Data-Labor-Technology

Facebook has a track record with publisher subsidies: They go away after a year. For the dozens of Facebook Watch publishers getting direct payments from Facebook, time has been ticking from Watch’s launch last August.

Today, most of the money that publishers can make on Watch is still through the funding Facebook provides for some of the original video shows. But as Watch partners look to create new revenue streams beyond Facebook’s subsidies and fledgling video ad breaks program, Watch has become a testing ground of sorts for publishers seeking to sell content to other platform buyers as well as marketers.

Take, for instance, Inverse’s original science explainer series “Your Brain on Blank,” which airs on Watch and YouTube. Inverse produced two shows for Watch during Facebook’s first wave of funding, but decided to develop self-fund “Your Brain on Blank,” in part to retain ownership of the intellectual property. That way, if the series managed to attract an audience, Inverse would control how it could develop new revenue streams, whether through sponsorships, custom content, licensing the show to other platforms and even merchandise, according to David Spiegel, CRO of Inverse.

The first five episodes of “Your Brain on Blank” collectively have more than 56.2 million video views on Watch. And since the show is self-funded, Inverse has been able to make money from Facebook’s mid-roll ad breaks from the minute Facebook enabled that option, instead of having to wait for Facebook to recoup production costs before being able to split ad revenue. The show is already profitable based on Inverse’s cut of the Facebook mid-roll revenue, according to Spiegel. Now, Inverse is exploring how to franchise “Your Brain on Blank” through possible licensing deals as well as merchandising and commerce options, Spiegel said.

“The easiest thing to do is to sell [a show] to a platform or a single brand, but is there more upside to self-funding a successful franchise?” said Spiegel. “We’re already in talks about merch and retail products based on this franchise because [its success has created] interest in the market.”

It’s still unclear how long Facebook will continue funding shows for Watch. So far, Facebook has committed to spending $1 billion on content through 2018. And prior to launching Watch, Facebook’s CFO David Wehner said the company’s hope was to eventually create an ecosystem where ad revenue could fund Watch programming entirely, instead of Facebook fronting production costs. By now, publishers are used to Facebook ending subsidies programs, as Facebook has shown with initiatives like Facebook Live that its direct payments are not a long-term strategy.

But even as Facebook continues to subsidize some of the productions for Watch, the platform increasingly wants to take total ownership of the shows. This means that Watch producers can only make money off of production margins on the show — as well as small, back-end percentages based on the profitability of the show in some cases.

Early Watch partners such as Attn, Business Insider and Refinery29 were able to retain ownership of their short-form programs — back then, Facebook labeled these as “spotlight” shows — with Facebook generally requesting a two-week period of exclusivity. In renewal negotiations, Facebook has asked some partners for ownership over the program, multiple sources said. This has created a dilemma for partners that now have to choose between Facebook’s short-term guaranteed money or the chance to make more down the road. (This is similar to the dilemma TV producers face when working with Netflix.)

“We haven’t made the call yet,” said one early Watch partner of whether it would take Facebook’s renewal offers, which come with the stricter ownership terms. “There are shows that we are willing to do that with, but there are others we wouldn’t.”

By opting to self-fund Watch shows, publishers have the chance to license the show to other platforms if they’re proven to be successful, said Oren Katzeff, head of programming at Tastemade, which has made more than 12 Watch shows, including six Facebook-funded ones.

“I remain bullish about monetization opportunities on Facebook, but as we think about the next phase of the Watch shows that we created on our own, we’re looking at other platforms where monetization opportunities exist,” Katzeff said.

Other options that multiple Watch partners have said they’re exploring include pitching advertisers on sponsorships that would underwrite additional seasons of already successful Watch shows or selling advertisers on entirely custom Watch shows based on the publisher’s track record on Watch.

(It’s important to note that Facebook allows sponsored shows on Watch, but it does not allow Watch partners to sell advertising for Facebook-funded shows.)

“We are now going to clients and saying that we can develop Facebook Watch programming with them — and the response has been great,” said Nicholas Carlson, chief content officer for Insider Inc. In this case, the ability to show that Insider Inc. can drive millions of views per episode on Watch programming helps, Carlson said.

By self-funding Watch shows and retaining intellectual property rights, Watch partners hope to diversify Watch revenue at a time when the Facebook mid-roll video ad breaks program isn’t breaking the bank for anyone. There’s money to be made with Facebook mid-rolls, but that typically requires a significant volume of views in order for a meaningful percentage of viewers to hit the commercial break.

“[Mid-roll ad revenue on Watch] is nice; it’s good, but it needs to get higher,” Carlson said. “I think about mid-roll similarly to the way I think about programmatic on a website: It’s one revenue stream that contributes among many revenue streams.”

Spiegel said it’s possible to be profitable on Watch — it just requires a more sensible investment approach.

“I’m not saying go in and do a seven-figure documentary, but doing a low-investment digital pilot, making it profitable, figuring out what works [on Watch] and doing that a couple more times — suddenly, it becomes a very interesting platform for us,” Spiegel said. “You can start to do the math on the return that can turn this into a business — and we see that.”

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The post Facebook Watch publishers look for revenue sources beyond Facebook’s subsidies appeared first on Digiday.

Advertisers are hungry to connect ad spend to consumer purchases, and publishers want to grow their non-advertising revenue. Meredith is trying to serve up products that address both problems.

The women-focused publisher partnered in March with eMeals, a subscription meal-planning app, where editors from Better Homes and Gardens, EatingWell and Allrecipes contribute meal plans and recipes to the app in exchange for a portion of subscription revenue. People can click to buy the ingredients in those recipes though grocery stores or delivery services.

Last fall, Meredith integrated AmazonFresh into some recipes in the meal-planning section of Allrecipes, which lets readers click to add groceries to a shopping cart. It plans to add some of these capabilities to its other lifestyle sites as well as the food titles it got through the acquisition of Time Inc.

Since Meredith added shoppable features to its food sites two years ago, commerce and shopper marketing now deliver nearly 25 percent of its food sites’ digital revenue, said Corbin de Rubertis, vp and gm of Meredith’s shopper marketing.

“Over the last year, we’ve really started to think about our content as much more solution- and utility-focused,” de Rubertis said. “We’ve started to position commerce — and making that commerce dead easy — as a fully integrated component of the content itself.”

First, Meredith made individual recipes on some of its sites commerce-enabled. Then, it started to grow the revenue from its food content by expanding individual recipes into meals and meal plans, which can dictate an entire week’s worth of food for a family.

The titles’ commitment to growing consumer revenue extends beyond Meredith’s sites. To promote the launch of eMeals, for example, Meredith used content marketing on its own sites, social promotion and full-page ads in the participating titles’ print editions.

“We’re acting against our overall strategy of trying to develop recurring revenue streams from readers,” said Andy Wilson, Meredith’s svp of consumer revenue.

Selling advertising is part of the strategy. Advertisers can sponsor the recipes themselves or run contextual ads against ingredients. The site’s editorial team chooses the ingredients in a recipe. But Bertolli, for example, could pay to become the olive oil that’s added to the cart when someone decides to buy the ingredients for eggplant parmigiana.

While customers can add different products to their cart before checkout, the initial placements tend to stick: 80 percent of the brands included in the sites’ preselected shopping lists remain through checkout, de Rubertis said.

Letting advertisers buy their way into consumers’ shopping carts gives Meredith access to advertisers’ shopper marketing budgets, which have mostly been stuck in coupons and physical media that most publishers haven’t been able to access.

To tap those budgets, Meredith in 2015 acquired Qponix, a location-specific grocery and shopping platform. In the fall of 2016, it partnered with The Trade Desk to launch a programmatic shopper marketing network.

Those systems have evolved to the point that Meredith’s titles can deliver specific audiences for marketers. “Meredith has been working on this for years,” said John Wagner, the head of published media investment at PHD. “If you want to do something as specific as a Kroger-only opportunity, they can figure that out.”

These moves are part of Meredith’s effort to show food companies that it can drive purchases. “This is changing the conversations we’re having with agencies,” de Rubertis said.

But being shoppable doesn’t solve every food advertising challenge, such as those of smaller food companies, for which getting distribution in brick-and-mortar stores is a priority. “Shoppability is such a hot word right now,” said David Tucker, the head of strategy at media agency SwellShark. “But part of why [some brands are] advertising is to expand their distribution.”

The post Why Meredith is serving up more shoppable content on its food sites appeared first on Digiday.

Future Publishing has consolidated its four music titles — Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Prog and The Blues — under one umbrella brand, Louder. The consolidation comes with a shift in business models, with Louder squarely focusing on driving ticket sales to concerts and audio equipment rather than relying on display ad revenue alone.

Future’s most healthy e-commerce title is consumer electronics site TechRadar, which makes nearly half of its revenue from e-commerce, but Julian March, Future’s managing director for games, music and entertainment, doesn’t expect Louder to reach that level.

“[TechRadar] shows the art of the possible, but music listening is a different animal,” he said, pointing to factors that play a role in driving commerce, like search referral, commission rates and basket size. “[For Louder], e-commerce will be a material revenue diversification.”

Future has so far signed up one ticketing partner to the platform, which matches keywords in content to product recommendations, in this case gig listings on content about band tour dates and new releases.

Beyond that, Louder’s editorial team will work with TechRadar and T3 on creating buyer guides for audio equipment, like speakers or headphones. In the future, Louder’s editorial team will produce more utility content, like pieces on how to find a band manager or how to get a record released, which will draw on its existing partnerships with record companies.

Future faces a familiar challenge in managing the dual revenue streams of display advertising and e-commerce: For content that is focused heavily on e-commerce, like a buyer’s guide, for example, it might turn off the display ads, particularly during busy buying periods like Black Friday, to avoid cannibalizing revenue.

“Our biggest challenge is that our magazine brands are more famous than the platform,” said March. “If we can make Louder as famous as the magazine brands, then that means growth.” Grouping the titles under Louder allows the publisher to explore new music genres the magazine titles previously couldn’t individually. For instance, it will launch a new subchannel for alternative rock. “Louder will be famous for different things,” he said, “hence the broadening of the editorial scope to allow us to cover new genres that we couldn’t on the magazines.”

Five people work on Louder, with four additional people working on each magazine brand. Since mid-January, roughly half a dozen people have worked on the design of Louder and moving the brands to Future’s publishing platform. Future has a centralized team of about a dozen people working across its e-commerce partnerships and editorial products. According to the publisher’s internal Google Analytics figures, the four music titles have a combined audience of 1.8 million unique monthly users.

Future will apply this model of grouping titles under a digital brand to its gaming and music-playing titles. In the gaming vertical, Future has seven magazine brands. Online, its gaming title is GamesRadar, which will become the umbrella brand for the other magazine titles online.

Louder plans to encourage more community interaction on its own site through more regular interactive polls and encouraging more readers to submit gig reviews. A poll on its previous site asking about the best guitar riff of all time had thousands of responses.

“These are passionate communities. We want to channel that energy of our most engaged fans,” said March. “We’re looking at how we could systematize that. Do we need new tech solutions? We’re talking about how we can do this across our verticals in the future, effectively licensing our platforms to individuals.”

The post How Future music brand Louder is pushing into commerce appeared first on Digiday.

For Mark Zuckerberg, the transition to wartime CEO has been anything but smooth.

He got roundly pilloried for his days of radio silence after the news broke that data firm Cambridge Analytica misused Facebook users’ personal data for political aims. Since then, he’s been on a whirlwind media tour where he apologized for the scandal (an apology repeated in full-page newspaper ads) and affirmed Facebook’s commitment to solving its fake news and election-meddling problems, even betraying some emotion along the way. The outlets of choice — CNN, The New York Times and Vox Media — gave him space to make his case, not just sound bites.

The key messaging:

Facebook has more work do to make the platform safe using A.I. tools and is going to lock down more user data; Facebook needs to take a broader view of its responsibilities; and he’s open to some regulation of the platform.

It’s a textbook approach to a public relations crisis, the comms pros say.

“That’s a pretty standard playbook,” Andrew Gilman, president and CEO of CommCore Consulting Group. “Meet with key audiences; have a prepared statement. He’s the face of the brand, and he came across as earnest and sincere. He didn’t get into a lot of detail. Now, we’ll see what happens next. The last thing you want to do is commit to something you may have to take back.”

Zuckerberg said the right things, but not enough for many.

My longer take on Mark Zuckerberg’s media tour yesterday. Calculated spin that sounded like he was conceding a lot, when in reality very little has changed. https://t.co/imZkwWwlU5

— Dave Lee (@DaveLeeBBC) March 22, 2018

He was composed and even welcomed regulation, but none that would have a meaningful impact on Facebook’s business, the BBC’s Dave Lee wrote.

Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor at City University of New York, has defended Facebook on some counts, but was critical of the media tour, saying Zuckerberg has been too tactical in his response to date.

“This is not just about a press tour — it’s about the company re-examining itself, and how do we prevent this from happening,” Jarvis said. “He waited too long to get out there. He’s getting out there; that’s all fine, but it’s still all reactive. Facebook has to recognize its higher social responsibility.”

Part of the problem is that until now, Facebook has bungled its PR response to its myriad crises. A quick recap: First, Zuckerberg dismissed outright the idea that political propagandists could have used Facebook to swing the election, comments he later had to walk back. Then, there were Facebook execs sounding off with tone deafness on Twitter about Facebook’s role in the election. Meanwhile, there was the excruciating period of silence from the top after the Cambridge Analytica bombshell.

The other issue hanging over Facebook is the broader backlash against tech in general; technology is increasingly seen as bad for society because it keeps people in their filter bubbles, addicts them to their devices and provides a breeding ground for trolls.

Facebook has several constituencies to persuade, from investors to users. It’s so entrenched in people’s lives that it’s hard to imagine a meaningful number of users abandoning it, which means Facebook’s advertising business is relatively safe. The press is another story, as the media, burned by Facebook’s many strategy changes and unable to compete with Facebook and its ilk, has its knives out for the platform. Facebook also has to think about its ability to recruit and retain employees who may grow disillusioned with the company with all its missteps.

And Zuckerberg is about to face a much bigger test when he appears before Congress, where he can expect to be subject to bipartisan grilling about how Facebook allowed information on millions of users to be accessed.

“A good questioner in Congress is going to be like a prosecutor,” Gilman said. “When [Zuckerberg] testifies, he will not satisfy all critics.”

The post ‘It’s still all reactive’: Rating Mark Zuckerberg’s redemption tour appeared first on Digiday.

Communications marketing agency Edelman leads the 2018 Digiday Content Marketing Awards with eight nominations total. Its “Make The Cut” campaign for Adobe is up for Best User-Generated Content, Best Brand/Influencer Collaboration and Most Effective/Measurable Campaign; its “Pumpkin Spice Latte Hatch” campaign for Starbucks is nominated for Most Original Use of Facebook, Best New Product Launch or Campaign and Best Use of Real-Time Streaming Video; the “By Air, By Land, or By Sea” campaign for the Department of Defense Warrior Games is up for Best Use of Video and Best New Product Launch or Campaign.

Content teams from Allstate, Reebok, Delta, KPMG and Cards Against Humanity are up for Content Marketing Team of the Year. In the past year, all five nominated teams have shown the potential of content marketing, from innovating around new technologies to participating in cultural discourse.

Insurance firm Allstate focused on new content initiatives, including Google Quick Answers and bringing in guest bloggers to build on existing content.

Athletic brand Reebok jumped in to the cultural conversation — rare for a consumer brand. In July, it responded to President Donald Trump’s remarks about Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, with a barbed tweet that has been shared over 40,000 times.

Party game manufacturer Cards Against Humanity also pushed back against Trump. In November, the company bought a plot of land on the U.S.-Mexico border and retained a law firm to exercise its right to eminent domain, aiming to fight Trump’s proposed border wall.

Delta Air Lines used high-quality, engaging imagery around the launch of its newest aircraft, the Airbus A350, to take people “on board” the A350 and even pre-book seats, driving revenue.

KPMG stood out in a crowded field of golf sponsors by focusing on content and social media. The tax auditing firm used rich media content such as GIFs and animations to help drive its authority around leadership in golf and engage its target clients that may consider its services.

“There was no dearth of talent in this year’s entries, and it’s thrilling to see branded content not just fizzing with innovation and creativity, but also delivering real consumer value and some phenomenal business results,” said David Moynihan, awards judge and director of digital consumer engagement at Lego.

Julia Blanter, head of content at Boxed, added: “This year’s best entries were not only innovative and engaging, but were super smart about addressing their challenges — and most importantly, putting their audience first. As content marketers, that should always be at the forefront of everything we do.”

View the complete list of winners below. Winners of this year’s content marketing awards will be announced at the Digiday Content Marketing Awards gala on May 9 at Sony Hall in New York City. Tickets to the gala are available for purchase here.

Content Marketer of the Year
Ann D’Adamo, director of content, Women’s Marketing
John Dillon, CMO, Denny’s
Jeremy Elias, creative director, Atlantic Re:think
Kurt A. Kane, chief concept and marketing officer, Wendy’s
Claire Daugherty, growth marketing manager, Uber

Content Marketing Team of the Year
Allstate – Allstate digital content team
Reebok – Reebok newsroom
Intersport – KPMG sports marketing social media team
Delta Air Lines
Cards Against Humanity – “Cards Against Humanity Saves America”

Best Content Marketing Agency of the Year
Imprint
Redbird
Portal A

Atlantic 57
Collectively

Best Agency/Client Collaboration
Kovert Creative and Howler Media – “The Soccer Ball Phone”

DEG – Beauty Brands Liter Sale Campaign

AT&T Business – Solutions Pillars Content Campaign
MassMutual and Giant Spoon – “The Unsung”

Rogers & Cowan – “Dear Basketball”

Best Brand/Influencer Collaboration
Bark Bark and Orbitz – “It’s A Great Big World”
Viacom Velocity and BeatsX – “BeatsX In Action”
Digital Media Management and DreamWorks – “Spirit Riding Free”

Periscope and Trolli – “Most Valuable Beard” series
Edelman & Adobe – Make The Cut

Best Experiential Marketing Campaign
Lost Angels – “The Mission”
23 Stories – Teen Vogue Summit
Refinery29 – 29Rooms 2017
Giant Spoon – “Blade Runner 2049” Comic-Con Experience
The Macallan and M Booth – The Macallan 12 AR Experience

Best New Product or Launch Campaign
Weber Shandwick and M&M’s – Caramel launch

DEG – Dri Duck launch social campaign
Edelman and the Department of Defense Warrior Games – “By Air, By Land, or By Sea”

Periscope and Trolli – “Weirdly Woven”
Edelman and Starbucks – “Pumpkin Spice Latte Hatch”

Best Use of Native Advertising/Sponsored Content
Bustle Digital Group and Luna Bar – “Let’s Fix Things”
23 Stories and Bank of America – “The Joy Index”
Hearst Magazines Digital Media and Fitbit – “The Adventurist”
Havas Sports & Entertainment, Havas Media, Elle and Prada – “The Job Interview”

CNN Courageous Studio and Volvo – “Racing the Sun”

Best Brand Publication – Print and/or Digital
Meredith Xcelerated Marketing – WebMD Magazine 2017
MM.LaFleur – The M Dash
Delta Sky magazine

The Players’ Tribune
Reebok Blog

Best Branded Content Site – B2B
Situation Publishing – The Register
Dell Inc. – Perspectives
IBM Originals – Reinventing the Network
AT&T Business and WP BrandStudio – Connected Commerce
Intel and Variety Content Studio – Unleashing Creativity in Entertainment

Best Branded Content Site – B2C
iQiyi and McDonald’s China – Rising: The Rap of China
Newell Brands – elmers.com
Alkemy SpA – he110, this is Inter
Honda, RPA and Amobee – Honda Odyssey
Amazon and Acura – This Is What We Make

Best Branded Content Series
Invisalign Brand – “Made to Move”
AwesomenessTV and Gatorade – “Versus Aims to Keep Girls in the Game”

WSJ. Custom Studios, National Geographic and Star Alliance – #StarAlliance20
CNN Courageous Studio – “Return to Catalunya”
Muh-tay-zik Hof-fer and Audi – “Think Faster: The World’s Fastest AMA”

Most Original Email Campaign
Outsell and DSplus – 2018 Toyota C-HR launch campaign
DEG – Nikon Birthday Email Journey
Merkle Inc. and Perrier – Flavors Journey

Most Original Use of Facebook
Coty Inc. and Calvin Klein – Obsessed E-Sampling
Merkle Inc. – ReadyRefresh Weather Social
Oxygen Network – The Pursuit
Edelman and Starbucks – “Pumpkin Spice Latte Hatch”
Fullscreen and Turner – “The Alienist”

Most Original Use of Twitter
RT – #1917LIVE
NASCAR – #NASCARPlayoffs
Viacom Media Networks and Taco Bell – Best New Artist Twitter voting bot

Best Use of Instagram
Coty Inc. and Calvin Klein – Obsessed E-Sampling
Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media – Club Mickey Mouse
Ruder Finn and Subway – #SubYAY campaign

Sony Electronics – “Alpha Universe”
Paramount Pictures and Fullscreen – “mother!” marketing campaign

Best Use of Snapchat
Movement and Fanta – “Taking Over Halloween”

Viacom Velocity – “2 Truths & a Lie with the Justice League”
Awesomeness TV – “Freakish” Snapchat lens

Marriott International – “Six Days, Seven Nights”

TEN + TEC – Conan and Pepsi Turn Up The Heat

Best Use of Real-Time Streaming Video
Viacom Velocity International – 2017 Isle of MTV
Sweety High and Musical.ly – “After the Bell” and VidCon Livestream Rock partnership
Havas Media – Veuve Clicquot 10th Anniversary Polo Classic
Muh-tay-zik Hof-fer and Audi – “Think Faster: The World’s Fastest AMA”
Edelman and Starbucks – “Pumpkin Spice Latte Hatch”

Best User-Generated Content
Wattpad, Tongal and Lionsgate – #WonderTheMovie campaign

Newell Brands – Sharpie.com
Viacom Media Networks and Rimmel London – #ANTMLook
OneTeam and Citi/AAdvantage – 30 Years of Wow
Edelman and Adobe – Make The Cut

Best Use of Video
Kovert Creative and Method – “Fight Dirty”

Havas Media, Arena Media and 1800 Tequila – “The Refined Players”
Viacom Velocity – “The Big Sick: Life in the Laugh Lane”

Edelman and the Department of Defense Warrior Games – “By Air, By Land, or By Sea”
Havas Media Group – “Imagine Dubai”

Most Influential Brand Community
Aaptiv – Facebook community
The Players’ Tribune
Beck Media & Marketing and National Geographic – “Chasing Genius”
OneTeam and Citi – “No Kid Hungry”
DeVries Global and Sephora – Sephora Beauty Insider Community

Most Innovative Use of Content
iQiyi and McDonald’s China – Rising: The Rap of China
Expedia Media Solutions and VisitBritain – “The Only Place You Need To Go”

Kovert Creative and Method – “Fight Dirty”
The Economist Group and HPE – “Yeasayers”
CNN Courageous Studio and Volvo – “Racing the Sun”

Best In-House Content/Brand Studio
23 Stories
24sata – 24sata Native Studio

CNN Courageous Studio
Refinery29
Sephora LA Content Studio

Most Effective/Measurable Campaign
BBC StoryWorks and Huawei – “The Explorers”
Cadreon and BMW – “The Ultimate Data Machine”
Edelman and Adobe – “Make The Cut”
Madwell and New York Road Runners – “It Will Move You”

Cards Against Humanity – “Cards Against Humanity Saves America”

Best Interactive Content Piece or Series
Group Nine Media – NowThis and Samsung Gear VR

IBM Originals – “Deconstructing the Future: IoT in the Industrial Age”
The Economist Group and HPE – “Yeasayers”
Giant Spoon, Spotify and Netflix – “Stranger Things” Spotify playlists
The Macallan and M Booth – The Macallan 12 AR Experience

Best Content Marketing Tech Platform
LeadDog Marketing Group – opendorse
Pressboard
Fooji – “The X-Files UFO Deliveries”
inPowered and Mazda – inPowered Content Amplification Platform
MediaCom and Dell Inc. – “Down To Earth”

Best Branded Podcast
Response Marketing & McAfee – “Hackable?”
Havas Sports & Entertainment and TNT – “The Alienist” podcast takeover
NASCAR – “Glass Case of Emotion”
Atlantic Re:think and Fidelity Investments – “The Future According to Now”
Dell Inc. – “Perspectives”

The post Edelman leads the Digiday Content Marketing Awards with 8 nominations appeared first on Digiday.

In our series “Life After Advertising,” we share the stories of past advertisers who endured the long hours in the industry and have emerged in a new career, perhaps a little worn, but mostly unscathed and living new dreams.

Rob Strasberg, 49, spent 25 years in advertising, including 10 years as a creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky working on brands like Volkswagen and Mini, plus nine years at Detroit-based Doner, where he rose to chief creative officer and co-CEO.

But in January 2017, Strasberg left advertising to run a nonprofit with his wife, Treger. Humble Design furnishes homes for people who are transitioning out of homeless shelters. Digiday spoke with Strasberg about departing the advertising industry and how Humble Design started.

Why did you decide to leave advertising?
In advertising, there is a small portion of opportunities where you really feel like you are changing the world. I was fortunate in my career that I was able to work on campaigns that gave you that sense, but I wanted to feel that on a day-to-day basis. Also, I’ve worked on other people’s companies for so long, it’s exciting to get behind your own company and see where it can go.

How did Humble Design come about?
It was 2009 when my wife and I first moved to Detroit for the Doner job. My wife started volunteering at a nonprofit, where she became friends with a homeless woman. My wife helped her find a home and then went around the community asking for furniture to furnish her house. People kept bringing stuff over to the house even after the house was done, so she decided to help someone else. Every three months, we would fill up our garage and do another haul. At the end of the year, the word got out that someone was doing this, and the waiting list at the shelters was 100 families long.

What happened next?
Instead of giving our money to a bunch of charities, we decided to invest ourselves. We got a warehouse, hired some employees and tried to figure out a sustainable business model. Today, Humble Design has helped 900 families furnish their homes, and the original headquarters in Detroit is helping three families a week.

What are your plans for Humble Design?
We are building a national management team to thoughtfully and responsibly manage expansion. The goal is really to make it a brand name. We would be the Habitat for Humanity of donated furniture and household goods. We opened a Chicago office in March of 2017 with CB2’s help and last month opened a Seattle office with the help of Microsoft and the Schultz Family Foundation. We plan on opening a second location in the Detroit area, and we are close to opening one in San Diego.

How do you apply your advertising background to Humble Design?
It helps to have the skill of working with national brands. What we do is have brands come down to deco days, when the families get to see their homes fully furnished. We charge for that, and create videos and content for them so they can show their authentic side. We’ve worked with local brands and national brands like Bank of America, Ford and U-Haul.

What do you miss the most about advertising?
I miss the creative spark. I used to call it the “home run walk,” the sense that you have come up with an original idea that fits the strategy and is going to be exciting to present to the client.

What don’t you miss about advertising?
When you’re leading an agency, you want everything to go perfectly. You want to win all the accounts, and you want everyone’s careers to flourish. Unfortunately, advertising is a roller coaster and people who are talented don’t always continue on the journey. I don’t miss the pain that comes with being a leader. At Humble Design, I don’t have to deal with that.

The post Life After Advertising: From chief creative officer to nonprofit leader appeared first on Digiday.

It’s common for marketers to talk up their willingness to pay more for the context and quality of ads now that chasing the cheapest media impressions is seen as a major faux pas in a transparency-obsessed industry. To balance the quality and price of media, marketers are reconsidering how they buy cheaper inventory with quality KPIs that are tied to business goals.

Here is the state of the pivot to quality in advertising, in five charts.

Anyone can buy programmatic on cost, but few understand its value
Marketers are focused more than ever on fees levied in the media supply chain. It was only when Duracell understood how much it was spending on hidden fees that it was able to decide what constitutes a fair take rate. Getting that clarity, however, is still a long way off for most brands. Of the $63.4 billion (£45.1 billion) brands spent on programmatic in 2017, as little as 27 percent or $17.8 billion (£12.7 billion) made it to the working media level, according to a Warc report.

Marketers aren’t measuring what matters to their business
It’s generally agreed in advertising circles that chasing a low cost per click without considering the quality of clicks and subsequent action is as destructive as it is self-defeating. Yet clicks are still deemed a key indicator of ad success, per a study of over 200 senior marketers from Infectious Media. Some 56 percent of advertisers cited number of clicks as the most important metric, followed by cost per click (45 percent) and click-through rate (43 percent). This is despite the fact that click data is often distorted by fraud and has been proven to be an extremely flawed metric for predicting a sale.

There are signs that advertisers are finally trying to address the issue. Most of those surveyed (53 percent) are in the process of changing their approach to display measurement, while 44 percent are open to the idea of changing, per Infectious Media. The challenge those businesses face, however, is that the ad industry has grown used to the lack of sophisticated measurement on offer. More than half (56 percent) of the respondents said resistance from their agencies is the greatest challenge to changing the way they measure display, according to the report.

Stricter viewability standards could be on the way
The majority of global advertisers believe that 50 percent of a display ad in view for at least a second is not a viewable impression even if it is the global standard for viewability. Philippe Dominois, founder at media performance consultancy Abintus Consulting, expressed the apathy of many advertisers toward existing viewability standards: “If the ad hasn’t been seen — and we need to be clear how we define a viewed impression — then the advertisers should not pay anything. At the moment, most of them do.”

The viewability gap between online media and other mediums is too big. When comparing results for the first half of 2017 — the latest period for which data is available — to those from the same period in 2016, a report from the World Federation of Advertisers found marginal improvement (0.6 percent) in performance for display across 20 of the biggest ad markets for both desktop and mobile viewability. Average display viewability was highest in Sweden (52 percent) and worst in Russia (32 percent). Those numbers do not include Facebook or Google data.

Advertisers want greater transparency, not just about their inventory, but also data
Data ownership has become a touchy subject in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. But it was already a delicate one among advertisers trying to make better use of data in a supply chain they’re trying to understand. More advertisers like Pernod Ricard are asking how accurate the data they’re being sold is and how their partners can validate quality continuously. Around half of marketers in the U.S. feel confident enough in their data to integrate it across their ad tech stacks, according to a January survey from Ascend2 of 223 marketing professionals. Four in 10 (43 percent), however, are merely talking about integrating data.

Mastering analytics is key to proving the value of media buys
As widely accepted as data’s importance to advertising is, the reality is many marketers struggle to make sense of how they use it. Marketers spend 5.8 percent of their budgets on marketing analytics, but that outlay is expected to rise to 17.3 percent over the next three years, per February’s CMO Survey of 362 marketers in the U.S. As spend on marketing analytics rises, so too will companies’ reliance on those insights to make decisions. The number of companies using those analytics to inform business decisions has risen from 30 percent of the time to 42 percent in the past five years, with business-to-consumer marketers using analytics 55 percent of the time.

“Chasing the cheapest impression is not necessarily making the most of media money,” said Lucy Cunningham, head of mobile and display at digital agency Roast. “It could be that it’s three or four times more valuable to send an impression to the right audience rather than any audience.”

The post The state of programmatic advertising, in 5 charts appeared first on Digiday.

Direct-to-consumer brands are now popping up within designer brands.

Brands like Milly, Comme des Garcons and Theory are designing in-house offshoots of their main collections that have all the makings of the digitally native, direct-to-consumer brands that have flooded the market. The lines are sold through the brands’ direct channels (as either online exclusives or both in stores and online) and not wholesale partners; they’re designed with a trendier, millennial customer in mind; and they don’t abide by the traditional fashion calendar. Instead, they follow the streetwear-inspired drop model of monthly or regular seasonless collections.

Milly’s direct-to-consumer line will launch this spring only in Milly stores and online, with lower prices, shorter production cycles and trendier designs, to be released more often throughout the year, outside of the regular fashion calendar. The goal is to push growth past a steady rate of 15 percent annually, get a foot in the door with younger customers, and take back control of the majority of sales: The brand is aiming to have 60 percent of its sales come from its direct retail channels, and 40 percent come from wholesale. A direct-to-consumer collection not found in department stores could help. Milly also wants to own the entirety of the data they can collect from a valuable demographic.

“We want to keep people hungry for what’s next,” said Milly CEO Andy Oshrin. “About 24 percent of our business right now is from millennial customers. We know they’re interested, and this could be an even bigger entry point to the brand. Selling directly to them at lower prices could be an enormous blessing for the business.”

Theory 2.0, designed, marketed and merchandised in-house by a group of younger Theory employees across departments, is a similar play for more direct sales driven from a younger customer base. While there’s little information about Comme des Garcons’ upcoming new brand, CEO Adrian Joffe said that it would be sold online-only through the brand’s e-commerce site.

“Direct-to-consumer is one of the most important trends in retail, whether it’s through brick-and-mortar or e-commerce,” said Jane Hali, CEO of retail analyst firm Jane Hali & Associates. “It gives brands more control of their branding and shopping experience.”

Co-opting a saturated model — the direct-to-consumer apparel space bubble itself is ripe for bursting — feels like a late attempt to maintain relevance by following the customer to where they already are. But for luxury and contemporary luxury brands, the new spin they add to the direct-to-consumer model is an element of design prestige that can often be missing from startup brands.

“The word ‘luxury’ is abused; a lot of people use the word luxury and are not luxury. We see that word a lot. They all say the same thing: Luxury quality without the luxury prices,” said Tamara Mellon, the founder of her namesake, direct-to-consumer footwear brand and Jimmy Choo. “It’s hard for a customer to tell the difference.”

One brand CEO who asked to remain anonymous said that direct-to-consumer fashion brands are most often led by business entrepreneurs, not professional designers. People still buy into and shop designer-led brands, but the way they shop has changed, said the CEO, and combining the designer aesthetic and brand recognition with the updated business models of direct-to-consumer brands could help otherwise traditional brands modernize.

Of course, pulling out of wholesale entirely and converting the entire company to direct-to-consumer is an option. But it’s not easy to pull off.

After selling her share of Jimmy Choo in 2011, Mellon launched her first collection, working with wholesale partners. But she soon felt frustration around the seasonal collection limitations, which felt out of sync with customers and the stores’ inability to properly relay a brand story.

“I was lucky enough as a small brand to be able to pull out of all of my wholesale accounts and start over direct, on my own terms,” Mellon said. “If I still owned Jimmy Choo, I don’t know what I would do. I had hundreds of millions of dollars in wholesale. You can’t just pull that out and switch. You’re really stuck.”

Brands like Thakoon, which went bankrupt in 2016 after a direct-to-consumer shift, have been burned for trying. Others, like Public School, have adopted a direct-to-consumer strategy to try to recorrect their businesses. Oshrin said that, at Milly, there’s still a value in wholesale, especially as department stores work to update their experience. He added that not only does selling in stores like Neiman Marcus still create a brand halo for a business, but that revenue from wholesale supports other initiatives, like the direct-to-consumer line.

“We just want to have more control,” said Oshrin.

The post Designer brands are joining the direct-to-consumer fray appeared first on Digiday.

A blog post by Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer on Wednesday detailed restrictions on data access for a number of its APIs, including events, groups and pages. Read it. (The blog also revealed in that post that Cambridge Analytica had harvested 87 million profiles, rather than 50 million, as was originally widely reported.) Developer… Continue reading »

The post Zuck Speaks: Facebook Restricts API Data Access And Shares Updates On User Privacy Efforts appeared first on AdExchanger.

It’ll be a “multiyear effort” to fix Facebook’s security and content issues, according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Speaking during a press call this afternoon, Zuckerberg once again took responsibility for the policies that led to as many as 87 million users having their data improperly used by the British data firm Cambridge Analytica. On…