Month: September 2018

The 29Rooms experience from Refinery29, a celebration of art and culture through interactivity (and selfies), has returned to Brooklyn for its fourth year. Here’s what we found in each room: Room 01In Light of You, Jose A. Roda Blurring the lines of sex and gender to unveil radical, authentic individuality. Room 02Teen Bedroom, Uzumaki Cepeda…

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Matt Prohaska, principal and CEO at Prohaska Consulting. Like the US political news cycle today, the mar tech news cycle moves pretty quickly, so I recognize we are near or at the end of… Continue reading »

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When it comes to distributing videos on social platforms, European publishers see it primarily as a way to build audiences than to generate ad revenue, according to a Digiday survey.

Of the 65 publisher executives surveyed at the Digiday Video Summit Europe in Amsterdam this past June, nearly half said the biggest advantage to distributing videos across social platforms is being able to generate larger audiences. Just 20 percent of respondents said they viewed ad revenue as the greatest benefit.

The post Digiday Research: European publishers use distributed video for audience generation over revenue appeared first on Digiday.

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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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Grandpa’s Got Game Nielsen has acquired gaming intelligence firm SuperData Research to better track user engagement with video games and esports, VentureBeat reports. SuperData tracks the behavior of 160 million gamers and extrapolates that out to the US population. As gaming and esports become… Continue reading »

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Media companies have wrestled with how to make meaningful money from the video they distribute on platforms. To get more mileage out of its distributed video, digital content studio and broadcaster Little Dot Studios created a new media-selling unit to sell its YouTube inventory directly to brands and agencies, rather than through Google AdSense.

To run its media selling unit, Little Dot has hired Disney Maker Studios (now Disney Digital Network) vets Elliot Baum and Peter Yardley-Jones, respectively, as head of digital media sales and head of operations. The company is also giving YouTube monetization a boost by hiring former Channel 4 exec Jade Raad to lead branded content partnerships. Little Dot will add to the team and its technology down the line, said Wayne Davidson, managing director of Little Dot.

“We’re taking that next step to enhance revenue against inventory that we own,” he said. “It all ties to the migration of premium content to platforms. Advertisers are all searching for brand-safe content.”

Little Dot Studios, part of All3Media production company, works with hundreds of media companies and broadcasters to package content like popular TV shows starring the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Graham Norton and sports content such as Formula E, and distribute it on digital, particularly YouTube. It also makes money from social channel management and content production for brands and platforms.

By selling video directly, Little Dot hopes to reap higher CPMs than it can get on YouTube, said Davidson, without sharing revenue expectations.

“Average YouTube CPMs globally fetch $4, but vary a lot by region and audience type,” said Alex DeGroote, an independent media analyst. “Few publishers or producers have the scale of Little Dot. This scale conveys media buying power, data and major insight into YouTube’s algorithms.”

Little Dot has a broad network of channels on YouTube; it’s growing five that feature original shows that it licenses around real-life stories, history, science, parenting and documentaries. The most popular, Real Stories, had 19 million YouTube views in June and 1.7 million subscribers, according to SocialBlade. Little Dot says its average watch time is 25 minutes for Real Stories and 20 minutes across all five channels.

Some of Little Dot’s channels are part of Google Preferred, which buckets YouTube’s high-performing channels for advertisers. Sources familiar with the matter said CPMs for Google Preferred videos are three times higher than those in non-Google Preferred.

By negotiating with agencies, either directly or via programmatic, Little Dot hopes to drive up CPMs by direct-selling targeted ads around content that is mostly taken from TV, brand safe, and backed by audience data that it’s gathered over the years. Because of YouTube’s sheer scale, an estimated 30-40 percent of Little Dot’s inventory isn’t being sold, Davidson estimated.

Agencies say talking to sellers with deep channel understanding will make buying easier. “This would be a less blunt approach to creative than unrelated pre-roll,” said James Duffy, head of digital at agency Total Media, “Little Dot can build awareness of coming projects to inspire advertisers. We talk with publishers about what behavioral planning is, how we want to implement campaigns using our insight and what results we want to drive for our clients.”

“Advertisers are more aware of the content they are associating themselves with now,” said Aaron Duckmanton, head of marketing and content at video platform Grabyo. “A direct relationship provides the platform for publishers to work more closely on creating integrated campaigns that provide higher rates of engagement, advocacy and value for brands, which will drive premium CPM pricing.”

The post Little Dot Studios hires ex-Disney execs to grow its YouTube revenue appeared first on Digiday.

If media companies want people to spend more time watching videos through their over-the-top or connected-TV apps, they might want to give viewers something to watch immediately.

That was the idea Jukin Media had in July when it made a switch on Roku for its comedy brand, FailArmy. When users open FailArmy on Roku, instead of a standard on-demand menu, FailArmy would launch into a TV-like linear stream. Since making the switch, the average watch time has increased from 24 minutes per session to 64 minutes.

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Podcasting has long had a reputation among advertisers as being low-tech, hard to measure and reliant on a quaint ad format, but its players are stepping up their efforts to dispel those notions.

On Sept. 6, companies from NPR and Westwood One to How Stuff Works gathered at the fourth annual IAB Podcast Upfront. But in contrast with past events, where the emphasis was on content, this time presenters focused on products like targeted marketplaces, attribution and retargeting tools to attract brand advertisers, who have mostly ignored podcasting because of the medium’s measurement issues.

Some media agencies are skeptical that new stabs at measurement will work, while others see it as a sign that the medium is finally catching up to the obsession with measurement that’s encroaching on other forms of digital advertising.

“Last year, we were talking mostly about content,” iHeartRadio CMO Gayle Troberman said. “Now, the marketers are asking about targeting and measurement and results. The challenge for brands is how this grows from an experimental investment.”

Podcast is small relative to other digital mediums, but revenue is projected to more than double in size, to $659 million by 2020, according to an IAB/PwC study. Legacy media companies continue to invest in the space: Univision was a first-time presenter at this year’s upfront.

And compared to other digital mediums, podcasting has been fairly low-tech — more than two-thirds of its ads were host-read, and under 60 percent were dynamically inserted in 2017, the IAB/PwC study said — a reputation that podcasters seem determined to shed. At the event, Wondery CEO Hernan Lopez pitched an attribution tool and retargeting tool, Bullseye, that serves display ads to people who have heard ads on Wondery podcasts. Panoply chief revenue officer Matt Turck talked up the Megaphone Targeted Marketplace, an ad network that lets advertisers target up to 60,000 Nielsen audience segments across Panoply.

But both the IAB and the Media Ratings Council released ad measurement toward the end of 2017, and so stats and analytics are becoming a bigger topic of conversation. Some on the podcast advertising side expressed optimism about the prospect of being able to more clearly measure ads’ impact. Media agencies that serve direct-response advertisers expressed concern about possible competition from brand advertisers, though.

“It doesn’t do the performance marketers in podcast any favors because standardization will invite increased brand dollars, driving up demand on inventory and making the media less attractive to performance marketers, on whose backs the podcast industry has been built,” said Dan Granger, the founder of media agency Oxford Road. “Attribution has been a challenge for more than a century and will likely be a challenge a century from now. It never goes away. However, we applaud any efforts to fight the good fight alongside us and our clients.”

Others see risk in pitting podcasts against other forms of media. Josh Pollack, vp at the talent agency APA, which represents the talent behind podcasts including “Snap Judgment,” said if podcasting gets too measurable, it could be shown to be less effective than people thought and the high CPMS it’s known for could come down.

The post Hunting for brand dollars, podcasters turn attention to measurement and attribution appeared first on Digiday.

Direct-to-consumer retailers and digital banking startups face a common hurdle — how to get to the consumer with no physical presence.

This week, digital banking startup Varo, which has no branches, got preliminary approval from the OCC for a banking license. Varo, like other digital-only finance institutions like Chime, Simple and SoFi Money, is focusing on simple, mobile-centric user experiences much in the same way Amazon does, with the goal to become platforms to cross-sell a range of other services.

“We draw from the playbook of companies like Amazon to fundamentally minimize friction and maximize delight for consumers in an industry where they’re used to their bank doing the opposite,” Varo CEO Colin Walsh said. “Our goal is to streamline everything: from the new account application process, to opening a savings account, to mobile loans in just a few taps that are available for instant deposit, to how money moves.”

Varo and other digital-only financial services companies are becoming platforms offering a range of financial services to a customer base loyal to the brand. To differentiate, they’re focusing on experiences, building on recent research demonstrating that customers prefer experiences over things. But experiences need not be physical, however; an easy-to-use interface and transparency on product descriptions and pricing can go a long way in hooking the consumer. In addition, online banks, as financial service retailers, are growing their reach with younger customers through digital marketing.

It’s an approach that’s worked well for a range of retailers that began online, including Bonobos, Everlane and the Dollar Shave Club — all brands that focused on convenience and needs unmet by traditional stores before scaling to a bigger market.

Varo, which is promoting an online-only, fee-free checking account along with a suite of products including savings accounts and loans, will be able to offer additional products like mortgages and certificates of deposit based on what it knows about customers. Varo’s marketing, mostly online, focuses on keeping fees down, and its content emphasizes financial empowerment.

“[Varo] has done a really good job infusing community in the building of their brand,” said Aite Group senior analyst Tiffani Montez. “They did focus groups and used the early feedback to build those online experiences, and they use that sense of community to optimize their products and services.”

Varo’s emulation of Amazon’s model comes from an acknowledgement that Amazon’s user experience is winning it loyalty despite its limited physical imprint; a recent Cornerstone Advisors study found a possible foray of Amazon into the checking account sphere would resonate with many younger customers. In its survey earlier this year, it found that 37 percent of young millennials and 46 percent of older millennials said they would open an Amazon-branded checking account that offered a bundle of services including digital banking, identity-theft protection and insurance.

Beyond user experience, Amazon’s ability to suggest other products to consumers based on what it knows about them, along with clarity of pricing, are also areas digital financial services companies are looking to emulate.

Others are using technology to recreate the physical experience to the greatest extent possible. San Francisco-based Chime, which recently hit 1 million customers, said physical spaces aren’t necessary to grow its brand reach, especially given that legacy banks are cutting their branch imprint.

“While free ATM access remains a core bank feature, the traditional physical branch service model is dying a rapid death,” said CEO Chris Britt. “Reputations and brands are being built by creating better product experiences, which are then amplified by word of mouth and social media.”

Direct-to-consumer brands are also using social media to punch above their weight. Online glasses retailer Warby Parker, for example, built a campaign to get customers to share pictures of themselves wearing frames, an approach that earned it brand advocates.

To Chime, which focuses its marketing on search and paid placements on Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat, technology is more effective at achieving the two core functions of a bank branch network, which are advertising and personalized service. For support, Chime’s head of product, Zachary Smith, said email and live chat meet customers’ service needs, and the company is considering rolling out video chat.

“There are many benefits of shopping online for both merchants and consumers that carry over to banking. From our ability to spread the word about Chime and acquire members to a member’s standpoint, everything you need is at your fingertips, which makes banking through mobile apps as easy as e-commerce shopping,” he said.

While focusing on digital experiences can gain a loyal following, like Amazon, digital-only banks are also looking at pop-ups that do more than sell product. Smith said the Chime hasn’t ruled out some form of physical activation to grow its reach, though he declined to comment on any specific plans. Meanwhile, PurePoint Financial, which offers online-only accounts, decided to roll out physical spaces (“financial centers”) that resemble hospitality lounges and art galleries to set itself apart from other online-only brands and enhance personalization of service.

“The financial center experience is very different than a traditional bank branch,” said PurePoint’s head of enterprise marketing, Maha Madain. “We offer a hospitality bar and private offices so clients can feel comfortable discussing their savings needs. In an increasingly competitive space, client experience can establish brand loyalty and be a differentiator for consumers.”

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