Terakeet has released data from its latest study examining the value of organic search as a driver of revenue and insights. The report compares the impact of organic search to paid search, as well as other marketing channels.

Despite a lower-than-average investment, organic search cost 87.4% less than paid search when it comes to delivering consumers to brand. Audience insights and transparent data driven by the organic search channel far exceed those available from other marketing channels, such as digital advertising, public relations, and email marketing, according to the findings.

Terakeet determined the average customer-acquisition cost difference between organic and paid search by comparing the channel cost and conversion percentage of both channels for its current customers.

The report -- The Compounding Value of Organic Search Report -- compares organic search with two channels: paid search and other, which includes television, print, and radio advertising; partner and affiliate marketing; events; digital ads; and email marketing.

Terakeet Director of Marketing RJ Licata believes the audience combined the growing lack of transparency, banner blindness, and general distrust in online advertising, has helped organic search become a significant business opportunity for brands looking to reach consumers. It’s all about trust driving conversions.

Organic search results are highly trusted, per the study, so it attracts the majority of clicks. Consider that 93% of all web traffic comes from search engines. Then, consider that Google’s organic search results generate nearly 20 times more clicks than the paid ads on desktop and 10-times more on mobile

Organic search also outperforms other channels. Nearly one-third of the budgets spent on online advertisements is lost to fraud. Non-organic search channels offer minimal or inaccurate audience targeting and conversion tracking.

Many companies allocate a significantly larger percentage of their marketing budget to paid media over organic search, and 93% of all online traffic originates from search engines.

Why don’t the majority of U.S. businesses prioritize organic search as a marketing channel? The data suggests that only 10.5% of marketing budgets are allocated to organic search.

For every $79 that customers spent acquiring new business through the paid-search channel, they could have achieved the same results for only $10 through organic search. In one case, the organic search customer acquisition cost was 97.9% lower than paid search, per the study.

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Web-based augmented reality (AR) company 8th Wall, and Ericsson's mobile advertising solution business Emodo announced a partnership on Wednesday to support a web-based AR (WebAR) advertising solution.

The partnership aims to provide agencies and brands with everything they need to create and distribute branded WebAR campaigns.

Digital advertising is changing. Consumers suffer from ad fatigue. They want new ways to engage with brands. With WebAR, the companies believe the 3.5 billion smartphones can access these experiences — no app required.

8th Wall’s AR experiences work in the browser, do not require an app to download, and offer the ability to reach nearly 3.5 billion iOS and Android smartphones, desktop computers and AR/VR headset devices. 

AR makes use of the mobile camera, computer vision and 3D assets to create interactive, personalized and memorable brand experiences.

Last year, an Emodo survey found nearly three-quarters of consumers would be more likely to pay attention to an ad that incorporated AR elements, and about 70% said they would like to see more ads that do so in the future.

The partnership includes the introduction of an embeddable AR ad type that places interactive WebAR content inside ad units directly alongside publisher content, offering a more streamlined and engaging experience for consumers. 

Emodo last month launched its Creative Lab and the company’s first, 5G-powered AR campaign.

The ad transported mobile users to New York City’s Times Square through an AR-powered snow globe experience, allowing them to engage with entertaining content from 17 Broadway musicals and plays. The campaign saw 90% of the audience enter the experience, boosting an average engagement time to 3 minutes. Nearly 25% of users also shared the experience to spread more engagement.

WebAR experiences support performance-marketing campaigns. For example, according to Emodo, one national convenience-store chain saw a return on ad spend (ROAS) that was 3.79-times greater for its WebAR campaign compared to traditional digital media.

Embeddable AR ads today are direct to publisher opportunities only. 

Emodo and 8th Wall have partnered for the past year to establish an end-to-end web-based augmented-reality advertising solution.   

The 8th Wall WebAR platform launched in late 2018. Since then, the platform has been used to power more than 1,300 commercial WebAR experiences for blue-chip brands across industry verticals. Many of these experiences have been featured on the 8th Wall Discovery Hub.

In 2020, 8th Wall productized its Inline AR capability which enables WebAR experiences to be embedded into existing websites and apps using iFrames.

The combination of 8th Wall's WebAR platform, including its Inline AR capability, with Emodo's network of publishers has unlocked the opportunity for Embeddable AR ads. 

When gambling and overeating are widely practiced or become addictive, the results are often serious health and social consequences for the individuals involved, their families and society at large.

TV promotes both of them. TV’s fetishistic fixation on the gluttonous consumption of high-calorie, fatty foods has been addressed at least a half-dozen times in the TV Blog.

Now we can add online gambling and sports wagering to the vices TV promotes without regard to social consequences. 

TV commercials for the likes of FanDuel, DraftKings and Caesars SportsBook (featuring JB Smoove, above) have flooded the airwaves here in New York and presumably in other states where this mobile online wagering has already begun or is about to.

Those three mobile betting apps were approved by the New York State Gaming Commission -- along with a fourth, BetRiver -- to start doing business here a little over 10 days ago, on January 8.

In New York City, spots and other marketing efforts for the new gambling apps -- including billboards and other forms of signage seen during sports telecasts -- began appearing a year ago or more, as the online betting industry sought to set the table for its prospective patrons in advance of this month’s start date.

Needless to say, this marketing onslaught continues, and along with it has come a new category of sports-talk shows on local, regional and national sports channels that are all focused on sports wagering.

Clearly, much of the nation is embracing mobile sports betting. And let the record show that the TV Blog cannot blame the TV and advertising businesses for taking up this golden opportunity to profit from this robust, new revenue source.

Once upon a time, this level of widespread sports betting was frowned upon and relegated almost entirely to Las Vegas casinos. Here in the present day, however, this activity that was once thought of as a vice to be discouraged, is suddenly widely acceptable.

If you go in search of studies about the deleterious effects of gambling, you will find plenty of them. One such piece of research from Baylor University is typical.

In a report titled “The Hidden Social Costs of Gambling,” researchers cite one consequence after another stemming from the illness of gambling addiction -- business and employment costs, suicides, costs for unemployment and treatment, divorce, domestic abuse and the list goes on and on.

State governments are complicit in the gambling explosion, which has resulted in casino gambling in 18 states, and 30 states offer legal gambling of at least one form or another.

TV stations often mount public service campaigns to support social causes. But to my knowledge, none around here have ever addressed the issues of gambling and the costs -- both human and financial -- that it generates.

On Christmas Day, Meta’s mobile companion app for its Oculus virtual reality (VR) headsets like Quest 2 was the most-downloaded app in the U.S. According to Apptopia and Sensor Tower data, the app's popularity has not decreased and it has been downloaded over 2 million times since.

With the Oculus  a popular gift, especially for children, some cybersecurity experts are voicing potential privacy concerns.

NordVPN, for example, which provide virtual private network (VPN) services to help people protect their online identity, in a recent statement detailed a series of potential threats that parents and consumers should be aware of with Quest 2 Oculus headsets.

“As with every new technology, manufacturers want to jump on the train as soon as possible,” said Daniel Markuson, NordVPN digital privacy expert. This rush, he believes, may result in a lack of oversight, allowing hackers to easily take advantage of consumer vulnerabilities. “Since children usually poorly understand the possible risks, they are the perfect targets for cybercriminals,” added Markuson. 

NordVPN’s statement cites involuntary data collection as the most troublesome virtual reality privacy issue. This includes biometric data such as eye scans, fingerprints, face geometry, and voiceprints. 

“It is nearly impossible to stay anonymous while using VR,” the statement reads. Based on a study from 2019, it notes that the behavioral and biometric information collected by most headsets can be used to identify users with very high accuracy.

More specifically, NordVPN covers three categories of privacy breaches it believes children will be most susceptible to when gaming with Oculus: identity theft, social engineering, and real-world harm.

A recent survey conducted by NordVPN showed that 28% of all Americans reported having been victims of identity theft just this past year. NordVPN believes that VR games connected to social media accounts present easy access for hackers to steal birth dates, places of residence, and even bank account and credit card information.

However, even without connectivity to Facebook sites, Facebook's parent company Meta will still be collecting user data. This is a troubling issue, after Business Insider reported in April 2021 that 533 million Facebook users’ personal data was leaked online.

The combination of potentially hacked biometrical and behavioral data through a VR device may result in real charges through user accounts.

“Deepfakes” -- synthetic media in which a real person is replaced with another -- is an additional hacking threat that NordVPN finds concerning. With a user's motion-tracking data, hackers can carry out a social engineering attack by pretending to be someone else in a VR game.

Children in particular may be most vulnerable to this kind of attack because of their tendency to divulge personal information to people they think they know.

NordVPN is concerned that attacks may bleed into the real world as well. The vast amount of information that hackers are able to collect through Oculus headsets says a lot about users’ daily habits, their exact location, and even the interior of their homes. Given the availability of this information, the threat of robbery or physical harm exists.

“If your virtual reality device gets hacked, you can sometimes notice the change immediately,” said Daniel Markuson. “After all, the attacker has complete access to what you see and hear. They can modify this virtual world however they want.”

Before giving a headset to a child, NordVPN suggests that parents read the privacy policies at length, although few consumers actually ever do so. Instructing children to create anonymous nicknames on VR multiplayer games and to keep their personal information to themselves is another helpful tip.

Not surprisingly, NordVPN’s last suggestion involves installing a VPN service.

AT&T and Verizon will again delay plans to roll out ultra-fast 5G service near some airports, in response to the airline industry's warning that the broadband service could interfere with flights.

“At our sole discretion we have voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways as we continue to work with the aviation industry and the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] to provide further information about our 5G deployment, since they have not utilized the two years they’ve had to responsibly plan for this deployment,” the company stated Tuesday. 

A Verizon spokesperson also said the company has “voluntarily decided to limit our 5G network around airports.”

The spokesperson added that the FAA and airlines “have not been able to fully resolve navigating 5G around airports, despite it being safe and fully operational in more than 40 other countries.” 

AT&T and Verizon had been scheduled to begin deploying the fifth-generation mobile service on Wednesday, after previously agreeing to a two-week postponement.

Both telecoms are still moving forward with the launch of 5G in areas that are not near a limited number of airports flagged by the FAA.

The company's move came one day after the aviation industry group Airlines for America warned of “significant” disruption, if the telecoms deployed 5G within two miles of certain airport runways.

“Immediate intervention is needed to avoid significant operational disruption to air passengers, shippers, supply chain and delivery of needed medical supplies,” operational disruption to air passengers, shippers, supply chain and delivery of medical supplies,” the organization said in a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Stephen Dickson.

This latest postponement follows more than two months of conflict that pit the FCC, AT&T and Verizon against the FAA and airlines.

The FCC voted in 2020 to free portions of the C-Band spectrum for 5G for mobile broadband, and issued rules aimed at preventing interference with aviation equipment. But the Federal Aviation Administration, warned in November that the planned 5G service could potentially affect altimeters -- devices that determine altitude based on radio waves.

Late last month, the aviation industry group Airlines for America filed an “emergency petition” asking the FCC to stay its 2020 order. The pilots union supported that request, arguing that airplanes' “margin of safety” would be degraded by the planned 5G service.

AT&T and Verizon have argued that their use of the C-Band won't interfere with airline equipment.

“Spectrum interference disputes typically involve simultaneous transmissions on the same frequencies. But radio altimeters do not operate on, or anywhere near, the C-Band frequencies,” the companies said earlier this month.

Samsung has broken a campaign for its new Exynos 2200, “next generation” mobile processor, which it will likely put in its Galaxy S phone series this year.

The 60-second ad, via BBH, London, features a woman at an exotic fair reminiscent of various Star Wars films. Vendors keep beckoning her with pixelated goods, like a watermelon that’s split open and a sword that looks like it’s from a videogame.

Then a strange, large rabbit guides her into an underworld that looks like a bar at night. She enters a stand and picks up a gun that triggers a standoff between her and various aliens. The camera then zooms toward the rabbit, who covers his eyes. A caption reads, “Playtime is over.” 

The CGI-laden ad is meant to signal a new era of gaming enabled by the new processors. Such graphics were previously only accessible via a game console, Samsung asserts.

The agency’s brief was to drive anticipation and excitement among keen gamers ahead of the launch of the first phones containing the new mobile processor, which features a state-of-the art mobile graphics processing unit (GPU) developed by Samsung in partnership with AMD.

The ad was shot in Kiev and directed by Matthijs Van Heijiningen (director of Netflix’s “The Forgotten Battle”).

In a statement, Changwan Kim, brand manager at Samsung Electronics, said: “We wanted to implicitly express how the Exynos 2200 processor will bring differentiated gaming experience on mobile, in a short, condensed fashion. We are very excited to see BBH’s creativity come to life in this adventurous hero film and believe this project may be a big milestone that changes the course of how we promote semiconductor products in the future.” 

Though more than three-quarters of mostly younger viewers watch sports on streaming platforms and spend time multitasking on other devices, the TV screen remains the leading viewing device.

A survey from Disney Ad Sales of the 13-54-year-old demo found 46% of their time is spent watching sports on a TV set, 24% using a mobile phone, 18% on laptop/computer, and 12% on tablet.

“TV continues to be the dominant platform for consuming sports content across demos. However, screens themselves are tipping digital,” says the report's authors.

In terms of total time -- among all respondents -- 54% of the time is collectively spent on devices other than TV (mobile phone, laptop/computer and tablet).

Some 76% of sports streamers are on “one or more second-screen activities when they watch sports.” Research says streaming TV viewers can be found checking social media (41%) and shopping online (26%). Seventy-one percent are multitasking and socializing “in real life.”

“Though it would make sense that the digitally native generation is driving this trend, that’s not necessarily the case,” says the  report.

Young Gen Z viewers (ages 10 to 25, according to other research) spend the most time looking at screens other than TV while watching sports on streamers platforms: 61%. This break downs as: 29% of the time on mobile phone; 19% on laptop/computer; and 12% on table. Millennials (ages 26-41) spend 53% of the time on non-TV devices, with older Gen X viewers (age 42-54), 43%.

Disney Ad Sales surveyed 2,500 sports streamers ages 13-to-54 across the U.S. in June 2021. It characterizes "sports streamers” as those who self identify as sports fans, use streamers to watch some or all sports, and have watched live/non-live sports events and/or content within the past three months.

Publicis Media's Starcom unit is going a deep dive into the Metaverse, releasing a series of podcast episodes, as well as a new report discussing how the next new iteration of virtual media might impact brands, as well as the overall media industry.

"The term 'metaverse' represents a vision of the next stage of the internet, where people can meet, work, be entertained and find information either in an alternative virtual space, or via a digital layer over the physical world," reads the report, "Future Tensions In The Metaverse," which draws on its seminal science fiction roots -- from Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" to "The Matrix" -- as a point of orientation, but strives to put it into practical terms for advertisers and their brands.

"A decade ago, advertisers had to prepare for a mobile-first world," it explains, adding, "Many can recall the confusion and skepticism surrounding the mobile internet. Today, the call is to prepare for the metaverse world(s). The speed of change is staggering, not only in tech investment and innovation, but also in consumer behavior."

The agency's analysts and the report's authors argue that the shift already began accelerating when the pandemic forced "lockdown periods" supercharging the adoption and sophistication of "digital alternatives to real world experiences in all aspects of our lives -- from dining, working, shopping, and socializing," emphasizing, "No advertiser will have an audience that won’t be affected by these metaverse ambitions in someway."

In an accompanying podcast series (see below), the agency's experts offer more guidance, from some basic definitions to projections and scenarios for the meta implications.

"We aim to show how brands will need to adapt the way they communicate to connect in the right ways, particularly through media execution and advertising," says Starcom U.K. CEO Nadine Young.