Month: August 2018

GM’s plans to ramp up electric-vehicle production in China were set back after the auto maker determined the Chinese-made batteries it intended to use failed to meet its own safety and performance standards during testing.

TV and video planning and measurement is a fragmented mess. Buying and selling video inventory across platforms can create a headache for everyone involved, not to mention a mountain of paperwork. That’s where VideoAmp, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based video startup, comes in. VideoAmp is a software and data platform with a planning and measurement tool… Continue reading »

The post VideoAmp’s Ross McCray: Tidying the Mess Of Cross-Screen Video Planning And Measurement appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Of MuleSoft And Metallica “Nearly universal euphoria.” Those are the words Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block used on the company’s Q2 earnings call Wednesday to describe how Salesforce’s customers feel about its $6.5 billion acquisition of MuleSoft. “We listen to our customers,” Block told investors.… Continue reading »

The post Amazon Tries Ad Supported Video; Big Pubs Seek New Revenue Streams appeared first on AdExchanger.

CoinDesk is well-known as a news site covering everything happening with the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It’s also the outlet behind Consensus, the biggest conference of the year within this world. Now, it wants to put its expertise and authority to use by building a media businesses spanning documentaries, TV shows and podcasts dedicated to all things blockchain and crypto.

Earlier this summer, CoinDesk formed a new business unit called CoinDesk Productions, which is tasked with developing and producing long-form documentary films and TV shows “rooted in crypto and blockchain technology,” the company said. The publisher also hired former Bloomberg Media exec Dan Treinish as managing director of business development to oversee the unit with an eye toward selling them to TV networks and streaming platforms.

The post Fueled by the crypto boom, blockchain news outlet CoinDesk is venturing into TV appeared first on Digiday.

Bid shading (no not bid caching) is a term that’s cropping up a lot more due to the shift from second-price to first-price auctions used in programmatic advertising.

As with anything in programmatic advertising, it’s worth keeping an eye on the lingo in order to stay on top of any changes. Here’s a primer:

So WTF is bid shading?
In programmatic advertising, there are two main types of auction: first-price and second-price. In a first-price auction, the highest bidder determines how much an impression gets sold for. In a second-price auction, the second-highest bidder determines the sale price of an impression. So in a second-price auction, if two buyers bid $10 and $15, respectively, the buyer who bid $15 will win but will only pay $10.01. Bid sharing has cropped up as a compromise between the two. So the buyer will pay something in between what the second-price and the first-price value would have been, based on a calculation made by the ad tech partner.

How does it work?
The tech is predominantly available in supply-side platforms as a free service and is becoming a feature increasingly used in DSPs because of the shift toward first-price auctions. The vendor will analyze bid-history information, such as what bid rates typically win on a certain website, or in a certain ad position, or at what price bids are lost, for example, to calculate what a bid should be that is somewhere in between what the first and second bids would be.

Why has it come about?
Bid shading has been developed as a sweetener for buyers who weren’t too happy about suddenly having to pay far higher prices than they were accustomed to when first-price auctions gained traction. “This is a product to soften the blow for buyers, especially DSPs, which aren’t yet configured to operate in a first-price world,” said Matt McIntyre, head of programmatic for Europe, Middle East and Africa, at Group M agency Essence. “It’s very important for buyers to know what bid shading is. It reduces the risk of us overpaying [for impressions] in a first-price world.”

Do publishers gain from it?
It’s more a useful toolkit for buyers than publishers, but given the mid-range price is still likely to be significantly higher than what would have cleared in the second-price auction, publishers should in theory still get a good payout.

Do buyers pay extra for it?
They haven’t until now, though that may be changing. Google has its own version, as do other independent vendors albeit packaged and branded differently. There are now signs that certain vendors will start charging buyers a fee if they want to use bid shading. That’s not something all buyers are happy about.

Any down sides? 
It’s not particularly transparent, so buyers will have to rely on whatever the vendor has said is the right price. “There is very little accountability in terms of us being able to audit whether they [SSP] have extracted as much value as possible,” said McIyntre. “It looks like they’re saving you money, but how can you prove it? It may be easier for the DSPs to show the maths of how they’ve got there, but an SSP can’t show buyers that.”

Why is this happening at SSP and not DSP level?
Not all DSPs could switch to a first-price algorithm overnight, according to Paul Gubbins, head of programmatic at News UK-owned video marketplace Unruly. “We have spent the last 10 years of programmatic buying and selling where second-price auctions were the norm, so DSPs won’t just be able to transition if a buyer flips the switch and asks for the DSP to bid into an auction that is clearing on the highest first price. I envisage many SSPs offering these services until DSPs are fully equipped to flip in real time between first- and second-price auctions without exposing their buyers to unnecessary costs and inefficiencies.”

The post WTF is bid shading? appeared first on Digiday.

Instead of asking your friends or your cousins who to add to your fantasy football team, CBS Sports would like you to ask your Google Assistant.

The broadcaster has launched a Google Assistant action, a voice-controlled app on Google devices, aimed at fantasy sports fans. The action helps users choose NFL players as they head into fantasy draft season. Starting in October, CBS Fantasy Sports players will be able to use the action to get personalized answers to questions about whether or not to pick up players from the waiver wire. Also for fantasy football players, the ad-supported OTT product CBS Sports HQ on Labor Day will stream a five-hour fantasy football “telethon” where viewers can call in with questions about who to draft.

To figure out what its action should do, a team at CBS Sportsline, which provides information about betting odds, focused on content that was most popular among fantasy sports players during the NFL season. “We tried to focus in on the real basic questions,” CBS Sports Digital evp and gm Jeff Gerttula said. “We know what the most popular search terms are, and we know what problems they’re solving.”

With monetization on voice activated devices is still a way off, publishers are using them to grow engagement and loyalty-building. CBS Sports’s fantasy audience is already quite loyal. On average, CBS Sports’ fantasy players visit CBS Sports’ site five times more often and view 10 times more pages than non-fantasy players. The broadcaster wouldn’t say how many fantasy sports players it has.

The fantasy sports audience in the United States and Canada has more than doubled over the past decade to more than 59 million in 2017, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, a trade group.

CBS Sports isn’t the first publisher to take a stab at building apps oriented around fantasy sports. Yahoo Sports built a fantasy football Alexa skill in 2016 that allowed users to do things like monitor their scores and track the health of their rosters’ players; daily fantasy brand DraftKings launched an Alexa skill that lets users check how many points players had scored.

More than 50 million voice-powered speaker devices are installed in the United States, with around 70 percent of the voice device market belonging to Amazon, followed by Google with around 24 percent, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Personalization is one feature that distinguishes Google’s voice platform from Amazon’s. Over time, the two tech companies are expected to minimize the differences between their platforms.  “In some ways, it’s a race to parity,” said Bret Kinsella, the founder and editor of Voicebot.ai, which monitors the voice space.

Gerttula wouldn’t say how many people he expects to use the action, saying that he is focused more on return usage and how many questions users ask per session. If the action is successful enough, CBS Sports will start marketing the action to people outside diehard fantasy sports fans.

The post CBS Sports launches a Google Home action for fantasy football players appeared first on Digiday.

Tom Brady’s top two passions are family and football. Or maybe they’re 1a and 1b, flip-flopping depending on the time of year. Regardless, after those two, the New England Patriots quarterback’s focus is wellness in the form of TB12, a sprawling brand that is everything from lots of reps with fitness bands to a diet featuring avocado ice cream — all premised on the fitness gospel that underpins Brady’s legendary run in the NFL.

“It’s the idea of helping other athletes learn from the lessons he’s learned during his career and help them achieve the same time of longevity,” said Jeff Surette, referring to his boss’s present and future.

As svp of TB12, Surette is one of the key players within a larger effort to build Brady’s legacy once he leaves the field behind. Of course, no one knows when that is. Quarterbacks in the National Football League retire after three years and one month, on average, according to a 2016 Wall Street Journal study. Meanwhile, the 41-year-old Brady is playing his 19th NFL season.

Like any sport, NFL stars take different paths in retirement. Michael Strahan, former defensive end for the New York Giants, is an anchor on “Good Morning America.” Eddie George, former running back for the Tennessee Titans, starred on Broadway. Retired quarterback Peyton Manning owned some Papa John’s franchises — until recently. Brady’s path forgoes pizza to promote diet and exercise.

Getting ahead of retirement
The inspiration for TB12 isn’t just Brady himself; it’s the relationship he has with his personal trainer Alex Guerrero. They began working together in 2004, per the recommendation of former Patriots linebacker Willie McGinest. Guerrero’s methods are “different,” and that was part of Brady’s attraction, Surrette said. To others, Guerrero is quite controversial. For Brady, Guerrero is not just a trainer but also a business partner. They launched the first iteration of the brand in September 2013 with the TB12 Sports Therapy Center by Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, home of the Patriots.

“A few years ago, [Tom] knew a couple things. He wanted more time with Alex and the passion he had for this approach to natural, holistic wellness for athletes that would help them sustain peak performance. He knew this was what he wanted to do after football,” Surette said.

Surette joined TB12 in July 2014, first as a consultant, and full-time in January 2015. Prior, he worked in consultancy at The Parthenon Group in Boston. Back then, the TB12 Sports Therapy Center had four body coaches within a 3,500-square-foot facility. In those early days, Guerrero and TB12 faced a state investigation, opened in October 2013 but closed without action, Boston magazine reported. In August 2016, they expanded the space to 7,000 square feet and now have 10 body coaches along with 25 total employees within TB12.

From one center to a community
TB12’s clientele in the facility, which totals “thousands,” varies, Surette said. They’ve helped runners, skiers and, of course, football players, and they’ve let a handful of reporters try out the method. While the TB12 method has helped Tom Brady, TB12 isn’t just for Brady wannabes.

“We believe this method can be useful for any athlete, no matter the sport, position, age. The majority of people we see fall into the psychographic segment of being incredibly passionate of what they’re doing, whether that’s skiing on the weekend with the kids or running a marathon,” Surette said.

As they try to scale, TB12 has expanded beyond the one center by selling other products. “The TB12 Method” book was released in September 2017. A few months later, they launched the TB12 Method mobile app. TB12 also has an online store for workout equipment like TB12 resistance bands, supplements like TB12 electrolytes and apparel like TB12 hats and, through a partnership with Under Armour, recovery pajamas that help  you heal muscles while you snooze. TB12 also works with meal delivery service Purple Carrot on TB12 performance meals that are high in protein and free of “inflammatory vegetables.”

“We don’t do anything, sell anything, recommend anything to anyone that Tom and/or Alex haven’t personally used successfully in their practice. Nearly every product we sell, with the exception of women’s top tanks, is things that Tom wears, and if Tom doesn’t wear them, he approves them,” Surrette said.

Building beyond controversy
As Brady tries to make a paycheck beyond his performance on the football field, one of his challenges will be that not everyone loves Tom Brady. His controversy stems from the long dominance by the Patriots — with some notable exceptions — along with allegedly deflating footballs and political tensions like not visiting Obama’s White House and later endorsing Donald Trump.

“I feel bad to say this being from New England, but our data shows that he’s extremely polarizing. Athletes like Tom Brady are incredibly popular in their region. He has nationwide recognition but not global recognition,” said Janet Comenos, co-founder and CEO of Spotted, a research company that focuses on celebrity data.

According to Spotted, Brady’s audience is 66 percent male, with about 43 percent is between 25 and 44 years old. His top cities are Boston, Chicago and Houston, while 69 percent of his audience is in the U.S.

Separately, wellness brands are tricky with the potential of being framed as bogus. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop frequently has been accused of “snake oil” shilling, though it seems that hatred may have helped build her massive empire. For Brady and TB12, part of the controversy and investigation around Guerrero stemmed from practicing physical therapy without a license as a massage therapist or as an athletic trainer in Massachusetts. Regardless of his licensing, not everyone may be willing to follow a routine that suggests a diet without caffeine and sugar.

But there’s also evidence Brady, and perhaps his lifestyle, appeals beyond Patriots fans. According to Facebook, more than 66 percent of the people who watched a full episode of “Tom vs Time,” an exclusive to Facebook Watch, do not follow the Facebook pages for the New England Patriots or Tom Brady. More than 48 percent of the viewers do not follow Brady’s page or any official NFL page.

That show, a rare peek inside his life, reveals not only Brady’s dedication to football on and off season, but his willingness to open up. He frequently chats with media, though he’s not afraid to hang up the phone. He’s also been known to regularly post on Facebook and Instagram, though it’s not always family-friendly.

“Tom is very aware of how tightly this business is linked to him. It’s his initials and his number on the door,” Surette said. “When he retires, my hope for the brand and the business is he’ll still be Tom Brady, the former quarterback of the Patriots who won five or more Super Bowls, and that he can become Tom Brady, likely the greatest football player that ever played who can promote health and wellness.”

The post With TB12, Tom Brady is tapping into the burgeoning wellness industry appeared first on Digiday.

It’s the season for trying new reader payment models. A few weeks after it rolled out a new website, BuzzFeed News started testing paid memberships. A step toward getting reader contributions into the revenue mix looks like another step to a separation between the news and lifestyle division (for the record, the company has maintained it’s committed to its news operation.)

If there were any time for a news publisher to test the reader revenue waters, now would be the time, with high interest in the news and a spurt of publishers putting up online paywalls. BuzzFeed News wants to see if it can get a piece of that revenue pot before it runs out (The number of people who will pay for news and how much they’ll pay is limited, even if no one knows where that limit is.)

The post The Rundown: BuzzFeed’s membership model takes the middle road appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook has opened Watch, its video destination, to audiences outside the U.S. and is letting more content creators monetize video through its ad break program. It’s a welcome move for non-U.S. publishers that have been anticipating a way to monetize their Facebook video views, but there are measured concerns around how broadening the scope will impact ad rates as Facebook gets closer realizing its video ambitions.

Since Watch launched in the U.S. last August, the platform has been honing the monetization model to work for audiences, publishers and advertisers. As a result, it has lowered the threshold for pages that are eligible for ad break monetization. With the announcement, Facebook has also released tools to drive more engagement around Watch videos and give content creators access to more data on returning visitors to help inform editorial strategy.

“Facebook’s commercialization of video has been volatile,” said a content publisher who has been testing mid-roll, speaking anonymously. “What Facebook wants doesn’t always marry with its model.”

Facebook has long stated it wants episodic content that people seek out and watch regularly, built around interaction with the creators and other viewers. The platform earmarked “Red Table Talk” with Jada Pinkett Smith, as an example of a show using Facebook’s interactive tools like vote polling. The first episode has been watched 28 million times.

“Content that is viral and less engaging tends to have a higher drop-off over ad breaks,” said Fidji Simo, head of video at Facebook. “The biggest lever we have is on the product, the biggest lever is content itself. We’re working with partners to understand the type of content that works best for the ad experience.”

“Facebook is built around community and engagement,” said a second existing mid-roll partner. “Getting audiences to content is a different process, monetizing against that is about how you play to the community rather than a straight audience build.”

According to three publishers interviewed for this article that have been trialing the mid-roll program, monthly revenue is healthy and in the six figures. Digiday has previously reported that publishers in the U.S. have needed to get a least more than a billion monthly views to make meaningful revenue.

Currently, Facebook is selling the ads in Europe, although publishers outside the U.S. will be able to sell them direct, which has yielded revenue gains for publishers in the U.S.

“Opening the floodgates like that, logically you’d expect the CPMs to go down, but that may not be the case,” said the first existing mid-roll publisher. “It’s not a transparent process; Facebook could be limiting supply.”

According to this exec, although CPMs have varied and have been decreasing, it’s seeing, on average, a completion rate of 80 percent. Facebook has said that more than 70 percent of mid-roll ads are viewed to the end.

This sentiment was echoed by a second publisher that has been trialing mid-roll ads. “Facebook has to make sure there are enough ads to fulfill the broader inventory if it’s including a wider circle of publishers, and I don’t think they will be able to. It will always attract advertisers, but the inevitable consequences are that in the short term CPMs will see a dip.”

According to marketing platform 4C, which aggregated ads from hundreds of brands across its platform between of April and June, CPMs for in-stream video ads on Facebook were nearly $16.

“There’s a land grab for premium video content — Watch is Facebook’s best chance,” said Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer at 4C. “It’s a high-premium ad placement and format; any new inventory that opens up in Watch will bring the overall CPMs up.”

Existing content creators have been eager for more metrics around Watch performance to encourage more content creation. Facebook has said that each month more than 50 million people in the U.S. come to watch videos for at least a minute in Watch, and total time spent watching videos in Watch has increased by 14 times since the start of 2018.

For publishers who aren’t on the program, reception to mid-roll is measured. Some are still feeling the sting of Facebook’s slow communication about its algorithm changes at the beginning of the year, which hampered reach.

“We are both interested parties and ambivalent bystanders,” said a publishing executive speaking anonymously to avoid damaging relations with the platform, adding that it plans to monetize video through mid-roll in the future. “From a monetization point of view, we are always willing to test demand and impact. But we are yet to be convinced, and we don’t expect to change our fortunes drastically in the video space.”

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The post Facebook extends Watch and mid-roll beyond the U.S. appeared first on Digiday.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, which consults with marketers on growing their digital initiatives and in-house teams among other services, is launching a two-year training program to boost the digital skills of its own employees.

Beginning in January, PwC’s intermediate to advanced skill-building program, called Digital Accelerators, will replace 1,000 participants’ typical work load with digital-heavy client work and projects and weekly classes on everything from cleansing data and blockchain to 3D Printing and drones for two years.

Sarah McEneaney, digital talent leader at PwC and head of the Digital Accelerators program, said that since PwC is not primarily known for its marketing consulting work, its services are having to compete directly with other consultancies and ad agencies for a larger share of clients.

“My job is to future proof our workforce,” said McEneaney. “It just seems table stakes at this point that people should have more technology skills. It’s needed for us to remain competitive and to be responsive for what our clients are also going through.”

It’s also an effort to cut costs for clients. PwC can cut down billable hours on projects when employees finish tasks faster because of what they’ve learned in classes. “Our clients are looking for us to do things more digitally and control the cost of what we’re doing,” said McEneaney.

PwC began its push into digital services in 2014, and is currently working with clients across industries with their user experience, media strategy and more. “Our clients are looking at how they can transform, stay relevant and frankly stay in business and attract employees,” said McEneaney.

In March of this year, PwC opened up an application to all 46,000 of its nationwide employees for participation in the program. Out of that number, 3,500 employees applied for a spot. Although the program is meant to give opportunity for employees to advance within the company, all participants had to sign a two-year contract stating their commitment to the program, which might have been one reason behind the low number of applicants. The consultancy then selected 1,000 employees for the program, said McEneaney.

Of those 1,000 employees, around 100 of them work directly with clients in the marketing consulting space, although it’s difficult to determine just how many employees touch marketing, according to the company. Meanwhile, 16 of these employees work specifically on PwC’s own marketing and sales teams, and aim to digitalize the company’s own marketing efforts.

For every employee participating in the program, their previous responsibilities are stripped away and they are now required to spend upwards of 10 hours a week in Digital Accelerator classes, with the rest of their work week comprised of new digital-intensive projects. It’s not that these employees will not have any client work; their responsibilities will now focus on client work that is digitally-focused. “It’s basically like a new role for them,” said McEneaney.

The curriculum consists of three primary focus areas. The first is data and analytics and will include classes on collecting and cleansing data and blockchain. The second area focuses on automation, including classes on cybersecurity, drones and augmented reality. The third is focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Participants will also take coding, user experience and design thinking classes that deal all these topics.

Part of the time, these classes will be led onsite, but the majority of classes will be taught virtually and are group-focused, so an employee in Boston could easily work with an employee in San Francisco if they want to, said McEneaney.

PwC would not say how much it’s spending on the overall program, but did say that training employees with new digital skills is one of the largest single investment areas for the firm this year.

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