Data-Labor-Technology

Digital platforms are behind the growing trend in the TV industry to reduce commercial time.

Fox Networks Group said it wants to cut advertising on its networks to two minutes per hour by 2020. NBCUniversal said it plans to reduce the number of ads in its commercial pods by 20 percent and the total ad time by 10 percent on more than 50 original prime-time programs across its networks. Turner’s TruTV has already been reducing ad loads on its original programs and plans to expand the offering over the next three years, and its sister networks TBS and TNT will soon reduce ad loads by as much as 50 percent, according to Turner.

These moves are the exception right now, as overall TV commercial loads overall are still increasing. According to an analysis by Pivotal Research’s Brian Wieser, national ad loads rose 3.9 percent year over year in January to 11 minutes per hour.

“We’ve been stuffing content with ads for way too long, and across the landscape, you can see the negative impact it’s had,” said Chris Linn, president of TruTV. “For too long, everyone has been leaning into what has worked in the past, but that’s not what is going to work moving forward. The bottom falls out quickly if you don’t meet the changing needs of your audience.”

The reductions in ad loads come as viewing shifts to digital and video-on-demand platforms. And with the duopoly battling brand-safety issues, TV networks have an opportunity to capture ad dollars from Google and Facebook.

A TV experience that’s closer to digital
TV viewing is increasingly happening on connected TVs — 75 percent of NBCUniversal’s digital ad impressions are delivered that way — where the ad load is lower, said Mark Marshall, evp of entertainment ad sales for NBCUniversal.

The average episode of NBC’s “The Voice” is watched for 35 minutes on live, linear TV. That jumps to 43 minutes on connected TV devices and 48 minutes on digital video recorders. With video on demand, time spent is at an average 51 minutes, he said.

“It’s the same show, it’s the same piece of glass, so why are they watching longer on digital properties? Part of it is because there’s a lower ad load on that side,” said Marshall, who leads sales for NBC’s broadcast network, USA Network and Syfy. “The whole goal is to make TV look more like digital TV.”

Then, there’s the Netflix, Amazon and Hulu effect. Netflix and Amazon have no commercials, which can make it jarring to binge hours on those platforms and then switch over to ad-supported cable TV, said Alan Wolk, co-founder and lead analyst for consulting firm TVRev. On Hulu, roughly 70 percent of its 54 million monthly unique viewers subscribe to Hulu’s ad-supported tier, where commercial breaks are limited.

“Because Hulu keeps their ad loads light, people don’t mind it,” said Wolk.

The duopoly’s brand-safety issues give networks an opening
TV networks are also eager to pounce on Facebook’s and Google’s ongoing issues with brand safety. At the upfronts and other industry events, NBCU’s ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino frequently took swipes at the duopoly by pointing out how a view can’t buy products or a like has never walked into a store. TV, meanwhile, has viewers — and viewers that spend more than a few seconds with their programming.

“When you’re in the marketplace and you hear a lot about how these special platforms are pitching and selling video against television, they will try and tell you that 1.7 seconds with the audio off is a good example of a delivered impression,” Marshall said. “Now, compare that to where we have shows that people are watching 35 to 50 minutes straight. TV has arguably never been more valuable to an advertiser; it’s already the best in terms of ad effectiveness, and these initiatives are incremental steps on top to improve it.”

Along with reducing ad clutter and commercial time, NBCU is pitching a new ad product called “prime pods.” Essentially, it’s a new 60-second slot in the first or last commercial break of a show with just one or two advertisers, depending on the buy. Ads within this pod are meant to be contextually aligned with the show and its audience, which could include custom pieces NBCU itself produces.

“What the research tells you is that an advertiser really gets the biggest bump when half of the ad load is removed,” Marshall said. “Obviously, we can’t take half of the ads out of the entire portfolio, but it led us to the idea that we can make the first pod something that works for both the consumer and the advertiser. If, in an hourlong drama, you’re 25 minutes in and you’ve only seen one minute of ads, you’re going to remember it.”

Of course, it’s also an opportunity for TV networks to charge more for these placements. NBCU’s prime pods will come at a premium, Marshall said. Fox, too, reportedly admitted it will charge more for the reduced inventory and sell ads based on time spent versus the number of viewers the content gets.

Reduced ad loads can equal more ad dollars
Networks have experimented with reduced ad loads for some time, and there’s some evidence that advertisers are willing to pay more.

In 2016, Turner’s TruTV reduced commercial time against its original half-hour shows by three and a half minutes. TruTV produces its programming in-house, which required that producers make shows that run for around 26 minutes instead of the traditional 22 minutes and 30 seconds, the network said.

“This is not for everyone,” said Linn. “You have to make a full commitment to go all-in and stick with it for the long haul; at TruTV, we had a unique opportunity because we own all of our content — there are not acquisitions. So we have the ability to flip a switch and say all of our content going forward is going to be longer and more premium.”

The move has worked out so far. TruTV said it saw double-digit CPM increases in 2017, the first full year it made its “limited commercial interruption” ad product available to marketers. One media buyer said Turner’s prime-time CPM is between $35 and $40, noting that the network is up in viewership and that increased viewership and a decreased ad load results in [TruTV] increasing CPMs. TruTV also said it saw a nearly 100 percent renewal rate among marketers that bought its LCI product in last year’s upfront market.

According to Nielsen, TruTV’s ratings were up 2 percent among adults 18 to 49 — the coveted demographic among TV marketers — since it introduced the LCI product. It’s one of only three of the top 30 networks to grow for two consecutive years, according to Nielsen.

Not all of TruTV’s ratings increases can be attributed to reduced ad loads, as the network is also producing more high-end original comedy programs. But with the ratings growth, TruTV plans to reduce ad loads across all of its programming over the next three years. (Right now, the LCI product hits about 15 percent of the network’s programming lineup.)

“The overall mission of TruTV has been to take the reality TV network it once was, and turn it into something that is more premium and appeals to a younger, more affluent audience,” said Linn. “We know we’re competing for those eyeballs with Netflix and Hulu; the worst thing we can do is degrade the experience by offering longer and longer commercials and too much messaging.”

For more on the future of TV and video, subscribe to Digiday’s weekly Video Briefing email. 

The post ‘Make TV more like digital TV’: Networks are removing clutter to improve TV viewing appeared first on Digiday.

After nearly a decade of indifference, Reddit is cozying up to publishers.

Over the past year, a media partnerships team of four has ramped up efforts to bind publisher content and Reddit users closer together. It has rolled out new features, including profile pages and native video hosting. It has also stepped up efforts to work with publishers on content-focused initiatives both on and off Reddit’s platform, including its editorial collaboration with Time magazine and a WBUR-produced podcast, “Endless Thread,” which started in January.

These efforts come at a moment when publishers are looking for new ways to connect more directly with their readers.

“I’m starting to feel like we’re making inroads,” said Alexandra Riccomini, Reddit’s first director of business development and media partnerships, who oversees Reddit’s publisher relationships. “How we function, necessarily, is with third parties. I’d love to see our continued march toward becoming one of those platforms that’s top of mind for publishers.”

For years, Reddit has intrigued and confounded publishers. Those that tried to promote their content too hard wound up getting accounts suspended; others found themselves feuding with the site’s community, who felt publishers were mining the site for story ideas without properly crediting Reddit users themselves.

And any publishers that tried to start a dialogue with Reddit got nowhere, mostly because there was nobody to start a dialogue with. Prior to 2016, Reddit did not have any employees dedicated to publisher or advertiser relations.

“Everyone who came up in the early social media for news days, one of the first things you learned was: Reddit is anti-publisher,” said Amanda Zamora, chief audience officer of the Texas Tribune. “It’s been a remarkable shift, I think.”

Riccomini’s earliest moves were designed to smooth relations between Reddit’s users and publishers. Tools were launched in May 2016 to encourage publishers to source and credit Reddit users in their pieces. In February 2017 came an integration with CrowdTangle, which let publishers monitor how their content was being shared inside Reddit.

Other product changes made over the past year were meant to encourage publishers to use Reddit more. In years past, publishers trying to share their content on Reddit could be warned or banned if they violated the platform’s “1 in 10” rule, which required that no more than 10 percent of the content that accounts shared be promotional. That rule was relaxed last spring. In December 2017, Reddit rolled out profile pages that let publishers post content directly to their followers, without fear of getting banned for spamming.

Reddit remains an influential source of story ideas for publishers. But the changes made to the platform this past year have allowed for more exchanges between Reddit’s audience and publishers. “It’s a place where our fans flag content for us and highlight things we should be covering,” said Kate Coughlin, the director of audience development at National Geographic Partners.

Overall, Reddit’s referral traffic to publishers is less than 1 percent of all social traffic and declined 45 percent in the past year, according to Shareaholic. But the effect has been noticeable, if modest, for publishers that have put in time. “Traffic from the profile page has been nice and steady,” said Gene Park, a social media editor at The Washington Post.

Park said he still sees the work he does on Reddit as experimental and wouldn’t say how much referral traffic Reddit drives to the Post. And while he thinks Reddit can become a powerful source of referral traffic, traffic in and of itself is not the end goal of the work he does on the platform. Park said Reddit’s product changes let publishers communicate with Reddit’s user base, in line with a Post mandate that its journalists should be more transparent about their work.

To some publishers, that is especially important as they try to diversify their audience away from Facebook and Google. “With everything that’s going on with Facebook, we’re trying to figure out some other places where we can grow our audience and interact with them in smart ways,” said Connor Finnegan, senior audience development manager at Inverse, which launched an Inverse profile page on Reddit in January.

Finnegan said Reddit has become a better place to show his site’s content to a new audience. “On other platforms, like Facebook or Twitter, it’s hard to stand out,” Finnegan said. “And we find the feedback we get on [Reddit] is a little more sophisticated than the average Facebook comment.”

As the year rolls on, Reddit also plans to do more original content with publishers such as original video, applying the playbook it used on the Time and WBUR collaborations, Riccomini said. Reddit will also add more content programming to the platform that publishers can participate in regularly. She wouldn’t say which publishers or platforms would be involved; she said both were developed to help all the involved parties. “I don’t believe in one person taking from the other,” Riccomini said. “It’s got to be a mutual value-add.”

The post ‘We’re making inroads’: Reddit is trying to tighten its relationship with publishers appeared first on Digiday.

Royal Bank of Scotland will soon run more of its programmatic advertising internally, according to David Wheldon, the bank’s chief marketing officer.

The financial firm is building what Wheldon calls an “in-house studio” that will run parts of its media and advertising alongside its external agencies. Rather than eliminate agencies outright, he wants greater control over parts of the marketing mix that directly affect the business, such as ad tech and data management. Wheldon wants to drive the decisions, rather than agencies, on what supply-side vendors the bank uses and what aggregators it buys data from. Tighter agency contracts alone won’t guarantee that level of control, said Wheldon.

“You can’t carp on about transparency [as a marketer] unless you do something about it,” he said.

Wheldon shares how he sees the relationship between RBS and its agencies evolving. Excerpts from his conversation with Digiday appear below, edited and condensed.

Why do you need an agency as you take more control of your media investments?
At the moment, we still need an agency. But I can see a not-too-distant future where we could be doing a lot more programmatic ourselves. We’re building an in-house studio, and the vision for that is to be plug-and-play ready [to make media decisions]. For example, when an interest rate changes, we’re obliged to communicate that to all of our customers, and at the moment, we have to buy media to make it happen. One day, it will [be automated] and have the capability of using our own first-party data.

Why are you trying to in-house and automate as much marketing as you can?
Our future is definitely going to be one of doing much more customer communication directly. We’ll be able to target our own customers more thoughtfully using our data than we can by outsourcing those tasks. We’ll then be left scratching our heads about where we need to spend the money externally. Up until the last few years, we were outsourcing all of that media planning and buying to a media agency. I can see that happening in my role as the president of the World Federation of Advertisers, too. This increasing shift to programmatic is becoming more about the in-house capabilities on the brand side. And as that movement happens, the more tough questions there will be around digital and the more people are going to have to think long and hard about how they run online advertising, especially given the obligations of the General Data Protection Regulation.

How happy are you with the transparency you have into your media agency?
I’ve made it clear to our media agency that I expect them to tell me how and where they make money. I’ve reminded them that if they don’t do that, then RBS has a contract with them that means they can be fired instantaneously. It’s a brutal way of putting it, but it’s going to force transparency because I’ve learned to get very suspicious about where the [bank’s] money is going. It’s not so much about the contract. It’s about asking the right questions. The example I always refer to is [asking about] the percentage my media agency charges when they recommend a media partnership.

Could RBS as an advertiser do more to take responsibility of its investments?
We’re getting better at understanding the people we’re after, as that’s the primary way to reduce wastage. I inherited what some would describe as some very lazy briefing, which would basically say, “We’re a bank with 16 million customers; therefore, our target audience is everyone, so go forth and buy ads.” Are we as efficient as I’d like us to be yet? I don’t think so.

What are you doing to change that?
We’re writing better briefs that are based on our data, which isn’t just our customer data, but our historical data in terms of what has and what hasn’t worked. There’s also the fact that when people come and recommend something to us, we’re asking for data to justify those recommendations. We want to know how those suggestions are going to be measured as well as how will we know whether the idea worked or not. We’re trying to do all that in a way that’s more about test and learn. We were taking recommendations straight from Facebook, for instance, where its representatives would say, “We think you need to do this,” and my team would come back do it. I’d ask why we’d launched whatever was suggested across our entire customer base, when we could’ve done something smaller to test the idea and then learn about it.

With the changing advertiser-agency relationship, what’s the opportunity for consulting firms?
I’m not sure there was ever a bygone era when agencies enjoyed a great relationship with the top of the house, but what the consultants have now is the C-suite relationships, a deep understanding of technology and a deep understanding of the digitization of our services. It’s not too much of a leap for them to think they can help with the advertising part of that mix.

Would you hire a consulting firm to replace an agency as you in-house more media management and advertising?
You always need external people because they bring a freshness and a lack of fear.

The post Royal Bank of Scotland CMO David Wheldon: More marketing will go in-house appeared first on Digiday.

Women-focused publisher Bustle is expanding to the U.K., launching a local site and social channels in May. According to the publisher, it will have 10 employees in the U.K. within the next three months, split evenly between editorial and commercial. Former Mashable sales exec Jack Gillespie and former Vanity Fair strategy editor Charlotte Owen will lead the publisher’s U.K. operations.

The 5-year-old site already has a U.K. following: In January, Bustle had nearly 3 million unique visitors in the U.K., putting it slightly ahead of PopSugar (2.9 million) and Refinery29 (2.7 million), according to comScore.

“Empowering women is a universal thing. Now, there’s an opportunity to reach the U.K. market directly,” said Kate Ward, Bustle Digital Group’s editor-in-chief. “We’re proud to never have pivoted; we’ve had the same message of inclusivity and diversity since day one. Women’s empowerment will always be a trend.”

Bustle’s U.K. site plans to publish roughly two dozen text articles a week, figuring out what content resonates with U.K. audiences before developing more specific coverage and formats. Ward points to recent successful articles like this piece about actor and writer Heather Graham’s directorial debut, and this profile on “Black Panther” actor Danai Gurir.

Jason Wagenheim, Bustle’s chief revenue officer, said 95 percent of the company’s revenue comes from direct display and branded-content ad campaigns, while roughly 5 percent comes from programmatic and affiliate revenue. Last year, he said, Bustle grew revenue by 50 percent. Branded content will drive its growth in the U.K. market: Wagenheim said 80 percent of each deal has a branded-content component, with Instagram proving particularly popular with advertisers recently. The publisher was unwilling to share when it expects the U.K. site to turn a profit.

“Insights always lead our strategy in our approach to branded content,” said Wagenheim. The Bustle Trends Group, the publisher’s research arm, informs ad campaign strategy and post-campaign analysis. It’s conducting research on the U.K. market to take to advertisers and plans to have several brands on board when the site launches.

The digital media casualties of the last six months have spurred U.S. media companies to rethink international expansion. And it won’t be easy for Bustle. Its brand recognition among U.K. agencies needs to improve quickly in order to gain traction with advertisers. Campaign budgets in the U.K. are lower than in the U.S., and competing with entrenched titles will be tough.

“There is a lot of competition in this area. I don’t yet know what Bustle’s point of view would be or what makes their audience unique,” said David Carr, strategy director at DigitasLBi, pointing to Bustle’s homepage, which features a variety of listicle posts like “9 Revelations From ‘Bachelor Nation’ By Amy Kaufman That Will Surprise Even The Most Diehard Fans” and “14 Scary Movies Like ‘Veronica’ That Are Too Terrifying To Finish, From ‘Creep’ To ‘The Babadook.’”

The publisher, however, is confident about its international expansion. “We’re in the U.K. for the long haul,” said Wagenheim.

Image: Bustle via Facebook

The post Bustle plans UK expansion with 10 staffers appeared first on Digiday.

Linda Yaccarino, chairman of advertising and client partnerships for NBCUniversal, says media must get moving on solving problems. Our conversation is lightly edited and condensed.

Last year, you talked a lot about the need to address brand safety, media measurement and transparency issues. Are your priorities the same for 2018?
I certainly think some of those or all of those issues are the same. But broadly what I’m vocal about is the illogical inertia that is plaguing the advertising industry. There’s safety and transparency issues facing one side of the business. There are measurement issues on the other side. All of those need to be addressed. The industry hasn’t been doing enough. We’re just not willing to wait for other companies that the industry has traditionally relied on to measure viewing reliably or that we offer brand-safe environments.

The post ‘You have to go beyond the algorithm’: NBCU’s Linda Yaccarino takes platforms to task appeared first on Digiday.

How banks promote Zelle is about more than television ad campaigns.

This year Chase and Wells Fargo have launched 15- and 30-second commercials advertising Zelle, the peer-to-peer payments offering built right into banks’ mobile apps. Zelle itself has even launched a couple of spots, one featuring Hamilton star Daveed Diggs.

Smaller banks that can’t afford national commercials, however, will need to promote Zelle in their existing products, their mobile banking apps, and perhaps take a page from fintech startups’ marketing playbook and design their apps in such a way that the product does the selling for them. That’s according to a new report by Javelin Strategy on Zelle’s rollout; that it emphasizes within its own mobile banking experience that a product called Zelle exists and communicates the benefits of using it and the reasons its better than competitors like Venmo or Square Cash.

“Banks are doing a lot of things right but this is not an easy thing to introduce,” said Mark Schwanhausser, director of the digital banking practice at Javelin and the author of the report. “It’s not a simple feature you can roll out and say ‘try it.’ Explaining all these things means you have to prioritize because there just isn’t enough time so you have to be very selective… I don’t envy bank marketers who have to try to figure out how to in 15 seconds give an elevator pitch.”

Read the full story on tearsheet.co

The post For banks, marketing Zelle is proving to be a challenge appeared first on Digiday.

This article is a free preview of the new issue of Digiday magazine, our quarterly print publication that’s distributed to Digiday+ members. To find out more about Digiday+ — and ideally subscribe — please visit the Digiday+ section.

It was April 2016, and BuzzFeed had just exploded a watermelon on Facebook Live, making it Facebook’s most-watched live video to date. BuzzFeed was flush with $3.1 million in Facebook money, making it the media company the platform paid the most to make live video content, ahead of even The New York Times and CNN. Just a few days later, onstage at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti expounded on all the live video the viral content company could make for Facebook, including even a game show. Facebook and BuzzFeed seemed to be arm in arm, marching into the brave new world of live video.

The post Media companies are speaking up against the dominance of Facebook and Google appeared first on Digiday.

Sherwin-Williams Consumer Brands Group has selected Minneapolis-based independent agency mono as creative agency of record for its Valspar, Krylon and HGTV Home brands following a review. Mono will be tasked with creating integrated campaigns for the three brands and has already starting working on them. “We are thrilled to partner with an agency that is…

Last summer, Heather Salkin, svp of innovation for North America at experiential agency Momentum Worldwide, had to be in two places at once: American Express’ virtual reality demo at the U.S. Open in New York and with her family at a New Jersey beach. Normally, Salkin would have had to forgo her vacation to attend the tennis tournament. Instead, she used one of Momentum’s traveling robots to appear at her client’s event while she relaxed 160 miles away.

Salkin arrived at the U.S. Open with her colleagues, her face appearing on the screen of an iPad supported by a foot-long stick (the body) attached to a base with wheels.

The robot is one of three that Momentum is using to help address one of the many concerns agencies face today: maintaining a healthy work-life balance for employees in an industry as competitive and hectic as advertising.

“Had the robot not been on-site, [Salkin] would have missed this much-needed time to reboot with her family before gearing back up for the next few weeks of high-energy technical event oversight at the Open,” said Jennifer Frieman, chief talent officer of Momentum Worldwide.

Momentum introduced what it simply calls “The Robot” to its New York office around two years ago and is now rolling out two others to its St. Louis and Chicago offices and its 1,300-plus employees. While the robots, which can be powered by app or web browser, are mostly used in the agency’s offices, Momentum has shipped them to conferences, marketing events and even client offices when travel is not possible because of scheduling conflicts.

“When employees cannot be at a meeting or event in person, these robots give them a physical presence to bridge that gap,” said Frieman.

Momentum bought the robots from Double Robotics, which typically sells them for $3,000 each, excluding warranty fees. Momentum would not disclose how much it paid for the robots.

The rollout of the robots is one part of Momentum’s new flexible work initiatives that launch on March 8, in honor of International Women’s Day. The other initiatives include a way for employees to ask their managers for reduced work hours or more days when they can work from home, and Momentum-sponsored fitness and productivity classes.

More than ever, agencies are under intense scrutiny to provide more flexibility in their working policies. Ad agencies now have to compete for talent with clients hiring for their own in-house operations, consultancies like Accenture and Deloitte that are taking work away from agencies and platforms that tend to offer incentives and benefit packages that are hard to turn down.

Momentum conducted its own survey of around 500 people in June 2017, finding that 83 percent said they would leave the industry if they could not find a job with a good work-life balance.

“Our industry is losing too many talented people to unreasonable demands that put unnecessary strain on families,” said Donnalyn Smith, Momentum’s president in North America.

The post One agency’s staffers use a screen-carrying robot to be in two places at once appeared first on Digiday.

America’s oldest brewery has a new creative partner. D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc. selected Chicago-based independent agency Laughlin Constable as creative agency of record for Yuengling, following a review. Dan Fietsam, who joined Laughlin Constable as chief creative officer in June 2016, has a history working in the category, having worked on Bud Light earlier…