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It has become a common joke among digital marketers to talk about the elusive “year of mobile”. Experts have been proclaiming the tipping point of mobile as a marketing platform since as early as 2009, and a small number believe it hasn’t even arrived yet. As IAB UK’s CMO James Chandler discussed at Engage last week, the year of mobile has well and truly been (he puts it at 2018 – the year mobile ad spend outstripped desktop) and the future is all about unleashing potential of mobility. In my...

“Know more than the next person.” So said Alex Jenkins, Editorial Director of Contagious at IAB UK’s Engage on Wednesday 5 June. And if you missed it, there’s no better way to know more about what happened there than the next person than by listening to this special episode of the IAB Podcast. Recorded on-site at the Barbican, host James Chandler, CMO at IAB UK, catches up with speakers from the day who tell us what they talked about on stage, how the internet lets them be their best selves and...

Social media is a very fluid medium, and one that is constantly changing. It’s one of the reasons that makes it so dynamic to work with. So, the announcement back in April that a major brand seeking to communicate and engage with younger audiences is reigning in its social presence – at least in the UK – has rather set tongues wagging. Most of us recognise that organic reach and engagement has declined along with the maturation of the medium and the continual tweaks to different platforms’...

Whether it’s beating the Friday traffic with a Google Maps shortcut, catching up with the news on your favourite newspaper app or simply staying in touch with loved ones, the internet is an intrinsic and invaluable part of most people’s daily lives. Nearly all of us use it – 91% of the population recently logged on, according to the Office for National Statistics, rising to 99% for 16-44 year olds. What’s more, the majority of content and services are free to access because they’re funded by...

The ‘Consumer attitudes towards digital advertising’ research seeks to understand how people feel about online advertising, whether they are aware that the value exchange allows for a free internet and if how much they value the internet. Some of the key findings include: 89% of people prefer having an ad-funded internet to paying for online services 84% would be “furious” if they had to pay every time they used an online service 74% agree that being online has made their lives better 50% of 18...

The IAB’s Head of Marketing Tom Stevens takes the reins in the final episode of season 2, with a roundtable looking at two areas of emerging digital: emotional targeting and camera marketing. Unruly’s Becky Waring and Snap’s Ed Couchman help us understand these two areas in more detail and what to expect in future. Charlie Glynn from Havas shares a bitesize look at programmatic with Two Minutes on Bid Shading and the IAB’s Sophia Haynes lets us in on plans for the project she’s leading on Direct...

In July 2018, Facebook signed up with JICWEBS and began the audit process to certify Instagram and Facebook to the DTSG Good Practice Principles. In January 2019, Facebook was granted an extension to submit its report due to the size and complexity of the audits. Facebook’s feed-based media platform, accompanied by its use of AI posed new challenges. JICWEBS and the auditor have been working closely to ensure reporting accurately reflects the way Facebook operates and transparently shows how the...

The advertising industry’s education programme Media Smart has launched a new resource to help children understand the commercial link between social influencers and the brands they may be promoting. The rising numbers of social influencers in young people’s lives has prompted Media Smart to create a film-based PSHE teaching resource for 11-14-year olds, the first of its kind to tackle this area of marketing. Watch a clip of the film below: The Influencer Marketing Education resource has been...

We have developed a handy guide with the help of our members, looking at the key areas in the programmatic supply chain. By asking core questions of each area, we aim to provide better understanding of the inner workings of programmatic and therefore boost transparency in this area. Read on for a brief introduction to the guide, or download it in full here. Since its introduction in 2010, programmatic has transformed the way digital display advertising is typically bought. However, the speed at...

Marketing attribution is like waking up with a hangover. You ask yourself which of the six drinks you had last night is responsible. Was it the gin that you finished the evening off with, or the whiskey chaser after the second pint or perhaps it was the cocktail at the very start of the evening? As a marketer, at the end of a successful marketing campaign, your CFO might ask you why 30% of the budget was spent on one platform when it only delivered 10% of sales. The problem of marketing...

Inclusive marketing, diversifying recruitment and recognising disability as a plus were all on the agenda at IAB UK’s Inclusion, Diversity and Equality Seminar, with speakers including Microsoft’s Tina Aird, Pride in London’s Tom Stevens and MyPlusConsulting’s Helen Cooke. Opening the morning, IAB UK’s Director of Campaigns Sophia Haynes highlighted the need to “drive the industry forward” through IDE principles. In order to resonate with people, advertising has a responsibility to “think more...

With previous research proving the link between attention, brand recall and short-term sales growth, IAB UK and Lumen set out to explore how advertisers can maximise the attention their digital ads receive. The study, which spans desktop and mobile, shows that there are five key ways to boost advertising attention online: Quality matters: Being in a premium content environment (aka, a quality news brand or magazine site) is the single biggest driver of ad attention, generating three times more...

Below you can read the full report which draws from the IAB / PWC ad spend study. It seeks to prove the causal link between advertising and the wider economy, even saying that advertising has a closer link to investment and consumption that GDP.

Podcasts have proven to be particularly popular in recent years, but who is driving growth? As part of our Listening Britain Series drawing on latest RAJAR MIDAS data (Spring 2019), we’ve taken a closer look at who is listening, how much time people spend tuned in per week and how they are accessing podcasts. Some key stats include: 7.6 million listen to podcasts in the UK each week Podcast listeners in the UK consume 7.3 hours of podcasts per week on average, equating to 56 million hours in...

As an FMCG brand, you live and die by your distribution, if you aren’t available you can’t be sold and you risk losing a prospective consumer to a competitor. Whilst the online revolution is continuing to reshape the retail landscape and new technologies, if used effectively, can provide a wide array of opportunities for connecting with your audience. It’s important to not lose perspective of the here and now. In spite of the prevailing doom and gloom on the high street, physical stores still...

The IAB recently conducted research seeking to understand how people feel about online advertising, and asking whether they were aware of the value exchange that allows for a free internet, and also how much they value the internet itself. This research can be read in full here. We also created a one page report with all of the key findings from our research. This can be downloaded below.

Earlier this year the IAB hosted an event giving everyone working in Parliament a chance to learn about how online advertising actually works, explaining what types of digital ad exist, how they work and how the industry is regulated. Continuing with our political outreach, last week we returned to Parliament to host a breakfast roundtable, bringing politicians together with members of our Board to discuss the state of the industry, the challenges it faces and reasons to be cheerful. The IAB...

The Government’s Online Harms White Paper did not include proposals specific to digital advertising, but did propose the establishment of a new regulator. The IAB submitted a short response urging the Government to recognise the effectiveness and respect the remit of the UK’s world-leading system of self-regulation that currently exists within the digital advertising industry, including the CAP/ASA system, the European Digital Advertising Alliance, JICWEBS, and the IAB’s own Gold Standard. Our...

Managing brand safety in digital has always been a delicate trade-off between suitability and scale. Advertisers understand the potentially disastrous consequences for their brand image and reputation if their messaging appears next to salacious content. But they also understand that if their brand safety standards are too restrictive, they inadvertently avoid safe content, negatively impacting reach. Most advertisers use brand safety blocking to ensure their ads do not appear next to content...

DOOH offers advertisers an eye-catching and dynamic way of reaching consumers and raising a brands’ profile. But how much are marketers using the medium and what do they think about it? We teamed up with YouGov to get the inside track from 504 marketing decision makers across a range of sectors and company sizes. Here’s some of the key findings: 41% of marketing decision makers are responsible for OOH campaigns, of which 36% are using DOOH DOOH is unlocking new budget with 19% of spend coming...