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.
]]>That’s the one of the key messages from Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S. advertising sales officer at Discovery, whose network brands also include TLC, Food Network, Cooking Channel, HGTV, DIY, ID and Travel Channel. He predicts that broader demographics will shape the linear TV marketplace, along with smaller ad loads and strategic targeting based on audience metrics such as purchase propensity.
“We should focus at what TV’s good at: reaching people over 35,” Steinlauf said in this episode of the Beet TV/VAB “TV Reset” forum. “We think we should be bought for what we do well.”
Speaking with Doug Ray, chief executive of media at Dentsu Aegis Network Americas, Steinlauf also discusses how its collaboration with Amazon Publisher Services helps to reach viewers who stream Discovery’s programming on Amazon Fire TV devices.
You are watching TV Reset, a leadership forum produced in partnership with VAB. The series is presented by 605 and Magnite. For more videos please visit this page.
]]>Discovery forecasts that it will end the second quarter with higher ad sales than a year earlier for its streaming apps, which are a key part of its strategy to help advertisers reach younger audiences and higher-income women whose viewing habits are changing.
“We think there’s going to be a shortage of ad-supported impressions for upscale female viewers,” Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S. advertising sales officer at Discovery, said in an interview. “Those are the viewers that are moving over to streaming services more frequently.”
In this episode of the Beet TV/VAB “TV Reset” forum, Steinlauf speaks with Doug Ray, chief executive of media at Dentsu Aegis Network Americas, about the shifts in viewing habits and how streaming complements linear TV.
Discovery’s brands include a variety of lifestyle channels whose content is well suited for homebound consumers who are cooking more frequently or who have more time for do-it-yourself projects — including the setup of a work-from-home space. Food Network, Cooking Channel, HGTV, DIY and Magnolia are among its lineup of channels, which also includes Discovery and TLC.
Each channel has a complementary app that authenticated pay-TV subscribers can access for no additional cost. Its advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) platforms extend the reach of its linear TV schedule among younger viewers.
Its programming also is appealing to women consumers, who make most of the purchase decisions in U.S. households, studies have shown. Steinlauf sees an opportunity to reach those viewers who favor video streaming, but don’t see ads on the three most popular streaming services: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.
“We’re seeing about 25% of the viewership shifting to a platform that only carries about 5% of the advertising,” Steinlauf said.
You are watching TV Reset, a leadership forum produced in partnership with VAB. The series is presented by 605 and Magnite. For more videos please visit this page.
]]>Especially for brands. In this video interview with Beet.TV, an ad agency leader says, when he buys ad campaigns across media types, he sees a lot of wastage in television.
“What we’re seeing across dozens and dozens of campaigns is that, generally, 80% of the total impressions delivered in linear television is going to about 25% of households,” says Doug Ray, Dentsu Aegis’ head of media in the US.
“That’s pretty significant if you’re trying to reach a very large audience and also you’re generally driving about three times the average frequency. So (there is) massive, excessive frequency that’s inherent in the system.”
Ray is talking about the problem which arises when ads purchased to reach a particular target audience do exactly that – but too often.
Whilst modern digital platforms can narrow the scope of target audiences so as to not waste ads on undesired targets, traditional TV lacks that relative power.
But there is a solution to be found in the way TV itself is evolving, says Dentsu Aegis’ Ray.
“We’re looking at things like addressable TV, OTT, other advanced TV platforms to essentially help us mitigate that, to rebalance the delivery, to help clients achieve more, more reach, more even distribution of impressions for the same amount of money,” he says.
“Effectively, (we could be) getting more value for the same dollars by including multiple platforms in their overall approach to video.”
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.
]]>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 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.
]]>Amongst other stipulations, the European Commission’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) measures include:
The measures apply to any global company processing EU citizens’ data, with penalties of up to 4% of global turnover. Steps data handling and data processing companies should take include conducting risk assessments, appointing data protection officers and overhauling policies and systems.
So, with less than a year ticking on the compliance clock, how are advertisers and their agencies responding to the new regimen?
At a panel debate convened with Beet.TV, four agency data executives said GDPR compliance was a big deal, but they framed privacy regulation in the context of consumer aversion to “creepy” ad tactics generally…
IPG Mediabrands chief data and marketing technology officer Arun Kumar:
“There are a couple of things (clients) probably miss on… an understanding that there is a true impact of what many of these regulations are, and how the EU and the US are not necessarily going to be in sync.
“(Clients) are not at the point where they’re willing to have a conversation around, ‘If someone’s giving me data, what am I giving in exchange?’ It’s going to get harder to justify bombarding consumers with impressions that they don’t need, just because you know who they are. Less is more. That is a far more fundamental shift that has the come – privacy is one part of it.”
GroupM North America CEO Brian Lesser
“We have more conversations about how advertising can be relevant engaging without being creepy… there very rarely is (a breach of privacy). Part of our job as agencies is to ensure clients don’t find themselves getting sued for breaching privacy laws.
“Privacy is not an issue for our clients so much as following the law; that’s never been an issue – it’s more about … using data for good to make the consumer experience better.”
Dentsu Aegis Network product and innovation president Doug Ray
“If we use some insight about an audience to personalise a communication … the trust is there because you’re using the data in a way that there’s a value exchange.
“As we start to use data across more parts of the agency and client, there’s an education that has to happen, so that people that haven’t necessarily been handling data previously and are now having data conversations know the implications and are trained on how to handle that data or send an email without being in breach.”
Hearts & Science CEO Scott Hagedorn:
“I think clients should own all their own ad-tech contracts, agencies should operate them, and they should be fully transparent.”
This video is from The Mastercard Automated Advertising Panel at Cannes Lions 2017. For more 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.
]]>Often, the question is framed as an “either-or” in which Netflix would have to choose between continuing its current premium SVOD model or ripping it up in favour of ad funding.
Previously, Ampere Analysis’ Richard Broughton has told Beet.TV Netflix could make up to $8bn a year from advertising if it switched over entirely, but would have to accept churn would knock off some of the gain, as angry consumers quit.
But one ad agency executive doesn’t think the choice has to be so dichotomous. Speaking in this panel debate recorded by Beet.TV, GroupM North America CEO Brian Lesser said an ad model for Netflix could be a lot more intrinsic and less disruptive.
“The question is not necessarily, ‘Is Netflix thinking about how to infuse advertising in to its model?’,” Lesser said.
“Netflix is, I would bet, having conversations about how big-brand advertisers can get involved in content creation so that they can have a more effective engagement with their consumers.
“I think, over time, all over-the-top content, with Netflix being the gold standard, will have to be financed in some way by what we, traditionally, know now as the advertising business.”
Also in the panel, ad agency tech and data executives discussed whether the modern-day precision capability to target only customers known to be in-market for a particular brand or product will mean an exclusive focus on performance advertising, at the expense of traditional top-of-funnel or brand-based advertising of the like commonly seen on TV.
This video is from The Mastercard Automated Advertising Panel at Cannes Lions 2017. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>That was the main question on the lips of moderator Jay Sears, the SVP of MasterCard’s advertising intelligence, when he chaired a panel discussion on the topic on the shores of the Cannes Lions festival of creativity.
In The Mastercard Automated Advertising Panel, Sears questioned a line-up of agency leaders:
In this enlightening, 46-minute recording of the panel, they touch on a variety of topics, including:
Enjoy the full, insight-packed video, or look out for our individual segments.
This video is from The Mastercard Automated Advertising Panel at Cannes Lions 2017. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>Now, slowly, as new attribution technology hots up, brands are being promised the ability the ability to close the loop.
But, whilst, to many, this evolution appears to be driven by brands, agency tech chiefs, in this Beet.TV recorded panel discussion, say some clients have a long way to go. Here is a flavour of what they said…
IPG Mediabrands chief data and marketing technology officer Arun Kumar:
“Depending on who in the client organisation you talk to, you tend to get get a couple of different definition of ‘What is an outcome?’
“There is a disconnect in the conversations you have in procurement (and the brand). There is a desire in one part of the organisation to drive toward the outcome – and the other part doesn’t necessarily believe that that is measurable or comparable across a wider set of the ecosystem. There needs to be an alignment.”
Dentsu Aegis Network product and innovation president Doug Ray:
“You get what you measure. If you’ve got a procurement department, they’re looking at ‘How do we extract cost and drive down that cost? … If I can buy what I bought before more cheaply, the thesis is the return on investment will be improved’.
“There is a race to the bottom. It can only be bought so cheaply before you’re starting to fundamentally disrupt the quality of that inventory.
“We’d like to change the conversation and look at the value-in versus cost-out. It may cost you a higher CPM – but, if the response from the consumer is greater, then the overall value of that media buy is going to be better for that client.”
GroupM North America CEO Brian Lesser:
“The technology would be easy to solve. The most powerful media companies right now have a better understanding of consumers than many advertisers do – they want to hold on to that leverage, they want to define their own metrics, they want to grade their own homework. We’re left with Nielsen, which is imperfect at best.”
Hearts & Science CEO Scott Hagedorn:
“A lot of clients believe there’s one true god and that god is Nielsen – and that is wrong.
“If you’re an application … you have to install the Nielsen app in to your SDK, and there’s not a lot of room for that. We think 40% of all video or content that could be measured is not. That’s a big problem.
“The great thing about programmatic … and fusing different panels … in to a DMP is, you can actually start to look at the causality of marketing.”
In this discussion panel recorded by Beet.TV, ad agency tech executives say many clients are capable of moving forward – but they are caught between two worlds…
IPG Mediabrands chief data and marketing technology officer Arun Kumar:
“The newer companies look at performance (marketing) very differently and they’re far more open to restructuring and not having silos. They’re very good at lower-funnel, they’re structured internally to do that.
“Where they struggle is, in many cases, they see that as a battle for market share, as opposed to figuring out, ‘How am I going to get to the top of the funnel?’”
GroupM North America CEO Brian Lesser:
“Market-mix modelling has been the holy grail of channel allocation fora very long time. When you come from the new school, you say, ‘Market-mix modelling is looking through the rear-view mirror, that can’t possibly be right.’
“You get part of your media plan using real-time media to buy and optimise, and part of your plan that’s looking backwards. The answer is not either-or, frankly – tis’ about updating that model more often.”
Hearts & Science CEO Scott Hagedorn:
“The big problem with the market-mix models right now is the competitive data set which powers most of those are powered by Nielsen, and 75% of Nielsen’s money comes from the TV networks – so the mixed models themselves are totally based on TV and don’t take in to account what’s really happening in digital.”
Dentsu Aegis Network product and innovation president Doug Ray:
“We’re working with a lot of our clients on, ‘How do you bring those two worlds (clients’ media team and and customer data team) together? How do you apply the precision and audience understanding that those groups had, how do you leverage the understanding that those CRM or ecommerce teams and leverage similar types of data in a mass-media ecosystem?’ That’s evolving, we’re able to apply some of those principles in the mass-media space.”
This video is from The Mastercard Automated Advertising Panel at Cannes Lions 2017. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>“I think privacy is of the utmost importance for clients. It always has been,” says Doug Ray, Dentsu Aegis Network’s President of Product & Innovation.
At the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, where Ray was a panelist at the Mastercard Automated Advertising Panel, he explains to Beet.TV how the way media is planned and purchased has become much more dynamic and why his company has “doubled down” on leveraging data.
This includes both PII information—names, physical addresses and email addresses—and cookie data within client data management platforms.
“That’s at the end of the day why clients are directly managing their DMP’s and leaning in to CRM, because they’re looking to try to understand and know their customers better,” says Ray.
Particularly in Europe, regulators go to great lengths to restrict what marketers can do with consumer data. This will only increase as companies become more sophisticated about mining that information.
Last week, Dentsu Aegis Network recruited the Chief Privacy Officer from British Telecom Group, Mark Keddie, to become its first Global Data Protection Officer. It came a year before such a position will be mandated by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
The move is “very important and something we’re certainly taking quite seriously particularly as we pivot into utilizing PII more and more for our advertising campaigns,” says Ray.
The pivot includes its acquisition last August of a majority stake in data marketing firm Merkle. Baltimore-based Merkle specializes in so-called “customer relationship marketing,” which includes crafting loyalty programs for marketers and managing their vast customer databases that hold reams of consumer information, as The Wall Street Journal reports.
Earlier this month, Dentsu Aegis Networks’ media agency brands began using Merkle’s PII-based M1 platform for centralized data planning and activation. For some initial campaigns using M1, Ray says there’s an average improvement of 20% in return on investment “and that’s simply by cleaning up the supply side in terms of costs, duplication of cookies and so on.”
This video is from The Mastercard Automated Advertising Panel at Cannes Lions 2017. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>Also at CES, Ray will host a “fireside chat” with Hulu, looking at where the online TV service is today and where it’s going. “With the landscape of data changing so quickly, our ability to leverage their data to create better experiences for clients to connect linear TV experiences with non-linear TV is what we need to do to maximize the TV platforms,” Ray says.
He also touched on the risks and opportunities in the shifting over-the-top landscape. Carat analyzed video viewing from 2009 to today, and has seen a 16% increase in total hours consumed. The challenge is some of those platforms can’t be monetized. “We are working with many platform companies about how to leverage their data and create some partnerships to be as targeted and as addressable as we can in the formats that support ads, and in some non-supportive platforms we look at how to integrate into that content.”
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.
]]>“Right now, that data doesn’t exist in a co-mingled way or in a way that would allow us to truly target at a one-to-one individual level on an OTT or television device,” Doug Ray, the CEO of media agency Carat USA, says in an interview with Beet.TV at the annual IAB MIXX conference in Manhattan.
“Can we get there? Perhaps at some point. But we’re still going to then to crack the code around household versus individual or addressable data,” Ray says.
In the meantime, Carat is “engaging with the ability to target at the individual level and we’re leaning in and doing a lot of work with clients at the household addressability level,” Ray says.
This is not to say that cross-platform attribution at the household level isn’t relevant. It’s “absolutely critical,” adds Ray. “We’re able to look at that exposure not only through linear or addressable TV but also across other platforms. That’s been proving very well for us,” he says.
Although not many clients are active in that space, “those clients that are leaning into it are seeing real value and by testing it they’re able to substantiate that as a viable measure for them.”
Within the TV realm, the biggest issue to Ray is the lack of a common currency for measurement purposes among the biggest program owners. “They’re investing in their own datasets, ad tech, to enable addressability within their own ecosystem. But that starts to create some issues around cross platform or across suppliers,” Ray explains.
Citing companies like Samba and Simulmedia, which have amassed huge amounts of TV viewing data, Ray believes their efforts could lead to an industry wide solution. “My hope is that we get one of those as a potential solution for the industry to actually embrace,” Ray says.
The next step then would be getting that data down to an individual level. “I’m not sure that we will ultimately be able to get to that individual level without fusing or matching data,” he says.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB MIXX Conference, 2016, presented by The TradeDesk. Please find additional videos from the Conference here.
]]>Last year, a poll of senior global marketers said personalized ads made for higher response and engagement rates. But, for marketers and the agencies who make the ads, getting there is not easy, a panel convened by Beet.TV heard:
Carat’s Ray identified two main challenges standing in the way of the opportunity:
Imagine making a TV ad for every individual consumer. That’s going to require a lot of individual footage assets, plus the ability to thread them together in to something resembling a standard 30- or 15-second commercial.
Tech vendors like Eyeview and Flite are emerging to support the latter. But even Flite’s Goodwin, whose company enables ad creative management, cautions against too ambitious a goal for now.
“If we’re talking about addressable TV, we can do five versions, seven versions,” he said. “We would love to do 100,000 versions – but the technology is not ready.
“The set-top box is not built to hold 100,000 versions, there is limited hard drive space. Once the set-top box is digitised, you’ll be able to get the ad on a real-time basis, then we’ll be able to do 100,000 versions on TV.”
For now, Flite is supporting a plethora of personalization of supported devices, however: “On connected TV, we are doing 100,000 versions. In a Facebook environment, we are limited to 10,000, 20,000 versions.”
For agencies used to making one or two ads for a brand campaign, the coming age may sound challenging.
But Eyeview’s Cohen, whose company supports programmatic media management, advised: “We don’t change (the entire) 30 seconds, we change (only) five seconds.”
At the end of the day, Carat’s Ray offered a useful framework for marketers embarking on a dynamic ad creative future, one that is dependent on present-day data-based ad targeting principles:
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology. You can find more videos from the session here.
This panel was moderated by Furious Corp founder Ashley J. Swartz.
]]>
Many people in the furnace of the fire know this much. But how exactly is the business changing, and what does that mean for ad agencies and how they must step up to the plate?
Doug Ray, an agency veteran who helms Dentsu Aegis Network’s Carat in the US, observes: “I think we are in a point of inflection, and I think we’ll continue to be in that point … at least for the next five, potentially 10 years.”
For Ray, the old agency business was about amassing agency scale sufficient to wangle preferential pricing for ads, thereby competing for client business on price. But consolidation and technology have rendered pricing mere “table stakes” as a USP.
“What I’m now seeing is that the ability to be clever and smart and to leverage data in a way that brings value, less about extracting costs, but more about creating better performance, is where we’re going,” he says. “It’s more about now having a very strong point of view about where that client needs to go.”
The whole agency evolution came in to sharp focus in 2015 amid so-called “Pitchapalooza”, a confluence of brand-agency account renewals when a reported $25bn in business was up for renegotiation – and from which Carat, Ray has previously said, emerged with $1.8bn in new business.
He says brands will make agency decisions in the future based on three criteria other than pricing:
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology. You can find more videos from the session here.
]]>In truth, so-called “Pitchapalooza” has been about more than just beauty contests for contract renewal – it’s also about establishing which agencies have digital chops in the booming age of data-driven marketing.
“This has been an unprecedented year. We’ve felt it as an agency,” admits Dentsu Aegis media planning and buying agency Carat‘s global president Doug Ray, in this video interview with Beet.TV
“It’s setting a precedent in terms of marking a change in what clients are expecting from agencies, what agencies’ capabilities need to be.
We’ve fared pretty well. We’re at about $1.8bn in net new business. That doesn’t account for the major decisions that are yet to come this year – Procter & Gamble, Sony and so on.”
Carat pinched Mondelez’s contract from MediaVest, Pfizer shifted its media planning to the firm, too, while Carat also picked up LongHorn Steakhouses, all following last year’s big MasterCard win.
What’s Carat doing right? Ray says: “Agencies are focused on technology stack, data strategy… how they help clients move from less legacy, reservation, less flexible media in to much more dynamic, automated and addressable media.”
That’s what he has his eyes on as he embarks on a visit to the Consumer Electronics Show, where he says clients want to “understand the future of marketing through the lens of data and innovation.”
This video is part of a series titled “The Road to CES,” a series of video interviews leading up to CES in January. The series is sponsored by YuMe. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
Readers note: Ray will be one of the keynote speakers in the Beet Retreat in Vieques in February.
]]>In Ray’s view, that’s because of factors like the growth of data and programmatic, as well as decision-making over the years over whether to take investment in various media owners and technology companies. As a result, “different holding companies and agencies are now fundamentally taking different positions and having different philosophies,” he says in an interview with Beet.TV.
Going forward, “the client is going to actually have to ask themselves which philosophy and which approach do I align with,” he says.
At dmexco next month, Ray expects discussions with clients and partners to center on the same topics that have been generating buzz all year, namely data, transparency, and the continued migration of legacy media over into addressable, automated channels and formats.
This interview is part of a series of videos leading up to the DMEXCO conference in Cologne. The series is presented by 4C + Teletrax.
]]>“We are moving away from buying as a core ability and to strategy and to audiences and understanding them better,” he says, explaining the focus of a media agency in today’s environment. “The key is in identifying the most valuable audiences, being able to understand the insights, knowing how to activate those audiences, and being able to measure the value of the contribution of those audiences.”
An agency that is an expert in data and how to leverage those capabilities is best positioned to succeed. In addition, it’s critical to move towards addressability in TV buying, as that model can help ensure the TV ads are indeed reaching the right audiences, Ray says.
He also talked about attribution modeling, and its use in video advertising. “We look at leading indicators to understand the contribution of video, such as the connection between video and branded search,” he says.
This video is part of our series about the impact of video advertising, produced at Cannes presented by true[X]. Please find additional videos from the series here. This segment was produced on the true[X] yacht.
]]>He predicts that media planning in general will become more centered on linking advertising to the content across screens. Look for more acquisitions too, such as Disney’s purchase of Maker Studios. “We will see big networks looking at new content players and transforming how they connect with consumers,” he says. Data, of course, will remain front and center especially as programmatic buying continues to take hold. Carat is already in 24 markets globally with programmatic capabilities.
This is part of a series title the State of Video, a series sponsored by AOL Platforms. Please visit this page for all the videos from the series which will published over the next 30 days. This segment was recorded in London.
]]>“Because of that data warehouse you’re starting to discover audiences that perhaps a traditional segmentation model may not have you to,” Carat global president Doug Ray tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“We now have more knowledge and more information about the value of networks and programs – information that we have and the networks don’t have. That starts to turn the balance of leverage in terms of ‘information is power’.
“My ambition is that we create the first audience/GRP guaranteed currency against non-traditional currency measures … and hold the networks accountable for those audiences.”
This is part of a series title the State of Video, a series sponsored by AOL Platforms. Please visit this page for all the videos from the series which will published over the next 30 days.
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