Author: rssmasher

Booming demand for cellphone and electric-vehicle batteries has created a once-unthinkable metals-industry player: the pure cobalt company.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Foxconn Technology Group have led a $348 million funding round into Chinese electric-vehicle manufacturer Xiaopeng Motors, the auto maker said in a statement.

A federal copyright board has raised the music streaming royalties for songwriters and music publishers by more than 40%.

Waymo LLC on Tuesday signaled a large expansion of its robot taxi fleet as the company prepares to open its driverless ride-hailing service to the general public.

The Pentagon is reviewing policies that allow deployed troops to use activity-measuring devices and fitness apps that rely on GPS tracking, after a digital map online accidentally exposed information that could reveal where American troops are deployed or even precisely where they exercise overseas.

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Rob’s-Eye View Rob Norman, who retired as GroupM chief digital officer last November, spoke with The New York Times about his expectations for media and advertising in the next decade. Despite the hype and the reality of duopoly dominance, Norman isn’t betting against an… Continue reading »

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For the past three years, publishers have benefited from fat guarantees from content recommendation services like Outbrain and Taboola. But the good times are coming to an end, as both players, along with upstarts, move away from a land-grab phase in development.

Publishers that spoke on background for this story because they were in the midst of negotiating said either that the content recommendation companies themselves weren’t offering guaranteed payments anymore or that the publishers themselves were opting for a revenue-share model where they’d be paid a share of the revenue when visitors click on a paid ad in the widget. One exec at a digital lifestyle publisher used to get a $1 million-plus guarantee a year and gave it up for a rev share with Taboola.

“When we looked at the stipulations, we decided we wanted flexibility on placement, and a guarantee doesn’t let you do that,” said the exec.

A senior executive at a different, midsize publishing company said that in recent negotiations, neither Outbrain nor Taboola offered a guarantee, instead offering to pay the publisher on a cost-per-click model.

The moves are critical to publishers. The guarantees delivered a predictable stream of highly profitable revenue, something especially attractive to public companies. Two publishing sources said they were paid $1 million to $2 million a year. “And it’s all 100 percent margin, so for all of us looking to optimize EBITDA, it’s pretty attractive,” said the lifestyle publishing exec. For all the criticism and self-hatred publishers experienced over the widgets, Outbrain and Taboola have become a crucial source of revenue for many, with Outbrain once saying it accounted for 30 percent of some publishers’ revenue. The shift away from guarantees should have upside for users, who should benefit by seeing fewer such ads — or at least fewer low-quality ones — on sites.

Outbrain said a significant number of its top publishers have recently been on guaranteed terms. The company said it’s not stopped offering guarantees, but that over the past year, almost a third of those publishers have chosen to renew with a non-guaranteed economic structure that affords greater flexibility and editorial control, said Matt Crenshaw, general manager of Outbrain. Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda wouldn’t directly say if the business has shifted away from guarantees but said the model hasn’t “materially changed.”

Revcontent, an aggressive third player in the field, hasn’t filled the void; CEO John Lemp said that being that Revcontent is a self-funded company (unlike Outbrain and Taboola, which both are investor-backed), 97 percent of its gross revenue is paid out on a revenue-share basis.

The guarantees may have been lucrative, but they came with downsides. The content recommendation companies were losing tons of money on the guarantees, according to publishers that have negotiated with them. For both, the guarantees were onerous to maintain; in exchange for the fixed revenue, publishers were required to deliver a minimum number of pageviews, which meant running the unsightly widgets on all or nearly all their pages. The agreements also dictated where and how big the placements were, which made for unhappy editors who were denied control over what they could put on their pages. One publishing exec summed up the internal conflict this way: “We hate this, but we can’t walk away from the money.”

Publishers faced external pressure from advertisers to curb the use of the content engines on their sites, too, either because they thought the widgets mucked up the look of the sites or because they wanted total share of voice on a page.

Ad clients seeking premium placements will prefer publishers that don’t have such widgets, said Andrew Sandoval, director of biddable media for The Media Kitchen. Publishers should think about it from a brand safety standpoint, he added, because eventually advertisers will start evaluating sites based not just on their content but on the ads or user comments on the site, as happened recently when YouTube was found to have comments from pedophiles on its site, he said.

For publishers that turned up the dial on the clickbaity (and more lucrative) ads in the widgets, there’s also been concern that Google and Facebook would penalize sites with spammy ads.

Moving off guarantees means less cost for the content recommendation companies and headache on both sides. As more publishers work on attracting direct visitors, especially in the wake of Facebook making it harder for publishers to get exposure in its news feed, being freed of the guarantee requirements will give them more control over how their sites look and the ability to use the high-value space at the bottom of their pages to drive revenue from affiliate e-commerce, branded content, video ads, etc. On a rev-share model, some Outbrain publisher clients make more money directly from rev shares or overall because they have freedom to use more revenue-generating tools on the page, Crenshaw said.

“For publishers who are in it for the long haul, it’s the best to go with a revenue share,” the lifestyle publisher said. “It really puts us in the driver’s seat.”

Condé Nast has opted for a rev-share model with Outbrain because it wanted the freedom to decide what it puts on what site to maximize the value for the company and the user, especially as it prepares to launch paywalls on sites like Wired and Vanity Fair. On big news days like the Grammys, for example, the publisher wants to be able to point visitors to its own content, which it can do better with its own content recommendation system, said Zach Block, vp of business development and partnerships at Condé Nast.

“You may take a short-term hit [by turning down a guarantee], but we think there’s upside in user experience,” Block said. “We’re able to use our own data to drive our decision-making and grow a deeper relationship with our audience.”

Giving up a guarantee isn’t without risk, though. Guarantees were paid based on how many article views a publisher could generate, and when publishers go to a CPC model, they try to make sure they won’t lose money, but they’re only paid when someone clicks on a link in the widget — which more discriminating users won’t do. “So revenue might be lower, but maybe not,” said the midsize publisher. “There’s certainly a risk.”

The post In a shift, publishers can no longer count on content-recommendation guarantee checks appeared first on Digiday.

Less than a month into 2018, brands have put up to $5 billion (£3.6 billion) in media spend up for grabs. But unlike the last flurry of reviews in 2016 when marketers wanted the best price for ads, now they want the best value.

Shell, HSBC, Mars and Asda are among a raft of advertisers reviewing which agencies to trust with their media budgets. The large number of media reviews adds up to between $3 billion (£2.1 billion) and $5 billion in annual billings, said Brian Wieser, senior analyst at Pivotal Research Group.

The likes of Procter & Gamble, Barclays, Diageo and L’Oréal have openly pledged they will pay a premium for quality ads if agencies can fully disclose how they spend those budgets. Those brands believe that as they take more media-planning duties in-house, the criteria for selecting agencies shift beyond securing low cost-per-thousand impressions. Instead, advertisers are pushing to buy based on business outcomes such as the cost per acquisition or the guaranteed completion rate on a video. That wasn’t the case two years ago, when many marketers didn’t have that confidence or the expertise to question how their budgets were spent.

Media strategy consultancy ID Comms sees the growing confidence among advertisers manifesting itself in recent pitches that are far more “strategic.” Brand marketers are building pitches around strategic planning and the added value the agency can bring by targeting the right client at the right time with the right message in a transparent way, said Tom Denford, chief strategy officer at ID Comms, which is helping Mars consolidate its $1.4 billion (£1 billion) media duties. Denford said those advertisers have to put the use of data and technology at the core of their strategic challenges, as they “seek to understand how the agencies can help drive more informed and smarter media decision-making.”

Nike’s review is an example of this shift. Although the marketer is reassessing digital rather than media agencies, the same principle applies. Nike is using a so-called “reverse auction” to select the agencies, in which each one competes for the business with lower and lower bids until one stops and the other wins. Interestingly, the agencies aren’t being knocked out of the running for business, according to an executive with knowledge of the pitch. Instead, they are locked into the lowest rate they’re able to afford. While some observers have branded Nike’s use of the “reverse auction” bad news for already squeezed agencies, the move is “not necessarily a bad thing” as long as the range of work is clear, according to one executive, who spoke to Digiday on condition of anonymity. If so, then a “reverse auction” can be an efficient — “if not a little lazy” — way of reviewing agencies.

The next task for advertisers is to find out where agencies have added value beyond buying clout. Consequently, some of the reviews are happening to establish relationships with agency partners based around strategy rather than execution. Enter the consultants.

As advertisers move to hybrid in-house models, Laetitia Zinetti, managing principal for media management at media analytics specialist Ebiquity, believes they will increasingly turn to consultancies, which have been “beating the digital transformation drum for years,” to help them set up, implement and even run parts of their in-house media operations.

Since the last spate of reviews, more advertisers have wised up to what happens to their budgets on their way to the media owner. A 2017 study from the World Federation of Advertisers, which surveyed 35 global brands with spend in excess of $30 billion (£21 billion), found that 65 percent had improved their internal capabilities over the last 12 months. It’s meant that some advertisers, like Diageo with its Catalyst marketing tool or P&G’s plan to halve its 2,500 agencies this year, are confident they can handle the strategy side of the media equation themselves.

The problem, said Henry Daglish, founder of The7stars media agency startup Bountiful Cow, is that “much of the media contracts have been built on pricing guarantees driven by the volumes that network agencies control.” Now, the “arguments” are moving from price to value, he added. “If they [advertisers] can drive better business results via ad tech, albeit at a slightly higher cost per thousand, then that’s the logical thing to do, the advantages of which probably outstrip a cheaper base price.”

The post Ad quality rises to the top of the agenda for media agency reviews appeared first on Digiday.

When Oreo tweeted its seminal “Dunk in the Dark” tweet during the 2013 Super Bowl, social agencies everywhere felt the shock. Some wondered whether “real-time marketing” had finally jumped the shark — or if this was more proof that they needed to make the serious investment in a “war room,” equipped with just enough monitors to make sure they were ready for their own “Oreo moment” in the future.

Here is the story of the Super Bowl war room and how it came to be.

2009-13: The pre-Oreo era
Before there was the war room, there was second-screening. Agencies were waking up to the fact that people may be on Twitter or Facebook while watching TV — and they may want to talk about their brands during live events.

Adam Kahn, executive creative director, Possible: The first time I did a war room, it wasn’t for the Super Bowl. It was a political campaign for a retailer in 2010. But the first Super Bowl I did participate in with a war room was in 2012, for Verizon. It was when brands finally knew they needed to do more beyond TV.

Danielle Trivisonno Hawley, CCO of Americas, Possible: Arguably, the first war room was when we did a hashtag for Audi during the 2009 Super Bowl. That kicked the door open.

Kahn: When we did the Verizon thing, it was because brands were realizing that they didn’t want to just spend money to run stuff on TV without the second screen. It was like, clients were giving us the keys to a car.

Lee Maicon, chief strategy officer, 360i [worked on Oreo tweet]: That whole idea, it was grounded in the fact that when agencies are their best, it’s during pitches. During a pitch, you always have a war room. You’re throwing a group of people together; there’s a discrete moment in time; there’s a clear end date.

Ken Kraemer, CEO, Deep Focus [had a “command center” for the 2014 Super Bowl]: For me, the idea of a war room was always something that we at Deep Focus balked at a little bit because war rooms are only interesting when you know something is gonna be happening.

Maicon: When we first started working on the brand, we had to go the senior-most heights of the client to even do something like respond to celebrities who said they liked Oreos. It was so different. We were gonna work on brand A and brand B, and the pitch war room environment went on its way to becoming a thing we were comfortable working with.

2013: Have you heard of a ‘war room’?
Starting in late 2012 and leading up to Feb. 3, 2013, Oreo ran a series of “real-time marketing” Twitter posts called the Daily Twist, with 100 days of pictures of Oreos during cultural moments. That soon turned into a group of people from 360i, Mediavest and the brand clustered in a room during the big game. When the lights went out, they were ready — with a tweet, but also a smart public relations plan. Suddenly, the term “war room” was everywhere.

Cassie Reed, brand director, Innocean [had a war room from 2014-16 for Hyundai]: I remember Super Bowl 2013, of course. I was hanging out at my kitchen table when that Oreo tweet went out. The next day at work, we were like, “We all need to be ready for the next one. We have to be in the same place, be able to quickly respond and replicate.”

Maicon: It can be a great way to work. You see everything on the wall. You sort of have preordained prophecies and approaches. You have the lawyer on your bat phone, clients waiting for a call.

Jonathan Mesquita, editor, Deep Focus: I was at my brother’s apartment, and they sent that tweet. Everyone was laughing, and I was seething. There was an absolute sense of jealousy throughout me.

Maicon: After, we got a lot of clients saying, “Can we have a war room?” One thing we captured in the moment was the value of PR along with the war room. We got lots of people saying, “Give me one of those!”

Mesquita: Every single brand in our portfolio asked us what our plan was for the Super Bowl when it came to being reactive. Everyone wanted the opportunity for themselves.

Kraemer: There was a client we’d worked on for years who made a super complex war room. And this other tech company who set up a big war room for the Golden Globes in 2013. I remember thinking that the attention is not on the advertisers during this. It’s brand myopia sometimes, where they think everyone cares about something.

Maicon: We did not want to productize war rooms or do lots of war rooms. We said to clients, “Cool, you want one of those. Why?” And in a lot of cases, we turned to whatever the client’s business value was. We couldn’t turn into “Wars Rooms ‘R Us.”

Mesquita: It’s funny. Every single deck we got after had the question of what are your examples of what we would do if there were a blackout at the Super Bowl.

2014-16: It’s kind of quiet around here
Once agencies had set up their expensive war rooms, it became a matter of justifying them. The Super Bowl blackout wasn’t going to happen again. But the real-time marketing epidemic was still there. War rooms soon turned into large affairs, with brands and agencies creating live content as it happened, forcing “moments” by talking to other brands and hijacking the TV action with their own tweets. 

Trivisonno Hawley: After “Dunk in the Dark” happened, everyone was chasing this cultural moment. There were war rooms all over the country — just waiting. There wasn’t quite another blackout. The year after that, everyone just waited and waited for one.

Kraemer: There were other things, too. I remember thinking with R/GA when they redesigned their office, their main space looked like a big war room. It was so influenced by real-time information with big monitors.

Reed: Hyundai was a sponsor of the Grammys and FIFA in 2014. We need that dedicated space and also the resources ready to go in one place. One big element was being able to speed up approvals.

Maicon: For Oreo specifically, we took ourselves off the market the following year. It was a mic drop.

Kahn: We did a war room for Febreze in 2016, which was three people. Last year, it was 15. We had a six-minute turnaround time to make creative after someone commented.

Trivisonno Hawley: Yeah, I remember that. [Kahn] sent me a picture of the Febreze toilet that year from the war room.

Lori Martin, creative director, Innocean: It showed creative folks new ways of interacting on social. They had permission. We were all very jealous of how quickly [Oreo] moved.

Mesquita: In 2014, Ian Schafer was our CEO then. He loves football. So handling the duties for the NY/NJ host committee was like the biggest opportunity in the world.  

Reed: For the 2014 Grammys, that was our test run for our war room. It was the year Arby’s had that tweet about Pharrell’s hat. We built out a construction. We had multiple TV screens and new technology.

Mesquita: We did a big war room, command center, in Times Square. When it came to the organization of it, we realized that we didn’t have enough people. We had to get like 18 volunteers to help us answer all the questions on social media, and all that.

Reed: 2014 was when brand-to-brand banter got big. So in our war room for the Super Bowl, we kept a table full of other brands’ products, like Cheerios. So if there was an opportunity to talk with other brands, we were prepared. Just have the products on hand for inspiration.

Mesquita: We had this FAQ doc with 500 questions and answers. Each question had a copywriter assigned to it.

Reed: We had a Genesis spot running in 2014 where we were demonstrating our automatic emergency brake. Cheerios tweeted at us, and then we replied back.

.@cheerios And we remember all those times you saved our mornings. #NextGenesis https://t.co/A94Jmz3Kk5

— Hyundai USA (@Hyundai) February 3, 2014

Mesquita: I walked in on Jan. 28 — the game in 2015 was on Feb. 2 — I walked in, and this intern had fallen asleep on her keyboard because she’d been up all night. I woke her up, told her to go home. The one image that sticks with me is our senior comms manager at the time. He was sort of our pump-up guy. He had a megaphone. When everything was sort of quiet, people were falling asleep, he’d jump up on a chair and scream and yell. The volunteers were mortified. I loved it.

Trivisonno Hawley: Eventually by 2015, when people realized you couldn’t rely on a cultural moment, we had to make our own happen. So that year, our war room became a 50-person engine.

2016-present: RIP, war room
The war room concept is mostly dead. Agencies have figured out that they’re expensive, time-consuming — and actually kind of silly. Clients are demanding more than so-called “engagement.” 

Mesquita: We may not have a war room of that stature, but learnings continue. U.S. bank is one of our clients this year, and they’re the title name sponsor of the stadium in Minneapolis. We’re going to do a war room there.

Maicon: We now have rooms dedicated to each account here in the agency. Oreo does have a war room — it’s just a room where people go work on Oreo. We have stacks of cookies and cookie jars.

Martin: Technically, we still have the room; the space is there. But we use it for other things, too. It’s all about the practice of people who are creatively and quickly responding to things.

Kahn: It’s true that the investment of a war room becomes harder if the campaign doesn’t link to a cultural moment. What works for Febreze is that there is a link between having people over to watch the Super Bowl and the bathroom getting messy and all that. We own the bathroom break. 

Kraemer: It’s kinda over. It would have continued and evolved had that kind of earned media remained free. There was somewhat of a rollback. If you look back at that [Oreo] tweet now, it kind of makes no sense. Why is the cookie talking about a blackout at a stadium? It was the fever pitch of the medium of social media.

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