Why design-driven companies cut through to customers

Twenty years ago Joseph Pine and James Gilmore welcomed us all to the “Experience Economy” in the Harvard Business Review (HBR). They claimed that ‘services’ alone were not enough to satisfy experience-hungry consumers, and that “staging experiences” would generate more value. Although the examples they used were more physical experiences (aka Niketown) than digital experiences, they had rightly identified a pivotal moment in history.

One month...

27 June 2018 | Branding

The HTTPS deadline and what it means for your website

2018, the year of deadlines. Or, more specifically, the year of internet security deadlines. It turns out that the EU isn’t the only entity setting deadlines for us to up our online security game. Now, Google is throwing its weight around too. 

Google has slowly been encouraging stronger security practices over the past few years. Earlier this year, Google announced a deadline for websites to upgrade from HTTP to HTTPS. That deadline is almost upon us: July 2018.

But...

26 June 2018 | Publishing

Mobile advertising to win third of global budgets by 2020

Mobile advertising is on track to account for 30.5% of global spend by 2020 to total $187bn (£142bn), according to Zenith’s Advertising Expenditure Forecasts, published yesterday (June 19).

That figure is more than double the $88bn spend predicted on desktop advertising and just $5bn shy of television. By 2021, however, mobile advertising is expected to “comfortably” overtake TV.

This cosmic rise is a direct result of consumers switching out the desktop...

19 June 2018 | Advertising

Podcasts reeled in $314m in ad spend last year, finds IAB

Popularised by titles such as Serial, Stuff You Should Know and Ted Radio Hour, the humble podcast raked in $314m (£235m) in ad spend throughout 2017 in the US, according to new research by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC US.

That’s an 86% hike on 2016, while the study forecasts revenues on the channel to hit $659 million by 2020.

Of the self-reported data provided by top podcast companies in the study - including Audioboom, How Stuff Works and ESPN...

13 June 2018 | Branding

Instagram could be targeting YouTube’s influencer bucks with 60-minute videos

Instagram is rumoured to be rolling out long-form video in what could be a play by Facebook to poach a growing portion of ad spend from YouTube, owned by arch-rival in ad tech Google.

While Instagram currently supports hour-long live streams, videos are capped at just 60 seconds, but unnamed sources speaking to WSJ say this could be extended to 60 minutes, which could make the photo-sharing platform a whole lot more attractive to influencers.

The news comes despite Instagram...

11 June 2018 | Mobile Marketing

Buzzfeed sheds further 20 staff in continued move towards programmatic

Buzzfeed is reportedly laying off a further 20 of its staff in part of a reorganisation of its business, as it looks to recover from a loss-making 2017.

The announcement follows the publisher severing 100 employees last year - or 6% of its workforce - when it reported a £3.3m loss, owed in large part to its move away from native advertising.

The company will in turn be hiring a further 45 employees to its business team equipped with the necessary skills and “diverse...

8 June 2018 | Advertising Technology

Google scraps 12-vendor cap on GDPR consent tool for publishers

With the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) now in full swing, Google has made a surprising u-turn on its consent management platform (CMP) policy.

The Alphabet-owned search giant has scrapped what was a 12-vendor limit for publishers that used its Funding Choices CMP, used to gain the consent of users to access their data to improve ad personalisation in line with new European data regulations.

The former policy was applied based on tests by Google which found users are...

8 June 2018 | Advertising Technology

Native ad leader Outbrain acquires AdNgin for automated ad content optimisation

New York-based native ad firm Outbrain has acquired AdNgin, a UI (user interface) optimisation specialist built to enhance the reader experience.

The buyout - made for an undisclosed fee - marks the sixth for Outbrain since its founding in 2006, including the more recent purchases of content discovery platforms Zemanta and Revee as part of the company’s aggressive growth efforts and continued leadership in the native advertising sector. 

According to the...

6 June 2018 | Customer Experience

Apple takes aim at Facebook user tracking features

Apple has announced it will be making efforts to block Facebook’s user tracking tools within the next iteration of its iOS and Mac operating systems.

Announced at its WWDC developer conference yesterday (June 4), the tech firm’s software chief, Craig Federighi, said on the social network’s automatic tracking features, “we’re shutting that down”.

Those tracking tools in question allude to Facebook’s like buttons, share buttons and...

5 June 2018 | Advertising Technology

The ugly truth on conducting DIY research campaigns

Today’s data driven economy has theoretically transformed access to information about customers, prospects and competitors.  But drill down into the data provided by DIY research tools and the quality is raising serious concerns about the validity of research activity.

Help yourself

The plethora of self-service data collection platforms has provided organisations of every size with access to unprecedented depths of information. From apparently simple scripting to the wide...

15 May 2018 | Case Studies