Doing What is Best for the Advertiser with A+E Programmatic

In this highly fragmented media environment, how can advertisers best maximize, what Tyler DeNicola, Vice President  Programmatic Revenue and Partnerships at A+E Networks, called, “Flexibility with guardrails,” that also offer, “Expansive opportunities of scale.” His company has come up with a valuable solution that offers both programmatic and linear inventory buys using curated channels and measurement through a range of strategic partnerships.

A+E Programmatic Beginnings

Programmatic capability on A+E is not a new feature. In fact, the company has been offering forms of programmatic buying for at least a decade. “We were one of the first publishers to put long form inventory mobile inventory within the programmatic space. We started working with a partner who was then acquired by Facebook,” he explained and added, “It was where programmatic was very predominant on the display and pre roll space. We wanted to understand how this can be leveraged in a marketplace where it's predominantly Direct I/O. That's how we had started and obviously morphed into a much bigger business, but it was more on the mobile side of things.” From there, a great expansion took place that encompassed a range of technological advancements. A+E currently works with, “Six partners from the SSP side of things and we have other partnerships like the Roku and Amazons of the world.”

A+E Programmatic Today

From a start in mobile, the company moved into desktop where measurement was via the cookie. At the same time, mobile, “expanded overnight and came with the ability to have persistent identifiers outside of the cookie. Mobile identifiers offered the capability for audience targeting on a programmatic level moving into the mobile APP space. CTV followed suit. We continue to see this massive push into the connected TV environment that is also tied to these persistent identifiers like IP address, device ID etc,” he noted.

The result was that A+E was one of the first publishers to offer their entire ecosystem programmatically to direct agency buyers. “We use programmatic to be complimentary to what we're doing on the direct dial business where we fill unsold impressions. When buyers were starting to look on a KPI basis where they only want to target specific users that align with their brands, we utilize programmatic as a way to provide flexibility for our buyers to do a lot of these things on the back end,” he stated.

A+E Programmatic Components

Between the various platforms, data and metrics, the main goals for A+E Networks are ease, flexibility, transparency and simplicity. “We push everything across our networks and the three transactions paths,” DeNicola explained, “We have our traditional non-guaranteed private marketplace deals, we have our programmatic guaranteed deals and we are currently working on availing biddable guaranteed deals. We have very niche brands that perform incredibly well contextually so we can break things out on a channel level as well.  We create customized packages for tent pole events and specials and bundle packages based on series, depending on the type of criteria that our partners need.”

As far as measurement is concerned, in addition to standard impressions data, “We work with partners like Live Ramp so we can layer in first party data as well as other third party audience segments. We can customize against our inventory that's more against audience for behavioral targeting versus an actual show level or content,” he stated.

A+E Programmatic Next Steps

As the technology continues to advance and the demand for programmatic grows, A+E is seeing future opportunity. “We are working with one of our largest virtual MVPDs and trying to get their STB data incorporated into our programmatic offering,” DeNicola noted, “We're trying to build and continue to evolve in a place that there is parity with Direct I/O and programmatic and push for flexibility on the backend for our buyers,” so as to insure that, “there is flexibility to target granular audiences on the back end where needed or hit whatever efficiencies you need but also still be able to maintain this very premium living room experience that is happening on the linear side.”

DeNicola’s advice for advertisers is straightforward. “You're going to have this entire ecosystem. We make it an incredibly fair level playing ground for all of our buyers - this is what you can get if you bid at these levels. We also try to be incredibly agnostic, working with so many SSP partners. We're not going to tell you where we want you to buy. We want you to tell us.”

Doing what is best for the advertiser is paramount. “The way we look at it is we want flexibility but with guardrails knowing that programmatic does have its nuances. For us, it's setting expectations up front. Yes, we want to have programmatic as a means for you to have flexibility but it depends on the use case or the scale that's needed. It’s all about fine tuning what the partner strategy is, asking a lot of questions, trying to understand, help educate them and doing a lot of listening,” he concluded.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

Helping Advertisers Maximize Their Budgets Through the FreeWheel and Simplifi.fi Partnership

Viewers are increasingly turning to OTT/CTV to satisfy their content cravings. This behavior accelerated during the pandemic as more time spent at home translated into a heightened search for quality entertainment.  The expansion of choice is great for consumers but a challenge for advertisers, especially smaller ones. How can they maximize their ever shrinking budgets as fragmentation makes viewers more elusive than ever?

The Current TV Marketplace

When we look at the current TV marketplace and how it has evolved over the past couple of years, “there are a few areas of priority and they have had ripple effects, explained Mark McKee, FreeWheel’s U.S. Chief Revenue Officer with audience and automation getting the greatest amount of focus. He added that connected TV and the rise of direct-to-consumer offerings over the last two years, “has really catapulted adoption of new forms of TV and has given rise to more fragmentation so the need for standardization, how people buy and sell is something of great importance.” Data has also been a top priority for the TV industry in all of its forms as well as consumer privacy. “These are all paramount topics for the industry,” he noted, as well as for, “marketers and how they use data to craft the audiences beyond just using content as that proxy for audience.”

For Simplif.fi’s CEO and Co-Founder Frost Prioleau, “The biggest difference we’ve seen from a programmatic CTV advertising provider is the increase in inventory. We were starting to see increased inventory before the pandemic but in many cases TV advertisers were hesitant to advertise on purely connected TV because they felt it there wasn’t enough scale. Clearly the pandemic with people staying inside drove strong adoption of streaming television including advertising supported video on demand. Today there is very high quality scale available and the ability to target audiences.”

FreeWheel and Simplif.fi Partnership

With all of this expansion, opportunity and enthusiasm, FreeWheel and Simplif.fi, have teamed up to offer FreeWheel’s agencies the ability to buy OTT addressable programmatically the same way they buy digital media. Advertisers can access the full OTT marketplace through exchanges and direct premium publisher integrations, ending the need for minimum spend levels and simplifying the management of multiple campaigns across different vendors and geographies, even on the local level.

For McKee, the importance of this partnership is clear. “The Strata platform has about 1200 agencies, largely local agencies that transact across all formats from print to TV to digital. With all of this fragmentation, we focused on how we could make this process easier for those who use this Strata platform,” he explained and added, “One of the great partners that we identified and are working with is Simplif.fi. Just given the role that they play and the offerings that they bring to this very tailored group of buyers and agencies and the local markets.”

McKee noted that the offer enables small and local advertisers, ”To look at their audiences in a much more holistic or converged fashion and plan and execute against them.” He added that, “From a measurement and data perspective, the Simplif.fi product does a nice job of automating the buying and execution process as well as the management of that. The partnership also enables the ability to form a  proprietary integration of FreeWheel’s mini-market of unique inventory packages automated  through SImplif.fi from planning to execution and reconciliation.

Prioleau added, “The agencies that Strata serves, which overlap highly with the types of agencies that (we) serve, need tools to be more effective and efficient. Strata does a great job across many of the pieces and we look to extending that into their programmatic buying across CTV and into their workflow similar to how they buy linear TV and across other digital formats.”  

The reception from the marketplace has been impressive. “We have more than 200 clients that have taken advantage of this unique integration working with Simplif.fi,” McKee stated.

Looking into the Future

When I asked both McKee and Frost about what the future might bring, both were circumspect. “Three to five years is a long time,” Frost quipped and then predicted, “I see more and more of the viewership will be on streaming TV, but not all. There will still be a split there. I think it will be all about the tools that help buyers buy seamlessly across all TV formats whether that’s streaming, live linear or some other format and being able to not only target consistent audience across all those but also buy frequency caps as well as measure and deliver attribution across all TV types.”

For McKee, “The growth of addressability both on linear and in digital is going to fundamentally change the way TV is bought and sold. This will require a lot of creative development and innovation because it’s really changing the workflow that everyone currently has whether it is the home grown systems that everyone has developed or the technology solutions that they use today. It will make a lot of the convergence components that Frost mentions much more automated.” This is vital because without the fuller roll-out of automation, according to McKee, addressability won’t scale. “The ability to understand, ‘I reached this audience and it converted or drove the ROI that I wanted’ will soon become easier in the next two to five years,” he concluded.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

 

 

Julia Zangwill Shares the Results From the 10th Annual FreeWheel’s Video Marketplace Report

This year marks the 10^th anniversary of FreeWheel’s Video Marketplace Report, a seminal study on the state and future of premium video. The study is a valuable track of the emergence and growing popularity of premium video in the marketplace.

Methodology

“The report started in 2010,” explained Julia Zangwill, Director of Advisory Services at FreeWheel, “and we saw the need to highlight the trends in the premium ecosystem.” Over time it went from three pages to thirty pages and from just the U.S. market to the U.S. and the EU. The basis of the analysis is derived from the rich data set culled from the FreeWheel platform on premium video. “It’s all aggregated and anonymized and it is ad views data as well as video views data,” she explained.

Premium video is a term that can be loosely defined nowadays. For Zangwill, “It is a bit of a hot potato. The way we define it is around professionally produced, mostly long-form video, that has monetization rights. Those are MVPDs, Distributors as well as Programmers. It is the traditional television players that we focus on.”

Keeping it Fresh

In order to keep the study up-to-date, accurate and relevant in a highly changing and evolving ecosystem, changes were made in the analytical structure of the study. “We re-architected the way we analyze the world’s largest dataset of premium video ad impressions to reflect the changes we’ve seen in the market over the last ten years,” she noted and added, “This year, we see a long pattern of fragmentation across systems, content, and operations move towards integration, with notable examples of content aggregation, system simplification, and operational consolidation.” To that end, FreeWheel readjusted the way the database and queries were structured. “We took last year’s study, broke it apart and put it back together so we have a lot more flexibility going forward.”

Study Takeaways

Zangwill reflected that, “Overall, the past ten years we saw incredible growth. Technology was always one step ahead of consumers. When TV Everywhere services were first introduced in 2011 there was a lot of confusion on ‘how do I log in?’ and ‘on what devices does it work?’ and ‘what content is available inside or outside the home?’ But fast forward to the past year, we reached an inflection point where the technology and the content and the operations are starting to simplify.” In 2020, TVE made up 40% of ad views, but ad supported streaming services were 38% of ad views and continue to accelerate. With all of the device fragmentation, “Connected TV has emerged as #1, with close to 75% of device consumption” she stated.

What has facilitated CTV adoption, according to Zangwill, was the rich choice of high quality content especially in 2013. She referred to it as “the Golden Age of TV comprised of high caliber, scripted shows including AMC’s Breaking Bad and FX’s The Shield,” that consumers wanted to view on the larger screen. This timing, aligned with advanced technology like Roku boxes and Firesticks, accelerated CTV adoption. “Back then it was 2% of ad views and it more than doubled the next year. Seven years later, CTV makes up 62% of ad views proving CTV is here to stay,” she concluded.

The study also confirmed the Power of Live Sports. “Five years ago, the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil led consumers to watch more live sports on digital platforms than ever before.  In 2020 live content made up 55% of content consumption, and we expect the 2021 Tokyo Olympics will set new records later this year,” she noted.

Another takeaway is the rise of Programmatic. “It is another new data cut that we can now track moving forward. It was in its infancy in the past decade, specifically around video. But it has been in a mature state now for a long time. In 2015, header bidding made the transition from display to video. Today 24% of impressions are executed programmatically,” she explained, “We expect to see that accelerate and continue in the next few years.”

The pandemic, according to Zangwill, created decision fatigue which led viewers to passively stream content throughout the day to fill the time. This trend could continue with live sports coming back.

Next Steps

Looking to the future, “There is a lot of competition out there when it comes to ad supported services and there are going to be organizations to opt-in for a low cost value proposition. There will also be other players who are going to be more premium and have a higher price point that offers a different ad experience or different content. The value proposition will become very important,” she predicted.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Comcast’s Look Back at 2020 and Look Ahead to 2021

This has been an unusually challenging time for prognostication. The once-in-a-generation pandemic and the current political environment have upended expectations and has created what some believe is a “new normal.” 

How are the advertising and publishing spheres of media looking back and looking forward? Comcast FreeWheel offers a look back at 2020 while Comcast Advertising looks ahead to 2021.

Programmers 2020 Look Back

2020 was a year of major changes from the global pandemic to the Black Lives Matter movement to the U.S. Elections and aftermath. But the first look at the year 2020 began with a push forward on addressability with Comcast FreeWheel’s initiative on enabling addressability.

 

The full force of the global pandemic hit the market in March, changing viewing patterns across dayparts, devices and platforms. According to Comcast FreeWheel, in the first half of 2020, premium video views increase 17% year-over-year and premium video ad views increase by 32% in the U.S. Europe saw a significant increase in TV viewership as well with average daily viewing per household up to 6 hours and 25 minutes per day on average from 90 minutes. Tent pole events had mixed performances with the Superbowl achieving a five year ratings high while the Oscars slumped and the Olympics in Japan were postponed.

Certain advertising categories benefited from consumers sheltering at home, such as Food, while other categories such as Travel held more optimism for an eventual recovery in 2020 than actually happened. Sports returned by the start of summer, registering huge increases in viewership especially for Baseball, Hockey and Basketball. Notably, by the fall, more sports resumed including Tennis, Cycling and Rugby. Programmers, anxious to offer more viewing options to content starved consumers, launched a range of streaming services including Peacock from NBCU.

Certainly the impact of Black Lives Matter in the summer brought into the forefront the malignant and enduring impact of structural racism which expanded beyond the U.S. into the global zeitgeist, forcing the media world to lean in to be part of the change.

As the year progressed, Upfront was proving to be very different from prior years with smaller-than-normal and delayed events. Adding to this was the uncertainty of TV schedules with delays in production due to the pandemic and advertisers buying closer to program airings because of the uncertainty.

As 2020 wound down, the world braced for a COVID-19 resurgence and further lockdowns. But there are signs of optimism and hope for 2021. A FreeWheel survey of 500 European Marketers reveals that when it comes to advanced TV budgets, 84% expect spend to grow in the next 12 months.

Agencies 2021 Look Forward

For agencies, 2020 has been a year of adversity, complexity and, yes, opportunity. According to Comcast Advertising, Measurement has risen to the top of priorities for both the buy side and sell side of the business. Comcast has found that, “the whole industry is looking for workable solutions,” in an area that has historically lagged behind in innovation, relying on legacy data sets.

But 2021 looks to be a very different measurement environment. For Michael Law, President Amplifi USA, “As consumers have clearly shown they are in control of their experiences with brands and with media, it’s imperative our industry works collectively to evolve to a consumer-centric, cross channel and platform measurement solution, that can be used universally as a future trading currency and benchmark for the efficiency and effectiveness of all brand communications efforts.”

Programmatic is projected to be another hot growth area for agencies and as media converges, it is accelerating adoption of this advertising format. As Hayley Diamond, EVP, US Digital Investment and Partnerships, Publicis Medi, noted, “Two factors are driving new investment behavior in the TV space: increased buying automation and utilizing data for enhanced targeting. We see increased programmatic interest and activity, directly driven by a need to drive efficiency, the higher volume of options in terms of supply and investment options, and the unique dynamics of 2020 and into 2021.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted what has always been an important issue among agencies – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. There can be no more delay in implementing policies and actions that foster substantive change in this area. “This has to be a key objective for our industry, it’s not ok to sit on the side-lines and hope someone else will do it. As leaders of businesses we have to be better educated in recognizing that we don’t know what we don’t know, learning more and learning how to actively make those opportunities available to all,” warned Stephanie Marks, Managing Director, Havas U.

A major area of change that might lead to a new normal for viewership is streaming which is now 25% of total video consumption, fostering further fragmentation. Agencies realize that Unification is necessary for the healthy future of television that can be bought at scale more holistically.

“OTT and CTV’s scale and maturity have placed it on an even playing field with linear TV in terms of quality and engagement and offers incremental audiences via advanced targeting capabilities. Holistic planning across all flavors of TV will be key to take full advantage of these platforms so that marketers can maximize unduplicated reach and use the strengths of each platform to deliver the right advertising message,” stated Marissa Jimenez, President, MODI Media.

Fueling this need for convergence is Addressable which, for agencies, is the necessary next step in television’s growth and relevancy to marketers. Comcast Advertising noted that in June 2020, nine programmers began addressable trials for project OAR (Open, Addressable, Ready) and AMC was the first to join Comcast Advertising’s On Addressability in the U.S. This is expected to expand in 2021.

For Jason Han, Senior Vice President of Addressable Innovation for Matterkind, “Addressable TV is taking significant steps in its evolution as programmers are opening up their national inventory and new solutions are being tested. 2021 promises to unlock new levels of scale for advertisers looking to reach specific desired audiences in a premium environment that clients value.”

Will 2021 hearken in a “new normal” for our business? There is every indication that the seeds planted in 2020 from measurement to addressability to programmatic to inclusion will blossom into a stronger, more viable media ecosystem that is, indeed, a new, robust normal.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

 

Don’t Stop Advertising During a Pandemic. An Interview with Hanna Gryncwajg of TVSquared

Recent events from the pandemic to the protests have not only changed the ways we live with each other but also the processes by which we interact. Looking specifically at our industry and the way we transact business, it is clear that the old processes need to be updated to reflect the new realities. 

For those is the media sales sector, what was once hands-on and meeting-in-person has, by necessity, changed. TVSquared’s Vice President of Enterprise Accounts, Hanna Gryncwajg is a media expert with experience that spans linear and advanced TV, OTT, digital, and programmatic sales. For her, the pandemic, “has put an even stronger spotlight on the importance of speed and agility for advertisers. Those that react quickly – in smart, strategic ways – survive and thrive.”

Here are her thoughts about where we are and where we are going:

Charlene Weisler: How has your job changed pre and during the pandemic?

Hanna Gryncwajg: At TVSquared, my job is primarily working with MVPDs and media owners, providing them with attribution and measurement tools for their advertisers. While the sell-side was certainly in the midst of change, moving toward more transparency, accountability and outcomes, the pandemic has accelerated it. They are even more hyper-focused on providing their advertisers with proof of performance and the data-backed insights needed to reach audiences whose viewing habits and patterns are changing constantly. Brands want to be able to dynamically manage and optimize linear and OTT campaigns (like they do with digital), and MVPDs and media owners are adapting to that demand quickly.  

  

Weisler: What are the greatest challenges for sales today?

Gryncwajg: For sales across all parts of the advertising ecosystem, two challenges stand out. The first is staying on top of the rapidly evolving industry, which is no easy feat. Our space is changing by the day, with automation, data and technology moving us forward. It’s so critical for sales to be able to articulate these changes and trends clearly and in context of clients’ needs and challenges.

Second, the shift away from “traditional” metrics to ones that are more business-specific, has created a disconnect in the market. Don’t get me wrong, outcomes- and performance-based metrics, and being able to measure TV’s direct impact on them, are very good things. But in the case of agencies and sell-side sales, they are still being “graded” on delivering GRPs. That is a disconnect that is tough to balance, but we’re seeing the divide lessen.

Weisler: What are the greatest opportunities?

Gryncwajg: There are so many opportunities, but most have one thing in common: they benefit the advertiser. At the end of the day, we’re all serving the advertiser – whether you’re a DSP, agency, an enterprise seller, you name it. The end user has the money and they want to leverage TV to move products. They are not interested in GRPs. They want flexibility and transparency into what’s working and what’s not, and the data-backed insights to inform continuous optimizations.

In the case of streaming services, at the very moment (that’s how quickly we are evolving) it’s all about incremental reach, proving out how OTT extends reach over linear campaigns. OTT providers are seeing an influx of ad spend.  Some of it is clearly due to increased viewing during the pandemic, but much of it is about the content, not where or on what device it is being viewed.   OTT providers want to make sure they are finally given the credit of viewers they deserve, and to keep those additional dollars flowing. The time is now to prove what incremental reach can do for a brand – to measure it and also to attribute response to it. TVSquared plays a critical role here because we measure TV everywhere, across linear, data-driven linear and digital. We provide this critical piece of information to our partners as well as brands directly.

Weisler: What are you able to tell advertisers and clients regarding their flights during the pandemic?

Gryncwajg: TVSquared is a single, unified platform that measures outcomes, impressions, reach, frequency and reach extension across linear and digital TV anywhere in the world. We currently have clients in 76 countries and counting. We’re not in the business of attribution studies, which provide findings six weeks or more after a campaign. We are always-on, so you get real-time insights on the business impact of your campaigns. During the pandemic or not, we’re able to tell our clients optimal campaign delivery, reach and frequency. They get granular performance analytics by creative, day, daypart, channel, program and genres – with insights down to the DMA an ZIP code levels. They understand the immediate, longer-term and household-level impact of TV, and can uncover unique reach across OTT, as well as incremental reach vs. linear.

Weisler: In those industries where product sells itself like hand sanitizer, why should advertisers continue to advertise? What is the right mix during these times?  

Gryncwajg: It’s about adapting your creatives to be situationally aware and then testing and learning. There are products that are much more in-demand now than ever before. But there’s still competition and consumers have many options. At the start of lockdown, we saw many clients go off-air for a week to adapt their creatives to address the pandemic in some form or another. They then were right back on a few days later.

The right mix is 100% dependent on the brand. What works for one, isn’t necessarily going to work for another. Once a brand is on-air, it’s so critical to test and learn – see how new buys, timeslots, OTT/linear mixes, etc. are impacting the bottom line. And then use everything you learned to inform your next flight. Viewing patterns and audiences are always going to be shifting, so constant measurement and then acting fast to make those learnings actionable are very important.  

Weisler: For those categories that are hurting like Hospitality, should they continue to advertise? 

Gryncwajg: One of our biggest pieces of advice for advertisers is to not go dark. The damage we’ve seen from brands going off air, and essentially relinquishing their share of voice to competitors, is hard to come back from. It’s about finding the right messaging and staying on-air. Consumers are not necessarily buying cars or booking vacations at the moment, but you still see auto and travel brands on-air to maintain brand awareness. Their creatives aren’t about direct selling at the moment, but they are still staying in front of consumers so when the time comes to purchase a new car and book a holiday, they are top of mind. 

Weisler: As states open up, are you seeing a shift in the business? Are KPIs changing?  

Gryncwajg: The KPIs we measure for our thousands of advertisers are unique to each advertiser, so it’s hard to generalize. I will say that some of the brands that were on-air to maintain awareness have been slowly shifting back to more performance-based KPIs as things get back to normal (or as normal as things can be now). We’re also seeing verticals like travel, real estate and auto start to increase their presence across linear and OTT. While they never went dark, they are starting to show patterns of returning to pre-COVID schedules.

Weisler: What types of platforms are working best overall at this time for advertisers and why?

Gryncwajg: TVSquared has been growing steadily since its start, but the last few months have been extremely busy. Advertisers need to know that every dollar in their ad budgets are working, so cross-platform attribution that generates real-time insights has climbed to the top of many priority lists. Our platform was built to be data agnostic, it is versatile and flexible to serve a global community with different datasets and media needs. For an advertiser to be agile, its partners have to be as well. We quickly ingest any type of dataset that a client wants to work with to provide immediate results. There is no need to wait weeks for reports. Instant gratification and results = impacting change towards efficiency.  

  

Give us an overview on a global level on the state of advertising - maybe comparing countries?

Gryncwajg: We work with global accounts every day. We are the only GDPR compliant attribution provider and the only one that measures both linear and OTT globally. We have hundreds of clients that run campaigns in 20 countries or more. In fact, I’m working with a global data partner right now and we are training their sales teams in US, Europe, Asia and Australia. Understanding each country’s culture and media nuances are key to communicating in a way that is respectful, engaging and will drive response.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com