News & Articles

The Mobile Games Developer Trends Study by Pocket Gamer Biz, in association with The Specialist Works, suggests mobile marketers are missing out on huge opportunities by not using traditional media channels. The trends study created in conjunction with Pocket Gamer Biz, highlights that mobile brands aren’t utilising offline channels such as TV, Radio, OOH and […]

Media trust in a fake news world: how consumers are placing their trust back in the dial What’s the deal with fake news, and is it really such a big issue? We are living in an era where conversations around “fake news” and “alternative facts” are mainstays in the public dialogue. From Brexit to the […]

The impact of Black Friday on the UK’s fastest growing digital businesses Working with more eCommerce brands than any other UK media agency, here at TSW, we’re in a privileged position to comment on this year’s record-smashing extravaganza!  Here’s our Black Friday analysis from several from the UK’s fastest growing online retailers. Purchase intent increases […]

App acquisition marketing. More than just Google and Facebook. Global New Business Director and Mobile Marketing Expert, Richard Downey, comments on the future of app acquisition marketing Mobile apps. Love them or hate them they play a key role in most of our lives. Whether planning your route home via Trainline, planning your next holiday […]

To protect your personal data, your connection to Vimeo has been blocked.Click on Load video to unblock Vimeo.By loading the video you accept the privacy policy of Vimeo.More information about Vimeos’s privacy policy can be found here Vimeo.com Privacy Policy. Do not block Vimeo videos in the future anymore. Load video After the success of […]

Newspapers ‘lost it’ when it came to influencing the 2017 UK election: Why? And how does this affect advertisers? It’s true of every generation, young people don’t want to follow their elders. It’s what sparks change throughout society – whether it be in popular culture, social morals, technology, or politics. This rang true in the […]

When it comes to making successful DRTV ads, the main thing to ask yourself is: will they produce a direct response!? Once the ad rolls, will the audience immediately understand what it is you’re offering and what they need to do to get it? Alongside that, will the results from such advertising stack up nicely […]

We often talk about the ‘digital revolution’ with an innate bias towards media consumption… how people are spending more time online or with mobile devices. What’s sometimes overlooked is the quiet(er) revolution in how other services are provided to consumers. Technology-driven products are beginning to overturn long-established industries, with the potential to complete disrupt entire […]

With innovation and rapid reaction, eHarmony and TSW find new opportunities in our uncertain political landscape.   In amongst the political turbulence we are facing in the UK right now, you wouldn’t think looking for love would be at the top of anyone’s priority list. However, with some very clever research, eHarmony have found that […]

It’s not surprising that numerous industry commentators predicted ‘the end of traditional media’ when observing the surge in mobile internet consumption over the last 6 or 7 years. If that trend was set to continue, that could well have been the case. But Zenith Media’s latest Media Consumption Forecast has provided some new figures that […]

As TV advertising specialists, we know the compliance process inside out. The guidelines enforced by ASA in the UK are rigid and often restrictive and certain industries are under very strict controls about what they can and can’t say. For instance, the gambling industry, in which we have made countless campaigns over the past number […]

The Battle of Instream Ads:  Can Facebook’s new platform take on YouTube?  Facebook’s latest update is an all-time first for the platform; in fact, it could transcend them into the realms of digital video supreme leaders – move over YouTube and Vimeo TSW’s  social media expert, Kristy Hynes shares her insight on these new advancements […]

In simple terms, general advertisers’ primary objective is to increase consumer awareness of a brand, product or service. DRTV, on the other hand, is more focused around a call-to-action to influence consumers into pursuing a specific action. Traditionally, that action would have been to call a dedicated phone number. A reasonable ask, you might think. […]

Affiliate marketing can now rival any other digital channel An insight piece by TSW’s affiliate expert Nakisa Mavaei CJ Affiliate recently published an infographic on how the affiliate channel can bring an increase in AOV, customer retention and revenue in offline sales, which can NOW rival any other digital channel. The industry has progressed rapidly […]

TSW has built a team of mobile app acquisition experts over the past three years. These experts work with a range of clients from the worlds of gaming, gambling, dating, travel and more; here’s a brief overview on how they maximise performance for our clients: Mobile video: Using video to drive app installs, and subsequently […]

Your TSW Guide to App Store Optimisation by Richard Downey, Director of Global New Business – Mobile What is App Store Optimisation? (ASO) ASO is the ‘foundation’ on which all app acquisition marketing should be built. Whether you are using paid mobile channels, offline, email or any other tactic to drive users towards your app. […]

  Gareth Williams, Premier’s Director of Games, recently spoke in an article on Gamesindustry.biz about how mobile games require very different PR tactics to those of traditional console & PC game campaigns. He made some points that resonated with us at The Specialist Works – having worked on a large number of successful mobile game campaigns, […]

Below is an email that was sent to TSW’s print management customers after a major print supplier sadly – and suddenly – went into administration There is – and probably always will be – a debate about whether it is better to handle your printing in-house or use a print manager. The TSW print team […]

AMAZON SPENDING $4.5b ON VIDEO CONTENT   http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/04/11/amazon-spend-over-4bn-video-take-video-rivals-year   Analysts at J P Morgan have reported that Amazon is set to spend over $4 billion on new video content in 2017. Some of this will be original programming – and some allocated to live streaming: most notably Thursday Night NFL games. This takes Amazon ever […]

Nivea and Pepsi have us reminiscing on the bad old days http://fortune.com/2017/04/05/nivea-white-is-purity-ad/ http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/pepsi-advert-pulled-kendall-jenner-protest-video-cancelled-removed-a7668986.html   Like the old adage goes ‘all publicity is good publicity’. But no-one ever claimed that all advertising is good advertising. That’s because it isn’t. Sometimes it’s bad… very bad. Whether it’s down to hapless insensitivity – as we saw last week […]

One of the things our Copywriter learned from the last week was that this Blog used to feature a section called ‘things we learned from last week’. In a week that featured April Fools Day, the formal beginnings of Brexit and another hundred Trump-related facepalm moments, any such continuation would be jumping in at the […]

It’s a fundamental question when you begin planning out an advertising campaign: how many times should an audience be shown an advertisement before they respond positively to the offer? Bizarrely, there is actually some consensus if you Google that question. A lot of people say 7; though there’s little agreement over what happens after that […]

2017 has seen some pretty interesting developments at the frontline of digital media. Earlier this month, Google unveiled its premium subscription based YouTube TV service; and shortly after, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook, as well as announcing its set-top box video app, is open for pitches for TV-like shows across various genres. So […]

The start of 2017 has seen plenty of industry headlines about the increased TV advertising spends of digital businesses. Up 8% to a total of £639m in 2016, further growth is forecast and simply put, TV is where the smart money is going. There are some unique reasons why TV advertising is being realised as […]

TSW: Inspiraction Events Bursting the Paid Search Bubble TSW’s senior digital executive, Kristy Hynes shares her insight and learnings… On a stormy Thursday whilst most of London hid away from the ever-raging Storm Doris, industry experts from across the city flooded the TSW halls to take part in another of our thought-provoking inspiraction events. With […]

Hi! Welcome (back) to our blog! As our website evolves, this is where you’ll find general updates, interesting insights and other articles of distraction… such as this: Don’t call it a comeback It would be an understatement of epic proportions to say 2017’s set to be an interesting year, but even whittling it down to […]

The value of using data targeting customer behaviour in a performance world DOOH (Digital Out Of Home) is becoming more entrenched in the furniture of the OOH landscape, and as this evolving landscape is getting bigger TSW are harnessing customer data and performance insight to make this emerging channel performance led. DOOH is the chimera […]

ITV4 is a good bet for mr green mr green tasked TSW to find ways to grow their brand and build credibility A wide-ranging deal was constructed that allows mr green to attach their sponsorship idents to every unsponsored programme on the channel between 21:00 and 29:59 (05:59) every day for a year. We also […]

What do you think will represent the single biggest opportunity for printers in 2017 and why? E-commerce, e-commerce and e-commerce. The industry is growing rapidly and it’s almost impossible to scale a business on digital advertising alone. So printers have a real opportunity to align their offering with the growth of this industry. What was […]

PrintWeek notes that Jim, a new entry in the list this year, “is known throughout media land for his infectious energy and penchant for fancy dress*…” and that “…he might not be your typical straight-laced CEO, but you underestimate him at your peril.” *See evidence below…

A round-up of all that mattered in 2016 TV programming and a taste of some of the highlights in store for 2017 TV still dominates the new video world. Its scale, reach and impact are unrivalled. Despite new trends and patterns in how we consume television, the fundamentals remain the same.  According to Thinkbox we […]

A thought-provoking TSW Inspiraction Event After a short break, Graeme Lynch from TubeMogul gave us a view of how things might look in five years’ time, and what the programmatic expansion of TV advertising could do to the UK market. David Cloudsdale from Adalyser presented a quick overview of how they are working on a […]

Tackling fraud with good practice principles The DTSG (Digital Trading Standards Group) has created “UK Good Practice Principles” looking to create an industry-wide standard of effort to reduce fraud and ensure brand safety across all digital display advertising I recommend that any media agency worth their salt should gain accreditation, certainly around the growing requirement […]

Singles Day. Want a share of the world’s biggest shopping day?   TSW’s Richard Downey on how you can get involved…

There’s lots of talk about programmatic TV being the future at the moment, but exactly where are we? TSW’s Matt Whelan takes a hard look at some of the current lore surrounding innovations in TV. Online video doesn’t generate response Online video gets a bad deal, because it often sits in a silo along with […]

IPA Insight report – Black Friday: Deal or No Deal TSW’s Lenga Ball brings you the lowdown from the IPA Insight Centre’s report. More Than Just Another Sale: re-engaging with the customer experience Discount events have become the retail ‘norm’ and they’ve left many shoppers feeling fatigued and disengaged. To combat this, social media can […]

Younger, smarter and more resilient: mythbusting the inserts market in 2016 By Sian Lepperd, Associate Director, Print Media Despite print pessimism, and associations with the grey market, recent market reviews on how inserts are being bought and consumed reveal the medium is more diverse than you think. It’s hitting an untapped younger market, booming for […]

Five things I learned at China Joy 2016… by Richard Downey Global New Business Director, Mobile One of the biggest digital entertainment expos on the planet, China Joy is an annual conference full of the weird, wonderful and inspiring developments in consumer technologies. While spreading the word about TSW’s leading TV for apps tracking solution, […]

“There is nothing so terrible as action without insight” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer and marketing visionary(!) 1749-1832 Here at TSW, we couldn’t agree more. We invest in insight tools from the very best tech firms and in some cases we help them to develop and beta test new products and capabilities. This enables us […]

Are you being (dynamically) served? The future of TV targeting How ad-syncing will let you beat the marketplace and re-target TV viewers with personalised content You watch a TV ad. You want to find out more, so you reach for your smartphone. You mean to Google the brand. You get distracted by Facebook. The ad […]

Advertising on Pinterest – are you ready? It started life as one of the more niche social networks: a quirky guide to the latest vegan cupcake recipe and weird and wonderful arts and crafts. But Pinterest grew up. Its user base increased by 50% in the last year, and it turned into a Holy Grail […]

Brand vs Direct Response – a thing of the past Whether brand or DR, advertising shares a single goal: to drive response. Though DR tactics gratify this need immediately, the larger business effects of a campaign come from a smarter, more considered approach. Brand campaigns amplify direct response activities, and as attribution tech advances we […]

Mobile web advertisers are worrying about ad blockers when they should be worried about why people want to block ads in the first place. Web advertising in general and mobile web advertising in particular does not get a lot of positive publicity. The list of reasons not to seems to get longer by the day. […]

15 minutes later, within the same show, we saw Neal’s response (of course he said yes!) to the proposal –a great endorsement of eHarmony’s unique personality matching techniques. From 20:45 onwards a 30” cutdown of the proposal and response in one commercial ran across the majority of the TV network at a high frequency, carrying […]

What Google’s removal of right hand side ads means for your campaigns On the 19th of February Google confirmed that it had removed all PPC ads from the right-hand side of the search results page with immediate global effect. This change should provide a more consistent search results experience across multiple devices, but may also […]

Quorn Mince   There have been a number of adverts in this campaign, stretching back to 2014. The first, is very well put together. Featuring Mo running in a scenic mountain range, the sound design combined with the quirky editing makes a very good impression. It has a nice pace to it, with an informative […]

Well it’s here, it’s finally here. The Apple Watch is released this week and it promises to be the tech event of 2015. As with pretty much any Apple release of recent years the iWatch is a big deal because it is something new, because it is Apple and because everyone is really hoping that […]

If you’re into gaming like we are here in Pace Towers it probably hasn’t escaped your attention that Marvel has recently released ‘Contest of Champions’ for free across smartphone platforms. Essentially it’s a side scrolling beat ’em up a la ‘Street Fighter’ but has the added kicker of featuring all your favourite characters from the […]

In recent weeks, the health supplement store Protein World has been getting a lot of negative attention on social media from angry consumers, who have been most upset by their latest advertising campaign.   The posters, which mainly appear in Underground stations across London, feature the Australian model Renee Sommerfield in a yellow bikini, along […]

A trackable and attributable app download promotion via TV TSW and Clash of Kings team up to run the first genuinely trackable and attributable app download promotion via TV in the UK As successful app publishers turn to TV to find a new acquisition channel, the main challenge has been using ‘traditional’ mobile marketing metrics […]