Month: June 2018

Facebook is marking World Blood Donor Day Thursday with the rollout of its Blood Donations on Facebook center in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Blood Donations on Facebook enables users in those countries to find nearby opportunities to donate blood, as well as to receive notifications when there is a need for blood nearby. Facebook introduced…

AT&T has for years been described as one of advertising’s fabled “sleeping giants.” Now that its $85 billion bid to acquire Time Warner has gotten the green light, we’ll find out if it’s true.

After announcing its intention to purchase Time Warner in 2016, AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson has spent 18 months slowly ratcheting up his rhetoric around the combined entity’s ad capabilities, citing the combination of AT&T’s data and analytics with Time Warner’s content and ad inventory as a motivating factor for the deal.

The post The Rundown: Is AT&T serious about ads? appeared first on Digiday.

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Brienna Pinnow, co-founder at Blinc Digital Group. Even with fragmented viewership across screens and devices, TV’s brand-safe, fraud-free storytelling environment faces scarcity – and advertisers know it. As long as demand is high and… Continue reading »

The post 2018 Upfronts: The Real Celebrity Is You appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Census Incenses The ANA published a survey of advertisers who oppose a potential change to the US census that would undercut marketing spend and measurement. The Trump administration wants to include a question about citizenship in the 2020 census, which advertisers worry will… Continue reading »

The post ANA Opposes Census Change; Apple Vs. Facebook Intensifies appeared first on AdExchanger.

Believe it or not, the Cannes Lions festival includes a pretty significant awards component. This year, with a whittled down award program of nine categories, it’s easier to keep track — if you really care. Here’s a quick primer on everything you need to know about this year’s Cannes Lions so you can sound smart when you run into a Swedish creative director at the Gutter Bar.

Big theme: Equality, equality, equality
The Glass Lion, introduced last year for work that shifts perceptions of gender and seeks to address inequality, is getting another overhaul this year, with shortlisted entrants getting to present their work live in Cannes. Fearless Girl for State Street Global Advisors was the big winner last year. This year, the outcome is much less clear.

Sound bite: “The big trend I hear the jury is focusing on is brands taking action, not talking.”

Big theme: Was Publicis robbed?
Publicis is sitting out its first Cannes since announcing it was taking a hiatus from awards as it focuses on building its artificial intelligence platform, Marcel. Plenty of jokes were cracked around whether it mattered, given the holding company wasn’t exactly rolling in Lions last year anyway. The success of Saatchi’s “It’s a Tide Ad” for this year’s Super Bowl could change that, though — as long as someone else other than Saatchi enters the work. Our bet is it’ll find its way in, especially as Tide’s parent Procter & Gamble confirmed it is entering its campaigns.

Sound bite: “The power of design and creativity can change the paradigm, positively impacting the world through brilliant ideas mixed with masterful craft.”

Big theme: The blockchain
If last year was the year of robotics, this year it’s the blockchain. Never mind that it’s still not quite clear what its use could be in media or marketing. Blockchain is starting to capture the creative’s imagination — witness TD Ameritrade, which earlier this year placed an “ad” in the blockchain, courtesy of Havas.

Sound bite: “If you really think about it, all the blockchain is, is an Excel sheet. The possibilities are endless.”

Big theme: Traditional advertising is over
If there are two pieces of work that are going to be the talk of Cannes this year, it’s Tide, with its Super Bowl ad foray that had David Harbour in multiple spots, each mimicking a different brand’s ad. The key: What seemed initially a Mr. Clean or Budweiser ad was actually a Tide ad. Another big contender: Nike’s masterful video — sorry, film — “Nothing Beats a Londoner,” featuring artists, athletes and ordinary people, all coming together in a well-shot ode to London’s culture. Both are not typical ads, but creatives are excited about that.

Sound bite: “It’s not about advertising anymore. It’s about ‘engineering culture.’ Real craft stands out in this 24/7 disposable world.”

Big theme: Cannes is back — kind of
Last year felt like Cannes had peaked — or maybe it was the year the couple was caught having sex on the red carpet. But whether it’s the overall quiet that’s descended on Cannes (witness how many agencies have pulled back) or simply the realization that the past few years have been just too much, this year is the year to loudly declare that you’re here to see the work, damn it.

Sound bite: “Enough meetings. I actually paid for a pass this year, and I’m going to use it.”

Subscribe to our daily Cannes Briefing to get all of our Cannes coverage delivered directly to your inbox at 6 a.m. daily, June 17 – 22. 

The post Cannes 2018: Your awards cheatsheet appeared first on Digiday.

Vox Media likely wouldn’t have been able to sell its upcoming show, “American Style,” to CNN without the help of Hollywood talent agency WME.

Vox Media formed its Vox Entertainment division and signed with WME in 2015 to break into the TV business. Chad Mumm, vp at Vox Entertainment, had seen how WME helped convince HBO to buy a show from Vice when Vice was little more than a print magazine and digital publisher. Mumm recognized that Vox Media’s nascent entertainment arm could similarly benefit from working with an insider like WME. Because CNN’s originals team typically only buys shows from a limited roster of production companies with whom it has an established relationship, “I don’t think that team would have ever met with us” without WME convincing CNN’s execs “that we were like-minded and they shouldn’t think of Vox as a competitor but as an ally and as a producer,” he said.

“Vox, to be fair, was not the easiest sell. Some platforms looked at them as being competitive in that they, too, are a platform,” said Chris Jacquemin, WME’s head of digital.

WME execs Jacquemin, Bradley Singer, Amir Shahkhalili and Ryan McNeily arranged a meeting in January 2016 between Mumm and Jon Adler, senior director of development for CNN Original Series, and Chanel Carmona, director of development for CNN Original Series. WME helped with the follow-ups needed to convert the meeting into a show that CNN has added to its 2018-19 programming slate.

“That [deal] was one that I can’t expect us to have cracked on our own,” said Mumm.

Vox Media isn’t the only publisher turning to traditional talent agencies to break into Hollywood. BuzzFeed entertainment arm BuzzFeed Studios and Refinery29 have each signed with WME in the past year, and HuffPost signed with ICM Partners in April. Publishers, with their built-in audiences and the co-marketing opportunities see an opportunity to sell shows to streaming services and TV networks. But it’s a competitive market, so publishers are turning to talent agencies for help.

Fatherly took on UTA as a strategic investor in 2017 for exactly that reason. The parenting publisher wanted to expand beyond text-based articles into original shows and podcasts and didn’t want to waste time trying to get traction.

“The fact that they can say, ‘These are the platforms to talk to. I’m going to make email introductions this afternoon. Boom, boom, boom,’” said Fatherly CEO Mike Rothman. “And then people get back to you immediately, as opposed to me struggling to figure out who to talk to, who has the right reputation and appetite for the kind of content we’re creating. It just collapses time.”

Fatherly has a day-to-day point person at UTA who handles licensing and another who handles talent relationships. The publisher also works with a person who leads the agency’s emerging platforms group, who has “served as our Sherpa in navigating the audio landscape and has been able to make direct connections to all the decision-makers at all the platforms that matter to us,” said Rothman.

UTA also helped guide Fatherly away from the hell that can be the book publishing business. The publisher had considered developing a book series, but decided not to after talking to UTA, which has its own book publishing division. “When you lay out the economics and the time invested in doing one book deal, you might as well focus on doing one midsized ad deal and have a lot more margin to show for it,” said Rothman.

Some publishers are forgoing talent agencies, skeptical of how much support they would receive. In one publishing executive’s experience, talent agencies saw the publisher less as a producer or partner than as a potential buyer, despite the fact that the publisher had its own production arm and wanted an active role in — and control over — the pitch and development processes.

Agencies’ involvement can extend beyond helping publishers land deals or talent for shows to also include landing executive talent. “In many cases, we’re helping them hire internal infrastructure — a development executive, as an example, who is from the television or feature [film] business and really understands how to manage these processes,” said Jacquemin.

A concern for publishers may be that talent agencies would treat them differently than traditional, established clients like TV production studios. Given publishers’ lack of experience with selling shows or movies, a talent agency may have to wait a long time to see any return on its work with a publisher. As a result, the agency may ask the publisher to pay a retainer fee until they sell a show, and the agency can receive its usual cut of the sale price. But Jacquemin said WME usually does not ask publishers to pay a retainer instead of the agency taking a percentage of its deals.

“If there’s a lot of strategy and building of the organization to get ready to do something, and we know that’s going to take quite some time to get going, we might [consider asking for a retainer], but generally we’re great at packaging and selling stuff. So we’re happy to make money when they make money,” said Jacquemin. One of WME’s other execs on the Vox Entertainment account took time out from his vacation to chat on the phone with Netflix execs in order to close Vox Entertainment’s deal for “Explained.”

“He was doing it over the phone on the beach,” said Mumm. “That was when I was like, ‘Wow, these guys are in it.’”

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The post Publishers turn to Hollywood talent agencies for help breaking into TV appeared first on Digiday.

Two years after launching its own creative agency, soda brand Lucozade wants the team to buy its media, too.

The advertiser plans to take on some programmatic and social media buying from MediaCom. The idea is for Lucozade’s internal agency TED — which stands for tech, entertainment and design — to control up to 20 percent of its media spending. MediaCom would continue to manage the rest, which is mainly spread across TV and outdoor.

It’s a sharp turnaround for a business that wasn’t sure about the same move last summer. But as more spending goes programmatic, the company needs to have some of that expertise in-house, said Rick Oakley, Lucozade’s head of digital marketing.

“We’re sat on so much consumer and media consumption data that we should have an insight into when we’re able to advertise,” said Oakley. “Programmatic is revolutionizing advertising, and we need to have people in-house to help us understand it whilst continuing to work with our agencies.”

Having a mix of internal and external programmatic skills is an extension of the approach Lucozade took when it started to bring some of its advertising in-house in 2016. That model has given brands like Lucozade, Duracell and Deutsche Telekom control over their media buying while outsourcing specialist roles to agencies. Oakley believes Lucozade’s own agency has the advantage over its external partners when it comes to speed.

“We can deliver completely through the line [campaigns] with TED, but we’re also working very closely with the marketing, sales and field sales teams when it comes to being able to evaluate a campaign,” said Oakley. “Often, agencies don’t have access to those insights.”

Taking advertising work in-house has its own challenges. It’s not easy for the TED team to collate all that data. Lucozade’s agency is testing a tool to measure if ads are driving in-store sales. The tool tracks purchase data store by store before layering on media plans to see if sales uplifts match with spending patterns.

On the creative side, the plan is to do more of the same. Since starting in 2016, TED has been creating around half of Lucozade’s ads, producing outdoor and magazine ads and developing a fitness app before piloting its first TV ad last month. The team worked with broadcaster ITV to create the ad for TV show “Love Island” after MediaCom brokered the partnership.

The milestone doesn’t mean Lucozade’s creative agencies Grey and JWT have produced their last TV spot for Lucozade, though. “The one thing you should never skimp on is high-quality creative, which is why we pay through the nose for it because of its value,” Oakley said.

Looking forward, Oakley is thinking about how TED can be translated to other markets like Spain, the Netherlands and France. In-house agencies like TED aren’t new, but Lucozade’s interest shows how marketers are trying to produce content faster and take more control over their budgets.

Lucozade has yet to make similar demands of its own agencies to restructure their businesses as Unilever’s Keith Weed has. Oakley didn’t rule out changing the way the company pays its agencies in the future, though.

The post Lucozade looks to take some media buying in house appeared first on Digiday.

In February, Snapchat rolled out a controversial redesign, which separated media and celebrity content from messages and stories posted by users’ friends. The redesign made it harder to find the magazine-like editions from Discover publishers, as their tiles were now mixed in with public posts from influencers, video shows made by publishers and curated live stories. Snap has since reversed course and is in part reverting to the earlier design.

In this edition of our Confessions series, in which we exchange anonymity for honesty, we spoke with an executive at a longtime Snapchat Discover publisher about the impact of the controversial redesign and how its approach to producing content for Snapchat has changed. Answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

I’ve heard from two other Discover publishers that their Snapchat daily audience went down by about 20 percent immediately after the redesign. How did it affect your Discover channel?
We lost maybe 5 percent of our daily audience, which was a good thing. Like other publishers, we built a team for Snapchat, but now we are thinking more and more about how we can utilize the non-exclusive content we make for other platforms for Snapchat, and vice versa. Vertical video is going to remain a huge focus for everyone, but because we’ve turned our Snapchat team into a multimedia team in the past year or so — and the content we make for Snapchat we can utilize in 20 different ways — we’re not going to feel as much of a loss.

How much did the lack of monetization on the app drive that change with the Snapchat team?
The extent to which we can monetize on Snapchat has been highly limited. We have salaries to pay, so that meant [the team] had to do work on other platforms.

What about Snapchat shows? Snap seems to be working with more publishers on creating shows for Discover.
Snapchat used to pay [for upfront production costs] for shows. With the new ones, they’re not paying. We’ve not done a pitch for a show recently, and we would certainly make a show, but we would like them to pay for it.

Is Snapchat Discover profitable for you?
Yes and no. We’ve been able to land big investments in terms of sponsors, which certainly helps. But as we’ve expanded the scope of the team and combined it with other teams, it’s become more efficient.

Some Discover publishers argue that Snap can be profitable because, unlike some other platforms, there are fixed costs that make it easier for publishers to plan ahead for. Would you agree?
The costs are pretty much fixed at this point, and we know what the budgets are for staff. But there is a fluctuation in terms of the platform itself, which can throw everything off. [The redesign] didn’t throw us as much this time around, and we were able to quickly adjust, thankfully.

Snap has been on a charm offensive with publishers this year. Have you seen it be more approachable or improve as a partner?
They’ve always been good to work with. I think they are just in a more desperate period in their life cycle. As we expand into more lucrative and better monetizable platforms, I think Snapchat will become less and less of a priority. But if that happens, that doesn’t mean we’re going to disband our Snapchat team because we’ve already been re-versioning them to produce vertical video for multiple platforms. Vertical video is not going anywhere, but the platform on which the format is being viewed can change.

The post Confessions of a Snapchat Discover publisher: We’re looking beyond the app appeared first on Digiday.