Many media buyers and advertisers are continuing to experience problems with Facebook Ads reporting. Ad approvals have been a challenge since COVID due to ad review being done nearly entirely via automation, but the glitchy reporting problems could cause advertisers to pause ads that are actually performing well and vice versa, as media buyer David Herrmann noted on Twitter yesterday. 

Why we care. Reporting glitches are nothing new for Facebook Ads as we reported last month, but the persistence of the problems through Black Friday, Cyber Monday and beyond are particularly problematic for advertisers. That said, will these challenges actually make a dent in Facebook’s business. Its scale and targeting capabilities keep advertisers coming back in spite of the ad platform’s bugs and unpredictability, and its ad business has benefited from the shift to digital during the pandemic.

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Advertisers and publishers are scrambling to find alternatives to the third-party cookies which have been a prime way of understanding audiences and their interests, but which are soon to be history. One alternative, which seems almost too obvious to mention, is contextual advertising. Contextual advertising, of course, is as old as the hills. Soap operas, after all, got their name from the understanding that the audience watching them was the same audience which shopped for laundry soap. 

But of course, the technology has changed, and contextual advertising can now be much more agile and precise. That was our takeaway from a conversation with Phil Bohn, SVP of Sales and Revenue at Mediavine, the full service ad management agency which partnered with contextual intelligence engine GumGum to apply AI to the contextual advertising space.

The GumGum tool (Verity) reads text, and also analyses images and metadata, in order to derive context at scale. It also looks at brand safety. “That’s the easy part, right?” said Bohn. “You can find ‘earthquake’ and rule that out as a page you want to place an ad on, but to look and know that there’s an earthquake cake, and put that into context, makes a big difference.”

Read more here.

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Amidst all the change we’re experiencing in the world today, marketers may wonder what their role should be at the intersection of principles, profit and purpose. And can we as marketers contribute to our best collective future? The answer is yes, says MJ DePalma, Microsoft Advertising’s Head of Multicultural & Inclusive Marketing. Microsoft Advertising calls it Marketing with Purpose.

Marketing with Purpose is about building a brand that’s welcomed into people’s lives by earning their trust and upholding their values. It starts with respecting their right to privacy, being transparent and designing equitable experiences.

Find out more »

The onset of COVID and its urgency brought many realizations to marketers about their operational processes, but one fundamental one stood out – their sales pipeline and prospect data was not nearly as deep as they thought.

To respond to this, Pipedrive, a decade-old CRM platform used by nearly 100,000 marketing and sales teams worldwide, decided to expedite the launch of the newest version of its LeadBooster product, a lead generation and management tool-set.

B2B marketers gain value through LeadBooster’s Prospector tool, which allows users to search through a deep B2B database of 400 million business profiles and 10 million companies that are high-quality outbound leads based on the user’s profile of the ideal consumer.

Users then can utilize credits to discover verified information, including direct phone numbers, social profiles and emails of their most compatible matches. Prospector updates 800,000 profiles on a daily basis while being compliant with domestic and international data regulations.

Prospector also features a chatbot that is designed to be customized for a client’s preferences, and a live chat function to assist in qualifying leads in real-time.

Read more here.

Social platform Tumblr has launched a new social program called LOUDR, that pledges 10% of its top advertising unit to promote non-profit advocacy organizations. The focus will be on supporting BIPOC, LGBTQ and mental health advocacy groups. 

The initiative was launched in conjunction with two national nonprofits, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation and National Alliance for Media Literacy Education. LOUDR will also focus on emerging non-profit organizations to give them a major platform and national resources. 

Why we care.  Tumblr sets a good example by taking a concrete action to promote voices of diversity and inclusion.

“While platform capabilities may be the most foundational element to enterprise account-based marketing success, the most vital part of ABM success is shifting the balance of business interactions from transactions to relationships.” Michael McGoldrick, Senior Marketing Manager, MRP.