EMEA > Social Targeting

Social targeting company Affectv is opening up its proprietary aggregated social data for a limited period. They plan to enable and empower others to extract value from it and to further understand human interactions and our digital social experiences. The initiative kicks off with King’s College London and will roll out to Edinburgh University, Indian Institute of Technology and University College London with the aim of sparking innovation within the social media interaction industry.

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Rupert Staines is Managing Director Europe at RadiumOne Inc. Here he discusses the emergence of the Dynamic Audience Platform, and why turning awareness into purchase intent could now be a reality for marketers.

According to a recent study from Magna Global, Goldman Sachs and eMarketer, global online ad spend is set to grow from $79 billion in 2011 to $155 billion in 2016. Social advertising alone is set to rocket 780% from $5.5 billion to $43.1 billion in the same timeframe. One of the main reasons for this increase in spending is the evolution of the digital marketplace, where advertisers are constantly looking for new ways to shine and differentiate themselves in this ever-emerging and congested market. However, are they getting it right?

Until recently ad networks powered the growth of online advertising, but this model has become archaic and they are therefore struggling to target relevant audiences at the right scale and in a timely fashion. Some confine themselves to using social networks and target transactional behaviour which yield narrower and less relevant results. For example, once someone has bought a pair of football boots, it’s highly unlikely they are going to purchase another pair straight away.

The internet has evolved, it is no longer just a place to research information, it’s now a social environment, a place where people are engaged in conversation. The upshot is advertisers have to evolve their marketing communications within digital. Consider the fact that each day consumers share two billion items on Facebook and over 16 billion items on the Open Web on their desktop and mobile devices. This sharing phenomenon opens the door for advertisers to capitalise on this huge opportunity. However, it’s essential for the right strategy to be put in place to unlock its obvious potential.

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In 2011, mobile saw spend reach $3.9 billion globally and 2012 is expected to hit $6.2 billion. “This is the year of mobile,” most will say. It is here – and I think everyone may have felt a little underwhelmed by it.

There hasn’t been a massive parade, no free USB sticks shaped like an iPhone, and certainly no trophy taking the shape of a gold encrusted Motorola Dynatac 8000x (made famous by Gordon Gekko) engraved with “we did it”. Furthermore, mobile spend didn’t overtake TV spend.

However we have seen HTML5 become more important and we have seen businesses built around mobile, ad networks open up mobile inventory, DSP’s for mobile specifically come into existence, such as Strike Ad, and VC investors say, “I need a mobile start-up – stat!” CB Insights confirmed that it has reported on 102 mobile VC deals in 2011, and within those, any company with a photo or video-focus saw up to 30% of those deals.

It’s been a pretty exciting few months. Technology continues to develop and proliferate, with the likes of NFC (Near Field Communication) and 5G testing. Adfonic’s second quarter AdMetrics report shows that iOS saw its market SOV decrease from 45% in Q1 to 34% in Q2, whilst Android’s share increased from 38% to 46% over the same period. UDID’s are no more on iOS, and it looks as though Apple will roll out their own tracking tool. Cookies probably won’t come to mobile in the way we imagine for Android, or other devices for that matter. Fingerprinting scares me, as there still seems to be no regulatory authority behind it and no one seems to want to step up to the plate. There have been a number of articles highlighting both the benefits and the concerns around device fingerprinting. If you’re not familiar with fingerprinting, it’s a process in which a user’s device settings are collated and then assigned a unique ID – much like a cookie – to use for tracking purposes. These settings can range from brightness settings to browser settings, time zone and fonts. It requires many more data points and therefore is not as easy for the consumer to opt out of. Until we see a regulatory company behind device fingerprinting I don’t believe it will get the seal of approval from the wider industry.

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It’s the biggest data-driven advertising event in Europe. It’s the event that even has its own acronym. ATS London is now in its third year, and the line-up of speakers and content is the best yet. Often copied – A LOT! – but never equalled, ATS London brings together the best in the global online ad industry to discuss the latest trends and developments in the space. And this year is no exception.

It is clear that our industry is moving beyond the mess of the LumaScape to a platform-centric world, and this certainly is one of the key areas being explored by ATS London this year. The full-day programme will be organised into three core themes: brand, application and big data. All of these are effectively shaping the data-driven ad space, and speakers and participants on the day will explore these issues in more depth.

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Wildfire Founders, Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard

Google has just bought social marketing software developer Wildfire — provider of software that links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and other social networks, allowing customers to manage their online brand and presence, with clients including Sony Corp and Amazon.com. Several sources and blogs say the sale price was around $250 million.

Founded by Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard in 2008, Wildfire has about 400 employees and powers social media marketing for more than 16,000 businesses, including 30 of the top 50 global brands. Google plans to slot Wildfire into a group of online ad services offered through its DoubleClick business.

The acquisition will allow Google to provide advanced software and services to brands who want to run contests, sweepstakes, branded games and more on Google+. Wildfire will still operate as a marketing tool for brands on Google’s competing platforms, including Facebook, putting the search giant in a curious position where it earns money on the success of its rivals.

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James Yancey, VP of Global Strategy at IgnitionOne, on the future of Facebook Sponsored Stories combining social graph and third-party data.

What would happen if Facebook partnered with third-party data providers? Warning: if you’re a privacy fanatic, then it will probably stress you out to read any further. For those with an open mind, hear me out. If you take 900 million active users and understand not just how many friends they have, but how valuable those are based on their interests, demo data and influence – what are the possibilities?

In the months anticipating the Facebook IPO, the news had been calling for more ads that show clear direct performance, like search or display. And finally Facebook has been delivering one ad unit that shows comparable promise, the Sponsored Story. It’s a simple idea: show a socially relevant ad unit to friends only in the format and context of other updates in the news feed.

The success of the Sponsored Story is based on an idea that Facebook calls “amplification”. The thought behind amplification is that the original ad can reach many people at scale if their friend’s “like” it and it shows up in their subsequent news feeds. But again, it’s tied to reach metrics. Direct response advertisers have lost their interest and patience in many cases when comparing it to things to which they are accustomed.

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IAB/PwC UK online ad spend Study For 2011 is out today. The big story is that digital ad spending is up £687 million on the 2010 figure, and now stands at £4.784 million. Search returned the biggest growth in all the channels covered by the IAB/PWC report, but display showed a healthy 13% like-on-like rise on 2010.

The display figure for 2011 was £1,128 million. The IAB has wisely broken out the social figure, although it’s an amalgamated figure for Blogging platforms (such as WordPress) Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and YouTube. This is confusing to say the least given that YouTube and most blogs are running standard IAB units – and a lot of YouTube’s inventory is available through AdX.

The social display number now stands at £240 million, and represents a 21% share of the total display figure. Video was also a star performer, growing over 100% from 2010. The full breakdown of the display numbers are available below. There’s still no detail of the automated channel figures. Or indeed how big the ad network market actually is?

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Brainient, a personalised video retargeting solution, announced today it is raising a new round of funding. Here CEO Emi Gal discusses the new raise and the Brainient video offering.

Can you give some overview on the current Brainient offering?

Brainient’s goal as a company is to make video advertising more effective. We measure effectiveness through brand uplift and viewer engagement for brand advertisers, and sales for DR advertisers. We currently have two products in the market to satisfy these two categories:

BrainRolls, an interactive video platform aimed at brand advertisers looking to increase the engagement of their video ads by making them interactive. For example, while watching a BMW video pre-roll a consumer can book a test-drive, download a brochure or watch more videos about the brand right within the video advert. The average CTR on our BrainRolls is 3% (three times higher than the market average), engagement rates (the number of people that play with our interactive elements) range from 10% to 15% and we usually double the dwell time (people will spend 60 seconds on a 30 seconds pre-roll).

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