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... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “Placecast is bringing location intelligence to native advertising to improve relevance and performance. The company also announced last week that it has been awarded two patents pertaining to “location data management and targeting.” Placecast is one of the longest-existing companies in the location-based marketing segment, having begun as an SMS-based retail marketing platform using proximity and radius targeting. The new offering, called “Placecast Native,” promises the non-intrusive benefits of native, with the additional targeting, personalization and offline... [...]

Chris Glushko says, “Measurement, we’ve come a long way. Just 10 years ago, I was a manager in the “interactive marketing” department of a major real estate brand. Our marketing team as a whole employed 30 to 40 professionals, of which just a small handful worked with me in digital. As at any major consumer brand at the time, those of us on the digital team wanted a bigger slice of the marketing budget pie. “More brand dollars need to shift to online media,” we said. “Consumers are using DVRs to skip television commercials. Print is declining as people spend more time online.... [...]

Brad O’Brien says, “Social advertising in Q4 is expensive. Higher intent to purchase among holiday shoppers means that CPMs and CPCs (costs per thousand and costs per click) skyrocket because advertisers are all vying for those valuable consumer impressions. In social, you will feel these effects even if you’re not a holiday-based business, because good consumers will fall into audience targeting pools for all types of products and services. Knowing how to navigate the waters can mean the difference between a highly successful quarter and one that leaves you feeling that you’ve... [...]

Andy Taylor says, “At the recent SMX East conference in New York City, Google’s Jerry Dischler announced a number of paid search updates that should roll out in the near to immediate future. Among them, two in particular stand to expand the footprint of Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA). Here are the changes you need to know about, starting with the most impactful. RLSA membership duration expanded to 540 days Since beta testing all the way back in 2012, RLSA has been restricted to include only those users who visited an advertiser’s website within the past 180 days. This meant... [...]

Brett Middleton says, “Everyone running a PPC account typically has a budgeting question they are trying to figure out. For those with a tighter ad budget, the question becomes, “How do I get the most leads for this limited amount of spend I have?” Larger accounts run into their own problems; finding points of diminishing returns and making small gains in efficiency while maintaining spend levels at a point that generates the growth you need can be a headache. If you take away one point from this, it’s that search impression share may be the most ignored primary metric for most... [...]

Patrick Kulp says, “Publisher malaise towards ad blockers doesn’t seem to have lessened consumer appetites for downloading them. Ad blocking usage jumped 11 percent in the past year, according to a new report from Adobe and anti-ad blocking firm PageFair, bringing the total number of global users from 198 million to 220 million. The yearly study is widely cited as the definitive measure of the global ad blocking industry, despite the fact that it seldom holds good news for those who make a living online. The researchers behind it project an even more pronounced spike next year —... [...]

Barry Levine says, “According to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council, an online ad is deemed “viewable” if half of its pixels appear on the screen for at least one second. It’s always been a curious measurement, given that no human could be expected to respond to seeing half an ad for a second. Now, a recently-released eye-tracking study shows how inadequate this viewability threshold is for any advertiser wanting some impact on a website viewer. The study, conducted by biometric tracking firm Sticky, ad tech firm InSkin Media, and market research firm... [...]

Barry Levin says, “According to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council, an online ad is deemed “viewable” if half of its pixels appear on the screen for at least one second. It’s always been a curious measurement, given that no human could be expected to respond to seeing half an ad for a second. Now, a recently-released eye-tracking study shows how inadequate this viewability threshold is for any advertiser wanting some impact on a website viewer. The study, conducted by biometric tracking firm Sticky, ad tech firm InSkin Media, and market research firm... [...]

Wesley Parker says, “New expanded text ads came out as part of Google’s latest changes in summer 2016 and will replace the old text format by January 31, 2017. The new ad format has given advertisers another 35 characters to display their offer in the headline and has increased the description from two lines of 35 characters to one line of 80 characters, giving advertisers more space to display their features, benefits and calls to action. But what does all of this mean for advertisers? 1. An increase in clickthrough rate From early tests WordStream has noticed that the clickthrough... [...]