Author: rssmasher

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Although connected TV buyers have become pretty sophisticated at targeting and delivering an ad to individual users, managing frequency across video providers is a work in progress. But despite the industry’s recognition that consumers demand better ad experiences, many viewers find themselves bombarded with the same ad. Worse, those ads sometimes run within the same… Continue reading »

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The rise (and fall, and rise, etc,) of cryptcurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum brought mainstream attention to blockchain technology. And advertisers and online publishers hope blockchain-based ad buys could expose bad actors in digital media. Despite the hype, however, the number of advertising dollars transacted through blockchain technology is near zero, and blockchain ad tech… Continue reading »

The post Still On The Blocks, But Blockchain Ad Tech Hopes To Race This Year appeared first on AdExchanger.

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“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 Ari Paparo, CEO at Beeswax. The latest ad tech buzzword is supply-path optimization, and conveniently it comes with a tidy acronym – SPO – to save us all typing time.… Continue reading »

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Big Blue Bet IBM hopes marketer interest in AI and blockchain technologies will help it seize programmatic market share. “Programmatic is a relatively dumb system – it doesn’t learn,” IBM CMO Michelle Peluso tells Digiday. Raw audience targeting is being outperformed by AI programs… Continue reading »

The post IBM’s Programmatic Pitch; The Uses Of Loyalty Data appeared first on AdExchanger.

Influencer talent agencies are using social-amplification practices to pump up results, creating erroneously successful campaigns or potentially causing safety issues for brands. 

It’s an oft-hidden practice that has its roots in the industry’s scramble to show big numbers. Brands often preach “quality” engagement but seek big numbers, which means influencer networks are often scrambling to make up big goals. That means corner-cutting, through practices like pods, network amplification or bought followings. But it’s network amplification that is the biggest problem, since it’s harder to spot when a network kicks into action to amplify a certain post or campaign.

Influencer marketing fraud is a known problem. In an industry worth over $1 billion, social media stars with very large followings have become attractive for marketing because they’re perceived as being more authentic. But authenticity is often manufactured: High engagement is often because of bots, for example.

Influencers often engage in practices that are in a gray area such as Instagram pods, groups of up to 30 Instagrammers that work with each other to comment and like each other’s posts to increase engagement.

But now, those amplification tactics are spilling over into the networks that represent thousands of influencers.

“The influencer marketing marketplace is incredibly bifurcated,” said Corey Martin, 360i’s head of influencer marketing. “There are influencer agents who are now acting like agencies, and they all work differently.”

Another buyer said any problems that emerge from these agencies emanated from a practice of guaranteeing impressions for influencer campaigns. For example, when an influencer network represents 120 influencers, a brand can request for it to create a campaign. The agency in turn could propose 10 influencers who are “cast” for the campaign. But the impressions offered would be those influencers plus an amplified mix from the network.

A brand marketing manager at an auto brand that frequently uses influencers said this practice is common and occurs because agents have to make sure they hit numbers they agreed on in their contracts. Networks will chip in and promote the post or account through Instagram Stories, for example. “As soon as they hit the target, the post is removed,” this person said.

That in itself isn’t a problem, but brands and their media agencies then question whether the engagement they’re getting is real.

Ultimately, the big problem is these influencer networks agree to any goal the brand or its media agency sets.

One influencer speaking under condition of anonymity told Digiday that his agent frequently “forces” him to engage with other social stars’ posts. He gets paid a small amount for reposting an Instagram photo. The network will calculate whatever engagement his repost gets. Even more interesting, because of the way platforms work, people are inclined to click through to the original Instagrammer’s profile, increasing the chance they end up liking the original post or even following that influencer as well.

Another Instagram star said the agency that represents her will frequently engage in this kind of amplification. “I’m in fashion, so reposting something from a mommy blogger isn’t a huge deal for me because I can just tell my followers that she’s a friend,” said this person. “But if I was a brand paying for mommy bloggers and their audiences, I wouldn’t be thrilled.”

“They juice the numbers,” said Collectively CEO Alexa Tonner, adding that agents can sometimes pay influencers bonuses for sharing and commenting on posts. “There’s an FTC issue in here. If there’s a material connection between you and a brand, you have to disclose it. If you’re being paid to retweet and comment, you should be disclosing.”

The other issue is the engagement that brands want is from consumers — not from other influencers. That specifically was the issue for many with Instagram pods, which used comment collusion to game the Instagram algorithm. If the engagement doesn’t feel genuine, brands and media agencies wonder why they’re paying for it.

“I’ve seen it put straight in a deck by an influencer agent: You will get 5 million likes, and once the network kicks in, you’ll get an additional 10 million,” said one buyer. Sometimes it’s disclosed, but other times it’s not.

“The tactic of having other influencers like, comment or reshare posts is something agencies do, and oftentimes it can be a great formula to driving up engagement if it’s done with the right audience match and properly disclosed to the client,” said Speakr CEO Marco Hansell. “The worse scenario is when you choose an influencer who fits your audience, and then the agency just has tons of completely unrelated accounts reshare or interact with that influencer’s content in order to drive up engagements. Now, you’ve got engagements from the wrong audience, making your numbers look good but your results poor.”

Another buyer said the agent he engaged simply guaranteed a few million impressions without explaining it would happen through an amplification strategy. That’s bad for a few reasons: When a brand engages a certain group of influencers, it’s because it works for that brand. Amplifying means a group of social stars that potentially doesn’t appeal to the brand’s target demographic is sharing the content. The numbers look good, but they aren’t actually hitting goals. “There are influencers who have agents who push for campaigns and do something that may be out of sync with brand values, creating brand-safety issues,” said this buyer.

“The worst thing that can happen to influencer marketing is this way of overcommoditzation of the industry — platformification, gamification and incentivizing influencers,” said Tonner. “It devalues the industry. You’re paying for engagement that doesn’t reach an audience you want to reach, not indicative of performance of value of that content. You’re not understanding the consumer you want.”

The post Chasing scale, Instagram influencer networks cut corners appeared first on Digiday.

With Facebook deprioritizing publishers’ content in its news feed again, publishers are casting about for other places to diversify their traffic, including Apple News. But so far, most of the benefits of that platform appear limited to news publishers.

About 25 percent of the 4.5 million who read Michael Wolff’s buzzy New York magazine article about Donald Trump did so on Apple News. An exec at a comScore 200 news publisher, requesting anonymity, said in 2017, his site’s Apple News traffic doubled to 10 million readers a month. For The Washington Post, Apple News traffic is growing and among the newspaper’s top four sources of referral traffic, said Dave Merrell, lead product manager at the Post. At Boston.com, Apple News outstripped referral traffic from Facebook in December.

But Apple News remains tough for lifestyle publishers, according to conversations with seven publisher executives, which is problematic because they depend on Facebook more than other publishers. About 87 percent of the referral traffic for lifestyle articles comes from Facebook, according to Parsely. For comparison, between 15 and 60 percent of the traffic for business and political content comes from Facebook, per Parsely.

Outside Magazine and Ranker haven’t adopted Apple News yet because they’re unsure it is worth integrating and monitoring another traffic source where their evergreen content is unlikely to catch fire. LittleThings and Kiplinger get less than 5 percent of their referral traffic from Apple News. News publishers are driving traffic from Apple News, but some remain cautious about publishing all of their content on the platform since they’ve struggled to make money from it. Apple declined to comment on the record for this story.

After testing Apple News for a month and obtaining under 500,000 readers, a millennial lifestyle site dropped the platform, said one of its executives, speaking on condition of anonymity. In the weeks following Facebook’s news feed change, publishers may get more serious about deriving traffic from other sources, but in the opinion of this exec, lifestyle publishers simply aren’t Apple’s priority.

Apple News tends to surface and push stories about what’s happening in the world today. For lifestyle publishers looking to wean themselves off Facebook, Apple News doesn’t work well as a referral traffic substitute.

“It’s called Apple News for a reason,” one publisher source quipped.

Even publishers that are getting audience on Apple News still have problems with it. Many publishers struggle to monetize their content on Apple News because advertising hasn’t been a priority of Apple’s. Daniel Hallac, chief product officer at New York magazine, acknowledged that monetization on Apple News isn’t as great as it is on owned-and-operated properties.

But Hallac believes Apple News monetization will improve considerably once it integrates Google’s DoubleClick ad server into its platform. Multiple sources speculated this could happen by the end of the first quarter. The integration with DoubleClick would allow publishers to pipe ads into their Apple News articles that they already serve on their own websites.

Apple News provides about 5 percent of New York magazine’s referral traffic per month, and Hallac wants to continue growing traffic on the platform to diversify where New York gets its readers.

“It is unhealthy to be attached to any one referral source,” he said.

The post Apple News shows promise delivering traffic but won’t make up for Facebook shortfalls appeared first on Digiday.