Measurements Differ, But Online Ad Spend Up

Despite a lack of measurement standards, local online ad spending will show double-digit growth over the next few years, and will continue to increase its share of total local ad spending, according to a new report from eMarketer.

As consumers turn to local search, mobile devices, hyper-local sites and daily deals to satisfy their need for highly relevant news and information, local online ad spending will rise up to meet them, insists eMarketer analyst and report author Lauren Fisher.

“Local online ad spending is growing as fast as — if not faster than — total online ad spending,” according to Fisher. “National advertisers shifting dollars to follow the U.S. population online will largely fuel this growth.”

As of May, 90% of U.S. agencies surveyed by local forum site Topix said their clients had asked for geographically targeted ads. Although the agency sample was small, it included large firms that represent a greater number of national advertisers.

For eMarketer, any company using digital ads to reach an audience in a specific area is engaging in local online advertising. Most research firms agree on this general definition, but they largely disagree on how to apply it across advertiser type, ad format and online property. The result: conflicting local ad-spending estimates.

Read More: MediaPost

How Search Marketers Expect To Use Data In 2012

About half the search marketers participating in MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit survey during the three-day conference said they take responsibility both for search and social campaigns — making the range of topics discussed at last week’s MediaPost Search Insider Summit all the more important.

Most marketers — 72.7% — who participated in the survey said they rely on interest-based targeting in search campaigns. Targeting beyond keywords continues as a trend in search engine marketing, as well as social. Evidence of the movement can be found in a recent Twitter campaign connecting AMC TV brands to consumers.

Search marketers also clearly understand the benefits of tying social and social data into search engine marketing campaigns, as well as search engine data into social media campaigns. When asked whether their company has a Google+ account, 82.4% of respondents said yes.

It turns out that 60% of marketers said they tie search data into two or more online campaign media. Aside from social, some of the options discussed at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit include tying search data into display advertising or campaigns supported by demand-side platform providers.

Read More: MediaPost

Online Ad Predictions for 2012: Thoughts on ROI, Privacy, and Yes, More Acquisitions

It’s hard to believe another year has gone by already. This past year, we’ve seen the online advertising landscape continue to evolve at a rapid pace, fueled no doubt by increasing accountability for online media, key acquisitions, and online marketers demanding more from their campaigns—and the technologies that power them. What’s on the docket for next year?

Here are my thoughts:

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT ROI

Finally—The Death of the Click
As the Drago of online advertising, the Click has been beat on from all corners, but has refused to fall. Next year will be the final round in the fight – and Drago is going down. I foresee the majority of savvy, online marketers finally abandoning the click as a success metric in display advertising. It’s been a long time coming, and marketers everywhere, particularly those targeting business professionals, have finally realized that high CTRs do not generally correlate to the most qualified leads. Among other things, I bet we’ll see an increasing focus on the value of branding and post-impression attribution.

First- and Third-Party Data Unite
In 2011, we witnessed more and more online publishers achieving a better understanding of the value of their audiences, and as a result, better monetizing their inventories. However, from the advertiser’s perspective, first-party data is only the beginning. Advertisers have seen the ROI benefits that come from using both first- and third-party data to target prospects. As a result, I predict that in 2012, these two types of data will begin to blend seamlessly, ultimately driving deeper insight and ROI for marketers. Advertisers will also buy third-party data sets to integrate with their own data for better efficiency and targeting.

Read More: Bizo

Mobile Behavior Could Finesse Search Strategy

Mobile queries on tablets spike between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. while consumers sit at home watching television — which could support a cross-channel search and TV campaign strategy, according to Michael Slinger, director of mobile advertising at Google.

That type of insight, shared by Slinger at the Search Insider Summit, should provide brands with a road map for charting search campaigns.

For instance, Slinger said the single biggest barrier that companies have in entering the mobile search space is their mobile sites. In February, Google reported that 80% of the Fortune 500 companies have a mobile ready site. About two weeks ago, Google released a tool at HowToGoMo.com that shows companies what their Web site looks like when viewed on a mobile phone.

Industry executives suggest that the average consumer stores about seven apps on their mobile phone. And while they might have an app for banking, they might not have an app for a specific retail brand. Companies need to give consumers choice.

Slinger points to research that Google conducted with Compete on the use of mobile devices during the automotive research process. The goal was to get consumers into dealerships. About 34% of consumers use tablets throughout the research process, versus 30% on mobile devices. Still, 20% of consumers rely on tablets at the top of the purchase funnel — compared with 22% on mobile phones — to do research on cars. In the middle of the process, consumers use tablets 34% of the time and mobile phones 19% of the time. At the very end of the funnel, as consumers enter the buying process, 8% will rely on tablets versus 27% for mobile phones.

Read More: MediaPost

Adobe to Acquire Efficient Frontier

Acquisition Enhances Ad Optimization Capability for Social, Search and Display Campaigns

SAN JOSE, Calif.—-Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Efficient Frontier, a leader in multi-channel ad buying and optimization. Adobe solutions are central to how digital marketing and advertising is created, managed, executed, measured and optimized. Adobe currently captures approximately five trillion digital transactions per year for more than 5,000 customers, including many of the world’s largest advertisers, publishers and advertising agencies.

The acquisition of Efficient Frontier will add multi-channel ad campaign forecasting, execution and optimization capabilities to Adobe’s existing Digital Marketing Suite. Along with the Suite, Adobe’s digital marketing capabilities include an enterprise-class data management platform, a leading video ad management and monetization platform, and an enterprise content management system. Adobe will continue to build upon the foundation of its independent ad buying and optimization platform for search, social and display, enabling the company to offer a more complete suite of capabilities to digital marketers, advertisers and publishers for reporting and analytics, personalized experiences, multi-channel campaign management and media monetization.

“With the explosion in global Internet advertising, our customers need to know where, when and how to spend their digital marketing dollars to get the greatest return,” said Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Business. “The addition of Efficient Frontier will give our Digital Marketing Suite customers a leading platform for turning ad spend into business impact.”

Read More: AdExchanger

When Is Audience Targeting Worth It?

ADOTAS – The field of audience targeting – also known as audience analytics – has long proven attractive and effective to online marketers. Honing campaigns to focus on specific audiences is not only logical, but it promises to provide a better way to generate return on ad dollars for the goals an advertiser is trying to achieve.

Because advertisers pay a premium for audience targeting, it’s important to examine the return on investment as it relates to all aspects of a campaign. As online marketers are beginning to understand, it’s rare that any one dimension of a media campaign is responsible for success. Furthermore, they’re finding out that each dimension delivers different results depending on a number of variables.

Whether you’re trying to determine the best creative, the highest performing website, the right audience demographic or all of the above, the ability to simultaneously analyze these variables is key to determining the optimal mix of online ad campaign attributes.

Taking a holistic look at the ways audience analytics combines with other online marketing factors is essential to knowing how, when and where to invest in audience targeting. This is no easy task. A brand may be looking at targeting 10 different audience segments across multiple ad networks, making it difficult to determine the right combinations of creative, placement, timing and other campaign considerations that work best.

Read More: Adotas