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Three months after Vox Media and Group Nine’s branded content studios merged, the newly combined Vox Creative is using its different podcast ad formats to integrate audio advertising into advertisers’ campaigns or to upsell advertisers already in the space, according to svp Yosef Johnson and executive producer of audio Annu Subramanian.
Vox Creative offers three main podcast ad types: one- to five-minute-long custom branded segments, custom series sponsorships (where advertisers buy all the ad breaks across a selection of episodes) and standalone podcasts, where advertisers work with Vox Creative’s podcast team to create and promote a branded show for the Vox Media Podcast Network.
“We have each of these tools in our kit so we can point them to an opportunity to up-level, or a different thing that they haven’t seen before within the toolkit. A brand that may have had success with video before is now saying, ‘We’ll come back and do video and we’ll try audio as well.’ So not only are we up-leveling our native audio clients, but we’re also getting yield from across Vox Creative,” Subramanian said.
Vox Creative has worked with around 300 advertisers in custom audio ads in the last year, and 70% of those brands have spent across multiple podcasts, according to Johnson. A Vox Media spokesperson declined to share how this compares to the year prior. The Vox Media Podcast Network has over 200 shows. The team that works on branded audio has doubled in size in the last year. There’s been “little overlap” between Group Nine and Vox Media’s “key” advertisers, according to Johnson. Before the merger, Group Nine predominantly worked with CPG and retail advertisers, while Vox Media worked with advertisers in the tech, media, entertainment and financial services categories, he said.
After speaking with Johnson and Subramanian, Digiday conducted a follow-up interview with Johnson to discuss how the two studios have been combined in the merger. His answers are reflected below.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
How were Group Nine and Vox Media’s creative studios brought together after the merger closed in February, and what did each team bring to the table?
Both of our studios were very complementary in terms of our offerings. The Group Nine Brand Shop side was heavily focused on distribution across social channels, from an editorial and branded content standpoint. We worked with advertisers to really take advantage of that scale that Group Nine had across social. With that came expertise across the different platforms, whether that be Facebook, Instagram and increasingly TikTok and Snap. Social know-how was definitely a focal point on the Group Nine side.
On the Vox side, the team certainly worked on social campaigns, but the Vox Creative team was molded in the fashion of Vox at large, which is premium storytelling and utility-driven content. With that came the Explainer Studio, which is drafted off of the Explainer franchise, and brought out to advertisers in a form-fitting way — as well as branded documentaries. We recently had one that premiered on HBO Max. We’re currently in production on a number of documentaries. Audio is another huge capability that the Vox Creative team had, tapping into the Vox Media Podcast Network.
So when I say complementary, I would say Group Nine was playing heavily at one end of the spectrum and Vox was playing similarly at the other end. We’re doing branded TikToks and branded documentaries and everything in between.
Is the team coming from Group Nine Brand Shop focused on the Group Nine brands, or are they creating branded content across the Vox Media portfolio now?
We are mixing it up. The whole point is to learn from each other, from what’s been successful on our networks from the respective companies. We are definitely cross-pollinating right now. And I think that’s really what we’re so excited about. We’re just bringing the content expertise from our respective companies and getting everyone trained and learning. A lot of the skills are transferable, too. We have folks who may be from production but are really well-versed in audio, who can now work on the podcast team and can help bring fresh ideas to that team and vice versa.
You mentioned the focus now is to bring the strengths from the Vox side to Group Nine brands, and vice versa. Can you explain how Vox Creative pitches these integrated campaigns?
We are thinking about ways that our campaigns can span different creative formats. It’s very common that we’ll have a campaign that has custom video, written elements and social elements. Similarly, there have been campaigns that have audio as well as a hub experience as well as distribution promotion through media units. What we’re really looking forward to is bringing those elements together, particularly with audio as a focus. For something like a custom podcast, is there also a custom video component that accompanies that with bite-sized social elements to promote it and standalone pieces of content that live on social? As we look to integrated campaigns now with the full breadth of the Vox Creative offering that we bring together between Group Nine and Vox — there’s just a ton more opportunity for audio to sit as the hero but then be supported by other content formats. That’s something we’re actively working on and talking about.
We see advertisers that start on the audio side, and maybe they start with a daily ad and then that moves to maybe a custom segment, maybe it moves to a fully blown custom series. And then from there, you venture into a video or social. A lot of it maps back to our teams having been separate companies and the advertisers that they were talking to in those respective seats, which knew Group Nine for one thing and Vox for a set of things. And so everyone on our team is now having exciting conversations to say: “Hey, remember how you did all that stuff with us last year? We’re still going to do more of that but by the way. Let me show you this custom podcast we just did for Mattress Firm, and this feels spot on for what you were talking about for your strategy for holiday,” for example.
According to some reporting I’ve done, it seems like publishers are pitching longer-form podcast ads to advertisers. Are you pitching branded podcasts more than other podcast ad formats?
It’s not an either-or. We are definitely pitching them. We love our custom podcasts and you can do really compelling work as we’ve seen with a number of the custom series we’ve done. But we are always keeping the focus on what’s the right format for the advertiser and starting there. Daily ads make up a significant portion of our audio business. Advertisers see a ton of opportunity there. To do a custom podcast obviously requires a different level of time and investment and those make sense for a set of advertisers and specific opportunities and then the daily ads make a ton of sense for a whole host of advertisers looking to take advantage of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
The post Q&A: How Vox Media’s branded content studio is working to integrate its podcast ad capabilities post-merger appeared first on Digiday.
This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how Amazon, Roku and YouTube stand to play a bigger role in this year’s upfront market after leveling up in the last couple years.
The key hits:
In last year’s TV advertising upfront market, TV networks were willing to turn away linear TV ad dollars to move money to their respective streaming and digital properties. In this year’s upfront market, that move may come back to bite the networks. Some of that money did end up moving to streaming and digital, but it moved to other companies’ streaming and digital inventory and may not return to the TV networks given Amazon’s, Roku’s and YouTube’s rising roles in the upfront market, according to agency executives.
“We warned [the TV networks] last year: ‘Don’t overplay your hand because all your going to do is you’re going to force clients to shift money into some of these digital platforms that have great audiences, data, great measurement, great ability to prove that they’re reaching incremental audiences that you’re not reaching on TV. And once the money goes over, they’re not coming back,’” said one agency executive.
“People thought they could push money away, and it would just come back, and it doesn’t,” concurred a second agency executive.
This migration of money to companies including Amazon, Roku and YouTube is creating the conditions for the playing field to further level between traditional TV network owners and streaming-only sellers in this year’s upfront. “NBCU, Disney, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Amazon, Google, Roku — that’s where 80% of the marketplace gets spent,” said a third agency executive.
Historically, the streaming-only sellers took a backseat to the TV networks in the upfront negotiations. Advertisers and agencies struck their deals with the TV networks first and then moved on to haggling with Amazon, Roku and YouTube. But over the past two years, that gap has effectively closed to the point where, in some cases, the streaming-only sellers are securing the first deals.
“YouTube’s been one of our first deals a couple of years in a row, as has Roku,” said Stacey Stewart, U.S. chief marketplace officer at UM Worldwide. “Whether they will be this year, time will tell. We look at them all at the same time. We don’t have windows anymore.”
“You’re going to see more agencies and clients push for broader deals or bigger deals across YouTube, Roku, Amazon, for sure,” said the second agency executive.
Agency executives were leery of discussing, on record or anonymously, what share of upfront dollars they expect will go to the streaming-only sellers versus the TV networks this year, but they did say that they expect at least 30% but no more than 40% of the total volume of dollars committed in this year’s upfront to be earmarked for streaming overall.
Some agency executives who have continued to haggle first with the TV networks seem to be holding a bit of a grudge against the TV networks for their handling of last year’s negotiations and are now eyeing opportunities to overhaul their deal-making hierarchy. “We’re going to do our first upfront deals — the first in market that usually set the tone of the market — it could very well be with YouTube or Amazon,” said the first agency executive.
In short, after last year’s upfront market heavily favored sellers and particularly traditional TV sellers, buyers are heading into this year’s negotiations looking to even the balance and see the streaming-only sellers as a big bargaining chip that can now be used in the same way that the buyers play the major TV network groups against one another. “If Disney tells me that their pricing is plus-20[%], I can say, ‘Go screw yourself. I’m going to Paramount, and I’m going to YouTube,’” said the third agency executive.
Further favoring the streaming-only sellers is the relatively lax terms of their commitments. Unlike the TV networks that require advertisers to commit ahead of time to spend a set amount of money with fairly limited cancelation options, the streaming-only sellers typically strike so-called “endeavor” or “enterprise” deals, in which an ad deal is done at the agency level so the agency can spread it across its client portfolio and unlock certain inventory and/or pricing tiers as they spend more money with a CTV platform or streaming service throughout the year. These deals’ flexibility — further buoyed by adhering to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 15-day, 100% cancelation clause — may be especially in demand in this year’s upfront market given the macroeconomic conditions affecting advertisers’ businesses.
“Do you want to put your money somewhere where you’re committed — at least a large percentage of it — 14, 15 months out? Or do you want to work with somebody to get out in two weeks in terms of endeavors?” said the first agency executive.
Of course, capitalism being capitalism, agency executives have to be careful about the downsides of rebalancing the upfront market too heavily toward the streaming-only sellers. For example, rising upfront demand being directed toward Amazon, Roku and YouTube could put those companies in position to make greater demands of advertisers and agencies in the upfront — potentially as soon as this year’s upfront.
“I believe Roku has been out talking about trying to have more specific deals tied to clients and less about the enterprise. It’s the same for YouTube,” said the second agency executive.
“The mid-sized or smaller TV players can’t afford to subscribe to Nielsen plus three others. It’s a really big issue. You’ve already got a lot of cost in the system from programmatic fees. Then as we get into more data-driven linear and advanced TV, that has its own set of fees. Here’s another set.”
— TV network executive on the additional costs introduced by supporting multiple measurement currencies
Despite the timing of Netflix’s glum first-quarter earnings report, April wasn’t an entirely gloomy month for streaming. The dominant subscription-based streamer may have hit a low, having lost subscribers, but streaming overall gained share of total TV watch time to reach a new high, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge report for April 2022.
Aside from streaming’s overall uptick, the viewership share breakdown by major streamers didn’t change all that much — with one exception. Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max earned a callout for the first time by accounting for 1% of total TV watch time in April.
Splitting HBO Max from the “Other streaming” bucket would help to explain that bucket shedding 0.6 percentage points month over month. More to the point, it’s notable that the fact that “Other streaming” only dipped by 0.6 percentage points despite losing the 1 percentage point that HBO Max would have contributed if it hadn’t been broken out. Excluding the HBO Max impact, the “Other streaming” category appears to have gained share by 0.4 percentage points. That’s not a lot, but it would represent the biggest month-over-month gain in watch time among the listed streamers. Combined with HBO Max reaching Nielsen’s reporting threshold, these two developments evince how streaming viewership continues to spread beyond the historical who’s who, though the category still appears to be pretty top-heavy.
Speaking of slightly waning dominance, traditional TV still accounted for 61.5% of TV watch time in April, though broadcast TV’s share dipped by 0.2 percentage points and cable TV’s share slipped by 0.1 percentage point.
21%: Estimated annual U.S. revenue bump that Netflix could receive by adding an ad-supported tier.
17.4%: Percentage share of Snap’s U.S. employees who are members of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.
$2.99: Monthly subscription price for non-pay-TV subscribers to stream The Weather Channel’s live broadcast.
1.95 million: Number of subscribers that major U.S. pay-TV providers lost in the first quarter of 2022, slightly more than they shed in Q1 2021 but slightly less than in Q1 2020.
Disney’s Disney+ ad pitch reflects how streaming ad prices are set to rise in this year’s upfront:
Read more about streaming ad prices here.
Four takeaways on Upfront Week from a buyer’s perspective:
Read more about Upfront Week here.
Why TV advertising’s measurement currency change won’t happen in this year’s upfront cycle:
Read more about TV advertising’s measurement currency change here.
As economic uncertainty grows, senior media buyers expect decent upfront pricing options across linear and digital:
Read more about upfront buyers’ pricing expectations here.
Flexibility will be a focal point again in this year’s upfront negotiations:
Read more about upfront flexibility talk here.
Streaming’s belt-tightening era:
Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are taking steps to rein in their content costs, reflecting the end of streaming’s free-spending era, according to Bloomberg.
Netflix’s long-term subscriber loss:
While newer subscribers continue to account for a bulk of the customers Netflix loses each quarter, the share is increasing among those who have been subscribers for more than three years, according to The Information.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s disruptor in chief:
Former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar may have been described as a disruptor, but the label appears to apply to Warner Bros. Discoveyr COE David Zaslav, who has quickly shaken up the new conglomerate by cutting costs and canceling projects like CNN+, according to The Wall Street Journal.
TikTok’s live subscriptions test:
This month TikTok will start testing an option for creators to sell paid subscriptions for people tuning into their live streams, according to TechCrunch.
Candle Media’s Spanish-language studio:
A week after Candle Media acquired digital video publisher ATTN:, former Disney executives Kevin Mayer’s and Tom Staggs’ media company announced it is acquiring Spanish-language TV and film producer Exile Content Studio, according to The New York Times.
The post Future of TV Briefing: How Amazon, Roku and YouTube are figuring into this year’s TV upfront market appeared first on Digiday.
Marketers may be aware of the looming demise of third-party cookies, but they generally still seem stuck in second gear when it comes to finding new alternative solutions.
That’s what a recent report from marketing industry organization MMA Global and Boston Consulting Group determined as it works to examine the use of modern contextual advertising solutions that obviate the need for third-party alternatives that are being touted by other key industry players.
“The lack of maturity among the solutions, combined with a lack of understanding how to assess the impact by marketers, puts the industry in a real quagmire,” said Greg Stuart, CEO of MMA Global. “The solutions just aren’t fully established or completely understood yet.”
To wit, MMA hosted a series of webinars last year that allowed each cookie solution provider the chance to explain their offering — but industry response to the presentations was that none of them felt fully baked, Stuart acknowledged. That reality, he added, is hindering marketers’ ability to back one or the other, be it LiveRamp, ID5, Google Topics or others.
“Most marketers and publishers aren’t moving fast enough,” said Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk, which has its own ID2.0 solution that it’s testing with the IAB. “Many are moving, but there’s just so much more to do.”
Findings by the MMA/BCG report, which surveyed 150 senior and mid-level marketers and digital executives, include stats that seem to both instill fear in marketers that a substantial amount of work still needs to be done to determine the right solutions — but also reassure them they’re not alone. For example:
The ramping up of first-party data, for now, seems to be the patchwork solution, said Derek Rodenhausen, a partner with BCG. “Marketers know first-party data will be key and they know they will need new solutions when it comes to identity,” he said. “The problem is, it’s not clear exactly when cookies are going away, what the alternatives will be, or how to best tackle Identity in a post-cookie world.”
Thats’s perhaps why Stuart said MMA is looking for a completely different solution than either probabilistic or deterministic cookie-replacement tools. The organization is in the process of talking with brands about assessing the value of modern contextual marketing.
“We think the answer to these marketer challenges may lie somewhere else,” he said, adding that he’s lining up 10 marketers to participate in developing what he called a “consortium initiative for the industry.”
A February IAB report on the state of data also found marketers unprepared for the cookie-pocalypse, citing a possible $10 billion hit in annual sales if the industry remains in its current state of mind. The report was said to be more stern than usual in its criticism of its members for dragging their collective heels on finding solutions.
“I don’t recall a time when the IAB took such a direct approach to calling out its members,” said Insider Intelligence senior analyst Paul Verna, in a report analyzing the IAB’s findings. “Whether or not the report results in concrete action is an open question, but there’s no doubt the chaotic state of ad targeting and measurement is going to be a priority for ad buyers and sellers in 2022.”
The post Can contextual provide a better solution than cookie-replacement options, asks the MMA appeared first on Digiday.
Does the red-hot world of e-commerce — estimated to be in the neighborhood of $100 billion according to Boston Consulting Group — even need its own “upfront”? Horizon Media’s topical Night Market unit certainly thinks so.
Night Market, which specializes in guiding clients through e-commerce and retail media offerings and inventory, hosted its third annual eCommFronts beginning Tuesday through today. The virtual event examines the changing and growing world of e-commerce and shoppable media, focusing more intensely on the collapsing funnel (the coming together of brand gain with performance results) and the melding of data sets, said Randy Browning, president of Night Market. The event had 539 registered users.
The companies presenting cut across the growing swath of retailers that have opened up new revenue opportunities by selling ad inventory on their own digital presences and weaponizing their data to help other media hungry for insights on consumer behavior.
“The opportunity is that you have an ability to create a collapsed funnel in a purchase journey that is starting online,’ said Browning.
Here are some takeaways from the event:
Among the companies presenting are retailers Walmart and Kroger, both of which have committed deeply to building out an e-commerce and retail media revenue stream, but are now also generating data that has its own revenue value.
“People assume retail media is just sponsored product listings in e-commerce,” said Jill Smith, director of agency partnerships with Kroger Precision Marketing, which now operates within a data science division called 84.51°. “But we’ve entered a new phase of retail media. Now brands are using Kroger Precision Marketing’s first-party sales data to target and optimize programmatic ad campaigns on the open web.”
That said, retail media is still fighting for a greater share of media buyers’ attention, even if it’s caught on pretty well with marketers. A recent Digiday+ Research survey of 59 agency and marketer executives found that the bigger retail players haven’t yet seen a significant uptick in media investment. That could have something to do with why the eCommFronts are taking place.
Of course, ad-tech and platform players are also part of the eCommFronts, including Meta, GoPuff, Instacart, Criteo, Roku and The Trade Desk. Now that the retailers have established their media channels, next steps include setting some of the inventory for sale programmatically, as well as other offline opportunities. “Think about it from a branding perspective where we move from awareness through to consideration,” said Browning, “And all of this with a closed-loop approach to attribution without the need of cookies. We are very bullish on where this opportunity goes.”
Streaming, a seemingly omnipresent element in any media plan, is winding its way into the e-commerce equation as well. “Streaming TV is the next frontier of commerce,” said Kroger’s Smith. “Roku CPG advertisers can now use our sales data to identify the households they want to reach — like people who are lapsed buyers of a particular salsa or toothpaste brand — and then measure the incremental impact of that advertising.”
The road ahead isn’t just paved with gold, acknowledged Browning, who sees the still-unresolved disconnect between shopper marketing budgets and media planning as an obstacle to seamless progress. He added that better alignment of data between client and retailer is another area that needs to see improvement — an area where the use of clean room technology might help.
Still, the revenue potential remains higher than most other media, even at this time of darkening economic clouds. “Retail Media is foundationally built on the premise that the best opportunity to speak to a customer is at the point of purchase, or when they are in the closest proximity to conversion — pushing a physical shopping cart or adding to a digital one,” said Albert Thompson, managing director of digital innovation at Walton Isaacson. “Given its high correlation for directly impacting sales, it is the revenue return solution in marketing. What gives it even more power is that it possesses supply-chain acumen, meaning it’s oriented around the volume of product available in real-time so spending is adjusted in direct correlation with supply and demand.”
One major commerce expert added that agency budgets in tight economic times tend to go down, but rarely are e-commerce budgets affected since they are directly tied to sales, which companies need when market conditions worsen.
The post The Rundown: As e-commerce grows, the eCommFronts address data and communication issues appeared first on Digiday.