For over five years now, startup activity has experienced massive growth around the world. In fact, a post on the City A.M. blog shows that “a staggering 100 million businesses are launched annually, according to figures from GEM Global Report. It comes to just over three businesses every second, or 11,000 per hour.” However, does that mean that starting a business is easy? Well, I will say that starting a business is easy, but starting a business and making it a success is very difficult. Landing your first paying customer is even more challenging. Interestingly, as many companies are turning into successes, more and more companies with killer services and products are failing on a daily basis. In an article published on LinkedIn Pulse, Kevin Vyavahare showed that “The failure rate for new startups seems to be around 70% to 80% in the first year and only about half of those who survive the first year will remain in business the next five years.” However, no … [Read more...]

Can you call yourself a content marketing expert? Even if you answer “yes”, there are still lots of ways to enhance your performance. Even if you’re one of the 42% of B2B marketers that claim to be effective at content marketing, you still have a bunch of room for improvement. If you desire to make the most out of your content marketing efforts, you must know what strategies to implement, and most of all, what tools to use. Good keyword research, the perfect social media marketing strategy, and the best search engine optimization skills all can contribute immensely to your success as a content marketing expert. Unfortunately, when it comes to content marketing tools, a lot of the ones often recommended by the experts are very costly, and the average content marketer can’t afford them. Now, here’s the good news: There are a bunch of free tools out there that you can also use to get the same results, and many of them are owned by big G … [Read more...]

Not all impressions are created equal. So why trade them wholesale without distinction? It’s a good and democratic way to trade all your impressions in open RTB environment (akin to AdSense)—all publishers get the same data and price floor, the highest bidder wins, end of story. But that sort of “throw it to the market and let them decide” approach severely limits yield and barely scratches the surface of all the capabilities of programmatic selling. In this primer, we are discussing all four of programmatic deal types, along with their potential merits and disadvantages for media sellers. Also known as: Open exchange, Open marketplace, RTB Participation: All (eligible) buyers on a platform Ad Server Priority: Lowest (just above in-house ads) An Open Auction is the Wild West of auctions. — IAB It’s a lot like plug-and-play trading on AdSense: Every advertiser on an exchange/SSP/ad network gets the impression call, they all bid, and the highest … [Read more...]

UX has a long history… going back way beyond the digital era. Restaurants have always been concerned about User Experience, and so have museums and hotels. The chef, the curator, the innkeeper—these people have always had a vested interest in your comfort, your enjoyment… your experience.  Today, however, ‘UX’ is most often applied to software applications and websites. How easy is it to navigate a site? Is there a steep learning curve to using the site/application? How frustrating is it when the user makes an error? Is the site trustworthy? Do users find what they expect? Do they get what they need? From a visitor’s very first impression right on through to the engagement you hope they’ll pursue, every minute should be effortless. Interacting with your site/app should be pleasurable, easy, engaging, and efficient. That, in a nutshell, is ‘User Experience’ (UX). Tech changes at a lightning-fast pace. Every day, … [Read more...]

Advertising is the heart & soul of a growing blog. It’s the advertising that pays for our hosting, domain & gives us an ample amount of reasons to continue blogging, either as a part-time hobby or as a full-time profession. When it comes to managing ads on WordPress, one can easily do this using WordPress widgets or by editing the WordPress theme file. Adding ads using WordPress widgets are good enough for those who are starting out with blogging, but when it comes to making real money from advertising, using an ad management WordPresss plugin is recommended. Also, editing the WordPress theme to add ad codes is not a piece of cake for everyone. Here are some of the things that an ad management plugin for WordPress should help you achieve: Run various ad types: This could be running AdSense ads, Media.net ads, affiliate ads, or running your own product ads. Mobile/desktop ad: There is no point of serving the same ad to the desktop & mobile site if it’s not a … [Read more...]

Bitcoin is back in news again after trading at a record high of $4483 per coin this month. Many cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin are powered by a technology known as blockchain, and its potential use cases extends far beyond just the financial world—it continues to find use in government, healthcare, real estate, security, and many other industries. At events and in publications that cover the advertising industry, blockchain has been a hot topic as a candidate for bringing in more transparency into ad tech and solving problems such as opaque supply chains and ad fraud, how much of it is hype and what are the facts? Before getting into how blockchain could help ad tech, let’s understand what it is and how it works. Each “block” in a blockchain typically contains a hash pointer to the previous block, timestamp, and transaction data. A blockchain is a growing list of records, or blocks, linked together and secured by cryptography. Stripped to the basics, … [Read more...]

What do you imagine when you think of CocaCola? What do you imagine when you think of Apple? Can you imagine the color and logo of both these brands? The majority of us can, and that’s the power of branding. If there is one thing to learn in business, it’s branding. Consistent branding is key to making your company, business, blog, or idea a success. However, most bloggers and webmasters who start a blog or a product company are not so accustomed to design and branding. Most of us use sites like Fiverr, 99design, and Freelancer.com to hire a web-designer to work on the branding aspects of our websites. And if you are working with a well-skilled designer, then that’s great. But if not, you will miss out on several important aspects of branding. What are these important aspects of branding? Apart from the company’s vision and mission statement, here are a few important visual aspects of branding that you need to implement ASAP: Logo Font … [Read more...]

Every website owner probably wants more traffic coming into their site. I shouldn’t have to repeat the cliché that “traffic is the lifeblood of any blog”… I’m sure you already know that. This is because you won’t get more clients without more traffic. It’s only when you’re able to bring people to your website that you will have the chance to convert them into customers. In other words… More traffic = More customers = More money Does that make sense? That said, if more website traffic has been your problem all this time, I want you to bring your seat closer as I’m about to unveil to you some great ideas you can use to attract more traffic to your website. I want you to understand that there are many ways you can drive traffic to your site, but today, we’re going to talk about five ways you can hack content marketing to increase traffic. 1. Come Up With Viral Content Ideas First of all, you have to understand why … [Read more...]

‘Million’ is a magical word. However, until a few years back, it used to be an alien word for me. I’m from New Delhi, India, and here we talk in Lakhs and Crores. Thanks to globalization and the growth of the blogging and startup industries, “million” is no longer a word that is exciting for me. Why am I talking about this word? Because ShoutMeLoud receives more than 1.5 million page views a month, and one of my goals for this year is to reach 2 million page views a month. I think we can get there… Welcome to this special transparency report of ShoutMeLoud! Every few months, I publish a report like this stating what is happening with our blog, how we performed in terms of traffic and income, and a lot of new ideas and suggestions for bloggers in every niche to grow their own blogging businesses. If you are not sure why I publish such transparency reports, then you should read our philosophy here and check out previous income reports … [Read more...]

Back in 2015, DFP first announced the availability of native ads for mobile apps. This was aimed at creating a better user experience by giving app publishers an alternative to prestitial and interstitial ads—both disliked and disruptive formats that don’t meet the Initial Better Ad Standards. Context is incredibly important on mobile, and that’s why over the next few weeks we’re rolling out our native ad solution for apps to DoubleClick for Publishers clients globally. With native ads in DFP, publishers can maintain a beautiful user experience in their apps while providing brands an opportunity to reach their audience on mobile. Just a few months later, DFP revealed that they were beta testing programmatic native ads with eBay, an experiment that led to a 3.6x increase in ad engagement for eBay on average, with some campaigns delivering click-through rates up to 5%. Native has only grown since 2015, and according to eMarketer, now accounts for more than … [Read more...]