John joined OMD in 2017 from the global creative agency BBDO where he was CEO.
In this conversation, he speaks about managing brand’s media investments during the time of COVID.
He talks of the high wire act that marketers face with the ebb and flow of the pandemic, where hope turns to despair as the virus reemerges and hope inches back.
He addresses the “new normal” of the workplace, and the challenges of keeping the agency focused, trained and inspired in the home/office hybrid.
And he speaks about the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace and explains the recently launched training program for people of various backgrounds.
A longtime volunteer in the not-for-profit sector,John says that commitment to community action and philanthropy is essential for both brands and for each of us in our lives. John lives this credo as the Chairman of the Red Cross of Greater New York.
Great, inspiring conversation. Thank you, John.
Thank you to our series sponsor TransUnion.
And thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode.
]]>On top of a general reduction in linear TV viewing, the chief planning officer at OMD UK says casual TV viewers are drifting away, too.
It all adds up to a picture in which brands are increasingly struggling to use TV to find their audiences. And that is why Fox re-organised her team.
“If you just stuck with linear buys, the reduction in (audience) viewing is really clear over time,” Fox observes, in this video interview with Beet.TV senior advisor Jon Watts.
“Even if you strip out the COVID 2020 viewing patterns, what we’re seeing is reach build(ing) is a real challenge for linear TV.”
“I’ve run some numbers the other day – the light TV viewers in (the) linear space has halved over the last few years. It was 8% to now just over three (percent)
Fox says the pattern was even observable at a time when it seemed like TV viewing was booming from stay-at-home orders.
“Even during COVID, light viewers were not attracted to the linear TV experience,” she adds.
“So, it really does need someone who understands both those worlds to bring them together, to know how much to spend in linear, which does do a really strong initial reach build for people who enjoy linear, and then what to do to reach all those people who may be light TV viewers.
“They may be working longer hours, they may be younger, they may be fans of lots of other different types of engagement. You need to sort of understand how those whole ecosystems come together.”
About three years ago, Fox reorganised her team at OMD UK to tag-team ad planning for linear and connected TV, which is emerging as a key way in which media agencies are trying to make up for the shortfall in linear viewing.
“The first thing we did was bring together different teams that probably hadn’t worked together before,” Fox explains.
“We created a connections planning department, which was built from people who were either very used to planning in a linear way historically, and then brought them together with digital experts, the people who are used to planning programmatically, addressably.
“When you start to blend those two languages together … you get really robust plans. You get the balance of a mass reach with some moments of really strong targeting lines that are going to be really hard working.”
Connected TV is important for a variety of reasons.
Fox says extra data on viewers allows her to better target ads.
That is critical in a world where audience “self-scheduling is going to be the norm for everyone”, she says.
“A connected device means that we have more data on that person – not in a creepy way, (but) in a way that it makes the whole viewing experience better for them because we can serve them advertising that is much more relevant, which is great.”
You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.
]]>But, in 2021, that is exactly what ad men like Simon Ross are able to do, thanks to new technology.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Ross, innovation director for OMD in Canada, explains how connected TV and mobile come together to ignite ad campaigns.
“I think first-party data is going to be a massive opportunity. particularly when we think about the cookieless future,” says Ross, whose OMD holds the media agency account for McDonald’s.
“A lot of our clients and a lot of the advertisers sit on a gold mine of first-party data.
“The opportunity is, if I’m a QSR (quick-service restaurant) and my latest TV ad is focused on promoting a chicken sandwich, for example, and I’m able to extract chicken sandwich lovers from my own first-party data, then I can then start uploading that first-party data into connected TV platforms and finding lookalikes or excluding existing buyers to ensure that we’re looking at targeting incremental audiences.
“I think connected TV is so well placed moving into the future.”
For quick-service restaurants, the pandemic has accelerated not only greater use of connected TV in ad campaigns but also greater use of digital platforms like mobile to engage with consumers, including for ordering and delivery.
TV advertising dropped by 14.1% in 2020, according to Group M.
But there are rays of optimism.
The potential for Esports is only just beginning. @ATVI_AB's @SXSW panel discusses how the impact of #esports will affect not only traditional sports, but the wider cultural landscape because of its potential to become a leading medium for direct connection. #client pic.twitter.com/RxamUTo4yS
— OMD USA (@OMD_USA) March 18, 2021
“Connected TV has been a massive opportunity,” says OMD’s Ross. “Pre-lockdown, we were seeing growth – and connected TV has consistently being part of our media plans.
“Since lockdown, what we’ve seen is that the volume of inventory has grown massively in Canada, and more and more of our budget has gone towards connected TV.
“I think it’s something like 10% growth in total volume, which sounds small, but actually has been a big growth driver in Canada.
“The data that some of the connected TV vendors and suppliers and partners sit on is absolutely gold, particularly when I think about the opportunities to extend our reach and to find incremental audiences that other platforms can’t find.
“I look at platforms like Samsung, who can essentially tap into and see if you’re a streamer, if you’re a gamer. They can see if you’re a cord cutter. They can see if you’re into sports.”
And Ross sees advantages for delivering CTV ad campaigns north of the border.
For one, the supplier landscape is “less cluttered” than the US environment, which has become marked by proliferation that has caused consumer and ad buyer confusion – thanks in part to having “fewer players”.
“Netflix is the biggest player in Canada, but the BTUs (broadcast distribution undertakings) in Canada, (there are) only three of them,” Ross explains.
“The landscape is much smaller, so the connected TV opportunities are much smaller in Canada as well.”
You are watching “Media Innovation: What’s Next,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Samsung Ads. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>To many, news itself has become a problematic channel, whilst the increased scale offered by national or global distribution has proved more attractive.
But some of that could be about to change, as ad agencies seem keen to rediscover the strengths of local media. To fully capitalize, however, they are looking for some upgrades to be made.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Israel Mirsky, executive director of the OMD media agency, says he is now using black lists and white lists, plugged in to digital ad buying platforms, to ascertain the “brand safety” of inventory available for purchase through various publishers. The trouble is, those lists are not yet quite deep enough.
“Maintaining inventory that comes from some of the smaller local and regional news organizations – not only in the US, but outside – becomes more challenging,” he explains. “Reputability is a concern.”
Why does Mirsky think local news media could be valuable again?
“Trust in local news is actually quite high, a lot higher than in what most would consider mainstream media,” he says. “It’s about 76% of folks trust local news versus around 50% for national media.
“The problem is scale. Achieving scale through local news is challenging. Sorting through all of the individual organizations is a problem and there isn’t a great way of aggregating that inventory right now. We’re starting to look for alternative solutions.”
One of those solutions is United for News, a coalition comprising advertisers’ agencies, tech platforms and journalism non-profits that is working to restore the strength of local news media around the world.
Beside other initiatives, United For News is compiling a reputability index for local news outlets around the world. The theory goes, if that could be plugged in to ad buying platforms, advertisers would be encouraged to spend more in local news, thus helping to restore revenue to quality publishers.
Organizations like United For News are interesting because they can help us get a reputation level out of the smaller publishers that we can then apply potentially to our buying strategies.
Writing on Business Insider recently, Mirsky said that local news outlets are a good foil against misinformation and can deliver value to advertisers – but he was critical that local media stakeholders were not present at Cannes Lions to discuss this.
You are watching Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2019. For all of our Cannes coverage, please visit this page. Thank you to the sponsors of our festival coverage, which are Amobee, Innovid, Nielsen, RTL AdConnect and Teads. Special thanks to Hearts & Science for hosting Beet.TV for the Festival.
]]>“Brand purpose is so incredibly powerful and has the potential to do so much,” Hanson says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “You look at the state of the world, the planet is in, there has never been a greater need for a complete overhaul of institutions, around politics and social and educational.”
Alluding to the “tons of panels” at Cannes centered on cause or purpose, Hanson draws a distinction between the two.
“Cause is often a reaction to something that is kind of negative. The question around purpose is how do you shift companies into a space where they are putting it right at their DNA. How do you act as a force for good and you don’t simply kind of badge it?”
While every brief that OMD sees is ultimately seeking to deliver better business outcomes, an understanding of what consumers care about shows that “the need for purpose is absolutely rising,” Hanson says.
She cites research showing that 33% of consumers will shift and buy from brands “that are doing better” while 50% will move to brands of parity “as long as they are reflecting of your values. You shift from one to another.”
To participate in the purpose space if it’s meaningful to a brand “There has to be a genuine commitment to it and all that it takes,” Hanson says.
It’s not uncommon for a client to have multiple projects or commitments already in play. “But the question is which ones are relevant to amplify. Which ones do you potentially communicate more and why. We start to look at where can you affect culture most effectively and also business outcomes and where do you have the greatest space to show your impact.”
One of the big hurdles is expectations, because aligning with a purpose for a year or less doesn’t cut it, according to Hanson.
“Some of these shifts, they take two to three years to have an effect because you are requiring a different set of behaviors to be at stake. You take the best of brand building, but you’re taking that to have a different impact.”
You are watching Beet.TV coverage of Cannes Lions 2019. For all of our Cannes coverage, please visit this page. Thank you to our sponsors of our festival coverage which are Amobee, Innovid, Nielsen, RTL AdConnect and Teads. Special thanks to Hearts & Science for hosting Beet.TV for the Festival.
]]>Omnicom Group media agency OMD understands that risk. Its global CEO Florian Adamski raised eyebrows around his company back in February when he was quoted saying that: “A lot of agency people have forgotten that we do not have a natural right to exist.”
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Adamski says the likelihood of brands taking agency functions in-house is irreversible – but so is the growing likelihood that agencies will find new functions to perform for their clients.
“It is all about effectiveness,” he says. “I don’t think that this in-housing trend is something we will ever reverse. On the flip side of that, actually ,I don’t think that the in-housing trend will infinitely go on.
“Clients are starting to realize that there is a role for agencies, that there is a role for service providers that have a very, very broad view of the spectrum and the different approaches and solutions that are out there to drive better business.
The number of US brands which have launched in-house agencies has reached 78% – up from 58% in 2013, according to the ANA’s In-House Agency Report.
But many figures vary, and chatter often suggests that implementation isn’t as easy as going all-in on in-house.
Regardless, Adamski sounds a warning.
“(Some agencies) have lost clear sight of the fact that clients don’t want to work with agencies,” he says. “Clients don’t even want to work with a consultancy. Clients want business outcomes.
“Clients have realized that taking back control and having ownership of data, of contracts, of technology might be a good thing.”
You are watching Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2019. For all of our Cannes coverage, please visit this page. Thank you to the sponsors of our festival coverage, which are Amobee, Innovid, Nielsen, RTL AdConnect and Teads. Special thanks to Hearts & Science for hosting Beet.TV for the Festival.
]]>MediaLink Managing Partner Matt Spiegel prefaced the conversation by calling into question the age-old format of 40 minutes of TV content leavened with 20 minutes of commercials. Encountering no disagreement, Spiegel elicited the following condensed thoughts from the varied panelists.
Amanda Richman, CEO, Wavemaker US: “This battle for attention is really sparking different ways of working. And we’re excited about now it’s becoming less of a focus just on the precision and data and targeting and keeping that within the realms of digital media only. And maybe back to the creative agencies and a different level of collaboration to recognize that we need to actually help develop the stories and messages that are bespoke to these new ad formats and platforms and broader distribution.”
John Osborn, CMO, OMD USA: “I think media more and more is just as innovative and in some ways just as creative as the creative storytellers in a creative agency. No one’s ever gone wrong by considering the consumer first and foremost. You’re seeing I think some real evolution in terms of innovation in different formats if you think of what Fox is doing with JAZ pods or NBC with Prime Pods and you’re seeing a variety of different formats coming to life. But I think a lot of the conversation is around formats. I think more and more we have to change and tilt the conversation more to experiences.”
Allyson Witherspoon, GM, Global Brand Engagement, Nissan: “Relevancy becomes what the experience is because we know so much more about who our consumers are and what their interests are that we need to be serving up content and experiences to them that’s relevant. In the case of automotive, we know when they’re going to be in market, we even know what type of vehicle that they’re in market for. So we should not be advertising a van to them if they’re interested in a sedan and we know that type of information. And then it’s to the point of how you can combine media and creative to actually deliver that message, which I think is still not something that we’re able to do at scale but it’s definitely something that we’re trying to build towards.”
Pooja Midha, President, true[X]: I’m heartened and I love the discussion that’s happening these days around bringing the consumer back to the center. While I’ve not been with the company terribly long, true[X] has been around for years and really from the beginning said we need to think about the consumer. We need to respect the consumer. We have got to think about messaging and context, advertising and an experience that is worthy of that consumer’s attention. If we’re not delivering that, then we really have no right to be there and to be expecting something back. It’s nice to be in Cannes because everyone we work with is represented. The creative side of the business, the media side of the business, the agency side, client marketers even the technology companies and measurement companies we partner with to deliver.”
This video is from a series of videos and sessions produced in partnership with FreeWheel at Cannes 2018 as part of the FreeWheel Forum on the Future of Television. You can find more videos from this series here.
]]>“We’re living in a day and age when there’s no shortage of innovation,” he adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “Certainly innovation has come in the form of different ad formats. If you look at what Fox has done with JAZ pods and NBC with Prime Pods, you’re really seeing a different way of delivering messaging in a variety of different formats.”
As for experiences instead of formats, he believes complexity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “It think that provides an opportunity for us as sort of Sherpas, if you will, working with the clients to figure out exactly what the right formats are and what the right choices are for clients to make. To distill it down to brilliantly simple solutions that ultimately are an economic multiplier for the clients we serve.”
But old habits can and will endure. Osborn invokes the “our own worst enemy” adage when discussing change in advertising.
“Our immediate impulse is to take something that’s innovative, that’s been proven out in a test and win format and to productize it. And then we set a pricing structure to it. And there are no real benchmarks for that so it leads to a lot of questions.”
A better approach is to “just constantly strive for the right kinds of innovation, figure out the right measurement formats, and then collectively what does it all mean for the marketers we work for,” Osborn says.
At Cannes, OMD has altered its approach to an industry fixture that is also undergoing considerable change. Whereas the company used to craft its own experience and then welcome clients to that experience, “This year, we’re working with the clients to give them more curated experiences that are more customizable to their specific needs.”
This video is from a series of videos and sessions produced in partnership with FreeWheel at Cannes 2018 on the future of television. You can find more videos from this series here.
]]>Overall, this year’s Upfront is “not all that different from a marketplace that’s reflective of a relatively healthy economic backdrop,” Geraci, who is President of National Video Investment at OMD, says in this interview conducted by OMD’s Ben Winkler at the recent Beet Retreat in the City. “There is a significant amount of pressure in certain areas, mostly due to supply dynamics in linear television and fragmented viewership, combined with some increased spending from advertisers that rely heavily on television,” says Geraci.
He pinpoints that reliance in large part as relating to older-skewing brands for which “television is still really the best place, the most fertile hunting ground.”
Asked about efforts by providers like Fox and NBCUniversal to roll out reduced ad-load offerings, Geraci responds, “Time will tell.”
While there are potential positives in making the linear TV experience more like what viewers can get with digital offerings, reducing commercial load comes with a big caveat. “When you restrict supply, there are going to be pricing issues, and we get that,” Geraci explains. “The astute buyer tries to pay the lower price and we’re making efforts in that regard.”
Asked by Winkler about the efforts by Fox and NBCU, Geraci says, “I don’t know that we’re there yet in terms of finding that price-value relationship, for at least the two being discussed now.”
Looking ahead, Geraci outlines his desired outcome. “Our hope is that over time, if the expectation is that the viewing experience is better, more people will interact with the programming, ratings will ultimately increase. That’s the hope is that if you improve the experience you’re going to ultimately further down the road build back supply simply by higher ratings of at last live or slightly delayed commercial television. That’s sort of the holy grail.”
As for his thoughts on OpenAP, the audience targeting consortium started by Fox, Turner and Viacom that both NBCU and Univision recently joined, Geraci calls it “sort of common ground if you will for the optimization systems. If you can bring standardization to anything that is not standardized, in general you create more interchangeability in the marketplace and basically a more level playing field, and you allow the advertiser to make better decisions and selections.”
Geraci notes that OpenAP is for planning using common audience target definitions across networks but not for actual purchasing of inventory. So buyers are still “forced to optimize within just their set of offerings. It’s not the completely fluid situation that we’d like to see.”
One thing that has changed for the better over the decades that Geraci has experienced the back and forth of Upfront dealings is the temperament. He says there’s “more of a sense of fair play I think nowadays than I think than there was in the earlier times.”
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.
]]>“With programmatic, we’re starting with a lot of client interest in terms of them wanting to in house and gain more control over the programmatic execution,” Mendonca, who is Global President of Accenture Interactive Operations, says in this interview with Beet.TV at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Many of Accenture’s clients want to build “a hybrid model in terms of programmatic execution,” so the company is helping them decide what to control in-house, how to staff for it and determine what they want Accenture to take over as a managed service, according to Mendonca.
“And then, of course, in time we’re building out our capabilities to be able to operate and scale global programmatic services for clients.”
Until January of this year, Mendonca was President of OMD EMEA, were she was responsible for the financial and operational performance of all OMD offices across Europe, Middle East and Africa.
She’s seeing a “burgeoning interest” in tailor-made, bespoke programmatic solutions as Accenture helps its clients procure the right marketing technology and develop the most appropriate marketing stack. “That is where the sort of sweet spot of the need is at the moment. And of course being a technology powerhouse we have a lot of skills when it comes to systems integration,” Mendonca says.
Over time, Accenture will build out “more of an orchestration of a suite of technology” tailored to specific clients and be able to “develop something a little bit more industrialized for those clients who really want a global marketing activation to run on their behalf.”
Asked about flaws in the digital media ecosystem, Mendonca believes that it needs more “governance” and that Accenture will be helping clients gain added transparency “to basically increase the power and potency of the working media.”
Given Accenture’s “myriad number of C-Suite client relationships,” she sees the company providing agnostic advice on data-directed marketing activation. “Because this is the first time where we really do have the ability to see proper marketing ROI on every single dollar spent. So giving that that clarity and transparency to clients is very, very important.”
]]>“Time has proven that making the long-term bet is a good idea for both sides in the equation,” says Chris Geraci, President, National Video Investment, OMD.
Geraci was one of the featured speakers at last week’s Beet Retreat in the City, along with Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp. In this video, they discuss the dynamics of the video marketplace and parse the semantics of what now constitutes “television.”
Geraci has seen lots of change since starting his advertising career in 1987 at BBDO New York. Yet amid a rapidly changing media landscape, the bedrock role of advertising hasn’t changed all that much.
“We support a crucial part of the entertainment industry by way of advertising dollars, that allows for production and better quality content to come forth if they can count on a longer term advertising commitment,” he says.
The economics of what is often referred to as a “futures market” remain in place during the negotiations that typify the Upfront.
“For the advertisers and agencies that service the advertisers, we know we’re generally getting a better deal by working in the Upfront model,” Geraci says. “It’s just more efficient from a cost-per-thousand basis, which is usually the metric that’s being used. It’s just a better deal in the Upfront.”
Asked by Swartz to describe the change he sees year to year, Geraci notes the increase in digital options available. “I think the consideration set keeps widening. We now have definitely more online opportunities to interact with what we consider to be premium content. So the choices are broader.”
Given a “solid economic backdrop,” Geraci says that with consumer marketers “having decent results” some are putting that money back into media. “There’s a little bit more supply in some areas, including sports, perhaps a little less in some of the linear TV dayparts. So that’s creating a little bit of pressure there.”
Asked by Swartz whether there remains a distinction between “television” and “video,” Geraci says he believes it’s all video right now.
“In fact, we removed the TV designation from all of our job titles to prove that point publicly. Television is simply a physical device as a way to deliver what quality content and ad-supported content is what we transact in.”
OMD’s clients have the same mindset, according to Geraci.
“For the most part, they’re in the same place,” he says. “I think it’s been very helpful that a lot of the linear TV based companies have sort of morphed what they serve the consumer to be a multiplatform experience.”
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 do talk as an industry a lot about what it means to have diverse kinds of thinking in our organizations. But the actual action of bringing people with diverse thought to the table is really what I’m hoping comes to light,” Rossi says in this interview with Beet.TV.
On Thursday June 21, Rossi will take to the Palais 1 dais along with two beneficiaries of Creative Spirit so they can explain how they were recruited and hired into positions that leverage their oft-hidden talents, and how they approach briefs and challenges in a different way. The session is titled How Different Can Change The World.
“There are about 10 million people in the States alone who have an intellectual and developmental disability who are in the hiring age frame. And those people by and large are not employed,” says Rossi, placing the jobless rate at 85%. “We know that neuro-diverse thinkers have the opportunity to help companies grow their return three and four fold.”
Even though progress has been made in diversifying the makeup of the advertising and marketing world, the major exception has been people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, according to Rossi.
“So it’s been a passion point for me to reality think about neuro diversity, not just diversity as a topic, because we’re in the thinking business. When I look at folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities, they really do bring a different strain of creativity to our business.”
On the heels of a pilot program in Australia, Creative Spirit was unveiled in the U.S. at Advertising Week 2017. On stage were young adults in a number of disciplines—from coders to art directors, writers to receptionists—who had not had the opportunity interview for advertising or marketing jobs.
“From that moment, we received a groundswell from both clients and agencies around how I can bring that creative thinking to my organization,” Rossi says. “I set out with some partners on a mission to really bring that kind of neuro diversity to the marketing and advertising business, which is now expanding beyond to technology and other organizations.”
She’s hoping the conversation in Cannes is eclipsed by action.
“We see more sponsors and more organizations signing on and I also hope that our candidates have an opportunity to have the main stage for once.”
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.
]]>“The creative agencies are fantastic at telling stories. But stories just being told isn’t enough anymore,” Rozen adds in this interview with Beet.TV. “We see our job as story builders as much as the story telling still needs to happen.”
Creative versioning has long been based on campaign performance, as in “We’re seeing the red ad perform better than the blue ad. But what we’re also able now to overlay is audience understanding.”
The combination of data and technology facilitates amending creative “to be more bespoke to the situation that the consumer is in,” says Rozen. “Not just is red better than blue, but this call to action is going to resonate better because we believe that we’ve seen certain actions or indicators prior that allows us to optimize.”
Asked whether creative versioning is more suited to niche or broad targeting, Rozen says, “It can scale fantastically because a lot of what we’re talking about is technology driving this.”
With the role of creative agencies being to create assets, as those assets are developed technology “allows us to deliver this type of thinking at scale. More and more of our clients are looking for this type of advantageous way of connecting with consumers.”
Rozen doesn’t believe in a world of end-to-end, one-to-one personalized ad messaging. To him, it’s less about the medium and more about the format and using tools and technologies to drive more personalized stories.
“We don’t have to just serve one ad to all people. We can now get more granular. I don’t think all brands at all times need to be one to one. I think that has its place and it’s not for everyone.”
Alternatives include “one to many or one to fewer or one to some. It doesn’t always have to be one to one, but it also doesn’t have to be one to all, either.”
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.
]]>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 presented by LiveRamp, TiVo, true[X] and 605. Topics will include the rise of distribution platforms competing with linear TV, advanced audience targeting and how creative units are evolving to complement shifting consumer viewing preferences.
“Rewind only a couple of years and the Upfronts were about here’s our shows with almost no discussion about the things that make up fifteen, twenty percent of that hour, which is advertising,” Winkler says in this interview with Beet.TV. “I think we got to the point where even people in advertising realize and recognize the ad experience is not a great one, and that’s bad for the entire industry.”
When everyone starts to see “the entire experience, not just the shows, through the eyes of consumers, that’s when you start to get creative,” Winkler adds. “That’s when you start to deliver better experiences.”
The bottom line: help advertisers grow their businesses, regardless of whether their ads run six seconds or six minutes. “As long as it’s a good experience and not just the same thirty seconds one after another after another after another in a pod of eight or nine spots. That’s a good thing.”
OMD embraces the search for the most optimal ad experiences, according to Winkler. “We’re testing the hell out of it. No one has ever gone wrong by considering the consumer. And more and more, we’re seeing that shift happening.”
Beet Retreat in the City will be held at Meredith Corporation’s Luce Auditorium, 225 Liberty Street. Joining Winkler on the dais will be, among others:
Phil Cowdell, Global President, Client Services, GroupM
Laura Desmond, CEO, Eagle Vista Partners
Kristin Dolan, CEO, 605
Christopher Geraci, President, National Video Investment at Omnicom Media Group
Walt Horstman, SVP Advanced TV, TiVo
David Kline, President, Spectrum Reach, Executive Vice President, Charter
Allison Metcalfe, GM LiveTV, LiveRamp
Pooja Midha, President, true[X]
Rob Norman, Advisor
Babs Rangaiah, Executive Partner, Global Marketing iX at IBM
Nancy Reyes, Managing Director, TBWA/Chiat Day/NY
Lyle Schwartz, Managing Director, TBWA/Chiat Day/NY
Doug Ray, Chairman, Dentsu Aegis Media
Mike Rosen, EVP, Advanced Advertising and Platform Sales at NBCUniversal
Ashley J. Swartz, CEO, Furious Corp.
Vikram Somaya, SVP, Global Data Officer & Ad Platforms, ESPN
Ben Tatta, President, 605
Jamie West, Deputy MD, Sky Media UK & Group Director of Advanced Advertising Sky PLC
Note: To request an invitation to the June 6 event, put your request in here.
]]>This video is a highlight compilation our several of our conversations.
The first three are a related trio of concerns. Quality storytelling derives from consumer data and insights, the end product of which can be ripe for brand integration. Meredith Corporation’s extensive presence at the NewFronts was crafted to address all of these concerns.
“We’re trying to create advertising that becomes what people are interested in, rather than simply interrupting what they’re interested in,” is the way that Shane Akeney, President, Havas Media Group NA, sums things up in this video compilation, which Meredith presented in its NewFronts event on the big screen at Manhattan’s Hudson Theatre. “Big leaps can be made in creating content that is so compelling that consumers want to watch it, want to see it, want to actually be experiencing it.”
Rather than “insert” themselves into content, brand should be there “because they’re making the content better,” says Matt Seilor, President Brand Solutions, Dentsu Aegis Network.
Accountability means measurable returns on advertising spend. “I think the days of an advertiser just kind of spending money and hoping for the best are over,” says Jason Harrison, President and Client Partner, Essence.
Brand safety was a major theme during the week of NewFronts events, echoed by most participants and those featured in this video. They are:
Marla Kaplowitz, President & CEO, 4A’s.
Will Warren, EVP, Digital Investment, Zenith Media.
Yin Woon Rani, VP Integrated Marketing, Campbell Soup Company.
Christine Peterson, Managing Director, Digital Investment Lead, Mindshare.
Shane Akeney, President, Havas Media Group NA.
Matt Seilor, President Brand Solutions, Dentsu Aegis Network.
Jason Harrison, President and Client Partner, Essence.
Joe Barone, Managing Partner, Brand Safety Americas, GroupM.
Ben Winkler, Chief Investment Officer, OMD.
Joe Barone, Managing Partner, Brand Safety Americas, GroupM.
Louis Jones, EVP, Media & Data, 4A’s.
This video was presented on May 4 at the Meredith NewFronts presentation on the big screen of the Hudson Theater.
This video is part of a series titled The Road to the Digital Content NewFronts. It is a preview of topics to be explored at IAB’s NewFronts, which begin on April 30. This series is presented by Meredith Corporation. For the full version of videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>One agency exec says he is hoping to find a worthy rival to Google and Facebook, and proof that old-line publishers can prove themselves in the new world.
“One thing we’ll be looking for is if more traditional publishers can prove that they deserve to be at the digital table, whether that’s Meredith or Viacom, or ESPN and their first run-in with the NewFronts. Can they deliver a killer digital product?,” says OMD’s Ben Winkler”
“We’ll also be looking to see if Oath can be a legitimate player on the big, big stage. Can they create a triopoly with Google and Facebook? We’ll be looking to see if Twitter, for example, can expand from being a publisher around big events to being a publisher of big events, with their video product. There’s a lot of things to prove out, and we’re going to be listening closely.”
The NewFronts is organized by IAB to allow publishers a space to pitch their content ideas to eager advertisers on Madison Avenue.
Starting avenue, more than 15 such publishers will be presenting – fewer than last year, when some agencies complained at the complexities of meeting that number.
“I think what I’m most excited about is the culling of the NewFronts from, last year, there were 32 partners, to 15 this year, and critically, just one week,” Winkler adds. “Obviously, there’s logistical benefits of that, but more importantly now, everyone out there, to a greater or lesser degree, can credibly say that they deliver great video content at scale.
“That means less running around, less introducing clients to publishers. The publishers can spend less time explaining who they are and more time explaining what they do and how they can benefit our clients and their businesses, which is good for everybody.”
This video is part of a series titled The Road to the Digital Content NewFronts. It is a preview of topics to be explored at IAB’s NewFronts, which begin on April 30. This series is presented by Meredith Corporation. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>So OMD’s Jean-Paul Edwards commissioned a Europe-wide research study to understand how companies in different countries were treating the emergence of AI tech.
“AI has been in our culture for 200 years, since Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We’re now at the point where AI solutions can scale in to mass-market everyday consumer realities.
“Now is the time you move from it being led by technology to being led by consumer thinking, marketing thinking.”
Edwards, who is OMD’s EMEA strategy and development director, says OMD has been going out to talk with customers, stage hackathons and commission research, all to educate and understand customers’ views on AI.
The aim?: “Start to make those big strategic decisions based on empirical data,” he says.
So, what does the data show? Edwards explains: “In the UK, two thirds of people are either using AI or open to using AI, 34% are pushing back. People in Spain and Italy are actually more open to AI, which surprised us.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s AI Series from Cannes Lions 2017, presented by The Weather Company, an IBM Business. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>In this interview with Beet.TV, Winkler mentions a conversation he had onstage with NBCUniversal sales chief Linda Yaccarino during the the FreeWheel/Beet.TV forum hosted by Comcast. He says her call for an agnostic approach to media selection strikes a chord of harmony.
“It’s great to talk to Linda. What’s especially heartening is I think that she and the industry as a whole lower your temperature a little bit around the us versus them, traditional versus digital,” Winkler says in this interview with Beet.TV.
From the beginning of the digital era, people like Winkler found it challenging when broadcast networks “would come out and say digital has garbage content,” Winkler recalls. Paradoxically, some of the same networks would then implore buyers to patronize digital companies in which the networks had invested.
“The reality is any advertiser to succeed needs a nice mix of different types of media,” says Winkler. “You simply cannot deliver on your business objectives if you just pick a single medium.”
He adds that it’s “nice to see that Linda is embracing that idea of a portfolio approach, NBCU being a big part of that. Certainly they deliver fantastic content.”
OMD’s clients “have an insatiable appetite” for video content, according to Winkler. “When I say video content, I don’t mean tiny videos with no sound that are watched for 1.8 seconds. We’re talking about the full commercial experience.”
Beyond traditional TV, there are few places where brands can indulge in “the full commercial experience,” he adds. “Strangely enough, Snapchat is one of those places and it’s good to see that Linda and NBC have invested in that as well.”
Outside of “the video paradigm,” brands also need platforms like Facebook to reach audiences at scale. “You get great data, remarkable targeting with very little waste,” Winkler says.
As with any medium there are challenges. “But at the risk of saying something obvious, you have to spread the wealth when it comes to media planning because it’s the only way to deliver your business objectives.”
This video is from The New TV Ecosystem Forum at Cannes Lions 2017, presented by FreeWheel. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>To Doug Rozen, that means “making stories matter”. It’s one of the mantras of OMD, the global ad agency where Rozen is chief digital and innovation officer.
And he hopes this week’s return to Cannes Lions, the ad industry get-together that has always aimed to represent creativity in the trade, means a return to recognizing the art of messaging, as well as math.
“It can’t just be the machines alone,” Rozen tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We, as people, need to really have an understanding for how to apply this new intelligence to marketing communications.”
Whilst Rozen sees technologies like artificial intelligence play a part in the modern marketing mix, he is also advocating what he calls “artful intelligence”.
“I’m really hopeful here at Cannes that we’re going to pivot in to the opportunity of creativity, how we can break through the programmatic world,” he adds “Whilst automation is key to us continuing to drive greater efficiency, we also have an opportunity to be more creative, rise above the banner ad.
“Anyone can make a story. But how do you make it matter to the business to actually drive impact? Storytelling needs to do something.”
]]>“I haven’t seen a single presentation that didn’t begin, have a middle and end with brand safety,” says the Chief Investment Officer at OMD. “I’ve seen the biggest rise on the side of brand safety and the biggest decline on the side of virtual reality.”
Last year, Winkler explains in this interview with Beet.TV, you could not walk out of NewFronts presentations “without Google Cardboard strapped to your head looking at the latest virtual reality options.” By contrast, this year some company presentations “aren’t even checking the box, and that’s a function of scale,” he adds. “Our clients need big scale to reach lots of people, and VR isn’t quite there yet.”
On the contrary, there’s no escaping the subject of brand safety in the light of some marketers pulling their ads from digital platforms that haven’t done enough to ensure their content is inoffensive. To Winkler’s way of thinking, there should not be a debate about the need for brand-safe environments.
“There’s nothing more important than the context in which our clients’ advertising appears. That’s what brand safety is,” he says.
Publishers that create and own their content have a “very simple and elegant story” about brand safety, he says. That’s a far cry from platforms that are populated with lots of user-generated content.
“The challenge YouTube will have is trying to combine their massive scale with the technology and human element to make all of our clients feel comfortable about advertising in that marketplace.”
He welcomes the audience-targeting consortium OpenAP formed by Fox, Turner and Viacom because it represents a radical departure from buying TV audiences based on broad age and gender demographics.
Being able to target specific audiences is “extraordinarily important” and it’s going to make TV more effective both for the advertisers and for the broadcasters themselves,” says Winkler.
We spoke with him at the Turner NewFronts presentation.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the #NewFronts, please visit this page.
]]>“I think the opportunity around creativity is to divorce it from the visual design standpoint,” says Doug Rozen, Chief Digital & Innovation Officer at global media agency OMD. Rozen and his teams spend a fair amount of time thinking through the role of media in driving creativity and creative decisions, he explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the annual Transformation conference of the 4A’s.
In this manner they constantly seek to push contextual understanding to reach people better. “I think the most important thing is to find ways to think beyond a box, think beyond a screen, beyond an ad and create content that a consumer really wants,” says Rozen.
Part of the job is reaching audiences and then engaging them and breaking through to make a meaningful connection. “I think at times we get lost about either just making a connection and failing to reach, or reaching them without that connection. A lot of what we’re trying to do is how to bring those two things together,” says Rozen.
Asked about OMD’s experience to date with artificial intelligence technology, Rozen says it ranges not only from conversation assistants like Amazon’s Alexa to Google Assistant but to insights that can be gleaned from AI to inform media knowledge of things like audience segments. He likens AI in human terms to a toddler in a hurry.
“What’s exciting is that it’s growing up fast. It will not take years for it to be a teenager and adult,” Rozen says.
Transformation in advertising and media means different things to different people. People usually talk about how creative or media agencies have changed to keep pace with consumers and clients, but not Rozen.
“What transformation means to me is evolution. We cannot stand still. If we stand still we are dead,” he says.
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 that places a responsibility on advertisers to take advantage of the technology responsibly, says one executive from a leading ad agency.
In this video interview with Beet.TV at CES, OMD chief digital and innovation officer Doug Rozen says he is trying to help brands offer customers opportunities for “immersion”.
“There’s 200,000 people here,” Rozen says. “What it’s all about this year is immersive marketing.
“In the past, … we would just drive awareness one way. Then we got to ‘interactive’ in the last 20 years. Now it’s about immersive – it can be much more free-flowing, much more autonomous. That’s where virtual reality, AI and bots come in.”
VR and AR have surfaced in recent years as opportunities for both publishers and advertisers like. For some, appetite appears to have diminished in the last year. But Rozen says OMD is helping brands make 360-degree video experiences and “fully-immersive, ‘take me to a new world’ experiences”.
Now artificial intelligence, voice-controlled smart assistants and chat-controlled AI bots are being touted as the next wave of consumer interaction technologies that brands simply must embrace.
But OMD’s Rozen urges an excited caution. “My hope and desire is, we find the simplest way to celebrate the technology,” he says.
“A lot of times innovation is about just chasing shiny objects. One of the most important things not to lose sight of at CES is, while there’s a lot of gadget and a lot of flash, we have to find what’s going to be the simplest way to get a consumer to do something and drive business value.”
This video was produced as part Beet.TV’s coverage of CES 2017 presented by 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>That is according to one ad agency boss now helping clients understand and benefit from the changes.
“We are definitely entering an addressable age,” says Nikki Mendonça, OMD’s EMEA president, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “Personalisation at scale is the holy grail of marketing at the moment.
“We’re having a myriad number of conversations with clients at the moment about how to achieve that relevance for them. Using data … is the sweet spot.”
OMD has been helping clients use opportunities like AdSmart, the addressable TV offering from Sky, the UK’s pay-TV leader.
“The relevance is giving very good ROI, even though you pay inflated CPMs,” she says. But other markets are less developed. Already, France and Germany are behind due to national limitations on use of data in advertising. And a big challenge is imminent across the continent.
“In other parts of Europe, addressability at large is still quite fetal,” Mendonça says. “The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is coming in to force in May 2018.
“If you are seen, as an advertiser, to flout any data protection rules, your penalty is 4% of your global turnover. We have to exercise some caution going in to a world of being abel to leverage trillions of data points.”
This video was produced as part Beet.TV’s coverage of CES 2017 presented by 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>In this video interview with Beet.TV, OMD strategy and product development director Jean-Paul Edwards says AI is nothing new – but it is now ready to make in-roads in to media.
“AI’s been with us for 50 years – it’s had a lot of false dawns,” Edwards says.
He should know. Edwards has been heading up future-facing tech strategies for agencies for years. But now he says AI is truly emerging.
After all, The Weather Company and IBM are now using IBM’s Watson AI engine to power conversational ad units.
“We’re starting to see AI in terms of … decisions around content delivery in the digital space,” Edwards says.
“The next step is to bring that to mass broadcast video … fitting broadcast-quality content in to pipes, through to curation algorithms … (so that) a TV set knows exactly what you want to watch. … your brother-in-law’s YouTube videos or a specialist bit of content from a group n Facebook or the big new cop show on NBC.”
But there is no single product called “AI” that agencies can simply switch on. Rather, there is a messy, emergent set of tools Edwards is calling a “cognitive technology stack”, comprising data sources, sensors, APIs and bots.
This video was produced as part Beet.TV’s coverage of CES 2017 presented by 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>“We are in the age of addressability, it’s here,” OMD EMEA chief digital officer Blake Cuthbert tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “That’s at the top of our clients’ agendas.”
So how is OMD helping clients embrace the new age, when so many opportunities abound?
Cuthbert says the agency is using an approach of testing and partnership.
“How do we create mass personalisation?,” he asks. “We are working in very specific teams, we are putting number of different specialists… a search specialist working with a programmatic specialist of traditional TV specialist … to understand what signals we’re seeing and what message and content needs to happen there, across the entire journey a user has with a brand.”
Cuthbert says there are so many channels and options through which a brand can now reach consumers – but it is important that campaigns do not dwell on campaign key performance indicators (KPIs). Rather, it is imperative brands and their agencies focus on the end outcomes, like sales.
“The important thing is not to get caught up in the metrics as key KPIs but to use those as levers to tweak,” Cuthbert says.
This video was produced as part Beet.TV’s coverage of CES 2017 presented by 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
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