Huh? Bitcoin? What?

Why should you care?
Bitcoin has reached a tipping point where people are genuinely considering placing a piece of their real-world wealth into a virtual economy backed only by trust in this unproven, unregulated system. In the past week, some well-known venture capital firms placed millions of dollars as investments into companies that run Bitcoin exchanges and the rate at which Bitcoins are being exchanged has been growing on average 15% per week. The implications of what this could mean for business is currently unclear, however it offers a solution to immediately reduce the cost associated with accepting credit cards or transferring payments.

Whether you see it as all hype or a legitimate institution, Bitcoin is gaining momentum and now has a real case for our attention. At minimum, go ahead and marvel at how a virtual currency that appeared practically out of thin air just created a billion-dollar market that is for the moment, free of government control.

Have you jumped into Bitcoin yet? We’d love to hear about your experience.

Historically speaking, if an advertiser wanted to make an impact, they’ve been somewhat limited to sliding billboards, interstitials and overlays. The new IAB Rising Star units are a perfect combination of splash and functionality. These ads are high impact and cannot be missed.

But how do these eye catching ads perform? According to one study conducted by the IAB, they are already outperforming the standard IAB units. Let’s be serious though – this is no surprise! Looking at one of Centro’s more recent “rising star” campaigns you’ll find the results mirror just that of the IAB study.

According to Emilie Lee, one of Centro’s Sr. Campaign Analysts: “Rising Star units are proving to be a successful form of interactive advertising. Our West Coast team ran fourteen portrait units within one campaign in the entertainment vertical, which averaged a 14.8 second dwell time and a CTR of .24%.” That’s a lot of engagement and a 10x click-through than normal banner ads.

According to the same IAB study, users spent 50% more time interacting with a rising star unit vs. standard IAB ads. Big name brands like AT&T, Jeep and Westin Hotels are all giving it a try. In February 2013, Undertone released a whitepaper stating that an overwhelming 92% of agencies and marketers ranked the units a 1 or 2 (on a 5-point scale – 1 being the highest) on their overall performance satisfaction.

These interactive ads are demanding both attention from the consumer and warranting premium pricing for publishers. Best part of all? It’s pretty advertising that is being proven to work.

Eric Franchi of Undertone wrote in AdExchanger recently that companies in the space should take the viewability debate seriously, suggesting that it’s only a matter of time until the viewable impression becomes standard. Franchi suggested that publishers should begin to “work with vendors who can help you understand your universe of inventory, make an effort to educate both internally and externally, and create a roadmap for the eventual viewable impression standard.” I could not agree more. I would argue that publishers willing to put the work in now will position themselves far ahead of their counterparts when the day of standardization finally arrives. The early bird gets the worm, if you will.  Publishers should be working closely with the technology companies available to test and better understand their inventory. There are several sound vendors out there — comScore, DoubleVerify, RealVu, C3Metrics, to name just a few.

That said, publishers can and should be doing more than just testing. They should be looking at ways to better optimize their sites to increase their percentage of viewable inventory. eMarketer put out an article, “Viewability Metric Favors Persistent Rich Media Formats,” that explored the impact of Rich Media formats and the research suggested that they tend to be the most viewable. However, running more rich media units isn’t the only option.

Centro has a lot of energy surrounding this topic. In speaking with a colleague, Centro Brand Exchange VP of Operations Jennifer Schaen, her advice was that we “should be encouraging our partners to start thinking about and planning for site optimization. It will only put them in a favorable position as it relates to viewable impressions.” So let’s put our “guaranteed viewability” thinking caps on. With the right mix of testing and innovation, publishers can take control and actually create more viewable inventory.

Viewability Through Site Design

In early 2012, Yahoo launched a visualization tool that offers insights from their C.O.R.E. (Content Optimization and Relevance Engine) algorithm. Based on this tool, content is selected for display on Yahoo properties (how stories should be ordered, dependent on each user, etc.). It’s genius, but it’s not just for portals!

Look at the philly.com site redesign. By learning about the viewing trends of their audience, they revamped their website based on a similar content optimization model. Depending on the time of day, the content modules will shift to support the type of content their audience is most hungry for in that given time period. Imagine the impact this will have on their ability to garner viewable impressions. I suspect that by shifting the content based on user preferences and trends of their consumption, sites will see an increase in the percentage of viewable inventory on their site. This kind of site redesign will likely lead to an increase in CPMs and revenue share.

Even the naysayers believe the viewability debate is an important one. On Econsultancy.com, Doug Conely of Exponential suggests that viewability isn’t where it should be from a standardization perspective and that the industry is not ready to officially coin guaranteed viewability as a metric. However, he adds, “The more we can use this to encourage publisher partners to create web experiences with fewer ads with richer creative options that are more likely to be seen and the more we encourage advertisers to value that then the better the web will be for publishers, advertisers and consumers alike.”

Well, isn’t that grand? What better way to service clients than to do so in a way that benefits us (the publishers) and the clients’ clients (the consumers) at the same time! I couldn’t have said it better myself.

We trust that if we allow employees to work from home, then they are high performers who know their business can be done just as effectively as being in the office. We also believe they will let us know if they recognize it’s not working. We trust our employees to get their job done during some time of the day. Passing the time until the 5:00 pm whistle blows is not something we enforce, and it has never proved effective across companies.

Shawn Riegsecker (our CEO), says there is no such thing as work/life balance, it is just a “Life Balance.” Thanks to technology, employees can now work 24/7, so how do we stop them from doing that? We let them know that we care. Our company cares about their well-being. We care about how their family is doing. We also care about enabling them to become the best version of themselves. Not just a great employee, we want them to be a great PERSON —  father, mother, friend, partner. Got personal conflicts? Leave. Go home. Take care of it. We’ll still be here tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week. Let us know how we can help. Got a personal achievement? Tell us about it. Let’s all celebrate it!

HR teams and corporations often give up on trusting their employees too quickly. Hiring the right people with competencies important to the company allows us the freedom to trust and empower each individual. It’s what makes Centro a great environment for our 300 employees.

koozai.com

Yes, “mobile” is no longer a thing of the future.  It is here and it is prominent, but still struggles to get its share of the advertising dollars.

According to an AdAge White Paper, consumers’ media consumption time on mobile is up to 10 percent, while marketers’ share of advertising budgets is only 1 percent – this is a large gap.

On top of that, mobile usage is only picking up steam. Some studies predict that the usage of mobile devices for search will surpass desktop in 2014, and others believe local search volume will surpass desktops in 2015.

Whichever proves to be more accurate, it doesn’t matter as the fact remains the same: Your customers will be on their mobile device more than their desktops…yet we spend only 1 percent of our advertising budgets in the space.

Just as paid search blazed a trail on “audience buying” and “RTB,” it’s leading the way on mobile advertising, as well. According to a Marin Software study, smart mobile devices will account for 25 percent of all paid search ad clicks in Google’s network by end of year and were about 12 percent of total search budgets in 2012, according to a Yahoo!/Bing Study.

The share of the budget that mobile search gets is a smaller percentage than the click share because mobile CPCs are less expensive.As competition picks up, CPCs will pick up, ultimately lifting the share of budgets at a faster rate.  However, that gap is much smaller than the industry as a whole (see above: 10 to 1).

Here at Centro, we see a little over 15 percent of our advertising budgets in paid search going toward mobile.  While search marketing continued to be the biggest contributor to online advertising in 2012 at 46 percent, according to eMarketer, it is often overlooked as media of the future. Well, look no further.

As the interactive community becomes more favorable to performance and results-based media, paid search will continue to provide high ROI and large budgets.  According to Adobe, tablets and mobile phones have the highest ROI and tablets have the highest conversion rates when compared to desktops.

With growth in impression inventory estimates up to 120 percent year-over-year, look for advertisers to become more aware of the Mobile Paid Search opportunity and begin asking the question “how can I spend more in mobile?”

Lloyd Morgan Productions

A new study commissioned by AOL claims that short-form video advertising (ads that play during webisodes, cat videos, short interviews, etc.) is more effective than long-form advertising (ads that play throughout TV shows, movies, etc. or videos longer than 10 minutes).

These findings contradict the traditional logic that the standard 30-second TV commercial is the most effective in swaying an audience.

Highlights From the Study

• Ads in short-form videos are more effective than those in long-form content. More specifically, short-form video produced a 25 percent higher brand recall and 42 percent higher purchase intent for the featured product or service.
• Viewers are adopting traditional avoidance behaviors during ads within long-form videos. Respondents found the ads to be too frequent and interruptive; as a result, they chose to avoid them altogether (by walking away, going to other sites, multitasking with their phone). This is the same “annoyance” behavior that is demonstrated when viewing television without the use of a DVR.
• Consumers want more targeted and humorous ads in both formats. In fact, 67 percent of respondents would be willing to answer a question to make their ads more personalized and enjoyable.
• Consumers understand the exchange of free content for advertising, but they want to make sure their time tradeoff of watching ads also benefits them. They found coupons, contests and links to be the most positive forms of engagement.

What’s Next in Video Advertising
Facebook: Soon you will see video ads in your news feed. Facebook is set to unveil a new video-ad product in the first half of 2013.

Twitter: Nielsen announced last December that it will partner with Twitter to publish a new set of ratings that measure chatter on Twitter about TV programming. Read More

Who is Doing it Right, Right Now
Watch the Ten Most Viral Video Ads of 2012. Here is our favorite.

Facts and Stats from Google

• U.S. consumers exposed to a YouTube homepage ad are 437 percent more likely to engage in a key brand activity on the same day than those unexposed
• YouTube Mobile gets 400 million views a day
• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube per minute
• 4 billion videos are uploaded daily
• 71 percent of people search because they have seen an ad
• 57 percent of U.S. Hispanics who visit video sites share videos
• By 2012 internet video will account for over 50 percent of consumer internet traffic in the U.S.
• In 1 minute 3 seconds worth of uploads to YouTube, 1 million babies are born
• In 48 seconds worth of uploads to YouTube, a bamboo plant grows 6 feet
• Only about 10 percent of the population will always skip ads
• U.S. online video advertising spending is estimate to reach $7.11 billion in 2015

Cnn.com

While the excitement of the holiday season is over, there’s a ton to look forward to in the New Year for technology enthusiasts. For those deeply curious about what’s to come in 2013, there’s no better place to get fully immersed in what’s to come other than the International Consumer Electronics Show.

The 4-day conference commenced with pre-show events on January 7^th. The formal program runs from the 8^th through the 11^th at the Las Vegas Convention Center and The Venetian in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Besides grand displays of the newest technological devices, unmatched networking opportunities and a meeting of the industry’s greatest tech minds, key show offerings will include the masses of seminars led by industry experts and executives.

The keynote speech Tuesday kicked off show events. One notable change from past years will be the traditional commencement speech by a Microsoft executive. For the past 9 years, the keynote speaker at CES has been either the Founder or CEO of Microsoft. This is the first year the PC giant won’t be doing the honors. In their place will be Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs addressing topics including the future of mobile technologies. Jacobs previewed his address during a Charlie Rose interview last week.

Other noted keynote speakers will include Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, Samsung President of Device Solutions Dr. Stephen Woo, and Chairman of U.S. solutions at American Express Josh Silverman.

Take a look through scheduled events at the CES official website’s session page.

We have a team from Centro attending the conference. If you have recommendations on valuable panelists or speakers you’re planning to check out this week, give us a head’s up in the comments section below.

Read part one of this article: CES 2013: Gadgets galore to debut at the Convention

Computerworld.com

A report that came out in mid-December from iSuppli, the electronics sector research firm, noted that year-end eReader shipments are going down to 14.9M units – a significant 36% drop from the 23.2M units achieved in 2011.

Presently, the projection for 2013 will have the number down to 10.9M units sold.  That being said, none of this is a surprise – the decline in sales of eReaders has been expected for some time now.

However, instead of pig-piling on a market that appears to be drying up, I’d rather leave a note of appreciation for the role eReaders have played in raising our technological savvies over the past few years.

These devices served as a bridge to an entire population of people who had never previously felt the urge to ‘tech-up’ their lives, only to find a device that enabled them understand the utility that comes with new technology.  Suddenly, here was a group of people who once were in the ‘technology-is-not-for-me’ camp, and now were evaluating whether or not this was actually true.

Count my Mom as one of those people.

Throughout this past year, I’ve spoken ad nauseam with clients and partners about my mom’s love affair with the Kindle she received for Christmas two years ago.  And while it’s a constant joy to poke fun at the books she is reading (yes, I probably embellished a little – not all of it was Danielle Steel), the fact of the matter is that her Kindle had genuinely improved one aspect of her life that was important to her. She recognized it immediately and from that point on, she was hooked.

Fast forward two years, and now my Mom’s first question after the obligatory “are you kids hungry?” is “can I play around with your tablet?”  Little did she know that the iPad Mini was waiting in her stocking.

So, thank you, eReader – and, well done.  You proved to an entire generation that technology isn’t a young person’s game, and in the process helped turn a 60-something pre-school teacher into a technophile.

Signagesolutionsmag.com

Tracking and measurement is perhaps the most important aspect of advertising.

In the display and mobile advertising world, engagement is the major key performance indicator. However, in the digital place-based world there is no such thing as click through or page views. So what do you do when there isn’t a standard tracking tool?

Recently there have been a lot of conversations about the potential ways to track digital place-based (DP-B) media. For instance, near-field communication (NFC) and facial recognition software get tossed into the mix quite often, but NFC isn’t widely enough accepted to be considered good candidate for an official tracking system and facial recognition gets a book of privacy laws thrown at it every time someone mentions it.

Yet, this segment of digital advertising warrants more than just conversation. Last fall, The Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) announced that the growth rate for the industry sector was six times that of total measured ad spending, according to data from Miller, Kaplan, Arase and Kantar Media. Digital place-based (DPb) media grew by 11.8% from Jan-June 2012 over the same period last year, while Kantar Media data revealed that total measured media for the same period increased by 1.9%.

But, for the foreseeable future, it looks like it may be a while for DP-B tracking.

In the meantime, seek strong relationships with trusted vendor partners. Make sure your vendors are DPAA members or working under the DPAA standard for audience measurement. And realize that receiving an accurate proof of performance report (read more about best practices for PoP here) for each digital place-based campaign is not the same as accurately quantifying engagement.

Just remember: The reporting and tracking may be different and evolving, but a digital place-based campaign can extend brand awareness and reach. It should be top-of-mind as a great supplement to a display and mobile campaign.

Are you willing to include digital place-based media in a campaign knowing the tracking isn’t there? How would you add it to a campaign to extend reach?

Revolution Analytics

The advertising industry is in transition and at the heart of this transition is attribution. Attribution sounds like a four letter word, but simply put, it is the ability to evaluate the performance of each media channel.

Multi-Channel Attribution is a burning topic on the tongue of our industry, and yet it is so poorly understood and, at times, even less clearly defined. So let’s start with the definition – I pulled this definition from the report “Marketing Attribution: Valuing the Customer Journey”:

“Attribution offers the ability to understand how marketing affects the entire sales cycle, and to optimize across it. Unlike channel specific measurement, attribution doesn’t spit out binary results – DR (search) OR branding (display). It describes the nuances of how display can improve paid search results, or vice versa. Attribution jumps silos to analyze how channels work in different circumstances, and how they work together.”

Why is it important?
Digging into your analytical data allows marketers to identify campaigns that may be undervalued or overvalued based on the standard first click or last click attribution model.  It instead takes a holistic view of the overall click path. As marketers continue to spend more on digital with each budget cycle, they’ll want to know how best to allocate budget to an overwhelming array of advertising options.

What is an example of attribution modeling?
Let’s look at something on a very simplistic micro-level: Say you are running a search campaign and you bid on a general keyword like “digital media.” This keyword results in increased impressions but never converts to a lead. Whereas a more specific, branded term like “Centro media logistics” has resulted in fewer impressions, but has resulted in 5 leads.

If you are only looking at a last click attribution model, you may miss out on valuable insights such as the fact that “digital media” was an impression that drove a secondary search for “Centro media logistics” and thus resulted in what is referred to as an assisted conversion.

Now scale this to a macro-level relative to a comprehensive media plan or even a marketing program. If you tap into your data by building an attribution model, you can begin to examine the way in which your audience interacts with your digital media campaigns and marketing programs. You can then gain insight into how different advertising channels assist one another, for example how social, mobile, video, and display help a sale that has a last click or conversion driven from search.

I keep hearing the phrase “marketing funnel,” what does that even mean?
It refers to the “customer journey,” which today happens across multiple sessions, sites and devices. Even low cost products like pens and paintbrushes get discovered, researched, compared and purchased across multiple touch-points, in owned, earned and bought media. There are literally dozens of channels that can influence the sale, which is why it is so important to understand how all your target audiences’ clicks work together.

Blue Fountain Media

Heavy Lifting for 2013
Marketers have two major challenges as they approach the New Year. The first being scalability. How do you get your message, to multiple audiences, at multiple times, on multiple screens? How do you pair mobile and video effectively? How do you use search to enhance display.

Secondarily, how do you create and scale digital media in a way that makes smart use of your budget, and finally, how do you then track what works?

Sound heavy? It is. But it’s not impossible.

Anything worth doing takes work. Which is why spending time in your planning phase, building out your ideal attribution model, will help you uncover what you THINK your audience’s digital body language is, as well as what their click path ACTUALLY is so you can reinvest smartly.

What are some examples of attribution models?

1. Full Funnel Attribution: Assigns values throughout different stages of a consumer’s experience, providing deep insights into the role that each marketing channel plays.
2. Post-Click or Last Click Attribution: Post-click or last-click attribution is based on the general notion that the last advertising medium to persuade a consumer to click on an ad will receive credit for the entire sale.
3. Post-View Attribution: According to the post-view model, the last channel to show a person an ad is the channel that receives credit for it.
4. Equal Attribution: This is a form of post-view where equal value is assigned to every single ad placement.
5. Fractional Attribution: Fractional attribution is probably the best solution available. However, unlike the other options listed above, it’s necessary to work with an attribution vendor in order to effectively measure fractional attribution.

How do I get started?
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution with attribution modeling. But below are links to a couple great resources to get you started thinking about how to begin building out your marketing funnel. Happy modeling!

Time for Alternative Attribution Models

Which Attribution Model Should You Use?

8 Core Elements of Attribution Modeling

Google Analytics Attribution Webinar