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Ah, Election Day. An opportunity to participate in democracy, make your voice heard, and post that “I VOTED” sticker all over the 'gram.
In previous years, voter turnout in the United States has been less than stellar. In the 2016 general election, just under 56% of the voting age population showed up at the polls. Compare that to the other member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, where the U.S. ranks 26 out of 32.
Political scientists and survey researchers cite different reasons for low turnout relative to other democratic countries—dissatisfaction with candidates, political apathy, or not having the time to get to one’s polling location due to work or school commitments.
While there are many hurdles to voting, Centro aims to alleviate the major deciding factor of choosing between one’s commitment to their work, and their commitment to casting a ballot. Election day occurs on a weekday, and the process of voting in-person often takes hours. That’s where Time to Vote comes in.
Centro is proud to stand alongside a diverse coalition of 400+ companies that are committed to ensuring their employees have a work schedule that allows them adequate time to vote in the upcoming presidential elections.
The Time to Vote coalition is a nonpartisan movement led by the business community to contribute to the culture shift needed to increase voter participation in our country's elections. By offering our Centrons in the U.S. and Canada a paid half day off for Election Day, Centro is committing to making accommodations for workers that help enable them to vote.
Time to Vote is nonpartisan and there is no cost for companies to join. Nearly 400 companies with employees in every state in the U.S. have signed up. Members include Best Buy, Farmers Insurance, Gap Inc., Glossier Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Levi Strauss & Co., Lyft, PayPal, Target, VF Corporation, Walmart, Warby Parker and more.
Time to Vote was started during the election season of 2018, in which fifty-three percent of the citizen voting-age population voted, making for the highest midterm turnout in four decades.
In comparison, the 2014 election had the lowest—only 21% of millennials voted, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. When 80% of young voters choose not to participate in the election process, business leaders should take more steps to encourage full participation by employees in exercising their right to vote.
I, myself, am among some of the eldest members of the generation that follows Millennials, Generation Z. As myself and my peers mature and enter the workforce, our values and goals are likely to change the way people approach work.
As a potential employee prospecting a company to work for, involvement in a coalition like Time to Vote is attractive because it tells me that this business truly cares about both its employees lives outside of work as well as the community and world in which it conducts business.
Centro’s membership in this organization aligns with our Guiding Principles, including Self Improvement and Believe Impact is Possible. In participating in Time to Vote’s initiatives, Centro is committed to continuous investment in the growth of our team members while, at the same time, requiring each person to actively take responsibility for their own self-development and well-being.
To learn more about Time to Vote, head to their website.
Want to learn about Centro’s other employee benefits and perks? Check them out here.
Meet the latest innovation in adtech: Basis Assistant, which was built for remote work.
Whether it’s running a programmatic campaign in the open exchange, buying impressions in a social media platform, or creating a report in a dashboarding tool—users can input notes from all of these sources in Basis Assistant, all without switching programs. This one-of-a-kind browser extension is compatible with any digital marketing platform.
On this webinar, Shawn Riegsecker, Founder and CEO of Basis Technologies, and Nick Saggese, Lead Product Manager for Basis Assistant, dive into the ins and outs of Basis Assistant, what it does, and how it's built for you.
Complete a purchase. Install an app. Sign up for an event.
Every campaign has a goal. And behind every campaign, there's a media buyer working diligently to ensure that goal is met.
Day after day, these superhumans evaluate campaign performance and make real-time optimizations to improve results. But when you're managing 20, 60, or 80 campaigns, it’s incredibly hard to keep track of all the changes made in a day.
Until now, optimization logs were the best solution the advertising industry could come up with to tackle this problem. These logs often show up as shared Google Sheets into which buyers input the date, time, author, platform, campaign, and other details about each optimization they make.
The flaw is that maintaining well-organized logs that include all those important details isn’t a clean process. Each time buyers log information outside the system they're working in, they must exit the task in order to add a note to their optimization log.
The process is disruptive, cumbersome, and time-consuming, which discourages buyers from tracking optimizations.
Centro created a browser extension compatible with any digital marketing platform. Basis Assistant is a one-of-a-kind tool that aims to help marketers grow their business by simplifying logging processes and facilitating knowledge sharing among teams.
Whether they're running a programmatic campaign in the open exchange, buying impressions in a social media platform, or creating a report in a dashboarding tool, users can input notes from all these sources in Basis Assistant without switching programs.
Basis Assistant provides members with access to contextually relevant information that explains why, when, where, and how a change was made. This equips members with the knowledge they need to carry out their activities without having to schedule another meeting, send an email, or coordinate a video chat to discuss a campaign’s status.
In an industry that's based on collaboration, ensuring that teammates have access to detailed information about the status of campaigns is fundamental to success. Internal communication shouldn’t involve filling 5, 7, or 12 rows in a spreadsheet so that you and your peers can know a creative was swapped, a bid was increased, or a targeting parameter was removed to boost performance.
Optimization logs aren’t just notepads. They contain a wealth of knowledge that can and should be used by teams to expedite communication, learn from each other’s ideas, and revisit the past in order to make better decisions in the future.
Built for remote work. Built for collaboration. Built for cross-channel media management.
Basis Assistant was built for you.
As the usage rate of mobile devices climbs annually, marketers may be wondering how they can best leverage mobile apps to boost their user acquisition via mobile advertising. While evaluating which channels will best capture an intended audience, I urge you to consider mobile gaming apps for your next mobile advertising campaign!
Advertisers looking to cater their mobile advertising to a large target audience will find that mobile gaming apps have a very wide reach. Globally, the number of downloads of gaming apps lead in the app download category, well ahead of downloads of social networking, tools, and photo and video apps.
The diversity of mobile games available to download, such as puzzles, shooter, and/or action games, contributes to a diverse audience of mobile gamers. Research from Jun Group found that the majority of U.S. mobile gamers identify as women, and 45% of U.S. mobile gamers are 18-34 years old. Advertisers should consider their target demographic when selecting a mobile game app type to target ads. The same study found that female gamers prefer puzzle/strategy games, while male gamers prefer sports/racing and adventure/story games.
Advertisers looking to promote their own mobile gaming app would do well to consider mobile advertising on other similar mobile gaming apps, as users who enjoy one type of mobile gaming app are more likely to install another similar game type. Some networks can leverage behavioral data in their targeting that will allow advertisers to target ads based on mobile device ID, operating system, or device type, but reliable, cost-effective third-party data tools are still in development, as of October 2019.
While mobile gaming apps are generally brand-safe due to the lack of user-generated content, rising ad fraud rates still plague the platform. In a July 2019 study by Appsflyer, most gaming apps measured below-average mobile app install fraud rates, relative to other categories like finance, social, and shopping. As new ad formats, networks, and exchanges are introduced, though, fraud rates will continue to rise.
Displaying mobile advertising on mobile game apps presents new challenges and ad formats for advertisers to try. Because mobile ads can disrupt gameplay and affect gamer satisfaction with the app, there are also unique challenges posed for gaming app developers who include ads in their product. Most global game developers offer a mix of rewarded video, interstitial, and banner ads in their mobile gaming apps.
The majority of U.S. millennials and high-income gamers prefer opt-in rewarded mobile ads, which are ads that can be launched within a game, in exchange for a benefit to the gamer, like a bonus life for example. While this format comes with a higher eCPM, it also delivers results. Video completion and install rates of rewarded video ads are high and the advertiser only pays if the viewer completes the action.
Advertisers looking for an engaging mobile advertising opportunity should also consider a playable ad, which is essentially an interactive, miniature version of the advertised game, or a branded mini-game.
Mobile gaming apps have enjoyed rapid growth in mobile advertising, due to their high number of downloads, wide audience reach, and contextual targeting capabilities. For gaming app publishers and advertisers—advertising on mobile gaming apps is a win-win!
Learn more about Mobile Advertising with Centro.
Social Media Marketing is a necessity for any business, new or existing. Having accounts like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter isn’t just about being visible to potential clients. It also encourages engagement with your brand and can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal.
However, if you’ve never used social marketing before, it might feel a little overwhelming and confusing. Here are a few tips to help you get your Social Media Marketing strategy started.
If you’ve ever researched the best ways to start planning your marketing strategy, you’ll have encountered SMART goals:
However, just like you need a social media marketing strategy that suits your business and market, you also need a planning system that suits your individual goals.
Enter the DUMB goal system:
If you need inspiration or freedom to reach your goals, DUMB might be the best way. However, if you’re incredibly task-driven, SMART might be better.
You can also try combining them. Set lofty goals, but give yourself a few tasks to achieve it. Don’t be afraid to dream, but make sure you break it down into realistic, achievable metrics. You don’t want to be demotivated when you don’t achieve your dream of hitting the million-subscriber mark in six months.
Which metrics are the most valuable for your business? Do you need followers, shares and engagement, or comments and messages? It’s easy to celebrate vanity metrics, such as having 100K likes on a post – but how many of those likes converted to sales?
Decide which metrics help you track your progress towards your goal the most accurately, and then focus on those.
What is your competition doing? This question is essential for several reasons. First, you don’t want to replicate exactly what the competition is doing. Second, you can see what works in your industry, and what doesn’t.
A look at your competition’s social media channels can give valuable insight, but you can also use various online tools to get deeper insights.
Obviously, you need to create content to match your brand and engage your target audience. You should have a good idea of who you’re going to be targeting, and you need to adapt your content to your market.
You need to decide which platforms you’ll be posting on and adapt your content for each. Instagram is very visual, while Twitter is for short, quick, and eye-catching posts. You also don’t need to post new content all the time, either. Curated content can make up a crucial part of your social strategy.
You set metrics for a reason – now is the time to use them. Which of your posts achieved the goals you set, and which ones didn’t? Did you get the conversions you wanted?
Use the information and statistics you’ve gathered to work on your social media content strategy. You’ll continuously improve your posts, progressing towards achieving your goals.
Social media is a great way to market your business or brand, but it’s not just as easy as slapping a picture onto your Facebook account. It’s important to set goals and achievable tasks, but don’t be afraid to dream, either.
Remember to keep track of important metrics, so that you can use them to improve your marketing strategy later. It’s one of the ways you can see if you’re using the right methods to engage with your target audience.
With proper planning, sensible goals and tasks, and a dash of creativity, you can use social media marketing to your advantage.
Due to advances in smartphone capabilities, we now spend more time on our mobile devices than ever before. Advertisers are aware of this shift and have refocused a majority of their efforts to cater to mobile advertising. However, with the ever-changing guidelines of pixels and cookies on mobile devices, advertisers are struggling to measure the effectiveness of these efforts. Fear not! We provide some insight and best practices on how to track mobile advertising efforts effectively below:
First, let's talk about the cookie—a common tracking tool on desktops, but a term wrapped in caution tape and question marks on mobile. Apple introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) within Safari in 2017 to curb tracking abilities and protect users’ privacy online. There have been several ITP updates since then; all of them have been focused on restricting the utilization of cookies to track user behavior.
In the Safari browser, third-party cookies are fully disabled and first-party cookies are deleted after seven days. From an advertisers’ perspective, this means that conversion activity can be recognized only if a user has: 1. clicked on an ad (thereby setting a first-party cookie), and 2. completed the conversion action within seven days of clicking.
The emergence of ITP has made the measurement of mobile advertising challenging for many advertisers. However, since ITP is focused solely within the Safari browser, there are additional mobile environments that an advertiser can utilize to gain better insights into their mobile advertising performance:
By employing mobile attribution partners, advertisers can track any actions or engagement within their app. These actions range from installs or opens, to placed orders.
If an advertiser wants to drive users to a brick and mortar location, Centro works with partners to measure in-store traffic via paid media efforts.
When a user navigates to an advertiser’s website after exposure to an ad, the phone number on the website dynamically updates to a new, custom number that a user can click to call. An advertiser can then easily attribute their call volume back to their paid media.
It's no secret that mobile advertising lacks a simple solution to measure the overall effectiveness of a campaign. By understanding the goal or target KPI you’re trying to accomplish, Centro can help strategize and implement a plan that will allow for maximum visibility into your mobile advertising performance across all devices.
Learn more about Mobile Advertising with Centro.
Based on those stats alone, audio is everywhere, which means the opportunities for audio advertising are endless. Below are some quick tips for developing effective audio advertising:
1. Audio isn’t clicked—be visually descriptive and include a strong call-to-action (CTA)
According to Spotify, audio ads outperform display ads with brand recall by more than 24%. Focus on strong visual storytelling. While some audio units include a companion banner, always mention your brand and prompt customers with a clear, concise CTA, to direct them where to learn more, buy now, visit your website or local store, or take another immediate action. If there is a companion banner in addition to your audio ad, make sure to keep it simple. It should complement and not distract from the audio ad.
2. Keep it friendly and conversational
Audio advertising allows you to reach customers 1:1 in a highly engaged setting. They may be listening to voices from a trusted news source, a favorite podcast, or singing along to their favorite song. Avoid abrupt sound effects or loud background music that may distract from your primary message and turn off customers. As you often have only :15 or :30 seconds to communicate your message, make sure to highlight your brand or service upfront.
3. Consider your audience and context
With PMPs or private marketplaces, you can target your audience with precision and reach specific, brand-safe audio environments. There are also emerging creative opportunities with vendors like A Million Ads that allow advertisers to dynamically personalize audio messages based on criteria such as age, demo, language, weather, day of the week, and more.
4. Dive into reporting!
Programmatic audio advertising is highly measurable and valuable. With VAST (the IAB’s standard method of serving video and audio), compliant media partners can allow advertisers to report on in-stream audio metrics traditionally available for digital video – such as quartile or completion rate – and compare performance against other digital channels such as paid display, video, search, or social media ads.
5. Audio Advertising with Basis
At Basis, we have the knowledge and experience of our Media Services Organization, backed by Basis DSP, the industry’s most comprehensive and automated digital media platform.
With the rise of major streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, an abundance of scaled, brand-safe podcasts, and the increasing availability of inventory across programmatic channels, it’s now easier than ever to reach your target customer.
Learn more about Audio Advertising with Basis.
https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/customers-shopped-record-levels-holiday-season-billions-items
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2019/07/16/us-audiobook-sales-neared-1-billion-in-2018-growingf-25-year-over-year/#576e69be6050
https://www.emarketer.com/content/spotify-to-surpass-pandora-listeners-by-2021-sooner-than-expected
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2019/11/18/podcasting-is-going-mainstream/#4b0e92ea1699
https://www.statista.com/topics/3170/podcasting/
https://www.spotifyforbrands.com/en-PS/insights/the-power-of-audio-chapter-2/
https://www.iab.com/guidelines/digital-video-ad-serving-template-vast/
In the Breakthrough 2020 webinar series, Centro features clients who have gotten creative in times of uncertainty. Our guests share the challenges they’ve faced, the tough calls they’ve made, and how it’s all played out against the backdrop of 2020.
These stories will show how leaders are expanding their services, winning new business, adopting automated processes, realizing the benefits of remote working, and more.
Part 4 features Eric Myers, President of Belo + Company, who shares how traditional publishers can reinvent themselves through the expansion of services, while building trust and delivering results for local clients.
Digital marketing is a double-edged sword: you have the data to make the decisions you’d otherwise have to guess at in offline channels, but you also have access to so much data that even deciding which decisions to make is difficult.
As you navigate the latter, you may wonder whether you can afford to make the wrong decisions. But I would argue that you should question whether you can afford indecision. One of the most critical decisions for which to avoid analysis paralysis is choosing how to optimize your campaigns.
Particularly for programs oriented toward generating leads or for membership-based services where a new registration doesn’t reach revenue maturity for a delayed period of time, there is no doubt that every conversion is not created equal. For the performance marketers running campaigns driving traffic to these types of businesses, optimizing to conversions—in these examples, leads or registrations—is the easiest and simplest first step to launch campaigns. But stick to that optimization strategy for only as long as it takes to get the campaign off the ground because it comes with sub-optimal performance. You’ll over-value some conversions and under-value others, meaning that you’ll also over-pay for some that you could have earned more cheaply and miss opportunities for higher volumes of other more profitable conversions.
Forward-thinking digital marketers know this and instead look to link their campaign performance to the true sales and revenue data often housed in CRM systems or other back-office systems that don’t natively tie back to the advertising data stored in publisher platforms.
Recently, you’ve no doubt heard about Google’s promotion of Offline Conversion Tracking, which allows, with some restrictions, advertisers to tie offline data back to gclid identifiers (Google Click ID) and see the data within the Google Ads interface. It also enables advertisers to use certain offline data as optimization targets. Facebook offers similar offline conversion tracking functionality.
As a founding team at QuanticMind (now QuanticMind by Centro), we’ve been living and breathing the concept of offline conversion tracking going back to our time at NexTag, formerly the web’s largest comparison shopping search engine. There, as early as 2004, we helped retailers, financial institutions, universities, travel providers, automotive sellers, and other leading advertisers connect their sales and revenue data back to the ad units they purchased from NexTag. This helped advertisers keep a clear understanding of their NexTag ROI and we, as NexTag, argued that it helped us optimize the traffic being sold to the advertisers to meet performance goals. That’s true—we did that—but we also used the data to ensure that performance thresholds were fully utilized.
For example, why would NexTag sell traffic that could tolerate a 200% Return on Ad Spend KPI at a 300% ROAS? If NexTag could sell more traffic and still meet the baseline performance threshold, there’s no question that’s the decision that’s in NexTag’s best interest.
Like NexTag did almost two decades ago, Google and Facebook will undoubtedly use this data for their own benefit, whether to alter your traffic mix or even develop competitive offerings. And maybe that’s OK for your business, maybe it isn’t. But if you don't want to share that “last mile” data with the company selling you traffic (and potentially competing with you), there are plenty of alternatives you can explore to connect advertising data with your offline revenue data (including QuanticMind by Centro).
Regardless of how you choose to do it, you should be optimizing your digital campaigns to the metrics that define business performance. Conversions usually don’t get put in the bank, so optimize your digital marketing campaigns to the metrics that do.