The Update on Advanced Advertising

They say that the more things change the more they stay the same. The recent Advanced Advertising Summit this past week was notable in that the issues facing the industry seem to remain the same year after year. 

But the good news is that the technology is advancing to a point where the ability to seamlessly integrate digital and linear is ever closer to launch. Another positive change, for me, is the presence of more and more research and data executives in attendance at these types of conferences. When I first attended these events, there were few of my research compatriots there. Now we are even on sales panels!

Challenges in Advanced Advertising

Irwin Gottlieb, Senior Advisor WPP, in his keynote, explained that while advanced advertising has been around for years, it is not scalable yet. It is “somewhat scalable today,” he averred, “there are two minutes an hour (available) in local but it is not scalable in terms of support systems or inventory.” On the bright side, according to Gottlieb, there are no technology obstacles because companies such as WPP made deep investments in tech years ago. But there continues to be business obstacles where short term thinking, intra company fiefdoms and local vs national interests have enabled digital to “eat TV’s lunch.”

Scaling from a test to a full buy is another aspect of scalability that brings pain to the industry. Dan Riess, Executive Vice President of Ignite, WarnerMedia, noted, “We can always get clients to start a test but have find ways to scale that will trigger the technology to make it happen.” As a stopgap, he starts manually “to see how it works,” but there are, “so many different datasets, for example, that make it hard to scale.” Ultimately, we “need to move faster.”

Legacy systems are another challenge. Mike Mayer, Executive Vice President Sales Solutions, NBCU, explained that they are taking a “one order one report approach,” but if the order trail takes them from a legacy to legacy system, the buy has to be put together later. “It’s complicated,” he admitted, and it “can’t change overnight.”

Add to this the issue of silos. “Walled gardens make it difficult to develop business,” stated Jennifer Koester, Director of Telco and Distribution Partnership, Google. The solution is, “more standard segments,” noted Maureen Bosetti, Chief Investment Officer, Initiative, who added, “how it is being measured, more standardization and a privacy standard on identification,” with full compliance.

Positives in Advanced Advertising

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Many aspects of advanced advertising are hugely successful, offering manifold opportunities for both digital and television. Although linear TV is declining in usage, TV as a whole is adapting well to this multi-platform, advanced advertising ecosystem. Jason Brown, Senior Vice President, Head of Ad Sales partnerships, Xandr Media, finds that granular data enables us to “reach micro segments,” where the result is that “many advertisers are moving up the funnel,” and “TV is now full funnel for purchases, depending on the category.” This has resulted in “price hikes well beyond inflation.”

If there is one thing that TV does well, it is storytelling. Paul Alfieri, Chief Marketing Officer, Cadent, explained. Within the realm of advanced advertising, “a marketer can tell their story to consumers where they are and when they want. Is it seamless and we close the loop.” TV, according to Alfieri is learning from digital. “The industry has simplified it into one funnel and advertising is getting more sophisticated. It’s happening quickly because of paradigms you have in digital,” he stated.

No one is complacent. Many companies are creating their own systems that address advanced advertising like NBCU’s CFlight which, according to Mayer, “combines linear with digital impressions and sells deal with total impressions.” Others are joining consortiums like Vizio’s Project OAR, which stands for Open Addressable Ready. Project OAR includes Disney’s Media Networks, Turner, Xandr, Comcast’s FreeWheel and NBC Universal, CBS, Discovery, Hearst Television, AMC Networks and Inscape with the goal to define technical standards for linear and on-demand formats on smart TVs.

Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom Media Group, recommended, a “focused on education on both the strategy and investment side.” He sees a big shift from linear TV to a more expansive view of TV in the digital space where we, “can use same strategic targets.”

Conclusion

So, yes, there are still vexing challenges in getting advanced advertising to scale, especially in national inventory, and we still need to agree on standards for measurement, segments and protocols. But the industry is hyper-focused on these addressing issues, often working together and always committed to progress.  That might be the greatest positive of them all.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

When Agencies Predict the Ad Market: MediaPost’s Outfront Forum

As a strategist myself, I’m finding that it’s becoming harder and harder to predict the industry even five years out. 

So it was with great interest that I attended MediaPost’s Outfront Forum, where agencies debated the future of the upcoming upfronts, as well as what the upfront might look like five years from now.

Upfronts 2018-2019

There are some topics that seem to swirl through the media ecosystem in waves. This year it’s blockchain, the advanced advertising platform OpenAP, and the reduced ad load on certain networks, which might lead to increased pricing. Panelists prognosticating on the next few months were concerned about how pricing would impact their buys, though they understood the need to reduce clutter in order to improve viewer engagement and attention.

“I support the fact that we live in fragmented world,” stated Maureen Bosetti, chief investment officer at Initiative. “The networks are trying to create a more engaging ad experience and increase attention. They created a world with more clutter and are now trying to pull back.”

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

GABBCON’s 2018 Audience-Based Buying Conference: It’s All About Inventory

The third-annual Global Audience-Based Buying Conference and Consultancy (GABBCON) Audience-Based Buying Conference, was held recently in New York City. The 2018 conference offered attendees a wealth of information on how marketers and advertisers can adapt to the new environment of diverse datasets, dynamic real-time ad insertion, and the automation of local television.

Here is what’s looming on the horizon.

Identifying Diverse Audiences
In this age of ever-expanding consumer datasets, what is the best method to determine the most impactful consumer for a brand or network? Jason Wertheimer, vice president of media technology at Horizon Media, noted optimistically that our ability to pinpoint audiences is significantly better than it was years ago.

But Wertheimer says it’s hard to keep up: “Data is flying so fast. We need to make sense of it. Technology is advancing faster than we can keep up.” For some, data is not a panacea. According to Beth Mach, chief digital officer at Initiative, “consumers are finicky and change a lot. There is only so much we can attach to data.”


Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Tackling the Big Media Industry Issues at GABBCON 2018

Reaching the right consumer is getting much easier and at the same time, far more complicated. At the  GABBCON conference, issues like privacy and the right to be forgotten on the consumer side faced off with fraud, viewability and attribution challenges on the advertiser side. The playing field is not only changing, we may not be able to discern the best path to the goal posts. 

And in the spirit of the time, Gabe Greenberg, CEO and Co-Founder, GABBCON, made a concerted effort to enlist a diverse group of speakers to participate on panels. This resulted in an event that included new perspectives on media issues. Here are some takeaways:

Choosing a Consumer's Tattoo, Shadow or Twin

What is the best way to target a consumer? A panel moderated by Wendy Dunlap, Senior Vice President Digital Investment, Blue449 (previously Optimedia of Publicis Groupe), parsed out the various ways marketers can profile a consumer – whether a Twin, a Shadow or a Tattoo.  

Dunlap explained that a Twin is an individual’s digital representation formed by the aggregation and analysis of their behaviors, preferences and attitudes as expressed in the digital world.  A Shadow is an outline of a real-world identity but is prone to distortion and misrepresentation based on imprecise data signals in providing a complete picture. A Tattoo, as coined by Bethany Mach, Chief Digital Officer of Initiative, is a permanent marker of an individual’s digital activity that doesn’t go away but can continue to morph based on new information.  

“The replica of a real consumer is an amalgam of their various behaviors,” Dunlap noted. “A tattoo is a great metaphor,” she continued, stating that we should track “how it holds up over time and what we add to it” and “how it changes, “as more attributes are added to it or whether it fades away.” 

With Employees, Should it be a Right Brain or Left Brain Hire?

Throughout the day, panelists brought up the challenge of hiring the right people – those with that careful balance of right and left brain capabilities and experiences. And should new hires be from media or outside media? These are no small issues for the industry at a time when there is a need for both creative and analytical solutions and the knowledge of the past and the capabilities of the future.  

Mach stated, “I am looking for new types of people to work for me.  I want a data scientist or engineer.” However, filling media slots with left brain experts may be missing an important ingredient in discerning consumer motivations and behaviors. Shouldn’t we also be hiring anthropologists, Dunlap countered? “It’s good to have an analytical perspective but you also need a social science background,” she added.

Blockchain is Coming. Be Ready. Or Else.

There has been a lot of talk about how Blockchain will impact the Media industry but what exactly is Blockchain? Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom Media Group, defined it, “as an ecosystem. It is a technology method that provides a secure chain of custody for any digital transaction, data, or personal attribute all the way through a system. Where it is where it came from and what aspect of it you can use.”

It was agreed that Blockchain should be embraced and not deferred. Natalie Monboit, Head of Futures at Starcom, warned, “It will hurt you if you are not involved.” She advised to start now by looking ahead and asking, “What is that big disruptive vision? What is the future state?  And then work backwards. You have to be in it in order for it not to hurt you.”

While some may feel that the future application of Blockchain is just another monstrous transformation to upend business as usual, there are those who look on the bright side. Monboit concluded, “Blockchain has potential to solve for fraud and clean up our industry. It unearths everything we understand about engaging consumers. It is a lot bigger than just solving for current issues in ad tech.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com