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Note To Publishers: Not All Of Your Inventory Is ‘Premium’

brand-aware2"Brand Aware" is a column on the data-driven digital ad ecosystem from the marketer's point of view. It is written by Bob Arnold, Director of Digital and Social Media at Kellogg Company.

One of my main responsibilities for Kellogg is to steward all of its digital media spend in North America, so a lot of media pitches and proposals end up on my desk.  In just about every one of these, a publisher claims to have “premium” inventory, backing up the claim with a multitude of reasons why they deserve this label. And why shouldn’t they?  After all, there is no universally accepted definition of “premium” inventory, and I’d argue that, like beauty, “premium” is in the eye of the beholder.

That said, as someone who invests heavily in programmatic buying, I want to share my perspective of what makes inventory “premium.”  Keep in mind that this is my perspective as a brand advertiser who does only a negligible amount of direct-response marketing.  So success equals driving top-of-mind brand awareness, purchasing intent-to-grow sales and building brand equity and affinity.

For me, the definition of premium inventory is “inventory that enables the highest probability to increase sales and long-term brand equity.”  That is a high-level definition, so here are the attributes that I feel do and don’t make ad inventory “premium.”

Any one of the following, alone, is not enough to make inventory premium:

1)      Viewability: Obviously, the ads need to be viewable. That said, having viewable inventory in and of itself is not enough, in my mind, to constitute “premium.” Viewability is a bottom-line expectation.

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Three Pre-Reqs to Capture the Hearts, Minds And Budgets Of Brand Managers

At my company, we’ve been active in the programmatic buying space for brand marketing and we’ve seen some very positive business results to date.  I truly believe it's the future of all media buying (not just digital, but I’ll save that discussion for another day).

Yet, we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg of programmatic buying's potential for brand marketers.  The deck is stacked against brand marketers to be successful; this is an opaque space with ad tech companies often promising us the world. Call us marketers cynical, but we’ve heard that story before.  For me, just to understand, navigate and be successful in this space was a huge, time-consuming task full of fits and starts.

Programmatic buying has already established itself as a winning solution for direct response (DR) marketers and yet awareness, let alone adoption, is much slower among brand marketers. Why? Ironically some of the tactics and thinking that has pushed the industry forward for DR are now holding it back for brand marketing. So, I’d like to offer three themes that are inhibiting programmatic buying for brand marketers. While this is certainly not all encompassing, I’m hoping this will provide some insight and impetus to prioritize the needs of the brand marketer even higher.

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How Publishers Can Stand Out in the Programmatic Arena

Brand AwareWelcome to "Brand Aware," a column from the marketer's point-of-view on the data-driven, digital ad ecosystem and written by Bob Arnold, Associate Director of Global Digital Strategy at Kellogg Company.

I've never worked in the publishing industry. I've been on the marketer side of the equation for my entire career, so I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know the ins and outs of what publishers do. I’m writing this column to share a marketer’s point of view on potential areas of opportunity that may exist for publishers to demonstrate value and points of differentiation within the programmatic space.

Many web publishers fear the programmatic space, and understandably so, since it’s a disruptive change to the legacy of the ad buy and selling model. They fear programmatic buying is simply a race to the bottom, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

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Kellogg's Bob Arnold Starts 'Brand Aware' Column

Brand AwareWelcome to "Brand Aware."

I'm Bob Arnold, Associate Director of Global Digital Strategy at Kellogg Company, and I have the privilege of penning this column. I've been in the digital marketing space for more than 12 years - 10 years at Procter & Gamble and two years at Kellogg.

Having grown up in the "branding" side (as opposed to the "direct" side) of marketing, I've always felt that ad tech companies - to a certain degree - have ignored or simply not understood brand marketers. This is evidenced by the lack of innovations that are developed with branding as the main focus.

As a result most large brands only invest a fraction of their budget into the space, despite the mass consumer adoption - a recent AdAge article states, "By the most generous estimates, the all-in costs of digital make up around 10% of P&G's U.S. marketing outlay and a similar share for P&G's big global rivals, Unilever and L'Oréal -- Nos. 2 and 3 in global ad spending, respectively." It has become a vicious cycle!

My vision for this column is simple - to help close the gap between amazing technology companies and brand marketers. If ad technology companies understand what keep brand marketers up at night, we'll be flooded with incredible innovations.

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