Both, says one agency executive who was intrigued to see both opportunities presented to her at the recent NewFronts content shop.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, MediaCom digital investment associate director Heidi Capnerhurst says the content she saw, as premium publishers touted their upcoming slate to agencies and brands, ran the gamut.
“This time there was almost a polarizing Effect of ‘We have content that is so purpose-driven and then we also have content that is just fun and you can escape this politically charged world’,” she says.
“Each of the partners in the NewFronts kind of straddled the balance between that in that kind of polarizing way. They really did a good job of ‘We’re fun, and this is a place to just enjoy and be you and create’ and then ‘Also we have purpose-driven content.”
The mix of play and purpose is something that may come in useful to Capnerhurst. She works on the Sony PlayStation account, after MediaCom won the contract from rival agencies earlier this year.
“As a brand it’s kind of our job, and as marketers to understand where we fit in that and where we can also kind of be in-between and the conversation-leading culture,” she says. “But also have this idea of play and this idea of fun.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>But is the joint venture building its subscriber base, and what role does advertising play in a subscription-driven company?
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Hulu subscriber growth head Patrizio Spagnoletto opens up on his strategy. Part of the marketing mix is with Oath, he explains. We spoke with him at the Oath NewFront event.
“Bringing subscribers in for any service is challenging in our world because there’s a lot of competition, and it’s a market that’s changing a lot,” he says.
“We look at our subscribers and who are the healthiest subscribers. Then … we’ll work with partners to do look-alike modelling to see where are those subscribers out in the wild. We also work very closely with our agency at UM to build what we call high-value audiences so we can know not only who they are but what they look like, what do they like, and what is their media consumption.”
At the NewFronts, where premium publishers like Hulu touted their upcoming content roster to advertisers, Hulu announced series orders for a Four Weddings and a Funeral TV series and Ramy would join upcoming Hulu Originals Castle Rock, Catch-22, The First and Little Fires Everywhere.
It is a year since Hulu launched its live TV offering, on top of its VOD service, with one of the newest and freshest user experiences in the market. Now advertising is coming to the live service, making Hulu look a lot more like traditional TV – but with all the extra smarts afforded by targeted addressability.
Its product announcements didn’t stop there. The company also announced advertisers would be able to embed their messages in the shows viewers download for offline viewing, and it revealed that Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) for OTT is its currency of business across the platform.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>In this interview with Beet.TV at the Digital Content NewFronts 2018, Badigian, who is Account Lead at the GroupM media agency, talks about why consumers are more sensitive than ever to brand alignment with content and the utility of downloadable video content from Hulu. And she predicts a heyday for audio.
“I think Studio71 actually had a really interesting approach” consisting of computer-driven text and image screening plus a third variable that’s not always found, says Badigian. “They actually have a human element, which I thought was really interesting because not all publishers or content creators are doing that. And it allows them to really understand what’s the difference between maybe a child holding a water gun versus an actual weapon.”
While she doesn’t think there’s a “solve” yet for the overarching issue of brand safety in digital environments, “It’s a very sensitive area and I think it’s one that we’re going to have to be more careful about as advertisers and people as consumers are going to be looking for.”
Asked about tactics for brand alignment, Badigian says a client might be getting “great reach” out of YouTube but not all of the content the client is aligning with on the platform might not be relevant enough to the actual brand or product. “I think that’s where a lot of these smaller publishers or content creators are really important for us because their content might be more customizable to our brand,” she says.
“Studio71 has a lot of different content integration opportunities where you can more tightly weave your brand into that platform. They really do have a ton of very loyal followers.”
In this interview, Studio71 Media Sales EVP Matt Crowley explains the company’s vetting process.
Badigian says Hulu’s NewFronts announcement about viewers being able to download content, including programming containing ads, is a nod to the reality that people don’t always consume video in the same way.
“Sometimes we’re in our homes, sometimes we’re in a train, sometimes we’re in a plane. So downloadable content’s important because we’re not always online even though we probably always want to be online.”
More details can be found in this interview with Hulu’s Peter Naylor.
Badigian was surprised she didn’t hear much about audio content at the NewFronts, given the ascendance of podcasts and similar formats. “I think video had its heyday. I think audio is about to have one.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>“Great presentations, the right amount of great content, sales, customer engagement. I really thought it was extraordinary,” Bager says in this interview with Beet.TV.
For the first time, the IAB will hold a second NewFronts event this year. Titled the Digital Content NewFronts West, it’s scheduled for Oct. 9 and 10 at NeueHouse in West Hollywood, a central location for all media presentations.
Of the New York event, Bager talks about common themes that were unique to 2018. “I think there was a clear tendency to talk about diversity, diverse content,” she says.
In her NewFronts speech, Bager told the audience that for brands these days, “It’s about creating movements, not just moments. And with digital video, you can really, truly do that. The platform is so impactful.”
Other highlights for Bager were themed events like Meredith Corporation’s Help Puerto Rico effort and Hulu’s Huluween programming, along with Hulu’s ability to dynamically insert ads into its live television service, as ADWEEK reports.
“You can kind of see that the industry through the lens of the NewFront is growing up and knows what it’s doing and really starting to think about the audience that’s out there,” says Bager.
In West Hollywood, the focus will be on branded and sponsored content and how brands and media companies can work together to “capture those moments that mean something to individuals that can help brands build more direct connections with their audience. So we’re really excited about that event.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>After the scandal in which one of the world’s biggest video stars unwisely broadcast Nazi content, YouTube is hiring 10,000 moderators, as the brand safety concern rumbles on.
But human moderation at this scale is a losing battle. YouTube and everyone will need to combine pairs of eyes with AIs.
That’s the approach taken by Studio71, a company which helps produce and place branded content with popular celebrities and YouTube channels and which has just launched a software product to tackle the problem.
Called Context, the system uses humans on top of algorithms to measure videos for brand safety, labelling each piece of content as either safe or unsafe…
Text screening – Algorithms examine the text data around videos (including closed captions, title tags, and descriptions) for flagged keywords including profanity, slang, intolerance, racial slurs, hate speech, violence, sexual activities or controversial topics like extreme religious and political views.
Image processing – Using Google’s Vision API for image content analysis to look for artefacts not present in text, like nudity, drug use, weapons or illegal activities.
Human review – All videos deemed suitable are passed up for further examination, with moderator actions filtering back in to a machine learning algorithm for training the underlying AI more finely in future.
Studio71 claims that process takes three hours, and it will be able to handle 10,000 videos a week.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Studio71 media sales EVP Matt Crowley explains the idea.
“The top categories for us right now are the CPGs, retail and entertainment companies that are generally very family-friendly, very brand-safe, cautious,” he says. “We’d like to grow also some of our entertainment business along with some of that financial business because I think that’s where the brands are becoming more concerned about potentially running against non-brand-safe content.”
The “brand safety” issue has risen up the agenda in the last two years, as some advertisers have found their creative running against unsavoury kinds of content. That has fuelled a search for solutions to give them more control.
At this month’s NewFronts, where US premium digital publishers touted their upcoming roster to ad buyers, the concern seemed greater than ever, with many involving resorting instead to engaging in sponsored content partnerships in which they can be absolutely certain about the script beforehand.
This week, Beet.TV wrote about Grapeshot, another technology company which crawls the web, indexing and interrogating pages to identify their inner content, so that it can make that intelligence available to advertisers concerned to buy in brand-safe environments. The company has linked up with Tremor Video DSP, bringing the capability in to the media-buying layer.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>“I truly believe the audience is the boss,” Refinery29’s Chief Content Officer, Amy Emmerich, says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recently completed Digital Content NewFronts 2018.
Refinery29’s audience makes itself known through “the way they talk to us every single day” through comments, shares, engagements and “direct interactions” via its Mad Chatter feedback platform plus live events, Emmerich adds. Those insights are mixed with “the love and care and attention of people who work within the building who are also women of all kinds. And then we put them together to decide where can we use all of this power and make sure that we’re covering the things that we know matter to them.”
Topics like representation, sex and money “are the categories that they’re trying to own in the future that people are still quite ignoring them on.”
Refinery29’s editorial team leads with stories and series as opposed to platforms in considering how best to engage with its audiences. “It’s not where it is, it’s what it is,” says Emmerich.
At its NewFronts presentation, Refinery29 announced the upcoming launch of “Beauty and the Beats,” which executive creative director and Refinery29 co-founder Piera Gelardi described as a “mobile, virtual reality DJ battle. It will be like a dance party that can go anywhere,” as MediaPost reports.
In all, Refinery29 announced 10 new and six returning digital video series, some in partnership with companies and brands.
Emmerich describes the new series as “a bit more investigative. Really taking our editorial team and putting them in front of the lens and trying to dive into the topics that they cover.”
A new series titled Shady investigates the business of counterfeit cosmetics, while Pride is a six-part documentary series featuring producer Christine Vachon that addresses LGBTQ issues “through a historical lens but also layering pop culture,” says Emmerich.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>Luminate is managed by Laura Nelson, SVP, Audience Solutions, Disney|ABC Advertising Sales and Marketing, and ESPN’s Vikram Somaya, SVP, Global Data Officer and Ad Platforms.
The suite is powered by linear optimization, digital audience guarantees, digital private marketplace (programmatic) and attribution studies to quantify advertiser return on investment. Within the new unit, LiveConnect will now be used “to explore ways to extend to live events across the entire Disney portfolio,” the company said in a statement.
In this interview with Beet.TV last week at Disney’s NewFront event, Mattison explains the expected influence that Luminate is expected to have.
“There’s no question people recognize Disney and Disney’s content prowess across all the various IP, but as a data and data informed audience solution partner it’s not something that we’ve been very public about in the past,” Mattison says. “But if you look at what we’ve set up with Disney/ABC’s Luminate, it really is a framework that’s going to apply to all of our environments.”
Those environments range from pure digital into longer-form venues like Hulu and YouTube TV. “So it is truly a suite of solutions that span all of Disney ABC for advanced audience targeting,” Mattison says.
BlueKai is Disney’s current DMP and “LiveRamp has also been a fantastic partner. We’ve been able to do data matching and then do either hyper targeting or negative targeting, where we exclude certain people because they might already be customers of an advertiser.”
Luminate will help to enhance the existing sales ethos at Disney.
“When we come into a room with an advertising partner, we do so with all of our assets. So in the room is Good Morning America. In the room is American Idol,” says Mattison. “The second is you can see partnerships that will span multiple assets. You can go all the way from being a theatrical movie partner to having integrations into one of our ABC shows, into the Disney Digital Network and using creators or influencers as a layer in that program.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>He also traces the arc of a digital content ecosystem that is in a sort of “retrograde” phase as live content becomes more prevalent amid the decline of linear television viewing.
“The mantra of the week: premium content at scale. Original content being produced by publishers, really in response to cultural trends,” Gilbert, who is Head of Digital, Midwest, says in this interview with Beet.TV.
It’s premium not just in the various big-name publishers that are generating content but also in the “production values that is elevating this content to a premium level.”
While many content partnerships were announced at this year’s NewFronts, they were accompanied by other collaborations, for example publisher-to-publisher and publisher-to-platform.
“As well as even partners such as Hulu trying to hold themselves more accountable through the likes of measurement partnerships with Nielsen, IRI as well as others,” says Gilbert. “That to me as a marketer, as an advertiser, as an agency lead is critical to defining success for the future ahead of our clients and brands.”
He also heard “the loud and continued cry towards personalization and creating authentic resonance with consumers, ultimately helping to also ensure brand safety along the way.”
Gilbert’s perspective includes a view of the marketplace for live content that for him suggests a “retrograde” of how the digital marketplace has been built and where it’s going.
“Digital video has really been build off of traditional both long-form and short-form content that gets uploaded and then lives in perpetuity,” he says.
This stands in contrast to linear TV, which has largely been live and which still draws “a wealth” of live audiences.
“In order to draw more audiences away from linear and traditional channels to digital platforms, we are seeing the likes of ESPN, Twitter and Facebook live. We also heard it last night at YouTube’s Brandcast is they’re continuing to double down with YouTube TV. So I expect we’ll continue to see that grow in the years ahead.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>At NewFronts in New York, the event at which premium publishers tout their upcoming content roster to hopeful advertisers, BBC Worldwide executives led their pitch with a music offering.
“For the first time ever, BBC Music is coming to the US with a comprehensive commercial offering around TV, digital, social and live events,” says Aaron Tabas, director of the BBC StoryWorks content studio.
Tabas calls Live Lounge the “backbone” of the offering. “It will be living on bbc.com in a unique commercial environment where advertisers can sponsor it,” he says. “We can do branded content. We can do live launch events, something that really allows them to connect with music fans and build their brand messaging.
“We’re going to be creating this section on bbc.com and it’s going to be a really in-depth journalism proposition where advertisers can own 100% share of voice around your standard IAB advertising units. We will also be looking to create some really high-end backed branded content with advertisers.”
BC Global News’ NewFronts announcements included:
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>“Because, in fact, we are everywhere the sports fan wants us to be,” Howe explains in this interview with Beet.TV. “One of the core messages we wanted to get across today is wherever the sports fan is in the digital ecosystem, we are their voice of sports.”
While ESPN’s owned and operated platforms garner the largest audience of its 81 million fans a month, “Social is a critical aspect of it, most importantly because that’s where some of our fans want to consume their sports content.”
ESPN customizes sports content on Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter in sync with user expectations that vary by platform. “We do not treat them the same.”
Twitter “is a great place for live breaking news. Snapchat is there for digestible content and Facebook is there to tell the story,” says Howe. “Each of those platforms has a very different purpose in terms of communicating with the sports fan.”
He considers the recently upgraded ESPN app to be “one of our crown jewels.” ESPN+, the company’s long-awaited sports streaming service, will feature thousands of live games and original programming for $4.99 a month, and will live inside the ESPN app, as The New York Times reports.
“What’s important about our app is that it engages with 23 million unique fans. Capturing that audience is very important to us and we take it very seriously.”
Two main features of the app are personalization and direct-to-consumer sports.
Personalization ensures that “every single fan who comes to our app gets a unique and different experience based off of their preferences and fan behaviors.”
He calls ESPN+ “the first direct-to-consumer sports property, which allows us to give the sports fans more. ESPN+ allows us yet another outlet for our fans to engage with even more sports content around some of the best leagues and sports in the industry.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>The Global Chief Content Officer at Digitas, the agency that co-founded the NewFronts about a decade ago, says it’s more about brands having values that people can relate to.
“Sometimes it just means that they have to speak their own truth, they have to have values, because we think that audiences care about those values now and that those things will come into purchase decisions,” Donaton says in this interview with Beet.TV.
Donaton recalls the walkup to this year’s NewFronts and how many people naturally embraced the Digitas theme of The #Boycott NewFront.
“Every time we got on a prep call with somebody to get ready for the event, we didn’t even have to get out of our mouths what we wanted to talk about before they would basically say things to us that completely confirmed that we were on the right path.”
His takeaway is that “there’s clearly this moment in time right now and our aim was to capture it and it felt like we did.”
Aligning with causes and movement requires a smart, strategic approach because brands can be risk turning people off or, worse, sparking calls for a boycott of their products or services.
“We’ve seen some of this happen in the marketplace with brands that have taken a stand on more hot button issues. I think the point is, don’t court controversy for the sake of it.”
The right strategic approach means that brands must be prepared “and be ready for what might happen. Have the answers, have the strategy in place to stick by what you’re saying.”
It’s the job of agencies to help brands understand “what their why is,” Donaton adds. That “why” encompasses the role they play in peoples’ lives and the stories they can tell in a credible fashion.
“Then it’s really just about being true to yourself and speaking that truth. As long as brands don’t try to jump on something for the sake of jumping on it or doing something that’s not authentic, this is actually a no brainer.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>“But also we are thinking about commerce” and “how advertisers can transact on our platforms and we can deliver results. And I think that’s the most important thing,” Lucas adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the Digital Content NewFronts 2018.
Having recently joined Oath from Snap Inc., Lucas is clear about Oath’s overriding mission, which can be summarized thusly: How it uses data to create content, “to deliver consumers and associate them with the right content and the right advertisers, contextually.”
He hopes that NewFronts attendees left Oath’s presentation “feeling that there’s so much value in what we’re bringing to the table with the four pillars of deep content.”
Oath is squarely focused on being a mobile-first entity because that’s where people want content, according to Lucas.
“People wonder why ratings are going down, down, down and advertisers are paying more, more and more. It’s because the consumer wants to see it when they want it, all the time. In their pocket, on their phone.”
To sum things up, he offers a baseball metaphor. “You associate that with a brand-safe environment, with data for targeting and data for measurement and third-party measurement, I think you’re delivering a home run.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>Back in February, the MTV owner – which is itself the target of a takeover by CBS – acquired eight-year-old VidCon, which examines how a new generation of YouTube talent is coming to market.
But operating a conference sounds more like something an old-line B2B publisher would do. What does VidCon bring Viacom?
“We bring a great entrée into the world of online video, into the talent and creators and producers that are growing up in this new world of media,” says VidCon GM Jim Louderback. “We allow Viacom Digital Studio to extend itself into an experiential place as well.
“It really is part of that whole spectrum of engaging with audiences, building affinity with audiences, having the audiences love you, and doing that in lots of different places.”
In truth, whilst VidCon includes plenty of debates and discussions, it is also a showcase, where young YouTube talent can demonstrate itself to an audience of commissioners.
Louderback is the video industry veteran who once helmed Revision3, the pioneering internet video producer.
VidCon is coming up this june 20 to 23 at Anaheim, California, with three separate tracks for community, creators and industry topics. Signifying the demographic of some of the talent it is putting on stage, VidCon has even laid on services for parents and chaperones.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>Meredith used its NewFronts presentation to announce additions to its over-the-top PeopleTV service, including “Chatter,” a live talk show hosted by actress Rosie Diaz that will appear on both PeopleTV and Twitter. Meredith also debuted “Search History,” a comedy in which Michelle Collins “digs deep and peruses through the phones of unsuspecting, shocked bystanders.”
In this interview with Beet.TV, Kozo, who is in addition to being Manager, Digital Partnerships, at Initiative is a self-professed comedy lover, reacts to Meredith’s latest efforts “as a marketer who has seen everything being pitched to me that’s under the sun.” She also discusses the benefits and pitfalls for brands that engage in live content.
“I definitely thought Meredith did a great job with who they brought on to represent and to showcase the programs and the live feeds that they’re doing,” Kozo says. “I mean, clearly it worked. Everyone in the room was laughing and was enjoying what they were engaging with.
“I know I’m going to start looking at People now and Chatter. I don’t even, like, really use Twitter and I’m like, ‘I should get back on Twitter.’ I just want to follow this program because it’s funny and it’s light, but it’s also doing a good job of connecting with their consumers,” she adds.
Kozo thinks live content is “a great opportunity” but cautions that brands “need to have a lot of trust in who you’re aligning with, especially since it’s typically fairly unscripted. You can’t plan for how things are going to go and you can’t really take back your message after it’s been shown.”
More to the point, live content entails advertisers giving up a large degree of control, “which I think is really tough for marketers to do.”
Nonetheless, she thinks live is a great opportunity.
“I think it’s when people are most leaned in. People want stuff right away. They want to be cutting edge. People are always connected and they just want to be at the forefront of whatever’s happening.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>Vice Media head of sales Dawn Williamson says those campaigns don’t just look better; they perform better, too.
“We often do brand studies associated with programs that we do and what we found is, when Vice creates the creative in conjunction with our partners, the lift of the brand usage is much greater,” she tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “The brand lift awareness is there.
“So it’s about really leveraging our ability to get the message across for an advertiser in an impactful way, and we’ve done research to make sure that that’s an attribution tied to those custom-created units.”
Vice Media sponsored content includes that from Warner Bros, promoting the movie Kong: Skull Island, and Nike, with a short documentary film on 15 Years Of SB Dunk.
Williamson says a favorite example is Smirnoff’s Equalizing Music campaign, an effort to double the number of female headliners at electronic music festivals.
“We worked in tandem with Smirnoff, with this insight, to create a whole programme to elevate awareness of that and build the headliner base of females in electronic music,” she says.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>But one stands head and shoulders above others, according to a boss from one tech company helping advertisers deliver in to the new channels.
“(There is) anything from smart TV, a Samsung or an LG smart TV with apps, or streaming devices like Apple TV or Roku or Amazon Fire or Chromecast,” says Innovid co-founder Tal Chalozing.
“What we see right now – just in terms of share, we see Roku as the largest device right now in terms of delivery of ads on a monthly basis.”
Park Associates’ sales data showed Roku was the leading installed OTT device in Q1 2017, though Amazon this January said its Fire TV Stick was beating Roku, without breaking out sales figures.
Earlier this year, Roku introduced Roku Ad Insights, a suite of four tools to measure the effectiveness of ads placed in its platform.
But Chalozin, whose company has been going a decade, says he can already see Roku doesn’t just have more users – it has the most engaged users.
“And also in terms of engagement, we see Roku is leading the charge in terms of catering to an audience that understands that this is not television in the way that television used to be, but television that you can create a two-way communication with,” he adds.
“People will pull in their Roku remote, understand that there is a call-to-action, interact, click on the remote, use left and right (buttons), even voice navigation in order to engage with a commercial.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>“One of the things that you’ll see is that e-commerce tends to end up over on the side in some cases,” Meredith’s VP, Innovation, Corbin de Rubertis says in this interview with Beet.TV. “But we really try and weave it into the experience itself. As when you’re looking at a recipe, for example, you should be able to see the ingredients from local stores or Amazon Fresh, for that matter.”
The weaving results in “a discreet button” at, say, the bottom of a recipe. “You can push the button and all that stuff goes into the cart and you’ll have it on your doorstep that afternoon,” says de Rubertis, adding that Meredith has a “really interesting network of partners” on the retail side.
“Then we also work with the brands, because the brands are often positioned inside the retailers. We want to make sure there’s a place for them as well.”
Sometimes Meredith will work with both at once, for example a L’Oreal skincare product that can be purchased online at Target.
Like other publishers, Meredith has long positioned relevant products nearby its editorial content, separated from the content itself. A recipe in Better Homes & Gardens might be accompanied by suggested cooking utensils.
While the concept of e-commerce is nothing new, de Rubertis says it should be better integrated into the content consumption process.
“I think in a way, it’s almost just getting started,” he says. “It’s been relegated to kind of the back page or a shopping section on most sites and we’re really betting on the fact that consumers want to see that as long it’s relevant.
“As long as it’s relevant and useful, contextualized and appropriately targeted at the audience, we believe it’s part of the content in a lot of ways. It saves the consumers from having to go off to retailers’ sites sometimes and kind of ping pong in between so they get the inspiration and they can act on it immediately.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>“If you’re constantly just trying to get that pre-roll in front of a consumer and all they’re doing is waiting for that skip button, you’re wasting the whole effort,” the agency’s Head of Performance Marketing says in this interview with Beet.TV during the Digital Content NewFronts presentations.
Looking at the mix between branding and activation, it pretty much needs to be customized based on the product or service category, says Cannata.
“If you go heavy brand on a retail category, you’re not going to get the lift you’d expect because the consumers now are dealing with a daily media assault of ads. So how do you punch through that and connect to them and build that emotional connection to the brand?”
Data obviously plays a big part in understanding consumers and what messaging will resonate with them. “It’s all about behavior now. I think the breakdown between performance and what it used to mean is different. It’s just advertising now,” says Cannata.
Asked about creative versioning, he cites the attendant financial constraints involved but feels it’s important element of connecting with consumers if done properly.
“If I’m showing you a message versus what I’ve seen, that’s got to be tailored to what resonates for me. It think that versioning is going to play an important part in how we break through that media assault.”
While interactive ads are moving beyond display, video is still king, according to Cannata. But where much video consumption is taking place poses challenges to impacting viewer behavior.
“They’re spending their time on mobile. Creatively, how we do that is going to be a challenge. It’s a new world.”
He believes that even with the rise of ad-blocking solutions, display isn’t dead. It’s just going to take a different form. “And I think that’s building video into it.”
This is where out-stream comes in. “Putting headlines on the videos to get people to think about watching and not skipping” and “actually make something that people are going to interact with.”
Trends like VAST (video ad-serving template) overtaking VPAID (video player ad-serving interface definition) “allows us to do that in mobile apps a little bit better. Cache it, buffer it. Let it play just like it would on TV and consumers will appreciate that a little more.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>Whether it’s Twitter and ESPN or Disney and Tastemade, “To me, that was very encouraging seeing all these partnerships form and bringing premium video into a more expanded space,” Francois Lee says in this interview with Beet.TV.
Among the deluge of announcements at the NewFronts, Disney revealed that the launch of the Disney Eats brand, partnering with online foodie network Tastemade to develop original content, as Deadline reports.
As someone who works primarily in the television space, the EVP of Video Investment at media agency Assembly is always on the lookout for “places where we can find premium TV-like video in a brand-safe environment with scale.”
Besides acknowledging the nexus of digital and traditional TV, Lee comes away from the NewFronts presentations impressed by the increasing number of publishers launching their own over-the-top channels. “It’s definitely table stakes now,” he says.
While content was front and center at the NewFronts, performance metrics or guarantees were less so. “I think there’s an expectation that if you’re in digital video you’ll be able to provide digital video like metrics, which is not always the case of course.”
Lee is encouraged by better TV-targeting options from the likes of OpenAP, calling it a “healthy trend.” While measurement still needs to advance, “from an attribution model standpoint there’s a lot more we know about what networks what dayparts what programs are driving ROI.”
The missing piece is incremental improvement on ROI on the back end of campaigns.
“We need the networks to say, ‘if you’re going to create this data-led approach then you need to guarantee me ROI on the back end,’” for example guaranteeing performance on age/sex demos plus one of an advertiser’s own targets. “We want an actual ROI on the back end, which I think would really put skin in the game for the networks,” Lee adds.
“We’re definitely seeing improvements from last year to this year. We’re not quite there yet, but I think we’ve made quite a lot of progress in a year.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>“What I’m psyched about in terms of Channel29 is that we’re going to take the best of what it means to do native advertising inside of the digital space and we are going to bring that model into the TV space.”
In the short term, plans call for a “full, native integration of content in live programming” and over the course of time “we will look at doing more consumer-friendly commercials,” Personette adds.
“That said, I don’t think we’ll ever do a 30-second spot. I think we’ll be focused more so on what we have learned about what it means to consumer video in a mobile-first world, and that means more like six seconds and more like fifteen seconds.”
Available on smart TVs and Refinery29’s digital platforms, the channel will be for young, progressive female-oriented stories, as MediaPost reports. Refinery29, which has a presence in the UK and Germany, will be expanding its brand to Canada and France.
The goal of Channel29 is to offer “powerful female stories” wherever and however users want to engage with them. It will benefit from Refinery’s reach on owned-and-operated venues in addition to its broad social media presence, something that has greatly benefited the 29Rooms experience.
“We originally launched 29Rooms as just a pop-up event and invited people to come celebrate with us and there were lines down the corner,” says Personette. “We have seen the growth of 29Rooms as an experience continue to elevate and escalate over the course of the last three to four years and we feel that same way for channel 29.”
While the hypothesis of Refinery29 has been that if brands can create a social impact it can drive business results, there’s little research to support it. So the company partnered with Spark Neuro to conduct quantitative, biometric research.
Among the findings are that when a brand attempts to have an “inclusive human and empathetic conversation and dialogue” with women, it can change their self-perceptions and “drive better ad recall for that brand. It actually drives increases in purchase intent and it drives increases in overall conversion.”
Refinery29 plans to use the findings to “take that step into a territory that maybe brands and businesses wouldn’t have been comfortable in before,” Personette says.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>One of the founders of the Digital Content NewFronts, Digitas titled its own presentation this year The #Boycott NewFront. Afterward, in this interview with Beet.TV, Kahn makes the agency’s case for brand involvement in issues to which consumers can relate.
“Right now, everyone’s taking sides in issues everyone has causes and beliefs and brands need to have them too,” Kahn explains. “So it’s time to make that part of your agenda, part of your strategy and part of your curriculum.”
It’s the agency’s role to set the table by imparting information and knowledge about the conversations that are always happening within a given brand’s consumer set. “Understand the interaction that their audience has out in the marketplace. And then sharing with them all the stories of brands that have taken stands, have a brand view and the positive outcomes.”
Those outcomes aren’t necessarily material in nature, for example sales and market share, according to Kahn.
“I’m talking about brand reputation, brand preference, loyalty, enthusiasm and love. You can tell them those stories and then work with them in an authentic way for them to identify what resonates for them, what they can stand for.”
Asked about measuring performance, Kahn says it’s always been about driving things at the point of conversion “and now it’s about driving things at the point of connection” based on genuine, authentic brand identity.
“So I think it’s changed now that performance can’t be driven by just straight call to action. It’s got to be created by an emotional connection and I think that’s where an agency like Digitas can jump in and help the clients we serve.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>The announcement comes less than two years after the launch of Group Nine, whose four vertical brands are NowThis (news), Thrillist (food, drink and travel), the Dodo (animal lovers) and Seeker (science and tech).
Following its NewFronts presentation, Carone tells Beet.TV about the company’s mantra—a “maniacal” focus on its audiences—and the progress it’s making with brands across various product and service categories.
“How we prioritize our people, platforms and purpose in all of our storytelling. That was the through line to our whole presentation today,” says Carone.
Group Nine’s audience-first approach is backed by scale of reach the four brands achieve and the resulting insights. “So when we take a look at an aggregation of all of the content that we produce on a daily basis, we’re able to draw some fascinating insights on what interests our audience.”
Beyond reach, “we have some of the leading engagement metrics across digital media,” Carone adds.
Group Nine is flexible in how brands engage with its content and audiences. “We also have the ability to work with our advertisers’ own advertising assets and contextualize those assets so they’re in the tone of voice, they’re in the format that our audience is used to seeing.”
Carone says the company is “definitely building a lot of momentum in the entertainment business, a lot more momentum in the CPG business, which I’m so thrilled about, a fair amount in auto.”
Group Nine also used its NewFronts presence to highlight work it has done with Samsung. Last year, it created about two dozen 360-degree videos on Facebook for the VR headset Samsung Gear 360, generating 161 million views in five months and becoming the most popular brand campaign on Facebook in 2017, as AdExchanger reports.
“With Seeker, we’re working a lot more with BtoB companies in the technology space who are interested in being part of those conversations that are all about harnessing the curiosity that we have today,” Carone says.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>“For me, the thing that’s really standing out the most is it feels like this year’s really the tipping point in which people feel like their content needs to speak to a larger purpose and tap into some of the cultural and political movements that are happening,” Cooper says in this interview with Beet.TV.
It’s not just about brands having content that can entertain and content that serves utility, “whether it’s how to style your white jeans or what I’m going to make for dinner,” Cooper adds. “But now really highlighting these stories of change makers and people who have not necessarily had their story told before.”
The Advertising Manager for Cotton, Inc. talks about Meredith Corporation’s NewFront presentation involving people who have stepped up after national disasters and how they’ve been able to make real changes in their communities.
“And not necessarily at the moment of that natural disaster when the cameras are still on but later when the cameras are turned off. And that’s when the hardships really set in.”
Brands can be in a good position to become involved because they often have resources that some community causes might not. Plus they “have the microphone” and can amplify the need for help.
“We know that consumers take it really seriously when brands support a cause and they’re that much more likely to engage with the brand and, if you sell something, shop your products,” Cooper says.
Given that consumers want the path to purchase to be as easy as possible, Cooper noted “a number of different technology innovations this week” that make it as easy as possible.
“Whether it’s shopping in video or shopping within an article. However you can minimize the amount of clicks to the purchase I think will be a win for consumers,” says Cooper.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>“I’ve been really impressed with the content that I’ve seen. I think over the last number of years we’ve seen the quality of this content,” Lutz, who is President, Investment at Starcom, says in this interview with Beet.TV.
In addition to quality content “there’s a lot of quantity,” Lutz adds. “But we’re seeing some real quality in what is coming through from all the partners this year. That excites me for our clients. I think there are a lot of areas of opportunity to integrate with that.”
Lutz is excited about what she heard from Meredith’s representatives “and the ability for the two companies to come together I think is really interesting. Looking forward to diving into that with our partners to talk about that opportunity.”
Asked about issues surrounding data, she hopes for a “continued understanding of transparency, and then taking that a bit further.”
NewFronts attendees heard a lot about brand safety, “minimization of fraud and having verification of our spots running in the right places is really important,” Lutz says.
She believes agency partners are more important than ever to help clients navigate together the changing landscape “and challenges and difficulties that we’re having right now. I feel closer to my clients than ever in terms of that partnership and hopefully we can help navigate these waters over the next few months.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>We spoke with him on Thursday on stage after the Meredith NewFront. He shared his takeaways from the week of NewFronts, the state of video advertising and his impressions of the Meredith presentation which he calls “fantastic and fresh.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
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