The Future of Advertising

Weekly Roundup - 11/17

2017-03-16T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ Adidas announced it is abandoning TV advertising, choosing instead to rely solely on digital channels to capture and engage with young consumers.
[CNBC]

∞ Despite popular consensus, there seems to no objective evidence that human attention spans are shortening. One oft-quoted statistic - that current average human attention span is down to 8 seconds - turns out to be unreliably sourced; following the citation trail throws up no research backing the claim. (1/2)
[BBC]

∞ Moreover, according to attention researchers "average attention span" is a pretty meaningless term. Attention is heavily task dependent, and the notion that there's a typical length of time for which people can pay attention is simply untrue. (2/2)
[BBC]

∞ A new study concluded that $12.48 billion (20% of global digital ad spend) was lost to ad fraud in 2016, nearly double that of a previous estimate made by ANA. Fraudulent traffic and clicks manufactured by bots are expected to cost advertisers $16.4 billion in 2017.
[Business Insider]

∞ A study covering 1500 brands, reaching out to 300,000 people and spanning over 33 countries found that 84% of consumers expect brands to produce content but consider 60% of all content created by brands to be "poor".
[AdNews]

∞ Google tested playing unsolicited ads on Google Home, its smart home speaker, (and also on Google Assistant on some Android smartphones) by integrating a promo for a new Disney movie with daily updates. (1/2)
[MarketWatch]

∞ Amid pushback from Google Home owners, Google made some conflicted statements that tried to assert the intrusion wasn't an "ad" - but ended up outlining what in plain English would be considered an ad. (2/2)
[The Verge]

∞ Around 79% of publishers offering native advertising solutions use paid distribution to get scale for branded content, with about half using paid social on all their campaigns.
[Digiday]

∞ Pandora is offering advertisers the ability to personalise ads based on listeners' gender, age and ZIP code, while also taking into account variables like the weather and time of day. Additionally, the sequential messaging feature allows story-telling or unfolding information over a period of time.
[Adweek]

∞ Players of Pokémon Go have collectively walked nearly 9 billion kilometres since the game's launch last year.
[The Economist]

Weekly Roundup - 10/17

2017-03-09T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ A study found that mobile app push notifications that feature emojis have an 85% higher open rate compared to those sent without emojis. Notifications with emojis saw a 4.51% open rate compared to 2.44% for those without.
[Leanplum]

∞ Facebook launched a new app dedicated to VR content, Facebook 360. It is currently available for download only for the Gear VR mobile headset and, according to Facebook, already hosts 1 million 360 videos and more than 25 million 360 photos.
[TechCrunch]

∞ Snapchat users post 2.5 billion snaps every day and more than 60% of these snaps are decorated with text, doodles, stickers, emoji and video effects using Snapchat's inbuilt tools.
[The Economist]

∞ Connected spenders - a category of consumers defined as those that have internet access and are willing to spend their discretionary income - today account for about 19% of the global population, but are projected to grow to 37% by 2025. Cumulatively, over the next decade they are expected to spend $260 trillion — 46% of the world’s consumer spending.
[Nielsen]

∞ A survey found that 26% of US Teens watched Youtube every day, putting it ahead of Cable TV at 25%.
[Business Insider]

∞ More than 169 million U.S. adults - 70% of the population - now read newspapers every month - in print, online or mobile.
[TechCrunch]

∞ According to eMarketer, Amazon is poised to generate more than $1 billion in U.S. ad revenue in 2017 — finishing ahead of Snapchat.
[Mashable]

∞ Pokemon Go has already driven more than 500 million visits to stores partnering with the game.
[Adweek]\

Weekly Roundup - 09/17

2017-03-02T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ For the first time last year, digital advertising edged out traditional advertising as a share of total CPG spending - by 15.9% to 15.5%.
[AdvertisingAge]

∞ A neuroscience study concludes that when it comes to memorability ads seen on a publisher's site outperformed those seen in a Facebook newsfeed. (1/2)
[Adweek]

∞ There were exceptions, probably revealing the underlying dynamic at play; hospitality brands and ads for TV programs fared better on Facebook. (2/2)
[Adweek]

∞ Youtube users in aggregate are watching 1 billions hours of video every single day (a milestone that was passed last year but just made public by Google.) That’s around 8.4 minutes per human being on the planet.
[TechCrunch]

∞ The British division of Coca-Cola has a monthly subscription with a company that uses artificial intelligence to compose music. Unbundled individual tracks cost $21.99 a pop. (1/2)
[The New York Times]

∞ Coca-Cola is also thinking, aloud, about using AI to automate advertising - from creating music, writing scripts, posting on social media and buying media. (2/2)
[Adweek]

∞ Amazon's voice-activated platform Alexa just crossed the 10,000 "skills" milestone - setting off concerns about the scalability of its voice-based interface to enable users to discover new skills. Amazon's current solution is a screen-based skills store complete with ratings and reviews.
[WIRED]

∞ Renewal rates for native ads are low overall (33%) across all media sites, but for publishers with more established native programmes the renewal rates inch higher (49%). The top 11 publisher sites see renewal rates ranging from 62% to 73%. (1/2)
[MediaRadar - PDF Link]

∞ An average of 610 new advertisers are turning to native content solutions every month. (2/2)
[mobile advertising watch]

∞ You can now play a road race game where the punishment every time you crash is a pop-up ad.
[The Internet Express]

Weekly Roundup - 08/17

2017-02-23T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ For the first time, more than half (53%) of advertising spend in China is online.
[theMediaBriefing]

∞ According to Snapchat, video completion rates go up 9x times when the video plays fullscreen in comparison to a landscape video shrunk into a portrait screen. (1/3)
[Fast Company]

∞ Apparently, Snapchat's creative team has pored over the last 50 years of TV programming to better understand the shift their own product is enabling - hence the frequent mention of TV parallels. (2/3)
[Fast Company]

∞ An example is Snapchat's focus on channel-surfing effortlessly, literally just by swiping out. Snapchat supercharges discovery not by building elaborate menus and synopses (like Netflix, for eg.), but by making content quick to taste. (3/3)
[Fast Company]

∞ A study of global consumers shows that 57% watch videos on their mobile phone every day. This is just a smidgen away from the 58% watching videos on their laptop or desktop everyday.
[Campaign]

∞ Google is discontinuing 30-second unskippable preroll ads on Youtube, but effective only from 2018. (1/2)
[The Drum]

∞ It is not the end for unskippable ads though. 15- and 20-second unskippable preroll ads, along with 6-second bumper ads, will still be around. (2/2)
[The Verge]

∞ According to Nielsen, sports programmes accounted for 93 of the 100 most viewed broadcasts in 2015, compared with only 14 ten years earlier. (1/2)
[The Economist]

∞ Despite declining viewership, spending on ads for sports has risen rapidly by 50% in the decade to 2015 (while advertising rates in general have been flat or declining in most of the industry) because programming that attracts large audiences has gotten scarcer. (2/2)
[The Economist]

∞ Facebook is deploying machine learning technology to police ads - for housing, employment or credit opportunities - that are using its targeting capabilities in a discriminatory manner.
[Campaign]

Weekly Roundup - 07/17

2017-02-16T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ A new test feature in Google's Chrome iOS browser enables users tapping on the search bar to discover and view content made available to them in their immediate physical vicinity. These digital touchpoints - product videos, coupons, in-store promotions, etc. - are enabled through Bluetooth beacons broadcasting website URLs. (1/4)
[Advertising Age]

∞ The feature is a significant improvement over earlier implementations using Apple's iBeacon protocol which required users to download separate apps for each bricks-and-mortar retailer to access content. (2/4)
[Advertising Age]

∞ The innovation effectively combines the intuitiveness and ubiquity of a browser search bar to return results based on physical proximity instead of search terms. (If users ignore the "physical web" results and proceed to type in search keywords, the search bar reverts to its original functionality.) (3/4)
[Advertising Age]

∞ Incorporating discovery of the Physical Web inside a search bar and giving premium ranking to "nearby" content potentially allows bricks-and-mortar stores to recapture customers' online attention from drifting towards competition whilst they are physically in their store. (4/4)
[Advertising Age]

∞ Haptic technology is coming to advertising soon, bringing with it the ability to stimulate texture on digital touchscreens by modulating electric fields or by using ultra-sonic vibrations. (1/1)
[JWT Intelligence]

∞ Currently, texture can be stimulated using the vibration function on a standard Android phone - allowing existing media to be "rescored" with haptic content and experienced on existing mobile devices. (2/2)
[JWT Intelligence]

∞ Facebook advertisers can now opt to pay only for videos played with the sound turned on. (1/4)
[Advertising Age]

∞ Not coincidentally, Facebook is also switching the default sound of autoplaying videos in its newsfeed from mute to on. Users have the option of overriding this via settings. (2/4)
[The Verge]

∞ Facebook is also offering advertisers the option to buy completed video views - paying only if a video has been viewed till the end. (3/4)
[Advertising Age]

∞ The flurry of developments are a move by Facebook to reframe its consumption environment (more akin to Youtube and Snapchat) and pivot to becoming a video-first platform. (4/4)
[The Verge]

Weekly Roundup - 06/17

2017-02-09T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ 3D TVs are officially dead - no major TV maker makes them anymore. Instead the TV industry is focusing on 4K, HDR and smart-TV features as enticement for buyers to upgrade.
[Business Insider]

∞ In a quarterly earnings call the CEO of Disney, Bob Iger, acknowledged that there are too many ads on TV adding that Disney's ESPN and ABC channels will be exploring reduction of commercial interruption on TV.
[Business Insider]

∞ Overall adblocker usage increased 30 percent worldwide in 2016. (1/3)
[Business Insider]

∞ The spike in adblocker usage last year was driven by internet users in Asia where 94% of worldwide mobile adblocking occurs. (2/3)
[NiemanLab]

∞ Meanwhile, desktop adblocking remains predominant in North America and Europe — 68% of global desktop adblocking occurs on those two continents. (3/3)
[NiemanLab]

∞ Amazon generated roughly $1.2 billion in net advertising revenue globally last year, including $940 million in the US. Though its share of the U.S digital ad market was just 1.3 percent in 2016 (compared to the combined 58% of Facebook and Google), signs are that the retail giant is leveraging its unique advantages to claim a bigger share of the pie.
[Bloomberg]

∞ Facebook generated $19.81 per user in the US and Canada in 4Q 2016, up from $13.70 the year prior. (1/3)
[Mashable]

∞ Globally, each user is expected to generate an estimated $18.25 for Facebook this year. (2/3)
[Forbes]

∞ Facebook currently has more than 4 million active monthly advertisers, up from 2.5 million in 2015. (3/3)
[Forbes]

∞ Counter-intuitively, it's Gen-Xers (adults aged 35 to 49) who spend the most amount of time on social media - 6 hours 58 minutes a week compared with 6 hours 19 minutes for millennials. The data in the study that revealed this was not self-reported but collected passively through respondents' devices.
[Nielsen]

Weekly Roundup - 05/17

2017-02-02T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ For a 6th straight quarter, mobile search was the main driver of growth for Google. (1/4)
[Business Insider]

∞ 96% of all search-ad clicks Google received in 4Q 2016 were on mobile devices. (2/4)
[Advertising Age]

∞ Google ads are becoming more cost efficient. Cost-per-click (the amount that Google charges for its ads) is down 15% YoY and down 9% QoQ, while paid clicks (the amount of times people click those ads) are up 36% YoY and 20% QoQ. (3/4)
[Business Insider]

∞ About 70% of Google's total revenue in 2016 came from ads on its own digital properties (web search pages, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, etc.) The remaining advertising revenue comes from playing middleman for ads on the web and mobile devices. This latter business is lagging behind (and increasingly accounting for a smaller share of the pie), growing just 4 percent in 2016 compared with 22% of the former. (4/4)
[Bloomberg]

∞ Facebook is testing displaying ads - or "sponsored messages" - in its Messenger app. The ads won't show up inside actual conversations; instead, a carousel of ads will be featured just below the list of recent conversations. (1/3)
[Business Insider]

∞ Avoiding these ads is pretty straightforward - don't start a conversation with any company or brand. Currently, sponsored messages are only activated if a user initiates a conversation with a brand. (2/3)
[Lifehacker]

∞ The development is a result of Facebook running out of room to place ads in the news feed of its flagship app. It is also a sign that its efforts to monetize Messenger with chatbots hasn't yielded any tangible results. (3/3)
[Business Insider]

∞ Google took down 1.7 bn bad ads that violated it policies in 2016, more than double the number it took down in 2015. A sizable portion of these are ads for illegal products, featuring misleading/predatory offers or promoting malicious sites. (1/3)
[The Drum]

∞ However, one of the largest category of miscreants was "trick to click" ads, banners dressed up as system warnings to deceive users into clicking them and triggering the downloading of malware. Google disabled 112 million such ads in 2016, 6x the number in 2015. It also detected and disabled more than 23,000 self-clicking ads.
[Campaign]

∞ Of Google's 66,000 employees worldwide, more than 1,000 are dedicated to removing ads that violate its policies.
[WIRED]

Weekly Roundup - 04/17

2017-01-26T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ A survey of top-spending advertisers shows that confidence in digital and social platforms - with the exception of search advertising - is well below 50%. Many advertisers report planning independent audits of their Facebook investments; 36% plan to move spend from Facebook to Google in 2017, while only 8% plan to do the opposite.
[Advertising Age]

∞ Amidst the overall gloomy outlook from Edelman Trust Barometer 2017, there was a rise in public trust in Owned Media (+2, 43% overall), search engines (+3, 63% overall) and Online-only media (+5, 51% overall). By contrast trust in traditional media fell by 5 points to 51%. (1/2)
[Edelman]

∞ If the bump in trust in online media in a year dominated by fake news is surprising, it's probably because fake news is not as transformative or widespread a phenomenon as claimed. A study by two economists demonstrates that a given percentage of the population (8% in the survey from the study) is willing to believe anything that fits their priors, instead of fake news actively shaping their - or anyone else's - worldview. (2/2)
[New York Times]

∞ Messaging & social app usage on smartphones grew 44% by number of sessions and 394% by time spent in 2016. This growth surge also comes at the expense of other app categories including Games and News & Magazines which saw YoY declines of 15% and 5% respectively.
[Flurry]

∞ Google's new algorithm penalizing mobile webpages with pop-ups and interstitials ("problematic transitions") officially went live early January. (1/2)
[Scribblrs]

∞ Don't mistake this for an eradication of pesky pop-ups though. For one, the changes in Google's algorithm do not affect desktop pages. Two, the changes only apply to the first click on a page from a Google search results page - these penalties don't apply once a viewer is on the page and follows another link. Finally, it is going to take Google time to figure out all the different ways that interstitials can be programmed into webpages. (2/2)
[Scribblrs]

∞ Snapchat is going to offer advertisers the option to buy audiences based on TV-style ratings - by age group & gender and get a guarantee of delivery as measured by Nielsen.
[Adweek]

∞ Bloomberg's decision to ditch infinite scroll at the end of articles and send viewers to a vertical's homepage (at the moment only in the technology section) has reportedly boosted page views by 7x and engagment by 28% compared to the algorithm-driven infinite scroll. (1/2)
[Digiday]

∞ This runs counter to the media (and ad) industry's fixation with personalization. In this case, a mixed bag of options does seem to be better than one wrong choice confidently predicted by an algorithm. (2/2)
[Digiday]

∞ According to estimates, there were between 700 and 1,100 Alexa-voice-controllable products on show at CES 2017. If it can be connected to Alexa, it seems that it will be.
[Advertising Age]

Weekly Roundup - 03/17

2017-01-19T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ 95% of smartphone users have tried their voice-enabled digital assistants at least once, but only around a third use them regularly.
[The Economist]

∞ The average number of TV commercials per NFL game has seen a steady upward tick over the last 6 years and is now just under 70 per game.
[Business Insider]

∞ According to Instagram, over 70% of its users follow a business.
[Advertising Age]

∞ 56% of European consumers say in-store discovery is one of their top information sources for new products, compared to 45% for TV ads.
[Nielsen]

∞ Using eye-tracking technology, Google and Ipsos report that attention paid to YouTube ads is 84% higher than advertising on TV.
[Business Insider]

∞ Globally time spent using mobile apps shot up by over 150 billion hours in 2016, reaching a total of nearly 900 billion hours. These numbers, however, are limited to Android devices and exclude China.
[TechCrunch]

∞ A study funded by World Federation of Advertisers concluded that every 1€ spent on advertisingin the EU generates 7€ for the economy, contributing to wider economic growth through its ability to support competitiveness.
[Value of Advertising]

Weekly Roundup - 02/17

2017-01-12T12:00:00.000+01:00

[Do check out 100 essential facts and figures for thinking about the future of advertising.]

∞ Google accounts for 95% of all global web searches on mobile devices.
[New York Times]

∞ A study comparing ad tech deployment on mainstream news websites and fake news websites found that the former do more tracking, dropping 129 percent more cookies (a median of 167 cookies per page) and resulting in 19 percent more tracking. The discrepancy can be attributable to the differing goals of these two media vehicles - legitimate news operations are expensive to operate and need to maximize revenue potential while fake news is easier to produce and is also more concerned with pushing an ideology over purely making money.
[Digiday]

∞ Samsung announced at CES that it has sold more than 5 million of its Gear VR headsets.
[Adweek]

∞ Israel topped the list for ad revenue per person per year in 2016 at $719, followed by Switzerland ($555.2) and the US ($552.9). China generated only $65 per person in advertising, despite being the second largest advertising market.
[IHS Markit]

∞ There were 343 global ad tech venture financing deals in 2016, a 17% drop compared with the 414 deals in 2015. There was also a 33% drop in the volume of funding in 2016, from $3.2bn to an estimated $2.2bn. (1/2)
[Financial Times]

∞ Apart from the overwhelming dominance of Google and Facebook in online advertising, ad tech is also likely a victim of its own success. The efficiency of automated algorithms is easily and widely copied increasingly making any gains marginal and temporary. (2/2)
[Financial Times]

∞ Facebook will start to show "mid-roll" ads in the videos people watch in its newsfeed, sharing the raised revenue with publishers. But, crucially, it stipulates that these "mid-roll" ads can only run once a viewer has watched a clip for at least 20 seconds and the video itself should have a run time of at least 90 seconds.
[recode]

∞ Medium shuttered its native ad sales operation saying that ad-driven publishing model on the web is a broken system. It will now focus its efforts on getting paid by readers.
[Digiday]

∞ For the first time, in October 2016 mobile and tablet devices accounted for 51.3% of internet usage worldwide compared to 48.7% by desktop. In mature markets like the UK and US, desktop is still the primary mode of internet access (55.6% and 58% respectively); meanwhile, India currently sees over 75% internet usage through mobile devices.
[StatCounter]

∞ Snapchat is deploying machine learning to improve its ad targeting offering. Advertisers inform the Snapchat API that they value swipes over impressions and how much a swipe is worth for them - Snapchat then auto-optimizes bidding and delivery to a target audience that's likely to engage with the ad.
[Adweek]

Weekly Roundup - 50/16

2016-12-15T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ Data from Google Ngram Viewer and Google Search Trends suggests that use of the words 'marketing' and 'consumer' has been in decline after peaking in the early aughts. One extrapolation is that we are now entering a post-marketing era, where we - as users of the Net - are coming to exercise fully both the connections and the agency (ad-blocking, for eg.) this new(ish) medium offers us. Thereby putting even more distance between marketing and the marketplace.
[ART + marketing]

∞ An adtech company is experimenting with offering viewers control over the online ads they see - snoozing ads they don't like, for eg. Rubicon Project currently serves 10 trillion ad impressions each month and believes such viewer participation improves consumer experience while also eliminating wasted impressions.
[Ad Age]

∞ Commuters in Düsseldorf, Germany can now get a single journey train or bus ticket worth €2.60 in exchange for watching four 20-second ad spots on an app. Demand is currently far outsripping supply, all available free tickets finding takers within hours of being on offer each day. The app is currently operating with 2 sponsors but will offer a choice of ads to choose from, when more come on board.
[Citylab]

∞ In the US, mobile advertising is now beginning to match the performance of desktop advertising in reaching intended audiences - doing so 60% of the time, up from 49% in 2015. Desktop advertising still holds a slight advantage when broader reach is required, mobile being more effective in connecting with narrower audiences.
[Nielsen]

∞ In particular, mobile ad campaigns have a clear edge over desktop efforts in reaching women across most age brackets.
[Nielsen]

∞ A new survey reveals that a significant number of participants (44%) couldn't correctly identify the sponsor of a native ad they had just read, and a majority (77%) didn't interpret native ads as advertising, instead believing them to be editorial or hybrid content. About 54% reported feeling deceived upon finding out the truth.
[Niemanlab]

∞ A source of confusion is the widespread use of many non-standardized terms by publishers to label and identify native advertising. Even the FTC's own guidelines - intending to clear the air - offer 17 permissible examples of labeling native ads. However, survey participants found the label 'Sponsored' the most helpful disclosure for native advertising, even more than 'advertising' itself.
[Fast Company]

∞ Meanwhile, news outlets like Time, NYT, WaPo & WSJ continue to aggressively pursue 'branded content' as a growth driver. These forays by publishers are increasingly pushing in-house content units into the traditional domain of advertising agencies, from offering consulting & research services for companies to making ads that run outside their own websites.
[The Wall Street Journal]

Weekly Roundup - 49/16

2016-12-08T06:45:00.000+01:00

∞ Global advertising expenditure is expected to grow 4.4% in 2017, the same rate as 2016 but - significantly - without tailwinds from major sporting or political events.
[Reuters]

∞ Digital media continues to be the top driver of growth for the worldwide advertising industry hoovering up 72 cents of every incremental ad dollar in 2016, set to rise to 77 cents in 2017; the comparative figures for TV are 21 and 17 cents respectively.
[Ad Age]

∞ TV, however, remains the larger medium by global ad spend with 42% share in 2016 and a projected 41% in 2017. In comparison, digital spend is set to increase from 31% in 2016 to 33% in 2017.
[Ad Age]

∞ The average television network in the United States reaches around 6 percent of Americans aged between 18 and 34. Snapchat, on the other hand, reaches 41 percent of the same demographic.
[Forbes]

∞ It's worth noting that watching content on Snapchat is in many ways analogous to watching TV. Videos run full screen and play with the sound on; stories are designed to feature a narrative and users can flip between them as they do with TV channels. Some observers even believe that Snapchat will be the company that will figure out how to move TV viewers to mobile.
[New York Times]

Weekly Roundup - 48/16

2016-12-01T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ User-generated advertising is not the wholesale mobilization of unskilled, albeit passionate, fans to replace the output of skilled professionals. Instead it is the occasional gift of skilled amateurs foregoing monetary compensation for other rewards, as demonstrated again by 2 advertising students who spent every day of November creating ads for brands they loved.
[Adweek]

∞ A survey among internet users in US and UK adds texture to the relentless rise of ad blocking. The study used tracking pixels to detect ad blocking usage in addition to enquiring about it - revealing a significant gap between the two. While widespread on desktop, actual ad blocking usage on smartphones is still rare (2% in both countries) and is growing more slowly than the overall rate.
[AudienceProject - PDF Link]

∞ A startup named Emogi is developing a branded emoji keyboard that will soon become available through messaging apps and on iOS. Brands make a buy for keywords (or generic emojis) targeting a demographic or trigger, through an automated back-end system. When users type in those words or emojis, a menu of branded emojis pops up; 'drinks' or 'beer' might throw up a frog sipping a Bud Light, for eg.
[New Yorker]

∞ Digital natives, while displaying precocious digital fluency, seem to lack the perceptiveness to differentiate between real news and native advertising. More than 80% of school and college students participating in a recent news literacy study misidentified advertising clearly labelled 'sponsored content' as a news story. Instead of paying attention to news source, they judged credibility by the amount of detail the story contained or the size of the attached photo.
[c|net / WSJ]

∞ A pan-European study of FMCG brands and retailers shows that there has been a significant drop in the share of products sold on promotion, particularly in the UK where such activity shifts more volumes than anywhere else. It is expected that much of this reclaimed marketing spend will be directed towards communicating brand benefits through advertising in pursuit of longer-term gains.
[Marketing Week]

∞ A forecasting study concludes that the advertising industry will be a key driver of AI revenues by 2025, second only to the consumer products sector. With a 8% share of a $38.8 billion market, that will be a lot human powered decision-making taken out of the equation.
[Mike Quindazzi on Twitter / Tractica]

Weekly Roundup - 47/16

2016-11-24T12:00:00.000+01:00

∞ Voice-activated devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home are quietly promising a revolution unseating the default visual nature of advertising. Some brands are currently experimenting with "skills" - spoken instructions from a smart home device on how to clean stains, make cocktails or find a nearby liquor store in response to spoken voice-based queries. One holding company has even launched a stand-alone agency to meld together the creative and technological sides of AI and voice.
[Adweek]

∞ Following earlier revelations about overstated average viewing times for video ads, Facebook announced that a comprehensive audit has uncovered more measurement flaws. It found that its analytics tools were miscalculating and overstating 4 more metrics. Under pressure from ad buyers for increased third-party validation of the soundness of its numbers, Facebook also announced the creation of a Measurement Council to work with advertisers.
[AdAge / Adweek / WSJ]

∞ As online shopping starts to mimic offline shopping - where people start off with broad categories and narrow down choices using visual cues - online ad formats that showcase a series of product images responding to general cues and queries are being developed. Both Google and Facebook are offering retailers ad formats that eschew targeting a user with a single product and instead put together a cluster of product images - usually following the first click - to evince interest and facilitate visual discovery.
[Adweek / Adweek]

∞ Why don't digital video platforms report their audiences in average audience per minute? Because doing so would reveal the true - and unimpressive - scale of their reach vis-a-vis TV. Doing the math, Mark Ritson reveals that Twitter's impressive 6.8 million viewership for its US election coverage shrinks to 165,000 on the conventional metric - translating to a meager 0.2% of the viewing population.
[Marketing Week]

∞ A new twitter account called Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) is alerting brands to their ads appearing on news sites that stoke racist sentiments. The problem is exacerbated by the opaque nature of internet ad buying through third-party ad exchanges and networks. Some brands responded by black-listing the sites in question, others by pleading their ads shouldn't be seen as political commentary.
[Digiday / The Guardian]

Weekly Roundup - 39/16

2016-09-29T12:00:00.000+02:00

∞ A german signage company is developing giant monochromatic E-ink panels - known for their miserly use of power and legible screens even in direct sunlight - to be used as billboards on the back of trucks. Powered by GPS & 4G, these rolling billboards will display constantly updated location and context-based ads (McDonald's 5 kms ahead!) along with information about traffic and weather conditions to a "captive" audience. They are expected to be commercially available mid-2017.
[Gizmodo]

∞ Social media influencers with 3-7 million followers can earn, on average, $187,500 for a post on YouTube, $75,000 for a post on Instagram or Snapchat and $30,000 for a post on Twitter. For influencers with 50,000 to 500,000 followers, the rates drop to $2,500 for YouTube, $1,000 for Instagram or Snapchat and $400 for Twitter. In the US, these influencers are now being pressured by the FTC and consumer advocacy groups to make an unambiguous disclosure of the paid nature of their endorsements, for eg. with "#ad" or "#sponsored" hashtags.
[NYT]

∞ Adblock Plus is now launching a advertising marketplace which allows publishers to pick pre-approved ads to be shown to users of the popular adblocking service in place of the publishers' non-whitelisted ads. The marketplace expands the scope and reach of their earlier Acceptable Ads program that whitelisted ads for a fee. Publishers get to keep 80% of the fee, Adblock Plus picks up 6% and the rest goes to other parties involved in the serving of the ad.
[The Verge]

∞ Spending on out-of-home advertising - including stand-alone billboards, ads on various modes of transit and airport ads - has risen for 24 consecutive quarters up from $5.9 billion in 2009 to $7.3 billion in 2015. It is believed that audiences for out-of-home media are increasing as smartphones enable people to be connected wherever they are, allowing them to spend more time outside of home and office.
[NYT]

∞ ‘Coalition for Better Ads’ - a taskforce consisting of big-name advertisers, agencies, ad tech players and publishers - is planning to introduce a set of global standards that "all" digital advertising will have to meet. Ads will be scored on various factors including load time, format and size and will require a minimum score to appear on publishers’ websites. The initiative aims to transform the ad experience online for consumers and is a response to the alarming rise of adblocking.
[Marketing Week]