Vibrant News

The dust has largely settled after March’s brand safety scandal – however the problem hasn’t gone away. Although some brands are reported to have returned to Google advertising by May, others – including Pepsi, Tesco, and Marks & Spencer – were still waiting for solid guarantees from Google over and above what has already been promised.

The changes Google says it has already taken to improve brand safety haven’t been bedded in, aren’t sufficient for some brands, and still lack a vital component – third party verification. Google has promised to deliver such verification in the future, but before it’s implemented, marketers refusing to risk their brand reputation are opting for ad providers who can make promises on where their ads will appear as well as delivering third party verified monitoring and reporting on where ad creative actually did appear.

Third party monitoring, reporting and verification is imperative, of course, but it can really only help brands, publishers and ad tech companies to react to any concerning ad placement. Many brands would prefer a zero tolerance for any ad misplacement rather than an acceptance that misplacement will happen from time to time. Those marketers are likely to be the ones who focus their ad buying and planning on ad campaigns bought directly from ad inventory providers or, at very least, non-blind programmatic ad campaigns.

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You can read the full article by Vibrant’s CEO and Founder Doug Stevenson here, as featured in Digital Content Next

Virtual Reality can rejuvenate advertising but it won’t solve every business problem, says report

Advertising experiences in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) offers plenty of potential to get consumers interested in advertising again – but brands and advertisers still need to overcome the high cost, ROI, and storytelling challenges associated with creating these experiences.

This is one of the key findings of a new report launched by The Drum, in association with Vibrant Media, which examines if ads in VR or AR can help solve ad-blocking and whether it’s time for a new model in the industry.

You can read the full report ‘Is Immersive VR the future of advertising’, as featured in The Drum

As we proceed full steam ahead into the second half of 2017, we can’t help but cast our eye on the industry’s trends and predications for the future. But what can we expect to see in the coming months, and what trends will start to form key focus areas for 2018?

For some time now, we as an industry have been thinking of new and innovative ways to capture and retain audience engagement, especially when it comes to mobile video, so it came as no real surprise when AdWeek announced this week that brands and agencies were preparing for the era of 6-second ads. Short form video formats have been on the rise since the beginning of the year as snap style content continues to grow in popularity, and brands continue to seek new ways of keeping younger audiences engaged. Companies like YouTube have already started to take opportunities to show the value of short-form storytelling at festivals like Sundance and SXSW, so it’s easy to see why brands including FOX have begun to adopt short-form video formats as a way of getting their messages across to main target audiences in a mobile environment.

We are all aware that Millennials and Gen Z consumers have a shorter attention spans than previous generations, and that they are increasingly engrossed in their smartphones, so it is easy to see why creating snackable video content is an innovative and ideal medium to gain and retain their attention. But is it enough just to show a short video?

Whilst creating compelling and digestible content is a key step in creating a successful brand campaign, it also needs to be discovered by the right person, in the right place, at the right time. In Mary Meeker’s latest annual report, one of the main key trends she highlights was advertiser’s demands for better targeting and measurement of their ads. With issues around ad-blocking and brand safety playing on the minds of brands, publishers, and ad tech providers, it’s no surprise that targeting and ad relevancy form a vital role in shaping the digital advertising landscape, and why in turn relevancy and contextualization are key driving factors in driving success of online ad campaigns.

Vibrant’s in-house creative team are not only on hand and able to crop and convert videos for short-form and vertical use, but in general we are also able to deliver unique creative experiences and features within a contextually relevant environment at scale. Our vertical video and our premium contextual ad solutions are all designed to be launched from keywords and images within premium, relevant editorial, and our real-time technology knows exactly where and when to place brand ads.

Relevance and creativity go hand-in-hand, and are both key in capturing and retaining the right audience’s attention now, and as we continue to towards 2018.

In an increasingly competitive and fragmented age for electronic content providers—when ad blocking, alternative content channels, and decreased attention spans seriously threaten the bottom line—publishers might want to consider seeking revenue solutions less in the real world than in the virtual world.

You can read the full article here, as featured in EContent

In the aftermath of the 2017 brand safety scandal we asked media planners… do you know where your campaigns are running?

We did a poll across the UK, US & DE and found that just one in four advertising buyers and planners at leading media agencies (27.27 per cent) say with confidence that they feel informed of the brand safety measures of the ads they buy.

• Over a third (33.33 per cent) do not feel informed and one sixth (15.15 per cent) either only feel informed from certain vendors or to a partial extent.
• Nearly a quarter of respondents (24.24 per cent) failed to answer the specific question put to them on how informed they were of ad vendors’ brand safety measures.

Such alarmingly low levels of knowledge persist in the wake of the 2017 brand safety scandal and despite 87.87 per cent of ad planners and buyers stating that their number one priority is ensuring brand safe environments for their marketing clients.

The future is bright!

However, ad buyers are becoming more active on brand safety!

Nearly half (49.99 per cent) say they will be actively asking for brand safety information in media buys following the scandal, and nearly three quarters (73.43 per cent) agree with pulling ad spend on sites that have unsafe content, as huge brands across the world did in spring 2017.