Digital Marketing News: Programmatic Ad Challenges, Blockchain & Artificial Intelligence

The Challenges of Programmatic Advertising and How to Overcome Them [Infographic] A new infographic reveals that quality is the biggest issue in programmatic advertising. This includes brand safety, ad fraud and viewability. The good news? There's a way to overcome those challenges using a multi-layered human and technical approach. MarketingProfs Industry Vets Build A Search Engine On Blockchain To Displace Google MediaPost reports: "Colin Pape, project lead at Presearch.org, plans to release what he calls a decentralized search engine where no one company controls the content and the data and community members contribute to building the tool." Read on to learn how it will work. MediaPost Building Lasting Consumer Relationships in Retail [Report] A new report from Worldwide Business Research (WBR) and Persado shows that 86% of top retail marketers are investing up to multi-millions in AI this year. 69% are already using AI or machine learning within their organization. These marketers expect AI to make them more effective in terms of engagement, manage risk and stay ahead of the competition. Persado Digital transformation in B2B marketing is slowed by the lack of an adoption strategy A recent report shows that 21% of marketers surveyed have adopted digital transformation programs -- with 9% of marketers saying they've had a strategy in place for two years and 6% saying they're convinced that their company's digital marketing integration is completely optimized. The Drum Introducing Watch, a New Platform For Shows On Facebook Facebook has released a new show-based video platform called 'Watch'. This new platform is similar in functionality to YouTube, but emphasizes serial or episodic content. Watch will also allow video producers to monetize their content, however those details are currently unclear. Facebook Newsroom Lead Generation to Increase Conversions [Report] According to Ascend2: "A most important objective for 71% of marketing influencers to achieve with their lead generation strategy is to increase lead-to-customer conversions. This requires improving the quality of lead data – an important objective for half (50%) of marketing influencers." The study also notes that 50% of marketers surveyed also listed lead quality as a top challenge. Ascend2 AdWords mobile extensions get major upgrades with tappable sitelinks & more visible content Google has announced that AdWords mobile sitelinks are becoming interactive, and they'll begin to emphasize callouts and structured snippets on mobile. These extensions are going to fall in-line with ad copy. Search Engine Land Snapchat Acquired Location Measurement Company Placed for $135 Million Snapchat recently released how much they paid to acquire Placed in an effort to increase advertising effectiveness -- a cool $135.2 million. Coupled with their recent acquisition of Zenly, it appears that Snapchat is gearing up for more data and location driven features and advertising features. AdWeek What were your top digital marketing news stories this week? We'll be back next week with more news and insights from the wild world of digital marketing - stay tuned or follow us on Twitter @toprank for daily updates.

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