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The Salvation Army has responded to the recent terrifying tornado disaster in Oklahoma with a Public Service Announcement (PSA), encouraging people to donate at the most critical of times. DG is grateful to have been able to support the Salvation Army’s relief efforts by delivering the PSA TV spots, as well as the Salvation Army’s online campaign free of charge and within 24 hours of the client’s request.

“We have partnered with the Salvation Army to help them with their relief efforts by disseminating their disaster messaging as quickly as possible. Natural disasters are a highly critical time and tough to discuss, however, we’re privileged to be in a position to provide them with a solution to get their message to market within 24 hours,” said Christy Wright, director of sales, DG MediaMind.

With our Smart Versioning tool, the team was able to quickly repurpose the Salvation Army’s previous disaster relief ads with new copy and images for their online campaign. With disasters like the Oklahoma Tornado, responding the need within 24 hours is crucial.

“This is a wonderful case of how SV can be used, and a good example of truly developing a strategic partnership with the agency, The Richards Group,” Wright said.

Jessica Blancovich of The Richards Group said, “It’s reassuring to know that we have the ability to rise to the occasion at a time of crisis to help those in need.”

“DG MediaMind’s Smart Versioning tool allowed our team to customize disaster relief messaging for our Salvation Army client within minutes. Our client’s PSA message was live within a few hours after the tragic event, resulting in immediate awareness and fundraising to support those who were affected by the natural disaster,” Blancovich added.

Our thoughts are with those suffering in the aftermath of the Oklahoma disaster.

Want to donate? https://donate.salvationarmyusa.org/uss/eds/aok

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The reason that TV buying is so ingrained for the video advertiser is habit: TV advertising is a known and trusted model. Nielsen’s gross-ratings points (GRPs) have standardized the buying process over the last 70 years, making it easy for both content owners and advertisers to negotiate and close deals.

Advertisers generally know what they get when they buy a TV spot, but in reality it often falls into the old Wanamaker adage: “Half of my advertising is wasted…I just don’t know which half.”

Digital video buyers work in silos, just like their TV counterparts. Often, digital video budgets come from display or TV and are executed separately from TV buys, which creates an atmosphere of competition. Measurement and pricing is improving with accreditations from the Media Ratings Council and the consolidation of vendors, but there are still lots of unknowns out there, especially for traditional advertisers used to a single GRP.

The first step is to look at the latest consumer trends: how are consumers using and driving multiplatform video content today? While there are 289 million US homes with at least one TV– the majority own two or more – video capable mobile devices are flying off the shelves.1. More than 900 million smartphones and 172 million tablets are expected to ship worldwide this year, with video consumption reaching upwards of half of tablet users. 2,3.

The second step is to highlight the value of convergence: what is the current state of spending and how can convergence benefit the advertiser’s bottom line? New studies show that adding online/mobile to the video mix (or even beginning a campaign with it) not only increases reach but in some cases can double effectiveness.

Third, we take a look at the challenges and next steps that the industry as a whole must face. Multiscreen campaign management, measurement, fragmentation and a lack of standards are just some of the issues facing convergence.

Find out more at convergence.dgit.com

#Convergence to join the conversation on Twitter and join the Video Convergence LinkedIn group.


1. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2013/exploring-the-consumer-media-universe.html
2. http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/computer/338787/smartphone-sales-to-top-900-million-in-2013-survey
3. http://mashable.com/2013/01/02/tablet-predictions-2013/

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By: John Douglas, Product Marketing Manager at DG

Today, consumers are watching video everywhere, and marketers need to be prepared. Here are some best practices to help you succeed in the brave new world of video convergence.

1. High Definition Matters

Quality matters. Video isn’t just for TV anymore, so it’s imperative you plan for your spots to be on all screens. 75% of homes today are HD capable, and nearly all laptops and PCs can play HD. Even the latest round of tablets and smart phones are high resolution and designed for the HD experience, not to mention connected televisions. In an environment when files are transcoded for each publisher and broadcast format, you don’t want quality to stand in the way of a great viewing experience. If you’re not mastering and delivering your spots in HD, you’re already behind the curve.

2. Sharing Means Caring

Production is expensive, so every spot produced should be considered for use on all screens. And there’s no better way to ensure your spots are shared between media and creative teams across broadcast and digital, than by storing your masters in a digital asset management (DAM) platform. These systems not only make it easy to share spots, but they ensure all spot metadata is visible to all parties. And for global campaigns that need to customize and localize spots, it’s a requirement – not an option. From asset IDs to talent & usage rights, metadata transparency is a critical component of convergence and shouldn’t be overlooked. Continue reading

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By: Michael Lamb, Sr. Product Manager, DG MediaMind

Third-party ad serving has many advantages that agencies can leverage. One of these is the ability to record a user’s journey from ad impression through to purchase. This journey is called the path to conversion. In order for the agency to mark milestones on this path as well as the conclusion, it is important to place conversion tags on the advertiser’s site.



What are conversion tags?

Conversion tags are either snippets of JavaScript or a 1×1 image pixel. These bits of code are placed at strategically important spots on the advertiser’s site. The conversion tag “fires” when a user visits a strategically important page. At that time, the user’s local cookie is updated with the event ID and a date/time stamp of the event. We can pull data from the page and send that back to the ad server for analytics. We can also write information into the user’s cookie for future use, for example retargeting.

Where should I put conversion tags?

Best practice is to do an audit of the advertiser’s website anytime major changes are made. Most agencies will have multiple personas for different target audiences. “In Market” might be one target audience. “Considering brands” might be another. Role-play the possible activities your target audiences might take on the advertiser’s site. Mark down the URLs of specific locations where they may abandon their session or need more information. For each of these URLs, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why do I need to track this location?
2. Would I need to modify my creative messaging to a user that’s been to this location?
3. Do I need any additional data from the page to understand the user’s journey? (product name, local zip code)

The results of a tag audit are usually presented in a spreadsheet. It’s best to prioritize the items on this list, i.e. which conversion points are the critical paths and which conversion points are important, but not critical?

Many agencies simply want to tag everything on the advertiser’s site. This presents three challenges. First, keeping up with site changes can be challenging. Second, if everything gets tagged right away, then you may be drowning clients in too much data. Third, if you tag everything at once, there’s nowhere to grow.

We recommend putting a plan in action which allows you to grow the tagging strategy over time. This helps you set expectations with the advertiser and better manage the incoming stream of data. For example, start with collecting point-of-purchase conversions and a few key locations. Then phase in product-level or category-level retargeting. A final phase might be to tag social and interactive actions on the advertiser’s site.

What is “piggybacking” tags?

Placing individual pieces of code on the advertiser’s site is a time-consuming process. Years ago, ad technology companies didn’t need a major presence on the advertiser’s site. Now everyone and their cousin wants to put their conversion tags on the advertiser’s site. To accommodate this, ad servers allow you to attach or piggyback other vendors’ code onto the ad server’s conversion tag. When a user visits a conversion page, the ad server conversion tag is loaded first, and then any piggybacked tags are loaded into the user’s browser.

Are conversion tags important for branding clients?

We recommend the presence of some conversion tags for branding as well as direct-response clients. The ties between display advertising and brand lift carry over into activities users perform on an advertiser’s site. Conversion tags can be linked to coupon downloads, account sign-ins, social sharing buttons, newsletter sign-ups and even video views and game play. These events become part of a path- to-conversion analysis which gives agencies more commentary on how brand advertising is affecting consumer behavior online.

What’s all this talk about Tag Management?

As agencies and technology companies have gotten more sophisticated, the demands for tagging have increased greatly. It’s not uncommon for an agency’s tag audit to yield 500 to1000 different conversion “points” that need tracking. Tag Management companies provide a single piece of code to the advertiser. This code is placed into their content management system and once there, the code will render on each and every page of the advertiser’s site. This paradigm allows an agency to use the Tag Management user interface to map where they want conversion events to occur without the need to send hundreds or thousands of code snippets to the agency that is responsible for managing the advertiser’s website.

Not every advertiser needs tag management. Its benefits are ideal for advertisers with large sites, sites that change frequently, or web developers that don’t like to accept lots of code from third parties.

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By: David Scatterday, Manager of Product Marketing for Mobile at DG MediaMind

Mobile display ad spending is growing rapidly across all segments and will nearly triple between 2012 and 2014, jumping from $1.10 billion to $3.07 billion, according to eMarketer. While standard banners, rich media and video are the largest mobile display formats, dual-screen advertising is easily the most exciting and relevant segment in the space.

The always-on multi-screen consumer is a quickly growing yet hard-to-target audience. According to Business Insider, 85% of smartphone users report engaging in second screen-linked behavior at least once per month, and about 60% reported doing it on a weekly basis. I often check my favorite mobile application or website during a TV commercial break, and data shows I’m not alone. According to Pew, more than 80% of 18- to 24-year-olds say they use their phones while watching TV. A hefty 60% of Americans with annual incomes above $50,000 do so as well.

While the value of second-screen engagement may be hard to quantify, there’s no doubt it is real. A second-screen campaign DG executed for a major global retailer found a very strong correlation between the time proximity of seeing a TV ad and the frequency of click-throughs on the brand’s digital companion ad.

Continue reading

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