Getting into the World of Data. An Interview with Adam Solomon, CMO, Lotame

In a media world of expanding platforms, not to mention fragmented ad and creative lengths and formats, marketers are faced with the task of managing deliverables and data. 

With a range of competitors in the marketplace, Lotame is considered a leading company in data solutions for marketers. Medium.com notes that, “Lotame is a very popular solution for those who want to help get better value from their marketing.” For Lotame’s CMO, Adam Solomon, the ability to leverage first, second and third party streams of data places the company in the sweet spot for marketers.

Charlene Weisler:  What is the Lotame TV solution?

Adam Solomon: Lotame TV enables advertisers to seamlessly connect, build, target, activate and analyze TV viewership audiences for cross-screen digital campaigns through DSP partners such as AppNexus, Verizon Media, Google DBM, The Trade Desk, Adobe and Amobee. We consider it to be the industry’s most connected TV product suite. We connect and match TV + digital data — including ACR, OTT, website, app and CRM data — to over 4 billion web, mobile, and OTT IDs, build bespoke TV + digital audiences that can be activated across any channel, and help analyze how these audiences are performing in digital campaigns.

Weisler: What ACR do you use and why?

Solomon: We have a long-standing, strategic relationship with Inscape, which delivers viewing information from almost 11 million connected VIZIO TVs. Inscape is a leading provider of ACR technologies and comprehensive cross-screen metrics.

Weisler: What data and metrics do you use?

Solomon: We work with first, second and third-party data across CTV, OTT, website, mobile web, mobile app, and CRMs. In terms of metrics, we look at media and/or advertising engagement metrics. For media engagement, these metrics might include user uniques, page views, video views and specific user actions. For advertising engagement, these metrics might include video completion rate, click-through rate and conversion rate.

Weisler: How do you maintain privacy with GDPR and CCPA?

Solomon: Lotame provides consumers with the ability to opt-out of the collection and/or use of their data based on applicable laws and regulations.

Weisler: How do you define programmatic and where is programmatic today?

Solomon: The term “programmatic” has become shorthand for a diverse range of platforms, tools and strategies in digital advertising. We go by the IAB definition which is simply the automated buying and selling of inventory. There has been a lot of noise over the past couple years around programmatic related to the mechanics of how supply and demand sources interact with each other. The industry has been buzzing about everything from header bidding and unified auctions to first price auctions. But now with all the recent activity around privacy regulations and browser cookie restrictions, there's a much more fundamental conversation that needs to happen around programmatic targeting criteria, assets and tools. Some folks are going old school and focusing on contextual programmatic targeting while others are looking for ways to unlock first-party data in programmatic transactions. This is especially vital in light of the recent news out of Europe on GDPR and whether consumers are given proper opportunity to provide consent to data use for RTB.

Weisler: How will smart TVs impact your side of the business?

Solomon: We just rolled out Lotame TV this summer. The solution helps marketers target ads based on what someone watches on TV by collecting data from smart TVs and marketers' first-party data from OTT apps, mobile apps and websites. With this, we can help broadcasters retarget folks who didn’t finish watching a show on digital channels. Brands could run A/B tests to see how a digital campaign performs with people who saw a commercial on TV versus those who didn't. We believe this product offering will set us apart from our competitors.

Weisler: Where do you see opportunities and challenges three years from now?

Solomon: As privacy laws continue to pop up and browser changes are enacted, we anticipate that connectivity issues will come to a head. Already, publishers are grappling with how to appropriately collect and activate their data to fuel content creation, sell inventory and deliver effective ads. Publishers need data solutions that serve as “pipes” — that help them share audience data across environments and partners. In three years, we’ll see that connectivity as a necessity for survival in the ecosystem. 

Additionally, the demand for transparency in advertising will continue to impact how marketers work with and buy data. Ten years ago, audience-based data targeting was novel and attractive to both marketers and publishers. It created value out of remnant inventory for media companies, and created more actionable online inventory for marketers. This novelty drove interest, which then drove the need for more scale. But today, scale is given in the market. To be candid, lots of providers have access to audience data. For that reason, marketers are starting to focus more on ways to ensure the quality and precision of the data they purchase for campaigns and activations. And with recent GDPR and privacy crackdowns, the provenance, recency and origin of data will continue to grow. Focusing on data quality and accuracy, not scale alone, is the future of our industry.

This article first appeared in Mediapost.com

The TV of Tomorrow Looks Ahead

Tracy Swedlow, co-founder and CEO, TMRW Corp., is an industry visionary who has been charting the course of media since the 1990s. Her bi-annual TV of Tomorrow conferences bring together a stellar group of industry professionals who offer insightful takeaways about the landscape and how executives can embrace and prosper through the transformation. 

What are the biggest trends going on right now in the industry? According to Swedlow, it is attribution and ATSC 3.0. “Attribution is a super-hot topic,” she noted, “It is the customer journey – how they move through apps, websites and eventually into stores where they buy something.” She believes that we will get to full attribution soon.  With ATSC 3.0, “We are still very much behind the development of that technology for local broadcasting. Local broadcasting will change and we want to be as supportive as we can to get the right people together,” she added. 

I interviewed a few speakers, asking them their opinion of what we should expect in the next year and in the next three years. Here is what they reported: 

Question: What do you see as the biggest changes or transformations in the media industry in 2019?

Sean Doherty, CEO of Wurl: The biggest transformation we anticipate is the “tipping point” we’ve talked about through this decade, and is now becoming reality: the shift away from traditional TV viewing to Internet-based viewing. This opens up new paths to revenue for the streaming platforms already included in connected TVs, and a huge opportunity for those who have not yet crossed over to OTT. These free, ad-supported channels are unburdened by the parameters of traditional, linear TV and can bring viewers new experiences outside of “the box.” The technology is here, the viewers are here. There’s no reason for video producers and services not to keep up.

Ryan Rolf, VP, Data Solutions at Lotame: Unified view-ability standards in TV will start to come to life. The shift in how we understand TV and its influence on audiences will allow advertisers to engage in the same types of strategies they do on digital channels, creating a holistic view across channels and engaging, measureable campaigns. However, the industry should take the learnings from earlier programmatic days and not rush to "scale" at expense of quality and ask right questions as they merge TV, Digital, Linear, and Mobile with Data.

Jeff Greenfield, COO and Co-Founder of C3 Metrics: There are two major trends. The first is that traditional brand metrics will be unified with multi-touch attribution. As of now, the number one thing that CMOs want is ROI and attribution. They exist, but technical issues (such as ad fraud) have prohibited attribution from becoming the Holy Grail for CMOs – we can expect this to change this year as attribution has matured. The second is that standards for attribution accreditation will be set. The industry is currently lacking standards, given that accreditation had been non-existent, but the Media Ratings Council has come out with view-ability accreditation. With upcoming attribution accreditation, marketers will be relieved that standards will be followed by measurement companies.

Question: Where do you see the industry 3-5 years from now? 

Swedlow: I am very excited about new ideas in interactivity. There have been some exciting new developments. Walmart, for example, is investing in a company called Echo. They also bought MGM assets. They are going to be moving forward on interactive TV technology. Netflix announced in the Fall that they are going to launch interactive content with Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series and they have been doing some interactive content with children’s programming. So I would say that this is an exciting new development to watch – interactive storytelling in a commercial environment. 

Doherty: All US-based video content will be consumed over the top.  The viewers are already there and from a business point of view, the revenue associated with “un-structuring” TV is evident, easily reachable, and simply makes sense.

Rolf: Voice data is early and overhyped at the moment, but eventually it will change advertising and tip the scales of power to the operators of the voice assistants in terms of who they recommend when a search request is initiated. CPG brands should be very wary of jumping in with Amazon for the sole fact that Amazon would likely learn all the data on what CPG products are most bought via voice and create their "Basics" version of it. They could possibly tilt scales in their own brand’s favor vs. the best interest of brands themselves. Also, voice takes away some power from consumers because unlike other medium where you have options visually displayed, that aspect is missing with voice allowing them to re-order or promote a brand of their choosing without your knowledge. It will be interesting to see how voice shakes out over the next several years.

Greenfield:  The biggest change will be the "Attribution Effect" – the 'after shocks' of advertisers leveraging attribution data which will force publishers to adapt to not only new formats, but content which is started from the perspective of the advertiser with outcome in mind.  The “Attribution Effect” will move media from its current outdated currency to Attribution's Outcome Currency.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Lotame Ignite Americas Conference Focuses on the Power of Data

Data has (finally) become the force for change in our industry. Not only have many media companies devoted much of their upfronts about it, but Lotame's inaugural Ignite Americas forum last week expanded the discussion of how data can be used to improve ROI, upend legacy measurements, tell a story and totally restructure a company. It is finally revenge of the nerds. 

Data Attributes Have Evolved

There is so much data available from first, second and third party data that the parameters of what constitutes a valuable dataset have evolved. Previously, data size was one of the paramount requests. Do we have a large enough sample approaching census that will get us stable results? Now, with the complexity and sophistication of data availability, the wants have shifted from size to data quality. The components of data quality are Transparency (Do we understand the data attributes and origins?) Accuracy (Are we getting actionable successful results?) and Performance (Do the results deliver on the KPIs and/or ROI?).

Data expert Joyce Lee, Director Global Data Sales Strategy, Oath, has seen her role evolve from accumulating third party data to finding ways to "sync all first party data in the Oath family." Data stitching is like cooking, she noted, from having the right ingredients, to blending them together to serving a final, perfect result. Michelle Mirshak, Vice President Data Architecture and Platforms, Spark Foundry, noted that "Some of our more sophisticated clients are asking us to normalize data across channels to better track performance," as the data is analyzed in a more holistic way. The importance of data quality cannot be understated. According to Mirshak, whether it is third, second or first party data, "it all comes down to performance," because quality is not just a first party data attribute.

Data From Collection to Insights

Alejandro Matos, Digital Marketing Director, Omnicom Media Group, Dominican Republic and The Caribbean, explained the challenge he faced in generating insights for a local retailer who had limited data on its online consumers. “We needed to come up with a way to capture data,” he said. His work in capturing data that explained the consumer journey focused on a variety of sources - from placing beacons in various locations in the store, launching a DMP, CRM on social media and on apps, placing pixels in banner ads, gathering data on mobile, emails, websites, from multiple sources and then matched with third party data before modeling.

The result was the ability to more clearly understand the consumer journey, but it was putting the collection structure into place that made all the difference. Is every data project unique and custom? Not necessarily, according to Matos. The collection methods may be similar across clients but the insights and stories that can be crafted from the data, even from similar data sets, will differ.

A Move From Legacy Metrics to Segmentation and Attribution

With the availability of sophisticated datasets, it is time for the industry to move away from legacy age and gender demographics. According to Chris Frazier, Vice President Business Intelligence, Cadent Network, his company uses data to, “build what that audience will be” by building out a target consumer beyond age and gender, to “reach the intended target at the right time.” He added that linking to linear TV using traditional Nielsen to digital platform performance is a challenge, impeding the ability to measure and guarantee standardize-able sales deliveries across platforms. “We would like to see uniformity in how we measure impressions. Is it two seconds? Is it a minute? We want to see industry standards,” he stated. When it comes to addressable, attribution is key. “Attribution allows you to connect your exposures to where the sales are. It’s a measure of ROI to media spend.”  

The TV industry is beginning to embrace the use of consumer data in measurement in conjunction with demographic data enabling cross platform measurement. The need for a holistic, unified view of audiences and campaigns has never been greater and is essential for the evolution of the advertising industry. As data advocate, Andy Monfried, Founder and CEO, Lotame, concluded in his opening keynote, the requirements of a DMP is to unify disparate datasets to target the right audiences, extend a brand’s position to find and reach new customers and to better understand a consumer journey through greater personalization. This requires internal buy-in, retaining talent and aligning the strategic corporate vision to better understand and execute on the data insights. We are at the beginning stages. For the industry and for a company like Lotame, it should be an exciting and ground-breaking time going forward.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

What is Working in Television Measurement? Interview with Ryan Reed of Lotame

Ryan Reed, Director of Television and Video Solutions at Lotame, started his career at Matrix Solutions , creating sales software for local television groups.  “That was a crash course in TV ad sales, going around to local stations and learning their day-to-day operations,” he said. 

From there he worked for Comcast and Canoe Ventures before moving to Lotame. “It was clear to me that data and audience-based advertising was the place to be. Now everything is coming full circle and audience data is primed to empower local television advertising as these silos break down,” he added.

Charlene Weisler:  Tell me about your company.

Ryan Reed: Lotame has the leading independent data management platform (DMP) and offer the most widely used, trusted and comprehensive data exchange in the industry. Our team aims to continuously find new and meaningful ways to help clients harness the power of data to fuel more relevant and personalized experiences across screens and devices, online and off. 

Charlene Weisler: What is the most dramatic change in the industry since you started, in your opinion?

Ryan Reed: The growth of additional media, hands down.  Some may call this fragmentation, but that’s a very pessimistic view. When you boil it down media is a competition for human attention.  Regardless of how many screens or platforms exist, there is still a pretty static number of people with only so many waking hours of the day (in the US this would be around 319 million people with 16 hours or 5.1 billion hours of attention).

The biggest difference from the start of the 21st century (when I left college) is that media is an ever-growing percentage of our available time.  Before it was only TV when you woke up, radio and billboards on your way to and from work, then TV when you got home, with some web surfing maybe thrown in.  Now we have these magical devices in our pockets giving us social media, podcasts, video, and news whenever we want. And even our work machines give us the ability to be distracted by media. If you work in media or advertising, this means that there are more and more chances to reach people, but it gets harder to reach them at scale.

Charlene Weisler: What is your opinion on local television measurement in general? What is working and what needs improvement?

Ryan Reed: Overall, the marketplace undervalues local audiences due to a lack of audience data.  Advertisers know local broadcast is the best medium and provides the best local reach.  What we need to be able to provide is dynamic audience capabilities that the large national cable and broadcasters are developing to local station groups. Brands and their agencies want to measure their impact on audiences across different screens and local television completes that picture.

Charlene Weisler: How much impact do you think programmatic TV will have on local television in the next couple of years?

Ryan Reed: It’s tough to guess this on a relatively short timeframe. Even if we had perfect technology, the TV industry is a very large ship to try to turn around.  It will only take hold if the tech can work for all parties involved. TV programmers are very protective of their inventory. So the digital version of programmatic where inventory is thrown into a black box exchange isn’t going to work. We need to demonstrate that for stations and networks, the technology is getting them full value for their inventory that wouldn’t have been achieved before. For agencies, we need to demonstrate that the audiences they’re trying to engage can be reached more efficiently without spots being thrown away on the wrong audiences

Charlene Weisler: What is your definition of TV?

Ryan Reed: The delivery of audiovisual content to a consumer’s device.

Charlene Weisler: What should local TV priorities be in the next 2-3 years?

Ryan Reed: In broad terms, it’s the same as it has always been -- providing quality news and entertainment to consumers while demonstrating value to advertisers. What that means in the 2010s is embracing clients’ data-driven demands to show how local reach engages the audience that a brand reaches on competing mediums.  This means fighting old habits of how you buy and sell while embracing empirical and impartial data to meet clients’ needs.