According to recent research by Voicebot.ai, approximately 47.5 million adults living in the United States have access to a smart speaker. That’s one out of every five people! These “smart speakers” are voice assistants, such as Apple’s Siri, the Amazon Echo or the Google Home. Interestingly enough, of the people that use a smart speaker, 42.2% are females, while 57.8% are male. In the last two years, the machines have become standard equipment in 20% of American homes.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently conducted a study in which a range of “Moments for Maximum Engagement” were discovered. This was done by analyzing just how consumers give attention and gain value from interactions with episodic shows, music, news, podcasts, short videos, social media and weather across all dayparts and digital screens. The study revealed that 82% of Millennials say that they check their social media sites during particular times of the day, if not all day long.

In any business, the goal is to continually monitor and improve the numbers. But, in order for that to happen, you must gain a true understanding of which components of your marketing platform are successful, and which ones are not, otherwise you will be spending ad dollars ineffectively. To quote US Store Merchant, John Wanamaker, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half!

Genius Monkey’s new “Conversion Cycle Report” (CCR) is the latest nugget to be added to our treasure trove of state-of-the-art targeted digital programmatic tools. This new report increases the effectiveness of our digital marketing efforts and improves client ROI. Our CCR is the brainchild of the development team at Genius Monkey. It analyzes the average time, as well as the number of touches it takes for the user to go from being a browsing customer, to being a paying customer; measuring from the time we initially serve the impression to the time that the consumer converts.

One of the greatest attributes of programmatic is that the ads that are served to you are for things that you have already been searching for. So, how many times will Genius Monkey serve you an ad before you finally click on it? The answer is easy—as many times as it takes! Read More

Social media has recent roots in the overall timeline of our technological advancements. Facebook is a great example of a successful social medium that swept the world. In fact, as of December of 2017, the active number of Facebook users was 2.2 billion. (The term “active” is anyone who has logged onto his or her page in the last 30 days.) In just the United States alone, there were 214 million users, making it the most popular social network in the world.

Recently there has been a movement by many consumers to install software that blocks ads. These “ad blockers” are utilized to automatically remove unsolicited online advertisements. Some of the ads that get blocked include web banners, embedded audio and video, and pop-up windows. But, is this a good thing? Ad blocking disrupts those who earn their livelihoods from the online marketing industry. This field includes editors, publishers, journalists, columnist and content creators.

When mapping your customer’s path to conversion, attribution tracking is key. Using detailed attribution tracking, we integrated with Ticketmaster and were able to track the precise number of tickets sold for a particular professional sports team, as well as the value of each one. The results were a return of a whopping 572%, which was between 200-300% increase when compared to their success with other marketing efforts. While working with a subscription-based B2B online program, we used attribution tracking and were able to increase additional conversions by 276%.

Brand marketers of today are fortunate to have the advancements of digital programmatic technology to get their message to those who are ready to hear it. There is one group of marketers that encounter a special set of unique speedbumps to overcome, though. If you happen to be a franchise owner, you have most likely encountered difficulty with your digital marketing plan. This is very common, as franchise marketing presents more challenges than the traditional route.

When we have questions in life … about anything, we tend to go to a trusted source to discover the answers. It could be a member of our family, a teacher or a good friend–someone we really know well, and who knows and understands us, too. Another trusted source we turn to for answers is digital online search, and the content that follows. Common is the school of thought that no matter how specific your question may be, there are answers to be found online.