Less BS, More Facts, Some Opinions
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New year, same challenges. That’s the sobering 2021 outlook of one senior agency exec who expects many marketers to continue to avoid the thorny topic of remuneration. In the latest edition of our Confessions series, where we exchange anonymity for honesty, the managing director at a global media agency holding group explains why getting paid fairly remains a pipe dream for many of their contemporaries.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Every review we’re involved in seems to come through a consultant who wants you to fill out these forms of staffing hours and media prices before the client even wants to hear your ideas. That’s counterintuitive. Metrics like full-time equivalent are static and aren’t connected to any sort of campaign performance or business result. People talked about remuneration more than they have done for a while last year, and we were able to move to more nuanced payment models with some of our larger clients as a result of having built up trust with them, but it can’t drown out all the noise around this issue.
Some marketers would talk a good game to us going into a pitch, but then send over this 5,000 line template for us to fill out so that they can compare our media rates with other agencies. And let’s not forget that pricing data travels with the client and the agency they hire. Usually, these are the clients that see their media investment as a cost rather than an investment.
Look at the number of reviews that have started since the pandemic really took hold of the world last March. There aren’t many accounts that were switched to other holding companies. Yes, it’s hard to build chemistry with a potential client over Zoom and it can be awkward presenting a concept remotely but you can’t help wondering whether clients are using these reviews as opportunities to squeeze a better deal from their current agency.
I’ve sat through countless pitch briefs from potential clients who want all these new services from us, whether its strategic expertise to help them do more marketing internally or products to gather, process and activate more data, but seem intent on sticking with a one-size fits all way to pay for them.
The real conversation should be bound by a non-disclosure agreement and revolve around my team showing marketers how they work and highlighting how those processes and services could improve what they are currently doing while saving them money. That’s a better conversation than filling out those templates.
Sometimes they are. Procurement shouldn’t be a bad thing for senior marketers and subsequently agencies but there’s no doubt it can have a detrimental impact on some pitches. The new business game feels like a race to the bottom now that permeates everything, from media pricing to how much the client pays the agency. It’s frustrating because we’ve evolved the way we work over the years and feel like we can have more accountable ways to drive a client’s business. In most cases, however, we can’t. Often, clients don’t have the confidence in what they’re trying to accomplish so [they] let consultants lead them down a standardized path where services are easy to compare objectively across different businesses.
The problem is the wrong things are being compared. We should be allowed to make money by building relationships with clients based on mutual objectives. It’s on us to try and change the conversation so we’re not viewed as an interchangeable partner, but as an invaluable business partner.
I think some of us at the larger networks have to start pushing back and think harder about who we work with rather than constantly reacting to a deluge of pitches. I’ve pitched to marketers who have said they’re not ok with us having products where we make a media investment and share the benefit with them, but then they’ll demand 180 payment days terms. We can’t afford to work with clients that see us as banks.
We have relationships with clients that go back several years and most of them are at this nirvana. These accounts have evolved to a point where value is treated as a multidimensional component and not just connected to the price of media or staff. Crises like the pandemic tend to bring agencies and clients closer together and we’re getting good feedback with regards to how nimble we’ve been throughout the crisis.
The only way we can do this is to contour to evolve our offering faster than our clients. The pandemic has forced us to accelerate ongoing efforts to develop a better labor model that includes automating parts of our service as well as offshoring certain tasks. We want to get a point where we can go to a client and say ‘I can guarantee you a certain level of performance, and take down the fee by x%, but you can’t audit the business anymore in hours because I’m doing it with technology and other kinds of resources’. In other words, we’ll be held accountable for our results but clients have to give us the freedom to optimize the labor model so that we can deliver better performance. We’re working on some of these plans and are hoping to start having these conversations with clients in the second quarter of the year.
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Last year reshaped the future of TV in myriad ways.
It catalyzed the shift to streaming, foisted newfound flexibility into traditional TV advertising and threw traditional production and programming pipelines in flux. Many of the changes that the TV, streaming and digital video industry underwent in 2020 will continue and compound — but they will also be put in check.
The streaming wars will intensify. So will the competition among free, ad-supported streamers. TV networks will face the potential fallout from acquiescing to advertisers’ flexibility demands, while advertisers will see whether the money they moved to streaming in last year’s upfront was well spent.
After TikTok’s biggest year yet and Snapchat’s big rebound, those two platforms will continue to face off with Instagram, and all three will attempt to contend with YouTube for creators’ allegiances. And the uneven return to traditional production for shows, movies, digital videos and commercials may put new pressure on TV networks’ and streamers’ programming pipelines or prove that remote production is no longer a trend but an accepted tool for producers.
How exactly 2021 will further shape the future of TV is anyone’s guess. But here are the major factors that will affect its formation.
The next phase of the streaming wars
The battlefield for the streaming wars is close to being set. Discovery kicked off 2021 with the debut of its standalone streamer Discovery+ on Jan. 4, and ViacomCBS will follow suit with the relaunch of CBS All Access as Paramount+ sometime early this year. Meanwhile, although WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock launched last year, they were somewhat handicapped. Neither were available on Amazon’s or Roku’s connected TV platforms for months after launching. Peacock is still not available on Amazon’s Fire TV, but it reached a deal with Roku last fall. And HBO Max secured distribution on Amazon’s and Roku’s platforms by year’s end.
Now that nearly all the major subscription-based streamers are in market, the fight for audiences’ wallets will escalate. Netflix has the high ground, but Disney+ quickly raced to 86.8 million subscribers in just over a year after its 2019 launch. With the average U.S. household paying for four streaming subscriptions, per Juniper Research, that leaves two slots for Discovery+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock. The competition is not limited to them, though. With 38.8 million subscribers, Hulu remains a major player. Then there are the niche streamers, like AMC Networks’ horror-centric Shudder and documentary devotee CuriosityStream. Considering the challenging economics of operating a subscription-based streaming service, the heightened competition will put additional pressure on streamers to find ways to acquire and, as importantly, retain subscribers in 2021.
Free, ad-supported streaming bubble
There are so many free, ad-supported streaming TV services that the category has begotten its own acronym: FAST. Companies including Amazon, Roku, Samsung and Vizio have raced to roll out their rivals to ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV and Comcast’s Xumo, and TV networks and digital publishers have similarly sped up to spin out their own 24/7 channels to distribute across these services and give themselves a foothold on CTV. This category continues to be in the growth stage, but that phase is usually followed by growing pains.
As more FAST platforms bubble up, at some point that bubble will burst. Being free and ad-supported means these services live and die in accordance with the number of viewers they are able to attract and the amount of time they are able to get those viewers to spend streaming their services. Additionally, these platforms largely mirror one another, sharing many of the same 24/7 streaming channels and on-demand movies and TV shows. The lack of differentiation can have a dilutive effect. Why would someone take an extra step to install Pluto TV if The Roku Channel appears to offer much of the same programming and comes pre-installed? Or why try out Samsung TV Plus if a person is already accustomed to Pluto TV?
This differentiation dilemma is already leading the FAST platforms to separate themselves. They are creating their own 24/7 channels and locking up exclusive programming, as Roku is reportedly looking to do in buying Qubi’s library. These steps toward separation could have ripple effects on the media companies distributing programming and generating revenue across the platforms, creating a domino effect of winners and losers.
Upfront fallout
The annual TV advertising upfront marketplace did not experience a seismic change in 2020 — at least not in a way that would become apparent in 2020. However, while upfront budgets were largely preserved and the bulk of that money went to traditional TV, the changes could show up before the next round of upfront negotiations kick off later this year.
In their latest upfront deals, advertisers secured more favorable cancelation options, such as the ability to scrap half of their quarterly spending commitments a month before the quarter begins. Moreover, some advertises and agencies back-loaded this flexibility into their upfront deals. This flexibility combined with linear TV viewership shortfalls makes an already unstable traditional TV ad market potentially even more volatile.
Adding further fuel to the fire is the money that advertisers moved into streaming last year in light of the viewership surge. As advertisers see how their fourth quarter streaming campaigns panned out, more money may be on the move. If advertisers find that streaming sufficiently boosted their businesses, they will likely spend more money on the medium. If not, that money may make its way back to traditional TV. Either way, the strategy could play into the hands of TV networks that operate major ad-supported streamers and may want to use this year’s upfront negotiations to make up for last year’s concessions.
Social video platforms’ contest for creators
In the same way that Netflix faces its stiffest competition yet in 2021, so does YouTube. Google’s dominant digital video platform has been fending off Facebook while contending with Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, each of which are finally taking aim at YouTube’s point of strength: providing creators the opportunity to directly make money from their videos.
In 2020, Instagram began testing a monetization program for its long-form video platform IGTV. TikTok announced the TikTok Creator Fund to pay some creators for posting videos. And Snapchat — which introduced its monetization program in 2018 and is coming off a business rebound in 2020 — formed its own program to pay creators for popular posts.
To an extent, these platforms are not playing a zero-sum game. Creators, like publishers, recognize the need to diversify and have found the people watching their TikTok videos, for example, are not the same as those following them on Instagram. But creators’ time is finite, forcing them to prioritize certain platforms over others. And while creators have been able to repurpose videos between platforms, they are finding they need to be tailoring their videos to the respective platforms, as happened in the case of TikTok and Instagram’s copycat feature Reels. If this trend continues and platforms’ monetization programs mature to approach YouTube’s standard, then creators may find YouTube finally receiving the competition — and creators reaping the revenue — they have been craving.
Programming pipeline pressure
While some TV shows, movies, digital videos and commercials had eased back into physical production before the end of 2020, a full-fledged return has not yet taken place. And it may not happen anytime soon with coronavirus cases on the rise (more in the “Trend watch” section below). The continued uncertainty around the return to production could impact TV networks’ and streaming services’ programming pipelines potentially to a greater degree than has been the case so far.
For the most part, networks, streamers, video publishers and advertisers were successfully able to adapt to last year’s production shutdown. Networks and streamers picked up programming that had already aired elsewhere and took advantage of projects that had made it into post-production before the hiatus. Publishers and advertisers, meanwhile, shifted to remote production. But the entire industry had hoped to return to physical production in the fall. That didn’t happen en masse, and the latest shooting hiatus could further delay the return, leaving networks and streamers’ programming pipelines tapped out and sapped of shows to suck in audiences.
Alternatively, networks’ and streamers’ programming pipelines may be fine. Some shows and movies flocked to places like Canada to return to production. And some series, like ABC’s “The Bachelor,” formed their own bubbles to shoot while ensuring cast and crew members’ safety. Depending on the broad availability of a coronavirus vaccine, physical shoots may be able to start up en masse by summer, and the remote production and post-production processes put in place following last year’s hiatus could help to accelerate the turnaround of those projects.
“In 2020, we decided that we needed to focus on the smart TV guys because the rate of growth in smart TV usage was outstripping Roku and Amazon Fire [TV] and Apple TV and Android [TV]. Our fastest growing subset [of viewership] has been on smart TV platforms.”
— Streaming executive
Hollywood’s return to traditional production has become a series of restarts and stalls. The latest surge in coronavirus cases in Los Angeles has put another brake on film, TV, digital video and commercial shoots in the area.
It’s worth noting that these production pauses are specific to Southern California, which has become a hotbed for coronavirus. Additionally, while these companies and organizations are taking these steps to restrict the disease’s spread, California’s recently extended shelter-at-home orders exempt productions, so movies, shows and commercials are technically still allowed to shoot in Southern California. But considering people’s lives are at stake, producers and others have to ask themselves whether a piece of content is worth it, and many are acknowledging it’s not.
4.8 million: Number of people who watched each minute, on average, the Dec. 26 NFL game that was only available to watch via streaming services like Amazon’s Amazon Prime Video and Twitch.
20%: Year-over-year percentage increase in ESPN+’s annual subscription price.
4: Number of paid streaming services that the average U.S. household subscribed to in 2020.
How ViacomCBS is managing the transition from linear TV to streaming:
Read more about ViacomCBS here.
Media companies’ streaming inventory sold out early this fourth quarter:
Read more about streaming ads here.
What the AT&T-Fuse Media distribution dispute says about the pay-TV market:
Read more about AT&T-Fuse Media here.
TV networks’ debts to advertisers are piling up:
Read more about TV advertising debts here.
Roku’s Quibi catalog:
Roku is in talks to acquire Quibi’s library of original programming to populate The Roku Channel, according to The Wall Street Journal. Quibi’s content may not seem all that valuable considering how the mobile video service flopped and folded less than a year after launching, but there are two considerations to keep in mind. First, sometimes the issue isn’t the programming so much as the platform (ex. how shows like “You” and “Cobra Kai” become legitimate hits after jumping from Lifetime and YouTube, respectively, to Netflix). Second, The Roku Channel is in need of exclusive programming to differentiate the free, ad-supported streaming TV platform from every other FAST service, both in the minds of audiences as well as advertisers.
Hollywood’s diversity database:
Oscar nominee Ava DuVernay and former Warner Bros. executive Peter Roth are assembling a database of crew members from underrepresented groups so that film, TV and digital video producers can ensure their productions are diverse and inclusive, according to the Los Angeles Times. Called Array Crew, the database is the latest example of Hollywood’s attempt to address the industry’s historic lack of diversity on- and off-screen and erase the excuse of anyone attributing the lack of diversity to a dearth of — or difficulty in finding — talent from underrepresented groups.
The NFL’s TV dominance:
NFL games remain the most popular program on traditional TV. Of the 50 most-viewed TV programs in the U.S. last year, 33 were NFL games, according to Sportico. That stat will likely help the league to push up its prices in the next round of rights negotiations. More to the point, despite live sports TV viewership falling short of expectations in the fall, 21 of the NFL’s entries on the most-viewed list were games that have taken place since the start of September. In other words, even if people are tuning in less to linear TV overall, including live sports, they are still more likely to watch the NFL than anything else on TV.
YouTube’s biggest star:
What the NFL is to traditional TV, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson is to YouTube. In 2020, every video that Donaldson uploaded to the Google-owned video platform garnered at least 20 million views, according to Bloomberg. For as many people as say there is not a set formula for a video to go viral, Donaldson seems to have developed one that’s actually not all that novel: The more that is put into a piece a content — not only money but also effort — the more likely a large number of people will watch it. That has worked on traditional TV (e.g. NFL games) and in theatrical films (e.g. Marvel movies), and Donaldson is proof that it also works in digital videos. On average, Donaldson spends $300,000 to produce a video. Of course, the formula is not so simple as setting fire to a pile of money (though that would probably work as a one-off stunt), and the fact that viewership and revenue is not actually guaranteed is what makes managing the economics of producing videos for platforms like YouTube such a challenge for individual video creators and publishers alike.
The post Here are the five major forces and trends that will shape the future of TV in 2021 appeared first on Digiday.
A year ago it may have been hard to imagine the ways a pandemic could impact the world of programmatic marketing. As it has turned out, of course, the coronavirus crisis has had profound implications for programmatic marketing, upending certain longstanding trends in advertising and accelerating shifts in audience behavior and developments in CTV and OTT that were already remaking the industry.
The year ahead looks set to be an exciting time for programmatic marketing, with viewers and advertisers embracing CTV and opportunities for programmatic marketers to leverage linear TV. The transition away from third-party cookies is prompting discussions about data usage and privacy, as well as innovations in contextual targeting and data sharing.
Digiday’s Deep Dive: Programmatic Marketing, is a collection of videos and key takeaways from our recent Programmatic Marketing Summit Live that detail what marketers are investing in and what tools they’re using to make these strategies more efficient. Below you’ll find insights and best practices from industry insiders and experts that will help you chart a successful course into 2021 and beyond.
The COVID-19 pandemic threw programmatic marketing and advertising into disarray just as it did every other industry. The pandemic’s onset shattered normality as we knew it, but as consumers responded to lockdowns and economic crisis, the programmatic business entered a period marked by reset, stock-taking, improvisation and experimentation.
Distinct patterns quickly emerged and set the direction of programmatic for the remainder of 2020. Consumers streamed more entertainment than ever, with subscriptions soaring. This shift has sparked a boom for OTT and CTV advertising. “It really has become even more fragmented than it was pre-pandemic, when you already had your Netflix and Prime Video and everything like that,” said Katie Anderson, programmatic lead at PMG. “This is just growing even further and so I think that continues to emphasize why programmatic is so important.”
Linear TV advertising slumped, mainly due to big advertisers canceling upfront contracts. There are upsides to this, however, chief of which is the growing application of programmatic concepts to the linear space. Exciting developments lie ahead in this area, with ad tech platforms getting on board and advertisers still keen to chase the linear audience.
As Google and others throttle third-party cookies and cookie-based targeting in general, advertisers are taking consumer privacy more seriously than ever. As we’ll hear, that’s not solely driven by the need to stay on the right side of regulations, but rather by a cultural shift in the industry that recognizes consumers are deeply concerned about privacy. As a result, advertisers are reframing data usage as a matter of ethics, and some are taking a more idealistic approach than has been the norm in recent years.
The decline of cookies is also forcing programmatic marketers to devise new approaches to targeting, with greater focus on first-party data collection and data sharing. Data clean rooms are one innovative solution that paves a way towards mutually beneficial data cooperation between industry players, and one we can expect to see more of in the year ahead.
Many advertisers are also experimenting with greater use of contextual targeting as the death of the cookie looms ever closer. Contextual is no substitute for behavioral targeting — instead, the two approaches will co-exist, each with their own virtues and limitations. The trick is figuring out how one best complements the other. “We’ve really leaned into our contextual approach,” said Blake Laufer, manager, performance acceleration, at Initiative. “So we know that contextual does not really rely on cookies and it’s a valuable signal on users’ online behavior. So we’ve really looked to scale that out in the past couple months.”
The most far-reaching development in programmatic marketing right now is the accelerated shift towards OTT and CTV. Of course, as in so many other areas, we have COVID-19 to thank for speeding this change, but the pandemic has simply facilitated a trend that was already gathering momentum.
Viewers in all demographics are embracing streaming, and the pool of providers is only growing with big-ticket offerings like Disney+ and HBO Max entering the fray in 2020. Advertisers are following the consumers, and that’s boosting CTV and OTT, often at the expense of upfront advertising.
“We’ve seen exorbitant adoption in streaming services and hours spent in front of a television, whether that be linear or on demand or via streaming services,” said Anderson.
The expansion of CTV and OTT will be sustained well beyond the context of the pandemic. COVID-19 simply accelerated what was already happening. The audience is moving, the advertisers are following and the programmatic industry will only become more dynamic and sophisticated from here.
Persistent uncertainty regarding the pandemic and its economic fallout is helping to consolidate demand for CTV and OTT advertising. “We’ve already heard from multiple brands opting out of upfront buying moving forward and switching to this much more agile approach as things remain in flux,” said Anderson.
Leah Askew, svp, client results at Dentsu Programmatic, said news media is one area where private marketplace deals can be valuable for advertisers. News outlets’ mastery of audience targeting is a key factor. “This is no secret to them, so they can really help set up a deal that allows you to run and spend on all of their inventory and taking consideration of the safety that you need for your specific brand,” Askew said.
To some, programmatic advertising and linear TV may seem like contradictions in terms, but there’s growing convergence between these two worlds. The past year proved that linear TV continues to be a valuable outlet for advertisers, but with many clients ditching upfront commitments, there’s demand for less rigid buying models in the linear space.
That’s where programmatic comes in. The industry is realizing the potential for applying the programmatic model to linear inventory sales, and ad tech firms, platforms and advertisers are aligning on a path forward.
“A lot of the publishers and major providers from a linear standpoint are getting into the game of putting their inventory out there,” said Anderson
“Those with the connections from an inventory standpoint see the effectiveness of transacting programmatically,” said Anderson. “Programmatic isn’t a channel, it’s a way of buying.”
Linear TV still has a resilient audience, and one that continues to be prized by advertisers. The pandemic brought many advertisers aboard the linear ship for the first time, and demand will likely remain robust – if the industry can integrate programmatic and come up with more flexible inventory solutions.
Anderson said there’s growing appetite for programmatic buying in linear and CTV alike. “We’ve already heard from multiple brands opting out of upfront buying moving forward and switching to this much more agile approach as things remain in flux,” Anderson said. “It’s a really exciting time for programmatic, so we definitely see both from a supply standpoint but also a demand standpoint.”
Anderson said linear TV buying is already a hybrid model, but the balance could tilt decisively. “If we see advertisers wanting to emerge slowly in the TV space and have a little bit more control over where they’re inputting spots versus that quarterly buy or something like that, I think we will see this programmatic buying model become more of a norm versus some of those legacy buying standards that remain in place.”
Data ownership and privacy issues are occupying a lot of marketers’ headspace right now and will remain top of mind over the next couple of years. The sun is setting on the third-party cookie, and Apple is also making changes to its IDFA that will put the onus on users to opt in to targeted advertising, effectively throttling targeting for advertisers.
All this is prompting conversations around the ethical use of data that began with the arrival of the EU’s GDPR standard in 2018. In fact, many brands are taking consumer perceptions into account and setting their sights on a more progressive understanding of ethical data usage.
“We, alongside a lot of our brands, actually started to also think about is that really enough — is just getting an opt-in good enough — in terms of where we want to be from an overarching data governance perspective,” said Krystal Olivieri, svp, global data strategy & partnerships at GroupM.
This exercise provides a framework to help teammates make the right call with consistency. “Set those baseline principles of where your ethical lines are,” said Olivieri. “Then create a committee or group of people that when a person on the ground doesn’t know what decision to make or feels like the principles aren’t enough to help guide them through a decision, they have a place they can go to to get that clarity.”
As the industry shifts towards a consumer privacy paradigm grounded in more consensual, opt in principles, advertisers understand that there are benefits to demonstrating that they respect and understand concerns around data usage.
“What you don’t want is ethics to only be from one person’s lens, you want it to be considering the whole,” said Olivieri.
Olivieri said that a number of GroupM clients have been willing to sacrifice business at least to some extent in pursuit of data ethics. “The hard conversation is if [upholding data ethics] meant that this tactic that you were deploying, which drove phenomenal performance or CPA would you be comfortable stopping it because it’s the right thing to do,” Olivieri said. “And so far the brands that we’re working with have all said yes.”
Data clean rooms provide one pathway forward for marketers figuring out targeting as we move into the post-cookie era. These safe spaces are an attempt to leverage data sharing and get beyond data protectionism to benefit all parties. More and more advertisers have been testing these partnerships in 2020, and the results are encouraging the industry to invest more into data clean rooms into the year ahead.
Critically, data clean rooms give all parties peace of mind by protecting against data leaks and ensuring that partnerships do not come at the cost of giving up competitive advantage. There are issues to be worked out, but this looks like a development that has legs. “Data clean rooms are definitely the hot topic of 2020,” said Olivieri.
“Different clients are on on different scales and maturity,” said Olivieri. Many brands don’t own much first-party data and are not in a position to invest heavily in building data ownership, Olivieri added. Clean rooms give them a seat at the table.
Data sharing is likely to be a critical component of the programmatic marketer’s toolbox in the post-cookie era. Data clean rooms represent the most pragmatic, safe solution yet to emerge for navigating this thorny process in a way that benefits all stakeholders.
Take the necessary steps to ensure that the only data being shared is material that your party is comfortable with sharing, and that it will only be shared with your immediate partner. Rehan Iqbal, group director at M/SIX, explained how the agency is working with clients like Electronic Arts. “The direction is set by EA, we make sure that all the precautions, the right contracts are filled out,” said Iqbal. “And then anything that is being shared is really done in a closed environment, making sure that data is anonymized … and then when that information comes back to us, it’s really done in data-safe, clean environments as well.
GroupM’s Olivieri said data clean rooms give businesses an opportunity to find like-minded partners that have “different but complementary understandings” of consumers. “If you can bring those two datasets together meaningfully both brands get value, but also the consumer gets value,” she said.
Advertisers are looking to contextual targeting to ease at least some of the pain that will come as tighter privacy regulations make targeting tougher in the coming year. Contextual has undoubted benefits and can take up some of the slack, but it won’t provide a magic bullet.
While contextual may not be a standalone solution, it will be a useful accompaniment to what remains of behavioral targeting in the post-cookie era. “Using contextual to complement that is a really strong approach,” said Laufer of Initiative.
Nothing can replace the cookie, but contextual targeting is an adaptable technique that can be played off with other targeting methods to achieve great results.
“It’s very valuable to know what people are searching, what they’re getting emailed on and even what the client’s own CRM has,” said Laufer.
“We could see how many times someone has interacted with a particular topic,” said Laufer. “If someone looked at it three months ago versus yesterday, you know that they’re more in market based on their recency.” Alternatively, prices for inventory could be set and tweaked based on contextual data about the popularity of the adjacent content.
“It’s not just an HR function, it has to do with how the agency operates and behind an environment that we create for the people that work here.”
Duff Stewart, CEO, GSD&M
Amid all of the other changes sweeping the programmatic marketing landscape, this summer’s social justice protests sparked a conversation about whether the advertising industry is doing enough to advance diversity and equality initiatives. If 2020 made anything abundantly clear, it’s that diversity and inclusion has been treated as an afterthought within many companies, for too long — and that has to stop. Diversity and inclusion initiatives have to be ongoing, sustained and reflective of a deep understanding of the communities that a given company employs, serves and does business with, and that has to be felt both across all departments and by the consumer. Duff Stewart said marketing and advertising companies need to move away from thinking of D&I merely in terms of hiring targets, incorporating employee resource groups and D&I training as part of a holistic strategy.
“This needs to be bigger than just a book of statements, it needs to be a way in which they behave as an organization which is think of an organization, it’s like a living breathing person.”
Krystal Olivieri, svp, global data strategy & partnerships, GroupM
From social movements and election security to life under lockdown, 2020 has been a rollercoaster year, and Olivieri of GroupM said these events have also impacted the ways marketers are reflecting on consumer data. Against the backdrop of moves by big tech that will afford greater protection of consumer data, marketers are thinking about data usage increasingly from the customer’s point of view. “Data ethics really started with this notion of just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” said Olivieri.
“We really looked at path to conversion and we’re seeing a lot more exposures through contextual. So we may not be getting last touch, but it’s really doing a strong job of being introducers to retargeting.”
– Blake Laufer, manager, performance acceleration, Initiative
Advertisers are learning how to integrate contextual targeting into an overarching targeting strategy. Combining contextual with sustainable approaches to behavioral targeting that will endure beyond the demise of third-party cookies and tightening privacy regulations is the way forward. Laufer said contextual targeting can help to increase conversions via an incremental cycle that starts by growing an audience via contextual targeting. The advertiser can then retarget to drive final conversions within that expanded audience.
Third-party cookies are on the way out, and advertisers are devising strategies that will allow them to continue to effectively target consumers. First-party data gathering is a priority for some, and major platforms like Google and Amazon enjoy an embarrassment of riches in this regard. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other players who lack the resources to build a first-party data goldmine. Data clean rooms offer a solution that allows advertisers and platforms alike to form partnerships where data can be shared and cross-referenced. These are safe spaces where one party can give a partner access to their data-rich walled gardens while retaining an edge, while data-poor partners can gain insights and context to help them bolster their targeting efforts.
Privacy is bubbling up as a prime concern for many consumers, and advertisers, agencies and platforms are well advised to address anxieties around this issue with sensitivity and thoughtfulness. Although there are many lucrative ways of monetizing consumer data while staying within the bounds of regulatory compliance, many firms are deciding that “legal” does not necessarily mean “ethical.” We’re seeing companies setting their own standards for appropriate use of data that place the end user at the center of the process. As first-party data grows in importance to advertisers, expect deeper conversations around ethical usage to come.
Traditional TV advertising was grounded in the logic of buying slots on specific shows to target a given audience as a bloc. This critical development turns that model on its head, allowing viewers to be served dramatically different ads while watching the same show. Addressable is foundational to the value of CTV and OTT advertising, giving advertisers a hyper-targeted outlet that enables them to isolate the viewers they are most interested in. It’s not just limited to CTV and OTT, either — addressable is increasingly being leveraged to equip linear TV advertisers with greater targeting potency.
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