Shaista Shoaib Khan Dummy1

A
Project on
A study to understand the effect of native advertising on
consumer attitude and behaviour
In the partial fulfilment of the requirement of
Masters of Management Studies (MMS)
Conducted by
Rizvi Institute of Management Studies & Research
under the guidance of
Dr. Kalim Khan
Submitted by
Shahista Ahmed
MMS (Marketing)
Roll No. 92
2012 -14

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that Ms. Shahista Ahmed, a student of Rizvi Institute of Management
Studies and Research, of MMS bearing Roll No. 92 and specializing in Marketing has
successfully completed the project titled
“A study to understand the effect of native advertising on consumer
attitude and behaviour”
under the guidance of Dr. Kalim Khan in partial fulfilment of the requirement of Masters of
Management Studies by University of Mumbai for the academic year
2012 – 2014.
_____________ _______________
Prof. Umar Farooq Dr.Kalim Khan
Academic Coordinator Director

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I am very grateful to my mentor Dr. Kalim Khan who in spite of his busy schedule has rendered
all his support that was required in completion of this project. With his incredible eye for detail
that has taken this piece of work, miles. With every stage of approval during this project, the
project work has got better and better. It is his vision which entrusted on the scope of my field
of study, because of which the project has seen the light of the day.
I would also like to thank all the faculty and staff members of Rizvi Institute of Management
Studies and Research for being very cordial during the entire process of carrying out the
research.
I would also like to thank my Parents, Rizvi Institute of Management Studies and Research, its
teaching and non-teaching staff, my research Respondents, friends and all the people who
provided me with the facilities being required and conductive conditions for my MBA project.
Thank you,
Shahista Shahid Ahmed

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Internet technology is changing at a rapid pace and the faster the technology changes, the more
people expect from the Internet. Users were once satisfied with text and still images on their
web pages. Since the dawn of the Internet, marketers have regarded it as a vast laboratory,
launching experiment after experiment to generate sales and customer loyalty. Not surprising,
most have failed. Consumers adopted digital technology as they saw fit, fundamentally altering
the way they make purchasing decisions. Companies that understand this evolution are now
carefully moving digital interactivity toward the centre of their marketing strategies, rethinking
their priorities and budgets, and substantially reshaping their processes and skills. The
explosive growth in digital medium has forced marketers to rethink their digital media forward
strategies.
Native advertising has so rapidly become endemic in digital marketing circles that there’s been
little effort to understand what it actually is. With brands, agencies, publishers, social media
platforms, and technology vendors venturing into new and hitherto uncharted territory, clarity
and definition are called for. Native advertising promises very real benefits both to consumers,
in terms of a more elegant and seamless user experience, and to the rest of the digital marketing
and publishing ecosystem. Developed and deployed correctly, the result can be more effective
and engaging messaging that provides welcome economic benefits — if sufficient strategy,
learning, coordination, and transparency are invested upfront. At present, scale is the most
difficult aspect of native advertising, and the one technology companies are working to address.
More contenders and solutions will soon emerge in this rapidly evolving space, but at present
native versus scale is an either/or preposition. More than other forms of advertising, native does
not live in a vacuum, but must be measured against other channels of paid, owned, and earned
media.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction on Digital Marketing ...........................................................................1
1.1 Overview of Digital Marketing........................................................................................1
1.2 History of Digital Marketing ...........................................................................................4
1.3 Digital Marketing Today and Global Trends...................................................................6
1.4 Marketing moves online ..................................................................................................8
1.5 Future of Internet Marketing – Technology & Convergence ........................................10
Chapter 2: Digital Advertising Industry ..................................................................................11
2.1 Digital Media: New Game, New Rules, New Winners .................................................11
2.2Types of Display Advertising .........................................................................................11
2.2.1 Display advertising...............................................................................................11
2.2.1.1 Web Banner Advertising...................................................................................12
2.2.1.1.1 Frame Ads (Traditional Banner) ....................................................................12
2.2.1.1.2 Pop ups / Pops under ads................................................................................13
2.2.1.1.3 Floating Ads ...................................................................................................13
2.2.1.1.4 Expanding Ads ...............................................................................................13
2.2.1.1.5 Trick Ads ........................................................................................................14
2.2.1.2 Interstitial...........................................................................................................14
2.2.1.2.1 Text Ads .........................................................................................................14
2.2.2 Search Engine Marketing (SEM) .........................................................................15
2.2.2.1 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)...................................................................15
2.2.2.2 Sponsored Search ..............................................................................................15
2.2.3 Social Media Marketing .......................................................................................15
2.2.4 Mobile Marketing.................................................................................................16
2.2.5 Email Advertising.................................................................................................17
Chapter 3: What does it take to do native well? ......................................................................18

3.1 Consumers Coming to Accept Native Advertising Done Right ....................................18
3.2 Content Marketing .........................................................................................................20
3.3 Why Content Marketing ROI Tools are Flawed and What to Use ................................22
3.4 How Can Marketers Bridge the Content Creation and Measurement Gap....................23
3.5 Three Digital Content Lessons from 2014 .....................................................................24
3.6 How to Win the Content Numbers Game ......................................................................26
3.7 Shake Up Your Mobile Strategy for 2015 .....................................................................30
3.8 Multichannel Content Marketing Is Your Next Challenge: Here’s How to Overcome It
..............................................................................................................................................33
3.9 Lessons from 3 Great Native Ads..................................................................................35
3.10 Why Paid Links Will Destroy Good Content, and How To Stop It ............................37
3.11 Why Content Marketers Need Intelligent Content ......................................................39
3.12 Can You Create Content that Builds KLT (Know, Like and Trust)? ..........................41
3.13 Native Advertising Raises Qualms among Marketing Pros ........................................42
3.14 Publishers Must Act.....................................................................................................44
3.15 Native Advertising Budgets Will Rise In 2015, Say Marketers ..................................45
3.16 Native Advertising: Evil, Savior or Use As Directed ..................................................47
3.17 Where Brand Journalism and Native Advertising Can Fit Within Content Marketing
..............................................................................................................................................49
3.18 Social Media Advertising for Content Marketers: Insight from Salesforce’s ‘2015 State
of Marketing’ report.............................................................................................................51
3.19 The Roadblocks of Native Advertising........................................................................54
Chapter 4: Mobile native Advertisement.................................................................................60
4.1 Native is the Future of Mobile Advertising ...................................................................60
4.2 Guide To Mobile Native Ads.........................................................................................60
4.2.1 Twitter/MoPub .....................................................................................................60
4.2.2 InMobi..................................................................................................................61
4.2.3 Native X................................................................................................................62

4.2.3 Facebook...............................................................................................................63
4.2.4 MobFox ................................................................................................................64
4.2.5 Yahoo ...................................................................................................................65
4.2.6 AOL......................................................................................................................66
4.2.7 Namo Media .........................................................................................................66
4.2.8 OpenX...................................................................................................................67
4.2.9 Wrap up ................................................................................................................67
4.3 How Native Advertising is ideally suited for Mobile ....................................................67
4.4 Why are Native Powerful on Mobile .............................................................................71
4.4.1 The adaptability of native advertising ..................................................................71
4.4.2 End the interruptions ............................................................................................72
4.5 Mobile In-feed Native Advertising: Is It The Future? ...................................................73
Chapter 5: Future trends in native advertising .........................................................................74
One of the most significant announcements in advertising this year came not from a publisher
or an ad agency but from a tech company. A few weeks ago Apple announced that when it
delivers the latest incarnation of its operating system for mobiles, iOS9,that it will include
support for ad blocking software. ............................................................................................74
Chapter 6: Research Methodology...........................................................................................76
Chapter 7. Data Analysis and Interpretation............................................................................79
7.1. Gender of the Respondents ...........................................................................................79
7.2. Age group of the Respondents......................................................................................80
7.3 Education Qualification of the Respondents..................................................................81
7.4. Time spent on the mediums by Respondents................................................................82
7.5 Mediums that make Respondents purchase a product ...................................................84
7.6. Time spent in a day on internet.....................................................................................85
7.7. Respondents that have come across digital advertisements while surfing the internet 86
7.8 Awareness about digital advertisements among the respondents ..................................87

7.9 Awareness about the types of digital advertisements ....................................................88
7.15 Incase a user has an option to block native advertisements completely? What will the
user do................................................................................................................................115
7.16 Now a days Ad-words are used a lot in Native ads, do you think adwords make native
ads more reliable or trustworthy. .......................................................................................116
Chapter 8: Conclusion and Recommendations ......................................................................117
8.1 Major Findings:............................................................................................................117
8.2 Recommendations:.......................................................................................................120
Annexures ..............................................................................................................................121
Annexure 1 – Questionnaire: .............................................................................................121
Annexure: List of Tables....................................................................................................130
Annexure: List of Figures ..................................................................................................132
Annexure: List of Images...................................................................................................133
Bibliography: .........................................................................................................................134

Rizvi Institute of Management Studies and Research Shahista Ahmed
Understand the effect of Native Advertising on consumer attitude and behaviour 1
Chapter 1: Introduction on Digital Marketing
1.1 Overview of Digital Marketing
Internet marketing is the fastest growing and most exciting branch of marketing today. As the
world becomes ever more connected, keeping up with developments and trends is vital for
marketers trying to reach new audiences who are more discerning, fragmented and cynical than
ever. Technology and software are changing at such a high rate that it seems almost impossible
to keep up with trends. Products and services are evolving and adapting to the online sphere.
The web is constantly shifting, growing and changing. Until somewhat recently, most
consumers associated online video with clips of dogs on skateboards and episodes of TV shows
they forgot to DVR. Today, however, viewers are accessing everything from high-quality first-
run series to live coverage of news events. And they‘re doing it not just from laptops and
desktops, but via their smart phones, tablets and connected TVs.
It‘s hard to say which came first the widespread increase in consumer adoption or the massive
surge in the quality and type of video content available. Whatever the cause and effect, the end
result is lots of content being viewed in new and different ways. Below are three categories of
emerging content that I find most exciting, along with insights for brands seeking to leverage
video for marketing purposes, and content producers trying to create an audience by
experimenting with these forms.
Branded video content falls within the wider category of content marketing and is akinto
product placement. When done well, it‘s more about the content than the brand itself. The
videos can take a range of forms from the instructional to the entertaining. For a strong example
of the latter, look no further than BMW‘s recent web series Alter Egos, this features a bevy of
celebrities but zero cars. With this series, BMW targets a niche, upscale audience in other
words, exactly the kind of people who are in the market for a luxury vehicle.

Advertisers who want to create branded content should be aware that this medium requires an
inherent balancing act between their needs and the needs of the viewer. Videos featuring heavy
handed branding or overt company plugs will quickly turn off consumers, while videos that are
overly focused on driving sharing or viral buzz can have their brand message eclipsed by the
video‘s entertainment value. Above all else, when it comes to this kind of content, quality is
everything. The production value has to be top-notch, and proper placement is critical.
Original programming is a new but quickly growing segment of online video that includes
entertainment content created specifically for an online audience. Many of the medium‘s early
successes have been driven by content that‘s tied to traditional TV programming. The TV show
The Walking Dead, for example, boasts 16 million weekly viewers a massive audience that is
likely to engage online when meaningful content is available. AMC seized on this opportunity
by producing a series of short-form bonus videos, like cast interviews and behind-the-scenes
stories, and making them available online. For content without a built-in audience, content
creators need to think strategically in order to attract viewers. Some of the most established
names in traditional media have struck distribution partnerships with new media outlets for this
purpose. Take for example, YouTube‘s much discussed premium channels, which feature
content from the likes of print publishers like Hearst, Rodale, The Wall Street Journal, Motor
Trend and Vice. Even more recently, traditional production houses have turned to Netflix as a
distribution platform for shows like House of Cards and Arrested Development.
The success of these two shows will have major implications for the future of original Web
programming, not to mention the cable industry. Aggregating an audience around online-only
content is challenging, and it requires a behaviour shift on the part of consumers. Once this
model gains traction, and a major player like Nielsen begins tracking viewership stats for this
type of content, I think we‘ll start to see advertisers invest some significant dollars. For now,
brand sponsorship of a series seems to be the safest bet for both parties.

Live Streaming Content once the sole domain of the TV industry, live programming is
becoming more common place online thanks to technology players like live stream. Political
events, concerts, church sermons and academic lectures are just some of the kinds of content
that have popped up as streaming events in recent months. With live and streaming content,
consumers are the real winners they gain access to a wide range of programming as well as the
convenience of being able to watch while on the go. Advertisers, meanwhile, gain access to
very niche and often geographically well-defined audiences, making this kind of content an
attractive option for those seeking to target particular demographics or interest groups.
Live video‘s potential to drive social engagement has significant implications for both brands
and content creators. Savvy content producers like Huff Post Live are already using social
media to help drive their strategy by using social buzz and real-time viewer feedback to
determine which topics to cover. On the advertising front, live content also lends itself to multi-
channel marketing campaigns that allow for social sharing and commentary, thereby driving
increased exposure for the brand. As these and other types of content continue to emerge,
consumers ‘expectations will continue to shift and heighten. The onus will continue to be on
the industry to do two things experiment with different types of content and pay close attention
to consumer habits and feedback. The opportunities for innovation from all parties’ brands,
content creators, and marketers are plentiful, and I expect to see more exciting changes in the
years to come.
After dotcom bust, many managers gave up on the Internet. Although Google is successful and
the echoes of a delighted Yahoo users are heard at times, a business manager is the most
unlikely face in that Internet loving crowd. Selling or for that matter doing or improving
business through Internet has few followers in spite of the e-commerce buzz. E-bay dazzles,
not only with a changed business model where it is more of a virtual hypermarket than a crafty
electronics seller. Today, however, some new innovations on the Internet space are making
managers give it a relook more than 45% of people using Internet are also registered with one
or more social networks are also more dispersed than their real life counterparts spanning
across geographies. Many times they also mirror reality. Many users (mostly aged above 45 in
developed economies) use this space to be in touch with real life friends and distant colleagues

1.2 History of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing often called online marketing or e-Marketing is essentially any marketing
activity that is conducted online through the use of internet technologies. It comprises not only
advertising that is shown on websites, but also other kinds of online activities like email and
social networking. Every aspect of internet marketing is digital, meaning that it is electronic
information that is transmitted on a computer or similar device, though naturally it can tie in
with traditional offline advertising and sales too.
Digital marketing has three corner stone principles:
 Immediacy - The web changes at a blistering pace and online audiences, whose attention
spans are short, expect on-the-minute updates and information. To keep the favor and
attention of this group, you must respond to online messages and interact with communities
as quickly as possible.
 Personalization - Customers online are no longer faceless members of a broad target
audience – they are individuals who want to be addressed personally. Use the wealth of
personal information available online to your benefit by targeting the relevant people
precisely and personally.
 Relevance - Communication online must be interesting and relevant to the reader otherwise
it will simply be ignored. With all the information that is competing for your audience‘s
attention, you must find a way to stand out and engage readers. The best way to do this is
by giving them exactly what they want, when they want it.
The very first interconnected computer network was developed as a joint project between the
US military and several research organisations, and wentlive in 1969. New advances came
slowly at first network email was invented in 1971, international connections were established
in 1973, the term ‘Internet’ was first used in 1974 and the first real online protocols were
introduced in the 1980s. Everything accelerated in the early 1990s as Tim Berners-Lee,
acknowledged as the creator of the internet as we know it today, built on his earlier
revolutionary work and released the URL protocol, web browser softwareand the World Wide
Web to the public. By 1993, businesses started taking an interest in the internet. The debate
raged about whether they were permitted to use the internet for commercial purposes, since it
had been established as a strictly educational and non-commercial arena.

Eventually, however, the businesses won out and the last of these restrictions were dissolved
in 1995. Early internet giants like Yahoo and Amazon launched their online platforms in the
mid-1990s amid a wave of new search portals, including Alta Vista, Excite and Infoseek.
Google launched in 1998, taking search to a new level of accuracy and convenience. Other
commercial websites, like the auction site eBay, began to dominate the web, solidifying the
interactive and global commercial potential of the internet. In2004, the concept of web the
interactive, commercial, cooperative and user-centric web exploded into public consciousness.
Its main characteristics were the rise of social networking, the invention of tools that made
creating and customising personal pages increasingly simple, and the big push by online
marketers to make their advertising and products more accessible and desirable to online
markets. Commercial strategies have become more prevalent and innovative since then. Recent
years have seen a growth in web consciousness as users become more adept at filtering and
steering online content.

1.3 Digital Marketing Today and Global Trends
Throughout its history, the internet has reinvented itself many times and the changes are far
from over. The current web is dominated by socialising, cooperation, sharing and personal
entertainment. It is a space both for work and play – an essential tool for virtually every
business and the go-to repository for all forms of media culture products. People of all ages are
spending more and more time online, and are turning to the internet for better services,
convenience and life-enhancing tools: just consider how people use online shopping, online
banking, web communities that cross all boundaries, instant news and updates, social networks
and chat, self-expression and any of the dozens of other things that the web makes possible.
2010 was the first year where online advertising spend overtook the amount of money spent on
newspaper advertising in the USA. It was the same year that online readership overtook
traditional newspaper readership, which illustrates just how large an impact the internet has
had on the marketing and advertising industry.
The digital marketing field hasn’t stood still. Here are some of the current trends:
Social media marketing - Whether it is a fad or here to stay, social media has made
commendable mark on the web landscape and, concurrently, on marketing tactics. Social media
marketing involves using peer recommendations, sharing, building brand personality and
addressing the market as a heterogeneous group of individuals. It also uniquely encourages
customers to create content and buzz around a product themselves.
Viral marketing - This form of marketing involves the exponential spread of a marketing
message by online word of mouth (sometimes referred to a word of mouse‖). A major
component of viral communication is the meme a message that spreads virally and embeds
itself in the collective consciousness (Don‘t touch me on my studio‖ is a recent South African
example). Viral marketing is closely tied to social media, since social media platforms and their
sharing functionality are the main way that a message is able to go viral online. Keep in mind,
however, that viral marketing does not make a holistic online marketing campaign and should
be just one of many tools used to create awareness and encourage interaction
Brand as product - More than ever before, brands are creating personas and identities around
themselves rather than the products they sell. The online space allows customers to interact and
converse with the brand personally and directly

Ad Fatigue - Web users have become very familiar with online advertising and have learned
to tune it out or have even installed programs like Ad Block Plus to block it altogether.
Marketers today have to think of very innovative and eye-catching strategies to entice wary
viewers.
Targeting - Virtually all online advertising is targeted to reach specific readers. Unlike the
broad-strokes targeting done in traditional marketing (placing an advert in a relevant magazine,
for example), web targeting can be extremely precise. With the immense amount of personal
and usage data currently available, targeting can be done automatically and extremely
successfully
Golden Oldies - Despite all the exciting new strategies, email and website marketing remain
among the most useful and effective techniques. These strategies do, of course, use new tools
and tactics (like advanced tracking, integration with social networks and customer-generated
content), but their essence stays the same.

1.4 Marketing moves online
Websites first - The first marketing activity online started in the early 1990s with the creation
of simple, text-based websites with basic information about a product or company. These were
complemented with basic emails often unsolicited spam that shared information in a
rudimentary way. As web tools evolved, so too did the websites, incorporating images, sounds,
videos and more advanced formatting styles.
Advertising takes off - As regulations fell away in 1995, internet marketing and especially
advertising boomed. To put the growth in perspective, US online advertising spend in 1994
was zero dollars, and leapt up to $301 million in 1996. Another year later, the market was worth
$1 billion. Search engine optimization (SEO) started tentatively in 1995, relying on luck and
guesswork before hackers managed to crack the first algorithms in 1997. Companies began
thinking about advert placement and started buying advertising space on related websites, with
links back to their pages and often accompanied with data-gathering measures such as asking
customers to enter their contact information. In 1998, Hotwired began selling banner
advertising space to large corporate clients and achieved a remarkable 30% click-through rate.
Online search portal Yahoo capitalised on this trend and offered advertising space on its
massively popular home page, quickly developing extra software for tracking user preferences
so it could target the advertising more effectively; it became one of the few dotcom companies
to earn a tidy profit from online advertising. Google took the idea, streamlined it and improved
the advert-targeting algorithms. In 2000, it introduced AdWords, an advertising service that
allowed marketers to pay only for adverts that were clicked on by a customer. The strategy,
which accounts for 95% of Google’s current revenue, became phenomenally successful and is
now the benchmark search engine advertising method.

Online search portal Yahoo capitalized on this trend and offered advertising space on its
massively popular home page, quickly developing extra software for tracking user preferences
so it could target the advertising more effectively; it became one of the few dotcom companies
to earn a tidy profit from online advertising. Google took the idea, streamlined it and improved
the advert-targeting algorithms. In 2000, it introduced Ad Words, an advertising service that
allowed marketers to pay only for adverts that were clicked on by a customer. The strategy,
which accounts for 95% of Google‘s current revenue, became phenomenally successful and is
now the benchmark search engine advertising method.
The rapid improvement of online technology and the new business ideas that it inspired led to
the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. The boom was a time when enthusiastic but inexperienced
businesspeople conceptualised and financed through loans, advertising and venture capital
radical and exciting new web-based companies. Unfortunately, because the medium was so
new and the strategies untested, many dissolved into nothing and a lot of investment money
was lost (a well-known example is Boo.com, a fashion retailer that burned through Rs 1.5
billion in just one year and then went bust) the dotcom bubble had burst. This had a massive
effect on online advertising spend, which fell 33% from 2000 to 2002 and made companies
much more cautious of advertising online. The online advertising market was rescued by search
engine advertising, a field led by Google.

1.5 Future of Internet Marketing – Technology & Convergence
Naturally, it is impossible to predict what the future of internet marketing will hold, but two
things are certain:
 The field is growing and will become the largest and most important marketing sector in
coming years.
 The growth will be driven by new innovations in technology.
On top of that, web users are becoming more aware and marketing savvy, and their attention
spans are shortening as desirable content becomes ever more quickly available. This market is
more likely to challenge, debate and denigrate a brand but it is also more likely to share good
content and products with an exponentially growing social circle.
Convergence is the process by which many technologies meld into one. Consider your cell
phone: it makes calls, has a small camera, functions as a web browser and calendar and
probably does a range of other software-based tasks. This is a good example of a basic
convergence device: many functions are compressed into one piece of technology.
Many devices are far more complex. Apple‘s new iPad tablet computer performs thousands of
possible function and can be used as a portable computer, document reader, web browser,
media platform and so on. Convergence also happens between seemingly unrelated devices.
For example, some advanced refrigerators include a small computer and internet connection:
the appliance monitors what food is in stock and automatically orders the necessary
replacements at an online grocery shopping site when you run low. Child-protection devices
monitor a child‘s location over GPS and its vital signs with a range of sophisticated equipment.
Content can now move seamlessly between desktop and mobile devices. In an always-
connected, converging world, marketing will have to adapt constantly and spread along these
new technological lines

Chapter 2: Digital Advertising Industry
2.1 Digital Media: New Game, New Rules, New Winners
The speed at which digital media has taken off has been unprecedented in the history of
technological change. It has taken just seven years for Facebook to reach 750 million users
worldwide and this is not the only social media site to have attracted large numbers of users in
a very short space of time. This massive take-up is having a profound effect on the way in
which customers seek information and make purchase decisions.
Five key characteristics of socially adaptable and successful brands, which we believe all
organizations, can adapt and learn digitally are as follows:
 Facilitate open dialogue
 Engage proactively
 Connect beyond product
 Deliver integrated experiences
 Collaborate and co-develop
2.2Types of Display Advertising
2.2.1 Display advertising
Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations,
videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with
particular traits to increase the ads' effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers)
often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to
serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying
anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited
As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they
can create a detailed picture of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising.
This aggregation of data is called behavioural targeting .Advertisers can also target their
audience by using contextual and semantic advertising to deliver display ads related to the
content of the web page where the ads appear. Retargeting, behavioural targeting, and
contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI,
over untargeted ads.

Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through retargeting. A
user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country
or general region). The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined
with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations. For example, with
mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby
mobile towers. Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help
narrowing a user's location further.
2.2.1.1 Web Banner Advertising
Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Many
banner ads are delivered by a central ad server. Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate
video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java
applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.
A rectangular graphic display that stretches across the top or bottom of a website or down the
right or left sidebar. The former type of banner advertisement is called a leader board, while
the latter is called a skyscraper. Banner ads are image-based rather than text-based and are a
popular form of website advertising. The purpose of banner advertising is to promote a brand
and/or to get visitors from the host website to go to the advertiser's website
The host is paid for the banner advertisement through one of three methods: cost per impression
(payment for every website visitor who sees the ad), cost per click (payment for every website
visitor who clicks on the ad and visits the advertiser's website) or cost per action (payment for
every website visitor who clicks on the ad, goes to the advertiser's website and completes a task
such as filling out a form or making a purchase).
2.2.1.1.1 Frame Ads (Traditional Banner)
Frame ads were the first form of web banners. The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers
to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular
space on the web page. The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ad Unit Guidelines proposes
standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.

2.2.1.1.2 Pop ups / Pops under ads
A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's
initial browser window. A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's
initial browser window.
Pop-up ads or pop-ups are often forms of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended
to attract web traffic or capture email addresses. Pop-ups are generally new web
browser windows to display advertisements. The pop-up window containing an advertisement
is usually generated by JavaScript using cross-site scripting (XSS), sometimes with a secondary
payload using Adobe Flash, but can also be generated by other vulnerabilities/security
holes in browser security.
A variation on the pop-up window is the pop-under advertisement, which opens a new browser
window hidden under the active window. Pop-under do not interrupt the user immediately and
are not seen until the covering window is closed, making it more difficult to determine which
web site opened them.
2.2.1.1.3 Floating Ads
A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed
over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after
a present time period. The most basic floating ads simply appear over the Web page, either full
screen or in a smaller rectangular window. More sophisticated versions can come in any shape
or size and include sound, animation, and interactive components. Floating ads use a variety of
technologies, such as a combination of Flash and dynamic HTML (DHTML), and may have
the ability to display differently according to the user's browser capabilities.
2.2.1.1.4 Expanding Ads
An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition,
such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the
user's mouse movement over the Ad. Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information
into a restricted ad space. Advertisers use expandable rich media formats to expand an ad
creative into a larger creative upon a user mouse-over or click interaction. The most common
implementations expand leader board creative vertically into larger rectangles (i.e. expand from
a 90 pixel height to a 500 pixel height) or expand 250x300 rectangle creative horizontally into
larger rectangles (i.e. expand from a 300 pixel width to a 600 pixel width). Many other
implementations are also possible with the expandable ad format.

2.2.1.1.5 Trick Ads
A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly
encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad
clicks. Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are
a form of bait-and-switch. Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through
rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.
Trick banners seek to overcome “banner blindness” and “banner baggage” by disguising the
fact that they are advertising devices. Typically, no mention is made of the advertiser, just an
imitation of an operating system or popular application. While it is common for trick banners
to attract a higher-than-average click-through rate (CTR), the quality of the clicks may be
somewhat suspect, as visitors are likely to hit the “Back” button once they realize what
happened. Additionally, since trick banners rarely have identifying information, they fail to
capture any non-click response. Aside from CTR, there is the issue of visitor satisfaction.
2.2.1.2 Interstitial
An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user
is waiting for the content to load. Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.
Interstitials are web pages displayed before or after an expected content page, often to
display advertisements or confirm the user's age. Most interstitial advertisements are delivered
by an ad server. Full-screen interstitial ads are referred to as hyperstitials. Some people take
issue with the use of such pages to present online advertising before allowing users to see the
content they were trying to access. Less controversial uses of interstitial pages include
introducing another page or site before directing the user to proceed; or alerting the user that
the next page requires a login, or has some other requirement which the user should know about
before proceeding. Banners are small ads that when touched typically take the user to some
form of full-screen in-app browsing experience.
2.2.1.2.1 Text Ads
A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web
page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyper linking individual words or phrases
to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text
message marketing. Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for
ad-blocking software to block.

2.2.2 Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine
results pages (SERPs). Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored)
results based on a web searcher's query. Search engines often employ visual cues to
differentiate sponsored results from organic results. Search engine marketing includes all of an
advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords.
2.2.2.1 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings
in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms. Search engines
regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings,
making optimization a moving target for advertisers. Many vendors offer SEO services.
2.2.2.2 Sponsored Search
Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to
be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often
sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords. In addition to setting a
maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other
constraints. Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids. Modern search
engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through
rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.
2.2.3 Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites.
Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special
offers through their social media profiles. Social media marketing is commercial promotion
conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting
frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles. Social media
marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and
encourages readers to share it across their social networks. The resulting electronic word of
mouth (eWoM) refers to any statement consumers share via the Internet (e.g., web sites, social
networks, instant messages, news feeds) about an event, product, service, brand or company.
When the underlying message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it
appears to come from a trusted, third-party source, as opposed to the brand or company itself,
this form of marketing results in earned media rather than paid media.

2.2.4 Mobile Marketing
Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smart
phones, feature phones, or tablet computers. Mobile advertising may take the form of static or
rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging
Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile
applications or games. Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have
attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general
online advertising.
Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons. There are more mobile devices in
the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer
media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are
becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices
more extensively. The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile
advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not
available or relevant on personal computers. In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising
revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second
quarter of 2013. Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an
increase of 41 percent on the previous year.
o Simple, fixed applications involving pre-defined and pre-established operations
o Applications and devices which a user can program
o Fully flexible, automated applications and networks of devices that help out home
consumers by providing them with information or that can programmed for enabling
information sharing with others (NYSOFA, 2012)

2.2.5 Email Advertising
Email marketing/advertising is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of
people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer
could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request
business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.
Email marketing can be done to either sold lists or a current customer database. Broadly, the
term is usually used to refer to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing the
relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer
loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to
purchase something immediately, and adding advertisements to email messages sent by other
companies to their customers.
Email marketing is popular with companies for several reasons:
 An exact return on investment can be tracked ("track to basket") and has proven to be high
when done properly. Email marketing is often reported as second only to search
marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.
 Email marketing is significantly cheaper and faster than traditional mail, mainly because
of high cost and time required in a traditional mail campaign for producing the artwork,
printing, addressing and mailing.
 Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of email subscribers who have opted in (i.e.,
consented) to receive email communications on subjects of interest to them.
 Almost half of American Internet users check or send email on a typical day, with email
blasts that are delivered between 1 am and 5 am local time outperforming those sent at
other times in open and click rates.
 Email is popular with digital marketers, rising an estimated 15% in 2009 to £292 m in the
UK.
 If compared to standard email, direct email marketing produces higher response rate and
higher average order value for e-commerce businesses.

Chapter 3: What does it take to do native well?
3.1 Consumers Coming to Accept Native Advertising Done Right
Back in 1951, Hallmark made a mark with its Hall of Fame television programs, which still air
today. The award-winning series is arguably one of the earliest examples of "native"
advertising-advertising that is secondary to the message being delivered, but impactful through
its association with valued content. Since the 1950s, advertorials and product placements
emerged, and, as the internet and online commerce took hold, Amazon blazed trails by serving
up book recommendations to users based on their previous purchases and online behaviours.
Today, these sorts of activities-designed to deliver advertising content, online or via mobile
devices, to consumers who have demonstrated their potential interest in the product or service-
are known as native advertising. The practice lives on a continuum between "annoying" and
"useful," depending on the perspective of the consumer. The goal for marketers is to land
somewhere closer to the useful end of the spectrum.
"The whole idea of trying to influence opinion through content that's been created by a brand
or marketing is not new," says Larry Weber, author of the recently released The Digital
Marketer, chairman and CEO of the marketing services agency Racepoint Global, and founder
of Weber Shandwick. But, he adds, in the past, "We at least had to put on it that this was an
advertisement." Today, he says, the delivery of advertising content has become somewhat
murky and less direct, and that can be problematic.
"Do people want great content to help them make decisions on everything from buying to
advocacy? Sure. But they don't want things in their face, and that's the mistake that I think a
lot of marketers are making-they're interrupting the experience, and I think that's wrong." There
can certainly be value for those who get it right.

The online marketing firm HubShout found, in a survey of 425 randomly sampled internet
users, the following:
 72.8% of internet users who have read sponsored content believe it has equal or greater
value as non-sponsored content on the same website.
 66.1% of internet users find sponsored links to suggested content at the end of articles to
be the most helpful form of native advertising.
 66% of internet users presented with sponsored articles and banner ads said they prefer
clicking on sponsored articles over banner ads.
Patrick Quigley, CEO of the advertising technology firm Vantage Media, says native
advertising "is the new black-it's there; it looks good; and it's not going out of style any time
soon." Vantage Media's research supports HubShout's findings. Still, he points out, not all
native advertising is "smart native." There are standards, he says, that should be considered by
marketers to leverage native advertising to meet their goals. These include the following:
Informative content. "A reason why native advertising carries a negative perception may be
from the days of the in-your-face advertorial," Quigley says. "If the content is useful and
presents something your audience didn't know before, they're likely to trust it and refer back."
Continuous improvement through testing. Quigley recommends testing for everything from
tone to length to layout. In addition, consider factors like time of day and other events
happening in the world when laying out campaigns.
The use of analytics to prove results. "Native advertising is expanding into new areas of
media and there are stats to prove it's having [an] impact, down to where and with whom," says
Quigley. As Hallmark's success illustrates, the content delivered through native advertising
must be high-quality and must be valued by the audience to achieve desired results. The days
of "content mills" are waning. Mark Howard, chief revenue officer for Forbes Media in New
York, says Forbes was a very "early pioneer in this space, long before it was referred to as
native advertising." Its approach was to invite marketers who had expertise to become part of
the content experience on Forbes.com. Users value this content.

"Research continues to validate that readers of these websites are, number one, aware that the
content is there because a marketer paid to place it-and, two, have strong feelings that the
content is valuable to them. The "State of the Media 2014" report from the Pew Research
Center's Journalism Project indicated that BIA/Kelsey estimated that native advertising
revenues reached $2.3 billion in 2013 (up from $1.6 billion in 2012) and projected that revenues
would reach $4.6 billion by 2017.In 2013, Forbes teamed up with IPG Media Lab and
conducted a study of the effectiveness of branded content. That research indicated that branded
content provides better brand recall than display ads. In addition, it was found that pairing
display with branded content serves to boost awareness.
In addition to quality, transparency is imperative. It's terrible and immoral to try to hide the
fact [that it's advertising].The future of marketing is about transparency and honesty and truth."
If the content is high-quality, people don't care if someone paid to deliver it.
3.2 Content Marketing
Gone are the days of the Mad Men of Madison Avenue. Sad as it is, not only is the midday
drinking and smoking gone for good (mostly anyway), but the ads of old are gone as well.
Advertising in 1950, 1960, and beyond, was about a cheesy, geo-blanketed, retail-heavy
message. "Come on down and save, save, SAVE!" Today, the game is different. In the world
we live in, what we call the "internet maturation phase," we are covered in white noise.
Mindless drive from every product seller in the world.
We are smothered with ad and logo placements to the point where we tune most of it out.
Except for the stuff we really care about and that is where the paradigm shift comes into play.
Smart advertisers are now focusing on a different form of advertising. And it looks a lot like
its marketing brother from another mother, content marketing.
Few questions that needs to be answered:
 Do anyone remember a time when so many advertisements had deep storylines?
 Do anyone remember a time where the 30 second ad was outdone by the well-done 60
second, even 120 second ad?

It's a new age. It's what we like to call content advertising. It throws out high-frequency 30-
second ads which hammer you over the head with loud announcers and endless sales. Now it's
about a story. A feeling. A brand wishing to make a connection with us, the consumers.
Content Advertising is about two things.
The Story-This is not about a pitch. It's about the story behind a product. Content Advertising
brings the story to the forefront. Even some of the fictitious stories-like those of a
swashbuckling Captain Morgan-get us thinking about how the original purveyors might have
intended the product to be enjoyed. The story is everything. If it shines through, you win. If it
is diminished by Madison Avenue retail nonsense, you lose. Simple as that.
Being Personal-Let's use Apple as a case study for this. Every ad it puts out could easily be
about how wonderful the iPad Air 2 is. But it lets their consumer's personal experiences tell the
story instead. In my opinion, that has far more impact.
Products impact us personally. When a brand recognizes this and synthesizes it into an "ad,"
that's where the magic happens. Apple's ads are true. iPad's are used for countless purposes in
today's connected world and they deeply impact our lives, our health, and our well-
being. Showing the stories of people impacted by these devices makes it personal. And when
advertising gets down to a personal level, it connects.
Traditional advertising is dead. Content Advertising is alive and well, and the sooner we
understand its value and impact, the sooner we content creators and marketers will see our
brands thrive.

3.3 Why Content Marketing ROI Tools are Flawed and What to Use
Marketing to busy audiences is increasingly complex. It requires strategies to engage multiple
stakeholders throughout multi-stage sales cycles, conducting an intelligent dialogue, and
making a well-reasoned case for engagement. Successful marketers take a comprehensive view
of their customer by considering their changing industries, job roles, jargon, challenges, threats,
pain points, aspirations, and opportunities. What remains eternally true throughout the
marketing process is that the customer is at the heart of every business' success.
The foundations of great marketing are:
 Authentic, intelligent interaction
 Innovative method of delivery and a creative end-product
 And always - always - designed in measurement from the outset. This allows us to analyse,
review, and learn -- and to report success
Between CRM tools and the influx of connected devices, marketers are processing more real-
time data than ever before - and they will struggle to make sense of it all. The industry has
plenty of data gathering and visualization tools, but the big challenge will be insight and smart
action. Marketers are expected to overcome the glut of data as a no-excuses approach to
campaign performance analysis takes root. The abundance of measurement tools means that
marketers can no longer get away with unmeasured initiatives. They must have a plan to align
marketing activities with business objectives, and to then report on their outcomes.
Today, there's a lot of talk -and a lot of confusion about content. Marketers who have been
constrained by bullets and feature lists can finally give compelling stories the centre stage with
content marketing. While 86% of companies implementing content marketing programs
according to the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, most marketers struggle to
measure the ROI of their content marketing programs and here's why: They are measuring
the wrong things.
The biggest problem that we see repeated across marketing departments, verticals, sectors, and
geographies is that marketers fail to thoroughly and accurately define the value that their
campaign must deliver to their business. The value of a campaign can vary widely, and may
include measurements such as leads, search ranking, social growth, engagement, registrations,
sales, demo requests, free trial sign-ups, customer wins, and more.

Typical measurements such as likes, hits, and shares - even conversions - fail to expose the true
nature of the customer's engagement with a brand and their likelihood to engage in further
desirable behaviours. Additionally, every campaign should not use the same measurement
techniques to validate its effectiveness. What works for a promotional email campaign may not
work for customer showcase.
3.4 How CanMarketers Bridgethe ContentCreationandMeasurementGap
Information architects and writers must collaborate to provide junction points and give users
the ability to decide how deep their commitment to the story will be. And marketers and
analysts must also work together to measure the accumulative impact of those interactions.
Now, more than ever, marketers must become adept statisticians, with a variety of tools and
techniques to measure program effectiveness, all while mapping overall performance back to
the objectives of the business. Marketers must match the right tool to the job and measure ROI
as it relates to the customer lifecycle. By creating content that is tailored to each phase of the
lifecycle, and then using the right tools and techniques to evaluate the success of that content
at that particular phase of the customer journey, marketers can capture a more complete and
nuanced view of campaign effectiveness.
There are three steps that marketers need to take before they invest a single dollar or minute
into new measurement tools.
1. Rethink your definition of success
2. Understand meaningful connection and engagement vs. visibility with customers
3. Investigate the measurement tools before you commit - choose the right tool for the job.
Marketers can measure nearly everything now, and rather than taking a historical view of
measuring what worked, they should use this analytical power to anticipate their best
move. Marketers should weave together the data that is revealed through likes, shares,
downloads, etc. to tell a story about the sustained quality of engagement.

3.5 Three Digital Content Lessons from 2014
Being a Digital Native is Hard Work
Just when I thought I had a handle on the technology or media industry, some new gadget or
app came along and blindsided me. There is just so much to keep up with, from company
acquisitions, to new gadgets, to waxing and waning media trends. It's not easy staying in the
know.
In 2014, the news started to change. Social media companies took notice and started pushing
out news along with the typical status updates and tweets to expect. No more jumping from
GigaOm to CNN and back to Slate. All to do these days is pop over to social media site of
choice to see what's going on. Take Facebook for example. Pew Research reported in
September of 2014 that roughly two-thirds (64%) of U.S. adults use Facebook to get their news.
That's a big chunk of people, almost 30% of the general population.
Online Privacy is Essentially an Oxymoron
Sure, you can change your passwords every month and lock your Facebook settings to
"private," but no one is ever really safe from a good hacker with a lot of time on his hands. Just
look at Sony. One of the biggest media companies in the entire world suffered a debilitating
breach of privacy in 2014. Remember when Dropbox and Apple's iCloud were hacked just a
few months back? Let's face it: 2014 was the year of privacy breaches. And the worst part is,
things could only get worse.
In Pew Research's Privacy in 2025: Experts' Predictions survey, online experts sounded off on
what they think will happen to online privacy in the future. Some said that a secure online
infrastructure is impossible in the future, especially in the United States where personal
freedom seems to trump all. Others noted that if we don't come up with a viable solution to
keeping personal data safe, we run the risk of a global catastrophe.
No matter which side you fall on, the privacy debate could have a strong impact on media
companies and how they reach users. For example, Pew Research also reported that, "80% of
those who use social networking sites say they are concerned about third parties like advertisers
or businesses accessing the data they share on these sites." In the year 2015, media companies
have to be extra careful regarding what kind of information they ask users to provide for
marketing and advertising means. If they push too hard, they run the risk of users clamping
down on their personal information, and becoming increasingly unwilling to provide anything
to untrusted parties.
Be entertaining – Generation N is crying out for entertainment

Being entertaining demands creativity, and our experts agreed. In our expert survey*, we
asked respondents for their top three best practices for successful native advertising.
Top opinions are listed below as from highest to the least preferred:
• Be creative
• Be innovative
• Be authentic to the tone and values of the brand (don’t pretend to be something you’re not)
• Tell a great story
• Be authentic to the tone and values of the media owner
Align with consumers’ interests – tap into their passion points
The audience must be able to relate to this content, so it has to be relevant and resonate. As
we’ve said, authenticity is vital here; the brand must find a topic that’s not only of interest to
the reader, but genuinely relevant to the brand as well. Generation N consumers can spot a
phoney a mile off – remember, they’re experts in content consumption.
Be relevant to their current online activity – don’t interrupt
Another vital rule to follow is the need to have a ‘human’ feel, and to sit naturally alongside
the editorial. The worst crime possible in native is that you interrupt the user – 75% of
respondents to our consumer survey told us that they felt online advertising should be less
forced.
Paul Wilson, Managing Partner at media agency SMV, says: “If you are distracting somebody
or you’re encouraging them to click on something to go to another place, then you’re not
delivering on that promise, and that’s frustrating.”
Get this wrong and it’s not only the brand that suffers; the publisher loses credibility and
ultimately their audience could choose go somewhere else. The editorial environment is a
crucial part of the native approach, which means brands must choose partners carefully and be
respectful to the user experience.

3.6 How to Win the Content Numbers Game
It's time to face facts: Everything is a numbers game. From fantasy football to digital
advertising campaigns, we yearn for more numbers and more analytics. Content marketing is
no different. On a podcast called Conversion Cast (it's a great one if you haven't subscribed),
the host Tim Paige and guest Brian Dean (from Backlinko) spent an entire episode talking
through the tactics and metrics behind a single post from Dean that garnered more than 5,000
shares on social media.
Experts-such as Michael Hyatt, Derek Halpern, Dean, and more-point to specific techniques to
get the numbers we all desire. And here's a little secret: It's not hard; it just takes time, attention,
and action. Here is a synopsis of my favorite actionable techniques from around the web to
boost your numbers in a hurry.
Build your email list-This is, far and away, the top technique from every expert and non-
expert out there. If building your email list is not a top priority in your business, it needs to be.
Email lists are the holy grail of marketing (for now anyway-texting to smartphones will soon
take that mantle, in my humble opinion). Offer something of value to your audience. Use a
simple Mail Chimp data capture form, and start an email list today. It will be your most valuable
sales asset, period. This is not a best guess-this is a fact.
Teach-What do you know that your audience doesn't? Better yet, what are they starving for?
Gary Halbert's most famous advice before: "Find your starving audience and feed them."Take
the skills you have built during your career, and put them down in the written word, blog
posts, and videos, Sanskrit. There is always someone coming behind you who would benefit
from your expertise.
Find the pain - We are all consumers. There is nothing better than finding the right product at
the right time that solves a problem. Creating content about painful problems can set you on a
path to true success. The world's most successful entrepreneurs are successful because they
find the pain and provide meaningful and useful solutions.
Headlines - Part of content success is how you name or title your piece. Many experts-
including a couple of my favorites, Jeremy Frandsen and Jason Van Orden from Internet
Business Mastery-say you should take as much time or more on the headline as you do on the
content itself. Formulas such as the "How to" headline, the "End Result plus Time Period plus
Overcome Objections" headline, or even the "List" headline are the toast of the content world.

Give until it hurts - Not literally, but give, give, give. Try to give away a resource guide or
some piece of content all of the time. Ebooks and PDFs in which you teach or share insider
secrets are the types of things your audience will soak up. Always put your contact information
and an email auto responder link at the end of your ebooks or PDFs, because you never know
who will read it. And as we talked about previously, building your email list is key.
See what quality content already exists and make it better - Do not be afraid to review
existing popular pieces of content, polish them, and make them your own. They are not
advocating plagiarism. Find what worked for them, improve or tweak their concept or structure,
and make a similar piece of content in your own niche. As this year comes to a close, remember
that it's a numbers game, and can either be playing the game well or be floundering with little
traffic and little influence. It will require persistence and discipline, but in the end, the more
your content takes on the tactics previously mentioned, the more you will succeed.
In Branded Content We Trust - As the line between editorial and advertorial continues to
blur, so does the public's confidence in content from publications versus brands, as evidenced
by new industry research that explores this topic-with some unexpected results. A new study
by Vibrant shows that only 2% more of consumers trust content from publications (35%) than
from brands (33%); and yet, there are more consumers who distrust content from publications
(18%) than there are who distrust content from brands (15.5%). Additionally, the number of
consumers that distrust content from media titles they know (12%) is double the number who
distrust content from brands that they know (6%).
The fact that consumers' level of trust in branded content is even on par with editorial is very
surprising, says Craig Gooding, founder and executive chairman of Vibrant, in a written
statement. "Moreover, the higher levels of distrust in publishers' content than branded content
shows far less cynicism about branded content than we expected. We know that good editorial
keeps consumers on pages, but we haven't quite understood that brands are now creating
excellent editorial." Other experts were also surprised by the survey's results, including Jake
Burns, founder of SouthDirekt. "It shows how the prior church-and-state line between editorial
and advertising in publications has nearly completely eroded. This means that, to earn reader
trust, digital publishers and marketers should adhere to two simple principles: truth and
quality," Burns says. "If we tell a compelling but still truthful story, the reader will listen and
be more likely to engage and trust the source, be it a publication or advertiser."

Vicki Kunkel, CEO of Digital Wits, was also taken aback by the survey's findings, but more
so by the distrust numbers (12% versus 6%). "I thought that margin would have been higher
because studies over the past several years have shown a clear eroding of public trust in
traditional publishing operations-and especially journalists," says Kunkel. The reason
publications won the trust question-but lost big on the distrust question-is because they have
fewer touch points than brands, she notes. "Brands interact with us in so many ways-through
products, services, advertising, and content. The more touch points we have, the more chances
the company gets to earn our trust. With publications, content is pretty much their only game-
meaning fewer opportunities for the consumer to interact with and establish close trust ties,"
says Kunkel.
The study also revealed a number of other interesting results. When consumers want more
information about a brand or product after seeing an ad, 33% of respondents said the most
useful source of information was the advertiser's own website. This was five times the number
of consumers who stated that articles written by journalists about the brand or product are the
most useful source of information (6%). Even advertorials-articles written by the brand
advertiser themselves but displayed on a third-party publisher's website-ranked higher than
those written by journalists, with 8% of consumers stating that they found advertorials to be
the most useful source of information about the brand or product. And 46% of respondents said
they were receptive to articles written by brands, while 19 percent reported that they were
unreceptive to that format.
Branded content is now as acceptable to consumers as editorial, Gooding says, because
consumers are more aware of the biases within the media, regardless of the organization that
is producing the content. "In fact, the prevalence of partisan editorial has eased the acceptability
of branded content into consumers' media intake. Consumers' cynicism of all content has meant
that they don't discriminate as harshly against branded content as might be thought, even though
it has an underlying objective to push product," says Gooding. The depth of relationship
consumers have with brands-they eat brands' food, place brands' diapers on their babies, wear
brands' clothes, clean their houses with brands' products-may mean they are more inclined to
trust content from brands they know rather than media titles they know, Gooding adds.

For publishers to increase consumer faith in their publications, content providers need to be
more understanding of people's needs. "Consumers today are savvier and busier, but also
bombarded by content and brand messages from every angle, every minute of the day. This
means they're more selective about what they choose to engage with and where they ultimately
invest trust," says Christian Jorg, CEO of Opentopic. "That's why content should be centered
on the needs of the audience versus the product or company. For marketers and publishers
alike, this kind of consumer-focused approach is critical to developing relationships and trust
with today's consumer." Simon Slade, CEO and co-founder of Affilorama, agrees. "In your
content, sympathize with your readers. Explain why you share their plight and why your
product or service will help," says Slade. "When discussing your brand, focus on the product
or service's benefit rather than its features."
The key to boosting consumer trust is to focus less on traditional content that merely informs
and focus instead on activity that drives consumer behavior change, Kunkel believes. "Content
doesn't change behavior; action and involvement does. Active content generates more intense
touch points. There is so much informational content out there that consumers are experiencing
content fatigue," says Kunkel, who also recommends surveying your customers to find out
what types and formats of content they want from you. To achieve integrity in the process of
creating and placing content, especially native advertising, Gooding suggests that editorial and
advertising teams need to collaborate better. "Both brands and publishers need to be transparent
with consumers that the content has commercial objectives. Overt labeling and clear signals
should communicate to consumers that native ads are marketing messages," adds Gooding.
To effectively introduce branded content without compromising your relationship with
consumers, offer helpful and insightful information that the reader can use. "Include valuable
information that provides the answers that users are looking for. You don't want to give away
the store, but provide something that makes it clear that your brand is a trusted resource, and
put a call to action in your content," says Kenneth C. Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax.
Ultimately, it's important to remember that consumers want good content, and they aren't that
concerned where it comes from. "We in the media industry have to stop thinking of brands
purely as advertisers. Brands are creating credible content that consumers are trusting,"
Gooding says. "These study findings should reassure marketers and publishers that if they act
responsibly, they will not compromise their relationship with consumers." Relevance,
proportionality, and appropriate placement are the three most important considerations for
maintaining that relationship.

3.7 Shake Up Your Mobile Strategy for 2015
With Americans now spending more time on mobile devices than on desktops or laptops,
brands need a marketing strategy that embraces mobile. And yet, many brands are struggling
to find a coherent mobile strategy. One mobile media company says that brands that don't "get
mobile" must overhaul their marketing strategy in 2015 or risk becoming as obsolete as a flip
phone. Companies can no longer create a responsive website and claim that they have a mobile
strategy.
Smartphones and tablets are very personal devices. People carry them everywhere, unlike
desktops or even laptops, so marketing needs to be tailored to how people use their devices.
"Indiscriminant push notifications, irrelevant brand messages, and clumsy and complicated
mobile interfaces do not impress consumers," says Marla Schimke, VP of marketing at Zumobi,
a provider of integrated app content and advertising experiences on smartphones and connected
devices. "Understand mobile content marketing is all about the consumer."
Brands are beginning to understand that mobile content marketing strategy is not a sprint, but
a marathon," Schimke says. And yet, the marathon is comprised of countless sprints, as brands
can no longer rely on a catchy saying ("A diamond is forever.") or jingle ("Have a Coke and a
Smile.") to be the tent pole of their marketing strategy, according to Schimke. The advent of
mobile as a media platform has thrown a proverbial wrench into branding and marketing teams'
creative processes, as they no longer have to think of that one catchy idea-they have to think
of 1,000 catchy ideas," says Schimke. "Additionally, they have to think about where and how
they will appear and ways to keep their consumers connected to their brand.
However, a complete overhaul of a company's marketing strategy may not be necessary if its
business model and marketing initiatives are aligned, says Michael Blumenfeld, managing
consultant for financial services at Maxymiser, a provider of cloud-based testing,
personalization, and cross-channel optimization solutions. "The business model and goals
dictate the outcome of the strategy," Blumenfeld says. A major marketing redo would only be
necessary if a company doesn't have a mobile strategy yet or if its "current mobile strategy
supports X and you're looking to support Y," Blumenfeld says. According to a recent IBM
survey, most enterprises understand that getting mobile right is a key part of their marketing
strategy. "84% of CIOs rate mobile solutions as a critical investment to get closer to customers,
while 94% of CMOs ranked mobile apps as crucial to their digital marketing plans," says
Michael Gilfix, director of enterprise mobile product management at IBM.

Gilfix points out that apps such as QuickPay and Popmoney are making it easy to pay restaurant
bills, for example, and Dominos' allows voice ordering. "More companies should be
challenging themselves to emulate and improve upon innovations like these, turning mobile
strategy into a competitive advantage for their business. Despite the progress, experts say that
there's much work to be done if companies are to capitalize on mobile's promise. Take apps,
for example. IBM says that 80% of apps (see graphic) are used only one time and then deleted.
Gilfix says that Gartner, Inc.'s research shows that only 1 in 10,000 mobile apps will be
considered financial successes by their developers through 2018.
Creating a more engaging and personalized app experience could "represent significant
opportunities in terms of loyalty and revenue," Gilfix says. "For example, 75% of mobile
shoppers take action after receiving a location-based message. By designing for mobile from
the ground up, organizations can provide targeted, cloud-based push notification technologies
to maximize mobile customer engagement and drive a consistent brand experience through
multiple channels. Blumenfeld agrees that the mobile experience is not where it needs to be.
"Many people continue to feel that responsive design websites are the end all, be all," he says.
That statement is only true when a corporation has an understanding of what their client is
doing across devices.

There are several challenges that prevent widespread adoption of mobile strategies, including:
 Very few organizations have the foundation in place to capitalize on the power of mobile
as part of a holistic business strategy, instead of treating mobile as a soloed communications
channel.
 Companies are finding that mobile security is a serious concern and can slow down and
even prevent adoption of a mobile strategy.
 Apps and devices must be integrated with core business processes, workflow, and back-end
data and analytics in order to bring the power of mobile to the individual. Apps must be
built "from the ground up" to solve complex problems for customers
 2015 will be a challenging year as brands continue to react to consumers' rapid embrace of
mobile. The experts interviewed for this article were full of predictions for mobile in 2015.
Here are a few:
 Mobile will be embraced, 2015 will be the year that brands truly embrace the ‘mobile first'
mind-set. "Accompanying this trend, mobile content marketing spend will continue to
increase as brands experience the value of engaging the opted-in consumer with relevant
content marketing
 There will be more sophisticated apps. "Developers will create more sophisticated apps that
rely on analytics and cognitive computing capabilities to better engage users," says Gilfix.
"Developers will be able to better access and store data generated by the apps and make
better sense of that data to improve the user experience. Increased use of cognitive
technologies like [IBM's] Watson will lead to the development of apps that ‘learn as they
go' and use data to help shape entirely new markets."
 Mobile payments will catch on. Mobile payments opportunities in developed markets will
continue to rise, with merchants increasing use of technologies including geo location and
analytics to create greater value propositions for consumers-before and after the transaction-
in order to increase consumer interaction and influence changes in purchase behaviour and
loyalty
 There will be beautiful storytelling. As brands embrace marketing on a mobile device, great
content creation and beautiful storytelling will become an integral part of brands mobile
marketing strategies
 Video advertising's growth will continue, according to Schimke

3.8 Multichannel Content Marketing Is Your Next Challenge: Here’s How
to Overcome It
As a senior marketer, you are probably tired of hearing about anything related to content
strategy—multichannel, omni channel, or otherwise. Chances are good that you may have even
been asked about this by a C-level manager—it’s become pervasive. As with other digital
marketing tactics that have roared onto the scene during the past decade, the content marketing
ecosystem has mushroomed in only a couple of years, and the result is more confusion than
clarification, with hundreds of vendors vying for your business. And yet, while multichannel
content marketing may be the theme du jour rife with players, a few do’s and don’ts will help
ensure your marketing organization is getting the job done.
Do audit the state of your operation - how does your company perform up against two
competitors and one best practice company in the primary channels? Do you have the right
resources in place to execute a multichannel content strategy? How many existing content
assets do you have and which are usable? How much new content do you need to be developing
on a monthly basis, and who is going to define the strategy and create those assets? What do
your website stats say about popular versus underperforming digital content assets?
Don’t commit to a formal strategy until you’ve done testing - In spite of all the hyperbole,
no one really knows what they’re doing when it comes to multichannel content marketing. So
keep your boss at bay for 90 days while you do some testing and figure out the lay of the land.
Top advertisers with big budgets outspend competitors in every conceivable channel the rest
of us need to do some testing to define a plan.
Do make multichannel content marketing part of someone’s job description- additionally,
you can add a line item in a vendor agreement, with bimonthly check-ins to monitor activities
and progress. This could fit neatly into a digital marketing manager’s roles and responsibilities
or a public relations firm’s deliverables.
Don’t overspend on technology - yes, there are plenty of tools available to make distribution
easy and measure performance, and you should definitely be using one or more of these, but
strategy and talent will dictate success or failure, not the technology. There are hundreds of

enabling technologies to choose from, but it shouldn’t cost more than a few thousand dollars
during your first year or two of operation to execute a program.
Do pick your battles -You probably don’t have the resources to be a player in every digital
channel. Evaluate which are a good fit, and surrender the others (at least temporarily). Most
companies need to be active on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but the rest are nice-to-haves,
dependent on industry segment and resources. We regularly tell B2B clients to leave Facebook
alone until they get their core channels humming.
Don’t avoid Google - Although it’s not getting much attention these days, many consider it to
be molting. Google has never been averse to shutting down failed experiments, but Google+ is
too important to its long-term digital domination to abandon. Most importantly, Google+
activity contributes to SEO performance.
Do pursue hidden gems in your niche - Everyone is familiar with the major digital channels,
but each industry sector has specialty websites and bloggers that don’t boast monster traffic
numbers but are influential and accessible. Examples are Glide in arts and entertainment and
Cloud Showplace in technology. Seek out these hidden gems, find out what they’re looking
for—original content or modest sponsorships—and assess the opportunities within the overall
program options.
Don’t overlook second- and third- order ROI metrics - it’s usually difficult to quantify
direct ROI to content marketing efforts, which is what senior management wants to hear about.
Packaging content marketing with other digital marketing tactics and creating a website-wide
conversion metric is one workaround. Another approach is to focus on controllable metrics
such as general digital footprint stats. With careful analysis, you will be able to attach content
marketing to new business activities, but it’s not as straightforward as low-funnel activities
such as search.

Do make sure a newsletter is part of your strategy - Email newsletters don’t get the attention
they deserve in digital marketing these days. Maybe it’s because they’ve been around for so
long and have lost their luster. But an opt-in newsletter outperforms nearly every other digital
tactic when it comes to maintaining a profile among customers and prospects and direct
response. Distributing an email newsletter is a low-effort tactic that delivers terrific results.
3.9 Lessons from 3 Great Native Ads
Native advertising is having its big moment. When done right, it has tremendous pull with
consumers. According to Nielsen, native ads produce as much as an 82% in brand lift. An info
graphic from MDG Advertising says 70% of individuals reported that they would prefer "to
learn about products through content rather than through traditional advertising."
It's clear that consumers want great content, not canned messages. If brands can reach their
target niche, they can enjoy increased awareness, sales, and loyalty. Let's take a look at three
companies that have pulled off excellent native advertising campaigns, as well as how you can
emulate their success.
Netflix and The New York Times: Provide readers with interesting and new information A
native ad cannot contain recycled content. It should be new, fresh, thought provoking, and
above all, valuable to the reader. To promote the second season of Orange is the New
Black, Netflix sponsored a native ad in The New York Times this past June. The post, titled
"Women Inmates: Why the Male Model Doesn't Work," included a well-reported article
written by a Times staffer, along with videos showing testimonials from women who were once
incarcerated. The topic of imprisoned women doesn't show up frequently in the news, so
Netflix seized the opportunity to fill a hole. The article provided eye-opening statistics, such
as the fact that 75% percent or more of female inmates suffered through sexual or physical
abuse, and that over the last 30 years, the number of women serving time in American prisons
has increased more than eightfold. People go to publishers like The Times to learn something
new. A native ad that teaches and informs is going to be effective. Don't repost information
that's already available online. Do the reporting and offer something fresh.

Allstate and The Atlantic: Adhere to the publishers' standards When people log on to a
publishers' website, they expect to see consistency across the content. If content is not up to the
editorial standard, it's going to stick out. In a sponsored post on millennials' work habits,
Allstate provided original reporting and a handy infographic to illustrate its points. The writing
was on par with The Atlantic's other content. The first paragraph hooked readers like any good
piece of journalism should. It read, "It takes a certain blend of optimism and paranoia to sleep
with your phone within arm's reach. Something might happen-and I might miss it!" Though
the story wasn't in the traditional inverted pyramid style of journalism, it supplied fascinating
facts throughout that moved it along nicely.
Hanes and BuzzFeed: Match the tone of the publication
Before you create content-native ads or otherwise-you need to get to know your audience. Your
audience needs to feel as if you know exactly whom they are and are trying to give them content
they will appreciate, or else they won't connect with your brand. Hanes did exactly that.
BuzzFeed, a site known for its native ads, recently teamed up with the underwear company for
a sponsored post called "10 Of the Worst Moments In Any Interview." In a series of chuckle-
worthy animated gifs and one-liners, the post highlighted what does and can go wrong in
interviews.
The post was easily relatable to the BuzzFeed demographic, which is mostly made up of 18 to
34-year olds. People in this age group are often taking important job interviews for the first
time and experiencing the stress that goes along with it. When illustrated with a funny gif of a
gasping cat and a one-liner, it can help the audience feel better about their own interview
mishaps. They know they aren't alone in their career-related struggles.
When readers feel that content is applicable to their lives, they'll be more likely to share it with
their peers. Then paid media transforms into earned media, which is the goal of the sponsored
post model.

Shaista Shoaib Khan Dummy1

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (14)

Similar to Shaista Shoaib Khan Dummy1

Similar to Shaista Shoaib Khan Dummy1 (20)

Shaista Shoaib Khan Dummy1