Insatiable consumer expectations. Massive content creation. The promise of new technology. Brands contend with these forces every day, yet the holy grail of content marketing remains elusive.

The site list, an explicit rundown of all the sites an advertiser is willing to have on-plan, is a simple and effective way to control for brand safety. Trouble is, it creates a heavy trade-off: scale. Whitelisting can't counter the very real brand safety challenge at play on programmatic platforms, and, if scale is compromised, it defeats one of the primary benefits of running a campaign programmatically in the first place.

As social media platforms become more ingrained as part of popular culture, many recognize them as a means to connect with old friends, stay up to date with news and current events, and share photos and videos. But for marketers, the value of social media can be so much more. In its purest form, social media is the missing piece of the marketing puzzle.

In 2017, consumer demand for diversity and inclusion ignited a watershed in the evolution of multicultural marketing and research. Global brands publicly touted their commitment to these ideals, as seen by change agents like Nike, with the launch of the first mainstream sports hijab and Disney Pixar, whose animated movie, Coco , based on the Mexican holiday of Dia de los Muertos, shattered the box office this holiday season.

At a recent digital healthcare conference I attended, many speakers highlighted marketing automation as a wonder drug for effective digital marketing in healthcare, particularly in driving new patient acquisition. A technology-fueled approach can pull prospects into the marketing funnel, then optimize communications streams until the process yields an appointment.

While the world tends to focus on millennials, 13% of the U.S. is made up of teens between the ages of 10 and 19. Did you know that teens hold $44 million in spending power?

Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are struggling - to put it mildly. Hundreds of malls are closing every year. But retailers are fighting back. Next time you visit a Starbuck's or Dunkin Donuts, you may get a prompt from the latest new mobile technology - beacons!

Millennials officially overtook Baby Boomers as the largest demographic in the United States, making them the "it" target market ... for now. Yet, it's another group that wields household purchase influence on items ranging from food to clothing to furniture, even to vacation destinations.