RSS FeedArchive for the ‘Research’ Category

Nielsen To Add More Data Providers for OCR, Mobile – Cautiously

Steve Hasker, NielsenNielsen has steadily expanded its efforts to tie online and offline together and to build products around digital ad effectiveness. That push has required Nielsen to strike relationships with outside data providers such as Datalogix and Facebook.

As social and mobile become more crucial for advertisers, Nielsen is under more pressure to come up with insights into those areas – and that will take more outside help. However, Nielsen is worried about sacrificing credibility – it has plenty of detractors already, after all – for the sake of saying it has achieved comprehensive solutions covering the marketplace.

At the BrightRoll Video Summit, BrightRoll CEO Tod Sacerdoti and Steve Hasker, president global product leadership for Nielsen, discussed audience measurement and ad effectiveness, especially for mobile and social. Hasker began by acknowledging – and ultimately defending Nielsen against – the online ad industry's issues with gross ratings points. GRPs are the Nielsen standard metrics for TV viewing and the basis for its two main digital measurement products, Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) and Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings (XCR).

"OCR and XCR are really GRPs," Hasker said. "We're not here to tell anyone that the world should stop at categorizing consumers according to age and gender. But that's the language of the major marketers."

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Where Retail Brands Fall Flat On Tablets

L2Tablet usage is on the rise but retailers have yet to catch up, shows a new report by research company L2. As more people spend time on tablets—which L2 categorizes as a separate device from a PC or mobile device—retailers need to adopt a distinct strategy for engaging shoppers on their tablets.

“Tablets have been treated as an adjunct to either smartphone or desktop development efforts and it shows,” Colin Gilbert, digital strategy consultant at L2, told AdExchanger. “Brands have to be cognizant of the unique experiences tablets offer versus a smartphone or a PC.”

The research company studied 60 retail brands’ app and site experiences on iPads. The brands included various apparel, accessories, housewares, and online retailers such as Aeropostale, JC Penney, Williams-Sonoma, Cartier, Net-A-Porter, and Sephora.

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At ARF Re:think, Researchers Grapple With Emerging Markets

ARF-rethink

At the Advertising Research Foundation's Re:think conference in New York yesterday, discussion revolved around emerging markets such as China, India, and Brazil.

John Forsyth, principal at McKinsey & Company, presented data showcasing the growth in these markets.

"If you look at the growth over the next 15 years, three-fourths of the global growth is going to come from emerging markets," he said. "If you focus on consumption, there will be $30 trillion in consumption in emerging markets by the year 2025. If you're looking to grow, you have to figure out how to make that work."

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Report: RTB Space Gains Steam, Hurdles Remain for Brands

A new Real-Time Bidding buyer's guide from Econsultancy provides a snapshot of the exchange-traded media landscape, along with an assessment of today's demand-side platforms, trading desks, and supply-side platforms. Its overall conclusion is that RTB systems are maturing perhaps more quickly than might've been expected, though a lack of measurement consistency and other problems may be hindering marketer adoption.

AdExchanger spoke with Monica Savut, senior research analyst for Econsultancy.

What surprised you in the process of developing this report?

MONICA SAVUT: What struck me most was how fast the market is moving from the experimentation stage to sustained growth and delivering technology that scales. The whole sector has done a great job of educating advertisers and publishers about the benefits of programmatic ad trading and overcoming the most common myths and misconceptions related to RTB. It’s also encouraging to see how vendors are working together to develop industry-wide standards and define APIs that can be used during the media purchasing process. These are the first signs that the market is starting to mature and that adoption will accelerate over the next few months.

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CMO And CIO Uniting As Service Partners Find Their Role Says IBM's Yuchun Lee

Yuchun LeeLast week, IBM released the results of its "State of Marketing 2012" (on Slideshare) survey. The results dovetail with IBM's own technology plans as it relates to marketing and media as the press release revealed: "The new survey of the marketing industry finds that chief marketing officers (CMO) and chief information officers (CIO) must join forces in order to connect with today’s consumer across new channels including mobile devices and social networks. Fully 60 percent of marketers point to their lack of alignment with the company's IT department as the biggest obstacle to reaching today's consumers." Read more.

Yuchun Lee, VP and GM of IBM's Enterprise Marketing Management Group, discussed the fruits of his company's survey and industry trends with AdExchanger.

Click below or scroll for more:

AdExchanger: What is IBM’s CMO/CIO initiative?

YUCHUN LEE:  It is something that's been in the works for over a year within IBM.  In fact, when I joined IBM there was, internally, a CMO initiative being worked on.  But, a couple of weeks ago was the  first time IBM - through our CEO - launched a program to help educate the market and also form a community around the combination of the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Information Officer. They are two key executives who will drive some of the needed transformation in the market going forward.

This is based on a lot of quantitative research and experience in the market where we think that the changing world of marketing and how consumers interact with companies, is forcing companies to make a fundamental shift towards much higher-level customer-centricity which leverages technology.  The CIO role is now more important than ever. A CIO can't stay in the back office anymore. They have to think about their role in the front office.

Likewise, the CMO's role is expanding from an advertising-centric type of job description to one that needs to be a full owner of the brand of the company, which includes teaming up with the CIO to provide what we call “system engagement” to the client. The CMO must be the executive in charge of managing a consistent customer experience and also deal with the impact on the brand from social media, for example.  It's a much broader role for the CMO [these days].  The idea in thesis is around the CMO partnering with the CIO to make that possible

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Pure Play Wins the Day as Forrester Ranks Attribution Vendors

Pure-play firms reign supreme in a new Forrester evaluation of attribution vendors, released this morning.

After ranking eight vendors – a blend of specialized firms and large analytics companies with attribution on the menu – the researcher placed the one-note singers at the front of the choir. All five specialists - Visual iQ, Adometry, ClearSaleing, C3 Metrics, and Convertro - were rated “Leaders” or “Strong Performers” in today’s Wave report. According to analyst Ari Osur, each of these firms stood out for “strong data management, reliable account services, and user friendly interfaces."

Meanwhile the big analytics companies – IBM, Adobe, and Google – are called “less comprehensive and typically rules-based.” Yet despite those limitations, says Forrester, “Due to their inherent data collection and measurement capabilities, they are worth a serious look by marketers with existing relationships.” (Download the report from Visual IQ - pay with some PII.)

A common gripe leveled at attribution solutions is that they are too often used intuitively, thereby turning campaign analytics reports into self-fulfilling prophecies.  For example, if a client happens to believe strongly in in-stream video placements on portal sites, then the agency may assign more influence to those impressions. The result is an artificially closed feedback loop.

The most common version of this is “last click” thinking, which was a big concern for Forrester the last time it evaluated attribution vendors in 2009. Things have changed somewhat, according to Osur. He writes, “'Last click' still survives but we see accelerating momentum to cast it aside and implement interactive attribution to help guide planning and spending decisions.”

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Video Ad RTB Is Poised to Surge -- If Publishers Loosen Grip On Premium Inventory

RTB for VideoWhile it's not surprising that a Forrester report (sign-up required) commissioned by video ad platform SpotXchange suggests that the market for real time bidding for video inventory is starting to take off, the conclusion of the analysts is hardly cheerleading.

The report identifies three things hindering the growth of online video RTB, starting with the lack of consistent technology among major buyers and sellers. Forrester also suggests greater education of non-digital media buyers and sellers about what to expect from online video RTB. Underlying the last point is the sense that there has been some foot-dragging when it comes to publishers, some of whom still regard the acronym as actually meaning "race to the bottom" when it comes to prices for  premium inventory that is mostly sold on a direct basis to agencies and advertisers.

Despite those concerns, there is no doubt that online video -- like display advertising generally -- has started to emerge as a significant segment within the wider RTB universe. Forrester estimates that $387 million will be spent on online video RTB this year, meaning that it will comprise 15.6 percent of U.S. online video spending in 2012. The researcher expects online video to grow to over 20 percent of video ad dollars in 2013 with $667 million in spending.

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Bolstering Digital: GfK North America CEO Krajicek Discusses Acquisiton Of Knowledge Networks

GfKIn December, global market research firm GfK announced the acquisition of digital research firm Knowledge Networks. And late last week, the company announced the acquisition's closing. Read the release.

David Krajicek, CEO of GfK Custom Research North America, discussed the acqusition and its implications.

AdExchanger.com: What would you say were the triggers for GfK’s acquisition of Knowledge Networks?

DK: There were a couple of things. The first was, as in any acquisition, we had some base hurdles that we always look to clear, and one is a real fit into the strategic direction for the company. In Knowledge Networks (KN), we find that nice fit because it continues to drive us into the digital space: in the online assets that they have, the panel assets that are there, the Dimestore element, as well as some additional synergistic relationships in a few key areas around healthcare, the consumer packaged goods area, the government and academic areas. At its foundation, the real focus on quality that we try and deliver to our clients dovetails nicely or complements with KN, along with the push into digital.

What’s GfK’s view on digital and its opportunity?

Increasingly, what we're seeing is the digitization of commerce. General market activity is used to make decisions about purchase and seek out opinion or influence about brands and situations. We continue to see digital channels as important – and not just touch points, but intermediaries that really start to influence consumer behavior and the consumer cycle.

It's absolutely important that we continue to not just engage with consumers but also understand their attitudes in a digital environment. Additionally, we need to understand how those digital channels begin to impact behaviors and have metrics or solutions in place that begin to address that. When I think about digital, I think about it in terms of how it impacts the brand and consumer dialogue. The interaction is an important evaluator such that it can provide strategic direction to brands.  In understanding that, we get a better idea of how media is consumed, how it's used to make decisions and how purchases are actually made.

Digital is a broad word, but it can be made very tangible in our business when we focus on those areas.

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Senior Analyst O'Connell Discusses New Forrester Demand-Side Platform Report

Yesterday, a team of analysts from Forrester Research led by Joanna O'Connell, published a new report, "The Forrester Wave: Demand-Side Platforms, Q4 2011," shining a light on the programmatic buying trend in display advertising, and looking at seven demand-side platforms and their capabilities, in particular. O'Connell begins her team's analysis by stating the challenge for those holding the ad spend: "Today's digital media buyers - whether working in an agency environment or inside a company’s marketing department - face an unprecedented level of complexity in developing, managing, optimizing, and reporting on their media programs." You can currently get a free download of the report on MediaMath's site here.

O'Connell discussed the report with AdExchanger.com.

AdExchanger.com: Can you discuss your methodology a bit for creating this report? Did you talk to clients of the DSPs or do buys yourself, for example?

JO: It’s quite a formal process. We start by screening a very broad set of companies/entities who we think might meet the criteria we consider most important in a DSP (in this case, it was around 3 dozen). All those vendors get a lengthy and detailed survey to fill out. Using that information, we then narrow it down to a handful of companies who we find formally meet our criteria for inclusion in a DSP Wave. In the case of this Wave, we were looking for things like focus on RTB, % of impressions that were display, presence of self serve capabilities, etc (the full list of screening criteria are outlined in the Wave report). At that point, we have our list of Wave participants. Then it becomes a very long process of information gathering, which happens in a number of ways – we send a formal set of questions which all the vendors respond to (these ultimately turn into our scoring criteria), we do briefings and demos with all of them, we do very formal interviews with clients (and in my case, I also sent a follow up survey to gather some quant feedback too). There’s also an extensive fact checking process, where we go back and forth with our Wave vendors to ensure we’ve been factually accurate in our evaluations, etc. One important note here: Google declined to fully participate in the Wave so our process with them was a bit different. We had to treat them as a “non participating vendor” (which you’ll see noted throughout the doc). Rather than using the info gathering methods described above, we had to rely on our own knowledge of their product, as well as gathering some qualitative feedback from DSP customers, and using publicly available information to make our assessment.

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Ad Spend Going Up Globally In 2012 Due To 'Quadrennial Effect' Says ZenithOptimedia

ZenithOptimediaThe research team at agency ZenithOptimedia is predicting 4.7% ad spend growth in 2012 in spite of global, bubbling economic turmoil. In a post on the agency's blog, ZenithOptimedia's Head of Forecasting, Jonathan Barnard, says, "This acceleration in global expenditure is the result of the 'quadrennial' effect and Japan’s recovery from the effects of the earthquake in March. Every four years the quadrennial events – the summer Olympics, the European Football Championship and the US Presidential and other elections – provide a reliable boost to the global ad market." Read it.

Barnard offered his thoughts on the research in an interview with AdExchanger.com.

AdExchanger.com: What leads you to believe that "Advertisers to invest cash reserves to win market share and stimulate consumer demand"? I thought economic uncertainties would leave them less willing to spend, and stay "in cash"?

JB: Many studies have shown that, on average, advertisers who maintain or increase their marketing expenditure in a downturn, increase their market share into their recovery, while advertisers who reduce their expenditure lose market share. This is often ignored, partly because advertisers need to spend less on something to make their payroll or other vital expenditure payments. That's not so relevant now, after advertisers have built up their cash reserves since the last downturn - S&P 500 companies have increased their cash and short-term investment holdings by 60% over the last three years.

What role does "brand" play when emerging from a downturn versus going into one?

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