Building Global CTV Apps. An Interview with Ajey Anand, CEO Norigin

The world of CTV apps is global and the ability of companies to facilitate accessibility for both consumers and brands across providers is paramount.

 I spoke to Ajey Anand, CEO of Norigin Media, about the world of CTV apps and how companies can maneuver in the expansive marketplace. Norigin Media is a Scandinavian Connected TV Specialist company that designs, engineers and validates apps and features on a range of CTV devices.

Charlene Weisler: What are the opportunities for advertisers and marketers and brands in the CTV app market?

Ajey Anand: Increasing the times spent on Apps alongside good content is the goal. Making sure consumers find it easy to search and navigate with clunky remote-controls would be our goal. For advertisers, the first opportunity is to understand the consumer. Where reports and analytics are available, consumer retention is monitored and managed and finally churn is reduced. For marketers and brands, direct interactivity and monetization possibilities duplicated from what was seen on the Mobile, is now possible.

Weisler: Considering all of the data collected, what are the opportunities for researchers?

Anand: A strong suite of analytics integrations help understand consumer and app behaviors. Whether it is reviews, rating, quality of service and experience or consumption patterns - all analytics can be now collated in a synchronous manner, which serves any research or study.

Weisler:  What are some of the marketplace and technology challenges?

Anand: Certain devices like Apple and Roku may need unique attention, which are challenges that are manageable with engineers trained to think of streaming apps as a single goal rather than different technologies across different devices. Slow and changing App Store guidelines and the very mixed messaging from Device manufacturers are challenges for the industry but also an opportunity for Norigin Media, to be leaders in the space.

Weisler:  What type of data can be collected?

Anand: We don’t collect any data but we facilitate the streaming service owner to collect any data possible. This blog should give you an idea about the Analytics space for streaming TV: https://noriginmedia.com/2020/09/29/the-guide-to-tracking-and-analysing-ott-streaming-services/

Weisler: Can this replace recommendation engines?

Anand: We currently integrate the best of breed analytic providers and recommendation engines. We feel that recommendation engines will be replaced by AI technologies anyway and such a space is the right place to be now to engage with app makers and device manufacturers.

Charlene Weisler: Tell me about Norigin's ability to streamline audience involvement via CTV apps.

Ajey Anand: Norigin builds CTV Apps and UI/UX with a single codebase. Our TV Framework helps us create one frontend which is reused with “functional changes” to relevant devices. When we build an experience on a Samsung Tizen device, we can port the exact effort onto an LG WebOS Device without changing the UI but making sure the LG remote-controls are integrated with native instincts.

Weisler: Where do you see CTV apps going in the next 3-5 years?

Anand: As seen with Mobile, Apps and Markets will become easier to use and filled to the brim with all things digital. CTV devices will increase penetration across the world in the near future. As we have seen, as CTVs replace the need for second-screen support while consuming interactive content, it will become a central entertainment and media hub within all households.

 This article first appeared in Mediapost.

Focusing on Mobile and App Data. An Interview with Sabio’s Aziz Rahimtoola

For Aziz Rahimtoola, CEO and Co-Founder of Sabio, the richness of mobile data is one of the keys to understanding consumer behavior. “Sabio means wise or experienced in Spanish,” he noted. His company strives to address the issues with current panel measurement systems through mobile and app data.  

 

Charlene Weisler: What is the state of CTV/OTT in general at this time and where is it headed?

 

Aziz Rahimtoola: The CTV/OTT media landscape is quite fragmented due to the various operating system platforms and increased competition from every angle. This is good for consumers as it allows choice, but it will continue to be confusing for marketers. 

 

Weisler: In terms of methodology, what approach is best for marketers?

 

Rahimtoola: I believe that app data is more effective than panels in understanding consumer behaviors. This has been validated by Nielsen and other panel-based companies that admit to not effectively understanding streamers (app users) or diverse audiences via panels. In the 1970s, when society was 11% and monolithic, panels were more effective than now when at 42%, our population is more diverse.  

 

Weisler: What is App Science?

 

Rahimtoola: App Science combines data signals from 280 million active mobile and 110 million CTV devices and closes the quality gap between multicultural and general market data. Traditional survey panels have historically underrepresented and undercounted multicultural segments of the population. By analyzing CTV and mobile device data, App Science draws a complete picture of multicultural audiences, their preferences, and interests. They also provide trends and insights for their clients to help them better understand consumer actions and interests so they can make better strategic business decisions. This can entail programming preferences, competitive analyses, industry vertical insights, or multicultural and diverse audience trends that traditional measurement companies typically underrepresent.

         

Weisler: What data do you at Sabio collect and apply?

 

Rahimtoola: We have GDPR and CCPA-compliant ways of obtaining mobile and CTV/OTT IDs. We also use machine learning extensively to understand consumers via predictive modeling better. In addition, we provide advertisers with a pixel, or a snippet of code used for tracking, that can be applied across media buys to measure campaigns. The information can help to compare viewership among different platforms and avoid targeting the same audiences repeatedly.

 

Overall, we capture over one terabyte of mobile and CTV/OTT data daily and ensure that everything is ethically sourced, privacy compliant, and cleansed. This data contains a wide range of metadata that allows us to apply machine learning algorithms and other predictive modeling to considerably understand consumers’ demographics, points of interest, behaviors, and life stages. From there, we can create granular audience insights and segments that can be applied to media buys and measure campaigns’ effectiveness.

 

Weisler: How do you craft segments from your data?

 

Rahimtoola: Segments are created from a collection of CTV and mobile data where we apply the nearest neighbor, lookalikes and another predictive modeling to various attributes. When we look at the data collected from CTV/OTT and mobile, we analyze various attributes such as app ecosystem, technographic, brand visitation, purchase signals, and census data and further verify with trusted 3rd party sources. From there, we apply machine learning algorithms such as the closest neighbor, lookalikes, associations, and topic modeling to create clusters, user profiles, and audience segments that all connect back to our proprietary 55MM household graph. 

 

Weisler: How does Sabio differ from other platforms in the CTV/OTT space?

 

Rahimtoola: Sabio Holdings is the only company outside Roku with a complete end-to-end CTV/OTT technology suite of services. We can partner up with content creators and launch apps along with creating and distributing add breaks in content with our newly acquired Vidillion SSP (Supply Side Platform) acquisition, monetize them via our Sabio DSP, all while providing differentiated non-panel-based analytics via its App Science platform.

 

Weisler: How do you use your data to inform political campaigns?

 

Rahimtoola: We enhance National voter files with insights that help identify a political party’s viewing habits, app behaviors, points of interest, and key issues that matter to them most so that they can use this audience insights to inform their future campaigns, validate they are reaching their audience, and optimize in real-time.

 

Weisler: What were some of the trends in political advertising leading up to the midterms?

 

Rahimtoola: Looking back on November 8^th, we noticed the most notable political advertising trends being the increase in growth in CTV and OTT.  The political sector has always been reluctant to buy into CTV, but compared to 2018, the shift has been dramatic. Prior, most political ad spending has been programmatic. We also saw an increase in the use of QR codes, and interestingly, there’s been a multicultural shift. In previous years agencies said they didn’t have a big enough budget for the Hispanic demographic. Still, there has been an increase in the general market putting money into the multicultural market.

 

First published in www.MediaVillage.com Thought Leaders

 Artwork by Charlene Weisler

Finding Elusive App Data. Q&A Interview with Karl Stillner

Karl Stillner, Co-Founder and CEO of PushSpring, has been focused on the app economy for a few years. “I spent time working with apps like MSNBC and FlightTrack, allowing me to experience first-hand the biggest issue facing the app economy: the lack of data.”  It is hard to imagine any part of the media ecosystem that is challenged by a lack of data so I sat down with Karl and asked him the following questions:

Charlene Weisler: Karl, give me a short description of PushSpring and what it does.

Karl Stillner: PushSpring is a mobile app-oriented Audience Management Platform (AMP). We provide large-scale mobile audience data to marketers, agencies and publishers. App publishers have next to no audience data on who is using their application and other related applications. Applications are browser-less; no cookies exist in the ecosystem. So, collecting anonymized audience data and aggregating it into a format that speaks to behaviors, intents, demographics, etc. is very difficult.  

We’ve created a technology to aggregate data at scale. On the demand side, we allow brands and agencies the ability to use high quality data to target ads in mobile applications and to use this high quality data to reach people on other screens as well. Additionally, app publishers use our data to inform their understanding of their customers, and beyond understanding, to reach these customers with relevant messages.

Charlene: What exactly is app advertising?

Karl Stillner: There is a common misconception that in-app advertising is used only for driving installs for other apps.  While this is an extremely popular and effective method for new user acquisition, in-app advertising is also quickly becoming a preferred channel for brand and performance advertisers spanning a broader range of products and services.  Higher engagement rates and stickier user experiences in apps help drive consumer attention to advertising that, when targeted with definitive, app-based data, drives strong ROI and branding objectives for marketers.

Charlene: What data do you currently collect, use and find most important?

Karl: We aggregate anonymized device-level data from smartphones and tablets. This data is incredibly informative and valuable because it originates from the most personal devices a consumer owns. The mobile device is better at reflecting the user’s preferences than any other device, including desktop or point-solution devices like fitness trackers. The data we find most exciting relates to the apps on the device. The signal-strength associated with owning an app is high. For instance, the fact that I have a running app on my phone indicates I am fitness and running enthusiast. If you combine that signal with 15 other disparate apps, you can imagine the possibilities.

Charlene: Who is your competitive set?

Karl: It’s a very good question that doesn’t have an easy answer. Our demand-side customers buy data and media from closed-loop ecosystems, like Facebook, that have very high quality data and excellent media. We provide the same buyers with access to high quality data as well which they can run across whatever media they wish: RTB, mobile video, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Our customers also buy from the providers of mobile location data. For example, Placecast provides excellent carrier-based location data that can be used to target across the ecosystem as well. However, we view that kind of data as a natural complement to our data, and not so much a competitor.

Charlene: Can your data be used to measure TV via TV Everywhere or via a network app? If so how and if not, why not?

Karl: Our data can be used to understand the types of users that are using TV Everywhere services. We can also provide interesting insights into the people using specific mobile applications that stream video.

Charlene: Looking ahead the next 3-5 years, give me some predictions about how the media landscape will look.

Karl: One of the most obvious analogs to what is occurring in the media space occurred 10-15 years ago with financial markets. Open-outcry trading (traditional hand signals used on the stock exchange trading floor) relied on a variety of unique traits that aren’t necessarily valued to the same degree now. For example, athletes were often used on the floors because they were easy to spot and could command good positioning, social connections and trading history were highly valued. In the world of electronic trading much of this has been devalued in exchange for analytical ability and fluency in the technologies that underlie how trades are executed.  Programmatic is the electronic trading of the media space. The media space will be driven less by long-standing relationships and ‘access’ and more by speed and efficacy.

Buyers will be more analytical and agency buying arms will start to reflect hedge funds. Attribution will become much more sophisticated and much of the 50% of waste that John Wannamaker famously indicated will be not only known but trimmed. Ecosystems will continue to meld into one. People won’t target someone on mobile. They will simply target them whether phone, TV, car, fitness device, etc. Hopefully, the ecosystem won’t only be controlled by 2-3 closed tech stacks.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com