Author: rssmasher

The Y (formerly the YMCA) is launching a new content series called “My Y Story” demonstrating the value of its various offerings to individuals and communities, featuring actor Ethan Hawke, Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix and celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson. Catalyst Public Relations worked with The Y on the new “My Y Story” content series….

AdExchanger |

Disney’s bet on BAMTech could signal big advancements for its data and platform strategy. The streaming video provider, once majority-owned by MLB Advanced Media, proved such a valuable investment to Disney that it acquired an additional 42% stake in the company for $1.6 billion in August. It previously owned a 33% stake in BAMTech. “Disney… Continue reading »

The post BAMTech Will Help Disney Answer More Than The Direct-To-Consumer Call appeared first on AdExchanger.

AdExchanger |

Data providers have embraced an alternative way of buying audience segments: selling data as a percentage of media rather than transacting on CPMs. Instead of buying data at a fixed rate per thousand impressions, a percent-of-media model ties the cost of data to the cost of media. An advertiser, for instance, is unlikely to spend… Continue reading »

The post Why Some Data Companies Are Selling Data As A Percent Of Media appeared first on AdExchanger.

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 Barry Lowenthal, president at The Media Kitchen. Media agencies are used to talking to clients about the strength of their publisher relationships. In fact, I think agencies used to brag about… Continue reading »

The post Beyond Publisher Relationships: Agencies Need To Lead With Ad Tech appeared first on AdExchanger.

AdExchanger |

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Protect And Serve Facebook quietly embedded an app-install link from its iOS app menu to Onavo, a VPN app for malware security Facebook acquired in 2013. Users who click “Protect” in the Facebook navigation bar are sent to the app page. But data security… Continue reading »

The post Is Facebook Security App Onavo A Trojan Horse For Mobile Data?; IPG CEO Roth Optimistic On CPG Spend appeared first on AdExchanger.

In this week’s Rundown: CMOs turn into politicians in a desperate attempt to claw back leverage, Facebook expands its subscription support for publishers, and Verizon’s Go90 goes south.

Politicians or CMOs?
It’s been three days since Unilever CMO Keith Weed proclaimed in an Interactive Advertising Bureau keynote in California that his company, the world’s second-largest advertiser, would no longer advertise on any tech platforms that create “societal division” or fail to “protect children.” (I took it to mean YouTube and Facebook.) It’s another example of a CMO being much more vocal about how platforms have changed our lives, following Procter & Gamble CMO Marc Pritchard, who took the same stage at last year’s IAB confab — and then multiple times after — to bash the platforms. But Weed and Pritchard, and many of their ilk, are struggling with what seems to be a bigger and harsher reality: They no longer have the upper hand. Platforms have developed far-flung business models that are somewhat impervious to pressure from even the largest advertiser. Witness the “YouTube boycott” over advertisers appearing next to extremist content. The browbeating and posturing did nothing to slow the growth of YouTube’s ad business, judging by the gargantuan earnings Google continued to report.

For years, brands had power because they held the purse strings. But the rise of Facebook and Google has suddenly tipped the balance. Brands have no choice but to spend with the big platforms if they hope to reach customers, which has given rise to the CMO as an increasingly political figure — someone who has to make stump speeches over and over again, decrying the status quo, and hope that enough constituents, from brand managers to agency partners, buy into the message to actually make change happen.

Brands can seek to take some power back, but they’re never going to enjoy the leverage they once had. It’s worth noting that Unilever, for its part, is taking a soft tone when it comes to the platforms. Weed, speaking to Digiday after his speech, said his approach is to work collaboratively with Facebook and Google. Both brand holding companies have mostly kept ad spend the same, and it’s still unclear if anything actually changes after the rallies are over. There’s a wide gap between the big CMO speech and reality. — Shareen Pathak

The post The Rundown: CMOs grapple for leverage vs. platforms appeared first on Digiday.

Every year since 2012, OMD Worldwide has taken over a popular barbecue joint in Austin, Texas, to host its annual Bootstrap Barbecue at SXSW. It would welcome about 100 clients and introduce them to up-and-coming startups they would not meet otherwise. It was an event that the agency, and its clients, looked forward to all year for potential business opportunities, but also as a time to have fun.

No more. At this year’s SXSW, OMD will not throw any events, including its Bootstrap Barbecue, activations or panels. The reason: SXSW is no longer critical to the agency’s efforts to connect with clients and startups — or to educate staffers. SXSW also became less cool.

“It began to get more corporate,” said Doug Rozen, chief digital and innovation officer at OMD. “The intention of SXSW was always for the people versus these corporate presences.”

SXSW has long been a reliable stop in the agency year, offering a heady mix of tech, creativity, booze and barbecue. But with more scrutiny than ever on boondoggles — witness Publicis Groupe’s announcement this past summer that it would ditch awards shows and high-profile events to focus its time and money on developing its AI platform Marcel — several agencies like OMD say they’re pulling back on SXSW contingents when the event kicks off next month. Other agencies, such as MediaCom, EP+Co, SapientRazorfish and Kettle, are not attending like they have in past years, or they’re sending fewer people.

“In my head, [SXSW] started to jump the shark about four to five years ago,” said Jason Goldberg, svp of commerce and content at SapientRazorfish.

One big reason for agencies’ tempered enthusiasm: Clients are themselves less obsessed with SXSW. OMD said only a third of its usual 100 client attendees will attend. Spotify has pulled its large parties, and Vans is pulling its this year as well.

A large reason for not attending is because clients have a slew of other new conferences and events to attend, multiple agencies said. In short, March has become a busy time for travel, and clients are spread thin. Goldberg points to SXSW being so close to the Adobe Summit and the IBM Think and SAP Sapphire Now conferences.

Goldberg said that back in 2013, he sent about 10 people out of his 60-person commerce team to the event. That number then dwindled to one person in the years after. But this year, for the first time, Goldberg isn’t sending anyone.

“March is just a really busy event month for commerce practitioners,” said Goldberg, “and SXSW is such a broad event that tries to appeal to so many different segments of the market, that it just hasn’t made it worth it to keep it on the schedule.”

Besides time, a major reason why agencies don’t have brand clients attending this year is money. SXSW has gotten expensive, as hotels and local residents raise rates to make hay while the sun shines as an estimated 422,000 people flock to Austin.

“The most challenging thing from a cost management standpoint is actually accommodations,” Rozen said. In years past, the agency has set up male houses and female houses, but this year, there will be one house with far fewer rooms, although the agency doesn’t have an exact number finalized yet. Rozen said you can get hotel rooms away from the city between $300 to $400, but a hotel room in the city is over $1,000 a night. “And these aren’t lovely New York hotel rooms,” he added.

SXSW grew as an agency hotspot almost by accident. Originally a music festival, SXSW’s “interactive” offshoot became known as the go-to place for startups. Twitter famously launched there in 2007, and Foursquare followed in 2009. Soon, big-name brands like Ford, American Express and Oreo were making the pilgrimage to Austin, hoping some startup sheen would rub off on them. And where clients go, agencies follow. But like many events, SXSW soon became sprawling.

“The problem with SXSW is that it has gotten so big that it’s really, really hard to get noticed,” said John Baker, CMO at Mirum, a WPP-owned agency. “So if an agency is doing an activation, it needs to hit a real nerve.”

MediaCom isn’t sending anyone this year because clients get lost in the crowds and end up missing entire sessions. “It’s too crowded,” said Jeffrey Hinz, managing director at MediaCom. “You are often missing the fantastic sessions due to waiting in line and overbooking.”

Instead of hosting huge events or activations, agencies are now turning to smaller, one-on-one meetings with their clients, sometimes outside of the bustling convention center.

“When events get this big, brands either go all-in building out full installations like Google, or pull back to doing dinners, one-on-one meetings and simple entertainment,” said Baker. “This requires a smaller team on the ground.”

For instance, instead of the Bootstrap Barbecue, Rozen will schedule small, one-on-one meetings, including a brunch with a few clients on Rainey Street. And PMG is hosting brand clients at what it calls its PMG House, a place for its clients to get together with executives from platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google, 10 minutes away from the craziness of downtown Austin.

Other agencies are balancing spending for people to be on the ground in Austin and taking more of a social presence. Noah King, global product lead at Havas Media-owned agency Socialyse, which is sending one person to the event this year, said it could be a better return on investment to place someone in a social-listening war room.

“For attendees, it can be difficult to experience it all,” he said. “We see an opportunity to act as leaders and curators of SXSW, sharing content that summarizes key moments to ensure our clients and social followers can focus on the most relevant details and not get buried with information overload.”

Hinz doesn’t believe anyone should be on the ground anymore.

“It’s lost its community of innovation. The next Twitter won’t launch at SXSW to reach opinion leaders and innovators because they no longer attend; marketing content has stifled creativity and is being programmed similarly to conferences in NYC or San Francisco. There is no uniqueness. It’s like the same bland shopping mall on every corner.”

“And finally,” he added, “breakfast tacos are so 2009.”

The post ‘It lost its community of innovation’: Why agencies are skipping SXSW this year appeared first on Digiday.

Like many publishers, the Guardian is using Instagram to cultivate a loyal, young audience that doesn’t visit its main digital products.

The publisher has steadily grown its following and has nearly 860,000 Instagram followers to date, up 57 percent from a year ago. More interesting yet, 60 percent of those who follow links to the Guardian’s site are new to the Guardian, according to the publisher. The plan is to encourage those followers to become regular readers of the Guardian’s site and apps and, in time, possibly even paying members.

The Guardian has introduced more recurring Instagram Stories over the last year to keep people interested. One is a weekly Story called “Fake or For Real,” which features a Guardian journalist highlighting some of the biggest fake news that has surfaced that week and asking readers to tap if they think the news is true or false, before debunking it herself. The one-minute story gets approximately 50,000 views each week and has proven popular with people overseas, according to the Guardian’s social producer Eleni Stefanou. Another regular Story is “Brexit Bites,” which condenses complex developments around Brexit as they come up in the news. “Ramadan Diaries” is a recurring Story featuring Guardian journalist Iman Amrani, who explains the Muslim holy month and other related topics.

The Guardian has three people dedicated to posting on Instagram and the Guardian’s Facebook groups like Guardian culture. This team is separate from the publisher’s “reach team” that focuses on widespread distribution, a large part of which is Facebook publishing and search engine optimization, but both teams work closely together. Designers, journalists and video producers from the Guardian’s main multimedia team all contribute to Instagram content, with an average of three posts published daily to the platform. The content is a mix of original content made specifically for Instagram and existing assets — many of which are images pulled from major news stories and compiled into galleries to help tell the story in images.

People focused on video within the multimedia team are tasked with finding stories beyond traditional news, and they’ll contact independent filmmakers to ask if the Guardian can use footage for videos, which are often turned into Instagram Stories. An example of a Story that used assets from outside the Guardian is one created for Valentine’s Day, which depicts love letters sent between Barack and Michelle Obama; writers Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas​; and artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Naturally, having wider resources to tap is useful, but that can come with its own challenges. Maintaining a consistent style and editorial tone for Instagram posts can be difficult when so many different people contribute to it. The Guardian’s core guidelines are to create posts around topics relevant to the younger demographics that use Instagram: the environment, human rights issues and animal welfare. The message must also convey hope and emphasize the solutions being implemented as opposed to just a gloomy message.

“We want to use Instagram to reach a younger audience and one that we can convert into longtime readers,” said Stefanou. “We also want to build communities around shared subjects, all in the main account, not sub-accounts. That way, when we have a big [editorial] project come up around, for example, the use of plastic, we know we have already cultivated that audience on Instagram.”

The post How the Guardian’s Instagram strategy is winning new readers appeared first on Digiday.