Yearly Archives: 2016

Next to Now: The News from SXSWi, Influencer Marketing & More

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Spring 2016 unfolds with exciting new marketing platforms, a digital shout-out for an old but effective ad platform, new developments in looking at what readers want and more . . .

 

 

SXSW INTERACTIVE

Adweek points to the hot topics at the recently concluded SXSWi, and they’re not a surprise, but they do underscore areas all marketers need to be aware of as they develop on the near horizon: Messaging, VR, Snapchat.

#messaging #vr #snapchat

 

MICRO-INFLUENCERS FTW

Gnack, a start-up announced at SXSW is experimenting with ways to make labor-intensive influencer marketing work on a programmatic platform. They’re starting with micro-influencers, those with no more than 10,000 followers—the kinds of influencers, that is, that are more friendly to book budgets.

#influencer #programmatic

 

APPLE’S ENTRY INTO NATIVE ADS

Apple News is developing a native ad product, worth watching for:

“Apple News will be updated as part of the latest version of iOS, expected to be released next week. Eddy Cue, the Apple executive in charge of online services, told The Wall Street Journal that 40 million people had used the Apple News app in January.”

#apple #news #native

 

HERE COMES THE READER DATA! BUT WHICH READERS?

Everyone in publishing wants to get data on how people read—at least to get information as good as what Amazon and Apple have via Kindle and iBooks. For that reason we applaud Jellybooks’ efforts to democratize this data and read the New York Times article on their presentation at DBW with interest. But there are big limitations with the data collected here. Jellybooks only counts readers reading on special e-readers, who have sought out the Jellybooks platform, read whatever few e-books are available there, and then agree to share the specifics of their reading habits for that particular book. This is a very different kind of person from the avid book buyer who buys, reads, and buys more copies, often in print.

#data #readers

 

VIDEO HABITS OF MILLENNIALS

An infographic on Adweek provides great insight into the video watching habits of millennials (as well as which video ads are OK with them, and which are not). Top three video watching sources are YouTube (85%), Netflix (66%), and Facebook (53%).

#video #millennials

 

IN PRAISE OF THE BILLBOARD

From Digiday, a little rant in favor of the ultimate non-digital advertising product:  

“These days, billboards are viewed as, mostly, for local businesses only. Bull. Brands, if you took just a small part of your worthless social media budget and put up one billboard in a high-visibility spot, you’d see some big-ass ROI in awareness and sales.”

#outdoor

TARGETING

Ad targeting that relies on user profiling makes many users uncomfortable, and not just tinfoil-hatted privacy advocates. But it turns out that people also hate seeing ads that aren’t right for them. The younger the user the more s/he is likely to expect ads that are better targeted.

#targeting

 

 

Next to Now: The View from Here

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Thanks to Digital Book World for hosting another engaging conference on the state of the art of book publishing in a digital world. Verso’s Tom Thompson enjoyed the smart, focused crowd on hand for his Master Class on Paid Digital Media and the packed audience for his panel on the Book-Buyer’s Journey with deeply insightful colleagues Peter Hildick-Smith of the Codex Group, Peter McCarthy of Logical Marketing, and Jack Perry from Highlights for Children.

There were many highlights from the three day conference—including very informative slide decks from Peter McCarthy and Rand Fishkin, chock-full of free tools for audience research and SEO best practices.

Here is a link to Peter McCarthy on free tools for finding a book’s audience.

And here is Rand Fishkin’s presentation on how to apply SEO startup tactics to book marketing.

We’ll post a link to Tom’s Master Class slides as soon as Digital Book World posts them.

#dbw #moz #SEO #audienceresearch

 

FACEBOOK UPS ITS LEAD GEN GAME

Facebook is adding products that make it a better lead generation tool for advertisers looking to bulk up their direct contact lists—including partnerships with email companies like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact. There’s a lot of change happening in the intersection between email and paid advertising these days, and strong indications that advertising to your email lists significantly boosts actions taken on emails. Any book publisher looking to bolster their direct email marketing capabilities should look at integrating it with advertising.

#email #advertising #facebook

 

MOMS AND MOBILE ADVERTISING

eMarketer reports on a study that shows that not only do U.S. mothers spend more time online than the average population, but they are more open to mobile advertising than the average U.S. mobile user.

#mobile #moms

 

WHO LISTENS TO THE RADIO WHEN

A new study suggests that Millennials are the largest group of radio listeners, but the three generations each seem to prefer a different time of day:

“Interestingly, the top daypart for listening varies by generation, with Gen Xers most engaged during the morning drive (6AM-10AM), Boomers during the mid day (10AM-3PM) and Gen Xers during the evening drive (3PM-7PM).”

(Via @PeterMcCarthy)

#radio #millennials

 

PLAYBOY’S NATIVE AD OFFERING INCLUDES INSTAGRAM BUY

As part of Tullemmore D.E.W.’s native ad buy on Playboy, the publisher included a retargeting Instagram push for the whiskey.   Related: Digiday has a short article on Macallan’s Instagram push. There’s something about whiskey that works on Instagram

#instagram #native #whiskey

 

FACEBOOK PULLS BACK ON DSP OFFERING

Facebook is holding off on creating its own Demand Side Platform (DSP), which would have put it in competition with companies like Turn, Rocketfuel, and Google Display for running programmatic campaigns. The reason is that it’s really hard to find and sell clean ad inventory (i.e. ad impressions seen by people not robots) and that they don’t want to release an inferior product. But I don’t think we’ve heard the end of them on this one. The good news is they’re working on bringing the native and video ad experience to play on DSPs where they currently are not:

“Brian Boland, Facebook’s vice president of ads product marketing, told Business Insider that native and video formats delivered “7X” better results than banner ads. The problem right now is that the majority of ads being bought through demand-side platforms on the desktop and mobile web are banner ads, so Facebook is refocusing Atlas’ plans around “building a product in our mission to help marketers deliver and measure true business value,” according to the blog post.”

Watch this space.

A more pointed quote picked up by Ad Age, Facebook’s head of ad tech declared himself “amazed by the volume of valueless inventory.”

#DSP #native #watchthisspace #facebook

 

FACEBOOK ADDS PATH-TO-CONVERSION TO ATLAS

Joining Google’s DoubleClick ad server, Facebook’s Atlas ad server now can measure whether ads on desktop or mobile devices drove a digital sale. Given Facebook’s user attribution warehouse of data — now extending across the web with FB log in — this should be a powerful tool. Facebook’s VP of advertising, Brian Boland says:

“It provides insight into how real people—not cookies—see ads across multiple devices.” 

#facebook #atlas #pathtoconversion

 

NEW YORK MAGAZINE GOES NATIVE

New York Magazine is upping its commitment to the native advertising—announcing that 33% of 2015 revenue came from native formats—with a key new hire in its branded content department.

#native

 

NEW UNITS IN FB ADVERTISING

Click Z details the latest units in advertising on Facebook.

#facebook

 

BETTER ROBOT LEARNING THROUGH FICTION

Stanford researchers are using Wattpad stories to teach AI how to predict human response. This counts as a point for both arts and science disciplines.

#wattpad #data #AI

 

DARK TRAFFIC ON THE RISE

Websites rely on knowing where their audience is coming from so they can understand their audience. A recent article in the Guardian points out that it’s getting harder to do that, with about 15% of the Guardian traffic coming from unknown sources. Whether it’s email mentions, stray Reddit threads, or “Spotlight” searches on their iPhones (the biggest unknown according to researchers), the effort to understand the origins of this “Dark Traffic” is underway.

“‘It’s not just a referral agency problem; it’s a user problem deep down,’ points out strategy director David Carr at DigitasLBi. ‘The journey is broken for users who need to jump around in apps and on browser, because ad tech is getting in the way. That strips out the attribution. What could be a connected journey becomes disjointed. If we solve it for the user, we might solve the attribution.’ But that’s easier said than done.”

#audience #darktraffic

 

USING THE SECOND SCREEN

Broadcast isn’t dead. Americans still watch 5 hours of television a day. But that doesn’t mean TV advertisers should ignore the digital space. According to Google, two thirds of Americans watching TV have used their mobile screens to learn more about something they saw in an ad.

#TV #secondscreen #digital

 

IMPROVING AD VIEWABILITY ON MOBILE

In an article about how Google’s AMP project aims to improve the mobile advertising experience, Frederic Filloux points to an Adweek article about the problem with ad load times in mobile:

“44 percent of mobile ads served are deemed viewable compared with 52 percent of desktop promos, primarily because smartphone-wielding consumers often scroll faster than websites can load ads. Once someone is on a site, 76 percent of mobile readers choose to scroll down a website versus 63 percent of desktop users who do the same.

That spells bad news for publishers who don’t load ads at a lightning-fast speed. Per Moat, the average mobile user starts scrolling on a website 13 seconds after content begins loading. Desktop readers, on the other hand, wait 24 seconds before clicking down a page, which gives ads more time to load.”

#mobile #AMP

 

NEWSLETTERS ARE THE NEW BLOGS

On Twitter, @swissmiss, Tina Roth Eisenberg, says “Newsletters are the new blogs.” This may be true, but newsletters are a tool that have worked exceedingly well for advertisers since email began.

#email #blogs #style

 

Next to Now: Trying to Chart New Oceans of Data & More

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PODCASTS CONTINUE TO GROW

Digiday has an interesting article about the evolution of podcasts and the need for improved measurement. Measurement is still not there yet—even the link within the article to NPR’s proposed measurement guidelines is broken. But we expect it to happen. Fun fact from this article: NPR is working on a podcast that’s like RadioLab, but for the Supreme Court.

#podcast

 

PODCASTS GOING NATIVE?

While news and sports podcasts still dominate the top 10 most popular podcasts in the iTunes store, fashion bloggers are discovering the effectiveness of the podcast platform, and are expanding the ways sponsored content is integrated into popular podcasts.

#podcasts #native #fashion

 

BUZZFEED BETS BIG

Digiday writes about the strengths and challenges of the modern-day master of the cat video, Buzzfeed:

“BuzzFeed has mastered the art of distributed publishing, using platforms like Facebook, Snapchat and others to amass massive audience attention. The publisher boasts a mind-boggling 5 billion views per month of its articles and videos, spread out across 30 platforms, from Facebook to Pinterest to Snapchat. In a month it does 3 billion video views, less than 5 percent of which are on BuzzFeed.com. The bet is simple: publish content where people are, rather than forcing them to come to you.”

They’re the player to beat in this space, but wake us up when their minimum spend dips below six figures.

#native #buzzfeed

 

POP SUGAR MOVING AWAY FROM BANNER ADS

Pop Sugar’s Brian Sugar is going all in with native and affiliate marketing.   

#mobile #native

 

VIDEO DIDN’T KILL THE RADIO STAR, AND TABLETS HAVEN’T KILLED THE EREADER

eMarketer notes that eReaders continue to sell, especially with the 65+ age demo.

#ereaders #devices

 

BILLBOARDS ARE WATCHING YOU

As advertisers we have watched the continual evolution of billboards as they develop digital chops not just to display creative, but also to target users in their vicinity through geo-fencing app networks. Now, a New York Times article notes that billboards technology is able to track user information beyond mere app targeting to give you demographic information about foot traffic that is encountering your out-of-home ad.

Business Insider follows up with an article that goes into the objections and fears about this kind of tracking.

#billboards #digital #outdoor

 

SNAPCHAT EXPANDS AUDIENCE INFORMATION

New deals with Nielsen and Sizmek are allowing Snapchat to learn more about ad performance and audience measurement.

#snapchat #audience #data #targeting

 

Next to Now: New Shifts in Ad Ecosystems

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As our preparations for this year’s Digital Book World shift into high gear (including the Master Class in paid advertising and the panel on the book buyer’s journey), there is an abundance of ad news to take in. Below is a sampling of what we’ve been reading this week.
WHY IS THIS PAGE TAKING SO LONG TO LOAD?

In an article about how Google’s new AMP system works, AdAge connects to very clear graphics that show clearly how the complexity of ad exchanges and analytics tracking slows down load times—and how AMP fixes that.  

“When compared to traditional mobile websites, AMP pages load 85% faster, Google says.

‘The New York Times itself is running very fast,’ Ghostery CEO and founder Scott Meyer said regarding the desktop version of the site. ‘But once you get beyond the Times, and into the far reaches of the ad exchanges, a lot of those companies are going to be slow to load and there will be an impact on user experience.’

AMP is a response to similar but proprietary platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Unlike those, however, AMP is open source, meaning anyone can use it.”

It’s worth a click through to see the dynamic images, but here is a screenshot of the desktop ecosystem for a NYTimes.com story:

desktop_ecosystem

Here’s a shot of the mobile ecosystem:

mobile_ecosystem

And here’s a shot of the new AMP ecosystem for the same story:

AMP_ecosystem

#tracking #AMP

 

REDEFINING WHAT WE MEAN BY MOBILE CAMPAIGN 

AdAge has a fascinating article about the latest big brand thinking around mobile advertising. Long story short: It’s not about the campaign.

“The perfect mobile campaign isn’t a campaign,” said Carl Norberg, founder and chief experience officer of mobile-focused shop Monterosa/BBH Stockholm, which has created initiatives for clients such as Volvo, Justin Bieber, Google, Axe and others. “It’s a brand extension where marketing comes baked into the product.” While great TV is storytelling, great mobile is about “storydoing,” he said. “Instead of us telling the story, we hand over an app to let the consumer become an active part of the brand’s tale.”

While the takeaways for book publishing’s fleet of individual, smaller scale products is not great; it’s important to remember that “mobile” isn’t a platform any more. It’s how most people scan email, check Facebook, Tweet, research restaurants, and even (in some cases) read books.

#mobile

 

WHY HOLLYWOOD LOVES BILLBOARDS

The New Yorker has an interesting article on the “For your consideration” billboards that use a mass medium to reach a very targeted audience. Why do they use a mass medium when the target is so specific? Because they work in a couple different ways:

  1. The high concentration of  Oscar nominators in a few specific locations
  2. To show the wider audience that this might be a film worth seeing.  

#mass #targeting #billboards

 

PINTEREST BEST PRACTICES

Kirsten Oliphant has a good piece up on Jane Friedman’s blog about best practices for authors on Pinterest. It’s an especially good platform for lifestyle and cooking, and worth a read.

#pinterest

 

FOURSQUARE CONNECTS DIGITAL ADS WITH FOOT TRAFFIC

Foursquare announces that it can connect digital ads seen by Foursquare users with foot traffic in stores. Testing has already begun:

“Flipboard recently used the system to measure a campaign that it ran for an undisclosed retailer and found that the digital ads drove a 12 percent incremental lift in visits to the retailer’s locations within a week.”

Connecting the digital ad space to real world traffic is vital to understanding how our ads work with the people who see them. It will be exciting to see how this new product develops. In a followup article, Adweek mentions other players in this space. The interest in this is only growing.

#digital #instore

 

MAKE YOUR OWN SNAPCHAT FILTERS!

Marketers and party planners alike will be happy to hear of Snapchat’s new rollout of make-your-own geofilters for the platform.

#snapchat

 

EXPERIMENTS IN SNAPCHAT MARKETING

Dominos has run some successful experiments in marketing on the channel that marketers are scrambling to figure out to reach the post-Millennial generations

#snapchat

 

GOOGLE STUDY ON IN-STORE MOBILE USE

It’s not just show-rooming: a study from Google on in-store mobile use has a few key takeaways:

  1. Mobile is the new front door: Target found that 3/4ths of its customers start the customer journey on mobile
  2. Local search matters (for bookstores!): year to year growth in “Near to me” searches. A 2015 Google Consumer Survey found that 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a store within a day, and 18% of those searches lead to a purchase.3
  3. Ads that show local inventory drives users into the store (note, 3rd party servers such as Sizmer, a Verso partner, have this capability)
  4. In-store decision guide: 82% of shoppers say they’ve consulted their mobile phone while in store to make a purchase
  5. Omni-channel customers spend more: 250% more, according to MasterCard

#google #mobile #instore

 

INSTAGRAM CONTINUES DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH

eMarketer notes that, at this pace, more than a third of internet users will be on Instagram by 2017. The article includes projections for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr too.

#instagram

 

ADBLOCKERS ARE YOUNG AND MALE

There are 198 million ad block users worldwide. This infographic on Hubspot goes into detail about who are leading the charge, heavy into tech, gaming, sports and social. Not surprisingly it’s the young male demo. The older female demographic (core, avid readers) are the least likely to be using an ad blocker.

#adblocking #readers

 

PROS AND CONS OF PODCASTS

eMarketer talks to Digitas LBI Social Director about the pros and cons of podcasts for marketers.

#podcasts #audio #streaming

 

HOW TO USE TWITTER

ClickZ attended Twitter’s Flight Camp so you don’t have to. Good stuff here for social media managers.

#twitter #social #bestpractices

 

MEDIA PROS JOIN SNAPCHAT #FAILBETTER

A week travelling on the West coast with a pair of 15 year-old boys has shown me the vitality of Snapchat, the generational divide (and I mean the one that the millennials are starting to feel with the generation after them . . . ), and how Gen X just. doesn’t. get. it.

#snapchat #genx #fail

 

AOL FTW

More evidence that the digitally connected older generation are where the action is with digital marketing.

#email #boomers #politics

 

TWITTER UPS ITS GIF GAME

Integration with Giphy and Riffsy make it easier for Twitter users to post animated gifs.

#twitter #gifs

 

WRONG END OF THE FUNNEL

Why haven’t buy buttons on FB and Instagram taken off yet? Because they’re trying to force top of the funnel marketing down the funnel too far…. Customers aren’t interested in that (need a little more time and comfort before making the purchase).

#facebook #instagram #thefunnel

 

TUMBLR STRUGGLES

It’s still a great way to reach the YA audience, but Tumblr’s growth is slowing. Here are projections via eMarketer:

“Regarding its total user base, this will be the last year Tumblr will grow by double digits, signaling a plateau. In 2016, Tumblr will have 23.2 million users in the US. That’s less than half as many as Pinterest (which has 54.6 million) and less than a third as many as Instagram (which has 89.4 million).”

#tumbler #teens

 

The image at the top of this post is taken from the current Tara Donovan show at the Quint Gallery.

 

Next to Now: Feb. 19 Edition

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ARE CONSUMERS STARTING TO VALUE NON-DIGITAL EXPERIENCES?

Yes. We’ve seen it in the plateauing of ebooks and the continued strength of print books. Now, other media are seeing it too (even marketing people at mobile companies!):

“‘We’re seeing that people really love their phones, but many are craving a digital detox,’ explains Meredith Vincent, executive advertising director at AT&T Mobility.”

In book marketing, we should always remember the reasons our customers value books.

#nondigitalplug

 

DIGITAL STUDY SUGGESTS PEOPLE WANT DIGITAL ADS TO BE MORE LIKE PRINT

An article on niemanlab.org points to a Swedish study that suggest that intrusive ad forms—such as video, interstitials and rich media—are so disliked that CTR is negatively correlated to an ad’s effectiveness:

“The study revealed that the most effective of these formats was the static image. Static banner ads had the greatest effect on a reader’s preference for a brand and intent to purchase the item advertised — and those are among the categories that matter most to advertisers who, at the end of the day, want to sell something.”

The research team discovers that a “good” ad is a relevant one. That’s the goal: An informative static ad that does not get in the way of what you’re looking for, but offers relevant information you can choose to follow up on.

#adtech

 

SEARCH ADS DECLINE WHILE DISPLAY SPACE STAYS STRONG

The effectiveness of pay per click search advertising is diminishing, but the realm of display advertising is growing in strength. In ClickZ’s report from Connect conference:

“WordStream’s @larrykim: 95% of time online is spent consuming content but just 5% searching for it.”

#display #search

 

INSTAGRAM PUSHES MORE VIDEO ADS

In the announcement that they will start counting video views, Instagram also says that, like Facebook, three seconds of view-time will count toward a view. The question is are these views more valuable than a Vine, where videos play instantly, or is three seconds still too little to count even if it’s user-initiated.

#video

 

DIGITAL AD SALES ARE UP REVENUES ARE DOWN

An article at Columbia Journalism Review, looks at the struggles of media platforms that rely on digital ad spending for their bottom line, even as they’re growing:

“And yet growth can have its downsides. Even as digital ad spending climbs, flooding into video and expected to surpass TV, it’s also pressure on media sellers to lower their prices, leading to what some experts are calling, “digital deflation,” and an overall slowdown in the ad spending market, The New York Times reported.“

#digitalad

 

The image in this post is a photograph of the Robert Ryman show at Dia's Chelsea Gallery, looking in at one of the galleries from the entrance hall.

Next to Now: Valentine’s Day Edition

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SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS REJOICE

As a Valentine’s Day present to social media managers who like to keep their personal and their business identities distinct, Instagram announced this week that they are finally going to allow users to toggle between multiple accounts.

#instagram #social

 

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

From Quartz:

“Many people today struggle with information overload. We shift our attention between online and offline activities every 45 seconds, according to Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at the University of California at Irvine.”

In a world of information overload, advertisers need to respect their audiences and reach them in environments where the message can be heard

#attention

 

GOOD NEWS FOR QUALITY CONTENT

The FT hit a readership record: 780,000 paying readers, the highest in their 128 year history. In his latest newsletter, Ben Evans says,

“The FT now has the highest paying readership in its history. Remember how ‘pay walls’ were a staggeringly stupid idea? The Times is also now breaking even.”

This is also a win for advertisers (like books!) that match well with the audiences on these blue chip platforms (The FT, the New York Times, etc.). Reaching a committed reader in a place where s/he is reading relevant, engaging information. The best advertising shows its target what they want when they want it.

#thoughtleaders #targeting

 

WHAT GAME?

From USA Today on last Sunday’s Super Bowl: “According to Venables Bell & Partners, 78% of people were more excited about the commercials than the game last night.”

#superbowl

 

HOW DO YOU MEASURE AD SUCCESS?

That Mountain Dew ad freaked me out, but it was successful (especially when you remember that 40+ year old men are not the target demo):   

“Mountain Dew’s director of brand marketing Sadira Furlow told Adweek the Super Bowl campaign generated 11 million views across social media since its first teaser spot launched on Jan. 22.”

#roi

 

SNAPCHAT USER STUDY

While I watched the Super Bowl with my Twitter stream running, my 15 year old son was watching it with Snapchat running. While dedicated Snapchat users are a growing bunch, a recent study suggests they’re not engaging with the branded content as much as they are with their friends. To the question “How often do you buy something you saw on Snapchat,” 87% of respondents replied “Never.” 54% of respondents said they never watch Snap Discover Stories.  

#snapchat #streaming

 

THE TOP SUPER BOWL ADS

Hub Spot lists the top Super Bowl ads: Heinz, Snickers, Pokeman, Axe . . . Though it was the least flashy, I wonder if the most successful ad of the night wasn’t the one for the new Jason Bourne movie. It reached it’s target audience, delivered the message they wanted to hear (after taking a movie off, Matt Damon’s back as Jason Bourne!), and stuck in the mind. No tricks, just the right ad at the right time. Maybe only Beyonce’s ad for “Formation” directly following her performance was better targeted.

#superbowl #video

 

MOBILE USAGE WAS HIGH DURING THE 2016 SUPERBOWL

The second-screen phenomenon for huge live events is a regular thing. You probably knew that already, but it’s always worth a reminder. 

#mobile

Next to Now: The Super Bowl of Advertising Edition

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It’s Super Bowl weekend! That means most of the advertising industry is strutting, preening, and fretting in advance of the one event in which ads are at least as anticipated as the game. This time of year the industry’s worries are on full display: are we just making ads so people can see what fancy ads we’re making, or are we actually helping to sell products? We know where we stand at Verso.
IF A MARKETER DUNKS IN THE DARK, WILL ANYBODY SEE IT?

Only a few years removed from the Super Bowl power outage and the Oreo tweet that launched a thousand industry thought pieces — “Power out? No problem, you can still dunk in the dark” — the idea of social media “war rooms” is on the wane. It turns out that not only is a “free” social media onslaught expensive, it’s also not as wide reaching as it used to be:

“A couple of years ago, there was a lot more fun and opportunity in real-time marketing,” said Gareth Goodall, partner and chief strategy officer at Anomaly. “Those days are behind us. It’s a paid-media game today and with that, comes a lot more preparation than real-time inspiration.”

#social #freeisexpensive

 

POLITICS AT POLITICO

Politico has never been immune to the political turmoil it covers so well, but with two founders scheduled to leave at the end of the election cycle the question becomes: is this an orderly transition that signifies the site’s healthy growth or a sign of an unstable foundation for the future?

#politics

WHAT WILL A SUPER BOWL MARKETING BUDGET BUY ONLINE?

As a thought exercise, AdWeek asked marketers what a $5 million Super Bowl ad budget would buy online. For your weekly book marketing meeting, here are some alternatives: 1.5MM app installs; 5 custom Twitter emojis; 12.5 days of sponsored Snaps; 10.5 premium Instagram campaigns; 50 Tumblr takeovers; 8-10 YouTube masthead ads; and a gazillion Facebook impressions. But how many of those alternatives could possibly drive a conversation in the way that a first quarter Super Bowl spot can?

#thoughtexperiment #digitalvbroadcast

MORE THAN 50% OF US POPULATION WILL WATCH STREAMING VIDEO

EMarketer projects that 2016 will be the year that more than half of the U.S. population will watch TV shows online at least once a month.

#streaming #video

 

AUTO-PLAY GETS POPULAR (WITH WEBSITES IF NOT USERS)

Caveat emptor: Facebook’s move to auto-play has made it popular for many websites. It certainly gooses the numbers of video views. The question is are they *good* views, and do the readers like it or are publishers just asking people to install ad blockers?

#video

 

ON CONVERSATIONAL COMMERCE

Will 2016 be the year of conversational commerce? Uber’s Chris Messina thinks so. Platforms like Facebook Messenger, Peach, Slack and more are moving in this direction and advertisers should pay attention—especially since there’s more global traffic on messaging apps than there is on social networks:

“Suffice to say, the verbs we use with traditional apps are irrelevant in the conversational paradigm. We “buy”, “download”, “install”, and “trash” apps. The conversational paradigm is more social, and therefore less technologic. We use humane verbs like “add”, “invite”, “contact”, “mute”, “block”, and “message”. The language of conversation is more accessible to a broader audience, which will in turn accelerate the adoption of conversational agents faster than we saw with desktop apps.”

(via @onlydeadfish)

#messaging

 

MARKETERS NOW: DOWN ON FACEBOOK, UP ON SNAPCHAT

Visual marketing is in. That’s good news for Snapchat, Instagram and Pinterest:

“According to research from eMarketer, more senior U.S. ad buyers are planning to advertise on Snapchat for the first time this year over any other social media site.”

#visual #snapchat #instagram #pinterest

 

Next to Now: The Road Ahead Edition

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Does the road ahead look clear or is that just snow blindness from last weekend’s blizzard? This week we read about Facebook’s entry into live streaming, strategic shifts at Quartz, and new ways to target sports and gaming enthusiasts.

 

FACEBOOK JUMPS IN & PERISCOPE BETTER WATCH OUT

Facebook enters the live stream business: “The social network today announced it has expanded Live Video access beyond celebrities, verified users and journalists to any U.S. user with an iPhone.”

#streaming #facebook #social #video

 

INTENT TARGETING BEATS DEMO TARGETING, SAYS GOOGLE

Of course, they’re saying this because it boosts their ad model. But here are the facts Google lays out in their argument for intent targeting:

  • Only 31% of searchers for video games online are men aged 18-34. So if you want video game users and buyers and use only demographic targeting to find them, you’re missing 69% of the target audience
  • 45% of mobile searches for home improvement were made by women. So if you only targeted men for your home improvement book, you’d miss 45% of the market.

#intent #demographics #targeting

 

YOUTUBE A GREAT SOURCE FOR GAMERS

Another Google article (so, take it with a grain of salt), but YouTube is undeniably a great way to reach gamers, and the gamer audience is a good way to find entertainment enthusiasts for fantasy, science fiction, action-oriented YA, and thrillers. Some takeaways:

  • 40% of YouTube Gamers say they bought something because of a video they saw online
  • Of all the places to watch video online, YouTube remains the #1 site for gamer video
  • 88% of YouTube gamers give product recommendationos in Media & Entertainment category (a category that includes books, although it’s presumably far, far outshadowed by games and movies)

#gamers #video #youtube

 

FACEBOOK TARGETING EXPANDS BEYOND APPS

Facebook is taking its mobile network beyond the in-app ads it’s run so far–now including mobile display and native content. This makes sense:

“As popular as apps are, mobile Web browsing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. According to a comScore report last year, digital media consumption in mobile Web browsers increased 53 percent from 2013 to 2015. Between 35 percent and 40 percent of traffic to news sites comes from mobile devices, with 93 percent of mobile audiences coming from the mobile Web.”

#facebook #mobile #targeting

 

WE INTERRUPT THIS AD-RELATED READING TO PRESENT AN AUTHOR’S POV

Chuck Wendig has some things to share with you if you’re thinking of publishing your book. Two that related to marketing:

“Said it before, will scream it again and again at the asylum walls until my spit-forth soaks the padding — social media will sell tens or hundreds of books, but not thousands. Social media is good for getting the word out! Social media is good for earnestly talking about your book. Social media is not a good long-term sales channel.”

and:

“The more money spent on your book means the more money gets spent on your book. This is both sensible and weird. Sensible because investments must be protected, and sometimes you protect an investment by adding money to it. Weird because, hey, why does Coca-Cola advertise? Do they need it? Is there anybody in the world who doesn’t know that Coke exists? But even Coca-Cola must remind the world of its presence (and if I recall, Coke’s sales are down, too).”

#marketing #social #advertising

 

HOW TO ADVERTISE TO THE SUPER BOWL AUDIENCE WITHOUT A MILLION BUCKS

In their effort to get advertisers thinking of YouTube as a viable, affordable alternative to Super Bowl advertising, Google makes good points about ways to advertise to this audience if you don’t have five million to blow on thirty seconds of air: find content the demo likes, advertise earlier at key moments (the draft, opening day, crucial regular season games, etc), and don’t forget that this game is relevant to other categories than sports, including tail-gate worthy food, music, video games and more.

Here’s a link to key moments in the course of the season. 

#youtube #targeting #sports

 

QUARTZ SHINES, SHIFTS, GROWS

From a Nieman Lab interview with Quartz publisher Jay Lauf:

  • 42% of revenue from mobile
  • Despite the strength in mobile, the introduction of mobile ad blockers haven’t presented a problem (this makes sense given the nature of the site and the style of ads)
  • After famously launching as a site only, Quartz is now introducing an app. They’re doing this primarily because they want in on the app notification game

Quartz remains a great platform for reaching smart, tech-savvy, business-oriented readers. They’re a smart choice for a business or cultural trend book.

#quartz #business

Next to Now: The Coming Digital Storm Edition

Next to Now, , , , ,

The East Coast is bracing for our first real snow of the season, preparing our Instagram filters and Twitter hashtags. So now’s a perfect time for all you East Coasters (and Midwesterners and West Coasters) to line up some good reading for the weekend. Here’s some of what we’ve noticed the last few days.

 

POLITICS UP

A presidential election year means big traffic for political websites — and good news for political books looking to target their audiences. Digiday outlines the top websites as measured by traffic—Huffington Post, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the Hill, and Politico—and notes that The Hill and Mother Jones are growing fast.

#politics #targeting

 

NYT BRINGS “MODERN LOVE” TO PODCAST

The New York Times is teaming with NPR to produce a podcast of their popular Modern Love column: with essays read by actors including Jason Alexander, Judd Apatow, Sarah Paulson and more.  What an amazing resource that will be to advertise fiction. 

#podcast #modernlove

 

AOL AND TABOOLA TAKE ON FACEBOOK

In a world where reach is increasingly defined (or denied) by Facebook, AOL and Taboola are partnering up to increase the reach of AOL properties, including Huffington Post and Engadget.

#content #targeting

 

 

PINTEREST TO ADD VIDEO ADS

Pinterest is adding video ad capabilities—which makes sense for such a visually oriented network. But to do it well, they’ll have to improve video on a site that, so far, has been all about the static image.

#video #pinterest #social

 

GOOGLE’S MICRO-MOMENTS GET PLAY IN THE PAPER OF RECORD

This article on intent-based advertising feels like it was written by someone receiving the many (convincing!) emails from Google marketing services about their concept of “micro-moments.” This article is worth reading, if for no other reason than the agile use of ancient Greek philosophy from Rocket Fuel (Liberal Arts education FTW).

“Randy Wootton, chief executive of the ad technology firm Rocket Fuel, which recently announced a ‘marketing in the moment’ approach, refers to ancient Greek concepts of time: chronos, or sequential time, and kairos, a moment of opportunity independent of linear time.”

That said, caveat emptor:  

“Few marketers currently have all the skills needed for moments-based marketing, such as ethnographic studies of their customers and the ability to match customer data to the right context, according to a report released last July by Forrester Research. Without those skills developing throughout the industry, the latest scheme to reach peripatetic consumers could prove, well, momentary.”

#adtargeting #intent

 

BETTER GROWTH THROUGH PRIVATE ACCOUNTS?

Everlane experiments with a private Instagram account as a way to build community through a sense of exclusivity:

“’It’s like an Instagram incubator,’ said Gaskell. ‘We want to gauge criticisms, and we’re making it private in order to have a curated, high value experience. People will feel like they’re in on something.’”

Could it work for niche publishers?

#instagram #social

 

FACEBOOK GETS SET TO JOIN THE SPORTS CONVERSATION

AdWeek reports on Facebook’s new sport-oriented platform. It’s a smart move by Facebook that is not great news for Twitter or ESPN. If this gets the traction I expect, it will be a great place to advertise sports books. Here’s the link to Facebook’s post about the feature:

“With 650 million sports fans, Facebook is the world’s largest stadium. People already turn to Facebook to celebrate, commiserate, and talk trash with their friends and other fans.”

#facebook #sports