A+E Networks' Guarantees for Precise Outcomes Grow Wider and Deeper

There is nothing more important to an advertiser than meeting their key performance indicator (KPI). And in a world of increased fragmentation this goal is ever more complex. A+E Networks has not only spent four years developing a solution that helps meet those needs, but it also guarantees results.

The initiative, called Precision and Performance, combines optimization and attribution, even in cross-platform campaigns.

"Four years ago, we were first to market in guaranteeing against business outcomes, whether foot traffic to store locations or website visitations," said Roseann Montenes, A+E Networks' Head of Strategic Audience Solutions, Precision and Performance Advertising Sales. From there, the initiative expanded to a variety of different business-outcome guarantees. "We did a guarantee against app downloads, guarantees against viewability, guarantees against sales lift," she explained.

In addition, A+E started guaranteeing on a different form of currency away from Nielsen. "That led to actually proving out what matters most to our clients," she noted.

More recent innovations include the ability to optimize across platforms. Currently it is a manual procedure, "until we have full confidence in [an automation] vendor that can bring us true transparency and reliable methodology," Montenes said, adding that A+E is pretty far down the road with one vendor company. "We're gaining confidence in them and hoping to have some positive results by the end of second quarter."

Montenes noted that currently, cross-platform-solution buys represent an average 35% of A+E's advanced audience booked ad revenue.

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When advertisers need an assist in developing a strategic target, A+E can support them. "There are clients that are new to TV, and they want to make sure that they're hitting the right audience at the right time," she explained. "But they don't necessarily have their target figured out. We listen to their brand brief and hear what some of their goals are, and then we establish a strategic target for them, executing that campaign on their behalf."

Currency is a term that is hotly discussed nowadays, but Montenes said that this is often a dead-end discussion. "Nobody has the same line of business, the same KPI, the same agenda and the same timeline," she asserted. "So, how is it possible that we're all going to transact off a completely new form of currency overnight? It's just not going to happen."

Montenes said that discussions with vendors about transaction tests that use different forms of currency are like a speed dating adventure. "We listen to understand, not to react. We want to make sure we have match ability, for us and our client. What's more, boxing A+E into one partnership with one vendor doesn't make sense."

The advertiser's needs are paramount. For Montenes, it all depends on the KPI -- and then A+E can establish the best vendor partner. The translation of transacting off a new form of currency is essentially a mandate for all clients to use the same method of measurement within attribution. "I'm not going to connect you with a vendor like 605 to measure foot traffic if your KPI is conversions," she explained. "I may bring in iSpot for that. Or if your KPI is brand awareness, I'm not bringing in iSpot; I'm bringing in Comscore."

The response from advertisers has been welcoming and supportive. They understand that this is a learning process and appreciate that A+E is treating this as an educational experience. "Every client I've talked to has thanked us for not putting pressure on them to do a test or demand that they have some of their impressions transacted off a new form of currency," she said.

The results for those who take the opportunity to embrace the full offering have been very successful, especially with lift in areas that drive direct ROI. "We saw a tremendous amount of lift within viewability as well as foot traffic metrics," Montenes said. "We've seen a tremendous amount of success amongst different categories that also translated to savings. When we target efficiently, it opens doors for making every dollar work harder."

Where is A+E going in the fifth year of this initiative? It won't be that different, she explained. "We are focusing a lot of attention on our cross-platform solution to really get that off the ground," she said. "[That involves] listening to understand new forms of currency and to better educate our clients in terms of what makes the most sense for them, for the business and for the market in general."

 

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

Guaranteeing Attention by Tracking Eye Movement. A+E’s Roseann Montenes and Dentsu’s Cara Lewis Show Us How It’s Done.

The burning question in this media age of fragmentation is, does the current currency measurement capture true consumer behavior? More and more, networks and agencies are looking for metrics that are more precise for the KPI. This led to a fascinating and successful collaboration between A+E Networks and Dentsu to calibrate, measure and post against viewability for an ABI campaign.

“Our clients are continually looking for different ways to measure campaigns in marketplace and making linear TV as smart as it can be beyond the traditional behaviors that we have,” Cara Lewis, Executive Vice President Head of US Investment, Dentsu - Amplifi, explained.

First Steps and the Pandemic

According to Lewis, “ABI came to us. They have a partnership with the TVision data that we used for this test. They asked us to propose a partnership with networks to guarantee on viewability data that they have. TVision has eye tracking devices in 5000 households.” A+E stepped forward to be the first network to guarantee on viewability eye tracking impression data which can register exactly when eyes are on screen for at least two seconds.

As for timing, “I think the pandemic slowed us down,” stated Lewis, because the project hit a pause during Covid.  “We were on this path of auditing how to get there and talking to the vendors. It then took a bit of a back seat. But then, overall, we just picked up right where we left off,” she noted and added that it may have impacted adding other networks to the study. Roseann Montenes VP Precision + Strategic Audience Sales Partnerships, A+E shared that, “Even as we were noticing the ratings erosion, we were still able to get positive results out of the campaign. We were able to see a lift once we optimized against ABI’s historical data through TVision. We were still able to see improvement against every single network in our portfolio even in this challenging time, we were able to find positive results.”

Challenges and Opportunities

“There were a ton of challenges,” admitted Montenes. “To be very transparent, Cara and I started this conversation in March 2020 and we started to go down this path to figure out the feasibility. When we are working off of a panel size that is so small, it’s hard to get that confidence in stability. Do we trust that this small of an audience to actually give us the results that we are looking to accomplish? What are we getting out of this?”

But A+E is known for driving innovation and the opportunity to test case, as she explained, “Guaranteeing against metrics that mean the most to our clients, really interested us.” The risk was worth it and now the study is in its second wave and the partners are trading on this currency. “It’s proven, especially to us at A+E Networks that we really do believe that finding different metrics to guarantee off of is something that drives partnerships even further. Now, next time when Cara has an opportunity of a different metric that she wants to guarantee off of, maybe we will again be one of the first ones she comes to with it.,”

Successful Execution

As a result of the study, A+E was able to establish a new baseline and new benchmark with the agency. According to Montenes, “If you think about the way we traditionally do business, we have a starting point and for years, we traded off of CPMs. But now all of a sudden we were trading off of a new metric. So it took a lot of time to come up with that new benchmark and that new confidence level in guaranteeing off of a viewability score.” Her team analyzed historical information and attributed the new data to ABI specifically. They were then able to come up with a new scoring metric that could lead to tracking towards a guarantee. “We went to the highest potential possible so we could push our boundaries to over-perform and over-deliver for this first campaign,” she stated.

“GRPs are important. But there is obviously waste in the impressions that we are buying. So to make sure that the impressions are more viewable, and that is by using this data, was the main part of the structure of the campaign as well as making sure that the data was viable so that we could then build it out across the ecosystem,” Lewis stated.

Delivering Results on the KPIs

Among the KPIs for the campaign, “One was to get the campaign greenlit and guaranteed,” Lewis explained, “The other one was to see an increase or incremental lift in the overall viewability percentage. The third was to get a like-minded client counsel; We’ve been having a lot of client conversations across the Dentsu clients, many of whom have said they want to see how the test goes.” In addition, it was important to be able to build it out and make it scalable across the media landscape especially within linear TV.

The fourth quarter result, according to A+E, was a 7.6% lift. There has been a second campaign in first quarter and they are in discussion for a third campaign for second quarter. “We want to show our clients that it is a viable way to guarantee,” Lewis concluded.

For A+E, “We were the first to announce three years ago that we were the first to guarantee on business outcomes,” stated Montenes who added, “We are not slowing down in the space. We are going to continue to make sure that we are talking to the right audiences at the right time at the right places. Next steps for us and ABI is to continue to do everything we can to help them rise.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

The Brave New World of True Accountability. An Interview with A+E Networks’ Roseann Montenes

Can we ever get away from the antiquated demographic guarantee?  According to Roseann Montenes, Vice President, Precision and Performance Advertising Sales, the answer is a resounding YES! And she should know. 

Montenes is one of the forces behind A+E Networks’ MVP (Multi-Viewing Precision) initiative, a system that moves marketers from legacy metrics to true KPI accountability.

Convincing the Industry

But there is something a little unnerving to advertisers about moving from the comfort of demographics to true accountability. “It is essentially like moving a small mountain,” she admitted. “You have clients that are so used to doing business one way since the dawn of time. It was almost like when we made the shift to C3 and had to get clients into that mindset,” she added. The shift began to occur after, “tons of education, tons of case studies that demonstrated to clients that they could take the demo guarantee out of it and focus on who their true audience is.”

The first step is to, ”prioritize all of the client’s KPIs to see what matters most. Is it targeting households that have anyone from adults 18-49 in it? Or, is it targeting someone who is in-market to purchase a new vehicle?” she explained. The answer is usually to move product. “At the end of the day, that’s what matters most. That is how we started to change the conversation.” And yet, even with this great effort, it took a full broadcast year cycle to get a client onboard, comfortable and then implement.

How MVP Works

MVP offers marketers true cross platform optimization. But how does it actually work? “What we do is take a strategic target audience and optimize through our Precision platform, which is our linear arm, find the audience there. We then do an optimization on the digital side through our Digital Precision offering and then we blend those two plans together,” she explained. “We allow the client to have full access into the allocation of impressions within the linear and digital arm and then it is figuring out the balance.” Notably each campaign is monitored by hand to carefully consider how each spot, whether linear or digital, contributes best to the KPI goal. Both the linear and the digital teams are in constant contact to make sure that the overall plan is on target.

Delivering the KPI

What is the most meaningful metric to offer in place of demographics? For A+E Networks it is viewability. “We just did our first guarantee against attention measurement in fourth quarter,” noted Montenes which was based on attention measurement through partner TVision. She added that MVP has the ability to ingest any data set. “Our management doesn’t limit us to what kind of datasets we can partner with. Any third party dataset, we can onboard an advertiser’s own first party data onto our platform and any other standard, generic, statements whether it is a Polk dataset or MRI. For those advertisers who don’t have their own strategic target in place, they can come to us and we can help them create one,” she explained.

To craft a plan, MVP enables a drill down, “to the sell title level, to the half hour level. This allows us to make those in-campaign optimizations based off of the pacing of whether it’s our attention measurement or a guarantee against a business outcome, or whether we are optimizing against reach or a particular strategic target,” she stated. This enables the network to maximize the value of all of their programs, regardless of demographic performance levels. “There are no two programs that are equal when you are talking about a customized strategic target,” she noted, as opposed to being able to compare programs based on demographics which are more standardized but less targeted.  

Impact of the Pandemic

With one major advertiser on board, the teams at A+E networks have been able to monitor a full broadcast year worth of MVP performance. “Now that we feel comfortable and know that it works, this is something we are going to bring to other clients as an opportunity to change the total outlook of currency and how to trade off of it,” she assured. Of course the landscape has changed since fourth quarter 2019 with the pandemic but a marketer could successfully pivot… and should. Montenes explained that, “For a really long time, we were all about foot traffic into store locations, dealerships and into family dining establishments. Once Covid hit, we felt this sense of ‘oh no’ now that foot traffic has stopped, because you are not allowed, how do you reimagine what a partnership looks like?”

After the initial sense of panic due to the pandemic dissipated, “it quickly fixed itself,” she stated. So instead of actually dining in a restaurant, consumers were downloading the app. “We switched the conversation and KPI to be reimagined and looked at differently. It went from foot traffic to app downloads and foot traffic to conversions.” Notably in some cases, the advertiser still wanted to deliver on foot traffic.

Going Forward

For Montenes, there is a new normal for media now. “Clients have gotten a peek under the hood in terms of what their business could look like. There is now efficiency in seeing the world that once was and measuring it in the world that now is. How can you go back to the way it was before now that we see what the new world actually looks like?” she asked and added that she is very optimistic about the future. “It’s exciting to see how much has changed since last March. It hasn’t changed for the worse. It’s changed for the better,” she concluded.  

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com