Month: August 2018

U.S. sports fans are spending more time getting their fix through digital channels: 30 percent now stream live sports on their smartphones or tablets, and 80 percent% use the internet when watching sports to enhance their experience. For them, digital is the new normal. We at Two Circles think this is a huge opportunity–albeit a…

Almost six-in-ten Americans consider it an appropriate use of technology to genetically engineer animals to grow organs or tissues that could be used for humans needing a transplant, while 41% say this would be going too far.

Over the past year, GroupM media agency Essence has reduced its investment in third-party data segments for certain clients by more than half. While the decline has been most prominent in Europe, it began well before GDPR took effect and is totally independent of the regulation, said Ryan Storrar, Essence’s head of media activation in… Continue reading »

The post Essence Decreases Its Investment In Third-Party Data appeared first on AdExchanger.

“AdExchanger Politics” is a recurring feature that tracks developments in politics and digital advertising.  Today’s column is written by Ray Kingman, CEO at Semcasting. Political parties and their leadership pick winners and losers – when they legislate and, especially, in how they allocate resources to candidates running for office. The idea of picking winners and… Continue reading »

The post Digital Advertising Upends Formula For How Political Parties Pick Winners And Losers appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Leviathan Stirs Netflix is testing promo ads between episodes with some European users. Netflix subscribers in the UK started seeing unskippable units suggesting other shows they might like, which bubbled up on Reddit and were first reported by Cord Cutters News. Netflix already runs… Continue reading »

The post Netflix Experiments With Promo Spots; Google Clarifies Location Data Issue appeared first on AdExchanger.

When it comes to video distribution, European publishers are increasingly betting on themselves.

Over half of publishers surveyed at the Digiday Video Summit in Europe this June said their owned and operated properties are their primary focus when it comes to video distribution, over other channels such as social media platforms or over-the-top TV.

The post Digiday Research: European publishers bet on their own properties for video appeared first on Digiday.

Munchies is shopping for chefs and restaurants to bake into its newest endeavor: a food court.

The Vice and Fremantle Media co-owned publisher recently signed a brand licensing deal with developer Triple Five Media, putting it in charge of a food hall at American Dream, a 4.5 million square-foot shopping and entertainment complex set to open in the Meadowlands, New Jersey, in the spring of 2019. Munchies’ food court, one of American Dream’s two food halls, will feature space for 14 vendors, as well as a staging area where a team can shoot videos and chefs can do demos.

Thanks to its proximity to MetLife Stadium, as well as American Dream’s own dizzying list of attractions — a 12-story indoor ski hill, the world’s largest indoor water park, a Ferris wheel, a luxury retail shopping center and a “4-D” movie theater — Munchies expects the complex to host 40 million visitors per year.

As a part of the agreement, Munchies gets a brand licensing fee, plus royalties that change depending on how much revenue the food court generates. It declined to share specific financial details of the deal.

Muchies will select the vendors that will both represent the publisher’s sensibility and deliver something that feels appropriate to the food hall’s setting. A cocktail party for possible targets is in the works, along with outreach to chefs the publisher has worked with in the past.

“I don’t want this to be really self-indulgent,” said Munchies co-founder and publisher John Martin. “If you’re going to do a food court, there are certain things you need. You should have sandwiches. You should have pizza.”

Like many other food-focused publishers, Munchies has cast a wide net for non-ad revenue. It partnered with Chef’d on a series of meal kits (Chef’d folded unexpectedly in July); last spring, Munchies published its first cookbook, “Chef’s Night Out,” and has two more coming in the next 12 months; it also regularly hosts branded events at its Williamsburg headquarters.

Those other streams of revenue account for a “meaningful” yet minority share of Munchies’ revenue, Martin said. It also makes money by producing shows for Viceland, creating branded content for advertisers and from selling ads on its site. Since the site launched four years ago, digital ad revenue has gone from 100 percent of revenue to 25 percent, Martin said.

The food court is the latest example of a food publisher extending its brand into the real world. BuzzFeed’s Tasty, for example, recently set up food stalls at Madison Square Garden, and Tastemade, after a number of successful brand-licensing experiments, is eyeing cafes as a new revenue stream to complement its branded-content and video-production business.

Beyond the inherent brand marketing opportunity, Martin sounded optimistic about the food court’s ability to generate different kinds of revenue. Munchies is permitted to sell branded merchandise on site, for example, and it is also free to host events and other kinds of experiential marketing programs there.

That open-ended approach speaks to a recent reversal in the attitudes of mall operators, who historically kept a tight grip on what went on inside their walls.

“Mall operators have historically demanded that brands pay high rates to host events or pop-up activations—in the six-figure range — which really didn’t make sense for marketing activations,” said Karina Masolova, the executive editor of The Licensing Letter, which tracks brand-licensing activity. “But as U.S. malls have begun to feel the crunch, they are beginning to see the value in brands driving foot traffic to their spaces.”

Over time, the programming will be worked out by both the marketing and editorial teams, though Martin expects Munchies will field ideas not only from its own employees but from chefs and sponsors, as well as American Dream.

While that work is in an early stage, Martin said the best-case scenario would involve a kind of content tentpole that would play out at the food court. “The dream would be to do what TRL did in Times Square,” Martin said.

The post Vice’s Munchies is launching a food court in New Jersey appeared first on Digiday.

On Aug. 2, a trio of longtime digital media executives, including former HuffPost CEO Betsy Morgan and former AwesomenessTV president Brett Bouttier, launched Magnet Companies, a new holding company focused on investing in, buying and building digital media businesses. It’s the latest high-profile digital media venture — after AT&T’s Otter Media, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo and Group Nine Media — that has been set up as a holding company.

Magnet Companies, which also counts former Whalerock Industries president Jeff Berman as a principal, is backed by an unnamed multibillion-dollar private equity fund in New York, which has invested a “significant amount of money” into the venture, said Bouttier. The idea is to either find or build digital media businesses that can achieve greater success by working under a holding company structure rather than on their own. This includes the usual “shared services” such as accounting, legal and HR, but also establishes centralized teams for content production and ad sales, Bouttier said.

“When you have a holding company, you have the ability to scale operating expenses that can be costly when you’re still trying to build a new business,” said Bouttier. “And at such an early stage, you generally don’t have access to skilled and experienced executives — and if you do, it creates a lot of expenses that divert money away from things like product, creative and marketing. If we can scale that and offer those types of services, it’s a benefit that can accrete to the companies in our portfolio.”

Magnet joins a handful of high-profile holding companies in digital media. The company that has been getting the most attention of late is Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo, which has reportedly raised a $591 million fund and has invested in companies such as The Young Turks Network, Clique and Whistle Sports. WndrCo and Katzenberg are also behind NewTV, which has raised $1 billion for its upcoming mobile video streaming platform. (Though WndrCo bills itself as a consumer tech holding company, some industry sources still call it a fund at this stage since it hasn’t acquired or rolled out any companies or products.)

Other prominent digital-media holding companies include Group Nine Media, which is backed by Discovery and controls the publishing brands NowThis, The Dodo, Thrillist and Seeker. Otter Media, a streaming video joint venture between AT&T and The Chernin Group, functioned as a digital holding company overseeing brands such as Fullscreen and Crunchyroll until it was fully acquired by AT&T.

Ben Lerer, CEO of Group Nine Media, said forming the holding company — and the ability to show greater scale — has created more opportunities for Group Nine to close upfront ad deals with advertisers. “We have some relationships at the agency holding company level that we would not have been able to have as an individual brand,” said Lerer. “We have a seat at the table.”

Similarly, Group Nine’s structure allows it to have broader and bigger conversations with platforms around producing original content and testing out new products in beta, Lerer said.

Some benefits are obvious. For instance, by virtue of having four different media brands constantly publishing, Group Nine and its publishers have access to a lot more data, which helps them make better programming and distribution decisions. It’s also easier to allocate funds and resources toward new products — such as commerce — because the costs don’t feel as large under an umbrella organization.

The challenge in a holding company structure such as Group Nine’s is to ensure that the different media brands have enough room to be different, Lerer said.

Not every holding company is the same, and often these types of companies are formed because the executives behind the venture — as is the case with Magnet Companies — want to invest in and own multiple businesses.

“These strategies are very much like tech incubators: It brings investment diversification and creates cost efficiencies through shared services,” said Peter Csathy, founder of media advisory firm Creatv Media. “It’s a bit of venture capital mixed with hands-on operational resources, and it’s a diversification play, which is smart if they make the right bets and get some wins — just like any VC.”

With the ongoing wave of consolidation in both traditional and digital media, it’s likely that more media companies will look to join forces — and a holding company structure is certainly one way to make it happen.

“You are going to see more [consolidation] because it makes sense,” said Lerer. “It’s not a trend, it’s an inevitability.”

The post The rush to streaming services gives rise to a new crop of digital holding companies appeared first on Digiday.

Johnson & Johnson is using a network of incubators in 11 cities to position itself as a innovative brand in pharmaceuticals, medical devices and in the consumer products area.

For a company like Johnson & Johnson, finding talent with expertise in technologies like data analytics, blockchain and connected devices is a big concern. As new pharmaceutical innovation is coming from startups, rather than large brands — recent research indicates that 63 percent of new prescription drug approvals come from startups — incubators are a way for large companies like Johnson & Johnson to tap into that talent. The incubator helps the company scout out new companies it wants to work with, and even find new employees.

Kate Merton, who heads up JLABS NYC, said that getting to know the entrepreneurs makes it easier to vet future partners, even if it doesn’t lead to an acquisition.

Incubators are a popular way for large brands to bring in talent and to change the culture of  larger companies that are often slow to evolve. Other pharma companies like Sanofi and Merck host startup incubators, and other large consumer-facing companies like Pepsi, Heineken, McDonald’s and Unilever all offer startups opportunities to pitch ideas. For many, it’s also the idea that having a different kind of mentality nearby will shake things up internally.

For Johnson & Johnson, company executives, or “J Pals” mentors, benefit from working with startups, because they bring agile thinking into the culture of a 131-year-old  large company, Merton said. The New York JLABS space is a 30,000-square-foot facility with exposed brick walls, office co-working spaces, flex rooms, shared lab space and a dedicated hall for events.

Beyond sourcing talent for future collaborations, incubators also serve an important corporate citizenship objective — by partnering with startups that are working to solve critical problems in health care, it positions large companies like Johnson & Johnson as forward-thinking companies that give back, especially important right now as every brand tries to appear “purpose-driven.”

“It’s really key especially in the health-care industry to be seen to be part of the change in the health care — big pharma partnering with startups is a way to kickstart that change,” said Chris Millsom, vp of digital strategy at GHG Greyhealth Group, who added that it lets large companies break away from rigid, bureaucratic ways of working.

Merton said the goal is to establish relationships with the portfolio companies, but it has invested in some 25 percent of the companies that have graduated from JLABS’s two-year program. The more than 400 companies that have been part of JLABS aren’t necessarily aligned with Johnson & Johnson’s activities, but they need to be based on credible science, address unmet medical needs and have a strong team, Merton said.

Companies that are part of JLABS New York include smartphone app and clinical analysis platform, biotechnology company Envisagenics and medical device maker CertaDose.

For Sean Sibel, chief experience officer at Envisagenics, one of JLABS’s resident companies based in New York, JLABS’s partnership lets his company navigate how to connect with a large brand through mentors. It also offers a marketing lift for a small company seeking funding. While JLABS connects startups with Johnson & Johnson’s corporate venture capital arm, JJDC,  JLABS brings local venture capital companies with interests in health care to hold speed-networking sessions with companies.

“VC office hours are like speed dating,” Sibel said. “But you have to be careful not to take any investor; they have to have knowledge of your domain.”

Johnson & Johnson hasn’t wholly acquired any of the startups, but some have been bought by other major players in the health-care and pharma world, including Padlock Therapeutics, which was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb for $600 million, Silicon Biosystems, acquired by Italy’s Menarini Group, and Tem Syystms, which was purchased by Instrumentation Laboratory.

 

The post How Johnson & Johnson is using startup incubators to find new talent appeared first on Digiday.