Ever use your smartphone ortablet while watching television? Ever read an article halfway on your
desktop computer, and then rest on your phone later? And have you ever
noticed that a company whose site you checked out on your phone is
suddenly appearing in ads while you browse the web on your laptop?
The
proliferation of web-connected devices and the modern propensity for us
to own (and use!) several of them at once has not been lost on web
publishers or advertisers. As mobile readership continues to grow,
publishers respond by building mobile versions of their sites with
layouts that make sense on small screens, navigation that relies on
tapping and swiping, and page weights that don't necessarily rely (yet)
on broadband speeds.
Users are Individuals, Not Devices
Furthermore,
web services, unsurprisingly Google at the forefront, have become adept
at tracking your behavior as you hop from device to device. Google
Chrome shares information across every instance of the browser among
your devices. Save a bookmark on Chrome on your MacBook, and you'll find
it when browsing the web on your Samsung Galaxy S4.
August might be the month that many enjoy the summer and time off,but our blog was abuzz with activity. Have a look at the five most-read
posts for the month:
5. Photography & Fashion Ads: How Color, Location, & Models Change an Ad’s Message
Our
intern Allison's post has a look at the many way aesthetics - from
subject choice to color and backdrop - can create a range of moods and
messages that fashion advertisers might want their brand associated with
(or not). While this is particularly true for those in the sartorial
industry, these insights could just as easily apply to other verticals
as well.
Online video ad spend is forecasted to reach a staggering $4.14 billion in 2013, according to eMarketer.
The double-digit growth of videos advertising reflects the rise of mobile usage and a more connected society online. Brands are recognizing that customers are spending more time browsing the web -- and where the eyeballs go, the ads go. 75% of U.S. senior executives plan to shift their budget from television to digital video ads. One reason for this is that interactive video ads help drive online ad awareness, purchase intent, and brand favorability for brands.
Real-time marketing is a hot topic for marketers right now, offering opportunities to interact with consumers in more meaningful and relevant ways.
In their May 2013 white paper Real-time Marketing: Speeding up the Creative Process eMarketer reported that consumers exposed to real-time marketing were significantly more likely to take action on the same day.
But while marketers have begun to master using the immediacy of social media, adoption of applying real-time data in advertising is coming along more slowly.
Many companies focus on using best practices when optimizing the discrete landing pages they send specific sources of targeted traffic to, but often ignore these same best practices on the page that generates the majority of visits – the homepage!
Any marketer can rattle off dozens of best practices and tips for designing landing pages that convert – but for the sake of this exercise, let’s focus on a few of my personal favorites:
Before we get started, let me make a confession: I’m not a designer. I’m a marketer. So I won’t ask you to trust me when I tell you the following sites inspire credibility through quality of design. Instead, here are some insights from a true expert in the field:
What is the first thing you see when you look at an ad for a fashion brand? Is it the model, clothes, or background?
When it comes to photography, artistic aspects such as position, coloring,
background, and lighting have strong influences on how the consumer sees
an ad. To attract a consumer, an advertiser might alter the photo’s
lighting, saturate it with brighter colors, or position her model
underneath the Eiffel Tower. A good photo will catch a consumer’s eye,
but a great photo will make a lasting impact on a consumer.
In
the following examples, fashion brands chose specific arrangements to
display their products. Here are three things to consider when
evaluating a photo for potential use in an ad.
Although mobile ads typically have precious little real estate to workwith, integration with the full functionality set of modern smartphones
has enabled a broad range of actions that can extend what a user can do
through interaction with the ad. We've seen examples of this in mobile
applications. For instance, Urbanspoon was one of the first popular
smartphone apps that encouraged you to shake your phone in order to serve up nearby restaurant suggestions, using the phone's accelerometer to detect a shaking motion.
Integration
can also extend to popular native apps. Here are five actions that be
linked to a range of user inputs (tap, shake, etc.) that leverage some
of the most common usages of smartphones:
1. Call to Phone Number.
A very, very long time ago, before iOS and Android were battling for
primacy, and even before the Blackberry, phones were used to call
people. On occasion, they are used for them nowadays. And for certain
cases, a voice call is indispensable when navigating through menus and
tapping out a message is just impractical. Embedding a "click-to-call"
button in an ad can reduce the friction a potential customer faces when
electing to directly engage with an advertiser.
Ogilvy’s addition of Todd Cullen as Chief Data Officer to their C-suite this month is the latest indicator of the rising importance of data for agencies.
Cullen will guide the advising of clients on gathering cross-channel data, using 3rd and 1st party data, and creating advanced analytics and modeling.
The new CDO role reflects an increasing demand and need for personnel at agencies who talk tech and brand with equal ease. The agency culture at Ogilvy is no doubt very performance-oriented and that means being metrics and data-oriented as well.
Brands are making content marketing a core part of their promotional tool set. But with a field that's growing so quickly, it can be daunting to figure out how to incorporate such a topic into your own marketing mix. Luckily, several firms have created infographics that address the who, what, where, why, and how of content marketing in easily digestible formats.
These infographics cover the following questions and more:
- What is the average attention span and how much content will a user read before they lose interest?
Why do mobile ads average a $1.30 CPM while television commercials average more than twenty times that ($29
CPM)? Sure, a 30-second television spot provides a richer sensory
experience, but that's quite a multiple. Some suggest that the heavy
discount mobile advertising still incurs is that marketers haven't yet
settled in on mobile environment metrics that are meaningful to
advertisers. Considering that engagement metrics for interactive desktop ads are just now coming into their own, maybe we can afford to be a bit patient - measuring mobile engagement should follow suit.
But
what's worth measuring, and how do you do it on a mobile device? Some
desktop actions, like hover (mouseover), don't have obvious analogs on
smartphones and tablets. How do you know if a mobile user has consumed a
brand's message?
In the age of social media, consumers expect and enjoy the immediacy of information and content on the web. Marketers, to remain relevant, have found they have to keep up. That's why in the past couple of years, I've seen so many companies shift toward agile marketing.
Some companies embrace the agile marketing methodology from the onset. But it seems just as common for brands to test the waters before jumping in.
Whatever you commitment to agility is, to be wholly successful with agile marketing I believe you need more that just a change in strategy. You need a shift in culture as well.
Agile marketing is growing in popularity among teams of all sizes. By now, you probably know the basics of what it means and why it's used — but how does it actually work?
Here are three frequently asked questions about agile marketing that are especially relevant to brand marketers looking to incorporate an agile mentality to their processes.
How do you figure out when to be agile and when to stick with a fixed goal?
According to David Huron in "Music in Advertising: An Analytic Paradigm" (Musical Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 4 [1989] pp. 557-574), the purposes of music in ads are to
engage a listener’s attention and to make the advertising message less
of an unwanted intrusion. However, marketers and advertisers have
realized that what we hear in ads is more important than just these
purposes.
A particular song
or soundtrack can be a big game changer for what consumers associate
with a brand. Whether rocking, inspirational, or sentimental, music can
change an ad’s mood and the way consumers absorb them.
Display advertising is an essential part of any digital marketer's toolkit. No other type of visual advertising has the massive reach and precise targeting that display has.
But many companies are hurting themselves — and display overall — by repeating a few critical mistakes.
If you’re using display ads, you could be putting your brand’s reputation at risk if you’re doing these 3 things.
Businesses across the board are beginning to see the value of content marketing as an approach worth investing in.
But the truth is, being successful in content marketing requires more than realizing its potential — it calls for an intelligent and strategic approach in order to be successful.
If your brand isn't currently doing content marketing, how do you start? Here are three main steps to consider.
Phase 1: Plan
With “60% of consumers not remembering the last display ad they saw” (Online Media Daily), advertisers are turning to alternate ad forms to counter consumer
blindness. Leading this digital ad revolution are sites such as
BuzzFeed, Mashable, and The Awl that engage their users with ads that
fit within the natural flow of the site - native advertising - rather
than attempting to do so with increasingly ignored banner ads.
With
a similar look and feel to a website’s page, native ads offer
advertisers the opportunity to engage users with brand content in a
friendly and non-interruptive manner, raising brand awareness through
visual attention.
As the
world of digital marketing adapts to users’ preferences, native
advertising delivers interaction and engagement through content-rich ads
embedded users’ typical site consumption experience rather than through
a click to landing page.
Here
are 25 statistics that explain how and why native advertising is
rapidly becoming one of the most popular digital advertising approaches.
Since not all mobile operatingsystems support Flash and there's considerably less real estate on a
smartphone or tablet, mobile advertising comes with at least a couple of
handicaps against traditional desktop digital advertising. But social
media juggernaut Facebook has made considerable success with its
in-stream (read: native) ads. A year ago, the company made virtually no
money from mobile advertising; in Q2, it comprised a staggering 41% of its $1.81 billion in earnings.
What
the company has not lacked in recent years are mobile users. By the end
of the quarter, there were 819 million monthly mobile users (MAUs), 57%
of which use the site daily (DAUs). Interestingly, 27% of its monthly
mobile users access Facebook exclusively through their mobile device.
Dell's a personal computermaker, one with an exceptionally easy to use customization and ordering
process. You don't normally associate it with the written word, except, I
suppose, that you can use a Dell PC as a word processor. So why has
Dell developed its own (currently in beta) tech information site, Tech Page One?
Dell's
mission, according to Dell's managing editor, Stephanie Losee, (who
spoke at the San Francisco PRSummit, which I attended, earlier this
week) extends beyond building and selling built-to-order computer
technology. It's to help you do what you do better. That help can be in
the form of a computer put together with your specific needs in mind.
But making the best use of that computer once you've unboxed it also
falls within this mission, and would presumably make you a repeat
customer.
While much of
Tech Page One's content will be available to stream into Dell devices,
both desktop and mobile, much of it will also be consumed by potential
new customers. Yep, we're talking about content marketing here.
