Weekly Roundup - 48/16

∞ User-generated advertising is not the wholesale mobilization of unskilled, albeit passionate, fans to replace the output of skilled professionals. Instead it is the occasional gift of skilled amateurs foregoing monetary compensation for other rewards, as demonstrated again by 2 advertising students who spent every day of November creating ads for brands they loved.
[Adweek]

∞ A survey among internet users in US and UK adds texture to the relentless rise of ad blocking. The study used tracking pixels to detect ad blocking usage in addition to enquiring about it - revealing a significant gap between the two. While widespread on desktop, actual ad blocking usage on smartphones is still rare (2% in both countries) and is growing more slowly than the overall rate.
[AudienceProject - PDF Link]

∞ A startup named Emogi is developing a branded emoji keyboard that will soon become available through messaging apps and on iOS. Brands make a buy for keywords (or generic emojis) targeting a demographic or trigger, through an automated back-end system. When users type in those words or emojis, a menu of branded emojis pops up; 'drinks' or 'beer' might throw up a frog sipping a Bud Light, for eg.
[New Yorker]

∞ Digital natives, while displaying precocious digital fluency, seem to lack the perceptiveness to differentiate between real news and native advertising. More than 80% of school and college students participating in a recent news literacy study misidentified advertising clearly labelled 'sponsored content' as a news story. Instead of paying attention to news source, they judged credibility by the amount of detail the story contained or the size of the attached photo.
[c|net / WSJ]

∞ A pan-European study of FMCG brands and retailers shows that there has been a significant drop in the share of products sold on promotion, particularly in the UK where such activity shifts more volumes than anywhere else. It is expected that much of this reclaimed marketing spend will be directed towards communicating brand benefits through advertising in pursuit of longer-term gains.
[Marketing Week]

∞ A forecasting study concludes that the advertising industry will be a key driver of AI revenues by 2025, second only to the consumer products sector. With a 8% share of a $38.8 billion market, that will be a lot human powered decision-making taken out of the equation.
[Mike Quindazzi on Twitter / Tractica]