We post great content to our blog every week, but between hectic days (or weeks, or months) at work, trying to keep up with trade publications and industry news, or forgetting about all the stories you bookmarked to read later, sometimes it can be hard to keep up.

So, in case you missed any of our blog posts, below are the most popular from the past month:

• How to Use Programmatic in Higher Education: If you’re a higher education marketer or institution, we put together some tips and tricks for approaching programmatic ad buying.
• Dreamforce Recap: A few of us went to Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference, and we gathered our favorite highlights and takeaways from the massive event.
• DIAL (November): The latest Digital Innovations Awesome List, a round-up of articles and industry reports from the trade pubs.
• Programmatic 101/Conversion Tracking: Tracking conversions is crucial to digital campaign success. Here’s a primer on how conversion tracking works, why it’s helpful for campaign optimization decision-making, and what types of conversions can be tracked in DSPs.
• 3T Wrap-Up: After 12 months, 10 webinars, almost 6,000 registrants, and 2,400 attendees, 3Ton30 has concluded for the year. We rounded up the presentations, slides, and extra 3T content from each webinar into one blog for easy viewing.

Happy reading!

We received a lot of questions during our November 3Ton30 webinar. Because we like to keep these bite-sized presentations under 45 minutes, we weren’t able to answer all of them, so we’ve enlisted our fearless speaker, Ryan Manchee, to share some additional digital marketing insights and answer questions on our blog:

Does Centro support podcast advertising? If so, what results have you seen from this? Do you have any major takeaways?

Centro has worked on a number of digital marketing campaigns with podcasts as an advertising channel, all with fairly good success. It’s important to keep in mind that there is no direct click or interactive engagement that can happen during a podcast. So, it’s best to use this as an awareness effort, or to provide a specific referral code (ideally with a discount) to measure performance.

From a targeting perspective, there are several podcast platforms like Panopoly, Gimlet, and Midroll, each with varying levels of demographic or geographic targeting. For now, I think most podcasts are ideal for brands with a national presence, though there are some podcasts with a heavier subscription/listener base in specific markets.

Here’s a link to the NPR/Edison Smart Audio Report I referenced during the webinar Q&A. This report does a great job of highlighting podcast opportunities – in particular the potential with smart speakers/assistants.

Learn more about audio advertising with Centro.

How does your team at Centro talk about the effects of client website user experience in relation to campaign performance?

For digital marketing campaigns where it makes sense and we are able, Centro analyzes a combination of post-click and post-view activity, which helps provide an understanding of the effectiveness of the ads, and helps show us where we can optimize to improve performance over the course of a campaign (and for future campaigns).

On the personalization chart, was there a third option – besides generic vs personalized – that the remaining percentage of marketing leaders went with?

My interpretation from the study is that not all marketing leaders responded, so the totals did not add up to 100%. You can see the full Salesforce State of Marketing report here (and page 11 has the personalization data chart).

What is your take on the recent moves by large brands, like P&G, to drastically change their digital spend? Won't this impact the overall trend? For example, if P&G is doing this, why would I still do it?

I love seeing bigger brands help move the industry forward. A line item for them may be another marketer’s entire annual budget, so when a company like P&G pushes for more transparency and accountability it’s not just a benefit for them, but a benefit for the entire industry.

My interpretation of the challenge they put in place earlier this year was for more transparency in the supply chain, and additional assurances via certifications to mitigate fraud and establish a higher minimum expectation for viewability. I feel that any impact on the industry is more of a correction, allowing the good players to become even stronger, while the ones in the middle have to choose to evolve their business to where it needs be.

Beyond the benefit for the industry, I like the validation that the way Centro runs our business is very much forward-thinking, operating in a more transparent model that helps deliver performance for our clients not just by smart planning, quality media (see the recent TAG certification) and optimizations, but by putting more of our client’s investments towards working digital media.

Why would a company sell their first-party data? Isn’t it more beneficial to have proprietary data to use toward your own products?

Most of the companies that sell their first-party data are either publishers who have been able to smartly segment their audiences, or are a data-focused company, like an OwnerIQ that has unique purchase and shopping data they license to digital marketers.

Companies that sell products or services with an overlapping client (or prospective client) base may form a relationship that allows them to license one or each other’s data. A simple example would be American Express and Mercedes Benz, who are in different businesses, but have customers who may be good customers for the other’s business.

For additional info on specific opportunities, Centro capabilities, or questions unanswered, please reach out to your Centro Account Lead.

Do the math: What do you get when you add up four sunny days in California, countless breakout sessions and informative hands-on trainings, mesmerizing keynote speakers, conference floors filled top to bottom with swag, and what seemed like an after party around every corner (and a hangover to remind you)?

Dreamforce 2017.

More than 160,000 people from all over the world descended on San Francisco last week to talk marketing, sales, and software at the annual (and massive) Salesforce conference.

A group of Centrons made the trek out, and we can show you all 17,000 miles worth of steps on our Fitbits to prove it. (That's a rough estimate, but I know my feet still hurt). Once we landed, we hit the ground running, and we rounded up some of our favorite takeaways and highlights from the event:

It's important to align sales and marketing teams, and putting in that work is definitely worth it in the end. No one team is in the driver's seat when it comes to effective digital strategies. Sales and marketing should act as partners, and one of the common themes at Dreamforce was the importance of aligning sales and marketing on common goals, KPIs, and tactics. Doing this gives marketing clear direction on how to build their programs. With marketing able to pass better leads, it creates accountability for sales, and they're able to take notice and better act on the opportunities being created. It also makes it easier to track, measure, and analyze program success, offering better opportunities for tweaking, optimizing, and re-optimizing over time.

Plenty of Salesforce solutions and tools were plugged throughout the week, but tech isn't the only answer to creating winning sales and marketing strategies. According to Summer Crenshaw, co-founder of Tilr, “tech is there to support and nurture, but not to replace the human touch.”

Which means personalization is key.

One social marketer noted that it's important to talk about “what your customer cares about, and not what you want to say, otherwise you're just talking to yourself.”

As marketers, we have to make sure we create personalized experiences for all our consumers. Even as a B-to-B marketer selling products and solutions to other companies, it's crucial to remember that you're still talking to people.

Account-based marketing, or ABM, took center stage at Dreamforce this year, and is a great example of a way marketers can tap into personalized messaging and create personalized experiences. By utilizing ABM, you can make content dynamic, and build blocks of specific content based on visitors' behaviors, backgrounds, interests, and industries. This isn't just an opportunity to drive performance and success with your campaigns, but it's also a competitive advantage because it differentiates your company.

Which should be a major focus for marketers in 2018, because creating a better customer experience will become the new purpose for digital marketers. In today's digital world, customers are buying experiences, not products. And they're always-on, so focusing on when, where, and how to market to them is important – because quality, timing, and relevant affects brand perception. According to one Salesforce study, 64% of users respond to ads that are relevant in the moment. You only have their attention for so long, so you want every interaction they have with your brand to be positive. That extends to making sure your website and calls to action are clear and concise, and that when people search for your brand they see positive reviews and have positive experiences.

But it's difficult to personalize experiences and positive interactions if you aren't using the right data to make data-driven decisions.

Sitting on top of mounds of data, or describing all of your digital strategies as “data-driven” in client presentations won't amount to much unless you know what to do with the data. If you're not able to measure it, capitalize on it, or deliver results, then you simply have a pile of stuff and a pile of numbers.

For example, AI was an ever-present topic at Dreamforce – with a large percentage of marketers looking to invest in AI in 2018 and beyond – but if you're storing data in 30 different platforms or unable to locate and act on data, then it's hard to realize the true potential of AI.

Marketers and organizations need to focus on collecting the right data, using the right tools to digest the data, taking those insights to shape strategies, and figure out what resonates with your audience to solve their problems.

Beyond performance, there's also a trust element to data. “Data will be one of the issues of our time. There are very simple decisions you make when you have values around this,” noted Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and CEO of IBM. “Customers have trusted us with their most valued asset – data. Your data is yours, not mine to give away.”

Ultimately, knowing whether you are creating experiences that consumers trust can be achieved by talking to your customers.

Channel your inner salesperson and journalist – or your inner gossip – to reach out to customers and get a better idea of what they think of your content and your campaigns. Ask questions like 'What were you looking for?' and 'Did it meet your expectations?' and 'Have you seen better?'

For example, when building nurture campaigns, try different tactics, and make sure to get feedback from customers on what worked and what didn't. Your customers are either opening the emails or not – and it's important to figure out why not, so you can cut the dead weight and increase engagement. Are your emails too generic? Are your prospects too cold? Are the subject lines making an impression?

Your customers are the audience, so why wouldn't you be interested in their POV?

External feedback is crucial, but so is internal feedback. Figure out a way to audit your content and assign grades to the finished product.

With that, another Dreamforce is in the books. Until next year, San Francisco. But in the meantime, if you want additional digital tips, trends, and insights, reach out to [email protected] or check out Centro Institute.

At Centro, we know that keeping up with the trade pubs and latest trends can be tough and time consuming. To make that easier, we've compiled all the articles, reports, and other bits of awesomeness you may have missed, but should definitely read. Enjoy our latest list below!

Creative Agencies Offering Media Planning and Buying Services
Is a new trend on the horizon? More creative agencies have begun to offer media services in an attempt to bridge the gap between creative and media and help creative teams better understand media channels, user behavior, content, and context.

32% Of Marketers To Bring Programmatic Media Buying In-House
According to a recent Ad Perceptions report, 7 out of 10 brands rely on agencies for programmatic buying today, but over 50% of marketers and agencies believe programmatic buying will ultimately become the responsibility of the brand. A third of marketers surveyed already have plans to bring programmatic buying in-house.

Will the Hype Around Programmatic Keep Going Strong in 2018?
How will 2018 shake up when Zenith estimated that over half of global ad spend was with Google and Facebook?

Direct Ad Buys Are Back In Fashion As Programmatic Declines
According to data from MediaRadar, the number of brands engaging in programmatic ad buys dropped by 2% between January and July. While programmatic buys account for over 80% of the display ad market, have concerns over brand safety, transparency, ad fraud, and fees caused marketers to rethink their digital advertising strategies?

Six Digital Marketing Trends to Watch out For in 2018
Digital advertising is set to hit $113.2 billion by 2020, which is double what we saw just two years ago. The Digital Marketing Institute highlights six trends for 2018 that present some unique opportunities for brands and businesses.

The World of Data: Hoarders vs. Sharers
Here's a new way of viewing all of the data available in the world of online advertising, and how data can be put into action.

Audience-Based Planning is the Next Battleground for Media Agencies
Audience-based planning, or people-based marketing, is built on the promise of pulling together different data sets from a brand's first-party data, device IDs, data from Amazon, Google or Facebook, and purchased data sources to build a consumer identity graph. And then matching that with publisher inventory, without disclosing any personally identifiable information.

Snapchat Finally Lets Advertisers Use Pixels To Track Ad Results & Eventually Retarget
Snapchat is looking to build advertising models (and revenue) similar to Facebook and Google, and they're starting with the ability to retarget.

A User's Guide to Advanced TV Jargon
Programmatic TV, Addressable TV, and Connected TV are used interchangeably -- even though each refers to specific aspects within the umbrella category of Advanced TV. Here's a good outsider's perspective on what each of these mean, and how they're different. Want an insider perspective? Be sure to read Heather Robertson's take on these terms, and more, on our blog and in the new Connected TV e-Book.

Three Reasons Retailers Should Rethink Their Holiday Strategy
Consumers are starting their holiday shopping a lot earlier than Thanksgiving. Find out what their new patterns are, and maybe start preparing for next year.

The Day After Tomorrow: When Adblockers and GDPR Kill All Adtech and Martech
Over the past 20 years, digital marketing has gone all-in on direct marketing. And we've seen the rise and power of retargeting, but many consumers don't like to be retargeted with bland, generic messages. It only takes four clicks to install most ad blockers, which affects not just an annoying banner ad, but the digital landscape that advertisers and marketers rely on. Could we see creative once again play a bigger role in online advertising?

November's DIAL is also available as a PDF. Download it here.

As we near the end of the year and dig into planning for 2018, it’s important to step back and think about how to successfully navigate the rapidly changing media landscape. Advancements in advertising technology continue to improve, and marketers are tapping into more sophisticated and innovative digital capabilities and tools. The complexity is enough to make your VR headset spin.

For our next 3T webinar, we’re exploring how the industry can deliver more effectively on its longstanding promise of performance.

Watch our webinar, Cut Through the Digital Chaos: Insights for 2018. In 45 minutes or less, VP of Media Innovations and Technology, Ryan Manchee, will discuss:

• Trends and predictions for the upcoming year
• The future fluidity of media channels
• How the value of data will be re-evaluated
• What shiny new digital objects will live up to their hype

Digital advertising and campaign management is fast-paced. From a digital media team's perspective, strategists, planners, and buyers need to be able make quick updates and modifications. But the amount of manual effort required to plan campaigns means it's often hard to find time to continuously evaluate campaign performance and optimize towards success. With one of the busiest seasons right around the corner for marketers, finding ways to create efficiencies, improve the digital media workflow, and utilize the right tools and techniques are crucial building blocks for campaign success.

Basis DSP's new productivity tool, Bulk Editor, lets you make multiple changes simultaneously, so you spend less time modifying campaign settings and spend more time focusing on campaign strategies. Instead of going into individual campaigns to adjust settings, Bulk Editor allows you to make changes at once, which helps to speed up campaign set-up and free up time for strategic thinking and optimizations:

• Do you need to adjust the budget of your campaigns or groups? In General Settings, you can change the spend settings for all of them at once. There is also the option to update the status, flight dates, advertiser settings (for groups), and CPM bid (for campaigns).
• Are your October campaigns going to be the same in November and you simply need to rename them? With Bulk Editor, retitling Campaign Names is easier than ever. Add a prefix, suffix, or try the unique “find and replace" option.
• Would you like to substitute the times and days your ads are being displayed? Requests to change campaign dates can come in unexpectedly and require immediate action. Quickly create different rules using the Day Parting control.
• Have you analyzed your geo report and noticed low performance coming from a particular state? Now you can exclude it entirely from more than one campaign at a time with the Locations option. You can also add or replace the geos your campaigns are targeting.

To learn more about Basis DSP, visit our website or email us at [email protected].

How do you determine the best demand side platform?

That's not an easy question to answer. Demand side platforms, or DSPs, are digital campaign management product software that provide advertisers features for buying ad placements online in real time. Determining the best one depends on who you ask, what problem they want to solve with a DSP, and how they evaluate success. Asking an analyst – who is basing their answer off a strict set of criteria, reports, and data – might yield a different opinion than an internet user on platforms like Quora or Reddit.

In order to eliminate bias and opinion, the better question to ask is: How do you determine the best demand side platform that exceeds user needs and the needs of their digital buying teams? And to measure that accurately and objectively, reviews from actual users should be gathered in aggregate based on a certain set of criteria, like how many people are using the software and how successful they are.

According to Forrester, 80% of B-to-B buyers seek a referral from their network and 74% conduct half of their research online before making an offline purchase. One popular and trusted tool for online research in the programmatic space is G2 Crowd, a review site for business technology. Every year, G2 Crowd collects, aggregates, and analyzes user reviews to produce their G2 Crowd Grid Reports. The Grid is developed from a combination of robust data science algorithms that pull in data points from product reviews shared by G2 Crowd users and data aggregated from online sources and social networks. Users ranking and reviewing DSPs are basing their criteria off a number of factors, including DSP functionality and ease-of-use, quality of support, and DSP features, workflow capabilities, and platform integrations. The highly anticipated report plays a critical role in the procurement process of thousands of software buyers globally, who use the Grid to help them quickly select the best DSP products for their businesses and to find peers with similar experiences.

The latest Grid Report for Demand Side Platform Software was released this month, and the report ranked the top 11 demand side platforms. G2 Crowd ranked the industry DSPs based on two measures: market presence and satisfaction. In other words, the very questions we're trying to answer: how many people use the software and how successful are they?

Basis DSP is The Leader in Demand Side Platform Software

Based on the chart above, you'll see the leaders category is populated with software solutions and tech companies that exceed client happiness in both market presence and satisfaction. Though Basis has some company in the top right quadrant, it also has the highest G2 Score (74) among the competition. Not only that, but 100% of users rated it 4 or 5 stars, 94% of users believe it is headed in the right direction, and 90% of users said they would be likely to recommend the product.

Basis also scored the highest for quality of support and ease-of-use, in addition to meeting the highest satisfaction ratings in several other categories.

If you take a look at the Net Promoter Scores (NPS), no other DSP scored half as high as Basis. What's NPS? The concept, discussed in a 2003 Harvard Business Review article, is designed to highlight the link between profitable growth and customer loyalty. After two years of research, HBR determined that, for most industries, the best indicator of customer loyalty could be measured by asking people how likely they would be to recommend a particular company to a friend or relative. So, a company's NPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors.

Why does this matter? When you invest in a software solution, it's important to know the product will be there for the long haul – with regular updates, consistent and quick support, and the stability to deliver on its promise of growing your business and driving revenue.

Impacting the Future

Without our customers using and loving Basis, we wouldn't be able to celebrate this win. Customer success is the driving force behind our product and our continued innovation:

Read more of user Alicia R's review on G2 Crowd.

G2 Crowd's report also gives us an objective and honest look at where we can improve, how the competition stacks up, and what the digital marketplace looks like. But it also benefits potential buyers, allowing them to crowdsource information and hear from industry peers on what works for them, what doesn't, and why.

If you are in the market for a media buying solution, we encourage you to closely scrutinize the methodology and results. Download the report to read in-depth, and contact us at [email protected] to get a demo of Basis, the No. 1 demand side platform!

The rise of Connected TV has changed the way consumers watch and engage with content – and the way marketers can reach viewers who are spending less time with linear TV in favor of viewing on Internet-connected devices.

For our next 3Ton30 webinar, we’re going to explore how Connected TV, which combines the branding power of TV with the highly targeted capabilities of digital, has opened up new advertising opportunities for marketers.

Watch our webinar, The Connected TV Opportunity. In 45 minutes or less, Director of Video, Heather Robertson, discussed:

• What Connected TV is and the increase in device adoption
• Viewer insights, media habits, and viewership trends to help you reach audiences
• Advertising opportunities available and advantages for including in your video strategy
• What trends to watch and how to think about the future of TV targeting

At Centro, we know that keeping up with the trade pubs and latest trends can be tough and time consuming. To make that easier, we've compiled all the articles, reports, and other bits of awesomeness you may have missed, but should definitely read. Enjoy our latest list below!

Why Amazon Is The New Google For Buying
Amazon Prime customers start their search for purchases at Amazon 100% of the time. With over 85 million Amazon Prime account holders, Amazon is hard at work creating products to reach buyers who are actively demonstrating high purchase intent. Amazon already offers a wide range of ad products from mobile and desktop display banners to dynamic ads and coupon ads, but there are big expectations for the growth of their global ads segment, which is already on track to generate close to $2B by end of 2017. What will this mean for the Google and Facebook duopoly?

The Digital Ad Industry is Officially Out of Ideas
What's old is new again, and the new push is for more display banner ads -- and bigger ones to boot. As we flashback to the last decade, how will creativity be saved in our increasingly data-driven, programmatic ecosystem?

Apple's Move to Kill Cookies Brings Plea From Six Major Trade Associations
Apple plans to limit cookies on the newest version of Safari through a feature called Intelligent Tracking Prevention. While cookies will still exist, they will be wiped of data after 24 hours instead of the standard 30. It should come as no surprise, but digital advertising regulative bodies are asking Apple to rethink the rule that is expected to go into effect later this month.

What Marketers Need to Know About Location-Based Advertising and Where It's Headed
Grab a seat and read this round table discussion about how some industry leaders think about the current state of location-based marketing, and, more importantly, what the future looks like for them and the industry.

Data Feeds Can Bridge The Digital Divide
It's easy to focus on the new and shiny objects in digital marketing when it feels like there's something new every day. However, customers want personalization, and that can be found by connecting offline data to online data.

Programmatic is Finally Figuring out the Basic Flaw in Ad Audiences
An unfortunate reality of programmatic is that buyers are often left in the dark about what type of auction they are bidding on. But now there is a shift for more programmatic platforms to step up and offer more transparency around auction mechanics

Spotify Launches Self-Serve Ad Studio, Enables Long-Tail To Create Three-Figure Professional Audio Campaigns 
Just as they helped music fans rethink the concept of a playlist, Spotify is helping advertisers of all sizes rethink the way their media can be bought. The release of their new self-serve audio advertising platform includes a tool to create audio ads with a professional voiceover. Self-serve has been all the rage with Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, and now Pinterest, not to be outdone by their social peers, has launched their self-serve platform for Promoted Pins. So much power, so many new platforms to manage.

Pinterest Is Offering Brands Its Visual Search Technology to Score Large Ad Deals
Target, one of Pinterest's earliest advertisers, has deepened the partnership with plans to leverage the platform's visual search tech in their sites and app. In exchange, and in an effort to get smarter about how they merchandise their products, the retailer will gain access to insights about how consumers use Pinterest.

Infographic: Shoppable Media Is Transforming How Consumers Find and Then Buy Products
As the traditional path-to-purchase collapses the active and passive stages, shoppable media has made it not only about finding the right person at the right time, but also in the right experience.

Nearly Half of Millennials and Gen Xers Don't Watch Traditional TV: Study
Did you know that half of adults between the ages 22-45 are not watching TV in traditional platforms? They are watching TV content, but they're streaming it on their tablets or through OTT devices like Apple TV.

Smart Speakers: Why Marketers Need to Listen Now 
According to a recent report from NPR and Edison Research, only 7% of the U.S. population owns a smart speaker. This number is expected to rise, and according to the research, folks who do have a smart speaker are using them in ways that marketers should start to consider.

October's DIAL is also available as a PDF. Download it here.