Marketers

The convergence of creativity and technology is shifting the dialog between consumers, agencies and brands. An on-stage discussion at the DMA 2013 conference in Chicago attempted to chart that shift by answering the question, “Does data drive the big idea or vice versa?” On the panel were Doug Bryan, a principal engineer at RichRelevance; Ben […]

As an industry, data-driven marketing drives $156 billion in revenues and contributes 675,000 jobs to the US economy alone. These figures, published and heralded onstage to thousands of marketers this morning by Direct Marketing Association president and CEO Linda Woolley, were part of a 100-page Data-Driven Marketing Economy report distributed today at the DMA 2013 […]

In the past week, Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify – two companies whose aim is to ensure that brand advertisers get the kind of exposure and inventory they expect – unveiled their respective tools designed to limit, if not eliminate, the waste caused by fraudulent traffic – namely “bots.” The new tools, as outlined by […]

“Marketer’s Note” is a weekly column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. It is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research.   Having just returned from the three-day ANA Masters of Marketing conference, held this past weekend in Phoenix, I thought it worth sharing my thoughts with marketers on what […]

Breaking: The sizzle reel still has legs. Two thousand attendees at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual Masters of Marketing conference were treated to numerous examples of the genre Friday, as senior marketers from Chrysler, Walmart, MARS and Coca-Cola showed off their favorite TV spots. Repeatedly. But while the raw storytelling power of television remains […]

Clearly Criteo is feeling no pressure to “go quiet” following its-F-1 filing last week. President Greg Coleman appeared at Advertising Week yesterday for a rapid-fire session with marketers. At the outset of the panel discussion, it was made clear “there won’t be any questions [taken] about Criteo going public.” Coleman was accompanied onstage at the […]

Last week, Cologne, Germany became a hub of advertising news, discussions and deals when roughly 26,000 marketers and vendors descended on Germany’s fourth largest city for the 5th annual Dmexco conference. In many respects, Dmexco is like any other large ad tech conference with breakout sessions and an exhibit hall, but done on a much […]

More advertisers are running in-house “agency” units in 2013 than did five years ago, according to a new survey from the Association of National Advertisers. The change is driven in part by the weak global economy, but also could be chalked up to digital acceleration – including data/analytics and social imperatives. The survey of 203 […]

With agencies continuing to voice concern about their battles with clients’ procurement officers, some high-profile agency executives have called to pay for performance. Perhaps they should look no further than today’s direct-response business — traditionally driven by search advertising — where agencies like WPP GroupM’s Quisma have been operating for more than a decade. Quisma continues […]

Much has been made of the need for marketing and IT to forge closer ties. But a new study from Accenture finds only 10% of executives feel the collaboration is going well. And according to the report “The CMO-CIO Disconnect,” marketers may be to blame. Accenture surveyed more than 400 senior marketing professionals and 250 IT […]

Fees remain the most common way for marketers to compensate advertising agencies, according to the 2013 Trends in Agency Compensation survey released by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Out of 98 client-side marketers, 81% indicated that they continue to use some type of fee compensation for various agency types and services. Labor-based fees, which […]

Little Rock, AR-based Acxiom is gearing up to launch an “Audience Operating System,” for cross-channel and cross-device ad targeting, in September. “The world is coming to us as big data and insight-based decisioning is exactly what we do,” CEO Scott Howe said during the company’s earnings call. “It is also exactly our vision for the […]

As more marketers use data to deploy targeted offers, clear differences are emerging in how industry verticals embrace digital strategies, a study has found. Digital technology company Lyris and the Economist Intelligence Unit found in “The Digital Marketing Gap” that some of the most widely growing areas of strategic importance to marketers include: content to guide product research, the […]

IBM unveiled today a new initiative, Digital Experience, that allows organizations to create customized versions of IBM products. Noting that clients want the option of deploying either on-premise or in the cloud, this initiative is a reaction to new purchase patterns, explained Gary Dolsen, director of IBM’s digital experience software. “What we’ve found is customers […]

After six months in beta, LinkedIn unveiled its “Sponsored Updates” feature for marketers with budgets of all sizes, and mindful of balancing current trends around programmatic, native advertising and content marketing. Alison L. Engel, LinkedIn’s senior director of global marketing, acknowledged that those terms sum up the latest evolution of the professional social network’s advertising […]

As a number of large technology vendors race to create full-spectrum digital marketing suites and omnichannel customer experiences, one player is here to remind them that it knows a thing or two about commerce. And, when it comes to its advertising and paid media play, eBay’s launch of eBay Enterprise Marketing Solutions today has much […]

Among Adobe’s visions for its Marketing Cloud suite of products is enabling a streamlined process of creating content and delivering it all the way through to campaign execution, the company said. Just weeks after Adobe’s announced $600 million acquisition of marketing automation company Neolane (See AdExchanger story) to round out its creative and content capabilities […]

Retail marketers are focusing most of their digital marketing efforts on paid search and email, according to new findings from Forrester Research and Shop.org’s joint State of Retailing Online 2013: Marketing and Merchandising report, released today. Mobile optimization, unsurprisingly, is another area of interest as more commerce companies look to the mobile device as a vessel […]

“Old marketing has always been about archery. You’re there to hit the target and shoot the same arrows over and over again. New marketing is a lot like ping pong. It’s real-time decisioning. You’re leveraging business data, and not just media and marketing data. It’s requiring a lot of new skill sets, especially people who […]

“Data Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by David Walsh, SVP of media at Integrate. In the 2010 film “The Social Network,” Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin asks Sean Parker to settle an argument between him and Mark […]

Pulling insights out of disparate data sets is a challenge for many companies. Sometimes the problem is a marketer’s approach to data analysis. Kevin Ertell, e-commerce VP at kitchenware retailer Sur La Table, identified at Experian Marketing Services’ Client Summit 11 ways marketers undermine their efforts. AdExchanger spoke with Ertell about those points and other best-practice […]

Cross-channel marketing is one of the most common buzzwords marketers hear everyday, but only 8% of marketers have effectively implemented cross-channel strategies in their interactions with customers, according to results from a recent survey presented yesterday at Experian Marketing Services’ Client Summit in Las Vegas. The main obstacle is data. “Data is a blessing and […]

Ecommerce is on the upswing. This sector saw a compound annual growth rate of 18.7% between 2008 and 2012, suggesting it’s one of the fastest-growing industries, according to new research compiled by global boutique merchant bank Siemer & Associates. Worldwide spending on ecommerce totaled $820.5 billion in 2012, which was nearly 21% higher than the […]

“Data Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Bill Duggan, group executive vice president at the ANA (Association of National Advertisers). In marketing procurement, industry stakeholders have been repeating many of the same conversations for years. It’s […]

In what ways do the various components of digital marketing intersect and how can a company use that knowledge to its advantage? Gartner asked itself those questions and came up with the “Digital Marketing Transit” map, which resembles the map of the London Underground, with color-coded routes bearing names like mobility, analytics, and ad tech […]

Today in Cannes, Tumblr CEO David Karp sat down with me to discuss his views on advertising and the work Tumblr and Yahoo are doing there. “They’ve got more than a decade of real powerful ad tech under their belt,” he said. “This is very likely an opportunity for us to move much faster to […]

Facebook has made so many embellishments to its ad monetization machine in the past year that communicating it all to clients has become a big chore. This week in Cannes, the company participated in a “Creativity at Scale” panel and convened its 18-member Client Council to discuss its embrace of hashtags, its recent decision to […]

Talking about data feels a bit transgressive in Cannes, where creativity is literally center stage. But with data driving so much change at agencies – including at creative shops – it seems an unavoidable topic. It came up frequently in a conversation on Tuesday with Americo Campos Silva, Shell’s Global Media Manager, and Sasha Savic, CEO […]

AdExchanger is in the French Riviera, where some 12,000 people have gathered for the 60th annual Cannes Lions festival of creativity. We’ll have updates throughout the week, and a definitive (!) answer to the question, Can Big Data can play nice with the Big Idea? This morning Adobe hosted a discussion around advertising and trust, […]

Email and search continue to drive the most referrals to ecommerce sites, according to Q1 2013 data from website optimization company Monetate. But word-of-mouth through social media does influence purchases, despite a lack of last-click attribution for the channel. After analyzing more than 500 million online shopping experiences, the Ecommerce Quarterly report found conversion rates […]