Weekly Roundup - 50/16

∞ Data from Google Ngram Viewer and Google Search Trends suggests that use of the words 'marketing' and 'consumer' has been in decline after peaking in the early aughts. One extrapolation is that we are now entering a post-marketing era, where we - as users of the Net - are coming to exercise fully both the connections and the agency (ad-blocking, for eg.) this new(ish) medium offers us. Thereby putting even more distance between marketing and the marketplace.
[ART + marketing]

∞ An adtech company is experimenting with offering viewers control over the online ads they see - snoozing ads they don't like, for eg. Rubicon Project currently serves 10 trillion ad impressions each month and believes such viewer participation improves consumer experience while also eliminating wasted impressions.
[Ad Age]

∞ Commuters in Düsseldorf, Germany can now get a single journey train or bus ticket worth €2.60 in exchange for watching four 20-second ad spots on an app. Demand is currently far outsripping supply, all available free tickets finding takers within hours of being on offer each day. The app is currently operating with 2 sponsors but will offer a choice of ads to choose from, when more come on board.
[Citylab]

∞ In the US, mobile advertising is now beginning to match the performance of desktop advertising in reaching intended audiences - doing so 60% of the time, up from 49% in 2015. Desktop advertising still holds a slight advantage when broader reach is required, mobile being more effective in connecting with narrower audiences.
[Nielsen]

∞ In particular, mobile ad campaigns have a clear edge over desktop efforts in reaching women across most age brackets.
[Nielsen]

∞ A new survey reveals that a significant number of participants (44%) couldn't correctly identify the sponsor of a native ad they had just read, and a majority (77%) didn't interpret native ads as advertising, instead believing them to be editorial or hybrid content. About 54% reported feeling deceived upon finding out the truth.
[Niemanlab]

∞ A source of confusion is the widespread use of many non-standardized terms by publishers to label and identify native advertising. Even the FTC's own guidelines - intending to clear the air - offer 17 permissible examples of labeling native ads. However, survey participants found the label 'Sponsored' the most helpful disclosure for native advertising, even more than 'advertising' itself.
[Fast Company]

∞ Meanwhile, news outlets like Time, NYT, WaPo & WSJ continue to aggressively pursue 'branded content' as a growth driver. These forays by publishers are increasingly pushing in-house content units into the traditional domain of advertising agencies, from offering consulting & research services for companies to making ads that run outside their own websites.
[The Wall Street Journal]