We sat down with our Creative Director at Genius Monkey, Damon Reine, and asked him about his work, design tips, advertising secrets, and more. Here’s what he had to say: Q: What does being creative director entail at Genius Monkey? Damon: The day-to-day position entails managing and creating the visual and creative voice and personality of the company. We’re an ad tech company—we don’t have a product on the shelf—so it’s important our consumers come to digest us through advertising, the website, social media, and more.

Podcasts have continued to skyrocket in 2022, hitting over $1 billion in ad revenue. According to a report by IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers, podcasts are growing twice as fast as the internet advertising market as a whole. Before recently, advertisers could only purchase audio directly through Pandora, iHeartRadio and Spotify, but there was no way to attribute lift or conversions in doing so. In the past two years, Genius Monkey has made it possible to track these via impression-level tracking from knowing when someone hears an ad and converts afterwards.

If you check your phone right now, how many apps do you have for a loyalty program or retail store? We’re talking about everything from the Target and Kohl’s app to your favorite restaurant’s rewards app—who doesn’t want a free burger on their birthday? Most big-name businesses and retailers have an app, and if they don’t, they’re most likely falling behind or missing out on important data. AdExchanger reported that retailers are “investing heavily in first-party data assets (aka their loyalty and membership programs) and in first-party data vehicles like retail media platforms.

When we entered 2020, nobody could predict what was going to happen. And nobody could foresee that the next two years would be full of immense change, online pandemonium, and masks. Don’t worry, this won’t be yet another pandemic article. Instead of focusing on COVID-19, Omicron, and worldwide effects of the virus, we want to focus on how the pandemic has affected marketing and advertising specifically. As the world changed, so did consumer habits.

Many agencies try to keep everything in-house with a self-serve digital advertising model, but they’re left with depleted time and resources. In our latest article published on Yahoo! Finance and MarketWatch, read how a fully managed service brings in a powerful advertising technology partner to help you reach all of your goals, without the added stress on your shoulders. In a day and age where hiring experienced marketing experts is proving more difficult, it’s no wonder why agencies are turning more often to fully managed platforms—it just makes sense.

The downfall of linear and traditional marketing has given way to new marketing mediums, such as CTV and Programmatic audio, which continue to rise. Television, streaming, YouTube, and other online media platforms continue to get more use as our lives become more diverse, which has allowed marketers and media companies to reach, track and target audiences in new and exciting ways. We are excited to bring you quarterly insights into significant marketing mediums and vertical trends Genius Monkey data has shown.

Do you understand the difference between data and insights? Are you really understanding your data, or do you have surface-level knowledge that can be improved? In an Adweek article by Anastasia Leng, she warns against doing the same thing multiple times without ever “validating if it’s having the intended result.” Leng says many have easy access to metrics without the right tools to differentiate them. Simply put, just because something can be measured doesn’t mean that data should make the decisions for you.

Being diverse with your marketing spend is the future. Our lives are diverse—even on a given day our routines can change sporadically. And just like our daily lives, our marketing approach can’t be set in stone or predictive. Being diverse doesn’t mean you have to micromanage 10 different vendors—find a vendor that has an agnostic approach, like Genius Monkey, and see the results for yourself. What is a Diverse Media Plan?

What is the Metaverse? According to Facebook, the Metaverse is a virtual arena, where “3D spaces in the metaverse will let you socialise, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what we can imagine.” They go on to explain that this space will be created by everyone and built for everyone to enjoy. Put simply, it’s a virtual world of interconnected communities. In the Metaverse, people can chat, work, play games, and interact through virtual reality.

Netflix Reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers in April 2022. They attributed the loss to factors like increased inflation, password sharing, and shutting down service to 700,000+ Russian accounts during the Ukraine invasions. This is the first time in 10 years that such a loss has been reported, and Netflix is fighting to stay ahead of the competition. Is Netflix Now Open to Ads? Though he was once firmly against it, Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings may now be changing his mind about ad-supported streaming, saying that they are “quite open to offering even lower prices with advertising, as a consumer choice.