Digital Ad Spend Jumped in 2016, All Thanks To Mobile Advertising

, , ,

Paid search advertising continued to rise last year, accounting for almost $35 billion in ad spend, but the IAB’s latest revenue report shows big shake-ups in where that money is going.

During 2016, desktop paid search dropped by 10 points and was down by almost $3 billion. However, mobile paid search shot up, leading to an overall increase in paid search revenues by almost $6 billion.

As such, mobile ad spending also surpassed spending on desktop search advertising for the first time ever. Throughout the year, mobile accounted for 51 percent of digital ad spend in the US. Notably, it was even higher in Q4, where it represented 53 percent.

In total, digital ad spending accounted for $72.5 billion in 2016, rising 22 percent from 2015. Mobile is largely responsible for this increase, as it grew across every digital format, including search, display, and social. Most notably, mobile video ad revenue jumped 145 percent year over year. The cumulative mobile spending across formats nearly reached $37 billion in just the last year.

Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of IAB, best sums up the report by highlighting the versatility and ubiquity of mobile devices to reach customers no matter where they are:

“Mobile fueled the internet economy in 2016, with advertisers showing their confidence in digital to achieve their marketing goals. This increasing commitment is a reflection of brands’ ongoing marketing shift from ‘mobile-first’ to ‘mobile-only’ in order to keep pace with today’s on-the-go consumers.”

/0 Comments

YouTube Lowers Subscriber Requirement For Live Streaming

, , , ,

YouTube Live

YouTube is arguably the largest online video platform on the internet (though Facebook is providing some tough competition), so it is interesting that the platform has been one of the slowest to provide a widely available way to live stream.

That may be starting to change, however, as YouTube is significantly lowering the number of subscribers a user needs before being able to stream.

YouTube only introduced its public live streaming feature back in February, although it has partnered with large events to provide live streams for years. Even then, a user needed to have at least 10,000 subscribers before they were allowed to start streaming.

Over the past week, that threshold was quietly reduced to just 1,000 subscribers. Rather than announce the change, it was only discovered after a change to one of YouTube’s help pages.

The subscriber requirement is just one of a couple different stipulations required for streaming. Users must also have a verified channel and have not received any live stream restrictions in the past 90 days. Live stream restrictions are punishments placed against channels that have violated YouTube’s terms of services.

To start a live stream, follow these simple steps:

  • Tap the camera icon
  • Grant permissions allowing the YouTube app to access the Camera, Mic, and Storage.
  • Verify your account if you have not previously.
  • Tap GO LIVE.
  • Name your live video and set the privacy setting for your stream
  • Tap FINISH when you’re ready to end the stream
/0 Comments

Twitter Encourages Conversation With Big Changes To Replies

, , ,

Twitter has always been built on the idea that brevity is the soul of wit. But, it can still be hard to fit everything you need to say in just 140 characters, especially if you’re responding to someone with a long username.

Until now, user names were included in YouTube’s character limit. That is no longer the case as of this week. Twitter announced that usernames won’t subtract from your tweet’s 140 character count from now on.

Additionally, the company is changing up how replies appear to make conversations easier to follow with three new features:

  • Who you are replying to will appear above the Tweet text rather than within the Tweet text itself, so you have more characters to have conversations.
  • You can tap on “Replying to…” to easily see and control who’s part of your conversation.
  • When reading a conversation, you’ll actually see what people are saying, rather than seeing lots of @usernames at the start of a Tweet.

“It’s now easier to follow a conversation, so you can focus on what a discussion is about, and who is having it,” Twitter explained in a blog post. “Also, with all 140 characters for your replies, you have more room to participate in group conversations.

repliesupdate

The new changes should be available to all users across PC, iOS, and Android already. According to the company’s testing, Twitter says the new features lead to higher engagement for conversations.

/0 Comments

One Year Later, Accelerated Mobile Pages are Catching On

, , ,

Accelerated Mobile Pages

The celebrate the one year anniversary of the rollout of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs), Adobe Analytics released data showing just how much the stripped-down ultrafast mobile pages have grown in use.

Accelerated mobile pages are designed to deliver content to viewers as quickly as possible. Instead of loading within full versions of the website (with all their ads, navigation, and extra content), AMPs use a stripped-down version of HTML to make speed the top priority.

According to the data, AMPs account for 7% of traffic to all top US publishers as of December 2016. While this may not sound that great, the report shows this is an 896% traffic increase to AMPs from April to November of last year. It also indicates the number of AMPs on the internet has spiked by 405%.

The report from Adobe Analytics is based on an analysis of over 1.7 trillion visits to over 16,000 mobile web pages from January 2014 to January 2017. The data on AMPs specifically is based on traffic to top US publishers between April 2016 to December 2016.

The unsteady growth of accelerated mobile pages is likely due to a disorganized rollout. While the technology first became available in February of last year, the pages were not included in organic search results on Google until September. During this time period, AMP was slow to catch on. However, once Google started indexing organic AMPs, the pages quickly rocketed up in use and traffic.

As AMP continues to be further integrated into organic search results, the pages are likely to continue to rise in prominence. I predict we will be seeing a lot more of them as the year progresses.

/0 Comments

YouTube Opens Mobile Live Streaming To More Creators

, , , , ,

YouTube has been teasing its plans to expand its live streaming services for over eight months, and that plan is finally coming to fruition. The video platform says it is bringing mobile live streaming to its biggest content creators, with plans to share the feature with everyone soon.

YouTube is also releasing a new chat tool known as Super Chat to help creators monetize live streams.

Mobile Live Streaming

YouTube has built mobile live streaming directly into its mobile app, with a single catch. You must have at least 10,000 subscribers to use it. If you happen to already have a sizable following, launching a mobile live stream is as simple as opening the app and tapping the capture button.

The company plans to bring the tool to everyone in the coming months, but there is currently no firm estimate of when to expect it.

In the announcement, YouTube says streamed videos will have all the features you expect from normal YouTube videos. Streamed videos will be:

  • Searchable.
  • Discoverable via recommendations and playlists.
  • Protected from unauthorized use (using Content ID).

Super Chat

To accompany the release of mobile live streaming YouTube has also launched Super Chat, aimed at monetizing live content.

Super Chat essentially lets any viewer purchase a chat message that will be especially prominent in the chat feed and can be pinned to the top of the chat window for up to five hours. Super Chat messages will also be highlighted with a color and other viewers can see the amount paid.

CameoFlow

Super Chat is now live to creators with 10,000 subscribers across 20 countries and viewers in over 40 countries.

/0 Comments

Google Confirms It Has Launched Its Mobile Interstitial Penalty

, , , , ,

Google has officially begun rolling out the intrusive mobile interstitial penalty yesterday after months of warnings the penalty would be launched on January 10, 2017.

The roll-out was confirmed by both John Mueller and Gary Illyes yesterday.

The penalty is specifically designed to target intrusive interstitials that pop-up immediately after landing on a page from a Google mobile search result. However, it does not affect pages with delayed interstitials triggered by a click or action on the website.

Google specifies this means “pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”

Google also detailed three specific types of interstitials it deems as problematic:

google-mobile-interstitials-penalty-bad-798x600

  • showing a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results or while they are looking through the page.
  • displaying a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.
  • using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold.

The company also detailed three types of interstitials that would not be affected by the penalty, so long as they are “used responsibly”:

google-mobile-interstitials-penalty-good-798x600

  • Interstitials that appear to be in response to a legal obligation, such as for cookie usage or for age verification.
  • Login dialogs on sites where content is not publicly indexable. For example, this would include private content such as email or unindexable content that is behind a paywall.
  • Banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easily dismissible. The app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome are examples of banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space.
/0 Comments

Google’s Mobile-First Index Won’t Include AMP Pages

, , , ,

Google has already begun rolling out its mobile-first index to some users, but there are still a lot of questions about how exactly the search engine’s new separate index actually functions.

One such question got a surprising answer yesterday during the Google State of Search conference, as Maile Ohye told the audience that Google won’t index the AMP version of your page in the mobile search index – even when you don’t have a mobile-friendly alternative.

Google’s Gary Illyes also confirmed the news on Twitter after the conference:

That means if you’ve been using AMP pages as an alternative to making your website mobile-friendly, the search engine will skip over indexing your AMP pages in the mobile-friendly search index. Instead, it will by default choose to index the desktop version within its older index.

There is a way to force Google to index your AMP pages in this situation using a rel alternate attribute, but otherwise Google’s index will default to your desktop versions of pages.

This is particularly surprising because Google has pushed AMP as the ultimate way to deliver content to mobile users quickly and without losing ad revenue. But, in this case it seems the streamlined design of AMP pages leaves something to be desired. It may be the lack of site navigation options is what made Google decide to favor desktop over AMP in their index.

This change will most likely only affect a very small number of websites, but it is an odd choice for the search engine. The vast majority of websites who have adopted AMP also maintain a mobile version of their site.

/0 Comments

App Install Ads Come To Bing

, , ,

bingmobileads

Bing is officially expanding their ad format selection to include app install ads in a pilot program open to all US advertisers. These ads are designed specifically to drive users to install apps when searching from their mobile devices.

The new format isn’t exactly revolutionary. Google has offered similar adds which directed searchers to the iOS App Store or Google Play Store for a fairly long time. However, this is the first time these ads have been available for Bing advertisers.

Setting up App Install Ads is easily done when selecting your ad type in your campaign settings screen. Once your campaign is running, Bing will then detect what type of device a searcher is using and show ads with a direct link to installing an app through their device’s app store.

”Using App Install Ads gets app customers to your app store directly, eliminating the extra time, navigation, and clicks they would otherwise need to take from your website.”

App Install Ads do have a few quirks compared to older ad formats. For example, there is no display URL on the ad. Instead, any clicks will take users directly to an app store page. The new ad format is also limited to just iOS and Android apps. There is no indication whether they will eventually support Windows or Windows phone apps in the future.

/0 Comments

Brands Can Now Send Sponsored Messages On Facebook Messenger

, , , ,

messenger

Facebook has been expanding their advertising service across every aspect of their platform for years, but one area has remained completely ad-free for users despite this – until now.

Facebook has officially launched ads within its Messenger app with ad bots.

The company has been testing sponsored messages since April, and now it has announced it is opening the messaging app’s ad format to all brands using Messenger’s developer tools to manage their chats.

636141993368026582-ad

The ads are pretty much exactly like the format they have been testing, with straightforward ad messages. However, you can’t spam out ads to everybody. You can only show sponsored messages to those who “have an open, existing conversation with” a brand, according to Facebook.

To help with this limitation, the company says it is also allowing advertisers to create ads that link directly to their Messenger account to spark more conversations with brands.

The ads are also limited to just one link and photo. Unlike most Facebook ads, sponsored message campaigns also cannot be modified to automatically run on Facebook or Instagram.

In another departure from Facebook’s normal ad formats, the company says it will charge advertisers anytime the ad appears on a Messenger user’s screen in their Messenger Inbox – even if it is never opened.

/0 Comments

Google Officially Starts Experimenting With “Mobile-First” Index

, , ,

As announced last month, Google is officially making its first step towards the launch of mobile-first indexing with the test of its mobile-first search index.

The company confirmed the testing has officially started via its company blog:

“Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results. Of course, while our index will be built from mobile documents, we’re going to continue to build a great search experience for all users, whether they come from mobile or desktop devices.”

This means in the future Google will increasingly prioritize crawling the mobile versions of a site’s content, rather than treating desktop as the “main” version of your site.

The company also gave some quick tips to help you make the most of this change as it is happening:

  • If you have a responsive site with identical content across mobile and desktop, you shouldn’t have to change anything.
  • If you have a site where the primary content and markup is not identical across mobile and desktop, you should consider making some changes to your site.
  • Make sure to serve structured markup for both the desktop and mobile version.
  • Google recommends using the Structured Data Testing Tool to verify the equivalence of structured markup across desktop and mobile by typing the URLs of both versions into the Structured Data Testing Tool and comparing the output.
  • When adding structured data to a mobile site, avoid adding large amounts of markup that isn’t relevant to the specific information content of each document.
  • Use the robots.txt testing tool to verify that your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot.
  • Sites do not have to make changes to their canonical links.
  • If you are a site owner who has only verified their desktop site in Search Console, please add and verify your mobile version.
  • If you only have a desktop site, Google will continue to index your desktop site just fine.
  • If you are building a mobile version of your site, do not launch it until it’s ready. Google says: “a functional desktop-oriented site can be better than a broken or incomplete mobile version of the site.”
/1 Comment