Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

Men’s-rights advocate and Pizzagate provocateur Mike Cernovich is reported to be another bider in line to acquire the Gawker.com domain and its trove of 200,000 plus articles.

In a media environment with some questionable content, consumers avoiding ads, audience fragmentation and clutter, out-of-home digital media has become a popular medium with marketers.

Get inside a Kia Stinger, drive backwards and relive your youth. At least, that’s what happens to Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler in Kia’s 60-second Super Bowl spot. The ad, “Feel Something Again,” from David&Goliath, is Kia’s ninth consecutive Super Bowl ad. Last year, the carmaker gave Melissa McCarthy the dubious task of saving whales, trees,…

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National Geographic may be rooted in traditional media, but these days it’s all about cross-channel. Last year, Nat Geo doubled down on digital extensions through platforms such as Apple News to support the launch of “Genius,” its new scripted TV series that depicts the life of Albert Einstein. Nat Geo, which began 130 years ago… Continue reading »

The post How Nat Geo Aligns Cross-Platform Content To The TV Tentpole appeared first on AdExchanger.

By Matt Saler, vice president, sports marketing, and Stefen Lovelace, manager, sports marketing & content development, imre

Cord cutting keeps on punishing the TV industry. Younger consumers are unwilling to pay large cable fees, and they’re moving toward watching what they want, where and when they want to. Executives in the television industry are scrambling to figure out how to keep subscribers.

The distinctive live nature of sports always made it lucrative and relatively safe for advertisers. But even major sports leagues are seeing the writing on the wall, and they’re looking for ways to reach cord cutting and cord never consumers. The NBA – a league that has always been ahead of the curve in its digital offerings – has been a ratings success this season. The MLB anticipated streaming trends early, and MLB.TV is the only sports service in the top-10 for over-the-top subscriptions.

But our most popular league, the NFL, has experienced a downward trend, in part due to cord cutting. “The fact that the ratings haven’t bounced back is surprising,” said Anthony Crupi, a TV reporter for Advertising Age, in a December interview with Sports Illustrated. “Take all of the political stuff out and it feels like there are more long-lasting reasons at play. The 18-34 demographic is just completely disappearing from TV.”

The NHL saw its lowest regular season ratings last season. Sports networks like ESPN and Fox Sports 1 are losing subscribers at an alarming rate. There are several formidable companies watching these trends, and they’re looking to pounce. Amazon – the NFL’s exclusive streaming partner for Thursday Night Football games – saw a 17% increase in viewership from 2016, when Twitter had the rights. YouTube allows sports streaming, and aims to be viewed as the go-to source for millennials looking for live sports while cutting the cord. Then there’s Facebook, with money to burn, stating late last year that they want to spend “a few billion dollars” in global rights deals. They made a $600 million play for Indian Premiere League cricket matches, and they hired Peter Hutton, the CEO of Eurosport, to help pursue more sports-streaming packages. Then there are OTT-based TV services like YouTube TV and PlayStation Vue, which offer their own linear-style packages.

All of those platforms have something very important in common: They print money. As TV subscribers look for other avenues to consume content, networks could soon see a dip in advertising dollars. But as your favorite sports move from traditional cable to your phone, tablet or smart TV, new opportunities will arise.

The savviest brands that invest in sports marketing will enhance their offerings with smart, multi-platform social strategies. We already know that the majority of adults are using multiple screens when “watching” TV. Brands can reach those consumers by going beyond commercial spot buys to create integrated campaigns that address fans across screens. The shift to digital makes this a lot easier, since viewing data can be used to retarget people based on not just their browsing habits, but their viewing habits as well. Social media allows the added benefit of being a community enabler, creating shared experiences not just around sports, but the brands associated with the sport as well.

So where does this go? What’s most concerning for networks is that there doesn’t appear to be a floor for cord cutting yet. Experts have had trouble predicting just how much cord cutting will hurt the sports industry. (Put it this way: After 2016’s election cycle, many predicted professional sports ratings would bounce back in 2017.)

But there are some concrete things that brands, networks and leagues can do to weather the cord cutting storm:

• Enhance your digital offerings. The NFL has seen the tide turning and has already been shopping its “Thursday Night Football” package to the highest bidder. Initial reports of the bidding mention several new network suitors – including FOX and ESPN – but the NFL is reportedly entertaining “digital-only offers” from the likes of Amazon and Facebook, a first for the league. This year ESPN purchased BAMTech, a major player in the streaming game. When you make your bid, you should include in your pitch how you plan to get the product to fans who aren’t watching TV. Is your streaming app up to snuff? Are you making your services available to those not watching traditional TV? Cord cutting isn’t going away. Adapt or continue the bleeding.
• Generate meaningful social traction. If you can’t get a customer to watch a game on cable TV, at least get them to view your highlights, engage with your content, and build affinity. Turner Sports owns Bleacher Report, which routinely dominates NBA-related Twitter with dynamic content, engaging highlights, and witty commentary – the exact type of content that NBA fans seek out. Does your brand have an in-house creative team ready to cut and disperse highlights as they happen? Do you have social managers in place ready to engage with fans in the social space who may not even be watching the game?
• Invest in fan communities. Whether it’s on a fan forum or Twitter, brands have to be present where the fans are. Brands with sponsorships are uniquely positioned to be associated with a sport at a deeper level than other advertisers; taking advantage of that to become part of the fan conversation is key to maximizing the value of the sponsorship. Our client, the USTA, mastered this dynamic during the 2017 U.S. Open tennis tournament. To activate the tech-savvy millennial demographic – both those on-site and those following the action on their phones – the USTA developed an interactive digital map that allowed users to see their location on-site, live stream matches, track scores in real-time, and identify attractions and special offers to ensure that fans maximized their experience on site.

Cord cutting is a trend that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Smart leagues and brands will be the ones who adapt, up their digital games, and reach their audiences where they interact. That’s the key to transforming cord cutting from an obstacle into an opportunity.

The post The playbook for how sports can beat cord cutting appeared first on Digiday.

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Off The Grid When Facebook announced it would downplay news and promote friend and family posts in the news feed, it cautioned investors that engagement metrics could slip. But engagement may have been falling before then, reports Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier. Nielsen and comScore said… Continue reading »

The post Facebook Engagement Wobbles; Google Fails To Assuage EU Anti-Trust Worriers appeared first on AdExchanger.

Oddly enough, Twitter has become the go-to forum for Facebook execs as the platform battles pushback over algorithm changes, spammy ads and the spread of misinformation. It’s a shift for Facebook, which, like other tech companies, has been known for having a tightly controlled PR strategy. It’s also an acknowledgment that Twitter is beloved by one of its core constituents, journalists, and is a more effective way to respond to critics in real time than Facebook itself.

In recent weeks, Facebook execs have used Twitter to promote changes to the news feed and ad policies, debate journalists over the portrayal of people in tech and take jabs at rival platforms. Facebook’s public relations team is aware of the execs’ tweeting but isn’t coordinating it; the loosened approach does go hand-in-hand with the company’s sending people in operational roles out to meet with publishers to improve relations with media companies as part of the Facebook Journalism Project.

Facebook product vp Adam Mosseri, whose core responsibility is the news feed, has been active on the platform, where he has 21,000 followers, to handle reaction to Facebook’s January announcements that it would reduce the amount of news people see in their feeds.

Rob Leathern, a Facebook product director brought on in 2017 to improve trust in Facebook’s business products, used Twitter, where he has 11,000 followers, to promote Facebook’s new ads policy. At other times, Leathern, a longtime online ad expert and founder of Optimal.com, a consumer-paid ad-blocking service, has called out online scam artists and other scourges of digital media.

If you see any bad ads on Facebook or Instagram, pls tag me

— Rob Leathern 🛠⚙️ (@robleathern) January 25, 2018

Leathern seems to understand that Facebook’s policies won’t necessarily work perfectly, and he cheerfully offered to answer questions about the ads policy as the company starts enforcing it.

We also understand that we may not catch every ad that should be removed under this new policy, and encourage our community to report content that violates our Advertising Policies. People can report any ad on Facebook by clicking on the upper right-hand corner of the ad! https://t.co/AgmdMx97xT

— Rob Leathern 🛠⚙️ (@robleathern) January 30, 2018

The Twitter action is going over well with critics, many of whom have seen the company as remote and uncommunicative.

“I think it’s a great trend when tech execs in general make themselves more available, especially when it’s across a variety of platforms outside of just their own product,” said Hunter Walk, a former Google and YouTube exec who now runs venture capital firm Homebrew. “Be human, be accessible. Listen, in addition to talk. It goes a long way toward helping those outside of these companies realize that real flesh-and-blood people with good intentions are behind the decisions and products we critique.”

Any effort by Facebook to communicate with the outside world is good, and Leathern strikes a good tone, but time will tell if it leads to any action, said the person behind the anonymous Twitter account Sleeping Giants, which calls out advertising on racist and sexist websites.

“We have been asking Facebook for a year why they continue to serve their customers’ ads on Breitbart despite clear breaches of their community standards, and we have gotten no answers,” this person said. “On top of it, many of their customers who have already blocked that particular site end up showing up again, which is infuriating for them. Facebook has been lousy at communicating their plans, so we’re obviously hopeful that Rob, though social media channels, can start to be more responsive. It’s going to take a lot more than a few people on social media to change things over there, though, we suspect.”

We asked Leathern (via Twitter, of course) to respond; he referred the question to Facebook PR, which sent over this statement from its Audience Network team: “Advertisers who participate in Audience Network have control over where their ads appear. If they don’t want their ads to appear on a specific site or app, that’s their choice and they can block them. And not all disagreeable or unpopular speech violates our Community Standards or Audience Network policies. We review all publishers on the Audience Network both proactively when they sign up and reactively as they run ads through the Audience Network to make sure they are not in violation.”

Other Facebook execs are less diplomatic on Twitter. Facebook security chief Alex Stamos (27,000 Twitter followers) made news last October for his multipart tweetstorm defending Facebook against criticism of its efforts to deal with the spread of misinformation on the platform.

I appreciate Quinta’s work (especially on Rational Security) but this thread demonstrates a real gap between academics/journalists and SV. https://t.co/CWulZrFaso

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017

In November, he sparred with reporters over user safety on Facebook.

Hi, Jake. Before you pass judgment, you might be interested in reading this thread correcting some of the initial reporting. Please pay attention to the statements by the experts in this abuse and victim advocates we are working with. https://t.co/VSIC0hA5c8

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) November 12, 2017

In January, he came out swinging again, defending the tech elite from the media stereotype of them as arrogant, flagrant-spending bros.

The recent media push to paint the denizens of SV as Alien Overlords to the rest of the country has been effective, but it’s just not accurate. This service, the routers/switches carrying this tweet, the phone/OS you are holding were likely designed by boring suburbanites. https://t.co/tVrsOHvzby

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) January 9, 2018

Other Facebook execs frequently use Twitter, though less to engage with people on technology-driven issues. Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, vp of augmented reality and virtual reality at Facebook (6,000 Twitter followers), has defended Facebook’s actions during the 2016 U.S. election on Twitter but has lately used his account to promote Facebook products and critique media coverage of the company.

This is a big deal. I’m very proud of the direction we are headed here. https://t.co/vEtLB9Q0ws

— Emotional Support Boz (@boztank) January 12, 2018

Another staunch defender of the Facebook cause is Rob Goldman, vp of ads (1,500 followers).

Fb just named the best place to work by glassdoor. Proud to work at a place that lives its mission: Building community and bringing people closer together. https://t.co/4rbLyeFbjN

— Rob Goldman (@robjective) December 6, 2017

When Goldman isn’t promoting Facebook’s products, he uses his account to take shots at Apple, Snapchat and Twitter over various privacy, age-targeting and mobile payment issues. Hey, no one accused Twitter of being a place for diplomacy and nuance.

Woah. @Apple, what happened to your commitment to user privacy?
BBC News – Apple: Chinese firm to operate China iCloud accounts https://t.co/ZjOIGuuN9S

— Rob Goldman (@robjective) January 10, 2018

The post The Facebook execs who turn to Twitter for publisher charm offensive appeared first on Digiday.

In this week’s Rundown: A challenging year lies ahead for online publishers, and just how big can Amazon’s ad business really get?

Tough times for publishers
Along with Facebook referral traffic, it turns out that some publishers now can no longer rely on the fat guarantee checks many of them used to get from the leading content recommendation companies, Outbrain and Taboola. The guarantee agreements were a pain — publishers often had to run the “around the web” content recommendation widgets on every page — but they provided predictable money at a time when digital advertising and platform behavior were so reliably unreliable. The good news is, these changes will push publishers to take more control over their own sites from a user experience and revenue perspective. To do that, publishers will need skills they might not have, such as the ability to know what elements to promote at what time and in front of which users to maximize revenue. Some publishers might finally learn what their ad ops people do. — Lucia Moses

The post The Rundown: Tough times for publishers appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook wants live sports. But it also wants a ton of sports programming that can complement any live games and sporting events it broadcasts on Facebook Watch.

In the past couple of weeks, Facebook has released several sports shows with high-profile athletes and media partners. This week, Facebook Watch premiered ESPN’s “First Take: Your Take,” a thrice-weekly interactive series based off of the popular ESPN debate show, and “Von Miller’s Studio 58,” a weekly sketch-comedy show hosted by the star Denver Broncos linebacker. Last week, Facebook Watch premiered “Tom vs. Time,” a six-episode series starring Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. And a week earlier, WWE launched a new wrestling show called “Mixed Match Challenge.”

These new programs, all of which are funded by Facebook, join existing funded Facebook Watch sports shows such as the LaVar Ball-starring “Ball in the Family,” Bleacher Report’s “No Script” with Marshawn Lynch, the Bill Murray-starring “Extra Innings” and Cycle Media’s “In the Zone.”

As Facebook tries to get users to actually watch Facebook Watch shows, it’s looking at buying projects with big names attached to star or produce, according to multiple media execs that have sold shows to Facebook. In the sports world, that means working with more big-name athletes and giant media brands such as ESPN and WWE.

In working with bigger names, Facebook hopes to bring community or interactivity to the programming.

Take, for instance, ESPN’s “First Take: Your Take,” whose format seems designed for Facebook. Every week, ESPN will air three episodes of the show. On Monday’s episode, ESPN will run a traditional in-studio “First Take” segment in which co-stars Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman debate a broad sports topic. (The first week’s was on who would win the Super Bowl.) Then, viewers can upload videos of their own answers to the show’s Facebook Group, after which ESPN will put some of the best responses into a second episode that airs Wednesday. On Friday’s episode, ESPN will invite one of the uploaders to debate Smith and Kellerman directly.

“This was crafted and tailored and is being built specifically for Facebook,” said Ryan Spoon, svp of social content for ESPN, which initially plans to make “First Take: Your Take” for six months. “We had plenty of conversations and brainstorms — an open dialogue — when developing the show. We knew we wanted to go in aiming for interaction and doing something that is very fan-driven and different.”

With shows such as “Tom vs. Time,” the appeal was not only in having a high-profile name attached to the show, but the fact that Brady actively posts about his personal life on Facebook and has a huge following there, with 4.3 million followers, said a Facebook spokesperson. Brady shares new episodes of the show on his Facebook page, which increase the likelihood that people will watch and share the content. One Watch partner that’s producing a show for Facebook said that whenever a personality shares a Watch video on their own Facebook page, the average watch time increases significantly. With almost all of Watch viewership happening from the Facebook news feed, personalities sharing episodes becomes an almost invaluable resource.

Sports programming, whether it’s live games or episodic shows, tends to be social by its nature. People already go to social platforms to talk about their favorite teams and athletes — and by following these stars, get a glimpse into who they are off the field or court, said Jason Stein, CEO of Cycle Media.

Cycle’s show for Facebook Watch, “In the Zone,” was developed off this idea. The show follows different pro athletes, including New Orleans Saint Alvin Kamara and Golden State Warrior JaVale McGee, as they prepare for game day.

“‘In the Zone’ found a highly engaged audience on Facebook Watch,” said Stein. “The access and narrative arc are driving positive comments and strong watch time across the community.”

Ultimately, Facebook’s efforts to build out a sports programming library point toward the ultimate prize: live sports. Through various partnerships with sports leagues and TV broadcasters, Facebook has already started streaming live sports, including some MLB, MLS and UEFA Champions League games. It also has partnerships with CrossFit and Tough Mudder to stream their live events. Even with “Ball in the Family,” which is already in its second season, Facebook is streaming live basketball games from Lithuania featuring LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball.

And when rights deals come up for the major sports leagues in the future, Facebook is expected to be a bidder — even though it reportedly walked away from a Thursday night NFL package for this coming season. By having a deep bench of sports shows that people are watching, maybe they’ll be more likely to watch the actual games if and when Facebook airs them. (It also helps that shows such as “Ball in the Family” and “Tom vs. Time” are being recognized by people outside of digital-media circles.)

“Shoulder programming is an entry into the larger stuff,” said a Facebook Watch partner. “Facebook Watch needs some successes right now, and this is step one.”

The post Facebook courts sports stars for Watch video shows appeared first on Digiday.

Any ad tech vendor clinging to the notion that legitimate interest alone will render them compliant for the General Data Protection Regulation may need to think of a plan B — and fast.

Less than four months remain until GDPR enforcement, yet confusion remains about compliance and how the regulation will be enforced, at least in some quarters.

It appears that location-based ad tech vendors are among those in the worst pickle, with many claiming loudly that their businesses comply with the GDPR under its “legitimate interest” clause, according to sources. In doing so, they hope to skirt some of the more arduous hurdles around obtaining consumer consent for data use. While some businesses will be able to claim a legitimate interest in using people’s data without having to seek explicit permission, no ad tech vendor that relies on bid-stream data to create segments and audiences can use the legitimate-interest loophole.

But that is indeed what many are doing, according to sources. The lack of detail on how the GDPR will be enforced has lulled some into a false sense of security, which could backfire on them later.

“If a [location] ad tech vendor tells you they can use legitimate interest and they can’t explain why, they’re morons and don’t understand at all what GDPR means,” said one ad tech executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Most location vendors that rely on bid-stream data are claiming legitimate interest, with nearly none of them having grounds for doing so, the executive added.

Some agency groups have sent out RFPs for location data, and responses from location vendors have not impressed them regarding plans for making their businesses compliant with the law, according to sources. “They’re [agencies] getting high-level claims of legitimate interest but no real meat on the bones,” said the same executive. “It will likely result in agencies culling [location] vendors.”

Some third-party vendors have appeased agencies, saying they are reducing their dependence on bid-stream data. Regardless, agencies aren’t satisfied. “The feedback you get with [independent] tech providers is way too high-level,” said a senior media agency executive, who preferred to stay anonymous. “They say they’re 100 percent compliant or that they have these ‘high-level’ principles, but they don’t really answer my questions around what levers they have in place to act on the right to be forgotten, for example, or to send me all the ways they process data.”

If the vendors are important partners to this agency group, then they’ll undergo data protection impact assessments to assess whether they’re compliant, according to the same agency executive. “If they’re not important partners, we will drop them.”

To some extent, it’s understandable that some vendors are latching on to legitimate interest as a get-out-of-jail-free card: Details on how the GDPR will be enforced remain broad, leaving companies searching for loopholes. “Companies risk being wiped out partially, if not entirely, and many are fighting tooth and nail, climbing mirrors to avoid the collapse of their commercial relationships, buying time and getting some oxygen while waiting to see what will happen,” said a media executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But the core rules seemingly ignored by vendors assuming they are safe under legitimate interest are clear: A business must balance its interests against an individual’s when determining if it has a legitimate interest in using the individual’s data. Data processing must be necessary, and if other methods of achieving the same result are feasible, then legitimate interest won’t apply.

“Legitimate interest can’t protect people,” said Amir Malik, digital marketing lead at Accenture. “The permission procedure is to remove all ambiguity, and legitimate interest is rigidly defined, so can’t be used as a hack. Consent is ultimately required.”

In short, attempting to hide behind legitimate interest won’t work in the long run. Instead, vendors should be proactive in finding ways to use the GDPR as an opportunity to clean up their processes. “Rather than try to slip through the net of GDPR, the ad tech sector should rather reinvent itself, focusing its energy in developing new solutions that fulfill the need for more genuine, earned and not forced engagement with audiences, serving publishers’ and advertisers’ legitimate interest and not their own,” said Alessandro De Zanche, independent consultant and former News UK executive.

The post Ad tech vendors offer customers rosy pictures of GDPR compliance appeared first on Digiday.