Happy weekend. It’s been a bit of a quiet week. Well, not for Pressboard, who managed to raise 2M in funding for its native ad marketplace. Congrats to Jerrid Grimm and his team there. Well done.

Anywho, here are a few things that caught my attention this week.

Is The Return To Emotion-based Marketing Upon Us?

The Drum published an interesting article about the return to the emotional side of marketing this year and the hybrid approach that now seems to be regaining favor with top brands. I’m a sucker for a good branding campaign. They’re memorable. They build awareness. They often make you think. They don’t, however, encourage you to take the next step in some marketing conversion funnel. They plant seeds. Ideas gestate. They have room to breathe. If I’m honest, it’s everything I love about advertising. A right-brained approach to advertising is something that resonates with me greatly. Some of the early Volkswagen Beatle ads are works of art (more here and here).

Here’s Why Branding Is So Important To Publishers

The last half-decade has seemingly been all about data-driven ad targeting. An approach that stands in direct contrast to the strategies employed by companies like Volkswagen back when they were rolling out the Beatle. Today, some would argue, rather articulately, that deep targeting-based advertising is the only type of advertising worth engaging in today. It’s cost-effective. It reaches the right audiences. It leads to predictable and measurable outcomes.

For publishers though, brand recognition has a significant role to play moving forward. They’re going to be pushing up against a decade of targeting rhetoric, but the sooner they can get there the better. The only thing that matters for a publisher today is the brand. Don’t believe me? Fine. Then explain why advertising on premium publishing sites like The New York Times is “three times as effective as it is on those of nonpremium publishers at boosting brand favorability and making users more likely to recommend products or services.” Differentiation is the key to surviving the next decade, and both brand affinity and customer trust play a massive role in building the type of ecosystem that results in a 3x multiplier in effectiveness for marketers.

As a marketer, it’s important to realize that where a brand appears matters. The location conveys a message and it’s not always controllable with deep-targeting practices.

According to comScore, where someone viewed an advertisement is three times more important than if they saw an advertisement on a nonpremium brand website. Does keeping costs down matter for marketers? Absolutely. But, it does matter more than where your advertisements are showing up? Probably not.