Overall, this year’s Upfront is “not all that different from a marketplace that’s reflective of a relatively healthy economic backdrop,” Geraci, who is President of National Video Investment at OMD, says in this interview conducted by OMD’s Ben Winkler at the recent Beet Retreat in the City. “There is a significant amount of pressure in certain areas, mostly due to supply dynamics in linear television and fragmented viewership, combined with some increased spending from advertisers that rely heavily on television,” says Geraci.
He pinpoints that reliance in large part as relating to older-skewing brands for which “television is still really the best place, the most fertile hunting ground.”
Asked about efforts by providers like Fox and NBCUniversal to roll out reduced ad-load offerings, Geraci responds, “Time will tell.”
While there are potential positives in making the linear TV experience more like what viewers can get with digital offerings, reducing commercial load comes with a big caveat. “When you restrict supply, there are going to be pricing issues, and we get that,” Geraci explains. “The astute buyer tries to pay the lower price and we’re making efforts in that regard.”
Asked by Winkler about the efforts by Fox and NBCU, Geraci says, “I don’t know that we’re there yet in terms of finding that price-value relationship, for at least the two being discussed now.”
Looking ahead, Geraci outlines his desired outcome. “Our hope is that over time, if the expectation is that the viewing experience is better, more people will interact with the programming, ratings will ultimately increase. That’s the hope is that if you improve the experience you’re going to ultimately further down the road build back supply simply by higher ratings of at last live or slightly delayed commercial television. That’s sort of the holy grail.”
As for his thoughts on OpenAP, the audience targeting consortium started by Fox, Turner and Viacom that both NBCU and Univision recently joined, Geraci calls it “sort of common ground if you will for the optimization systems. If you can bring standardization to anything that is not standardized, in general you create more interchangeability in the marketplace and basically a more level playing field, and you allow the advertiser to make better decisions and selections.”
Geraci notes that OpenAP is for planning using common audience target definitions across networks but not for actual purchasing of inventory. So buyers are still “forced to optimize within just their set of offerings. It’s not the completely fluid situation that we’d like to see.”
One thing that has changed for the better over the decades that Geraci has experienced the back and forth of Upfront dealings is the temperament. He says there’s “more of a sense of fair play I think nowadays than I think than there was in the earlier times.”
This video was produced at the Beet Retreat in City & Town Hall on June 6, 2018 in New York City. The event and video series are presented by LiveRamp, TiVo, true[X] and 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>Titled Television Advances as Consumers Choose: The Beet.TV Town Hall, the event will bring together leaders in the advertising and media industry for a full day of conversation and interaction presented by LiveRamp, TiVo, true[X] and 605. Topics will include the rise of distribution platforms competing with linear TV, advanced audience targeting and how creative units are evolving to complement shifting consumer viewing preferences.
“Rewind only a couple of years and the Upfronts were about here’s our shows with almost no discussion about the things that make up fifteen, twenty percent of that hour, which is advertising,” Winkler says in this interview with Beet.TV. “I think we got to the point where even people in advertising realize and recognize the ad experience is not a great one, and that’s bad for the entire industry.”
When everyone starts to see “the entire experience, not just the shows, through the eyes of consumers, that’s when you start to get creative,” Winkler adds. “That’s when you start to deliver better experiences.”
The bottom line: help advertisers grow their businesses, regardless of whether their ads run six seconds or six minutes. “As long as it’s a good experience and not just the same thirty seconds one after another after another after another in a pod of eight or nine spots. That’s a good thing.”
OMD embraces the search for the most optimal ad experiences, according to Winkler. “We’re testing the hell out of it. No one has ever gone wrong by considering the consumer. And more and more, we’re seeing that shift happening.”
Beet Retreat in the City will be held at Meredith Corporation’s Luce Auditorium, 225 Liberty Street. Joining Winkler on the dais will be, among others:
Phil Cowdell, Global President, Client Services, GroupM
Laura Desmond, CEO, Eagle Vista Partners
Kristin Dolan, CEO, 605
Christopher Geraci, President, National Video Investment at Omnicom Media Group
Walt Horstman, SVP Advanced TV, TiVo
David Kline, President, Spectrum Reach, Executive Vice President, Charter
Allison Metcalfe, GM LiveTV, LiveRamp
Pooja Midha, President, true[X]
Rob Norman, Advisor
Babs Rangaiah, Executive Partner, Global Marketing iX at IBM
Nancy Reyes, Managing Director, TBWA/Chiat Day/NY
Lyle Schwartz, Managing Director, TBWA/Chiat Day/NY
Doug Ray, Chairman, Dentsu Aegis Media
Mike Rosen, EVP, Advanced Advertising and Platform Sales at NBCUniversal
Ashley J. Swartz, CEO, Furious Corp.
Vikram Somaya, SVP, Global Data Officer & Ad Platforms, ESPN
Ben Tatta, President, 605
Jamie West, Deputy MD, Sky Media UK & Group Director of Advanced Advertising Sky PLC
Note: To request an invitation to the June 6 event, put your request in here.
]]>One agency exec says he is hoping to find a worthy rival to Google and Facebook, and proof that old-line publishers can prove themselves in the new world.
“One thing we’ll be looking for is if more traditional publishers can prove that they deserve to be at the digital table, whether that’s Meredith or Viacom, or ESPN and their first run-in with the NewFronts. Can they deliver a killer digital product?,” says OMD’s Ben Winkler”
“We’ll also be looking to see if Oath can be a legitimate player on the big, big stage. Can they create a triopoly with Google and Facebook? We’ll be looking to see if Twitter, for example, can expand from being a publisher around big events to being a publisher of big events, with their video product. There’s a lot of things to prove out, and we’re going to be listening closely.”
The NewFronts is organized by IAB to allow publishers a space to pitch their content ideas to eager advertisers on Madison Avenue.
Starting avenue, more than 15 such publishers will be presenting – fewer than last year, when some agencies complained at the complexities of meeting that number.
“I think what I’m most excited about is the culling of the NewFronts from, last year, there were 32 partners, to 15 this year, and critically, just one week,” Winkler adds. “Obviously, there’s logistical benefits of that, but more importantly now, everyone out there, to a greater or lesser degree, can credibly say that they deliver great video content at scale.
“That means less running around, less introducing clients to publishers. The publishers can spend less time explaining who they are and more time explaining what they do and how they can benefit our clients and their businesses, which is good for everybody.”
This video is part of a series titled The Road to the Digital Content NewFronts. It is a preview of topics to be explored at IAB’s NewFronts, which begin on April 30. This series is presented by Meredith Corporation. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>Therein lies a paradox of sorts, given NBCU’s public bashing of some of the new generation of content providers. So it’s noteworthy to hear the company’s sales chief, Linda Yaccarino, discuss issues like brand safety, premium video and “shiny new toys” in this interview conducted by OMD’s investment chief Ben Winkler at the FreeWheel/Beet.TV New TV Ecosystem Leadership Forum, which took place at the Comcast beach cabana.
Winkler set the stage by asking Yaccarino to square her comments about advertisers over-allocating spending to digital platforms with a wave of negative comments about brand safety on some of those platforms. Were the two connected?
Yaccarino responded by citing a “dangerous soup of an environment that we live in today. I don’t think anyone has the answer yet of what’s the right magical number of the mix, of premium content to digital.”
At the next Cannes festival, the subject may very well be moot, as far as Yaccarino is concerned. “Next year, I hope we stop talking about digital versus linear. In a year or two it’s all going to be the same thing,” she said. “But the turf war isn’t about digital versus linear. It’s how can we come together and help our clients sell more product.”
Winkler asked why NBCU disparaged “shiny new toys” in the digital space but proceeded to invest in and partner with some of them. That all depends on how one defines shiny objects, Yaccarino said.
Citing Apple News, BuzzFeed, Snapchat and Vox, she said, “It’s all populated by one thing and that’s premium content.”
Consumers have already dispelled any semantical differences between traditional TV content and video, according to Yaccarino. “The consumer is already there. They see no difference between accessing content via the big screen on the wall in their home or the screen in their lap or the screen in their hand.”
However, barriers still remain in the “ease of transaction for our customers,” she noted, “and the ability to offer them unified measurement or, God forbid, a currency in which to transact.”
NBCU’s Symphony initiative is credited with, among other things, raising NBC from “worst to first” in ratings by pooling the resources of all company units—from linear digital to theme parks. Among the beneficiaries has been the program “This Is Us,” as The Los Angeles Times reports.
“The difference this year is that we’re able to spread that messaging through the partners that we’ve been talking about, Snapchat, Buzzfeed, Apple News so it’s very exciting,” said Yaccarino.
This video is from The New TV Ecosystem Forum at Cannes Lions 2017, presented by FreeWheel. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>In this interview with Beet.TV, Winkler mentions a conversation he had onstage with NBCUniversal sales chief Linda Yaccarino during the the FreeWheel/Beet.TV forum hosted by Comcast. He says her call for an agnostic approach to media selection strikes a chord of harmony.
“It’s great to talk to Linda. What’s especially heartening is I think that she and the industry as a whole lower your temperature a little bit around the us versus them, traditional versus digital,” Winkler says in this interview with Beet.TV.
From the beginning of the digital era, people like Winkler found it challenging when broadcast networks “would come out and say digital has garbage content,” Winkler recalls. Paradoxically, some of the same networks would then implore buyers to patronize digital companies in which the networks had invested.
“The reality is any advertiser to succeed needs a nice mix of different types of media,” says Winkler. “You simply cannot deliver on your business objectives if you just pick a single medium.”
He adds that it’s “nice to see that Linda is embracing that idea of a portfolio approach, NBCU being a big part of that. Certainly they deliver fantastic content.”
OMD’s clients “have an insatiable appetite” for video content, according to Winkler. “When I say video content, I don’t mean tiny videos with no sound that are watched for 1.8 seconds. We’re talking about the full commercial experience.”
Beyond traditional TV, there are few places where brands can indulge in “the full commercial experience,” he adds. “Strangely enough, Snapchat is one of those places and it’s good to see that Linda and NBC have invested in that as well.”
Outside of “the video paradigm,” brands also need platforms like Facebook to reach audiences at scale. “You get great data, remarkable targeting with very little waste,” Winkler says.
As with any medium there are challenges. “But at the risk of saying something obvious, you have to spread the wealth when it comes to media planning because it’s the only way to deliver your business objectives.”
This video is from The New TV Ecosystem Forum at Cannes Lions 2017, presented by FreeWheel. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>“I haven’t seen a single presentation that didn’t begin, have a middle and end with brand safety,” says the Chief Investment Officer at OMD. “I’ve seen the biggest rise on the side of brand safety and the biggest decline on the side of virtual reality.”
Last year, Winkler explains in this interview with Beet.TV, you could not walk out of NewFronts presentations “without Google Cardboard strapped to your head looking at the latest virtual reality options.” By contrast, this year some company presentations “aren’t even checking the box, and that’s a function of scale,” he adds. “Our clients need big scale to reach lots of people, and VR isn’t quite there yet.”
On the contrary, there’s no escaping the subject of brand safety in the light of some marketers pulling their ads from digital platforms that haven’t done enough to ensure their content is inoffensive. To Winkler’s way of thinking, there should not be a debate about the need for brand-safe environments.
“There’s nothing more important than the context in which our clients’ advertising appears. That’s what brand safety is,” he says.
Publishers that create and own their content have a “very simple and elegant story” about brand safety, he says. That’s a far cry from platforms that are populated with lots of user-generated content.
“The challenge YouTube will have is trying to combine their massive scale with the technology and human element to make all of our clients feel comfortable about advertising in that marketplace.”
He welcomes the audience-targeting consortium OpenAP formed by Fox, Turner and Viacom because it represents a radical departure from buying TV audiences based on broad age and gender demographics.
Being able to target specific audiences is “extraordinarily important” and it’s going to make TV more effective both for the advertisers and for the broadcasters themselves,” says Winkler.
We spoke with him at the Turner NewFronts presentation.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the #NewFronts, please visit this page.
]]>“What I think we’re going to start seeing with new technologies is using addressability as a way of versioning for national TV,” Winkler says in an interview with Beet.tv. “That’s really exciting stuff, particularly for our set of clients, many of whom are portfolio clients, all of whom are looking for growth.”
Media agencies have always touted their clout in getting the most advantageous rates for their clients owing to the sheer amount of money they spend. The same principle is still at play, but it’s just the starting point.
“Using technology, you can take the clout and those great rates but then deliver the right ad to the right person within that national buy,” Winkler says. “That’s a remarkable opportunity.”
More TV networks are realizing that in lieu of an increase in viewers, they need to bring more value to the table, according to Winkler. He cites NBC and Turner Broadcasting as examples of programmers using various data sets to optimize schedules on the fly. “And that’s a good thing. Just because we’re not doing pure programmatic doesn’t mean we’re not happy about the better performance we’re getting for our clients,” Winkler says.
For media agencies seeking to transition to the all-things-data approach to media planning and buying, the biggest change that Winkler has seen has been taking data out of the data silo “or even out of the digital silo, for that matter.”
OMD is seeing the biggest impact for its clients by “making data part of the beginning of the process and therefore affecting every medium that we plan and buy on behalf of our clients,” says Winkler. “When you do that, suddenly it’s 10X the impact. But only if you talk about data up front.”
As he looks ahead to CES 2017 in Las Vegas, Winkler will be trying to discern the most meaningful advances in television technology from the passing near-fads.
“We’ve seen a lot of gimmickry over the last few years, whether that’s curved TV’s or 3D TV’s,” he says.
So what went wrong? According to Winkler, manufacturers were focusing on the wrong types of technological advances.
“People want technology that makes it easier for them to watch more TV,” he explains. “Technology that lets you watch more TV is going to be embraced by the American public because we love to watch TV.”
Voice recognition could be that technological magic bullet. The ability to tell your TV set to play episode #4 of Seinfeld or a particular pro football game.
“Once you have the experience of asking technology to do something for you and it does it instantly and without hesitation and without a mistake, you will never go back,” Winkler says.
Who’s going to deliver it? Siri with Apple? Amazon Echo? Google?
“I’m not sure,” Winkler says. “That’s the new battlefront. Voice activation in the living room with a TV and may the best man win.”
This interview is part of our series “The Road to CES,” a lead-up series in advance of CES 2017. The series is presented by FreeWheel. Please find more videos from the series here.
]]>“There are too many areas that we can measure,” said GroupM Connect’s north America chairman John Montgomery. “There’s almost infinite sources. There’s new things all the time.
GroupM’s Modi Media president Mike Bologna agreed it is stressful trying to keep up with all the new measurement criteria.
These days, fraud, viewability, reach and frequency have all joined click-through as barometers for assessing campaigns.
But OMD chief digital officer Ben Winkler urged peers to strip back a little. His company uses a single metric, CPVM (Cost Per Valuable Impression).
“Instead of finding the magic bullet, we’ve combined metrics in to one,” he said. “The more we make it like rocket science, the less it works.
“If we want to do this right, we simply ask our clients – ‘what do you see as success?’ You’ll be amazed at what they tell you – it’s plain English. They’re not talking about digital micro metrics. They’ll say, ‘I want to make sure you’re showing my ad to a real person in the right place and not too many times’. I can explain that to my mom!”
They were questioned by Tobi Elkin.
This video is from Media Future Conversations 2015: Unblocked – Valuing Human Attention In A Content-Driven World, an event presented by true[X] in association with Beet.TV Please find more event videos here.
]]>But what is the real place of “content” in a marketer strategy? And are they prepared to to the next step – to create content that’s so good people would pay for it?
If brands really want their content to be consumed, should they aim for standards so high that their work demands payment? It’s an interesting notion – one OMD chief innovation officer Ben Winkler shared a Beet.TV discussion panel.
“In the end, there’s only really two kinds of content – you either pay for it or you don’t,” he said. “When clients talk to us about creating content, I say, ‘Are you willing to put the time, investment and resource in to creating content that people would pay for?’
“I say, ‘Think about the kinds of content that you pay for – HBO, Netflix, sometimes even New York Times’. Then they tend to back off a little bit – they go, ‘Okay, maybe we’re not ready for that’.”
Fellow panelists Jordan Bitterman and John Montgomery said they think data can fuel creative renaissance for advertisers.
“(Data) can be reinvested back in to some sort of creative product,” saidMindshare NA chief strategy officer Bitterman. “We have a lot of white space left in which we can create great content due to data. We’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg on this.”
GroupM Connect NA chairman Montgomery added: “We can use data to tell stories. We know who’s seen episode one of the ad – we can serve episode two or three. We can tell much longer stories.”
They were questioned by Tobi Elkin.
This video is from Media Future Conversations 2015: Unblocked – Valuing Human Attention In A Content-Driven World, an event presented by true[X] in association with Beet.TV Please find more event videos here.
]]>But are they asking the right questions? OMD chief digital and innovation officer Ben Winkler doesn’t think so, and he’s got a better idea.
Winkler says the history of online ad measurement has been about publishers responding to game ad formats introduced by agencies and tech firms – whether it be the rise of publisher click farms as a response to click measurement, or of auto-playing videos as a response to the preponderance of video views.
“We come up with a new measurement every couple of weeks. Clearly this is not working out,” he says. “The question we have been asking is wrong. The question we’ve been asking is, ‘What measurement most represents performance for my client?’ That’s not right.
“The correct question is, ‘What measurement would best encourage publishers to deliver advertising that helps my client succeed?’”
Winkler proposes a solution that goes like this – publishers should gather their finest minds in a room to field-test new ad formats. If the format is still standing and serving both parties after a weekend, that format is a winner – if not, it should be discarded, lest the merrygoround continue.
“Make it a hackathon,” Winkler reckons. “Force them to come up with those ideas. If they can’t game it in 48 hours, maybe we’re on to something. It’s doable if we change our mindset.”
We interviewed him at Media Future Conversations 2015: Unblocked – Valuing Human Attention In A Content-Driven World, an event presented by true[X] in association in association with Beet.TV Please find more event videos here.
]]>Ben Winkler, chief digital officer of ad agency OMD USA, says the ads were bound to be successful, given Facebook’s scale – but that’s not the full story.
“They got really lucky, though, in that, just as they were thinking about putting video advertising on there, the ice bucket challenge came,” Winkler tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “The timing couldn’t have been any better. Suddenly, everyone’s getting used to see auto-playing video in their streams.”
The organisation behind the challenge recently received two Cannes Lions awards for the campaign – and Winkler says: “Our clients have an insatiable appetite for video. As broadcast shrinks, they have to find that video somewhere. Nothing has replaced sight, sound and motion.”
But he says some barriers remain in the way of Facebook video advertising glory:
This interview is part of a series of videos leading up to the DMEXCO conference in Cologne. The series is presented by 4C + Teletrax.
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