Minimal mobile video engagement puts marketers under pressure

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Mobile video watchers have a relatively short attention span when viewing content on YouTube, meaning marketers have to have a small window of opportunity to make an impact.

According to a study by software company Citrix, 90% of mobile YouTube viewers watch video for less than five minutes at a time, whereas 55% of mobile Twitch viewers watch content for five minutes or less.

Content quality makes a big difference to mobile video...

10 February 2015 | Content Marketing

IAB UK clamps down on native advertising with new guidelines

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Consumer transparency is firmly on the agenda as the internet advertising bureau (IAB UK) releases the first part of its guidelines for native advertising.

Advertisers, publishers, agencies and technology companies will all want to heed these new guidelines that make it easier for consumers to tell native advertising apart from the editorial it is designed to mimic.

The guidelines may have been devised by the IAB UK, but they also have...

9 February 2015 | Advertising

Is social media turning consumers into emotionless robots?

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Content marketing has evolved from a buzzword into a rampant industry. Whole agencies have built their business model on flooding social feeds with brand-backed copy, but has this saturation removed all emotion from the experience for consumers?

It is a question that Havas Media set out to answer in research, conducted with the help of CrowdEmotion, that examines the emotions of social media users when they were confronted with varying types of...

5 February 2015 | Social Media Marketing

Virtual reality becomes a more accessible marketing tool for brands

Wearable headsets capable of producing virtual reality (VR) environments are not as wide spread as some brands would like. However one company is investigating a more accessible solution.

Creative technology agency Knit has been working with Google Cardboard, a folding smartphone mount that users wear over their eyes, mimicking the functionality of VR devices, to create a usable solution that brands can use in marketing.

Through its NFC-enabled Cardboard Objects, Knit wanted...

4 February 2015 | Advertising

Big-budget Super Bowl advertising worthless without SoMo strategy

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Cloud computing company Salesforce Marketing Cloud has released a series of figures revealing the futility of Super Bowl advertising if marketers choose not to consider how consumers’ social media and mobile usage.

Of the 400 consumers polled by Salesforce, 66% of viewers will use Facebook during the big game, making it the number one Super Bowl social network while Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat follow in close succession.

As...

29 January 2015 | Mobile Marketing

Marketing reimagined: From cost centre to revenue generator

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Perception is everything in marketing and a new study supplies evidence of the tainted view many employees have of their marketing department, however there are visible traces that this stance is weakening.

Forecast and advisory firm the Economist Intelligence Unit, which conducted research on behalf of Marketo, discovered that 68% of marketers believed the rest of their company viewed the marketing department as a cost centre.

Likely fuelled...

29 January 2015 | CRM

Marketers risk omni-channel success by overlooking mobile retargeting

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Mobile might be a priority in the social and search marketing channels, but there are still a high proportion of display advertisers choosing to keep it at arm’s length.

In research conducted as part of its State of the Industry: Europe report, AdRoll discovered a 44% demographic of marketers who are still refusing to use retargeted display advertising on mobile.

It is a worrying statistic given the omni-channel opportunities...

28 January 2015 | Advertising

Marketing technology industry set for explosive revenue gains

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Companies investing in marketing technology will continue to raise their budgets, with global vendor revenue forecasted to touch $32.2 billion by 2018.

The projections, part of an IDC webinar on the marketing software revolution, reveal a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.4% and total spend of $130 billion across the five-year stretch between 2014 and 2015.

Customer relationship management software is a sizable growth sector of...

26 January 2015 | Advertising

comScore uses Trust Profiles to rally ad industry against bot menace

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Digital measurement firm comScore has taken a step closer to uniting marketers against a common enemy that threatens the advertising industry’s very profitability.

Bots are embroiled in a war with marketers who are buying ads that consumers never get the chance to see because they are instead subjected to fraudulent impressions from these bots, but comScore believes its Trust Profiles hold the answer.

The new solution lets...

23 January 2015 | Advertising

Do marketers need an automation education?

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Technology is at the heart of everything digital marketing is achieving today, but there are still some subjects that are beyond a subset of marketers.

Automation is one such topic where there is evidence of a knowledge, that is according to research by marketing technology provider Adestra, which revealed more than a quarter of marketers have never heard of marketing automation.

In an era when customer experience is at the heart of...

23 January 2015 | Advertising