Tag Archives: Pinterest

In a reminder that different platforms call for different standards, Snapchat is telling its video creators to pay close attention to the audio. This is in direct contrast with Facebook’s recommendation to create video that works without sound at all. They’re different platforms with different audiences and content expectations, so it makes sense to create different video for both. If you want to compare the platforms though, Snapchat says a recent study with MediaScience gives them an edge over TV, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. According to AdWeek,

“The study encompassed biometric testing to capture emotional responses, as well as eye-tracking and exit surveys . . . Snapchat says its ads garnered twice the visual attention of Facebook, 1.5 times more than Instagram and 1.3 times better than YouTube. When compared to those platforms and TV, Snapchat claims that its ads generated greater emotional response and twice as much purchase intent.”

#snapchat #social #video

BEN EVANS THINKS THROUGH MOBILE

In a recent blog post, Ben Evans does some smart thinking through the issues around mobile video and the problems of trying to compare TV ads with Facebook video plays with Snapchat Stories. They’re different animals with different metrics. Bonus video: Lyrical School puts it all in context for you with Run and Run.

#mobile #video #TV #facebook #runandrun

WHAT ADVERTISERS NEED TO KNOW

R/GA boils down Mary Meeker’s epic deck to the slides brand advertisers need to focus on. Here’s our boil-down of R/GA’s boil-down for book advertisers:

#data

PANDORA REDESIGN

With over 1,000 different audience segments to use for targeting, Pandora has been one of our strongest ad partners in recent years. We are pleased to note that their redesign improves on their strengths. AdWeek notes:

“The streaming-music service is introducing responsive mobile display ads that automatically adjust to a phone’s screen size and that live in the square space housing album art. The format, which also applies to images that accompany audio ads and first impression takeover ads, is a move away from pop-up ads. A second major update for the app is the introduction of muted video ads, which will allow advertisers to serve promos within a responsive display unit that can be unmuted and watched in full-screen view.”

Other aspects of the redesigns go even farther to allow users some choice over the ads they see by allowing users to swipe right to dismiss ads. Anything that enhances the user experience is good news for book advertisers.

#streaming #pandora

MORE ON PANDORA TARGETING

AdExchanger has more on the new units in this interview with Pandora’s group product manager Eric Hoppe.

#streaming #pandora #data

IS IT OVER? DID FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE WIN?

No, but it can feel that way, especially after reading the New York Times piece that suggests Google and Facebook take up 85% of total US ad revenue. This article from April suddenly popped up in our feed this week with comments and criticism from The Motley Fool, AdWeek, IAB, Business Insider and more. As mammoth as the two platforms are, it’s unlikely that 85% number is accurate. And while book publishing is certainly not representative of the larger advertising market, it’s worth noting that Google and Facebook advertising products are nowhere near 85% of what we run at Verso.

#facebook #google

PINTEREST MEASURES REAL WORLD IMPACT OF PROMOTED PINS

Pinterest studied the effect of Promoted Pins on real-world store purchases:

“The study found that Promoted Pins drive 5-times more incremental in-store sales per impression when compared to other campaigns measured by Oracle Data Cloud, which include social media platforms as well as programmatic vendors and publisher websites, said Jon Kaplan, head of global sales at Pinterest.”

#pinterest #realworld

Photo (c) Martha Otis

Next to Now: New Shifts in Ad Ecosystems

February 26, 2016Next to Nowbillboards, DBW, foursquare, instore, Pinterest, Snapchat, social, tumblrVerso Advertising

As our preparations for this year’s Digital Book World shift into high gear (including the Master Class in paid advertising and the panel on the book buyer’s journey), there is an abundance of ad news to take in. Below is a sampling of what we’ve been reading this week.

WHY IS THIS PAGE TAKING SO LONG TO LOAD?

In an article about how Google’s new AMP system works, AdAge connects to very clear graphics that show clearly how the complexity of ad exchanges and analytics tracking slows down load times—and how AMP fixes that.

“When compared to traditional mobile websites, AMP pages load 85% faster, Google says.

‘The New York Times itself is running very fast,’ Ghostery CEO and founder Scott Meyer said regarding the desktop version of the site. ‘But once you get beyond the Times, and into the far reaches of the ad exchanges, a lot of those companies are going to be slow to load and there will be an impact on user experience.’

AMP is a response to similar but proprietary platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Unlike those, however, AMP is open source, meaning anyone can use it.”

It’s worth a click through to see the dynamic images, but here is a screenshot of the desktop ecosystem for a NYTimes.com story:

Here’s a shot of the mobile ecosystem:

And here’s a shot of the new AMP ecosystem for the same story:

#tracking #AMP

REDEFINING WHAT WE MEAN BY MOBILE CAMPAIGN

AdAge has a fascinating article about the latest big brand thinking around mobile advertising. Long story short: It’s not about the campaign.

“The perfect mobile campaign isn’t a campaign,” said Carl Norberg, founder and chief experience officer of mobile-focused shop Monterosa/BBH Stockholm, which has created initiatives for clients such as Volvo, Justin Bieber, Google, Axe and others. “It’s a brand extension where marketing comes baked into the product.” While great TV is storytelling, great mobile is about “storydoing,” he said. “Instead of us telling the story, we hand over an app to let the consumer become an active part of the brand’s tale.”

While the takeaways for book publishing’s fleet of individual, smaller scale products is not great; it’s important to remember that “mobile” isn’t a platform any more. It’s how most people scan email, check Facebook, Tweet, research restaurants, and even (in some cases) read books.

#mobile

WHY HOLLYWOOD LOVES BILLBOARDS

The New Yorker has an interesting article on the “For your consideration” billboards that use a mass medium to reach a very targeted audience. Why do they use a mass medium when the target is so specific? Because they work in a couple different ways:

The high concentration of Oscar nominators in a few specific locations
To show the wider audience that this might be a film worth seeing.

#mass #targeting #billboards

PINTEREST BEST PRACTICES

Kirsten Oliphant has a good piece up on Jane Friedman’s blog about best practices for authors on Pinterest. It’s an especially good platform for lifestyle and cooking, and worth a read.

#pinterest

FOURSQUARE CONNECTS DIGITAL ADS WITH FOOT TRAFFIC

Foursquare announces that it can connect digital ads seen by Foursquare users with foot traffic in stores. Testing has already begun:

“Flipboard recently used the system to measure a campaign that it ran for an undisclosed retailer and found that the digital ads drove a 12 percent incremental lift in visits to the retailer’s locations within a week.”

Connecting the digital ad space to real world traffic is vital to understanding how our ads work with the people who see them. It will be exciting to see how this new product develops. In a followup article, Adweek mentions other players in this space. The interest in this is only growing.

#digital #instore

MAKE YOUR OWN SNAPCHAT FILTERS!

Marketers and party planners alike will be happy to hear of Snapchat’s new rollout of make-your-own geofilters for the platform.

#snapchat

EXPERIMENTS IN SNAPCHAT MARKETING

Dominos has run some successful experiments in marketing on the channel that marketers are scrambling to figure out to reach the post-Millennial generations

#snapchat

GOOGLE STUDY ON IN-STORE MOBILE USE

It’s not just show-rooming: a study from Google on in-store mobile use has a few key takeaways:

Mobile is the new front door: Target found that 3/4ths of its customers start the customer journey on mobile
Local search matters (for bookstores!): year to year growth in “Near to me” searches. A 2015 Google Consumer Survey found that 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a store within a day, and 18% of those searches lead to a purchase.3
Ads that show local inventory drives users into the store (note, 3rd party servers such as Sizmer, a Verso partner, have this capability)
In-store decision guide: 82% of shoppers say they’ve consulted their mobile phone while in store to make a purchase
Omni-channel customers spend more: 250% more, according to MasterCard

#google #mobile #instore

INSTAGRAM CONTINUES DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH

eMarketer notes that, at this pace, more than a third of internet users will be on Instagram by 2017. The article includes projections for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr too.

#instagram

ADBLOCKERS ARE YOUNG AND MALE

There are 198 million ad block users worldwide. This infographic on Hubspot goes into detail about who are leading the charge, heavy into tech, gaming, sports and social. Not surprisingly it’s the young male demo. The older female demographic (core, avid readers) are the least likely to be using an ad blocker.

#adblocking #readers

PROS AND CONS OF PODCASTS

eMarketer talks to Digitas LBI Social Director about the pros and cons of podcasts for marketers.

#podcasts #audio #streaming

HOW TO USE TWITTER

ClickZ attended Twitter’s Flight Camp so you don’t have to. Good stuff here for social media managers.

#twitter #social #bestpractices

MEDIA PROS JOIN SNAPCHAT #FAILBETTER

A week travelling on the West coast with a pair of 15 year-old boys has shown me the vitality of Snapchat, the generational divide (and I mean the one that the millennials are starting to feel with the generation after them . . . ), and how Gen X just. doesn’t. get. it.

#snapchat #genx #fail

AOL FTW

More evidence that the digitally connected older generation are where the action is with digital marketing.

#email #boomers #politics

TWITTER UPS ITS GIF GAME

Integration with Giphy and Riffsy make it easier for Twitter users to post animated gifs.

#twitter #gifs

WRONG END OF THE FUNNEL

Why haven’t buy buttons on FB and Instagram taken off yet? Because they’re trying to force top of the funnel marketing down the funnel too far…. Customers aren’t interested in that (need a little more time and comfort before making the purchase).

#facebook #instagram #thefunnel

TUMBLR STRUGGLES

It’s still a great way to reach the YA audience, but Tumblr’s growth is slowing. Here are projections via eMarketer:

“Regarding its total user base, this will be the last year Tumblr will grow by double digits, signaling a plateau. In 2016, Tumblr will have 23.2 million users in the US. That’s less than half as many as Pinterest (which has 54.6 million) and less than a third as many as Instagram (which has 89.4 million).”

#tumbler #teens

The image at the top of this post is taken from the current Tara Donovan show at the Quint Gallery.

Next to Now: The Coming Digital Storm Edition

January 22, 2016Next to Nowinstagram, Pinterest, social, taboola, targeting, VideoVerso Advertising

The East Coast is bracing for our first real snow of the season, preparing our Instagram filters and Twitter hashtags. So now’s a perfect time for all you East Coasters (and Midwesterners and West Coasters) to line up some good reading for the weekend. Here’s some of what we’ve noticed the last few days.

POLITICS UP

A presidential election year means big traffic for political websites — and good news for political books looking to target their audiences. Digiday outlines the top websites as measured by traffic—Huffington Post, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the Hill, and Politico—and notes that The Hill and Mother Jones are growing fast.

#politics #targeting

NYT BRINGS “MODERN LOVE” TO PODCAST

The New York Times is teaming with NPR to produce a podcast of their popular Modern Love column: with essays read by actors including Jason Alexander, Judd Apatow, Sarah Paulson and more. What an amazing resource that will be to advertise fiction.

#podcast #modernlove

AOL AND TABOOLA TAKE ON FACEBOOK

In a world where reach is increasingly defined (or denied) by Facebook, AOL and Taboola are partnering up to increase the reach of AOL properties, including Huffington Post and Engadget.

#content #targeting

PINTEREST TO ADD VIDEO ADS

Pinterest is adding video ad capabilities—which makes sense for such a visually oriented network. But to do it well, they’ll have to improve video on a site that, so far, has been all about the static image.

#video #pinterest #social

GOOGLE’S MICRO-MOMENTS GET PLAY IN THE PAPER OF RECORD

This article on intent-based advertising feels like it was written by someone receiving the many (convincing!) emails from Google marketing services about their concept of “micro-moments.” This article is worth reading, if for no other reason than the agile use of ancient Greek philosophy from Rocket Fuel (Liberal Arts education FTW).

“Randy Wootton, chief executive of the ad technology firm Rocket Fuel, which recently announced a ‘marketing in the moment’ approach, refers to ancient Greek concepts of time: chronos, or sequential time, and kairos, a moment of opportunity independent of linear time.”

That said, caveat emptor:

“Few marketers currently have all the skills needed for moments-based marketing, such as ethnographic studies of their customers and the ability to match customer data to the right context, according to a report released last July by Forrester Research. Without those skills developing throughout the industry, the latest scheme to reach peripatetic consumers could prove, well, momentary.”

#adtargeting #intent

BETTER GROWTH THROUGH PRIVATE ACCOUNTS?

Everlane experiments with a private Instagram account as a way to build community through a sense of exclusivity:

“’It’s like an Instagram incubator,’ said Gaskell. ‘We want to gauge criticisms, and we’re making it private in order to have a curated, high value experience. People will feel like they’re in on something.’”

Could it work for niche publishers?

#instagram #social

FACEBOOK GETS SET TO JOIN THE SPORTS CONVERSATION

AdWeek reports on Facebook’s new sport-oriented platform. It’s a smart move by Facebook that is not great news for Twitter or ESPN. If this gets the traction I expect, it will be a great place to advertise sports books. Here’s the link to Facebook’s post about the feature:

“With 650 million sports fans, Facebook is the world’s largest stadium. People already turn to Facebook to celebrate, commiserate, and talk trash with their friends and other fans.”

#facebook #sports

Next to Now: News for January Edition

January 15, 2016Next to NowMessaging, mobile, peach, periscope, Pinterest, podcast, Snapchat, social, targetingVerso Advertising

POLITICAL HEAT BRINGS VIEWS TO THE HILL

For the coming round of political books, take note of this stat from AdWeek: “The election cycle is already paying off for The Hill. According to comScore’s December 2015 numbers, the politics site garnered nearly 10.6 million visitors, a 175 percent year-over-year increase.”

#politics

BRINGING ADS TO MESSAGING

It’s one of the continuing questions: as mobile messaging grows by leaps and bounds (even putting the fear of god into Facebook), how will advertisers reach users on these new platforms in a compelling way that’s authentic to the experience. Kik continues to innovate in this direction.

#messaging #adtech

A WORD BUSINESS IN AN IMAGE-FIRST WORLD

AdWeek looks at Merriam-Webster’s experiments with the new visual-first social network Peach. Will this one stick, or go the way of Ello? Either way, this is an interesting read for all of us in the word business.

#social #visual #peach

MOBILE APPS VS. MOBILE BROWSER

According to Dec 2015 research cited by eMarketer, mobile users are as likely to prefer using a mobile app as a mobile browser. In the “app versus browser” debate, one conclusion remains: That depends.

#mobile #apps #browsers #targeting

CJR DOES A DEEP-DIVE INTO RADIO’S REINVENTION

In an article that focuses on WNYC, Columbia Journalism Review looks into the ways that radio brands are trying to avoid the pitfalls that print journalism has fallen into by vigorously working to reinvent themselves for digital transformation. It’s a hopeful story.

#radio #podcasts #journalism

SNAPCHAT KEEPS UP THE PRESSURE

Snapchat enters 2016 just as they left 2015: talking about new ad products, better targeting, more opportunities.

#snapchat #social #targeting

PERISCOPE NOW AUTOPLAYING IN TWITTER APP

This is good news for getting your Periscope campaigns discovered in realtime.

#periscope #twitter #streaming

THE CASE FOR PRINT ADVERTISING

The continuing case for print advertising: it’s an oldie but a goodie, especially for book publishers: “The Ten Advantages of Advertising Books in Print Media” from Book Business magazine (via Digital Book World)

#print

PINTEREST: THUMBS UP OR DOWN?

A long-read from Business Insider about the prospects of Pinterest: ranging from what they’re doing right (audience engagement) to what they’re doing wrong (sales, basically). Mid-way through is a fact that should make publishers of Etsy-friendly books (lifestyle, crafting, food) pay attention, “It drives nearly as much traffic to the online marketplace Etsy as Facebook does.”

#pinterest #lifestyle

WHAT THE SUCCESS OF NATIVE ADVERTISING SAYS ABOUT CONTEXT

Digiday has a story about the success Time Out is seeing with their native ads. Implicit throughout is the importance of context for advertising. In the rush to programmatic targeting, context has been sold short the last few years. With the rise of native options, context is back.

#native #contextual

“LEGACY” NEWS IS CATCHING UP TO THE FUTURE

Conde Nast, Heart, The New York Times, The Washington Post and more “legacy” brands are getting their digital growth up to the speed of digital specialists like BuzzFeed. How? Bloomberg Media global head of digital, M. Scott Havens, says,

“If you’re doing what the startups are doing and you have the brand equity and resources to build and hire, I’m not shocked at all how well some of the older guys are doing.”

#legacy #digital

2016 DISPLAY AD SPENDING TO EXCEED SEARCH

The first truly successful ad model on the Web was search, but as people increasingly turn toward mobile, display ad spending is beginning to catch up.

#display #search #adspending

Next to Now: Keep Your Eyes on Instagram and Pinterest

June 5, 2015Next to Nowinstagram, mobile, Pinterest, socialVerso Advertising

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.

NEW YORK TIMES JOINS SNAPCHAT DISCOVER

GEN Z —

PINTEREST: “DON’T LIKE US ANYMORE.”

PAMA CORNER

SESAME STREET VERSUS DATA

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What’s the cause for optimism? Our latest readings on advertising and what it means for book publishers. The links below point to new intelligence on fresh data, smart research, inspiring creative, reader-centric design, and the potential for real world impact.

SNAPCHATS WANTS YOU TO AMP UP THE AUDIO

BEN EVANS THINKS THROUGH MOBILE

WHAT ADVERTISERS NEED TO KNOW

PANDORA REDESIGN

MORE ON PANDORA TARGETING

IS IT OVER? DID FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE WIN?

PINTEREST MEASURES REAL WORLD IMPACT OF PROMOTED PINS

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As our preparations for this year’s Digital Book World shift into high gear (including the Master Class in paid advertising and the panel on the book buyer’s journey), there is an abundance of ad news to take in. Below is a sampling of what we’ve been reading this week.

WHY IS THIS PAGE TAKING SO LONG TO LOAD?

REDEFINING WHAT WE MEAN BY MOBILE CAMPAIGN

WHY HOLLYWOOD LOVES BILLBOARDS

PINTEREST BEST PRACTICES

FOURSQUARE CONNECTS DIGITAL ADS WITH FOOT TRAFFIC

MAKE YOUR OWN SNAPCHAT FILTERS!

EXPERIMENTS IN SNAPCHAT MARKETING

GOOGLE STUDY ON IN-STORE MOBILE USE

INSTAGRAM CONTINUES DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH

ADBLOCKERS ARE YOUNG AND MALE

PROS AND CONS OF PODCASTS

HOW TO USE TWITTER

MEDIA PROS JOIN SNAPCHAT #FAILBETTER

AOL FTW

TWITTER UPS ITS GIF GAME

WRONG END OF THE FUNNEL

TUMBLR STRUGGLES

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POLITICS UP

NYT BRINGS “MODERN LOVE” TO PODCAST

AOL AND TABOOLA TAKE ON FACEBOOK

PINTEREST TO ADD VIDEO ADS

GOOGLE’S MICRO-MOMENTS GET PLAY IN THE PAPER OF RECORD

BETTER GROWTH THROUGH PRIVATE ACCOUNTS?

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POLITICAL HEAT BRINGS VIEWS TO THE HILL

BRINGING ADS TO MESSAGING

A WORD BUSINESS IN AN IMAGE-FIRST WORLD

MOBILE APPS VS. MOBILE BROWSER

CJR DOES A DEEP-DIVE INTO RADIO’S REINVENTION

SNAPCHAT KEEPS UP THE PRESSURE

PERISCOPE NOW AUTOPLAYING IN TWITTER APP

THE CASE FOR PRINT ADVERTISING

PINTEREST: THUMBS UP OR DOWN?

WHAT THE SUCCESS OF NATIVE ADVERTISING SAYS ABOUT CONTEXT

“LEGACY” NEWS IS CATCHING UP TO THE FUTURE

2016 DISPLAY AD SPENDING TO EXCEED SEARCH

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Instagram opens up its ad platform:

Pinterest adds a buy button.

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

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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 . . .

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