This year, brands will use real-time marketing to enhance the World Cup viewing experience. Instead of being drowned out by the massively-popular event, telling brand stories in real-time offers brands an opportunity to be part of the conversation.

Coke, for instance, has stated they're going full speed ahead with real-time marketing during the 2014 World Cup.

Paul Dwan, Head of Assets and Experiential at Coke explained the importance of real-time marketing during panel at Advertising Week Europe 2014...

You could say that I like ads.

I know that to “like ads” sounds funny, but I’m in the business. Some people not in advertising don’t seem to be as keen about ads as I am. That's fair.

At best, I think most folks begrudgingly accept that ads are necessary to make other great things happen, like make apps or content free. Ads have the noble function of helping reward good companies with a source revenue. But if ads do have a bit of a PR problem with the public at large, it's because they don’t make the value they provide explicit enough.

Think about it.

Most display ads these days are functionally very similar to what they were 10 years ago. I find this odd, given how the rest of online marketing has marched forward to embrace new modes of interacting with potential customers. Are you advertising like it’s 1999? I hope not.

The IAB recently published a comprehensive report on native advertising, guiding the industry one step closer to an official definition.

To get everyone on the same page, for months they have been working with industry leaders to share knowledge and create a common language to talk about native. This culminated in the release the IAB Native Advertising Playbook, which is based on discussions from a task-force of companies in the ad space. The report looks at what types of native ads exist, and how what elements vary across each type of native ad.

There are two traits common to all native ads...

We are witnessing a convergence in digital advertising. Smartphones and tablets now have widespread adoption. At the same time, consumers have a sharply increased preference for animated, interactive advertising over static banners. These two trends coming together have strong implications for the technologies that power digital ads.

Device proliferation is surging. A threshold was crossed in April 2013 when we reached a multi-screen majority and more than half of US consumers engaged with media on both computers and phones. The number hit 54% in June 2013. This rising rate of media consumption patterns across devices indicates that multi-screen is the new status quo.

Users are on the move. Not only are they taking their devices with them, but they are also hopping from device to device.

We are marketing in the age of the always-on consumer, a majority group that takes web access with them on-the-go. Being always-on means these consumers are persistently connected to the web, which presents new opportunities and challenges in brand storytelling.

Always-on consumers now make up about half of the US market. ComScore confirmed last year that at least 54% of consumers were using multiple devices—such as a laptop and a smartphone—to consume media. The trend is growing.

The Vivaldi Always-On Consumer 2014 report had similar results, estimating that 48% of the US population are now “always-on consumers” who are connected online with multiple devices and from locations throughout their daily lives.

To market to always-on consumers successfully, you must find new ways to connect with them, collaborate, and support them in a way that is also increasingly also always-on.

To begin with, let's clarify that always-on marketing goes beyond simply being multi-platform...

Content marketing has matured and brands now are seeking to broaden the uses and impact of content into paid media. Sometimes called "content advertising," this trend has the potential to have a transformative impact on display advertising.

Here are 5 principles to help you launch your first content ads campaign.

Flash is the dominant technology for display advertising, but Flash isn’t supported on mobile and tablet devices. In this infographic, see how smartphone proliferation indicates a need to embrace both Flash and HTML5 for display ads.