However, the popularity of cryptocurrency, and the lengths at which people will go to obtain them is causing the bandwagon to strain. To better understand this, you need to understand cryptocurrency mining and how that effects websites.

The Mining Process Explained.

There is no shortage of questions about how cryptocurrencies work. However, the one that is most commonly asked is, where do cryptocoins come from? This answer can become extremely technical, but in short, miners use powerful hardware to solve mathematical problems and in return are issued a certain number of cryptocurrency in exchange.

While this process sounds easy, mining can take a long time and is a computationally intense process, which requires a considerable amount of computer hardware, power and cooling resources, to run the processors required to successfully mine cryptocoins.

Mining Malware on WordPress.

Due to the popularity of cryptocurrencies, online platforms have appeared that allow website owners to use the CPU of their website visitors’ computers for mining purposes. Website owners simply sign up for an account and add some JavaScript to their site. These platforms include CoinHive, CoinImp, Adless and Crypto-Loot.

Off the back of these platforms, and fuelled by this intense demand, there has been a considerable surge in mining malware in the form of inserted JavaScript files found on third party websites, in particular the extremely popular CMS WordPress. Unlike legitimate platforms, this malware allows miners to mine for currency through a website visitors’ computer CPU, without the permission of the website owner.

What Will Mining Do To Your Website?

Mining for cryptocurrency has become increasingly more technical and difficult over the past couple of years. The biggest cost of this mining is by far the electricity costs, with the Digiconomist estimating that 60% of Bitcoin’s revenues are eaten up by electricity costs.

What does this mean to your website if it is being used to mine cryptocurrency? The main implication of mining malware will be to drastically reduce a website visitors’ computer performance. This can be put down to your visitors’ CPU resources being diverted towards the mining instead of running their core programs.

One recent example of this is from users of the torrent website Pirate Bay, where users were experiencing a spike in CPU usage when visiting their website. As it turns out, this was a direct result of Pirate Bay authorizing the installation of CoinHive, the JavaScript-based bitcoin miner to its homepage.

How to tell if your website has been hacked and how to fix it.

You may begin to suspect that your website has been infected with this malware when your website is loading slowly or at least abnormally slow compared to its normal rate, or JavaScript functionality on your website such as user login areas, have stopped working. Other indicators can include a higher bounce rate of website visitors due to the slow loading speed of your pages, and an increase in warning notifications on website effectiveness.

Once you suspect your website has been infected, one secure way to confirm this is through the WordPress plugin, WordFence. This free plugin can scan your site for malware, bad URL’s, backdoors and DNS changes. When Wordfence scans your site, it compares your core files, themes and plugins with what is in the WordPress repository and reports any changes to you.

It is paramount that you make sure you detect an infection quickly. If an attacker has managed to slip through your website’s defences then you need to be able react quickly to restore its safety quickly.

Ways to for website users to Prevent Hacking.

While the installation of Wordfence is a great way for website owners to ensure that your site is being routinely scanned for any malicious malware that may have infiltrated your plugins or script, there are other ways for website users to provide additional security from miners. These are best found in the form of browser extensions, such as the following:

1. No Coin Extension

The quickest and easiest way to protect your computer from being used to mine cryptocurrency is by installing the extension, No Coin.  This simple-to-use extension is available to install for Chrome, Firefox and Safari with the sole purpose to get rid of the mining code that’s infiltrated the back end of your page. While the extension is currently focused on the most popular CoinHive miner, you would assume that this will be expanded in the future to include other mining applications.

2. MinerBlock Extension

MinerBlock is another open source extension aimed at blocking cryptocurrency miners from websites. Like No Coin, it blocks the popular miner, CoinHive, along with some other smaller mining applications.

This extension uses two different approaches to block miners. The first one is based on blocking requests loaded from a blacklist of miners, which is the traditional approach adopted by most ad-blockers and other mining blockers. The other approach is through detecting potential mining behaviour inside loaded scripts and killing them immediately.

3. Block coin mining domains in hosts file

One of the most popular options available to block mining domains is to block coin mining domains in the host file. One option is to add the domains to the hosts file of the operating system so that these domains redirect to localhost.

The result will be that your computer will not be able to connect with any of these domains as they will automatically redirect back their own domain. The downside is that you will need to add new domains and modify existing ones manually as the need arises.

4. Block domains in Ad Blocker

Adblock Plus is a free add-on for the Firefox, Chrome and Opera Web browsers. It is designed to block website ads that you may find annoying, distracting, or detrimental to your privacy and security. One its most popular features is the ability to use blacklists and whitelists, which can be customized to block all ad content from an entire website, such as currency mining domains.

Importance of backups and updates.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to leave your website open for attacks is to run outdated versions of WordPress, plugins and themes. Updates often include patches for security issues in the code, so it is vital to ensure that the latest version of all software is installed on your WordPress website.

Creating a WordPress backup can often be something that falls by the wayside, however it should be considered as website insurance in case it falls victim to mining malware. Setting up scheduled backups should be considered as an essential part of your WordPress security plan.

If cryptocurrency mining malware does infect your website, having numerous backups to upload will be essential to ensuring that minimal data is lost or damaged in the process.

Do you think your website has been infiltrated by malware and need help? Contact one of the professionals at Living Online today.

The post Cryptocurrency Malware Infiltrating WordPress Websites. appeared first on Living Online.

Not a week passes by without a new feature or update being released on one of the social media platforms you use. It can be challenging to keep up with them so we have compiled the ones most likely to impact your marketing and provided tips on how you can make the most of them just in time for the holiday season.

Twitter doubled its character limit from 140 to 280

You have honed your skills to express yourself in 140 characters which could make you wonder what to make of this new character limit.

Our recommendation? Use it when you need to. Short and high impacts tweets are still a thing and won’t vanish anytime soon on Twitter, but if a few additional characters allow you to clear up a thought or claim then use it. There is not a day that goes by without a controversy taking place about a tweet that could have been formulated better or been more nuanced so don’t miss on the benefits longer tweets could provide. This is also a good opportunity to explore the use of more hashtags on your tweets and see if there is any impact on your engagement or followers.

A cross-posting feature now allows users to post their Instagram stories straight on Facebook as well.

Previously if you wanted to post your Instagram story across Facebook too, it would have been time consuming and would often lead to reduced image quality as you saved it on your device and re-uploaded it again. This could also take your attention away from what you were covering. Now you can simply choose to share on Facebook at the same time at a click of a button, allowing you to keep on filming and taking pictures without having to break the flow or losing any of the image quality.

Facebook rolled out new features to engage with your offline customers

Numerous features were rolled out in October 2017 such as the improved canvas templates, but some of the more interesting ones are those which allow you to target ads at customers that interacted with your brand offline.

Facebook will now let you create a custom audience made of people who previously have made a booking, visited your store or made a purchase offline – provided they had their geo-location on at the time or gave you some of their personal info such as name, age, phone number, email address through a contact form or upon checkout.

This has a lot of potential in terms of hyper-targeted remarketing but it also allows you to figure out whether your previous campaigns drove traffic to your store. By providing information on your clients, Facebook can match it with the people you previously targeted and who interacted with your ads.

Ad campaigns on YouTube can reach a whole new level of customisation

Google introduced new tools on AdWords to tailor your video ads to your same audience on YouTube.

If your business marketing strategy heavily relies on videos then these updates will be of high interest to you.

Creating ultra-targeted video ads can be very tedious and time-consuming depending on how many segments you want to reach. However, these are also typically the ones which perform the best. Having this in mind, Google released the Director Mix tool that will do the heavy lifting for you. Using only one creative asset, the Director Mix will allow you to create thousands of video ads. Upload as many copy variations, voiceovers and backgrounds as you want and let the system create different versions to match the audience segments you want to target.

Finally, let’s talk about Video Ad Sequencing, another recently launched tool that allows you to bring your audience on an optimised ad experience that unfolds over time. If you have a set of video ads you wish to show to your target audience, then using this tool will allow you to set the order they will appear for an optimum result. The journey can be linear (e.g.: they will watch ad 1 then 2 they 3) or pivot to different directions depending on the audience’s previous reaction (e.g. if they passed on ad A then the next shown will be ad C, should they watch ad A entirely then the next will be ad B).

Be proactive and be ready for future features

There are always features being beta-tested on social media and it won’t be long until we write about them but it can be worth your time to think ahead about how you would utilise some of them.

One of the most interesting features currently being tested on Instagram is the ability to follow hashtags the same way you would follow accounts. This could end up being a great alleyway for a business to organically reach a new and fitting audience –  if the way you use hashtags is done well. Now is the time to have a look at your current hashtag use and to think about how your business could best embrace this future feature.

If you need help with your social media strategy and discovering which platforms will help you reach your business goals whether it be leads, subscribers or sales, contact the Digital Marketing Consultants at Living Online – we have extensive experience helping clients across a number of industries improve their business through their social media.

It’s never too late to transform your social media, so contact us today!

The post Spring 2017 Social Media Update appeared first on Living Online.

You should only hope that you will never encounter her reaction to the current onslaught of virtual reality headsets bursting onto the tech scene. The Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Samsung Gear are just a few of the virtual reality consoles jamming players faces right into a digital screen presenting a world other to their own. Unfortunately, Mums around the world are simply going to have to face the fact that the next generation of devices will only further enhance digital proximity.

People’s livelihoods are increasingly dominated by the screens that surround them. Advancements in virtual and augmented reality only bring humanity one step closer to viewing life through the interfaces of these screens.

So why does any of this matter and how is it relevant to search marketing? We’ll start by covering the change in search capabilities over the years, then look at the rise of augmented reality and its influence within search. When you’re done reading this article, you will understand the potential for augmented reality search marketing to become ubiquitous in our very near future.

Semantic Search

For years now, semantic search has been a core focus of search engines. The semantic aspect of the term here refers to the idea of providing a searcher with the most relevant answers to their search queries. To break it down simplistically, in the past when you searched for something in Google, it would return results that were directly and singularly related to the keywords you had entered. Nowadays there are far more factors at play such as consideration of a users’ search history, location, interests, etc. When I type in ‘Perth’ into Google, the search engine returns content for Perth, Western Australia. If I lived in the Scotland city of the same name, because of semantic search, I’d expect to see a very different set of results.

The Hummingbird algorithm implemented by Google in August 2013, very much focused on improving this notion of semantic accuracy. Hummingbird fixated on paying more attention to the context of the searcher in a bid to better understand their query intent. Applications like Google Now, Siri and S Voice have been an extension of this, operating to deliver results based on voice command.

Even the recent introduction of Google Home is a step towards the semantic search direction. The voice activated speaker for the home can speak to users and has the ability to learn about them specifically to relay back personalised answers, not just generic ones pulled from the web. Admittedly it’s a little creepy, but Google Home’s operative ability is certainly reflective of the heavily customised path that search is taking.

The Rise of Virtual and Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is where we can say, semantic search will truly succeed. Given that user interactions are based on their surroundings, there is no better way to match individuals’ queries with their context.

Futuristic television shows and movies have titillated audiences with the prospect of digital utopias cultivated from virtual technologies. Well folks, the future is here. Augmented and virtual reality are no longer experiences reserved for technological evangelists. Instead they begin to hit the mainstream public as apps utilising features of integrating the virtual with reality begin to rise to popularity.

So what exactly is the difference between VR and AR? The former refers to entirely replacing the real world with a simulated version. The latter on the other hand, largely maintains the background of the real world but embeds aspects of virtuality within it through graphics, GPS data, video, etc.

Pokemon Go, a location-based augmented reality game launched in July 2016, has been downloaded more than 500 million times worldwide. The use of this kind of technology is certainly not the first in the realm of online gaming but it has been the first to have such a colossal reach within general society.

And now we’re beginning to see the wave of virtual reality headsets hitting our store shelves ready for mass consumer consumption. So far these devices have been primarily marketed for entertainment purposes in the form of gaming but there lies a lot of potential for other applications.

Perhaps the greatest path for opportunity comes in the form of marketing and we’ve definitely already seen big moves in this space. With the launch of their XC90 SUV for example, Volvo released an app where users could test drive the vehicle in a virtual setting via their phones on headsets. On top of this, consider the realm of digital marketing possibilities for car brands when vehicles transition to becoming autonomous. What makes virtual reality so different is its ability to give consumers an experience much more immersive than any form of television or rich media advertising ever could. Given this move towards experiential marketing, what if VR headsets became AR wearable devices? What then are the possibilities for search marketing?

Who and What’s Getting Funded?

Firstly, it’s important to know what exactly is going on in the industry. Particularly within recent years, investors have gained a keen interest in funding R&D within the field. These are just a few of the organisations currently leading the way:

• Blippar, a visual discovery app, announced the close of a $54 million funding round in March of this year. The software utilises the abilities of image recognition, computerisation and augmented reality to translate real life objects into digital entities. Users are able to ‘scan’ real world items to unlock more information about them.
• Magic Leap announced that it had raised $793.5 million in a Series C round of funding for its wearable augmented reality eyewear that allows users to interact with virtual 3D objects.
• Mindmaze, an entity playing in the healthcare and virtual reality fields, raised $100 million to fund the vision of developing a virtual reality experience that could be used across multiple platforms and within services including brain imaging and neuroscience.

Undoubtedly this investment behaviour means that the next steps forward will be one integral to consumers around the globe – search within the real world.

Search Engine Augmented Reality Marketing

With the augmentation of real-world settings via digital mechanisms, the opportunities for search marketing are endless. Augmented reality companies such as Blippar, Magic Leap and Mindmaze have the potential to provide an ‘encyclopaedia’ of the physical world. Ambarish Mitra, CEO of Blippar, recognises that occasionally text-based search is the most practical tool for search but ultimately a lot of people’s inspiration for queries is sourced from their 3D world. Consider if you were out for dinner one night and had walked past a restaurant you hadn’t been to before. Now imagine if you could scan that restaurant on your phone or other wearable device and immediately receive important real-time information including wait times, pricing, reviews, etc.

The return of search results through AR devices all ties back into semantic search. Sure, this sort of information can be easily found via a text-based search but in a world where consumers increasingly expect their demands to be met in the most accurate, appealing and timely means possible, technology such as this will be revolutionary.

Augmented reality therefore puts a particular amount of onus on the local. People will be searching in their immediate settings. Already local SEO is something leading digital marketers have recognised as vitally important in most businesses’ marketing campaigns. With augmented reality, the focus becomes ever more important as many AR apps use GPS technology to provide information on the environment that surrounds users.

So how would AR work for search? First let’s take a look at it from the brand side of things. As a local business, you’ll want your brand to jump in front of the consumer, grasp their attention and drive their feet straight to your store. With AR, you can literally accomplish this. A customer looking for a nearby cafe can scan their surroundings on an app or wearable device to reveal branded messaging from metres away, all achieved from geo-targeting capabilities. Here are just a few ideas of what local businesses could achieve:

Looking for a new dress? A nearby clothing retailer advertises a 20% sale by having virtual balloons and sale signs overlay the store when ‘scanned’ by wearable AR eyewear.

A coffee shop could send notifications to AR app users when in store. Upon opening the app an animated drink of coffee is thrown onto the screen. The coffee splatter reveals a loyalty program offer.

A book store gamifies it’s AR search marketing through having fluttering books encircle mobile app users approaching its store. Catch enough books and you receive a free bookmark with your purchase.

Now let’s flip to a user-generated perspective. A significant part of organic search for many online businesses is the ratings and rankings they receive from consumers of their products and services. You can undoubtebly expect to see these reviews in a first page return of results for a brand name. How would this work in a virtual context? Consider, that if upon finishing a meal at a restaurant, you could rate the experience and this would immediately contribute to the restaurant’s average rating hovering front and centre above their building on an AR app. People could watch in real time as the score rises and falls with each and every vote cast. Local SEO will be more important than ever as search marketers race to optimise review and rating signals for their clients.

PPC Comes to Life

AdWords on AR. It’s likely that if augmented search becomes mainstream (and it will), search engines won’t hesitate to try and reap reward from it. Depending on the platform, businesses may have to pay to have specific messaging or promotions show up in the virtual context of their nearby vicinity. With most shopping hubs and retail districts being lined with hundreds of stores, it could become a matter of the highest bidder receiving most prominent display of their ‘ad’.

Augmented reality within search marketing will also extend beyond the local. An interesting aspect of Magic Leap’s funding was that it was led by the mega Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba. A major barrier to shopping online compared to the offline experience, is the inability to actually engage with a physical product. Now consider the implications of AR for ecommerce. Customers would have the potential to ‘handle’ products in 3D via their smartphones, tablets, wearable devices, etc. Google Shopping campaigns, for example, could turn into interactive engagements. No longer are product results static 2D images but transformational 3D experiences. Imagine what a Rolex would look like on your wrist or how an Ikea couch would appear in your living room!

So what Does the Future Hold?

So far everything I have discussed is in its early stages. However, it would be unwise to dismiss the idea that the proliferation of AR apps is right around the corner. There will definitely soon be a market to tap into with early adopters already beginning to pick up on the impressiveness and versatility of augmented reality technology. It’s going to be an exciting time for digital marketers as we can harness the power of a digitised modern world to reach an audience like never before. Moving forward, search marketers need to capitalise on the prospect of intensified local and physicalized marketing to sell goods and services. The user engagement model will be transformed and it could only be a matter of time before augmented reality forms the new predominant medium of digital marketing.

The post Augmented Reality the New Solution to Search Marketing appeared first on Living Online.

So why hasn’t this happened before, and why does it need to occur now?

Previously, Google’s AdWords billing for Australia came from its office in Singapore where they were under no obligation to pay tax to the Australian Government. By the start of the November this will change as AdWords billing will now be charged from their Australian-based branch. This is largely due to pressure from Malcom Turnbull who in March last year started pushing for a proposal which would see large multi-national companies charged with the Australian Goods and Services Tax so that they can deliver “a fair return to the countries where they make most of their money”.

You may recall that on October 1, 2016, the Australian Tax Office made changes to the GST Law where cross-border supplies of digital products and services would now be subject to the Goods and Services Tax if those businesses had been based in Australia for more than 183 days over a 12 month period, and had a GST turnover of $75,000 or higher.

What does this mean for online advertisers in Australia?

From the 1st of November, all invoices from Google AdWords (which previously only charged for the direct ad spend) will now feature a GST charge. While this may not have too much of a financial impact on those companies allocating only a small amount of their marketing budget to AdWords, for those Australian businesses which spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (and more!) advertising on this platform each month, it could have a significant impact on their finances and budgetary commitments. Of course, the actual impact on companies will largely depend on whether they currently pay GST or get a GST refund as part of the quarterly BAS return.

This further highlights the importance of having an AdWords account optimised to attract the most relevant prospects, ensuring that every dollar of your ad spend (and the GST that is now attached to it), returns the greatest value to the business.

If you want to make sure that your AdWords campaign is operating at its highest efficiency, feel free to contact us then click here to learn more about our AdWords service.

The post Google Is Now Charging GST On AdWords – What Does This Mean For You? appeared first on Living Online.

The following screenshot was taken yesterday when searching in the Chrome browser on desktop for the brand name of our client PP Wholesale.

It’s apparent that Google is currently testing this layout, as a follow up search showed the following traditional location of the Google My Business page.

This experiment comes after Google ceased displaying AdWords text ads on the right-hand side of desktop search results earlier this year. This change in the Google Adwords layout saw the complete removal of all right side advertising aside from Product Listing Ad boxes and ads in the knowledge panel. The change was intended to create a more consistent experience across desktop and mobile, however it also had the effect of increasing competition and driving up minimum AdWords CPCs, and pushing organic results further below the fold due to the inclusion of up to 4 AdWords ads at the top of the search results.

The ramifications of no right-side ad serving and fewer ads appearing on a SERP led to some backlash from the SEO community, where many feared that the increased dominance of AdWords in the SERPS would negatively impact click through-rates for the organic search results.

Paid Search marketers were more divided in their opinions. Some recognised the benefits of all text ads now being able to include call-out extensions, location extensions, sitelink extensions, etc., whilst others had concerns about the potential rise in AdWords pricing given less supply per page.

Hence, it’s evidentiary that whenever Google makes amendments to its interface, it can be viewed with trepidation due to the potentially significant impacts.

Moving the Google My Business listings from the right side to top left would follow in the wake of the AdWords changes by adopting the mobile-first design approach.

Furthermore, similar to AdWords text ads, with the increased prominence of the Google My Business page we see standard organic search results pushed down to accommodate for the business listing information. Having the business listing displayed straight under the search bar gives the Google My Business information a far more ‘native’ appearance and is likely to achieve greater click-through rates to the Google My Business page. Organic results, which often include the business’s own website, third party reviews and social media pages, are pushed below the fold.

Importantly, the decreased prominence of the business’s own website may lead to more advertisers deciding to advertise on their brand name keywords in AdWords.

Further, it will also undoubtedly lead to business owners placing more emphasis on the importance of Google My Business reviews.

For now, however, it appears Google is in its early stages of testing this new layout. If Google does decide to roll this change out permanently, then the implications for both AdWords and SEO will be significant.

The post Google Experiments With Moving Google My Business Listings To The Top Of Search Results appeared first on Living Online.

“Typical,” he says, “Obviously someone as technologically illiterate as you, doesn’t have an ad-blocker installed.”

Now two things spring to mind. Firstly, I don’t take very well to being referred to as digitally un-savvy given that I just so happen to work exactly in that field. But secondly, and more worryingly, he has a point. How hadn’t I come across this phenomenon before?

After a 30 second wait whilst HBF tries to convince us to get health cover (for what my brother describes as “like an eternity in hell”), the trailer starts playing. It certainly does not disappoint as we dive into the dystopian world of Westeros and surface the storylines for the upcoming series. But throughout watching it, I am distracted by a world of quite the opposite – the thought of this seemingly advertising-free online Utopia, previously unheard of to me.

Unwilling to feel the wrath of my brother’s condescension ever again (though most certainly near impossible), I wasted no time in installing Adblock Plus on my computer.

And then my life changed.

Catching up on MasterChef episodes online has never been easier. What was previously a one and a half our episode with incessant, repetitive and irrelevant commercials now became a 55-minute video only inclusive of the content I actually wanted to see.

Browsing through news websites were no longer unpleasantly halted by Kia overlays leaving me guessing if I was actually a soccer mom with five kids who really needed a ‘7 seater family car like no other’.

And most importantly, I can now evade those scrummy adverts from the very (ahem) legal websites I stream GoT episodes from.

So basically ad-blockers remove many forms of online advertising, particularly video commercials, banner ads and displays ads that feature on content publicising websites. They are also able to remove some paid search advertising on Google as well as trackers, social media sharing buttons and a few other features.

Of course, this all doesn’t come without its consequences. The unfortunate reality is, a lot of online content is only made free to us because of advertisers. As much as we all despise wasting minutes of our lives on being promoted extraneous material, it really is core to the capitalist business model our society is built upon. Ad-blocking inundating the online world threatens the fairness of this system and potentially the future access to content. Additionally, by removing companies’ abilities to track users, whilst a win for privacy, is a loss on businesses’ ability to gain consumer insights. So whilst I do receive a great amount of satisfaction in ridding myself of crappy advertising, it’s not so great for content creators.

Secondly, I’ve got to admit it’s a bit hypocritical for a marketer to purposely avoid advertising but in a world where doctors smoke, politicians lie and teachers hate children, can you really judge me?

Consumers: A Storm of the Sour

When it comes to online business, consumers are sovereign and ultimately decide on how things play out. King Joffrey here, will form an excellent representation of consumers for my GoT analogy to ad-blocking.

HBO

What do you mean I have to listen to some bladesmith sales garbage before the gladiator tournament?!!

Yes, perhaps Joffrey is a bit of a stretch from the billions of users online but whatever he says will go (unless you want your head on a spike), and it’s pretty much the same for when it comes to consumers.

By people choosing to keep their ads displayed, publishers continue to make revenue, advertisers deliver their message and content remains produced. On the flipside, by choosing to block ads, some parties gain but most will lose.

And badly they have lost. Disastrously is probably a more adequate descriptor for just how much advertisers and publishers have suffered as a result of software such as Adblock Plus and Adblock Fast. A 2015 report on the cost of ad-blocking highlighted that the estimated global revenue loss due to ad-blocking was $21.8B in 2015. And if they weren’t crying out in desperation already, the global growth of ad-blocker users in 2015 was a stomach-churning 41%.

Additionally, it’s not only networks and news/content publishers at risk. Internal search engines such as Seek, eBay and pretty much any other website that relies on banner advertising to support their free listings, are put in dangerous territory by ad-blocking technology.

Yet, some argue that advertisers and publishers are nothing short of deserving of this consumer backlash against them. The Lannister distaste for the Starks saw several of the latter’s family members meet a not-so-pleasant end. Users too, have developed a similar disliking to the annoying ubiquity of terrible digital advertising and have now found a solution to kill off as much as they can (just as brutal I know). Critics suggest that an abuse of advertising privileges have driven consumers over the edge and the only form of rectification is simply to make better ads.

In fact, it is likely that consumers don’t actually want to avoid all ads. Despite the Starks being a right pain in the Lannisters’ rear ends, Sansa Stark did come of use to Joffrey. For consumers, some advertising too, is perfectly worthwhile to them and actually it is only the immensely interruptive and completely irrelevant marketing that seems to create a problem. Good advertising, messaging that is non-obstructive, piques individuals’ interests and adequately targets their needs, is likely not the reason that over one million Australians have chosen to download ad-blocking technology.

All very valid points. But can you hear that? Yes, it’s the sound of thousands of marketers groaning at yet another moralistic claim to simply make even more appealing advertising. Remember that brief era on YouTube where advertising, in a bid to become more interesting, would turn meta:

“STOP. Don’t click the skip button. We know you want to do it. We know you’re thinking, I couldn’t care less about this ad. But trust us, you’ll want to hear what we have to say.”

It was unique and funny when the first commercial did it. It was even funny when a few others used the format. But after a while, viewers grew tired of the joke and once again, ads were skipped. Not to mention, ad-blocking software remained endlessly downloading.

So you might not need a degree in aeronautical engineering, but delivering quality marketing content actually desired by the viewer is pretty much like rocket science.

[/media-credit] Unless you’re going to demonstrate by flaying a peasant with that blade, I couldn’t care less about your 30% discount on all Valyrian steel.

However, in a recent discussion on ad-blocking involving some of the industry’s key players, Ben Williams Communications and Operations Manager at Adblock Plus, threw a spanner in the works. He stated that native ads that are served could most certainly be blocked.

As a result, many native ads are in fact vulnerable since, as opposed to being published, are ‘served’ across sites in the same way that advertisements are. Some would go on to suggest that advertisers should therefore strive to only create content that sites would willingly publish. Red Bull’s viral campaign where Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner made a freefall leap from space 128,100 feet above Earth was a classic example of this. The company was able to satiate the media’s hunger for an inspirational story and subsequently drove immense awareness for the Red Bull brand.

But not every company is a multi-million-dollar business. Not everyone can afford to invest pools of money into testing and training for a man to jump from space. So if consumers are king and their demands are always met, how then to foil the king’s plan?

Publishers: A Clash of Counteractions

Publishers have a duty to ensure that consumers are not unfairly barraged with irrelevant advertising when visiting their websites. For them, sympathising with ad-blocker users is just about as tough as empathising with Joffrey. But as hard as it may seem to avoid viewing these users in a negative light (aka as ‘freeloaders’), this is an essential perspective needed to combat the problem of ad-blocking. Users are ultimately a businesses’ assets and they vote with their software choices because of the way in which websites sometimes abuse boundaries of excessive advertising. Publishers must therefore keep in mind that they need to limit the invasiveness of commercially targeted material.

However sometimes, consumer expectations are too unsustainable to meet.

The Small Council is a body that advises Westeros’s King of the Seven Kingdoms. As the council served (or at least attempted to serve) Joffrey, publishers serve consumers. They provide them with the information they want, most often free of charge. Yet sometimes consumer demands can seem as ruthless as those of Joffrey. Many people believe that they should receive content for free with zero advertising, often unaware of the significant consequences of this adamant belief. After all, consumers don’t want a world where large publishers, in their oligarchical ways, decide to band together to enforce pay models on their platforms right?

But ah! That is indeed one of the solutions. Bitcoin has recently become a suggested facilitator of micropayments for accessing advertising-free content online. Sure in the past, paywalls have been criticised for the simple fact that people are stubbornly against paying for something that they previously received for free, but in an increasingly digitised world, this hurdle can somewhat be overcome. The physicality of money is diminishing, as cash payments have transitioned into credit card swiping and now contactless payment such as PayPass and Tap & Pay dominate the form of exchange. Alongside such changes, the care for expenditure too diminishes. Bitcoin, as non-traditional currency, further enhances the dissociation between spending and the feeling of spending. If consumers don’t take significant notice to the payment they make for content, then this does indeed present a potential solution to the problem. Now if only the Master of Coin could come up with a quick fix as good as that!

[/media-credit] In order to proceed with today’s meeting, we require 5 sacks of gold.

Australian TV networks have taken to implementing ad-stitching, also known as server-side ad insertion (SSAI), as a method to bypass blockers. SBS recently utilised this technology through Switch Media’s Ad Ease software to overcome threats to their advertising monetisation. Through this technique, publishers are able to place ads on their video content through the cloud as opposed to using third party servers which are vulnerable to being blocked. Ad blockers work by blocking domains that lead to these third party servers. As such, they are able to block ads yet reveal the publisher’s content at the same time. Through publishers integrating ad serving and content publication into one stream, this limits the chances of ads getting noticed and blocked.

However as with any solution, there are of course limitations to this technique. SSAI essentially increases the difficulty of maintaining a website due to the fact that most current ad technologies are largely built on the client side (i.e. the browser) as opposed to server-side. As a result, developers have to implement client-side code in order to support users’ experiences in viewability, interactivity, clickability and so forth, which makes things quite complex for website operators.

It’s probably also important to note that undoubtedly, ad-blockers will fight back with software of their own that overcomes ad-blocking prevention. In fact, there already exists tools on the web such as Anti Adblock Killer, which do exactly this.
Several publishers have also taken to begging, I mean er… requesting that users turn off their ad-blockers before reviewing content on their site. ‘We notice you have an ad-blocker enabled. Would you consider supporting our work by switching it off?’ Reeks a bit of desperation and passive aggression doesn’t it? But playing the victim definitely will do you no harm if you’re a well-loved brand. In some instances, publishers even give the option to either turn off ad-blocking or if not, subscribe to their newsletter. Admittedly this is actually a very smart way of turning a tough situation into a positive outcome. However, it wouldn’t be surprising if those email databases were filled with a lot of begrudging contacts.

So, if there’s something Bob the Builder couldn’t easily fix, it would certainly be the perils of this unrelenting technology. Obviously the whole scenario isn’t as straightforward as publishers and advertisers would hope for. It’s much like a never-ending game of cat and mouse where each side’s solutions are repetitively one-upped by the other. Yet, publishers have no choice but to continue the battle or potentially meet their demise.

Advertisers: A Dance with Distribution

The hand of the king, after the king himself, holds the most powerful position in Westeros. With an abundance of wealth to his family name, Tywin is placed at the centre of decision making to continue the Lannister reign. Advertisers too, wield a lot of power in the online world. They are the ones that ultimately decide how to allocate their budget and content in the most effective way possible.

[/media-credit] Joffrey, you should check out Lannister Bannisters. I’ve heard they’ve got the sturdiest range in King’s Landing.

So undoubtedly publishers suffer a lot when it comes to the problem of ad-blocking technology. However, there has also been some debate on the financial loss that advertisers themselves may face. The good news is that if their ads are blocked, they are unlikely to pay for them even if served by the publisher. Bannerconnect’s recent study on the dangers of ad-blocking to advertisers’ media budgets identified that in over 9, 500 tests of blocked ads, not one was registered as viewable and therefore they were not charged. Even ads that are not blocked but simply ‘hidden’ from the viewer do not pose significant risk to budgets.

But that’s pretty much where the positives end. In consumers choosing to cull digital marketing, advertisers are unable to get their message out to the masses. This is particularly worrying for the online platform which already is far more fragmented than its mass media counterparts in television and radio. Without reach and frequency, advertising will fail. Online marketing campaigns may begin to see dwindling results when it comes to click-through-rates and conversions. Already, the success of several PPC campaigns have been diminished by declining impressions. In fact, some blocker software is so extreme, websites’ own calls to action are eclipsed from the viewer. This would likely cause you to question the ethically paraded claims that ad-blocking software simply provides consumers with what they really want. How can this be true when some software goes so far as to block information customers may actually want to see? The technology has become so advanced that online advertising is now much like a seal in shark infested waters.

Social media has been a controversial answer to this predicament for advertisers. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are less defenceless to ad-blocking software, especially when it comes to their in-feed advertising. Secondly, as has been so far, ad-blocking usage is relatively low for mobile devices versus PCs. With a large slice of social media entities’ user base existing within the mobile platform, they have yet to be burdened significantly by this issue. Even so, many argue that the ‘walled gardens’ of social media sites allow for them to have overbearing control on advertisers through content and segment restriction.

And now, even these major players can no longer bury their heads in the sand as ad-blockers continually update with a new-and-improved vision to, just like a delirious Tyrion with a crossbow, annihilate anything in their path.

[/media-credit] Sorry Dad, I was sick of all your Lannister Bannister crap.

Amidst all the panic, some have argued that ad-blocking couldn’t be better news for advertisers. Proponents suggest that this online revolution pushes digital advertising to reach new limits where advertisers must work to make their promotions attractive and suited to the user. Why waste money on trying to get impressions for those who have no interest in seeing them in the first place? To turn down a route of economics, advertisers now must pull in their customers instead of pushing information onto them. They are also likely to witness greater conversions as many unqualified consumers have been shelled by their choice to use blockers.

On the other hand, people who decide to block online advertising may in fact also be excellent customers to target. If you studied marketing in school, you’d probably tire of the saying ‘break through the clutter!’. But ad-blocking in fact enhances the means to accomplish this. Advertisers who are able to target this segment with ‘premium content’, will undoubtedly stand out from the crowd. Why? Brands that are able to bypass blockers and become seen, will have more traction among ad-blocking users than standard users. As they experience less ads on average, these individuals are more likely to interact with advertising that reaches them.

Don’t worry, yes I can still hear the frustrated groaning of marketers all around. How exactly does one bypass ad-blockers?

The ad-blockers call it quality.

The rest of the industry calls it money.

Ad-blockers: A Feast for CEOs

Do ad-blockers as they say, really have consumers’ best interests at heart?

To suggest that the topic is controversial, would probably be the understatement of the century.

In actuality, ad-blockers generally don’t block all ads. Take Adblock Plus. The company enforces an ‘Acceptable Ads’ program to deem ads that meet certain perquisites as satisfactory for display. They acknowledge that not all online advertising is necessarily intrusive and the acceptable ads permit is a way of finding common ground with publishers and advertisers who require revenue for content to remain free.

“We hope that the initiative encourages the ad industry to pursue less intrusive ad formats and thus have a positive impact on the Internet as a whole” they state on their website.

Cue the eye-rolling.

But there’s more:

“It provides us with a viable source of revenue, which we need to be able to administer the Acceptable Ads program and continue development of a free product.”

Cue the scoffing.

In other words, yes you can have excellent advertising that meets each and every piece of their criteria on size, placement, content, etc., but don’t be expecting any of your ads to be unblocked without a sizeable bank account to fit.

Furthermore, entire websites can be whitelisted, essentially have none of their advertising blocked, by entering into agreements with the software producer. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that these ‘agreements’ require a certain amount of financial resources from the publishers’ end. But with advertising forming nearly the entirety of their revenue sources, some may consider it a necessary price to pay.

Sound familiar to you?

The publishing industry has certainly not shied away from their feelings on the matter. Extortionists and hypocrites are popular insults hurled at ad-blocking companies because of the way in which they siphon money from ad spend. Many argue that CEOs of these businesses have found a way to divert marketing budgets into their own pockets. Additionally, the irony of needing money to sustain the delivery of a free product whilst stripping the means of revenue from other free products is for many, simply outrageous.

The internet in its pervasiveness, enormity and brilliance falls greatly victim to unethical practices that are tough to circumvent. Putting on a façade of morality in ‘delivering better advertising for consumers’ whilst holding ads ransom for monetary gain is understandably infuriating for publishers and advertisers. More significantly, consumers are likely to face the consequences as a result.

So ad-blockers – the king’s army or the king’s enemies? In other words, do ad-blockers exist to serve users or ultimately serve themselves at the users’ cost?

Tyrion never really had Joffrey’s true interests at heart. Through presenting himself as an ally, his feigned love but actual hatred of the Joffrey rule, was only second to that of the Tyrells.

[/media-credit] Oops, well he certainly had that coming.

That being said, not all ad-blocking businesses require money as a means to allow acceptable ads. For some, such as AdBlock Fast, the focus truly is on making a stance against unreasonable online marketing as opposed to earning profit. Even on Adblock Plus’s website, they claim to have a team of volunteers on board to review program applications from small and medium publishers unlikely to afford paying for whitelisting. How much of this is just another mechanism to shroud themselves in ethical reasoning and hide from their capitalistic motives is questionable. But it does at least indicate that some companies will be willing to take a bit of initiative to reach a level of compromise.

Ad-blocking parties are also quick to retaliate to the constant criticism of their ethics. They state that publishers have no moral high ground to stand on with a history of rampant invasive advertising that completely disregards consumer interests. In the end, consumers should be able to decide what they want to be exposed to and if that doesn’t include advertising, then that’s good enough a reason to have it removed. If one can channel zap through radio and television to avoid messaging they don’t want to receive, then they should be able to make those same decisions online.

But perhaps the greatest hilarity of this whole scenario is that several ad-blocking companies are known to buy advertising to drive downloads. Those with incentives for large user bases, i.e. those that can profit from publishers’ fears of them, invest greatly in promotion of themselves.

And that right there folks, is the textbook definition of irony.

A Game of Unknowns

So the fact that my 16-year-old brother knew more about ad-blocking before I did is worrisome. Why? If digital marketers were hoping that this whole online catastrophic change was just a phase, they’d be greatly mistaken. The younger the generational segment, the lesser their attention spans and the greater their technological savviness. If the current generation can’t put up with the existing state of digital advertising, the next certainly won’t. In the very near future we could see installers of the software reaching 80%-90% of total users and undoubtedly, the technology is well on its way to becoming a household staple.

There are really only two paths that can be taken. The first is that publishers take matters into their own hands, pull a Donald Trump, and sue everyone. Copyright laws have been suggested as a way of arguing this claim. Some ad-blocking software modifies publishers’ webpages which are against the laws of fair use. Blocking also epitomises the concept of anti-competitive behaviour, particularly when it comes to certain software companies’ whitelisting processes.

The alternative is that the way of the web is going to have to change. Whether that is through pay models, increased subliminal advertising or the revolution of marketing standards online, something is bound to happen when loss of revenue is no longer sustainable. Who knows, we may even regress back to the caveman era of only having magazines, newspapers and encyclopaedias for information! (Don’t worry, I’m only kidding).

And so the tug-of-war continues. Ad-blockers continue to push their ad-blocking technologies to the online world, publishers continue to try and thwart them, ad blockers retaliate, and so on and so forth. Realistically, the fight between blockers and online advertising cannot persist forever. Ultimately, it is likely that only one can triumph. But for now, the future is only unknown.

[/media-credit] When you play the game of ad-blocking you win or you die.

The post Advertising and Ad-blockers: The Tales of an Online War appeared first on Living Online.

Programmatic Advertising is quickly taking over both the digital, and traditional marketing channels in a monumental shift of advertising budgets.

This multi-billion dollar trend has spawned a frenzy of articles and guides aiming at explaining this emerging discipline.

But here is the problem: programmatic advertising remains very complicated and confusing.

So with this post I’ve aimed to create a comprehensive but still digestible guide that demystifies the topic.

I will explain programmatic advertising in the simplest possible terms, while also providing you with the knowledge you need to impress even the most discerning  dinner party companions.

Why do you need to know Programmatic?

In 2013, 50% of brand marketing budgets were spent on Programmatic. In 2017 this figure is expected to be around 83%, and by 2020 it will be 95%.

The programmatic media purchase process has many industry experts thinking that it is the next big thing in terms of ensuring every dollar within the marketing budget is well spent. In case you read that too quickly, let me repeat this again for you, …marketing budget… not digital marketing budget.

Why? Because these experts are already testing the use of programmatic for traditional marketing channels. Once they fine tune it, the industry will change forever very quickly. So, if you have anything to do with marketing, then Programmatic is something you should understand sooner rather than later.

What is Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic means, in any context, something that is automated.

In the digital marketing context, it refers to the automation of buying and selling Display Advertising.

This particular type of advertising comes in several forms and it relies on rich media such as images, video and audio to convey a message.
Its most common type of ad is the display banner.

Now let me demolish the first biggest barrier in understanding Programmatic:

Programmatic Advertising, Programmatic Buying, Programmatic Display and Programmatic Marketing are often used interchangeably and refer, to the same identical process.

Is that all?! No, but it’s a great first step!

What about Programmatic RTB?

RTB is only a subset of Programmatic. We’ll have a closer look at it later.

In order to really understand what we refer to when we talk about Programmatic, we need to have an idea of what was happening before programmatic became mainstream.

Before Programmatic

Before programmatic advertising, the process of placing digital ads looked more or less like this:

A car manufacturer (Advertiser), let’s call it Toyota, wants to advertise its new, low emission, family car to internet users that match a particular buying persona, e.g. young families that are environmentally conscious. So they decide to target internet users that have the following characteristics:

1. They live in the San Francisco area
2. They have visited a car manufacturer website in the last two weeks
3. They have bought solar panels online before

Toyota then reaches out to an agency, the middle man (Marketer) who has in mind a selection of websites (Publishers) where these ads will work.

After several sales calls, emails, faxes, implementation issues, technical hiccups, and several weeks later, the marketer would seal the deal with the client over a beautiful lunch with a martini or two. You might argue with me that the lunch and martini sound great, but you have to admit that everything else doesn’t.

It was slow, complex and very inefficient.

When was Programmatic born?

There is not one single date you can pinpoint, because the automation doesn’t happen overnight of course. It emerged as an evolving process, dictated by the ability to implement the technologies available at the time. Without going through the extensive history of display advertising, here are the milestones that made Programmatic what it is today.

• 1994 The launch of the first digital ad.
• 1996 The launch of the first ad network. A media company that aggregates ad space from publishers and matches it to the advertising demand.
• 2005 Ad Exchange launch. Effectively a market place that allows real-time bids for ad inventory, just like AdWords with search.
• 2007 sees the introduction of a demand-side platform or DSP. It basically allows marketers to manage multiple ad exchanges through one interface.
• 2007 Sees the introduction of Supply Side Platforms or SSP. This the same as DSP but on the seller’s side.
• 2011 Programmatic Real Time Bidding (RTB) goes mainstream.

One big barrier in understanding programmatic is knowing what all the unfamiliar acronyms stand for and what each of these software services does. So before proceeding further I have prepared an explanatory cheat sheet below:

Remember that process of placing an ad we described earlier?

Thanks to software automation, it now requires a fraction of the time!

It takes expensive and inconsistent variables out of the equation, like human ad buyers and sales people.

Suddenly the whole process is much more efficient.

But before you start thinking about apocalyptic scenarios, where robots rule over us and hatch human babies to feed their thirst for energy in a matrix-like scenario, stop there.

Machines are not taking over our jobs yet, they are just being relegated to perform the part of the process that didn’t require skills and was repetitive. This has freed humans from menial tasks and has allowed them to focus on campaign optimisation and strategy.

So what does today’s Programmatic Process look like?

Going back to our example, once Toyota engages an agency to display adverts for a certain type of audience, the agency marketers have the ability to set these parameters and their budget through the DSP – Some advertisers have an internal team and can skip the costs of the agency – The DSP then starts to automatically place bids in real time for ad spaces/impressions on an Ad Exchange, which then communicates instantly with different SSPs. SSPs can represent thousands of different Ad Inventories and through these, the DSP is able to finally pick ad spaces that match the demand of the marketers. Once chosen, the ad is then displayed to the user.

That is a simplified version to allow us to understand the process.

Reality looks a lot more like this:

Much more confusing right?

Want to know the best part?

This whole process happens in milliseconds every time a page gets requested by a user and starts to load. By the time the page has loaded, all the relevant ads are appearing in front of the user.

Can’t I get the same outcomes using google Display Network or Google AdWords?

This particular type of targeting or customer segmentation is not possible to perform with other advertising tools like AdWords or Google Display Network (GDN).

This is all to do with the way AdWords and GDN access first-party and third-party data.

AdWords doesn’t offer any, as it focuses almost exclusively on query targeting.

The GDN offers limited access to third-party data, but it pales in comparison to the amount of information Programmatic is able to offer through Data Management Platforms.

An evolving discipline

The reality with Programmatic is that it’s an environment that is very dynamic and that is changing constantly. For example, the ad exchange is not only the place where the auction takes place. Sometimes, if the marketer is after high volume impressions and is less interested in the quality of the ad space, or is not interested in very specific targeting, the ad exchange can offer this loosely matched and low priced inventory. Ad space is deemed to be low quality when the user that is visiting the website does not have a third-party cookie installed and therefore lacks any sort of behavioural information that would segment them into a specific audience.

Ad Exchanges also offers remnant ads. These ads may come from high quality Ad Inventories, but are deemed to be remnant when they have been unable to sell. They are included in the ad exchange at a significantly lower price.

On the other side an SSP can bypass Ad Exchanges and DSPs completely and talk directly to a big agency. Or it can interface exclusively with an Ad Exchange that hosts auctions only to a carefully selected group of agencies.

These different and intricate scenarios often determine the type of Programmatic advertising that is taking place.

How many types of Programmatic Advertising are out there?

Well, that is quite a hard question to answer. It’s like going to the doctors and asking them to cure your knee pain. Depending on the specialisation and experience of the doctor, each of them will diagnose the pain to different causes and will most likely advise different therapies.  Programmatic is similar. If you ask different players, you will get different answers.

For the sake of simplicity we can identify three main types of Programmatic Advertising:

• Private Exchange
• Programmatic Direct
• Programmatic RTB

Below is a quick overview of how they differ from each other

Programmatic RTB

Also called Open Auction, Open Marketplace and Open Exchange. It is regarded by many as the Wild West of ad auctions. It is the first type of programmatic that went mainstream a few years ago. RTB stands for Real Time Bidding. It’s the same type of auction that is used every day in the stock exchange.

For those familiar with online advertising, RTB is very similar to how Google AdWords works, but instead of bidding for search queries you bid for display ads.

RTB auctions happen mostly on the AdExchange, where SSPs sell their impressions and DSPs buy them.

From the Publisher perspective:

The publisher allows any and all buyers to participate in this type of auction. This tactic is usually used by publishers that have large amounts of advertising space on websites that are not topical or are not able to offer a big audience. It is also used as a way of selling remnant inventory. That is, ad space that has not been sold through the other, more remunerative, types of programmatic advertising by the big ad networks or media companies.

RTB is often regarded as the “race to the bottom” for its nature to favour whoever is willing to drive their prices lower.

The publishers usually don’t know who is buying their ads, they can only try to introduce a minimum of control by including price floors or blocklists. But that doesn’t mean RTB is a lower quality type of Programmatic; high quality ad space is also regularly sold through this type of auction.

From the buyer’s perspective:

The buyer is able to buy from any publisher that is willing to trade impressions on the ad exchange. The buyer has the advantage of pushing for low prices. On the other hand, buyers don’t know who they are buying from. There are too many transactions that take place every hour for the process to be 100% traceable.

Fraud and trust issues:

In the past there have been instances where fake publishers have been able to sell large amounts of ad space that in reality didn’t exist. The industry and IAB have come together to tackle these problems and combat piracy, malware and fraud by building Quality Assurance Guidelines.

Programmatic Direct

Programmatic Direct, Premium or Reserved all refer to same style of auctions.

Programmatic Guaranteed and non-guaranteed are often considered as subsets of Programmatic Direct.

If this is not enough to confuse you, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), in a bid to clarify programmatic, has introduced a further nomenclature: Automated Guaranteed.

Welcome to Ad Tech…

Programmatic Direct started around 2011, when Programmatic RTB was on the rise. Some advertisers were resistant to jump on the new practice due to perceived inadequacies with RTB. The agencies that were committed to offering good quality advertising space on the internet saw the potential of automating the direct exchanges between publishers and clients.

Perfect, so Programmatic Direct is high quality ad space while RTB is about low-quality stuff?

Not really, Direct is just a different type of programmatic that is only a tiny portion of the Programmatic market.

“Invitation-Only Auction”

Also known as private exchanges auctions.
This auction type is very similar to an Open Auction except a publisher restricts participation to select buyers/advertisers via Whitelist/Blocklist. A publisher may choose to not participate in an Open Auction and only run an Invitation-Only Auction. It is important to note that an Invitation-Only Auction is an auction and buyers will be expected to bid on inventory.

Upmarket publishers have been cautious about making their premium ad space available for sale by automation because they think, probably rightly, that it will drive their prices down.
Consequently, some of these publishers, such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Economist, have created invitation only auctions which limit the number of advertisers who can bid for their ad space or buy it in advance, giving them more control over pricing.

Conclusions

Programmatic is a complex subject. Because of its flexibility, the process to deliver the same outcome can take almost infinite paths. The evolving nature of the discipline, the rapidity of the changes and the number of players involved, makes it inevitably hard to create industry standards or even try to establish consistent naming conventions.

Not long ago, an article from The Economist argued that Programmatic was not delivering greater transparency and that many businesses were complaining about a “technology tax”. Some argued that ad-tech firms take advantage of the Programmatic opacity and charge extra costs on ad spend.

The bottom line? We need to understand programmatic.

It is already part of big business’ plans. American Express marketing and business insights director has admitted “We talk about how we’re going to go programmatic, rather than talk about why”. Nevertheless, the industry is on the march and shows no sign of stopping soon. Now that Google and AOL are already trying hard to streamline the process and become a one stop shop for programmatic buying, we’re already on our way to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Welcome to the future.

The post Programmatic Advertising appeared first on Living Online.

As an aside, see if you can count the total number of movie references throughout this content piece.

Before we get ahead of ourselves…

What is a self-driving car?… and

What on earth does this have to do with digital marketing?

I always liked the concept that driverless transport would feel a lot like The Knight Rider, featuring the Hoff and autonomous sports car, ‘KITT’. Unfortunately, in reality, the birth of the autonomous vehicle is much less like a Hollywood movie, and more accurately resembles that of a driverless taxi. The elemental nature of self-driving cars won’t change. You will still be getting from points A-Z (you hope). The true benefit is the user experience; more specifically, spare time. You will be able to sit back, relax, and fill this time doing whatever you like (within the confines of the law, folks!). From a scientific standpoint, for the tech-heads and newly-informed, Techopedia defines the self-driving car as a “vehicle that can guide itself without human conduction” – sounds a little less badass than the Knight Rider, but is fundamentally accurate.

Likewise, the user-experience will be a little less action orientated than Will Smith and Tom Cruise in the above action movies, though invaluable to everyday life – a greatest thing since sliced bread, if you will.

Which brings us to the next question – What does this have to do with digital marketing?

Let’s do a little test on how you arrived at this page, and see if the question answers itself.

1. How did you find this content piece?
2. What device are you using to read this on?

I’ll hazard a guess and say that no matter how you found this article

1. The referring channel was digital – say Facebook, Google, backlink or a digital advert somewhere, AND
2. There’s a 51% chance that you’re reading this on a mobile device – a tablet, phone or laptop.

Hopefully you know where this is going (here’s a hint – DIGITAL)…

Before we dig into the good stuff, here’s a bit of a background on driverless cars –

Self-driving, driverless or autonomous (use whichever phrase you like) vehicles have been in existence for close to forty years – in extreme beta. In the 1980’s, the then called ‘self-sufficient cars’ were being researched and tested for consumer use by “Carnegie Mellon University’s Navlab and ALV projects in 1984, and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich’s Eureka Prometheus Project in 1987”, according to Autonomous-car.com. Fast forward 20 odd years and autonomous vehicle technology had accelerated into the mining industry for functional purposes – like any new technology, the goal was to provide a faster, easier, safer and more cost effective way of achieving the same goal. Now jump Back to the Future, and come present day, the likes of Volvo, Mercedes, Google, Tesla and more are reinventing the ‘space race’ by working ferociously to produce the most desirable, commercially scalable, autonomous vehicle for the Average Joe.

Now that you’re up to speed, how will self-driving cars change digital marketing?

To begin with, remember the two-question test above? I hope so. The reoccurring buzz word was “digital”. Without digital, the conversation ends here.

Now we’re on the cusp of covering the marketing aspects of this article, but first, try to digest these facts and keep them in mind as we move forward –

Digital Usage

The average person spends

• 90 mins on their phone per day.
• Amounting to 23 days a year.
• Totalling 3.9 years of the average person’s life.

Now consider

• We spend more time online per day than we do sleeping,

With

• 51% of this time is satisfied through mobile device usage

What we’re essentially looking at is a captive digital audience en masse – globally.

Now, think about how much time you spend commuting each day – either in a car or public transport? (once driverless cars become the norm, public transport will become increasingly redundant).

It may shock you to know that studies indicate that on average, we spend approximately 3 hours a day driving and/or commuting.

We’re also basically addicted to mobile and being connected.

Combine these two data points together and it’s looking like a perfect storm of demand and supply.

Now let’s sink our teeth into the really juicy digital marketing related stuff in autonomous vehicles.

Time. The World’s Currency

“Time is now the currency. We earn it and spend it…. I just wanna wake up with more time on my hand than hours in the day” (Will Sallis, In Time).

A huge benefit of the self-driving car is that the driver becomes the passenger, and as passengers, travel time will become free time. This is the pretext to this whole blog post, so from a digital marketing perspective, it’s time to start thinking about every single driver on the road from here on out as transitioning from driver to passenger, with each and every person gaining more TIME to spend/invest in the best ways they see fit.

If we take into account the consumption of digital usage outlined above, we can modestly say that as marketers and business professionals, we too have been gifted an additional 2-3 hours a day that we can use to provide product and service information to potential customers.

Channels

We can speculate all we like about how new digital marketing channels and opportunities will arise from the production of driverless cars (and we will, read on to find out more). But first, think about your current marketing spend (I sincerely hope the vast majority is invested in digital means). It’s probably distributed based on your goals – conversion rate, exposure, engagement for example – across the following channels: PPC, social, emails, remarketing, content marketing, automation, offline marketing… and more.

So we know where our marketing budget is spent. Now think about what the passenger of a driverless car might get up to now that they have so much more time to engage in digital means….

Web browsing, online shopping, Netflix’n’Chill (Orange is the New Black and House of Cards are must-see), social media, gaming apps (Clash of Clans and Candy Crush are hitting home runs), Tinder(?), or perhaps posting a Google+ review on Google Business for a local bar. These channels all rely on digital engagement and present a plethora of advertising opportunities. I know this isn’t news to you, but think about these mediums in congruence with your autonomous vehicle. A good number of the digital marketing trends unravelling in 2016 and beyond are nicely constructed to showcase in autonomous vehicles. This will include relevant, real-time, location-based ads, directly to your mobile device – we will go into more detail below.

And so in begs the question, what can we do to creatively market to passengers during their 2-3 hour daily commute, using current and trending channels, in a non-disruptive and informative way?

Digital Marketing Channels for Driverless Cars behold

Let’s run through some of the must-know channels that will dictate the success of our digital marketing efforts within the sprawl of autonomous vehicle production.

Intelligent Marketing

Location-based advertising and Geo-targeting

These elements are the Starsky and Hutch dynamic duo that solidify the relationship between digital marketing and autonomous vehicles. In simple terms:

1. Location-based advertising is a technology that pinpoints a mobile user’s location to provide location specific ads.
2. Geo-targeting uses a person’s physical location to publish content to web visitors based on their geo-location. Directories and international websites predominantly use this technology

It’s 7pm on a Thursday night and you have made dinner plans with your best pal. You’re in your self-driving car affectionately named ‘KITT’, with your mobile device wirelessly connected to your car, feeding navigational instructions. As you busily scroll through your Facebook feed on your way to your favourite restaurant, an ad pops up offering you a 15% discount on your first meal at a new boutique restaurant 5km up the road. Naturally you can’t pass this offer up! So you capitalise on the opportunity by tagging your friend in the post and tell ‘KITT’ to change course so that you and your friend can try out this new hot spot, with the complimentary 15% discount.

As per driving laws in many countries, using your phone while driving is illegal (no-brainer), so the opportunity to intercept a potential customer en route to their favourite restaurant simply isn’t currently possible. Soon, with autonomous vehicles freeing passengers from the legalities of accessing the internet while driving, advertisers will be able to present offers to customers with a high purchaser intent based on real-time data – How? You know they’re travelling to a restaurant nearby, your restaurant is around the corner, and the passenger is scrolling through Facebook – hey presto, relevant ads grab their attention.

The same principle could apply based on travel patterns for your morning coffee and more…

This sort of scenario will become increasingly common and more sophisticated than current geo/location targeting, but it provides context for the purpose of relevance. We can hypothesise that as driverless vehicle technology advances, you won’t even need to be using a mobile device to be presented with these adverts, the technology will form part of the cars off-the-shelf package when purchased from a dealer.

In-Vehicle Marketing

If trains can have televisions promoting ad partner content and busses can plaster the inside of their vehicle with posters, why can’t intelligent advertising integrations form part of a self-driving cars genetic makeup? From augmented/holographic head-up displays (HUD); to LED monitors, cognitive voice over and language processing, and various app/firmware updates. To put this in plain terms, all internal surfaces could be high resolution screens for display advertising, streaming your favourite movies, or as secondary monitors for your laptop. The additional advertising real estate present enormous opportunity at what could be cost efficient. What we’re talking about is leveraging a range of advertising and marketing technologies that are already accessible, and embedding them as freestanding applications within your car – this Go-Go-Gadget car is starting to sound like a marketer’s new best friend!

New Ways to Shop While Fully Reclined

Sit back, put your chair in full recline, and start finger smashing your mobiles touchscreen, because there’s no time like the present to do some online shopping.

eCommerce – or Online shopping – sales still account for less than 10% of online vs. retail shopping in developed countries, including Australia and USA. But consider this:

• Autonomous vehicles will hit the streets with overwhelming volume, and
• When they do, there will not be a scenario where fully autonomous vehicles and manned vehicles share the same highway – due to safety issues.
• When these vehicles hit our roads, they will replace all manned vehicles in the region – e.g. Consider a driverless conversion of all cars within a 5-10 hour drive of your house.

With 1.2 billion cars operating globally in 2014, and average commuting times reaching 2 hours per day, we’re talking about an additional 2.4 billion hours of potential mobile browsing time every year that will be used for online shopping and other digital ancillary tasks. The resulting impact will be fierce competition among businesses and advertising costs will explode – basically an all-out Braveheart battle on the digital landscape, minus the bloodshed.

So not only will there be opportunities for increased visibility, but also a requirement to be damn good at optimising campaigns through programmatic, website/mobile optimisation, RTB, social media advertising, remarketing etc.

Personalised, customer centric marketing

Now I’m not talking about holding the customer’s hand. Personalised marketing in autonomous vehicles will involve a combination of:

• Granular targeting for campaigns, backed by
• Detailed big data analysis (possibly algorithm generated like programmatic).

Compared to Google’s ‘Custom Match’ and Facebook’s ‘Custom Audience’, in-vehicle’s real-time targeting capabilities through connectivity will be more like hyper-personalised marketing.

Connectivity through IoT – you’ll never be alone again

The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming all the hype as its commercial application becomes increasingly digestible to marketers, businesses and the general public. In its most basic and relevant form, we’re talking about device-device and user-device communication. Marketo believes that IoT will supply “endless opportunities for marketers and advertisers to listen and respond to the needs of their audience based on behaviors” – their infographic through iScoop is worth a gander.

Productivity before and after work

Surely we all work hard enough already, right? Gruelling hours, tireless report writing, spreadsheets a plenty, and exhaustive growth hacking… If you’re shaking your head, don’t worry, this will apply to you.

With all this extra time at our finger tips, consider how much more productive we can be with our working day. There’s no reason why emails couldn’t be expedited; business calls be knocked on the head nice and early; projects left to the last minute could be extended by a whole 1 or 2 hours – university students are guaranteed to thrive on this…

Consider as well that the commute home may also present an opportunity to leave work 30-90 minutes early as you complete final tasks in the car – assuming you don’t get too distracted by the influx of creative digital marketing collateral.

Subsidisation – Technology acquisition with a reduced price tag

“Subsidising through advertising”

The first and most obvious autonomous vehicle subsidy is “subsidising through advertising”. Consider introducing autonomous vehicles to Uber X – an already affordable ride sharing service – then add optional advertising within the vehicle via built in, internal displays. For the customer, we then reduce their transportation fee by subsiding the fee through digital advertising.

“Click and drive through”

Coined in the Living Online office, “click and drive through” presents an enormous opportunity for businesses to leverage an autonomous vehicle subsidy through customer incentives. If you make a purchase at any large grocery retailer, or clothing megastore, you will likely be offered some sort of VIP membership for discounts or a voucher for your next shop. Instead, retailers of all kinds can offer their customers credit for an autonomous vehicle ride for their next store visit, or provide transportation to pick up their newly purchased electronics. The cost may be significantly less for retailers, while the benefit for customers remains omnipresent – the big selling point here is convenience

“Subsidisation through streaming media providers”

This is essentially an exchange service for media companies to acquire new service subscribers while offering free transportation. If Spotify and Netflix offered you a joint subscription that included free transportation, would you be on board?

Tying it all together

How will we make this work? It doesn’t really matter which of the above (and more) come into fruition for marketers, as long as we adapt to the new environment.
We, collectively, need to be agile in our approach to developing digital marketing strategies that will provide a gateway for us and our customers to promote products and services to this new relevant audience. As it stands, “agile marketing” strategies are in the early adopter’s phase – most people only apply tried and true methods of marketing, which means that they’re often late to the party on new developments. This also means that they’re often subjected to the law of shitty clickthroughs. To take advantage of the early-mover benefits that will undoubtedly be present on the ‘digital marketing in autonomous vehicles’ front, it’s important to be willing to venture where no one has gone before.

What will be next?

Now take a breath. Well done. This is a lot of information to digest, so let me cleanse your mind with a few key points worth remembering.

• Who?
  • YOU!

• What?
  • Autonomous Vehicles – Self-Driving Cars – Driverless Cars.
  • Digital marketing WILL evolve with the automotive industry. If there’s one thing marketers live by, it’s “adapt, survive, overcome”…

• When?
  • These cars have been in the concept phase for YEARS. It’s a matter of time before they start rolling up our driveways – be sure to hide your cat.
  • Many of the digital marketing technologies already exist. If you are across the latest and greatest digital trends, you will be ready to hit the ground running on automation ‘D-Day’

• Where?
  • Developed (1st world) countries will be the first to adopt the autonomous vehicle phenomenon at a large scale. The rollout will be impacted by bureaucratic speed bumps, but is inevitable nonetheless.

• We’re talking digital – this will apply everywhere.

• Why?
  • Time is valuable. Driverless cars will gift users additional time to spend every day – the safety benefits are pretty attractive too.
  • The acquisition of time for drivers-turned-passengers will be spent somewhere. When you’re in the car, on the road, mobile engagement will dominate.

• How?
  • Evolution. We as humans constantly seek technological advancements that enable a better standard of living. With heavy hitters including Google, Tesla and Volvo on the scene, the new age ‘Space-Race’ is sure to reveal a 3 tiered podium in due course.
  • Learn, adopt, apply and adapt. A portion of the digital marketing practices that will apply to self-driving cars already exist. The best course of action is to: learn current and trending marketing practices; be across developing marketing technologies; be agile when applying these practices; be adaptable – make your strategy adaptable – things will change.

There’s no doubt that the commercial availability of autonomous vehicles will offer a significant upward trend in the automotive industry, both in production and technological application. But how will this impact on our marketing efforts, and will it be a positive or negative change?

From what research tells us across various sources is that there will be an unprecedented opportunity for digital marketers to innovate using new and to-be-established digital marketing techniques/practices. The full scope of these techniques will emerge in time, though some early insight includes the current ‘Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends”.

The post Digital Marketing in Autonomous Vehicles appeared first on Living Online.

Competition is heating up as billions of dollars in marketing budgets accelerate the shift to online channels, generating increased demand for limited inventory. New never before seen job roles like “growth hacker” are being created to help manage increasingly large investments. Powerful tools have emerged to help “make life easier”, each with a steep learning curve before they start delivering dividends.

As these new technologies are born, old techniques will die.

2016 is a year of remarkable opportunity for those who choose to embrace this change. It will also mark the end of the road for those who refuse to adapt.

Read on to find out what’s hot in digital marketing right now so you can position yourself for success.

1. Digital Advertising

Companies are spending more and more money on ads.
Consumers attention spans are shrinking – it’s possible that you’ve even been distracted by Facebook, your email inbox, your phone, or some other alluring eye candy in the 26 seconds it would have taken you to get to this point in the article – so companies are spending more money on interruptive and alluring advertising in order to compete for their attention. All industry experts agree that even more cash will get pumped into the ad market as time goes on. As a matter of fact, PWC’s Matthew Hobbs believes that internet advertising will be the single biggest segment of the advertising industry by 2019.

The increase in ad demand has been driving up ad prices. In our last post, we went into detail about how Google has recently reduced its number of available ad spots. Google’s sudden move has caused the price of ads to surge – both a benefit to Googles bank account and a new challenge for SEM optimisation.

(source: wordstream.com)

A look at Mark Irvine’s CPC map reveals that the United States is still the leader when it comes to high CPC costs, and for now, Australia is just a couple of spots below, averaging a 5% lower CPC. Considering that average wages and prices in Australia are consistently higher than those found in the US, it’s only a matter of time before Australia overtakes the US in CPC rates.

Ad algorithms know where you’ve been and what you’re looking for.
New marketing automation techniques allow advertisers to access your browsing history by reading a 3rd party cookie in your browser. As a result, it is now possible to deliver just the right ad at just the right time. Have you been searching for Toyota on Google lately? Modern advertising algorithms can understand what you’ve been up to and serve up ads that will show you how you can get a good deal on a car loan.

Real-time Bidding
Real-time bidding, or RTB, is the digital evolution of buying and selling advertising space on websites to the highest bidder. Programmatic real time bidding functions — like AdWords — efficiently by connecting publishers (selling ad space) and marketers (buying ad space) through a demand-side platform (DSP). The platform feeds on user input data that sets display parameters so the business displays ads only in locations chosen, and only to audiences that meet specific criteria. RTB has been around prior to the millennium and started being adopted by publishers more vigorously in 2005. Publishers nominated their ad space to be retailed through the Ad Exchange. This is essentially an advertising store where marketers want to buy ad space for their business or their clients – in an open auction!

(source: votarymedia.com)

Programmatic Advertising, Buying, Marketing… and the rest
Taking one step further in the algorithmic classroom, programmatic is considered as “digital marketing’s saviour” by some. Programmatic is a technology permitting advertisers to automatically target their desired audience using metrics obtained using complex algorithms. Programmatic can be referred to using the following terms:

Programmatic;

• Direct,
• Guaranteed,
• Premium, and
• Reserved

Not to mention the range of ‘branded’ names applied to Programmatic advertising as they try to claim some ownership over the channel. Ignore these terms and stick with the standard industry terms above.

(source: stateofdigital.com)

This programming revolution has essentially turned Mad Men into an algorithmic program. Unlike real time bidding (RTB) which only allows advertisers to bid, buy and sell display ads in real time, programmatic takes this one step further and allows publishers to restrict the bidding auction for pre-qualified players only, and allows marketers to reserve ad space, stocked in the ‘ad inventory’, to promote products and services to a pre-defined target audience; across a multitude of publishers. So basically, programmatic advertising automatically targets consumers based on browsing data (cookies), using complex algorithms, when permitted by the publisher, triggering a bidding war for display advertisements.

It is worryingly common for programmatic RTB and programmatic direct to be confused. So to help demystify the nuances of each technology:

• RTB: real time bidding is a sub-set of programmatic advertising whereby marketers can manually select display locations by domain to pitch ad sets to a target audience.
• Programmatic includes RTB technology as a part of its process in serving advertising as per predefined campaign parametres, but does so on a large scale while reserving ad space in an automated process, which RTB doesn’t allow.

Although RTB is still a powerful tool to be utilised, programmatic allows marketers to take a more sophisticated approach through automation by digging into consumer data on a more granular level when running ad campaigns.
Gaining a fuller understanding of both advertising technologies will require a good deal of research. Marketers are not expected to fully understand the complexities of each technology on the whip around. If you’re slow on the uptake and adoption of this concept, both on the surface and in practice, start digging faster!

2. Mobilegeddon

Mobile is king. Long live mobile!
Every credible source for marketing information agrees that the mobile web will continue to grow. Cisco thinks that that global mobile traffic will increase eightfold between 2015 and 2020, reaching 20.6 exabytes. That is why a mobile-first mentality is at the core of new developments across the digital world. Only last month, Google made a strong move in that direction by changing to the way Adwords are displayed on their search results by making the desktop experience more like the mobile experience.

Mobile advertising, site development and the app-world
Mobile marketing will ever increase as consumers spend exceeding amounts of time on mobile for digital tasks (and some offline tasks). Marketers responded to Mobilegeddon with responsive design to make their websites more mobile friendly; leading to the next logical question – optimized website, or mobile app? With the development of apps becoming increasingly common for functional purposes and life hacks (games, tools, business, media…), the demand for apps delivering information and functionality over websites will increase. In fact, in 2013 “80% of mobile device time [was] spent on apps”. Fast forward to 2016, and this will bring with it a string of opportunities and challenges for digital marketers that will draw on an adaptive approach to advertising, promotion, optimisation and UX (and don’t forget sales).

(source: smartinsights.com)

Stephen Gill of Tiller is quoted on Mashable as saying “Mobile native ads draw double the CTR of display ads, and in many cases, bypass ad blockers to reach the right audience in context. Seventy-three percent of U.S. media buyers are now investing in native. By 2018, spending on native will reach $21 billion.”

3. Digital vs Traditional Marketing, not for much longer…

At the moment, digital and traditional marketing are being treated like North and South Korea in organisations across the globe, with clearly demarcated boundaries and dismissive animosity. In the post-digital world, we’re less likely to see ‘digital’ as a standalone activity. Both traditional and digital marketing will be fully integrated, falling under the umbrella of ‘marketing’. In order to promote this new culture, Amanda Rendle – the global head of marketing at HSBC– has gone as far as banning the use of the term digital in her team.

(source: enablecode.vn)

Corporates are starting to adapt to changing market conditions. Proof of that is the more frequent appointment of a Chief Marketing Officer who is in charge of bringing together the two marketing functions.

A key reason for this divide is that many professional marketers originally gained their knowledge through university. Given so few universities cover digital marketing beyond a handful of seminars or lectures, it becomes a sort of taboo subject until graduates look to gain digital specialisations based on interests and career goals. Thankfully this shortfall will be negated from the top-down as corporates rectify the problem due to necessity.

4. Content Marketing

Content marketing is here to stay.
Content marketing was the big trend in 2015. Well it’s not going anywhere. According to a poll conducted by Smartinsight, content marketing will be even more important in the coming years. If your content isn’t valuable, it will sink to the bottom of the bin.

(source: smartinsight)

Videos, videos, videos.
Search engines like it when visitors land on a page – and stay there. They award higher rankings to pages that captivate interest and devalue those that disappoint. Adding an interesting video to your site is still one of the best ways to keep a visitor’s eyes glued to your page. Cisco predicts that by 2019, 80 percent of all internet traffic will consist of video streaming.

Digital Influencers are becoming more important.
According to Deloitte, more and more consumers are arming themselves with product knowledge that they’ve discovered on the internet. As a result, when they enter a store they often already know what they are going to buy.

No wonder why popular bloggers, vloggers and trusted product reviewers are increasingly sought after by brands that want to promote their products. This report from Group High shows how a growing number of these content creators admit to offering their service in exchange for money.

5. Data-Driven Marketing

Analytics and Big Data.
When so many marketing decisions depend on cutting-edge technologies, big data analysis comes to the rescue. Experts predict that analytics will grow further as a sector in 2016. Interestingly at the same time cmo.com.au points out how an increasing number of companies are appointing CMOs that have an analytical background and are able to take action on ever growing volumes of data.

(source: steffondavis.com)

Big Data (including market and customer insight and predictive analytics)
Much like Google Analytics spits out website performance data in a user-friendly interface, the term and function of “Big Data” allows us to analyse, infer and predict or ‘spit’ out market shaping conclusions in a calculated, quantifiable way. Big data embodies the holistic principles of what data-based information can do for a marketer, thanks to the web having absorbed billions of interactions, across a multitude of platforms, for many years. Historically, subjective or anecdotal inferences on consumer behaviour have driven market direction and shift. In the last 2-5 years, big data has put the ‘persuasive power’ back in the hands of marketers by leveraging cold hard facts for the betterment, growth or evolution of a business, in a highly responsive, and reactive manner.

6. Social Media

More ads between your friend’s posts
Twenty percent of the world’s population logs on to Facebook at least once a month. But marketing experts are divided when it comes to its future. WARC, an online service for advertising best practice, recently stated that Facebook’s advertising business will continue to grow thanks to its regulated environment. On the wider internet, ad blockers are surging due to the obtrusive way ads are often being delivered. But social platforms can guarantee a balance between amount of ads shown and user experience. As a result, advertisers expect a better return on investment.

(source: Living Online)

A Forrester 2016 report painted a less rosy picture for Zuckerberg’s product. While ad spend is predicted to increase, the overall lack of ‘organic post value’ on Facebook will lead companies to prioritise other platforms, such as Instagram (incidentally owned by Facebook), Vine and Twitter.

Natural language processing
NLP is a field of computer science, artificial intelligence, and computational linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages. As such, NLP is related to the area of human-to-computer interaction.
NLP in social media and beyond, will, and is, helping marketers learn more about the customer through millions of social interactions across Web 2.0 and various media. Although not a cost effective tactic for agencies at present, data scientists and analysts are already scraping through data to gain intrusive insight into the minds of purchasers.

7. The rise of ultra-personalised marketing

Teradata’s principal consultant Umporn Tantipech believes that hyper-personalised marketing is the next big thing. The 20th century was about crowds. The 21st century has arrived, and it’s all about you (I wonder what the 22nd century will hold). The more you can make your targeted audience feel like you are listening to their individual wants and needs, the more appealing your brand will seem.

8. Connectivity and Automation

Internet of Things (IoT)
Tied in with big data, the application of marketing to the ‘internet of things’ (IoT) is focused heavily on data gathering and real-time analysis. However, due to current implementation deficits for marketers in practical functionality, we are unlikely to be able to leverage its raw power effectively for some time. Technology companies dealing with sophisticated and integrated networks will be the first to truly benefit, though the capabilities of IoT will soon drip feed into the lives of everyday marketers. How? We’re not yet sure, but Marketo suggests that “51% of the world’s top global marketers expect IoT will revolutionize the marketing landscape by 2020”. While some think that we are currently in a state of IoT being fully integrated with marketing, the truth is that while machine-to-machine or device-to-device connectivity is already here, the future implications of IoT on marketing really depend on how the maturation of its current application into a commercial landscape develops; especially as it moves away from its current, more industrial environment.
Looking further into the future, it is highly likely that we will see opportunities where applications and systems will talk to one another without human intervention, like: “Google search, Mobile SEO, GDN, Google Now, Google Local, App stores, iTunes, mobile, vehicle autonomy, Google Play” (+ buying and selling).

Marketing Automation
Automation is the progressive and ‘now happening’ next step in digital marketing. Again, stemmed from previously industrial applicability, marketing automation has been embedded in the core aspects of all modern businesses to-date. Automating tasks supported by data insight saves time, increases effectiveness and broadly allows ‘more to be done better’. By interlinking tools like CRM, email, content, social and more, automation can be valuable for businesses in both the B2B and B2C realms. Marketing automation has current application for businesses when there is sufficient scale to the organisation and volumes of traffic to justify the investment. In the future, it will likely marry up with IoT and big data, especially given that automation relies heavily on data. With more than 49% of companies already using marketing automation technology, the number of organisations making some level of automation a part of their strategy will likely rise to become a staple in every marketer’s arsenal.

9. New search engines – dominating in numbers, not search volume

Search Engines
Google’s reign over the digital realm will continue for the foreseeable future. What will change is where people go for niche searches, whereby the engine provides something that Google doesn’t – perhaps a better service or differentiating feature to that of Google, Bing, Yandex and so on. DuckDuckGo is a good example of an independent search engine gaining traction (although now partnered with Bing and others). Launched in 2008, as the modern, simplified, distant cousin – in appearance only – of Google; DuckDuckGo has an Alexa global rank of 764 and draws the interest of large markets such as the US, Germany and the UK. Furthermore – and interestingly – the key search queries for this site are variations of DuckDuckGo, which suggests that their brand is growing. Again, although Google is dominating the ‘search-space’, new search engines will continue to pop up, drawing in audiences seeking different features, functions or user experience.
For your notebook, DuckDuckGo’s key differentiator is “we do not track you” – which seriously goes against the grain.

Vertical Search Engines and Aggregators
Much like Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo and the rest; independent and 3rd party supported vertical search engines (VSE) and aggregators are fast becoming the preferred search intermediaries for information. Search Engine Watch pitches a rather vexatious opinion that Google’s reoccurring modifications will disrupt users loyalty, turning searchers to source other vessels of information. It’s a little rash to suggest that Google’s behaviour will directly result in VSE and aggregator’s overthrowing the search kingdoms reign. Though as brand name and performance of VSE’s and aggregators grow, these platforms will start to absorb portions of Google’s market share.

For example: If you are interested in purchasing a new car, would you search “new family car for sale” in Google, or would you jump on to www.carsales.com.au? Nationally, in Australia, consumers know that there are only a small handful of directories, aggregators or vertical search engines that can provide specified, relevant search results based on highly customised search queries. Google simply can’t compete with this type of unique user enquiry and platform functionality.
The same concept applies to house hunting (www.realestate.com.au), image origin search (www.tineye.com), and www.mixturtle.com to browse thousands of music files.

As VSE’s and aggregators continue to build their brands and subscriber following, they will rely less heavily on search engine organic rankings and paid advertising, in order to grow their audience. It’s in this instance that traditional monopolistic search engines will start strategizing competitive rebuttals. After all, the news.google.com service already exists, so what could be next? Cars.Google.com, Music.Google.com, Property.Google.com…???

10. Technology/Science

Cognitive technology
Deloitte expects companies to adopt a number of cognitive technologies this year, including machine learning, natural language processing and speech recognition, most of which aim to increase the value of their products or service – and more.

Deloitte predicts that by the end of 2016, more than 80 of the world’s 100 largest enterprise software companies (by revenue) will have integrated cognitive technologies into their products, a 25 per cent increase on 2015. By 2020, Deloitte expects about 95 per cent of the top 100 will have done so. For marketers, this will open up new advertising channels such as marketing through learning and experience.

Wearables (e.g. Apple Watch, activity trackers, augmented reality)
The “wearable tech industry will treble inside the next five years – with a whopping 245 million devices expected to ship in 2019”. With integrated, user-interfaced, ‘connected’ products, comes tasty opportunities for marketers. As Erick Schonfeld, executive producer of DEMO states, “if it’s Fitbits and Nike Fuel bands, wearable tech is already hitting the mainstream today”. When it comes to items like Google Glass and more sophisticated virtual reality (VR) products, the sooner these products are commercialised with the technology applied elsewhere, the sooner we will know the impact on marketers. Given the surfacing of various product forecasts, it’s fair to assume that inbuilt technologies such as heads up displays in automotive and media viewing via VR will become common place – the sky’s the limit.

(source: 30npire.com)

That’s a wrap
Being on top of the latest trends is a good way to gain the competitive edge; but being ahead of the trend is a great way to become a market leader.

Steve Jobs didn’t copy Bill Gates; he revolutionised the idea.

Facebook didn’t mimic MSN messenger; it massively usurped it.

Google didn’t become the search powerhouse it is today by sticking to its original launch of BackRub in 1996; 13 iterations and 17 years later, the search engine stayed ahead of the trend – until now, when it ‘sets’ the trend.

Enjoyed this article? Check out the infographic.

The post Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends in 2016 appeared first on Living Online.