Month: February 2019

Media companies eager to deepen relationships with their audiences are teaming up and turning to unified login systems so users can access multiple media sites through a single email address.

France is the latest country taking this route, with 10 media companies across news publishing, radio and broadcast setting rivalries aside to collaborate on a single tech system. Le Figaro, Altice, Team, M6-RTL, Lagardère Active, Czech Media Invest France, 20 Minutes, Les Echos-Le Parisien, Le Point and Radio France, who together reach around 80 percent of French internet users, are all in the as-yet-unnamed alliance.

The media groups are pooling resources — and €5 million ($5.7 million) in funding over three years to create an independent, common technology infrastructure that all publishers and other media owners can plug into. A consumer would then upload their email, and every time a person visits a site across any of the media company’s online portfolios, they’ll be able to login with the same details or stay logged in.

“As a publisher, we need a link with the reader,” said Bertrand Gié, deputy director of the Le Figaro news division. “Today, this is a tiny link through a cookie. Cookies are very imperfect and in danger.”

The idea is that one publisher’s single login strategy isn’t likely to have the necessary scale to rival the login platforms of Google, Amazon and Facebook. (The reality check of how difficult this will be is highlighted by the fact that publishers hope to score funding from the Google News Initiative.) And publishers are loathe to use tech platforms as identity systems. Moreover, with the prospect of ePrivacy laws coming to pass, having explicit consumer consent to use data is becoming paramount.

By September, audiences will be able to use their email address to automatically log into around 100 media sites in France, the alliance is running tests on up to three media owners in June. Logging in won’t be a requirement to access content to start with, but this could change. It’s fairly typical for broadcasters, like M6, for instance, to require a login for viewing shows on catch-up services.

European Lawmakers are still thrashing out the ePrivacy directive, which isn’t yet set in stone but would stipulate that consumer consent is needed for all cookie use. This has thrust media owners to team up for unified login systems in Germany and Portugal.

France has had more success over alliances than other European countries, programmatic alliance La Place was one of the earlier examples in the market, but that doesn’t make it challenging getting into bed with competitors, even with common enemies.

The alliance is only collecting email addresses, according to Gié. Collecting and sharing more personal data would have made discussion between alliance members, and competitors, more difficult. It’s then down to the media owner to build up a relationship with the readers and collect the relevant data to build our a profile to create personalized ads and services.

Media owners will offer incentives to those who register, like setting up specific alerts. With the login, people will be able to switch between devices while reading an article, for instance. Just 15 percent of people register with media sites in France currently, according to a report from Le Figaro.

A positive approach and a long-term view need to be the lowest-common denominators among all the alliance partners, said Alessandro De Zanche, founder of consulting firm ADZ Strategies, and best practices and knowledge needs to be shared to avoid falling into the previous publisher pitfalls of frustrating audiences through bad programmatic practices.

“The user is willingly, proactively and positively answering the proposition of the media brands and publishers,” he said. “It has to be based on value exchange, not value extraction. It’s important to preserve the trust.”

The post Top French media companies team up for unified login system appeared first on Digiday.

Heineken wants its ad tech partners to share more than just their take rates.

The advertiser wants more information on how exchanges handle auctions so that it can only bid in the ones it’s most likely to win, a process commonly known as supply-path optimization. Heineken is already making these decisions to a degree through the demand-side platform it buys its programmatic ads, but the intel the ad tech uses to those customize bids is limited. There’s more of that information sitting within the supply-side platforms that sell programmatic ads to Heineken because they manage the auctions.

The post Why Heineken is doing more ad buying in private marketplaces appeared first on Digiday.

Buyers were gathered in Nashville this week for the Digiday Media Buying Summit. Conversations during sessions and during closed-door town halls were largely focused on client education, in-housing and brand safety. Edited highlights below.

Why brands don’t want to advertise alongside news
“There is now a question of the definition of news: what’s real and what’s fake? This started with Breitbart, and that’s where the question is.”

“We will run against news content. It’s about us finding the right audience. A lot of the keyword targeting doesn’t stick. For us, with what’s happening right now,  it’s not sticking. The articles are sometimes below the fold.”

“News of the day is the news. We can’t change that. So saying you can’t advertise on the news is to avoid reality. It’s incumbent on exchanges to do their jobs of whitelisting quality websites.”

“Brands don’t want to be near controversial issues or near any news. But the net of controversial issues has grown. The 24-hour news cycle means there’s always some kind of drama.”

Publishers need to do more
“In terms of news, what is going to have to happen is publishers need to have to do some work on their end. In many cases, they need to start working with writers to classify their stories. Most of the work is being done on our end, on the demand side.”

“We do have to have content tagging done in the article passed to the ad server so we can set up PMPs that will allow us to block specific keywords and types of articles. Publishers need to try. It’s the need to-do for publishers: to pass us your content tagging.”

The screenshot-industrial complex
“The thing is, tools like Grapeshot need articles to have a certain number of views before they can do anything, so God forbid the advertiser sees the one impression. So it’s about the screenshot.”

“We’re using a blunt instrument to block things. Even if someone were to set up a whitelist, it’s not clean.”

“Is there even any data showing if consumers see an ad near a piece of content they’re making a negative connection?”

“’Stay the hell away’ is the go-to feel.”

“All it takes is one letter from one person saying you were here. People are tweeting at advertisers. It’s fear of the screenshot.”

In-housing has led to agencies needing to pivot
“My team works mostly in social, and the biggest thing is Facebook making it easier for people to take it in-house.”

“As an agency, we’re now starting to work on a program where they have us on retainer to bounce their in-house ideas on us. It’s not ideal because it’s not scalable, but it’s the way to help us in this instance.”

“We’re also seeing it with big brands and with programmatic in-house. It’s happening because they read a couple articles someplace and then decide to do it. They’re then reaching out and asking us what DSPs we’re using. But clients are starting to see that everything is hard.”

“You’re seeing it at companies where they’re focused on direct-response. They have quick turnover at the CMO. and it’s coming from there; we need to control every aspect of the business. The bigger picture for all of us is this is inevitable when you digitize an ecosystem and commoditize its building blocks. Buyers are commoditized. As agencies, we need to look at the fact that buying inherently isn’t an advantage for us.”

“I fail to see a point at which an agency provides value with a self-service model.”

“Agencies that focus on their bottom lines and the CPMs they get do themselves a disservice.”

“With brands, they’re often out of touch with what’s going on. They’re focused on the politics and red tape inside their companies.”

The post ‘Fear of the screenshot’: Candid thoughts of ad buyers at the Digiday Media Buying Summit appeared first on Digiday.

Barstool Sports recorded more than $15 million in podcasting revenue in 2018, according to a source. Erika Nardini, CEO of Barstool Sports, declined to comment on how much revenue Barstool’s podcasts generated last year, but confirmed that it has become a meaningful business for the company. Half of Barstool’s advertising revenue is from podcasts, Nardini said.

Barstool’s network of podcasts currently consists of 25 active shows. Top shows include “Pardon My Take” (which is a top-10 U.S. podcast according to podcast measurement firm Podtrac); “Spittin Chiclets” (an NHL-focused podcast with former players Ryan Whitney and Paul Bissonnette); “Call Her Daddy” (sex and relationships); and “Fore Play.”

The cumulative reach across all of Barstool’s podcasts was 7.9 million uniques in January, up from 4.3 million unique viewers a year ago, according to Podtrac data provided by Barstool. Podcasts were also downloaded 37.9 million times in January, up from 19.9 million in January 2018, Nardini said. This has helped make Barstool a top-10 podcast publisher in the U.S., according to Podtrac. It ranked above such well-known media brands as ESPN but still trailed podcast heavyweights like NPR and The New York Times.

Audience growth is translating into revenue. Barstool has already sold 50 percent of its expected 2019 podcast inventory upfront, Nardini said. The average rate per spot grew 30 percent year over year. Other existing sponsors for Barstool podcasts include New Amsterdam vodka, FanDuel and SeatGeek.

Barstool’s podcasts are anchored by personalities, such as Dan Katz and PFTCommenter on “Pardon My Take.” This influencer approach has helped bring in loyal audiences and also turn some of these shows into franchises that can deliver different forms of revenue. For example, “Call Her Daddy” — which is a real name for a show in which hosts Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn talk about sex and relationships while living in New York City — is sponsored by men’s health brand Roman, but Barstool also creates merch for fans of the show. It has also become Barstool Sports’ second-biggest podcast, after “Pardon My Take,” and 70 percent of the audience is female, Nardini said.

“Podcasts are the single most compelling way we create IP,” said Nardini. “And it’s very natural for Barstool — podcasts and blogs are not that different.”

The podcasting market is growing, although still small. Podcast ad revenues are expected to reach $514.5 million in the U.S. this year, which pales in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars that go toward TV, search and digital video, according to an IAB report. Some digital media companies are building robust podcast operations that are main drivers of their business. The Ringer, helmed by Bill Simmons, has 28 podcasts and is reported to have done more than $15 million in revenue, mostly from podcast ads. Vox Media, which has a network of 75 podcast shows, also has an eight-figure podcasting business, according to Axios. The market for podcasts was recently validated by Spotify’s $340 million worth of deals to buy Gimlet, maker of popular podcasts, and podcast creation and hosting service Anchor.

“You’re seeing an acceleration of podcasts as a content medium; there’s way more awareness among consumers,” Nardini said. “Our ambitions in podcasts are very big.”

While podcasts are expanding into narrative formats, Barstool mostly sticks to a talk radio approach. Barstool podcasts typically has a small number of people on each podcast — for instance, there are four people on “Pardon My Take” including the two hosts — while the crew makes use of other parts of Barstool’s infrastructure including talent booking, promotions and merchandise. (The podcasts are separate from Barstool’s 12-hour live radio channel on Sirius, which consists of exclusive programming made for the channel.)

“We’re very talent-driven,” said Nardini. “[The podcast hosts] play an extremely active role in these podcasts. As a result, the podcasts are more personal, which is more compelling.”

The post Barstool Sports has 25 podcasts and brought in $15 million from them last year appeared first on Digiday.

As a number of major brands, including Disney, Nestle, McDonald’s, AT&T and Epic Games, are pulling their ads from YouTube due to its latest brand-safety “crisis,” media buyers are largely reacting with a collective shrug.

In a poll conducted by Digiday Research on Thursday, Feb. 21, only 14 percent of 100 buyers said they expect the crisis to have any impact on long-term spending on the platform. Nearly a third of buyers said they expect any cutbacks they make to be temporary. Meanwhile, 37 percent of respondents said the crisis would not impact their advertising plans for the platform.

The latest scandal came about this week when a blogger posted a 20-minute video showing how comments on certain videos showing kids doing gymnastics or posing were used to create what essentially amounted to a child porn or pedophilia ring. Those videos were innocuous on their own, but the comments were used to identify them because they could be seen as sexually suggestive. The way YouTube works, its algorithm would then bring up similar videos.

Brands like Disney and Nestle ran ads on those videos.

But for agency buyers, gathered in Nashville this week for the Digiday Media Buying Summit, this is just the latest in a long line of supposed brand-safety crises that won’t really amount to much other than a temporary pause. “It’ll never happen [that this hurts anyone]. YouTube is such a brand-unsafe environment. But it works. They give you the views, they give you the conversions,” said one C-level exec at a major agency.

For one exec, the issue is time spent worrying about this. Speaking on stage, indie agency Crossmedia’s managing director Ali Plonchak said that one of her largest clients, Hertz, called her up Tuesday and asked for log files to make sure their ads weren’t running on the affected videos. “We went through all this and found that over six weeks we spent 7 cents on any of these videos with comments that have been an issue,” she said. “Of course, we should do this digging, but what did our team not do [while] figuring this out? It’s the human cost. The team didn’t get to spend that time doing optimization or strategy because it was looking for fires.

“It depends also why the issue happened and what your safeguards are in place that should have caught that, and what realistically can catch it,” said Plonchak. “If it helps us to change our process, then that’s a good thing. If it’s an anomaly, what are you supposed to do?”

Louisa Wong, chief transformation officer at Carat USA, said she spent the whole day with clients and Google trying to figure out what next steps were, part of a series of conference calls the company held with holding companies and agencies. One issue was also why YouTube hasn’t done a better job at managing this. Wong said she’s found that buying YouTube inventory through third-party players has meant better controls. “If smaller companies are better at managing this than you are, then that begs some questions,” she said.

This particular crisis pales in comparison with the one in 2017, when investigations by the Times of London and the BBC found ads that ran against comments and videos that exploited children, leading to big brands freezing spend. But even despite the brouhaha then, most brands quietly came back to YouTube. Granted, the Google-owned platform has added certain tools to avoid issues, including pulling off hundreds of thousands of videos off the site and created new tools like Preferred, selling them as brand-safe content zones.

Another issue brought up by agency executives was the scale of the problem in general. Buyers are aware that they have to build in some margin for error — these platforms are too big to expect a “100 percent brand-safe” environment. In that context, it makes it doubly clear that this “crisis” is more about fear of a customer on Twitter making a screenshot of an ad go viral than any actual business concern.

“Our chief digital officer said to our clients if you’re in an environment with audience-based buying, there’s always going to be some exposure,” said Will Warren, who runs digital investment at Zenith. “But [platforms] that have resources need to push them to have products going off the 99.99 percent of safety. Alternatives will come up, and they need to be responsive. And they are. They’re always scrambling. Competition comes from outside; it also comes from within the platforms.

“It’s not Google’s fault. We just need to be live and agile and deal with it, and accept that you can never be 100 percent sure,” said Essence CEO Steve Williams.

“All it takes is one letter from one person saying you were here. People are tweeting at advertisers. It’s fear of the screenshot,” one buyer said.

The post ‘It’s the human cost’: Buyers shrug at YouTube’s latest brand crisis appeared first on Digiday.

Crowdfunding campaigns, once largely relegated to wacky Kickstarter ideas and personal projects, are becoming a viable funding tool for new direct-to-consumer brands

Indiegogo has watched product companies take off on its platform: In the past five years, watch brand MVMT raised nearly $300,000; a foldable bicycle called Mate raised $4.6 million; Misfit, a Fitbit-like fitness tracker, raised $850,000.

The post Retail Briefing: Crowdfunding is making a DTC comeback appeared first on Digiday.

Aldi is pushing to become the third-largest grocery retailer in the U.S., but instead of e-commerce, its path to scale is hinged on an aggressive private-label strategy and physical store expansion.

Despite a limited e-commerce presence (it’s currently limited to an Instacart delivery partnership), Aldi’s approach to building out its owned brands gives the grocer a chance of gaining ground among a younger, middle-income target audience. It’s a shift in strategy for the German-based retailer, which has traditionally focused on the budget-conscious consumer market. And although Aldi currently operates in two-thirds of the country, it’s aiming to go coast to coast as part of an effort to expand its store count to 2,500 by 2022, putting it just behind Walmart and Kroger.

“They’re moving more into upper-middle-class areas of the country with higher wages and demographics — it used to be they would put up a store in average and mid- to lower-income areas,” said Phil Lempert, grocery analyst and founder of SupermarketGuru.com.

To achieve this, Aldi is making major investments in its 1,600 stores $5 billion to remodel and expand its store count. Today, Aldi has stores in 35 states, according to the company. Aldi is moving upmarket with its private-label offerings, including a greater selection of organic meat products; expanded produce selection, including organic products; and growth in vegan and vegetarian categories. It has also rolled out a private-label wine line, along with more gluten-free and prepared meal options.

“Ten years ago, they only had one kind of olive oil, and now they have four,” said Lempert. “They have one that comes from a very specific part of Sicily, the crème de la crème of olive oils — so if I love a product from Aldi; I can’t get it anywhere else, and you’re locking in your customer.”

Private-label strategies help retailers grow a loyal following, keep customers in the retailer’s ecosystem and protect margin, a strategy that’s working well for Amazon, Walmart and Target, which are increasingly focusing on their owned brands as differentiators. Going private label also appeals to customers who want sustainable, quality products but are also price conscious, typical of millennial and Generation Z demographics, Lempert said. 

Moreover, perceptions around private-label grocery brands are changing.

“People used to think of private label in a certain type of way — an in-store cheap alternative, but that’s not the case anymore; we see millennials at a higher clip willing to experiment with private label on par with big-name multinational brands,” said Evan Mack, research specialist at Gartner L2.

Cara Brosius, grocery analyst at The Fredonia Group, said Aldi is increasingly catering to niche diets in an effort to appeal to higher-income, younger customers. Among the company’s premium private-label food brands, Aldi’s offerings include Earth Grown (vegetarian and vegan); Never Any! (meat free from antibiotics, hormones and preservatives) and SimplyNature (organic and non-GMO).

In expanding its store footprint and increasing private-label options, Aldi still isn’t exactly taking on Amazon. A recent report suggests that at $13.5 billion in revenue in 2017, Aldi captured just 2 percent of the U.S. grocery market — well behind Kroger, which made $97 billion in 2017. Aldi’s vulnerabilities, according to Mack, include a store layout that emphasizes utility over experience, and its scant attention to e-commerce and delivery. Aldi’s e-commerce footprint is restricted to a delivery partnership it launched with Instacart in September 2018.

The company’s e-commerce delivery moves, said Lempert, are more based on the fear of missing out rather than a coordinated approach to take on those channels. Regardless, the chain’s premium but affordable private-label offerings, combined with a smaller-format store than most big-box chains (averaging 22,000 square feet, in comparison to 179,000 square feet for an average Walmart Supercenter) could help it win, he said.

“They’re careful in curating things — if you look at their wine selection, it’s inexpensive but gets high scores, and besides private label, they’re increasing their produce selection,” he said. “[And] having a smaller store does well for them because the average person spends 22 minutes shopping.”

The post Aldi uses private-label products to fuel U.S. expansion appeared first on Digiday.

Pinterest has confidentially filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, joining a parade of highly valued technology startups planning to list their shares in 2019.

The Chinese company’s low prices outweigh spying concerns for many countries ramping up 5G spending, in particular the pivotal internet economy of India. “The perception here is that the U.S. action is more a matter of foreign policy.”

The Trade Desk’s growth streak shows no sign of diminishing, with revenue of $477 million in 2018, a 55% increase from the year before, according to the company’s earnings report on Thursday. Shares of The Trade Desk were up more than 10% in after-hours trading. The company raised eyebrows last year when its stock went… Continue reading »

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