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91% of women say that advertising misunderstands them

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91% of women say that advertising misunderstands them

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Similar to Move On from Deutsche Telekom

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Similar to Move On from Deutsche Telekom

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Raúl Arévalo: gears up for Vodafone's Twitter campaign

Next Friday Vodafone will encourage people to suggest lines and directions to the actors using the hashtag #firstteatrotuits. Tweets sent from all over the world will be incorporated into the two-hour play.

Arévalo will perform the play alongside the Spainsh actors Juanma Díez and Paula Galimberti at the Capitol Theatre in Madrid at 8pm GMT next Friday (11 July). Free tickets are available at www.firstteatrotuits.com.

The live audience will also be encouraged to make their own suggestions to the actors using their smartphones.

The play will be available to stream on the #firstteatrotuits website from 18 July.

Vodafone Spain devised the #firstteatrotuits with the WPP shop Sra Rushmore.

Arévalo, who starred in 'Summer Rain', the second film directed by Antonio Banderas, said: "It's a group effort. People will use their smartphones to send messages over Twitter.

"I don't know how it starts; I don't know how it ends. This is something that really awakes my curiosity. I've never done this. It's the first time and I'm really looking forward to it."

The telecoms giant is also giving people the chance to suggest things they want to do for the first time through its Pitch Your First competition on Firsts.com.

Vodafone Firsts is a social media-led programme of activity designed to demonstrate the new things technology can enable people to do. It replaced Vodafone's previous sponsorship-led marketing activity.

Other "firsts" include the surfer Tom Lowe riding a 40ft-high wave for the first time at Todos Santos, Mexico and the Dutch grandmothers An and Ria flying on a plane.

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Next Friday Vodafone will encourage people to suggest lines and directions to the actors using the hashtag #firstteatrotuits. Tweets sent from all over the world will be incorporated into the two-hour play. Arévalo will perform the play alongside the Spainsh actors Juanma Díez and Paula Galimberti at the Capitol Theatre in Madrid at 8pm GMT next Friday (11 July).

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UK mobile advertising will overtake the multi-billion pound newspaper and magazine market next year, and surpass TV ad spend to hit £4.5bn in 2016, according a new forecast.

Mobile ad spend is expected to grow by 96% this year to £2.02bn in the UK, just a shade behind the £2.06bn forecast to be spent on print ads in newspapers, according to a report published on Tuesday by eMarketer.

The seemingly inexorable growth in mobile usage - half of Britons are expected to own an iPad, Kindle or similar tablet device by 2018 - will see the ad market grow a further 60% in 2015 to £3.2bn.

This will be some distance ahead of the entire UK print ad market, from newspapers to magazines, which is forecast contract from £2.8bn to £2.7bn.

EMarketer says that the stratospheric growth of mobile advertising - just four years ago the entire UK market was worth £83m - shows no sign of abating with a 38% rise to £4.46bn inked in for 2016.

This is well ahead of the £3.8bn forecast to be spent on TV ads in 2016.

"Continued robust growth in the mobile channel is driving the bulk of [overall] digital ad growth in the UK," said eMarketer. "The dramatic growth of mobile and video ad expenditures will boost digital ad spending throughout the forecast period."

The total UK digital advertising market is forecast to be worth £7.25bn this year, £7.97bn in 2015 and £8.64bn in 2016.

"Mobile will account for nearly 30% of all digital ad spending this year, with this figure rising to more than half by 2016," the research company said.

EMarketer estimates that the total UK ad market across all media will rise a healthy 6.6% this year to £15.1bn.

"A strong economy, high consumer confidence and increases in spending on digital, TV, radio and outdoor formats will spur what growth there is in total media ad spending," the company said. "While digital, and especially mobile, are boosting total growth, other channels are flat or even losing ad revenues".

The report notes that between 2014 and 2018 the newspaper and magazine market will lose £276m in ad spend, although this does not factor in money made from digital revenue streams.
* To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@theguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".* To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on and . Topics

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UK mobile advertising will overtake the multi-billion pound newspaper and magazine market next year, and surpass TV ad spend to hit £4.5bn in 2016, according a new forecast. Mobile ad spend is expected to grow by 96% this year to £2.02bn in the UK, just a shade behind the £2.06bn forecast to be spent on print ads in newspapers, according to a report published on Tuesday by eMarketer.

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EU goes to war against power of US digital giants

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EU goes to war against power of US digital giants

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Within the salons of the Elysée Palace, along the corridors of the European parliament and under the glass dome of the Reichstag, Old Europe is preparing for a new war. This is not a battle over religion or politics, over land or natural resources. The raw material that Paris, Brussels and Berlin are mobilising to defend is the digital environment of Europe's inhabitants; their enemies are the Silicon Valley corporations that seek to dominate it.

Coal, gas and oil powered the industrial revolution, but in the digital era, data is replacing fossil fuels as the most valuable resource on Earth, and the ability to collect and interrogate it has created organisations with a power that can at times seem beyond the control of nation states. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google represent, in the words of Germany's economy minister Sigmar Gabriel, "brutal information capitalism", and Europe must act now to protect itself.

"Either we defend our freedom and change our policies, or we become digitally hypnotised subjects of a digital rulership," Gabriel warned in a passionate call to action published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine. "It is the future of democracy in the digital age, and nothing less, that is at stake here, and with it, the freedom, emancipation, participation and self-determination of 500 million people in Europe."

In France, economy minister Arnaud Montebourg believes Europe risks becoming a "digital colony of the global internet giants", and ministers have called for Google to contribute to the cost of upgrading the country's broadband infrastructure. Gabriel says Germany's cartel office is currently examining whether Google should be regulated as a utility, like a telecoms supplier - the group has 91.2% market share of search in Germany.

He believes that, as a last resort, there may be a case for "unbundling" Google, separating its search arm from mobile, or YouTube, or services such as email.

As a first step, he is in favour of regulation that allows competitors to use the Google platform fairly. The pushback against Amazon has also begun: as of last year, the online retailer can no longer stop independent sellers on its German website from offering their own goods cheaper elsewhere, including on their own websites.

European regulators have also begun to take action. In May, the European court upheld a plea by a Spaniard, Mario Costeja González, who wanted pages hidden from any Google search for his name in the EU. Judges decided the past transgressions of private individuals have a right to be "forgotten". The threats that ruling poses to freedom of the press are now being debated, but it was a watershed moment, representing Europe's first major regulatory strike against the search and software colossus.

On 11 June, the European commission's competition regulator, Joaquín Almunia, wrote to colleagues to warn that his investigation into Google's search rankings could be reopened, after new complainants had stepped forward. On the same day, he announced a potentially wide-ranging inquiry into tax avoidance, starting with a focus on three companies: Apple and its international headquarters in Ireland, and Starbucks and its head office in the Netherlands (the third company being carmaker Fiat). On Thursday, a leak from Brussels suggested Amazon, which operates through a European HQ in Luxembourg, was also being dragged into the net.

"In the current context of tight public budgets, it is particularly important that large multinationals pay their fair share of taxes," Almunia said. His intervention was widely interpreted as a politically motivated act. It almost certainly was.

There are those who believe that Jean-Claude Juncker, the former Luxembourg prime minister who has just been elected as the next president of the European commission - despite vocal opposition from David Cameron - is out to get Google.

Its corporate motto is still "don't be evil", but Google seems to have replaced Microsoft - which was embroiled for years with regulators over monopolistic practices - as the bête noire of Brussels. The comparison is perhaps unfair. Google has taken a less confrontational stance than Microsoft, by accepting the commission's right to regulate its business in Europe and readily engaging in a negotiated settlement on search.

Nevertheless, says Ian Maude, new media specialist at research firm Enders Analysis, "Google, as far as regulators are concerned, is the new Microsoft. It is the big bad wolf. Privacy has become a much more important issue.

"Media markets historically have been national, but Google straddles borders and stands head and shoulders above any other online players. The European regulators have more power than any bar those in the US, and Google is now such a giant that it is going to face increased regulatory scrutiny. Regulation, rather than competition, is probably its main challenge right now."

Google has a friendly face, but its creeping power is causing alarm. The company controls two of the world's biggest search engines: Google itself and its video site YouTube, which ranks alongside Microsoft's Bing! and China's Baidu. The company's own web browser, Chrome, has overtaken Firefox and Microsoft's Explorer as the most popular browser, its Gmail is the largest email service, and its Android software controls more mobile phones than any other operating system.

Now Google is moving into the home, buying cloud-connected thermostat maker Nest and home security camera operator Dropcam. It wants to drive our smart cars and build humanoid robots, and it is funding a network of satellites to beam internet connections from space.

In an extraordinary metaphor, the boss of German media group Axel Springer has compared Google to the dragon Fáfnir, from the Norse myth that inspired Tolkien to write The Hobbit and Wagner to compose the Ring Cycle. Fáfnir was the son of a dwarf king, who became so jealous of the family's vast store of gold and gems that he killed his father to take sole possession of the treasure. Greed turned Fáfnir into a dragon, who guarded his hoard with fire and poison.

"Google is sitting on the entire current data trove of humanity like the giant Fáfner in The Ring of the Nibelung," Axel Springer boss Mathias Döpfner wrote in an open letter to the firm's chairman, Eric Schmidt, in April. More recently, he has condemned Almunia's settlement with Google over search. Google is under fire for allegedly downgrading results from companies that offer similar services to its own, prioritising its price comparison sites, stock price information or maps even when those services receive less traffic than rivals. Almunia has agreed that companies appearing too low in the rankings to draw traffic can pay to appear in a box at the top of the page. Döpfner told Radio 4's Today programme last week: "I would call that protection money. It is basically the business principle of the mafia."

Google's earnings from search have drained advertising spending from European newspapers, magazines and radio stations. Piracy, facilitated by search engines and broadband, has hit revenues for record labels hard. Bookshops and electronics stores have disappeared from high streets as sales migrate to Amazon and even Apple's bricks and mortar retail outlets. Europe's mobile phone networks, once considered global technology pioneers, have handed fortunes to Apple and South Korea's Samsung in subsidies for mobile phone handsets.

The sense of injustice has been reinforced by revelations about tax. Amazon, Google and Apple have found ways to reduce their corporation tax payments on international revenues to single-digit percentages of profits. Now fear has been added to the mix, with Edward Snowden's revelations about digital surveillance.

Reaction on the continent to the NSA scandal has been far stronger than in Britain. Gabriel argues that we are compromising our national security, and selling our economic and personal freedom, every time we exchange our personal data for access to free music or email, cheap smartphones or a page on a social network. Our preferences, our movements and our mistakes are being collected and stored, ready to be passed on to advertisers, medical researchers, car insurers, political strategists and even government spies, he suggests.

When Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, withdrew her support for Cameron in his push to promote an alternative candidate to Juncker, fingers were pointed at Döpfner, whose group publishes the influential German tabloid Bild. Döpfner is said to have persuaded Merkel to back Juncker in the belief that he would support the battle against Google.

Juncker has not publicly indulged in Google-bashing, but he has made the creation of a strong digital economy in Europe the first priority of his presidency. "Europe's path to growth is paved with tablets and smartphones," according to his campaign manifesto. He is using the dream of creating the next digital giant in Europe as a rallying cry for closer integration, in particular the creation of a single market for telecoms and digital businesses.

Under the industrial policy being drafted by his team, Brussels will encourage the harmonisation of national laws on copyright, data protection, telecoms regulation and the auction of the electromagnetic spectrum used by mobile phone networks.

Mobile networks, perhaps unrealistically, are seen as central to the fightback against America's information capitalists. With companies like Britain's Vodafone, Germany's Deutsche Telekom and Spain's Telefónica, Europe was able to create multinationals on a far grander scale than America's own domestically focused networks.

That competitive edge has since been lost. During spectrum auctions, when operators bidded for the airwaves they needed to link handsets to the internet, vast sums were handed over to national governments for 3G licences. The UK raised £22bn in 2000, but networks were left without the cash needed to expand 3G networks. The problem was compounded again with 4G, which delivers faster internet speeds. Wrangles over the timing of auctions, which did not occur simultaneously across Europe, allowed the US and many other countries a headstart.

"The reason the European telecoms industry has lost its edge is because of our own regulatory and political decisions," says Bengt Nordström, whose Northstream consultancy advises on telecoms. "Without spectrum harmonisation we are just a continent of various middle-sized and small countries and can never be an industrial leader."

With a population of 310 million to supply, American firms gain meaningful scale before they export. The same is true in China, where e-commerce group Alibaba and Baidu are dominant. If Europe's 500m inhabitants are corralled into a single market, Juncker believes that home-grown companies, like the flights comparison service Skyscanner, or music streaming firm Spotify, can gain scale.

Will his ideas gain favour in Britain? Labour is clear that, on tax and on search rankings, Google and its peers must operate on a level playing field. "It's important the large online organisations pay their fair share of tax," says shadow culture and media minister Helen Goodman. "If your competitive advantage is built on you being able to charge lower prices because you are paying less tax, that is not a sustainable way for us to run our economies."

In Brussels, Cameron and Google are seen as a little too close for comfort. The company's head of communications and public policy, Rachel Whetstone, is a close friend of the prime minister. She is married to Steve Hilton, architect of the "big society" policy that helped return the Tories to power. Google's European headquarters are officially in Ireland, but 2,000 programmers, salespeople and managers are based in London. The company is building a new headquarters in King's Cross that could house as many as 4,500.

John Springford of thinktank the Centre for European Reform says Cameron signed up to the idea of a digital single market as long ago as 2011, but that while he supports the removal of barriers to trade, he may be reluctant to accept edicts from Brussels on copyright and spectrum sales. On tax, however, the prime minister has made his position clear, saying avoiders like Starbucks need to "wake up and smell the coffee".

Margaret Hodge MP, whose influential parliamentary public accounts committee has brought digital tax evasion to national attention, welcomes action from Brussels.

"This is a very good first issue on which David Cameron can make common cause with the new president of Europe to heal some of the wounds and to ensure digital companies don't evade their responsibility to the jurisdictions where they make their money. Let's see him smelling the coffee," she says.
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From Google to Amazon: EU goes to war against power of US digital giants

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Within the salons of the Elysée Palace, along the corridors of the European parliament and under the glass dome of the Reichstag, Old Europe is preparing for a new war. This is not a battle over religion or politics, over land or natural resources.

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MoshiMonsters launch "Instagram for kids"

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MoshiMonsters launch "Instagram for kids"

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The idea of Moshi Monsters in crisis is strange, given that the children's virtual world has more than 80m registered users, and a thriving business in magazines, merchandise, toys and 2013's official movie.

A philosophical crisis? More likely: Moshi Monsters' parent company Mind Candy has spent the past couple of years racking its brains over this challenge: how to release mobile apps that are as popular with children as its web-based virtual world was in the past.

In July 2012, chief executive Michael Acton Smith said that Mind Candy was about to launch an iPad app version of Moshi Monsters.

"We're hopefully going to launch Pocket Moshi or Moshi-on-the-Move or whatever it's called in the next few months," said Smith, in an appearance at the Children's Media Conference (CMC) in Sheffield. "We're going to make it free, and hopefully have millions of kids playing it."

The app never came out. Instead, Mind Candy has released some smaller apps - a guide to its world's Moshlings characters, a virtual pet game, a music videos app and a digital version of its print magazine, for example - without any of them really catching fire on the app stores.

This month, Smith was back at CMC to provide an update, including a characteristically-honest assessment of his company's past efforts. "We thought it would be easy to move our web stuff to mobile, and it wasn't. It was extraordinarily difficult," Smith told delegates during the conference's closing keynote speech.

"There are so many new challenges, not least how the commercial side of things works. We certainly haven't cracked it yet, despite trying very hard with a well-established brand."

Smith added that Mind Candy has been tracking wider trends around children and apps, noting two in particular: their interest in playing "free-to-play" games - the ones that make their money from a mixture of ads and in-app purchases - intended for an older audience; and the fact that they're turning up in increasing numbers on social networks that in theory are for over-13s only.

"Kids don't have their own app where their voice and creativity can be heard, so they are joining up to grown-up social networks in their droves. Facebook, Tumblr, Snapchat and Instagram in particular are hugely popular with kids," said Smith.

This is clearly a concern for Mind Candy, faced with the prospect of Moshi Monsters losing relevance for under-13s who'd rather be playing Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga, or sharing photos on Instagram and Snapchat.

PopJam: social sharing but safely

Enter PopJam, which is Mind Candy's latest app, unveiled by Smith during his CMC keynote, although it was actually launched quietly in October 2013 under a different name: JellyChat.

Then, it was a cross between WhatsApp and SnapChat but for kids, focused on text chat and private photo-sharing, with digital scribbling and stickers included.

Its public launch as PopJam sees it shifting to more of an Instagram-for-kids approach: private chat is still a feature, but the emphasis is much more on a public feed of shared photos. Smith pitched it as a safer alternative to the grown-up social networking apps.

"With these environments, there are all sorts of issues. Why not give kids their own space where kids can be kids?" he asked. "We'd love to build a creative community that inspires, entertains and empowers all the kids in the world. Give kids the tools, and step back to see what they create."

PopJam is colourful and easy to use, aimed at 7-12 year-olds who can create their profiles, customise and share photos, and follow "channels" based around specific themes - from memes like Cats, Fail and LOL to specific brands: Minecraft, Lego, Doctor Who, One Direction, Adventure Time and more.

Smith was at CMC to launch PopJam partly to encourage children's TV, publishing and games companies to consider launching official channels within the app, although he stressed that - for now at least - Mind Candy won't be charging brands to have a presence within PopJam.

"For now, the core focus is that there's no commercial aspect to it: it's simply free, and if we can build an audience of millions and tens of millions of kids, then we can figure out how the commercial side will work," he said.

"One option could be to charge small amounts for sticker packs or extra ways of customising photos. We could do that, but it may not sit quite so comfortably with parents. That's why we feel maybe subscription is the way to go: parents pay a few pounds a month, they know exactly how much they're going to pay, we have predictable, recurring revenues, and kids get access to extra premium content."

Moderation is the key

Mind Candy hopes safety will be a key part of PopJam's appeal to parents, promising that a "big team of very experienced human moderators" are working on the app, including pre-moderating photos shared by newer users.

"If you're a new user, all the content you push into the app will go through human moderators. Once we get to know users a little better and how their behaviour is in the app, they may be treated differently," said Smith. "There's a lot of complexity behind the scenes."

Children are being discouraged from sharing selfies of their own faces unless they're disguised with stickers - virtual masks for example - and the app's messaging features will be closely monitored for children trying to share personal details like home addresses.

While testing PopJam with a fellow CMC attendee, a message sent with swearing saw those words replaced by # symbols - and a few days later, even that censored message had been deleted from the conversation.

"This is a very delicate balancing act we've got to get right," said Smith, on the balance between parents feeling safe and children feeling restricted. "I think we can do it: if kids don't have their own space, they're going to continue going to over-13 sites."

Human moderation isn't infallible - the downfall of children's virtual world Habbo Hotel in 2012 was a reminder of that - but Mind Candy hopes its experience on the web will persuade parents that PopJam can be trusted too, including for issues like data collection.

"We're going to be incredibly responsible just as we were with Moshi. There are no plans to monetise that, and there are very strict regulations around that," said Smith.

"Currently, when children sign up they have a unique user name, and we ask for an age. There is nothing more than that at this stage. For now there are no plans to collect huge amounts of data."

Doubters will inevitably pick up on the phrases "at this stage" and "for now", but PopJam, like the social networks for adults, will have to disclose any changes to its data collection policies, and is sure to be picked up on any expansion of the information that it is taking in on its young users.

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Moshling Rescue game's in-app purchases go up to £59.99.

Freemium risks

At CMC, I interviewed Smith on-stage after his keynote speech, and asked him about a different aspect of Mind Candy's mobile strategy: one that's been raising eyebrows within the children's entertainment industry. That's the company's expansion into freemium mobile games.

Moshi Monsters Village is a FarmVille-style strategy game that sells its "Rox" currency for up to £29.99 at a time as in-app purchases (IAP). Temple Run-style racing game Moshi Karts also goes up to £29.99 with its virtual currency shop, while Candy Crush-alike matching puzzle game Moshling Rescue's IAP goes all the way up to £59.99.

The latter in particular seemed a puzzling - and worrying - move for Mind Candy. The company's argument is that the game isn't for kids: it's for parents.

"It's a very delicate line and we are trying to balance this correctly. It's part of this experimental phase. We know there are a lot of mums who have played Moshi with their kids and love it, love the characters and the Moshlings, so why don't we try to create a brand for an older audience?" said Smith.

"We haven't actively promoted this new game Moshling Rescue to kids: it's aimed at a much older audience, and therefore we can be a little bit more liberal with the way the in-app purchase side of things works."

Smith sees games like Moshling Rescue as marking Mind Candy's transition into a company that makes entertainment for families, not just children.

"It's very hard to just create entertainment for kids. You have to bring some of the parents along as well. Some of the most successful companies in the world create entertainment for all ages," he said, citing Nintendo and Pixar as examples.

However, this may be the most dangerous balancing act facing Mind Candy, caught between its desire to make responsible, trusted entertainment for kids, and its frustration at not being able to make the kind of money being generated by (theoretically) adult freemium games like Supercell's Clash of Clans and King's Candy Crush Saga.

"It's very hard to generate the kind of income [from children's apps] that justifies the huge teams and multi-year projects that we want to do. I can't think of too many companies that have cracked this," he said.

"Toca Boca is often given as a good example, and their apps are wonderful, magical, amazing. But they are making a fraction of the money that some of the Kings and the Supercell and the others are. No one's quite cracked it: it's a really tricky problem."

While Mind Candy tries to crack it, Smith said it remains committed to the web-based virtual world that started off the Moshi Monsters phenomenon - "the beating heart of the property" - despite changing habits of children.

"We still love the web experience at Moshi, we still support it and have a team on it, but we feel the new centre of gravity will be mobile and tablets," he said.

"We're living in a world now where kids will have their own devices, not just to play games, but to read stories, listen to music, watch videos, and communicate with other kids around the world."

* YouTube, apps and Minecraft: digital kids and children's media
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Moshi Monsters maker pitches PopJam app as Instagram for kids

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The idea of Moshi Monsters in crisis is strange, given that the children's virtual world has more than 80m registered users, and a thriving business in magazines, merchandise, toys and 2013's official movie. A philosophical crisis?

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Forget Kent, forget Newcastle... this week, Birmingham is the UK's newest tech hub

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Forget Kent, forget Newcastle... this week, Birmingham is the UK's newest tech hub

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'Traditional marketing is broken', says Edelman

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'Traditional marketing is broken', says Edelman

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Not exactly new thinking, but fairly recent, and quite big player talking

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In Chicago last Thursday, the head of the world's largest PR firm declared that the marketing industry has its business backward. Speaking to an audience of academics and brand marketing executives at De Paul University, Richard Edelman, who runs the eponymous agency as president and CEO, stated that much of the marketing we've grown up with "is a short-term and broken model."

The marketing industry has been rocked the last few years by the massive rise of commercial brands acting as publishers. Whereas brands like General Electric and American Express historically could only reach customers through advertisements next to content people sought in newspapers and television, they can now create their own stories that readers find and share in their news feeds on social media websites. (This, of course, is not news to anyone who's reading this story on LinkedIn.)
(Disclosure: American Express is a Contently client.)
However, the communications approach brands have been using as publishers is still often anachronistic. "It's always been marketing first and communications as a servant," Edelman said. "I see the emergence of a new paradigm, which is 'communications marketing' instead of 'marketing communications.'"

The difference, he says, has to do with priorities. In a media environment where control over who sees content is actually up to readers-not editors or advertisers-companies who wish to build relationships with potential customers must now do so on readers' terms. That means communicating meaningfully before selling to them. It means sharing useful and entertaining information as a primary objective, with the understanding that relationships and sales will eventually flow if done appropriately.

The early adopters in the marketing community understand this well. It's why Red Bull makes snowboarding movies and drops skydivers from space to entertain its audience. It's why Blackrock creates in-depth education to help people understand investing. And it's why creative and media and PR and social agencies (and publishers like The New York Times and Forbes) now sell "sponsored content" and content marketing solutions.

Social media has changed our expectations around what we see and don't see on the Internet, and that's forcing the hands of some brands-the ones with a lot to lose-to behave more in the interest of the crowd. Interestingly, that mindset (and pressure) is influencing beyond simply what brands broadcast from their Twitter accounts. Edelman uses Starbucks as an example: The company recently announced that it's going to subsidize its employees' college tuition, in part as an effort to help its workers feel connected to the brand and to care about its customers more to the point that they share the brand's story and ethos with strangers who buy lattes.

You're not just selling coffee," Edelman said. "You're selling a relationship."

The key to "communications marketing," Edelman said, is "substantive storytelling." Purveying interesting and surprising stories instead of ads. To work, he said, brands must publish content that is:

1) "Rational and built for consumption." (Useful to the reader.)

2) "Emotional and built for sharing." (Of human interest.)

3) "Supported by data and insight." (Factually sound.)

These sound a lot like things a journalist would say. But when Edelman then declared that those in the PR industry must now consider themselves "guardians of truth," I was taken aback. It's a dramatic statement coming from the head of an industry that's thought by most people to be paid to spin facts. However, knowing that the social media crowd is quick to point out and amplify improprieties, PR firms seem to be grabbing onto the idea of storytelling and relationship-building through radically transparent publishing more fully than almost anyone. (I suspect that this is largely due to the fact that Edelman and firms like Weber Shandwick's Mediaco have been hiring editors from traditional media with strong journalism backgrounds to run branded content.)

Though I think that brand publishing should not be overly compared to journalism, the infusion of a journalistic mindset-or communicating instead of selling-into marketing is a great thing. After all, the number one priority of journalism is to seek the truth and not betray readers. Marketing, historically, hasn't had much incentive to rank such ideals above the bottom line.

"We're going to change the mindset of marketers," Edelman says. It's a lofty idea. But if we can collectively manage it, it just might make the Internet-in which the 5.7 trillion ads served per year get ignored by 99.9 percent of us -a little more interesting.
What's the deal with The Content Strategist? It's something we created at Contently because we believe in a world where marketing is helpful, and businesses grow by telling stories that people love. Take advantage of our tools and talent and come build that world with us.

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'Traditional Marketing Is Broken,' Declares Richard Edelman - The Content Strategist

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In Chicago today, the head of the world's largest PR firm declared that the marketing industry has its business backward. Speaking to an audience of academics and brand marketing executives at De Paul University, Richard Edelman, who runs the eponymous agency as President and CEO, stated that much of the marketing we've grown up with "is a short-term and broken model."

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Santander launches $100 million fintech fund from London

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Santander launches $100 million fintech fund from London

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Half of the UK want BBC license fee scrapped

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Half of the UK want BBC license fee scrapped

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Half (51 per cent) of the UK want the BBC licence fee scrapped and the corporation to fund itself, a study of 2,049 Brits by ComRes has found.

However, a BBC spokesperson has told The Drum: "In fact, support for the licence fee is higher today at 53 per cent of the population than ten years ago when it was 31 per cent, and our research shows the licence fee remains the most popular way of funding the BBC across all ages and backgrounds - it's tremendous value, and ensures that everyone gets access to great content that informs, educates and entertains."

The Whitehouse Consultancy commissioned research found 40 per cent agreed with the suggestion that the "current system of a compulsory licence fee paid by individuals who watch live television" is the best way of funding the BBC, although the same percentage also disagreed with the suggestion.

Only 34 per cent of those surveyed said that they would prefer the current system as opposed to the BBC becoming a more commercial organisation which funds itself.

Chris Whitehouse, chairman of the Whitehouse Consultancy, said its research found the lack of support for the BBC's licence fee 'alarming'.

"There clearly isn't solid support for the licence fee model and the public appears willing to consider alternatives means of funding the BBC, as long as abolishing the licence fee doesn't mean higher taxes instead," he said.

"While interesting that older respondents appear to be more supportive of the licence fee than younger Britons, these figures show the huge job of work still be done by the BBC if it is to have a strong hand in the future in renegotiating the licence fee and justifying why the public should continue to pay it."

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Half of UK want licence fee scrapped, but BBC insist its the most popular way

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Half (51 per cent) of the UK want the BBC licence fee scrapped and the corporation to fund itself, a study of 2,049 Brits by ComRes has found.

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Newly released data from Kantar Media's syndicated study, futurePROOF, shows that tablets have become mainstream consumer devices with more than half of 16-44s now having access to them.

45% of all GB adults now have a tablet compared to 32% a year ago, and 36% at the end of 2013. The highest penetration is among 35-44s where 58% of adults now have at least one tablet in their home. Presence of children is the strongest driver of this, with 69% of parents of school age children having a tablet at home.

In terms of device operating systems within the home, 37% of users now have an Android based tablet, up 10 percentage points in six months, and 15% own Kindle Fire or Fire HD tablets. Apple remains the market leader with 56% of tablet users having an iPad, although this is down from 63% in the last six months. The shift towards Android devices is linked with their relative affordability compared with Apple's iPad.

The increasing ubiquity of tablets is also changing their role. More than four out of ten users now live in a home with more than one tablet (up six percentage points in the last six months). Consequently, tablets are moving from being a shared device to an increasingly personal one, opening up new content and advertising opportunities for targeting and engaging specific users much more effectively.

As consumers become more comfortable with tablets, they are gaining a clearly defined role in households with multiple devices. Tablets are more likely than smartphones to be used for watching or catching up on TV programmes or film, YouTube, or gaming; anything where a larger, better screen will enhance the experience.

Tablets are also playing a growing role in the purchase process with 53% of tablet users researching information on a product or service using their device, up from 44% six months ago.

Fewer users are taking their tablets out of their homes with just 8% using their tablet out-of-home every day, and 44% never taking their tablet out the front door, up from 36% six months ago. Rather than indicating that people have stopped taking tablets out with them, this reflects the different usage patterns of new tablet owners, who are driving the rapid growth.

Trevor Vagg, Director, Kantar Media Custom, comments: "Tablets have rapidly become part of our digital lives, with Christmas sales and cheaper, Android powered devices all contributing to make tablets a 'need to have' rather than just a 'nice to have'. The arrival of cheaper Android based tablets such as Tesco's Hudl and the Kindle Fire has turned what was a premium device into something that's much more ubiquitous but also increasingly as personal as the smartphone we use when we are on the go. These shifts open new doors for advertisers in terms of targeted messaging opportunities."

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Majority of under 45s now own a tablet as it becomes the go-to portable device

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Newly released data from Kantar Media's syndicated study, futurePROOF, shows that tablets have become mainstream consumer devices with more than half of 16-44s now having access to them. 45% of all GB adults now have a tablet compared to 32% a year ago, and 36% at the end of 2013.

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Research by IPC reveals that 'narrow' sharing is much more prolific that social sharing

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Research by IPC reveals that 'narrow' sharing is much more prolific that social sharing

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McKinsey - digitising the customer journey

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McKinsey - digitising the customer journey

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In a world where physical and virtual environments are rapidly converging, companies need to meet customer needs anytime, anywhere. Here's how.

Many of the executives we speak with in banking, retail, and other sectors are still struggling to devise the perfect cross-channel experiences for their customers-experiences that take advantage of digitization to provide customers with targeted, just-in-time product or service information in an effective and seamless way.

This quest for marketing perfection is not in vain-during the next five years or so, we're likely to see a radical integration of the consumer experience across physical and virtual environments. Already, the consumer decision journey has been altered by the ubiquity of big data, the Internet of Things, and advances in web coding and design. Customers now have endless online and off-line options for researching and buying new products and services, all at their fingertips 24/7. Under this scenario, digital channels no longer just represent "a cheaper way" to interact with customers; they are critical for executing promotions, stimulating sales, and increasing market share. By 2016, the web will influence more than half of all retail transactions, representing a potential sales opportunity of almost $2 trillion.

Companies can be lulled into thinking they're already doing everything right. Most know how to think through customer search needs or have ramped up their use of social media. Some are even "engineering" advocacy-creating easy, automatic ways for consumers to post reviews or otherwise characterize their engagement with a brand.

Yet tools and standards are changing faster than companies can react. Customers will soon be able to search for products by image, voice, and gesture; automatically participate in others' transactions; and find new opportunities via devices that augment their reality (think Google Glass). How companies engage customers in these digital channels matters profoundly-not just because of the immediate opportunities to convert interest to sales but because two-thirds of the decisions customers make are informed by the quality of their experiences all along their journey, according to research by our colleagues.

To keep up with rapid technology cycles and improve their multiplatform marketing efforts, companies need to take a different approach to managing the consumer decision journey-one that embraces the speed that digitization brings and focuses on capabilities in three areas:

Discover. Many of the executives we've spoken with admit they are still more facile with data capture than data crunching. Companies must apply advanced analytics to the large amount of structured and unstructured data at their disposal to gain a 360-degree view of their customers. Their engagement strategies should be based on an empirical analysis of customers' recent behaviors and past experiences with the company, as well as the signals embedded in customers' mobile or social-media data.

Design. Consumers now have much more control over where they will focus their attention, so companies need to craft a compelling customer experience in which all interactions are expressly tailored to a customer's stage in his or her decision journey.

Deliver. "Always on" marketing programs, in which companies engage with customers in exactly the right way at any contact point along the journey, require agile teams of experts in analytics and information technologies, marketing, and experience design. These cross-functional teams need strong collaborative and communication skills and a relentless commitment to iterative testing, learning, and scaling-at a pace that many companies may find challenging.

Let's consider what an optimized cross-channel experience could look like when companies target improved capabilities in these three areas.

A new normal ...

Imagine that a couple has just bought its first home and is now looking to purchase a washer and a dryer. Mike and Linda start their journey by visiting several big-box retailers' websites. At one store's site, they identify three models they are interested in and save them to a "wish list." Because space in their starter home is limited-and because it is a relatively big purchase in their eyes-they decide they need to see the items in person.

Under an optimized cross-channel experience, the couple could find the nearest physical outlet on the retailer's website, get directions using Google Maps, and drive over to view the desired products. Even before they walk through the doors, a transmitter mounted at the retailer's entrance identifies Mike and Linda and sends a push alert to their cell phones welcoming them and providing them with personalized offers and recommendations based on their history with the store. In this case, they receive quick links to the wish list they created, as well as updated specs and prices for the washers and dryers that they had shown interest in (captured in their click trails on the store's website). Additionally, they receive notification of a sale-"15 percent off selected brand appliances, today only"-that applies to two of the items they had added to their wish list.

When they tap on the wish list, the app provides a store map directing Mike and Linda to the appliances section and a "call button" to speak with an expert. They meet with the salesperson, ask some questions, take some measurements, and close in on a particular model and brand of washer and dryer. Because the store employs sophisticated tagging technologies, information about the washer and dryer has automatically been synced with other applications on the couple's mobile phones-they can scan reviews using their Consumer Reports app, text their parents for advice, ask Facebook friends to weigh in on the purchase, and compare the retailer's prices against others. Mike and Linda can also take advantage of a "virtual designer" function on the retailer's mobile app that, with the entry of just a few key pieces of information about room size and decor, allows them to preview how the washer and dryer might look in their home.

All the input is favorable, so the couple decides to take advantage of the 15 percent offer and buy the appliances. They use Mike's "smartwatch" to authenticate payment. They walk out of the store with a date and time for delivery; a week later, on the designated day, they receive confirmation that a truck is in their area and that they will be texted within a half hour of arrival time-no need to cancel other plans just to wait for the washer and dryer to arrive. Three weeks after that, the couple gets a message from the retailer with offers for other appliances and home-improvement services tailored toward first-year home owners. And the cycle begins again.

... requires new capabilities

As this example makes clear, the forces enabling consumers to expect real-time engagement are unstoppable. Across the entire customer journey, every touchpoint is a brand experience and an opportunity to engage the consumer-and digital touchpoints just keep multiplying. To maximize digital channels, companies need to focus on improving their "3-D" capabilities.

Discover: Build an analytic engine

Even in this era of big data and widespread digitization of customer information, some companies still lack a 360-degree view of the people who buy their products and services. They typically measure the performance of direct sales activities such as product pitches and encourage downloads using "last-action attribution" analyses, which assess campaigns in isolation rather than in the context of the entire cross-channel consumer decision journey. Usually these data will have been stored in disparate locations and legacy systems rather than in a central server. Complicating matters further is the range and quantity of unstructured data out there-information about consumers' behaviors and preferences that is, for instance, captured in online reviews and social-media posts. In our experience, this type of data is usually the least understood and therefore the least utilized by companies.

To get the full customer portrait rather than just a series of snapshots, companies need a central data mart that combines all the contacts a customer has with a brand: basic consumer data plus information about transactions, browsing history, and customer-service interactions (for an illustrative example of how companies can lose potential customers by failing to optimize digital channels, see exhibit). Tools like Clickfox and Teradata can help marketers gather these data and begin to pinpoint opportunities to engage more effectively with consumers across the decision journey. This collection effort requires input from people across multiple functions-a complex undertaking, to be sure, but the payoff can be big. Our work in this area suggests that the growth rate of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization of grocers that focus on customer analytics is 11 percent, compared with just 3 percent on average for their main competitors. For big-box retailers, the difference is 10 percent compared with 2 percent.

With a comprehensive data set in hand, companies can undertake the sort of quick-hit "shop diagnostics" that many tell us is lacking in their marketing and e-commerce programs. Using analytic applications such as SAS and R, and by applying various algorithms and models to longitudinal data, companies can better model the cost of their marketing efforts, find the most effective journey patterns, spot potential dropout points, and identify new customer segments. Based on its analysis of click-through behaviors, for instance, one regional retailer saw that a particular set of customers preferred digital shopping over physical and always read e-mail on Saturdays, and so the retailer altered its e-mail campaign to send this cohort online offers only on Saturdays.

Additionally, by using business-process software and services from vendors such as Adobe Systems, ExactTarget, Pegasystems, and Responsys, companies can identify in real time the basic "triggers" for what individual customers need and value-regardless of the product or service-and personalize their approach when making cross- or up-sell offers. They can also use these tools to generate automated reports that track customer trends and key performance indicators. For instance, the regional retailer's analytics suggested that two of the customers who read their e-mail only on Saturdays were in the midst of a career change; both had revised their profiles on LinkedIn within the past three days. Based on its analytics efforts, the company was able to create targeted offers for each-one received information about laptop bags (based on her previous purchases) while the other received information about suits (based on his previous purchases).

Already, the companies employing these types of advanced analytics have seen significantly improved click-through rates and higher conversion rates (between three and ten times the average). Additionally, McKinsey analysis shows that using data to make better marketing decisions can increase marketing productivity by between 15 and 20 percent-that's as much as $200 billion given the average annual global marketing spend of $1 trillion.

Design: Create frictionless experiences

Careful orchestration of the consumer decision journey is incredibly complex given the varying expectations, messages, and capabilities associated with each channel. According to published reports, 48 percent of US consumers believe companies need to do a better job of integrating their online and off-line experiences. There is a premium for getting this right. One major bank unlocked more than $300 million in additional margins by making better use of digital channels. It tapped into underutilized customer data and delivered targeted marketing messages at various points in the purchase-decision process. The bank used the data, plus various personalization and testing tools, to inform changes in marketing campaigns for certain product lines; every next step for every customer was progressively tailored to help the customer take the best action.

Digital natives such as Amazon, eBay, and Google have been leading the pack in resetting consumers' expectations for cross-channel convenience. (Think of eBay's Now mobile app, which provides one-touch ordering from any of eBay's retail partners and same-day delivery in some US cities, or Amazon's recent incorporation of a help button in the company's latest-generation Kindle Fire tablet, linking users to a live help-desk representative.) These players have perfected the ability to test new user experiences and constantly evolve their offers-often for segments of one.

This lean, start-up approach might sound counterintuitive to large, entrenched marketing organizations in which decisions are made at a snail's pace, but test-and-learn methods can help companies decide how best to optimize (and customize) critical design attributes of the consumer decision journey at various points along the way. In the appliances example discussed earlier, the retailer's customer analytics allowed it to design an experience for the couple that was completely customized to their context-from their initial online searches to their physical and virtual interactions at the store and to their follow-up with the company postpurchase. Rather than push what could be construed as intrusive (even creepy) messaging, the retailer provided Mike and Linda with the most useful information at every point in their decision journey and offered the easiest possible path to purchase and delivery.

To create similarly frictionless experiences, some companies have created 24/7 digital "window shops" to test product ideas and customer interactions and collect rapid feedback without the need for additional labor or inventory. Several companies that offer inherently complex products or services have incorporated "gaming" elements into their experiences-tweaking the navigation, content architecture, and visual presentation to allow consumers to trade off and test various options and prices associated with a product before making a decision. One financial-services firm redesigned its mobile app for collecting credit-card applications to incorporate the customer context. Previously it had a one-size-fits-all interface; in the redesigned version, various elements of the mobile app's interface-such as pricing, stage of process, and designated credit limits-are dynamically generated based on existing customer information. And the app's page layout and navigation are rendered simply, allowing for easy completion within just a few clicks. The result has been a significant uptick in online applications.

Deliver: Build a more agile organization

In our experience, too many companies are afraid to launch "good enough" campaigns-ones that are continually refined as customers' purchase behaviors and stated preferences change. Under the direction of conservative senior leaders, teams tend to launch campaigns that take too long to get off the ground and end up revealing few new insights. Instead, they must be willing to conduct lots of small-scale experiments with cloud or proxy website services to pilot new designs and prove their value for investment.

These types of agile, data-driven activities must be supported by an organization that has the right people, tools, and processes. Many companies will have some of the talent required, but not all, and executives will inevitably face resistance when it comes to introducing lean tools and techniques into their sales, marketing, and IT processes. The most successful omnichannel marketers we've seen have established centers of excellence in both analytics and digital marketing, and they practice end-to-end management of microcampaigns. Their campaign-building processes typically include systematic calendaring, brainstorming, and evaluation sessions to allow for one-week and two-week turnaround times. And roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. Far from creating a rigid, hierarchical process, this model frees up individuals to iterate quickly-what is sometimes called "failing fast forward" in the world of high tech.

At one bank, for instance, business-unit leaders gather each month to talk about their progress in improving different consumer journeys. As new products and campaigns are launched, the team places a laminated card illustrating the journey at the center of the conference-room table and discusses its assumptions about the flow of the experience for different segments and about how the various functional groups need to contribute: Where does customer data need to be captured and reused later? How will the design of the campaign flow from mass media to social media and then on to the website? What is the follow-up experience once a customer sets up an account? The team has also appointed dedicated mobile and social-media executives to become evangelists for strengthening the omnichannel experience, helping business units raise their game along a range of consumer interactions. The company's first wave of fixes and new programs generated tens of millions of dollars in the first six months, and the team expects it to continue scaling beyond $100 million in added annual margins.

Building an agile marketing organization will take time, of course. Companies should start by assembling a "scrum team" that will bring the right people together to test, learn, and scale. The team should incorporate cross-functional perspectives (marketing, e-commerce, IT, channel management, finance, and legal), and its members must adopt a war-room mentality-for instance, making tough calls about which campaigns are working and which aren't, and which messages should take priority for which segments; launching new tests every week rather than every six months; and mustering the IT and design resources to create content for every possible type of interaction.

Companies likely will need to hire people with skills that differ from the ones they rely on now. Some organizations have developed innovative, venture capital-like strategies for finding and recruiting the people they need. Staples, for instance, has built an e-commerce innovation center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to better recruit technology talent from nearby Harvard University and MIT, and it recently bought conversion-marketing start-up Runa to act as a talent hub on the West Coast.

New types of information systems may also be required. The best technology solutions will vary according to a company's starting point and objectives. Generally, though, companies will get the best results from tools that enable large-scale data management and the integration of databases; the generation of next-best-action and other types of advanced analyses; and simpler campaign testing, execution, and metrics.

Companies need to make strategic decisions about the best pathways to build customer value. Many cite digital as one of their top three priorities in this regard, but few have taken the time to measure the level of digital maturity their organization has achieved. A company's digital quotient (DQ) is a function of how well defined its long-term digital strategy is, its effectiveness in implementing that strategy, and the strength of its organizational infrastructure and information technologies. The companies that incorporate the notion of DQ into their short list of performance metrics can more effectively monitor their progress across the digital capabilities we've outlined here, enabling more targeted investments and accelerated rates of digital growth.

Indeed, the companies that ultimately succeed in omnichannel marketing and sales will likely resemble tech companies and, interestingly, publishers-effectively using big data and digital touchpoints to drive growth and reduce costs, while producing and managing a variety of content (catalogs, coupons, web pages, mobile apps, and user-generated content) in real time across multiple platforms to create breakthrough customer experiences. This means rethinking the analytics that inform their segmentation strategies, the flow of the experiences they design, and the way they set up their internal operations for faster iteration and delivery of service.

About the author(s)
Edwin van Bommel is a principal in McKinsey's Amsterdam office, David Edelman is a principal in the Boston office, and Kelly Ungerman is a principal in the Dallas office. They are leaders in McKinsey's revenue enhancement through digital (RED) initiative, which redesigns the consumer decision journey to encompass all commercial levers, across all channels and touchpoints, thereby creating growth in revenue and profits.

Article - McKinsey Quarterly

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Digitizing the consumer decision journey

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In a world where physical and virtual environments are rapidly converging, companies need to meet customer needs anytime, anywhere. Here's how. Many of the executives we speak with in banking, retail, and other sectors are still struggling to devise the perfect cross-channel experiences for their customers-experiences that take advantage of digitization to provide customers with targeted, just-in-time product or service information in an effective and seamless way.

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How combining Programmatic and Search data could be really powerful

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How combining Programmatic and Search data could be really powerful

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Over the past five years, the media buying world has changed dramatically.

The incredible advances in adTech (Advertising Technology) and consumer electronics have opened up the doors for never-before-seen targeting and measurement capabilities. Especially in the field of programmatic and audience-based buying, we have made progress at a rate that has even outpaced consumer behavior.

As I've mentioned previously, we know more about our consumers today than we can leverage without creeping them out. So how has this inside knowledge changed marketers' online ad-buying behavior?

Historically, we would buy ads based on a context-centric model, very similar to the way we would buy ad space in a magazine. If we were a manufacturer of luxury cars, we would buy ads in car enthusiast magazines. The same holds true for the way we've been buying space online; we would buy ad inventory on sites that focus on luxury automobiles.

However, today's technological innovations and the rise of real-time platforms have led to audience-based, programmatic buying. We know, understand and evaluate each visitor on an individual basis and can serve those visitors hyper-targeted ads based on their specific profiles.

If you are unfamiliar with the way programmatic audience-buying works, please feel free to have a quick look at my recent post, Why Every Marketer Needs to Understand Programmatic. To summarize it, this audience-based buying is one-on-one marketing based on single impressions earned through virtual auctions/real-time bidding (RTB).

1. As a prerequisite, a publisher/website is integrated with a SSP (supply side platform) and the advertiser/buyer will leverage a DSP (demand side platform).

2. When a user (let's call her Melissa) is loading a page on publisher.com the SSP will attempt to fill the ad request created by the user.

3. The SSP then sends the request to the RTB exchange with the pertinent information about Melissa (browser, cookie data, device, URL, content type, etc.)

4. The RTB exchange distributes the request to multiple DSPs of which most will have a cookie on the user's browser.

5. The DSP will often leverage a data management platform to obtain knowledge about this user (browsing history, activity on other sites, purchase history) as well as obtain third-party data (such as credit card data, household income, and purchase patterns). All this user data triggers the ad request.

6. Based on the DSP algorithms, a maximum bid is being calculated and matching creative will be sent to the exchange.

7. Upon completion of the auction, the winning creative will be shown. If there was sufficient user history, a dynamic ad based on previous user behavior might be shown. This could have pre-populated fields or show a product the user previously looked at.

8. The page is served to the user and any engagement and behavior will be recorded.

9. By the way, all of this takes less than a second.

This simplified view shows us how amazingly powerful audience-based buying is. PPC platforms like Google AdWords have always provided some basic segmenting parameters, which allow you to target ads based on some audience metrics (and as recently as last week, added parental status to its segmenting).

However, I believe that in order for search to remain competitive with other forms of digital marketing, Google and Bing will have to allow advertisers to connect their audience data to the individual searcher.

Once we have the ability to make bid and ad decisions based on both the query and on the data we have about the individual, we will be able to execute more precise and effective search campaigns than ever before.

Take The Following Example...

We are a luxury automotive brand, and recently launched our new $120k SUV. Now historically in search, we assume that anybody searching for that SUV is a potential consumer.

However, we all know that not every consumer looking at this SUV is really in the market for this type of vehicle. There are many automotive fans who are just curious: people looking for images, kids ogling their fantasy cars, or people just doing general research.

This is where valuable third-party cookie and profile data come in. Companies like Nielsen provide detailed audience segments around age, credit, income, auto ownership and other criteria. For automotive intelligence, companies like Polk provide detailed audience segments on current car ownership, in-market data, attitudes and other hyper-relevant data that guides programmatic ad buying ( sample of Polk segmentation).

If we were able to combine this kind of data with our search campaigns, the possibilities really open up.

For example, we would be able to bid low or not show our ad to viewers that are below our target age group or have a household income too low to afford this type of car. We would be able to increase our bid for high-potential consumers that match all our requirements (income, age, neighborhood, current car, etc.) and increase our chances of showing our ad to that audience.

I am sure you can see the potential for higher conversions from combining this valuable audience data with searchers and with advertisers' bids. As I mentioned, Google offers some audience guidance via AdWords, but it's not even close to what's possible through programmatic ad buying.

To further highlight my point here, data from companies like Kantar Shopcom let you target users by the type of products they buy; if you are a manufacturer for a soda company, you could bid high on consumers that buy a lot of units of your competitor's brand.

Another great ability this type of integration would allow for, is the use of sequencing.

We could display specific ad copy based on previous user actions. If we identified you as someone in the market for an SUV and you already engaged with ads regarding a specific model in other channels, we could serve you ad copy based on that behavior. Or if we know you also researched a competitive brand, we'd serve ad copy highlighting our competitive benefits.

The potential of audience-based ad buying is huge, and the future of paid search is getting more exciting for those of us who love data. We have not even scratched the surface yet regarding how laser-focused we can get when it comes to reaching the digital consumer.

Building more and more profile data in AdWords will blow the roof off of what we can do with programmatic ads. Google, the ball is in your court.

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author

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The Future of Paid Search (From a Data Perspective)

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Over the past five years, the media buying world has changed dramatically. The incredible advances in adTech (Advertising Technology) and consumer electronics have opened up the doors for never-before-seen targeting and measurement capabilities. Especially in the field of programmatic and audience-based buying, we have made progress at a rate that has even outpaced consumer behavior.

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Osper receives £6m funding to expand it's bank-for-kids to the UK

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Osper receives £6m funding to expand it's bank-for-kids to the UK

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Osper is more than just a payment tool. The subscription service features a financial app. The app is downloaded by both parent and child, and can be used to transfer money from the parent's account instantly.

While debit cards can be issued to children as young as 11 in the UK, Osper has struck a new deal with Mastercard that allows kids as young as eight to open an Osper account.

According to Mr Varma, his bright orange cards are fast becoming a status symbol in UK playgrounds. "Young people love having the card. It's a responsibility but it's exciting too."

Index Ventures' Robin Klein joined Osper's board following the funding round and the start-up boasts an enviable roster of additional investors.

Financial nous will be provided by Peter Jackson, ex-CEO of Travelex, who sold Travelex's prepaid cash card business to Mastercard for £290m, as well as Funding Circle co-founder Samir Desai, and ex-chairman of Sainbury's Bank Darren Chaplin.

Proven entrepreneurs Brett Akker, co-founder of Streetcar and boss of LoveSPACE, Jawbone's Alexander Asseily, and co-founder of Skyscanner Barry Walker have also invested in the start-up.

Further investors include California-based Horizon Ventures, which holds an equity stake in Hutchison Whampoa, owner of the Three mobile network. TV presenter Davina McCall also invested in the series A round.

However, Mr Varma retains the majority shareholding.

The company is currently in the middle of its beta testing phase. In the last six months, more than £10,000 has been given to young people through Osper cards.

Osper's revenue model is subscription-based. The app and card are free for the first year and £10 per annum thereafter. The subscription also features a financial app. The app is downloaded by both parent and child, and can be used to transfer money from the parent's account instantly.

For the child, the debit card is an independent means to pay for goods and services, rather than using parents' bank cards or cash. But, crucially, the app gives both parent and child a detailed breakdown of all transactions made through the card.

"For the first time as a parent, rather than giving the child cash and knowing nothing about what it's spent on, you can put it on the card and see the transactions, prompting a conversation about where they are spending their money," says Varma.

While the idea behind the business is to pass financial responsibility onto the child, Varma has opted to block certain categories on the card. Osper cannot be used in pubs or for online gambling, for example.

To launch the company, Varma has to strike deals with seven partners. These include Mastercard, issuing bank IDT, and acquirer Worldpay.

There are currently 7m young people aged 8-18 in the UK, which represents a significant opportunity, he claims. "There are lots of exciting fintech start-ups out there at the moment but none have gone head on with core banking like we have," he says. "We're going after the heartland of banking."

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Osper is more than just a payment tool. The subscription service features a financial app. The app is downloaded by both parent and child, and can be used to transfer money from the parent's account instantly.

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UKOM have analysed Comscore data & the most popular content areas online are dominated by only a few big brands

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UKOM have analysed Comscore data & the most popular content areas online are dominated by only a few big brands

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'Buy now' buttons appear in Tweets - has Twitter shopping arrived?

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'Buy now' buttons appear in Tweets - has Twitter shopping arrived?

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Two things stand out about the sneakers pictured above in a screenshot from Twitter. First, their list price is a cool $170 million (though we imagine that's a glitch).

Second, there's a "Buy now" button included in the tweet.

What's that you say? You didn't know you could buy stuff directly from a tweet? Neither did we. So what do we have here?

The products being shared in these tweets come from a shopping app called Fancy. Back in January, Re/code uncovered a mock-up online that was created by Fancy and that a source said was used to pitch Twitter on what a Twitter e-commerce integration could look like. But Twitter didn't launch any buying capability within tweets, until maybe now.

When Re/code uncovered these "Buy now" buttons today, they only surfaced in Twitter's mobile app and tapping on them didn't do anything. But Re/code did speak to someone who said that tapping on the button earlier on Monday did lead to a checkout page opening up within the Twitter app. Re/code could not replicate that experience.

So did Fancy accidentally make public another Twitter Commerce experiment? Is Twitter starting to facilitate in-tweet purchases?

The companies aren't saying. Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser declined to comment, and Fancy execs didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

That said, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for Fancy to include "Buy now" buttons in a tweet without Twitter's approval. So it's likely that in-tweet shopping is here, or coming soon.

As former Re/code reporter (and now sworn enemy) Mike Isaac and I reported at the time of the first Twitter Commerce mock-up discovery, the launch would be a long time coming:

The new product comes after a long history of Twitter virtually neglecting commerce options on its service (aside from a few exceptions which weren't widely adopted by the public). Twitter has also built and shelved multiple commerce-related products in the past, according to two people familiar with the matter.

But the renewed interest in Commerce comes on the heels of a closely watched initial public offering, where questions were raised about Twitter's ability to add revenue streams in the future. Shortly before the company went public, Twitter hired ex-Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard to run the company's commerce efforts.

In May, Twitter announced a deal with Amazon that lets Amazon shoppers add a product to their online shopping cart via a tweet. But again, the integration did not allow a Twitter user to pay for a product directly from the tweet.

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"Buy Now" Buttons Start Appearing in Tweets. Is Twitter Shopping Finally Here?

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Two things stand out about the sneakers pictured above in a screenshot from Twitter. First, their list price is a cool $170 million (though we imagine that's a glitch). Second, there's a "Buy now" button included in the tweet. What's that you say? You didn't know you could buy stuff directly from a tweet?

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Ikea has created an entire product catalogue on Instagram

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Ikea has created an entire product catalogue on Instagram

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The Instagram app doesn't include a web browser, but that didn't stop Ikea from using the service to build its latest web catalog anyway. For its PS 2014 Collection-an assortment of unconventional accessory pieces from the Swedish furniture giant-the company tapped Russian agency Instinct to create a catalog that's as unique as the, er, exploding pendant lamp the collection offers.

Using the Instagram tagging system, anyone who visits the ikea_ps_2014 account on their phone from within the Instagram app will see the familiar Instagram grid of images set up like an Ikea catalog (see a video demonstration above). Clicking on the desired section-benches, tables, storage, light, textiles, and "ideas"-opens an Instagram photo of the items in that part of the collection. Using Instagram's tagging system, tapping the photo allows users to navigate to the desired item, where they can see more photos, a video demonstration, and the price (in rubles, naturally). It's a clever, nice-looking, and novel little catalog that makes clear that apps like Instagram have helped us develop intuitive new forms of interactive content. Instagram may have made its name on filters, but campaigns like this prove that we've only scratched the surface of what some apps can do.

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Ikea's Newest Catalog Is A "Website" On Instagram

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The Instagram app doesn't include a web browser, but that didn't stop Ikea from using the service to build its latest web catalog anyway. For its PS 2014 Collection-an assortment of unconventional accessory pieces from the Swedish furniture giant-the company tapped Russian agency Instinct to create a catalog that's as unique as the, er, exploding pendant lamp the collection offers.