Maria is a Senior Copywriter and Editor-in-chief of the Marketing Insights blog. She joined Marin Software in May 2015. She has a long and varied history as a technical writer and copywriter across multiple industries. She’s worked in establishments large and small, including IT startups, academic institutions like Stanford University, and biotech giants like Genentech. She holds a BA in English Literature with a Focus on Creative Writing from Stanford, and an MFA in Playwriting from San Francisco State. In her "spare time," she's an independent filmmaker.
As more advertisers flock to Amazon for its revenue-generating ad capabilities, the competition continues to heat up.
Subscribe to our blog to get tips on how to stay ahead of the game with your Amazon advertising efforts. In the meantime, in our latest post, we offer five quick pointers for fine-tuning your campaigns.
As in the paid search world, brands need to make sure they’re bidding on their own brand terms. If they don’t, competitors may see it as a conquest opportunity and muscle in on your territory.
Use the information in Amazon’s search term report to create new manual campaigns using keywords that aren’t covered in their automatic campaigns. You can add irrelevant queries as negative keywords, or even add negatives to specific ad groups if queries are showing up in the wrong ad group.
Brands must have a strong landing page for customers and potential customers being directed from external sites or from a Sponsored Brand ad. Like a corporate website, this may not be the responsibility of the person running paid media, but it’s important to make sure the advertising investment performs well by making sure customers have a solid brand experience on Amazon.
This is an important part of the conversion funnel, with plenty of space for brands to put quality content in front of shoppers—but there’s also room for Amazon to place things like a table comparing similar items. Brands are now investing in their own comparison charts, which show up a little higher on the page.
If a shopper is looking for a printer but the one they initially clicked isn’t right, the vendor can show its other printers in a chart comparing price and specifications—before the shopper gets to Amazon’s chart—which may lead them to a competitor’s product.
This also may not be the domain of the digital marketer, but brands should ensure a quality landing page experience to get the best ROI on their Amazon ad spend.
Does it make more sense to show the brand logo or an image of the product? What should the wording in the headline be? Which products should be shown and how do the products line up with the keywords? As in all areas of digital marketing, testing is key.
For more extensive guidance on setting up and optimizing your Amazon ad campaigns, along with real-world examples, download our guide, Ramp Up Your Amazon Ad Game: 5 Tips for Success. It covers:
And more.
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Feeling overwhelmed by your advertising campaigns? Donate 15 minutes of your time and we’ll show you how MarinOne allows you to easily manage, measure, and optimize all of your ad campaigns from a single location. Request a demo today.
Findings in our latest digital advertising benchmark report show that marketers increased their eCommerce spend 115 percent year over year, driven by more Amazon advertising. Mobile search also continues to dominate, with nearly half (47%) of total search spend dedicated to mobile ads.
Our key takeaways:
To learn more and see how your ad campaigns compare, view our Q3 2019 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report. You can analyze current cross-channel advertising trends by region, industry, and publisher.
Each quarter, we aggregate advertising performance across our customer base, and share our results with digital marketing professionals to compare against their own initiatives. In addition to global industry trends, we explore the most compelling findings in key areas of digital marketing.
Access the report for actionable insights you can apply to your digital ad campaigns.
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Feeling overwhelmed by your advertising campaigns? Donate 15 minutes of your time and we’ll show you how MarinOne allows you to easily manage, measure, and optimize all of your ad campaigns from a single location. Request a demo today.
In our latest digital advertising benchmark report, we found a 40 percent ad spend increase in eCommerce as Amazon maintains its healthy lead. Shopping ads represented 37 percent of total search spend share, as Google Shopping continues to be a key source of traffic and online orders for many retailers.
A few other key takeaways:
To learn more and see how your ad campaigns compare, view our Q2 2019 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report. You can analyze current cross-channel advertising trends by region, industry, and publisher.
Each quarter, we aggregate advertising performance across our customer base, and share our results with digital marketing professionals to compare against their own initiatives. In addition to global industry trends, we explore the most compelling findings in key areas of digital marketing.
Access the report for actionable insights you can apply to your digital ad campaigns.
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Feeling overwhelmed by your advertising campaigns? Donate 15 minutes of your time and we’ll show you how MarinOne allows you to easily manage, measure, and optimize all of your ad campaigns from a single location. Request a demo today.
According to Red Crow, people are exposed to 4,000 to 10,000 ads a day. That's not counting TV, radio, print, and billboards—or the constant demands of work, family, and/or school. The people you’re trying to reach as an advertiser are overloaded, overstimulated, and overwhelmed.
Despite this reality—or perhaps because of it— there are things your brand can and should do to make sure you’re delivering resonant messages instead of simply adding to the noise.
Whether someone’s shopping online or in a store, there are certain deal breakers that could lose you business from the get-go. For example, rude employees make for an unpleasant in-store experience. In the digital realm, one thing that turns off shoppers more than anything else is a shoddy delivery timeframe or, worse, an undelivered shipment. Today’s consumers simply won’t tolerate such lapses in the modern, on-demand economy.
The best way to provide a great experience is to know what people want—now, tomorrow, and next month, whether it’s sustainable products, the right communication method, or other motivation encouraging a purchase—and to flawlessly execute on the delivery logistics.
What do people want? Well, we’re all human. Of course, you should “always be testing” to find out what makes your particular audience tick. However, there are certain things that just about all of your potential customers prefer:
To be left aloneif it’s not relevant
Think obnoxious barfly versus subtle flirt. Again, people are dealing with more interruptions and distractions than ever before, so make sure potential touchpoints are meaningful, and be there when they're looking for a distraction. Using custom and lookalike audiences to target campaigns is one of the areas where a third party like Marin can really help increase the relevancy (and performance) of your campaigns.
To be understood
Do you have a good understanding of your audience and what they want, in particular, how their wants and needs change over time or by season, age, gender, etc.? Do you have a mechanism in place to alert you when trends change or new ones arise?
The right content
Are you sending a bunch of influencer videos when your buyer is looking for a discount? Make sure you’re posting the right things that meet people where they are on their customer journey. Tracking engagement and conversion rates—in particular monitoring your campaigns for spikes or drops—is a great way to ensure that your content is resonating.
Discounts and sales
On a related note, a recent study showed that 72% of consumers consider “Discounts or sales” as their top shopping priority. Contrast this with the 18% of marketers who provided this answer, and you’ll find a quick disconnect between marketing teams and the general public. Make this your mantra: Give the people what they want.
Privacy and trustworthiness
Data privacy is a top-of-mind issue, with Marin research placing it as the #1 challenge among global digital advertisers. As each week (and sometimes day) brings a new data breach or company handling personally identifiable information (PII) in a clumsy way, more and more people are concerned about how their data is being used and otherwise protected.
How are you addressing this growing consumer—and advertiser—apprehension around “Big Data”? Check out your ad management vendor’s privacy policy to ensure they’re on the right side of this argument at all times.
Connection
Are you relentlessly focused on the customer? Is there a human touch in your messaging? It’s in our nature to eventually circle back to “me,” so find ways to regularly assess your programs and make sure you’re connecting in a meaningful way with customers and prospects to maximize value.
Safety
Fraud, protecting kids online, and screening inappropriate content that displays alongside your ads are all important for advertisers. But, despite all these legitimate concerns, people will share their data if you make it worth their while. Advertising is essentially transactional—consumers will only share their data with you if you’re providing enough value and relevance to justify their trust. And, they expect you to uphold that trust as a top priority.
More than ever, consumers expect personalized, relevant experiences; trustworthy brands; and a secure shopping encounter. Every time you deliver on these requirements, you boost your brand credentials and increase the likelihood of gaining more customers.
To recap, make sure you’ve done your homework:
Once you’ve nailed these basics, it's time to execute on your strategy. And, although this (almost) goes without saying, always be sure to do periodic check-ins to make sure your programs are on the right track and delivering results. At the end of the day, ensuring a two-way relationship with your customers will lead to more credibility, more trust, and more sales.
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Feeling overwhelmed by your advertising campaigns? Donate 15 minutes of your time and we’ll show you how MarinOne allows you to easily manage, measure, and optimize all of your ad campaigns from a single location. Request a demo today.
For our latest State of Digital Advertising report, we surveyed over 400 high-level digital marketers across 12 industries to find out their current goals, strategies, and concerns.
What are some of their top priorities for this year and beyond?
Advertisers are working hard on key strategic goals like increasing brand awareness and reducing friction for their clients. They’re also eager to win new business by adopting more tactical plays like running omnichannel campaigns and optimizing performance. Brands who deliver on both strategic and tactical goals will outpace the competition.
Although paid search still dominates digital advertising, other channels are taking their share. Despite ongoing controversies and people leaving for greener (Instagram) pastures, advertisers still have a massive Facebook audience—and can also take advantage of surging video and eCommerce advertising opportunities.
With regulations like the GDPR and the upcoming CCPA requiring advertisers to implement entirely new strategies for ensuring data privacy, publishers have continued work to do to win and keep public—and advertiser—confidence.
To see the complete report and compare against your organization’s goals, view our State of Digital Advertising Report 2019.
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Feeling overwhelmed by your advertising campaigns? Donate 15 minutes of your time and we’ll show you how MarinOne allows you to easily manage, measure, and optimize all of your ad campaigns from a single location. Request a demo today.
Premier Farnell faced the constant challenge of operating its paid search and shopping campaigns at scale. With over 40 markets selling over 900,000 electronic components, it needed to ensure the best possible performance from their digital marketing campaigns.
Thanks to MarinOne's bidding technology, Premier Farnell identified opportunities for increasing account performance, with immediate improvements in two markets, Germany and the Netherlands.
The results?
Read all about it in our case study.
New ad formats, continued breaking news, and shifting ad budgets are all at the forefront of online marketing. In our infographic, see the top 10 things to watch out for, plus opportunities for tapping into the latest digital advertising trends of 2019.
In our latest digital advertising benchmark report findings, we discovered that Instagram continues to grow its share of Facebook spend, while newer ad formats like responsive search ads (RSAs) dominate as advertisers seek growth across channels and devices.
Here are a few key takeaways:
Want to learn more and see how your ad campaigns compare? View our interactive Q1 2019 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report. You can analyze current cross-channel advertising trends by region, industry, and publisher.
Each quarter, we aggregate advertising performance across our customer base and share our results with digital marketing professionals to compare against their own initiatives. In addition to global industry trends, we explore the most compelling findings in key areas of digital marketing.
Access the report for actionable insights you can apply to your digital ad campaigns.
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Feeling overwhelmed by your advertising campaigns? Donate 15 minutes of your time and we’ll show you how MarinOne allows you to easily manage, measure, and optimize all of your ad campaigns from a single location. Request a demo today.
Before you begin to investigate tactics for implementing an effective cross-channel advertising strategy, it's important to take a broad view of your goals, data, and business. In this article, we look at the necessary elements you should have in place before getting tactical with your cross-channel ad campaigns.
What are your digital advertising goals? Is the aim to drive awareness and exposure for an emerging brand or product? Are you selling commodity products, and aiming to get them in front of buyers before your competitors? Is it a longer sales cycle, with a high purchase value consideration that requires many touchpoints and a patient approach? Before you spend your first advertising dollar, get to know your business and clearly lay out your objectives.
Now that you know what you want to do, look at what you have. Does your site function well? Do you have quality landing pages that load quickly on desktop and mobile? Create strong content and write descriptions that resonate. Take the steps needed to get your program in the best place possible before spending money on cross-channel digital advertising campaigns to promote growth. At the end of the day, driving traffic to an unsatisfactory experience can damage your brand and derail ROI.
Not every tactic is going to work well across every channel. As a digital advertiser, it’s important to be flexible, but more importantly, to be informed. As your program expands in breadth and volume, take advantage of all the insights you glean from your paid efforts across channels.
Unified reporting and analysis surfaces the opportunity areas both in terms of driving more sales or pulling back spend to increase efficiency. Take a product-first approach, for example: widget launches on the first of the month, and we’re tasked with promoting the widget with campaign assets across Google, Facebook, and eCommerce marketplaces.
Which channel did customers use to research their purchase? Where was the best return in terms of conversions? Where was our competition more assertive? At Marin Software, we believe companies need to think “big picture” by taking the holistic view across channels, segmenting audiences, and revisiting performance regularly.
Too often, advertisers start strong and move along, failing to actively measure, manage, and optimize cross-channel campaigns. Sadly, digital advertising isn't as easy as putting up a billboard on the highway and waiting for responses as traffic snarls by.
Your audience is a moving target, and the battle for their attention is complicated and dynamic. Compound that with things like rotating inventory and promotional periods and it can be pretty overwhelming. However, sticking to the basics and doing things like search query analysis and product segmentation are core to program growth and improvement. Take the time to reallocate budgets and seize opportunities, and do so often.
Once you have these pieces in place, you're ready for specific actions to coordinate your Facebook, Google, and eCommerce campaigns and deliver growth. We're here to help. Download our Search, Social, and eCommerce Guidebook to learn everything you need to know to create revenue-boosting digital ad campaigns.
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Feeling overwhelmed by your advertising campaigns? Donate 15 minutes of your time and we’ll show you how MarinOne allows you to easily manage, measure, and optimize all of your ad campaigns from a single location. Request a demo today.
In Q4 2018, paid search continued its upward trend, growing 10% YoY. As inventory gets more expensive, however, more spend doesn’t necessarily mean more clicks—there was a modest 10% increase year-over-year in Retail, less than the search spend for the vertical.
Instagram Stories and Dynamic Product Ads ruled, however—Instagram received 18% of total Facebook spend, with 34% of that spend allocated to Instagram Stories, a 36% increase from the previous quarter. Dynamic Product Ads accounted for 35% of total Facebook spend in Q4.
See more insights in our Q4 2018 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report. Our interactive format reveals the latest cross-channel advertising trends by region, industry, and publisher.
Each quarter, we aggregate advertising performance across our customer base, and share our results with digital marketing professionals to compare against their own initiatives. In addition to global industry trends, we explore the most compelling findings in key areas of digital marketing.
Other highlights for Q4 2018 include:
View the report for actionable insights for your digital ad efforts.
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Feeling overwhelmed by your advertising campaigns? Donate 15 minutes of your time and we’ll show you how MarinOne allows you to easily manage, measure, and optimize all of your ad campaigns from a single location. Request a demo today.
As we kick off 2019, it seems like eons since the first eCommerce transaction back in 1979, when entrepreneur Michael Aldrich invented online shopping. Since then, the space has exploded—with tens of thousands of eCommerce sites in existence today. In her 2018 internet trends report, Mary Meeker estimated that eCommerce accounted for 13% of total U.S. retail sales last year.
We’re now at a point where clear leaders and laggards have emerged in the eCommerce marathon. In this article, we take a look at the state of the industry, the developing competitive landscape, and things to watch out for in 2019 and beyond.
At the moment, when advertisers think eCommerce, they likely think, “Here comes Amazon.” As of 2018, Amazon has risen dramatically to third place in the ad industry, experiencing “faster than expected growth” and giving Google and Facebook a run for their money. In fact, according to eMarketer, Amazon is poised to keep growing at a rapid clip—with revenue on track to double this year alone, growing to $5.83 billion. Wall Street Journal expects Amazon’s ad sales to soar to $28.4 billion over the next five years.
With Amazon now being so huge—representing almost half of the U.S. eCommerce market—what does it mean for eCommerce as a whole? And, what does it mean for the ‘little guy’ trying to infiltrate the triopoly’s ad turf?
All in all, eCommerce is experiencing a Golden Age, as consumers flock to online deals and convenience, and retailers adopt more sophisticated digital ad offerings. As Mary Meeker reported, U.S. eCommerce sales grew 16 percent between 2017 and 2018, an even larger rate of growth than 2016’s 14 percent. This success is expected to continue indefinitely, as more companies expand into eCommerce and existing ones continually innovate to stay ahead of the competition.
For example, in 2018, Google expanded into eCommerce with Google Home Ordering. Amazon Stores offers brands a place to showcase and sell products on Amazon. Facebook Shop allows advertisers to create a product catalog on the platform to promote and sell their products there. Facebook also has plans to add a shopping function to livestreams. As Tech Times Reports,
“In this trial, the company is letting merchants demo and describe their items for viewers. Customers can then screenshot something they want to purchase and reach out to the merchant via Messenger, who can then start a payment transaction directly within the app.”
Still boasting 1.74 billion mobile active users—despite recent scandals and government run-ins—Facebook has the continued potential and incentive to further expand its offerings. Include ad formats like Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, and WhatsApp advertising—and it appears the company opens several doors for every one blocked by another distressing news headline.
Outside of Amazon, Google, and Facebook, what other players are contributing to the eCommerce field day?
Big box giants like Walmart are on the move and making steady progress despite a late arrival to the eCommerce party. Walmart’s Q2 2018 earnings reported a 4.5 percent YoY increase in U.S. sales and 2.2 percent more traffic. Notably, its eCommerce business declared a whopping 40% increase in sales. Walmart’s momentum matches solid in-store visits with robust online demand, buoyed by expanded and enhanced clothing and grocery options. It certainly doesn’t hurt that people are embracing online grocery selection with offline pickup.
There’s also strong competition from other players like eBay, Macy’s, and Costco. For instance, you may be surprised to hear that shoppers tend to spend more time on eBay than Amazon. eBay and Costco also have lower website bounce rates. When it comes to attracting tech-savvy shoppers, Best Buy corners the market. It remains to be seen whether Amazon will innovate to become even more competitive on these fronts or if the other players will try to beat Amazon at its own game.
In addition, some unexpected competition could bite into the major players’ piece of the eCommerce pie. With modest wage growth relative to inflation and the stock market, more lower-income and rural shoppers are converging on dollar stores.
As it stands, these communities have much less access to online shopping opportunities or a culture of technology that could compel residents to become eCommerce site visitors. Development initiatives such as Congressman Ro Khanna’s could transform these communities and open up new opportunities not only for jobs and higher wages, but also new revenue streams for retailers, both online and off.
Perhaps not as unexpectedly, mobile commerce is also having its moment, with mCommerce transactions around the world projected to surpass eCommerce this year. The future looks bright if often unpredictable.
Well, many things could always go wrong. But, looking at 2019, the market could experience ongoing turbulence. Some economists even predict a recession if inflation continues to rise and inflicts serious damage on the U.S. economy.
The continued pace of wage growth (or lack thereof) could affect consumer confidence and spending, although it’s slowly improving. Throw in the unknowns of the full rollout of the new U.S. tax cut and uncertainty around tariffs, and, as the Magic 8-Ball might say, “Cannot predict now.”
One thing we can predict is that retail innovation will continue. In the arena of emerging opportunities, there’s a huge potential market for up-and-coming eCommerce innovations. One such example is voice assistants, where 70% of consumers aren’t yet using one to perform a product search. To tap into this market, technology companies, advertisers, and brands will have to strategize ways to overcome consumer apprehension and mistrust.
Although at the moment Amazon and Google are the pioneers of voice-controlled devices (with Google currently in the lead), companies like Apple, Samsung, IBM, and Microsoft are all in the mix and hoping to gain ground.
In addition, as CES often proves, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the entrepreneurial and inventive spirit. With this year’s brilliant thinkers and engineers inventing roll-up TVs, a bot that folds laundry, and connected cars (and the associated $212 billion in commuter spending), it’s anyone’s guess what toys, gadgets, and breakthroughs will come next.
On the social side, eCommerce looks very likely to play a larger role in 2019, as advertisers get their feet wet selling on social platforms. They’ll have to decide if social’s an eCommerce fit or if its big strength will be awareness for the foreseeable future.
To be sure, technological change has come come a long way since Smell-O-Vision! Although it may be challenging to keep up, the good news for retailers is that opportunities to target and woo customers will only continue to evolve.
Where do retailers go from here? Given current challenges and increased competition, eCommerce businesses must give customers what they want and beat competitors to the “experience” punch. This involves a holistic approach that delivers overall eCommerce interactions based on ease of use, convenience, personalization, and choice (not to mention easy checkout, fewer clicks, and so on).
Looking at your digital campaigns as part of a unified digital marketing strategy across search, social, and eCommerce will be a key differentiator for advertisers in 2019 and the coming years as competition grows even fiercer. The ultimate goal for advertisers is to meet shoppers where they are, regardless of which platform or device they happen to be using. Choosing the right ad tech vendor with an independent, cross-channel view of the world is the key to success.
As the retail landscape transforms and companies strive to develop a workforce equipped with skills to work in in the 21st century, eCommerce will continue to find itself leaps, bounds, and many clicks ahead of its humble 1970s beginnings.
Thank you, Michael Aldrich.
By now, most search advertisers have heard about Google’s responsive search ads. Still, SEM aficionados are still getting their heads around this latest ad type. How does it work? Will it bring more clicks? How does it compare to text ads?
Responsive ads choose the best-performing combinations from a search advertiser’s ad copy and assets. Advertisers can write up to 15 headlines and four descriptions, and Google’s algorithm automatically serves the best combinations in auctions based on which ones are most relevant to users, ultimately driving conversions.
With responsive search ads, advertisers can boost relevance and streamline performance across Google Ads campaigns. Now, you can create ads that automatically adjust to show the most effective ad copy to your audience.
At Marin, we’re getting a lot of questions from our advertisers about this new ad format. We decided to partner with Google to shed some light on this important topic for search advertisers. Sign up for our webinar on Thursday, December 6th at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET and hear answers to such questions as:
Sign up today to secure your spot.
Speaker Bios
Sylvanus Bent embraces a growth mindset, and looks forward to continuing to learn everything he can about successfully taking products to market. He works closely with design and engineering colleagues to ensure that Google is building the right products for its customers.
Wes MacLaggan has over a decade’s experience developing and delivering analytical enterprise SaaS applications, including four years with Applied Predictive Technologies working on the company’s platform to help retailers maximize the return on their promotional spending. He is currently Head of Marketing at Marin Software, and has been with the company since 2008.
In Q3 2018, paid search saw healthy 13% year-over-year growth—driven almost equally by increased click volume and rising CPCs—while Shopping ad budget share reached an all-time high of 36%. Also, Instagram ads gained ground, grabbing 15% of total Facebook spend, with Facebook’s news feed accounting for over 80%.
We share these insights and more in our Q3 2018 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report. Our interactive format reveals the latest cross-channel advertising trends by region, industry, and publisher.
Other highlights for Q3 2018 include:
Download the report for other actionable insights for your digital ad campaigns.
The October 30th deadline for parallel tracking is fast approaching. If you’re running paid advertising campaigns on Google Ads, consider these stats:
The math is clear: When Google’s parallel tracking rolls out on October 30th, many advertisers will gain more visitors and see a bump in campaign performance as a result.
But how does it work, exactly?
Sign up for our webinar on Wednesday, October 24th at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET to learn about the implications of parallel tracking. We’ll discuss how parallel tracking:
Sign up today to secure your spot.
Speaker Bios
Prashant Nair is a Product Manager at Google. He has extensive experience across all areas of digital advertising including demand side, supply side, ad network, data platform, and analytics. At Google, he’s led product operations for AdX and YouTube Ads, and helps develop the vision that fuels innovation for AdWords, AMP, speed, scoring, reporting, and more.
William Hartley-Booth is a Marin Senior Product Manager who oversees Marin’s conversion tracking products, among other responsibilities. He joined Marin in 2010 after holding positions at other advertising technology companies specializing in optimizing digital advertising across search, social, and display.
First it was Google, then it was Amazon, then it was Oath.
Out with the old, in with the new, as they say—and in this case, 2018 seems to be the Year of the Ad Platform Rebrand. We took a look at what changed and why.
While most of the rebranding included simple name changes, others provided advertisers with consolidated or new solutions to streamline their advertising platforms—often bringing disparate products under a single brand identity. (Click to enlarge.)
As the major ad platforms continue to grow and develop new features and services, so does the potential learning curve for advertisers hoping to take advantage of these platforms. In Amazon’s case, the goal is to attract more brand advertisers. Across the board, however, these rebrands make the case for simplicity, and for ensuring the services are as easy and intuitive as possible for advertisers.
With one potential barrier to success lifted—multiple advertising solutions with disparate messaging and features—the hope is that brands can focus on driving more brand awareness, customer engagement, and revenue.
Your move, Bing.
Here at Marin, we think the easiest way to run your digital advertising campaigns is from a single location. Our independent platform unites advertising across search, social, and eCommerce, connecting you to customers wherever they are. We think the only way to see better results from ad spend, every day, is to run your channels in concert, such using search intent signals to power your social advertising and to integrate, align, and amplify all of your digital advertising efforts.
Whether you’re using Oath, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, or Bing, we’re here to help. To learn more, feel free to schedule a demo.
For further reading:
Omnichannel marketing causes many brands to look at their programs as a set of disparate disciplines—SEM, SEO, content marketing, social marketing, email marketing, etc. And, each discipline often has its own department, budget, and strategy, even though customers only see a single brand.
Advertisers are increasingly coming to understand that a good way to tackle the challenges inherent in omnichannel marketing is through a unified strategy, one that combines search and social into a single blueprint. Here are what our survey of digital advertisers identified as the top obstacles to overcome in reaching the goal of an integrated program.
Separate departments for search and social mean separate staff, managers, budgets, and strategies—resulting in teams that rarely communicate, even when they might be sitting right next to each other in the office. This lack of collaboration can result in mismatched or conflicting campaign messaging, and lead to internal battles for shared resources, such as IT, engineering, budget, or creative.
When search, social, and other marketing channels operate in silos, it creates organizational knowledge gaps and makes it more difficult to agree on how to attribute credit to each touchpoint on the conversion path. Social tends to benefit from a first-click attribution model because it’s typically used to create awareness at the top of the funnel.
A last-click model, on the other hand, will provide search with most of the credit for a conversion. Changing to an attribution model that applies equal or partial credit to each channel could threaten each department’s budget or organizational standing.
As the saying goes, ‘follow the money.’ Successful paid search and paid social marketers operating in different departments and with separate budgets are understandably protective of their dollars.
Search may enjoy the largest share of the digital marketing budget. However, social is increasingly carving out a larger share. As long as search and social strategies and campaigns are isolated from each other, the competition for budget dollars will continue.
Search and social marketers each speak their own language around key performance metrics (KPIs) and campaign goals. A social brand awareness campaign may use Facebook to increase the number of followers or the length of time followers spend on the brand’s Facebook page.
Conversely, an AdWords campaign may seek more conversions by increasing click-throughs to the website or improving the cost per click (CPC) of specific keywords. It’s difficult to measure a unified search and social campaign’s ROI when metrics don’t line up.
To learn the emerging best practices that brands are using to solve these challenges, download Unifying Your Search & Social Ad Strategies. Or, if you’d like to learn how Marin can help, request a demo today.
Amazon has emerged as the primary purchase channel of the US consumer. Nearly two-thirds of US households have Amazon Prime, and a whopping 92% of people who begin their purchase journey on Amazon buy on Amazon.
But do you know how to leverage Amazon’s growing ad opportunities? What are the best practices for running Headline Search Ads or Product Display Ads? Do you know the difference between advertising on the Amazon Ad Platform versus Amazon Marketing Services?
Join our digital advertising experts as we explore the many ad choices available on Amazon and its online properties, including IMDb and Twitch. We’ll suggest use cases, keyword tips, and targeting strategies to maximize your advertising results, including:
Sign up for our webinar on Thursday, August 23rd at 10am PT / 1pm ET to learn more about this next big advertising opportunity.
Speaker Bios
Wes MacLaggan has over a decade’s experience developing and delivering analytical enterprise SaaS applications, including four years with Applied Predictive Technologies working on the company’s platform to help retailers maximize the return on their promotional spending. He is currently SVP of Marketing at Marin Software, and has been with the company since 2008.
Bryant Garvin has managed and led teams that have spent over $150 million in advertising over the last six years, driving hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. He’s worked with brands ranging from startups to the Fortune 500, and has worked in in-house marketing positions to develop a keen understanding of the complexity that in-house managers face every day.
In our State of Digital Advertising report, we surveyed over 500 global B2C advertising professionals across the retail, automotive, travel, and finance sectors. The companies ranged from $40 million to over $1 billion in annual sales with an average annual digital advertising spend of more than $2.4 million.
Our survey results uncovered several key themes preoccupying advertisers this year:
Nine out of 10 respondents are investing in paid social media in 2018, beating the next most popular channel (YouTube/Google Display) by over 10 percentage points. Marketers now see the need to position social as a key channel in their online customer acquisition strategy.
The vast majority of advertisers expect to increase spend in 2018, led by social (70%) and followed by search (65%).
With the rise of Facebook, linking together search and social advertising is the most cited challenge for both search and social advertisers.
The survey found that many advertisers don’t feel they have the expertise required to deliver successful social campaigns, particularly when it comes to attributing ROI. Nevertheless, investment in paid social remains strong as advertisers recognize the importance of evolving their social capabilities to meet changing consumer expectations and media habits.
The majority (85%) of respondents believe Amazon and its digital advertising options will impact their business in 2018. Conversely, only 1 in 5 advertisers viewed the eCommerce giant and its digital advertising options as a competitor they’re unlikely to advertise on.
Brands can no longer repurpose existing video content in a world of vertical video. Thirty-four percent of advertisers said that creating quality content is their top challenge with respect to video.
The view the full results of the survey and the main digital opportunities in 2018, download the report.
You’ve finally figured out what attribution model is best for your organization. From here, you’ll most likely have to overcome some additional hurdles. Here are the most common things to consider in executing an attribution strategy.
Despite recent entrants like Amazon and Pinterest shaking up the ad tech market, Facebook and Google have gobbled up almost 75% of online traffic. Be sure your model works across channels and devices and takes an independent view of attribution credit.
Marketing teams continue to operate independently, missing out on the insights that a combined search and social strategy provides. Avoid the pitfall of channel blindness, and instead, harmonize your teams’ budgets and objectives across channels.
It’s no longer the case that Facebook owns top of funnel and Google dominates the lower funnel—the reality is they both offer excellent coverage across the entire customer journey.
Align around the customer and think about what you’re trying to accomplish rather than chasing single-channel success. For example, what products are you using to build awareness versus conversion?
To learn more—including detailed explanations of the attribution models available on the market today—download our white paper, The Myths and Realities of Cross-Channel Attribution. Or, if you’d like to find out how Marin can help you with advanced cross-channel ad campaign measurement, request a demo today.
Our latest research finds that as search spend continues to grow from increased clicks and CPCs, another channel is quickly gaining traction: eCommerce, due to the rise in spend on Amazon. Now capturing over 20 percent of digital ad spend for our clients advertising on that platform, Amazon’s Sponsored Product Ads represent 79 percent of ad spend, with Headline Shopping Ads capturing the remaining 21 percent.
We share these insights and more in our Q2 2018 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report. Our interactive web page reveals the latest cross-channel advertising trends by region, industry, and publisher.
Each quarter, we aggregate advertising performance across our customer base, and share our results with digital marketing professionals to compare against their own initiatives. In addition to global industry trends, we explore the most compelling areas of digital marketing.
Other highlights for Q2 2018 include:
Download the report for other actionable insights for your digital ad campaigns.
The “big three” publishers—Google, Facebook, and Amazon—operate as walled gardens by design. Sadly, they have zero incentive to share data across channels. This siloed approach is totally at odds with your goals as an advertiser—you need a single view of performance to run effective cross-channel ad campaigns.
There’s an answer—our next-generation advertising solution, MarinOne, unifies your search, social, and eCommerce advertising. Within a single platform, you can:
We’d love for you to see it in action. Sign up for our webinar on Tuesday, July 10th at 10am PT / 1pm ET for a preview and to learn how our customers are using MarinOne to save time and increase conversions.
Speaker Bios
Wes MacLaggan has over a decade’s experience developing and delivering analytical enterprise SaaS applications, including four years with Applied Predictive Technologies working on the company’s platform to help retailers maximize the return on their promotional spending. He is currently SVP of Marketing at Marin Software, and has been with the company since 2008.
Rob Emery has been part of the product team at Marin Software since 2015, where he has honed and delivered features serving Search, Social, and Optimization. He’s currently Director of Product Management and taking a lead role in the development and release of MarinOne. Prior to joining Marin, Rob worked in digital marketing for brands including Hilton Worldwide and Bonnier Corporation.
We’re excited to share some big news today: We’ve launched our next-generation platform, MarinOne, which unites your search, social, and eCommerce advertising.
Now, you can maximize the results of your digital ad campaigns with a single view of the customer. By focusing on the customer and not the channel, MarinOne gives you a powerful new way to engage with people wherever they are, no matter which device they’re using or what channel they’re on—ultimately driving more customers and higher revenue.
Check out our video to learn more, and then request a demo today.
We're excited to share Marin’s win at this year’s Drum Search Awards in London, where our search solution was recognized for its innovative features:
At a black-tie event in the London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square, we were recognized as the best product on the market for increasing performance and revenue for search marketers, anticipating their future needs, and allowing them to run seamless cross-channel and cross-device campaigns.
We work hard to ensure that our customers gain a financial lift from using our platform, with some customers seeing an overall lift of 45%. We’ve also been able to boost cost efficiencies and time savings by over 60%.
The judging panel included industry experts across prominent brands and agencies, including Google, Facebook Atlas, and Philip Morris International.
As our RVP of Sales, Richard May, said, “We’re really proud. Marin Search has been helping brands around the world get the most out of their ad spend and make informed budget allocation decisions. Recently we've really focused on innovating our offering, and it’s great to see this hard work paying off. Being nominated in such a competitive category is fantastic recognition of this work and winning the award is the icing on the cake.”
Watch an interview with our Marketing Director EMEA, Irisini Davis.
Our Q1 2018 benchmark report shows that search ad spend increased 11% around the globe, fueled by significant eurozone growth of 30%. Also, mobile advertising accounted for 40% of total search spend, representing a growing market share. Advertisers should be aware that mobile ads still offer a 33% discount versus desktop CPCs globally, a bargain that won’t always be available.
We hope you enjoy these insights and more in our Q1 2018 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report. Now available as an interactive web page, we reveal the latest cross-channel advertising trends and allow you to slice the data by region, industry, and publisher.
In addition to global industry trends, we explore the most compelling areas of digital marketing, including the evolution of mobile, the best use of creative to gain more clicks and market share, and using the right search and social tools to attract the right customers.
Other key findings for Q1 2018 include:
Download the report for other actionable insights for your digital ad campaigns.
The marketing landscape is awash with competing attribution models—from first-touch to time-decayed to last click—none of which truly capture the full path to conversion. So what’s an advertiser to do?
We believe you should focus on true cross-channel, multi-touch attribution. Without a clear picture of your conversion efforts across channels and devices, it’s simply impossible to follow your customer’s journey, calculate ROAS, and double down on your most successful campaigns.
Join us for a live, 60-minute webinar on Wednesday, March 28th, 2018 at 10 am PST / 1pm EST. We’ll explore the myths and realities of cross-channel attribution. You'll learn:
Our Senior Product Manager for Attribution, William Hartley-Booth, will present with Emilio Tamez from Facebook. Be sure to sign up today to reserve your spot.
Speaker Bios
Emilio Tamez is a Quantitative Researcher on the Advertising Research team at Facebook, whose primary focus areas include cross-channel measurement (especially search and TV) and brand equity quantification. He joined Facebook in 2016 after holding jobs in media analytics for a political campaign and neuroscience research. He is native to the American Southwest and holds a degree in Statistics from Rice University.
William Hartley-Booth is a Marin Senior Product Manager who oversees Marin’s conversion tracking products, among other responsibilities. He joined Marin in 2010 after holding positions at other advertising technology companies specializing in optimizing digital advertising across search, social, and display.
In our Q4 2017 benchmark report, we show that advertisers are investing heavily in Google Shopping ads, which increased 31% in click share year over year (YoY). Our data reveals that audience utilization remains low at 24%, despite the clear benefits of combining audiences with keyword targeting.
Also, social CPMs increased 44% YoY, indicating that competition for consumer attention is heating up among advertisers.
To create our quarterly benchmark reports, we sample the Marin Global Online Advertising Index, composed of advertisers who invest billions of dollars in annualized ad spend on the Marin platform. We analyze data from around the world to create our report.
For Q4 2017, other key findings include:
To find out how your ad campaigns measure up to industry benchmarks across channels and devices, download our Q4 2017 Digital Benchmark Report. In addition to global trends, we explore the most compelling areas of digital marketing today, and identify tactical opportunities to help you drive better performance.
Between Q3 2016 and Q3 2017, clicks on Google product ads grew by 62%, showing that more advertisers are taking advantage of Google’s latest shopping ad formats to capture first-mover advantage. The auto industry posted the largest CPC increase on Google, clocking a 35% YoY gain.
To create our quarterly benchmark reports, we sample the Marin Global Online Advertising Index, composed of advertisers who invest billions of dollars in annualized ad spend on the Marin platform. We analyze data from around the world. For Q3 2017, other key findings include:
To find out how your ad campaigns measure up to industry benchmarks across channels and devices, download our Q3 2017 Digital Benchmark Report. In addition to global trends, we explore the most compelling areas of digital marketing today, and identify tactical opportunities to help you drive better performance.
Audience targeting gives marketers a powerful tool to tailor their message and build highly relevant ad campaigns for different customer segments. Layering “Audiences” on top of keywords drives better results than using keywords alone.
Consider a few results:
Most marketers underutilize audience products today. In our conversations, we hear a number of recurring themes when we explore why this is happening.
Many advertisers say that “We don’t have a retargeting pixel installed” or “I don’t know where to start or how to test audiences.” The good news: After you set a baseline with Google Analytics, audience targeting is easy to implement and test to find the best configuration for your organization.
To get started with audience targeting and ensure the largest yields from your advertising budgets, download our free guide, Finding Your Ideal Audience: Advertisers Get Smart About Customer Acquisition. With its practical advice and hands-on tactics, you’ll be able to begin using audience targeting right away.
Each year we review the aggregate performance of our advertisers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to see what kind of patterns and trends jump out at us. The story this year looks to be similar to the last two years—significant jumps in clicks and spend on paid search as the holiday shopping season officially gets kicked off.
The interesting thing we observed is that the increase in spend is significantly higher than the increase in clicks. Of course, this means CPCs have increased. Google wins twice—more volume but increased competition means higher CPCs.
Is this bad for advertisers? Not necessarily. Conversion rates tend to increase significantly during holiday sale periods, so even with higher CPCs your overall return on ad spend may be higher. This will certainly vary from program to program, so keep an eye on your overall campaign efficiency (or use a tool like Marin to help do it automatically).
Another trend we were curious about is whether spend is ramping up earlier than it has in previous years, diminishing the importance of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in favor of a longer holiday season. Based on our set of advertisers, the answer to this is no. In the chart below, you can see that the 2017 spend pattern closely follows the 2015 and 2016 cycles, with no signs of an earlier ramp.
As the shopping season gets more frenzied and more shoppers hit the stores and their devices, we’ll no doubt see other interesting data and trends. Stay tuned for updates during the rest of the holiday season.
On a clear, beautiful spring day in Texas, Dana Carpenter sat on the floor of a small plane with her legs dangling out, door wide open and wind gusting in. As her tandem instructor edged them closer to a free fall, she thought, “I can’t believe I’m seconds away from jumping out of a freaking airplane!”
With that, he yelled, “One, two three!” and somersaulted them out of the aircraft.
Not only had Dana never gone skydiving—she had never walked.
Dana, a Marin Software Sales Development Researcher in our Austin office, embraced the skydiving challenge head-on, much as she’s done her entire life. As someone with a disability, she’s used to navigating all sorts of situations and terrain, and has competed and spoken at Ms. Wheelchair Texas. Her untiring advocacy is an inspiration to everyone, disabled and able-bodied alike.
She recalls that pre-jump moment: “It goes against all of your instincts to leave the safety of the plane. Luckily you’re strapped to your instructor, who’ll give you that nudge to go.”
As for the training she received, Dana describes it as, “Surprisingly not that much. They had you watch a 30-minute video about what to expect, with a few dos and don’ts. Then you paid and signed a stack of papers, signing your life away! Right before getting on the plane, you met your instructor, who went over a few more things and let you ask any questions.”
From there, it was up in the air and back to the ground, by way of 12,000 feet.
Dana recalls what it felt like being up so high: “While it was in the 70s at ground level, it was really cold up at 12,000 feet. I remember being taken by how beautiful it was up there. The sky was so blue and clear, and you could see for miles and miles. You were so high in the sky that the ground looked like a patchwork quilt of various greens and browns from all the yards and fields below.
“The strange thing was it didn't feel like you were falling at all. During the free fall, you’re falling about 120 miles per hour, so it felt like standing in front of a huge fan with your cheeks flapping in the wind. After about a minute of that, the instructor pulled the ripcord and I came to a complete stop when the parachute deployed. It was kind of jarring.
“The rest of the trip down was very calm and serene. My instructor pointed a few things out in the distance, but mostly he was quiet and let me take it all in. It was literally sensory overload.
“The landing spot was only about the size of your living room, so I remember being amazed that the instructor could pinpoint that tiny circle from so far away. We wouldn't be able to land on our feet like everyone else, so we came in on our bottoms.
“The circle we landed in was filled with pea-sized gravel, so it didn't hurt at all! Also, the shop had a few of the other instructors out in the circle to help catch us, to slow our landing down.
“The whole experience made me feel like a superwoman, but to be honest I was kind of glad to be back on the ground!”
Dana’s skydiving story was so inspiring, it was selected for inclusion in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series: Step Outside Your Comfort Zone: 101 Stories about Trying New Things, Overcoming Fears, and Broadening Your World, released in October of this year. Dana shares how they discovered her:
“I receive various writing emails, and one of those emails said that Chicken Soup for the Soul was looking for stories for their upcoming book called Stepping Outside of Your Comfort Zone. I figured that my skydive story fit that pretty well, so on a whim I decided to enter it. A couple of months later I heard back from them that my story was chosen and the rest is history, as they say.”
Chicken Soup for the Soul received over 6,000 entries and chose only 101 stories. It’s a testament to Dana’s confidence, resilience, and strength that she now gets to share her story with a wide audience.
“All my life, I had been proving to people that their doubts in me had no merit, and now I had just proved it to my biggest critic … myself. I realized I could do anything I put my mind to, despite my disability, or perhaps because of my disability. My perspective had changed in an instant. I have never walked, but that day I learned to fly.”
Dana Carpenter is a Sales Development Researcher in Marin’s Austin Office, joining in 2013. Her team identifies a wide range of digital advertisers for growth opportunities and improvement via Marin solutions. She’s passionate about data, and is a fierce advocate for the disabled.
Black Friday is the day that reminds us how much people like to rub elbows in physical stores in search of a great deal. While there has always been an impact on online campaigns on Black Friday, our initial analysis shows that consumer behavior continues to shift online, and perhaps to spending a little more time with family.
We’re seeing two interesting differences between 2017 and the previous two years:
For our group of US advertisers, we saw a 62% bump in spend relative to the average spend for the rest of November. This was 11% higher than we observed in 2015 and 2016. Are more consumers looking for deals online instead of heading to the stores? The rise in spend was a result of increased volume and higher click-through rates, which increased from 2.2% to 2.8%.
The other interesting observation was that Thanksgiving was slower than in previous years, continuing a pattern we saw last year. Spend was only up 14%, a significant change from 2015 where the bump was 53%. Are people more focused on their families on Thanksgiving or just heading out to the stores earlier for the pre-Black Friday deals?
Stay tuned for updates on Cyber Monday and the rest of the holiday season.
A key way to drive better performance than your competitors as you vie for consumer attention is by incorporating search intent signals.
In our Marin Software Holiday Guide, we detail things you can do to create powerful cross-channel campaigns using search intent audiences—and find new growth during the holidays and beyond.
Here’s a preview of just a few tactics the guide includes:
To learn how to fully harness search intent signals to power your cross-channel campaigns, download our guide, Marin Software Holiday Guide: Cracking the Cross-Channel Code with Marin Search Intent Audiences.
As mobile continues to grow and advertisers perpetually optimize ad campaigns for better performance, it becomes increasingly challenging to know what’s working and what’s not. Where should you allocate budget? Exactly how much should you be investing in mobile versus desktop? How can you further improve?
We’re happy to offer customers our Mobile Scorecard, a kind of “decoder ring” that provides a total view of your mobile performance and identifies areas for growth.
Our scorecard is a two-page summary that includes a high-level dashboard, followed by a more detailed analysis by device. Our aggregating scripts show you:
After your high-level dashboard, we show you how your desktop and mobile ad campaigns stack up in terms of usage and key KPIs. From here, we recommend specific actions you should take to increase your mobile score and to find the “sweet spot” for your mobile advertising budget.
We tailor our guidance to your particular business needs and objectives. Whether it’s advice to leverage our automated bid optimization engine or implement our forecast and budgeting tool, we have solutions to meet any digital advertising goal and reveal your untapped revenue opportunities.
In her 2017 Internet Trends Report, Mary Meeker highlights the amount of time spent on mobile versus the associated ad spend. As Meeker points out, given the vast number of people looking at mobile screens, advertisers in the US aren’t devoting nearly enough advertising dollars to mobile.
Our scorecard shows you how your ad campaigns can stay competitive in the battle for consumer attention.
You may be missing out on opportunities or overlooking potential revenue. To learn how we can help, contact us today.
On October 23rd at this year’s International Performance Marketing Awards (IPMA) in London, Marin Software took home the gold, winning Best Paid Social Campaign for our innovative work with The Economist. The IPMA is the largest and most prestigious ceremony in the world for paid advertising.
With Marin’s experts leading the way and tapping into our social campaign management technology, The Economist boosted new subscriptions by 66% through a highly targeted Facebook video campaign. The results shattered targets while generating a 72% lower CPC than image-based ads.
The goal of the campaign was to increase the number of subscriptions to The Economist across 24 countries, including the UK and the US. Along with boosting new signups, The Economist wanted to improve the outlet’s profile as a trusted source of news within social platforms, and to keep conversion costs as low as possible.
The strategy was to focus on converting those who had expressed interest in The Economist by continuously engaging with them. We used two specific ad types—Facebook link posts and animated video ads—to engage readers and encourage them to subscribe.
The team’s tactics ensured a prizewinning campaign:
Dynamic Product Ads
The Economist used Dynamic Product Ads (DPA)— traditionally used only in e-commerce—to target people who’d read an online article on Economist.com. The reader would then receive subscription offers based on the themes of the article. This was an industry-first use of DPA in EMEA.
Unique to Marin: Managed Social Advertising Rules and Ad-level Bidding
The Economist used automated ad pausing to maintain a below-target cost per subscription. The Marin platform automatically paused ads that spent over a set threshold without converting, resulting in more efficient budget allocation.
With managed rules and automated bid management, The Economist increased the reach of its video ads in strong-performing markets, and paused under-performing video ads in other markets. This strategy delivered the maximum number of subscriptions within a target cost per acquisition. In fact, it reduced cost per subscription by 12%.
With ad-level bidding, The Economist achieved granular bidding capabilities on the ad level on Facebook—as opposed to the ad set. This allowed for maximum control over delivery and optimization to meet results.
Video and Animated Covers
The industry is currently mad about video. To ride this trend, ad creative included animated magazine covers and video that provided a much higher engagement CTR of 1.24% on video ads compared to 0.51% on link posts. The Economist also used video carousels to showcase multiple covers in one ad format.
We’re proud to have partnered with The Economist to achieve not only record-breaking performance but also a big win at the IPMA! To find out more about how Marin can help your team realize similar results, get in touch today.
Google research shows that if you’re a search advertiser, you may be missing over 70% of potential mobile shoppers by relying on demographic targeting alone. On the other hand, if users are already familiar with your brand, they’re 20% more likely to convert.
How do you get people to discover you in the first place? And, how can you move beyond demographics to reach existing and potential customers more precisely and efficiently?
To ensure the success of your search ad campaigns, it makes sense to adopt a combination of audience targeting and smart bidding.
There are a number of search ad formats designed to deliver specific results based on your business goals and objectives. The key is knowing how to mix and match. For instance, according to Google, advertisers using Similar Audiences in conjunction with remarketing are seeing some pretty amazing results:
Think of audience targeting as a toolkit—a set of ad types you can choose from to build performance-boosting campaigns. Audience targeting allows you to achieve several great benefits and capabilities:
The name of the game is accuracy—building the right audiences, choosing who sees your ads, and optimizing based on performance.
Sign up for our upcoming webinar, Finding Your Ideal Audience: Targeted Ads for Customer Acquisition, to learn how to effectively use your first-party data and insights on consumer behavior to drive profitable search ad campaigns. Mike Lerra from Google and Marin’s Patrick Hutchison will share practical insights, tips, and tactics for your advertising efforts.
To make it convenient for global teams, we’ve scheduled three different times:
Speaker Bios
Mike Lerra is a lifelong Massachusetts native and the Global Product Lead for Search Audiences out of Google’s Cambridge office. Prior to this role, he was an Analytical Lead for Google’s sales teams in the Retail and B2B verticals. Mike came to Google from TripAdvisor, where he managed search engine marketing. Outside of work, Mike is an avid sabermetrician, always looking for the next great baseball statistic or analysis.
Patrick Hutchison has been on the Marin team for 10 years, filling roles as diverse as Search Manager, Solutions Architect, and Sales Engineer. In 2015 he became a Product Marketing Manager, and now helps create effective customer success stories and evangelize the Marin Brand. Patrick graduated from University of California, Davis, with a BS in Managerial Economics.
We’re all obsessed with our mobile phones. So obsessed, in fact, that 67% of us check our phone for an incoming call even when it doesn’t vibrate or ring.
We look up to—or rather down at—our mobile devices, to the tune of almost 30,000 times a year.
eMarketer provides another astonishing stat: between 2016 and 2018, people in the UK alone will spend about 3.4% more time with mobile media. Advertising budgets will increase to keep pace—but how much of the mobile opportunity remains untapped? What strategic steps can advertisers take to gain and hold consumer attention?
According to Zenith’s 2017 ad spend forecast, new and “innovative” digital ad formats—such as social media, in-feed ads, and video—will drive 14% of annual growth in total display advertising. Paid social display will grow 20% annually from 2016 to 2019.
Does this mean traditional display is booming? Not necessarily.
As we know, Facebook growth has been astronomical—so much so that it’s cutting into and skewing the display advertising growth stats. In particular, Facebook mobile ad spend is exploding, boosting sales way above projections. By many measures, mobile is poised to significantly dominate ad spend in the coming months and years.
Statista’s 2017 Digital Advertising report projects that digital advertising will generate $10.5 billion US by 2021, with $7.4 billion of that in search in 2017.
As far as traffic goes, Facebook and Google are riding side by side.
And, it looks like the dynamic Google-Facebook duo won’t be exiting the advertising superhighway any time soon.
As an advertiser, you’re most likely managing or executing any number of efforts to get people to click and convert, including:
An increasing number of advertisers understand that most social clicks happen on mobile, whereas most conversions still occur on desktop. What they’re still tackling is accurate measurement of campaign outcomes using a multi-touch attribution model. This is another largely untapped source of campaign insights, one that can make the difference between smart budget allocations and wasted marketing spend.
Advertisers should take these three steps to ensure profitable mobile results.
Step #1: Increase your mobile advertising spend.
This may seem like a no-brainer. But, with overall mobile budgets increasing across industries, advertisers who don’t follow suit will be out-maneuvered and left behind.
Step #2: Unify your paid search and social programs.
The benefits of a combined search and social strategy are substantial and the mandate is clear: marketers who unify their programs and focus on the journey rather than the channel deliver incremental ROI. For comprehensive tips and tactics, download our guide, Google + Facebook: A Playbook for Cross-Channel Advertising Success.
Step #3: Implement multi-touch attribution.
To use another driving metaphor—you probably wouldn’t get behind the wheel blindfolded and expect to successfully reach your destination. Knowing how all of your marketing efforts contribute to a conversion is vital to attaining your goals and objectives.
This is where Marin TruePath comes in—our lightweight, cross-device, cross-channel measurement solution. TruePath delivers user journey reports that properly attribute revenue to all touchpoints—including search, social, display, organic traffic, and more. To learn about TruePath, contact us today.
No matter what your next steps are, one thing is certain—mobile usage is increasing and will continue to grow at breakneck speed. Analyze what you’re currently doing, see where you can discover growth, and plan ahead for the inevitability of not only “mobile-first,” but “mobile-immersed” users.
As savvy marketers know, it often takes multiple touches with a brand before a prospect or existing customer takes a desired action. We’ve created a sample workflow that illustrates how Google and Facebook can work together in an integrated, cross-channel way to deliver both new conversions and repeat purchases.
As we follow Amy through the customer journey, it’s notable that the Facebook video ad she viewed was based on the search intent from Google. Leveraging that search intent cross-channel, Marin was able to serve Amy with a relevant video ad for the particular hotel ad that she viewed. In other words, had Amy not clicked the search ad on Google, she would have never seen the Facebook ad.
This purchase is a great example of how dynamically generated micro audience segments on Facebook can deliver incremental returns from a conversion that never would have occurred had it not started with the first Google click. In a nutshell, that explains the true potential of cross-channel advertising to span the entire customer journey and drive meaningful conversions.
As digital advertising has evolved, many advertisers have sought a more sophisticated solution than last-click attribution to track conversions. In a cross-channel world, where users see ads in different formats and often on multiple devices, it’s important to identify all the sources that influence a conversion rather than just one final conversion event.
The table below shows how a last-click attribution model compares to unified attribution in the context of a cross-channel customer journey on Facebook and Google. Instead of attributing the entire conversion to Google’s last click, you can see how a using unified attribution values all touch points in the actual user’s journey.
Here, with unified attribution, each touchpoint receives credit for the path to conversion. The total value of a conversion is one—a last-click attribution model wouldn’t give any credit to the video ad highlighting the hotel brand, which ultimately led to Amy searching on Google two weeks later and converting.
For more insights and tips on combining search and social for enhanced advertising performance, download our guide, Google + Facebook: A Playbook for Cross-Channel Advertising Success.
Online retail is on the rise, with the National Retail Federation estimating an 8-12% US e-commerce bump in 2017. Still, most purchases continue to happen in stores—how can retail advertisers accurately measure the impact of their digital advertising efforts on these brick-and-mortar sales?
To help close this gap, we’ve launched Offline Conversions in Marin Social.
With offline conversion tracking, you can track transactions that happen at a physical retail store and other offline channels such as phone orders. From here, you can attribute these conversions to users engaging with your Facebook ads.
Marin Social offers full support for this type of offline conversion tracking, and maps transaction data from your customer database or point-of-sale system to your Facebook ad reporting. This gives you a better understanding of the effectiveness of your social campaigns.
In Marin Social, Offline Conversions setup is easy. Once you update the settings in your Marin Social media plan, every new ad you create will automatically be tagged to enable offline conversion tracking.
We’ve designed Offline Conversions to be as flexible as possible, so you’re free to create a single media plan for an ad account that covers all available offline events. Or, you might choose to create multiple media plans for the same ad account and include only the appropriate offline events. You can even link existing ad campaigns to offline events on the publisher side. It’s all up to you.
If you’re already a Marin Social Customer, just get in touch with your account rep and learn more in our support center. If you’re new to Marin, contact us today.
People can’t click ads they don’t see. Audience targeting is the best way to reach the right people with relevant ads and grow revenue. And, when it’s done in an integrated way across channels, audience targeting will jump-start your advertising efforts.
Google and Facebook have particular strengths that help advertisers. Google captures data on what people are looking for, and Facebook identifies who people are and what they like. The combined power of both channels allows you to reach people anywhere in the funnel.
Here are three pointers as you combine the best of Google and Facebook in cross-channel campaigns for maximum ad exposure:
We live in an age of personalized experiences—your customers are open to hearing from you if there’s something in it for them. By leveraging cross-channel advertising on Google and Facebook and the potential to be laser-focused in your ad targeting, you can indeed give them exactly what they’re looking for.
For more great tips—including how to develop a cross-channel story, grow ROI with incremental lift testing, and measure performance beyond the last click—sign up for our upcoming webinar, Facebook + Google: Bridging the Search and Social Divide.
To make it convenient for global marketing teams, we’ve scheduled the webinar at three different times:
Speakers include Noah Singer, Product Marketing, Monetization and Measurement Manager from Facebook, and Brett Loney, Product Marketing Manager – Social, Marin Software. Be sure to register today—we hope you can join us!
Speaker Bios
Noah Singer helps lead and manage Atlas’ and Facebook’s ads measurement solutions, bring products to market, conduct market analysis, lead policy decision making, identify and execute against operational improvements, evangelize Facebook solutions and points of view within the industry, and determine how to best partner with companies in the Facebook ecosystem. He previously helped launch and build its mobile app ads business and Facebook Analytics for Apps.
Brett Loney has managed over $50 million in paid social spend for diverse companies, from startups to the Fortune 500. Brett led paid social for Cartwheel by Target, Target’s first digital product team and internal startup. The app achieved, and has sustained, a top 5 ranking in the retail category on the Apple and Google Play stores, with over 10 million downloads in its first year. Brett has a B.S. in Marketing from St. John’s University and is a die-hard Minnesota Vikings fan.
Dynamic Ads allows advertisers with a product feed to automatically deliver personalized ads based on the interest people show on your website site or app. This powerful—and largely untapped—ad type delivers hyper-targeted ads on Facebook, Instagram, and the Audience Network to people most likely to buy what you’re selling.
In our Ultimate Guide to Dynamic Ads on Facebook, we share tactical advice and timely tips to get you up, running, and profitable with this innovative ad type.
Just a few highlights:
To learn more, download the full document.
For digital advertisers, 2016 was a fabulous year. Global Internet usage on mobile surpassed desktop, plus significant strides were made in mobile-connected technologies.
Still, marketers continue to identify winners—and losers—that can affect performance and act as barriers or opportunities for growth.
In our State of Digital Advertising 2017 report, conducted in December 2016, we surveyed over 500 professionals in digital advertising—41% who are with agencies and 59% working for brands/client-side.
In addition to data charts and recommendations, the report discusses several industry insights:
To learn more, download the full report.
We all know the two most popular websites in the world right now—Google and Facebook. On any given day, people are performing close to 3 billion Google searches, and over a quarter of the world’s population use Facebook. Bing is also growing fast and is now a major SEM contender.
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Image source: Parse.ly, 2016[/caption]
Advertisers have much to gain from an integrated search and social advertising approach. But exactly how much?
To answer this question, we conducted a study of more than 200 enterprise advertisers managing Google, Bing, and Facebook campaigns. With billions of dollars in annualized ad spend managed on the Marin platform, we work with many of the world’s largest and most sophisticated advertisers.
Here’s what we found:
For full research results and actionable tips for cross-channel success, download The Multiplier Effect of Integrating Search and Social Advertising.
Facebook Dynamic Product Ads, if we must say so, are pretty badass. In the not-so-distant future, dynamic product ads are the way all digital advertising on social and display will be delivered, regardless of industry or vertical.
Dynamic Ads for Travel (DAT) allows advertisers in the travel industry to automatically deliver personalized ads based on the interest people have shown on their travel site or app. Part of the Marin Social platform, DAT lets you seamlessly create dynamic audience and product sets across each phase of the buyer journey—from retargeting to cross-sell and up-sell.
Meliá Hotels International used DAT to lower its CPA and increase ROI by 6.7 times.
Watch the video to learn how DAT can help you target the right travel audiences, deliver thousands of relevant ads in seconds, and increase your conversions.
There’s no doubt that the options for advertisers are growing by the day. So, as we start 2017, what should marketers be looking at to stay relevant and competitive?
We spoke to market experts across social, search, and omnichannel to ask: what can marketers expect to see in 2017?
From location beacons to artificial intelligence—here is a comprehensive guide to what Marin predicts will be the biggest marketing trends of the year.
Amandine Dovelos, Senior Customer Manager
Location-based, personalized data is the clincher in perhaps one of retail's most underutilized technologies to date—beacons. Using beacons in sophisticated marketing strategies will be the next step in how customers experience your brand in a bricks-and-mortar setting. For marketers, it also adds a new dimension for in-store analytics, allowing them to better understand buying patterns, create in-store engagement, redeem offers, and increase conversions.
Imagine this: A beacon in a clothing store that can located a shopper and detect exactly what sort of customer they are (for example, their gender, age, location, and whether they’ve purchased from the retailer before). Then, the retailer serves them a notification (email/SMS) with a time-limited, personalized offer.
Since the importance of customer experience dominated throughout 2016, the new year will have marketers’ efforts geared toward consistently improving this experience, as it directly correlates with positive brand differentiation.
Amandine Dovelos, Senior Customer Manager
As interesting enhancements continue to rock the online landscape—for example Google Shopping, carousel ads, and voice search—advertisers need to explore new ways of enticing possible buyers.
With audiences becoming more sophisticated in their online behavior, new online searching patterns have emerged. Search engines can now better analyze each word/token of a query and produce a deeper contextual meaning. Rambling voice searches will be enriched by synonyms to return search results that reflect your deeper intent. Given that many voice searches have a local intent, enriching customer intent with a local tweak will facilitate better results.
Jane Felice, Senior Product Marketing Manager
Facebook has introduced a unified conversion pixel that combines both the conversion tracking pixel and custom audience pixels that enables more solutions for advertisers. Note that the previous iteration, Facebook's conversion pixel, is going to be deprecated in February 2017, so marketers will be migrating to the new pixel to leverage the best options Facebook has to offer.
Facebook Audience Network (FAN) will develop new formats, metrics, and channels such as purchases and installs via FAN, so as FAN grows, more metrics and objectives are likely.
Facebook is also likely to invest in publisher partners, focusing on header bidding for greater control. These moves are likely to pivot the focus of programmatic display.
Brian Lee, Market Research Manager
A variety of quality touchpoints continue to influence consumer behaviors. WBR recently found that 75% of retailers consider omnichannel essential to their business, and with good reason. Over 50% of current search conversions have a conversion path with two or more channels, and this is likely to continue as consumers have access to an increasing amount of data—and options—online.
Brionna Lewis, Kiip guest author
The Pokémon Go frenzy this year brought augmented reality on mobile to the forefront for businesses. Augmented reality unleashes unlimited creative possibilities when it comes to delivering more captivating content. With this technology, the viewer becomes an integral part of the brand experience as opposed to a mere observer. Instead of a call to action, they are the action.
Highly engaged users are highly engaged consumers, and with the virality of Pokémon Go and the consequential sharp fall in its users, marketers will be looking into this area with great excitement, but also caution. Because AR and VR technologies remain largely uncharted territory with literally endless creative possibilities, we expect advertisers outside of the gaming realm to dive deep into this space in 2017.
Brionna Lewis, Kiip Guest author
Companies like Amazon and Google are already tapping into this in a big way with virtual assistants like Echo and Google Home. These high-touch devices allow brands to reach consumers in an authentic and useful way. They also serve direct communication to consumers, and in doing so, they encourage purchase and brand preference.
Similarly, powered through messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Kik, WhatsApp, and WeChat, brands can chat directly with consumers and inspire them to make purchases via chatbots. From Sephora offering makeup tricks, to American Express letting you know about new promotional offers you might qualify for, the opportunities for brands to reach consumers through messenger bots is gaining momentum. They’re likely to be a large focus for marketers in 2017.
According to Charles Schwab, demand for healthcare products and services is on the rise. And, despite the uncertain regulatory outlook heading into the new year, if spending and clicks are any indication, then consumers and healthcare advertisers can boast of a clean bill of health.
We took a look at the Marin Advertising Index to see where the industry’s at and where it’s headed. Here are a few highlights.
Here we go again. The shopping period is already here, and season-crazy advertisers are going where every ad campaign has gone before, but now even more so—online and mobile.
This year’s expected to be even more frenzied—and lucrative—than the last. To help you maneuver through the upcoming spending sprees and plan for a successful holiday season, we dug into the Marin Advertising Index to assess last year’s digital advertising performance and provide tips for Q4 2016. Check out a few of our industry highlights.
SPEND AND CONVERSIONS
In 2015, retailers spent 200% of their average daily spend on Black Friday, and received 210% more conversions.
PHONES AND DESKTOPS
Smartphone clicks grew by 87% year over year (YoY), almost equaling desktop clicks in 2015. Compared to 2014, 54% of clicks were on desktops and only 28% were on smartphones.
In 2015, retailers spent 200% of their average daily spend on Black Friday, and received 210% more conversions.
STAT #1
Cyber Monday had a bigger online presence than Black Friday in 2015. We may see this behavior again this year.
STAT #2
In 2015, Cyber Monday saw 280% higher spend than the daily average, and 270% of conversions.
For online advertisers, Cyber Monday should be even bigger than Black Friday. Advertisers should be ready for up to 3x more clicks and conversions. Begin preparing at least a week ahead for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Last year, we forecast that 30% of all retail paid-search spend would be on a shopping ad, and 45% of all product ad clicks would be on a smartphone—and smartphone click growth ended up being even stronger than we predicted. Looking forward, where do we see shopping ads this holiday season?
We took a look at month-over-month variations and factored in seasonal shifts in performance to forecast where we’ll be by December 2016:
For more results sampled from the Marin Global Online Advertising Index—composed of advertisers who invest more than $7 billion in annualized ad spend on the Marin platform—read The State of Shopping Ads: 2016 Cross-Channel Marketing Report. With data charts on mobile, social, text versus product ads, and strategy recommendations for the 2016 holiday season, be sure to download your copy today so that you’re prepared for the Q4 rush.
As retail search advertisers continue to plan their campaigns for the 2016 holiday season, they’re weighing the pros and cons of text versus product ads. What’s the most effective ad type for reducing cost, increasing CTR, and maximizing returns on spend?
The answer: it depends.
Sampling the Marin Global Online Advertising Index, composed of advertisers who invest more than $7 billion in annualized ad spend on the Marin platform, we analyzed data from around the world to create our 2016 Cross-Channel Marketing Report. Here are just a few of our findings:
For the full results of our research, including data charts on mobile, social, text versus product ads, and strategy recommendations for the 2016 holiday season, download The State of Shopping Ads: 2016 Cross-Channel Marketing Report.
