2015 was an exciting year for programmatic advertising in general and in-image advertising, in particular. As the year draws to a close, we took the opportunity to look back at the 7 most popular articles on the imonomy blog based on what interested you most.
7. How To Boost Your Site’s Traffic Without Using ClickBait
In this article, Shirley explored that great alternative to clickbait titles: “rich, meaningful content”. As trends point to shorter attention spans and more emphasis on visual content, it becomes more and more important to produce better quality to cut through all the noise and jostling for your attention and clicks.
Shirley emphasizes the importance of understanding your audience and giving them great quality that satisfies their need for useful content that adds value. Clickbait may earn the shorter term click but even those titles start to lose their appeal as readers year for something more substantial.
6. 10 Minute Guide To Become A Better Online Publisher
The most popular publishers deliver great content and a great reading experience. Both are crucial for sustained success. Avishai and Shirley’s article outlines tips for newer publishers based on best practices she has gathered from her favorite online publishers that include –
- understanding your audience better;
- inviting feedback (especially relevant as more and more publishers disable comments on their sites);
- better integrating social media;
- adapting to multiple screen sizes; and
- paying careful attention to how publishers implement ads on their sites.
5. 5 Ways To Create More Engaging Content
In this article, Sinead dives into an evergreen topic: creating better, more engaging content. After all, isn’t the primary purpose of our content to connect to you, add value and perhaps even serve as the starting point for a meaningful conversation about the article’s themes? In practical terms, engaging content also usually leads to more traffic to your site which has benefits for your business.
Sinead’s advice is straightforward and relevant to content creators at different levels. For example, she recommends friendly and personal language; asking questions and writing from the heart. She also highlights that we are all people and writing that touches on our shared experiences is so much more appealing.
4. Mobile Advertising Trends: What Publishers Should Know
Saying that mobile advertising is a big deal seems pretty obvious these days but keeping your finger on the pulse of the mobile advertising industry isn’t always that easy. Shirley’s article highlights a few central themes and critical trends in the mobile advertising space that remain relevant six months after she wrote it. Shirley’s major themes include choosing the best mobile ad network; adapting to CPMs in mobile advertising; responsive ads (crucial for variable device form factors) and various forms of advertising that are well suited to mobile campaigns.
3. Surprising Content Marketing Tools That Help You Work Smarter
Content marketing is frenetic work and it isn’t always easy to work efficiently with everything that is going on. In this article, Avishai spent some time exploring a number of tools and services that many content marketers use to work not just more effectively but also smarter. His article covers some favorites including Canva, Google Analytics, Feedly and MailChimp. You may be familiar with many of these tools. They remain incredibly useful even now and, if you aren’t already using some of them, you really should spend some time reading Avishai’s article and exploring these options.
Surprising Content Marketing Tools That Help You Work Smarter
2. Mobilegeddon – How Publishers Can Survive Google’s Update
For a time it seemed as if Google’s algorithm update would precipitate a global, mobile disaster. So much so that the impending change became known as “Mobilegeddon”. Fortunately the impact wasn’t as severe as many expected, for the most part. Even though Google’s update didn’t lead to the disaster many were expecting but a positive outcome is that it pushed the industry to make content more accessible on mobile devices which, with the remarkable growth of that segment of the overall market, is a good thing for everyone.
1. Programmatic Advertising in a Nutshell – Part One
The most popular blog post of 2015 was this first part of a three part guide to programmatic advertising (here are parts two and three). I should disclose, in the interests of transparency, that I co-authored this article.
This first part explores more traditional advertising sales models as a precursor for the second part in which I introduced readers to the programmatic advertising sales model. One big shift was the move to interconnected systems that automated and dramatically sped up the process of buying and selling ad inventory. Another important change that programmatic advertising introduced was the ability to rapidly (almost realtime in most cases) present consumers with targeted ads based on their preferences.
Programmatic advertising, as a model, is still evolving and new options such as “header bidding” are advancing the general state of the art. You can expect programmatic advertising to be even more relevant in 2016 than it was in 2015.
Were any of your favorites not on this list? Which blog posts did you find most useful in 2015? Share your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Image credit: Tea, Glasses, Book from Boss Fight