That is stark contrast to the US, where many media houses remain in competition with both each other and the tech giants.
But one European media company that is amongst the leading exponents of joint working thinks partnerships point the way ahead.
“Partnerships in general, and alliances, will be really the big industry topic from a publisher or a broadcaster point of view in the next couple of years,” says Daniel Bischoff, chief marketing and operations officer for RTL AdConnect , in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“(That is) in contrary to the U.S. where you see a lot of mergers and acquisitions, they’re more straightforward. You’ll see a lot of more alliances, whether it’s around data, whether it around access to inventory.”
Bischoff’s AdConnect is an ad sales arm for broadcasters owned by pan-European RTL Group and shows made by its Fremantle Media subsidiary (American Idol, Got Talent, X Factor) around the world, but also those owned by other operators.
In examples of cooperation from the RTL portfolio:
It is as though the contestants of Fremantle’s televised song contests were coming together to form a super-group.
“Regarding Germany, I think if you’ve been around a bit in the business, you know that a couple of years back this wouldn’t have been possible, no way,” Bischoff tells MTM’s Jon Watts for this interview.
“The biggest two enemies in the market, RTL and ProSieben are lion’s sharing about 80% of the television market, getting together and doing something. But I think it’s just a start of what we’re going to see”
RTL AdConnect uses a video marketplace platform to access premium inventory across linear TV and VOD, built on SpotX and Smartclip, both of which RTL acquired in recent years in addition to VideoAmp and Clypd.
The idea is to give video and TV companies a leg-up in ad sales against the might of tech platforms, appealing to international companies with a clear pitch in a fragmented market: “Buy Europe”. Specifically, 800 million audience members in Europe.
“It’s a super big challenge,” Bischoff acknowledges. “But at the same time it’s our promise to the advertising industry is that we simplify this continent of Europe with it’s different languages, different legislations, different obstacles, in order to give you a one-stop shop and simplified solution.”
That is why, to bring the world to Europe, AdConnect is going out to the world. Recently, the outfit opened up two US offices and enlisted an agent in Japan.
“What we want to do is really build as multiple touchpoints as possible with the advertisers,” says Bischoff.
This segment is part of a series titled The New Global Marketplace for Premium Video, produced at Cannes Lions and sponsored by RTL AdConnect. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. For all of Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2019, please visit this page.
]]>“All of the hospitality industry today, six years ago everything was digital,” the SVP of Global Marketing Strategy says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
“And now we are let’s say back in the roots simply because you can see that Booking and Expedia and all key players today” invest in TV advertising.
Having done as much as it could to increase sales and ROI in digital media for its brands, which include Fairmont, Raffles, SLS and Sofitel in 100 countries, Accor decided it needed to travel in a different direction. “So we decided to come back a year ago on TV but TV in a different way. It’s how do you link your brand awareness with what is going on in the physical world in the hotels,” Dubois says.
TV provides a new way to reach the right audience. “In the hospitality business, we need to touch some niche audience and as part of a global scale it’s always a big challenge. We are able to target the right people at the right time to talk about our universe. It’s not a day-to-day conversation for consumers.”
Accor has the tools to link its TV advertising to “what is going on in the digital space. These tools today are great. When you do TV, it’s not only to spend a lot of money and have status. We’re very confident and very pleased to be back on TV for our hotel brands. We see great results,” Dubois says.
This segment is part of a series titled The New Global Marketplace for Premium Video, produced at Cannes Lions and sponsored by RTL AdConnect. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. For all of Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2019, please visit this page.
]]>Visit the Shell website and you won’t see promotions for the company’s liquid products. Instead, the issue of climate change takes center stage. And so it was with one of Shell’s latest YouTube initiatives, called The Great Travel Hack, hosted by actress and sitcom star Kaley Cuoco.
“Over the last two years we have reframed our presence on YouTube,” Silva says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “And I would say today we are much more professional, not only on the type of content that we put there but also the type of content that we don’t put there, to preserve what our subscribers want,”
Shell leverages technology for audience targeting and retargeting, “playlists, call to actions, all those types of best practices that are available today for anyone. You need to be good at all those things, otherwise you are missing a piece of the puzzle to be performing at your best,” says Silva.
The Great Travel Hack pitted two couples with “their own social media presence” against one another in a race from Los Angeles to New York. “We selected them by their audiences, their profile, their sympathy, their engagement, their awareness in their own countries and the authenticity that they have with their own audiences in the countries that they work.”
The goal was to make the 3,000-mile jaunt while emitting the lowest possible level of CO2. Vehicles used by the social media influencers in Team Alpha and Team Omega included a sailboat and a three-person sled powered by 12 dogs.
“And what we saw throughout this journey from Los Angeles to New York is that the more stimulus we gave them, the more interested they were in this subject and the more fluent they became to talk about this subject,” Silva says of the influencers. “Which was exactly what we wanted to achieve because it’s very organic, very natural, very native. We didn’t script it at all. This came across very natural.”
The company has several objectives for outcomes and KPI’s. “The success for us is really the outcomes in terms of the perceptions of the brands,” Silva says. “To have millions and millions of views on its own is not enough to be successful.”
This segment is part of a series titled The New Global Marketplace for Premium Video, produced at Cannes Lions and sponsored by RTL AdConnect. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. For all of Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2019, please visit this page.
]]>Luxembourg-based pan-European RTL Group is living out both of those trends.
Its Adconnect unit is an ad sales arm for RTL-owned broadcasters and shows made by its Fremantle Media subsidiary (American Idol, Got Talent, X Factor) around the world, but also those owned by other operators.
And it is doing that by trying to satisfy advertisers that have an increasingly global outlook.
“What we saw over the last few years with the appearance of the big pure players, to have global partnerships at HQ level, and we are here to answer to those needs,” says Stéphane Coruble, RTL Adconnect CEO, in this video interview with MTM’s Jon Watts for Beet.TV.
“We call this a ‘glocal’ approach. You know, global KPIs, because brands are very global now. You can go wherever you want in the world, you will see the same brands. But, when it comes to implementation, it’s clear that you need to have a strong knowledge of the local discrepancies across the world.”
Around the world, operators are coming together in partnership, seeking scale to fight common challenges. That is what Germany-based broadcast group RTL is doing with more than 400 partners.
Last year, after acquiring SpotX, RTL Group created Video Marketplace (VMP), an initiative to combine various source of online video ad inventory which its AdConnect sales house represents.
And this June the company formed a joint venture with Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1, helping the latter to sell ads in addressable TV platforms.
This segment is part of a series titled The New Global Marketplace for Premium Video, produced at Cannes Lions and sponsored by RTL AdConnect. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. For all of Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2019, please visit this page.
]]>Last year, acquiring SpotX, pan-European RTL Group created Video Marketplace (VMP), an initiative to combine various source of online video ad inventory which its AdConnect sales house represents.
Now the outfit is doubling down on its US presence.
“(When) I stepped into the company we had 37 people mostly in Europe,” says Stéphane Coruble, RTL AdConnect CEO, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“Now we’re reaching 100 people across the world and we’ve been opening lots of new offices.”
Mostly, AdConnect’s expansion has happened in the UK, where many international brands bridge in to Europe through major ad agencies. But AdConnect also set up camp in New York a year and a half ago, and is now opening a Los Angeles office, Coruble says.
“The US market is very dynamic,” he adds. “Many of our legacy clients are based here in the US, and it’s important that we get discussions and partnerships with them. (We want) to discuss with companies based in LA, but also based in San Francisco, in the Valley – direct consumer brands. Very important for us, especially for the European market.”
AdConnect represents broadcaster VOD, including its group’s own, totalling ore than a billion monthly views, Coruble claims.
VMP accesses premium inventory across linear TV and VOD, built on SpotX and Smartclip, both of which RTL acquired in recent years in addition to VideoAmp and Clypd.
Coruble’s strategy seems to tap two trends we are seeing in the marketplace;
This video is part of the Beet.TV preview series titled “The Road to Cannes.” The series is sponsored by 4INFO. Please visit this page for additional segments.
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