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Closing out the year, I touch on the luxury opportunity and the rise programmatic direct, both discussions are interlinked around transparency for advertisers. Where are ads showing and are the numbers real? Fake news isn’t helping!
Notable Stories this Week
- Another metrics mishap from Facebook. This time Instant Articles.
- Methbot, large-scale video advertising fraud. Video can be very dubious, especially on mobile. There’s a nice commentary on this article too, grounding the estimates and reality of the situation. Give both a read.
- [From me] Why luxury needs to get native.
- 23 Native Predictions for 2017. Requires opt-in.
- A pessimistic outlook for native in 2017.
Announcements/Case Studies
- How Cadillac uses native advertising to create positive and authentic brand experiences.
- Yahoo expands Gemini to Yahoo Mail.
Campaign of the Week
- Are your travel habits more pro than everyone else? A BuzzFeed quiz for United MileagePlus Chase Explorer Card. Ideally everyone is racking up a few miles over the break!
Smartest Commentary
- “Publishers New Year resolution: more experimentation, cautious optimism.” This is great stuff from Pete Vernon.
- “I think lots of clients have woken up and they’re saying, ‘We understand there are efficiencies in buying through an open exchange, but I’m not so confident my ads are showing up in the right environment.”” -Michael Kuntz, SVP Digital Revenue at USA Today Network.
- “Will Google start penalizing publishers for using Taboola or Outbrain?” -Paul Dughi, VP/General Manager at WAAY-TV & AudiencePop. I’m not entirely sure they could, but an interesting thought.
Datapoints of Note
- The number of video ad impressions through Google’s Programmatic Direct has doubled from January to September 2016.
- The number of programmatic direct details executed by retail advertisers grew 2.8 times Q4 2014 to Q4 2015.
- Google anticipating a 150-200% jump again this Q4.
Trends to Watch/Bleeding Edge
- Programmatic Direct due for a rise in 2017. Couldn’t agree more here, in a lack of transparency around programmatic native brands will fulfill their appetite by going direct. But in doing so miss out on data + optimization. My call, we’ll get a bit of both – but this opens a way for Google to own more of the market.
Events & Webinars
- None – we’re an open slate for 2017.
And as some closing thoughts for 2017, in planning native content.
Best Practices
- Set KPIS upfront.
- Check Share Copy.
- Optimize distribution.
- Load time can be a big issue.
- Anchor performance against benchmarks and attribution.
- Focus on a piece, with continual distribution.
Watch outs
- Slow load time.
- Adload/competing ads on the content. Sloppy work here.
- Longevity of your content.
And some our goals for native content through 2017
- We want to help native grow faster than pundits predict.
- How we’re doing that is greater transparency and efficiency from content.
- Where we need help on, is industry commitment to the same.
- And your partnerships, we can work together on this.
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