WPP’s Kinetic unit, the world’s largest buyer of out-of-home media, has begun serving ads to digital, place-based media outlets via a real-time exchange developed by sister shop Spafax Networks. The aptly named “SN: Xchange” also provides real-time reporting of a campaign’s audience delivery and verification.Both shops are units of WPP’s tenthavenue division and Kinetic has already begun serving out-of-home ads in real-time for one big client, commercial insurance marketer Zurich, and other undisclosed brands over the past six months. The campaign for Zurich ran in November and December 2012.From Kinetic’s point-of-view, the major benefit of the exchange is its real-time reporting, according to Kinetic’s U.S. President David Krupp. Previously, he said, out-of-home media buyers have been reliant on “affidavits” from their suppliers as a proof-of-performance. In addition to being more objective, Krupp said the exchange enables Kinetic to verify campaign delivery in real-time, and to resolve discrepancies with suppliers in near-real-time. “For the first time, we can see how a campaign is pacing in real-time -- hourly, daily, weekly -- and can make the necessary changes to ensure that our clients’ campaign requirements are achieved,” he said, adding that the improved efficiency is “giving our planning team some time back.”In the long term, he said he expects to see “creative benefits” as use of the exchange becomes “more sophisticated.”The SN: Xchange, which is powered by digital out-of-home technology developer Vistar Media, includes a “predictive planning tool” enabling digital out-of-home buys to be managed in a way that is similar to online programmatic exchanges. Reach estimates come via Nielsen’s On Location Media reports.Currently, the exchange is available only to clients of Kinetic and Spafax, and the growth of the exchange will depend on how much inventory vendors opt to trade on it. Otherwise, Patrick Bonomo, the executive vice president of Spafax Networks who developed the platform, says it functions just like any digital biddable media exchange.“SN: Xchange responds to ad requests within milliseconds,” he says, adding, however, that the digital out-of-home networks typically ask for ads at a less than real-time pace.“The networks ask for ads as frequently as once an hour to one per day,” Bonomo explains, adding, “It isn't real-time in the true sense because of networks’ bandwidth and Internet connection constraints.”
Analytics company KISSmetrics has finalized the settlement of a class-action lawsuit stemming from its alleged use of "supercookies" to track people online.The company implemented an agreement calling for it to refrain from using eTags, Flash cookies or other types of hard-to-delete supercookies without first notifying users and allowing them to choose whether to accept the technology, according to recent court papers. The company also agreed to pay around $500,000 to the attorneys who brought the case and $2,500 each to the two consumers who sued: John Kim and Dan Schutzman.Late last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Lauren Beeler in San Francisco dismissed the lawsuit based on the representations that the settlement agreement had been carried out. Beeler approved the deal in November, ruling that it was "sufficiently fair, adequate, and reasonable.”Unlike many other recent class-action settlements, the KISSmetrics deal leaves open the possibility that individuals who were tracked by the company can still bring suit.The case dates to 2011, when Kim and Schutzman alleged in a class-action complaint that KISSmetrics violated wiretap laws by using ETags (and other supercookies) for tracking. ETag technology can be used to track people across the Web, even when they try to protect their privacy by deleting traditional HTTP cookies.The lawsuit came soon after researchers at UC Berkeley published a report detailing how KISSmetrics allegedly used ETags to store information in Web users' browser caches. When those users deleted their cookies, they could be recreated with information from the ETags. The only way for users to avoid KISSmetrics' tracking was either by clearing their browser caches between each Web site visit or by installing the AdBlock Plus extension.After the report was published, KISSmetrics stopped using ETags.A separate lawsuit against against the video service Hulu, which allegedly worked with KISSmetrics, is still pending. In that case, Hulu is accused of violating a federal video privacy law that prohibits movie providers from sharing information about the films people watch without their consent.
Self-serve DSP SiteScout has published a guide to real-time bidding (RTB). Called the Knowledge Center, the free reference pages include easily accessible infographics and snappy videos designed to demystify the RTB business for marketers. “We are not an agency and we don't compete with agencies, so we have no need to hoard our knowledge about the media buying process,” says Ratko Vidakovic, director of marketing, SiteScout. “By sharing this information, we enable our advertisers, and marketers from all over, to become better media buyers, especially in the RTB space.” Designed to educate marketers and media buyers new to the RTB field, the guide includes strategies for campaign planning, creation and optimization, as well as tools for conversion tracking, retargeting and contextual targeting, helping marketers understand how to effectively serve ads across multiple platforms. “The main points are already well known within the ad tech industry itself,” says Vidakovic, “but for newcomers from the search world or elsewhere, it takes a while to basically grasp these key takeaways about RTB-based media buying.”
Focus Groups. Testing. Polls. Market Research. It used to be that these terms would send a creative person over the edge. The everpresent argument -- to think that 10 people in a room, who volunteered to be there because they got paid and fed, could represent true consumer behavior toward advertising concepts that we usually not even fully formed -- was maddening. But things changed. The explosion of real-time analytics brings us tangible facts on how consumers actually react to almost anything. And that learning is now used to shape our communication across all advertising channels. Dwindling are the days of subjectivity and pure creative opinion. Enter proof. The inarguable facts of what consumers will and won’t do or buy according to action and not intention. The above may sound like the death of creativity. It may sound like everything is now based only on fact and that Willy Wonka’s coat might need to change from purple to red because consumers pick red coats 3.5% more often. Or that Mickey Mouse should actually be a hamster because consumers resonate 4.03% more with hamsters. Let’s not get crazy. How many times have you read research findings that begin “Surprisingly, ….”? That’s because humans are only predictable to a certain degree of, well, certainty. The way to find the nuances and intricacies in human behavior is to uncover them through testing. True creativity comes with finding a strategically sound hypothesis to test in the face of current learnings. Notice I didn’t say “works in the face of current learnings." While it would be fantastic to have every new idea outperform the previous one, the creative objective should be to exhaust the variables. The job of analytics is to measure and translate those combinations into learning. It’s a co-dependent relationship, yet a healthy one. If you don’t have new hypotheses, you don’t have new analytics and learning stops there. What that means is that creative people have to think harder -- have to look at what is known and find the unexplored territory that still makes sense to the strategy. True creativity is finding freedom within a framework. That is exactly where we are now. There are frameworks of what we know about consumers. What we have to do is find new questions to ask -- new ways to say things that consumers want to hear. This has always been the job of creative -- it just now has more information to use for that process. That’s why it important for creatives to be able to “read” the results. Our creative freedom lies in being able to understand what is defined by current learnings. Then we need to be able to find the soft spots and areas where there are potentially better ways to reach the target or, even different targets. We have to understand which targets are already defined and possibly identify a critical mass of potential new ones who may respond differently (and better) to an alternate concept. There is more fertile ground for creativity. Or you dig a little deeper into the results and realize that although more general consumers pick red coats themselves, that doesn’t mean they want Wonka to alter his wardrobe. You test that even though consumers may have a personal propensity for red coats, they like purple on public characters. Even more, you might only want to be talking to a smaller segment of the group, the “Dreamers”, and they are just fine with purple coats and Oopa Loompas. Variables can also be a key to creativity. The “what ifs…” still exist; we just know the answers to a lot of them now. But keep in mind that changes in external variables can alter human behavior. Things such as the economy, fashion, which party is in office and who our pop icons are all affect consumer behavior. Each time an influential cultural change takes root, a previous concept that did not test well could have its day in the sun. And results that have been true for years may wither. Remember, Ford gave us one of the best quotes for not always following what we know: “If you would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” There is still plenty of room for surprise, delight and magic. It’s up to us to find it. “We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams.” Willy Wonka/Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy.
I remember chatting a while ago with a producer who shot a sitcom pilot of a successful Broadway comedy. The experience left him unsettled. A network executive showed him the graph from an audience test. In some places, the line went sky high, indicating a point that the audience was expressing satisfaction and enjoyment. Good enough. At other places it was low. “We need it to be all up here,” the executive told him, his finger tapping the high point on the graph.” The producer threw up his hands. The high points, he explained to me, were the laugh lines. The lower points were the set up lines. The show never happened. ASI Market Research in North Hollywood has tested television and everything else for more than 50 years; it claims the entertainment testing is a $254 million business, but is also tests for advertisers and political candidates and other. There are legendary stories about horrible test results for shows that turned out to be big hits, and of course, hardly any stories about shows with horrible test results that never get on the air because of it. It’s a big business. The idea of measuring online advertising—figuring out a way to get you to stick around for the pre-roll before the video—has likewise been analyzed. Eye-tracking technology is kind of common, and other theories abound. Earlier this week, I wrote about a company that advises Super Bowl advertisers to produce ads that are, to paraphrase, enjoyable. That would seem to work. There’s an estimate that we saw 11.3 billion online ads last year, and that it’s still growing. Billions are spent on online video advertising, and so no doubt, there is endless research on how it “works.” A recent article on Forbes.com details a study by the Harvard Business School, in which it paid 58 adults to watch a four-minute clip from a sitcom, followed by 28 commercials, 14 of which were expected to get a rise out of the viewers because their content was provocative, and 14 others that were just supposed to be emotional neutral. The results: “As expected, the researchers found that the more attentive viewers were, the less likely they were to skip to the next ad. More importantly, they found definite patterns in the emotional elements that commanded the most attention. In short, evoking surprise proved the most effective way of capturing attention, while evoking joy was best for retaining attention.” The results, in other words, seemed to be pretty much what would be the result if somebody at a bar began a conversation with you, or if were watching a TV show. One wrinkle: The Harvard study says its test subjects seemed to prefer a “surprise element” at the beginning of the online ad, not at the end, which is a typical progression for a commercial with a memorable ending. That current verbal meme, “Wait for it, wait for it” doesn’t work with online ads. Because people won’t wait for it. So you’d better get them while you can, and get them quickly. Forbes.com says, “Video-ad designers also have to extend the opening surprise long enough to provide maximum impact. That’s no easy feat. The data indicated that it’s hard to evoke a feeling of surprise for more than just a second, even for companies known for their marketing genius.” Basically, you should always strive to have that graph line at the top. Even though it’s impossible. pjbednarski@comcast.net