MediaMath Blog - Social Media

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Make the Most Out of the Biggest Day in Sports with Twitter Advertising

April 20, 2015 — by MediaMath

What turns just another Saturday into the greatest day in sports of the year? How about the convergence of game-day calendars from every large sports franchise out there, from boxing to baseball, and beyond. That’s exactly what will happen Saturday May 2nd, 2015.

Seven large sporting events from these sporting organizations will be broadcast throughout the day:

● The English Premier League with Manchester City vs. Tottenham

● The NFL with the NFL Draft

● The MLB with Yankees vs. Red Sox

● The NBA with the NBA playoffs

● The Kentucky Derby

● The NHL with the Stanley Cup

● Pay Per View boxing with Mayweather VS Pacquiao

Since there will be plenty of social media chatter about these sporting events, now is the perfect time to plan a social advertising strategy to join in on the conversation. Utilizing a social platform like Twitter for your social advertising strategy is an easy way to connect with consumers who follow and talk about these sporting events in real-time.

TV and Twitter work especially well together, with many using Twitter on their second screen during live, televised events. In fact, 87% of consumers now use a second screen while watching TV, according to a recent report. Marrying Twitter advertising to televised sporting events opens up a huge opportunity for advertisers to reach audiences across devices and screens in order to drive brand engagement on digital channels. Using paid Tweets, or Twitter Cards, can increase brand impact versus TV advertising alone. For instance, brands who engage with their audience during a popular TV event or show have seen 11% greater lift in brand favorability and 14% greater lift in purchase intent over TV advertising alone, according to Millward Brown Digital.

Reaching your consumers on May 2nd, during the biggest day in sports TV, is quite simple if you plan for these live TV moments ahead of time. Advertisers looking to improve their cost per engagement (CPE) across social can leverage Twitter paid advertising to scale their social media efforts for these popular sporting events. To reach Twitter users, advertisers can take advantage of MediaMath’s Upcast Social to create, manage, and optimize their Twitter campaigns. Consider these two tactics to reach the audiences with the highest ROI:

• Make the most of the official hashtags for each event in your promoted Tweets or Twitter Cards to inject your brand into the conversation happening on Twitter.

• Use Upcast Social to tap into Twitter’s TV Conversation targeting to engage fans Tweeting about a TV show in real-time, as the show airs.

With a little advanced planning, brands can maximize the power of Twitter to engage in the live conversations happening on Twitter on May 2nd, the biggest day in sports TV.

Data Media Social Media Technology Uncategorized

MediaMath’s 7 EMEA Trends for Programmatic Players in 2015

January 16, 2015 — by MediaMath

“We want to get 80%-85% of predictions right, not 100%. Or else we calibrated our estimates in the wrong way,” said Nate Silver, the American statistician famous for calling the 2008 US election win correctly (and overseer of the superb data story and visualisation site www.fivethirtyeight.com).

Making forecasts at this time of the year is both expected and makes the future-gazer a hostage to fortune. But, it only seems appropriate that we cast an eye over what 2015 is likely to hold for the programmatic landscape. If we hit 85% accuracy then we know we’ll at least meet with Nate’s approval.

With the combined help and insight of MediaMath Managing Director, EMEA, Dave Reed and Commercial Director Romain Gauthier, we have identified seven key trends that clients and agencies should have on their radar.

Here we go:

1.Cooperation and consolidation are on the cards in 2015 as the ‘ad tech’ universe matures. Expect acquisitions and mergers to accelerate and specific solution providers to be bought by larger marketing operating systems. MediaMath made acquisitions in 2014 including that of Upcast Social and will be looking at other strategic investments.

2.Data is the key to unlocking the benefits of programmatic trading and 2015 will see far better use of first and second party data. Companies will realise just how much high quality data they are sitting on and find better ways of integrating it into their strategy. Part of the trend will be an increase in the selling of first party data between brands. As brands reach a saturation point in marketing to their core consumer “they will need to find other audiences already engaging with, or expressing an interest in similar products,” says Dave Reed.

3.Retail will lead the pack as the vertical dedicated to accelerating testing and adoption of programmatic. Tesco has already bought a display advertising company with programmatic expertise while France’s largest retailer, Carrefour, is building a technology stack to improve data integration and activation. The travel industry won’t be far behind in pursuit of better segmentation and targeting via automated trading.

4.It will be vital to keep one step ahead of the consumer path to purchase and the crumbling cookie trail. With consumers moving seamlessly across devices and between offline and online, engaging the customer down the path to purchase will be paramount. Brands will need to develop a credible tracking solution. Allied to the cross-device journey is the challenge of attribution. Expect more sophisticated attribution models to emerge as forward-thinking companies move beyond last-click.

5.Social media networks, including Facebook and Twitter, will continue to expand their advertising capabilities and this trend will further blur the lines between earned and paid media. Driving social recommendation will be become a high priority for brands but they will demand greater agility in responsive strategies and ask for more robust metrics for campaign tracking from their technology partners.

6.There will be an increasing movement of ad spend budget from television to online video, and an accompanying increase in experimentation of programmatic trading in this arena. Romain Gauthier points out that connected TV ownership is widespread in France and 6.95m households are expected to switch over from pay-TV by 2016.

7.The debate over the definition of ad visibility should reach a conclusion. The IABs of 26 European territories are trying to reach agreement and a major prompt to action should be the fact Conde Nast and Group M have already devised a stricter visibility measurement model.

Data Media Social Media Technology Uncategorized

Hot Topics for 2015: From Outside the Walls of MediaMath

January 13, 2015 — by MediaMath

A new year awards us a fresh start and an opportunity to make some predictions for what we think will influence decisions in the year to come. In the digital space, which moves at breakneck speed, discussion around what trends we think will dominate the coming months not only sheds light on what is driving marketer demand, but what we actually want to happen, sooner rather than later. As such, we connected with best of breed email, attribution, and native partners that are a part of MediaMath’s OPEN Partner Marketplace, which enables marketers to access relevant information about the companies integrated with MediaMath. We also heard from Upcast Social, a MediaMath company. Here is what they had to say:

Dave Hendricks, President, LiveIntent

“The biggest shift will be more widespread use of first-party data for increased customer reach and frequency. Smart use of ‘people-based’ marketing technology will go a long way towards alleviating concerns about viewability and quality. Snapchat will successfully monetize. Mobile ad spend will quadruple as marketers with first-party data find ways to connect on the go. Programmatic Direct will become big business as brands bring the power of their data and combine it with SSP technology to increase page yields while still maintaining human relationships between publishers and the brands who want to reach their audiences.”

Nicole Loiacono, Marketing Events Manager, Visual IQ

“To truly engage with consumers, brands need to deliver highly relevant, personalized messages to each potential customer. In 2015, the ability to leverage first-party data stored in a brand’s customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise data warehouse (EDW) systems will become essential for building customized audience targeting strategies. By using this data in combination with advanced attribution, marketers can gain a much richer understanding of the “right” audiences to target, what products or services are most relevant to them, when they are most likely to buy, and the optimal combination of marketing tactics needed to convert them.”

Mike Goldberg, Senior Director of Marketing, TripleLift

“2015 will finally be the year of mobile, thanks to native advertising and programmatic media buying. Despite the explosive growth of consumers using mobile devices over the past few years, mobile advertising never really found its stride. Banner ads intended for desktops weren’t always suitable on screens almost 1/8 the size. Sure, we had higher CTRs, but this was mostly due to accidental clicks in attempts to close out of them. Enter native advertising. Delivered in-feed and integrated with content, these ads will be adopted by mobile marketers as a way to reach consumers without disrupting the user experience. And with more of this inventory being available programmatically, it will be easier to execute.”

Colin Kim, Product Marketing Manager, Upcast Social

“With MediaMath’s offering for native Facebook advertising via Upcast and FBX via T1, marketers are already set to take full advantage of paid social’s continuing growth this year. In 2015, we expect that the boundary between the two will become blurred, with native social inventory becoming more programmatic. Social advertising will be able to incorporate more consumer signals, purchase intention and behaviour, to generate real-time, efficient exposure of brand messages. Additionally, 2015 will determine if Facebook can successfully overcome YouTube’s dominance in online video. As Facebook continues to push beyond the ‘social’ label and extend its reach across the web, marketers will have even greater capability to target real people across the web and multiple devices.”

Learn more about MediaMath Retail here.

Media Social Media Technology Uncategorized

What Do You Know About In-App?

December 24, 2014 — by MediaMath

As the holidays are coming to a close, thousands of people will undoubtedly be receiving shiny new devices from their loved ones this season. As these happy owners explore their newly unwrapped smartphone or tablet, have you considered that this may be the best time for them to discover your app?

Paid in-app ads are a great way to drive app installs, and can serve as an additional touchpoint with consumers to increase brand awareness and loyalty. Retailers are catching on to the effectiveness of apps for driving ecommerce sales, with Internet Retailer citing that apps drove 42% of m-commerce sales for brands like Neiman Marcus, Kohl’s, and H&M, in 2014. But, retail isn’t the only vertical tapping into the power of apps to drive sales. Videogame brands are especially keen on in-app advertising, and some advertisers are willing to pay as much as $20 per ad due to the likelihood of consumers making purchases within the game at a later time, according to the Wall Street Journal. In-app ads also perform better than “traditional” ad placements on the mobile web, too. A recent eMarketer article explains that in-app ads served in Q3 2014 saw a clickthrough rate 2.8 times higher than ads on the mobile web. Interested in learning more about in-app? MediaMath has several solutions that advertisers can leverage before the holiday season truly comes to a close, and in-app advertising is one of them.

As part of MediaMath’s holistic solution, advertisers can target app audiences, optimize to in-app behavior, and analyze their mobile performance. Advertisers can target by numerous parameters including geo, age, day part, creative type, device type, and more, across any of MediaMath’s billions of daily mobile impressions.

If an advertiser is particularly interested in Apple iOS conversions or installs, MediaMath has recently launched a managed service offering (self-service coming soon) that allows clients to target directly within the Apple iAd Workbench across iOS inventory exclusive to Apple.

With consumers spending more time using their apps, mobile advertising, specifically in-app, is a marketing channel that can’t be ignored.

Media Social Media Uncategorized

Webinar Recap: 5 Social Media Advertising Best Practices for the Holiday Season

November 18, 2014 — by MediaMath — 2

Last week MediaMath and Upcast Social, a MediaMath company, held the webinar “Tis the Season: Programmatic Practices for Your Social Media Ad Campaigns.”

With consumers turning to platforms like Facebook and Twitter earlier in the holiday season to research, buy, and talk about the brands they love, it was an opportune time to review how agency and brand marketers can fully leverage social channels to drive increased sales from their holiday campaigns.

Mike Neiss, Director of Programmatic Strategy and Optimization, along with Josh Wallin, Global Client and Sales Director, provided listeners with five best practices for advertisers looking to ramp-up their social media advertising.

The five social media advertising best practices are:

1. Launch campaigns early to own holiday share of voice, but make sure you sustain you messaging throughout the entire holiday shopping season.

2. Create social-specific offers; offers and rewards are cited as being most influential for making a purchase on a social networking site, so use promotional ad units like Facebook Offer ads and the Twitter Lead Gen card.

3. Utilize social as a direct response ecommerce channel; both Facebook and Twitter allow for advanced ecommerce conversion tracking and optimization.

4. Use video on social; complement TV reach and frequency with Facebook video ads, which are seeing an increased share of interactions compared to YouTube.

5. Retarget existing customers on Twitter, via Tailored Audiences.

To view the full webinar click here.

Media Social Media Uncategorized

3 Tips for Facebook Ad Creative To Drive Business Results

November 7, 2014 — by MediaMath — 2

Earlier this year, Facebook released a study that examined whether or not an ad creative was effective in its intended goal (like driving online conversions, for example) and how the elements of that ad that contributed to the ad’s effectiveness. The study outlines a few guidelines and develops a standard for ad creative, in order to arm advertisers with the best possible ad before pushing their content live to Facebook.

We’ve picked out the top 3 elements we think would be most useful to a brand advertiser trying to get started with Facebook creative.

1. Have a clear link to your brand. Can the user identify the brand solely based on the image of the creative? Develop a message that resonates with consumers. Don’t create an ad with visually appealing content if it doesn’t tie back to your brand. Instead try to focus on incorporating your brand logo into the creative itself. Facebook points to numerous Bud Light campaigns where the bottles themselves were the sole focal point of the ad.

2. Let your brand’s personality shine through. An ad can have a brand’s logo featured within the content of the ad but brand personality can still be lost. Make sure to choose images that provide a clear representation of what your brand is or the intention of the ad. Try focusing on a single product image to better communicate with and attract potential customers.

3. Reward the customer. Appeal to the customer’s emotional side. Does the ad stimulate the user emotionally? Does it bring back a feeling of nostalgia or perhaps appeal to their luxurious side? To drive conversions focus on an informational reward such as a call to action or tying back to your brand. Facebook found that a sense of reward, such as prompting a smile or providing valuable information, tied back to purchase consideration at the bottom of the purchase funnel.

Not yet advertising on Facebook? Apply these creative suggestions when you leverage MediaMath’s Dynamic Creative, like the MediaMath client featured in the case study below:

It’s not too late to learn how you can put your social media campaigns (and creative) to work for the holiday season. Join MediaMath and Upcast Social, a MediaMath company, in the upcoming webinar “‘Tis the Season: Leveraging Social Media Ad Campaigns for the Holidays.”

Media Social Media Uncategorized

‘Tis the Season – A Social Media Marketing Webinar with Upcast Social

November 4, 2014 — by MediaMath — 2

With the holidays quickly approaching, many consumers are turning to social networks like Twitter and Facebook to research holiday gift ideas and shop online. According to new research by Twitter, users of their platform are shopping early and heavily:

• More than a third (34%) have already begun thinking about holiday shopping. And they’re enjoying it: 81% say they love holiday shopping, compared to 56% of non-users.

• Most users (87%) also said that when holiday shopping, they end up getting a few extra things they didn’t intend to buy — significantly more than the 71% of non-users who said the same.

When it comes to the other social media behemoth, Facebook, 60% of people using the network during the 2013 holiday season found it extremely influential to their holiday shopping, and 89% of holiday shoppers who shared their experience on a social network did so on Facebook, according to the report “The Impact of Mobile and Facebook While Shopping,” by Millword Brown Digital.

Learn how to make the most of your social media marketing campaigns with Upcast Social, a MediaMath company, in an upcoming informational webinar. The webinar will address and reveal this season’s top social secrets for creating and managing complex social campaigns with ease, and address how marketers can speak to optimize their social strategies during the holiday season.

Sign up for the webinar by filling out the form below:

Media Social Media Technology Uncategorized

Post It, Tweet It, Like It – MediaMath’s Social Media Advertising Platform Acquisition

October 16, 2014 — by MediaMath

Social advertising isn’t #trending; it’s around to stay. In fact, the opportunity for social advertising through programmatic only continues to grow. According to eMarketer, 2014 has been the year that marketers focus on social to master the art of engaging with consumers. Social has not only become the channel where people interact with brands, but it’s increasingly become the channel where people actively share their brand sentiment with others. In response to this, marketers have increased their focus on social media, particularly in the area of social network advertising. MediaMath, realizing this increased opportunity for marketers, has announced its acquisition of Upcast Social, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) and Twitter Marketing Platform Partner headquartered in London, UK.

After reviewing dozens of companies, MediaMath chose Upcast due to its robust and flexible technology, best-in-class product, global presence, and its strong team with a proven track record. Coupled with TerminalOne’s existing social capabilities across the Facebook Exchange and Twitter Tailored Audiences, Upcast opens up even greater opportunities with access to Facebook and the Twitter social advertising environment. These include access to Facebook and Twitter native data for targeting and analytics, access to a wider variety of native ad formats, including mobile and video, the ability to leverage powerful features like Facebook Custom Audiences, and more.

Upcast brings a wide range of features for social advertisers to manage engagement, direct response, and mobile campaigns. Built for agencies and advertisers, Upcast offers both operational efficiency and increases in performance along with social advertising expertise. In addition, advertisers can gain further insights from social campaigns by streamlining testing and optimisation, in order to maximize ROI. The addition of this global best-in-class social media platform reinforces MediaMath’s mission to help clients seeking to engage their target audiences across all addressable media channels throughout a fragmented media landscape.

To learn more on what MediaMath’s acquisition of Upcast means marketers, please click here.

Media Social Media Technology Uncategorized

With API’s Wide Open

August 26, 2014 — by MediaMath

Not unlike Creed’s power ballad “With Arms Wide Open,” MediaMath is excited to announce that we’ve opened up the MediaMath – FBX integration at the API level on the TerminalOne™ platform.

Facebook’s ad exchange, FBX, provides advertisers the powerful opportunity to engage with consumers on the social media behemoth. As Business Insider notes, FBX plays an important role in the digital advertising ecosystem: “Facebook accounts for about half of the retargeted ad clicks on the Web.”

MediaMath, one of the earliest partners of FBX, is on a mission to provide a scalable and open technology platform to our clients. Extensibility is core to MediaMath’s platform offering, and we are working aggressively to expose more platform capabilities, empowering marketers to define their own advertising workflows.

Through the TerminalOne FBX API integration, MediaMath clients can gain access to FBX’s Right Hand Side and Page Post Ads inventory, and build custom tools to traffic creative and execute their media plans.

To learn more about MediaMath’s capabilities visit www.mediamath.com

Media Social Media Uncategorized

Get Personal with the Biggest Audience on the Planet with an FBX+DCO Strategy

August 8, 2013 — by MediaMath

FBX provides marketers with a seamless method to reconnect with site visitors on Facebook. Contextual relevance and timing make FBX one of the most powerful forms of targeting – especially when combined with realtime dynamic ads that are personalized to the viewer. Dynamic creative is taking off as marketers are placing a high priority on personalization in their advertising campaigns. This notion was underscored by a January poll by eMarketer that showed dynamic creative/messaging as the single most appealing element of IAB rising star display ads.

Dynamic ads give you the power to deliver customized, highly relevant messages and images to each user based on previous behaviors, context, demographics and more. Retailers can retarget with SKUs previously carted or accessories for products purchased. Travel marketers can promote hotels in cities browsed. CPG advertisers can present coupons based on affinity, site visits and more. The possibilities are endless – especially with tools that deliver automated, real-time versioning and optimization.

Our forthcoming FBX dynamic creative product brings many of these dynamic capabilities onto Facebook, with or without a data feed – your entire product catalog can be turned into Facebook ads on the fly. You’ll also be able to target based on a wide variety of behaviors – how long a user spent on your site, context and more.

Then, those intelligently personalized ads reach highly engaged Facebook consumers!

Merging the proven performance of real-time dynamic advertising and the unmatched audience of Facebook is the ultimate way to speak individually to consumers on a global scale. It’s a one-two punch any performance advertisers should explore.