#programmatictrend

Brand safety concerns are growing. According to a survey commissioned by Oath and conducted in April by the research firm Advertiser Perceptions, 99% of advertisers concerned about their ads appearing in brand safe environments, and 58% said they were more concerned about brand safety this year than they were in 2017.

Oath learned advertisers thoughts on brand safety, and the action they are taking to ensure the integrity of their brands through the survey.

Check out the Brand Safety Infographic to find out more.

Oath capped AdExchanger’s Top 10 Programmatic Publisher list, which compared it to a “dark horse” as it is a “powerful, highly scaled platform publisher with reach that’s hard to get anywhere else”.

Just less than five years ago, programmatic buying was seen as the new dawn for the digital world. Today, it has expanded to become a mandatory feature in any marketing 101 course. As it grows to be a glossier way to transact and add value to both the buyer and seller, demand for better inventory alongside complementary tech, data, creativity, service and most importantly, trust, has also reached new heights.

"We are moving rapidly into a programmatic-first world,” said president of enterprise partnerships at Omnicom, Sal Candela, for AdExchanger. “There is a surge of quality inventory in digital.”

Sarah Warner, digital investment lead for programmatic and video at GroupM, chimes in: “Programmatic has expanded from yield management to automation and a change in how we liquidate relationships.”

With surged importance of programmatic buying, choosing and leveraging a well-established and trusted programmatic publisher is crucial.

And it seems, to AdExchanger, the “dark horse” is on the right track.

Not only is Oath’s owned-and-operated media properties and news search portal well received by audiences of all segments, they represent scaled, direct publisher relationships that will last for a long time in this media landscape.

Already representing a large portion of big media buys and offering targeting data pooled from Yahoo, AOL, Verizon and one million mobile apps, Oath is still consolidating its many inventory sources, meaning possibilities for its future is endless.

And compared to the more internationally or US-focused candidates on the rest of AdExchanger’s list, Oath holds the strongest grip in the APAC market. Market-specific portals like Yahoo奇摩 in Taiwan, Yahoo 雅虎 in Hong Kong, as well as a multilingual Engadget, continue to be major attractions for its viewers and clients.

AJ Kintner, Merkle M’s VP of business development, predicted Oath will offer a DSP with scale, reach and an addressable audience.

Also laudable is Oath’s excellent service and insights for bettering future campaigns, wrote AdExchanger.

Other names that made it onto the AdExchanger list include Condé Nast, Financial Times, Insider Inc., King, News Corp., Spotify, Turner and Vox Media.

Flurry unveiled Flurry Push, a free offering from the new Flurry Marketing Suite that enables app developers to utilize messages to target, engage and retain users across Android and iOS. With Flurry Push, mobile developers can leverage on the power of push notifications, one of the most popular forms of engagement, to effectively grow their business and drive revenue.

David Lundell, Director, Product Management, Flurry Marketing Suite, said, “This has been a year of remarkable growth for the mobile industry. Mobile innovation, disruption, and growth in software development are changing the ways of interaction between users and application developers. Modern business relies heavily on mobile technology. The proliferation of volume of new apps and ever-changing preferences of users make capturing revenue difficult. App developers must find ways to engage and retain new users for the long term, driving more usage, a bigger and more targeted audience and new revenue streams and growth in business.”

“Mobile engagement is now the key to capturing a share of the time users spend on their mobiles each day. This is the focus of Oath,” added David. “From segmentation, target selection and execution, to sustained analysis and adjustment, mobile engagement involves countless procedures. There is an increasing demand for an efficient one-stop solution that allows developers to grow usage and revenue.”

Key features of Flurry Push include:

Actionable One-stop Analytics: Analyze app KPIs and push notification campaigns through one single platform.

Triggered Push Notifications: Automatically send push notifications to users based on app- install time, event triggers or other audience attributes.

Powerful Segmentation: Target users by geographic, demographic, behavioral and technographic attributes, including activity or inactivity, install date, device model, app version or specific event combinations. Save commonly-used user segments for quick set-up.

With Flurry Push, mobile developers can leverage on the power of push notifications.

“We've heard consistently from our developers that messaging is one of the most powerful tools for boosting user engagement. With Flurry Push, we're putting free messaging front-and-center to empower developers to take charge of their app business and address the recurring challenge of long-term engagement. We believe mobile developers will use this new tool to engage and retain users in more effective and efficient ways, which is vital to growing their apps and building their businesses,” David concluded.

Today, Eudora Li, Manager, Partner & Supply Management, Oath Hong Kong, also shared the highlights of the Oath Video Activation Network, “There is a rapidly growing demand for digital video, with an expected 262% increase in the time spent in the upcoming few years. In view of this, Oath is introducing the brand-new Video Activation platform, which contains over 9 million premium video clips for developers to create unique user experiences. This platform is built to drive revenue for developers through premium video content.” 

Flurry宣佈為全新 Flurry Marketing Suite 推出免費的 Flurry Push 推播工具，讓流動應用程式開發人員可以利用流動訊息來鎖定、吸引及留住 Android 以及 iOS 流動應用程式用戶。透過 Flurry Push，流動開發人員便可以深受歡迎的強大推播功能有效促進業務及收入增長。Flurry Marketing Suite 產品管理總監 David Lundell 表示：「今年是流動科技業迅速發展的一年。流動軟件開發的創新、突破和增長正改變用戶和應用程式開發人員之間互動的方式。現今企業均非常依賴流動科技，但大量湧現的新應用程式及日新月異的用戶喜好，令它們難於從中獲取收入。流動應用程式開發人員必須尋求創新的方法去吸引並長遠地留住新用戶，務求推動更高的使用量，進一步擴闊及鎖定目標用戶群，從而開拓新收入來源，促進業務增長。」

David 續指:「透過流動裝置與用戶互動是現時爭取他們每日更多流動裝置使用時間的關鍵，亦是 Oath 的 業務發展重點。由劃分、鎖定目標及執行，以至持續分析及調整，透過流動裝置與用戶互動，涉及繁複的 程序。因此，能夠讓流動應用程式開發人員提升用戶使用量及收入的一站式高效解決方案需求日增。」

Flurry Push 推播工具的主要功能包括：

可行的一站式分析功能：透過單一平台分析應用程式的關鍵績效指標及推播活動。 

啟動推播：根據應用程式的安裝時間、活動提示或其他用戶資料，自動向用戶發送推播。

有效用戶劃分：根據地域、人口統計、行為習慣和科技消費相關的數據，包括活躍程度、安裝日期，裝置型號、應用程式版本或特定活動組合等來鎖定目標用戶，更可儲存常用的用戶劃分有助快速設置。

David 總結:「我們不斷從開發人員得知流動訊息是其中一個最有效提高用戶參與度的工具之一。透過 Flurry Push，我們將免費流動訊息視為重點，讓開發人員能夠掌握他們的流動應用程式業務，解決要維持用戶長期參與度不斷的挑戰。我們相信流動應用程式開發人員將使用這項新工具，以更快捷有效的方式去吸引及留住用戶，成為發展流動應用程式及建立業務的關鍵。」

The impact of fraud is significant, and expected to grow, as more advertising shifts to video formats and mobile devices. As large as the fraud problem is, it's only one part of the inventory quality equation. Other concerns include brand safety, fake news, and viewability. 

We'll break down some of the differences in more detail in the eBook below, but it's not surprising to see that advertisers are concerned with essentially everything under the inventory quality umbrella. Research initiated by Oath, via the Advertiser Perceptions Omnibus study, found significant level of concern across a plethora of brand safety topics.

View eBook

In the challenging world of app marketing, it's good to know that there are proven tactics that will drive success for your efforts.

The ebook below shows six specific steps to boost your app marketing campaigns, including understanding the complete app marketing lifecycle. With U.S. mobile app store revenues expected to jump dramatically from $16.3 billion in 2017 to $31.2 billion by 2021, there is plenty of opportunity for those that know how to grab it.

Find out how to get the most quality users for your app and drive the best ROI for your app campaigns with these six keys to success.

View eBook

Over the past few years, video has migrated beyond TV, reaching people in more personalized and engaging environments. Digital video ads have become new and exciting ways for marketers to deliver highly targeted messages directly to the eyes and ears of key consumers, making it a vital part of any successful marketing strategy.

In 2017, eMarketer expects digital video ad spend to grow 24% to more than $13B, with almost three-quarters of all video ad dollars transacting through programmatic pipes.1 To further explore the top trends facing digital video advertising today, Oath partnered with Ad Perceptions to survey 251 advertisers and agencies. Here are the four main themes that we discovered:

Time spent with connected devices has grown rapidly in recent years, resulting in a persistent decline of traditional TV viewing—especially among people younger than 35.2 With digital video, marketers have a powerful storytelling tool at their disposal that can efficiently reach key audiences across devices.

This combination is causing TV video ad budgets to shift to digital. In fact, 56% of our advertising partners said they are likely to move TV ad budgets to digital video in 2017, while 71% felt digital video was as or more effective than TV.3

To meet the growing expectations of today's consumers, every aspect of marketing, including video, is moving toward personalization, targeting, and interactive content. In fact, a recent survey from Boston Consulting Group found that brands using technology and data to offer personalized experiences are seeing 6-10% revenue increases.

Immersive digital video formats are transforming viewing behavior, taking it from a passive to highly interactive experience. By accessing real-time data and insights through programmatic video technology, brands are beginning to harness the full potential of relevant, one-to-one video connections. Our study revealed that 56% of marketers ranked targeting capabilities as the top benefit to digital video advertising, while 77% of marketers cited the ability to leverage programmatic signals from online behavior as a key driver in increasing digital video ad spend.3

When it comes to data, both brand and agency respondents ranked first-party and demographic data as the most valuable in programmatic audience targeting strategies, followed by purchase and search data.

Mobile video is one of 2017's fastest growing ad formats, arriving on the scene with an entourage of game-changing innovation. Between vertical video, programmatic native, and immersive 360/VR video ad units, mobile's potential to redefine the video advertising industry is endless.

But perhaps mobile's video biggest draw is its massive audience reach. With 72% of the over 231 billion digital video viewers regularly watching video on their smartphones,4 it's no surprise that 66% of our advertiser and agency partners said they are likely to shift TV dollars to mobile video this year.3

As data-driven marketers face growing market expectations, transparent and consistent video measurement options are essential. Despite challenges with mobile measurement, digital video measurement continues to drive ad spend, with 75% of senior level marketers citing it as a leading reason to invest.3 Luckily, with the rise of HTML5, omni-channel measurement is quickly becoming a reality. This long-awaited shift opens the door for more comprehensive attention metrics that look at viewability, engaged time in-view, and ROI.

While these advances are great for digital video, measurement models' lack of standardized metrics across TV, over-the-top services, and digital video continues to be challenge. According to our study, 42% of marketers attribute the lack of comparable measurement for digital and TV as the most significant factor limiting digital video growth.3 However, with TV increasingly becoming more digital and budgets shifting to programmatic TV, advertisers can expect to see a continued effort to bridge the gap between traditional TV's panel-based Gross Rating Points (GRP) and digital's census-based approach.

One thing is clear: in today's multi-screen world, digital video has emerged as a must-have strategy for creating deeper connections with consumers across platform. Marketers have long understood targeted video's unparalleled ability to make an impact; it's just that digital, when combined with programmatic technology, gives us the means to do it more effectively than ever before.

Source: Oath.com

1 eMarketer, "US Digital Video Ad Spending, 2017-2021", Jan 2017

2 eMarketer, "Daily Time Spent with Select Connected TV Devices Among US Consumers, by Age, Aug 2016

3 Ad Perceptions, Yahoo Advertiser Study, Jan 2017

Since industry standards are essential for our programmatic advertising industry, we’re pleased to welcome additional perspective from the Interactive Advertising Bureau. This post also published on the BrightRoll blog.

The programmatic advertising industry has been hard at work coming up with global digital technical ad standards for all companies to follow. Viewability, digital measurement across devices and media, and sorting through new complexities introduced by technology have been priorities. As an industry, we have made progress establishing standards in taxonomy, ad formats, and creative guidelines but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

Where do we start?

As we work through the issues one by one, it is clear that to move the conversation forward we need to separate business negotiations away from technical standards.

To do this, there should be a framework through which companies, both large and small, can enter into the digital ad ecosystem whether via real-time bidding (RTB), direct buys, video, mobile, etc.—and be able to measure all of it in an easy fashion and not have these entry points be negotiation points. The mantra of “equal access for all” is palpable.

As an industry we are looking to democratize the technology framework of the advertising ecosystem so that everyone has a voice into the standards that will govern our industry. Our efforts have been successful thus far, including establishing the following standards:

Video Player-Ad Interface Definition (VPAID) establishes a common interface between video players and ad units

Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) gives consistent instructions to your video player on how to handle an ad

Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definition (MRAID) is a common API for mobile rich media ads that will run in mobile apps

Open Real-Time Bidding (OpenRTB) allows an individual ad impression to be put up for bid in real time

There are a number of different initiatives helping to resolve industry challenges around fraud and brand safety including the The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). Specific outcomes from these partnerships include work around eliminating fraudulent digital advertising traffic, combating malware, fight ad-supported Internet piracy, and promoting brand safety.

We are also working through the open source measurement SDK to provide one “transport” framework for companies to use to implement their private libraries while committing to a more seamless SDK implementation for the greater good of our industry.

Collaboration from all partners in our landscape is critical to our success in the next evolution of digital advertising. New technologies, data limitations (especially in the mobile space), and the rapid “digitalization” of many aspects of our lives behooves us to come together to create a framework from which to launch a safe and effective digital advertising supply chain.

By Alanna Gombert, General Manager, IAB Technology Laboratory