Tag Archives: media

NEXT TO NOW: AD RESEARCH EDITION

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ARE BUY BUTTONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA A GOOD IDEA?

Marketers are very excited by social media buy buttons, but consumers? Not so much. This survey of user habits on social media is a useful reminder that just because an idea looks good on a marketing plan doesn’t mean it’s something that serves our customers well.

#social #media #adtech

 

DATA REVEALS SURPRISING, UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH 

According to Spotify, the number one zip code for playing Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” is Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

#data

 

HUBSPOT ON THE BENEFITS OF NATIVE ADVERTISING

This HubSpot article on the benefits of native advertising is well-argued and cites a wealth of links to relevant studies. Of interest:

—Consumers look at native ads 52% more frequently than banner ads:.

—Native ads receive two times more visual focus than banners: 

—Native CTR performance can be 85% higher than banner ads. n.b. This data point is from a Stackadapt study that uses an “average” banner CTR of .06%. Since Verso’s average is more like .1%, the percentage improvement is not as high for our campaigns, but it’s still significant.

—Avg CTR for banner ads is .08%. n.b. This links to a useful tool from Google for identifying benchmark rates, that identifies the average click-through rate as .08% (.05% for Flash, in case anyone’s still using that format!). It’s important to keep saying this: we expect—and see—better average CTRs for Verso campaigns.

#native advertising #data

 

DIGITAL ADS ARE GETTING SMARTER. ARE ADVERTISERS?

A professor at the University of Chicago looks into advertising spend on search, email and mobile. Among his surprising discoveries: most sales do not result from users who click on ads:

“In fact, 78 percent of the increase in sales in the Yahoo experiment was from users who never clicked on the ads. ‘Even though clicks are a standard measure of performance in online-advertising campaigns, we find that focusing only on clickers leads to a serious underestimate of the campaign’s effects.’”

#research #search #email #clickthroughs

 

OLDER USERS RESPOND BETTER TO DIGITAL

Two former Yahoo researchers show that the effect of online advertising on sales increases with age, with the top performing group over 65. So maybe book publishers shouldn’t worry about Snapchat so much right now.

#research #sales

 

CREATIVE PERSISTENCE

A report from professors at the University of Chicago’s Booth Business School and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management details the importance of persistence when it comes to creative breakthroughs.

#creative

 

NEW LUMA REPORT

Here’s LUMA’s new report on the state-of-the-art of digital marketing. The number one new trend is mass-personalization across channels. This of course requires very smart “identity” data. Slide 31 points to developments on this score. The second largest trend, content marketing, requires traditionally siloed departments such as advertising, PR, web development and email to work in concert. (Via BusinessInsider)

#adtech

 

IS THE VINE EXPERIMENT OVER?

Two years ago it was one of the hottest new marketing platforms, but AdWeek reports that today Vine accounts for just 6% of video marketing using advertiser-produced video (compared to 64% YouTube and 24% Facebook). That said, it’s still a viable platform if you use it right and partner with social media stars:

“Vine still shines when social stars are involved. Instead of brands posting their own content, Burns said that clients are looking to team up with top influencers who have amassed massive followings to create sponsored content.”

#social #video #vine

 

MOST MOBILE AND DESKTOP VIDEO ADS SERVED AGAINST SHORT FORM

Emarketer reports: “Q3 2015 research from FreeWheel found that 69% of digital video ad views served by its platform to smartphones occurred while users watched content shorter than 20 minutes.” Perhaps more surprising was the revelation that desktop video watching is still twice that on mobile and tablets:

“In 2015, US adults will spend an average of 12 minutes per day watching digital video on their smartphones and an average of 14 minutes on their tablets. Time spent on desktop and laptop is higher, with US adults spending an average of 24 minutes per day watching digital video.” 

#video

 

AGAINST BAD ADS

And by “bad,” we mean a bad experience for the user. As this NYT article says, there are far too many digital ads right now that try to work up the engagement numbers through forcing you to click on the content when you were just trying to get the ad out of your face. It’s a little ironic (but only a little), since the NY Times website is not immune to these kind of ads (this cat owner is looking at you, Purina dog chow video). But this might be the kind of culture we create when every marketing job is numbers based—judging a campaign by how many people clicked on the ad, rather than to how many people responded to what you were advertising.

#creative

Great Media Ideas You Should Consider

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By Verso’s Media Department

Places We Love to Advertise Books:
.com — Home Page Advantage Pop-Up Menu — over 30,000,000 impressions for a very low $1 CPM. A great place to advertise well-known brands — our clients who publish a popular diet book loved it so much that they doubled the length of their campaign after first-wave results came in.
– Consistently a great place for books. It can nicely complement a television campaign and is extremely targeted. We have run many campaigns for everything from vampire books to children’s books, with great success.
— A good place to reach a broad audience for a relatively inexpensive CPM. News sites do a great job of increasing awareness about books in many bestselling genres, from business to fiction.
Phone Kiosks / Billboards — Phone kiosks continue to be an affordable way to advertise books. We can target by city and even by neighborhood, and kiosks start for as little as $250 each. We’ve recently secured some great deals on billboards in NY and LA—on Sunset Blvd in LA, and Times Square for as little as $40,000 for 4 weeks.
Media We Think You Should Consider:
Rolling Stone – For the first time in their history, Rolling Stone has dropped their print rates for us. We can now run a color ad for as little as $20,000 that will reach the magazine’s full 1.5 million readership. It may be known as a music magazine, but it has strong political and cultural reportage, and reader studies show that people who read Rolling Stone also read books. Haven’t seen the magazine in a while? Let your AE know and we’ll get you on comp.
The Week – A fabulous place for books. They dedicate about 10% of their edit to books, feature a different author’s favorite books each week, and reach an affluent, educated audience. We have great negotiated rates and can run an ad for as little as $8,000.
The Book – We think it’s very important to support publications and websites that review and promote books. If you aren’t aware of the New Republic’s new book offering, check it out at http://www.tnr.com/book
New Yorker  —  It’s always worth remembering that the New Yorker offers a full page 4/c ad for less than $45,000. The critics rate for a 1/3 page is about $11,000. And did you know that we can buy the New Yorker by region?
BBC.com – Another great place to reach a literary, affluent audience. We can behaviorally target to literary and entertainment enthusiasts. 74% of their users have purchased a book in the last 6 months.
Arthouse Movie Network – We feel that there’s a strong correlation between people who see movies (especially the kind of movies in the Arthouse network) and people who purchase books. And you don’t even need a produced spot to run in theaters. We can run :15 second flash ads – significantly cheaper to produce than standard broadcast quality ads – and you can run them in over 70 theaters on over 400 screens, for less than $25,000.

Places We Love to Advertise Books:

NYT_logo.com — Do you know about the “Home Page Advantage Pop-Up Menu”? It delivers over 30,000,000 impressions for a very low $1 CPM, and it’s a great place to advertise well-known brands. Our clients who publish a popular diet book loved it so much that they doubled the length of their campaign after first-wave results came in.

hulu_logo – Consistently a great place for books. It can nicely complement a television campaign and is extremely targeted. We have run many campaigns for everything from vampire books to children’s books, with great success.

cnn_fox_cbs_logos — These general news sites are not only a good place to reach a broad audience for a relatively inexpensive CPM, but they also do a great job of increasing awareness about books in many bestselling genres, from business to fiction.

Phone Kiosks / Billboards — Phone kiosks continue to be an affordable way to advertise books. We can target by city and even by neighborhood, and kiosks start for as little as $250 each. We’ve recently secured some great deals on billboards in NY and LA—on Sunset Blvd in LA, and Times Square for as little as $40,000 for 4 weeks.

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