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Do Video Ads Work For Small Businesses?

Video.  Is it worth the investment to have a video created and include it in your digital marketing?  The answer is yes. In almost every aspect of Digital Marketing, we have seen not only an increase in using video, but an increase in the interaction with digital ads created by businesses. (photo credit: Ad Week) According to SingleGrain: 70% of consumers say...

What is a digital buyer and why are they so important?

Digital Buyers are typically the link between advertiser and media partners. In the marketing world, there are many viable media outlets, however digital is on the constant rise. In 2019 it is projected that digital media will take up 55% of all ad spending. When engaging in digital it is important to make sure you find the best partner with...

Are teenagers leaving Facebook? Should that impact your Ad Spend?

My 14-year-old son refers to Facebook as “Snapchat for Old People” yet he still knows every time I post something on Facebook. Teenagers would like us to believe that Snapchat is life, but is that actually true, and more importantly does it matter for your advertising dollars? According to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, today, roughly half (51%) of...

Digital Ad Spend Surpasses 50% of Total Ad Spending in the U.S.

Earlier this year, eMarketer, Marketing-Interactive, and CNBC  all predicted that digital ad spend would surpass 50% of advertising dollars in the U.S.  Turns out they were right. Currently, according to MAGNA, digital ad spend in the U.S. will surpass 51%, 51.5% to be exact.  That equates to about $160 billion dollars!  That’s a lot of money! Leading the digital ad spend...

Christmas In October?

Most people frown at the thought of thinking about the holiday season now and prefer to wait until after Halloween and Thanksgiving. It makes us cringe when we walk into a home decor or craft store and it is already filled with Christmas trees, lights and aisles of gift wrap and bows in September or even October. BUT, with the...

New Enhancement to Mobile Conquesting™: Announcing Audience DNA

MOBILE CONQUESTING’S™ AUDIENCE DNA The mark of a truly great digital ad campaign is the ability to learn from the results you a see and apply what you learned to future campaigns, allowing the campaign to sharpen over time.  Now you can learn about your audience as you’re marketing to them through Mobile Conquesting’s™ Audience DNA. WHAT IS AUDIENCE DNA? During a...

How Are Google And Facebook New Policies Impacting The Running Of Political Ads?

Another step closer to elections, and major exchanges Google and Facebook are flexing their muscles when it comes to the approval process of ads.  Back in June,  Vici reported the sweeping changes on Facebook that required ad buyers to be authorized to run political content.  This requires any individual who is buying a campaign to submit a U.S drivers...

Is couponing effective on Mobile?

Short answer: no. In fact, it is not just mobile, we have yet to find a digital product that works effectively for coupons. What is the problem with digital coupons on mobile? The main reason digital coupons on mobile fail is that they are just too complicated for most people. Think about how the ads are served. You are on...

IRS Contributes 3rd Party Income Data to Facebook (Example)

As we know, Facebook has been under scrutiny when it comes to their targeting capabilities and what they can/cannot do. Earlier this year, we learned that Facebook was removing many 3rd party categories from their targeting offerings and that they would take effect October 1st, 2018 (link here: https://vicimediainc.com/why-i-love-facebook-collection-ads/). This impacted many categories, including automotive, charitable donations, financial, job role,...

How Does Back to School Impact Automotive Advertising?

They’re making a list and checking it twice. But, it’s not to see who’s naughty or nice. Parents are checking to make sure that a car is now on their Back-to-School list. According to Nielsen Scarborough 22% of households with a child in college are also planning on buying a new or used car during the upcoming year. What does...

Opinion: My Love/Hate Relationship with Google’s “Walled Garden”

As Google has advanced as a search engine, it has rolled out many features aimed at getting users information as fast as possible.  Included in Google’s search engine results are things like the Google Knowledge Graph, which appears if a business has an updated Google Business listing, showcasing information like the address, phone number, business hours, reviews, and even...

New Facebook Feature Great For Prospecting

Facebook has launched a new feature called Info and Ads. This push from Facebook is another step towards their goal of digital transparency that they released late last year. To access this feature, go to Facebook and visit any business Facebook profile page from a computer.  On the left-hand side navigation, underneath the profile image you will see many options like...

Facebook Changes the Rules for the Advertising of Addiction Treatment Centers

On Thursday, August 9, 2018, Facebook made a move to increase transparency of where ads are coming from, cracking down in the medical category of addiction treatment centers.  This comes after the announcement earlier this year that all digital media buyers managing political campaigns go through an authorization process providing a US driver’s license or US passport, a...

The Latest and Greatest Mobile Marketing

Mobile Marketing is a hot commodity among advertisers around the country, as consumers spend more and more time on their mobile devices daily. Our Mobile Conquesting products have many advanced features, including geo-fencing, behavioral/location/brand targeting, dynamically updated ads, weather triggered ads, geo-retargeting, geo-lookalike targeting, and also the ability to track in-store visits. The most amazing thing about digital marketing...

How To Be A Digital Marketing Guru

Because you are reading this, it is likely that you and your team have now completed your digital training. (if you haven’t, click here and get on board!  You make the effort to keep up to date on all things digital through ongoing education and weekly webinars. You know your stuff and you have put it into action! You...

Are You Looking For More Quality Conversions?

Conversions are pretty much the pot of gold for digital marketing.  Increasing your conversion rate is fundamental to your client's return on investment and make the most of your digital marketing budget. Vici manages thousands of campaigns and is constantly on the lookout for industry updates on the subject.  Here are some tips to increase your client’s conversion rate:               Include A Clear...

Are you asking: “How did you hear about us?” (Example)

Please stop. No one will say they heard about you from your digital ad. Most people will say they heard about your business on radio or on TV, even if you are not running on radio or TV!  You don’t have to stop asking, but definitely stop making decisions about your advertising dollars based on the answer to that...

Another Tool to help your Digital Marketing campaign kickoff with ease.

Digital Advertising is great, we all agree and that’s why you’re reading this.  To begin your campaign with ease, we want you to have access to any and all tools that can make your job easier. We sometimes have limitations as to how we can target (i.e. radius, zip code, city, state, country), there are times when businesses want to...

Why Do Native Ads Work?

I have always been told "You can't have your cake and eat it too."  What does that really mean and how is it relevant to native advertising?  The proverb's meaning is similar to the phrases "you can't have it both ways" and "you can't have the best of both worlds."  With native ads, you are!  You are able to...

I don’t have time to meet. Can you just send me your presentation?

If you are in sales, you have heard this statement. Probably many times and in different ways: “Just send me your notes.” “Just email me the pricing.” “Just forward your pitch.” All too often when we hear this, we jump to it and start drafting long emails with lots of notes and attaching presentation materials. We give it all away and then follow...

Use Email Databases For More Than Just Email Marketing

Many companies are increasing their usage of email marketing.  One of those industries increasing email marketing is nonprofits, who last year increased their email communication by just over 11%.   Now whether those emails were for fundraising, brand building, strengthening relationships or just improving communications, there’s a value to it.  Speaking to the fans of your business, or organization, is...

How To Do A Video Ad Campaign

In today’s fast paced world video is climbing up the marketing ladder, and it is not just for the big dogs anymore, everyone is playing. 87% of online marketers are using video content and it continues to grow! Recent statistics show that one-third of online activity is spent watching video and half of all video content online is viewed...

The Rules for Political Advertising on Facebook Have Changed

From Russia, with Love? Recently both Facebook and advertisers are scratching their heads on how to handle US political advertising, given the allegations that Russians may have meddled with the previous presidential election with large amounts of paid propaganda sweeping our feeds.  Over the last several weeks Facebook has swiftly responded with added security measures for all political advertising...

Meet Megan “Sully” Sullivan and Shay Edwards

Vici is excited to welcome Megan "Sully" Sullivan and Shay Edwards to the team!  They are both based out of the Philadelphia location.   Sully’s background is in digital marketing, corporate relations, and promotions, while Shay's expertise is in marketing, communications, and social media management.  During our last hiring cycle we had hundreds of potential ad buyers apply and...

Does my behavior online influence the ads I see?

Absolutely, and it is awesome. One of the main ways we are targeted with online ads is based on our online behavior. Actions we take online and what we demonstrate an interest in puts us into targeting categories. In a way we are virtually raising our hands and saying, “I’m over here and I’m attracted to what you are...

Buying Premium Placement on Facebook

Vici knows a little bit about Facebook and Instagram campaigns.  Looking back over the last year we’ve run a little under a billion impressions, resulting hundreds of thousands of conversions for our partners and their clients.  In my last post I talked about why I loved Facebook’s new Collection Ads, an ad unit seemingly only utilized by national brands...

Why I Love Facebook Collection Ads

Facebook has been in the news lately, for some not so popular things, mainly the Facebook data breach impacting over 50 million user’s data. They reacted quickly to the news, publicly declaring that starting October 1, they will no longer be offering 3rd party targeting categories to advertisers.  Moving forward, they will only be allowing advertisers to buy categories...

Who are these Joneses and why is everyone trying to keep up with them?

According to the English Dictionary, “Keeping up with the Joneses” means to always want to own the same things as your friends or neighbors, because you are worried about seeming less important socially than they are. Does this happen in the advertising world?  You bet!  In fact, that’s what some advertisers are banking on.  Meet geo-retargeting look-a-like.  This product targets...

Up Your Google Analytics Game with Annotations

Google Analytics is a free measurement tool that measures your website traffic, giving you powerful marketing insights.  But the data is only powerful if you understand it.  Sometimes as a marketer you have so many irons in the fire when it comes to driving business from sending out an email blast, running a radio campaign, or tweaking the art...

Are you interested in FREE MONEY that can be used on digital?

I find this statistic shocking: “Roughly half of the nearly $70 billion allocated to fund co-op advertising programs goes unused every year.” However, according to estimates from LSA, Borrell Associates and others that is exactly what is happening. So it is not that co-op money is less available as some might believe, it is more that the uses of...

Radio And Digital Advertising By The Numbers

A recent report on the state of digital advertising as it relates to radio stations selling it, provided some valuable insights into both mediums. The report, “Benchmarking: Local Radio Stations’ Online Revenues” looked at factors such as how much local digital ad dollars are being spent broken out by market and how much of that is with local traditional...

Targeting an Event With Digital? What You Need To Know

Event based targeting is becoming extremely popular among digital marketers, mainly because it gives you an opportunity to have a presence at the event, even without a physically being there.  But event targeting is not a one-size fits all strategy.  Depending on what is capturing event attendees’ attention, different digital tools should be utilized to effectively market your business. Targeting...

How are small and medium-sized businesses spending their ad dollars this year?

Looking at total ad spend alone; the short answer is “similar to last year.” However, when broken down product by product, we learn that even though half of Small and Medium Businesses are not increasing their overall ad dollars by much, they are adjusting how they are allocating those ad dollars, and more money is moving to digital media. According...

What does Facebook’s latest announcement mean for businesses?

Facebook announced on January 11th that they are doing some further “tinkering” with their algorithm which has implications for businesses that post organically to their Facebook Business Page. While this has made big news in the last week – it really isn’t anything new, it’s a continuation of changes that started two years ago as we talked about in...

Digital Advertising continues to grow year over year!

  2017 saw record growth in Digital Advertising dollars throughout the United States.  According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, those dollars are actually $40.1 BILLION.  And, that’s just for the first half of 2017. $40.1 billion represents a 23% increase over the same time period in 2016.  What can we take from that?  Businesses are spending money on digital advertising, and...

What are small business marketing resolutions for 2018?

As this year closes and a new one begins, small business owners are seeking strategies that can help them remain competitive and relevant.  They are analyzing past tactics and campaigns and determining where and how to spend their marketing dollars. Digital is absolutely a significant part of marketing budgets and in a multifaceted landscape, Small Business Owners are looking for...

How Data And Digital Analytics Can Drive Your Business Forward

Technology has changed consumer behavior and disrupted many business sectors over the last 15 years. The touch points to connect and engage consumers now require new marketing channels.  Advertisers are harnessing innovation and data to drive marketing decisions. Today, online marketing may include, retargeting, behavioral and keyword targeting, video, SEO, mobile conquesting, native advertising, social media and blogging to...

Google Analytics Workaround: Using Bit.ly Instead Of UTM Codes

More and more, advertisers are using Google Analytics to traffic the traffic that comes to them from a digital campaign. While Google Analytics is a great tool for analyzing what your website traffic does once they get to your website, it has its limitations. To read more on these issues, click here. For example, you can’t tell exactly where traffic...

What Is Geo-Framing?

Geo-Framing technology allow us to go back in time to previous events where we have captured people’s mobile Unique Device ID’s, map those Unique Device ID’s to their homes, and show those people ads now, across all devices.  It combines the best of aspects of Geo-Fencing and Household IP Targeting. How does it work? If the event you are interested in...

Online Reputation for Your Business Matters!

“You can’t buy a good reputation; you must earn it.”  These are words from the famous Harvey Mackay. It’s never been truer than now, when your online reputation can make or break your business. With 92% of consumers hesitating to buy a product or service from someone that doesn’t have any reviews, and 88% of consumers trusting online reviews, what...

How long does a digital campaign need to run to work? (Example)

One of the core challenges advertisers face is determining how long a digital marketing campaign should last. Digital, like many other mediums, requires frequency. If the campaign is too short, you reduce the probability of your customers seeing your message, and grasping it enough to take some action. So what is the ideal time for a campaign? We believe it is...

What is Geo-Farming with digital ads? (Example)

You may have heard about a new tactic that’s becoming popular with advertisers seeking to reach people on their mobile devices…It’s called by some Geo-Farming. It’s also referred to as Geo-Retargeting (what we at Vici call it). Why can’t everybody in the digital ad game agree to call things by the same name? Let’s save that for another day! ...

I gotta to have Faith, Faith, Faith!

Vici is excited to welcome Faith Koerner, Digital Campaign Coordinator, to the team! Faith is based out of the Philadelphia location. Her background includes a focus in media management, publicity and marketing before she started working for Vici, plus she's got all the right certifications in Google and mobile marketing.  And boy was her Wonderlic score off the charts. ...

How Vici Hires Top Talent

Update: Facebook shuttered Jobs on Facebook (February 2023) and Instant Articles (April 2023) We are extraordinarily proud of the team we’ve built here at Vici, but as with all systems we utilize, hiring takes constant refinement.  People on our staff are not only marketing savvy, smart, and thoughtful, but also have an inherit want to be customer-focused.  These are technology...

What Are The Best Digital Advertising Products For Local Political Campaigns?

According to Ad Age, there is a broad trend being played out across the advertising landscape. Using data to target audience segments and make smarter media buys in digital. Political numbers absolutely reflect that as digital is replacing traditional ad spend in this vertical. Politicians are assigning ad budgets for digital. And, online digital advertising is not covered by the...

How To Help Credit Unions Grow And Maximize Membership

According to Credit Union Insight, there are several challenges that all credit unions face.  Here are just a couple: Growing membership Increasing digital usage Integrating channels Let’s start by looking at how to integrate channels.  This means integrating marketing channels.  According to CUIInsight.com, “Your key to success is to consider integrating member messaging across multiple channels.”  As with any type of marketing,...

What’s the best way to reach Hispanic consumers with digital ads?

In some instances, getting the right message to the right person in the right language is as simple as asking them to push a button.  “For English, Press One. Para Español, Marque Número Dos.” In digital, it is even easier; the button is already pushed as their preferred language is already selected on their browser. How do you reach the audience you...

Why Digital Is Not A One-Call-Close

When training traditional media advertising salespeople on how to sell digital, I find that the biggest hurdle is often what made them successful salespeople people to begin with – being able to get their message across quickly, devise a solution, and close the sale – often all in one meeting. When you are selling a media advertising product that people...