Starting next year, YouTube will price its homepage masthead ad unit on an impression basis only rather than allow advertisers to reserve the spot for an entire day. “For years, advertisers asked us for more flexible options for appearing in the YouTube masthead, which is why we introduced the cost-per-thousand (CPM) Masthead in 2019 and earlier this year told advertisers that it would be our primary masthead reservation option in 2021,” the company told CNBC in a statement. “This change gives advertisers more budget flexibility and applies across all verticals — not just political advertisers.” 

Why we care. Though advertisers were notified earlier this year that Cost per Day (CPD) pricing would end, it caught attention this week as the Trump campaign reserved the homepage masthead for election day and the two preceding days. YouTube said the change isn’t related to political advertising or the election. Masthead CPM pricing has been available for more than a year. The CPM model also gives advertisers targeting options, whereas with the CPD option, every user sees the ad when they land on the YouTube homepage. 

Change has come to define the past year, and it will probably define the next one, too. Some marketers are exhausted from pivoting from one surprising development to the next. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Operating with agility can help you succeed today, stay ready for anything, and even save both time and money. Join this webinar to learn more.

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Influencer marketing can have the appearance of something which works based on hunch or instinct. Maybe if you have a fashion or beauty product to launch, and infinite budget, you just have your people call Selena Gomez’s people, and you’re done.

Of much more interest to our readers, we believe, is the role of influencer marketing in less splashy campaigns, the role of micro-influencers, and even the part played by influencers in B2B marketing. But the bottom line is authenticity. Selecting the right influencers for your brand or campaign means weeding out those who have inflated followings and artificial engagement. A stunning 22% of those who follow influencers, for example, are thought likely to be inauthentic accounts: that’s according to HypeAuditor, an influencer platform which specializes in vetting influencers (it has a database of some 19 million).

The influencer may be great, but what about their audience. HypeAuditor has distilled metrics into an Audience Quality Score; it’s not the only thing to look at while selecting influencers, but a low AQS will likely mean low impact.

Read more here.

Before adopting a Customer Data Platform (CDP), CarParts.com had a vast dataset of customer behavioral data, but had issues with scaling to take advantage of it. In addition, it wasn’t able to glean insights from real-time signals as it would have liked to do. 

“We weren’t really getting to that one-to-one personalization and we felt like we were falling short,” said Houman Akhavan, CMO of CarParts.com, speaking in a recent session at the MarTech virtual conference. “With all of the advancements available in CDPs we saw the value of being able to really understand the voice of the customer and being able to market to them in a very relevant and personalized fashion.” 

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“If you’re wondering how to replicate an in-person event online, you’re thinking about it the wrong way. Instead of asking how you substitute online for in-person, focus on the more essential question. Ask how you can best drive engagement remotely.” Mark Roberts, CMO, PGi.