DPAA Explores the Mediapalooza

If you think at the television space has undergone change in the past few years, you haven't seen anything yet. In the world of out-of-home (OOH) digital placed based media, the impact of digital technology arguably surpasses all other types of advertising media. Which is why attending the annual DPAA conference is so important to understand the pervasiveness and effectiveness of digital messaging on consumer behavior. "It is a great time for video" exclaimed DPAA president Barry Frey, "The world is changing, disrupting, fragmenting and shifting like tectonic plates. Technology is forcing change upon consumer habits which is foisting change on media habits.  It is a Mediapalooza."

Indeed, now we can receive content and messages when we pump gas in our car, sit in a movie or a nail salon, shop at a bodega or a mall, use a vending machine, an elevator, a taxi or Uber or visit a doctor’s office. There are many new streams of data available through such novel sources as vending machines, airports, stadiums and gyms. The opportunities to reach consumers at every point in their day wherever they are, makes for new collectable datasets that can lead to an all-encompassing view of their behavior.

Currently “forty-one percent of OOH is digital,” according to DPAA Chairman François de Gaspé Beaubien and this is posed to increase over the next few years. Looking ahead, Frey predicts that "by 2017 more than half of all ooh revenue will be digital and 10% bought programmatically. There will then be a steep curve towards programmatic. *

So where is all of this disruption leading?

Change, Change, Change

Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategist for Publicis Groupe mapped out three areas of massive change - Globalization (which he deems “unstoppable”), Demographic shifts (noting that the average age in Africa is under 21 and the aging of China led to the reversal of the one child rule) and Digitization (which is driven by phones that today have “1000 more processing power than in the first space shuttle.”)

Marketing Without Borders

Tobaccowala reprimanded marketers who he said, “have to learn how to market. They haven't done so in 30 years. Eighty percent of what marketers were doing was logistics and managing revenue points.”  Relying on comparing yourself to a traditional set of competitors is risky because “threats and opportunities come from the outside.” Take, for example, the iPhone. “When iPhone came out Nokia and Blackberry did not take it seriously because it had no keyboard and, anyway, what did Apple know about phones? If you don't take people seriously, things happen. Benchmarking against other pathetic people doesn't make you any less pathetic.”

Forget Data Ownership. The Secret to Success is Storytelling

And the lure of owning your data? Tobaccowala is unimpressed. He said, “Owning data alone will be obsolete. It is how you access data not own it. It is the algorithms. Owning is so 1980s.” The secret to success is storytelling. “We have to recognize that we are talking to humans. Storytelling is very, very important. And mobility is also important.” He concluded, “Change sucks. The more things you want to stay the same, the more you have to change yourself. How do we change the people? We need to learn to collaborate.”

Ecosystem Dichotomies
Lori Hiltz, CEO Havas Media spoke of the “complexity of our business where the largest retailer does not own a store, where families are connected and disconnected at the same time and where technologies shape the dynamics of the new us.” Despite rumors to the contrary, David Sable, Global CEO Y&R asserted that, “TV is not over. Cinema is still strong. They say that print media dead but catalogs are having resurgence.” He also refutes the theory that as media gets fractured, TV audiences will likely get smaller. He said, “How do you define TV? We are watching more video than we have ever watched in the history of mankind. We are watching for longer and longer time. There are more screens and more shows to watch. In 1999 there were 26 series to watch. In 2014 there are 1715 series shows available to view, not including short form video.”

The Future is Expansive and Expensive

“Let’s set the record straight,” advises Sable, “The narrow definition of TV is digibabble. As Michael Wolfe wrote in his new book, TV is the new TV. It is simple. Think about the entire ecosystem. Twitter doesn't kill TV. It makes it better.” The idea that content can be free is unsustainable to Sable. “The future of free is dismal and not sustainable. Advertising pays for content. There are three ways to access content - steal it, pay for it or watch ads.” And just wait – “NFL contracts are up in 2022,“ Sable warns, “That is when the next big change will happen. That will be the next huge inflection.”

Digital Placed Based Media Makes Its Big Move

As if the current television environment isn't challenging enough with flat expected revenue, expanding linear viewing choices, audience fragmentation, cross platform viewing, VOD, DVR, and commercial ratings, there is apparently a new set of challenges eroding potential ad dollars according to the DPAA at its recent conference.

This challenge to media ad dollars may be coming from the most unlikely places - a taxi, an elevator or even a gas pump.  In this ever expanding and developing area of digital placed based media, any place where the consumer journey takes place is an opportunity to reach them via a screen. And digital placed based media is already recognized by brands and advertisers as valuable opportunities to reach their target consumer.  As Jack Haberman at Colgate Palmolive says, "Video is the new day part". That means that viewers are no longer tethered to the home screen… or any one based device... or by any time of day. Prime time can be any time and any place; morning at the gym, lunchtime at your desk, commutation in a cab or train.

Consumers Rule

The proliferation of screens into all aspects of everyday life, both inside and outside the home, presents both opportunities and challenges for media companies, advertisers, brands and data companies. According to Francois De Gaspe Beaubien, chairman of the DPAA, "Consumers are spending most of their time out of the home. People are interacting with screens outside of their homes." That means that there is more competition for attention and more of a consumer driven environment for placing content. And with prescient content owners like HBO deciding to go OTT, it looks more and more like the content delivery chain, like everything else in media today, is fragmenting and morphing. More native advertising, more binging, more multi-tasking is coupled with less reliable measurement, less concentrated viewer attention and less control of the chain by the old television guard.

Who is to Blame?

There is certainly enough blame to go around. Technology certainly plays a large role in this disruption. Jack Myers gave an inspiring talk about how technology is forever changing media habits. He says, “The fundamental culture of our business is changing. Every minute of every day, consumers’ media habits are radically different than they were last year, two years ago, ten years ago and certainly dramatically different than they were 20 years ago.”

But in addition to technology, traditional media’s way of doing business also contributes to the viewers’ changing habits. Ad time within a TV program can be more than 25% of the program run time. Commercial pods are getting longer, encouraging viewers to find ways to avoid ads. BTIG’s Rich Greenfield noted that “Binge viewing drives more binge viewing. We are learning to watch in a certain way. We are training consumers to avoid ads.”

Challenges – Measurement, Privacy and Fraud

However, digital placed media has a few challenges as well. For one, there is no standard accredited measurement across all OOH platforms. The current Nielsen measurement consists of audience studies that are conducted as proprietary research with each study funded by the measured network. Nielsen then takes these studies across all measured nets and compiles into one report that is issued quarterly to the marketplace. According to MediaVest’s David Shiffman “A few years back, the DPAA issued specific guidelines for their members to follow for audience measurement with the goal to help ensure some standardization in what gets measured and how it is measured.”

There is also the privacy concern. Deutsch’s Anush Prabhu noted that “there is a lot more data available today. We can tell your geo location from your phone which is cool but also creepy.” Microsoft’s Natasha Hritzuk added, “Consumers are aware that their data is being collected. It is the lack of transparency as to how we are using the data that is the problem. We need simple conditions that we can opt into and a clear value exchange.”

Fraud is another concern. As Barry Frey, President and CEO of the DPAA remarked, “Kraft has said that 75-85% of their data is fraudulent and they will not use it.” Companies are responding to this challenge. According to MEC’s Shenan Reed, “We are going to 100% viewable which is higher than the industry standard. We will only pay for something that is 100% viewable.”

Ultimately, the DPAA conference was a high note for digital placed based media. As Frey concluded, "We received terrific feedback on this year's Video Everywhere Summit from many of the record 700+ people in attendance. The sessions covered not only issues specific to the rapidly growing digital place based media sector, but those of importance to the overall media and advertising ecosystem as well. It's always rewarding and exhilarating when so many months of planning coalesce into a worthwhile day for so many people." See a video of some of the highlights of the DPAA conference here. (insert link or embed)