conversation Marketing - Margy Consultants Blog

The four fundamental challenges of conversation marketing

Conversation marketing is based on two key facts: firstly, the consumer shares his purchasing experience with his community, and secondly, he or she needs to be convinced and assured by fellow consumers. The prodigious expansion during the last decade of the social networks and the advent of the smartphone has enabled the development of consumer interactions, and augmented the digital contents created by brands. Companies are investing more and more in conversation marketing to better understand the needs of their customers. The profound changes that marketing has undergone in terms of usage and tools have nevertheless engendered new challenges that companies and businesses must incorporate.

Digital contents: Consumers at the centre of attention

Customer opinions are at the centre of conversation marketing, and receive special attention from companies that are always on the look out for more information. Certain companies even create events just to collect their customers' comments, which can then be transformed into digital content. The objective of businesses is to place themselves in an “earned media” situation in order to display themselves with digital tools without advertising costs. It is up to companies and businesses to manage, compile and measure these contents.

The advent of the multi-connected consumer

A few years ago showrooming (buying on internet after a visit to a bricks and mortar shop) made us fear for the future of physical shops. As it turns out, digital has actually favoured the act of buying. The consumer will not leave the shop to buy from another channel, except in the case of excessive price differences. Contents produced by conversation marketing have become indispensable elements for the customer. The challenge for companies and businesses is therefore to supply access to all digital tools that can procure valuable content data, in order to improve both customer conversion and loyalty.

The ubiquity of consumer opinions

Once upon a time, consumer opinions were esconced right at the end of product notices. Now however, they are presented on the first page of the website, in newsletters, and so on… and even in shops. With the rise of conversation marketing, they have become veritable sales arguments, invaluable recommendations highlighted by companies. Customer comments are essential as they reassure fellow consumers and make the brand message more credible.

The dialogue between brands and customers

Changes brought about by conversation marketing have replaced unilateral opinions and introduced exchanges. Brands respond to customers through different digital channels in real time, and seek out and question them in a continual dialogue which enables companies to listen and respond to their customers' needs. Certain companies even propose points if they leave comments. Faced with the emergence of a customer community, brands that fabricate false consumer opinions may quickly find themselves ostracised.

Even if the risk of bad buzz actually exists, companies must invest in conversation marketing to strengthen their consumer relations. Nevertheless, brand communication operations, undergoing constant innovation, must incorporate opinions and digital contents adapted to the new challenges.


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The journal Graphisme - Margy consultants blog

The 22nd edition of the journal Graphisme en France (Graphics in France) to focus on graphic research

In the 22nd edition of the the journal Graphisme en France, the Cnap (Centre national des arts plastiques), will assess the research of graphic design and typography. The centre enables different lecturers and researchers in the graphics field to set out and analyse the past and current position of graphic research.

What is this graphic journal's objective?

In this new edition, Cnap has the opportunity to inform graphic experts and amateurs alike of the current research in the field of graphics, typography and visual identity. It also gives the possibility to 6 researchers, historians, lecturers and authors to present the development of their graphic research and work over the years. The journal is presented free of charge to the general public on internet. In this journal of nearly 200 pages, the two typographers Alice Jauneau and David Vallance use the entirely new Walther typography developed by Sarah Kremer for its layout.

Specialist visual identity contributors

The journal's six contributors are of course specialised in the visual identity sector as well as the graphic research branch. Each one presents their opinion and work, in order to give this document a mulitidimensionality.

  • Éloïse Pérez, graphic designer and typographer, writes about graphic research in France. She evokes, particularly, different works relating to graphic research, as well as various researchers and their work in graphics or typography.
  • Alice Twemlaw, author, teacher and speaker, defines the word “research” evoking the different definitions that can be accorded to it. The author goes on to explain the nature of research in graphic design.

Graphic designer and design researcher,

  • Catherine Guiral, comments on her work in the field of graphic design and typographic research, using the work of graphic designer Pierre Faucheux as a springboard.
  • Annick Lantenois and Gilles Rouffineau, who teach the optional “graphic design” course at the École supérieure d’art et design de Grenoble-Valence, present and outline the nature of the research that they head at their academy.
  • Sébastien Morlighem, researcher and typographic historian, writes about his research in the field of typography.
  • Catherine de Smet, lecturer and doctor in the history of typography, takes up her research work on the Grapus collective, employing different images of the collective to illustrate her research.

A journal with a wealth of illustrations

This journal of French graphics features many illustrations from advertising, political tracts, manuscripts and other visual identities. It highlights all the graphic and typographic dimensions of these documents. Each illustration in the journal has a caption documenting the author and the source for the readers. The captions also contain information about the graphics, typeface and the stenography of each image. This allows a clear comprehension of the communication force contained in these advertising posters. They convey the importance of typography and graphics which accord a visual identity to brands, logos, groups, films, political parties and so on.


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Avertising paper - Margy Consultants blog

Printed advertising is still effective in 2016

Quite unexpectedly, the printed advertising sector has retained its dynamism despite digital advertising's breakthrough the past few years. BALmétrie, in collaboration with Ipsos, have published its latest figures for this traditional medium. In 2015, a French person will read at least one printed advertising document each week.

We do not seem to mind paradoxes. Despite our protests about the invasion of advertising in our letter boxes, we continue, whether we like it or not, to cast a glance at it, and are always on the look out for a good deal to come our way.

The printed advertising market grew by 0,6 point in 2015

Proof of this can be found in the results published by BALmétrie which carefully examined our reading habits. In 2015, 93,4% of the French audience read at least one printed advertising document each week. It might take the form of a postal advertisement (58,1%), a leaflet distributed in a shop doorway or even one left in your letter box (69,8 %).

Better still, in a context dominated by the emergence of digital advertising, the good old advert has augmented its market by 0,6 point compared to 2014. This type of dynamic astonishes critics, who until recently were under the impression that paper was nearing its end.

Ad blocking used by 30% of the French

This fine bill of health can be attributed to consumer habits and the use of different advertising channels. As if in common agreement, we are rebelling against an advertising that has become too intrusive and invasive. Nevertheless, despite the fact that 30% of internet users employ advertising filters in 2015, only 17% put a ”No junkmail” sticker on their letterbox.

Even if the amount of postal advertising decreased last year due to a drop in investments which lead to a decrease in the market by 3,1 points, the French still prefer postal advertising. In 2016, the reading rate for printed advertising remains superior to that of its digital counterparts (92% for postal advertisements compared to 83% for an email).

Supermarket leaflets are still in vogue in 2016

The food industry continues to be the principal leaflet distributor. French supermarket publications are read by 56,4% of the population each week. The other major sources in this sector are the furnishing and decoration sectors (35,3%) followed by the gardening and do-it-yourself branches (31, 9%). They remain loyal to printed publications that we often thumb through distractedly looking for products or a bargain.

The BALmètrie figures can be translated in the following manner: We want to be “disturbed” by advertisements, but only when we choose to be! We are, undoubtedly, more liable to devote our time to flyers, as with these we can decide exactly when and where we will pay attention to them. The web 2.0 world and digitalisation have indisputably changed consumer habits. Nevertheless, our free will is still intact and it is up to us in the final analysis to choose our preferred advertising channel. In line with the global trend in this traditional communication sector, our choice still falls upon the printed document.


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Eye tracking - Margy Consultants Blog

Eye tracking or how customers' subconscious can dictate a company's marketing policy!

A better understanding of customers' buying impulses with eye tracking glasses

Today, web marketing allows us to obtain numerous statistics regarding internet users and advertising, from the suitability of commercial locations to changing commercial strategy. However, it is difficult to access consumers' innate behaviour in such subjective matters as packaging types or shelf placement. Eye tracking enables a study of this subconscious behaviour thanks to the visual interactions of the customer. Is this a revolution for companies always on the lookout for relevant and reliable marketing policy?

What is eye tracking and what are the benefits for businesses or companies?

It goes without saying that information gleaned from internet users' consumer habits represents an exceptional gold mine for all marketing professionals of both small and large commercial or industrial structures.

Nevertheless, even if customer habits can be predicted by data made available by digital information on consumers' surfing habits, their “instinctive” habits in a shop-situation or in front of a screen rely on variable data which up until now has not been exact.

Subconscious habits are incidentally often very difficult to express, even for the customers themselves. Questions such as “Why are you attracted to this product rather than another?”, or even “What type of shelf placement are you drawn to when you enter a commerce?”, are more often than not posed without receiving an adequate response. Thanks to eye tracking, all these questions will finally receive relevant answers!

Consumers' visual behaviour can be methodically analysed thanks to glasses with sensors which monitor the direction of their gaze. Using heat maps, eye tracking enables us to determine so-called hot zones in a retail shop. These are the gaze points or products that draw the most attention, as well as the opposite, so-called cold zones; the shelves or highlighted products that customers do not pay attention to.

Equipping businesses with innovative and high-tech tools in marketing: a superfluous or necessary cost?

Thanks to eye tracking the data furnished by customers' visual behaviour enables us to rethink shelf placement, uninteresting packaging or even web habits. This opens enormous possibilities of information sourcing for companies!

However cutting-edge technology currently comes with a cost that cannot be considered negligible. Soon to be commercialised, the new version of the famous Tobii Pro Glasses dedicated to eye tracking possesses a wide-angle HD scene video camera as well as a gyro and an accelerometer. It also has the possibility of sound. This technological marketing jewel has of course a price (excluding VAT): 22,000 € or around 800 € on a monthly rental basis.

Currently eye tracking represents a significant cost in a company's marketing policy, especially as this price does not take into account post-analysis once the customer data has been collected. Even if there is little doubt that the price will drop in the future, it seems more appropriate to consider eye tracking as a complement to current statistical web marketing tools.


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Web communication in companies: the challenges of successful programmatic advertising

The current challenges of digital marketing for companies

A digital themed day

The fourth edition of the conference cycle organised by Viuz and focusing on digital marketing will be held at the Pavillon Wagram in Paris between 8:30am and 5pm on 10 May 2016.

Viuz, the primary web site on the topic today, proposes this event entitled “Les nouvelles frontières du marketing digital” (“Digital marketing's new frontiers”), and its two co-founders, Patrick Kervern and Andrès Menajovsky, will be present as keynote speakers. The event will be the occasion to address a number of themes regarding the current challenges of marketing communication.
It will include round tables, numerous keynote and prestigious speakers, who will recount their own experiences and visions of the changes taking place today. Marketing experts, digital leaders, renowned marketing directors (Axa, Coca-Cola France, Google France, Le Bon Coin, Waze among many others), will gather with the public to exchange views about today's and tomorrow's significant challenges.

New business challenges

The spectacular rate of technological advancements and the resulting consumption habits (changing customer loyalty and purchase methods) have led to jobs becoming extraordinarily more complex in the fields of marketing and public relations.

The explosion of the multi-channel environment (consumers constantly move from one screen to another, whether it be their smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer, looking for production information, price comparisons, helpful tips on social media, websites, search engines, etc.) and the staggering growth of Big Data must lead to new cross-channel strategies being developed, whilst maintaining a coherent message over all channels and staying on top of offsetting the risks involved - data silos, etc.

Even the marketing team in a business can no longer be conceived based on the way things were prior to the technological (r)evolution.

Indeed, the need to devise a new communications network must lead to new and innovative strategies and systems, the key to which is hybridisation. For this to work, it will be vital to pool talent from various players within a company, optimise collaboration and form a new outlook on coordination.

Today, if businesses are to survive, they are therefore forced to learn to adapt and to respond to this new challenge.

The agenda for this meeting

This excellent opportunity for innovation must lead to the reinvention of digital marketing boundaries. This will serve as the basis for several discussions throughout the day:

• How do new consumption trends affect marketing?
• How can we dovetail the physical with the digital?
• What are the advanced practices in Mobile Marketing?
• What are the emerging opportunities for brands on Messaging Apps?
• What is in store for social media and the new ways of conceptualising owned, paid and earned media in 2016?
• What will be the impact on organisations and brand content?
• What is the role of strategic marketing in an expanded organisation?
• How can businesses prepare to adapt their digital strategies as of now?

To debate these new issues and what they mean for the future of marketing, meet on 10 May 2016 at 8:30am at 47 Avenue de Wagram, 75017 Paris. You can sign up online via the website lesnouvellesfrontieresbyviuz.


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Traditional publishing - Margy Consultants Blog

Renewed growth for traditional publishing in 2016

To the great relief of professionals the traditional publishing sector appears to be recovering. After several years of lean times, where its international revenue dropped from 165 billion to 145 billion dollars between 2011 and 2014, traditional publishing has revived its growth. A progression observed in the French market as well as on the other side of the Atlantic.

For a long while, it was considered inevitable that digital would replace traditional publishing, and several years of decline seemed to prove Cassandres right in his prediction of the book's demise. Quite unexpectedly, however, this trend was reversed in 2015, and seems to be due to consumer habits.

French publishing registers growth of 2% in 2015

Readers love paper. They almost have a physical attachment to it. The touch and smell of paper is all part of the reading experience. Digital has become a complementary alternative, and not a substitute for the paper support. In 2016, the e-book is no longer a threat to the book; from now on the two supports will cohabit. Readers seem to have a “come and go” attitude in their respective usage of the two forms. This same trend has also been confirmed by professional publishing revues and paper advertising.

Expressed in figures, this market development can be observed in the French traditional book sector, which showed an increase in revenue of 2% in 2015. During the same period e-book sales stagnated. Even if 35% of Americans buy e-books compared to 10% in France, the sales of e-books in 2015 diminished for the first time by 12,7% in the USA.

Digital versus paper: the book war will not take place

This co-habitation can also be observed in the professional press sector. The circulations of company magazines and institutional reviews grow each year. At Havas, the company magazine sector is increasing annually by 10%, despite production costs.

Even in our era of social networks, these magazines continue to attract readers, thanks to the quality of their contents and the exactitude of their information. Not forgetting the fact that their contents, conveyed by intranet, are often construed as cold and impersonal.

A standoff has been established between the two universes, which otherwise could be thought of as diametrically opposed. Certainly, it is impossible to imagine the development of the traditional publishing sector on the fringe of the internet world. However, modern communication campaigns still take into account the credibility of traditional supports.

The paper support's trust capital has never been supplanted

Studies show that paper advertising garners more attention than its digital equivalent (92% for postal advertising compared to 83% for emails). Despite the wealth of innovations deployed by programmatic advertising, the paper flyer continues to find a place in the sun with the reader, who still refers to it before surfing on web sites.

This also applies to digital publicity, such as information spread by intranet, the social networks, or even reading an e-book compared to a book. The paper support guarantees the digital support. Traditional publishing has not finished re-inventing itself. Irrespective of its application area, it can more than hold its own with digital supports, benefiting from emotional and trust capital never matched by internet. The proverb says it well: “Words may be forgotten, the written aspect lives on”. Traditional publishing has taken digital supports at their word.


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Visual and packaging communication supports - Margy consultants blog

Visual and packaging communication supports: the paper industry world in constant search of innovations!

Visual communication constantly proposes new products for business communication

Even if web communication has seized power, it is not the only business communication and marketing vehicle. The paper industry has always coined new words as well as innovative and creative supports for the business world. Visual communication remains one of the best marketing vectors, whatever anyone claims!

Why does the paper and packaging industry constantly propose new business communication supports?

It goes without saying that the marketing and communication industries have been significantly shaken by the encroachment of the web and its many advertising vectors. However, companies have been able to preserve traditional communication methods, and have never stopped demonstrating their effectiveness. Visual communication is still considered a sure value today in marketing techniques by all companies. Nonetheless, it must propose a number of innovations to be as rapid and efficient as web marketing solutions.

The paper industry is therefore on a continual quest to renew its range of visual communication products and to propose equally durable and effective innovations for their customers.

“Innovation is a part of our DNA and in our role as distributor, we must select the products that constitute veritable creative revelations”, states Alexis Dormoy, director of sales and marketing operations at Inapa France.

Three significant innovations in paper products and communication packaging: the world of visual marketing in constant development

Thanks to Inapa's “Révélations créatives” the professionals of the paper industry can unveil their new products and the many innovations in the packaging, visual marketing and communication sectors. This annual trade fair proposes innovations in visual communication for marketing professionals.

During an earlier fair, three new particularly promising products were highlighted, demonstrating their numerous possibilities and manufacturing methods: the “MultiLoft” or sandwich product, as well as the “Crush” and “Remake” paper ranges.

The “Multiloft”, or sandwich product, makes it possible to manufacture packaging adapted to all the needs and creative wishes of businesses by proposing hitherto unseen structures combining product thickness and multiple colours. The assembly technique and pre-glued inserts of “Multiloft” allow a record weight and thickness, previously impossible to achieve.

The two new paper manufacturing techniques “Crush” and “Remake” proposed by Favini, are moving towards new waste recycling processes. “Crush”, a new paper range derived from agro-industrial waste products, is composed of 15% waste products, 55% virgin fibres and 30% recycled fibres. It is also manufactured using 100 % green energy. Manufactured from by-products of the Italian leather industry, the “Remake” paper range does not use chrome. It is composed of 25% by-products, 30% recycled fibres and 45% virgin fibres.

The paper and packaging industry has not finished to astound and surprise the professionals of the marketing and visual communication industries!


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generation Y - Margy consultants blog

To captivate the Generation Y (or Millennials), businesses must adopt the most efficient advertising strategy

Everyone's target group, the generation Y, has gained a significant amount of attention and is an important target for many businesses. These new kinds of consumers are difficult to attract, and especially, to gain their loyalty.
What are the latest marketing strategies to make the brand stand out from the competition? What are the vectors that will win the loyalty of consumers? What type of marketing tools should be utilised to ensure this?

What exactly is the generation Y?

It's basically the age group between 15 and 25 years old. The term was coined in 1993 by the Advertising Age magazine. We also speak about “Digital Natives” or “GenY”.
In France there are around 13 million, roughly 21% of the French population (figures from INSEE – the French national institute of statistical and economic information).

A target with strong potential

They represent the most powerful target in terms of marketing and advertising investment, around 500% more than all other consumers.

The new business and marketing strategies

The generation Y are on a quest to differentiate and assert themselves, and wish to belong to a group that they can identify with.

Latest development: digital proximity or the new business - client relationship

The rise of digital has enabled businesses to get even closer to these consumers and to share their daily life. Certain brands and companies understand this very well and focus their strategy on this link and their proximity in every day activities.

Three significant trends in digital proximity

  • Big Family concept
    The company targets consumers as if they are friends. The vocabulary used is emotional and appeals to feelings.
    One example is the hotel and restaurant chain, Mama Shelter, with its hotels incorporating cool, comfort and humour. A friendly place that assembles all the criteria sought after by the generation Y: a relaxed party spirit, team games (a ping pong table), a central bar, good music and so on.
  • The brand that “show you care”
    The company shows concern for its customers or its users. The best example occurred during the Paris terrorist attacks, when Airbnb made an appeal to all its users in the capital to find out if they were safe. The message was sent by social networks and Smartphone apps.
  • The company with the “not so serious” tone.
    The OKKO Hotel chain produced, via Tumblr, its famous GIF corrosive blog, full of pungent humour with its tone established in the first few lines, “a very unserious blog from the very serious team at OKKO Hotels”.
    This style of extremely human marketing lifts the barriers connected with these prestigious luxury hotels.

The most popular levers

  • The social networks' vector
    The generation Y is the most connected (75% of the age group 11 to 24 is on at least one social network) with 2 main leaders: Facebook and Twitter. The companies multiply their customer engagement strategies to boost their fan numbers and win the loyalty of their customers.
    Companies can count on conversation marketing. It creates a dialogue and an involvement between the consumer and the brand. Once involved, internet users are more inclined to buy the brand. Take the case of Haribo that launched a followers' poll to decide on the colour of its next Dragibus.
  • The web has one watchword: humour
    Serious discussions are for school or the home. On the web 15 to 25 year olds just want to relax and amuse themselves. Brands count on this humour and complicity to stand out from the competition.
  • Co-branding: essential
    Having a partnership with an emblematic brand is a huge trump card. Take the example of the Swarovski or Sephora brands. Their respective partnership with the Hello Kitty character attracted a target group of teenagers and young women.

Opinion leadership

This is an approach strategy using complicity and involves being present at events where their target groups gather: festivals, student parties, fairs and so on. The company declares its understanding of the target group.

Whatever type of marketing strategy and vector employed, certain criteria remain inseparable from a successful campaign outcome. The product's quality, its innovation and its ecological scope are all important criteria that will make or break your brand.


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Le networking - Margy Consultants blog

Maintaining the company's image by communication: networking

Using networking to strengthen your company's marketing operations

You have seen or heard this term many times over the last few years: networking. Very often used but seldom defined, networking is, however, a tool you already use as company manager. How to define, and more importantly, how to get the best out of it for your business?

Networking: a new communication tool for one of the oldest tools, marketing!

Since the beginning of time, the sale of a product or goods starts with communication. From the town criers of medieval Paris to sponsored contents of advertising videos on social networks, the means may have changed, but the principle remains the same: communicate and exchange.

Networking is based on an old principle recognised through the centuries by all business managers, which basically boils down to maintaining a contact network.
More than just simple conversations between company directors, networking offers sustaining and extremely profitable contacts thanks to internet. That is, from the moment when you know where, and how, to use it.

Many entrepreneur associations and event-specialised companies have breached the networking gap. It's not just a question of responding to an obvious communication need faced with the manager's “lonely at the top” situation, but also to find viable and less time-consuming solutions to maintaining a relations network, and in certain cases, professional friends.

Knowing how to maintain long-term professional relations or how to make networking “profitable”?

Networking can take different forms, but always with the same goal: to reunite managers or marketing directors from diverse horizons and professional directions, and create rewarding meetings from human as well as marketing points of view.

Entrepreneurial luncheons and cocktails, communication or web marketing meetings, as well as seminars are all the rage, and are attended by more and more managers. These meetings are generally organised in an amicable and relatively calm atmosphere, despite the importance of the issues at stake for all concerned.

Nevertheless, limiting its presence to the common ground of interprofessional meetings would be to deprive marketing of an absolutely indispensable component. It is not just a question of preserving contacts via multiple professional interfaces such as Linkedin, Viadeo and so on, but also by maintaining regular relations with the exchange of address books and potential customers. Not forgetting, where possible, to note the email contact details of your new relation in your mass mailing campaigns, or even among the followers of your Facebook pages.

Networking can be defined, then, as communication work accomplished in a network situation, based around different events with a seamless and constant web exchange. This implies that the entrepreneur should have the savvy to not only devote the necessary time to these exchanges, in order to spread a positive and dynamic image of the company, but also to share the torment and the great joy of company life with other entrepreneurs. Who understands a company manager more than another company manager?


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Companies and marketing - Margy Consultants blog

Companies and marketing: proposing quality advertising contents to reconquer internet users

The importance of personalised and optimised advertising to publicise the brand

Web marketing is one of the essential communication and marketing media for companies, medium-sized businesses or multinationals.
One of the most common communication techniques utilised, video contents, are key arguments in the context of an advertising campaign. However, internet users, tired of a stream of videos that constantly interrupt their connection, are increasingly blocking advertising contents by using software. Companies must therefore find new ways of communication.

Adapting advertising contents to internet users' wishes: the new challenge of company communication

Even if video with advertising content remains one of the most effective means of communicating and selling services or a product on the web, internet users have responded by installing increasingly often adfiltering software. With advertisements jeopardised by this widespread practice, web marketing specialists have had to rethink their advertising approach in terms of quality rather than quantity, as in the case of written contents.

In this way, adfiltering should probably be viewed more as “an opportunity to develop and revitalise the web browsing experience using advertising with improved contents to achieve better results.”

New and different publicity strategies are currently being tested, and the messages generally lean towards higher quality contents, and a possible message personalisation.

Internet users might soon be able to choose their advertising contents and even interact with the advertisements. This would of course be significantly more interesting for the advertising recipient, while also generating a great deal more informative data about the internet user for the business behind the personalised advertisements. Two new valuable assets for internet users and for web marketing specialists alike.

Adapting advertising formats to streamline their loading time on the web

The loading time of videos is one of the main reasons that many internet users give for using adfilters. It is therefore a question of making advertisements not only more attractive and personalised, as we have already mentioned, but also lighter in terms of loading times and buffer memory.

Sophie Rayers, director of marketing, EMEA & LATAM at Brightcove, says: “Brands should propose a more stream-lined advertising experience and televisual quality with faster loading times, irrespective of the video duration”. She recommends for example to use the streaming video with Cloud, thus lessening loading times.

If adfiltering software worries companies' web marketers, numerous solutions exist to by-pass this obstacle. As in the case of written contents, video contents must be continually improved to interest the public. In the long-term, this can also be an excellent way of enhancing the added-value contents to outrun competitors who have not invested in quality.


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