The company, which owns media titles including Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Huffpost, TechCrunch and Engadget, has content at scale second only to Google and ahead of Facebook, according to Jeff Lucas, Verizon Media’s head of North American sales and global client solutions. That positions it between two content hubs that rely on user-generated content, making brand safety at scale one of Verizon Media’s top differentiators and value propositions.
“We have an extremely close relationship with our user, who leans in every day to consume professionally produced, premium content that’s totally brand safe,” says Lucas, speaking with Beet.TV at Advertising Week. “It puts them in an environment of trust. We would never betray that trust.”
First-party data, transparency around data practices and customer trust shapes Verizon Media’s work with advertisers – Lucas says he feels Verizon Media offers the best data in the business. He says the company has created a data ecosystem that includes customer data, customer safety and brand safety. That’s good for both customers and for marketers, because in the right environment, customers are more likely to convert from ads. “If you’re in an environment that’s not brand safe, and you’re seeing bad content, you’re not likely to trust the advertisers that are building around that.”
As a media company part of the broader Verizon umbrella, Verizon Media is also looking ahead to coming developments around the 5G network, which Lucas says is “limitless.”
“Really, what’s endless is – think about production,” says Lucas. “There’s so much to do where marketers can get right there in the middle of it and see how it’s going to affect their business. When it starts to get more widespread, you’ll see it’s a new revolution.”
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.
]]>But how do advertisers take advantage of that mega media platform, and what exactly is Verizon Media’s offering?
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jeff Lucas, Verizon Media Head of North American Sales & Global Client Solutions, explains: “We’re second to Google in terms of total size, and we are stocked with premium, professionally produced content.
“What we do is, when we look at the first-party data of our users consuming content, we can see where they’re consuming content along the path to purchase. I think that that’s very unique that others don’t have.”
Lucas was speaking around Verizon Media’s NewFronts presentation, where the outfit was pitching its upcoming content slate to advertisers in a bid to secure upfront ad sales agreements.
That roster includes:
As a media proposition, what does a beast with such breadth add up to? Scale, says Verizon Media Head of North American Sales & Global Client Solutions Jeff Lucas
“We’re intending to bring content, data, and innovation with scale to the marketplace,” he says in this video interview with Beet.TV. “When we aggregate all of our audience, we rank number two behind Google in terms of total audience.”
At CES, where Lucas was speaking, Verizon and Microsoft announced an expansion of an existing ad partnership, extending Verizon’s handling of Microsoft’s display, video and content marketing to also include native ads.
Powering native ads on the Microsoft properties extends the latter’s ad inventory by 20%, the pair said.
And, of course, Verizon Media Group will need to make good ad money. Having spent almost $10 billion to acquire AOL and Yahoo, Verizon in its 2018 Q4 wrote $4.6 billion off the value of its Oath assets after Oath ad sales under-performed.
Closer ties to Verizon could help, Lucas says. “When we came together with Verizon, we also came together with Verizon Wireless,” he adds.
This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2019. The series is sponsored by NBCUniversal. For more coverage, please visit this page.
]]>“But also we are thinking about commerce” and “how advertisers can transact on our platforms and we can deliver results. And I think that’s the most important thing,” Lucas adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the Digital Content NewFronts 2018.
Having recently joined Oath from Snap Inc., Lucas is clear about Oath’s overriding mission, which can be summarized thusly: How it uses data to create content, “to deliver consumers and associate them with the right content and the right advertisers, contextually.”
He hopes that NewFronts attendees left Oath’s presentation “feeling that there’s so much value in what we’re bringing to the table with the four pillars of deep content.”
Oath is squarely focused on being a mobile-first entity because that’s where people want content, according to Lucas.
“People wonder why ratings are going down, down, down and advertisers are paying more, more and more. It’s because the consumer wants to see it when they want it, all the time. In their pocket, on their phone.”
To sum things up, he offers a baseball metaphor. “You associate that with a brand-safe environment, with data for targeting and data for measurement and third-party measurement, I think you’re delivering a home run.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
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