Forget Percentages -- UK Smashes The EU In Mobile Marketing

Forget Percentages -- UK Smashes The EU In Mobile Marketing

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Covering figures is interesting because all too often publications can be sucked into reporting on growth percentages, meaning that new and emerging markets leap out of the page as offering a far better investment opportunity than the UK.

Hence, when I saw Netimperative's very useful coverage of the latest AdEX Benchmark figures from IAB Europe, I thought it best to have a closer look at the original report. Belarus, Russian and Serbia were picked out by the site for showing strong growth. It's a fact that is good to know, but I always find myself reacting to such figures as a Devil's Advocate, looking to inject a little common sense around what the real picture is.  

The first thing one see from a general picture of the market for 27 European countries, including Russia, is that digital advertising has doubled across the region in just the past five years to hit €48bn in 2017. This is due to growth in digital marketing budgets levelling out at 12% to 13% each year since the global financial crash. IAB Europe points out that the new growth is coming in three areas -- social, video and, where the two so often meet, mobile.

Interestingly, and again as a macro view, the UK is way out ahead in the region for spending €240 per consumer per year on digital market -- that is around four times the European average. This is no doubt helped by the market leading in premium advertising solutions, such as video -- some 38% of all display budgets are going to video in the UK compared to an average of 27%.

The real killer stat comes with the amount of budget devoted to mobile display in the UK. It's not worth having any false modesty here or beating around the bush. At nearly €4bn per year, the UK market is pretty much the size of all of the the 26 markets put together. To put that into perspective, combine mobile spending on display in France, Germany and Italy -- the next three biggest markets -- and you're still only halfway to meeting the size of the UK market. 

In fact, for mobile search too, the UK is so far ahead with a €3.6bn spend on mobile search is equivalent the six next biggest markets combined --- that's Germany, France, Russia, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Sweden.

To take one of those impressive percentage growth figures for, say, search more than doubled in the Czech Republic last year. Sounds good, and I'm sure it is an exciting market to be in, but that more than doubling meant that mobile search was worth €65m. The 37% growth in the UK took mobile search spending to the aforementioned €3.6bn. That's around sixty times the size, in case you don't have a calculator to hand. And 37% growth would be as near as damn it another billion Euros coming in to the market, compared to the €30m or so that doubled the size of the Czech market.

I'm not saying this to sound boastful. I just think we can lose sight of the real picture when we become addicted to percentage and growth. Sure, some emerging economies have shown good growth, and that's great. However, you can forget that in money terms, rather than a percentage of a very low starting point, the established markets have fared much better. 

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July 2, 2018 at 10:42AM

Ad Council Taps GE's Linda Boff As Board Chair

Ad Council Taps GE's Linda Boff As Board Chair

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The Ad Council is appointing Linda Boff, chief marketing officer of GE, as Board Chair, succeeding David Sable, Global CEO of advertising agency Y&R. 

Boff will serve in the role for one year as the Council rotates Board Chairs every year between the organizations’ four sectors: media companies, technology platforms, agencies and advertisers. 

As Chair, Boff will work closely with the non-profit's executive committee as well as the governing body of the Ad Council’s Board and Ad Council leadership to develop and raise awareness for its various initiatives.  She will also manage and advise on business affairs and policy initiatives, as well as chair the Ad Council’s 2018 Annual Public Service Award Dinner, the largest fundraising event for the organization that will be held on December 5, 2018 at the New York Hilton.

Boff first joined the Ad Council Board of Directors in 2012 and became a member of the Executive Committee in 2014. She previously served as one of the Council's Vice Chairs, whose path typically transitions into Chair leadership.  

Her dual roles at GE and Ad Council helped to land GE as a founding partner for the Ad Council’s upcoming campaign designed to encourage young girls to pursue their interests in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), which is slated to launch this fall.

“Linda is one of the most forward-thinking leaders in our industry, with an unparalleled passion for innovation and social good," says Lisa Sherman, President and CEO of the Ad Council. "Her leadership will be an invaluable asset to our Board and many of the most critical social issues facing our country.”

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July 2, 2018 at 10:42AM

Look On In Awe As News Orgs Cover Their Own Tragedies

Look On In Awe As News Orgs Cover Their Own Tragedies

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A friend of mine -- a former colleague from the newspaper where we both once worked -- includes a quote from the late Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory at the bottom of his emails: “I have always felt a little sorry for people who didn't work for newspapers.”

We who have had the privilege of working for a newspaper know exactly what she means. That is not to denigrate people who have never worked at newspapers or to pity them. For all we ink-stained wretches know, other workplaces might be just as special.

Still, the deadline pressure, the competition, the long, arduous hours and the camaraderie and dedication that come out of all of that is something newspaper people take for granted while they are in the thick of it. And when they are no longer in the thick of it, they remember it later as the best years of their lives.

The unique ability of a newspaper staff under extreme pressure to rise to the occasion was brought home Friday morning when pictures and news stories began to circulate on social media and on TV news about that day's edition of the Capital Gazette.

That was the paper in Annapolis, Maryland, where a man fatally shot five employees on Thursday. Photo above: Friday's front page.

Elsewhere in stories and pictures, you saw editors and reporters working outside their newsroom since they had to evacuate their building. One photo had editors using the back flatbed of a pickup truck as a makeshift desk.

They were working on stories and page layouts -- trying to figure out the best way to play their pictures and stories, and at the same time pay tribute to their slain colleagues.

The professionalism displayed by some journalistic organizations at such times is mind-boggling to many people. But those of us who have worked in newsrooms understand it. Somehow, the need to tell the story takes over, no matter how heartbreaking or close to home the story is.

At the same time, even a newsroom veteran has to marvel at the dedication of the Capital Gazette staff who reported on their own massacre.

I remember feeling the same sense of awe in August 2015 when a young TV reporter and her cameraman -- each in their 20s -- were both fatally shot in Roanoke, Virginia, while she did a routine live shot for a segment on summer tourism that was then airing on their station's morning show.

In this instance, the newsroom at this station -- WDBJ -- was forced to report on the unthinkable, and they did so for several days.

One of the similarities between that Roanoke TV station and the Annapolis newspaper is that they were both local media entities serving smaller markets.

These instances of tragedy remind us that high-quality journalism is not restricted to bigger news organizations that serve wider audiences. Professionals can be found in newsrooms at all levels of news media and in all places -- from Roanoke to Annapolis.

The kind of journalism that people practice at places like the Capital Gazette and WDBJ is what we are at risk of losing as emerging media overtake legacy newspapers and TV stations.

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July 2, 2018 at 09:44AM

Delivering Amazon Packages to the Top of the World Technology

By VINDU GOEL and ATUL LOKE from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/2Ng4Hna
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What To Do If GDPR Puts Pressure On Email List Growth

What To Do If GDPR Puts Pressure On Email List Growth

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Even if you had never heard of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), it was clear in the last two weeks of May that something was up. The deluge of re-permissioning and privacy policy notification emails was overwhelming.

After a few weeks and lots of conversations with email marketers, it’s clear that the major impact of GDPR for marketers is the pressure of maintaining a large and healthy list. Here are a few anecdotes that illustrate the kind of challengesGDPR presents:

Re-permissioning: Many marketers decided to re-permission their lists to ensure that they had affirmative consent. To do this, many sent an email requesting that subscribers click on a link within the email to “stay connected.” While this is just one of many approaches to re-permissioning, our clients have reported “save” rates below 30% in most cases for this strategy, leading to dramatically smaller lists — which presents a major challenge.

Changing permission techniques: Since GDPR requires unambiguous, affirmative consent, many marketers have had to move away from ‘“softer” forms of gathering consent (e.g., pre-checked checkbox, opt-out), and instead implement “harder” forms of gathering consent (e.g., requiring client to take an action to opt into a list). Since harder forms of gathering consent require more subscriber effort, list growth has decreased for many marketers.

So what can a marketer do if his list growth has been affected by GDPR? I’d recommend two broad approaches.

1. Make the most of your current list. If you’ve had to re-permission your list to stay compliant with GDPR, there are several approaches you can take to get more out of the list you have left. These include:

-- Invest in more contextual and triggered programs. Per email sent, contextual and triggered programs drive significantly more open, clicks, and conversions than traditional campaign-based mail. If you haven’t invested in triggered/contextual messaging, now might be a good time to start.

-- Improve personalization for campaign-based mail. Personalization of featured products, offer, call-to-action, and other dimensions of the email drive much higher response rates. Again, if you haven’t invested in personalization capabilities, this may be a good time to make a change.

-- Test frequency. Research would indicate that almost every marketer is undermailing a segment of their list. First, build segments based on time on list and days-since-active. Test sending more frequently to “high value” segments and see what happens to reads/opens/conversions per month. Make sure to balance these gains against losses from subscribers who unsubscribe or “tune out” of your program.

2. Replenish your list. In addition to doing more with what you have, you should also explore being more active in growing your list. Of course, you’ll need to meet GDPR standards for obtaining permission (as applicable). Recommendations include:

-- Make subscription more “front and center” in web and mobile. Change the placement of your subscription form to make it more prominent. Use light boxes when it becomes clear clients intend to exit the site.  

-- Capture subscriptions in new places. Use “social” (I’m defining that term broadly here) as a way to acquire email addresses. Add subscription CTAs on Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, and other social channels to acquire more email addresses. The mechanisms vary, but they do exist in the most common platforms. Give subscribers to your blog an opportunity to subscribe via email.

-- Make the subscription CTA more attractive. Regardless of where you are acquiring addresses, spicing up your subscription CTA is key to building a larger, high-quality list. Some effective approaches are “subscriber only” and “subscriber first” offers; limited-time offers only available to subscribers; and providing social proof that a subscription is worthwhile (such as testimonials).

Note that as you try new techniques to grow your list, you’ll need to focus on both quantity and quality. Review the activity levels, both good (opens, clicks, conversions) and bad (complaints, unsubscribes) to understand the impact of each acquisition initiative.

In the end, I believe that GDPR will make us all better email marketers. However, in the short run, there are some major challenges to overcome.

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July 2, 2018 at 07:48AM

Airstream Targets Millennials With 'Nest'

Airstream Targets Millennials With 'Nest'

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Airstream, the iconic RV/trailer company, is introducing a new fiberglass travel trailer, Nest, that it hopes will appeal to a younger generation. 

The company and its creative agency, Dayton, Ohio-based Upward Brand Interactions, turned to Calabash to create a pair of animated hummingbird characters named Gigi and Dave that serve as tour guides in the online campaign. A second spot will post in late July and a third in the fall.

“The expectations for the launch of the Airstream Nest were very high and so we wanted to make sure that we had partners that could provide both creativity and technical expertise,” said Jean Silverstein, senior client strategist at Upward Brand Interactions, in a release.

The choice of hummingbird characters was a natural decision to feature in creative promoting a product called “Nest," says Sean Henry, Calabash’s executive producer.

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The first one-minute spot, “Introducing Nest,” is running on the company’s website, social media channels and on kiosks in Airstream showrooms and auto/RV trade shows.

It opens with the hummingbird couple Gigi and Dave debating whether a particular tree will make a good nest location. Dave loves it because it’s so “branchy,” but Gigi calls it “pedestrian,” which leads them to look elsewhere and discover an Airstream Nest nearby. 

As they fly in for a closer look, Dave loves it because it’s all “roundy.” From there, Gigi and Dave take a tour of the Nest both inside and out. One shot shows Dave testing out the Nest’s bed by falling gently onto the mattress and stretching out while gazing through the moon roof above.

The project was full of creative challenges, such as how to depict the speed with which hummingbirds’ wings flap, and how big the tiny birds should appear when next to or inside the Nest. For Creative Director Wayne Brejcha, the key to the spot’s success centered on finding the balance between reality and a cartoon feel.

“Character animation has the flexibility to be both silly and sophisticated. With Airstream, we were aiming for something towards sophisticated and realistic,” Brejcha stated. “But we also needed the birds to break out of strict nature, to do playful or human things. Defining their unique mix of silly and photo-real was a fun challenge for us and the agency creatives."

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July 2, 2018 at 05:37AM

Here’s Some Cryptocurrency. Now Please Use It. Technology

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