Google is launching ad blocking technology in Chrome… and why this is a good thing for all of us! According to Mary Meeker’s 2017 Internet Trends report, the marketing industry doesn’t want ad blocking increasing on mobile devices from the current adoption rate of 1%, which is considerably lower than the current rate of 18% for desktop computers. The good news is that there is an improvement plan being implemented.

The impact that mobile advertising has on the landscape of advertising is growing exponentially, and no company in any industry should ignore the tracks that mobile ads are leaving in the sand. Here is what we ALL can learn from the travel industry: Google recently reported that when it comes to booking hotels, almost 50% of Google Hotel ads referrals are now coming from smartphones, indicating a continued growth by nearly 2.

“Searches on smartphones for ‘Furniture near me’ has increased year over year by 85%.” Furniture shopping has come a long way. No longer is it only an in-store activity, as smartphone and mobile use has become the norm. Nearly half (47%) of furniture shoppers have indicated that they are increasing their online purchases via mobile, and even if they go to the brick and mortar store, it’s most likely that it was mobile that drove them there.

According to a recent forecast by eMarketer, it is estimated that close to 80% of every dollar spent on advertising will be allocated to programmatic in 2017. This number equates to a whopping $32.56 billion for the year! There is no room for doubt that programmatic is here to stay; especially in light of the fact that by the end of the year, that number is expected to grow to 84%.

If you were to look up the definition of native advertising, you would see that it is content in an online publication that resembles the publication’s editorials, but is paid for by an advertiser and intended to promote the advertiser’s product. In other words, the advertisement is somewhat camouflaged to appear relevant to its surrounding content. There are those who adhere to the notion that native advertising erodes consumer trust, or compromises the wall that exists between editorial and advertising.

With the proliferation of devices, screens and platforms, it is much easier in this day and age to reach the right audience with video ads. But how effective is the reach if the attention is lacking? And if the attention is lacking, how likely is the inattentive consumer to consider making a purchase? According to Nielson research, the attention that consumers pay to a video directly corresponds with the ad recall.

Forbes.com has published an article by Genius Monkey CRO, Jeremy Hudgens, in which he expounds on the importance of combatting the effects of ad fraud in the arena of online advertising. It’s titled Three Ways Marketers Can Beat Today’s Ad Fraud. Ad fraud is a $7 billion-per-year problem in today’s digital online advertising. Through nine years of tireless efforts by the “Intelligent Primates” on our Genius Monkey team, we have developed the three best methods to combat this malicious activity.

With the millions of websites that exist in the cyber world, the information highway can guide visitors to a practically infinite number of destinations. So how can you get potential consumers to your website? There are actually two ways that Internet surfers can get to your page. They might see your ad, which may make an impression on them, and they may navigate to it later. Or they might just click on your ad and get there right away.

Genius Monkey is excited to announce the newest utensil in our technological toolbox; it’s called Genius Monitor, and it’s designed to help our clients better understand how their website is performing when it comes to their page speed. Genius Monkey checks to make sure that not only its code is loading properly, but that the load time of the site is below a given threshold. In short, this service generates information that will help clients determine how they stack up to the current industry benchmarks for page speed, and protect them from spending money on ads on a site that may be down.

Attribution, validation and bot detection are more important than ever; especially when there are so many discrepancies between analytics and the network reporting. As an example, let’s say that a programmatic-based ad server like Genius Monkey (or someone like DoubleClick, for that matter) reports that they delivered 5000 clicks, yet Google Analytics only shows 3000 clicks. That can leave a marketer wondering about the integrity of the reports. It’s not uncommon for marketers to use multiple tools to get an understanding of how users interact with the product they’re advertising.