On His Hustle As An AdTech Entrepreneur, Industry Insights, And More: Interview With Digitalks Founder, Mohit Jain
Mohit Jain has been working in the AdTech space for over a decade in various capacities, the recent being the founder and chief consultant in his own venture- Digitalks in Dubai. He is passionate about data analytics, and particularly enthusiastic about the endless possibilities with the integration of technology and marketing. He has spent the last 15 years working focused on digital advertising & data and has worked with some of the biggest & brightest agency names in the MENA region.
Today he shares with us his thoughts and insights about not just the latest developments in AdTech, but also his hustle as an entrepreneur at Digitalks.
Mohit, firstly, tell us what made you take the leap from your already established career to starting your own venture, Digitalks?
I have just loved working with the agencies throughout my career span and that’s where I learnt the skills which made me whatever I am now but at some point, the work became quite repetitive, dealing with similar challenges over & over again, enormous work pressure and 14 – 16 hours working days was impacting work-life balance. On top of that, I wasn’t able to develop new skills to keep up with the pace of the industry. That’s when I decided to take this leap and take control. I am very glad I took this decision at the right time.
What unseen opportunities do you aim to tap with Digitalks?
I don’t know about unseen but I am trying to position Digitalks in between a world that sits between Marketing & IT i.e. Ad Tech. I think of us as “technical marketers” who understand how marketing communications succeed in the digital world and who can code at the same time and tie both worlds together with the help of data and that is why we call ourselves “Data Whisperers”.Speaking about AdTech, what recent developments are you most thrilled and concerned about? You can cite one example for each.
Frankly, I am more concerned about how advertisers make use of existing AdTech they have access to.Agencies are great in promising bells and whistles and sharing incredibly beautiful stories using words such as big data, artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, etc but they fail miserably in fixing the foundations and most basic things in their AdTech. I’ll be very happy if they can simply just use Excel and Google Analytics properly to their full potential, to begin with.
How much importance or budget do today’s Advertisers give to data compared to their marketing budgets? Do they have separate budgets allocated for data alone (similar to marketing budgets)?
The true fact today is that the budgets for projects related to data come out from overall marketing budgets. Unfortunately there are not many advertisers who set budgets aside specifically for data specific work in the region we operate in but the situation is rapidly changing. Businesses seek more accountability and this can be only measured by data so things are already shifting. I believe that Covid-19 pandemic is going to further strengthen the budgets in this direction.
Is DMP mandatory for all the Advertisers who are spending their budgets across multiple platforms. Isn’t that a costly affair for small & mid-sized Advertisers?
DMP is an enterprise technology and definitely not for SMEs. In my opinion, DMP is a dying technology which is severely impacted by walled gardens from Google & Facebook, the war of browsers against cookies, GDPR & similar laws, and most importantly it is dying because DMP ad tech companies oversold & overcharged advertisers to a great extent and then they failed miserably in delivering the business results.Marketers often get confused between DMP & CDP. Can you please simply state the difference between them both and which one should the Advertisers pick first?
Both of these terms can be confusing for someone who doesn’t work with these platforms closely. The confusion is understandable as both technologies claim to collect, unify, segment and activate customer data across digital channels. In simple words, think of a DMP as a big database that collects addressable “cookies” of your prospects & customers and provides a capability to push this data to outside activation platforms so you can reach them with the right message wherever they are or use this data to personalize their experiences on your website or app. On the other hand, think of CDP as a “data pipe” to pass your own customer data to multiple places depending on the use cases such as when someone fills up a lead form on your website you want to send this data to your CRM, to your email marketing vendor, to your SMS vendor, Google’s & Facebook’s of your world so you can target these users online and then also trigger a workflow to your contact centre partner in India so they can schedule a call with your sales team.What’s your take on Google disabling the third-party cookies in Chrome? How is it going to affect the data industry of advertising?
It does mean the honeymoon is over for some companies and it is going to impact the audience sizes available in your DSP based on interest and affinity however as the biggest budgets are going to Google, Facebook, Amazon and new social channels such as Snap and TikTok – these guys have built their companies on data they own so I am sure nothing is going to change for them as they will figure out a way however for consumers it does mean more “privacy”. I think it was a very smart move from Google as they prepared themselves clearly to tackle this situation before they announced the change to the world. They gave themselves a 2 years deadline too. Cookies track consumers on the web but things would really change when this rule will be applied on mobile apps as well where cookies are not present and the glue is the device ID of the consumer which is a more powerful piece of data than a cookie. It would be interesting to see how the future will unfold on this front.Should Advertisers keep buying third-party data from DMPs for their campaigns on programmatic? Is it really worth spending those additional dollars on this data?
It depends on what is your objective. If you are a CPG advertiser looking for mass reach, then these 3rd party datasets can be useful but if you are a performance-driven advertiser then in my experience these 3rd party datasets don’t bring the results they seek. 3P data bought from a DMP or through a DSP is more or less the same but the data volumes of a DMP-based 3rd party data could be higher depending on how that segment was configured.Coming back to your company Digitalks, how do you plan to increase your verticals and business overall? Is there any expansion plan on cards?
We are a talent-driven business and expansion for us means bigger team sizes. A lot of companies prefer the “hire fast fire fast” approach but that is not my style.I am not too concerned about the business as there is too much work out there if you know what you are doing. In addition, I don’t want me or my team to end up working 18 hours a day.
What would you suggest to the young Digital Advertising professionals who are looking to build their career around data science? Is there any specific course or education that you would want to recommend to them to enhance their skills?
I think the first piece of advice I give to young professionals entering into the world of data is to understand where they want to start first. I see 3 very broad categories-- Folks who focus on data collection and who can code, build data pipes, build data lakes, work with APIs, etc
- Folks who can take this data and give it a shape in the form of a report, dashboard, analysis, etc
- Folks who can go beyond and use this data in machine learning, artificial intelligence, statistical modelling and beyond.
The last question- During this unprecedented Coronavirus phase, brands are becoming conservative about their marketing strategies and spends. How do you think this will affect the overall Digital advertising industry? Does data have a role to play here to help the marketers float through?
The need for measuring every dollar spent is always critical but now due to the CoronaVirus situation, this demand is at its peak. Data has played a great role and will continue to do so in bringing this clarity to advertisers. The advertising budgets were already shifting to online but I think CoronaVirus will work like jet fuel and will speed up the journey of all advertisers who were missing out and will also fuel more money coming to online channels from offline channels.More and more consumers will go online and as a result demand and supply both will increase however I think brands will be more driven to spend on performance campaigns than just branding campaigns. That right mix between branding & performance will make or break sense from a brand’s advertising budgets. Data will continue to proliferate and how advertisers make use of this data will be the only differentiator left between a successful brand vs average brand.
Guide On EVERY Type Of Digital Ad Out There. Case Studies Included.
What is Digital Advertising?
Digital advertising, paid advertising, or paid marketing is an online advertising model for advertisers to target potential buyers based on their interests or intent. This Digital Advertising took birth on October 27, 1994, when the online magazine ‘Hotwired’ decided to set aside a portion of its website for advertisers to raise some money. The banner ad space had a message in rainbow font, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.” From 1994 to 2020, digital advertising has come a long way. In 2021, the amount spent on worldwide digital advertising is estimated to touch USD 375 billion (emarketer report estimates) with Google, Facebook, and Amazon, the three largest advertising platforms contributing to 43% of the market share. Here we have provided 10 best digital advertising ideas in 2020 post coronavirus (COVID-19) but be prepared to make changes in your sales funnel to meet global digital challenges. Digital advertisers get ready for a new normal in digital advertising in 2020. After all, change is the only constant in life.
Increase in Online Spending Over the Years
Ad spending in the digital advertising market has been showing an upward rise since 2018. From USD 283 billion in 2018, it is expected to reach around USD 517 billion in 2023.
The Importance of Digital Advertising
There is a wealth of available data to impact your online advertising decisions. With digital spends getting closer to traditional ad spends, it’s without doubt, every company or brand must have a strong online presence. Very large companies with more than USD 10 billion in annual revenue spend around 11.6% and companies with annual revenues between USD 500 million to USD 1 billion spend around 8.5% of their marketing budget on digital advertising. Some of the 2019 big digital ad spenders are Comcast (USD 5.75 billion), Proctor & Gamble (USD 4.39 billion), Amazon (USD 3.38 billion), AT&T (USD 3.52 billion) and Samsung Electronics (USD 2.41 billion). While on one hand, ad spending increased, on the other hand, the demand was augmented by the addition of ad platforms.
- More money is being spent on digital v/s traditional advertising channels with digital ad spend expected to reach 60.5% of total media ad spending by 2022.
- India’s digital ad spend grew at a rate of 24% (2018 to 2019), becoming the fastest-growing digital advertising market in the world, followed by Russia at 22.5%. Both are home to large populations of increasingly digital and mobile users.
- Marketing budgets range from 8% to 16% of total revenue (B2B Products 8.6%, B2B Services 8.7%, B2C Products 9.8%, and B2C Services 15.6%).
- In many countries, 85 percent of internet users are accessing the internet on mobiles.
Types of Digital Advertising
There are different types of digital advertising available to a company or product or brand. The best ad campaigns are often a mix of two or more types of paid marketing or digital advertising. From Display Ads to SEO to PPC and more, here are the top 10 online advertising options available to a digital advertiser to execute a winning ad campaign.
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Display Advertising
What is display advertising?
Online display advertising means advertising a company or a product on websites. Display advertisements run across any website that wishes to monetize their content by selling ad space on their page. Display ads are mostly image-based ads shown on web pages within the Google Display Network (GDN is a network of websites that allow space on their web pages for Google Ads) or on a search result page. It is used to redirect the user’s attention to the company’s product. Display ads can be paid for based on three different metrics: cost per thousand impressions (CPM), cost per click (CPC), and cost per action (CPA), also known as cost per conversion.
How is the Display ad used?
Online display ads on a website, can be on the top, bottom, or right side of a page depending on the web page layout. The types of online display ads are banners, landing pages (LP’s), and popups. The types of banner ads online that appear on Google Display Network are Flash, animated GIF, and Static Banners. The most popular Display ad options are Google Shopping (allows shoppers to browse a variety of products based on their search query) and App Campaigns. The types of online Display Ads include Overlay ads, Interstitial ads, Rich Media ads, and 360° Display Ads. Display advertising and paid search advertising are the two most used forms of online advertising.
Why is display advertising important?
- Display ads are more affordable and reach a larger audience. They are used by advertisers to promote clothes, hotel chains, public events, etc.
- Website visitors who are re-targeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert on your website.
- Display network offers advertisers contextual targeting by keywords, placement targeting by sites, topic targeting by relevance and demographic targeting based on age, gender, preferences, location and language.
- 90% of agencies and marketers believe that display ads help with branding.
- It leads to increased website traffic, and increased sales.
- These display ads can be effectively used by businesses of all sizes.
Coke’s most successful Display Ad case study
When Coca-Cola’s popularity decreased among Millennials, the brand developed the ‘Share A Coke’ campaign specifically for a Mexican audience to raise awareness and increase sales and brand love. For the campaign, Coca-Cola found the top 100 searches on YouTube and created short ads with the names of the most-searched artists, athletes, and trending YouTubers.
Coca-Cola’s website received almost two million visits during the campaign, and more than 51 percent of them came from mobile devices. View KPIs increased by 4,000 percent, and the cost per view decreased to 2 percent ofthe initial estimated budget. Additional metrics included
- 1.7 million users reached
- 81 million media impressions on display
- 175 million social media views
- 3.2 million views for the TV commercial
- CTV average of 3.98 percent during the campaign
- 80 percent of target reached
- 51 percent of website traffic from mobile devices
- 44 percent of Mexico shared a Coke
- Awareness increased 11%
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Native Advertising
What is Native Advertising
Native Advertising called ‘recommended content’ or ‘promoted stories’ is a monetized type of advertising on a website except slightly differing from display ads in a way that attempts to mimic the format of the publisher’s content. Native advertising comprises 6 main types of ads online: in-feed (which is ad units in a content stream), recommended links, sponsored search results, promoted product listings, traditional display banners with native content, and custom integration. Most of the native pricing is on CPM basis for the campaigns.
How is the Native ad used?
Since Native advertising is designed specifically not to look like an ad, it is almost everywhere and hard to ignore. It’s designed to look like and blend with the rest of the content on the page. As a result, users interact 20-60% more with native ads than traditional banner ads. As per Google Ads, in the last four years, the search for native ads has been growing in numbers. You may notice this ad type at the bottom of a blog or a FB post. It could appear as ‘recommendations’ or ‘other people also liked’ with suggested examples for users to click on.
Why use Native Advertising?
The in-feed content in Native advertising, can include videos, animations, or carousels of images. When native ads take on the looks of the content around it, they actually become non-disruptive ads. They are found in social media in the form of sponsored posts. Also, since these ads are interactive they are the best for brand building through trust by engaging with a customer. It is an up-coming ad type mostly used by new media companies. Today native ads constitute about 20% of all advertising revenue.
The Native ad case study
- Campaign: Asian Beauties from Neverblue
- Ad Copy: Would you date an Asian Woman?
- Campaign period: Mar 30, 2019 – Apr 7, 2019
- GEO: USA
- Total spent: $934
- Total Revenue: $1397
- Net profit: $463
- ROI: 50%
The advertiser worked in two stages:
– In the first stage he started with a CPC campaign to get at least 50 impressions for each ad zone. After that, added these zones to the blacklist regardless of the CTR (by clicking Zone Limitation «Exclude» in the account settings) to redirect traffic to zones that weren’t tested yet. Started with $50 and got $58 for 11 conversions. So, the profit was $8. Then decided to scale this campaign to CPM.
– In the second stage he created a CPM campaign and targeted zones with the CTR higher than 0.7% (Zone limitation “Include” in the personal account). Then he blacklisted all the under performing zones. After all the testing, he had 8 zones, with two of them generating 80% of the profit. He spent $884 and got $1339 for 255 conversions. The profit — $455
3. Search Advertising
What is Search Advertising?
Search advertising or search engine marketing (SEM), or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the process of advertising on search engines. Search ads are text ads displayed on Google’s search result page. Worldwide Google handles over 75,000 search queries per second. It enjoys a worldwide ranking as #1 search engine, ahead of its competitors Yahoo, Bing, and Baidu. Thereby, moving up one spot in Google’s search results can increase CTRs by up to 30.8%. Google shows your ad in the same format as other search results except that it earmarks it as an ‘Ad’. SEM is mostly combined with SEO (Search Engine Optimization is the organic and not paid form of advertising. Here, advertisers use SEO tactics, like creating keyword-friendly content, back linking, meta descriptions, etc.).
How is the Search Advertising used?
There are two search ads formats, viz. text ads and product listing ads.
- Text ads appear as ‘Ad’ above or on the right side of an organic search.
- Product listing ads (PLAs) mostly seen on e-commerce websites, show the image, price, description and link of your product when a potential customer is searching for a product based on a keyword.
These advertisements are found on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. They are purchased based on the most relevant keywords a potential buyer uses to search for a product or service. However, recent shifts in PPC strategies are showing an increase in PLAs and ‘Semantic search’ (find meaning and or intent in the words) slowly replacing a direct keyword search.
Why search advertising?
- Paid search advertising allows advertisers to place their products/service in front of people who are already looking for the product/service.
- Since the ad is shown to potential customers who are searching for a similar product or service, there is a high chance of the user clicking on your product and converting it into a sale.
- With Google searches at 3.5 billion per day, search ads reach a larger target audience.
Case study of a Search Advertisement
- Client: Automotive Industry
- Goals: Reduce cost per sale from Google AdWords & Reduce monthly spend while generating more online sales.
The advertiser began with identifying the highest value conversion points, restructuring the account to only target keywords and products that would best drive the selected conversions. By understanding the way consumers buy, they could target consumers looking for specific products. They allocated an additional budget towards increasing the bids, to increase the average search position, earn a larger click share, and win the highest value auctions.
The Results:
- Increased Online Sales by 73% vs. prior year
- Deduced Cost Per Sale by 57% vs. prior year
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Social Media Advertising
What is Social Media Advertising?
Social advertising is the use of social media sites to run an advertising campaign. By Q4 of 2019, the total number of social media users had crossed earlier estimates to reach 2.95 billion users worldwide. In 2020, that number is expected to surpass 3 billion.
How is the Social Media advertising used?
As per a recent study by Statista, the social media advertising segment amounts to USD 105,863 million in 2020 and is expected to have an annual growth rate (CAGR 2020-2024) of 6.0%, resulting in a market volume of USD 133,756 million by 2024 (not taking into account the recent coronavirus (COVID-19) implications on global trade).
The Social Media Platforms available for Advertising
Most marketers are using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in their marketing campaigns.
The other emerging platform is TikTok with 500 million active users worldwide. As per CNET, by end 2019, TikTok crossed 1.5 billion downloads, becoming the third most downloaded non-gaming app of the year, after WhatsApp and Messenger. Facebook and Instagram followed in fourth and fifth places. While grocery retailer Kroger was the first to run an ad campaign on TikTok, famous brands like TacoBell are now using TikTok.
Social ads charge advertisers on a CPC, CPM and other basis. However, the pricing will depend on the different types of ads like photo ads, video ads, stories ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, messenger ads, collection ads, snap ads, tweet ads, sponsored content, etc. Here is a quick cost comparison between the three top platforms to give you an overall idea of pricing but of course your company, your product and your brand will determine the ad budget and the social media platform allocation to maximize the profits and return on investment (ROI).
Why is advertising on social media sites important?
- 97% of marketers use social media.
- 78% of marketers using Social Media outsell their peers.
- Social Media ads help to build brand awareness.
- The social media ad spend has risen to USD 89 billion in 2019.
- It helps to build a clientele henceforth bettering Brand Loyalty.
- Improves conversion rate.
- Reduces marketing costs as it is cheaper than traditional marketing.
- Rise in search engine rankings.
Case Study of Bajaj V’s Social Media Ad
- Campaign: SonsOfVikrant
- Objective: Promote Bajaj V – The Nation’s Bike
A ten day social media campaign run by Bajaj Automobiles, touched the minds and hearts of the whole nation as INS Vikrant one of India’s aircraft carriers was scrapped and its steel was melted and used to create the Bajaj V.
Result: Bajaj V gained 0.7 Million USD worth of free media coverage in just one week of the launch. It created 160 million impressions, reaching out to 32 million overall. And the most important one, Bajaj sold 11,000 bikes on the first day of launch. It got 984,862 views on Youtube and more than 23,000 views on Facebook.
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Video Advertising
What is video advertising?
Video advertising is a process of running online display ads that have video within them to promote a company, product or website. These ads play before, during or after a video stream on the internet. 57% of marketers are now including video marketing in their digital marketing strategy.
How is the Video advertising used?
There are different video ad formats. The main ad formats used by YouTube, the largest video hosting platform, include TrueView Ads, Non-skippable video Ads, Bumper Ads, Outstream Ads, YouTube Masthead Ads. For more details, read about YouTube here. Video ads can be purchased on a cost per mille (CPM) basis, but are also typically priced on a cost per view (CPV) basis, allowing advertisers to pay for the ad only if someone watches or interacts with it.
Why is video advertising gaining popularity?
- Being the most engaging form of online content, video ads have higher recall.
- Video will remain a key driver of advertising expenditures on display, projected to account for 31% of overall display ad spending next year.
- More than 50% of consumers like to watch videos of the brands they support.
- In 2019, video ads saw an increase in ad spending mainly in the fashion and retail industry.
- Almost 88% of video marketers are happy with its ROI.
- As per a study by Forbes, videos get shared 1,200% more than text and links combined.
- Mobile ads on YouTube get the viewer’s attention 83% of the time.
- Everyday people watch 1 billion hours of video on YouTube.
- 90% of the potential buyers have discovered new products on YouTube
- Companies and brands like LEGO or Coca-Cola have started uploading video content on their respective brand channels.
Case Study of a Video Ad
- Campaign: Meri Maggi
- Goal: Brand image
A classic example of a video ad used to regain brand image was by none other than Maggi Noodles. When the product got banned in India in 2015, its sales dipped from INR 250-300 crore a month to in between 5%-10% in various states.
In November, when the company re-launched Maggi after the five-month ban, it had 10.9 percent of the market share, which climbed to 35.2 percent in December. The relaunch campaign did include press ads and an extremely touching video launched across different platforms.
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Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
What is PPC advertising?
Pay per click (PPC) ads are ads that advertisers only pay for when a user clicks on them. PPC ads are usually text ads but sometimes includes a small image. Google AdWords and Bing Ads both use a pay-per-click model.
How is the PPC advertising used?
This type of advertising is used to direct a potential buyer to your website. It is important to have a PPC landing page that is optimized for conversions. Google has now removed PPC ads from Right Hand Side so they now appear on the top of the page only.
Why PPC advertising?
- PPC marketing is done through Google Ads, the worlds’ largest search engine thereby boosting the traffic to your website.
- It can deliver a large number of impressions and clicks because of the large amount of traffic, especially on Google, leading to an increase in sales.
- This type of advertising is highly successful if the advertiser has rightly focused on relevant keywords and the quality of the landing page for a higher quality score.
- Advertisers can make changes to optimize the campaign to improve the quality score which helps to increase the ROI.
- Helps to control the ad budget.
- Can improve brand recognition with remarketing.
Case study of a PPC Ad
- Campaign: Dental Clinic, London
- Goal: To increase the number of leads their ads were generating while lowering the cost per lead.
The strongest USP of this UK clinic, was the doctor a native Polish speaker. So the marketing team targeted the niche audience of Polish speakers living in London close to where the clinic is based, to create ads and select keywords in the Polish language pointing to a dedicated landing page. Constant refining of the keywords and target audience was required.
Results
- In the first 50 days, the number of conversions increased considerably, up 409% from 20 to 107.
- Conversion cost came down to £7.41 from £44 (when client managed own campaign)
- The conversion rate also improved — up over 207% — from 4.38% to 13.44%.
7. Remarketing Advertising
What is retargeting advertising or remarketing?
Remarketing (or retargeting) is a type of online advertising that allows you to serve targeted ads to people who have already visited your website earlier. A remarketing ad allows you to strategically position your ads in front of the target audience as they browse Google or its partner websites, to increase brand awareness and to remind the user to make a purchase.
How do retargeting ads work?
It is a cookie-based technology that follows the user around the internet, by serving ads on the websites and platforms which the user visits most often in order to remarket to him/her again. Retargeting is required since almost 98% of users leave the website without converting on the first visit. Thereby, these 98% users need to be reminded or targeted about a product /service of interest once they leave the website. Here’s how retargeting works:
Why Retargeting Ads?
- Retargeting increases the conversion by 150%.
- The average CTR (Click Through Rate) for Retargeting Ads is 10 times more than display ads.
- Remarketing Ads have a CPC (Cost Per Click) which is 50% that of the PPC search ads.
Case study of a Retargeting Ad
- Campaign: Jabong
- Goals: To increase transactions by acquiring more high-quality customers who are more likely to convert or make a purchase & to improve app activation rates to drive traffic to the Jabong.com mobile app and control user acquisition costs.
Jabong the e-commerce website has successfully used Facebook’s dynamic ads to retarget potential customers by showing them products they have looked at on both Jabong.com’s website and app, allowing the brand to customize ads to every individual.
Results
By Personalised Acquisition using “Retargeting” and creating custom advertisements Jabong was able to:
- 2X increase in customer acquisitions
- 5X increase in app activation rates
- 40% lower user acquisition cost on mobile app
- 30% lower cost per order
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In-game Advertising
What is In-game advertising?
In-game advertisements are ads that may exist within computer games on desktops/PC, mobiles or tablets. In-game advertising is a digital advertising strategy provided by game developers to boost their revenue. Game developers earn money and get paid by showing the ads to the users.
How does In-game advertising work?
The ads which become a part of the user experience in a 3D game setting through virtual objects, such as, billboards, posters, or bus stops, help to improve the game app engagement and also the retention rates.
The different types of in-game advertising include –
- Dynamic In-game advertising that can be inserted or removed in real-time, inside of Console and PC video games is charged on CPM or cost per thousand impressions pricing model.
- Console Integration in the form of square tiles in the Xbox Live dashboard has a higher CPM rate.
- In the Static In-Game Advertising model where advertising is programmed directly into a game, it is normally a flat fee anywhere starting with USD 50K.
- Advergames are developed for the purpose of promoting a company, brand, or product which can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Why the growing popularity of In-game Advertising?
- 62% of smartphone owners install games within the first week of purchasing a new phone.
- Games can be designed with the sole purpose of advertising a brand.
- It offers advertisers an option to position the product in the game, to reach the right audience with the right message.
- Market for in-game advertising on all devices in the US alone, to touch USD 3 billion in 2019.
- The ad spend in all games grew by 16% in 2019.
- Retargeting in gaming apps is generating revenue uplift of over 50% among paying users.
Case study of an In-game Ad
- Campaign: Nike Epic React
Nike named their shoe ‘Epic React’ and created a game named React Land to promote this new line of shoes in four cities. This was Nike’s idea to use gamification to attract a young target audience. After putting on a pair of Epic Reacts and creating an avatar, the player is transported to React Land, a virtual world where he/she navigates as the main character by running on a treadmill and using a handheld button to jump. In the 3-minute game, players can choose to explore a floating metropolis in China, a super soft panda land, the Fuji Mountain, a view of Santorini, a jumping frog in France and many more. After the success of this ad, Nike announced a share value increase of 7%, putting it back in direct competition with Adidas in the sneaker market.
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Email Advertising
What is email advertising?
Email ads are interactive ads that appear in the Promotions and Social tabs of the email inbox.
How do email ads work?
Email ads are ads sent to a user via the web mail. It can include an image, video, or embedded forms. These ads are cheaper than most others. It aims to create leads, to enhance relationship with the customer, to encourage loyalty, and to grow repeat business.
Why Email Advertising?
- Email ads help to reach affinity audiences.
- Can customize the target audiences in Display campaigns by applying keywords.
- Offer an option of automated targeting to reach potential customers whom you wouldn’t otherwise reach, at around the same cost per person.
- You can reach people on the Display Network basis demographic categories, like age, gender, income, hobbies, etc.
- Dynamic remarketing ads are possible but the targeted Gmail ads must have a minimum of 100 active visitors or users within the last 30 days for your ads to show.
- This ad type is good for promotions, new features, and discount offers.
- An Email ad looks organic prompting the user to click.
Case Study of an email advertising campaign
- Campaign: Wok to Walk
- Goal: Local customer creation, Brand Awareness
Wok to Walk, a health food company, sent a newsletter with a subject line that invited recipients to call, make inquiries and order a meal. This email generated an open rate of 18.1%. Next step they checked the statistics and selected email subscribers who didn’t open the previous email.
The same email was sent – but the subject line was changed to better suit this new segment by including a phone number, making it easier for people to call even if they didn’t open the email. This second email received 7.7% additional subscribers, resulting in a higher level of email engagement.
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Mobile Advertising
What is mobile advertising?
Today with mobiles becoming a quintessential part of our lives, mobile advertising is growing in importance. Mobile advertising is placing ads to run specifically on mobile devices such as cell phones, smartphones, tablets, and wearable technology with the use of enhanced campaigns. Marketers often combine mobile advertising with other digital advertising channels like display advertising, search advertising, social media advertising, and video advertising.
How do mobile ads work?
Mobile advertising is targeted. It allows the advertiser to personalize the content for a specific audience. When Samsung wanted to promote its Galaxy S6 smartphone, they created an interactive mobile ad for people to experience what the company was talking about with a demo on their smartphone. The other winning mobile ads are Ruffles potato chips, GAP remix logo launch, Nissan Rogue SUV launch, and Starbucks.
Why is mobile advertising or mobile marketing important in 2020?
- Global mobile ad spending in 2019 reached USD 190 billion.
- In India, mobile ad spending is expected to rise from approx. USD 460 million to USD 1.73 billion in 2021.
- 29% of the time is spent on desktops and 71% on mobile devices
- 80% of internet users own a smartphone.
- 70% of B2B buyers increased mobile usage over the past years.
Case Study of a video ad
- Campaign: Pay Attention
- Goal: Create Awareness
In 2018, cosmetic brand Avon India aimed to raise awareness about breast cancer among women in India through its #PayAttention campaign. Avon had a breast self-examination (BSE) video for women to help them identify the signs of breast cancer.
Results
- 15 % SOV and awareness in breast cancer
- Reached over 1 billion people of India at USD 25k
- On social media, Avon reached out to 917 million on Facebook, 101 million on Twitter, 109 Million through PR stories and 29 influencer videos with 36 million impressions.
- #PayAttention was top trending hashtags around Breast Cancer Awareness in India.
- 200,000 interactions were created on FB and near 185,000 interactions on Facebook posts.
Conclusion
The coronavirus (COVID-19) has disrupted our world, our thinking, and our way of doing business. This impact will surely be felt by every company, big or small. Once the global crises passes, there will be renewed spending on digital platforms to adapt rapidly to the new normal. This new normal stage requires new advertising strategies and new execution plans across all channels. With a fair idea on paid advertising, it’s time to get ready to leverage the right ads for your company or brand when the time is right. How to establish new goals to maximize the ROI, how to rework ad budgets, how to re-prioritize the channel amplification, how to pivot from the standard content marketing plan, how to target all devices buyers use, are all questions a digital advertiser will need to be prepared with. There will never be a right or wrong answer but always an in-between that is the ‘right fit’. We have only put you on a fast track to think on the right lines to restrategize your digital advertising campaign. Time to work on it further!
Summary
Coronavirus (COVID-19) will bring about deep changes in digital advertising. Ad revenues, social media, e-commerce will impact Google Ads, Social Media ads, affiliate earnings and publisher advertising earnings. Digital advertisers will require to get ready for a new normal in paid advertising from 2020. In this blog, we have tried to contain maximum information and some relevant statistics on digital advertising. There will never be a right or wrong answer but always an in-between that is the ‘right fit’. We have only put you on a fast track to think on the right lines to restrategize your digital advertising campaign. Time to work on it further!
Morgan Stanley Forecasts Australian Ad Spend To Fall By 9% In 5 Years
In a recent analysis by investment bank Morgan Stanley on Australian advertising, it forecasted that the domestic media share will shrink if it doesn’t innovate quickly. The domestic media ad spend was $10.4 billion in 2019 and will fall at an annual rate of 9% over the next five years. In a note to clients, analysts wrote,
“We think investors perpetually underestimate the global leakage of ad spend from Australia.”
A section of marketers holds a viewpoint that the ad spend with Google and Facebook has started to plateau and revenue is returning to the domestic traditional media. However, the analysts completely disagree with this market viewpoint and highlighted numbers that suggest that there can be an acceleration post-COVID 19.
The Australian advertising market has shown little growth over the years – around 1.9 % a year. Also, the financial statements filed with corporate regulator ASIC reveals that over the last three years, global media/tech players’ revenues in Australia increased by roughly 20%.
The global ad tech players like Google, Facebook, Snap, and Twitter as well as emerging players like TikTok continue to take an increase in share in the Australian consumer’s time especially the younger demographics. They will have a larger share in digital media spend in Australia post-pandemic as well.
Morgan Stanley forecasts 2.1 % revenue to fall of global tech players in Australia in the current downturn but not as severe as that of domestic media- radio, outdoor, print, and TV. On the other side, the revenue of the domestic media players will see a drop of steep 22.1%
However, the analysts believe that global players will lift their market share in advertising in Australia. For instance, Google Australia’s gross revenue was $4.8 billion in 2019. Morgan Stanley estimates a 4% decline this year owing to the ad industry slow down but expects to rise 13% year-on-year growth up to 4 years to reach between $7 billion and $8 billion in ad revenue a year in 2024.
Analysts say,
“Eventually, COVID-19 will be over and there will be a cyclical recovery in the Australian economy, and a bounce-back in the advertising cycle. ”
He further added that the market will be disappointed in expecting a rise in domestic media earnings.
“Even post COVID-19, when the overall advertising market stabilizes and starts to improve, we think the magnitude of the recovery will disappoint investors.”
“Our point of difference is our thesis … that if the global tech players continue to grow revenue double digits in Australia, but the total pool of ad revenues is only increasing 2% to 3% p.a., there is necessarily a ‘crowding out’ of ad spend left for domestic media companies to pursue.”
The markets underestimate the risks to ad revenue, profit margins, and ROCE(Return on equity) from a 5-year long term view. The main reason for the global tech giants growing faster than local media is structural changes. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ and businesses that continue with traditional media platforms for advertising need to change and rethink their strategy.
The analysts in the report mentioned that
“The consistent industry feedback we receive is the current challenges facing large, small and medium-sized businesses across Australia is prompting leadership and management teams to think harder and deeper about becoming more digital,”
Many SMEs have tried marketing on digital platforms for the first time during COVID 19 as consumer behavior and time spent has changed and accelerated towards digital/online/mobile media. It is expected that the same pivot will exist with the advertising budgets.
Unfortunately, the crowding of traditional media- radio, outdoor, TV, print – is set to be more intense.
Morgan Stanley continues to have an underweight rating for ASX media companies like Seven West Media, WPP AUNZ, oOh! media and Southern Cross but Nine Entertainment.
Nine Entertainment (NEC)is an exception due to its various revenue sources like digital subscription, streaming, and digital advertising assets. Analysts believe that some Australian media companies have the potential to reinvent themselves and develop digital businesses and NEC has demonstrated the ability for such a reinvention.
The global players may face a threat if they fail to innovate themselves and will lose their consumer share and ad share.
Where Do These Global Companies Stand At The End Of Q1: Performance, Insights, And Statistics
We bring you insights and earning calls on various media companies, publishers, agencies, brands, and tech companies performing on a quarterly basis. The iteration focuses on media companies’ financial performance in the 2020 first quarter and taps all the vital data.
Q1 2020 earnings and performance
Though the waters are choppy ahead, we are optimistic that the worst is behind us and have learned to live with the new normal. Consumer habits are changing and the future is more accelerated towards the digital economy. The media landscape has changed especially the TV front and the focus is on opening businesses again with advertising driving the demand.
Q2 Outlook
Q2 advertising for publishers is estimated to be significantly down as much as 25-30% Y-o-Y and for some even 50-55% down. Few companies like Facebook, Snap, Dotdash expects Q2 revenue to be flat or slightly up Y-o-Y. Here are a few key points to consider:
- Google revenue declines by 15% year- over -year, though search activity increased. Advertising spends decreased due to coronavirus recession. However, other advertising mediums are growing like connected TV, ads in video games, or ads in video conferencing.
- International TV ad sales are down by 30-35% Y-o-Y whereas programmatic revenue decreased by 40-45%.
- Performance ads are down year-over-year and demand from industries like restaurants, travel, retail, auto, and luxury has declined.
- Some advertisers seek opportunities and increase spending in financial services, insurance, telecom, technology, streaming services, and app downloads. Gaming and streaming are gaining a strong foothold and permanently taking a share of our time and wallets.
- CPM’s down by almost 50% giving an advantage to advertisers for huge bargains. New and existing advertisers are looking to acquire new customers at a lifetime low value.
- With no new live events expected on TV till September/October, it will boost the growth of CTV.
- Attribution for marketers is easy as most sales are online than in-store. The animation is expected to be robust in Q3 and Q4.
- 90-95% workforce for media companies are operating from home and CMO’s can justify spending using data-driven advertising with trackable ROAS.
Let’s take a look at the financial report card of the global giants.
The Trade Desk
The opening remarks from the trade desks on the present scenario are as follows – Programmatic’s greatest feature is ‘Agility’. One can easily start and stop the programmatic campaigns, unlike linear television. Early April witnesses advertisers stopped/pause ad spend in certain verticals especially travel and remained active in health, technology, games, home, and garden.
However, by mid-April year-over-year spend decline stabilized, and as the month progressed things started improving. Advertisers were trying to adapt to the present environment. For instance, restaurants changed their messaging to “We are open” or “We deliver.” Consumer products focused on pantry loading and travel companies planned to waive off cancellation fees for bookings. Basically, advertisers started to strategize on how to run businesses on the other side of the pandemic. Now, every company is trying to work out an advertising strategy to connect to consumers and gain share once the economy gets going.
CTV is a clear winner as linear TV’s life is shortened. Unlike traditional TV ads investment where brands and agencies commit billions of dollars without knowing the content and audience, they have the freedom to be more deliberate, liberal, and agile on CTV.
Roku:
- Pandemic has accelerated the shift to streaming by viewers due to excellent content and value.
- In the short term, the video advertising business has slowed down due to budget cuts and low spending by advertisers.
- In the streaming business, active accounts grew roughly 38% Y-o-Y with an increase in new accounts of more than 70% Y-o-Y.
- Streaming hours grew roughly 80% in April and the increase in streaming hours per account is approximately 30%.
- It is estimated that ad business will grow at a slower pace and gross profit margin will be lower than expected for the year.
- The behavioral changes of TV ad buyers are positive in the long-term and more people are expected to stay home to control spending in the light of economic hardships and the shift to streaming business will grow further.
Google:
- In March there was a sudden slowdown in ad revenues owing to COVID 19 and lockdown orders. The first two months of Q1 reflected strong growth. Google search and other advertising revenues generated $24.5 billion, up 9% Y-o-Y.
- After the 2008 crisis, the Google search can be adjusted easily-quickly turn-off and back on which is cost-effective and ROI based. At the inception of the coronavirus crisis, users’ interest was more for information on the virus and non-commercial topics providing less opportunity for monetization.
- Q2 looks difficult for the advertising business.
- YouTube advertising revenues were up 33% year-on-year to $4 billion however there were different performance trajectories for direct response and brand advertising.
- Direct response continued to grow throughout the quarter but brand advertising growth grew for the first two months of the quarter and declined in March. This resulted in the slowdown of Youtube ad revenues by the end of March.
- Similarly, networking ad revenue was $5.2 billion, up 4%Y-o-Y for the first 2 months of the quarter, and declined in March in the low-double-digits year-on-year.
Spotify:
- Ads are a small part of the business, nearly 10% of the overall revenues. Therefore it is less impacted compared to other businesses.
- From a long term perspective, it will be an opportunity to move from linear to on-demand due to COVID 19 crisis.
- It is suspected that advertisers will move from pure reach to more measurable ad formats -mostly analog ad formats.
- The conjecture on advertising and consumption front is what is already happening of linear shifting to digital.
Learn more: Spotify Adds $1.7B To Market Cap In 23 Min Post A Deal With Joe Rogan, World’s Leading Podcaster.
Rubicon:
- The first half of April’s revenue was roughly 30% down until it showed signs of stabilizing in the second half.
- CTV continued to grow at a slower rate in April with a Y-o-Y increase of nearly 10%. Ad slot availability grew by roughly 25% compared to pre-COVID 19.
- Being an omnichannel SSP there has been diversity in ad categories and even more after the merger with Telaria. Certain verticals were highly impacted like travel in entertainment but e-commerce, technology, and direct-to-consumer were benefitted.
- Upfront deals are canceled and focus is shifted to spend from linear to the spot market that programmatic serves.
Microsoft:
- Reduction in ad spend affected Search and LinkedIn business and assumes that the advertising spend will not improve in Q2 as well.
- Search revenue ex-Tac increased by 1%.
Apple Advertising:
- The economic slowdown and uncertainty on business reopening have impacted the advertising business – which is the sum of App Store search ads, Apple news, and third party agreements on the advertising front.
- This slowdown and uncertain future will have a strong effect on the Service business for the June quarter.
Verizon:
- Owing to the COVID-19 crisis, ad revenue declined by 10% in the second -half of March and the rate of decline only increases in April.
- Industry forecasts a fall of 20-30% in digital media and Verizon media results are likely to be similar.
- It also experienced a decline in advertising and search revenue due to hold back or cancellation of campaigns by advertisers and users searching for fewer commercial terms providing less opportunity for monetization.
- Finally, some staggering numbers were seen- 200% up on gaming, 40% up on video, and 10 times up on the collaboration tools. 800 million calls a day, is double the amount on Mother’s Day, the biggest day of the year.
Netflix:
- Increase in subscriber growth in March and is a pull forward for the rest of the year leading to an assumption that subs will be light in Q3 and Q4.
- Filming is stopped globally except Korea and Iceland.
- Customer services are fully restored with 2000+ agents working remotely.
- With the lockdown orders coming into effect in LA, animation production is up and working from home whereas the post-production of 200+ projects is in pipeline remotely.
- Series writers’ rooms are operating virtually.
- Netflix has invested in Open connect, a pioneering cache system that puts content library as close to members’ homes as possible. This enables ISP’s to run their network efficiently and at a lower cost. However, some countries networks may face issues due to the increasing usage of the internet.
Omnicon
- The company doesn’t collect weekly revenue numbers by the agency and roll them up at the Omnicom group level.
- Q2 downfall is expected in double digits and year-on-year revenues will be down.
- The future is challenging but the company expects to get many of those people back as they move into the year ahead.
Learn more about the quarterly performance of other media companies: Financial Report Card Of The Global Giants And Industries In COVID-19
A One-stop Guide On All You Ever Need To Know About AdTech In 2020
AdTech or Advertising Technology did around $800 Billion Worth Of Business In the US alone in 2019, making it one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.
Are you trying to understand ad tech? Just as advertising is the business of making advertisements, ad tech is the business of using technology to make advertisements faster, quicker, and efficient. The business is driven by powerful algorithms and data points. While it is not rocket science, but for the uninitiated, it can be challenging to understand what is ad tech and how its product and services work.
The ad tech industry fuels the global economy with big investments, employment, and ad spend. Digital advertising has reached new heights of complexity, with the rise of programmatic advertising, AI, and automated interactions between computer systems reducing human intervention. Today’s omnichannel ad campaigns reaching to different platforms all at once from publishers’ websites, mobile apps, social media to search engines. Campaigns using tailor-made and highly targeted ads to reach audiences. This process involves many participants- advertisers, publishers to third-party vendors. The technology used in advertising to store, manage, and deploy data is far more sophisticated.
This guide will give you a sneak-peek into the world of technological advertising and understand the growing ad tech industry. As you read further, you will understand the ever-changing ad tech ecosystem.
What is Ad Tech?
Ad Tech also is known as Advertising Technology covers a range of tools and software that can be helpful for brands and agencies to plan, strategize, and manage all digital advertising activities.
The AdTech ecosystem consists of two major entities – the advertiser (Demand-side) and the publisher(Supply-side).
On one hand, advertisers want to run effective campaigns and optimize their budgets to reach the target audience, gain customer insights, and measure ROI.
Whereas, on the other hand, publishers cater to the need of advertisers and generate revenue through ads by displaying ads on their publications like websites, apps, etc, increase ad impressions, bids for ad slots and visitor insights. These are significant factors that publishers need to consider to maintain the platform User Interface (UI).
Adtech helps advertisers and publishers achieve their goals in harmony by providing solutions that meet the demands of both parties. A few examples of AdTech platforms include Pubmatic, Adroll, MediaMath, SmartyAds, and many more.
Programmatic Advertising Explained
After a brief understanding of ad tech, let’s step into the world of programmatic. You will come across concepts like programmatic advertising, Real-time bidding, and programmatic direct. Let’s discuss it:
- Programmatic Advertising Definition:
It is projected to be the game-changer for digital advertising. Programmatic automates the process of buying and selling online advertising space with the help of technology and data. This means, with the introduction of programmatic publishers, advertisers or agencies don’t have to sit across to discuss ad size, rates, et. Ad buying is done through algorithms and data insights.
- Programmatic Direct:
This a type of Programmatic digital advertising, where a publisher bypasses auction and reserves a portion or entire ad inventory for a particular buyer or advertiser at a fixed cost per mile. (CPM). Put simple, here the buyer and seller are known to each other and the ad placement is done programmatically.
- Real-Time Bidding (RTB):
Another type of programmatic digital advertising and also known as an open auction. RTB is when inventory prices are decided through an auction in real-time and open to both advertisers and publishers. This is the most feasible and preferable method of programmatic ad-buying because of scalability and flexibility.
The AdTech EcoSystem
The process of digital media buying is similar to the traditional media value chain except AdTech has multiple components in the ecosystem to keep the management of advertising campaigns easy for demand and supply-side platforms. Here are the key components of the AdTech supply chain:
1.Media agency: Responsible to allocate the advertiser’s expenditure budget across the channel. It is not involved in the creative aspect of ad campaigns.
2.Agency Trading Desk (ATD): Plans, buys, and manages ads across different platforms and is a set of services provided by the media agency.
3.Demand-side Platform (DSP): An essential platform for advertisers to buy, search, display video mobile ads. It enables advertisers to buy ad placements in real-time on the publisher websites made available by ad exchange and networks. Some of the DSP players are Simplifi, Smarty Ads, App Nexus, Double Click, and more.
4.Data Management Platform (DMP): DMP’s collect data from sources like websites, apps, social networks, campaigns, CRM’s, and more. Using AI and big data analytics to gather first and third-party data, advertisers, and marketers rely on them. DMP players are Lotame, Oracle Blue Kai, SAS data management and more
5.Ad Networks: The unsold inventory will be bought by ad networks from publishers and try to sell to advertisers using their technology. The popular programmatic advertising platforms for the ad networks are Taboola, Google Double Click Ad Exchange, Rocket Fuel, and more.
6.Ad Exchange: A dynamic platform to buy and sell ad impressions between advertisers and publishers without any intermediaries. Open X, App Nexus, Rubicon Project Exchange are examples of programmatic advertising platforms.
7.Supply Side Platform (SSP): The platform allows publishers to sell display, mobile ad impressions to potential buyers in real-time. Some of the key SSP players are MoPub, AerServ, App Nexus Publisher SSP, and more.
8.Ad Server: This platform is used by advertisers, publishers, ad networks, and ad agencies to run their campaigns. It determines which ad will be displayed on a website and also collect ad performances data such as clicks and impressions Double click for publishers, OPen X Ad server, Ad butler, and more are the examples.
Learn more: Programmatic Advertising Platforms in 2020: A Complete Guide
Is Programmatic advertising worth it?
The programmatic advertising statistics say it all. According to Zenith’s Programmatic Marketing Forecasts 2019, 69% of digital media will be programmatic in 2020.
- The total amount spent programmatically will exceed US$100bn for the first time in 2019, reaching US$106bn by the end of the year, and will rise to US$127bn in 2020 and US$147bn in 2021.
- 72% of digital media will be programmatic in 2021
- Ad spends growth is slowing down to 22% in 2019 due to industry challenges of privacy and supply-chain.
- Brands need to develop new targeting techniques using first-party data and customer data platforms in response to the ongoing death of the cookie.
Programmatic Display Advertising fastest-growing segment.
- The ascent of programmatic display advertising has been rapid. In 2012, only 10.4 % of global digital display spend was programmatic. However, it ballooned to 65.3% in 2019 and it is estimated that the share of programmatic display advertising will grow 69.2 5 and 72% in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
- How does it translate in dollars? In 2012, total digital ad spend was $37.8 billion and the programmatic display market was $3.9 million. Fast forward to today, digital display ad spend is $162.3 billion, out of which $106 billion is invested in programmatic display advertising. In 2021, global digital display ad spend is estimated to reach $204 billion, with $147.1 billion going to be programmatic share.
Programmatic marketing by country
One of the benefits of programmatic technology is it shows real-time data that helps companies take swift actions to adjust their strategy as per customer requirements. Digital marketers are considering buying programmatic media in-house due to its transparency. Programmatic has undergone massive growth in the following 6 countries out of which the UK and the US are the most advanced programmatic markets in the share of digital media.
As per eMarketer forecast, Programmatic ad spending will reach $59.45 billion in 2019, accounting for 84.9% of the US digital display ad market. It is estimated that 87.5%, or $81 billion, of all US digital display advertisements, will be bought via automated channels in 2021.
The above programmatic advertising statistics prove that the investment has increased Y-o-Y and marketers prefer programmatic advertising to buy digital display ads. Marketers are increasingly allocating their advertising budgets to digital advertising channels as it provides precise data that helps to reach customers effectively.
Learn more: 5 Programmatic Advertising Case Studies That Yielded Exponential Results
Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged in AdTech Industry
Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are two buzzwords in recent times. And why not, as it brings efficiency in whatever we do.
However, AdTech is a messy market now. Ironically, the good and bad part of AdTech is the abundance of data. True, we certainly have all the information to better understand the customers but most marketers aren’t aware of how to leverage the data and use it forward.
The way you advertise-is going to change extremely right before your eyes- thanks to Artificial Intelligence. Not all in the AdTech world have the analytical skills to evaluate the big data as not many are trained to use it and are misinterpreting them.
Adtech partnering with AI can help lower CPC prices, higher click-through rates (CTR), conversions, and better ROI. Let’s check out how AI can help the Adtech industry find better solutions in the following areas.
- AI in Ads Positioning
Developers don’t need to sit and determine which ad position will drive maximum revenue for the website. With the help of AI, employing machine learning algorithms study historical data to find relevant ads for the targeted user group.
Adtech has not used heatmaps previously but AI algorithms use them to learn where the visitors on the website are going and present them with the relevant ads. AI will help marketers to find the best ad positions by studying the maps in detail.
- AI in Ad Network Selection
There are many Ad Networks that provide different kinds of ads to websites owners and required to sort ads according to the websites. This is called Ad mediation and apt to earn high revenue for the websites.
By employing AI for ad optimization it reduces human effort by using a data-oriented approach that includes data, facts, and intelligence to make sure only relevant ads reach the end-user. Data will be user or website’s past history and facts will be website content, geo, and timing. Machine learning algorithms are employed to enhance the best ad-user match.
- Analytics
In the Adtech world, data analytics is not ‘taken seriously’ and publishers.are not happy about it. The AI-based approach will drive reporting and analytics to new levels.
Analytics will help publishers understand the content that drives the audience, placement of the CTA button to turn one time users into loyal users, and increase traffic. It will be a win-win situation for AdTech and parties- publishers, platforms, and users.
AI is the Future of Advertising
Today, digital advertising cannot exist without AI. Behind most online ads are the sophisticated delivery systems in place powered by AI. These systems place the ads before users, the coordination process happens in real-time and generally is automatic. It’s called programmatic advertising.’
According to eMarketer, 86.2% of all digital display ads will be bought via automated channels and nearly $19 billion in additional spending will enter programmatic display platforms between 2018-2020.
Also, 90% of mobile display ads are bought programmatically. On the other hand, AI also powers advertising products offered by Facebook and Google. In 2017, 90% of the new advertising business was captured by these firms.
In recent times, brands are under more pressure to deliver relevant, personalized, and contextual ads to individual customer preferences.
How AI makes Programmatic Advertising better
More companies are turning to AI for creating advertising relevance at scale.
For instance, if you want to advertise on Facebook,-an AI-powered algorithm determines the relevance of the score of your ad. This means that the score impacts the ad delivery directly and influenced by the experience of the ad delivery to Facebook users. Expect a low score if the ad is not liked or is irrelevant.
This decision is made by machine and is beyond your brand’s control independent of strategic or creative decisions
A marketing company like Phrasee launched an AI tool that writes Facebook and Instagram ads. The AI tool assesses a brand’s voice and copy, then the machine writes the ad that performs better than human-written ads. Recently, it helped reduce one client’s cost per lead by 31%. Another AI-powered tool is Albert that helps automate media buying, testing, and optimization. It enhances ad performance and delivers relevant ads to the right person. This shows that relevance at scale is possible in advertising.
Emerging Programmatic AdTech Trends 2020
1. AI in Programmatic Advertising:
Technologies such as artificial intelligence(AI) and machine learning (ML)have involved programmatic ad buying or bid optimization. Programmatic campaigns are used by companies for more targeted net across platforms. By 2020, it is expected that there will be a shift towards automating technologies like AI and ML to get the most from data.
2. First Part Data Move Made Important by GDPR:
After the announcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, last year on cookie crumble or removal of third party cookies is gradually turning out to be beneficial. The regulations protecting the privacy of user data initially looked limiting to ad tech experts but is resulting in cleaner and more reliable data over time.
Learn more: Digital Advertising Industry Plans To Replace Cookies With First-Party Data
3. Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) and Mobile Location:
Digital DOOH combined with mobile location data has the potential to help marketers to drive conversions in the offline world. Integrated ‘home-to-out-of-home’ programmatic advertising approach provides a smooth experience to the customers.
4. Voice-activated Ads:
The adoption of voice-based to in-home smart devices has grown rapidly. Gartner predicted by 2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done through voice-first browsing. Amazon sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices in 2018 compared to 2017. A recent survey by VoiceBot.AI revealed 25% of respondents orders everyday household items through voice assistants followed by apparel and games and entertainment.
Programmatic advertising helps marketers to optimize these ad spaces across in-home smart devices, to on-app audio ad opportunities, and connect to consumers through in-store ads, ads in elevators and taxis, and more.
5. Wearables will enhance programmatic advertising:
Wearables collect data on location, lifestyle, health metrics, and more. The market penetration of smartwatches has grown multifold over the years and programmatic advertising is already making its way into this medium. For instance, it helps advertisers run banner promos to customers on their Samsung or Sony smartwatches. The wearable ecosystem has a huge potential to grow and programmatic adtech can bring greater opportunities.
6. 5G in programmatic advertising:
The high speed and no buffering will encourage the rise of more users to spend time on videos on mobile devices. It will enhance other technologies such as AR-enabled ad displays, VR without headsets, and innovative new digital outdoor mediums.
This will give programmatic advertising new opportunities to run more interactive ads without any lags across mediums. By 2024, the use of 5G in AdTech is predicted to grow to 1.4 billion.
7. Evolution of Personalization:
With Gen Z and Millennials- the biggest demographics -personalization is a priority as they like all things customized. Personalization in advertising is going to be inevitable as the choices of the new generation are different. Therefore, programmatic customization by advertisers is increasing offering personalized, relevant messaging to their target group.
8. Blockchains and Ads.xt:
Ad frauds are increasing over the past few years. A cybersecurity firm Cheq reports that ad fraud damages will touch $26 billion in 2020, $29 billion by 2021, and $32 billion the year after that.
The only way to handle the frauds is by bringing transparency in programmatic advertising. Blockchain and Ads.txt (an Interactive Advertising Bureau initiative – Authorized Digital Sellers) can help to remove unrequired middleman, domain spoofing, and verification of publishers and allow transactions using cryptocurrencies.
Learn More: Advertisers Look For Greater Transparency In Programmatic Ad Buying
9. Programmatic TV, podcasts and audio Ads set to grow:
The content on TV has changed drastically. There is a paradigm shift in TV viewing from cable TV to over-the-top(OTT) like Amazon Prime or Netflix via an internet connection.
Programmatic advertising has a larger role to play to ensure marketers get the best of both worlds. Programmatic TV is also going to get more important with its data-driven approach for buying and delivering ads.
Programmatic in podcasts and audio advertising is also growing. Apps like Spotify and Soundcloud are seeing more user acceptance and a new advertising landscape is being created for companies to monetize on.
10. Omnichannel Programmatic:
Forrester defines omnichannel marketing as ‘the practice of digitally sequencing advertising across channels, which is connected, relevant, and consistent with the customer’s stage in their life cycle.’ This is how programmatic advertising is going to be in 2020 and beyond.
A single marketing resource or an ad can be customized programmatically suiting various platforms through programmatic AdTech.
11. Agencies to work on outcome-based pay:
Discussions are making rounds to switch to an outcome-based remuneration model. With increasing ad frauds and agencies promise programmatic tech, advertisers fear how their budgets were used and where their ads placed. There was a lot of wastage in the space. Media buying companies started giving outcome-based remuneration more prominence. Gradually, advertisers would like to see the full cost chain of their programmatic buys, pushing agencies to outcome-based pay.
12. In House programmatic advertising v/s agency.
An IAB report suggests that nearly 40% executing programmatic trading via in house and 50% publishers also have an in-house model. This means advertisers are looking for more transparency, control of their ad strategies, and outcome.
It makes more sense to have an in-house team for strategizing programmatic ads and an agency partner for implementing parts of it instead of having a full-stack programmatic AdTech in house.
Wrapping up
Yes, Adtech is complicated but the best part is that it allows integrating the whole toolset into a single system. According to Zenith Media, the ad spends on digital media will reach $329 billion in 2021. However, there are major concerns and challenges -Ad Fraud, transparency, and privacy issues need immediate action.
There have been big changes and improvements over what advertisers and publishers used to have earlier but it still needs more work and their expertise to handle the challenges and resolve for good.
5 Programmatic Advertising Case Studies That Yielded Exponential Results
Advertising has come a long way from the early ’70s and with technological shifts, there are incredible options to reach the target customers effectively. We have witnessed the rise of programmatic advertising with the advancement in the digital world.
For the uninitiated, programmatic advertising can be described as automatic buying and optimizing digital campaigns through real-time auctions, where ads are bought at the same time when a visitor loads the website instead of buying directly from the publishers without human interference.
Programmatic advertising is becoming a star strategy and businesses spend almost $60 billion every year. It is forecasted by 2021, 88% of all digital display ad spending will flow via automation.
Explore these five programmatic ad case studies to comprehend how brands are building compelling and successful campaigns.
1. BoxFresh
Challenge:
The men’s footwear brand had lost ground to sports brands like Nike and Adidas over the last couple of years because of its reliance on brick and mortar stores over online sales. The brand aimed to re-establish its brand in the UK and German markets, establish a connection to drive loyalty and repeat business with its target customers.
It concentrated on creating branded casual men’s footwear but reached a point where one in four consumers preferred Boxfresh for their purchase.
Solution:
The brand focused on video-led campaigns advocating their brand ethos- simplicity, value for money, nonconformity and authenticity which are in alignment with target consumers’ own values. Ads on Facebook were segmented based on demographics and interests as well as through first-party based lookalike audiences build. Video campaigns provided tailored messages to the audience’s stage in the buying cycle.
With the newly launched e-commerce website, the brand initially did not retarget cart abandoners and purchasers but model and optimize lookalike audiences prospecting campaigns.
Result:
With a programmatic display campaign, the brand soared above Google benchmarks disrupting the competitive market. The assurance that the brand is connected with the audience own values, display adverts had a click-through rate (CTR) 233%higher than Google’s benchmarks in the UK and 800%higher in Germany. 85% of the users who visited the site through prospecting activities are new users.
The digital agency Europe regional head added,
“The storytelling technique has had incredibly positive effects on the creative performance, which has resulted in great return on spend for Boxfresh. However, it’s important to remember that display is not the final touchpoint in the purchasing journey. Using Cadence, Rakuten Marketing’s data insights and attribution platform, revealed conversion rates for SEO and PPC grew by 169% and 50% in the UK when display campaigns ran alongside other channels. Likewise, the average order value increased by 20%.”
2. ASUS
Challenge:
ASUS has barely 0.3% market share in the Indian Smartphone market. 34% of sales are online and have more than 35+ handsets. With a low market share, it is important to revive the brand and plan a programmatic campaign to attract customers at the buying stage and create brand awareness.
Solution:
The brand integrated real-time data to send feedback on the effectiveness of each audience combination to web ASUS with their OCMPID.
When a user likes something, he adds to the cart. This shows that the user has a higher chance of buying it. On the other hand, there is a chance that he could accept another better deal for a more fitting product. Therefore, the best way was to target the audience through ads based on the cart.
The brand divided the audience into various segments based on – price range, featured buying habits and buying characteristics of the user on Flipkart.
These ads were programmed to reach the consumer on a real-time basis and here it is – when a user adds an ASUS phone in the cart, the brand was informed of the effectiveness of the creative audience combination.
For instance, if a user adds Xiaomi with 3500 mAh battery, ASUS would target them with ads that had 5000 mAh batteries at an even better price.
Results:
Due to a real-time programmatic approach, ASUS met its target to sell more than 1 million units leading to targeting efficiency went up by 3 times. In less than a year, the ASUS market share rose from 0.3 to 3%, a 10x growth.
3. The Economist:
Challenge:
To increase the subscriber base and grab the reader’s attention who are reluctant to try the Economist. Using creative programmatic display, the goal is to reach 650,000 new prospects and stimulate a change in perception.
Solution:
The campaign utilized Economist content and headlines that contained humor, wit, and sparked curiosity. The publication analyzed the extensive audience data which included information on how subscribers responded to the publication’s web and mobile app. Using this data, the Economist determined what content attracted and when. The idea was to link Economist content to the stories ‘the reluctant readers’ were presently reading.
The advertising creative was built in real-time. It matched viewers’ profile and page context to the Economist’s feed before serving an ad to the right people with the right context. For instance, someone could see a featured ad that linked an Economist’s story on US cops using firearms to the story of a police shooting in the Guardian.
Results:
On a £1.2 budget,
- 3.6 million taking actions
- 650,000 new prospects
- ROI of 10.1
The Economists followed up this display campaign with another focus especially on millennials and social networks. It won the 2016 Gold Best use of Programmatic award.
4.Missing People
Challenge:
British charity ‘Missing People’ is an ideal example of how to maximize a small programmatic budget. The charity needs to rescue all the missing children across the UK. With the use of programmatic OOH advertising, it intends to increase reach and impact.
Solution:
Programmatic OOH will help the charity to target those who might miss or disregard print appeal. It also helped to understand that people respond to messages relevant to their area in which they live. And through programmatic it could make a more targeted and location-based appeal.
The move from print to digital was crucial for the charity as it helped to save lives and allowed ads to be adept, creative changing once a child was found.
Result:
Ross Miller, director of fundraising and communication said, “the use of e programmatic use of out-of-home increased the response rate from 50% to 70%.”
5. O2
Challenge:
In 2016, O2 intended to make its “tariff refresh” TV ad more engaging and attractive for a mobile audience. It also wanted to repurpose its TV ads and make them interesting for mobile users.
Solution:
O2 created a system whereby it could take data about mobile usage-device, location, and others to offer personalized messages and video ads based on the user’s profiles.
More than 1000 versions of personalized video ads were made that integrated real-time with the user’s device and location.
Coinciding with the company’s sponsorship of the Rugby World Cup, it launched a website for the users to create rugby-inspired avatars. Using data from the website, O2 launched a campaign targeting those who accessed the website, giving them a personalized video ad and addressed them by their first name and invited to visit the avatar site. It also included a personalized call-to-action button to know whether they have already created the avatar or abandoned the process before finishing.
Result:
Personalized ads had a 128 percent click-through rate and an 11 percent increase in engagement.
Wrapping up
So, are you ready to use programmatic advertising? Well, programmatic adverts have immense potential for all kinds of business in any verticals. Simple but brilliant creative programmatic campaigns can be created to reach the right audience.
TikTok Appoints Former Disney Chairman As New CEO To Capture New Markets.
- Disney veteran Kevin Mayers who oversaw the launches of Disney+ and ESPN+ is leaving the company after 27 years to become the new CEO of TikTok.
- Mayer will take the lead on ByteDance’s music, gaming, and emerging business along with heading TikTok.
- Mayer will start on June 1 and report directly to Bytedance CEO Yiming Zhang.
- TikTok had an immense impact on the music industry and grabbing eyeballs of gaming and esports companies.
TikTok appoints Kevin Mayer as the new CEO after being poached from Disney. Kevin Mayer who was passed over for the Disney CEO role is taking a jump from the entertainment industry’s most esteemed names to one of its most dynamic new arrival.
TikTok’s new CEO plans to explore business opportunities in music and gaming as the company looks to capitalize on a recent increase in app downloads. Mayer, head of The Walt Disney Company’s direct-to-consumer and international business said in a statement,
“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to join the amazing team at ByteDance. Like everyone else, I’ve been impressed watching the company build something incredibly rare in TikTok – a creative, positive online global community – and I’m excited to help lead the next phase of ByteDance’s journey as the company continues to expand its breadth of products across every region of the world.”
Advertisers and brands taking advantage of music trends
TikTok is a significant player in the music industry for discovering new artists and making songs to hit status. The platform contributed to the grand success of Lil Nas X’s record-breaking “Old Town Road” and more recently with chart-toppers like Doja Cat’s “Say So” and Megan thee Stallion’s “Savage,” which are all featured in the TikTok videos.
Advertisers have found new ways to use TikTok music and dance trends to their advantage in order to drive brand awareness among the Gen Z audience. Brands like e.l.f. Cosmetics and Warner Bros. have used original music and dance challenges to attract the audience and generate billions of views and user engagement on the app. As quoted by Business Insider, Evan Horowitz, CEO of the creative agency Movers+Shakers said,
“I think the nature of TikTok as a platform is that it’s one. It’s only natural that brands that create really good music.that the community on TikTok really resonate with, that music can start to trend and be successful outside of the platform.”
Gaming and esports companies jumping onto the bandwagon
Video games companies and esports brands have shown keen interest in the TikTok app as it continues to be popular among Gen Z users of the app.
Many esports brands like FaZe Clan, Team SoloMid (TSM), and 100 Thieves have officially created verified accounts whereas video game content is slowly taking up TikTok’s content recommendation landing page (ForYou). It’s too early for gaming creators on the platform even though esports companies are slowly and carefully exploring TikTok in recent months. Jason Wilhelm, CEO of TalentX Gaming told Business Insider,
“For TikTok, they haven’t really found what is the best way forward for gaming yet. You need a lot of requirements in order to stream video games. TikTok obviously is not set up for that right now, but that is something that we’re going to be figuring out.”
TikTok has seen a significant surge in users since the pandemic hit U.S – 315 million downloads across the iOS and android app stores in 2020 Q1, that’s the most download for one app in a single quarter as per mobile data analysis group Sensor Tower.
Also read: YouTube Shorts: Will it be Able to Capture Tik Tok’s Audience?
Financial Report Card Of The Global Giants And Industries In COVID-19
Media companies are facing distress owing to the pandemic crisis, particularly those relying on advertising revenue. The current situation is precarious that compelled companies to roll out furloughs, pay cuts, or layoffs.
Even though publishers are recording high traffic, there is a mismatch in demand and supply in the ad market. Subscriptions are a silver lining for publishers but again sustainability is in question. Many businesses are impacted due to cancelled live events like sports that would bring a vast sum of revenue. Newsstands sales have also witnessed a fall.
Keeping the above factors in mind, below is the analysis of leading media companies’ financial and quarterly reports and their progress in this crisis.
CONGLOMERATES
Bertelsmann: Ad funded businesses were affected while music, services, and education business performed well.
The German media conglomerate Bertelsmann’s revenue declined by 2.7%. The advertising-funded business Q 1 was “highly affected” by the pandemic. Within the digital business RTL Group specifically, the revenue was down 3.4 % owing to the cancellation of ad bookings at the start of March or postponement of productions.
Music business BMG, its Arvato services business and its education business performed well. Subscription to the online streaming services was up 34% Y-o-Y.
Comcast/NBCUniversal: Broadband business upticks whereas rolling out Peacock streaming service.
Comcast is a large company with its broadband business marks an uptick with signups. and revenues up by8.8%. On the other hand, its theme park, TV and film production business is on hold.
NBCUniversal and newly acquired Sky TV cannot broadcast live sports. The company expects the advertising business to be down significantly in Q2
NBCUniversal Q1 revenue was down 7% and it rolled out ad-supported Peacock streaming service to Comcast customers in April.
Disney: Theme Parks and Sports Broadcast Shut, Disney+ subscribers up.
The crisis led to shutting down of theme parks, and productions and theatre movie releases were put to hold. Ad revenue at its TV business was affected as ESPN couldn’t air any live sports.
However, it stepped up the launch of ad-free streaming service in European countries. Disney+ had 33.5 million subscribers by the end of Q1 and an average of $5.63 in monthly revenue per paid user. Disneyland Shanghai did reopen, at 30% capacity on May 11.
WarnerMedia (owned by AT&T): Q1 Revenues severely hit.
Recently, folded its Xandr advanced advertising unit into a bigger WarnerMedia business.
Q1 revenues of WarnerMedia was down 12% on the year-ago quarter to $7.4 billion due to lower ad revenues in March on sports cancellations. Movie productions are also on hold.
PUBLISHERS
News Corp: Circulation and Subscription revenue grows, Ad revenue takes a hit.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp includes various leading and established brands like The Wall Street Journal, The Sun, and many more in U.S, U.K, and Australia.
Overall revenue declined 7.8% to $2.27 billion in Q1 due to weak ad business, low ad revenues, and negative currency movements. April ad revenue for Dow Jones declined 20% from the prior year whereas for News Corp Australia and News UK fell by more than 45% which includes negative currency impact.
The Wall Street Journal reported circulation and subscription revenue growth by 1% reaching a record subscriber base of 3 million overall, of which 2.2 million are digital-only.
The New York Times: Focus on Subscription Revenue to thrive in the post coronavirus world.
The NYT is leading more emphasis on subscription revenues to reduce its dependency on ad revenue to be in a better position and thrive post coronavirus world.
NYT recorded the highest quarterly increase in new digital-only subscriptions-up 587,000 in Q1 -leading to a 5.4% increase in subscription revenue to $285.4 million. Ad revenue fell by 15% and likely to fall further in Q2 somewhere between 50% and 55%.
“Other revenues” segment is estimated to fall around 10% as licensing revenue from Facebook News is expected to be “more than offset”- by lower revenue from its live events and its TV series.
TV AND CABLE
Discovery: Their channels are new sports.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav on the Q1 earnings call said, “Our channels are the new sports — the numbers are huge” around its lifestyle channels like HGTV, Food Network, and DIY. The engagement with the characters and talent is enormous. Discovery is also saving money productions through the pandemic as the film shows from home.
Total revenue declined from 1£ in the first quarter to $2.68 billion and expects advertising revenue to fall significantly in 2020. Many sports events are postponed and 90% of the sports deals have force majeure provisions or provisions to not pay for the content that is not received.
Fox: Fox News gains the largest audience.
Revenue for the three months to March 31 rose 25% supported by the forecast of Super Bowl in February, an increase in political advertising, and growth in affiliate revenue. But in March entered coronavirus crisis leading to the postponement of sports events and suspensions of entertainment shows.
80% who signed up for Fox Nation streaming service from Fox news continued to become paying subscribers and advertisers from sectors like technology and communications looked for the transition from sports buy to news buy. Ad revenue within local TV stations to be down 50% from last year.
ViacomCBS: Streaming revenue continues to grow and more on its way441.2 b
Revenue for Q1 fell 6% to $6.67 billion of which advertising revenue marked a 19% drop though a comparison to last year would be unfair when it aired Super bowl and basketball tournament.
Streaming continues to grow- domestic and digital revenue up by 51% to $471 million and had 13.5 million streaming subscribers. It intends to build “a broad pay streaming product in multiple markets” over the next 12 months. It announced a distribution deal with YouTube TV, which will carry 14 ViacomCBS channels
DIGITAL GIANTS
Alphabet or Google: Faring well in this crisis and a better situation.
Q1 revenue stood at $41.2 billion, up 13% Y-o-Y basis(including Google cloud revenue and the ‘other bets’ segment).
According to CFO Ruth Porat, Youtube’s March revenue “decelerated to a year-on-year growth rate in the high single digits” and Google Network March revenue declined “in the low double digits.”
Google Cuts Marketing Budgets by 50%, Freezes Hiring, and launched a “Journalism Emergency Relief Fund”.
Baidu: A closer watch on the signs of recovery in the upcoming result.
Chinese advertising giant Baidu was the first to report the coronavirus crisis set to affect media companies and expect a revenue drop of between 5% and 13% due to advertiser pullback.
In April, it suspended updating content on certain newsfeed channels within its app due to government directives which may impact its marketing services revenue. On May 18, Baidu will give the next quarterly update, and would be worth watching whether there is any recovery in the ad business.
Amazon: The advertising business grew as directly related to eCommerce sales
Amazon’s Q1 revenue soared as consumers quickly shifted to shopping online amidst the coronavirus crisis. Conversely, revenue rose 26%, and profit dropped 29% compared to last year’s quarter. The cost grew to finish the surge in orders
In the financial statement, the ‘other’ category is advertising business- revenue grew by 40% to $3.9 billion in Q1. The growth is consistent with a little downward pressure in March but no major impact as its directly related to eCommerce sales. ‘
Facebook: Post Strong Earnings, Exceeds Projections
Facebook ad revenue grew by 17% Y-o-Y to $17.4 billion despite the instability in the digital ad market due to COVID-19.
Facebook saw strength in the advertiser’s vertical- gaming, technology, and e-commerce whereas travel and automotive were the weakest verticals in the first three weeks of March.
Facebook had Pledged $2M Grant Funding To Support Publishers Financially.
Snapchat: Users and Revenue Increases, ad spend declines
Snapchat reported in its Q1 2020 earnings – strong gains in both users and revenues but a dip in advertiser spend despite the growing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. the company reported a 44 percent (Y-o-Y) increase in its first-quarter revenue to $462 million. Snap benefited as people used animated lenses to keep in touch with loved ones in this lockdown. Snapchat’s daily active user (DAV) base reached 229 million.
Direct-response advertising accounts for more than half of the company’s revenue and clients in sectors like gaming, e-commerce, and consumer packaged goods continue to spend even during the crisis.
Twitter: Work in progress over AdTech concerns
Twitter’s user growth jumped in March as people rushed to check the latest news updates related to the coronavirus. Despite a 9% growth in daily users, revenue was up only 2.6% to $807.6 million and reported a loss of 8.4 million in Q1 results.
In comparison to its competitors, Twitter doesn’t have a direct-response advertising business. Therefore, the company is improving its mobile application promotion products and rebuilding its ad server which is expected to be up and running by Q2.
Mobile Gaming Industry Bank On People Locked Inside Homes Due To COVID-19.
- Even as stock markets plummet two sectors actually doing well are streaming services and online gaming.
- The mobile-gaming category is finding the brightest spot even as other businesses face the heat of countrywide lockdown owing to coronavirus outbreak.
- The mobile gaming category is more than a $60 billion-a-year market and seeing a massive surge in ad revenue.
Even as businesses across sectors face the heat of lockdown owing to coronavirus pandemic, online gaming has witnessed a welcome spike. There are more than 2.6 billion gamers, each spending over eight hours per week playing worldwide.
Why it matters
As hanging out gets difficult, gamers are active members of their communities, socializing with each other and exploring the virtual world – A world free of coronavirus. Recently, Netflix CEO admitted that when it comes to screen time, video games and not streaming services is their biggest competitor. For instance, Netflix has 167 million members, whereas one of Epic’s games, Fortnite, has over 200 million users.
Driving the news
Video games used to be played on big screens through expensive consoles but now when we think of video games, we will think of our mobile phones instead. Mobile gaming is emerging as a dominant digital ad platform and marketers are planning to leverage it as the world goes online from home.
- The months of quarantine and pandemic has changed brand engagement with the consumers. People are streaming entertainment, watching the news, and engaging with friends and family on playing games especially mobile games. Therefore, marketers are reimagining their brands and agencies are restructuring to communicate effectively on behalf of the brand and seize every opportunity on the way.
Yes, the trends are changing. The future of addressable video lives is now in the palm of your hands. The app is your TV and mobile gaming is primetime.
By the numbers: AdColony new survey in March 2020 showed mobile gaming jumping more than 24 percent as the mobile audience grew more reliant on smartphones for entertainment while sheltering in homes.
- Increase in mobile game downloads by 60 percent compared to the 30-days before the survey month March.
- The increase in casual mobile games is 28 percent whereas board game downloads grew 16 percent and there were major acquisitions too.
- Word game download grew 8 percent with a six percent lift in the already high number of sessions.
- Hardcore gamer categories like action, adventure, and role-playing have started to move upward.
61 percent of marketers polled said the coronavirus situation is leading to changes in content that they are comfortable having their ads placed adjacent to.
The big picture
Mobile games have more reach than traditional T.V. Additionally, they are backed by the best parts of digital buys – addressability, creativity, analytics, and attribution. This allows advertisers an opportunity to rethink how to leverage sight, sound, and motion to engage customers combined with the surge in users.
With In-app gaming, the brand is safe and accountable. For viewability, fraud, and accuracy, measurement vendors have built programmatic solutions, and data is defined and virtually universally accessible. In these uncertain times, the app has a lot of scope with innovative opportunities for smart marketers to go big on consumers.
Wunderman Thompson Brings Agency Office Buzz To Employee’s Homes.
COVID-19 has compelled the world into self-isolation which means working from home indefinitely- which is challenging for highly collaborative and creative industries like marketing and advertising. Technology bridges the gap of connectivity but nothing can replace the buzz that comes from working in a busy agency. Therefore, Wunderman Thompson Canada is keeping you company with the ambient noise of an agency office from the pre-pandemic times.
The 8-hour soundtrack spans from 9 a.m coffee to 4 p.m happy hours, every elevator ping, chatter, and email notifications of a typical office day, recorded by the agency’s remote employees. The audio is called ‘Isolation Station’ on SoundCloud and is hoping that this tracklist might recreate the familiar and nostalgic buzz which will help employees feeling sick of working from home in the pandemic, get the feel of a more productive setting. Even the track names remind of office life with titles such as “But first, coffee” and “Beer o’clock”.
Wunderman Thompson Canada executive creative director Ari Elkouby said that they tapped real Wunderman Thompson Canada employees to record themselves having conversations with colleagues over Microsoft Teams and on their mobile devices to make the soundtrack truly authentic.
“We created a story map over the course of eight hours and got employees to contribute to different parts of the day. That dialogue was mixed over an audio bed of office ambient sounds to complete the track.”
Ari Elkouby also mentioned that Isolation can be scary and less ideal for many, however, this is to show the team and industry that we are together and provides much-needed comfort in a creative and fun way. Who knew that a conference room discussion meet can be so nostalgic?
This is similar to a campaign from the New York Public Library, in which the sounds of the bustling New York City were recreated.
This is also an interesting read: Noise-O-Meter By Bose Rewards Rising Noise Level With Discounts On Its Headphones.