Month: January 2022

Having a system in place to manage employees coming into the office “makes a huge difference to the employee experience,” said Jordan Scoggins, director of information technology at Quartz. It’s a lot better than employees emailing back and forth to coordinate schedules, he added.

Workplace software companies like Envoy, Condeco, Teem, Robin and OfficeSpace provide employees with the ability to reserve available desk space when assigned desks are no longer the case. Office spaces were redesigned during the pandemic for social distancing — and to adjust to the reality that all employees wouldn’t be coming into the office five days a week.

So along came the need for a solution to manage “hoteling,” or reserving a desk space in advance like you would a hotel room. It’s a similar concept to “hot desking,” which refers to booking an unassigned space in an office (often meaning finding a desk on a first-come, first-serve basis) — however, these terms are sometimes used interchangeably. These software companies also provide management with data and insights on the workplace. They can see how often the office is being used by employees, an important metric to watch as companies ponder the future role of office space. 

“It helps the office make decisions on future office usage,” Scoggins said. For example, it became clear that “almost no one” was coming into Quartz’s office on Fridays in the summer, so the company decided to keep its office closed that day of the week.

Politico will have hoteling software up and running when it begins its hybrid work model, which is now scheduled to take place Mar. 1, the company announced earlier this month. A Politico spokesperson did not respond to questions about what kind of hoteling software it would use. BuzzFeed is using Envoy for check-in, desk reservations and other services — it’s worked with the company since 2017, a BuzzFeed spokesperson said (Envoy added the desk reservation feature in June 2021). So is Quartz, which started using Envoy when the company reopened its office to employees on a voluntary basis last summer. 

Envoy, a company with roughly 250 employees, offers a mobile app that lets employees book desk space and upload proof of vaccination or COVID test results — the latter is a new feature Envoy added to its platform in October 2021.

At Quartz, employees who want to come into the office can download the Envoy app on their phone and submit proof of vaccination, which is reviewed and approved by a Quartz administrator, explained Scoggins. Then the employee can schedule their visit to the office.

Before going in, the employee has to go through a check-in process, answering three to four health questions on the app. Once that’s cleared, an entry pass is provided that can get the employee into the office. The app can automatically assign them a desk, or they can select one on their own, Scoggins said. The Envoy app has a virtual maps feature so that employees can see who is working in the office that day and where they’re sitting. The idea is that a team can coordinate reserving space near each other to collaborate together in person.

Remington Woo, head of customer success at Envoy, said in an email that the company saw an “initial increase” in media companies signing up to use the app in June 2020. “Since the pandemic, we’ve definitely seen an uptick in companies interested in our workplace solutions. Some have reopened their doors and have welcomed folks back – and others are in the process,” Woo said.

An Envoy spokesperson said they have “thousands of customers” in 14,000 office locations in over 100 countries but declined to share exact customer figures. According to the company’s latest funding round announcement published this month, Envoy added more new revenue in 2021 than in 2019 and 2020 combined. Envoy also works with media companies like Hulu, Pandora and Lionsgate, Woo said. And it has a free plan for companies that have less than 50 employees. After that prices range from $99 a month to $299, and companies can choose to add more features for more money.

Envoy also manages workplace capacity and contact tracing of employees who test positive for COVID-19. It can also alert management when the office has reached its capacity limit and stops more people from registering or signing in to prevent overcrowding. If there is a COVID outbreak, the app can help trace who had close contact with that person based on who reserved a desk in close proximity to the infected employee.

Hoteling software can empower employees with information that could help determine whether or not they want to go into the office on a given day. “If someone is being more cautious about COVID and they see there are too many people in that day, they might say, ‘I’ll go another day,’” Scoggins said. Or, an employee might not want to bother commuting to the office if very few people are working there that day and instead choose to come in on a day where more colleagues will be around. 

“Technology empowers the employee to make the best decision for what is best for them, which I think is really important,” Scoggins said.

Here’s a rundown of some of the obvious, burning questions the industry is yet to get to the bottom of in understanding Google’s latest proposal for ad targeting sans third-party cookies.

Will Topics be good for brand advertisers?

If Google’s Topics’ announcement is taken at face value, the answer will be “no” it won’t be good for brand advertisers. 

The kind of aggregate browsing labels that Topics will deliver will mostly not be relevant to brand advertisers’ goals, especially when it comes to reach and frequency. In particular, frequency reported could be a tough one to believe in if Google is only tracking users broadly based on topics of interest. Simply put, the approach seems a bit odd. 

“Does Google seriously believe that the average person’s attention span only covers five topics in a week? In an average week, most users will think about work, eating out, entertainment, commuting, potentially about holidays, health and wellbeing,” said Farhad Divecha, md of digital marketing agency AccuraCast. 

That’s six things already, and they’re all fairly wide and applicable to everyone today. Five topics will feel really limited and might preclude other topics being targetable — unless Google includes some mechanism to ignore the everyday topics and only focus on new topics of interest. Doing so could create a different set of problems for advertisers who want to target users based on those everyday topics, said Divecha.

Worse still, what happens when users turn off the feature? 

Will there be truly no interest or topic-based information for advertisers, and subsequently no reach and frequency information for them to lean on either?

Topics’ Privacy Sandbox stablemate FLEDGE, or First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment, might have some answers. The feature is meant to support remarketing by letting someone’s browser, not the advertiser or ad tech platform, control the advertiser-defined interest groups associated with that browser. It’s possible the same mechanism may be used to track frequency. But Google hasn’t been clear if this is the case.

But surely this is an actual improvement over FLoCs, right?

Sort of. Topics works to block digital tracking cookies and instead focuses on the individual, rather than overall browsing history trends for groups of people. This allows for users to be more anonymous while also allowing for an easier way for people to opt-out if they so choose. “It is still too early to tell if this will go far enough for privacy advocates and yet still allow for the relevant targeting that marketers want,” said Scott Sullivan, chief revenue officer at ad tech vendor Adswerve.

For now, what little has been shared about Topics suggests it will be an improvement on FLoCs when it comes to privacy, since it will eliminate the issues with potential fingerprinting via those cohorts. 

On the flipside, the benefits aren’t so clear. On the contrary, it looks they will be drastically reduced since the source of the data is domain-based and transient instead of contextual and relatively persistent, said Loch Rose, chief analytics officer at Publics-owned Epsilon. In fact, it’s not clear how much better Topics is than detailed IAB labels, except that it carries across sites to a certain degree, added Rose. 

So Google has taken privacy issues off the table at the expense of precision. What might this mean for ad prices? 

So let’s recap.  It appears that Topics will: a) seriously degrade targeting; b) quite possibly frustrate frequency capping and also c) substantially constrain measurement.

Given the above, it would seem that in a competitive market, there would be substantial downward pressure on pricing for Topics-based ad buys. Should this happen then it seems reasonable to assume that Google will prioritize its own economics first, then focus on those of publishers before dealing with ad tech vendors, said Gartner analyst Eric Schmitt. 

“It may conclude that while reducing (perhaps modestly) the fees associated with Ad Manager, AdSense and AdX will put a small drag on its own economics (priority number one), it will go a long way towards preserving relationships with publishers and inventory suppliers (priority number two), and ultimately it will be independent ad tech vendors that suffer the most,” he continued. 

It’s not hard to see how in this hypothetical scenario the first casualty of the media cost savings that advertisers will be looking for will be the fees associated with cookie-based targeting, data management and processing, including identity resolution/onboarding, measurement, and attribution.  Much of this work are provided by independent ad tech vendors. 

“My sense is that they are the ones who will feel the squeeze first,” said Schmitt. “Demand-side platforms and supply-side platforms will also presumably come under pressure, as the (cookie-based) bidstream dries up, as the simpler, Topics-based model facilitates more direct buys between advertisers and publishers.”

How does Topics gel with Google’s recent moves towards greater control over user privacy? 

It certainly appears to keep Google in the driver’s seat when it comes to managing user privacy on the Chrome platform, as opposed to making Chrome into a neutral offering that respects user privacy by default. 

It may even be enough to ameliorate some of the antitrust concerns leveled at the company recently, especially the more than a dozen state attorneys general in the U.S. , led by Texas AG Ken Patton — concerns that were stoked by ethics researchers last year as the potential discriminatory and harmful impacts of FLoC came to light. Indeed, Topics grants an ability for users to be a bit more anonymous, with only 350 potential topic categories, which is in direct response to the feedback Google received about FLoC. 

That said, questions remain over how easy it will be for consumers to enable or opt out of those settings. Google was at pains to stress the “transparency and control” people will get via Topics, which sounds great in theory. It could also be a vague way of saying this is something that people will have to opt out of, which most don’t do even when they don’t particularly like being tracked. 

Is it enough to impress publishers?

Not quite. Google must be clearer about Topics’ controls and value proposition for publishers is the overwhelming initial response to it from that part of the market. 

Epsilon’s Rose expanded on the point: “This still seems like a recipe for taking data from valuable publishers and allowing it to be used to deliver advertising on other publishers, which will incentivise publishers with the most valuable inventory to opt out — assuming that Google makes it possible for them to do so.” 

In other words, publishers don’t see Topics as an improvement, but rather a change. The ultimate purpose of the update is the same as ever for Google. Which is to say it wants to impose a new model in the value chain at the operator level. 

As explained by a chief digital officer at a publisher in Europe: “Google always considers that user’s data are the advertisers property, but the reality is that the users, in fact, the audience is the property of the editors, and the navigator has no rights to impose a model on the editor,” the exec continued on condition of anonymity because they did not want to be seen to be openly critiquing Google. “Floc or Topics, means cohorts or individual user — it does not change a lot for the editors,

The company anticipates further growth for the vertical — somewhere in the region of the “mid-to-high-teens” — in the coming quarter, during which time it is also set to go about the integration of Xandr to its media offering. Some are beginning to wonder if all of this represents the stirring of a sleeping giant in adland?

Over the last number of weeks, Microsoft has agreed to write checks amounting to close to $70 billion for two companies that can be considered as some of the best-in-class in their respective verticals: gaming giant Activision Blizzard, and Xandr, or AppNexus, a company that forged its reputation as the leading independent ad tech company in years gone by.

The intended $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard will burnish the gaming footprint of the creator of the Xbox, but it is with the purchase of AppNexus from AT&T, for a reputed $1 billion, that Microsoft is (arguably) revisiting an old stomping ground.

How will AppNexus be used?

The two were already well acquainted with Microsoft’s investment in AppNexus dating as far back as 2010, while in the mid-2010s the company effectively outsourced programmatic activations on its owned-and-operated properties to the ad tech outfit.

Microsoft’s ad offering currently consists of a number of services including ads on its search engine Bing, placements across its O&O network, including the Microsoft Audience Network which operates the programmatic placement of native ad units on properties such as CBS Sports and Fox Business, according to its website. This is in addition to its retail media offering PromoteIQ.

A statement shared with Digiday by Microsoft’s PR firm spoke of its “bold ambitions” for its advertising business “especially around data, audiences” plus its plans for international expansion.

The statement continued, “Our greater ambition is to create a trusted, free and open web where everyone — customers, advertisers, publishers and platforms alike — while adhering deeply to our commitment to strong data governance and consumer privacy practices.”

Post-cookie plans

A big part of its ambitions for its buy-side offering, the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform, is to help marketers to wean their online advertising operations off the third-party cookie. “We’re helping marketers to gain better control of their own customer data and enrich it with our data in a privacy-safe manner to personalize, automate and best orchestrate along their customer decision journeys without limits,” read the statement.

In addition, it also hopes to distinguish its native network MAN from other sell-side offerings by positioning it “at the intersection of work and life” with the company describing such audiences as “workday consumers.” The statement continued: “These audiences have higher purchasing power, are more likely to make a purchase online, and are more likely to engage with advertising to discover new products.”

Microsoft declined Digiday’s interview request for further insight into how it intends to integrate its newly acquired ad stack which consists of an ad exchange (Xandr Marketplace), ad server, DSP (Xandr Invest), and SSP Xandr Monitize).

A new walled garden in town

Most sources interpreted the purchase of AppNexus as a bid from Microsoft to build a walled garden with a buying platform, unique inventory, persistent ID layer and proprietary data.

Brian Wieser, GroupM global president, business intelligence, noted Microsoft’s Xandr acquisition should cement its role as the industry’s fourth-largest media owner. “The acquired business represented approximately $400 million in net revenue on trading volumes that likely exceeded $2 billion last year… the additional activity related to Xandr will place further distance between Microsoft and others,” he added.

Jay Friedman, president of Goodway Group, told Digiday it was worth noting how Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure Azure could help fuel its ambitions in the advertising sector, similar to how many deem Google’s corresponding technology helps bolster its ad-funded operations.

Ratko Vidakovic, founder of consultancy service AdProfs, also noted how Microsoft swallowing up the entirety of the Xandr stack would bring synergies. “Microsoft avoids a host of integration headaches,” he said. “There is no need to cobble together separate systems.”

John Donahue, partner at consultancy Up And To The Right, said “If you look at companies like Pinterest, their advertising revenue is growing quickly, and that’s primarily because it is a search business. Now, Bing is the number two search engine in the U.S. and now you can integrate that search-intent data into AppNexus, so it’s a great opportunity.”

A transformational buy?

Meanwhile, Goodway Group’s Friedman, said, “I think it [Xandr] is being brought to Microsoft as important plumbing for a slew of acquisitions they have made that can be used for advertising, and also connect identity and experiences.”

Helene Parker, founder and chief executive of consultancy service Programmatic Sensei, noted how Microsoft “has made some serious internal, and external investments” in recent months in a bid to win over practitioners such as herself. “I’m expecting UI and technology updates since Microsoft has been very intentional and calculated with their latest tech updates,” she said. “This could be the disruptor this industry needs amid cookie deprecation, the rise of acquisition, and more.”

Friedman also noted how “sometimes Bing benefits [on advertisers’ media plans] from simply not being Google and that the ‘social’ element of its offering does have a unique selling proposition, describing LinkedIn as “immensely valuable.”

Elsewhere, Vidakovic noted how the addition of the Microsoft brand could be key to positioning the advertising offering as a credible alternative to the current market leaders. “If history has taught us anything, it is more difficult to truly compete with Google and Facebook than simply having some ad tech and sprinkling some unique inventory and data on top,” he said. “There are many more ingredients required to be successful and very few companies that can realistically compete. But Microsoft is absolutely one of them.”

Alternative ad server?

Another key component in the newly-acquired entity is the AppNexus ad server, a key tool in the ad stack of any media owner. Although multiple publisher-side sources, all of whom declined to be named due to their employers’ PR policies, noted that Google’s lead in this sector is formidable.

One source commented that AppNexus’ ad server has been largely “dormant” since it was purchased by AT&T in 2018. The source went on to add that while the AppNexus ad server performs well, many other marketing technologies, such as customer data platforms etcetera, are optimized to work with Google’s ad server.

“You hear a lot of people coming out and publicly trashing Google, but with all the challenges [involved with switching ad ad server] people are going to default to what’s easy,” said the source who claimed to have experience of using both ad servers.

Meanwhile, a separate publisher source noted that Microsoft will likely encounter some degree of skepticism if it tries to position the Xandr ad stack as a “neutral” arbiter of independent media – this was at the core of AppNexus” messaging prior to 2018 — given that it now has its O&O network of media properties.

A boon for ad-funded gaming?

Of course, the Xandr purchase is a drop in the ocean compared to the Activision-Blizzard deal with some wondering if these two acquisitions could find some common ground? Albeit, sources approached by Digiday seemed to think the notion of using AppNexus to further the scale of its media business for gamers, Microsoft already runs ads on Xbox Live, should be approached with caution.

Tim Edwards, CEO of Network N, an ad network focused on gamers, said that while the purchase of Activision Blizzard does distinguish it from the triopoly in terms of attention and wallets of such enthusiasts, serving ads to this audience requires balance. “The challenge every game publisher has with ads is that every pixel on the page has to compete with direct-to-consumer revenues. Optimizing for those direct purchases inevitably drives greater revenues and profits,” he added. “There is a space for ad-tech — but it’s very much further down the chain, that’s why I’m not convinced there’s any brand link between the Xandr acquisition and the Activision Blizzard acquisition.”

There’s a big gap to close

Unquestionably, the addition of the Microsoft brand will be a great asset if AppNexus is to achieve what it, ultimately failed to achieve while part of the AT&T stable. Although, a few facts need to be considered in order to manage expectations.

In 2020, eMarketer forecast that Microsoft would pocket 1.4% of all U.S display ad spend, putting it in sixth place behind the triopoly, Verizon Media, and Twitter. By comparison, eMarketer separately forecast that the triopoly collectively accounted for 64% of all online spend last year. Numbers need to be considered when assessing the scale of the challenge ahead of this sleeping giant.

According to a PwC survey, consumers are now putting more value on seamless digital transactions, more eco-friendly ways of shopping and the ability to support small and local businesses. With online shopping now routine, this has also introduced new challenges around purchasing experiences, online scams and other issues that can erode shoppers’ trust. In response, online commerce platforms are working to ensure trustworthy shopping experiences through various policies, safety measures and technologies. 

Shoppers have moved online and businesses are following

In 2020, 62% of US shoppers surveyed said they shop online more than before the pandemic. Because of this shift from in-store to online shopping, businesses have had to evolve how they connect with customers. Meta’s September 2021 Global State of Small Business Report shows that 69% of those surveyed said digital tools positively impacted their business during the pandemic. Additionally, 60% of SMBs reported using digital tools to advertise — up from 40% in February 2021.

This trend is expected to continue through 2022, with online shopping now common for many people. Buyers are turning to technologies such as Facebook Marketplace and Instagram Shops, where they can find local products in their communities or easily browse products from businesses of all sizes. Through this kind of online commerce, companies can meet people where they already spend their time, building engagement and trust with customers. 

How online commerce platforms are fostering a safe shopping environment

While online commerce has grown considerably over the past couple of years, it’s also provided a new channel for scammers to prey on well-intentioned buyers and sellers. Many scammers have also evolved their tactics, motivating businesses to step up their efforts to build a safer and more trustworthy shopping experience. 

Online commerce platforms are investing to meet this challenge through a mix of artificial intelligence and human efforts to establish safeguards. The results of these investments include tools for businesses to report counterfeits, heightened reviews of businesses to detect scammers and product ratings and reviews to build shoppers’ confidence.

Delivering trustworthy shopping experiences should be a key focus for online commerce businesses and the sellers that utilize their platforms moving through 2022. It’s crucial that the companies that provide online commerce marketplaces vet the businesses that sell on them and maintain high standards. Businesses looking to sell goods through Meta’s technologies, for example, must abide by the company’s Commerce Eligibility Requirements and applicable Commerce Policies. Steps like this are favorable for businesses, who can feel more confident selling with safeguards in place, and for people, who know that they can trust purchases made through these technologies.

These safeguards also help online commerce companies identify businesses that should be considered for removal due to indications like poor shopper feedback and give people more confidence when making purchases. Enforcing these policies at the scale at which a company operates is essential work. Still, it is not without challenges – it’s crucial to invest in these systems to improve the detection of untrustworthy sellers to improve the buyer’s experience.

Customer experience and loyalty are predicated on trust

To build trust, businesses should be upfront and clear about product and delivery expectations, prioritize good customer service and take shopper feedback seriously to promote strong customer relationships.

Online commerce platforms should also publicize and educate shoppers about the safeguards they have in place to protect their experience, like how to tell if a business is a verified seller on the site. In addition, commerce platforms can encourage buyers to use secure payment methods and demand best practices regarding the personal information customers need to provide to make a purchase, ensuring they are protected.  

Online commerce companies need to be committed to delivering technologies for easy, useful and safe shopping experiences. That all starts with building and maintaining trust.

Sponsored By: Meta