Month: June 2018

Last month, at Microsoft’s annual Build Developer Conference, the company showed off what happens when two voice assistants–its own Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa–talk to one another. Cortana exec Megan Saunders asked Alexa, via an Amazon Echo, to order milk, and then had Alexa “wake” Cortana to view her schedule and send an email. Following this…

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Erik Requidan, vice president of programmatic strategy at Intermarkets. I spend a lot of time talking with other publishers. Some things we agree on and some things we don’t. Regardless of how much we… Continue reading »

The post My Not-So-Easy, Must-Do List For Publishers appeared first on AdExchanger.

“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 Julia Amorim, CEO at MediaNet. As a general waging battles in ancient China, the philosopher and writer Sun Tzu would never had come across the terms “marketing” or “advertising,” yet… Continue reading »

The post What It Takes To Close The Gap Between Strategy And Planning appeared first on AdExchanger.

At the Digiday Hot Topic UK: GDPR event in May in London, we surveyed 22 companies on what they predict will happen as a result of the General Data Protection Regulation. Check out our earlier research on what companies are tracking to measure the impact of GDPR here. Learn more about our upcoming events here.

Quick takeaways:

• Sixty-eight percent of respondents to Digiday’s survey say Google and Facebook will benefit most from GDPR.
• Publishers, followed by ad tech vendors, are most likely to experience the brunt of negative GDPR consequences.
• Three-quarters of respondents are worried about declines in digital revenues as a result of GDPR.
• Seventy-five percent of companies say the greatest cost incurred in the run-up to GDPR was time spent on GDPR-related issues.

Publishers face the most negative GDPR consequences
GDPR, which took effect May 25, is a massive overhaul of the European Union’s privacy laws and has industry insiders worried about the future of ad-supported businesses. Industry executives have clear opinions on who GDPR will negatively affect most. Of the executives polled at the Hot Topic event, 40 percent thought publishers were most likely to be negatively affected, while 38 percent chose ad tech vendors.

The post Digiday Research: Publishers are expected to suffer most due to GDPR appeared first on Digiday.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem… AdExchanger: Origins AdExchanger: Crisis In Ad City (Part I) AdExchanger: Crisis In Ad City (Part II) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part I) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part II) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part III) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (The Conclusion) AdExchanger: Angels And Startups AdExchanger: Rumble In Arbitrage Plaza… Continue reading »

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The House Always Wins As YouTube keeps dialing up brand safety protections, creators in marginal or disreputable categories are feeling the brunt. A relatively small but active group of creators who stream from inside casinos (because people like to watch others gambling) have found… Continue reading »

The post YouTube Vs. The Fringe; Will Contextual Ads Boom? appeared first on AdExchanger.

Progress in making the media and advertising industries more diverse has happened in leaps and bounds in the last few years, but there’s still a lot to be done. The ongoing diversity drive hasn’t yet reached all parts of the industries, and that’s meant internal cultures haven’t evolved in line with the more advanced areas.

For the latest installment of Digiday’s Confessions series, we spoke to an experienced male media executive, who said that not fitting in with media’s “boys club” culture has made it harder to progress.

Answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

What’s it like being a gay man in the media industry?
On the face of it, media is a really gay-friendly industry to be in. In the different facets within media — creative, content, creative advertising — gay men and women are represented strongly, but there are still corners of the industry that are not diverse in any respect, including being gay. That can feel isolating and like you’re on the outside of a club that you’ll never be a member of.

Which corners?
It’s particularly obvious in the digital advertising ecosystem, so anything around ad tech, programmatic, data and tech in general.

Explain how you feel like an outsider.
I’ve always known that no matter how senior or influential I have been in a variety of previous positions, I wasn’t going to be invited on the media agency ski trip or selected by my company to take senior clients on an overseas rugby jolly. I didn’t think for a second that those decisions were based in homophobia, rather that I just wasn’t one of the boys in the club. You have to find your own way to fit in and make that work, but you’re never going to be one of the guys doing a deal on the golf course. That’s hard sometimes, and you can’t help feeling that without being part of that club, there’s a glass ceiling you’ll never get through. To get to the top, you have to be one of the boys.

You mean, to be promoted, you have to be in the club?
Yes — and to network in the way that is meaningful. It’s a terrible cliche to talk about how deals are done on golf courses, but it is true — there are just more contemporary examples of the golf course deals today. If you’re not part of it, it’s harder to make that progress. You have to find your own way to do it. I have managed to and know others that have, too, but it’s harder. The Lumascape may look very colorful, but it’s far from. I have huge admiration for how they’ve [ad tech execs] built businesses. They’re incredibly skilled at what they do. It’s just really homogenous.

Does this lack of cultural diversity affect business?
Yes, diversity is important because it creates a better, more inclusive culture that then attracts people from all kinds of backgrounds to go into a company or industry. To have businesses run by monocultural leaders — straight, white middle-class men — can’t be a healthy thing.

Reading about the engineer Shannon Lubetich who recently resigned from Snap and sent an email to 1,300 staff struck a chord with me. She wrote a number of things an engineer could be, including “a person who isn’t straight or doesn’t want to get married and have kids,” “a person who doesn’t drink Red Bull or alcohol,” “a person of colour” and “a woman.” There is a lot of testosterone at industry events. Women really stand out, as there aren’t many of them, and it feels the same for a gay man sometimes. I often wonder if that lack of diversity makes the industry less attractive to people coming into it.

What’s stopping the diversity from reaching those parts of the industry?
Maybe it’s a function of building new technology and taking it to market — you have to be super hubristic, ballsy and confident to do it. But there is a lack of emotional intelligence in that world sometimes. And it’s poorer for it. It isn’t just about ad tech vendors. My career was in TV, newspapers, magazines, where there are also male cliques, but there was more of a mix. The tech world seems to have pivoted the other way. There’s a much higher concentration of that boys-club element and much less diversity of thoughts and approaches.

Things have improved, though, right? 
Yes, that whole culture of being instructed to take pretty girls to meetings doesn’t happen anymore. That would always be the instruction when going to Cannes [Lions], as it was your way into conversations. Cannes is a wonderful thing, but it also brings out the worst of the industry, too. It shines a light on these things.

What should change to make things better?
There must be gay people in ad tech that are in senior positions. It would be great if there could be more visible role models, and having more visible diversity would change that.

For more from our Confessions series, download the complete agency confessions collection. 

The post ‘There’s a glass ceiling’: Confessions of a gay media executive appeared first on Digiday.

In the summer issue of Digiday magazine, we spoke to Google’s head of news, Richard Gingras, about how the company sees its responsibility to the news business, how Google is different from Facebook in its treatment of publishers and why he thinks direct payments to them is a bad idea. The interview has been edited and condensed.

Google News made a series of updates in May. What’s their significance in this day and age?
We’ve always felt news was an important component of what Google does. So it was important to enable sustainable success in the ecosystem, or make sure consumers have all the tools and information they need to understand complex issues. The update was done with very much with that in mind. The key characteristics we were trying to get across were: How do we keep people up to date with current events, give them the ability to go deep and have a diverse set of sources about any given issue? How do we give people the depth of perception so they can be smarter for it? And be able to enjoy and support sources they have an affinity for.

The post ‘I feel optimistic about the future of news’: Google’s Richard Gingras says the company’s success depends on the health of publishers appeared first on Digiday.