The Unruly Blog
Stay ahead of the curve and at the forefront of ad tech with the Unruly blog, covering stories from across the Unrulyverse and beyond!
How understanding emotions helps create great Christmas ads
In the past a sudden fall in the temperature, a flutter of snow, or the sound of jingle bells would indicate that Christmas was on it’s way. These days it’s marked by the Christmas ads that begin to appear around the beginning of November. Our UnrulyEQ team have been hard at work trying to decipher which emotions make Christmas ads so moving and memorable. If you think back to Christmas ads gone by I’m sure a whole host of images and emotions pop into your head, from the Coca Cola truck and a man in the moon, to a clumsy cat and a dancing carrot. The team have looked at some of the most popular festive ads from the past three years to find out what emotions they
Uncovering the truth behind popular programmatic myths
The programmatic advertising ecosystem can be a confusing place – so full of acronyms, vendors and platforms that it can be hard to know who (and what) you can trust. The issues of brand safety has been publicized for quite some time, and is only becoming more of a concern as programmatic buying continues to scale. At our last Unruly Trust Talks event in New York, Unruly’s Programmatic lead Paul Gubbins sat down with Ryan Rolf, VP Data Solutions at Lotame, Rachel Nyswander Thomas, SVP Operations at TAG, and Doug Zarkin, CMO at Pearle Vision to uncover the truth behind popular programmatic myths, and how advertisers can work to rebuild trust. Paul Gubbins (PG): Why do publishers and brands still not trust adtech vendors? Doug Zarkin (DZ): It’s
Inside ProDev: Our Product Manager on culture, crossfit, and delivering wow!
Next up in our ‘Inside ProDev’ series we sat down with one of our Product Managers Julien Altoé to find out what it’s like to work as a Product Manager in the ProDev team. Q: Hi Julien, first of all, could you introduce yourself and tell a bit about what you do here at Unruly? As you faultlessly said, my name is Julien, and I am a 28-year-old Frenchman that has been working at Unruly for three years. After a few roles in the Ops team, I am now a Product Manager in the ProDev team. I am the home Product Manager for the Demand Side, and as the name implies, we are the team that look after the demand side of the business. Making sure anyone willing to
Programmatic and publishers: a heavenly match?
Many say premium publishers have been disintermediated from their audiences by programmatic buying and selling. However, since GDPR landed, browsers have clamped down on 3rd party cookies and initiatives like ads.txt and ads.cert have taken a hold. The practices adopted by the buy side to find premium audiences are being challenged and publishers are very much back in the driving seat. At our Unruly Trust Talks: The Great Programmatic Debate coming up in the UK, we decided to take a look back at last month’s one in New York where Unruly COO Kenneth Suh spoke to Chris Guenther, Global head of programmatic at NewsIQ, Brendan Cleary, VP of Programmatic Sales at The Guardian, and Rachel Tuffney, Head of Financial Vertical Sales at Dow Jones, to find out their
Inside ProDev: Unruly’s Software Engineer Ina Tsetsova on remote working, open source and stuffed toys
Next up in our ‘Inside ProDev’ series we sat down with one of our Software Engineers Ina Tsetsova to find out what a day in the life of an Unruly developer looks like. Q: Hi Ina, first of all, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do here at Unruly? IT: Hi! I’m Ina Tsetsova and I’m a Software Engineer here at Unruly, currently working in our Shared Infrastructure team. The team started by taking over infrastructure projects that didn’t have an owner, and were getting pretty out-of-date. Now we are steadily improving things, instilling best practices, and spreading infrastructure knowledge! Q: How did you end up at Unruly? IT: I went to a couple of XProlo events and was blown away by
Paul Gubbins: Thoughts from the programmatic coal face…
It’s been a hectic few months in the ad and martech sectors so I wanted to share an overview of some of the things that have caught my eye. This article has been taken from the The Drum’s monthly ‘Welcome to Programmatic Perspective’ series. This is an opinion piece and has been written by our programmatic lead Paul Gubbins. Each month he offers his take on the latest trends in the automated advertising space. DMEXCO is changing, but it’s here to stay Off the bat, DMEXCO is not going anywhere. It felt just as big this year as it has ever been. OK, there were fewer agencies in attendance but I feel that is more a reflection of the day to day pressures they are under rather than
Unruly Home Show: Honda’s robotic lawnmower
On this week’s episode of the Unruly Home Show Live Leo Bernard talks to Honda’s Marketing Manager, Benjamin Neu, about their robotic lawnmower, and how connected devices are branching out from the home into the garden! Check out previous episodes of the Unruly Home Show Live.
What to see at Advertising Week New York: Blockchain, AI and the retail apocalypse
Not sure what to see at Advertising Week New York? With so many venues, speakers and topics, it can be overwhelming! We’ve broken down the three areas which continue to dominate discussions within the ad industry. We’ve also highlighted the talks we are looking forward to around each topic. Why are people still talking about Blockchain? It feels like we have been talking about blockchain forever, and that’s because we have. Ten years in fact! The first blockchain was conceptualised back in 2008 to serve as the public transaction ledger of the cryptocurrency bitcoin. It’s come a long way since then and many people believe that the technology will revolutionise numerous markets including the advertising sector. With problems of fraud, complicated supply chains and lack of control over
The future of advertising: how to avoid brand bypass
Unruly Futurist Elena Corchero talks about her experience at DMEXCO earlier this month, the future of advertising, and how to avoid brand bypass. This year a lot of the conversations we had were around the future of advertising and the rise of ambient tech. We also spoke about the growth of data produced by humans, and how it’s doubling every year. Everyone knows that voice technology and voice shopping is on the rise. However, I was surprised about the number of brands who hadn’t considered the implications of brand bypass. Brand bypass in AI Companies are using voice assistants, and piggybacking on the tech of Alexa, Google or Messenger to create specialised assistants. A good example of this is Diageo’s “Open the bar”, or Estée Laude offering nutritional
