Month: June 2018

With U.S. fans the largest group traveling from a foreign country to attend, advertisers are taking note.

Fast-growing Chinese technology startup Meituan-Dianping applied to list in Hong Kong and seeks to raise billions of dollars to pay for its growth strategy.

Mammoth Media, a media and entertainment network aimed at teens and millennials, wants to do for apps what Viacom did for TV. “Viacom has Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central – program options and content based on demographics,” said Peter Szabo, Mammoth’s CRO and head of partnerships. “We’re taking the same approach with different monetization, and instead… Continue reading »

The post Mammoth Media’s Apps Take A Page Out Of TV’s Playbook appeared first on AdExchanger.

“AdExchanger Politics” is a recurring feature that tracks developments in politics and digital advertising.  Today’s column is written by Ray Kingman, CEO at Semcasting. Borrell Associates predicts the 2018 election cycle will be an $8.5 billion “advertising bonanza.” Given the temperature of the electorate this figure is likely to grow. Unfortunately, fallout from the Cambridge… Continue reading »

The post Local Races Are Key To Retaking The House, But Attribution For Political Ads Is Still MIA appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Go For What Works The New York Times has relentlessly cut ad tech vendors and point solutions. “You will see us continue to work with a smaller number of players in the middle,” EVP and COO Meredith Kopit Levien said to Digiday. That trend… Continue reading »

The post NYT Cozies Up To Google; Ad Industry Skeptical About Apple appeared first on AdExchanger.

by Tom Shields, Chief Strategy Officer, AppNexus and Co-Founder, Yieldex

Ever since the invention of the ad server in 1995, publishers have been working to optimize yield. At first, that meant selling as many impressions as possible. Soon, more sophisticated targeting meant that yield optimization and pricing became important skills. Then, with the introduction of real-time bidding (RTB,) the problem of allocation grew even more complex. But across the decades the objective has remained constant: fulfill commitments to buyers while maximizing revenue.

Back in the early days of digital advertising, technologists struggled to solve one of the most difficult tasks in yield management: forecasting delivery to fulfill guarantees to buyers. Overlapping segments, buys of different sizes for different time periods, and fluctuating traffic all made forecasting horribly inaccurate. It was over a decade later when my Yieldex co-founder Doug Cosman patented a combination of clever algorithms to enable dramatically more accurate forecasting.

To meet these challenges, a focus on yield optimization for publishers proved key. Accurate forecasting helps drive yield both before the sale (by informing sales of availability), and after the sale (by informing the ad server of the most efficient way to deliver). Offering availability lookups for sales and delivery control for ad servers addressed both.

As the technology developed, it turned out that our new systems had another incredible advantage over those that weren’t forecast-aware: the ability to do a much better job allowing RTB to compete with guaranteed inventory. For example: typical ad servers serve guaranteed flights evenly throughout the day, meaning they try to deliver the same number of impressions during the 3 AM hour as the 3 PM hour. If RTB demand is roughly flat throughout the day as well, then at 3 AM (when there are fewer visitors) there will be a lot more contention than at 3 PM (when impressions are higher). A forecast-aware system would deliver more guaranteed impressions during high-traffic periods, capture more RTB demand during lower-traffic times, and deliver higher overall RTB revenue. We quickly patented this idea as well.

The year 2008, however, presented a challenge: ad servers of the time simply didn’t have the ability to become forecast-aware—the APIs did not exist. Short of writing our own ad server, we didn’t know how to deliver on our promise of automated yield management, so we pivoted toward providing tools for ad operations, yield managers, and sales, enabling yield optimization through control of avails, pricing, and prioritization.

By 2015, the potential to realize our original vision arose through an acquisition—marrying our accurate forecasting with AppNexus’ state-of-the-art ad server to deliver higher yield. Beginning with basic avails integration, we steadily gained confidence and integrated progressively deeper.

This year saw the emergence of a never-before-seen direct integration between the forecasting and delivery systems, which Schibsted Media Group helped develop and test. Leveraging what we’ve titled our Forecast-Shaped Pacing algorithm enables Schibsted’s direct campaigns to more evenly distribute budgets throughout the day, which in turn opens up more inventory to programmatic demand during peak hours. Schibsted has seen revenue increases since employment, and this algorithm has since been rolled out across the platform. Schibsted was invaluable in helping us look at the real-world outcomes and validating the efficiency increases and is actively working with us on the next generation pacing algorithm.

Lo and behold, just as predicted possible nearly a decade prior, programmatic revenue substantially increases as a result of the forecast-shaped pacing. And a much larger percentage of guaranteed orders delivered evenly all the way to the end of the flight, without manual intervention.

The production of Forecast-Shaped Pacing is the culmination of over ten years of work to deliver a key advancement in delivery optimization. Whether you call it artificial intelligence or just algorithmic optimization, our platform is taking over more of the complex repetitive work of yield optimization, freeing publishers’ time up for more strategic thinking.

The post Realizing a 10-year quest for near-perfect delivery appeared first on Digiday.

For large banks hobbled by legacy technology, rigid processes and regulations, building a digital-only banking brand from the inside could sound like a non-starter. But inside an office at New York City’s Hudson Yards area, a team of 50 employees at JPMorgan Chase is trying to do just that with a digital mobile banking app, Finn.

“We don’t look like traditional bankers,” said Matt Gromada, managing director and chief product owner for Finn, which is in beta. “Our team tends to be young, diverse and not all from financial services, and that difference is really important to customers.”

Some big banks have gone the route of buying digital companies, as shown by BNP Paribas’ Compte Nickel acquisition last year and BBVA with Simple four years before. But Chase decided to build a digital brand itself for people who want to do all their banking on mobile. The in-house experiment had the support of senior executives and the ability to operate with independence.

Finn offers checking and savings accounts and features that let customers save if they’ve indicated they want more control over their money. Emotion is also part of the user experience. Customers can report if certain purchases make them happy or sad, and the app will provide them with a report that tracks their sentiments.

Chase began testing Finn in October in the St. Louis area, where Chase doesn’t have physical branches. The bank put out the first version of the app in just 16 weeks, with the goal of getting out a product fast so it could get people’s feedback and adjust it if necessary. Chase said it would expand Finn to other markets but didn’t say when. Gromada said Chase is focusing on learning based on user research, aware that some ideas may be good ideas in theory but may not pass muster with users.

“The notion of being perfect has to go,” Gromada said. “You need to get something in the hands of customers that they can react to.”

Finn had two problems early on. While digital-only customers say they don’t need checks, for some, the off-chance that they’ll need one makes them nervous about digital-only banking. Chase solved this by letting people order a one-time check through the app. The other issue the bank is still working on is how customers can deposit cash in ATMs in states where Chase doesn’t have physical branches or ATMs.

Dan Latimore, svp of Celent’s banking group, said Finn is unique because it allows Chase to provide a slick, youth-focused brand that sits on top of the trust and infrastructure of a big bank. Many banks see in-house startups as threats to the core product; having the freedom from Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to try new things was key.

“It’s very tough for [most banks] to do something so radically different in a way that looks like it could potentially be a threat to the incumbent solution,” Latimore said.

The post ‘Done is better than perfect’: How Chase built a digital banking brand in-house appeared first on Digiday.

Programmatic ad spending has started to recover a month after the arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation caused it to nosedive. Advertisers’ panic toward the EU privacy law has turned to pragmatism.

Some clients cut programmatic buys by anywhere from 20 to 50 percent in the days after GDPR took effect May 25, several media buyers said on condition of anonymity. A month in, spending has somewhat recovered to pre-GDPR enforcement levels. Now, brands are spending around 30 percent less on ads from exchanges than what they were prior to May 25, said a media buyer at an independent agency. An executive at one of the holding groups put that figure at closer to 20 percent.

Programmatic spend was down for two reasons: First, some publishers lacked the technology to secure consent for targeted advertising, which limited the number of sites that advertisers could buy from. Second, advertisers were cautious about pumping money into supply chains that they weren’t sure could target their ads safely or legally.

As those issues eased over the last month, spending has returned. Two media sources said that publishers saw opt-in consent rates gradually hit around 75 percent since the regulation arrived, which convinced advertisers to buy more programmatic ads. Jon Slade, global chief commercial officer at the Financial Times, said on the Digiday Podcast that the FT’s demand recovered after five days. Deutsche Telekom stopped some buys immediately after the law took effect, but Gerhard Louw, the company’s head of international media management, said its programmatic spend has returned to pre-GDPR levels.

Programmatic is simply the preferred way advertisers like Deutsche Telekom do business today. While some brands “may have temporarily shifted [programmatic] budgets, we’re seeing a return across the board,” Chris Hogg, Lotame’s managing direction in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Programmatic spending shifts
Programmatic trading will still drive digital marketing because of the scale and automation it affords media buyers, but the pipes are no longer filled with third-party data, which was “liquid gold to many pre-GDPR enforcement,” said Sam Fenton-Elstone, CEO of media agency Anything is Possible. Media buyers said many advertisers will move the majority of their programmatic spend away from audience targeting in favor of contextual targeting strategies or direct deals with publishers.

Chris Ashton-Green, the founder and chief revenue officer at automotive tech firm Regit.cars, has benefited. His business, which lets drivers get information about buying, selling and fixing cars, has seen an increase in interest in its direct-sold-only business.

“The third-party data pot has declined aggressively [over the last month], and advertisers are telling their agencies that they need more first-party data in order to be [GDPR]-compliant and brand-safe,” Ashton-Green said. “Agencies are reaching out to us now to say, ‘I know we’ve given you a hard time about your lack of programmatic trading, but we know you have first-party data, which we’re interested in.’”

The interest in smaller sites like Regit.cars shows how far advertisers will go to trim the fat from their supply chains, opting to rely on the most trustworthy and high-quality data. Advertisers like Nissan and Pernod Ricard say they’re less concerned about data’s scale and are more focused on its quality and accuracy. That’s increasingly pushing them toward Google.

The Google effect
The tech giant purged its ecosystem of third-party tracking, making it harder for advertisers to independently verify their ads were delivered. Instead, advertisers have a Google-controlled measurement system that improves privacy protections, but puts their ads behind a walled garden. It’s a “major concern” for clients, said James Duffy, head of digital at Total Media. Some advertisers see no other choice but to buy into Google’s entire stack and use its tracking data to understand their audience. “It’s not just programmatic spend that has changed over the last month,” a media buyer at programmatic agency said. “Google’s share of money going into supply-side and demand-side platforms has grown over the same period.”

A Google spokeswoman said: “Ad reporting is an important part of the digital ecosystem, and we are committed to partnering with advertisers and partners to help refine strategies.”

Lucinda Southern contributed reporting.

The post A month after GDPR takes effect, programmatic ad spend has started to recover appeared first on Digiday.

As part of Snapchat’s ongoing charm offensive with creators, the app said it would start sharing ad revenue with them. The program was announced June 21 as part of Snap’s keynote at VidCon.

While Snap’s main announcement was a new creator-led Snapchat Show called “Untitled Patrick Starrr Project,” produced by Starrr with E!, Snap’s Lauren Gallo said onstage that the company has been experimenting with revenue sharing. She also said her focuses for the creator community are growth, discoverability, analytics and monetization. Snapchat would not give specifics on the deals.

“What we’re doing is we’re listening,” Gallo said.

The update follows Snap’s first Creators Summit, a two-day event where 13 Snapchat creators met with execs including CEO Evan Spiegel to discuss how the company can better support them. The move to ad-revenue sharing matches Snapchat’s recent move away from licensing fees with publishers in favor of an ad-revenue-share model.

Snap’s programming team, which works alongside the Shows team under Snap’s head of original content Sean Mills, has been approaching creators about participating in the program, a Snap spokesperson said.

Mike Metzler, a strategist at Delmondo who has been making content on Snapchat as a job since 2015, was one of the 13 Snapchat creators who attended the Creators Summit. He said this move is much-needed for people like him.

“I can say emphatically that creators would love seeing ad revenue split. The unfortunate truth is that brand deals have been few and far between for Snapchatters of my size compared to, say, 2016, when they were coming in once a week,” Metzler said. “I’m at a point where if I am not able to monetize my content, I have to put my effort elsewhere.”

Other platforms already share revenue with creators. YouTube has long offered an ad-revenue split to small and large creators and has uplifted its homegrown creators. At VidCon, for example, creators’ faces are plastered on the sides of hotels, billboards and buses, Metzler said. Now, Facebook is experimenting with monetization options across video on Facebook and Instagram.

When asked during Snap’s panel at VidCon about Snap’s delay in sharing revenue, Mills pointed to the company’s age.

“It’s easy to forget what a new and young company we are,” Mills said. “We’re kind of just getting started here.”

Metzler saw Snap’s move as a win not only for people like him and Snap, but also for advertisers since it gives them more places to advertise.

“They reward creators who have done a lot for Snap, and it’s a great way to build a more diverse set of premium inventory and targeting data for advertisers,” Metzler said.

The post Snapchat experiments with sharing ad revenue with creators appeared first on Digiday.