Joe Pulizzi says, “In this first official podcast of 2017, Joe and Robert discuss the ad fraud “Methbot” issue and what it means for programmatic advertising. The boys rip to pieces a 2017 trends post, and then outline why native advertising is not the savior some experts thought it was – for either publishers or brands. Rants and raves include the history of video games and Generation Z. This week’s TOM example: Purina’s Chase the Chuck Wagon. 1. Content marketing in the news Methbot – an ad fraud scheme costs advertisers $3 million per day (11:03): Russian hackers are back... [...]

Christi Olson says, “Impression share is an interesting paid search metric. On the surface, you could argue that impression share is a fairly useless metric. In fact, I’ll admit that I’ve argued for years that impressions really aren’t an important measure of paid search success. However, while I still strongly believe that ROI — not impressions, clicks or conversions — is the ultimate gauge of paid search success, impression share itself is far from a useless metric. In fact, after auditing thousands of paid search accounts at Disruptive Advertising, we’ve found that impression... [...]

AJ Agrawal says, “When was the last time you checked your phone? When was the last time you looked at social media or an app on your phone? I’m guessing you answered with “a few minutes ago,” or maybe at most, an hour ago. If so — you’re not alone. Americans spend over 10 hours a day on screens and about five of those hours are spent on their smartphones. Is your brand where your consumers are looking? Marketers are definitely taking note of the shift in consumer habits, which has resulted in mobile advertising spending increasing a whopping 40 percent for 2017 (it increased... [...]

Eric Samson says, “Most internet users have had the experience of having an ad from a site they were previously browsing pop up on the next site they visit. It’s kind of impressive, right? This technique is called remarketing, and it’s valuable because it allows a business to continue the conversation with a potential consumer in the target audience. If a customer visited a website once, odds are they were at least contemplating purchasing from the site at one point. Through remarketing, the brand is able to maintain a presence in front of prospective buyers, which leads to higher... [...]

Zak Stambor says, “Paid search and video ad spending is up 29.9% and 31.6%, respectively, according to new eMarketer estimates. Retailers’ digital ad spending is expected to jump 22.5% this year, to $15.81 billion from $12.91 billion last year, according to a new estimate released today by research firm eMarketer Inc. More than half, 50.8%, of those dollars are being spent on paid search ads, a three percentage point increase from last year. In terms of dollars, retailers are expected to spend $8.03 billion on paid search ads, a 29.9% increase from $6.18 billion in 2015. Display ads—which... [...]

Ronald Dod says, “PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, is a complex digital marketing strategy that is composed of many working parts. A lot of the parts are very technical and require extensive knowledge and expertise. Those generally fall on the back end of PPC, and many people who are working with PPC ads can forget about the ad itself. The biggest part of what your audience is going to see and connect with is the ad copy, and you need to make sure you are putting enough time and effort into making your copy the best it can be. With that being said, writing copy for PPC ads can be very... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “As the industry continues its move away from Flash to HTML5/JavaScript-based ads, the IAB Technology Laboratory is pushing a clear cutoff point for the industry to shift from Flash-based ads entirely. On Tuesday, the trade group issued guidance for the migration, along with the recommendation that all video ads be HTML5-based by July 2017. Along with transition guidelines, the Tech Lab released checklists for publishers and brands and agencies, with tailored suggestions for addressing the technical requirements and communication best practices for making the transition. The... [...]

Keith Pieper says, “Mobile app advertising has been an ongoing, complex challenge for the ad industry in almost every way. Most notably, mobile apps make it hard to scale a targeted media buy and measure accurately — basically, mobile apps don’t play nice with the adtech ecosystem. Why native mobile apps hold back advertisers and publishers Apps you install from the Apple or Google app stores are small, proprietary software applications. App developers must build their apps to the specifications of each proprietary platform (iOS, Android) and have them tested and approved for quality... [...]

Craig Simpson says, “No matter what your advertising message is and what platform you’re using to broadcast it, there are basic principles of promotion you can use to make sure you’re working as effectively as possible to spread the word. From all my reading and extensive research on some of the best master promoters, I’ve arrived at these 10 overriding lessons for putting together a promotional campaign that produces the best results. Lesson 1: Know your product In order to sell something, you need to develop some kind of description of what you’re offering that you can present... [...]

Tony D’Anna says, “Recently, Facebook announced that it had found a way to circumvent ad blockers. About 48 hours later, Adblock Plus announced it had circumvented the circumvention. That back and forth was only the latest in the ad-blocking arms race, an ever-escalating conflict involving billions of dollars in ad revenue. The latest salvo in this arms race came when Adblock Plus announced that it’s now serving ads in addition to blocking them, which is at the very least monumentally confusing and something publishers fear most. Think about it: In the past, a publisher could... [...]