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Vice President Mike PenceMike (Michael) Richard PencePence takes victory lap at CPAC: ‘This is our time’ Pence: Democrats’ Obamacare promises were ‘fake news’ Conservatives to Congress: Get moving MORE on Thursday touted the early accomplishments of President Trump’s young administration and showered praise on the real estate mogul as the herald of a new era at a major conservative gathering.

Speaking at the high-profile Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland, Pence seized on an enthusiastic audience to declare victory over the Affordable Care Act and tout Trump’s victory in November.

“Men and women of the conservative movement — this is our time,” Pence said.

“I believe President Trump has given voice to the aspirations and frustrations of the American people since no leader since [former President Ronald] Reagan,” Pence said to cheers. “I just knew our knew president would reignite our cause and renew it in our own day.”

“President Trump won a historic victory all across the United States of America,” he said.

CPAC is familiar territory for Pence. His remarks on Thursday marked the ninth time he has addressed the annual gathering.

But predictably absent from Pence’s remarks were the myriad challenges and controversies that have roiled the Trump administration in its first month.

There was no talk of the president’s embattled executive order barring citizens of several predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. Nor did Pence discuss the abrupt resignation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Instead, the 20-minute address was a sort of victory lap for Trump’s campaign, touching on shunning the media and the political establishment and vows to “make America great again” – themes that have dominated Trump’s rhetoric since his early days as a presidential candidate.

“The media, the elites, the insiders, everybody else who profits off preserving the status quo — they dismissed our president every step of the way,” Pence said. “And in dismissing him, they also dismissed millions of the hard-working, forgotten men and women that make this country great.”

“And worse yet they’re still trying to dismiss him. They’re still trying to dismiss all of us,”

Pence also voiced support for Israel, vowing that Trump would “stand with” the Jewish state.

“Israel’s fight is our fight. Her cause is our cause. Her values are our values,” Pence said to rising applause. “And under President Trump, America will stand with Israel.”

Pence rolled through several of Trump’s major campaign talking points, spending the most time on Obamacare.

“Despite the best efforts of liberal activists at town halls around the country, the American people know better,” Pence said. “Obamacare has failed and Obamacare must go. »

The vice president’s remarks came a day before Trump himself is set to take the stage at the annual conservative meeting. Earlier in the day, top adviser Steve Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus took the stage together. 

« I’m confident that with your help and with God’s help and with President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpPence takes victory lap at CPAC: ‘This is our time’ President Trump, immigrants are not ‘bad dudes’ Zuckerberg group donated to Trump transition MORE in the White House, I know the best days for America are yet to come. Let’s get tow work, » Pence concluded.

At this point, no one needs to be convinced of the power of video used within marketing. Video is eagerly consumed by all types of consumers and is an ideal way to transmit ideas that are difficult to convey with words alone. But not all videos are created equally, and the mere act of producing a video won’t suddenly make your marketing effective. The video has to be high quality, send a powerful message and be short enough for someone to watch in passing. Beyond this, here are three ways to create a compelling video that will actually make an impact for your business.

Conquer Misconceptions

Nearly every brand has faced misconceptions at one time or another. The challenge lies in being able to reverse opinions that aren’t complimentary of your company and/or are rooted in false information. Video is a great way to do this.

One example is Amway, a business whose name is a shortened version of “American Way.” Because of this, some of Amway’s target audience were left thinking that Amway was only available in the U.S. The reality is that Amway is a global company, with operations and employees in over 100 countries. To help consumers understand this, Amway created a video that showed just how global the brand really is. You can do the same with any misconception your brand is facing.

Use the Influence of Others

One of the goals of creating a great marketing video is to get it seen by as many people as possible. In order to do this, a brilliant strategy is to tap into the networks of influential individuals. If you can include someone (or multiple people) with mass social media followings in your video, for instance, there’s a great likelihood these folks will share the video with their networks.

Gap did this when it launched its “Styld.by” campaign. The company used stylists and other people (with vast social followings) known for having impeccable fashion sense. Then they filmed and photographed them wearing Gap clothing and wove in stories about why they chose their particular outfit. It worked phenomenally well, and these influencers then shared their inclusion in the campaign with their own networks. By sharing these videos, Gap was showcased to entirely new audiences, who may have never been exposed to the brand previously.

Get Real

And finally, authenticity always wins. If you want to recruit skilled people to your company, a video about your culture can go a long way in encouraging talent to contact you. Cancer Treatment Centers of America did this well when they put together videos of real employees doing their jobs. It might sound unspectacular, but the results were great. People respond to seeing other people as real human beings. This raw look at what a day in the life of an employee might look like makes outsiders feel like they understand your brand.

If you want to be effective with your video marketing, focus on breaking through misconceptions, tapping into others’ networks and using real people to tell real stories. None of these are complex methods, but they work very well.

About Missy Ward

Missy Ward has been in affiliate marketing since 1999. She is the Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, FeedFront Magazine, GeekCast.fm, itsaWAHMthing.com; the Co-Publisher of Revenews.com, Founder of AffiliateMarketersGiveBack.com and manages many of her own affiliate sites. Visit her affiliate marketing blog at MissyWard.com.

In this industry byliner, SelectMedia’s CEO and founder, Sagi Gordon, discusses the growth of video marketing in Asia-Pacific and urges marketers in the region to take the first steps towards fighting ad fraud.

The use of programmatic software for the purchase of digital video advertising is already a fact in Asia. The technology has brought about a great change to the field of marketing, which was previously dominated by traditional video marketing practices. Programmatic video marketing has been particularly preferred over traditional platforms because it utilises real-time data, hence, ensuring a video ad is presented to the target customer at the right time.

The advent of high-speed bandwidth also fuelled the growth of programmatic video ads, just as it revolutionised the way people access TV and online video content. This drove marketers to switch dollars used for TV marketing towards digital marketing.

Looking forward, I expect some significant programmatic trends for the Asia-Pacific region in 2017. First, one should anticipate increasing use of digital marketing among manufacturers. In SelectMedia, for instance, our data for Asia reveals some manufacturers are starting to invest significantly, with upward trends in advertising for clothing and footwear as well as travel, where these players are buying online packages for landing pages.

Across Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific, in general, has seemed like a haven for online marketing, with the region embracing digital content more than anywhere else. For example, consumers in the Philippines send more text messages than any other country; and Indonesia leads the world in the use of tweets. The region’s population has shown an eagerness to use mobile technology and consume video.

The region, this year, will likely experience a surge in mobile ad spend, especially in video ad formats. In fact, with about 50% of searches occurring through mobile platforms, up to 75% of marketers in this region will see a rise in mobile spend. The growing importance of cross-device marketing further points to a likely uptake of video marketing in 2017.

However, while mobile video ad spend is growing faster than any other digital ad format, it’s still straining to catch up with desktop video. Thanks to audiences who love to consume video content via smartphones and tablets, mobile video ad spend is likely to see rapid growth. Particularly in Asia, though, the lack of agreement over metrics, as well as ad pricing between buyers and sellers, has affected mobile video growth. The disparity in mobile video ad formats has led to buyers choosing to wait and see where the trends are heading. Also, the jury’s still out on whether mobile web or in-app is the better option for video mobile advertising.

Sagi Gordon, CEO Founder, SelectMedia

I believe advertisers are starting to understand the concept of splitting budgets into cross-channel marketing strategies. They see mobile video ads as highly attractive, due to touchscreen devices and the ability to create a more private video experience, compared desktop video.

As such, all indicators point towards the possibility of mobile marketing outpacing desktop marketing in the region.

The rising affluent demographic in Asia also can present marketers with a great opportunity, but targeting this group should be done through video marketing. For instance, an interesting area where programmatic video advertising has started to gain ground in Asia is luxury goods and services; and search activities around this product segment have been high on online video platforms. This underscores the need for luxury brands and marketers to focus their efforts on digital video advertising and platforms.

In June 2016, a poll by research firm Ipsos revealed that 62% of consumers in the top-income bracket watched online marketing videos on YouTube or via social media networks. Another 2015 study by Nielsen Company indicated 75% of young adults in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines watched digital videos on a weekly basis; and video sharing topped the region’s social networking activities. These findings further emphasised the importance of video marketing in Asia – although the effectiveness of targeting in the region would require a combination of digital video content and TV ads, since the majority of the population here still consume TV.

Asia-Pacific presents a great opportunity for digital marketing and, in particular, programmatic video advertising. Here at SelectMedia, we’re seeing a 30% year-on-year increase, due to growing programmatic spending. Digital video ad spend also is projected to rise faster in the region in coming years, compared to display, search, and even social media.

Global organisations are starting to take notice of anticipated growth in digital media consumption in APAC, with many US companies already targeting the region by offering programmatic video ad services and opening sales offices here to support increased demand. In particular, video media companies have opened sales offices in Australia, Singapore, as well as other Southeast Asia countries, and in territories such as India, Hong Kong, and Japan, to name a few.

Marketers must take the first step in fraud fight

To reap all the benefits of video, however, marketers must not neglect the need to embrace strategic safety and quality measures. The topic of fraud in digital advertising involves a broad range of issues, from fake clicks and inventory from publisher websites, to exaggerated traffic numbers and the lack of transparency in media buys. In Asia, fraud became a serious consideration only since 2014; and media companies in the region then started to use third-party tools to address the issue. However, today, such tools are not yet widely used in this region and still have gaps in what they are able to track, such as video ad serving template (VAST) video formats.

I believe education is key to improving the fraud situation, especially in Asia where the gap is wider than the West. Most advertisers are unaware of the problem, and most media vendors do not want to deal with the issue since it will dramatically reduce their inventory reach – or amount of available media to sell – and spend opportunities.

Also, marketers in Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific, as well as Japan, still are not willing to pay for verification companies and technologies, even though these are available today and the issue is frequently discussed. They probably want media agencies to take care of it and rely on the latter’s capabilities and judgement to find the fraud matrix and, as a result, neglect it from their actual planning.

The bottom line is, until advertisers start demanding third-party verification tools and heeding the advice to set KPIs beyond viewer metrics or click-through/completion campaigns, fraud surfaces too easily and advertisers will continue to pay for its impact.

Looping video app Vine may be gone as a standalone offering, but the super short video format it helped popularize is only picking up more traction with both big brands and social platforms.

Video messaging app Snapchat, for example, serves much of its advertising as quick Stories units lasting no more than 10 seconds and YouTube, a veteran of the social video space, launched a six-second « Bumper » format last year. 

Procter Gamble, the world’s largest advertiser, has similarly suggested that video shorter than the typical 30- or 60-second spots is becoming essential to its marketing strategy. “We’re […] increasingly using five-second to six-second formats that quickly convey the brand and the benefit, given the ad-skipping behavior that we know happens quite frequently,” the company’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard said in November, as reported by the Cincinnati Business Journal.

As consumer attention spans shrink — some research suggests they last eight seconds on average, shorter than that of a goldfish — marketers must figure out ways not only to attract eyeballs in a short period of time but also create a lasting impression thereafter.   

« Super short videos have disrupted the world of video marketing and will continue to play a pivotal role throughout 2017, » said Jaclyn Rose, digital marketing lead at G2 Crowd. « The 10-seconds-or-less video format has capitalized on today’s increasingly short attention spans.

« It’s the hook, the foot-in-the-door, the branding and awareness play that will turn video viewers into interested buyers, » she said. 

Video’s ‘elevator pitch’

Video is quickly becoming the dominant content type for digital marketers and its penetration is most apparent on mobile devices, especially among young demographic groups.

But while some platforms including Facebook and Snapchat have begun to focus on longer-form, premium video content offerings, short videos can serve as a sort of « elevator pitch » intended to interest an audience in continuing to learn about what a brand has to offer, according to Rose.

“On social media, we make ads work in literally two seconds to three seconds, recognizing that people are whipping through their news feeds, » Pritchard said in the Cincinnati Business Journal report. « We are optimizing medium mix by following consumer behavior to advertise based on when, where and how much time consumers spend engaging with ads on various media platforms.”

Speaking to Pritchard’s point, Snapchat users watch video ads for less than three seconds on average, according to recent estimates by the company. Being able to both engage and communicate a clear brand message in such a short period of time — that elevator’s only really going up one floor — amounts to an immense but not insurmountable challenge that can be bested with a smart approach to strategy, according to experts. 

Keep it off-the-cuff

One way to hook viewers quickly is to go for an off-the-cuff creative approach. Super-short video advertisements are at their best when they appear somewhat unpolished, according to Rose and Sarah Ware, CEO of influencer marketing platform Markerly. 

This tactic is reflected in Snapchat ads that appear in style and aesthetic to mimic a user story but slowly reveal themselves to have a branded component. 

“Improv works best in terms of producing content that is enjoyed and engaged with by the viewer, » said Ware. « It should include real people, have minimal scripting and be lighthearted in a way that makes someone smile or laugh. » 

For longer 10-second ads — the time ceiling usually assigned to this type of brand storytelling — there should be more of a premium put on production value. The more time users spend in an ad, the bigger chance any seams will show through.

A key point of difference would be influencer campaigns based around shorter video ads, where less heavily-edited creative is desirable, communicating a genuine feel as opposed to a studio-quality spot.

« Customers now demand transparency and authenticity — two major trends that these super short videos address, » said Rose. « In a way, the planning and production required of longer videos defeats the purpose of these shorter ones.

« Super short videos are intended to provide a real-time, on-the-fly, behind-the-scenes look, » she said. « You can’t fake authenticity and shouldn’t try. Plan the concept and have an idea of what you want the final product to look like, but don’t stage a video that’s meant to be improvised. »

Effective deployment 

While much of the discussion around extra-short video content marketing is centered on consumer-facing brands, it’s not necessarily limited to that space.

“I’ve seen B2B marketers use this video format to not only showcase their products and services, but also to promote their brand, » said Rose. « Product teasers, snippets of company culture, behind-the-scenes footage and employee takeovers are all examples of how marketers can and should be using this. »

Since short videos aren’t meant to be meticulously edited, the tone should be similarly raw and real or funny. This is particularly true for spots aimed at the under-30 audience that tends to dominate platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, which are especially well-suited to this type of brand storytelling.

As for how to deploy super short videos, Ware suggested running them back-to-back, especially for lifestyle brands.

« If you’re putting this together, you should have about five back-to-back videos for Snapchat and about three for Instagram, for a total viewership around one minute,” said Ware. 

« Snapchat automatically limits your video to 10 seconds, which allows you to easily create back-to-back videos. However, on Instagram choose to limit yourself, » she added. « It’s better to stop each video at 10 [to] 15 seconds for three back-to-back videos, for example, than to produce one 40-second video. »

A day after an off-duty Los Angeles police officer fired his gun during a confrontation with a group of teenagers in Anaheim, videos purportedly showing the encounter spread online, prompting questions about the officer’s actions. 

No one was injured by the gunfire, but the footage — posted on YouTube and Facebook  — sparked a flurry of phone calls and emails to Anaheim police, who are investigating the officer’s actions. 

(Warning: The video contains indecent language. You can watch it here.)

On Wednesday night, about 300 demonstrators took to the streets of Anaheim to protest the case. The marchers began in the west Anaheim neighborhood where the shooting occurred and eventually moved into major streets.

Iraqi federal police forces – backed by U.S. air support – entered Mosul International Airport and took control of the runway from the Islamic State, an official said Thursday.

Thursday’s advance is part of a major assault that started five days ago to drive ISIS militants from the western half of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

Two police officers said the airport buildings were under fire from Iraqi forces. They would not provide more information but said the U.S.-led coalition is with the advancing forces.

Reuters reported Monday that Iraqi forces were closing in on the airport after pushing ISIS fighters back at a nearby hill. The troops were working on regaining the west side of the city and overtaking the airport completely would be a major blow to militants.

Mosul fell to ISIS in the summer of 2014, along with large swaths of northern and western Iraq. ISIS is estimated to have between 1,000 and 3,000 fighters in Mosul, Col. John Dorrian, the Baghdad-based spokesman told Pentagon reporters Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, a top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Monday the Iraqi forces are an « increasingly capable, formidable and professional force. »

« Mosul would be a tough fight for any army in the world, and the Iraqi forces have risen to the challenge, » he said in a statement.

Ground units pushed into a belt of villages outside the country’s second-largest city Sunday and plumes of smoke rose into the sky early in the morning as U.S.-led coalition jets struck militant positions southwest of Mosul and militarized Iraqi police fired artillery.

US TROOPS HAVE COME ‘UNDER FIRE’ IN AN AROUND MOSUL, OFFICIAL SAYS

The United Nations warned that hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped inside their homes in Mosul « are at extreme risk, » with dwindling fuel, food and water and scarce electricity.

Iraq declared eastern Mosul « fully liberated » last month after three months of fierce fighting, but the militants have continued to stage attacks there, including two suicide bombings against government forces on Sunday.

The battle for western Mosul promises to be even more daunting, as the half of the city west of the Tigris River has older, narrower streets and is still heavily populated.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of the latest operation on state TV. He said government forces were moving to « liberate the people of Mosul from [ISIS] oppression and terrorism forever. »

Police units quickly entered the village of Athba, about 3 miles southwest of Mosul’s international airport, encountering only light resistance. Separately, the Iraqi Army’s 9th Division moved into the village of Bakhira, also southwest of the city, the Ministry of Defense said.

Citing witnesses in western Mosul, the United Nations said nearly half of all food shops were closed and bakeries had shut down for lack of fuel and an inability to purchase costly flour. Prices of kerosene and cooking gas have skyrocketed, and many of the most destitute families are burning wood, furniture, plastic or garbage for cooking and heating.

US TOOPS IN IRAQ OPERATING CLOSER TO FRONT LINES

« The situation is distressing. People, right now, are in trouble, » Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said in a statement. « We are hearing reports of parents struggling to feed their children and to heat their homes. »

Peter Hawkins, of the U.N. agency for children, said: « Three out of five people now depend on untreated water from wells for cooking and drinking as water systems and treatment plants have been damaged by fighting or run out of chlorine. »

The humanitarian agencies were gearing up to aid 250,000 to 400,000 civilians who may flee because of the fighting, the statement said. The U.N. estimates 750,000 civilians may be left in western Mosul.

Iraqi special operations forces, regular army and federal police units are taking part in the offensive along with government-approved paramilitary forces, mainly consisting of Shiite militias, which are operating on the city’s outskirts.

Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.