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The Digital Marketing Enlightenment

AppNexus CEO Brian O'Kelley has recently suggested that we're entering an adtech renaissance. In a recent speech at IAB, he positioned that today's efficient buying and selling of ads, humanism in native ads and the growth of machine learning are re-energizing the industry and giving it new life. 

The adtech renaissance is undeniable - the levels of efficiency enabled by programmatic marketing, machine learning and other technologies are helping adtech flourish, just as art and culture re-emerged again in the European renaissance. However, there are many layers of complexity beneath the issues we face in digital marketing today that mean a technological revolution will not be enough on its own. As we enjoy the renaissance of adtech, we must also embrace an “Enlightenment” of digital marketing at the same moment.

The Enlightenment in Europe was also known as the “Age of Reason,” a period when thinkers questioned authority and embraced the idea that humanity could be improved through rational change. The period produced some of the most powerful books, philosophies, laws and revolutions in history, driven by ideals like Immanuel Kant’s mottos, “Dare to know!”

For too long, marketers have relied on faith-based digital marketing. Through a series of rituals and smokescreens, they released their budgets into a murky black hole, with little understanding of how their data was being manipulated along the way. In exchange for promises of efficiency, they were entrusting their marketing pipeline to a limited number of technologists who understood how to access data. Like priests in the pre-enlightenment era, these technology experts met little to no pushback from marketers who paid little attention to the process.

Just recently we’ve arrived at a tipping point where marketers aren’t blindly trusting measurement reports and methods and are increasingly pushing back . Marketers today are no longer willing to just accept what they are told - hard-line stances on transparency this year from companies like Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and more are indicators that good marketing leaders won’t take view powerpoint decks as proof enough for successful campaigns - they want to "dare to know" and analyze data for themselves.

This curiosity and dedication to accurately understanding data is the most critical role marketing executives will take in the years ahead. As brand CMOs and others start seeing the light, they are bringing more rational questions and discussions to root out superstitious habits of the marketing industry. They are questioning whether impression counts have a meaningful impact on campaigns, they are understanding the prevalence of fraud and constantly seeking to minimize it, and they are regularly re-assessing whether metrics they turn to most like viewability are the right cure for their challenges. Those who ask these questions and challenge assumptions will be shedding light on a complicated system and their demands will bring democratized access to knowledge and information.

The rightful heirs of the marketing industry will be those who complete this enlightened transition from manipulatable measurement to meaningful measurement. By questioning their existing beliefs and regularly re-evaluating their data, they won’t need to be dependent on forces beyond their control.

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Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook

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The Ultimate Guide to Native Advertising

There is probably no term that is getting greater play in the marketing space right now than “native advertising”. Heck, even the New York Times is getting in on the actionand including native advertising opportunities in their latest redesign.

There is a great opportunity in “native” for both media companies and brands, but it’s imperative to understand all the moving parts.

What Exactly Is Native Advertising?

NOTE: Personally, I had a challenging time going through all the definitions of native advertising, so I’ve done my best here to make it simple and useful.

If we want, we can get super complex about what native advertising is. The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) created a Native Advertising Playbook that has six different categories of consideration. It’s a worthy document, but to simplify the argument, native advertising is:

• A Directly Paid Opportunity. I hate to bring out the obvious, but native advertising is “pay to play”. If a brand or individual did not pay for the spot, it’s not native advertising.
• Usually Content Based. The information is useful, interesting and highly targeted to the specific readership. So, in all likelihood, it's not an advertisement promoting the company's product or service directly.
• Delivered In-Stream. To truly be a native ad, the user experience is not disrupted. The advertising is delivered in a way that does not impede the normal behavior of the user in that particular channel.

Again, the goal of native advertising (at least for definition purposes) is to not disrupt the user experience…to offer information that is somewhat helpful and similar to the other information on the site so that the content is engaged with at a higher rate than, say, a banner ad (this is good for advertisers, and if the content is truly useful, good for consumers).

What Is the State of Native Advertising?

According to Hexagram's State of Native Advertising report:

• 62% of publishers and media companies offer some kind of native advertising program.
• 66% of brands create their own content for native advertising programs (in most other cases, the publishers assist in creating the content for the brand).
• The most popular forms of native advertising are sponsored blog posts (65%), sponsored articles (63%) and Facebook sponsored updates (56%).

Native advertising is growing as a part of content marketing for a few reasons:

1. Media brands and social platforms (like LinkedIn and Facebook) are aggressively offering native advertising products.
2. Brands now spend approximately 25 to 30 percent of their budget on content marketing initiatives. Brands have started to make this a priority, so native advertising is seen as a viable opportunity.
3. When done right, it can work.
4. There is a renewed passion in the advertising community around native. This "new advertising" (even though it's not new at all) has given hope to media buyers around the world that something can perform better than a banner ad.

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