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Billboards are one of the oldest advertising formats known to humankind. The first American “large format” billboard made its debut all the way back in 1835, spreading the word about a circus in New York City, and with the first leasing of a billboard in 1867, a cornerstone of the out-of-home advertising industry was born.
Of course, we’ve come a long way since those early billboards for “horse blankets and rheumatism pills,” and today, digital out-of-home advertising (or DOOH advertising) is a uniquely agile way to reach consumers.
So, how does digital out-of-home advertising differ from traditional out-of-home advertising, and how should marketers embrace it within their media mix? Read on to find out.
Let’s start by defining the baseline of traditional out-of-home advertising, which is essentially any ad you might see (you guessed it!) outside of your home. Common examples include billboards, ads on public transit, signs at a sporting event, or banners at the airport.
Digital out-of-home advertising, meanwhile, expands upon this field by adding a digital element. So instead of, say, a static printed billboard along the side of the highway, you might have a giant screen displaying a rotating series of digital advertisements to passing drivers. If you want to see just how much digital has changed the OOH landscape, just look at present day Times Square!
DOOH has also brought us innovative new ways of advertising, particularly using video. You know those little screens that keep you entertained in the back of a taxicab? Or that play above the pump at a gas station? Both are prime examples of how digital OOH advertising can help marketers reach captive audiences.
And just how popular is DOOH among advertisers? We’ll let the numbers speak for themselves:
Programmatic digital out-of-home (aka pDOOH) includes any DOOH inventory that is purchased programmatically. It offers advertisers all the same benefits of DOOH and allows them to harness the power of real-time bidding (RTB) to activate their DOOH campaigns in an automated and data-driven way, typically by using a demand side platform (DSP).
Here are some key stats marketers should know about pDOOH:
Let’s take a quick look at three major reasons why digital OOH is an important part of any marketer’s media mix:
Unlike traditional out-of-home advertisements, digital OOH ads can rotate and change over the course of a week, day, hour, or even minute—all allowing advertisers to better target and reach specific audiences in specific areas at specific times. So if you wanted to, say, reach commuters heading home from the finance district at rush hour, digital OOH can empower you to do just that. And because DOOH technology supports programmatic advertising, marketers have even more control over the placement of their ads.
In pre-pandemic times, consumers spent 70% of their waking hours outside their homes. As the world steadily gets back to normal, people are anxious to return to the world outside those four walls, and digital out-of-home ads are an ideal way for advertisers to grab (and keep!) a customer’s attention when they’re out in public.
Some of the most innovative examples of digital OOH advertisements take advantage of modern technology to create dynamic, interactive campaigns that take audience engagement to the next level. Whether by harnessing the power of virtual reality (VR) or artificial reality (AR) to create an immersive experience, utilizing QR codes to compel viewers to take immediate action, or using video capabilities to captivate, DOOH gives advertisers the opportunity to engage audiences in unique ways.
TikTok, and CTV, and Pinterest—oh my! With a seemingly ever-expanding list of devices and channels to connect with audiences, today’s consumer journey is complex. And given how much time people spend on their personal devices, many marketers might wonder: How does DOOH, a channel that does not live on mobile phones, laptops, or tablets, enhance the customer journey?
First, DOOH gives advertisers the opportunity to connect with audiences when they may be less reachable on their personal devices. This could be when consumers are out-and-about in the city, at a sporting event or concert, or shopping at a mall or grocery store.
Plus, DOOH ads allow advertisers to connect with consumers in contextually relevant environments. With digital screens popping up virtually everywhere, there’s a wide variety of places to connect meaningfully with audiences. Advertisers can take advantage of this and place their ads in moments that are meaningful to audiences. This might look like:
Thanks to its ability to reach customers in a variety of places, and particularly the places in which people are less active on their personal devices, DOOH advertising can significantly enhance the customer experience.
If you’re looking for a way to shout your brand’s message from the rooftops—both literally and figuratively—digital out-of-home might just be the answer. It offers advertisers a significant opportunity: Connect with audiences, in relevant environments, through an engaging and memorable medium. As such, it’s no surprise that DOOH is growing rapidly and that more and more advertisers are embracing it in their campaigns.
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Want to learn more about how to incorporate DOOH to your media mix? Our Media Strategy & Activation Team can help.
These days, there’s no escaping digital video. In fact, research shows that US adults spend nearly over three hours per day watching digital video, and that number is only going to grow in the years ahead. There’s even a decent chance that before, after, or possibly even while you read this blog post, you will find yourself watching some digital video (like, say, this one of a turtle eating a strawberry).
For advertisers, this voraciousness for video represents an incredible opportunity to reach audiences in the form of digital video advertising. To help you on your journey, here are some useful digital video-related facts and tips for creating effective digital video ads:
On average, US adults spend 24 minutes of video a day watching videos on their laptops or desktops, an hour and six minutes per day viewing videos on their mobile devices, and over an hour and a half streaming on connected devices such as CTVs.
There are three primary types of digital video ad units: in-stream, out-stream, and interstitial. Let's take a closer look at each:
In-stream video ads are ads that run before, during, or after other video content (aka pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll). In-stream video ads are displayed within the context of streaming video and often used to monetize video content delivered by the publisher. In other words, think of them as the digital video equivalent of a TV commercial.
Out-stream video ads show up outside of video player environments. This type of ad unit typically includes less traditional video placements, such as in-article, native, in-feed, or interstitial videos. For example, a site visitor may be reading a cooking recipe article on a lifestyle website, and then a video ad may load in-feed or alongside the content. Depending on the environment, out-stream video ads can be auto-play or viewer-enabled play.
Interstitial ads are a type of high-impact, full-screen video advertising that cover the interface of the host app or website. Interstitial ads are typically displayed at natural transition points within the flow of an appear website—such as between activities or as a screen takeover when opening an app or web page— and they usually auto-retract after a short period of time (say, 15 seconds) or via a close button.
Typically, an in-stream video ad is either 15 or 30 seconds, with 15 seconds the oft-recommended length. However, there is some flexibility depending on the channel— we’ve seen successful ads that are as short as five seconds and as long as several minutes.
Well, as you might guess from the name, in-banner video ads are digital video advertisements that play “within” a banner advertisement. You might see one at the top of a webpage, in the middle of an article, or on a sidebar.
Honestly, at this point, it’s probably more practical to ask where you can’t place a digital video ad (inside a medical textbook, maybe?) Digital video ads are widely used on streaming video platforms like YouTube and Hulu, social media giants like Facebook and Instagram, gaming and streaming audio platforms like Twitch or Pandora, news and information sites, and seemingly everywhere in between. In short, if a website has video content, it almost certainly has the ability to show digital video advertisements.
Want to create ads that will appeal to and engage digital video viewers? Here are five tips to inform and inspire:
According to both YouTube and Facebook, among others, it’s absolutely critical to grab a viewer’s attention in the first five seconds of an ad—before they either tune out or skip the remainder of the advertisement. This is especially important for mobile users and younger audiences (who, incidentally, are often one and the same.) Think of it as the new “five second rule”—only instead of determining the safety of food that you should probably just throw away because the floor is covered in pet hair, it’s about determining the effectiveness of digital video advertising.
Video is a unique medium in its ability to quite literally show someone your product, service and/or organization in action. Don’t let that opportunity go to waste! After all, if a picture is worth a thousand words, and 4K video captures 60 frames per second...well, you get the idea. One thing you absolutely need to show? Your brand name/logo. This is particularly important in coordination with tip #1: a Facebook study found that consumers were 23% more likely to remember which brand made a given video ad if the brand was featured in the first three seconds of that ad. So don’t be modest: give yourself an early shoutout!
Remember: your ad has to work and feel native on any device, so keep mobile users in mind when developing your video. Additionally, mobile users are likely to have their sound off if they come across your ad on many platforms—particularly social media—so make sure the ad is compelling and that the core message still “translates,” regardless of whether the audio is on.
When making a digital video ad, be sure to take the channel/platform into account for that particular cut of the video. Your ad should ideally match the “vibe” of a specific channel, with the video feeling native to that platform, while staying mindful of what likely brought a viewer there in the first place. For example, a video ad that shows up in the middle of a Facebook feed should feel a little different to, say, one running in the middle of a bingeable show on Hulu.
Lastly, before you advertise anywhere—be it with digital video or otherwise—take the time to get to know your audience as much as you can, and then take advantage of any platform-based targeting at your disposal to better reach them. And it’s a digital video, after all, so be sure to use the digital CTAs at your disposal to send viewers directly to your website or app of choice.
Want to dig deeper? Download our Video Unleashed guide to see tips for how to run a strategic video campaign, gain more digital video advertising insights, and a whole lot more.
California: land of sun, surf, Redwoods, Hollywood and, of course, consumer privacy regulations.
The Golden State was a US pioneer when it passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) back in 2018, giving California residents the right to know what personal information a business collects about them and how it is used and shared, the right to delete personal information collected from them (with some exceptions), the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information, and the right to non-discrimination for exercising their CCPA rights.
But today, there’s a new regulatory act in town: the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). Building upon the CCPA, the CPRA adds some new rules, clarifies some old ones, and introduces dedicated resources for regulatory enforcement to help ensure California consumers’ control over their personal data. The CPRA also ushers in a year that will see five new state-level data privacy acts take effect, with regulations also debuting in Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah.
To get a better understanding of the latest laws and see how they could impact the digital advertising industry, we spoke with Derek Zolner, General Counsel at Basis Technologies, about the CPRA—the most expansive of the acts.
Here are some highlights from that conversation, including how the CPRA builds off the CCPA, what companies have to do to comply, and how it will impact the programmatic advertising industry:
California’s initial foray into the world of consumer privacy regulation was 2018’s California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). That was really the first stake in the ground for privacy legislation here in the US. Prior to that, we had some self-regulation for our industry, and good citizens were already doing a lot of the stuff that the CCPA required—for example, in our ads and on our website, we have long allowed people to opt out of targeted ads based on cookie use—but the CCPA requires you to give people a right to opt out.
And now we have the CPRA, aka the California Privacy Rights Act, and that does a couple of things. One, it gives California some broader enforcement rights, creating a California Privacy Protection Agency that's dedicated to (and responsible for) enforcing the act. That, to me, indicates we're probably going to see more enforcement actions coming down the pike.
But it also builds upon the foundation laid by the CCPA in a few ways. The biggest part for our industry? The CCPA had a requirement that if you were selling data, then you had to have an opt-out on your website that said “Do Not Sell My Personal Information.” A lot of people in the digital advertising industry read this definition of “sale” very technically, arguing that if you weren't actually bundling up data, giving it to somebody, and saying “Pay me for this data,” then it wasn't a sale. At Basis, we didn't take that point of view, electing instead to honor the spirit of the law—i.e. giving consumers the right to opt out of things like what we do with cookie data, mobile ID data, and IP address data.
But the CPRA eliminates any ambiguity around how to interpret this aspect of the law by now requiring companies to give consumers the opportunity to not only opt out of the sale of their personal information, but also of giving or sharing that data with someone else, including a third party that might use it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
Essentially, the CCPA, CPRA, and the other data privacy acts that are popping up around the US are establishing legal enforcement mechanisms around personal control of one’s personal data and codifying many of the core principals of our industry—namely, transparency, notice, and the right to opt out. Only now, instead of the industry self-regulating these matters, state governments are intervening to take control of that enforcement.
The aforementioned opt-out message (ex. “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information”, “Opt Out”, “Your Privacy Rights”) has to be conspicuous on a company’s website and easy for consumers to access/use. Since any company currently operating in California should already have a “Do Not Sell” option on their site, many are choosing to simply add “or Sell” to the same link and give consumers the option to do both on the same page.
At Basis, we made updates to our website so that visitors from California have enhanced opt-out rights. One of the main thrusts of CCPA and CPRA is that California consumers can come to organizations like Basis and say, “Hey, what personal information do you have about me? What are you doing with it? And, if I want you to, please delete it or correct it or limit your use of it.” So we offer that to visitors from California through a link on our website, and then we then have 45 days to respond and let them know we're doing so. Additionally, for CPRA, there are some enhanced requirements for contracts between parties that clarify what their relationship is, and so we've retooled some of our contracts with customers and vendors to include what we believe to be those necessary requirements. It’s all about being clear, accurate, and truthful about what your relationship is.
The truth is, we were already doing most of what CCPA required—which was, in essence, having a privacy policy that tells people what you're doing with data in clear and understandable language, and then giving people the right to opt out of the use of that personal data. We’ve been doing those things for a really long time, and so I didn't see CCPA as a huge shift or change for us.
But even with any of the minor changes that we might have to make, I don't view them as changing anything core or fundamental to how we operate, nor do I view it as unnecessarily burdensome for to us to allow people to have access to information about what's going on with personal data for them.
When CCPA came into effect, there was some concern that the sky was going to fall. The fear was that everybody was going to click on that “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link and that cross-contextual behavioral advertising was going to go kaput—at least as it related to California consumers—because everybody was going to opt out.
In fact, that's not been the case. The opt-out rates are very, very low, because (and this is not a legal explanation, but just sort of my intuitive opinion) people tend to take the easy way. What people want when they visit a website is the content, and whatever they think is the easiest way to get to that content, they're going to do. I think people are conditioned to just click accept on the website or whatever it is they need to get to the page they want so they can either watch the video that they're looking for or read the article or whatever it is. And so I don't perceive that these requirements are going to have a significant impact on our ability to continue to conduct cross-contextual behavioral advertising with programmatic buying.
If anything, I think the main impact of this is on compliance teams and lawyers, in that everybody that operates a website in California with any amount of volume is going have to do some compliance work to make sure they're adhering to the regulations. But beyond that, I don't think it's going to result in a in a meaningful economic change to how our business operates and works.
Until you have a fundamental change like you have in the EU, where you require “Opt-In” consent (vs. somewhere like California that only requires an “Opt-Out”), I don't think it's going to have a material impact on the amount of data that companies can use for behavioral advertising. What's likely to have a much greater impact is a technical change, like if third-party cookies ever go away from Google Chrome. That, in my opinion, would be a much more significant event than this legal change.
I would say our general guidance always is to be clear about what you're doing and give people the right to opt out of it. That means explaining as much as you can in your privacy policy, detailing what data you’re collecting and what you're doing with data, and then giving people the right to opt out of that usage in some meaningful and conspicuous way.
Generally speaking, at Basis, we we're in favor of anything that gives consumers more control of their personal data. Personally, I would be strongly in favor of having one point of reference for that—namely, a federal act—rather than 50 state acts that set up this sort of regional patchwork of compliance, and I think that aligns with where we sit as a company.
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Looking for guidance on how to effectively connect with consumers while respecting their privacy rights? Check out Beyond Third-Party Cookies: Your Guide to Overcoming the Identity Crisis.
(Blog cover image: What DALL-E 2 produced when given the prompt, “A beagle celebrating the New Year while reading its favorite stories on an iPad”.)
With 2023 fast approaching and 2022 slowly fading in the rearview, we wanted to take a look back at some of our favorite blog posts from the year that was! Read on to see just a taste of our advertising and marketing industry coverage from 2022—and check out the Basis blog to see all the rest!
Advertising Opportunities in the Metaverse
If we are to believe the hype (and the billions upon billions of investor dollars that are fueling the phenomenon) it appears the metaverse is well-positioned to become the “next big thing” in marketing and entertainment—even if, at this moment, it does not fully exist. For many brands, the sensible approach to the metaverse right now is to learn, observe, and wait for the concept to become more tangible, as it is still far too soon to know which investments will be viable in the long term. But for those looking to be early adopters in the space, there are a few initial metaverse solutions that indicate potential use cases for advertisers. Check out this post to learn all about how digital marketers can start tapping into them.
Climate Change and Sustainability Advertising: Tips, Dos, and Don’ts for Digital Marketers
Reports on the trajectory of climate change are growing ever more dire, with targeted carbon emissions goals looking increasingly out of reach barring swift and major regulatory and/or corporate changes. In the face of this, organizations continue to tout their climate pledges and roll out marketing campaigns—or, depending upon who you ask, PR stunts—demonstrating their commitment to environmentally-friendly values and practices. But many sustainability-minded consumers are making it clear that they aren’t buying what your brand is selling. And with consumers increasingly looking to corporations for leadership on the climate crisis, the old methods of green marketing just aren’t good enough. To help brands navigate this sensitive territory, this piece lays out some of the dos and don’ts of climate- and sustainability-focused advertising.
Why Contextual Targeting is Having a Moment in Digital Advertising
The forthcoming “cookie-pocalypse” threatens to wreak havoc across the advertising industry, and many marketers are responding like birds: either running around in panic like chickens, or pretending the crisis doesn’t exist and burying their heads in the sand, ostrich-style. Clearly, neither is sustainable, but are there any solutions out there that can help marketers get back to acting like humans? Oddly enough, the most practical one may be staring us right in the face: contextual targeting. And look, we get it: a lot of people are (quite understandably!) uninterested in hearing more about contextual targeting. It’s been around for a while and, candidly, it’s kind of boring. But in rare and exceptional instances such as this, old + boring doesn’t necessarily have to = bad. Just ask baseball fans, or anyone in the middle of a riveting game of Monopoly! Read this to learn all about contextual targeting, how it works, and why it’s a surprisingly great solution for today’s digital advertiser.
Everything You Need to Know About Programmatic In-Housing
Throughout programmatic advertising history, brands have largely entrusted its execution to agencies and trading desks. But today, in a world of unforgiving consumers and constantly shifting market dynamics, many brands are searching for an alternative to the traditional brand-agency model as they look to gain greater transparency into their media buys, more holistic control over their data, and greater assurance of compliance with privacy regulations. The result: programmatic in-housing. So, just how has the in-housing trend evolved to date? What forms can programmatic in-housing take? What are the benefits and challenges for brands? And what does the process really entail? This piece answers all these questions and more.
Listen Up! Here’s What the Podcast Boom Means for Digital Advertisers
People listen to podcasts everywhere. No, really: Recent data shows that most listening happens on smartphones, which means that listening can occur virtually anywhere: in the car, on a walk, at home, at work, on the way to a first date, hiding in the bathroom to avoid a terrible first date, in the 24-hour donut shop you always go to after a bad date...you get it. As such, podcast ads provide marketers with a captive audience—ripe for high engagement—at any time, and in any place. But despite the growing popularity of podcasts, podcast advertising is still an underutilized and undervalued opportunity. This piece examines how (and why) podcast advertising can help marketers cut through the noise—pun very much intended!
It’s been a rough couple of years, to say the least. As a leader at Basis Technologies, Lois Castillo, our Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, is constantly thinking about how to support our people in the context of global stress, trauma, and burnout. And she’s not the only one: Many leaders today are wondering how to support their workforces through times of turbulence, and how to broaden their leadership skills to support their employees who have experienced a tremendous amount of harm and hurt during these unprecedented times. It’s a journey we’re all on together, and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. However, this piece is a great starting place, featuring few useful strategies Lois has learned in her time as a DEI leader.
Going Deep on Live Sports Advertising Opportunities
Tuning in to live sports used to be so simple—and we’re not even talking about 50+ years ago, when that meant “going to the game” or “turning on the radio.” As recently as the 2000s, when it came to sports broadcasts, there were the major networks, ESPN, an occasional game on one of the Turner channels, and that pretty much was it. Today, sports leagues are scattering their broadcast rights around like digital Johnny Appleseeds, adding to an already-complex CTV and streaming video environment and creating new challenges for advertisers and consumers alike. In light of these dramatic shifts, how can digital advertisers effectively reach and connect with sports fans? Read this to learn all about it.
The Weird, Wonderful World of Geotargeting and Location Targeting
What’s the weirdest museum you’ve ever been to? How about the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin? Or maybe you’re hoping to visit the Museum of Bad Art in Dedham, Massachusetts? And don’t forget the British Lawnmower Museum in Southport, England (not to be confused with the Reel Mower Museum in Bluff Point, New York). While quirky destinations like these are fun for townies and tourists alike, creative marketers can also benefit from understanding the significance of such local attractions—especially in today’s industry, which is slowly but surely transitioning toward more privacy-friendly methods of serving tailored messages to consumers. This post explores some of the different geo-based targeting strategies that can help advertisers connect with their audiences wherever they are.
How Advertisers Can Succeed During Uncertain Times
From interest rate hikes, to an impending recession, to supply chain shortages, new economic complexities are impacting consumers’ daily lives and shifting their behaviors. And when consumer behaviors change because of what’s happening in the world, so too must marketers. Advertisers who quickly lean into an altered marketplace set themselves apart from those who see themselves as victims of unmanageable change. This piece evaluates the ever-changing economic landscape, its implications for marketers, and tactics advertisers can use to adapt to all the new complexity.
4 Adtech Horrors to Avoid This Halloween (and Year-Round)
Horror movie fans, this one’s for you. Inspired by classic tropes from fright flicks, this post highlights four horrors that can jump scare marketers during the digital campaign process and provides some helpful tips on how to steer clear of them altogether. Just think of us as the friendly neighbors who, upon hearing that you’re thinking of purchasing a certain decrepit mansion that goes on the market every few years, refer you to a different realtor.
Media Complexity in the Marketing Landscape
Speaking of complexity: As if recruiting wasn’t enough of a problem on its own, complexity in digital marketing and media presents additional crises for brands, agencies, and publishers alike. Transparency, speed, and cost-efficiency are all hindered by a rapidly expanding list of channels, formats, technologies, and solutions—all of which require new skill sets, guidelines, rules, and standards for marketers to learn. To solve these colliding dilemmas of staffing, transparency, speed, and cost-efficiency, the advertising industry must better understand their underlying causes. This post dives into the factors causing this complexity, and explores some of the solutions poised to usher in a better future for everyone working in the marketing space.
TikTok by the Numbers: Stats and Facts for Digital Advertisers
The TikTok era of social advertising has arrived. The short-form video app has blown up the model of what a social network can be, and it is increasingly a must-buy for a growing number of advertisers. In this post, we explore the evolution of TikTok through a collection of stats and facts that we’ve curated just For You. We cover the good and the not so good as we try to paint a picture of how (and why) the platform has become social media’s golden child.
Four Pro Wrestlers Whose Day Jobs Needed Digital Advertising
In the mid-1990s, professional wrestling was filled with wrestlers whose characters were defined by their day jobs: a garbage man, a circus clown, and even a federal tax agent. Today, marketers in these real-life industries use digital advertising, not dropkicks, to improve their bottom lines and meet their business objectives. Kind of makes you wonder: If these wrestlers were around today, would this era of digital advertising help them to attract and earn enough business to stay out of the ring? Check out this one-of-a-kind post to learn about four former professional wrestlers whose “day jobs” would have benefited from today’s digital advertising ecosystem.
Connected TV: Fact and Fiction
With more and more people using connected TVs each year, it’s no surprise that ad spend has exploded in kind. Of course, as marketers strive to make the most of the connected TV advertising opportunity, it’s likely they’ll encounter an overwhelming amount of information and recommendations. But as the adage goes, you can’t trust everything you read—especially on the internet. So for all the advertisers who want to separate fact from fiction when it comes to connected TV: This (delightfully GIF-filled) piece is for you.
Brand Safety and Avoiding Controversy in Digital Advertising
Brand safety is, unsurprisingly, increasingly top-of-mind for advertisers everywhere, but it’s of particular importance to programmatic advertisers. The automated nature of programmatic media buying lends itself to situations where, if you aren’t careful, your brand could end up placing an ad next to some very, very controversial or undesired content. Want to steer clear of negative headlines? The post examines some of the ways digital marketers can protect their brands and avoid controversy.
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Be sure to bookmark the Basis blog to enjoy even more great adtech coverage in 2023! And while you’re getting ready for the new year, check out all of our 2023 trends content so you can stay ahead of the curve.
The year ahead will bring a host of major changes and serious challenges to advertisers. We will have to leave behind what we've long assumed to be true about capturing audience attention as we enter a new era of digital advertising. We have to embrace new and emerging channels. And we have to hold on for dear life during what is likely to be a bumpy economic ride.
But where there is change, there is also opportunity, and for those savvy marketers who are willing to evolve with the changing media landscape, 2023 could be quite a year. This report aims to showcase those opportunities and highlight how advertisers can best capitalize on their potential.
Ready to discover the trends that will shape digital advertising in the year ahead? Download Digital Sea Change: Basis Technologies 2023 Trends Report today!
Let’s start with this: Burnout is real.
Though it’s not a medical condition, burnout is nevertheless a very real, very definable occupational phenomenon that can tax a worker’s physical and mental health. The famed Mayo Clinic defines job-related burnout as “a special type of work-related stress—a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity.” The syndrome has also been tied to anxiety and depression, as well as fatigue, reduced cognitive and emotional abilities, and mental distancing.
Burnout has been having a moment of late—basking in the dull afterglow of the COVID-19 pandemic and helping fuel the mass job-departure movement known as the Great Resignation—and its impact has been particularly acute in the advertising industry. And even with the Great Resignation no longer wreaking havoc, the folks who remain in the agency world have only seen their burnout risk rise amidst rising pressures to deliver new dollars, fewer co-workers to share the burden, and a 53% global increase in new business pitches.
The impact, inevitably, is exhausted employees making more pitches with less time to prepare—and then, for the clients whose business they do win, having fewer hours to actually optimize and analyze campaigns. So burnout leads to more than just a stressed-out staff: it has a very real, very negative business impact for all parties.
Sound familiar? If your answer is “Yes,” then first and foremost: we’re so sorry to hear you’re struggling right now! As a few of us can attest, burnout is no fun—like, at all—and trying to just power through it only further exacerbates is effects. Fortunately, many employers (including, it may be worth mentioning, Basis Technologies) have begun investing in an array of benefits to support their employees’ mental health and general wellness. Whether it’s a week off, Zoom-free Fridays, or a paid subscription to mindfulness and meditation app Headspace, these perks and gestures are one way companies can show their staffers that they care about their wellbeing and are taking measures to support them in the battle against burnout.
But while these employee-friendly benefits are both thoughtful and effective, they ultimately serve to treat the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying illness that prompts the burnout in the first place. In order to effectively tackle those concerns, employers will need to holistically address the way they do work. Here are two good places to start:
Elvis Costello may have really been on to something when he crooned, “What's so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?” At a time where so very much is complicating people’s everyday lives—from economic turbulence, to supply chain crises, to global destabilization, to “tripledemics” and more—a little empathy can go a long way in establishing a stronger relationship between employers and employees.
Basis Technologies’ own Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Lois Castillo, wrote up a great blog post that features a list of four strategies for leading through turbulence, including acknowledging what’s going on, establishing systems of care, addressing situations head-on, and giving folks a (well-deserved) break. In it, she shares the following bit of wisdom:
“Your people are your best asset: They’re the heart of any organization. You need them healthy and vibrant and committed. As leaders, if we don’t consider all the external stressors that are affecting our people and make sure we’re providing an environment that mitigates some of that harm, then our employees won’t be able to come in and focus on the job at hand.”
It's a great reminder of the importance of taking the time to understand and support your people—both as a marketing leader, and as a human being. (P.S. If you’re interested, you can read the full post here.)
Beyond the care and consideration that can help foster a healthier workplace environment, employers can help prevent burnout by providing their staffers with the tools and resources they need to do their jobs efficiently, effectively, and satisfyingly.
In digital advertising specifically, there is ample room for improvement to the tech stack status quo. For programmatic marketers, the campaign process can be a tedious, mind-numbing, time-consuming slog. Part of that comes from the complex and fragmented nature of media buying: an Advertiser Perceptions report found that the average buyer uses nine different platforms over the course of a single campaign. To put that in perspective: on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, astronauts piloted the semi-autonomous rocket to the International Space Station using just three large touchscreen panels. And as valuable as the work we do is, digital advertising shouldn’t be harder than flying a rocket to a floating laboratory in the middle of space.
However, there is one key thing that the future of digital advertising and the future of space travel have in common: leveraging automation to empower users. By embracing the possibilities afforded by advertising automation, marketers can tap into new efficiencies that both save time and money, and can create a more employee-friendly job experience.
Automated functionality like inventory forecasting, bid multipliers, algorithmic pacing, machine learning optimization, group budget optimization, bid shading, automated billing, and automated dashboard reporting can combine with convenience features like trend benchmarking, inventory forecasting, inventory directories, in-platform communications, and unified reporting to create a simpler, more streamlined, and more enjoyable job experience for media buyers.
The impact of this type of tech is measurable, both in terms of economic ROI and job satisfaction. For instance, according to a recent study conducted by Directions Research, built-in automation tools and tactics within Basis simplify the campaign process and save users an average of 51 hours per campaign. That’s equal to six-and-a-half workdays—time that agencies can spend on more high-value endeavors (with higher hourly billing rates) and that media buyers can spend on more satisfying tasks like creative, strategy, planning...or themselves. And because of those automation-driven efficiencies, 80% of the advertising automation and media buying platform’s users agree that it makes their jobs easier.
Investing in the right tech can be daunting, but investing in the right tech can make for a more rewarding workplace (and, incidentally, a more profitable one).
Burnout is a beast, and the digital advertising industry is far from immune to its wrath. The campaign process is in-depth, complex, and relentless, and today’s marketers are asked to deliver more ROI despite spending large chunks of their weeks on small, repetitive tasks. Add in external economic pressures and top it off with global instability, and you’ve got yourself a workforce that’s often burning the candle and both ends under what feels like a rocket booster.
By leading with empathy and empowering media buyers with the right tools, agencies can help protect their employees and prevent burnout from setting in. And who wouldn’t want to work somewhere with a promise like that?
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It can be difficult to understand how a given platform can impact a team’s day-to-day work and overall output. So Basis Technologies partnered with Directions Research to study how our platform can help marketers streamline the campaign process. Curious about the results? Check out our report to see how Basis simplifies digital advertising.
All things considered, it’s a pretty remarkable time to be a marketer. Looking at the advertising landscape, there are more opportunities than ever to reach consumers in the right place and at the right time.
But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and there’s no great opportunity without risk. Indeed, there may be more ways than ever to connect with your target audiences, but there are also more ways than ever to court controversy—whether it’s an unfortunate ad placement next to unethical content, a PR slipup that goes viral, or even politically and socially treacherous partnerships that, until recently, may have been seen as safe.
Case in point? Look no further than the 2022 FIFA World Cup. What was once a premier sponsorship opportunity that’d make any brand marketer drool is now the subject of consumer boycotts, increased scrutiny, limited press freedoms, accusations of intolerance, and a beer-battered sponsor calamity—though, unlike the 2022 Winter Olympics, no major advertisers have gone so far as to pull the plug on their campaigns during the sporting spectacle.
Then there’s the issue of hate speech and misinformation, a two-headed plague that has rattled the internet—and social media in particular—for years but has become even more pressing since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing global unrest.
Take, for example, the myriad controversies surrounding Twitter. From the early days of Elon Musk's bid to purchase the social media company back in spring 2022 through his eventual takeover that October, the billionaire has touted plans to bring "free speech" to the site and do away with many of the platform's efforts content moderation efforts. After an initial effort to assuage advertisers' fears with promises of a content moderation council and a pledge that Twitter would not become a "free-for-all hellscape", Musk has proceeded to layoff half of Twitter's staff, prompt the resignation of more than 1,000 others (including its longtime Head of Trust and Safety), and reinstate controversial and previously-banned accounts. Oh, and that content moderation council? It's nowhere to be found.
The result? A number of major advertisers have paused their spend the platform, negotiations on new contracts have come to a halt, and eMarketer's Intelligence Insider has projected that Twitter's ad revenue will shrink by nearly 40% between now and 2024.
Brand safety is, unsurprisingly, increasingly top-of-mind for advertisers everywhere, but it’s of particular importance to programmatic advertisers. The automated nature of programmatic media buying lends itself to situations where, if you aren’t careful, your brand could end up placing an ad next to some very, very controversial or undesired content.
The result could be anything from a minor uproar to widescale boycotts and long-term damage to your company’s reputation. At a time when customers have more choices than ever, and an increasing number of people say they are looking to support brands that share their values, companies quite literally cannot afford to inadvertently or carelessly involve themselves in any type of avoidable scandal.
Want to steer clear of negative headlines? Let’s take a quick look some of the ways digital marketers can protect their brands and avoid controversy.
When marketers are crafting their messaging and placing their media buys, they’ll naturally want to focus on the important things, like how and where to engage their audience and drive new business. Unfortunately, placements next to negative content can totally undermine all that good work.
So, how can your brand counter such risks? Well, as the old saying goes, sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Or, in the case of programmatic advertising: sometimes the best defense against harmful ad placements is a proactive approach that prevents you from bidding on those placements in the first place (which, admittedly, sounds a lot less cool than “sometimes the best defense is a good offense.”)
In this Golden Age of Content, where there is far too much material on the web for any one brand or agency to adequately monitor it all, media buyers need to rely on outside solutions and integrations to help ensure brand safety. This is especially critical when it comes to programmatic advertising, as it will protect you from inadvertently bidding on any undesired impressions. Having these systems in place can protect your brand’s ads from appearing alongside undesired or even dangerous content, thus damaging your own reputation in the process.
Partners such as Comscore, Grapeshot, and Peer39 can help advertisers tap into third-party brand safety segments upon campaign launch, enabling them to exclude sensitive content and determine placement based on criteria such as viewability, ad count on page, language, and more.
Another newer brand safety tool of note: NOBL, which bills itself as “the world’s first truly responsible programmatic advertising solution for responsible brands.” NOBL continually scans the internet looking for high-quality content, evaluating and scoring each page using NOBL’s natural language processing and machine learning algorithms. The pages that score above the minimum credibility threshold are made available, while the rest are avoided, thereby protecting media buyers from running ads next to low-quality or uncredible content.
By tapping into resources like NOBL, advertisers have an important safety net in place to help ensure brand safety.
Whether you’re at an agency or sitting on an in-house media buying team, agility is of the utmost importance. Campaigns are most likely to succeed—and brands are most likely to thrive—when advertisers have the time and resources they need to continuously monitor and optimize their advertising efforts.
Critical to staying agile, of course, is bandwidth. When marketers have the time to make informed decisions on how and when to deploy their campaigns, they can better plan and execute on larger strategic goals—even if that means pivoting and course-correcting right in the middle of an ongoing campaign. This could involve updating creative, shifting budgets...or potentially dropping a campaign altogether (or, say, removing its assets from certain media properties) if it has inadvertently courted controversy.
One solution to the ever-pressing need for more time: automation, which can not only prevent harmful placements (as outlined above) but also help spare media buyers from tedious, repetitive tasks so they can better focus on things like strategy and creative. Studies have found that advertising automation platforms can simplify the media buying process and help marketers complete their campaign-related tasks 22% faster. That resulting increase in bandwidth can empower marketers to make quicker, more data-informed decisions about when, where, and how they want to advertise—or, in some instances, not advertise.
Whether responding to controversy or (ideally) trying to avoid it entirely, digital marketers know how critical it is to keep brand safety top of mind. After all, failing to so can cause PR nightmares and audience perception crises that take years to overcome.
Interested in learning more about responsible advertising? Check out this blog post on Basis’ partnership with NOBL, the world's first ethical programmatic advertising solution.
The digital media campaign process is in-depth, complex, and relentless. Today, marketers are spending too much time on small, repetitive tasks—time they could be spending on things like media strategy, education, and innovation.
It can be difficult to understand how the right media platform can impact a team’s day-to-day and overall output. So we partnered with Directions Research to study how Basis can help marketers simplify and save time throughout the campaign process.
Among the findings:
Want to learn more about how Basis can help save you time? Download the Basis User Study Report today.
Fraud is having a moment. From Fyre Festival to Theranos to "Inventing Anna," it often feels like we are in a golden age of deception.
Sadly, digital advertising has not been spared in this fraud feeding frenzy, with countless articles covering the much-loathed scourge that is ad fraud. But while ad fraud is no doubt a very real concern for advertisers, the industry has come a long way since the "Wild West" days that marked the early stages of programmatic, with new tools and best practices to help identify and prevent its impact.
To get all the latest, we reached out to Ian Trider, Basis Technologies' VP of RTB Platform Operations, for a breakdown of all things ad fraud and some tips for how advertisers can detect, minimize, and avoid it.
Ad fraud is the practice of serving digital ads that a) have no chance of being viewed by a human user, or b) are misrepresented.
Bots are software programs that perform functions automatically. There are legitimate and illegitimate bots.
Googlebot is an example of a legitimate bot. It is Google's “crawler" or “spider"—the software that automatically visits websites to build Google's search engine. Legitimate bots identify themselves, and discounting that traffic is a standard requirement in industry guidelines for impression and click counting.
Illegitimate bots attempt to simulate human web surfing for the purpose of generating paid ad impressions.
It is important to understand, though, that there are types of traffic fraud that are technically served to humans, but the traffic is still unacceptable. Examples include: impressions generated when web sites are loaded as pop-unders on porn and piracy sites, or domain spoofing, where impressions claim to be on a respectable, known site, but are actually served somewhere else. This “human traffic fraud" is a significant problem too, especially in video. Bots are a part of the problem, but not the entire problem.
"Bad" needs further definition. Inventory that is bad because it doesn't achieve the performance goal of a campaign is not fraud. Inventory that is bad because it has undesirable characteristics (fake news, adult content, etc.) is not fraud.
Ad stacking (placing multiple ads on top of each other) is fraud, because the hidden ads are impossible to view. An important distinction to note here: Unlikely to be viewed and impossible to view are not the same thing. A placement may have very poor viewability, such as a 728x90 banner at the very bottom of a news site, but it is possible to view it—most users just won't scroll that far. A stacked ad cannot be viewed under any circumstances.
Yes, but not the one that might be expected. Fraudsters want fake impressions to look desirable, and making them appear viewable is one such way. There is actually a positive correlation between gross viewability and fraud: Highly viewable inventory is more likely to be fraudulent.
This is why viewability data should always be reported net of fraud—but even so, fraud detection is an inherently imperfect science. While it should not be assumed that high viewability is a sign of fraud, extremely high viewability on unfamiliar sites that seem unlikely to have the traffic they have is certainly a sign to be cautious of.
It depends. Websites are sometimes set up containing fake or low-quality content, and ads are placed on the sites with the intention of sending bot traffic there. The creators of those sites undoubtedly know exactly what they're doing.
In other circumstances, especially when significant volumes of bot traffic appear on what appears to be a legitimate site, the publisher may have engaged in traffic buying (increasing the traffic to their website by paying other companies to bring visitors to the site). This is a fairly common practice, and there are ways to do it that are quite likely to result in real, human users (i.e. content ads via Facebook). However, these sources are relatively expensive. When the goal is to make more from advertising than it costs to bring the user to the site, publishers find themselves pursuing cheaper and more questionable sources of traffic. Breaking even requires visits that cost more than a few pennies each—and at this price, there is a substantial danger of bot traffic. Often, this traffic flows through multiple traffic brokers, and these brokers won't necessarily ask many questions, resulting in selling of traffic with unknown origins.
Innocent publishers can also be victims of a drive-by—bots are designed to look human. Only visiting one site is not very human looking, so bots may visit popular publishers to appear more realistic in their behavior. This can cause bot traffic to occur on sites that are not engaging in traffic buying at all.
People buy things. Machines do not (at least, not yet...) The point of advertising is to get people to buy things, so serving ads to machines instead of people is a waste of money. Ad fraud also tarnishes confidence in the industry overall, affecting even very clean sources—buyers' skepticism about traffic quality will be reflected in the CPMs they're willing to pay.
Estimates vary substantially. There is a baseline of suspicious traffic that will occur everywhere. Again, fraud detection is imperfect, and it isn't always possible to have smoking gun evidence of fraud. That said, this baseline level should be well under 5% of impressions. DoubleVerify reported that global fraud rates are down significantly to just 1.4% of overall impressions, but volume remains steady. Significantly elevated levels of fraud can be found in pockets—certain sites, certain sellers, etc. Sometimes common sense will indicate where fraud might be a concern, but in other cases it's not obvious.
Here are a few fraud prevention strategies:
In addition to the avoidance tactics above, here are a few strategies:
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Interested in other Basis Technologies resources that will help you understand and combat ad fraud? Reach out today.