Month: July 2021

One such business is Salesforce consulting partner and app development firm Traction on Demand. The business is in talks with a range of local businesses across the U.S. — from bike shops, cafes and restaurants to microbreweries and community halls — about how to pair up to deliver a workspace model that suits Traction’s staff needs and locations. 

The firm, which employs more than 1,000 people across the U.S., Canada and India, had eight offices prior to the coronavirus pandemic. It has since closed two of the smaller offices and the remaining six (in Vancouver, Nelson, Montreal, Toronto, Seattle and Jaipur), roughly 10,000 sq ft in capacity, will act as core collaboration centers for staff.

But from the fall, Traction will also add a range of smaller “shops” set up in areas which it has high numbers of employees. These will do the dual job of providing a work area for people who want additional flexibility and to work asynchronous hours, and supporting local businesses that are in need of extra business after spending the last year or so closed. With hybrid work models the new norm, footfall inside these eateries and other retailers isn’t likely to mimic the same patterns as before the pandemic. 

“These places aren’t full each day,” said Traction CEO Greg Malpass. “We want to partner with these local retailers and coffee shops and places for people to come together, and make sure there is accessible internet, and that there is enough stuff for people to get done what they need — laptops, strong Wifi and sockets — simple stuff. Then they can come and go as they please.” The aim is to help small businesses bring in a steady income for the space they already have but are underutilizing during the work week, he added. 

The last year has brought about a complete shift in how people balance work and lifestyle, to the point that requesting more flexibility is no longer a nice-to-have but a prerequisite for staying in a job for many. And with so many people expected to quit their jobs this summer — a trend that’s been dubbed “The Great Resignation” — onus is on employers to make their work cultures attractive to these new demands.

For Traction, that means creating local workspaces for its staff to congregate when they don’t want to be the office, but also don’t wish to work solely from home. Its shops will be geographically located where its staff can commute to by foot or bike. “We have given ourselves permission to find a better way to work that factors in what towns we want to live in, what lifestyles we want and need, what is sustainable environmentally and economically, and how the team in each location is made of the communities that are there,” said Malpass.  

Traction isn’t the only business that’s providing smaller workspaces in areas where a large percentage of its workforce lives. With most offices having gone entirely remote over the last year, city centers have become ghosts of their former selves. And while back-to-offce return plans are underway, most businesses are exploring new models which won’t involve having 100% capacity in their former premises.

A bunch have started to explore hub-and-spoke models. And a popular route is to pinpoint where large swathes of employees live and create smaller workspaces close by. 

NTT DATA, a global IT consulting firm, which has 130,000 employees globally, is also experimenting with a model which it has dubbed “hub cities” for its U.S. offices. The plan is to set up smaller hub workplaces which have been picked for their near proximity to both clients and staff in major metropolitan areas where it can also attract top talent, according to NTT DATA integration director Shaymaa Alashar.

The first hubs will launch in the fall. Employees will be able to see what desks colleagues have bagged when they log on to book their own desks and meeting rooms. The business is also exploring other uses of new technology, such as virtual receptionists.

“The pandemic created this time for everyone,” said Alashar. “Everyone’s going to remember the company they worked for when it happened, it’s one of those unique and important moments. Then how companies adapt and pivot to accommodate and make their employees feel important and critical [to the business] – I think that’s what’s going to help drive [us] forward into the future.”

Gotlieb told Digiday he’s long pushed for a more quantifiable way to make media decisions that goes beyond the use of cost-per-thousand viewers/users (CPM). “CPMs don’t reflect the value of any impression or media opportunity because they don’t gauge effectiveness of media,” he said.

A lifelong “quant guy” who has written code for buying and selling media since the 1970s, Gotlieb validated Adelaide’s hardware and software setup before putting up his money. “I don’t invest in anything I haven’t assessed thoroughly,” he said. (Gotlieb is also a board member of research firm Comscore.)

Kassan said he was impressed by Adelaide’s board of advisors, which include Clarizio, former Publicis exec Rishad Tobaccowala, former ARF head Jim Spaeth, marketing observer Bill Harvey, and research vets Alice Sylvester, Marshall Cohen and Howard Shimmel.

“There are a lot of important words in our industry that start with the letter T — transformation, technology, trust, etc. What Adelaide is doing really hits on transparency,” said Kassan, who’s also recently invested in Hudson MX, another tech firm developing products for agencies and marketers to reduce their media costs. “This is especially important knowing the way brands are more focused than ever on optimizing their media.”

Marc Guldimann, Adelaide’s CEO, said the company’s AU metric (which, not coincidentally, is also the symbol for gold) aims to focus on the opportunity for attention rather than the duration of attention, which is why he pushes hard against viewability as an evaluation standard. “Duration is a proxy for attention, but does it drive outcomes?” asked Guldimann. “If we gather enough information and input, eventually [AU] will be able to better predict outcomes.”

Advocates of attention metrics as a replacement for CPM-based evaluation have been vocal for a few years now. Key to securing traction in a marketing world that’s weary of wave after wave of new “solutions” from ad-tech vendors is education. “No one wants to transact on a currency they don’t understand,” said Guldimann, who noted that having Moat’s Goodhart on Adelaide’s advisory board is key, since Moat faced that very issue as it tried to get its solution adopted.

In the end, no matter how elegantly AU or any other metric can measure, calculate and optimize, Guldimann acknowledged that the creative process will ultimately determine the success of a campaign. “Media’s job is to create the opportunity for attention; it’s creative’s job to get that attention.”

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

What has been your experience as a woman in advertising and marketing post 2020? What made you want to have this conversation?

Executive 1: I don’t have something so egregious where it was a tipping point and I think that’s often the misconception, where you’re targeted as a woman of color. There [have been] many occasions over my career and my life where those microaggressions have presented themselves. I think this past year has probably been the first time where, at a high level, there’s been that acknowledgment that it exists. It’s clearly an evolution and nothing is going to be perfect, but there’s still so much work to do. People all of a sudden have all these responses or actions that they want to report on, and it calls into question the authenticity of what’s real — the convenience of it all now that you’re the hero and the ally. But where were you a year and a half ago?

Executive 2: I agree. There’s this great big rush like, “Look at us. We get it. We’re woke. Look at the DE&I leads we’ve got.” There’s also this public declaration of what we’re doing, why it’s important and resources groups for employees, we want to create safe spaces, and all of that is really good. But I still think it’s still missing a whole bunch of things — behavior that we’re just not tracking and choosing to ignore.

I think we’ve got to go deeper into the action areas to really see that change.

Why do you think these diversity offerings, publishing diversity stats, panels and thought pieces, seem inauthentic?

Executive 1: Because it’s easy. The hard work would be to ask the questions and really understand what would deliver that sense of belonging and inclusivity. Putting on a panel, writing a piece of thought leadership or putting something on your website, those are all relatively simple things to do. And you get that pat on your back.

Executive 2: [The hard work] is a much longer commitment over time and it’s uncomfortable. That means calling out people and holding them accountable to a certain set of behaviors when it’s going to disrupt a lot of things. People have to truly feel safe to come forward and share something about their manager without fear of it impacting their own prospects.

I think there’s some fear. For so many years, [inequalities] have been built up and it has given people advantages. And they don’t want to give that up because it upsets the whole balance of power. And it’s not up to the chief DE&I officer solely. It’s unrealistic to think that one person in one role can create that kind of long-term change.

So is this push for DE&I a fleeting moment in ad history or will the movement keep steam?

Executive 1: I think we’re seeing corporate social responsibility slowly being embedded into how we think and how we operate, even if organizations themselves have a lot to do. Still, it’s unavoidable in the conversation. I have reservations about leaders, from a CEO, CFO, CFO perspective, actually taking responsibility, accountability and ownership over changes that need to happen, and not just leaving it to the chief diversity officers in the organization. There’s still that air of ‘I’m doing enough. I’ve invested X amount, made these partnerships, hired all these people of color and look at my pie chart.’ I think that’s what’s going to have to be pushed to the next level.

Executive 2: I think the KPI there is we don’t need to have an equal payday or a Woman’s Day or Pride Month, and we should absolutely celebrate the history of why we got there, but not call it out because it just is [the norm].

In the past two weeks, the AG’s office sent at least 10 and possibly more than 20 companies letters that call on them to honor the GPC, according to four lawyers with clients in the digital publishing and advertising industry.

“We all have clients who got some [letters],” said Alysa Hutnik, partner and chair of the privacy and security practice at law firm Kelley Drye and Warren, speaking on behalf of a small group of lawyers she communicates with regarding privacy regulations.

“[The letters] are implying that companies must follow the GPC signal,” said another lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity. Despite previous doubt among some ad firms, some of the new letters make it clear that the use of data passed among third-parties for behavioral advertising is indeed a data sale under the CCPA in the eyes of the state’s attorney general, according to the lawyers.

A spokesperson for AG Bonta’s office declined to confirm that the letters were sent, but told Digiday, “Enforcement of the CCPA hit its one-year anniversary in July and enforcement continues on a regular basis.”

“Under law, [GPC] must be honored by covered businesses as a valid consumer request to stop the sale of personal information,” stated a July 14 update to CCPA-related frequently asked questions on California’s Department of Justice website.

GPC is a browser-based opt-out tool that automatically sends out a signal requesting websites and ad tech intermediaries to opt-out from selling people’s data. People using Brave and DuckDuckGo’s Privacy Essentials browser extension have the GPC setting turned on by default, for example.

Slow-ish adoption

“At least 50 million people” worldwide are sending out the GPC signal today, up from around 40 million when the tool was launched in October, said Ashkan Soltani, a privacy researcher who helped launch the GPC program. 

However, support of GPC is limited to “privacy-preserving browsers and tools,” Soltani said. He added, “A lot of the browser vendors are reluctant to engage in enabling it.” For instance, some browsers that incorporate other privacy-protective features, including Apple’s Safari, haven’t gotten on board with GPC. Meanwhile, without Google’s Chrome — the world’s most popular browser — in the mix, GPC may not make much of a dent in limiting data collection

That means GPC doesn’t necessarily pose a threat to publishers when it comes to how they gather data, said Don Marti, vp of ecosystem innovation at ad management firm CafeMedia, an early adopter of the tool on behalf of its publisher partners. Because “none of the major browsers have turned it on,” Marti said GPC has little impact on publishers’ ability to gather data that helps generate ad revenue.

Other publishers including The New York Times and The Washington Post signed on to honor the tool when it launched, and Soltani said he’s spotted several small publishers recognizing the GPC signal over the past few months. 

Confusion remains without technical standards

In the absence of technical specifications from the AG’s office for how companies should honor global privacy opt-out signals, companies remain somewhat confused, said Hutnik. “There’s no technical standard for it,” she said. For that reason, companies are reluctant to invest in possibly costly technical fixes. Just how expensive implementation of changes are to acknowledge GPC signals seems to vary from publisher to publisher.

“My clients want to comply with the law,” said Hutnik. “But it requires a lot of money and investment, and if you’re interpreting it wrong and you have to do a 180, it’s not a good use of resources or good for consumers. It’s confusing.”