Month: July 2018

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Erik Requidan, vice president of programmatic strategy at Intermarkets. Instead of taking a well-deserved (and much-needed) break after the 2016 presidential election, digital teams went right back to work. That’s partly because presidential elections… Continue reading »

The post Getting In On The 2020 Election Campaigns: What Publishers Need To Know appeared first on AdExchanger.

Now Hiring The overarching trend of brands in-housing marketing technology operations isn’t great for agencies and tech vendors. But one thing working in their favor is the challenge many brands now face securing top programmatic and data-driven talent. The pharmaceutical giant Bayer would like to more than double its 10-person programmatic and analytics team, but… Continue reading »

The post The In-House Hiring Challenge; NYT Covers TV Ad Tracking appeared first on AdExchanger.

There are numerous factors behind clients’ desire to move marketing in-house. In the latest installment of our Confessions series, where we exchange anonymity for honesty, a senior executive at a global advertiser says the amount of extra work hours its agency always seems to tally up is one of the top reasons behind the company’s decision to move strategy and media in-house.

The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What is one of the main reasons why your company plans on leaving your agency and move marketing in-house?
There’s always overbilling when it comes to the hours our agency puts in and we’re not sure why. The agency says they’re going to spend 1,000 hours a month on our business, and after the month is over, I see where all of the hours are allocated and they’re actually spending 2,000 hours.

Does your agency tell you these hours are accruing?
No, there’s no check-in from the account leadership where they might say we’re mid-month and we’re already at our month’s cap. All of a sudden, I just get a report that shows they are double the hours over our spend.

Are they charging you right away for these extra hours?
No, they’re not charging me for those extra hours, but I guarantee you that next year they will come back to us and say, “You know what guys, we need more money because we are doing 2,000 hours a month,” or they will say they have to add more staff to complete all the hours they’re spending on our company.

Do you believe these extra hours are justified?
While I don’t nitpick, I’ve looked at some of the roles and I can’t point to any deliverables I’ve gotten that would’ve needed these extra hours. There’s all these internal status meetings people are being asked to be a part of. I’ve had some people on the agency side come to me confidentially and say, “We’re in too many meetings.”

Why does this lack of transparency lead to your company bringing marketing in-house?
It makes me feel powerless. I don’t have a high level of confidence that my agency is giving everything I need both strategically and tactically. As a client, you really have no way of auditing [agency hours] unless you hire a third party to audit your agency. If you tell me you spend 80 hours on my account, I can’t tell you that you didn’t; all I can say is that feels high.

Is the fear that the agency would drop you if you say no to more hours?
No, they would never drop us. The fear is that we would always be stuck working with them. They use a fear tactic. They’ll say, “You’re never going to be able to do this yourself. Look at how many hours we spend. We have 50 people working on your account; you’re not going to hire 50 people.”

The post Confessions of a marketer: Agency overbilling is spurring the move in-house appeared first on Digiday.

Bleacher Report is getting into live events, starting with several parties and installations that it’s planned around the NBA’s Summer League this weekend in Las Vegas.

As the NBA Summer League kicks off this weekend, the Turner-owned sports publisher plans to host parties Friday and Saturday night and an afternoon pool party hosted by NBA player JaVale McGee on Sunday, all with sponsors Verizon and the Hakkasan Group. Also planned are a Fortnite gaming challenge hosted by House of Highlights founder Omar Raja and influencer dinner hosted by Turner and Bleacher Report on-air personality Lance Fresh.

The Summer League campaign, called “B/R x Jumpoff,” is described by Bleacher Report CRO and CMO Howard Mittman as a “branded takeover” for the weekend and a model for future live events. Recent Bleacher Report-hosted events included parties tied to the NBA and NFL drafts and a celebrity soccer competition in New York hosted by former NBA star Steve Nash.

Bleacher Report aims to do up to four such tentpole events this year and 15 to 20 smaller ones, led a six-person team that’s supported by other Bleacher Report departments such as marketing, as well as the Turner’s events operation.

“Live events is a big focus for us,” Mittman said. “All of our events are built as backdrops for social. We can’t bring the 100 million people that follow us across our social channels to Las Vegas, but we can bring this moment to them through the content we can produce on the ground.”

Bleacher Report will have about 50 employees in Las Vegas this weekend producing videos for Bleacher Report’s site, apps and social channels, everything from live interviews with players, spotlight videos, highlights from the games and parties taking place that weekend and coverage of any NBA breaking news that happens in and away from Las Vegas.

The publisher is also looking to host events during the offseason for the NBA, NFL and other major sports the publisher covers. This is partially because some offseason moments such as the start of NBA free agency or the NFL’s draft are some of the most heavily-trafficked days for Bleacher Report. The first day of this year’s NBA free agency, for instance, drove 11.8 million sessions and 46 million page views on Bleacher Report’s app — both single-day records for the publisher.

“Over the course of the year, there are off-field and offseason moments that sometimes pop in a much bigger way than we expect, sometimes rivaling big days during the actual season,” Mittman said. “We want to own those moments, too.”

While Bleacher Report is looking to grow consumer revenue through merchandising, content licensing and even pay-per-view sports on its new streaming video service, the publisher isn’t immediately at its events as a paid revenue stream, Mittman said. For instance, even though the parties will be ticketed, Bleacher Report won’t be taking a cut of the sales. Mittman added that Bleacher Report’s events practice, while new, will be profitable this year.

“It’s something we’re testing and we’ll pay close attention to the gate,” said Mittman. “But right now we’re enthusiastic about our ability to prove ‘proof-of-concept’ here. Can we build these events into tentpoles that can have a significant impact on our brand? Then we can focus on getting to intense profitability.”

 

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Hearst UK has introduced a branded content metric combining dwell time and scroll depth. The metric, dubbed Engaged View Rate, calculates a score once audiences have spent a minimum of 30 seconds on the page and reached a scroll depth of at least 75 percent.

“We were confident that a combination of both dwell time and scroll depth showed that readers were engaged,” said Ali Gray, head of digital content studio, Hearst UK, adding that taking singular metrics like time as a proxy for quality is skewed.

Hearst has used EVR on a branded content campaign with retailer Very, but wouldn’t share results, only saying that branded content performed on a par with its editorial content. Being able to compare commercial and editorial content has been a goal for the publisher as giving a measurement of success beyond the standard reach metrics of impressions, clicks and views. For future branded content campaigns, Hearst will set benchmarks for EVR and adapt the campaign if it’s underperforming. For Very, well-performing content on Cosmopolitan informed what content ran on Good Housekeeping.

“The whole industry has to move to think about quality,” said Clare Gorman, chief operations director, Hearst UK.

According to the publisher, it started working on EVR eight months ago. Since then, it has been testing out the right combinations of dwell time and scroll depth to signify an engagement percentage.

Outside of the campaign with Very, EVR has only been used internally. Hearst will begin sharing the scores with agencies and advertisers. Currently, there’s no pricing model around the metric, but the publisher isn’t ruling out using EVR to sell branded content with long-term commercial partners.

Richard Stokes, global head of content at Wavemaker said that while Hearst should be applauded for focusing on engagement, dwell time and scroll depth for measurement are table stakes.

“Reach is a metric but not the metric,” he said. “Publishers have been a little slow on responding to our needs, which is really how interested are people and what did this make them subsequently do? Anything that tries to understand attribution better and enhance effectiveness will make publishers more competitive.”

In display, using time as a way of proving engagement has failed to gain wide-scale adoption outside of specific publishers like The Financial Times and The Economist. Getting people to adopt new ways of selling isn’t easy.

“It’s not about agencies putting [EVR] on a spreadsheet,” said Gorman. “It’s about us giving them a quality metric that holds us to account. I can only see agencies embracing it.”

“The big challenge for media owners is, we need more editorial insight to apply against the content,” said Laura Wade vp of content and innovation at Essence. “Capturing data isn’t the hard bit, interpreting it into meaningful insights is; that’s a different skill set.”

Hearst UK’s branded content division has 25 staff across editorial, digital designers and art directors. (It plans to hire another six people in the coming months to build up its video capabilities.) The average deal size for digital content creation has grown by 200 percent in two years, said Hearst. Last year, branded content revenue had grown by 60 percent year over year, but the publishers was unwilling to share exact figures and how much of its revenue portfolio it makes up.

The post ‘The whole industry has to think about quality’: Hearst UK introduces new metric to prove branded content works appeared first on Digiday.

The NFL is looking to grow its content library, not only to feed its associated social accounts but produce more programming for its own media properties and potentially license to media companies.

In its second year, the NFL’s Live Content Correspondent program embeds freelance photographers and videographers with each of the league’s teams in its 32 U.S. markets plus London, where some games are held, to capture pre-, in- and post-game content that’s sent out across its own media properties, including its TV network and its live show on Twitter, “#NFLBlitz;” as well as the league’s, teams’ and players’ social accounts. This year, the NFL will double the number of correspondents for the upcoming season to 64 people, including two in London, to multiply the amount of content produced beyond the 30,000 photos and videos captured last year for the league’s content library.

“Library is the key word,” said Mark Pesavento, vp of digital content at the NFL. “I do think this IP is incredibly valuable. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface on its potential.”

With this expansion, the NFL expects to capture more and different kinds of content, like tailgate parties in the stadium parking lot and players’ warm-up routines; plus content beyond game days to capture events like teams’ training camps and players’ charity functions. The NFL already had one correspondent cover the NFL Draft in April and expects the correspondents’ work to extend past the season’s completion.

Having more exclusive content on the NFL’s own media and social channels could threaten other sports media companies, if NFL fans increasingly turn to the NFL’s Instagram account or Twitter show instead of, say, ESPN’s. The NFL has been a content provider and competitor to other media companies since at least the 2003 launch of the NFL Network, which rivals other TV sports networks like ESPN and Fox’s FS1.

Being a league-owned media company, it can be hard to discern who the NFL’s competitors are because they’re also its partners, said Pesavento. He doesn’t see the NFL becoming a bigger competitor than it has been, though. “We could wind up just giving it to Fox and CBS and ESPN to drive engagement in the broadcast, to promote tune-in or to promote things that we think are priorities,” said Pesavento.

The Live Content Correspondent program originated as a way to generate content for NFL teams to share on social media, especially when a team was playing an away game. Teams get a 10-minute exclusivity window to post the material to their own social account before the NFL can use it for its own social accounts; there is no exclusivity period for content distributed on the NFL’s media properties, said Russell Simon, the NFL’s coordinator for social media operations and the Live Content Correspondent program. The content was also provided to NFL players, said Josh Tucker, director of social content at the NFL.

The correspondents’ up-close access to the games and teams also benefits the league’s own media properties. A video from December caught a veteran player taking time after a game to offer tips to a younger player from an opposing team was shared on the NFL’s Twitter account and garnered more than 3 million views.

Awesome moment.@TambaHali91 giving @jbbigbear pass rushing tips after the game. #FootballIsFamily pic.twitter.com/iam0d5RfLM

— NFL (@NFL) December 17, 2017

After Minnesota Vikings receiver Stefon Diggs caught a miracle game-winning touchdown during last season’s playoffs, a correspondent was nearby and handed Diggs his cell phone, which the player used to record a video of the celebration. “Our social creators capture things that sometimes the broadcasters miss,” said Tucker.

The NFL is already picking at potential opportunities for what else it can do with the correspondents’ content. It has discussed producing “whiparound” shows — programs that drop in and out of various games — that only use content from the Live Content Correspondent program, said Tucker.

The NFL is also considering plugging that content into its Twitter live show, “#NFLBlitz,” said Pesavento.

The post The NFL doubles its Live Content Correspondent program to grow its content library appeared first on Digiday.

The HQ trivia obsession spread quickly last fall, with agency employees praying conference calls would get canceled so they could tune in at 3 p.m. each weekday. The free mobile app not only provided a workday distraction, but it also offered a chance to win real money.

Now, about eight months into HQ’s fame with millions still playing each day, the company is working to prove it’s not just a viral hit but a real business — a media empire, in fact. While popular mobile games like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Fortnite have become cash cows via in-app payments, HQ trivia has so far relied on an advertising business. Early partners said the sponsored games have been successful, not for simply buying into a shiny object but for driving sales. And that’s exactly what HQ CEO and co-founder Rus Yusupov likes to hear.

While some tech companies are selling your private data, tweaking elections or being called to appear before Congress, we’re focused on making advertising something that people actually don’t mind.

— Rus (@rus) April 10, 2018

HQ’s sole revenue strategy, for now, is akin to a sponsorship where brands pay for game takeovers. For example, NBC paid for a takeover of “The Voice.” On May 14, HQ players had a chance to win $50,000 and a trip for two to the show’s finale. “The Voice” game on HQ, which aired at 11:30 p.m. ET, reached 1.4 million players. NBC’s ratings for 18- to 34-year-olds, as well as viewers aged 12 to 17, was the best for a Monday episode since the first live show of the season, evp of digital for NBC Entertainment Rob Hayes said.

Yet Hayes wouldn’t use the word “sponsorship” to describe NBC’s work with HQ. Rather, he saw the deal as more mutually beneficial.

“It was a great marketing initiative, not a sponsorship. We both had something to get out of it. It wasn’t just [HQ saying,] the only way we will do this is if you pay all of this money,” Hayes said.

That time that @blakeshelton and @kelly_clarkson we’re on @hqtrivia with @ScottRogowsky! I got eliminated on a question about the Voice, which I didn’t watch because I don’t have cable! pic.twitter.com/bhcg1MyrsB

— Sarah Carmichael (@SarahCarms) May 15, 2018

Hayes said that all of that audience engagement wasn’t even that difficult to attract.

HQ is “not scripted. It’s fairly easy to pull off if you have a studio, production company, even though we didn’t produce it; they did,” Hayes said.

Indeed, HQ’s parent company Intermedia Labs has proven itself capable of producing shows optimized for mobile and for its audience. Nike’s HQ show in March had a peak viewership of 1.7 million with the majority watching the entire 20-minute broadcast. Exclusive sneakers in addition to the prize pool provided an added incentive. Sandra Carreon-John, Nike’s global corporate communications director, called HQ a “success” for Nike.

“Sentiment across social was widely positive with people clamoring for HQ trivia’s first non-monetary prize in the custom Air Max 270s. All in all, we considered it to be an effective effort that provided great brand distinction around Air Max Day,” Carreon-John said.

Unique prizes — not just money — is one reason people keep coming back. Those exclusives are similar to what ad buyers have said could be successful commerce strategies on Snapchat.

“Money is fine and fun, but despite all the ‘millennials love experiences’ hot takes, we still love limited-edition, free stuff,” said Jay Kapoor, a venture capitalist at Launch Capital who regularly played HQ but now tends to play only sponsored games.

While 115M+ ppl tuned in to watch #SuperBowlLII, almost 2M people tuned in to watch @hqtrivia! That’s insane!

Congrats to all 168 winners and best wishes to my fellow #Giants who still don’t know who to root for in this Super Bowl 🤷‍♂️#HQTrivia Tracker below, as always: pic.twitter.com/MwUKPB1ZWi

— Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) February 5, 2018

The price of HQ’s ad buys vary depending on the extent of the deal. Warner Bros. reportedly paid $3 million to cover sponsored games for three movies. NBC declined to share how much they paid exactly but said the network at least partially funded the $50,000 jackpot and the entire trip to the finale.

But it remains to be seen how successful these sponsorships will continue to be. For now, HQ can tout that all three films from Warner Bros ranked No. 1 at the box office for opening weekend after their respective HQ integrations. The Nike Air Max 270 also is one of the top-five-selling sneakers this year.

“If I were a sponsor, I’d definitely put dollars behind HQ over TV, especially if done well. Much more quality attention,” said Kamil Strycharz, digital content coordinator of the Chicago Bulls, who has been a regular HQ player.

Yet one issue going forward is HQ’s app downloads are declining. HQ has garnered about 7.7 million downloads since its launch, according to Apptopia. It experienced a jump when the Android version came out earlier this year but week-by-week downloads have been declining since April.

Since its launch, HQ also has faced competition from other similar apps. The makers of an HQ trivia cheat app recently launched a game called Majority Rules. Gravy is a shopping game show. Facebook also released a game show format for creators. An early competitor, The Q has inked some of its own advertisers such as Pandora.

“We felt The Q trivia was a great place to reach passionate music fans during moments when they are celebrating music and let them know about the exciting evolutions on our platform,” said Bill Crandall, Pandora’s vp of editorial. “Anyone out there who answered both the One Direction and Black Uhuru questions correctly, our thumbs are up to you.”

Crandall declined to comment if Pandora considered working with HQ, as well.

NBC hasn’t planned another deal with HQ or another trivia app, Hayes said, but they’re still keeping a close eye on the format.

“It’s safe to say we’ve talked to everybody. We’re aware of those companies that are out there that can offer the same kind of infrastructure and services. Quite honestly, we were in the trivia space, and we were able to do this ourselves,” Hayes said, referring to NBC’s 2013 show “The Million Second Quiz.”

Meanwhile, HQ has no set quota of sponsored games, and it’s been relying primarily on sponsors reaching out to them. As for the future of ads on HQ, the HQ team said they’re considering other types of app and product monetization.

Sage Lazarro, senior editor at creative agency Codeword, said she’s considered an HQ sponsorship for one of her clients. To her, the deal is unique among other advertising options in digital media because she sees it as actually beneficial for players and for brands.

“I know a lot of people who stopped playing after the initial hype died down, but I actually think HQ has gotten a lot better,” Lazarro said. “Sponsorships add user value instead of just being ads, which is so important for a game like this where people need to repeatedly make snap decisions to opt in on cue.”

While HQ focused on growing one app, it has begun to offer different experiences. Scott Rogowsky regularly hosts the main game. Sharon Carpenter, also one of the original hosts, is now the host of HQ’s UK edition. In May, HQ launched its first vertical, HQ Sports, with Lauren Gambino.

“My view of [HQ] is they’re still in the scale business, like a lot of those startups,” NBC’s Hayes said. “They have a format, and I’m sure they’ll come up with new ones, whether it’s for people who are playing now or people who are new viewers.”

The post How HQ trivia is trying to turn a viral sensation into a media business appeared first on Digiday.

Formula One is in talks to launch the F1 TV channel on Amazon Prime, which could potentially open it up to more than 100 million subscribers over time.

The service would be made available to Prime subscribers in countries where the local broadcaster has given up its exclusive rights under new or renegotiated deals. The partnership would not, for example, be available in the U.K. where the sport has an exclusive deal with Sky but could work in the U.S., said head of global sponsorship and commercial Murray Barnett.

“It makes sense for us to be on there [Amazon Prime] because it’s an open platform and we’re already in discussions with them about distribution in the future,” he said. “In the U.S. we have an agreement with ESPN that allows us to exploit our own OTT service separately so we’ll definitely be on Amazon Prime [there].

Negotiations between both Formula One and Amazon will likely mirror those Amazon had with Eurosport’s executives, who agreed to put the broadcaster’s player on Prime Video. If that happens then F1 TV would sit on Prime’s Channels section where viewers pick the channels they want to watch and pay for.

From Amazon’s perspective, if customers opt to pay for multiple subscriptions through Prime, F1 TV could help reduce churn from the service as consumers adapt to being able to access more and more content from within a single interface, said Toby Holleran, senior analyst at Ampere Analysis.

Gaining more subscribers for F1 TV, and all the data that comes with them, is a key part of how the sport attempts to pitch itself against other sports. It gives the sport’s commercial bosses an alternative to broadcast contracts protecting against rights deflation but more fundamentally creates a relationship with and knowledge of the consumer for the first time.

The risk for Formula One, according to Mostyn Goodwin, partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants, will be making any money from the venture, given the issues with SVOD profitability, and balancing on the tightrope of building a consumer business without angering their core b2b broadcast customers.

In established markets such as the U.K, U.S. and Germany, multiple subscription households are on the rise, and the average home with a subscription video player now takes two services. In the U.S. the figure rises to 2.8, according to Ampere Analysis.

“We want to be one of the smarter channels on the Amazon Prime platform,” said Barnett. “[F1 TV] is part of how we’re building a direct relationship with our fans because that’s always been something that’s run through our promoters or TV partners….We see F1 TV as an independent revenue stream outside of the relationship with our TV partners.”

It’s a gambit that has been deemed too risky in other sports like football where the possibility of rights holders launching their own subscription service is more complicated due to lucrative deals with broadcasters. Barnett said: “The sports sponsorship model is changing to a point where there’s an increased focus on delivering against a brand’s specific objectives. We’re taking much longer to work with partners through proposals in order to develop bespoke deals. We’re no longer giving them a menu of what rights they can buy and for what price.”

The challenge will be in proving to potential sponsors, particularly consumer brands that the sport is closer to fans than it ever has been. After all, Formula One has operated as a B2B business: revenues come from large broadcasters, corporate sponsors and governments. Knowledge of its own audience has consequently been low. Investments have been made over the last 12 months to close that knowledge gap, said Barnett.

The strategy appears to have a resonated with Amazon executives. Earlier this month, the online retailer’s Amazon Web Services division was unveiled as the sport’s latest backer. But unlike traditional sponsorship deals, Barnett said the motivation was as much about generating value in kind between both parties as it was about trying to make the most money from its rights. Consequently, Amazon will use its cloud computing software to make decades or archived data and content more accessible to fans such as by showing on screen graphics about technical aspects of the car during races.

The post Formula One to bring streaming service to Amazon Prime appeared first on Digiday.

The company forecasts second-quarter operating profit will grow 5%, though the result missed analyst estimates and would halt what had been four straight quarters of record earnings.

Micron Technology, America’s largest memory-chip maker, is challenging a Chinese court decision that temporarily halted the sale of some of its products in the country.