Author: rssmasher

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, chief operating officer at Goodway Group. Most of the discussion about who dominates digital media over the past few years has focused on the Google and Facebook duopoly. That’s… Continue reading »

The post Through Consolidation And Net Neutrality Repeal, The Duopoly Becomes A Lots-More-Opoly appeared first on AdExchanger.

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Ameet Shah, senior director of global technology, publisher and data strategy at Prohaska Consulting. For the last 10 years, publishers have been using programmatic media technology to drive greater scale and revenue. Real-time bidding… Continue reading »

The post For Publishers, The CDP Forges A New Path For Opportunity appeared first on AdExchanger.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem… AdExchanger: Origins AdExchanger: Crisis In Ad City (Part I) AdExchanger: Crisis In Ad City (Part II) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part I) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part II) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part III) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (The Conclusion) AdExchanger: Angels And Startups AdExchanger: Rumble In Arbitrage Plaza… Continue reading »

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by Chris LoRusso, svp publisher solutions at Nativo

These are challenging times for publishers. In addition to dealing with ad blocking, fraud, viewability, GDPR and changes to the Facebook algorithm, savvy publishers are also addressing challenges around website latency and what it means for their bottom lines when their sites perform slowly. Website latency is a silent but efficient UX killer, siphoning off crucial audience and ad impressions.

Every millisecond counts

Latency is meaningful. The success of publisher monetization efforts is dependant on users staying on the site long enough to see and engage with ads. Sites that render pages slowly, become unresponsive due to ad load, or constantly reflow their layout due to delayed rendering of ads will lose money due to low viewability, high user abandonment, and, eventually, ad blocking.

A 2017 study from Akamai found that a 100-millisecond delay in website load time led to a 7 percent drop in conversion rates. Meanwhile, while only 9.6 percent of users bounce when encountering an average page load time of 2 seconds, bounce rate skyrockets to 32.3 percent when page load times climb to 7 seconds.

There are many contributing factors to slow page loads, the proliferation of third-party tags not being the least of them. An informal accounting by Nativo shows that the typical open website has anywhere between 40 and 80 third-party tags running on it. This third-party code is notorious for slowing pages to the point where users lose patience and bounce. Heavy adoption of header wrapper tech in the name of increased yield is a major culprit, and an example of publishers creating one problem to solve another.

Publisher heal thyself

Ever the frenemies to open web publishers, Google and Facebook are aware of latency problems plaguing UX — and unsurprisingly have handily turned it to the advantage of their own proprietary standards.

Google has gotten its piece of the action via Google AMP, which gives publishers a simple way to create webpages that load almost instantaneously for users. In addition to restricting page design, article recirculation and the type of ad units that publishers can use, AMP has been criticized by numerous publishers for loading ads more slowly than content, meaning publishers are making notably less money per page view on AMP than on their own sites.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s Instant Articles allow publishers to publish their content for consumption on Facebook in a fast, immersive format. But like AMP, the monetization of such pages has been troublesome for publishers — so bad, in fact, that The New York Times, Forbes, Hearst and others stopped using Instant Articles altogether, as previously reported by Digiday.

Poor monetization aside, publishers on the open web struggle to compete with the user experiences offered by closed platforms like Google and Facebook, and might be better served concentrating on improving user experience themselves. Emerging “pubtech” offers new site-serving paradigms to accelerate sites on the open web, improve monetization and recover inventory by avoiding ad blocking without needing to replace their existing CMS infrastructure. At Nativo, we are beta testing a publisher solution that significantly cuts page load times, resulting in recapturing more than 40 percent in lost inventory. This tech is a fundamental shift in how websites are served and therefore is not weighed down by legacy ad tech. Preliminary testing is more than promising, showing up to an 80 percent reduction in page load time for some sites.

So, despite all the challenges facing publishers today, the future remains bright for this indispensable piece of the digital advertising landscape. The open web is where advertisers win hearts and minds. Engagement and consideration that regularly occurs on the pages of open web publishers bridges the gap between awareness and action from within the walls of paid social and search. And by addressing latency with a new paradigm in site serving, publishers on the open web can unhitch their sites from the plow, choosing instead to pave a fast lane for the consumer purchase journey.

The post Slow death: Latency is a weight dragging down publishers’ bottom lines appeared first on Digiday.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Consent Mismanagement Publishers have wildly divergent approaches to consent management, and some may not sufficiently comply with GDPR. Since the regulation is vague about how publishers should convey consent to their audiences, many still use practices that violate the law, such as pre-ticked opt-ins,… Continue reading »

The post Some Pubs’ Opt-Ins Fail GDPR; Buyers Clamor For Acxiom’s Connectivity Biz appeared first on AdExchanger.

The intent of the General Data Protection Regulation was to restore people’s online information to them. Under GDPR, businesses must ask consumers to opt in to sharing their data to process it for services like advertising.

One common complaint from companies is that if they provide more than one service, they have to get people to opt in separately to each one instead of bundling the consent process into one opt-in. For example, users must opt in to sharing their data with each Facebook product, including Facebook, Watch, Messenger and WhatsApp. GDPR prohibits bundling consent requests, but that isn’t stopping companies from doing it. At the Digiday Hot Topic UK: GDPR event in May, which occurred before the law took effect on May 25, half of the 22 companies surveyed by Digiday indicated they planned on bundling their consent requests.

The post Digiday Research: Half of companies plan to bundle consent requests under GDPR appeared first on Digiday.

As direct-to-consumer brands from Brooklinen to Curology try to wean themselves off of Facebook ads, commerce-focused publishers are trying to help fill the marketing gap.

This spring, the science publisher Inverse began pitching DTC brands sponsored posts about their products. The posts, marked as advertisements, would run on Inverse’s site and in its newsletter, and link to the brands’ sites. When the posts drove sales for products, Inverse has forged deals to get a cut of the sales.

Branded content is often thought of as too expensive for most DTC brands, which remain small relative to major retailers or legacy brands. Inverse founder Dave Nemetz said the publisher’s average branded content deal costs over $100,000. But its DTC packages start in the five-figure range to let these performance-obsessed marketers see if they’re a good fit before ramping up spending.

Using this approach, Inverse said it is negotiating “six-figure” investments that involve more content and more distribution with DTC brands that initially signed on for the five-figure trial.

“We’re trying to put ourselves in the shoes of the marketers,” Nemetz said. “I think a lot of them felt that as Facebook’s targeting capabilities have narrowed and they’ve kind of mined out the audiences they can reach there, they’ve looked for other places.”

E-commerce has grown as a percentage of overall sales, leading publishers to get more involved in it and spawning new brands that appeal directly to shoppers through digital and physical channels.

Those brands, in turn, have grown more interested in using publishers to get exposure. Five commerce-focused publishers contacted for this story say they have noticed a big uptick in inbound interest from DTC brands in the past year.

In the past, that endorsement was often packaged into Facebook ads. More recently, though, DTC brands have been more interested in forging affiliate commerce deals with publishers because ads on publishers’ sites can lead to more sales than Facebook ads.

“We’ve seen a real maturing of the publisher affiliate ecosystem,” said Ariel Kaye, the CEO and founder of Parachute, a DTC linens company. “That has become very fruitful for a ton of e-commerce companies, and it’s very mutually beneficial. Getting a publisher endorsement works really well.”

Working with DTC brands has its wrinkles for publishers. Historically, DTC brands have focused on performance advertising over the brand-building advertising that’s common among their legacy counterparts. Publishers will have to train them to do more branded content, which is expensive and hard to tie to performance.

As competition among DTC brands in Facebook’s news feed grew more heated, they also faced more competition for publisher approval. Publishers say the pitches they get from DTC brands, particularly those in competitive categories like mattresses, don’t just emphasize the virtues of their products, but the high commission rates they pay publishers.

In some cases, those pitches even come with bribes, which are non-starters for publishers that care about their editorial integrity.

Camilla Cho, gm of e-commerce at New York Media, said she’s heard of DTC brands, which she wouldn’t name, offering to pay to be included in posts. “It’s getting ridiculous,” Cho said. “But I guess if the ROI is there for them, it’s maybe not all that ridiculous.”

Jessica Probus, the director of BuzzFeed Market, said the publisher has done posts with DTC brands that helped drive sales for the brands, leading them to do more advertising with BuzzFeed. But it’s tricky for publishers to monetize interest from a DTC brand that they’ve never or rarely written about, she said.

“There are certain brands or types of products that are tough to write about editorially,” Probus said.

The post How commerce publishers cozy up to direct-to-consumer brands appeared first on Digiday.

4G brought about video streaming, app stores, programmatic auctions and an entry point into the world of virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. With 5G, experts say advertisers and publishers should expect much more.

Imagine hopping in an autonomous vehicle and calling up Amazon Alexa to prep for dinner. A holographic display appears on your dashboard and directs you through the steps of a recipe, based on your diet preferences and meal history, as you drive to Whole Foods to pick up the ingredients, which are already being assembled robotically.

That is a (realistic) vision of the future with 5G. Experts say 5G brings with it the ability to process and exchange more data at higher speeds, so advertisers and publishers can expect to see faster ad-load times on desktop and mobile.

Today, when a visitor to a website clicks a link, there is a slight delay before a server responds, resulting in milliseconds to seconds of nothing apparently happening. It’s an issue that causes visitors to click away from an article or site, and one reason behind the adoption of ad blockers, according to a study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. But 5G will effectively eliminate that delay, said Jeremy Lockhorn, vp of experience strategy for mobile and emerging technology at agency SapientRazorfish, resulting in faster ad-load times and happier users. The FCC states that 5G is 1,000 times faster than 4G with 100 times less latency. Scott Singer, managing director at consultancy DDG, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the use of ad blockers begins to diminish because of webpages loading at quicker speeds.

At the same time, 5G will be able to process more data, allowing for the use of higher-resolution ads, such as 4K video, and furthering advertisers’ ability to personalize content in real time.

“5G is an evolutionary step,” said Charles Hu, chief technology officer at PMX Agency. “What it allows us to do is have a more stable and faster exchange and retrieval of data, so we can do more complex advertising.” Hu predicts that with 5G, mobile devices will have just as much power to interpret data as servers, delivering content instantaneously instead of having to go through a server.

With faster load times and higher resolutions, advertisers and publishers predict a new range of ad formats and pricing options.

“Getting really granular with retargeting and hypertargeting is possible right now, but the depth of how we can communicate to consumers will expand, and with the expansion, comes more premium options,” said Chris Neff, senior director of innovation at agency The Community, which works with clients like Domino’s, General Mills and Converse.

While these abilities might seem like a win-win-win for advertisers, publishers and audiences, programmatic auctions will have to keep pace with the speed of 5G.

“The programmatic auction process will have to change and improve in order to be able to take advantage of the speeds in which data will be processed,” said Singer.

Higher speeds will ultimately affect more than just mobile and desktop screens. Internet-connected devices will become more entangled than ever before, and advertisers will be able to personalize their messaging to any device or screen, no matter the time or place.

“5G is the tech that’s going to make all the new tech that everyone is talking about happen,” said Singer. “AR, VR, AI, [internet of things], including driverless cars, all those things need incredible data speed to actually happen on a public network.”

Then, there’s the out-of-home opportunity. Andy Sriubas, chief commercial officer at out-of-home advertising company Outfront Media, said Outfront will rely on 5G to distribute dynamic video to those screens, which will be able to react to commuters. “Brands will be able to talk to consumers in real time through OOH networks as opposed to publishing from a batch system,” said Sriubas.

Already, the U.S. market is ramping up for the delivery of 5G, as consumer demand grows for 4K video, instantaneous experiences and limitless connection. AT&T is one company leading the charge. Its recent acquisition of Time Warner and ad tech firm AppNexus are all steps the telecommunications company is taking to fully capitalize on the 5G service it aims to roll out to a dozen markets by late 2018. Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are also determined to be part of the race to get 5G onto consumers’ devices.

But the effort doesn’t come cheap. On Wednesday, Sprint and T-Mobile contended before a Senate subcommittee that their proposed merger is needed to compete in 5G because they lack the resources to challenge AT&T and Verizon on their own. Sprint Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure testified that alone, Sprint would need to spend around $25 billion to deploy 5G just in highly populated areas.

For this reason and the fact that hardware that can handle 5G still needs to be developed, Neff said marketers should expect 5G’s impact on advertising to be minimal in the next year, but that there’s the potential for “massive change” after that.

Still, companies are already establishing partnerships with these carriers to ensure they are well-positioned for 5G’s emergence. This week, independent esports company ESL, which produces video game competitions worldwide and streams them to platforms such as Twitch, worked with AT&T on a plan to incorporate 5G technology into live gaming. At the E3 conference in June, ESL tested AT&T’s 5G technology. Outside the U.S., China Mobile is working with HTC to produce 5G-powered VR devices.

As 5G becomes the norm, expect companies to run their entire businesses on it. Hu said PMX Agency was already on the cusp of going wireless this year, but when 5G comes to fruition, it will be the perfect opportunity to disconnect from the wall and poor-quality Wi-Fi.

“With 5G, you don’t need Wi-Fi or a wire,” he said. “You can go straight to the 5G provider because it’s that fast.”

The post 5G is coming and will change digital advertising in more ways than you think appeared first on Digiday.

For all the talk of equal opportunities and diversity targets in media and advertising workplaces, sexual harassment remains woefully prolific.

In the U.K. alone, 1 in 5 women between 18 and 24 years old has been sexually harassed within the first few years of working in the media and advertising industries, as well as 5 percent of men in the same age group, according to a survey of 3,500 U.K. respondents who work in media and advertising, published today.

Twenty-six percent of respondents said they have been harassed while working in the media and marketing industries. Of the respondents who have been sexually harassed, 72 percent said they were more than once, and 25 percent said it had happened six times or more.

The study, commissioned by Women in Advertising and Communications London and the Advertising Association, shines a spotlight on how rife sexual harassment is in media and advertising in the U.K. Along with a high volume of female employees citing either single or multiple experiences of sexual harassment in the report, other patterns emerged: Both men and women remain unclear on what specifically constitutes sexual harassment and therefore are often unsure what their rights are, and most refrain from reporting issues, for fear of being fired or demoted. Just over 80 percent of the respondents that said they have been harassed experienced it from people a more senior level than them. The result is that the issue is perpetuating rather than diminishing.

WACL and the AA have devised a #TimeToo Code of Conduct that they’re encouraging businesses to adopt. The code details how to know when you’ve been sexually harassed, how to deal with it and what the reporting structure should be. It also advises on protocol for when an individual witnesses harassment, along with guidelines on how senior management and human resources departments should treat it, including whether or not it’s appropriate for people who have made harassment claims to sign nondisclosure agreements.

“These are sobering findings,” said Kerry Glazer, president of media and advertising industry charity NABS and outgoing president of WACL. “What we hope in publicizing this code and getting it endorsed where possible is that it is acted on in the most senior levels. If the C-suite sets the tone for the rest of the company and it becomes part of their harassment policy, then they are making a statement this behavior is not to be tolerated.” Agencies including BBH London, Havas London and Karmarama have endorsed the Code of Conduct, as has broadcaster ITV.

Sexual harassment is a broad spectrum. It can be anything from bullying language and behavior dressed up as “harmless banter” to physical assault. “In some old-school agencies, there’s a belief that it [sexual harassment] is part of doing business,” said Mary Keane-Dawson, co-founder and CEO of the agency Truth.

Sixty-six percent of the respondents were women, while 39 percent were from creative agencies, 34 percent from media agencies, 8 percent from media owners and 4 percent were brand marketers. The remaining 15 percent of respondents came from production companies, public relations, events companies, charities and trade bodies.

“In reality, it’s probably more,” said Amy Kean, head of strategic innovation for Starcom Global Clients. “But at least these findings prove that even now these issues are real, and they have to be addressed at every level. It’s time for the commentary to stop, and the real action to start. This research should be conducted every year to make sure the numbers go down.”

“We need to make this a thing of the past,” said Stephen Woodford, CEO of the Advertising Association. “For all the positive initiatives and incredible industry ambition in terms of helping women achieve their potential and getting more diversity at a senior level, if this [level of sexual harassment] isn’t addressed, those initiatives will always be undermined. We’ve got to address this to ensure there is a fair and humane platform for everyone to work in.”

The fallout from the high-profile Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal reverberated across the media and advertising industries both in the U.S. and the U.K. last year. Women spoke up about some of their experiences, albeit under the cloak of anonymity. Ugly truths surfaced around how HR departments hadn’t supported women through the process, but instead got them to sign NDAs to stop harassment claims and gender-related bullying from becoming public.

Similar stories have surfaced in the U.K. But the attention on the topic doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference. Approximately 70 percent of the respondents in the WACL and AA study who said they had been sexually harassed said the harassment occurred within the last five years, but 28 percent said it happened in the last 12 months.

“Because there have been no high-profile sackings for sexual harassment, there’s no deterrent for men or women who do this to be afraid of the consequences,” Keane-Dawson said. “No high-profile sackings, so no Harvey Weinstein effect.”

Agencies have welcomed the focus by the report and #TimeToo guidelines on HR departments’ role in addressing the issue. “The fact that so many women and men are either scared or apathetic about reporting incidents means not everyone feels protected and represented by HR departments,” said Kean. “These teams need a revamp to be more equipped to deal with people’s emotional needs and personal stresses. Individuals need to feel safe in their own workplace, and hopefully this survey is an important step in making this happen.”

For now, WACL and the AA’s approach will be more carrot than stick. The bodies don’t want the code to be used as a tool to publicly name and shame perpetrators, but more as a constructive method of changing internal culture to stamp out sexual harassment in the future.

But some believe a hard line is the only way to truly knock the issue on its head. “A code can be hidden behind,” said Keane-Dawson. “It’s time to take action and set up a system, perhaps run by NABS, that allows whistles to be blown without fear of being fired or forced out.”

The post ‘Sobering findings’: Survey reveals rampant sexual harassment in UK media and advertising appeared first on Digiday.

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.