If those are the three Ps of the practice known as supply path optimization (SPO), then here is another framework.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Ashwini Karandikar, EVP, Media, Technology, Data of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), sets out what she calls a “clean supply framework”.
“Cleaning up suppliers is not just a function of adding a tag to your brand safety tag or what-have-you,” she says. “It takes all parties to participate to ensure that what you are curating is suitable and clean for your brand.
In fact, Karandikar sets out four “pillars”:
SPO has risen as more ad buyers have wanted a better handle on the kinds of inventory they are really buying, and how.
It has also grown in importance as ethics and responsible behavior have risen on the agendas of not only publishers but, crucially, ad buyers.
In the past, Karandikar says, the notion of cleaning up supply was mainly restricted to programmatic media.
But now that more media have become digital media, applying SPO principles – in terms of how advertisers can plan, buy, optimise, analyse and go back and feed all this data back into their next planning cycle – is possible for all media types, Karandikar says.
But what if it could also move the needle on social responsibility?
In this video interview with Beet.TV, GroupM VP, Managing Partner, Global Head of Programmatic, explains how SPO is changing.
SPO has risen as more ad buyers have wanted a better handle on the kinds of inventory they are really buying, and how.
But now it’s more than that.
“The idea of inclusion in social responsibility, understanding what properties our clients and GroupM is really supporting, is really at the forefront of our minds and has been for a bit,” Jaffe says.
He says the first step is to focus around understanding all of the players within the path, their alignment and focus with buyer aims.
GroupM works with SSPs from the likes of Index Exchange, SpotX and PubMatic.
But SPO is evolving now to focus on more than just SSPs, Jaffe says, pointing to the importance of all three parties:
Europe ignited the new privacy era with its GDPR legislation, prompting California’s CCPA, deprecation of third-party cookies and other mobile identifiers and now a federal look at privacy policy.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, 4As EVP for government relations Alison Pepper says agencies are having to live with the new regulated environment – but they deserve a consistent approach.
“The advertising industry is really at an inflexion point when it comes to privacy right now,” she says.
Pepper thinks the last time such a moment hit advertising was around 2007 and 2008, when the industry got together and coalesced around self-regulatory principles for online behavioural advertising.
“I think we’re no longer in an environment where we can really truly rely on self-regulation to do what needs to happen to keep our industry thriving and vibrant,” she says.
So, more regulation is happening; most people accept that.
But Pepper is one of many advertising industry executives who are craving a consistent approach to that regulation, so that companies don’t have to operate in different ways for different states and countries.
She is speaking for the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Pepper’s words are a call on behalf of ad agencies for simplicity.
“We’re really going to have to regulate … at a national level so that we don’t see this bifurcation of different privacy regimes happen at the state level,” she says.
“Agencies have so many touchpoints into how they’re getting data and how they’re using data that I think agencies increasingly have a really strong interest in seeing one national standard. They really need uniformity.”
This video is part of the Global Forum on Responsible Media produced by Beet.TV, GroupM with the 4A’s. This track on data, identity and a transparent supply chain is sponsored by MediaMath. For more videos on this topic, visit this page.
]]>For Marlo Skiko, it also marked another change. From being EVP ad ad agency Starcom, Skiko went brand-side at Ford Motor Company, as US and global head of media.
In this fireside interview with Mindshare North America CEO Amanda Richman for Beet.TV, Skiko says her time has been characterized by quests toward brand safety, ad-buying transparency and understanding of a diverse consumer set.
“As we look for ‘where’s the growth going to come from?’, that leads us to audiences that we may have been courting,” Skiko says.
“But maybe we need to put some more effort there, and understanding that and what that leads us to, ‘Okay, who’s next? How are we most relevant for growth audiences for diverse audiences, for women, audiences that we’re saying we have some of, but these new products may help us engage in even better ways than we have already?'”
That drive is becoming more important. Ford US sales in June 2021 were 26.9% down on the prior year.
But the company is now pushing the pedal on a new generation of electric vehicles, with a Mustang all-electric and electric and hybrid versions of F-150 and Escape.
It’s the truck of our past, and our present. On May 19, it becomes the truck of our future.#F150Lightning #BuiltFordProud pic.twitter.com/I72ZVTc1oQ
— Ford Motor Company (@Ford) May 10, 2021
Skiko wants to ensure that she has adequate sight of where Ford is showing up.
Last year, she set a new series of expectations around ad transparency and brand safety, re-setting expectations of its partners in a more deliberate fashion.
“If we’re not defined in what our expectations are and we set what the accountability is, it’s really hard to lead that conversation” she says.
“In this past year, we became even more laser-focused and set very refined criteria where there can’t be a question. And we broke it down and had just a very methodical framework.
“Then we went to our partners and we had purposeful conversation … a two way dialogue that we lay out what’s really important to us and that we have a roadmap to get there.”
That roadmap will now be key in Ford understanding who, amongst a diverse customer set for a diverse vehicle line-up, it is reaching and how effectively.
.@mskiko, Head of U.S. & Global Media, @Ford, assumed her position in Jan. 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning to spread.
What's one of @Ford's key takeaways of 2020 according to @mskiko? Don't think about women one-dimensionally.
Read more: https://t.co/bLnwd4EfJr pic.twitter.com/pCMhtVfu23
— SeeHer (@SeeHerOfficial) June 11, 2021
But Skiko doesn’t think Ford can, or should, make the journey alone.
The group is part of PRAM, the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media, a diverse range of ad-interested groups trying to re-think the use of technology in light of software vendor changes.
“No one marketer can define this just on their agenda,” Skiko says.
She says she wants to answer a broad set of questions, like: “How are we being perceived? How are we showing up? And what do we need to do to be as clear and transparent to people when they come to us, no matter how they visit us?”
But, she says: “That takes all of us working together because it won’t just fall into place if we don’t connect those dots in the right ways. It really takes all of us together.”
This video is part of the Global Forum on Responsible Media produced by Beet.TV, GroupM with the 4A’s. This track on data, identity and a transparent supply chain is sponsored by MediaMath. For more videos on this topic, visit this page.
]]>In April, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), of which Liodice is CEO, issued a call seeking a consultant to conduct a study to help the organization understand how much actual spend is siphoned off in assorted fees.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Liodice and O’Connell use the language of military strategy to discuss the “information asymmetry” and “unknowables” at the heart of the industry.
ANA’s interest was sparked by a report by ISBA, the trade body for UK advertisers, the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and auditor PwC, which found 15% of advertiser spend could not be attributed, whilst publishers receive only 51% of advertiser spend on average.
The figures were described as “mind-boggling” – especially several years after earlier industry reports first raised the problems around “ad tax” and transparency.
“The ad tech community is probably the least understood within the purview of brands and marketers,” Liodice says.
“It’s extraordinarily complex. There are billions of transactions that happen second by second, there are an incredible amount of handoffs and deals that take place between buyers and sellers, between SSPs and DSPs.
“The ad tech community knows a hell of a lot about what’s going on, they understand data flows, money flows – and the marketers pretty much do not. A lot of times, brands are flying by the seat of their pants.”
The problem, Liodice says, is “you don’t know what you don’t know”. He describes the “lack of information that we have to be able to make these decisions and optimise” as “almost opaque for us”.
That, in a programmatic world, is a far cry from history, when marketers had far more certainty about where fewer ads ran, in fewer destinations.
O’Connell and Liodice both hope a byproduct of the new focus on consumer privacy will be a cleaner, simpler and more transparent ad supply chain.
“Particularly now, as Google is deprecating its cookies and Apple is changing its IDFA policies, the marketers are essentially in the dark,” Liodice says.
This video is part of the Global Forum on Responsible Media produced by Beet.TV, GroupM with the 4A’s. This track on data, identity and a transparent supply chain is sponsored by MediaMath. For more videos on this topic, visit this page.
]]>It all boils down to a need to balance two key pillars – performance and responsibility – according to MediaMath chief partnerships officer Laurent Cordier.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Cordier talks about how those imperatives can come to the fore.
Cordier says there are two key considerations:
He continues: “The role of the CMOs is critical.
“They’re the one who can influence their team about where to spend, and how important it is for any top brand in the world to continue to fuel the free, ad-supported web ecosystem with great dollars, with great money, with great advertising money.”
In 2019, MediaMath launched a new initiative, Source, committing to:
Source is MediaMath’s effort to bring together several hand-picked ad-tech vendors committed to accountability, addressability and AI.
Cordier is an 11-year Google veteran who joined MediaMath this April from HeadSpin, a video delivery company.
This video is part of the Global Forum on Responsible Media produced by Beet.TV, GroupM with the 4A’s. This track on data, identity and a transparent supply chain is sponsored by MediaMath. For more videos on this topic, visit this page.
]]>“Profound change,” according to GroupM North America CEO Kirk McDonald.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, McDonald interviews MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki on how the entire advertising industry can reboot itself for a new era.
Both McDonald and Zawadzki agreed cookies, the third-party usage of which is being deprecated, are a “20-year-old hack” on top of rudimentary browser technology, and are ill-suited to modern demands.
“If you thought that either last click or post-click post view was the right basis by which to manage a $500 billion industry on our way to a trillion dollars… is it going to work by asking people to touch their TV?,” Zawadzki said. “Highly unlikely.”
"The advertising ecosystem is begging for a redesign and it’s our job to give it one." Read more from our CPO, Anudit Vikram, on the urgent need for programmatic redesign, live now on @TheDrum: https://t.co/1g4eO3nZfO
— MediaMath (@mediamath) June 29, 2021
“We’re in a situation where we want to recreate addressability as defined by the humans behind the screens and speakers, which is good. But the way that we’re going to have to do it – we’ll have to become enterprise-open. It’ll have to be a portfolio of solutions.
“Those things will need to be selected, stitched in scale – it’s going to be deterministic solutions, probabilistic solutions, open solutions, proprietary solutions. You’re going to have to put these things together in a way that allows for orchestration across set screens and speakers.”
Zawadzki said the new-look industry organization demands a more consensual, all-hands approach to redefinition. Previously, he suggested, self-interest ruled.
“People (have been) operating in silos in isolation… optimising for publisher yields, optimising for advertiser performance, optimising for intermediary profit growth,” he said.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
“You can’t solve the industry challenges in a silo.”
Global Forum on Responsible Media – Watch the Program on Demand
Ultimately, the significant disruption happening in the ad industry can be beneficial, the MediaMath CEO said.
“It is a requirement that the industry reorganise itself around a new set of principles and work backwards from what it should look like and what it needs to look like.”
And GroupM CEO McDonald agreed. “Profound times require profound change,” he said.
“Profound change does have us have to sort of look in the mirror.”
This video is part of the Global Forum on Responsible Media produced by Beet.TV, GroupM with the 4A’s. The entire Forum can be watched on-demand here, and all videos from this project can be found here.
]]>Whilst it may seem easier to manage that direct, there is a school of thought that it is actually going to make things rather complicated.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jeremy Hlavacek, chief revenue officer of IBM Watson Advertising, explains why – and what the answer may be.
Hlavacek says it is vital to ensure “transparency” in the ad supply chain. But he acknowledges people in the industry are confused about what that means – anything from algorithmic “black boxes” to ad margin taken by partners.
He advocates a two-step response:
That’s when things are going to get hard to manage, Hlavacek reckons.
“We’re moving to a first-party data model where you’re going to have data coming in a consumer privacy safe way, but it’s going to come from a lot of sources,” he says.
“It’s going to come from publishers. It’s going to come from ad tech companies. It’s going to come from marketers.
“So, you’re bringing together all these data streams from a variety of different places. They’re all going to be about the same consumer, about me or you, but they’re going to need to be rationalised and organised.”
Artificial intelligence can help, Hlavacek says.
What is AI really? More specifically, machine learning – as a key pillar of AI – involves algorithms, trained on data sets to identify patterns, predicting future events from similar streams of input data.
In particular, AI can make meaning of large unstructured data sets.
As AI gets used, however, it will be important that consumers have sight of what is happening.
“I have a lot of sympathy for consumers who are trying to figure it out,” says IBM’s Hlavacek. “We want them to understand the value exchange, that those advertising experiences ultimately create the open internet and create free content.”
A growing number of marketers are coming to that conclusion.
In Beet.tv’s Responsible Media Global Forum with GroupM and the 4As, plus with IBM Watson Advertising, MediaMath, Nielsen and Pubmatic, a series of guest speakers wrestled with balancing the new capabilities with a drive for simplicity.
ANA CEO Bob Liodice said a major problem is “information asymmetry”, the “increasing level of opacity” over advertising data.
“This is very different from where we were 10 years ago, when we had such a relatively simple landscape,” he said.
“Marketers are receiving relatively less and less information for which to be able to make responsible media investment decisions. We have less to make those calls and less to be able to analyse the impact of those results.”
4A’s EVP for government relations Alison Pepper said agencies are having to live with the new regulated environment – but they deserve a consistent approach.
“I think we’re no longer in an environment where we can really truly rely on self-regulation to do what needs to happen to keep our industry thriving and vibrant,” she said. “I think we are at an inflexion point.
“We’re really going to have to regulate … at a national level so that we don’t see this bifurcation of different privacy regimes happen at the state level. Agencies have so many touchpoints into how they’re getting data and how they’re using data that I think agencies increasingly have a really strong interest in seeing one national standard. They really need uniformity.”
IBM Watson Advertising revenue head Jeremy Hlavacek said improvements are coming.
“It’s clearly time for improvement and reinvention. I’m encouraged by the increased transparency that we’re demonstrating on our platforms,” he said.
“And I’m encouraged by how we can take this ecosystem to the next level and have it be both data-driven and intelligent, but also consumer-friendly and privacy-safe.”
GroupM global head of programmatic Max Jaffe said agencies are also having to ensure responsible media buying in this complex environment.
“The idea of inclusion in the social responsibility and understanding what properties our clients in GroupM is really supporting is really at the forefront of our minds and has been for a bit,” Jaffe said.
“Understanding how (players’) alignment and what their focus is on these types of issues and topics is really important.”
The considerations keep coming, however, as 4A’s chief operating officer Ashwini Karandikar says the drive to guarantee the provenance of ad inventory remains important.
“In the past, the notion of cleaning up supply was mainly restricted to programmatic media,” Karandikar said.
“At this point, there is so much programmatic guaranteed buyers that are already in place across all media types, across television, across audio, across just standard digital properties that are applying these same principles in terms of how you plan, buy, optimise, analyse, and go back and feed all this data back into your next planning cycle is possible for all media types.”
It all boils down to a need to balance two key pillars – performance and responsibility – according to MediaMath chief partnerships officer Laurent Cordier.
“We should aim (to) make programmatic performing, make programmatic transparent, make programmatic valuable,” Cordier said.
“The second side is, ‘What’s your responsibility, how do you see your responsibility or your role in continuing to favour or flourishing an open ecosystem?'”