digiday

Digiday is one of my favorite digital marketing/social media online publisher, and I recommend it to every marketer, social media marketer, and business owner to check it every day. However, I wanted to get a little more information regarding what they think about banner ads, how relevant banner ads are for them, and what is a daily routine of a CM & CO at Digiday. This is why today we have an interview with Paul Kontonis, CM & CO of Digiday. Brian Morrissey, editor-in-chief of Digiday said about Paul when he joins Digiday: Paul’s the right person to make our own marketing live up to the high bar we set in our coverage of the industry. We want to be smart and modern in how we communicate all that Digiday does. Twitter: @kontonis Please tell us a little bit about you and your background. How did you started in marketing and for how long have you been doing it? I started my marketing career while in NYU with various organizations and while promoting bands through my own music management company. My job out of school was as a pharmaceutical sales rep in 1993. My digital marketing pathway really started in 1995 building company websites. What difficulties did you face at the beginning of your career? My biggest challenge was venturing into the unknown. We didn’t know what was possible with websites in 1995. It was all brand new. We had to develop strategies and plan the best we could and try to learn from as many sources and possible. It didn’t take long for me to understand the importance of planning, measuring and iterating. So, you are currently the CM & CO of DigiDay, what’s your daily routine? My days are intense and heavily scheduled to fit everything in. This year we will produce over 2500 articles, send out over 1000 emails, produce over 30 events and 7 awards programs and print 4 issues of our new quarterly magazine. And then not only do I oversee the related marketing and communications activities for Digiday but also for our new media brand Glossy and for the new brands we have yet to launch this year. We have very big aspirations here and that means a lot of planning and management to make sure we get things done quickly and the best way possible. I saw that you did display advertising on DigiDay. How important is this monetization strategy for your publication? Advertising revenue from display plays a very small role in our overall monetization. We let brands have a very large SOV in our display advertising that maybe they can share with one other brand. House ads do play a very important role for us. They build awareness around our offerings. What are the trends that will continue to influence banner advertising? Brand awareness is a major component for our banner advertising. We consider it a platform to announce new events, programs, awards, offerings and more. The placement of the ads next to relevant articles vastly improves its effective as well as minimizing the placements so as not to overwhelm your readers. Are there any conversion tactics you recommend for banner advertising? Great artwork and messaging seem to best the best approach. We have optimized our banner click through rates to over 3%. How would you describe the relationship between display advertising and content marketing in a digital marketing strategy? Display helps to get the message out about content. It can also augment content with additional relevant information or calls to action. I always feel the two should be related. Could you make some predictions about banner advertising for 2016? Can banners make a comeback if you make less annoying ads with high relevancy that do not get in the way of your reader? Maybe. Ad blocking will surely increase so relying heavily on display advertising is a dangerous proposition. Top 3 best articles our community should read on DigiDay? Confessions of a social media exec on influencer marketing: 'We threw too much money at them’ 85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound And anything on Glossy Coffee or Tea? Iced coffee all year round.

digiday

Bannersnack Ad Talk “Brand awareness is a major component for our banner advertising” via Paul Kontonis, Digiday