2018 was a hard year for tech giants, and the beginning of 2019 has not been much kinder to the likes of Google and Facebook. The days of marketers placidly placing their ad spend with the two platforms have certainly come to an end, with more and more chief marketing officers and marketing teams questioning the best way to reach their customers and deliver ads to the masses.

While some in the industry have come out strong and suggested marketers should pull their spend from the platforms altogether, the fact remains that they will, and should, form part of a balanced marketing strategy. Many marketers are clearly following this path; the numbers point to the fact that Facebook’s share of the almost $280 billion worldwide digital ad market will have grown to 19.5% as of the end of 2018, trailing Google at 31.5%.

The analogy “you need to fish where the fish are” rings true to an extent – if your customers are using Google, Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, then it makes sense that this is where you’ll direct your ad spend. But as anyone who has actually gone fishing will understand, it takes more than just knowing where there is a massive school of fish to actually catch one. You need to recognise what kind of fish they are, and what kind of bait will work.

Back on the solid land of advertising and marketing, that means you need to have access to robust, insightful first-party data that allows you to shape a campaign around your audiences’ behaviour, likes, dislikes and preferences. This is currently the biggest hurdle at which the likes of Facebook and Google fall.

Marketers want more from walled gardens

Sizmek’s survey of more than 500 marketers across the UK and US showed that two-thirds believe that walled gardens are a major block to improving first-party data. That’s a significant chunk of advertisers who think they’re not getting bang for their buck. Without access to this data, how are brands meant to effectively analyse and measure campaigns?

It’s a big question and one that needs to be asked. If a staggering 88% of marketers say they want to own the data created from their own campaigns, clearly there is a reason for brands to start looking elsewhere in the digital landscape for platforms that will deliver better data ownership.

After all, consumers don’t browse the internet with blinkers on; there is an enormous opportunity for advertisers that are willing to follow the gaze of consumers and look outside of the walled gardens.

What marketers really want

Clearly, brands are clamouring for more and better insight into their data. They need to compete for the attention of consumers, and data is the biggest and best way to ensure they are creating the content that counts; and that they are delivering it in the right place at the right time. In fact, the same study showed that 83% said having improved insight into data was a critical or high priority in 2019.

So, what kind of data are people are looking for? Well, when asked which insights they found the most valuable, “understanding audience behaviour” came out on top (92%), followed by “informing overall strategy” (88%) and “viewability” (87%). It’s this information that makes all the difference to whether a campaign is seen by more consumers.

It’s time to take stock of your surroundings

It may be increasingly hard for marketers to navigate today’s complex digital ecosystem, particularly when it comes to improving their campaign effectiveness or increasing the efficiency of their media spend. But it’s high time to start asking the questions of the walled gardens and taking advantage of the plethora of adtech solutions that offer simple, transparent control over the first-party data generated as part of ad campaigns.

Marketers must put themselves firmly in the driving seat and ensure their campaigns are being executed effectively and are delivering meaningful returns on their ad spend. Put simply, if you own your data, you’ll own your future.

The post When Data is King, Marketers Need to Look Beyond the Walled Gardens appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Since its introduction, advertisers have both welcomed and been wary of programmatic technology. The potential to place an ad in the perfect moment, with the right audience member and on the best channel promises significant return of investment for brands that can get it right. UK companies have been quick to recognise the value of the technology, investing more than £3 billion into programmatic ads last year in an effort to improve campaign engagement among consumers.

Yet there are still rumblings about the issues around programmatic and the persistent murky ad supply chains. Companies are calling for more accountability around how their ads are being delivered online; they want to know their content is finding a brand-safe environment, in a way that reaches the right audience, at the right time, in the right context and at the right price.

The power of programmatic

The rise of programmatic can be traced back to the increasing fragmentation of the digital landscape. More than ever before, audiences are engaging with ads on a multitude of devices and platforms, from mobile and social media to video-on-demand sites. While this means that there are more opportunities for brands to reach consumers, it also means that audiences have been scattered across different media. To combat the fragmentation, advertisers turned to programmatic technology to use the vast quantities of consumer data at their fingertips to pinpoint the best moment at which to target people with relevant, branded content.

With the promise of reaching audiences online more efficiently and cost-effectively than the alternative manual ad bidding and placements, it’s unsurprising that programmatic is the tool of choice for most marketers. However, the convenience of programmatic has been undone in recent years, thanks to the lack of transparency into how the technology chooses the ideal ad environment based on audience numbers and segments, along with the exact cost of delivering the ad on certain sites.

So, how can advertisers ensure that programmatic targeting is doing the job it has been tasked with?

AI can do the heavy lifting in a programmatic world

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been heralded as the solution to business challenges in a range of industries from manufacturing and healthcare to banking and transport. In digital advertising, AI’s key value-driver is its ability to analyse information and attribute it at speed and scale, which makes it the perfect foundation upon which to build an unparalleled programmatic offering.

Essentially, AI gives advertisers more control over how they define, source and target their ideal ad environment; all in a brand-safe way. There is a much bigger benefit as well. As we see digital and programmatic ad spend rise, the role of AI will shift from decision-maker to trusted advisor, with more transparency into algorithms and data inputs.

This will unpick the tangled web behind the complex workings of machine learning, so the decisions made by AI are no longer held deep within a ‘black box’ of technology. While machine learning does the hard work analysing vast quantities of data in real-time, it will also guarantee that advertisers understand the mechanisms at work and can make informed decisions about how they want to deliver ad campaigns to their consumers.

At the end of the day, AI can analyse data and draw insights in a way that humans can’t. It is this previously unattainable insight that will be key to bringing clarity to the advertising supply chain and demonstrating to both brands and consumers that ad tech is ready to be open and transparent.

The post Why AI is the Key to Rebuilding Trust in the Ad Supply Chain appeared first on PerformanceIN.

You have three seconds to persuade users they should stop scrolling and watch your mobile video ad. When Facebook first introduced this concept, advertisers were unsure, with platforms like YouTube deeming 30-second video ad views standard; was a three-second audition really enough?

Now, the majority accept this threshold, because a few seconds is all any mobile content has to hook audiences. Time spent on mobile devices may be rising, but with users squeezing 2, 617 interactions into each day, attention is short-lived. So ads have to impress, fast.  

This means advertisers must deliver instantly personalised, relevant and ‘snackable’ content if they’re to make the cut. And to do so, they’ll need smart tools that enable them to identify individual wants and tastes, and use this insight to adjust ads in real-time. More specifically, they’ll need to utilise dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) and location targeting.  

Location fuels fast personalisation

Location data isn’t just for mapping user movement. While it’s true that certain elements such as GPS do exactly that, the finished article is more than the sum of its parts. When multiple location data sources, like GPS, Wi-Fi, and in-store beacons are combined, they produce a detailed and constantly updating view of user activity. Using this information, advertisers can tailor messages and ensure attention is engaged in those crucial first few seconds.

Of course, there are some potential drawbacks. For instance, Wi-Fi can pinpoint users on the move as they link up with different hotspots, and track their unique device IDs. But it only works while users are connected, which means there are blind spots in user activity. But the good news is this issue can be easily overcome by adding data layers to fill in the gaps, such as GPS. Though it’s important to note that depends on users always bringing their device with them and keeping location services switched on.

Advertisers should also keep an eye on quality. Given the high data volumes mobile devices produce, the probability that errors will occur is increasing. This makes it essential to use a validation platform capable of monitoring location insight, identifying suspicious data — such as blacklisted or unfeasible coordinates — and removing it from consumer profiles.

Bringing location and DCO together

However beautiful ad creative is, it can still lose user attention if it doesn’t match their current context. That’s why location targeting and DCO are a formidable duo: with up-to-date location insight and the ability to automatically adapt creative, advertisers can ensure mobile video ads always have the in-the-moment relevance needed to keep users watching.

How far advertisers can take location-powered DCO depends only on their desired level of targeting. For starters, they can adjust ads to align with broader variables, such as the local language, currency or the city users are in — as Toyota did with its recent Corolla campaign, which referenced local places users could visit with its new model across 15,000 US cities.  

For those looking to go further, ads can also get personal. When combined with additional data, like past purchases or browsing behaviour, location insight can determine not just where consumers are now, but also where they have been and where they are likely to go in the future. Using DCO, this insight can inform advertising that provides real value for individuals: discount codes for items users have been searching for that reach their device as they pass a participating store, suggestions for newly issued upgrades that will improve past buys. In this way, advertisers will not only be able to boost the appeal of each ad, and the chances users will stick with it beyond three seconds, but also the likelihood of conversion.

Then there is the capacity to add interest by linking ads to external events and the weather. For example, Disney used weather segmentation for an OOH campaign promoting its emotion-focused movie Inside Out; switching the characters featured on digital billboards to reflect the skies, sadness for rain and joy for sunshine. Dove Men+Care also experimented with giving ads contextual meaning last year in its campaign for the RBS Six Nations rugby tournament, where ads were updated with the latest scores and news using a real-time live stream.  

Yet while precise targeting is an effective way to grab user attention, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that attentiveness will last the duration of a 60-second ad. Advertisers need to make sure content is snackable, key messages are conveyed at the very start and ad length is proportionate to content.

Time is limited for today’s audiences, yet content variety is endless — so when it comes to choosing which ads to engage with, the video that makes the best impression will always win.

Advertisers need to give ads instant impact. Not only is it vital for key targeting elements to be covered — user identity and preferences  — but also that context is taken into account. If ads are to make the cut, creative must seize the moment and provide an experience so immersive users ignore everything except the ad in view.  

The post The Three-Second Audition: How to Ensure Video Ads Make the Cut appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Flash has been on borrowed time for a while, but the contingency clock is about to stop.

Although it has clung on amid increasing limitations from most major browsers, Google will soon deal the final blow — in June, the company is set to stop work on software development kits (SDKs) for Flash, removing all support for Flash and the video Flash ads Google still supports. Such is the anticipated impact of this move that by July the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) expects the transition to HTLM5 and the “elimination of Flash Interactive Video Ads” will be complete.

For those who have so far been reluctant to make the switch, the news may seem like a cause for concern. Yet it shouldn’t be. While flash-based VPAID ads may be passable on desktop, the majority of users now consume video ads on mobile. The shift to HTML5 is crucial to meet user expectations of ads that render perfectly on multiple screens. What’s more, the change doesn’t have to be complex if we take the right approach.

So, to ease the transition, here’s a look at why and how we must finally say goodbye to Flash.

A long overdue retirement

It’s well known that Flash is imperfect. While it has played an important role in serving video, advertising and gaming content across the web, the media player has also been plagued by a litany of issues, including numerous security breaches, problems with stability, and its tendency to drain battery power. All of these make for a bad user experience on any device, but particularly on mobile. Indeed, Adobe itself acknowledged this problem several years ago by moving to HTML5 video and animations on mobile as a means to improve quality. And, unsurprisingly, marketers have been reluctant to assign budgets to build two videos – one for Flash and another for HTML5.

Yet despite these defects and persistent calls for Flash to be replaced by more versatile tools, many key industry players are still dragging their heels, which begs the question: why?

Challenges and advantages

For those who are uncertain about embracing HTML5, the biggest problem is its perceived complexity. Many are concerned that integrating HTML5 — an advanced combination of HTML, CSS, and Javascript — will mean becoming experts in coding and making large investments in building bespoke HTLM5-based apps.

Yet such apprehensions can’t overshadow the advantages of HTLM5. With its capacity to automatically adapt ads to any screen, HTML5 ensures that ad quality remains high across all devices, including mobile, significantly enhancing audience satisfaction and campaign scale. Indeed, its versatility also means that there is less pressure to build multiple versions of ad creative ad for different screens, reducing costs for advertisers, while increasing publisher ability to keep up with demand for ad formats that reach a range of audiences. Furthermore, Google’s impending withdrawal of support means that Flash-based video ads will no longer be served, so if advertisers want to harness the power of digital video — which now makes up over an hour of consumers’ daily viewing time — an upgrade to HTML5 is paramount.

Streamlining the switch

So how can brands make the move as simple and successful as possible?

1. Ensure a straightforward transition

An industry-wide change cannot be effective if different players are using different tools, so the first step is universal adoption. If brand encourages publishers, ad networks, demand and supply-side platforms to align video campaigns with the IAB’s HTLM5 VPAID (Video Player-Ad Interface Definition) standard, consistency can be used to keep confusion at bay.

2. Phase out Flash-based inventory

As Flash leaves the advertising scene, its presence amongst inventory is set to decrease. By reducing their usage of Flash-based impressions and expanding the range ad types used in each campaign, brands can keep coverage strong while future-proofing their campaigns for a new HTML5 world.

3. Request in-depth analytics and viewability insight

A technology so long integrated into the fabric of digital advertising can be hard to spot, which means transparency is crucial. Brands should ask for a full overview of the VPAID standard in use when buying inventory to establish whether any Flash wrappers are present and make sure back-up content will default to HTML5, not Flash.

4. Communicate openly with publishers

Finally, it’s the most important step of all: effective communication with publishers. More specifically, brands need to be sure publishers have the right systems in place to support HTML5 video, such as updated video players and the ability to run JavaScript VPAID tags, and that their verification — and viewability — benchmarks comply with VPAID standards. Open discussions also afford an opportunity to gain a thorough understanding of the inventory on offer and which creative specifications ads must meet for VPAID placements.

You’ve got to hand it to Flash; the media player has proved its staying power in the face of many challenges and great opposition. But the end has been nigh for some time and with decisive action from both Google, and the IAB, it now looks inevitable. Yet this transition is good news for advertisers and consumers — giving one the tool required to better meet the needs of the other. Change can be confusing, but by taking an efficient and cohesive approach, brands can ensure they are ready when the HTML5 era finally arrives.

The post HTML5 Transition: How and Why We Must Say Goodbye to Flash appeared first on PerformanceIN.