Marketing Automation

Could “the next big thing” be a Baby Boomer creation?

When you hear the word startup, chances are images of twenty-somethings hacking away at Macs in a loft office with an open floor plan spring to mind. And for good reason: head to sunny California, home to Silicon Valley and some of the today’s prominent internet startups, and you’re bound to find that a lot of startups do look something like this.

But that doesn’t mean that one should jump to the conclusion that Gen-Y is the generation with the greatest entrepreneurial spirit. According to a new survey released today by Monster.com and Millennial Branding, members of Gen-X and the Baby Boomer generation actually consider themselves to be more entrepreneurial than their younger siblings and children.

Q&A: Lean Analytics co-authors on data-driven marketing

Econsultancy and Geckoboard recently surveyed SMBs and entrepreneurs in the internet software industry for our Data-Driven Culture Survey and found that across different approaches to data and goals, the majority of respondents felt metrics were not understood or acted upon correctly.

Whether you are a marketer or a startup founder, we can all benefit from a structured, lean approach to data.

As the Lean Startup movement (spawned from the bestselling book of the same name by Eric Ries in 2011) will add another chapter in just a few weeks’ time when co-authors Ben Yoskovitz and Alistair Croll release Lean Analytics, we decided to get their take on prioritising data for marketers in this Q&A.

The Twitter API: human meets programmatic

The official launch of the Twitter Ads API was inevitable but still important for the marketing ecosystem. One of the world’s biggest human-fed and –curated platforms has taken a step in the right direction – using technology to help make marketers’ lives easier.

Twitter is taking a page out of the playbook of Facebook, which started its journey toward a mature advertising business with its own API in 2009. They built on this success with the launch of Facebook Exchange in 2012. As one of the original FBX partners, we have seen the data and scale available become important to many top brands.

Automation for the premium

Finally, automation is here, and there’s little doubt it is fundamentally changing our industry, powered by sophisticated yield optimisation algorithms and platforms offering the ability to bid on each impression served.

So, can we finally throw away our manually generated insertion orders, and book every campaign systematically? Can media owners connect up their platforms to the cloud, and walk away?  Will market forces replace expensive sales people?  

As RTB accounts for only 12% of display trading, it’s clear there’s still a long way to go. Certainly, automation is growing rapidly, but it’s still fair to say that most automated campaigns are focused on the lowest value inventory.  

Similarly, the vast majority of inventory traded in automated systems is still considered remnant and would be otherwise unsold. 

Audience buying: why it demands always-on investment

The accelerating media transformation is rapidly redefining the relationship between brands and consumers. As new vehicles proliferate, marketers face an urgent question: where do I invest. Neither planning nor analytics tools have kept up. And while statisticians work to sort through the jumble of data, marketers need to make tough innovation decisions…yesterday.

Life offers few shortcuts, but it is wise to take them when they materialize. Some marketing decisions may contain a shortcut around the “What kind of an ROI will I get?” interrogation. In some cases, it can be simpler to ask “Can I afford not to invest in a new tactic?”

Cutting out complexity to deliver value in today’s ad tech world

As we begin 2013, we have already seen activity that points towards a shakeout in the advertising technology industry.

In the space of one week, we saw MediaMath buy Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions unit, AppNexus secure $75m funding, part of which will be used for acquisitions, and ad exchange business adBrite shut down its operations.

And we are likely to see greater industry consolidation as we continue through the year. So what’s important when it comes to technologies in today’s ad tech environment?

How far should programmatic marketing go?

There is a rise in ‘machine marketing’ underway. This is most evident in digital marketing, where algorithms and automation can help create efficiencies across campaigns.

But how far should marketers rely on programmatic marketing as part of the mix?

The movement to viewable ads vs served ads: infographic

As we begin to sift the huge amounts of data at our fingertips, we are starting to see a move toward better advertising solutions: more targeted and more relevant ads served to potential customers who will actually act on them. This is needed in display advertising more than any other.

In 2012, we started to see publications shift toward more effective types of inventory from ad servers. Sites such as Forbes and USA Today have moved from allowing served ads to viewable ads, which means advertisers aren’t being charged for ads that aren’t seen by the consumer. 

Some may consider this a bold move, and those serving the inventory are likely to unhappy with this move, but a movement to a viewable ad measurement, will make the ROI of display advertising reflect the actual truth of what is seen.

Programmatic premium is not about bidding

When it comes to digital publishing sales, it seems like many publishers are questioning whether the product they have — the standard banner ad — is what they should be selling.

Last month I wrote that 2013 would be the year of “premium programmatic,” where LUMA map companies who make their living in real time bidding turn towards the guaranteed space, where 80% of digital marketing dollars are being spent.

My recent experience at Digiday Exchange Summit convinced me that this meme continues — with an important distinction: “Premium programmatic” is not about bidding on quality inventory through exchanges. Rather, it’s about using technology to enable premium guaranteed buys at scale.

Five ways to elevate your game as a marketer

Is marketing a science or an art? According to Adobe’s Jeff Allen, marketers need to make sure they have a foot firmly in both camps.

In a talk at Econsultancy’s JUMP New York conference this morning, Allen said that within any given organisation it’s likely that almost everyone will have an opinion on the marketing strategy.

So it’s up to marketers to convince their colleagues that they are the experts in what they do and can use data to prove it.

In order to change the perception of marketers as “colour pickers”, Allen highlighted five points that his audience should put on a checklist to make them more effective at proving their worth…

How can data fuel creativity?

In a world where retargeting with dynamic ads seems like the only option to improve creative through data, marketers are beginning to look at what other options exist, for both brand and performance advertisers to run better campaigns.

Twitter prepping launch of advertising API: report

Last year, Facebook went public in what was one of the most highly-anticipated and, as it turned out, disastrous IPOs of all time. In the past several months, the world’s largest social network has managed to convince Wall Street that it will eventually monetize its billion-plus users.

That’s good news for the number two social network, Twitter. Last week, reports surfaced that global investment powerhouse BlackRock is reportedly looking to buy $80m of Twitter shares from early employees, and some believe that the company will look to go public as soon as this year.

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