DOOH is the Epicenter of Media and Marketing. Showcasing the DPAA Conference for 2021.

This year’s DPAA conference took place in person on October 12 and spoke to the value of DOOH. Barry Frey, President and CEO, DPAA is bullish about the value of DOOH and its capacity to hyper target to the right consumer at the right time. “There is no better way to see trustworthy messaging in an utterly brand safe environment. No fake news, no echo chamber talk, no ad skipping or pod fraud,” he stated.

There was a range of compelling case studies showcasing how different companies in a range of categories met the challenges of 2020, reinventing themselves while maximizing the value of DOOH.

DOOH is Growing

The conference launched with an overview of a recent research study that confirmed the growth of DOOH. Roey Franco, Vice President of Product and Innovation, Xaxis, reported that DOOH has made great strides this year especially among agencies. The topline results showed that 77% of those brands and advertisers polled said their awareness of DOOH increased over the past 18 months, 81% plan to recommend DOOH in their media plans in the next year and 66% have activated new DOOH campaigns in past 18 months. “There was a strong correlation between activation and greater sophistication,” noted Franco who added, “We can credit it to two things. One; A lot of investment in education and from a sophistication perspective, we that found that enhancements within the space itself, drives adoption.”

Facing Covid and a Business Transformation

For his company, Patrick McLean, Senior VP and CMO, Walgreens noted that in the early days of Covid it was a matter of unknowns and survival. Even adding plexiglass dividers across all of their stores was daunting as well as finding certain products for increasingly empty shelves. Masks became a must-offer followed by meeting the demand and complexity of the vaccine roll-out. “We had to build this new muscle to take this on the road,” he explained. “We were very customer driven at this time. We learned quickly that everyone is different. Approach had to match up,” to the specific consumer. “A lot of dynamics were in play.”

Not only did Walgreens develop several key messages they brought to market, “We were also in the process of transforming our business. We were not really known for its digital capability and our marketing was traditional,” he admitted. So at the same time as Covid, Walgreens was re-positioning to a mass personalization position by implementing marketing technology.  My Walgreens loyalty program was previously siloed, he noted, but now was moving swiftly into a more one-to-one digital customer experience. This required a re-authentication of the full customer database which could then enable a more seamless customer communication process. This has enabled Walgreens to fortify their first party data as well as to, as McLean explained, “Get back to our core of health and wellness,” brand positioning for their customers. He noted that their data strategy has become, “a powerful asset for our company,” enabling Walgreens to expand the use of their data knowledge.

Connecting with the Social Media Generation

There is arguably nothing more ubiquitous than milk, which, because of its ubiquity, has experienced a weakened brand position, especially with the digital generation. For Yin Woon Rani, CEO of Milk Pep, this was a challenged that needed to be overcome. “We realized that to change, we needed to build a bold new strategy; one for the social media generation,” she began, and added, “They are a challenging generation. They are true digital natives and are sophisticated about marketing.” This presents high standards for marketers. Her goals was to, “Drive reconsideration of milk through new messaging and positioning,” something that is, “assertive and muscular.”

The tagline, “You’re Gonna Need Milk for That” was developed and supported by DOOH marketing which was eventually migrated and shared on Tiktok with great success. Going forward, the milk campaign is dedicated to greater cultural collaboration, experimentation using constant reiteration and the mantra to Be Remarkable.

The Importance of Both Quantitative Data and Qualitative Creative

For Jonathan Gudai, CEO Adomni, “It has been said the Data is the new Oil. You need an engine for oil to matter. We on the programmatic side, we on the digital home side are that engine that is ingesting that data and then creating all sorts of new opportunities to reach consumers in brand new ways that drives relevancy and engagement. But data is useless unless it’s being applied.”

On the creative side, Rob Master, Vice President and Digital Engagement, Unilever, has seen great creative possibilities with the convergence of media. “The convergence between media and commerce is one of the most exciting things we are facing today. It’s filled with so many great opportunities,” he explained, giving retailers great opportunities to connect with consumers through platforms and technology. “And ecommerce products and experiences tend to create a premium,” he added.

Brands can strengthen their presence through storytelling. “Storytelling helps lead to people being passionate and loving your brand or understand that they need your brand or understand the functionality of your brand,” he continued, “Storytelling is such an integral part of the marketing experience and all these platforms and the convergence of telling that story allow what we hope is a frictionless great consumer experience.”

Conclusion

As we evolve to a post pandemic environment, it is clear that DOOH is in the perfect position to not only re-emerge but to thrive. There is pent up demand to get out of the house and that brings more people into streets and venues where their yearning for stimuli is at its peak. The convergence of media, the ability to cultivate a range of data sets and the immense potential for creativity places DOOH in the epicenter of media and marketing.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Getting Ready for the Upfronts with the PeopleFront

This year’s PeopleFront focused on three main pillars of the media marketplace – people, outcomes and ROI – and offered discussion viewpoints from “the street”, the research, the data and the buyers and sellers.

Dave Morgan, CEO and founder of Simulmedia and the host of the PeopleFront, presented the big picture when he said, “There is a consensus that the next year or two will bring significant change.  TV is continuing to make money and is expected to make money for some time. There are steps that TV companies can do to extend the duration and profitability.” 

Here are the different views on possible solutions:

View from the Street

Change, consumer behavior evolution and the limitations of the measurement in a world of ever increasing pools of data cause a confluence of challenges. “The nature of what is TV is fluid,” noted Brian Weiser, Senior Analyst, Pivotal, “Younger demos change behavior more rapidly. Some behavior is not currently measured that would make consumption data more healthy.” He explained that there was a recent CRE insights study that showed that TV is ambient in a world of multi-tasking. “There is still an important role for TV,” he assured, “but it is changing” depending on the degree of programming engagement.

On the ad side of the equation, Anthony DiClemente, Managing Director, Nomera, said, “The U.S. ad growth is robust and we have upped our forecast. TV is showing unexpected resilience.” That is this season. The projection may change in two or three years as Anthony admitted, “Automation of TV ad selling is causing concern.”

Affiliate fees are an area of current concern, however. There are persistent concerns regarding cord cutting and shaving and the further consolidation in the distribution space. “We are shifting to larger and more scaled companies,’ said Anthony, “What is media doing with their cash? Are they investing organically? Are they automating? Or are they buying stock back? We applaud companies organically and investing in the right way such as in infrastructure, programming etc.”

What the Research Says
The ARF recently completed an ambitious series of studies to measure how advertising works. "We collected 40 industry leaders together, committed $1million investment on three studies over 5000 campaigns, twelve years of data, $375B in advertising spend in 41 countries across over 100 categories  in the areas of Cross platform ROI, improve creative and mobile mastery," explained ARF CEO Gayle Fuguitt. The insights were that advertisers need to invest across platforms, combine traditional and digital media, optimize digital by capping frequency and unify their creative while keeping in mind the unique characteristics of each platform to optimize performance.

“Targeting purchasers by direct match at scale increases ROI,” explained Bill Harvey, Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor, TiVo Research. “TiVo Research proved it with multiple advertisers. Now Simulmedia is proving it by running 72 campaigns for advertisers in 2015 using the same methods and showing ROI improvements in the same range as TiVo i.e. up to +250%. Simulmedia is also reducing waste frequency and is targeting day of week for recency. An example of a campaign where the same brand’s other TV had half the impressions in the excessive frequency range, the Simulmedia campaign had fewer than 5% in that bucket,” he concluded.

Daniel Slotwiner, Director Advertising Research at Facebook, recently conducted a study with Neuro-Insight on the coordination of TV advertising with digital to get the best impact. “We measured memorability, brand linkage, likability linkage and found the most efficient way to drive awareness.”

Connecting the Dots with Data

There is more data available than ever before and research companies are actively engaged in creating tools to maximize the value of this data. But there are challenges. In the case of Nielsen, Steve Hasker, President and COO explained that, “We have been working with STB data for 7 years, matching it up with credit card data and working on an independent currency measurement using the panel with large databases.” But it has not been easy. “We are chipping away to get access to STB data,” he added, “Most of today's STB data owners can't supply STB data over night.”

Omar Tawakoi, SVP, GM Oracle Data Cloud, said, “We are running a data cloud. Having a census approach is very important. In digital everything is census based and things are starting to get really interesting in TV. We are connecting offline sales to digital activities and want to prove that TV ads drive sales offline.”

“My clients only care if we moved the needle,” said Wes Nichols, Co-Founder, Marketshare, SVP Chief Strategy Officer. “They really don't care about measurement or the brilliance of a campaign etc. There is a huge credibility gap between marketing and the C-suite. We are cobbling together data based measurement and need to get a fuller assessment of our investment.”

Buyers and Sellers of the Eve of the Upfront

What about content providers and buyers? From the sellers side, Arlene Manos, President national Ad Sales, AMC, said, “Data has begun to figure into our discussion. But as a single company, we can’t effect change alone. We are using data to change internally and to figure out how to get viewers acquainted with our diverse programming.”

On the buyers side, Yin Woon Rani, VP, U.S. Marketing at Campbell’s, noted that, “Traditional advertisers take a TV centric viewpoint.  But digital is changing the nature of expectations. It is not that easy to compare between mediums so the real task for marketers is deciding where dollars can go across the media pool.”

But, there has been “an evolution over several years. We are getting more find tuned beyond demographics,” according to M’lou Walker, CEO, Matrixx. Because Matrixx in is the consumer healthcare industry, M’lou said that “Knowing when our consumers are sick is more important for us. We need to find who she is at that moment of illness. So we take segmentation data and find consumers at different points and roll it all up.  TV plus digital gets us much further. We can get to consumer in her moment.”

As Dave concluded, the industry is now “More evolutionary than revolutionary but the evolutionary pace is picking up. We are swimming in data. How to can we best operationalize it?” That will remain the burning question as we are about to enter the next upfront.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBlogger.com

First Upfronts, Then New Fronts and Now PeopleFronts

We have Upfronts and Newfronts. Do we need another “front”? Dave Morgan of Simulmedia thinks so and has launched the PeopleFront with a presentation in NYC this past week. Morgan is one of the most respected executives in the media data space today. His company was an early user of STB data for targeted television marketing, which is why, when Morgan talks about a PeopleFront, he had a full house of media executives ready to listen.

So what exactly is a People Front? Morgan explained, "We buy people not programs, which is why we developed an audience insights database platform offering data driven people- oriented TV advertising."

Morgan began the presentation with actors, all in the 18-49 age break, describing their various lifestyle and behavioral affinities in a way that clarifies that, while they are all 18-49, they are all very different media and marketing targets. While not especially different from lifestyle segments that have been in the industry for decades with Prizm or VALs for example, we do seem to be heading more towards a closer one-to-one targeting capability.  And with the recent announcement that Nielsen and Simulmedia are partnering with to develop a measurement capability for long tail cable network measurement, the race for measurement solutions to facilitate targeting is heating up.

As part of the program, Jack Myers hosted a panel consisting of content buyers and sellers as well as Simulmedia and Nielsen representatives. Leading off was Nielsen’s Steve Hasker who outlined Nielsen’s key priorities. Hasker said that one of the key priorities was “Working with Simulmedia and putting Nielsen ratings with Dave’s analytics and STB data” admitting that “we have some work to do in local.” 

There is the opinion that with Nielsen, innovation often comes in response to perceived competitor initiatives. Myers spoke for many in the audience when he asked, “Nielsen’s history is that it doesn't move forward. How do we know that Nielsen is moving forward (in people measurement innovation)?”  Hasker responded that “Nielsen has and the privilege of being considers currency by the buyers and sellers. We can't just wake up one morning and say that we are going to change the metric. We have a methodical process to go through. Our clients say they want to get beyond demographics. We have our own sets of products that get beyond datasets. One true thing about using age and gender is that it is true of the population. Advertisers want specific people but there is value of age and gender in the mix. We must make sure that all of the data that we have is made available to those who want to add its secret sauce.”  All this caution is great except the industry appears to be moving faster and impatience among the clients is growing. As Campbell Soup Company’s Yin Woon Rani said, “Nielsen is taking input from clients but there is a big learning bell curve.”

In the client sector, interested in People Front audience targeting is keen. Rani explained, “We have a lot of small audiences making up that soup franchise and we use STB data to have our creative delivered to more specific target. It is a pragmatic use of the data. We create a message with that person in mind.  So the core focus of why this (People Front approach) is valuable is that we cultivate segments but then have to buy our media on age gender.  Now you can marry content creative choices with media choices.” Mark Kaline, formerly of Kimberly Clark added, “We are all interested in measuring outcomes. If we can get to individuals and people targets, you can get more clarity and provide effectiveness.”

The research portion of the panel included Discovery’s Sharon O’Sullivan, Turner’s Howard Shimmel and Simulmedia’s John Piccone. All of these executives are involved in finding measurement solutions through big data sets. O’Sullivan noted that there are now “many data sources. Every client wants something different. Some want TRA. Some want Rentrak. Simulmedia has wealth of data. It is refreshing not to have to sell something with a standard mix.” Myers noted that research has historically been a staff area but there is a new movement afoot as Shimmel explained, “We are trying to evolve research away from being a cost center. We target using all these datasets. Recent tests we have done using data to optimize a client’s mix resulted in a 10-30% increase in grps.”

The march towards better consumer targeting, whether as part of a PeopleFront or  through some other codified industry movement, might finally lead to welcomed a readjustment of audience valuation. Shimmel noted that “CPMs for W18-49 could be $10 but for heavy soup eaters it could be $50.” And for those of us in a certain less desirable age group, Jack Myers spoke for many, “I am “55+ and by most measurement targets I am irrelevant. But my spending is not.” I hear you, Jack.