Assessing blockchain for marketers: Potential is there but caution advised

Blockchain, like artificial intelligence and augmented or virtual reality, is a buzzword which currently produces more utopian dreams than use cases right now. A new report from advertising media behemoth GroupM aims to get past the fudging and explore the facts of how blockchain technologies can benefit marketers.

The report, authored by GroupM investment chief product officer Jack Smith, argues at a wider context the role of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) in managing...

28 March 2019 | Advertising

Brand suitability: Exploring the next generation of brand safety

Brand safety is big news. It is one of a trinity of major issues facing the advertising industry today, the others being fraud and viewability. But dig beyond the headlines and it is bigger news still – it’s time for advertisers to take a stand and look beneath the waterline.

News publishers risk being unfairly penalised and the industry is at risk of losing quality, independent journalism if advertisers are frightened to support them through advertising.

This,...

14 March 2019 | Advertising

The 2019 data outlook sees spending rocket and multi-channel key amid regulatory concerns

Data spending continues to go up - but getting fresh, gleaming, actionable insights remains a challenge. According to a new survey published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), organisations are looking to multi-channel to create those harmonious experiences users will love.

The study, which polled 105 professionals focused across marketing service providers, developers and publishers, found cross-channel campaign measurement and attribution - cited by 57.3% of those polled -...

12 March 2019 | Advertising

Why the advertising industry needs to reprioritise ad quality urgently

Last year, eMarketer’s Geoff Ramsey highlighted the “crisis of trust” across the digital ecosystem: not only pointing to the need for better relations between brands and consumers, but also within the marketing community itself; covering advertisers, agencies, publishers, and ad tech players.

As 2019 begins, issues with misunderstanding and mistrust persist — especially in programmatic. One of the main talking points at this year’s dmexco was around...

11 January 2019 | Advertising

eCPA is dead: Long live the incremental eCPA

Every advertiser wants to spend their advertising budgets in the most efficient way possible. That’s why, in the digital advertising world, it’s vital to measure the results of all campaigns. Advertisers and agencies commonly analyse reports from various tracking tools in order to evaluate the ROI of each of their advertising partners, and these results determine which partners receive budget in the following months. This seems to be a wise approach but often that’s not...

11 January 2019 | Advertising

Bid caching: An innovation in programmatic or reopening the trust wound?

Last month, there was another brouhaha in the programmatic ad world. It was revealed that was a new ad-buying practice was happening and apparently very few people knew that it is going on.

Devised by the ad marketplace Index Exchange and hailed as the latest innovation in programmatic bidding we discovered a practice called ‘bid caching’. New technology that was designed to reduce latency, thereby creating faster ad serving. It was a supposed master stroke by the company,...

12 October 2018 | Advertising

How much of your ‘working media’ is actually working?

The “working media” debate, i.e. what percentage of advertiser programmatic budgets get spent on pure media (and what this percentage should be), has been raging for some time now.

It’s a contentious topic, fueled by a historic lack of transparency, but one that, I feel, has a simple solution:

1.   Work with partners who can give you full transparency of the programmatic value chain (yes, they do exist!).

2.   Identify which fees...

8 October 2018 | Advertising Technology

Five steps to avoid wasting your display advertising budgets

There is a myriad of advertising partners available to buy media and help mobile advertisers to reach their target audiences, and advertisers need to follow clear criteria to find the right ones. In the world of data-driven advertising, it is a common (and logical) practice to distribute advertising dollars based on the cost per conversion each partner is delivering, and those delivering the best price, or in other words, the best ROI, will get the bigger budgets.

And how do...

28 August 2018 | Advertising

Three solutions to the nonsensical ad viewability standard

In 2014, I wrote a piece calling out our industry for its pretty feeble definition of ‘viewable’. Little did I know I’d be saying the same things four years later. 

But the fact is, very little has changed. The Media Rating Council’s standard still stands: a digital advert is classed as ‘viewable’ if half of it is in vision for one second or more. Run that by anyone outside media-land and they’d laugh in your face.

I actually...

7 August 2018 | Advertising

Is SPO the silver bullet to programmatic’s transparency challenges?

The ongoing header bidding revolution might be bringing joy to publishers, but it’s giving the buy side of programmatic a bit of a headache.

While the technique allows demand-side platforms (DSPs) to help advertisers access a wider range of inventory, this amplified scale is creating issues. Not only does the bid duplication header bidding generates mean DSPs must deal with higher volumes of requests, but greater adoption is disrupting auction mechanics and leading supply-side...

6 August 2018 | Advertising Technology