native advertising

Meta Audience Network Announces Rewarded Interstitial Ads

Meta Audience Network announced a new ad format ‘Rewarded Interstitial Ads’ on Wednesday. The rewarded interstitial ads are new, user-friendly, skippable format. It allows game developers to reward players in-game after completing a video view, encouraging longer sessions.

How rewarded interstitial ads work

In the blog, the company said place the ads at gameplay moments when rewarding players is suitable. The players can opt out after 5 seconds of ads played. However, they can also receive an in-game reward, like coins or extra lives for viewing the full video.

In its blog post, the mobile monetization platform explained how rewarded interstitial advertising helps game developers:

Improve user experience: This skippable, non-intrusive ad format doesn’t interrupt players during application events resulting in higher retention.

Increase session length: By offering rewards for watching the ads, gamers are motivated to continue playing, resulting in fewer lapsed players.

Make an impression: These interactive, full-screen ads can grab attention when placed at natural transition points or breaks in the game like in-between activities or game levels.

Monetize more players: Rewarded interstitials can be tested to monetize players who may not engage with rewarded video and in-app purchases.

Interesting Read: Your Ultimate Guide to Understanding Gaming Advertising

Best practices for implementing rewarded interstitial ads

Take a closer look to implement the new ad option including a review of the in-game economy and consider the placement strategically to avoid cannibalizing other ad formats.  To test the effectiveness of ads, add a pre-prompt screen at the beginning of the video to inform players what rewards they will receive.

Manish Gajria, Director, Product Management at Meta said,

“Publishers told us they wanted new opportunities to monetize gaming apps, and we listened. We’re proud to launch rewarded interstitial ads: an improved consent-driven interstitial experience aimed at driving higher eCPMs and increased player engagement for Instant Games and native mobile game apps. Next, our teams will look into ways publishers can get the most out of this innovative format by sharing best practices and recommendations.”

Interesting Read: Have You Played Netflix Games?

 

InMobi, Microsoft Advertising Extends Partnership Into SEA, Middle East, And Africa

Adtech provider InMobi has announced an expansion of its partnership with Microsoft Advertising to support enterprise and strategic advertisers in new regions including Southeast Asia, Turkey, the Middle East, and Africa.

InMobi will offer marketers an integrated solution to ramp up their campaigns built on the search and native display capabilities of Microsoft Advertising and the mobile ad tech capability of InMobi’s advertising platforms.

Interesting Read: Is Microsoft Reinventing Its Ad Business With Massive Acquisitions?

Microsoft and InMobi have been working together since July 2018 to help enterprises accelerate their digital transformation through insights, audiences, and engagement platforms. Continuing the partnership in 2019, InMobi added Microsoft Advertising products and solutions to its offering in India. Microsoft Advertising offers solutions that reach people across Microsoft properties, including Bing, Microsoft News, Edge, and Outlook, as well as on partner sites like AOL and Yahoo.

In the past 2.5 years, InMobi and Microsoft have shared a successful partnership in establishing an Indian footprint. With a 1.8X growth in India business since 2019, Microsoft Advertising’s APAC vice-president, Nick Seckold, said, 

“InMobi’s successful track record in India has led Microsoft Advertising to extend its coverage across Southeast Asia, where it will be tasked with building close relationships with advertisers and agencies to grow the business in the region.”

Microsoft Advertising’s EMEA and LATAM vice-president Mark Richardson also commented that InMobi will expand its representation of Microsoft’s full suite of advertising offerings to strategic and enterprise clients in West Asia, Turkey, and Africa.

Rohit Dosi, General Manager, Microsoft Advertising business at InMobi, will take up additional responsibilities in the newly expanded regions and also said,

“The extended partnership between Microsoft Advertising and InMobi will enable marketers to deliver a unified brand experience to customers by bringing together the best of search and native display platforms across both organizations. We are positioned uniquely to bring Microsoft Advertising to marketers in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa through our deep appreciation of marketers’ needs, a keen understanding of the markets, and a customer-obsessed team.”

InMobi will be responsible for the sales, account management, marketing, finance, collection, and billing for Microsoft Advertising customers, managed by InMobi, in India, SEA, and MEA from now onwards. Direct billing with InMobi is designed to provide advertisers with an easy and hassle-free advertising experience as they leverage InMobi’s services.

Interesting Read: InMobi And Anzu Partners To Bring Programmatic In-Game Ads To APAC Region

 

 

Advertising On Taboola: An Efficient Tool For Advertisers

Getting to know Taboola – An Introduction

Taboola is the first preference of advertisers for native advertising. Taboola has expanded its user database at a tremendous pace and is growing every minute, adding new users to its list. Its reach is on every possible website, and people are using it for effective advertising. If you search for the platforms for native advertising, you will find Taboola on every list.

The platform is so popular that it reaches 1.4 billion new users every month. Is it not amazing? The market share of the platform is 13.6%. Therefore, we have no restraint in saying that it is one of the most admired platforms for advertisers.

Here we will be providing all the necessary information for the beginners who wanted to start advertising on Taboola. Therefore, if you are looking for a solution for your native advertising marketing campaigns, you must go through this blog to obtain a better understanding of every aspect of the platform.

Understanding the potential and working of Taboola.

As the tag line for the tool says, it is a worldwide popular tool for native advertising and content discovery. Taboola is the first preference of the advertisers and publishers. It is useful to advertise or publish an advertisement on the blog posts. The advertisement location is usually on the top, bottom or in the form of a widget of blog posts.

Here are some images which will give you a clear idea of how your advertisement will look on a blog if advertised using Taboola.

Following are some of the statistics that you might want to know if you are planning to get started with Taboola:

• Nearly 10000 premium brands and publishers are working with Taboola or vice-versa!
• Approximately 44.5% of the total world’s population view the advertisements published by Taboola.
• Out of 10000 top websites worldwide, 1783 generate traffic using Taboola.
• 56% of the total website population on the internet using the technique of content curation are advertising with Taboola.

Understanding, the working of Taboola!

Taboola was founded in the year 2007! Since then, it has been established as one of the prominent sponsored content providers on prevalent websites.

Is easy to use Taboola and pretty straightforward to use:

• Firstly, the advertisers must create their content and decide on a budget that they want to spend on pay per click (PPC). Then they have to decide on what type of audience they want to reach. Finally, all they have to do is wait for their advertisements to bring traffic to their website or landing page.
• The publishers of your advertisement earn money by displaying your advertisement on their page. They assign a widget on their website for Taboola to advertise the content of its users.
• Taboola makes sure that the advertisement is placed appropriately and is visible to the maximum number of people for better conversion.

Creating a campaign on Taboola

As soon as you signup on the platform on Taboola, you will be directed to the page which will demonstrate and display the process of campaign creation.

Choosing the right content

Type of content matters! The content you are publishing can be educational, entertainment or just some information. It could be a photo gallery, blog post or a video. Considering the likes and dislikes of your audience when promoting the content is crucial. It will help your advertisement to perform better and bring more traffic to your website.

The chart shown below will give you an idea about the performance of different types of content on the internet. 

Looking at the chart, it is visible that the visual content ranks the highest in terms of attracting the customers and making them click to view the details.

Content for Advertisement

Unlike any other platforms, Taboola lets you enter the title, brand text, add images and target Url in the initial steps of your campaign.

It increases the effectiveness of your advertisement, and it enhances the chances of people liking it in the first glance. Hence, it already keeps you halfway towards success.

The Title-

Taboola lets you add a title of 60 words allowing you to express the initial idea of your campaign and let you convince them to click your advertisement on a priority.

With a word limit, it becomes crucial that you utilize the word resourcefully. The title plays a vital role in conversion, and you must keep it clear and crisp. 

Using power words in your title is the best way to attract audiences. Power words are useful in generating emotions in a person’s mind and heart, and thus he gets reluctant to click on the link. These words could express joy, pride, sorrow, grief, anxiousness etc. Here is a list of power words that you can choose in your title according to the emotion you want to express! 

Using a few statistics in your title can help you build user trust. For example, “ 7 out of 10 people like this blog!” You can do better according to the situation and as per your requirement.

Being precise is the prime objective that you have to achieve while framing a title.

Thumbnails-

The thumbnail is the image that is attached to the link or sometimes acts as a link. Therefore, it is paramount that the image you use is of high resolution and delivers your message to the larger audience.

If you are lacking, with the imagination for your advertisement, you can also check for the Taboola Trends to get ideas for your thumbnails and title. Before finalizing the title and the thumbnail, try various options and variations and finalize the item which looks best.

Objective for marketing

There could be several objectives for your marketing strategy! Some of the most common objectives achieved by people using online advertising are:

• Online purchases
• Web engagement
• Brand awareness
• Lead generation
• Installation of mobile applications

 

Targeting the audience

Before signing up to Taboola, you get only two options for targeting your audience, these options are:

• Targeting by country
• Targeting by device

However, the moment you complete the procedure of signing up to the platform, it opens up a wide variety of options for the targeting of the audience. Following are the options which will be available to you at Taboola after you sign up:

• Targeting by the operating system
• Targeting using the variety, in types of audience.

1. 1. My audiences
   2. Lookalike audience
   3. Campaign Clickers
   4. Marketplace audiences

My Audience: Using this option, you can target the audience visiting your website.

Lookalike audiences: These audiences are those people who have a similar taste to your customers. Due to the resemblance in their interests, they will be targeted by the tool!

Campaign Clickers: These audiences are those who click your advertisement using other campaigns running online.

Marketplace Audience: These are the usual filters that you can apply like based on the interests of the audience, demographic location, intention of buying and their behavioural approach.

Considering a Few things as you proceed:

• Never be overconfident about your audience, even if you know them inside out, you should keep testing to make your campaign better at every step.
• Splitting your campaigns by the segment of your audience by adjusting the settings is always useful( eg. Creatives, CPC etc.) for each segment.
• Remember that selecting audiences from several audience types will limit your chances of reaching maximum audiences.

Assigning the correct schedule for the campaign

Just the way other native ad networks work, Taboola also lets you select the timeframe of the campaign. Also, you can specify the timing when you do not want your advertisement to be visible.

However, the targeting time of the audience generally depends on the location. Below we have a chart showing the variation of users’ behaviour in a week. 

Budget and strategies for bidding

There are two options available with Taboola for bidding: Smart bidding and Fixed bidding. We all must be familiar with the method of Fixed bidding. However, let us understand how smart bidding works!

Using the method of smart bidding, you can maximize the conversion, and by effectively utilizing your marketing strategy. Firstly, you have to decide the base amount for the bidding. Once the base amount is decided and set, the smart bidding method will look up into the history of campaigns and accordingly see if the impression is good for getting the conversions. 

If the smart bidding method is used, Taboola uses the A/B testing method. It will compare the fixed bidding strategies and the automated bidding strategy on a real-time basis.

You can set the budget for your campaign for a month or for the duration your campaign will be live on the internet.

Another interesting option that will intrigue your curiosity is the option to decide the pace of the campaign. Usually, Taboola offers balanced pacing. The option will help your campaign run at a constant pace, throughout the month.

You also get the option to set your campaign budget at an accelerated pace. It will help you to reach a larger audience in minimum time, but also you will exhaust your biding budget at a greater speed.

You can also choose the option of Strict pacing. In this, you can select an everyday budget that you will like to spend each day.

Optimizing the performance of your campaign

The moment you launch your campaign, you can view the performance of your campaign at many different levels. You can view the performance of your campaign by applying several filters. Here is a few information that you can get by monitoring your campaign:

• You can view the data by location,
• Data by time,
• Data by platform,
• Data by the hour or day,
• Data by campaign items
• And by applying several other filters.

You will be able to see the following metrics in any report generated:

• CTR
• Impressions
• Clicks
• CPC
• CPM
• Conversions
• Conversion rate
• Views
• Competed views
• Viewable impressions.

Conclusion

Taboola is one of the most superior tools available in the market for native advertising. It has a wider database of users, publishers, brands and websites on the internet. The best part about Taboola is that it is easy to use and is effective to achieve long term goals.

Due to its reach worldwide, Taboola can be used, generate traffic from any part of the world. With tremendous potential, it also provides an opportunity to view reports on real-time bases, which helps users to see the shortcomings of their campaigns. It is the reason, the tool is trusted by millions of users across the world.

It is easy to sign up on the platform, and by following a few simple steps, you can get used to the platform and start spreading your wings on the internet. Hence, what are you waiting for?

 

Guide On EVERY Type Of Digital Ad Out There. Case Studies Included.

What is Digital Advertising?

Digital advertising, paid advertising, or paid marketing is an online advertising model for advertisers to target potential buyers based on their interests or intent. This Digital Advertising took birth on October 27, 1994, when the online magazine ‘Hotwired’ decided to set aside a portion of its website for advertisers to raise some money. The banner ad space had a message in rainbow font, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.” From 1994 to 2020, digital advertising has come a long way. In 2021, the amount spent on worldwide digital advertising is estimated to touch USD 375 billion (emarketer report estimates) with Google, Facebook, and Amazon, the three largest advertising platforms contributing to 43% of the market share. Here we have provided 10 best digital advertising ideas in 2020 post coronavirus (COVID-19) but be prepared to make changes in your sales funnel to meet global digital challenges. Digital advertisers get ready for a new normal in digital advertising in 2020. After all, change is the only constant in life.

Increase in Online Spending Over the Years

Ad spending in the digital advertising market has been showing an upward rise since 2018. From USD 283 billion in 2018, it is expected to reach around USD 517 billion in 2023.

The Importance of Digital Advertising

There is a wealth of available data to impact your online advertising decisions. With digital spends getting closer to traditional ad spends, it’s without doubt, every company or brand must have a strong online presence. Very large companies with more than USD 10 billion in annual revenue spend around 11.6% and companies with annual revenues between USD 500 million to USD 1 billion spend around 8.5% of their marketing budget on digital advertising.  Some of the 2019 big digital ad spenders are Comcast (USD 5.75 billion), Proctor & Gamble (USD 4.39 billion), Amazon (USD 3.38 billion), AT&T (USD 3.52 billion) and Samsung Electronics (USD 2.41 billion). While on one hand, ad spending increased, on the other hand, the demand was augmented by the addition of ad platforms.

 

• More money is being spent on digital v/s traditional advertising channels with digital ad spend expected to reach 60.5% of total media ad spending by 2022.
• India’s digital ad spend grew at a rate of 24% (2018 to 2019), becoming the fastest-growing digital advertising market in the world, followed by Russia at 22.5%. Both are home to large populations of increasingly digital and mobile users.
• Marketing budgets range from 8% to 16% of total revenue (B2B Products 8.6%, B2B Services 8.7%, B2C Products 9.8%, and B2C Services 15.6%).
• In many countries, 85 percent of internet users are accessing the internet on mobiles.

Types of Digital Advertising

There are different types of digital advertising available to a company or product or brand. The best ad campaigns are often a mix of two or more types of paid marketing or digital advertising. From Display Ads to SEO to PPC and more, here are the top 10 online advertising options available to a digital advertiser to execute a winning ad campaign.

1. Display Advertising

What is display advertising?

Online display advertising means advertising a company or a product on websites. Display advertisements run across any website that wishes to monetize their content by selling ad space on their page. Display ads are mostly image-based ads shown on web pages within the Google Display Network (GDN is a network of websites that allow space on their web pages for Google Ads) or on a search result page. It is used to redirect the user’s attention to the company’s product. Display ads can be paid for based on three different metrics: cost per thousand impressions (CPM), cost per click (CPC), and cost per action (CPA), also known as cost per conversion.

How is the Display ad used?

Online display ads on a website, can be on the top, bottom, or right side of a page depending on the web page layout. The types of online display ads are banners, landing pages (LP’s), and popups. The types of banner ads online that appear on Google Display Network are Flash, animated GIF, and Static Banners. The most popular Display ad options are Google Shopping (allows shoppers to browse a variety of products based on their search query) and App Campaigns. The types of online Display Ads include Overlay ads, Interstitial ads, Rich Media ads, and 360° Display Ads.  Display advertising and paid search advertising are the two most used forms of online advertising.

Why is display advertising important?

• Display ads are more affordable and reach a larger audience. They are used by advertisers to promote clothes, hotel chains, public events, etc.
• Website visitors who are re-targeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert on your website.
• Display network offers advertisers contextual targeting by keywords, placement targeting by sites, topic targeting by relevance and demographic targeting based on age, gender, preferences, location and language.
• 90% of agencies and marketers believe that display ads help with branding.
• It leads to increased website traffic, and increased sales.
• These display ads can be effectively used by businesses of all sizes.

Coke’s most successful Display Ad case study

When Coca-Cola’s popularity decreased among Millennials, the brand developed the ‘Share A Coke’ campaign specifically for a Mexican audience to raise awareness and increase sales and brand love. For the campaign, Coca-Cola found the top 100 searches on YouTube and created short ads with the names of the most-searched artists, athletes, and trending YouTubers. 

Coca-Cola’s website received almost two million visits during the campaign, and more than 51 percent of them came from mobile devices. View KPIs increased by 4,000 percent, and the cost per view decreased to 2 percent ofthe initial estimated budget. Additional metrics included

• 1.7 million users reached
• 81 million media impressions on display
• 175 million social media views
• 3.2 million views for the TV commercial
• CTV average of 3.98 percent during the campaign
• 80 percent of target reached
• 51 percent of website traffic from mobile devices
• 44 percent of Mexico shared a Coke
• Awareness increased 11%

 

2. Native Advertising

What is Native Advertising

Native Advertising called ‘recommended content’ or ‘promoted stories’ is a monetized type of advertising on a website except slightly differing from display ads in a way that attempts to mimic the format of the publisher’s content. Native advertising comprises 6 main types of ads online: in-feed (which is ad units in a content stream), recommended links, sponsored search results, promoted product listings, traditional display banners with native content, and custom integration. Most of the native pricing is on CPM basis for the campaigns.

How is the Native ad used?

Since Native advertising is designed specifically not to look like an ad, it is almost everywhere and hard to ignore. It’s designed to look like and blend with the rest of the content on the page. As a result, users interact 20-60% more with native ads than traditional banner ads. As per Google Ads, in the last four years, the search for native ads has been growing in numbers. You may notice this ad type at the bottom of a blog or a FB post. It could appear as ‘recommendations’ or ‘other people also liked’ with suggested examples for users to click on.

Why use Native Advertising?

The in-feed content in Native advertising, can include videos, animations, or carousels of images. When native ads take on the looks of the content around it, they actually become non-disruptive ads. They are found in social media in the form of sponsored posts. Also, since these ads are interactive they are the best for brand building through trust by engaging with a customer. It is an up-coming ad type mostly used by new media companies. Today native ads constitute about 20% of all advertising revenue.

The Native ad case study

• Campaign:  Asian Beauties from Neverblue
• Ad Copy: Would you date an Asian Woman?
• Campaign period: Mar 30, 2019 – Apr 7, 2019
• GEO: USA
• Total spent: $934
• Total Revenue: $1397
• Net profit: $463
• ROI: 50%

 

The advertiser worked in two stages:

– In the first stage he started with a CPC campaign to get at least 50 impressions for each ad zone. After that, added these zones to the blacklist regardless of the CTR (by clicking Zone Limitation «Exclude» in the account settings) to redirect traffic to zones that weren’t tested yet. Started with $50 and got $58 for 11 conversions. So, the profit was $8. Then decided to scale this campaign to CPM.

– In the second stage he created a CPM campaign and targeted zones with the CTR higher than 0.7% (Zone limitation “Include” in the personal account). Then he blacklisted all the under performing zones. After all the testing, he had 8 zones, with two of them generating 80% of the profit. He spent $884 and got $1339 for 255 conversions. The profit — $455

3. Search Advertising

What is Search Advertising?

Search advertising or search engine marketing (SEM), or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the process of advertising on search engines. Search ads are text ads displayed on Google’s search result page. Worldwide Google handles over 75,000 search queries per second. It enjoys a worldwide ranking as #1 search engine, ahead of its competitors Yahoo, Bing, and Baidu. Thereby, moving up one spot in Google’s search results can increase CTRs by up to 30.8%. Google shows your ad in the same format as other search results except that it earmarks it as an ‘Ad’. SEM is mostly combined with SEO (Search Engine Optimization is the organic and not paid form of advertising. Here, advertisers use SEO tactics, like creating keyword-friendly content, back linking, meta descriptions, etc.).

How is the Search Advertising used?

There are two search ads formats, viz. text ads and product listing ads.

• Text ads appear as ‘Ad’ above or on the right side of an organic search.
• Product listing ads (PLAs) mostly seen on e-commerce websites, show the image, price, description and link of your product when a potential customer is searching for a product based on a keyword.

These advertisements are found on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. They are purchased based on the most relevant keywords a potential buyer uses to search for a product or service. However, recent shifts in PPC strategies are showing an increase in PLAs and ‘Semantic search’ (find meaning and or intent in the words) slowly replacing a direct keyword search.

Why search advertising?

• Paid search advertising allows advertisers to place their products/service in front of people who are already looking for the product/service.
• Since the ad is shown to potential customers who are searching for a similar product or service, there is a high chance of the user clicking on your product and converting it into a sale.
• With Google searches at 3.5 billion per day, search ads reach a larger target audience.

Case study of a Search Advertisement

• Client: Automotive Industry
• Goals: Reduce cost per sale from Google AdWords & Reduce monthly spend while generating more online sales.

The advertiser began with identifying the highest value conversion points, restructuring the account to only target keywords and products that would best drive the selected conversions. By understanding the way consumers buy, they could target consumers looking for specific products. They allocated an additional budget towards increasing the bids, to increase the average search position, earn a larger click share, and win the highest value auctions.

The Results:

• Increased Online Sales by 73% vs. prior year
• Deduced Cost Per Sale by 57% vs. prior year

 

4. Social Media Advertising

What is Social Media Advertising?

Social advertising is the use of social media sites to run an advertising campaign. By Q4 of 2019, the total number of social media users had crossed earlier estimates to reach 2.95 billion users worldwide. In 2020, that number is expected to surpass 3 billion.

How is the Social Media advertising used?

As per a recent study by Statista, the social media advertising segment amounts to USD 105,863 million in 2020 and is expected to have an annual growth rate (CAGR 2020-2024) of 6.0%, resulting in a market volume of USD 133,756 million by 2024 (not taking into account the recent coronavirus (COVID-19) implications on global trade).

The Social Media Platforms available for Advertising        

Most marketers are using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in their marketing campaigns.

The other emerging platform is TikTok with 500 million active users worldwide. As per CNET, by end 2019, TikTok crossed 1.5 billion downloads, becoming the third most downloaded non-gaming app of the year, after WhatsApp and Messenger. Facebook and Instagram followed in fourth and fifth places. While grocery retailer Kroger was the first to run an ad campaign on TikTok, famous brands like TacoBell are now using TikTok.

Social ads charge advertisers on a CPC, CPM and other basis. However, the pricing will depend on the different types of ads like photo ads, video ads, stories ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, messenger ads, collection ads, snap ads, tweet ads, sponsored content, etc. Here is a quick cost comparison between the three top platforms to give you an overall idea of pricing but of course your company, your product and your brand will determine the ad budget and the social media platform allocation to maximize the profits and return on investment (ROI).

Why is advertising on social media sites important?

• 97% of marketers use social media.
• 78% of marketers using Social Media outsell their peers.
• Social Media ads help to build brand awareness.
• The social media ad spend has risen to USD 89 billion in 2019.
• It helps to build a clientele henceforth bettering Brand Loyalty.
• Improves conversion rate.
• Reduces marketing costs as it is cheaper than traditional marketing.
• Rise in search engine rankings.

Case Study of Bajaj V’s Social Media Ad

• Campaign: SonsOfVikrant
• Objective: Promote Bajaj V – The Nation’s Bike

A ten day social media campaign run by Bajaj Automobiles, touched the minds and hearts of the whole nation as INS Vikrant one of India’s aircraft carriers was scrapped and its steel was melted and used to create the Bajaj V.

Result: Bajaj V gained 0.7 Million USD worth of free media coverage in just one week of the launch. It created 160 million impressions, reaching out to 32 million overall. And the most important one, Bajaj sold 11,000 bikes on the first day of launch. It got 984,862 views on Youtube and more than 23,000 views on Facebook.

5. Video Advertising

What is video advertising?

Video advertising is a process of running online display ads that have video within them to promote a company, product or website. These ads play before, during or after a video stream on the internet. 57% of marketers are now including video marketing in their digital marketing strategy. 

How is the Video advertising used?

There are different video ad formats. The main ad formats used by YouTube, the largest video hosting platform, include TrueView Ads, Non-skippable video Ads, Bumper Ads, Outstream Ads, YouTube Masthead Ads. For more details, read about YouTube here. Video ads can be purchased on a cost per mille (CPM) basis, but are also typically priced on a cost per view (CPV) basis, allowing advertisers to pay for the ad only if someone watches or interacts with it. 

 Why is video advertising gaining popularity?

• Being the most engaging form of online content, video ads have higher recall.
• Video will remain a key driver of advertising expenditures on display, projected to account for 31% of overall display ad spending next year.
• More than 50% of consumers like to watch videos of the brands they support.
• In 2019, video ads saw an increase in ad spending mainly in the fashion and retail industry.
• Almost 88% of video marketers are happy with its ROI.
• As per a study by Forbes, videos get shared 1,200% more than text and links combined.
• Mobile ads on YouTube get the viewer’s attention 83% of the time.
• Everyday people watch 1 billion hours of video on YouTube.
• 90% of the potential buyers have discovered new products on YouTube
• Companies and brands like LEGO or Coca-Cola have started uploading video content on their respective brand channels.

 

Case Study of a Video Ad

• Campaign: Meri Maggi
• Goal: Brand image

A classic example of a video ad used to regain brand image was by none other than Maggi Noodles. When the product got banned in India in 2015, its sales dipped from INR 250-300 crore a month to in between 5%-10% in various states.

In November, when the company re-launched Maggi after the five-month ban, it had 10.9 percent of the market share, which climbed to 35.2 percent in December. The relaunch campaign did include press ads and an extremely touching video launched across different platforms.

6. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

What is PPC advertising?

Pay per click (PPC) ads are ads that advertisers only pay for when a user clicks on them. PPC ads are usually text ads but sometimes includes a small image. Google AdWords and Bing Ads both use a pay-per-click model.

How is the PPC advertising used?

This type of advertising is used to direct a potential buyer to your website. It is important to have a PPC landing page that is optimized for conversions. Google has now removed PPC ads from Right Hand Side so they now appear on the top of the page only.

Why PPC advertising?

• PPC marketing is done through Google Ads, the worlds’ largest search engine thereby boosting the traffic to your website.
• It can deliver a large number of impressions and clicks because of the large amount of traffic, especially on Google, leading to an increase in sales.
• This type of advertising is highly successful if the advertiser has rightly focused on relevant keywords and the quality of the landing page for a higher quality score.
• Advertisers can make changes to optimize the campaign to improve the quality score which helps to increase the ROI.
• Helps to control the ad budget.
• Can improve brand recognition with remarketing.

 

Case study of a PPC Ad

• Campaign: Dental Clinic, London
• Goal: To increase the number of leads their ads were generating while lowering the cost per lead.

The strongest USP of this UK clinic, was the doctor a native Polish speaker. So the marketing team targeted the niche audience of Polish speakers living in London close to where the clinic is based, to create ads and select keywords in the Polish language pointing to a dedicated landing page. Constant refining of the keywords and target audience was required.

Results

• In the first 50 days, the number of conversions increased considerably, up 409% from 20 to 107.
• Conversion cost came down to £7.41 from £44 (when client managed own campaign)
• The conversion rate also improved — up over 207% — from 4.38% to 13.44%.

 

7. Remarketing Advertising

What is retargeting advertising or remarketing?

Remarketing (or retargeting) is a type of online advertising that allows you to serve targeted ads to people who have already visited your website earlier. A remarketing ad allows you to strategically position your ads in front of the target audience as they browse Google or its partner websites, to increase brand awareness and to remind the user to make a purchase.

How do retargeting ads work?

It is a cookie-based technology that follows the user around the internet, by serving ads on the websites and platforms which the user visits most often in order to remarket to him/her again. Retargeting is required since almost 98% of users leave the website without converting on the first visit. Thereby, these 98% users need to be reminded or targeted about a product /service of interest once they leave the website.  Here’s how retargeting works:

Why Retargeting Ads?

• Retargeting increases the conversion by 150%.
• The average CTR (Click Through Rate) for Retargeting Ads is 10 times more than display ads.
• Remarketing Ads have a CPC (Cost Per Click) which is 50% that of the PPC search ads.

Case study of a Retargeting Ad

• Campaign: Jabong 
• Goals: To increase transactions by acquiring more high-quality customers who are more likely to convert or make a purchase & to improve app activation rates to drive traffic to the Jabong.com mobile app and control user acquisition costs.

Jabong the e-commerce website has successfully used Facebook’s dynamic ads to retarget potential customers by showing them products they have looked at on both Jabong.com’s website and app, allowing the brand to customize ads to every individual.

Results

By Personalised Acquisition using “Retargeting” and creating custom advertisements Jabong was able to:

• 2X increase in customer acquisitions
• 5X increase in app activation rates
• 40% lower user acquisition cost on mobile app
• 30% lower cost per order

 

8. In-game Advertising

What is In-game advertising?

In-game advertisements are ads that may exist within computer games on desktops/PC, mobiles or tablets. In-game advertising is a digital advertising strategy provided by game developers to boost their revenue. Game developers earn money and get paid by showing the ads to the users.

How does In-game advertising work?

The ads which become a part of the user experience in a 3D game setting through virtual objects, such as, billboards, posters, or bus stops, help to improve the game app engagement and also the retention rates.

The different types of in-game advertising include –

• Dynamic In-game advertising that can be inserted or removed in real-time, inside of Console and PC video games is charged on CPM or cost per thousand impressions pricing model.
• Console Integration in the form of square tiles in the Xbox Live dashboard has a higher CPM rate.
• In the Static In-Game Advertising model where advertising is programmed directly into a game, it is normally a flat fee anywhere starting with USD 50K.
• Advergames are developed for the purpose of promoting a company, brand, or product which can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

Why the growing popularity of In-game Advertising?

• 62% of smartphone owners install games within the first week of purchasing a new phone.
• Games can be designed with the sole purpose of advertising a brand.
• It offers advertisers an option to position the product in the game, to reach the right audience with the right message.
• Market for in-game advertising on all devices in the US alone, to touch USD 3 billion in 2019.
• The ad spend in all games grew by 16% in 2019.
• Retargeting in gaming apps is generating revenue uplift of over 50% among paying users.

Case study of an In-game Ad

• Campaign: Nike Epic React

Nike named their shoe ‘Epic React’ and created a game named React Land to promote this new line of shoes in four cities. This was Nike’s idea to use gamification to attract a young target audience. After putting on a pair of Epic Reacts and creating an avatar, the player is transported to React Land, a virtual world where he/she navigates as the main character by running on a treadmill and using a handheld button to jump. In the 3-minute game, players can choose to explore a floating metropolis in China, a super soft panda land, the Fuji Mountain, a view of Santorini, a jumping frog in France and many more. After the success of this ad, Nike announced a share value increase of 7%, putting it back in direct competition with Adidas in the sneaker market.

9. Email Advertising

What is email advertising?

Email ads are interactive ads that appear in the Promotions and Social tabs of the email inbox.

How do email ads work?

Email ads are ads sent to a user via the web mail. It can include an image, video, or embedded forms. These ads are cheaper than most others. It aims to create leads, to enhance relationship with the customer, to encourage loyalty, and to grow repeat business. 

Why Email Advertising?

• Email ads help to reach affinity audiences.
• Can customize the target audiences in Display campaigns by applying keywords.
• Offer an option of automated targeting to reach potential customers whom you wouldn’t otherwise reach, at around the same cost per person.
• You can reach people on the Display Network basis demographic categories, like age, gender, income, hobbies, etc.
• Dynamic remarketing ads are possible but the targeted Gmail ads must have a minimum of 100 active visitors or users within the last 30 days for your ads to show.
• This ad type is good for promotions, new features, and discount offers.
• An Email ad looks organic prompting the user to click.

Case Study of an email advertising campaign

• Campaign: Wok to Walk
• Goal: Local customer creation, Brand Awareness

Wok to Walk, a health food company, sent a newsletter with a subject line that invited recipients to call, make inquiries and order a meal. This email generated an open rate of 18.1%. Next step they checked the statistics and selected email subscribers who didn’t open the previous email.

The same email was sent – but the subject line was changed to better suit this new segment by including a phone number, making it easier for people to call even if they didn’t open the email. This second email received 7.7% additional subscribers, resulting in a higher level of email engagement.

10. Mobile Advertising

What is mobile advertising?

Today with mobiles becoming a quintessential part of our lives, mobile advertising is growing in importance. Mobile advertising is placing ads to run specifically on mobile devices such as cell phones, smartphones, tablets, and wearable technology with the use of enhanced campaigns. Marketers often combine mobile advertising with other digital advertising channels like display advertising, search advertising, social media advertising, and video advertising.

How do mobile ads work?

Mobile advertising is targeted. It allows the advertiser to personalize the content for a specific audience. When Samsung wanted to promote its Galaxy S6 smartphone, they created an interactive mobile ad for people to experience what the company was talking about with a demo on their smartphone. The other winning mobile ads are Ruffles potato chips, GAP remix logo launch, Nissan Rogue SUV launch, and Starbucks. 

Why is mobile advertising or mobile marketing important in 2020?

• Global mobile ad spending in 2019  reached USD 190 billion.
• In India, mobile ad spending is expected to rise from approx. USD 460 million to USD 1.73 billion in 2021.
• 29% of the time is spent on desktops and 71% on mobile devices
• 80% of internet users own a smartphone.
• 70% of B2B buyers increased mobile usage over the past years.

Case Study of a video ad

• Campaign: Pay Attention
• Goal: Create Awareness

In 2018, cosmetic brand Avon India aimed to raise awareness about breast cancer among women in India through its #PayAttention campaign. Avon had a breast self-examination (BSE) video for women to help them identify the signs of breast cancer.

Results

• 15 % SOV and awareness in breast cancer
• Reached over 1 billion people of India at USD 25k
• On social media, Avon reached out to 917 million on Facebook, 101 million on Twitter, 109 Million through PR stories and 29 influencer videos with 36 million impressions.
• #PayAttention was top trending hashtags around Breast Cancer Awareness in India.
• 200,000 interactions were created on FB and near 185,000 interactions on Facebook posts.

Conclusion

The coronavirus (COVID-19) has disrupted our world, our thinking, and our way of doing business. This impact will surely be felt by every company, big or small. Once the global crises passes, there will be renewed spending on digital platforms to adapt rapidly to the new normal. This new normal stage requires new advertising strategies and new execution plans across all channels. With a fair idea on paid advertising, it’s time to get ready to leverage the right ads for your company or brand when the time is right. How to establish new goals to maximize the ROI, how to rework ad budgets, how to re-prioritize the channel amplification, how to pivot from the standard content marketing plan, how to target all devices buyers use, are all questions a digital advertiser will need to be prepared with. There will never be a right or wrong answer but always an in-between that is the ‘right fit’. We have only put you on a fast track to think on the right lines to restrategize your digital advertising campaign. Time to work on it further!

 

Summary

Coronavirus (COVID-19) will bring about deep changes in digital advertising. Ad revenues, social media, e-commerce will impact Google Ads, Social Media ads, affiliate earnings and publisher advertising earnings. Digital advertisers will require to get ready for a new normal in paid advertising from 2020. In this blog, we have tried to contain maximum information and some relevant statistics on digital advertising. There will never be a right or wrong answer but always an in-between that is the ‘right fit’. We have only put you on a fast track to think on the right lines to restrategize your digital advertising campaign. Time to work on it further!

A One-stop Guide On All You Ever Need To Know About AdTech In 2020

AdTech or Advertising Technology did around $800 Billion Worth Of Business In the US alone in 2019, making it one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.

Are you trying to understand ad tech? Just as advertising is the business of making advertisements, ad tech is the business of using technology to make advertisements faster, quicker, and efficient. The business is driven by powerful algorithms and data points. While it is not rocket science, but for the uninitiated, it can be challenging to understand what is ad tech and how its product and services work.

The ad tech industry fuels the global economy with big investments, employment, and ad spend. Digital advertising has reached new heights of complexity, with the rise of programmatic advertising, AI, and automated interactions between computer systems reducing human intervention. Today’s omnichannel ad campaigns reaching to different platforms all at once from publishers’ websites, mobile apps, social media to search engines. Campaigns using tailor-made and highly targeted ads to reach audiences. This process involves many participants- advertisers, publishers to third-party vendors. The technology used in advertising to store, manage, and deploy data is far more sophisticated. 

This guide will give you a sneak-peek into the world of technological advertising and understand the growing ad tech industry. As you read further, you will understand the ever-changing ad tech ecosystem.

What is Ad Tech?

Ad Tech also is known as Advertising Technology covers a range of tools and software that can be helpful for brands and agencies to plan, strategize, and manage all digital advertising activities.

The AdTech ecosystem consists of two major entities – the advertiser (Demand-side) and the publisher(Supply-side).

On one hand, advertisers want to run effective campaigns and optimize their budgets to reach the target audience, gain customer insights, and measure ROI.

Whereas, on the other hand, publishers cater to the need of advertisers and generate revenue through ads by displaying ads on their publications like websites, apps, etc, increase ad impressions,  bids for ad slots and visitor insights. These are significant factors that publishers need to consider to maintain the platform User Interface (UI).

Adtech helps advertisers and publishers achieve their goals in harmony by providing solutions that meet the demands of both parties. A few examples of AdTech platforms include Pubmatic, Adroll, MediaMath, SmartyAds, and many more.

Programmatic Advertising Explained

After a brief understanding of ad tech, let’s step into the world of programmatic. You will come across concepts like programmatic advertising, Real-time bidding, and programmatic direct. Let’s discuss it:

 

 

• Programmatic Advertising Definition:

It is projected to be the game-changer for digital advertising.  Programmatic automates the process of buying and selling online advertising space with the help of technology and data. This means, with the introduction of programmatic publishers, advertisers or agencies don’t have to sit across to discuss ad size, rates, et. Ad buying is done through algorithms and data insights.

• Programmatic Direct:

This a type of Programmatic digital advertising, where a publisher bypasses auction and reserves a portion or entire ad inventory for a particular buyer or advertiser at a fixed cost per mile. (CPM). Put simple, here the buyer and seller are known to each other and the ad placement is done programmatically.

• Real-Time Bidding (RTB):

Another type of programmatic digital advertising and also known as an open auction. RTB is when inventory prices are decided through an auction in real-time and open to both advertisers and publishers. This is the most feasible and preferable method of programmatic ad-buying because of scalability and flexibility.

The AdTech EcoSystem

 

The process of digital media buying is similar to the traditional media value chain except AdTech has multiple components in the ecosystem to keep the management of advertising campaigns easy for demand and supply-side platforms. Here are the key components of the AdTech supply chain:

1.Media agency: Responsible to allocate the advertiser’s expenditure budget across the channel. It is not involved in the creative aspect of ad campaigns.

2.Agency Trading Desk (ATD): Plans, buys, and manages ads across different platforms and is a set of services provided by the media agency.

3.Demand-side Platform (DSP):  An essential platform for advertisers to buy, search, display video mobile ads. It enables advertisers to buy ad placements in real-time on the publisher websites made available by ad exchange and networks.  Some of the DSP players are Simplifi, Smarty Ads, App Nexus, Double Click, and more.

4.Data Management Platform (DMP): DMP’s collect data from sources like websites, apps, social networks, campaigns, CRM’s, and more. Using AI and big data analytics to gather first and third-party data, advertisers, and marketers rely on them. DMP players are Lotame, Oracle Blue Kai, SAS data management and more

5.Ad Networks: The unsold inventory will be bought by ad networks from publishers and try to sell to advertisers using their technology. The popular programmatic advertising platforms for the ad networks are Taboola, Google Double Click Ad Exchange, Rocket Fuel, and more.

6.Ad Exchange:  A dynamic platform to buy and sell ad impressions between advertisers and publishers without any intermediaries.  Open X, App Nexus, Rubicon Project Exchange are examples of programmatic advertising platforms.

7.Supply Side Platform (SSP): The platform allows publishers to sell display, mobile ad impressions to potential buyers in real-time. Some of the key SSP players are MoPub, AerServ, App Nexus Publisher SSP, and more.

8.Ad Server: This platform is used by advertisers, publishers, ad networks, and ad agencies to run their campaigns. It determines which ad will be displayed on a website and also collect ad performances data such as clicks and impressions  Double click for publishers, OPen X Ad server, Ad butler, and more are the examples.

Learn more: Programmatic Advertising Platforms in 2020: A Complete Guide

Is Programmatic advertising worth it?

The programmatic advertising statistics say it all. According to Zenith’s Programmatic Marketing Forecasts 2019, 69% of digital media will be programmatic in 2020.

• The total amount spent programmatically will exceed US$100bn for the first time in 2019, reaching US$106bn by the end of the year, and will rise to US$127bn in 2020 and US$147bn in 2021.
• 72% of digital media will be programmatic in 2021
• Ad spends growth is slowing down to 22% in 2019 due to industry challenges of privacy and supply-chain.
• Brands need to develop new targeting techniques using first-party data and customer data platforms in response to the ongoing death of the cookie.

Programmatic Display Advertising fastest-growing segment.

• The ascent of programmatic display advertising has been rapid. In 2012, only 10.4 % of global digital display spend was programmatic. However, it ballooned to 65.3% in 2019 and it is estimated that the share of programmatic display advertising will grow 69.2 5 and 72% in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
• How does it translate in dollars? In 2012, total digital ad spend was $37.8 billion and the programmatic display market was $3.9 million. Fast forward to today, digital display ad spend is $162.3 billion, out of which $106 billion is invested in programmatic display advertising. In 2021, global digital display ad spend is estimated to reach $204 billion, with $147.1 billion going to be programmatic share.

Programmatic marketing by country

One of the benefits of programmatic technology is it shows real-time data that helps companies take swift actions to adjust their strategy as per customer requirements. Digital marketers are considering buying programmatic media in-house due to its transparency. Programmatic has undergone massive growth in the following 6 countries out of which the UK and the US are the most advanced programmatic markets in the share of digital media.

As per eMarketer forecast, Programmatic ad spending will reach $59.45 billion in 2019, accounting for 84.9% of the US digital display ad market. It is estimated that 87.5%, or $81 billion, of all US digital display advertisements, will be bought via automated channels in 2021.

 

The above programmatic advertising statistics prove that the investment has increased Y-o-Y and marketers prefer programmatic advertising to buy digital display ads. Marketers are increasingly allocating their advertising budgets to digital advertising channels as it provides precise data that helps to reach customers effectively. 

Learn more: 5 Programmatic Advertising Case Studies That Yielded Exponential Results

Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged in AdTech Industry

Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are two buzzwords in recent times. And why not, as it brings efficiency in whatever we do. 

However, AdTech is a messy market now. Ironically, the good and bad part of AdTech is the abundance of data. True, we certainly have all the information to better understand the customers but most marketers aren’t aware of how to leverage the data and use it forward.

The way you advertise-is going to change extremely right before your eyes- thanks to Artificial Intelligence. Not all in the AdTech world have the analytical skills to evaluate the big data as not many are trained to use it and are misinterpreting them.

Adtech partnering with AI can help lower CPC prices, higher click-through rates (CTR), conversions, and better ROI. Let’s check out how AI can help the Adtech industry find better solutions in the following areas.

• AI in Ads Positioning

Developers don’t need to sit and determine which ad position will drive maximum revenue for the website. With the help of AI, employing machine learning algorithms study historical data to find relevant ads for the targeted user group.

Adtech has not used heatmaps previously but AI algorithms use them to learn where the visitors on the website are going and present them with the relevant ads. AI will help marketers to find the best ad positions by studying the maps in detail.

• AI in Ad Network Selection

There are many Ad Networks that provide different kinds of ads to websites owners and required to sort ads according to the websites. This is called Ad mediation and apt to earn high revenue for the websites.

By employing AI for ad optimization it reduces human effort by using a data-oriented approach that includes data, facts, and intelligence to make sure only relevant ads reach the end-user. Data will be user or website’s past history and facts will be website content, geo, and timing. Machine learning algorithms are employed to enhance the best ad-user match.

• Analytics

In the Adtech world, data analytics is not ‘taken seriously’ and publishers.are not happy about it. The AI-based approach will drive reporting and analytics to new levels. 

Analytics will help publishers understand the content that drives the audience, placement of the CTA button to turn one time users into loyal users, and increase traffic. It will be a win-win situation for AdTech and parties- publishers, platforms, and users.

AI is the Future of Advertising

Today, digital advertising cannot exist without AI.  Behind most online ads are the sophisticated delivery systems in place powered by AI. These systems place the ads before users, the coordination process happens in real-time and generally is automatic. It’s called programmatic advertising.’

According to eMarketer,  86.2% of all digital display ads will be bought via automated channels and nearly $19 billion in additional spending will enter programmatic display platforms between 2018-2020.

Also, 90% of mobile display ads are bought programmatically. On the other hand, AI also powers advertising products offered by Facebook and Google. In 2017, 90% of the new advertising business was captured by these firms.

In recent times, brands are under more pressure to deliver relevant, personalized, and contextual ads to individual customer preferences.

How AI makes Programmatic Advertising better

More companies are turning to AI for creating advertising relevance at scale.

For instance, if you want to advertise on Facebook,-an AI-powered algorithm determines the relevance of the score of your ad. This means that the score impacts the ad delivery directly and influenced by the experience of the ad delivery to Facebook users. Expect a low score if the ad is not liked or is irrelevant.

This decision is made by machine and is beyond your brand’s control independent of strategic or creative decisions 

A marketing company like Phrasee launched an AI tool that writes Facebook and Instagram ads. The AI tool assesses a brand’s voice and copy, then the machine writes the ad that performs better than human-written ads. Recently, it helped reduce one client’s cost per lead by 31%. Another AI-powered tool is Albert that helps automate media buying, testing, and optimization. It enhances ad performance and delivers relevant ads to the right person. This shows that relevance at scale is possible in advertising.

Emerging  Programmatic AdTech Trends 2020

 

1. AI in Programmatic Advertising: 

Technologies such as artificial intelligence(AI) and machine learning (ML)have involved programmatic ad buying or bid optimization. Programmatic campaigns are used by companies for more targeted net across platforms. By 2020, it is expected that there will be a shift towards automating technologies like AI and ML to get the most from data.

2. First Part Data Move Made Important by GDPR:

After the announcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, last year on cookie crumble or removal of third party cookies is gradually turning out to be beneficial. The regulations protecting the privacy of user data initially looked limiting to ad tech experts but is resulting in cleaner and more reliable data over time.

Learn more: Digital Advertising Industry Plans To Replace Cookies With First-Party Data

3. Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) and Mobile Location:

Digital DOOH combined with mobile location data has the potential to help marketers to drive conversions in the offline world. Integrated ‘home-to-out-of-home’ programmatic advertising approach provides a smooth experience to the customers. 

4. Voice-activated Ads:

The adoption of voice-based to in-home smart devices has grown rapidly. Gartner predicted by 2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done through voice-first browsing. Amazon sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices in 2018 compared to 2017. A recent survey by VoiceBot.AI revealed 25% of respondents orders everyday household items through voice assistants followed by apparel and games and entertainment.

Programmatic advertising helps marketers to optimize these ad spaces across in-home smart devices, to on-app audio ad opportunities, and connect to consumers through in-store ads, ads in elevators and taxis, and more. 

5. Wearables will enhance programmatic advertising:

Wearables collect data on location, lifestyle, health metrics, and more. The market penetration of smartwatches has grown multifold over the years and programmatic advertising is already making its way into this medium. For instance, it helps advertisers run banner promos to customers on their Samsung or Sony smartwatches. The wearable ecosystem has a huge potential to grow and programmatic adtech can bring greater opportunities.

6. 5G in programmatic advertising:

The high speed and no buffering will encourage the rise of more users to spend time on videos on mobile devices. It will enhance other technologies such as AR-enabled ad displays, VR without headsets, and innovative new digital outdoor mediums. 

This will give programmatic advertising new opportunities to run more interactive ads without any lags across mediums. By 2024, the use of 5G in AdTech is predicted to grow to 1.4 billion.

7. Evolution of Personalization: 

With Gen Z and Millennials- the biggest demographics -personalization is a priority as they like all things customized. Personalization in advertising is going to be inevitable as the choices of the new generation are different. Therefore, programmatic customization by advertisers is increasing offering personalized, relevant messaging to their target group.

8. Blockchains and Ads.xt:

Ad frauds are increasing over the past few years. A cybersecurity firm Cheq reports that ad fraud damages will touch $26 billion in 2020, $29 billion by 2021, and $32 billion the year after that.

The only way to handle the frauds is by bringing transparency in programmatic advertising. Blockchain and Ads.txt (an Interactive Advertising Bureau initiative – Authorized Digital Sellers) can help to remove unrequired middleman, domain spoofing, and verification of publishers and allow transactions using cryptocurrencies.

Learn More: Advertisers Look For Greater Transparency In Programmatic Ad Buying

9. Programmatic TV, podcasts and audio Ads set to grow:

The content on TV has changed drastically. There is a paradigm shift in TV viewing from cable TV to over-the-top(OTT) like Amazon Prime or Netflix via an internet connection.

Programmatic advertising has a larger role to play to ensure marketers get the best of both worlds. Programmatic TV is also going to get more important with its data-driven approach for buying and delivering ads.

Programmatic in podcasts and audio advertising is also growing. Apps like Spotify and Soundcloud are seeing more user acceptance and a new advertising landscape is being created for companies to monetize on.

10. Omnichannel Programmatic:

Forrester defines omnichannel marketing as ‘the practice of digitally sequencing advertising across channels, which is connected, relevant, and consistent with the customer’s stage in their life cycle.’ This is how programmatic advertising is going to be in 2020 and beyond.

A single marketing resource or an ad can be customized programmatically suiting various platforms through programmatic AdTech.

11. Agencies to work on outcome-based pay:

Discussions are making rounds to switch to an outcome-based remuneration model. With increasing ad frauds and agencies promise programmatic tech, advertisers fear how their budgets were used and where their ads placed. There was a lot of wastage in the space. Media buying companies started giving outcome-based remuneration more prominence. Gradually, advertisers would like to see the full cost chain of their programmatic buys, pushing agencies to outcome-based pay.

12. In House programmatic advertising v/s agency.

An IAB report suggests that nearly 40% executing programmatic trading via in house and 50% publishers also have an in-house model. This means advertisers are looking for more transparency, control of their ad strategies, and outcome.

It makes more sense to have an in-house team for strategizing programmatic ads and an agency partner for implementing parts of it instead of having a full-stack programmatic AdTech in house. 

Wrapping up

Yes, Adtech is complicated but the best part is that it allows integrating the whole toolset into a single system. According to Zenith Media, the ad spends on digital media will reach $329 billion in 2021. However, there are major concerns and challenges -Ad Fraud, transparency, and privacy issues need immediate action.

There have been big changes and improvements over what advertisers and publishers used to have earlier but it still needs more work and their expertise to handle the challenges and resolve for good.

Project Agora Partners With Taboola For A New Native Content Solution- ‘Explore More’

Publishers have a new tool in their monetization kitty with the launch of Project Agora’s new Native Content Solution, Explore More.

Over 15,000 websites use Project Agora’s Native Content feature in partnership with Taboola to drive revenue, increase engagement and page views, and acquire new customers.

What is Explore More?

‘Explore More’ is designed to make mobile users, who are visiting the publisher’s site directly from social media and apps to stay longer and re-engaging them before they exit with the relevant content recommendation.

Explore More serves organic and sponsored content. However, they feature 70% organic content which increases organic re-circulation and improves revenue.

How Beneficial is it? 

Explore More has impressive results on smartphones and Tablets.

On Smartphones, it brings 60% uplift in RPM (Revenue per Thousand Pageviews) and 100% uplift in Organic CTR whereas, on Tablets, it brings a 45% uplift in RPM and 30% uplift in Organic CTR.

How to Use it?

It is simple to use for publishers already working with Project Agora by just adding the Explore More feature to the website. Project Agora’s expert team will undertake all the processes, and there is no work needed from the publisher to start seeing immediate results. 

Project Agora’s Publishers such as protothema.gr, alon.hu, a1.ro, alwatanvoice.com have already upped their game by implementing Explore More on their mobile websites

Dimitris Tsoukalas, Regional Director MEA, Project Agora said,

“More than 19 of Project Agora’s publishers, in the Middle East and Africa, have already upped their game by implementing Explore More on their mobile websites. In their battle to retain users for as long as possible and increase ad-revenues, Explore More is a no-brainer, quick win for publishers.”

Also Read: Project Agora Co-founds the New EMEA Video Advertising Platform- Union

Publishers Look For New Income Alternatives As Adtech Revenue Declines

The adtech industry has already been in an unstable situation for the past two years loaded with debt. It has been a challenging situation for major tech providers as well. Many of the companies were start-ups, fully leveraged, or hoping to come out with an IPO soon.

The COVID-19 pandemic only worsened the situation, for now, companies are to stay above water. Publishers fear that the two-year revenue gains will be over.

With the overconsumption of video content, premium ad placements have also declined. The publishers are also concerned about encountering payment uncertainty from ad exchanges and third-party revenue sources.

Co-CEO Rotem Shaul of Primis which is owned and backed by the Interpublic Group and Universal McCann.shares with Digiday the concerns from publishers and said,

The publishers we work with are prioritizing safety.

Therefore, publishers are rapidly finding new and stable ad formats and ad programs across platforms to continue with additional revenue streams ad reduce dependence on one ad format. The new ad format includes native, display, video advertising content, and scrolling videos that give way to new opportunities. Publishers are also using this quarantine time to improve and update the programmatic systems -page loading speeds, update ad tech stacks, and refresh the sales team on the latest developments.

CEO Roetm Shaul added with an increase in consumption, publishers should do everything they can and should partner with companies that will continue post-crisis too. They should look for new ways to diversify their ad tech portfolio.

All this would have been a little easier to experiment with vendors before the tightening of the economy as they had the luxury of freedom and money to test and determine the best solutions. Currently, the focus is on the cash flow with low pay or no pay, putting pressure on the managers to deliver revenue.

In this down economy, this will lead to a vicious cycle. Publishers will be hesitant to give a chance to small vendors for fear of being unpaid or will be enforced to replace ad tech. With these concerns, publishers will leave small companies and they will lose more money and business which will lead to bankruptcies or shutdown. This will create more worry over working with small vendors and publishers moving to bigger vendors.

Present scenario of publishers

According to Digi Day, Shaul said, “Publishers are frantically moving their businesses to safe havens like Google, Verizon, and other big companies.” Companies may not offer the best deals but have no uncertainty over the payments.

However, there are vendors like Freewheel (owned by Comcast), SpotX (owned by RTL), or Primis that can offer similar levels of stability. They are equipped to offer attractive deals and keep the revenue stream intact.

Again, Shaul said to DigiDay that at Primis, all publishers want to hear is about security and safety in these uncertain times. He added,

Even we feel the concerns from publishers. Fortunately, they do categorize us as a big company, as we are a part of IPG,  and once they see the letters IPG and know that they will back us up, they relax.

This unpredictable time will teach new learnings. To drive fresh revenue streams, new ad programs are set up. For ad tech and publishers, these new practices for stability and innovation will be carried forward. The revenue-strapped publishers and vendors will stabilize, then sustain, and once again grow and prosper. It’s all these important learnings that will lay a new foundation for their relationships and campaigns in the future and make stronger business for both sides- vendors and publishers.

 

Verizon Media Expands DSP to Offer Premium Native Ad Inventory.

Verizon Media has announced the expansion of its demand-side platform bringing in premium, programmatic, and now its full native marketplace inventory, formats, targeting, and measurement into a single unit. 

The DSP gives a unified solution to the advertisers to check on every aspect of their buys across all formats and inventory purchases- from planning, buying, and management to optimization.

Today, people are using more screens and devices than before. Therefore, it becomes challenging for advertisers to provide a personalized and unified experience across the media mix. This level of fragmentation eventually leads to using different tools for different formats and then measuring the success of each of them would be laborious. But now advertisers can have access to omnichannel inventories including mobile, digital out-of-home, CTV, video, and audio along with native advertising from a single dashboard.

According to Iván Markman, the chief business officer at Verizon Media,

The Verizon Media native experience was separate from the programmatic capabilities in our DSP…Now both are one, and this includes a lot more consistency planning and measurement and attribution. Over the last few quarters, we’ve looked at bringing more transparency and insights to our DSP.

The expansion of DSP’s functionality provides exclusive access to native ad inventory from Verizon’s owned and operated properties like Tech Crunch, Yahoo, and Huffington Post. The robust native marketplace format and premium inventory along with the programmatic offering, supported by 1st party data will help advertisers navigate a cookie-less environment.

In an era when media agencies are on hiring freeze if not headcount cutbacks, it was essential for the company to improve the efficiency of the tools. Markman stated, “You can now do more with less.“He further added,

Sometimes you’d have seven different platforms for things like digital out of home and native then display. Many of our clients have unfortunately had to furlough some team members or lay off their workforces. This helps with performance.