Torrence Boone

Agencies are no strangers to disruption. Recent years have unleashed a practically-unending seismic event for the industry, from changing consumers tastes, demographics, and innovative new technologies. The latest wave of change to face agencies continues an established trend: brands pulling more and more marketing functionality in-house.
The tide of insourcing came in yet again when Walmart, a mega-retailer and one of the world’s largest brands, announced last month that it would be bringing...

Patience may be a virtue, but nobody—especially customers and mobile device users—wants to practice it. Customers want their devices to move as fast as their desires, and they want the same from their experiences on brands’ websites.
The stakes are high for brands that can’t keep up with these expectations. A majority of consumers say that their irritation grows as load times on mobile websites drag on. Conversion rates on mobile can take a hit of up to 20% from load times delayed by just one...

There’s no shortage of literature on millennials, and it tends to focus on how the generation has disrupted business, politics, culture, and whatever else these twenty- and thirty-somethings can get their hands on. Now, millennials are passing their torch to a new cohort of young disruptive types: Generation Z. Both the largest and most racially- and ethnically-diverse generation ever, members of Generation Z—Gen Zs for short—differ from their generational predecessors in key ways but share t...

Mind the Ad: How Publishers Can Incorporate Better Ad Standards into Their Websites
Torrence Boone
Mar 6
When it comes to ads, consumers can be an evasive bunch. Multiple studies have explored rates of adblock usage and found them to be as high as 40%, at least on desktop, indicating the lengths users will go to in order to avoid ads. But it’s not that users hate ads but — just ads that employ annoying or invasive formats.
The Coalition for Better Ads has conducted research to determine which...

A mobile website can be a powerful tool to help your brand engage customers and generate conversions. However, just because you build a beautiful mobile website doesn’t necessarily mean customers will come. Even worse, customers might actually come—and then leave immediately. It happens everyday: Users abandon half of all mobile website visits if they take longer than three seconds to load, but the average mobile website takes 15.3 seconds. That means your website needs to be not just well-de...

An invisible, imperceptible wave of change is thundering across the globe, and by the time it completes its journey, 5G technology will have transformed the world. The next phase in the evolution of mobile communications, 5G networks will render internet speeds up to 20 times faster, potentially, than today’s quickest connections can muster. Experts predict that 5G will impact every industry under the sun, but few industries have awaited the dawn of these new networks as eagerly as marketers....

Never before have marketing and advertising efforts been so tailored to the particular individual who sees or hears them. Gone are the days when brands were limited by medium—radio, print, or television, for example—and could only launch campaigns that painted all consumers with the same brush. Today, modern technology makes it possible for brands to deliver personalized ads that reflect the men and women on the other side of the screen. So what’s the next frontier of personalization for mark...

Travel is an exhilarating experience. It’s fun, exciting—it’s an adventure! It’s also an absolute bear to plan and organize, even for short domestic trips. Booking or planning travel can be so challenging that high-value travelers prioritize a smooth, user-friendly website experience over features like online reviews or loyalty programs when deciding which brand wins their business.
That complexity is an opportunity in disguise for travel marketers. If customers are looking for simplicity whe...

Not all customers are created equal. Some shoppers may discover your brand by happenstance and make a single purchase out of curiosity or convenience; others will seek you out and loyally return to your store or website without ever thinking of switching brands. Businesses of all sizes need to make complex decisions about their marketing and the types of customers they should attract, and these choices become even more challenging when it’s not clear which customers are just one-time buyers a...

More 18-34 year olds in the US watch YouTube than any other cable network, fueling the billion hours of content watched on the platform every day. It’s no surprise that noted cord-cutters like Millennials and Gen Z prefer YouTube to more traditional viewing options, but it is a surprise to see the latest generation to step up to the search bar: Baby Boomers.
Born between the 1940s and 1960s, Baby Boomers have witnessed TV’s spectacular rise and its gradual diminuendo in recent years. They mig...

For a few days every January, the future descends on Las Vegas. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) draws hundreds of thousands of attendees eager for a first glance or grasp of the technology of tomorrow, but the annual trade show is more than just a mecca for the tech set: With its buffet of cutting-edge gadgets and curious consumers, CES is an unrivaled feast for marketers as well. Now, even if you couldn’t make it, here’s your chance to take a look at some of the most exciting trends on d...

Robotic or machine assistants are ubiquitous across books, movies, and television. From Rosie of The Jetsons to Star Wars’ C-3PO and countless others beyond, men and women have long been fascinated by the notion of highly-intelligent computers or automatons that feel like family and make their lives run like well-oiled machines. Now, technological advances in the real world have made it possible for life to catch up with art. Digital assistants are finally here.
These assistants have already ...

The widespread practice of cord-cutting has been much discussed in recent years as men and women, especially younger generations like Millennials and Gen Z, refuse to be tied down by traditional forms of consuming media in the face of innovative alternatives. For further evidence of a rising, disruptive tide, look no further than the ongoing surge in mobile use. More than 50% of web visits and searches now take place on mobile, and the pattern shows no signs of slowing anytime soon. If the fu...

Something is rotting in the state of marketing—at least, that’s what large segments of the public think. Studies have revealed that only 4% of Americans believe the marketing industry acts with integrity, which suggests that the other 96% wouldn’t trust a marketer as far as they could throw one.
Consumer behavior underscores the trust deficit: 26% of desktop users and 15% of mobile users employ adblockers to skate by ads as much as possible. For marketers, this has the makings of an existenti...