Less BS, More Facts, Some Opinions
What’s the point in running an ad on TV if no one’s watching? That’s the question Origin Media is aiming to answer with technology that inserts native animated “primer” videos before ads within connected TV ad pods so that a viewer’s attention doesn’t wander off during an ad break. “Capturing attention is a big challenge… Continue reading »
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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. TC Effed? The Irish Council for Civil Liberties, a privacy advocacy group, published a blog post last week arguing that IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), the industry’s mechanism to convey consent data in online ad bids, cannot be reliably audited and… Continue reading »
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Throughout 2021, live-streamed shopping was one of digital media’s most closely watched industry trends. Interest in the emergent consumer behavior fueled venture capital investments, spending by legacy broadcasters, and some unusually ineffectual business development from Amazon.
It also left publishers, platforms and influencers with questions they’re still trying to answer. Last year, BuzzFeed streamed more than 60 different live shopping events, 30 of which went live in the fourth quarter of 2021. The streams attracted over 4.4 million visitors, who watched more than 1.1 million minutes of content; BuzzFeed, which said it has been evaluating the live streams based on engagement, rather than sales metrics, would not share information about how many products its streams sold.
Digiday spoke with Nilla Ali, evp of commerce at BuzzFeed, Inc., about everything it learned from last year’s forays into the format, as it prepares for another year of testing and learning.
While emerging digital products often start on one platform before they’re copied by competitors, a number of different platforms, startups and retailers launched shoppable live stream products in 2021, creating extra variables for publishers to sift through. In 2021, BuzzFeed produced shoppable live streams with retailers including Walmart, Target and Amazon, across platforms including TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, as well as its own websites.
“What we do on TikTok, in theory, is different from what we do on Instagram versus our O&Os,” Ali said.
As 2021 wore on, live-stream shopping grew into an obsession for certain media watchers. Live-stream shopping is entrenched as a consumer behavior in China, and so many presume that it is only a matter of time before the practice flourishes in the United States.
But several dozen streams in, Ali and her colleagues are still trying to figure out what might regularly compel someone to tune in to live shopping programming.
“I think you have to take another step back and think about what the psychological reason is for someone,” Ali said. “We’re still understanding that behavior, and that behavior is going to vary, depending on platform, price-point, talent.
“So many in our industry want answers immediately,” Ali added. “We want to do it thoughtfully.”
As with any emerging consumer behavior, the list of qualifications for a good live-stream host remains largely unwritten. But last year, BuzzFeed’s team figured out that spontaneity and an ability to roll with punches is essential. “It’s not, ‘Are they good on camera?” Ali said. “It’s, ‘Are they good at pivoting?’”
On some of the platforms, hosts have to deal with lots of interactivity, including comments from viewers, purchases made. Having somebody who can engage with those changes is important, Ali said.
Subject matter expertise helped. Before 2021, BuzzFeed had run a live stream show focused on pet products, and instead of more manicured TV hosts, it chose a pair of dog walkers. “It behooved us not to find people who had huge followings.”
For all the questions that remain unsolved, Ali said the platforms will put significant effort into solving them in 2022. “Expect more to come in this vein,” “All these platforms are investing in more commerce tools.”
Shirley Johnson, a senior director and the commerce capability lead at Publicis Commerce, called live-streamed, shoppable commerce “the commerce trend to watch for in 2022.”
The post ‘Still understanding that behavior’: What BuzzFeed learned from a year of livestream shopping appeared first on Digiday.
Could 2022 be the year of the independent media agency? And will their success, if achieved, come more out of the hides of the agency holding companies or the consultancies that have made their push (with limited results) into agency turf?
An informal canvas of several independent agencies (including PMG, Crossmedia, Media Matters Worldwide, Traction and Worldwide Partners) yielded some common traits among them. They all came off strong 2021 financial results — PMG said revenue grew 75 percent over 2020, Traction grew 30 percent, and the others cited similar double-digit percentage growth — and are quite bullish on their prospects to maintain similar levels of growth this year.
“Not only was 2021 back to the trajectory we saw in 2019, but agencies demonstrated and delivered the best year in their history, not just from a bottom-line perspective but based on top-line and bottom-line levels,” said John Harris, president and CEO of Worldwide Partners, a network of independent agencies including all disciplines.
“It’s going to be a great year because of the momentum we have,” echoed Josy Amann, co-founder and managing partner of media agency Media Matters Worldwide. More clients, she said, “are making the switch quickly to pivot to independent agencies, and now it’s like a tidal wave.”
The executives base that belief on:
Interestingly, it all nets out that independents may actually be beating the consultancies at their game as they are stealing away clients and talent from the holding companies.
“I consider us more of a consultancy than an agency today,” explained Adam Kleinberg, founder and CEO of Traction, which erased its “agency” handle and renamed itself a “marketing accelerator” after he retrenched the shop in 2018 by dropping difficult clients and shedding personnel. “So many clients we see are in this growth-hacker mindset, fighting against the algorithms in how they go to market and buy media. We’re helping them untangle that and figuring how to get them back on a performance track.”
“While we do integrated marketing and media and full-funnel strategy work with [clients], there are certain niches in their business they’re trying to solve for, things they haven’t faced before,” said Lindsay Weeks, vp of client strategy at PMG. “For us it allows us to take off this, let’s put on another hat and tackle this together and solve, whether it’s bringing in partners or even building something from scratch, that’s what’s allowed us to be nimble.”
That approach can be a challenge to be compensated for those efforts, but Weeks said PMG’s solution is easy: set it up as project work, as opposed to AOR or retainer-based. “Whether it’s in the initial scope or grow our scope, it’s certainly started new conversations with how we engage with our brands,” she added.
Media Matters Worldwide’s Amann said she also believes that the ramping up of data/analytics tools and expertise has not only been necessary but a standout distinction for independents, in this environment where consumer behavior has become indelibly altered and much more digitally-driven. “That’s big to us, because clients big and small have broken systems, and they don’t have their data story worked out,” she said. “We need clean data in and clean data out. And we need data to tell the story — analytics should be agile. We’re hyper-focused on working with our clients and our future clients on agile measurement.”
Though he didn’t dispute Amann’s notion, Forrester’s Pattisall pointed out that indies are largely playing catch up when it comes to data. “The holdcos have spent well over $12 billion in data technology acquisitions and investments,” he said. “As [indies] shorten the distance between their data strategy and activation capabilities and the holdcos, they will become more competitive.”
Meanwhile, other headwinds continue to prevail for the entire marketing services industry, elements from which independents aren’t immune. Talent retention is a huge problem for the entire agency universe. Forrester global agency analyst Jay Pattisall noted that the U.S. agency industry lost 40,000 employees between September 2019 and the end of 2021. “The independents’ bullishness is warranted when it comes to talent, as most are in the position to use their culture and autonomy to attract and top talent, but that only goes so far,” he said. “The talent challenge is among both holdcos and independents.”
Crossmedia co-founder and CEO Kamran Asghar said he approaches talent retention less as a we-can’t-lose-you quandary and more as a positive step in an employee’s career. “It’s like their career Airbnb,” said Asghar. “They’re going to stay with us for a period of time — could be a year, could be three, could be 10. But that experience with us has got to be really awesome and really beneficial for their career and mutually beneficial.”
The one looming uncertainty that could batter the entire marketing/communications ecosystem, Traction’s Kleinberg acknowledged, is the effect of inflation/supply chain issues since most CEOs and staffers alike have never experienced anything like this. “This isn’t a typical inflationary period, we could see double-digit inflation this year and for the next few,” he said. “It’s informed by the supply chain crisis (disruptions all caused by COVID), and it’s informed by trillions of dollars pumped into the economy, which saved a lot of jobs but is artificial money. Brands are going to be impacted by the price increases. There is no template for the modern marketer for dealing with inflation at this level.”
Video advertising, in its linear/traditional and various digital forms, appears to be as red-hot as ever, according to the latest Video Advertising Convergence Report from Advertiser Perceptions, which surveyed 250 U.S. advertisers (63% agency, 37% marketer). Video beat out all other media (search, social, display, audio, print, and OOH) in achieving advertising goals.
“Compensation has to be motivating and inspiring to the agency partner. It’s not all about efficiencies and turning the screws on the agency, or extracting every drop of blood and treating them like a vendor. We want them to come up with innovative ideas and fantastic media deals … We’re flexible. One of the biggest mistakes brands do is to hold their agencies to ransom. You cannot hold the sword of the RFP over an agency’s head and expect them to be committed to you for the long term, and be inspired to win together with you.”
Mastercard chief marketing & communications officer Raja Rajamannar, speaking on a Madison Alley Executive Lounge webinar
The post Media Buying Briefing: As independents set bullish goals for 2022, they grow their consultative powers appeared first on Digiday.
As some publishers refrain from returning to in-person events just yet, they are employing their virtual events to aid another direct revenue source: subscriptions.
The Washington Post launched its first event series exclusively for print and digital subscribers on Jan. 18. The Information is also adding to its subscriber-only events this month, with programming created for those that purchase corporate subscriptions. These events will be virtual for the foreseeable future. Events that provide subscribers with access to big-name guests, journalists and an opportunity to connect with one another can provide more value to paying readers, executives at both companies said.
Subscriber-only events are a “great opportunity to provide value to our current subscribers, a growth opportunity to attract new subscribers, and then a very small percentage of attendees paid to come,” said Ann Marinovich, vp of brand partnerships at The Information. She did not provide exact figures of how many paid to attend.
The Information has 225,000 active users, Marinovich said. She declined to share its total number of subscribers. (Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information, told Digiday last year the number is in the “tens of thousands.”) The Washington Post has roughly 3 million subscribers, according to The Wall Street Journal, and that base is reportedly plateauing due to a decline in interest among readers in political news stories. Both publishers have invested more resources into areas beyond their core coverage areas: The Information launched a vertical on the creator economy last year, while The Post has created editorial initiatives to attract young readers, like “Next Generation,” which launched last August.
Creating “special” programming for Post subscribers
The Washington Post’s new series will feature interviews with key figures in the news, conversations with authors and discussions with the journalists working on The Post’s biggest projects. The Post will host a minimum of one virtual event per month for its subscribers. “We are likely to increase that given the excitement we’ve already seen for this feature,” said Kris Coratti Kelly, chief communications officer at The Washington Post and gm of Washington Post Live.
Subscribers will be able to submit questions to those featured in the events. For author events, the first 200 registrants will get a free copy of the author’s book. Video will also be available to subscribers after the program. Unlike events freely accessible by non-subscribers, this event series has an expanded Q&A section from a few questions to more than 15 minutes to give additional time to readers’ questions. Those questions are submitted in advance for now, but eventually, The Post will make that feature “a more real-time interaction to create a deeper connection with the audience,” Kelly said.
The first installment of the series featured former Post reporter and investigative journalist Carl Bernstein and The Post’s national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig. The event had over 21,000 registrations.
Last year, Washington Post Live produced more than 430 event programs, all of which were virtual. In 2021, The Post doubled the number of programs and events produced and sponsorship revenue coming in year-over-year. The Post declined to share revenue numbers. “Given the enormous growth and popularity of the platform, 2022 seemed like the right time to carve out something special for subscribers,” Kelly said.
Subscriber-exclusive events can serve as a “strong” retention or acquisition tool, according to Melissa Chowning, founder and CEO at audience development agency Twenty-First Digital. “I think the most compelling component about a strategy like this is the exclusivity feel behind these events.” The data publishers can gather from their audiences, such as their interest (or lack of interest) in certain topics or events, can also “help media organizations understand their audience better,” she said.
The Information gives more access to its journalists
Starting this month, the business and tech site will begin hosting quarterly events exclusively for those who buy a corporate subscription package, also called a group subscription. Corporate subscriptions start at $349 per subscriber (for a minimum of 10 subscribers). These events will provide companies who are “giving a larger commitment to The Information” with more access to their journalists, Marinovich said.
The first event, which will be held on Jan. 25, is called “2022 Tech Outlook: What’s Next?” It will bring together reporters at The Information who cover topics like the metaverse, fintech and platforms to share their predictions on the next big trends and companies to watch, Marinovich said. These events will be “less focused on external big industry speakers” and more on “insight from our editorial,” she added.
About three-quarters of the events The Information hosts are exclusively for subscribers. The other 25% are roughly split between those that require a purchased ticket to attend and those that offer access for free, according to Marinovich. The Information held about 30 events last year. Sponsorship revenue for events in 2021 “was 3x that of 2020,” Marinovich said, but declined to share exact figures.
Subscriber-exclusive events can also build community within a publisher’s subscriber base or around their brand, Chowning said. “Users often want to connect with other like-minded users, even if it is in the form of a virtual event. There’s a sense of community that is being established here as well,” she said.
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In 2013, Alison Morra was only two months into her career at Inkhouse public relations agency before learning she was pregnant. She was excited and nervous, but the pregnancy never came to be. And because Morra was so new to the company, she said, she didn’t say anything to her boss about the miscarriage or needing time off to process the grief.
“I grew up with the mentality that work was work and your private life was private and those two things shouldn’t mix,” she said in an email. “Knowing what I know now, it seems crazy I wouldn’t have said something or taken time off, but I was trying to prove to the company that hiring me was a good choice.”
Morra, who is currently a mom and now chief operations officer at Inkhouse, has worked to introduce new company policy aimed at those who have faced a similar experience. As of last week, Inkhouse now offers two weeks of paid leave to all regular, full-time employees who experience miscarriage or pregnancy loss within the first 20 weeks. After that, the company’s standard parental leave policy kicks in, which was recently updated to offer 20 weeks of paid parental leave.
Paid leave for pregnancy loss is just one of the new employee benefits the company rolled out this year aimed to improve employee work-life balance. In addition, Inkhouse employees have every other Friday off with unlimited vacation and are entitled to a six-week sabbatical once they’ve been with the company for 10 years.
“What’s good for people is good for business and the more companies recognize this, the more they will do to keep their employees, particularly women, in the workforce,” Morra said.
Since the onset of the pandemic, there has been a renewed interest in work-life balance and gender inclusivity that has led companies across industries to roll out more robust family leave policies. Beginning this year, companies like Inkhouse and even Pinterest have created new policies aimed at parents experiencing miscarriage or pregnancy loss. Jennifer Bett Communications, a New York City-based PR firm, put in motion something similar to prevent burnout for working moms, as previously reported by Digiday.
“We know that our people do their best work when they feel seen and supported, and we wanted to be there for them throughout life’s biggest milestones — including all paths and stages of parenthood,” said Alice Vichaita, head of global benefits at Pinterest via email.
With the new policy, Pinterest has extended company benefits to provide four weeks of paid leave for pregnancy loss in addition to setting a global company standard for both In vitro fertilisation (IVF) and egg freezing. The social media platform has also introduced at least 20 weeks of paid parental leave, 12 weeks of paid leave for parents with newborns in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and 20 weeks and up to $10,000 for adoptive parents globally.
When it comes to paid family leave, the U.S. lags behind other countries, not offering guaranteed paid parental leave at the national level, per data from the World Policy Analysis Center.
Recently, Democrat-backed legislation allowing Americans to receive paid leave time after pregnancy or related child loss was introduced last July. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan included language around universal paid leave, but the program has since hit a wall, leaving the decision making up to corporations.
The advertising industry itself has notoriously been behind when it comes to paid parental leave. In 2020, Digiday research showed that just two-thirds of agency employees noted their agencies offered maternity leave. That same research showed that less than half of those employees reported their shops also give paid leave to new fathers. However, in order to gain and retain talent, a number of agencies have taken aim at reshaping those policies.
If the last two years have taught this industry nothing else, it’s a broader understanding of employee health and wellness, said Marla Kaplowitz, president and CEO of the 4A’s.
“We’re not unilaterally one type of person. We’re multi-dimensional and there are different components based on your gender,” Kaplowitz said. “These are policies [agencies and companies] need to start thinking about.”
Per Vichaita, Pinterest is constantly watching the industry, looking for ways to improve company benefits and remain competitive. This latest initiative stems from conversations company leadership has had with employees, “even if that means going above and beyond usual benefit norms,” Vichaita said.
“This includes coverage and support for the often lesser-talked about but no-less challenging complications that come with childbirth and parenting,” she added. “Maintaining a healthy workforce means engaging employees on their unique needs, and helping them grow and develop within a positive, supportive workplace.”
In the future, Morra hopes more companies will continue to make space for women to bring their whole selves to work, she said.
“It’s not a weakness to take time off, it’s not a weakness to have a child pop onto Zoom during a conference call and it’s ok to not have it all together,” she said. “It’s imperative that we meet women where they are in their personal lives in order to retain them for the future.”
The post ‘Going above and beyond usual benefit norms’: Companies are starting to give employees time off for pregnancy loss appeared first on Digiday.