Month: September 2021

But while TV advertisers were grandfathered into using Ad-ID for their linear campaigns, adoption in streaming and digital video has been slower. That appears to be changing, though, as ad buyers and sellers grapple with managing ad delivery across the broader TV, streaming and digital video ad market.

“Everyone is figuring out how to integrate with the Ad-ID standard. No one likes a shitty ad experience, to have an ad placed two or three times in a row,” said a streaming executive.

WTF is Ad-ID?

Ad-ID is a naming system for advertising assets. It attaches a universal identifier to each individual piece of ad creative, whether it be a TV commercial, a print advertisement or a banner ad. That way an advertiser as well as the media companies and platforms that distribute its ads would all use the same ID to refer to an ad. This would make it easier for the advertiser to control how an ad is run, such as by being able to limit the number of times a specific ad is shown across various media properties and ensuring the ad doesn’t run past its scheduled end date.

How does Ad-ID work?

An advertiser creates a unique Ad-ID for each advertising asset that they plan to distribute. The Ad-ID itself would be an 11- or 12-character string with a 4-character prefix that is associated with the advertiser and is attached to all of that advertiser’s Ad-IDs and the optional 12th character indicating whether an ad is high-definition or 3-D (remember, Ad-ID was introduced in the early aughts when HD was still nascent and 3-D was expected to be eventually ubiquitous).

In addition to identifying the advertising asset, the Ad-ID carries information about the ad, such as the name of the advertiser, the product being advertised, its start and end date and custom fields, like how many times each household should be exposed to an ad per week. 

Companies such as media organizations are able to plug into the Ad-ID system in order to access Ad-IDs codes and their corresponding information. That access enables them to manage the delivery of ads for advertisers, such as by tracking how frequently people are exposed to a given ad across their various properties, maintaining creative separation between certain advertisers and evaluating a specific ad’s performance.

There isn’t a system already in place for that?

Yes and no. Ad-ID has been around for more than two decades, so in a way, it is that system. And its predecessor (ISCI) originally rolled out in 1969. But the system’s adoption has been largely limited to advertisers and agencies, such as Lowe’s and Havas Media, in order to manage ad asset libraries. 

Case in point: 19 years after Ad-ID’s introduction, NBCUniversal announced in July that it would support Ad-ID across its streaming and digital video inventory through its One Platform ad program and claimed to be “the first major media company to adopt Ad-ID.”

What has been the hold-up?

Adopting Ad-ID doesn’t seem to have been as urgent of a priority for media companies until recently. As an executive at one TV network owner that plans to add support for Ad-ID said, “we want to be a part of that solution, but what’s the biggest priority right now? It’s hard. Measurement’s a challenge. Delivery’s a challenge. Making good content’s a challenge. Like, it’s really hard across the board.”

So what’s changed?

The continued convergence of TV, streaming and digital video. As more audiences and ad dollars shift to streaming and digital video, advertisers are increasingly running their ads everywhere, with different teams within a brand or agency potentially handling different components of the buy, such as the social team buying ads on YouTube and the TV team buying connected TV inventory. Additionally, the scope of who can sell ads in streaming ranges from TV networks and streaming services to CTV platform owners and ad tech companies. 

This knotty ecosystem can increase the difficulty for an advertiser to keep the reins on an ad’s delivery — the challenge that Ad-ID was created to address for all these years.

Over the past year, makeup and skin-care collabs and brands have been launching practically every week for anyone (or anything) with a following. The power of social media and devoted fandom have been coupled with easier-than-ever means of lining up distributors, giving an ever-lengthening list of creators, agencies, and even film and television studios an opportunity to turn beauty products into a new sub-category of celebrity merchandise. 

“The way that we approach it is more as a collectible. And we want it to be an experience for the fan,” said Jeff Sellinger, the co-founder and CEO of collab-focused makeup startup HipDot. Enthusiastic fan groups have led it to launch makeup collabs in the past year with singer Kesha, the movie Clueless and the band My Chemical Romance, to name a few. “A lot of people order multiples because they don’t want to open it up; they want to have one that they keep that pristine.” 

For traditional beauty giants, that means competition not just from startups with disruptive branding, but a growing number of influencer, celebrity and collab-focused brands with a built-in fan base at launch. As these labels fill the shelves of Sephora and other retailers, established beauty brands have been adapting with increasingly creative collabs to stay relevant. For buzzy new brands with collab-reliant business models or famous founders, the key has been to position themselves as more than just merch — instead of the next viral gift, these startups are hoping to create the next Fenty Beauty.

“Merch as we used to know it, I would say, seven years ago, was logos on t-shirts,” said Ronak Trivedi, the co-founder and CEO of Pietra, a platform that helps celebrities and influencers develop their own product lines. With the rise of social media, “traditional merch” has evolved to “full products and brands,” he said. 

An Uber alum, Trivedi co-founded Pietra in 2019 to offer a centralized online platform where users can link up with service providers including suppliers, warehouses, e-commerce facilitators and designers to launch their brand. Pricing varies by service: for sourcing and product development, Pietra takes a 10% fee for each sample, while product assembly and warehousing costs $99 for up to 500 units. The company also operates its own e-commerce marketplace where creators can sell their brands, collecting a fee of 5% plus $1 on each purchase. Backed by VC heavyweights including Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, TQ Ventures and Abstract Ventures, as well as celebrities such as Will Smith, the company is valued at $75 million. 

The platform is gearing up for a major influx of celebrity and influencer brands, as it announced on August 23 a deal with United Talent Agency for a $500 million fund to create more brands with the agency’s talent. The platform and agency will focus exclusively on talent represented by UTA, funding all aspects of the brand launch process. Creators chosen for the funding will not necessarily be those with the highest follower count, but rather those chosen for “authenticity,” demographics and location, said Trivedi. With regard to where funds will be allocated, “we don’t we don’t have a set constraint” on categories, he said. 

Beauty is currently Pietra’s second most popular category after fashion, and makes up between 25-30% of brands created through the platform, according to Trivedi.

The value of an automatic follower base or fan group has also spurred the collab-focused models of fast-growing beauty startups such as Morphe, ColourPop, HipDot and Revolution in the last half-decade. In addition to leaning into influencer collabs, these brands have also discovered the value of collaborating with any entertainment franchises driving a demand for merch, whether they be musical artists, movies, TV shows or fictional characters. 

For five-year-old HipDot, collabs “play a larger role in our business” than core products, said Sellinger. 

“We do these for the fans,” said HipDot co-founder and CEO Jeff Sellinger of the brand’sregular beauty collabs. It has been increasing its number of collabs every year: in 2019, it launched 3, which doubled to 6 in 2020 and is already at 5 this year with more planned. HipDot involves fans in product artwork and social media content to promote the products.

This business model has proven lucrative for brands. British e-tailer Beauty Bay, for example, sees sales uplifts across its site when it launches successful collaborations. Its May 2021 collaboration with beauty influencer Ayo Coralie not only sold out in 47 minutes, but drove an overall 43% lift in sales of its private-label brand By Beauty Bay. It drove increases on other brands, as well — SUVA saw 84% growth as a result. 

Collabs “continue to be an important sales driver for us” and “create an almost viral excitement at launch which in turn expands the reach of Beauty Bay,” said the company’s joint CEO Dave Gabbie via email.

For traditional conglomerate beauty brands, that has meant the celebrity spokesperson model is no longer enough. Startup-inspired collabs have especially picked up within the last two years among established brands. NYX Professional Makeup, for example, has launched multiple collabs over this time period with TV shows, musicians and other entertainment brands.

“​​Partnering with a TV show, we are able to build off of the storyline to develop products that fit the themes and characters of a series, and there’s also a devoted fan following that comes along with that,” said NYX Professional Makeup global president Yann Joffredo via email. 

“We go deep into the superfan communities” for marketing the collabs, said Joffredo, who said that these fans “definitely see the collabs as merch.” Like HipDot, the brand also sees double-purchases of products, which then become collector’s items: a January 2020 collab with the Netflix show “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” sold out within a few hours, and was later sold on eBay at four times the original price. On August 28, the brand released its latest collab with the Netflix show “Sex Education.” 

While fans and followers can drive hype and buying frenzies, the goal for both collab-centered startups and influencer or celebrity brands is to be taken seriously for high-performance products. 

“Traditionally, you may have seen more traditional merch, or licensed products where quality hasn’t always been the most important thing,” said Sellinger. The importance of securing positive online reviews from beauty influencers and online enthusiasts has changed that. HipDot, for example, focuses on marketing language that products are clean and vegan with no talc, parabens or mineral oils. 

This is especially important for celebrities or beauty influencers launching their own brand or collab with a focus on products intended for actual use. Rather than making it seem like they’re just profiting off a licensing deal, “the creator has to design it; they have to use it,” said Trivedi.

As for the next several years, more standalone brands are on the horizon. 

“Now that these barriers are broken down, I think that we are about to see a massive shift in consumer retail culture to be creator-led brands, when creators start realizing that they are renting out their audience to these bigger brands,” said Trivedi.

With physical stores closed and e-commerce adoption flourishing, resale platforms like Poshmark, ThredUp, The RealReal and Gen Z favorite Depop saw astonishing growth, with the entire resale category growing 25% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to a ThredUp report conducted with research and analytics firm GlobalData. 

And perhaps just as importantly, that momentum has sustained, signaling systemic shifts in shopping habits, the rate of fashion consumption and the embrace of a more circular economy. According to Boston Consulting Group, secondhand apparel, footwear, and accessories represent $30 billion to $40 billion in value worldwide, and the resale market is expected to grow by 15% to 20% annually over the next five years. What will fuel this growth is not only consumer demand for a more climate-friendly version of fast and easy consumption, but every brand and retailer becoming a reseller too.

“We’ve only just scratched the surface of the resale market. When Poshmark was started 10 years ago, resale was more of a novelty. Today, there’s a massive market opportunity and demand is growing exponentially for secondhand,” said Tracy Sun, Poshmark co-founder and svp of new markets. “We’re also seeing resale catch on more and more, from a cultural perspective, and are excited to be one of the companies encouraging consumers to embrace secondhand style.”

Poshmark, which went public in January, stated in its second-quarter 2021 earnings that the total dollar amount of transactions on the platform during the quarter (excluding shipping and sales tax) was $449.6 million, an increase of 25% year-over-year from 2020. Meanwhile, Depop’s gross merchandise sales and revenue more than doubled in 2020, to about $650 million and $70 million, respectively. London-based Depop, founded in 2011, was purchased by Etsy in June for $1.63 billion.

“The pandemic highlighted a shift in where people could buy and discover fashion (as brick-and-mortars were closed), or source inspiration for their next purchase,” said Peter Semple, Depop CMO.

Resale is also now more than a popular means of buying clothes, having emerged as a form of pseudo-entertainment. Depop and fellow resale app Poshmark have managed to turn resale into another microcosm of social media, with social features such as following, liking, and chatroom-like events that allow people to engage with one another and influence their own tastes and shopping habits. A Bain & Company report conducted with Depop found that 35% of Depop users engage with the platform as “a cool thing to do (entertainment).” 

This was only amplified during the quarantine period in the U.S. in 2020. For example, Poshmark introduced a community toolkit and “Posh N Coffee” Zoom gatherings that would allow people to connect and generate income. Throughout the 2020, Poshmark hosted over 1,000 Posh N Coffee Zoom meetings and in 2021 introduced another version called “Posh N Sip.” A DePop spokesperson said more social features would be added toward the end of 2021, but declined to comment further.

Following this surge in popularity, many brands — especially of the luxury variety — have begun to embrace resale, often as a protective mechanism to prevent the flourishing of counterfeit goods. While a few holdouts, LVMH and Chanel being two, who stand opposed to resale, others are investing. In Oct. 2020, Gucci began a partnership with The RealReal, while Neiman Marcus announced in April it was facilitating resale opportunities using its in-store stylists through handbag resale site Fashionphile. And in June, rental service Rent The Runway added the option that everything on its site is available for resale to both subscribers and non-subscribers. Rental competitor Nuuly also entered resale in August with a platform called Nuuly Thrift.

Investor appetite in resale is also increasing. Luxury conglomerate Kering Group led a $216 million funding round for resale site Vestiaire Collective in March, and Europe’s largest secondhand fashion marketplace, Vinted, raised $293 million in May that valued the start-up at $4.26 billion.   

High street brands like REI, Levi’s, Patagonia and Fabletics have also introduced resale to their e-commerce or established resale partnerships with companies like resale platform ThredUp and resale tech company Trove. In these particular cases, the main motivation has been sustainability, which is so important to Gen Z in particular that they are willing to pay extra for goods that have been made in a sustainable way, according to First Insight research. 

“Gen Z is increasingly buying and selling luxury, and consumers are making conscious, smarter purchasing decisions with sustainability playing more of a motivating role,” said Sasha Skoda, The RealReal head of women’s.

Questions have arisen around whether resale is as sustainable a practice as the public would like to think. Recent studies have provided contradictory evidence regarding the environmental effects of circular-economy practices such as renting and reselling items.

But the popularity of the circular economy concept has broadened the appeal of resale. The demand for resale now goes beyond apparel as well. Poshmark added a pet products category in February, while The RealReal launched a Collectibles & Electronics category in August, as a way to buy and sell unused household items.

In February 2018, Cheryl L. Bedford threw a party. The invite called for women of color to unite, and the event spawned Women of Color Unite, the nonprofit organization Bedford oversees that supports women of color in the entertainment industry.

“We basically built Women of Color Unite on the idea of exclusion by familiarity and ending it,” Bedford said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast

In the fight against people hiring people whose identities and experiences are most similar to their own, Women of Color Unite operates two programs that are aimed to help women of color get in the door and move up the Hollywood ranks. The JTC List is a database of 4,500 women of color that not only provides a free tool for companies to find cinematographers, line producers, screenwriters and others, but also provides Women of Color Unite a means of analyzing the issues underpinning the challenges for women of color in entertainment.

Then there is #StartWith8. This program originated after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and gets established people in Hollywood to commit to giving their time and energy to support eight women of color apiece. For example, Win Rosenfeld — a writer/producer and president of Jordan Peele’s production company Monkeypaw Productions — committed to meet with eight women of color, read their scripts and provide them with notes. “That means a lot to somebody, to understand what people want in this industry, to understand what kind of things get green-lit,” said Bedford.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

Exclusion by familiarity

Originally, I always said [exclusion by familiarity] was the idea of I don’t know any, don’t go to school with any, don’t live near any, don’t play golf with any — meaning, the global majority yet marginalized in this country. But I think it goes even further than that. It also means you don’t remind me of myself, anybody in my family, any of my friends.

The power of networking

In May of 2018, I was working at AwesomenessTV, and they had just moved into a new building, and they want me to build it. And I threw an event. It was Women of Color Unite and our allies. At that point, we were about 250 members. And something happened. People started getting hired on the spot.

The struggle for women of color with experience

Thirty to 33% of the women of color who we call our “in-betweeners” — meaning they have between three and 10 years of experience — are still still waiting to get in the room.

The issue of industry organizations

It’s not a pipeline problem. It’s what I call a “hire my Black ass” problem. Only 10% of women of color who work in the entertainment industry belong to a union, a guild or a trade organization. So that’s a decent wage, health care and networking opportunities — and we all know that your network is your net worth.