Tag: Digital Ads

Why Amazon Is Retiring Its Product Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Earlier this week, Amazon notified advertisers of its decision to shut down its popular pay-per-click “Product Ads”, which shows texts and photos at the bottom of Amazon’s search results and usually links to other sites. Besides the obvious concerns over diverting traffic to competing ecommerce sites, Amazon may also be discontinuing this particular ad unit to stop companies like Google gaining access to its shopper data.

What Brands Should Do
This decision will no doubt push some brands that advertising their products on Amazon towards selling their products on Amazon as well. For those brands, it is important to build out the product pages with rich product descriptions, demo videos, and photos that can truly capture the attention of digital shoppers. For brands that still wish to direct shoppers to their own sites, Amazon offers an alternative ad format named “text ads,” which, as the name indicates, only offers textual links, admittedly making it a less attractive option for most retailers.

 

Source: Marketing Land

CBS To Bundle Broadcast And Streaming Ad Sales For Super Bowl

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
CBS has confirmed its plan to sell all national ad spots for next year’s Super Bowl as a package deal with its corresponding stream’s ad units during the game. CBS will not allow advertisers to opt out of the latter, which are conventionally sold separately from the broadcast units. As a result, all national ads that plays during the game will be live-streamed as well.

Market Impact
According to NBC, over 1.3 million people watched this year’s Super Bowl via its streaming service, a number that will most likely increase next year as U.S. viewers continue to adopt OTT streaming services, but still pales in comparison to the over 114 million viewers who watched it on TV. Therefore, it is understandable that only 18 of more than 70 Super Bowl advertisers opted to put their commercials in the live-stream this year, and NBC allegedly had some difficulty selling all of its separate streaming inventory, according to an AdAge report.

CBS’s decision may set an important precedent and become common. “We expect bundling of broadcast and streaming ad sales to catch on, at least for the sports events that draw sizeable live audiences that are the most important and attractive for advertisers,” says Brian Hughes, SVP, Audience Analysis Practice Lead at Magna Global. “This approach unifies the viewer experience across platforms, and simplifies both the sales process and the viewership metrics which, for these events, are based on reach, not targeting.”

 

Source: Variety

Snapchat Reveals Plans To Be More Brand-Friendly

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original article on: Marketing Land

In an interview at the Code Conference this Tuesday, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel did his usual round of horn-tooting about the rapid growth of the app, hinted at an ambitious plan for IPO, and revealed some future plans to make Snapchat more brand-friendly.

Spiegel said the company would eventually add a self-service ad platform to “make it easier for brands to be brands”. So far brands can only get on the platform by purchasing expensive ad units within its Stories and Discovery features, and a new self-serving ad platform would certainly give brands more freedom to test and explore the messaging app. However, don’t expect Snapchat to start actively helping brands with more organic use of the platform just yet, as Spiegel seems to consider it “frustrating when brands come on to [Snapchat] and tries to act like a person”.

How Brands Can Deal With Increasing Ad-Blocking

Posted on by Lab Team

Earlier last week, a Financial Times report claimed that several mobile network operators in Europe were planning to block online display ads as a way to attack Google’s domination of digital ad revenue. Whether this will actually be implemented is still up in the air, but the tide of ad blocking continues to rise this week as popular ad-blocker maker Adblock Plus launched its Firefox-based web browser for Android with built-in ad blocking. The first of its kind, this new Adblock Brower promises shorter load times, reduced cellular data usage and better battery life. No longer is ad blocking an add-on feature—it is quickly becoming the default and extending from desktops to mobile. Therefore, brands advertising online needs to adapt accordingly.

One good way to cope with such changes is to explore the newer formats of digital ads, such as video or native ads. For instance, yesterday Pinterest unveiled a series of new ad products and services that include an in-house creative arm called Pin Factory, improved audience targeting tools, and a new animated ad format dubbed “Cinematic Pins”, an interesting way to incorporate video ads into the usual static pin boards. As noted in the aforementioned Financial Times report, social “in-feed” ads on the likes of Twitter or Facebook will not be affected, presumably because they are native to the platform. For brands and marketers alike, the right way to combat ad-blocking tools expanding beyond add-ons is to stop making digital ads that look like add-ons.

European Mobile Carriers Plan To Block All Online Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: Financial Times

A recent report claims that some mobile network operators in Europe are planning to start blocking online ads to target Google’s stranglehold on digital ad revenue. The mobile carriers have reportedly installed ad-blocking software in their data centers and plans are afoot to switch the technology on by the end of the year.

The software, developed by an Israeli-based company named Shine, will prevent most advertisements from loading, thereby causing some severe viewability issue for online advertisers. However, it seems that it will not affect social “in-feed” ads on Twitter or Facebook. Should this actually be implemented, which seems highly unlikely given relevant regulations, digital display ads would be seriously impacted. Maybe now is the time for brands and advertisers to take a look into native ads.

Mondelez Experiments With “Buy Now” Button In Digital Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: CNN Money

Mondelez International has inked a global partnership with marketing tech firm ChannelSight to ramp up e-commerce sales across its digital platforms, including brands’ product pages, social media, and video ads.

As a crucial part of this partnership, “Buy Now” buttons will be added to the aforementioned media platforms across 25 global markets to make it easy for sweet-toothed consumers to find and purchase Mondelez products online. After clicking the button, interested consumers will be presented with a list of relevant third-party retailers that stock the specific product being advertised.

It is worth noting that such lists are compiled through ChannelSight’s technology rather than partnerships struck with the retailers, so as to offer prospective customers the best deal available. Although not quite the “one-click” purchase that some major platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon, are striving for, it is definitely a step in the right direction for the multinational conglomerate to improve its digital attribution.

By The Numbers: Digital Ad Spend Concentrates Into Mobile

Posted on by Lab Team

According to a new eMarketer study, mobile advertising is set to take over digital ad spending in the States, surpassing spending in desktop advertising as early as next year. And its growth is not showing any sign of slowing down, as mobile is predicted to account for 72% of the US digital ad spend by 2019.

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Why Mobile Is Winning The Ad Dollars

The shift to mobile ad spending is being driven mainly by the change in media consumption as users move towards mobile devices. In 2014, US adults spent an average of 2 hours, 51 minutes with mobile devices, while desktop time fell to 2 hours, 12 minutes daily last year.

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Apps Are Where The Money Is Going

The growth rate stays uneven even within mobile ads, as app spending is projected to outpace mobile web browser ad dollars at a ratio of nearly 3-to-1. Advertisers will spend $20.79 billion to reach consumers via mobile apps in 2015, compared with $7.93 billion on mobile browsers.

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All charts courtesy of eMarketer.

 

Attentiveness & Receptivity: The New Frontier In Ad Measurement

Posted on by Lab Team

Download the report here.

The Lab teamed up with YuMe to explore a new measurement frontier: Attentiveness & Receptivity.

Moving beyond reach & frequency, 10,000+ respondent study examines how to identify attentive and receptive audiences. The objective of this research was to deconstruct the indicators of receptivity and determine if they differ by industry vertical.

Receptivity, defined as the willingness to receive a message from a brand before exposure to an ad (passive) and Attention, an active behavior of noticing an ad (active) are the patterns in which consumers interact with advertising. How open are consumers to stimuli (an ad) and how much attention are they giving to the stimuli and to what degree?

Simultaneously, the research sought to conduct attention measurement to test the output of receptivity and establish to what degree attention and receptivity drive brand metrics. From this, marketers can identify appropriate targeting indicators and apply findings to better understand and define an attentive audience.

To learn more about this joint study, download the report here.

 

 

Snapchat To Add News And Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

According to The Wall Street Journal, Snapchat is planning to broaden its offerings with video clips, news articles, and ads. It is reportedly in talks with advertisers and media companies about a service called “Snapchat Discovery” that would support such content.

Such support is certainly nothing new for messaging apps: Kik, for example, has been partnering with advertisers to run campaigns on its multimedia platform for a while now. Before Snapchat can capitalize on its estimated 50 million active users, however, some reliable measurements are needed.