Author: rssmasher

Defy Media is trying to bargain with companies that claim the media company’s ad network business owes them money, three of them said.

Two publishers and an ad tech company said that in recent weeks, Defy Media has offered them 20 percent of what they’re owed for ads that Defy Media sold on their sites as part of its programmatic ad network.

One is trending news publisher Viralised, which head of operations James Harris said is owed $21,000. “Their solution to our accounts team is to pay us 20 percent of the invoice and call it quits,” he said. Viralised has not agreed to the offer, he said.

AdPone, an ad tech firm that syndicates programmatic ads across a network of publishers’ sites, claims that Defy Media owes the company $200,000 and has offered to pay 20 percent, said AdPone CEO Alex Martinez.

Another publisher claimed to be owed more than $40,000 and asked to remain anonymous while weighing whether to take the offer or sue to recoup the full amount.

A Defy Media spokesperson declined to confirm the 20 percent claim. “Defy is engaged in ongoing discussions with publishers regarding outstanding balances and consider such discussions to be confidential,” the spokesperson emailed.

Several publishers came forward earlier this month, alleging that Defy Media has not paid them for ads it sold on their sites since at least October 2017. One of those publishers, Topix, said it filed a lawsuit in June, alleging that Defy Media owed it $300,000 for ads that Defy Media ran in December and January.

In mid-May, Defy Media emailed publishers in its ad network that it would suspend its programmatic business, according to publishers that received the email, a copy of which Digiday has reviewed. After receiving that email, some of those publishers said they noticed that Defy Media had continued to run ads on their sites until that point, but hadn’t paid them for months.

The Defy Media spokesperson said earlier this month that the company had been communicating with publishers about when it would pay them.

Three publishers — Topix, PBH Network and Bourbon & Banter — said they asked Defy Media when it would pay them, but got no response or firm commitment to a payment plan.

Patrick Garrett, founder of Bourbon & Banter, said he spoke with a legal representative from Defy Media on June 8, but that representative did not commit to any resolution. Instead, the representative said he would update Garrett on Defy Media’s plans during the week of June 11. As of June 27, Garrett said he had yet to hear from the company.

Alexander Baldwin, co-founder and president of PBH Network, which operates the site All That’s Interesting, said earlier this week that he hasn’t heard from Defy Media about any payment plans.

The post Sources: Defy Media offers to pay publishers 20 percent of the money its ad network owes them appeared first on Digiday.

Influencer marketing has been back in the limelight since last week, when a bunch of top marketers, including Unilever’s Keith Weed, said there was widespread fraud in the industry — and went on a mission to fix it.

In this edition of Confessions, where we exchange anonymity for candor, we spoke to a former influencer-turned-marketing executive who has been on the front lines of influencer fraud. Edited excerpts from the conversation appear below:

When did influencer marketing start feeling problematic to you?
Two years ago, maybe a little more, it felt like it all blew up: Nobody was really using Instagram for influencer marketing, and suddenly, everyone was using it. That’s when the influencer situation got out of control. All of a sudden, people I’d never heard of had 200,000 followers overnight — mostly in fashion, but even in tech. 

How did it manifest?
In fashion, there were people begging to get into fashion shows because they had a few hundred thousand followers on Instagram. I said “OK, I don’t get it. We’re just going to go along with it.” Then, last year, things got out of control. We went to an influencer conference. It was like a meeting of a cult. It was like Scientology.

What do you mean?
Brands and agencies were everywhere. Platform reps were everywhere. They were promising us things and talking about how we were going to make it rich on Instagram by being an influencer. You’re looking at these young people who are spending their entire lives on Instagram. Everyone was encouraging them. And if you asked a real question like, “How does Instagram’s algorithm work? How does the promote stuff work?” They gave a lot of esoteric answers.

Tell me about the people whose follower counts shot up.
Everyone knows it; some people admit to it — everyone buys [followers]. It’s not a shock. It happens, but it was another thing that turned me against influencer marketing.

Is the ‘marketing’ real?
Not really. I once spent a little money promoting a post, trying things out. It got really good engagement, but 98 percent were men in Bangladesh who were clearly fake profiles liking the pictures. Even when you pay Instagram, it ends up being fake engagement. I remember telling these PR agencies that would work with us that I didn’t understand. They didn’t care.

What’s their role?
PR agencies are encouraging this. Wait, more than that. It’s not encouragement — it’s active participation in fraud. The PR agencies are playing both ends. In order to sign with an agency, you need so many followers. So the agency buys the followers for influencers, and gets some money from the influencers in exchange for helping them land clients. Then, the agency introduces the influencer to clients. So the agency gets money from the influencer as well as the client. The conflict of interest with agencies is what nobody wants to talk about.

How does this affect brands?
They don’t care. The influencers are so desperate now that they just are OK doing anything: They’ll regularly post in exchange for stuff, not money. The one effect is that models, real models, are no longer making money or getting booked, and they have to compete with Instagram influencers who are in shows now. Now, the models are trying to be influencers. Modeling agencies are having trouble because designers only want to cast people with large followings.

The post ‘Active participation in fraud’: Confessions of a former influencer appeared first on Digiday.

On June 28, Facebook and Twitter both launched their transparency tools for advertising that will make all ads run on the platforms visible. These tools, which operate independently, mean an end to dark posts, far more access to information for consumers and for advertisers, and hopefully, less risk of foreign interference in political elections.

The transparency centers are part of the companies’ efforts to appease the world (read: government regulators) following Russian trolls using Facebook, Twitter and other online platforms to manipulate U.S. voters during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Both Facebook and Twitter launched new policies for political advertisers, such as registering to run political ads, in May. Here’s what marketers need to know about this step.

Haven’t we known about this for a while?
The launch of these ad-transparency tools have been a long time coming. Facebook announced the tool in April and has been testing it in Canada. On June 28, Facebook’s tool went live globally. Twitter promised to create such a tool during a congressional hearing on October, and it also went live around the same time as Facebook’s. According to spokespeople from both companies, the launches were not coordinated.

How does Facebook’s ad-transparency tool work?
Every Facebook Page carries a new button called “Info and Ads.” That new section will display the ads the Page is currently running across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook’s partner network. Facebook also will have a button to report each ad. Facebook also will publicly share more information about Pages. Pages will display changes to their names along with the date they were created. Facebook said it plans to add more information in the coming weeks.

Facebook introduced its archive of ads with political content in May, starting with U.S. ads. Facebook announced on June 28 that it will launch labeling of political ads and the archive for Brazil ads ahead of the general election in October. Facebook advertisers who wish to run political ads in Brazil can begin to register next month. Ads in the archive last for seven years.

How does Twitter’s ad-transparency tool work?
Anyone can view ads on Twitter by searching for a specific handle. That search will bring up the ad creative for all campaigns that handle has run in the last seven days. For political ads run in the U.S., users will be able to see billing information, ad spending, impression data and demographic targeting data.

Any important differences between the two?
Facebook requires people to sign into a Facebook account to access the tool. Twitter doesn’t require users to have a Twitter account. Facebook only shows ads that are currently running across its properties, unless the ads are related to politics, and then they are archived for the next seven years. Twitter shows all nonpolitical ads from the past seven days. Twitter’s transparency center will only include U.S. political campaigning ads, not international ones, for now.

Is it bad that everyone can see my ads now?
Facebook chief operations officer Sheryl Sandberg would like you to think no.

“The majority of advertisers were very positive [about this update]. They’re standing behind the ads they’re putting up. There’s definitely some out there with concerns and with competitors seeing the ads they’re running,” Sandberg said during the launch event.

Amanda Grant, GroupM’s head of social for the U.S., said the move was positive and didn’t expect any drastic changes in how her agency operates with the platforms.

“We see these types of transparent moves as a positive signal and ways to keep tactics and behaviors more brand safe for users and advertisers. As these changes do not impact scale or performance, we do not envision any change in forecast spend or creative,” Grant said.

Any unintended consequences?
Now, marketers can easily check out what their competitors are doing.

“Competitive insights are only one factor of holistic planning, and as we plan and focus primarily on client objectives and tactics that achieve those goals, our approach remains consistent,” Grant said.

Can I see all of a brand’s spending, or do I have to go post by post?
For now, you’d have to go post by post. Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, said that will change in the future. Facebook is releasing an application programming interface later this summer so people can aggregate information.

Is this going to cost Facebook a lot of money and stress?
Probably.

“We don’t like the delays in the system. More manual review and more checks mean more delays,” Sandberg said. “Human beings don’t review the way machines review. Part of the cost of the checks and balances we’re putting in the system are those delays. We’re going to do everything we can to minimize them.”

Haven’t publishers been frustrated by these changes, too?
If a publisher pays to boost a story related to politics in the news feed, Facebook will put the ad in its political archive. Michael Golden, president of WAN-IFRA, said it “confounds the distinction between journalism and political advocacy.”

Sandberg defended the choice during the press event.

“We had a choice. We decided that our goal is transparency. We’re just erring on the side of being more transparent,” she said. “We decided it was better to be broader and more inclusive because people can see everything, but it was a hard decision.”

Will all of this change soon?
Expect changes to come in both Facebook’s and Twitter’s tools. Both Facebook and Twitter said they’re still evaluating whether decisions like the choice of storing for seven years and seven days, respectively, makes sense.

Both tools are also expanding internationally. As Twitter’s blog post said, the company is “examining how to adapt and internationalize both political campaigning and issue ads policies.”

The post Goodbye, dark posts: How Facebook’s and Twitter’s ad-transparency tools work appeared first on Digiday.

Finn, Chase’s digital-only mobile banking app, rolled out to iOS users across the U.S. Thursday — the first step of a phased approach to scale the brand nationally. It has been testing it in St. Louis since October.

Finn’s wider rollout is evidence of the opportunity banks see in serving younger, digitally-native users, and a sign that the agile, iterative approach to products typical of startups is making its way to the big banks.

“We want to learn beyond St. Louis, and understand how prospective customers feel about this offering, do they find it valuable, and how much are they using it, and how do we think about the evolution of this product — we need to learn those things before general availability,” said Matt Gromada, managing director and chief product owner for Finn.

Chase wants to take the lessons from the St. Louis pilot and apply it to a broader audience of digitally-comfortable iOS users, ahead of an Android launch later this year. The St. Louis experiment yielded three key conclusions: Autosave triggered by rules is a priority for the customer community; a digital-only offering backed by a known, established player like Chase is a reason why customers trust Finn; and that a 24-hour-a-day client support team can replicate most of the functions of a brick-and-mortar branch. Customer feedback has inspired some product updates, including the ability to save a percentage of one’s paycheck, and pre-set autosave rules when customers spend at popular brands like Starbucks.

Chase emphasized that the iOS rollout in no way means the test phase for Finn has wrapped up; it’s still meeting with customers every three weeks, and customer feedback will inspire future iterations of the product. Keeping with its focus on digital, mobile-first customers as a testing ground, the marketing plan is entirely digital, centering on paid social media ads (Chase isn’t saying more beyond an Instagram presence), digital banner ads and videos.

“Our goal is to be as nimble with our marketing as possible, such that we are constantly learning from customers across the end-to-end experience of Finn,” said Gromada.

Chase’s approach to scaling Finn represents how banks are quickly releasing minimally-viable products that are effectively “works in progress” whose journeys are closely linked to how customers guide it along the way. It’s an approach that’s slowly making its way into the banking ecosystem. The six-month go-to-market plan of Barclays’ recent co-branded Uber credit card is a recent example of how banks are more quickly releasing products that can evolve with customer feedback, instead of striving to build “as perfect a product as possible” as part of a more rigid, stage-oriented “waterfall” approach.

Meanwhile, digital-only startup banks in Europe like Monzo are Revolut are regularly releasing product tests, offering customers opportunities to act as product developers. Instead of having an annual or biennial product release, a product can have four or five releases a year.

“You have to balance the risk in saying this product currently a minimally-viable product,” said Aite senior analyst David Albertazzi. “Banks are gaining expertise in agile development as this example shows — software companies are doing this; they’re using agile development methodology to focus on satisfying the customer experience.”

Finn is still an experiment for a customer segment that’s used to doing everything digitally in their non-financial lives — it’s perhaps a safe bet with population that’s accustomed to quick product evolutions in the digital world. It still may be a little early to use the same approach for products that serve a wider spectrum of customers, argues Celent senior analyst Stephen Greer.

“It’s an interesting route to take, and certainly out of the startup playbook, but this would really only work with something non-core like Finn,” he said. “You can’t fail fast or partially deliver functionality on a mobile banking app. Development cycles are to ensure stability, compliance, integration, and numerous other things.”

The post Inside Chase’s marketing strategy for digital-only brand Finn appeared first on Digiday.

In advertising’s golden age, “outdoor” was a category essentially synonymous with billboards. And while there are certainly still a few creative boards on display in this year’s top winners at the Cannes Lions, most of the golds went to out-of-home ideas that push the edges of how marketers can engage passersby. Take, for example, the…

Verizon is finally calling it quits on its expensive mobile video bet, Go90.

The wireless communications giant is shutting down the mobile video streaming service, which it launched in October 2015, according to four sources familiar with the situation. Go90 representatives have begun informing content partners about plans to end both the Go90 brand and the video streaming app by July 31, sources said. Go90 will also return the shows and all content rights back to its production partners, which included companies ranging from AwesomenessTV to Vice Media.

The move will end an expensive endeavor for Verizon, which over the years spent a significant amount of money on both content acquisition and marketing costs on Go90. It’s unclear exactly how much Verizon spent on Go90 over the years, but two sources close to Go90 estimated that the total cost for was roughly $1.2 billion. Another source close to Verizon disputed that figure and said the total cost was less than $300 million.

“Following the creation of Oath, Go90 will be discontinued,” said a Verizon spokesperson in a statement. “Verizon will focus on building its digital-first brands at scale in sports, finance, news and entertainment for today’s mobile consumers and tomorrow’s 5G applications.”

The service launched to great fanfare — Kanye West performed at the launch event — as Verizon attempted to build a mobile video streaming platform that could sit somewhere between Netflix and YouTube by providing TV-quality short-form and mid-form original series. (Go90 also offered licensed TV episodes and even live sports on the platform.) But Go90 consistently struggled to attract viewers who were used to YouTube for their short-form video needs, and Netflix and other streaming giants for other professionally produced, TV-quality programming.

In recent months, Verizon had moved many Go90 employees — many of whom came over as part of an acquisition of another ill-fated mobile video platform, Vessel — across various departments inside Oath, the digital publishing and technology company formed by the merger of AOL and Yahoo. According to a source, there were roughly a dozen employees working for Go90 in recent months. A source said there will be no personnel changes for now, and resources will be rerouted toward the various publishing and distribution platforms controlled by Oath.

Go90 did see some successes on the creative front, such as winning an Oscar for its “Dear Basketball” short film with Kobe Bryant. But sources admit that Go90 struggled to find an audience as a stand-alone app and that it made more sense to distribute original programming on Oath. Once Oath began distributing Go90 programming across its media properties, more than 17 million people were watching Go90 programming, according to Verizon.

Go90’s shutdown does not come as much of a surprise, especially in light of Oath CEO Tim Armstrong’s comments at a Recode event earlier this year. When asked if Go90 would remain, Armstrong said: “The brand will remain, I don’t know how long for.”

This story has been updated to include a statement from Verizon as well as information clarifying how much Verizon supposedly spent on Go90.

The post From Kanye to bust: Verizon is shutting down Go90, ending an expensive effort at mobile video streaming appeared first on Digiday.

Gizmodo Media Group will not lay off people after enough staffers took voluntary buyouts, editorial director Susie Banikarim told employees in a memo today. “While that is the outcome for which we’d hoped, any relief is bittersweet because it comes with the loss of talented and valued colleagues whose countless contributions will be greatly missed,”…

Pinterest introduced a tweak to speed up the process of saving Pins on desktop. Rather than taking three clicks–clicking the save button, picking a board and clicking the save button again–users can now click once to access a drop-down menu enabling them to save Pins in search, their home feeds or their following tabs. Pinterest…

Erik Oster contributed to this report. WPP has hired two outside law firms to investigate several anonymous, encrypted emails sent to its current and former employees, which came from a WhatsApp group that included onetime executive assistants to Martin Sorrell, the holding company’s founder and ex-CEO who abruptly stepped down in April, the Financial Times…

Facebook and Twitter each released new political advertising transparency tools on Thursday in preparation for the 2018 US midterm elections, as the social platforms try to forestall the malicious electoral interference they enabled during the 2016 election. Facebook began archiving electoral and issue-based ads in May, so any ad by an active candidate or featuring… Continue reading »

The post Facebook And Twitter Offer New Political Ad Transparency Tools To Head Off Bad Actors appeared first on AdExchanger.