Mediastreet
Tag

advertising

Browsing
In News

VR Ads Are Almost Here. Don’t Act Surprised

No Comments

By Elizabeth Stinson

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re inside a virtual reality world. You look to your left and an open door appears, beckoning you to walk through it. You enter and suddenly find yourself in the middle of an advertisement—a branded world you can explore and manipulate. Forget banner ads and auto-playing videos. The advertisement of the future is immersive, almost game like. And it’s nearly here.

Last week, Unity, the world’s largest VR development company, announced Virtual Room, a new type of interactive advertisement it plans to roll out later this year. Unlike the standalone VR marketing experiences you’ve seen before, Virtual Room ads will surface across a wide network of VR apps, similar to the display ads you see on your laptop or the video ads you see while playing games on your phone. Don’t act surprised—you knew this was coming.

Like any new medium, VR must be monetized, says Tony Parisi head of Unity’s VR and AR strategy. “Developers want to make money,” he says. “We want to help them do that.“ Until recently, though, it was unclear how, exactly, that would happen. Most VR developers make cash from micro transactions and in-app purchases, but that’s pennies compared to what advertising can bring in.

Google

To capitalize on the opportunity, other VR companies have already begun exploring what ads might look like in this new medium. In a recent blog post, Google showed off a concept for a floating cube that players can tap or gaze at to start video advertisements—sort of like auto-play, but in VR. The format is simple by design. “VR ad formats should be easy for developers to implement, native to VR, flexible enough to customize, and useful and non-intrusive for users,” writes Aayush Upadhyay and Neel Rao of Google’s Area 120.

Google’s vision nods to the legacy of existing digital advertisements, which many in the ad industry are trying to avoid. “Our hope is that VR creates new opportunities that don’t replicate advertising the way that mobile originally did with repurposed 30-second TV spots,” says Eric John, deputy director of video at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the organization responsible for setting guidelines for web, mobile, and now VR advertisements.

The IAB is working with Unity to build guidelines around Virtual Room, which outline everything from how long an ad should play to how often it should surface. For now, Unity says branded content will be opt in for both developers and players. It will surface for no more than two minutes every hour, and those ads will be highly targeted as to not alienate the person interacting with them. They’ll likely pop up at points of friction—when a player is having trouble or after a level is completed—similar to ads on mobile games and television.

What will change is how the player interacts with advertisements. People won’t passively watch Unity-created ads; they’ll play with them. “Ads are usually linear,” says Julie Shumaker, VP of business development at Unity. “And there’s nothing linear about VR.”

To play to the medium’s strengths, Virtual Rooms will first appear as a floating, glowing door somewhere in the player’s field of vision. Shumaker calls this the Alice in Wonderland effect. “If you choose to enter, you’re going to drop into a completely different experience than the one you were just in,” she says, adding that the experience is meant to be transportive, not jarring. From there, players can explore the branded world for anywhere from 30 seconds if they’re not interacting to 60 seconds or more if Unity’s tracking software detects deep engagement.

For its pilot advertisement, Unity partnered with Lionsgate to craft a Virtual Room for the gory movie Jigsaw that will surface in apps across Unity’s growing VR ad network. Though they haven’t finished the creative content, Shumaker says the goal is to build something that will hit people on a visceral level and engage them just like a VR game engages players.

That’s an appealing sell to advertisers. Creating compelling content that doesn’t feel like an advertisement is one way to avoid audience burnout. Still, developing high caliber content is prohibitively expensive. Shumaker says they haven’t finalized pricing yet, but Virtual Room is going to be a premium product that commands premium rates.

According to a recent report from Forrester, developing a single 360 video ad can cost in the tens of thousands; developing a fully interactive ad could cost upwards of $500,000. “I think a lot of brands will be reluctant to invest in that,” says Thomas Husson, one of the Forrester analysts who authored the report.

For advertisers, the cost might be too high for what’s still essentially an experiment. But Unity has reason to bet on it. There might not be many people using VR headsets today, but if Virtual Room becomes a de facto ad standard in what’s projected to be a growing field, Unity has a lot to gain. Plus, virtual reality offers advertisers one thing that no other medium can accomplish. “You have 100 percent of the audience’s attention,” Shumaker says. In today’s frenzied media landscape, that’s worth a lot.

By Elizabeth Stinson

Sourced from WIRED

Read More
By
In News

Will marketing agencies always be nothing but sweatshops?

No Comments

By Samuel Scott.

There are so many slaves in the marketing industry that we should create an underground railroad beneath all our office buildings.

Following the recent news that the Japanese advertising firm Dentsu has been charged in the suicide of an illegally overworked employee, I collected stories from my own personal experiences, what I have read in the press, and what others have told me or posted online. Identifying specifics and situations have been removed. The anecdotes are from several countries.

But first, I will present data that compares agency and in-house salaries in the PR, advertising, and digital worlds in the UK, US, and Canada. (For those who want more information, the UK recruitment agency Major Players partnered with The Drum to release this 2017 salary report as well.)

The salaries

Public relations

The Works PR and communications recruitment agency in the UK conducts a salary survey every year. Here is part of the 2016 findings:

For the US, I pulled data from PayScale. The chart in the top left corner shows the median nationwide salaries for various job titles at PR agencies. The other boxes are in-house salary details of some of those listed agency jobs:

For Canada, I used the latest data from The Creative Group:

Advertising

For the UK, I could not find side-by-side comparisons of agency and in-house salaries. But I did find the following two data sets for agency positions in the Major Players 2017 salary report:

Here is the corresponding US data from PayScale. The chart in the top left corner shows the median nationwide salaries for various job titles at ad agencies. The other boxes are in-house salary details of some of those listed agency jobs:

A comparison for Canada:

Digital

For the UK, I used a report from The Candidate staffing firm:

US and Canada:

I could not find such side-by-side salary comparisons for digital agencies and in-house jobs in the United States and Canada, but I did find this 2016 agency survey conducted by Moz cofounder Rand Fishkin that includes both countries:

What it means

For most positions in all three countries, the salaries at marketing agencies are moderately to significantly lower than those for in-house positions – especially at the inexperienced end of the spectrum. The ‘gap between the rich and poor’ also seems to be larger within agencies.

However, I can attest from personal experience and stories from others that many agencies effectively give even less than these figures – and that they do it with a straight face.

Public relations

In the PR world, many agencies consist of a few well-paid strategic executives and an army of low-level, underpaid publicists who make countless phone calls and write untold numbers of emails to get as much news coverage as possible. Most are salaried but work so much overtime that they are effectively paid only a couple of pounds, dollars, or euros per hour. Many are students or recent university graduates who are officially – and often illegally – unpaid “interns” who are there only to “learn” and not work.

It’s a huge problem that no one is acknowledging – because the old have always taken advantage of the young.

Agency stress is also higher. Companies take weeks or months to hire and fire in-house staff, but many clients feel that they can change agencies within days. As a result, agency staff are under constant pressure to respond at all hours to multiple ‘bosses’. The young are on the first line of communication from clients and bear the brunt of the workload.

In a case that rattled the entertainment industry and beyond, the US studio Fox Searchlight settled a lawsuit last year from an unpaid intern who argued that he had learned nothing from his work on the film Black Swan and was essentially free labour. (For those in America who think that their rights have been violated, the Huffington Post published a list of tips on how unfairly unpaid interns can get their due wages. Here are the US Department of Labor’s specific rules.)

When any agency advertises openings for interns, the business goal is almost always to get cheap labour. No agency makes money by altruistically devoting time to teaching something to someone who will leave in six months.

Still, the problem does not stop with interns.

Advertising

Take a look at this archived Reddit thread from 2015 on “Why agency people are so unhappy.” Two of the comments summarise the problem well:

“The money just doesn’t make sense to me at this point for the amount of time you have to work sometimes… Most of my peers look at it as more of a long-term game. Low pay up front, but bust your ass long enough, and with a little luck, you’ll never have to worry about money again. That’s a little unrealistic for most of us, but the few optimists I know look at it that way.”

Here is more:

  • An anonymous advertising industry blogger simply called agencies “white collar sweatshops”.
  • MGH Advertising itself once placed an ad in The Wall Street Journal claiming that the ad industry was full of sweatshops (see main image).
  • “Goodvertising” author Thomas Kolster wrote in a column for The Drum that the industry needs to stop the overworking culture and make it fun and worthwhile instead.

The Twitter satire account Adweak, which is as funny as it is truthful, put it perfectly:

Digital

On the digital side of things, the situation is a little different. Online marketers should not be surprised at the low salaries at agencies. People who routinely proclaim that they know multitudes of quick and easy ‘hacks’ have only themselves to blame when their retainers and salaries are hacked down as well. Why should anyone pay a lot of money for someone to do hacks?

Instead of creating long-term, integrated campaigns, digital marketers all too often suffer from short-termism and think about numbers of social media followers, blog spam, and rankings of keywords – and those activities occur with high turnover rates that lead to lower retainers. Of course, the good agencies know that true SEO is a complicated, long-term process – but the constant promotion of ‘hacks’ by hacks is not doing anyone any favours.

So, between ad agencies and digital ones, guess which ones are paid more? Companies often choose to go with digital agencies when they need something done quickly and cheaply.

I do not want to name names, but I know the owner of a digital agency in a certain country with global, well-known clients. I respected the person greatly – until I found out that the owner was paying gross salaries of $18,000 per year to young employees in the agency’s large, metropolitan and expensive city.

A friend of mine who once worked at a ‘content agency’ in a certain country told me this:

“At my content agency, they defended the rights of the client at the expense of the employee. We had very stringent goals on a monthly basis which were impossible to meet. At one point, I had almost 30 blog articles I had to write in one month, many of which were extremely technical and required 2,000 words.

“Days off were allowed, but it was known that they give a really hard time and try to make you work on vacation days. I took off in April to be home with my family. I took one week off after being there almost a year and never even taking a sick day.

“About a week before the vacation, I get called in for a meeting: ‘Congratulations! You have a new client! They only require 12 more articles a month – starting now.’ I was furious. I had told them about my vacation and they never even took it into consideration.

“This is the situation in many agencies. More work is more money and employees are expected to go to all lengths to to get the work done without being included in the conversation in the first place and saying whether or not it’s possible to even accomplish.”

Sweatshops kill agencies

Among my circle of friends in marketing, most of us agree that agencies are places to learn early in one’s career – but that everyone should leave as quickly as possible. Those with talent and ability eventually end up in-house. (Many of us have also sworn never to work for agencies again following the bad experiences.) It’s why sweatshop conditions lead to short-term gain but long-term pain for owners – everyone ends up leaving.

And the agencies have no one but themselves to blame.

In 2016, Farmer & Company chief executive Michael Farmer, a 25-year advertising veteran, published ‘Madison Avenue Manslaughter: An Inside View of Fee-Cutting Clients, Profit-Hungry Owners and Declining Ad Agencies‘, a book that Keenan Beasley summarises in Forbes with this question: “How did America’s darling Mad Men go from rolling in it to barely holding on?”

The answer, according to Farmer, is a combination of outdated compensation models, an inability to measure results, and the pressure to spread themselves too thin. In the Forbes interview, he also says:

“Executives at these large agencies somehow continue to eke out profits through these sweatshop conditions, and they get huge bonuses for doing so. They’re all just praying they retire before the whole system blows up.”

The timer might already be ticking. Two years ago, marketing consultant Mark W. Schaefer cited reports from the Association of National Advertisers and the Society of Digital Agencies to show in the Harvard Business Review that companies are bringing more and more marketing in-house. In the first half of 2017, an increasing number of brands purchased agencies themselves.

Gerry Moira, the retired chairman and UK director of creativity at Havas London, put it more bluntly:

“If I were starting out now, I’d much rather be client-side. It’s the future… Agencies have had their day. They are sweatshops whose output has become so much more prosaic because of social media.”

So, what’s the answer?

Of course, not every agency is like the underground work camp in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Most bosses are not going to rip out hearts and wheel people down into lakes of lava – unless perhaps you work for Meryl Streep’s Anna Wintour-inspired character in The Devil Wears Prada.

But far too many agencies are, in fact, sweatshops.

Agencies typically compete with other agencies and in-house alternatives with either their expertises or their pricing. In other words, they market themselves by saying that they are either better or cheaper. Those that compete based on price are usually sweatshops that deserve to implode more quickly than Lindsey Lohan’s acting career.

Once the sweatshops close, the marketing agencies that remain will deserve to remain and will be those that focus on the one thing that differentiates them: creativity. Agencies need to reassert the value of creativity to get higher fees, and agency employees need to do the same to justify higher salaries.

Creative people get bored easily. It’s why agencies have typically delivered the best ad campaigns. (Just remember that the doomed Kendall Jenner Pepsi spot was created by an in-house ‘content creation arm’, a fact that reveals the results when marketers who do not know advertising are the ones creating the ads.) People who work on a single brand will eventually run out of ideas. The ability to work on multiple accounts keeps the creative juices flowing.

As I discuss as a frequent marketing speaker, the problem is that creativity is being increasingly devalued in the marketing world today. Marketers think more and more about data, automation, and analytics – and, therefore, what typically results in direct-response campaigns.

Just read this eye-rolling column from Jesse Williams of Mindbox Studios:

“Marketing is no longer design, it’s no longer messaging, it’s no longer SEO, or social, or branding. It’s data –  and the rock stars of modern marketing are the ones who can find and interpret that data.”

Unfortunately, this pile of malarkey is what drives a lot of discussion today. Too many people think that they can merely press a couple buttons, insert a few keywords into website metadata, target and track the best individuals, spread blogspam, or write a social media post in a certain way and then the sales will start pouring in.

In response to such drivel, creative staff need to communicate that direct response campaigns are only one tool of many and that a lot of the data is completely wrong anyway.

Creativity can save agencies

Creativity is something that the tech world will never replace – and that creativity is what builds brands and can be used in areas ranging from television to print to social media to email. Creativity is the only advantage that premium agencies can offer because all of the others compete on price and therefore offer a value proposition that is not viable over the long term.

But I guarantee you that some martech person somewhere will soon develop something he will call ‘AI-powered content marketing’. It will purport to use artificial intelligence and real-time analysis of one thing or another to create instant blog posts designed for goals such as ranking in Google search results or maximising conversion rates.

And the posts will be loads of tosh because they will be more boring than Daft Punk’s autotuned-to-death song One More Time. They will do nothing to build brands. Creatives need to remind people that at the end of the day, the brand is the most important thing. It’s the only way that agencies – and the people who work for them – will survive.

Creative agencies of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your existence. Come together to advocate for brand advertising and against the hacks the dominate modern marketing. Show the world the benefits of creativity. Demand higher fees, not lower ones. Pay your workers more, not less.

But will all of this work? I admit that I’m skeptical. As conditions will either remain the same or worsen, I think that we will instead see more unionising along the lines of what boutique consultancy Modern Craft co-founder Randy Siu recently saw in Canada:

Unless agencies can raise their fees to cover the higher salaries that workers deserve, such unionising will merely slow down the approaching agency extinction rather than prevent it.

So, in the meantime, will marketing agencies really ever stop being sweatshops by another name? Sadly, it’s as likely as a bloke building a time machine, going back to the year 2000, and dating all three members of Atomic Kitten at the same time.

But please prove me wrong.

The Promotion Fix is an exclusive biweekly column for The Drum contributed by Samuel Scott, a global marketing speaker who is a former journalist, newspaper editor, and director of marketing and communications in the high-tech industry. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Scott is based out of Tel Aviv, Israel.

By Samuel Scott

The Promotion Fix is a​n ​exclusive biweekly column for The Drum from Samuel Scott, a global keynote marketing speaker who is a former journalist, newspaper editor, and director of marketing and communications in the high-tech industry. Follow him @samueljscott.

Sourced from THEDRUM

Read More
By
In News

Virtual Reality Shopping is Here — And This is What Consumers Want From it

No Comments

Customers want to use VR to design rooms, customise products and shop with friends from across the world. Retailers – get ready for v-commerce, because others are already offering it.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Virtual reality shopping is on the way — and now new data shows how consumers want to use it.

Early tech adopter consumers are eager to use virtual reality technology to:

-Design rooms by visualising furniture and accessories assembled together in virtual “rooms”

-“Trying on” and customising products like jeans and eyeglass frames

-Taking virtual shopping “trips” with friends from across the country or around the world.

Many people said that they would like to use virtual rooms to see how items purchased online would look in their own rooms.

Those are among the key findings of a survey of 1,000 early-adopter consumers by global management consulting firm L.E.K. Consulting. The results show that “v-commerce” – a blend of e-commerce and brick-and-mortar shopping – is nearly here.

Savvy retailers will respond by investing in virtual reality technologies and starting to plan v-commerce strategies. Some, like Alibaba, The Gap, and Sephora have already started down this route.

“V-commerce brings the potential for entirely new shopping experiences and new kinds of added value,” says Dan McKone, Managing Director at L.E.K. “But there are risks for retailers – the initial investment is significant, and there are high costs for getting it wrong. Retailers need to do what they’ve always done – look to their consumers to point the way.”

Retailers are ramping up investment in two kinds of v-commerce technology. Firstly, there is “virtual reality” (VR), where consumers use headsets to enter a completely digital world. Secondly, there is the more-accessible “augmented reality” (AR), where the customer uses their camera-equipped smartphones to get information (such as prices and colour selections) overlaid on a picture of the physical showroom or shopping space.

“For retailers, the appeal is obvious,” says L.E.K. Managing Director Rob Haslehurst. “These technologies are a new way for retailers to do what customers want them to – create compelling shopping experiences and have rich communications with them.”

The L.E.K. survey of 1,000 consumers who had already experienced VR and AR technology was conducted in in the spring of 2017. Among the findings that help point the way for retailers:

  • Eighty percent want to use AR or VR to design a room or physical space by browsing virtual or physical showrooms, getting information about furniture and décor, and “seeing” what it looks like. Retailer Wayfair uses VR showrooms where customers can see a room come together as they fill their basket with products. Lowe’s Holoroom lets customers design a virtual room and then tour the space. Alibaba’s “Buy+” VR app allows consumers to browse and buy from the aisles of a virtual store, no matter where they are in physical space.
  • Seventy percent want to use v-commerce to try on clothes and accessories and to customise them. Consumers can start with an image of themselves on their smartphones, then search for the perfect shade of makeup or an eyeglass frame that perfectly suits them. The Gap and Sephora are already offering these AR applications.
  • Seventy percent are strongly interested in virtual shopping, where consumers use VR headsets to shop in a virtual store with a friend who isn’t physically present, or with an AI “virtual shopper” similar to Alexa or Siri.

V-commerce offers retailers considerable benefits. L.E.K. Managing Director Maria Steingoltz says “It can create new, special experiences that would otherwise not be possible, and that leads to greater consumer engagement. It enables retailers to unify physical and digital channels – brick-and-mortar retailers can bring digital capabilities into the store experience, and online-only retailers can create virtual ‘stores.’ And the rich experience can generate more sales — a customer can ‘see’ a sofa in his or her own living room, and then be shown the cushions, lamps and side tables that go with it.”

Retailers that want to take advantage of the v-commerce opportunity should:

  • Act immediately to make AR and VR a part of their digital strategy. “They’re not far out on the horizon – the time to think about them is now,” says Haslehurst.
  • Establish a compelling value proposition and define the business model. “Make sure customers understand from the first encounter how the technology solves their pain,” says Steingoltz. “And make sure to define the resources, concrete goals, and metrics for the project.”
  • Consider making alliances with technology leaders. “Retailers don’t need to be technology experts,” says Haslehurst. “Look for alliances that provide access to world-class technology and give technology makers a good story to tell.

“The future of v-commerce is still developing — but it’s time for retailers to start investing in it and creating consumer experiences that fill baskets and the revenue pipeline,” Steingoltz says.

 

Read More
By
In News

In Retail? Till Receipts Can Now Be Digital – And Feature Advertising

No Comments

A South African tech company wants retailers to send receipts to their consumers’ phones directly upon purchase. These receipts can be held in the cloud, be searchable, and carry advertising.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

The company, called EcoSlips, says it is launching the new disruptive service to forever get rid of paper-based transaction receipts.

Retailers can now link their point-of-sale systems to EcoSlips and send transaction receipts digitally from any pay point to the consumer’s mobile phone.

Paper receipt waste is reduced and a new advertising platform provides opportunities to grow any business in the retail sector.

Consumers may download the application to their mobile phone and register free of charge. The cashier scans or enters the customer’s unique pin number and a digital receipt is forwarded to their phone within seconds.

Transaction receipts are stored in the cloud from where it can be downloaded, verified, forwarded or printed at any time, from any location.

BENEFITS TO CONSUMERS

Transaction receipts do not get lost and a printer-friendly report with all transactions can be downloaded in seconds. Consumers may use it for tax purposes, corporate expense claims, medical and warranty claims.

Transaction slips can also be forwarded directly from the retailer to the user’s office for corporate expense claims. Users do not even need a cell phone to request their digital receipts at a pay point.

The system saves hours of manual labour, since transaction slips are already scanned and summarised in digital format.

Customer identities remain protected and no spam can be sent to any phone, as is the case with text or email powered systems. Messages do not get lost in spam filters because they are sent directly to the user’s phone.

BENEFITS TO POINT-OF-SALE VENDORS

Vendors can provide a value-added service to their clients at no additional cost. They have an advantage over competitors and receive free advertising exposure in the process.

Free software is provided to link any windows based POS system without backend programming to EcoSlips.

BENEFITS TO RETAILERS

EcoSlips provides an advertising platform that targets only consumers in their immediate geographic location.

Complaints and compliments can be sent directly to the retail manager from the customer’s phone and frustrations caused by waiting in line to speak to a call centre agent are completely eliminated. Service levels can improve significantly when complaints are handled in a timely fashion by the retailer.

According to Henco Schoeman, founder of EcoSlips, “consumers may use the service free of charge. Retailers can significantly reduce paper slip waste, save on printing costs and early adopters may secure an exclusive opportunity to advertise in their geographic area. It is a win-win solution for retailers and consumers.”

EcoSlips is financially supported by Mlab and the SA Technology Innovation Agency (TIA). The service can be used anywhere in the world.

So if you are a retailer, this may be food for thought.

Read More
By
In News

How blockchain is used in media and advertising

No Comments

By Shareen Pathak.

It suddenly feels like blockchain is everywhere — and that includes media and advertising. Here’s what to know.

What it is
Blockchain is the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like bitcoin; it’s essentially a massive Excel sheet that operates in a decentralized network format. That means that the data can have large amounts of information that can be transmitted and added onto, without compromising on security. You can’t change the blockchain — and for data purposes, not one person or entity can destroy it.

What it isn’t
Blockchain is not bitcoin. While that’s what it is best known for, bitcoin is basically a digital currency that operates on blockchain. The blockchain developed for bitcoin was developed specifically for it — which is why other uses for it were only developed much later. And while bitcoin works because it is anonymous, blockchain for other types of businesses don’t have to be anonymous. In fact, they shouldn’t be: Participants are able to tell where data came from so they can trust that it’s real.

Use in media

  • Monetization: This week, blockchain content distribution platform Decent announced the launch of Publiq, a “rewarding” process that will let writers and creators distribute content on the blockchain and get paid immediately.
  • Advanced TV: A new technology by Comcast’s advanced advertising group lets brands make ad buys on both broadcast and OTT TV using blockchain technology. The group, which has brought together Disney, Altice USA, the U.K.’s Channel 4 and TG1 Group in Italy, plans to — in 2018 — let marketers, publishers and programmers share data without having to pool it in any one place. A CPG marketer, for example, would be able to use data from a content producer like Hulu to understand how to target its ad buys without receiving the actual data itself.
  • Fraud: In June, MetaX and the Data & Marketing Association launched adChain, an open protocol on the Ethereum blockchain that tags a piece of creative and follows it on the internet to make sure someone sees it, determining who it was as well as what actions were taken afterward. Like Comcast’s approach, adChain lets multiple parts of the industry, from agency to publisher to marketer, work together without dependency.
  • Whitelisting: MetaX also runs an adChain registry in collaboration with the DMA and ConsenSys that uses a cryptocurrency called “adToken,” which incentivizes people to determine whether a publisher can be whitelisted or not (or is deemed reputable or not). Brands can then decide to spend money only on those publishers.
adToken (via MetaX)

 

  • Ad buying: New York Interactive Advertising Exchange, which will be a marketplace where brands, publishers and agencies can buy and sell future ad inventory will launch this year, in partnership with Nasdaq. The idea is to automate contract execution as long as conditions are met. It plans to first support only digital ad buys.

The problems
Blockchain isn’t widely adopted: Fred Askham, associate director of analytics at IMM, which is looking into using adChain, said while fraud is a big concern, the big problem in the industry is adoption. Blockchain relies on multiple “nodes” and players, and if people don’t participate, it doesn’t work. “In the advertising industry, we’ve seen this happen a few times where the tech to measure something comes out and then there is some lag time,” he said.

It’s too theoretical: Comcast’s platform won’t launch until 2018, while NYIAX is still in the proof-of-concept phase. Most moves in blockchain are in the theoretical phase, with their realization expected to be years away, if they even happen.

It won’t scale: Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, whose investor Union Square Ventures recently announced a major blockchain investment, said blockchain’s biggest promise is in ad delivery, but scale remains an issue. “It’s good for problems that are easy to solve on an individual level but hard to compute overall,” he said. “It’s really about five years away, if not more.” For example, an Ethereum-based blockchain processes 20 transactions per second — light-years away from how quickly real-time bidding works. Research firm Gartner places blockchain right before the “Trough of Disillusionment.”

It won’t work for many types of transactions: Jon Heller, co-founder of FreeWheel, which worked on the insights platform and is owned by Comcast, said that where there is no secondary market, like in the premium video space, blockchain for smart contracts doesn’t make sense. “Premium inventory doesn’t have this commodity-like feeling,” he said. “The parts where it makes a ton of sense is that it lets you trust a transaction without having to trust the counterparty. So that’s not everywhere in marketing, but it’s in a decent number of things in marketing.”

The counterargument
“There are few technical barriers. Blockchain has proved itself robust and adaptable to dozens of high-impact use cases. Companies need to develop compelling-enough applications that it can make a real impact. This is already happening,” said Alex Tapscott, author of “Blockchain Revolution.” “As I say, the future’s not something to be predicted; it’s something to be achieved. We’re seeing people achieving amazing things already.”

By Shareen Pathak

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK

Read More
By
In News

Identity Marketing Backfires: Don’t Tell a Consumer What they Like

No Comments

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

When choosy parents choose Folláin jam and sports fans who call themselves sports fans subscribe to SkySports, identity marketing is hard at work. But what happens when this type of advertising misses the mark?

According to a study in the Journal of Consumer Research, when a person’s sense of ownership and freedom is threatened they are less likely to respond positively to identity marketing campaigns.

“While people may be drawn to brands that fit their identity, they are also more likely to desire a sense of ownership and freedom in how they express that identity. Identity marketing that explicitly links a person’s identity with a brand purchase may actually undermine that sense of freedom and backfire,” write authors Amit Bhattacharjee (Dartmouth College), Jonah Berger (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), and Geeta Menon (New York University).

The researchers ran a series of five studies that compared two types of identity marketing, messages that simply referenced consumer identity or messages that explicitly tied consumer identity to a brand purchase. Participants were first asked to answer questions about the importance of a given identity in their overall life. They then viewed an advertisement for a brand that appealed to that specific identity. The advertisement used a headline that either referenced the identity or explicitly linked it to a brand. Participants then rated their likelihood to purchase a product from within the brand.

Study results showed that explicit identity marketing messages backfired with consumers who cared about the specific identity and resulted in a lower likelihood to purchase the product. This information may help brands understand why some people react negatively to products used in important areas of their lives.

“Contrary to the traditional thinking about identity marketing, our research shows that people who care deeply about an identity are not receptive to messages that explicitly communicate how a brand fits with their lifestyle,” the authors conclude. “In fact, to restore their sense of freedom, some people may avoid purchasing a product that otherwise appeals to them and fits with who they are.”

There you go marketers. You can suggest your product to your customer using their identity, but not tell your customer that if they are a certain type of person that they will buy it for sure. Humans: we hate being told what to do.

 

 

Read More
By
In News

What you need to know in advertising

No Comments

By 

The digital-advertising industry is looking to stamp out bogus ad inventory, like websites that claim to be premium brands but are actually sites the average person hardly ever visits.

Google, with help from some media giants, is taking the lead.

To read more about the company’s initiative aimed at wiping out fraud, click here.

In other news:

It’s starting to look like Facebook and YouTube blew a golden opportunity to grab TV ad money this year. The timing of Facebook and YouTube’s recent mishaps centered around shoddy measurement and ads ending up in the wrong places appears disastrous.

America’s “Moneyball” Tour de France team just made a clever deal that should make it more competitive against Chris Froome’s Sky juggernaut. Cannondale-Drapac announced on Friday that it was teaming up with the Verizon-owned company Oath as its digital-media partner for the 2018 racing season.

This popular drink from the ’90s is making a comeback. Pepsi says it is bringing back Crystal Pepsi for one last time.

Walmart built giant towers to solve the most annoying thing about online ordering — and they could be coming to your store. The company told Business Insider that it is ramping up its rollout of self-service kiosks that retrieve customers’ online orders.

Five years ago, two roommates launched TheSkimm, a newsletter now read by five million people and former presidents — here’s how they hustled to success. The business was far from easy to build, with Zakin and Weisberg quitting jobs at NBC only to get turned down by “hundreds” of venture capitalists.

Twitter is clamping down on users for being abusive 10 times more than it was a year ago, reports Recode. It also claims its recent efforts to curb abuse are helping.

Follow us at  @BI_Corporate  to be among the first to hear about news and updates from Business Insider. 

Also,  sign up for the Executive Summary , a new biweekly newsletter that brings the latest marketing news, trends, and company updates straight to your inbox.

 

By 

Sourced from Business Insider UK

Read More
By
In News

Sex Doesn’t Sell Anymore… Wait… What?

No Comments

If you think sex sells, you’d be wrong. You now need to associate your product with compelling dialogue to make it appear attractive.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

So maybe a world saturated in free porn and technology has had a rather unpredictable outcome. People are craving conversation and connection in person, and not nameless faceless sex, helped along by tech. Who knew?

Plenty of Fish (POF), a dating website and app, has just released the findings of Conversation Nation, the largest survey on the topic. According to this survey, 90 percent of singles crave great conversation – not sex.

65% of both men and women of all generations believe conversation is a lost art, yet see a great conversation as the top indicator of a successful match.

Conversations should be a primary driver in how singles connect, according to the study. However, 61 percent of singles believe the rise in technology usage has impacted our ability to have meaningful, face-to-face conversations. Nine of 10 respondents identified a great conversation as the gold standard for a great date, bumping out sex by a longshot with only one in 10 opting for it. Compelling dialogue can also make someone appear more attractive, according to nearly 90 percent of respondents.

“The internet is making it difficult for people to have meaningful conversations, so technology companies need to do their part to solve that,” said Celeste Headlee, conversation expert and author. “Learning to have conversations that inspire and enlighten you is achievable.”

POF have decided to concentrate on conversation as the true measure of dating success. The company has just launched “Spark”, a new in-app feature that enables a user to easily initiate a conversation. By picking up and dragging a new conversation icon over any aspect of a potential date’s profile, users can quote and comment on any content – from photos, to anything a user has written about themselves.

“With more conversations than any other dating app, Plenty of Fish is focused on bringing conversation back to singles,” said Hesam Hosseini, CEO, Plenty of Fish. “In the short time we’ve been testing Spark, we’ve seen a 15 percent increase in conversations. Given our scale, this can result in an increase of hundreds of thousands of conversations happening every day on the app, leading to more dates and more relationships – and it is just our first step to bring the art of conversation back to dating.”

Conversation Nation Insights

The Emotion of a Great Conversation

  • Nerves run high with Gen Z. While 87 percent said they prefer face-to-face conversations with someone they’re interested in dating, a full 62 percent said they get too nervous for face-to-face. Only 32 percent of Gen X and 26 percent of Boomers felt the same way.
  • Fear of rejection (48 percent) and not knowing what to say (43 percent) are the leading reasons why singles are hesitant to start a conversation with a potential date. Of all the generations, Gen Z is least likely to start a conversation because 60 percent have a fear of rejection.

The (Lost) Art of Conversation

  • Face-to-face conversation isn’t the only lost art. Letter writing (78 percent), common courtesy (66 percent) and cursive (63 percent) are also on their way out.
  • With age comes confidence: Forty-five percent of Gen Z think they need tips or techniques to keep a conversation going, while only 35 percent of Millennials, 25 percent of Gen X and 18 percent of Boomers felt the same way.
  • Sixty-one percent believe that technology has impacted our ability to have a meaningful, face-to-face conversation, because it’s distracting (72 percent), people are heads down in their phones (65 percent), and it has just made people worse at speaking face-to-face (61 percent).

Smart + Funny = Key to Attraction

  • Nearly nine in 10 respondents have found someone more attractive after having a conversation with them, proving beauty is a lot more than skin deep. Intelligence (42 percent), having a sexy voice (40 percent), and a sense of humour (34 percent) ranked at the top of reasons people got better looking with dialogue. Gen Z and Millennials both selected sexy voice as their top pick, while Gen X and Boomers chose intelligence.
  • It does work both ways: Someone can also appear less attractive after a conversation. Having nothing in common (61 percent), coming across as insensitive or mean (58 percent), and having misaligned values (57 percent) dominated an appearance downgrade.

Tech Talk: What Constitutes a Conversation?

  • More than 80 percent of respondents agreed that a phone/voice call is a conversation, but division ensues from there.
    • Fifty-four percent said texting constitutes a conversation, particularly among Millennials (67 percent) and Gen Z (76 percent). Only one in four Boomers think texting qualifies as a conversation.
    • 87 percent of Boomers don’t consider chat apps as a conversation. A majority of Gen Z (54 percent) and 47 percent of Millennials disagree with the Boomer mindset.
    • Boomers are significantly more likely than other generations to communicate by email, while Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z prefer texting.

So if you are about to launch that sexy ad campaign, maybe you need to have a rethink. Witty and smart is the new sex, and if any of us want to sell anything, we have to take this on board.

 

Read More
By
In News

Teenagers and Higher-Income Households Most Likely to Struggle with Technology Addiction

No Comments

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

–One in three people find it difficult to take a break from technology, even when they know they should

-China, Brazil and Argentina have highest levels who struggle to take a tech break

-People in Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium lead for finding it easy to ‘unplug’

A third of people (34 percent) in an online survey of 17 countries firmly agree that they “find it difficult to take a break from technology (my mobile device, computer, TV, etc.), even when I know I should.” This compares to less than half that number (16 percent) who firmly disagree that it is difficult to take a break.

The findings from global research firm GfK, show that, internationally, gender makes next to no difference in people’s struggle to turn off their devices or ‘unplug’ from technology, with nearly equal percentages of both men and women agreeing they find it difficult.

However, the different age groups and income groups show distinct differences in susceptibility to being ‘always on’.

Younger age groups struggle most with technology addiction

Teenagers (15-19 year olds) are the most likely to struggle with technology addiction, with just under half (44 percent) firmly saying they find it difficult to take a tech break, even when they know they should. This dips to 41 percent for those in their twenties and to 38 percent for those in their thirties. It then falls significantly for the older age groups – standing at 29 percent of those in their forties, 23 percent for those in their fifties and 15 percent for those aged 60 and over.

Critically, the 50-59 and 60+ age groups are the tipping point, where there are higher percentages who firmly indicate they have no problem turning off their technology, than percentages saying they struggle to take a break.

High income households show biggest gap between those finding it easy or difficult to take tech breaks.

For people living in high-income households (across all 17 countries), 39 percent find it difficult to take a break from technology, even when they know they should, while 11 percent find it easy – a gap of 28 percentage points. This contrasts to those in low-income households, where 30 percent find it difficult, while 20 percent find it easy – a gap of only 10 percentage points.

China and the Americas have highest percentages who find taking a technology break difficult. Germans lead in finding it easy.

Ireland didn’t feature in the survey, but everyone can agree we all are prone to tech addiction.

At country level, China (43 percent) has the highest percentage of online population who strongly agree that they find it difficult to break from technology. This is closely followed by the Latin American countries surveyed (Brazil 42 percent, Argentina 40 percent, Mexico 38 percent), with the USA coming fifth (31 percent).

On the other side, Germany has the highest percentage (35 percent) of online population who strongly disagree that taking a break from tech is difficult. This is followed by the Netherlands (30 percent), Belgium (28 percent) and Canada and Russia (both 27 percent).

The findings clearly show where the key markets lie at a number of levels – from brands offering the latest devices targeting happily ‘always-on’ consumers, to brands offering ‘quality time’ services that resonate with people who like to break from technology.

You can find the full report here.

 

 

 

Read More
By
In News

How AI Is Changing the World of Advertising Forever

No Comments

By George Beall.

For how much Hollywood loves remakes, I’m curious to see what a futuristic Mad Men is going to look like. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not expecting to see robotic Don Draper, who writes poignant lines of copy aggregated from data points all over the world (that’d be cheesy and boring). Rather, I’d be more excited to see how technology is going to change the world of advertising for good.

A lot of people might think that under the reigns of Artificial Intelligence every job will suddenly be replaced by a robot. However, the core component of advertising is storytelling, which is something that requires a human touch. Even more, AI isn’t going to replace storytellers, but rather empower them. Yes, the world of artificial intelligence is about to make advertising more human. Here’s why:

From Madison Avenue to Silicon Valley

It’s no secret that the advertising world goes giddy over any innovation in the tech realm. After all, a big portion of how firms gain an edge in their industry is by being up on the latest and greatest, as well as demonstrating a capacity to look at how new practices can be applied to client campaigns. And when it comes to AI, a lot of major agencies have already situated themselves ahead of the curve.

The interesting thing to note here isn’t necessarily that these agencies are using AI in general, but rather, how they’re using it. For example, the link above notes how a few firms have teamed up with AI firms to work on targeting and audience discovery. While these practices have been implemented long before, Artificial Intelligence has been accelerating the process. However, even with major players teaming up with the likes of IBM Watson, smaller agencies and startups have been on this trend as well.

An excellent example of this is the company Frank, an AI based advertising firm for startups. Frank’s goal is to use AI in the same manner of targeting mentioned above, only offering it to those businesses that could really use the savings. The platform allows you to set the goals of your campaign, as well as hones in on targeting and bidding efficiently. This saves time and money often devoted to outsourcing digital advertising efforts, as well as gives an accurate depiction of how ads are performing in real time. Expect players like Frank to make a significant change in how small businesses and startups approach how to use AI in their marketing.

Big Dollars For Small Budgets

One of the biggest news stories to hit about AI and advertising was Goldman Sach’s $30 million investment into Persado. If you haven’t heard about it yet, Persado essentially aggregates and compiles ‘cognitive content,’ which is copy backed by data. It breaks down everything, from sentence structure, word choice, emotion, time of day, and even can bring in a more accurate call-to-action. And for those that hire digital marketers and advertisers, this sounds like a dream come true in saving time and money. However, when it comes to writing, AI can only go so far.

While some content creators and digital copywriters might be a little nervous that AI will eventually take their jobs, that’s simply not the case. Writing involves a certain sense of emotional intelligence and response that no computer can feel. Moreover, the type of content that AI can create is limited to short-term messages. I’m not sure about you, but I’ll safely bet that no major marketing director is willing to put their Super Bowl ad in the hands of a computer. Overall, while Wall Street recognizes Artificial Intelligence’s potential impact in the creative world, it’s safe to say when it comes to telling a story, that human touch will never go away.

The Unexpected Players

Perhaps one of the most underrated things about AI is its potential to eliminate practices altogether. While we mentioned above that, yes, certain jobs in the creative field will never go away, there’s a possibility that certain processes in the marketing channel might change drastically.

For example, companies like Leadcrunch are using AI to build up B2B sales leads. While before B2B sales could rely on either targeted ads or sales teams to bring clients in, software like Leadcrunch’s is eliminating those processes altogether. Granted, this isn’t exactly a bad thing as a lot of B2B communications relies heavily on educating consumers, something a banner ad can’t do as accurately as a person. Overall, companies like this are going to drastically change how our pipelines work, potentially changing how the relationship between advertising and AI work hand-in-hand for a long time.

By George Beall

George Beall is a student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has a deep admiration for true innovation and has been involved in multiple in technology startups. He is currently an active angel investor. In his spare time he enjoys horseback riding, discovering upcoming music, and binge watching Netflix.

Sourced from TNW

Read More
By
Load More