Resource Center

I recently read a great article on Digiday called The Ad Network Transparency Conspiracy that resonated with me – I felt it aligned perfectly with some industry challenges Centro has aimed to address.
If you ask any media planner or buyer to think back to when they studied media planning and were asked to create a “dream campaign,” they’d probably tell you that they hadn’t yet gained understanding of the challenges execution poses in reality. And I seriously doubt that anyone would have relied on networks to account for much of their plan.

Adding third-party digital media logistics experts to a service provider adds another layer to the evolution of the industry. According to Craig Montgomery, principal of marketing strategy firm CMG partners, “It can be done, but it will take time and there will be some carnage along the way.”

Is mobile an essential part of your marketing mix? A new MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) study concludes that the optimized level of spend on mobile advertising for U.S. marketers in 2012 should be 7% (on avg.) vs. the current budget allocation of less than 1%. Findings also reveal over the next 4 years, mobile’s share will increase to at least 10% (on avg.) based on increased adoption of smartphones alone. Consumers are rapidly adopting mobile…shouldn’t marketers too?

Even as we rush headlong towards 2013, the speed-of-light changes in our industry demand we all become visionaries, able to look past what I like to call “The Great Disruption” – the immediate and ever-evolving commotion in the media landscape – to the horizon: 2017.
That’s exactly what I’ll be talking about when representatives from 2,000 local newspapers and their digital products gather in Atlanta from September 11th to the 14th for the 2012 Local Media Fall Publishers’ & Advertising Directors’ Conference.

The digital media industry has changed dramatically in the past few years. Craig Montgomery, principal at CMG Partners, a marketing strategy firm, thinks that changes in the mobile and social world represent the most fascinating aspects of the industry’s evolution.

In online advertising’s infancy, many publishers ran what we now call “native ad formats.” At the time, “ad format” referred solely to dimensions, as ads were either GIFs or JPGs. As publishers multiplied, the number of formats increased, and ad agencies started crying foul. They couldn’t keep up with creating the seemingly countless sizes needed for a diverse, wide-reaching media plan.

CMG Partners is a marketing strategy firm specializing in both digital and traditional media. Principal Craig Montgomery focuses on consulting, strategy and business development activities for his clients. While CMG does not partake in digital media logistics on a grand scale for its own operations, the firm helps clients with their digital media logistics. Montgomery has recently noticed what he calls an “interesting and fluid dynamic” between online and traditional media. “As Newton once said, ‘For each action there is an equal and opposite reaction,’” he notes.

A new Google study identifies two primary ways people use multi-screens: 1) Sequential – moving from one device to another to complete a single goal 2) Simultaneous – using multiple devices at the same time. These types of usage modes offer key insights to marketers. For example, the study found that nine out of ten people use multiple screens sequentially and smartphones are by far the most common starting point for completing a task (e.g. booking an online flight).

Enticing consumers to engage even further with brands is the goal for most advertisers but, as we’ve learned with quick response (QR) codes in the mobile space, it can sometimes be a challenge.