Month: June 2018

For Just Eat, augmented reality isn’t just about people playing with trippy camera effects, it’s a way to drive sales on social networks.

The fast-food delivery service is testing how effective AR ads are at convincing people to order on social networks with an AR camera effect, developed by agency Byte London, that will run on Facebook over the next month as part of Just Eat’s campaign for the World Cup. Just Eat is awarding certain people who download its app with collectible plates featuring illustrations of food, which when held up in front of the camera effect in Facebook Messenger, turns into the head of ex-footballer John Barnes asking to be licked.

“We don’t do AR for AR’s sake,” said Ben Carter, Just Eat’s marketing director in the U.K. “Everything we do from a social perspective is about driving activity through the funnel. AR isn’t the answer to all marketing, but it does give us a way of engaging with our audiences in a way that you can’t get on other channels.”

The company is considering more tests, now that Facebook has started sharing the performance of the effects with brands. Until recently, advertisers with effects on the social network were only able to see how many times they were used and how many views they generated. In March, however, certain brands were given access to performance data. That’s how Just Eat discovered the first effect it ran in December sparked a surprising amount of orders. The effect had around 102,000 unique impressions, and 10 percent of those people went on to order from the service within seven days during the six-week campaign.

The effect ran at a time when there weren’t many others on the social network, which made it easier for people to discover through their friends sharing it. Around 75 percent of the effect’s reach was not paid for, according to Just Eat. (The effects are free for brands to use, but they can pay to amplify their reach.) Part of that reach came from celebrity chef Ainsley Harriott’s post of himself using it, so the food delivery service is now weighing whether to use influencers in future campaigns.

Other advertisers like StudioCanal pinned effects to their pages and saw shares rise with minimal paid support because it was so easy to be naturally discovered. While they won’t fully offset Facebook’s declining reach for brands over the years, the AR effects are a reprieve for marketers who had resigned themselves to having to spend money to get noticed on the social network.

Unlike other brands, Just Eat piloted AR ads during Facebook’s test of the technology rather than buy Snapchat’s more established formats. The food delivery service was reluctant to pay for a lens on a platform that some media buyers have said costs as much as $1 million per day to use. In recent months, however, Snapchat has lowered its fees.

“The media cost to having a lens on Snapchat had been pretty prohibitive, but that’s changing,” one media exec said. “We saw Snapchat recently, and there’s a lower barrier to entry in terms of media, which can be as low as $40,000 now.”

Adidas and Coty are among a number of advertisers to have been encouraged by Snapchat’s revamped AR pitch. Both brands recently let fans buy directly from their lenses. Ad campaigns with lenses, on average, drive a 15 percent lift in purchase intent and a 9 percent sales lift in the U.S., according to Snapchat numbers verified by Nielsen.

Just Eat has done little on Snapchat, but the success of its Facebook effect combined with Snapchat’s easy performance tracking could tempt it to buy a lens to see which platform’s ads are more effective.

While AR on social networks can drive results, AR still needs a bigger audience to interest performance marketers, said Kieran Bass, managing partner at digital creative agency Kitty. Until this changes, AR is likely to be used for branding campaigns, and any performance metrics that come from the campaigns will likely be treated as a bonus, he said.

The post Just Eat wants to use AR to drive delivery orders appeared first on Digiday.

The Cannes Lions festival is back, and as much as the ad world’s biggest boondoggle remains the same every year, it also changes. Digiday compiled over 20 years of cumulative experience at Cannes to bring you the definitive guide to what’s in and out this year.

The post The definitive Digiday guide to what’s in and out at Cannes 2018 appeared first on Digiday.

The U.S. isn’t among the 32 countries represented in the 2018 World Cup, but Bleacher Report is charging forward with its soccer ambitions, unfazed.

In the past few years, the sports-lifestyle publisher has built up a staff of some 40 people dedicated to soccer coverage, largely working out of the U.K. As of this spring, former NBA player Steve Nash and longtime sports broadcaster Kate Abdo have been leading its soccer coverage.

The publisher recently updated its logo for Bleacher Report Football, its soccer hub, to delineate it from American football. And it’s developing an as yet unnamed animated series around the UEFA Champions League in the tradition of its popular animated series “Games of Zones” and “Gridiron Heights,” with plans for a fall launch.

“When people ask me, why are we investing so much into what has largely been an international passion, the answer is pretty simple: It’s the fastest-growing sport in America,” said Howard Mittman, Bleacher Report’s chief revenue officer. “There’s this intensity of enthusiasm around this sport right now.”

Soccer now rivals baseball in popularity among Americans and appeals more to young viewers than those over 55. And as they’re doing with other forms of media, millennials are disrupting the tradition of watching full games in front of the TV set as they watch highlights online, share memes and stream games online (often without paying, it should be said).

That provides an opening for a publisher like Bleacher Report, which was born online and built its business around an ability to find audiences on social media. Soccer fandom is also as much about off-field activity as game action, as the players are stars in their own right. Bleacher Report believes it’s well-positioned to capitalize on that, too, because it’s rooted in the intersection of sports and culture.

Soccer is a passion that attracts a young and diverse audience that’s extremely attractive to marketers, said Brian Millman, account director and partner at Mindshare North America’s Spotlight, the dedicated sports and entertainment partnerships unit of Mindshare. Converting soccer fans during major events to everyday viewers afterward has always been challenging for the sport overall, though, which is where Bleacher Report’s lifestyle approach could give it an advantage.

Case in point is its popular “Game of Zones,” which imagines NBA football players in a medieval setting, and “Gridiron Heights,” which has fun with NFL players. The latest season of “Game of Zones” got 72 million views across platforms, up 85 percent year over year; “Gridiron Heights” got 113 million views in its latest season, doubling its year-over-year number, per Bleacher Report.

As it has with the NBA, Bleacher Report thinks it can tap into soccer’s larger-than-life stars and year-round games. There are also affinities between basketball and soccer players. (Take Nash, who is a lifelong fan of soccer.)

House of Highlights, Bleacher Report’s popular Instagram account for young NBA fans, has already been posting more soccer highlights and memes itself. And to stir up World Cup fever, the publisher had New Orleans muralist Brandan “BMike” Odums create murals made for social sharing in New York City, Miami and New Orleans that celebrate World Cup stars Neymar, Mo Salah and Paul Pogba.

Bleacher Report doesn’t have media rights to the World Cup. But its parent company, Turner, has the U.S. broadcast and streaming rights to the Champions League, and those games will be available on Bleacher Report Live, a new over-the-top streaming service.

With a bigger soccer audience, the goal also is more and new kinds of advertising. Advertising tied to Bleacher Report’s soccer coverage will represent 10 percent of its revenue this year, up from 2 percent last year, Mittman said. (The publisher’s overall advertising has increased 40 percent this year, so the total ad pie and soccer portion are both growing.) The global nature of soccer has helped Bleacher Report attract new, nonsports advertisers, including Chanel and Chase.

“It isn’t a great thing,” Mittman said of the U.S. team’s absence from the World Cup. “But it also gives us a chance to connect fans with players globally. And that offseason is always on.”

The post Bleacher Report charges ahead with growing soccer ambitions appeared first on Digiday.

The Cannes Lions may have significantly cut prices for delegate badges by as much as 900 euros this year, but on the French Riviera during the festival it’ll still cost you about 17 euros for a café au lait and a croissant.

We asked multiple Cannes attendees across media and marketing to break down what it really costs to attend the festival.

 

 

 

The post What it costs to attend the Cannes Lions appeared first on Digiday.

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