Eye-Tracking and Survey-Based Study by Sharethrough and IPG Media Lab Delivers Insight into Native Advertising Consumer Perception and Behavior 

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Sharethrough, in conjunction with the IPG Media Lab, part of IPG Mediabrands, announced the results of the industry’s first native ad effectiveness study measuring visual attention and brand lift for native ads from top brands, including National Geographic, Southern Comfort and a premium travel brand. Findings show that consumers visually engage with native ads more frequently than traditional banner ads and in an equivalent way to editorial content. The study also found native ads drive superior brand lift over standard banner ads.

Native Ads Are More Visually Engaging than Banner Ads

The study, which surveyed 4,770 consumers and used latest eye-tracking technology to assess the attention of 200 consumers, showed that users’ visual attention clearly was superior for native ads than banner ads.

1.       Frequency of Views – Consumers looked at native ads 53% more frequently than banner ads. Native ads were viewed 4.1 times on average per session versus banner ads, which were viewed 2.7 times on average per session.

2.       Total viewership – 25% more consumers were measured to look at in-feed native ad placements (the most common editorial native ad format) than banner ad units.

Native Ads Drive Higher Brand Lift than Banner Ads

The study showed that native ads drove higher brand lift for all campaigns. Interestingly, the delta was even more pronounced for respondents who had previously bought a product from the advertiser.

1.       Higher Average Brand Lift – Native ads registered an 18% higher lift for purchase intent and 9% higher lift for brand affinity responses than banner ads

2.       More Likely to Be Shared – 32% of respondents said the native ad “is an ad I would share with a friend of family member” versus just 19% for banner ads.

3.       More Personal – 71% of consumers that had previously bought a product from the advertiser said that the brand was one they “personally identify with” versus just 50% for banner ads.

Native Ads Are Consumed the Same Way People View Editorial Content

The study showed that users visual attention for native ads was nearly equivalent to the visual engagement of original editorial content. The behavior was measured by placing original content and native ads in the exact same placement on the webpage and measuring respective engagement.

1.       Total Viewership – A slightly higher percentage of people looked at the native ads (26%) than original editorial content (24%)

2.       Time Spent Viewing – Consumers looked at the original editorial content for an average of 1.2 seconds vs native ads where they viewed for an average of 1.0 seconds.

“At the IPG Media Lab, we know that marketers’ greatest loss in value is most often inattention to ads. Past research shows us that neither overly intrusive nor easily ignored ads are effective. But, this study validates that we are on the right path to finding that middle-ground, and that native advertising is a compelling way to navigate this middle ground,” said Kara Manatt, VP, Consumer Research Strategy, IPG Media Lab, who co-authored the report.

Clear Implications for Media Buyers and Planners

1.       For campaigns that are focused on driving brand metrics such as brand affinity and purchase intent, native ads have shown a superior capacity to improve these metrics than banner ads.

2.       Marketers that are actively creating original brand content should look to promote their content through native ads, as people view them similarly to editorial content

3.       For campaigns that are targeting brand loyalists, native ads have shown a strong ability to help people identify more deeply with the brand.

Clear Implications for Publishers 

1.       Native ads have shown to be appreciated more than banner ads by consumers and thus offer an overall better user experience for a website

2.       Native ads provide marketers with a new channel to connect with consumers that is a strong fit for a brand’s content marketing efforts

3.       Native ads have shown a strong ability to drive higher brand affinity among brand loyalists, which strengthens the opportunity for publishers to drive recurring demand from advertisers.

To see a full visualization of the data from the study, please visit: http://www.sharethrough.com/native-ad-infographic

“This study proves native ads are more engaging to users and outperform standard banners for advertisers. We’ve seen these ad formats utilized successfully across social media sites and are now watching the next evolution on to high quality editorial publishers. The data from this study validates this trend and should help accelerate the adoption among a greater number of sites,” said Patrick Keane, President, Sharethrough.

About Sharethrough

Sharethrough is the leading provider of native advertising technology solutions for brands and publishers. Fortune 1000 brands and their agencies work with Sharethrough to guarantee audiences and maximize social engagement for their original branded content, and social web publishers partner with Sharethrough to create native, non-interruptive brand content placements via the Sharethrough native advertising platform. Founded in 2008, the company now has 85 full-time employees and is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York and Chicago.  Sharethrough is privately held and please visit www.sharethrough.com to learn more.

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SAN MATEO, Calif. – Mobile publishers such as Facebook, Pandora, and Twitter are rapidly taking over the mobile display advertising market in the United States. Where in past years, ad networks such as Google, Millennial Media, and Apple received most of the spending on mobile display ads, now publishers control the segment, thanks to very strong sales growth in the past year. Facebook, Pandora, Twitter, and The Weather Channel all registered strong sales in 2012 and all (with the exception of Pandora) popped onto the scene from zero sales in 2011. As a result, publishers controlled 52% of U.S. mobile display ad spending in 2012, compared to the 39% they received in 2011. This is one of the results from a newly published International Data Corporation (IDC) report, 2012 U.S. Mobile Advertising Market Sizing and Vendor Market Shares (Doc #240311).

“Networks, especially independent ones, are entering a difficult phase, in which, with an ever smaller share of revenue, they’ll have to compete with publishers, which will only grow in strength.”

“Mobile ad networks are losing market share to publishers, and we expect them to lose even more going forward,” said Karsten Weide, Vice President of Media & Entertainment at IDC. “Networks, especially independent ones, are entering a difficult phase, in which, with an ever smaller share of revenue, they’ll have to compete with publishers, which will only grow in strength.”

Additional findings from IDC’s U.S. mobile advertising report include the following:

- Strong growth in mobile advertising spending in the United States continues, even if annual growth rates continue to decline: the market grew by 88% in 2012 (down from 125% in 2011) to a total of $4.5 billion (up from $2.4 billion in 2011). Mobile market share within all digital advertising reached 11% in 2012, up from 7% in 2011. For 2013, IDC expects a growth rate of 55–65%, with spending coming in around $7 billion, for the United States.

- Mobile display advertising has increased its market share of total mobile spending by no less than 8 percentage points to 39%, versus 61% for search ads, in 2012. Mobile display ads attracted $1.7 billion in 2012 compared with $0.7 billion in 2011. Growth rates have picked up again in 2012 after a dip in 2011. They were at 134% in 2010, 118% in 2011, and 132% in 2012.

- Among mobile publishers selling display advertising, Facebook was the number 1 company in 2012 ($234 million gross revenue), followed by Pandora ($229 million) with Twitter coming in third ($117 million). In the ad network segment, not much has changed. Google still holds the top spot ($243 million). One change is that Millennial Media ($151 million) has taken over Apple ($125 million) to claim the number 2 spot. Jumptap remains number 4 ($90 million).

- Marketers spent $2.8 billion in 2012 on mobile search ads, compared with $1.6 billion in 2011 and $0.7 billion in 2010. Growth rates have slowed significantly, down from 195% in 2010 to 127% in 2011 to 68% in 2012. Google still dominates the market with gross revenue of $2,166 million, and a gross market share of 79%.

The IDC report, 2012 U.S. Mobile Advertising Market Sizing and Vendor Market Shares (Doc #240311), sizes the 2012 mobile online advertising market in the United States. The report breaks out search versus display advertising revenue, estimates gross revenue vendor market shares, and highlights the most important trends in the mobile ad segment.

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. For more than 49 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world’s leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

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Top 2% of digital consumers see 24 times as many ads; advertisers spend 85% more to reach them

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Major advertisers spend an average 85% more on display, mobile, social and video advertising to reach the most elite customers – the top 2% of the global online audience – according to the new Digital Audience Report from Turn (www.turn.com), the cloud marketing platform. This “Most Valuable Audience” is so in-demand that they are shown 24 times as many ads as the average digital consumer. And this premium audience is more likely to engage with brands through channels such as Facebook and online video ads.

The report (accessed at www.turn.com/digitalaudiencereport) highlights many invaluable insights for marketers seeking to reach relevant audiences through cost-effective digital advertising strategies. It is based on an analysis of data from the Turn platform, which every day makes more than 50 billion advertising decisions, analyzes over 1.5 trillion anonymous customer attributes, and provides instant access to billions of digital ad impressions – resulting in an unmatched ability to provide game-changing insights.

According to the Digital Audience Report, the characteristics the Most Valuable Audience generally has in common include:
•       Income above $76,900 a year
•       They are aged 21-34
•       They are white-collar professionals or students
•       Live in a city and like foreign travel
•       Like bargains but also shopping at Banana Republic and Sephora
•       Diverse media tastes. They enjoy NPR, but also America’s Next Top Model and Family Guy.

“It may not be shocking that a premium group of consumers spends more and is therefore very appealing to marketers,” says Paul Alfieri, vice president of marketing, Turn. “What is incredible is the window we have into the world of these digital elites and what makes them so valuable. They can be reached very cost-effectively by smart marketers who seize the power of the Turn platform and the massive scale and deep data insights we deliver.”

The report highlights other important data for marketers in the U.S., E.U. and Asia-Pacific, such as eCPM trends across channels and regions – critical insights that show the possibilities for reaching audiences efficiently at scale.

Among the other findings from the Turn Digital Audience Report, January – March 2013:

•       Eighty-five percent of digital elites reside in the U.S. Another 10% live in the E.U., a region that’s growing rapidly. Expect to see Asia-Pacific and South American markets continue to gain, as global brands look to RTB and data-driven marketing in new regions.

•       Mobile ad impressions remain inexpensive due to concerns over a reliable ecosystem and standards for anonymous data targeting. Average global eCPM for mobile fell from $1.31 to $.72, a 45% drop.

•       Social advertising remains cost-effective and is becoming immensely popular. The Turn Platform alone has seen volume grow to billions of impressions per month. Average global eCPM for social advertising went down 20%, from $.30 to $.24 between January and March.

•       Display and video advertising continue to exercise their dominance, with a premium being paid by advertisers looking to reliably reach consumers through familiar, big-canvas formats. Display eCPM went from $.92 to $1.06 – a 15.2% rise. Global video eCPM rose from $9.41 in January, to $9.99 in March – a 6.16% increase.

Turn provides two real-time marketing applications: Audience Suite, an enterprise data management platform, and Campaign Suite, a digital media buying platform for video, mobile, social, and display advertising. Turn works with the world’s top brands, agencies and trading desks including Aegis, AT&T, Chrysler, Experian, IPG/Mediabrands, OMG, Sojern and Vivaki.

About Turn

Turn delivers real-time insights that transform the way leading advertising agencies and marketers make decisions. Our cloud applications and Internet-scale architecture work together to provide a complete picture of customers, execute cross-channel campaigns, and connect with a worldwide ecosystem of more than 100 partners. Turn is headquartered in Silicon Valley and provides its platform, products, and services worldwide. For more information, visit turn.com or follow @turnplatform.

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Integration with Spindle’s MeNetwork Platform Enables Retailers and Restaurants to Connect with Consumers Through Mobile Devices

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Spindle, Inc. (OTCBB:SPDL), a leading provider of  mobile payments solutions, today announced it has reached an agreement with TruEffect™, a leader in First-Party display advertising technology, to integrate Spindle’s MeNetwork mobile marketing platform with TruEffect’s display advertising services. As a result of this partnership, TruEffect will be able to use the MeNetwork platform to deliver location- and time-relevant offers from major retailers and restaurants to consumers through their mobile devices.

“We are delighted to form this partnership with TruEffect, which is considered the leader in First-Party advertising services,” said Bill Clark, president of Spindle. “We expect the combination of TruEffect’s First-Party advertising technology with MeNetwork’s robust mobile marketing platform will result in more efficient marketing campaigns and serve the needs of both merchants and consumers.”

As part of the agreement, TruEffect will utilize its sales force and customer relationships in an effort to increase the volume of merchants on the MeNetwork platform. MeNetwork plans to leverage TruEffect’s powerful First-Party display advertising platform to acquire customers by providing incentives to download the MeNetwork app in select advertisements.

The MeNetwork application was recently featured by Apple during the iOS 6 launch as a prime example of native Passbook integration. The MeNetwork app is designed to allow merchants to push offers, events, and announcements to consumers who have “subscribed” to the merchants they want to hear from, and this active connection between merchant and consumer has propelled MeNetwork to a benchmark-beating user engagement rate among lifestyle category apps (user engagement rate is the percentage of app downloaders who have used the app at least once in a rolling 30-day window).

Headquartered in Westminster, Colorado, TruEffect is recognized as a leading provider of First-Party advertising solutions. TruEffect’s technology is designed to enable more efficient delivery of web-based marketing programs, and give advertisers and agencies greater visibility into the effectiveness of campaigns.

”The partnership with Spindle will significantly expand the breadth of our offering to our national and regional retail customers,” said Finn Faldi, chief executive officer of TruEffect. “Integrating mobile marketing with our display advertising platform will result in a compelling solution that we expect will yield both strong penetration and customer conversion rates.”

About Spindle, Inc.

Spindle is an innovator of mobile commerce solutions for financial services providers and consumer-facing merchants of all sizes. Focused on pioneering new ways for businesses to rapidly integrate mobile payments acceptance and mobile marketing services while empowering location-based merchant discovery, fulfillment and frictionless mobile payments for consumers, Spindle is dedicated to expanding beyond traditional electronic payment boundaries by offering cutting-edge solutions that allow clients, partners, merchants and consumers to take full advantage of the rapidly emerging mobile economy. Spindle has an extensive proprietary intellectual property portfolio—which include patents pending—that encompass networks, mobile payments, and security. For more information, visit www.spindlehq.com.

About TruEffect       

TruEffect uses a First-Party customer data approach that enables advertisers to improve targeting the right ad to the right person, more accurately measure advertising effectiveness and improve performance while managing costs all to increase return on ad spend for their customers. TruEffect achieves this return on ad spend performance by providing a software as a service advertising technology suite that is individually configured to the requirements of advertisers and agencies to deliver, measure, manage and target their internet media activities.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements regarding our expected future financial position, results of operations, cash flows, financing plans, business strategy, products and services, competitive positions, growth opportunities, plans and objectives of management for future operations, as well as statements that include words such as “anticipate,” “if,” “believe,” “plan,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “could,” “should,” “will,” and other similar expressions are forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements, as described in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission which are available for review at www.sec.gov, to differ materially from anticipated results, performance, or achievements. We are under no obligation to (and expressly disclaim any such obligation to) update or alter our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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Breakthrough in visibility of Display Ads

- Online ads are not loaded below the fold
- Guaranteed 0% waste for advertisers
- Market for Display Ads will become more transparent

WebAds Interactive Advertising now guarantees advertisers that Display Advertisements will only be shown when visible. By doing this, WebAds meets the increasing demand from advertisers to only pay for ads that are actually visible. Serving display ads that are not visible are now a thing of the past when buying WebAds NL inventory. With the ’0% waste tag’ developed by WebAds and its technical partner AdSolutions, WebAds guarantees advertisers that website visitors will actually see the ads served. WebAds wants to play its part in contributing to a transparent online advertising market. Ensuring 0% waste is both an improvement and also an important first step forwards. WebAds asks all its network publishers to urgently implement this new 0% waste technology.

Tjeerd Kooij, Managing Director WebAds Nederland: “Every website contains several ad positions. Some of these positions are not visible during each visit session. Visitors leave the site without scrolling down the site, for instance. Increasingly, advertisers are demanding that ads are only shown when visible and will only pay for these ad impressions if they’re above the fold. This is fair, according to WebAds as ads that aren’t visible are pointless, as no one can see or click on them. We therefore understand the demand for viewable ads. We believe that a real-time medium such as online advertising should be able to offer this upfront instead of afterwards. An ad call should only be made when the ad position is in view. With our new developed technique, we can not only ensure advertisers minimum waste but also maximum visibility, thus preventing complicated cost models that are calculated afterwards. This will make online advertising more transparent and reliable.”

Every year WebAds performs a network-wide visibility study which gives us insight into the duration of ad contact, visibility into advertisement per website, placement (area) and ad size. Publishers can optimize their websites based on this study and by doing so minimize the possible impact on their inventory through implementation of the 0% waste tag. After implementing the 0% waste tag, ads are loaded when at least one pixel is in view. WebAds expects its publishers to implement the changes within the next couple of weeks and guarantees 0% waste.

WebAds Netherlands
WebAds is an online sales house that sells display and non-display advertising space for over 130 sites on internet and mobile phone. With this broad network of sites, WebAds has a monthly reach of 7.5 million internet users. WebAds, therefore, is a one-stop shop that enables advertisers, media and advertising agencies to realize effective advertising campaigns. WebAds is continually developing products to meet the demands of advertisers and its goal is to optimize revenues for publishers that have selected WebAds as their outsourced Sales House. WebAds now offers Brand, Video, Mobile, Audience and Performance marketing solutions. Visit our website at www.webads.nl

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TORONTO - comScore’s digital audience measurement data released in December 2012 shows AcuityAds Inc among the top performers for display advertising reach in Canada (Key Measures report for the Ad Network category, December 2012). comScore Inc. is a global leader in measuring the digital world and a preferred source of digital business analytics. According to comScore’s data, Acuity reached an audience of approximately 18 million out of a total pool of 27.8 million unique online consumers. These impressive reach numbers place Acuity just behind such online giants as Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. AcuityAds ranked first among pure Real Time Bidding players*.

“The comScore results are very exciting as one of our key goals is to deliver extensive, quality reach for our clients. We are extremely proud of our tremendous growth over the past six months,” said Tal Hayek, Acuity’s CEO. “We are also proud to be playing in the same league as multi-billion dollar companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, and to have done so by growing organically.”

The comScore report highlights Acuity’s growth momentum in the real-time bidding space. “We’ve been using the Acuity platform for over a year, so comScore’s numbers are not surprising to me,” said Karen Geller, Media Planning Manager at Shaw Media, “but they confirm Acuity’s value proposition as an online reach tool for our brands.”

“We see over 20 billion impressions every day. We see the transactions that take place in the market,” says Dr. Nathan Mekuz, Acuity’s CTO. “A lot of it is very inefficient. We saw lots of room for improvement and automation in the industry and so we founded Acuity with the vision of a fully automated machine learning system. Today our vision has become a reality with hundreds of international brands using our platform. ”

About AcuityAds

Acuity is Real Time Bidding. Founded in 2009, with the vision of creating better online advertising technology, Acuity’s combination of cutting edge machine learning and exclusive data has revolutionized the industry. Acuity is the Real Time Bidding platform provider of choice for many Fortune 500 brands and digital agencies and is currently experiencing fast growth thanks to the launch of a real-time bidding solution for online video advertising.

* According to AcuityAds’ custom-defined ranking based on comScore data.

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