Strategy

Since its release in 2012, there have been continuous industry updates and hype around Facebook Exchange (FBX), the site retargeting program introduced for Facebook ad inventory. Much of the early speculation and reports compared FBX performance against both Facebook and general display. Over time, product improvements and attribution functionality have influenced FBX’s valuation. As such, it is necessary for marketers and advertisers alike to understand how performance has evolved and is defined so as to adequately determine its value and impact on the advertising ecosystem.

All blogs are not created equal, and some will have the opportunity to drive ad revenue better than others due to their audience, growth, content and sales strategy. For these networks to stand out against others in the marketplace, we have a couple suggestions…

Over the past few years, there has been a literal and figurative explosion in the amount of data available to analyze business activities. Companies that can rapidly process publicly available (or licensable) data and turn it into actionable information have been able to develop real competitive advantages. From a systems perspective, the playing field (with regards to how fast you can do both of those items) is leveling pretty quickly. So where will new sources of competitive advantage come from?

As things started to grow and change in the mobile advertising landscape, publishers quickly realized that responsive design was going to be super important for their content to morph to the screen that it was being shown on. As a publisher, you’d want your readers to have the same great experience whether they were on their phone, iPad or desktop computer.

Local digital advertising is about delivering ads based on the vicinity of the consumer, including messaging that supports national brand exposure but is contextually relevant to the in-market consumer. However, a legacy connotation is that local equates to local-only publications such as local newspapers or community magazines. This leads advertisers to raise the skeptical question of, “Why local?”

Many analyst firms estimate that Real-Time Bidding (RTB – the ad buying process where bids are placed on impressions in the milliseconds before an ad space loads) will represent 20% of all digital display ad spend by the end of this year.

For media planners and buyers, this method of running campaigns is getting more and more interest as clients continue to ask about it and look for greater precision and efficiencies in their media buys. It behooves us to evaluate how well it drives the advertiser’s objectives. So, how much should we spend on RTB when planning a campaign?

By now we’ve all seen and heard much about the six IAB Rising Star Units. It’s no surprise Centrons are eager to hit the ground running to bring these new, sexy ad units to our advertisers. Creative teams are busy building these out and publishers are working hand-in-hand with their web development teams to get them approved.

Last month during my web presentation “Viewability: What publishers need to know to compete for dollars,” there were a lot of questions from the audience about whether sites would have to drastically change their layout in order to maintain their premium inventory status once it becomes necessary to transition sites from a “served” to a “viewed” impression measurement standard.

I have always been skeptical about the role that ad executions play in mobile games. Gaming publishers often defend the space by contending smartphone and tablet owners spend a significant amount of their device time in mobile gaming environments.