Wage Wars; Marketing Automation And Ad Tech Collide

considering-talent Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

A Battle For The Wages

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, 4A CEO Nancy Hill comes to a pretty grim conclusion as to why the ad industry is starved for talent. With student loans on the rise, and with low average entry salaries in the ad biz, not all grads can afford to work in the industry. On Wednesday, ANA CEO Bob Liodice stepped into the ring. Agreeing with an apparent industrywide thirst for talent, Liodice argues that low entry wages have been endemic to advertising for decades. And the adoption of programmatic strategies and a move to take media in-house have compounded the problem, he says. WSJ’s Mike Shields takes a look at both sides of the debate.

Worlds Collide

Marketing automation and advertising technology are coming together through software integration, reports Ad Age. Although both fields have separate target audiences and aims says Ad Age, recent M&A suggests a turning of the tides. Marketing automation provider Marketo, for example, integrated with data provider Acxiom in recent months, in addition to programmatic ad-buying platform Turn. “I don’t think you’ve seen anybody yet articulate how a [automated ad-buying platform] fits literally in the business process workflow with a marketing automation system,” said Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez. “We intend to do that and to do that soon.” Read on.

Video Attribution

Conversion Logic, the startup endeavor of two former Visual IQ VPs, is coming out of stealth. The company’s goal is to help advertisers track and measure the effectiveness of video campaigns across devices. Cross-device attribution is, according to Conversion Logic CEO Trevor Testwuide, “relatively new technology … [which] has moved from the analytics professional to advertising and marketing, then to strategy and then media,” he said, adding, “Our clients are any data-driven company that wants to optimize ad spend in a holistic way.” In addition to launching on Thursday, Testwuide and co-founder Alison Lohse also unveiled a total $1.1 million in funding raised through a “founders’ round.” Read more via TechCrunch.

The Native Debate Deepens

In this week’s The Drift, Doug Weaver reviews the native ads trend. Weaver writes that separation of church and state, for advertising, “worked about as well on Madison Avenue as … in Tudor England.” Weaver also takes issue with the assumption that marketers and agencies aren’t producing winning storytelling. It’s much harder to move an audience with a banner ad, he writes, which is why marketers will explore every other available marketing channel – “packaging, publicity, events, public relations, retailer relationships, infomercials and, yes, native advertising.” Read it.

Social Path To Purchase

When it comes to driving offline sales for small businesses, Facebook is king of the social sites, according to a new study by marketing company G/O Digital. The research surveyed 1,000 social media users in the US, aged 18 to 29. Participants who consider Facebook to be the most useful social media for product research before in-store purchases were a resounding 62%. Pinterest and Twitter were neck and neck for second and third, at 12% and 11% respectively. Read more.

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