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The end of the year brings many things: movie premiers, shopping and overeating  (all the important things, right?). For media companies, it is serving up online video, to capture that much-needed ad-revenue and traffic. These premium CPMs help fulfill revenue goals and campaign guarantees, so it’s vital that media companies take full advantage of the opportunity. According to Ezoic’s ad revenue index, the fourth quarter (specifically November & December), garners the highest online ad rates of the year. IRIS.TV’s…

The other day I met the Head of Digital marketing for a Fortune 100 major financial institution. We were having coffee and discussing the future of digital marketing. Even though we were talking about mobile, this person was laser-focused on one thing and one thing only: Click-through rates. Their goal was to avoid the notorious low CTRs of display advertising and so they were making campaign and creative decisions based on that objective. Also Read: Swrve Extends Leading Mobile Customer Interaction Platform to Support…

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a powerful technique to deliver targeted and personalized engagements to customers in key accounts.  ABM Leadership Alliance’s recent research report shows that B2B marketers who adopt ABM can expect a 171% uplift in annual contract value - so perhaps it’s no wonder that according to data by Constellation Research, 92% of companies plan to implement an ABM strategy in 2017. Also Read: Coolfire Solutions Delivers Actionable Intelligence to Meet Data Challenges However, according to the…

A decade ago, vendors didn’t sell public support forums because they assumed only an insane entrepreneur would want one. They were afraid prospective customers see the complaints and then run away. In my experience, public support forums are one of the most underrated “growth hacking” tools – if you use them wisely. When I launched JotForm in 2006, we built our own public support system. During August 2017 alone, the forum had over 150,000 unique visitors. In this article, I’ll discuss how to create and manage this…

Knock-offs have long been the bane of the fashion industry. One need only visit Canal Street in Manhattan to see “solid gold watches” peddled on the sidewalk, and Versace imitation purses hawked on the cheap. No brand wants to see a copy of their designer label sold on the black market. And no buyer wants to discover that their Rolex is really a faux-lex. Unfortunately, knock-offs aren’t confined to the fashion industry. The reselling of long-tail inventory under fraudulent terms has become common practice in the…

Of late, a new trend has been sweeping the Internet - and no, it’s not the next iteration of the fidget spinner. Everybody’s doing it, from that guy standing on the corner with his coffee in hand to news organizations such as the New York Times and National Geographic. I’m talking, of course, about the vertical video, the stuff that Snapchat videos and Instagram stories are made of, and the format that is increasingly taking precedence over the long-established landscape mode. In 2010, only 5% of…

Today’s businesses no longer compete on product, price and advertising space alone. The experience they provide to customers has become a leading differentiator, and deterrent, in purchase decisions. Poor customer experiences cost U.S. businesses $62 billion in 2016, up $20 billion from 2013. In an effort to reduce lost revenue, Gartner predicts that 50 percent of product investment projects in 2018 will be redirected to customer experience innovations. Now that business is often conducted online, optimizing websites…

Business-to-business (B2B) marketers are under constant pressure to prove the impact of their investments to the C-Suite. When an organization’s sales are slumping and spending needs to be cut, marketing has historically been an easy target. But in more recent times, cuts to the marketing department have become a harder decision to make – especially when marketing and advertising efforts can be directly tied to business results and, more specifically, sales success and profitability. The more that marketers can prove…

There has long been a desire for transparency and specific guidelines around data within the advertising industry. Recently the Advertising Research Foundation partnered with the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement to propose a data labeling initiative. Still in the early stages of development, the proposal is surrounded by a plethora of open questions about how an initiative such as this can come to fruition. While we fully support the idea of data labeling and affirm that this is a move in the right direction, a…

This holiday season is predicted to be the largest on record. For retailers, the preparation should have started a long time ago. For those late to the game, take a look at Walmart. It’s projected that the retail behemoth’s e-commerce growth rate will top 40 percent. Walmart’s success story and the strategies it has used to drive growth can be replicated by other retailers. Drive growth this holiday season with these three lessons from Walmart-- Go With Your Strength For Walmart, a distinctly large physical…

You know when you hear those pharmaceutical commercials for drugs with potential side effects that sound worse than the diseases they are trying to cure? Sometimes the fight against ad fraud is reminiscent of that. Digital ad fraud is a real and growing threat. By 2025, global ad fraud will reach an estimated $50 billion, according to the World Federation of Advertisers. Advertisers, agencies and publishers obviously have to take steps to protect against ad fraud, otherwise they will waste a greater number of ad dollars…

With the kids back in school and summer behind us, it can only mean one thing—time to start planning for the holidays! “Wait! But the leaves only just started to change?” you might be thinking. I know, it seems early. But an early start can mean the difference between using the same-old, ho-ho-ho-hum specials and décor from last year and developing a truly unique and differentiated experience that surprises and delights customers—and keeps them coming back long after the holidays are over. A well-planned holiday event…

When asked to think of an individual making a living off the sales profession, many people still imagine a man in a suit hitting the streets, demoing products and charming customers. But this is no longer the case--the modern salesperson isn’t pounding the pavement or flipping through their Rolodexes for specific contacts. They are instead people with diverse backgrounds sitting in front of a computer screen, more responsive and able to make efficient lead conversions faster than ever before. From prospecting to closing…

Machine learning and creative marketplaces are impacting the online advertising industry in noticeable ways. Facebook and Google are drastically changing the face of online advertising with machine learning algorithms that simplify the process of acquiring high-value users. They simplify user acquisition management by automatically optimizing placement, audience targeting, bids and budgets. Facebook’s Dynamic Creative allows advertisers to further automate creative testing workflow and performance by dynamically…

According to Business Insider, $4.6 trillion worth of merchandise was abandoned in carts in 2016 alone. This has led to an uptick in the number of retailers who send shopping cart abandonment messages, as well as a renewed concentration on using those items left unpurchased to retarget customers, creating another consumer touchpoint. But, while it’s all well and good to use digital data to capture revenue that might have been otherwise lost, what about all of those real-life shopping carts that have been left to languish in…

As sales and marketing strategies are increasingly driven by machine learning and AI, executives in these areas should be looking for the best ways to source data for applications leveraging this technology. One such solution is predictive analytics. The keys to predictive analytics success can be summed in three areas – the quality of the data sources leveraged, the machine learning and AI used to prioritize those data sources, and the actions taken on the results. Given the foundational importance of data sources to…

Social media is more pervasive than ever and poised for further evolution. It has been reborn over the course of the past few years as a hyperfocused business tool– more targeted, simpler to use, and possibly more effective than before. Think about how social media use has transformed over the last couple of years: platforms are growing in size, the number of platforms has increased, and conversations have become more detailed and complex. Rather than being siloed to researching marketing messages and measuring the…

Consumers are spending more time on digital devices than they spend time on all traditional media channels combined. Marketers who are trying to stay in front of these consumers are increasing spend in digital media channels such as display, mobile, video, and social media.  While budgets are increasing, the core issue of people-based identity resolution is not being solved as it continues to evolve.  This core problem leaves marketers flying blind on who (and how many) they are actually reaching. The world of digital…

As a martech enthusiast, I can vouch that there are hardly any marketers or sales professionals today, who are not incorporating artificial intelligence in some way. 91% of companies with world-leading brand recognition and high levels of customer satisfaction use AI solutions to increase customer satisfaction, compared to 42% of companies in their fields overall. -MIT Technology Review and Genesys, 2017. We all use Alexa, Google Assistant and more. But the question to ask is – Is AI enabling us? Is the impact…

How to find the right AI platform for B2B marketing and sales success A report by technology research firm Nucleus Research provides compelling new evidence of the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-assisted marketing. The study showed that in their first 30 days of using AI for advanced analytics and predictive functionality, the B2B sales and marketing teams at a commerce service provider increased business from the company’s top-tier accounts by 5% and created 25-35 new sales opportunities. Overall, the unique…