Advertising is Already Changing
This is the big week when GDPR finally rolls out. No longer can marketers in the EU use data to which users haven’t consented. However, we don’t think this change in how we use data will be confined to...
View ArticleHow to Make Ads People Will Like
Can you make ads people will actually like? Yes, it can be done. The TL;DR: Provide useful information. Provide convenience. Build trust. Don’t chase people. The story behind this, for those who prefer...
View ArticleContextual Advertising and Trust
Marketers are increasingly likely to buy media that consumers trust, that they believe is giving them good value for what they pay, and that their target audiences engage with. Although that should...
View ArticleZuckerberg Testimony Will Change Advertising
One of the most amusing aspects of watching Mark Zuckerberg testify before Congress was the wide-ranging knowledge or lack thereof about Facebook ads, and about digital advertising in general. While...
View ArticleGoogle Chrome vs. Ad Block Plus
There are almost too many competing initiatives going on to fix what different constituencies consider to be wrong about online advertising. Each constituency has its own point of view and a...
View ArticleFraud Fighting Initiatives Grow in Digital Media
Ads.txt is IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau)’s newest fraud-fighting initiative. It stands for “Authorized Digital Sellers,” and the aim of the initiative is to increase transparency in the way that...
View ArticleHappy Holidays!
As we close out this frenetic year of 2018, we can’t help noticing how the bulk of the digital ad industry is located on the east and west coasts. And yet, the bulk of consumers, especially for b2c...
View ArticleIn-App Advertising Must Be Interactive
In the past couple of years, more publishers than ever have pivoted to video. They did that to prepare for the big moment when TV ads would migrate to digital media, and they wanted to be ready.They...
View ArticleThe Programmatic Baby Must Survive the Emptying of the Bathwater
We have been following all the news about fake news, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and the elections. It has produced a major backlash against media technology. But part of the problem is not...
View ArticleBrand Advertising That Leads to Conversions
If you are wondering why Facebook is grabbing so much of the online ad spend, it’s because the company does more research into what makes ads work than most brands do, and it makes its research...
View ArticleTo Avoid Fines, Buy Carefully
We recently had breakfast with the head of a regional advertising agency in the Southwest. After he finished telling us about how much native advertising and influencer marketing he was doing, he told...
View ArticleThe Advertising Agency Business Must Change
The advertising business as we know it is outmoded for the world we live in today. Think about it: it was founded to get messages to consumers who were scattered over many different forms of media:...
View ArticleDid We Learn Anything at Advertising Week?
Now that New York Advertising Week is over, we can go back to dismissing many of the predictions made there. (Just kidding). Some of these predictions will come true, of course, but not very quickly....
View ArticleGDPR Will Bring Fundamentally Better Advertising
If you live in Europe, you already know about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new regulation of consumer data that takes effect in May 2018. Its objective is to return control of data...
View ArticleHow Advertising Will Survive
We’ve been writing a bit about the future of advertising lately, because it is changing very fast. It is not, however going away. It tracks as a percentage of GDP just like it always has. However,...
View ArticleP&G Should Allocate TV Budgets to Digital Branding
Last quarter, Proctor & Gamble eliminated $100 million in digital media spend without any noticeable change in revenues. This led P&G to decide that perhaps all of its digital spending was...
View ArticleThe State of Digital Media 2017
Coming so soon after Mary Meeker’s presentation on Internet Trends, Luma Partners’ report on the State of Digital Media this year was a bit buried by the press. But this report was equally important to...
View ArticleA New Idea for Advertisers
Sometimes everything old is new again. And that’s the case with sponsorships in the advertising world. We believe they will have an ever-increasing role in advertising going forward. Let’s take a walk...
View ArticleCan a Strong Brand Be Like a Religion?
Why has digital advertising taken such pains to ruin something as wonderful as how people feel about the brands they love by assuming that brand ads don’t work online and only interruptive, painful...
View ArticleCould Blockchain Technology End Ad Fraud?
More often than not disruptive changes in an industry come from outside, rather than from within an industry. People inside the industry tend to tinker at the margins, not trying to alienate any of the...
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