Month: June 2018

The agency and ad tech vendor presence may be more muted at Cannes Lions this year, but publishers are seizing the opportunity to reassert themselves — and there’s no better place to do so than at a festival packed with global chief marketing officers who are looking to use first-party data in brand-safe, privacy-friendly ways.

Publishing executives have been out in force this week pitching marketers on new audience data-targeting opportunities. First up: alliances.

Despite previous setbacks, European publishers remain committed to alliances to help them compete with Facebook and Google for ad revenue. The Guardian, News UK and The Telegraph unwrapped another this week during the festival, the latest publisher alliance from the U.K. in the past six months.

The Ozone Project, as it’s called, is pitched as a way for agencies to match their own customer data to the publishers’ combined 39.4 million unique users with a single point of contact. A centralized team will run sales for the platform, with details to be confirmed later in the autumn when the platform rolls out.

Speaking to Digiday at the festival, Dominic Carter, group chief commercial officer of News UK, stressed that publishers need to work together while avoiding past mistakes.

“There are steps we can make to start to bring back a more sustainable news business in the digital space,” he said. “A lot of it rests with being collaborative with each other rather than spending our lives competing with each other, because that’s not where the competition is.”

Carter has previously called for publishers to stop fearing the duopoly and assert themselves. “We must treat them with respect for the brilliant propositions they have, but we, too, need to be proud of what we do,” said Carter. “We have real relationships with consumers in a different way to a platform, and we haven’t perhaps valued that as much as we could so have been overreliant on some of the platforms in the past.”

News UK executives also have been using Cannes to pitch their own tool, News IQ, which connects advertisers’ first-party customer data with that of News UK’s across its properties that include The Sun and The Times of London newspapers and radio station TalkSport.

The goal is to move the ad industry away from “mediocre” measurement proxies like click-through rates by using the media owner’s analysis of people’s emotions, said Ben Walmsley, digital commercial director at News UK. News UK says it will let brands create custom audiences based on their emotions, attitudes and preferences, as determined by their on-site behavior.

The tool was informed by a study undertaken by Paul Dolan, professor of behavioral sciences at the London School of Economics, of 600 readers of The Sun and the Times, who were exposed to content designed to elicit specific emotions alongside video advertising. The upshot was that consumers are more likely to engage with ads that appear near content that strikes an emotional chord.

News IQ is also being rolled out in the U.S. by News UK parent company News Corp with media buyers including Dentsu Aegis Network.

Agencies will always welcome genuinely new data propositions that can give them access to big audiences. But publishers also need to be careful not to confuse the market with conflicting propositions. News UK pitching its own product while being involved in the data-led publisher alliance risks confusing some buyers while cannibalizing each proposition, some executives attending the festival said.

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Teens and tweens won’t be the only ones trying to get close to top digital video creators this week at VidCon, the online entertainment industry’s mashup of Comic-Con and the Cannes Lions festival that kicked off June 20 in Anaheim, California. So will many of the major digital video platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Twitch.

For most of VidCon’s eight-year existence, YouTube dominated the annual event. But the online entertainment ecosystem has expanded beyond YouTube with creators establishing audiences and building businesses elsewhere, like Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram. Creators are also growing frustrated with how crowded YouTube has become and how the Google-owned platform’s handling of its brand-safety issues has hurt their businesses.

VidCon’s scope reflects that shift. YouTube remains the event’s title sponsor, but the competing platforms have increasingly encroached on what was once YouTube’s turf alone.

In 2014, VidCon’s CEO Jim Louderback, who was editorial director for VidCon’s industry-focused programming track at the time, tried to get Facebook to come speak at what was still a YouTube-centric event. The year before, Facebook had adopted autoplay videos, and by fall 2014, the social network was averaging 1 billion video views a day. The social network turned down a speaking slot for the 2015 event. Undeterred, Louderback got creators to talk about how they were building businesses on Facebook anyway. “Facebook sent people to see what was going on. Then, the next year, [Facebook’s vp of product and de facto video boss] Fidji Simo spoke,” Louderback said in a recent interview.

Since then, Facebook has become a VidCon mainstay, and its presence at the event continues to swell beyond connecting with the creators and suits there to include the young fans running around the Anaheim Convention Center. This year, for the first time, the company will host a booth to promote its Watch video hub, a Facebook spokesperson said. That Facebook opened up Watch to nonshow videos from creators and hosted its first Creator Day in Los Angeles the day before VidCon kicked off is unlikely a coincidence.

Facebook is far from the only platform staking its claim at VidCon.

Twitter has been a VidCon sponsor for the last three years, but this year will be its largest VidCon activation to date, said Dennis Todisco, global head of creator community at Twitter-owned influencer marketing firm Niche.

Twitter, which in April announced its Creator Originals program to produce original shows with creators, will sponsor three of the stages on VidCon’s creator-focused programming track and the speaker green room for creators, which lets Twitter get in front of every creator that will take the stage on the creator track.

“It’s about establishing a connection and letting creators know that this is something available to [them]. Not every creator is aware of Niche or Creator Originals,” said Todisco.

Snapchat and Amazon’s Twitch are also looking to make creators more aware of what their platforms can do for them. Both companies are first-time VidCon sponsors this year, and each will have private lounges to which they are inviting creators to visit, meet with their execs and try out their products.

Twitch’s lounge will have “streaming pods” for the creators to record live broadcasts from the lounge to air on their Twitch channels, a company spokesperson said, while Snapchat’s lounge will have custom swag related to its animated avatar product, Bitmoji. Snapchat also made a 3D Bitmoji specifically for VidCon attendees to add to the videos they share in its app; the augmented reality effect was designed with an unnamed creator’s participation, according to a Snap spokesperson.

Not to be outdone, this year will be YouTube’s “biggest VidCon ever,” a company spokesperson said. The platform will host three lounges, one each for creators, advertisers and creators, and advertisers that will be tied to YouTube-owned influencer marketing platform FameBit.

YouTube also will screen episodes from two of its original shows, “Escape the Night” and “Liza on Demand,” and will throw its own mini event called YouTube OnStage with top YouTube stars appearing, such as Liza Koshy, Rosanna Pansino and Matt Steffanina, as well as DJ Marshmello.

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Popular Science has a long tradition, coming up on 150 years, and a largely male one. But over the past year and a half, it’s made significant gains in its female readership. Today, half its online readership is female, double what it was a year and a half ago, per the magazine.

Joe Brown, the publication’s editor-in-chief, said that when he started there in August 2016 (after stops at Wired, Gizmodo and an earlier stint at Pop Sci), he came with a mission of making the Bonnier-owned magazine more inclusive, as its name suggests. That approach was evident in Brown’s earlier acknowledgment of climate change skeptics.

“One thing that was really important to me was speaking to more than just the geek audience for a science and tech publication,” he said. “There are a lot of female-focused publications that were focused on science, but not with as much authority as the subject deserved. We want Pop Sci to live up to its name and be the most accessible publication online and in print.”

Brown didn’t simply order up more articles on topics he thought women would be more interested in. He set out to make the staff more diverse, which was then mostly male. “I’m a white male from New York City, and I’m in the media. I am not the person who is going to be creating these stories. I’m literally not qualified.” He made new hires, including Amy Schellenbaum as online director, Rachel Feltman as science editor and Mary Beth Griggs as assistant editor, and now, women make up about half the 25-person editorial staff.

There was an increase in health stories of particular interest to women, on topics like reproductive health and cosmetics. But having more women on staff naturally led to more stories being produced with a wider point of view generally, like this one by Kendra Pierre-Louis (who’s since left for The New York Times) about makeup’s toxic impact on women of color and this one by Sara Chodosh about pregnant women being shamed for unhealthy habits.

“We come up with stories at a daily meeting,” Schellenbaum said. “With a critical mass of women, if you talk about gross body stuff, women are more represented.” Pop Sci also made sure images paired with stories were more inclusive and not just “white male hands on an iPhone,” as Schellenbaum put it. “It’s not that we’re writing more girly stories. We’re writing the same stories we have for 146 years, but it’s written by a woman. They have different questions, different art, different headlines,” she said.

Another factor that gave the inclusivity effort a boost was that the publication had, like others, dialed back on the frequency of stories it was posting online from 25 to around 10 more deeply reported ones, which also resulted in stories that represented more points of view. In the past year, the online audience has grown 40 percent to 5.8 million visitors in May, with the female audience going from 41 percent to 52 percent in that same time, per comScore.

Other online science-tech publications tend to skew more male, per comScore’s May numbers. Gizmodo is 58.6 percent male; Popular Mechanics, 68 percent; TechCrunch, 56 percent; The Verge, 61.4 percent; and Wired, 47.6 percent.

The female audience gains are relatively new, and a rep for the publication didn’t have any new advertisers to call out, but Gregory Gatto, evp of Bonnier Media, said there’s been a lift in programmatic advertising resulting from the audience expansion. “From a publisher’s perspective, it’s always heartening to see a brand grow and reach new audiences, especially based on the merits of inclusivity and the quality of our content,” he said.

It may take a while for some buyers to change their perception of Pop Sci as male-focused because it’s been around so long, but if the data backs it up, a more even gender split could help it appeal to tech marketers, said Chris Wexler, svp and executive director of media and analytics at Cramer‑Krasselt.

“It’s a smart reflection of how technology is in culture,” he said of Pop Sci’s evolution. “It’s not just guys tinkering in their garage, it’s appealing across gender splits. As media gets more to audience-based buying, we’re more interested in what people are interested in, and technology is such a big space, cutting out half your audience doesn’t make sense.”

Pop Sci is more female-centric than some of its peers, and as dramatic as the shift in online audience has been, Brown concedes there’s a lot more to do. There’s progress in bringing more female writers into the print magazine, but print magazine audiences change more glacially because people tend to subscribe for a year at a time. According to GfK MRI’s spring magazine audience data, Pop Sci’s print readership is 82 percent male. Pop Sci’s Facebook following still skews heavily male, and the publication hasn’t done much to change the way it markets on the social network.

And while Pop Sci’s staff is now more gender-balanced, it’s still mostly white. Brown said he doesn’t know what the staff breakdown is, but conceded, “we could be doing a better job with race. I don’t think we’ll ever be done trying to be more diverse. My goal is to make sure my staff thinks about it with every story they write and edit, and every art they design.”

The post How Popular Science is shedding its male-geek image appeared first on Digiday.

As Amazon makes inroads into fashion, high street clothing retailer River Island is trying to succeed by being what the retail behemoth can’t.

Fashion brands aren’t predicated on price and convenience as many of the categories dominated by Amazon are, so going toe-to-toe with Amazon in fashion won’t end well for high street brands, said Josie Cartridge, customer director for River Island.

Influencers are one way River Island plans to grow its authority, working with recognized bloggers such as Hannah Louise and Martell Campbell to stay on trend.

River Island uses an internal team of media buyers to inform its spending on influencers. They handle River Island’s online media buying. Its agency, Manning Gottlieb OMD, handles TV, print, cinema and outdoor buying. This approach allows Cartridge to control a media strategy that doesn’t prioritize impressions while benefiting from Manning Gottlieb OMD’s training resources and help in bringing the retailer’s media and commerce investments closer together.

Influencers will eventually play a larger role in River Island’s marketing, Cartridge said. But River Island is mindful of the fraudulent practices that have accompanied the industry’s rapid growth, and before more money is spent on those creatives, Cartridge said the industry around them has to mature.

“Influencers can be very valuable at creating really relatable content that we can use on our site and they can use on theirs,” said Cartridge, “but I think they tend to do everything in the same, so lines between what’s editorial and what’s an ad are blurred. Consumers will pick up on that very quickly if they think the influencer is not staying true to their values.”

River Island isn’t ignoring Amazon’s lessons, either. One of Amazon’s greatest strengths is how much it knows about each shopper. River Island is following that lead by trying to quantify the cost of each user journey, rather than chasing the cost per transaction as it has done. For example, if a paid search post led someone to buy a product using a credit card, pick it up in store and then return it, the retailer wants to know the cost of the entire journey.

River Island is smart not to ignore its own strengths in competing with Amazon, said Debbie Ellison, head of digital at shopper marketing Geometry U.K., a shopper marketing agency that works with retailers.

“While River Island is right to leverage learnings from the retail goliath — mobile-first commerce, price and convenience — they are also capitalizing on their own [unique selling propositions]: a great physical retail network, connected omnichannel experiences for shoppers and, their real pièce de résistance, authority in fashion,” Ellison said.

The post How River Island is trying to Amazon-proof its business appeared first on Digiday.

“It feels like Mom and Dad crashed the party this year,” a top agency executive said to me in a fog of rosé in Cannes last night.

It’s certainly the theme of the week, which is winding down on a distinctly more serious note than years past. And leading the charge are the marketers, who have arrived and are here to get things done.

“I’ve had clients up my ass all week,” said this agency exec. “Every time someone comes out talking about influencer marketing, or fraud or something, they call me asking what we’re doing about it.”

There are more marketers than ever before in Cannes. And going along with the theme of circumspection, many are using this week to either continue or kick-start conversations about some part of the digital marketing system they think is broken.

“What are the issues critical for the survival of our business? That’s what I’m here to focus on,” said Antonio Lucio, HP’s chief marketing officer. At HP, Lucio has been at the forefront of cleaning up internal organization to bring data and analytics closer with its media buying. He said that has been transformational — and also changed the way the company works with other parts of the marketing universe, including its agencies and its vendors.

It’s also led to a bigger pressure and desire inside marketers to take back control by doing more of their marketing themselves. “This changed our profile and placed a burden on capabilities we need to develop internally,” Lucio said. “Today, I spend 40 percent of my time in meetings on development and capability-building issues because our industry is changing so fast that success of the company will be predicated on that.”

Marc Speichert, a former Google and L’Oréal exec and the current chief digital officer at GSK, which owns brands like Sensodyne and Theraflu, is also cleaning house. He’s spent the past year improving the technology the company uses and asking tougher questions of agencies. GSK is in a review process for its $1.7 billion media account. “We have to make sure we push hard,” Speichert said. “As we elevated our own internal capabilities, we are asking much tougher questions of agencies. We have much higher expectations.”

Speichert also has a direct deal with Google where his media agencies operate buys, but has his own people increasingly checking their homework, he said.

It’s not just that brands are questioning agencies and vendors more. They may even be cutting them out. Brands taking back control has meant brands doing more in-house. Speichert, who hasn’t yet gone down that path, said he is thinking about it. “I think we’re going through a journey,” he said. “We needed people who can first ask the right questions internally. Now, I have people that can ask the right questions and, yes, maybe bring some stuff in-house down the line if we feel like we’re not getting the right answers to those.”

It’s also not just agencies in the crosshairs. There is more public questioning of Google’s and Facebook’s power. Dan Salzman, HP’s global head of media, said one big reason is how much more consumers are aware of Facebook’s issues given the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal and the Russian influence on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“Brands have known that the digital ecosystem has a lot of problems for a while: whether ads are viewable, whether we’re getting value for our money, whether Facebook or Google are being as transparent as they need to be,” Salzman said. “But what’s changed is that there was no motivation for them to change. Now, there is. Brands need Facebook and Google more than Facebook or Google need any one brand.”

HP is re-evaluating how it spends money on Facebook. It’s not cutting spend, but thinking more selectively about what it’s buying.

“We’re here in Cannes discussing all the issues, but I think we are on the beginning of a renaissance for brands,” said Lucio. — Shareen Pathak

Overheard on the Croisette (and beyond)
“Hopefully, by this time next year, we’ll have figured out another way to make money.” — Agency executive

“For someone who is not here, I’ve heard more from Publicis in the last few days than I have my entire career.” — Agency executive

“It’s so quiet. I’m worried we may actually win holding company of the year, and nobody will be there to accept it because everyone is leaving tomorrow.” — Agency staffer

The most depressing place in Cannes
There is no place as full of despair during Cannes than the press room — sorry, media center — in the Palais des Festivals. It’s fittingly cruel that it has one of the best views of the Côte d’Azur. One veteran reporter, who asked that we not use his name, said he’d been coming to Cannes for 14 years, and he spends between six and seven hours on average in the room each day of the event. “The coffee is the worst thing about it,” he said. Another reporter, who was trying to film a segment from the terrace and doing double duty as both on-camera talent and videographer, said it’s the news conferences that he finds most tedious. Happening most mornings, the conferences are when reporters receive embargoed awards results (in tiny type) and can ask the jury questions. There’s inevitably a flurry of questions on country-specific results, then reporters are released to write stories as quickly as possible to publish that evening. On Monday, a welcome surprise came in the form of a plate of sandwiches — they disappeared in minutes. But perhaps the best news to the ink-stained wretches was that this year, the media team has added a new perk: Free rosé on the terrace at 4 p.m. — Shareen Pathak

Marcel, who?
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about, as they say. Publicis scaled back its presence at Cannes this year in order to spend money instead on a new internal collaboration tool called “Marcel,” which made headlines and had the festival buzzing. And this year, the company’s senior execs took to the main stage on Tuesday to unveil a demo of the platform, discuss what it’s been working on for the past year and why. But if the intention was to make a splash that somehow validates that decision, that plan appears to have fallen short. Few people along the Croisette this week have had much to say about Marcel itself, besides simply questioning the rationale behind it. It’s too early, of course, to know if the investment will pay off, or if the whole thing was mostly about incoming CEO Arthur Sadoun making a statement. But one way or another, people are talking plenty about Publicis at this year’s festival — and very little about Marcel. — Jack Marshall

Publishers use Cannes to reassert themselves with marketers
Agency and ad tech vendor presence may be more muted at Cannes Lions this year, but publishers seem to be seizing the opportunity to reassert themselves in the market. And where better to do so than at a festival that is notably more well-attended this year by global chief marketing officers, who are focused on new brand-safe ways to leverage first-party data opportunities in a way that’s compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation. News UK, the Guardian and The Telegraph have announced new products at the festival. Read the full story here.

The Digiday Podcast Cannes Edition hosts the FT’s Jon Slade
Facebook has rankled publishers with its political ads policy, which lumps promoted publisher content in with political advertising. For Jon Slade, the global chief commercial officer at the Financial Times, the policy was enough for the FT to pull all advertising from Facebook in the U.S.

“We have pulled advertising from Facebook in the U.S.,” he said on the Digiday Podcast from Cannes. “It is dangerous to describe journalism as political content. Journalism is journalism, and political lobbying is political lobbying. To conflate the two is an extremely dangerous precedent, particularly in this era when there are so many question marks about the veracity of news. We pulled out, and we are yet to be convinced that Facebook is taking this issue seriously.” Read more excerpts and listen here.

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If you could work outside on a sunny day instead of being cooped up inside the office, you probably would. A new campaign from L.L. Bean is hoping to mitigate the indignities of modern professional life–and promote an outdoorsy lifestyle–by providing an open air office space in select cities this summer. The retailer teamed up…

Instagram is a visual social network, but an audio company is looking to change that. JBL, the official sound partner of the National Basketball Association, will debut 60-second audio series DraftWav on its @jbl_cast Instagram account just in time for the 2018 NBA Draft Thursday night. DraftWav will feature projected top-10 picks Marvin Bagley III,…

Instagram wants to be a video platform that sits somewhere between YouTube and Snapchat — and is launching a new video hub and app called IGTV to do so.

Announced June 20, IGTV is a new section on the Instagram app and a standalone app that lets video creators distribute long-form videos on Instagram. Whereas before, Instagram capped regular videos at 60 seconds and Instagram Stories videos at 15 seconds, with IGTV video can go as long as 60 minutes. IGTV video will appear vertical and full-screen. IGTV is set to roll out over the coming weeks.

IGTV particularly wants celebrities such as Kim Kardashian West, Selena Gomez and Kevin Hart and social media stars including King Bach and Ninja to use IGTV, although anyone with an Instagram account will be able to do so through their own IGTV “channels” — just like YouTube.)

With IGTV, Instagram is aiming YouTube and its community of homegrown YouTube stars — especially video bloggers (or “vloggers”). And by focusing on the vertical video format, Instagram is continuing its assault on Snapchat, which has put a huge emphasis on shows and influencer content in Snapchat Discover.

The big question is whether Instagram users will watch videos that go longer for than a minute or two. Instagram has been reportedly telling video makers to opt for videos in the 10-minute range, which is more like YouTube than traditional TV fare.

“There are lots of formats right now working online that are longer than 1 minute,” said Rafi Fine, co-founder of Fine Brothers Entertainment, who said he does not expect to produce hour-long programs for IGTV right away. “Having the ability now to do so on Instagram is great. FBE’s shows average 9 to 12 minutes now, and I see that having the opportunity to do well on a platform like IGTV.”

IGTV could work for Instagram in a way that Facebook Watch isn’t yet for Facebook: Instagram has already trained many of its users to shoot and watch vertical video, whereas Facebook is still trying to get people to go to Facebook Watch. Top Snapchat shows, which typically run for 3 to 5 minutes, get around 20 to 30 million viewers per month, also suggesting some appetite for vertical videos longer than a minute.

“IGTV is a much more natural evolution for what the user experience has been on Instagram, versus Facebook. People are using Facebook for a variety of reasons, and watching a TV show or something TV-like is not as quite a natural fit,” said Eric Lam, CEO of influencer marketing platform Revfluence, which works with more than 700,000 Instagram creators.

Regular videos (not Stories) on Instagram might also be plateauing on Instagram. According to data pulled by Revfluence for Digiday, only 4 percent of branded posts on Instagram across its network are videos — and that figure has remained consistent. The vertically-oriented Instagram Stories, however, continue to see more usage. The number of branded Instagram’s Stories have been growing at an average rate of 63 percent month over month since October in Revfluence’s networks.

In this context, it makes sense that IGTV is focusing on vertical videos rather than horizontal or square videos that are reserved for regular Instagram video posts.

An Instagram spokesperson said it’s not paying any celebrity, social media star or media company to make videos for IGTV. The company also didn’t announce any ad products such as pre-rolls or mid-rolls that would help IGTV creators make money.

“YouTube currently gives creators a cut of ad revenue which Facebook Watch is making premium content deals with the like of Tastemade,” said Denis Crushell, vp of EMEA for Tubular Labs. “Instagram will have to get this incentive right to encourage premium content creators to focus on its new video offering. Regardless, it’s a huge opportunity for the platform, even if the video revenue model isn’t there yet. A lot of content creators will want to get involved early to build up their audiences to benefit further down the line.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s basically the platform-creator relationship in a nutshell. But with 1 billion monthly users now, Instagram and IGTV will be hard to ignore.

This includes media companies, even if Instagram spent its launch event showcasing how IGTV can be used by video creators — and if celebrities and social media stars are already planning to use the product. Nat Geo, which has 89 million followers on Instagram, said it plans to air the final episode of its TV show, “One Strange Rock,” in a vertical video format later this summer to market its long-form TV programming to its massive Instagram audience, said a company spokesperson.

The YouTube-like IGTV comes at YouTube continues to battle issues over brand safety on its platform. Advertisers’ concerns over this issue has affected ad spend on YouTube, said MediaRadar CEO Todd Krizelman. According to MediaRadar data, ad spend across a selection of 70 top YouTube channels has remained flat this year.

IGTV has the chance to capture some of the ad dollars going to YouTube, though by being an open platform it may only a matter of time before Instagram faces the same brand safety issues as YouTube.

But first, Instagram should hope that the IGTV launch goes better than its actual launch event for press in New York, where rotated vertical screens live streaming the event continued to go out.

The post With IGTV, Instagram is betting that people want longer vertical videos appeared first on Digiday.

AT&T rode into Cannes this year amid fanfare following its Time Warner acquisition, freshly rebranded as WarnerMedia. But trailing in its wake are a lot of questions around what this mega-merger means for the advertising landscape. Intentionally or not, AT&T added to the ambiguity with its Cannes branding – or complete lack thereof. The telco… Continue reading »

The post AT&T Advertising CMO Kirk McDonald On Redefining The Ads Experience, Blank Banners And Big Rumors appeared first on AdExchanger.

Chicago’s Cloud Gate, better known as The Bean, is as iconic an image of the city as they come. Since its installation in 2006, it has graced all manner of social (and other) media, with its backdrop of the Windy City’s skyline. Now its creator, Anish Kapoor, is suing the NRA for using the famous…