GEO-FENCING MOVING TARGETS
Geo-fencing can be a very effective mobile targeting tool. Now, that targeting option comes to the roving double-decker tourist buses that prowl the streets of major U.S. cities including New York, San Francisco, LA and Chicago. With the strong correlation between travelers and book buyers, targeting tourist buses could be a great way to target readers not just for travel-related titles, but for any title that gives particular insight into a city—whether it’s a celebrity biography that hits high points in key L.A. locations or a new edition of Bright Lights Big City on the streets of Manhattan.
2016 INTERNET TRENDS
Mary Meeker’s definitive Trends report is out for 2016. The main sections focus on the continued growth of mobile, especially in social channels, and the opportunities in transportation. Here are relevant highlights for book advertisers:
- “Advertisers remain over-indexed to legacy media”: Mobile is solidly in place as the dominant format worldwide, but there’s still room for growth in ad spend versus hours spent on the device.
- Online advertising efficacy: Problems and opportunities
- Video ads that work are authentic, entertaining, in-context, and brief
- Some of the differences between Millennials and Generation Z: 2 screens vs. 5 screens; Curators v. Creators
- The evolution of video: Live -> On Demand -> Semi-Live -> Real-Live
- The rise of the new tools of engagement: Lenses and filters
BEYOND THE BANNER
- The trend toward performance marketing (CPC, CPA) mitigates issues around ad blocking, bots, non-viewable ads
- Value Exchange Programs are a win-win for advertisers and audiences. A good example is Pandora’s Sponsored Listening: early results have led to >10% increase in brand awareness and 30% lift in purchase intent
- 85% of incremental digital ad spend goes to either Facebook or Google
- In order to make use of their significant first party data, telcos are eyeing ad tech companies for acquisitions.
Digiday reports that Facebook is expanding the walls of its walled garden:
“Last week alone, Facebook shut down its last pure programmatic ad exchange FBX, put the final nail in the LiveRail platform, and expanded its Facebook Audience Network, which is a closed platform.”
This means FB is taking its extensive and proprietary user data and serving ads beyond social. Bad news for independent ad tech, good news for advertisers.
AUDIO MARKETING TOOLS
For marketers looking to create sound files in-house–whether as podcasts or to share across social media, startup Anchor is worth a look. Will it grow like Snapchat or vanish like Ello? ClickZ suggests the question is irrelevant:
“It doesn’t really matter if Anchor becomes a ghost town at some point in the future. As of right now, it’s the only platform that influential media figures and brands are using to drive audio interaction across channels. That should be reason enough to try it out and incorporate it into the mix of formats you use.”
VANITY FAIR
Vanity Fair is launching a new site—The Hive—dedicated to the intersection of business, politics and tech, and built for a digital first world. Digiday reports on the new site:
“What works brilliantly in the magazine is that sense of discovery, but that doesn’t really work on the web,” said Chris Mitchell, publisher and chief revenue officer of Vanity Fair. With the Hive, he said, “We get the halo of Vanity Fair, the built-in audience and SEO of Vanity Fair, but we also get to have it live in its own space, which is good for advertisers but also will be interesting to readers as well.”
LISTEN UP: PEOPLE PREFER PODCAST ADS
AdWeek reports on a new comScore study that finds that people prefer podcast ads to all other types of digital ads:
“And not only do listeners not mind hearing them—they act on them. The study of 2,000 U.S. respondents ages 18 to 49 found that two-thirds of listeners have acted on ads they heard in a podcast either by researching a product or service or by actually purchasing something they first heard about in an episode.”
Photo (c) Martha Otis