Author: rssmasher

The UK treads water on viewability, but with four-fifths of display traded programmatically, that is not so bad.

LinkedIn began beta-testing video for sponsored content last October, and the professional network is making it available to all businesses over the next few weeks. More than 700 advertisers participated in the beta-test, including GE, Philips and Audi Canada. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions product manager Phil Spitzer announced in a blog post that the new native…

Selling in Tesla bonds intensified, driving prices to fresh lows, a day after the electric-vehicle maker suffered a credit-rating downgrade.

When metasearch travel site Kayak decided to take programmatic in-house in the spring of 2016, it needed to select a group of vendors that could help it buy media both more efficiently and effectively. After settling on DoubleClick Bid Manager for display buying, Kayak realized it didn’t have an automated or transparent way to buy… Continue reading »

The post Inside Kayak’s Journey To Bring Programmatic In-House appeared first on AdExchanger.

While broadcast TV is still a big awareness driver for supplementary insurance brand Aflac, it’s not planned in a vacuum. “I don’t do one-offs,” said Catherine Hernandez-Blades, chief brand and communications officer for Aflac. “I like to create an overarching strategy, and if something can’t be measured as part of a bigger umbrella strategy, it… Continue reading »

The post To Aflac, Big TV Buys Are Never Just A ‘One-Off’ appeared first on AdExchanger.

“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 Shachar Shamir, co-founder at Ranky. Too often, marketing and sales folks work hard to move leads through the sales funnel, only for some of those customers to leave after making… Continue reading »

The post The Silver Lining In Lost Business appeared first on AdExchanger.

Earlier this week, we broke the news of GroupM requiring publishers to sign a “Data Protection Addendum” in advance of the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation in May.

Why this matters is more interesting. GroupM is scrambling to make sure it won’t take on significant liability. (The GDPR calls for fines of up to 4 percent of a company’s global revenue.) What it’s doing is using its leverage as the biggest ad buyer to play a game of pass the liability. The demand is simple: You take all the liability, or you get cut off our media plans. From GroupM’s standpoint, it’s simply ensuring a compliant supply chain. In its view, it’s a leader, much as it was in pushing onerous viewability standards on publishers. Those in the front take all the arrows.

The post The Rundown: Inside GroupM’s GDPR power play appeared first on Digiday.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Over-The-Top Growth TV ad spend will shrink in the US this year by 0.5% to $69.9 billion, according to eMarketer’s updated forecast. TV’s share of US media spend will decrease as a result, from 33.9% in 2017 to 31.6% this year. TV ad spend… Continue reading »

The post US TV Ad Spend To Shrink; A Quarter Of Web Traffic Isn’t Human appeared first on AdExchanger.

Influencer marketing is evolving as it grows, with brands ramping up their influencer budgets, bringing influencer marketing in-house and treating influencers as marketing partners. Another change: Influencer contracts are starting to resemble those for traditional talent for TV ads or billboards.

The contract language is comprehensive, now often including the length of a post, the period of paid amplification, the specific type of content — whether it’s a video, Instagram Story or Boomerang, for example — the amount of content, exclusivity rights, confidentiality agreements and payment terms.

“Recently, influencer contracts have become more in line with traditional talent contracts,” said Ryan Detert, CEO of influencer platform Influential, which uses an artificial intelligence platform run by IBM Watson to match brands with influencers. Contracts now include licensing rights for likeness and content usage, and they open up the opportunity to use influencers for display advertising, TV ads and billboards as opposed to just social channels, Detert said.

Over the past couple of months, Jamie Lieberman, founder of law firm Hashtag Legal, has also seen an influx of contracts that want influencers for longer periods of time, usually six months to a year as compared to a one-time post or a few posts. Lieberman also said contracts now refer to influencers more as brand spokespeople than influencers, request more in-person appearances and in some causes, even include morality causes that give the company permission to use content in case of death.

Even micro-influencers are receiving long-term contracts from brand partners. Micro-influencer Jeannette Kaplun, who runs the blog Hispana Global and its social channels and works with influencer agency Everywhere Agency, said she regularly engages in more longer-term partnerships.

Influencer marketing agency WhoSay generates the contracts between its influencers and brands, and it has updated them to reflect how brands want to use influencers for longer partnerships and as talent that extends beyond social.

WhoSay CMO Paul Kontonis said that last year, the agency updated the language in its contracts with the option to use influencer content for other applications such as TV, in-store or e-commerce campaigns. Now, brands are starting to take advantage of that, said Kontonis. For instance, in February, Google used one contract with entertainer RuPaul for a social campaign to promote its Pixel 2 phone as well as a TV commercial. Meanwhile, a social campaign Walmart launched with musician Jana Kramer was also used for in-store content.

This differs dramatically from five years ago, when most contracts were one-off agreements done over email, handshakes or phone calls, Lieberman said. Today, influencer marketing has become a significant part of brands’ marketing strategies, despite the struggle to calculate return on investment and widespread follower fraud. In 2018, brands are increasing their influencer marketing spend, according to influencer platform Linqia, which surveyed 181 marketers and found that 39 percent are increasing their budgets.

Requests for video are also appearing more in contracts. Lieberman said the deals vary dramatically from influencer to influencer, but overall, even bloggers have been asked to do less blog posts and more videos.

“We’ve seen cost per view being the most important pricing model as video formats have overtaken static content,” said John Kalis, vp of U.S. business development at influencer marketing platform indaHash.

Another area that influencer contracts are touching on is fraudulent followers and brand safety. In all campaign contracts, WhoSay includes a clause that gives it the power to whitelabel all of an influencer’s accounts, allowing the agency to control the accounts and use its platform to determine how many fake followers an influencer might have. Although WhoSay has done this for the past three years, Kontonis said brands are now appreciating it for regulating ad fraud and making sure an influencer is brand-safe. Kontonis said influencer Logan Paul was off its platform before his recent YouTube scandal.

There are also brands using platforms that eliminate the need for multiple contracts altogether. Procter & Gamble’s Head & Shoulders and L’Oréal use micro-influencer platform Peersway, and instead of negotiating individual contracts with influencers, they use one contract with the platform. Peersway CEO Arnab Majumdar said this is meant to help brands “save hundreds of hours, as they no longer need to negotiate individual fees with influencers or negotiate individual contracts.” Instead of negotiating deals that could span different price points, Peersway charges brands $60 an influencer to make one post and $90 per influencer to create two posts. Majumdar said a fixed price point allows the platform to deliver a cost per engagement of less than 25 cents, while the industry average is 50 cents.

Something that is not yet appearing in influencer contracts are brands’ expected KPIs, according to several agencies. Kontonis said brands will discuss their intention of measuring cost per impressions, cost per views and cost per engagements with the influencer content, but WhoSay leaves this out of the contract because it’s not the influencer’s job to achieve those — it’s the agency’s, said Kontonis.

Lieberman said that for influencers, it’s hard to agree to a campaign goal they cannot guarantee. Still, she said, it’s important for an influencer to understand a brand’s KPIs, especially for negotiations and deciding which content might benefit a brand more. But most of them don’t think to ask. “It’s still a conversation influencers are learning to ask about,” she said. So, Lieberman said it’s the first piece of advice she gives her influencer clients — to know exactly what the brand is looking for.

The post Influencers are getting long-term contracts that treat them more like traditional talent appeared first on Digiday.