Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

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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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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. More Media Mega-Mergers? Nearly a decade after their split, CBS and Viacom might be getting back together. According to Reuters, the CBS board has discussed the possibility of reuniting with Viacom, a union that would bring CBS’ broadcast properties together with Nickelodeon, MTV and… Continue reading »

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The Dodo wants to entertain people who love animal videos outside of the U.S.

In November, The Dodo, the animal-focused distributed publisher housed underneath Group Nine Media, launched El Dodo, a Spanish-language Facebook page making the same type of animal and pet videos that have helped The Dodo grow, as of December, to 17.5 million followers and 1.1 billion video views on Facebook alone, according to Tubular Labs. El Dodo is The Dodo’s first extension in another language, and it plans to introduce more international content to expand its global reach. Thirty-five percent of The Dodo’s audience lives outside of the U.S., the publisher said.

“[International] will soon be a quarter of the stories that we cover,” said YuJung Kim, president of The Dodo. “If you look at our top 10 markets, India, for example, is a top-three market for us — it’s obviously a huge, untapped opportunity. And beyond language, telling local stories will be more important — about 150 of the 800 nonprofits, animal shelters, sanctuaries and organizations we work with are international.”

Since launching El Dodo, the page has racked up more than 620,000 Facebook followers. About 50 percent of El Dodo’s audience is in Mexico, with another 33 percent coming from South American countries, including Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Chile, the publisher said.

Today, El Dodo is run by two staffers and publishes four videos per day. El Dodo plans to grow by expanding to other platforms and screens, like YouTube, which already has 80 percent of its audience living outside of the U.S.; and Snapchat, where The Dodo has a Discover channel and will start to produce Spanish-language content for the platform, Kim said.

And just as The Dodo produces a TV show called “Dodo Heroes” for Animal Planet, which Group Nine investor Discovery Communications owns, The Dodo could produce a Spanish-language show for a local TV station such as Discovery Latin America, Kim said.

As Facebook works to expand Facebook Watch beyond the U.S., The Dodo is angling to produce shows for those markets. Group Nine Media has a deal with Facebook to produce multiple Watch series for its publishing brands, which also include NowThis, Thrillist and Seeker.)

Launching a new Facebook page might seem like an odd decision as Facebook is deprioritizing non-user content in its news feed to favor content that’s commented on and shared. Kim pointed to The Dodo’s ability to get people to share and interact with its videos as a reason why the publisher isn’t worried. The Dodo gets 1.5 times more engagements (likes, comments and shares) per view than the Facebook average, according to Tubular Labs.

“We don’t believe every type of animal content is shareable, but we have gathered so much data about which types of animals and videos get the most shares,” Kim said.

The post The Dodo launches in Spanish in its first international foray appeared first on Digiday.

Feb. 4 will mark M&M’s return to the Super Bowl after a three-year hiatus, with a commercial that features actor Danny DeVito lounging in a pool of M&M’s. On Feb. 3, M&M’s will bring a Twitter-activated video vending machine to the Super Bowl Experience at the Minneapolis Convention Center, where fans can see the new commercial, and, of course, eat M&M’s. All this falls to Allison Miazga-Bedrick, the candy maker’s senior brand director, and her team. Here’s what a day in her week before the big game looks like.

5:30 a.m.: I typically wake up when it’s still dark outside. I grab my phone and quickly check on the news of the day, and see what emails have come in. My direct reports and functional partners — media, social and PR teams — are clamoring for time with me so that we can continue to evolve the program. I have a critical discussion later today with our president to walk her through our integrated plans. I can get ahead of some emails before my full day of meetings begin.

6:30 a.m.: Now, I turn my attention to the realities of a working mom. I get the kids up, hop in the shower, make the school lunches and get ready for the day. After some coordination with my husband, I am out the door to drop off my high schooler while hoping my fifth-grader is getting ready for school.

8:30 a.m.: I arrive at the office and head right to my desk to see what rolled in on email while I was in transit. With about 30 minutes of thinking time before the team arrives, I get my thoughts ready for my meeting.

9 a.m.: Team arrives, and we are buzzing about the Super Bowl, other projects and priorities. I have a few quick drive-by discussions with my team before we all start our days.

9:15 a.m.: I head over to the conference room for a live meeting. Successful call — mission accomplished.

10:30 a.m.: The marathon of meetings ensues. First up, creative review, and rough cuts are now final, so I approve all creative assets, and all are ready to ship on plan and on time.

11 a.m.: Next up is media review. We learn about a new opportunity that is a win for one of our assets: Our Danny DeVito video vending machine. I have the freedom to jump on these moments that provide a clear benefit. I approved the opportunity on the spot.

11:30 a.m.: Social review. Social strategy, check; social content, check; paid support, check. Influencer support review is with the same team and aligned to the final choices and content strategy, check.

Noon: I head toward our cafe to grab lunch. A few calls and texts to coordinate the night, make personal appointments for the kids and do some more juggling.

12:30 p.m.: A review with the PR team. I’ve seen the plan, and I’m expecting to see enhancements.

1 p.m.: Media team tracks me down for a new, super cool digital idea. I stop to evaluate and provide on-the-spot feedback. I’m aligned.

2 p.m.: Time to transition to some innovation topics and check in with my team. Executing 2018, launching 2019 and planning ahead for 2020 — always a three-year focus.

3 p.m.: A final review of our on-the-ground [campaign] is scheduled. I provide input and final approvals on materials, run of show and program elements.

4 p.m.: Super Bowl is the priority at this time of year, but my brands have other projects and campaigns running. My team seeks me out for guidance and counsel on all of our other priorities.

5:30 p.m.: It’s time to pick up one of my kids up from dance class while my husband has my other daughter at judo.

7 p.m.: Finally home. A check-in with everyone on their days and a discussion on the schedule for tomorrow. Mom time kicks in as I spend time with the family, and prepare for the following day. I finally sit down, check some quick emails and try to relax before starting it all over again tomorrow.

The post A day in the life of M&M’s brand director before the Super Bowl appeared first on Digiday.

Now, it’s time for Flipboard’s charm offensive with publishers. This week, the mobile reading app rolled out full-page print ads in newspapers, including the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, and sites, including Axios, Vanity Fair and The Hollywood Reporter, just as publishers are increasingly seeking ways to replace their Facebook referral traffic.

Mike McCue, Flipboard’s founder and CEO, said discussions of a campaign began late last spring and that the timing of the launch is unrelated to Facebook’s announced plans to cut the amount of news people see in its news feed. Still, the campaign comes after a year when Flipboard worked with publishers on reporter-curated newsletters, grew its editorial and curation team and laid the groundwork to help publishers monetize their video inside Flipboard. It added more than 100 non-U.S. publishers to its roster of 4,000.

It’s also backing away from a fast-loading mobile article format, similar to Facebook Instant Articles, which it debuted before mobile-optimized sites were common. In response to publisher feedback, it’s no longer stressing the format, instead allowing publishers to use Flipboard as a source of referral traffic, provided their sites are mobile-optimized.

The effect has been dramatic in some cases. The Next Web was publishing all its content on Flipboard using its proprietary format and started using it for referral traffic in November. After the switch, Flipboard immediately leapfrogged Facebook, where The Next Web has over 1 million fans, and Twitter (1.85 million followers) to become its top source of referral traffic, despite the fact that The Next Web has just over 181,000 followers on Flipboard.

Mobile referral traffic from Flipboard is up over 350 percent since May, according to Parsely, albeit from a small base compared to Google and Facebook. Google and Facebook still dominate mobile referral traffic by a big margin, and Flipboard is a distant fourth after Twitter, according to Parsely.

“It’s become a sleeper hit,” said Jess Barron, vp and gm of Livestrong.com, which joined Flipboard six months ago. “Every publisher is looking for the next big thing to provide us that regular infusion of traffic.”

Flipboard is not in the same weight class as Facebook or Google. It claims a monthly active user base of 100 million, less than 5 percent of Facebook’s 2.1 billion. And its audience doesn’t skew heavily toward a particular age group — its audience is equal parts millennial, Gen X and older.

But unlike Facebook, which is trying to become a native video platform and a commerce marketplace and a global ad platform (as well as a place for friends and family), Flipboard’s raison d’être is simple and publisher-friendly: Deliver brand-safe publisher content to its users.

Publishers just need a functioning RSS feed of their content to be distributed on Flipboard. But this past year, Flipboard began collaborating more closely with publishers on content packages that appeared both on Flipboard and in newsletters. NBC News, for example, created a package around the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency; The Wall Street Journal created a package on the state of women in the workplace.

Those efforts continue in 2018. For the Golden Globes, for example, E! curated coverage of the event that Flipboard put on its homepage.

Publishers, which have often complained that other platforms from Facebook to Pinterest haven’t been helpful solving their problems, will take any platform love they get these days.

“They’re incredibly responsive,” said Janaki Challa, who heads audience development at The Daily Beast, which gets more traffic from Flipboard than Facebook. (She wouldn’t give numbers.) “It can be hit or miss with other partners, but with them, it’s been a relatively easy relationship.”

The post Flipboard cozies up to Facebook-weary publishers appeared first on Digiday.

At the Digiday Hot Topic UK: Data-Driven Publishing event last November in London, we sat down with over 20 media-buying executives from major agencies across the country to discuss developing trends such as the General Data Protection Regulation and addressable TV’s potential. Check out our earlier research on advertisers’ lack of concern about brand safety here. Learn more about our upcoming events here.

Top findings:

• Addressable TV has a long way to go to match digital advertising. Only 16 percent believe TV networks or OTT platforms collect the best data for consumer targeting.
• Seventy-five percent of respondents don’t believe addressable TV can replace digital advertising if the GDPR damages audience-targeting capabilities.
• $600 million was spent on addressable TV in 2017, up from $450 million in 2016.

The enforcement of the GDPR on May 25 has most in digital media on edge. The GDPR will upend how data is collected from consumers and then used to target them. Some advertisers have noted the GDPR’s potential to improve the quality of data collected, but many are apprehensive about what the GDPR means for their ability to accurately target consumers. Location-based ad tech vendors that supply the data necessary for audience targeting are particularly susceptible to the GDPR’s effects because of how they collect their data.

This has some advertisers turning to different media channels to reach consumers, including addressable TV. However, Digiday’s survey found that only 25 percent of respondents think addressable TV has the potential to replace digital advertising, should the GDPR harm advertisers’ ability to target consumers.

Addressable TV offers marketers similar opportunities to digital advertising like location-based targeting. Dish Network, owner of OTT platform Sling TV, is betting heavily on addressable TV until more advertisers warm to programmatic TV ad buying. But compared to digital advertising, addressable TV is a drop in the bucket in terms of media spend. In 2017, marketers spent just $600 million on addressable TV, while they dumped $33 billion into programmatic display ads alone.

Although addressable TV ad spending is growing significantly, up 33 percent between 2016 and 2017, there are limitations. Both TV networks and OTT platforms fall far behind publishers in terms of the quality of data they collect. Two-thirds of respondents to Digiday’s survey believe publishers have the best data for targeting consumers, whereas just 16 percent said the same about TV networks. No respondents chose OTT platforms, which could be because over 80 percent of the 200 OTT streaming services offer ad-free subscription products. A lack of reliable TV audience measurement metrics has dissuaded advertisers from buying addressable TV, which must be improved before advertisers will spend their money on it.

The post Digiday Research: Media buyers question quality of addressable TV targeting appeared first on Digiday.

Since establishing their joint ad sales alliance last September, Le Figaro and Le Monde have shed 12 ad tech vendors from their digital trading supply chain. Within a few months, Le Figaro’s video ad revenue soared 50 percent.

The French newspaper giants set up the alliance, called Skyline, as a show of strength to the French ad market in the face of competition from Facebook and Google.

Shedding vendors was one of the first steps they took to regain control of their inventory — a move both publishers believed would return revenue that ad tech middlemen have siphoned off for years. Skyline’s core partners are now AppNexus and Google. Le Figaro has several other vendors like Rubicon Project, according to its ads.txt file, which is plugged into French premium publisher marketplace La Place, of which Le Figaro is a member.

“We’ve cut pretty much everyone,” said Alexis Marcombe, chief operating officer at Le Figaro.

Le Figaro sells 100 million monthly video impressions, and in the weeks after dropping video ad tech vendors such as Teads, Advideum, Mobvalue and Sublime Skinz, its pre-roll revenue rose 50 percent. Le Monde didn’t respond to an interview request by press time but Marcombe said he believed Le Monde’s results have been similar to Le Figaro’s.

Like an increasing number of publishers, Le Figaro has implemented ads.txt to crack down on unauthorized selling of its inventory.

“The goal of the publisher is not aligned with the goal of the vendor, which becomes apparent as soon as you start working with one,” Marcombe said. “As a publisher, if you plug everyone in and they offer you a minimum guarantee, but you don’t know how it is generated, you can be sure something is not right. You have to operate with your own technology.”

Skyline is the only way advertisers can buy Le Figaro’s and Le Monde’s inventory other than directly through the publishers themselves. So far, 125 campaigns have run on the platform since its launch, representing 50 brands, all of which have repeatedly booked, according to the publisher. Marcombe wouldn’t say how much revenue Skyline has generated so far, but industry sources estimate it’s around €1.5 million ($1.9 million). That figure is expected to rise to between €2.5 million ($3.1 million) and €3 million ($3.7 million) in the next few months, according to industry sources. Big ad spenders including Carrefour, Volkswagen, Qualcomm and Citroën are among those to run campaigns on Skyline.

“Since we started Skyline, every time we have cut an ad tech vendor, we have made much more money,” added Marcombe.

While publishers may think wistfully of shedding vendors, the idea of pulling the plug on any short-term revenues is a major deterrent. Marcombe confirmed this is a challenge for smaller publishers that don’t have the resources of Le Figaro or Le Monde. “It was a relatively seamless transition because we have the engineering capability, and we could bear the expense,” he said. “But the money returned to us was pretty instantaneous.”

That said, it was still difficult. The main challenge for Le Figaro was to ensure it could offer the same ad formats that its former ad tech partners offered. As a result, Le Figaro developed four new ad products in-house with the help of AppNexus.

Dropping vendors from a publisher’s ad stack doesn’t have to pose a short-term risk to ad revenues, Marcombe said. “If you can ensure your own ad stack offers the same level of quality as what’s available from vendors, then you can get your money back quite quickly,” he said. “We prefer to get back [control of] our inventory and offer full transparency on what advertisers are buying to ensure they’re getting the real value of our inventory.”

The post Le Figaro sees video ad revenue jump 50 percent after shedding ad tech vendors appeared first on Digiday.

The NFL’s marketers in the U.K. face a challenge. The biggest opportunity to grow the sport’s fan base is the Super Bowl, but then there’s a seven-month gap until the next season starts. So to keep fans interested after the big game, they’re tapping the league’s personalities and treading into lifestyle content.

The Super Bowl on Feb. 4 is the biggest event for the NFL on the U.K. marketing team’s calendar, said Sarah Swanson, head of marketing for the NFL in the U.K. That’s especially the case this year, given Jay Ajayi, a Philadelphia Eagles running back who is British, will compete. Ajayi will “return home” with his own Twitter emoji ahead of the game, after becoming the first NFL player to have his own emoji in September, Swanson said.

It’s an extension of the influencer strategy the league has developed over the last two years, which included working with YouTube star Bateson87 and fans from other sports such as former footballer Rio Ferdinand.

The NFL in the U.K. is also getting into lifestyle content. It’s creating films with publishers like Joe Media showing fans what a tailgate party looks like. It’s working with an agency to get feature articles placed in non-sports, lifestyle magazines such as GQ and celebrity tabloid Closer as well as producing features on video competitions for the Madden video games and players learning British customs during their visits to the U.K.

The use of influencers, combined with the league’s deals with publishers such as Joe Media and Sportbible, lets sponsors tap an audience and messaging that they wouldn’t get from the NFL in the U.S., said Aaron Duckmanton, head of marketing and content at video tech platform Grabyo. (It’s also cost-effective, given the NFL doesn’t pay influencers in cash.) The use of influencers also gives sponsors more freedom to produce content that drives engagement and action, which is becoming much more valuable for sponsors across digital platforms, Duckmanton added.

The NFL’s marketers in the U.K. don’t have sponsorship assets, like the front of a jersey, or the fan base to justify funding several owned channels as their U.S. counterparts do, so Swanson takes advantage of social networks, especially Instagram. Most of the content posted to the NFL UK account between the start of the season in September and January was pictures (513), followed by video (223) and then 11 carousel posts, according to Socialbakers.

The content posted throughout the season drove a higher proportion of engagement from likes than comments, per Socialbakers. The majority of comments to the NFL UK account came last month, corresponding with a flurry of posts pushed out around the playoffs. This pattern of interactions was similar — albeit relatively larger — in the U.S., per Socialbakers.

Instagram is a double-edged sword for NFL UK, though, because there’s limited visibility of the platform’s reach.

“If the NFL UK is doing an Instagram Story, then I can tell you how many people are looking at it,” Swanson said. “But if I take a bunch of influencers to a Philadelphia Eagles game like we did a few weeks ago and they all post Instagram Stories, then I can’t see exactly how many people watched and wouldn’t have been able to grow those views over a longer period because they would’ve vanished.”

Despite those reservations, Swanson has enough other indicators to know the league is resonating with young men. The league said that over 830,000 people attended the NFL on Regent Street event in London last September, and it beat two attendance records this season, with the games at Wembley and Twickenham Stadiums attracting 84,592 and 74,237 fans, respectively.

The post How the NFL UK plans to keep fans engaged post-Super Bowl appeared first on Digiday.

To fête its newest product, the Early Defence Glow Activating Serum, the skin-care and makeup brand No7 is rolling out its largest influencer marketing campaign to date. But more than just product placement, the campaign aims to showcase concrete product results.

That concept is trending in the beauty industry right now, with successful brands ranging from Rodan & Fields to Deciem relying on results-based lingo and creative to drive impressive sales.

The digital campaign, which involves a combination of paid social and programmatic advertising, centers around three influencers: actress Meghan Rienks, beauty vlogger Iris Beilin and the husband-and-wife YouTube duo Kate Albrecht and Joey Zehr, of Mr. Kate. Together, they have over 2.2 million followers on Instagram.

The group, which is being paid, was tasked with participating in a seven-day challenge of sorts, dubbed #Glowin7: Use the serum every day for a week and chronicle the results with their respective followers on Instagram and YouTube.

No7’s new Early Defence Glow Activating Serum

Rienks kicked off her challenge on Wednesday with a post on Instagram. The other influencers will announce their challenge participation over the course of the next two weeks. According to Iris Beilin, No7 was explicit about the fact that she was to truly use the product for a full week and provide honest results to her audience. “It was important to stay committed to the daily routine to get the best results,” she said. Altogether, it required two weeks of her time, with one week for planning.

For those ads rolling out across social platforms and the web, each influencer also created a separate, short testimonial film with the brand, documenting their daily progress.

“We were specifically looking for people who embodied the millennial mindset, and they fit the bill,” said Hillary Hutcheson, No7’s senior brand director.

Crucially, the influencers chosen for the campaign will also be encouraging their myriad followers to try out the challenge for themselves. Each of them, as well as No7’s own social media team, will be hosting serum giveaways to help promote the product.

No7 held a party with Coveteur to celebrate its latest launch

With hundreds of product mailings also having gone out in the last few weeks, the company has engaged over 500 influencers for the launch. Data from the influencer marketing companies Octoly and Tribe Dyamics helped the brand whittle down who to target that would trend well with millennials.

According to Hutcheson, No7 has recently moved to focus on long-term influencer partnerships, a strategy increasingly shared by other brands, from Sephora to Alala. The brand has worked with Mr. Kate before, and hopes to continue working with BeilIn and Rienks.

“Longer-term partnerships are ideal for raising awareness among [millennials] and, ultimately, for driving steady sales,” she said. “It adds authenticity to the endorsement, which is, of course, important to our consumer.”

Of course, that’s only the case if the initial partnership pays off. No7 will be tracking the engagement rate and impressions garnered from these influencers’ posts, as well as how many followers clicked through from their channels to learn about and purchase the serum.

To drive extra buzz around the launch and cement it in the influencer community, the brand also held an exclusive VIP event in Los Angeles last week hosted by Stephanie Mark, co-founder of the popular site Coveteur. Over 150 fashion, beauty and lifestyle influencers were in attendance, and Coveteur featured it on their site.

“They are a highly respected, elevated media brand,” said Hutcheson. “Partnering with them allowed us to engage a new set of tastemakers and industry insiders.”

The post For No7’s largest influencer campaign to date, the focus is on results appeared first on Digiday.

The Financial Times is bolstering its commercial offering for clients with the acquisition of London-based research company Longitude.

With 910,000 paying print and digital readers, according to the publisher, the FT is better situated than ad-reliant publishers to weather a tough ad market. But advertising, along with branded content and events, is still important to the business newspaper.

The FT plans to use Longitude’s research and thought leadership to complement its media distribution of advertising and branded content, plus its creative and video production from Alpha Grid, a content marketing video company the FT recently acquired. The publisher wouldn’t disclose the financial terms of the deal.

“[The acquisition] is a big opportunity to shift gears on our commercial offering,” said FT chief commercial officer Jon Slade. “There is a requirement for a commercial revenue in a balanced business, and talking to commercial clients is equally important as reader revenue.”

Longitude counts Barclays bank, energy consultancy DNV GL and law firm Simmons & Simmons as clients. Slade said Longitude and the FT have mutual clients, but it’s too soon to say if any of them will take on additional services.

Projects with Longitude’s clients typically last four months, from the advising phase to designing and conducting research, analysis and then content creation. Longitude CEO Rob Mitchell said Longitude’s clients have been moving away from project-based work to long-term campaigns, in keeping with a trend in the industry. Longitude’s research typically focuses on businesses rather than consumers, often targeting the C-suite. For Accenture, Longitude surveyed 32,000 people about their attitudes toward banking services.

“The conversation with clients has changed in the last couple of years,” Mitchell said. “Thought leadership didn’t often involve discussions about KPIs and measurement. Now, every conversation starts with it. It’s something clients still struggle with.”

The FT has increased its focus on proving effectiveness of its ad campaigns and growing client services over the years. It runs roughly 100 studies a year that measure the effectiveness of its ad campaigns, so it knows what content format a brand should use to improve its reputation and how much improvement it can expect, Slade said.

Over the last four years, the FT has grown its client services team, doubling the number of people involved in execution and client relations on the sales side to 40 people. The importance of campaign delivery has also increased: The ratio of sales to delivery people was 6 to 1; now, it’s 3 to 1, Slade said.

In the next year, the FT will move back to its original headquarters near St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, freeing up space for Longitude’s 33 employees. Longitude plans to hire about 15 people in the next 12 months in all its departments, including commercial, editorial and research, Mitchell said.

The post The Financial Times adds research agency Longitude appeared first on Digiday.