Month: August 2019

Given this reality, innovative solution selling is the only viable long-term growth strategy for media sales. The research shows that solution-invested[1] organizations drive stronger revenue growth, as well as more revenue from new products and new customers. But what are the keys to a successful transformation?

2. Balance transactional and solution sales
While solution selling is a must for future growth, investment and focus must be balanced with transactional (or legacy) business. Why? Publishers and their core clients still heavily rely on it. Organizations need to match their coverage investment level with growth opportunity on an account-by-account — or even deal-by-deal — basis.

It is especially important to allocate resources strategically, as support and coverage required for solution sales results in higher cost per head. As one Chief Commercial Officer put it, “Transactional buyers need sales people; solution seekers need media consultants.”

3. Increase pre- and post-sale support investment

Account executives and account managers are becoming more involved before and after the sale. Specialized support roles are emerging in areas including insights/research, custom creative content, ad pps, partner management, measurement and customer success. “More and more often, responsibilities bleed across roles and sales cycle stages,” one media sales leader summarized. The research shows that this proliferation of roles and evolution of responsibilities drives 30-50 percent plus of coverage budget to pre- and post-sales, in large part to promote solution adoption up front and customer success and renewal on the back end.

4. Incorporate programmatic into the core
It’s no secret that the automation of media planning is a disruptive trend. However, there’s an opportunity for media sales forces to drive profitability and relationships through the programmatic channel. But beyond the challenge of designing your offerings is that of executing the plan through the right sales roles.

“We assumed programmatic sellers could transition from open to PMP/PG sales,” recalls one operations leader, “but we found that different skills and talent profiles are required.” And beyond this obstacle, the job is not over once the initial sale is made. “Revenue maximization post-sale is key,” a head of ad sales observed. “Any seller can set up a Deal ID, but you need hands on the keyboard to grow programmatic.” Accordingly, research finds that proactive organizations are staffing more programmatic specialists and assigning them revenue quotas.

5. Avoid promising too much and under delivering: Leveraging data to drive trust and retention
The rise of the data-driven marketer has created the data-driven publisher. As one CRO explained, “Connecting the data and building insights platforms is challenging, but getting the team to replace traditional selling tactics with more data-driven messages is just as difficult.”

To justify the high cost and complexity of modern media solutions, sales forces must make the business case to advertisers in the proposal, during the campaign and post-campaign by demonstrating ROI against client success metrics. Interviews with media sales leaders revealed that they have identified campaign measurement and reporting as their #1 investment area for 2020.

One head of sales finance currently engaged on a sales model transformation project stated, “My VPs are willing to trade sales talent budget for more measurement & analytics resources”.

The results are clear ― revenue and sales leaders need to address these five key mandates for success in 2020 and beyond. It’s even more important today to advance your revenue generating organization, differentiate your value propositions and define your path for growth ― all to win more, now.

The post Why the sales “close” is now an obsolete concept appeared first on Digiday.

What’s it like to be a copywriter at an agency today?
Going back to the golden era of advertising, there was a lot more weightiness to the role of the copywriter. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it swung to that partner model. Now, it feels like the pendulum has swung even further. Art directors outnumber copywriters. That has reduced the role of a copywriter in a lot of ways.

How outnumbered are you?
I work with four different art directors. How are we that outnumbered? That’s how little they tend to think of copy. I can write a headline in eight seconds, that’s what they think. Yes, technically, that’s how long it would take me to physically type six words. And it does take a lot longer to design an ad. But it’s putting a toll on copywriters because we’re stretched so thin between all the different art directors and projects. On paper, they don’t think we should take that much time writing.

Do you have any examples of how the role of copywriter has been reduced or devalued?
One of the most frequent ones would be the way people flippantly treat copy. The account team may tweak something before they send it to the client. Sometimes I’ll get a brief from the client and project management  that is like, “They want it to say this but they thought it sounded boring so they want you to zhuzh it.” I’m not a zhuzher. I’m a writer. I get that a lot. The client doesn’t take photoshop files and change them. We don’t give them access to that. So why am I getting revisions from clients that say, “Just change it to say this.” You’re messing with my work, and it’s not treated to with the same sort of value as the art director’s [work].

Why do you think that’s happening now?
We’re straying further from the agency-of-record world. We’re getting more into projects. It’s becoming more about pleasing the client to get the paycheck instead of creating something meaningful. It becomes a “we’ll just do what they want” mentality because no one wants to fight with the client. Instead of me writing something, it becomes me copy editing or proofreading it. We’re just swapping some words, or we’re trying to make it fit within a character count. That’s not my job. My job is to write things and to think of things; it’s not to make a client’s words sound fresher. 

How does that shift change the work environment?
It’s stressful because now I feel like I have to fight to do my job. I have to constantly be reminding people that they can’t change my copy because that’s my job. They don’t think about the copywriter’s presence as being a creative one. They think well, the creative directors are going to come up with all the ideas, the art director will implement the idea and the copywriter will come in, slap a headline on it and call it a day.

How does that play out when it comes to being on-set?
[If] we’re over budget or there’s going to be too many people on set, the first person who’s cut is the copywriter. They always say things like, “Well, you’ve already written the script” or “It’s a photo shoot, you’re not needed.” They don’t think a copywriter’s presence is necessary. To them, it’s the art director that picks out the props, sets up the scene, picks out the wardrobe, points out flaws. Everything is about the art director when it comes to shoots. That’s where the biggest challenge is because people don’t understand that I’m not on set to write on the fly. I’ve never written a word on a set before. That’s not why writers are there. People don’t know why writers are there.

What does a writer do on set? Why do they need to be there?
You’re not only making sure that everything is executed correctly or that the words coming out are the correct ones, but you’re also making sure the story is being told in a cohesive manner. You’re having conversations with the art director and the creative director to make sure that it’s feeling like you want it to feel. It’s not just what you’re seeing but about the mood that’s being encapsulated. The problem now is that the art director is put on a pedestal. The writer’s [role on set is] you stand there, represent and chill out. You raise a finger if you see something going awry or if the photographer is accidentally forgetting to leave room for copy. The art director leads the charge, and you’re not supposed to say anything unless it’s going off the rails.

That sounds like it would fracture the relationship between the art director and copywriter.
Correct. The biggest eye-opener for me was that someone once referred to my partner as my boss on a set. They thought my partner was the one in charge of me and the whole production. That’s my partner. We are equals. 

Do you think that perception has a greater impact on the copywriters?
My role has become confused within the industry. People don’t quite understand what I’m supposed to do. Even I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do half of the time. When there’s a lack of understanding about your job role, it creates frustration and animosity. This industry has such a high turnover rate, especially for junior creatives, because they get in there and they’re like, “I’m treated like shit, so I’m not going to do this anymore,” and they leave.

The post ‘I have to fight to do my job’: Confessions of a copywriter appeared first on Digiday.

“In line with the IAB Europe timeline, we expect to integrate with TCF 2.0 shortly after the switchover from TCF 1.1 and when 2.0 goes fully live, which we currently understand as by end of Q1 2020,” said Chetna Bindra, senior product manager for user trust, privacy and transparency at Google. “We will provide greater detail on our integration approach in the coming weeks.”

Many ad executives have long speculated that the longevity of the TCF would depend on whether Google joined. Until it does, ad tech vendors and media agencies are still buying and selling ads using different consent strings provided by the IAB TCF and Google’s own versions, creating interoperability and resource headaches. “It’s much easier for media buyers if they only have to read and ingest one type of [consent] string,” said Stevan Randjelovic, brand safety manager for EMEA for GroupM.

The second version is the fruits of 12 months of continuous discussion and planning between more than 55 organizations including publishers, media agencies, ad tech businesses, 10 national IABs and nine meetings with data protection authorities from across Europe. There is no official number of publishers that have joined the framework due to the fact it’s their consent management platforms that sign up to the TCF. But major publishers including Axel Springer, The Guardian and The Telegraph have all been actively involved in the steering group discussions, according to sources close to the situation, along with publisher trade bodies such as the European Publishers Council.

“It’s a positive development for both publishers and their ad tech vendors,” said Angela Mills Wade, executive director of the EPC. “V2.0 provides the granularity publishers need in order to remain compliant under GDPR, and the flexibility to present consent requests as they wish.” This version will be an attractive option for many publishers, she added.

The revised version has been centered around improving how publishers communicate to users how they’re using their data, to ensure consent requests are clearer, and users properly informed. It’s also been geared toward giving publishers more control over how their ad tech vendor partners can use their data — and for what purposes. Now, users can deploy a right to object if a business is using the legitimate interest (opt-out) basis, just as easily as revoking consent. Vendors will be assigned a signal from the publisher CMP that specifies when that vendor has been disclosed to the user as being able to process the publisher data on the basis of having a legitimate interest, for ad targeting purposes, and when they can’t.

Due to the wide interpretation of GDPR, publishers have gone for a wide mix of approaches to gaining consent, some very light touch, others far more conservative. Meanwhile, publishers that rely on open marketplace inventory for a large chunk of their digital ad revenue have been criticized for overloading consumers with legal jargon and top-heavy consent messages which list hundreds of ad tech vendors consumers aren’t likely to recognize. As such, doubt has been cast over whether users are actually giving informed consent or whether they understand how their data is being used and by whom. To improve that, TCF 2.0 includes standardized messaging templates that offer both legal-language and user-friendly language versions. The user can have access to both the legal and user-friendly versions. The legal version is mandatory, the user-friendly version optional. Which type publishers use will vary by publisher, but the overall effect should at least go some way to cleaning up the current mess of different consumer messages on sites.

Much of the discussions over the last 12 months with the steering group has been around agreeing on an appropriate level of granularity of purposes for which data can be processed. The second version of TCF includes 12 purposes (the current one has five), and two special features. The purposes are related to online ad delivery such as profiling, content and ad measurement. The special features are additional controls added for geo-location data and for fingerprinting. These features also require an extra layer of consent. For instance, not all purposes for processing data — like ad targeting — will use geo-location data. But if they do, that has to be clearly disclosed to the user.

One of the core new additions to the TCF is a stack of some 38 different variation options, though these will likely be whittled down to between five and 10 in time by publishers, according to IAB Europe CEO Townsend Feehan. Publishers can choose from these options which purpose and vendor stack they want. For instance, they can select which vendors they would allow to carry out data processing for purposes such as ad measurement and targeting, and which they wouldn’t. But the vendors that wouldn’t be allowed to use data for those purposes may be allowed to for other purposes. Publishers can pick and choose, but it must all then be relayed to the consumer clearly in the consent messages.

“It’s a way of trying to layer the information so people can better assimilate what they’re agreeing to,” said Feehan.

The first version of the TCF has attracted fierce criticism from across the media industry, with critics lambasting the fact that the framework exists as a vehicle by which bad practices and misuse of personal data by ad tech businesses can be protected under GDPR. Privacy activists have for some time lobbied that real-time bidding — the mechanism by which ads are bought and sold programmatically on the open exchange — is incompatible with GDPR. On June 20, U.K. data protection authority the Information Commissioner’s Office released a report that pulled up the TCF as not being fully compliant and highlighted concerns over the volume of ad tech vendors involved in digital ad transactions as well as the leaky nature of digital ad trading.

There are some who still believe that the TCF has exposed brands and publishers to legal hazard, and the second version does nothing to solve the underlying issues of RTB in which data leakage is a given. “RTB is a massive data breach,” said Johnny Ryan, chief policy and industry relations officer at browser Brave. “That means it fails the GDPR at the first test. It also means that consent is not possible because nobody can say where the data in question will end up or what will happen to them.” If there is no protection of the data, then consent is irrelevant, he added.

Yet the IAB Europe and IAB Tech Lab remain confident that the TCF 2.0 will help render RTB compatible with GDPR. “The intent is to allow RTB transactions to be GDPR compliant,” said Dennis Buchheim, evp and gm at IAB Tech Lab.

However, especially sensitive data — called special category data under GDPR — such as sexual orientation, ethnic origin, political views, isn’t ever likely to be compatible with GDPR. The ICO has recently stated that this cannot be used in ad bid requests without explicit consent. That a business could get a user to give informed and explicit consent to that kind of data being used for ad retargeting is highly unlikely, according to ad executive sources. In fact, it’s better to avoid altogether.

The TCF does not support the processing of this special interest category data, nor the gaining of explicit consent in order to do so. Some businesses may choose to flout that, but it would be at their own risk. “It would be very challenging to get explicit consent to work under GDPR for RTB purposes,” said an executive at a major agency holding group who requested anonymity. “GDPR isn’t just about direct data but also data that allows you to infer that a person is, for example, bi-sexual. It would be too challenging to cater to that [in the TCF].”

The post Google to join IAB’s revamped GDPR framework by next March appeared first on Digiday.

In the short term, publishers anticipate revenue decline and uncertainty over product investment. However, publisher executives don’t believe the drop will be as severe as the initial ITP updates, after which some publishers saw CPMs on the open exchange drop by 40%, according to ad tech sources.

“It’s pointed at third-party tracking and ad tech junk, and that plays better for publisher-owned data,” said a publishing executive speaking on condition of anonymity. “The specific call-out that ‘Like’ buttons, federated comments or other social widget buttons may stop working looks like an obvious hammer blow to Facebook and others, who federate and collate data that is harmful when played back against publishers.”

Along with this latest update on Aug. 16., Apple listed 11 unintended consequences that would arise due to it wiping out tracking techniques, many of which have made media consultants nervous. As well as “Like” buttons, Apple lists federated login using a third-party login provider and single sign-on to multiple websites controlled by the same organization as potentially being affected. These are two techniques that multiple media organizations within alliances deploy so users can log in once to access numerous sites. This allows media organizations to share data with each other to offer ad buyers an alternative ad platform with competitive scale to Facebook and Google. The impact on media alliances that require users to log in once for multiple sites is going to be painful.

“The list of unintended impacts make it clear that the overall industry approach of whack-a-mole is unsustainable,” said Alessandro De Zanche, founder of media consultancy ADZ Strategies. “Single sign-on and federated logins could affect media alliances that are genuinely trying to implement a more powerful future vision for the business. This is a huge issue, I can’t see it being any benefit to the industry; it’s just a further sign of back and forth.”

Ad tech vendors popularizing workarounds and circumventions to Apple’s anti-tracking ITP had already prompted the company to update its policy in February and again in April this year, forcing an anti-tracking arms race.

Approximately 37% of users in the U.K. in June came to publisher sites via Safari browsers and 5% from Mozilla Firefox, according to data from demand-side platform Permutive. Firefox has its own anti-tracking policy, which Apple nods to, and Google has pledged to crack down on cross-site tracking and fingerprinting. Publishing sources are keeping a watchful eye as to whether Google can commit with the same conviction to its privacy pledge.

Since the ITP 2.0 update last summer, publishers have sold open marketplace inventory for Google Chrome audiences, rather than Safari, which they instead now sell direct to agencies. For instance, some publishers have found that by setting up private marketplaces for their Safari audiences directly with agencies, they have managed to recoup some of the revenue they lost with the initial ITP update, according to Joe Root, co-founder at Permutive.

Another temporary fix for advertisers has been to try and find these audiences in the app ecosystem. Advertisers can still track users across the app ecosystem with Apple’s identification for advertising. But Apple’s no-nonsense stance toward privacy on the open web means industry sources question how long Apple will keep identification for advertising alive.

“It’s not until Apple kills IDFA that the buy side will see the scale of the problem and will force the relationship with publishers,” said Root.

Apple’s anti-tracking moves have implications for the whole ad tech ecosystem. Apple intends to treat ad tech vendors, as well as tech giants such as Facebook and Google, like malware if they continue to use cookies for cross-site targeting purposes. It stands to reason those hardest hit will be third-party data providers, DMPs, and in the long term Facebook and Google, which won’t be able to retarget on Apple devices, leading to large holes in their ad businesses, said Root.

“Publishers, Facebook and Google are all aware of the scale of the problem and talking actively about it,” he said. “The rest of the industry is trying to obscure it. The scale of the problem is enormous.”

For instance, ITP 2.0, released in August 2018, prompted Nordic publisher Schibsted — which provides login and identity services to a range of its digital newspapers in Norway and Sweden — to completely rebuild its login and identity system so that users’ logged-in sessions are based on first-party rather than third-party cookies.

“Apple’s ITP 2.0 update had a big effect on how we need to operate to secure a stable and reliable login and identity solution,” said Ida Kristine Norddal, product manager, identity, at Schibsted. “It has not impacted the revenues directly, as we have rebuilt our solution accordingly. But there are, of course, costs associated with rebuilding the solution.”

For now, there are still a lot of unknowns about exactly how much of a problem the unintended consequences will cause publishers.

“If it starts hurting user experience because it prevents us from persistently identifying session-to-session users, then that’s obviously bad for the user and bad for us,” added the first anonymous publishing executive. “But that’s equally bad for everyone.”

The post ‘The scale of the problem is enormous’: Apple flexes strong anti-tracking stance appeared first on Digiday.

One publisher with a successful show on Snapchat plans to debut a new season on the platform this year. However, the publisher isn’t in a rush to premiere it anytime soon. “We’re not going to launch the next season of the series until December because we know that’s when the CPMs are going to be highest for Snap,” said one publishing exec. Other publishers are adjusting their platform programming strategies by waiting until the fourth quarter to release episodes that are more expensive to produce or by extending the lengths of the videos they upload during that time so they can carry more ads.

While platforms like Snapchat pay some companies to produce shows, publishers are largely responsible for funding the programming they put on these platforms and recoup those production costs through the ad revenue that the platforms share as well as through sponsorships or ads that publishers are able to sell directly. With platforms like YouTube taking videos’ production quality into account when deciding which channels to include in its upfront ad buying program Google Preferred, publishers are trying to strike a balance between investing in improving the production quality of their shows and ensuring they will be able to make back that money and turn a profit.

The fourth quarter is historically when advertisers spend a bulk of their budgets, and the increased competition for inventory leads to higher ad prices and fill rates to the point that advertisers are often pressed to pay more ahead of time to secure the inventory. This year, publishers hope that ad rates will further increase across YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat now that each of these platforms has an ad-buying program that cordons off their most valuable video inventory and fetches higher ad rates.

The fourth quarter is a popular time of year for advertisers largely because of the holiday shopping season, though it’s also when marketers can spend any unused ad dollars in order to protect their budgets from being cut in the next year. Historically, retailers have counted on the quarter to make their profits for the year. That’s how the annual post-Thanksgiving sales extravaganza Black Friday got its name. But as evidenced by publishers’ platform programming strategies, it’s not only retailers looking to capitalize on the quarter.

Higher ad rates
Publishers have already seen how the fourth quarter can lead to higher ad rates on YouTube. During November and December last year, one publisher saw CPMs on YouTube were nearly twice as high compared to the annual average, according to an exec at this publisher.

That CPM increase appears to correspond to the heightened demand for video ad inventory that is common to the fourth quarter, as evidenced by a seemingly related increase in the share of non-skippable ads running against this publisher’s videos that were bought on a reserved basis. Advertisers reserve these ads ahead of time in order to ensure they are able to reach enough people for a given campaign, such as in periods like fourth quarter when there’s more competition for impressions, and like someone buying a house before it hits the market, they pay higher CPMs in order to secure the impressions. Typically, non-skippable reserved ads account for 30% of the ads running on this publisher’s channel, but in November and December, the share rose to roughly 80%. “This is among the most expensive ad types you can be served,” said the second publishing exec.

Now publishers are looking to see if the same might happen this year on Facebook and Snapchat. Earlier this year Facebook made its inaugural foray into the annual TV-and-video upfront marketplace to pitch its In-Stream Reserve program that puts a velvet rope around its top in-stream video ad inventory for advertisers to secure ahead of time. Facebook has told publishers that the average CPMs for in-stream video ads in Watch shows are between $8 and $9. However, in a pitch deck that Facebook has shared with ad buyers, the initial CPMs for In-Stream Reserve inventory in Q4 2019 range from $24 to $34.

Snapchat has been pitching advertisers on its own version of Facebook’s In-Stream Reserve called Snap Select that similarly sets aside the platforms’ top video inventory, including publishers’ shows. “People are waiting for Snap Select to potentially change the game,” said a third publishing exec.

Risky business
However, not all publishers are willing to go so far as to wait until the fourth quarter to premiere shows. That’s for good reason. If too many publishers wait until November or December to release series, that glut of content could counter the revenue publishers may recoup because audiences may have a harder time finding a show or find other shows to watch instead. Additionally, making radical changes to a publisher’s own programming strategy could create a programming calendar in which some months are notably weaker than others, and that inconsistency could destabilize a publisher’s performance on a given platform to the point of negatively impacting how platforms’ content recommendation and ad insertion algorithms rank its videos.

Instead of waiting until the fourth quarter to premiere a show or season, some publishers simply make adjustments to the episodes slated to air in the period, such as by producing longer videos that can carry more mid-roll ads. A fourth publishing exec said their company increases its production budgets for shows airing in Q4 because the stronger ad market is more likely to offset the higher production costs. By contrast, this publisher reduces its production budgets in historically weaker periods like Q1.

In addition to increasing production quality in the fourth quarter, publishers also increase the volume of videos they upload in the period. The fourth publisher distributes multiple episodic series on its YouTube channel, and during Q4 last year, the publisher upped its weekly output from two episodes a week to three and sometimes four weekly episodes. “In November and December, we try to fill up as much as possible we know the CPMs are strong and the fill rates are good,” said the fourth publishing exec.

The post Publishers are delaying series for YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat to cash in on lucrative holiday season budgets appeared first on Digiday.

Throughout the tournament and related festivities, a team of 14 videographers, producers and social media editors from Slam followed the Classic’s participants around New York, gathering up raw material to promote both the players and Slam itself.

While the Summer Classic does not generate a profit, it allows Slam to amass exclusive raw footage it can turn into content not just in the days following the classic, but for months, or even years afterward, Slam CEO Dennis Page said. The Slam team has already put up dozens of short clips on Instagram, and it will be meting out clips steadily for the next few weeks, culminating in a 10- to 15-minute documentary on YouTube recapping the Classic; last year, a 17-minute recap of the Classic piled up nearly 450,000 views on YouTube.

The Classic weekend also helps raise Slam’s profile as a brand. Watermarked footage from the weekend has already been featured on the Instagram accounts of ESPN, Sports Illustrated and WorldStar Hip Hop. Just 24 hours after the Summer Classic concluded, clips from the weekend’s events had gathered more than 10 million views across Slam’s Instagram accounts; last year, the clips that Slam created using Summer Classic footage totaled 2 million Instagram views.

“For each activation, we think, ‘Are we going to get cool content out of it?’” said Adam Figman, Slam’s head of content.

Most of the content produced by this event will not live on Slam’s own website, but on social platforms, which Slam has made a focus of its content strategy of late.

In the past year, Slam has grown its follower count on Instagram by more than 130% to nearly 2.6 million spread across three accounts, including Slam Magazine, Slam High School and Slam Goods, which is dedicated to promoting its branded merchandise.

For reference, those totals are close to the nearly 3.4 million followers spread out across Sports Illustrated’s Instagram accounts, but well behind the 10 million followers that Bleacher Report’s House of Highlights has.

“We’re not hoarding this stuff for our O&Os [owned and operated sites],” Figman said. “We’re IG-first at this point.”

Sports publishers as a whole have begun gravitating more toward live events lately, said Kevin McGraw, an associate creative director at the sports marketing agency Revolution. Events help a publisher, particularly one unable to offer more traditional ad slots, opportunities not only expand their relationship with advertisers but provide a platform to support other forms of revenue, including branded merchandise and commerce; McGraw said he sees Complexcon as the event that most sports publishers are looking to for inspiration.

For example, Overtime, which has raised some $35 million in venture capital, including $23 million this past winter, plans to use some of that money to help build an events business, shortly after finding success in launching a popup shop to support its ambitious merchandise business.

To some extent, Slam is running a similar playbook. Thanks in part to a licensing partnership with Mitchell & Ness, which has gotten T-shirts and sweatshirts featuring Slam covers and other images into stores including PacSun and Urban Outfitters, merchandise now comprises 25% of Slam’s revenues. This weekend, Summer Classic invitees all got their own pairs of Summer Classic merch to wear around.

The post How Slam Magazine accumulates months’ worth of content out of one weekend event appeared first on Digiday.