Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

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Adobe and AppNexus plan to give marketers supply-chain transparency from the DSP to the SSP by partnering on a pilot program. Adobe Advertising Cloud will reveal all fees taken by the DSP, including the platform fee and any add-ons, as well as AppNexus’ bill to the publisher, which will help marketers track media dollars through… Continue reading »

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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 Adam Heimlich, senior vice president and managing director of HX at Horizon Media. This point-counterpoint between Adam and Emily Del Greco was written in response to the question: What is the… Continue reading »

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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 Emily Del Greco, founder at Del Greco Solutions. This point-counterpoint between Emily and Adam Heimlich was written in response to the question: What is the future of the open exchange?… Continue reading »

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5 charts that show how people-based measurement can help your customers and company

In today’s omnichannel world, consumers are targeted through an ever-growing number of platforms and channels with an ever-growing number of messages. But do marketers really know just who these consumers are? Do they understand their journey? Or are they only seeing them as a mass of statistics and data points without any essential connecting threads?  

As these five charts show, people-based measurement, or, PBM — defined as the use of de-duplicated, cross-channel person level data to measure the impact of marketing — can help a marketer enormously when it comes to making connections between customers and campaigns.

 

 

It’s essential for measuring ROI

500 marketing professionals were asked for their thoughts on how people-based measurement can help to accurately measure their marketing’s impact on sales. Of those surveyed, a whopping 94% agreed that marketers cannot accurately measure ROI if they do not adopt people-based measurement in the next 3 years.

Three-quarters of the marketers also agreed that people-based measurement can aid in improved real-time campaign optimization, leading to a better outcome for both your business and your customers.

However, it’s not without its challenges

While an overwhelming number of marketers are on board with the idea of people-based measurement, eight out of 10 marketers surveyed have yet to implement these strategies, citing a number of common challenges.

There are various reasons why marketers might be hesitant about PBM. 49% cited not having the ability to bring all the data together for analysis, while 48% did not have access to the necessary Identity Resolution technology that helps enable this unified customer view.

As 42% of marketers point out, it can be daunting to delve headfirst into a new capability, noting that they simply do not know how to get started — but the improved customer experience that results from people-based measurement can make this challenge well worth it.

This is the difference that PBM makes when it comes to metric measurement

If you’re implementing people-based measurement, you’re more likely to be measuring all other metrics in general. Of these 500 surveyed marketers, the ones who already use people-based measurement tactics are conducting deeper analysis than those who do not implement these capabilities.

It’s striking to note that 90% of those who use people-based measurement are comfortable attributing sales directly to online advertising — a huge boon when working in the digital marketing landscape.

People-based measurement plays well with ad tech and mar tech tools

If your business has already invested in ad tech and mar tech tools, then it’s likely that you’re ready to take the next step toward better metrics. 87% of those marketers who use people-based measurement are also using data analytics and visualization platforms, showing a focus on results-driven campaigns.

The usage of these tools goes hand-in-hand with the usage of people-based measurement capabilities. Smart marketers are willing to invest their energy into pursuing the most fruitful ways of gaining results, from technology to customer insight.

In the end, people-based measurement is the gift that keeps on giving

As these charts all illustrate, it’s no secret that people-based measurement can help enormously with gaining deeper insight into overall marketing performance. However, calculating the success of a campaign or channel is only the start.

Additional benefits of people-based measurement include improved personalization and real-time optimization, as well as heightened customer and prospect insights, all of which can help improve the overall customer experience.

Check out the Liveramp study here if you’re interested in learning more.

The post The state of people-based measurement appeared first on Digiday.

Frustration with Facebook’s communication with U.K. publishers is nothing new, but the platform’s latest plans to deprioritize publisher posts in its feed have further exacerbated it.

In the U.S., Facebook briefed publishers one by one about the upcoming changes, and a couple dozen publishers also received an email from Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships.

In the U.K., several top-tier publishers say they have been in constant contact with Facebook about the news-feed changes. Others said the possibility of the changes was discussed in meetings in December after Facebook tested two separate feeds in other countries.

For other U.K. publishers, particularly midsize ones, the changes came as a surprise.

“I’d still be waiting to get updated if I purely relied on Facebook’s U.K. team,” said one publisher who was notified of the changes by U.S. colleagues.

Managing publisher partnerships is resource-intensive, and there’s always been a publisher hierarchy when it comes to contact with U.S.-based Facebook, with global or national ones having a direct relationship and local or regional publishers in the U.S. and beyond tending to find things out secondhand. Meanwhile, Facebook is making outward claims of trying to improve partnerships with the media world.

Facebook’s U.K.-based media partnerships team, headed by Nick Wrenn and Sarah Brown, is responsive when contacted about technical or copyright issues, publishers there say. Proactive updates about product have been sporadic or inconsistent, depending on the size of the publisher. In some cases, publishers were sent press releases, or select partners were notified ahead of time; sometimes, there was nothing. In the U.K., publishers say Facebook hasn’t been proactive about signing up partners to its Facebook Journalism Project; requests have been met with noncommittal pleasantries.

“Keeping the media at arm’s length is not a partnership,” said one midsize publisher, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect its relationship with the platform. “If you’re serious about helping publishers right the revenue balance, then invest in that area and adjust your ad product to reward quality content. Otherwise, don’t call it a partnership. Partnerships tend not to involve long gaps in communication.”

“The central challenge they have is scale. How do you scale a media partnerships team across Europe, the Middle East and Africa?” the publisher added. “You have to eat into margins by hiring significant numbers of people. Right now, the team feels like it’s a token gesture, with no clear purpose and presenting generic updates. If it’s serious about working with content companies, it needs a tiered structure to give a level of service depending on the size of the publisher.” According to Facebook, over 85 percent of its users come from outside U.S. and Canada, where it makes half its revenue. To keep growing, it needs to continue to invest beyond U.S. borders.

Facebook responded with a statement from Wrenn: “Through the Facebook Journalism Project we hold regular meetings, roundtables, webinars and hackathons for journalists, social media managers and publishers in the U.K. and EMEA. We’re actively hiring and growing the media partnerships team in the U.K. and other countries so that we can engage with even more publishers across the region.”

The lack of direct contact is a source of frustration. Another mid-tier publisher was unable to get Facebook to verify its page without directly reaching out to the team. “We had an informal strategy meeting at the beginning of last week. By the end of the week [after the news-feed changes were announced], I had to tell everyone, ‘Scratch that, don’t make Facebook top of the priority list,’” said this publisher. “We’re already not a massive player. If we’re going to get deprioritized, invest time elsewhere.”

Among publishers in the U.K., like those in the U.S., the sense is that Facebook’s U.K. partnership team is interested in publishers but can’t effect change.

“Partner managers don’t have a huge amount of power,” said a former exec at a major news publisher. “People are hired to defend the needs of publishers. But whether they’re listened to, who knows?”

If there’s an upside of U.K. publishers’ relative isolation, it’s that they never got too reliant on the platform that they now need to backtrack from, so the fallout from Facebook’s news-feed changes will be easier to manage. U.K. publishers have long seen the writing on the wall and chosen to diversify revenue streams and platform distribution.

“With every product cycle, there’s different vocabulary: A year ago, it was reach; now, they’ve been talking about loyalty and quality of engagement,” said the former major news publisher exec. “If you listen, it’s very clear what their goal is. They were priming people for the news-feed change.”

The post ‘The relationship has to improve’: UK publishers want more contact with Facebook appeared first on Digiday.

With algorithmic changes underway for Facebook’s news feed, which will devalue most media content in favor of posts shared by users, the future of Facebook Watch will be tied to how well Facebook and video makers can get people to click over to the Watch section to view shows.

Right now, the vast majority of Watch viewing happens inside the news feed, according to four media companies that have sold shows to Facebook. When users follow a particular show, new episodes are then seeded inside the news feed like content from any other Facebook page that a user might follow.

“No one’s going to the Watch tab; no one’s going to your Facebook page, either,” said a publishing executive. “And that’s the issue; if our videos are not going to show up in the news feed, how are we going to get people to go over to Watch?”

Facebook has been experimenting with a few tools designed to get people to go to Watch. For instance, when a user follows a show, they will see a red notification when a new episode is available. Shows can also be featured at the top of the production company’s or media brand’s Facebook page, which usually have larger followings than Watch pages dedicated to individual shows.

But both of these tools have been available since Watch launched in August, and neither has helped create a habit among most Facebook users to go to Watch for the latest programming, multiple Watch partners said.

Yet there is some hope that Facebook won’t completely cut off Watch programming from the news feed.

“Facebook has made it clear that they want to reward intentional viewing and deprioritize accidental or passive viewing,” said a second Watch partner. “The whole philosophy behind Watch is intentional viewing: It’s more premium, well-produced video that’s meant to elicit a stronger reaction and repeated viewership from Facebook’s audience.”

Other Watch partners said Facebook has told them it will favor videos and shows that users choose to watch, with the thinking that this would make them more likely to show up in the news feed. Facebook already favors Watch shows that have repeat viewership, which indicates people are choosing to watch the show. That’s a type of engagement that Facebook would support, along with programming that viewers interact with in some fashion. (Facebook is also testing a new feature called Watch Party, which allows multiple users to watch and interact with video at the same time.)

Another view is that whatever happens to the news feed, Facebook has committed enough resources to Watch and video in general that it’s not likely to kill it just five months after launching, said one Watch partner. This is even after what many consider to be a misfire by Facebook to kick-start Watch with cheap and unscripted short-form shows.

“There is really no logic to them shuttering Watch at this point in time,” said the second Watch partner. “They wouldn’t have hired the executives that they have. I don’t think Facebook is going to be fickle about their long-term play in Watch.”

The hope for Facebook and its media partners is that Facebook can develop another YouTube-esque platform where users actively go to watch videos. Under this scenario, Facebook would likely spin off Watch into its own app — similar to what the company did with Facebook Messenger once it hit a critical mass. Facebook already has a dedicated video app for connected TVs, but it’s easy to imagine a scenario where that app is available across platforms in the form of a spun-off Watch app.

But that’s merely fantasy until Facebook can convince its users that it, too, is a video platform.

“At the end of the day, Watch has yet to become a thing,” said an executive at a TV and digital media giant. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done before we can tell you whether we’re bearish or bullish on it.”

One point made by several Watch partners is how little Facebook’s algorithm change will affect how much they’re making from their Watch shows. There are two primary ways for video makers to earn money on Watch: getting Facebook or an advertiser to fund the show. In both instances, creators can turn a profit off of the production margin — and in Facebook’s case, if the show makes more money from pre-roll and mid-roll ad revenue than it cost to produce, creators get 55 cents of every additional dollar made.

Facebook’s ad program has not driven any meaningful revenue for most media partners, though, which means the only dollars that video creators see is from the margin they bake into a show’s budget. Some Watch partners also have the opportunity to make additional money by redistributing the show on other platforms after Facebook’s exclusivity runs out, but even here, Facebook is pursuing stricter deal terms that either give it longer periods of exclusivity or total ownership of the show.

There is some hope on the horizon: Facebook is warming to the idea of letting media partners sell their own ad inventory, including that available inside Watch programming — something many partners have pressured Facebook to do for months. This would allow media companies to sell broader, multiplatform ad packages that could include sponsorships and ad slots inside Watch programming, according to one Watch publisher, which previously was able to sell sponsorship for one of its Facebook-funded Watch shows but was rebuffed by Facebook.

“When someone makes that kind of pivot or acknowledgement, then it’s easier for us to lean in because they eliminated that friction,” said the TV and digital media executive. “Think about where Hulu used to be and where it is today: Hulu used to be about [selling] Hulu [ad inventory] first; then they realized they probably have a greater chance at success by giving media companies more flexibility to monetize their shows.”

The common refrain among most media executives is that Facebook has the money and the power to do anything it sets its mind to. But it’s set its mind to video for several years now, and the company hasn’t had much to show outside of a few viral video clips and the LaVar Ball-starring “Ball in the Family,” which many industry sources consider to be the sole hit out of Facebook’s initial crop of funded shows.

If publishers are less willing to give Facebook a long leash after its decision to nuke the news feed, the video creators making shows for Watch will arrive at a similar decision at some point. Privately, some Watch partners are willing to acknowledge that making Watch shows is driven by Facebook’s willingness to pay for it — not because they’re certain Watch is the next big thing in video.

“Honestly, I’m very down on it,” said the first Facebook Watch partner. “I just don’t see people on Facebook caring about long-form shows, and I don’t know how many people anyone can convince to do that [on Facebook].”

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Local newspaper conglomerate Digital First Media is going to focus a lot more on email this year, with plans to launch e-newsletters for its markets beyond Denver, Colorado, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The push will help Digital First, which gets about a fifth of its traffic from Facebook, diversify away from the platform.

The shift away from Facebook will take on more urgency in 2018 now that Facebook is privileging users’ content over publisher pages’ content. Some are returning to old standbys like search and email; others are putting more resources into different platform products. For example, Stephanie Fried, evp of research analytics and audience development at Condé Nast, said some of the people the company now allocates to Facebook may wind up focusing on Instagram Stories.

In most cases, the goal is to build sustained engagement with publishers’ content, rather than chasing the flyby traffic that Facebook sometimes drove. “We need to focus a lot more on engagement and conversation,” said Dan Petty, digital director of audience development at Digital First Media. “The focus is much more on, ‘How do I get someone who’s coming two to three times a month to come four, five, six times in a given month?’”

Facebook is no longer the top source of referral traffic for publishers, but it’s been a top priority, particularly for ad-supported lifestyle publishers. In some cases, Facebook was responsible for 70, 80 or even 90 percent of their referral traffic. Facebook drove so much traffic and demanded so much attention that publishers had to have Facebook-specific teams.

“Social is the only place where we have brands focused on one channel,” said Fried. “That may change now.”

One reason Facebook required so much attention is because the platform’s priorities were always changing. And as they shifted, from shares to reactions to video to friends and family to live video and so on, audience teams have found themselves more focused on decoding Facebook than on building relationships with the audiences they amassed on it.

“We just learned the rules of the game and played it,” said one audience development executive, who asked not to be identified. “[Facebook] wasn’t great at driving loyalty. It just sucked up our time and gave us cheap traffic.”

Even though last week’s news has dominated conversations among digital publishers, many of them had begun shifting how their audience development teams were used well before the announcement.

The Economist, for example, grouped members of its audience, product and editorial teams together into so-called “tribes” last summer to improve site performance indicators like time spent and increase the publisher’s mobile app usage.

The Texas Tribune, in a bid for more membership revenue, now looks at membership growth as its primary metric rather than pageviews. It embedded its membership team, which pursues donations of $1,000 or less, inside the audience team back in June.

Even though Facebook’s signaled that publishers should rely on it less, publishers say they’re weeks away from knowing the true impact of Facebook’s announcement. But even if there’s near-term pain, many feel that Facebook distancing itself from publishers will be positive in the long run.

“The feeling, both public and private, is that people seem quite relieved,” said one audience head at an international publisher, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We were feeling hostage to Facebook for quite a while.”

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Amazon is on top of every marketer’s mind today. Google and Facebook combined still represent more than half of the U.S. advertising market, but Amazon’s ad business, while just 2.5 percent, is growing faster than both of them, according to speakers at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview in New York City.

Scott Galloway, founder of consultancy L2, predicts that digital ad revenue for Amazon Media Group, Amazon’s in-house team that sells ad products, will grow more than 40 percent year-over-year. That’s faster than Facebook, which is poised to grow about 25 percent; and Google, about 15 percent, Galloway said in his presentation on Jan. 17.

Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said Amazon has aggressively hired marketing talent from top universities over the past year or so. “One in eight kids in my class goes to work for Amazon,” Galloway said.

Another presenter, Geoff Ramsey, co-founder and chief innovation officer for eMarketer, also discussed Amazon’s growth. Ramsey said that although the duopoly accounts for more than 65 percent of U.S. ad spend, compared to 2.5 percent from Amazon, Amazon was the second-fastest growing advertising company last year, second only to Snapchat. Ramsey estimated that this year, Amazon’s advertising business will increase by 42 percent compared to a year prior. He didn’t give baselines.

“Facebook and Google are also under increasing pressure to clean up their acts,” said Ramsey. “Brands want to be in a safe environment. Trust is becoming a real issue [for Facebook and Google] in light of activities like fake news.”

Amazon’s consumer-obsessed culture has helped it win advertisers, Seth Dallaire, vp of global advertising sales and marketing for AMG, said during a fireside chat. And Amazon’s growth in advertising can also be attributed to advertisers gradually adopting e-commerce as a marketing discipline, he said.

“Two years ago, we oftentimes had to explain why we had an advertising business,” Dallaire said on stage. “But now, we go beyond that, and the tenor of the [client] conversation is more urgent, centered on how advertising on Amazon works. Holding companies are looking to build capacity in data interpretation and e-commerce marketing, while boutique agencies are very focused on search and programmatic display [on Amazon].”

One reason behind Amazon’s growing ad business is that with AMG, it requires clients to spend a minimum amount on some ad products. One product has a threshold of $100,000, for example. A media buyer, speaking anonymously, said AMG can provide managed service if an advertiser doesn’t know how to use the self-serve Amazon Advertising Platform yet plans to spend more than $35,000 on display advertising on Amazon. In that case, AMG would charge a percentage of the advertiser’s media spend as a managed service fee and a platform fee on top of that, this person said.

Dallaire said Amazon will continue investing in ad tech, search advertising and data intelligence products. One area where Amazon is not going to incorporate advertising is its voice assistant Alexa, although Ramsey said Amazon has about a 70 percent share of the voice market.

“Our advertisers are interested in Alexa and how their brands may be able to interact with their audience there, but we don’t plan to have ad products for Alexa,” said Dallaire.

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YouTube is tightening up requirements for content creators to quell advertiser concerns following the Logan Paul controversy. Under YouTube’s new rules, creators of channels need more than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time to earn money from ads, while videos on Google Preferred, which represent the top 5 percent of most-viewed channels, will be reviewed by humans, not algorithms, before they are monetized.

As the debate around brand safety matures, advertisers fall into one of two camps: those that think Google has taken positive steps to tackle the issue over the past 12 months and others who believe Google won’t exert more control over controversial content for fear of losing money. Advertisers publicly welcomed the latest overhaul but have lingering questions:

Will advertisers have to pay more for brand safety?
YouTube is rolling out a three-tier “suitability system” for advertisers to pick their level of comfort with the content they’re buying against. By taking these steps, Google may reduce YouTube’s reach for advertisers but ensure a safer environment for ads, said Norm Johnston, chief digital officer at Mindshare Worldwide. Chasing broad reach at any cost is what led to brand-safety problems in the first place, he said. But advertisers wonder if this approach means they will end up paying even more for brand safety.

Is AI the solution for better brand safety?
Google has said it will use artificial intelligence to sift through all the videos uploaded to channels on Google Preferred before they go through another check by employees. Google execs have told agencies that the algorithm has a 99.9 percent success rate in filtering out inappropriate content, said two separate agency bosses, speaking on condition of anonymity. As accurate as YouTube’s AI sounds, advertisers want to see some evidence of it working before they pump money back into Google Preferred. As Peter Wallace, U.K. commercial director at GumGum, said: “There will be questions about the scalability of Google’s proposals given the sheer volume of content being uploaded to YouTube.”

How big is the brand-safety risk for viral content?
Google has told advertisers that shielding ads from inappropriate videos is tough because so much of the content it hosts is time-sensitive. Advertisers want evidence of how big the issue is; they’ve asked YouTube to disclose the percentage of YouTube views that are time-sensitive versus those that build up over time.

Why won’t YouTube protect brands from inappropriate comments on videos?
Google decided not to turn off comments on kid-related and news videos despite pressure from advertisers to do so. The U.K. agency trade body the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising had proposed the move to the online giant last month when the two met behind closed doors. Google responded that such a move “wasn’t appropriate,” according to an executive who was there and spoke to Digiday on condition of anonymity.

How detailed will YouTube’s brand-safety reporting be?
YouTube has promised to provide regular transparency reports on brand safety. Advertisers and agencies wonder how granular those insights will be. Dan Larden, global strategic partnerships director at Infectious Media, said the agency is booking campaigns directly with content creators due to its brand-safety concerns on YouTube. “But this comes at a higher price and gives us less reach,” he said.

The post 5 questions advertisers have about YouTube’s brand-safety measures appeared first on Digiday.

Cloud storage isn’t sexy, but it’s often cost-efficient.

In September, IAC — the parent company of publishers including Dotdash, Investopedia and The Daily Beast — finished a 12-month project of moving the data storage and back-end tech infrastructure of its 50 digital media sites to the cloud. No longer having to maintain 400 servers across eight different physical locations will save IAC $10 million a year, the company said.

The toughest part of making this change is that cloud computing services use their own programming languages, said Maxx Lobo, vp of platform and cloud services at IAC Publishing. Once IAC decided to make this change, it had to train 425 developers and engineers to write and analyze code for Amazon Web Services, the vendor that IAC chose.

IAC wouldn’t say how much it pays Amazon for cloud services, but it acknowledged that its scale allowed it to negotiate a cheaper rate than the standard prices on Amazon’s website. For companies that store 100 terabytes of data with Amazon, its standard monthly rate is 2 cents per gigabyte.

Instead of migrating data to the cloud on a site-by-site basis, IAC migrated pieces of multiple sites simultaneously over the cloud, Lobo said. The first pieces of code it moved to the cloud were consumer-facing products like the design elements that make up its websites. Last to move to the cloud were its data lakes that host its raw user data.

Another challenge of pulling off a project this big is getting people to go along with it.

“The hardest part of large-scale cloud migrations isn’t technical,” said Ben Jackson, founder of publisher consulting firm For the Win. “It’s building consensus with stakeholders across dozens of sites, each with its own team, priorities and limitations.”

Getting executives to back the project enabled IAC to get 50 different sites to agree on it, Lobo said.

“Our CEO put a stake in the ground and said, ‘We are going to do it,’” Lobo said.

Other media companies have migrated their data to the cloud in recent years. Condé Nast did this back in 2014. Spotify and The New York Times also made these changes in the past two years.

While IAC Publishing — the IAC unit that includes Dotdash, Investopedia, The Daily Beast, Ask.com and Dictionary.com — is now fully on the cloud, its other business units are not. This includes its video platforms like Vimeo and CollegeHumor as well as Match Group, which is made up of dating networks like Tinder and OkCupid. A company spokesperson said IAC plans to eventually bring all of its properties to the cloud, but no timeline has been set.

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