Marketing

US consumers are spending more time with their digital devices than ever before, and that holds true while they’re already watching something else. eMarketer estimates 177.7 million adults will regularly use a second-screen device while watching TV this year, an increase of 5.1% vs. 2016.

To most industry experts, at forums like ANA and elsewhere, the only sure thing in advertising these days seems to be changed. Forecasters keep painting a future about the profitability of digital over analog and all things; Google competes successfully with the Global giants of Advertising; and Facebook reveals the powers of the 6-second spot. Where are we these days? Enter the growing content-creation activity by agencies.

Category winners in the 17th annual Association of National Advertisers’ Multicultural Excellence Awards competition were announced.

At the start of 2017, the new administration and Congress set tax reform as one of their highest priorities. As work on that began in earnest, it became clear that the reduction in the full deductibility of advertising was once again in play.

What customers want and what businesses think they want are often two different things. Here’s what customers are looking for.  Anyone who has gotten an unsolicited and irrelevant offer related to something they’ve done online knows that creepy feeling that “someone is watching me.” This kind of reaction is the third rail of today’s drive to personalize interactions with customers.  By Julien Boudet, Brian Gregg, Jane Wong, and Gustavo Schuler

A new fiscal year is in sight and you still have no measurable Hispanic or multicultural budget. You’ve shown the C-suite the purchasing power numbers, the demographic trends, and the generational trends to no avail. Well, you’re not alone; 49% of respondents in a recent CMO Council study admitted they do not have a multicultural marketing initiative in place.

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that I would come back to the idea that there is a right time to advertise to someone. Right now the marketing world seems to have decided that the right time to get a message to someone is as close to point of purchase as possible, but is that really true?  by Nigel Hollis

Marketing in Spanish in the U.S. may not seem like an innovation from our purview in 2017, but when the first recognized full service Hispanic advertising agency in the United States opened up in 1962 it was a paradigm-shifting marketing event. It was one of the first times national brands and companies marketed their goods and services in the U.S. using a language other than English. Again, upon retrospect this doesn’t seem like a significant innovation when we look at the immigration patterns and changing demographics at the time but for the courageous few that had the foresight and business savvy at the time to look at this shifting tide and create the business case, it was an innovation that birthed a multibillion dollar industry, Hispanic Advertising.  by Mario Carrasco

The future of agencies is less about actually preparing for the future, but making changes today in the way we work and how we deliver results for our clients. Most of the advertising industry is grappling with the idea of full-service shops versus unbundled, more focused agencies; when in reality it does not matter where we sit or what the agency focus is because this isn’t going to help us overcome the key issues we’re facing.  by Keith Mackay

Recent studies from key players in the world of ad tech tell quite different stories of how video ads seem to be performing, based on completion rates, viewability rates, clickthroughs and more.

I have already written about this before, and I think this is probably one of the biggest misconceived concepts marketers have in this country. One that keeps fueling the “one size fits all” Total Market approach.  By assessing their choice for headline, even the Pew Research team show a little bias towards the chart on your right side (Share of Latinos who Speak Spanish) instead of focusing on the chart on the left (Absolute number of Latinos who speak Spanish).  By Isaac Mizrahi – Co President, Chief Operating Officer at Alma

Covered California is sending videos like “Guadalupe’s Story” to potential customers, to encourage them to sign up for health insurance.  The way human brains are wired, it just doesn’t make sense to us to buy something now that we may not need for years in the future.

Pfizer, Eli Lilly and the other companies engaged in creating and selling pharmaceutical drugs or treatments are expected to spend $4.4 billion on television commercials this year.  That’s a seven percent increase from 2016, according to Kantar Media research.  With $5 billion a likely TV ad sales outcome next year, Univision Communications Vice President of Business Development, Dennis O’Leary, wants to see more of this spending directed at the nearly 60 million Latinos living across the United States.  By Simon Applebaum

Experiential plays a powerful role in driving the how, when, and where millennials spend their dollars and willundoubtedly become one of the most influential and relevant engagement channels for the generation to follow….Generation Z. For legacy brands, experiential marketing is incredibly important as it inspires people to action and force CPG marketers to rethink how they connect with people outside of the aisle and beyond the screen.

Who will succeed and who will fall short as the retail sector goes through a wave of creative destruction?  eMarketer’s latest report, “The Future of Retail: Nine Things to Watch for in the Coming Year,” digs into questions of pricing, technology and even politics as key factors over the next 12 months.

Some 32% of marketers plan to bring programmatic buying in-house, and more than 50% of marketers and agencies believe this complex job will ultimately become the responsibility of the brand.

Univision Communications Inc. (UCI) and The Harris Poll have released findings of a national study, “Banking on Hispanics for Growth,” to offer insights regarding Hispanic consumers’ attitudes and behaviors on the financial services sector. The findings were unveiled in a webinar presented by Roberto Ruiz, UCI’s executive vice president of Strategy & Insights, and Kathy Steinberg, The Harris Poll’s Senior Consultant PR Research.

The influencer marketing space shows no signs of slowing down. But to have a successful strategy, brands need more than just celebrity endorsements. Identifying the right influencers is a science that relies on complex data, not just the number of social media followers a user has—that’s why influencer platforms are becoming key components of companies’ marketing stacks. Rob Trauber, CEO of apparel brand Johnny Was, and Zackary Cantor, director of decision sciences at digital marketing company GlobalWide Media, spoke with eMarketer’s Maria Minsker about the value of influencer marketing technology.

Brands have been called on to make a stand and many have answered the call. So far this year we have seen a number of large, well-known brands lining up to save the world or make it a better place to live in. I applaud the fact that these brands are willing to take a stand, but I do wonder if it is yet another step on the road to brand fragmentation.  by Nigel Hollis

Marketers are becoming more and more interested in reaching out to and engaging Influencers – due to the factors like media fragmentation, quality and transparency issues of the media supply chain, and the rise of ad blockers. Thus, the idea of reaching a targeted group of people who are particularly powerful and influential is spreading. Which is why the identification of the Affluencers is so important – this target has the potential to not only represent a disproportionate amount of purchases, they also represent a group that is sought for their advice and purchasing input across all categories. In addition, Affluencers on average consume more media than general Affluents, with both print and digital publications up +9%.