AMP pages have turned out to be quite popular, adopted by a majority of websites online, including the Washington Post, to ensure a faster, more efficient mobile web experience. Leveraged by digital publishers to increase site performance, these can help the former get maximum ROI.

What Are AMP Ads

An acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages, this concept was launched in February 2016, with an aim to help mobile website content load immediately. Google was the main sponsor, along with Twitter, Bing, Baidu, and Pinterest as well as others. Aiming to minimize data to 8 times smaller than the mobile page size, Google’s AMP might result in an increase in revenue. Thus, faster, lighter, and capable of loading as fast as the rest of the AMP page, these ads, created by AMP’s smart open-source components, are devoid of useless JavaScript (JS), ensuring a seamless advertising experience. Validation before display protects them from malware. Developers need to build them only once and they can be used freely on both AMP and non-AMP pages.  

How Do AMP Ads Work

Similar to standard HTML ads, there are 3 steps to AMP ads. 

1. Publishers use an ad slot to insert an ad, through the amp-ad tag, further defining the SSPs or ad networks they prefer. 
2. A piece of JS code controlling the implementation of AMP elements and managing resource loading, or AMP runtime, further sends an ad request to a network to retrieve said ad. 
3. The AMPHTML ad is sent by the ad network, and AMP runtime starts before the ad rendering. 

Usually, ad networks have the ability of serving AMPHTML ad creatives, with each creative validated and signed via the Fast Fetch mechanism, the process being the same for AMP and non-AMP pages. The Fast Fetch mechanism ensures that AMP ads are fast (2.7 seconds faster, to be precise), as they’re fetched asynchronously, rendered only when users might see them. As ads and their responses are separated, ad requests are entertained during the early stages of a page’s life cycle. 

AMP Video Ads 

Being heavy, videos can slow site loading time, affecting end-user experience. AMP videos can help monetization without hampering speed. There are 16 video players, like DailyMotion, Brightcove, amongst others. Apart from these, custom components like <amp-iframe> can be used to integrate your existing player. Video ads boast a higher completion rate on AMP pages, appear more frequently on traditional web pages, and are a huge source of ad revenue. Instream video ads can be served by publishers using the <amp-ima-video) component, which works as a standard video player with functions like docking and auto-play on scroll. Publishers who don’t have video content can also deliver out-stream ads, courtesy of the <amp-ad> component. 

What Are The Benefits of AMP Ads 

Speed 

Faster than regular ads as they are requested earlier in the web page’s life cycle, AMPHTML ads help page rendering and creating selection happen parallelly. The omission of unnecessary elements makes these ads good performers. 

Page Latency 

Publishers often put up with high page latency due to slow-loading ads. AMPHTML ads are rendered immediately, reducing this significantly. 

Performance 

AMP runtime is tuned to work according to mobile resources. For instance, when not in view, AMPHTML ads with animations will not play. 

Size and Viewability

These ads are low on browser resource consumption due to their light size. They load faster, making them more viewable. 

Safe

AMP validates each ad creative before users see it, making AMPHTML ads fraud safe. 

Customizable

Working across devices on both AMP and non-AMP web pages, AMPHTML ads allow publishers to put down different strategies for ad loading, by changing one line of code. 

Amount of Ads

Publisher’s HTML page and AMP pages should be the same, content-wise. However, AMP pages can have more ads than the original HTML page, giving publishers more flexibility and control. 

Free, With Good ROI

An open-source project, AMP’s product suite, and resources are free. AMPHTML ads have a higher number of viewable impressions, generating more revenue per day for publishers. 

AMP Ads Also Have Their Disadvantages

Here are some cons to running AMP ads. 

1. Say goodbye to any fancy design elements, because UX is very basic. 
2. There will be random errors and warnings in Google’s Search Console. Fix them, whether they appear to resolve themselves or not. That means constantly working on the AMP platform. 
3. Depending on the website size, your workload might be more because you’ll need to maintain two identical websites. 
4. Using Analytics, Ads, or DoubleClick to track data from AMP pages is tricky. 

 Does AMP  add Value

AMP allows you to create your own custom design but is not just a simple code strip. As Google’s servers do a small pre-render of your website, you cannot speed up your site to be faster than the caches themselves. AMP could help with increasing page results, but knowledge of how to track the data served from Google’s servers is tricky. AMP has created a plugin, to help you create your own AMP pages, design, etc, according to the AMP project guidelines.

A lot of ad platforms, networks, and agencies are on-board with AMP, but there has been some criticism regarding its nature. AMP is a threat to the open web, alleging a few, courtesy of its supposed ‘rankings favoritism’. This is because Google always lets its own exchange win, despite submitting lower bids, courtesy of its fierce anti-competitive practices. Firebolt, Cloudflare, offers similar benefits, but then, any product/platform needs sufficient research before you implement it. 

Results of AMP on Revenue 

Since we have covered the advantages and disadvantages of AMP and the details of its implementation, it’s time to focus on the effect of AMP on Ad Revenue. While you certainly get better traffic from Google, including mobile search, ad revenue might suffer a little. For monetizing AMP pages, Ad Exchange and AdSense are sufficient, with other networks not optimized to work with AMP. 

Conclusion

AMPs are very beneficial for publishers who want to boost page speed and give their subscribers faster ads. Creating an AMP ad is as easy as creating a regular ad, with the former increasing revenue significantly for advertisers. What’s more. Google is constantly innovating functionality, which makes working with AMP to boost ad performance a lucrative option. 

At the end of the day, it’s all about providing a pleasant and memorable user experience. With more users going mobile, AMP ads might be the way forward. Read our blog to find out the right way of striking the fine balance between ads and user experience. Also learn how to optimize your ads so they remain non-intrusive, helping you retain your audience.

The post AMP Ads – Will They Boost Revenue For Publishers first appeared on Publir.

With sticky pads, you can place and emphasize ads both inside and outside your site layout, creating anchor ads that are always displayed on the web browser. The ‘Sticky Ads’ add-ons don’t scroll up and down. Choose between positions, shapes, and styles with multiple customizable parameters. 

Types of Sticky Ads 

Generally speaking, sticky ads can be broadly put into 4 categories. 

• Vertical Banner Sticky Ads – Portrait-sized ads that are on a web page’s sides, either on the right or the left side. 

• Horizontal Sticky Ads – Landscape-sized ads that are stuck to the top of the webpage. 

• Bottom Horizontal Sticky Ads – Similar to horizontal sticky ads, only placed differently, at the bottom of a webpage. 

• Sidebar Sticky Ads – A lot of websites show sticky ads together with sidebar content, earning the name sidebar sticky ads

Why Should You Bother About Sticky Ads

When implemented correctly, sticky ads can be quite effective, without being intrusive. They too have their pros and cons, and these are listed below so both publishers and advertisers can take a call about sticky ads. 

Pros 

• Increased viewability while being less obtrusive because they’re subtle and don’t interfere with a website’s organic content. 
• Adherence to IAB and MRC guidelines, that allow 50% of display ad creatives to be in view for a second. 
• Higher CPM and increased ad revenue. 
• Google Ad Exchange and header bidding can target sticky ads, good for increased auction pressure. 
• There are deep customization options available so they can be viewed well across devices.

Cons 

• Some ad networks ban sticky ads, for example, Facebook disallows them, while Google’s AdSense doesn’t permit them unless their anchor ad unit is used. Break these rules and risk your account being blacklisted. 

• They need a great deal of technical expertise because customization requires hard work.

Should You Implement Sticky Ads

The statistics stand in favor of sticky ads. They’re better performing than standard display ads. Nowadays the online population is getting saturated with ads, so getting useful clicks to drive sales is quite difficult. People online are indifferent to relentless marketing efforts, so in such times, well-implemented sticky ads which refuse to move when scrolled past yet are non-interfering, are the need of the hour. 

Using Google AdExchange to Run Sticky Ads 

Running a sticky ad isn’t dissimilar to running other display ads. First, check with your ad network, exchange or SSP, because some don’t allow running anchor ads along with theirs. Declare sticky ads to the ad exchange you work with. For those using Google’s AdExchange, here’s how you confirm a sticky ad’s existence. 

Sign into Google Ad Manager –

• From Inventory go to Ad Exchange Rules, then further to Publisher Declarations. 
• Click on the ‘Display’ syndication type, post which you click on the New Display Publisher Declaration. 
• Enter a new name for your declaration, selecting particular inventories to include or exclude for targeting. 
• Under the ‘Sticky Ads’ option, choose the ad inventory which will provide vertical or horizontal sticky ads on the site, and then click on save. 

When it comes to including and excluding ads, here are some high-performing sizes that generally do well. 

• 728×90: Also called leaderboards, these make for good horizontal sticky ads, having been proven to perform well. 
• 300×250: Known as medium rectangle ads, these pair well with sidebar content, making for good sidebar sticky ads. 
• 300×600: Popularly known as the ‘half-page ad’, it is a good, impactful size, easy to make as a vertical sticky ad. Along with 160X600, it makes for a good ad size for increasing CPM.

Refreshing Sticky Ads – How Do You Do It

Ad refreshing is beneficial to both advertisers and publishers if performed accurately. Ad refreshing for sticky ads works on different principles. An advanced trigger, relying on ad viewability, scroll movements, user activity, etc, is better than using standard triggers. 

What Are Some Best Practices That You Can Implement

• Take UX into account. Readers don’t care whether a sticky element is an ad or a video player. Any pop-up is immediately closed because it is disruptive and disturbing to the site experience. Read our blog on how to strike the right balance between ads and user experience, to get an idea of this.
• Keep your website’s sticky header small, and to the top of the screen. While sticky headers are helpful for a good mobile experience, they drive up close rates because they shrink the sticky visual’s area. 50 pixels tall is a good sticky header size, ensure this disappears when you scroll down or up, so it doesn’t interfere with readers. 
• Minimal text should be your principal here. However, this minimal text should be of high importance. Any lines used in the banner must be indispensable. A sticky ad is no place to get verbose because too much text can distract viewers. You just want enough to give them the information they need without interrupting their browsing experience. 
• Ensure your sticky ads are aesthetically pleasing and non-distractive. Don’t use colors that are too bright and distracting. Or, a video that could hamper the browsing experience. Sticky ads are to be non-obtrusive, small, and effective, not attention-grabbing. Ad size isn’t just relevant for sticky ads, it’s sacrosanct across other kinds of ads as well. For instance, our blog on banner ad design can give you an idea of what ideal design dimensions for online ads could be. 
• Ensure they’re spread through the website and don’t populate a page with too many sticky ads. Too many little squares and rectangles bouncing around the page can be quite annoying. Stick to a maximum of 2 ads that run on a single page. 
• Have a CTA. Like any ad, a sticky ad should either direct people to your website, landing page, or social media handles, or harvest their email ID, or make some purchase, basically, carry out some online transaction, monetary or non-monetary. There has to be some CTA that a person could click on. 

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, sticky ads are an effective way to grab user attention and direct it towards something you want. The trick lies in balancing the fine line between being interesting and interruptive. Ultimately, you want users to have a smooth browsing experience. Once they’re annoyed with a site, it will take a lot of convincing before they visit that website again. 

Ads are a great way to engage an audience, offering them discounts or getting them to sign up for something. However, today’s digital landscape has seen ads relegated to being treated as mostly spam, when in fact, they are key elements that drive purchase decisions. Make your sticky ads effective and place them smartly to get the most out of them. Read our blog on calculating return on ad spends, to get an idea of how to judge whether you’re spending too much or too little, on advertising online. 

The post Using Sticky Ads Effectively- Here’s What You Should Know first appeared on Publir.

Reviewing Ad Spending In 2021

As this happened, companies needed to tailor their digital marketing strategy and ad spending plan to cater to this new, homebound audience and a new way of doing business. Make no mistake, the competition was intense. When a person is sitting at home, there are a million ways to get distracted, so how are you going to make your product stand out for them? Digital advertising saw a marked shift during the beginning of the pandemic, with some brands taking a more story-based approach toward problem-solving. 

Global Decline In Spending During Pandemic

According to reports in 2020 by Magna, ad spending in the U.S. for linear media fell to $81 billion in 2020, a year-over-year decline of 16%. The agency had expected digital media to grow by around 10% in 2020, reaching $140 billion, as digital was often driven by eCommerce and advertisers seeking “lower funnel” attribution. Magna’s prediction for 2021 isn’t too drastic. It claims that led by search, digital media may grow by around 8%.

Mobile Ad Spends To Lead the Way 

Since the beginning of 2020, there has been quite a clear shift to digital in terms of share of ad spends, compared to 2019. And in 2021, this trend will continue as the smaller screen becomes more popular. 

According to Dentsu’s report of the Global Ad Spends forecast for 2021,  In APAC itself, the digital share of ad spending amounted to around 55.7% in 2020, which beat the global 48% average, and was the highest figure in terms of percentage, across regions globally. It’s estimated that by the year 2020, mobile will overtake the desktop in terms of ad spends.

Though the pandemic is lightning up in many parts of the globe, many people continue to remain closer to home. Often that means more screen time. And the more people’s lives revolve around the screen, the more marketers will need to come up with ingenious ways to bring their offerings to clients. 

In 2020, Zenith estimated the global ad spend will total $587 billion, a year-over-year drop-off of 7.5%. The agency noted the ad marketplace had unexpectedly rebounded in the latter half of 2020 or the decline would have been greater. In 2021, Zenith forecasted the global ad marketplace, driven by the postponed Tokyo Olympics and UEFA Euro tournament, will grow by 5.6% to an estimated $620 billion. Nonetheless, global ad dollars in 2021 will be lower than in 2019 ($634 billion). Looking ahead to 2022, global ad spend is projected to grow by another 5.2% reaching $652 billion. 

Digital Content To Become More Unique and Creative 

There is no doubt that the pandemic has not only changed shopping habits but lifestyles as well, as an extension. For companies, adaptation is key. Creating interesting ads that target the right consumers is key if you want your product to stand out and not get lost in the ‘pandemic specials’ that every company seems to be parroting nowadays. For example, if you have a streaming service, why should people use your portal instead of Netflix?

Experts To Help Companies To Navigate The World Of Digital Media 

Evolution needs to be a constant process. Before the pandemic, Uber and Lyft were constantly at loggerheads and expanding in multiple ways, trying to get consumers to choose one of them as a service provider. Leveraging social media is a proven way organization can reach more consumers if done right. If you run a small business, you need to get the word out about your offerings in the most efficient and cost-effective method possible. And attracting consumers is not enough. You need to retain them, so they form more than just a perfunctory functional bond with your product. They should fall in love with the brand, so they buy a subscription. Publir’s subscription tool is a nifty way to capture details and get clients to sign up for your services. 

Expect A Rebound 

In 2021, digital ad spending in America alone will increase to around 25.5%, the fastest growth rate since 2018. The ad market and wider economy are continuing to recover from the pandemic. Though 2020 was relatively flat, total media ad spending could rebound at around 18.0%. That’s not bad when you compare it to global figures. In February 2020, digital ad spending grew by around 12.7% only. Also, total ad spending declined by 1.2%, led chiefly by a 15.7% contraction in traditional ad spending.

Conclusion

It’s expected that 2021 will be marginally better for companies than the year 2020 because not only do businesses have more than 12 months of experience running in a pandemic, the global shutdowns are coming to an end in many countries. As time goes on, this new way of doing business might become the new normal, and functioning under these circumstances may be the only choice we have. The emphasis will likely be more on automation and personalization and less on customized, in-person experiences. Companies are aiming to offer users even more personalized content, and to help in doing so, artificial intelligence too might chip in. So despite being around for quite some time now, digital still has fresh and continually evolving prospects. To read such interesting articles, visit Publir ‘s Blog now!

The post Global Digital Ad Spending 2021 – An Overview first appeared on Publir.

Why Do Publishers Monetize Digital Media?

More than two decades ago, former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates predicted the monetization potentiality of the digital media, stating “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.” 

His predictions came true. While the content is described as a king, data is emerging as the ‘Queen’ for publishers who built strategies and business models to generate revenue through digital advertising, subscriptions, affiliate linking, and eCommerce sales.

By now, it is evident for content creators and publishers that their future lies in monetizing the changing consumer behaviors by drawing insights from the data, which drives their advertising and subscription strategies to fuel their growth engine. 

Publishers have also found new content distribution options in digital media. Digital solutions have reduced or eliminated printing, production, and supply chain costs, providing opportunities to target global markets. The growth of the internet and technology, in general, has had a profound influence on how people consume media and seek diversified content. Given the plethora of choices related to digital media platforms and the content they offer for consumers, digital content publishing has truly come of age.

Content platforms and search engines like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Amazon, Twitch, and so many others have been offering opportunities for creators to make money by following digital monetization practices.

What are the different ways to Monetize Digital Media?

Digital media products are offered in various forms including eBooks, videos, tutorials, audiobooks, newsletters, podcast series, and e-magazines and publishers rely on a variety of business models for monetizing the digital media through which they are offering content. The popular among them are:

• Digital advertisements
• Subscriptions
• Sponsored Content
• Virtual/Hybrid Events
• Affiliate Linking

Digital Ads

While some digital media companies generate revenue by placing display advertising on their websites and email newsletters, others utilize platforms for running programmatic advertising on their websites. Digital ad spending grew 12.2% YoY in 2020, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and it is expected to reach $455.30 billion in 2021. While 55.2% of the money will be spent on display ads, 40.2% will go to search.

For the first time, Amazon’s share of the U.S. digital ad market grew more than 10% in 2020, with Google taking a lion’s share of 28.9%, and Facebook making 25.2% digital ad revenue. While Social media ad revenue in 2020 was $41.5 billion, making up nearly 30% of all internet ad revenue, the digital video saw 20.6% YoY growth, increasing its share of total internet ad revenue by 1.3% to reach 18.7%. Programmatic ad revenue was 24.9% at $14.2 billion in 2020 and the global digital ad revenue grew substantially. 

 Subscriptions

Digital media inherited subscriptions as one of the primary revenue generators from traditional media and 2020 saw many digital publishers and media houses that provide political and business news, and entertainment switches to a subscription model. The New York Times garnered a record number of paid subscribers by Q4 of 2020 and the trend continued even in 2021 with a 6.6% rise to $473 million. As a result, the NYT’s subscription revenue rose by 15.3% to $329.1 million. Thomson Reuters, which provides free analytical business news, recently adopted a paywall strategy for its website, reuters.com.

Sponsored Content

Sponsored content, or native advertising, is yet another way of making revenue for digital media companies. Here, sponsored content appears alongside articles on the publisher’s website, social media channels, or in email newsletters. Either the advertiser or the publisher’s staff prepares this content in various forms, including but not limited to articles, videos, tweets, stories, and podcast episodes.

U.S. native ad spend is expected to increase by 21% in 2021 to a value of $57 billion and spending on mobile has more than doubled between 2018 and 2020, reaching $45 billion. Native advertising is the second-best top-performing channel for video campaigns according to U.S. publishers. Advertisers are opting for this format as it is easier to understand than display ads and social ads. They are engaging the readers for a longer time; with a 48% low CPC.

Events

Although events have traditionally been used to promote brands through exhibitions, tradeshows, and summits, virtual events have gained popularity in 2020, due to many in-person events being canceled thanks to COVID-19. Both live events and virtual events are an excellent strategy for publishers looking to diversify their revenue streams but companies measure the success of virtual events differently. In fact, 87% of event planners consider it successful based on the opportunities it generated, while 71% of them are looking at deals closed. 

Affiliate Linking

Like social media platforms, digital media publishers have started inserting affiliate links into their content as a way to promote other products and generate additional revenue. The New York Times has been a pioneer through its product review website, Wirecutter. To keep their journalistic integrity intact, digital media companies should mark any affiliate links they include in their articles.  

Top Challenges for Publishers to Monetize Digital Media

The ever-evolving digital media landscape offers multiple challenges for the publishers and content creators:  

• Several initiatives to ensure user’s privacy restrict companies from relying on third-party cookies, used for cross-site tracking, retargeting, and ad-serving. This would severely impact digital ad revenue.
• Digital ads are difficult for publishers as they have to fight tooth and nail for the ad dollars with many existing and emerging players. Several socio-economic and political factors influence the ad revenue. Google’s ad revenue hit by 6% in 2020, the worst-ever dip since 2008, while Amazon crossed 10% ad revenue. 
• Metrics such as page views and click-through rate are used to measure the ad impact and determine ad revenue. There is no uniform way to gauge the user’s behavior to determine ad revenue.
• Search engine ranking is crucial for digital revenue and to remain in the first or second position for popular keywords. Publishers should have a thorough knowledge of the latest search engine optimization tactics. 
• Not all publishers are successful in mustering subscribers’ support, which depends on the publisher’s ability to win the trust of the readers with quality content and innovation.
• The publisher should have strong customer data and strategies to generate subscription revenue, which is time-consuming. 
• Ad fraud is one of the biggest challenges that advertisers and publishers face. Fake users and bots that boost click-through rates may try to tamper with ad units that need to be tackled.
• The timing and positioning of an ad greatly influence the user experience. Several studies have proved that anchor ads and pop-up ads irritate readers, leading to higher bounce rates.
• Publishers must constantly evaluate the situation and update ad units to serve as a platform to track user behavior and trends.
• Media giant Google and social media giants like Facebook and Twitter are crushing competition through aggressive mergers and acquisitions and not letting many small players thrive. 

Digital Monetization Best Practices

Think Mobile

More than 5 billion people worldwide are now using a mobile phone, most people in the developed world. Consumers around the globe spent an estimated $407.6 million across Apple’s App Store and Google Play. No matter what industry you’re in, it pays to develop a mobile strategy alongside your digital media strategy. 

Digital publishers must gear up to produce formats compatible with mobile to reach all customers right where they’re at–on their phones. Although the staggering figures are appearing very lucrative, digital publishers cannot ignore the other platforms.

Video Streaming 

People stranded at home spent more hours watching videos on demand on OTTs in 2020 and video usage is on the rise on all interactive social media platforms like YouTube. The video keeps people on your site longer and has a 41% higher click-through rate in video search results than text-based content.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok have been on news, making digital media more participative and Apple’s UGC marketing campaign with #ShotOnIphone is a remarkable example of trust-building, showcasing authenticity, and boosting engagement and sales.

Interactive Experiences

Interactive experiences like games, quizzes, polls, surveys, competitions, video making, and events engage the audience better than making them passive recipients.

Winning the customer’s trust

Winning customer loyalty goes a long way for the publisher in building the digital platform. Privacy breaches, information leakages, antitrust behavior is harmful to the digital platform.

Quality Matters

The quality of content in websites, social media, and other digital media is measured by different standards depending on the platform. Although the digital marketing industry uses various metrics to measure its success, a publisher must strive to create engaging content that is capable of holding visitors on their site and platforms for a longer time. Publishers should constantly experiment with format and practices to make it more innovative.

Native Advertising for Content Promotion

Once you’ve decided which content you’re creating, it’s important to ensure it reaches your intended audience. Native advertising is one of the best ways to do this. Research from eMarketer shows that spending on native ads continues to rise, reaching $44 billion in 2020. Find a brand that aligns with yours and negotiate to publish some of your content on its platforms or vice versa. Getting in front of new audiences with quality content is key to building an audience and increasing sales.

Conclusion

Despite challenges, digital media is painting a promising picture for publishers to make money in innovative ways. The publisher, however,  must have to keep pace with evolving digital media publishing trends to remain in the race. 

The post Behind the Curtain of Monetizing Digital Media first appeared on Publir.

Marketing using online platforms is becoming the preferred marketing method to promote your products and services in the technology-driven world of today. Hence, the present digital environment demands our knowledge of various digital marketing tools to promote our companies and services in the right way. 

Have you ever thought about improving your business on the digital platform but found out that you have limited knowledge about digital marketing tools? It’s not easy to find out the best tools because there are so many options available. Choosing the wrong one may affect your business and changing tools is inconvenient and cumbersome. 

Why do we need Digital Marketing Tools?

No two companies are the same, so it’s important to do your research so you can choose the most appropriate tool for the way you do business. Thousands of tools are available to organizations and their digital marketers. And there’s a lot to consider when evaluating the tools you’ll use, including ease of use, budget, performance, depth of delivery, reach, recommendations, and others.

Social networking may be the most common digital outlet for digital marketing strategy, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most effective. You need to choose the right approach for your own needs–and the tools you need to carry out that strategy. And then you’ll want to measure those results to ensure you’re on the right path.

Top Digital Marketing Tools in 2021

Let’s look at some of the most valuable digital marketing tools for businesses today, based on the type of services they support. The tools mentioned below will give you a heads-up on what the winning teams are using.

Data & Analytics

Google Analytics

For any digital marketer who seeks to scale his company, Google Analytics is a must. This free tool shows you all the relevant website output statistics, including where your website traffic is coming from, what they’re doing on your website, what pages they love, and more.

Pros

• Google Analytics can measure traffic from various multimedia formats such as blogs, smartphone apps, posters, or anything that is connected to the internet. 
• You can add a Google Analytics account through the Google Ads account, making your digital ads more effective. 
• Data can be collected from various networks and databases, such as trade links, market benchmarks, etc. 
• You can create custom objectives and track e-commerce sites through this tool.

Cons

• You must “learn the language” to understand the complexities of Google Analytics, and it can feel complicated. 
• The right resource is, unfortunately, frequently difficult to find online, and directions for those without an interim analysis experience can be frustrating, time-consuming, or daunting.
• Overwhelming feeling with many dashboards, user views, and analytics.
• If you experience heavy page traffic may, you may need to switch to a paid version that is quite costly (though most small and growing businesses can do quite a lot with the free version). 

Pricing

There are two pricing tiers for Google Analytics:

• Freemium: Free
• Premium: $150,000 per year

Sumo

Sumo, formerly known as SumoMe, provides a range of website enhancement software. You can see if users are reading your blog with its heat maps tool, and check out precisely where people are clicking so you can adjust the call-to-action buttons, news, pictures, etc. for an even better ROI. It’s easy to find information through Sumo’s content analysis application.

Pros

• A large range of software to replace some individual plugins of WordPress.
• The intuitive user interface is incredibly convenient.
• Setup and monitor info to assist you in obtaining the best results.
• The premium version includes the latest software and resources from third parties.

Cons

• The visitor’s brand contains the free edition.
• Premium versions are fairly costly.

Pricing

There are five pricing for Sumo:

• Basic: Free
• Small: $29 per month
• Medium: $59 per month
• Large: $119 per month
• Sumo: Unlimited (find out more on the Sumo website)

Blog Content and SEO

UberSuggest

UberSuggest can help you come up with new content topics and keywords with a simple “suggest” option. Simply type in an idea or keyword to see a list of similar outcomes. You can then pick either of the results to broaden the scope, check Google trends, or search Google’s keyword.

Pros

• A free app having no restrictions like most software with the keyword. 
• Open to everyone on the Internet.
• Offers a lot of new ideas about keywords and content topics.
• It uses location-based data that is easy to scan for through SEO.
• It gives you fast results and simplified metrics.

Cons

• You may find that you’re restricted in identifying specific target audiences. Results linked to particular niche markets can be difficult to identify.
• There is no dedicated mobile app for Ubersuggest.

Pricing

There are two pricing for Ubersuggest:

• Monthly: $2.5 per month
• Yearly: $45 per year

Google Keyword Planner

This free tool will help you find keyword and ad ideas, look at the performance of a list of keywords, generate new key phrases by multiplying several keyword lists together and select competitive bids and budgets for your promotions. 

Pros

• It is easy to use with a simple step-by-step process.
• It lets you export data easily and quickly.
• It has a unique feature allowing you to multiply two or more keyword lists to generate a list of new, special keyword combinations.
• It has hundreds of possible alternatives to the keywords entered by the user.
• This tool helps you to apply filters based on area, right down to the city, as well as language.

Cons

• Google Keyword Planner would not propose long-term keywords for most types.
• This tool does not seem to have a negative keyword list for those that use one.

Pricing

This is a free tool where the only requirement is your Google account or Gmail account credentials.

SEMrush

SEMrush comes with a slew of digital marketing resources that will assist all paying search experts and SEOs in tracking and improving their search rankings. One of the most useful features of SEMrush is the ability to watch your rivals. You will use the tools to pull backlinks from your competitors, monitor their ranking fluctuations, and do a complete comparative analysis.

Pros

• It will show you how your website is doing in the search engine results with your chosen keywords.
• It even gives you details about your competitors’ websites. You can take advantage of the information by applying it to your own website.
• You can fully schedule, organize, and launch PPC campaigns with SEMrush at your disposal.
• It gives you all the information you need about each keyword in your niche. This covers the term’s search rate, patterns, and ad copy.

Cons

• Its backlink and keyword index are not the best in the market.
• Its PPC keyword research tool is not user-friendly.
• Most of the information present is in industry jargon rather than in plain language.
• SEMRush’s recommendations can give you a false sense of confidence and precision if you don’t have a professional marketer to translate your results.

Pricing

There are three pricing for SEMrush:

• Pro: $99.95 per month
• Guru: $199.95 per month
• Business: $399.95 per month

Email Automation

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a comprehensive marketing tool that allows you to communicate with your subscribers and customers seamlessly and automatically. You can set up subscription forms and send email newsletters and automated email sequences to stay in front of your audience regularly–right in their inboxes. Some pricing tiers offer a full customer relationship management system, landing pages, lead scoring, and more. 

Pros

• Integration with over 800 other tools you may already be using
• Over 500 automation recipes so you can literally get your automation going in minutes
• It’s incredibly easy to upgrade or downgrade your services to meet your current needs
• Predictive sending is available for some tiers, so you can send your emails when your audience is in their inbox–rather than in the middle of the night

Cons

• New users have found it to be difficult to navigate
• There’s no free option
• The price can get expensive if you have a large list

Pricing

• Lite: $9 a month, paid yearly, for 500 contacts
• Plus: $49 a month, paid yearly, for 500 contacts
• Professional: $129 a month, paid yearly, for 500 contacts
• Enterprise: $229 a month, paid yearly, for 500 contacts

HubSpot

HubSpot, a well-known provider of CRM and inbound marketing tools, recently introduced an email marketing service. HubSpot Email Marketing is simple to use, has high deliverability, and is fully compatible with all other HubSpot goods, including the free-forever CRM and hundreds of other common marketing resources.

Pros

• HubSpot offers multi-blog hosting, which can all be handled from a single location.
• The HubSpot CMS has a WordPress “blog importer.” This platform makes it easy to convert your WordPress blog to HubSpot.
• There is an SEO checklist when you build a blog using HubSpot’s in-line editor. This checklist outlines what needs to be streamlined in order for the blog to score as high as possible.
• The blog comments dashboard allows advertisers more leverage of their comments by allowing them to be filtered and moderated before they are uploaded.

Cons

• You cannot update your blog using the staging tool; instead, you must replace the blog templates in your settings.
• While HubSpot allows you to convert content into another language, this option is only available for limited website pages and landing pages.
• The tags will be applied to all blogs. This is fine if you only have one blog in a single language, but if you have two, three, or even four blogs, the tags would not translate well.

Pricing

HubSpot has four pricings:

• Free
• Starter: $45 per month
• Professional: $800 per month
• Enterprise: $3,200 per month

Social Media Marketing

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is used by many social media marketing agencies to plan and analyze social media behavior and results across various platforms–and it works great for organizations that are managing their own social media too. Marketing teams can quickly produce and schedule quality social media content to attract their target audiences. Users can respond to comments right in the tool, research new trends, and watch social conversations and brand mentions.

Pros

• It helps in monitoring multiple social media streams all in one place.
• You can schedule posts weeks in advance, so you can set it and forget it.
• It has a dashboard for social analytics that provides customized insights.
• It has a one-of-a-kind app directory with over 100 applications, including YouTube, Salesforce, Google Drive, and SoundCloud.

Cons

• Given the amount of interaction taking place within any one tab, seeing too many social networks and accounts shown in the interface can be overwhelming.
• It’s not as intuitive and simple as other social media marketing tools.

Pricing

There are four pricing for Hootsuite:

• Professional: $29 per month
• Team: $129 per month
• Business: $599 per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing according to services 

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is another social media scheduling tool that allows you to schedule posts well in advance. It offers analytics that inform you about your content distribution rates, level of interest per message, use, and other considerations so you can figure out how often you should share. 

Pros

• The dashboard is well-organized, with a menu of six different items that will assist you with any current social media campaign that you might be undertaking.
• Sprout Social allows you to track posts from all of your social media pages in one convenient location.
• The Listening feature shows you audience trends in a unique format.
• It is simple and easy to publish posts on a regular basis with this tool.

Cons

• Sprout Social’s analytics don’t track the same way the social media platforms track, making it difficult to rely solely on its reports.
• In the scheduling tool, links don’t always format well.
• It has a limited number of social media networks including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. 

Pricing

It has three pricing:

• Standard: $99 per month
• Professional: $149 per month
• Advanced: $249 per month

Visual Design

Klipfolio

Klipfolio is a fantastic platform for data visualization and automation. It offers dashboards to help consumers monitor the success of their marketing strategies. Klipfolio connects to a wide variety of data sources through integrated APIs – and if there isn’t an API for a data source, it’s simple to create one within the platform. It also has a useful feature that allows you to send data as an attachment via email.

Pros

• It integrates with numerous data sources and has great documentation.
• Dashboards with shared/permalink URLs are ideal for allowing private access without needing a password.
• Klipfolio strikes a good balance between ease of use and efficient data crunching and visualization capabilities.
• You will have complete control over who can access which data with the help of its team permissions.
• It has a responsive support staff to resolve the issues immediately.

Cons

• Klipfolio is a true dashboard solution for displaying key performance indicators (KPIs). It is not for you if you need a monitoring solution to investigate and drill further into datasets.
• Setting up a new client for a dashboard can be a time-consuming task.
• For people who are new to Excel, SQL, and database design, there is a slightly steep learning curve.

Pricing

Klipfolio has the following pricing plans:

• Free Trial
• Starter: $29 per month
• Publish: $49 per month
• Grow: $99 per month
• Team: $199 per month

Landing Pages

LeadPages

LeadPages makes it easy to build mobile-friendly landing pages, offer lead magnets, gather email addresses, and link your landing page to your email marketing program. Leadpages is one of the most competent landing page builders on the market, allowing you to quickly build a professional-looking landing page that’s easy to update to find the perfect formula for conversions. 

Pros

• It is easy to create landing pages by using a basic drag and drop builder.
• Using the same tool, you can even create popups and caution bars.
• Facilitation is provided at no cost. Leadpages will ensure that the position landing page loads quickly and switches over more effectively.

Cons

• It can be difficult to switch widgets around and position them exactly where you like them while customizing them.
• You’ll need to upgrade to a higher plan to get all the features you might need.
• Standard models are not editable. You are unable to add new content or rearrange existing content.

Pricing

After a 14-days free trial of the tool, Leadpages offers three pricing plans divided into two categories, i.e., monthly and annually:

Monthly:-

• Standard: $37 per month
• Pro: $79 per month
• Advanced: $321 per month

Annually:-

• Standard: $300 per year ($25 per month)
• Pro: $576 per year ($48 per month)
• Advanced: $2388 per year ($199 per month)

Content Curation 

Feedly

Feedly helps you to collect content from all over the web (not just RSS feeds) and organize it into a management dashboard. One of Feedly’s many features is the ability to browse for websites, podcasts, and even keyword search results, then follow these news outlets, which will appear in Feedly any time new content is written. Essentially it becomes your “read later” list based on your preferences.

Pros

• Blogs can be categorized into folders.
• Your sources can be divided into various “feeds.”
• You can easily customize the layout as per your requirement with lots of options.
• When you’re in full articles mode, you can scroll down and it’ll mark the post as read for you. It’s also simple to mark the article as “keep unread.”

Cons

• If you have a lot of interests, your feed can quickly get cluttered.
• Email updates aren’t a free service so you’ll have to upgrade if you want your updates delivered to your inbox. 
• Many features are only available to paying users.

Pricing

All prices are based on annual billing.

• Pro – $6 a month
• Pro+ – $8.25 a month
• Business – $18 a month
• Enterprise (check the website)

Project Management

Trello

Trello is a wildly popular project management tool that can be quickly managed on your computer or mobile device. You can build new assignments, add collaborators, delegate tasks, and set work deadlines in this easy-to-use framework. Trello is free to use, but it also has premium versions for more features.

Pros

• The update system is instantaneous; upgrades will not be delayed if several participants are operating on tasks at the same time.
• Trello is very easy to use, and the whole process of creating cards and boards is extremely user-friendly.
• It is mobile-friendly and keeps you updated on the go with its push notifications.

Cons

• While Trello may carry a large number of attachments, if you are a gold member, you are restricted to 250MB per upload and if you are a basic member, you are only allowed to upload 10MB per upload.
• When you’ve written and saved a comment, you’ll only be able to write a new one rather than edit the old one.

Pricing

Trello has three pricing plans:

• Free
• Business Class: $12.50 per month
• Enterprise: $17.59 per month

It’s time to bring the right digital marketing solutions for 2021 to work for your company and your customers, now that you know what they are.

The future of business growth is in digital marketing. It’s one of the best ways to get in front of new audiences and stay there when done right. And to do it right, you truly need the best tools.  Do your research to find the tools that provide the right solutions for your business. And when in doubt, hire a professional to help you make that decision. For more such insightful content, explore our blog here!

The post Digital Marketing Tools To Look For In 2021 first appeared on Publir.

Sounds lucrative, right? First, you need to understand what NFTs are and why they’re so important today.

What Are NFTs?

So what are NFTs and how can you capitalize on this digital content? NFTs are a form of cryptographic assets that you can create, buy, and sell–endlessly. They are unique files that live on a blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other. 

Unlike cryptocurrencies, NFTs cannot be traded or exchanged at equivalency. This differs from fungible tokens (like bitcoin), which are identical to each other and can be used as a medium for commercial transactions.

Non-fungible Tokens are a means to build digital assets that use blockchain to issue and track absolute digital goods or properties. They are niche, as they are scarce and are driven by the market forces of demand and supply.

Some experts are comparing the virtual popularity of NFTs to standing in line to get the latest Air Jordans at the shoe store. With the Air Jordans, you’re getting something that’s limited to a specific product run. But when you buy an NFT, you buy a barcode that certifies you are the owner of that particular–original, one-of-a-kind digital asset.

And while it’s incredibly easy to copy digital images online and save them to your own computer, that’s a copy, not the original. Just like the copy of van Gogh’s Starry Night isn’t worth much, the original is worth millions. The same idea applies to NFTs.

NFTs are becoming increasingly popular as an asset class with the entry of several popular personalities and agencies as collectors. It’s an industry that started with a mere $31 Million market cap back in 2017 but has skyrocketed to over $338M with a CAGR of 187.28% by the end of 2020.

Unique Features of NFT

Indivisibility

Unlike the popular currencies in place, which can be shown in denominations, NFTs are indivisible. They remain as a complete entity.

Non-exchangeable

Since each piece of content built as an NFT possesses its own unique features, they are not inter-exchangeable. They are built to be originals and live on the blockchain, giving the ownership rights to the piece. 

Indestructible

NFT data is stored on the blockchain via smart contracts and it is not possible to destroy, remove or replicate. Ownership of these tokens also remains immutable. Gamers and collectors who possess NFTs retain their ownership on the one they purchased but not the companies that create them. They can sell it for a higher price whenever they wish to. This is a complete contrast to a case when a customer purchases music. He neither owns the company nor copyrights over the music. As a customer, he can just enjoy the music without any ownership.

Verifiable

Since NFTs store historical data on the blockchain, attributing ownership over a digital art piece or virtual land to its creator, it remains indestructible and immutable and can be easily traced. The art piece remains authenticated without the need for any third-party verification.

Scarce and Expensive

The NBA has partnered with Canadian-based Dapper Labs, the makers of the CryptoKitties game to enter into the trading card marketplace. Irrespective of the number of cards the NBA had issued, a video clip of LeBron James dunking was recently sold for $200,000 and a Zion Williamson edition was sold for $750,000 at Golden Auction in January. Clearly, there are die-hard admirers and collectors who are ready to spend big dollars to own the digital assets of their favorite players. Sports NFTs are like baseball card collecting on steroids.

Why Have NFTs Gained Popularity?

NFT is becoming increasingly popular among companies and individuals alike for obvious reasons; it has completely revolutionized the concept of online gaming and digital arts by adding authenticity to the ownership that remains immutable. 

For example, Decentraland is an Ethereum-based 3D world that started in December 2020. It’s owned by its users and governed by Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). Anybody can explore this metaverse utilizing two ethereum tokens. Users can purchase virtual land, goods, and services with NFTs. They can also explore virtual valleys, gardens, digital art galleries, and games. 

Are NFTs The Next Big Thing?

The monetization potential of NFTs is attracting individuals to bid for digital artifacts for ever-higher prices. Creators and developers can build and monetize unique structures like casinos, theme parks like Sandbox, or virtual worlds like Decentraland for sale. 

A gamer on the Decentraland’s virtual platform recently purchased 64 lots and sold them as a single estate, titled ‘The Secrets of Satoshis Tea Garden,’ for $80,000 due to its desirable location and road access. Another investor purchased a segment of a digital Monaco racing track in the F1 Delta Time game for $222,000. He will get 5% dividends from all races that take place on it, including entry ticket fees. And Nyan Cat creator Chris Torres has sold his meme as an NFT for $600,000. He is now launching an event called “Memeeconomy” to sell other popular memes like “Keyboard Cat” and “Bad Luck Brian” via auction.

Artists can sell their artworks in digital form as NFT in virtual art galleries directly without having to pay for auction houses that deduct a significant amount of auction money, making them a lucrative option for artists who want to monetize their art. Creators get a percentage as royalty each time their artwork is sold to a new owner. 

William Shatner from “Star Trek,” for example ventured into digital collectibles in 2020 and issued 90,000 digital cards on the WAX blockchain, showcasing his images. Each card was initially sold for $1. Now it is providing Shatner a passive royalty income every time his images are resold. Rare CryptoPunks are sold for over $1 million and a chunk of “land” in the game Axie Infinity fetched 888 ETH (over $3 million as of this writing) for its owner. Canadian musician and singer Grimes also opted into the NFT rush, selling $6 million worth of digital artworks, which included images, short videos, and music in February 2021. The video titled “Death of the Old” alone fetched her $389,000.

How to create NFTs?

NFTs aren’t limited to digital art. Both tangible and intangible articles, properties like land or houses, documents, certificates, artwork, music, video, and metaverse themes and concepts can be created as NFT.

It’s about having a digital asset that is of value to others and making it available for sale on a blockchain service, like Ethereum. 

Demonstration of Creating and Selling NFT

Having decided the standards, several NFT-centric platforms allow individuals to create a wallet of their choice and upload the chosen image or file that ought to be turned into an NFT.   A listed artist in any of the Marketplace can create and own an NFT. If the artist has digital art ready to sell, he should follow the below-mentioned steps.

.

Digital Wallet

Before getting into buying or selling NFT, an individual needs to create a digital wallet. Since Ether is a popular cryptocurrency, available on major marketplaces, it is desirable to buy and save it in a digital wallet.  

As of May 2021, Ether is equal to almost $4,000 US. There’s a lot to consider when buying Ethereum, including which blockchain provider you plan to use. There are wide ranges of other blockchain services like Binance Smart Chain, Flow, Tron, EOS, Polkadot, Tezos, Cosmos, and WAX. Each blockchain follows its own NFT standard, such as compatible wallet services and marketplace for trading. 

If you are buying Ether in OpenSea, for example, you need to download a plug-in called MetaMask into Chrome or any other browser of your choice to create a digital wallet, which can be connected to your ‘OpenSea’ account. You need to buy Ether and deposit it in your digital wallet for any transaction.

How to Buy NFT?

One who decides to buy an NFT can get into any of the popular marketplaces like OpenSea to explore the ‘galleries’ that display a variety of images, cards, themes, and concepts for sale. They may be either put on rotation or may emerge as flashing icons. Select a product/image of your choice and click “Buy Now.”  Check out and submit your order. Pay the Gas Fee to confirm the Ethereum network to process your transaction.

Now you have become the proud owner of an NFT.  Your transaction and ownership details are registered in a digital ledger that adds authentication to the digital file you purchased with a digital signature, which tracks your NFT ownership across the globe.

Future of NFT

NFTs have redefined the meaning of asset creation and infrastructure building as they are offering a decentralized, blockchain-based financial system that does not rely on intermediaries like brokerages, stock exchanges, and banks. NFTs rely on smart contracts on blockchains and the most common among them is Ethereum. Important documents like passports and transcripts can be digitized to ensure easy identity management.

Apart from decentralization, NFTs are also democratizing land ownership on the virtual front, as it is much easier to divide a digital real estate asset among multiple owners than a physical one. It is possible to simplify the complex real estate trading, eliminating bureaucracy by incorporating relevant metadata into each unique NFT. Hence, we see a bright future for the NFT market in the coming years.

Final Thoughts

NFT as an industry has to go a long way, as it is still in its infancy and not accessible to mainstream users. But there is so much potential. In the future, we expect improved platforms and technology as well as new applications that can support larger numbers of transactions to make it more sustainable. In the end, we think NFT could definitely be a game-changer. If you liked our article, explore our blog to read more informative content like this!

The post A Comprehensive Guide to Making, Buying and Selling NFT first appeared on Publir.

Online advertisers were using third party cookies for years as a standard tool used as a third-party tracking technology. However, in the near future, third party cookies will soon be the thing of the past as Google Chrome is going to support this functionality by 2022. Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox dropped support for third-party cookies in 2017 and 2019 respectively, leaving Chrome – the most-used browser with a 69% market share – as the man standing.

What Would A Cookie-less World Feel Like?

So when we talk about a cookie-less world, we are really referring to a world in which ad tech vendors, marketers, advertisers, and others can no longer access third-party cookies set on websites.

Several brands including that of marketers, advertisers, publishers, and technology providers are yet to embrace the cookie-less future. Even though many of them believe that such a future may have a serious impact on brand building.

Aroscop and Brand Equity took a poll in their new study with over 450 technology providers, advertisers, and marketers. Out of all of those brands, 22% of the respondents were confident that brand building would have serious consequences without cookies. The study also showed that only 8% of these brands were prepared for the shift and deployed alternate solutions for it. However, 35% of the respondents are actively looking for solutions to adapt to cookie-less marketing.

In the study, advertising agencies also stated that loss of clients, diminishing profits, and inability to acquire new clients would be their top priorities while entering the future without cookies.

What Are The Possible Challenges To Tackle In A Cookie-less World?

Nonetheless, there are a few challenges that brands and marketers would have to tackle while heading towards the cookie-less world. The first challenge would be for the advertisers to deliver personalized content to their users. For quite some time now, the advertisers relied on third-party cookies for personalization. After third party cookies being obsolete, personalization would have a severe impact. Apart from this, frequency capping could change drastically in the post-cookie era. Advertisers could have a tough time while managing the frequency of ads being displayed on the internet to users.

Behavioral targeting is another challenge that is fuelled by third party cookies currently. User behavior helps advertisers collect data to track and target prospects for them. It will be majorly affected without cookies in the future. Customer acquisition will also become more difficult. It is no longer about cold emails and offers anymore. Guiding the buyer through a sales funnel with relevant content across platforms has always been fruitful for the marketers. Cookie-less advertising will change the way brands acquire customers.

Self-reliant Publishers – Is This The Way Forward?

With cookie-less tracking, brands and marketers would have to rely on first-party data that publishers control on websites. Publishers are now building their own walled gardens providing advertisers with accurate data as they are drawing closer to the cookie-less world. Publishers would be in an extraordinary position connecting advertisers with high intent customers considering how rich data will become scarcer.

Furthermore, user privacy has become a real issue in this matter, and focussing only on cookies would not do justice to analyze how things would turn up. Using data to understand the behavior of the user has always been a key part of any brand objective rather than just to drive growth and gain profit from it. Building consumer trust and quality targeting must always go hand-in-hand when it comes to the goal of a brand.

Will Tracking Tools By Companies Successfully Tackle A No Cookie Environment?

Meanwhile, many companies have developed their own tracking tools and procedures while gearing up to perform well without third-party cookies. Google, for instance, has developed “universal IDs” that do not require third-party cookies and would identify users while tracking them across different devices. Although, the idea that in order to target the users many smaller publishers would have to use Google’s universal IDs, does not sit well with many in the industry.

Google is also starting to pitch a Privacy Sandbox as an alternative. The initiative is to help track while continuing to allow ad targeting within the Chrome browser. However, it seems to the advertising industry that the proposal may come with a catch. With Privacy Sandbox, cookies are replaced via five software-programming interfaces. Advertisers can use each API to obtain collective information concerning problems like conversion (which means how properly the ads performed) and attribution (meaning which entity is attributable, for instance, for a purchase). It acts as an alternate pathway that Google has presented to the market relying on anonymized alerts, which are not cookies, inside a user’s Chrome browser to take advantage of his searching habits.

Microsoft is also not far from developing a way to track its users without cookies. It can track users with its Windows software, including tablets and Windows phones, even the users of Xbox gaming systems. The tracking technology of Windows works by assigning a number to the user or a unique identifier. That unique number would track the user across Windows-enabled devices.

Pandora, the online music streaming service, is also hoping to leverage its first-party data to overcome the absence of cookies. Pandora gets the users’ login information including their email, age, location, and gender. The service cross-references the data with the US Census and their listening habits before offering the targeted inventory for advertisers. Because of its predominantly mobile-based audience, it is actually an advantage for Pandora to move to first-party data.

How B2B platforms are gearing up?

Likewise, B2B online targeting and personalization platform, Demandbase, has developed one of the first cookie-less ad targeting solutions. It allows users to identify a group of businesses to advertise to, as the targeting tool is solely helpful for B2B advertisers. The B2B targeting tool is an extension of Demandbase’s Company Targeted Advertising solution. It uses corporate IP addresses of visitors as a source of identification to know from which company the person belongs. With this tool, any time a user visits the Demandbase client’s webpage, it can track the IP address back to their company and potentially gain a new lead.

Skepticism & Forecasting A Cookie-less Future

Many smaller firms fear a takeover of online advertising by Google if cookies cease to be useful. One of such smaller firms is Xasis, an agency ad trading desk. It is proposing a new industry standard called “statistical ID”, rather than developing its own exclusive tool like the other companies discussed above. The idea of statistical ID is to identify users by their devices and other anonymous attributes. Instead of using cookies, the combination of these attributes will be used by the advertisers to target the users.

To sum up, everything that has been stated so far, a private marketplace (PMP) advertising environment could become common among publishers in the near future. It will act as a digital marketplace where advertisers can buy premium inventory for their advertisements. The main idea behind PMP advertising is data quality assurance. It is predicted that such an environment reduces the chances of ad fraud, enhances brand safety, and facilitates more accurate targeting. While this is a challenge for ad tech vendors and marketers, maybe it creates a path to provide more control to publishers and content creators. It will be interesting to observe how brands and marketers would adapt their offerings and services to cater to the new demands of advertising in a cookie-less era.

If you are looking at reading more about Cookies, click here and find out the impact Of 3rd Party cookie blocking on Ad Revenues.

The post How Are Marketers Gearing Up For A Cookies-less World? first appeared on Publir.

Publir has launched a homegrown sticky ad unit solution that gives publishers the ability to customize their ad unit, allowing for flexibility as to what the ad unit looks like, where on the page it renders and how often the ad refreshes.

Publir’s sticky ad units complement any publisher’s current ad layout. We offer two types of sticky ad units – horizontal units and vertical units. Each type comes in a range of sizes. Horizontal sticky units span the bottom of the webpage in a landscape format. In contrast to horizontal units, vertical units stick to the sides of the webpage in a portrait format.

Our sticky units are intelligent. The ads only display/refresh if they are in viewport and the user is actively engaging with the page. 

Sticky ad units generate higher yield than a standard banner units because of increased viewability – advertisers will pay more for a placement that has a higher likelihood of being seen by a user. Banner blindness, a term describing a website visitor’s behavior to consciously or unconsciously ignore placements that they perceive to be ads, is largely overcome by sticky ads that tend to catch the attention of the reader and maintain in view for longer periods of time. 

Publir also has the ability to target our header bidding and programmatic ad stacks. This results in more competition amongst buyers, creating greater auction pressure. For Publir clients, implementing our homegrown solution eliminates the need for third-party vendors, resulting in higher net revenue to the publisher. 

Check out Publir’s sticky ad units in action. If you’re interested in learning more, inquire directly at inquire@publir.com.

The post Publir Sticky Ad Units Are Live! first appeared on Publir.