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IAB Europe and the IAB Tech Lab have launched the second iteration of the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) after spending a year gathering feedback from publishers, advertisers, digital protection authority groups and ad tech providers.

TCF 2.0 includes technical specifications and policy documents that outline GDPR-compliant processes for delivering digital ads and managing consumer data. This latest iteration states that consumers can not only withhold consent on data collection, but can exercise the “right to object” to how data is processed: “Consumers also gain more control over whether and how vendors may use certain features of data processing (for example, the use of precise geolocation).”

Publishers implementing TCF 2.0 will also be able to restrict how consumer data is processed by third-parties on the publisher’s website on a per-vendor basis.

“It is a framework for publishers, technology vendors, agencies and advertisers to clearly and consistently communicate with end users about how their data is being used, while also providing an opportunity for users to object,” said IAB Europe about TCF 2.0.

Why we should care

With GDPR already more than a year into existence and the California Consumer Privacy Act coming next year, data privacy regulations are top of mind for marketers. IAB Europe and IAB Tech Lab’s latest efforts aim to offer the digital ad industry a framework to help publishers, advertiser and ad tech vendors navigate data privacy regulations. But the reality is many in the ad tech space are being forced to manage consent — no small task when you consider the complexities around programmatic ad networks and technological layers involved across the digital ad industry.

“With the number of constituents involved and disparate regulatory interpretations across multiple jurisdictions, it was essential that the evolution of the framework was handled sensitively, with final specifications able to be adopted in a manner consistent with differing business models in a wide range of operational markets,” said IAB Europe CEO Townsend Feehan.

According to IAB Europe, the TCF 2.0 had to meet the needs of the 28 different markets within the European Union, “Each possessing a DPA that interprets the rules regarding GDPR compliance in different ways.”

IAB Europe also stated in the announcement that it is confident the updates to TCF 2.0 will allow UK companies to adopt GDPR-compliant RTB (real-time bidding) practices. But as recently as June, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) released a report addressing concerns that RTB was not GDPR-compliant. IAB Europe said it has continued a close-working relationship with the ICO, but jury is still out on whether or not TCF 2.0 will satisfy privacy regulators even if it does provide more details for vendors and offers “right to object” measures.

More on the news

Are you going about your content marketing as effectively and efficiently as possible?

There are a lot of different content marketing tools out there, with new ones appearing faster than you can keep up. You might be tempted to keep trying new things, but have you chosen the best software for the job at hand?

One great way to find the best content marketing tools is to take a look at what the pros are using and recommending. Here are six of the best, as recommended by six top content marketers.

1. BuzzSumo  – Recommended by Neil Patel

What is it?

BuzzSumo is hugely popular within the content marketing industry. It allows you to look up your competitor’s sites (or a keyword) and see what content is performing best – listing the number of social media engagements and shares across key platforms.

At the Pro level, it also gives you a very handy option to see what backlinks each piece of content has.

Why try it?

In “15 Content marketing tools you can’t live without”, Neil Patel explains why BuzzSumo is a great tool for content marketers who want to play in the big leagues:

“BuzzSumo is perfect for leveling the playing field, revealing the topics you should write about, and helping you find influencers in your industry to market your content for you.”

BuzzSumo can be used as a way to come up with content ideas, by seeing what content is already popular in your niche or as a backlink tool that highlights backlinks with the most social shares.

Who’s it for? 

At the free level, content marketers on a shoestring budget. At the Pro level, content marketers who want to focus heavily on idea generation and backlink building.

Who’s it for?

Content marketers who need to come up with a lot of ideas … or content marketers who are short on inspiration. The free level is generous (you can run up to 50 searches per day although it’s limited in the number of results you get) and the pro plan is $79/month.

2. Easel.ly – Recommended by Jeff Foster

What is it?

Easel.ly is a tool for creating infographics, which might form a useful strand of your content marketing – especially if you’re in an industry where you want to present facts, figures, and statistics.

Why try it?

In “12 Time-saving tools for content marketers”, Jeff Foster explains that Easel.ly has loads of content that you can use for free:

“The site has thousands of free infographic templates that you can use, along with drag-and-drop tools to fill in your own content. Or you can upload your own templates instead. The site has only been around for a few years, but it already has 800,000 users who have built more than one million infographics.”

Who’s it for?

Easel.ly is free and straightforward to use, so it’s a great tool for content marketers who don’t have the budget for a designer. (If you’re a content marketer for a large firm, you’ll probably find that you want to pay for a custom infographic design instead.)

3. Grammarly – Recommended by Alex Birkett

What is it?

Grammarly is an automatic editing tool that checks your writing for errors and for areas where you could phrase things better. It’ll pick up on grammatical mistakes that basic spellcheckers miss, it’ll advise on stylistic issues, and it’ll recommend cutting out unnecessary words.

Why try it?

As Alex Birkett from HubSpot explains in “The 19 Best content marketing tools in 2019″, Grammarly is a fantastic tool if you’re not great at spotting your own mistakes:

“Grammarly, however, reduces my error rate by probably 50-80%. I still have some mistakes slip through, but to a large extent, Grammarly saves me from embarrassment (not just when writing articles, by the way – it also works for social media and forum comments).”

Who’s it for?

Content marketers who do a lot of writing themselves (whether that’s for blog posts or for social media), and content marketers who need to edit and review writing produced by other team members.

4. GetResponse – Recommended by Digital Marketing Institute

What is it?

GetResponse is an all-in-one platform that lets you create landing pages, send emails, and use powerful autoresponders to make sure that you capitalize on all that content marketing. You can even use their “Autofunnel” feature to build a complete marketing campaign based on ready-made funnels.

Why try it?

As Digital Marketing Institute explains in “15 Content marketing tools you need”, GetResponse is a powerful tool with a lot to offer:

“It’s an extremely useful tool for those who have a lot of email marketing activities. Their tools breach several areas, including landing pages, autoresponders and even a full suite of enterprise and CRM management solutions.”

Who’s it for?

GetResponse starts from $15/month (for a list of up to 1,000 subscribers), so it’s accessible even for small-sized startups.

5. Tailwind  – Recommended by OptinMonster

What is it?

Tailwind is a tool that you can use to schedule your Pinterest and Instagram posts. You can also use it to discover content, monitor conversations, and look at the analytics of how your posts are doing on those networks.

Why try it?

In “45 Insanely useful content marketing tools to skyrocket engagement”, Sharon Hurley Hall from OptinMonster explains that Tailwind can be a great time-saver:

“You’ll save time with bulk image upload, drag and drop calendar, multi-board pinning and pin looping, hashtag lists, and more. Plus, automatically optimize your Pinterest and Instagram schedules based on when your audience is most active and engaged.”

Who’s it for?

Tailwind is particularly well designed for teams (you can use it in conjunction with your colleagues), and it’s also great if you post on social media accounts for more than one website or brand (you can manage multiple Pinterest and Instagram accounts using it).

6. Agorapulse – Recommended by Donna Moritz

What is it?

Agorapulse is a social media management tool (similar to Hootsuite or Buffer), but, as Donna Moritz explains, it’s “like a Swiss Army knife of social media management.” You can view and respond to social media activity in the app, you can schedule posts for different platforms, and you can see handy details about your followers.

Why try it?

In “Why I love Agorapulse for social media management”, Donna Moritz outlines how useful the tool has been to her:

“I love that Agorapulse has a suite of features that really do cover most of your social media marketing needs. In fact, I have been gradually moving a lot of the features I use on other tools over to Agorapulse. It’s hard not to want to stay “in” this tool as it is so user-friendly and fun to use.”

Who’s it for?

Larger content marketing agencies or businesses. It starts from $99/month, so it won’t easy on the wallet – but if you have a whole social media team that needs to stay on top of messages, then it could be well worth the money.

Bonus – SEMRush  – Recommended by Joe Williams

What is it?

I felt this list would be a little incomplete if I didn’t share my own recommendation. SEMRush is one of my favorite marketing tools, with a huge amount of power. It has data on a gigantic pool of websites (over 70 million), allowing you to see what keywords they rank for, their keyword positions and search volumes, and various other information.

Why try it?

SEMRush can be used in lots of different ways, and even if you’ve already given it a whirl or you’ve been using it regularly, you might find there are yet more things you can get from it, as I explain in “7 Powerful ways SEMRush can help you become an SEO superhero“:

“If you’ve already given it a try, […]  you may have missed some neat little features (as I did). Like how using SEMRush can give you a ticket to travel back in time and learn from the past. Or how it can help spot unique content gaps you may normally miss.”

Who’s it for?

There’s a free (though limited) version of SEMRush, which all content marketers can benefit from – paid subscriptions start from $99.95/month if you want to continue. Large companies or marketing agencies will likely find it valuable.

Conclusion

Good content marketing tools can make your job so much easier (and the wrong tools can waste your time, or prevent you from following up on opportunities you might otherwise have spotted). Which of the above tools will you test out?

Joe Williams is the founder of Tribe SEO. He can be found on Twitter at @joetheseo.

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Siloed teams and breakdowns in communication are familiar challenges to most of us. In our fast-paced environments, it can sometimes be difficult to ensure teams are all on the same page, particularly when it comes to digital marketing execution.

New solutions, intended to speed up processes and improve efficiencies, often create complexities as more users are added, additional tools are implemented and processes need to scale. The content creation process can involve a number of players from different teams, but how can we ensure everyone is on the same page?

Adobe’s State of Creative and Marketing Collaboration survey sought to better understand how teams work together when creating content and delivering customer experiences. The survey included over 1,000 creative, marketing, advertising and IT professionals, and the findings point to the growing need to improve collaboration efforts across departments.

We’re creating more content, but communicating less

Survey results indicated that cross-team communication takes place at least once a week, but those meetings don’t necessarily mean collaboration. Only 35% of all professionals surveyed rated their existing content creation and delivery process as “very well-coordinated.” With a growing number of content requests, these processes become more convoluted and lead to breakdowns.

“Marketers are being asked to produce and deliver way more content than they were asked to do just five years ago,” said Bruce Swann, group product marketing manager for Campaign at Adobe.

Improve visibility, transparency across teams to streamline processes

Most organizations use productivity and communication tools, but in some cases adoption is low. Driving adoption within your own team and across the different departments you work with can be critical to working smoothly together.

Many workplace messenger apps allow users to create groups or channels dedicated to specific projects to open up a new line of communication for users involved. These can be used to streamline processes and help bring the necessary parties from each team into the conversation, improving visibility into upcoming projects and tasks.

Involving creative will improve outcomes

Lack of visibility into campaign results is a consistent challenge among creatives. Only 24% reported being involved during the reporting stage. “Reporting is often stuck in silos or teams,” Swann said.

Source: Adobe’s State of Creative and Marketing Collaboration Survey

Not including creative teams can lead to misses when they lack insight into the effectiveness of the assets they’ve created. Not knowing what drives conversions, for example, can lead to roadblocks in future projects or a decrease in conversion. Forty percent of creatives said they want to be involved in reporting — specifically to understand conversion metrics and how content impacts revenue.

Marketing can lead the shift

While these challenges may be organizational, marketing can take the lead in improving how we work with our counterparts on other teams by providing ways to include the right people at the right time. We can leverage the tools we have to create inclusive environments that can help bring out key insights from our colleagues to improve our marketing campaigns and outcomes.

Publishers are increasingly adopting the paywalled content approach as a monetization strategy. If there’s anything, paywalled content has helped publishers generate more revenue online. But user experience may have suffered as a result.

Paying for content may sound arcane on the Internet, but it’s not a new thing. Newspapers thrived on subscription plans. And high subscription numbers are how publishers justify their ad rates. But with the way the internet has democratized access to knowledge, hardly does anyone pay for content anymore. But that is changing.

Adopting the content subscription strategy is on the rise. And it is being endorsed by decision-makers at major media outlets. However, both from an SEO perspective and a user experience angle, paywalls may create concerns.

How do paywalls work and are they sustainable?

“Can publishers sustain their paywalls?”, this is the question to ask. It’s understandable that introducing sudden changes to a platform may cause user apathy. But is that the case with publishers who use paywalls? Or rather, should content marketers begin to adopt this approach?

Interestingly enough, some major publishers report seeing their ad revenues improve once they added a subscription service. Why this is the case is still not clear.

Let’s breakdown the different types of paywall strategies and how they function

• Freemium: This approach is popular with media outlets with a fairly sizable audience. Here free content is separated from premium content, allowing the free content to be available to everyone while premium content such as in-depth analysis is reserved for subscribers.
• Metered paywall: Metered paywall is the most adopted approach and is the type used by major outlets such as Medium and The Times. Users are allowed to access a limited amount of content in a given month until they are required to become subscribers to continue to enjoy more content.
• Hard paywall: The hard paywall blocks the entire website’s content for non-subscribers. Typically, readers will only get to see the headline and nothing beyond the infamous “read more” link. Users can still use the search feature of the website but cannot access any of its content or comments unless they become subscribers.

Source: Betterhelp.com

Over at Betterhelp, where I oversee content creation we’ve only tried the “Freemium” approach and will continue to split-test between free content and putting back paywalls. So far, from professional experience, putting content behind paywalls has not helped our users, who rely heavily on our advice blog. While our experiment with a paywall is yet to be concluded, we can draw from other media outlets to see what works.

Why publishers adopt paywalls

Source: The Wall Street Journal

If you’re on the homepage of The Wall Street Journal website, you’re immediately prompted to register to start reading an article. Of course, to register means to pay to gain access to the content. On a website like WSJ.com, it’s easy to justify paying to read an article. They employ professional journalists who must keep producing high-quality content round the clock to meet the standard the newspaper is known for. Readers that enjoy it will not budge at the idea of paying to keep their subscription to The Journal. However, to understand why mainstream publications put their content behind paywalls, we need to look at how their business model works.

Revenue driven decisions

It’s obvious, monetization is the chief factor in why publishers adopt paywalls.

In print, established outlets like The New York Times, WSJ, and The Post rely on advertisers and subscribers to keep their business running. On the internet, however, advertisement is not a sustainable revenue model for large publishers as users are trained to seek fast bloggy content that is difficult to monetize. Further crippled by the wave of Adblockers, digital advertising generates less than the revenue that similar ads will generate in print. With this, publishers are willing to throw UX under the bus for revenue.

Should content marketers also put up paywalls?

Defiance and reports of success after implementing paywalls may tempt marketers to adopt the approach. As in our case, we had to shelve the idea after a brief experiment with the freemium approach.

Source: Twitter

Most publications have reported success after adopting the paywall program. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, has over 1,550,000 paying registered online subscribers that have opted to pay to read their content. In 2018, The New York Times also reported hitting 3,000,000 registered subscribers, with digital contributing the most to its revenue source.

Results may not be typical

Now, you need to understand that The Time and WSJ’s approach involves a lot of testing and engineering. WSJ, for instance, scores readers based on an average of 60 data points to judge their readers. This pool of data is then used to determine when the paywall is introduced. Data helps WSJ to determine whether to nudge a reader into subscribing, offer them a “Freemium”, or even put up a “Hard Paywall”.

For content marketers, especially those whose existence relies on educating their audience through content as we do at Betterhelp, putting valuable content behind a paywall may be risky. Paywalled content could become a hindrance in the decision maker’s ability to consider your brand for opportunities. Decision-makers may even think your brand is not serious when content that is meant to educate your customers is put behind a paywall.

How does paywall affect SEO and UX?

Google tried to rein in on paywalled content practice by forcing publishers to follow their “first-click-free” policy. Basically, readers coming from a Google search result must be allowed to get the first premium content for free, or you lose your rankings. Of course, this rule gave room for misuse by some users and placed publishers in a tight spot, forcing many to ignore the controversial policy at the risk of losing their search rankings. In 2017, Google dropped the first click free policy and allowed publishers to decide how their content is seen.

Poor user experience is the bane of paywalls

It’s important to note that the way search engine crawlers interact with content is not the same way humans interact with content. This means publishers must carefully consider user experience in making content strategy decisions. Should an article that is crucial to the free content you’re allowed to read from search be put behind a paywall? How does that affect the experience? Ultimately, user experience is critical to SEO performance.

Side doors may mitigate poor UX

Studying the pattern of the largest online newspapers that have prioritized subscription services, it’s noticeable that they understand the negative impact of this approach on UX. For instance, there is hardly any publisher that has employed the “Hard Paywall” approach without leaving room for numerous “side doors” for non-subscribers to still access their content.

The downside of poor user experience for an online brand is so significant, it goes beyond the website alone. It can as much as hurt the brand itself. This is where the impact could be felt in search rankings. Google predominantly favors higher organic click-through rates (CTRs) in ranking search results. And once users have been trained to ignore a brand’s links in the search result pages, it’s only a matter of time before Google starts dropping the website for others with higher CTRs.

Whether publishers are aware of the several “side doors” non-subscribers are actively taking advantage of, or perhaps are they intentionally leaving room for content leaks is not clear. The upside to this “loophole” is near parity with what Google expects from publishers versus what they get.

How do content creators factor in their users’ experience while still accounting for revenue generated from their content? The key is this – when deciding which content to put behind a paywall, think about its primary purpose first.

Marie Miguel has been a contributor and a writing and research expert for nearly a decade, covering a variety of health-related topics. Some of her write-ups can be found on BetterHelp.com.

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In our hyper-connected digital world, an omnichannel marketing approach helps brands bridge the gap between online and offline consumer behavior. But driving an effective multi-touchpoint strategy has its unique challenges – and oftentimes, our strategies are only as effective as what we know about our customers.

In particular, customer location data has emerged over the last decade as a wealth of information for marketers, providing a digital footprint of where customers are spending time and how they interact with brands – both online and offline. From offline attribution to geo-targeting, location data can help marketers understand the bigger picture of the customer journey. But while location-based marketing can be a powerful strategy for marketers, it can also be a bit of a black box.

Here we dive into what location-based marketing is, how it works and what marketers need to consider, from privacy to targeting, to make it consumer-friendly and effective.

So, what exactly is location-based marketing?

In short, location-based marketing is targeting audiences based on where they are or have recently been.

“This can range from targeting users who live in particular zip codes, to targeting devices that tend to visit particular locations such as coffee shops, auto dealers, etc.,” said Frost Prioleau, CEO and co-founder of location marketing agency Simpli.fi.

Location data can reveal a trove of information about a customer’s daily travel routines (such as commutes), recurring shopping habits (like grocery shopping or gas station stops), restaurant preferences, and even online-to-storefront purchasing behavior. The data allows for more personalized targeting for the products and services customers might care about and enables more efficient ad targeting and budget allocation for marketers.

Location-based marketing tactics

There are several ways to use location data in ad targeting.

Geofencing. Geofencing refers to the mechanism through which location data is collected in real-time. In geotargeting, a virtual perimeter is constructed around a location to enable real-time data collection or targeting within that geographic area. Typically, geofencing uses a combination of latitude and longitude coordinates, radio frequency identification (RFID), Bluetooth technology, and location beacons to determine the specified area. Marketers can use geofencing as a vehicle for geotargeting or proximity marketing.

This technology isn’t necessarily new, but its increasing accessibility and application in digital targeting have ushered in more opportunities for real-time location-based marketing.

When a customer enters a geofenced area and shares their location with an app or browser, they might be served with local content in the form of push notifications, photo geo-filters, text messages, or in-app ads.

Geotargeting. Similar to geofencing, geotargeting is used to deliver ads to customers in a location – but unlike geofencing, geotargeting often combines past location data with particular audience attributes. Advertisers can specify the desired location in conjunction with defined criteria (such as demographics, behavior, interests, etc.) to target customers who meet the exact requirements.

Geotargeting with historical data enables marketers to reach more defined audience segments with campaigns that are informed by behavioral or shopping trends at a given location.

Conquesting. In his column Getting back to basics with location-based marketing Brian Handly explained that geoconquesting is used to help brands reach audiences that visit their competitors’ locations. “For example,” he wrote, “Burger King utilized geoconquesting to run a campaign offering the one cent whopper to audiences that had their app open when they visited a McDonald’s location.”

Geoconquesting is best served as a tactic for audiences who are local in real-time, but can also be applied to reach historical audiences.

Proximity marketing. A more granular form of location-based marketing, proximity marketing often uses geofencing to deliver customers with timely ads in a specific location, in real-time. Marketers can use proximity marketing for things like local events or recurring store visits with the aim of serving the most relevant content in that given moment (i.e. a nearby restaurant chain, gas station, etc.).

For example, navigation app Waze uses proximity marketing in its ad platform by delivering ads when a driver is near a promoted location or billboard and the car is stopped. Advertisers can then leverage information about the customer’s location, frequent routes, weather, and time of day to provide local suggestions based on what it knows about the customer in that moment.

How location data is used in marketing

Browsers, search engines, apps, and social platforms all collect data to deliver both organic and paid content relevant to the consumer based on their location. Jeff White, founder of location data provider Gravy Analytics, explained that location data collection is nothing new – but only in the last decade has it proven to be a lucrative asset to marketers.

“Early adopters of location data info came through e-commerce and large enterprises. Early on, it was big for large retailers and hotels,” he said. But now, location data has lent itself to much broader use cases that provide valuable insights about the behavior of consumers.

Location data and the customer journey. To identify how location data can be effective in marketing, it’s important to understand the location experiences that are most valuable to the consumer – and, by extension, to the advertiser.

“A visit to a convenience store doesn’t have the same significance to a consumer as a visit to a wine-tasting festival, for example,” said White. Location data provides a toolset that marketers can use to fill in the gaps of a consumer’s profile – where valuable location-based experiences are the missing pieces.

Industry segments. Retailers or service providers with physical storefronts are best positioned for location-based marketing.  Local business marketers can employ geotargeting campaigns to reach audiences based on real-world visits, rather than on digital engagements alone.

Prioleau of Simpli.fi explained that location-based targeting can be used by businesses to “drive foot-traffic to their stores or locations (like QSR, retail, automotive, etc.), and by advertisers who want to increase traffic to their websites or apps (e-commerce providers, direct-to-consumer brands, insurance, other service providers).”

Likewise, niche industries like real estate, education, and transportation are apt to benefit from location-based marketing given the nature of their businesses. By understanding the level of intent and time investment from audiences based on their location behavior, marketers in niche industries can paint a holistic picture of likely buyers.

“Location data is the next frontier of understanding consumer behavior,” said Jeff White. “Things like collecting and geofencing open houses helps marketers get an advanced view of who might be a highly-qualified lead.”

Online to offline attribution. In addition to enabling a more highly targeted ad experience, location intelligence can be used to help close the gap between online and offline purchasing behavior. For businesses with storefronts, real-time location data can help fill in the holes of the customer journey by shedding light on the relationship between an online touchpoint and an in-person transaction.

How location data is collected

The process of data collection and the ethics surrounding it are increasingly under fire, as evidenced by growing concerns over user privacy and the regulatory legislature aimed at protecting it.

While the extensive push for data regulations creates challenges for marketers, it also provides an opportunity for businesses to build a foundation of trust with customers. By obtaining user consent and offering visibility into how location data is being used, marketers can maintain customer trust and deliver meaningful content in the path to purchase.

The location data collection process involves several steps, including anonymization, said Jeff White from Gravy Analytics.

1. Users consent to sharing their location data by opting-in when prompted in an app or browser.
2. SDKs then gather and transmit information about a user’s location, including geographic coordinates and the time spent.
3. The location data is then cleaned, anonymized, and aggregated into a database to build specific consumer profiles.
4. All of this information can then be used by the marketer to target customers using programmatic (through a DSP) or direct advertising.

Data collection process from user-end. Image: Marketing Land

User data can be collected via IP addresses or mobile device ID when users are browsing on public WiFi networks or when they explicitly share their location during a search. A unique ID connected to a users’ device (desktop or mobile) is gathered during the process to provide advertisers with a retargeting identifier.

Privacy concerns and the marketer’s responsibility

Data breaches and mismanaged data by ad tech giants has provoked a groundswell of concerns from users, bringing heightened awareness to how data is collected and used. Consumers are worried – and rightfully so.

The challenges raised from regulatory legislation such as GDPR in the EU and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which takes effect next year, could significantly impact how marketers use location data in campaigns. However, the move also creates an opening for increased transparency for marketers.

“When initiating location-based marketing, advertisers should use platforms that are compliant with GDPR and other privacy standards, and focused on using data which has been collected based on these standards,” said Prioleau.

By taking measures to ensure privacy is top-of-mind, marketers and businesses alike are better positioned to achieve the location-based marketing outcomes desired. Marketers should approach user privacy as a facet of both their own and their customers’ best interests to build a foundation of transparency. This approach should include:

• Understanding and auditing the location-based insights that are most important to the business and the customers.
• Building an airtight strategy on how personal data is handled, processed, and used for campaigns – in line with the strictest privacy regulations.
• Determining a course of action for disposing of unused, irrelevant, and outdated user data.
• Facilitating internal education and procedures for managing location data requests and disclosure inquiries.
• Adhering to strict regulatory procedures in preparation of a potential data breach, with a clear operations process.
• Review and analyze all contracts from vendors and third-party providers of user data to ensure regulatory compliance.

When businesses and marketers are able to manage and use location data responsibly, it can empower rich and impactful marketing outcomes. From understanding how consumers engage with retailers to identifying untapped opportunities for product localization, consumer location data is a potent tool for the digital marketer.

But the duty lies with the marketer to embrace privacy standards which, in turn, creates a trusting environment for users. From the rich location data that consumers willingly provide, marketers can derive meaningful insights and start to connect online touchpoints to real-world applications.

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In an effort to provide mobile advertisers with more options for viewability measurement in Google Mobile Ads (GMA) and Interactive Mobile Ads (IMA), Google announced Thursday a new integration with Open Measurement Software Development Kit (OM SDK).

Developed by the IAB Tech Lab, the open measurement SDK provides advertisers with common code and libraries for facilitating third-party access to measurement data.

“IAB Tech Lab’s Open Measurement (OM) initiative makes it easier for ad buyers and sellers to work together for viewability measurement and other verification needs,” said Dennis Buchheim, EVP and general manager of the IAB Tech Lab. “The sell-side has been adopting OM quickly, and we ask brands, agencies, and Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) to get more active and take advantage of what OM offers.” 

Why we should care

Advertisers on GMA and IMA can now measure viewability using third-party measurement platforms such as Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, Comscore, and Moat (in addition to the measurement already available with Google’s Active View). To take advantage of the integration, advertisers can add Open Measurement enabled tags to their ad creatives from the viewability vendor of their choice.

Viewability tracks ad impressions that appear “in view” on users’s mobile devices — and have an opportunity to actually be seen by users — as opposed to impressions served, which may load on a page but never enter the user’s view. Selling inventory on a viewable basis also helps publishers offer and charge more for inventory.

Typically, viewability tracking for in-app ads depends on the developer’s ability to integrate a variety of SDKs from different vendors, which often results in inconsistent measuring methodologies and costs.

The IAB Tech Lab’s Open Measurement standard eliminates the need to implement various SDKs, allowing advertisers to measure viewability signals from one single location across display, native and video. Through its integration with Open Measurement, Google mobile app advertisers will have access to universal code libraries that enable an app publisher to provide required measurement data to all measurement providers and advertisers.

“Google’s adoption of the Open Measurement SDK is a huge step in moving the industry forward and creating more transparency for advertisers,” said Sumit Shukla, SVP, Strategic Partnerships of Comscore. “It’s important for brands to consistently measure viewability across the entirety of their media buys.”

More on the news

• Google said it is continuing to work with the IAB’s Tech Lab Open Measurement Working Group to expand Open Measurement capabilities beyond viewability, as well as to other environments such as web video.
• Open Measurement has the potential to create a more transparent and accountable digital media ecosystem across all screens.
• More information on downloading and using the SDK is available here.

Have you had any issues trying to get images to load for organic posts on Facebook? Search Engine Land editor Barry Schwartz noticed images were not loading — or were being replaced with random images — when creating organic posts with links to stories he had written.

“People were sharing my stories, but the images stopped sharing all of a sudden in the past couple days,” said Schwartz, “Turns out, in what’s likely a bug, Facebook doesn’t like images on HTTPS URLs. People stopped sharing my stories because Facebook was including a random image.”

The problem: A corrupted image or platform bug? When Schwartz ran the HTTPS links through Facebook’s Debugger tool, he got a notice claiming the images connected to the URLs may be corrupted or were an invalid format. A thread on Stack Overflow covering the same problem dates back to 2012, but with entries as recent as four months ago.

The fix: Implementing an HTTP link instead. According to the thread, users resolved the issue by using an HTTP URL instead of HTTPS. One entry on Stack Overflow claimed Facebook was aware of the problem and, at the time, was looking into it. “I ran into the same problem and reported it as a bug on the Facebook developer site. It seems pretty clear that og:image URIs using HTTP work just fine and URLs using HTTPS do not. They [Facebook] have now acknowledged that they are looking into this,” wrote Keegan Quinn in January 2012.

Why we should care. For brands already struggling to gain traction with organic content on Facebook, a glitch that removes or replaces images from posts is one more obstacle. With the Facebook debugger claiming the error is a corrupted file, marketers may not realize that the problem might not be the image, but perhaps Facebook’s issue with HTTPS links.

We’ve asked Facebook for a comment and will update this story if we get a response.