Data is the air that marketers breathe, yet it’s not always clear how to approach it. What data should I be using? How can I make all my data fit together? What types of audiences and segments do I need to reach the right consumers? These are just some of the questions on the minds…

There is new data that paints a picture of what consumers are doing online in the days and weeks leading up to travel. This is what marketers need to know.

For marketers, the challenge remains the same; capture attention and demonstrate that your message, product or service is worth it. What’s changed are the rules around how to engage, maintain loyalty, and ultimately provide some value in exchange for that engagement and loyalty.

Nicole Liebmann, Head of Mobile for APAC and South Africa at Exponential is responsible for leading the revenue and operations for the company’s mobile solutions. Nicole shares four mobile campaigns by Exponential as case studies on the new way of mobile engagement.

Exponential is a “digital advertising experience provider” across desktop, laptop, and mobile, with a global footprint, says Bryan Melmed, VP of Insights Services. In this podcast, Melmed shares forceful, sometimes controversial views on big data, cross-device targeting, and programmatic — and breaks down human behavior into three intriguing layers.

For marketers, deciding between short-form and long-form video has been challenging. On one hand, consumers have short attention spans, and on the other, studies have shown that longer video can perform better. Both short and long formats have value. When deciding between the two, marketers should first consider the goal of the campaign.

For marketers, deciding between short-form and long-form video has been challenging. On one hand, consumers have short attention spans, and on the other, studies have shown that longer video can perform better. Both short and long formats have value. When deciding between the two, marketers should first consider the goal of the campaign.

Recently, Proctor and Gamble called on the media buying and selling industry to get its act together and demanded transparency into the whole supply chain. When I buy Proctor and Gamble’s products, I don’t ask them for transparency into their supply chain. In fact, I buy their products knowing that I will get high quality products at competitive prices because I can choose between many competing brands.

The marketing world is seeing the friction as the internet develops from something open into a collection of very large walled gardens – walled jungles? – with the open part of the internet increasingly marginalized – and that should give everyone pause.

The announcement has those in marketing questioning the approach and the overwhelming power the ad blocker would give Google.

How offensive or annoying is that? That’s a real question for those in the business of assessing what types of ads viewers might consider beyond the pale: Especially now, when ads that don’t make the cut may be blocked before any human sees them.

The YouTube Boycott & Brand Management in the Age of Trump This recent incident of hundreds of brands boycotting YouTube and Google is very different from anything we have seen before. The situation all seemingly started with an article breaking the news of video ads appearing alongside extremist videos and, within a week, hundreds of…

This recent incident of hundreds of brands boycotting YouTube and Google is very different from anything we have seen before. The situation all seemingly started with an article breaking the news of video ads appearing alongside extremist videos and, within a week, hundreds of brands decided to boycott YouTube. Writing exclusively for ExchangeWire, Dilip DaSilva, CEO, Exponential, asks whether this is an orchestrated event. These brands are likely not talking to each other and collectively deciding to pull out. Yet, this situation has snowballed fairly quickly, which leads us to scratch our heads wondering why.

It’s not often issues such as ‘programmatic advertising’ and ‘brand safety’ make the BBC national evening news, however, that’s exactly what happened last month thanks to the ongoing furore surrounding brand ads appearing alongside inappropriate online content.

It’s not often issues such as ‘programmatic advertising’ and ‘brand safety’ make the BBC national evening news, however, that’s exactly what happened last month thanks to the ongoing furore surrounding brand ads appearing alongside inappropriate online content.

I am often asked these days about our stance on transparency – the subject comes up in RFPs and has become the subject du jour in the same way as engagement, attribution and viewability.

If you’re currently employed as a media planner or media buyer, there’s a very good chance that you won’t finish this decade in the same role. The reason?

VPAID has two big advantages compared to the standard VAST video script: Interactivity and measurement. “VAST is for your vastly vanilla type of creatives, whereas publishers that adopt VPAID will get paid because it allows their video players to accept more ad types”, said Rick Abell, vp of global publisher development for ad intelligence firm Exponential.

Because programmatic advertising has automated so much of media, more and more marketing dollars are underwriting fraud without advertisers’ knowledge. One major trick unscrupulous publishers are using is domain spoofing. While not exactly new, domain spoofing is getting into the public eye thanks to the rise of fake news.

As we dive into 2017, the marketing industry conversation around big data has evolved into a discussion on the growing use of machine learning and the inevitable disruption this will create among planning and campaign delivery teams.

As January draws to a close and we look to the year ahead, we asked our expert partners to name their “New Year’s Marketing Resolutions”, to find out what marketers should be looking out for, and focussing on, in 2017.

Bryan Melmed unpacks how every poll conducted around the presidential election failed to come to the correct conclusion due to the results being systematically biased in Clinton’s favour.

A dramatic political transition is mesmerizing the nation. It’s not so much that things are changing, it’s that the change was entirely unexpected — and when it comes to uncertainty, Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. As a result, a significant percentage of the U.S. population is exhibiting signs of heightened anxiety. We see it in our data, in the aggregate, across millions of anonymous user profiles, and almost entirely in Democratic areas.

2016 represented an exciting leap into new pastures for the marketing community. Augmented reality broke into the mainstream thanks to the extraordinary success of Pokémon Go!, opening marketing minds to the possibilities of AR and virtual reality. At the same time, artificial intelligence also had a break out year thanks largely to chatbots in the service space, but marketers too were able to start capitalising on AI’s maturity, courtesy of its application to the likes of semantic analysis and segmentation.

Data privacy has always been a hot topic, but with new laws coming next year, the landscape as we know it today is going to change. There are two things that will affect pretty much everyone next year.

The winter holidays are known as a time for families. But what about young adults without children, or new families without established holiday traditions? We’re talking about the marketer’s favourite target audience, 18-30 year olds. As one would expect, this demographic have their own take on the holidays.

MyCustomer spoke with a handful of experts and took a step back through this year’s news to share the four marketing stories and trends that characterised the last 12 months. What have we missed?

Retailers are hoping to attract all demographics during the holiday season, but millennials are a particularly coveted group. How can we anticipate what millennials will be doing and what they will be buying?

Facebook is in the news again, reporting ad-metric errors and inconsistencies. I think this is a great thing for our industry! No, this is not schadenfreude or facetiousness. I’m honestly hopeful that this will lead to thoughtful conversations about what metrics mean, and when digital ads are truly effective.

Admit it: As a marketer you can’t help but get caught up in the hype of a hot new trend. You get drawn in by shiny objects. You’re excited to test the latest marketing technique. That’s cool. Own it. Excitement about what’s new and trendy is part of marketers’ DNA and what helps them keep their campaigns and strategies fresh.

The ad tech industry has been on a journey; applying more technology to their audience targeting and optimisation strategies than ever before. Developments in technology, such as sophisticated machine learning, have changed the process of data collection and analysis, enabling it to grow massively in the last few years and shifting from a predictive approach to a cognitive one.

Earlier this year, ad solutions provider Meetrics released a report that looked into the current state of online ad viewability in the UK and claimed it was at its lowest level in 18 months. The study suggests that online ad viewability levels took a drastic slump from 54% to 47% in the second quarter of 2016; leaving the UK lagging behind other European countries.

In the age of digital, mobile, and social, both advertisers and publishers are taking to these channels to promote their brand and disseminate content. Facebook is practically a publisher’s hub for video content; any given scroll through a user’s Facebook newsfeed can include breaking news clips, DIY recipe micro-videos, cute kitten compilations, and beyond. Advertisers have gotten in line with the positive response from consumers and incorporated pre-roll, native, and other features into their own marketing strategies for social.

Everything you know about millennial spending is about to change by Ashley Lutz Millennials are becoming parents – and it’s creating shockwaves in the retail, restaurant, automotive, and home-buying industries. The 18- to 35-year-old generation is notorious for renting homes instead of buying, spending on experiences over apparel, and dining at restaurants instead of at home.…

Many advertisers overlook the impact of uncertainty on their customers. Bureaucrats in London and Brussels will struggle to negotiate Article 50 for months to come, but for marketers Brexit is already here.

In late 2015, the Drum published an article within which the author stated that over the next 12 months, viewability would re-emerge as a key industry issue and that digital video would be a key driving force behind this. With more brands focusing their ad budgets on digital video over traditional television ads, the importance of being able to track their performance and effectiveness has thrust viewability to the forefront of discussion.

This year’s election has broken so many rules that it barely resembles a political process. Few predicted that Donald Trump would be the last Republican candidate standing, let alone that the Grand Old Party would subsequently rally around him.

City A.M. previously published an article titled “Why marketers need humans behind the programmatic steering wheel”. The author highlighted how automation has transformed the marketing industry, and argued that for marketers to achieve successful automation, humans need to lead as machines lack the ability to predict or detect subtle changes or circumstances that make consumers respond to ads.

All Video May Not Be The Answer For Some Publishers by Ittai Shiu There has been a lot of buzz lately around video content in the publishing world. Some of the biggest publishers are either predicting or pushing for all video content in just a few years. For example, Tronc, formerly known as Tribune, revealed plans for its…

It’s not new to say that the advertising industry has made a monumental shift towards putting viewability at the forefront of campaign goals, however, the impact on user experience is increasingly being called into play.

The adtech industry is not without its daily challenges. However, some challenges present themselves as significantly more prominent, complex and influential than others. In particular, fraud has remained a constant problem.

Viewability is still a divisive subject within the ad tech industry. Whilst its takes into account when an ad has appeared in front of a user, it doesn’t determine whether that user engaged with it and whether that user is your target audience.

Viewability is still a divisive subject within the ad tech industry, but while the benefit of a viewability goal to advertisers is that it ensures their ad has appeared to a user, it doesn’t determine whether that user engaged with it and whether that user is your target audience. So what use is a viewable ad, if it isn’t engaged with? Perhaps the industry needs to re-align its focus on viewability.

The Emerging Trump Republican Voter Profile by Philip Rosenstein As the Grand Old Party rips open at the seams, political marketers are taking a closer look at an emerging demographic group within the Republican party — one significantly distinct from the traditional Republican demographic. Red, White & Blog spoke with Bryan Melmed, vice president of insights…

Five Minutes With: Ittai Shiu, VP Creative Strategy at Exponential What are your biggest opportunities & challenges in marketing tech for next 12-24 We constantly hear about the growth of digital ad spends and how they will overtake TV. This represents a huge opportunity, but the challenge arises from a vast and increasing amount of technologies…

New Advertising Report Shows the Power and Impact of Interactive Video by Kevin Matthies According to a report from MAW ahead of the weekend, Exponential Interactive has just released a new report worth probing further. In the report — “The Power of Video-Driven Experiences: What Attention, Emotion and Perception Can Tell Us About Good Advertising”…

Study: Interactive video ads getting more attention by Kristina Knight Turns out, video is an attention getter. That’s the takeaway from a new Exponential Interactive study which looked into how consumers react to pre-roll and banner ads as well as interactive video. Data from The Power of Video-Driven Experiences: What Attention, Emotion and Perception Can…

Study Finds Interactive Video Ads More Effective Than Pre-Rolls by Troy Dreier The ad tech company Exponential has released the results of a study measuring the effectiveness of standard video pre-rolls compared to interactive video ads. The interactive ads were VDX pre-roll and rectangular video ads, both proprietary formats offered by Exponential. Self-serving? Yes, vendor-created…

What Marketers Can Learn About Millennials via The Comedy Brand of choice: Comedy Central by Lisa Lacy Comedy isn’t for the faint hearted. Neither is marketing a comedy brand to Millennials. But that’s precisely what Comedy Central CMO Walter Levitt does every day. At Adobe Summit 2016 in Las Vegas, he talked about how Comedy…

Interactive Video Ads Garner Best Engagement by Ben Frederick Interactive video is more engaging than pre-roll or standard banner, according to a new study commissioned by Exponential Interactive from market research firm EyeSee. The study compared 30-second pre-roll ad units with VDX interactive ads and standard banner units, measuring attention, how long subjects browsed and…

Everyone lies at one point or another — especially when they are asked to describe themselves. Marketers tend to rely on surface demographics such as age, gender and income, but unfortunately, people even fudge these for a multitude of reasons. How can advertisers be assured that the data they’re receiving is accurate? One way you…