An ESOMAR webinar featured some of the best pollsters currently examining the U.S. in the weird and wacky world of Trump and his regime, where we can always expect the unexpected.
Average CPM For Location-Based Audiences Might Surprise Marketers
The Location-Based Marketing Benchmark Report published by Reveal Mobile analyzes cost and examines how digital marketers use location data and run location-based marketing at agencies and brands In
the United States.
the United States.
What Do You Get When You Mix Brick, Mortar And Live Streaming?
When last we checked in with Dan Hodges, it was last September and he had just launched the latest version of his latest venture Retail Store Tours into New York City just before a global pandemic
would shut down much of the world’s retail establishments. As it turns out, it was one of the best things that ever happened to him.
would shut down much of the world’s retail establishments. As it turns out, it was one of the best things that ever happened to him.
NBCU Adds Free NBC Sports Channel To Peacock
Starting August 24, NBC Sports on Peacock will offer live and on-demand sports event coverage and talk shows.
Who’s Making the Grade for Back-to-School Marketing?
There’s been a lot of talk during the Covid-19 crisis about brands helping customers as much as possible. On that level, back to school is serving as an important type of midterm exam to see how much marketers actually learned in the last six months. The back-to-school shopping season normally starts in July and is…
GOP’s Convention Goal: Making Trump Great Again
This week, the GOP faces the challenge of how to make their candidate appealing and likable.
Millions Are Earmarked For TV Political Ads – But Where?
Given the question mark over new fall TV shows — as well as the regular high viewing of regular season NFL games — the answer might be obvious. It isn’t.
Microsoft’s hands-off handling of LinkedIn offers model for potential TikTok acquisition
If Microsoft successfully ekes by Oracle to acquire TikTok, agency executives have some advice for how the tech giant should handle the social video app’s advertising business: treat it like LinkedIn. “Microsoft acquired LinkedIn and has left it largely to operate independently,” said Jeremy Hull, svp of innovation at iProspect
That’s right. After it would have likely spent tens of billions of dollars to purchase TikTok, the best thing Microsoft could do to recoup that money may be to do not much at all. At least not on the surface. However, Microsoft’s experience in catering to direct-response advertisers buying ads on its Bing search engine could help TikTok to expand beyond the realm of experimental budgets to prove itself as a platform for performance-minded marketers’ money.
“TikTok has a ton of potential, but I don’t think it has found its bearings with advertisers. The folks with giant budgets to throw for experimentation and small brands are jumping on, but everyone else is waiting in the background,” said one brand executive.
Whereas Facebook has ingested Instagram into its broader advertising platform — as Yahoo tried and failed to do with Tumblr — Microsoft has largely left LinkedIn’s advertising business untouched. Hull cited that as “a large reason for LinkedIn’s growth and success” since Microsoft bought the business-centric social network in 2016.
LinkedIn’s registered user base has grown from 400 million people at the time the acquisition closed in December 2016 to 706 million people as of July 2020. Microsoft does not break out LinkedIn’s revenue in its earning reports but said that the platform’s revenue grew by 10% year over year in the most recent quarter and had grown by 21% to 25% in the prior four quarters.
Microsoft’s light-touch handling of LinkedIn likely owes to the reduced scope of Microsoft’s overall advertising business. Until the mid-2010s, Microsoft tried to compete with Google to dominate the online ad market. In 2007, it acquired ad tech firm aQuantive for $6.3 billion, but five years later, it wrote down almost the entire purchase price and then sold aQuantive’s Atlas ad server to Facebook in February 2013. Then, in June 2015, Microsoft effectively exited the display advertising business when it handed over direct sales to AOL.
“I haven’t had a Microsoft [ad sales] rep call on me in many years,” said Justin Scarborough, programmatic media director at PMG.
However, Microsoft has not left LinkedIn entirely untouched, nor has it abandoned advertising as a revenue stream. The tech giant continues to sell ads on its Bing search engine and Xbox gaming platform, and in May 2018, the company launched the Microsoft Audience Network, which can be used to extend Bing search campaigns to run as display ads on Microsoft’s other properties, such as its MSN portal and Outlook email service.
Then in August 2019, Microsoft announced the acquisition of retail advertising firm Promote IQ to bolster its direct-response While LinkedIn’s advertising business operates independently of its parent company, Microsoft has used LinkedIn’s data to inform how ads are targeted across Microsoft Audience Network, said Sam Huston, chief strategy officer at 3Q Digital.
Although agency executives asserted that Microsoft should apply the LinkedIn model to TikTok, they do see an opportunity for Microsoft to help develop TikTok into a mature advertising platform that can compete with sophisticated rivals like Facebook. TikTok is “a very young platform in terms of its ad product,” said a social ad buyer.
TikTok has largely attracted brand advertisers seeking to reach young audiences, but as similar platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have shown, the real revenue will come when TikTok builds up its performance-based advertising bona fides to cater to advertisers who want proof that their ads will deliver revenue and are willing to spend more once they have that evidence in hand.
TikTok “hasn’t really been a place where we’ve seen a lot of growth and adoption from a performance standpoint,” Scarborough said.
Among TikTok’s limiting factors for direct-response advertisers is its limited ad performance reporting. For example, TikTok only offers a one-day attribution window for campaigns whereas platforms like Facebook and Snapchat allow advertisers to track ads against conversions, such as site visits, for 28 days after an ad ran. But this is where Microsoft’s stewardship would be able to come into play to help address TikTok’s direct-response shortcomings.
“They have experience in terms of what performance marketers are looking for in terms of data and the infrastructure required to pass that data back. That will certainly help to accelerate TikTok into a performance marketplace,” Huston said.
Microsoft restricting its involvement in TikTok to back-end work like improving the platform’s ad reporting and analytics capabilities would also help to avoid the pitfall of marring TikTok’s consumer-facing product and squandering the acquisition.
“It’s a logical place to start that doesn’t disrupt users or creators but gives more value to advertisers,” said Hull.
The post Microsoft’s hands-off handling of LinkedIn offers model for potential TikTok acquisition appeared first on Digiday.
CVS Rolls Out New In-House Digital Advertising Network
Key Insight: CVS joins retailers including Target and Walmart in introducing its own in-house media network. Today, CVS Pharmacy is introducing a new advertising platform, CVS Media Exchange, or as it’ll be known for short, cMx. The CVS Media Exchange will cater to CPG brands, and allow them a chance to “efficiently reach existing and…
Bulleit’s New Ad Reminds Us That Bartenders Have Mad Skills—and Are Still Out of Work
After the initial shock of lockdown, one of the early trends among alcohol brands was an outpouring of support for bartenders and service industry workers–people who were hit especially hard by the closure of bars and restaurants. But as often happens, that kind of support slowed down as the months dragged on. There are still…