But, for one former media agency boss who now is now part of a private equity company, the next gamble make in marketing is clear.
“If I were a betting person, I would go long on identity,” says Laura Desmond the former Starcom Mediavest Group CEO who is now operating partner at Providence Equity, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
What does Desmond mean by “identity”? Simply, the idea that marketers shouldn’t just treat audiences as anonymous pieces of programmatic data whom to push out messages to; they should have bona fide relationships with active prospects, and they will need the technology to manage that.
“We’re going through a tremendous pivot to first party data,” Desmond adds. “Identity is going to become the backbone of the personalized marketing experience, and the advertising ecosystem.
“It is the authentication of the real person, the device as well as who you are from your online and your offline purchases, which is going to make the difference to marketers being able to find you with relevant advertising.
Providence’s portfolio includes DoubleVerify and Chernin Group. It previously acquired and sold Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1
Desmond sits on the boards of DoubleVerify, Adobe Systems and Syniverse Technologies.
“You now need first party data and an identity graph that is your own, both something that you curate and build yourself, as well as partner with other first party data partnerships to create a bigger collective,” she says.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of LUMA Partners’ DIGITAL MEDIA EAST 2019. For more videos from the conference, please visit this page. This series is sponsored by 4INFO.
]]>As an example, he explained during a panel discussion at the recent Beet Retreat in the City the process involved in NBC executing dynamic ad insertion. “Through FreeWheel, there’s probably 700 right now end points of where we have to integrate into in order to be able do that. But it can be done,” said Rosen, who is EVP, Advanced Advertising & Platform Sales.
That’s the good news. However, more than 90% of NBC’s impressions are still delivered in a live, linear fashion.
“It’s going to involve programmers and distributors, MVPD’s, virtual MVPD’s coming together both to solve for the tech as well for the business rules. We are a business of legacy. It’s hard to change that but the will is there,” said Rosen.
Moderator Laura Desmond, who until recently was CEO of Starcom, asked whether the traditional value exchange between content providers, consumers and advertisers is “broken.”
Vikram Somaya of ESPN said the value exchange “isn’t good enough. For a long time, everybody in the system was making money and it made it very hard to change. We’re getting to the point now where everyone in the system is not making the money they used to make and suddenly we have to look in the couch cushions a little more than we had to.”
Desmond described the efficiency and effectiveness of TV advertising before describing a scenario that is destined to become as antiquated as rabbit ear antennae on top of a TV set. “You push a button, the commercial goes out, it airs, time delay, you post it, done. That’s a pretty simple and easy model.”
So is lack of education inhibiting the adoption of addressable TV ads? “The ad-supported experience needs to change,” responded Rosen. “Limiting commercials, but also it is about relevancy. We do know that ads that are more relevant to the user are going to be less annoying or perhaps not annoying at all or even welcome. Data’s going to help us with that.”
Asked by Desmond about the role of automation, Metcalfe, who is GM of LiveRamp TV at LiveRamp, said technology isn’t the problem. She recalled that before LiveRamp was acquired in 2014 by Acxiom, companies like Facebook “weren’t really interested in working with us yet. We didn’t have the reputation we needed, etcetera. Acxiom brought that to us.”
LiveRamp was in the early stages of powering custom audiences for companies like Facebook, but it wasn’t easy working with them because they wanted to control every last detail. “And it’s very similar to what I’m seeing now working in the TV industry today because it started to ramp up and become a larger part of their business. Everybody has to get comfortable with losing a bit of control.”
Asked by Desmond whether ESPN parent Disney is ready to compete in direct-to-consumer content delivery with the likes of Roku, Hulu and YouTube TV, Pandit said one of the joys of sports is that “no matter where you go you will get advertising.
“We can’t put our heads in the sand and say we should not go down the DTC route because we’ve done very well with pay TV and very well with digital. We have to be open to what consumers want us to do,” said Pandit.
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.
]]>“People are still pretty confused about what’s possible and how it works,” Metcalfe explains in this interview with Laura Desmond at last week’s Beet Retreat in the City: Television Advances as Consumers Choose.
LiveRamp helps several hundred brands make the best use of their CRM data to implement people-based marketing across more than 500 publishers and digital marketing platforms, “and so there’s a natural extension in talking about television as well,” says Metcalfe.
In March, LiveRamp extended its IdentityLink platform to the TV space. Its Connect Select solution is designed to empower MVPD’s on the sell-side.
Educating LiveRamp’s brand clients has sparked a “tremendous movement on their behalf. I think we’ve got 40 brands that had never been in addressable TV working with us and executing campaigns in the last two quarters alone,” says Metcalfe.
Desmond was one of the early pioneers of addressable TV while at Starcom, beginning with a trial in Huntsville in 2005 with Charter and Comcast followed by more trials in 2009 and 2012.
“We actually were the mover that put DirecTV into the addressable business,” Desmond recalls. “In all four of those use cases, what we saw was a tremendous business case. Zapping was down by 33 percent, engagement increased anywhere between ten to forty percent. Yet the dollars aren’t flowing.”
Says Metcalfe, “There’s overwhelming evidence this works.” She notes that MVPD’s and companies like one2one Media “talk about how the majority of their business is repeat business. They have such high retention rates because once you try it, you see how well it works you come back.”
Underlying hurdles to adoption include brand procurement people not understanding why a CPM for an addressable campaign may be higher even though the effective CPM can be lower. Using a hypothetical household CPM of $25 for a non-addressable campaign, Desmond says, “It’s a good buy, it’s targeted but it comes with waste.” And while reducing waste can mean a higher effective CPM, “People have a hard time wrapping their arms around that.”
In a recent earnings call, LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe CEO said the company’s addressable TV unit is growing at a rate of 70 percent this year. What are the drivers of the growth?
“The activation of the buy side, I just can’t underplay that enough,” responds Metcalfe.
Another priority at LiveRamp is bringing TV-specific identifiers into its identity graph.
“Currently, our graph is PII based and email and mobile ID and device ID. We need to get to a point where we have IP to household that scales as well as the Roku ID or the Hulu ID or the Chrome stick ID. To really unlock those connected-TV cases to empower the networks to have a better understanding of true viewership of their content as well as the advertisers,” says Metcalfe.
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 see it play out with the holding companies and how they’re doing and how they’re under pressure, and that impacts every other part of the ecosystem,” says Desmond, who is Founder & CEO of Eagle Vista Partners. “I fully believe we can get out of this crisis of confidence, but we can’t keep doing the same thing.”
Desmond was one of many advertising and media veterans who assembled at Meredith Corporation’s Luce Auditorium last week to participate in Beet Retreat in the City: Television Advances as Consumers Choose. In this interview with Beet contributor Ashley J. Swartz, Desmond discusses the need to “disrupt ourselves from a new place in marketing and communications and really begin with a new value exchange with people.”
Alluding to Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker’s adage in the 1800’s that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half,” Desmond says measurement’s not the issue.
“That’s not true anymore. We have more accountability, more modeling, more smart measurement in what media and advertising is doing than ever before,” says Desmond.
What has changed is the rise of digital communications and the concurrent advent of so-called direct brands, which bypass traditional means of producing, promoting and distributing their wares.
“The problem is, with the advent of the digital marketing ecosystem, there’s so much fragmentation and people are building brands now. Brands and marketers and agencies aren’t building brands.”
Desmond cites the emergence of brands like Dollar Shave Club, which disrupted a marketplace long dominated by Gillette and Schick.
“Gillette never saw dollar shave club coming, yet they’ve completely upended the category,” she says.
While the television industry is often criticized for lacking change amid the rise of digital media, it’s still “the most perfect model that we’ve ever created over the last 75 years. It’s scale, it’s got reach, it’s got engagement.”
The real problem with television is the waste involved for advertisers trying to achieve effective reach when targeting desired consumer segments, according to Desmond. Therefore, the $100 billion TV marketplace “needs to be absolutely disrupted.”
She believes that innovations like data-informed addressable and connected TV will provide that disruption, but there’s work to be done before they can be fully leveraged.
“The supply side is somewhat ready to sell this way, the demand side is not as completely ready because mostly they don’t know how to plan and buy for it,” Desmond explains. “Because they need to have more software and automation to help them make sense of all the complexity. You can’t do addressable advertising on a spreadsheet.”
Asked by Swartz, who is CEO of Furious Corp., for an update on her work life after leaving Starcom at the end of 2016, Desmond says she is an operating partner with Rhode Island-based Providence Equity Partners. She’s involved in two deals: one for adtech firm DoubleVerify and one for a sports marketing firm in Europe.
“The other part of my week is I’m working with a select group of CEO’s and startup companies, helping them on branding, on purpose, on go-to-market strategy,” Desmond says. “I’ve been working really heavily with LiveRamp, with Anaplan and with a company in Chicago called Uptake Technologies.”
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.
]]>That’s because agencies are best equipped to “understand people, what they do, how they buy, what they’re motivated by and brands. And how to connect media and brands in the right media environment together,” says Desmond.
In this interview at RampUp 2018, the annual LiveRamp conference, Laura Desmond, the former CEO of Starcom and now Founder & CEO of the new consultancy Eagle Vista Partners, talks about the tools and skillsets agencies will need to best leverage omnichannel marketing.
Referring to Tobaccowala as “my very smart old colleague,” Desmond says of his prediction, “I think broadly that’s right.”
In the days of the 15% media commission for agencies, the impact of such a spending decline would have had a different effect. Now it means that agencies must invest more not only in creativity but also in data and science.
“And agencies are without question in that space the undisputed leaders of putting that alchemy together on behalf of a client, on behalf of their brands. I don’t think that’s going to change,” Desmond says.
Agencies need data platforms and streams that encompass not only brand, media and buying but all kinds of data. This can range from weather to purchasing information “to how people use screens when they are in store, out of store, mobile, location,” she adds.
“All those data pieces and streams have to come together and agencies are going to need to use technology and software to better capture intelligence in an instant of time. Because people and human hands just can’t do all of that data crunching themselves.”
This video is part of a series produced in San Francisco at the RampUp 2018 conference. The series is sponsored by Alphonso. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>Many a business guru is fond of the ironic value of failure. That’s a notion that the boss of one of the biggest ad groups subscribes to, too.
“I’ve always learned more from failure than success,” Starcom MediaVest Group CEO Laura Desmond tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “At times, when people are on the top of the wave, riding it and feeling like nothing can touch them – those are the points in time when you really have to remember, ‘what was it like to be off that wave?’
“Those times make you humble, keep you hungry and keep you focus on the good and the necessary learning and challenges that go in to staying strong in this industry.”
There’s another kind of wave Desmond is riding, and that is the constantly-changing businesses of advertising and technology. The fusion of the two is up-ending the traditional marketing business, and turning geeks in to kingmakers amongst the creative community.
“This industry ain’t for the faint of heart. It’s a tough business today, (with) lots of different pressures,” Desmond reckons.
“Our work inherently is for people who are young or young at heart. You have to have a constant curiosity about what’s going on in the world. You have to be very comfortable with this notion of … moving at an increasingly faster rate of velocity as we see technology empowerment disrupt business models.”
Back when Desmond got started in the industry, her entrance was a sure thing. It started by being an outlier – the only one in her class to back advertising as a positive force for change.
“It’s a story that starts in my freshman year in college,” Desmond recalls. “One of the assignments was to find a popular brand advertising campaign and argue, ‘Was it good for society or not?’
“Out of 20 people in the class, I was the only person to argue that the campaign for Crest toothpaste was actually good for society because the sales funded the investment and research in to fluoride and better products.”
Out of college, Desmond joined advertising company Leo Burnett, which she recalls as “where it was at”: “Creative (messaging) wasn’t the … only thing … (the strategy of) reaching people at the right time and the right place became as important and – arguably, today, 20 years later, more important than the message itself.”
So what are Desmond’s lessons to tomorrow’s generation of ad industry joiners? “Be humble and listen,” she adds. “That’s mostly what I’ve tried to do.”
Desmond was interviewed in Chicago for Beet.TV by Andy Plesser, executive producer of Beet.TV for the Media Revolutionaries series presented by AOL and Xaxis. You can find more videos from the series here.
]]>Speaking with Beet.TV in this interview ahead of her visit to the upcoming Cannes Lions festival, SMG CEO Laura Desmond says:
We interviewed her as part of the series The Road to Cannes, our lead-up to the Cannes Lions Festival presented by Coull. Please visit this page for additional segments.
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