Greg Sterling says, “Audience enrichment — combining first-party data from your website with third-party data gathered from other sources to get a more complete picture of your visitors — is a hot topic right now amongst enterprise-level businesses. Evidence of its impact is clear in channels such as programmatic, which continues to rampage through paid marketing budgets, hoovering up the dollars left and right. Being UK-based, the above overview from eMarketer struck a chord on that progress to channel dominance for programmatic within paid channels. But you can also take a look at... [...]

AJ Agrawal says, “Virtual reality (VR) is the next big technology. And it’s growing at an extraordinary rate. The Oculus Rift for gamers has been one of the most successful VR devices to date. By 2020 it’s expected that 30 million U.S. consumers will be using the technology. What hasn’t been looked at, though, is how marketers can use VR to make their campaigns and their businesses successful. Begin by targeting consumers with mobile. VR is already beginning to make its next move. Rather than putting a large headset on top of your head, you can now experience it from the comfort of... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “The IAB Tech Lab released a standard for dynamic content ads this week for public comment. The standard is a schema (structured meta data) aimed at increasing the relevancy of ads — and eliminating the need for creating dozens of ad variations — by automatically tailoring ads based on user factors such as gender, location, weather and language. The new standard is designed to function across devices and screen sizes, as well as ad types, including display, video, audio, native or social. A tool powered by dynamic ad platform Jivox on the IAB site shows... [...]

Evan Dunn says, “Data-driven marketing is super popular right now. Topics that stem from it – like personalization, performance optimization and customer experience – dominate blogs and research. 81% of marketers are looking to increase budgets for data-driven marketing, while 83% of marketers believe it’s important to be able to make data-guided decisions. That’s nearly every marketer. Over half expect to see revenue growth as a result of data-driven marketing investments (only 7% expect a decrease), and 39% plan to increase spend on data-driven marketing initiatives. Despite... [...]

Brian Clark says, “In just over a decade, WordPress has become the most popular content management system on the web. And as with any hugely popular open source movement, there are plenty of for-profit companies providing premium themes, plugins, hosting, and support. Is it too late for you to get involved? Evidence suggests the contrary — that WordPress is just getting started. But you do need to identify a distinct business problem to solve. As a non-technical founder myself, a decade ago I was under the misconception that the code is what matters. And it does, but the most elegant code... [...]

Jason Lucash says, “My company OrigAudio manufactures premium quality audio products. The bulk of our sales comes from customizing products for brands to sell and give away to their employees, fans and customers as promotions and giveaways. Getting in front of our target market audience is difficult, and we invest a lot of time and resources into creative marketing efforts. Because of the importance of marketing to our company and the potential of a successful campaign to an early-stage product-based company, we’re flooded with marketing “opportunities” on a daily basis. These include... [...]

Juliana Nicholson says, “In marketing, it seems like the word “brand” is used a lot — the leading brand, off-brand, personal brand … you get the picture. But there’s often confusion around its meaning in business. What does it entail? Do I need to hire an expert? Branding is expensive, right? To that very last point, it doesn’t have to be. As it turns out, there are some pretty creative ways to brand your business without a ton of cash. And while it can require an investment of time, the ROI won’t go unnoticed — in some cases, it can actually... [...]

Martha France says, “It’s exciting to be part of a growing business. But growth can also be stressful, especially for the corporate marketing department. In fact, sometimes growth can cripple your business if you do not have the resources to adequately support it. Perhaps you are a bank that has made an acquisition and you’re now in the process of integrating many new branches into your organization. Or maybe you’re a franchiser with dozens of new locations under construction or scores of new franchisees under contract. With new locations come many more local representatives... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “The consumer path to purchase has become increasingly complex, with multiple channels and devices playing a role in influencing buying decisions. However, beyond devices and channels, newresearch from YP (conducted by Thrive Analytics) examines the “primary” and “secondary” content variables and other factors that influence consumer purchases. Thrive surveyed 5,418 US adults about their shopping behaviors in the past three months, across multiple verticals. The survey found, consistent with other research, that consumers use multiple devices and tend to shop... [...]

Nikki Gilliland says, “With Thanksgiving just around the corner, many online retailers are preparing for one of the biggest days of the year – Black Friday. However, with increasing backlash over the ‘Black Friday creep’ – is it still all it’s cracked up to be? Here’s a closer look at the opportunity it presents, as well as how retailers can best capture consumer interest through organic search. What happened last year? Despite murmurings that consumers are becoming fed up of Black Friday madness – and some retailers like Rei even taking a stance against it – last year’s... [...]