First Thing Monday – June 20 2017

There’s always plenty happening in the fast-moving world of online search and advertising. Here’s a summary of key things that caught our eye last week…

Coming soon to YouTube and Gmail: Life Events targeting

Graduating? Moving house? Getting married? Advertisers will soon be able to target YouTube and Gmail ads to consumers based on upcoming or recent important events in their lives.

Making the announcement at Google Marketing Next, Bhanu Narasimhan, Google’s Director of Audience Products, said that the company’s machine learning technology would use “intent-rich signals, which include searches and video” to identify target audiences. Available later this year, we’re told.

Find out more (skip ahead to the 28:02 mark for the announcement on Consumer Patterns and Life Events)…

IAB claims 45% of users take action after seeing mobile ads

An IAB survey of 200 adults in 18 countries (no, not NZ) concludes we’re all hopelessly addicted to our smartphones, and highly likely to take action when we see a mobile ad.

The report found that nearly half the respondents (49%) spent more than three hours daily on their mobile devices; 22% check their phones every five minutes.

The IAB also determined mobile ads to be highly effective, with 45% using the web (and 47% using mobile apps) responding or taking action after seeing ads on their mobile device.

Those responses looked high to us, but it’s because the IAB is including remembering the brand being advertised and feeling more favourably towards the brand/product as actions.

Read more…

Bing Ads rolls out expanded device targeting globally, supports mobile-only campaigns.

Bing announces the global rollout of device targeting and ability to import the device bid adjustments from Google AdWords.…Read More

Google’s mobile-first index likely not coming until 2018 at earliest
At SMX Advanced, Gary Illyes says Google will “communicate a lot” before rolling out the mobile-first index and the rollout will not be coming until 2018 at the earliest

Read More…

Food for thought: The art of brand storytelling
Steve Morton (CMO, Ivanti), Caroline Francis (Marketing Director, Jade Software Corporation) & Graham White (Group Managing Director, Howorth, Ogilvy PR) on what it takes to be a great storyteller

Read More….

What we’ve been reading this week

• How to Tell If a Link Is Good, Bad, or Ugly
• The power of hashtags: Using travel experiences by tourists for destination branding on Instagram
• Laybuys go digital with new start-up
• Surge pricing comes to the supermarket
• Thai Click-Fraud Farm Busted Using Wall Of iPhones

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