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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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Why marketers must look beyond cookies and rethink data in the 2020s

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By Thomas Hobbs

Marketers must stop prioritising strategies built around cookie data if they’re to succeed in the 2020s. Speaking on a panel at The Drum’s Predictions 2020 event at Sea Containers this week, Andy Chandler, Adjust’s VP for UK and Ireland, called for brands to evolve in the post-cookie world and start to work out whether they’re truly adding value to their customers’ lives.

“With Google Chrome getting rid of third party cookies, brands need to start looking at data differently or they’re going to very quickly get left behind,” he explained. “We are moving into a cookie-less world, where consumers are interacting more with apps than browsers, so the way we measure data needs to truly reflect that. We need to keep evolving and keep up with where people are, ensuring we add real value to their lives.”

A recent feature by The Drum explored the impact of Google’s plans to “render third-party cookies obsolete” and how brands must now respond. According to Ed Preedy, chief revenue office at Cavai, one solution could be for brands to use online messenger apps to speak directly to their consumers. He says messenger apps can ensure more tailored advertising and better conversion rates when it comes to making a purchase.

He added: “In 2019, there were 73 trillion posts across all messaging apps. And in markets like APAC and Latin America, something like 63% of consumers purchased over a messaging app or spoke directly to a business. These are becoming hotbeds for commercial opportunity and it will only grow in the decade ahead in the UK too.

“Messaging apps allow for a genuine two-way interaction. They qualify what users want and who they are almost instantly, so therefore the advertising that runs is contextually relevant. They will become so much more important as cookies start to dissipate. I think there will be a wider move to more personalised platforms, where advertising is less random.”

It was a frank assessment that Tanzil Bukhari, managing director for EMEA at DoubleVerify, very much agreed with. He insisted consumers now want to see more relevant advertising and that getting rid of cookies will ensure this happens more consistently. “The Google Chrome announcement will mean publishers have to offer much richer and directional content, and that’s only a good thing.”

Using data in the right way

But there was also a message of caution in the air, with Vodafone’s brand director Maria Koutsoudakis warning that brands and agencies who prioritise data too heavily risk becoming irrelevant, on a panel earlier that morning alongside Ogilvy CEO UK, Michael Frolich. Koutsoudakis asked the audience: “When was the last time you spoke to a customer? If you stood back from click attributions and A/V testing then what do you really know about your customers now?

“By only really focusing on data, there’s a risk we create a generation of marketers who don’t understand brand, consumers or behavioural change and aren’t agile enough to cope with it. There needs to be more of a blend of people being on the ground, really speaking to their customers, as well as having a good data strategy. If marketers only care about digital metrics then there’s a risk they become irrelevant in marketing in the 2020s.”

With consumer data obviously so important to the UK mobile network’s business, she admitted it has taken a back step to ensure it’s precious about protecting it. “We don’t sell this data as we can’t afford to lose our consumers’ trust,” she admitted. “Being so cautious might mean we get left behind, but I think it’s worth it as we can’t take any chances.”

Frolich agreed with Koutsoudakis’ sentiment. In the 2020s, he said ad agencies shouldn’t be using client and third party data unless they can absolutely prove it has a positive impact on creativity and this in turn enriches the lives of their customers.

“We aren’t a data company, we are a creative agency,” he insisted. “We use client data and third party data to feed our creativity and build better work that consumers then enjoy. If you’re using this data and it isn’t creating better human insights then you’re using it incorrectly.

“Agencies have bought big data companies and it isn’t working because they’re not using the information to create better marketing. If we can work with a client like Vodafone and use their data to feed better creativity then we’re winning.”

The sentiments around trust were picked on another panel, where Courtney Wylie, VP of product & marketing, Mention Me had a word of caution: “We’re going to continue to see this evolving trend of lack of trust. A declining trust in influencers, brands, marketing channels.”

However, the way the relationship between agencies and brands works will become a lot more adaptable over the coming years, with a one-size-fits-all approach now completely redundant. John Readman, CEO & Founder, Modo25, explained: “In past there were only two options: work with an agency or do something in-house, but we will see these lines blurring more and more. There’s no reason why a combination of both won’t be the best way forward.”

Talking about the way forward, Andrew Challier, chief client officer, Ebiquity predicted that the industry will finally see “the rebirth of creativity and the importance of creativity in engaging people and reaching people in a meaningful way.”

A more ethical way of thinking could impact Facebook and Amazon

As we move further into the 2020s, some of the event’s panellists warned that established retailers and social media brands could start to fall short, as consumers switch to a more ethical way of thinking.

“Yes, lot’s of people still buy off Amazon, but the fact Brits also want to become more engaged with their local community means independent retailers should be confident heading into this new decade,” predicted Hero Brown, founder of Muddy Stilettos.

She explained further: “We’ve noticed a real shift in our readers wanting to support the high street more and more, and there’s this ethical thinking coming through, which could be detrimental to an Amazon. Shoppers want real-life experiences, even from online brands. They’re starting to get tired of faceless fast transactions and want to see brands brought to life in a more physical way. This trend will only intensify in 2020.”

Meanwhile, Darren Savage, chief strategy officer at Tribal, would like to see Facebook’s dominancy recede in the social media space. “I think major firms who consistently lie will come unstuck in the 2020s as people won’t put up with it anymore,” he said. “An immoral toxic cess-pit like Facebook will come tumbling down.

“The blatant lies they tell around consumer data will mean people will leave the platform in much bigger numbers. Truth is more important than ever before and just being a big business isn’t going to protect you if you mislead consumers.”

Proving you’re making a difference

This ethical way of thinking also extends to a brand’s commitment to sustainability, and Misha Sokolov, co-founder of MNFST, believes this will only rise in importance over the coming years.

“I spoke recently to someone at the Volkswagen Group and he was telling me how they calculated they were responsible for 1% of all global emissions, and that’s why they now want to be carbon neutral within 10 years,” he said. “The smartest brands won’t just put a nice message on their packaging, but do something that has a provable positive impact on the environment and helping reduce climate change. It must happen automatically as brands will lose market share if consumers don’t think their being ethical enough. There’s no excuse in the 2020s.”

And businesses shouldn’t just think of sustainability in environmental terms either, with it also being just as wrapped up in how a brand and business treats its employees. Stéphanie Genin, global VP of enterprise marketing at Hootsuite, says employee advocacy will be a huge trend moving forward, as consumer want to ensure their favourite brands treat their staff good before supporting them with a purchase.

She added: “Employee advocacy and employee generated content will become so so important. When you empower employees to be the communicator of what your business stands for it really adds to brand value and boosts sales. I think marketers are missing a trick by not prioritising this more heavily.”

However, Readman, added none of this will work unless it’s part of a global governance policy. “It’s all good being sustainable and doing good things for employees in one market, but if it’s not something you’re doing consistently across the board then consumers will work it out and there will be a backlash.”

Meanwhile, for John Young, executive creative director and co-founder, M-is, as brands start to really understand the consumers through personal engagagement, “the advertising budgets will transfer into experiential budgets.”

Be as safe as possible

Another topic of conversation that came up throughout the day was brands ensuring the data they keep on consumers remains safe, especially as more and more of their ads are traded programmatically.

Francesco Petruzzelli, chief technology officer at Bidstack, said that 13% of global ads are currently fraudulent and that while major brands know it’s a “big issue”, they’re not necessarily doing enough to prevent it. “We acquired a publishing guard to protect publishers, but I find a lot of people aren’t thinking seriously enough about this issue. It won’t go away!”

Dan Lowden, chief strategy officer at Whiteops, added how he recently worked with a major brand who believed bots were accounting for up to 5% of fake views of its £10m campaign, but says his team worked out they were actually accounting for 36% of traffic.

Looking ahead, he concluded: “The bad guys aren’t going to let up and will keep on persisting with cyber crime in the 2020s. We all need to be serious about tackling this problem and do more to collaborate as an industry to ensure that marketing dollars are genuinely being spent on human engagement and not just robots.”

By Thomas Hobbs

Sourced from The Drum

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New study: Majority of consumers are unaware of how search engines work

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Sourced from Search Engine Watch.

As brands and their marketing departments deploy strategies to capitalize on record ecommerce spending — which soared to $586.92 billion in 2019 — new research from leading provider of brand protection solutions, BrandVerity, has brought to light important findings and hidden risks pertaining to the journeys consumers are taking online.

In order to give brands a better understanding of the search experiences their customers are having and how they are impacting brand perception and customer experience, BrandVerity commissioned the “BrandVerity’s Online Consumer Search Trends 2020” research study in Q4 of 2019 to over 1,000 US consumers, balanced against the US population for age, gender, region, and income.

Amongst the many findings, three main themes stood out:

Consumers confused by how search engine results work

Only 37% of consumers understand that search engine results are categorized by a combination of relevance and advertising spend.

The other 63% of consumers believe that Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are categorized by either relevance or spend, or they simply “don’t know.”

Additionally, nearly 1-in-3 consumers (31%) say they don’t believe search engines (e.g. Google) do a good job of labeling which links are ads.

Consumers more inclined to click on the result that appears first

Without a clear understanding of how search results are served up, consumers are more inclined to click on the result that appears first, believing it to be the most relevant option.

With 54% of consumers saying they trust websites more that appear at the top of the SERP, this isn’t just an assumption.

Consumers feel misled by the websites they find in the search engine results

51% of consumers say that when searching for information on a product, they sometimes feel misled by one of the websites in the search results.

An additional 1-in-4 report feeling misled “often” or “always.”

Even further, 25% also say they often end up somewhere unexpected that does not provide them with what they were looking for when clicking on a search result.

“Against a backdrop where consumers have increasingly high expectations of the brands they do business with, and are holding them to equally high standards, companies must ensure that the entirety of the experiences they provide meet customer expectations,” said Dave Naffziger CEO of Brandverity.

“As these findings show, a general uncertainty of how search engines work, combined with the significant occurrence of poor online experiences, mean oversight of paid search programs is more important than ever for brands today.”

Sourced from Search Engine Watch.

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Ad revenues remain a bright spot for Amazon as profits falls flat

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By Rebecca Stewart

Amazon‘s profits might have fallen for the first time in two years, but its advertising revenue outshone its overall sales growth in the most recent quarter – showing brands are taking it seriously as a challenger to the Google-Facebook duopoly.

During its most recent earnings call on Thursday (24 October), the e-commerce giant revealed that sales were up, but profit had slumped year-on-year for the first time since mid-2017.

The business reported a third-quarter profit of $2.1bn, a drop of 28% on the previous year, which was put down to investments in shipping and warehouses to help its core retail business maintain its edge.

Over the past three months, the businesses has garnered $70bn in revenues; up from 24% on on the same quarter last year.

Advertising revenue growth was a bright spot in the company’s results, with ‘other revenue’ (which principally refers to Amazon’s ad business) hitting $3bn over the three months to the end of September, up 45% on the same quarter last year.

Driving ‘relevancy’ and looking beyond search

The firm’s chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said it was “very happy” with its ad sales progress and that it was now focused on helping brands deliver more targeted ads within the Amazon ecosystem.

“We continue to focus on advancing advertising experiences there, [making them] helpful for customers and helping them to see new products. We want to empower our businesses to find attracting and engage these customers and it’s increasingly popular with vendor sellers and third-party advertisers,” he added.

“It’s still early and what we’re focused on really at this point is relevancy, making sure that the ads are relevant to our customers, helpful to our customers, and to do that, we use machine learning and that’s helping us to drive better, better and better relevancy.”

Earlier this month it was reported that Amazon was eating into Google’s search dominance, with eMarketer forecasting that Amazon’s share is expected to grow to 15.9% by 2021, with Google’s expected to contract to 70.5%.

However, Dave Fildes, Amazon’s director of investor relations said that increased adoption among brands was pushing the company to expand its video and OTT offerings.

Pointing to the ad-supported movie streaming service it recently launched on IMDb and live sporting deals, Fildes said it planned to ad more inventory to the latter and across its Fire TV apps via Amazon Publisher Services integrations.

“[We’re also looking at] streamlining access for third-party apps and really just making it easier for advertisers to manage their campaigns and provide better results,” he continued.

Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer, at self-service ad platform 4C Insights highlighted how quickly Amazon is ramping up its ad platform.

“It has the unique ability to close the loop from purchase intent to sales and allow brands use that data for ad targeting and measurement,” he explained, saying clients using 4C’s platform had upped their spend by 250% in the past year.

Feature Image Credit: Advertising revenue growth was a bright spot in the company’s results / Amazon

By Rebecca Stewart

Sourced from The Drum

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Twitter promises ad product improvements as ‘seasonality’ and IT bugs hamper Q3 revenues

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By Katie Deighton

Twitter execs have outlined how they plan to bolster its ad business after missing Q3 revenue targets. It blamed the weak growth on bugs affecting its mobile product, which further hindered ad sales already weakened by the “seasonality” of a slow summer.

Revenues for Q3 were up 9% year-on-year to $824m. The US reported a rise of 10% to $465m, while international growth was slower at 7%, totalling $358m.

Sales fell short of the expected $874m. Growth slowed substantially since Q3 2018, when sales grew 32% year-on-year.

The results, which sent shared in the tech firm tumbling 20%, were explained by advertising “headwinds” driven predominantly by bugs in the company’s targeting system. In a letter to shareholders, Twitter explained the issue had affected its ability to target ads and share data with its measurement and ad partners.

The bugs reduced year-over-year revenue growth by at least 3% in Q3, Twitter wrote in a letter to shareholders.

Ned Segal, Twitter’s chief financial officer, explained the glitches in the legacy mobile application promotion (MAP) product meant information regarding users’ device settings was shared with Twitter for targeting purposes, even if they had asked it not to be.

“When we discovered that … we turned off the setting,” he said on an earnings call this morning (24 October). “That has a negative impact on revenue because it’s one less input you’ve got when you’re figuring out what ads to show people.”

Additionally, a bug meant Twitter was passing on data to measurement companies from users who explicitly asked not to be monitored in such a fashion.

“We stopped doing that, and although we are working on remediation, there isn’t remediation yet in place,” said Segal. “So, the effects of that will continue into Q4.”

Twitter recently faced criticism after it reported some users’ private email addresses and phone numbers had been exposed to its advertisers in a breach of its targeting system.

Aside from the technical issues, organic advertiser interest in Twitter dropped in the quarter, too. “Greater-than-expected” seasonality issues began in July and continued into August, due to what the company dubbed a “relatively lighter slate of big events” taking place when compared to the same period in 2018.

The sales slowdown occurred as Twitter continued to push its offer to advertisers on its global ‘#StartWithThem’ roadshow. The platform has a goal to double its ad business by 2020 and become advertisers’ most recommended partner.

Today, Segal outlined the company’s immediate and long term plans to bring more advertiser dollars into the business and appease Wall Street qualms.

He first stated the company will continue to actively market its platform to big advertisers. By way of example, he observed that while 38 of this year’s Super Bowl advertisers were on the social network at the same time as the game, there were eight “to whom we still need to make the case”.

“[We’re also] continuing to improve relevance, to continue to come out with better ad formats and improve versions of our existing ad formats,” he said.

He added Twitter could do a better job in monetizing smaller advertisers – an area it has not “prioritized” in the past.

“We’ve got to do the engineering work and make the case to them better than we are today, and right now we’re chosen to prioritize other things first,” he said.

Finally, he noted the Twitter ads experience could also be improved through better educating clients and working more closely with advertisers on their paid-for content.

“There’s also opportunity without selling one more ad to put better copy in the ads that exist today,” he said. “And we still have half of our video ads being served at longer than 15 seconds. As you can imagine on a service like Twitter, the completion rates for video ads that are six seconds are much better.

“That, along with continuing to improve relevance, better formats and moving down the funnel in terms of the types of advertising that’s available … are all things that ought to help us.”

Feature Image Credit: Twitter launched a consumer campaign in recent months / Jonathan Hokklo

By Katie Deighton

Sourced from The Drum

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Weibo and WeChat get 68% of their reads from pushing content to existing followers

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By Taruka Srivastav

Most accounts on Weibo and WeChat get the majority (68%) of their reads from pushing content to existing followers.

The remaining 32% of reads mostly come from sharing on moments (10%), in chats (3%), history (4%) and others (11%). “Others” is typically desktop usage or non-official types of promotion by sharing the direct link to the article.

Content should be shared on Weibo 2-4 times per day and WeChat only when there is great content to share, according to a research done by KAWO.

WeChat and Weibo have suffered with platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu on the rise. The read rates are down significantly, but seem to have stabilised and even picked up a little in the case of service accounts.

The Top Stories have grown significantly since it was launched in December 2018, but is still quite small for most accounts. Accounts with less than 2000 followers have seen as much as 13% of their reads from Top Stories.

Furthermore, the average subscription account doesn’t seem to be held back by the limit of 1 post per day. Meanwhile service accounts send a higher number of articles per push presumably because they’re only able to contact users 4 times per month.

According to KAWO CEO Alex Duncan, follower growth on Subscription accounts has fallen quite a lot over the past 3 years, but seems to have been helped a little by the changes

“WeChat made to the Subscription folder in June 2018. Although the growth rate has slowed, they are now also losing less followers too presumably because it’s less annoying for users to scroll past an article they don’t like rather than open each subscription account one by one,” he added.

Usage in the week before and the week after Chinese New Year is higher with users presumably spending more time on social media.

KAWO spent 6 weeks analyzing 20 million data points to answer every marketer’s questions on WeChat and Weibo.

The Drum recently spoke with Akae Wang, an executive creative director in the corporate marketing and public relations department at Tencent to find out how Tencent brought the moon closer to WeChat users during Mid-Autumn Festival.

Feature Image Credit: Weibo and WeChat get 68% of their reads from pushing content to existing followers

By Taruka Srivastav

Sourced from The Drum

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Australian publishers band together to form programmatic editorial video marketplace

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By Taruka Srivastav

Australian publishers Seven West Media, Network 10, SBS, Foxtel Media, Pedestrian Group and Daily Mail have joined forces to launch a programmatic ‘Editorial Video Marketplace’.

The new marketplace, run by Telaria, aims to simplify buyers’ access to this professionally produced premium content with daytime audience reach and scale, as per the official statement.

Luke Smith, head of programmatic sales and audiences at Seven West Media said: “The demand from advertisers has been clear – that there is a need for quality video delivering high viewability and completion rates within brand safe editorial environments at scale.

“It is important that the premium value and impact of editorial video is able to differentiate itself from other forms of short-form like social video. This marketplace, available programmatically, will be a means to make that easily accessible for buyers and advertisers at scale,”

Flaminia Sapori, head of partnerships at media agency Cadreon said: “It’s encouraging to finally start seeing publishers working collaboratively to provide alternative independent options in this space — creating ease of access, and most importantly, a new narrative for editorial video, giving it the credit it deserves, and perhaps start influencing more social budgets being redirected to new premium ecosystems.”

The news comes after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released its final digital platforms inquiry report in July calling on the government to act against the tech giants.

ACCC had raised concerns, at the starting of the year, about the market power of Facebook and Google including the companies impact on Australian businesses, particularly their ability to monetize content, as well as outlined concerns about the extent that consumers data is collected and used by companies to target advertising.

Feature Image Credit:The marketplace aims to simplify buyers’ access to this professionally produced premium content.

By Taruka Srivastav

Sourced from The Drum

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Companies Accelerate Digital Innovation Inside and Out

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Sourced from The Wall Street Journal

Ecosystem partnerships and cross-functional teams can help spur innovation and enable agility at companies pursuing digital maturity.

Many digitally maturing companies are not only innovating more than their less-advanced counterparts, but they’re also innovating differently, according to “Accelerating Digital Innovation Inside and Out: Agile Teams, Ecosystems, and Ethics,” an annual report from MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte studying the effects of digital technologies on organizations.¹ This year’s research focuses on how digitally maturing organizations are drawing on the power of ecosystems, cross-functional teams, and other loosely coupled arrangements to increase innovation and agility.

The surveyed companies each fit into one of three digital maturity categories—early (24%), developing (44%), or maturing (32%)—with maturing companies innovating at far higher rates than less mature businesses in large part by fostering a culture of innovation and providing the resources to support it. Eighty-one percent of respondents from maturing companies cite innovation as an organizational strength, compared with 36% from developing outfits and only 10% from early-stage companies. They invest more in innovation, too, with executives and managers from 74% of maturing companies saying their organizations provide sufficient resources for innovation, versus 39% of developing companies and 15% of early-stagers.

Maturing companies also allocate time for their employees to innovate. Eighty-six percent of respondents from digitally maturing companies say that 10% or more of their time at work involves the opportunity to experiment or innovate. By contrast, more than 40% of early-stage respondents report that less than 10% of their time, or no time at all, involves experimenting or innovating.

Ecosystems a Fertile Source of Innovation

Digitally maturing enterprises are also far more likely to encourage innovation by forming external partnerships. Eighty percent of respondents at maturing companies say their organization is cultivating innovation this way; at developing organizations, that number drops to 59%, and, at early-stage organizations, it falls to 33%. This gap does not exist because less mature companies fail to recognize the importance of these bonds—nearly 80% of respondents across all maturity groups consider partnerships vital to their innovation efforts—but early-stage companies, in particular, are less willing to commit resources to innovation, which can be essential to scaling successful projects with external partners.

Digitally maturing companies also use wide-ranging, capability-building ecosystems to address both short- and long-term objectives. Working with platform companies, for instance, can enable organizations to team up with additional collaborators and jointly explore potential innovations. Ecosystems can also provide collective access to diverse customers, leading to a combined understanding of audience feedback and behavior that often plays a critical role in the innovation process.

Leveraging these partnerships to increase innovation, however, can also present difficulties. Nearly half (46%) of all respondents cite challenges related to creating a collaborative culture and aligning goals across an ecosystem, with results consistent regardless of maturity level. Companies may also struggle with employees and leaders who aren’t naturally inclined to collaborate with external partners.

Buying In to Cross-Functional Teams

While ecosystems are critical to externally focused innovation activities, 83% of digitally maturing companies depend upon cross-functional teams to advance innovation internally, compared with 71% of developing companies and 55% of early-stage outfits. Executives and managers at digitally maturing companies say these teams are more likely to have considerable autonomy regarding how to accomplish goals (69%, versus 53% and 38% at developing and early-stage companies, respectively), to be evaluated as a group (54%, versus 33% and 20%), and to have their senior leaders create a supportive environment for their teams (73%, versus 48% and 29%).

A cross-functional team, with people from multiple departments, might be accountable to a project manager or a corporate innovation executive rather than to their official line manager. Respondents point to enhanced access to resources—such as diverse perspectives, broader skill sets, and new ideas—as the most important benefit. At the same time, operating via cross-functional teams may pose new kinds of management challenges, with more than half of respondents citing problems with team alignment and an unsupportive culture.

Digitally maturing companies also embrace loosely coupled relationships, systems, and processes to support their digital innovation. They give greater autonomy to their cross-functional teams and individual units, which have the freedom to respond quickly to shifts in their market environment. Their interactions with external partners, governed more by relationships than by detailed contracts, enable cross-pollinated skill sets and mindsets. This, in turn, can allow novel solutions to arise more often and more quickly than in tightly controlled systems.

*****

In today’s rapidly changing marketplace, a company’s belief in the importance of innovation is an important enabler of digital maturity. Companies that want to advance digitally can take concrete steps to drive innovation further, developing an ecosystem-driven, cross-functional approach that can have a decisive effect on their progress toward full digital transformation.

Click here to see the accompanying infographic.

—by Gerald C. Kane, professor of information systems at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College; Doug Palmer, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP; David Kiron, executive editor, MIT Sloan Management Review; and Anh Nguyen Phillips and Natasha Buckley, senior managers, Deloitte Services LP

Editor’s note: This is the first story in a two-part series on the “Accelerating Digital Innovation Inside and Out: Agile Teams, Ecosystems, and Ethics” report.

 

 

Sourced from The Wall Street Journal

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Seven step guide to turbo charge growth

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By Olivia Atkins

It can be difficult for SMEs to remain competitive today, but AdRoll’s new report ‘The Ultimate Guide to Growth’ provides a detailed step-by-step guide to help small to mid-sized businesses, solopreneurs and entrepreneurs to accelerate their growth. The robust report is split into seven categories with each providing case studies and takeaway lessons.

Identifying audiences

The report stresses the importance of marketers to first determine their ideal customer, knowing this then allows them to accurately target them. It cites various characteristics to look out for when compiling customer profiles and suggests that marketers should also tap into customer geographics and work on understanding their online behavioural habits. Empathising with their customers’ needs will help marketers to capitalise on their audience’s activity.

Understanding competitors

While getting to know your customers is important, the report also urges marketers to understand how their competitors operate, so that they can have a strong understanding of their positioning in the market. Marketers should conduct research and analysis on their competitors to work out where marketplace opportunities and threats lie, as well as keep a close eye on their opponent’s messaging.

Know your USP

Key differentiators set companies apart, so identifying these – no matter how big or small they are – is vital. The guide advises marketers to focus on your key attributes but encourages them to avoid concentrating on replicable differentiators such as new technologies or competitive prices as these can easily be beaten by competitors.

Marketing strategy creation

Marketing strategies should act as a roadmap for growing businesses with clear steps as to how to reach and engage new and existing customers. Working out the company’s value proposition will help. Marketers should consider where their customers are struggling and how they can help relieve their pain through the services they offer. They should then develop messaging to reflect this strategy, set attainable goals and create a realistic marketing budget to ensure that progress can be tracked.

Using marketing tactics

The marketing strategy set out earlier in the guide will provide marketers with clear business goals and budgets. Working out actionable tactics and which marketing channels to push marketing messages out on is essential. The report suggests looking at AdRoll’s digital advertising tactics and offers marketers the opportunity to sync up their e-commerce website with their growth platform to attract new visitors and convert existing prospects.

Creating content assets

Marketers should work out which type of content asset will suit their strategy best; the report provides pros and cons of using visual, written and ad content formats, with advice on how best to combine content assets to save on time and avoid duplication. The guide reminds marketers that ad sizes and formats also vary according to each platform, so messages need to be punchy and to the point for them to be effective.

Implementing and testing

Testing is one of the most important steps in the digital marketing growth journey. The report suggests that ads don’t need to be perfect before going live and encourages marketers to experiment with different renditions of ads to see how audiences respond. Various techniques for testing are listed, ensuring that marketers can get the most out of the experiments they do on ads, so that they know what to look out for.

Measurement

The guide advises marketers to build quantifiable KPIs and metrics that correspond to the business strategy and goals outlined earlier. Marketers should look at various analytics tools and work out which would best suit their business, but the report urges them to continue testing tactics to ensure that processes and information are consistently refined throughout the journey. Attribution models can also help marketers to gain better insight into consumer purchase habits.

Feature Image Credit: The Ultimate Guide to Growth report, with AdRoll

By Olivia Atkins

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Carole Cadwalladr: the ad industry is ignoring Cambridge Analytica fallout

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By Rebecca Stewart

Prominent UK journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who led the reporting on Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018, has cautioned the advertising industry that it has a collective responsibility to tackle the issue of data misuse.

Speaking during an unscheduled event at Cannes Lions last week (20 June), the reporter called out the advertising ecosystem for its role in funding the platforms she accuses of undermining democracy – including Facebook – as well as a perceived lack of action in tackling the issue head-on.

“It’s really funny being here in the heart of the ad industry and seeing the yachts, the money and the beach clubs – while its central, central role in what’s going on here is being ignored,” she said.

Accusing the adtech yachts parked in Le Viex Port of “monetising a total surveillance apparatus” that was “exploiting [people] in invisible ways,” Cadwalladr said the lack of discussion around the issue on Cannes Lions’ main stage was “depressing”.

“In terms of responsibility, there’s something really key about Cannes Lions and the ad industry’s involvement in this,” she explained. “This is where the money is coming from. It is kind of depressing that there’s not a single talk happening in this entire week [about data misuse] with money swishing down through the streets.”

While there were talks hosted in the Cannes Palais around data and marketing technology, there were none with a specific focus on data misuse or ethics.

Cadwalladr said: “I know that individuals here are really troubled by what’s going on but as a collective industry level, it just seems to be that it’s being swept under the carpet.”

The Guardian and Observer journalist, who has been fiercely critical of Facebook, also called out chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg for attending the festival but failing to “give answers to MPs in parliament” about Cambridge Analytica.

“As far as I’m concerned, Facebook is a foreign company which represents a national security threat and it shouldn’t be anywhere near our elections,” she said.

Sandberg appeared on the main stage on the Wednesday of Cannes where she simply said it needed to be “clearer” about the way it uses data. She was also invited to speak at WPP’s Beach event where, in conversation with chief executive Mark Read, she admitted that Facebook had to “earn back” trust.

Hacking Nix’s Cannes appearance

In one of the most controversial events at Cannes, former Cambridge Analytica executive Alexander Nix had been scheduled to appear on the main stage on Thursday (20 June).

The headline event was billed as his first speaking appearance since the firm sunk into administration after allegedly harvesting Facebook user data to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential race.

However, Nix pulled out the day before he was due to appear following criticism from various corners of the industry – including one ad director who penned an anonymous letter to organisers, describing the inclusion of the exec on the programme as a “monumental act of self-harm.”

His withdrawal also followed on from Cadwalladr announcing she was to host her own event during the festival.

Gillian Tett, The Financial Times’ editorial board chair and US editor at large, had been due to chair the discussion with Nix on “the morality of data” but instead found herself hosting Cadwalladr’s ‘Great Hack’ event with BBC journalist Jamie Bartlett in which they screened a documentary taking a deeper look into the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

Tett said she had hoped her conversation with Nix was going to be a way to focus the topic of data misuse that was lacking throughout the festival, and get answers to some of the “bigger, more existential” questions.

She detailed how Nix had been “on and off” and “back and forth” with her in the weeks before Cannes Lions, finally withdrawing from the appearance.

“I’m not sure as to why he pulled out – you’d have to ask him,” she asserted. “We’ve been up and down and round the blocks on that one, he’s been cross with me, then not cross with me and there’s stuff I’ve written he doesn’t like.”

Discussing the practical ways in which the ad industry could help ensure people got real value in handing their data over to advertisers, Bartlett – who covered the use of data and tech in the 2016 elections – said GDPR was too reliant on consumers issuing companies with requests.

“People need to be aware of what they’re trading and what they’re getting back in return. At the moment it’s very one-sided and not very informed,” he said.

“People have no idea, they give away their data for a good Google search result or product recommendation, but they don’t know what the scale of that trade is because they don’t see what’s on the other side of it and they don’t fully understand who is going to misuse it in future.”

Bartlett said he wanted people to make informed choices about when they give their data away and for it to be as easy as possible for them to get it back.

He suggested that the advertising industry had the power to build the technology that could allow people to do just that – bundling up consumer data and repackaging it in a way that it could be sold, with both parties getting a share of the profit.

“We need the private sector to incentivise people to make money out of their own data. You can’t do it on your own, it’s not valuable but it is if you do it collectively. It will take decades for that to happen, the culture needs to change.”

As well as the Nix controversy, Cannes Lions 2019 was disrupted by protesters from climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion, who crashed spots like the Palais and Facebook beach, urging the ad industry to act on the climate and ecological emergency facing the world.

With a heavy theme of brand purpose and business for good running throughout the week, the lack of interest from ad execs in supporting the group’s mission has been lamented as “hypocrisy” by Extinction Rebellion’s team and other industry commentators.

Feature Image Credit: Cadwalladr called out the advertising ecosystem for its role in funding the platforms she accuses of undermining democracy / TED/YouTube

By Rebecca Stewart

Sourced from The Drum

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