There’s been some negative buzz in recent months around publishers’ shift to distributed content–and particularly, video ad spending on Facebook. Numerous articles, citing anonymous sources and utilizing mysterious methodology, point to monetization woes, shrinking returns and writer layoffs. But is that the full story? Is it a problem with the platforms? Are Google and Facebook…
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Digital advertising’s true impact on in-store sales
Digital advertising’s true impact on in-store sales
Digital advertising’s true impact on in-store sales
CNBC eyes monetization after its voice audience doubled this year
Publishers have been enthusiastic about voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant this year, often undaunted by the fact that these platforms require bespoke content, and the route to monetization is still unclear. After promising levels of its audience returned each week to use its Alexa skill, CNBC’s global ad sales team will start selling audio sponsorship packages to advertisers in the next few months.
The company said its voice audience across Amazon and Google (on which CNBC launched in the U.S. in May) has doubled since January, though the company declined to share absolute numbers. When people interact with skills they are loyal: CNBC said audio audiences are the second most loyal behind those on its iOS and Android app. For the most part, CNBC reaches existing audiences through voice assistant devices, offering them audio content in a more useful way.
CNBC has created content for Alexa-powered devices in the U.S. since November 2016. In December, CNBC International launched an Alexa flash briefing so audiences in Europe and Asia can get region-specific updates on financial news. CNBC International’s digital team of eight people located in its London and Singapore offices are creating this device-specific content. The CNBC International Alexa skill, which audiences can use to ask for stock quotes from outside of the U.S., will launch in January.
Of course, much of this growth is due to more people owning devices, said Deep Bagchee, svp of product and technology at CNBC. Reports from Strategy Analytics found there are 24 million smart speakers globally, while forecasts from consulting firm Activate suggest smart-speaker ownership will peak at 41 million devices in the U.S. in 2019, when people will be able to access voice assistants through many other consumer products besides speakers.
“The platform is new and nascent; we want to monitor and judge how they grow,” said Bagchee. “Right now, it’s about experimentation, getting on the platform, how the features perform, how much people are consuming and what is resonating.”
With its six-person emerging platforms team dedicated to integrating CNBC’s content into new places that works closely with editorial, which produces content for the platforms, CNBC has expanded the content on audio assistant devices to offer four additional flash briefings focused on specific areas: CNBC Markets Now, CNBC Tech Check, Mad Money Cramer Remix and Mad Money Lightning Round. CNBC also creates video content for the Amazon Echo Show, some of which is produced specifically for the device. To gauge success, CNBC measures the growth of the total audience, how often people return each week and how many times CNBC’s skill is unable to answer queries. Bagchee said offering fewer features but ensuring they deliver on the user experience is the key concern.
The problem for all skills on Alexa and other audio assistants is making people aware of them. In October, Activate said more than 25,000 possible skills are available, and 65 percent of U.S. Alexa users have not yet enabled a third-party skill. CNBC has experienced this problem firsthand: As part of its ongoing audience research, when asking people what feature they would find most useful from its skill, people requested stock prices, without realizing that CNBC offers those already.
“The broader issue is around platforms educating users about skills,” Bagchee said. “Platforms need to create more awareness.” One way to address this would be for Google or Amazon to defer to a third-party skill if they don’t know the answer to a query, but how the platforms would choose or charge for this raises questions.
For next year, the goal for CNBC is more audience growth by promoting its voice assistant offering through CNBC’s other channels and creating a sustainable revenue model without compromising the user experience.
“This first year has validated the experience. We had to make sure the audience is there, and the user experience is good,” Bagchee said. “There is demand out there with finance advertisers who want to reach the audience in the tech space. Scale will be important [for advertisers], but the platform is so new there is still value in brands being associated with investing first, by crafting the right ad and user experience. We don’t want it to be audio billboard full of ads.”
CNBC eyes monetization after its voice audience doubled this year
Publishers have been enthusiastic about voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant this year, often undaunted by the fact that these platforms require bespoke content, and the route to monetization is still unclear. After promising levels of its audience returned each week to use its Alexa skill, CNBC’s global ad sales team will start selling audio sponsorship packages to advertisers in the next few months.
The company said its voice audience across Amazon and Google (on which CNBC launched in the U.S. in May) has doubled since January, though the company declined to share absolute numbers. When people interact with skills they are loyal: CNBC said audio audiences are the second most loyal behind those on its iOS and Android app. For the most part, CNBC reaches existing audiences through voice assistant devices, offering them audio content in a more useful way.
CNBC has created content for Alexa-powered devices in the U.S. since November 2016. In December, CNBC International launched an Alexa flash briefing so audiences in Europe and Asia can get region-specific updates on financial news. CNBC International’s digital team of eight people located in its London and Singapore offices are creating this device-specific content. The CNBC International Alexa skill, which audiences can use to ask for stock quotes from outside of the U.S., will launch in January.
Of course, much of this growth is due to more people owning devices, said Deep Bagchee, svp of product and technology at CNBC. Reports from Strategy Analytics found there are 24 million smart speakers globally, while forecasts from consulting firm Activate suggest smart-speaker ownership will peak at 41 million devices in the U.S. in 2019, when people will be able to access voice assistants through many other consumer products besides speakers.
“The platform is new and nascent; we want to monitor and judge how they grow,” said Bagchee. “Right now, it’s about experimentation, getting on the platform, how the features perform, how much people are consuming and what is resonating.”
With its six-person emerging platforms team dedicated to integrating CNBC’s content into new places that works closely with editorial, which produces content for the platforms, CNBC has expanded the content on audio assistant devices to offer four additional flash briefings focused on specific areas: CNBC Markets Now, CNBC Tech Check, Mad Money Cramer Remix and Mad Money Lightning Round. CNBC also creates video content for the Amazon Echo Show, some of which is produced specifically for the device. To gauge success, CNBC measures the growth of the total audience, how often people return each week and how many times CNBC’s skill is unable to answer queries. Bagchee said offering fewer features but ensuring they deliver on the user experience is the key concern.
The problem for all skills on Alexa and other audio assistants is making people aware of them. In October, Activate said more than 25,000 possible skills are available, and 65 percent of U.S. Alexa users have not yet enabled a third-party skill. CNBC has experienced this problem firsthand: As part of its ongoing audience research, when asking people what feature they would find most useful from its skill, people requested stock prices, without realizing that CNBC offers those already.
“The broader issue is around platforms educating users about skills,” Bagchee said. “Platforms need to create more awareness.” One way to address this would be for Google or Amazon to defer to a third-party skill if they don’t know the answer to a query, but how the platforms would choose or charge for this raises questions.
For next year, the goal for CNBC is more audience growth by promoting its voice assistant offering through CNBC’s other channels and creating a sustainable revenue model without compromising the user experience.
“This first year has validated the experience. We had to make sure the audience is there, and the user experience is good,” Bagchee said. “There is demand out there with finance advertisers who want to reach the audience in the tech space. Scale will be important [for advertisers], but the platform is so new there is still value in brands being associated with investing first, by crafting the right ad and user experience. We don’t want it to be audio billboard full of ads.”
Movie theater companies plan to use brand-safety concerns to sell ads
The loss of confidence in online media could be the cinema industry’s gain.
At least that’s the hope of Digital Cinema Media, which sells ad placements at movie theaters to brands. Like publishers and broadcasters tried to do before it, DCM sees advertising’s transparency crisis as a chance to take some power back from online media.
The media owner launched its creative division earlier this month at the height of the latest brand-safety crisis, using the timing to position cinema as a safe haven of sorts compared to the disorder in online media, per The Drum. Advertisers are realizing that digital media “isn’t the be-all and end-all,” said Jeremy Kolesar, creative business director at DCM, pointing to a 10 percent year-over-year increase in the number of brands DCM worked with in 2017.
Cinema seems to be winning new advertisers. Ad spend on cinema rose 8.4 percent to £258 million ($345 million) in the U.K. in 2016, according to the Advertising Association and Warc, which predicts that figure to swell 12.6 percent to around £290.5 million ($389 million) in 2017. Growth is expected to slow in 2018, however.
To ease the slowdown, DCM must move closer to marketers. The creative studio’s mandate is to get DCM in front of ad agencies rather than media agencies in order to secure larger projects that aren’t necessarily adaptations of the TV spots it had become accustomed to producing in the past. “We’re moving from a relationship with media agencies where the briefing into our creative team can be as little as a 48-hour turnaround to a relationship with the creative agency and the client that could stretch over five months,” Kolesar said. “The creative agencies are more involved at 12 to 18 months, which means we’re able to talk about our media in a slightly different way.”
That revised pitch is split into four areas: technology, film content, film partnerships and content production. Cosmetics giant Max Factor bought into the idea early and launched in October a long-term partnership with boutique cinema chains Curzon, Everyman and Picturehouse Cinemas. Ending next June, the partnership involves the brand creating one ad each for four films due out over the next nine months, which started with “Murder on the Orient Express” in October. While media agency Zenith brokered the deal, Max Factor’s ad agency Adam&eveDDB worked with DCM’s team on the campaign.
The campaign is the largest of a handful that DCM’s studio has worked on to date, and there are “three or four biggish” ones on the horizon, revealed Kolesar. “By having that longer lead time to work on campaigns, it’s changing the way we talk about our media,” he said. “Because we know the film slate for the next 18 months to five years, we can start to talk to brands about building strategies around certain releases.”
But the studio won’t just be creating slick ads for upcoming releases or repurposing behind-the-scenes footage. It is also exploring how social listening could support campaigns. Kolesar would not go into specifics so early into the test, though he has already seen a “couple of companies that can offer the technology.”
With the latest films becoming a mainstay of social chatter these days, DCM’s top creative is keen to see how some of those conversations can be brought into its projects. Kolesar said that could range from using social listening to understand how cinemagoers use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to decide what films they see or targeting ads to certain theaters so people see comments about the movie they just watched.
Moving forward, DCM plans to increase its head count. Kolesar is the studio’s main employee, while around five other creatives across the wider organization are pulled into projects as needed. The studio’s size, combined with its new approach, means it will act more like a consultant — in theory. It has a network of production studios such as Recipe, which will take on the additional work.
Despite his admission that the transparency crisis is an opportunity, Kolesar doesn’t believe advertisers will suddenly start putting their digital spend into cinema. It’s more about winning larger briefs as a result of being closer to how the broader campaigns are conceived, he added. Kolesar said he doesn’t know “what other media are losing out” as a result of the greater spend coming into cinema, adding: “More advertisers are willing to put more money into cinema because they’re seeing that it’s working.”
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Movie theater companies plan to use brand-safety concerns to sell ads
The loss of confidence in online media could be the cinema industry’s gain.
At least that’s the hope of Digital Cinema Media, which sells ad placements at movie theaters to brands. Like publishers and broadcasters tried to do before it, DCM sees advertising’s transparency crisis as a chance to take some power back from online media.
The media owner launched its creative division earlier this month at the height of the latest brand-safety crisis, using the timing to position cinema as a safe haven of sorts compared to the disorder in online media, per The Drum. Advertisers are realizing that digital media “isn’t the be-all and end-all,” said Jeremy Kolesar, creative business director at DCM, pointing to a 10 percent year-over-year increase in the number of brands DCM worked with in 2017.
Cinema seems to be winning new advertisers. Ad spend on cinema rose 8.4 percent to £258 million ($345 million) in the U.K. in 2016, according to the Advertising Association and Warc, which predicts that figure to swell 12.6 percent to around £290.5 million ($389 million) in 2017. Growth is expected to slow in 2018, however.
To ease the slowdown, DCM must move closer to marketers. The creative studio’s mandate is to get DCM in front of ad agencies rather than media agencies in order to secure larger projects that aren’t necessarily adaptations of the TV spots it had become accustomed to producing in the past. “We’re moving from a relationship with media agencies where the briefing into our creative team can be as little as a 48-hour turnaround to a relationship with the creative agency and the client that could stretch over five months,” Kolesar said. “The creative agencies are more involved at 12 to 18 months, which means we’re able to talk about our media in a slightly different way.”
That revised pitch is split into four areas: technology, film content, film partnerships and content production. Cosmetics giant Max Factor bought into the idea early and launched in October a long-term partnership with boutique cinema chains Curzon, Everyman and Picturehouse Cinemas. Ending next June, the partnership involves the brand creating one ad each for four films due out over the next nine months, which started with “Murder on the Orient Express” in October. While media agency Zenith brokered the deal, Max Factor’s ad agency Adam&eveDDB worked with DCM’s team on the campaign.
The campaign is the largest of a handful that DCM’s studio has worked on to date, and there are “three or four biggish” ones on the horizon, revealed Kolesar. “By having that longer lead time to work on campaigns, it’s changing the way we talk about our media,” he said. “Because we know the film slate for the next 18 months to five years, we can start to talk to brands about building strategies around certain releases.”
But the studio won’t just be creating slick ads for upcoming releases or repurposing behind-the-scenes footage. It is also exploring how social listening could support campaigns. Kolesar would not go into specifics so early into the test, though he has already seen a “couple of companies that can offer the technology.”
With the latest films becoming a mainstay of social chatter these days, DCM’s top creative is keen to see how some of those conversations can be brought into its projects. Kolesar said that could range from using social listening to understand how cinemagoers use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to decide what films they see or targeting ads to certain theaters so people see comments about the movie they just watched.
Moving forward, DCM plans to increase its head count. Kolesar is the studio’s main employee, while around five other creatives across the wider organization are pulled into projects as needed. The studio’s size, combined with its new approach, means it will act more like a consultant — in theory. It has a network of production studios such as Recipe, which will take on the additional work.
Despite his admission that the transparency crisis is an opportunity, Kolesar doesn’t believe advertisers will suddenly start putting their digital spend into cinema. It’s more about winning larger briefs as a result of being closer to how the broader campaigns are conceived, he added. Kolesar said he doesn’t know “what other media are losing out” as a result of the greater spend coming into cinema, adding: “More advertisers are willing to put more money into cinema because they’re seeing that it’s working.”
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Isobar’s Jean Lin on marketing in China: ‘The speed of evolution is tremendous’
Jean Lin, global CEO of digital marketing shop Isobar, manages more than 5,500 people across over 45 markets. While many holding group agency CEOs are based in advertising hotbeds of New York and London, Lin has run Isobar from its Shanghai office.
Lin spoke with Digiday about the Chinese advertising landscape, the role of consultancies and how her team works with Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (known as the BAT). Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Why manage Isobar from Shanghai?
I come from the region, but I also see a lot of evolution from [the] Asia-Pacific [region] in general. A chart from the World Economic Forum listed the top 15 global cities that would contribute to global GDP [gross domestic product] by 2030. Nine are from China, along with Tokyo and Jakarta [in Indonesia], which says a lot. It’s clear that lots of dynamics are taking place in APAC, especially with the digital economy. I want to stay close to the market, and I think the world needs a more balanced view.
What examples of evolution do you see?
The speed of evolution in APAC is tremendous and amazing. A few months ago we partnered with Alibaba to improve KFC’s dining and checkout experiences with cashless payments. In China, I never bring my wallet because the only thing I need is my mobile phone and my WeChat. Most stores are WeChat-enabled or Alipay-enabled. That evolution has changed people’s lives and has an impact on retail and financial services.
What are hot topics for advertisers in China?
Everyone talks about “O2O,” which means online to offline, or “OMO,” which means online merges with offline. That requires the understanding of a complex infrastructure in China in terms of different industry sectors, how the trade middlemen work, and how to enhance brands’ logistics and design brand experiences.
The key is the convenience of mobile apps and how people are used to calling in services on mobile. For instance, delivery services in China are happening at an amazing speed. My colleague was trying to arrange a grocery delivery to her home yesterday, and the company would make the delivery in 15 minutes. In China, brands think about how they can speed up the delivery of their services, from brand inspiration to transactions.
Is marketing easier in China than the U.S. because of the BAT?
Not at all. A lot of traditional channels are still working, and they are really important, so there is more than the BAT. Meanwhile, there are lots of new offerings in automotive and financial services segments. You can’t just work with the BAT to reach over 1.3 billion people in China, although the BAT is very important. We look at the BAT’s respective strengths and form a different partnership with each company.
How so?
One clear strength of Baidu is its artificial intelligence development, which is understandable because Baidu has been big in search. We have also worked with Baidu on a lot of voice recognition projects. There are more than 30 different dialects in China, so if a brand is trying to make its customer feel at home, the brand needs to talk to them in their home tongue. We co-designed a robotic ordering device with Baidu for KFC called Dumi that can recognize over 30 accents from all provinces in China.
How about Alibaba and Tencent?
We work with Alibaba on connecting online and offline. We’ve helped clients improve in-store experiences and online promotions around Singles Day, for instance. Alibaba also gets more involved in the physical space, so we’ve also tested many technologies with Alibaba for offline stores.
We have partnerships with Tencent that help us do better targeting. In last year’s campaign for [culinary provider] Unilever Food Solutions around Chinese New Year, we only targeted chefs, as they [had to work at restaurants during the holidays] and thus couldn’t go back home during Spring Festival for a family reunion. Tencent’s data allowed us to do that.
You started Wwwins Consulting in 1999, which became Isobar’s China office. Is there tension between agencies and consultancies in China?
There’s more face-to-face encountering between consultancies and agencies, which actually gives clients more options on how to make things happen. The current gap with consultancies lies in creative and design areas. That is why they go out and acquire companies. One challenge for consultancies is to integrate creative culture into a strong consulting culture. They are still figuring it out, while agencies can do better in understanding insights, consumer behavior, emotional attachment that people have with a brand and how that impacts the brand’s overall experience. It’s a race between consultancies and agencies that are both expanding to have better integrated offerings, which is good for clients.
Isobar’s Jean Lin on marketing in China: ‘The speed of evolution is tremendous’
Jean Lin, global CEO of digital marketing shop Isobar, manages more than 5,500 people across over 45 markets. While many holding group agency CEOs are based in advertising hotbeds of New York and London, Lin has run Isobar from its Shanghai office.
Lin spoke with Digiday about the Chinese advertising landscape, the role of consultancies and how her team works with Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (known as the BAT). Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Why manage Isobar from Shanghai?
I come from the region, but I also see a lot of evolution from [the] Asia-Pacific [region] in general. A chart from the World Economic Forum listed the top 15 global cities that would contribute to global GDP [gross domestic product] by 2030. Nine are from China, along with Tokyo and Jakarta [in Indonesia], which says a lot. It’s clear that lots of dynamics are taking place in APAC, especially with the digital economy. I want to stay close to the market, and I think the world needs a more balanced view.
What examples of evolution do you see?
The speed of evolution in APAC is tremendous and amazing. A few months ago we partnered with Alibaba to improve KFC’s dining and checkout experiences with cashless payments. In China, I never bring my wallet because the only thing I need is my mobile phone and my WeChat. Most stores are WeChat-enabled or Alipay-enabled. That evolution has changed people’s lives and has an impact on retail and financial services.
What are hot topics for advertisers in China?
Everyone talks about “O2O,” which means online to offline, or “OMO,” which means online merges with offline. That requires the understanding of a complex infrastructure in China in terms of different industry sectors, how the trade middlemen work, and how to enhance brands’ logistics and design brand experiences.
The key is the convenience of mobile apps and how people are used to calling in services on mobile. For instance, delivery services in China are happening at an amazing speed. My colleague was trying to arrange a grocery delivery to her home yesterday, and the company would make the delivery in 15 minutes. In China, brands think about how they can speed up the delivery of their services, from brand inspiration to transactions.
Is marketing easier in China than the U.S. because of the BAT?
Not at all. A lot of traditional channels are still working, and they are really important, so there is more than the BAT. Meanwhile, there are lots of new offerings in automotive and financial services segments. You can’t just work with the BAT to reach over 1.3 billion people in China, although the BAT is very important. We look at the BAT’s respective strengths and form a different partnership with each company.
How so?
One clear strength of Baidu is its artificial intelligence development, which is understandable because Baidu has been big in search. We have also worked with Baidu on a lot of voice recognition projects. There are more than 30 different dialects in China, so if a brand is trying to make its customer feel at home, the brand needs to talk to them in their home tongue. We co-designed a robotic ordering device with Baidu for KFC called Dumi that can recognize over 30 accents from all provinces in China.
How about Alibaba and Tencent?
We work with Alibaba on connecting online and offline. We’ve helped clients improve in-store experiences and online promotions around Singles Day, for instance. Alibaba also gets more involved in the physical space, so we’ve also tested many technologies with Alibaba for offline stores.
We have partnerships with Tencent that help us do better targeting. In last year’s campaign for [culinary provider] Unilever Food Solutions around Chinese New Year, we only targeted chefs, as they [had to work at restaurants during the holidays] and thus couldn’t go back home during Spring Festival for a family reunion. Tencent’s data allowed us to do that.
You started Wwwins Consulting in 1999, which became Isobar’s China office. Is there tension between agencies and consultancies in China?
There’s more face-to-face encountering between consultancies and agencies, which actually gives clients more options on how to make things happen. The current gap with consultancies lies in creative and design areas. That is why they go out and acquire companies. One challenge for consultancies is to integrate creative culture into a strong consulting culture. They are still figuring it out, while agencies can do better in understanding insights, consumer behavior, emotional attachment that people have with a brand and how that impacts the brand’s overall experience. It’s a race between consultancies and agencies that are both expanding to have better integrated offerings, which is good for clients.