Month: February 2019

Facebook, through its first 15 years, has revolutionized how billions of people connect but also has been criticized for its handling of that communication. Here’s a look, in charts, at the social network’s growth and impact.

As brands increasingly implement global data strategies, agencies must get creative about collecting data in emerging markets. Outside of data-mature markets, such as the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, access to data varies. In Latin America, Asia and other emerging markets, programmatic spend is lower and deterministic data sits behind walled gardens, making it… Continue reading »

The post How Publicis Media Delivers Global Data Strategies In Data-Poor Markets appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Commerce + Ads Wayfair is expanding its paid media business, also known as “Wayfair Media Solutions,” Digiday reports. Like Amazon, Wayfair reports its sponsored products revenue under an “other” revenue category, which was a relatively tiny $13 million in Q3 2018 (Amazon’s “other” business… Continue reading »

The post Wayfair’s Budding Paid Media Business; YouTube’s Changing Homepage Ads appeared first on AdExchanger.

The economics of the news business may be “precarious” and “not for the faint of heart,” but BBC Global News CEO Jim Egan found a lot to be optimistic about in 2018.

Powered partly by interest in global stories including the Royal Wedding, Brexit and the World Cup, which was responsible for 133 million pageviews alone, the British news giant grew its U.S. audience 41 percent in 2018, averaging 58 million monthly unique visitors, according to Comscore. Its revenues so far are up 8 percent (its fiscal year closes in March). It also launched BBC Reel, a hub for the short-form video created by its various divisions, and saw double-digit growth for many of its specialized verticals, including BBC Capital, BBC Culture and BBC Future.

In 2019, BBC Global News will build out more habit-forming coverage in the United States with the launch of Work/Life, a service journalism vertical aimed at young professionals, as well as a U.S. version of BBC Music.

Digiday spoke with Egan about the growth of BBC Global News, its relationship with platforms and the value of non-partisan news coverage. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

What do you attribute to the audience growth you’ve seen over the past year?
One of the advantages of being a dinosaur of the news industry, which is how some people have described us, is you have a pretty good sense of who you are and what you stand for. BBC News has always been about the idea of independent, impartial and balanced reporting of news. That’s a rather old idea, which I think is as current in 2019 as it was when BBC was first founded. And that may be something that audiences in the U.S. and elsewhere have found somewhat distinctive.

Do you think impartiality in news is a value proposition moving forward, or might you reconsider the way you think about news?
We talk about impartiality a lot, often because actually, it’s a bit of an abstract journalistic concept. It’s not a term that’s in frequent, everyday use. We always thought it was important, and as polarization and partisanship increases, we just think it’s more important. We’re doubling down on our independence. We think it serves the audience interest best. We’re not going to pretend we’re the only people who are committed to independent news coverage, but it’s something that’s very important to us.

The relationship between publishers and platforms can often feel fraught. What’s your relationship with Facebook?
I would say, in all honesty, we have a good working relationship with Facebook. And that relationship has been one we’ve managed very carefully, with Facebook and the other platforms, where we’ve been mindful of our strategic imperatives and what we can bring to each other. We’ve always been very wary of becoming over-reliant on any platforms generally and certainly any one platform in particular. That’s shielded us a little during a period of pronounced turbulence. But we’re pleased with the Facebook relationship generally.

Do you think platforms have a sufficient understanding of the role they play in the news ecosystem?
The last few years have been a very steep learning curve for platforms across the piece. In particular, one thing that platforms have learned in the U.S. and not just with social morays and regulatory models being their expectation. One thing that platforms are having to learn very, very quickly about is how different life can be outside the U.S. There are particular sensitivities in Europe which the European Commission has been on the forefront of — thinking about changes in copyright directives and GDPR and so on. There’s an enormous diversity of what both publishers but also regulators and policymakers are expecting from platforms.

The post BBC Global News CEO Jim Egan: ‘We’re pleased with the Facebook relationship’ appeared first on Digiday.

Electrolux is bringing all of its digital media buying in-house, beginning with North America and then expanding to different regions across Europe and Latin America.

Joel Stanley, senior director of digital marketing at Electrolux North America, said that the Sweden-based global company, known for its Frigidaire refrigerators and parent company to a variety of global home appliance brands like refrigerator and air conditioning brand Gibson and Electrolux Laundry Systems, is estimating that by this July, all of its digital media planning and buying in North America will be done internally through its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In North America, the company spends approximately $25 million in total media on Frigidaire and anywhere from $3 to $5 million on Electrolux branding a year, according to Stanley. The company declined to break out how much was on digital media.

The company began working with agency MightyHive, which helps brands create in-house buying operations in October to start training people for open positions within the company’s 45-person marketing team in North America and to take over digital media responsibilities from WPP agency VMLY&R, until the company can manage on its own. The company ran its first test campaign in December and plans to launch its first programmatic Frigidaire campaign done outside of an ad agency in April with MightyHive leading the project.

Stanley said the main drivers for bringing digital media buying and planning in-house are having full control over consumer data across social, display and search, as well as a company effort to adopt programmatic media buying.

“Before, we were very much trying to manage agencies to manage our media,” said Stanley. “While we had great agency partners, it wasn’t the same as having expertise in-house where we can dictate from the business needs what the media should be. The level of data we can get, we can get a much better view of a consumer.”

Measuring the frequency of ad views has been a “huge issue” for the company in the past. Without its own data, Stanley explained that Electrolux couldn’t see whether people were viewing an ad 25 times or two times. “It’s difficult to get that with media from different DSPs going out in the market,” said Stanley.

Another benefit is cost-savings. Stanley calls them “significant.” Without agency fees, he said the company will save anywhere from a third to nearly half of the $1.5 million it was spending a year with VMLY&R. VMLY&R will continue to plan and buy TV on behalf of Electrolux and VML, which is currently the company’s agency of record, will maintain the company’s creative work.

Last week, Electrolux reported positive fourth-quarter earnings, with net sales of $34.43 billion, 2.4 percent above analyst estimates.

On its path to bring media buying in-house, Electrolux has opened up four new roles on its marketing team — including a digital strategist and three media buyers, and has so far has filled the role of the digital strategist and one media buyer. They report to the head of data and media and will all have expertise on optimization and bidding across paid search, social and display.  

“We want everyone to have at least a good understanding of the entirety of the system,” said Stanley. “We don’t want to pigeonhole someone. We want someone doing paid search to see how display is interacting with it.” When it comes to buyers, the company prefers candidates who have no previous media experience so that their training can start from scratch.

Electrolux’s North America media spend is currently spread out among Google and Facebook properties, with Amazon growing as a third option. About 75 percent of Electrolux’s digital ad dollars are going to Google search and display ads and YouTube video ads, and 25 percent is going toward ads on Facebook and Instagram. On Amazon, Electrolux uses a distributor to sell some of its products but is looking into using the platform as an advertising channel. Stanley said it is “fascinating” for the company that they have the option of tagging a standard display ad and can see whether someone clicked on it and converted by buying the product on Amazon.  

Similar to Electrolux, the majority of companies bringing pieces of their marketing in-house are doing so to gain more control of data. According to Digiday research, 38 percent of 214 marketers Digiday surveyed in November said having increased control over their marketing functions was the greatest benefit of an in-house agency.

Brand consultant Gene Fischer believes the move is a smart one, with the only downside is losing out on any publisher relationships through its agency partners. “[Electrolux] might not have access to content deals with larger publishers without the help of traditional media or creative agencies who have established relationships with those publishers,” he said.

When it comes to incorporating media buying abroad, not all details are mapped out yet, but the plan is to start building out the company’s technology stack in Sao Paulo, Brazil and then in Stockholm, the location of the company’s global headquarters. The process will be different depending on the region. Because Europe and Latin America are more complex with multiple countries involved, Electrolux will still work with its media agencies in the regions to construct the deals but will control all its data and technology. Still, speed is on the agenda. In Brazil, Eletrolux is aiming to introduce its own technology stack by the end of March, and Stockholm and the rest of Europe will follow by the end of the second quarter.

“Agencies will be using our technology stack so that when we do develop the audiences, it’s all within our technology,” said Stanley.

Building out small capabilities in-house so far has helped Electrolux leadership to get on board with adding media buying, said Stanley. Electrolux has an in-house graphic designer and two developers that manage the Frigidare.com and Electrolux.com websites. The fact that other brands are also on board with what is being called the “in-house movement” also helps. Stanley said the company is speaking and learning from international brands like Diageo and Adidas, which are also bridging their internal marketing capabilities to different regions.

“That’s what helped make our leadership frankly become comfortable with this,” said Stanley. “It’s not just our idea –there’s a lot of people doing it.”

The post Electrolux is bringing its digital media buying and planning in-house appeared first on Digiday.

A primary goal for Turner-owned Bleacher Report is growing businesses underneath popular sub-brands like House of Highlights and B/R Kicks. To support these brands, the company has also rethought how it’s using a key team within its broader content organization.

B/R Entertainment, the department that oversees the publisher’s digital series, is no longer a standalone, separate division, but a “company-wide” group focused on higher-quality video productions, said Courtney Vincent, executive director of content production at Bleacher Report. The group, which consists of 20 people, has been unofficially rebranded into a premium content team that supports programming made for Bleacher Report and its sub-brands. This includes shows such as animated series “Game of Zones” and “The Champions,” as well as the House of Highlights live talk show on Twitter and two other live-action series, “Sneaker Shock” and “Pre-Heat,” made for B/R Kicks.

Last year, Bleacher Report built four physical content studios to support much of the work this group does, which also includes branded content work Bleacher Report makes on behalf of advertisers. This does not include the fifth studio in Los Angeles, where Bleacher Report and Turner Sports work together for studio programming tied to Turner’s broadcasts of the UEFA Champions League.

“We’re continuing to do ‘Game of Zones,’ a new season is coming up. We’re continuing to do ‘Gridiron Heights.’ We launched a soccer show called ‘The Champions,’ which we’re going to continue in the spring [with a second season] as well as the fall [with a third season] — and that’s just on the animation side,” Vincent said. “We are doing more with Turner around the Champions League, we’re expanding B/R Kicks content. In order to solve for all that, we have grown that team to create more long-form original content that is immersive.”

When Bleacher Report talks about a premium content team for its long-form programming, the publisher means anything from animated shows that run three to four minutes per episode — but require a ton of production effort — to hour-long live shows on Twitter. It’s an area that the publisher plans to increase investments in 2020. For instance, “B/REAL,” a documentary series co-produced by Carmelo Anthony, will also be returning this year. The show’s first season spanned five episodes, with episodes running for 10 minutes or longer.

“[Projects such as ‘B/REAL’] are a critical component for us to continue to grow,” Vincent said. “Our audience is interested in us doing more than daily stats and hot takes.”

Most top digital publishers are investing in studios businesses to make and sell more long-form video shows to streaming platforms and TV networks. In fact, as part of the layoffs announced last week by BuzzFeed and Vice Media, both companies said they plan to invest more in this area of the business to help boost revenue growth. One benefit of these studio production divisions is that they can turn a profit quickly: costs are often tied to what is sold and for how much.

Vincent didn’t rule out the idea of Bleacher Report developing and selling more shows for external parties, but said any such partnership would have to be “more than just us handing off content to a third party.” She pointed to the House of Highlights live talk show Bleacher Report produces for Twitter, as an example. While Twitter isn’t paying Bleacher Report for the show, the two companies work closely together on selling sponsorships and other campaigns for marketers. “We are definitely exploring content licensing partnerships,” Vincent said.

The 20-person premium content group is expected to grow this year to support a growing slate of programming. Vincent and a Bleacher Report spokesperson didn’t specify exactly how much the team will grow by. “We’re definitely growing, especially with new shows that we’re still waiting to announce in the future.”

The post Bleacher Report rethinks its studios business as the publisher prioritizes its content brands appeared first on Digiday.

The wider roll-out of Snap’s six-second commercials in Europe is expected to bring more revenue to show creators, but until then publishers are also looking to other ways to make money off their Snapchat efforts, including piloting shows to sell to broadcasters and exploring e-commerce options.

Snap introduced Shows to the U.K. in October, adding 17 U.K. content partners with 25 new shows to its roster with the assumption that more local content leads to more audience. The Guardian, Channel 4 and Culture Trip, as well as existing Discover partners like Sky News, Vice and PinkNews all launched Shows.

For U.K. publishers, the upside was that content didn’t have to be exclusive, and it could be monetized through a revenue share with Snap: Publishers have been cautious to rely on volatile handouts from platforms to produce content. But revenue from ads in Shows isn’t the end goal for most, who are using the platform in creative ways for other revenue streams. When asked to comment on this piece, Snap said it was too early to draw definitive conclusions from the success of Shows in the U.K., but audiences are growing and it plans to add more content partners this year. The company doesn’t disclose details on revenue but said it’s committed to supporting partners in building sustainable businesses. It couldn’t share details of when commercials would roll out more widely.

Digital media company Brave Bison, which has two channels on the platform, Mutha and Perk and a few shows running across them, is using Snap as a way of piloting content and format ideas that it can build up audiences and take to other platforms or broadcasters. Each channel is getting between 3 million and 4 million monthly views, said Will Payne, chief creative officer at the company.

“We need to mitigate the lack of revenue, or the potential lack of monetization, so if it doesn’t cover the cost, it’s not the end of the world; we can use the ideas elsewhere,” said Payne. “Monetization is challenging — it’s difficult to say it’s a huge money spinner — but it depends on whether you look at monetization as a binary yes or no.”

Other publishers like PinkNews are using Snap for testing formats to sell. The LGBT digital publisher has the second series of its agony aunt show “Ask the Aunties” due in February. Season one had monthly unique viewers in the millions. The publisher is in discussions with broadcasters and producers in the U.K. and overseas about the intellectual property it’s creating for shows.

“We expect long-term revenue from the formats and the actual content themselves,” said Benjamin Cohen, CEO and editor-in-chief of PinkNews. “It’s been taken into account for the budgeting for this type of content.”

Publishers look hungrily to Vertical Networks’ “Phone Swap” with 10 million viewers per episode and versions on Fox in the U.S. and on BBC3 in the U.K. But not everyone will get that kind of hit. In the U.S., average audience sizes for E!’s “Face Forward” have more than 4 million unique viewers per episode and NBC News’ “Stay Tuned” roughly 5 million unique viewers per day.

E-commerce is another avenue publishers like PinkNews are keen to explore. In the U.S. where Snapchat added a commerce function in early 2018, the results have been mixed, but PinkNews is exploring ad formats to shop merchandise — custom superheroes on shirts — from the characters it has developed on Snapchat.

One Snapchat Shows publisher with monthly views under 10 million said it was getting monthly revenue in the low four figures.

Vice, which has five different Shows across two of its brands Vice and ID said it was seeing CPMs for Shows were on a par with what it sees in its Discover edition, where it publishes in local editions in France, Germany, U.K. and U.S., and has grown monthly active users across those four channels to 35 million. It’s seeing “solid” revenue numbers from Discover, and with vertical ad creative on the increase, popularized through other platforms, it only expects monetization to grow, especially as six-second unskippable ad units are introduced, which U.S. advertisers say show promise for being cost-effective versus competitors.

“If you look at what Snapchat is trying to achieve — returnable, repeatable programming — it’s giving it a genuinely good shot,” said Olly Osborne, marketing director for EMEA at Vice. “On Facebook, it’s difficult for us to get returnable viewing. The news feed is different every day; it’s difficult to string the formats together. Snapchat gives us an area for that programming.”

Snapchat’s attraction has been reaching younger audiences who might not be on other platforms, so using the platform as a brand-building exercise over revenue driver has made sense. Vice has found that the interactive features and polls on Snapchat exceed other platforms. Vice polled its Snapchat audience on whether they knew people who took Xanax and had 85,000 respondents in the U.K., feeding into a wider investigation of counterfeit Xanax and mental health.

For now, it’s still relatively easy to get cut through compared to other platforms. There are around 25 content creators across Shows and Publisher Stories in the U.K., but that won’t last forever. And as Snapchat has pushed its self-serve ad system, it’s opened itself up to fake ads. In the U.K., Snap controls just 0.5 percent of the U.K. digital ad market (Google and Facebook together control 60.8 percent). There’s room for head growth, and these ads are unlikely to dissuade audience-hungry marketers and publishers. Publishers are seeing higher view counts than on Facebook, historically the place for greater reach.

“[Snapchat] is not a platform to make a huge amount of money from, but it gives us huge visibility on storytelling,” said Brian Whelan, content director at Joe Media. “It covers costs; it would be difficult to justify if the content couldn’t live elsewhere.”

Joe Media’s third Show is launching in February, giving an insight into the human side of U.K. politicians by joining them in with their hobbies, for instance, surfing with Conservative member of parliament Johnny Mercer and boxing with Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan.

On Snapchat, Joe gained a larger audience than on Facebook for another one of its Shows, “Fight of Your Life,” following mixed martial arts fight Dylan Evans and his journey after being diagnosed with cancer. Toward the end of the season, episodes were getting a million views each on Snapchat, said Whelan, compared to versions on Facebook which peaked at 143,000 views. Compared to editions, Shows content is evergreen, and publishers find people who start watching the final episode go back to binge the rest of the series thanks in part to Snapchat’s next watch function.

“There are some stories we want to tell,” said Whelan. “And Snapchat is an extra way to get eyeballs on things wouldn’t get seen otherwise.”

The post With slim ad revenue, UK publishers look to alternatives for Snapchat shows appeared first on Digiday.

In an effort to grow repeat revenue and appeal to customers’ desire for newness, Ikea is testing a subscription-based furniture leasing model.

The trial, which will roll out in Switzerland later this month, is a model similar to Rent the Runway for furniture. Customers will lease furniture for a pre-determined period of time, and after the leasing period, the company will refurbish the products for re-use. The retailer hopes the experiment will lead to “scaleable subscription services,” though the cost of the program is unclear. The objectives are to generate repeat business, drive traffic to stores and appeal to younger customers.

An Ikea representative told Digiday in an email that it’s a sustainability play, as the rental model promotes the “circular economy.”

But the impact is also on Ikea’s bottom line, as a subscription model drives repeat revenue and more frequent physical and digital store traffic. Ikea, like other large retailers, is quickly rethinking its traditional, suburban big-box store model. The furniture leasing test is its latest attempt to modernize after shifting to smaller stores in urban centers and investing in improving the e-commerce experience.

Through a subscription-based service, the retailer can help grow its physical and digital store components and build a consistent source of membership fee revenue. If the trial is successful and Ikea scales the program to all customers, it will be entering a space that’s already somewhat crowded, with old players like Rent-A-Center competing with recently-established startups like Fernish and Feather.

According to Griffin Carlborg, senior research associate at Gartner, the leasing trial is a way to show investors that Ikea is serious about adapting its business model to changing customer behavior. Ikea’s revamp, however, is affecting the retailer’s profit margins. In November, Ikea reported that pre-tax profits between January and August of 2018 were down 36 percent to $2.4 billion, and sales rose 2 percent to $42 billion.

“In a low-growth market, [retailers] need to figure out a way to drive shareholder value, and how to get people back into stores — a subscription model can help retailers with this really challenging cycle,” Carlborg said.

The subscription-based model is showing early success in the home goods category. Restoration Hardware, which rolled out a membership program in 2016, last year claimed it provided 95 percent of the company’s core business. The program entitles customers who pay a $100 annual fee to discounts and consultation services.

A pivot to subscription-based leasing is also a response to new customer preferences: Consumers are slowly becoming more comfortable signing on to a subscription-based retail service. According to a 2017 Euromonitor survey of U.S. millennials, 37.5 percent currently use some form of subscription-based retail service, and 20 percent did so for the furniture category. Ikea joins a growing number of traditional retailers looking to maximize revenue from loyal customers through subscriptions in different categories. For example, last year, CVS rolled out an Amazon Prime-style subscription program; Best Buy also rolled out a tech support subscription product the same year.

“Consumers have grown to adopt the subscription model, and they’ve become very familiar with things like recurring meal kits, razors and fashion products like Rent the Runway — it’s mainstream consumer behavior,” said Michelle Grant, head of retail at Euromonitor.  “Consumers also want the newness; call it the HGTV effect, where everyone is constantly upgrading.”

Ikea’s move shouldn’t be seen as a reactive move to Amazon and furniture startups, said Hannah Hayes, home improvement retail analyst at Kantar Consulting. She argues it should be should be cast alongside its other modernization to stay relevant to digital-first, younger customers.

“It’s trying to reinvent itself to connect with a younger generation of shoppers; it’s more aligned with their ‘test and learn’ approach rather than to go head to head with startups,” she said.

While customers may want to upgrade frequently, higher price points make doing cost prohibitive for many customers; subscription services may make those plans more affordable for some customers. However, to generate a consistent revenue stream, the retailer needs to offer enough value from the program to keep customers within its family of products.

“The question I would have is whether it’s compelling enough for customers to stay within Ikea’s ecosystem to drive the recurring revenue stream,” said Carlborg.

The post ‘HGTV effect’: Ikea is testing a subscription model for furniture appeared first on Digiday.

In the absence of a direct-to-consumer business, Hershey’s is going directly to retailers to get the data needed to see whether its ads encourage people to buy its chocolate bars.

The candy maker is pitching a “clean room” to retailers that will store their loyalty card data alongside its ad exposure data to eliminate the risk of data leakage, said Vincent Rinaldi, head of addressable media at Hershey’s. Discussions are ongoing, Rinaldi said, with progress predicated on whether Hershey’s can convince retailers to share the same data many of them hope will eventually form the nub of their own walled gardens. Like Procter & Gamble, Hershey’s hopes to use its commercial clout as a wholesaler to grocery stores to win them round.

The post Hershey’s is pitching a ‘clean room’ for data sharing to retailers appeared first on Digiday.

Alphabet posted sustained revenue growth in the fourth quarter, the latest indication of strong financial results in the technology world despite mounting public pressures.