Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

Brian Krzanich sold shares and exercised stock options worth $39 million while Intel was handling concerns about security flaws in its chips, a highly unusual move that risked attracting regulatory scrutiny, according to lawyers and analysts.

Search engine Baidu is the most-recent company to come under the spotlight, joining Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial and Tencent Holdings, following claims by a provincial consumer group that Baidu illegally obtained users’ personal information.

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In recent years, enterprise giants like Salesforce, Oracle, IBM and Adobe monopolized M&A activity as each marketing cloud raced to buy their way into ad tech. That tide has turned. These days, strategic acquisitions are more about expanding access to content, audiences and new means of distribution. Just look to media company team-ups like Disney-21st… Continue reading »

The post Who Are This Year’s Strategic Acquirers In Media And Marketing? appeared first on AdExchanger.

by Nick Eber, VP, Consumer, Imre

“Alexa, how do I turn this on?”

Alexa may be getting smarter everyday, but are consumers keeping up? As the world becomes more connected through smart devices and manufacturers hurry to push through the latest technology, many homeowners are overwhelmed by all the choices. Consumers are wondering if they really need smart appliances, let alone thermostats. Meanwhile, the marketing is becoming increasingly disconnected from the audience, stalling wider adoption.

A simple Google search of “Alexa” sheds light on some of the problems. (And yes, I recognize the irony.)

While spending on homes in many categories like appliances and flooring is increasing, smart home purchases have not been prioritized. The money and intrigue is there, but how do you get homeowners to actually buy the products?

Here are five strategies to consider when developing a marketing plan for smart home products of any size and function.

Show a Smart Life Reality

Start by appealing to fundamental drivers for purchase in this category – convenience, security, aesthetics, total cost, and life events, like moving into a new home, then show how a realistic tech future fits into the consumer’s lifestyle.

Keep It Simple

The product should to be easy to use – but if it’s not, strong education content can reassure consumers that they’ll be able to operate this new device. Develop plenty of resources, including short videos, that show how to install and use the product properly, and make them widely available and easy to locate. And don’t stop online. There’s a reason why Lowe’s created a smart home store-within-a-store concept that it ultimately expanded to 70 stores. Homeowners need to see it and touch it to believe it.

Help Make the Best Choice

Our client Kwikset found that confusion is one of the top barriers to purchasing smart locks. To help people choose the right smart lock, we developed lifestyle videos and interactive decision-tree content targeted to different audience segments based on behaviors, attitudes and interests.

This video, distributed on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, introduced the smart lock to audiences most likely to purchase it and showed how the product could benefit people with a variety of lifestyles. We then educated those segmented audiences about the different smart locks through a video series that paired product features with lifestyle benefits and quickly followed up with a retargeted ad that drove to the landing page.

Leverage Brand Recognition and Platform Integration

Look to the mobile space, where Apple, Samsung and Google are some of the world’s most trusted brands – ones that also control most of your smart home devices. Mintel’s Mobile Phones – US, June 2017 report found that 85% of adults owned a smartphone operating on either iOS or Android. And while only 11% of smartphone owners currently use their smartphone to control the lighting or climate of their home, 52% would like to do so.

Smaller brands should integrate with systems like Apple HomeKit, which has more familiarity, to increase awareness and purchase. Don’t get lost in the empty promise of having your own app if it’s not necessary. Partnering with other brands and synching services can make the user experience friendlier.

Do It for Them

It’s true: most smart home devices require limited DIY skills. But if they’re spending a premium, homeowners, a majority of whom are not Millennials or Boomers that might have technology trepidation, want to make sure they’re getting the most out of their products – piece of mind. This requires an investment in service and accessibility to real experts.

There’s a lot you can offer in terms of digital services – such as creating custom chatbots to serve up on-demand videos or simply making customer service a priority on your social channels. But there is also currently a market need for more services like Enjoy that provide delivery and set-up at no additional cost. Sonos has branded theirs up&running™, which speaks to both the demand for immediacy and support.

It’s been said that business has only two functions: marketing and innovation. In this case, marketing will drive innovation in the home … where there is plenty of room to grow.

“Alexa, you’re in control now.”

The post Remodeling your smart home marketing appeared first on Digiday.

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Appy New Year Since Apple launched the iOS App Store in 2008, developers have made more than $86 billion on the platform. Of that, $26.5 billion was made last year, a 30% jump over 2016, according to an Apple news release. The company touts… Continue reading »

The post Apple’s App Store Hot Streak; Facebook’s TV Fixation appeared first on AdExchanger.

Data management platforms play an increasingly important role in helping digital marketers find high-value audiences, largely based on third-party data collection without much transparency. But with the General Data Protection Regulation being enforced in May, DMPs may face a tough battle to obtain third-party data.

DMPs mainly process third-party data through cookies for lookalike targeting, and under the existing laws, consent isn’t necessarily required to use cookies. But the GDPR will change that, as it demands that personal data — including data collected through cookies — can only be used with explicit consent from individuals. That means DMPs will face more legal obligations under the GDPR, and since the GDPR will make it harder for companies to obtain third-party data, DMPs may have to rely more on first-party and second-party data than third-party data, according to ad tech executives and legal counsels.

“There is much more legal work ahead for DMPs, especially between them and their data providers,” said Maciej Zawadzinski, CEO of Poland-headquartered ad tech firm Clearcode. “Third-party data will become less accessible because of GDPR, which is likely to cause DMPs to focus more on first-party and second-party data. But it doesn’t mean that third-party data will become irrelevant, or DMPs will stop relying on it.”

Becky Burr, chief privacy officer for Neustar, believes that GDPR will have a significant impact on DMPs and ad tech companies in general. This is because ad tech companies are known to process data based on inferred consent through opt-out mechanisms, but GDPR makes reliance on individuals’ consent as the lawful basis for processing data, according to Burr. “In addition, enhanced data subject rights in the form of access, correction, erasure, and portability will require more robust consumer-facing portals and may create additional processing overhead [for DMPs] in some situations,” said Burr.

Douglas McPherson, chief legal officer for OpenX, thinks that whether — and how — the GDPR will affect DMP operations boils down to how a company defines its role under the regulation: Is it a “data controller” that “determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data?” Is it a “data processor” that “processes personal data on behalf of the controller?” Or is it a “data subprocessor” that a data processor engages to conduct further processing in addition to what the data processor is doing? The role determines how and why a company collects personal data, said McPherson. For instance, the data processor can’t engage the subprocessor without informing the data controller.

McPherson believes that while DMPs typically act like data processors, they will also be viewed under the GDPR as data controllers in some cases, like when they collect data from credit card companies, look for users’ purchase patterns, create user profiles and then create data products to sell, for instance. And as data controllers, DMPs will have lots of legal responsibilities under the GDPR, like maintaining records of data-processing activities, as well as implementing an internal policy on handling data and data security.

“Some of those things are required by GDPR’s predecessor as well, but few companies took the regulation seriously because there were no significant financial penalties,” said McPherson. “But GDPR will change that. If there’s a data breach, for example, data controllers will get a fine of €20 million [$24 million] or 4 percent of their global revenue.”

In addition to the role of DMPs under the GDPR, the definition of user consent also determines the regulation’s impact on DMPs. “For now, it’s unclear what type of consent is adequate for GDPR purposes — we are told that there will be further guidance on consent over the upcoming months,” said McPherson. “If GDPR requires more robust consent than the existing laws, DMPs may need to ask brands and publishers they work with to obtain explicit consent from individuals, or DMPs can look for first-party data or other data sources.”

While Burr thinks that changes in the treatment of consent under the GDPR are “an important derogation” for DMPs that usually aggregate and analyze pseudonymised website data and log data on publisher, retailer, and advertiser websites. “Because IP address may be personal data under EU data protection law, Neustar stores them for 10 days or less, keeping only truncated or hashed IP addresses for our products and services,” said Burr.

Tiffany Morris, general counsel and vp of global privacy for Lotame that has a DMP business, also believes consent can work smoothly in a first-party relationship, but it is hard to track consent in a third-party relationship, where data may flow into different parties’ hands. “We are talking to our data providers to understand how they interpret GDPR, how they obtain consent and if they follow the IAB consent mechanism,” said Morris.

DMPs like Neustar and Lotame already started adding GDPR-specific language to vendor contracts with their data providers. But Morris thinks the real challenge for DMPs is how they interact with data providers technically. “In many cases, the DMP is acting solely as the processor who is processing first-party data at the direction of the controller or the client. In some instances, however, a DMP may act as a data controller,” said Morris. “GDPR makes it clear that both the data controller and the data processor are responsible for personal data. But we don’t have technical means to validate how [our data providers] obtain consent.”

Despite these challenges, ad tech executives and legal counsels interviewed for this story believe the GDPR creates opportunities for quality data and better data management. They also think the regulation will lead to consolidation in the ad tech space, as media buyers feel pressure to cut vendors that are not GDPR-compliant.

“There’s lots of negativity about GDPR in press, but it’s a positive thing to me,” said Nick McCarthy, svp of data solutions for agency Merkle’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “There’s lots of work to do, but it pushes people to be responsible.”

The post GDPR is coming, and data management platforms are in the crosshairs appeared first on Digiday.

To investigate the level of domain spoofing occurring against its news brands, News UK conducted a programmatic blackout test for two hours in December. The result: 2.9 million bids per hour were made on fake inventory purporting to be News UK’s The Sun and The Times of London newspaper brands.

From the results, the publisher estimates that marketers are wasting £700,000 ($950,000) on domain-spoofed inventory per month. A total of 650,000 ad requests were made each hour, according to the publisher.

The publisher conducted the test between 3a.m. and 5 a.m. on Dec. 4, deliberately choosing a time that would be less disruptive to site visitors and wouldn’t hamper revenues or ongoing campaigns. The publisher shut down all programmatic advertising on its sites, including all supply-side platforms, its header bidding wrapper and all networks. During this time, it was impossible to buy programmatic inventory on The Sun, the Times or News UK’s fantasy football brand Dream Team. That made it easy to isolate inventory that still appeared to be offered on its sites as fraudulent.

The publisher wouldn’t name the SSPs, but The Sun’s partners include Google AdX, Rubicon Project, AppNexus, Index Exchange, PubMatic and Amazon’s A9, according to its ads.txt file. The Times’ ads.txt file lists Google AdX, Rubicon Project, AppNexus, Index Exchange, PubMatic, Kargo.com, OpenX and Sovrn. For the test, News UK chose to focus on inventory bought via its six biggest SSP suppliers.

The 2.9 million impressions were found to be across two specific SSPs, though one of those two had significantly higher fraudulent inventory within it, according to Ben Walmsley, digital commercial director for News UK, though he wouldn’t specify their names. The other partner showed some fraudulent activity, although mainly through three network vendors selling inventory that appeared to be from News UK titles. Two of the SSPs were totally clean, and the remaining two haven’t yet provided their data logs to the News UK team for that two-hour window, according to the publisher.

Most of the fraudulent inventory discovered was display, although there was also evidence of spoofed video inventory. The Times is a subscriptions title and doesn’t sell any pre-roll ads, let alone programmatically, so any video inventory purporting to be from the Times is fraudulent. The Financial Times also saw this occur across its own video inventory when it conducted its own domain-spoofing investigation.

“We wanted to expose where brands are being tricked into thinking they’re buying quality inventory, bidding on what they think is a premium site when it isn’t,” Walmsley said.

News UK has been in close contact with the SSPs, all of which have been cooperative and responsive, according to Walmsley. No deadline for removing the fraudulent inventory has been set for the SSP found to be carrying the most on its platform. Walmsley stressed the publisher wants to remain on good terms with its tech vendors and that it’s only by cultivating strong relationships with vendors, brand partners and agencies that fraudsters can be rooted out. “We’re all victims in one way or another,” he said. “If the SSPs hadn’t taken it seriously, then it might have been different, but they were very keen to address it.”

The publisher plans to run additional regular blackout tests to check for progress but hasn’t yet decided on when. “We believe the responsibility for cleaning up the supply chain lies with publishers, brands, agencies, industry bodies and technology intermediaries,” said Walmsley. “Working together, improving communication between all of these groups and taking steps such as this to root out criminality will create a better digital marketplace for advertisers, who should be confident that they are getting the advertising inventory that they are paying for.”

The post News UK finds high levels of domain spoofing to the tune of $1 million a month in lost revenue appeared first on Digiday.

Cars aren’t the only thing Volkswagen wants to automate. Artificial intelligence is managing the brand’s media buys in Germany and proving to be more effective than its media agency.

Whenever Volkswagen uses the recommendations from Blackwood Seven, a Danish media agency that uses AI and predictive analytics to forecast ad spend decisions, it sells more cars than it would have if it had gone with its media agency’s recommendation, according to Lutz Kothe, the head of marketing and PR for Volkswagen’s passenger cars. Kothe said his team uses Blackwood Seven’s algorithm to buy the right ads based on sales.

Defining a role for the AI platform, however, has taken Volkswagen a while. Two years ago, the advertiser ditched MediaCom and gave its digital business in Germany to Blackwood Seven. At the time, Kothe wasn’t sure the algorithm would be able to deliver better media recommendations than its agency, but the signs were promising just months into the deal, according to Kothe. Between September and December 2016, Volkswagen used the algorithm’s media recommendations for a campaign for its up! model, which led to a 14 percent rise in orders from Volkswagen’s dealerships versus what those orders would’ve been had the campaign run solely on its agency’s recommendations. In some instances, the difference between the algorithm’s and its agency’s car orders has been as high as 20 percent, revealed Kothe.

Since those early campaigns, Volkswagen has applied the algorithm to all its media strategies in Germany. Every car model there from the advertiser has a different strategy, predicting which media investments will give the best returns for its marketers. Those forecasts are based on Volkswagen’s transactional data — or incoming orders — as well as market data such as fuel price, competitor prices and overall car registrations from sources such as Nielsen. Like other AI platforms, the more data fed into the algorithm, the smarter Blackwood Seven’s recommendations become.

Volkswagen’s marketing team bought those recommendations for display, search and social directly from the platform in 2017. By circumventing the agency and going direct to the media owner, the car manufacturer avoided any hidden rebate costs it might have incurred from buying via an agency. In 2018, however, Volkswagen will only use the AI platform to plan its campaigns, not buy them — a move that comes nearly a year after the advertiser appointed PHD as its global media agency.

Kothe would not comment on the prospect of Volkswagen eventually replacing all its agencies with AI platforms, instead stressing how important AI could be to finding marginal gains in media.

What separates Blackwood Seven from Volkswagen’s agencies, Kothe said, is the AI platform’s capacity to process reams of data. Volkswagen’s marketers pull data from more than 1,400 touch points, yet they relied on the “personal interpretations coming from the agency,” which wasn’t based wholly on the data, Kothe said. The biggest advantage the algorithm gives Volkswagen is the ability to better predict what the brand’s media investments will do, he added. The more precise the recommendations become, the more “we can steer our media activity into the best areas,” he concluded.

This means the brand can invest less for some campaigns and still see a sales uplift, Kothe said. While he would not reveal details on those campaigns, he noted how radio, which had been regarded as somewhat of a stale media for Volkswagen in Germany, has been used more frequently over other media to launch new cars, per the algorithm’s forecasts.

But trusting a machine hasn’t been easy. After two years of working with Blackwood Seven and another year before that of early discussions, Volkswagen’s German team is only now talking to other markets about the algorithm’s performance. While hype continues to build around AI replacing media agencies, the reality is it won’t happen anytime soon. Blackwood Seven’s failed launch in the U.K. is a testament to that; the startup closed its office there last month after just a year, despite offering to give marketers more control of their media spend at the height of the transparency crisis.

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