Less BS, More Facts, Some Opinions
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Setting The Scene What would anonymous media and entertainment execs say about their fellow media companies? To find out,
The post Media And Marketing Gossip; Can TikTok Achieve Always-On Status? appeared first on AdExchanger.
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify
The Interactive Advertising Bureau provides a set of standard terms and conditions governing digital advertising deals. And starting next year, those standards will be in the process of being updated for the first time since 2010.
“It’s time for a refresh,” said IAB CEO David Cohen in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “We started this year with a survey to the industry [asking] what are the things that need to be changed, what are the things that need to be fixed, what should we focus on? We are starting an endeavor in 2023 to redo the terms and conditions.”
Updating the IAB’s terms and conditions is “a pretty gnarly process,” Cohen said. The process involves other industry trade organizations, including the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) and establishes a set of generally accepted provisions that ad buyers and sellers can adopt in their contracts, such as payment terms and cancelation options.
To be clear, the IAB’s terms and conditions are more recommendations than requirements. Companies can choose to not adopt them. For example, some TV network owners have opted not to support the IAB’s cancelation terms for their streaming inventory.
That cancelation option is among the terms on the table for an update, though any changes are unlikely to be introduced ahead of next year’s upfront negotiations. Cohen said he expects the forthcoming update to be a two-year effort.
“We’re kicking off the project in earnest in Q1, and I think just realistically it’s going to be more than a year to get this done. So it will be a 2023-24 initiative,” he said.
Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.
I can’t think of another at-scale trade association that is as big-tent as IAB. We view that as a real point of differentiation in this space. That’s not to say that warrior-type trade associations like the 4A’s or ANA or the VAB don’t serve a purpose. They certainly do; they have constituents that they represent. We represent the entire digital industry.
When I joined IAB [in March 2020], I heard two things. I heard number one that the IAB can’t be all things to all people. And number two, I heard that IAB is in the pocket of Google and Facebook. And I will tell you — and it’s obviously slightly disingenuous coming from me — but as I’ve been in the role now for three years, I can tell you nothing is further from the truth. We try to have equal representation across the ecosystem.
There are situations that will necessitate having forums that are just for a particular group. As an example, we have a publisher council. A publisher council is exactly what it sounds like. We do not invite ad tech, we do not invite agencies, we do not invite brands. It is for publishers to talk among themselves about the things that are important to them, peers learning from one another in a non-competitive way. We have an agency council. We have a brand council. We have these individual peer communities.
They are two totally separation organizations with separate boards of directors that govern their activities. That’s the simple answer. The more complicated answer is IAB Tech Lab was created by IAB, IAB maintains roles on the board, and obviously we believe that one plus one equals three, that the activities of IAB Tech Lab and IAB — when coordinated in a collaborative way — become a very powerful force in the industry. We like to think about it as IAB is the business requirements side of the equation, and [IAB] Tech Lab is the global technical standards-setting side of the equation.
During the FIFA World Cup, beer brand Modelo has taken advantage of connected TV to increase brand awareness among soccer fans. While Modelo still spends the majority of its ad budget on linear TV, it’s looking to use streaming and social media ads during the World Cup to meet the fans wherever they watch the games.
To achieve this, Modelo has created two ad spots — one 30-second spot for television and a 15-second spot for social media, both in English and Spanish — that highlight the highs and lows of sports fandom, which often includes spilling beer when celebrating a victory or defeat. Modelo’s goal is to reinforce its brand message with its core Hispanic consumers who are serious soccer fans, while also introducing the brand to new consumers who may be more casual soccer fans.
Modelo’s vp of brand marketing Greg Gallagher said that the dual objective of the TV ad spots is to reach both general consumers and the Hispanic market in order to promote the brand to both of these target audiences. “We aim to drive awareness among total market consumers and drive first choice consideration among Hispanics,” said Gallagher.
The ads started running in late November and the TV spot will run through Dec. 18, while the social spot will run through Christmas. As part of the campaign, Modelo’s ads will show up on channels including ESPN (through premium coverage with sponsored digital videos, pre-roll and editorial content), Telemundo digital (through Spanish language in-game inventory), YouTube ads, programmatic digital TV (through FIFA+ and FuboTV), content and news coverage related to in-game inventory, as well as Reels on Facebook and Instagram in English and Spanish.
“Investing in live sports continues to be a priority for Modelo as it allows us to meet consumers where they are most engaged,” said Gallagher, commenting on why the brand chose to run the ads during the FIFA World Cup. “This event is an amazing opportunity to reach both passionate and casual soccer fans.”
According to Gallagher, the ad mix leans toward linear TV, which prioritizes high-profile Spanish-language in-game inventory because of the TV ratings. “Our target over indexes with watching Soccer on Live TV and the investment puts us in the most highly anticipated games, including the broadcast of Netherlands vs. USA, and this allows us to reach the total market soccer fan, during the hype around the USA’s success,” said Gallagher.
With that said, it is unclear how much of Modelo’s advertising budget is allocated to this campaign, as Gallagher declined to share overall budget specifics. According to Pathmatics data, the brand spent a little over $30 million so far on advertising efforts in 2022, up from $23 million in 2021. Gallagher broke down the budget for the brand’s World Cup campaign, saying 77% went to broadcast TV, 12% went to digital, 6% went to streaming TV and 5% went to Instagram and Facebook.
The FIFA World Cup is a major branding moment for many food and beverage brands in addition to Modelo, including Coca-Cola and Frito-Lay. The tournament is watched by millions of viewers around the world each day during the event and is projected to pass 5 billion viewers across television and streaming platforms by the end of 2022, according to FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
According to a study conducted by Morning Consult, 40% of soccer fans are people of color, making it the sport with the most diverse fan base. And Hispanics make up nearly a quarter of U.S. adults who identify as soccer fans (27%).
“The fact that it’s viewed across multiple demographics and a large and diverse audience, coupled with the fact that it is a cultural phenomenon mostly untainted by politics, makes it a great opportunity for a brand to cleverly and authentically connect itself with the sport,” said Aliza Freud, CEO of SheSpeaks, a community of female influencers.
The winds of the global economic slowdown have started to chill even the buoyant digital advertising market, albeit digital spending is on course to hit $567.49 billion this year, up from $522.5 billion in 2021, according to Insider Intelligence.
Figures shared with Digiday by the analyst firm ranked the performance of the industry’s major digital ad companies by global revenue with results indicating that while the sector is in line to cool over the next few years it is forecast to be valued at $695.96 billion in 2024.
Insider Intelligence’s global leaderboard is dominated by the internet’s household names with Google and Facebook occupying the top-two positions of the rankings with each company on course to pocket $168.44 billion and $112.68 billion respectively.
The rise of Amazon in the digital advertising market over recent years has led to the rise of ‘the triopoly narrative’ — that is, how Amazon, Facebook and Google dominate the U.S. advertising market — but the global market has a different hue.
Insider Intelligence’s global numbers demonstrate how players from the Asian markets, predominantly Chinese players such as Alibaba or Tik Tok-owner ByteDance, dwarf the forecasted numbers from Big Tech names such as Apple, and Microsoft.
Developments in the advertising strategies of both of these Big Tech names have generated a plethora of headlines this year with Microsoft’s alliance with Netflix, and Apple’s touted ad tech developments generating key interest.
Key moves from Amazon have also generated headlines but Insider’s figures demonstrate how advertising revenues generated by China’s Alibaba ($41.01 billion) eclipse those from the U.S.-based e-commerce outfit ($37.99 billion).
Meanwhile, ByteDance (the owner of Tik Tok, a.k.a. ‘Douyin’ in China) is on course to generate $29.07 billion this year, a number that looms over Microsoft’s forecasted advertising revenues of $12.33 billion, plus Apple’s $7.06 billion, per the forecasted numbers.
Source: Insider Intelligence
Marketers are touting value more this holiday season with fixed prices and ongoing sales as inflation continues to make shopping more difficult for consumers this year.
Last month, for example, Walmart rolled out ads that claimed consumers could get “the same incredible feast for the same incredible price as last year” for holiday meals. Walmart isn’t alone in wanting to appeal to people with fixed pricing on some items amid rising costs. Canadian chain Pizza Pizza is taking a similar albeit more humorous approach, offering the chance for people to “lock in” a rate for their pizza delivery. And natural supplement manufacturer Now worked with ad agency Hanson Dodge to create a strategy to focus on value as inflation was emerging. These are just to name a few examples, of course.
“We were aiming at savvy shoppers who appreciate a good value, and suspected that the ranks would grow if the inflationary trends being warned were to come to fruition,” Hanson Dodge president Stacey Boney said in an email. “So not a reaction to inflation, but a good position to be in when it occurred.”
By focusing on the potential savings via fixed prices or sales, many of which are running longer than usual, marketers are hoping that consumers will spend as usual instead of reducing their spending due to inflation this year. Whether or not that will be the case, or if that focus on value will continue in the new year is yet to be determined.
“We’ve seen more advertisers addressing inflation in their ads in Q4, but it remains to be seen if that will continue into Q1 or is just a holiday message,” said Stacey Stewart, U.S. chief marketplace officer at UM, adding that it’s mostly affected messaging. “Inflation is a key topic these days — how to address it as a business and with customers — but other than keeping dollars flexible by using channels with historically better cancellation terms, we haven’t seen it impact where we are spending.”
That’s not to say it won’t eventually impact where clients are spending, as one media buyer noted that a potential client in a pitch asked about inflation’s effect on media this year with the intent of incorporating where they can save into planning their spend. Still, much of the inflation impact has been on messaging with value or sales, especially for clients that need short-term growth.
“In the DTC space we have to do everything we can to help our clients remain relevant, competitive and growing their business against the headwinds of consumer belt tightening,” said Scott McClure, vp and group creative director at Rain the Growth Agency, adding that one client has asked about value messaging and others have been running sales longer than usual. “Positioning against inflation when possible both meets the consumer where they are and is just good direct marketing, but it’s not possible for every industry or brand.”
While some caution against leaning on value amid inflation — one exec said that doing so can “erode” a brand as focusing on price can be a race to the bottom — others see an opportunity. Another creative agency exec noted that brands that back up value messaging with lower prices have a chance to sway consumers their way.
Talk to me about the adoption of mental health in the workplace. How is that changing how Talkspace goes to market?
Our job is to drive awareness of Talkspace to all potential members. There’s all different levels of access. And that’s really what we want to communicate. It’s really bringing that coverage to the forefront in our messaging and making sure that people are aware that that’s an option. Certainly partnering with employers and making sure that whatever communication avenues they have available that we’re able to be part of that conversation.
How do you manage to stand out as more competitors come into the mental health space?
Once you get to a certain level of penetration within a market, you probably have enough influencers who have also used your product very authentically. Being able to tap into those people, educate them so that they’re talking about their own experience, but they’re also bringing the Talkspace value propositions into play, it really doubles as great advertising. But also word of mouth, at the same time. That’s a big one because it also allows us to open up some digital channels that we aren’t necessarily in quite yet.
Talk to me about 2023 budgeting and planning amid a difficult to predict economy.
The only thing I would add to that is one thing that I always tout, which is, as a marketer being best friends with your product leader. When you think about economic times, there’s always more juice to squeeze. And that is really how you do it. It’s by partnering with product and bringing that growth marketing angle to the product team to say, ‘Here are opportunities we’re seeing with our members. What can we actually build on the product side to get more from what we’re getting from our traffic?’ — Kimeko McCoy
At the height of the pandemic, marketers started taking a closer look at virtual events, taking the industry’s biggest affairs, like the Consumer Electronics Show and the South by Southwest festival, to a virtual stage. Some even predicted that the future of events would become a hybrid of online and in-person. As 2023 quickly approaches, new research from video experience cloud Kaltura offers insight into how marketers are thinking about virtual events in the new year. — Kimeko McCoy
“If you’re a DTC brand, all of these big brand players are coming in and now you have more of a crowded marketplace. You have so much demand on these creators, and these creators are increasing their rates.”
— Vickie Segar, founder of influencer marketing agency Village Marketing, on the competition for influencers increasing the cost for brands.
The holiday season is when brands and retailers really ramp up marketing. Regardless of what they’ve done up until this point in 2022, many have likely saved the best of what they’ve got for last.
To find out what that looks like this year, Digiday+ Research surveyed 56 brand and retail professionals and compiled a ranking of the marketing channels that were most important to them so far this year, and what channels will be most important through the holiday season. We already know that Instagram will play a bigger role than its Meta sibling Facebook in holiday marketing, but now we look at the bigger picture of how marketing channels will shake out through the end of 2022.
Leading up to the holiday season this year, Facebook and Instagram led the marketing channel pack, with more than 90% of brands and retailers telling Digiday they used the channels as part of their marketing strategies. Influencers and Google came next, with more than 80% of respondents to Digiday’s survey saying they used those channels in 2022 leading up to the holiday season, and online display ads rounded out the ranking’s top five, with more than three-quarters of brands and retailers saying the channel played a role in their marketing in 2022.
The ranking of marketing channels adjusted for brands’ and retailers’ holiday marketing plans does look different, though. While Facebook and Instagram have been the dominant marketing channels so far in 2022, Digiday found that TikTok and Instagram will grow in importance more than other marketing channels for the holidays.
Specifically, more than half of brand and retail pros told Digiday that the two social media platforms will become more important to their marketing plans during the holidays, with 55% saying TikTok will become more important and 54% saying Instagram will become more important. Forty-five percent of respondents said Google and influencers will grow in importance to their marketing plans for the holidays, and 41% said other social platforms such as Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube will grow in importance.
Facebook actually came in at the bottom of the list, with only 36% of brands and retailers telling Digiday the social platform will grow in importance for their holiday marketing plans.
Interested in sharing your perspectives on the media and marketing industries? Join the Digiday research panel.