Month: December 2018

The evolution of music journalism includes some hints about its future — whatever the medium.

There was plenty to confess about in 2018. This year in Digiday’s Confessions series, in which we trade anonymity for complete candor, professionals in media and marketing spoke openly about relying too heavily on platforms like Facebook, the truths behind influencer fraud and the tensions around bringing media and marketing in-house. We’ve compiled the best of this year’s Confessions below.

Facebook will ‘completely deprioritize publishers’: Confessions of a publisher audience development lead
Exactly a week before Facebook announced it would change its News Feed algorithm to favor user content and de-prioritize the content of publishers,’ Digiday spoke with an audience development head at a midsize digital publisher who said the platform had disclosed its plan to him and warned him against depending on Facebook too much: “They very candidly said to me, ‘If I were you, I would probably not rely on Facebook as much as you are.’ So a big strategy for publishers needs to be diversification. The people at Facebook I’ve spoken to have confirmed this. Their efforts are going to be elsewhere.”

Confessions of a data scientist: ‘Marketers don’t know what they’re asking for’
Like with artificial intelligence or blockchain, data science is an area that marketers feel that they are in the dark. Digiday spoke with a data scientist who explained that many marketers are wasting their money just to be part of the trend: “It’s the Wild West, especially if a company has never dealt with data. Companies that aren’t ready for a data scientist, hire one and end up wasting $100,000 a year. Most small businesses don’t need a data scientist; they need someone to handle a spreadsheet or a data analyst.”

Confessions of a TV ad buyer: ‘Sometimes a client’s media plan makes no sense’
In 2018, digital ad spending toppled TV ad spend for the first time. In a Confessions with Digiday, a TV ad buyer discussed how TV ad buyers are feeling the pressure from clients’ persistence that they still see the same impact for less money: “Because of all the digital options available to them today, clients are spending less on TV, but they still want it to make just as much of an impact. They don’t want to let go of any of the channels they are on, and TV is still an important channel to them. Clients just aren’t willing to shell out the appropriate amount of money.”

‘Active participation in fraud’: Confessions of a former influencer
In June, marketers – including Unilever’s Keith Weed — brought the conversation around fraud in influencer marketing back in the limelight at Cannes. In the week following, a former influencer spoke with Digiday about how PR agencies are to blame as well: “PR agencies are encouraging this. Wait, more than that. It’s not encouragement — it’s active participation in fraud. The PR agencies are playing both ends. In order to sign with an agency, you need so many followers. So the agency buys the followers for influencers, and gets some money from the influencers in exchange for helping them land clients.” 

Confessions of a marketer: Agencies forced brands to in-house more marketing
As the in-house movement speeds along, Digiday spoke with a senior marketer at a global advertiser who said it has become necessary to take more control from agencies: “The agencies have caused marketers like myself and others to bring more knowledge in-house. Yes, in-housing that expertise is beneficial for us because we control and track the data, and so can have a more transparent supply chain with internal media specialists, who will also care about and understand the brand better.”

‘It’s a hard industry’: Confessions of a young ad creative
Life at ad agencies haven’t gotten any easier. In a Confessions, a young agency staffer confided that there is still a lot of co-opting of ideas: “When you’re at an agency that is not producing a lot of work, people freak out a little bit. When it’s time to find a new job, they desperately take advantage of work they haven’t done and believe they can add it to their portfolios. Others are just greedy.”

The post The best of Digiday Confessions in 2018 appeared first on Digiday.

When 2018 began, AT&T did not have a massive media and advertising business. But the telecom giant is closing the year with a portfolio of TV networks, multiple direct-to-consumer streaming video services and an advertising division that spans traditional and digital media. Here are five things we learned about AT&T’s media and advertising business in 2018:

AT&T wants to rival the tech giants
AT&T didn’t buy WarnerMedia only to compete with its traditional rivals such as Comcast and Verizon, but also to keep pace with newer adversaries including Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (collectively dubbed FAANG). Without owning the distribution pipes, as well as some high-profile content that runs through those pipes and an ad business that runs alongside it, “you’re gonna have a hard time competing with these guys,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at Recode’s Code Conference in May.

Through WarnerMedia, AT&T acquired not only to Turner’s and HBO’s TV networks and digital properties, but also their content and Warner Bros.’s film-and-TV library. And in Turner, AT&T’s advertising division — overseen by former WPP exec Brian Lesser — gained access to some valuable TV, digital and OTT inventory. AT&T has some big plans following its WarnerMedia acquisition, notably a streaming video service to rival Netflix, Amazon and Apple, as well as an advanced advertising business to compete against Google, Facebook and Amazon for big TV dollars.

AT&T wants to make addressable TV advertising more than a niche business
Aside from Turner, the foundation of AT&T’s advertising business is AdWorks, which sells targeted TV ads on AT&T’s DirecTV and U-verse pay-TV services. But addressable TV advertising has been beset by the perception that there’s not enough inventory available for advertisers. AT&T is trying to change that.

AT&T’s Xandr advertising business has signed deals with cable-TV providers Altice and Frontier to sell their addressable TV inventory alongside the inventory it already has from DirecTV and U-Verse, which will give it access to 40 percent of the addressable TV inventory available next year, according to Jason Brown, vp and head of ad sales partnerships at Xandr.

The acquisition of Turner’s networks could open up more inventory if AT&T follows Comcast-NBCUniversal’s example and starts selling targeted ads against more of Turner’s TV inventory beyond the two minutes per hour that DirecTV and U-Verse are allotted.

AT&T wants to be a one-stop shop for digital video advertising
AT&T’s advertising ambitions are not limited to addressable TV or TV in general. After acquiring AppNexus in August, AT&T’s Xandr division is looking to sell ads across a whole network of third-party publishers with an emphasis on digital video.

However Xandr still has work to do. The division — which has been somewhat quiet since its rebranding in September and is said to be hashing out its product roadmap — has been working to acquire more premium digital video inventory, according to ad buyers who cited that as the biggest need that Xandr currently has.

Xandr could help itself to fill that need by adding inventory from Turner’s properties and commingling its addressable TV and digital video ad sales. Those moves — and the addition of demographic-based guarantees, another thing desired by ad buyers — could help to establish a pipeline of ad spend that may lure more publishers, particularly those looking to foster more competition against Google, Facebook and Amazon.

AT&T wants to catch the cord-cutters
AT&T’s DirecTV business has been losing subscribers like every other traditional pay-TV service, which is why AT&T has two streaming TV services that aim to catch those customers when they cut the cord.

AT&T’s DirecTV Now had been able to stanch the bleeding for a time. In the second quarter of 2018, DirecTV Now added 342,000 subscribers to more than offset the 262,000 linear TV subscribers lost in the period. But that didn’t continue in the third quarter, when DirecTV Now only added 49,000 subscribers, which was far short of the 346,000 linear TV subscribers that AT&T lost in the period.

DirecTV Now isn’t AT&T’s only streaming TV business. In June the company debuted WatchTV, a $15-a-month skinny bundle of live TV channels. While WatchTV is primarily aimed at AT&T’s wireless customers — it’s free for those with unlimited data plans — the service is open to anyone and works on mobile as well as connected TV devices.

AT&T wants to have a portfolio of streaming video services
DirecTV Now and WatchTV are far from AT&T’s only attempts to cater to cord-cutters. The company has a whole portfolio of streaming video services, even after shutting down some of them.

After taking full ownership of Otter Media in August, AT&T has anime-centric subscription streaming service Crunchyroll as well as Vrv, a subscription service featuring a bundle of on-demand channels from Otter Media companies and other companies such as AMC. AT&T also has OTT apps for HBO and Turner’s cable networks. And in March, Turner-owned Bleacher Report introduced B/R Live, which streams live broadcasts of sporting events, including NBA games and UEFA soccer matches.

AT&T has pared down its streaming video services by shutting down DramaFever and FilmStruck in October. But it has at least one more — a big one — on the way with an unnamed direct-to-consumer streaming product that WarnerMedia plans to unveil in late 2019. Little information is known about what WarnerMedia is planning, but it’s likely to have multiple tiers that bundle different parts of the broad WarnerMedia ecosystem. It will also have its own original content, which will be overseen by Kevin Reilly, who most recently served as head of Turner’s TNT and TBS.

The post 5 things we learned about AT&T’s media and advertising business in 2018 appeared first on Digiday.

Publishers had to embrace new metrics and modes of thinking when they first made their way into digital media. In many respects, Tony Haile helped nurture that new mindset by creating the analytics tool Chartbeat, and he will be shepherding publishers toward another emerging mindset with Scroll, a product that charges users for an ad-free version of publishers’ sites, which will launch at the beginning of next year.

Haile got on the phone with Digiday to discuss the pressure publishers are under from both advertisers and subscriptions. The conversation has been condensed.

The post Scroll CEO Tony Haile: ‘We’re moving to a world where simplicity matters’ appeared first on Digiday.

The retailer is targeting hundreds of millions of new online shoppers in India’s countryside by simplifying its order screen with Hindi and videos, opening stores to help people shop and adding a fleet of local deliverymen who can take payments.