate, “relatively robust with 0.043 percent CTR.” That may be the average click-through rate throughout all desktop banner advertising, but our benchmark CTR is 0.1 percent.

#desktop

 

EVIL GENIUS

What do you do if your handful of four star reviews is a little short of decent authoritative reviewers? Here’s one way you could go:  “A promo for the new Tom Hardy movie hid a negative 2-star review in plain sight.” We don’t condone this behavior! It’s clever, for sure, but a kind of one-off clever that puts a serious dent in your legitimacy with reviewers and consumers.

#creative

 

LONGER INSTAGRAM VIDEO

Instagram ups its maximum video length from :15 to :30, and allows posting in landscape mode as well as portrait. Whether longer video leads to better performance is another question.

#video #social

 

INSTAGRAM V. FACEBOOK

An early look at Instagram ad performance from Salesforce: Compared to Facebook, Instagram delivers fewer impressions but a higher click-through rate.

#social #performance

 

THE COMING ADBLOCKOPOLYPSE?

Will Apple’s mobile ad blocking block native ads as well as banners? This question is all the rage in advertising circles. We are sanguine about any potential changes. The best advertising proceeds by adaptability and curiosity, not panic.  

#native

 

THE FIGHT AGAINST THE ADBLOCKOPOLYPSE

Google is “punishing” (Business Insider’s word) YouTube viewers who use ad blocking software by not allowing them to skip pre-roll ads. Here’s some free advice: If you’re creating ads that feel like punishment to watch, you’re doing it wrong.

#creative

 

 

Next to Now: “Everybody in the Pool” Edition

PERISCOPE UP

Periscope now has 10 million users who watch 21 million minutes a day.

#social #video

FACEBOOK ADS OUTPERFORM OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS

More marketers say they’re satisfied with Facebook ad performance than say the same about LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube. Those platforms all serve very different functions so it’s a little disingenuous to put them all together in a group as if it’s a single horse-race, but it’s worth keeping in mind. As is this tidbit in the last sentence of the post:

“The report also said paid advertising now accounts for 83% of marketers’ social spending, as it becomes harder to reach users on those social platforms without paying to do so.”

#social

NEW FACEBOOK AD PRODUCTS

The recently launched Carousel unit is already one of the best performing Facebook ad units and the Dynamic Product Ads are sure to be the same (though they are more relevant to retailers than to brand advertisers).

#social

MORE ON AD BLOCKING

Four charts that say ad blocking is something we need to face.

#adblocking

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

One way around ad blocking is increased native options, including new campaigns that target ads to specific real-time moments based on hundreds of factors, from biometric data collected by your cell phone to real-time events such as when your favorite team wins or if you attain a new level in a video game.

#mobile #native

“I AM VERTICAL / BUT I WOULD RATHER BE HORIZONTAL.”

That’s what Sylvia Plath wrote in her poem “I Am Vertical.” It’s a sentiment that applied to video shot for the Web–at least until recently, when platforms such as Snapchat, Periscope, and Meerkat definitely prefer vertically shot video. (Really? Turning your phone to the side to watch a video just takes too much time.)

Farhad Manjoo weighs in on vertical video orientation for the New York Times: “not a crime.”

#video

WHAT’S THE RIGHT MEDIUM FOR YOUR MARKETING: INSTAGRAM OR PINTEREST?

This ClickZ article does a good job outlining the pros and cons of each platform. But what it really comes down to is knowing the ins and outs of whatever platform you’re using to promote your books. Interact using each platform’s native trends, tools and tendencies.

#social

DON’T SLEEP ON VINE

Everyone has been focused on Snapchat, but meanwhile Vine continues to develop a healthy, responsive audience.

#social

ARE VIDEO ADS PERFORMING GREAT FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS?

We know video ads work . . .

“When Q1 2015 polling by Aol queried US internet users ages 13 to 54 who watched video on a mobile device at least monthly about ad recall, more than eight in 10 remembered digital video placements on each option listed: 84% recalled those on tablets, 83% on smartphones and 82% on PCs.”

. . . .but do people remember them in the way because they’re particularly annoying? Maybe. That said, the problems cited in this survey are fixable: keep repetition down (not a problem for book publishers given our budgets) and keep the videos short (who’s going to tell the editor we can’t use *all* the quotes?).  

#video

EMAIL IS (STILL) NOT DEAD

Email marketing is not sexy but it has 3 things going for it: (1) ability to use big data to personalize communication, (2) ease of integrating with other marketing channels, (3) ability to measure and adapt every day

#email

INSTAGRAM, HASHTAGS, AND GOLDILOCKS

How many hashtags should you use in your Instagram posts? Three is too many, one is too few, two is *just* right.

#social

This week's cover art is taken from Ida Applebroog's recent show, "The Ethics of Desire," at Hauser and Wirth. It is from a series of scenes she painted on folding chairs.

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