Month: October 2018

TV ads are slowing becoming more Internet-like, but that’s not leading to a digital media-like swing to the power of aggregators — at least not yet.

Ad buyers are finding that it can often be cheaper to buy ads on connected TV from the media companies themselves, including TV networks, than from the increasing number of companies that aggregate inventory across many publishers’ connected TV apps.

There is “a significant price premium” to buying connected TV inventory through aggregators, whether that be connected TV platforms, like Roku or Samsung, pooling inventory across media companies’ apps or ad tech firms that similarly target campaigns across multiple inventory sources, said Sean Odlum, CEO of Bliss Point Media, an agency that specializes in video advertising.

The cost dynamic would seem counterintuitive. Traditionally it’s more expensive to buy ads directly from a publisher than through an intermediary that packages inventory from multiple publishers. However media companies appear to be using the lower prices to maintain their direct relationships with advertisers as advertisers shift more of their budgets from TV or other digital channels to connected TV and options to buy through inventory through intermediaries proliferate.

This year connected TV has overtaken mobile’s share of video ad impressions. In the third quarter of 2018, 38 percent of video ad impressions were served on connected TVs compared to 31 percent that were served on smartphones, according to a study by video ad server Extreme Reach. A year ago connected TV accounted for 14 percent of video impressions versus mobile’s 39 percent share, per the company.

Advertisers’ rising adoption of connected TV is the result of more inventory becoming available and access to that inventory becoming easier, said Mike Piner, svp of video and data-driven investments at MullenLowe’s Mediahub.

That increased availability and improved access coincides with connected TV platforms, like Roku and Samsung, as well as ad tech firms, such as The Trade Desk, aggregating more connected TV inventory from media companies to satisfy advertisers’ scale demands. And the media companies themselves have also been able to grow their individual connected TV audiences to address advertisers’ connected TV demands.

“A few years ago, there was much more cobbling together [of inventory] that was necessary,” said Odlum.

To be clear, there still is some cobbling required. “The buying experience itself is still highly fragmented. Every platform has its own buying parameters and targeting parameters,” said Philip Inghelbrecht, CEO of TV ad-buying firm Tatari.

But connected TV platforms and ad tech firms are increasingly trying to step in as one-stop shops for advertisers’ connected TV campaigns. “The fact that we can transact these things through programmatic pipes and aggregate [inventory] is helpful,” said Manny Hernandez, vp and head of display activation for North America at Essence. Roku and Samsung, in particular, have taken advantage of their device-level targeting capabilities to get a larger share of advertisers’ connected TV dollars, said Piner.

The post In the fledgling connected-TV market, buying ads direct is often cheaper appeared first on Digiday.

Direct-to-consumer brands are flocking to podcasts because of their ability to use promo codes to track sales, but these brands still have trouble measuring the medium’s business impact.

Parachute has sponsored more than 50 podcasts in the past two years and, as a result, is getting a lot of attention from podcast agencies, said Luke Droulez, CMO at the bedding and bath company, speaking at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s first DTC brand summit, held this week in New York. “I was approached by 20 agencies today,” he said.

It’s still hard for Parachute to judge how well podcasts perform, though, Droulez said. Parachute once relied on promo codes to trace how many people heard the company’s ads on a podcast and then went to the site and used the code. About every month or so, people would hear a Parachute promo code on a podcast and leak it to a site like RetailMeNot. The metric became unusable because customers were leaving their online shopping carts, looking up the promo codes online and using the codes for their online purchases, whether they listened to the podcast or not. Parachute stopped using promo codes in podcasts and switched to vanity URLs to track who lands on their site after listening to a podcast, but they don’t provide a complete outlook.

Dan Granger, CEO and founder of Oxford Road, a media agency that sells podcast spots to DTC brands like Boll and Branch, Rent The Runway and Everlane, said most DTC brands use promo codes along with vanity URLs to measure effectiveness, then survey customers about where they heard about them, with podcasts being one option. Granger said that he has seen some DTC brands experience promo codes leaks but not to the extent that it would make sponsoring podcasts not worth brands’ spend.

Podcasting revenue is projected to more than double in size to $659 million by 2020, according to an IAB/PwC study.

Most DTC brands are sponsoring podcasts. A few like Blue Apron and Dollar Shave Club have launched their own podcasts in the past year, but most DTC brands don’t have enough brand recognition to do so.

DTC brands pay for podcast ads on a CPM basis, but some would rather exclusively sponsor podcasts and pay by time, which might be more expensive but a better deal over a long period, said Bryan Goldmark, digital sales manager at Westward One, which buys sponsorships for DTC brands like Brooklinen and Quip.

The post DTC brands are drawn to podcasting, but aren’t sure of its impact appeared first on Digiday.

In the underappreciated 1993 movie Matinee, John Goodman plays a producer of B-grade horror movies with a penchant for the theatrical. Set in 1962, he’s out to promote his new film Mant, about a man who turns into an ant after being exposed to radiation. Goodman’s character touts the movie as being presented in “Atomo-Vision…

Twitter is now enabling its users to provide more information on the posts that they report as spam. The social network announced in a Twitter Safety tweet that users can specify the type of spam they are reporting, including suspicion that the tweets originated from fake accounts. Activity that attempts to manipulate or disrupt Twitter’s…

To compete with Amazon and the influx of other online marketplaces, eBay is focusing on simplifying the selling process on its platform.

Over the past several months, the marketplace has made it easier for sellers to borrow money from eBay to scale their businesses, which then adds more inventory to its site, as well as added more capabilities to seller tools, including search functions and faster product listings. Ebay CEO Devin Weng trumpeted the new measures in an earnings call Tuesday, saying the moves would help eBay stay ahead of its growing competition.

The goal is to both retain long-time sellers and acquire new ones, by supplying them with the resources to scale.

In July, the company partnered with Square Capital, which allows a seller to borrow up to $100,000 in a single day. The move is intended to allow credit-worthy businesses to scale their operations more quickly, including by stockpiling more inventory. New seller tools have also been rolled out in the past quarter to improve businesses as they grow, like image search and integrating marketplace feeds across the eBay platform and sellers’ own sites. The company has also worked to streamline its ad placement business.

As Amazon has been criticized for an opaque ad policy that doesn’t give sellers access to much of its data, eBay is positioning itself as the transparent one. Though Amazon dominates eBay in the online advertising business, eBay is emphasizing the straightforward and fast nature of its ad business, including providing instant analytics through the company’s seller hub.

It’s a complement to the pitch eBay is making to larger companies to use its services to build online stores. The combined aggressive growth strategy to both win over small and large businesses contributed to an uptick in revenue. For the third quarter, the e-commerce giant reported revenue of $2.6 billion, a year-over-year increase of 6 percent.

But there are other indications that eBay’s growth is slowing, such as a gross merchandise volume, or total products sold, quarterly growth of just 2.6 percent, down from 6 percent.

The moves are meant to stem concerns that eBay’s retail business is plateauing.

“eBay continues to see slowing growth in its core business given difficulty revamping the platform without disrupting existing users, competition, and challenges acquiring new users,” wrote Brian Nowak, a Morgan Stanley analyst who covers the company, in a report released ahead of the company’s third-quarter earnings.

Scaling new services is a defense strategy that has its drawbacks. The influx of new options has been jarring to some long-time sellers. In the company’s earnings call, Weng said that fear has “limited our ability to scale some new experiences.”

“New eBay users are responding well to the evolution of our platform,” said Weng. “As we mentioned last quarter, our existing buyer base has been slower to adapt to these changes.”

But evolution isn’t optional.

“eBay finds itself in a position of adapting to an evolving digital commerce landscape as well as changing seller/buyer behaviors,” wrote R.J. Hottovy, a Morningstar analyst who covers eBay, in a report. He added, “we believe eBay’s consumer-to-consumer platforms have developed a network effect within the broader digital commerce landscape.”

The post eBay is improving seller resources to scale new business appeared first on Digiday.

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The post Criteo Revenue Drops As It Invests In Business Transformation appeared first on AdExchanger.

As part of changes to the Instagram Graph API (application-programming interface) that were announced in January and go into effect Dec. 11, the ability for businesses to search hashtags via the API is being removed, but the Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing network announced a scaled-down version of that capability Wednesday. Software engineer Namrita Pandita revealed…