Less BS, More Facts, Some Opinions
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“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 Trey Stephens, director of audience monetization at Acxiom. As 2017 comes to a close, it’s a great time for brands to assess ways to improve marketing strategy and better capitalize… Continue reading »
Consultancies aren’t just parking their yachts off the French Riviera at Cannes. They’re setting their sights on major marketing budgets, and 2018 will be the year they start their conquest to remake the industry.
The CMO budget is the last line item on the balance sheet that companies like Accenture, IBM, and Deloitte haven’t touched. In the agency world, many are shrugging off consultancies’ maneuvering as irrelevant to their business and clients. While market inertia may slow down consultancies in the near term, they are playing a much different game than agencies — and the largest agencies should be particularly worried. Consultancies are integrating the entire digital marketing environment, of which paid media is just one facet, to tell a broader story about ROI — and they have the data to prove it. They aren’t simply selling ads, they’re helping the brand sell products and services with holistic solutions that cover the entire value chain.
Traditionally, Accenture, IBM and other consultancies have been system integrators and technical infrastructure companies. They implement large scale IT solutions and operate data centers for corporations — about as far from advertising creativity as a company can get. But as their core services expanded — and there was a clear need from the market — they bridged into marketing-related activities, such as building interactive and e-commerce websites. Now, they’re consolidating their role in marketing and design, with the CMO budget being the last untapped pot of money. This shift is predominantly driven at the CEO or CFO level, while ad agencies typically connect with CMOs at brands.
These companies have adopted a standard playbook as they remake advertising in their own image: acquire new capabilities, or enter client accounts through audits. Accenture recently purchased the French digital commerce agency Altima, the company’s 17th acquisition since 2013 as it expands its move into marketing and advertising. Altima joined Accenture’s roster of previous acquisitions, including US-based marketing and design agencies Wire Stone and Matter. They’re also acquiring people: Accenture recently hired OMD‘s EMEA president Nikki Mendonça to be the global president of intelligent marketing operations. Rigorous audits will also win consultancies the CMO budget: they’ll look for a pain point within a brand’s marketing strategy, provide a deep analysis of why that’s a problem, and offer a technical solution that integrates a number of third party solutions. The consultancies’ deep experience in building complex solutions out of many building blocks provided by independent vendors is the key enabler for these complex, transformational projects.
Market forces are pushing businesses to become more digitally-integrated. Brands must go all in to digitize themselves if they want to survive this tidal shift — they’ll be called on to better connect with consumers online, tell a broader story about the digital buying journey, and measure the impact of their marketing efforts. For example, lightweight direct-to-consumer CPG brands are upending the beauty industry with influencer-led marketing and slashed prices due to a lack of overhead. As major advertisers go digital, they’ll also face significant challenges in bringing all facets of their business into compliance with data privacy regulations around the globe. Consultancies are demonstrably better positioned here — for example, IBM recently showcased its capabilities to help brands weather the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU.
Traditional ad agencies don’t currently have the staff, expertise, or infrastructure to build out and support this deep digital integration — and they face a considerable amount of resistance from their brand clients as they wage a cold war over marketing data. As a result, they’ll continue to lose market share to consultancies that can build systems and integrations for advertisers, and offer both efficiency and tighter control over their data.
In 2018, consultancies will test the waters in the advertising space by auditing major brand marketing budgets — and it will likely be a bloodbath. Consultancies will come for high-value targets like brand and creative strategy first, and if agencies can’t prove their value, they’ll be left out in the cold. Major agencies are right to be worried — consultancies will likely move fully into the space in 2019 and 2020, once they’ve hammered out the details of adapting their business model to the marketing industry.
There is a silver lining for agencies, though — for the moment, these consultancies will likely steer clear of the execution layer, and leave media buying to agencies. Instead, they’ll continue to expand their creative efforts: building interactive experiences, setting up e-commerce sites, and optimizing and integrating technical solutions. Media buying requires a heavy investment in working capital with a comparably low rate of return to what consultancies are used to. In fact, this will likely prove to be a major boon to small shops and medium-sized agencies — following an audit of a major brand’s marketing budget, independent agencies will be on an even playing field with major agencies. If they can integrate with the consultancies’ technical solutions, and make the right pitch, they could win unprecedented budgets. But is there a motivation for consultancies to move into media buying? Yes — and they will move into media buying aggressively once they’ve isolated a vastly different media buying model than the traditional paradigm.
For the CMOs of major brands, the future of their marketing spend will depend on the outcome of a mandated consultancy audit. Long-time agencies of record could fall by the wayside — unless agencies and brands agree to a mutually beneficial, more transparent deal. Barring this, consultancies will help CMOs manage their budgets, soliciting bids from creative shops, media agencies, tech vendors, and platforms on the CMO’s behalf — and building the technical solution that integrates all the pieces.
To defend against consultancies, agencies must provide greater value, get leaner, and become more transparent. Smarter agencies — such as WPP — are already building out or buying IT infrastructure to integrate their digital marketing capabilities. But as these holding companies move from a verticalized to a horizontal approach, there’s still a challenge in connecting the disparate pieces for clients at scale — when each client wants a bespoke solution — while receiving fair compensation for their work.
Moving into 2018, agencies should lean on their bona fides: relationships, creative expertise, and organizational DNA that consultancies can’t easily access. The competition from consultancies should also be seen as an opportunity for agencies: to tell a holistic marketing story, built on deep ROI, across the nonlinear consumer journey.
NFL ratings are down this season, but in-game ad revenue continues to grow year-over-year this season, according to new data from Standard Media Index. This season’s NFL revenue, from September to the end of November, is up 2 percent among all networks. There was one additional nationally aired linear TV game than in the same…
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Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Jonathan Suarez-Davis will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on Jan. 17-18. In the wake of several big acquisitions, Salesforce Marketing Cloud has surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue. In this week’s episode we talk with its chief strategy officer, Jon Suarez-Davis, who joined the… Continue reading »
What’s the Story? is a storytelling video series dedicated to learning what truly makes a great story, told through the lens of the world’s talent and practitioners of the craft in entertainment, marketing and beyond.
Gary Shenk, chief executive officer at Branded Entertainment Network (BEN), has been on the forefront of brand integration for a number of years — and is clearly bullish on its effectiveness for brands.
In the early days, brands dabbled in brand integration. But fast forward to the current state of advertising affairs and it’s clear that brands can find effective, game-changing opportunities in entertainment. In fact, integrations placed by BEN represented nearly $1bn in media value in 2017.
On average, BEN places about 14 integrations per day across streaming, TV and influencers — and in looking at the BEN roster, there are heavy hitters across the board. Dyson, Hyundai, Zillow, Microsoft and General Motors have been matched up with all manner of top-tier content, films and shows including House of Cards, Ghost in the Shell, Grace and Frankie, Portlandia, The Bachelor and more.
One of BEN’s signature integrations was Heineken for the James Bond franchise which, Shenk says, was a big moment of change — switching from a martini to beer.
What’s telling is that, in 2017, about 20% of BEN’s integrations were on streaming shows, further signaling the growth and opportunities in the space. In Shenk’s mind, part of this lies with traditional advertising losing relevance — and being in the content itself is a strong proposition for brands.
“People are spending more time watching entertainment than ever before, but they’re spending less time watching ads,” he says. “For brands, the only way to be noticed by contemporary audiences is to be inside the content itself.”
Additionally, the evolution of binge watching heralds another opportunity for brands to be more deeply engaged with audiences that are paying close attention.
“When you binge, you’re more engaged with the content. You watch two, three, four or more episodes at a time,” says Shenk. “A brand being not only in the place where they know people are watching, but where they know that the people are watching [and] are incredibly engaged and getting more engaged — that is invaluable. That’s why we think this category is only going to continue to grow.”
Though the caché of being attached to creative projects and entertainment is enticing, the fact is the brands, and especially CMOs, need to see the real value of brand integration. To BEN, marrying the art and science is critical.
“Showing the data is the most important thing,” notes Shenk. “Showing how authenticity really, really matters. We measure every integration that we do and show how that relates in a change in awareness, or brand affinity, [or] purchase intent.”
Authenticity is an important consideration. According to Shenk, when brands trust the creative process and BEN’s expertise, it goes beyond just making people aware of a brand or product.
“The reality is that if you give a producer or a creator the leeway to show your brand in a way that is going to emotionally connect with the audience, it is almost always a win for the brand,” he says.
Having been in the entertainment industry for a number of years, Shenk also has strong opinions on what makes a great story. In his mind, it’s all about the character. A rabid reader, he believes that motivations and imperfections make a great character and help drive a strong story.
His favorite story of all-time, The Great Gatsby, certainly fits the bill.
“You have this rich, incredibly good-looking guy who has it all,” says Shenk. “What does he want? He wants love and he wants love of specifically of one individual. He has it all, yet, he has this incredible Achilles heel of this need for affection that is elusive to him. So, that’s a good example of the type of story that I love. One with a character that’s motivated to do something in an incredibly strong way that you sympathize with because of his flaws.”
What’s the Story? is sponsored by Branded Entertainment Network (BEN), the first global network for branded product integration in the entertainment industry, across all media, including the influencer space.
If you would like to pitch someone for “What’s the Story?“, please complete the linked form.
The ad tech industry is a fast-moving and innovative environment. It’s also very competitive and full of gimmicks and buzzwords in place of technology and real solutions. Santa’s a little preoccupied this time of year, so I thought I’d give him a hand with a “naughty or nice” list—the best (and worst) trends in ad tech and digital media—to help marketers break through the hype and kick off the New Year with confidence. See which ones are meaningful – and which ones lack substance.
THE NICE LIST
Ad quality
After P&G’s chief brand officer Marc Pritchard challenged brands to “stop giving digital media companies a pass,” we saw growing demand for better brand safety, ad fraud and viewability standards. Digital media companies are beginning to respond with improvements in fraud prevention, transparency and accountability. The greatest impact comes from all three of these areas working together in concert, which is becoming the new standard. There’s still work to be done, but it’s encouraging to see continued progress as poor ad quality can negatively impact advertising performance and cause long-term damage for brands.
People-based media
Even though the industry has been talking about people-based media for some time now, this year we saw more and more brands demonstrate their commitment to reaching consumers with tailored messaging. The key is to ensure you’re talking to real people across all their devices and digital touchpoints, and not just cookies. While not everyone is truly delivering on the promise of one-to-one marketing at scale, brands are moving in the right direction. I encourage all companies to work towards delivering only relevant, meaningful messages to individuals on the right device and at exactly the right moment.
Measurement
Measurement may not be the most exciting aspect of marketing, but it’s among the most important. Brands want more accurate measurement of their advertising performance, and digital media companies are responding by (finally) abandoning last-click attribution for more advanced and effective measurement methods and metrics – like incremental return on ad spend.
THE NAUGHTY LIST
Non-validated metrics
Let’s face it: the trust is gone. Marketers have been “burned” too many times by digital media companies’ miscalculated metrics related to how consumers are interacting with content on their platforms. Attribution or measurement that isn’t validated by a third-party partner has always been questionable, but this year it was increasingly troubling to some advertisers that rely on such platforms for content distribution and monetization. Digital media companies must strive for transparency and accuracy to ensure they are truly driving results or they will continue to face more backlash.
DIY solutions
Some things you can do yourself, while others you should leave to the pros. Too often, I have seen marketers take the DIY approach and try to piece together multiple technologies to activate their CRM data for digital marketing. The result is an underperforming, money-wasting ecosystem. It takes an investment of time, talent and capital to build robust platforms that can bring that data to life, accurately reach consumers at scale and build personal connections. Marketers who take the DIY path typically spend more time refining and fixing, and ultimately lose sight of the true cost of ownership. Their time and resources would be better spent on driving their business rather than learning martech skills.
Trends that overpromise and under-deliver
AI, VR and blockchain are the future, or so they say. These buzzwords have been getting a lot of attention lately, but are they actually a sound business investment? While there’s value in staying on top of emerging tech and it’s fun to think about how they’ll shape our world in the future, they represent just one facet of a product or deliverable and are not a strategy on their own. Marketers need to do their due diligence and understand what’s underpinning these tools so they can ensure they’re good for their business in the long run and not just a short-lived (and expensive) gimmick. Read the fine print before buying into the hype.
With the continuing fall out of Brexit and how it impacts on consumer confidence, a knock-on effect will be how that influences brand budgets, and as a consequence, a push for real focus on ROI as a metric for customer success, according to Bing UK head of strategic sales, Aaron McGrath.
McGrath says there are two areas that should be questioned. How does the industry really drive ROI and efficiency? And how does it continue to build trust with consumers?
He expresses that ROI has always been a metric for success, but in 2018, what the industry will see is brands thinking about how much they are spending, how they are going to spend and how effectively they will do that.
Also, publishers, brands and agencies should be keeping an eye on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. How will these concepts be used as a crucial success to 2018?
We’re talking to machines a lot more than we used to, and machines, like Alexa and Cortana, are listening to us more than they used to. The same goes for image or video recognition, allowing machines to watch us a lot more than before. With the power of machine learning, machines are collecting all this data in a much more powerful way, explains McGrath.
The opportunity for brands, agencies and publishers then is how to turn that into an emotional connection/intelligence. Thinking about how they can be intentional about it and how to understand the emotion of the user/consumer in a way that seems natural to them, by overlaying AI with what is found to be the most intelligent and sending that message at the right time, to the right person.
However, there is always a danger when pushing out words like listening, talking, watching and collating, when it comes to machine. Consumers don’t want to be thinking that Big Brother is watching them at every moment. But the only way you can break down that resistance, according to Bing, is by being transparent about how the technology is being used.
As an industry, GDPR is an interesting reflecting point. McGrath asks whether everybody should follow the rules and regulations of governments and legislators or focus on how to really build trust as publishers, agencies and brands with the industry.
He believes this should push thoughts on how the industry can go beyond concepts like GDPR and how to talk in an open and transparent way. For instance, talking to consumers and users about how KPI‘s are connecting, how information is being used and how privacy is being respected within that environment.
The opportunities, explains McGrath, are unlimited, but as an industry, search needs to start with transparency otherwise the challenges faced in 2017 will continue beyond 2018
This discussion arose from The Drum Search Awards breakfast panel, in association with Bing on Monday December 3. The Search Awards are now open to entries for 2018, which will close Friday February 2, 2018. Click here for more information.
Lotame Ignite APAC Conference 2017: The Current State of Data in Video Advertising Across Asia, brought to you by Lotame and SpotX.
Like other media companies, The New York Times is recognizing that its survival depends on growth in a lot of areas, not just display advertising or subscriptions.
The Times’ push to double digital revenue to $800 million by 2020 is built off a varied business model of agency work, subscriptions, ads and more.
“There is no one single strategy for growing advertising,” said Sebastian Tomich, who was just elevated to the Times’ head of advertising from svp of advertising & innovation.
Next year, the Times will push into a few areas outside its core but mature business selling display ads on NYTimes.com and less and less so in the print newspaper. Growth is expected to come from elaborate partnerships, like the Samsung-sponsored 360-degree videos that the Times publishes daily or a kid-aimed version of its popular news podcast, “The Daily,” that the Times created for voice-activated device Google Home.
The upside is big programs like these can command many millions of dollars. The downside is it can take up to nine months to sell them, and there are only so many companies in the market for them. Tomich has identified around 25 advertisers that are candidates for these and aims to sell five to 10 deals in the year ahead.
Longer term, Tomich also sees growth coming from agency-like products and services via T Brand Marketing Solutions (formerly T Brand Studio), which could include running campaigns that run outside of Times properties.
As its growth strategy evolves, so is the kind of talent the Times is looking for. The Times will always have salespeople, but it’s de-emphasized that role as technology has made that function more efficient and clients are increasingly asking for creative expertise. As part of that shift, the Times let go several ad sales directors last week, the New York Post reported. Now, there are fully 160 people in creative services, plus five to 10 business development leads that focus on the agency businesses. To sell those big partnerships, there’s a new partnerships team led by Andy Wright that’s set to have 18 people once fully staffed. Meanwhile, T Brand, now led by Amber Guild, a vet of The Martin Agency, is hiring creative and strategy people with agency backgrounds.
“Where the industry is heading, it’s valuing creative people,” Tomich said. “To compete as an agency, you’ve got to have the people to do it.”
Closer collaboration with the newsroom will be another hallmark of 2018. To better systematize that effort, the Times named Allison Murphy to lead a new Ad Innovation team of about 30 people, separate from T Brand. Murphy is charged with developing new ad formats and leveraging Times journalism for advertisers.
That isn’t supposed to mean Murphy will sit in on story meetings or that advertising will dictate news coverage; it’s more she’ll work with the Times’ Reader Experience team on the product side (known familiarly as “T Rex”), led by svp Ben French, to identify editorial content that has an advertising opportunity. One such missed opportunity was a video the Times did on Justin Bieber in 2015 that was hugely popular but didn’t have any special ad support.
Three years ago, the Times’ scathing internal innovation report on itself revealed a deep-set divide between news and advertising that was holding back growth. Today, under the threat of extinction, there’s been far more willingness from news to cooperate with the business side, but the two still have their sensibility differences.
“The newsroom is still an untapped resource for advertising,” Tomich said. “I don’t think there’s resistance; it’s just foreign. There’s not a lot of planning. There’s a lot of serendipity.”
The push into new buckets of marketing dollars comes at a point when the Times is getting more growth from subscriptions than advertising, to the point that it now talks about itself as a “consumer brand.” The Times said it had 3.5 million paid subscriptions as of the third quarter. Print advertising revenue decreased 20 percent, while digital ad revenue increased 11 percent. The pursuit of subscription dollars has led the Times to do things like lower its paywall meter count to five articles a month from 10 and start charging for Cooking’s recipe content because the Times figures it can make more money from getting readers to pay directly than by selling advertising against that audience.
Those moves can have a short-term cost to a publisher’s ad business, though. Publishers’ ad problem has gotten bigger, with Google and Facebook gobbling up the majority of digital advertising and advertisers talking brand safety but continuing to allocate more of their budgets to the tech platform. That leaves publishers with little choice but to fight each other even harder for the scraps. For the Times, that means being more forceful about touting its quality, as defined not just by Pulitzers but its readers’ willingness to pay.
“We want to beat our chest more in the media market,” Tomich said. “Going into next year, we’re going to be much less modest. I want to be more vocal about how all inventory is not the same.”
So Stitch Fix is giving it to them.
Online personal styling service Stitch Fix stepped up its advertising spending by 84 percent in the first quarter of its 2018 fiscal year, with TV campaigns playing a big role in trying to attract new customers.
But the new customers attracted by the mass-market commercials had one common piece of feedback: Stitch Fix needs to offer a bigger selection of less-expensive clothing. CEO Katrina Lake told Recode in an interview following today’s release of Q1 results — its first earnings report as a public company — that these consumers want more options in the $20 to $50 price range.
So Stitch Fix plans to give these new customers more of what they want.
“In the last year, lower price point product has grown to represent a double-digit percentage of our total unit sales,” the company said in a letter to shareholders announcing the financial results. “Given the success of this offering, we plan to increase lower price point sales as a percentage of overall sales over the course of this fiscal year.”
In its first few years of existence, Stitch Fix’s selection of clothing items skewed mid-tier — higher than the range mentioned above, but lower than those of premium brands. But in the past year, the company has started to sell name-brands at premium price points, in addition to beefing up the selection in the $20 to $50 range.
On the company’s earnings call with analysts, Lake was asked what the lower-price push would mean for profit margins. She did not offer specifics on the profitability makeup of the different price points, but said Stitch Fix “can serve very profitably” these value shoppers.
Average order values, on the other hand, would be lower for these customers, but would be largely offset by new sales of high-price premium brands, she said.
For the quarter, Stitch Fix reported revenue earnings and profits that were generally in line with analyst estimates. First-quarter revenue grew 25 percent to $296 million year over year, while the company netted $13.5 million in net income.
But Stitch Fix’s stock was trading down as much as 12 percent in the after-hours market, perhaps over concerns that the company did not provide a forecast for net income.