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If anyone’s ever had a campaign which hasn’t gone quite right, it’s always reassuring to know the marketing technology providers can also make the same mistakes.

Take video. B2B video marketing platform providers, such as Brightcove and Nideo, offer vital services to show brands where their campaigns are going wrong. Analytics readings tell marketers where customers are switching off, so they can rejig the length and message of the video.

As Brightcove CEO David...

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One in three consumers are more likely to trust native advertising than traditional advertising, according to a report from the Association of Online Publishers (AOP).

The report, which focuses on the impact of native advertising, or advertorial, uncovered a series of interesting statistics. Three in five (59%) consumers claimed to find native advertising “interesting”, while 42% more consumers said they found native ad drivers more interesting than traditional...

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An industry benchmark report from email marketing provider Sign-up.to has found open rates at nearly a quarter across all campaigns analysed and an increase in 17 sectors across 2014, with click rates declining at a small rate.

While overall opens hit 24.45%, mean click through rates were at 3.13% and unsubscribes at 0.55%, with median click through rates at 2.36%, and median opens at 24.22%. Mobile opens, at 53.9%, has overtaken the desktop.

Yet the devil is in the detail; the public...

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Cloudy software provider Salesforce has released Salesforce Marketing Cloud Predictive Decisions, a feature set which aims to fuse marketing and CRM data with contextual data and predictive intelligence to increase conversions and engagement.

The move follows a piece of research conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Salesforce in August, whereby 42% of respondents admitted they had difficulty analysing data from all customer interactions.

Salesforce says marketers will be...

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The customer experience process is rapidly changing. For brands, getting the customer to return again is not new, whether through incentivisation or simple brand loyalty. But the landscape is being turned on its head – and it’s through such new technologies as the Internet of Things (IoT) driving what is being described as the new services economy.

Companies are recognising this. Instead of buying standalone products, it’s now about buying services. Take Netflix...

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Earlier this week, email marketing intelligence provider Return Path announced the appointment of Scott Roth as its new chief marketing officer. As reported, it was a particularly interesting move: Roth had been at ExactTarget, which was hoovered up by Salesforce, and was also partnered with Return Path for several years.

Roth’s new job spec includes everything from brand...

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Email intelligence provider Return Path has hired Scott Roth, formerly of Salesforce and ExactTarget, as its new chief marketing officer.

Roth was most recently vice president of global marketing for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and was responsible for seeing through a successful IPO with ExactTarget, which was then acquired by Salesforce. Return Path and ExactTarget have been partnering for almost four years, with Roth helping to set it up.

Roth’s remit for the 400 employee-strong firm...

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If a customer’s at a bricks and mortar store and the service is a little slow or the card machine doesn’t work, most of the time they’ll probably accept it. They’ve already made the effort to go all the way to the store, and a few more seconds waiting around isn’t likely to hurt.

If they’re on a mobile device, however, and the m-commerce app times out or the site is a little slow, then patience is a virtue which most customers don’t have....

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A study from the University of Sydney has revealed how junk food brands are targeting young adults on social media.

The report, entitled ‘Digital Junk: Food and Beverage Marketing on Facebook’, was authored by seven academics in response to the growing obesity issue in Australia, with more than a third of Australians aged 15 to 24 considered overweight or obese.

The research involved analysing 27 food and drink brand Facebook pages on their marketing techniques,...

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The vast majority of companies are aware that, in the social age, mistakes they make could have nightmarish consequences if it gets picked up. Take Kenneth Cole’s tweet using the hashtag #Cairo back in 2011, oblivious to the protests in Egypt.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. A new report from MSL Group, entitled “Reputation: With or without you”, has found that most firms (86%) are...

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Are luxury brands more alluring for banner ads? According to ad platform provider Sizmek, they are: luxury brands get much better click through rates (CTR) for rich media and polite banners when compared to benchmark figures.

The study, entitled Luxury Benchmarks 2014, found that for rich media luxury brands had a CTR of 0.36%, compared to 0.22% benchmark, while for polite banners – banners which replace the main image with a featherweight replica during page loading to avoid...

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Feature Video is becoming more and more important to content marketing. More often than not, a quick video pitch will last far longer in the memory than a block of text or a generic press release.

Some companies are doing video very well. Plenty more, though, are making a right pig’s ear of it.

One company which aims to change that is Nideo, a B2B video content platform.

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The largest global firms are rushing to social media, but are hampered by “poor management and disjointed strategies”, according to a study.

The Financial Times Bowen Craggs Index of corporate online effectiveness, which published its eighth edition today, found that Shell, Eni and Nestle run the top three “web estates”. Unilever, Siemens, BP and SAP all made the top 10.

What do...

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Financial services companies are improving their customer experience...

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Lego has released a statement confirming it will not renew its partnership deal with oil firm Shell, after a series of attacks from Greenpeace regarding Shell’s proposed plans to drill for oil in the Arctic.

“Children are our major concern and the central focus of our company,” said Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO of the Lego...

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Apple has been ranked the top global brand for the second year running, according to a report from Interbrand.

The top five brands remains unchanged from the year before, indicating an entrenched ecosystem. Google and Coca-Cola took the silver and bronze medals respectively, while IBM and Microsoft rounded off...

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A report released by Adobe and PageFair has revealed that the use of adblocking software is accelerating rapidly, with some demographics more likely than others to nix the rogue adverts.

2013 saw the number of users who use ad blocker software more than double globally, from 54 million to 121 million. As of June this year, the number stands at approximately 144...

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We’ve all heard the maxim that content is king. For marketing managers with advertising budget to blow, then it’s an important piece of advice, whether you’re creating a banner ad or going native.

More recently however, it’s not...

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Video advertising group Ebuzzing & Teads has rebranded to Teads,...

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Here’s an interesting new mobile app release: Journey HQ is trying to get to the bottom of customer journeys, decision making and buying patterns by getting users to fill in information as they go along.

The USP is simple. Most industry market research never fails to have two ingredients: questions and question-setters. Journey HQ gets rid of both.

Siamack Salari is the creator of Journey HQ, and a long time collaborator on ethnographic testing methods. He firmly believes the...