Traffic Scam; Marketing Native

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Traffic Scam

Online advertising fraud continues to be a topic of discussion, and Adweek has named six companies that consistently come up when talking about traffic fraud: AdOn, Adknowledge, eZanga, Jema Media, MGID and BlueLink Marketing. Adweek’s Mike Shields covers it: “’AdOn is just about the worst,’ said one publisher victimized by bots. ‘They are notorious for having the worst quality traffic in the industry,’ said another publisher.” Read more.

Marketing Native

A few weeks after selling NetShelter to Ziff Davis, the brothers behind “native” ads platform InPowered talked to TechCrunch about what they see next for their company. Although InPowered says it has largely been about technology since the platform launched in 2011, Peyman and Pirouz Nilforoush say the next step is using the money from the sale to promote (i.e. invest in sales and marketing). In case you missed it, instead of focusing on the traditional native advertising model, which turns ads into content, the self-serve InPowered platform allows companies to cherry-pick pre-existing consumer content to turn into ads. Read more on TechCrunch. InPowered is a classic case of a startup “pivot,” where the strategy changes to capitalize on a new market opportunity – native ads online, in this case.

Make Silicon Valley Beautiful

According to Ad Age, demand for designers is increasing in tech-centric Silicon Valley, as users opt for beautiful products as well as functional ones. “It’s important to realize that designers in general have elevated themselves to being equivalent to engineers,” said Shannon Callahan, an Andreessen Horowitz partner. Ad Age also points specifically at Google as an example of a company which has recently attempted beautification of their products while trying to attract design talent rather than just engineering talent. Read more.

TV Bridge

Real Media Group announced a new product – INFUSETV – which will allow advertisers to reach TV audiences on different devices. “INFUSETV provides marketers with the ability to leverage set-top box data and Nielsen GRP measurement tools to complement their existing TV buys,” said Nicolle Pangis, President, Real Media Group. Read more.

IAB Cranks ‘Em Out

The IAB has released a couple of studies and a display advertising guideline. The Mobile Rising Stars Ad Interaction & Effectiveness Study examines the effectiveness of using IAB Mobile Rising Stars creative ad units versus traditional mobile ad units. Their whitepaper Omnichannel and the Drive For Audience Engagement explores the changing landscape of advertising including the continually fragmented online audience.

New Mobile Ad Unit

Time Inc. is currently testing a new mobile ad unit called Double Snap. The unit consists of a banner that follows users as they scroll, which opens up into a larger ad that doesn’t completely obscure content, and then shrinks back to a banner. “It never overlays the content, never takes you away from the content,” Solomon Masch, Director of Mobile Sales and Strategy at Time Inc. told Adweek. It’s “impossible to miss,” he added. Read more.

Everybody’s Doing Multiscreen

Mixpo surveyed over 300 industry professionals for a study on how they are using multiscreen advertising. According to the report, “[in] 2012, 78% of agencies ran multiscreen campaigns in behalf of their brand clients, and 90% expect to run multiscreen campaigns in 2013. In contrast, 81% of media companies ran multiscreen campaigns in 2012 and 96% expect to run multiscreen campaigns this year.” Read the report here and the press release here.

Are Oreos News?

In a column for PandoDaily, Kirk Cheyfitz, founder of ad agency Story Worldwide, criticizes the idea of brand newsrooms. Given that brands are only interested in talking about their products, it’s difficult to make them continually newsworthy for audiences. Cheyfitz pulls out three points that make newsrooms effective and potentially workable for brands. Read more.

iRadio Is Real

iRadio has officially been announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, and it appears all the rumors that have been swirling are spot-on. The service will stream music to a user’s device, supported by text and audio ads, accessing the iTunes music database to do so. Furthermore, users can create custom playlists or allow one to be created from their pre-existing library. Read more.

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