When’s the last time you tapped on a banner ad on your phone, not including the time you tried to hit the tiny “X” in the top right corner but missed?

If you said “never,” you’re in the majority. Industry wide, mobile display advertising click through rates are somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% (depending on the source), and this includes accidental taps. In other words, almost nobody engages with banner ads.

On the desktop or laptop, banner ads are a bit annoying, but we’ve all been trained to simply ignore them. On the phone, though, they are downright disruptive, as they commandeer valuable real estate on an already small screen.

For those who missed this event (which was attended by an estimated 90,000 in the industry, including 798 speakers sitting on 198 panels), or for those experiencing early nostalgia, here are some highlights:

• Scaling content marketing: "Content is king, but distribution is queen...and she wears the pants."
• Mobile as a source of data: Macy's is mining users' mobile usage patterns for the insights necessary to predict what shoppers might be interested in buying.

ROI.

It's the lifeblood of marketers. ROI gives our work meaning. It lets us know when we're doing our best work and when we're doing our worst.

But it's something we're having a really hard time calculating when it comes to content marketing. 

AdAge had a telling headline yesterday: Advertisers Struggle to See the ROI on Branded Content. This isn’t the first story of its kind and it won't be last.

Have you ever seen an AdChoices button on a display ad while browsing the web? Most consumers have, and if you've ever wondered what the little icon means and why it's important, we've got answers for you. 

This morning, Flite announced a partnership with TRUSTe, the leading global data privacy management (DPM) company, to offer the TRUSTed Ads technology as the newest addition to the growing list of third-party apps available on the Flite Platform. 

The TRUSTED Ads component in Flite gives brands, publishers, and agencies the ability to insert the industry-sanctioned Advertising Option Icon — often seen as an AdChoices button — within a Flite display ad. This integration allows customers to be compliant with the industry recommended self-regulatory principles for Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA) and FTC guidelines. 

The tenth annual Advertising Week kicks off in New York today, and naturally, we're excited about the topics and conversations that will recap the past year and in large measure shape how 2014 will unfold in digital. 

Poring through the enormous 268-page guide, among all the speaker bios, lists of sponsors, and, of course, advertisements, there are some interesting tracks and sessions:

Mobile: Sessions focus on the continued rise of mobile as a primary screen, of multi-screen consumer behaviors and implications for digital advertising, the use of Big Data for targeting, budget allocation, smaller-screen creative development, and the tantalizingly-titled "predictive advertising". 

In working with dozens of digital teams at the world's top brands, at Flite we've seen a few major trends emerge. One is the fact that many brands now publish content directly into paid channels. This is a major shift that puts more control in the hands of brands. It builds on the trends of content marketing and agile marketing both becoming more important in the marketing mix.

Why? A few reasons. First, click-through rates continue to be abysmally low because ads don’t provide value. For years, consumers have put up with ads that are teasers that try to lure them to click to another page. Certain advances in advertising technology have actually made ads even more intrusive — think homepage takeovers, or videos that automatically start playing music until you scramble to hit the "pause" button.

More than half of marketers say that getting widespread distribution for content marketing is a major barrier to the content's success.

Check out this video which explains in 2 minutes how publishing content into advertising can amplify reach and give your content the distribution it deserves.

If you enjoyed the video, grab this free eBook for more information: The Essential Guide to Paid Media Publishing.

Content marketing continues to grow as a particularly productive item in digital marketers’ toolkits. According to a recent Content Marketing Institute survey of B2C marketers—86% of whom use content marketing—55% plan to increase their content marketing budgets over the next twelve months. And with good reason.

A Custom Content Council survey found that 61% of polled consumers feel better about a company that provides useful content, and are more inclined to buy from them. And in the UK, a Content Marketing Association poll turned up equally sanguine results:

• 68% of consumers spend time reading content from a brand they are interested in.
• 82% like reading content from brands when it is relevant.
• “Content marketing has a positive impact upon my purchase decisions”: 43% agree, 20% disagree
• “Content marketing makes me more positive towards the brand itself”: 48% agree, 14% disagree

What do events, award shows and holidays have in common? They are broad cultural moments that touch vast audiences and capture interest.

That means that for advertisers, an event or holiday is also opportunity to be topical and make a positive association with a brand, create some engaging content, or drive a direct response.

Thinking broadly, here are some forthcoming events and holidays that advertisers are already planning for:

Content marketing is especially important for B2B marketers because transactions tend to be based on credibility, expertise, and relationships. The fact that content marketing allows you to build upon these three areas is a big reason why it's grown in popularity as an effective marketing strategy. After all, it can lead to powerful results, including inbound leads that come knocking on your door because they're already convinced of the value you bring.

So it's understandable that when B2B marketers start building a content strategy, they focus on content creation. That is, they try to churn out as many pieces of content as possible in the form of blog posts, white papers, eBooks, webinars. But are customers really finding value in all of it? Since creating quality content on a regular basis is a big investment of resources, it's important to confidently answer "yes" to that question.

The multi-screen era of digital media consumption is so firmly entrenched that it's almost old news. Except it's not. It's a phenomenon that arose and spread quickly, engendering unconscious habits in the way we interact with the various connected devices we have at our disposal every day. And since advertising supports a large majority of online content, any discussion of digital advertising today would be remiss if it didn't include how ads adapt to the screens that users view and interact with them on.

Since a multi-screen campaign forces advertisers to focus on users rather than devices, it's important to keep all the necessary execution details in mind to make for a robust, seamless experience for users.

1. Layouts responsive to the most common dimensions and aspect ratios

At least currently, there are three primary device form factors: computer (desktop or laptop), tablet, and smartphone. Within each are a fairly wide range of aspect ratios and sizes. Some screens display 4:3 video content better; some can more readily handle HD 16:9. Some smartphones tout exceptionally high pixel density, but screen dimensions still limit how small fonts can be and still be readable. Some larger ad formats will not play well with the content they're juxtaposed with on smaller screens.

Flite — along with our partners Shell and a|muse — were selected to present a never-before-seen case study at the prestigious iMedia Brand Summit in Coronado, California on September 9, 2013. We were in great company, with other case studies sessions led by top brands including Target, L'Oreal, Clorox, Adobe, and more.

The event invites senior-level brand marketers to discuss trends and challenges surrounding interactive media in the overall marketing mix. The format is a dynamic combination of keynote speakers, case studies, networking opportunities, and workshops.

I felt like a thief as I grabbed my order and left without so much as saying hello to anyone. But instead of stealing a sandwich, I had stolen 15 minutes of my life back.

20 minutes earlier, lunch time had snuck up on a hungry me, and I had already expended all my short-term brain power on email and getting ramped up for a successful week...

In an October 2012 study, Adobe found that 68% of consumers find online ads “annoying” and “distracting” and 54% say online banner ads don’t work.

It makes no sense that ads should be so reviled. They lack public support because they have been so widely misused.

Meanwhile, content marketing has been on the rise. But engaging in purely inbound content marketing lacks the scale many companies require to hit their objectives.

The key to successful display ads — ones that aren’t “annoying” — is to focus on providing value through entertainment and information. You can do this through content advertising: scaling content out to audiences in paid channels.

For content ads, ditch the idea of a “banner” ad. Display ads are a fundamentally different space than physical billboards — notably that display ads are enabled by technology to be interactive and real-time.

With the back-to-school season in full swing, it's a good time to think about what marketers can learn from teachers. Why? The growth of content marketing marks a shift towards educating customers and providing them with relevant information.

In short, marketers are teaching, rather than hard-selling. Let's check out three lessons that marketers can learn from teachers.

1. Connect the dots: explain why information matters and what the listener will get out of it.

Mobile advertising, long theugly stepchild compared to its desktop sibling, is coming into its own, if not outright flourishing. Recently released projections from eMarketer estimate that mobile will capture almost half of the total digital ad spend in North America in 2017. Much of the growth over the past few years has been due to advertiser dollars belatedly following where users' consumption habits had migrated. But what else is driving such tremendous growth in the years ahead?

1. Smartphone Penetration Continues to Skyrocket

While desktop penetration and usage has plateaued in this mature space, the rapid adoption of smartphones has enabled large cohorts to replicate the richness of their desktop experience on a device that fits in their pockets. According to a Pew Internet study, 56% of Americans own a smartphone, up from only 35% as recently as 2011.

It’s old news that banner ads are dead, and clickthroughs a terrible metric.

Spend from that old, interruptive advertising has been steadily leaking into other areas: rich media, video, and social media.

But as brands and agencies are firming up planning for 2014, the questions aren't about what's bad. They're about how to create experiences that resonate in the hearts of consumers — ways of advertising that can compete with the perpetual distractions of the web.

If you’re looking for the next big thing in digital advertising, here are 4 trends to keep your eyes on.