Month: March 2019

Meng Wanzhou claims her legal rights were violated when she was detained at Vancouver International Airport in December following an extradition arrest request from the U.S.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s latest strategic shift will be one of his biggest challenges: persuading mainstream consumers to purchase cars online the way they buy books or clothes.

Sizmek needs another investment round after facing setbacks and revenue shortfalls in 2018, and it won’t find new funding with Vector Capital, the firm that backed the acquisitions and integration of Sizmek and Rocket Fuel. Sizmek is working with Cerberus Capital Management, the PE firm that financed the debt on Vector’s deal for Rocket Fuel… Continue reading »

The post Sizmek Could Be Forced Into Sale After 2018 Revenue Miss And Ad Server Losses appeared first on AdExchanger.

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Robert Rasko, CEO and founder at The 614 Group. I find it quite interesting that the IAB has asked the federal government to regulate a portion of the digital advertising… Continue reading »

The post The IAB’s New Position On Regulation Signals We’re Not In The Little Leagues Anymore appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Twitter’s Unfinished Ad Business Twitter still has some catching up to do on the advertising front, CFO Ned Segal acknowledged Monday at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media and Telecom conference in San Francisco. Segal said Twitter needs to prove its ad formats drive interest even… Continue reading »

The post CFO Admits Twitter Ad Platform Needs Work; Snap’s Uncertain Future appeared first on AdExchanger.

Alibaba and Office Depot are launching a joint B-to-B site in order to thwart competition from Amazon Business.

The new co-branded marketplace, called “Office Depot on Alibaba.com,” will allow small and medium businesses to buy products and services from Alibaba’s global network of over 15,000 suppliers. Alibaba, in turn, will be able to offer shortened delivery time on products by using Office Depot’s fulfillment system. They’ll also offer online and in-store deals for Office Depot products here.

The partnership is yet another way that Office Depot is trying to invest more in business services, having also rolled out a co-working space earlier this year. While Office Depot started as a consumer services company, that part of the business has taken a hit as more people buy home and office supplies online through sites like Amazon.

For Alibaba, it’s an interesting category through which to make its foray into the U.S. The company has seen success in China with both U.S. DTC brands as well as high-end luxury via Tmall, but its partnership with Office Depot is its first major partnership with a U.S. retailer.

Alibaba’s strategy is in playing up Office Depot’s personal relationships with small businesses as its biggest opportunity is in luring small businesses, fed up with Amazon’s ever-changing packaging or selling rules.

And it sees a marketing advantage in partnering with a brick-and-mortar retailer.

“Office Depot has an intimate, personal relationship with small businesses here in the U.S., so by leveraging the trust that Office Depot has, with the power and breadth of Aliaba.com, we think it’s a way to accelerate helping small businesses,” John Caplan, head of North America B-to-B at Alibaba said.

Caplan, in a joint interview with Office Depot CEO Gerry Smith, didn’t answer directly when asked how the new service will compete with Amazon Business, Amazon’s own marketplace for business supplies that was projected to reach $10 billion in sales volume last year. But Smith offered up some examples of what Office Depot and Alibaba won’t do, citing moves that Amazon has been criticized for in the past.

“We really do think it brings a friendly platform to the U.S. business customer, and I think that’s a really important distinction — we’re not going to go try and private label a customer, we’re not going to scrape data. We’re going to build a trusted platform [small and medium businesses] can use to save money and save time,” Smith said. The company is targeting small and medium-sized business owners and is positioning itself as a friendly partner to both them and the manufacturer.

Smith said that talks with Alibaba began after Office Depot’s investor day last May, when the company said it wanted to build a marketplace platform with small-to-medium-sized businesses.

In order to push U.S. customers to Alibaba, Office Depot’s 1,800 sales agents will be reaching out to current Office Depot customers. Office Depot will also promote the Alibaba marketplace with in-store branding.

Andrew Lipsman, a retail and e-commerce analyst for eMarketer, said that Office Depot and Alibaba will face an uphill battle in that most small business owners are already used to buying on Amazon as consumers, and thinks that the two companies will have to also create a more seamless buying — not just pitch themselves as a friendlier platform — to win over customers.

“With the buying process on Amazon, they’ve built up the B-to-B buying perspective to largely mirror the easy transition for the buyer, so honestly once they’ve made the transition, it can be hard to switch them back,” Lipsman said.

Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer for Publicis, also notes that Office Depot’s decision to turn an existing marketplace like Alibaba is risky in that should the relationship turn sour, “all those customers would now have Alibaba.com in their bookmarks.”

And in the age of Amazon, the opportunity to have an endless aisle is enticing. “If plugging into Alibaba allows you to have an endless aisle offering, it makes you that much more competitive,” Lipsman said.

The post ‘We’re not going to private-label a customer’: Alibaba and Office Depot team up to pitch small businesses appeared first on Digiday.

Bon Appétit is testing different release strategies for the original shows on its new OTT app.

Combining Netflix-style episode dumps with exclusive availability windows, Condé Nast’s food publication is trying to cultivate an audience of binge-watchers, accumulate inventory to sell to advertisers and differentiate the app from the publication’s YouTube channel, which will eventually feature all the same content as the OTT app.

On Feb. 21, Bon Appétit debuted a free, ad-supported OTT app for people to stream its videos on TVs connected to Apple’s Apple TV, Amazon’s Fire TV, Google’s Android TV and Roku’s connected TV platforms. While the app includes videos from Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel, its primary programming is the slate of original shows that the publication is producing specifically for the OTT app, though they will also be available on its YouTube channel after a period of time. The release strategy of these shows is at the center of how Bon Appétit is trying to entice its audience to install its OTT app and to binge-watch its programs in order to open up more ad inventory.

“The theory is we need to drive the audience to come to the OTT app,” said Croi McNamara, svp of programming at Condé Nast Entertainment.

The app builds on the success that Bon Appétit has had on YouTube. Last year, the publication’s YouTube channel generated 340 million views, a 255 percent increase compared to its 2017 view count and added 2.2 million subscribers, per a Condé Nast Entertainment spokesperson, to total 3.3 million subscribers, as of March 4. In January 2019, Bon Appétit received 25.8 million video views on YouTube, according to data from Tubular Labs. Bon Appétit’s YouTube subscriber base gave it a sizable foundation from which to establish an audience for its OTT app. However, it needed to give those subscribers reason to shift their attention from YouTube.

To get its YouTube audience to make that transition, Bon Appétit is experimenting with delaying the time between when an original show premieres on its OTT app and when it becomes available on its YouTube channel, a tactic called “windowing.” Additionally, it is releasing multiple episodes of shows at a time to further encourage people to use the OTT app instead of waiting for the videos to make their way to YouTube.

Bon Appétit’s new travel show “It’s Alive: Going Places” is the first example of this distribution strategy that combines two established distribution tactics: batch releases and windowing. A spin-off of Bon Appétit’s “It’s Alive” YouTube series, the new show focuses its entire season on central Texas after viewers on YouTube left comments asking for its host Brad Leone to visit the Lone Star State. The publication released four episodes of the new show on its OTT app on Feb. 21, two weeks before they will become available on its YouTube channel.

Bon Appétit plans to employ a similar batch-and-window release strategy for its next series, “Bon Appétit’s Baking School,” that features pastry chef Claire Saffitz instructing viewers on how to create various confections. Instead of two weeks, Bon Appétit is considering uploading the episodes to YouTube two days after they premiere on the OTT app in late March, said McNamara.

So far Bon Appétit’s batch-and-window strategy appears to be working. While the publication declined to share viewer numbers for the OTT app, Condé Nast chief business officer for lifestyle Eric Gillin said that, since the OTT’s app Feb. 21 launch, the average viewer is spending more than 30 minutes per session watching videos within the app, “which means they’re watching two to three episodes per sit-down.”

Bon Appétit’s push to get people to binge-watch its shows plays into its business strategy for the OTT app. The company is running unskippable pre-roll ads ahead of videos that people watch, but it is not inserting mid-roll ads in the middle of those videos. Therefore, the more individual videos that Bon Appétit can get people to watch, the more ads it can serve.

Accruing this video ad inventory can be particularly important for the app’s business on Amazon’s and Roku’s platforms. Since those two companies require that publishers provide them with 30 percent of an OTT app’s ad impressions for Amazon and Roku to sell, Bon Appétit needs to ensure it has enough inventory to sell itself.

Bon Appétit has the advantage of not being limited to its OTT inventory to lure advertisers. The publication is able to bundle its OTT inventory with its YouTube inventory and the video inventory from its owned-and-operated site. And Bon Appétit is able to further bundle all of that video inventory into broader packages for advertisers. That kind of packaging helped it to secure GE’s customizable appliances brand Café as one of the OTT’s apps launch sponsors.

After GE debuted the Café brand in August 2018, the brand advertised in Bon Appétit’s print magazine as part of its launch marketing strategy, then extended that deal to include the publication’s YouTube inventory. Now it appears as the presenting sponsor when people open the OTT app and is running pre-roll ads within the app through the end of March, said Carrie Frazier, director of advertising at GE Appliances. However, the brand will continue to appear on Bon Appétit’s OTT app and its YouTube channel well beyond March.

As part of a long-term deal, GE’s Café has outfitted Bon Appétit’s test kitchen with its appliances so that videos filmed in the publication’s test kitchen, such as ensemble series “Making Perfect” that will premiere on the OTT app in April, will feature the brand’s products. In addition to those videos, GE’s Café appliances will appear in the events, such as dinners and parties, that Bon Appétit will host in the test kitchen. “We’re going to be right in the center of it all,” said Frazier.

The post Bon Appetit uses batch-and-window release strategy to promote its new OTT app appeared first on Digiday.

Big digital publishers including BuzzFeed and Group Nine Media are aggressively courting advertisers with a new pitch: We can now sell you the ads that run against our videos on major social platforms and get you the reach you want — and you won’t have to worry about any brand-safety issues.

After getting the ability to sell its own Facebook pre-roll and mid-roll inventory in August, BuzzFeed can now pitch marketers on ads that run across any combination of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat. The publisher has been selling this cross-platform ad product for the last three months, according to BuzzFeed CRO Lee Brown.

The post BuzzFeed, Group Nine Media are selling more ‘brand-safe’ cross-platform video ads directly appeared first on Digiday.

Apple has released another version of its anti-tracking update, this time affecting first-party as well as third-party data cookies.

The platform’s first Intelligent Tracking Prevention, released in 2017, was intended to protect user privacy by restricting the ability of ad tech companies to track people around the web. A week ago, Apple announced plans to launch the next version ITP 2.1, still currently in test mode. Expectations are that it will be fully announced later this month.

So far, talk and buzz around the update has been restricted to web analytics and developer circles, but it’s worth publishers’ and marketers’ attention.

Like all jargon-riddled technology updates, it’s difficult to see the forest for the trees. Here’s a primer.

So, WTF is Apple ITP?
ITP stands for Intelligent Tracking Prevention and is Apple’s attempt to crack down on ad tracking through its browser Safari. The first version blocked the tracking of third-party cookies via Safari browsers, which was a headache for ad tech companies, marketers and publishers reliant on third-party data that advertisers depend on to target niche audiences at scale.

How is the newest update ITP 2.1 different from ITP 2.0?
In a nutshell, 2.0 related to third-party cookies, whereas 2.1 also relates to first-party cookies. First-party cookies are generally regarded as the more benign type of cookie. They’re typically used by publishers to monitor how people are using their websites, and for other site analytics purposes. Unlike third-party cookies, which are used for advertising purposes like building profiles of potential customers and retargeting.

So why update it?
Blame ad tech vendors. When Apple announced the initial ITP it caused a wave of anxiety among ad tech vendors that rely on third-party cookie tracking and revenues were affected. But gradually companies adapted and a range of workarounds were created to help circumvent the issues. One such workaround was to store third-party cookies as first-party cookies. To close those loopholes, Apple has developed 2.1 to counter those workarounds.“It’s [ITP 2.1] become something of an arms race between the Apple webkit Safari developers and ad tech firms,” said Sam Vining, head of data and consultancy at iCrossing. “It [ITP 2.1] was a response to the response [to ITP 2.0.].”

How does 2.1 block the workarounds?
It reduced the usefulness of the solutions by targeting the accessibility and longevity of first-party cookies. For instance, now persistent first-party cookies which are used to track visitor behavior on-site, can only be stored for seven days. The 2.1 update doesn’t relate to session cookies, which already disappear after 24 hours after a person has visited a website.

Are there any unintended consequences?
Yes. One could be a duplication of unique users, caused by the fact that website owners may count site visitors who return after seven days as two different customers when in reality they’re the same person. “Previously, a Google Analytics cookie would, in theory, last for two years; it will now be deleted by Safari after seven days,” added Vining. “That could drastically inflate the number of unique visitors that brands and advertisers see in their figures.”

Marketers must adjust to the new reality in which certain audience data is now closed to them. “The fundamental challenge facing marketers with this latest release is visibility into how their digital marketing is performing, said Ryan Storrar, svp and head of media activation for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Essence. “ITP 2.1 is the latest chapter in this story. There are steps that can be taken to limit the impact in the short-term, but, more broadly, a post-cookie world is clearly on the horizon and marketers need to get ready.”

How big of a problem is it?
It affects everyone in the ad tech ecosystem, which means vendors, marketers and publishers. In a way, that makes it less of a concern because everyone has to deal with the same challenge, which puts everyone on a level playing field. It’s important also to remember that it’s only Safari browsers that are blocking the cookies (although Firefox browser also has a version of its own.) But it’s still a large proportion. Approximately 38 percent of 400 million monthly unique users in the U.K. come to publisher sites via Safari browsers and 7 percent from Firefox, according to data from data management platform Permutive. That means approximately 45 percent of those unique users are hidden to the publishers, because they can’t use cookies to determine who that user is, in order to retarget them. “It doesn’t feel like it’s a hair-on-fire problem to publishers, but it should be,” said Amit Kotecha, marketing director of Permutive.

Is more coming?
Likely. Like most things in digital, workarounds will be found for the current update, and so more iterations will follow.

The post WTF is Apple’s latest anti-tracking update? appeared first on Digiday.

Press and analysts get excited when a platform changes its reporting metrics, but when it comes to media buyers, they’re often left unfazed.

When Twitter swapped its reporting of monthly active users (MAUs) for monetizable daily active users (mDAUs), a chart from Recode showed just how small Twitter’s overall daily audience is when compared to Facebook and Snapchat.

Poor Twitter. It finally disclosed daily active usership and it looks like this: https://t.co/fjR9YPwZ4V @KurtWagner8 pic.twitter.com/YhEev5uKJZ

— Rani Molla (@ranimolla) February 7, 2019

But for buyers, it’s business as usual. Addressable reach is exactly how buyers have always defined and evaluated platforms, among other factors like demographics, interests and campaign effectiveness. Those numbers are easily identifiable via the platforms’ self-serve ad buying tools.

“DAU, MAU is taken with a grain of salt. Platforms always tell you the best possible number from the best possible angle, like people who only show you pictures of themselves from their good side. Counting those people who only login once a month for two months isn’t being genuine about who we can reach,” said Duane Brown, founder and head of strategy at Vancouver-based agency Take Some Risk.

Tech platforms share whatever metric they think will put them in the best light, whether it’s Pinterest seeking investors for its initial public offerings or Facebook simply wanting to tout its massive scale even with all of its scandals. But media buyers look at those headlines as the never-ending flaunting of vanity metrics. Advertisers don’t need to scale their campaigns to all of Facebook’s 2.32 billion monthly active users. Buyers look at demographics, like age, location, household income and interests, and if they can reach them through a certain time period with a particular budget, said Lisa Reid, associate director, search and social at Mindshare.

“Comparing the scale is nuanced. From an advertiser standpoint, we use these numbers to support and directionally inform channel strategy and investment. However, once we are able to see where our audience is, we can rely on the platforms to tell us potential audience reach given a certain budget and flighting period,” Reid said.

That nuanced look at scale is one way Snap is trying to position themselves in the fight for survival (and advertisers’ budgets) against Facebook. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley conference on Feb. 25, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said, “A lot of people are surprised when they actually look at the data and see the overlap for our audience, and the audiences of products built by competitors. For example, in our core markets like the United States, U.K. or France, we tend to have roughly the same audience size as products people perceive to have a much larger audience.”

For example, Snap’s self-serve ad tools show that the platform has 47 million users age 13 to 24 in the U.S. while Instagram has 33 million in that demo. Jordan Jacobson, vp, head of social media U.S. at iProspect, said he has to educate his agencies’ clients on these types of specifications.

“While the CMO might read the Wall Street Journal and call us and ask why Snapchat is still in the [media] plan, we have numbers to back it up and running brand studies to make sure it’s actually working. As it stands right now, that core [Gen Z] demographic is still there,” Jacobson said.

Of course, buyers don’t look blindly at the numbers provided by the self-serve tools. Veronica Ripson, a digital marketing consultant, said she and her peers use baseline discount factors such as about 40 percent on audience size for Facebook based on campaign date.

“Ideally, you record audience types, first, second, third party, and have discount factors for that or even more ideally; you’re tracking estimates versus delivery for specific audiences so you can use that, and it’s automated,” Ripson said.

John Max Bolling, marketing manager at Engine, said his agency will run tests on platforms, especially on Snapchat which is less trusted in its ability to scale. For example, if they see a good return on investment of a $10,000 campaign on Snapchat, they will invest more.

Buyers said they don’t necessarily care what metrics platforms use to impress investors in earnings calls. But they did want the platforms to better position themselves and not stretch their offerings. For example, Twitter had previously told buyers it was investing more direct-response ads. But over the last year, Twitter has committed itself to being a place for live events and real-time campaigns.

“What the platforms need to do is really home in on their sweet spot and know where they can have success in versus positioning themselves against Facebook,” said Jacobson of iProspect. “It’s a lot easier to chat with them about solving real business challenges versus coming up with a pitch deck of their latest attempt.”

The post ‘DAU is taken with a grain of salt’: How media buyers define scale on platforms appeared first on Digiday.