This month, Yahoo announced Tubi is extending its use of Yahoo’s supply-side ad software (SSP) to also connect with its demand-side platform (DSP).
As Iván Markman, chief business officer of Yahoo, explains in this video interview with Beet.TV, that means Yahoo ad buyers now have access to one of the biggest connected TV destinations.
“They’ve been leveraging our SSP for about three years,” Markman says.
“Advertisers and agencies can now access the high-growth inventory and engagement opportunities that Tubi has to offer in those ways, above and beyond the ways that they have been able to access them in our exchange.
“We are lighting up a unique set of capabilities in our DSP to enable advertisers and agencies to access supply in unique ways and better ways.
“Programmatic guaranteed deals reporting and planning gets amplified within the DSP.
“A result of that for Tubi is to drive greater growth as they can transact.”
Now owned by Fox, Tubi has been on a tear.
Reportedly, usage has doubled in the last year, whilst upfront commitments have tripled.
Now Fox wants to spend even more on streaming TV.
Fox Corp.’s streamers will get a cash boost in the coming year as the media company looks to lean further into its growing portfolio of ad-supported and subscription streaming services like Tubi. https://t.co/nmCvI5T1UQ
— Adweek (@Adweek) August 4, 2021
Markman is clear why he thinks Tubi is growing.
“There’s quality content that is very relevant ,” he says.
“(It is) a great kind of creative canvas, if you will, when it comes to the consumer experience.
“When you think about upfronts as an example, it really helps everyone participate in those opportunities in much more valuable ways.”
]]>“Historically, we were seen as just an ad rep organization and what we’re trying to do is build adtech underneath it that supports it and drive operational efficiencies into that space,” says NCC Media Chief Data Officer Bob Ivins. In this interview with Beet.TV, he discusses how NCC hopes to unify audience targeting transactions across TV distributors and shares his thoughts on viewer data and privacy.
“I think that the cable operators have all operated in their own swim lanes,” Ivins says. “They’ve taken their subscriber files, they’ve appended variables to it or attributes to it, they’ve used that within their infrastructure to do zone-based addressability, but they’ve all been kind of one-off.”
Some operators are versed in video on demand and digital but there’s no uniformity.
“You end up with this bingo board of distributor and capabilities and there’s no one line or one row that matches for everybody. What NCC is trying to do is we’re trying to harmonize, standardize and federate those capabilities so that you can actually do one buy, one place and have national capabilities within an infrastructure.”
Consumer TV and digital data from NCC owners Charter Communications, Comcast and Cox Communications forms the basis of a converged data set that NCC says will represent “the largest data set in television,” as CEO Nicolle Pangis explains in this video interview.
Ivins joined NCC in July 2018, having played a pioneering role in the development of the data-driven advertising ecosystem for three decades. He held executive roles at comScore, Mindshare, Comcast, Yahoo and Nielsen.
Noting that “we rationalized the irrational going back in time,” Ivins refers to a period when executing a local spot cable buy in a market like Philadelphia required transacting with anywhere from four to six operators.
“It was really hard to do an operation like that. NCC stepped in, they harmonized the process so you had one order, they distributed the execution, you had one set of affidavits that went back to the client,” Ivins says. “We’re kind of doing the exact same thing, but now instead of in that environment we’re doing it a new environment and hopefully we’ll extend it to cross-platform.”
Asked about data and privacy, Ivins believes the industry recognizes its responsibility in ingesting and understanding behavioral data. Given the head start that digital media companies have in advanced consumer targeting, “I think it’s now time for the TV industry to really take advantage of that.”
Consumers should have an “active opportunity” to understand what companies like NCC intend to do with their data, according to Ivins. “And I think that notice and choice needs to get really solidified in the industry and if it does, I think we should have the rights to do it. As long as the consumer knows what we’re doing with it.”
]]>In addition to the Samsung pact, Oath announced at this week’s Digital Content NewFronts 2018 that it will debut 10 new series on AOL and Yahoo properties.
The apps that will reside on S9 phones are Verizon’s Go90 video service, Newsroom from Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance.
The Galaxy integration is a “really important part of our statement to the marketplace about Oath as a mobile company. It’s a tremendous opportunity,” says Oath CRO John DeVine in this interview with Beet.TV.
“Millions of Samsung Verizon users will be carrying around those Oath brands in their pockets and it gives our advertisers a chance to get their ads into those apps.”
At its NewFronts presentation, hosted by actor Jamie Foxx, Oath announced three shows for mobile sports fans, as Broadcasting & Cable reports.
• The Rush, a daily sports show featuring “must-see” moments filmed both in vertical and horizontal format “so it gives the user a chance to really get the best of the mobile experience.”
• The Spin, offering insights and analysis on sporting events.
• Soccer Mom, in which soccer star Abby Wambach tackles everyday issues common to athletes and parents.
In addition, the Build Series is adding two new live daily shows: Build Brunch and The Build Up. Oath brand Makers will collaborate with Yahoo Finance on a new series titled Makers Money, aimed at helping women with their finances. It will feature Sally Crawcheck “talking about finance through the perspective of women,” DeVine says.
“We founded Oath and began Oath as a portfolio of brands. We’re going to continue to mine that garden of brands if you will,” says DeVine.
As it continues to invest in properties like Yahoo Finance, Huffington Post and Yahoo Sports, “Over time we may add to that portfolio as well. Those brands have a rich legacy and real trust equity built up with consumers and we think that matters to our advertisers.”
DeVine says one major focus of Oath is pioneering new ad formats that consumers will warm to. “We think clearly consumers want fewer adds, but they really want fewer bad ads.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
]]>As Oath sorts out the DSP solution, “We’re very sincerely aligned with wanting to go from a Wild West to a real, trusted environment,” DeVine says in this interview with Beet.TV at the Annual Leadership Meeting of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. “We want to have an open platform and an open ecosystem where we bring technology that as an advertiser and as a brand builder you can trust.”
Such an open system means advertisers can bring to the table their own data, validation and measurement so that “we’re not grading our own homework so that you as an advertiser feel comfortable with the ROI, the results and the delivery of your message to our universe of users.”
The unified DSP is based mostly on the BrightRoll code base “but it pulls in ad learn and other features of the ONE by AOL DSP,” says DeVine. “We’re cross-coding right now the features and functionality of both into the combined platform.”
As The Drum has reported, Oath hopes to have the unified DSP by the end of 2018, along with two ad exchanges—one for video and the other for mobile.
According to DeVine, Oath is working on establishing “a common interface, features and functionality” between its Gemini native platform and the single DSP “so advertisers have one plug-in, one place to go.”
What Verizon has invested in with its separate acquisitions of AOL and Yahoo is growth. In addition to consolidating Oath’s tech assets, “We also know that growth starts with our consumer relationship and so our energies are going very aggressively toward that consumer interface”
Oath’s mobile-first regimen was bolstered in late 2017 with the addition of live-streaming NFL games, a five-year deal that Recode estimates will cost Verizon more than $1.5 billion.
“On the advertising side, we’re going to continue to push on creative ad formats. We want ads to be great for consumers and advertisers,” says DeVine.
This video is part of a series covering the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting. The series is sponsored by AppNexus. Please visit this page for more coverage.
]]>“Build brands people love” is the mantra of the amalgamation of AOL and Yahoo that is Oath. Fittingly, the company has decided to share its “love” with advertisers and consumers at its love.com site. There resides a wealth of data from some 150,000 consumers in 13 countries to reveal what makes them love their most trusted brands.
“We love this opportunity of using what we have as an asset and let it be shared across the industry, and it’s something you’re gong to see more of,” says Tim Mahlman, President, Advertising & Publisher Strategy, Oath.
In this interview with Beet.TV at Oath’s first appearance at the annual CES confab, Mahlman explains the company’s mobile-first video push and how it intends to go big on such venerable brands as Yahoo. An example of the latter is the recently announced deal between Verizon and the National Football League. As CNBC reports, fans can live-stream playoff games on the Yahoo Sports app, a deal with the sports league that is pegged at more than $1.5 billion over five years.
“We still very much want to double down on properties like Yahoo and within that the Yahoo Finance property and Yahoo sports,” Mahlman says. “Those are still big, behemoth organizations that have massive followings, especially on the app ecosystem.”
Two themes Mahlman cites going forward are advertisers’ continued concern over ad-serving transparency and creating unique ad formats for consumers, particularly in the mobile video realm. As for the former, he says, “It really comes down to transparency and trust. It’s something we saw happen in 2017 where there’s been some turmoil.”
The need for more engaging formats is necessary to prevent consumers from shutting out ads altogether. “If we don’t take amore proactive approach on it, we could see ourselves in a much different situation.”
Mahlman believes that video needs to be “democratized” and “ubiquitous” because there’s no accounting for public taste. However, the caveat for publishers is the risk of going it on their own for video production. “If you try to produce the content on your own and you don’t get the engagement, it’s a heavy cost,” Mahlman adds.
]]>Oath Chief Revenue Officer John DeVine spends much of his time at events like Advertising Week in Manhattan explaining how all of these assets are coming together, along with the melding of the teams and culture of AOL and Yahoo.
“We are consolidating the ad stack to make it ultra simple for our users,” DeVine says in this interview with Beet.TV while attending the Advertising Week festivities.
To help communicate all of the changes under way, Oath in late September launched a global brand campaign called #BuildYourBrand, which spans nine global markets and underscores the company’s differentiators across mobile, video and data for advertisers, publishers and partners, according to a news release.
Oath is a portfolio of more than 50 media and tech entities that Verizon accumulated with its acquisition of AOL and more recently Yahoo. According to DeVine, the company knows it needs to be “consumer first” when it comes to content.
“We have a beautiful garden of properties. We’re going to continue to grow, water and nourish and build that garden for consumers,” says DeVine.
Implicit in the choice of Oath as its own brand name is being open not only about the various consolidations apace but also how the company will operate going forward, given the delicate relations between brands and the digital ecosphere.
“We believe that programmatic advertising can be done with trust and advertisers can maintain control of their brands while they’re journeying into the programmatic space,” he adds.
Among other tactics in the mobile space, where 70% of Oath’s users interact with the company, Verizon plans to share hashed ID’s from its subscriber base for targeting on any AOL or Yahoo property, as well as for media bought through its platforms, AdExchanger reports.
Given its big footprint on the buy side and sell side, Oath is keenly aware that marketers aren’t going to let up on their demands for more open digital dealings.
“Advertisers are not happy with the way they’re being served. They’re not happy with the trust and transparency. At Oath we’re leaning directly into that,” DeVine says.
]]>Oath is a portfolio of more than 50 media and tech entities that Verizon accumulated with its acquisition of AOL and, most recently, Yahoo. It’s hoping that its “ton of quality brands” from Yahoo’s news and sports franchises to Huffington Post, TechCrunch and others will represent a trusted port for marketers in a sea of not always reputable options.
“We’re really excited about the reaction we’re getting to the Oath name and the Oath brand and the Oath value proposition,” says DeVine as the company made its debut at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
Oath is hoping that the perception of trust will be a big differentiator.
“When you put the trusted brands, the trusted data and the trusted distribution together, we think there’s really an opportunity that the marketplace is looking for to build brands with trust,” says DeVine, who served in the Navy before founding and leading McKinsey & Co’s B2B/B2C Customer Experience Practice. He joined Yahoo four years ago.
Mobile, video and content marketing are keystones of the company’s strategy. “We think brands will be built on the mobile device,” he says. “Oath is investing in building out quality video ad supply but also really innovative ad positions that let marketers and let brand builders get their brand out in video.”
At Cannes, DeVine is inspired by the work he’s seen in virtual and augmented reality, 360 video and holographic advertising, among other things. “It’s just great to see the innovation that’s happening.”
He also perceives a desire on the part of marketers to change the way they engage with consumers on their phones. Not just a “one-way, interruptive ad protocol but something that’s really much more interactive and two-way.
“So I think the creativity that’s happening there around the mobile device and the way to bring brands through the phone is really energizing.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s Coverage of Cannes Lions 2017. For more from the series, please visit this page.
]]>Last month, Facebook apologized after major agencies became aware that the social media behemoth had erred in the way it computed one of its video viewing metrics, as The Wall Street Journal reports. It’s something that’s “been blown out of every proportion,” de Nardis says in an interview with BeetTV at the annual IAB MIXX conference in Manhattan.
“Let’s not make it a huge problem, because it’s been managed quite well,” he says, adding that Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s VP of Global Marketing Solutions, “has been very forthcoming with their explanation. Mistakes happen, so let’s learn from them.”
Nonetheless, there is a bigger issue at hand. “It proves the point that we need third-party measurement, we need more control over the data and I think the whole industry needs to evolve in a better direction,” says de Nardis. “Third-party measurement is a key part of it and I think we need more consistency in the way it’s applied.”
When the subject turns to Twitter, one senses that like much of the ad world, de Nardis wishes for a speedier denouement.
“I just wish that Twitter finds their roots, they find the right place where they want to be because there has been too much speculation,” says deNardis. “I think they need to have the time just to focus on what they want to do without the speculation of a possible acquisition. Whatever it is, I hope it happens quickly, if it has to happen at all.”
A logical ending would be for Twitter to remain a media company, “because that’s what they have become,” possibly becoming integral to a bigger media organization, according to de Nardis.
The union of Verizon and Yahoo holds the potential for “where one plus one does not equal two but four or five,” de Nardis believes. “I look forward to what Verizon is going to do with its new assets.”
Asked about addressable advertising, he notes that one-to-one marketing has been a desire for at least two decades. “I think the big difference now is that one to one marketing at scale is possible. I think everything’s becoming addressable. It’s becoming the norm.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB MIXX Conference, 2016, presented by The TradeDesk. Please find additional videos from the Conference here.
]]>“A lot of people have asked why AOL, why Yahoo,” Jacob says in an interview with Beet.TV. “We are the supply chain while AOL and Yahoo are on the demand side of things. We’re the tech organization.”
Noting the importance of being able to dynamically insert ads into live or linear video feeds, Jacob says VDMS has welcomed joining with other companies’ technology.
“We have been known in the industry to actually be agnostic to whom we’re integrating with,” says Jacob, citing the likes of DFP, FreeWheel and SpotX. “We continuously focus on how can we enhance the technologies that these service providers actually provide. Our integration with AOL and Yahoo is just at the beginning.”
In less than three years, VDMS has grown to nearly 1,200 people. This expansion has occurred amid constant change in the adtech space as all manner of companies try to adapt and survive.
“The providers that have services such as FreeWheel have taken notice that in order to stay relevant, they need to be playing with companies such as Verizon and VDMS,” Jacob says.
Describing as “super smooth” the company’s existing ad decision integrations, Jacobs adds, “We’re looking into potentially building our own sometime in the future, which is why the acquisitions of AOL and Yahoo happened in the first place. We’re very excited on where we can take this over the next couple of years.”
]]>This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen. You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.
]]>Speaking with Beet.TV, Yahoo’s global TV and video partnerships chief Brent Horowitz says Flurry has access to data from two billion phones, while Yahoo’s data management platform tracks over 165 billion events every day.
“Twenty percent of ads on TV are for other TV shows,” he says. “Some of the early interest is certainly coming from a lot of entertainment brands trying to figure out, ‘How do I keep up with my consumers, how do I continue to market my content?’
“Cross-screen graphs are going to become critical. Yahoo’s built a tremendous cross-screen graph that’s well into nine digits (of users) and we expect that to be approaching close to all of our users by middle of next year.
“So that gives us and our clients the ability to, if you’re trying to market content, follow a given consumer across the variety of screens that we have access to. We think that that’s something that’s really unique.
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.
He was interviewed on stage by moderator Xaxis SVP Christina Beaumier.
You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.
]]>“The BrightRoll brand now will apply to the Yahoo DSPs as a whole that includes display as well as a lot of native capabilities,” says Yahoo Brent Horowitz in this video interview with Beet.TV.
The move is driven by a wish to simplify things for buyers, Horowitz says.
“Having large advertisers, agencies, trading desk partners of ours needing to log in to different screens to buy video over here or display over here is clearly not something that’s going to scale over time,” he says. “So a unified interface within which to leverage data to buy anywhere they want, that’s an important point.”
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.
You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.
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Lisa Utzschneider, the company’s SVP-Sales, Americas, observed that Yahoo’s video offerings now run the gamut from long-form original content (such as a custom opportunity for Honda in “Community”) to short videos in digital magazines to Sponsored Posts on Tumblr that appear alongside user generated content.
“Video advertising is a big opportunity for Yahoo marketers to connect with users wherever they’re consuming streaming content,” she says.
Utzschneider joined the company last year and had previously been Amazon’s ad sales chief. She notes that Yahoo has been focused on integrating BrightRoll to make video inventory on the company’s owned and operated sites available programatically.
Yahoo’s acquisition of the programmatic video ad platform, which it bought for $640 million, closed last December. Utzschneider says Yahoo is now able to reach 188 million video viewers every month.
“What that gives Yahoo and our marketers is incredible flexibility and scale,” she says.
]]>For many teens and millenials, watching TV and movies on digital screens is quickly replacing viewing them on the TV, the study found. The size of the screen plays a role, Weinberg tells us. Nearly half of consumers watch long-form content on their smartphones. As tablet size increases for phones, so does the viewing of video on those screens, she says. “We are seeing triple digit growth in terms of the time being spent when we compare typical smartphone devices to ‘phablets’ in categories such as sports, entertainment and news,” she says.
The Yahoo study also found that long-form TV viewing is rising on connected TVs, with about 80% of consumers saying they now watch long-form video in such a fashion. In general, viewers prefer shorter ads on digital devices. Even so, brands have ample opportunity to experiment with new ad forms. “As more original content comes online, that offers brands unique opportunities for integration and to get creative in ways that might have been more limited when they were on TV,” she says.
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So, as consolidation occurs, will vendors under new ownership be temped to lock customers in to their parents’ business ecosystem?
“That’s one of the risks,” according to Brightroll marketplace SVP and GM Dan Mosher, whose company was recently acquired by Yahoo.
“But, when we make the case to the publishers, we never say, ‘Be in our walled garden’. For us, it’s open to all of the programmatic buyers in the universe.”
“There is a lot of console on the sell side with Facebook buying LiveRail and AOL buying Adap.tv. Now it’s a case of, who’s going to bring the best tool to market?”
Mosher was interviewed at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat by Nielsen Digital MD Andrew Feigenson.
The Beet Retreat ’15 was sponsored by AOL and Videology. Please find additional videos from the event here.
]]>“It’s been underpenetrated and underserved by the video market over the last couple of years,” Brightroll marketplace SVP and GM Dan Mosher tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Part of that has been due to lack of measurement tools.
“Advertisers that have been using comScore or Nielsen as their measurement currency haven’t really been able to do it yet in mobile – those solutions are starting to get to market. Yahoo’s mobile focus is going to change the way we go to market.
“They are out there selling to some of the top brands every day – we are going to be a programmatic solution that leads the way for them in to video.”
He was interviewed at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat.
The Beet Retreat ’15 was sponsored by AOL and Videology. Please find additional videos from the event here.
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“We are trying to build more of these custom experiences on tumblr and this lets brands create content that is more modern, visual, shorter form, and the pages look more visual,” he says, adding that the branded content it creates can be distributed on Yahoo, tumblr and through Yahoo’s programmatic channels, and via native ad systems. As Yahoo pursues more branded opportunities, it’s also been experimenting with larger formats in mobile to take advantage of the growth in mobile, Albano adds.
This video is part of series of videos covering DMEXCO. Please find all of our coverage of the show right here.
]]>“A media company that was based on the web is now struggling getting in to the mobile space,” Jun Group CEO Mitchell Reichgut tells Beet.TV.
“Mobile apps are where most of the traffic is taking place. To get integrated is much more difficult that building another web network. The differentiation is everything. They’re buying that access.”
Acquiring Flurry, reportedly for more than $200m, gives Yahoo access to troves of information on how consumers use mobile apps – useful to Flurry’s 170,000 developers as well as to Yahoo itself.
“People use search every day to show (purchase) intent – that search-based data has never been able to be used in a programmatic environment,” according to Yahoo’s head of the Americas, Ned Brody.
“Display advertising is going to perform better if you only show those display ads … to people who searched for the car in the previous days.
“For the first time, you can use Yahoo search data to find that consumer who matches that search profile anywhere on the web.” The self-serve access for advertisers is “coming soon”, Brody said.
Brody spoke with Beet.TV during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Please find more coverage of the festival here.
]]>“The traditional inventory … haven’t really provided marketers the environment to tell a rich, engaging, robust story,” says Yahoo’s head of the Americas, Ned Brody.
“Unlike the small piece of real estate that typically is available in IAB units … this is an opportunity to tell a full story… and distribute that not only through Tumblr and (our) ‘magazines’ but our entire ecosystem on Yahoo.” Brody says Tumblr has seven content types available for marketers to use.
We spoke with him at the the Cannes Festival. You can find more coverage of the festival here.
Update: More on Yahoo’s use of Tumbr and other advertising efforts reported in the New York Times on June 21.
]]>The company’s Americas head Ned Brody has a clear answer: “You need to start thinking about Yahoo as both a publisher and a network.”
That means Yahoo doesn’t just want to be an owner and operator of its own web properties on which to sell ads, it wants to power ads on other people’s sites, too.
“You can’t buy ads on Conde Nast for ‘people who have searched for credit cards in the last 30 days’,” Brody boasts. “No-one can tie those datasets together – except us. You’ll see us take many of our assets and transition them from a publisher monetization model in to more of a modern network philosophy.”
That philosophy comes in to its own in video, where Brody concedes: “We are supply-constrained.”
He was interviewed by Tod Sacerodoti, CEO and founder of BrightRoll, in this on-stage session at the BrightRoll Video Summit. You can find more coverage of the BrightRoll summit here.
Disclaimer: BrightRoll sponsored Beet.TV’s coverage of the event.
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“If you enable content with underlying data, marketers should be able to seek out audiences and build up a database to understand who’s responding and which ads are producing the greatest results,” he says. “Flipping that model will dramatically change discoverability.” Starcom is currently working with Yahoo to roll out this platform to help find the ideal audience for videos and the accompanying ads. “The biggest opportunity is in breaking or extending the TV models,” he says, adding that multiple studies have shown the effectiveness of online video in delivering brand metrics.
]]>In June, at the Cannes Lions festival, we spoke with Erin McPherson, Head of Video, about the fall comedy line-up. “We are personalizing the network with streams and shows for each and every user. Our comedy offering will be distributed that way,” she tells us. She delves into Yahoo’s programming strategy since Marissa Mayer took over the reins at the company in our video interview, as well as Yahoo’s approach with advertisers.
“It’s essential to listen to the user first and look at what they are watching and interested in and then everything else will follow,” she says.
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