editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

‘Broadcast-level scale’: Why retail media networks view in-store as their next frontier

April 4, 2024 No Comments

By Peter Adams

At NRF’s Big Show, companies like Walmart pitched in-store as an advertising channel on par with TV.

NEW YORK — Retail media networks are entering either their 2.0 or 3.0 era, depending on who you asked at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show this past weekend. Numerical variance aside, experts agreed that 2024 heralds the next chapter for a fast-growing channel, though one whose path forward remains murky amid a race to standardize ad formats and measurement.

Retail media is still primed to attract heftier investments now that Google’s plan to enact the death of the cookie is in effect, hampering a bedrock digital ad-targeting method. However, speakers at the NRF confab seemed more eager to highlight the ways they’re trying to refashion old chestnuts, including in-store assets, to fortify their newfangled advertising bets than talk about the search and display offerings (or retail media 1.0) that have put the category on course to generate a $100 billion in revenue over the next several years.

Repositioning brick and mortar as a brand-building tool versus simple shopper marketing was a theme threaded throughout discussions and interviews on the show floor. Only time will tell whether consumers view it as more than a message plastered on the aisle or their shopping cart with some additional tech bells and whistles.

“It’s a channel with broadcast-level scale,” said Ryan Mayward, senior vice president of retail media sales at Walmart Connect, during a panel about how physical stores could usher in the “golden age” of retail media. Walmart Connect has recently taken its product demoing program in-house and expanded advertising on an owned and operated in-store radio network called Walmart Radio.

“One hundred and forty million customers a week shop in our stores. That’s bigger than any broadcast TV network can deliver,” Mayward continued. “I think the store, as an advertising channel, is as relevant to the shopper marketer as it is to the chief marketer.”

A Super Bowl-sized opportunity?

Other retail media networks signalled their ambitions to ramp up in-store bets at NRF, viewing it as a key piece in realizing a pitch around omnichannel capabilities and providing a full view into the customer journey. Despite the bump e-commerce received during the pandemic, about 85% of transactions still occur at brick-and-mortar locations in the U.S., per CB Insights data cited by one conference attendee. Physical retail also gives smaller networks a possible advantage over Amazon, a platform that commands the lion’s share of retail media spending but has struggled to iron out its brick-and-mortar strategy.

“[In-store] is the biggest opportunity left for retail media networks to capitalize on. Generally, it’s by far the larger conversion location,” said Evan Hovorka, head of product and innovation at Albertsons Media Collective, in an interview. “A lot of the traffic, the time spent, the impressions and the conversions are in that store center.”

7-Eleven, the largest convenience chain in the U.S. with over 13,000 locations, is also scaling up its radio ambitions this year, bringing a program currently in about 2,000 stores to the entirety of its North American network. The move will make the c-store’s radio station the largest in the country, claimed Marissa Jarratt chief marketing and sustainability officer, during an on-stage discussion.

Instacart, the grocery delivery platform, is beginning to pilot ads on its artificial intelligence-powered Caper Carts. Deli and bakery screens, electronics department TVs and cooler doors, enabled by vendors like Cooler Screens, were some of the other in-store advertising avenues championed at NRF.

“I think physical retail is the new TV because it provides so much of what linear TV is no longer able to provide, which is scale, brand safety and reaching the right audiences,” said Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at Media, Ads +Commerce, on the same panel as Walmart Connect’s Mayward. “Increasingly, it can start to fill that role that TV is leaving behind.”

While it’s been clear for some time that in-store advertising has benefits, like placing a brand message close to the point of transaction, some on the NRF show floor were more measured about the opportunity when compared against conventional brand-building tactics.

“In-store should be able to shine bright for a few things, but nothing tells a national brand story like a Super Bowl ad,” said Hovorka. “It’s just that there’s less and less of those opportunities on linear.”

Easier said than done

The fast rise of retail media has pushed network owners to quickly learn the ropes of complicated programmatic ad tech, either building out that infrastructure internally or, more commonly, partnering with established third parties for scale and cost-effectiveness. A renewed emphasis on in-store formats sounds, on paper, potentially more intuitive for a crowd that has sometimes been stodgy with tech adoption, drawing on retailers’ rich history of shopper marketing.

But experts said that delivering a cohesive in-store experience will prove to be one of 2024’s biggest challenges, especially with the longer-term goal of threading the needle between digital and physical measurement and sales attribution.

“If you’re a large company like us with 2,200 stores, all with different footprints, different banners, different constraints, trying to bring a consistent look and feel to a complementary ad service is difficult,” said Albertsons’ Hovorka. “Where we’re pushing ourselves is to really tie that all into a single vision, single strategy, so we can tell an omnichannel story better to our investors to our brands.”

As in the digital realm, retailers may enlist the help of vendors with more established tech know-how to enact their visions of a better-monetized, more digital store. Indeed, NRF’s Big Show was host to plenty of vendors touting those very same capabilities in a sea of booths that stretched across the Javitz Center in Manhattan. But third-party relationships can be messy and add layers to an already complicated retail ecosystem where different players are fighting for a piece of an increasingly lucrative pie.

“A lot of vendors are coming to them now. There’s a price to that. It could be on a programmatic exchange that they don’t control,” said Matt O’Grady, Dunnhumby’s president of Americas, on the NRF show floor.

“I’m a little sympathetic to the retailers because I think they’ve been burned in the past with other in-store technologies that they probably spent a lot of money on — radio frequencies and things like that — that may not have worked out,” O’Grady added.

“You’ve got to have great creative to get somebody to stop in an aisle and watch an ad.”

Evan Hovorka -Head of product innovation, Albertsons Media Collective

Preparation for the in-store evolution is leading companies like Albertsons to invest more in sourcing, negotiations and legal given the amount of sensitive data and contract work involved in the process. The grocer earlier this month partnered with Capgemini on automation tools that serve to improve media planning, operations and content creation.

“I think what we’ll look for is more localized campaign objectives, being able to target specifically within certain regions, within certain zip codes,” said Hovorka. “We’ve launched our AI and automation investment now to prepare for that in-store work later this year.”

If and when more sophisticated in-store tech is implemented, retail media networks will have other factors to consider if they want to truly transform the channel into a storytelling machine. Chief among them: Are the ads from their brand partners actually any good?

“What everybody’s got to remember about brand building, and this is not just relevant to retail, is the value of creative,” said O’Grady. “You’ve got to have great creative to get somebody to stop in an aisle and watch an ad.”

Feature Image Credit: SDI Productions via Getty Images

By Peter Adams

Sourced from MARKETINGDIVE

In News

YouTube is making millions off a new breed of climate denial, a monitoring group says

April 3, 2024 No Comments

BY REUTERS

A CCDH found that 70% of climate denial content focused on attacking climate solutions as unworkable.

YouTube is making millions of dollars a year from advertising on channels that make false claims about climate change because content creators are using new tactics that evade the social media platform’s policies to combat misinformation, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) used artificial intelligence to review transcripts from 12,058 videos from the past six years on 96 of Alphabet’s YouTube channels. The channels promoted content that undermines the scientific consensus on climate change that human behaviour is contributing to long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns, the report said.

CCDH, a non-profit that monitors online hate speech, said its analysis found that climate denial content has shifted away from false claims that global warming is not happening or that it is not caused by greenhouse gases produced from burning fossil fuels. Videos espousing such claims are explicitly banned from generating ad revenue on YouTube, according to Google’s policy.

Instead, the report found that, last year, 70% of climate denial content on the channels analysed focused on attacking climate solutions as unworkable, portraying global warming as harmless or beneficial, or casting climate science and the environmental movement as unreliable. That’s up from 35% five years earlier.

“A new front has opened up in this battle,” Imran Ahmed, chief executive of CCDH, said on a call with reporters. “The people that we’ve been looking at, they’ve gone from saying climate change isn’t happening to now saying, ‘Hey, climate change is happening, but there is no hope. There are no solutions.’”

YouTube is making up to $13.4 million a year from ads on the channels that the report analysed, CCDH said. The group said the AI model was crafted to be able to distinguish between reasonable scepticism and false information.

In a statement, YouTube did not comment directly on the report but defended its policies. ”Debate or discussions of climate change topics, including around public policy or research, is allowed,” a YouTube spokesperson said. “However, when content crosses the line to climate change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos.”

CCDH called on YouTube to update its policy on climate denial content and said the analysis could assist the environmental movement to combat false claims about global warming more broadly.

Feature Image Credit: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

BY REUTERS

Sourced from Fast Company

In News

Internet Marketing: A Beginner’s Guide in 2024

April 3, 2024 No Comments

By Kristy Snyder

Move over print ads and direct mail: Internet marketing is the new trend. Digital marketing accounts for 56% of total marketing spend, and the industry as a whole is expected to reach over $786 billion by 2026.

This means that if your company isn’t already dabbling in online marketing, it needs to be. Use this beginner’s guide to internet marketing to learn more about the basics.

What Is Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing—also known as digital marketing—is the process of using online channels to help an audience learn more about your products. Using tools such as websites, email, online advertising, social media and more, you can reach potential consumers, educate them on your offerings and hopefully convert them into customers.

Types of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is far more than just setting up a website. There are many different approaches to leveraging digital platforms. Here’s a look at some of the most popular types of internet marketing. Keep in mind, many of these overlap, which is why it’s best to utilize several when crafting your overall internet marketing strategy.

Content Marketing

Content marketing encompasses all consumable materials you might use to promote your company. It includes everything from blog posts to infographics to podcasts. The goal of content marketing is to establish your expertise, promote your brand and provide some sort of value to consumers. That might be by educating them on a new subject, providing a relevant tip or even offering entertainment.

To effectively utilize content marketing, you’ll need to pair up with copywriters, video editors, graphic designers and more. Define your objectives for each piece of content by planning and researching, create the content and then distribute it across various online channels including your website, email newsletters, guest posts and more. Depending on your strategy, content marketing can bleed over a lot into social media marketing and SEO marketing.

More and more small businesses are throwing weight into content marketing. In fact, 30% said they’d be increasing their content budget up to 10% in the following year. If your business jumps in as well, you can enjoy increased audience retention, higher conversion rates and increased brand awareness.

SEO Marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing involves perfecting your content so it ranks highly in search engine result pages (SERPs). SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate compared to just 1.7% for outbound leads, so getting listed higher on Google can definitely be financially worthwhile.

This doesn’t mean paying Google to place your ad higher. Instead, it means following Google’s E-E-A-T criteria to naturally hack the system. What does E-E-A-T mean? It stands for:

Experience: Your content is created by someone with first-hand experience in the field.
Expertise: Your content is highly researched or created by an expert.
Authoritativeness: Other sites link to your content.
Trustworthiness: Your content is accurate and your site has good security.

Of course, there’s more to SEO marketing than E-E-A-T. You also want to use good keywords that potential customers are searching for and optimize your on-page title tags, meta descriptions, headers and images. Also, this should go without saying, but your content should be well-written, relevant and not filled to the brim with keyword stuffing that makes it hard to read.

Social Media Marketing

In social media marketing, you’ll use platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to promote your brand and connect with potential customers. And there’s a lot of them out there—an estimated 4.89 billion people spend an average of 151 minutes on social media per day.

Running a social media marketing campaign is not as easy as it sounds, as you’ll need to stand out in a crowded sea of competition. This involves planning out posts in advance, creating a posting schedule and setting an advertising budget. Posts on social media usually include a mix of photos, videos, text and stories based on your brand and your products.

Using social media marketing gives you the chance to interact with followers, humanizing your business and brand. You can also use it as a way to drive traffic to your website, generate leads, increase brand awareness and build relationships.

Affiliate Marketing

Humans are easily influenced. That’s likely why affiliate marketing has grown so much in recent years. It involves partnering with a highly influential individual or entity that can promote your product or service to their followers. For every sale or lead they generate, you’ll pay them a commission.

While affiliates can promote your product on their blog or website, social media is the most popular platform. As many as 61% of Gen Zers and Millennials trust recommendations from social media influencers, and 33% and 26% have bought a product based on an influencer’s recommendation in the last three months, respectively.

Don’t worry—you won’t have to go out into the wild yourself to find affiliate marketers. You can often sign up for an affiliate network that links you up with eligible influencers. Then, you’ll give them a personalized tracking URL and any assets or guidance they need to promote your product. The rest of the campaign is in their hands, meaning you don’t have to worry about anything.

Email Marketing

Email marketing involves sending targeted, personalized and relevant emails to a specific audience with the aim of promoting products, services or fostering customer engagement. These aren’t just random users; instead, they’re people who have willingly signed up for your email newsletter, whether that was through a promotion or after creating an account.

Email marketing can drive a return on investment (ROI) of $36 for every dollar spent. That’s more than any other type of marketing. To take advantage of that potential, you’ll need to provide meaningful content to your subscribers. It should educate them on your products, announce important updates or even inform about special promotions. Design and formatting are also crucial for establishing a brand identity.

You can monitor the performance of your email campaigns by using an email marketing platform. You’ll want to track open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates and unsubscribe rates to measure the effectiveness of your emails.

Internet Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

While internet marketing and traditional marketing can share the same goals, they’re actually quite different. Each one has a distinct approach to promoting services, products and brands. Here are the key differences between the two.

Communication Mediums

For an internet marketing campaign, all of your communications take place online. You might use a variety of platforms, including websites, social media, emails and search engines.

Traditional marketing, on the other hand, takes place off-line. Your ads are shown in person, such as on billboards, direct mail flyers or print publications. They can also be in non-digital media, including radio, television or podcasts.

Demographic Targeting

One of the great things about internet marketing is that you can custom-target specific demographics. Maybe your ideal audience is women in their 30s who are interested in Taylor Swift. Platforms such as Google, Facebook and Instagram let you narrow down the exact type of people you want to show your ads to, making your promotional spend more effective.

Unfortunately, traditional marketing doesn’t always offer such highly targeted approaches. Often, it involves targeting people who live in a certain geographical area. You may be able to somewhat tailor television or radio ads based on the time of day or show that’s on, but there’s still no way to guarantee who is watching or listening.

Budgeting

On the whole, internet marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing. Consider the cost to reach 1,000 people (also known as the cost per mille or CPM) in each category. In 2022, the CPM for social media marketing was $8.15. Reaching the same number of people with direct mail, on the other hand, could cost anywhere from $300 to $3,000.

Lead Tracking

It’s incredibly easy to track internet marketing campaigns. You can collect data on impressions (how many times people see your ad), the number of clicks and even conversions. It’s simple to compare different versions of an ad to see which is performing better, or even look at the actions customers took after clicking your ad.

With traditional marketing, all of this is a lot more complicated. Sure, you can monitor website traffic and sales after starting a new campaign, but you’ll never really be sure if it was the ad that increased your traffic or another factor. Calculating your ROI can be a lot more challenging.

Interactivity and Engagement

If done correctly, internet marketing facilitates two-way communication. For example, imagine you run an ad on Facebook. Users can comment, like and share the ad, giving you greater reach than you’re paying for. You can also reply to their comments and messages, directly answering any questions that arise so they’re more informed on your solutions.

This isn’t quite as intuitive with traditional marketing. Sure, it’s possible to offer a phone number or email address for people to reach out to, but it’s an additional step that many won’t bother to take.

Global Reach

Obviously, internet marketing can reach a lot more people than traditional advertising. The world is just a few clicks away, and you can set up ads that people will see across the globe.

But for many businesses, that’s not always necessary. For example, if you’re a localized business that only services American customers, it’s probably not helpful if you run ads that go viral in China. You may appreciate the limited geographical reach of traditional advertising, especially if you’ve found good niche publications or programming to advertise with.

Internet Marketing Strategies

Now that you know a little more about the ways to market your company on the internet, exactly how do you go about doing it? These internet marketing strategies can guide your efforts as you initialize your first campaign.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

As part of SEO marketing, you’ll need to optimize your website so it stands out in SERPs. You can do this by strategically using keywords in your content. You’ll also want to craft compelling meta tags and descriptions—these are what show up in Google search results.

Optimizing headings and content, structuring user-friendly URLs and effectively linking within your site are a few more good tips. The technical aspects of your website are also important, including site speed, mobile responsiveness, sitemap structure, URL structure and overall user experience. There are plenty of SEO tools that can help you if you get stuck figuring this stuff out.

Don’t forget about off-page SEO! It involves building high-quality backlinks, engaging in social media, collaborating with influencers, contributing guest posts and participating in relevant online communities.

User-Friendly Website Design

Did you know that 88% of online users won’t return to a site after a bad experience? Furthermore, 61% of users say they’ll bail if they can’t find what they’re looking for within five seconds. All of this means that you need to nail your website design.

Users want a site that’s easy to navigate, especially if they’re coming to a landing page from one of your ads. Make sure to include well-structured menus, a logical flow of content and an efficient search function. They’ll also want it to load fast, so optimize your image sizes and enable caching to improve site speeds.

Also, make sure your site is responsive and accessible. Responsive design ensures your website functions well and appears correctly on various devices. To improve accessibility, use readable fonts, suitable font sizes and proper colour contrasts to enhance readability.

Social Media Outreach

Actively engaging with your social media community is essential for building a loyal following. Responding to comments and messages and participating in discussions demonstrate your brand’s genuine interest in its audience. That’s especially true if you’re running an ad and people have questions. Leaving these concerns unaddressed can cause people to lose trust in your brand.

And your social media outreach doesn’t have to stand on its own. Link up your posts with your content strategy so you don’t have to come up with all original content.

Finally, choose the social media platforms where your target audience is most active. This lets you tailor your content and engagement strategies accordingly.

Customer-Centric Approach

A customer-centric approach means you place the needs, preferences and satisfaction of the customer at the forefront of all marketing efforts. The primary objective is to deeply understand your target audience, empathize with their challenges and provide tailored solutions that meet their specific requirements.

To do this, you’ll need to do lots of customer research and profiling. Develop detailed customer personas to create a clear and accurate representation of your ideal customers. Then, map out the entire customer journey—from the first interaction to conversion and beyond. Identify touchpoints where customers engage with your brand, and try to understand their motivations, concerns and expectations at each stage.

Using this information, create tailored messaging and content. Establish a feedback loop where you regularly review customer feedback, analyse data and adapt your strategies accordingly.

Pay-per-Click Advertising

It’s totally possible to craft an internet marketing campaign without spending any money. But if you want to guarantee people will see your content, then you’ll want to try pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This is when you pay advertisers such as Google or Facebook to display your ad to relevant audiences.

The good news? You’re not paying for every person who sees the ad. Instead, you only pay whenever someone clicks on the ad. Now, there’s no guarantee that someone who clicks on your ad will make a purchase or create an account on your site. However, at least you’re only paying to reach interested consumers.

There’s a lot more to PPC ads, including bidding and ad placement. If you’re interested in trying out this strategy, we recommend checking out our guide on PPC advertising, which dives deeper into the nitty-gritty of it all.

Bottom Line

Internet marketing is a powerful tool that’s cost-effective, reaches a global audience, helps target the right people and provides measurable results, engagement and insights. In short, it’s a must-do for your small business.

There are a lot of different methods you can utilize to reach online audiences, but we recommend pairing several together to see the best results. That way, you can tackle your marketing efforts in every digital frontier, from social media to email to video. The result? Hopefully, your business will see a boom in sales, brand awareness and customer trust.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Kristy Snyder

Sourced from Forbes

In News

7 Innovative Marketing Approaches to Boost Your Sales in 2024

April 2, 2024 No Comments

By JESSICA WONG

The year 2024 looks promising for marketers who are willing to embrace technology without sacrificing community.

Within less than two decades, marketing as we know it has changed almost beyond recognition. At the beginning of the century, business owners and marketers had a limited choice of channels through which they could reach potential customers. For small businesses, some of those channels were cost-prohibitive.

The state of marketing in 2024

Over the past two decades, digital marketing has transformed how companies find customers. Type ‘the state of marketing 2024’ into any search engine, and the results will most likely include some of the following key elements: personalization, use of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), creating community, and a degree of uncertainty.

As economic challenges and wars continue to wreak havoc on economies worldwide, forecasts for business performance remain volatile. Still, a handful of trends have been slowly emerging in marketing and are set to become key elements of winning marketing strategies in 2024. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, some of those revolve around the use of technology. At the same time, there is a distinct trend toward human connection. Marketers can make use of both to benefit their brands.

1. Personalized marketing strategies

Gone are the days when entire families gathered in front of radios and TVs to watch a certain program and the advertising content delivered during breaks. For several years now, marketers have emphasized targeting specific audiences rather than using a broad approach.

Experts predict that leading brands will take things one step further in 2024 and introduce true personalization, basing the information consumers see on their needs immediately. Imagine a weather change, for example. As soon as the rain starts, you see adverts for rain gear, umbrellas, and articles discussing weather patterns. The goal is to make content more relevant than ever before.

2. Interactive content and experiences

Interactive marketing communications are also gathering pace. To take advantage of them, marketers can use elements like polls and quizzes to create stronger connections with their target audiences. The goal is to transform the passive connection between the brand and the consumer into active, memorable communication.

Product images and basic videos may no longer be enough to help a product stand out. Instead, leading brands will utilize augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to allow their customers to experience new products and innovations.

3. Innovative use of social media

Social media marketing and advertising have become a core element of the marketing strategies of businesses of all sizes. Social media platforms offer targeted access to audiences, activities can be tailored to fit most marketing budgets, and the platforms lend themselves to community-building.

Over the past few years, ephemeral content that is available briefly and then disappears has been growing in importance. As consumers’ attention spans grow ever shorter, content like Facebook or Instagram stories becomes more easily digestible than longer-form offerings.

Aside from this type of disappearing content, live videos, social commerce offerings, and interactive storytelling that allows the audience to decide the outcome of a story will continue to grow.

4. Embracing new technologies

Most of the key developments in marketing in 2024 will be driven or supported by emerging or developing technologies. Artificial intelligence (AI) has already made its mark on 21^st-century marketing, with nearly two-thirds of marketers telling Hubspot that they are utilizing AI for market research, content creation, and improving the user experience their brands are delivering.

Chatbots have become common on many brands’ websites, improving the user experience by allowing customers to access support 24/7. Combined with AI, chatbots are becoming increasingly more capable. Voice search and other voice-driven technologies are another element of leading marketing strategies in 2024.

5. Community building and user-generated content

The continuing rise of technology has led to something that could be seen as a counter-trend – the demand to create community among audiences. Early examples of these communities include Facebook’s community chat feature in groups or Instagram’s broadcast channels. Both give brands and creators another option to open conversations with multiple users.

In addition, brand communications are no longer a one-way street from the company to the consumer. Some of TikTok’s most popular videos show consumers using products and sharing their experiences authentically and in a highly relatable manner.

6. Sustainability and purpose-driven marketing

Today’s consumers expect more than profit-making from their favorite brands. More and more, discerning consumers are choosing businesses with a greater purpose, such as environmental or social commitments. Two key elements of purpose-driven marketing are searching for sustainable solutions and giving back to the local community.

Highlighting a company’s work in that area will appeal to conscious consumers, but brands must demonstrate a real commitment. Superficial commitments and activities may grab consumers’ attention in the short term, but they are unlikely to deliver long-term benefits.

7. Cross-channel integration

A cohesive and integrated approach to marketing has always been considered best practice. Even though brands can use different channels to reach different audiences, marketing messages must align across those touchpoints. Most audience members will see a brand’s content in different places. Inconsistent messages will be confusing and may drive potential customers away.

2024 is looking promising for marketers willing to embrace technology without letting go of the need for community. While not without its challenges, this year has the potential to transform the way marketers use emerging technologies like AI to create the strongest brand-consumer connections yet.

By JESSICA WONG

Founder and CEO of Valux Digital and uPro Digital.

Jessica is the Founder and CEO of nationally recognized marketing and PR firms, Valux Digital and uPro Digital. She is a digital marketing and PR expert with more than 20 years of success driving bottom-line results for clients through innovative marketing programs aligned with emerging strategies.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

The ‘Meta halo effect’: The secret weapon of search tracking

April 2, 2024 No Comments

By Jane Wareing

Space & Time’s Jane Wareing examines a ‘halo effect’ from Meta ads – and outlines how to optimize your advertising strategy to make the most of it.

Space & Time on Meta ads’ halo effect / Ramez E. Nassif via Unsplash

In digital advertising, understanding the true impact of your campaigns is crucial.

While Meta ads don’t always see the highest last-click return on Google Analytics, they can be highly effective at driving consumer discovery. That’s a significant halo effect. And through search tracking via custom conversions, we can begin to shed light on how it works.

Meta and search tracking 101

Meta’s custom conversion feature means that you can create metrics in the platform, allowing you to track the number of people who have landed on your website via a search engine, after seeing (or clicking on) a Meta ad.

This this works by setting up conversions using Meta’s ‘referring domain’ and ‘URL contains’ parameters and inputting filters to ensure you only pick up website visitors who came through search domains. Depending on how your paid search URL tracking is set up, you can split this simply into ‘paid’ and ‘organic’, or you can dig deeper and split them by campaign types – for example, ‘brand’, ‘non-brand’, and ‘performance max’.

This further split allows you to see the effect of your ads on these different campaign types. For example, in a brand awareness campaign, you may further prove the effectiveness of your advertising through A/B testing and comparing branded search conversions alongside typical brand awareness metrics.

Setting your objectives

Tracking Meta’s halo effect can benefit various types of campaign, targeting different stages of the conversion funnel. This is especially valuable for products or services with longer purchase cycles, as it can illustrate the more immediate impact of your Meta ads and the role they play in driving last-click conversions from other channels.

Either way, there are three key reasons to set up search tracking for your Meta activity, regardless of your product or service.

First, it helps you to understand the true value of Meta ads. By tracking how these ads influence your website traffic, you can measure their effectiveness and make data-driven decisions to test or amend audiences or creative.

Second, you can use it to drive consumers earlier in their purchase journey. Meta ads can act as a catalyst for potential customers to start searching for specific keywords, especially branded keywords. Understanding this can help you create more engaging and educational content to guide them through the conversion funnel.

Third, it opens up the opportunity for highly engaged retargeting audiences. By knowing which users arrived at your website through search engines, you can create retargeting campaigns that specifically target them, increasing the chances of conversion.

Does it work?

We’ve tested this with clients. With one, for example, we gained increased insights into the discovery our Meta ads were driving, including over 86,000 landing page views after searching on Google or Bing during the first month of recording this data.

We also set up a retargeting audience based on those who had landed on a client’s website after searching on Google. Testing this against our original dynamic retargeting campaign, the retargeting campaign delivered a 4.3x higher return on ad spend and 71% lower cost per purchase, as well as a 39% higher click-through rate when looking at Meta attribution data.

When diving into Google Analytics last-click attribution data, we saw even more favourable results, with an 18x higher purchase rate and 4.96x higher return on ad spend for the search retargeting audience compared to the original dynamic retargeting audience. This shows the value of specifically targeting this highly engaged audience, and Meta’s value as a final driver to purchase for this group.

Using search tracking to understand Meta’s halo effect allows you to make informed decisions to optimize your advertising strategy based on key results, as well as offering new retargeting audience opportunities. While customer journeys are available to view in GA4, concrete results within the Meta platform showing the effect of its advertising on other channels can go a long way in proving that Meta ads have a more significant role in driving discovery and conversions than traditional last-click attribution might suggest.

Feature Image Credit: Ramez E. Nassif via Unsplash

By Jane Wareing

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Watch out Windows 11 users: Microsoft may be sharing your Outlook emails without you knowing – here’s how to stop it

March 28, 2024 No Comments

By Muskaan Saxena

Over 700 third parties, including Microsoft, could be reading parts of your emails

It looks like Microsoft’s penchant for collecting its users’ data may get it in more trouble, with a worrying new report suggesting that it’s sharing more information from emails sent by the new Outlook for Windows app than people may know.

This is particularly concerning as most people check their emails daily, to keep up with friends and family, or send important documents and information at work, and with the Outlook for Windows app now being the default program for emails in Windows 11, this discovery could impact a lot of people

MSPoweruser reports that the team behind ProtonMail, an end-to-end encrypted email service and competitor to Microsoft Outlook, has discovered the worrying scale of user data being collected by Outlook for Windows, which reportedly includes your emails, contacts, browsing history, and possibly even location data.

ProtonMail’s blog post goes so far as to call Outlook for Windows “a surveillance tool for targeted advertising”, a harsh comment, certainly, but people who downloaded the new Outlook for Windows app have encountered a disclaimer that explains how Microsoft and hundreds of third parties will be helping themselves to your data.

It seems like the majority of the data is being used primarily for advertising purposes, with users having to opt out of sharing their data for each of the 772 companies manually. This means that by default you may be sharing a heck of a lot of information, and if you wish to opt out, the process is time-consuming and annoying.

Here we go again …

Microsoft has a rather dubious past of being quite greedy with user data. This time last year you might remember our report detailing serious privacy concerns users had with Windows 11, with the PC Security Channel uploading a YouTube video that demonstrated that before you even connect to the internet or open an app, Windows 11 was collecting and sending data to Microsoft – and possibly third-party servers.

That being said, we should remember that ProtonMail is a direct competitor of Microsoft’s email apps and services, and the team behind it would be very keen to direct criticism at Outlook for Windows. ProtonMail is a service dedicated to user privacy and keeping users’ email (as well as calendar, file storage, and VPN) encrypted, so we do have to keep in mind the team’s motives for highlighting this, as the company would want to make its privacy and security look much better than Outlook.

We also have to consider the fact that Outlook for Windows is a free app, so you could argue that Microsoft can support the app and continue adding features by providing user data to paying third parties. Regardless, while you can technically opt out of the data sharing, it’s still cheeky of Microsoft to have the opt-out option be a per-advertiser toggle click rather than a simple ‘reject all’ button. But, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Opt out as fast as you can!

If all of this has you concerned and itching to opt out entirely, we’ve got you covered. Head over to the General section of your Outlook for Windows settings and you should see an option called ‘Advertising Preferences’. When you click that you’ll see a large list of company names and toggles near their name set to ‘enable’.

Unless you create a brand new Outlook email, from what we can tell there’s no single button that will deselect all of them, so you may have to set some time aside to sit down and deselect them all. Each advertiser has an option for you to read more about their privacy policies, and once you open that you’ll see another option to opt out.

Microsoft Outlook — (Image credit: Future)

I created a new Outlook email account just to test it out, and the option to reject all did pop up when Outlook for Windows first opened, and I also have the option to deselect all the advertising preferences at once in the Settings page as well, though that might not appear for people who have already set up the app with an existing Outlook account.

If sharing our data by default is the price we have to pay for free apps like Outlook for Windows, at least Microsoft seems to have made turning off that sharing easier than ProtonMail’s team have made out. Still, this shows that it’s well worth paying attention to user agreements and disclaimers for free apps, especially from Microsoft, so you know exactly how much of your data you’re sharing – and who has access to it.

Featured Image credit: Shutterstock

By Muskaan Saxena

Sourced from techradar

In News

There’s No ‘Vs.’ Between Brand and Performance Marketing

March 28, 2024 No Comments

By Jason Notte

Leaders from SeaWorld, BNY Mellon, Brainlabs said strategy should involve both short- and long-term preparation

At a panel entitled “Brand vs. Performance,” the brand marketing, performance marketing and “versus” portions of that thesis were all up for debate.

As SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment chief marketing and communications officer Marisa Thalberg told ADWEEK community editor Luz Corona during the Outlook 2024 event, “versus” presents short-term sales—”performance”—and long-term brand building as not only exclusive, but at odds with each other.

”We are essentially implying that whatever is on the other side of the equation is what? Not performance,” Thalberg said. “If you’re a CFO (chief financial officer), which are you inclined toward? We’ve created a false choice that is really creating tremendous headwinds for us as marketers.”

Thalberg and others on the panel advocate for a “brand and performance” approach that’s gained momentum among marketers in recent years. With 50% of marketers telling LinkedIn that they want to run brand and demand campaigns together, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising recommends allocating 60% of marketing budget to brand and 40% to demand.

In the age we are all in, consumer psychology and platform mastery are the keys to brand success.

Divya Gururaj, global chief client officer of Brainlabs

But the brand also has to extend beyond building awareness. Thalberg said it has to speak to a brand’s salience and relevance in a consumer’s life: They may know your brand, but do they know what you’re about? That’s the issue that Natalie Sunderland faces as CMO of BNY Mellon, a 240-year-old institution that would love a cameo on HBO’s The Gilded Age—but also wouldn’t mind people identifying it as a modern financial services platform.

“We are the oldest bank in America and the oldest company in New York City, but people don’t really know who we are, and if they do know who we are, they might have a bit of an outdated perception of us,” she said. “I need to shift perception so that our clients recognize that we are solving not just yesterday’s problems, but today’s and tomorrow’s problems.”

This requires a blend of brand and performance marketing as subtle as adding dashes of yellow, pink and purple to the drab designs of the legacy banking sector and as urgent as building a full social media personality and touting BNY Mellon’s 240th-anniversary events.

As noted by Divya Gururaj, global chief client officer of Brainlabs, the modern marketplace requires “brand building with a performance mindset and performance with a brand-building mindset.”

The pandemic only made that need more acute. Gururaj noted that increased digital adoption, penetration, consumption, online commerce and social media traffic lowered entry barriers for brand launches. With 88% of respondents to Nielsen’s 2021 Trust in Advertising Study saying that they had more faith in the recommendations of people they knew than in any other channel, brands like Crocs and Stanley have unprecedented opportunity to build both brand and sales simultaneously.

“All of these brands, if you look at what they’re doing, it’s understanding consumer psychology, it’s mastery of platforms and leaning into influencers, social media, the whole digital landscape, and using them to inform how they are building brands,” Gururaj said. “In the age we are all in, consumer psychology and platform mastery are the keys to brand success.”

Feature Image Credit: Ivan Piedra Photography

By Jason Notte

Jason is an Adweek staff writer covering the business of marketing.

Sourced from ADWEEK

In News

5 ChatGPT Prompts To Build A 100-Year Brand (and Make More Money Now)

March 27, 2024 No Comments

By Jodie Cook

Anyone can write a landing page, run some ads and start a business. It’s not difficult. But very few can build a brand that stands the test of time. One with happy, repeat customers, a solid reputation, and a commitment to quality in every transaction. Businesses that started decades ago have one thing in common: they cracked the code of longevity. They figured out what was working and doubled down. They listened to their customers. They didn’t give up until they were established. Set up your long-term brand right now and you’ll see more success in the short term too.

Chris Orzechowski is a brand growth strategist and founder of agencies including The 100 Year Brand. His work has generated over $120million in revenue for e-commerce brands, including Carnivore Snax, Gold Medal Wine Club, Factor 75, and author of Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki. Orzechowski wrote the bestselling book, The Moat: How to Build a Durable, Profitable E-Commerce Brand That Can Last Forever, and has trained over 5,000 students in his marketing and brand growth practices.

Orzechowski wants to help you build a brand that never dies, and these 5 ChatGPT prompts make the ideal place to start. They have been modified to include the 9 crucial components of an effective prompt. Copy, paste and edit the square brackets in ChatGPT, and keep the same chat window open so the context carries through.

Build a brand that goes the distance with ChatGPT

Define your X-factor

In a sea of sameness, you can only compete on price. And no one wants to do that. Stand out for something else. Find your X-factor. According to Orzechowski, this is “the thing about your brand that means consumers inconvenience themselves to buy from you instead of taking a more convenient or cheaper option.” You should know exactly what your X-factor is so you can lean into it more. Use this prompt to clearly articulate the difference between you and everyone else.

“My company provides [outline your offering] for [outline your target audience]. I want to identify what specifically makes my brand unique and compelling to establish my “X-factor”. Acting as a brand specialist, analyze my brand and its offering to ascertain why a customer might prefer my brand over more convenient or cheaper alternatives. Start by opening a dialogue and ask questions, one by one, about aspects including product quality, customer experience, brand values, or any other unique selling points, to establish my X-factor. After five questions, suggest how I can further enhance and communicate this X-factor to make my brand even more irresistible to potential customers. Include the strategies I should employ to emphasize these unique qualities in my marketing and branding efforts.”

Build a moat around your business

Waste no energy being defensive by protecting your business interests. Spend more time on the offense, executing your plan of attack. “This prompt helps you forecast disruptions in your industry and come up with a plan to thrive,” said Orzechowski, who knows running a company on the back foot is no way to operate. Ask for ChatGPT’s assistance on what might be around the corner so you can cover every base and thrive during any turmoil.

“Given what you know about my company, our target audience and how we differentiate ourselves, help us prepare for future change, especially the impact of AI and other new technologies and how they might affect our revenue and position in the marketplace. Our ultimate goal is to build a moat around our brand so our company can survive and thrive for the next 100 years. Acting as a business analyst, outline the 5 steps I should take to ensure my company’s success over the next century.”

Assess your brand voice

“Brand voice is an abstract concept,” explained Orzechowski. “But this prompt will make it concrete.” He said it’s especially important if you’re hiring marketing team members or agencies, because “you need to be able to communicate your brand voice, as esoteric and ethereal as it might be.” If you can’t delegate work to others, your company will stay small and won’t fullfill its potential. “This prompt will list the key elements of your brand voice so your team members or partners can incorporate it into your communication.”

“Act as a brand strategist and analyse the attached origin story of my brand. My objective is to be able to confidently delegate the creation of marketing copy in the style of the document pasted below. Answer the following questions in a way that’s helpful to a marketing manager responsible for creating content from the analysis. 1) How would you describe the style and tone of this copy? 2) What would this copy suggest are key life goals and obstacles for my customers? 3) How does my brand aim to help them? After answering these questions, list the 5 key elements of my brand that should be incorporated into all marketing messaging. Here’s the copy: [Include the copy].”

Lock in your acquisition

Prospects in your pipeline mean nothing until they have converted to paying clients. Without paying clients, you don’t have a business. Orzechowski explained that, “every customer you acquire is a future cash flowing asset. But getting the cash to flow requires them to make that first purchase.” And that’s where most businesses fall down. Find out why people aren’t buying right now by analysing the ones who already said no. Dig into the lost reasons; the causes for someone to look elsewhere or decide to do nothing. The more data you have, the more you can find out how to compel products into a purchase. Secure the medium term of your business and the long term takes care of itself.

“I want to find out the main reasons prospects don’t turn into customers. I’m pasting a list of lost reasons by the number of times they were used. We also have [number] prospects in our existing pipeline who haven’t yet gone ahead. Act as a positive business analyst and use the data we have to suggest our main weaknesses in customer acquisition and suggest tactics we could try to (a) re-engage people who previously said no and (b) go out to current active prospects with a more compelling offer.”

Punch up your emails

Build a 100-year brand with email campaigns that can run autonomously. Make your email campaigns an extension of your high quality brand, not set up for a quick buck. When you get this right, your prospects will turn to customers as if by magic. You won’t need to change them up, you won’t need to spend any time writing new ones. Orzechowski said this is, “one of the easiest ways to increase your sales” and recommends using ChatGPT as your “writing assistant and copy chief.” He believes business owners often “forget crucial conversion elements that diminish the power of your sales message.” This prompt will help you double check your work so you can handle your customers objections before they even think of them.

“I’m writing an email to [describe the people on your email list] with the purpose of selling [describe the product the email is designed to sell]. Acting as a marketing specialist, analyse the copy and tell me its strengths and weaknesses from a conversion perspective. Using what you know about my business and its X-factor, highlight any key points missing from the copy. Make suggestions on improvements I can make to ensure the email is more compelling, true to my brand voice, and more likely to convert.”

5 ChatGPT prompts to build a 100-year brand

If you could get everything right today, your business’ upward trajectory would start from now. As your customer base grew, so would its reputation, website power, pipeline and number of referrals. More customers would tell their friends, more of your future would be secure. Start the ball rolling with these five key elements. Define your X-factor, build a moat around your company, and assess your brand voice to communicate with clarity. Lock in your acquisition by assessing prospect lost reasons and punch up your emails with ChatGPT’s critical eye. The next century starts today.

Build a brand that goes the distance with ChatGPT

Define your X-factor

Feature Image Credit: CHRIS ORZECHOWSKI

By Jodie Cook

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

Founder of Coachvox AI – we make AI coaches. Forbes 30 under 30 class of 2017. Post-exit entrepreneur and author of Ten Year Career. Competitive powerlifter and digital nomad.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Affiliate marketing: Top 7 must-know trends for 2024

March 27, 2024 No Comments

By Rob Davinson

In 2024, affiliate marketing will see brand-creator alliances rise, TikTok vs. Amazon competition, programmatic opportunities, and more, says Awin’s global head of content, Rob Davinson.

Affiliate marketing mirrors the broader digital landscape, with trends at the macro level resonating in our microcosm. In 2024, we’ll see emergent trends (artificial intelligence (AI), social commerce and retail media to name just a few) that will impact affiliate marketers.

Here we breakdown the key changes (and challenges) that affiliate marketing is likely to encounter this year, and what they mean for the industry.

1. Brand-creator affiliation will rise amidst social media slowdown

With global digital ad spend growth slowing (Dentsu predicts only 6.5% growth in 2024, after a historically low-growth year in 2023), and social media facing a similar slowdown as new user growth plateaus, brands can combat this by directly partnering with creators, as influencer marketing proves more resilient than paid social.

Major brands like The Body Shop and Walmart are two examples that launched large-scale creator affiliate programs in the last year, tying social awareness to controlled marketing outcomes. We see this trend further developing in 2024, as it not only counters platform-dependent risks, but benefits influencers seeking stable incomes,

Awin’s platform witnessed a surge of registering influencers in 2023 (over 10,000), foreshadowing continued growth in 2024.

2. TikTok vs. Amazon: Affiliate model’s value amid new competition

As major tech giants mature, Amazon transitions from a shopping marketplace to an ad space, while TikTok evolves from entertainment to a product purchasing platform. This encroachment on each other’s territory is likely to intensify competition, with TikTok employing an affiliate-type model, mirroring Amazon’s commerce flywheel.

Both platforms embracing affiliate strategies validates its efficacy. Brands may channel more ad budgets into these tech giants, necessitating a choice between entering new marketplaces or driving traffic to their e-commerce sites.

Opting for the latter requires enhancing the shopper experience, supported by affiliate tech partners, as exemplified by Nike’s livestream shopping collaboration with Contester, enhancing the Cyber period with engaging content on their site.

3. Programmatic challenges will propel affiliate ad spend growth

In 2023, the programmatic ad industry faced serious challenges, as reported in the ANA’s Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study. Among its findings was the fact that there is $22bn of wastage from the $88bn programmatic supply chain.

Advertisers often grapple with misaligned incentives, prioritizing cost over value, resulting in diminished ad quality. In contrast, affiliate marketing’s performance model, linking ad spend to tangible outcomes like sales, proves more valuable.

It says a lot that global spend in affiliate marketing last year is estimated to be around $14bn, a third less than was wasted in programmatic. As senior marketers consider their budgets this year, the data suggests affiliate marketing should garner greater consideration for its effectiveness.

4. News and media publishers will leverage affiliate commerce content

In 2024, with a record number of global elections, including the US presidential election and 40 national elections, political interest will drive traffic to news media sites.

Despite heightened ad spend forecasts, news publishers may not see increased income due to past challenges with programmatic display ads. Affiliate channels offer a solution for publishers facing declining ad monetization and brand block listing.

Additionally, major sporting events like the European Football Championships and the Olympic Games in Paris promise increased traffic, creating opportunities for affiliate efforts to offset ad revenue challenges and enhance the value of journalism amid growing demand.

5. AI revolution in search will pose a threat to affiliate longtail

When it comes to online, the significance of high Google search rankings has been paramount. As the old adage (meme caption) goes: “The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google’s search results.”

Google’s search console, shaping our online information-seeking behaviour for two decades, faces challenges from Google’s monetization motives and emerging AI-powered search consoles, like ChatGPT. These AI consoles provide instant answers, diminishing the reliance on external links and altering the traditional internet ecosystem.

Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) introduces AI-generated responses, potentially reducing organic traffic to publisher websites. Publishers face limited options – allow crawling for SGE or risk exclusion from Google search. SEO adherence to E-E-A-T values becomes crucial for publishers navigating this transformative shift, emphasizing the affiliate industry’s need to adapt and maintain audience-centric effectiveness.

6. Travel resurgence will inspire pop culture-inspired trips and affiliate growth

While some predicted its near-extinction after the 2019 lockdown, the travel industry is booming as we begin 2024.

IATA predicts that this year will exceed 2019’s travel record, with 4.7 billion people expected to board airlines in 2024. Awin observes a surge in affiliate-driven travel bookings, a trend set to continue as consumer confidence rises, airline capacity grows, and major events drive demand.

Expedia and Amadeus foresee a significant year for experience-based tourism (think set-jetting and music festivals). Affiliates play a crucial role in the complex shopper journey, offering inspiration, comparisons, and personalized options.

Brand partnerships, where one advertiser promotes another complementary one as part of the customer’ booking experience, thrived in 2023. Travel brands are well set to capitalise on this growth with lots of potential match-ups from other brands keen to tap into consumers’ resurgent appetite for travel.

7. As cheap fashion challenges sustainability efforts, green affiliates will emerge

Despite Cop28’s pivotal agreement to shift from fossil fuels, inertia persists around climate change. In 2024, the rise of ultra-fast fashion platforms like Shein and Temu, fuelled by the TikTok trend of buying cheap dupes, contributes to growing landfill fashion.

Even impacting Amazon, Teemu users spend nearly double the time compared to Amazon, prompting the e-commerce giant to lower fees for clothes under $20. However, some affiliates continue to promote mindful consumer choices innovatively. Examples include Refoorest, planting trees for site visits, and Axon Mobile incentivizing eco-friendly commuting. And another new promising solution for 2024 is spearheaded by Birl, who are introducing the circular economy to e-commerce through their smart resale system.

By Rob Davinson

Sourced from The Drum

In News

There’s only one streaming device that lets you escape ads

March 26, 2024 No Comments

By Phil Nickinson

Here we go again, folks. First it was Amazon Fire TV, with a large (and apparently unescapable) ad that invaded the home screen. And Chromecast with Google TV reportedly is starting to do the same sort of thing, at least if a singular post on Reddit is any indication.

I haven’t been able to replicate the experience on my Chromecast with Google TV. That might or might not be indicative of anything. For one, I don’t use the Chromecast as my usual device of choice (though it does end up in my gear bag on most trips). For another, I run a Pi-hole ad-blocker on my entire home network — and still very much think it’s a thing you should use if you have any sort of connected TV or streaming device. Finally, and more likely, this new home screen ad hasn’t seen a widespread rollout just yet.

In any event, nobody should be surprised by this turn of events, even if we don’t like it. Google’s job is to make money. And it does so by selling advertising. Same goes for Amazon Fire TV. Same goes for Roku. And you can absolutely make the argument that Amazon, Google, and Roku are now advertising companies first, and anything else second.

Google, for its part, just announced $9.2 billion in revenue from YouTube advertising in the fourth quarter of 2023 (up from $7.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022.) “We’re pleased with the NFL Sunday Ticket signups in our first season,” Philipp Schindler, Google senior vice president and chief business officer, said during the earnings call.

But it was advertising — not pure subscription numbers — that stood out in the mention of YouTube TV and NFL Sunday Ticket. By literally cornering the market on out-of-market Sunday NFL games, Google is able to sell that many more ads. Lucrative ones, no doubt.

“Advertisers can buy from an NFL lineup as part of our YouTube Select portfolio,” Schindler continued. “And this actually allows advertisers to reach football fans across YouTube’s pretty unique breadth of NFL content, independently of whether you are viewing live NFL games or on YouTube TV or Primetime Channels or watching NFL highlights or postgame commentary on YouTube channels.”

Roku makes things even more clear. It made $787 million in revenue on advertising in the third quarter of 2023, but only $125 million on hardware. It’s an advertising company first. Everything else second.

Which brings us to the obvious question: Is there a streaming device you can buy that won’t bombard you with advertising? The answer is “yes,” and it also happens to be the streaming box that we think is the best you can buy — Apple TV 4K.

A new search feature on Apple TV 4K. — The Apple TV 4K home screen is boring. But it also doesn’t have advertising. Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

You’re still going to get a lot out of Apple TV 4K even if you’re not in the Apple ecosystem. (I used it for years while I was still on Android phones.) In addition to hardware and software that practically lasts forever, you get a home screen that does not contain any display advertising. Not all ads are created equal, and display ads are the sort we’re talking about here. You’ll see the occasional (somewhat annoying) notification for a hot new show or movie on Apple TV. And you’ll eventually see a notification for a sporting event while you’re watching said game. It happens. And I still chuckle anytime it tells me to hop over to a “close” soccer match. They’re almost all close.

But Apple TV 4K does not have display ads. You won’t be tempted by a crispy chicken wrap. Or any other wrap. And definitely not any chicken. You’ll not see a home screen with much more than row upon row of app icons. The top row will give a couple show previews, but that’s hardly the same thing as a display ad.

That could one day change. Never say never, especially when potential revenue is concerned. But Apple, generally speaking, isn’t a company to sully its products with display ads, whether it’s on home screens or hardware. You’ll not find an ad attacking you from within the notifications of an iPhone, nor will you find a sticker affixed to the body of a MacBook letting the world know whose processor is inside. (Not even when Apple was still using Intel chips.)

For now, though? If you want the cleanest, ad-free user experience, there’s only one option. It’s not Google TV. It’s not Fire TV. It’s not Roku. And it’s none of the built-in TV operating systems.

It’s Apple TV 4K. Full stop.

By Phil Nickinson

Sourced from digitaltrends