The Latest: Are Your Ad Metrics “Ghosting” You?

Here is our take on the most notable stories in Digital and Social Media Marketing from last week.

Social media users and advertisers are abuzz about video content on their favorite social media platforms. On the flip side, companies are voicing their concern about digital advertising fraud. And, last but not least, we debunk the myth that Facebook is dead.

Pinterest Introduces Autoplay Video Ads, New Opportunities for Video Ad Exposure

Social Media Today | May 25, 2017

Facebook and Pinterest are looking to take full advantage of the popularity of video content on their platforms. Last week, Facebook further rolled out its “Watch-and-Scroll” feature, which allows users to “pin” or “stick” a video they encounter to the sidebar of their newsfeed. This enables an interruption-free experience for both organic and promoted videos—and gives users the potential to play two videos at the same time.

Pinterest is also providing advertisers with new video options. Users will soon begin to see automatically-playing video ads in their feeds and search results—a major step up from previously offered “cinematic” ads, which only played in tandem with users’ scroll through the page.

Also sourced:

• Social Media Today

Our Take

Advertisers should certainly be excited about new ways to reach audiences through video: according to Social Media Today, video content generates more shares than any other form of content on Facebook, and 60% more video content was published on Pinterest in 2016. However, we have to ask: just how much video can social media users take? As publishers, advertisers, and individual users alike generate more and more video content, the novelty is likely to wear off fast. And with Pinterest charging by impression rather than engagement (meaning, every time an ad appears on a user’s screen for at least 1 second), video ads might not offer the best bang for your buck in the long-term.

ANA declares ad fraud war ‘winnable’

Marketing Dive | May 25, 2017

It is a fear every digital advertiser has: that they are paying for ads that are broken, only seen by bots, or, worst of all, never actually appear. This is called ad fraud, and it is typically the result of a lack of transparency in ad metrics, or the data about who saw your ad and when. But, things may just be looking up!

According to Adweek, The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and White Ops have reported that they expect total economic losses from ad fraud to drop by up to 10% in 2017. Companies like Pepsi Co. and Airbnb are already noticing a difference, likely due to new technologies that can decipher between human and bot traffic. A quote from the ANA published on MarketingDive even deems the war against ad fraud a “winnable” fight—as long as advertisers are proactive.

Also sourced:

• Media Post
• Ad Week

Our Take

So how can you do your part to end ad fraud? Our best advice is to be choosy about who you advertise with: according to study from fraud detection company Fraudlogix (as published on MediaPost), nearly 70% of fake impressions come from just 3% of publishers. So, limit your partnerships to publishers who have implemented technologies that provide detailed metrics and weed out fake traffic. You can also check to see if the publisher is a part of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which now requires member companies to register with the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). The TAG is an organization created by Congress with the goal of strengthening cybersecurity through information sharing (MarketingDive).

Stat of the Week via Social Media Today

Don’t listen to your teenage neighbor’s rant about how Facebook is ‘so lame’: the platform is still the biggest social network in the world in terms of user growth and engagement, according to Social Media Today. Over the last 18 months, over 18 million new users joined Facebook and 8.6 million of them were baby boomers.

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