ZenithOptimedia Group is refreshing its marketplace branding with the new addition of a “Live ROI” tagline to underscore the shop’s real-time ROI accounting capabilities. The Publicis Groupe-owned media agency network is also sprucing up its logo and redesigning the logos of its specialty units to present a uniform corporate look. The agency network, comprised of media shops Zenith and Optimedia along with several specialty operations, has been positioned as “The ROI Agency” for the last decade. That overarching descriptor will remain in place. The Live ROI branding is designed to help the shop promote its digital proficiency through new measurement offerings, such as “Socialtools,” a proprietary software application that tracks the performance of brand pages in Facebook via live dashboards. They display various trends, such as the number of fans, likes, comments and engagement rate for each brand page, as well as competitive comparisons across multiple brand pages. The shop has also launched Adforecast.com, an online database of historical and future global advertising spend based on the ad spend data that ZO forecasters have been collecting and distilling for years. The forecasts are closely watched industry snapshots of the state of global advertising spending. “Consumers increasingly live their lives in a digital world in which traditional ROI techniques no longer deliver everything our clients need,” stated Steve King, ZO’s global CEO. “Live ROI does. It takes ROI to the next level and ensures a real-time approach that identifies how and where budgets can be invested to deliver the best returns.” As part of the makeover, ZO has just rolled out a new uniform corporate look across its 250 offices worldwide, encompassing all ZenithOptimedia Group companies, including branded entertainment shop Newcast, search unit Performics, digital agency Moxie, strategic marketing consultant Ninah, and sponsorship firm Sponsorship Intelligence. Zenith Media is also dropping the Media from its name and will be known simply as Zenith, the firm said. The ZO logo has been tweaked slightly and the logos of all the ZO companies have been redesigned and use the same type as the parent company to “create a clear brand relationship," the shop stated. The individual units use additional colors and symbols to distinguish their sub-brands.
Iconic fashion retailer Ralph Lauren has put its digital media agency assignment into review, according to sources. The incumbent is Razorfish, a unit of Publicis Groupe. Among other responsibilities, Razorfish has handled the company’s search activities and advised the client on its overall digital strategy. According to Kantar Media, the company spent just over $4 million on Internet advertising last year, out of a total advertising budget of a little more than $60 million. But the company is also spending money on newer forms of digital. For example, to make a splash during last September’s Fashion Week in New York, the company bought all the space in The New York Times’ iPad for the entire month. It created Web sites that allow customers to create one-of-a-kind designs and has been on the cutting edge of in-store advertising with interactive window displays. Earlier this year at the National Retail Foundation’s annual conference, David Lauren, the company’s executive vice president, advertising and marketing (and Ralph's son) emphasized the importance of digital in the company’s marketing mix. “We fuse art, fashion and technology,” he told attendees. “It’s about finding the right technology to help you tell the story.” The company does not break out total online sales, but recently reported that through the first nine months of its current fiscal year, online sales were up nearly 30%. When asked for details of the review, a rep at Ralph Lauren said the company does not comment on “any specifics as it pertains to our relationships with outside agencies.”
Journatic, which creates hyper-local content for online publishers and advertisers, has received a strategic investment from the Tribune Co., effectively merging Journatic with Tribune’s TribLocal division, which publishes a network of community Web sites and print editions. Journatic will take over the production of TribLocal, in essence allowing Tribune to outsource some local editorial content. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Journatic’s local content platform focuses on “people,” “places” and “events,” guided by intensive research into local markets to determine the interests of the local audience. Journatic also produces sponsored local content as a means for small and mid-sized businesses to connect with their audiences. The Chicago-based company is already working for Hearst, and produces the entire real estate section of the San Francisco Chronicle, according to the Chicago Tribune report on Monday. Journatic is owned by the same company that owns Blockshopper.com. Most of TribLocal’s 40 employees will lose their jobs, also per the Chicago Tribune, although 11 out of 18 reporters on staff will be reassigned to the Tribune’s suburban bureaus. With Journatic in charge, TribLocal will continue publishing some 90 local Web sites and 22 community papers, with more reporting on subjects like real estate transactions, property tax logs, new business applications, crime blotter news, prep scores, test scores from schools, and local sports, per the Chicago newspaper. While a number of big newspaper publishers have experimented with hyper-local online content strategies, some of these initiatives have failed to gain traction or proved prohibitively costly. In July 2011, Gannett shuttered the company's 17 hyper-local news sites in New Jersey, which operated under the umbrella InJersey.com site.
With the backing of some prominent media venture capital firms, NimbleTV is looking to start as a subscription TV service. It intends to bring all cable, satellite, and telco-delivered networks to any device. Greycroft Partners and Tribeca Venture Partners are investors, as well as media firm Tribune Co., which Nimble contends is not a competitor and working within the law. NimbleTV is based on a simple idea: "Customers should be able to access the TV they pay for wherever they happen to be," said Anand Subramanian, CEO of NimbleTV. Nimble, a cloud-based service, is looking to speed up the slow-moving process of making all TV networks available digitally. Company executives are pushing cable TV and other operators efforts for "TV Everywhere" -- allowing their consumers to access all their traditional TV channels from a digital video device. Under its plan, consumers still pay their cable, satellite or telco subscribers. There is is a fee to Nimble, according to The New York Times, of around $20 for set-up and management services. Nimble says it merely acts as a "payment service." Subramanian says his Nimble complies with all laws about the distribution of TV networks, stating: “Today, the groundbreaking technology behind our service makes ‘TV everywhere’ a reality -- with more options, high-quality viewing on any device, watchable from anywhere.” NimbleTV will begin by running a test run in New York City, limited to 26 networks. Nimble says no box or equipment is needed for its service.
Mobile and place-based media are being fused with the acquisition of Adcentricity, which aggregates digital out-of-home networks, by Bee Media, which operates a mobile shopping platform. Under the terms of the agreement, Bee Media will assume Adcentricity’s name and operate as Adcentricity under the continuing leadership of Bee Media CEO Doug Woolridge. Former Adcentricity CEO Rob Gorrie will stay on with the company as a senior strategic advisor. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. As the deal was announced, Adcentricity unveiled two new products to help marketers reach consumers via combined mobile and digital out-of-home campaigns. The first, ADMobile, is a platform for location-based mobile shopping, including mobile interfaces, shopping tools, location services, mobile payment, content management, analytics and reporting. The second, an expanded version of the company’s ADFormat offering, is an automated content generation tool that allows advertisers to create campaigns with video, copy, images and graphics for distribution across multiple screens, including DOOH and mobile. Adcentricity will also continue to offer its portfolio of DOOH and in-store planning and buying services, which include ad production and formatting capabilities, as well as planning, executing and reporting across multiple DOOH networks. Data from various sources, including Nielsen, Environics, Polk, Simmons, PMB and BBM, is integrated into campaign planning to allow marketers to target specific audiences. Gorrie stated the company can now "target and distribute addressable content across every digital channel with a location attached to it."
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings hammered home Monday that the company believes it is squarely in the TV business, saying that increased competition for exclusive content is “a natural outcome of us becoming a network like other cable networks." He also used the term “Internet television” to describe the company, which finished the January-March quarter with 23.4 million streaming subscribers in the U.S., following 1.7 net additions in the quarter. The company predicts it will end the year at close to 29 million streaming customers in the U.S., which would be equal to about 30% of homes that pay for TV service. Netflix is moving to acquire exclusive rights to TV shows that have run elsewhere -- such as AMC’s “Breaking Bad” -- while launching content it produces itself, such as “Lilyhammer,” which came online in the first quarter. On an earnings call, Hastings said “Lilyhammer” consumption has not proved to be “hugely significant,” but as the company adds more of its homegrown content, it expects that portion of its offerings to make up a “nice percentage of our total viewing.” Hastings did say that “Lilyhammer” has had a level of success similar to “Breaking Bad” in “cost-to-viewing ratio.” In a letter to investors, Netflix made a subtle pitch to networks to make more content available to it, positing that airing past seasons of a show on its platform can help boost ratings. It noted the significant increase in ratings for the recent season five debut of “Mad Men” after the first four seasons became available since last summer. Furthermore, it said, the most-watched “Mad Men” episode on its service on a given day is the series debut. “This means we are still growing the fan base for this show nearly six years after it first premiered on television,” the company said. Netflix noted that it watches competitors Hulu and Amazon Prime, but believes its most significant competition over the long term comes from the TV Everywhere-type offerings of cable/satellite/telco TV operators. In the short term, these “steps to evolve to Internet TV networks” should be a manageable threat. “Given the superiority of our content selection, user interfaces and device ubiquity, we don’t currently see any meaningful near-term impact on our business from these developments,” Netflix said.
Rolling into the final weeks of the season -– and right before the big May finales are set to commence -- Sunday nights continue to yield underwhelming results. All networks continue to average under the 2-rating-point threshold for the key advertising viewing group, 18-34 viewers. The top networks were CBS and ABC, tied at a Nielsen preliminary 1.9 rating /5 share among 18-49 viewers. ABC was up from a 1.3/3 the week before, and CBS had a 1.8/5. ABC gained from the return of its big rookie fantasy/drama -- “Once Upon A Time,” which posted the top rating for any broadcast Sunday night of a 2.9/8. “Time” was up one-tenth from the last time the show aired an original episode. Running opposite “Time” at 8 p.m. was CBS’ “Amazing Race” at a 2.5/7 -- down one-tenth of a rating point from the week before –- and the second-highest-rated TV show of the night. NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice” scored a still-solid 2.0/5, down from a 2.2 the week before. NBC earned a 1.5/4 for the night overall, down from a 1.6/5 the previous week. Fox landed with a 1.7/5 on the night overall -– the same number the week before. At 8 p.m. Fox ran its “Fox 25th Anniversary Special” for two hours, which posted a 1.8/5. Earlier in the night, and keeping with its historical perspective as a night, it ran the original pilots of “Married… With Children” followed by the first episode of “The Simpsons.” The 10 p.m. time slot is already tough on broadcast networks for most of the week, all due to time-shifting. It gets harder on Sunday night, when a lot of original, touted cable fare is run. CBS’ new rookie show, “NYC 22” scored a low-ish 1.4/4, losing one-tenth of a rating point versus the week before. Univision was at a 1.0/3 for the night, posting the same numbers as the week before.