Month: June 2018

Now that it’s bought Time Inc., Meredith is focusing on wringing more revenue out of Time Inc. titles. This week at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado, a team of seven writers, producers and videographers has been holed up in a house paid for by San Pellegrino, churning out branded content for advertisers from Patrón Tequila to Microsoft.

The Classic has always been sold as one of the crown jewels of Time Inc.’s events, but this is the first year that Food & Wine’s editors used it to generate content for brands or editorial use. That capability brought in dollars from new and existing advertisers, including KitchenAid.

“[The Classic] is a gold mine,” said Hunter Lewis, Food & Wine’s editor-in-chief. “The strategy is about maximizing the value of what we’re doing.”

Other titles are working with advertisers in new ways. Next week, Real Simple will launch a cooking school video series on Facebook Watch that brands can pay to place products in. This summer, Real Simple will launch a new shopping section on its site featuring Real Simple-branded products and others picked by its editors. In the fall, it’s launching an apartment in Brooklyn called Real Simple Home, which will be used to model design ideas, throw events and generate editorial content.

The goal is to grow the titles’ overall revenue, but especially digital, through new and existing ad programs. Titles like Real Simple still get fully 70 percent of revenue from print advertising. Real Simple publisher Daren Mazzucca would like it to be closer to 60 percent, while still growing overall revenue.

“Our whole mission here is pretty simple: Outperform the market,” said Doug Olson, president of Meredith magazines. “Everybody is an integrated seller now. It just matters to what degree.”

Meredith assigned dedicated publishers to Time Inc. titles, reversing Time Inc.’s maligned category-specific sales strategy. Olson said the move to dedicated sellers, which was finalized in March, will help the company monetize the magazines and their big events like the Classic.

The new ownership’s focus on delivering return on investment for clients is getting noticed. Ashley Bahlmann, svp of group media at Cramer-Krasselt, said that since Meredith acquired Time Inc., the RFPs she sends to clients have come back with more details on how a proposed campaign would meet the client’s business goals.

The post How Meredith plans to wring more dollars out of Time Inc. titles appeared first on Digiday.

Tensions between Google and France’s media and advertising industries are heating up following Google’s last-minute changes to its General Data Protection Regulation policy, which caused havoc in the European ad market in the immediate aftermath of the law’s arrival.

France’s five main trade bodies representing publishers, advertisers, agencies and ad tech vendors are set to meet June 15 with Mounir Mahjoubi, France’s secretary of state for digital, said Bertrand Gié, president of Geste and digital director of national newspaper Le Figaro. The groups planned to share with the French government their concerns that Google’s GDPR policy changes have damaged the digital ad ecosystem, due to Google’s size and dominant market position.

The trade bodies had met with Google representatives in Paris on June 12 to discuss an open letter they sent the tech giant on June 8, according to French publishing trade body Geste.

In the letter, the trade bodies — Geste, IAB France, media-buying body UDECAM, advertiser association UDA and digital ad body SRI — asked Google to expedite its integration with the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe and IAB Tech Lab’s GDPR consent framework. Google hasn’t put its commitment to the framework in writing, causing unease in France.

During the meeting, Google representatives explained its position but did not mitigate the trade bodies’ concerns by committing to immediate action or requested changes, said Gié, who attended the meeting.

Google did not respond to Digiday’s request for comment before this article was published. We’ll update the story if it does.

The trade associations also want Google to establish a permanent consultation process between them and its own representatives to share future GDPR-related decisions that affect its partners.

Google’s swift action
The impact of Google’s GDPR approach were felt across Europe as soon as it took effect. In France, volume demand dropped by as much as 50 percent for some independent ad tech vendors, while some publishers’ programmatic ad revenues dropped 70 percent, according to Gié. Google moved quickly to rectify the issue, with the result that several of the major exchanges such as AppNexus were reintegrated into Google’s ad-buying ecosystem in the days after May 25. Today, business is almost back to normal as more and more exchanges have been reintegrated, according to sources. But some vendors still aren’t on Google’s vendor whitelist, which has meant certain publishers’ programmatic ad revenues are suffering as a direct result, said Gié.

Despite Google’s swift action, discomfort remains about how one company could have such a big impact on the market — a concern that prompted the letter.

“We had to do something,” said Luc Vignon, head of digital transformation for publisher ad sales house Régie 366 and an IAB France board member. “There is a lot of frustration still in the market. In France, we don’t like leaders — we like challengers.”

The trade bodies also want Google to provide more clarity on how it plans to integrate into the IAB Europe and IAB Tech Lab’s framework by its proposed August deadline.

Media sources said Google’s reps in France have taken care to hear their concerns, but they sense that there’s not much they can do because the company’s strategy is led by its U.S. headquarters.

“Google’s local teams are being very cooperative and communicative, but they don’t have all the keys,” said David Pironon, chief programmatic officer of local ad server Smart, whose ad volumes have recovered since May 25.

Publishers scramble for consent
Most French publishers had opted for the legitimate-interest based approach to complying with the GDPR, according to sources. Once Google revealed it would take the far stricter consent-based approach in April, a scramble ensued. Publishers are now pushing to implement consent management systems so they can provide information on consent to Google and other partners, Pironon said.

But publishers have more to do to align with Google’s consent-based approach. Only around 20 percent of bid requests Smart has seen to date via its platform have information about consent attached to them, which is in line with the rest of the market, Pironon said.

“There is this intermediary period where the absence of information is not considered absent consent, so the [demand-side platforms] are still O.K. to buy as long as there is no explicit denial of consent,” he said. “But it won’t last. Publishers need to implement CMPs.”

Download our complete guide to GDPR. 

The post French media plan to meet with government over Google-GDPR concerns appeared first on Digiday.

Slack may be ubiquitous across Silicon Valley startups, media companies and agencies, but the communication tool is trying to appeal to more 9-to-5 workers in its latest ad campaign that includes a collaboration with Fox Sports during the World Cup.

Slack is running 30-second TV spots that feature workers in colorful clothes and an enlarged view of an office’s Slack. When Anna, a character in the ad, shares the company’s new vacation policy, she’s greeted by virtual emojis and real beach balls. The summer advertising campaign also includes 15-second video ads for digital as well as online display ads, audio ads on Pandora and Sirius, podcast sponsorships and paid social.

“It would be closed-minded to think everyone already knows what Slack is or knows how to communicate this way. There’s a whole world of knowledge workers out there,” said Anna Pickard, Slack’s head of brand communications. “We’re a startup, but we’re a startup made up of people who have been around the block. We’re not routed in making solutions for people who live next door to us in San Francisco.”

Slack touts more than 8 million daily active users. There are more than 3 million paid users, and its 70,000 paid teams include 65 percent of Fortune 100 companies. Now, Slack is focused on attracting more enterprise customers amid competition from Facebook’s Workplace and older workplace communication software options.

This is far from Slack’s first big ad campaign, but the narrative has changed from fantastical to ordinary. Slack’s first TV ad premiered in December 2015 and featured a team of animals making a flying umbrella. Another ad from 2017 showcased animated animals in black and white building a spaceship. This year’s campaign, titled “The Collaboration Hub for Work,” differs by showing real people — not animals — completing typical work tasks like getting a budget approved and launching an ad campaign.

While one of the beauties (and horrors) of Slack is being able to take it, and therefore your work, anywhere with an internet connection, the ad campaign features people doing work in a physical office.

“This is a way to say Slack is not just for those happy few who can take their work with them,” Pickard said. “It’s for people in the traditional office. Everyone has a need to collaborate better.”

To reach those traditional office workers, Slack is only running TV ads before 9 a.m., such as during morning shows like “Good Morning America” and “CBS This Morning.”

“People are getting ready in the morning, and work often is the first thing they’re thinking about,” said Byron Fulmer, Slack’s brand marketing manager. “We want to be there and show that there’s a better way for work.”

Slack also is running online display and YouTube ads during the workday. The three 15-second video spots are focused on finance, marketing and sales.

“From the moment of finishing up a PowerPoint to talking Karen in finance, they might look at social media or look at what happened on the late night shows. It’s something every employer doesn’t want to happen but does,” Fulmer said.

Slack is also tapping into the hype around the World Cup. As part of the “Collaboration” campaign and titled #PoweredBySlack, Slack partnered with Fox Sports. Slack is sponsoring the Fox Sports Hub in Los Angeles, the physical studio space for commentators.

Fox Sports is also running Slack-related ads that show how its teams in New York, Russia and elsewhere collaborate. For example, one video shows the production team sharing a clip of Lionel Messi on Slack so the social media team could repurpose it.

“We wanted to focus on how our partners are using Slack,” Fulmer said. “If you look at the 15-second spot for marketing, that’s how we’re using Slack. I’ve probably sent six emails to the agency since we’ve started working together in the last two years.”

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Flipboard has been growing its presence in Europe, taking advantage of the opportunity to work closely with publishers who are looking for more stable distribution.

The mobile reading app says Europeans account for 27 percent of its 100 million monthly readers. Flipboard has a dozen staffers across Europe, with local language content in the U.K., France and as of May, Germany. Also in May, it picked up more U.K. publishers, among them Hearst’s Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar and Digital Spy.

According to Hearst, Flipboard is its fourth biggest source of traffic referral in the U.K.

“We can use Flipboard dynamically and manually. There are both lower- and higher-lift ways of using it: RSS feeds pick up our unique takes on current stories, and we can also work with Flipboard directly to curate content packages,” said Betsy Fast, executive director of digital editorial strategy at Hearst UK. “There’s a real opportunity to be creative, and Flipboard has been receptive to our ideas and generous with feedback.”

The benefits of Flipboard for publishers are clear. It takes little to no effort to distribute on Flipboard; editors, as well as algorithms, decide on the content in the feed; and Flipboard sends traffic back to publishers so they can monetize impressions from direct sales. Because reading is core to the purpose of Flipboard, it also attracts people who read for long periods of time.

Flipboard’s impact varies by publisher, with some saying they can get as much as 10 percent of referral traffic there. According to Parse.ly, which tracks referral traffic for hundreds of publishers, Flipboard accounts for 1.8 percent of publishers’ traffic, just behind Twitter at 2 percent, but trailing Facebook, which drives 28 percent of referral traffic, although this was down from 40 percent a year ago.

Business publisher Quartz said it has seen a 70 percent increase in the number of Flipboard referral pageviews between 2017 and 2018, although the publisher wouldn’t give specifics. Quartz has roughly 29 different magazines on Flipboard and pitches twice a week to be featured in the platform’s newsletter that goes out to Flipboard users.

“It’s been consistent growth,” said Sari Zeidler, director of growth at Quartz. “It’s become a bigger portion of the referral traffic pie in the last year since the Facebook algorithm has shaken up the referral landscape.”

Zeidler said Flipboard gives a lot of feedback about which content — across the platform and specific to Quartz — performs by region. “They are very global, which is great for us,” she said. “They are well-staffed, [well-sourced] and knowledgeable about the different regions they operate in; that shows in our regional reader patterns.”

Dazed Media has had magazine brands Another and Another Man on the platform for over a year, and flagship brand Dazed joined Flipboard at the beginning of the year after Facebook announced it would deprioritize publishers’ content. According to the publisher, Dazed is getting around 5 percent of its total referral traffic from Flipboard, while the other two titles are getting between 6 and 7 percent.

However, Flipboard isn’t without its limitations. Publishers including Hearst have noted inconsistencies in traffic referral. For Another and Another Man, traffic peaked between October and December last year, with the most popular stories being image-led, either photography or fashion.

For some publisher partners, Flipboard sells the ads within the platform and shares the revenue, but on-platform traffic doesn’t always translate to revenue.

The platform is keen to prove that its magazine-like environment has a positive impact on its ads. Research commissioned by Flipboard released this week with Kantar Millward Brown of 2,000 U.K. mobile users showed Flipboard users are 2.6 times more likely to recall ads on its platform and 1.7 times more likely to purchase products as a result of the ads compared to seeing them on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“We were previously set up with them selling ads on our content within the app and giving us a rev share, then moved to the more common way of linking back to our site,” said Bridget Mills-Powell, head of digital at Dazed Media, adding that this means traffic is more effectively monetized. “It’s been working fine, but hard to say if there’s been a big change as it’s just been running like that since the start of the year.”

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JPMorgan Chase is taking a new twist on meeting customers “where they are:” A 27-foot trailer at business events across the U.S., offering free one-on-one advice sessions on marketing, business insights and small-business financing.

The trailer, which is called Chase BizMobile, is the latest iteration of the bank’s plans to grow face-to-face connections with business owners, alongside conferences and seminars it’s organized for the last two years. The objective is to connect with clients and prospects who may consider taking taking up service offerings from the bank in the future.

“Our strategy is to have a human presence everywhere we do business,” said Brent Reinhard, chief marketing officer for Chase Business Banking.

After the recession, large U.S. banks pulled back on most of their small-business lending activities, creating fertile ground for startups like OnDeck and Bond Street to grow market share. But now, banks, including Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are looking to the small-business market as a growth area, adding pressure on institutions to find new ways to reach customers. Chase has modernized its small-business product tech stack and is using OnDeck’s technology to make the approval process simpler and faster. But in a competitive field of banks offering small-business products and services, face-to-face relationships are big differentiators. Chase is the fourth-largest lender of Small Business Administration loans; as of March 31, 2018, the bank approved 1,307 loans valued at $323 million.

The emphasis on face-to-face connections with business owners is a way to build trust among clients who know they’re entering a long-term relationship with a financial institution. Aite senior analyst David O’Connell said surveys he conducted of small-business owners seeking credit showed that while interest rates and repayment terms were important, relationships also figured prominently among their considerations, including the ability to turn to someone when problems arise.

“Chase is smartly setting itself up as a trusted adviser among its small-business borrowers,” he said. “They want to take advantage of their ability to deliver on that relationship as a way to acquire more customers.”

Read the full story on tearsheet.co

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It’s easy to remember when “Snow Fall” was going to change the world of journalism. The 15,000-word opus about a deadly avalanche in Washington state piled up over 3.5 million views within weeks of its publication on Dec. 20, 2012, temporarily setting the paper off on a drastic new course: In a memo sent to staffers weeks after the publication of “Snow Fall,” executive editor Jill Abramson had announced that Sam Sifton, then the national editor, was in charge of a new unit tasked with creating a new “immersive digital magazine experience.”

That unit didn’t last, but the impact of “Snow Fall” is still regularly visible on the Times’ sites. The Gray Lady produced over two dozen large-scale interactive journalism packages in 2017 and more than 60 projects that tied interactive elements.

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There was a time when brands lived in fear of Walmart. But now, Walmart-owned Jet.com is using unease with Amazon to position itself as a friend.

Jet.com is fighting an uphill battle for e-commerce market share and continued relevance under the shadow of not only Amazon, but also its own parent company, Walmart. So to differentiate, Jet.com, led by CEO Marc Lore, is building a strategy that puts brands center stage on its platform. The platform spotlights locally made products based on a user’s location, selling tiny mom and pop labels. Premium brands get full control over pricing. Customers are encouraged to discover based on aesthetic, not previous search patterns.

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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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The path to enlightenment is lined with salty snacks, as far as Lindsay the life coach is concerned, and she’ll be happy to dole out some unconventional advice to you over a bag of Cheez Doodles. Pick your flavor. She’s so enamored with the Wise Foods brand, in fact, that she’s come up with “The…

Campbell Brown, head of global news partnerships at Facebook, said publishers have “welcomed” the company’s approach to including them in their political ads policy. Mark Thompson, CEO of The New York Times, called bullshit. Brown and Thompson were discussing the findings in the 2018 Reuters Institute Digital News Report during an event at Columbia Journalism…