Month: September 2018

One month on the job, WPP CEO Mark Read is making big changes at the holding company. WPP will combine digital agency VML and 100-year-old ad agency Young & Rubicam into a new agency named VMLY&R, the group announced Wednesday. WPP tapped Jon Cook, VML’s CEO since 2011, to lead the company and its 7,000… Continue reading »

The post WPP Launches VMLY&R To Create Connected Brands appeared first on AdExchanger.

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Scott Garner, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at ADARA. During a panel discussion over the summer, Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson described how his company is pitched in a… Continue reading »

The post Brands Can Win the ‘War’ For The Customer appeared first on AdExchanger.

Content providers are reducing their ad loads to accommodate viewers’ changing preferences, consumption patterns and attention spans. But what about rethinking the commercial break model so it doesn’t disrupt a good “Handmaid’s Tale” binge? Is a high-quality ad experience possible without a traditional ad break? Jeremy Helfand, Hulu’s new VP and head of advertising platforms,… Continue reading »

The post Hulu’s Jeremy Helfand Hopes To Disrupt TV Advertising Without Disrupting Audiences appeared first on AdExchanger.

By Pat Ciavolella

Malware blockers ease workflows for ad and revenue operations teams but are still an imperfect band-aid solution to a persistent and deep-rooted problem. However, blocking quickly became so productized and commoditized that it’s easy to overlook the details that can hinder ad revenues, hamper user experience and ultimately hurt the overall health of the digital ecosystem. To cut through the chaff, here are 7 questions to ask when evaluating blocking providers.

1. What’s the data source for blocking?
Most vendors providing malware blocking tools use compiled, synthetic, outdated data sources — typically lagging three to five days after the malicious behavior begins — to block bad ads. As a result, blocking of malvertising is often delayed, inaccurate and generally inadequate, with loads of false positives also eating into your ad revenues. Due to its temporal and quickly morphing nature — new malware vectors emerge every 30 seconds or less — web-based malware must be continuously hunted.

The action to take: Request details on the malware data sources and how often data is refreshed.

2. Is the entire ad experience safe?
An ad experience has many moving parts, including the creative, tag and landing page. Most blocking tools only see and block the “known” malicious visual and tag, while ignoring malicious landing pages. Blockers unfortunately also don’t see down the request chain, often missing site-level malware. Considering that 10 percent of malware detected by The Media Trust only infects landing pages, user advertising experiences remain at risk.

The action to take: Inquire about how malware blocking tools address deficiencies.

3. Does it take domains and hosts equally into account?
Blocking malicious URLs is a great start, but here’s the thing about bad URLs: they can change within seconds in order to evade detection. Having blockers that are capable of both rapid detection of bad hosts and also domains is crucial in order to adequately protect the user experience.

The action to take: Ask if blocking tools address domains as well as hosts.

4. What about obfuscated code?
The Media Trust’s malware desk confirms that malware blockers aren’t effective when the malicious code is obfuscated or concealed. Obfuscation is the technique of encoding or double-encoding malware in order to evade detection. A combination of machine learning, human analysis and scanning solutions are required to decode obfuscated malware delivery. With 40-50 percent of malvertising using obfuscation (90% for mobile redirects), blockers that aren’t backed by human verification allow obfuscated code to pass.

The action to take: Demand proof of how tools detect obfuscated code.

5. Do you understand blocking context?
One frightening aspect of malware blocking is that publishers have in many ways handed the reins of their ad revenues to third parties. To avoid unnecessary monetization hiccups, it is necessary to get context around why an ad is being blocked. False positives can shut down a perfectly good ad — or worse, a perfectly good upstream partner. Inflating malware numbers by blocking a DSP is not a good revenue strategy.

The action to take: Review reports to determine accurate reasons for why an ad is blocked.

6. What is the latency impact?
Blocking solutions typically enable passbacks (replacing a blocked ad by calling back to the server for another ad). However minimal, this process can cause page latency issues and hurt the very user experience it claims to protect.

The action to take: Evaluate latency issues associated with the malware blocking tool.

7. You blocked a bad ad, what about future ones?
Blockers are nifty tools that allow ad and revenue operations teams to block bad ads, but wouldn’t it be better to block the source of malware instead of playing whack-a-mole? While protecting your user experience and ad revenue, malware blocking vendors should provide enough data and supporting services to help with long-term growth and business continuity.

The action to take: Analyze the digital ecosystem and suss out bad partners.

The ongoing issues of malvertising and site-level malware need a holistic approach that rewards good business practices and long-term thinking while keeping bad actors and unworthy partners out of the ad supply chain. However, one should still remember: malware blocking solutions aren’t a long-term cure-all for securing user experience and ad revenues.

The post 7 questions to ask before choosing a malware blocking solution appeared first on Digiday.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. A Dish Best Served Amazon has discussed building its own video ad server that would put it squarely in competition with Comcast’s FreeWheel and Google, Mike Shields reports for Business Insider. The product could power advertising on Amazon’s streaming platform, where ad-supported video streaming… Continue reading »

The post Amazon Mulls A Video Ad Server; TV Merger Mania Creates Odd Bedfellows appeared first on AdExchanger.

CollegeHumor wants some of those sweet, paying subscribers, too.

The IAC-backed online comedy brand is launching Dropout, a subscription product that will include original video series and other forms of media including digital comics and fictionalized chat conversations. Dropout has a tiered subscription model: $3.99 for the first three months, followed by $3.99 per month for an annual subscription; $4.99 per month for a six-month plan; and $5.99 per month for subscribers who want to pay on a monthly basis. It’s available online, with plans to launch mobile apps for iOS and Android devices in October.

CollegeHumor is taking a membership-style approach popularized by companies such as Rooster Teeth and Crunchyroll. It also plans to put more resources toward growing its commerce business.

“In order to turn into a much larger asset for IAC, our strategy is to focus on who we consider to be the whales in terms of our consumers,” said Shane Rahmani, chief business officer of CollegeHumor Media. “They are people who are very passionate about what we do and are willing and interested in supporting us across a number of different fronts. We’re going to build a portfolio of products that meet their needs.”

Advertising represents a little less than 50 percent of CollegeHumor’s revenues, Rahmani said. The rest comes from productions such as “Adam Ruins Everything” and “Bad Internet” that the company sells to distributors. CollegeHumor hopes to reach a point where subscriptions deliver as much revenue as advertising — though Rahmani declined to offer specific subscription targets for Dropout.

Having a diversified revenue stream will also make it easier for CollegeHumor to fund more original productions. By the end of the year, Dropout will feature six original long-form video series and 30 digital comics and chat stories. This is in addition to more than 1,000 hours of library programming of popular CollegeHumor web series such as “Jake & Amir.” The chat stories, which mimic text conversations, will often extend shows’ storylines and include their talent, Rahmani said.

“The thing about the comics and chat stories is that you also don’t need the sound on to enjoy it, which makes it ideal for watching those on the go,” Rahmani said. “That’s where we think the mixed-media will set us apart from other services, because it’s optimized for mobile.”

Even with a recognized media property such as CollegeHumor, subscription revenues are no guarantee. CollegeHumor is confident in being able to build such a business based on studies it conducted to gauge demand for a subscription product. One such study, a survey of 6,000 CollegeHumor fans, found that a majority of respondents were willing to pay more than the price CollegeHumor eventually arrived at.

“We belabored this point a lot when we were convincing IAC to support this,” Rahmani said.

The post CollegeHumor makes a play for subscription revenue appeared first on Digiday.

Viewability is not a real word, at least if you go by Merriam-Webster. But over the past decade the concept — which attempts to define whether an online ad has an opportunity to be seen — has altered digital advertising’s trajectory. Originated in an effort to persuade TV advertisers to bring their budgets online, viewability has quickly become a standard now widely considered fundamental for any digital ad buy. But that took years.

Viewability measurement arose from research conducted in 2007 by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies to identify what would get brand advertisers to shift their ad dollars from TV to digital.

The post Now you see me: An oral history of viewability appeared first on Digiday.

It’s becoming more likely that the U.S. will pass its own version of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal appeared to set things in motion earlier this year, and the subsequent passage of a sweeping privacy law in California has spurred major internet companies to get on board.

Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Charter, Google and Twitter support a comprehensive consumer privacy law in the U.S., executives from those companies said during a Senate hearing Sept. 26 held by the Senate Commerce Committee. Here’s what you need to know about their game plan.

How we got here
Companies have issues with the consumer privacy law that California passed in June. Until it takes effect in over a year, they are racing to find ways to delay or squash it, to the point that they’re willing to support a federal privacy law that would preempt it. Companies want to avoid complying with a patchwork of regulations from multiple states, if others follow California’s example.

What the internet companies want
They want to regulate themselves. But with the passage of California’s privacy law, that’s no longer an option, so they’re aiming for something less burdensome than the GDPR and California’s privacy law but just stringent enough to satiate the amplified calls for better consumer privacy protections. Len Cali, svp of global public policy at AT&T, acknowledged the “growing agreement of the need for new and comprehensive federal privacy law.”

What the internet companies will accept
If Congress passes a federal privacy law that mandates companies to disclose how they track people online, that’s fine by Google and Twitter since they already do that; none of the other companies were pressed by the senators to weigh in on that. If the law imposes any restrictions on the sale of people’s data, also fine because all of the companies testified that they do not sell people’s personal information. At one point Cali said AT&T may sell people’s information with their consent but later corrected himself and said the company does not sell people’s information. And if the FTC is charged with enforcing the law, all the better. The FTC is already responsible for ensuring that companies abide by their own privacy policies — and has not been very harsh with privacy violators like Google and Facebook — so why shouldn’t the regulatory body should be in charge of enforcing a federal privacy policy?

What the internet companies need
Clarity. If Congress is going to pass a law regulating how companies collect and manage people’s personal information, then companies want to know what exactly qualifies as personal information — and hope it’s limited to sensitive and personally identifiable information like their name or email address, as opposed to something obscure like their web browsing history.

What the internet companies don’t want
To have to ask for permission before they can collect people’s personal information. They also don’t want a law preventing them from encouraging people to give them their information. That would nullify retailers’ loyalty programs that track people’s purchases while providing them with discounts in exchange, said Cali, who may have also been thinking how such a stipulation would bar AT&T from discounting people’s subscription fees in exchange for tracking them around the web.

The post Cheatsheet: Internet giants weigh in on U.S. privacy law appeared first on Digiday.

There are benefits of getting revenue directly from audiences. But as Dutch subscription publisher De Correspondent is finding, that revenue comes with disclosure obligations.

De Correspondent this week started releasing more detail about its finances after its 60,000 members started requesting more transparency. For the past five years, the publisher has reported how it spends the money it makes from membership fees, which makes up three-quarters of its revenue. Now, it details all revenue sources, including book publishing, which makes up 14 percent, speaker engagements and article syndication, and how the money is being spent.

In 2017, De Correspondent made $4.5 million (€3.8 million). Readers were the source of 94 percent of its revenue through activities like membership fees, donations and book sales. Most of the readers are based in Holland and pay €70, or $82, a month.

“This was uncomfortable in the beginning,” said co-founder and CEO Ernst-Jan Pfauth. “We thought we share a lot of information — there are few publishers as transparent as us — but [members] push us and we do it. They feel like they funded this and now they want to know what we’re doing and making business decisions they agree with.”

De Correspondent launched with 10 founding principles — among them: to never sell ads, to be inclusive and collaborative, and to offer an alternative to the daily news grind. These principles and its member base impact the content it produces and its business model. Members take an active part in shaping the editorial product and journalists publish more details of their reporting. In a survey, it found that members don’t join for exclusive access but because they believe its journalism is needed, said Pfauth.

Such transparency with readers is a sign of the changes publishers have to make if they’re going to depend on their audience for direct payments. The publisher details its costs in a deliberately simple way as a retention tool, said Aron Pilhofer, who teaches journalism at Temple University and is a booster of De Correspondent. “Being this reliant on a single source of revenue is still risky, but it’s a risk worth taking for De Correspondent,” he said.

De Correspondent has enlisted a number of ambassadors ahead of its U.S. launch, including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver, Pilhofer and singer and socialist Rosanne Cash. How the ambassadors advocate for the publisher is up to them.

Putting up paywalls has attracted some criticism for catering to an elite few. De Correspondent seeks to have a diverse mix of readers. If a journalist is working on a story about police brutality, for example, the conversation editor might offer a free trial to people close to the experience, like victims or police officers.

For most publishers, the idea of community ends with comment moderation. For De Correspondent, the community is infused in the business model, the editorial strategy and the people they hire. This alignment makes it complicated for other news organizations to learn from them.

“It would take a massive shift away from how media organizations do business,” said Pilhofer. “Either they’re unaware or too afraid to risk what they are currently doing to explore these alternatives and do it seriously.”

Image: De Correspondent via Medium

The post De Correspondent gets more transparent with members about its finances appeared first on Digiday.

The New York Times is launching a limited-edition newsletter for the U.K. that’s dedicated to demystifying U.S. politics ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The “Abroad in America” newsletter, which launches next week, will be written by Sarah Lyall, a London-based American Times journalist and longtime U.K. resident. London-based illustrator Dominic Kesterton will design the artwork.

The Trump bump has boosted subscriber bases for many American publishers, but has also driven international growth. Rather than competing on U.K. politics, the Times is trying to use its American perspective as a competitive advantage.

“We’re trying hard to expand outside the U.S.,” said Elizabeth Goodridge, newsletter editor for the Times. “It makes sense for us to do something like this during such an important time in U.S. political history. We’ve never had a president like Trump before, and there is so much happening from state to federal level.”

The newsletter will be distributed twice a week and will feature a core 600-700 word opinion article from Lyall, links to related midterms stories from the Times and responses to reader questions. “We have realized that a good newsletter is a two-way communication,” Goodridge said. “It’s not about pushing our journalism out into the ether. We want to demonstrate our relationship with the readers.”

Goodridge wouldn’t share the total number of sign-ups for the newsletter, but said that it had already hit its halfway goal, with 60 percent of sign-ups coming from outside the U.S. The Times has 4.8 million monthly visitors in the U.K., according to comScore.

Newsletters are a useful tool for publishers seeking to build reader habits and turn readers into paid subscribers. The Times’ international digital subscriber base accounts for 15 percent of the publisher’s digital news subscriptions (not including its crossword or cooking subscriptions). Total digital subscriptions are now at 2.9 million, according to the publisher. The Times has found a direct correlation between those who subscribe to any of its free 55 global newsletters and those who convert to paying subscribers. A total 14 million people subscribe to its newsletters overall; Goodridge wouldn’t say how many have converted to subscriptions.

“The New York Times is unique amongst traditional publishers,” said Alice Pickthall, analyst at media analyst Enders. “They have successfully broken out of their regional market and now have significant international demand. Targeting U.K. readers of The New York Times, who are concerned with U.S. politics, will sit well within their strategy to further international demand for their products.”

The newsletter is being treated as an experiment. It will run until Nov. 11, after the midterms end. The team will then assess what’s worked and where to launch future U.K. and Europe-specific limited edition newsletters, according to Goodridge.

“The inbox is very tough real estate to get into. You’re competing with emails from your kids’ doctors. What we offer has to be invaluable information. We will experiment with the structure and look at how people respond,” said Goodridge.

The post ‘The inbox is tough real estate’: The New York Times expands international newsletters appeared first on Digiday.