I believe display advertising is actually in its infancy. There are powerful dynamic variables at work that are creating major challenges for the advertising technology industry at large. Depending on the vendor, its technology stack and its level of commitment to legacy beliefs, this is either a problem that is of  concern or the opportunity of a lifetime. Either way, evolution is at work. Reality Check In the 1940's, science fiction writers began dreaming of a medium that looked something like our beloved Internet does today. By the 1960’s, key discoveries were being made and impl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

If you haven’t married your AdWords account with your Analytics account, now is a good time to take that step forward. Otherwise, you are missing out on data that you can only get with true integration. Google is constantly upgrading Analytics and adding new features for AdWords. Some of most recent upgrades include a new feature that now allows AdWords advertisers to add columns to their campaigns for Bounce Rates, Pages Per Visit and Average Duration. Remarketing lists can also now be created in Analytics and then added into your AdWords campaigns. Along with the more recent changes, [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

How many times have you accidentally clicked on a mobile display ad, when you meant to hit the adjacent content on that tiny phone screen? More importantly, how many of your pay-per-click ads have been clicked on accidentally? This is the problem Google is trying to solve with new "confirmed click" functionality for its in-app mobile display ads on smartphones. When Google detects that a person clicks on the outer edge of an ad unit -- potentially meaning to click on adjacent content -- the user will be prompted to verify that he actually meant to click on the ad. The prompt will take the f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Google: Display Advertising | Google: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Top News

Back in May, I wrote a blog post documenting the top 10 alternatives to “Last Touch” attribution. Last touch is the common practice of awarding credit for an online conversion to the last advertising vendor to put an impression in front of a user before that user returns to a website and converts. This methodology for awarding credit to a display vendor is very common, often manipulated and highly illogical. I wish I could say that the absence of common sense begins and ends with “last touch,” but, alas, it gets worse. Very often, direct brand and agency contacts buying display m [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

While 2012 isn’t entirely behind us just yet, many exciting things have happened in the digital space over the last twelve months that will have an impact on advertising in the New Year. Ad targeting has played a tremendous role in online advertising, and we have the abundance of available data to thank for this. Let’s take a closer look at some examples of what might have added to this momentum: Facebook Went Public In an effort to expand its reach and drum up additional revenue, the social networking giant went public in May. And what is Facebook comprised of? That’s right, da [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve had my AdWords Display Network lab coat on. I needed volume and more conversions for my Google AdWords account, so I decided to set up and run a variety of keyword-driven campaign experiments. What I learned can save you a lot of time, money and frustration. What Are Keyword-Driven Campaigns?  Keywords are the most common method for targeting in the Google Display Network. In a keyword-driven display campaign, the main factor in determining which landing pages appear for your ads is your choice of keywords inside each AdGroup. Keywords can be combi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

Even with the lean-back nature of online video, it can be a great channel for branding a product or service in the minds of relevant video viewers. But, marketers typically have both branding and direct response goals. Online video can achieve both – compelling viewers to lean-forward and engage. In today’s digital video landscape we have a few ancillary products that can help measure how consumers are engaging with an advertisement. Traditionally, we have completion rates and clicks. The inverse relationship of those two actions often makes it difficult to deduce what a consumer [...]

Related Topics: Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Video | Display Advertising | Video

A new ad type can now be found across LinkedIn's self-service platform, video ads. LinkedIn Ads users will be able to run a video ad within the standard  300 x 250 px ad location and tie in their YouTube videos and tracking as well. Once a user clicks on a video ad (like the "Announcing: Video Ads" unit above) the video will open up and play across the the entire 300 x 250 px unit. Once an ad runs, users will be able to easily click through to view more content, just like the current ads. LinkedIn advertisers will be able to purchase the video ads using a variety of display types i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | LinkedIn

The foundation for every Google Display Network (GDN) strategy is placements. It doesn’t matter what campaign settings you use or how you set your campaigns up (keywords, topics, interest targeting, remarketing, managed placements), you will still optimize and base your success on the relevancy and performance of the placements where Google showed your ads. I have a terrible confession to make. I have never worked with any agency, company or individual that wasn’t using too many placement exclusions. There, I said it. But after today, there will be no more excuses and Google Disp [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column | Google: Marketing

Over the last two years, we've seen companies develop display solutions that show ads based on the keywords prospects search as they navigate the Web. The introduction of search retargeting represented a major leap forward for direct response and brand marketers who were thirsty for new audience acquisition and engagement solutions that performed better. What they got was transparency and insight into the data used to reach consumers -- they could use consumers' actual online searches instead of the 3rd party data shoved into a fixed, black box audience segment that had become the norm. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

Google today launched a new form of expandable display ad that it calls a "Lightbox ad" -- it begins as a standard display ad, but expands to a super-sized image after a two-second hover -- long enough, the company says, to eliminate nearly all accidental expansions. Marketers pay when users interact with the ad, rather than when they click through. The company calls it "smart hover," and says this type of expandable increases engagement by 6 to 8 times over click-to-expand ads. When the ad expands, it appears in the middle of the screen and dims the rest of the page behind it. The p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Display Advertising | Google: Display Advertising | Google: YouTube | Top News

Last month, Google’s famously streamlined white homepage was plastered with something different: an animated banner ad. Since Google has been credited as an ad-free (or, at least, display-ad-free) search engine, the animated banner ad for the Nexus 7 Android tablet came as a bit of a shock to both Google users and the wider industry. While this wasn’t the first time Google used its homepage to showcase products, was it a smart move by Google? In today’s shareholder-value-centric paradigm, companies are principally run by profitability. Whenever a company says that it will never d [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column | Search Marketing

Flash back to the 90s to a time when interactive Flash ads were fairly fresh. Do you remember those "shoot the duck" leaderboard banner ads that, for a time, converted no matter what the message?  Not only did those Flash banners integrate movement but they gave you the ability to interact when you put your mouse over the ad. As advertisers pushed Flash ads to the edge of annoyance, most ad networks began outlawing all ads that shivered, blinked, had flashing backgrounds or tricked you into clicking the ad. These truly tricky banners made us believe that the ad was interactive but it reall [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

 Google and Facebook are by far the dominant players in the display ad space, together expected to command 30% of the overall market in 2012. And their substantial lead is set to become even greater, according to an eMarketer report that predicts the two will sell 37% of all display ads by the end of 2014. Among the two, Google comes in slightly ahead with 15.4% of the market this year ($2.31 billion), compared to Facebook's 14.4% ($2.16 billion). Yahoo, which once dominated the display ad market, is on the decline with 9.3% of the market ($1.39 billion). Google and Facebook have been l [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Online Advertising | Statistics: Spend Projections | Top News

After a beta period lasting a couple of months, the doors are open on the new Facebook Ad Exchange (FBX), which makes the social networking giant's inventory available to real-time bidding (RTB) and retargeting. Facebook is working with the exchanges of a generous number of partners, including AdRoll, AppNexus, Brandscreen, Criteo, DataXu, MediaMath, Nanigans, Kenshoo, Optimal, RocketFuel, Tellapart, TheTradeDesk, Triggit, Turn, Xaxis, and X+1. The company says that through these partners, advertisers can access capabilities like multi-touch attribution, view-through conversions, global fre [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Facebook Exchange | Features & Analysis | Top News

I am sure you have heard the expression "the only constant in life is change".  If you make a living buying, selling and evaluating online display advertising then you understand this all too well. The days when companies in the ad tech industry fit into simple-to-define silos seem to be behind us. Company capabilities continue to expand through innovation and acquisition while sales teams advocating their value multiply.  The end result is that those individuals left trying to make the best decisions about their display budgets are genuinely more confused than ever. The lines are far less [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Content Marketing | Content Marketing Column | Display Advertising

As with buying stocks, timing is everything when it comes to leveraging data to reach your target audience. Today, brands have the opportunity to capitalize on the abundance of inventory and data available to plan their marketing initiatives. When combined with media, these ingredients create the perfect recipe to apply targeted advertising to seasonal events. From the Super Bowl to holiday shopping and political events, there are a multitude of seasonal opportunities for marketers to strategize against. Below, I have highlighted the most effective times during the year for marketers to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

Just go ahead and admit it. We've all had a fascination with spies since we were kids. That’s why we flock to spy movies like Mission Impossible and secretly pretend we could live a life as adventurous as Jason Bourne and James Bond. So maybe that’s why we look for marketing software that gives us the feeling that we are spying on our competitors. Well, that and the competitive advantage we can gain. SEO And PPC Spy Programs For SEO and PPC, there are software programs with cool spy names like SpyFu and SEO Spy Glass along with many more tools that may not have cool spy names but [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

Big data seems to be the buzzword around our industry these days, and is there any wonder based on the recent explosion of data in terms of growth, availability and use? IBM does a pretty good job of explaining big data and I’m not one to mess with a good thing. According to the company's definition, the three core components of big data are volume, variety and velocity. Volume refers to the growing mass of terabytes and petabytes being generated and converted into analysis and real time decisions. Variety refers to the structured and unstructured data pouring in via thousands of so [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

To date, branding has often been associated with billboards, magazine spreads and million-dollar TV spots. In online advertising, this translates to large media buys with premium publishers, including spots such as site sponsorships and homepage takeovers. However, where do data and ad targeting fit into the branding equation? Is there a place for branding campaigns within the world of ad targeting and real-time media buying? The answer is yes. Large brands such as Proctor & Gamble (P&G) and Unilever have already commented publicly about moving brand dollars to digital -- crediti [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column