Less BS, More Facts, Some Opinions
AdExchanger |
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Programmatic Pushback The news company Quartz released a memo on Thursday laying out an anti-programmatic stance on advertising. “In a bygone era, advertisers wished to align with and support what they perceived as quality content,” writes Quartz publisher Jay Lauf. “That idea has eroded… Continue reading »
Every year, a number of things die in media and marketing. This year, we thought we’d switch up the year-end prediction tradition, and ask people in those industries to tell us what they think will kick the bucket in the coming year. We granted sources anonymity so they could speak freely. Here are their responses.
Referral traffic: “In the short term, Facebook will be a worse partner before they’re a better partner. They’re confused right now. They had a shitty year. When you’re confused and scared, you go back to your comfort zone, and that’s peer to peer. I think they’re going to go, ‘This news thing is harder than it looks.’ But fundamentally, Facebook is a way less interesting place without premium content.” — Digital publisher
The 30-second digital video ad: “We’ll see ad length decrease to meet the demands of short-form video viewers. Six- to 15-second ads will dominate by the end of 2018.” — Video platform vendor
Facebook Watch: “Facebook will abandon the Watch strategy and reinvent a digital product yet again. They’ve literally abandoned every single video strategy in the past three years. None of the Watch shows are making money. People asked to produce content for Watch are not going to see enough ROI for it, and this mid-roll experiment is going to be a massive failure because users aren’t going to engage with mid-roll advertising. Getting people to consume video is the easy part. Getting people to stick around when you’re jamming in a mid-roll ad isn’t.” — Digital publishing exec
Fake influencers: “Bullshit poseurs who have built up their followers by buying them and baiting them, and then rip off the brands who pay them for influencer campaigns that don’t generate any results. The brands are getting too smart for this shit.” — Influencer marketer
BuzzFeed’s commitment to news: “BuzzFeed will divest one of its business to a legacy media company, most likely BuzzFeed News. Running a news organization is expensive and they have always struggled with monetizing it versus their lighter content, and the recent layoffs have refocused the company into building fast, efficient businesses like Tasty. BuzzFeed News would be a bounty to a legacy organization looking to jump-start their journalistic footprint against younger audiences. The most likely buyer will be NBCU because of the existing relationships, but what about the soon-to-be-merged Disney/Fox or even the eventually merged AT&T?” — Publishing sales exec
The independent media company: “That can’t last. Everyone will figure out a way to partner up with someone to get through the tough times, or bigger companies will snap them them up. Maybe NowThis picks up Mic. All these digital media companies raised so much money, they have amazing cost structures. It’s a downside to all the VCs and people who get laid off, but it’s necessary for the vitality of the space.” — Digital media operator
The cold war between Facebook and Google: “In the way Facebook came after YouTube, YouTube will hit back, along with Google, with things like better products, better monetization for publishers. Publishers had 45 percent referral traffic from Facebook and 34 percent from Google, and now that’s reversed. Google is the friend to publishers, and Google is going to keep on it and hit back. Zuck is in for a bit of a fight.” — Platform partnerships exec
AdExchanger |
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Erik Requidan, vice president of programmatic strategy at Intermarkets. In September, I wrote a column that introduced the idea of demand-path optimization, the process by which publishers optimize the path from supply-side platforms (SSPs),… Continue reading »
Papa John’s founder and chief executive officer John Schnatter announced that he will step down from his role in January 2018.
The news comes two months after openly criticizing NFL players for protests against police brutality during the national anthem. The pizza chain, an NFL sponsor and advertiser, had seen its quarterly revenues fall since the football season started, with “significant decline” in TV ratings being blamed for the losses.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Schnatter’s post as chairman (he is also the largest shareholder of the chain) remains intact. Steve Ritchie, the brand’s chief operating officer, will replace Schnatter in the top role. Ritchie said there is no word on whether Schnatter will remain the brand’s spokesperson.
Papa John’s recently underwent a creative review that saw the likes of Grey, BBDO New York, and Laundry Service competing for the business. Chief marketing officer Brandon Rhoten announced the winner of the pitch, Laundry Service via Twitter:
Excited to announce we have chosen @247LS as @PapaJohns Creative AOR. Watch your 6, cheap pizza guys. 😉
— Brandon Rhoten (@brhoten) October 31, 2017
Ritchie, who began his career at Papa John’s making pizzas and answering customer phone calls 21 years ago, said that the brand looks to compete with Domino’s, as well as other fast food brands by making it easier for customers to order a pizza from multiple platforms. The brand currently allows customers to order from Facebook and Apple TV.
Christmas is not an official holiday in Japan, nor a widely observed religious holiday, but it is celebrated nonetheless in its own unique way. Here’s some data that highlights Christmas in Japan.
Christmas is not an official holiday in Japan, nor a widely observed religious holiday, but it is celebrated nonetheless in its own unique way. Here’s some data that highlights Christmas in Japan.
Digiday Research surveys executive-level decision-makers who are in the know about critical issues facing the digital media industry. Here are some of our favorite insights from the past year. Check out Digiday+ for the latest research, exclusive content and member events.
Only 14 percent of agency execs believe brands are responsible for ad misplacement
Consumers are quick to judge, tweeting their displeasure the instant they find something they disagree with. But consumers have little to no idea how advertising works, believing, for instance, that every brand’s advertisement on Breitbart is a ringing endorsement of the so-called alt-right. Brands, however, often have little knowledge of or influence over where their ads end up. In this Digiday report, only 14 percent of agency executives believed the brand is responsible for the location of their ad placements. Instead of brands, agency respondents thought that either the brand’s agency (41 percent) or the tech vendor placing the ad (40 percent) should take the fall for inappropriate placement of ads.
90 percent of media execs think Amazon can threaten the duopoly
The Facebook-Google duopoly remains strong, but the days of the duopoly earning 99 percent of all new digital ad spending could be short-lived. With an ad business that now surpasses $1 billion, nine out of 10 media execs think Amazon has the potential to shift the power in the digital advertising world. Amazon has worked tirelessly to invest in the ad tech infrastructure to compete on a global stage. Amazon’s server-to-server wrapper is the most popular, and its header bidding solution is No. 3 among the Header Bidding Index Top 100 sites. Amazon also launched an application programming interface for Amazon Marketing Services, which will provide better data tools for its more nascent ad services.
72 percent of brands conduct most of their marketing in-house
2017 has been a trying year for agencies. Organic growth was virtually nonexistent for major agency groups Publicis and Omnicom. Consumer packaged goods companies slashing their marketing spend hurt WPP. Brands are finding that sometimes it’s easier and often faster to go it alone, with 72 percent of brands conducting over 50 percent of their marketing efforts in-house. As one anonymous executive put it: “Agencies and vendors are battling against each other, and I don’t know whose fault it is. I just want to get the work done. For instance, when we integrated a new tool recently, our agencies said that our vendors’ coding was wrong, while our vendors said that our agencies made the mistake. It took ages for us to finish the integration.”
Almost half of all publishers are deploying chatbots
The growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning has spurred publishers and marketers to create chatbots. The vast majority of them — 88 percent — work within Facebook Messenger, where their primary function is to provide information services and customer support. Digiday’s research found that publishers and marketers alike are eager for chatbots to help them interact with consumers at scale, but they acknowledge chatbots’ limitations. Chatbots aren’t technically sophisticated enough to resolve the bulk of customer interactions, with 91 percent of marketers saying chatbots conduct less than 20 percent of consumer interactions and pass the conversations off to human support when things go off-script.
51 percent of marketers think private marketplaces’ biggest issue is lack of inventory
Private marketplaces appeal to publishers fatigued by ad fraud and nontransparent exchanges because they allow publishers to create special pools of premium inventory for select advertisers to buy from. Publishers can oversee the bidding process for their inventory and are less likely to be affected by ad fraud. Marketers are happy to play along because it secures brand-safe environments for their ad placements. Unfortunately, PMPs are difficult to scale because they’re cobbled together on a publisher-by-publisher basis. More than half of the respondents to Digiday’s survey said their biggest complaint with PMPs is insufficient inventory, with just 16 percent of respondents saying they purchased more than 40 percent of their inventory from PMPs. After brands apply their targeting data to the pool of data and impressions publishers make available, they often find just a handful of users worth advertising to.
Digiday Research surveys executive-level decision-makers who are in the know about critical issues facing the digital media industry. Here are some of our favorite insights from the past year. Check out Digiday+ for the latest research, exclusive content and member events.
Only 14 percent of agency execs believe brands are responsible for ad misplacement
Consumers are quick to judge, tweeting their displeasure the instant they find something they disagree with. But consumers have little to no idea how advertising works, believing, for instance, that every brand’s advertisement on Breitbart is a ringing endorsement of the so-called alt-right. Brands, however, often have little knowledge of or influence over where their ads end up. In this Digiday report, only 14 percent of agency executives believed the brand is responsible for the location of their ad placements. Instead of brands, agency respondents thought that either the brand’s agency (41 percent) or the tech vendor placing the ad (40 percent) should take the fall for inappropriate placement of ads.
90 percent of media execs think Amazon can threaten the duopoly
The Facebook-Google duopoly remains strong, but the days of the duopoly earning 99 percent of all new digital ad spending could be short-lived. With an ad business that now surpasses $1 billion, nine out of 10 media execs think Amazon has the potential to shift the power in the digital advertising world. Amazon has worked tirelessly to invest in the ad tech infrastructure to compete on a global stage. Amazon’s server-to-server wrapper is the most popular, and its header bidding solution is No. 3 among the Header Bidding Index Top 100 sites. Amazon also launched an application programming interface for Amazon Marketing Services, which will provide better data tools for its more nascent ad services.
72 percent of brands conduct most of their marketing in-house
2017 has been a trying year for agencies. Organic growth was virtually nonexistent for major agency groups Publicis and Omnicom. Consumer packaged goods companies slashing their marketing spend hurt WPP. Brands are finding that sometimes it’s easier and often faster to go it alone, with 72 percent of brands conducting over 50 percent of their marketing efforts in-house. As one anonymous executive put it: “Agencies and vendors are battling against each other, and I don’t know whose fault it is. I just want to get the work done. For instance, when we integrated a new tool recently, our agencies said that our vendors’ coding was wrong, while our vendors said that our agencies made the mistake. It took ages for us to finish the integration.”
Almost half of all publishers are deploying chatbots
The growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning has spurred publishers and marketers to create chatbots. The vast majority of them — 88 percent — work within Facebook Messenger, where their primary function is to provide information services and customer support. Digiday’s research found that publishers and marketers alike are eager for chatbots to help them interact with consumers at scale, but they acknowledge chatbots’ limitations. Chatbots aren’t technically sophisticated enough to resolve the bulk of customer interactions, with 91 percent of marketers saying chatbots conduct less than 20 percent of consumer interactions and pass the conversations off to human support when things go off-script.
51 percent of marketers think private marketplaces’ biggest issue is lack of inventory
Private marketplaces appeal to publishers fatigued by ad fraud and nontransparent exchanges because they allow publishers to create special pools of premium inventory for select advertisers to buy from. Publishers can oversee the bidding process for their inventory and are less likely to be affected by ad fraud. Marketers are happy to play along because it secures brand-safe environments for their ad placements. Unfortunately, PMPs are difficult to scale because they’re cobbled together on a publisher-by-publisher basis. More than half of the respondents to Digiday’s survey said their biggest complaint with PMPs is insufficient inventory, with just 16 percent of respondents saying they purchased more than 40 percent of their inventory from PMPs. After brands apply their targeting data to the pool of data and impressions publishers make available, they often find just a handful of users worth advertising to.
San Francisco startup The Hustle started out as a newsletter built to promote Hustle Con, a free event for startup founders and young people on the make. In the year ahead, it plans try to turn itself into a service-oriented media brand, not just with more ticketed events but a software and product recommendation service.
“We get classified as a media company a lot, but I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate,” Hustle co-founder Sam Parr said. “I think we’re a membership company.”
The fuel for The Hustle’s growing ambitions is its newsletter, which now has more than 500,000 subscribers, up from 100,000 subscribers 18 months ago, and an open rate north of 40 percent, nearly twice the 22 percent benchmark for a media or publisher’s newsletter, according to MailChimp.
Thirty percent of The Hustle’s newsletter subscriber base comes from a referral program like theSkimm’s. Initially, readers who referred contacts to The Hustle got swag like T-shirts. Today, if they refer 10 people, they can become one of the 3,000 Hustle Ambassadors, which gets them access to a private Facebook group for other ambassadors and The Hustle’s seed investors, who include author Tim Ferriss and Bleacher Report co-founder Dave Nemetz.
Those ambassadors, along with The Hustle’s most engaged readers, have inspired some of its new ventures. For example, the company noticed that people in the Facebook group regularly talked about which products or services were best for a specific task or job at work.
Based on that, Parr is building a product-recommendation service for business software that’s slated to launch in early 2018.
Audience feedback has also informed The Hustle’s events business. The site’s female audience responded positively to seeing other women as presenters at Pizza & 40s, an initially male-dominated lunch-and-learn event, so The Hustle — whose audience is now 40 percent female, according to Parr — launched a new event series, 2X, centered around female founders and executives telling their stories in a TED-esque 10-minute format. Two installments, held in San Francisco and Los Angeles, sold over 1,400 tickets that cost between $15 and $35, a big enough success that The Hustle plans to expand the series to 10 cities in 2018, including Chicago, New York and Austin, Texas. Until now, The Hustle has only staged one event outside California.
While growth and brand-building will remain important for The Hustle next year, Parr said his top priority will be ensuring The Hustle’s readers stay engaged with the newsletter. The newsletter is designed to be self-contained, so it regularly surveys readers to get their feedback. The Hustle also taps into Facebook audience data and third-party data sources to gather demographic data that newsletters do not readily offer up to publishers.
“There’s been a re-emergence of email,” said Jed Williams, the chief innovation officer of Local Media Association. “As you look at newsletters, the most important thing is how engaged that list is.”
San Francisco startup The Hustle started out as a newsletter built to promote Hustle Con, a free event for startup founders and young people on the make. In the year ahead, it plans try to turn itself into a service-oriented media brand, not just with more ticketed events but a software and product recommendation service.
“We get classified as a media company a lot, but I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate,” Hustle co-founder Sam Parr said. “I think we’re a membership company.”
The fuel for The Hustle’s growing ambitions is its newsletter, which now has more than 500,000 subscribers, up from 100,000 subscribers 18 months ago, and an open rate north of 40 percent, nearly twice the 22 percent benchmark for a media or publisher’s newsletter, according to MailChimp.
Thirty percent of The Hustle’s newsletter subscriber base comes from a referral program like theSkimm’s. Initially, readers who referred contacts to The Hustle got swag like T-shirts. Today, if they refer 10 people, they can become one of the 3,000 Hustle Ambassadors, which gets them access to a private Facebook group for other ambassadors and The Hustle’s seed investors, who include author Tim Ferriss and Bleacher Report co-founder Dave Nemetz.
Those ambassadors, along with The Hustle’s most engaged readers, have inspired some of its new ventures. For example, the company noticed that people in the Facebook group regularly talked about which products or services were best for a specific task or job at work.
Based on that, Parr is building a product-recommendation service for business software that’s slated to launch in early 2018.
Audience feedback has also informed The Hustle’s events business. The site’s female audience responded positively to seeing other women as presenters at Pizza & 40s, an initially male-dominated lunch-and-learn event, so The Hustle — whose audience is now 40 percent female, according to Parr — launched a new event series, 2X, centered around female founders and executives telling their stories in a TED-esque 10-minute format. Two installments, held in San Francisco and Los Angeles, sold over 1,400 tickets that cost between $15 and $35, a big enough success that The Hustle plans to expand the series to 10 cities in 2018, including Chicago, New York and Austin, Texas. Until now, The Hustle has only staged one event outside California.
While growth and brand-building will remain important for The Hustle next year, Parr said his top priority will be ensuring The Hustle’s readers stay engaged with the newsletter. The newsletter is designed to be self-contained, so it regularly surveys readers to get their feedback. The Hustle also taps into Facebook audience data and third-party data sources to gather demographic data that newsletters do not readily offer up to publishers.
“There’s been a re-emergence of email,” said Jed Williams, the chief innovation officer of Local Media Association. “As you look at newsletters, the most important thing is how engaged that list is.”