2014 Digital Ad Revenue Grows 16% over 2013

U.S. digital ad revenue had its fifth consecutive year of double digit growth in 2014 with a 16% increase over the previous year, according to a new report from the Internet Advertising Bureau.

The increase is in line with the 17 percent growth in 2013 and 15 percent growth in both 2012 and 2010. The total jumped 22 percent in 2011.

Total spending by advertisers reached $49.5 billion during the year compared to $42.8 billion in 2013, the industry organization said. (more…)

Ad Viewability Standard Rises with Google and Yahoo!

Google this week took another major step with raising the standard for ad viewability.

The company rolled out a new version of the AdSense partner revenue reports that make viewability a prime tracking number.

Viewabile impressions are those ads that are seen by consumers. They usually are the ads located in the top half of the page and don’t require scrolling to be seen.

Google defines the new report as, “The percentage of impressions that were viewable out of all measurable impressions. This metric only includes impressions from regular AdSense for content, AdSense for video and AdSense for games ad units. It doesn’t include data from link units, or data from dynamic allocation in DFP Small Business.” (more…)

Mobile CPM Rates: Trends and Best Practices

Mobile CPMs and their ability to generate meaningful revenue remain a major challenge to digital publishers.

Average Mobile CPMs reflect market supply and demand. They also can be discouraging when compared to desktop CPMs. (more…)

Google Ad Trends Show More Growth at Softer Pace

Revenue for Google-owned sites is outpacing revenue for partner sites. © Promise Media LLC

Google reported fourth quarter 2014 results showing a 15 percent increase in revenue versus the same period the prior year.

For most businesses, a 15 percent growth would be good news. For Google, it was fairly good news. It did reveal that the company’s ability to grow online ad revenue is still running at a decent pace, but that pace is moderating somewhat.

Earnings were not as good. They declined slightly versus the prior year, while the operating income declined from 28 percent to 24 percent of revenue. (more…)

Mobile Advertising Trends Raise Concerns on Revenue

Anyone who has developed a responsive Web site that displays well for mobile visitors will likely find that their total audience has increased over the last few years.

If the responsive site has been well designed, the pages per visit and return visitors should be increasing as well.

Search engines recognize sites that are responsive and raise their rankings in search results because visitors will respond favorably to those results.

Unfortunately, all of this good news doesn’t mean that mobile advertising will deliver the same kind of numbers.

Numerous credible sources point to weak click-through rates and RPMs (revenue per thousand impressions) for mobile advertising.

Ironically, spending on mobile advertising continues to climb while spending for desktop advertising has weakened. (more…)

Programmatic Advertising Tutorial: A New Wave of Efficient Buying and Selling

Old practices sometimes get new names, and programmatic advertising is one of them.

This hot buzz word describes a process of automating the buying and selling of ads online.

What makes it so hot now is a vision of the future that takes away any decision making on the part of the marketer and places it directly in the hands of software that does real-time bidding of ad space. (more…)

Mobile Display Ads Present Opportunity for Smaller Players

Data source: IAB. Graphic © Promise Media

Search-related advertising has dominated the online environment for desktop computing for many years, but mobile may be changing that dominance.

The search format, usually in the form of text ads, made up 43 percent of total online advertising in the first half of 2013, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.

Banner advertising came in a distant second place at 19 percent while mobile (mainly mobile search and banners) made up only 15 percent.

Those numbers looked quite a bit different in the first half of 2014. (more…)

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