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Craig Jaffe

Member since August 2006Contact Craig

Craig Jaffe is an award-winning published research and analytics strategist. He helps drive sales and audiences for television networks, digital publishers, marketers, and advertising agencies. Craig concurrently teaches digital marketing at three universities.

Articles by Craig All articles by Craig

  • Google Selling Invalid Traffic in MediaDailyNews on 09/29/2015

    Google is beholden to the ad industry and must bear the burden of putting into place processes that attempt to filter and remove invalid traffic. Also, the burden of proof falls primarily onto Google to demonstrate that the ad running on its YouTube channels was exposed to valid traffic.

  • Google, Facebook and Amazon: The New Digital Era Begins Now in MediaDailyNews on 07/01/2015

    We all know digital is a successful business and has been dubbed by some as the most accountable medium for advertising purposes. However, digital has enormous flaws, which has led others to suggest that it is one of the least accountable media.

Comments by Craig All comments by Craig

  • MRC 'Modernizes' 5-Year-Old Invalid Traffic Standards To Account For New Forms Of Ad Fraud by Joe Mandese (MediaDailyNews on 06/25/2020)

    Joe, thank you for your report, but I would like to suggest a correction to your sentence in the fifth paragraph which currently states:"While the guidelines are highly technical, they essentially set an industry standard for determining if and when digital traffic used as the basis for ad impressions is non-human and illegitimate, often because of some devious technology such as spiders, bots or another mechanism is used to fraudulently represent real people."I encourage you to make sure your readers know the phrase "essentially set" should be understood as "set essential industry standards." It's important readers of this article understand the distinction. In this case, the standards are not just good to know concepts. The standards are mandatory protocols for entities who seek accreditation.Let's use your company, Mediapost, as an example. At some point, I imagine you will be interested in learning the metrics associated with the all of the paid advertising campaigns that have run on Mediapost. For example, you will probably want to know how many impressions did the advertising campaigns generate, and so on. The entities you work with who are responsible for collecting, processing, and reporting those metrics are held accountable, meaning that whatever metrics are reported, the responsible entities should have handled the data in the most valid, reliable, and effective manner. If not, then the metrics shared with you and your advertisers are suspect. However, if standards are met, then the metrics shared with you and your advertisers are regarded as being approved by our industry. As you are a business owner, I encourage you to consider the best practice of only working with entities that have passed their respective audits and are accredited.I very much enjoyed your article. Thank you for letting our industry know of these important developments.

  • Obit: Pioneering Media Researcher Gale Metzger, Dead At 83 by Joe Mandese (MediaDailyNews on 03/17/2020)

    I would be hard pressed to think of someone more intelligent and creative in our industry than Mr. Metzger. He and I once discussed, "How do you know if a word is misspelled in the dictionary?" He said, that's the point. To enable anyone in any business to make decisions from data, it's essential to codify definitions, so there are standards which get at the truth--data should not arbitrarily vary depending on the company or the person you're talking to who is conducting the business. That's also why it was important to have had congressional hearings to consider the quality of TV audience, because at that time, some players were not forthright about their methodologies, and subsequently they went out of business. It sounds very much like P&G censuring digital publishers today. Mr. Metzger helped modernize the business of media as we know it, and arguably made it more accountable. Rest in peace.

  • Facebook Not Complying With Political Ad Disclosures, Study Finds 'Dubious' Sources Using Tactics Similar To Russia's by Joe Mandese (Marketing Politics Weekly on 03/06/2020)

    Thank you to the academic researchers at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering. To offer context to the analysis, would it be helpful for the researchers to also note the following marketplace statistics: 1) In 2016 the year of the U.S. Presidential election, Facebook made +528% more money selling ad space on its pages compared to the prior U.S. Presidential election year [see SEC]. 2) According to the Mueller Report, Russia ran thousands on advertisements on Facebook with the intention of influencing the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, with ads that included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisement campaigns [see https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5955997-Muellerreport]. 3) Vladimir Putin, Russia's President, has been called the wealthiest person on the planet [see Fortune, 7/29/2019 “Vladimir Putin Is Reportedly Richer Than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos Combined”]. If Putin decides to authorize or direct advertising campaigns on Facebook supporting Trump again, how difficult would it be to identify the source of those ads? In the most recently reported full year (Jan-Dec 2018), Facebook made approximately $32 billion selling ad space to non-U.S. entities that ran advertisement campaigns on the pages of Facebook, and I imagine it might be difficult to positively identify all the different entities, given the expansiveness of dollars spent. It also seems as if Putin may have resources that could enable him to potentially spend billions of dollars on Facebook. It has elsewhere been reported by intelligence agencies the cracks that allowed Russia to interfere in 2016 have gotten wider since then. I'm interested in learning if there are planned next steps in your analysis. Thank you very much for your work on this subject so far.

  • TV Services Explode: Is Free TV Over? by Steven Rosenbaum (Media Insider on 12/02/2019)

    Thank you very much for the clarification, Steven. It makes me wonder why Netflix felt compelled to originally issue a statement after four days. Why not after the first day, or first week, or first month? Four days seems arbitrary. I could be wrong, but I imagine Netflix's internal data analysts had previously evaluated the performances of some of their other programs, and possibly noticed a meaningful drop-off in viewership four days after the typical Netflix program is placed in its library for consumers to access. While "64 million member households" is certainly better than 40.7 million, the 64 million is based on a much longer period of time (nearly a full quarter), which points to an approximate -90% decline, or attrition rate, in the viewership of this "top" Netflix original program, based on the normal definition of the rating metric used by the industry. If Netflix's top original fare is attriting -90%, I believe they should be concerned, should begin establishing norms, and should change their communications strategy.

  • TV Services Explode: Is Free TV Over? by Steven Rosenbaum (Media Insider on 12/02/2019)

    Hi Steven, it's always prudent to exercise caution when quoting data from other sources. Your article states, "Netflix says 40.7 million accounts had watched 'Stranger Things 3' since its debut July 4." Since your article was published today, I assume you wrote the article yesterday, which means the quote is implying 40.7 million accounts watched that particular Netflix program from July 4th until now (yesterday's date, December 1st). This would be far from an impressive statistic. If we do the calculations based on this period of time, the math suggests Netflix's "top" original achieved a zero rating (rounded) or about 0.09% during this time period, assuming we use the normal definition of the rating metric and assume the best case scenario in which all 40.7 million Netflix accounts watched every episode and every minute of every episode one time. I believe Netflix's original press release suggested 40.7 million accounts watched the program within the first four days of when Netflix made it available in its library for consumers to possibly access. Based on this smaller time frame of four days, the statistic is more impressive, but in the grand scheme of things, it actually isn't dramatically impressive either. Lastly, I would caution against quoting statistics sourced from a business who has a vested interest in those statistics. It is in Netflix's interest to demonstrate to Wall Street (its investors) and advertisers (due to product placement in Netflix programming) that it has high numbers. Media companies are not the authoritative source on how they themselves perform. For example, if you want to know how many people watch CBS, you don't get that information from CBS; if you want to know how many people use Facebook, you don't get that information from Facebook; if you want to know how many people read the NYTimes, you don't get that information from the NYTimes; etc. To prove this point, I once joked to my students I would let them grade their own midterm exams. This got a big laugh, because the students are not the authoritative source on the correct information; it would also be a conflict of interest as the students have a vested interest in how they perform; and I would never allow this. If Netflix wants to quote numbers, that's fine. But I would suggest you also use another source that is an objective, third-party, non-biased, independent source that has its data collection techniques audited to assure all businesses that will be using the resultant data, that the data is valid and reliable.

  • Evaluating TV's Enhanced Role In A Full-Funnel Environment by Artie Bulgrin (MediaDailyNews on 11/18/2019)

    Thank you for sharing the insights, Artie. If it's okay with you, I was wondering how many observations where included in your controlled lab studies. Is it possible significant differences weren't found possibly due to studying a small number of observations? I was also wondering if findings may be different in real-world scenarios, vis-a-vis the lab scenarios. Lastly, to what extent did the studies take into account buffering in the digital environment that may not exist in the TV environment? While there may be a lag time in running addressable commercials in TV, I'm not sure how that compares to targeted ads in digital, because the lag will depend on the tech, and buffering/load time of commercials will affect whether or not a percentage of viewers will tune out during the ad or even end the session/channel switch before the commercial has a chance to initiate. Thank you very much. One final point--I was wondering to what extent non-targeted ads in your experiments were successful at targeting. Even though they are not designed to target in the same manner, they still have a degree of success targeting the consumer segment. Look forward to hearing from you.

  • Netflix CEO: Viewing Time, Not Subscriber Counts, Will Determine Streaming Wars' Winners by Karlene Lukovitz (Digital News Daily on 11/07/2019)

    A few years ago, Netflix's library (quietly) shrank by 32%. Something to consider for those of us who model viewing/usage behavior.With that said, I think there was some poetic license in this article (and the related CNBC online post as well) which indicated that Reed Hastings said "total viewing time" was a better way of understanding which services customers preferred. I listened to the whole Hastings interview with the New York Times, and he didn't say anything about "total viewing time." I'm glad to discover that, because "total" (while sometimes analyzed) is not generally how our industry evaluates time spent with media, especially when comparing discrete viewing sources, such as media distributors (i.e. Netflix vs CBS vs YouTube, etc). There is merit to analyzing "total," but during those exercises, how we define viewing time becomes critical to assure we are making a fair apples-to-apples comparison. Hope you agree.

  • Facebook Tries To Justify Running False Political Ads by Gavin O'Malley (Digital News Daily on 10/14/2019)

    Thank you for the article.It may be important to remember several things: 1) In 2016 the year of the U.S. Presidential election, Facebook made +528% more money selling ads on its pages compared to 2012, which was the year of the prior U.S. Presidential election.2) According to the Mueller Report, Russia bought over 3,500 Facebook advertisements before/during/after the 2016 Presidential election which included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisements [Buzzfeed, 4/18/2019] documented evidence illustrating Russia’s interest in influencing the U.S. election.3) Vladimir Putin, Russia's President, has been called the wealthiest person on the planet [Fortune, 7/29/2019 “Vladimir Putin Is Reportedly Richer Than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos Combined”].What if Putin decided to flood Facebook with billions of dollars’ worth of ads supporting Trump, either paid for by Putin himself, the Russian government, or shadow companies, so it cannot be easily determined who paid for the ads?Perhaps this scenario goes beyond the original scope of this article, but it presents us with another potential problem: a foreign government having the ability to easily interfere in U.S. elections through social media. It has been reported the cracks that allowed Russia to interfere in 2016 have gotten wider since then.I'm interested if you believe this is a potential (related) problem worth reporting too. Thank you very much.

  • Who Wins And Loses When 9 Trillion Linear TV Ads Disappear? by Dave Morgan (Media Insider on 08/09/2018)

    Dave, your statement that streaming video-on-demand services are used by 2/3 of households sounds like it may be a penetration number, and not a number based on actual viewership. If that's the case, then it may not be appropriate to compare this with the other Nielsen data you collected for linear TV which you say is down.

  • TV Has An Attribution Problem by Dave Morgan (Media Insider on 02/22/2018)

    I enjoyed your write-up, Dave. If household-level sales attribution is becoming table stakes, are you sure it will be so for "all media campaigns and channels"? That seems bullish as not many things in life are 100% of anything. I imagine this may be more relevant for some categories and less for others. If this is so, who do you believe will most likely demand attribution as table stakes and what would be your estimate of the dollar value? All my best, Craig

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