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Remember how wonderful holiday breaks felt like back in the day? After week-long all-nighters, countless cups of coffee and an arduous week of final exams and final papers, your brain was fried and your body was exhausted. The well-earned time to relax and put your feet up couldn’t come any sooner.

As you headed home, you would mentally prepare a “to-do” list that most likely included items such as: turning off your alarm, binge watching TV shows, packing for a long trip and/or catching up with friends and family. Did you ever think you would ever be able to create a list like that again?

Well, sabbaticals are Centro’s adult version of those holiday breaks! On top of our generous paid time off benefits, every Centron is eligible for three consecutive (and paid!) weeks off during their 5th, 9th, 13th and 17th year of service.

A sabbatical is a celebration of our peeps’ commitment to Centro and a way of showing our gratitude for dedication to this organization. The three weeks are intended to give the individual the opportunity to step away from the desk, refresh and fill that time-off with a “to-do” list similar to the one above. It’s an investment we are willing to make for our peeps to come back reenergized and check back in feeling personally fulfilled.

In the past, Centrons have spent this time volunteering, taking a long trip abroad, dedicating time for hobbies or projects or simply taking a “staycation” at home to unwind.

In 2013, we celebrated a whopping 15 sabbaticals – hey, it happens when you’ve been growing for 12 years and have a high employee retention rate. This upcoming year, we will have 36 Centrons taking their first sabbaticals and ten Centrons taking their second. Don’t worry, with our 400+ employees and continuous hiring, we’ve got the business covered.

This year, Katie Risch (SVP, Publisher Development) took advantage of her second sabbatical – check out her experience below.

Centro: Where did you go?

Katie Risch: Given I’m in airports and planes a lot for work, I stayed close to home and avoided all the stress and hassle that can come with travel! I spent much of my time in Chicago, Eagle River, WI and doing a roadshow around the Midwest to visit college friends in Louisville and Indianapolis on what I call “the baby tour” – visiting good friends whose babies I hadn’t been able to meet yet.

Who were you with?

KR: A bunch of peeps! I was in Chicago mostly with my boyfriend, Dustin. We went to Lollapalooza and took full advantage of the fact that I didn’t have to get up early for work. I bought tickets to after shows around the city four nights in a row (these typically end around 1 AM), and then attended three full days of the music festival. We were hardcore about seeing as much music as possible over the course of the week. In Eagle River, WI I spent time with my family. It’s beautiful up there and the perfect place to relax and unwind. On “the baby tour,” I saw my college friends and, of course, their babies! It wouldn’t be a baby tour without babies, right?

Why do you think Centro offers sabbaticals?

KR: Centro has a lot of employees who are committed to the betterment of the company. For those who’ve invested five years of their time, talent and energy into it, a sabbatical is a way to say ‘thank you’ and help them recharge so they can come back more energized to continue making this company a special place.

What advice would you give to someone who has yet to be eligible for their three weeks off?

KR: Check something off your bucket list. Whether that means travelling to a remote part of the world that requires at least two weeks off to get there and back and immerse yourself in the culture, or sitting on your back porch and starting to write a novel, or becoming certified as a yoga instructor. For me, my first sabbatical was a “bucket list” check mark. I went to Africa and got off the beaten path. My second sabbatical wasn’t about a bucket list item, but I would say to those who are about to embark on their first, do something that requires an investment of time that would not be achievable within a standard week-long vacation.

How would you spend your sabbatical? Write in the comments below and tell us!

The effect of real-time bidding (RTB) on publishers has been well documented.  Such insights have often focused on the challenges RTB poses for publishers, including how it negatively impacts their direct advertising revenue and relationships. It’s a “glass half empty” view and it lends to the trepidation in which many publishers enter and participate in this space.

Whichever point of view you take, what can’t be denied is that RTB is here to stay and its impressive growth is expected to continue at elevated speeds. At this rate, the demand and supply sides of RTB need to continue to support one another and take advantage of the many benefits supported by programmatic buying.

One of the less obvious and less publicized benefits for the supply side is that RTB creates opportunity for publishers to access an entirely new crop of advertisers. There are tens of thousands of RTB buyers, most of which may have never purchased inventory through direct sales channels. RTB also connects buyers with inventory they otherwise wouldn’t have access to. RTB helps bridge that gap.

As is usually the case, publishers offer all “unsold” inventory to RTB buyers. Reserved inventory will always be accounted for and prioritized accordingly. However, as technology and offerings change, there may be more gray areas involved and inventory will go to the highest CPM, as that will dictate the “real” value of inventory. And the high CPM could actually come from RTB.

Now, as we put more focus on analyzing RTB data, we believe such insights will enable publishers to identify and create new partnerships and revenue opportunities, otherwise unavailable. If an advertiser is finding success across a particular site on the programmatic side of the business, it’s likely that the publisher can expand on that partnership by pursuing direct opportunities on top of the RTB budgets they get from that advertiser.

I encourage all publishers to take an active role in looking at the revenue coming through their RTB relationships. There’s more than just that monthly check they receive from exchange partners. They may find advertising opportunities that wouldn’t have been visible if those brands never bought on the site through RTB. Furthermore, machines can’t notice these nuances, which explains why people remain valuable in this process.

There is likely hidden treasure in RTB, and those that look, just might find something shiny.

We’re lucky to work in such an innovative and fast-paced industry. However, because the pace of change can seem relentless, we need to make time to rejuvenate and re-inspire ourselves.

There is perhaps no other industry more deadline-driven and tied to the clock than digital advertising. If you have served on the front lines (particularly on the planning and buying side), it’s safe to say you are regularly asked to deliver the impossible: “…by COB.”

“No actually, I’m presenting that to the client COB. I’ll need it by lunch.”

Turnaround times are always speeding up, while the endless options of everything from publishers, to tactics, targeting abilities and terms & conditions keeps expanding.

A 1997 landmark study on stress and heart disease surveyed over 7,400 employees. Their findings were shocking. Employees who felt they had little control over deadlines imposed by other people had a 50% higher risk of coronary heart disease than their counterparts. The bottom line: feeling a lack of control over pressure at work ranks right alongside high blood pressure as a risk factor for heart disease.

How do we slow down this crazy train enough to create the type of (happy, relaxed) environment that drives innovation?

Centro’s wellness team recently launched a company-wide meditation program called The Pause.

The Pause is extremely simple, but when factored into our gadget-obsessed and lightning-fast industry, it may be considered downright radical! Here’s how it works:

1. At the same time each day, all employees are encouraged to take 15 minutes of “company-sanctioned silence” to Pause. During this time it is recommended to power-down, sit in silence and just breathe.

2. Since our work requires us to be connected via numerous channels and inputs throughout the day, there is a calming benefit to unplugging. Even 15 minutes can create a calm, steady focus for the rest of the afternoon.

3. As our company continually upgrades our work space, planning will also include rooms solely dedicated to expanding our meditation and mindfulness practice.

4. We’re committed to providing ongoing support for all employees in deepening their meditation or mindfulness practice. Centro worked with New York Times Bestselling author and Buddhist meditation teacher Susan Piver to produce this 2-minute getting started tutorial. Each day, Susan mobilizes over 10,000 meditation practitioners worldwide through her site, The Open Heart Project.

Click here to view the video.

About Meditation and Mindfulness

Mindfulness and meditation have been practiced across many cultures for thousands of years. Psychological and physical benefits include: stress reduction, better sleep, decreases in depression, increased creativity, improved working memory, better focus, less emotional reactivity and increased satisfaction in interpersonal relationships.

A 2009 study examined how meditation affected participant’s ability to focus attention and resist distracting information. Experienced meditation practitioners were found to have significantly better performance on all measures of attention. Meditation practice and self-reported mindfulness are directly correlated to cognitive flexibility and attentive functioning.  Both of these factors greatly reduce stress, as well as increase creativity and innovation.

At Centro, we believe in the wellness of our employees and we encourage meditation because we feel it will help them become better versions of themselves at work and outside of it. What works for you? How do you maintain a sense of calm and balance in this fast-paced industry? We’d love to hear from you.

Despite bearing a resemblance to television and a historical placement in the out-of-home category, digital place-based media (DPB) should also be recognized as an extension of digital advertising campaigns. Armed with the capability to run digital video messages, similar to desktop and mobile, DPB serves as a point of contextual reminder, engagement, and/or content delivery throughout the purchase cycle and is growing in sophistication as a cross-platform digital medium.

Consider how you spend your day: waking up and going for a quick workout at the gym, then off to work – but not before you get gas – then a lunch meeting in the middle of the day, and a run to the grocery store after work. There within your journey lies five touch points for marketers to reach you — gym, gas station, office, lunch, and grocery store. DPB is the digital thread for nearly 50% of U.S. adults (according to an Arbitron report) who consume media while in action mode. It is a distinctive opportunity for marketers to connect with the hard-to-reach, mind-changing, decision-maker.

Unlike out-of-home, DPB uses contextually relevant content to capture the consumer at moments of natural dwell time, such as an office elevator or taxi cab. The opportunity to reach consumers on-the-go and at the point-of-purchase takes it beyond just television. The ability to target audiences at specific times with dynamic video throughout their daily journey is inherently like desktop advertising. Combining audience data (where they live, work, and play) with inventory evaluation allows for smart selection against the desired target, similar to a mobile buy.

Location-based delivery to the IP addresses of digital screens allow pairing of ad messages with geo-targeting. Messages can be tailored to the time of day or the block. For example, an auto advertiser displays a message as a consumer researches a new car on the web and then sends a reminder of that message during a visit to the dealership. They can connect that to a story about the drivers of that type of vehicle in the middle of lunch or while en route to a meeting by extending that message to digital place-based media screens. The consumer can take more information with them using their mobile device to receive a special content video from the brand. Technologies like near-field communication (NFC) and QR codes extend the DPB experience, allowing a distracted consumer to take the information with them.

When we take a step back and consider the larger picture – how and when consumers are using multi-screens, as well as what kind of decisions they are making while in action mode – DPB fits in quite nicely as a strong vehicle to increase connections with a desired and elusive audience. It is a powerful tool with proven results against driving awareness and recall as a branding layer of advertising campaigns. A closer look at the flexibility of the medium gives a clear view of an opportunity for marketers to have their brand stand apart from the clutter and break through the noise. The consumer journey is a digital one, and so is DPB.

 

The typical automotive customer is fickle and savvy… and older (I will address that latter point in a bit). Research firm Polk states that brand loyalty in the auto industry is about 48%, meaning that more than half of any OEM’s consumer base will defect to another brand. Furthermore, according to software firm idio, car consumers now use 18+ digital sources to research automotive content before they even step foot onto a dealership’s lot. A wealth of information is easily accessible from any device, and it’s no wonder that consumers can switch brand loyalty quickly and easily. With 41 new vehicle launches set for 2014, it’s important that automotive advertisers understand how to capture consumer interest through these channels and differentiate their products.

What to Do

Given that 60% of consumers will abandon a brand because of a poor online experience (according to eMarketer), it’s important to have strong digital presence and experience. For example, 63% of consumers have watched an online video as part of their automotive purchase process. With 81% of consumers deciding on a vehicle within three months, dealerships must quickly build and execute campaigns that drive more foot traffic and increase sales of new vehicles. Additionally, with new digital formats and executions being rolled out, brands have an opportunity to differentiate their experiences with customers. Using technology, automakers can understand who is in-market. The question then becomes, how do you most effectively reach and engage the market?

Marketing Fundamentals

Successful automotive advertising has always been driven by local and contextual content. While the media environment has changed, where the Internet and technology now play a larger role in a consumer’s media consumption, the fundamentals have stayed the same. Local and contextual media reaches enthusiasts, and people near dealerships, which generate sales. However, local and contextual marketing has become more difficult. What was cheap and easy to do in traditional media has become challenging and more costly. Auto brands still need local and contextual solutions that come with the four key ingredients fundamental to successful advertising – scale, impactful creative, guaranteed placement and transparency. It is worth mentioning that a new tech-driven advertising tactic such as real-time bidding (RTB) has sprouted to offer scale and pricing leverage for automakers and the agencies that serve them, yet it is missing guaranteed placement and transparency.

The Opportunity

New auto sales are expected to jump 6.6% this year. Dealers are likely feeling this impact directly, where they are averaging $38.4MM in annual sales. Furthermore, a KPMG study stated that 83% of U.S. auto executives predict that online activity for dealerships and intermediaries will increase. Much of this is a result from the behavior of older consumers. Analyst firm eMarketer pointed out that 62% of new vehicle registrations are from folks 50 or older, and 24% are from people from 35 to 49 years of age.

How do smart auto marketers capture (more than) their fair share? To differentiate their campaigns, marketers need a deep understanding of consumer behaviors and lifestyle interests that drive their brand’s perception. By using this insight to define consumer segments, marketers can map out where they need an impactful digital presence. Plus, this needs deep customization based on each OEM, with each brand, in each region of the country.

Digital advertising in the automotive industry is filled with competitors and noise. To stand out to key audiences, OEMs must approach digital with a strategic and differentiated strategy.

For more information on how Centro powers campaigns in the automotive industry, please visit: http://medialogistics.centro.net/industry-solutions-automotive.

Falling web ad prices sounds like good thing for advertisers, but the secret tax you may be paying is fewer actual impressions. We all know that CPC advertising can be exploited by bots, making it look like ads are getting click traffic when they’re actually not. CPM seemed to be the smarter way to pay: by impression, and not by click.

But now, like a sequel to a bad ‘80s movie, the bots are back. Those clever scammers are wreaking havoc on CPM and making it look like ads are being viewed when they aren’t. Behold, a few tricks of the ad-scam trade:

No group is going to fess up to engaging in this kind of behavior, but fraud is rampant on lots of networks, DSPs and trading desks. It’s possible for this to happen without the knowledge of the perpetrator, so it’s important to choose your partners carefully and be sure you’re doing business with people who acknowledge click fraud and will be proactive about making sure it doesn’t happen to you.

Three simple ways to protect yourself from impression fraud: buy closed exchange, buy based on transparency, and buy from trusted vendors. The truth is, if you’re looking for bargain basement prices, you’re probably not getting much for your money — that’s the hidden tax you pay when you buy dirt-cheap. A better way is to spend your ad dollars on a vendor you trust, who won’t give you convoluted explanations and complex excuses. Remember to trust your gut. If things don’t sound right to you, they’re probably not. My rule of thumb is, if technology can’t be explained simply, it should be questioned.

(This post was re-published from Ad Spandex. You can view the original post here - http://adspandex.com/articles/the-hidden-ad-tax/.)

Over the past few years, there has been a literal and figurative explosion in the amount of data available to analyze business activities. Companies that can rapidly process publicly available (or licensable) data and turn it into actionable information have been able to develop real competitive advantages. From a systems perspective, the playing field (with regards to how fast you can do both of those items) is leveling pretty quickly. So where will new sources of competitive advantage come from?

The answer is pretty simple: look at what you have that no one else does. There is only a certain amount of value that can be generated from the same data sets that everyone else has access to. In other words, add something proprietary to your analysis.

Here’s an analogy – at the NFL Scouting Combine, all teams have access to the same player test information. They see the same 40-yard dash times, the same standing broad jump distances, the same Wonderlic scores, and every other activity players are asked to perform. How do coaches decide whom to draft? How will different teams determine the value of available players? They add data into their analysis that no other team has. Some of this is quantitative (private workouts) and some is qualitative (private interviews). In addition, they use the mixture of public and proprietary data to make strategic decisions in alignment with the type of offense and defense that they run (e.g. how they operate their ‘business’).

At Centro, we maintain nearly eight years of historical data on the campaigns we have executed on behalf of our clients. We feed the lessons learned from each placement and completed campaign back into the next planning and buying cycle. For example, we can look at not just how a given publisher performed on a given campaign, but also how different individual ad size units on the publisher’s site performed. We can take it further by comparing performance across platforms (desktop vs. mobile) and formats (display vs. video). The volume of our history means we can factor seasonal performance into the analysis as well. The goal is simple: look back at the campaign objectives, see which parts of the ad buy moved the needle and use that information to build more effective campaigns. We call this strategic decision intelligence.

Whether your business is about building a championship football team or a successful campaign for a client, you want to develop some form of competitive advantage from information you possess that no one else does. Combining the right publicly available data with the right proprietary data is the key. From our experience, the competitive advantage created by Centro’s strategic decision intelligence is more a function of what you have instead of how much you have.

By Sara Tady on May 14, 2013

By now we’ve all seen and heard much about the six IAB Rising Star Units. It’s no surprise Centrons are eager to hit the ground running to bring these new, sexy ad units to our advertisers. Creative teams are busy building these out and publishers are working hand-in-hand with their web development teams to get them approved.

Historically speaking, if an advertiser wanted to make an impact, they’ve been somewhat limited to sliding billboards, interstitials and overlays. The new IAB Rising Star units are a perfect combination of splash and functionality. These ads are high impact and cannot be missed.

But how do these eye catching ads perform? According to one study conducted by the IAB, they are already outperforming the standard IAB units. Let’s be serious though – this is no surprise! Looking at one of Centro’s more recent “rising star” campaigns you’ll find the results mirror just that of the IAB study.

According to Emilie Lee, one of Centro’s Sr. Campaign Analysts: “Rising Star units are proving to be a successful form of interactive advertising. Our West Coast team ran fourteen portrait units within one campaign in the entertainment vertical, which averaged a 14.8 second dwell time and a CTR of .24%.” That’s a lot of engagement and a 10x click-through than normal banner ads.

According to the same IAB study, users spent 50% more time interacting with a rising star unit vs. standard IAB ads. Big name brands like AT&T, Jeep and Westin Hotels are all giving it a try. In February 2013, Undertone released a whitepaper stating that an overwhelming 92% of agencies and marketers ranked the units a 1 or 2 (on a 5-point scale – 1 being the highest) on their overall performance satisfaction.

These interactive ads are demanding both attention from the consumer and warranting premium pricing for publishers. Best part of all? It’s pretty advertising that is being proven to work.

Tracking and measurement is perhaps the most important aspect of advertising.

In the display and mobile advertising world, engagement is the major key performance indicator. However, in the digital place-based world there is no such thing as click through or page views. So what do you do when there isn’t a standard tracking tool?

Recently there have been a lot of conversations about the potential ways to track digital place-based (DP-B) media. For instance, near-field communication (NFC) and facial recognition software get tossed into the mix quite often, but NFC isn’t widely enough accepted to be considered good candidate for an official tracking system and facial recognition gets a book of privacy laws thrown at it every time someone mentions it.

Yet, this segment of digital advertising warrants more than just conversation. Last fall, The Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) announced that the growth rate for the industry sector was six times that of total measured ad spending, according to data from Miller, Kaplan, Arase and Kantar Media. Digital place-based (DPb) media grew by 11.8% from Jan-June 2012 over the same period last year, while Kantar Media data revealed that total measured media for the same period increased by 1.9%.

But, for the foreseeable future, it looks like it may be a while for DP-B tracking.

In the meantime, seek strong relationships with trusted vendor partners. Make sure your vendors are DPAA members or working under the DPAA standard for audience measurement. And realize that receiving an accurate proof of performance report (read more about best practices for PoP here) for each digital place-based campaign is not the same as accurately quantifying engagement.

Just remember: The reporting and tracking may be different and evolving, but a digital place-based campaign can extend brand awareness and reach. It should be top-of-mind as a great supplement to a display and mobile campaign.

Are you willing to include digital place-based media in a campaign knowing the tracking isn’t there? How would you add it to a campaign to extend reach?