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In News

Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams and other film stars take us behind the scenes for Apple TV+

April 3, 2019 No Comments

As part of its big rollout of its new content services, Apple debuted a new short film for Apple TV+ featuring some of the most creative minds in film taking us inside their respective worlds on the anxieties and triumphs of their craft.

‘Storytellers’ was shot by Academy Award-winning cinematographer/filmmaker Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki. The film features iconic storytellers – Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, Sofia Coppola, Ron Howard, Octavia Spencer, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Damien Chazelle, M. Night Shyamalan and Hailee Steinfeld – who take us through the creative journey of telling stories that matter.

By Kyle O’Brien

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Culture secretary commissions study into ‘opaque’ world of online advertising

March 29, 2019 No Comments

By John Glenday

The UK government has moved towards launching a formal investigation into the ‘largely opaque and extremely complex’ online advertising industry and the power wielded by Facebook and Google on the digital ad market.

It comes following the publication of the Cairncross review, which highlighted how tech giants like Google and Facebook are the root cause of the crises facing publishers.

Culture secretary Jeremy Wright told the House of Commons yesterday (Tuesday 12 February) the Competition & Markets Authority has been commissioned to study the digital ad ecosystem to establish whether there are grounds to launch a full investigation into practices prevalent in the industry, a process which would legally oblige the tech firms to hand over sensitive financial information.

Wright also said had asked the Charity Commission to investigate whether publishers can be afforded charitable status to aid local and investigative journalism.

A third tier of efforts to reform the sector will see civil servants conduct a parallel investigation into regulation of the online advertising space as a whole, a process which could result in new regulatory powers to enforce fair play.

Shadow culture secretary, Tom Watson, said the government was united in its desire for major technology companies be more accountable to parliament.

“Even in these dark days of Brexit and increasing division in politics, there is one man who is uniting this house: Mark Zuckerberg,” he said.

“He insulted us all when he refused to attend the [Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport] select committee. He may think the UK market and our institutions are not a priority for him. But I hope he knows there is now a new resolve that transcends our party differences to deal with the abuses by his company and others.”

Feature Image Credit: Digital ad market under a microscope over Facebook/Google monopoly

By John Glenday

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Sky, Unilever and P&G slash UK traditional ad spend as Brexit approaches

March 21, 2019 No Comments

By John McCarthy

Some of the UK’s largest traditional advertising spenders greatly tightened their belts in 2018, with overall spend slumping across cinema, outdoor, press, radio and TV.

According to research from Nielsen, top spender Procter & Gamble reduced its traditional ad spend from £196m to £186m in the UK last year. Sky’s expenditure, meanwhile, slumped to second with a 30% decline from £177m to £124m. Unilever fell out of the top three advertisers for the first time in the last five years, coming in at number seven and down 29.2% to £82.8m from £116m.

By John McCarthy–

Sourced from The Drum

In News

4 Benefits to Advertising on Instagram

March 12, 2019 No Comments

By Robert Katai

There was a time when business owners relied solely on referral marketing.

The “Word of Mouth” strategy was perfect for businesses operating in small communities where every customer could spread the word and attract other customers from the same town or city.

Things changed during the 20th century when radio and television gave people access to more information. However, it was the Internet that triggered one of the most important and most drastic shifts in marketing, business, and lifestyle. It changed the way we communicate and, of course, the way we market and advertise our products and businesses.

Now, there are no limits in marketing and advertising. The Internet makes it easier for everyone. Choose the right platform and the right way to communicate with your audience and success is right around the next corner. Let’s talk about the latest trends in social media advertising and one of the best platforms to deliver your message:

Aim for success and go visual!

Facebook and YouTube, both leading multimedia channels and social communities, are mostly visual.

This is, in many ways, the main reason why they’re so successful.

[clickToTweet tweet=”People react better to images and videos than texts and slogans.” quote=”People react better to images and videos than texts and slogans.”]

People want to see, hear and learn more, but their time is limited. The problem is classic social media platforms are time-consuming.

You need to deliver your message fast and concise to be able to attract fans or customers. And not all the social media platforms promote this kind of communication.

Is there a platform that is visual and popular, easy to access and able to deliver instant messages? Yes, there is, and we’re referring to Instagram.

Why advertise on Instagram?

With more than 1 billion active users, Instagram is a leading social media platform. Not convinced by this number? Well, just a little while ago, Instagram announced its 700 million users milestone. A growth of almost 30+% in a little time tells us more about this platform’s popularity and future potential than anything else.

In simple words, it has become a huge and diverse online community with unlimited marketing potential.

Of course, Facebook has more active users than Instagram. However, shear numbers may not be the first thing to consider when advertising a small business. If you want to successfully promote your small business, you should look first at the relevant data. The statistics are more than just simple numbers calculated in order to attract more users.

According to Forrester, Instagram is the king of social media with a 4.21% engagement rate.

This is a huge number, considering that Facebook and Twitter combined barely reach a 0.10 engagement rate. “Instagram delivered 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter” Forrester ads.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Instagram is the king of social media with 4,21% engagement rate.” quote=”Instagram is the king of social media with 4,21% engagement rate.”]

What are the benefits of Instagram advertising?

Here are the real benefits of advertising on Instagram.

There are more than 700 million users on Instagram and the community is still growing.
Instagram and Facebook are connected. So it’s easier to target your audience based on Facebook data. All budgeting and scheduling tasks, the setup and creation of ads are done through Facebook. So you don’t need to start from scratch and learn about Instagram, once you’ve already used its sister platform for marketing and ads.
Instagram ads are non-intrusive and less likely to annoy your targeted audience.
The engagement rate on Instagram is higher than the engagement rate on any other social media platform.
You can easily integrate Shopify and sell your products instantly.
Instagram measures the success of your campaign based on awareness, reach and recall instead of follower counts, likes or comments.
Most people use their smartphones to read their news, socialize on Facebook or post their own stories and update social media timelines. Most smartphones feature high-end cameras that can shoot photographs to be immediately posted on Instagram. Everybody can be an amateur photographer. Instagram is the best channel for this type of media and it’s why most mobile users have Instagram accounts.
In terms of ROI and cost, Instagram returns the best results. It’s effective and less time-consuming than other online marketing channels.

How to promote your small business on Instagram

There are several options when launching an Instagram campaign. But you need to know from the start exactly what you want and what your target is.

Learn as much as possible about Instagram and Instagram advertising by reading everything you can find online about this topic.

I recommend this exceptional article by Oberlo that will teach you the basics of how to advertise on Instagram.

You’ll have to choose which type of your campaign will be the best for your business.

Basically, there are 2 advertising methods on Instagram, the free one and of course, the paid ads feature.

1. Free marketing

I am sure most people reading this article have already tested and used Instagram. If you already have a personal account you’ll need to set up a new account for your small business.

If you’re selling products, you can integrate Instagram, Facebook and Shopify and instantly sell to your followers. Posting relevant images and videos and build your brand online, and attract more customers and followers.

Be aware that these images should be targeted, attractive and at the same time, of high quality. If you are not a skilled photographer, hire one that can deliver the best images to be successful.

2. Paid marketing

The most profitable method to advertise on Instagram is, of course, the paid one. If you’ve previously advertised your business on Facebook, then you already know how to advertise on Instagram.

Here are the types of ads you can post on Instagram and of course, how can you benefit from them.

Select an editor, such as “Ads Manager”, “Power Editor” or “Facebook API”, choose your objective, choose your audience and your budget.

There are 3 main types of Instagram ads to choose from when starting an online campaign:

1. Instagram Photo Ads

You can tell a story or promote your products online through visually engaging images. Market your small business or brand to a broad audience or target just local customers from your geographic area or hometown.

2. Instagram Video Ads

Create video ads up to 60 seconds long and deliver them to your target audience. Time is very limited these days and I would recommend shorter videos. They’ll get maximum attention and the expected response from your potential and existing customers.

While photo ads are your best choice when dealing with Instagram, videos can be effective if they’re short and have the potential to go viral.

3. Instagram Carousel Ads

These types of ads make Instagram users swipe to see additional images and call to action on your official website to learn more about your products or services. In many ways, a Carousel Ads campaign is similar to a content marketing campaign because it delivers valuable information to users.

The main goal is to get your potential customers to visit your website once you’ve managed to draw their attention.

4. Instagram Stories Ads

Instagram Stories ads are the “new kid in town”. With over 250 million daily users it’s a great way to grow your brand awareness. Just like how Smartketer has done in this case study.

I will finish with a Slide presentation from Socialbakers on why Instagram is important for every small business owner in 2017.

By Robert Katai

Robert Katai is an expert on Instagram. Robert is a Visual Marketer, Blogger and Brand Evangelist Bannersnack. Passionate about visual marketing, Instagram, content marketing and always up to date with the latest trends.

Sourced from NEAL SCHAFFER

In News

Joe updates logo to reflect the recent growth of the brand

February 1, 2019 No Comments

By John McCarthy

Digital publisher Joe Media has unveiled a new logo and identity as the brand looks to deliver a more coherent look across its numerous sub brands.

The company, founded in 2010 by Irish entrepreneur Niall McGarry, has largely held the same identity for the last decade. Its look has been updated by an in-house team to run better on mobile and evolve to better reflect the intent of the company.

In particular, it has expanded from Joe Media to also encapsulate verticals such as Football Joe, Sports Joe, Politics Joe, Comedy Joe, MMA Joe, Fit Joe and Rugby Joe. As a result, it required an identity that can better adapt across numerous platforms and audiences.

Rebecca Fennelly, head of brand and communications, told The Drum: “The new design reflects our heritage as much as it does our growth, evolution and big ambitions for the near future. We are still the same Joe – same mission, values and personality. We want to enrich lives by entertaining and inspiring through our original content. We still pride ourselves on our continuous investment into legacy journalism and modern-day storytelling. But we are always innovating.

“It is something we’ve become known for. When it comes to new logo designs, there tends to be knee-jerk assumptions made that they mean a ‘rebrand’ or a move away from a previous identity. When others may need to change up shop in big ways, Joe is building on something we’ve been working hard on from day one. ‘Brick by Brick’ as we say here. We are very proud of our roots and the distinct brand heritage we’ve built for Joe, and it is all enveloped into the carefully calculated subtleties of the new logo design.”

The project was led by Joe’s head of design Jack Homan, having previously worked at Channel 4 and Channel 5, and was delivered by an in-house team.

On the work, Homan said: “Breaking out from Joe’s old box means we can be more playful with our logo. For big editorial and commercial features we’ll look to build bespoke artwork featuring our logo, using the word-mark itself as the boundary box. The old Joe logo was boxed in, we wanted to break out and let the typography speak for itself.

“The logo now has a balance that the old did not. The ‘J’ and the ‘E’ are the same width. The aperture of the ‘O’ is the same size as the top bar of the ‘J’ and the middle appendage of the ‘E’. Turn both the ‘J’ and the ‘E’ in on themselves and they will meet in the middle of the ‘O’. This balance allows us to more easily lock our new logo up with commercial partners and our sub-brands.”

He concluded: “Whilst a lot of work went into this new design, it was important we didn’t move too far from our original logo, but rather embrace the best of it in the new iteration.

Late in 2018, The Drum sat down with the title’s, head of content Evan Fanning, to learn about how it is scaling up promising talent in order to take on more-established media players.

He said: “Going to a place like Joe with the freedom to attack things without the newspaper deadweight was really exciting. We say we do ‘traditional media, but digitally’.”

By John McCarthy

Sourced from The Drum

In News

How Much Digital Advertising Is Too Much?

December 5, 2018 No Comments

By Greg Sobiech

It’s been almost two years since Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer of Procter & Gamble, told the digital advertising industry to clean up its act. The e, currently the world’s second largest CPG company, was tired of what he perceived as massive waste in the digital advertising supply chain. He was referring to the lack of transparency between advertisers and digital agencies and the alphabet soup of ad-tech players that created complexity without always clearly defining value.

Since Pritchard was the man holding the purse strings of one of the single largest advertising budgets in the world, the digital industry stood up and took notice.

Getting Tough

Since that time agencies, publishers, and the ad-tech industry have all taken steps to increase transparency, both around media quality and around where and how advertising dollars are actually spent.

In mid-2017, Pritchard declared the job of cleaning up digital roughly half done citing reductions in fraud and increased transparency. However, he didn’t stop there.

Between April and July of 2017, P&G cut more than $100 million in digital advertising spend, citing the continued prevalence of bot traffic and brand safety challenges presented by risky content. These reductions remained in place from July until December, removing roughly another $100 million from the market by the end of the year. The reduction was meant to reduce waste, pulling dollars away from risky, fraudulent, and non-viewable inventory. But the final impact went much further than reducing waste.

The Result

According to P&G, the result of these dramatic cuts to its digital spend was a 20% reduction in ineffective ad spend. In some cases, P&G reduced its spend by as much as 50% with specific big-name partners with no reported negative impact on ROI.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the CPG leader measured a 10% increase in overall reach of its campaigns. On the surface, this result is counterintuitive, P&G reduced its spend and the overall number of placements, but reached more consumers. The result was likely driven by the increased efficiency of carefully pruning ineffective inventory and reallocating remaining budget to higher quality placements.

P&G competitor Unilever, which likewise commands market-shaping amounts of ad spend, similarly reduced its total advertising budget. The CPG giant reduced spend by nearly 51% across digital channels. While Unilever doesn’t break out its ad spend, the company similarly reported no ill-effects on ROI from the dramatic spending cuts.

What next?

Experiments by CPG leaders like P&G and Unilever have made waves in the market, revealing that ad spend alone doesn’t drive value when not tied to quality metrics like viewable inventory.

By pushing the envelope on quality these advertisers learned that some of the seemingly immutable paradigms of digital — the scale is king, and quality is beyond our control — weren’t as unshakable previously assumed.

So how should advertisers proceed based on this information? Three tips to keep in mind:

The platforms can be moved. When advertisers put pressure on the digital advertising ecosystem, the ecosystem gave way. Agencies and ad platforms previously assumed to be immovable made a concerted effort to provide quality. That’s a powerful lesson, especially for brands that feel powerless in the face of the duopoly platforms of Google and Facebook. Collective action can reshape the ad ecosystem for the better.
Measure the things that matter. Pure scale, as measured by impressions, has been the standard metric for advertising success, but P&G’s experiment proved that quality of impressions had more impact on ROI than brute number of impressions.
Budget isn’t everything. For marketers who don’t have P&G-sized ad budgets to play with, the numbers indicate that it’s still possible to drive meaningful results. A focused media strategy that prioritizes context and quality can carry the day even in the face of smaller budgets.

By Greg Sobiech

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

What Is The Difference Between Marketing, Advertising, and Branding? A Simple Analogy To Help Explain

November 21, 2018 No Comments

Sourced from Lyndax

To understand the difference between these concepts, simply apply them to you

In my work with entrepreneurs and business students, I often hear marketing strategies explained as “having social media,” “having an online brand,” or “advertising a lot.”

These explanations make me cringe because while they might be part of a plan, they grossly oversimplify the deeper and more complex concepts behind a truly effective marketing strategy.

In order to explain and help others understand marketing — namely the difference between marketing, advertising, and branding — I ask them to apply each of these concepts to themselves personally. When you do, this is what it would look like.

Marketing is how you see yourself.

Marketing is the image that you are trying to present to others. It starts with how you dress, the colors and patterns you choose, and how you groom. We all have a strategy for this — yes, everyone, including your unkept second cousin who rarely showers and wears the same Star Wars shirt he’s worn since college.

Even not having a strategy for your personal appearance is a strategy itself.

You choose your image to portray yourself as a business professional, a punk rocker, a tech nerd, etc, and by doing so, you are expressing to others through your appearance your character, lovable attributes and in the end the value you offer to others.

It isn’t fun to admit that appearances are as important as they are, but let’s be honest, first impressions are driven by appearance. Impressions can evolve and be molded later, but as we all know, they require time and effort to change, so we do our best to get it right up front.

For a business, a marketing strategy considers how you want others to perceive your company. It should convey the vision and values of the business and express these in a way that the public will recognize and associate with your company.

How you “dress” your company will determine how effectively your message and image will be accepted by consumers.

Advertising is how you act in public.

If marketing is how you see yourself, advertising describes your actions.

How you carry yourself, where you hang out, and what you say are just as important as how you look. All of this should be considered with your marketing strategy to assure that you have consistency between your image and your actions.

For instance, imagine that you wear a New England Patriots jersey and get a “I Heart Tom Brady” tattoo, but during the Super Bowl, you cheer for the Philadelphia Eagles and celebrate their victory. You will confound — and probably infuriate — all of your friends and likely be exiled from future Sunday game days.

Your business advertising strategy is the same. If you execute it in the wrong places, with the wrong message and tone, at the wrong times, or to the wrong audience, it will ultimately confuse consumers and could turn them away.

Branding is how others see you.

While marketing is how you want others to see you, branding is how they actually do.

Your marketing strategy should assess and consider your personal brand. If you have a strong brand, you can spend more time building on it. If you have reputation problems, however, you need to focus on rebuilding or changing perceptions.

As an example, if your professional network believes you to be fraud or slacker, then it will require more than just dressing professionally and mastering your LinkedIn profile to change this perception.

Similarly from a business standpoint, understanding how consumers perceive your business is crucial for how you decide to execute a marketing and advertising strategy.

Now, I understand I just over-simplified complex marketing concepts — exactly what I critiqued at the beginning. I find, however, that applying these concepts to ourselves creates an effective and simple way to explain how each concept can and should be applied to your business.

Sourced from Lyndax

In News

Preparing for the takeover: Google voice search SEO strategies

September 25, 2018 No Comments

By Jason Hall

Whether or not you’ve embraced it, voice search is here to stay and it looks like it will be the next biggest trend in social media. In 2014, 41% of adults surveyed said they use voice search at least once a day. By 2020, 50% of all searches will be by voice search.

Google controls the lion’s share of the search engine market and it is essential to optimize your website.

Speech and type patterns are different

Think about how you perform a search when you’re typing your query rather than speaking. When you’re typing, you’re more likely to use a shorthand and leave out superfluous words. Conversely, when you speak, you’re more likely to speak in a complete statement.

For example, when searching for the best restaurants in New York. In Google, you will type “best restaurants NYC”. However, with a voice search, you will ask “What are the best restaurants in New York City?”

Google and other search engines have been working on improving the programming and machine learning that pick up speech patterns. What this means is that while you may need to enunciate to get Google to understand you at first, it should soon become familiar with your accent.

Long tail keywords are crucial

While the days of short tail keywords are well behind us, voice search makes targeting the correct long tail keywords more important than ever.

Marketers can optimize both types of search by using conversational, long tail keywords. The new keywords are very specific because they are being searched by people further down the buyer’s journey.

Instead of writing a blog post called “10 Home Decor Trends for 2018”, write for a more targeted audience with the post “10 Vintage-Inspired Home Decor Trends for Small Apartments”.

How to use Google voice search SEO Strategies

With regular search SEO, being within the first ten results and displayed on the front page of the search engine results was enough. Voice search makes this game more competitive because now all SEO and SEM marketers are aiming to have their content returned as the featured snippet that is displayed above the first organic result. The featured snippet typically displays the text from your site answering the question and an image.

How is the featured snippet generated?

There are two parts to how Google builds the featured snippet to display at the top of the search results.

Part of it is based on the same elements dictating your position in a search engine results page regardless of the type of search being conducted. This includes your domain authority, backlinks, social media engagement and more. This is to say that building a high-quality site that is fast and secure is still important.

The other half is based on how Google reads the content on your website. It ranks the text on your website based on the size of the font. Titles are the most important and then subheaders formatted in H2.

When performing a search, Google is looking for pages with the relevant keywords in the titles, subheaders and URL along with an authoritative, speedy and secure website for delivery as the featured snippet.

Use trigger words in your long-tail keywords

Keep in mind that people who are searching by voice are either in a rush or on-the-go. To get your content into that answer box, you need to use these popular “trigger” words when creating content. These phrases should appear not just in your post title, but in subheadings, the URL and meta descriptions as well. The most popular trigger words in voice searches are “how”, “what” and “best”.

Use tools like Google Trends and Google Suggest for ideas about what content you can generate based on these trigger words and keywords that apply to your site. When creating your posts, try to answer a question up near the top of the post and then follow it up with a relevant, well-researched, easy to read and informative post.

Think about how and where you want Google to display your content

Google prefers that voice search results are short and easy to read. At the same time, it seems to prefer long-form content (over 1000 words) as opposed to short-form content. Confusing, I know.

It comes down to the type of questions that are being asked. For search queries that have a simple or clear answer, Google wants something that is brief and accurate.

In order to catch both the Google Home and Chrome users, think about how to structure your posts so that Google can find an answer users can click to find more detailed information. Stick with simple vocabulary and shorter sentences to maintain readability.

It may be daunting to hear all the digital marketing pundits talk about how voice search is going to disrupt everything we know about search engines. It’s important to remember that voice SEO is still just SEO.

Now you know what Google is looking for when choosing what to select for its answer box and how to use Google voice search will put you be in a better position to take advantage of this new trend.

By Jason Hall

Jason Hall, founder, FiveChannels

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Netflix sets the record straight over plans to introduce ads

September 5, 2018 No Comments

By Gillian West

With news spreading Netflix is adding ads, the streaming service has stepped in to set the record straight – it’s testing skippable video promotions between episodes and movies.

Introduced quietly this week, Reddit users sparked confusion when some claimed they saw a video in between episodes they weren’t able to skip, while others spotted a ‘skip’ button.

With users threatening to quit over the addition of ads, Netflix issued a statement on Friday reading, “we are testing whether surfacing recommendations between episodes helps members discover stories they will enjoy faster.

“It is important to note that a member is able to skip a video preview at anytime if they are not interested.”

A spokesperson for Netflix added the videos were not ads or commercials, but personalised recommendations for other shows and movies on the service. They claimed it conducts hundreds of tests per year, most of which aren’t adopted.

The addition of video previews that play while browsing were added in 2016, with Netflix revealing they cut down the amount of time people spent browsing “significantly”. Since then it has been experimenting with different kinds of video such as this.

Worldwide, Netflix boasts 130 million customers. In April, The Drum reported Netflix was investing “more in marketing of new original titles to create more density of viewing and conversation around each title.”

Source: CNN

Netflix

Netflix, is an American entertainment company founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph on August 29, 1997, in Scotts Valley, California. It specializes in and provides streaming media and video-on-d…

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Feature Image Credit: Netflix has set the record straight on the addition of ‘ads’

By Gillian West

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Amazon Music animates Ariana Grande, Kendrick Lamar and SZA in ad campaign for the service

September 4, 2018 No Comments

By Kyle O’Brien

Amazon Music is pushing its paid streaming music service with a new campaign as a way for listeners to power their preferences by using Alexa.

The service is building on its momentum with the launch of ‘A Voice is All You Need.’ The campaign highlights the powerful vocals of notable songs while demonstrating the simplicity of voice with Alexa, featuring leading artists at launch including Ariana Grande, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Queen and Kane Brown.

The ad creative, developed with Wieden+Kennedy, celebrates the growth of Amazon Music against rivals like Apple and Spotify, by noting its lead in voice innovation while playing off isolated vocals from notable artists in a journey through the voice experience with Alexa on Amazon Music.

In the first video, Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s All the Stars gets animated in a 30-second spot that starts off with brightly hued lips singing the lyrics. The lips then turn blue as the Lamar’s rap begins, then morphs into the Amazon arrow, which also turns into a mouth and asks Alexa to play the song as it promotes the 30-day free trial for the service.

Another ad rises high above Times Square to push Ariana Grande’s new album, Sweetener. The three-tiered digital ad starts with the ‘A Voice is All You Need’ phrase, then turns rainbow colored with a pic from the album and the text: “Alexa Play New Ariana Grande.”

Launching at a time where the number of Amazon Music hours streamed globally on Alexa-enabled devices has doubled over the past six months compared to the same time last year, ‘A Voice is All You Need’ will begin appearing today in select US cities, and will expand to the UK and Germany throughout the year across media channels including national online video, radio, and out-of-home billboard advertisements in support of upcoming new releases. Select creative from the campaign will also appear on national TV later this year.

By Kyle O’Brien

Sourced from The Drum