Is Programmatic Advertising Killing Creativity, and is Content Marketing Saving it?

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3 years ago
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PowerLinks’ CEO Kevin Flood (@kevinflood88) joined a panel at New Video Frontiers London in October to debate “Is Programmatic Advertising Killing Creativity, and is Content Marketing Saving it?” Kevin and his fellow panelists (Tom Curtis, Head of MediaCom Beyond Advertising UK (@iamtomcurtis) and Chris Gorell Barnes (@cgorellbarnes) , Founder & CEO of Adjust Your Set) went into the details of the meaning of creativity in the programmatic age, and the effects of new and emerging technologies on the creative process. MediaCom’s Tom Curtis set out to define what creativity means in this instance. “How do we define creativity? Some people will say that creativity is about creating incredible art, and programmatic is going to fundamentally undermine that process… On the other end of the scale, you have creative strategy and an incredibly interesting way of targeting people.” Kevin said the definition of creativity in the context of modern marketing is “understanding who …

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PowerLinks at New Video Frontiers: Native Mobile Video Panel

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3 years ago
3 years ago 0

In September, PowerLinks’ VP of Media Partnerships Simon Morris discussed the convergence of Mobile, Native and Video with Kenneth Suh from Unruly and Anne Frisbie from InMobi at New Video Frontiers in New York. The panel discussed what this convergence will mean for the industry, the benefits to the buyers and sellers of these emerging ad formats, and the necessity to align new native formats with the consumer experience. When quizzed on the benefits of Native Mobile Video, Simon commented that banner advertising is far from ideal on mobile devices, and this problem is paving the way for a new, more effective method of cross-device advertising. “Display ads on mobile don’t look good – they aren’t engaging users… Native ads give you the opportunity to tell a story, allowing brands to communicate through the same voice as publishers.” In terms of user-engagement, and the ROI of Native Mobile Video, Anne …

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IAB Releases New Deep Dive on In-Feed Native Ads

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3 years ago
3 years ago 0

The IAB’s Native Advertising Taskforce today released a Deep Dive on In-Feed ad units with participation from many of the key players in the native ad landscape including PowerLinks, Sharethrough, InMobi, AdsNative and PubMatic. The report “looks into today’s in-feed advertising, specifically the consumer’s first experience or ad discovery with the paid content distribution ad.” The IAB’s Content Marketing and Native Advertising Task Force groups conducted the Deep Dive as a supplement to the original Playbook, with a view to helping the industry to “speak a consistent language” and add more definite structure as we journey further into the year of Native Programmatic. The report specifically focuses on Content Feeds, Product Feeds and Social Feeds. Content Feed Ads are defined as “primarily articles, images or videos”, placed within editorial news feeds; Product Feed Ads as “primarily products, services or app installs” within sites and apps; and Social Feed Ads as that which …

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Native Ad Talks April 2015

Native Ad Talks NYC – Creating Great Branded Content

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3 years ago
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The Native Ad Talks bring together players from a variety of perspectives who are involved the Native Advertising Ecosystem. Publishers, agencies and tech solutions alike aim to answer all queries related to this burgeoning form of advertising. The second NYC based Native Ad Talks focused on topic of producing branded content. Our panelists broke down the key ingredients to a successful branded content campaign. Giving the journalists’ and publishers’ perspectives, the panel featured Adam Aston (@adamanyc) of The New York Times and Joe Lazauskas (@JoeLazauskas) of Contently. Moderated by Lucia Moses (@lmoses) of Digiday Below are our Key Takeaways from the panelists’ discussion: Setting Expectations for Journalists through education Our panelists main recommendation to those interested in the empowerment of the entire native ecosystem is this: set expectations. To what extent is the journalist held accountable? What if there is backlash? Joe Lazauskas (Contently) notes that, “there is a huge …

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AdWeek 2015

AdWeek Europe 2015 Recap: How Native Programmatic Advertising is Reshaping the Media Landscape

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3 years ago
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The Ad-Tech industry has long debated how native advertising will scale – could native ever combine with programmatic to reach its full potential? At Advertising Week Europe 2015, we hosted a panel of industry experts; asking them how they believe the coming-of-age of native programmatic will affect the industry as a whole.  Here are some of the key take-aways of the discussion… Native Engagement Mike Harty talked about In-Feed ads as “an execution rendering the ad to look – with advertising disclosure – like it belongs in the stream of content on the host site.” By injecting content into the user screen, there is a higher chance of engagement if the content is properly targeted and the creative is good. As opposed to attempting to win user engagement by contrasting with the user experience, this execution attempts to win engagement on the merit of the quality of the content presented …

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Native Advertising - Mike Harty ExchangeWire March 2015

Mike Harty in ExchangeWire, March 2015: The Highlights

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3 years ago
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Last month, our Co-Founder Mike Harty talked to Ronan Shields at ExchangeWire about the growth of native, adding value to the user experience and the benefits of standardization. Here’s a digest of the best bits… On native growth: “…what is abundantly clear is that both advertisers and publishers are heavily adopting Native. According to the IAB, spend hit £216m in the first half of 2014. Furthermore according to AOP figures, publishers have now identified Native as their principal new business opportunity. Combined, this shows the rapidly growing appetite and opportunity in Native from both buyers and sellers.” “Native advertising is an opportunity to rewrite the playbook… It’s a chance to say: ‘If we want digital advertising to work optimally, we need to figure out ways to add value to the user experience.’” On transparency and the user experience: “Native should deliver end-user value, not detract from it… Programmatic Native will …

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Measuring branded content - native advertising blog

Measuring Branded Content Engagement: Understanding Bounce Rate’s Fine Print

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3 years ago
3 years ago 0

GUEST BLOG WRITTEN BY VITALY PECHERSKIY, CO-FOUNDER AND COO OF STACKADAPT. Follow Vitaly (@vitalypecherski) and StackAdapt (@StackAdapt) on Twitter.  The Custom Content Council estimates that nearly $44bn will be spent on branded content this year (The Guardian). A big topic of discussion is not only content creation, but also content distribution. When it comes to distribution, the important questions to consider are, have you reached the right audience with this content and has the content produced the desired impact? While the topic of reaching the right audience is fundamental to this discussion, here we’ll focus on the one metric that an overwhelming number of marketers use to measure engagement with branded content: bounce rate. Bounce rate is commonly defined as the percentage of single-page sessions. It means that if a user arrives at your content, but doesn’t click to another page (regardless of how long they spent on this page), …

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Native Ad Talks - How to Win at Native

How to Win at Native: Four Tips to Get You Started

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3 years ago
3 years ago 0

GUEST BLOG WRITTEN BY BEN YOUNG, CEO OF NUDGE ANALYTICS.  Follow Ben (@bwagy) and Nudge (@Giveitanudge) on Twitter.  Last week, we hosted our inaugural native ad panel in partnership with PowerLinks. This month, we focused on how to win at native through distribution. While planning, we realized this is the first event that many of our attendees would have seen on the topic, so we would be best to keep it practical. Shareen Pathak at DigiDay was first to come onboard as our moderator. As Agency & Brands Editor at DigiDay her focus is what do brands care about. This served as a natural and great starting point for discussion. For our panelists; John Chan from Native Lift first came to mind. His background includes a stint at Buzzfeed and before that, starting his own PPC agency Reprise Media (acquired by IPG). Native Lift provides content amplification to publishers. So they sit …

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WATCH: PowerLinks’ CIO Mike Harty on the Big Data panel at IAA 75th Anniversary Leadership Forum

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3 years ago
3 years ago 0

At the IAA Leadership Forum 2013, a panel of assembled advertising industry technology experts discuss the various developments around big data, small data and metrics. The panel, including Mark Bulling, Lead Custom Insights, Facebook;  Simon Halstead, Director Microsoft Advertising Exchange, EMEA, Microsoft and Mike Harty, the co-founder and CIO of PowerLinks, discuss the future of data, short and long term strategies and best practices. What is data now? What does success look like for the companies that are harnessing and leveraging their data resources? Watch the video to find out.

Native Advertising Landscape

5 Key Factors Shaping the Native Advertising Landscape

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3 years ago
3 years ago 0

Just over a year ago, the captains of the media industry gathered in Palm Springs for the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting 2014. Incoming Chairman Vivek Shah took to the stage announcing the 20th birthday of the banner ad—a landmark moment providing pause for reflection. Faced with the devaluation of the digital economy’s mainstay, the agenda was clear…the industry must collaborate to tackle the challenges of fraud, adopt progressive metrics including viewability measurement and “insist on more creativity and less clutter”. Running in parallel with the sobering realities of declining display CPMs, a new initiative was gathering momentum. Innovators including Facebook, Buzzfeed and Forbes had embraced responsive design and uncluttered user experiences to suit a 4 screen world. These adopters had turned their focus towards sponsored content and custom advertising formats situated “in-feed”; designed to connect consumers with brands through equally responsive and intuitive user experiences. Native Advertising had arrived. Its …

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