Articles about Advertising

Since the dawn of time, watching TV has always been an exercise in patience and frustration. Just as you're beginning to enjoy the unfolding storyline in your favorite shows or movies, they are interrupted by a series of commercials that you most likely are not going to find useful or interesting.

That has been starting to change over the past few years as the entire advertising landscape has undergone massive paradigm shifts, but there's still a lot of work to be done in the prehistoric landscape that is traditional TV ad buying. Enter Adobe.

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It has been a few weeks since advertisers started to pull out of YouTube after concern about the placement of ads. Since then, the company has been scrambling to earn back trust and it says it has "held thousands of productive conversations with advertisers, and implemented additional controls to restore advertiser confidence."

Now YouTube has set out what it classifies as hate speech, and says that any content that falls into this category will not be eligible for monetization. It's a move that's designed to calm the fears of advertisers, but there is concern that the rules being put in place are now too strict and could affect the incomes of large numbers of YouTubers.

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Starting early next year, Chrome users will benefit from an ad blocker built into the web browser. As part of its work with the Coalition for Better Ads, Google is looking to clamp down on intrusive ads that web users find most irritating.

Google is a company whose business model is built largely on advertising, and it is keen for the experience of being subjected to ads to be as painless as possible for people. But rather than block all ads -- killing revenue streams for many websites -- Google wants to block only those that do not comply with Better Ads Standards.

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Google's own bot filtering catches only a small percentage of the bot traffic that hits most sites, leading to traffic analysis data being skewed.

Bot detection specialist Distil Networks is launching a free tool designed to remove the bad data created by bots.

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Just a few days ago, the BBC revealed that it was planning to introduce password checks for iPlayer users so it could ensure that a valid TV license is in place. Following on from this, the corporation has updated its Privacy and Cookies Policy.

The changes mean that personal information is shared with TV Licensing to check whether individuals have paid for a license. The BBC also says that it will use the personal data it collects to deliver "relevant advertising" on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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When it's not being accused of being used for propaganda or peddling fake news, Facebook is often criticized for being home to meaningless clickbait that exists only to generate ad revenue. As part of an on-going drive to make people's News Feeds more useful and pleasant to use, the social network is clamping down on what it refers to as "links to low-quality web page experiences."

Facebook wants to cut back on content that is "misleading, sensational and spammy" and links to web pages that contain "little substantive content and that is covered in disruptive, shocking or malicious ads." Starting right now, you should start to see fewer of these links.

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Facebook's fight against fake news has been taken to the printed press. The social networking giant has taken out a series of ads in UK newspapers giving tips about how to spot fake news. The ad campaign comes as Brits prepare to go to the polls and vote in the snap General Election in a month's time.

The issue of fake news really came to prominence in the run up to the US election, and research has shown that Facebook has become a tool that is used as part of campaigning to spread propaganda. In addition to the print ads, Facebook has also closed down thousands of UK accounts and is also expanding its automated system for spotting fake news to the UK.

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YouTube offers businesses the ability to connect meaningfully with their audience and build an engaged base of customers and prospects. The video sharing website has never been more popular. Today, over three billion hours of videos are watched per month, with an additional 300 hours of videos being added each minute. Yet, out of all the videos uploaded to YouTube, only a very small percentage generate more than a few hundred views; and only an elite few of those ultimately end up going viral. However, when done right, uploading videos can be big business. And not just for traditional organizations.

The number of channels earning six figures each year on YouTube is increasing by 50 percent year on year. According to a 2014 Variety survey, the stars of YouTube’s most popular channels, such as Swede Felix Kjellberg’s PewDiePie and Germán Aranis’ HolaSoyGerman, are now more influential and popular than mainstream celebrities among teenagers, so they need to be taken seriously by marketers.

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It’s time to stuff the stereotypes. For too long in the minds of too many, gaming has been thought of as a sub-culture populated by teenage boys sitting indoors and playing shoot ‘em ups on either a console or computer.

The statistics to disprove this have been around for a long time -- the average age of a US games buyer was 36 last year and women make up more than 40 percent of gamers. Nearly two-thirds of US households contain at least one frequent gamer. Staggering stats that make it hard to pinpoint who the "typical" gamer is -- because there isn’t one anymore.

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In case you missed it, rumors are rife that Google will soon introduce an ad blocker in Chrome. Understandably, there's concern about the power that would give Google over the advertising industry and its competition. As a member of said competition, I am equal parts concerned and supportive of an ad blocker in Chrome.

It’s certainly an interesting story. On first thought it’s a little ironic, in that a company which makes a large proportion of its money through advertising revenue is not only giving users of its browser the ability to block ads from appearing, but turning it on by default too. If the rumor is true, the addition of an ad blocker in Chrome could limit the reach of ads to over half of the world’s internet users overnight. That’s a big change, and in many instances it’s needed.

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Social media is powerful, so it's really little wonder that the likes of Facebook are used for propaganda. We already know that advertising can be very carefully targeted for maximum impact, and this can prove important when it comes to getting across a political message.

With the UK on the verge of an early general election -- one that will be fought with Brexit and Scottish Independence looming large -- political campaigns are getting underway, including on Facebook. To help educate voters about how they are being besieged by political parties, a free Chrome extension called Who Targets Me? has been launched. It reveals just how personal information made available on the social network is used.

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A leaked internal document shows that Facebook is capable of identifying people according to their emotional state. The document, seen by The Australian, shows how the social network can monitor users' posts and determine when they are feeling "stressed, defeated, overwhelmed, anxious, nervous, stupid, silly, useless, or a failure."

The leak pertains to Facebook's Australian office and suggests that algorithms can be used to detect "moments when young people need a confidence boost." It raises serious ethical questions about Facebook's capabilities, but the company denies it is doing anything wrong.

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Like Google, Facebook places great importance on advertising. The social network not only earns money from ads itself, but also allows companies and individuals to do so by displaying ads in videos. Pirates were quick to spot an easy way to earn money -- steal someone else's popular video and watch the ad revenue roll in.

Now Facebook is fighting back in a way that has already been used to some extent by YouTube. There is a new "claim ad earnings" option in the Rights Manager tool which enables the owner of a particular video to bag the ad revenue when their material is pirated. But the update to Rights Manager are more far-reaching than this.

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It's news that -- on the face of it -- makes very little sense; the Wall Street Journal reports that Google is going to include an ad-blocking feature in its Chrome web browser. For a company that makes so much money from advertising this seems like something of a strange move, but in the light of recent ad controversy, it could be sensible business.

Just last month a large number of big companies started to pull advertising from Google and YouTube after finding that their ads were appearing on sites hosting extremist material. This, coupled with the fact that there is a general backlash against advertising from consumers (hence Adblock Plus pushing its Acceptable Ads program), could explain why Google is keen to be seen to be doing something that will give uses a better ad experience with greater control.

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Back in February, Google opened up YouTube live streaming to channels with 10,000 or more subscribers. Just two months later, the company has slashed this requirement to just 1,000 subscribers.

But while the bar may have been lowered in terms of subscriber numbers, there are still a few hoops that would-be live streamers have to jump through. It does mean, however, that many more YouTubers will be able to stream their content live, so there will be a greater selection of content to consume.

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