Not a news flash: Media agencies are under immense pressure.
That was true long before the pandemic. But agencies have also made big investments in data and technology over the last few years that are starting to bear fruit.
This week on The Big Story, special guest Jay Pattisall, a principal analyst at Forrester, calls in to dish about Forrester’s most recent wave examining which media agencies are at the top and why.
The agencies that did best had the most centralized offerings, meaning they’ve got their own tools – and they actually know how to use them.
UM, for example, placed first largely because of its data services division, Kinesso, built from the Acxiom acquisition. WPP, on the other hand, was considered a strong performer in the wave but got dinged for its decentralized approach of working with many different platforms.
“Clients are really confused about what agencies do at times, what they offer and what they’re capable of with respect to data and technology,” Pattisall says. “A set of clearly understood and identified tools helps not only clear up some of that confusion with clients, but also helps streamline and simplify the engagement.”
Also in this episode: Think you know what a gamer is? Think again.
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That’s one serious commission.
Retail performance marketing company Connexity has acquired Skimlinks, one of the larger (now formerly) independent affiliate networks.
Terms of the deal, announced on Thursday, were not disclosed. But Connexity is adding the roughly 80-person Skimlinks team, said CEO Sebastien Blanc, who took on the top job in 2018. That brings Connexity's total headcount to about 230.
Blanc realized early on that if Skimlinks wanted to create value for publishers, the company “couldn’t be all things to all people.”
In other words, Skimlinks focused on its publisher relationships while relying on other affiliate marketing or ecommerce companies to aggregate demand deals with retailers.
Connexity has some ecommerce properties of its own, namely Shopzilla and a few price comparison sites, but also brings direct relationships with retailers, Blanc said. Access to those direct deals means Skimlinks can trade on more kinds of ecommerce marketing budgets, instead of only offering affiliate fees.
Cost-per click campaigns are on the table, as well as ecommerce surge advertising, which is when retailers and merchants hold their own promotions or brands lower their profit margin to clear out product.
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Joe Hogan and his wife flew to the far corner of northwest Florida in early March for a long weekend.
They’ve been there ever since.
“If we’re still working from home in a month or two, we’re going to suffer through the heat of the summer here, I’m sure,” said the EVP of sales and marketing at WarnerMedia.
As a long-time TV ad sales executive, working from home is new for Joe. This is the longest period of time he’s spent in his career without traveling to a new city to meet a client.
He’s realizing that work from home involves a lot more work than it sounds like. “Work from home equals more productivity,” he said.
The ad sales team at WarnerMedia is enhancing communication, both internally and with clients, w
ho appreciate the transparency – especially without a typical upfront this year.
“[Clients] need to know what’s going on every day, not just a moment in time,” Joe said.
With sports and live events canceled, March and April were a flurry of shifting and canceling client spend commitments while helping brands reposition their messaging. That has since quieted down.
“We’re seeing a recognition now that social distancing is going to be with us for a while, and brands are creating plans for a new normal,” Joe says. “More … want to learn how to accelerate through this rather than just get through it.”
Creative optimization is one of the most effective tactics that mobile growth marketers can use to boost performance.
But it’s also a pain in the butt.
User acquisition managers must test an enormous amount of creative assets by size, color, copy and placement type before they find those that really work for specific pockets of traffic on certain platforms, often just in time for ad fatigue to set in.
That’s a heavy lift for an in-house team and sucks up a lot of resources, said Vladimir Ilchenko, head of user acquisition at Veraxen, a casual game developer based in Cyprus and Belarus.
To alleviate some of that burden, Veraxen has been testing a tool from mobile demand-side platform Appreciate that automatically generates multiple variations of a developer’s existing ads. The tool, dubbed Creative Wizard, was released on Thursday.
The idea is for the creative process to become automatically iterative, said Rachael Alter, Appreciate’s head of business development.
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You are reading AdExchanger Politics, our news roundup in which senior editor James Hercher tracks the latest developments in political advertising, augmenting our political marketing commentary and news coverage. Want it by email? Sign up here.
In the past couple of months, political media operatives have debated whether the coronavirus pandemic is a relative advantage for President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden.
The usual answer is that President Trump’s reelection campaign is the beneficiary, even if it faces challenges during the pandemic. If mobile communications and digital media are more important factors this year due to COVID-19, then it’s logical that the candidate with a larger online following and advertising operation would benefit.
But new factors are hard to quantify. It remains to be seen if Republicans can shift their historical advantage in turning out voters on Election Day to voting by mail or if Democrats can exploit widespread disapproval of the administration’s coronavirus response when their candidate is stuck inside.
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"On TV And Video" is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.
Today’s column is written by Rob Gabel, founder and CEO at Tubular Labs.
Stuck inside for more than two months now, many of us have looked toward new interests to help occupy the time away from work and/or parenting (however fleeting those moments may be).
Some have turned to baking or cooking, others are discovering new shows and movies. DIY arts and crafts can help occupy children through tough weekends without parks at our disposal. And if you don’t get a workout chasing kids, perhaps you’ve used this time to embrace physical fitness. My wife and I have taken HIIT classes on Facebook and now joke about meeting our “celebrity” trainers.
From a content perspective, one of the quarantine’s biggest winners is the gaming industry. After decades of existence and a fervent social media following that’s boomed in recent years, it appears that video games have finally taken the next step into legitimate community engagement.
Socialization around gaming isn’t new. But socialization as gaming has only recently entered the forefront. Early tries at this, including Second Life, The Sims or even Pokémon Go, only scratched the surface of what gaming socialization could be. In the middle of a pandemic, Fortnite and Animal Crossing, among others, are not just surviving on socialization as a core feature, but thriving as a result of it.
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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
A Short Stint
The average tenure of CMOs in the United States dropped again in 2019, to 41 months from about 43 months in 2018. That’s the lowest number on record since 2009, according to a report from executive search firm Spencer Stuart. The median CMO tenure rose to 30 months from about 28 months in 2018. CMOs tend to have much shorter tenures than CEOs, who averaged 76 months on the job last year and had a median tenure of 53 months. That’s partly because it’s difficult for marketers to prove the effectiveness of their work, and CMOs often aren’t included in broader conversations about company strategy, writes The Wall Street Journal. That situation is being exacerbated by COVID-19, as CMOs are forced to work with smaller marketing teams after layoffs.
Not Maxed Out Yet
AT&T’s WarnerMedia launched HBO Max on Wednesday, bringing together HBO with other media properties such as Turner Networks and Warner Studios. At $15 per month, it’s the most expensive option on the market, not counting Amazon Prime (Netflix follows behind at $13 per month). But there is an ad-supported model in the works for early next year. “We believe the long-term dynamics will be both subscription and advertising supported. If you think about what consumers like, they like choice,” incoming AT&T CEO John Stankey tells CNBC. “You don’t necessarily mind ads, if they’re executed well and they’re relevant.”
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Facebook won’t ever solve its content moderation problems to the satisfaction of all. Not because it’s incapable of doing so, but because free speech is the hottest of hot buttons.
People want Facebook to police itself – and they don’t want Facebook acting as a censor.
It’s an awkward dynamic that was on display at Facebook’s annual (virtual, of course) shareholders meeting on Wednesday.
During the Q&A portion of the meeting, one shareholder asked, “Why do you allow hate speech on your platform? Seems like you should outlaw this.” A few minutes later, another shareholder questioned why Facebook is acting as an arbiter of free speech. “I don’t think you need to be a watchdog – censorship is not your job.”
That’s the dilemma in a nutshell. “Why do you take down so much content in some cases … and why aren’t you taking down more?” said Mark Zuckerberg. “People across society do not agree on the right way to address this.”
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"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
Today’s column is written by Connie Del Bono, programmatic associate director at Croud.
The industry was already contending with changing privacy regulations and the hunt for a cookie alternative when COVID-19 added another array of challenges to campaign planning.
Luckily, the fact that we are no strangers to change in the ad industry is an asset, and while there will always be pressure points associated with planning a campaign, it’s still possible to create something both robust and adaptable.
It’s impossible to predict what's lurking around every corner, but there are a few common pressure points to always be mindful of when planning privacy-compliant campaigns.
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Criteo on Wednesday launched a self-serve ad platform for its retail media network.
The platform connects demand from brands directly to supply from retailers across Criteo’s network, said Geoffroy Martin, EVP and GM of retail media at Criteo. Previously, brands could access Criteo’s retail media supply through a managed service. Criteo works with more than 100 of the world’s top retailers, but declined to share names.
“By opening the platform to be self-serve, we’re increasing the amount of demand that’s going to flow to retailers,” Martin said.
And for brands and agencies, having direct access to the platform lets them target more granular audiences and optimize campaigns on the fly, based on supply chain availability. Access to retail media is especially important as ecommerce surges during the pandemic.
The self-serve component also means buyers no longer have to pay managed services fees. Criteo charges on a transparent SaaS fee and percentage of media spend.
“It allows us transparency for the first time ever to see the cost of the technology vs. the share the retailers are getting,” said David Hutchinson, VP of marketplace and retailer optimization at iProspect.
Criteo’s platform also enables agencies to more granularly measure return on ad spend. Buyers using the platform can buy on a CPM or CPC, depending on campaign objectives, and receive reporting across retailer sites.
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