Ryan Skinner says, “Native advertising corresponds to many types of advertising, from paid search and social ads to the sponsored editorial offerings from media companies. Put simply, it’s confusing as hell to understand. Success at native means both the user of a media site or app and the advertiser explicitly get value out of the experience. To understand if a particular kind of native advertising is going to be successful, marketers should assess four criteria: Format, reach, context, and identification. The seven core types of native advertising** all function to varying degrees against... [...]

Jim Nail says, “Facebook’s admission that their video viewing numbers have been inflated for two years is one more shoe dropping in an ongoing breakdown of the relationships between advertisers, agencies and media companies in the advertising ecosystem. Coming after the ANA’s work on transparency, and the unresolved issue of fraud in the programmatic ecosystem, this points to a larger, more fundamental problem in the advertising industry. I won’t try to diagnose them all (my colleague Sarah Sikowitz did a good job on the agency transparency issue on her blog). And I won’t... [...]

Sean Donnelly says, “Last week we hosted Get With The Programmatic 2016 (GWTP), a conference designed to demystify programmatic and examine some of the technology steering its use cases. A key theme that came up several times throughout the day was what marketers require to get started. If you are a Marketing Director and you’ve heard how your competitors are benefitting from programmatic and aren’t sure where to get started, you might find these suggestions from the GWTP panellists helpful. The key insight here is that all speakers emphasised the importance of people, skills and procedures... [...]

Karla Cook says, “Nostalgia marketing is the advertising equivalent of comfort food. In a time when most marketing focuses heavily on the future, it transports us back to a simpler place where our current problems don’t matter and the hustle and bustle of modernity just melts away. Instead of anticipating the next great thing, nostalgia marketing urges us to focus on the things we already know are great. We know at a gut level that nostalgia gives our lives a feeling of meaning and continuity, but you may be surprised to learn it can also make us looser with our wallets. A study published... [...]

Rebecca Pollard says, “As a small business owner, you’ve poured blood, sweat and tears into your company to get it to a place where you can finally see financial benefits (go you!). But due to all of your hard work, that sometimes makes the decision to spend your hard earned money particularly difficult. When you do spend it, you want to spend it well – like on something that gets your message in front of an audience who has a problem your product or service can fix. But sometimes, reaching the right people is the biggest challenge of all. That’s where a wonderful tactic known... [...]

John Lincoln says, “Expanded text ads (ETAs) are here and marketers everywhere are jumping in to take advantage. You should too. If you’re unfamiliar with ETAs, they offer almost 50 percent more ad text that you can use to reach people in your target market. Unsurprisingly, the expanded format is designed specifically for mobile users. According to Google’s own research, “longer ad headlines are more useful to mobile users because they provide additional information about your business before they click your ad.” In fact, as of October 26, 2016, you will be required to create... [...]

Ellisa Hudson says, “Digital advertising doesn’t have the best reputation amongst consumers. In fact, earlier in 2016, HubSpot Research dug into how people interact with digital advertising, and it confirmed what many marketers have known for a long time: Consumers are actively avoiding our ads. Over half of the respondents said they used ad blockers or were planning to install one in the next six months — certainly not something most brands want to hear, but what’s the solution? For many businesses, the solution is simple: inbound marketing. But inbound marketing is a... [...]

Dave McIninch says, “Today, Google ends support for Converted Clicks in Google AdWords. Advertisers still using this metric in reports or for Target CPA bidding need to take a few steps to successfully migrate to the Conversions metrics instead. This article outlines how this change may affect you and what you need to do. What This Change Means Converted Clicks is a metric that came about in 2001 with the introduction of conversion tracking, and has lost much of its relevance since AdWords made updates to the Conversions column in 2015, at which point AdWords encouraged anyone still using... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Whether you are in marketing and advertising or product design and management, it is impossible to avoid the term ‘customer experience’. The two words litter agency pitches, vendor websites, trade press and conferences and, increasingly, job titles. Improving customer experience is not a novel concept, but it has become more important as digital technology has increased competitive pressure in almost every market. Aaron Dignan, investor and writer, puts it as follows: “As products and the means to create them have become digitized (often referred to as software... [...]

Dave McIninch says, “Today, Google ends support for Converted Clicks in Google AdWords. Advertisers still using this metric in reports or for Target CPA bidding need to take a few steps to successfully migrate to the Conversions metrics instead. This article outlines how this change may affect you and what you need to do. What This Change Means Converted Clicks is a metric that came about in 2001 with the introduction of conversion tracking, and has lost much of its relevance since AdWords made updates to the Conversions column in 2015, at which point AdWords encouraged anyone still using... [...]