Month: April 2019

Ad tech on the open web has become a disjointed chain of systems that is so fragmented that it prevents any single player from innovating at scale. The walled gardens of Google, Facebook and Amazon have left the rest of the ad-tech ecosystem behind. Take publishers, for example. The industry has struggled to attract new…

A+E Networks said Wednesday that it will work with Comcast-owned FreeWheel to unify demand across its direct sold and programmatic ad buyers. When viewers stream shows via an OTT device, phone or computer, A+E has to balance programmatic bids with direct sold buys sold through cable channels, like A&E, History and Viceland, said Jason DeMarco,… Continue reading »

The post A+E Networks Connects Direct Sold Inventory To Programmatic appeared first on AdExchanger.

ESPN is helping YouTube promote Season 2 of Cobra Kai, its Karate Kid revival. The two teamed up to create a faux segment of ESPN’s popular 30 for 30 docuseries focusing on the karate tournament featured in the iconic 1984 movie. Called Daniel LaRusso vs. Johnny Lawrence, the special revisits the 1984 Under Eighteen All…

Big changes are in store for Money magazine: it’s ceasing print publication and will be going digital-only, as owner Meredith has decided against selling the brand. “We are going to invest in the digital money.com brand site itself as well as leverage the Money content across our portfolio,” a Meredith spokesperson said in an email….

Team spirit is spreading at LinkedIn following the professional network’s debut of its Teammates feature, which enables members to ensure that they see updates from the people they work directly with. Teammates will begin rolling out on desktop and mobile in the U.S. in the coming months, with worldwide availability following shortly thereafter. Members with…

Consumers can now purchase Band-Aids and pick up their latest online shopping purchase from Urban Outfitters at the same place: Walgreens. Narvar, a customer experience company that powers the shipping information for brands like Warby Parker and Macy’s, is debuting Narvar Concierge in partnership with Walgreens, letting any retailer on the Narvar platform enable an…

by Lynn Chealander, director, product management, AppNexus, a Xandr company

When you think about it, marketing campaigns and big Hollywood studios aren’t so different from each other. Allow us to explain.

Imagine you work for a film studio — and your latest project isn’t doing too well in test screenings. Audiences can’t follow the plot, they’re laughing when they should be crying and overall, it’s clear that the film isn’t a finished product. You set up a meeting with the director, but they refuse to make changes: “The audience stayed until the end credits — I delivered exactly what you asked for!”

Unless the director is a cult favorite, the studio likely wouldn’t be satisfied with that response. In fact, they might consider replacing them with a director whose creative vision transcends the basics.

And for marketers employing video advertising, they know they too need to look beyond run-time to judge the success of their campaigns.

Video completions are a hygiene metric: not the only indicator of a campaign’s success, but still necessary for meaningful results. Ultimately, they’re an indicator that ads are reaching an engaged audience. When completions are guaranteed, buyers can focus on what really matters to their clients: optimizing towards performance and brand objectives.

Unfortunately, the market for video completion guarantees is fragmented, with both cost and definition varying greatly among platforms to the detriment and confusion of buyers. When platforms choose to sell on an arbitrary time-based video metric — three seconds, ten seconds, 30 seconds — the focus becomes monetization rather than buyers’ overall success.

To boot, transacting on arbitrary time-based metrics is less efficient than the impression buying it replaces. Since the metrics are not consistent, buyers not only have to use different price benchmarks per platform, they also have to do manual calculations on the back-end in order to compare performance and share results with their clients. That’s a lot of work just for hygiene.

However, as most buyers now optimize towards completion, we feel that it’s the job of sophisticated technology platforms to make it easier, not more challenging, for buyers to transact with consistency.

From our perspective, the first step to reducing buyers’ headaches is to align on the universal definition of “complete” – 100 percent – and apply it consistently across exchanges on the open internet.

Next, we believe ad completion in full should be guaranteed — meaning the platform assumes the risk of the transaction — in order to increase confidence in campaigns. Charging only if an ad is watched to 100 percent completion — not 50 percent, not 75 percent, not 97 percent — eliminates the unnecessary costs of ads that aren’t delivering and maximizes working media dollars.

And beyond avoiding wasted spend, consistent measurement and guaranteed completion also save time. Replacing the manual set-up process with machine learning to deliver video completions efficiently leaves buyers and their teams freed up to focus on other goals. Quite simply, it’s one thing off the to-do list.

As digital advertisers increasingly favor video-based campaigns, it’s necessary for technology platforms to use the innovation enabled by machine learning to the ultimate benefit, ease and trust of our customers.

The post How guaranteed video completion frees buyers to focus on optimization appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook gave advertisers another brand safety tool with last week’s introduction of the inventory filter, which provides more control over the content their ads appear next to. The social network said in a blog post that its new inventory filter applies to in-stream video ads, as well as ads within Instant Articles and its Facebook…

IPG Mediabrands’ UM has hired Trish Chuipek as its first global chief client officer, effective immediately. Chuipek most recently was the chief marketing officer for Blue Box Toys and served six years as president of OMD Midwest and OMD Multicultural before that. Having experience on all sides of advertising, she’s also spent time at OgilvyOne…

In the beginning of April, Buttigieg looked like the newest and most prominent member of the presidential-hopeful pinata club.