Month: March 2021

While the future of Mel is still uncertain, the impact of the branded publication, which differentiated itself from other brand-backed titles with its unique coverage of masculinity, sex, pop culture and more, will remain. Industry insiders and fans believe it will be remembered for its independent voice rather than simply being yet another branded mouth piece; brands like Airbnb, Casper and Away also previously ventured into brand-backed publications, but have since shuttered or significantly reduced those publications’ output.

“It’s never been there just to push razors,” Schollmeyer previously told Digiday. “It’s been there to be a thought leader on modern masculinity.”

But that supposed independence from product sales may be part of the reason the company has now cut ties with the publication, as proving a return on investment for the brand may have proved difficult, according to agency execs and industry observers. Without a clear ROI for the mother brand, branded publications are unlikely to survive.

“Dedicated audience or not, is it driving ROI or is it becoming a distraction?,” said Jordan Cohen, CMO of performance marketing shop What If Media. “Is it moving the needle on sales or are other channels lower investment and higher return? These are the questions that brands have to ask themselves (and do ask themselves) when putting out a publication.” 

Without sales figures to boost a brand’s product via a publication, brands often reconsider investing dollars that could be spent on more traditional marketing channels.

Duncan continued: “Publications are about affinity, advocacy and brand love — the ROI is rarely black and white. Publications should be viewed as long-term investments, measured against long-term goals.”

“It becomes an issue of whether a brand can justify the investment —especially as it grows and efficiency becomes the focus — as the true benefit to the brand often is intangible or at least hard to quantify,” said Garret Duncan, strategy director at creative shop Made Thought.

As for Mel in particular, it’s unclear what changed at Dollar Shave Club to shift the brand away from the publication. “[Dollar Shave Club] tried to exhaust all options before making the decision to cease publication,” said the spokesperson. “We remain committed to doing everything we can to support them in the transition.”

Mel’s site averaged just under 1 million unique visitors per month in 2020, according to Comscore. It did, however, face a steep decrease in unique visitors in February this year, falling 58% from more than 1 million visitors in February 2020 to fewer than 450,000 visitors in February 2021. 

Until recently, this audience number did not really matter from a monetization perspective, since the magazine does not sell advertising or subscriptions, But Mel had started to get into paid newsletters earlier this month, representing the branded magazine’s first foray into paid content, according to a report by Adweek.

And from a media buyer’s perspective, there are brand safety concerns around the content that Mel publishes, with articles that cover everything from sex to personal health care. Because of that, keyword blocklists could definitely hinder the brand’s attempt at programmatic monetization.  

“This editorial team clearly takes an unabashed approach to being male focused and [isn’t] afraid to tackle edgy subjects or fresh angles — that’s really not going to be right for every brand out there,” said Greg James, global chief strategy officer at Havas Media. “For some brands, context in more ‘grown up’ areas might be beneficial and appropriate. For planners and buyers it’s a ‘tread with care’ message.”

Leaving a lasting mark

What stands out about Mel as a branded publication is that despite being primarily funded by early DTC mover Dollar Shave Club, (which was acquired by Unilever in 2016 for $1 billion), it doesn’t read as a branded publication, according to its fans and industry insiders. 

“Having worked on branded publications myself, it’s very rare that a publication like that can do the work that Mel did. Branded publications tend to be narrow and watered down, but Mel was an incredible, indie brand,” said Taylor Lorenz, a technology reporter with the New York Times. 

Lorenz said that her beat, which covers internet culture, was largely influenced by the stories that Mel was willing to publish, adding that it was often the first publication to cover topics that might have been considered “taboo” or “not mainstream enough” by larger legacy publications. 

“Their coverage of sex work and OnlyFans was so ground breaking and made it so that other publications could take that stuff seriously,” Lorenz said, adding that Mel was one of the first publications to cover TikTok star Charli D’Amelio. “Things there would percolate into big national stories.”

Those stories were incredibly important to readers as well.

“As smaller, niche outlets like Mel Magazine close, marginalized communities suffer,” said Charles Girard, a trans man and self-proclaimed “big fan” of Mel. “I loved how Mel Magazine, a publication created explicitly to investigate masculinity and manhood, unapologetically published unique articles about trans masculinity.”

The editors’ willingness to explore these topics created a “haven” for freelancers and aspiring writers, according to freelancer Jordan Hoffman. “Mel wasn’t my main gig, but I loved it because it wasn’t my main gig. There was no idea that was too nuts to pitch,” he said.

While Hoffman primarily covers film, he said that he was able to cover movies that were way too niche for most publications, like why a 7.5-hour long Hungairan movie was worth watching, as well as covering topics completely unrelated, such as the origin of the party mix snack.

The other reason why Hoffman said Mel was one of his favorite outlets was because they paid their freelancers well thanks to the “deep pocket of Unilever behind them.” For a story Hoffman would classify as a “typical” assignment, he said Mel would pay him $350, where a publisher like The Guardian would pay closer to $250.  

Other reporters are expressing concern that what happened with Mel could be a trend felt across the industry.

Jack Crosbie, writer and co-owner of worker-owned collective media organization Discourse Blog, said that there are many publications, including legacy titles like the Washington Post and Time, that are owned by a single benefactor who are willing to operate a media company at a loss. And despite unions and diversified business models, they too, could be at risk.

“I want to work in an industry where the future of a publication like [Mel] isn’t determined by the whims of the board of directors of some direct-to-consumer brand. What they offer is worth more than the profit line that they provide,” said Crosbie.

We all know of colleagues pre-pandemic who curried favor with the boss; or groups of employees who always lunched or played golf together.

So, as early morning in-person chats over coffees and after-work happy hours between colleagues return, managers must keep their entire team in mind — including those they still only ever see on the computer screen.

“Those located away from the office or unable to find an excuse to get close to the leaders could be left out,” warned Kevin Wheeler, founder of The Future of Talent Institute in California. “Some people do not have the same opportunities to build a close relationship with an organization’s leaders.”

Wheeler said it is difficult for employees to raise concerns. “Proximity says it all — you need to be near managers and aware of what they are working on.”

So how do employers ensure that employees working remotely are treated the same as in-person, office-based workers?

Employers can avoid potential problems by continuing to use collaboration tools such as Slack. And when physical meetings are held, remote workers should be included via a video link and encouraged to keep on their cameras.

Malcolm Manswell, head of marketing at the Los Angeles-based record company CMG The Label, founded by rapper Yo Gotti, agreed remote workers could be overlooked but said many people can be more difficult to manage remotely.

“Things can fall through the cracks and it is harder to manage the process of projects if someone isn’t able to get clarity right away or if communication isn’t airtight with regards to details,” Manswell said. “I’ve seen this happen a bunch over the past year and it is extremely detrimental to a business.”

In this new climate, leaders and managers will need to be more diligent in communicating exactly what they need and when they need it by when it comes to project management, according to Manswell.

In many ways, the pandemic has leveled the playing field between those who preferred to work in the office and those who wanted to be at home.

Rebekah Wallis, director of people at Ricoh U.K., part of the global office and IT services group, said that those who perhaps perpetuated the proximity bias before Covid-19 have since found themselves in the same remote working situation as their colleagues. It has become the norm to see a colleague’s home life as a very real and tangible aspect that does not negatively impact someone’s work.

“In all likelihood, going to the office will be seen as an event and a place people go to for a particular purpose rather than every day,” said Wallis. “With this shifting mindset, it is likely the mentality that favors output over input will continue. This will reduce proximity bias due to our collective experience of home working.” 

However, some are fearful a hybrid office could create an unconscious bias between pay scales as well as promotion opportunities, including Ali Shalfrooshan, head of international assessment at consultancy PSI, a company of psychologists and HR experts.

“Companies need to evaluate their inclusiveness and build in processes designed to level things up between remote and office workers,” he said. “This starts with managers and directors leading from the front, and including home workers in meetings, strategic planning and recruitment.”

At award-winning business-to-business PR agency GingerMay, founder Victoria Usher has already put in place plans to avoid proximity bias.

“To ensure all team members have the opportunity to fully participate in client work and campaigns, we plan to compile agendas for meetings well ahead of time,” she said. This should mean everyone in the team, whether they’re at home or in the office, can gather their thoughts, contribute their discussion points to the agenda and secure an allocated spot to share them in the meeting.

“This also gives individuals the chance to indicate if they’re interested in a particular role before decisions are finalized, ensuring that no one gets missed out because of their work location,” she added.

A full half of small publishers plan to rely more on non-advertising sources of revenue when third-party cookies are phased out at the end of 2021, according to a survey Digiday conducted in the first quarter of 2021. Digiday asked 114 publishing professionals how their organizations were responding to the changes Google is making to the digital ad ecosystem.  

That’s compared to about 30% of publishers that generate more than $50 million in annual revenue and a similar percentage of publishers that generate between $10 million and $50 million in annual revenue. 

While the media business has looked different for bigger and smaller publishers for years, the coming changes may mark the unofficial end of a long, futile struggle for publishers to turn digital advertising into a sustainable stream of revenue. More than two decades after the first banner ad was sold, digital advertising has grown so competitive, and so complex, that small publishers are beginning to disengage from it.  

Most cannot hire the talent needed to stay at the bleeding edges of programmatic advertising. Many do not have the development resources required to meet the market’s changing brand safety and viewability standards. 

And none can, or will ever be able to, offer the scale necessary to attract many direct buyers. 

And so, after years of being scolded by Google and different trade groups for being too reliant on print advertising, many of the smallest publishers are instead admitting that they have brought knives to a gunfight, where the largest combatants have fielded entire battalions of robot soldiers. 

“The big tech platforms and the mega publishers have the resources to swim in these waters,” said Ken Harding, senior managing director and global publishing leader of FTI Consulting. “Everyone else is floating along, and they’ll take what they can get…maybe you plug in where you can, you get your $1.15 CPM, but you’re not going to invest.” 

While many small publishers spent years watching expectantly as their digital ad revenues grew from a small base, even that promise has begun to fade. Harding said that, in recent years, smaller clients have actually begun to see their digital ad revenues decline, with last year’s coronavirus shock delivering the toughest blow yet. 

Faced with the prospect of having to turn around a declining revenue stream, or invest in an area like subscriptions, “the question is: ‘How much do we want to invest in something we can’t control?’” Harding said. 

In theory, digital advertising ought to be easier to sell because there is less friction in the connections between audience, publisher and advertiser. In practice, particularly at the local level, publishers have had trouble drumming up interest in their inventory, either among the small businesses who remain comfortable buying print ads or among national advertisers who are too busy to bother setting up dozens of deals with smaller outlets. 

The changes looming on the horizon will exacerbate that dynamic even more. 

“Without third-party cookies and targeting, they don’t have the scale to compete,” said Fran Wills, the CEO of the Local Media Consortium, a trade group that negotiates preferred rates with vendors and platforms for over 5,000 local news publisher sites. “They aren’t necessarily engineers or digital experts, nor do they have the time or the resources to keep up.” 

Wills says that a growing number of LMC members have begun asking for a managed service that would allow them to wash their hands of managing their own digital advertising. 

The LMC took a tentative step in that direction in the first quarter of 2021, launching the pilot phase of a product called NewsPassID, a single sign-on technology meant to provide a foundation of first party data for an ad network set to launch later this year. 

Wills said a number of working groups will use the pilot phase to determine, in part, how to adapt NewsPassID to make it easy enough for even the smallest, most strapped members to implement it. 

But even if the challenges in digital advertising are being felt most acutely by small publishers now, they are not the only ones looking for relief. 

“More and more we’re seeing bigger and bigger publishers working with us, because it’s so hard,” said Paul Bannister, the chief strategy officer of Cafe Media. “It’s all hard and it’s getting harder.” 

That’s why Digiday Media’s “Amazon U: Amazon Beyond Search” event brought four industry insiders together to share current best practices, case studies and tips on how to make Amazon work for your brand in 2021. This was the first of three events focusing on different parts of the Amazon ecosystem.

The takeaways will be different for every brand. If you’re newer to Amazon — or simply behind the curve — your action plan may revolve around optimizing your presence and getting to grips with the full scope of what the Amazon ecosystem has to offer. From there, you’ll want to develop an Amazon-specific ad strategy that you can iterate as you measure, learn and retarget. If Amazon is already an integral part of your mix, pay attention to the insights our speakers shared about the new opportunities that are emerging within Amazon, and how their tactics and recommendations may shift in the year ahead.

Price Glomski, evp of digital commerce at PMG, noted that many marketers and advertisers have a love-hate relationship with Amazon, but while there’s always cause for frustration, he said there’s a lot to be excited about right now. With an enormous user base, Amazon already offers dependable display formats and an array of exciting emerging solutions from OTT and Twitch to shoppable Amazon Live streams, dynamic e-commerce ads and voice actionable ads. That portfolio is only going to grow, so get your brand on the front foot and ready to embrace the ever-evolving Amazon juggernaut. 

Here is a crash course in how Amazon advertising experts are approaching the 500-pound gorilla.

If it wasn’t already clear, one thing many brands have learned over the past year is that Amazon is so much more than a revenue stream. It’s more than just a marketplace, but also a necessary advertising channel as well as brand building tool. 

Amazon has a direct impact on everything the brand does elsewhere. “Most brands that we work with never look at this and it seems really odd to me,” EVP’s Price Glomski said. “Amazon could make up 40% of your gross demand, or in some cases it may make up 2% of your gross demand, but … because Amazon owns 46% of the retail market, you have to look at these together.” 

For many consumers, Amazon search, product detail pages (PDPs) and reviews will be the first touchpoint for sales – millions of sales – that will be completed elsewhere. “That’s why it’s really important to put [Amazon] at the front and center when you’re thinking of new product launches, when you’re thinking about research, when you’re thinking about how it impacts your digital ecosystem,” said Ekta Chopra, Chief Digital Officer at Elf Cosmetics.  

A consumer’s journey may start on Amazon and cross over to a purchase in your brand’s brick-and-mortar store. And if it doesn’t, that’s fine too. Chopra said Elf is agnostic about where the consumer ultimately makes their purchase. “We focus on showing up as a brand consistently across every single touch point, rather than dictating where the consumer should shop,” Chopra said. “Every time they do shop and we can get that data, we use that data to improve our journey, our creative and our storytelling.”

There’s growing buzz around some of the new opportunities emerging within the Amazon ecosystem. For one, brands are looking at Amazon Live and its shoppable livestreams. This is set to be a new frontier for the influencer industry, with explosive potential across all product categories. Chefs like Carla Hall, for example, have hosted well-received Amazon Live shows, and more brands are playing around with these nascent programs. 

Brands are particularly curious about how they can use Twitch as a platform towards building strong relationships with Gen Z audiences. Ekta Chopra said Elf is thinking about Twitch and the initiatives the cosmetic brand has taken, such as partnering with one of the platform’s star gamers, Lufu. 

Beyond partnering on individual streams, plans are now afoot for an Elf channel on Twitch. “We’re not treating it as a gaming opportunity,” Chopra said. “It’s a live streaming opportunity, it’s an opportunity to engage with your community in a new and innovative way.” 

One common thread at the summit was the importance of laying solid foundations before unleashing your ad dollars. EVP’s Glomski said taking care of the basics first is a must for “endemic” brands (those selling on Amazon). “If your product display pages are broken, if your brand store isn’t enforcement informed, you have a ton of unauthorized resellers in the market, nothing’s optimized, it’s going to break down,” Glomski said.

Julie Weitzner, EVP at Dentsu’s Sellwin Consulting, shared some excellent tips on conducting an audit of your PDPs and brand store. They include: 

• Checking that titles are SEO-optimized and your page is fleshed out with strong images and video.
• Ensure that you’re winning the buy box by effectively managing inventory, Prime offerings and pricing. 
• Don’t overlook the value of A+ content. “This is your chance to shine below the fold and really bring the brand to life,” Weitzner said. 
• Brands might want to prepare FAQs to pre-emptively address common queries, and be sure you’ve exceeded the threshold of 15 verified reviews that PDPs need in order to be promoted. 
• Brand stores need to be optimized just as much as PDPs. “It’s your one chance to show your entire product portfolio,” Weitzner said. “Really vary up your assortment and do it in a stylized manner that brings your brand assets to life.” 

Glomski, however, noted that it’s not necessarily a good thing to list your entire catalog, as Amazon has encouraged brands to do. A more curated approach, he explained, will benefit companies offering a larger range of products, particularly for consumer electronics and softline brands. 

An growing individual brand can only know so much about the Amazon ecosystem. The speakers underlined the importance of having a clear focus on Amazon and identifying partners with the expertise to drive results for your brand. “Unless you’re spending over $10,000 a month on Amazon, you need to most likely be partnering with somebody to help support that,” Glomski said.

That doesn’t mean you can simply hand Amazon strategy passively off to an agency to take care of. Elf’s Chopra said that a brand’s agency partner needs to be “embedded” in the brand’s business to achieve maximum success. “They should be coordinating with operations to marketing to brand to creative so they have access to everything,” Chopra said. Additionally, somebody on the brand side must be assigned to focus on Amazon operations. 

The Amazon universe is vast, and it’s easy to get lost amid all the advertising options at your disposal within the platform. What’s right for each brand will differ, but our speakers offered some high-level insights on outlining and developing a strategy. 

• Adam Epstein, VP of Growth at Perpetua, recommended advertisers activate using both DSP and sponsored display if they have the budget to do both. Broadly speaking, he said DSP is better suited for activities at the top and middle of the funnel including custom creative and video, competitor conquesting and retargeting. 
• Glomski was bullish on the effectiveness of display formats and over-the-top (OTT), although said the latter can be challenging for brands who don’t have commercial creative. 
• Glomski also recommended brands devote around 10% of their total ad budget to experimental spending — allocating a recommended minimum of around $10,000 if they want to see meaningful results. Where your brand spends that experimental budget depends on your priorities. For example, OTT and Twitch are better suited to driving awareness. 
• However, if you’re more concerned with what Glomski called “owning your aisle,” or nudging consumers towards conversion, lean on Amazon’s range of product display ads.

Glomski discussed one consumer electronics client and how it approached the annual deals day. This brand decided to blanket the Amazon ecosystem over a 48-hour period with a mix of DSP, search, OTT and Kindle Fire advertising. 

“We saw the product everywhere,” Glomski said, and the results were astounding: over 500,000 visits to the brand’s store page in the runup to Prime Day and an over 40% increase in year-on-year sales on the day of the event itself. 

Glomski attributed those impressive results partly to the experiment with OTT. “We saw it crush,” he said. “Consumers weren’t ready to see that type of product that within OTT and when they did, it became a very highly engaged piece of creative … purchases were made directly and, and just the acceleration of that product across many markets was pretty exceptional.”

Sponsored Display Product Targeting Ads

Amazon launched this sub-category of display ads in early 2020. The unique feature of product targeting ads is their strategic placement: these ads feature the brand’s products in contexts where consumers will likely compare them directly alongside rival products. For example, product targeting ads are served alongside user reviews and on PDPs. Adam Epstein of Perpetua described these as the “hot ad of 2020,” and enthused about improved capabilities coming down the pike this year.

“Make sure that you’re enforcing competitor arbitrage … protect your own product by going in targeting your own ASINs and products. That is an easy win, it’s inexpensive and it converts.” – Price Glomski, EVP of Digital Commerce at PMG

Sponsored display product targeting gives your brand an opportunity to compete toe-to-toe for consumers’ eyeballs by placing your ads on your competitors’ PDPs. But if you’re not careful, your competitors will do the same to you. Fortunately, you can shut down the possibility of losing consumers to this kind of leakage by occupying the ad space on your PDPs with your own ads. “Defense is the new offense,” Glomski said.

“The brand presence has to be consistent with everything else that you’re doing with your content, your storytelling. Don’t treat it as one of those things that you just put it in there. Whatever you do for your own channels, you should be thinking about how to incorporate that into Amazon as well.” 

– Ekta Chopra, Chief Digital Officer at Elf Cosmetics

A brand’s Amazon presence doesn’t exist in a silo. It’s an extension of the way your brand presents across your owned channels and every other space you operate in, and your PDPs, brand store and advertising should reflect that. As brands look to engage new audiences, like Gen Z, Chopra emphasized the importance of making sure that your Amazon spaces communicate your brand purpose in clear terms. 

“Make sure that when it comes to the measurement, everything doesn’t get measured on ROAS.” – Julie Weitzner, evp at Sellwin Consulting, Dentsu

Developing a sophisticated measurement system capable of capturing data at every point of contact along the sales funnel gives a brand sophisticated tools for tweaking its ad strategy at a granular level. Weitzner pointed out that each customer’s Amazon login is the key to a first-party data trove like no other, covering everything from buying patterns, delivery locations and search habits — offering brands insights that allow them to go far beyond ROAs.

“I texted somebody saying we’re safe because we have IP address and IP address is going to be fine — unless somebody was to do something totally crazy like go and obfuscate everybody’s IP addresses,” said Carter. 

Within a week of that text message being sent, Google — the same company almost single-handedly prying away the third-party cookie — announced on Jan. 25 a proposal called Gnatcatcher to disguise people’s IP addresses to prevent companies from using the internet’s version of a phone number as a means of tracking people. “If this catches on, then even IP address is potentially going to be something that is not necessarily a guarantee anymore,” said Carter.

The elimination of the IP address as an identifier for CTV advertising could have a significant impact on a growing slice of the ad market. While it’s unclear how many CTV ad dollars are spent in connection with IP addresses, the IP address has been “the most common identifier for CTV advertising today,” according to Verizon Media chief business officer Iván Markman, and “the core of what is used for programmatic targeting” for CTV ad campaigns, said one agency executive. According to eMarketer, advertisers in the U.S. are expected to spend $2.37 billion on programmatically purchased CTV ads in 2021, more than double the estimated amount spent in 2020. 

However, that growth is somewhat contingent on the IP address’s preservation as an identifier. Between Google’s Gnatcatcher proposal and a groundswell of privacy legislation like the California Consumer Privacy Act, which considers the IP address to be personally identifiable information, the long-term availability of the IP address for advertising purposes is in doubt. “There’s near consensus that it’s going to go away. Some people think it’s going away in two years, some in five years. But everyone has some confidence that it’s going away,” said Jesse Math, vp of client strategy, planning and platforms and OTT lead at performance marketing agency Tinuiti.

The expected elimination of CTV’s predominant identifier has companies working to wean themselves away from the IP address. While the IP address remains the “dominant signal” in its device graph, Cadent also uses an extended version of people’s ZIP codes to connect household devices, Carter said. Meanwhile, Comscore sought to avoid the situation altogether when it opted not use the IP address for its CTV audience targeting product, which it introduced in January 2019. “When we made the decision, at that point, most of the industry was IP address-based as the CTV identifier, whereas we went the route of [advertising-specific identifiers provided by CTV platforms] and device IDs,” said Rachel Gantz, gm of activation solutions at Comscore.

As Gantz implied, alternatives to the IP address exist. As with the web, the CTV ecosystem’s alternate identifiers are primarily the advertising-specific IDs provided by CTV and smart TV platforms, as well as first-party data like email addresses that streaming services collect from registered users. But the device makers’ identifiers are limited to their respective devices and do not provide a singular means of connecting multiple devices for cross-device tracking, and connecting the individual streamers’ footprints to the broader digital ad ecosystem would require a means of bridging those first-party fiefdoms.

The alternate identifiers being pushed to fill the third-party cookie’s void, like Unified ID 2.0 and LiveRamp’s IdentityLink, would seem best suited to cover the IP address’s eventual absence. They are being designed to do that, but to do so successfully will require widespread adoption among ad buyers and sellers as well as CTV platforms and ad tech intermediaries. And that may be hard to come by. 

“CTV providers are already fairly reluctant to pass stable identifiers to buyers. So even though there’s a lot of logins, I don’t think UID 2.0 is going to be super popular in CTV because publishers are very reticent to share login information across the buy side,” said Tom Kershaw, CTO of ad tech firm Magnite, who believes that publishers’ first-party data will be the core of CTV advertising. However, that leaves open the question of how to connect that data.

“The industry has to move to some type of unified ID across publishers, but that does not exist today,” Tierney Wilson, svp of client strategy and consulting at media agency January Digital.

Launched in May 2020 for the U.S. and Australia markets, end-to-end marketplace Publicist allows brands to connect with talent in PR and marketing for freelance positions. Users are paid via either a month-to-month retainer or a project-based payment, with Publicist collecting a 20% fee.

All talent on the website and upcoming mobile app is vetted for criteria including years of experience, skills, references, former brand clients and location, using a scraper and staff. Roughly one-fourth of those that apply to be on the platform are approved to list their profiles. Brands can find former executives from major companies such as Estée Lauder Companies, L’Oréal, Net-a-Porter and Glossier. 

“We have seen this acceleration and push to freelance, because media companies, agencies and brands have downsized a lot of marketing teams,” said Lara Vandenberg, founder and CEO of Publicist. “A few years ago, 80% of a brand’s team was full-time and 20% was freelance. In the next couple of years, it’ll be closer to 50/50.”

In a Harvard Business Review survey of C-suite executives, half said it was “highly possible” that their permanent full-time workforce would be “much smaller” in the future, two-thirds said they expect to increasingly rely on temporary talent. It also found that there are now over 330 talent-finding platforms for highly skilled workers, and almost all Fortune 500 companies use at least one. 

Emma Paton, co-founder of Net-a-Porter and a consultant for luxury brands, used the platform to find a brand client to work with on a five-month project via her new freelance consultancy. 

“It felt like a great way of trying to understand what might work for me,” she said. Her experience at Net-a-Porter combined with her later work at her own agency have given her “multiple tools, a wider skill set and a better perspective, overall, to be able to deliver on what I’m doing now in my freelance consultancy capacity,” she said. 

Brands can use the platform by creating a project, which involves listing out the dates and pay along with the job description and any requirements. Talent profiles include both descriptions of experience and a list of the brands they have worked with in the past, which can be searched on the platform. 

In addition to seasoned former executives, Publicist is also “seeing a lot of Gen Zs that will probably never go into a full-time job,” said Vandenberg. “Gone are the days that people want to work for a brand for 30 years or so.”

So far, 80% of the talent on the platform are individual freelancers and 20% are agencies. Most new applicants have come to the platform via referrals, and Vandenberg said that the company plans to recruit more agencies for the platform. The company has over 3,000 marketing and PR experts currently listed on the platform and 450 companies.

Publicist is also part of the ongoing digitization of the industry that has been fast-tracked by Covid-19.

“The pandemic has really accelerated this by a few years,” said Vandenberg. “On the one hand, we’re seeing talent that has been at companies like L’Oréal or Diageo for 30 years, and as a result of the pandemic, they found themselves as first-time freelancers and consultants. They’ve come to our platform almost as a landing pad.” 

In addition, the platform has opened up opportunities for professionals from a wide range of geographic areas, especially because of the nature of remote work during Covid. 

“Before the pandemic, we saw localization was a really important thing for someone. If it was an L.A. brand, maybe they’d want an L.A. agency,” said Vandenberg. But she said that during the pandemic, 95% of clients mark job location as remote, proving “remote is here to stay, and people have transitioned to not really caring where that person is,” she said. 

But there are drawbacks to relying on freelance work for both brands and talent, said Emily Parr, founder of PR agency Poke PR. For brands, especially in the startup phase, “It’s important for them to be getting consistent buzz, press, stories, interviews and all of these things — not just around the time that there’s a launch or some sort of announcement,” she said. And for professionals living the freelance life, “It’s obviously a hustle, always trying to find your next gig.”

In Paton’s view, both in-house and contract-based support are “still extraordinarily important” for brands. “No one knows the brand quite like you do when you’re there every single day, working across teams. A 360[-degree] integration across all of the different departments when you are in-house is vital,” she said.

“But what consultancies and freelancers can offer is a very different perspective to support that role. So I wouldn’t say it’s an either [one] or [the other], but instead the marriage of both. A brand doesn’t necessarily have to trade one for the other.” 

The upfront goes upstream

Historically streaming has taken a backseat to traditional TV in the annual upfront market. This year, however, streaming will be sitting shotgun as it gets closer to seizing the wheel. But the question is whether TV network owners will use streaming to retain their grip on the upfront market or whether streaming-only sellers have an opening to take more control.

The key hits:

• Heading into this year’s upfront, agency executives are looking to push TV network owners to fix the traditional TV side of the marketplace and streaming will be central to that tug of war.
• As ad buyers advocate for the networks to acknowledge in their viewership guarantees that linear viewership is eroding, they expect the networks to push back by prodding advertisers to redirect dollars to the networks’ streaming properties.
• The continued shift of money from traditional TV to streaming creates an opportunity for those dollars to not only go to the networks’ streaming properties but opens up advertisers’ wallets even more to connected TV platform owners like Amazon and Roku as well as YouTube, which has a growing CTV audience and a streaming pay-TV service.

The TV network owners “think the shift will be to their digital delivery and streaming businesses. But it may just jump over and head to Roku and Amazon and YouTube,” said one agency executive. 

To be clear, the TV network owners’ streaming pitches will be the strongest they have been in this year’s upfront. Once WarnerMedia debuts HBO Max’s ad-supported tier in June, the major TV network groups including Discovery, Disney, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia will all have their respective ad-supported streamers rolled out and ready to pitch. 

However, agency executives wonder how much streaming inventory the networks will actually have on offer. Between the relatively low number of ads the streamers will air per hour of programming — which the agency executives believe is a smart move — and the fact that many of the streamers require people to pay to access even their ad-supported tiers, agency executives are having a hard time assessing how many people they can actually expect to reach through the networks’ streamers during the duration of their next upfront deals. “I think we’re probably a year away from the full impact [of the networks’ standalone streamers on the upfront negotiations]. HBO Max and Discovery+ will still be pretty nascent. Peacock is further along and seems to be growing rapidly, but it’s hard to tell,” said a second agency executive. 

Another question among agency executives is to what extent the networks’ streaming viewership will be incremental to their linear viewership. “How much [the networks’ streaming properties] will cannibalize from their existing linear offering is really hard for us to understand, project and figure out,” said a third agency executive.

Amazon, Roku and YouTube, by contrast, don’t suffer from a lack of scale. That scale initially helped these digital-only players to crack into the upfront marketplace in the first place when the primary option for reaching people who don’t watch traditional TV but stream TV-quality programming was Hulu. Now, with the broad acceptance among advertisers that their money needs to follow audiences and move to CTV, these companies are in position for a windfall. “They’re very important parts of the marketplace at this point. They all can deliver really significant audiences and have strong data platforms,” said a fourth agency executive.

However, the current volume and growth trajectory of the inventory these digital-only platforms are able to sell can work against them. Amazon and Roku each claim to reach more than 50 million people each month on their respective CTV platforms, and YouTube said that more than 120 million people streamed the platform’s traditional videos or its streaming pay-TV service on a TV screen in December. That expansive scale is leading to a variation of the increment question: What is the overlap both among the platforms’ audiences and between the people the platforms can reach and those who the networks’ streamers attract?

“In a way, their competition isn’t television anymore,” said the fourth agency executive of Amazon, Roku and YouTube. “I don’t think the buy side, and to some degree the client-side needs to hear that TV ratings are down and we should move money to connected TV. That story is loud and clear. They need to focus their story more on why is YouTube CTV more valuable than Amazon and Roku versus Amazon. That is a marketplace in and of itself.”

Ironically, for how flat the streaming ad playing field is becoming between TV networks and digital-only platforms, there seems to be a risk of it reinforcing some separation as both sides’ streaming pitches develop. Advertisers may be moving more money to streaming, but some seem to be making a distinction between the money they are purely putting into streaming and the money that is part of their overall TV spending, the bulk of which continues to go to linear TV.

“Linear TV dollars are going to come down somewhat. They will go to streamers first and then devices second,” said a fifth agency executive, referring to streaming services and CTV platforms, respectively. As for why streamers first, “Streamers are how you ensure decent pricing for linear,” said this executive.

Confessional

“There will be a reduction in viewership this summer because people will be outside and vaccinated. So we shouldn’t go bonkers on content.”

— Entertainment executive on ramping up production make up for last year

Stay tuned: Connected TV platform war

Amazon, Roku and Samsung may operate the most popular connected TV platforms, but competition is coming.

On March 25, Vizio went public to raise money to fund the expansion of its smart TV platform, and on March 29, Comcast announced a deal to distribute Disney+ and ESPN+ on its Xfinity Flex CTV platform. Meanwhile, LG is stepping up its CTV ad pitch after the smart TV maker acquired TV data provider Alphonso in January and rebranded that business as LG Ads in March.

However, these companies are facing an even steeper uphill climb to keep up with their top competition. In the fourth quarter of 2020, Amazon overtook Samsung as the top CTV device seller worldwide, with 12.1% percent of CTV device sales in the period compared to Samsung’s 10.9%, according to Strategy Analytics. Sony’s and Nintendo’s gaming consoles put them in the third and fourth positions, with LG ranked fifth with 5.9% of Q4 sales. Roku ranked sixth at 5.8%, but the company also powers some of the Smart TVs sold by TCL, which ranked seventh at 5.7% and may have pushed the share of Roku-powered CTV devices closer to Amazon’s and Samsung’s echelon.

Companies like Vizio, Comcast and LG have another challenge to contend with, though: their respective footprints. Comcast’s Xfinity Flex is only available to people who pay for Comcast’s internet service, meanwhile, Vizio’s and LG’s CTV platforms are limited to their respective smart TVs. Amazon and Roku, by contrast, sell CTV devices that can be plugged into just about any TV, dumb or smart, and also come built into some Smart TVs. Meanwhile, Samsung has the same limitations as Vizio and LG but has a head start when it comes to its share of the smart TV market.

For its part, Vizio is counting on people choosing its cheaper smart TVs and opting to use its smart TV platform rather than plug in another CTV device. In the past year, when people have streamed video on Vizio’s Smart TVs, they have done so via Vizio’s own smart TV platform more than 50% of the time, said said Mike O’Donnell, chief revenue officer for Vizio’s platform business.

To increase that percentage, the company has been building up its free, ad-supported streaming TV service WatchFree. But the FAST market has quickly become saturated and competitive to the point that Amazon’s IMDb TV and Roku’s The Roku Channel are investing in exclusive and original series. Asked whether Vizio plans to invest in original programming for WatchFree, O’Donnell said the company is focused on adding content providers that are creating their own original programming (but not necessarily exclusively for Vizio’s platform) and is taking “a wait-and-see approach” to adding its own original programming.

Numbers don’t lie

5%: Percentage of televised sports coverage in 2019 that focused on women’s sports.

$75 billion: How much money the NBA will seek for the rights to air its games after its current deals expire in 2025.

50 million: Number of total new streaming video subscriptions that people in the U.S. will purchase this year.

34%: Percentage of the time people spent streaming ad-supported and linear video in January, compared to “other” video like subscription-based programming.

$2 million: How much money ABC is asking advertisers to pay for 30-second ad slots during next month’s Academy Awards broadcast.

Trend watch: Streaming pay-TV struggles

The pay-TV business isn’t only struggling in the traditional sense. Streaming pay-TV providers are also having a hard time, leading the successful ones to continue to raise their prices and others to shut down.

• On March 29, T-Mobile announced that it will shut down TVision less than five months after the streaming pay-TV service launched.
• In January 2021, AT&T stopped selling new subscriptions to its AT&T TV Now streaming pay-TV service.
• In the fourth quarter of 2020, Dish Network’s Sling TV lost 118,000 subscribers, marking the first period in which it posted a drop in subscribers.
• In December 2020, Hulu increased the monthly subscription price to its streaming pay-TV service by $10 to $65 for its lowest-priced tier, its third price hike since January 2019.
• In June 2020, YouTube raised the monthly price of its streaming pay-TV service by $15 to $65.
• In January 2020, Sony shut down its PlayStation Vue streaming pay-TV service.

What we’ve covered

How Jeremi Gorman brought collaboration to the forefront at Snap:

• Snap’s chief business officer has married the company’s product and sales teams and hired heavy hitters since joining in 2018.
• Gorman’s tenure has correlated with Snap’s first increase in average ad prices since the company went public.

Read more about Jeremi Gorman here.

Why brands like Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch are creating TV shows:

• Brands are trying to keep people’s attention as they tune into more ad-free programming.
• Shopify and Nike have created shows that will stream on Disney+ and HBO Max, respectively.

Read more about brands’ TV shows here.

How PBS NewsHour is adapting its digital video programming strategy to a quieter news cycle:

• This year PBS NewsHour plans to roll out new video series across platforms including YouTube and Instagram.
• The aim is to broaden the program’s programming slate beyond its core live streams that are very news-reliant.

Read more about PBS NewsHour here.

Fitness brands look to organic, short-form video to connect with remote consumers:

• Brands like RXBar and Blink Fitness are using Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to make up for in-person activity shifting online.
• While filling a near-term need, the shift could become a long-term strategy.

Read more about fitness brands’ short-form content here.

What we’re reading

Netflix’s subscriber advantage:
Disney’s and WarnerMedia’s streaming services may be on pace to close the subscriber gap to Netflix, but the subscriber count comparisons aren’t exactly apples to apples, according to The Information. Some subscribers pay different prices because of where they live or how they signed up for a subscription. For example, a subscriber who purchased their subscription through an intermediary like a pay-TV provider isn’t as valuable because that intermediary takes a cut of the subscription fee and may also withhold the subscriber’s contact information, making it so that the streamer is really only renting the subscriber. Netflix, by comparison, has taken pains to sell subscriptions directly and has the benefit of selling subscriptions for so long that it’s been able to raise its prices.

Roku’s original programming plans:
Roku isn’t diving into exclusive original programming so much as dipping a toe, according to Bloomberg. The company has acquired Quibi’s programming library as well as This Old House, but it isn’t yet writing massive checks for new shows. That prudence squares with Roku’s previous aversion to original programming altogether. It also befits the fact that Roku would be investing in original programming to reap revenue from advertising alone, which isn’t as lucrative as recurring subscription revenue, especially when combined with ad revenue. Another explanation for the caution may be that Roku doesn’t want to upset the companies it depends on to supply The Roku Channel with programming and Roku’s CTV platform with apps — companies that Roku also asks to spend money to advertise on its platform — by quickly becoming a more direct competitor.

Hollywood’s diversity progress:
The entertainment industry has taken steps in the past year to create more opportunities for people of color, but those opportunities have not necessarily turned into jobs, according to the Los Angeles Times. Programs like #StartWith8Hollywood have helped people of color gain mentors and entrance into fellowship programs. However, people of color still have a hard time being considered for jobs by white people that continue to dominate positions of power in the industry. To truly close the diversity gap in Hollywood requires following through on the progress these early efforts have initiated.

Behind every flashy advertising campaign, there are a million and one decisions that were made on the backend. The innovative and agile choices that ladder up to launch often come from the voices the industry does not hear as often, from non-traditional skilled backgrounds or the business’s most technical sides. 

In the sections that follow, technology leaders at Xandr share the experiences and lessons throughout their lives that have shaped their thinking and decision-making — helping them to keep their teams and clients ahead.

Passionate teams that put in extra time bring customers in the door

“As a first-generation Asian American, I was born to parents who immigrated to pursue the American dream and always taught me and my siblings that hard work results in rewards,” said Jenny Leung, vice president and head of Technology Enablement at Xandr. “As part of that thinking, they required us to work after school and weekends at their restaurants. While I learned work ethic from my parents, who woke up at 5 a.m. most days and would not sleep until after 10 p.m. most evenings, the skills I learned on the floor of the restaurant were invaluable to my future career in strategy and operations.

“It starts with the customer: no matter the industry, customers are the center of the business,” she said. “Catering to them, understanding what they want from an experience, and treating them with respect is key to building a base, your reputation and for loyalty.

“Hiring great employees makes the difference here,” Leung continued. “Even though my parents worked around the clock, I learned that hiring well and engaging employees toward a shared mission is important. I also learned about what bad hiring does to your business and brand.

“Once these employees are in the door, it can quickly turn into the lunch rush hour,” added Leung. “Have you ever felt like you had too many hungry customers knocking on your door and not enough resources to accommodate? I learned about how to effectively figure out the critical path to getting customers in the door, fed and happy.”

The spirit of collaboration over competition

“We live in a world that continues to find ways to divide us,” said Moy Hayhurst. “Giving in to those tendencies in your workplace will only lead to misalignment, frustration and disengagement, especially in an ever-evolving industry like advertising technology.

“I grew up as a theater kid and learned at an early age that no one puts on a show alone,” she said. “There are many major roles that make the audience’s experience magical that you never see on stage. There are roles onstage that run the entire show and those that swoop in at the eleven o’clock spot and blow the house down. It takes all of those roles to create the overall spectacle. So, don’t tell partners ‘This is what I need from you.’ Instead, ask, ‘What can we accomplish together?’

“When you stop looking at partner teams as blockers or your adversaries, you open up a much more positive and inclusive working environment that focuses on cooperation to achieve outcomes,” Moy Hayhurst said. “That is not to say you won’t encounter disagreement or different personalities, but when you root those interactions in collaboration and not competition, you choose to change the tone and tenor of how you engage those issues and work together to find a solution.”

When challenges loom, turn into the wave

“Always seek out challenges, and to overcome each one, you need three things,” said Jung Manson, senior vice president, Global Technical Operations at Xandr. “To believe in your abilities, to partner with people who see your potential and will support you without handing success to you and to find an environment that will give you opportunities and obstacles, risks and rewards.

“It’s scary, and you may fail, but failure is good because you learn from it,” Manson said. “That’s the environment that will nurture you to grow and move forward. In the end, you have to believe that you can take these challenges on, no matter how scary. They rarely land at your feet, so seize them yourself!”

For tech teams: ‘Leave it better than you found it’

“I am one of the many immigrant women who moved to this country with many dreams,” said Mythili Maduraiveeran, senior software engineer and team lead at Xandr. “‘Leave it better than you found it’ is one of the principles that taught me a proactive mindset. This passion for making things better pushes me to not settle for anything less than giving my best, as I raise two young boys, train for marathons, give back to my community and build a career. I focus with perseverance, choosing not to compromise on one goal to achieve another.

“’Leave it better than you found it’ applies to the technology community as well,” Maduraiveeran added. “Our culture is more effective when we concentrate on what we can teach and learn from each other. With this practice ingrained in every interaction, I have thrived and grown to lead Xandr’s core billing engineering team, which processes billions of dollars with a persistent focus on investing in people and building great products.”

In each of the lessons and observations this team brings to bear, the underlying subject is problem-solving through working together and ensuring that all voices are heard. It is an approach that puts partnerships at the center of each project and one that turns clients and vendors into collaborators across industries.