Some of the benefits we’re seeing: 

• Better communication between team members
• More empowerment throughout our organization
• Higher quality product releases
• Happier people

Those are the top pluses, and add up to more than enough reason to be excited about it. 

So how does it work? I’ll discuss some of the characteristics we're following:

We follow scrum at Flite. Each team makes use of scrum and a scrum task board (we use Trello for this) to track what everyone is working on. This allows them to communicate with one another in their daily standup meetings. Scrum works well but Kanban or any good ad hoc process can work just as well. The important point is that teams have a streamlined process to communicate, track progress, prioritize, and have retrospectives that promote learning rather than repeating things that don’t work or cause harm. 

Our teams are truly cross-functional. We structure them like mini-business units. That said, we’re not being overly strict and as a small company we certainly don’t want to add overhead to things like accounting for time borrowed between teams or ensuring each group is always profitable. The key, of course, is having people with diverse skillsets and backgrounds working together. This produces better decision making and ability to deliver on strategic goals while handling the bumps encountered along the way.

Top priorities are clearly identified and everyone on the team understands these priorities and the reasons behind them. This takes debate, communication, and being strict on what can and can’t actually be accomplished. That’s tough to do but worth it. A well-formed, cross-functional team can accomplish a great deal when they’re focused—gaining that focus takes strict prioritization. Good prioritization becomes possible when team members from all of the crucial business functions meet together and work to deliver value to their end customer.

Customer focus is key for our teams. At Flite, we keep the values empower, delight, and deliver. We use those values to guide how we serve our customers and our employees alike. Well-defined values are a great asset for keeping our teams focused on our customer’s needs since they form scaffolding for discussion and debate as they work through the issues that arise while building products and solutions for our customers.

We’re forging ahead with our new team structure and are excited to see what we achieve with it.

Native ads are paid media units that take on the form of the environment they are displayed in.

That worked for me.

More debate followed about "what was the first example of a native ad?" and "do we need to consider print or just digital when thinking native?" For the context of this post, let's consider only online digital native ads while we dive into some examples to shed light on those questions. Along the way we will uncover some of the sources of controversy that drive the debates around native ad formats.

Google AdWords: the world's most successful native ad. Many people will agree that the biggest reason Google was successful in the early days of search was how well they made money at it. The beauty of AdWords is that it makes money for Google as it balances the needs of the advertiser with those of the user. The AdWords search result is relevant or it wouldn't show. It's easy for the user to understand what happens when they interact with the ad (taking you to a website when clicked). And advertisers are motivated to improve the text (the creative part) since it's bought in a marketplace.

At the risk of being overly meta with this example… here's a look at an AdWords ad for AdWords itself:

The obvious characteristic about the first result (the paid result) is that it's only slightly different than the second result (the natural result). It's marked as an "Ad" by showing the yellow symbol next to the URL of the result. You will see this in almost all types of native ads but often they are labeled as "promoted" or "sponsored" rather than "ad". Also, the mark often appears as subtle text rather than a bold yellow marker like what's shown in the Google example above.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn Ads: social sells native. We've heard lots of recent talk on native ads and it's clearly not because of Google AdWords since it's not something new. I think much of the interest is due to the native formats across websites. But before we dig in there, I'd like to talk about what the big social networks are doing with native. I think their use of it has driven much of the innovation and motivation in the industry to work on native.

All three of these social giants sell many forms of paid media, ranging from direct sold banners to operating their own ad exchanges. But when we think of ads on Twitter, we think of promoted tweets. On Facebook, we think of sponsored posts. And on LinkedIn, it's sponsored updates.

Looking at the LinkedIn ad below, it is easy to spot how similar it is to the Google ad we first examined.

The similarities are:

• Both ads look like the content around them. LinkedIn ads look like the other updates in my stream just as Google ads look like the natural results I searched for.
• Both ads are marked as "paid for" in some way. Google uses the yellow "Ad" mark and LinkedIn displays the word "Sponsored" to distinguish it from other content.
• Both ads "act" like the organic content around them. We discussed how the Google search takes you to a website when you click on it exactly as the organic result does. In the case of LinkedIn, users can take action (follow, like, comment, and share) on the ad just as they can with any other shared content.

The last point is key. The ad conforms to the expectations users have of the non-promoted content around it. If it didn't, users would quickly learn there is no value in the native ad. But since there is value, just like in the Google ad, this new form of paid media is really taking off.

Think about that for a minute. This suggests that Google is the successful company it is today largely because they make money driving highly functional ad units to their users. These ad units simultaneously maximize value for both advertisers and users. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are doing the same and seeing great success at it, of course.

Native on the Web: the controversy begins. In the above I stuck to simple examples but things get blurrier when you apply the concepts of native ads to the web at large. This shows up when you look at what web publishers are doing today with their own promoted posts. Let's take the example of a promoted article for a handbag on a fashion website. That article would fit our definition for a native ad: 1. It looks like the content around it 2. It is likely marked as "sponsored" 3. It acts just like other content since it's a webpage and all articles on the website are just webpages.

Website promoted articles are clearly carried over from offline full-bleed magazine ads and promoted articles which have been helping fund publishers for years. The difference with online is that publishers need to be creative in how they drive traffic to the paid media. Users aren't running into the ads as they do offline while flipping through pages of a magazine. So they integrate the paid media into their site navigation and search.

Navigation and search results are where things get a little harder to define what's going on. Is the native ad the destination, the promoted navigation element, or both? Here's an example in BuzzFeed:

The destination of the link of the target ad is a BuzzFeed page that is a promoted feed of images for Target. 

Programmatic Native: turning up the volume for native ad buying. Late last year, Twitter's MoPub unveiled their plans to offer programmatic buying of native ad inventory. Others were already hard at work at building native exchanges, like NaMo media, who was recently acquired by Twitter. Here's an image pulled from their release ("Introducing Native Ads"), which captures how native ads look across the numerous apps in their exchange:

You will notice the common markers of native ads we've discussed above including the “sponsored” mark and the functional integrations.

This opens up native ad buying and selling to every app (and site over other exchanges). We should expect to see native ad formats growing in number and with it more and more native ads appearing. Why? If Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have all chosen native formats to sell paid media, we can conclude that it works well. And now exchanges like MoPub make buying and selling native scale for advertisers and publishers.  

Expect nothing but growth for native ads. All the parts are in place for advertisers and publishers to create new innovative solutions at scale. 

To learn more about native advertising, download our eBooks:

• Mobile Native Advertising — examples across 13 mobile leaders
• Native Advertising — What they are, and why they work

LinkedIn is showing us all the power of great content to connect us with a brand. This post itself is an example of the ways they are sourcing content which in turn brings us closer to LinkedIn's own brand.

The three big trends in paid media can be good for both brands and consumers if brand embrace content marketing and use smart tactics and make good use the latest ad tech.

1. Native: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all use promoted updates, tweets, or posts as a core revenue driver for their platforms. Each of these is a form of native ad. The promoted content is a story (full of text and often images) that express a message, wrap it up in a package that's consistent with the platform, and deliver it to a target audience through paid media. What's unique about native ads is they match the environment they are displayed in, and to do that in a content rich environment the ad must be content rich. This is similar to TV but using written and image based storytelling over video production.

2. Programmatic: You don't think of branding when you think of programmatic advertising. RTB was built around the clickthru not engagement. Things change however when you replace the flat ad creative with a brand story. Targeting based on the context of the story and the context of the publisher property become possible. I expect a lot of exciting developments to arise in the near term.

3. Mobile: We all know Twitter and Facebook are mostly mobile...and there is a good chance you're reading this on your iPhone or Android device right now. Brands are looking for new ways to gain benefits on this platforms, the most direct is through publishing better content.

It makes sense that native and programmatic as described above will work best for both brands and consumers on mobile devices. At Flite we're working on exciting ways to combine the three trends for brands and we are seeing great results in return.

Native advertising continues to make substantial inroads across a wide range of publishers; even some previously resistant pubs, like the New York Times, have gotten on board. Their success has prompted rapid migration onto mobile screens as well, providing some hope to mobile publishers and app developers who had until recently struggled to extract meaningful value from their smartphone and tablet inventory.

While the earliest mobile native pioneers have been the largest social networks—Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn organize their content into feeds that lend themselves well to the story-driven native placements we profiled in our eBook on native advertising—other prominent publishers and app developers have also successfully made the leap. 

In an eBook that we are debuting today, Mobile Native Advertising, we take a look at 13 social networks and publishers, in both mobile web and app form, that represent the state of mobile native advertising today. Each publisher's implementation is evaluated across six dimensions: 

• Placement: how the ad fits into consumption flow
• Aesthetic Treatment: how a native ad is distinguished visually from editorial content
• Functionality: how much a native ad shares the same liking, sharing and other options as editorial pieces
• Disclosure: how it’s identified as an ad
• Sponsor Identification: how the advertiser is promoted (logos, blurbs, links, etc.)
• Links: whether the native ad links to on-site or off-site content, if at all

We see similarities across most mobile native executions, suggesting the basis of an early, emerging standard. 

One of the 13 examples we profile in this eBook.

Download our free eBook on mobile native advertising and see how in-feed advertising is taking shape on today's smaller digital screens.

Considering content marketing's enormous scope—$44 billion according to a comprehensive estimate by the Custom Content Council—it's no surprise that a large range of software and platform solutions have emerged to help scale marketers' workflows. Altimeter Group, a tech research and consulting firm, has just released a report on the landscape of content marketing software vendors that provides context to the various service segments.

The report begins with the premise that platform/tool selection is a difficult proposition. Vendors' offerings are highly differentiated and present a wide range of capabilities that might not be relevant to all marketers' needs. The report's author, Rebecca Lieb, suggests that evolution in the space will drive consolidation and the formation of end-to-end solutions incorporating capabilities from content creation to compliance within the next two years.

In the meantime, marketers are urged to examine their use cases and choose from software options based on their needs. For example, a marketer that doesn't need the full stack of options but needs to focus their efforts on curation and optimization might choose to prioritize integrating sharing platforms, search, marketing cloud and storage platforms from among the plethora of available solutions.

Among over three dozen players in the space, Flite was profiled with a ranked list of our top three use cases:

1. Curation/Aggregation (via CONTENT@SCALE)
2. Optimization
3. Analytics

We are listed as additionally providing capabilities in Workflow and Distribution.

Readers of the report that are interested in additional insights are invited to attend a webinar hosted on June 4 at 1pm Eastern. 

After six years as CEO of Flite, I am thrilled to announce that Giles Goodwin is succeeding me as CEO.  Giles will be responsible for defining Flite's vision, leading our talented team, and working with our top partners and customers to realize the promise of content marketing's future.

First, I want to thank Flite's employees, customers, partners, and investors for allowing me the honor of leading this fine organization. I leave a different and better person for having led Flite.

Second, I am grateful to Giles and the passion and energy he brings to the role. As Flite's founder and President of Technology, Giles is the perfect choice to provide Flite not only continuity of culture and purpose, but also the skills and depth required to chart us to future success.  The Valley treasures founder CEOs for a reason, and I know that Flite will find the combination powerful.

Finally, I am pleased to report that I will continue to serve on Flite's Board of Directors and will work closely with Giles, the team, and our top partners over the months to come.

Here's to the future,

Will

NBC Universal's President of Research and Media Development, Alan Wurtzel, made waves a couple of days ago in an interview with the Financial Times when he claimed that social media "is not a game changer yet" in driving television viewing. The revelation was a bit of a shock to those of us who regularly see hashtags planted in the corner of our favorite television shows, and assumed that we were the only ones not tweeting at every discussion-worthy plot twist.

As it turns out, Wurtzel drew his conclusions based on the Winter Olympics, which NBC had exclusive rights to broadcast. Across the 1500+ hours of coverage over 18 days, his team's research found that approx 3 million unique users, or about 19% of the television viewing audience, posted 10.6 million Tweets, and around 20 million people somehow engaged with Olympics-related commentary on Facebook. His conclusion? Popular shows drive social media activity, not the other way around.

Not everyone agrees with his conclusion. Kate Sirkin, head of Starcom MediaVest Group's global research, suggests that relatively rare international events like the Olympics are a bit of an anomaly, while more niche programs could benefit from social media comarketing. 

Sirkin's conclusion, at its face, make sense. Massive televised events that already become watercooler fodder due to their scale alone might see social media buzz as a result, not a cause, of their popularity. But other programming that doesn't suck all the oxygen out of the room could see social media chatter fueling much-needed attention. 

Take, for instance, cable dramas like The Walking Dead, which has seen its ratings fortunes grow year after year (an average of 5.24 million viewers in its first season, more than doubling to 13.3 million in its fourth). Although increasing marketing has helped propel the show to its enormous popularity, social media posts, including Tweets by stars Norman Reedus and Steven Yuen, and anticipatory hashtags (#TheWalkingDeadin15, etc.) help drive up pre-airing buzz. Official announcements and teasers released by the show days and moments before the show airs also help seize some social media mind share. Given its relative short term and live broadcast nature, none of this would be possible for the Olympics.

Hashtags can also encourage viewers to tune in and participate at the time of broadcast, instead of catching the show (and skipping commercials) later via Tivo or BitTorrent. And Jean-Philippe Maheu, Managing Director of Global Brand and Agency Strategy at Twitter makes a good, and related, point: "People who are tweeting don't go to the kitchen or bathroom—they stay in the room. They may not watch everything about ads, but they are watching."

Much of the value of robust social media engagement can also be attributed to feeding a community of dedicated fans. Along with webisodes, apps, and other innovative forms of digital marketing, active social media interaction with fans can sustain a show's mention in between broadcasts and while on hiatus. A season's cliffhanger can be the source of lots of speculation and wagers among a show's uber-fans.

While it's no surprise that any phenomenon like social media can have its impact oversold, underselling it is likewise possible. Given the dynamic and complex nature of the television-social media nexus, it's too early to write off Twitter's and Facebook's ability to sustain and grow TV show viewership. We are not even close to understanding the full influence of the second screen on the small screen.

No one in the digital advertising space has missed the explosion of social media activity by large brands over the past few years, particularly during major media and sporting events when everyone's eyes are shuttling between their television and their phone or tablet. After every year's Oscars and Super Bowl, the advertising world is abuzz with chatter about which social media forays garnered outsized attention for brands (think Oreo at the Super Bowl in 2013 and Arby's at the Grammys this year). Brands with an impeccable sense of timing and creative smarts earn well-deserved kudos.

What's discussed less is how many brands are effectively playing a zero-sum game by limiting their social media campaigns to the social media platforms themselves. Facebook has been rumored to be putting a slow squeeze on the organic reach of Pages. And taking in event-day Tweets can be a little like trying to sip from a firehose; often only the most catchy ones rise above the fray.

With this growing development in mind, we have published a free eBook, Beyond the Feed: Extending Social Media Marketing into Paid Media. The book specifically addresses:

• Real-world examples of brands "doing social right."
• Capabilities of display ads with social media content and functionality.
• How brands can amplify their social media investments off-platform.

We hope the eBook provides fuel for thought and discussion as marketers look to amplify the impact of successes in social media.

Flite's co-founder and President of Product and Technology Giles Goodwin was honored to be interviewed here in Flite's San Francisco office a few weeks ago, as part of Dell's #Founders Chats series on CIO.com.

In a couple of minutes, and with a colorful backdrop of our busy office, Giles imparts wisdom gleaned from his experience as a successful startup founder in the digital ad space. Here are a few highlights from this #Founders chat.

The current state of digital advertising

Most of us don’t have a favorable view of ads online, and we think that can be changed. There’s all this great content, great sites, great apps - and we think with the right tools and the right platform that ads can be just as good.

The people factor

Hiring is one the easiest things to do wrong … As you interview, really take a careful look at who you add to the team and make sure that you’re checking for both skills and a cultural fit.

The challenges of adapting to a dynamic market

Focus - Narrowing efforts and trying one thing ... Every feature should work its way into the platform. You need to find a balance between simplicity and necessity.

Making the shift from consumer to advertising space is difficult; projecting where the market is is the hard part. Something I’ve learned along the way is not being overly optimistic about the rate of change of the market, and knowing when customers are ready.

Have a look at the #Founders Chat and other startup founders profiled in the series at CIO.com.

Want to be “that person" who starts the buzz conversation of the night? Ask this question and watch as anyone remotely involved with technology perks up: “With all the technology around us, why are we still using pens and paper, especially for the important stuff?”

Paper processes— think physically signing documents or sending contracts— are no longer realistic in today’s world of real-time and immediate results. People are performing business transactions all the time and live online, both inside and out of work. A staggering 500 million tweets and nearly 45 billion emails are sent daily. The digital revolution is infusing into every area of our lives and is only picking up speed.

Many have called 2013 the year of mobility and this momentum has only increased into 2014. While we might experience a temporary slowing of new device releases into the mobile market, applications and technology integrated into the mobile ecosystem are taking center stage and flourishing. Integration, in a multitude of facets, has produced huge success in some of the world’s most influential industries. 

Wondering where the newest—and possibly most essential— adoption of digital management has come from? Public institutions. Governments are adopting cloud-computing models due to enormous budget cuts and demand to increase efficiency. But use cases are extended past just gathering signatures. Using government adoption as a sponsorship, companies such as IBM are stimulating economic activity in specific regions to raise innovation and endorse economic development. Small- and medium-sized businesses were the first to adopt cloud computing, as it allows for high-level infrastructure and rapid growth flexibility. But companies of all sizes and industries are starting to get their feet wet.

As digital management spreads, industries such as telecommunications companies are adopting new ways to utilize the platform. IBM even developed a unique hardware package, Cloud Service Provider Platform (CSP2) for their customers. The last sector that is calling upon technology to solve problems is education. For students, classes and research are totally transformed in a cost-effective manner with the switch from pen-and-paper to technology.

The two pinnacle mobility trends we are seeing today are ease of access and the velocity that an integrated technology platform brings. People are never without their mobile devices— raise your hand if you sleep with your mobile device within arm’s reach— and the ability to rapidly keep business moving is transformative. DocuSign, who provides technology to electronically sign documents, experiences 40-50% of documents signed within one hour due to these trends. 

Timesaving techniques are topping nearly every IT priority list for all industries. Everyone likes staying on top of trends, and in the world of digital advertising, there are several to choose from. A few key trends for 2014 include:

1. Mobile devices proliferation: Business is done on the go today and in a world dominated by smartphones and tablets, mobile devices are far outnumbering traditional desktops. Going mobile allows users to complete transactions— whenever and wherever is convenient. Companies are seeing record growth due to this phenomenon.
2. Internal process optimization: Companies are now integrating mobility and digital into internal processes. The procedure of tracking approved content and tracing client trails, among so many others, is now automated and streamlined. Mobility allows companies to plug into internal systems in a way that traditional paper based processes can’t.
3. Collaborative marketing: The heightened level of consumer mobility positions consumers as influencers. People talk, or more accurately type, and their influence spreads within circles. For every social media posting or email sent, advertisers have their work done for them thanks to the mobile devices that make rapid and widespread sharing of information possible. Private Jet proved how engaging customers via social media was the jackpot for collaborative marketing.

Digital practices are infusing themselves into nearly every facet of business processes, driving out traditional means of production. Time is saved, costs are dramatically decreased, and energy can be redirected in productive and useful ways to create a better client/ partner/ supplier/ employee experience. Think about it— if time is our most precious commodity, imagine everything you will be able to accomplish when you are gifted with so much of it back.

Matt Malden is the Chief Product Officer at DocuSign, Inc.

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:

"In real-time, there were 2.3 billion consumers engaging with the World Cup in 2010. This year it’ll be more like three billion. The biggest difference will be the need to be real-time rather than pre-planned."

Aisling McCarthy, who works on the Adidas account at We Are Social, a social media agency, agrees:

"It is a reactive environment, so you need to know how fans behave in and around games. They watch the game, they update on Twitter, they second-screen. If you understand the behavior then you can work out how to engage with that. It’s similar to the Super Bowl, where brands get much bigger bang for their buck, and not just that one ad during the game."

Coke's Twitter account background during the 2010 World Cup.

By putting out stories or messages that reflect organic conversations and events during the World Cup, brands can stay hyper-relevant, or even newsjack breaking stories to become part of a viral moment.

The potential is powerful, but there is a second reason for real-time marketing. Risk reduction.

For instance, in a separate interview a Coke representative said if unrest occurs in a region, they plan to soften their marketing. People are passionate about their teams and the climate could sour. Here, being agile also helps them avoid accidentally becoming a target for negativity if their marketing message is suddenly off.

"We hope there is no unrest, but we recognize these things happen. You always have to be smart to have all kind of Plan Bs, Plan Cs and Ds to prepare for any contingency. And if certain things happen, you might have to change the tonality of your marketing or communications ... to make sure your messaging better reflects the mood in a particular country."

The roots of Coke's real-time efforts lie in their Liquid and Linked marketing strategy, announced in 2011: “Through the stories we tell, we provoke conversations, and earn a disproportionate share of popular culture … Then we need to act and react to those conversations 365 days a year" says the narrator in Coke's video describing the strategy behind Liquid and Linked (below).

Coca Cola describes that a Liquid and Linked marketing strategy is needed because the rise of an “on demand culture” where consumers can "turn their demands on" 24-hours a day. In many regions of the world, the World Cup wont simply be turned on. It will dominate the news cycle and popular culture at large.

Rather than be displaced by the epic soccer contest, real-time marketing lets brands participate in the conversation. This real-time brand storytelling will go much further than simply talking about soccer. The World Cup is an international contest that ties to deep emotions.

Brand stories can involve a gamut of topics such as:

• Celebration

• National pride

• Competition

• Physical health

• Relaxation

• Being a team and working together

• Enjoying the outdoors

• Sharing an experience with family and friends

• Overcoming obstacles

• The universality of sports that defies race, income, and location

For instance, we'll likely see more content like this Tweet, which was promoted by Coke during the 2010 World Cup.

Congrats to ENG & USA on moving forward. Lots of celebrations across the globe. How's your celebration? http://CokeURL.com/63fx #WC2010

— Coca-Cola (@CocaCola) June 23, 2010

Promoted social posts will definitely be a popular avenue for brands to amplify their World Cup conversation. The above Tweet was promoted to run 86 million impressions and had an engagement rate of 6%. Social media is easy to leverage in a real-time manner and amplify.

But to extend the reach even further, some brands will leverage their display advertising as well. Brands have many options for including interactive functionality in ads for event-based campaigns, like polls, slideshows, and article snippets.

No matter what the channel, an estimated 3 billion people tuning into the event. That's an opportunity that any global brand shouldn't pass up.

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 many 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 15 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.

New school marketers are embracing tactics like content marketing, social media engagement, and native advertising because they provide value to users. These practices need to be fully introduced into display advertising as well.

Native ads are surging in popularity because they…

1. provide value to consumers

2. use content to tell a brand story, or position a brand within a compelling idea

3. are less noticeable as ads, which ironically maybe makes them more noticeable

Display advertising...

1. is both a visual and text-driven medium
2. has unmatchable reach and scale
3. already has an ecosystem across a massive number of relevant sites and apps

That’s why I find it strange that so many brands haven’t made the leap to using rich media for paid content distribution when it’s so well suited for it.

By suggesting that rich media ads get that native ads feel I'm not suggesting advertisers be deceptive. Quite the opposite.

You have these ads. They're out there in the wild probably driving brand awareness or direct response or both. Why not use those ads as a canvas for your brand storytelling too? Why not drop some snackable content into that rectangle with something interesting and relevant to those who see it?

Why not take a page from the native ads playbook?

This is a huge missed opportunity for so many brands. Especially brands that are already investing in content for other channels.

Here's an example of an IBM ad I discovered on AdAge.com a few months ago.

The ad contains a bunch of interesting videos about big data and other important business topics. It tells a great brand story about a caring company that has invested in being a resource to the business community. The content is geared to help make potential IBM customers more aware of important trends and concepts shaping the business landscape.

In short, this ad's content makes people better at their jobs.

That is powerful. That is what advertising can be. Something that makes people better.

I wrote another post a couple weeks ago called Content Advertising 101: 5 Principles to Start With where I showed examples, including the IBM ad above, of the following types of companies doing content advertising in display ads.

• a bank
• a salad dressing
• a snack food
• a credit card
• a cereal
• a consumer and industrial technology company

As you can see, it's a somewhat diverse group. I hope that inspires you. With the right processes and tools, content advertising should be within anyone's grasp.

So, what now? Well, if this is something you're intrigued by, check out our free eBook, The Essential Guide to Paid Media Publishing. The guide contains example content ad formats and case studies to help you get started with publishing content into ads, to get that native ads feel.

And if a 25-page book isn't your thing, here's a 2-minute video that describes paid media publishing in more detail.

Flite Co-Founder and President of Product and Technology Giles Goodwin authored a "Data-Driven Thinking" column for AdExchanger on the promise of native advertising, and how both media buyers and sellers will have to give up a bit more control in the process in order to achieve scale.

Native advertising has grown by leaps and bounds, but why hasn’t it knocked out the lowly banner? It has not reached scale, whereas banner advertising, whether direct or via RTB, enjoys almost limitless application and scope. Programmatic has only reduced friction and enhanced targeting. Native ads might be worth caring about, but the lack of scalability has rendered them a niche player.

Giles then goes on to explain the current native advertising exchange landscape, one that is attempting to build scale through a form of templatization. However, since the vast majority of publisher inventory lacks a common template, he argues that advertisers will have to cede some control over the ultimate format of native ads to the publishers they are buying media against.

In a native advertising programmatic setup, an ad’s content and formatting are decoupled. A bundle of content and its accompanying media can be associated with an advertiser’s media plan, and the matter of assembling a native ad unit left with the sell side. The publisher then digests the content bundle and media plan and automatically assembles an in-feed ad from it. Standardization occurs in the format of the content bundle and the individual publisher’s process for building ads from it.

Implicit is the assumption that publishers will also have to give up some control themselves. 

Programmatic means doing away with editorial review of incoming brand content. Rules for acceptable content need to be expanded, but there’s considerable variability within complied rules that might make publishers or their editors uneasy. Maybe that’s a bridge that publishers who’ve signed on for native have already crossed. What about others who’ve resisted? Unless they innovate a new advertising model that works better, they’ll have to capitulate, too.

Head over to AdExchanger to read the full column.

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. One is disclosure language indicating that the ad content is "sponsored," "promoted," etc. Indicating that native ads are paid content is incredibly important, given the potential consumer backlash for blurring the lines between editorial and sponsored content.

The second trait that all native ads share is an aspiration for a less-interruptive form of advertising. 

Beyond these two commonalities, The Native Advertising Playbook acknowledges the wide variance in native advertising. Within that range, native ads fall into six categories:

• In Feed Units
• Paid Search Units
• Recommendation Widgets
• Promoted Listings
• In-Ad (IAB Standard) with Native Element Units
• Custom / “Can’t be Contained”

1. In-Feed Units

When native advertising comes up in conversation, in-feed ads are probably the first thing that comes to mind. In feed-ads can take on two forms: 1) sponsored articles/content, and 2) in-feed promotions.

The in-feed sponsored content ads are comprised of sponsored content that simply mirrors the form and function of other content available in a feed. Examples of these kinds of in-feed native ads include sponsored content on BuzzFeed, Gawker, Forbes BrandVoice and Mashable.

As second type of in-feed native ad is a promotion ads. These ads appear in-stream, but instead of being "content ads" they focus on direct response and link to content off of the site.

Examples of in-feed promotion ads include the non-content ads on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Sharethrough and LinkedIn.

2. Paid Search Units

Paid search ads are promoted direct-response ads that appear along with search results. These ads are presented in a format and layout similar to organic results, except that they are indicated to be sponsored.

Paid search ad units were one of the original native ad formats to achieve massive scale.

3. Recommendation Widgets

Recommendation widgets are a growing category as advertisers are looking to new avenues to distribute their content marketing efforts. They allow sites to monetize their traffic by recommending content via a widget. Advertisers can then spend to have a preview of their content featured in these widgets.

One big difference in this category is that many of the other native ad units mimic surrounding content for a more native feel. Recommendation widgets take the opposite approach—they tend to always look the same, even from site to site. The native experience for these widgets then comes from the consistent user experience across many sites, which allows them to still blend in to some degree.

The front runners in this category are Outbrain, Taboola, Disqus and Gravity.

4. Promoted Listings

Promoted listings are a type of direct response ad that matches the browsing experience that is somewhat similar to in-feed promotions and paid search ads. These ads have their own category because they are found on sites that do not have traditional editorial content. The native product promotion on shopping sites like Etsy and Amazon are examples of this type of native ad.

5. In-Ad (IAB Standard)

The IAB-Standard native ad category is composed of native ads that come in standard IAB containers (e.g. 300x250 or 300x600 banners).

In this case, what makes these ads native is that they contain contextually-relevant content within the ad. By layering in native form and functionality on top of an already existing IAB standard, these types of ads can be easier to ingrate and scale for sites that already offer a lot of IAB standard inventory.

At Flite, we frequently work with premium publishers to develop these kinds of ads as premium ad products.

6. Custom / Can't Be Contained

Some native ads are simply to specific to a platform to be contained in a group. These ads are obviously native, but are too custom to be contained in one of the above types. Examples include Spotify and Pandora's sponsored playlists, as well as Flipboard's signature native ads. As the industry evolves, new native ad categories will likely emerge from the most prevalent in this bunch.

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Want to dig deeper into native ad formats?

Check out our free eBook, 9 Examples of Native Advertising: What They Are and Why They Work.

Several parallel developments are underway that are setting the stage for mobile video native advertising to make an outsized impact on the digital ad space in the coming years.

• Native advertising continues to grow. eMarketer is projecting $3.1 billion in spend this year, a 29% increase over 2013's $2.4 billion. The Wall Street Journal and mobile news app Circa are among the latest publishers announcing the move to native.
• Consumers are increasingly watching video on mobile. Smartphones' larger, higher-res screens, coupled with better (read: 4G) mobile data bandwidth, have made video consumption on mobile more tenable. According to Business Insider, mobile's share of online video has jumped from 4% at the start of 2012 to over 14% at the close of 2013. Cisco claims that this amounted to 53% of total mobile data traffic.
• There's greater appetite for longer-form video. As viewers are more apt to watch full episode- and movie-length video, their tolerance for 30- to 60-second video spots typical for television grows. As one such measure, ads for video content longer than 20 minutes grew 86% YOY, while the same for short- (less than 5 minutes) and medium-length clips (5-20 minutes) saw ad views grow by a more modest 22% and 13%, respectively (source: FreeWheel).

Since native advertising is all about providing richer, longer-form content within the same sets of consumption constraints as neighboring editorial content, and users are continue to gravitate towards video, especially on their smaller screens, there seems to be a perfect storm brewing for mobile native video, still a nascent and evolving format.

With the move to native will come an evolution in mobile video ads. The short pre-roll clip, the video version of a banner, will increasingly be displaced by longer content that provides a more immersive brand storytelling experience that advertisers value. A pioneer in this space, Facebook, which draws a mindblowing 53% of its revenue from its mobile advertising, debuted autoplay (sound off) videos in users' mobile feeds late last year, and announced that it had begun testing mobile video ads with similar autoplay functionality, called Premium Video Ads, earlier this month.

Interestingly, Facebook measures the performance of Premium Video Ads in a way that large brand advertisers are most comfortable measuring them: like television ads. Media is bought using Targeted Gross Rating Points and paid for based on Nielsen (online) delivery ratings. Also similar to television brand advertising, the impact will be measured in terms of "watchability, meaningfulness and emotional resonance." DR-focused metrics, including clicks and conversion, are not part of the picture.

Native ads continue to evolve quickly, especially in mobile, and in parallel mobile video consumption growth seems to know no limit. As mobile video native ads get their foothold, look for content evolution to track that of the best-in-breed native ads: informative and entertaining, similar to editorial content in the same feed, in which the brand enjoys a halo through association with the sort of content users will want to watch.

Coming from an agency background, I've witnessed firsthand how difficult it can be to execute a complex digital ad campaign.

A typical media plan might include over fifty ad placements, running on various properties, in different sizes, with multiple creatives. Trafficking was never a simple process, but as ad technologies have evolved, the workflow has become even messier. Juggling between a media plan, trafficking sheets, and other campaign information in your emails is frustrating and leaves plenty of room for human error.

That’s why I was thrilled last week to announce the general release of Campaign Studio. This is a tool for ad ops, analysts and media planners. It’s the product of a lot interviews and hard thinking to answer the question, “How can we make ad trafficking better?”

Campaign Studio is a complete digital ad management platform. It allows you to create, manage and measure the impact of an entire campaign.

We built a workflow that takes your mental model of how you want your ads to run, and turns it into a live campaign. We combined that workflow with a graphical interface that is easy on the eyes, so you can easily see and understand what you are building. Then we topped it off with layers of performance metrics that are helpful both during the campaign and for post campaign analysis.

Beyond Spreadsheets to a Visual Interface

Drag and drop campaign elements to model your campaign.

I think we can agree that most people prefer to use visuals to digest concepts rather than reading text.

Instead of spending time deciphering your campaign from a spreadsheet, Campaign Studio provides the information graphically. At a glance the interface shows:

• What ads are running?

• Where are the ads running?

• How is my campaign set up to deliver across my media plan?

• When is my campaign going live?

To do this, one of the first features we built for Campaign Studio was a site and media placement import. This sets up the campaign modeler with all of the elements included in the media plan: site information, placement information, creative size, start and end dates, and planned impressions.

Since so much of the current process exists as spreadsheets it seemed like a natural starting point. Once you get your information in place, you can define your market segments and model your campaign. With everything there in the interface, you can literally drag your ads around in your campaign to assign them to different segments.

Rethinking Ad Tag Management

Dealing with ad tags is another tedious process that we wanted to tackle. We ended up creating a smart ad tag that knows what creative to serve based on the model, which includes scheduling, dayparting, and A/B testing.

If you want to introduce changes—for instance, by changing the weighting on an A/B test—you can. The campaign’s ad tag simply follows your instructions on the very next impression served.

To make things even easier, Campaign Studio can generate all of your ad tags at the same time, based on how you have modeled your campaign. In many cases, you only need one ad tag per ad size. So if you have 100 ads with dimensions 300x250, 320x50, and 728x90, that would just be 3 ad tags for the bunch. In cases where you need a special ad tag for a particular placement, you can generate that too.

The previous process involved countless ad tags which had to be meticulously inserted into an ad server, so we view improving this as a huge win for ad ops.

In-Depth Analytics that Provide Context

Generate reports by Site, Media Placement, Ad, Ad Size, and Segment.

Campaign Studio captures a lot information, all of which needed to be sortable and discoverable. To make it possible to bubble up insights we molded the data into an “organized hierarchy” which allows performance data to be sliced and diced across each aspect of a campaign.

The hierarchy is nice because you can see the big picture, or drill down into each level of information for more detail. For example:

How is my campaign performing overall?

> What is the best performing segment?

> What are the best and worst performing sites in that segment?

> Which ads running on those sites are have the highest and lowest interaction rates and CTRs?

Campaign Simulator

Campaigns are complicated, and despite every effort we made to eliminate problems, people still can make mistakes.

So we built a campaign simulator. That way, before the campaign goes live, you can test it, and ensure the right ad will be served when a segment matches specific criteria, like date, site or placement. The simulator is a simple feature, but I love that I can create and publish a campaign with 100% confidence that it’s set up to run as expected.

Thanks

During the Beta, when I asked a friend how he would describe Campaign Studio, he said, “It gives you back your time.” When he said that, I knew we had accomplished what we set out to do. It's hard to estimate just how many hours Campaign Studio might save.

We could never have come this far without help. I can’t thank our beta partners enough for their feedback. And I can't thank my team enough either. This has been an incredibly satisfying product to release.

To our customers: If you want to try Campaign Studio and aren't sure where to start, please reach out to me and I’ll help get you set up.

If you're intrigued by CONTENT@SCALE and would like to know a bit more about how it works at a practical level, check out this newly-released video that explains what it offers participating advertisers and how the interface works in concert with the Flite Design Studio.

If you'd like to learn more about this platform, please visit our CONTENT@SCALE page and, if you're a Flite or Starcom MediaVest Group customer, please contact your account manager.

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. When smartphone owners engage with their phone, 57% of the time they are also using another device at the same time. 67% of users start shopping on one device and continue on another.

Gaming consoles, smart TVs, set-top boxes, and smart glasses and watches have also entered the mix.

Simultaneously, interactive media is replacing static creatives. The rising sophistication of multi-screen digital media draws a growing contrast with flat banner ads, which consumers increasingly ignore. So while spend on desktop banner advertising will barely grow over the course of this decade, the increased adoption of interactive advertising incorporating rich media and video will vastly outpace that growth.

Why is the convergence of device proliferation and growth in rich media significant? Because the incumbent platform for delivering rich ad experiences—Flash—isn’t up to the task of being viable across most new platforms. The same devices whose sales and usage are swelling are the ones that don’t support Flash. All of these devices do support HTML5, however.

That means that to remain relevant to the majority of consumers—to reach them on the screens they’re using—advertisers must begin to create HTML5 ads to augment or replace what they are currently doing with Flash.

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Download the entire REPORT: Why Digital Advertising Must Embrace HTML5 to learn more about the following topics:

• What is HTML5?
• Which Companies Are Already Using HTML5?
• What Else Does HTML5 Make Possible for Advertisers?
• HTML5 vs. Flash Support
• Chart: Flash vs. HTML5 Support By Browser

We recently published a case study that underscores the ability of content-rich ads to amplify and extend the impact of brand messages.

In the profiled campaign, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, eager to connect with Hispanic mothers, worked with agency Starcom MediaVest Group and publisher MamásLatinas to create interactive ads with embedded videos and article content that would resonate with Latina mothers interested in ideas for family activities. Leveraging the unique set of capabilities in the Flite Platform, Kellogg's updated their in-market ad units with fresh content on a regular basis, and, as an agile marketing best practice, included comments and responses to ads shared in social media within ad updates themselves.

Earned media responses, content consumption, and engagement rate left no doubt to the campaign's success: the ads were a hit among their targeted audiences. Read the full case study to see metrics and a sampling of the (functional) English- and Spanish-language ads that struck a chord with Hispanic mothers.

The Always-On Consumer takes their digital connection with them. (Photo Credit: VIKTOR HANACEK)

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. It's not only the ability to reach your market across devices, but also with a frequency and relevance that matches their appetite for media and interaction.

The first step in achieving always-on marketing is to move away from big idea campaigns, and instead to use long ideas and consistent engagement.

By big ideas campaigns I mean classic ad campaigns that were set up to make a big splash. They would usually have one central idea, repeated so often that it could sink into popular consciousness. For a while big ideas worked really well.

However, today’s always-on consumer seems less affected by big ideas. Always-on consumers have unprecedented access to information, literally at their fingertips. They have social media and apps to create customized digital experiences tailored to their own tastes. Maybe they don’t want to be told what to think or do and would rather figure it out for themselves? If we accept that repetition of a single, perfect brand story isn't necessarily the best or most effective way to sway opinion anymore, then what is?

One tactic that has gained a lot of traction is to replace "big idea" marketing, with "long idea" marketing.

Long ideas consist of multiple small touch points over time. Each moment ties back to a larger brand story or brand ideal. The sum of these small ideas is greater than its parts, and the result can be a longer-lasting story than many big idea campaigns.

By recalibrating your strategy from big idea campaigns, to always-on, long idea campaigns, your brand story can stay aligned with consumer habits and behavior patterns.

To do this, deliver utility to consumers in addition to brand messages. For most teams, that means some form of content marketing or content advertising. When the content delivers consumer value, those efforts can generate additional exposure in the form earned media.

Always-on marketing also requires active listening. The most commonly used tools are social listening tools, but there is almost limitless depth to the data than can be mined to understand what is relevant to your market from one day to the next. While big-picture data is great for this, don’t forget to also listen closely to your customers.

While you are actively listening on social media, take some time to respond and start a dialogue as well.

In addition to interpersonal exchanges, offer real-time engagement by expanding the frequency and duration of your marketing activities. Diversifying the tactics you use can provide opportunities to reach on-the-go consumers more frequently or more often in their always-on lives.

Building successful long ideas also requires constant iteration. By embracing agile marketing practices, you can learn and adapt to achieve even more positive outcomes. Stay fluid and use experiments and data to help guide the way.

Finally, because the always-on consumer is also frequently using devices to stay connected, content and ads need to use multi-screen technologies and channels to be able to reach them wherever they are. In paid media that means moving toward native advertising, HTML5 for display ads, and other formats that are multi-platform. For owned media, it means having a mobile-friendly website or building a mobile app. These long ideas require multiple touches, and if you’re missing your audience half the time because you lack a mobile strategy, it can reduce the brand story’s overall effectiveness.