“I like to think about the CMO as actually the chief consumer officer. So I guess marketing people should always be the people with the best knowledge about consumers,” says Marcel Marcondes, U.S. CMO, Anheuser-Busch. “Marketing needs to deliver on creativity on advertising and everything. But if you really want to drive growth, we must lead the conversation on innovation as well. Because this is how we fulfill their needs through our products.”
In this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Masters of Marketing conference, Marcondes explains A-B’s quest for agility and why it’s no longer enough to simply steal market share from competitors.
“First and foremost, we’re radically changing the way we do innovation. We’re reducing lead times by half so we can really bring great beers and great products to life in a much faster way,” says Marcondes. “We’re really trying to bring more people to the category” in order to expand the category, he adds, citing health and wellness beverages. “And we’re developing new kinds of beers that can really address that in a very effective way.”
Whereas beer brands are used to planning and delivering “whatever we want to do” to drive business, that strategy has gone flat, according to Marcondes. “Now it’s all about listening to consumers first. So it’s harder to plan. You must pay attention on a daily basis to what’s going on out there, what’s relevant in culture, what people are talking about. This is really time sensitive.”
Asked about A-B’s longtime use of brand-building television advertising, Marcondes says TV still occupies an important place in the company’s communications. “I still believe in TV to support innovation. It’s all about driving fast awareness. This is exactly what you need when you’re launching something new to the market.
“Nowadays, that’s the beginning of the conversation. We need to have TV and we need to go way beyond that because either we are part of the conversation or we’re irrelevant. I cannot allow this to happen to our brands or to our categories.”
This segment is from CMO Growth Council presented by the ANA and Cannes Lions. Beet.TV coverage is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find more videos from the series here.
]]>“Talent is critical to the journey of transformation for marketing these days. As we all know, many of our organizations have been disrupted and are all undergoing transformation to drive growth,” Sison says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Masters of Marketing conference of the Association of National Advertisers.
“We talk about how we build brands in this new world, we talk about marketing technology, data and analytics. But we often forget about the importance of people and talent as a critical component to driving successful growth and change within the industry itself.”
Within J&J, the marketer has decided that “All of our marketers need to be better scientists,” along with better strategists to sort out data that can drive business success and better storytellers “to make sure that we’re able to tell a consistent brand story across screens.”
The final “s” is for socializers, “because we need to create that relationship that’s much more social with our consumers and our brands,” Sison says.
J&H’s engagement with its consumers reveals that they are expecting “a great deal of value exchanged with our brands these days in terms of not just the education but also a broader set of experiences.”
It goes beyond mere products to services powered by technology, for example apps or the Internet of things.
“We at J&J have begun to recognize this and are building new engagement touch points, if you will, with our consumers to make sure that our brands are relevant in that exchange of value.”
This segment is from CMO Growth Council presented by the ANA and Cannes Lions. Beet.TV coverage is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find more videos from the series here.
]]>That age cohort, consisting of those born between roughly 1995 and 2008, has been the subject of focus groups, the results of which have formed the Navy’s most recent content for its Forged by the Sea campaign, says Capt. Matt Boren, CMO, Navy Recruiting Command.
“Most of them have something unique that drew them to the Navy, and we define those as rewards of the Navy,” Capt. Boren explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference.
Some prospects are drawn to meaningful venture or creative innovation, while a third group is “traditionalist” in nature by virtue of having family members in the military. The last group respond to ads or displays of strength, according to Capt. Boren.
“All three of those pillars really want to find teamwork and opportunity, so we call that a stability seeking behavior across all three genres.”
Asked about specific KPI’s, he says the big picture starts with creating awareness about a branch of the armed forces with which not everyone is completely familiar.
“We have a system where we go from awareness to them engaging with our content, ultimately driving them to navy.com. We consider that our recruiting hub and there we have a call to action,” says Capt. Boren.
That might be an 800 number someone can call, filling out lead-gen form or an email. “They will do some form to get their name and information in our system, at which point we take that from a gross lead and we start a process we call blueprinting.”
After checking those prospects for age, citizenship and other aspects of eligibility, “then we get them on the phone” gauge interest and eliminate such disqualifiers as medical or criminal backgrounds. At the bottom of the funnel emerge qualified and interested leads. “That’s what we pass to our field recruiters.”
Since 1973, when the Navy became all-volunteer, it’s had nine different advertising taglines, but none of them invoked the word “sea” until now, Capt. Boren notes. The Navy’s agency in Memphis is Y&R, whom he describes as an “outstanding team. I’ve been ecstatic with what they’ve produced” in partnership with media agency Wavemaker to drive a deeper connection between media, content and technology.
He presented on the main stage of the ANA with Amanda Richman, CEO of Wavemaker, U.S.
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
]]>Noting margin inadequacies at agencies and profit-and-loss challenges at marketers, it’s logical to take a close look at what can be done in-house, Kassan says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference.
“Those are competing dynamics and I think it’s a chaotic moment and I think there is more that clients, marketers can do themselves. That doesn’t negate the need for an agency because the agency is that outside-in perspective that you can’t always get looking inside out,” says Kassan.
“You run the risk if you create an in-house agency at brand X, that your team is only focused on brand X and they don’t get the horizontal visibility and influence that you get if you’re working across many brands.”
Taking more functions in-house also impacts the recruitment of talent when creative or media practitioners decide whether they want to work on just one client or vertical category, according to Kassan. “Or do they want the variety is the spice of life approach where they get to work across a portfolio of clients?’
The ANA surveyed 412 of its members in August 2018, 52% of whom were at the director level or above. According to the survey, 78% of ANA members have some type of in-house operation compared to 42% 10 years ago.
Kassan believes that advances in technology and automation will continue to be driving force for marketers deciding to do more themselves. “Will that trend continue? Yes.”
He perceives more transparency in what people are talking about at the ANA conference, and not just pertaining to media buying and placement “but also transparency about the actual conversation. Marketers and agencies actually talking about what are the benefits and liabilities of going in house. I think it’s a good conversation and we’ll see a lot of movement in that regard.”
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
]]>For about six months, the media entities “were basically in a stall as a business,” Cancela, who is President and GM, Telemundo Puerto Rico & NBC Puerto Rico, explains in this video interview with Beet.TV conducted on the island. Among other effects of Maria, he says an “exodus” of people leaving the island scared advertisers, and cable TV providers suffered two storms: the hurricane and the destruction of broadband lines during the subsequent cleanup.
At Beet Retreat 2018 in San Juan from Nov. 28-30, there will be a special session titled Lessons Learned: Hurricane Maria’s Impact on the Media Industry of Puerto Rico. Cancela and other speakers will discuss how in the absence of broadband advertisers turned to over-the-air broadcasting along with traditional media like outdoor, radio and print.
For Puerto Rico, it took from September to March before “the market really started to react to TV,” at which point 70% of the island had regained electricity, Cancela says. “One thing we learned during that time is the importance of your digital platforms and being able to broadcast through your digital platforms. We never stopped broadcasting but we were broadcasting through our digital platforms.”
Asked to describe the TV market currently, Cancela says “What we’re definitely seeing now is that over the air has grown a good ten percentage points.” He adds that cable providers “actually had two storms,” Maria and the aftermath with “people just sawing through stuff and they cut down a lot of their broadband. It’s taken them a while. They’re still in recoup mode. I’d say the satellite providers have recouped a lot quicker.”
Maria’s impact on audience sizes won’t become clear until the first quarter of 2019 when new Census data become available, according to Cancela. He says the “overlying scenario is the exodus of people, and that scared a lot of the advertisers.” Estimates range from 150,000 to 300,000 people leaving the island within a six-month window. The human outflow scared the market, with some advertisers holding back on ad budgets. “That’s kind of stabilized.”
Throughout the whole ordeal, content remained king. “We produce over forty five hours of local content and we see that as an area of continued opportunity for us,” Cancela says. “No matter what platform they may watch us on, that content is unique to us, unique to Puerto Rico and therefore relevant to our potential viewers and our viewers.”
Joining Cancela to discuss media in the aftermath of Maria will be Melissa Burgos, Marketing Director USVI/Puerto Rico, AT&T Mobility; Freddie Hernandez, General Manager, Procter & Gamble, Puerto Rico; and Andres Claudio, General Manager, Hearts & Science, Puerto Rico. The session will be moderated by Phil Cowdell, President of Client Services at GroupM, who has been deeply involved with Puerto Rico relief and recovery.
The session will conclude with a briefing by Olga Ramos, President of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico. She will present data on the impact of the storm on the island’s youth and her organizations’ efforts to improve their future.
]]>“We put a lot of effort on remodeling restaurants and making sure that the restaurants have the latest design. We always study the type of guests who come to our restaurants and we try to offer a layout to accommodate them,” Machado adds.
In this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference, Machado talks about a company culture focused on design, good service and modern technology.
The “design bucket” includes being able to accommodate, say, families who need four seats or people who need a power outlet and WiFi to get some work done at a Burger King location. “Try to understand who is the guest of that particular location or the country so that we make sure we offer that experience,” Machado says.
Bucket #2, “guest friendliness,” covers seemingly simple concepts like getting someone’s order right and serving food while it’s still hot. “It’s basic stuff, but if you don’t get that right, the experience will not be great. It’s one of the biggest challenges we have to make sure that our culture permeates to the restaurant.”
Rounding out Burger King’s trio of priorities is using technology to change the way that people interact with the brand. “I’m not even talking about advertising or social media, I’m talking about at the restaurant,” Machado says, citing amenities like self-ordering kiosks, mobile ordering/payment systems and CRM. “The basic things that we have to do at the restaurant because today technology is empowering us to do that.”
Asked about his participation with the ANA’s CMO Council in conjunction with the Cannes Lions, Machado calls it a “huge opportunity and responsibility. I want to learn and I also want to contribute.”
Noting that things are “just getting started” with the CMO Council as people continue to get to know each other and decide what to pursue, he shares his hopes for the next gathering in June of 2019 at Cannes. “My expectation for Cannes would be to have even more clarity in each of the work streams, in each of the pillars that we have as part of this initiative” along with having better connections with Council members “because I think that’s also part of the benefit of having a council is the networking.”
This segment is from CMO Growth Council presented by the ANA and Cannes Lions. Beet.TV coverage is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find more videos from the series here.
]]>Whereas shoppers’ in-store experiences might once have involved interacting with a cashier or other employee, now they’re researching and buying products online, engaging in customer service follow-up and making a lot more returns, Rogers explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference.
“All of that has really changed the nature of the relationship with the customer and now what we have historically defined as marketing or the communication piece is really a small piece of the overall pie now,” says Rogers, who had been Chief Marketing Officer at Walmart. “Structurally, what we’ve done is we’ve made the job of the chief marketer bigger. And so now it’s chief member officer instead of chief marketing officer. Every customer touchpoint digitally and physically along the way now resides within the marketing team, and that’s a big change.”
Rogers is one of many marketers who are involved with the ANA’s CMO Council along with the Cannes advertising festival. He likes the opportunities to brainstorm, think and ideate with other marketers who are experiencing similar challenges.
“The challenge is when you’re in your own organization, everybody kind of already expects you to know all this stuff. So it’s cool to have a safe place where you can go and network and think and be around a bunch of smart people to cultivate ideas that you can then bring back to your company. This group has a high ROI in terms of the things that I’m able to take from it and bring back to my company.” Rogers adds.
When the CMO Council convenes again at Cannes in June of 2019, Rogers hopes to see guidelines or recommendations “about what companies can do in terms of their org structure, to position themselves to really go and address customer experience broadly.” He thinks it’s a “good idea for this group to provide guidance to corporate America on how to do that.”
This segment is from CMO Growth Council presented by the ANA and Cannes Lions. Beet.TV coverage is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find more videos from the series here.
]]>“You need to nurture it and you need to sort of grow and develop that talent. I’m a firm believer of great marketing talent is going to lead to great and big growth for our companies,” Rutledge adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference.
Rutledge had a key role in two sessions at the conference: Leading Disruption To Drive Growth, wherein she shared the stage with executives from Procter & Gamble, Deloitte and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, and Leveraging An Iconic Brand To Fuel Business Globally.
“American Express does a lot to nurture its talent,” Rutledge explains. “We have great learning programs that help our marketers understand and grow as well as we’re really caring so much about leadership and personal leadership and are really caring about their career development and how we can be there for them and have their back every step of the way of their career.”
Reflecting on one “fabulous” conference session, she cites examples of action items that can be taken both as individuals and as a group in terms of furthering the marketing industry, from partnering with universities together, from clearly defining and expanding the definition of marketing.
Also a firm believer in the need to “market the marketing,” Rutledge says “that’s what I think we need to do.”
This segment is from CMO Growth Council presented by the ANA and Cannes Lions. Beet.TV coverage is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find more videos from the series here.
]]>In this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers’ Masters of Marketing conference, A+E’s EVP of Ad Sales discusses why advertisers haven’t taken the full plunge into advanced targeting and the likelihood that the ad-supported model is in the future for companies like Amazon, Netflix and the planned Disney service.
He says advertisers are “getting so pressured to prove the effectiveness of every nickel they spend. Everyone’s known for a long time TV works, especially on the upper-funnel metrics of awareness and all that. But there’s been like a vagueness to that. It doesn’t really tie back to ROI as cleanly as some other things.”
Being able to more closely tie TV ad exposure to tangible business results “gives the ammunition that the marketers need to keep recommending premium video as that centerpiece and not be shifting money somewhere else,” Olsen says.
Advertisers are looking to strike a balance “between what digital is claiming it can do and what we’ve always known TV could do, and then just really getting to kind of the right balance to answer on the effectiveness of both,” he adds.
It’s worth noting that while age and gender has been the transactional TV demographic for years, secondary targets have been available for more than three decades, Olsen observes. TV networks have the tools to go beyond, say, trying to reach everyone ages 18-49 to more strategic targets.
“Clients I think are interested but they’re not jumping in with both feet yet” given questions about data quality and scalability. “So I think it’s finding the right balance between what is still mass, what is targeted and then you take it a step further, what should go to addressable, et cetera.”
Then there’s the viewer balancing act. While many are seeking to avoid ads, that comes with a higher cost.
But Olsen points to signs of hope. “Some of the stuff we’ve seen, though, isn’t as daunting as it may look right now,” he says. “Some of the S-VOD penetration is kind of hitting a ceiling here in the U.S. and I think those companies are actually looking at ad models themselves.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix has an ad model, Amazon, the new Disney service. All those things eventually have ad models as part of that product. I think they will be more tailored ads and more personalized will be kind of the magic to it.
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
]]>“I took the time to read through it and understand what they were seeing, and I think that sometimes there are facts that are buried in that tell a broader story, Marla Kaplowitz says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference. “We speak to agencies every single day who are either working with some in house teams or they’re working directly with marketers. And there is no right way and you have to really consider what is right for you.”
The ANA surveyed 412 of its members in August 2018, 52% of whom were at the director level or above. For 44% of respondents, their in-house agency was established within the past five years, contributing to the recent rise in overall penetration of in-house agencies, according to the survey.
Among other survey findings, services performed in-house that have grown significantly over the past five years are content marketing, creative strategy, data/marketing analytics, media strategy, programmatic media and social media (both creative and media).
The survey reveals that top perceived benefits of in-house agencies are:
*Cost efficiencies
*Better knowledge of brands
*Institutional knowledge
*Dedicated staff
*Speed, nimbleness
Asked to identify a single primary benefit of having an in-house agency, cost efficiencies was top ranked by a wide margin, according to the survey.
“The most telling stat in the report is that 90 percent of ANA members still continue to work with an outside agency,” Kaplowitz says. “I think that when you look at the kind of work that is going on right now in the marketplace, from media and the complexity that is happening in the digital supply chain, if you’re looking at programmatic and all the technology, you need outside perspective.”
She adds that producing “brilliant” creative requires “outside provocation and thinking. When you’re working with an agency on content, you want a strategic planner who is looking at what is going on in culture and not just looking at one particular brand but looking across all the different categories and working with different people in the agencies.”
Kaplowitz says the most important thing to understand about agencies is their ability to help drive business growth and “helping to be an extension of that client and that client team. You need that outside perspective, you need that outside thinking to push and provoke. You don’t get that when you’re with your own team.”
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
]]>“Emotions are running high. The good news is spend is running very high as well,” already surpassing spending in the 2016 election cycle two weeks before the mid-terms, Baer explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers’ Masters of Marketing Conference. “So it’s a very exciting space.”
Behind the dollar figures are trends showing that data “is playing a really key role in enabling the right type of targeting.” Local cable’s share of political advertising budgets is at 33%, “which is an all-time high for cable advertising. We’re also seeing that their ability to go deeper into the networks that they’re selling and the candidates are buying is greater because of this data,” Baer says.
Previously, a Republican candidate might have advertised on just one TV network but now “can advertise on four or five different networks to get greater efficiency and effectiveness in reaching their audience.” The effect on Democratic candidates is even greater, with some using more than a dozen networks “because of this rich data that’s informing the buy.”
Because of the compressed time frame of political campaigns, they have been leaders in the use of data targeting, particularly with the rise of digital media. But political spending is still focused primarily on TV.
“TV is still king in many ways,” says Baer. “In large part because political spend happens between Labor Day and November. So it’s a very condensed window of time, and in order to be effective in spending what turns out to be billions of dollars in aggregate, we need to do it in an efficient medium. And television is that medium.”
Nonetheless, digital spending by political campaigns also is up to the tune of triple digits, according to Baer, citing data from Comcast Spotlight, which marries its own data insights with voter data to help better target cable advertising at the local market level.
“So there’s a greater amount of digital inventory, and actually that’s driven a lot by set-top box VOD inventory. So what we’re seeing is the trend toward accessing cross-screen and following viewership to their other devices and modeling after their viewing habits, not just live television.”
Political advertisers also are harnessing household addressable advertising for more precise targeting of voters, according to Baer, who is President of FreeWheel Advertisers (formerly STRATA).
All in all, she believes that the two-month campaign window represents an “accelerated view” of what’s happening in television.
“While TV marketing is undergoing tremendous change overall, in the context of political everything is accelerated. One trend that we’re seeing is that data-driven television is the future. I would say one of the main takeaways from the political spending season right now is that using intelligent data capabilities married with the right television inventory is going to skyrocket effectiveness for all advertisers.”
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
]]>It’s a situation that many retailers would love to find themselves in, Gomez explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference.
“The retail industry is going through a massive transformation,” Gomez says. “If you read the headlines, what you’re reading about is there are so many retailers that are on the verge of bankruptcy or actually going bankrupt. They’re closing stores.
“Those retailers that are going to survive are going to be the ones that can invest to create a differentiated, compelling guest experience.”
For Target, whose brick-and-mortar locations and online presence Gomez says are frequented by 80% of Americans, investments are made with an eye toward creation a shopper experience that can’t be found elsewhere. “We’re remodeling our stores, we’re opening new stores in urban locations, on college campuses, we’re investing in supply chain so we can get product to you faster than anybody else and we’re launching a ton of new owned brands,” he says.
So the Target challenge is “how do we come across as small? How do we come across as local? How do we come across as your Target?”
While mass-targeted advertising across the country is a given, Target also invests in such a way that’s “very bespoke for that community.” Tactics can include charitable works and local events to “make sure that we’re showing up in a way that’s going to be relevant for that neighborhood.”
Asked about the work he does with the CMO Council partnership of the ANA and the Cannes advertising festival, whose representatives gathered in Orlando recently, Gomez points to common issues as a binding element.
“It doesn’t really matter what industry you’re in or how big your company is. We’re all dealing with the same challenges. And Cannes gives us a great forum to get together to talk about the solutions and that’s what I expect to happen in June.”
His hope for the agenda next June in Cannes is “that it becomes very clear, specific and tangible and that we have some early wins so it can build some momentum.”
This segment is from CMO Growth Council presented by the ANA and Cannes Lions. Beet.TV coverage is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find more videos from the series here.
]]>Suitably, Charney’s presentation at the recent Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference was titled The Most Feared Four-Letter Word In Marketing. That word is risk, and it’s something that the marketing department of the insurance giant has long championed, he explains in this interview with Beet.TV.
“Risk? First of all, it’s my favorite four-letter word of any four-letter word in marketing and in general. You’ve got to take risks. It’s got to be a company, a culture of risks,” Charney says.
With Flo, portrayed by actress and comedian Stephanie Courtney, one might not think there’s too much risk involved, even though some of her characters can be hard to relate to. Fact is, she’s attracted a great deal of detractors (to put it mildly) among American consumers. But it’s helped Progressive stay top-of-mind.
“It’s all about being part of the consideration set, Charney says. “If I’m thinking about insurance, I got to think about Progressive. I see that woman Flo, I’m thinking about Progressive. Then I go and I quote with Progressive and I convert with Progressive. Next thing I know, I’m a customer for ten, fifteen years. It’s a very competitive environment right now.”
There are 36,000 “marketers” within Progressive, according to Charney. “And in some ways, they really represent our brand, and they also have to be themselves. We don’t want to change who they are, we want them to be who they are. And if they get a chance to take a risk and we support that risk, it extends throughout the company.”
When Flo emerged 10 years ago, there was an obvious risk, Charney says, because she was a woman with black hair and a beret, red lipstick and crazy eyelashes. “That was a risk ten years ago. Now it’s nothing. But we have eight other campaigns besides just the Flo campaign.”
If it seems like some Progressive commercials are impromptu, that’s on purpose. They are shot using script outlines and improvisational actors exclusively.
“We don’t try to get normal actors. So the energy on set is incredible,” says Charney. “It’s almost like Curb Your Enthusiasm, if you follow that. We get script outlines and then we’ve got to get certain messages across, but we let the improv actors have fun with it. And we are surprised sometimes with some of the content we get.”
While he professes an inherent love for marketing, Charney believes that his compatriots need to get braver. “Take risks. It’s a good thing. And when it pays off, it pays off big.”
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
]]>“I think we’re at an inflection point,” Rothwell says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers’ Masters of Marketing Conference. “Scale has been lacking in certain areas, which made it tough I think as an investment prioritization for some brands and agencies,” Rothwell adds. “But now we see a lot more scale coming through those OTT, set-top box VOD and, increasingly, addressable linear opportunities.”
Calling advanced TV “the umbrella term for all of those opportunities or anything outside of the linear stream,” Rothwell says he’s “getting the sense that people are really leaning into it now. ”
In a Beet.TV interview with Brian Wallach, who is SVP, Chief Revenue Officer, Advanced TV, FreeWheel Markets, Wallach explains how FreeWheel’s new DRIVE platform is designed to unify advanced TV offerings with unified audience measurement.
To align with a more scaled, dynamic TV offering, Rothwell discussed the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video’s latest output: A Buyer’s Guide to the New Living Room.” This reference guide provides media planners and buyers with tactics and workarounds to take advantage of what the new living room can do for advertisers.
Every quarter, increasing volumes of digital and dynamically delivered video advertising are accessed via set-top boxes and (OTT) devices on the big screen. This now accounts for 57 percent of all non-linear impressions, according to the FreeWheel Video Monetization Report (VMR) Q2 2018.
“Combine the reach of broadcast television with the dynamic insertion and dynamic advertising opportunities through these new devices and you can combine that reach now with precision. TV being that full-funnel opportunity for advertisers,” says Rothwell.
This is not to suggest these still-growing channels are not without their challenges. “Currently, there’s a lot of constraints getting in the way, whether that be measurement, technology and partners.”
Hence the following guideposts for buyers from the FreeWheel Council’s “A Buyer’s Guide to the New Living Room”:
• Become a subject matter expert in the new living room to gain advantage for your clients while these channels are still nascent and growing
• Create a plan using complementary channels to balance reach and precision, leveraging the common and unique attributes of each
• Work through measurement hurdles and leverage the tools and KPIs that are available to access these engaged yet underserved audiences
• Personalize messaging and manage frequency through addressable options with creative diversity on all campaigns delivered to the new living room
• Optimize for scale by adjusting your KPIs for platforms as necessary such as viewability targets in channels that aren’t able to be measured
“We are as an industry starting to understand what we need to do to make it a more viable opportunity for brands,” says Rothwell, who is VP, Global Agency, Brand & Industry Relations. “Really get that first and third party data to light up and create additional value, create additional precision for those advertising campaigns.”
He sees a “wide appreciation” for the reach of TV programming, regardless of how it is accessed, to help build the purchase funnel and using addressable advertising options to help push consumers to the transaction phase.
“Consistency and standards obviously come next, and we’re starting to see some of that already as well,” Rothwell says.
This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find additional coverage here.
]]>Initial FWCE members include Canal+, Channel 4, Discovery International, Medialaan, MTG, Nelonen, Proximus, RTE, SBS, SFR, Sky Germany, Sky UK and TF1. In conjunction with the launch, the FWCE published its first position paper, titled Why Premium Video Matters for Advertisers: a European Perspective. The document provides a definition of premium video, an overview of how premium content differentiates itself from the digital fray and what the industry in Europe needs to do to effectively evaluate and leverage its engaging, brand-safe environments.
“We’re really excited to replicate the success we’ve had in the U.S.” with the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video, James Rothwell, FreeWheel’s VP, Global Agency, Brand & Relations, says in this interview with Beet.TV.
The FWCE held its first board meeting with its members at Cannes, after which it curated the panel session Television Evolved: The Rise of the Dynamic Living Room, in conjunction with The Drum.
Publishers share many of the same interests and needs across the Atlantic, according to Rothwell. “U.S. TV programmers and operators look very similar in many ways to their European counterparts,” he says.
Nonetheless, there are differences from market to market. “So understanding those differences and obviously creating a unified voice and a unified perspective on how we move the industry forward across the region while thinking about the nuances for each different country is very important,” Rothwell adds.
Here are three takeaways from the initial FWCE position paper.
1) What sets premium video apart is its capacity to elicit engagement with both publisher content and the advertising that appears alongside it.
2) All too often the industry is trying to measure premium video by the standards of other formats, pinning its worth on metrics like viewability alone, without recognizing its potential to engage the consumer.
3) In TV-like environments, brand-safety is assured and fraud is virtually non-existent and advertisers can reach real humans, engaged with the content they have chosen to watch.
This video is from The New TV Ecosystem Leadership Forum at Cannes Lions 2017, presented by FreeWheel. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>“There was a clear understanding, based on the conversations that we had with brands and agencies, that solving for best-in-class ad experience isn’t the issue of the publisher alone,” says the GM, Publisher Platform, FreeWheel. “There is shared accountability on both sides.”
More than half (52%) of 250 agency and brand leaders surveyed by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video said that improving the video ad experience for consumers is the biggest challenge for the industry.
“One of the interesting findings was that the number one answer for ad experience issues actually came back as creative diversity, and that is something that the buy side has accountability for,” Rooke says in this interview with Beet.TV.
Other findings highlighted the need to ensure the right creative assets are made available for the right screens and that ad tags aren’t so heavy as to cause latency issues. “But there was a very balanced point of view that says that at the end of the day, we have to put the consumer at the center,” Rooke says.
He believes that if everyone does their part, everyone will win. Brands know that they’re getting the best return for their money if consumers are watching content in brand-safe and engaging environments, while MVPD’s and other premium video providers can continue to grow their share of ad dollars.
“That fuels the production of best-in-class content that we get to all enjoy, and that’s good for consumers. So I think there’s a nice virtuous cycle there,” Rooke says.
When it comes to fragmentation, FreeWheel has a bird’s-eye view of the complications, as it executes dynamic ad insertion to more than 200 different endpoints.
“Managing that ad experience is not just a technical issue but it is the combination of business policy, operational execution and technical execution. And those three things have to come together across all the different parties,” Rooke observes.
This segment is part of a series leading up to the 2017 TV Upfront. It is presented by FreeWheel. To find more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>Given the 2017 the Upfronts and the attendant conversations about audience buying and cross-screen executions, “One of the most important topics that’s underpinning all of that is ensuring that we’re delivering a really good ad experience to the consumer,” says James Rothwell, VP, Global Agency, Brand & Industry Relations at FreeWheel.
In this interview with Beet.TV at the annual Transformation conference of the 4A’s, where the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video released its survey results, Rothwell explains that the video ad experience was cited above measurement, “which I think gets most of the airtime as the number one challenge.” In all, 59% of respondents indicated that improving consumers’ video ad experience is very important in helping to achieve campaign goals.
Among other survey findings: 46% of respondents cited a lack of creative diversity as one of the leading reasons for a poor ad experience, and there are typically 3.3 ads per screen produced per campaign today. Those surveyed believe that an average of 4.7 ads should be created, while more than one in three said the video ad experience has a direct impact on advertiser ROI.
Despite talk at the Transformation confab of ever-emerging creative formats, Rothwell believes that “it’s more about how do we execute the basics. Making sure we have the right amount of creative to be delivered per screen is really, really important.”
To achieve this, it’s crucial that creative and media teams work closely together “to ensure that process is end to end and is being synchronized in some fashion,” he says.
With 30 members, all on the selling side, the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video operates as an educational and organizing resource to assist marketers reach desired audiences in premium video environments.
Among the survey’s calls to action are industry collaboration to refine the frequency of exposure across channels and ensuring that creative diversity and quality “maps to the context and audience.”
This video is part of series produced in Los Angeles at the 4A’s Transformation ’17. The series is sponsored by Extreme Reach. For more videos from the conference, please visit this page.
]]>But one word is inarguable – “complex”. That’s why the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video, a collection of video providers advocating alongside the video ad-tech vendor, is aiming to stitch back together a fragmented landscape.
The outfit just put together the first of three position pieces examining how to achieve a unified approach.
“We need to first establish what is the language we’re going to be using to describe this challenge,” FreeWheel agency and brand relations VP James Rothwell tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “‘Multi-platform’, ‘convergence’, ‘fluidity’ – there are hundreds of terms and it depends on who you are.
“Let’s align on what we mean when we say these things. Let’s think about different measurement and targeting techniques, currency windows, associated with the linear and digital sides of the house, and figure out how we then unify measurement to tie it all back together again.”
Dynamics are already shifting fast within this multi-dimensional landscape. According to its latest Video Monetization Report, desktop ad view growth has now flattened out, with most growth coming from mobile and over-the-top video devices.
The latter are now making up almost a quarter of ad views on FreeWheel’s publisher network, which Rothwell says accounts for the majority of the premium video ecosystem.
This interview was conducted by Furious Corp CEO Ashley J. Swartz for Beet.TV.
This interview was conducted at Beet Retreat 2016: The Transformation of Television Advertising, an executive retreat presented by Videology with AT&T AdWorks and the 605. Please find more videos from the event here.
]]>“It’s really important for us to ensure that the ad experience and all of the workflow that goes into making sure that ads appear in the right way is done well,” James Rothwell, VP of Agency & Brand Relations at premium video company FreeWheel, says in an interview with Beet.TV.
The Council’s position derives from content consumption patterns showing how people interact with both content and ads. Says Rothwell, “Am I a sampler of content? do I come just to watch an individual show or am I a digital enthusiast basically watching all of my content through all this digital platforms?”
The first leg of the position is preventing ad fatigue from ads that are repeated too often. “It’s a challenge,” Rothwell notes. “The good news is the research we’ve done shows that most long-form and live content, those frequency caps are being adhered to.”
Between five and 11 percent of creative are being repeated over two times, “Which we think is an appropriate frequency per stream. But we know there’s still work to be done,” says Rothwell.
The second area of Council focus is customization of the ad experience based on content consumption. For example, how “snackers” differ from binge watchers.
“There are different ad experience models that our premium publishers are testing out right now to find the right balance between content and ads and ensure that they’re retaining and growing their audiences while meeting advertisers’ goals,” Rothwell says.
Finally, the Council wants to make sure that there is maximization of the diversity and quality of advertising creative. This includes making sure campaigns have “the right amount of creatives in every single format on a cross-screen execution, according to Rothwell. “We’re going to dive a little deeper into that in the future” via custom research, he says.
We interviewed him last month at the ANA Masters of Marketing summit.
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