Contact UsSign In

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!

The Rise of Self-Service in Ad-Tech
As media buyers call for more transparency, the media planning and buying ad tech industry is moving toward a self-service model. This shift allows media buyers to have their own bidding tool and manage their data in-house. The appetite is there from the buy side, but it seems many technology companies have been hesitant to fully develop the platforms and are instead relying on recent acquisitions to create an end-to-end solution. #BasisFTW

Outbrain Acquires Native DSP Zemanta
This deal comes after months of speculation of an Outbrain and Taboola merger. Instead, it will bring together Outbrain's native recommendation ad products and Zemanta's native DSP, which has access to 30 native supply platforms, including Outbrain and their competitors.

Discovery Aims for Content Clout with Scripps Network Bid
This $11.9 billion deal will bring together Scripps' largely female-focused lifestyle channels such as HGTV, Travel Channel, and Food Network with Discovery's Animal Planet and Discovery Channel, whose viewers are primarily male. With more viewers watching shows and movies on their phones, tablets, and phablets, U.S. TV networks and cable providers are feeling the pressure. The hope is this will give Discovery & Scripps an advantage in skinny bundle negotiations and economy-priced cable packages. One thing is for sure: The Puppy Bowl and Property Brothers tie-in is going to be adorable.

Adobe Finally Kills Flash Dead
Adobe has announced 2020 as the end-of-life date for Flash. For a guy who taught himself Flash in 2000 and spent the early part of his career designing ads in Flash, this is the end of an era.

Experimenting with VR Ad Formats
Gaze Here Now: From Area 120, Google's internal workshop for experimental ideas, comes the early stage experiment of what a native, mobile VR ad format might look like. Check out a couple of examples created by developers experimenting with the forthcoming ARKit from Apple.

With Echo, Amazon is Emerging as a Friend to Publishers
Publishers say Amazon has given them significant freedom to create skills for the Echo — and has even been willing to make accommodations publisher requests. In this honeymoon stage, Amazon has also allowed some publishers to monetize Echo without asking for a cut. “Alexa – how long will this last?"

For the Wealthiest Americans, Amazon Prime has Become the Norm
82% of households with annual incomes above $112,000 have access to free two-day shipping and both seasons of Man in the High Castle — whereas only about half of households making under $41,000 have an Amazon Prime membership. Recognizing the opportunity for growth, and in an attempt to woo Walmart shoppers, Amazon announced a half-price pay by the month ($5.99) option for low-income shoppers.

Android and iOS Updates Pump the Brakes on Location Data
With the looming mobile operating system updates, Apple will make changes that give consumers more control and insight into when apps are using their location. Android is making changes to limit the amount and frequency of background data available for developers. Their intention is to eliminate apps that capture a user's location, but don't provide the value associated with that exchange.

August's DIAL is also available as a PDF. Download here!

Centro kicked off the summer with 13 new interns in Chicago, New York, and Dallas. For 10 exciting weeks, our Centerns – as we lovingly call them – were spread across multiple teams and given the opportunity to get hands-on learning experience. They took on digital ad campaigns, individual projects, and community service work, while soaking up everything they could about the industry in the meantime.

Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be featuring their experiences on the blog. Today, we'll give you a look into the internship program through the eyes of our Chicago Centerns.

Sarah Newell, Media Associate Intern
I went to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and majored in advertising and minored in informatics. I was attracted to Centro because ad tech is the perfect combination of my studies!

I am currently an intern for the Publisher Solutions team. I work with several different markets, mainly assisting the publisher specialists whenever they need help. This could mean setting up campaigns in Basis Platform, pacing campaigns using Basis DSP, or talking to publishers about different ways to optimize campaigns.

My favorite part of this program is that every week someone takes time to give the interns a presentation about a different department or a different role in the company. We're at the beginning of our careers and learning at a big company, so it's a great way to discover what opportunities are out there and how we can grow at Centro.

Through this internship, I've learned that if you ask, people will go out of their way to help you. For example, I told my boss that I really enjoyed learning about how different teams work together, and now she's setting up a workshop with our team and the sales reps, so they can give us an intro on how they sell.

That above and beyond is such a great example of what initially attracted me to Centro's internship program: the people and the opportunities.

Maggie Nemoy, Insights Intern
I went to Vanderbilt in Nashville, where I majored in economics and minored in math and corporate strategy (yes, I am a total math nerd). At Vanderbilt, I was so happy surrounded by the group of intelligent and caring students, and I wanted a similar environment at work – which I found at Centro.

My daily work consists of creating insights and strategy briefs for different campaigns – that means I pull data on what our competitors are spending on different ad platforms, and use data platforms to research consumers and their media habits. Also, when a campaign manager wants to include a feedback survey with their advertisement, I'm in charge of coordinating with our brand study partner and setting the studies up.

Outside of the work, the best part has been having so much fun getting to know the other interns and making good friends. I also feel like I learned something new every day. I've learned that it's really special to work at a place that embraces making (reasonable) mistakes and learning from them. Which is why my advice to future Centerns is to work hard and have fun, but don't be afraid to make a mistake!

Caroline Nugent, Analytical Operations Intern
As a recent graduate of Michigan State University, I was thrilled to move to Chicago and join the team. Centro's commitment to providing its employees with opportunities to learn, grow, and innovate in the digital advertising landscape initially attracted me.

I'm more than halfway done with the experience, and I can say I've gained valuable exposure to the solutions and platforms that Centro uses for campaign performance analysis. The internship program has been very well organized, and the weekly meetings have given us all the opportunity to better understand the different teams and their roles within the company.

Plus, everyone is very welcoming, passionate about what they do, and more than willing to answer questions. It was a big transition to move to a new city from my hometown, but everyone at Centro has been so welcoming and given me tons of recommendations for places to explore and restaurants to try!

Matthew Langshur, Software Engineering Intern
I'm still in school at McGill University in Montreal studying mechanical engineering. This past year, to get more involved in engineering, I joined a student club where we built a functioning race car and competed against other universities.

This summer, I was tasked with investigating and beginning to implement the use of load testing tools for Basis Platform. This meant learning about the platform and learning Ruby so I could successfully research and test different load testing solutions. While the work I was assigned wouldn't prove difficult to an experienced developer, it would take a considerable amount of time to fully research, and the fact that I helped contribute makes this internship memorable and impactful.

Centro has taught me more than I could have imagined. I'm now familiar with several programming languages and, as a result, have a much better understanding of web development – something they won't teach you in school.

My advice to a prospective Centern is to work hard (obviously), but don't shy away from a task even if it seems too difficult. With enough resolve and work, anything is achievable.

Torie Patterson, Media Associate Intern
I went to Denison University and majored in communications. I love to play tennis and travel which is why I studied abroad in Greece and London.

Here's a snapshot of what my internship entails: Beyond helping out the team with anything they need, I also assist with managing live campaigns, help to monitor performance of campaigns, help to process and approve publisher IOs, and facilitate order revisions and approvals of revised IOs

One of my favorite parts of the program has been our involvement in Giving Tree project, where we all went to the Lincoln Park Community Shelter to make lunch for the guests, spend time with them, and hear about their lives. It was really great to embody Centro's manifesto by giving back, and it was a special experience to see the impact we made!

What would I tell a prospective Centern? That this internship is an amazing opportunity, they will learn so much beyond their specific role, and get direct, hands-on experience in digital media.

Paola Gutierrez, Marketing Intern
I went to Loyola University Chicago and majored in marketing and international business. I am currently pursuing my MBA at Loyola's Quinlan School of Business. In my free time, I love to try new foods, play board games, read, and travel!

Every day I support the team in a variety of ways. Some days I help with event set-up and logistics (researching and contacting food truck vendors, restaurants and rooftop bars, or boat companies). Other days I help contribute content to our social media channels and the blog (I wrote these lovely intern blog posts). Sometimes I'm doing analysis to figure out how our social media accounts stack up against the competition.

My favorite part of my internship has been planning and being a part of our Giving Tree Project, because it gave me the opportunity to meet people all around the company who contributed food donations for the meal we cooked at Lincoln Park Community Shelter. Our project showed me that everyone at Centro really does live by the manifesto, particularly their dedication to others.

I would tell a prospective Centern to meet as many people as they can, and to try to learn something new every day.

If you have more questions about our internship program or would like to apply to be a part of the program, please reach out to [email protected].

Brand and agency marketers descended on Chicago last week for the Midwest outpost of the Modern Marketing Summit. Attendees connected over what's new and exciting and challenging in today's digital industry, with a particular focus on how evolving technology is affecting retail, CPG, and QSR marketing.

As with any conference, there were larger, common themes and hot topics discussed – and we're highlighting some below:

Mobile data partners should carefully evaluate the collection of app data.
It's a joint effort: Mobile data partners that offer mobile advertising audiences and the brands and marketers that leverage them need to be cognizant of how data is being collected on mobile users. This must be done with regard for user permissions, and they must work to understand the collection process – whether it be data that comes directly from publishers or from app SDKs they have access to.

Brands have been adopting advertising-based forms of artificial intelligence for years.
AI is defined as the development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. Technically, adoption of AI dates back to when brands and marketers started executing search engine marketing and, after, the rise of programmatic and optimizations of programmatic tech learning over time.

Despite the expectations for AI, humans will continue to lead the digital advertising selling process.
Some hypothesize that the advancement of AI will result in the loss of digital media jobs that are currently occupied by people. However, panelists discussing the topic contended that tactful sell-in of media concepts and strategic evaluations of media will continue to require human oversight. Qualitative optimizations will also require human thinking, so it's more likely jobs will evolve in the space rather than be lost to AI.

Ads aren't made for the sake of serving impressions, but for reaching people.
Clients put so much focus on using technology and algorithms to hit KPIs, while forgetting that no matter how digitally-focused today's world may be, the goal of digital ads remains the same: reach human beings. This means that ads must speak to us – not just by reaching the right individuals, but by identifying and speaking to us at meaningful moments in our day.

Saying you need big data doesn't mean you know what to do with it.
One panelist cited an IBM study where approximately 70% of surveyed CMOs said they wanted to invest in programmatic media -- except roughly the same percentage of those surveyed CMOs identified themselves as not truly knowing what programmatic was. A similar (though perplexing) comparison can be drawn for marketers and brands wanting big data, but not knowing what they want it for. Organizations may want to try putting less emphasis on amassing large sums of data, and instead focus on building infrastructure or resources that digest data into insights. Even if it's on a smaller level, the insights and intelligence they gather will help to solve client problems.

Brands should focus on the collection of CRM data.
It might sound like a no-brainer, but there's no denying the value of collecting high-quality CRM data for audience targeting. A panelist from Kellogg's noted the brand's constant effort to collect CRM data and constantly refresh their large and growing data set. In order to make their robust first-party data work harder and more powerfully, the brand consistently interacts with their existing customer base by offering them new reasons to stay in touch. This ensures high-value customers remain actively engaged and primed for new ad campaign messaging.

"Further automation, more sophisticated algorithms: What's music to the ears of brands’ bottom lines and media efficiency is slowly encroaching on the role that actual humans play in the ad ecosystem."

Read more in MediaPost.

Ask a Centro Expert is a blog series from Centro where we break down the complicated tools, tech, and trends you've been hearing about in the trade pubs and around the office. We reach out to some of our in-house experts to ask the tough questions and turn them into bite-sized, palatable Q&As for your reading pleasure.

Last month, we explored ad fraud. This month's topic: Ad blocking. We talked to Ken Rood, Centro's Director of Technical Ad Operations, for the break down.

In the simplest terms, how would you describe what ad blocking is and what happens when an ad is blocked?
Ad blockers are generally user-installed plugins added to a browser. When a user loads a webpage, the plugin tells the browser to ignore anything and everything that looks like an ad. While plugins like AdBlockPlus are widely known and discussed, many desktop and mobile browsers also have built-in features to filter out specific ad formats as well. For example, most browsers have blocked pop-ups for years and years.

What's the purpose of ad blocking? What are the most common reasons people would block ads?
Consumers want to be safe and in control of their user experience.

According to PageFair, a company that helps publishers measure and recover revenue lost by ad blocking, more than 45% of blocking is because the ads are impeding a user's ability to get content (i.e. there are too many interruptions, or slow-loading ads are slowing down the page).

Another 36% cite security and privacy issues. In light of recent news about data breaches, malware and Flash security updates, users are rightfully sensitive to an increasing number of third party trackers using their data for targeting.

Who blocks ads? Is it specific to any particular group, area, browser, demographic, etc.?
Because ad blockers are designed to duck most tracking systems, hard numbers are difficult to gather. However, according to 2016 surveys from the IAB and C3 Research, consumers who use ad blocking tools skew younger and male. PageFair confirmed this research in a more recent 2017 study, but noted that ad blocker usage has now broadened across men and women of all age ranges.

Globally, ad blockers are most prevalent in India and parts of Asia – mostly on mobile devices while in the U.S. (for now) – though there are more users blocking on desktop.

How prevalent is the problem, and is this a desktop-only phenomenon or do people block ads in smartphones too?
Ad blockers exist for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. In recent years, blocking on mobile devices has rocketed as new apps like AdBlock, Peace, Crystal, and others were introduced to the App stores in 2015.

In some cases, ad blocking companies – like Rainbow (formerly Shine) – are working directly with carriers to block ads that don't comply with industry standards, accelerating mobile adoption.

Below is a chart of mobile vs. desktop adoption in recent years:

Can you tell us a bit about Google Chrome's new ad blocker and Apple's Safari ad blocker?
Google announced in June that they'll be adding filters to their Chrome browser beginning in 2018. These filters will stop intrusive ads, such as full-page pop-ups, interstitials, and auto-play video or flashing/strobing ads on desktop and mobile.

Similarly, Apple announced they will be adding blocking features, such as Intelligent Tracking Prevention to their desktop browser Safari. These updates will stop auto-play video and curb certain types of user targeting/tracking.

Both are responses to consumers demanding better security and control over user experience – and they follow the industry trend toward better encryption and less intrusive formats.

Will these ad blockers increase the numbers in mobile ad blocking?
The Safari update will be focused on desktop-only, but Chrome's release will impact both mobile and desktop.

Is there any connection between ad blocking, viewability, and ad fraud?
Absolutely! It's important to consider all of these factors together to understand how it may be impacting reporting.

Humans block ads. Bots do not. Since blocked impressions are never counted, humans and bots can show up disproportionately in reports.

Will shifting to alternative formats like native, search, and social be the only solution for advertisers?
Some formats – like those on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. – are less susceptible to browser-based ad blockers because their ads are in-app (outside of a browser). The key is focusing on creating relevant, engaging ads that don't interfere with the user experience. Avoid auto-playing ads, floating ads, or other ads that may disrupt site navigation. Use ads that give users full control and allow them to play and skip.

Can you provide 3 strategies or tips advertisers and publishers should take to tackle this issue?

Stay LEAN
The IAB and publishers introduced LEAN principles, an industry guideline that encourages:

Designers should follow standard ad specifications and use secure (HTTPS) protocols wherever possible. Allow users the ability to opt out and focus on ad formats that support the user experience.

Be Compelling
According to PageFair, 77% of consumers are willing to see some ads. Make sure you're properly targeting ads, and that you're delivering a message that is clear, timely, relevant, and engaging.

Stay informed
New consumer and industry updates to ad blocking are developing daily. Advertisers and agencies: Continue to work with your ad serving partners and publishers to understand formats that are working well. Similarly, publishers should follow updates from the IAB and other trade organizations on best practices.

Interested in other Centro resources that will help you understand ad blocking? Reach out to [email protected].

"Local media companies — including newspaper, television, and radio publishers — are getting a new way to scale their digital campaigns and more precisely target audience segments this morning, as the team at Frankly has announced the launch of an audience extension solution... The new platform was built with technology from Centro, which provides enterprise-class software for digital advertising organizations."

Read more in StreetFight.

It's our final ad tech analogy in the series: The Dinner Recipe Analogy, which explains how KPIs affect what programmatic tactics should be used.

Pretend you're throwing a dinner party with a friend. Your friend asks you to be in charge of buying all the groceries for the party, but they don't tell you which ingredients to buy at the store, what you'll be eating, or what any of the recipes require.

In that situation, it's almost impossible to know what to purchase at the store. You could pick out a bunch of items you like to eat, or ingredients you think taste good, but you might end up making a meal that's full of dishes and foods that don't work well together or sides that don't complement the main course. You'd likely be left with a table full of unhappy guests who have to eat a meal that isn't very good.

This is similar to building programmatic campaigns without deciding on goals and KPIs beforehand.

It's hard to put together a plan if you don't know the KPI, because evaluating campaign success and performance can only be accurately tracked if you're measuring against a specific KPI.

The various tactics at your disposal work better than others for different KPIs and objectives. For example: If you're trying to achieve brand awareness, you want to measure your campaign's success based on how many people you reach. Meaning the KPI is impressions.

In order to put together the best and highest-performing plan, know the KPI first.

Interested in other Centro resources that will help you dominate the digital media space? Reach out to [email protected].

Social media's unmatched reach has made it increasingly important to include on every media plan, but so many platforms, objectives, targeting, placement, and creative options have made paid social an overwhelming space to navigate.

We brushed you up on the basics of paid social back in April, and for our next 3Ton30 webinar, we're taking it to the next level. We'll explore how to add social to your media plans as part of overall campaign strategy – instead of adding for the sake of checking off a box on your digital checklist.

We'll showcase real-world business cases and discuss what social considerations make sense for each – to ensure you're taking a multi-faceted approach to social media, matching strategy to your business objectives, and, ultimately, crushing your campaign goals.

Join us and Centro's Associate Director of Social & Search, Vanessa Pence, on Wednesday, July 19, as she discusses:

Next up in our ad tech analogies series: The Rue La La Analogy, which explains how private marketplaces and private exchanges are not the same thing. Private marketplaces and private exchanges can frequently be confused – likely because they both have the word “private" in them – but they're two different concepts.

We explored private marketplaces in our Coupon Code Analogy two weeks ago, but in order to get to the heart of the difference between the two, let's use online shopping service Rue La La as an example.

Rue La La allows shoppers and clothing brands to buy and sell clothing and accessories. Once you are signed up and approved to buy or sell within Rue La La, you can buy as much or as little as you want – and whenever you want – for an indefinite amount of time.

That's similar to how private exchanges work, where all bidders and sellers must be approved before they are allowed to buy or sell, but once they are, there's no limit to activity.

But it's unlike how private marketplaces work, because private marketplaces operate much more like a “sale," where there's a defined period of activity and a time sensitive Deal ID required for access.

Next week we'll dive into our final ad tech analogy, The Dinner Recipe Analogy, which explains how KPIs affect what programmatic tactics we use.

Interested in other Centro resources that will help you dominate the digital media space? Reach out to [email protected].