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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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…