One of the challenges that we face as marketers in general, is that a lot of things have changed as far as what the consumer requires. The numbers (not too long ago) were five to twelve brand interactions for a customer to feel comfortable doing business with a particular brand. In 2013 the study showed that shoppers required 28 + brand interactions in order to feel comfortable. However, that number quickly became obsolete when another study from a slightly different angle showed that one auto buyer’s path to purchase required over 900 + brand interactions!

As our readers may or may not know, March 1st, 2019 is the first annual National Digital Programmatic Humor Day (known as NDPH Day). To get your ad humor started in the right direction, the digital programmatic specialists at Genius Monkey are throwing some chuckles your way! We are Geniuses At Genius Monkey we are all monkeys. That’s because we share our Amazon Account with one another. That makes us prime-mates, right?

The first thing that people usually ask about Generation Z is how old they are, and between what years would they have been born in order qualify as Gen Z members. As in most areas of life, the lines between each generation are usually blurred, but generally, Gen Z members are made up of anyone who was born between 1996, right up to present-day. A good reasoning to follow is that if someone remembers the change from the 20th century to the 21st century, then they are not Gen Z, they are probably Millennials or Baby Boomers.

Customers respond in a positive fashion when they feel special and important to the brand. In this quest for personalization, marketers are faced with a myriad of marketing technology choices. And while there is a wide selection of tools available for improving customer interactions, there is one essential ingredient to achieve personalization – one underlying tool in the toolbox that can act as a force multiplier across all personalization efforts – unified customer data.

The manner in which programmatic platforms price inventory has undergone a sizable shift. In March of 2018, 338 billion ad impressions across 39 US supply-side platforms were analyzed by Getintent. Their findings revealed that 43.3% of these impressions were sold through first-price auctions, meaning that the highest bid wins an impression. Just last December (2017) the figure was significantly lower, when only 5.8% of the 171 billion impressions analyzed were sold in the same manner.

As many of our readers know, Genius Monkey is a regular participant in the Digital Summits held around the nation, where we share our philosophies and best practices in the field of digital programmatic in today’s marketing. Digital Summit attendees are the movers and shakers that influence the growth and success of their company’s digital marketing efforts, as well as the future landscape of the digital economy. They hail from a broad variety of companies and organizations including national brands, CPG, agencies, service providers, technology pioneers, B&B providers, associations and nonprofits, startups and much more.

Today’s customers are getting tough to keep up with! They no longer buy things based on impulse or first impressions; they do their homework for just about all of their purchases. They also want to be supported throughout their purchase journey – at each stage – in a relevant way, by the brand. This same technology that keeps these consumers in the know, can also help marketers. One of these tools that advertisers can use to meet the high expectations of their customers is machine learning (the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use to progressively improve their performance on a specific task).

During the year of 2017, and for the first time in history, the giant duo of Facebook and Google slipped in their market share. And, surprisingly, this came BEFORE the Guardian and the New York Times unleashed their exposés on the topic of Cambridge Analytica, in which it was discovered that Facebook had been aggressively marketing users’ data with little transparency or agency! Consumers expect their brands to be above board and honest.

Autonomous vehicles (otherwise known as self-driving cars (or driverless cars) are beginning to make their way onto our roads and highways. These latter-day driving machines use sensory data collected from their surrounding environment to navigate the roadways sans the help of a human driver. Case in point: Uber recently ordered 24,000 fully autonomous Volvos Tesla just introduced an electric-powered long-haul tractor trailer with self-driving capabilities, and UPS has pre ordered 125 of them Google just ordered several thousand autonomous vehicles for its self-driving fleet (currently operating on the roads of Arizona) Google is expected to serve ads in their self-driving cars driverless car revenue in the US is expected to reach roughly $2.

Now that we have turned the corner onto 2019 Street, Genius Monkey will take this time to reflect on the outstanding year we’ve had, and rev up for an even bigger, better year for the constant growth and improvement of the programmatic digital ecosystem! According to recent research by Zenith Media, the boom of programmatic advertising will continue its momentum for years to come. As an example, they forecast these programmatic trends in 2019: