Month: September 2018

Uber executive Cameron Poetzscher, who played a key role in negotiating SoftBank’s investment in the ride-hailing firm, was disciplined after a probe found he had a pattern of making sexually suggestive comments about other co-workers.

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Rachel Parkin, senior vice president of strategy and sales at CafeMedia. It’s been a year, give or take, since the dominoes started to fall in the direction of first-price auctions. Our industry wasn’t fully… Continue reading »

The post A Year In First-Price appeared first on AdExchanger.

Snap Fizzle? This year, eMarketer estimates Snapchat will bring in $662.1 million in US ad revenue, a significant drop from the $1.03 billion it had projected last March. “We now expect that Snap will not break $1 billion in US ad revenue until 2020,” according to the revised figures. The downgrade is mainly due to… Continue reading »

The post Behind Instagram Founders’ Exit; Snap Fizzles? appeared first on AdExchanger.

Coffee is deeply ingrained in our culture, both at home and at work. An office isn’t truly an office without a coffee machine, and some companies even employ their own baristas. For city dwellers, the sheer number of coffee shops — and the variety of options available inside — is astonishing.

Coffee’s modern ubiquity stems from a long history of cultural developments. In a 2008 review, the late Los Angeles food critic Jonathan Gold wrote about how American coffee culture had entered its third wave. The first stage was mass acceptance — Folgers in every home. The second was the proliferation of chains like Peet’s and Starbucks. The third wave is defined by “coffee connoisseurship,” where beans are treated like artisanal ingredients and baristas are elevated to the level of chefs.

This third wave concept has parallels in the evolution of advertising technology. At the moment, data management platforms (DMPs) are transitioning into their very own third wave. With mass acceptance and proliferation complete, the third wave for DMPs will be defined by data connoisseurship and specialization, and will usher in an unprecedented level of intelligence and sophistication around data. For advertisers, that means a new age of audience creation, exploration and activation.

 

The first and second DMP waves

The first wave of the DMP was adoption. After BlueKai pioneered the the separation of data from ad delivery and commercialized third-party audiences, the DMP rapidly rose to the center of the programmatic ecosystem. All major brands started using these new audiences and the DMP quickly become a core ingredient in ad targeting.

The second wave was commoditization, spurred by an influx of new players entering the market. Companies like Demdex, Krux and others would join BlueKai and eventually be scooped up by marketing cloud giants like Adobe, Salesforce and Oracle. DMP access quickly became table stakes for digital advertising. The ability to combine different data silos into one audience and activate it across channels — a process that once felt like magic — became commonplace.

Ushering in the third DMP wave

The current third wave is characterized by specialization, generally through an intelligence layer around audiences and unique technical capabilities. Just as the third wave of coffee is defined by connoisseurship in bean quality, variety and brewing techniques, the third wave of DMP can be defined by advancements in data quality, variety and machine learning techniques.

In terms of quality, freshness is key for both coffee beans and data. First and second wave DMPs focused on scale, often sacrificing precision and freshness. Today, improved processing capabilities give marketers the best of both. With devices scored daily in and out of audiences, advertisers can weed out irrelevant and outdated devices and IDs. Combined with advanced modeling capabilities, marketers can now scale any audience without having to sacrifice precision.

In terms of variety, the third wave of coffee exposed consumers to different beans from around the world. Similarly, DMPs now offer marketers a variety of audiences never seen before. The first two waves of DMP development offered broad views of audiences, such as demographics, in-market auto buyers or coffee enthusiasts. The proliferation of mobile and hyper-specific behavioral data means that third wave DMPs can create nuanced and imaginative audiences marketers could previously only dream of.

Finally, there is technique. Late 19th century Folgers drinkers would likely be confounded by a modern coffee maker. Similarly, marketers who haven’t changed how they work with a DMP since the early days might be wary of audiences derived through machine learning and AI-driven techniques. By combining standard DMP capabilities of yesterday with the latest in machine learning and AI, DMPs can now automatically create a wide variety of performant and accurate audiences, such as consumer segments derived by clustering devices based on similar actions.

Looking forward

Overall, it won’t hurt brands to remain planted in the second wave of DMPs — after all, there are plenty of people who have never sipped a pour-over coffee and live happy lives. But riding the third wave will give brands an industry advantage. Technology progresses quickly, and what was once unheard of quickly becomes commoditized. As data science becomes democratized, marketers need to do what’s best for their business and take advantage of the latest advancements.

The post The third wave of data management platforms is upon us appeared first on Digiday.

Matt Rivitz now has police cars cruising down his street a couple of times a day.

They’re there because Rivitz gets daily threats against him and his family from people on the right, including Breitbart News supporters. They started after the 45-year-old freelance copywriter was recently outed by right-wing website The Daily Caller as a founder of Sleeping Giants, the Twitter account that convinced 4,000 companies to pull their ads from Breitbart by posting screenshots on social media of their ads on the site.

The post The whistleblowers: What happens when advertising’s anonymous organizations get unmasked appeared first on Digiday.

Digiday+ members get access to exclusive research in order to make smarter decisions. Now, members will also receive monthly trend reports on the most important topics in media and marketing.

In our first downloadable research report, we take an in-depth look at the state and future of video. Digital video is critically important to the media landscape and but is increasingly difficult for publishers to perfect. Digiday+’s research sheds light on the publishers continuing to produce and draw revenues from video, which platforms are best for video monetization and distribution, and consumer demand for OTT video.

Five key themes emerged from the findings:

The pivot to video continues
The past year has seen a litany of publishers that pivoted to video fail to meet revenue expectations, get sold for a fraction of prior valuations, or collapse altogether. But despite the turmoil, publishers in both the U.S. and Europe are continuing to invest in video content, with the vast majority planning to boost their video production this year.

Video is a key revenue driver for publishers
The pivot to video failed to provide the gold rush many publishers expected it to but advertising revenues from video continue to remain an important source of income for publishers. Forecasts predict spending on video advertisements to increase and several C-level publisher executives predict video to be their company’s largest growth area.

Long form video is in, short form is out
The death of Go90 signaled to video creators the limits of short-form video. Even after spending hundreds of millions on short-form video series, Go90 never gained audience traction. Few publishers now believe there’s a sustainable market for short-form video, while more are focusing on longer videos. 

Not all platforms are equal for video distribution and monetization
In an effort to diversify the source of their video revenues, publishers have built out presences on multiple social platforms, including Flipboard and Apple News. However, not all platforms offer publishers equal opportunities. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube make it easy for publishers to repurpose their content, whereas publishing videos to Snapchat often require creating custom content.

Consumer appetites for video streaming services
American customers have exhibited a strong appetite for OTT services. Two-thirds of American households use an OTT subscription service. Furthermore, concerns about a slowing demand could be premature. More than half of existing OTT subscribers plan to purchase an additional OTT subscription in the coming year.

Digiday+ members can access the full research report below:

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Battling competition from Amazon, Shopify, and retailer e-commerce, eBay is making a core part of its pitch larger, non-DTC brands. Part of this is a new way of marketing itself, as an e-commerce “concierge” that can help large brands like KitchenAid or Acer build their online stores on its platform.

And it’s doing that by pushing personalized service, help with directing customer traffic to branded stores, and assistance with marketing and advertising.

The crowded market is adding pressure on eBay to hold its own, especially as fewer Amazon sellers concurrently list products on it, a recent Feedvisor study reported. Large consumer brands are a major opportunity for eBay, and they’re reaching out to it in bigger numbers, according to the company.

“They’re coming to eBay because the retail landscape is changing,” CEO Devin Wenig said in an earnings call earlier this year. “They get sales from multiple channels that may not be around in a few years and they’re looking at their alternatives, and eBay is one of the very few at-scale marketplaces in the world, and we don’t compete with our sellers.”

eBay’s pitch to brands is being able to let them own the relationship with their customers — a “friendly face” instead of a foe that may develop copycat products.

The company is building out its platform to become as user friendly a place as possible for brands that want to develop customized storefronts and generate traffic to those sites through tagging in search results, said Bob Kupbens, vp of seller and marketplace operations at eBay.

eBay has 175 million active buyers, according to the company. Brands are reaching different audiences through it than traditional channels, Kupbens said. eBay currently has “hundreds” of brands currently selling direct through the platform, including Acer, Microsoft, KitchenAid, Dyson and Quiksilver. Some of these companies also sell on Amazon, but eBay has the benefit of being a pure marketplace, an enabler that lets brands acquire and retain customers.

Instead of presenting itself as a massive marketplace that brands plug into, eBay is selling itself as a tool for brands to build their own marketplaces through personalized daily interactions. eBay also emphasizes its ability to amplify brands’ outreach to customers through online campaigns and events.

“We work with the brand to get their inventory shown and available in the marketplace, and those relationships get consummated between the buyers and the brand directly; we also don’t have private label products,” Kupbens said. eBay is emphasizing transparency and marketing assistance through and 1p ad placements; promoted listings and analytics through the seller hub, which provides sales and performance information; and aggregated customer data.

Through its emphasis on service and efforts to develop direct relationships with customers, eBay seeks to address some of the pain points some Amazon sellers have expressed about the platform, including the desire for more control over data, unresponsiveness, and frustrations over the growth of counterfeit sellers. It’s also marketing the launch of its in-house payments platform this week as a pro-seller move, because the company said it will result in lower costs for sellers.

Still, with 100 million Prime Members, Amazon is a force brands can’t ignore.

Despite interest among brands to sell directly on the platform, Forrester analyst Sucharita Kodali said eBay has lost ground to competitors.

“Amazon is more of a first stop for shoppers and delivers more sales for brands than eBay,” she said. “eBay unfortunately has lost mindshare with shoppers and marketing is the only thing that will quickly regain that.”

To grow market share, she said eBay needs to invest more heavily in paid search and SEO for its own brand, citing an example where Wayfair and Williams Sonoma appeared higher up in search results for Kitchenaid.

eBay, however, has one lagging challenge from its brand story history — evolving from its previous role as an auction house or a liquidation center for a range of items.

“When eBay first opened its doors, it was an auction house for people who wanted to sell the stuff they no longer wanted,” said Feedvisor CEO Victor Rosenman. “Over the years, eBay evolved to be a marketplace similar to Amazon, with a range of new products and fixed price points. However, Amazon was already winning over consumers across the country by providing consistent shopping innovations, like Amazon Prime.”

The “liquidation store” model is still somewhat true today. Kupbens said eBay is a place some companies sell refurbished items (Dyson, for example), liquidation and factory outlet shopping (Guess Factory Outlet Store has a presence on eBay). Brands also don’t necessarily have to do all the heavy lifting selling the items, since authorized resellers have access to similar analytics tools and help that brands can use. Kupbens emphasized that eBay is moving beyond the liquidation model to a bigger marketplace where a range of merchandise is featured; he said some brands start with liquidation, and expand when they see results.

To succeed, eBay needs to play up what makes it different from Amazon, including one-on-one service and a more direct relationship with sellers.

“They should embrace the fact that they’re not Amazon — the amount of control of the brand is higher and they control pricing, and it’s more integrated; they should market eBay as if it were a one-shop shop,” said Mudit Jaju, global head of e-commerce at Wavemaker.

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The post ‘They should embrace the fact that they’re not Amazon’: Inside eBay’s pitch to brands appeared first on Digiday.

Business Insider is allowing advertisers to buy its inventory programmatically across all its international editions.

The Axel Springer-owned publisher has expanded aggressively in Europe over the last few years, with its biggest presence in the U.K. Like many big U.S. publishers, it has expanded into Europe via partnerships with local media players, of which it has eight. But until now, there hasn’t been a unified way for advertisers to buy its audiences programmatically across all eight of its international editions.

From October on, buyers will be able to do so across BI editions in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and the Nordics, via a single point. The marketplace will also plug into the publisher’s U.S. inventory. So if a buyer wants to purchase all French-speaking readers, for example, they can target French natives across all the properties since BI works on a revenue-share basis with its partners.

By pooling inventory from all its Europe partner BI editions, the publisher hopes to grow their programmatic revenue further. BI’s UK programmatic revenue grew 112 percent in the third quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year, according to the publisher. A similar jump was made in the previous quarter. The publisher’s programmatic revenue is roughly 35 percent of overall revenue. The publisher is also considering the potential for including inventory from across other titles in those media partners portfolios, though those discussions have only just started, according to Julian Childs, svp of international and managing director for BI UK.

BI’s local publishing partners are: Prisma Media in France, Finanzen (part of Axel Springer, BI’s parent company) in Germany, GEDI Gruppo Editoriale in Italy, Bonnier Media in the Nordics, Z24 in the Netherlands and Grupa Onet in Poland. In Spain, the local partner is BI owner Axel Springer España. The U.K. operation is owned and operated by BI, which claims to have 30 million monthly visitors across its titles, 8 million of whom are from the U.K.

Agencies are always on the lookout for more simplified ways of buying premium publisher inventory programmatically, in a brand-safe environment. Increasingly, they’re also looking for alternatives to buy at scale, outside of Facebook and Google. BI marketplace inventory will remain within its own walls, rather than being available on the open marketplace, to ensure brand-safety guarantees to advertisers, according to Childs.

“A PMP [private marketplace] is a great way to target potential customers within a trusted, respected environment, so what Business Insider has done will be welcomed by the market,” said John Thomson, head of media for 360i. “All high-value business audiences are hard to reach, but they come at a premium and advertisers are willing to pay for this.”

Meeting ad-buyer demand for simpler ways to scale programmatic buys across multiple regions wasn’t the only driver for the publisher. With the General Data Protection Regulation now enforced, advertisers are increasingly on the hunt for compliant ways to reach audiences. As such, publishers like BI are being asked more for first- and second- party data opportunities, rather than relying on third-party audience buys, which are riskier under GDPR, according to Childs.

“Because of the [GDPR] consent challenges, we’re seeing a shift away from third-party data being used [to buy and scale campaigns],” he said. “We own consent for the data and can work with our partners for add-ins, to create second-party data opportunities. So, we can take audience data from an international partner that we know has [GDPR] consent and pull it into a data set for a buyer.” Advertisers will then have the choice to map their own customer data, to BI audience data to create their ideal segment to target. BI has set up a consent management platform to pass information about audience consent to its ad partners via consent strings.

For now, not all inventory across all partners will be available via the marketplace. How much inventory each edition pools will depend on the partner in each country. But the goal is to keep increasing the amount of inventory that can be pooled, according to Childs. The publisher has had interest from agencies, as well as clients direct — indicative of the ongoing trend of advertisers taking ownership of their media planning and buying.

“Part of our goal here is to make it easy for advertisers that want to be in safe and compliant environments, and who are taking a lot more of this in-house,” added Childs.

The post Business Insider unifies programmatic ad buying across all international editions appeared first on Digiday.

AT&T doesn’t want to be labeled a walled garden like Facebook and Google. Instead, after acquiring Time Warner and ad tech firm AppNexus to become a media-and-advertising monolith, the telecom giant considers itself “a community garden,” said Brian Lesser, CEO of AT&T’s advertising and analytics division, which is newly named Xandr (as in AT&T founder and telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell).

AT&T’s advertising business is seeking to separate itself from the digital ad duopoly by giving advertisers better access to its data than the walled gardens make available. “We have a concept of attribution enablement where we want to give data back to our clients so that they don’t necessarily have to trust us that [a campaign] worked. They can ingest the data, model it themselves and know that it worked based on their standards,” Lesser said in a brief Q&A session with reporters during a conference that AT&T’s advertising business is hosting this week in Santa Barbara, Calif.

AT&T’s pitch piqued the interest of advertisers and agency execs among the roughly 250 attendees at the company’s conference. It’s unclear how exactly AT&T plans to provide this data or even what categories of data it will provide, though. Paul Dolan, CEO of Varick Media Management, said he received the term “community garden” and the idea behind it with “hopeful optimism.” He is particularly hopeful that advertisers could use this ad-related data to inform marketing beyond advertising, such as product packaging decisions. “To hear that we can bring the client data to the party and actually get smarter about it and not have that intelligence tied to whatever platform we’re using but we can bring that back to the business, that’s a big win for our clients,” he said.

AT&T may not go so far as allowing advertisers to take the data from its platform and add it into their own. AT&T cannot share individuals’ raw personal information with advertisers because it would run afoul of its own privacy policy and could violate privacy laws, such as the one recently passed in California. So the company is seeking a middle ground between sharing all the data and too little data with advertisers. The company could  provide advertisers with anonymized information, but it seems that information would remain within the confines of AT&T’s platform. “We call that a community garden, not a walled garden, where, as long as these types of analytics are occurring in our environment, we can actually make advertisers smarter and we think that helps us in terms of bringing them back to the marketplace,” he said.

As much as AT&T appears to be trying to distance itself from the walled gardens, it is also beginning to act like one. Last week AT&T-owned ad tech firm AppNexus pulled out of the Advertising ID Consortium that was formed for independent ad tech companies to pool together their cookie-based identifiers in hopes of providing improved tracking outside of the walled gardens. “From our point of view, this is the very first official move of AT&T/AppNexus toward building the next big walled garden in the industry,” said Michael Nevins, CMO of ad server Smart.

If AT&T were to only allow advertisers to access its data within its own platform, then it wouldn’t be acting much different than the walled gardens. Amazon already opens up its anonymized data to advertisers but only to analyze within Amazon’s platform without the ability to extract it, said a brand executive in attendance who asked to remain anonymous. And, for certain advertisers and agencies, Facebook operates so-called “clean rooms” to cross-reference an advertisers’ first-party data with Facebook’s own data that is sanitized of personally identifiable information.

“Walled gardens don’t get enough credit for the data they do share,” said the brand executive. Perhaps they should rebrand themselves as community gardens.

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