Traditional Media Planning and Buying Still Have a Future

In the past, media planning and buying were simpler. It was a time of four broadcast networks with the rumblings of some emerging cable networks as competition. Broadcast sales ruled the day and negotiations were made with a lunch and a handshake. Contracts were stewarded and posted using Nielsen, and at the end of the campaign (often a full year), there was either an over-delivery for the client or a shortfall.

With the advent of automation, the use of data to form targeted segmentations and the ability to transact in real-time, the advertiser/network relationship is less personal but more efficient. However, there are lessons to be learned from the old ways of buying and selling media, and a place for traditional buying and the human touch in today’s media world.

Sales Personalization

Consumer personalization through automation, where messages are tailored to household or individual, offers relevancy and a greater call to action. But personalization in business transactions also has a place in this new advertising world. Being able to connect with a human sales expert to ask questions, research possibilities, and discuss ideas is a legacy sales hallmark that is still valuable in today’s automated sales arena.

Marketing Initiatives

As part of the legacy system of negotiations, additional sales placement opportunities for advertisers were possible, such as in-program insertions (which are increasingly computerized) or signage at an event. While automation is excellent at placing messages in advertising slots created by the sellers, it can’t always take advantage of these other, less formatted marketing opportunities that require human intervention to implement and monitor.

Brand Safety and Fraud

There is nothing worse than running a commercial for an airline during a news report on a crash, but it happens. With automation, algorithms can help to prevent such mishaps, but it is also valuable to have a sales and traffic compliance team monitoring activity. Having a human touch also reduces the risk of ad fraud.

Consumer Safety

With the high degree of personalization in automation, there is the risk of the right message for the household being received by the wrong family member, such as a pregnancy kit being served to the father of the household when it was intended for the daughter. Traditional media may not be as hyper-focused as programmatic, but it offers viewers a degree of anonymity while still targeting the household.

Soft Human Attributes

As Business Insider noted, humans remain masters in skills that AI and machine learning can only mimic, whether using common sense to solve problems, feeling and understanding emotions, or harnessing creativity. While there is much to be praised about the efficiency of automated buying, there are also advantages to retaining the human element of media planning and buying legacy protocols.

This article first appeared on the Videa blog.

The Fraud of Fake Influencer Marketing

Fraud remains one of the top concerns for marketers and digital companies. A new study by cybersecurity company CHEQ found that 15% of all influencer ad dollars are spent on fake followers costing brand advertisers a projected $1.3B globally in 2019.

A study titled The Economic Cost of Bad Actors on the Internet; Fake Influencer Marketing in 2019 by Professor Roberto Cavazos, Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore, reports that the total cost of fraud and the resulting loss of trust, “extends beyond the affected business. Entire sectors and economies are adversely impacted.” Influencer marketing spend is big and growing; Mediakix reports that 2019 influencer marketing spend is $8.5 billion globally and is expected to reach up to $10 Billion in 2020, up twentyfold since 2015 when spend on social influencers globally was $500 million. 

When it comes to Fake Followers, there are four main ways to game the system:

Automation can be used to build followers to appear as if they are among the top influencers. Nik Speller, head of campaigns at influencer marketing agency Influencer says: ‘‘They use  automated services, to act on your behalf to follow people, unfollow them again, like content, comment on content, just to do all that underlying stuff that an account has to do sometimes to grow and do it in a  turbo-charged way. In this way all of a sudden you follow 500 people, 200 follow you back, you unfollow them, you’ve got 200 followers and it looks like you are important because your follower number is bigger than the number of people you follow.’’ Speller believes this practice is fraudulent and against social media network’s terms of service as it consists of spamming. 

Use of “Pods” which allow influencers to trade engagement back and forth on each other’s posts, as part of a community. This involves one influencer commenting on or liking a certain number of posts, and is reimbursed in kind with comments on their own activity and posts. Cavazos noted that, “This is clearly not what brands have in mind when creating and paying for campaigns.” 

Sponsored posts. Some bad players publish what is purported to be sponsored posts on behalf of brands they are not actually working with. “In some cases, they engage in this dubious behavior with fake sponsored posts to dupe brands into believing they have a proven track record – and in order to get hired for a future engagement,” according to Cavazos’ study. 

Goosing Inactivity. Even real followers can be problematic when audience inactivity on many networks is considered. In a situation where 30% of some social media accounts have been claimed to be inactive, digital analyst Brian Solis says, ‘‘Many influencers have no access to 90% of their audience simply because it no longer uses the social network where they were followed. This doesn’t stop them from touting millions of followers, who will, of course, never see your content.’’ 

Complexity is a well-known cause of fraud in many domains. Cavazos explains that, “Ad fraud losses to the economy are expected to be more than 20-times the costs of Influencer marketing losses in 2019. However, the growing popularity of influencer marketing brings with it greater opportunities for fraud as the number of players increase and more players are involved around this economy across an expected 4.4 million influencer promoted posts in 2019. The opportunities for accountability and monitoring diminish as the sector increases. In addition, the industry is moving towards greater depth and complexity through other means, with so-called micro influencers and nano-influencers joining the payroll of brands.”

While there are efforts to combat fake influencer fraud, marketers should be aware that we are not there yet.

This article first appeared in Cynopsis.

How Will Automated TV Spend Grow?

Programmatic and automated TV spend is on the rise. Addressable TV spend will grow 65.8 percent—reaching $1.26 billion in revenue—according to a July 2017 eMarketer estimate. While this is still a small portion of the overall media spend, the robust growth forecast nevertheless indicates that addressable and audience-targeted media buying is becoming a force within the media ecosystem.

As technology continues to advance and even more datasets make their way into the buying and selling parlance, expect the growth to not only continue but also accelerate. But with increased competition from buying platforms, walled gardens of data, and technology that’s, well, always changing, how can addressable continue its impressive growth and amass a greater slice of the advertising pie?

Be Simple—Not Complex
One way for addressable TV to strengthen its market position is by making the purchasing cycle easy and real-time, essentially like the way digital is purchased. This simplicity will create a more seamless and satisfying purchasing experience for advertisers.

Ben Tatta, president and co-founder of media measurement and analytics firm 605, notes that the growth of automated TV spend “will be driven in the coming years by improved audience measurement, the ability to use data to more effectively target specific audiences, and the emergence of new applications.” Tatta explains that automated TV platforms should simplify the planning and buying process and “enhance the returns on a marketer’s investment across local and national markets.”

Read the full article on the Videa blog.