Digital Media News (32)

Jan 19, 2015 8:00:00 AM

7 Fundamental Skills for Every Prospective Startup Employee

In the beginning stages of any company, the value each team member brings to the table is central to its success. This is particularly true when it comes to startups, where being a team member is not simply a job, but more importantly, a lifestyle. Being part of this lifestyle means having to work long hours and irregular hours, as well as having the ability to constantly innovate and improve upon the business.

So what do you weigh when looking for new employees? What skills does one look for?

Each startup has different needs and subsequently, will look for different qualities in an employee, but there are certain characteristics that every prospective startup employee must have. Here is some insight into what various startup founders believe to be the most important skill that every startup employee should have.

Jan 16, 2015 8:00:00 AM

How To Overcome Your Fear Of Failure

ExactDrive was recently quoted in an article posted on LudoTech, a leading technology blog.

Its only natural that startup founders contemplate failure, especially considering that the majority of startups don’t last more than five years. More often than not however, the fear of failure tends to be quite irrational and often prevents entrepreneurs from focusing on the very goals they need to accomplish to achieve success. Rather than dwelling on the negative, its important to embrace the possibility of success and constantly envision your business in growth and continuous improvement.

We spoke to several startup founders at different stages in their careers, and asked what advice they had for overcoming their fear of failure.

Jan 13, 2015 9:24:00 AM

5 Horrible Mistakes You're Making With Facebook Advertising

Facebook can be a powerful way to target potential and current customers, track the ROI of your campaigns down to the penny, and grow your business’ influence. Despite this, brands are making the same few mistakes over and over again when it comes to their Facebook advertising.

Here are five of the most common reasons campaigns fail and how to avoid them.

1. Poor targeting

There is no excuse for poor targeting, as Facebook makes it easy to narrow down your target audience by age, gender and interests, so you can literally tailor your promotion to only reach those who are actually interested in what you have to offer.

2. You’re not noticeable

Your advert is one of hundreds of messages on the viewer’s screen and they will skim over most of the content until something catches their attention. You therefore need to make sure that it’s your advert they’re looking at.Your ad needs a clear image under an attention-grabbing headline,accompanied by engaging copy. Keep the copy short so Facebook doesn’t truncate it, and use a relevant image that is noticeable in the mini right-hand images.

Jan 6, 2015 7:00:00 AM

Understand Psychology To Nail Your Advertising Campaigns

When it comes to advertising campaigns, marketing content and experiential marketing strategies, success lies in the planning. It’s not enough to simply be creative, and losing sight of what you’re trying to achieve will hinder your chances of attaining any goal.

Ideally, you need experience. That’s experience of what works and what doesn't. And most of the top marketing experts gather that experience by analyzing campaigns from the customer’s perspective, not from their own. Whether they know it or not, what they’re actually doing is analyzing human behavior.

Yes – to consistently deliver marketing that works, you need to be something of a psychologist. Here are 4 top tips to help you connect with your audience like never before.

1. Pick your words carefully.

Sounds obvious, so let’s be specific. People put a lot of emphasis on what they read first, so make sure any headlines or initial copy is working as hard as it possibly can be. Remember that visually, less is often more. Take Apple’s approach - when they’re in full ‘product launch’ state, their messaging is less about marketing and more about the product.

Jan 5, 2015 7:30:00 AM

Bot Fraud Accounts For $6 Billion Loss In Digital Advertising

According toresearch conducted by digital security firm White Ops and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), nearly a quarter of video ad impressions are triggered by "bots;" (automated entities that mimic the behavior of humans by clicking on ads and watching videos) and11% of display ads are viewed by fake consumers, created by cybercriminals with the purpose of taking a slice of the billions of dollars spent on digital advertising each year.

The White Ops/ANA study is one of the most comprehensive on the subject of online fraud in digital advertising. It analyzed 181 campaigns from 36 ANA member companies, over a two-month period earlier this year.Ad budgets ranged from $10 million to more than $1 billion and brands ranged across nine vertical categories. Tagged to identify bot fraud, the ads accounted for 5.5 billion impressions in 3 million domains.

The findings

The study found that while some bot fraud was triggered by fake websites, the majority of it(67%) came from bot nets taking over unsuspecting users’ home computers. As users logged into services such as Gmail, Facebook and Twitter, the bots infiltrated their systems and mimickedthe user’s behavior; sophisticated bots were able to move the mouse and move the cursor over ads;they also put items in shopping carts and visited websites to generate cookies, in order to appear more demographically appealing to advertisers and publishers.

Jan 2, 2015 7:30:00 AM

Guest Post: Exact Mobile Trends 2015 Will Drive Better Campaigns

Guest Post on justAd. Founded in 2009, justAd develops the leading self service advertising platform that enables advertisers to create highly engaging rich media ad campaigns for mobile and tablet devices, without the need for custom coding, server-certification nor testing.

After a somewhat awkward adolescence, mobile marketing is maturing as it heads into 2015. With $31.45 billion spent in 2014, and even more predicted for next year, the significant growth of mobile marketing has proven that the mobile channel represents the future of the industry.

Mobile apps are a big contributor to this growth. Today, there is an app for everything, and with new apps appearing daily, it’s estimated that by 2017, there will be 4 billion app users, worldwide. Apps are clearly playing a major part in shaping the future of mobile marketing, but what other mobile innovations are proving popular with consumers as we move into the New Year?

Dec 30, 2014 8:00:00 AM

Facebook Relaunches Cross Network Ad Platform Atlas

Advertisers' fascination with cookies has long past. Every advertiser knows deep down that a cookie is a blunt instrument and its limitations are woefully apparent when dealing with cross-channel campaigns. Unfortunately, cookies are the best way to track the effectiveness of online campaigns. That is, until Facebook announced the relaunch of their cross-network ad platform, Atlas.

With Atlas, Facebook are attempting to take on Google on its home turf — display advertising. How? Aside from dispensing with cookies, Atlas purports to bridge the gap between the offline and online advertising worlds by linking the real-world interactions of customers to their Facebook profiles.

Here’s how it works. When a user logs in to Facebook or uses their Facebook credentials to log in to other websites, the network installs cookies to track their activities on the website. But cookies alone are not effective enough, and they don't work on mobile, which is becoming the preferred online shopping platform for consumers. To navigate the problem, Atlas combines cookies with demographic information to help advertiser’sbetter target their audience.

Dec 26, 2014 7:30:00 AM

Winning Political Votes With Social Media

The rules of advertising have changed drastically in recent years, due tothe significant growth of social media. It has become the online advertising strategy du jour for organizations in every industry, but one area we have see the effects of this prevail more and more in recent years is politics.

The tech-savvy campaign that Barack Obama’s aides unveiled six years ago is a case in point. It was historically significant for two reasons; not only was Obama the first African American to be elected president, but he was also the first presidential candidate to effectively use social media as a major campaign strategy. Obama created an environment of transparency never before experienced in American politics.

His strategy? Personalized tweets; Facebook updates, and his very own YouTube channel.

The Obama campaign reached 5 million supporters on 15 different social Networks, and by November 2008, he had approximately 2.5 million Facebook supporters, 115,000 Twitter followers, and 50 million viewers of his YouTube channel.

Dec 23, 2014 8:00:00 AM

How Guerrilla Advertising Can Make You Famous

Unconventional, whacky marketing tactics can have a massive impact. Guerrilla advertising is much like guerrilla warfare: placing ambushes, sabotages, raids and elements of surprise within the advertising industry. Despite it often being a low-cost tacticthat deliversmaximum results,it can be a risky business whenthe reputation if your brand is on the line. Guerrilla advertising undoubtedly provokes very strong opinions and emotional responses.

Dec 19, 2014 8:21:00 AM

7 Startup Entrepreneurs On How To Attract Top Talent

ExactDrive was recently quoted in an article posted on YoungUpstarts.com, which focuses on stories and thought leadership pieces that help businesses small or large, the entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, or those who simply want to become better at what they do.

by Philip Acuña

As a start-up, it’s seemingly impossible to compete with the Facebooks and Googles of the world, who can offer six figure salaries to the talented professionals you’d want on your team. Because of that asymmetry, it can often be more important to create novel ways of attracting top talent to a new company, than it is to obtain operational funding.

This poses a massive challenge for any young and innovative tech start-up hoping to build a top-notch team, one that is not only able to get the startup off the ground, but most importantly, lead it to enduring success.