In this week’s episode of the #BeetCast we explore the topic through the initiatives of the Publicis Groupe and the Spark Foundry agency. Our guest is Jason Smith, President, Diversified Investments at Spark Foundry, a unit of Publicis Media.
Jason is twenty-year veteran of the agency world with time as Horizon and Mindshare. He joined Spark Foundry earlier this year in a newly created role
In our chat, he speaks to the imperative of media investment around the increasingly diverse U.S. consumer population. He says one of the barriers to investment is the under representation of diverse groups in panels and other audience planning measurement methodologies.
This is a very open and direct on the need and outlook of real change in the advertising business.
Great conversation. Thank you Jason.
And thanks to our sponsor Mediaocean for supporting this podcast.
And thank you for listening!
]]>The EVP of advanced TV at Publicis Media has seen an explosion in video viewing and, as a result, ad opportunities.
But, in this video interview with Beet.TV, she says that can cause as many headaches as solutions.
“We saw a hockey stick rise in streaming services, both AVOD and SVOD, more than we expected,” Whitesel says.
“That fragmentation has continued to disrupt … in a period that was more condensed, which has added to the challenges that we have already seen over the last four to five years within the ecosystem.
“From a video standpoint, that makes the challenges that we deal with on a day-to-day basis just more pronounced. The aggressiveness with which we need to attack it both from a client side and agency side (is) all the more important and more pronounced today than they were probably a year, 18 months ago.”
EMarketer forecasts US digital video consumption among adults rising from an average 133 minutes per day in 2020 to 145 by 2022.
After Roku Channel, Tubi and Pluto TV are amongst the leading suppliers of ad-supported options.
But Publicis’ Whitesel says brands need to think calmly about where to place their money.
“Everyone is excited about everything, which is probably part of the problem,” she says.
“There’s only a limited amount of funds to invest. And there are unknown amount of quantity of things that we know that work.
“For many of our clients, it’s about ‘What is the opportunity cost and what can they afford to risk in test?’
“Leaning into everything everywhere can make for a lot of excitement and a lot of anticipation for results, but can also make for a lot of chaos where you don’t necessarily know what’s working and what’s not.”
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.
]]>During a fireside chat with Jon Watts, co-founder and managing partner at MTM London at the Beet Retreat, hosted by Publicis Media, Whitesel explained why clients are “terrified” of current measurement strategies across linear TV, data-driven linear TV and advanced TV, mainly because multiple partners and approaches are required to get a clear picture of what’s driving results.
“We are in the Wild West. There are clients depending on the metrics and business goals. We could spend a day on TV measurement,” says Whitesel. “There’s a huge issue when it comes to TV measurement with a digital mindset, where people are like ‘Just give me exposure data and I’ll make decisions based on that.’ Thats a huge issue. If you do that you can run yourself right out of TV.”
Whitesel’s concern is that a singular view of data will mislead advertisers into ignoring some channels and spending more on others because of a lack of transparency across mediums. As advanced TV rises and linear TV changes, Whitesel is observing big shifts in the industry. Here are her biggest takeaways.
For advertisers, TV is a spectrum.
Whitesel says there’s still a misunderstanding about what advanced TV actually is – the conclusion is that it’s all OTT, CTV and one-to-one addressable TV. But there are more opportunities that get overlooked that fall between linear and hyper-targeted addressable TV, including data-driven linear, which helps brands make the most of big TV moments with the most reach, like the Super Bowl, while still collecting information on audience and lift.
“We have to understand that not all [channels] are equal across and they all contribute in different ways to different outcomes for brands and clients, and that’s the gap.”
Frequency remains the biggest issue for advanced TV.
Because transparency remains an issue for the advanced TV market, there’s a responsibility for agencies to improve the ability for clients to understand what they’re paying for and where it’s going, and tying that directly to business outcomes, whatever those may be. Those are going to be different for different companies, which is where multiple measurement partners come in.
“TV measurement is the great democratization we need to understand how each [of the channels] is tied to a business outcome at the client or brand level. Whether it’s retail store visits, website metrics, sales in aggregate – we need to get better about tying those things together, so we can deliver the right amount by channel for clients to deliver the best outcomes.”
Walled gardens come with both benefits and challenges.
Moving toward network and platform walled gardens, which Whitesel says some currently are but wouldn’t name names, would give advertisers more data and more transparency, because the data providers own the data. But that data comes at a cost.
“The cost is there of not seeing the rest of the universe, and there’s learnings where you’re not going to listen because you don’t have enough trust in the evaluation of the rest of the landscape,” says Whitesel. “What learnings can you get from the walled gardens without the cost of everything else?”
The next five years will be about content.
Whitesel’s prediction for the next five years in TV and advanced TV is that there will be a shift to control over content.
“There’s been a lot of disparate sources where you can buy audiences, through premium, TV-like content,” says Whitesel. “Now you’re starting to see the TV giants put their arms around that content, seeing how valuable it is and [wanting] better control of it regardless of where it’s being viewed. Owning that content and getting the exposure data is allowing for more insight.”
This video was produced at the Beet Retreat leadership event hosted Publicis Media in New York. The event and video series is sponsored by FreeWheel and LiveRamp. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
]]>“If they’re not happy with the experience and the ad load, they’re going to try to find other places that they can. Essentially that’s what’s happening with subscription-based viewing.”
This is underscored when one considers demographics, Cohen explains in this interview with Beet.TV.
“We’re seeing a lot more cord cutting, a lot more cord nevers, and it’s becoming harder to find them in a meaningful impactful way.”
Cohen foresees a big change happening amid the growth of streaming TV choices. “It’s an exciting year because there’s so many new entrants into this year’s NewFronts and Upfronts.”
He mentions “a proliferation of new formats” and more engaging units.
“We’re starting to see differences in how they come to us with how to reach someone who’s binging content, someone who is a lean back experience, someone who’s looking at vertical video differently.
“I think everyone is thinking about this year massively different than last year. It’s a great opportunity for us as buyers and also for consumers as well.”
Cohen is particularly enthused about a return to storytelling, understanding how to work across screens and formats with frequency capping and “diving into new forms of measurement that can help us do that. And using creative formats like vertical video and more engaging ecommerce ads to help us to tell a better story for our advertisers.”
In short, there’s many things for advertisers to examine and perhaps embrace.
“I think this is a wealth of an opportunity for our advertisers to start to dig deeper into what content is resonating with what target audience that they want,” Cohen says. “We haven’t yet seen the true potential of all the targeting capabilities that are now starting to happen as we shift into more of like a living room focus of linear plus OTT.”
This video is part of a series about the emergence of OTT as an advertising platform. For more interviews, please visit this page. This series is presented by Premion.
]]>“It’s been around for a long time. There have always been teams inside of clients within the marketing teams or supporting the marketing teams to address the needs that exist,” Kaplowitz says in this Beet.TV interview at the recent Association of National Advertisers’ In-House Agency Conference.
At the event, Kaplowitz moderated a panel discussion titled Agencies and the Velocity of Change. It brought together executives from VMLY&R and GlaxoSmithKline, plus Publicis Media and New Balance. Turns out “balance” is a key word in the modern-day world of marketers and how they mix internal and external resources.
“There’s just so much more that is needed today and there’s a lot of work that needs to get accomplished,” says Kaplowitz. “I do think it’s important to recognize that here is no one size fits all. There’s no right way of doing it.”
It’s more about “finding what is the right model for you, but you have to really think about what are your objectives, what are you trying to accomplish. And that they’re not set in stone. They change over time.”
One theme from Kalowitz’s panel is that client-agency partnerships have to be right for both parties. For VMLY&R and GSK, a key element was “how to work together to support the tech stack that they work with, to collaborate with the team that’s in-house that’s actually managing strategy and comms planning.” In the case of Publicis and New Balance, while the agency sets the “base” brand strategy, the global creative services team at New Balance does “more of the executional work and work closely within the local territories and how they manage it.”
Asked about negative and positive implications for agencies, Kaplowitz says that’s largely in the eye of the beholder. The recent growth of in-house teams is undeniable, but 90% of marketers still require outside resources.
“Agencies have also shifted to being less reluctant to needing to do everything end to end. There’s more openness to recognizing what their specific role can be within the journey and how to bring that to life. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It doesn’t have to be negative.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the ANA In-House Agency Conference. This series is sponsored by Extreme Reach. For more videos please visit this page.
]]>But, if addressable TV ad spend is still small-scale, it may be a function as much of available ad space and success proof as of ad buyers’ reluctance.
In this video interview with Beet.TV during CES, the enterprise strategy EVP of Publicis Groupe’s planning and buying division, Publicis Media, outlined the way ahead.
“Clients’ appetites (are) larger than ever before to explore,” said Nicole Whitesel. “And, where in the past, it was seen as a nascent channel with limited reach, I think you’re seeing a lot more inventory there available to them to buy. I think their willingness to test things where they’re unsure of outcomes has been increased more than ever before.”
If that is a change of attitude on the brands’ own part, what about those brand’s media planners themselves? How do they regard the emerging connected video landscape?
Whitesel says her own company is responding to growing demand by more closely aligning its teams, just like the new media landscape is melding together classical TV with the qualities of online delivery.
“There’s an opportunity to get in early, test things, build operational muscle between teams that maybe haven’t worked together as closely before,” she says.
“Historically, broadcast teams and national teams have bought broadcast and (separately) you have teams that maybe are more precision- or audience-driven that buy programmatic. You’re seeing a lot of work between those teams now to think about the way we’re buying connected TV.”
That plays out by the broadcast-buying team doing so during an annual upfront whilst an activation team buys an ad during quarter.
This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2019. The series is sponsored by NBCUniversal. For more coverage, please visit this page.
]]>Announced today at the 4A’s Accelerate conference, the APB “came up as a very natural discussion around something that we call the code of decency,” Louis Jones, EVP, Media & Data at the 4A’s, says in this interview with Beet.TV. “There ought to be a base level for brand safety.”
Founding members of the APB include executives from Dentsu Aegis Network, GroupM, Havas Media, Horizon Media, IPG Mediabrands, MDC Partners, Omnicom Media Group and Publicis Media. Each holding company—as well as Horizon Media—has committed to dedicating a Brand Safety Leader within its network to serve on the bureau.
“We are creating a database where everybody can report in and say, ‘Hey, I’m the person from Dentsu Aegis and I just saw some of your Publicis brands in places where you don’t want them,” Jones says. “And then that information gets shared so that everyone can collectively act and keep every brand potentially, every major brand in the marketplace, safe.”
The formation of the APB is the first step in a list of actions that nearly 100 4A’s members and industry leaders “outlined and rallied around” at the Advertising Assurance Forum, a closed-door event hosted by the 4A’s on March 19, according to a 4A’s release.
Additional next steps outlined under the Advertising Assurance initiative include:
• Develop a risk management module. The APB will work with advertisers to develop categorizations of risk across a spectrum from most safe to least safe.
• Create a code of decency. Working with the Media Rating Council, Inc., APB agencies will help establish a set of ground rules that align baseline expectations for safety through a new set of standards within the MRC’s Brand Safety Guidelines, currently in initial draft. “Down the road, media agencies will also work with the MRC to identify efforts and methodologies to mitigate fake news,” states the 4A’s release.
• Educate the ecosystem. The APB will develop an industry playbook that will include new standards, metrics, methodologies and tools to combat unsafe environments for both brands and consumers.
Working with the MRC will help agencies understand “what are all the things we can do as an industry, from a perspective of how can technology be better, how can it be more specific, what is the role that human intervention plays in terms of understanding levels of risk and inappropriateness,” Jones says.
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.
]]>It’s a gathering where agencies and their clients size up trends in consumer technology, content consumption and distribution to “help tell stories together on those platforms or through those vessels or through things that maybe haven’t peaked yet,” says Adam Shlachter, President of Global Innovation at Publicis Media.
The ability to bring all of these fully or partially formed elements together for collaborative building is a far cry from other events described by Shlachter a “showcase of reels and demos and sneak peeks of things that may or may come to light.”
With so much to cover during the annual Digital Content NewFronts presentations, he’s looking for what’s actionable, most impactful and will help marketers transform their business and brands.
This can happen through new platforms, new partners or “new voices” to help tell marketers’ stories and connect with consumers “in new and better and more defined ways,” Shlachter says.
Also maturing a bit is Snapchat, along with its audience, according to Shlachter. Snapchat most recently revealed a deal with Moat to be able to provide a viewability score for its advertisers, as ADWEEK reports.
“There’s no shortage of content,” he says. What’s key is to understand how it works more seamlessly between platforms “because content doesn’t exist on just any one place anymore.”
We interviewed him at the Digitas NewFronts event.
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.
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