Martin Beck says, “The Interactive Advertising Bureau opened a new front in its battle against ad-blocking companies Tuesday, announcing the creation of a working group and an online hub to help publishers deal with software that strips advertising from their sites. “We don’t want to see highway robbery becoming the norm across the Web,” said Scott Cunningham, the general manager of the IAB’s Technology Lab. “When it comes to how ad blocking effects [sic] small publishers, there is no question that ad-blocking companies are holding their sites, their livelihoods in fact, hostage.” There... [...]

Amy Gesenhues says, “Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer took center stage during Monday’s IAB MIXX conference in NYC, and told the audience that she thinks it’s a mistake for internet users to install ad blockers. Near the end of her conversation with The Slate Group chairman and editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg, Mayer weighed in on the hottest topic in the marketing industry today. “I personally think it’s a mistake to install ad blockers,” Mayer said. She says Yahoo has ads that work and make for a better internet experience, adding to the content versus taking away from it. According to... [...]

Carly Stec says, “When display advertising first surfaced in the world of marketing, many marketers were left with a bad taste in their mouth. The ads we were being presented with lacked context and value, and as a result, many of us were quick to deem them untrustworthy. At HubSpot, we held onto this notion for a while. There was just something about paying for an irrelevant banner ad that didn’t sit well with us. But then things started to change … As technology advanced, we started looking at display advertising — digital advertising in general, really — in a new... [...]

Heather Marano says, “On a recent trip to New York, I took the opportunity to attend a digital publishing summit that brought together key digital players including The Huffington Post, The Onion, Buzzfeed and others to discuss trends in publishing. I was interested to learn more about how the media landscape is changing as a result of digital. Changing reader habits, geared towards a preference for consuming media online and through devices, have led to the decline of print and a subsequent decline in revenue for media outlets. Unsurprisingly, the number one issue up for discussion at... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “It may be premature to call ad blocking a “crisis” for the industry, but it’s obviously an area of significant concern for publishers and advertisers. The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has suggested that it may sue to try to stop ad blocking; however, the prospect of legal victory is dubious. To the surprise of many, following the release of iOS 9, the ad-blocking app Peace immediately rose to the top of the iTunes paid app charts over the weekend, only to be later pulled by its developer Marco Arment amid feelings of remorse over its potential impact on... [...]

Susan Waldes says, “In March, I wrote a two-part series on Marketing Land about my experience with Gmail Sponsored Promotions (GSP) and best practices for utilizing the platform. Part 1 focused on the basics of the ad type, where it shows up, what kind of results advertisers should expect, and how to set up a campaign. Part 2 focused on strategies to build successful creative and more advanced targeting best practices. Not long after, on June 1, Google retired the original GSP platform and moved the targeting type into the AdWords interface and back into beta status. Earlier this month,... [...]

John Meyer says, “Think for a moment about the lineage of brand marketing. At the dawn of the industrial age, marketers used print media as their exclusive resource. Print was soon augmented by radio, which was subsequently complimented by television, and that trifecta lasted well into the new millennium. The explosion of the digital universe added a new promotional dimension, one that rendered its predecessors woefully primitive by comparison. Now in 2015, and for the foreseeable future, technology has legitimized programmatic buying as a major component in the overall brand marketing equation,... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “To combat ad injectors, Google has added a filter on DoubleClick Bid Manager to automatically keep advertisers from buying injected ad inventory across the exchanges it has access to. Google says it has already received nearly 300,000 complaints in 2015 from Chrome users about ad injectors. Ad injector programs can take over legitimate ad placements or put ads in places that are not designed for ads at all. Google provided the example below showing a scam ad injected on the New York Times site, complete with a pop-up. The programs often end up on users’ machines... [...]

Greg Brown says, “With clickthrough rates of 1% to 5%, mobile banner ads are a sad savior for publishers looking to drive advertising revenue. But they can’t ignore this, as people are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to consume content. Consider this: Elite Daily saw a 61% drop in desktop traffic between January 2014 and June 2015, said Nicole Goksel, vice president of revenue operations, at the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit. Rory Brown, chief content officer at Bleacher Report, said at the same conference that he has seen points in time where 90% of the site’s traffic... [...]

Timothy Schmidt says, “On September 7th, 1982, David Ogilvy, founder of the iconic agency Ogilvy & Mather, sent an internal memo to all of his employees. Sparsely titled, “How to Write,” Ogilvy laid out his commandments for producing clear and efficient written messages. Among them (at number five) was the simple doctrine, “Never write more than two pages on any subject.” Surely then, Ogilvy would have loved the blog. Concise (usually under 1,000 words or less), covering only one topic and always endeavoring to add value. The blog has become a mainstay in today’s digital marketing... [...]