Month: October 2019

At the beginning of October, at an all-hands meeting headed by CEO Guru Gowrappan, a number of Verizon executives spent nearly an hour laying out a host of new products and programming changes designed to lay the foundation of something they hope can deliver one-third of their revenue in the next five years.

Some of these tools have helped Verizon Media develop strong relationships with retailers such as Walmart, which counts Verizon as one of its top drivers of affiliate transactions. But with many brands still wrapping their heads around affiliate commerce, direct-to-consumer techniques and how those fit into the rest of their marketing strategy, Verizon Media is hoping to prove that it can help a wide variety of marketers and advertisers in this way.

“I think the next year will be foundation-building,” Gowrappan said. “Most advertisers know the net goal is to convert a consumer, but they don’t get that level of deep tracking. We will be innovating on that and educating the market.”

Across the portfolio, all of Yahoo’s properties, plus Engadget, AOL, HuffPost and Autoblog all publish at least some commerce content. Some create a lot: 35% of the content on Yahoo Lifestyle is commerce content, for example. The goal is to increase that amount across the portfolio, though some titles have more room to develop this than others, said Alex Wallace, gm of entertainment, news and studio at Verizon Media. Wallace cited HuffPost and Engadget among the titles that she saw having some of the greatest potential to increase their commerce content output.

But like a growing number of commerce-focused publishers, Verizon Media also wants to change the way that content looks and feels. A recently built shoppable video player, for example, is deployed across just 15% of the commerce content on Yahoo Lifestyle & Entertainment. Verizon Media plans to increase that to at least 25% by the beginning of next year and increase the amount of shoppable video it publishes across the platform.

The video is just one new feature. At the internal presentation, product leaders also laid out a suite of new features, including site-native buy buttons, so-called “hot spot” technology that makes images on posts across Verizon Media Group sites shoppable.

On the back end, a new content management system, called Fireplace, designed to make it easier for Verizon Media Group’s writers and content producers to add products and interactive, shoppable elements to stories, was unveiled.

To meet that growing need, Verizon Media is investing in more original shopping-focused video too. Beginning Nov. 1, Verizon Media will roll out a series of shopping-focused videos oriented the holiday season, a complement to six shoppable video series Verizon Media rolled out across Yahoo Lifestyle and In the Know earlier this year, including “Gotta Have It,” “Add to Cart” and “You Need This.”

That content, in theory, will help drive affiliate revenue. But it is also meant to help power other revenue opportunities, including branded content production and a coupon business that currently serves billions of coupons and special offers every day globally through Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Shopping. Verizon Media plans to target coupons to people that have read about the products and services written about across the ecosystem.

“What we’re doing is creating a more direct through-line from content to discovery to commerce to transactions,” Gowrappan told staff, saying that the products being built would serve as a “horizontal engine that intersects across verticals.”

The strategy is also designed to broaden the meaning of Verizon Media Group’s brands for its audience, a strategy that has underpinned many publishers’ revenue diversification plans. “It’s not just about revenue,” said Chris Erwin, the founder of strategic advisory firm RockWater. “It’s about reinforcing [the titles’ value] to the audience and giving them another way to interact with a content brand.”

Verizon Media Group’s push into shopping comes at a moment when publications are looking for ways to diversify their revenue as they fight a losing battle against Google, Facebook and Amazon for digital advertising dollars. Like every other media company, Verizon Media Group took its lumps in that fight. It began the year by laying off 800 employees, or about 7% of its workforce, and resolving to focus on growing its video strategy, increasing business use of its ad products, and partnerships. The commerce strategy supports those priorities.

“We’re finally stabilizing the business,” Gowrappan said. “Now we’re playing offense.”

Even with all these changes, Gowrappan said that it will be months, if not years, before it changes the nature of the relationships Verizon Media has with its advertisers, which are still largely grounded in media spending. “We’re treating this as incremental right now,” Gowrappan said. “It doesn’t pollute how things are done today.”

That’s partly because not every advertiser is set up to use services like those. But being built for where things are going could serve it well. “I think they’re probably a little bit ahead of the curve, in a good way,” said Carina Pologruto, the chief information officer at MarketSmith Inc., an agency focused on commerce and performance marketing. “What Verizon’s doing is smart. They’re looking for a way to have a competitive edge.”

The post ‘We’re playing offense’: Verizon pivots its publishing strategy to focus on commerce appeared first on Digiday.

SPO was devised as a way to counter some of the unintentional side effects caused by the introduction of header bidding five years ago. Demand-side platforms went from handling one bid request at a time to around 20 from different exchanges thanks to header bidding. Lesser-known exchanges that were previously in the shadows came into the mix, creating multiple routes to the same impression. SPO was created to untangle this and make it easier to see who sold what impression.

Trouble was, no one on the buy or sell sides ever agreed on a common definition for what it does and who stood to benefit from it. Buyers thought SPO insights would help them negotiate better terms with vendors and reduce the number of times they inadvertently bid multiple times on the same impression, while sellers saw it as a way to understand how DSPs bid on impressions to increase their chances of making a sale.

It’s debatable as to whether SPO at scale has been possible for any of those stakeholders yet, according to Tom Kershaw, CTO at The Rubicon Project. “SPO has been effective, but it’s also been a manual process of making cuts and tweaks to supply sources,” said Kershaw. “In an industry that’s doing billions of transactions an hour making changes manually doesn’t work. The more we do manually, the worse off we tend to be in ad tech.”

SPO boils down to this: In a programmatic market littered with vendors selling the same impressions, savvy buyers know which sellers to pick and why because they have data on the best route to them and what a fair price is to pay for ads. It’s a simple concept that’s deceptively hard to do. Early attempts at SPO were neither sophisticated nor straightforward. For instance, buyers would have to go to extreme lengths like shutting off or opening up entire exchanges to find out who they bought from. It was a practice reserved only for the smartest programmatic buyers. And yet many of those early efforts were deemed smart because they were built on commercial relationships and intuition, not because the buyer had the inside track on sellers.

It paved the way for a certain kind of SPO that let buyers buy impressions from a handful of trusted ad tech vendors. They’re trusted because they’ve promised to give the buyer a range of benefits from transparency on how much of their money goes to the publisher to discounts on CPMs in exchange for more of their budget. Agencies, not advertisers, have been the ones to drive this form of SPO as it extends their buying power to biddable media. GroupM, Havas and Goodway Group have used SPO this year to broker better deals with fewer supply-side platforms, for example.“Agencies are saying they want to limit the supply path because they want control over what they’re buying,” said Rajeev Goel CEO of PubMatic.

When Havas, on behalf of a telco client in the U.S., cut the number of SSPs it used from 42 to seven earlier this year, it didn’t know which ones provided value before they were dropped. Some exchanges went if they didn’t share log-level data about auctions; others went if they refused to reveal information on the fees paid to publishers and some were dropped due to the fact that the agency’s trading team knew little about them, said Andrew Goode, head of programmatic at Havas at a Rubicon Project event in September.

Cutting the number of exchanges made sense for the holding group given there are a lot of different exchange “paths” to buy the same impression. It’s also been hard for buyers to trust exchanges in recent years due to suspicion over the legitimacy of how they make money.

But this form of SPO is far from perfect. By funneling budget through fewer exchanges, Havas could still end up paying the ones it axed, for instance. Blacklisting an exchange doesn’t actually stop a buyer from buying from it. Some Exchanges are selling to other exchanges, after all.

“It is vital everyone in the industry keeps the pressure on to increase transparency on the supply side,” said Paul Frampton, CEO of Goodway Group’s European arm, Control v. Exposed. The agency negotiated its own low-fee paths to supply with SSP Pubmatic earlier this year. “It’s not yet a perfect science but we are confident that we are significantly improving both transparency and quality around the origin of an impression,” said Frampton.

Almost all exchanges have some reseller inventory.

“The average impression in programmatic has been auctioned 15 times before an ad is ultimately served,” said Ari Lewine, chief strategy officer of ad exchange TripleLift. That means the same impression is being recycled 15 different times by sellers and resellers before it actually gets transacted. It makes for a less transparent, more expensive way to buy impressions along less efficient paths.

Turning off all resold inventory might throttle duplication in auctions, but it could also block the buyer’s access to unique ad units. “An SPO strategy can’t be to turn off all resellers. It has to be more precise,” said Chris Kane, founder of programmatic consultancy Jounce Media. “There are some resellers that are quite valuable.”

This is why some buyers are starting to adopt a data-driven approach to SPO thanks to the sellers.json and the SupplyChain Object transparency tools from the Internet Advertising Bureau Tech Lab. Both tools reveal the actual source of an impression so buyers can now determine how an exchange gets its inventory, for instance, whether it’s through a wrapper like Google’s Open Bidding, which handles multiple auctions for a single impression for publishers, or the inventory from another exchange.

Getting exchanges to make that information publicly available via the IAB’s tools hasn’t been straightforward. In fact, it was only after DSP The Trade Desk demanded the exchanges it bought from used Sellers.json that it was widely adopted. Enforcement started in the summer and since then 34 of the 50 most widely adopted, have shared a sellers.json file as of Sept. 28, per Jounce Media.

DSPs like The Trade Desk have added features so that buyers can use its bidder to build custom bidding algorithms that follow the most direct route to supply or offer unique ad formats.

After earlier attempts to get it done stuttered, SPO is now getting a second wind. New tools from ad tech vendors are making it easier for buyers to control how they buy impressions, while SPO was prominent during recent earnings calls with The Trade Desk and Telaria. Despite the slow start, SPO is set to be central to how ads are bought in online auctions moving forward.

The post Why supply-path optimization hasn’t lived up to its promise appeared first on Digiday.

One media exec, who has been briefed on Roku’s pitch but has not signed a deal with the company, described the program as “a proof-of-concept” that Roku is looking to roll out in the fourth quarter of 2019 or first quarter of 2020. However, the pitch resembles the branded content program that Roku introduced last year and could be the company building on that existing program by opening it up to more media companies and advertisers.

In September 2018, Roku added a MillerCoors section within its free, ad-supported streaming service Roku Channel. The MillerCoors section carried minutes-long videos that Great Big Story and National Geographic had produced documenting people exploring glaciers, the ocean and other outdoor locales. As part of the program, Roku ran ads on its platform’s home screen to point audiences to the branded content.

In its recent pitch to media companies, Roku is positioning itself as an additional distribution outlet for advertisers’ videos. Unlike Facebook which provides self-serve tools for media companies to promote branded content on the social network, a media company would need to provide Roku with an insertion order that includes the campaign’s assets and impression goals.

Media execs see Roku’s pitch as a way for the platform to cozy up with media companies while also piggybacking media companies’ work with advertisers. In particular Roku is highlighting the ad placement that appears on the right side of its home screen next to the menu of streaming apps. “They’re getting like billions of impressions on that unit. It’s ever-present,” said a media exec. A Roku spokesperson declined to comment on the terms of its branded content program.

However, advertisers may need to be convinced of the value of those impressions. One agency exec who has received Roku’s branded content pitch within the past two months questioned the likelihood that someone would elect to watch a piece of branded content when browsing Roku’s home screen. “I give them credit in trying to think differently of how to use the platform that they have, but similar to the Roku Channel, I don’t feel like it’s that compelling a place to go to,” said the exec.

Another agency exec was more open to the potential. This exec had previously worked on a campaign for food marketer to distribute branded content on Microsoft’s Xbox. “It was amazing the amount of time that kids would spend on that content. It’s a precursor to what we’re talking about now,” said this exec.

The model to the approach taken by Snapchat, which in March 2018, enabled Discover publishers to run the branded content they produce for companies as ads in their Discover channels.

“At launch it was more compelling to have Snapchat Discover be an additional distribution point for a much bigger project you might be doing with a publisher, and I think for Roku this is similar,” said the first agency exec.

The post Inside Roku’s nascent branded content pitch appeared first on Digiday.

Talent has become a giant challenge.
Buyers are seriously concerned about a talent crunch. It’s a job seeker’s market, and many agencies are having a tough time hiring smart people and retaining them.

• Training has become a major budget line item for agencies. Agencies are building giant training programs for both junior and mid-level employees. They’re creating courses and figuring out how to best keep employees motivated with growth opportunities but also keep them savvy enough to keep up with changing tech and evolving platforms. 
• At Essence, the agency has created an entire learning and opportunity team in order to ensure training is a focus. At CMI/Compas, the agency has spent “seven figures” on the same.
• And at smaller companies, agencies are offering everything from remote, work-anywhere opportunities to more soft benefits like sabbaticals. 

The bottom line: The talent crisis is real, and employers are getting desperate to find good people.

Agencies worry about in-housing.
Brands like Bayer have proved that in-housing media buying works for them. The company’s Josh Palau, who runs the in-house agency team, has said it’s resulted in significant cost savings. For agencies, this means it’s time to seriously consider how they work for brands.

• Agencies are deciding to do more strategic and advisory work for brands. If their clients choose to take things in-house, they often help them do it.
• iCrossing chief media officer Chris Apostle said he’s had plenty of clients have that conversation with him. The key now is to know that many times, those conversations don’t lead to much, and his agency has often had clients boomerang back to them with projects they were previously in-housing.
• “We had a situation where we had a client take things in-house. We agreed to train some of their internal people that we already had. We had a six month time period where we transitioned everything to them,” said one buyer. Another said brands soon realize how hard the work is: “We’ve had clients in tears on the phone. They didn’t realize how annoying it is to run Facebook campaigns.”

The bottom line: In-housing is a reality, but it also falls on a spectrum.

Speaker highlights
Josh Bayer, vp media strategy and platforms at Bayer, gave a talk on the second year of Bayer bringing programmatic in-house.

• The company started this project with a clear vision and spent time on the back-end before setting it up.
• The data piece was the most important one, of cleaning up and sorting data inputs and how they would be used.
• It’s now on track to take all digital buying in-house by 2020, and Palau is now focused on process. “When you’re in-house you’re coworkers. I can say no to more things than my agency ever could.

GroupM LatinAmerica head of digital David Posada chatted with Digiday’s Shareen Pathak about why premium advertising environments have become more important.

• The brand safety discussion is still top of mind for brands, said Posada. Most brands now fall into being more risk averse than before, and the agency spends a lot of time on risk management profiles for each client.
• Issues with platforms like YouTube or Facebook haven’t gone away, but Posada said clients have often no choice but to work with those platforms despite any scandals or fear of the screenshot.

ICrossing’s chief media officer Chris Apostle also gave a talk on the future of media buying.

• Apostle said that like Posada, many clients have become more risk-averse. The agency’s job is now to define brand safety for them — and emphasized it’s not just about being in “unsavory” environments but also just being in the right place at the right time, targeted to the right person. “It’s just good advertising,” he said.
• Apostle also said the consultancy threat is real, and agencies are running up against them in about 20% of pitches. The key is to remain a partner to brands and focus on being an objective agent, he said.
• Talent is also a significant concern. The hardest roles to fill, said Apostle, are for anaytics and paid social experts.

Overheard

“Consultancies’ job is to nitpick and look under every single piece of paper they can find. They’re a threat and they like it.”

“Consultancies are potentially better equipped to succeed. They find the lowest hanging fruit to succeed. They start showing progress and then they showed we can buy media. They build the trust on low hanging fruit. They come in as the savior on multiple situations.”

“Clients want to know they’re not being taken advantage of. Clients are asking us to do more things, and every single contract is being renegotiated.”

“Amazon is clunky. You can’t even have a line item end and have it turn back on. You have to rebuild it. It takes forever. We don’t want to keep doing it each month. Now they have workarounds to do that. “

The post Ad buyers view Amazon warily: Insights from the Digiday Media Buying Summit appeared first on Digiday.

Too many rounds, and with too many people

One key insight that emerged from the survey was that there are too many “cooks in the kitchen” when it comes to collaborating on creative content. As many as 74 percent of the respondents said they work with five or more departments on developing creative assets — while 32 percent said they also work with external agencies.

And having so many individuals involved in the creative review process is clearly causing issues, with 79 percent saying that has been a contributing factor when deadlines are missed.

Not only are there too many people, but there are also too many rounds of creative review, according to 84 percent of respondents.

“The routing process is a dense jungle — a morass of sharing feedback, editing and approvals from countless internal parties,” according to the survey report.

Not so easy step 1: Ask yourself: Does the review process really need that many people and that many rounds? The “good, long look” will likely lead to “no.” Only involve the people who are familiar with what your project is trying to accomplish, as well as those that have the creative skillset to get that done. Limiting the feedback to critical stakeholders only can help things move more quickly — and likely can also help reduce the number of creative review rounds.

Not enough time, money or resources

The ever-increasing number of mediums that creative content is needed for and the need to keep up with, and even surpass, competitors across those mediums are likely among the reasons that 88 percent of respondents say that demands for creative assets have increased at least somewhat within the past year. But how can they keep up, when 82 percent said they have somewhat fewer resources than necessary to meet such demands?

The answer is that they aren’t keeping up, with 84 percent saying they run over budget at least sometimes, and a whopping 93 percent saying they sometimes run over the original allotted time for creative review and production.

Not-so-easy step 2: The obvious answer here, of course, would be to provide the time, money and resources to get the work done. More realistically speaking though, it might be time to reassess how deadlines are being decided upon. Are they taking into account other projects that are being worked on simultaneously? With most respondents reporting not having enough resources to keep up with increasing demand, optimization is key. Is talent being allocated in the best possible way for each project? Would someone be a better fit for a video project vs. the creation of a convention booth, for example? There are also great tools out there that can help you optimize your time, money and most importantly, team other resources — as long as they’re used correctly.

Not using tools and processes the right way

Something definitely needs to change when it comes to creative asset production and review processes. An astounding 80 percent of respondents say they are at least somewhat dissatisfied with their companies’ current processes.

And the tools being used for those processes are contributing to that dissatisfaction, with 78 percent citing “confusing or inefficient use of collaboration tools” as a moderate problem and 83 percent saying their organization’s use of such tools makes collaboration and communication more complicated.

Not-so-easy step 3: Another good, long look might be required to determine what your team is trying to accomplish, and how your current tools or processes might actually be hindering them. Do they need so many tools, or is it causing more angst to switch between them? Using tools with overlapping, yet somewhat separate functionalities, could be causing both redundancies and inefficiencies. Is there a way to get everything accomplished with one creative collaboration tool?

As for processes, how many are actually really necessary? Does every single thing really need to be documented the way it currently is, for example, or is that just a paper trail that nobody ever looks at?

Perhaps one of the more troubling revelations that came from the survey is that while creative collaboration should be about being “creative,” 81 percent said that cumbersome, creative processes are causing the quality of their creative work to suffer because other considerations inevitably wind up being prioritized. The need for increased productivity shouldn’t be the enemy of creativity. The report outlines the need for streamlined processes, tools, resources, number of people involved and number of creative rounds — but it’s up to us to ensure that happens, and keep the “creative” in creative collaboration.

The post The key mistakes you may be missing in your creative content process appeared first on Digiday.