Facebook As Content Host; Mobile Ad Spend Spiking

Publisher Mothership

Facebook has been in quiet communication with at least six media companies about hosting publishers’ content inside Facebook, rather than directing users to an external site, The New York Times reports. Sources say Facebook will roll out the format in the next several months. But publishers must be willing to share content freely outside their walls, and that includes the consumer data that comes with it. “It’s a scary proposition because publishers want to control their brand, and their audience and their advertising dollars,” said newspaper consultant Alan Mutter. And Facebook only stands to gain, he added. “It enhances user satisfaction, keeps users on its site and has better content which allows it to sell advertising at better rates.”

The Mobile Ad Spend Boom

Mobile spend will make up 72% of total digital ad spend in the US by 2019, according to research from eMarketer. The findings put US mobile ad spend on track to increase 50% this year and hit $28.7 billion. At that volume, mobile ad spend will account for 49% of all digital ad spending in the US. “The shift to mobile ad spending is being driven mainly by consumer demand,” eMarketer notes. “In 2014, US adults spent an average of 2 hours, 51 minutes with mobile devices each day, up from 2 hours, 19 minutes in 2013. Meanwhile, desktop time fell to 2 hours, 12 minutes daily last year, after being equal with mobile time in 2013.”

Creating More ‘Content You May Like’

Taboola is giving publishers a free add-on that allows them to optimize their content, dubbed Taboola Newsroom. “It’s Google Analytics of 2015 for content creators,” CEO Adam Singolda told AdExchanger, comparing the tools to the internal ones used by sites like Mashable or Vice. Taboola Newsroom helps publishers A/B test headlines and images and find out what content works best on mobile vs. desktop. It also provides input into how to make content perform on social networks. When using the tool, Refinery29 reported a 45% increase in the click-through rate on its home page. Read the release.

For Big Data, It’s ‘A Rose By Any Name’

Marketers are expected to spend $11.5 billion on data-related services in 2015, up almost 10% from 2010’s $10.5 billion total, according to research from Winterberry Consultants. Ad Age’s Kate Kaye explores what that means for some of the largest data research and analytics firms, who have been caught up in a flurry of acquisitions and brand pivots in an attempt to – as Kaye puts it – put on “the slick clothes and cool tattoos of the modern marketing industry.” More than anything, these changes point toward the hesitancy of data services to adopt clear-cut labels in an environment where agencies, media networks, vendors and consultancies are converging into…what? Read more.

From Text To Commerce

Analysis from Flurry Insights suggests that messaging apps may be muscling in on traditional banking – and the’ve got the millennial market cornered, compounded by customer loyalty. Retention rates for messaging apps far exceed the average app retention rate, according to Flurry’s findings, and are used on average nearly nine times a day. “It is safe to say that messaging apps have made the leap to become the platform for many services, starting with payments and most likely ending with commerce,” reads the report. And with rumors swirling about Facebook turning its messenger into a platform, advertisers and bankers may be next to join the conversation. Elsewhere, Seeking Alpha posits on the future of FB messenger.

Illusive TV Addressability

Speaking to Beet.TV, Rob Norman, chief digital officer at GroupM, said programmatic TV is imminent, but that the upfront market isn’t going away any time soon. “Digital natives who don’t have the context of pre-digital have a somewhat naive view of the integrity and the intricacy of the television market” he said. “There are people who have had a mission for years now to take all the data that’s available … and apply it as close to the time a decision has to be made as possible.” Norman added that the key to automating TV will be achieving addressability. “The bit of automation we are most interested in is addressability,” he said. “[It] is rapidly becoming a reality. That’s not the same thing as programmatic television. The technology doesn’t exist in any way that is scaled.”

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