Month: June 2018

Chinese smartphone and gadget maker Xiaomi lost money in the first three months of the year, the company revealed in new filings ahead of its coming stock listing that is expected to value the company at about $70 billion.

Last year, to kick off its “Hidden Treasures” campaign, Adobe partnered with an award-winning Photoshop brush maker and Oslo’s Munch Museum to digitally re-create seven of painter Edvard Munch’s original brushes, turning them into tools for Photoshop and Sketch users. This year, the company has set its sights on the Bauhaus, the short-lived (1919 to…

Will Publicis Groupe be present at this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity? That depends on who you ask. Earlier this month, one of the festival’s newsletters welcomed Publicis back into the fold just under 12 months after the 80,000-strong network announced that it would be “eliminating all award/trade shows for the next year” in…

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by David Markel, director of digital activation at Hearts & Science. Against the backdrop of data privacy, marketers are being forced to weigh their options for how media should be run… Continue reading »

The post A Guide For Not Going All-In With A Walled Garden appeared first on AdExchanger.

Mobile programmatic is poised to dominate digital display ad spend this year, but there are still a heck of a lot of kinks to work out. The No. 1 headache for publishers: buyers that try to apply desktop tactics and standards to mobile and then wonder why it’s not working out. Even some of the… Continue reading »

The post When It Comes To Mobile Programmatic, Buyers Are Behind appeared first on AdExchanger.

At the Digiday Video Summit in May in Scottsdale, Arizona, we sat down with 51 executives in the digital video industry to discuss their ambitions and pain points with over-the-top services. Check out our research on publishers’ plans to increase their video production here. Learn more about our upcoming events here.

Quick takeaways:

• The amount of publishers planning to produce more OTT content has remained mostly the same compared with six months ago, according to respondents to Digiday’s survey.
• Monetization has become publishers’ biggest challenge with creating OTT content.

Publishers’ plans to create OTT content remain relatively unchanged
Even before the market for short-form video series dwindled and Facebook announced it would de-emphasize publishers’ video in its news feed, publishers were starting to create more long-form content for OTT platforms. Of the executives Digiday surveyed at the Digiday Video Summit in May, who were almost all from publishers, 76 percent planned to increase the amount of content they create for OTT platforms. That’s slightly less than the 81 percent of publishers who planned to increase their OTT content at Digiday’s video summit seven months ago.

The post Digiday Research: Monetizing content for OTT platforms is a growing concern for publishers appeared first on Digiday.

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Michael Bologna, president at one2one Media. As the annual network upfront presentations concluded, agencies and advertisers were strategizing on how to best act on the series of announcements, products, tools and data that promise… Continue reading »

The post Advanced TV Tactics: Pieces Of A Holistic Media Strategy appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Cannesultants Cannes Lions kicks off next week, but without the hometown hero. Last year, the French holding company Publicis Groupe said it would forgo Cannes and other award shows in 2018 and reinvest savings in an AI platform. In a press release on Monday,… Continue reading »

The post Consultants In Cannes; Decision Time For AT&T-Time Warner appeared first on AdExchanger.

Last June, Publicis Groupe made a splash by vowing it would not attend 2018’s Cannes Lions festival and would instead redirect its efforts and resources in an internal collaboration tool called Marcel.

But staying away from Cannes is proving to be harder than it looks. In what seemed to be an attempt to head off any awkward questions, Publicis issued a press release Monday explaining that, despite last year’s promise, 87 of its staffers will in fact be attending the festival this year after all.

The company said 12 staffers will attend as part of awards juries, 12 will compete in Young Lions competitions, 25 have been invited by clients to attend and a further 20 will be there on the Publicis dime to attend key client meetings. A further staffers 15 have dipped into their own pockets to fund attendance, said the release. Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun himself will not only be in Cannes but also take the main stage to promote Marcel.

And Publicis agencies have managed to be up for awards for 336 campaigns thanks to clients, production companies or others fronting the fees, according to Publicis. (The holding company did pay to enter one campaign: BBH London’s “3 Billboards” work for Justice4Grenfell, the organization that is working for the victims of the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster in London.)

“I’d say it’s a tightening of the belt more than a pullout,” said one Publicis staffer.

The no-Cannes policy has caused headaches and confusion for Publicis employees, many of whom were invited to sit on judging panels, compete in the awards, or use the opportunity to wine and dine clients. After all, their competitors will be there to do the same.

The policy has also irked some Publicis clients, who often use Cannes for global coordination meetings with key partners — and of course being wined and dined on the agencies’ dime while in the Riviera. Nobody said Cannes was a hardship assignment.

Publics staffers around the world say they’ve been repeatedly told in recent weeks and months that they are not to be seen in Cannes under any circumstances, under direct orders from Paris. Publicis management is aware that its Marcel platform will attract attention and scrutiny from press and across the industry, staffers say, and is worried its employees showing up in the Riviera might undermine those efforts.

“Pulling out of Cannes was [Sadoun] making his mark. If everyone goes anyway it threatens to undermine the whole thing,” one Publicis exec said.

“I think that’s what they’re trying to avoid. Everyone will be looking for someone [from Publicis],” another Publicis staffer said.

Senior Publicis execs, including Sadoun and chief creative officer Nick Law, will also present a “beta” version of the new Marcel platform on the festival’s main stage on Tuesday, June 19. That’s not the only time Law will be on the Cannes stage — he will also be debating what the future of agencies looks like with Accenture managing director Anatoly Roytman that week.

 

The post ‘Tightening of the belt more than pullout’: Publicis finds it hard to ignore Cannes entirely appeared first on Digiday.

Amazon’s plan for live sports broadcasts is becoming clearer following its deal with the Premier League.

The tech giant is the first platform to strike a deal to stream Premier League matches in the U.K., with 10 matches to be shown on Amazon Prime on two separate days for three seasons starting next year. It’s not a wide-ranging deal, but it’s a statement of intent from a business that already has the rights to stream tennis in the U.K. The region has become a proving ground of sorts for Amazon’s bid to become a sports broadcaster, and the company is on the hunt for more rights in the market.

An opportunity to broadcast major events like the Premier League or the U.S. Open tennis championships will help Amazon prove to rights holders that it has the reach and the monetization credentials to contend with traditional broadcasters. This is key, given that many existing broadcasting agreements for various other leagues are up for renewal in the next decade. As Amazon acquires more sports rights, it will be easier for the company to gauge how best to monetize those rights. For now, it’s content to test and learn, buoyed by the fact that its early experiments with streaming NFL games have been fruitful. Amazon sold two minutes of ads for each hour of its NFL coverage, allowing advertisers to track how many people saw the ads and went on to take action on Amazon.com or other sites across the web.

“Amazon got positive feedback from the brands it worked with around the NFL livestreams,” said one ad exec. “What really stood out for us and them was the measurement aspect of advertising around that content, rather than the targeting. We were able to see the impact of someone who sees an ad for a shaving brand, for example. You could see how many people visited a product page or how many people actually went on to purchase it. That’s something you don’t get in a television environment.”

Amazon gave no clues as to whether it would conduct similar trials on its football broadcasts. But four media buyers Digiday spoke to for this article said Amazon will due to the types of rights its content executives have targeted. Amazon seems to be pursuing smaller packages that are unlikely to tempt fans into becoming Prime subscribers, but are big enough to see how existing subscribers respond to personalized ads during livestreams. The goal for Amazon is to be able to serve dynamic ads tweaked to logged-in viewers’ shopping history and preferences during broadcasts.

As old as Amazon’s ad business is, it’s only now whirring into gear as it accounts for a larger percentage of the company’s overall revenue. In the fourth quarter of 2017, the ad business grew to about $1.7 billion, up about 60 percent year over year. It’s what makes Amazon “dangerous” to the TV market, said John Turner, head of media practice at OC&C Strategy Consultants. “When you look at the growth of average purchasing on Amazon Prime both in the U.K. and the U.S., it’s growing rapidly,” Turner said. “Sports is a way to bring people into that ecosystem, albeit in a very expensive way.”

Amazon’s problem is people don’t watch Prime regularly like they do Netflix, said Richard Broughton, director at Ampere Analysis.

Sports could change that. With the mix of properties that Amazon appears to be amassing, casual fans who already subscribe to Prime could be tempted to use the service more regularly. If that happens, then the business can decide what ad-supported content on Prime looks like. Broughton said Ampere Analysis’ research found that 40 percent of the people who have shown an interest in the Premier League don’t have access to Sky Sports or BT Sport. About three-quarters of those people aren’t Prime subscribers, which is about 30 percent of the overall Premier League fan base that Ampere Analysis surveyed, Broughton said.

Video ads are likely to be a factor in any plans to monetize casual fans. The 10- to 30-second ads Amazon sold during NFL games might not be the most innovative way to make money from them, but video has higher margins than search or display media. Amazon, therefore, has been looking for more ways to serve video ads. Video ads on product listings on the Amazon site or app, for example, are not as obvious a fit as putting them around live sports.

“Amazon has been selling video inventory for years, but what’s new is they’re really going into more of the television space with the sports rights they have,” the advertising executive with knowledge of Amazon’s plans said. “Prime viewers get a similar experience as they would if they were watching TV, but then there’s the prospect of a better ad experience, which Amazon have been quietly fine-tuning. There’s big demand for video anyway, and it’s one of the top questions being asked of Amazon at the moment in terms of the opportunities around it.”

Some media buyers aren’t so sure that Amazon will prioritize video budgets despite the clear opportunity. Amazon sees a clear correlation emerging between people watching content on Prime and those buying more goods, said Misha Sher, vp at MediaCom Sport & Entertainment. “But I don’t think the future of monetizing content is always going to be in interruptive advertising in the way that we’re used to,” he said. “The truth is that the only reason Amazon is buying sports rights is because they want to sell more products. It’s more likely that Amazon will come up with a way to recommend products while people are watching a football match, for example, rather than pushing pre-rolls in front of them.”

Amazon’s biggest challenge will be how it adapts to a rights market spread across different regions. That’s not necessarily a good fit for its own holistic approach. As Gareth Capon, CEO at video tech platform Grabyo, said: “The regional nature of rights is a necessary evil of doing business in sport, so that companies monopolizing rights are forced to buy panregion or global properties. But if you look at what [live sports streaming service] DAZN are doing now in looking for more regional acquisition of rights where possible, and are buying out almost entire sports on a global basis to then resell them to give them access to those rights, that model is beginning to change.”

The post Amazon gets serious about streaming live sports appeared first on Digiday.