Data-Labor-Technology

AdRoll and Magento Commerce announced a partnership on Friday to combine the companies’ ecommerce platforms, incorporating AdRoll’s ad targeting and attribution directly into the Magento cloud management service for online sellers. Bay Alarm Medical, which sells medical alert systems, has been working with Magento for four years and with AdRoll for almost a decade, said… Continue reading »

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At the Digiday Publishing Summit last month in Vail, Colorado, we sat down with 49 U.S. publishing executives to learn how they are adjusting to Facebook’s news feed changes. Check out our earlier research on the growth of programmatic spending in Europe and the U.S. here. Learn more about our upcoming events here.

Quick takeaways:

• Fifty-three percent of publishers in Digiday’s survey say they are changing their strategies for Facebook in the wake of its news feed changes.
• Sixty percent say the changes will have a marginal impact or no impact on their overall audience size.

It’s been several months since Facebook announced it would change its news feed to de-emphasize publishers’ content in favor of users’ posts. Facebook’s changes have brought drastic consequences for some publishers, and many publishers are now adapting their strategies as a result, according to Digiday’s research from the event.

The post Digiday Research: Majority of publishers aren’t worried about Facebook’s algorithm changes appeared first on Digiday.

“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 Ming Wu, chief revenue officer at MightyHive. The digital advertising industry is afflicted by seven deadly sins, six of which are common themes in the industry: ad fraud, viewability, ad… Continue reading »

The post The Seventh Deadly Sin Of Digital: Reach And Frequency appeared first on AdExchanger.

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Francis Turner, co-founder, US general manager and chief revenue officer at Adyoulike. Though subscription video services are signing customers fast, spiraling costs may soon force them to rethink how they make their money. Take… Continue reading »

The post In the Streaming Wars, There Are Many Paths To Monetization appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Safe Or Sorry YouTube still has a brand safety problem. The media world has had its eyes trained on Facebook for the past month, but CNN reports that more than 300 brands recently ran against YouTube channels featuring violent extremist content, white nationalism, pedophelia… Continue reading »

The post YouTube Still Has A Problem; ANA Resists US Privacy Legislation appeared first on AdExchanger.

Brands may be putting more money toward branded content, but many of those dollars end up going to distributing that content instead of producing it. In the latest in our Confessions series, in which we grant anonymity for honesty, a digital studio executive whose company creates videos for brands says agencies’ expenses often take away from content production.

As a digital studio that works with brands to produce digital videos starring influencers, what’s one of the bigger, more regular challenges you face?
All the marketers feel like they have to work with their agencies, but they don’t know why they’re doing it. The agencies move slow. They’re not experts in the things they need to be experts in. They’re unbelievably expensive in covering all their crazy overheads.

Does that affect how much of the brand’s budget goes toward the work?
Absolutely. The brand’s investment is going toward, if the agency’s built a name brand themselves that gives credibility to the brand, it’s going to a staff that’s probably two times as big as it needs to be, offices around the world. It’s not going into the work.

Does that compromise the work?
No, because we run a lean shop. We don’t overhire.

What if the brand wants to do something cool that costs X dollars, and because of the agency costs, the brand says, ‘No, we can only pay Y instead?’
For sure. Their budgets are tied up in the high cost of doing business in agency world. And also it’s much easier to get approval for things they’ve been doing for the past 20 years than things that are new and experimental. We’re always fighting for more budget. But there are macro trends that are so much bigger than our individual battles: How much of the spend is going from traditional to digital, or to new and emerging media? How much of the spend is locked at the agency?

Are there financial pressures from the brands directly? They might see you run a lean shop and think they can pay less because you can squeeze more out of a dollar.
I don’t think there’s an inherent undervaluing of working with creators or digital content. I think there’s just pressures with how much money is docked in other places. What I’m seeing is that brands are coming up with creative solutions to reallocate budget.

Like what?
Like even if we’re doing a creatively driven campaign, there would normally be a fund for content, but they’ll take their media budgets and slice them up so that they can put more money toward content.

I would have thought they’d do the opposite, and put some of the production costs toward media because it’s easier to attribute that spend to performance.
No, it’s like, instead of buying X dollars in media, I’m going to put those same dollars working with YouTube creators and reach the same or more audience for the same amount of dollars.

Do the agencies get involved and say, ‘Hey, there are working dollars and nonworking dollars. You’re forcing more money to go toward the content costs that are nonworking dollars. Knock it off.’
I’m, for better or worse, not part of those conversations. But I hear echoes in the hallway all the time of agencies saying, “Stay with us. Don’t go with them. No need to try something new. We can do that, too.”

The post ‘The agencies move slow’: Confessions of a digital studio exec appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook’s international rollout of Watch has been slow going. U.K. publishers face moving timelines and an unclear pitching process, as Facebook aims to iron out the kinks from its U.S. Watch launch.

The U.K. timeline for the rollout of the dedicated Watch tab is still unclear. According to publishers, Facebook has not committed to a date. Now, some publishers are estimating its arrival in 2019. When contacted for this story, Facebook said it had no updates to share on the launch of Watch in the U.K. In the U.S., Watch launched in August 2017 with a select number of partners, including Attn, Tastemade and Refinery29, and has since expanded, with Facebook offering dozens of publishers subsidies to create show content.

Facebook has been talking about Watch shows with U.K. publishers and production studios since the beginning of the year, according to multiple sources. But it has not made any direct commissions yet from U.K. companies. While U.K. publishers and production studios that have a Los Angeles presence pitch Watch shows through LA teams, the commissioning process for U.K. companies still seems unclear.

“There is no formal pitching process that we have been made aware of,” said a digital publisher requesting anonymity so as not to disrupt relations with Facebook. “After putting together decks for self-funded, original and episodic content for Facebook Watch, we’ve had no feedback and zero movement.”

This same publisher is looking to create pilot episodes for Watch off its own back, in the hope that Facebook will pay attention, according to the executive.

Equally, Facebook in the U.K. has been vague about the types of shows it wants for Watch, according to a second digital publisher, who said the platform has shied away from being too prescriptive so it doesn’t pigeonhole content and then lead to unrealistic expectations of what could get made.

In the U.S., Facebook has been clearer on the types of content it wants and in March announced plans to partner with 10 news publishers to create news content, a genre from which it has previously distanced itself.

Creators in the U.S. have said Facebook rushed them to produce content, leading to a deluge of low-quality content on Watch and dwindling demand for ad breaks. To avoid the same mistakes, Facebook is now taking its time, to some U.K. publishers’ chagrin.

The platform is being more selective about whom it commissions content from and which videos can be monetized through mid-roll ads, clamping down on Watch pages full of subpar content and looped or prank videos that are a far cry from Facebook’s ambitions to be a premium content destination.

“Facebook understands the initial launch of Watch wasn’t the best,” said the second digital publisher requesting anonymity to avoid derailing ongoing conversations with the platform. “It’s looking to revamp the whole process to get beyond the teething problems. It states there’s been an abuse of monetization it doesn’t like, and it wants a new platform that’s fresh and brand-friendly.”

However, how Facebook revamps the Watch pitching process is still unclear, and the same issues of publisher hierarchy in testing new products plays a factor, combined with a non-U.S. team that’s touting its commitment to publisher partnerships, but leaving publishers wanting more communication.

Watch shows in the U.S. have not yielded the expected traffic numbers, with publishers still hoping for a more robust monetization model. Subsidies from the platform will inevitably come to an end, while self-funded shows monetized by mid-roll ads have been lackluster. Yet this hasn’t deterred U.K. publishers. “If the money [from Watch] isn’t huge but makes content scalable, then we can make enough money in other ways,” said the second digital publisher. In the U.S. publishers are already exploring brand sponsorship, merchandise and licensing to other platforms to drive revenue.

Yet the journey to becoming a U.K. Facebook Watch partner is not an obvious one, and while publishers that aren’t part of the program can still monetize video through mid-roll, there are benefits to having Watch pages, not least in getting closer to the platform.

“There’s little indication of the rationale behind which [few U.K.] publishers are chosen for the platform,” said the first digital publisher.

The post ‘No feedback and zero movement’: Facebook Watch’s international expansion is off to a rocky start appeared first on Digiday.

YouTube’s bad-content problem hasn’t gone away, but as the heat turns up on Facebook for data breaches, the spread of misinformation and Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, some say the Google-owned video platform has been overlooked.

YouTube’s problem with offensive content persists even after its “adpocalypse” last year that revealed bad actors monetizing hateful messages and lewd videos aimed at children, and people posting pedophilic comments. The company said it would hire 10,000 human moderators and take a new approach to advertising, and most of those advertisers came back within a few months, according to ad-tracking firms. But as CNN reported just last week, advertisers are still popping up on controversial channels promoting Nazis, pedophilia, conspiracies and the like.

“We think there are enormous issues with YouTube and privacy and Google more broadly,” said Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which earlier this month called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate YouTube for illegally tracking kids. “The conversation has been so focused on Facebook and is an important conversation, but it’d be a mistake if we saw Facebook as one bad actor.”

Meanwhile, researchers have argued that YouTube is actually designed to serve up ever more conspiracy videos and extreme and incendiary videos in a self-reinforcing process.

“There is no reason to let a company make so much money while potentially helping to radicalize billions of people, reaping the financial benefits while asking society to bear so many of the costs,” researcher Zeynep Tufekci wrote in a March New York Times op-ed.

Google didn’t comment on the record.

Facebook may be the biggest social network by users, but another researcher, Jonathan Albright, has argued that YouTube plays an important role in social media, sowing doubt and discord and undermining the democratic process by serving up conspiracy theory videos to visitors.

YouTube has had its share of tough coverage. The Times ran front-page stories on how the platform was letting offensive videos appear in front of kids and helping fuel state-backed Russian news channel RT. But when the Cambridge Analytica story blew up, it eclipsed everything. In March, the public learned that the Donald Trump-linked research firm used 87 million Facebook users’ data without their permission, threatening the very democratic process of the nation.

“Privacy is a hard issue to understand; it’s not particularly sexy,” Golin said. “Cambridge Analytica and Russians and the election makes it more sexy.”

“It had everything — evil CEO, prostitutes, Russians — it’s out of a crazy movie,” a longtime digital media vet said. “Add on top of that the fact that, yeah, we report the story neutrally, but the fact is, Facebook has been pissing off journalists and media companies for a long time, and revenge is sweet.”

The biggest question Congress was asking was whether the Russians colluded with Trump in the 2016 election campaign, and Facebook was known to be a particularly big focus of Trump’s effort to get elected. Evidence of the Cambridge Analytica data breach just fueled the fire. The idea of bad actors stealing people’s data clashed especially badly with the idea of Facebook as a place where people share baby pictures and other personal news with friends and family.

Facebook bungled public relations around the crisis, and its image suffered. A Reuters/Ipsos online poll conducted in March, days after the Cambridge Analytica story was reported widely, found that 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information, compared to 66 percent who said they trust Amazon, 62 percent who trust Google and 60 percent who trust Microsoft Corp. A separate survey during the month of March of Americans 18-29 by Harvard Kennedy School, 27 percent said they trust Facebook and Twitter to do the right thing versus 44 percent who said the same of Google.

YouTube, by contrast, is more safely ensconced in Google, which is doing everything right from a PR perspective. Google has a better reputation with news organizations, nurtured by years of grant-making and technical assistance.

Google was among the tech giants hauled in front of Congress last fall to answer questions about Russian meddling on their platforms. But Google insisted that Russian manipulation on its services was “relatively small.” Google also spent $18 million on lobbying last year — more than Facebook’s $11.5 million and any of the tech giants. YouTube has “largely been left off the hook” by Congress and the FTC, said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, which advocates for consumers on digital privacy and consumer protection issues. “They been able to get away with it because they have smooth PR, an extremely complicated business model,” he said.

“Google is better at lobbying both in D.C. and the press and publishers,” said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade association for publishers. “Despite having different free services, Google and Facebook have the same underlying business model, which has led to many of our industry’s woes. Google, even more than Facebook, has propped up an ecosystem which hasn’t rewarded the companies who trade in high-quality news and entertainment for trusted audiences.”

Things might change, though. Now that the Facebook hearings are over, Congress is expected to turn its sights to Google and Twitter. Critics say they expect the groundswell of concern about privacy will help renew attention on YouTube as a result.

“We got a huge amount of media attention and probably more because of the concern about Facebook,” said Golin of his organization’s FTC complaint. “We are having a conversation about privacy we weren’t having six months ago.”

The post While Facebook gets roasted, YouTube stays in the shadows appeared first on Digiday.

“Good Morning America” is trying to grow direct relationships and e-commerce revenue with a revamped digital strategy.

The morning show relaunched its site with more lifestyle coverage, made-for-digital videos, an email newsletter and a plan to drive visitors to log in. Another new site, GMAdeals.com, is focused on e-commerce.

The “GMA” move follows others by rival morning shows, NBC’s “Today” and “CBS This Morning,” to expand their digital presences.

“We know that our audience has ever-changing behaviors,” said Terry Hurlbutt, the gm of Good Morning America Digital. “We’re really leaning into, ‘What does “GMA” stand for?’”

“GMA” has long distributed its content on digital platforms. It partnered with Yahoo in 2011 on its most recent website, to house and distribute digital clips from its broadcast. That partnership will continue; most of the content on the “GMA” site will also be available on Yahoo’s “GMA” page.

But ABC can’t use Yahoo’s site to drive direct connections, a priority that’s manifest in many areas of the current site. In addition to the newsletter, which will contain links to “GMA” content, it has a private Facebook Group, “We Are GMA.”

Forming a direct relationship will also give them the chance to sell products on an affiliate model. The deals site will feature items from TV segments and a separate editorial group; Skimlinks is powering the commerce operation.

To increase output on the “GMA” site, the company moved over editorial staffers from ABC News’ site and hired more reporters and video producers. (The company wouldn’t say how many.)

To generate more videos for the site, video producers will work more closely with the “GMA” broadcast team. Visiting musicians, for example, might get pulled in for a segment of “Dressing Room Reveal,” a digital-exclusive series hosted by Robin Roberts.

While Hurlbutt said “GMA” is keen to launch more digital-exclusive video franchises, it is proceeding with caution. It has not settled on a cadence for the two shows it announced April 19, “Dressing Room Reveals” and the Chrissy Teigen-hosted “Advice to My Younger Self,” and Hurlbutt said no firm commitment is in place to launch other ones.

Past attempts by “GMA” to build digital-native content brands for third platforms have been few and far between. Most recently, its Facebook Watch show, “Closet Raiders,” ran for one season.

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