But few ad agencies out there believe that a grand lurch from one medium to another would be sensible.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Dentsu Aegis Network’s VP of video innovation Brad Stockton says a multi-channel approach is vital.
“We don’t look at any one tactic alone,” Stockton says. “Whether it’s linear TV, if it’s connected TV, digital video, or social, it’s really about starting with ‘where are your people consuming content?’
From there, we’re going to identify the best ways to measure how those audiences are watching that content and the effectiveness of reaching them on said platform.
“So, it’s really about an omnichannel strategy and not looking at any one platform in a silo.”
Despite the seemingly binary nature of digital and TV, the application of data is also revolutionizing the planning and buying of linear television.
“The truth is, every client can make sense for advanced linear,” Stockton says.
“We know ratings fragmentation is continuing to happen, but we know that TV works. So, that doesn’t mean that we should just stop buying TV, or only move to an addressable audience or a people base.
“(We can) go after audiences that are actually category buyers, as opposed to 18 to 49, or 25 to 54. It’s really about taking your linear audiences and really understanding what day parts programmes and networks are going to work the hardest for you against your core audiences.”
Stockton is talking about brands like quick-service restaurants that have wide appeal across demographics, for which advanced targeting can reveal lucrative audiences, nevertheless delivered through channels like TV.
Stockton says modern agency business invokes software from platforms like Xandr to identify the networks, day parts and time periods that makes sense for brands to reach particular audiences, buying the correct schedule.
He says effective strategy is not just about taking a channel-by-channel approach . Rather, it is increasingly possible to find and reach the right audience, on whichever platform they happen to be.
“The truth of the matter is, consumers dictate how our strategy should be moving forward, where consumers are watching content,” he says.
“How they’re watching content is ultimately how we have to make sure, as advertisers, we are being as agile as possible to following the eyeballs.
“Ultimately, we have to find our audiences and, if advanced TV gives us the ability to do that, we’re just ensuring that we’re always pushing the boundaries to ensure that we are still always testing and learning.”
You are watching Where We Go From Here: The Lessons and Opportunities of 2020, a Beet.TV series presented by Xandr. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>Case in point – the pandemic has tilted business even farther toward online channels.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Sunil Naryani, Vice President, Commercials & Partnerships Asia Pacific at Dentsu International, which changed its name from Dentsu Aegis Network in October, says there have been two big changes.
“Things have probably changed for a permanent basis and then probably for good because a lot of the Gen X, the baby boomers, have really come online during COVID,” Naryani says.
“You would see them probably making their first (online) grocery purchase in the last three months.”
Older consumers were widely seen as less willing than younger counterparts to embrace technology. But the demands of the pandemic have pushed many of them to use digital services, just as they did younger people.
Naryani says that means the online consumer base now looks a lot more like “the real world”.
Naryani also says the growth in connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) viewing options that has occurred in the West has also been seen in his Asia-Pacific region.
In south-east Asia, for example, total streaming minutes grew 57% to reach 107 billion in Q2 versus 68 billion in Q1, according to Media Partners Asia (MPA). That doesn’t include YouTube, which accounted for 84% of Q2 usage, thanks to its carriage of free-to-air TV content.
Often little talked about, video games are surging even more than before.
“There’s a big boom around gaming and APAC kind of leads that across the globe,” Naryani says.
“Almost two thirds of the gaming base as well as the time consumed is coming from APAC.”
Taken together, these trends have significantly changed the market that brands want to reach, and how they should do so.
Because the consumers have really changed in the way they’re consuming media and where they kind of be present every day, marketers have to pivot to digital as well,” Naryani adds.
“There needs to be a true embracing of digital, which means that they need to have a proper data strategy, need to know what kind of mar-tech and ad-tech stacks that are using, which can not be just solving for the next three months or four months, but kind of a longer period.”
Naryani also says marketers need to be further educated about how they should use their own, “first-party” to reach consumers.
You are watching “Where We Go From Here: The Lessons and Opportunities of 2020, ” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Xandr. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>Case in point – newly-cautious brands, looking to prove the effectiveness of spending, appear keener to buy advertising that is based on real outcomes, something connected technology has been promising for the last couple of years.
So, in this video interview with Beet.TV, Amplifi’s USA president Mike Law says 2021 is shaping up to be a year when such schemes are committed to.
“What is exciting about going into next year is really the scale and the pace at which things have changed over the past nine months,” he says.
“COVID accelerated a lot of the ways that we needed to buy media across all channels but, in particular in the connected (TV) space. We saw more and more consumers moving to streaming; it really highlighted it for ad buyers, ad sellers, and for our clients to see what that change look like.
“Going into next year, the hopes of scaled, connected TV buying, the growth of addressable TV, the ability to continue to use better data to target linear television – these are things that we’ve been trying to do and wanting to do over the past few years, but there’s no better time than 2021.”
Amplifi is the media innovation and investment arm of Dentsu.
Amplifi’s goal is to help the whole of Dentsu identify and generate value across all media opportunities. It works on investment, global media partnerships, Dentsu’s Amnet programmatic group, its Story Lab entertainment company and commercial teams.
Dentsu-owned Merkle has recently been building out its identity chops, off the back of its Merkury.
It is an identity graph platform covering 96% of US adults aged over 18 that includes associated email addresses, device identifiers like cookies and device IDs.
Law sees an opportunity to help brands that have become concerned about performance, saying: “I think we really need to start talking about effectiveness and business outcomes.”
But he also doesn’t want the opportunity to be overly complicated.
Asked what one message he would advocate to publishers and broadcasters, Law responds: “Simplification.
“There are so many great options that exist inside the marketplace. And I think for buyers and for clients to begin to digest that and figure out, ‘How do we actually attack this marketplace?’ … I think, simplification. ”
You are watching “An Open Ecosystem is Key to Advanced TV Success,” a Beet.TV leadership video series presented by DISH Media. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>The episode is guest hosted by Joanna O’Connell, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research.
The dramatic transformation in video investment is just part of deep dive into many transformative changes taking place in advertising including the resilience of digital media through the pandemic; outcome based modeling, omni-channel investments, the rise of DTC, privacy/identity and the maturing of creative optimization solutions.
This episode of the BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Opik, a Transunion company. Please visit this page to find more episodes of the BeetCast and to subscribe on your preferred podcast service.
]]>Digital and streaming video is no long just about reach she notes, in this interview with Beet.TV
The move to OTT will be significant part of the conversation at next week’s IAB NewFronts, she expects.
This video is a preview in a series leading up to the 2020 IAB NewFronts. Please visit this page for additional segments from the Road to the NewFronts 2020. This Beet.TV series is presented by the IAB.
]]>According to Zhang, Dentsu has conducted a comprehensive audit of ACR data, and from this, has learned more of the opportunity that these figures present. She sees particular potential for the granularity, real-time nature, and linear transferability of the data, but recognizes that it works best when paired with other numbers.
“ACR data alone is not the only source,” says Zhang. “We’re looking into the possibility of co-mingling or connecting ACR data with traditional panel data as well.”
Zhang adds that they’re currently looking into cross-platform measurement capabilities based on ACR, too. She’s excited about all of the great OTT services currently available and the content that goes with them. She believes that there’s opportunity for brands to connect more effectively on ad-supported networks as well as an ability to create a more individualized connection.
As far as addressability, Zhang has already identified national linear addressability as a trend in 2020, which will allow for a more customized experience for the consumer.
“Now with the new possibility of unlocking more national linear addressable impressions, we definitely see great opportunity for more personalized [content] in creative to create a more relevant experience for our viewers,” says Zhang.
This should also help to better manage frequency, which has been an issue, especially for heavy linear viewers.
In 2020, Zhang hopes to collaborate to better unite the different moving parts of the television and digital marketplace.
“I’d love to talk more about standardization,” says Zhang. “Our marketplace has been very fragmented. There’s a challenge in the OTT measurement space, and how can marketers understand holistically across all of the tactics—addressable is one, CTT and OTT are another one, and there are so many more.”
Maggie Zhang will be speaking at the Beet Retreat in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on February 5 to 7, 2020.
This video is part of a series produced at CES 2020 called Television Redefined, sponsored by Samsung Ads. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>Today, subscription video has boomed, but the following wave of advertiser-supported VOD services is also emerging in its wake.
Preparing for an internet TV world that won’t only be about subscription, brands and technology providers convened on a panel at Advertising Week New York, moderated by eMarketer analyst Nicole Perrin, to discuss measurability, effectiveness and the future of creativity.
Shoba Subramanian – Director, Global Media & Platforms CoE at PepsiCo at PepsiCo:
“We have actually what’s called the PepsiCo Rating Point system, it’s called PRPs. We take purchase data layered on with social data, emotional data, and then we really create our own propensity model to rank now against our buyers of Doritos or Quaker or Pepsi, blue can, who’s most likely to watch which network and which show, and then we utilize that for upfront buying.”
Vinny Rinaldi – Head of Addressable Media and Technology at The Hershey Company
“Even though we’re seeing a higher cost to buy against this media, I’d rather control reach frequency because I’m actually getting a lower cost per person by doing that, even though the CPMs may seem inflated and all that. But because the planning capabilities in the entire industry are so nascent right now, how do we evolve that game?”
Tim Spengler – president, M1 US at Dentsu Aegis Network
“(The industry is) starting to bring together media and creative and using a platform in data to do dynamic creative optimization and putting it back together. I’m old enough to (remember) when it was together and then when it got pulled apart. Being part of that inevitable change in the industry is probably what I’m most excited about for next year.”
Michael Scott – Samsung Ads head of sales, brand
“I’m so excited about our Samsung TV Plus, which is a free television service that has upwards of almost 70 channels that comes a free TV with your TV. As soon as you get that smart TV, that brand new 65-inch, and you plug it in and you turn on the internet, you start having great high quality television served right to your home. So it helps compliment those cord cutters who maybe were using kind of the cable for channel surfing.”
This video was produced at the Samsung Ads Leadership Forum during Advertising Week, 2019. It is sponsored by Samsung Ads. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
]]>Panelists debated how, thanks to technology that can observe eventual viewer outcomes like sales or clicks, and link them back to initial ad exposure, advanced TV can not only target viewers, it can provide brands with effectiveness indicators.
Michael Scott – Samsung Ads head of sales, brand
“One of the things that we’re hearing a lot is the ability to prove out the ROI.
“Whatever that key indicator might be, to show that television as a medium – sight, sound, motion, emotion and colour – really works to build brands, to move cases, to build relationships.
“You can prove it now.You bring that digital to life.”
Vinny Rinaldi – Head of Addressable Media and Technology at The Hershey Company
“Big brands live and die by an ROI number. The simplest way of effectiveness is revenue-due-to-media. In my opinion, I’d rather drive revenue as a business. The ROI is just an equation off of it.”
Tim Spengler – president, M1 US at Dentsu Aegis Network
“This just sounds like such a no brainer. Why (aren’t) people aren’t moving faster? You have those two things that are working against the change….
“Everyone starts every conversation with ‘cost and my CPMs are going to go up’.
“I just think it’s stupid. (Many brands think) that, ‘because my TV’ (advertising campaign) is ‘working’ … let me go fix something that isn’t working’.”
Shoba Subramanian – Director, Global Media & Platforms CoE at PepsiCo at PepsiCo:
Subramanian said she aims to share knowledge about the emerging platform throughout her large organization.
“I was blown away by the AVOD (advertiser-supported video-on-demand) stats. Just to see that number is quite, quite eye-opening. It’s really a matter of permeating that knowledge and empowering the brands as we continue to do so.”
This video was produced at the Samsung Ads Leadership Forum during Advertising Week, 2019. It is sponsored by Samsung Ads. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
]]>But how quickly are brands embracing the opportunity?
In this Samsung Ads panel at Advertising Week, two major brands were asked how fast they are welcoming in addressable TV.
Moderating, eMarketer analyst Nicole Perrin referenced eMarketer’s projection that “between 7% and 10% of upfront (TV)spending would go to advanced TV buys”.
Vinny Rinaldi – Head of Addressable Media and Technology at The Hershey Company
“We’re looking towards the higher end of that number. The only way to truly grow a big brand and business is to reach new people.
We jumped right off the diving board starting this year and started testing right out of the gate. Our brands need to just find incremental reach, that’s the biggest thing. About six years ago, 97% of our total budget was in linear television. Going into 2020, that number is going to be under 50% for the first time.”
Shoba Subramanian – Director, Global Media & Platforms CoE at PepsiCo at PepsiCo:
“It’s a slow moving force for us. We started out with a few test-and-learns. we looked at the entire advertising landscape … then we had to present this out to everyone (in the company).
“We’re starting out with very small tests in market to prove out that hypothesis, that it can actually result in incrementality, you can get these new audiences you’ll never touch otherwise.”
Tim Spengler – President, M1 US at Dentsu Aegis Network
Spengler said the up-to-10% of TV spending migrating to addressable is underplaying the profound consumer shift that has already gone in that direction.
“It is too small. You got 20 plus percent of households who don’t have a linear cable box delivering content into their home. They’ve cut the cord, (or) they’re cord-nevers.
“If you don’t play in this space, you’re going to have a reach problem and you’re going to have an over frequency problem and you’re going to have a problem in knowing your customer, who has now seen the eighth ad today from your brand.”
Hershey’s Rinaldi says his company’s first addressable campaign bodes well.
“What we’re showing early on with our first advanced TV buy, is in a small testing environment, we’ve grown our reach by 5%,” he says. “Showing an old big brand that you can grow their reach by 5% in just a small testing environment, I think the sky’s the limit as we move into 2020.”
PepsiCo’s Subramanian says the landscape is complex. “The one platform I feel is a slam dunk for most brand marketers is Hulu,” she says. “I think people relate to it more comfortably as a consumer and that translates into brand decisions.”
This video was produced at the Samsung Ads Leadership Forum during Advertising Week, 2019. It is sponsored by Samsung Ads. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
Dentsu Aegis Network, which owns global creative and performance agencies like iProspect, Merkle and Firstborn, has built social impact principles into its business that goes across all of its companies. According to Angela Johnson, Dentsu Aegis Network’s US Client Development Officer, it’s something that will mark the next generation of marketing.
“Purpose-based marketing seems like it could be a buzzword at the moment, but it’s really deeply important,” Johnson told BeetTV in an interview during Advertising Week. “It’s a generational shift, this drive to know what are you doing beyond making money and shareholder value. What is your purpose as a company? That’s something Dentsu really wants to define, and then activate.”
Dentsu is part of an organization called “Brands Doing Good,” which Johnson says underscores its commitment to developing and marketing products in a sustainable way. For corporate companies, being “purpose-based” means making products more mindfully and in better conditions. Overall, brands need to have a reason for existing.
That’s always been the case, but the bar has been raised. Johnson says social impact marketing today needs to be the “red thread right through everything.” It’s the foundation on which the rest of the brand is built.
What matters most is that brands approach this authentically, something that Dentsu plans to help them do, by finding causes that align with the brands’ cores.
“The worst thing a brand can do is, in an inauthentic way, attach themselves to a cause because it seems like the thing to do at the time,” says Johnson. “The most important thing is to be authentic, and bring your brand to the cause and partner with them more than bolting it on.”
This video is part of a series of interviews conducted during Advertising Week New York, 2019. This series is co-production of Beet.TV and Advertising Week. The series is sponsored by Roundel, a Target company. Please see more videos from Advertising Week right here.
]]>The SVP of Video Research & Insights for Dentsu Aegis Network is seeing an “explosive growth of attribution vendors,” she explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting.
Such providers have traditionally been digital oriented, measuring multi-touch attribution across all digital touchpoints. “But now, especially this year, there’s been a growing school of TV specialists,” Zhang says.
“They are able to attribute the impact of big-screen, top-funnel impact of TV advertising to the actual business outcome in terms of any type of conversion metric, be it foot traffic or online purchase, offline purchase.”
Dentsu Aegis has been doing “a very thorough audit across the entire spectrum of TV/cross platform video attribution vetting. It’s still going and we’ve learned a lot just to understand their modeling approach, their TV/video data sources, their conversion metric sources and how they can match together and modeling and analyze and predict the outcome.”
In an age sensitive to consumer privacy and increasing data regulations, the media agency is looking into “pixel-less methodology” to measure both conversion and viewership data.
“So ACR data is one good example and there are also a lot of other tech platforms that are able to provide data, especially on the back end without pixels. So we’re able to measure in terms of the audience in a one-to-one, deterministic fashion.
This segment is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2019, Phoenix. This series is sponsored by Telaria. Please find additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>Since gaining, keeping and growing customers involve different phases, being able to discern them leads to knowing what messaging to deliver across platforms. “Linking those two things up we think is the next phase of where the business is going,” Spengler opines in this interview with Beet.TV at CES 2019. “It’s data, but then you have to know what to say and it’s creativity.”
Powering much of this progress within Dentsu is the M1 platform developed by the Merkle agency prior to its acquisition by Dentsu in 2016. M1 now has an identity graph that comprises 95% of U.S. adults by way of personally identifiable information codes, according to Spengler.
“That gives us a tremendous ability to work with our clients to identify true targets based on all the data they would want to know about somebody,” and then to figure out “how to connect them at various end points so we can actually speak to those exact people. So it’s making media more precise and more powerful.”
Part of the process is connecting audiences with media owners. “The conversation we’re having is about audiences, it’s less about GRP’s,” Spengler says. “It’s about content and environment, because content and context will always be important. We’re coming together on that.”
Understanding the differences among audiences goes hand in hand with being able to determine how specific targets are consuming media, according to Spengler.
“You’ve got five different devices. Am I going to waste money and talk to you five different times when I only want to talk to you once? So you’ve got to really understand who you are and what device you’re on so we’re not wasting the money.”
Asked about the value that media agencies need to provide, Spengler says “It’s very complex. It used to be strategy and save me money.” Now its data, technology and creativity working together.
“It’s higher level work but that’s what our clients need and that’s what we’re trying to build ourselves to be able to deliver.”
This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2019. The series is sponsored by NBCUniversal. For more coverage, please visit this page.
]]>A Beet Retreat panel convened by Beet.TV in Puerto Rico discussed that topic.
The debate kicked off with some data points quantifying the size of spend in US addressable TV advertising today…
Howard Shimmel, President, Janus Strategy and Insights, LLC:
“Two percent of all national media (is) being spent via addressable. Forester issued some research last summer that said about 15% of advertisers are using advanced TV, (but) 50% are sitting on the sidelines. Are you happy with the level of adoption? Are we behind?”
Mike Bologna, President, one-2-one media, Cadent:
“For the advertisers where the return outweighs the work and the pain, they’re involved. For the advertisers and the brands where it doesn’t, they’re not there.
Whilst media buyers are certainly spending in addressable TV, executives bemoaned that the budget was still experimental or occasional…
Michael Law, EVP, US Media Investment, Dentsu Aegis Network:
“Our (clients’) spend is actually about flattened down a little. But the number of brands interacting is growing because we’ve had some brands who went in just way too high early on. What is worrisome is the amount of (spending that) is still considered ‘test and learn’ – it’s just a little bit of money and then it goes away.”
Mike Bologna, President, one-2-one media, Cadent:
“That’s very true. That is the single biggest issue with scaling the dollars in addressable television today. Many advertisers want to do it for the wrong reasons. They want to check off the ‘innovation’ box.”
Panelists discussed how limiting the availability of inventory with the right audiences against it could actually work against addressable…
Mike Bologna, President, one-2-one media, Cadent:
“Historically, television has always been (about) supply and demand. When the supply decreases, the knee jerk reaction is to raise the price. As we all know, in television, at least in recent times, the advertisers still stand in line with the checkbook.
“That’s not going to work with addressable television. If we run out of inventory, or we get to a point where there’s a finite supply of inventory, it’s going to drive up the price.”
Craig Berkley, Head of Revenue, TV, LiveRamp:
“You’re going to have ownership of programmers by MVPDs or at least a fusion of the two. That inventory will open up and I think OTT is also growing rapidly.”
The debate heard one view that addressability should not be about targeting audiences at all – especially for certain brands…
Adam Gerber, President, Global Media Investment, Essence (GroupM):
“We’re thinking about addressability wrong … The math is not going to work, right? I would question, are we thinking about addressability the right way as being about audiences? Or should we be thinking about it a different way, in that it can solve frequency distribution? The better option for us is, how do we use addressability to manage frequency, not target audiences.”
Michael Law, EVP, US Media Investment, Dentsu Aegis Network:
“Right now, there’s a lot of categories saying, “How do I (target) toilet paper (which everyone needs)?”
But the panel also heard how addressable or some alternative to conventional linear TV advertising is essential…
Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom Media Group:
“Part of the problem now, with the way viewership behavior is shifting, is that there are a lot of people who you’re just never gonna get on linear TV because they don’t do that anymore. Whether it’s linear or addressable, or anything that looks like broadcast, to try to reach people who don’t have an antenna or cable subscription ain’t going to work.”
This video was produced in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Beet.TV executive retreat. Please find more videos from the series on this page.
The Beet Retreat was presented by NCC along with Amobee, Dish Media, Oath and Google.
]]>But it’s not just in technology that certain key staff are in-demand.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, an ad agency boss says that all sides of the marketing industry are also racing to hire a new generation with key skills.
“As an agency we’re really spending a lot of time trying to think about the talent that we’re bringing in,” says Dentsu Aegis Network EVP, US media investment, Michael Law. “We’re working with different types of people.
“This isn’t just a transactional job anymore. We need to build this bigger into our training programs. We need to think more about not (just how to put things in MediaOcean but how to trade and how to get planners thinking about audiences.
“The brands that we’ve seen have the most success (are) the people who are really passionate about this. We talk about using them as lightning rods and moving them around. The challenges is … everybody wants those people … because they’re few and far between.”
A couple of years ago, the industry was talking about a programmatic skills gap, concerned that there were insufficient people to work the new levers of the ad trading platforms.
That concern has ebbed away. But the hiring concern this year has taken on a new shape, as the strategic imperatives themselves have shifted once again.
In April, Omnicom’s new Hears & Science agency told Beet.TV it was hiring 800 people, having added a chief experience officer to implement culture programs that the new cohort can dovetail with.
This video was produced in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Beet.TV executive retreat. Please find more videos from the series on this page.
The Beet Retreat was presented by NCC along with Amobee, Dish Media, Oath and Google.
]]>“We’ve really been optimistic about the space,” says Law, who is EVP, Managing Director, US Media Investment, Amplifi (Dentsu Aegis Network). “I think the innovation and the technology the scale of the number of people we can hit and the improvement of data sources across the board has made addressable that much more viable on a media plan.”
In addition to more scale, there’s more data to provide understanding about consumer behavior and the best ways to target them, Law explains in this interview with Beet.TV. at the recent Xandr Relevance Conference.
“And then on the back end, being able to understand did they actually follow through, make a purchase, go to a store, follow them throughout the full process,” Law adds.
Asked about the workload required for addressable TV, Law says it takes commitment and harnessing different resources. “I think you need to work with your analytics teams, you need to work with your clients very closely about what their goals are. So it is bringing a lot of people together on both sides.”
On the program distributor side, each vendor can represent a silo of sorts, so “it’s really our responsibility to bring that together to think about how can we maximize what we’re getting out of this.”
Part of the process is helping clients determine how addressability fits into their overall planning, given its utility in targeting specific households. “As we think about it, you have reach happening across the marketplace, but in traditional television and across other channels we’re really getting to the top of that reach curve very quickly now and then it’s frequency and we’re just kind of running rampant at the top of the reach curve.”
In moving TV into the lower part of the funnel, it’s less about brand awareness than it is getting closer to consumers—right now at the household level. Law describes a “one ad in one room versus in another room” approach “the ultimate dream, although we’re not quite there yet.”
This video is part of a series leading up to, and covering the Xandr Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. This Beet.TV program is sponsored by Xandr, a unit of AT&T.
]]>Norman, who recently retired from GroupM and is an Advisor to Beet.TV, kicked things off by noting a level of “sturm and drang” surrounding a desire in some circles to quickly abandon the traditional Nielsen demo-based ratings as a transaction currency. But will it actually happen?
Ray, who is President, Product & Innovation at Dentsu Aegis Network, said that it will, predicting a more addressable marketplace in 3-5 years and the accompanying changes in measurement that marketplace will bring.
As a former researcher, Schwartz painted a broad swath of change resulting from addressability. “It fundamentally changes how and what we do,” said Schwartz. “Because once you start getting to person–level addressability or even device-level addressability, the word research is out the window.”
Taking its place will be a mix of census, response and counting. “So we don’t have all those situations where the systems go down, the set-top box isn’t working or we have an underrepresentation. You’re seeing actual response and analysis,” Schwartz added.
The drawback? Not all households will be capable of being addressed, according to Schwartz, who is President of Investment, North America, GroupM.
Norman questioned whether those households will hold the least amount of value for advertisers. “I think some of them might be, but some of them might be all the way at the other end of the spectrum, that have the ability to be reached in a manner and not addressed. There’s the evolution of technology so I still believe that the top end will have a way to find out how to basically take themselves off the grid,” said Schwartz.
Ray predicated a bifurcation of how buyers and sellers look at video content. “The role of live content is going to be more valuable because it’s going to be tied to the cultural moments,” he said.
Asked by Norman whether all video is “born equal” and how advertisers should consider various screen sizes, Ray said much of that calculation depends on the desired outcome, be it click-through, engagement, response or “trying to change fundamental beliefs about the brand.”
Noting that hand-held screens are of better quality than some of the TV sets he grew up with, Schwartz said it’s not about size but environment and also proximity to what people are about to do, including buying something. “We have to take that all into account. So not all video is the same, but we need to know how and where to use it,” Schwartz said.
Norman wanted to know whether the industry is within “seeing distance” of a time when significant parts of the video market will be traded on business outcomes rather than exposure to commercials.
Schwartz said there is “a desire for a lot of people to get there,” but there are so many factors in the marketing spectrum “I don’t think we’re at the point where the buyer and seller want to predicate the price and the value on the return on investment yet.”
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.
]]>In this interview with Beet.TV at the Festival, Seiler talks about the speed needed to deliver creative in real time and the utility of such technologies as artificial intelligence, artificial reality, virtual reality and blockchain.
On the issue of speed, there’s some catch-up needed between desire and reality, according to Seiler.
“Once you’re at the right person, what do you want to say to them and how much can you change that up to ensure that you’re getting the right message to the right person in…real time. And I pause on real time, because I think we as an industry talk about real time as if it were now and it’s way too big a lag,” says Seiler, who is President of Brand Solutions. “So I suspect that the accountability will get to individual behaviors and as close to the time that you wanted to solicit that behavior as possible.”
He believes that artificial intelligence has “been around kind of forever, but calling it AI has changed our perception of it. I think there’s an insecurity around machine learning that makes us think that people are going to become obsolete, and that obviously isn’t the case.”
To Seiler, machines should do things “that people are wasting an awful lot of time doing themselves” so that they are freed up to be much more creative. “It should be much more around the story rather than the technology that’s required in order to develop and or distribute that story,” Seiler says. “AI I think is going to be really helpful and really disruptive at the same time, because there are going to be jobs that are displaced by it, as there should be.”
Virtual reality is being used “all over the place,” but he thinks the application to media hasn’t really been determined. While it’s probably appropriate for gaming, beyond that “I don’t imagine anytime soon until the technology advances and you don’t have to have those really clumsy things on your face.”
Artificial reality “is going to get a lot farther a lot faster.”
Seiler considers blockchain technology as a potential remedy for providing needed trust, accountability, speed and measurement, but he’s not about to jump aboard the blockchain train.
“I don’t think we have a clue how to go from where we are today and how we are used to paying for things and tracking them, etcetera, to where we will go.”
At Cannes, it’s all about the creative for Seiler. “I love judging here because it means you’re actually guaranteed seeing the work. I wish always that we were spending more time around the work, which is what the point of this whole thing is.”
Nonetheless, he cites a palpable sense of insecurity given the struggles of some advertising-based holding companies and competition from, among others, management consulting groups.
“The collective understanding that things are changing but not a clear understanding to what. So there’s that uncomfortable thing of, ‘like I know it isn’t this but I don’t know what it’s going to be.’ I say opportunity.”
This video is part of a series titled The Consumer First, a New Era in Digital Media presented by MediaMath. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>In 2018, many buyers are struggling to bridge the chasm across multiple media channels like these, which they nevertheless need to deliver through.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Dentsu Aegis Network’s product and innovation president Doug Ray says his organistion is in a good position after making an early bet.
“I like to think that we’re ahead because, even five years ago, we moved away from having a digital buying team and a television buying team, and we moved to, for example, a video buying team, and we’ve been doing that for a while,” Ray says.
“We’ve built tools that allow us to be able to look at the unduplicated reach between things like OTT platforms or even YouTube or Facebook video, combining that with traditional television platforms that might be measured through a Nielsen, as an example.”
The problem of measuring impact across channels is a thorny one. Many marketers want to continue buying TV ads, albeit often fewer of them. They also want to buy digital video ads. But the new imperative is to look at each of these things as a whole rather than as distinct.
Group M’s Lyle Schwartz has also told Beet.TV he wants to be buying media “holistically“, not as separate channels.
Dentsu Aegis Network’s Ray continues: “By combining those, we can understand the value of ‘If I move 10% of my dollars from linear television into digital video platforms, what’s the increase in unduplicated reach that I can achieve and what’s the reduction and perhaps, the cost per reach point, or the overall cost per thousand to reach those individuals?’”
He is grateful for having made the switch long ago: “That’s been game-changing for our clients for a number of years now.
The interview was conducted at the Beet Retreat in the City by Ashley J. Swartz, CEO and founder of Furious Corp.
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.
]]>“We’ve sort of gotten away from the core essence of the reason for Cannes, which is creativity. It’s a creativity festival. It’s about celebrating the work.”
Ray welcomes an anticipated move back to brand storytelling, complemented by data and technology that when combined make the end result much more compelling and engaging.
“I’m really looking forward to how can we think much more about the technology or the data or the capabilities to allow us to create more personalized, connected storytelling that then puts the relationship that consumers have with brands much more on their terms,” he says.
Ray will be a featured speaker on June 6 at Beet Retreat in the City. 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.”
This video is part of The Road to Cannes, a preview of topics to be addressed at Cannes Lions. The series is presented by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. FreeWheel is a Comcast company.
]]>“I think we’re going to ultimately end up negotiating live TV, because those are the moments that have the greatest attention. They’re wrapped around cultural moments that we want to associate brands with,” Ray explains in this interview with Beet.TV.
He bases his “hypothesis” on the nature of non-live programming “Most of that content is very low rated, it’s time shifted in terms of how people are viewing it, and therefore our ability to manage reach, frequency, audience delivery in a programmatic or audience targeted way is absolutely the future.”
Ray will be a featured speaker on June 6 at Beet Retreat in the City. 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.
Another trend he sees continuing unabated is the desire for marketers to “own the ID” of their customers using personally identifiable information, not data proxies. He cites Amazon as an example, noting that every single user has a registered ID, “you have your address that you’ve given, there’s a credit card number, there’s no way that you can transact without them having some level of personally identifiable information.
“And so I think every single client is trying to move towards owning and identifying to the best that they can their customers.”
Dentsu is one of the youngest of the major agency networks and its initial holding, media agency Carat, was known for its strength in consumer-related analytics when it came to the U.S. from Europe in the late 1990’s and began to acquire media-buying services. Dentsu’s 2016 acquisition of a majority stake in marketing agency Merkle had the effect of “transforming the organization around people,” says Ray. “What Merkle brings is 30 years of dealing with consumer and understanding consumers through that data.”
Combined with Dentsu’s existing data and analytics assets, Merkle has helped to create “an incredibly robust data cloud that allows us to truly understand people. And critically, doing that based on PII data, name address email address. Not a projection of someone or a proxy of someone based on a cookie ID or device ID or panel ID but actually an authenticated deterministic ID.”
A couple of years ago, Dentsu agencies recommended to clients that a small percentage of cable upfront dollars should be put aside for programmatic linear television. “For those clients that did that, they actually learned about what networks were working or weren’t working, and that was leveraged for the next TV Upfronts,” Ray recalls.
“For other clients, they saw such success with that they doubled their investment. Maybe ten percent to twenty percent programmatic. And this year, we’ve got a handful of clients that have almost a third of their cable dollars that are being spent in some form of addressable or audience targeted television. I think that’s going to continue.”
This video is part of The Road to Cannes, a preview of topics to be addressed at Cannes Lions. The series is presented by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. FreeWheel is a Comcast company.
]]>This video is a highlight compilation our several of our conversations.
The first three are a related trio of concerns. Quality storytelling derives from consumer data and insights, the end product of which can be ripe for brand integration. Meredith Corporation’s extensive presence at the NewFronts was crafted to address all of these concerns.
“We’re trying to create advertising that becomes what people are interested in, rather than simply interrupting what they’re interested in,” is the way that Shane Akeney, President, Havas Media Group NA, sums things up in this video compilation, which Meredith presented in its NewFronts event on the big screen at Manhattan’s Hudson Theatre. “Big leaps can be made in creating content that is so compelling that consumers want to watch it, want to see it, want to actually be experiencing it.”
Rather than “insert” themselves into content, brand should be there “because they’re making the content better,” says Matt Seilor, President Brand Solutions, Dentsu Aegis Network.
Accountability means measurable returns on advertising spend. “I think the days of an advertiser just kind of spending money and hoping for the best are over,” says Jason Harrison, President and Client Partner, Essence.
Brand safety was a major theme during the week of NewFronts events, echoed by most participants and those featured in this video. They are:
Marla Kaplowitz, President & CEO, 4A’s.
Will Warren, EVP, Digital Investment, Zenith Media.
Yin Woon Rani, VP Integrated Marketing, Campbell Soup Company.
Christine Peterson, Managing Director, Digital Investment Lead, Mindshare.
Shane Akeney, President, Havas Media Group NA.
Matt Seilor, President Brand Solutions, Dentsu Aegis Network.
Jason Harrison, President and Client Partner, Essence.
Joe Barone, Managing Partner, Brand Safety Americas, GroupM.
Ben Winkler, Chief Investment Officer, OMD.
Joe Barone, Managing Partner, Brand Safety Americas, GroupM.
Louis Jones, EVP, Media & Data, 4A’s.
This video was presented on May 4 at the Meredith NewFronts presentation on the big screen of the Hudson Theater.
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 the full version of videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>“I think what’s most exciting, and this might sound odd from an agency person’s perspective, is Netflix,” Seiler adds in this interview with Beet.TV.
Why is that?
“Because subscription has led to way better content. And like all things free capital market, that’s led to more choice means got to be better. Content’s better everywhere you look.”
He calls pay-TV content “extraordinary.” That, in turn, has made free TV content “have to be that much better.”
But there’s a need for aggregation of all that content because we can’t all possibly keep track of where it is, according to Seiler.
“And I think that the notion of that really good content being interrupted by nasty ads is wildly anachronistic. I love the platforms that are pushing for fewer interruptions that are being smarter about how brands are integrated.”
Integrating brands into “the really valuable stories that are being told and ensuring that they’re there in a way that’s reasonable” is paramount. Brands should not engage in integrations just because they’re just looking to insert themselves. “They’re there because they’re making the content better.”
He thinks this year’s Upfront rituals will produce “a lot better partnerships with the content creators and the brands and the agencies that work with them to ensure that when a brand’s showing up that’s a good thing.”
Along with proliferation of choice comes the need for aggregation and therefore a few trusted partners. “They’re probably not going to be the few trusted partners that you and I had growing up of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN, et cetera. Those channels are going to look more like Prime and Netflix and YouTube as well as NBC, as well as some of those other channels,” says Seiler.
Nonetheless, he believes it’s a great time to be a brand and a marketer. “It’s confusing, but the choices are so much better and the idea of integration in the truest sense of the word is I think here.”
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.
]]>“I think when folks are talking about transparency what they’re really talking about is validation. They really want to know that what they’re buying is exactly what we say they’re buying and it’s achieved the results,” says Judith Hammerman, SVP, Data & Programmatic Solutions, Time Inc.
The reasons for this desire are clear, as Hammerman explains in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“They’re big advertisers and they’re spending big budgets and they have large goals ahead of them. So it’s important that they be able to answer, both from a KPI perspective and for an overall ROI perspective, what they’ve been able to achieve,” says Hammerman.
To a certain extent for Time Inc., transparency is “a little bit of a non-issue” because it’s always asked its advertisers what they wanted to achieve and what were their metrics for success.
“For us, transparency isn’t a change. We’ve always been transparent,” Hammerman adds.
She then offers an interesting take on the walled garden moniker that often accompanies mentions of platforms like Facebook and Google. Quite simply, to be a walled garden environment you need a wall and a garden. “Garden is scaled content. What is bringing a consumer there and ultimately keeping a consumer there.”
While scale is baked into Time Inc.’s DNA, it’s the walls that are missing, according to Hammerman.
“We really try to ensure that the consumer can go wherever they want to go and that as they go we’re still capturing data,” she says. “But we’re also sharing that data with our advertisers so that they can learn the most.”
One of the things that interests Hammerman is the growing nexus of publishers, publisher data sources and supply-side platforms.
“A great example of this is Merkle’s M1 platform, where you really are bringing the best knowledge together and there’s a real collaboration happening on a more consultative level versus transactional level.”
As AdExchanger reports, Dentsu Aegis Network recently disclosed that its media agency brands in the U.S .will use Merkle’s PII-based M1 platform for centralized data planning and activation.
“It certainly puts more onus on the publisher to not only know their supply but know their consumer,” says Hammerman. “But to me it’s becoming a very exciting place where publishers can play and add incremental value.”
This video is part a series that examines programmatic from both the seller and the buyer perspective. It is presented by PubMatic. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>For many, that has meant a promotion for the executives who once ran outlier data divisions within an agency but who now are calling the shots.
What changes when that happens, and what have those people learned along the way? In this recorded panel discussion at Cannes Lions, four agency executives opened up. Here is what they said…
Brian Lesser, CEO, GroupM North America (previous: CEO, GroupM’s Xaxis):
“It’s a sign of the times that people with data, analytics, platforms backgrounds are now being put in a position to manage media agencies.
“For me, it’s a matter of making sure our agencies have appropriate platforms… make sure we are data-informed at every step along the way … activation across all channels.”
Arun Kumar, chief data and marketing technology officer, IPG Mediabrands (previous: president, IPG’s Cadreon):
“In this role, I’ve started to see the reality of the imbalance between planning and buying. Planning tools are activated by data sets which are still not quite where they should be.
“There are silos being created which are legacies from the past, you need to clean them to make some of the tech and systems work. That’s all I’ve been focused on for the last there of four months since starting the role.”
Doug Ray, product and innovation president, Dentsu Aegis Network (previous: CEO, Carat):
“I’ve always been on the planning, strategy and management side, not so much on the buying side. What has made great plans and strategies … is human insight, to have a deep understanding of customers. Clients are looking for the human truth, the insight to help them with better outcomes on their media.”
Scott Hagedorn, CEO, Hearts & Science (previous: CEO, Omnicom’s Annelect):
“We under-leveraged the audience creation and syndication side of it. The buying side of programmatic is actually the least important side of programmatic. The three most important sides… are the audience creation, syndication and also using some of the new ad-serving capabilities like an Innovid … to do the orchestration of the creative assets in the product.”
Those were some of the conclusions of a panel of ad agency technology executives, who debated the topics in a session recorded by Beet.TV.
In the panel, the quartet spoke about the problem of inconsistent data taxonomies and how advertisers can make hay where consumers are already buying.
IPG Mediabrands chief data and marketing technology officer Arun Kumar:
“When I say an audience segment is ‘somebody who is interested in fashion’, am I defining it the same way across these different datasets, are the taxonomies similar? If they are not, then, even if it’s deterministic, it fails, because I’m actually not reaching the audience I think I am.
“How quickly do you refresh this data? If my data is a year old, should I really be using that or not?”
GroupM North America CEO Brian Lesser:
“We’ll never get to a category standard because the industry thrives on information asymmetry – everybody wants to know more than their competitor.
“We have to tell (clients) things they don’t already know about their own consumer but also model out their potential consumer. You’re seeing a cottage industry crop up to answer these questions.”
Dentsu Aegis Network product and innovation president Doug Ray:
“The mobile device is the gateway to people’s passions. We can instantaneously learn about a product, the price and buy that product at that moment in time. If there’s one thing that will continue to transform the way our clients market, it will be mobile.”
This video is from The Mastercard Automated Advertising Panel at Cannes Lions 2017. For more from the series, please visit this page.
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