How Xaxis Has Changed; Data-Driven Marketing (The Book)

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

Clear Your Desk

The buy-side push for ad tech transparency has changed Xaxis, the GroupM trading desk with a black box ad-buying model. The business has made some concessions, like offering self-service products and disclosing its margins, reports Digiday. Xaxis has also embraced outcome-based deals as a way to tie its buys to business results that satisfy an attribution algorithm without exposing its secret sauce. And while the United States and Europe have slowed in light of changing buying models in those markets, emerging markets like China and India have propelled overall growth for Xaxis, says CEO Nicolas Bidon. “We’re a billion dollar business growing at a double-digit rate, so I’d be hard-pressed to say the agency trading desk model is dead. It does, however, need to evolve.” More.

By The Book

Salesforce Marketing Cloud exec Chris O’Hara spoke with Adweek about his book “Data-Driven,” co-authored with Krux founders Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya. He describes how senior marketers are still fighting to overcome fear, uncertainty and doubt in their data strategies. “Some marketers think they have way more data than they actually have, and others think they don’t have a lot of data but actually do,” he says. From the consumer point of view, O’Hara argues the archetypal “shoe ad that follows you everywhere” may soon be a thing of the past. “There’s a good opportunity to be smarter about using data to determine if someone already bought something, and the ability to stop wasting a lot of money marketing to somebody who’s already bought the thing you’re trying to get them to buy.” Read the interview.

Movie Meme Marketing Magic

“Bird Box,” the Netflix original movie that drew in 45 million accounts over the holidays, demonstrates the power of memes in the movie marketing playbook. Above-the-fold, auto-play previews on the Netflix home page definitely helped boost the thriller. But the flood of memes on social media hooked viewers as well. “I feel like I’m being conned into watching it by some unseen force that’s funneling ‘Bird Box’ memes onto my timeline,” one viewer tells The Ringer. “I figured that I just about got the gist of the joke, visual memes are largely self-explanatory,” said another. “But there was just so many of them, and they seemed so versatile, so I ultimately decided to watch the movie to make sure I wasn’t missing any nuance.” More.

But Wait, There’s More!