Month: June 2018

The ad-buying pendulum is swinging slowly but surely back to contextual targeting, thanks to the arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation.

With so much market uncertainty surrounding the impact of GDPR, many ad buyers are reluctant to take risks with data-heavy audience targeting techniques. But contextual targeting, where ads are targeted to individuals based on the context of what they’re looking at on page, is suddenly looking a lot more appealing — and safer.

Some agencies have started shifting more of their budgets toward contextual targeting versus personalized, audience-based ad targeting. Some of the big media agencies have gone a step further and told publisher partners they want to cancel all audience-based targeting and focus entirely on contextual targeting for certain campaigns from now on, according to publisher sources.

The renewed focus on contextual targeting is a glimmer of good news for battle-weary top-flight publishers, which have long complained that the value of contextual targeting has been neglected in the rush to micro-target audiences with context a far distant second (or third or fourth) on the priority list. Publishers have strongly touted the value of contextual targeting in quality environments ever since the YouTube brand safety scandal in 2017. But the buy side’s reaction to GDPR’s arrival has unexpectedly helped further this cause.

“The growth in contextual spending will continue as people focus more on being relevant, than being personal. If done correctly, this is a much better way of creating engaging, better performing campaigns. Over-personalization actually limits campaign effectiveness, so a more balanced approach is a very good thing,” said Sam Fenton-Elstone, CEO of media agency Anything is Possible.

A major media owner, which has been instructed by several advertiser clients and their agencies to halt all audience-based targeting in favor of contextual, has reported steady performance on campaigns after making the switch.

”Some agencies were not ready for GDPR and on day one, and told us they needed to do anything they could to remove data from our buys as they were not sure they were compliant yet,” said the publishing executive. “Contextual takes away the issue of having to find the right data for individual users so we can scale more with contextual. Performance is also not affected, actually click-through rates on a campaign we ran that dropped personal data use for contextual-only, increased a lot [as a result].”.

The trend is also good news for contextual targeting specialists like Grapeshot, recently snapped up by Oracle. While some independent exchanges and other ad tech vendors have struggled to maintain demand within their platforms since GDPR, contextual ad vendors have had a bit of a windfall. Native ad firm AdYouLike has seen an average 20 percent increase in demand for semantic and contextual targeting on its platform since May 25, according to the company.

“In the short term we are running non-personalized [ads], said an executive at a major publisher. “Personalized audience targeting is out the window — it’s not being run [by us] in Europe at all. Contextual is the way forward.”

While contextual targeting has always had a seat at the media planning table, its importance has been overshadowed by buyers chasing audience-based ad targeting at scale, which platforms like Facebook have made easy. But the vagueness around how strictly GDPR law will be enforced, and the lurking threat of being fined anything up to €20 million ($24 million) for GDPR breaches, means some businesses aren’t willing to take the risk.

“GDPR has caused brands to reset, to reassess the value their audience targeting is providing against the risk that it might not comply,” said Fenton-Elstone.

While some agencies have halted all audience-based targeting on certain campaigns, others have increased the amount of contextual targeting they do alongside personalized advertising, to offset drops in the volume of third-party data available as businesses have struggled to gain user consent or justify using personal data for retargeting. To skirt that issue, some agencies set up contingency plans ahead of GDPR going into force on May 25 that prioritized contextual ad campaign targeting.

“Our clients still want customized digital campaigns that are relevant to consumers in a post-GDPR digital media ecosystem, said Matthew Landeman, client managing director of media agency Carat. “Contextual signals allows us to connect our client’s advertising with consumers in a way that respects their data privacy and is authentic.

“Sophisticated semantic analysis tools, exclusive access to premium environments and high quality content creation and distribution opportunities with publishers and influencers arm us with the toolkit to serve digital advertising that doesn’t require personal data yet is relevant and will resonate with its audience,” he added.

Most agencies agree the refocus on contextual is beneficial for all. “As an industry we went down the path of targeting a specific audience too far, to the detriment of the environment in which the ad is delivered,” said Robin O’Neill, managing director of  digital trading at Group M. “I would argue we [as an industry] have moved too far away from contextual— so I welcome people talking about this resurgence.”

However, he added that the media agency group doesn’t need to increase its current use of contextual targeting.

“We want to work with all the publishers that are important to us, and have gained the consent necessary for us to continue working with behavioral and audience data [in a GDPR-compliant way],” he added.

Media agency Total Media prepared back-up contextual segments to go live before the law’s arrival. A large portion of the agency’s buys pre GDPR relied on personalization of ads and retargeting — two areas it expected the law’s arrival to hamper, according to Duane Thompson, head of display and programmatic at Total Media. That’s meant the agency has refocused on using topic categories, keywords and site-domain data to serve contextually relevant ads to visitors.

“For the foreseeable there will be a change in the way that agencies will have to speak to their audiences,” said Thompson. “Personalization will be diminished but contextual relevancy is how we will combat this in the short term. As an industry we have always supported the notion that ‘content is key’, so GDPR will test this theory with the uptake on increased contextual targeting.”

“Contextual signals can be really powerful,” added Fenton-Elstone. “While audience data can tell you who someone is, contextual signals can give you an insight into their frame of mind and receptiveness to a particular message, at a particular moment. For publishers, this should lead to a re-evaluation of quality, focused content that drive high levels of attention. Brands should be looking to tap into these moments with relevant creative messaging that complement the environments they place them in.”

Download our complete guide to GDPR.

The post ‘Personalization diminished’: In the GDPR era, contextual targeting is making a comeback appeared first on Digiday.

Over lunch, Refinery29 co-CEO Philippe von Borries, NowThis President Athan Stephanopoulos and Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini discussed building a media business that isn’t dependent on Facebook, how to succeed on TV and more.

SAHIL PATEL: Is Facebook a good partner or bad partner for media companies?

The post The Media Makers: A conversation with the heads of Refinery29, NowThis and Barstool Sports appeared first on Digiday.

If there’s one word SoundCloud wants media buyers to associate with them, it’s first, and well, alive. Nearly a year ago, the music streaming service was saved from bankruptcy by a new round of funding that also included a shift in leadership. Now, the company, led by two former Vimeo executives, is launching a charm offensive to persuade advertisers to include SoundCloud in their budgets.

In SubCulture, a live music venue in a basement on Bleecker Street, SoundCloud hosted its version of a NewFront on Tuesday. There were no new shows or ad formats being pitched; rather the three-hour evening was a chance to gather and entertain about 100 media buyers. Four members of SoundCloud, including the CEO, talked about the platform as a place where emerging artists get their start and has a passionate creator community and music-obsessed audience.

“Our ecosystem is one that’s very different from the other streaming platforms. We are a streaming platform, but we’re built from the creators out,” said Kerry Trainor, CEO of SoundCloud, who previously led Vimeo.

Advertising has existed for about four years on SoundCloud. In 2015, SoundCloud said it had 100 partners in “On SoundCloud,” its invite-only tier that lets musicians, podcasters and labels take a cut of ad revenue. Now, SoundCloud offers audio and display ads. In its pitch, SoundCloud’s sales team said that buying those ads has recently gotten easier and more formalized via new pacts with AppNexus and Google’s DoubleClick. Brands also can work directly with creators via sponsorships.

For advertisers who have worked with SoundCloud on sponsorships, a big draw has been its young audience. SoundCloud touted its concert series sponsored by payments service Zelle during this year’s South by Southwest conference and its show sponsored by Under Armour last year in New York City.

“I know I’m supposed to sell here, but the reality is SoundCloud was a partner for us that we knew had an ear to the youth,” said Ernie Talbert, global brand manager at Under Armour. “We also felt like it was a great platform that had the equity that we don’t have as a brand.”

Similar to how Snapchat rivals much-larger Facebook, SoundCloud competes with far bigger platforms for attention from advertisers. Spotify, which was recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange; Apple Music and Google’s evolving music service are all vying for the same media dollars. At the event, SoundCloud’s Trainor wasn’t shy about mentioning the competition, noting that SoundCloud is still the number three streaming platform in Spotify’s homebase, Sweden.

SoundCloud touted its unique relationships to artists, like G.L.A.M., also the night’s performer, singer and DJ, many of whom credit the platform to their success. Two mainstream artists commonly associated with SoundCloud are Chance the Rapper and Lorde, said Megan West, SoundCloud’s director of client relations. But West’s focus was on Post Malone and Lil Uzi Vert, two rappers who have more recently dominated the charts and are loyal to SoundCloud and epitomize its being-first philosophy.

Lil Uzi Vert became “the number one most-followed rapper on SoundCloud — more than Chance, more than Kanye, more than Drake,” West said.

The evening had an uncomfortable moment when G.L.A.M. repeatedly told the audience to listen to her latest tracks on Spotify.

When asked if its paid act mentioning what is arguably SoundCloud’s biggest competitor was awkward, Trainor repeated the statistic of SoundCloud usage in Sweden and reiterated that SoundCloud is about being first, not necessarily the biggest. (G.L.A.M. later that evening clarified that SoundCloud is where she got her start and that she still publishes there.)

While SoundCloud continues to formalize and pitch its programmatic ads, West promoted the company’s native ad formats and sponsorships.

“These artists get really excited about it because they get a brand that supports their music. Our audience gets really excited because they see the artists that they love align with brands who are interested in them,” West said.

Again, similar to Snapchat’s pitching how its audience is unique, SoundCloud’s head of global sales and partnerships Chris Blackburn argued that advertisers are missing out on potential customers if they don’t buy ads on the music streaming service.

“If you’re not working with SoundCloud, you’re not reaching this audience,” Blackburn said. “We have extremely loyal SoundCloud users. SoundCloud’s audience is first to lead and first to follow.”

The post ‘Ear to the youth’: How SoundCloud is pitching media buyers appeared first on Digiday.

Food video publisher Tastemade is seeking growth in e-commerce and TV.

Like other digital-first publishers looking to diversify revenues, Tastemade is focused on growing its direct to consumer connections through physical products and experiences. Speaking at the Digiday Video Summit Europe this week, Andrew Saunders, head of global brand strategy at Tastemade, explained how it plans to integrate shopping with the TV network that it launched two weeks ago on YouTube TV.

According to Saunders, the 24-hour linear TV channel will house six original shows by the end of 2018, along with hundreds of hours of original programming for 30 and 60-minute long shows.

Launching its own network gives Tastemade more ways to make money, including commercials, branded content and sponsorship — and commerce. The publisher will embed tech in the content alerting viewers to open the Tastemade app, which will sync with the content from TV for viewers to carry out the purchase.

Tastemade has been testing commerce for six months, in one case working with ironwear retailer Smitheys, selling cast iron skillets costing $180 (£134) through its videos. “When you think of the way things are going for social shoppable content, where the barrier to pay is getting lower, the question becomes can we leverage our audience across platforms to drive meaningful e-commerce business,” said Saunders, “and the answer is yes.”

The skillet videos were filmed similarly to how Tastemade creates branded content, featuring creators using the product, optimized for platforms, so on Facebook people view a horizontal video and click the link to purchase, on Instagram Stories and Snapchat people swipe up and purchase through Apple Pay. According to Saunders, the product sold out and generated $600,000 (£477,000) in revenue for Tastemade.

“We were hesitant that we could drive sell anything at $180 price point in a meaningful way,” he said adding that the business owner had to hire 10 more employees and increase the size of its shop, while Tastemade became the brand’s number one retailer.

Elsewhere, in May Tastemade announced a new channel in partnership with Disney Digital called Disney Eats, featuring family cooking experiences targeted at millennial parents. As well as combining Tastemade franchises like “Little Kitchen” with Disney characters, the channel will run original programming which, if successful, will eventually run on Disney’s TV network. Tastemade and Disney are also selling cookware like book and aprons linked to the channel online and in store.

Launching a network with this much programming isn’t as costly as expected, according to Saunders. “If you look at our upcoming development slate and the production costs associated with the content in addition to the production costs associated with what our social content would be for the year, the number is extremely lower than you’d expect.”

“The audience [for the TV network] might be small now, but if we’re driving $180 and $225 products, that becomes a meaningful diverse revenue model,” he said.

For more on the modernization of TV and video, subscribe to our weekly video briefing email. 

The post Selling skillets: Tastemade is testing commerce and TV appeared first on Digiday.

Hillary Haley is svp and group director of research, analytics and insights at RPA.

Digital marketers have always had some concerns with survey data. But they still rely on it for critical information, like, “Is our target audience even aware of our product? Do they ‘get’ the value prop? Why didn’t they download the app?” Certain questions can’t be answered in any other way.

So when survey respondents start to clam up or get suddenly “shy” — something we are seeing right now, in response to press surrounding vulnerabilities in data privacy — we should pay close attention and take radical action. Specifically, we have to be very clear with survey respondents about how we will protect their survey data. If we fail to do this, we will forever lose access to this critical stream of data.

Here’s why this is such a big deal. We conducted the exact same survey last year and this year. The surveys were specifically designed to understand just how open and honest people are willing to be in a survey. Or, put differently, just how freaked out people are getting about sharing their data. Even when survey questions come from a trustworthy source, and even when respondents remain anonymous, people still have trepidation. And while last year that trepidation was lukewarm, this year it turned white hot.

Both years, we recruited large samples of people via Google Surveys (5,582 in May 2017 and 6,298 in April, right after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s hearings) and asked them the same 10 questions, which were designed to assess openness and honesty. Across the board, our 2018 respondents are proving overwhelmingly more jaded. Concerningly so.

To begin with, among those we recruited, fewer people agreed to complete the survey. In 2017, 18.7 percent of recruited respondents agreed to complete the survey. But that percentage dropped by an alarming 13 percent to just 16.6 percent in 2018. In 2018, we also saw a 19 percent drop in the amount of content provided in response to open-ended questions and 23 percent more refusal when it came to offering up personal information like household income. (All these results are statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence level.) In short, people don’t want to take surveys anymore, and when they do, they seem to be breezing through as much as possible and seeking out the quickest exits.

In 2018, we also saw higher indicators of lying in survey responses, based on measures adapted from standard psychological tests of lying. For example, we saw a 10 percent climb in people stating that they “always” practice what they preach and a 12 percent uptick in people saying that they are “always” as honest as possible (both measures of “socially desirable” lying). So, along with the slackening response this year, there was also a significant hike in untrustworthiness of responses. People aren’t so sure they want to reveal much anymore.

What’s perhaps even worse is that we are seeing more reactance in 2018 as well. People aren’t just skipping through questions more quickly in 2018 and lying more often. They are also significantly more likely — in fact, 143 percent more likely — to directly attack the survey authors or otherwise rebel against the survey. For example, when asked to describe themselves, they are more likely to say things like, “mad that I have to fill this out” or “someone who hates nosy strangers.” And when asked to describe their most important personal values, they are more likely to say things like, “not doing surveys” or “none of your business.” It should be obvious why these kinds of responses are problematic and not valuable for us as marketers.

Take these trends seriously. The figures as they stand are not great, but they can get worse — to the point of survey data becoming completely worthless. Be 100 percent transparent with people about the information being asked for and how it will be used. Because right now, people aren’t so sure they want to tell us anything. If people don’t want to take surveys anymore, a unique channel of learning will become forever closed.

The post Viewpoint: Marketers need to earn consumers’ trust when it comes to surveys appeared first on Digiday.

Paul Jacobs, the former Qualcomm Inc. chief executive who was ousted as chairman of the chip maker’s board earlier this year, is launching a new startup focused on developing advanced wireless technology even as he continues pursuing a plan to take his former company private.

The social-media company is joining a rush of tech firms taking advantage of soaring share prices to issue shares that convert to equity.

Vista Equity Partners’ plan to buy a majority stake in Integral Ad Science – valuing the company at $820 million, according to AdExchanger sources, or up to $850 million, according to Axios – underscores the ongoing importance of ad verification and the pressure these vendors face to grow their product offering to remain competitive. “There’s… Continue reading »

The post IAS Acquisition Highlights Growing Competition Among Ad Verification Vendors appeared first on AdExchanger.

Not all home improvement projects are sexy enough to post online. Just ask Sioo:x. The wood protection brand guarantees to keep patios and porches silver-gray in color and protected from the elements for 12 years. Confident in its durability, Sioo:x purchased billboard space for 12 years from Look Media. The billboard, created by agency Stendahls,…

The furor over Spotify’s move to remove some musicians from its playlists, and its reversal, reflects a reality of the music business: Playlists are the new radio.