SOCi, a platform that helps national brands manage their marketing locally, closed its $80 million Series D on Thursday with an eye on growth.
The round, led by JMI Equity with participation from existing investor Ankona Capital, brings the company’s total funding to just over $137 million since 2014. Afif Khoury, SOCi’s CEO and cofounder, and Doug Winter, CEO and cofounder of sales enablement platform Seismic, also contributed.
Most of the money will go towards new product development, sales marketing and strategic M&A. SOCi’s plan is to increase headcount which stands at 200, by around 30% to 40% this year.
According to Khoury, demand has been up during the pandemic as national brands increasingly rely on local search to reach their customers with information on product availability, hours of operations, whether or not certain locations are open for business and other fluctuating logistical tidbits.
SOCi signed up around 100 new brand customers in 2020, including Hertz, Anytime Fitness and Ace Hardware.
Continue reading »
Over half (52%) of marketers say that they use Salesforce or Microsoft as their customer data platform, according to the most recent Advertiser Perceptions report on the CDP market.
Clear evidence that the marketing clouds are dominating the CDP category … right?
Here are a few grains of salt. For one, when Advertiser Perceptions conducted its research in Q3 of last year, Salesforce had yet to make its CDP generally available. That didn’t happen until October. Before then, advertisers just thought they were using it because Salesforce spent well over a year ballyhooing the arrival of its forthcoming CDP offering.
On top of that, the nomenclature that Salesforce and Microsoft use for their respective CDPs – Customer 360 Audiences and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, respectively – is so similar that it’s entirely possible advertisers conflated the two products when they were asked about them.
It’s a great example of the problem that’s been dogging CDPs since the start: ongoing category confusion.
“Part of it has to do with the fact that this is a nascent market,” said Stu Schneiderman, SVP of business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions. “But it’s also because independent CDPs just haven’t done enough marketing and education.”
Continue reading »
Mattress startup Purple doesn’t run unskippable video ads.
“If someone’s on YouTube and ready to watch a video of their choosing, but you’re forcing them watch 30 seconds of ads first – that’s a brand imposing their will on the viewer,” said Rob Towne, director of performance marketing at Purple Mattress.
“As a brand, we choose to let customers decide for themselves,” he said.
One way to do that is to make the video experience fully opt in, which makes that engagement more valuable for both the viewer and the brand.
“If you give consumers autonomy to interact with an ad on their terms, it leads to better outcomes rather than us dictating what their next behavior needs to be,” Towne said.
Towne spoke with AdExchanger.
Continue reading »
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Time To Reassess
Marketers were hawkeyed in the lead-up to Inauguration Day on Wednesday, ready to pause, tweak or block ads from appearing against problematic content should things have gone sideways, Digiday reports. While some marketers said they planned to stick to blunt tactics, such as blocking ads from news sites entirely, many are turning to more nuanced strategies so that their dollars can continue to support quality journalism. Even so, there will always be those marketers whose first response in any crisis is to steer ads clear of all news. It happened when rioters stormed the Capitol building in Washington D.C. earlier this month. [Related in AdExchanger: “Brand Safety Shouldn't Be Reactionary – Advertisers Need To Do Better”]. Often, however, kneejerk brand safety reactions are mainly precautionary pauses and ads return to the sites they abandoned within 48 hours or so. Ahead of President Biden’s inauguration, media agencies advised clients not to rely on keywords lists and instead to “take a more considered approach to where they invest in media to protect their brands,” Joshua Lowcock, global brand safety officer at Universal McCann, told Digiday.
Local Youth
Local news is gaining popularity among Gen Z and millennial readers. They’re flocking to local news stations, according to data from Nielsen, Variety reports. The trend is fueled by their hunger to make sense of current events, from the pandemic to the Black Lives Matter movement to the riot on Capitol Hill. Nielsen found that growth by age for news has skyrocketed by as much 100% among 18 to to 24-year-olds, and viewing behavior among young audiences surged by as much as 100% for local news following the Capitol siege. National news broadcasters also enjoyed a 50% uptick among this young demographic so coveted by marketers. “What we’ve seen during the crisis is that local news is the star: even younger audiences of 12 to 17-year-olds are up by 30%,” said Catherine Herkovic, executive VP and managing director of local TV at Nielsen. “News is the bread and butter for local TV – so the fact younger audiences are watching more news now is an incredible opportunity.” The data vindicates broadcasters who have made moves to launch their own Gen Z and millennial-focused local news stations, such as NBC’s over-the-air and digital brand LXTV.
Continue reading »
Industry Preview is a special, limited-run audio series featuring interviews with key leaders in marketing, media and technology who share their predictions and key priorities for 2021. This podcast is sponsored by IBM Watson Advertising.
Brands have long been sold the vision that artificial intelligence will one day supercharge their marketing plans, but results have been mixed.
In this episode, Bob Lord, IBM’s SVP of cognitive applications, assesses AI’s progress in areas such as audience modeling and campaign optimization, and articulates some future opportunities related to first-party data management, creativity and privacy.
In the case of privacy, AI is often invoked as a bogeyman by people fearful of its misuse. Think facial recognition and mortgage approvals. But Lord argues that, to the contrary, the technology has a role to play in countering these risks. As new laws and browser policies multiply, he says, artificial intelligence can help organizations stay compliant with permissions across large and overlapping data sets and by flagging noncompliant uses that may otherwise be overlooked.
“If you’re a big enterprise client you have information on your customers that you want to guard well,” Lord says. “AI can help you make sense of massive data and protect consumer privacy at the same time. We need to learn how to make large amounts of data accessible, useful and productive in a post-cookie world."
Despite falling short of earnings-per-share estimates in Q4 2020, Netflix’s stock popped Tuesday after beating on revenue and the news that it’s nearing free cash flow profitability.
Netflix also reached a new milestone in 2020 with the addition of 37 million net new subscribers. Netflix now has more than 200 million subs worldwide.
But Netflix viewing still only accounts for a small share of paid TV penetration in most markets around the world and a small but growing share of overall viewing time.
Netflix represents less than 10% of television viewing time even in the US, its most penetrated market, said co-CEO Reed Hastings during the company’s Q4 2020 report on Tuesday.
“We’ve got a lot of subscribers here in the US, but we still have a lot more viewing time that we would like to earn,” Hastings said.
Earning eyeballs is essential as competitive streaming services roll off the conveyor belt and snap up subs.
Continue reading »
In December 2020, Get Maine Lobster sold more lobsters in three weeks than it did in the entirety of 2019. And all this year, it’s often selling more lobster than Maine fisherman can catch.
The decade-old lobster-by-mail business experienced hockey-stick growth because CEO Mark Murrell took a big risk last March. As millions of Americans sheltered in place, business picked up. So Murrell decided to “pour gasoline on the fire” and spend money on advertising like never before.
“My directive to the agency was, ‘Here are the rules. As long as you can stick with the rules, you have no limit in how much you can spend,’” Murrell said.
The decision broke with tradition.
Until last year, the company was parsimonious with its marketing dollars, spending a little around holidays on Facebook and Google. It also used email marketing and worked with third-party sellers like Groupon and Gilt.
But like other direct-to-consumer companies, Get Maine Lobster had been investing in its data. Going into 2020, it already knew its customer acquisition cost (CAC) and long-term value (LTV) down to a tee.
So as long as its agency kept at or below the customer acquisition cost it needed to break even, Murrell allowed the agency to spend as much as it could.
Continue reading »
“The Sell Sider" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
Today’s column is written by Paul Roberts, founder and interim CEO of Kubient.
Ads.txt was an ambitious initiative spearheaded by the IAB to clean up the digital ad supply chain and help publishers list the platforms allowed to sell their inventory. Yet, it has failed to bring transparency to the industry.
Launched nearly four years ago, Ads.txt set out to combat fraud, detect hidden fees and deter ad resellers. Since being introduced, it’s estimated that 45% of the top 1,000 domains have adopted Ads.txt.
Despite the initial excitement and consistent use, it’s hard to find proof points for Ads.txt’s success or to validate its claims that it has made “significant in-roads.” In fact, Ads.txt hasn’t just plateaued - in 2019, adoption by the top 1,000 sites was declining, according to Pixalate’s Advertising Trends Report.
Behind closed doors, publishers are venting their frustration, upset that the watershed moment they’d hoped for, when they’d finally see their inventory used transparently, never came. Instead ad fraud costs continue rising.
Continue reading »
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Stop The Spread
Misinformation isn’t a virus – but it can spread like one. Election fraud paranoia, hate speech and online conspiracy theories were all roiling in the overheated atmosphere that contributed to the Jan. 6 siege of the US Capitol. And advertisers don’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole attached to a second 10-foot pole. Shareholders in Home Depot and holdco Omnicom have filed resolutions asking the companies to investigate whether their ad dollars helped fuel hate online, and whether their advertising policies “contribute to the spread of hate speech, disinformation, white supremacist activity or voter suppression efforts,” according to The New York Times. The effort was organized by Open MIC, an organization that uses shareholder engagement to promote causes such as diversity and privacy. “The ad buyers and the big ad agencies are typically behind the scenes, and yet they have an enormous amount of influence on what happens in the media environment, particularly on social media,” Michael Connor, executive director of Open MIC, told The Wall Street Journal. The resolutions were filed in November but weren’t made public until this week.
Simpli M&A
Omnichannel DSP Simpli.fi has acquired The Advantage Software Company, a provider of enterprise-level software for advertising agencies and marketing companies. Read the release. The rationale is to help drive Simpli.fi’s vision of delivering more integrated omnichannel workflows that help ad buyers be more effective and efficient across planning, buying, tracking, accounting and reconciliation. Automating buying processes for both digital and traditional media is key as consumers shift more and more of their viewing to CTV, which CEO Frost Prioleau says is the fastest-growing medium on Simpli.fi’s platform. The combined company will serve over 1,000 agencies and media buying organizations with a headcount of nearly 400 employees. The deal was valued at more than $100 million, according to Adweek.
Continue reading »
Soon-to-be-president Joe Biden has a full plate, from ramping up COVID-19 vaccine distribution and dealing with the economy to addressing the stark polarization of the Trump years.
So, don’t expect much movement on privacy and consumer protection during the first 100 days.
But both are top priorities for the incoming administration. And there’s appetite for action on both sides of the aisle and in the mainstream.
“Big tech has fallen out of favor with politicians and the masses due to the political climate,” said Bryan Karas, CEO and founder of performance agency Playbook Media. “Any issue that diminishes their power in the name of returning it to individuals is seen as favorable.”
Chess pieces in place
Data privacy legislation is one of the few areas where there’s actually bipartisan support, said Charles Farina, head of innovation at Google services partner Adswerve.
Continue reading »
