Digital Media News

Although brands are increasing their spend on social media advertising, only a relatively small portion of it is going to ads - according to a new survey of Ad Age readers.  

Ad Age and RBC Capital Markets jointly conducted their fifth major survey of marketer attitudes toward social media and the survey polled 1,682 executives at marketing, agency and media companies for their opinions on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (which was included for the first time).

It seems that marketing teams are spending slightly more in digital and social media channels than in previous years, but this spend is still a relatively small part of overall advertising budgets. So what’s the thinking behind it?

As Facebook’s lead ad planner, Kelly Maclean’s job is to watch people watch advertisements. In emerging markets, the heat is on to study local activity so that Facebook can come up with advertising methods that perform well in developing countries. She travels to places like Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa to get an inside look at what works and what doesn’t.

So what’s the main difference between Facebook advertising in places like this and countries in Europe and the US? In the US it’s fair to say that social media advertising is rife, to the point where it can sometimes get in the way of ‘socializing’, or it becomes a bit of an intrusion on your digital world. It’s a cluttered marketplace where brands battle for their piece of the action, but it’s a very different story in the developing World where it’s still a novelty to see and hear what big brands have to say. MacLean said:

Negative advertising or “poisoning the well” is the practice of attacking a competitor or opponent to make yourself look more credible. The logic behind the practice is that if the other party's reputation is damaged, you end up looking better. While poisoning the well is de rigeur in political advertising, businesses also use it as a part of their overall advertising strategy. It’s particularly popular in the tech industry, where rivalries tend to run deep. This smear tactic technique is also frequently used by a second or third tier competitor as a way to try to tarnish the market leader’s image. Below outlines a couple google examples of negative advertising.

Scroogled (Courtesy of Microsoft)

It doesn’t matter if your business is big or small. You may be a startup upstart, using guerilla marketing tactics to capture any hearts and minds you can reach. You may be the established super-power business in your part of the world, marshalling enormous resources to conquer the world.

Whatever your situation, you cannot ignore Facebook advertising. It is a platform that is coming into its own because of its reach and accessibility.

Difference-making online advertising campaigns require innovative strategy, leading technology, careful planning and insightful analysis. ExactDrive’s Advertising Platform and strategic consultant team provides all four, making it easier for you to generate the results you want most. Retargeting coupled with dynamic ads is a very powerful combination. With that in mind we wanted to share with our readers a sample digital media plan that we recently created for a politically focused client.

The University of Wisconsin - Madison is the largest and oldest public university in the state of Wisconsin. ExactDrive is excited to be seeking interns from UW - Madison (home to Bucky Badger), a highly regarded and selective research university located in Madison, Wisconsin. This is just the start of the strategy to expand our office location in Milwaukee, WI and we are excited to get started.

Intern position details are below:

Search retargeting is the first cousin of website retargeting and they often get along wonderfully when working and coupled together as a two-punch online advertising strategy. Different than website retargeting, which focuses on displaying advertisements only to people that have previously visited a specific website, search retargeting focuses on displaying ads to people that have previously searched for specific keywords or keyword phrases.

Simply put, search retargeting is a highly effective way to target people who have proven to be interested in certain topics, services and/or products based on their search history.

ExactDrive’s Self-Serve Advertising Platform now offers real-time advertising and campaign reporting. Defaulted by Eastern Standard Time and updated hourly, the advertising and campaign reporting sections display analytics on advertiser, campaign ad creative levels. Impressions, clicks, and conversion data is provided along with creative attribution and transparent domain level analytics. In short, users are able to easily pull reports at-will for any advertiser and campaign being managed, down to the domain level or performance per creative. Any report pulled is exportable and can be adjusted and branded to the users’ needs.

The NEW Face of Robust Advertising Analytic Reporting

Before deciding how ExactDrive should serve a third-party creative, you must determine the ad tag format: HTML or JavaScript. HTML creatives are easily recognizable by their angle brackets (e.g. <html>). Your browser is designed to read HTML. We often see issues where the ad tag was labeled with the wrong tag format.

JavaScript, on the other hand, is a scripting language that defines variables and functions, which result in a certain output. ExactDrive must wrap JS creatives in HTML so that the browser is told that it is looking at a language. Note that often JavaScript ad tags come pre-wrapped in HTML, but do not be fooled. If the JS is surrounded by HTML markup tags, then the creative is HTML.

Online advertising can be stressful on a good day. On a bad day, it can generate a lot of fear and self-doubt. Lets discuss how to be aware of the fear and self-doubt and get it under control so you can spend the extra energy on managing a successful online advertising campaign.

Imagine The Following Scenario: You are an owner of an Italian restaurant in Chicago. Actually, you just opened your third location and the financial pressure is immense, expectations from your silent partner are growing and your wife is wondering when you are going to start spending more time at home seeing your family.