Greg Sterling says, “Digital ad revenues in the US reached $32.7 billion for the first half of 2016, according to the IAB’s new Internet Advertising Revenue Report. Overall, search ad revenue (desktop + mobile) represented 50 percent of the total, which was up 19 percent year over year. Mobile advertising as a channel (inclusive of multiple formats) was the single biggest growth driver, up 89 percent since last year, to $15.5 billion. The IAB announced that mobile “surpasse[d] Search as the lead ad format for the first time.” Of course, mobile is not a format; it’s a collection of... [...]

AOL team says, “Love is a complicated thing. We can’t always put our finger on why we love who or what we do, but we’re all looking for that feeling (and bonus points if our love relationships are reciprocal). Brands work this relationship magic on us, too. It’s just like the dance we do with a prospective partner — they have to hook us in, make us happy and keep us engaged for the long haul. The courting phase    Now more than ever, our attention is hard to capture, and it’s even harder to keep. The brands we love best have become relationship gurus when it comes to drawing... [...]

Andrew Chapin says, “Online advertising sucks.You already know the reasons why: First, there are the visuals: Most ads are ugly and interrupt the browsing experience — and then there’s what ads do to website-load times. Users do everything in their power to avoid those irrelevant, intrusive ads: Nearly 200 million people worldwide use ad-blocking –software. And the result for publishers is almost $22 billion in lost ad revenue. So, what’s a publisher to do? Ad scrollers help. This relatively new format appears as a window, running in line within the content... [...]

William Johnson says, “Advertising can bring you quick success. That’s the reason it’s still in vogue and will continue to be so. Small businesses need to shrug off the preconceived notion that advertising is uber-expensive. It’s not always expensive; getting started with Facebook ads costs only $50. Cost is not a legitimate concern because to fully harness the power of advertising, things must be done in the right ways. The right ways include: Adding Value to the Ad Creativity has always been a must in advertising. Lately, however, its importance has increased by leaps and bounds.... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “The IAB Tech Lab released a standard for dynamic content ads this week for public comment. The standard is a schema (structured meta data) aimed at increasing the relevancy of ads — and eliminating the need for creating dozens of ad variations — by automatically tailoring ads based on user factors such as gender, location, weather and language. The new standard is designed to function across devices and screen sizes, as well as ad types, including display, video, audio, native or social. A tool powered by dynamic ad platform Jivox on the IAB site shows... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “Placecast is bringing location intelligence to native advertising to improve relevance and performance. The company also announced last week that it has been awarded two patents pertaining to “location data management and targeting.” Placecast is one of the longest-existing companies in the location-based marketing segment, having begun as an SMS-based retail marketing platform using proximity and radius targeting. The new offering, called “Placecast Native,” promises the non-intrusive benefits of native, with the additional targeting, personalization and offline... [...]

Chris Glushko says, “Measurement, we’ve come a long way. Just 10 years ago, I was a manager in the “interactive marketing” department of a major real estate brand. Our marketing team as a whole employed 30 to 40 professionals, of which just a small handful worked with me in digital. As at any major consumer brand at the time, those of us on the digital team wanted a bigger slice of the marketing budget pie. “More brand dollars need to shift to online media,” we said. “Consumers are using DVRs to skip television commercials. Print is declining as people spend more time online.... [...]

Brad O’Brien says, “Social advertising in Q4 is expensive. Higher intent to purchase among holiday shoppers means that CPMs and CPCs (costs per thousand and costs per click) skyrocket because advertisers are all vying for those valuable consumer impressions. In social, you will feel these effects even if you’re not a holiday-based business, because good consumers will fall into audience targeting pools for all types of products and services. Knowing how to navigate the waters can mean the difference between a highly successful quarter and one that leaves you feeling that you’ve... [...]

Andy Taylor says, “At the recent SMX East conference in New York City, Google’s Jerry Dischler announced a number of paid search updates that should roll out in the near to immediate future. Among them, two in particular stand to expand the footprint of Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA). Here are the changes you need to know about, starting with the most impactful. RLSA membership duration expanded to 540 days Since beta testing all the way back in 2012, RLSA has been restricted to include only those users who visited an advertiser’s website within the past 180 days. This meant... [...]

Brett Middleton says, “Everyone running a PPC account typically has a budgeting question they are trying to figure out. For those with a tighter ad budget, the question becomes, “How do I get the most leads for this limited amount of spend I have?” Larger accounts run into their own problems; finding points of diminishing returns and making small gains in efficiency while maintaining spend levels at a point that generates the growth you need can be a headache. If you take away one point from this, it’s that search impression share may be the most ignored primary metric for most... [...]