Less BS, More Facts, Some Opinions
Forget the post-cookie future. For Dailymotion, user-based targeting is already a thing of the past. Hamza Kourimate, VP and global head of sales marketing and data solutions at Dailymotion, spoke to AdExchanger on how the video platform is using its first-party data trove to build a contextual framework for video.
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A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…
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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. OneView, Meet ONE AdExchanger has previously referred to Roku and Nielsen’s relationship as a “strategic accord.” Roku was the first streaming media platform to use Nielsen ratings and has delivered semi-annual doses of good PR to Nielsen during a dismal streak. And when… Continue reading »
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This article was first reported on, and published by, Digiday sibling Glossy
On Sunday, February 12, 2023, three megastars, the NFL Super Bowl, Rihanna and her brand Fenty, will come together to form one of the greatest supernovas ever witnessed.
Following a roughly six-year hiatus from music, Rihanna is returning in the splashiest way possible. The residual effects for her Fenty brand will be paramount. According to a 2016 study by the NPD Group, Rihanna’s fan base, sometimes referred to as “the Navy,” is 3.7 times more likely to buy products from her than the average big-name celebrity, which is the highest rating any celebrity has had. A television audience of 100 million may not only boost Fenty’s sales from existing fans but also encourage more people to enlist in the Navy.
“Super Bowl ads have always been the thing of water cooler talk and a reason for some to watch the game. But having Robyn Rihanna Fenty perform might turn this into the greatest performance advertising-product-persona ever seen,” said Sean Field, creative director at Special Operations Studios, a commercial arts and entertainment company.
Rihanna’s Instagram announcement, specifically, a simple picture of her hand holding a football, generated $2 million in MIV, a proprietary Launchmetrics metric for media impact value. MIV tracks the impact of influencers, print media, celebrities, official third-party partners and a brand’s media channels. Comparatively, the NFL’s announcement generated $202,000 in MIV. Overall, the online chatter between September 25-27 garnered $28.8 million in MIV, with the majority coming from social media buzz followed by online media.
And social media was indeed in a tizzy, with many people cracking jokes related to the irrelevance of a football game when Rihanna is performing, to more tongue-in-cheek quips that the performance would be one giant Fenty ad, given that the artist has not produced new music since her album “Anti” in 2016. During this hiatus, Rihanna has focused on her businesses, including the Savage x Fenty lingerie brand, which has contributed to her $1.7 billion net worth, as estimated in 2021 by Forbes. She also recently had a baby with her partner, A$AP Rocky.
“The [NFL’s] choice of partnering with Rihanna is exciting due to the massive anticipation of the artist’s return to the [music] scene, which has been on everyone’s minds since her last public performance,” said Alison Bringé, CMO at Launchmetrics. “Rihanna’s Fenty ventures and her recent childbirth have sustained the singer’s interest in the public eye, making her a brilliant choice for a buzzy Super Bowl performance.”
With its nearly 12 million Instagram followers, Fenty Beauty has not taken advantage of the Super Bowl announcement yet. Fenty Beauty did not respond to a request for comment. However, it’s worth noting that the NFL takes its trademarks around the Super Bowl very seriously, which could impact Fenty’s indirect advertising and marketing strategy. Fenty could very well elect to have a Super Bowl commercial, which according to Sporting News, was upwards of $6.5 million for a 30-second ad on NBC in 2022. Nielson reports that women comprise 46% of the Super Bowl viewing audience, meaning that an ad may find a relevant audience. However, according to previous Glossy and Launchmetrics data, Rihanna is the most significant MIV contributor to her brand. A multi-million paid ad spot might not drive as much impact as the halftime performance itself.
But aside from the paid and unpaid advertising opportunities, there are softer approaches to marketing the brand, according to Bilal Kaiser, principal of creative and influencer firm Agency Guacamole. There are “Get The Look” makeup tutorials related to Rihanna’s performance look and her attendance at other parties and events that week. Even Fenty Skin products she uses after taking off her makeup could be highlighted. Fenty could also produce special collections featuring the products Rihanna uses for her halftime show.
“Done the right way, an organic product-led perspective and music perspective can be tastefully combined as one big pop culture Zeitgeist moment around the Super Bowl,” said Kaiser. “[I would recommend that] versus $5 million on a traditional blitz campaign on the Super Bowl. Based on everything we’ve seen, it wouldn’t strike the right note.”
For the first time, the City of New Orleans is experimenting with virtual reality marketing by way of an immersive experience viewed through Oculus headsets or YouTube. It’s a move made in hopes to boost brand awareness and stand out in a crowded market as travel reaches pre-pandemic levels.
“We’ve got to break through the clutter of so many other messages coming across,” said Mark Romig, CMO of New Orleans and Company, formerly the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau.
It’s a first for the city’s marketing efforts, which has recently made a shift to become digitally focused, investing in digital video and social with some linear television programming reserved for regional campaigns, particularly around live sporting events. It’s unclear how these new technology-first efforts will impact ad spend as Romig declined to provide those figures.
Spend will increase “as a situation warrants,” Romig said. “There’s never been a fear to spend appropriately,” he added, further noting that the brand needs to “spend efficiently because we don’t have an unlimited amount of dollars.”
According to Kantar, New Orleans and Company spent $60,400 on media in 2021. Those figures do not include social as Kantar does not track those numbers. Kantar did not show reported spend for New Orleans and Company for this year.
New Orleans and Company rolled out its first foray into technology-first marketing efforts in mid-July and its set to run into 2023. The eight-minute, immersive virtual reality spot featuring dinner with locals, home tours and more was produced with its agency partner Dentsu Creative. Non-immersive spots will run on streaming services, social media, via display ads and some linear television. As of reporting time, the YouTube video has less than 400 views.
A few years ago, virtual reality ads were deemed more hype than reality, according to previous Digiday reporting. But now, with more consumer interest in digital experiences, brands like CUUP, Nestlé and Estée Lauder are experimenting with AR/VR to bridge the gap between online and offline experiences.
“We’re on the cusp of graduating beyond experimentation,” said Marc Simons, co-founder of Giant Spoon ad agency. “We’re probably 10 to 15 years away from AR/VR being mass adopted.”
As AR/VR continues to surge in popularity, more businesses will evolve to meet shopper habits. Meaning marketers will need to press the gas soon to avoid missing the virtual reality train. “There are going to be more and more opportunities for brands to be able to start to experiment,” he said. Eventually, Simons expects commerce, shopping and entertainment marketing can happen regularly.
It’s too early to tell what the return on investment is for New Orleans and Company’s first go at technology-led marketing. But Romig says there could be a bigger investment in that space in the future.
“We’re open for more,” he said.
Joining a building brand marketing trend, Sunglasses brand Quay has retooled its marketing strategy to be more “full funnel” rather than relying on performance marketing tactics. The shift followed iOS 14 (and Apple’s subsequent operating system updates) as the ability to track what was working and what wasn’t became that much harder.
“After all the iOS changes, we’ve moved back to a full-funnel approach,” said Quay CEO Jodi Bricker. “I’ve been in retail for over 30 years, and while it hasn’t gone completely back to traditional advertising, the funnel is alive again. We’re still in performance marketing, but we’re exploring and testing across all the platforms.”
Prior to the iOS changes, Quay was spending the majority of its ad dollars on performance marketing tactics and influencer marketing. Now, since the brand has “reduced our spend within social advertising since the iOS changes” the company takes a “much more balanced” approach, said Bricker, as it has a mix of performance marketing, search, affiliate marketing and streaming ads as well as partnerships with buzzy young-skewing shows like Love Island.
“We’ll never walk away from anything completely,” said Bricker, of the company’s performance marketing efforts, adding that following the shift the company is “now much more balanced across top, middle and bottom tier funnel.”
It’s unclear how Quay divides its ad budget now or prior to iOS changes as Bricker declined to share percentages or exact figures. According to Pathmatics ad tracking data, so far this year, Quay has spent $2.7 million on advertising; the company spent $4.7 million on advertising throughout 2021. Roughly 34% of Quay’s monthly ad budget is spent on Instagram, 17% on Facebook, 14% on Snapchat, 5% on TikTok, 20% on desktop video and 9% on out-of-home, per Pathmatics data.
Aside from retooling advertising and marketing efforts to be more full funnel, the company has also pushed to broaden its retail footprint as part of an effort to drive broader brand awareness. The company will have 24 shops by the end of this year; Quay has focused on sunnier states in the U.S., per Bricker, with shops in California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. The brand is also available in retailers like Nordstom, Dillards and Anthropology.
“Over 80% of eyewear is purchased in a brick-and-mortar store,” said Bricker. “Not everyone knows how to assess their own face shape and what looks good on them. Having a really big presence where people can come in, feel the product and try it on [helps]. Having our stylists, our secret sauce, in our shops with incredible taste who know how to fit peoples’ faces and assess their style [helps us stand out].”
The shift to a more full funnel approach now is becoming more common, according to performance marketing agency execs.
“A lot of brands seem to be shifting to a more full funnel [approach] aka ‘We care about branding right now,’” explained Duane Brown, founder of performance marketing shop Take Some Risk. “With a deeper recession coming in 2023… the brands that do well and survive are those that build the brand and keep advertising. Brands who focus on branding in a recession coming out ahead of a recession when it is over,” he said.
“When others are fearful, be greedy and go all in.”
Connected TV remains on the rise in programmatic advertising, fueled by the popularity of Roku, Samsung and Amazon devices.
In a 2022 report published this month on the global CTV ad supply chain, Pixalate, a fraud and privacy software company, found in the first half of 2022 that 94% of U.S. households are now reachable through open programmatic CTV ads. This is up from 86% in 2021, making for a 10% year-over-year increase and signifying steady growth even as providers and content increase.
The findings of the study align with what media agency buyers are seeing in the marketplace. “We are anticipating growth in ad-supported CTV impressions for obvious reasons: Netflix and Disney+ enter the marketplace in Q4,” said Kelly Metz, managing director of advanced TV at Omnicom Media Group. “From a seasonality perspective, Americans return to their televisions as football season drives overall viewership and weather drives consumers indoors.”
Pixalate’s data analysis was based on programmatic activity across more than 300 million CTV devices and 70,000 programmatic support CTV apps, mostly consisting of buy-side open auction programmatic traffic sources.
Overall, these trends point to some growth in the volume of CTV apps and global ad spend in programmatic CTV, as well as Amazon and Apple catching up in their market share. The report also takes a more in-depth look at each app’s growth in different categories and makes comparisons across operating systems, from Apple tvOS to Samsung’s Tizen OS.
“Covid-19 lockdowns were a catalyst for consumer adoption, as household reach [in CTV ads] has leapt from 59% in Q1 2020 to 94% now,” said Jalal Nasir, CEO of Pixalate.
However, some other areas are growing at a slower rate when compared to the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. On the device manufacturers side, Roku is still leading the market with almost half the share of programmatic ad spending — but other tech giants are quickly catching up.
“Samsung has also shaken up the marketplace, rising from 4% CTV device market share in H1 2020 to 17% in H1 2022,” Nasir said.
Here is a closer look at some of the trends in this CTV supply chain research:
After the mourning period for Queen Elizabeth II elapsed, the newly minted U.K. government unveiled a series of policies prompting a wholesale sell-off of sterling, a.k.a. GBP, resulting in historic lows for the currency.
For instance, this week saw sterling plummet to a historic low compared to the U.S. dollar which prompted the Bank of England to take rare measures to stabilize the situation on the international markets.
The instability is the result of U.K. government policies unveiled last week, which include tax breaks for the wealthy paid for by public borrowing, and are labeled by many as “trickle down economics” with many predicting a rocky road ahead.
Despite the opprobrium, advocates could argue that such market conditions will stimulate activity with investors (particularly those laden with the ever-powerful U.S. dollar) eager for a bargain.
In 2022, several U.K.-founded digital media companies received notable investments, including AdLib.io, LoopMe, and MiQ. So, with the likes of fellow British ad tech hopeful BrainLabs eager to do likewise (and likely more that have yet to be confirmed), some have wondered if this trickle is about to turn into a flood of inward investment.
To get a sense of what might be ahead, we polled industry insiders:
Brian Wieser, global president, business intelligence, GroupM told Digiday that similar fluctuations in the Argentinian and Turkish currencies in recent years should serve as an example of what to expect. “A short-term significant move in a given currency won’t usually be enough to catalyze new M&A activity,” he added.
Mark Sainthill, managing partner, M&A at Cactus, told Digiday the current uncertainty and dip in the value of the U.K. currency is now an added bonus for acquisitive parties that had already been looking in the region.
“We’re in the process of selling a U.K. company and for them [the buyer], it’s great as it’s 20% cheaper than it would have been under normal circumstances,” he added. “I haven’t had a lot of U.S. buyers calling up and asking if they can buy, but we expect that to happen.”
Kevin Flood, a partner at investment fund FirstPartyCapital, said that even if the weakness of sterling, and the Euro, relative to the U.S. dollar continues, it’s unlikely to stimulate immediate action, even if there was some pre-existing interest.
“Even if there’s good value to be had, the volatility will somewhat detract from that,” he added. “But if the U.S. dollar is strengthened, then I think it is inevitable that it will attract investment and M&A into Europe and Britain… if it sustains, you’ll get cash-rich U.S. companies and also private equity acquiring companies, but normally M&A is three-to-six months behind currency.”
Nandi Gurprasad, a start-up advisor and co-founder and CEO of YEARXERO, noted how the pre-existing slowdown in ad spend is unlikely to engender a groundswell of investment in the near term even if some strategic players could potentially eye inorganic growth opportunities.
“When there’s this amount of uncertainty, M&A slows down as both buyers and sellers don’t know which way things are going,” he said, “People I speak to (even those that have done quite a few acquisitions recently) say that we need to pause, take a breath, do some digestion and look at things like operational efficiencies.”
As with every crisis, there’s opportunity. All sources noted how those outfits likely to attract investment — once concerns around volatility are assuaged — are those promising efficiencies, as well as addressing pre-existing concerns.
If the ongoing volatility further strengthens the U.S. dollar, investors may look across the European continent (the U.K. included) for potential opportunities. Fabien Magalon, co-founder and CEO of Xpln.ai, a France-based company that aims to help advertisers optimize and measure the results of their ad campaigns after the third-party cookie finally meets its end, explained how his company was able to recently raise $2 million, even with the ongoing uncertainty.
“We raised our money mostly from angels,” he said, adding that early-stage, angel investors were likely reassured by his cofounders, the likes of which include those that had previously sold their companies to Comcast and held senior engineering roles at Google. “The problem we are solving is well-known, and a large opportunity,” added Magalon, “that, our track record and combination of experience was enough to make investors to see us as less risky.”
To avoid potential blowback from a skeptical audience, retailers as well as media and entertainment companies are learning to invest in their homegrown intellectual properties while building virtual brand activations inside Roblox or Fortnite.
Take, for instance, when they get it wrong.
Earlier this week, Walmart launched its own Roblox world — called Walmart Land — and was roundly mocked for it across social media given the announcement’s disjointed brand message and apparent lack of life. In one viral tweet, a Twitter user described a clip of Walmart CMO William White introducing the Roblox space as “one of the saddest videos ever created.”
To some extent, this sort of criticism is to be expected during the early days of the metaverse.
“Walmart is an iconic brand; when you see them coming into a platform like Roblox, people are going to be 10 times more critical of what is being launched,” said Yonatan Raz-Fridman, CEO of the Roblox developer studio Supersocial.
But Walmart’s size is not its only disadvantage as it dips its toes into Roblox. Although Walmart has a widely recognizable brand, it owns few intellectual properties that users are actually interested in experiencing virtually — a shortcoming reflected by the somewhat cavernous emptiness of Roblox’s Walmart Land.
The success of other recent brand activations is evidence that media and entertainment brands are better equipped to build metaverse spaces that can dodge online skepticism, thanks to their wealth of owned IP.
“They are having to reinvent themselves, to a certain degree, but that is in their DNA,” said Jesse Streb, global svp of technology and engineering at the agency DEPT. “So they have a unique advantage over, say, some kludgy company that sells lumber, or a construction company.”
For example, iHeartMedia’s Roblox and Fortnite spaces were inspired by the mass media corporation’s wealth of popular real-life events, such as the Jingle Ball Tour and iHeartRadio Music Festival, with virtual versions of musicians like Charlie Puth performing pre-recorded concerts that allow real-time audience interaction.
“There’s a strong brand association with the IP, down to a station level — you’re in the New York area, you probably know Z100,” said iHeartMedia evp of business development and partnerships Jess Jerrick. “The same is true for the event IP, or the IP that we now have in the podcasting space, and of course our radio broadcast talent. So there’s no shortage of really strong IP we can bring into these spaces.”
Translating real-life properties into the metaverse is also an enticing prospect for brands that view metaverse platforms as an experimental marketing channel, allowing them to bring tried-and-true IP into their virtual activations instead of designing them from the ground level. This was part of the strategy behind the recent Tonight Show activation in Fortnite Creative, which was designed in collaboration between NBCUniversal and Samsung. “We’re looking at it holistically — how do we find fans in new ways, and use IP that fans love in new ways?” said NBCU president of advertising and client partnerships Mark Markshall.
Since opening on Sept. 14, iHeartLand has already enticed over 1.5 million Roblox users to visit. The company aims to retain that attention with a schedule of virtual programming featuring popular musicians and personalities.
“At our core, we are essentially an influencer network; our broadcast talent are some of the most connected, most engaging influencers at work in media today,” said Conal Byrne, CEO of iHeart Digital Audio Group. “That gives us this sort of superpower, to be able to go into new-ish platforms, like Roblox or Fortnite, because we talk to our listeners through those influencers.”