Members of the Merchenta team will be at OPS Markets London on Feb 9th. To arrange a meeting or catch-up over drinks just contact us.

Recent research from the IAB reaffirmed the growing role of tablet/slate devices in retail/ecommerce. According to the survey, 65% of tablet owners used them to browse online stores. This snazzy IAB infographic shows that the majority of tablet use occurs in the evenings and is favoured for keeping up on social networks & email.

We thought we'd take a closer look at the IAB's figures and see whether slate 'browsers' were also 'buyers'.

Taking November 2011 as our benchmark we compared the number of tablet-toting consumers across Merchenta with the number who actually used their device to purchase.

Surprisingly, although 5.6% of merchants' online stores were accessed via slate/tablet, just 3.7% actually bought something on their device.

Despite retailers' increasing efforts to tailor their online stores to tablets, it seems that consumers are choosing to buy online using good ole' fashioned desktops. This is a trend to watch during 2012 - is this really going to be the 'year of the slate'?

It's been our long-held belief that consumers value relevant, appropriate marketing over irrelevant, spammy or aggressive in-your-face targetted advertising. 

And now we can share the proof.

Since joining the IAB's Online Behavioural Advertising initiative, we've been watching opt-out rates carefully. Although every Merchenta IntelliAd contains an opt out capability and we're listed on the IAB's "youronlinechoices" sites, opt out rates have remained stubbornly low. Indeed, they are falling month on month. For the month of November, just 0.2% of consumers who saw one of our ads opted-out - of those 60% opted back in within 24 hours.

Proof, if more were needed, that consumers value advertising relevance.

This year, according to comScore Cyber Monday Spending Hit $1.25 Billion to Rank as Heaviest U.S. Online Spending Day in History. Traditionally Cyber Monday signals the start of the Christmas shopping season. 

Across the Merchenta platform, we've seen a similar trend. But what's interesting is what happens after Cyber Monday - there's a pronounced uplift on the following Wednesday (7th December) as consumers scramble to secure gifts.

There's even a halo effect - products not typically associated with the Christmas season (eg large white goods, DIY products) have also sold strongly.

Overall, the uplift in sales over Cyber Monday was 27%. All of which suggests that online consumer spending continues its irrepressible rise.

Members of the Merchenta team will be at ECMOD Direct Commerce show at the Islington Business Design Centre on 30 November & 1 December. It's a great chance to catch up with clients & friends old and new. For an appointment contact us, we'd love to meet up.

As the picture below shows, it’s not always easy to ensure ads appear in an appropriate context.

This – real-world – example was in place for several days before complaints caused the billboard to be taken down. You’d have thought the bill poster might have noticed that this ad for the ‘Walking Dead’ might not be best displayed on the side of a funeral home. Likely as it was, he was following the media planner’s instruction, to the letter. Except they didn’t understand the specific placement – or that the messaging might cause offense in that spot.

So if it’s hard to ensure that a 60 foot by 30 foot billboard is relevant and appropriate to its location, just how hard is it online with display ads?

Well, it turns out to be pretty tough. As this collection of howlers shows the display ad landscape is littered with examples of ads shown in exactly the wrong place. Wrong context, inappropriate content, conflicting messaging, whatever.

When it comes to behaviourally targeted ads, the simple act of displaying ads for a known audience isn’t enough. You have to consider context.

What’s to stop an ad recommending a widget appearing on a publisher site laden with negative comments about the widget? If we simply discard all user generated content sites just in case, it’s easy to miss opportunities to display a widget ad adjacent to negative comment about a competitor’s widget. You don’t like that widget – but this one might be great!

Do you really want to show ads to people on pages covered fold-to-fold with other brands’ ads? Probably not. And what about above/below the fold – clickthrough rates tend to drop markedly the further down the page you go. So how do you know where the ad placement is – and whether it’s above the fold where it’s likely to be seen?

Try figuring all this out across millions of websites, billions of potential placements all-day every day at scale and it becomes something of a challenge. Traditional approaches of sampling ads on publisher sites after the fact just don’t work. By that stage, it’s too late.

So, this is where Merchenta//Lexi comes in. Lexi is smart enough to understand page structure, the details of where a placement occurs and its relative positioning to the fold. So Lexi can hand-pick the best spots in real-time as part of the display cycle.

More than that, Lexi also understands the context of each page that an ad is displayed on. So, inappropriate context can be identified and excluded upfront, quickly and easily.

Result? Ads that appear above the fold – and in locations surrounded with appropriate content - at scale, millions of times daily.

We're delighted to announce that Virgin Balloon Flights has selected Merchenta’s behavioural video IntelliAds to convey the thrill of Virgin’s range of experiences. 

 “For experience based products such as ballooning, Merchenta’s video IntelliAds really give the customer a great idea of what to expect and allows them to convert instantly if they like what they see.” enthuses Eve Ashwell, Digital Marketing Executive at Virgin Balloon Flights.

Each Merchenta IntelliAd is unique, combining sophisticated real-time behavioural analytics with branding to deliver personalised, dynamic product recommendations to consumers as they browse the web. 

“Merchenta IntelliAds allow us to extend the reach of our products in an engaging and effective way. Our products appear in dynamic units with a clear call to action which enable our customers to see more of our products more of the time.” - added Ashwell.

Using its sophisticated Insight Engine, Merchenta engages consumers only at the optimal point for conversion. The result – digital marketing that’s relevant for consumers and that delivers incremental, risk-free revenues for retailers.

Merchenta IntelliAds secure branding benefits, too.

As Ashwell notes - “IntelliAds also allow us to fully customise our units ensuring that we’re able to maintain the integrity of our brand, another important feature for us.” 

Merchenta IntelliAds leverage sophisticated audience targeting, retargeting/pre-targeting and audience extension strategies on a paid-for-performance basis. They are available in a range of IAB-compliant formats, including video, expandable, in-unit credit/debit card transactional and dynamic.

In the midst of the furore over the EU Privacy Directive and this week's class-action suits in the US against Facebook for alleged cookie-spawning, it's been easy to forget some basics.

Consumers are a pretty smart bunch. They're able to make informed choices about digital marketing. Stuff that engages and delights, works. Stuff that doesn't gets lost in the noise. 

We take the view that relevant marketing is better than irrelevant advertising. It's something our stats bear out (something to share another day) and philosophically it feels right.

When we started running behavioural campaigns last year, we were determined to provide consumers with a choice. Every ad carried a working opt-out, the 'eye' icon. Unlike some vendors, once you'd opted out you stayed opted out.

Our opt out rates are a fraction of a percentage point, so why bother? Because consumers should always have a choice. 

So, we're delighted to announce that this month we've moved to what's emerging as the global standard, the NAI AdChoices opt-out logo. It's on 100% of our IntelliAds in the top right hand corner, take a look.

It's been a hectic few months at Merchenta Towers, but we're on the road again starting next week.

Come and meet the team at a4uexpo conference on stand 32 at London's Hilton Metropole Hotel.

We'll be showcasing our new Merchenta IntelliAds behavioural advertising gallery and sharing some recent case studies and hard data that's sure to be of interest to performance marketeers.

If you're visiting the conference, feel free to drop by and pick up a Merchenta swag bag. Tickets are almost sold out but you can get 10% off tickets by registering with 'MERCHENTAVIP'  here http://www.a4uexpo.com/london/

We'll be at Admonster's OPS:Markets London conference tomorrow talking about the future of real-time bidding in display. Come say hello - tickets available here.