Marketers

ESPN unveiled results of its first advertising “hackathon” at its cable network upfront presentation this week. The hackathon event divided ESPN staffers into groups and charged them with developing new ad solutions that would be presented to six judges and 250 other employees. Marketers and media buyers were given a preview of some of the […]

There’s been no shortage of talk about “programmatic direct,” which involves using automated buying tools to support negotiated ad deals with presumably branding-oriented campaign goals. But for Priceline.com CMO Brett Keller, the idea is an illusion. “We’ve been using TV as our branding vehicle from very the beginning of this company 14 years ago and […]

As Heineken continues its discussions with ad sellers from broadcast, cable and digital for those outlets’ respective “upfronts,” the beer marketer is looking to tie its campaigns more closely among TV and the web. While there’s nothing unusual about that, the company, which also owns the Newcastle and Dos Equis beer brands, is working with […]

Experian Marketing Services has integrated technology gained from last year’s acquisition of Conversen with its CheetahMail platform. Referred to simply as “Experian Marketing Services’ cross-channel marketing platform,” the new offering lets marketers coordinate customer interactions across email, mobile, social, web, display, and print advertising campaigns, using testing and rules-based segmentation capabilities. For instance, a customer who made a […]

Salesforce.com introduced today a new addition to its Marketing Cloud – Social.com, which allows marketers to apply their CRM and social listening data to their social ad campaigns. Creating targeted ads, marketers frequently run into the “silo issue” of being unable to connect their various customer data sources, noted Gordon Evans, VP of marketing at Salesforce.com. […]

The consumer packaged goods (CPG) market presents an opportunity for Amazon to better serve its customers, according to Lisa Utzschneider, VP of Global Advertising Sales at Amazon. Speaking at AdAge’s Digital Conference in New York City today, Utzschneider talked about her company’s approach to targeting ads and the growth of the CPG sector. In discussing […]

“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 Bodhi Short, SVP of Operations & Product Development at Integrate. It often takes only two words to pause a deal with brands and agencies: performance marketing. This effect is reinforced […]

After a relatively quiet period following its acquisition by WPP Group for $540 million last year, AKQA’s executives popped up in New York on Friday to deliver what the digital agency described as an “experiment” in reaching out to clients and the media. “We wanted to give back to our customers by sharing with them […]

“The key thing to realize is that you don’t find customers anymore. They find you. To make that happen more often, you need to think like a media company and produce the content that people want to consume. We get about 10,000 leads a month from our blog and 30% of those leads came from […]

Nearly a year after launching a collaboration and productivity platform for marketers, Shift unveiled its Open Marketing Cloud, a suite of social promotions, media buying, community management, and analytics applications available through partnerships with 12 tech companies. The Open Marketing Cloud brings together apps from the following firms: Aggregate Knowledge (media intelligence platform), Convertro (conversion-tracking), Curalate (Pinterest […]

Facebook’s first deep hardware integration is a custom version of the Android operating system, packaged on a new HTC smartphone called “HTC First.” “We didn’t want to build our own phone or an OS,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the press conference at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters. “We want to provide the best experience for […]

The Weather Company, owner of The Weather Channel and its digital extensions, unveiled a plan to bring more addressability to its TV advertising. Dubbed “CableFX,” the new offering from the company’s WeatherFX Division brings existing “big data” to its local and regional TV targeting system. The idea  is to more closely bridge TWC’s TV, web, […]

Marketing executives for pharmaceutical companies are stepping up their use of digital technologies and analytics to save money and fine-tune their targeting efforts. That includes hyper-personalization through retargeting and other digital ad technologies. According to a recent survey by management and tech consultant Accenture, more than 80% of the 200 executives surveyed named cost reduction […]

The first quarter of 2013 was marked by some notable acquisitions—Google acquired Channel Intelligence; Twitter snapped up Bluefin Labs and Facebook agreed to buy Microsoft’s Atlas DMT. Merger and acquisition activities for marketing and other sectors have generally cooled down, however, according to a new report from The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. (JEGI), an investment bank […]

Imagine having a conversation with a mobile ad that goes something like this: “I like the Celtics.” The ad: “Did you know the Celtics are playing in this city at 8:00 pm  tonight? Go Celtics.” Voice recognition software maker Nuance Communications claims brands will be able to engage customers in such two-way conversations through its […]

Marketers worldwide are pouring more money into digital ads, according to a new report from GroupM. Internet ad spending is expected to reach $113.5 billion worldwide this year, a 14.6% increase from last year and representing more than 21% of advertising budgets, reports the media buying agency, which polled marketers from 28 countries. North America […]

Even though it is widely used, customers would be hard-pressed to find vendors who agree with the label “marketing automation,” according to Jon Miller, VP of marketing content and strategy at marketing automation software provider Marketo. Marketing automation is “one of those terms that nobody really seems to love but at the same time it’s […]

Information Builders, a 38-year-old business intelligence and analytics provider that serves customers like Ford, Mastercard, Lockheed Martin, and Verizon, is setting its sights on the CMO. The New York City-based company yesterday launched its WebFocus Social Media Analytics platform, designed to provide insight into customer sentiment on social networks. “We were originally very IT-driven but […]

Winning a hotel guest takes more than a swimming pool and a spa package. Like its competitors, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide looks for opportunities to give its accommodations an edge over other hotels. With more than 1,100 properties in nearly 100 countries across nine brands, the company has strong brand awareness. But that isn’t […]

Following its string of social media acquisitions, Oracle has pulled all its social capabilities into one product, allowing marketers to create and publish content, listen to and engage customers, and analyze interactions from a single interface. Unveiled at the South by Southwest conference, Oracle’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) product ties together capabilities gained when the […]

You wouldn’t expect a media-focused conference to dwell on content strategies, but “owned media” dominated at the Association of National Advertisers Media Leadership conference in Miami this week. Numerous client-side marketers trumpeted their content innovation, including paid integrations with network TV programming, mobile apps, and social fan engagement. They often appeared to give short shrift […]

“We have definitely seen [Facebook paid media] working in terms of fan acquisition and growing our fan base. Though, I think there is a point for all big brands where that begins to work a little bit less – meaning you’ve captured all of that low-hanging fruit and now your Facebook fan advertising has to […]

It has become de rigueur at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual conferences for executives to take to the stage for sessions that were half encouraging and half lecturing industry professionals for getting the science of digital marketing right, while not quite nailing down the art side of the equation. This year’s IAB Annual Leadership Meeting […]

Kellogg Company is undoubtedly the brand with the most to say about programmatic. And its VP media & digital, Jon Suarez-Davis, carried on that tradition during comments today at the Association of Nation Advertisers’ Media Leadership Conference. More than half of Kellogg’s online media now traffics through programmatic channels, including both “open exchange” buys and […]

Mobile and video are the fastest growing segments of display – eMarketer has video’s growth rates rising 46.5% for 2012, while it says smartphone based ad spending will jump 180% this year to top $4 billion. And yet, aside from Google/YouTube, Facebook, and Hulu, there are very few sites that can truly make the claim […]

Gartner predicts global ad revenue for mobile will top $11 billion this year, and leap to $24.5 billion three years hence. (Press release) That’s a striking increase from the estimated $9.6 billion it recorded in 2012, suggesting a rosy near-future for mobile ad sellers such as search companies, app developers, ad networks and social platforms. […]

When ad industry discussions turn to data, it’s usually about how to target ads, not create them. But Douglas Van Praet, EVP/group planning director at Deutsch LA, speaking at Wednesday’s ANA Creativity conference, offered up some ideas of how science can influence the artistic side of advertising. Following a presentation Van Praet did with Justin […]

The Media Trust is a company that verifies the placement of ads relative to what the buyer originally intended. Sounds like the ad verification space popularized by companies like DoubleVerify, AdSafe and ComScore’s AdXpose, right?  Well, it’s not. Though the pitch seems similar, according to CEO Chris Olson, the concept isn’t about brand safety metrics […]

Speak the name iProspect and what’s the first thing that comes to mind? If you were around during the first wave of online marketing, the answer is certainly “search.” The agency was one of the first independent search marketing agencies to go global with offices in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere before its 2004 acquisition by […]

“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 Will Price, CEO of Flite.  Brands are increasingly embracing content marketing, behaving like publishers for their owned and earned media in today’s digital world.  Coca-Cola’s “Liquid and Linked” video […]