Data-Labor-Technology

With 50% of the company’s revenue coming from events, Joseph said that events in their virtual form are still a significant part of the business strategy. 

Joseph said that not only was her team able to hang onto all of the more than 120 speakers and keep the more than 50 sessions on the schedule for GameBeat, but all of the sponsors stayed locked in as well. The sales team was even able to sign additional partnerships leading up to the summit. 

GameBeat Summit 2020 ended up bringing in more money from its virtual iteration than it did as its in-person version in 2019, she said. This was not only due to a higher profit margin, but also due to the fact that her team was able to keep sponsorships prices consistent with the summit’s original in-person format. 

The summit’s success “proved out that virtual events can be more effective and valuable than in-person events,” Joseph said. 

In the latest episode of The New Normal, Joseph talked about transitioning into virtual events and how lead generation and thought leadership are top of mind for the business-to-business publisher’s sponsors.

Serving marketers thought leadership opportunities 

Joseph said that 90% of VentureBeat’s sponsors have thought leadership as a top objective when spending with the site. So the company created its custom content studio VB Lab in order to provide options for marketers’ campaigns. Since launching the lab last year, she said brand partnerships have increased 400% year-over-year and event partnerships have increased by 150% year over year. 

VentureBeat’s audience is relatively small at 6 million monthly unique visitors, but Joseph said that marketers do not want to reach a massive audience through the site. “It’s a focus play and I think that is where the opportunity is,” she said. Targeted partnerships are what’s appealing to partners, she said.

The B2B space is all about lead generation 

The first phase of marketing strategies is “always going to be thought leadership, awareness and going to market, and the more effective you can be in that,” the more quality leads you can get, Joseph said. In person events have always been a major tool for business-to-business marketers to achieve lead generation and provide touch points with their audience for marketers. 

But, Joseph said, the fact of the matter is that in a virtual format there are more ways to track the impressions that sponsors made on the audience. In-person events have less tangible ways to estimate the number of people who saw a sponsor’s banner or the number of conversations that can be held by their booth. The virtual format gives sponsors the opportunity to hold more one-to-one meetings and have access to Slack channels to have more direct and engaged lines of communication.

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Gina’s three takeaways for the future of virtual events.

More effective and valuable than in-person events

Overhead costs associated with in-person events are considerable and include everything from the venue to the food and beverage to the AV. But Joseph said that while those costs don’t apply to virtual events, the time and labor investment putting them together is “actually a lot more work.” 

Even still, the event yielded enough interest that they decided to expand the summit into a series, with another one taking place this fall. Sponsorship levels will not decrease for the new event either, she said.

Adding humanization to a digital world

In order to get people involved and interacting with the content and during the networking opportunities “it comes down to personalization,” said Joseph, adding that all of the attendees have to feel like they’re connected with each other as well as with the brand hosting the event and the sponsors who are there. They shouldn’t feel like they are trapped behind the screen, she said.

Be “thoughtful about what their days look like,” she said. To do this, her team began integrating breaks fo participants to leave their computer as well as networking chats or one-on-one meetings. Joseph said they will also actively reach out to attendees to get real-time input during the event.

In talking to agency employees and executives about the statements and commitments, some optimistically say that agency leaders are sincerely committed to change and transparency when it comes to equality in the workspace.

“My agency is taking it seriously,” said a copywriter for an independent creative shop, adding that he’s encouraged as the shop is hiring and has told him “they want to see and talk to Black creative talent and are making it a big focal point.” 

That said, others worry that the public statements are just that: Statements made publicly as lip service rather than truly working to be inclusive by rooting out racism and micro-aggressions within their agencies with actual, and measured, policies and procedures. 

“There’s momentum,” said the copywriter. “But agencies also need to take care of their existing Black employees. And it seems like that’s less of a priority than the performative posting.” 

Posts that are perceived to do that are being called out. For example, on June 18, 72andSunny posted on Instagram that the agency was “committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, but we are not where we need to be.” The text accompanied a look at the agency’s make up with the percentage of white people working for the creative shop (67%) as well as the percentage of people of color (33%). The agency was called out in the comments section of the post for lumping people of color into one percentage pool rather than breaking out how many Black employees work for the shop. 

On June 25, 72andSunny again posted on Instagram again in response, this time specifically breaking out the percentage of Black employees (10%), Latinx (8%), Asian (7%), two or more races (7%), Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (1%)  and Native American (0%). “Last week we published our diversity data and were rightfully called out for not clearly showing Black representation (vs. all POC) despite stating that we need more Black leadership,” the June 25 Instagram caption read. “Thank you for calling us out. The problems that plague our industry are specific, and the data needs to be equally focused.”

One issue for some Black employees is that agency leaders are using the Black talent they do have as “the Black sounding board,” for posts or statements, said a Black strategist at an independent agency where he’s one of few Black employees. “Instead of asking for strategic insights they’re asking me, ‘Is this offensive?’” That’s one way that agencies don’t “foster Black talent” in a fair way, according to the strategist. 

Agency employees say their leaders have to continue to be held accountable not only for their diversity data but for their agency cultures for real change to happen inside agencies. “What happens if a Black employee is being discriminated against, but then logs on to Instagram to see their agency has posted about how they support Black people?” asked Becky Brinkerhoff, social content manager for the 3% Conference. “It’s gaslighting.” 

“There is an incredible vagueness when it comes to accountability,” said Mary Ergul, strategist at Madwell, of agencies on-going diversity and inclusion issues. “Is it the CEO’s fault? Is it the talent acquisition department’s fault? Is it the HR department’s fault? For an industry so eager to innovate and creative problem solve for clients, there’s an incredible ‘not my problem’ attitude when it comes to internal matters.” 

That’s why some agency staffers say that calling agencies out online is necessary — whether they’ve posted their values on their social channels or not — as the accountability is happening there. For example, last week Nathan Young, group strategy director at Periscope and president of 600 & Rising, called out the Havas agency Rosapark for its name (which associates the shop with civil rights leader Rosa Parks) and having all white leadership in a tweet. Doing so led to a conversation with Havas leadership, per Young’s tweets, and according to an AdAge story the agency is now considering changing its name. 

“Agencies often remind clients that brand purpose is something that you have to live and breathe, and that same lesson now applies at home,” said Mark Pytlik, CEO of Stink Studios. “It’s no longer enough to gesture at being a progressive company; the world is soon going to be divided into those who truly mean it and those who don’t.”

Last week the video-sharing app kicked off a campaign to demystify what makes the platform unique and valuable to brands in Europe and the U.S. The pitch makes several references to why advertisers should focus on “making TikToks, not ads” as a statement for what will play best on the platform. In doing so, TikTok is veering away from the well-trodden path of trumpeting the size of its audience to rather focus on why advertisers should want to reach its young cohort, who are dance and musci-crazed, but more sophisticated and varied than might be suspected — and how to do so. 

Here’s an explainer on how TikTok’s latest pitch is trying to convince advertisers to buy into its brand of advertising.  

WTF is TikTok’s new pitch to advertisers? 

To ram home the point that it’s not like other social networks, TikTok has distilled its pitch into five key points:

• TikTok’s most popular content isn’t just videos of people dancing. In fact, it has become a platform for social activism at a time when rivals like Facebook are accused of being against it. “Activism is welcome on the platform,” said Stuart Flint, head of Europe, global business solutions, at a TikTok event last week. “The Black Lives Matter hashtag is trending with more than 12.2 billion views.”
• Where the likes of Facebook and Google are accused of being quite restrictive in how advertisers measure ads, Flint says TikTok will be as flexible as possible. Partnerships are being developed with research firms Kantar, Nielsen and Milward Brown, while beta tests are running with third-party measurement firms.  “We’re definitely not going to mark our own homework,” said Flint. 
• With marketers on the hunt for more positive, uplifting content amid a relentless stream of hard-hitting news, TikTok is positioning itself as a safe haven for their ads. The app is mostly known for amusing music and dance videos, but it’s also building out a pipeline of educational content across Europe, the U.S. and Asia. At the same time, it’s pushing its integrations with ad verification firms Moat, Integral Ad Science, Doubleverify and Openslate as well as developing its own content moderation technology and brand safety teams across 20 markets. 
• The most popular campaigns on TikTok are the ones fueled by its users. Advertisers are being encouraged to think about how they leverage the app’s algorithm, which curates content specific to each user’s likes and subsequently increases the odds of them seeing campaigns they want to take part in. Last year, telecoms provider Congstar asked users to share videos of themselves dancing for the chance to win additional data on their phone contracts. Over three million user-generated videos were created, which have generated over a billion views, per TikTok.
• What happens on TikTok doesn’t stay there. Commercial execs are trying to position the app as the starting point for social media campaigns that then spread to other platforms. “Content on the app is regularly posted across all the major social channels reaching far beyond our own audience and into other media,” said Trevor Johnson. head of marketing for TikTok’s global business solutions division in Europe. “As a result, TikTok has unrivaled potential to weave brands into the fabric of wider culture and create trends.” 

What else do I need to know about TikTok’s new pitch?

Up to this point, TikTok has been something of a black box to marketers. It hasn’t had the local market infrastructure until recently to cozy up to advertisers and agencies. Now, TikTok is making its presence felt. As part of its new pitch, TikTok has streamlined all its advertising formats and services under the TikTok for Business banner, which also doubles as an online portal where marketers can go to understand the different ad formats on offer as well as get tips on how to manage campaigns. Media buyers see these changes as a turning point.

“What we’re seeing with the Newfronts presentation and the TikTok for Business resource is that they are focusing heavily on building out both their ad products and client service teams to make it easier for brands to engage with the platform,” said James Chanter, Senior Partner, m/SIX.

Are there any aspects of TikTok’s pitch that need fine-tuning? 

Brand lift outcome studies on the platform are limited as few advertisers have commissioned them. 

As one media planner explained on condition of anonymity: “While Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have established brand lift benchmarks across various verticals, the studies TikTok has touted across Europe seem to be impossibly high with one example showing increases of +96% awareness, +43% brand association and +39% preferences increase on a Hashtag Challenge. Though the tests are from Nielsen and Kantar, we feel that they don’t align with other platforms and would be unrealistic to achieve.”

TikTok is working to bolster brand lift reporting on the platform.

“We ran 24 campaigns with Kantar in the first quarter of the year,” said Flint. “We looked at Kantar’s global [benchmarks] and all 24 of the campaigns we tracked performed above those norms for awareness, consideration, favorability and intent.”

Six months in the making, Lighthouse follows efforts from Vox, The Washington Post and The New York Times who are reducing reliance on third-party data ahead of browsers and regulators cracking down.  

“Third-party data is a crutch, it allows you to say ‘we kind of understand that,’” said Ian Hocking, vp of digital at SCMP. “When you take it out it makes you focus on what is important to understand [about] how you can service clients. Publishers are well-positioned to capitalize on that if they are motivated in the right way.”

That motivation, for all publishers, is to understand more about its audience and turn that into useful information for its sales, editorial, commercial content and marketing teams. Last week was a busy one for marketing and identity issues, kicked off by Apple announcing IDFA is opt-in. That was followed by Facebook revealing that Facebook Audience Network publishers see 50% less revenue when no ID is present. Publisher’s first-party data strategies are only going to get more crucial as the lights go out on third-party cookies.

SCMP said Lighthouse gathers more than 1.2 million data points a day, which it collects through declared data from polls, surveys and quizzes, plus observed data from elements like onsite behavior, ad logs, CMS, content analytics, sentiment, readability and contextual data.

The publisher has a registration wall but wouldn’t say how many people have signed up. Increasing this pool plays a growing role, having logged-in users lets it create persistent identifiers, making attribution much more efficient. Beyond simple data like geography and demographics, the publisher can infer the value readers see in its content: A user looking in the parent section could be expecting triplets or already have a toddler, they could be feeling nervous or excited.

SCMP — which is mostly ad funded — has worked with customer data platform 1PlusX. With 1PlusX, SCMP syncs various IDs under one first-party user ID with all the known attributes about them and assigns an arbitrary name. It then applies the vendor’s audience expansion machine learning to create targetable audiences. 

“We see more [companies] making the move from a DMP to a CDP,” said Alexis Faulkner, head of FAST UK, Mindshare’s integrated performance business unit. “It means you stop relying on segment data and move to individual user profiles that can build audience understanding. It’s a move any company that has information from different sources on their customer may want to consider [in order to] unify their approach across the different data assets they have.”

But it’s a developing space and publishers have only had a couple of years to build out capabilities with CDPs. And it can get murky when data is aggregated, causing no shortage of confusion. SCMP has an internal cross-department team of 14 from data, tech, product commercial which built and now manage the platform. 

Over the last month, it’s tested Lighthouse with its core 25 pre-built segments to test the performance of adding data versus the cohort run of site average. Using Lighthouse improved click-through rates by 40%, the company said, it applied a business segment to an education campaign looking for MBA candidates saw an increase in CTR from 0.12% to 0.3% 

Beyond the 25 pre-built segments, Hocking hopes marketers will get under the hood and build bespoke audiences and apply new targeting criteria on the fly.

“When reporting campaigns back to clients, you typically send back CTR or viewability and not much else,” said Hocking. “There’s little differentiation between you and a third party vendor in the programmatic marketplace.”

Hocking notes this won’t generate millions of dollars in revenue immediately — SCMP has signed three big partnerships, although he wouldn’t say with whom, based on the ability to offer these insights — but instead it signifies the importance of building deeper, ongoing relationships with publishers to understand incremental audiences.

“Publishers haven’t so far had much response to the decline in third-party data,” said Hocking. “They haven’t had a unique position, but the data is value-adding and worth the time investigating.”