The unforeseen upheaval of 2020 has been hard on all industries, but colleges and higher education institutions have taken a particularly rough hit since social distancing and stay-at-home mandates went into place. Without the opportunity to make personal connections, foot traffic has greatly decreased on campus, while many prospective students are now hesitant to enroll in any higher learning programs due to economic uncertainties. With so many unknowns still up in the air, educational institutions have been forced to shift their marketing strategies and re-evaluate their advertising message.

How long do advertisers have to make an impression when they engage an audience online? Not as long as you might think. Marketers typically assume people will watch all of their 15 or 30 second spots or all of their rotating banner ads. But when looking at the data, it seems that’s not always the case. In fact, it rarely ever is. The IAB Digital Video Glossary says a video ad is considered “viewable” if at least 50% of the ad is viewed for two consecutive seconds.

While banks are an important part of our economy, they’re not the only component of the financial sector. Also included are real estate firms, insurance companies, and investment firms. Advertising for financial institutions can be challenging, as it’s always changing and very fast-paced. In fact, 51% of financial institutions report that their biggest challenge is keeping up with new digital marketing techniques. As technology evolves and customer habits change, the marketing strategies must change with them.

The year of 2020 has been a wild ride and it’s still going strong. This year has thrown marketers from every industry for a loop when it comes to customer patterns and advertising predictability, and while much of what we’ve learned this year has come at a high cost, we’ve learned a plethora of lessons involving consumer behavior, trends and overall ad effectiveness–and savvy marketers are continuing to adapt their campaign strategies accordingly.

With the release of iOS 14, Apple is making yet another big privacy-focused upgrade to iOS. One where users can choose to hide their device’s ID from apps so it can’t be tracked. Something many advertisers, particularly Facebook, aren’t happy about. But despite the uproar of Facebook and a handful of other social giants, there are certain programmatic advertising platforms who aren’t bothered by the privacy news at all. Why?

Genius Monkey is proud to announce that our programmatic platform has been listed among the top 1% of all ad vendors with The Media Trust, according to their recently released IAB Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) report. As a global leader in digital third-party risk management, The Media Trust provides real-time security, data privacy, performance management and quality assurance solutions that help safeguard, monetize and optimize the user experience over devices.

Gaming and music and apps…oh my! There’s a brave new world taking shape across the programmatic landscape, and it comes in a host of new platforms and channels for advertisers to explore. But not before gearing up for the journey. So plug in. Power up. And get ready…to play. Social media on the decline Smart devices have become a regular part of daily life, with the average person spending at least four hours on their phone per day and more than 65% of Americans using multiple installed apps in that time.

For luxury brands, loyal relationships and the revenues they bring in are everything. As Genius Monkey has advocated for years, programmatic doesn’t just sell $10 tubes of makeup and Happy Meals at McDonald’s … it also sells $30,000 diamonds and $500,000 homes. American short-story writer and novelist, F Scott Fitzgerald, famously wrote, “The rich are different from you and me.” Comparatively, high-ticket items are different from other goods, too. They do take longer to sell, but by implementing digital programmatic, the ROI and sales numbers are greatly improved.

AI is a boon to programmatic advertising, and the “intelligence” in artificial intelligence is getting smarter each day. However, because AI algorithms aren’t able to experience emotion or base decisions on gut instinct, there will always be a need for human oversight to help govern AI technology and ensure proper decisions are being made. Intelligence without oversight isn’t enough When the late Kobe Bryant passed away earlier this year, social media and news agencies went wild reporting the tragedy.

What’s My Marketing Data Telling Me? Do you know what your marketing data is actually saying? These days, it’s not enough just to collect data on your verticals. You also need to understand what that data is saying so you can actually use it to optimize campaigns. Understanding your vertical data can be tricky, but we have a few tips to help make things easier in our recent Yahoo! Finance publication titled What’s My Marketing Data Telling Me?