Blog
Bridging commentary on the art & science of content; content marketing, branded content, native advertising and the analytics, attribution and intelligence that powers it.
A crisp fall (autumn) week here in New York but lots going on: Facebook Q3 results are incredible, WSJ coverage of ad spend is very interesting. And I had a great time chatting with Patrick Keane at the LiveRamp RampUp event. Thanks if you made it. Facebook is nearing the limits of their ad load – with the next horizon Instant Articles and/or any other way they can get more attention. The curious part in the data is that… Continue reading
After acquiring a tan in Maui, I’m back in action! Bit of focus on AMP this week post Google’s roll out across all search results. This feels like a big opportunity and equally an invisible tax people are paying by not being optimized. If you haven’t by now figured your AMP strategy, now is probably a good time. I’ve grumbled on the technical roll out but it is improving rapidly and hugely extensible. And an ask: I’d love… Continue reading
With Ben out of the office this week I’ll be jumping in to provide ‘This Week in Native Ads’… be nice 🙂 One of the biggest changes I’m seeing within the native content space (and not just this week), is the rise of native video across a wide range of publishers. For this week’s ‘campaigns’ we’ve focused on this format. It’s essential that when you’re looking to create video content with a publisher (or as a publisher), to remember… Continue reading
Brands are still doubling down on content, especially in finance. This week we saw Goldman announce its new initiative and Vox partnering with Chase to produce Meridian. With this continual focus of content, brands as publishers, more and more ad:tech will be now consumed by the brands direct, i.e. take a look at Chase.com they have News & Stories on the homepage. Tactics publishers use are now required client side. Notable Stories this Week Goldman Sachs… Continue reading
New York Times showcases some of Google’s Native Stack, which is neat, where we see premium publishers experimenting. It’s an early indicator of where the rest of the market will follow, especially given the Times role in helping spread native content. I have an ask this week… we want to feature more people in the industry. If you’d like to put your hand up, or someone you think we should talk to, we want to do a few… Continue reading
The story of the week is Facebook incorrectly measuring attention on its video ads for 2 years! Read it here. It’s kind of a simple (and easy to make) mistake in the algorithm. But it has gone unchecked for so long. Facebook said it didn’t impact what people paid but incorrect data changes everything about your ad spend. This supports the need for an open eco-system, which arguably Google has been more adept at. But if… Continue reading
We have some interesting datapoints from Dmexco, thanks to TheDrums coverage and interviews with Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP and Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL. Further in exciting news this week, we at Nudge are sharing a case study in partnership with The Atlantic, demonstrating how native can convert. And Yahoo wading in to native retargeting for its search advertisers. Notable Stories this Week How Vertebrae is bringing native… Continue reading
Advertising is created to inform & persuade; in a digital universe persuasion is quantifiably measurable. As marketers, we’re programmed to have specific media for specific tasks. Awareness, conversion, etc. But, as we’ve run a lot of campaigns in partnership with publishers and agencies, we’ve found that native content can be actually very powerful at typical “bottom of the funnel” tasks. Nudge sees a range of 1-3% of post-consumption conversion as defined by the client. It’s not a huge surprise but… Continue reading
Dmexco is in, in big time this year! I attended last year and thoroughly enjoyed it but unfortunately couldn’t make it this year. Will share the best post analysis next week. -Ben Campaign of the Week: 12 Free Apps that will Enhance Your Life Source: USA Today Why we like it: We like this USA Today piece for StraightTalk, helping reach a mainstream audience with real utility – apps that… Continue reading
Good content is good content is good content, that’s the stream of conversation with this week. Mirroring last week – people don’t really care where content comes from as long as it’s good. -Ben Campaign of the Week: The Tech That Took Down A Titan Source: Wired Why we like it: For the launch of Season 2 of Narcos, Netflix comes out strong with this Wired piece on the technology that helped take… Continue reading