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The Importance of Google Ads Quality Score

September 16, 2019/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

When running a PPC (pay per click) campaign, you’ll want to make sure your ad’s content is of high quality. You’re investing in these ads, after all. The last thing you want is to pay for clicks if those clicks aren’t converting because of poor ad copy, poor landing pages, or poor use of keywords. It’s one of the reasons why you should pay attention to the Google Ads quality score. However, Google Ads quality score doesn’t just give you an idea of the quality of your ad, it can also affect the performance of your ad, which is why you’ll want to track your quality score and improve it if possible.

What is Google Ads Quality Score?

The Google Ads quality score is a rating that’s given to PPC ads based on a number of different factors. These factors include how relevant your keywords are to their ad group, how relevant your landing pages are to the ads they’re linked from, the quality of those landing pages, the relevance of your ad’s copy, your click-through-rate, and the historical performance of your AdWords account. Google doesn’t divulge how much weight each factor holds in the calculation of its quality score; however, the click-through-rate is the most important factor. This is because a high click-through-rate indicates that your ad must be relevant to users.

Why You Should Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score

Besides rating the quality of your PPC ads (and therefore giving you an idea of whether you need to improve your ads or not), the quality score of your ads will actually play an important part in how they perform. Higher quality scores directly correlate with lower your cost per conversion and your cost per click. This is because not only does a high-quality ad perform better in general, but Google rewards ads with high quality scores with lower costs and higher ad rankings.

Similar Article: How Your Web Page Speed Effects Your SEO and Adwords Performance

3 Ways To Improve Your Quality Score

The following are three ways that you can improve your Google Ads quality score:

Do your keyword research – You not only need to make sure that the keywords you choose are relevant to your ads, but that they are competitive as well. Look for long-tail keywords in particular and make sure that you divide your keywords into organized groups that can be more successfully tied to your individual ad campaigns. In addition to looking for high-quality keywords, you should also keep a list of negative keywords to avoid.
Test your ad copy – In addition to writing quality copy that’s free of errors, you should test out copy that’s more targeted to individual ad groups. The more effective your ad copy is, the more click-throughs you’ll obtain, which contributes to a higher quality score.
Optimize your landing pages – Landing pages should connect directly with your ad groups, meaning that they need to be relevant to the copy of your ads. Generic landing pages can confuse visitors and hurt your conversion rate. Not only should the offer remain exactly the same as it was on the ad copy, but you should be using the same keywords as well.

PPC campaigns can be a very effective part of your online marketing strategy; however, their success depends on their quality, which is why you should pay attention to your Google Ads quality score and make every effort to improve it. Improving your Google Ads quality score not only improves the general quality of your ads, it will put you in a better position to succeed as a result of being rewarded with higher ad rankings.

Understanding the Difference Between Earned Media vs. Paid Media And Embracing The PESO Model

September 12, 2019/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Media /by Nicole Wagner

When it comes to digital marketing, there are four main types of media. The first, owned media, is relatively obvious. Owned media refers to the media that you own, such as your website, your blog, or your social media pages. Then there’s paid media, which often comes to mind first. However, you could argue that earned media is just as important. The following is a breakdown of earned media vs paid media as well as the importance of following the PESO model, which implements all forms of media for a more balanced digital marketing strategy.

Earned Media vs Paid Media

Paid media consists of the marketing elements that you pay for. Traditionally, paid media consisted of things like TV commercials and magazine ads. However, these days, they also include PPC (per-per-click) ads, social media ads, and display ads. To get the most out of your paid media, you have to plan your marketing strategy carefully and make sure that you’re targeting the right audience. However, paid media can be quite effective at helping to increase brand exposure and web traffic.

Earned media is essentially a form of marketing that you do not pay for and do not own. Customers and brand advocates generate earned media. In a way, it’s like a digital form of “word-of-mouth.” Earned media can include having reviews written by customers as well as professional product review sites or having news stories published about your company. Any kind of publicity that you didn’t pay for is earned media. Earned media is an excellent way to increase brand recognition even though you don’t have direct control over it; however, earned media is also free.

What Is The PESO Model?

Earned media and paid media are not the only types of media you should be concerned with. Owned media, which includes marketing elements that you have direct ownership and full control over (such as your website and your business blog) as well as shared media, which is the media you earn through social media engagement (shares, likes, and comments), both play an important part in helping to grow your brand. The mistake many businesses make is to focus more on one type of media than the other.

Similar Article: Using The Right Media Mix During Each Stage Of The Buyer’s Journeys

Gini Dietrich stressed the importance of integrating all four forms of media with her PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) model. By implementing the PESO model, you integrate all four forms of media to strengthen your ability to attract leads and convert customers. For example, the use of paid media and shared media can help draw the attention of prospects. Earned media helps to establish the credibility of your brand so that those prospects trust you. Owned media, such as eBooks or whitepapers, help showcase the value of your brand.

While knowing the difference between earned media vs. paid media is important, it’s also important that you don’t value paid media over earned media or vice versa. They, along with shared media and owned media, play an important part in helping to grow your brand. Finding the right balance can take some time, but as long as you keep the PESO model in mind as you create your marketing strategy, you’ll end up having a more balanced and effective marketing campaign.

The Difference Between Landing page vs. Homepage

September 10, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Website Design /by Nicole Wagner

Once upon a time, when the web was still in its infancy, the homepage was considered the most important page on your website. While the homepage is an essential component of your website, it shouldn’t necessarily be the first page that visitors see. The webpage functions more as a way to draw visitors into the marketing funnel than anything else. Unfortunately, many businesses focus heavily on sending new leads to their homepage, which can actually be a mistake. Doing so can confuse new visitors because they won’t know where to go from there. Instead, you should be sending new visitors to a landing page. The following is a breakdown of the main differences between landing page vs. homepage.

What Is The Function Of A Homepage?

The homepage is the page that should occupy your root domain. For example, if someone types in www.yourwebsitename.com, it should take them to your homepage. When you add a link to your main social media profiles, you want it to direct users to your homepage. This is because the main function of your homepage is to provide an overview of your company. Visitors should get an idea of who your business is and what services you provide. It should also act as the main hub of your website from which visitors can explore at their own pace — meaning, you should have links to all other important pages on your homepage. Last, but not least, your homepage should inform visitors as to how they can get in touch with you.

What Is The Function Of A Landing Page?

Landing pages are pages that are specifically designed to receive traffic from specific sources. For example, if you run a PPC ad, users who click on that ad should be taken to a landing page. That landing page should be specifically designed for that particular ad. For example, if the ad is for a special discount on a specific product, your landing page should reflect that. If you send the user who clicked on that ad to your homepage instead, they would simply be confused. You’re basically forcing them to go on a search for the ad’s offer without any clear directions as to where to go.

Landing pages are created to stay focused on a single topic or offer and encourage visitors to take specific actions, such as filling out a form or downloading an offer, to name a couple of examples. A landing page shouldn’t have links to other pages unless they’re relevant to the action you want them to take. Adding irrelevant links to your landing page can distract visitors from what you want them to do.

Landing pages can be created for all kinds of marketing efforts, including not just PPC ads but also for different CTAs that you include in your blog posts. These landing pages may not be a permanent part of your website either.

Similar Article: 5 Types of Landing Pages To Increase Your Lead Conversion Rate

The Main Difference Between Landing Page Vs. Homepage

When it comes down to it, the homepage is an overview of your business that introduces visitors to your marketing funnel, whereas a landing page helps to convert visitors immediately by prompting specific actions. Although your homepage isn’t the end all be all of your website like it was during the early days of the Internet, it still plays an important part in your marketing efforts. However, it’s important to understand when it’s more appropriate to send visitors to a landing page instead of your homepage.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

6 Mobile Marketing Tips

September 6, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Mobile Advertising /by Nicole Wagner

The mobile market has skyrocketed over the past decade. It’s estimated that around 96 percent of all American adults own a cellphone and that 81 percent of Americans own smartphones. That’s more than the number of Americans that own desktops or laptops. It’s also estimated that around 20 percent of American adults access the Internet solely through their smartphones. As such, it’s no surprise that businesses both big and small are focusing more and more on mobile marketing. At this point in time, the mobile market accounts for almost 75 percent of all digital advertising spending. Keeping all of this in mind, the following are six mobile market tips to help strengthen your mobile marketing strategy:

1. Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly

Your mobile marketing strategy is going to fall flat on its face if your main site isn’t mobile-friendly. Few mobile users are going to be patient with your site if it has trouble loading on their phones. Not to mention that if your site doesn’t display properly or is difficult for mobile users to navigate, it will hurt your mobile SEO. The best way to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly is to use a responsive design and to design it with mobile use in mind.

2. Improve Your Local SEO

People often use their smartphones while on the go in order to look up products, services, or businesses within their vicinity. By strengthening your local SEO, you improve your chances of being found during these searches. You can improve your local SEO in a number of ways, including by using local keywords, creating local-based content, submitting your NAP to local directories, and by setting up a Google My Business page. mobile market

3. Advertise Promotions Through Text

Sending promotional content through email is often unsuccessful. This is because many people receive so many emails that they often miss your emails — not to mention that they may just choose to ignore it if they can tell it’s promotional. If you get leads to subscribe to SMS marketing, then you can text them promotions instead. Texts are much more likely to be seen and opened.

4. Invest In Video Content

Watching video content has never been easier with the use of smartphones. In fact, more than half of all mobile traffic is used for video. As a result, creating video content is an excellent way to engage your mobile audience.

Similar Article: The Importance of Implementing a Marketing Dashboard

5. Use QR Codes In Store

QR codes can be scanned to bring mobile users to a specific page. For example, putting QR codes in your store that take users to a discount page can help motivate them to make a purchase. It also encourages customers to continue engaging with your brand. One way you can do this is by having a QR code for your Facebook page at your checkout. You can also put QR codes on your website. This will allow mobile users to quickly scan the QR code on their computer to direct them to your site on their smartphone.

6. Optimize For Micro Moments

Micro-moments are those moments in which people use their phones to look something specific up. For example, quickly looking up the weather before heading out of the house is a micro-moment. These micro-moments happen all day long, which is why you should optimize your content to address potential micro-moments that are relevant to your business. You can do this by creating bite-sized content that’s both easy to consume and visually stimulating.

If you haven’t implemented a mobile marketing strategy yet, then you need to do so soon. Without an effective mobile marketing strategy, you’re limiting your audience reach greatly. Be sure to keep these six mobile marketing tips to keep in mind, whether developing or strengthening your mobile marketing strategy.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

5 Simple Facebook Advertising Strategies

August 28, 2019/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

Facebook has an enormous user base that’s only continuing to grow every month. As of the first quarter of 2019, Facebook boasted 2.37 billion active monthly users — up 55 million from the previous quarter. Additionally, roughly 1.56 billion users are logging into Facebook on a daily basis. These are numbers that no marketer can ignore, which is why you should be using Facebook Ads. However, just because Facebook has a big audience doesn’t mean that you’ll reach your target audience. It’s why you need to put some time into crafting an effective Facebook advertising strategy. The following are five Facebook advertising strategies that will help you reach your target audience:

1. Target Life Events

Depending on what your business is, you can target users based on major life events. Users commonly share big life events, such as if they bought a new house, got engaged, had a new baby, moved to a new city, or got a new job. Facebook is well aware of this, which is why it offers advertisers a Life Events parameter. You can select what life event you’re targeting and the date range from that event that the event will remain relevant. For example, if you’re a moving company, you might want to target users who have just closed on a new home within a three-month range. If you’re a jeweler, you may want to target newly engaged users within a year of their engagement.

2. Target Custom Audiences

Another unique feature that you can use on Facebook is the ability to target Custom Audiences. The feature works by uploading who you want to target, such as a customer phone list, an email list, or even your Facebook followers list. You can then specifically target these audiences. Doing this can be an excellent way to increase your lifetime customer value and to boost brand loyalty. You can also choose to specifically exclude the list you upload if your goal is to target completely new leads. facebook advertising strategy

3. Use Geo-Targeting

As you can imagine, targeting all of Facebook’s 2.37 billion monthly users is a ridiculous idea. This is especially true if you’re running a local business that provides a local service. This means that targeting an audience in a different country or even a different state is going to be a waste of time. Geo-targeting allows you to target users who are located within the vicinity of your physical location or the locations that you serve.

4. Retarget Engaged Users

Retargeting users who have engaged with your brand via Facebook in some way can be effective for a number of reasons. First of all, they’re aware of your brand. Secondly, they’ve shown interest through interaction. For example, if you ran a Facebook video ad campaign, then you can retarget users that watched the video all the way through with an additional call-to-action.

Similar Article: How Much To Advertise on Instagram And Why It ‘s Worth The Cost

5. Take Advantage Of Look Alike-Audiences

Lookalike Audiences lets you mirror your Custom Audience list or Facebook following. By doing this, you’ll target a completely new audience that has a lot in common with your current leads and customers. You’ll be able to expand past your reach while still targeting users with specific profiles.

These are five ways you can implement a Facebook advertising strategy that will allow you to effectively target your audience. Just keep in mind that these strategies work best if you’ve already done the basics. This means developing your buyer personas, understanding who your target audience actually is, and establishing the main goals of your Facebook ad campaign.

Why You Should Invest In RTB Advertising As Part Of Your Paid Advertising Campaign

August 20, 2019/in Articles, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

In this day and age, there are countless ways that you can run ads. Even if you don’t take into account traditional advertising (such as running newspaper ads or magazine ads), there seem to be new online advertising opportunities popping up every day. For example, in addition to running banner and popup ads on certain websites, you can also target your audience more effectively using Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, or Twitter Ads. While you may have already invested in these types of advertising campaigns, there’s one other advertising opportunity that you should look in to — RTB advertising.

What Is RTB Advertising?

RTB (Real Time Bidding) advertising refers to a process in which online impressions are bought and sold during real-time auctions within the few seconds that it takes to load a webpage. These auctions are ran by supply-side platforms or ad exchanges. The way it works is relatively straight forward. During the few seconds that an ad impression loads, information about the webpage that’s loading and the person viewing the page is sent to the ad exchange. The ad exchange then auctions the impression off to whoever is willing to pay the most for it. The winning bid will get their ad onto the webpage almost instantly. This entire process takes milliseconds to execute.

Advertisers make a number of decisions prior to bidding based on what websites they will appear on and the previous history and behavior of the user viewing the page. Such decisions include what ad impressions they want to purchase and how much to bid on them. The cost of each impression will be determined in real time based on what bidders are willing to pay.

How To Transition From Traditional Advertising to Inbound Marketing

How Is RTB Advertising Different Than Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising is a process in which the buying and selling of online ads is automated. As such, it’s not difficult to see why you might think that RTB advertising is the same thing; however, it’s not. While RTB advertising is a type of programmatic advertising, not all programmatic advertising involves real-time bidding. For example, some programmatic ad platforms allow publishers to sell their inventory of ad space for a fixed price ahead of time instead of auctioning it off in real time.

Why Should You Invest In RTB Advertising?

You don’t have to work directly with publishers. There is no more wasting time negotiating ad prices with individual publishers. You can simply use ad exchanges to access a massive inventory of impressions across a huge number of sites.
RTB advertising is more cost-effective. Because you have access to a big inventory of impressions, you can choose what impressions are most valuable to you. This helps reduce the number of impressions that go to waste on the wrong users.
Reach niche audiences. Because of RTB advertising’s use of cookie matching to obtain user information, you can more effectively target niche audiences with your RTB ads.
RTB advertising fits any ad campaign and budget. RTB advertising can be an effective strategy no matter what size your ad campaign is or how big of a budget you have.
Obtain valuable data. Over the course of an RTB advertising campaign, you can collect valuable data on your marketing campaigns. This data can help you to determine what types of ads drive the most engagement, what websites perform better, and more.

RTB advertising is not only a cost-effective way to run an online advertising campaign, but it’s also incredibly effective when it comes to advertising to your target audience. As such, it’s well worth looking into RTB advertising if you haven’t done so already.

What is an Ad Exchange and How Does it Work?

August 14, 2019/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

Before ad exchanges began popping up, the only way for marketers to purchase ad space online was directly through publishers. This process was not very cost-effective. It was also time-consuming. As new ways to purchase advertising space online have popped up, including programmatic ads and RTB (real-time bidding) ads, so have ad exchanges. Ad exchanges have made it much easier to buy ad space that’s both more effective and more efficient. But what is an ad exchange, exactly?

What is an Ad Exchange?

An ad exchange is an online marketplace for ad space that functions as an auction. Publishers (such as website owners) make their digital advertising space available. Then, advertising agencies and marketers then purchase this ad space through the ad exchange. It’s worth noting that ad exchanges are autonomous, meaning that they aren’t on the side of either the buyers or the sellers.

While ad exchanges are simple for publishers and advertisers to use, the way they actually function can be a bit complex. When a publisher lists ad space on an ad exchange, they provide details that include the page location, audience, topics, and URL. When somebody visits the publisher’s website or mobile app, data about that user is collected. That user data is transferred to the ad exchange. The ad exchange then sends a bid request to DSPs and ad networks. Each DSP inspects the bid request and the parameters of the advertiser to decide of the impression will be relevant to the advertiser. If it is, the maximum bid amount will be sent back to the ad exchange along with the location of the advertising copy to be placed in the ad space.

The ad exchange will review all the bids, eliminating bids from advertisers that don’t meet the publisher’s requirements. The impression will then go to the highest bidder. Their copy will then be displayed on the publisher’s website in front of the user that’s visiting the website. As complicated as this process may appear to be, it takes milliseconds for it to occur.

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The Benefits of Using an Ad Exchange

The use of an ad exchange provides benefits to both publishers and advertisers. The following are a few of the advantages publishers have when using an ad exchange:

Establish the minimum CPMs (cost per mile, which refers to the cost per thousand impressions) for their inventory units.
Filter and block ads that have sensitive content or that are ads for competitors.
Choose the ad format and style, thereby defining what types of ads can appear on their webpage.
Choose where the ads will be displayed on their webpages.
Customize combinations of fonts, colors, and corner style. They can then apply these combinations to multiple display ads at a time.

Ad exchanges don’t just benefit the publishers. They also benefit advertisers who are buying ad space in the following ways:

Choose targeting options, behavioral profiling, price settings, and bidding capabilities.
Blacklist certain audiences.
Blacklist certain publishers.
Place limits on the number of times the same ad appears to the same user.
Retarget across multiple ad exchanges.

Ad exchanges are incredibly effective because they provide advertisers with a lot of control over where their ads will be seen, who will see them, and how much they are paying for those impressions. They also help you save a significant amount of time finding ad space in general. As such, ad exchanges are well worth looking into.

5 Innovative Marketing Ideas To Use In 2019

August 8, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Video Marketing /by Mark Beebe

When it comes to inbound marketing, it can be somewhat easy to fall into a pattern. If you feel like your marketing efforts are just more of the same, then it might be time to take a fresh approach. You want to stand out from your competition, after all. The following are five innovative marketing ideas that you should consider implementing into your inbound marketing strategy in 2019:

1. Create Eye-Catching Lists

Lists are popular because of how easy they are to read. Audiences can just scan lists and still get the general gist of the content. They’re particularly effective at keeping the attention of readers. Just make sure you format your lists into sections and use visuals for each item on the list for an even bigger impact.

2. Reference Current Pop Culture

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that referencing pop culture is tacky or that it will date your content. As long as the pop culture you’re referencing is relevant to your target audience, it can actually help to engage your audience on a deeper level. For example, you could use the meme of a popular TV show that you know your target audience is familiar with to add a bit of flair to a blog post. Just make sure you keep your buyer persona in mind when you do this.

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3. Use More Images

Written content can become stale simply because it’s not visual. Make it a point to use images to break up the text of written content. The longer the text is, the more images you should use. Images help give the eye a break, make the content more interesting to consume overall, and give readers an idea of what the content is about by simply glancing at the images. Even if you’re crafting a white paper or an eBook, using images to break up your text will go a long way towards making it easier to read.

4. Leverage Older Studies For New Content

There is a massive amount of old studies available online no matter what industry you’re in. Many of these studies are not outdated even though they may be older. Look for older studies

that have relevant information and leverage that information for new content. Not only can you use the data to back up new content, but you could even highlight the data on its own in the form of new infographics or other types of visual content (just be sure to cite your sources).

5. Create Time-Lapse Videos

Video content is the most effective content there is because of how easily consumable it is. People love watching video content and do so on their phones on a daily basis (as long as that video content is on the shorter side). Time-lapse videos are extremely effective because they’re basically videos that are displayed in fast motion, making them even easier for viewers to consume. Time-lapse videos tend to be on the shorter side, which is perfect for present-day audiences, which have shorter attention spans (which is why social platforms like Snapchat are so popular). There are lots of ways that you can create time-lapse videos as well, from showing how products are made to the showing the effects of a product over time (for example, showing a stain remover product removing a stain from a carpet).

You should always be on the lookout for innovative marketing ideas to keep things fresh and to keep your audience interested and engaged. These are five innovative marketing ideas that can help to inject some life into a marketing campaign that might be growing a little bit stale.

What’s Trending in Marketing for July 2019

July 1, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Trending /by Nicole Wagner

Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Microsoft Just Dealt A Blow To Google’s Ad Blocking Plans

Google announced their plans to restrict ad blocking Chrome extensions. This means that ad blockers, like uBlock origin, won’t work on the Google Chrome browser. This update will come in the upcoming months and some Chrome users have made it clear that they’ll move to another browser if Google carries out that plan. Microsoft has responded by reaching out to their users to see if they’d like Ad Blockers built into the new version of the Microsoft Edge browser. You can learn more about this story on Forbes.

Instagram advertisers can now convert organic influencer posts into ads

Instagram confirmed in March that it’s testing a new ad format. It’s going to be possible for brands to create ads using organic posts from the influencers they have relationships with. Marketing Land writes, “Before brands can use influencer posts as ads, the content creator must grant their business partners (the brands they have relationships with) access to promote their posts. Once the creator — or influencer — has done this via their Advanced Settings page, brands will see the influencer’s posts in the Ads Manager under “Existing Posts” and can run the content as an ad within the Instagram newsfeed or Stories format.”

Comcast partners with Charter, Cox to advance targeted advertising

Comcast launched an advertising strategy that will target audiences better in an effort to lure more advertisers away from digital platforms like Facebook and Google. The initiative is called “On Addressability” and the aim is to target advertisements to certain households based on their interests. So far, this has only been done on a small scale in TV advertising. TV is the best way to reach a lot of people at once, but it lacks the big data that digital platforms use. Learn more about this story at Yahoo.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

Informing your audience is important. You want potential buyers to understand what their problem is, and how your products or services can solve that problem. Unfortunately, people don’t generally make purchases based on information alone. It turns out that people are more prone to making emotional purchases than informed purchases. It’s why commercials consist of much more than an explanation of a product’s use. Instead they use emotional advertising to target the viewer. It’s effective, and it’s why connecting with your audience on an emotional level will benefit your marketing strategy.

Simple Ways that Small Businesses Can Use Data to Build Better Customer Relationships

In this day and age, it’s pretty difficult for consumers to not be inundated with dozens of advertisements. As such, targeting your audience has become more important than ever, especially when it comes to running a smaller business. The most effective way to target your audience is to make use of the consumer data that you have access to. Knowing how to use the data you have can go a long way towards building customer relationships.

However, having consumer data is a lot different than knowing how to make it actionable, which can make the data you have very intimidating. The following are the three steps that you should take to so that you can leverage your data to build strong customer relationships.

What Are Behavioral Biometrics and How Do They Fit Into Marketing?

Companies often hold focus groups in order to get direct feedback about products, services, and even website experiences. The only drawback to such focus groups is that people often aren’t sure how to articulate what they feel about certain things. However, new biometric technology, such as eye-tracking software, has made it easier to determine exactly how someone feels about a website experience at any given moment–and they can allow you to do so without holding a focus group.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Almost 70% of digital ad spending going to Google, Facebook, Amazon, says analyst firm

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are collecting more than 2/3rds of all digital ad spending. Between the 3 companies, this is about $73 billion. Amazon owns 38% of e-commerce, which is down from almost 50% a year ago.

These numbers matter greatly as the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice will begin antitrust investigation of Facebook, Google, and Amazon in the upcoming 12-18 months. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Political Ad Spending Will Approach $10 Billion in 2020, New Forecast Predicts

A new report predicts that spending on political advertisements will reach a new high in 2020. According to the forecast, political ad spending will total $9.9 billion in 2020. In 2016, $6.3 billion was spent on political ads. Political ad spending in 2018 accounted for 2% of total digital ad spending in the US and it’s projected to increase to 2.2% in 2020. Learn more about this story on WSJ.

Survey finds 89% of marketers seeing increased sales using location data

700 U.S. based mobile marketers from 536 consumer brands and 164 agencies took part in this 2019 survey. The survey found that about 9 in 10 marketers plan to use location data in the future to increase sales. However, of those surveyed, only 24% are using or plan to use location data for store visitation or offline measurement.

This report shows that location data is becoming a popular horizontal tool for audience segmentation and targeting across channels. Learn more about this report at Marketing Land.

Pump Up the Power of Your Digital Advertising Display

June 26, 2019/in Articles, Blog, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

Display ads are one of the oldest forms of online advertising. Unfortunately, the typical display ad doesn’t have as much of an impact as it once had. It has been surpassed by many other online marketing strategies. This is in part because display ads are often irrelevant to the consumer viewing them, not to mention they may disrupt the consumer’s website experience. But that doesn’t mean that display ads don’t have a place in your marketing strategy. The following are a few tips for using a digital advertising display in an effective manner:

1. Combine Your Display Ads With Native Formats

Using a native format allows your digital advertising display to blend in with the content on the page that they are being displayed on. Whereas users often skip over traditional display ads, they are more likely to read native display ads because they are part of the overall content experience. Several studies have backed this, finding that consumers view native display ads 52 percent more frequently than traditional display ads.

2. Set Targeting Dimensions Of Your Display Ads

Contextual targeting allows you to target your display ads to specific demographics, which means that your display ads will be more relevant to the user experience. Private platforms, such as Google and Facebook, allow for contextual targeting by letting you choose who you want to target (age range, gender, etc.) and when.

3. Test Your Display Ads On Social Media

Because of how social media lets you target specific demographics when running display ads, it’s also a great way to test your display ads. This is because social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have excellent analytics tools that you can use to measure your advertising outreach’s value. This means you can test different display ads against certain demographics to see which perform better. This allows you to adjust your strategy so that it’s more effective.

Check out our article: What’s New with Google: How Page Speed Affects SEO and Adwords

4. Make Your Digital Advertising Display Mobile-Friendly

Make sure that you design your display ads with mobile use in mind. Some display ads may look great on your desktop but won’t translate as well to a smaller screen. The fact that the majority of your audience is going to be viewing your display ads on a mobile device, it’s incredibly important your ads are built for mobile viewing.

5. Focus On Delivering Your Message Quickly

A display ad functions in the same manner as a roadside billboard. Billboards can’t be jam-packed with text and information because drivers don’t have the time to read it all as they pass by. They must deliver their message within a couple of seconds. The same applies to display ads. Users need to be able to consume the message with a quick glance.

The traditional method for using a digital display ad is somewhat outdated. However, display ads can still be effective if you know how to use them. Follow these tips and your display ads are likely to have a bigger impact on your audience.