One day three statisticians went hunting in Maine. Out overlooking an open meadow, they spotted a deer, and the first one took a careful shot but missed by a yard to the left. Miraculously the deer never moved, allowing the second to take his shot, this time missing by a yard to the right. The third took his turn to aim and – BINGO! “We got it!” exclaimed the third with high fives all around. The marketing planning process can seem precisely like this, and people remember the misses more than anything. Sales and customer growth forecasting is complicated under the best of circumstances, and when planning for 2021, we’re all in for some difficult challenges. One basic principle of forecasting is to plan for normalcy, but this year was anything but typical, and there is still a great deal of uncertainty ahead. Several years ago, when we had more human interaction with our peers, I remember my colleague Matt Morton referencing the planning process as being “a bit of alchemy,” which stuck with me. I thought that was a great way to put it. Naturally, we’ll have previous results from which to work, but the real skill involves the ability to make sound assumptions for planning purposes. Get more at: https://cohereone.com/planning-in-chaos/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=99162426&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8Fe-e-x7FfpLs6vHkNUBAT-Qiz-lHoetPkpZ3bUZ_E7KVhQoQauWC908pY6r9_kJQFD3RcOl6hkg75lneVJTRK4snWbCwo_yJaUHmecdx01klgoPY&utm_content=99162426&utm_source=hs_email

An alarming new study on click fraud should sober up both publishers and advertisers. Large percentages of clicks qualified as invalid traffic (IVT) in June 2023, according to Q2 2023 Global Click Fraud Benchmarks, a study by Pixalate. For starters, there was a 17% invalid click rate for all open programmatic advertising across desktop web, mobile web, and mobile in-app in June. In addition, there was a 21% invalid click rate for desktop web open programmatic advertising, a 16% invalid click rate for mobile web open programmatic ads and 13% invalid click rate for mobile app open programmatic ads. However, the 729x90 Leaderboard ad size drove an invalid click rate of 26% on mobile apps, twice that of the total mobile app invalid click average (13%). Moreover, 20% of all invalid clicks on mobile apps are now generated by click farms, the study says.

Check out the latest report from J.Schmid and CohereOne. The data is in, and Labor Day weekend signaled a strong start to the fall season. The weekend drove strong engagement, with apparel and outdoor brands leading growth. Home retailers also saw strong performance. Read the full report here. https://jschmid.com/marketing-kpis-labor-day-weekend-2025-trends/