The Mobilizer

At Kargo, we believe that putting art into adtech is the key to brands connecting with their audiences. So when it comes to ad innovation, our strategy is to invoke human emotion. We know that starting there, with the consumer at the forefront, will drive performance outcomes on the backend.

Update from 2017’s landmark Web vs. App report presents new opportunities on mobile for advertisers 

As featured on Adweek

Maybe it’s a smell, a song, a food, a toy or even a simple logo. Whatever it is, nostalgia triggers a connection in your memory so deep and special that you are transcended to a previous version of yourself. While triggers vary by individual, the power of nostalgia is undeniable, yet it is often overlooked by marketers.

Kargo's Curated Marketplace Boasts Less Than 0.3% of Invalid Traffic Following Implementation of White Ops' MediaGuard.

As featured on MarTech Series

Innovation in advertising takes many forms. As technologists in Mobile Advertising, we spend a lot of time thinking about the creative palette itself–how the properties of the palette can enhance consumer experiences. As more content consumption moves to smaller devices, having the ability to transform those small screen experiences into larger, more immersive ones will be critical to the future of advertising.

Following Huawei’s latest announcement of the Mate X phone, which has both 5G capabilities and a foldable display, we are embarking on a pivotal time with the opportunity to create the next generation of mobile advertising.

As featured on MarTech Advisor

As the advertising industry has become focused on pouring resources into buying, targeting, and measuring ads, the customer experience has taken a beating. According to Chris Keune, VP of Data Innovation at Kargo, shifting the focus back to the consumer starts with changing the way advertisers speak to each other.

As featured on AdExchanger

Google announced last month that it would switch to a first-price auction in Google Ad Manager by the end of 2019. The move brings Google into parity with most demand-side platforms (DSPs) and creates a unified auction from all demand sources, thereby changing the dynamics of the second-price auction universe that it created.

This, along with removing its “last look” preferential spot in its ad stack, illustrates Google’s response to the broad perception that it has an unfair advantage in the programmatic waterfall. Header bidding has been nearly universally adopted by publishers to create a more even playing field via first-price auction in the header. This gave publishers more control over competition for their impressions.

I see the changes as a move to counteract the need for alternative strategies to Google at a time of growing competition for premium impressions, especially in light of Amazon’s competing auction platform. By moving to a first-price auction, Google is seemingly surrendering a competitive advantage – and strategically repositioning itself for its next move: ensuring that Google's ad server, formerly DFP, becomes the central place for the auction to take place.

As featured on The Drum

Today’s advertising models often focus on outcome-driven KPIs that help to optimize a campaign tactical effectiveness but do little to improve overall strategy.

Missing from these models is the very essence of advertising’s purpose: influencing people through information and emotion. The average consumer sees more than 500 ads per day. Focusing on emotion allows advertisers to break through that excess a grab more than a fleeting moment of a consumer’s attention. Focusing on emotion also allows advertisers to build awareness, change perception, or drive a specific action.

What we need are new models to measure the breakthrough of an ad, quantify whether it successfully transferred its message, and analyze the personal response of the ad.

We can think of these models as: fidelity, entropy, and empathy.

As featured on Adweek

For all the ongoing talk of brand safety, digital advertisers really need to start thinking about new ways to ensure that their messages show up in the places where they are most appropriate and most engaging. It’s probably time to shake up this conversation and stop thinking just about ways to “protect” a brand’s image and start looking at how to actually enhance it.

And that comes from creating a media strategy that leverages the contextual signals evoked from the articles people are consuming.

The mobile landscape is ever-evolving, but our core best practices have remained constant for our award-winning design team at Kargo. Follow along below for our top five mobile design principles to see how we keep our units looking as fresh as the latest Yeezys.