Multi-Platform Mastermind
  • Home
  • Industry News
  • Technology Guide
  • Blog
  • Research & Whitepapers
  • Products & Services
  • About
    • About
    • Contact Us

It's Time For Time To Replace Meaningless Click-Throughs

1/29/2015

0 Comments

 
It's not going to happen overnight, but trust me, little by little digital advertising is going to embrace a time-based metric as a replacement for -- or perhaps initially a supplement to -- click-throughs and impressions.

I've blogged about this being my firm conviction before, and was glad to see BMW sign a deal with a design Web site last year that was based around time rather than an ad simply being served to so many people momentarily. Now we have news that a guiding influence in The Guardian's redesigned Web site has been the ability to offer advertisers campaigns based around time, not simply impressions. Quite how this will pan out is not yet entirely clear but what is certain is that The Guardian has changed its units away from static boxes that sit in isolation at the top and the bottom of a page hoping to hit the one-second rule by which an impression can legally be seen as served.

Instead, messages will be measured by how long a viewer had the opportunity to see them -- and one can imagine that The Guardianmay well choose to do this across different static and rich media units in campaigns that will be able to report back that people were exposed to branding for the agreed amount of time. Of course, this could be extended to run across a typical month or six-week campaign to show that a certain percentage of the brand's target audience were exposed to its message for x amount of time on x number of occasions.

Does that sound a bit like television? Good, because I think that's the point here.

Advertisers are clearly fed up with digital display's lack of guaranteed transparency on viewability and click-fraud. One of the obvious benefits of the move to time is that you can, hopefully, weed out the robots and fake clicks and concentrate on those people who appear to be spending enough time to show they are human and are enjoying the content -- framed, of course, by the brand's message.

With click-throughs at less than one in a thousand and brands not even really trusting that those clicks are coming from human beings, the click-through rate (CTR) is in dire need of being replaced. It's effectively meaningless because it measures actions that are so rare they are likely to have come from a robot and it detracts from the branding and "share of voice" the majority of large advertisers now use digital display for. 

So, mark these words, it may be a slow march, but time is coming and, in some form or another, it will replace impressions and CTRs with reports of how long an advertiser's key audience has been shown its messaging and on how many occasions.

When advertisers start asking for time-based metrics and publishers like The Guardian begin to respond, you know it's really only a matter of time.

0 Comments

Facebook's Mobile Ad Revenue Will Completely Dwarf Its Desktop Revenue Next Year

1/26/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Facebook’s mobile ad revenue is growing at an astonishing rate and it’s showing no sign of let-up.

For a company that admitted in its 2012 IPO filing it did not “generate any meaningful revenue” from its mobile products, Facebook has truly pivoted.

We already know that in 2013 45% of Facebook’s $6.99 billion in full-year ad revenue was derived from mobile ads. But by 2016 Facebook’s worldwide mobile revenue will reach 75% of its total (or $7.39 billion), according to new estimates from research firm eMarketer. 

That’s huge and, if eMarketer’s predictions are accurate, means Facebook is on track to post $18 billion in revenue in 2016, suggesting that Facebook will also be selling mobile ads at a premium compared to its current mobile ad rates. Mobile ads across the industry tend to be sold at a lower price compared to desktop for a variety of reasons, but it's mostly down to the received wisdom that people are less likely to buy products on their mobiles and that there’s simply less space to advertise in on mobile.

The reason why Facebook’s mobile offering is working so well? EMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson said in a press release accompanying the new forecast: “Because the Facebook experience is basically the same across devices, advertisers don’t have to reinvent the wheel to place mobile advertising. As Facebook’s user base shifts even more heavily toward mobile, it is well positioned to see increasing ad revenues from this channel.”

EMarketer predicts Facebook will be closing in on 1 billion mobile users by the year-end, but that by 2016 it will have clearly crossed that landmark. By 2018 EMarketer says Facebook will have 1.34 billion mobile users, meaning 75% of its userbase will use its mobile site and apps.

The overwhelming majority of those mobile users currently come from the US, which this year had 123.1 million users logging on to Facebook via their mobiles. But that is set to change in the coming years. By 2017 India will have overtaken the US to have the most Facebook mobile users — notching up from 80.6 million mobile users in 2014 to 167.7 million by 2017 (to the US’ 143.8 million mobile users that year.)

The chart to the right also shows how prominent markets like Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico are set to become as part of Facebook's mobile audience.

In 2014 Facebook made a series of acquisitions and strategic plays to grow its audience and commercial revenue in emerging markets. It launched its Internet.org initiative to connect “the next 5 billion” to the internet; it also acquired Bangalore-based startup Little Eye Labs, which builds mobile app analysis tools; and it owns Whatsapp, which had 70 million monthly active users in India as of November last year, according to Statista data. 

Earlier this week Twitter announced it had acquired India-based mobile marketing startup Zipdial as it looks to bolster its position in emerging markets.

Picture
0 Comments

    Archives

    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013

    Categories

    All
    Adap.tv
    Advertising
    Agencies
    Apps
    Automotive
    Branding
    Broadband
    Broadcast
    Buyers
    BuzzFeed
    Cable
    CBS
    Click-through Rates
    Comcast
    Comscore
    Consumer Expectations
    Consumption
    Cross Platform
    Demographics
    Digital
    Dish Tv
    Dual Screen
    Ecommerce
    Facebook
    Fandango
    Gaming
    Growth
    Hsi
    Instagram
    Internet
    Iptv
    Linear Tv
    Linkedin
    Measurement
    Media
    Mobile
    Mobile Tv
    Multi Screen
    Multi-Screen
    Nbc
    Ncc
    Networks
    Nielsen
    Online Video
    Ott
    Outdoor
    Out Of Home
    Out-of-Home
    Pay Tv
    Pointroll
    Print
    Prospecting
    Radio
    Ratings
    Rentrak
    Search
    Sem
    Seo
    Social Media
    Sony
    Spending
    Streaming
    Streaming Tv
    Telco
    Television
    Time Shifted
    TV
    Tv Everywhere
    Twitter
    Viacom
    Video
    Video Ads
    Viewing
    Vod
    X1 Platform
    Xfinity
    Yahoo
    Yelp
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

All rights reserved by Multi-Platform Mastermind LLC
                About Us         |        Subscribe to Newsletter