Paul Haddad Explains How a4 Is Inventing the Way Advertising Works

Navigating the transition from collecting and mining data to actually applying it in addressable advertising is a talent that a4 President Paul Haddad (pictured at top) has in abundance. With an engineering background and extensive work in collecting data at the set-top box level from his tenure at Cablevision, he has a keen sense of how the addressable landscape looks and what the underpinnings of data and analytics need to be to ensure a seamless, real-time, targeted experience for both consumers and advertisers.

His evolution from entrepreneur to data geek (an epithet that we both agree is a source of pride) to president has been facilitated by his early work at Cablevision, the mentorship of then-department head Kim Norris (currently the division vice president), Spectrum Reach, the acquisition of Cablevision by Altice, Patrick Drahi’s support of disrupting status quos, Dexter Goei’s coaching on building growth-driven business and the recognition by the industry of the value and power of data and targeting.

A One-Stop Advertising Shop
Utilizing data culled from many sources and offers, a4 is "a one-stop shop for audience-driven, integrated, multi-screen advertising and end-to-end ROI analytics across the U.S.," Haddad said.  But as complete as that sounds, that is not all it is.  Owned by Altice, which purchased Cablevision in 2015, a4 is actually a large advertiser in its own right, representing Altice's $200 million budget as an in-house agency.  So, a4 not only offers capability in both the buying and selling aspects of advertising, it also manages and stewards small $250 campaigns to multi-million-dollar campaigns, as well as national and local accounts through an interface platform controlled by the advertiser.  a4 is helping to transition the media world by "inventing the way advertising works," and it has been very successful.  "We now have over $500 million in total media revenue, over 500 employees and the fastest growing business at Altice," Haddad noted.

Going from Local to National
Transitioning from local MVPD operation to a national footprint was not without some internal questions.  "What is an audience to us?" Haddad posited. "Is it market-driven or is it location-driven or is it size-driven?"  After two years of tests, he realized that "audience targeting has no location or specific size."  So, the conclusion was that "when it comes to audience, we do not see the world as local or national at all," he explained.  "We do not see the world as TV or digital.  We see the world as household targets.  We deliver a household-based audience targeted campaign across all screens anywhere in the U.S. at any time and at any size of segment."  In sum, a4 essentially removes the need to label anything other than audience at a household level -- and that appears to be the wave of the future.

Haddad said that those still operating under the legacy mindset of local versus national are "limiting" themselves and warned that his competitors who stick to the old parameters of measurement are "being held as techno-hostages."

Finding Intent in Targeting
a4 has access to a myriad of datasets at the MVPD set-top box level, at the device level, at various digital touch points and through third and first-party partnerships.  To ensure privacy and create effective reach pathways, "our datasets are focused on household targeting," he explained.  "To target a household, you need to understand and provide to our advertising clients the means to create a segment.  And the way to create the segment is to collect data that finds intent."
He noted that intent on a household level is based on:

• Viewing and content consumption (a4 currently covers 12.5 million homes at the set-top box level covering 210 DMAs)
• Spending patterns (such as luxury items or beauty products or tech-gadgets)
• Consumer profile data (totaling 300 million homes)
• Geo-location data (sports stadium visits or high-end store or auto dealership visits)
• IP targeted data with a platform deployed behind the firewall at most MVPDs in the U.S. (accessing 50 million household data on digital and mobile devices for in and out-of-home addressability.)

"When you put it all together you can use the data for audience creation on the front of a campaign," he explained.  "You can then use the 'same' segment to plan when and how to reach them.  Finally, you measure and report all the impressions for that 'same' segment across all their devices, and clearly analyze the effect and whether you reached these audiences or not and what was the ROI."
In addition, a4 gives the client an on-boarding, self-service, full stewardship platform where proprietary CRM data can be uploaded privately and safely and matched with all of a4's data free of charge and within hours, not days.  So, from audience creation to media planning to media activation across all screens (which includes linear and optimized TV, OTT, digital video and display, social media, mobile display and in-apps banner), "we provide the measurement at the household level, plus all of these screens for the campaign, from the exposure to the medium to how often, and then we post at the end of the campaign."

As far as privacy is concerned, Altice applies a strict and disciplined compliance approach to all its data operations and business use cases.   "Privacy is extremely important and serious to us," Haddad asserted.

Time for a "Datalution"
Giving the client full access and control over all aspects of a campaign by targeting the intent of households is something that few companies offer. Haddad shepherds his company in a new direction that is poised to change the business of advertising as we know it.  "The advertising world is broken into a fast lane of born-data companies and the slow lane of legacy processes," he said.  "The slow lane has no choice but to revolutionize the way they do business.  It's a question of time."

The clock is ticking.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Taming Technology with The transHuman Code

In a time of increasing computerization through A.I. and machine learning, one might be forgiven for being concerned about human displacement. Do we really need media sales people in an era of automatic buying and selling? The answer is yes!

Co-authors David Fergusson and Carlos Moreira have written a book called The transHuman Code: How To Program Your Future whose basic premise is that, according to Fergusson, “we should always be creating a world for us, not technology, to thrive.” Humanity as we know it is being transformed so this concept, “points to the belief that our best future will come from a transformational relationship with technology—one that we control and not one that requires us to surrender to it or its products and services.” 

 “The platforms that we have come to heavily rely on today for shopping (Amazon), socializing (Facebook), and searching (google) were coded by and are controlled by a select few,” Fergusson continued, “The transHuman Code is proposed as a collective movement to manage the ongoing relationship between humanity and technology coded by all of us.”

Start the revolution. And, as in all good revolutions, it has a Manifesto:

1.       Privacy - Securing the privacy of every human being is paramount to realizing the full potential of our future. Therefore, personal data conveyed over the Internet or stored in devices connected to the Internet is owned and solely governed by the individual.

2.       Consent - Respecting the authority and autonomy of every human being is paramount to realizing the full potential of our future. Therefore, personal digital data will not be used as research, rationale, enticement or commodity by any entity or individual, except with the explicit, well-informed, revocable consent of the individual owner of the data.

3.       Identity - Valuing the identity of every human being is paramount to realizing the full potential of our future. Therefore, everyone everywhere has the right to be known and validated by the possession of a government-issued digital identity, which can be authenticated and used only by its owner.

4.       Ability - Advancing human faculties is paramount to realizing the full potential of our future. Therefore, to that end, the secure, approved, and accountable aggregation of personal information and resources to increase our individual abilities is a fundamental objective of technology.

5.       Ethics - Improving the human condition is paramount to realizing the full potential of our future. Therefore, a universal code of ethics reflecting the highest order of human values will govern the development, implementation, and use of technology.

6.       Good - Advocating and innovating the greatest good for all humanity is paramount to realizing the full potential of our future. Therefore, technology, no matter how advanced, will never supersede the spiritual purposes or the moral rights and responsibilities of any human being anywhere.

7.       Democracy - Democratizing human vision, ingenuity, and education is paramount to realizing the full potential of our future. Therefore, technology will remain humanity’s greatest collaborator but never represent humanity itself.

Carlos Moreira explained that, “In the absence of a ‘Global Governor of Technology’- an individual or body that decides what technology, when and where - the developers, enablers and users of technology (that’s all of us) must assume the responsibility to program our future.” 

Are we building a future of technological grandeur at the expense of what makes us magnificent, or we are building a future of human grandeur with the help of magnificent technology? What we choose will determine whether our future is bleak or bright.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Key Takeaways From the Cynopsis Measurement & Data Conference

We are operating in an ecosystem that continuously expands and deepens. There is more data than ever before and more companies jockeying, joining together and otherwise expanding and deepening their relationships with consumers, creatives and advertisers. How can we best navigate and, if possible, better predict the future? Enter the third annual Cynopsis Measurement and Data conference, which delivered insights into the range of media industry issues – from attribution to content labeling to OTT and addressable targeting, to agency and network initiatives, to the impact of consultancies.

Roberta Caploe, Publisher, Cynopsis, sees the conference as an important connector for “a candid conversation about what’s keeping us from arriving at a solution for consistent measurement across platforms and to walk out with next steps in hand.”

Here are the takeaways from the Cynopsis Measurement & Data Conference:

➢ Advancements are happening in content labeling and in attribution… but maybe not as fast as we want. In content labeling, CIMM ‘s TAXI (Trackable Asset Cross Platform Identification) initiative focuses on standardizing ids of video ads and programming not unlike UPC codes for consumer products. Jane Clarke, CEO Managing Director, CIMM, pointed out that Kantar audio watermarks have been qualified by SMPTE, which is a big step forward for ids that are bound to assets throughout entire distribution channel. “But the industry has to step up,” Clarke noted, by applying the codes to their content. In attribution, some questioned whether full attribution is possible. Funding it is expensive and advertisers are already paying premium pricing. TV data comes from a variety of different sources and there are a lot of steps to clean and process it. It is not always nationally representative … and what about word-of-mouth and out of home?

➢ Data gaps are impeding progress and it is difficult to solve. When it comes to data gaps, one of the most challenging is “identifying the consumer journey with precision, identifying the many different data sources, the specific needs of the consumer and being consistent,” stated Kathy Grey, Managing Director, Strategic Research, Omnicom Media Group, “That is the gap we are struggling with.” Beth Rockwood SVP Portfolio Research, Turner, added, “There are challenges working with first party data.” Walled gardens are another obstacle. “The Holy Grail is to unlock all walled gardens and have true cross platform measurement. But it’s still a long way away,” noted Shereta Williams, President, Videa.

➢ More collaboration is needed between networks and agencies and also between frenemy companies to find solutions. Rockwood explained that in learning how and when to use different sets of data and the different purposes for each, “We work in collaboration with agencies to understand what clients really need and then we decide what is relevant. This didn’t happen before. We work directly with planning and research and that wasn’t typical in the past.“ Williams added, “Cooperation between vendors is important. No one can solve for everything.” Helen Katz, SVP Global Director, Publicis Spine, noted that the industry needs to come together “to vet and understand the different data sets and come up with standards.” “Standardized transparent measurement can preserve TV value,” added Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom.

➢  But, while there is a benefit to working together, we also have to create our own solutions. They “vary by agency and client and is driven by client needs,” explained Katz, “it’s not one size fits all.” Steuer explained that there is a TV evolution going on. “No two TV households are alike anymore. It is a complex quilt of TV households.” And consumers are also fragmented. “There are generational shifts – cord cutters, cord nevers. Kids don’t know what channels and networks they are watching anymore.”

➢  Consumers are in charge but there is not as much agreement in what concrete, agreed-upon steps, protocols, metrics, datasets, systems and applications are most important to solving for this marketing shift. Consumers curate their own path to purchase which makes marketing to them very individualistic and fragmented. Ideally, though, the industry should be striving “for a holistic closed loop view,” advised Dr. Maggie Zhang, SVP, Video Research and Insights, Dentsu Aegis Network.

➢  Connecting with and following the consumer on a deeper, more emotional level is pivotal. Not doing so is dangerous to your brand. And because consumers are not averse to advertising that is relevant to them, data and identity will help connect the message to the consumer. But do so in a way that respects their privacy. “The elephant in the room is consumer privacy and their mistrust,” warned Marcus Ellington, Head of Industry, Media and Entertainment, Google/YouTube. Transparency is critical to building trust. 

>  The difference between consultancies and agencies is that consultancies focus on the long term and the broad landscape rather than meeting quarter to quarter goals. Andrea Boone, Executive Director, EY and Dan Calpin, Partner GM, Bain explained that the role of consultancies were broader and more long term with a focus on working with the full range of senior executives with both depth and vertical integration and advising on such things as collapsing entire departments.

➢  The industry is compressing and transforming. “TV is now full funnel,” stated Steuer. It used to be top of the funnel but because TV is becoming more digital, it is focusing on the full funnel. In addition, “The planning side is getting closer to execution side,” stated Williams. “Planning and executions are compressing a bit.” It is possible to see how a campaign is performing, what was missed and change in mid-flight. “We leverage old school data in new ways,” she added. Kristyn Clement, VP Insights and Measurement, NBCU, sees TV as relevant as ever, but evolving. “It’s not like TV is disappearing. It is still a huge portion of consumption. But a significant portion is digital now and it impacts our business.”

➢  Data, Data, Data. “Data is driving everything, noted Tom Xenos, Director Advanced TV, Omnicom. “Data has to lead. It fuels it all,” concluded Tim Spengler, President, M1, Dentsu Aegis Network. But we “need to make sure we do it the right way,” stated Vikram Somaya, Chief Data Officer, Nielsen. “If we do it wrong it will impact you.”

This article first appeared in Cynopsis.

How Short Can Ads Be? The ARF Studies the Impact of Six-Second Ads

The ARF and TVision recently released a study examining the impact of six-second ads, offering best practices for those who wish to implement. 

The study, announced in the recent ARF NYCU email, was conducted between October 2017 and May 2018 and tracked participants’ presence and visual attention through a set-top meter using computer vision as they watched television. The study consisted of 256,463 observations of an advertisement playing on a television in one of 1,372 households.

According to the ARF, the study found that visual attention differed by advertisement length, and identified which factors affected visual attention and whether they differ by advertisement length. The study found that the significant predictors of visual attention for 15s and 30s were nearly identical.

Here are the study conclusions:

1. Age –The older you are, the more likely you will pay attention to 15s and 30s. But the effect of age for six second ads was not significant.
2. Broadcast/Cable – Advertisements on cable were less likely to receive visual attention in general. This finding might have been due to the longer advertisement pods that typically are found on cable. The effect of network for sixes was not significant.
3. Daypart – Relative to primetime, advertisements run in all other dayparts were less likely to receive visual attention. Daypart played the largest role in determining visual attention for both 15s and 30s. The effect of daypart for sixes was not significant.
4. Gender – The gender of the viewer was not a significant factor in visual attention for any advertisement length.
5. Pod position – Compared with being first in a pod, all three advertisement lengths were less likely to receive visual attention when in the middle of a pod. Being solo in the pod was the largest factor for increasing visual attention for sixes.

This article first appeared in Cynopsis.

Changing the Advertising Model. An Interview with Hulu’s Peter Naylor

Hulu continues to keep up with the times. When it first launched 11 years ago it was 100% desktop delivered. Now, according to Peter Naylor, Hulu’s Senior Vice President of Ad Sales, the company is 6% desktop, 80% living room and 100% subscriber driven.

“It’s all about choice and control,” he explained at the recent VideoNuze conference, with three different types of subscription services depending if you want ad free or not and multi-member access. Naylor calculated that 82 million people watch Hulu per month with 70% opting for the ad supported version of the service.

Hulu’s mission is relevancy and being respectful of the viewer experience. “Our subscribers come to us for content,” he explained, and they have ample choice with an inventory of 85,000 TV episodes. Disney recently announced that they are planning to completely acquire Hulu. For Naylor this offers great opportunity for the streaming service. “Control by one owner enables us to move faster and invest more in content,” he stated, “Our international expansion will accelerate. So we will keep doing what we are doing. We have the wind in our sales.”

Ad Pod Length Consistency

Part of Hulu’s success has to be its commitment to consistency and standardization in a world of multiple choices for both the viewer and the business. In striving for consistent experiences for viewers, Naylor has had to address the inconsistencies in ad pod lengths. “There was a time when different shows had different ad pod lengths,” he explained, “but now all pods are capped at 90 seconds or less with a countdown clock. And we don’t put ads where you don’t expect them to be. We try to be thoughtful and also add as much value as possible.”

Further, “100% of our advertising is addressable and we only charge for ads that are completed.” Naylor and his team are data focused and also pay great attention to social media to discern what consumers find valuable and objectionable in their viewing experiences. “You can’t jam more ads in because you need to make a number,” he warned, because viewers have a lot more content choices.

New Types of Ad Deliveries

“The more time people view on demand, the more likely they are to have two to three services and the more time they spend online,” he noted. With multiple subscriptions, Hulu has to be very careful about ad overload and irrelevancy. “We are trying to figure out non-intrusive ad models.” To that end, Hulu created pause ads which places a static contextual ad (like a coffee advertiser) on the screen when a viewer presses the pause button. They are also rolling out a binge watching ad product in fourth quarter for those who watch three or more episodes in a row. “We will identify ‘bangers’ and feed them contextual ads such as ‘Feed Yourself.’ We make the third episode commercial-free if you watch this 90 second ad. We want to reinvent the ad model.”

For Naylor, there exists a full spectrum of ad acceptance. “It doesn’t have much to do with age income or geography,” he noted, “It has to do with your culture and interests. We strive to make ads more relevant and when you use data properly, relevance skyrockets. There will always be ad avoiders,” he added, “but they are a minority.”

When asked how much an ad’s creative factors into Hulu’s decision about where and how to place an ad, Naylor responded, “Ensuring creative is relevant to the person watching is fundamental to a viewer-first advertising experience. A relevant creative means a better experience for the viewer and better results for the advertiser.”

The Future

Naylor’s view of the future is focused on a world of connectedness and expansion, courtesy of technological innovations. “I can’t imagine a scenario where every television household in America isn’t someday connected to an IP address,” he explained. “While I don’t know what percentage of TV advertising is going to become addressable in the next two years or how long it will take us to get to a fully addressable future, I know the market is undeniably going in one direction with the help of market forces like 5G, ATSC 3.0 and the rise of on-demand, OTT viewing.”

He sees Hulu’s dominant place in the media firmament. “Today Hulu is the largest fully addressable marketplace in OTT, offering brands the opportunity to target and reach valuable audiences that are no longer found in broadcast television or via MVPDs,” he stated, “We’re offering the best of both television and digital and brands are coming to realize that OTT should be their first stop for TV in their marketing mix.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com