Although athletic apparel manufacturer New Balance makes more than $4 billion in annual revenue in 130-odd markets, it doesn’t share the same name recognition as competitors like Nike, Adidas or Under Armour. “We found through market research that in most of our markets globally, consumers are aware of us, but they weren’t considering us because […]
Facebook is doing some early spring cleaning in Ads Manager, the tool advertisers use to create, manage and track campaigns. Starting Thursday, it will begin labeling whether metrics are estimated and start marking metrics that are still being tested. The goal is to give advertisers more insight into how metrics are calculated. Knowing when metrics […]
Publishers, prepare yourselves for another Facebook organic reach reality check. Starting Monday, Facebook will finally begin measuring organic page reach the same way it measures paid ad reach: based on viewable impressions. This is only a reporting change and unrelated to how organic distribution works on Facebook. Facebook started alerting publishers in early February, but […]
The New York Times is making good on its goal to rev digital subscription revenue, but not at the expense of its other key growth driver: digital advertising. The Times’ total subscription revenue surpassed $1 billion in 2017 as the company added 157,000 net new, digital-only subscriptions in Q4, it announced during its Q4 earnings […]
Traffic is down at Facebook. It’s a new look for the platform, which has done almost nothing but grow quarter over quarter and year over year. Changes to Facebook’s news feed algorithm deprioritizing viral video in Q4 reduced time spent on the platform by around 50 million hours a day. Daily active users in the […]
When Facebook updates Ads Manager or tests a new ad placement, agencies – and even their account reps – are sometimes the last to know. In some cases, new features are enabled by default without any overt communication from Facebook, which can be “par for the course,” said Anita Walsh, director of social strategy at Horizon […]
When Facebook said it would change its news feed algorithm to prioritize users’ families’ and friends’ posts, advertisers worried it would also affect how paid placements are bought and sold. Would this reduce the amount of available inventory? Would it drive up costs? Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions, Carolyn Everson, sought to assuage the […]
Mark Zuckerberg expects people to spend less time in the news feed once Facebook throttles the organic reach of publisher content. That change will lead to less inventory at higher prices, said James Douglas, SVP and executive director of social media at IPG-owned Society Agency. After Facebook announced plans Thursday to deprioritize public content from […]
Two years ago, lift tests weren’t something OLX Group even talked about. Today, lift tests, which measure the incrementality of a marketing channel or advertising tactic, are in heavy rotation at the Argentinian web company, which owns and operates 17 classified apps and sites around the world, including Craigslist competitor Letgo in the US. Performance […]
Digital advertising is growing, and big platforms like Google and Facebook continue to reap the profits. That’s the insight from global ad spend forecasts released Sunday by GroupM, Zenith and Magna, which predict the industry will grow between 3.1% and 5.2% this year to as high as $535 billion, as reported by Magna. Advertising growth […]
Online display advertising spend in the US will grow 70% from $42 billion this year to $72 billion by 2021, propelled mostly by social media ad spend, according to Forrester’s annual Online Display Advertising forecast, released Wednesday. As mobile adoption continues to surge, Forrester predicted, social ad spend will reach $40 billion by 2021, and […]
During a speech Tuesday at think tank R Street Institute, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai justified his plan to scrap net neutrality (“We’re shifting from one-size-fits-all preemptive regulation to targeted enforcement.”) and took a shot at edge providers like Twitter, Google and Facebook. “Let’s not kid ourselves: When it comes to a free and […]
The ad industry needs to check itself before it wrecks itself. That was the rallying cry Tuesday at NBCUniversal’s swanky State of the Industry Forum, where 150 digital and broadcast advertising luminaries gathered in midtown Manhattan for fancy eggs and frank discussion. “I’ll cut right to the chase: We have a problem,” said Linda Yaccarino, […]
Facebook is gearing up to grab automotive advertising budget with dynamic and lead ads for auto brands, both released on Thursday. Dynamic ads for auto, like Facebook’s other dynamic ad products for ecommerce and travel, allow advertisers –auto manufacturers and car dealerships, in this case – to retarget auto intenders and create lookalike audiences for […]
Former Adap.tv CEO Toby Gabriner, who became AdRoll’s president in April, has been promoted to CEO, effective immediately. The company’s founding CEO, Aaron Bell, will transition to chief product officer. Gabriner has for the past year advised AdRoll, which wanted to evolve from an early retargeter focused mostly on Facebook to a mid-stage, cross-channel performance marketing […]
A stark juxtaposition: At the same time Facebook’s general counsel was getting grilled by members of Congress in Washington, DC, on Wednesday about how the platform was abused by Russian election meddlers, Facebook beat revenue expectations for the third quarter. Ad revenue was up 49% YoY, from $6.8 billion to just over $10 billion. Mobile […]
The tech titans have testified about Russian election meddling. And after two days and multiple hours of questioning by members of Congress aimed at top lawyers from Facebook, Twitter and Google on Tuesday and Wednesday, it’s clear that Russian operatives continue to spread propaganda and sow social discontent using social media platforms and that said […]
Facebook and Twitter both took steps last week to provide more transparent paid political advertising on their platforms. But although political ads will be clearly labeled and users will be able to access more information on who purchased the ads and how much the buyer is spending on electioneering, it’s primarily up to the advertisers […]
Dynamic creative optimization has thus far largely overpromised and underdelivered. Now Facebook is tossing its hat in the ring. Can it succeed where others have floundered? On Wednesday, Facebook introduced two tools to help advertisers tailor creative assets on the fly: one that automatically throws together multiple ad variants based on the basic components of […]
If lawmakers have anything to do with it, political ads on Facebook, Google, Twitter and other online platforms may soon be subject to the same disclosure requirements as traditional political advertising. Senators introduced a bipartisan bill on Thursday to do just that, prompted by revelations of Russian meddling before and during the 2016 US presidential […]
Google is the latest walled garden to be sucked down the Russian rabbit hole. The Washington Post reported Monday that Google has uncovered evidence of ads linked to Russia that were used to spread propaganda via YouTube, Gmail, Google Search and its DoubleClick ad network. Google’s revelations follow similar disclosures by Facebook and Twitter, which […]
The changes that Facebook is making in response to its ongoing Russia-linked ads predicament will impact every advertiser on the platform, not just political advertisers. For one, Facebook’s effort to introduce more transparency into political advertising could start bubbling up information that brands can use as competitive intel to track trends and make suppositions about […]
Facebook said Monday it will add 1,000 employees to its global ads review teams over the next year to put the kibosh on foreign state-sponsored ads. The company will examine not just the content of the ad, but also the context in which it was bought and the targeting parameters used. Facebook’s ads review system […]
Facebook’s audience data may be gold to digital advertisers, but it’s the Facebook Creative Shop that ensures campaigns are memorable in the news feed and on platforms like Instagram and Messenger. The 200-plus-person in-house agency designs and tests Facebook and Instagram ad units – like the full-screen mobile unit Canvas – before launching it widely […]
Under mounting pressure over its use by Russian meddlers in the US election, Facebook is imposing new transparency on ad buyers to make it harder to obscure who paid for an ad, and who saw it. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes in a Facebook Live video posted Thursday afternoon. “When someone buys political ads […]
Starting Thursday, Facebook will let advertisers retarget based on what people do in the real world. “Reporting on the impact of ads is great, but other companies provide something similar,” said Gabriel Francis, global product marketing lead for the offline sales group at Facebook. “We’re letting people actually do something with those reports.” Google’s offline […]
Facebook updated its targeting policies on Wednesday in the wake of the racist and anti-Semitic ad targeting scandal, first reported by ProPublica. COO Sheryl Sandberg clarified Facebook’s position in a post and laid out its three-pronged approach to running a tighter ship. Following the exposé and attendant public backlash, Facebook disabled the self-reported targeting fields […]
The latest fire at Facebook has been lit by Russia, which allegedly bought ads to destabilize the US, and the fallout might force Facebook to change the way it does business. “If Facebook really wants to respond to the public outcry, it’s going to have to leave money on the table,” said David Carroll, a […]
Facebook’s decision to disable segments around self-reported user information, including employers, won’t significantly change the amount of spend the platform gets from B2B marketers, according to numerous agency sources. Facebook disabled targeting around self-reported segments after ProPublica revealed Thursday that advertisers can target users with anti-Semitic and derogatory terms. The ban includes employer and education […]
In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions, Carolyn Everson, acknowledged that some marketers are “feeling uneasy” about viewability, online ad metrics and brand safety. She outlined updates meant to address that discomfort. First, Facebook intends to give advertisers more control over where their ads are running by tightening guidelines on the […]
