Summary
- The World Federation of Advertisers has surveyed multinational companies to understand the current state of ad spends. As per the findings, only 46% of the companies are delaying their ad spends by the end of September.
- As per the new revisions by eMarketer, the US digital display ad spends will grow by 10%. At the same time, the overall digital ad spend will grow by 7.5%.
- In its ‘Metrics that Matter’ initiative, the Telegraph measures 11 metrics to gauge user attention towards the ads. Data points such as dwell time, interaction, and time in-view helped in understanding how mindful the user was for the displayed ads.
- Ad fraud research and Forbes contributor Dr. Augustine Fou has referred to the data from Automatad to discuss the right way of refreshing ads on a publisher’s site.
- The NYTimes, Washington Post, and Financial Times are backing Global Privacy Control to manage user data sharing between websites and their vendors. The Global Privacy Control is a proposal that the backers want to become a legally binding mechanism under GDPR.
Latest Trends for Publishers
WFA Survey
The World Federation of Advertisers has surveyed multinational companies to understand the current state of ad spends. As per the findings, only 46% of the companies are delaying their ad spends by the end of September. During the pandemic, in June, the same number stood at 92%.
21% of the survey participants have a positive outlook on the current business environment. In June, only 8% of the participants said so.
eMarketer Revises Ad Spend
As per the new revisions by eMarketer, the US digital display ad spends will grow by 10%. Earlier the estimation was just 6.2%. At the same time, the overall digital ad spend will grow by 7.5%.
Before the pandemic, eMarketer expected the overall market to grow by 17%. But after the pandemic, the same estimation fell to 1.7%. So, the current forecasts are more optimistic than earlier.
Cloned Sites are the new problem for publishers
In a relatively new trend, malvertisers are buying cloned website templates to dupe the users with frauds such as data theft. The content on these cloned sites is six times more effective than auto-redirect ads for performance marketing. The pages on such sites have malicious codes. The malvertisers are using ads to bring users to these cloned sites.
One out of 5000 ads is leading the users to malicious cloned sites. 89% of the publishers serve the deceptive ads and it leads to a loss in revenue and subscribers.
Takeaway:
The digital ad spend is reaching back to the pre-pandemic level. The positive outlook of the advertisers is the most promising sign of a bright future. The revised forecasts by agencies like eMarketer resonate with the optimism in the market. But the publishers should keep their guards up for malvertisers using the cloned sites.
Related Read: “How to Deal with Low-quality Ads on Your Site.“
How the Telegraph Increased its Campaign Price
The Telegraph is working hard to strengthen trust among its advertisers. It is using its measurement capabilities to prove that its ads work. Having proof of effective ads has helped the publisher in bringing demand during the difficult time of the pandemic.
In its ‘Metrics that Matter’ initiative, it measures 11 metrics to gauge user attention towards the ads. Data points such as dwell time, interaction, and time in-view helped in understanding how mindful the user was for the displayed ads. The same metrics could be further correlated to understand the uplift in brand awareness.
Now the publisher is trying to tie up brand uplift with the commercial goals of the advertisers. The publisher is keeping track of metrics such as awareness, consideration, preference, and action intent for its advertisers. With all these efforts, The Telegraph has brought up its average campaign price by 24%.
Takeaway:
Every advertiser runs a campaign with some objective in his mind. The success of the campaign depends on how close it reached to its objective. Be it online or offline, measuring the campaign outcome has always been a challenge in marketing. The Telegraph is helping the advertisers with this challenge and commanding premium for this help. You can do the same if you can work along with the advertiser, just like The Telegraph
Ad Refreshing is Better, Not Bad
Ad fraud research and Forbes contributor Dr. Augustine Fou has referred to the data from Automatad to discuss the right way of refreshing ads on a publisher’s site. Typically, publishers refresh ads to increase the number of impressions and thus, the revenue per session. But refreshing the ads aggressively can lead to lower viewability. The ads refreshed when the user is inactive or when the user is not in front of the screen at all has no value for the advertiser. Whatever doesn’t work for the advertiser ultimately becomes ineffective for the publisher as well.
Through Active Exposure Time (AXT), Automatad refreshes ads only when the user is active and MRC viewability conditions are met. AXT ensures an ad is exposed to an active user for a period of 25s before it initiates refresh. In a way, you are trading attention.
It won’t refresh when the user is not engaged in any activity (mouse movement, scrolling, touch, etc).
So, what’s the result of this approach?
“The viewability of First Impressions hovers around 25%; but AXT ads show more than 3X higher viewability — because those ads were loaded when the ad slot was in view and the user was active”.
The CTR on the refreshed ads was also 4x higher than the first impressions.
Takeaway:
Active Exposure Time delivers unprecedented viewability to the publishers. A 4x CTR shows that the refreshed ads can help the advertisers with their marketing objectives as well. A publisher with high viewability and engagement is always preferred by the advertisers. This preference can be given by targeting the publisher’s site, allocating more budget to the site, signing a direct deal, or by any other means. So, publishers should use solutions like AXT to refresh their ads effectively.
Need an AXT demo? Let us know.
NYC Backs GPC
The New York Times, Washington Post, and Financial Times are backing Global Privacy Control to manage user data sharing between websites and their vendors. The Global Privacy Control is a proposal that the backers want to become a legally binding mechanism under GDPR. It suggests that the user should be able to signal his privacy preferences to every website through a setting in their browser or in a browser extension.
Apart from the three publishers, other backers of the proposal include Automattic (WordPress), Mozilla, DuckDuckGo, Brave Browser, Disconnect tracker blocker, FTC chief technology officer Ashkan Soltani and more. The NYT is adopting the GPC signal for both CCPA and GDPR.
Currently, only a few websites respect the GPC signals. It would be too early to speculate whether it becomes a part of the privacy laws or not.
Moments that Matter
Feds may target Google’s Chrome browser for breakup – Politico
Bloomberg: ‘For Us, First-Party Data Just Makes Sense – Adexchanger
Prog.IO Digital: Omnichannel Rising, Contextual 2.0 – And Pondering The Future Of Addressability – Adexchanger
‘Core to the identity of the internet’: How publishers are using Reddit to brand build and drive awareness – Digiday
At Automatad, we help publishers to monetize better without hampering the user experience. Our products are live across hundreds of publishers, earning them incremental ad revenue with every passing second. You can request a free audit to get an estimated revenue uplift today.
