Two mission-oriented publishing groups have joined forces to help channel more advertising revenue into Black-owned media companies. Group Black, a collective and accelerator for Black-owned media, announced Tuesday that it is partnering with She Media, a multifaceted Penske Media property that helps support and monetize more than 5,000 primarily women-owned independent publishers. The Group Black…
Is Your Brand Living Rent-Free in Consumers’ Minds?
If you’re engaged in brand building, you’ve probably wrestled with the selection of metrics to measure advertising’s impact on your objectives. Most marketers choose brand awareness to broadly measure effectiveness, but mental availability is another important metric that should be considered. Mental availability is the propensity of a brand being noticed or coming to mind…
The Key Players In The CTV OS Ecosystem – And What They’re After
“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is by Daniel Elad, chief strategy officer at TheViewPoint. Operating systems have often been overlooked when discussing the fragmented ecosystem of connected TV. But as the hunger for connected TVs grows among consumers, more and more gatekeepers… Continue reading »
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Why Zero-Party Data Is the Future Of Privacy-First Advertising
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Corey Weiner, CEO of Jun Group. As the ad tech industry shifted in the last five years toward more privacy-conscious advertising, first-party data became the golden child. The pitch was… Continue reading »
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Google’s Affiliate Link Penalty; The Brand vs. Performance Mistake
Ads Are There For You Publishers attempting to cut themselves a slice of the commerce pie are running into an unlikely – or maybe not so unlikely – competitor: Google. Seems like everywhere they turn, there’s Google with a new way to penalize them for experimenting with alternative revenue sources. Take BuzzFeed, which has emphasized… Continue reading »
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Digiday+ Research: Vaccination requirements rare among publishers, agencies
Over the past two years, the media industry has played a crucial role in shaping the norms and expectations around mask-wearing, vaccinations and how employers should incorporate them into their businesses.
It has also largely stopped short of requiring its employees to get the vaccine themselves, according to new Digiday+ research.
In early November, Digiday surveyed a panel of media professionals on a number of topics, including how they and their employers were handling the prospect of returning to work in offices; 72 agency professionals and 59 publisher professionals answered questions about how their employers were approaching the issue of vaccines.
Less than one-fifth of the respondents overall said that their employers were requiring all employees to get vaccinated. A slightly higher percentage of agency respondents indicated vaccines were required, though the disparity between the industries was within the margin of error.
This low rate contrasts with the U.S. government’s ongoing attempts to mandate vaccinations for American workers. In early November, the Biden administration announced that the Department of Labor would require that businesses with over 100 employees ensure that their workers either be vaccinated or get tested on a weekly basis by Jan. 4, 2022. That requirement has received dozens of legal challenges, which are being considered by a federal appeals court.
Publisher and agency executives may be reluctant to apply strong requirements when so many of their workers are performing their jobs remotely, and expect to continue doing so. Digiday has asked survey panelists on a quarterly basis about their plans for returning to office work, and while the participants in each survey have not been consistent over time, the surveys have consistently shown that some measure of remote work will be a fixture in the media industry. Close to half the respondents of the most current survey have said that they can either work from home permanently or they haven’t heard anything concrete from their employers about when all employees will be expected back in the office.
None of the respondents indicated that their employers had disciplined anyone at their organizations for failing to comply with company policies. That may have to do with the fact that, as an industry, media professionals are above average in their vaccination rates — 93% of agency, and 96% of publisher respondents indicated they are vaccinated against COVID-19, compared to 70% of U.S. adults and 59% of the U.S. population as a whole.
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‘It requires more scrappy thinking’: How cannabis brand Charlotte’s Web approaches media buying and execution
The cannabis industry continues to morph into a legitimate and possibly lucrative vertical for media agencies to pursue, as cannabis brands raise their marketing game to new heights.
Jenny Shi, associate director of media for cannabis brand Charlotte’s Web, explained her company’s approach to harnessing media in multiple forms to grow market share and find new users.
The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What agency/agencies does Charlotte’s Web use to plan and buy media? What about creative?
We brought all media planning, media buying and creative work in house. The integrated marketing creative agency shoots, produces, edits and resizes assets to support all cross-department needs, and the media team plans and executes all media strategy, partnerships, and performance media.
What are the primary media Charlotte’s Web uses to get the message out? And how they have delivered?
One way to achieve growth for the brand is to drive top-line awareness: building awareness of our mission, growing overall category awareness, and producing content that educates consumers on the benefits of hemp extract with naturally occurring CBD.
Another way is to invest heavily in digitally prospecting new, incremental users and driving e-commerce traffic and sales.
We build a full funnel plan every year — for our larger brand actions that help invigorate conversations about hemp access, like our “Trust the Earth” project, or event-related activations, like our sponsorship level support for Realm of Caring’s Rock the RoC, we turn to more mass reach channels like digital out of home, print, terrestrial and streaming radio, and connected TV. Getting our story in front of consumers in unique ways has had a positive correlation with our brand awareness. For our evergreen campaigns meant to drive mid-to-lower funnel objectives, we prioritize in-house digital channels like direct-to-site partnerships, programmatic, paid search, paid social, and affiliate. These campaigns provide much more immediate performance results, and as the in-house media agency, we are able to nimbly shift budgets based on performance and priorities.
How far away is the agency world from embracing cannabis as a legitimate marketing category — months, years?
I think there are different levels to “cannabis” when we’re talking about what partners are willing to advertise. “Hemp-derived hemp extract” is the path of least resistance when evaluating if the brand can advertise on a site or network — though there are still some roadblocks when buying traditional media. “CBD” is still rejected by certain publishers, platforms and sites, though it seems generally accepted by most digital partnerships.
Products that include more than the federally legal definition of hemp at 0.3% THC levels, going into actual cannabis/marijuana, are going to take longer to be accepted into the space as a legitimate category, and so much of that timeline is dependent on federal-level decisions. Even then, it could take some time for publishers, networks and ad tech companies to have their legal terms finalized in order to take on those higher THC clients en masse.
That being said, it’s already happening — there are data providers who aggregate transaction-level cannabis data that can be used for ad targeting. Several partners offer the ability to target users based on their visitation to dispensaries. And there are websites that provide consumers with information about strains, products and store locations. Where this part of the cannabis category is today, is where hemp-derived CBD advertising was back in 2015. It requires more scrappy thinking and an expectation to hear “no” but an intuition to build partner relationships ahead of time.
Have you ever bought media programmatically?
We have — programmatic is a fantastic testing ground on top of being one of the first scalable channels to open up to CBD advertising. When we first launched our partnership with The Trade Desk, we were working with smaller budgets, and needed to understand who were the right site direct partners and audiences to evaluate for future activations — and testing whitelists, data elements and private marketplace deals helped set up an initial RFP blueprint for us. It also allows us to be more nimble with digital OOH and banner amplification campaigns, as well as activate our evergreen full-funnel campaigns that prospect new users, retarget site visitors and retain customers.
How big do you foresee the cannabis market growing by year-end 2021 and 2022?
I’m of the opinion that we will continue to see growth, while not explosive absent any changes in federal legislation or regulatory, in the hemp category going into 2022. And I’m hoping to see a conjunction of both a returning growing economy and a decision by the federal government that could propel the industry into the tens of billions — though we may still be a few years away from that.
The post ‘It requires more scrappy thinking’: How cannabis brand Charlotte’s Web approaches media buying and execution appeared first on Digiday.
‘We need a structural shift’: Conscious Advertising Network’s co-chair on how the ad industry can tackle the climate crisis
As underwhelming as the Cop26 climate summit was to many, it has made many marketers think longer and harder about their own contributions to the climate crisis, namely how their dollars have inadvertently funded misinformation and disinformation around the issue.
“Without definitions, all we have are vague policies that do more harm than good”
— Harriet Kingaby, co-chair of the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN)
So much so in fact that some of the most influential ads businesses across Europe such as Sky, British Gas, Accenture Interactive and Havas Media have signed an open letter demanding immediate action from the platforms to tackle the threat. In it, the signatories ask for the following:
- A universal definition of climate dis/misinformation.
- ‘Action against climate dis/misinformation’ to be included in the COP26 Negotiated Outcome, based on the above definition.
- Technology platforms to implement climate dis/misinformation policies and enforcement that extend to content, algorithms and advertising, similar to the robust COVID-19 policies that have been published over the last 18 months.
The letter has been organized by the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN) — a voluntary coalition of over 70 organizations set up to highlight the ethics that underpin advertising.
Digiday caught up one of the architects of the initiative Harriet Kingaby, co-chair of the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN) to discuss Cop26 and how the ad industry could become even more conscious about how its dollars fuel the spread of multitude of facts, opinions and lies — for better or worse.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Of all the things the platforms could do to address this issue, why are universal definitions of climate dis/misinformation crucial?
If the platforms don’t take more demonstrable action against this issue then what happens is that you just get updates from that saying “we’ve taken down x number of posts,” which just isn’t enough. We want to see more action. That’s the reason we put together this letter; if we have a common definition for both climate disinformation and misinformation because if we have them then everyone knows where the line is — they know what’s harmful. Without definitions, all we have are vague policies that do more harm than good because there’s no consistent take on what is and isn’t acceptable.
The next COP event is in Egypt next year, but we can’t wait for when this issue is front and center again to make an impact. The platforms need to implement this definition straightaway. They should take it and use it to create and enforce policy changes across their networks because doing so would make huge headway in demonetizing the worst of this problem. Freedom of speech isn’t really a good enough excuse. Let’s be clear, it won’t be hampered by the platforms adopting this definition because it’s focused on monetized content only. People shouldn’t be paid for saying climate change is a hoax or casting doubt on issues that are doing so much harm to the world.
What’s the difference between climate misinformation and disinformation?
I use the Addis Ababa Action Agenda as per the CAN misinforoamtion manifesto. Disinformation is created or shared with the intent to deceive. Misinformation is shared without the intent to deceive. Importantly, we’ve probably all accidentally contributed to misinformation. Then, the definition of climate disinformation is here.
Why is climate misinformation — and subsequently funding it — so dangerous?
The issue of climate misinformation is one that has become so complicated in recent years. There was a time when it was just people saying “climate change is a hoax.” Back then it was easier to refute those claims because 97% of scientists believe that climate change is happening. That said, the misinformation around climate change has become more insidious; you’re starting to see false solutions being offered, for example. Its not so straightforward to tackle this. You have to have a reasonable level of knowledge of the problem to do it. Not to mention there’s this delay messaging effect whereby people push this idea that society has time to deal with climate change. Again, it’s something that requires a lot of scientific knowledge and insight into the different solutions to really unpick it.
Has the industry had its head in the sand on dealing with this matter?
There are many advertisers behind the scenes taking real steps to ensure they don’t appear next to this sort of thing but it’s not as straightforward as it was before when it was so clearly against scientific consensus. The hope is that with the definition, which has been developed with climate experts, that we’re able to address this — or at least start to. It starts with the platforms. If the platforms adopted this definition then it would stop so much content from being monetized. Sure, individual advertisers can adopt this definition and they can start to adjust their exclusion lists accordingly, but each one is just a small drop in the ocean. We need a structural shift to tackle the problem.
Are the platforms more at fault here?
It’s not that the platforms haven’t done anything. Google is now preventing advertisers, publishers and creators from monetizing content that denies the existence of climate change, for example. Furthermore, Twitter made authoritative information about climate change more accessible to people during COP26, while Facebook recently beefed up its internal processes around the issue. It’s all great but it won’t fix the problem. If they adopt the definition, however, they can start to address it at speed. We’re volunteers at the CAN but we don’t want to spend our lives sending these companies updates and keeping our own networks updated on what disinformation trends they should be aware of.
What should advertisers do?
First, we’d urge advertisers to sign the open letter to show the strength and depth of feeling around the matter. Secondly, I’d point them to CAN’s misinformation manifesto, which has been drafted with experts, and is a really clear and practical resource for marketers who are looking at how they tackle misinformation broadly. Finally, I’d urge advertisers to adopt the definition that’s in the open letter and use it as a tool to help them understand what climate misinformation looks like and ensure their advertising doesn’t fund commentators or publishers who peddle those narratives.
We’ve seen so much good work around this COP that its clear companies are making corporate-wide strides to tackle climate change. Nevertheless, it’s important for any marketer who is thinking about this issue to understand that there’s a strong possibility that if they’re not considering whether their media spending is funding climate misinformation and disinformation, then it’s working against those charitable intentions. We urge all marketers to audit their media spending accordingly.
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‘Becoming a direct-to-consumer company’: How Condé Nast’s Pamela Drucker Mann is focusing on innovation in 2022 after the best revenue year in a decade
For Condé Nast, 2021 was the best year the company has had in the past decade, according to global chief revenue officer Pamela Drucker Mann. And after a tumultuous 2020, that outcome was neither guaranteed nor expected.
As of mid November, the media company’s total global commercial revenue — including print — was up 20%, Drucker Mann said on the latest episode of the Digiday podcast. Specifically on the digital side of the business, revenue rose nearly 40% year over year, which she attributed much of to its new e-commerce business (up 46%), investing further into digital video, and shifting focus from audience targeting to contextual targeting in ad campaigns.
And thanks to all of that growth this year, Condé Nast is using 2022 to invest in “legitimately becoming the best, most refined, most sophisticated, direct-to-consumer company — not just an advertising company,” Drucker Mann said. This includes getting experimental with new businesses and projects, including NFTs, hosting events in the metaverse, and diving deep into live shopping.
Below are highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
An influx of RFPs
Our marketers are buying us in a lot of new ways [and] the way we monetize our audience is direct through our first-party data capabilities. I do think there’s something to be said — and we’re just at the beginning — for this shift away from audience targeting to contextual targeting. And it’ll be interesting to see how other publishers do in this moment in time. But I’ll be honest with you, I was just having a conversation with another client, I haven’t seen this kind of inbound ever in terms of just the amount of RFPs that are coming in right now. We’re starting to wonder, is some of this coming from these shifts in privacy and marketers needing to find new ways to find their customer? Which is obviously going to continue to be important to them.
A creator’s economy that bodes well for publishers
The other broader moment that’s happening is, it’s a creator’s economy. If you think about the pendulum in terms of just how marketers are prioritizing their dollars, this was already starting to happen before the privacy shift started last spring. Really looking at the full funnel, I think markers were starting to see the car was running out of gas a bit in terms of return on investment and were starting to refocus some dollars on building their brands.
Also, the funnels kind of collapsed with technology. The decision journey isn’t that much of a journey anymore. Creating want and desire and conversion can all happen in like three seconds. Because of that, marketers have been more focused on, “How do we get more gas in the tank? How do we get closer to content?” Everyone wants to be a content creator. And there’s a variety of reasons why content is driving commerce, [why] content is driving stickiness and engagement.
For us, as a content company, we’re well positioned, but I would say we were already kind of well positioned to be that solution to our marketing partners. Our entire focus is about building that relationship directly with our consumer, and because of that, we’re building an e-commerce relationship and building a stickier relationship around how we monetize our quality content directly to our consumer. So those are tools that we’re refining on behalf of ourselves. And so now we’re in a position to lend some of those tools back to our clients.
Finding fresh ways to rein in costs
There are some changes in the way that we think about cost. I think we were living at a time before the pandemic that felt very much like excess. I don’t think people were considering, “Do I need this? Or do I not?” It was just kind of always how things were. We’ve learned to move a lot faster [and] move with less. And when I say that, I mean really thinking about, “What do I need to do to get this done?”
We’ve just become more resourceful [and] with that comes intuitive savings, and just a better way of doing business. The idea of being able to work smarter, not harder, [such as] knowing that you have production teams on the ground in many different locations — does that mean you should be flying a new team over there, if you’ve already got a team that’s present? So it’s really given us a gift, to be honest, just more thoughtful approaches around how we think about spending.
The post ‘Becoming a direct-to-consumer company’: How Condé Nast’s Pamela Drucker Mann is focusing on innovation in 2022 after the best revenue year in a decade appeared first on Digiday.
Marketing Briefing: Disappointing Black Friday sales leaves advertisers questioning their strategies and future retail holidays
Say goodbye to the days of late night and early morning doorbuster deals exclusive to the week of Thanksgiving. Black Friday as we know it is no more.
Instead, people shopped online earlier this year, suggesting that major retailer holidays are, “rallying points for ad copy versus a reality for how people are purchasing,” said Noah Mallin, chief strategy officer at IMGN Media.
According to marketers and advertisers, there are a few reasons for this year’s change. Firstly, supply chain issues have led advertisers to roll out deals and “buy now” messaging earlier than they have in years prior, meaning shoppers are buying earlier. The pandemic has also significantly spurred the growth of online shopping, thus blurring the lines between in-store and online efforts around the big shopping moments this time of year: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.
Looking at it by the numbers, Adobe reports that online sales have dipped to $8.9 billion on Black Friday, slightly below 2020 levels of $9 billion. Per Adobe, it’s the first time the insights team has seen a decrease in spending on major shopping days since Adobe first began reporting on e-commerce in 2012.
For marketers, it all points to the idea that holiday shopping will start earlier and the actual day of Black Friday will take up a smaller share of holiday e-commerce spend, blending in with Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday to become a digital holiday retail conglomerate.
“Black Friday and Cyber Monday are morphing into one continuous cyber/retail marathon to try to get you, from Wednesday to Tuesday, to participate,” said Allen Adamson, brand consultant and co-founder of Metaforce. “[Deals] were available on sale, online well before you finished digesting your turkey on Friday morning.”
As the digital advertising space, from banner ads to email inboxes, becomes more crowded with both shoppers and advertisers, it’ll take brands a lot more to break through this holiday shopping season. “Everyone’s screaming as loud as they can and it’s really hard to have anyone break through,” Adamson said.
Ahead of the retail holiday shopping season, New York City-based marketing services collaborative, Rosie Labs, says not even upping discounts, from 15% to 25% for one client specifically, were enough to see a lift in online sales.
“I think the consumer has fatigue,” said CEO David Song in an email. “They know they will get a similar deal later in the year or were waiting for a Cyber Monday deal.”
Katya Constantine, CEO of performance marketing agency DigiShop Media, echoed something similar: if retailers don’t offer significantly different discounts than what’s regularly offered online, they’ll miss out on shoppers.
Per Song, it’s too early to tell what the ramifications will be. But he said, “I do know my clients are already putting more money into holiday [shopping] now based on disappointing Black Friday online sales.”
All in all, this Black Friday proves that marketers and advertisers need to become much more agile, according to David MacDonald, GVP of commerce strategy at Razorfish agency. Black Friday inventory is typically set up in advance. But with supply chain issues, brands need to be more nimble with their campaigns, MacDonald added.
“Customers enjoy having the holiday sales start earlier in the season, so a longer holiday season event could become normal. Black Friday used to be the kick-off of holiday shopping, but this year it was post-Halloween,” MacDonald said via email.
3 Questions with Alaynia Garnsworthy, Campaign Marketing Manager at Waldo
As a DTC eye-care company brand, how is Waldo scaling to reach new shoppers?
As a brand, we have expanded exponentially in the past few years (nearly by 500%), but of course, scaling and reaching new shoppers is always challenging. One thing that has presented a new set of challenges most recently has been adapting to new privacy policies within the iOS update. Like most advertisers, Waldo has been adapting and testing new strategies, approaches and channels to tackle the current challenge and be ahead of the game for a digital world without cookie tracking. A few ways we are scaling includes omnichannel strategy, ensuring that our brand is present across every stage of the funnel from awareness to purchase, [being] data-centric, understanding our customers and metrics, test and learn [approach] in everything that we do. We are constantly testing new channels, audiences, formats and A/B tests to be as informed as possible.
What’s the retail strategy ahead of the holidays this year?
Our approach to the holiday season from a retailing perspective is to add value, rather than discount. We believe that our products are a more affordable option compared to our competitors and therefore focus on adding even more value through impactful partnerships and gifting moments. This approach also attracts a customer that typically has a higher lifetime value compared to a customer who is more driven by discounts.
With supply chain issues creeping up already, any plans around that ahead of the holidays?
This holiday is truly unlike any other in terms of supply chain issues. At WALDO, we’ve chosen to focus on a few things: Plan ahead, book space with freight forwarders earlier than usual, share forecast volume with fulfillment parties, [and] boost relationships with suppliers.
By the numbers
The social commerce space continues to heat up as more players, like Pinterest with its new shopping list feature or TikTok’s latest innovation with shoppable videos. However, the U.S. has only a small piece of the social commerce pie compared to China, which is still about 10 times bigger, according to eMarketer. That being said, new research from 3Q Digital marketing agency reveals that more marketers, especially those at tech brands, are ready to invest in the social commerce space sooner rather than later. Find details from the report below:
- Tech brands are expected to substantially increase social commerce budgets from an estimated $120,000 this year to $370k in 2023, an average of 208%.
- 77% of tech’s marketing leaders think social commerce is important.
- 85% of the tech brand leaders surveyed are already investing or planning on investing in social commerce.
Quote of the week
“Getting our story in front of consumers in unique ways has had a positive correlation with our brand awareness. For our evergreen campaigns meant to drive mid-to-lower funnel objectives, we prioritize in-house digital channels like direct-to-site partnerships, programmatic, paid search, paid social, and affiliate. These campaigns provide much more immediate performance results, and as the in-house media agency, we are able to nimbly shift budgets based on performance and priorities.”
— Jenny Shi, associate director of media for cannabis brand Charlotte’s Web, on how the brand is approaching media buying.
What we’ve covered
- How TikTok became a staple part of Dr. Squatch’s social media budget.
- It took a while, but freelance marketplace Fiverr is ready to return to OOH marketing. Here’s why.
- Linear and connected TV is now “the biggest single channel” that Drizly is investing its advertising dollars in.
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