Tag: 2018 programmatic media

FIFA World Cup 2018 Infographic Part 2: Social Media

Posted on by Sierra Ducey

As the 2018 World Cup pool play comes to an end and teams and fans gear-up for bracket play, there are some noteworthy numbers to report from the first two weeks of play. Granted, the games were intense with Cristiano Ronaldo’s hat-trick against Spain, Mexico’s major upset of Germany and Argentina’s goal in the 86th minute to pass Nigeria, these aren’t even the craziest things to report. The social media trends coming in from all over the world are shockingly high and truly one of the most noteworthy statistics from the action.  
       

For social media, it’s no question that #fifa, #worldcup2018 and #futbol are the MVPs of Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook. In just under two weeks, there are over 1.5 million Instagram posts using #worldcup2018, and over 25 million impressions on Twitter of the same hashtag. Leo Messi’s Instagram post on June 14, captioned “Listos / Ready” racked up over 5 million likes, falling short of Cristiano Ronaldo’s “Vamos familia” captioned picture racking up just short of 10 million likes.

On Facebook, the German national team’s page, Die Mannschaft, has over 6.5 million people following their action with comments, likes, views and reactions. With Germany’s impressive social following, its shocking that Brazil’s page completely wipes them out. Brazil’s National team’s page, Confederação Brasileira de Futebol, had nearly 12 million followers. Snapchats are more difficult to track, in real time, but there is no question that fans are following all the action around the world with the 2018 Fifa World Cup Russia story. The following is so large, that the filter asking people to comment on Brazilian player, Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, new haircut is a trending story.

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All of the different platforms allow fans to share their opinion, players to interact with fans, and teams make sure everyone is up to date on all the action. There is yet to be a clear winner on whose social pages have the highest following, most likes, shares and impressions. We will continue to track these numbers and see how our predictions hold up. But, one thing is clear – fans and spectators have countless ways of interacting with their team, the players and other fans across their country and the world. Digital marketers and media buyers have an incredible opportunity to be part of the conversation and turn users into buyers through targeted programmatic, social and search. There is a captive audience waiting to be messaged to. If you can join in and show fans that you also care, there is a great opportunity to be seen and heard.

Digilant’s FIFA 2018 Digital Advertising Infographic covers who the consumers are, social media trends, how the content is consumed and by who, and more!

Download the full infographic here and don’t forget to share #DigilantData.

Interested in learning more about how people are consuming World Cup Content? Check out Part 3 of our FIFA World Cup 2018 Infographic series here.

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Programmatic Media Buying 101: What is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)? What Does It Mean For Digital Advertising?

Posted on by Karen Moked

Over the past few months, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) acronym has been thrown around often in the programmatic media industry, as everybody scrambles to define what it means for them and how to apply it.  At least on this side of the ocean, it seems like most digital marketers are still unaware of what the GDPR is and the heavy implications it holds on their programmatic media buying future.

What is GDPR?

The GDPR Transparency & Consent Framework was launched in Europe on April 24, 2018,  with the objective to help all companies in the digital advertising industry ensure that they comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, when processing personal data or accessing non-personal or personal data on user devices.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has recently established new requirements for companies that collect,use, and share data about EU citizens. As of May 25, 2018, all companies handling data of EU citizens must adhere to these new data privacy and security measures, regardless of whether the organization is located within the EU or not. After this date, companies around the world will no longer be allowed to collect or process consumer data from EU citizens without identifying their legal basis for doing so.  Not only that, but the same companies will also be barred from using any previously collected data if it wasn’t on-boarded with the appropriate notice and consent. Companies that fail to comply with any of these new rules and regulations could be subject to fines as high as 20 Million Euros or 4% of their annual global revenue.

However, the new European privacy policy affects more than just data miners and web developers and more than just European businesses.  Data controllers and any subcontractors will be obligated to maintain written records of their data processing activities, including why they’re processing the data and how long they plan to keep it and must be made available to data protection authorities upon request.  It’s crucial that digital marketers prepare themselves, because even if you’re operating outside the borders of the EU, if any of the data your organization collects goes through the region, then it’s subject to the legislation.

GDPR Starts Right Now

For digital marketers the changes will start immediately with websites. For example, we are accustomed to reading this message on many websites: “We use cookies to ensure that we give the best experience to the user on our site. If you continue browsing we will assume that you agree.” With this notice, or similar messages, the editors would be considered authorized to insert cookies for the visitor, but now, this will change. 
With GDPR, the copy used by the organizations to obtain legal consent must explain in a clear and concise manner why their data is being collected and what it will be used for, before it can be stored, processed, analyzed, and transmitted. When referring to personal or identifiable data, this that means personal data which is now classified as any information that could be used to identify a person, including location data, mobile device IDs and, in some cases, IP address. (Biometric and genetic data is considered to be “sensitive personal data.”)  Data that can be re-identified by data scientists or analysts with effort, by combining it with additional data points, is also considered personal data.

Article 4.1: “personal data means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.”

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What Does That Mean for Programmatic Advertisers on the Other Side of the Ocean?

While companies figure out how to comply with the new rules there might be a loss of momentum with data tech innovation.  GDPR will require programmatic advertisers to obtain active consent from users to use their personal information, and also give them the power to erase their accumulated historical data from any database they wish, thus being more transparent.
With the rise of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, there has been a lot of progress on the way programmatic advertising technology uses consumer data to provide intelligent and automated ad targeting. With these regulation changes we might see a halt in the progress made to enable automated and personalized advertising.  The implications of GDPR could somewhat restrict the extent of the role that AI-driven data insights and intelligence technology plays in the future. This will create significant challenges for the innovation of programmatic advertising.  That said, it is even more important today that programmatic service providers introduce other emerging technologies with the capabilities needed to address the goals of GDPR and ensure both secure and efficient advertising.
One emerging technology that could have a significant impact on programmatic advertising and how marketers deal with GDPR is blockchain. Blockchain has the ability to create a highly secure trading network for advertisers, by publicly storing data to create a permanent audit trail with an unchangeable record of all transactions that occur within the programmatic buying marketplace. This provides marketers with full visibility into their ad buy, to better track all transactions that are taking place automatically and a record of all transactions taking place throughout the ad-buying and selling process.

Possible applications for Blockchain to abide by GDPR rules and regulations:

  • “Do Not Record” personal data on a blockchain
  • Record personal data pseudo-anonymously
  • Encrypt the data on the blockchain
  • Store the data in a referenced encrypted database

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What Else Should we Expect from GDPR?

Trust and transparency have been leading many of the conversations about programmatic advertising, and GDPR may serve to accelerate the industry-wide push for more accountability.  Blockchain is one solution but there are other solutions waiting to be discovered and tried out.  Over the next several months we will see more on how the EU applies GDPR in a practical manner, so the approaches and implementation of new technologies like blockchain should become clearer.
Programmatic advertisers, marketers and publishers may be held accountable for non-compliance by third party data providers, which means all players in the ad tech ecosystem will become more reliant on one another. What this also means is that the ad-tech ecosystem will be a lot pickier with who we choose as partners and how many partners and publishers we all work with. Contracts will need to be revised to ensure compliance, and for publishers it will be an opportunity to gain leverage to demand transparency regarding the data used by any of their partners or platforms.

For more information on the GDPR, its goals, what you need to do to be compliant, and Digilant’s commitment to the regulation, download our white paper below.

You can also check out our privacy policy or contact us at [email protected] to learn more.

In 2018, Mobile Video Spend Will Dominate Programmatic Media Buys

Posted on by Karen Moked

In 2017, programmatic digital display ad spending reached $32.56 billion and is projected to continue to grow rapidly throughout 2018 and hit $45 billion in spend by 2019. With this rise in programmatic ad spend, there also comes a shift in where advertisers are buying ad space. Another shift in programmatic ad buying is the rapid rise in mobile placements over desktop. The move to mobile is not surprising considering that on average, people in the United States are spending over 5 hours a day on their mobile devices. Media Buyers are set to capitalize on this shift, in 2018, programmatic investment on mobile will reach $30 billion, over 3x the amount spent on desktop. This is in large part due to the popularity of mobile video consumption and mobile-friendly sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat.

In 2018, Programmatic investment on mobile will reach $30 billion, over 3x the amount spent on desktop -eMarketer

This year, it is projected that mobile video ad spending will surpass non-mobile ad spend. This is due to the rise in popularity of consumers watching video online. It is projected that this year people will spend on average 36 minutes watching video on their phone or tablet compared to 18.5 minutes on non-mobile devices. Around the world, people will watch 25% more video on phone and tablets whereas computer and laptop video consumption is expected to decline. Smart TV streaming continues to rise, but not quickly enough to make up for the mass decline in non-mobile platform viewing. Mobile video ad spending alone is expected to reach $18 billion, a 49% growth. With more consumers watching videos on their phone, media plans are also being adjusted to include larger budgets for mobile video ads and creative.

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Mobile Video Ad Boom Driven by Social Platforms

The move towards mobile video consumption is largely due to mobile-friendly apps like Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat. Over 500 million hours of YouTube video are watched everyday. 65% of people who watch the first three seconds of a Facebook video will watch for at least 10 seconds, and 45% will watch for 30 seconds (Facebook, 2016).  These stats clearly explain why Google as well as Facebook have the largest share in mobile advertising. Advertising agencies put aside a portion of their media budget for Facebook ads and although these agencies don’t necessarily plan to use this money for mobile, it is where the audience is going, as most of Facebook’s audience is through mobile. Views for branded video content on Facebook has increased 258% in 2017 making it a great media buy for advertisers. With 10 million videos watched on Snapchat everyday, the company is estimated to experience the fastest mobile ad revenue growth between 2016-2019. As more companies make their websites mobile friendly, the shift to mobile advertising will continue to grow, leaving desktop ads behind.  

By 2019, $45.72 billion will flow via biddable media, more than four out of five US digital display ad dollars. Mobile ad spending will be credited for more than $30 billion of this amount. The era of mobile programmatic advertising is just beginning as advertisers and brands spend more time and budget optimizing their campaigns for mobile.

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Read about the other nine trends that we are predicting will be the key to success for programmatic buying teams in 2018 here.

If you haven’t already, there is no time like 2018 to get on the programmatic bandwagon.  If you need to get started Digilant University has all the information you need to get up to speed on native advertising and more than 30 other topics.  Need more information, you can also reach out to us here.

2018 Trends: Generation Z vs Millennials, What Programmatic Media Buyers Need to Know?

Posted on by Karen Moked

In the last five years, digital media buyers and brand marketers have been hyper-focused on finding and targeting millennials, forgetting about an extremely influential and profitable demographic, Generation Z. Generation Z defines the group of people born between 1996 and the mid 2000s. They have different purchasing habits and need to be targeted differently than millennials. Most importantly, their influence on the market is tremendous and if brands don’t adapt to fit their needs, they have a great possibility of getting left behind.

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Instagram Stories blow past Snapchat with 200 million daily active users as Generation Z becomes more valuable to most organizations than millennials -Statista


Generation Z has very clear and unique preferences that advertisers need to understand. Influencer marketing is very successful with Gen Z. Rather than looking at informational sites, they are likely to head to YouTube and watch a trusted influencer’s video for their information. Although many of them grew up with technology in their hand, this isn’t where they do their shopping. Millennials are much more likely to shop online than Generation Z who prefer shopping in person. Although millennials and Gen Z share short attention spans and the ability to toggle between multiple pages, Gen Z takes this to an extreme level. People in Gen Z have an average attention span of 8 seconds and usually switch between at at least 5 different screens. Advertisers had already seen a decline in television advertising success but now with an even shorter attention span, Generation Z is not the audience to target with TV spots. Gen Z wants real content that makes them feel like they know the brand and the person behind the content. Most importantly, this age demographic wants their independence. They are not interested in loyalty programs but rather want to interact with the advertiser on their terms. Brands that understand the unique preferences of this age demographic and can build media plans, creative and overall programmatic marketing campaigns that have better results.
 

Snapchat vs. Instagram

Brands that are looking to buy programmatic media that targets a younger demographic need to stay up to date with Gen Z likes and dislikes. Especially when it comes to social media advertising. Snapchat, one of the biggest social media platforms with 150 million daily users is starting to fall behind in market share as they realize their competitors are resonating with Gen Z more effectively. Although Facebook, who also owns Instagram, added the “stories” feature and have been accused of copying Snapchat, they already have more active daily users than Snapchat. Instagram started with a larger install base, at over 800 million active users, and have been able to successfully copy what Gen Z users love about Snapchat and adapt it in their own app. This leaves Snapchat to figure out how best to target Gen Z so the users come back to their app and don’t leave them behind in the likes of Facebook and Twitter.  
 

In Summary

What do we need to know about Generation Z?

  1. Trust influencers over direct brand advertising and would prefer to see a YouTube video from someone they follow vs. a TV spot from a brand they might like.
  2. Prefer to do their shopping at a brick and mortar store rather than online.
  3. Have a super short attention span, and are often toggling between 5 screens.
  4. Are super independent and don’t want to be defined by a brand, so advertisers that want to succeed with them need to celebrate the individual rather than trying to group them into categories or audiences.

Read about the other nine trends that we are predicting will be the key to success for programmatic buying teams in 2018 here.

If you haven’t already, there is no time like 2018 to get on the programmatic bandwagon.  If you need to get started Digilant University has all the information you need to get up to speed on native advertising and more than 30 other topics.  Need more information, you can also reach out to us here.

Make your media budget work harder with Digilant.

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In 2018 Native Becomes the Leading Ad Format for Programmatic Media Buying Platforms

Posted on by Karen Moked

Native advertising was established to make ads appear more natural on a web page. Rather than making it overtly obvious that the ad is not part of the original page, native advertising uses the page’s design and layout to design the ad so that it appears as just a part of the webpage.  Programmatic native advertising takes this to the next level by targeting a person based on specific data parameters, with the goal of providing the right message to the user in the context of the page/ and or platform that they are on. This provides relevant and helpful information to the user at the right time.

Increase demand for more native experiences will drive programmatic native spend, reaching $24 million by years end, compared to 13.24 billion in 2016 – eMarketer

In 2018 native digital display ads will make up more than half of all digital display ad spending in the United States. This stems from both publisher and advertiser demands. Publishers are pursuing higher value and more mobile friendly content while advertisers are interested in more engaging, less intrusive ads.  This is a trend that programmatic media buyers need to pay attention to as it will be front and center in 2018 media plans. With the advances of machine learning and AI native advertising will become even smarter and which will likely increase the already enticing engagement metrics. Also, it is easier for publishers to guarantee a viewable and fraud free experience providing brands with a more reassuring level of transparency.

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Native Gained Popularity Through Social Media Platforms

Native advertising has gained traction through social media platforms, the trend having started with Facebook. In 2017, 84.2% of native display ads appeared on social platforms, which resulted in a $18.59 billion spend. Because most people consume social media on their phones, the focus native advertising development is equally been mobile heavy.  In 2017, $19.5 billion was spent on native mobile display which encompasses 88.3% of all native advertising, and the share is only growing. However, the social platform trend is slowly shifting as other publishers outside the social platform walled gardens are incorporating in-feed ads and videos allowing media buyers to scale their native programmatic ad buys, especially for those brands who are seeking higher rates of engagement. In the coming months, it is projected that more non-social publishers will quickly move to accommodate native programmatic ad buying.

As non-social sites incorporate programmatic native ads, social platforms continue to incorporate these ads to accommodate demand from both publishers and advertisers for this advertising format, and we predict that the trend will be that in 2018 native programmatic advertising will continue to take share away from display ads. The numbers back up this trend. It is estimated that the total ad spend will reach $24 billion which will make up more than 50% of all display ad spending in the United States.

Read about the other nine trends that we are predicting will be the key to success for programmatic buying teams in 2018 here.

If you haven’t already, there is no time like 2018 to get on the programmatic bandwagon.  If you need to get started Digilant University has all the information you need to get up to speed on native advertising and more than 30 other topics.  Need more information, you can also reach out to us here.

Digilant is a full-service digital media agency built for the modern marketing era.

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Programmatic Media Buying 101: How the Industry is Solving Domain Spoofing and Ad Fraud with Ads.txt & Private Marketplace

Posted on by Karen Moked

In 2018 the ad tech industry, and especially the top DSPs, are going to focus on improving inventory quality for programmatic media, as seen in our top ten trends you need to know about programmatic this year.

What Does Inventory Quality Mean?

Over the past few years, the quantity of fraudulent ads has decreased greatly as the ability to monitor and prevent ad fraud has improved. However, there was still a significant room for improvement. Much of the development that has been made is for desktops ads. As the digital ad buying process continues to become more transparent and ad inventory quality improves, focus now needs to be centered on mobile and video ads. Video ads are extremely enticing to ad fraudsters due to high CPMs. The importance of eliminating fraud and enhancing the quality of ad inventory benefits both buyers and publishers.

On the buyer’s side, there are two major reason to ensure quality ad inventory: brand safety and media waste. If a buyer purchases fraudulent ad space and their brand is presented in a negative environment, it can greatly affect their brand image. In regard to media waste, if an ad is bought and only viewed by bots, instead of human eyes, the media spend is wasted on false impressions. Purchasing quality ad inventory ensures that an ad shows up on the site it is supposed to be published on and that human eyes are viewing it.

Publishers are primarily concerned with ensuring a quality customer experience. Customer experiences are deterred through malware or annoying ads. If the ad exchange is not properly screened, malware can arrive on a publisher’s site. If the consumer clicks on the ad, it will infect their browser, creating a very negative customer experience. Customers do not like when ads refresh, flash or are otherwise annoying. Publishers need to ensure that this is not occurring with their advertisements.

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Publishers and buyers need to work together to become a trusted source of quality inventory which involves the following:

  1. Publishers sharing information with one another about negative buying experiences.
  2. DSPs need to educate their advertisers, that buying ad space from many different sources opens up the door for ad fraud.
  3. Create realistic standards for viewability. It is unrealistic to set 100% viewability goals.

Solutions for Fraud and Domain Spoofing

Private Marketplace Deals

Ad space was traditionally bought through open marketplaces. This is a process in which multiple media owners offer up their ad inventory to multiple buyers. All of the buyers compete to have their ad space placed on a page and the highest bidder wins.
Private marketplaces are auctions that are only open to select advertisers through an invitation-only format. Some of these entail only one publisher offering up ad space, others have a few. Before the auction, buyers and sellers negotiate a deal. Each deal is given a unique ID and advertisers bid on that deal only – inventory that does not meet the deal will not be bid on. This marketplace structure requires more work however, it is much more transparent. Buyers will know where their ad is being placed such as the URL of the website their ad will be shown on. The marketplace ensures a more transparent ad buying process and ensures that buyers ads show up exactly where they want them to, reaching the right audience in the right place.  

DSPs Are Implementing Ads.txt

IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has released the latest mechanism that boosts inventory quality and makes the ad buying process less risky. In September, IAB released the authorized digital sellers or ads.txt. This is a simple, flexible method for publishers and distributors to clearly state which companies are authorized to use their digital inventory.

Companies drop a text file on their website that lists the different companies authorized to sell inventory on their site. This will enable buyers to see which programmatic firms have authorization to sell ad space on specific websites, ensuring validity in their purchase. The upkeep for this process is also simple. Someone will have to monitor additions to an ads.txt list to stay up to date with authorized sellers.

If you haven’t already, there is no time like 2018 to get on the programmatic bandwagon.  If you need to get started Digilant University has all the information you need to get up to speed and get going.  Need more information you can also reach out to us here.

10 Programmatic Media Buying Trends for 2018 That You Need to Know About

Posted on by Karen Moked

As we kick off 2018, it’s important as marketers, media buyers or media planners to be confident that we are making the right choices, spending valuable dollars in the right places and overall making the returns for those dollars that everyone is expecting.  How do we know for sure we made the right decisions?  We read, we discuss and we read some more on what’s next and how we can outsmart others by being ahead of the trends or implementing the newest ad technology before anyone realized they even needed it.

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Our team at Digilant has spent a good amount of time doing the research for you.  We narrowed it down to 10 big trends we know will affect programmatic media buyers this year.  In 2018 you will be hearing a lot of talk about in-housing, ads.txt, OTT, DOOH, native, transparency, attribution and how digital media buying will be going fully programmatic in the next couple of years. We will cover all these topics and more over the next couple of weeks but in the meantime we offer you 10 things you need to know about programmatic for 2018.

Download the full infographic here or read it below. 
If you haven’t already, there is no time like 2018 to get on the programmatic bandwagon.  If you need to get started Digilant University has all the information you need to get up to speed and get going.  Need more information you can also reach out to us here.

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