Month: February 2019

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…  

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Disney’s Castle … And Walled Garden Disney has often been discussed as a potential buyer of ad tech, but hasn’t shown much interest in the category. It bought a majority stake in the streaming video technology BAMTech in 2017, and ended up taking a… Continue reading »

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Outstream video ads — commercials that autoplay within article pages — have grown in popularity with advertisers. The format is an alternative to scarce, expensive in-stream video placements like commercials that play before videos.

But some buyers are concerned they’re not always getting an accurate look at how their campaigns are performing: They’re particularly concerned that their video ads will continue to play to completion while out of view and that these out-of-view plays are being counted toward an ad’s completion rate, messing with one metric that brand advertisers in particular monitor to evaluate an ad’s effectiveness.

In recent weeks, an advertiser bought outstream video ads from several outstream video ad vendors running on mobile web and found that, in some instances, the ads’ completion rates exceeded their viewability rates. That led this advertiser, who asked to remain anonymous, to conclude that the ads continued to play even after a person had scrolled them out of view, which compromises advertisers’ ability to evaluate an ad’s performance based on completion rate. It’s a conclusion that did not surprise agency execs interviewed for this article.

“We know it’s very possible that the ad might be completing and not in view. There’s no question about that,” said Daniel Macdonald, vp of investments and partnerships at Xaxis.

“We really don’t do any outstream ads for our clients by virtue of the fact that we believe issues like this occur for outstream ads. But we can’t necessarily prove it and have a hard time proving it,” said Justin Scarborough, programmatic media director at PMG.

Often the closest that advertisers can come to seeing whether their outstream ads are playing out of view is to look at performance metrics to see if they don’t add up. For example, if a campaign is generating a high completion rate but is not moving the needle in raising brand awareness or brand recall, then that’s likely because the ads were playing out of view. Adam Heimlich, who oversaw Horizon Media’s programmatic trading desk before leaving last year to join consultancy Gale Partners as svp of media, has run at least a dozen brand lift studies for outstream video ad campaigns. “I’ve never seen completion rates trending with brand lift,” he said.

Comparing completion rates and viewability rates is another way to evaluate whether outstream video ads are playing out of view. According to the Media Rating Council’s video ad viewability standard, a video ad is measured as a viewable impression once it has played for at least two seconds while at least 50 percent in view. If an ad receives more completed views than viewable impressions, then it’s probably not being viewed but instead is playing while out of view. That is the conclusion that the unnamed advertiser drew for outstream video ads that it bought from several outstream video ad vendors.

That same advertiser ran 10,042 impressions through Teads and saw a 59 percent completion rate but only a 37 percent completion rate. For 4,685 impressions run through Sharethrough, the advertiser saw a 71 percent completion rate versus a 48 percent viewability rate. They similarly saw the completion rate exceeding the viewability rate for ads bought through Unruly, but Unruly was only able to deliver 171 impressions, an extremely small sample size. The advertiser also ran ads through Yieldmo, but the advertiser’s DSP was unable to measure viewability for those impressions.

Teads confirmed that ads running through its “view to start” player continue to play after they are no longer in view, though they only start to play once the player comes into view. According to Teads president Jim Daily, its “view to start” player served 9.7 billion impressions in 2018, and across those impressions, the average time that an ad played while in view was 11.27 seconds. Sharethrough did not respond to a request for comment, and Unruly did not provide a comment by press time.

To be clear, advertisers are not necessarily avoiding outstream video ads en masse. For Xaxis’ clients, 10-20 percent of the money they are spending on digital video is going to outstream video ads, said Macdonald. But he characterized that spending as being more experimental for clients who are interested in outstream video because they are more broadly interested in native advertising or hear enough about vendors like Teads and Sharethrough at industry events that they’re willing put some money toward kicking the tires.

Advertisers can ensure that they are not paying for outstream video ads that play out of view. Xaxis adheres to GroupM’s viewability standard that 50 percent of an ad must play in view to be considered viewable and assumes the risk by not charging clients if an impression falls short of that threshold. Through Teads, advertisers can opt to run ads through its “view to play” player, which pauses the ad when it is less than 50 percent in view and in which case the advertiser is only charged for viewable completed views, Daily said.

Nonetheless, to the extent that advertisers are buying outstream video ads, the format is not exactly in high demand. Instead of buying publishers’ outstream video inventory specifically, advertisers often purchase it as part of a broader video deal. “It becomes the filler and the fluff to an overall program that’s given by the partner. No one leans in and says that’s the type of inventory I want, because it doesn’t perform,” said Albert Thompson, managing director of digital at Walton Isaacson.

For video ads in general, Thompson expects to see click-through rates within the range of 0.75-1.0 percent, but the click-through rates for outstream video ads are often around 0.2 percent. “It’s just very low to the point where it’s like, wow, we could have just run a banner,” he said.

In addition to the out-of-view completion concerns and performance problems, there is also the consideration that forcing a video ad on someone who has not indicated they’re interested in watching a video is a bad user experience. “As outstream stands today, I don’t know that it’s going to be a huge part of what we do with video moving forward, not only because of things like the lack of viewability and completion rate but just as importantly because of the experience for the consumer,” said Macdonald.

The post Ad buyers’ latest gripe: Outstream video ads playing out of view appeared first on Digiday.

In media buying circles, the big buzz is Energizer. It started with a desktop search for Energizer batteries on Amazon.com that resulted in an ad for Amazon’s own Basics brand batteries so massive that people had to scroll to get to the Energizer product they’d searched for. Then, the battle shifted to mobile: Amazon is putting in a small lightbox ad that literally overshadowed the Energizer battery brand.

For brand purists, this is akin to a store replacing big name brands on shelves with their own private-label brands. The tactic was something that was teased late last year, with a few tests in which Amazon’s private-label products appeared within listings of competitive brands. Now, it’s everywhere: A listing for Bounty paper towels has an ad for Amazon’s in-house paper brand, Presto. A search for anti-allergy name-brand medications includes giant ads for Amazon Basics’ Care brand medications.

The post The Rundown: Tensions escalate between Amazon and major brands appeared first on Digiday.

In 2019, podcasting might have its own pivot to paid.

In the space of one week, two separate companies have unveiled tools designed to help podcast publishers and creators turn their listeners into paying customers. On Thursday, Feb. 7, Substack, a newsletter subscription platform used by writers including Bill Bishop and Matt Taibbi, announced Substack Audio, which emails private podcasts to subscribers. This past Tuesday, Slate unveiled a product called Supporting Cast, which allows users to pay and subscribe to a private podcast feed with just a handful of clicks.

They join Anchor, a podcast hosting platform that Spotify acquired in February, which announced in August that it would allow users to accept pledges from listeners. This was part of a crop of products from Anchor that make it easier for audio content producers to monetize their work directly.

“We’re all testing [paid-revenue methods] out to see what actually sticks,” Stitcher CEO Erik Diehn said. “Is it tipping, is it a publisher-by-publisher premium subscriber model, is it the Patreon single show, single creator support model, is it a Netflix-type model? There’s not going to be one thing.”

Testing for paid podcasting comes at a time when publishers are getting more and more serious about making money from podcasting, even though ad revenue is still lagging. The format still amounts to a rounding error in terms of overall ad spending. Advertisers spent about $315 million on the format in 2017, compared to nearly $88 billion spent on digital advertising that year, according to IAB figures.

And while its audience demographics skew in directions that are desirable for advertisers, only about 17 percent of Americans aged 12 or older listen to podcasts on a weekly basis, according to Edison Research estimates.

Because of these limitations, the number of podcasters betting on consumer revenue has been growing for a while, mostly out on the long tail. The number of podcasters using Patreon, which enables more than 3 million people to support creators on its platform, has quadrupled over the past three years, making it the second-largest content category on the platform, a spokesperson said.

Some audio publishers that bet early on consumer revenue have turned it into a meaningful source of revenue. Slate Plus, the membership program anchored by Slate’s podcasts, has amassed nearly 50,000 subscribers paying between $35 and $59 per year, according to David Stern, Slate’s vp of product and business development.

For the most part, podcasting has not developed into a medium where expensive content such as scripted series can live solely behind a paywall. Though platforms such as Spotify expect that it will eventually get there — Gimlet will soon start producing shows that are exclusively for Spotify, co-founder Alex Blumberg said — most producers say economic limitations compel them to support their biggest shows through advertising.

For example, Wondery, which predicts that 20 percent of its revenue in 2019 will come from sources other than advertising, does not put any of the highly produced, scripted fare it’s known for behind its Wondery+ paywall. Instead, the company focuses on content that’s cheaper to produce, such as extras and behind-the-scenes content for super fans. For scripted, resource-intensive material, Wondery needs advertising to support production, Wondery founder Hernan Lopez said.

In other cases, publishers are splitting the difference by embracing a windowing strategy, which first started to gain traction in podcasting in 2017. For example, the second season of “Wolverine: The Long Night,” a podcast that Stitcher co-produced with Marvel, will be exclusive to Stitcher Premium for several months before emerging from behind the paywall.

That windowing strategy allows podcast producers to have their cake and eat it, too, attracting subscriber fees and eventually advertiser dollars. But as 2019 wears on, it may wind up that more publishers convince creators that shows can live purely behind there.

“For some premium products, we’re starting to hit a scale within certain audiences where there isn’t that much of a trade-off,” Diehn said. “You can have tens of thousands of people listening to something and [still be] getting a big check.”

The post With new tools, podcast publishers are exploring consumer revenue models appeared first on Digiday.

Heading into the 2019 season, NASCAR is investing more in emerging formats such as augmented reality and 360-degree video.

This year, NASCAR plans to do 10 live 360-degree video streams to give viewers a look inside the race cars of various drivers during races. The first will take place inside driver Bubba Wallace’s car at the Daytona 500 — NASCAR’s most famous race — which kicks off the season and will take place this Sunday, Feb. 17.

During last year’s playoffs, NASCAR also introduced a new augmented reality feature within its mobile app, which was sponsored by Coca-Cola and allowed users to “walk into” and watch popular moments such as victory celebrations and post-race driver burnouts. NASCAR is bringing that feature back for the 2019 season, said Tim Clark, vp of digital for the league.

While NASCAR sees 360-degree video and augmented reality as vital components of its content and marketing strategy, these and other emerging technologies account for less than 10 percent of the league’s marketing budget, Miller said. And to be clear, NASCAR — which as a sports league is both a media company and a marketer — sees its work with new and emerging technologies as part of its marketing efforts.

“We don’t look at this as something that’s going to deliver revenue,” said Miller. “The goal is very much to drive awareness as a marketing platform to reach fans.”

In total, NASCAR produced more than 18,000 pieces of content for social platforms last year. It expects to grow that number to more than 25,00 pieces this year, according to Evan Parker, vp of content for NASCAR. All of these pieces, whether it’s social videos or 360-degree videos with AR capabilities, are treated as complementary to the main broadcast experience.

“If you can’t get to a race or have never been to a track, our experiences on digital and social platforms can not only complement what you’re watching on broadcast but might also increase your desire to get out to the track,” said Miller.

AR and 360-degree videos have received their fair share of hype among both marketers and media companies. Some of that furor has cooled recently as there are still questions on whether AR and VR can scale. Marketers are also worried that upcoming changes Apple is making to its operating system would make it make difficult to power web-based AR and VR experiences.

“With AR, in my opinion, there was a mistake made by others in talking about whether that technology will scale and reach a broad audience,” Miller said. “That’s not our goal for the space. AR is a unique opportunity for us to bring fans closer to the racetrack. We look at AR through that lens.”

With 360-degree video, which is now easily accessible on YouTube, Facebook and other big social platforms, scale is possible. And NASCAR can take advantage of the format because it can provide fans with unique access to areas such as inside the race car during a race — that is appealing in a way that other marketers and media companies might not be able to.

“If you’re able to put a 360-degree live camera inside of a car and watch the driver throttle and brake and see how close the car is to the wall — it’s such a unique opportunity,” Miller said.

Last year, NASCAR melded its editorial and marketing operations in an effort to create a more streamlined process on how the league creates content, distributes it across platforms and ties that back toward its overall marketing goals. This group now has 65 people and consists of divisions that include editorial, entertainment marketing and NASCAR Productions, which makes long-form programming to sell to TV networks, streaming platforms and other third-party content buyers.

“In silos, we can always create great social content and editorial and TV documentaries, but now that we have those elements together, we can be more efficient and have more control in how we tell a story in a lot of different ways,” said Parker.

The post How NASCAR is using AR and 360-degree video appeared first on Digiday.

Japan is moving fast on an Amazon Go-style push to make its drug stores and convenience stores cashier-free.

As of this week, all of the items in six of Japan’s convenience store chains, including 7-Eleven Japan, FamilyMart and Ministop, are to be embedded with Avery Dennison RFID tags as part of the country’s initiative to automate all convenience stores by 2025. The tags, called the WaveSafe RFID tags, are able to be microwaved for up to five minutes, making up for a previous limitation on what could safely be tagged with the technology. The initiative, put into place by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, is working with Avery Dennison to roll out unmanned stores as a way to solve for Japan’s workforce and supply chain challenges. Since products will be tagged with RFID tech when they’re manufactured, the technology will also make supply chains more traceable and inventory management easier for stores.

The post Retail Briefing: Japan’s cashier-free future appeared first on Digiday.

Amazon is abandoning plans for a headquarters in New York City after facing resistance from some local politicians who objected to giving the company billions of dollars in tax incentives.

China is counting on promises of big purchases of semiconductors and other U.S. goods to ease trade tensions and persuade President Trump to extend a tariff truce and later resolve the market-rattling dispute directly with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.