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Targeting Households Using Addressable TV Advertising Is Being Tested

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By Brad Adgate.

After several years, advertisers, content providers, ad tech companies and program distributors have been busy laying the groundwork for dynamically inserted television advertising. Addressable TV allows advertisers to deliver more targeted ads to individual households via cable, satellite or telco set top boxes or web-enhanced “smart” TVs.

The potential for addressable TV advertising could be big. Mitch Oscar, the director of advanced TV strategy for USIM says currently, there are about 54 million MVPD (cable, telco or satellite) households that are linear addressable and 35 million that are ad supported video-on-demand addressable households. As a result, Oscar estimates there are 66 million unduplicated addressable TV households. In addition, Mitch Oscar also notes there are also about 25 million homes with web enhanced TV sets currently capable of receiving addressable TV advertising via automated content recognition (ACR). Some of these homes however, may also be an MVPD subscriber.

Using addressable advertising, an automotive ad can promote a different car model to different households. A politician can insert a different campaign issue to different voters or a prominent packaged goods marketer can advertise different products to different households.

Addressable advertising could give the TV ad industry a much-needed revenue boost. In the first six months of 2020 another 3.8 million homes cancelled their cable TV subscription, resulting in a loss of subscriber fee revenue into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, the ratings for many top tier entertainment networks have been in decline, as viewers migrate to content from streaming video providers. The loss of audiences has also impacted ad revenue, especially during a recession.

In recent years, annual TV ad spend has been stagnant at around $70 billion. Some industry analysts project ad spend for addressable TV advertising could grow from $1 billion in 2017 to over $5 billion by 2021. The cost of an addressable TV ad would be greater than a typical linear ad, with the idea being a more relevant ad message would elicit a more emotional response to an engaged viewer, resulting with an increase of sales. A study from Bill Harvey Consulting found addressable TV advertising has a higher return-on investment than either digital media or linear television.

In the past, addressable ads were limited to the local two minutes each MVPD sells every hour. These MVPDs use their own set top box tuning data, first party data from an advertiser (or third-party data from Experian and Acxiom), as well as other technology to send targeted ads based on zip codes, cable zones or even down to individual households. The amount of addressable advertising inventory will increase notably as national networks, which sell about 14 to 15 minutes of commercials every hour, get more involved.

There are two industry trials currently taking place in the smart TV universe; Project OAR and Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising.

Project OAR: One initiative in addressable TV advertising is Project OAR (standing for Open Addressable Ready) which was created in March 2019. The goal of OAR is to set standards for addressable TV advertising using an open source. OAR is a consortium started by TV manufacturer Vizio and includes many prominent content providers; Disney Media Networks, NBCUniversal, CBS, WarnerMedia’s Turner, Hearst Television, Scripps and AMC Networks. These programmers account for 80% of all linear TV viewership.

Inscape, a data-tracking company owned by Vizio, developed OAR’s technology using ACR. In June 2020, OAR began the first phase a live test which provides more relevant ad messages for both linear and on-demand on smart TV’s. Participating were Fox, ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal, Scripps, and AMC Networks. A second phase is scheduled for mid-August 2020 and will include Disney Media Networks, Discovery, Hearst Television and WarnerMedia.

Project OAR is available on 10 to 13 million web-enhanced Vizio TV’s. One of the goals, is to build scale by allowing more partners into the consortium with hopes they will be available on all “smart” TV’s. This will require the participation of TV manufacturers Samsung, LG and Sony. Also, as part of the OAR consortium are TV ad delivery companies; Comcast’s FreeWheel, AT&T’s Xandr, Google Ad Manager and Invidi that are implementing technical integrations.

Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising: In February 2019 Nielsen launched AVA, focusing on addressable advertising for web enhanced TV sets. The announcement had come after Nielsen acquired addressable TV technology provider Sorenson Media, which was in bankruptcy protection. Nielsen integrated Sorenson with ACR technology from Gracenote and Qterics, a smart TV software and privacy management company, to accelerate their addressable TV initiative.

AVA will be using 15 million smart TV sets from LG Electronics. The addressable initiative has the participation of nine national content providers; A&E Networks, AMC, Discovery, Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal, Univision, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia. They account for about 90% of all linear viewership. Nielsen had launched a two-phased beta version in January which has been extended until the end of 2020 due to the pandemic. Mitch Oscar notes, as a long-time ratings supplier, Nielsen may be serving ads and verifying the impressions, instead of using a third-party, this could be an issue for advertisers.

On Addressability: In June 2019, Comcast, in partnership with Charter and Cox, formed On Addressability, an addressable consortium with a goal to develop industry definitions and standards, provide education for advertisers, and identify best practices and business standards for transacting on addressable campaigns. Also, the three cable operators hope to pool what they learned from offering addressable advertising to help other content distributors do the same. In June 2020, AMC Networks became the first content partner followed by Discovery in late July. Canoe Ventures provides the backend ad tech support. Collectively, the three cable operators have about 27 million addressable ready TV homes.

Measurement Challenges: With several trials taking place there are several industry issues facing addressable advertising such as inventory maintenance, revenue sharing and privacy. Another issue is audience measurement. Prasad Joglekar, the SVP & General Manager TV, cross platform products at Comscore says, “Addressable TV occupies somewhat of a middle ground between traditional linear TV and digital video advertising. Today, most addressable TV advertising is viewed as an evolution of TV. As such, the default measurement lens that gets applied is the traditional TV lens, which ratings and panel based. This leads to 3 significant measurement issues that various industry players are sorting out:

First, the things that make addressable TV interesting – the ‘breaking’ of the live spot, the delivery of multiple advertisements within the same unit etc. – are precisely the things that make it impossible to measure with a panel, or as a traditional age-gender rating. Trying to shove what is inherently an impression-based buy into a spot-based measurement scheme doesn’t work.

Second, for national addressability, a 30-second unit must be individually enabled in 3 to 5 different operator and distribution platforms. Each operator’s addressable insertion, pacing and reporting stack is unique. It is a hard and laborious process to measure each platform individually, and then combine the numbers to create a true national view.

Third, when an ad is made addressable, some impressions are targeted, but the vast majority are not. On average, ~30% of the impressions in a spot will be targeted. The impressions not targeted are seen as suspect or remnant and tend to be devalued. Decorating those impressions with useful, actionable audience attributes, across the 3 to 5 operators described above, is a measurement and planning problem that must be solved.”

As the industry continues to test addressable advertising and develop standards, Mitch Oscar agrees that similar to digital media, the currency for addressable advertising should be audience based, instead of ratings based, that has been the traditional measurement for linear TV for decades.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY IMAGES

By Brad Adgate

Brad Adgate is an Independent Media Consultant

Sourced from Forbes

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Marketing has the power to change the world

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By Emma Mulcahy

Marketing holds a unique place in the modern world; it has the ability to challenge and shape perspectives, to inform culture and to kickstart movements.

Now, in a time of global crisis, we see more clearly than ever the industry’s ability to effect real change, by driving positive messages and offering platforms to those that need it.

It is in the spirit of this fundamental belief that The Drum and Facebook have teamed up to launch the ‘Marketers Can Change the World’ global initiative, which aims to unite and support the industry across three areas: EMEA, North America and APAC.

At its heart, Facebook exists to help create and sustain communities, even from a distance. Now, during Covid-19, that distance is felt more than ever. Pledging to donate $100mn to 30,000 small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) across these markets, Facebook will support established and rising marketing leaders to rethink how these businesses are run and how we can make them more resilient in times of struggle.

Discussing the exciting new initiative and how marketing can effect positive change in the world is; General Mills marketing head- culture & brand experience (Europe-Australasia), Arjoon Bose, Bombay Sapphire brand director, North America, Tom Spaven, Facebook global industry relations and intelligence lead, Sylvia Zhou, and The Drum associate editor, Sonoo Singh.

What steps have been taken?

“You’ll have seen the Coronavirus Information Centre located at the top of your news feed from the start of the pandemic,” says Zhou. “This was introduced so that our users are up-to-date with news and developments, from a source they can trust.” Facebook has also offered free ads to public health authorities such as the W.H.O, created Community Help where people can support their peers and recently launched Facebook Shops to help users pivot their business online.

Spaven speaks of Bacardi’s commitment to their consumers during this trying period: “The bar and events industry was particularly impacted by Covid-19, so we wanted to give back to the businesses that have continually supported our business.” The project pledged $3mn in financial aid to bars and bartenders facing difficulty during this period, as well as offering up their platforms and marketing expertise for those that need it. For Bacardi, it was a case of serving those that serve them; an idea also seen at General Mills. With the enforcement of lockdown, Bose understood that it was essential to reiterate the kitchen as being the heart of the home and to promote the everyday products needed by families.

What more can bigger brands do to provide support?

“Now is the time to be bold and responsible,” Bose responds. Marketing has always been at the forefront of significant change. He argues that during these difficult times marketing gives consumers a reason to spend and a reason to hope. Now is the time to reiterate brand identity.

Spaven believes that going back to basics is the surest way to engage your consumer base. “The fundamentals of marketing, as well as of human behavior don’t change, only budgets and resources do.”

What are the objectives of the Facebook project?

The ‘Marketers Can Change the World’ global initiative supports small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) across EMEA, North America and APAC and will focus predominantly on those run by immigrants, senior citizens, or women. “Statistics show that businesses run by these marginalized groups encounter more difficulties in acquiring resources and financial funding,” Zhou shares with us. The project will give rising stars in the marketing industry the opportunity to collaborate with senior mentors with vast experience in the field. Working together on a prescribed brief, the teams will create business policies that give value for the people and communities they impact. Facebook will provide essential training and access to tools that will allow these businesses to thrive both during and after the pandemic.

What knowledge will the mentors be able to impart?

Both Arjoon Bose and Tom Spaven express their sincere gratitude at having been asked to take part in the initiative as mentors. “This is a great opportunity to listen and learn from others, and to experience situations in a new way,” Spaven says. These views are echoed by Bose, who recognizes this opportunity to collaborate with different people and teams, as a teaching moment.

“I hope to be able to provide a fresh perspective to the team members and ask the right questions,” shares Spaven. This initiative lets teams combine the quick thinking of big brands with the even quicker movement of smaller, more centralised businesses.

At the heart of this, is our consumers- and their needs are changing rapidly. How are brands able to keep pace with this?

“Brands have to always be open to change,” states Bose. “Whether that’s remaining open to rethinking your retention strategy, trying out new tools or reprioritizing your products in line with consumer needs- we must be agile.”

Similarly, for Spaven businesses should always be thinking about their brand experience and how this meets customer needs. “Purpose is so important for every brand, but that doesn’t mean they all have to save the world,” he affirms. Understanding your brand’s mission and ensuring you deliver that, ethically and responsibly is enough.

Spaven adds that diversifying the industry needs to be a top priority if we are to truly meet the demands of today’s consumer; “It’s not about ticking a box, it’s about benefitting your bottom line- it’s just good business sense.”

Zhou agrees: “This mission is at the core of what Facebook wants to achieve in this initiative. By channelling our every effort into increasing the visibility of these groups, we want to create a ripple effect throughout the industry. This project will reveal the true power of marketing to influence for good and change the world for the better.”

By Emma Mulcahy

Sourced from The Drum

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A Complete Overview of Social Media Advertising for Small Business

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By Anders Hjorth

Social media advertising allows businesses to reach users during their prime time and in pleasant, entertaining and engaging ways. Find out which platform suits your needs.

Social media has become a mass media, but a personalized one. Remember that scene from the film Minority Report where Tom Cruise walks through a shopping mall and the interactive ad displays address him as a different person, because they scanned his new eyes and took him for someone else?

Social advertising is moving in that direction: No user experience is ever identical to another on social media.

Each screen a user sees comprises numerous elements, that are all optimized by algorithms, which in turn feed on data the user has declared, and on behavior the social network has detected. Some of these elements are advertising. Personalized to the user’s profile, and designed to be a part of the experience.

Overview: What is social advertising?

Social media provides a useful and entertaining experience to its members for free. In return, social media platforms monetize user data by providing powerful digital advertising solutions to advertisers.

Advertising through social media takes the form of banners, posts or videos. Social media ads, many very creative, blend in with the context and appeal to the user.

Snapchat campaign for Bacardi

In a Snapchat campaign for Bacardi, branded filters were used to enable users to send branded postcard-like snaps to their friends from the music festival they were attending. Source:

Snapchat

Benefits of advertising on social media

One of the great benefits social media provides to businesses is the establishment of a direct relationship between you and the user. Advertising through social media creates, extends and activates these relationships. Let’s look at social advertising benefits for businesses.

1. Audiences can be precisely targeted

Users enter their data into social platforms: names, photos, job titles, location, marital status, friends, and much more. Social platforms monitor behavior and interest.

This data enables advertisers to reach the right audience and create targeted ads for it. If an advertiser has a well-defined target market, they can deliver it via social media advertising. Advertisers no longer target media channels, they target audiences via media platforms.

2. Social ads address “awareness”

The “hierarchy of effects” model, often used in marketing and advertising to describe the mental stages a user moves through before purchasing a product, contains three stages:

  • Cognitive (awareness and knowledge)
  • Affective (liking and preference)
  • Conative (conviction and purchase)

Social media advertising is good at addressing the cognitive and affective stages. This makes advertising on social media complementary to direct mail, search marketing, or retail media, which have their strengths at the conative stage.

3. Everything is measurable

Every social media ad impression leaves a digital trace. Every click can be tracked. User characteristics and user behavior can be related to each instance of advertising within a social platform.

So much data exists that it becomes challenging to figure out what is significant and what isn’t. Once advertisers choose the right social media metrics, however, this data will be easy to track and optimize via the social platforms.

4. Social advertising is scalable

Social media advertising costs for a campaign can start as low as $10, and the advertiser has control over timespan, targeting and creative. It can also cost $10 million and cover the globe. Between the two, advertisers have ample room to test, learn and adjust.

Marketers, mainly using social media advertising to boost and enhance their content strategy, can monitor and manage it directly through their favorite social media management tool.

5. Social ads can trigger actions

Whereas social media advertising is often used for building awareness, it can also trigger actions. It generates likes and follows, and can also generate clicks to your website and create leads for your sales and marketing teams.

There is even a rising social commerce trend, where social media advertising feeds directly into the conative stage: users can buy products directly on social media.

The 5 best social media platforms to advertise your small business

The Facebook Ads platform is dedicated to social media advertising, and the Google Ads platform also spans other forms of digital advertising. We will focus on the social media advertising aspects of seven digital advertising platforms.

Platform 1: Facebook Ads: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger

Facebook controls the most powerful advertising platform in the world, as it combines Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger together on the same infrastructure.

Most advertisers, however, will consider Facebook and Instagram to be two advertising platforms, and WhatsApp and Messenger to be additional features.

Characteristics of the Facebook ads platform:

  • Massive reach
  • Very powerful targeting
  • Innovative and adaptive ad formats
  • Machine learning used to improve performance
  • Most controversial use of user data

Facebook Ads by, itself, is probably the strongest social ads platform and is now also the backbone for advertising on Instagram. Depending on your campaign objective, the platform can activate one or more of its advertising channels.

Platform 2: LinkedIn Ads

The LinkedIn advertising platform stands out for its strong business focus. It’s increasingly integrating with the Microsoft Advertising platform and has access to a powerful technological backbone in its mother company, Microsoft.

Characteristics of LinkedIn Ads:

  • Clear business focus
  • Strong targeting of professional audiences
  • Maturing platform
  • Reputation for high cost

Platform 3: Twitter Ads

The Twitter advertising platform is not as powerful as the two above platforms, but Twitter has an interesting positioning as a great add-on for other social networks. The quality of its user data is not as good as the other platforms, but it is strong on topical and thematic targeting and for events.

Characteristics of the Twitter ad platform:

  • Lower volumes
  • Strong topical targeting
  • Specific communities and events
  • Reputation for low costs
  • Complementary to business activity on Twitter

Platform 4: Google Ads: YouTube and Google My Business

Google never created its own social network despite the efforts put into Google Plus and other initiatives. However, many consider YouTube to be a social media platform and the more recent Google My Business platform also has some social media resemblance.

Characteristics of the social media dimension of Google Ads (YouTube and Google My Business):

  • Massive video reach on YouTube
  • Low cost per view on YouTube and innovative ad formats
  • Strong integration with the Google advertising technology stack
  • Effective social-local advertising on Google My Business

Emerging platforms: Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat

The social media landscape is constantly changing. Recently the video-driven social media platform TikTok has entered the scene in a significant way. Its closest competitor, Snapchat, had experienced spectacular growth.

The emergence of new players like TikTok and Snapchat makes it hard for existing players like Pinterest or Twitter to keep growing because they are all fighting for the attention (and dollars) of the same audience.

Emerging social advertising platforms:

  • Pinterest: The creator of pin boards where users can gather images from around the web thematically and share with others, is still going strong. It’s finding itself a positioning on social commerce, as it has the power to inspire users for their purchases. If the platform can generate sales and connect to its advertising, it has strong arguments for attracting more advertisement.
  • TikTok is reaching a young audience massively and strongly influences this group. Its recent advertising offering is creative, including formats like stickers, filters, and overlays.
  • Snapchat has also seduced a large young audience which can be difficult for advertisers to reach. Its creative, innovative, and fun use of digital media shines through in its advertising formats.

Campaign on TikTok in Thailand

In a campaign on TikTok in Thailand, Colgate used an innovative ad format. They designed a clickable “branded effect” triggering a visual effect of exploding hearts when users made a “kissy face”. Source: TikTok

Social ads are a world of opportunity

Social media advertising is a mass media that can entertain, influence and seduce its audiences. Social media platforms provide powerful targeting capabilities and innovative ad formats.

Advertisers can start small and scale infinitely, but need to be very clear about their objectives, to reap the benefits of social ads. Finding the right social network and reaching the right audience can be challenging, but the opportunity is huge and the benefits can be significant.

By Anders Hjorth

Sourced from the blueprint

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Media agencies are changing fast to make advertising work better

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By Christian Juhl

People, not machines, remain the key to understanding the changing market.

One of the truly great things about advertising is that it is ever-changing.

It is an industry that requires continuous stewardship to meet evolving consumer behaviours and technological innovations – finding new, better and different ways to communicate, captivate and convert.

These worldwide lockdowns, and the dramatic impacts they have had, have forced advertising to dig deeper to identify relevant and appropriate ways to engage with consumers.

When there are more questions than answers, and universal uncertainty about what lies ahead, how do we provide the right guidance to our clients?

“Adaptability” and “pivoting” have quickly moved beyond buzzwords and become a foundation with which to approach our business.

Behind these business shifts, our people have had to adjust too.

These adjustments have made them acutely aware of the changing behaviours of consumers, the evolution of their needs and how they experience brands today versus even eight or nine short weeks ago.

The world is forever different and it’s on us to help our clients decipher what all of this means for brands; which shifts are temporary and which will be long-term.

This pandemic has also afforded our industry the chance to look in the mirror, fast-track our roles in the ecosystem and determine how we can best spend our energy to make advertising work better for people.

As Mark Read, chief executive of Group M’s parent company, WPP, recently said: “We’re seeing 10 years’ worth of innovation crammed into a few months.”

The big question is: what are we – media agencies – doing to continue to innovate for our clients, especially when no-one knows what’s next?

The decisions we made 12 weeks ago, before the coronavirus crisis gripped the world, don’t carry the same consequences they do now; the stakes are higher.

Few service businesses have the scaled expertise across categories to identify best practices in addressing changes to consumer sentiments, preferences and behaviours like media agencies.

We are in the unique position of having a fairly holistic view of the insights about shifts and trends in consumption, content and sentiment that are otherwise disparate and disconnected – giving us a thorough understanding of what has really changed.

When consumer habits and behaviours changed literally overnight, it was this unique vantage point that allowed us to quickly identify the optimal approach.

And, as marketing budgets were suddenly cut around the world, we maximised the intelligence our data and insights provided to make the remaining dollars work harder to achieve our clients’ business goals.

It has allowed us to optimise workflows across marketing functions and find new ways to work with media owners to maximise the value of a buy.

One of the truly great things about advertising is that it is ever-changing.

It is an industry that requires continuous stewardship to meet evolving consumer behaviours and technological innovations – finding new, better and different ways to communicate, captivate and convert.

These worldwide lockdowns, and the dramatic impacts they have had, have forced advertising to dig deeper to identify relevant and appropriate ways to engage with consumers.

When there are more questions than answers, and universal uncertainty about what lies ahead, how do we provide the right guidance to our clients?

“Adaptability” and “pivoting” have quickly moved beyond buzzwords and become a foundation with which to approach our business.

Behind these business shifts, our people have had to adjust too.

These adjustments have made them acutely aware of the changing behaviours of consumers, the evolution of their needs and how they experience brands today versus even eight or nine short weeks ago.

The world is forever different and it’s on us to help our clients decipher what all of this means for brands; which shifts are temporary and which will be long-term.

This pandemic has also afforded our industry the chance to look in the mirror, fast-track our roles in the ecosystem and determine how we can best spend our energy to make advertising work better for people.

As Mark Read, chief executive of Group M’s parent company, WPP, recently said: “We’re seeing 10 years’ worth of innovation crammed into a few months.”

The big question is: what are we – media agencies – doing to continue to innovate for our clients, especially when no-one knows what’s next?

The decisions we made 12 weeks ago, before the coronavirus crisis gripped the world, don’t carry the same consequences they do now; the stakes are higher.

Few service businesses have the scaled expertise across categories to identify best practices in addressing changes to consumer sentiments, preferences and behaviours like media agencies.

We are in the unique position of having a fairly holistic view of the insights about shifts and trends in consumption, content and sentiment that are otherwise disparate and disconnected – giving us a thorough understanding of what has really changed.

When consumer habits and behaviours changed literally overnight, it was this unique vantage point that allowed us to quickly identify the optimal approach.

And, as marketing budgets were suddenly cut around the world, we maximised the intelligence our data and insights provided to make the remaining dollars work harder to achieve our clients’ business goals.

It has allowed us to optimise workflows across marketing functions and find new ways to work with media owners to maximise the value of a buy.

We have helped clients identify how to transition their traditional businesses online to meet the needs of the stay-at-home economy by adapting best practices from direct-to-consumer and ecommerce-centric companies.

We have identified opportunities to optimise spending on short notice and shift resources across media channels – spending on out-of-home when suddenly no-one can leave their home offers a significantly lower ROI.

Optimising search, social and connected activities should be a top priority; everything that is addressable should be.

And, in places like China, where lockdowns have eased, we’ve done things like track road-traffic activity to identify when and where weekend travel has or has not returned to normal.

Many of these activities and habits established by consumers during this period will persist far into the future.

The collective ingenuity of this industry’s creative minds has been helping clients adapt and pivot to that too.

And by helping to improve clients’ offerings and connectivity to consumers, we help make advertising work better for people.

If there’s one thing I’m certain of “in these uncertain times”, it’s that the vibrant and talented people who fill our industry are the reason it will continue to flourish.

While detractors of agencies have often argued that marketing driven by machines is typically superior, it’s the campaigns led by people, adapted for people and pivoted around people’s emerging needs and interests that will ultimately rule the day.

By Christian Juhl

Christian Juhl is global chief executive of Group M

Sourced from campaign

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Brands can turn the tide during coronavirus by building new consumer journeys

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By Shawn Lim

Brands need to focus on hyper-localisation by connecting with consumers where they are, as Covid-19 has dramatically changed consumer behaviour and altered the path-to-purchase, according to Facebook and Boston Consulting Group.

According to a new report called ‘Turn the Tide’, released by Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, the use of micro-targeting can help brands get the first-mover advantage. This is because countries are being divided into different zones, with distinct restrictions due to the pandemic, so they need to build social connections despite social distancing, by engaging with consumers in their context

To cope with pandemic lockdown, which has caused significant disruption for communities and businesses, people are spending more time on social media platforms. This means brands have an opportunity to build stronger dialogues and deeper connections with users.

The aim of the guide, according to Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, is to guide brands to adapt to the pandemic and ensure business continuity.

Nimisha Jain, the managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, says: “We are experiencing unprecedented shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviours as 80%+ consumers will continue to practice social distancing and are bringing the outside inside, over 40% of consumers are dialling up on health and wellness spends, e-commerce adoption has already advanced by two-three years, to name a few.”

“These aren’t just temporary surges, and many will last longer and become more defining traits. Our analysis reveals that only one in six companies emerged stronger in past crises. Players who show the agility to reinvent their value propositions, go-to-market plans and business models to address these demand shifts, will be the ones that set themselves apart from the pack.”

In addition, the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

For example, brands can bring alive experiences through virtual launches and product demos as people turn to virtual experiences for every facet of their life. Facebook said it is already seeing more brands explore Facebook and Instagram ‘Live’ to connect with their followers and customers, with brands now thinking about using social media platforms for new product launches too.

Heeru Dingra, the chief executive officer at WATConsult tells The Drum the agency has modified its planning and strategy around the new consumer journeys, urging its clients to follow a simple mantra of ‘solve, serve and sell’.

She explains brands should focus on solving the problems their consumers face, serve their purpose and the result thereof could be the sale of services or products. She notes a lot of brands have understood this concept and have already started altering their approach to fit this mantra.

“We leveraged the power of gaming and re-created one of the most iconic games of all time, Ludo, for our client Tata Motors. Titled #SafetyFirst Ludo, this version aims to spread awareness about the importance of personal hygiene and social distancing amid the Covid-19 outbreak,” she says.

She also calls out work by Bajaj Allianz General Insurance called #CareWillOvercome, which salutes frontline workers, while a #ReconnectWithStarbucks campaign turned the act of baristas calling out people’s names into a digital phenomenon.

She adds: “These examples summarize how we integrated the need of the hour that is to maintain social distancing, continue to concentrate on personal hygiene and at the same time have our heartfelt appreciation for the ones who have been fighting for us day and night, into our brand approach in some way. This helps to amplify the brand message while being sensitive to the current situation, serving the purpose of extending the required communication and increasing as well as sustaining brand recall.”

The report also advised brands to look at their media mix models to drive growth by aligning to new media landscapes. According to the report, when brands, especially those with traditional product categories, start spending more online, they need to understand incremental outcomes, as well as cross-platform efficiency.

This would increase the need for digital measurement standards, such as custom mix modelling (CMM) by Nielsen, which Facebook said it had piloted last year.

Gautam Mehra, the chief data officer for South Asia and chief executive officer of programmatic at Dentsu Aegis Network observes the importance of moving away from traditional marketing metrics to real business metrics that can be measured and improved on an ongoing basis.

“With the impetus of commerce, CRM and digital transformation, I think, every company will now have a direct-to-consumer line of business and will want to bring themselves closer to the consumer, and rely less on the intermediaries,” he explains.

While most brands are dealing with huge change across many aspects of business, focusing on the changing customer journey is a good place for marketing to focus attention.

Feature Image Credit: the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

By Shawn Lim

Sourced from The Drum

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The why, what and how to building a better future for programmatic

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By Damon Reeve

With Isba’s study revealing that 15% of digital ad spend is unaccounted for, a statistic from the PwC-produced report that prompted headlines, Damon Reeve, chief executive of The Ozone Project, offers his first-hand insight into what this means for the programmatic sector.

The results from Isba’s Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Study, carried out by PwC and in association with the AOP, have practically self-penned the industry’s headlines for the past few days.

“Missing billions”, “big holes”, “the unknown delta”, “mind-boggling” – perhaps not the usual words used to describe a positive first step, yet that’s exactly what this report represents. If, as an industry, we want to create a more sustainable, future-proofed environment for digital advertising we must first acknowledge that things aren’t working as they are. These results certainly speak to what many people already know, and reinforces the need for change.

As we look to create a blueprint for that change, it is a great step forward that it has been driven by advertisers and publishers – as the principal architects – alongside their respective trade bodies. Reversing the trend of disintermediation by programmatic tech vendors, and working together to find their voice, albeit of frustration, is one of the best outcomes of this study, and why it must be a first step and not an end in itself.

In the interests of disclosure, The Ozone Project is an advertiser-led business created by publishers and was developed to tackle many of the issues highlighted in this report. We see ourselves as a significant catalyst for the shift towards a more grown-up advertising environment, one less willing to accept the past shortcomings of programmatic.

The answer is not just what to do next, it’s how we do it

As we entered the 2020s I was convinced we would see an adult programmatic self emerge; still with lots of growth and development ahead, but also less wild and irresponsible than the younger child of the 2010s. Given some of the research in this report was produced in Q1 2020, it’s clear there is still much to do before a more mature self emerges. Nine weeks of Covid-19 isolation has given much time to reflect, and it seems how we go about change will be as important as what we change.

Firstly, collaboration must be front and centre. Through their trade bodies, advertisers and publishers have highlighted some of programmatic’s most persistent problems. An astonishing insight from the report is the confusion over whether advertisers and publishers have the right to access the log data for campaigns they are running. The answer to that question should not require consulting a legal department.

The programmatic supply chain should genuinely work in the best interests of publishers and brands. Together they must build on this work to address one of the critical recommendations from the report; standardising terms and conditions for buyers and sellers, while creating consistent data taxonomies and data sharing rules. This first step will help close the somewhat unhelpful gap that has developed between advertisers and publishers within programmatic advertising.

Secondly, while transparency is at the heart of this study, it isn’t something to fix, it is a way to behave. The ‘opacity by design’ approach that has challenged the sector for years represents institutionalised behaviour that will require a concerted effort to correct. Being open, authentic and human in terms and conditions will be deemed important qualities, rather than hiding the ‘unknown delta’ in technical terms and jargon that almost no one understands. Patience has been worn paper-thin amongst advertisers and publishers, and in this new future we will see vendors and partners selected on operating principles as much as technical capabilities.

A starting point for what to do next

The insights and recommendations from the report itself provide a framework for where future focus must be directed.

As already mentioned, standardising terms and conditions through Isba and the AOP is an obvious next step to remove much of the friction and confusion that exists today. It took PwC more than nine months to receive the information for its analysis, with an often ‘round the houses’, confused approach to who could give permission to use the data.

Brand safety has been high on the marketer agenda during these challenging times with a specific focus from Newsworks’ #BackdontBlock campaign. This new analysis should enable further grown-up conversations around brand safety generally, particularly as the study’s advertisers appeared on an average of 40,524 different domains. That’s not a misprint. 40,524 different websites. How many websites do you visit on a regular basis? Even looking beyond the first page of the Comscore top 3,000 yields some very random websites. Only 19% of campaign impressions were delivered on premium publisher domains, with the vast majority appearing on other websites and the unregulated long-tail of the internet. Responsible advertisers will no doubt be asking questions about where their advertising is going, and what exactly it is funding.

Next, the ‘unknown delta’ needs to become known. In an automated world, one would expect any margin for error to be reduced, and therefore any major gap is concerning. While many have offered thoughts as to why – from currency fluctuations to the compound impact of rounding through the supply chain – it’s important to remember that this 15% ‘unknown delta’ appears in the very small proportion of data that could be matched for the purposes of the study. If this reflects the ‘best of the best’ – major advertisers working with the most premium publishers – the 15% delta will be significantly bigger with smaller sites and smaller advertisers that weren’t measurable.

A final point not specifically called out in this report but to me is inferred in every insight and recommendation, is aligning incentives for each participant in the supply chain to the value they provide. And this extends to the agreements brands have with their media agencies. It will be very difficult to move to a trusted grown-up programmatic ecosystem if each actor is trying to game the system, whether through opportunity or necessity. Remove the incentive for opacity and we build an advertising environment that we all want. It’s on advertisers and publishers to build on this study and remove these incentives.

“The market is damn near impenetrable.”

In last week’s Financial Times, the frustration of Phil Smith, Isba’s director-general, regarding the programmatic world couldn’t have been more obvious. Yet with some time to reflect and digest, what is becoming increasingly clear is that this first-of-its-kind collaborative study has already laid great foundations for building a better future for digital advertising.

By Damon Reeve

Sourced from The Drum

 

 

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Generic TV adverts about ‘togetherness’ during coronavirus lockdown aren’t resonating as well as practical messages

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By Josh Barrie

People are more keen to see practical advice

Shoppers much prefer ads with practical messages during the coronavirus lockdown and are shunning generic messages about “togetherness”, new data shows.

Advertising related to the Covid-19 pandemic from brands such as Heinz, Tesco, and Aldi have been the most effective to date, according to analysts Kantar, while ideas from McCain, Nike, and Bird’s Eye have fallen short.

Where Heinz saw success with its campaign to launch 12 million free breakfasts for vulnerable children, which scored well for long-term potential and short-term sales, and Tesco’s “Helps for safer shopping” also invoked a widely positive response, Bird’s Eye’s “What’s for Tea?” TV ad performed poorly, with low memorability and consumers suggesting they were unlikely to engage.

Shoppers want practical advice as well as good humour

Kantar ranked marketing campaigns’ effectiveness out of 100, measuring long and short-term potential in how they resonated with the public, and noting how likely they would be to lead to sales.

The data shows brands focusing on what they are actively doing to help people during the virus outbreak have proven more successful than those trying to push sentimental messages about pride and a common purpose.

Nike’s “Play for the world” campaign, for example, wasn’t disliked, and sparked some emotion, but failed to cut through, Kantar said.

While Aldi’s lighthearted relaunch of its Kevin the Carrot series, a recent Christmas hit, not only reminded consumers of happier times, but also looked to raise money for the NHS.

Empty campaigns without a clear, specific message aren’t as memorable

“An unwritten set of category codes gets established because these key moments are considered essential to conveying what the product is and what it does,” Kantar said.

“If you’re a deodorant brand for example you need to show wetness, armpits and the product being applied. This is often accentuated further when the brand doesn’t have anything different to say about itself versus other alternatives.

“The brands that win out are those that pursue a creative and distinctive creative platform, through a powerful and original human insight that resonates deeply, or through a unique brand vision or purpose,” Kantar says.

“Ads that reference the current situation but don’t have anything different to say to the next brand, struggle to cut through. They don’t make the featured brands feel different to other alternatives and they aren’t strongly building love towards the brands either.”

Feature Image Credit: Tesco has produced a helpful campaign (Photo: Getty)

By Josh Barrie

Sourced from iNews

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How UK broadcasters are adapting now that ‘TV ad prices have fallen through the floor’

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By John McCarthy

UK TV broadcasters are attracting record audiences, meeting their public service remit, and keeping the lights on while working from home. In return, they are bracing for a precipitous drop in ad revenue these next few months.

First, ITV said it expected a 10% ad revenue drop in April. Just weeks later, Channel 4 announced business cuts and staff furloughs, blaming the pandemic’s “severe effect” on demand and predicting that the current situation would burn a 50% hole in the TV market in April and May. ITV also said it was “taking measures to reduce costs and manage cash flow”.

At any other time, these audiences would be cause for celebration for the TV industry (ThinkBox says Easter weekend viewing in the UK was up 29% year on year). However, there are a difficult few months ahead as broadcasters look to ensure the flow of content keeps people informed and entertained at home, which balancing the books.

Barney Farmer, sales and marketing director at Nielsen Online, says its data shows that UK ad spend dropped 27% year-on-year across all media channels in March. Money coming in from from travel, transport and business utilities halved, while retail investments fell by a fifth. Some sectors saw the reverse. Among them was government advertising was up by 38%, food was up 16%, and tech/computing rose a massive 60% from an already high base.

Farmer explains: “The initial data for TV advertising in April does not paint a pretty picture, and it is expected that the numbers will drop significantly for the overall month.”

Many TV budgets have been frozenbroadcasters are unable to rely on tentpole events to prop them up. Brands looking to activate around the now delayed Euro 2020 (which ITV was expecting a particularly strong performance from) have been forced to shelve their best-laid plans. Other businesses are turning off the tap due to diminishing stock or demand.

“Broadcasters will be looking at all avenues for revenues, whether that is through different advertising sectors or ways to ensure money stays in their businesses via different digital channels,” adds Farmer. “Out of a crisis often comes new ideas so we can potentially expect something emerging that doesn’t exist today.”

The UK’s major broadcasters are all reliant upon ad income, although to differing degrees. ITV is less vulnerable to the ad freeze than the likes of Channel 4 due to its diversification efforts in production, e-commerce and its stake in streaming service BritBox. Sky, meanwhile, has user-generated revenue to lean on — although without the draw of its sports properties it could be bleeding custom.

Which brands are still on TV?

Amid this bleak outlook, British broadcasters are forming battle plans.

Some advertisers are still spending, with many leaning on TV to communicate how they are adapting to the pandemic or driving home message for viewers to ‘Stay At Home’. Though it’s brought the economy to a grinding halt, there is an opportunity for usefulness and long-term goodwill from brands willing to embrace a higher purpose. Others TV spenders may still follow, be it retailers directing shoppers from their shuttered stores to online, or games and apps looking to grab the attention of a bored locked-down populace — also, prices for a premium ad slot have dropped significantly.

“It’s looking like the cheapest TV pricing I’ve ever seen in my in my media career,” asserts Mihir Haria-Shah, head of broadcast at Total Media. Some audiences are down 50% year on year in terms of pricing. “I wasn’t working then, but it is comparable to the 2008 recession”.

The combination of larger audiences tuning into the TV at home and a reduction in demand for the inventory is to blame, argues Haria-Shah. “TV is really deflationary at the moment, and prices have really fallen kind of through the floor.”

Haria-Shah also notes some trepidation among brands that have been absent from TV for a while, a quick return may look “opportunistic”.

“Given the current circumstances, there’s quite a fine balance between doing the right thing for your business and also maintaining your long-term brand reputation,” he continues.

He adds its important to note that not every brand’s been fully hamstrung by the pandemic: “Some brands have actually reported their best sales in years, or for younger brands, the best in their existence.” FMCGs are among those seeing a bump from some of the early panic-buying of essential items, for which toilet paper will long be a visual metaphor for.

Right now, one of the biggest barriers to entry on TV, beyond falling ad budgets, is the lack of ability to produce big-ticket, sensitive creative. With most of ad land under lockdown, amendments will have to be made to existing films. Shots of friends and family out in the world having fun, or even in close contact, now carry negative connotations. The tone has to be right. The message can’t deviate too far from stay home. And the work can’t feel cynical, else long-term damage will be done in the name of short-term gains.

Some brands have been quick to adapt though. Apple is telling us that the lockdown doesn’t mean the end of creativity. Nike has been showing the home training routines of athletes. Toyota new creative was directed over Zoom. Mobile-footage and sweeping image slideshows driven by voiceover are the flavour of the day for brands limited in what in they can produce.

Accessibility

To woo brands among all this, broadcasters are looking to remove as much as the friction from buying and production as possible. Certain fees are being waived, and the best spots are more readily available than they’ve been.

On the production side, ITV’s in-house team is now being tooled to help clients where it can. There’s a great effort to get the work over the line fashion in its keen to help and others will be doing the same.

The in-house creative teams have indeed been busy too, Channel 4 and the BBC’s PSA efforts both landed earlier this week with strikingly different tones but the same message – ‘stay at home (and watch TV)’.

Further down the chain, according to Haria-Shah, TV ad clearance house Clearcast is reportedly working at an impressive rate – its new priority is to ensure no TV ads exploit the pandemic, spread misinformation, or offer advice contrary to that government guidance: “It’s [clearance period] seems to be down from five to three working days.”

He believes demand in TV ads will rise these coming weeks.

“TVs always been seen as the best brand builder. And now consumption is through the roof, you can sit alongside record audiences on trusted news or alongside the escapism of comedy, soaps and drama. There’s a lot of longer-term positive associations, that brands that advertise correctly can build right now.”

The aforementioned broadcaster budget cuts threaten this dynamic. Many productions have been frozen, few that were on the slate can be delivered under lockdown. As replacements, broadcasters have literal warehouses of archive content they can tap into.

ITV moved fast in releasing Euro 96 footage to its on-demand Hub as was requested by fans. BBC’s current affairs panel show is going ahead with phoned-in floating heads in a virtual studio. Netflix released a series of calls between Joel McHale as a bonus Tiger King episode. A BBC weatherman stole headlines by entering a frenzied cover of the news theme after his delivering his forecasts.

Will these bold makeshift productions continue to draw high attention these next few months? Or will audiences get their heads turned by a wealth of entertainment content on many of the ad-free subscription video-on-demand services.

Disney+ has just launched, Netflix and Prime and going anywhere. And for some, Quibi may be worth a look.

Concluding, Haria-Shah says: “You always believed that soaps like Coronation Street would always be on the TV. Its pause is a real symbol of how serious an impact this is having on the TV landscape.”

By John McCarthy

Sourced from The Drum

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Stephan Loerke, Tamara Rogers, Nigel Vaz and more on the next digital disruptions

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By The Drum Reporters

From The Trade Desk to Condé Nast and Puma to PepsiCo, we ask some of the world’s best digital marketers where they think the next big industry shift will come from?

Nigel Vaz, global chief executive officer, Publicis Sapient

If you’re riding (or getting hit by) waves then you’re probably still swimming in the shallows. By which I mean it would be easy to answer that the next big wave is the ability to reach new possibilities in personalization at scale, across touchpoints, through data and machine learning. It’s true, but tells only part of the story. What we are all here to do is not to help clients create a deliverable, but a way to operate and exist so they don’t end up on the receiving end of another company’s disruptive breakthrough. The most compelling conversations I have are with business leaders who aren’t looking for waves, but horizons: people such as Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan, whose vision is to move beyond being a pharmaceutical company and to create value for patients and support them through their entire lifecycle. That’s an incredibly powerful and purposeful ambition that requires reimagining that business on a number of fronts, from strategy to experience to the application of data.

Oliver Deane, director of commercial digital, Global

Voice will start to have a huge impact on our daily lives. We will begin to do much more than ask Alexa to play the radio. As we embrace voice to be more productive, we will use our devices to order groceries while we make dinner, have a long-form feature read to us while we exercise and book our train travel while shopping. Much of this technology is already accessible – the wave of disruption in the coming years will be how much voice is used and how regular it becomes within our lives.

Ray Soto, director of emerging tech, Gannett

The digital signs of the next big wave are all around us, but you can’t focus on one without considering the others. I foresee the next big wave will be a convergence of several technologies that solves a problem and delivers an experience worth being a part of. I see it as something that helps us navigate our digital space differently, but provides a more immersive experience and efficiency without a lack of connection we may feel today.

Adam Harris, director of custom solutions, Twitch

I believe live sport is surfing the first wave of digital disruption. Sports often look to expand their reach into different audiences or look for different ways to communicate with existing fans. On top of that you have a host of traditional sports, such as golf and Formula 1, with aging fan bases, contrasted with the eSports scene, which is thriving among younger demographics – just look at the success of the recent Fortnite World Cup.

With eSports’ success as a purely digital-first experience, traditional sports have a huge opportunity. Interactive live environments such as Twitch are made for the kind of communal, passionate tribal experiences live sport delivers. We are already seeing strong engagement in this area with the likes of the NFL, Champions and Europa Leagues, MLS, Rugby League and National Women’s Hockey League all broadcasting live on Twitch.

Luke Davies, senior manager of global yield, Reuters

Data privacy law, again. GDPR is a slow burner and unfortunately our industry’s attempts of adoption have reduced the general user experience quality across the web. For GDPR, and now CCPA in 2020, with the potential for wider uptake across the US market, we can expect to experience changing tides across the next few years.

Simon Gresham Jones, chief digital officer, Condé Nast

On our mobile devices, again. 5G will open up a new frontier of business and creative possibilities for brands. For media and entertainment in particular, there’s an opportunity to re-imagine how we inspire our audiences at scale.

Morten Grubak, executive creative director for northern Europe, Virtue

The intellectual properties of brands. Brands need to be innovative in the products, services and solutions they bring to the world (this is where adding value really gets to live), not just in their communication.

Creative agencies should have as much contact with product development and innovation, not just marketing. We need to prove our value by solving real problems – and not just that, but doing it in surprising and interesting ways to capture the world’s increasingly scarce attention. It’s harder than it sounds. But don’t fret: the world is young.

Alexandra Willis, head of communications, content and digital, AELTC

A continuation of the ability of AI, machine learning and automation to drive personalization: it will just get better and more sophisticated and therefore true choice for the consumer over experience, rather than just customization within rules.

Voice: not being wedded to keyboards will rapidly increase the speed at which things are expected to happen, both in terms of the way we work and how consumers engage.

5G penetration: if it does what it says, it could transform the cost and flexibility of content production in such a way that we move completely away from linear and digital, and have a truly integrated model.

Alysia Borsa, chief marketing and data officer, Meredith

It’s hard to pick just one thing. From a consumer perspective, behaviors continue to evolve and expand to multiple platforms, with voice being a major shift in engagement. From a business perspective, providing personalization and relevancy in a cookieless world is going to be disruptive, and players who have direct relationships with consumers will be best set up to succeed.

Julie Clark, global head of automation revenue and podcast monetization, Spotify

How we leverage and utilize data is going to be a massive disruptor to our industry; we all need to plan for it now rather than allowing it to happen to us. There is also a reimagining happening right now as we start to connect digital back to real-world engagement of consumers. While direct to consumer brands have fundamentally changed purchase behaviors, I do believe human tactile experiences will continue to be fundamental now and into the future. From pop-up store trends to retailers becoming more skilled in connecting their on and offline worlds, I think we are going to have an interesting few years seeing these worlds merge.

Victor Knaap, chief executive officer, MediaMonks

In my opinion the word ‘digital’ needs to be killed soon – everything is digital. Besides that, my prediction is media companies that don’t master programmatic will have a real hard time in the next 12 months. To be frank, I am afraid we all generally expect too much from the near future. Old models die slowly, while we are overlooking the real change that will happen in the long-term. The media, agency and consultancy industry will look completely different in 10 years’ time.

Tamara Rogers, global chief marketing officer, GSK Consumer Healthcare

A truly intelligent internet of things. A world where the devices around you no longer just respond to your instructions, but predict your needs based on the behavioral data patterns they have tracked. For example, your vehicle self-adjusting the seat and heat pads to the optimum position and temperature to ease your back pain, identified as an issue from the way you have been moving during sleep the previous night and your range of mobility since rising. How are brands part of a dynamic system to improve the quality of life?

Aaron Cho, head of digital, IPG Mediabrands Hong Kong

There are growing privacy concerns around the usage of data, while digital properties continue to tighten their data policies. I think these forces might bring about the next big shift in digital marketing for two main reasons. Firstly, the privacy landscape is still changing and the dust has yet to settle – there’s no clear indication about which digital linkages will break and which ones marketers will need to bridge, which affects practices around identity resolution and data-driven audience planning. Secondly, while there are numerous data and tech companies on the market right now, their solutions are mostly still in development in the APAC region and there’s also a very real shortage of talent that understands how to manage their implementation.

Josh Peters, director of data partnerships, BuzzFeed

First-party audience collection and data privacy. They’re intrinsically linked together – as they should be – and companies and brands who handle this well will be big winners. We’re already seeing apps like BigToken helping consumers not just take control of their data but also helping them monetize it themselves. That’s a huge shift in the market – users making money off their own data instead of just companies. This, in turn, makes the data the app holds even more valuable in the market.

For brands and publishers, the ways in which they collect and use audiences is going to be imperative to future success, especially in an industry whose regulatory structure is exponentially increasing in complexity. Tech that makes it easy to collect in areas third-party pixels can’t, that seamlessly connects to privacy compliance frameworks and even the privacy frameworks themselves, will change the way marketers do business. The ones who make it both easy and effective will help change the course of digital marketing soon.

Sean Lyons, global chief executive officer, R/GA

Data privacy. There are a lot of new technologies currently in development that rely on almost unlimited access to people’s behavioral and personal data. What happens when people, and legislators, decide that privacy is more important than personalized messages and services? What happens when these technologies fall into the wrong hands? There is a big opportunity to solve this problem in fair and novel ways.

Mike Scafidi, head of martech, adtech and consumer data, PepsiCo

The next digital disruption will be through establishing trust. This will protect the interests of the consumer and improve the marketer’s ability to have an accurate understanding of the consumer. This will fundamentally disrupt everything we see in the data ecosystem today.

Sujatha Kumar, senior director of marketing, Visa India

I think we are seeing it as we speak. It’s no longer a fragmented market or media, but it’s a fragmented consumer who has a myriad of choices and a short attention span – hence the rise of programmatic ad platforms for dynamic creative optimization. There’s still a long way to go on how these platforms really evolve to serve their purpose – not just to us marketers, but also the end consumer.

The other big disruption will be voice – how it will become the key enabler and how tools such as facial and voice recognition will become the norm for security encryptions.

Stephan Loerke, chief executive officer, World Federation of Advertisers

The next big wave of digital disruption will be voice. We see penetration of voice assistants growing exponentially, and hurdles to voice commerce are comparatively low – once the technology is fully there. From a brand marketer’s perspective, voice will change the equation fundamentally – in terms of consumer trust, role of platforms and brand presence.

Chris Curtin, chief brand and innovation marketing officer, Visa

Augmented reality will hit in a big way. I think we’ll see it primarily through virtual shopping experiences, with consumers being able to trigger supplemental experiences through AR and brands. With AR, companies can manifest much more engaging experiences with their consumers than what we generally see today.

Adam Petrick, global director of brand and marketing, Puma

I think many brands have been successful in making the jump from advertising-based messaging to storytelling, story creation and content-focused messaging. Now we must find ways to actually leverage the power of the technology at our fingertips to leverage content and story creation in a targeted way, at scale. That’s the issue at the heart of the current moment of stress and tension in the industry. Once we overcome the hurdle of getting promising dots to line up, then we can all start to focus on the ‘next’ wave, which I have to assume will be linked to end customers beginning to exert ownership of their personally owned marketing space and opting in to virtually all messaging that we want to deliver.

Jeff Green, chief executive officer, The Trade Desk

As I have said before, we will likely never see a bigger industry shift than what’s happening right now in connected TV. We are at the very beginning of the digitization of TV advertising. For the first time, advertisers can apply real data to their large TV ad campaigns. Much of what we’ve done over the past decade has simply been a dress rehearsal for the digital shift happening in TV right now. Every top advertiser wants to know how they can best access CTV inventory at scale and how they can apply programmatic to it.

Nicolas Bidon, global chief executive officer, Xaxis

To use a famous quote: “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” I believe the next big wave of digital disruption will be when some of the forces that have been at play in China for a couple of years already – such as mobile-first experiences powered by AI, social commerce at scale and frictionless mobile financial payments, to name just a few – will make their way to the US and Europe.

Lisa Utzschneider, chief executive officer, IAS

At IAS we are placing big bets on connected TV and OTT as the next digital disruption. We are already seeing major broadcasters start the shift to CTV/OTT content and that trend is expected to continue and grow. We’re leaders in creating solutions for advertisers and publishers to ensure that every ad impression is viewable, brand-safe and fraud-free, and we’re bringing our 10 years of experience in digital verification to the CTV space with our open beta in the US.

By The Drum Reporters

Sourced from The Drum

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Advertising budgets could take a $3B hit over coronavirus

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By Keith J. Kelly

The coronavirus pandemic could slash as much as $3 billion from advertising and marketing budgets in 2020, according to a new report.

“This is a global human disaster that impacts every company,” said Jack Myers, who authored the report and who has been tracking the ad spend market since the 1980s.

On Monday, Myers released a new forecast on the ad spending impact of the COVID-19 outbreak — tripling his previous forecast of a $1 billion blow. Given how quickly the virus has been spreading — resulting in entire industries like Broadway shutting down — a decline of $3 billion is more likely, he said.

“What I saw a week ago as the worst-case scenario, I now see as the most likely scenario,” Myers told Media Ink.

Before the coronavirus forced retailers, restaurants and entertainment venues to close their doors, Myers was predicting $227 billion would be spent on advertising and marketing in the US this year— a 6.2 percent increase from 2019.

The $3 billion decline — to $224 billion — represents a 1 percent drop from the earlier forecast, meaning ad and marketing spending could still be up 4.8 percent from a year ago.

Because even as legacy media sees advertising grow 1 percent year over year, social media from platforms Facebook and Snap could see a 12 percent surge in ad spending to $30.8 billion, Myers said.

And as the coronavirus forces people to spend more time at home, streaming video platforms like Hulu, Pluto, Roku and Direct TV could see ad spending grow 42 percent, to $2.6 billion — up from his pre-coronavirus forecast for growth of 38 percent.

Broadcast TV may actually see a rise in ad spend due to increased demand for political ads leading up to the November presidential election — and the Olympics. Myers sees network TV ad sales up by 4 percent, or $100 million.

Of course, the Summer Olympics could also be canceled, Myers acknowledged, and sporting events have been put on hold.

Cable could see a decline in ad spending if it’s forced to halt production of popular dramas and resort to reruns.

Myers was already forecasting a 3.3 percent drop for cable before the coronavirus hit, but he now predicts a 6 percent decline of nearly $800 million to $27 billion.

Myers sees a 3 percent decline for digital news site advertising, but says the coronavirus may actually help newspaper ad spending, which he now predicts will be flat.

Feature Image Credit: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images

By Keith J. Kelly

Sourced from New York Post

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