MultiScreen TV Buyers Can Overcome Market Challenges According to DeepIntent’s John Mangano

For multiscreen TV buyers, the current television landscape presents more than a few challenges. As viewers increasingly consume content across an increasingly varied set of platforms, the issue of metrics and measurement looms large.  John Mangano, DeepIntent’s Senior Vice President of Analytics offers some advice.

The problem, according to Mangano, “is the way we are buying it, transacting and ultimately measuring TV. Historically, buying and measurement from the 1950s to now hasn't really changed. It’s still tied to GRPs.” For Mangano, that misses a great deal of opportunities for both marketers and viewers. “It was something that was fine for many decades, but today it feels very prehistoric,” he asserted.

“Historically, the GRP was based off of reach and frequency. We didn't really have the ability to go much further. Now we target one to one in the majority of cases. The measurement also needs to be on a one to one basis as well,” he noted. Mangano explained that a campaign can have, “massive frequency and reach very few people or you can reach a lot of people and have very low frequency.” But now we have the ability to be very specific in how we identify viewers and aggregate them, beyond the usual demographics, to include very specific buying inclinations and motivations. Measurement must be able to keep up with the marketplace. “You need to get to the next level, which is a profile of who you're reaching so you know you're reaching the right targets,” he added.

DeepIntent’s focus is on the health sector and here, the value and importance of one to one targeting is paramount. “If we're reaching a lot of men and it's a health condition that only affects women it's not good. Because we're a DSP, the foundation of what we do is retargeting one to one. The DSP is the backbone of how the Internet serves ads,” he noted. And, with the addition of CTV, “television is now moving into a platform that is has the kind of accuracy that digital ads have had for years.” This now enables TV in the form of CTV to have the same level of targetability as there currently is in digital.

For viewers, the experience is seamless. He explained that, “We've done research and found that TV viewers have no idea whether they're watching CTV or regular TV. They're just watching TV and they're getting served ads.” He also shared that these viewers are okay with ads, understanding that advertising is the foundation of TV content funding. All of this enables companies like DeepIntent to not only target but also quantify very specifically who they are reaching.

In an era of one to one targeting, privacy is a huge priority. “There are two levels of privacy. One is legal, which is a top priority of ours. The other is ethical,” he stated.  Sometimes you can adhere to legal standards of privacy but the ethically, it may be a no go. This is especially true in medical advertising. “The key thing we always do is we never use health information for one to one. We build models that help us find people more likely, but the reality of it is not based off of anyone's individual health information,” he assured. The data from the served ads is aggregated and anonymized which gives Mangano the ability to measure, “the rate at which you reach the right patients or the people who are exposed and took specific actions. But we'll never know which one of the million people actually were the ones.”

DeepIntent is also able to parse, “How frequently we reach individuals and on what platforms. That platform could be TV versus mobile phone versus desktop, and it also could be app or channel for which you have been exposed. All that gives us the ability to have a full picture of the media campaign itself,” he noted. In addition, the data is also placed in an analytics engine which delineates specifically what different combinations of exposures drove action. “And because we also market to physicians, we also do analysis where we identify the patients who went to the doctors,” as a result of seeing the campaign.

“With our CTV analyses compared to linear TV, we are typically seeing an increase in the ability to find the right patients using CTV over linear TV as well as seeing higher rates of treatment,” he explained. There are huge benefits in finding the right patients for a medication, “because you're impacting more people for every marketing dollar spend and that ultimately means healthier people, living longer happier lives,” he added.

The past is not necessarily prologue for the future of pharma advertising. “When I first started in the health analytics industry 15 years ago, I spent a lot of my time trying to help pharma understand the internet space and market it. A lot has changed in terms of more advanced marketing and the industry has changed too. There is a lot more focus on privacy and other laws,” he explained.

Since the pandemic, which has normalized telemedicine while at the same time caused some people to delay treatments, the call for better and more individualized treatments has never been greater.  “The pharma industry has realized that digitally there are many ways to reach both doctors and patients and they're leveraging that more than ever. We're starting to see behavior changes that support more digitally focused communications and interactions. For us at DeepIntent, our ability to deliver the messages, whether to patients or doctors, creates efficiencies that weren't there five years ago,” he concluded.

 This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

 

 

 

Fighting Viruses; Cybersecurity and Privacy in a Pandemic. Interview with Chris Moschovitis.

We live in interesting, scary and stressful times when the usual social and business norms have been catastrophically upended. For businesses as well as individuals, past concerns about cybersecurity and privacy have evolved. How can we pivot to the new reality and respond? 

According to cybersecurity and privacy expert Chris Moschovitis, there are things we can do. Moschovitis is cybersecurity (CSX, CISM) and Enterprise IT governance (CGEIT) certified and has written books on these subjects -  "CybersecurityProgram Development for Business: The Essential Planning Guide" (2018) and "Privacy, Regulations, and Cybersecurity: The Essential Planning Guide" (to be published in 2021)

Charlene Weisler: Have cybersecurity considerations changed since the pandemic? If so, how?

Chris Moschovitis: They have not necessary changed, but they have increased.  Unfortunately, both nation-state sponsored hackers and organized cybercriminals have no qualms about kicking us when we’re down.  And, that’s what is happening.  Campaigns of disinformation, plus ransomware attacks against healthcare facilities have increased. 

Weisler:  How can we protect ourselves from hackers and phishers - have the rules changed during the pandemic? And how can we best protect ourselves?

Moschovitis: The best way to protect ourselves is to be aware that the attacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication.  We are particularly sensitive, depressed, and on the edge, hungry for information, and looking for news about a cure or a vaccine.  Beware of phishing emails capitalizing on this stress, and be particularly careful of “medical alerts” from government bodies.  The CDC, WHO, and the local governments will not be sending emails out asking you to supply your personal information or clicking any links.  Inspect the sender’s email address, and read the URL very carefully to make sure it’s not a spoof.  For those in IT or cybersecurity that work in healthcare you need to recognize that you’re a target and act accordingly.

Weisler: What advice can you give companies whose workers are working from home regarding cybersecurity?

Moschovitis: Teleworkers represent a real threat to corporate networks.  That is because they are usually using their own computers that are not as protected as the corporate ones.  As a result, it is critical that corporate IT departments allow remote connectivity through carefully monitored tunnels, and expand the umbrella of corporate cybersecurity protection to include remote workers.  The teleworkers themselves need to remain vigilant in terms of maintaining their home computer “clean” and up-to-date with operating and application security patches, current antivirus/antimalware software, and exercise extreme prejudice on any email that’s asking them for personal information, money transfers, or providing links for downloads.

Weisler: Is privacy still a concern? Don't we want to share more in this environment?

Moschovitis: Privacy is always a concern! We may be forced, for example, to share geolocation and behavioral data to the government in an attempt to monitor potential COVID outbreaks.  This is already happening in some countries, and it is starting being discussed here in the U.S.  As with everything, it will be a tradeoff between the benefit that we individually and collectively as a society will receive, vs. the lack of privacy that may be required.  Keep in mind, that once the horse leaves the barn, it is extremely difficult to put back in.  So, if we grant access to all this information, we may never be able to revoke it, all in the name of one valid reason or another.  We need to be at peace with that decision.

Weisler: Do you think this is a new normal that will last after the pandemic?

Moschovitis:  Yes.  This pandemic changed the world forever.  Telework became a new norm, and the need for it proved to all that we don’t need as much office space and density as we had in the past.  Social distancing will never be looked at the same way.  City vs Suburbs pros-and-cons conversations will flare up again.  The real estate market will dramatically be impacted, in both positive and negative ways, travel and hospitality, and work conditions and expectations will forever change.  Media and entertainment will also be severely impacted (movie theaters, theaters, concerts) especially as the numbers come in that will confirm what most entertainment executives knew:  On-demand is cheaper to distribute and brings in just as much money as a theatrical release.  Finally, on the media platform side, there will be a “reckoning.”  Facebook, google, etc., will have a very difficult time justifying a hand-off type of curation while millions die from disinformation posted on their platform and democratic institutions shudder.  We will be dealing with the aftermath of this pandemic for years, and our world will never be the same.  It is my hope that we can all get together and work to get this transformation right!

 This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Consumer Are Less Trusting, According to the ARF

According to a recent study from the ARF, consumers are slightly less likely to share their data in 2019 compared to last year.

Polling 1,105 adults 18+ via a mobile questionnaire in March 2019, respondents were asked about how well they understood common privacy terms, what personal data they were willing to share and how their attitude changed from last year when offered the benefit of greater customization of their on-line experience. The study’s sample, which was balanced by age, demo and region, also measured trust and how it varied by demo group and forms of privacy on digital, mobile vs. PC usage, and trust in institutions.

This shift in consumer attitude is a harbinger of to come as the American market faces legal restrictions not only globally from the GDPR but also nationally from the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), which as Paul Donato, Chief Research Officer at the ARF explains, is soon going into effect allowing, “consumers to opt-out of the sale of their personal information to third parties, not to mention the other upcoming state and federal regulations that could impact the ad tech industry.” 

Key findings from the study include:

    --  Respondents were much less willing than in 2018 to share their home address (-10 percentage points), spouse’s first and last name (-8 percentage points), personal email address (-7 percentage points), and first and last names (-6 percentage points).

     -- Incentives are less impactful. Offering to personalize experience doesn’t dramatically change what data consumers are willing to share.

   --  Regarding privacy policies, surveyed consumers understand the benefit of marketers using their data to target, but don’t understand the tools used, such as ‘pixel tags.’

    --  Consumers continue to be mistrustful of institutions, media, Congress and advertising. However, this varies by demographic. Democrats and Asian Americans, for example, have the greatest trust in the media and television news.

This article first appeared in Cynopsis.

Getting Rid of the Noise in Advertising and Data. An Interview with a4’s Hamid Qayyum

Hamid Qayyum, Head of Strategic Partnerships at a4, is a data and media veteran, starting his career at ratings upstart, erinMedia back in the 1990s. He is currently charged with taking all the data and media that is gathered from Altice and other data partnerships and acquisitions and use it to supercharge a4’s local and national sales efforts. 

Qayyum works with brands, agencies and supply partners “to facilitate our ability to deliver advertising effectively across all devices that consume media,” for the a4 universe of 92 million optimized linear TV households and 65 million IP addressable households. 

Charlene Weisler: You have worked for companies who very early on were working with data in very creative ways. How has the data landscape changed since the 1990s?

Hamid Qayyum: Data collection is far easier now. As the world becomes more digital, there is better data and as the TV world becomes more IP, we have access to more data. But on the flip side, we have to be more careful with how we treat that data – with more privacy and making sure that we are good caretakers of people’s profiles and habits. We have access to data that is very personal so we have to make sure that we guard that data very carefully. The more data we get the better products we can provide. From the media advertising perspective, we can do a better job of understanding what a consumer wants and delivering it to the consumer who wants it. 

Weisler: Talking about privacy and GDPR, how do you see this impacting the U.S.?

Qayyum: It’s very relevant for us. Altice, being a cable company and a4 being a division of Altice we take privacy very seriously. We have a lot of safeguards, such as a firewall between us and the data, to be sure that we got things right. How we use data, the ways we use data, we make sure that it complies with the latest privacy rules. Some industries will be greatly impacted by GDPR more than it will impact us because have already taken steps to be ahead of the curve and be GDPR compliant … or better. We don’t scrape data. There are a lot of companies that will scrape the bid stream and say ‘We have an IP address that we can target’ but we don’t do anything like that. That data is not really authenticated.  We authenticate everything in a privacy compliant manner.  

Weisler: What are the different datasets that you use?

Qayyum: One of the advantages we have is that we are part of Altice USA which is a very large marketer. We work very closely with the Altice marketing team to facilitate their marketing efforts. We also use the data that is used for marketing Altice’s products to better serve our strategic marketing partners from demographics to lifestyle to purchase habits to all of the viewership statistics – some of it is proprietary and some is acquired –as well as IP data. We have created a data warehouse that we can use for our national partners, brands and agencies. We also have a lot of political data, unique viewership data sets and have created a range of proprietary segments.

Data is at the core of what we do. But we don’t sell data. We are a media company. When you come to us you can buy local media, national media, TV, Digital and we will use all of this data that we have to find your audience.

Weisler: Altice was Cablevision. So this is Cablevision data?

Qayyum: We also have Suddenlink in addition to Cablevision plus data we acquire and data we receive through partnerships.

Weisler: What about the impact of the new technology – ATSC 3.0 and 5G?

Qayyum: The way we look at it from our side of the business, the more bandwidth you have, the more you will consume that bandwidth on more devices in the home. That is why we like the IP targeting aspect of our business, because consumers will consume more outside of just watching the television, whether through OTT or some other mechanism of content delivery.

That bandwidth has a couple of uses. One is driving the streaming part of the business and the other is driving the gaming part of the business. Everyone wants low latency in gaming. We are making huge headway in CTV and OTT with new offerings that leverage our IP targeting technology to deliver the next generation of addressable television. We have partnered with AT&T to cover the linear part of the addressable business to make a national footprint but also have the future of addressable through OTT and CTV where we leverage the IP targeting technology incorporated in our system to create a true multiscreen addressable solution.

Weisler: Can you de-duplicate your data?

Qayyum: Yes. We partner with various companies such as LiveRamp and Experian for data matching, etc. and we have a superb data team here internally that warehouses it and does the deduping. We then make it available to our customers for media buying through our platform, Athena. 

Weisler: What are some of the critical issues that the media industry faces now?

Qayyum: First, there is a lot of noise out there – what companies say they can do vs. what they can actually do. There are privacy regulations but data is still in the ‘wild west’ phase of evolution.  It would be great to have something that assigns a value to the data you have. People say, ‘here is the value of my data’ and that data may be wrong or improperly collected and there is no real way to say that this data is pure, authentic or good. 

The other issue is value of media. There are a lot of media choices as media consumption fragments. You no longer have families gathering in front of the TV on a Thursday night at 8 pm to watch Seinfeld. So while the audience and devices fragment, the business still works in silos. There are TV buyers and digital buyers. We need to get those walls broken so an advertiser can get the best value for their money. We broke down that barrier for Altice with a comprehensive media approach and are doing the same for other progressive marketers. 

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com