If You’re Buying Viewable Impressions, Demand Time Slots

Even though viewable impressions represent a huge improvement over CPC or CPM, marketers still must ask for specific time slots in order to ensure they aren't wasting their budgets.

After years of concern over suspicious click-through rates and fraudulent bot traffic, the digital advertising industry made a quantum leap from CPC and CPM to selling viewable impressions. While viewable impressions guarantee that human beings will actually see your ads on their screens, not all viewable impressions are created equal. If you want people to actually engage with your ads, you need to buy viewable impressions with guaranteed time slots.

When ad sellers can’t offer you specific time slots (e.g. 10, 15, or 20 seconds), they’re probably selling viewable impressions that only meet the bare minimum standard. According to guidelines released by the Media Rating Council (MRC) and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in June, viewable display ad impressions are counted when at least 50 percent of the pixels in the advertisement are on "an in-focus browser tab on the viewable space of the browser page" for at least one continuous second. For viewable video ad impressions, the ad must be on the viewable space and play for two continuous seconds.

While these minimum standards ensure that bots won’t artificially drive up your metrics and costs, one or two seconds is not enough time to ensure that people actually engaged with your ad. Think about it from a viewer’s perspective. When people are scrolling through a news blog scanning for headlines, what will your display ad really accomplish if it’s in their browser window for one second? If you created a 20-second video ad, what will viewers really take away from the first two seconds?

If your ad platform can’t guarantee viewable time slots, you’re not spending your ad budget as effectively as you could be. Today especially, digital ads are becoming more about engagement and affinity and less about click-throughs. Advertisers aim to provide entertainment, information, and experiences rather than flashing "50% OFF" banners. If you’re investing in high-quality creative work, you need time slots to ensure return on investment (ROI).

To be sure, even at the bare minimum standard, buying viewable impressions is a huge improvement over the old CPC and CPM models. Solve Media reports that in 2014, fraudulent bot traffic will likely cost the display advertising industry $11.6 billion. When 54 percent of standard display ads are never seen by a human being, switching from CPC/CPM to viewable impressions is the only logical choice.

In 2015, you won’t be deceived by bots and poor page placements, but ad sellers will still try to talk you into buying viewable impressions that merely hit the one- and two-second standards for display and videos ads. Don’t waste your budget. Use an ad platform that can offer guaranteed viewable impression time slots.

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How to Create Awesome Infographics Without Being a Designer

If you’re anything like me, you learned how to use programs like Photoshop and Gimp out of necessity to do minor changes to photos. You might have even dabbled in some easier graphic design projects for your own website, but it takes you hours to get the image or the design looking just right and you’re left exhausted. You might even spend time looking up tutorials on how to achieve a certain effect and still have trouble re-creating it.

In short, while you do know your way around the programs like Photoshop to a certain extent, it takes you forever and there’s absolutely no way you’d call yourself a graphic designer. But then, you’re surfing around the web and you noticed some really cool infographics on things like fashion, music and food and you can’t help but wish that you could create something like that; even if it’d take you a week.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s definitely possible to create some awesome infographics in any category that you choose, EVEN if you’re not a designer. In this blog post, I’m going to introduce you to three awesome tools to create the best infographics, tell you how to use them AND how you can share your infographics in different channels all over the web. So, let’s get started!

Introducing Easel.ly

First of all, I love the name of this tool, it’s a great play on words using easel (as in drawing pad) to play on easily’.

Launched two years ago in 2012, Easel.ly has hundreds of awesome infographic templates and design objects that even the most design novice can customize and share online. You can drag and drop design elements however you see fit or even upload your own background image from scratch as a template. The best part? Easel.ly is free!

Easel.ly is super popular with students, teachers and business owners who need to put together lesson plans or concepts in easy-to-follow visual forms. In fact, Easel.ly received the 2013 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning Award from the American Association of School Librarians (AASL).

So how does it work? Simply go to Easel.ly and click on ‘Create an Infographic’. Once you land on the page, you can pick a blank template or one of the other several hundred and get started!

Choose a category to find the best template that you want and then work your magic, dragging and dropping different backgrounds, themes, shapes, objects and putting in text. Then you can save it and share it through a browser link, a web link you can embed into your blog and share it via Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest!

In terms of going the extra mile in sharing your awesome infographic via social, you could even try attracting new audiences on LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram and even using new tools like Glossi to create a new platform like an online magazine featuring cool infographics before sharing them. Creativity and a little out-of-the-box thinking can go a long way.

How to Describe Piktochart

Piktochart is another awesome online tool for creating cool infographics. It’s little more in-depth then Easel.ly in that it’s a software platform that allows you to embed videos, change the fonts, colours, add different line elements and even charts.

You can even import Google or Excel spreadsheets to create your own charts and customize the infographic by uploading your own images or using the more than 2000 high-res, print-ready graphics in the Piktochart library. Note: While you can change the colors of the icons and graphics from the Piktochart library, you can’t use the program to change the colors on your own images. You’d have to make the changes on an external program first

When it comes to sharing your Piktochart infographic, you can choose the size and the orientation, down to the paper size that you want to print it on. You can embed it in an email campaign and send it through your email campaign client such as MailChimp, MyEmma or Constant Contact and share it via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ just by uploading it to your status update.

You can even include it in online Flickr galleries and share it in your Google+ communities, LinkedIn groups and Google Hangouts to help MAKE ONLINE collaborations a little more creative and visually informative.

How ReciteThis is Different

OK, so up until this point, I’ve been sharing a couple of really cool infographic tools with you that help you make IMAGE-based infographics. So they’re all a little more visual. But, what if you want to create a cool infographic using quotes or proverbs?

That’s where ReciteThis comes in. You can turn a quote into a masterpiece simply by typing whatever quote or proverb into the text box, or choosing a quote from the ReciteThis database. Then you select a background from a slideshow at the bottom of the page and press ‘Create’.

Afterwards, you have the option of posting it to Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or StumbleUpon to share with friends, downloading it for printing purposes or to share with other platforms like LinkedIn or e-mailing it to anyone you want.

So now you know how to create some amazingly fun, creative and detailed infographics-even if you’re NOT a graphic designer! Keep it locked here for more great tips on content MARKETING new social marketing and online tools AND tricks on how to better reach your audiences.

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Getting Inspired: 5 Ideas to Help Refresh Your Ad Copy

Refreshing ad copy is one of those optimization tasks that I have a very bad habit of putting off. For me, writing ad copy requires a certain Zen -- a deep concentration and focused frame of mind. And let's be honest -- when you're trying to manage PPC campaigns every day, it's tough to tap into that creative mojo when you need to.

And sometimes you can struggle coming up with different ways to say the same thing. Or trying to come with a different spin on how to present your product. All within the headline and two 35-character description lines of text. It can be challenging.

But it's important to not to use the same old ad copy. Writing great PPC copy means keeping your ad copy fresh. Even if your ads have a good CTR -- you should always look for ways to make them better.

So how to come up with new ideas for ad copy? Below are 5 ways to get some creative and different ideas:

1) Pay Attention to Commercials

We often find commercials insanely annoying -- but they can be a great way to see how advertisers are messaging their products. Next time you're watching TV, pay closer attention to the commercials and see if you can glean some new phrases or tagline ideas.

2) Check Out Online Advertising Sites

Going to advertising sites can provide interesting insights on the latest ads and creative. Not only do you get updates on the latest in advertising news, but they provide some of their showcased work on their sites.

Below is an example of an ad from Adroit Digital that creatively uses its name in the ad, but also has great tag lines:

Here are some advertising sites that can help inspire you:

www.mediapost.com

www.adage.com

www.adweek.com

3) Look at Competitors

Hey - it doesn't hurt to see what your competitors are doing! In doing a search on "wedding invitations," while incorporating offers such as free shipping and discounts is important, sometimes adding another word such as "stylish" or the phrase "make it yours" can resonate more with a prospective customer.

4) Read...

Magazines are a good way to get creative ideas -- check out this example from Dunkin Donuts:

While the association of a smoothie and a scary snack isn't something most of us would connect together, it does result in a very unique message.

5) Don't forget site links and callouts

When updating your ad copy, don't forget to revisit your site links and callouts. Changing your ad copy may result in your site links and callouts needing to be changed. And incorporating callouts into your message can help create a more relevant and compelling ad.

Are you feeling more energized to write new ad copy?

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3 Properties of Viral Headlines

You’re keeping your blog filled with content. You’re sharing it across multiple social media channels. When you check your analytics, however, it’s like looking at binary code (that’s all 1′s and 0′s in case you missed it). At this point you’re asking friends and family to like and share as much as possible to drum up interest. Why isn’t anyone reading your stuff? Maybe because your headlines stink.

According to Copyblogger, only 8 out of 10 people who see your headline actually read it, and only 2 of the ten will actually read past the headline. That’s depressing, but it’s also a roadmap for success. The more you know about what works and what doesn’t, the better you can adapt to overcome. If you can get your readership over 20% of the eyeballs your posts are reaching, you have accomplished something. Here are three ways that you can improve your headlines to get them shared.

SHINE Them Up

KISSmetrics took the time to compile opinions and data about what makes a good headline a few years ago, and the results still apply. Good headlines SHINE. That is, they have Specificity, they’re Helpful, they have a sense ofImmediacy, they’re Newsworthy, and they’re Entertaining. Every time you write a headline you should make sure that it meets each one of these requirements in some way.

Follow the Formula

Blogger and digital enthusiast Lenka Istvanova determined her own formula for what makes a headline go viral. While it can still meet all of the SHINE requirements, it concentrates more on the type of words you should choose and in what order they should fall. If this is all you use your headlines might become boring soon, but it’s definitely a formula you can pull out when you get stuck.

The formula is Number + Adjective + Keyword + Rationale + Promise.

Watch Your Words

Keep your headlines to six words or less as often as possible. The same KISSmetrics report also showed that most people scan over headlines as much as they do any other text online. The result is that they generally only register the first three and the last three words in a headline. If you keep most of your headlines under six words, you’re automatically increasing the chances of the headline being read. Which increases the chances of the rest being read, interest being generated, and conversions to sales

being made. It all starts with the headline.

Keep in Mind

Formulas and statistics are great starting points for increasing your social influence, but they aren’t the end-all-be-all. Your specific customer base has their own quirks, and the best results will come from analyzing those who already read your content or purchase your products and services. It’s often a good idea to hire a social media manager who can provide you with social analysis customized to your specific business for the best results.

Adblocking on the rise

A study by PageFair has found a 69% increase in adblock users in the last year.

• The number now stands at approximately 144m active adblock users (4.9% of all internet users).
• 27.6% of internet users polled in the US claim that they employ adblock software when browsing.
• The demographic in the US most likely to use the software is 18-29 year olds (41%).

A beacon of hope for advertisers, more than 60% of adblockers polled expressed some receptiveness to viewing text, still-image, and skippable pre-roll ads.

The Difference Between Content Marketing and Advertising

Content marketing has been a buzzword in media for a while now. But that doesn’t mean that everyone knows what it is, how it works, or how it differs from traditional marketing. Much like social media, many marketers have attempted to use content as another vehicle for one-way blasting of marketing messages.

Content marketing, however, is quite different from traditional advertising, and the same rules don’t apply.

Saying vs. Showing

McDonald’s is attempting to apply the old advertising tricks to content marketing.

Advertising is all about making claims. United’s tagline, “Fly the Friendly Skies,” sounds nice, but the skies don’t sound as friendly when you know that United has the industry’s lowest satisfaction ratings from customers.

There are tons of brands claiming to be “The Most Trusted Name” or “America’s Favorite.” Advertising is all about talking the talk. Content marketing is about walking the walk. 

Subway backs up their “Eat Fresh” tagline with content that supports the brand’s healthy image. Brands like Lowe’s and Colgate provide useful, relevant content that shows their expertise. This content is relevant to their customers (DIYers/contractors and people with teeth respectively) and is more about helping than selling. The content is authentic and pertinent to the brands.

When content is not authentic, it’s easy to tell. However, that hasn’t stopped marketers from trying to hijack the content train. McDonald’s Moms Quality Correspondents content reads like it was written by the company's PR department. I question whether these moms are real people, because I’ve never heard anyone talk like this.

I groaned to myself when I read one “mom’s” assertion that “the family dining concept where the time spent eating with the family is deemed to be an important part of the experience. The PlayPlace and the toy are all designed to help to enrich that experience.” I’ve had a lot of family dinner experiences, and none of them were enhanced by me playing with a plastic Batman toy.

McDonald’s is attempting to apply the old advertising tricks to content marketing. They think, “If we say we are great, they will believe it.” Unfortunately for them, this is not the case.

One-Night Stand vs. Relationship

Advertising is about the quick sale. That's why traditional advertisers have trouble adjusting to social media.

Advertising is about the quick sale. That's why so many traditional advertisers have trouble adjusting to social media and attempt to apply the same broadcast/quick sale model.

Social media and content marketing are intertwined, because both are about building relationships. While advertising is front-loaded, brands can use content to address the customer’s concerns  at every stage of their purchase journey. While an ad can help inspire a purchase, content can keep the customer in touch with the brand before, during and after the purchase.

Mass Market vs. Individualized

Advertising is expensive. When buying a TV or radio ad, it has to appeal to as general an audience as possible. It’s the reason why so many Budweiser commercials feature pretty girls and cute dogs—it’s all aimed at the lowest common denominator. 

With content, you can craft pieces to reach the needs of all of the different segments of your audience. This can be in both tone and medium. The lower cost of content when compared to traditional advertising can allow you to create a piece of content in multiple forms—infographics, video, press releases. By distributing this content to social sites, such as YouTube and Facebook, you can let users consume your content where and how they want, rather than hoping they are watching TV when your ad runs.

Because it can be tailored to specific customer groups, another great feature of content is that it is sharable. When you create useful, non-advertorial content it is much more likely to be shared by bloggers or on social media. Think about it this way: lots of people send you funny or interesting articles to read (think Buzzfeed), but very few people send you a commercial to watch.

Not the End of Traditional Ads

There is still a place for traditional advertising. Companies will still need to launch new products, announce special offers, and drive general awareness. However, content marketing has allowed brands to be more useful to customers when they aren’t looking to buy; to become a useful part of their lives at every stage.

It’s more than marketing, it’s building relationships. It requires a bit of restraint and patience, but the rewards can be much greater in the end.

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How to attain Paid search success

Many people miss is digging into the search phrase report that shows what other queries are being matched to these keywords.

Remarketing List for Search Ads (RLSAs) is possibly the biggest innovation and opportunity in search in a long time.

No longer do you have to show the same ad to a customer who comes back every week as you do to a brand-new customer.

Now you can show the customer that you know them, welcome them back, or create specific ad copy that directs that customer to your customer service section vs.

Anyone who feels like they have reached the limit of their campaign to dig just a little bit deeper and take that extra cut of data or extra step to target to see what can be squeezed out.

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Mobile App Metrics: Attributed Install vs. Assisted Install

To stay ahead of the curve, mobile app marketers need to be looking beyond top-level metrics. One of these top-level metrics is the install.

Looking at which marketing channels and advertising partners convert installs doesn’t give you insight into what engagement helped drive that install along the path to conversion. Mobile marketers should look at attributed installs versus assisted installs to better understand the impact of channel and campaign performance along the conversion funnel.

Before explaining more about the importance of an attributed installs versus assisted installs, let's review some terminology.

• Installs: New users that open the app for the first time.
• Attributed Installs: Publisher with the last click, within the attribution window for the publisher.
• Install Assists: Publisher(s) with a click prior to the last click, within the attribution window.
• Publisher Install Contributions: The total number of installs for which the channel was involved (Attributed Installs + Install Assists).
• Install Rate: The percentage of installs occurring from the total number of unique clicks.
• Assist Rate: The percentage of assisted installs occurring from the total number of unique clicks.
• Install Contribution Rate: The percentage of install contributions occurring from the total number of unique clicks.

Measuring attributed installs makes complete sense. Marketers need to know which channel and campaign converted that install. However, the assisted install metric makes it possible for marketers to measure the performance of the channels, campaigns, and advertising partners that focus on promotion and awareness (not only the ones that convert the last click).

This data is particularly useful for marketers that have campaigns running with a variety of channels and advertising partners simultaneously. Campaigns and advertising partners that focus on promotion and awareness – typically via banner and video ads -can re-engage users at a later time to install your app. These campaigns and advertising partners typically generate attributed installs, but generate a large number of assisted installs. If you have campaigns and advertising partners with varying business goals (for example, awareness vs. installs), then the assisted install metric gives you insight into how well each partner is achieving their goal.

Measuring assisted installs in addition to attributed installs also gives mobile app marketers insight into the duplicate (overlap) rate between campaigns and advertising partners. If an advertising partner or channel has unique traffic, then they likely have very few assisted installs. If an advertising partner or campaign has many assisted installs, then they are interacting with many users via ads that your other advertising partners are also interacting with (not unique traffic).

As a data-driven marketer, do you differentiate these metrics and measure the performance of each individually?

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Bing Ads "Top Movers" Report Gives the "Why" Behind Campaign Changes

Bing Ads has expanded its reporting features for added visibility into an account's performance. In an announcement, Bing Ads says its "top movers" report would give a snapshot of significant changes to advertisers' accounts and possible reasons behind the fluctuations.

From the announcement:

A "top movers" list [includes] up to 10 campaigns and/or ad groups that have experienced the largest performance change — by size, not percent — during two specified time [frames]. With this list, you can quickly identify which campaigns have contributed most to your account’s performance variation, from both a positive and negative perspective.

The new reporting goes beyond just showing changes and attempts to predict why they are happening.

"Whereas other search providers only offer possible causes based on changes made within your account, [the] Bing Ads Top Movers report takes three types of changes into consideration," the announcement says.

Those three areas include the account, search traffic, and competitor data. 

Another differentiator of this new feature is the "opportunities" tab, which allows advertisers to "explore keyword, bid, budget, and other factors that can drive an increase in clicks/spend" for those campaigns or ad groups that have experienced the most negative change, the announcement says.

A comparison feature allows advertisers to view performance over a time period to view clicks and spend "week over week, two weeks over two weeks, or even four weeks over four weeks," says the announcement.

"Even when overall account performance appears stable, the Top Movers report helps you highlight big moves that may be easily overlooked. It can also be used to regularly track account performance on a weekly or monthly basis," says Bing.

The Bing Ads team also cited a plan to soon expand reports to support metrics like conversions.

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Google Creates Shopping Campaigns "Upgrade Tool" for AdWords Advertisers

Google wants to motivate advertisers to make the switch from Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to Shopping campaigns and has released an upgrade tool to "help you upgrade in a matter of clicks," it says in a blog post.

In April, Google AdWords announced it would do away with regular PLA campaigns by the end of August in favor of these Shopping campaigns, which it said are a new way to manage PLAs and offer more features than PLA campaigns alone. Those features include a bid simulator, additional options for campaign creation, and the ability to create multiple ad groups.

The AdWords help files detail how to use the tool:

With the Shopping campaign upgrade tool, you select the regular Product Listing Ads campaign you want to upgrade, and AdWords will try to create a new Shopping campaign for you based on that campaign. During this process, you choose the status you want to set for your existing campaign and your new Shopping campaign, once it’s created. You can find a link to the upgrade tool from the Settings tab of any regular Product Listing Ads campaign that hasn’t already been submitted using the tool.

Google notes not all campaigns are compatible with the tool. For example, if advertisers use AdWords labels or groupings in their product targeting or inventory filters, they’ll need to upgrade the data feed with custom labels before using the tool.

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Retailers Outspend Luxury Brands on Luxury Keywords in Paid Search [Report]

In the battle for luxury shoppers, top retailers in 2013 outspent top luxury brands on Google AdWords paid search ads in four of five categories: apparel, beauty and cosmetics, shoes, and watches, according to a new AdGooroo report.

Handbags was the only category in which luxury brands outspent retailers.

Below is a breakdown of the investment in U.S. paid search spending for luxury apparel.

In 2013 alone, five of the top personal luxury brands spent nearly $22 million on paid search in Google AdWords. This didn't include the money invested in mobile search or Product Listing Ads.

Let's look at some additional findings.

The Biggest Luxury Apparel Spenders

Which brands are investing the most in paid search for luxury apparel? Below you'll find the top 10 brands by spend. Louis Vuitton claimed first place with $1.3 million, which is more than double the next brand on the list.

Retailers aren't far behind in their ad spend. In fact, many retailers spent more than the luxury apparel brands themselves on PPC. You'll notice that six of the top 10 retailers by spend are department stores.

Luxury Beauty & Cosmetics

For their 2013 report, AdGooroo collected data on 810 luxury beauty and cosmetic keywords. There is a significant gap in spend between the top brands and retailers and those that came in at the end of the top 10.

Luxury Footwear Brands & Retailers

The ads spend for luxury shoes is significantly less than that of luxury apparel and luxury beauty and cosmetics. Here are the top 10 brands and retailers by ad spend:

Luxury Handbags

Chanel, the top brand by spend in the handbag category spent $816,000 in 2013 while the brand in tenth place (Burberry) spent only $53,000. The gap was not so significant between retailers with Neiman Marcus spending $480,000 in position number one and The Luxury Closet spending $135,000 for 2013.

Luxury Watches

It's no surprise that Rolex came in number one in Paid Search by spend with $149,000. The next brand (Cartier) spent $50,000 less on paid search. Below you'll find the breakdown by brand and retailers for the top ten by spend in each category.

What Are Advertisers Getting for their Investment?

Based on the significant investment that advertisers are making in paid search, it is essential that we understand what their impression share is off of that budget.

• Louis Vuitton's ad spend far surpassed that of any other brand or retailer in luxury apparel. However they only had a 3.45 percent impression share, and was steamrolled by retailers.
• The top retailers by spend in beauty and cosmetics got their money's worth. Amazon came in with nearly 11 percent of share of voice, but brands didn't fair so well in this category.
• Retailers also dominated luxury shoes. Saks Fifth Avenue, which had the top spend for retail, had a 9.87 percent impression share.
• Amazon and Saks Fifth Avenue also dominated handbags, with 6.79 percent and 5.06 percent impression share, respectively.
• Websites that sold luxury watches at a discounted price were winning the war in this category. The top retail spender was authenticwatches.com and they had the highest impression share, 8.72 percent.

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