Month: May 2022

Digiday has learned that New Frontier Data (NFD), an analytics tech firm that specializes in the cannabis industry, struck a partnership deal with Smart, a programmatic platform that works with all manner of publishers, including cannabis content, to let Smart access a database of 160 million consumers via NFD’s NXTeck — an ad tech solution that packages cannabis-consuming audiences.

NFD has been busy of late cranking out information on the segment, which spent a collective $97 billion in legal and illicit cannabis consumption in 2021, according to its report “Cannabis Consumers in America: Dynamics Shaping Normalization in 2022,” released on April 20 (a national holiday of sorts for the cannabis consumer). Noting that that amount almost matches the $100 billion spent on beer, NFD is trying to paint a picture of the cannabis consumer as normalized and just as appealing to mainstream marketers.

“Cannabis consumers actually mirror just about every other CPG consumer group out there. We’re able to segment in a way that media buyers understand who the audiences truly are, and with smart technology, we’re able to ensure that the targeting is done in such a way that it also protects the mature marketers as well as the cannabis marketers,” said Gary Allen, NFD’s CEO. “And so very quickly there will be an erosion of the distinction between [them]. And QSR [buyers are] a huge consumer of this type of data.”

To wit, the partnership lets media buyers activate NXTeck segments and combine them with other targeting criteria, such as performance and viewability targeting, to create customized packages on Smart’s platform. 

“It’s absolutely ready, and it’s reached critical mass,” said Eric Perko, CEO of Apollo Partners, an independent media agency. “The broader acceptance is there. People are buying it digitally, so the data that’s associated with that could be really valuable to the right brand. And the mealtime moment does naturally come with cannabis consumption, so it’s smart for the right, brave brand that wants to associate with it, since it doesn’t have the stigma it had in the past.”

Ted Montanus, director of demand partnerships at Smart, said he’s looking even farther than low-hanging fruit categories. “We talk about QSR for obvious reasons, but we also have the ‘do it yourself’ Home Depot shopper, and people and that are much more focused on sustainability” as well health-conscious consumers who are looking to avoid mainstream pharmaceutical products, he said. 

And Allen pointed out that the long-term goal is to no longer pitch the cohort so narrowly. “The idea is to help the world understand that these consumers aren’t just cannabis consumers. We follow them across over 900,000 retail locations in the U.S.,” he noted.

Other players in the cannabis space believe advances like data sophistication and application of ad tech can attract new revenue to the space. “As cannabis becomes more mainstream… it’s no surprise that there is no more ‘typical cannabis consumer,’” said Monica Chun, chief client officer at independent holding company Acceleration Community of Companies. “Now you can target consumers based on format preference, desired effects, need states and lifestyle. It enables a more personalized message and solution that is right for you. All of this together will help further normalize and de-stigmatize cannabis use.”

“What we’re really seeing is the rapid mainstreaming of the cannabis consumer and the data suggests that they are one of the most influential audiences for both endemic and mainstream brands,” added Steve Katelman, chief partnership officer at cannabis programmatic/data platform Fyllo, who noted that MRI Simmons shows that almost 90 percent of cannabis/CBD consumers visited a QSR restaurant or ordered for delivery in the past 30 days, while 61% are frequent snackers. “They are obvious targets for CPG brands. Reaching new audiences is the holy grail for any marketer and the data shows that cannabis consumers are uniquely valuable to mainstream brands who want to reach those early adopters and more adventurous consumers.”

Fyllo, for example, has been able to attract business from broader brands such as Clorox and Uber. “This is why we’ve seen such a massive increase in ad spend from brands outside of the cannabis industry,” said Katelman. 

Color by numbers

Digital out-of-home media is one of the few media predicted to enjoy double-digit percentage gains in a media industry that’s looking at a significant slowdown the second half of this year. For example, Coca-Cola ran a campaign over the winter holidays promoting its Seagrams, Sprite and Fresca brands on Volta, a DOOH company that offers ads to people charging electric vehicles. According to Volta, the campaign resulted in:

• 56 percent more ROAS compared to industry averages;
• $2.51 million in attributable sales;
• an 8.2 percent surge in new brand buyers;
• 7.6 percent rise in new category buyers.   

Takeoff & landing

• GroupM’s Wavemaker landed Audible’s media business, which is said to amount to some $500 million in paid media. Publicis’ SparkFoundry had handled U.S. buying. 
• Retailer JC Penney named dentsu X its media agency of record, consolidating all of its media there. The two have a 17-year relationship, primarily in performance media, but dentsu X expanded its remit. Omnicom’s OMD had handled some of Penney’s media.
• Havas Media Group partnered with Liveramp to create an audience management platform, which includes clean-room technology, within its Converged identity-based planning and buying platform. HMG said it’s the first agency group to partner with Liveramp’s post-cookie solution.
• Scott Hagedorn will join Publicis as global chief solutions architect, a new role that blends tech, data, creativity and media elements and reports to global CEO Arthur Sadoun. Hagedorn was most recently CEO of Omnicom Media Group North America. Joining him in moving over from OMG to Publicis is Samantha Levine Archer, formerly chief transformation officer, who will hold a U.S.-focused solutions role. 

Direct quote

“There’s a difference between getting the OK to run a branded post from an influencer as opposed to getting approval for using a creator’s content within your ads, because there’s just more brand control. But it’s very much education-driven. And the platforms themselves, like TikTok or Snapchat, they’re really good about helping us out, and they’re invested in helping to grow these businesses. It behooves them to kind of help us in the education process and the approval process. All it takes is an advocate or a believer on the client side to that to help make it happen.”

— Emmy Clarke, associate director of social, Good Apple, discussing the growing use of influencers and creators in health/wellness and pharmaceutical advertising.

Speed reading

• Digiday news editor Seb Joseph takes a deep look into the progress made by Coca-Cola in efforts to in-house some of its business, as well as progress still to be made. 
• Digiday’s senior media editor Tim Peterson broke the news of Disney expanding its cadre of ad-sales executives to bolster its targeted- and addressable-ad abilities. 
• I included a brief item in a recent Media Buying Briefing about the NewFronts being super-spreader Covid events. Deadline followed up with this story alleging the same thing happened with the upfonts.

This comes off the heels of many large tech companies revealing they are slowing the addition of new hires due to lower than expected revenue.

Twitter had its last board meeting as a public company before Elon Musk potentially takes it private after offering $44 million, although the deal is still yet to be finalized as Musk has voiced uncertainty via his own Twitter account about the likelihood that the transaction will officially close. Also last week, the company was fined $150 million due to improper usage of users’ data. 

Emplifi, a social media listening tool, announced a partnership with TikTok. This partnership will help their brand partners to acquire insights into the Gen Z demographic, as TikTok is hugely popular in spurring young market consumption.

And finally, content recommendation platform Taboola has entered into an agreement to acquire Hungary-based, personalization tech company Gravity R&D for an undisclosed sum, according to the company. Taboola expects the deal to close in the second quarter of 2022. A Taboola spokesperson declined to say how much the company is paying for Gravity R&D. “This is a tech investment in engineering and AI, which is part of our long-term thesis that investing in technology and AI will help everything we do be successful – whether that’s personalization, commerce and eventually driving success for publishers and advertisers,” said Adam Singolda, Taboola’s CEO and founder.

In other news …

• iHeartMedia predicts it will not suffer losses following Snap’s announcement due to its large podcast advertisement library and multiple advertising platforms. The company even predicts that May and June will pace higher than April.

• Over a dozen mid-sized hedge funds through PIPE investments were identified in funding $1 billion into Trump’s social media platform Truth Social. In such deals, investors exchange capital for shares in the company which will ultimately be for sale in the open market. Pentwater Capital, Sabby Management, Anson Funds Management, Kershner Trading Americas, K2 & Associates, Yorkville Advisors, and MMCAP were all identified as investors in Trump’s company. 

• Candle Media recently acquired two companies backed by Blackstone, the first being Exile Content Studios, a Spanish language content studio, in which Candle Media aims to reach new audiences and creators through its premium Spanish content. The second acquisition was Attn:, a news feed focused on reaching Gen Z. With this acquisition, Attn: will grow aspects of the brand including creative strategy and brand services, particularly useful in the TikTok arm of Attn: launched last June. 

• SiriusXM acquired Conan O’Brien’s production company, Team Coco, and his podcast in an exclusive 5-year deal valued at $150 million. O’Brien will also start an exclusive comedy channel on the platform with this deal. In the acquisition, Team Coco’s staff also joins O’Brien at SiriusXM and will continue to produce content and now collaborate with SiriusX. 

• Journey Home Media also acquired 3 media companies backed by Growth Catalyst Partners: ICRAVE, Futures Intelligence Group and Skilled Creative. With these acquisitions, Journey positions itself as an important player across physical, digital and virtual platforms. 

• Firework, a live stream commerce company, secured $150 million in funding with a Series B financing led by Softbank Vision. The company aims to use these funds to decentralize tech powerhouses such as Meta, which charges a 47.5% transaction fee on all purchases made on the Horizon World Meta app. 

• Emirates Cricket Board signed a 10-year media rights deal with Zee Entertainment Enterprises. This is the second sports broadcasting deal ZEE has signed in the last year with UAE T20 League being the first, a deal estimated to be worth $100-150 million. 

Additionally, below is a list of industry leader hires or promotions

• Tubular Labs, the engagement and tracking company for Youtube, Twitter, and Meta, has hired Greg Coleman as CEO
  • He was formerly president of Huffington Post and Buzzfeed

• Eat This, Not That has hired Justine Goodman to Editor-in-chief 
  • She was formerly editor-in-chief of SHE Media

• Publicis has hired Scott Hagedorn as global chief solutions architect
  • He was formerly Omnicom Media Group CEO, NA

• Promax has hired Stacy La Cotera as new CEO following Steve Kazanjian stepping down
  • She was formerly general manager and executive producer

• UTA has hired Stefanie Liquori as general counsel and partner
  • She was formerly CEO and general counsel at DSG Entertainment Services

• Spanish Broadcasting Systems (SBS) has promoted Elisa Torres to chief eetwork officer/executive vp
  • She was formerly senior vp Network Operations and Alliates of Sales, executive vp Network and National

• BDG has hired Jon Wilde as senior vp, Culture and Innovation Group
  • He was formerly Global Digital Director of GQ

As a seven-year-old startup, Skorch sees influencers as a cost-effective way to stand out and get in front of shoppers in an increasingly crowded digital advertising marketplace, according to CEO and founder Lane Petrauskas.

“It feels word of mouth in that way. Even if it’s a paid campaign, it feels organic, word of mouth when you’re hearing about it from an influencer who genuinely loves it,” Petrauskas said, of the California-based company.

It’s unclear exactly how much Skorch spends on influencer marketing efforts per month as Petrauskas declined to offer specific details, but Petrauskas said it was into the thousands of dollars. At least 60% of it is dedicated to influencers on Instagram. Meanwhile, 20% goes toward podcast influencers, 10% to TikTok influencers and 10% to YouTube influencers.

To reach its target audience of traveling millennials and Gen Z women, the startup says it finds the most success in working with lifestyle influencers. For the past year, Skorch has worked with Hannah Godwin from The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise, who has more than 1.5 million followers on Instagram. 

“I wouldn’t say this would be our permanent strategy. It’s working now. But as we grow, brand awareness efforts could become more of a priority,” Petrauskas said.

Across podcasts, Skorch has advertised with The Skinny Confidential, which is hosted by Lauryn Bosstick, and Marianna Hewitt’s podcast, Life with Marianna. 

“We tend to like to work with influencers longer term on campaigns,” Petrauskas said. “So it’s more of an ambassadorship rather than sort of spreading our budget thin on one or two off posts.”

Prior to deploying its current strategy, Skorch experimented with paid ads on Instagram and considered out-of-home advertising, finding customer conversion rates to be better with influencer marketing. 

“Something like out of home for an app might be great for awareness. But one thing that we’ve learned is it’s not necessarily as easy as you might think for someone to influence someone to download an app,” Petrausaks said. She added that influencers are a direct line to the app for customers, with less friction and clicking around than other media channels.

Nearly 75% of U.S. marketers are expected to leverage influencer marketing in their strategies this year, up from 70% in 2021, according to eMarketer. It makes sense that many are investing in the space as influencer content often outperforms brand-generated or product content in display and paid social, according to Maggie Malek, CEO of MMI Agency.

“… influencers can deliver on all aspects of the marketing funnel given the potential to deliver not only engaged audiences and custom content but also trust and credibility to brand partnerships,” Malek said.

Despite knowledge workers pleading for greater flexibility and autonomy in this messy post-pandemic period, and a clear shift to measuring outcomes rather than time, there has been a massive surge in worldwide demand for solutions to keep tabs on staff, wherever they are working. 

“It’s shot up by 56% since the start of the coronavirus crisis,” said Lesley Holmes, data protection officer for MHR, a payroll software and services company in the U.K. and Ireland. Now businesses are firming up their hybrid working strategies there is even greater interest in various forms of monitoring tech. The research she cites, from Top10VPN, shows global demand for employee monitoring software jumped by 75% between January and March 2022, marking the biggest three-month increase since 2019.

Employers, eyeing the nibbled-at bottom line and anxious about optimizing productivity levels, are turning to this software. But Holmes is concerned about the insidiousness of this technology. “These apps have become increasingly intrusive, as they can register the time taken to read and respond to an email, monitor meeting attendance, and even film employees from their screen,” she continued.

Indeed, research published by Prospect — a union which represents engineers, scientists and civil servants — in November suggested that 32% of U.K. workers were being monitored at work using tracking software and remotely controlled webcams. Additionally, home workers monitored via webcams had leaped from 5% to 13% in just six months.

Keystrokes, behaviors and biometrics

Paul Kelly, head of employment law at Blacks Solicitors in Leeds, in the U.K., says the latest solutions include monitoring software that tracks how many hours an employee is logged on, what they are doing, what websites they visit and what keystrokes they make. “Some software can even take screenshots of the employee’s computer and access their webcam, allowing their boss to check they are at their workstation throughout the day,” he added.

If you thought that was disconcerting, look away now.

Monitoring software has evolved to the point where it can provide analytical data to employers to work out whether the employee has been productive based on their behaviors and biometrics (which includes fingerprint mapping, facial recognition and retina scans.)

More alarmingly, workplace monitoring platform Aware’s “large-scale sentiment analysis” goes even further: it can, according to the product description, “identify trends in conversation sentiment and behavior anomalies across your networks.” In essence, it can compute the overall mood of employees via their interactions.

Hong Kong-based Harold Li, vp of ExpressVPN, one of the world’s largest virtual private network providers, believes many businesses today are prioritizing profits over employee privacy. “As with many privacy issues, there are psychological effects of employee surveillance that are particularly worrying,” he said. His company’s research suggests that many employees would rather leave their job than be subjected to the anxiety and stress caused by snooping.

Consider the experience of New York-based financial services professional Sebastian, a pseudonym to which WorkLife agreed. “If you had your boss physically standing over you in the office, breathing down your neck, it would make you feel pressured, worried about making a mistake,” he said. 

“But being surveilled by monitoring software is orders of magnitude worse. It’s creepy, and I feel I’m always being watched, to the point where I’m holding out to go to the toilet. It honestly feels like I’m in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and I can’t relax.” 

Ruling by fear or monitoring for good?

Little surprise, then, that Sebastian is seeking a new job. However, even that has its complications thanks to the monitoring. “I’m gripped by paranoia about engaging a prospective employer and have had to use my wife’s computer to look for my next role,” he said. 

“Many other people at the company who are also trying to move away, because trust has been totally eroded. No one wants to feel like they are imprisoned, even if it is well paid. And a ruling-by-fear approach is so last century,” he added.

Li of ExpressVPN identifies another potential problem. “Surveillance can have particularly sinister uses if we factor in serious workplace issues like harassment,” he said. “In this situation, can businesses ensure that a worker is protected when their private messages could potentially be viewed by their harasser?”

MHR’s Holmes agrees that caution should be taken, and urges organizations to use other ways of engaging staff — measuring well-being not solely performance. “Rather than adopting monitoring software, employers should look towards an HR solution that offers an oversight of employee performance at the individual level without any feeling of an omnipresent Big Brother,” she said. “The technology should enable managers to gauge the mood and performance of each employee, so they have an accurate aggregate assessment of their team to report up the chain-of-command.”

This view is echoed by Josh Bersin, California-based CEO of research firm The Josh Bersin Company. “On the positive side, software from Microsoft and others gives employers and employees data on well-being, so people can try to avoid overwork, too many meetings or emails or communications outside of working hours,” he said. 

Moreover, he argues, good management focuses on outcomes or results, so it is wrongheaded to measure activities. “While many sales and call center managers monitor detailed activities, this data is ultimately not useful for performance management unless directly related to real business results,” Bersin added.

Monitoring in the eyes of the law

But what about the legalities of keeping a digital eye on employees? “In the U.K., there is no specific law governing the monitoring of employees in the workplace, and the U.S. does not have adequate rules to protect staff from excess monitoring,” said Kelly of Blacks Solicitors. 

He points out that U.K.-based employers may have many legitimate reasons for the monitoring and surveillance of staff — for instance, to prevent theft or comply with health and safety regulations — but there are specific criteria they must meet to monitor staff lawfully.

First, the employer must ask themselves why they need to monitor employees and what they hope to achieve. “Monitoring should have a clear purpose and not be frivolous snooping on staff,” said Kelly. Also, monitoring must be proportionate — neither too intrusive nor overly excessive in light of the employer’s aims. 

Thirdly, there must be respect for employees’ private lives, and their right to privacy. Lastly, and most importantly, employees need to be kept in the loop. “The employer should put in place a formal policy that informs staff that they are being monitored, how that monitoring will be conducted and how the information that is gathered will be used and stored,” he said.

Whatever the legal situation, the ethics are questionable. “Usually, employees will accept a certain amount of workplace monitoring provided that their employer is open and transparent as to why they are doing it,” concluded Kelly. “But without a doubt, increased workplace surveillance will have a negative impact on employee engagement, eroding the trust between employer and employee.”