Online Ad Networks

Media Economics Group has released a list of the top advertisers on Hispanic websites during Q1 2013, revealing that Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Toyota were by far the leading advertisers, neck and neck with 6.78% and 6.74% share of ad occurrences, respectively. According to Nielsen, P&G was the biggest spending advertiser in the US last year, with Toyota in the fourth spot. However, AT&T and General Motors, which were the second- and third-largest spenders last year in the US, didn't make the top 10 list for Hispanic advertisers in Q1. Rounding out the top 5 advertisers on Hispanic websites were Ford (2.99% share of occurrences); State Farm (2.93%); and Nissan (2.46%). Read more »

Digital coupon users - particularly heavy users - shop more often than the average shopper, and spend more heavily when they do, details Coupons.com in research conducted by GfK. The study looked at 120 campaigns which ran a digital coupon on Coupons.com during 2012, representing a cross-section of CPG categories, and compared the shopping behavior of digital coupon redeemers with the behavior of 2.3 million households in the GfK Knowledge Networks database. Digital coupon users were found to spend 13% more per grocery shopping trip than the average shopper ($53.14 vs. $47.01) and 42% more annually ($4,295 vs. $3,035). Read more »

In Q1, social vastly outperformed portals, networks, and exchanges in user quality index – a measure that refers to a channel's ability to reach a user that can be marketed to consistently – according to the latest "Global Media Intelligence Report" [download page] from Aggregate Knowledge. The study, which analyzed more than 27 billion impressions across Q1, found that social performed 65% better than the industry overall in delivering such quality users, and 33% better than the next-best channel, portals. In a turnaround from Q4, though, portals emerged as the best option for reach efficiency, which tracks the ability to reach exclusive users at the lowest cost. Read more »

58% of national brand advertising campaigns employed geo-precise targeting (including geo-fencing and geo-behavioral targeting) in Q1, according to a new report from xAd. That's more than double the 27% from a year earlier, as the proportion using standard geo-targeting dropped from 64% to 40%. Still, fewer advertisers used geo-precise targeting in Q1 than in Q4 2012. That's because some campaigns benefit more than others from such targeting, and Q4 saw more campaigns seeking to leverage the benefits of geo-targeting to promote their holiday and Black Friday promotions. Read more »

75% of ad agencies responding to a BrightRoll survey believe that video is equally or more effective than TV, and that's up from 64% who believed that to be the case in last year's survey, according to a new BrightRoll report [download page]. Even more respondents (91%) believe that digital video measures up well with display, although they're less convinced about its effectiveness compared to social media (68%), search (52%) and direct response (45%). The most important aspect of video advertising to clients is its targeting capabilities, according to 45% of respondents, with reach (27%) also valuable. Read more »

The US advertising market is quite heavily affected by political spending and the Olympics (P&O), with TV particularly influenced by cyclical P&O spending, according to [download page] the latest forecast from MAGNA GLOBAL. The researcher estimates that ad spending on core media will inch forward by 0.4% this year, but that growth is a more robust 2.4% when excluding P&O revenues. That disparity also means that TV revenues will decline by 2.8% this year, but otherwise be up by 1.9% when excluding the P&O impact. Next year, when P&O spending is back in play, the advertising market will rebound, growing by 5.9%, and fueled by an 8.9% expansion in TV revenues. Read more »

Perhaps due to the growing influence of social shares on search rankings, local SEOs are increasingly seeing social media as an effective marketing channel for local businesses, according to results from a BrightLocal industry survey. More than 8 in 10 respondents believe that social either works well for certain business types (57%) or that it is very powerful (25%), up from 76% last year, while fewer than 1 in 10 are of the opinion that it's over-hyped. When it comes to generating leads customers for clients, though, SEOs are biased towards search, with 82% saying that "general search" is one of their top-3 most effective online channels. Read more »

A study pitting native ads against banner ads has found the former attracting more attention and generating more lift. The study, conducted by IPG Media Lab and Sharethrough, leveraged both eye tracking technology and surveys to come to its conclusions, using leading brands across travel, CPG and entertainment verticals as test cases. Among the findings, consumers were 25% more likely to see native ads than banner ads (25% vs. 20%), looking at the native ads 52% more frequently (4.1 times per session, compared to 2.7). Notably, consumers looked at native ads at a slightly higher rate than the original editorial content, spending almost the same amount of time doing so. Read more »

87% of Mass Affluents (current investors with $100,000 - $1 million in assets, excluding the value of their homes) have used social media in the past year, with about three-quarters using Facebook, half using LinkedIn, and roughly one-quarter on Twitter, per results [download page] from a study conducted by LinkedIn in partnership with Cogent Research. Almost 40% of Mass Affluents report using social media for discovery (21%) or consideration (32%) of financial companies: interestingly, they're more likely to learn about financial information through an ad or brand content than through an individual. Read more »

An analysis of web traffic trends in March shows that lifestyle sites saw an uptick in traffic, with unique visitors to gay and lesbian sites up 40% month-over-month to 11 million, and visitors to religion and spirituality sites increasing by 11%, to 37.5 million. The data, from comScore's Media Metrix [download page], also suggests that Americans looked to the web to solve their allergy problems as Spring beckoned, with the number of visitors to pharmacy sites jumping by 23%, to 8 million. Read more »