This newest insight piece from comScore looks at mobile devices, categories and apps’ share of total digital time, and how this aligns with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but also investigates areas such as:
“The dominant share of digital time represented by mobile globally highlights the need for measurement that captures all forms of digital activity on these devices” said Will Hodgman, executive vice president of international sales at comScore. “This report underlines the importance of demographics, app consumption and country-specific behavioural trends that publishers, advertisers and agencies need to effectively evaluate mobile audiences in a cross-platform world. We’re excited to expand this precise mobile measurement to even more markets throughout 2017.”
To learn more about how comScore can help you succeed in a mobile-first world, please contact them at www.comscore.com/contact or visit www.comscore.com/mobile.
The report can be downloaded from the comScore website here.
Brussels, 29 March - IAB Europe is the organiser of the Interact 2017 conference, taking place in Amsterdam on 23-24 May at the NH Collection Barbizon Palace Hotel. Today, we are releasing the consolidated Preview Programme for the two days of the conference of Interact 2017.
While this programme is not final and more updates are to be announced in the coming weeks, it aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the overall theme, the sub-themes, and the range of high-level speakers, sponsors and media partners that will make Interact 2017 a successful discussion this year.
Interact is known as the premier gathering of the digital advertising industry within the network of IAB Europe, whose mission is to be the voice of digital business and the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising ecosystem.
Every year and for eleven years running, Interact has welcomed up to 400 delegates from all over Europe and North America, ranging from Advertisers, Publishers, Ad Tech companies, Media agencies and Creative Agencies.
In 2017, the stage will be filled with global thought leaders like Nicola Mendelsohn, Vice President EMEA at Facebook, Nicolas Bidon, Global President at Xaxis, Jeffrey Cole, Founder at Director of the Center for the Digital Future and John Montgomery, EVP Global Brand Safety at GroupM, and many others. Their voices will lead the way to a set of insights that are unprecedented in the array of digital marketing events in Europe.
Advertisers, publishers, creative agencies and ad tech leaders will discuss and share their expertise on this year’s top-of-mind challenges and opportunities for the digital advertising sector. Together, they will find common grounds that will set the tone for the coming year.
This year’s programme is articulated around the overall theme: The New Rules of Engagement, and four additional sub-themes covering:
To view the Interact 2017 Preview Programme, click here or download below.
The Interact 2017 conference is supported by the following sponsors:
And the following Media Partners :
Note: The Early Bird rate is extended until 18 April. Click HERE to register and book your tickets.
About IAB Europe
IAB Europe is the leading European-level industry association for the online advertising ecosystem. Its mission is to promote the development of this innovative sector and ensure its sustainability by shaping the regulatory environment, demonstrating the value digital advertising brings to Europe’s economy, to consumers and to the market, and developing and facilitating the uptake of harmonised business practices that take account of changing user expectations and enable digital brand advertising to scale in Europe.
Bio
Contact details
Bio:
Mutlu Dogus Yildirim has a broad experience with online advertising, software engineering, product management and business development. He has worked at companies like SONY, and started his own purely-programmatic advertising agency in 2016. He is one of the pioneers of programmatic advertising in Turkish market, having deep knowledge on sell-side and buy-side of the ecosystem. He can speak Turkish, English and German. Originally computer engineer, he holds an MBA degree from Imperial College London, where he worked on “The Impacts of Data on the Online Advertising Industry” as graduation project.
Contact details:
dogus.yildirim@arkitekt.com
+905322702721
Advertising helps support diverse types of free content, fearless journalism and close-knit social connections that span across the world. But as the web has grown, the online ad experience has sometimes fallen short of consumers’ expectations, as indicated in part by the emergence of ad blocking. For example, ads that disrupt the browsing experience or delay access to content can frustrate consumers.
In order to improve the consumer experience, leading international trade associations and companies in the online media ecosystem have joined forces to create the Coalition for Better Ads. The Coalition conducts research in order to develop data-driven standards for online advertising. The goal is to measure consumers’ preferences about the types of ads they least prefer, in order to help the global marketplace take steps to deliver a better ad experience.
In the first phase of the Coalition’s research, more than 25,000 Internet users in North America and Europe were surveyed about their preferences for different types of online ads. The research included desktop web (55 ad experiences) and mobile web (49 ad experiences). The results of the Coalition’s consumer-focused research define Better Ads Standards that identify the ad experiences that fall beneath a threshold of consumer acceptability.
Better Ads Standards reveal the least preferred, most annoying ad experiences that are also most likely to cause consumers to adopt ad blockers. Here are a series of useful links to understand what the Initial As Standards are about:
Mobile Web Ad Experiences: Least preferred formats
The following types of ad experiences were least preferred by consumers and beneath the initial Better Ads Standard for mobile web:
Desktop Web Ad Experiences: Least preferred formats
The following types of ad experiences were least preferred by consumers and beneath the initial Better Ads Standard for desktop web:
Infographic: Ad Experiences that fall beneath the Initial Better Ads Standards
Get the slides here.
Extensive Consumer Research Defines First Set of the Most Objectionable Ad Experiences
Washington, DC, Brussels, March 22, 2017 -- The Coalition for Better Ads today released initial Better Ads Standards for desktop and mobile web that reflect consumer advertising preferences in North American and European markets. The initial Better Ads Standards are based on comprehensive research in which consumers comparatively ranked different ad experiences presented to them while they read online articles. More than 25,000 consumers rated 104 ad experiences for desktop web and mobile web.
The Coalition’s research identifies the ad experiences in both North America and Europe that ranked lowest across a range of user experience factors, and that are most highly correlated with an increased propensity for consumers to adopt ad blockers. These results define initial Better Ads Standards that identify the ad experiences that fall beneath a threshold of consumer acceptability. Six desktop web ad experiences and twelve mobile web ad experiences fell beneath this threshold. The Coalition encourages the marketplace to use these results to improve the consumer experience.
"We are energized by how quickly this cross-industry Coalition was able to research and identify annoying advertising formats,” said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next. “There is still much work to be done but we are out of the gate in our work to make the web less annoying for the average consumer."
“The scope and nature of this research provides insight into how consumers view different online ad experiences, highlighting what’s working well, and what we need to re-think in order to secure more meaningful engagement,” said Nancy Hill, President and CEO, 4As. “The consumer preferences identified in the Better Ads Standards will be useful to our members who wish to take action to improve the online experience.”
During the Coalition’s research, consumers were asked to read articles on simulated high quality content pages, and then to rate comparatively the different ad experiences they received. These consumer preference ratings, as correlated with increased consumer propensity to use ad blockers, identified the following types of desktop ad experiences beneath the initial Better Ads Standard: pop-up ads, auto-play video ads with sound, prestitial ads with countdown and large sticky ads. For the mobile web environment, the following types of ad experiences fell beneath the initial Better Ads Standard: pop-up ads, prestitial ads, ads with density greater than 30%, flashing animated ads, auto-play video ads with sound, poststitial ads with countdown, full-screen scrollover ads, and large sticky ads.
“We hope these initial standards will be a wake-up call to brands, retailers, agencies, publishers, and their technology suppliers, and that they will retire the ad formats that research proves annoy and abuse consumers," said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. "If they don’t, ad blocking will rise, advertising will decline, and the marketplace of ideas and information that supports open societies and liberal economies will slide into oblivion.”
“Tens of thousands of consumers have made their opinions clear through this robust research. Consumers in North America and Europe have similar views on online ad experiences they find annoying and disruptive,” said Bob Liodice, CEO of ANA. “All online ad industry constituents should take a hard look at the findings. They provide valuable insights for the development of consumer-friendly ad campaigns.”
The Coalition plans a broad range of educational activities for its members and others in the industry, including presentations via participating trade associations, conference participation and webinars. By making the research widely available, the Coalition aims to encourage industry participants to incorporate the findings into their efforts to improve the online ad experience for consumers. Journalists and interested parties can learn more about the research methodology, findings and initial Better Ads Standards at betterads.org.
“This comprehensive research and these initial Better Ads Standards provide great guidance on the role ad formats have on the user experience,” said Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe. “We look forward to using the data released today to engage our members about consumer ad preferences, and to upcoming phases of the Coalition’s research that we expect will contribute even more depth and breadth of coverage of European markets.”
The methodology used to support the initial Better Ads Standards is extensible to different global regions and to other digital environments, or to the measurement of new ad experiences in previously tested environments. The Coalition’s roadmap includes plans to conduct additional research on desktop web, mobile web and other environments across various regions including further testing throughout Europe, in North America, Asia and Latin America.
“The Coalition will build on this important work by expanding its efforts to other regions and ad formats,” said Stephan Loerke, CEO of World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). “The global reach of the Coalition’s membership and the continuing addition of new members support our goal to improve the advertising experience for Internet users worldwide.”
“As an industry we have a responsibility to find better ways of making great advertising and content that really engages people. It's in everyone's interest; better advertising leads to a better experience for the viewer and more effective advertising for brand,” said Keith Weed, Chief Marketing Officer for Unilever. “The work of the Coalition to identify consumer preferences around ad formats will be a highly useful and insightful tool for the brand builders, advertisers and advertising agencies who are working to improve the quality of advertising for the viewer while driving effectiveness and efficiencies for the brand.”
"These research results will serve as a foundation to the LEAN Scoring System, which is currently under development," said Alanna Gombert, General Manager, IAB Tech Lab, and Senior Vice President, Technology and Ad Operations, IAB. "Now we have actionable results that can be used to create tools to improve the user experience across interactive screens."
“This research will prove incredibly valuable to the marketers and advertisers who seek to responsibly leverage data to achieve deeper engagement with consumers,” said Tom Benton, CEO of the Data & Marketing Association (DMA). “With these insights and the initial Better Ads Standards, the full marketing ecosystem can move forward together to pursue better-performing ad placements and enhanced customer experiences.”
“The Coalition’s research is timely and useful,” said Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) President and CEO Leigh Freund. “NAI members are committed to a free and open internet which depends on digital advertising. As a result, it is important to ensure that consumers can interact with advertising in a mutually beneficial way. Our high standards for member practices address consumers’ privacy concerns, and the Coalition’s work to address consumer annoyance issues can help guide our members and all advertisers to ensure a better consumer experience.”
“Our members make huge investments in high-quality journalism, and those investments are still primarily sustained by advertising revenue,” said David Chavern, President and CEO, News Media Alliance. “This exhaustive research allows advertisers, agencies, publishers and everyone else involved in the advertising ecosystem to have a much better understanding of the kinds of ads that consumers like to see – and the ones they don’t respond to. It is exactly the type of information that will lead to the higher performance for digital advertising as a whole.”
Members and supporters of the Coalition, in alphabetical order, include the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), AppNexus, Association of National Advertisers (ANA), BVDW Germany (rep. IAB Germany), Data & Marketing Association (DMA), Digital Content Next, Facebook, Google, GroupM, IAB, IAB Europe, IAB France, IAB Tech Lab, IAB UK, Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), News Corp, News Media Alliance, Omnicom Media Group, Oriel, Procter & Gamble, sovrn, Teads, The Washington Post, Thomson Reuters, Unilever, and World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). An additional 80 trade associations from around the world are affiliates of the Coalition for Better Ads. Companies and trade associations that wish to join the Coalition can learn more at www.betterads.org.
With audiences spending more time than ever watching online video, revenue opportunities for content providers are also expanding. But how can the industry respond to consumer demand for video anytime, anywhere, and on any device? Dana Ghazzi, Video Product Manager, and John Almeida, Mobile Product Manager at Improve Digital, look at the factors that have made the rise of mobile video possible, how content providers can keep up with video demand by creating the right content, and how they can capitalise on that demand by using the right technology.
The ascent of mobile video
To put the rise of mobile video in the ad tech ecosystem into perspective, it’s important to remember that it’s a rise that has been fuelled by three factors: the rise of platforms, changes in consumer viewing habits and advancements in technological infrastructure. Firstly, the evolution of mobile has led to a boom in mobile apps and user-generated content. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat have expanded to allow consumers to express themselves in many ways.
As platforms were fuelling a consumer appetite for self-generated content, a rise in mobile viewing habits was also taking place. A 2016 Ericsson report shows that, since 2012, consumers around the world have increased their viewing on mobile devices by four hours a week, while their fixed screen viewing has declined by 2.5 hours a week.
Lastly, there have been a number of technological advances that have pushed mobile video to the popularity we see today. With the arrival of 4G, better video streaming and better phones, there was suddenly an infrastructure that could support video on mobile phones. That led to an increase in mobile video consumption. Today, that consumption is peaking. As research firm eMarketer reports, “one in three consumers watch video on their mobile devices, which means watching video on mobile is already more common than using devices to listen to music.”
More video, more audience, more advertisers
This has created a ripple effect for content publishers that are not major platforms. Increasing their offering of editorial video content for mobile can mean attracting more audience and more advertisers. That makes mobile a built-in solution for content provider revenue.
So, that begs the questions:
The answer is:
Expanding reach: creating the right content
Creating the right content means creating content that harnesses the flexibility of form that video affords, so that it can appeal to audience behaviour on each platform. Think long-form video (such as YouTube), short-form video (Snapchat) and snackable videos (60-90 second cooking videos from content providers such as Tastemade). But also full-TV-length content that broadcasters are making available on mobile phones instead of traditional TV screens. Consumers are already spending a large proportion of time on mobile platforms, so it’s a matter of creating content that fits those platforms allowing publishers to increase reach.
Making content profitable: using the right technology
Content providers who are creating the right content and attracting more audience and advertisers will also need the right ad serving technology to scale, apply data and make video profitable. While serving video ads on desktop was difficult just a few years ago, that is no longer a problem now. The next challenge is to serve video ads on mobile phone, especially in-app. The good news is that according to the IAB, the video ad spend on mobile is rising.
And with mobile ad serving, the biggest challenge is data. Data makes capitalising on audience and ad serving profitable by serving the right content at the right time to the right person. This breaks down as:
Luckily, both ad serving and data harvesting have been made easier by organisations like the IAB who have helped standardise the process. The IAB has enabled the rapid growth of video ads by creating the Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) specification which standardises the schema for serving ads to digital video players, and describes expected video player behaviour when executing VAST formatted ad responses. As the IAB states “Before VAST, there was no common in-stream advertising protocol for video players, which made scalable distribution of ads impossible for ad servers. In order to serve ads to multiple publishers using disparate proprietary video players, ad serving organisations had to develop slightly different ad responses for every publisher/video player targeted.” Standardising the process has accelerated scalability and growth and will be the key to continued growth in the future as new video formats, devices and experiences come to market. But today, with the implementation of VAST we are now in a new video ad serving era, one that is ripe for mobile.
If the revolution of mobile video is here, then the future is bright as mobile video will continue to boom with the standardisation of 360-degree video and virtual reality in the next few years. Video provides an outlet that continues to capture consumers and provide an opportunity for content providers to maximise ad revenue.
IAB Europe will publish the results of its Video Ad Formats survey in April revealing the trends in format use across devices including mobile. To receive a copy of the results please contact Marie-Clare Puffett – puffett@iabeurope.eu
This piece was originally published in The Parliament Magazine on 17 March 2017.
Data-driven advertising provides an indispensable revenue stream without which European media would be hard-pressed to manage the challenging transition to the digital environment.
Without revenues from data-driven advertising, media plurality would decline over the medium- to long-term, with obvious negative implications for an informed citizenry, the basis of any functioning democracy.
Unfortunately, the cookie provision in the European Commission's proposed ePrivacy regulation would reduce the ability of digital media and services to rely on much-needed advertising revenues.
A law on the lines of the proposed ePrivacy regulation would forever change the internet as we know it for the worse, by undermining the advertising business model upon which millions of people in Europe depend for access to content and services free at the point of access, whether as individuals or small businesses.
The proposal also deviates in important ways from the principles of the new general data protection regulation (GDPR). The strict requirements on processing data are not inspired by data protection but by an approach that would be better described as "data prohibition". Data protection is an essential requirement for a functioning digital society and protected as a fundamental right in Europe.
Data prohibition is a pessimistic and backward-looking notion that does not align with the digital reality of modern Europeans' lives. Yet the ePrivacy regulation's cookie rules as proposed by the Commission would do just that: lead Europe into an age of data prohibition.
The GDPR covers the very same ground that the ePrivacy's cookie provisions purport to address. For example, secretly monitoring people's browsing habits for profiling purposes - not something that any legitimate business would be interested in doing anyway - is already outlawed by the GDPR, though protecting people from such tracking has been repeatedly and disingenuously cited as justification for the proposal.
A hard-won compromise, the GDPR carefully balances protecting an EU citizen's personal data with opportunities to process data to not only just fund but improve services that citizens use as well. Unfortunately, an ePrivacy regulation along the lines of the current proposal, would undermine the GDPR and much of the intended value attributed to it.
The consequences of the proposal on businesses providing digital content and services would be as pernicious as predictable: With opportunities for funding services through data-driven advertising dwindling, content and services would have to lower their quality to reduce costs, move behind a paywall, or close down altogether.
The law needs to consider the interests of people to have access to quality information at little or no cost, as well as remember that there are people for whom paying for everything is simply not an option, and who are every bit as entitled to access to that quality information as their more affluent peers.
One can only hope that the co-legislators recognise the flaws and inconsistencies of the proposed ePrivacy regulation and address them, especially by re-introducing important missing elements of flexibility.
Get the slides here.
The study shows how many ad blockers are installed in Romania and why Romanians are avoiding certain online advertising formats.
Mother, Mum, Mam, Mummy, no matter how you say it they’re pretty amazing. At AdRoll, they delved into the depths of their data to see how we treat our Mothers on their special day. Take a look into what they've found from campaigns across the globe in the apparel, beauty, consumer electronics and speciality retail industries.
You can download the infographic below or access the original article here.
I’ll admit before I start that media research doesn’t really compare to the FBI’s X Files unit. We don’t get to investigate unsolvable, mysterious crimes and we don’t get to carry a gun but sometimes we do need to study data to help assemble the truth regarding an industry issue. In this case, that issue is ad blocking.
In February 2017, the IAB released that 22.1% of British adults online are using an ad blocker. When looking at the IAB data year on year the number of people ad blocking has stabilised. From the research we can’t be sure about exactly why this is but possible influencing factors are:
However, analysing the results wasn’t entirely straight forward, the research also showed that 18% of current ad blockers did not name an actual ad blocker, citing instead their anti-virus software or a non-existent ad blocker, when asked which software they used. This suggests that the actual number of people blocking ads in Britain is lower than 22.1% - trusting people to self-report accurately is one of the problems when using claimed survey data.
In an attempt to get as close to the truth as possible we cross referenced the IAB’s latest data with other sources from around the industry. This was made complicated as different companies are conducting research in different ways, so it did genuinely feel like a mystery that needed solving.
We have summarised and drawn conclusions using ad blocking data from the IAB and three other companies: eMarketer, PageFair and comScore which you can read in more detail here.
One interpretation of all these data points is that ad blocking isn’t accelerating at speed, as was once feared, and that less than 22.1% of British adults online are using an ad blocker but, in all honesty we don’t know for absolute certain yet. What we do know is the industry has to continue to work hard to offer audiences a high-quality experience when advertising to them online.
So, on the subject of ad blocking, the truth definitely is out there and the IAB, alongside others, will continue acting as Mulder and Scully on the industry’s behalf.
Overview of IAB UK's latest adblocking research
<strong> Get the slides <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/IAB_Europe/iab-uk-report-ad-blocking-the-truth-is-out-there?ref=https://iabeurope.eu/blog/member-blog-iab-uk-ad-blocking-the-truth-is-out-there/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.</strong>
IAB Europe invites the industry to share insight about their measurement priorities and what would help drive more long-term brand advertising investment into digital media.
Your input is important to ensure that the results of this study reflect the opinion of all relevant stakeholders across Europe.
Take the time to complete the survey and you will receive a copy of the results outlining the priorities of the industry in terms of measurement, metrics and KPIs.
The survey highlights will be revealed at our Interact Conference on 23-24 May in Amsterdam.
Your reply will be treated in the strictest confidence and your name will not be associated with the results unless you give us explicit permission to do so. Please provide your email address at the end if you wish to receive a copy of the results of this survey.
It will take no longer than 15 minutes and will close on Friday 14th April.
