Tag: ad avoidance

Apple Inks Deal With NBCUniversal To Sell Ads In Apple News

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Apple has struck an exclusive deal with NBCUniversal to let the Comcast subsidiary handle the ad buying in the Apple News app. Publishers using Apple News can continue sell ads against their content by themselves and keep all ad revenue, and starting in January they will also be able to sell ads through NBCUniversal for 70% of the ad revenue. After a slow start, Apple News has now amassed 70 million users largely thanks to a deeper integration with the notifications in iOS 10.  

Why Brands Should Care
This deal provides publishers with a new partner to work with to monetize their content on Apple News after the Cupertino-based company retired its iAd network over the summer. A dedicated ad sales team at NBCUniversal should help ramp up the monetization efforts on this News app, offer brands advertisers more ad inventory to reach millions of iOS users.

One significant advantage that in-app ads have over standard web ads is that they are not affected by ad-blockers. At a time when ad blockers and ad-free streaming services are helping millions of viewers avoid ads, brands and publishers need to take proactive measure and experiment with unconventional ad formats, such as branded content and in-app ads, to win back consumer attention.

 

Source: 9to5Mac

Twitch Launches Unblockable Video Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Popular live-streaming site Twitch is launching a new video ad product that aims to circumvent ad-blocking software. Taking a page out of Facebook’s playbook, Twitch is now making its video ads indistinguishable from the site’s regular content so as to bypass detection by ad-blockers. The Amazon-owned site acknowledges in a blog post that it is “well aware that many dedicated Twitch viewers” use ad blockers but insists its platform will stay “agnostic” toward ad-blocking.

What Brands Should Do
This new ad product highlights the ongoing push-and-pull between consumers’ increasing avoidance of ads and digital platforms’ need for monetization. While this initiative should boost the viewability of Twitch’s video ads, brands looking to reach the young Millennial audience on Twitch may also consider native advertising such as the live, in-stream branded content that Carl’s Jr. tried with Vice Media.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer eyeballs, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: The Verge

Epicurious Revamps App With Better Native Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Popular recipe site Epicurious has revamped its mobile app to better integrate native ad units to offer a smoother user experience. The app, which was launched in 2009 and made Epicurious the first food publisher with a mobile app portal, previously supported banner ads and disruptive video ads. With this revamp, the Condé Nast-owned food publisher is getting rid of banner ads on mobile and adding sponsored content tiles that emulate the in-app designs for galleries and recipes. Epicurious is using custom content management system Copilot and a Google SDK to power the native ad experience.

What Brands Should Do
This revamp should help food-related brands reach their targeted audiences on the Epicurious app more effectively with branded or sponsored content. By improving its ad products, Epicurious is also doing its fans a favor by offering them a better app experience, which in turn should encourage app usage and user engagement.

As we pointed out in the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016, branded content serves as a good way to engage increasingly ad-avoidant consumers, and more brands should take note of the increasing number of native ad products available and explore their options in terms of finding the most suitable content creators and publishers to work with.

 

Source: AdExchange

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of www.epicurious.com

T-Mobile Sponsors Segment In Fox Sports’ World Series Broadcast

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
T-Mobile experiments with branded content as it sponsored a “commercial-free break” during Fox Sports’ broadcast of the World Series on Tuesday night. In the middle of the third inning, the network ran an in-game analysis session instead of the usual commercial break. Fox Sports studio host Kevin Burkhardt announced that the break was “brought to you by T-Mobile,” and finished the segment with a live read about the T-Mobile One campaign. A logo for the carrier’s unlimited phone and data plan was also prominently featured on the studio desk as well as on the bottom of the screen during the segment.

What Brands Should Do
This native ad serves as an interesting example of how traditional media companies can incorporate branded content into their existing content. One trend we identified in our Outlook 2016 is that consumers today are getting increasingly annoyed by the constant bombardment of ads and subpar digital ad experiences to the point that many are opting for the ad-free experiences enabled by subscription-based services and ad blockers. Therefore, it is imperative that brands and media owners work together to engage audiences in new ways, such as sponsored content and native ads, in order to earn consumer eyeballs.

 

Source: Digiday

Chipotle Aims To Engage Fans With Branded Online Game And Original Snapchat Show

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Chipotle is following up on its well-received, original animated short film A Love Story with more engaging content. The quick-service restaurant chain created a memory matching game based on the short film to let fans play and win rewards for free food at Chipotle.

Chipotle is also launching an original weekly show on Snapchat called “School of Guac” to target 13-24-year-old college students, which make up a key audience demo for the company. It has seen some positive results from the first two episodes, including a lower-than-average drop-off rate of 4.7%.

What Brands Should Do
As consumer attention becomes increasingly fragmented and subpar mobile ad experiences drive many users to use ad-blockers, it is becoming more and more difficult for brands to reach their desired audiences via traditional media channels. Therefore, brands should take a cue from Chipotle’s content marketing efforts and explore interactive branded content and new platforms like Snapchat to circumvent consumers’ growing ad aversion and grab their attention.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer attention, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Business Wire & Digiday

Twitch Incentivizes Users To Watch Ads With Virtual Rewards

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Popular gameplay live-streaming site Twitch has started testing a new way to incentivize its nearly 10 million daily active users to watch ads. U.S. viewers can now choose to watch a sponsored video or fill out a short survey in exchange for some “Bits,” a virtual currency the company introduced in June to enable users to tip their favorite broadcasters. Previously, users could purchase 100 Bits for $1.40.

What Brands Should Do
Twitch is commendable for taking an innovative approach to counteract the prevalent usage of ad-blockers in the gaming community. This initiative should make it easier for brands to reach the much-coveted young Millennial audience on Twitch, offering an example of how media owners can deal with the rise of ad-blockers by improving the ad experience and proposing a value exchange to their audience.

For more information on how brands can deal with the increasing consumer aversion toward ads, check out the Ad Avoidance section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Engadget

New York Times To Improve Banner Ads With New Dynamic Ad Unit

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The New York Times says it is moving away from standard banner ads and replacing them with a proprietary display ad format called Flex Frame. Designed to be more “native” on its website, the new format will appear along the top of webpages, in between paragraphs, and in feeds of content elsewhere on the site. The horizontal display ad unit will dynamically adjust in size and layout across different devices and window sizes.

What Brands Should Do
The Times is commendable in its efforts to modernize its display ad business and improve the experience for users and effectiveness for marketers. This initiative offers an example of how publishers are trying to deal with the rise of ad-blocker usage by improving the ad experience and adopting new ad formats like this helps brands better engage audiences, and brand marketers should be aware of new ad products available and work with publishers to make sure their ads are being delivered in a consumer-friendly way.

For more information on how brands can deal with the increasing consumer aversion toward ads, check out the Ad Avoidance section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Wall Street Journal

 

Twitch Goes Ad-Free For Amazon Prime Members

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon is once again expanding the perks of its Prime membership to include ad-free viewing on Twitch, the leading gameplay streaming site that Amazon acquired in 2014 for $970 million. In addition, Amazon is tapping into the gaming community on Twitch to sell more video games by offering discounts and special offers on copies sold on Amazon.com.

What Brands Need To Do
According to Amazon, Twitch has close to 10 million daily active users, and over 15,000 broadcasters on Twitch have signed on to the company’s partnership program to monetize their streams on a revenue-sharing basis. The move to support ad-free viewing on Twitch is one of the latest examples of media companies catering to consumers’ growing aversion to ads, which pushes brands to explore other forms of advertising, such as branded live content or sponsored gaming events, to reach Prime members on Twitch.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer eyeballs, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: The Verge

Adblock Plus Launches Ad Exchange To Sell Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Eyeo GmbH, the company behind the popular adblocker Adblock Plus, is launching an ad exchange called Acceptable Ads Platform, enabling publishers to “choose from a marketplace of pre-whitelisted ads that they can drag and drop onto their sites.” The platform, which Eyeo created in partnership with ad tech firm ComboTag, promises to cut the whitelisting process from weeks to seconds. Advertisers will also be able to buy the whitelisted ad space through Google’s and AppNexus’ ad exchanges. (Update 9/14: Google and AppNexus have withdrawn their involvement in this effort.) 

Why Brands Should Care
This new ad exchange offers brand advertisers a way to reach adblocker users, which is especially valuable for brands seeking specific audience segments where adblocker usage is high, such as young Millenials, high-earners, and the tech-savvy. While the irony of an ad-blocking software company selling ads itself is not lost, this development nevertheless highlights the ongoing tension between advertisers, publishers, and adblocker makers as they fight for control over the online ad experience.

To learn more about how brands can leverage branded content and native advertising to circumvent the rise of adblockers, please check out the Ad Avoidance section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdAge

eBay Receives Positive Results From Branded Podcast

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Brands have been jumping in on the podcast bandwagon since Serial blew up in 2014, and now they are getting some positive results from their branded audio content. Brands including eBay, GE, and State Farm all created their own podcasts as a way to reach potential customers and drum up customer engagement. eBay, for example, partnered with Brooklyn-based Gimlet Creative to develop a branded podcast series called Open for Business, a “curriculum-style” guide to starting a business. It landed on the No. 1 spot for business podcasts in iTunes when it launched in June, reaching more than 200% of its initial download goal.

What Brands Need To Do
Branded podcasts may be costly to produce, but it is a good way for brands to connect with targeted niche audiences and capture their attentions. At a time when ad blockers and ad-free streaming services are helping millions of viewers avoid ads, brands should consider working with content creators to experiment with new ways, such as sponsored content and native ads, to win back the consumer attention.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer attention, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek