In an effort to bolster brands’ confidence in the effectiveness of online video advertising, Adap.tv says it can now independently verify the viewability of video ads in real-time. Ostensibly saving agencies real money, the video ad start-up’s new Certified Viewability service promises to block impressions that do not appear to users. “We are able to provide buyers with the most accurate information on data on where and how their ads are being viewed,” said Toby Gabriner, president of Adap.tv. Verifying whether videos are actually being viewed should be a concern for any ad buyer, Gabriner stressed. In fact, a full 31% of ads are never viewed -- either because they appear on a part of the page that is below the fold or because of deceptive or fraudulent practices -- Gabriner said, citing comScore data. Agency heads, for their part, are aware of the viewability issue. “It’s critical for advertisers to not only understand if their video ads are being seen but to also have the ability to verify them independently,” said Mitch Weinstein, SVP of Ad Operations at Universal McCann. Offered within the Adap.tv Platform, Certified Viewability monitors where video ads appear, while verifying the size of the video player and its position relative to the browser viewport. Buyers can specify whether they want to target viewable-only impressions before the first ad request is sent. Adap.tv reported adding more than 200 new customers in 2012, including Vevo and Horizon Media.In terms of video advertising, Adap.tv served about 1 billion videos last October, according to comScore. At the time, that put it behind BrightRoll and its 1.8 billion videos served, along with Google (1.75 bilion), Hulu (1.5 billion), and LiveRail.com (1.2 billion). By eMarketer’s estimates, the overall U.S. online video ad market grew 46% to $2.9 billion last year. This year, the research firm expects advertisers to spend $4.1 billion on video ads in the U.S.
Mobile platform providers have begun to figure out how small, local businesses can benefit from digital marketing. edo interactive, a tech startup combining discounts and bank cards, introduced a pay-per-performance marketplace where businesses monitor the campaign in real-time and only pay when a consumer redeems an offer. The technology and marketplace allows local merchants to target consumers and increase loyalty with offers tailored to customers' shopping habits, serving up discounts on mobile devices. A data analytics engine based on the predictive modeling supports the marketplace, and frequent buyer cards measure and track effectiveness of the campaigns. Merchants also can extend targeted offers to current and prospective customers without installing additional point-of-sale (POS) systems. Bill Baskin, proprietor of Boutique MMM, a small Franklin, Tenn. merchant specializing in handbags and footwear, began offering a 10% discount and enrollment in a rewards program through the platform earlier this week. "We've spent thousands and thousands of dollars through local print and radio media," he said, pointing out that the mobile campaign won't cost a penny until someone buys something. BIA/Kelsey estimates that merchants will soon spend $3.1 billion on local mobile ads in 2014, compared with $2.9 billion for national mobile advertising, up from $2.1 and $2.2, respectively. The national number drove the most market share during the past years but local spending continues to surpass averages. Precise location targeting and flexible business models, similar to edo's platform, maintain a pace to spur adoption. edo supports relationships with more than 140 banks, from Ally to Fifth Third Bank, giving merchants access to about 100 million cardholders. Jeff Fagel, edo VP of marketing, said each person gets between three and five offers from their bank based on specific spending habits and behavior. He said this model also works for banks to build loyalty. "The banks are investing the dollars to drive innovation, loyalty and card use," Fagel said. "They're competing against Google, Groupon and daily deal providers to become the owner of local offers."
Interpublic Group’s Draftfcb is undergoing a major reorganization, with its media operation shifting to sibling organization Mediabrands, the company has confirmed. The move, which comes amid a search for a new CEO, will enable Draftfcb to refocus its practice on core competencies, including creative, strategic planning, data management, CRM and digital. Mediabrands manages most of IPG's media assets, including its two big media shops, UM and Initiative, start-up media agency network BPN, research and negotiation unit Magna Global and various specialty firms. But the media operations of some of IPG’s full-service agencies like Draftfcb and Mullen have remained outside the purview of Mediabrands. Draftfcb has estimated total revenues exceeding $1.1 billion although the media business that is shifting from Draftfcb to Mediabrands amounts to less than $10 million in revenue. Now the Draftfcb media team of about 50 staffers, led by chief media officer Rich Gagnon, will be housed organizationally within Mediabrands. Gagnon, who had reported into Draftfcb, will now report to Shane Ankeney, managing director Initiative U.S. The reorganization is a work in progress. Still to be determined is how the Draftfcb media assignments will be divvied up among the three main media shops: UM, Initiative and BPN. Eventually, the Draftfcb media specialists will migrate to one of those agencies, depending on which client brands they work on. Draftfcb’s media clients include Merck, Boeing, Dow, Amtrak and Microsoft. Initiative already does buying for Merck and is expected to inherit Draftfcb's planning-focused media assignment for that client. Earlier, the two shops had shared the MillerCoors business, although the entire assignment migrated to Initiative last year. The basic idea behind the realignment per executives is to facilitate easier access by Draftfcb media clients to the full portfolio of Mediabrands tools and resources, such as the IPG Media Lab, trading desk Cadreon, Shopper Sciences and other specialty services. The realignment has been ongoing outside the U.S. In a memo to U.S. staffers today, Draftfcb Laurence Boschetto wrote the move would "formalizing our existing alignment between Draftfcb and IPG Mediabrands to further leverage the full power of Mediabrands’ resources for the benefit of shared clients. In effect, that means our media people at Draftfcb will continue to work on our integrated brand teams, but will operationally become part of IPG Mediabrands.” In the same memo, IPG CEO Michael Roth stated: “Since the creation of IPG Mediabrands, we've looked to deliver the benefits of media scale and innovation ... This move is an evolution of that strategy, which will allow the insights and expertise that IPG Mediabrands and Draftfcb bring to clients to be combined into an even more integrated set of offerings and capabilities.”The media realignment is the latest in a series of steps the agency is taking to bolster its offering. Last week, the agency announced that Javier Campopiano had been named chief creative officer at the shop’s New York office. The company confirmed in November that a search was underway to find CEO Boschetto’s successor. This story has been updated.
Maybe it's just that time of year -- post-holidays, post-CES, pre-SXSW -- but I've been thinking a lot about the role gadgets, gizmos and cloud computing are playing in our lives and in our business. Every year the percentage of new products on display that feature some degree of connectivity seems to grow. As advertising executives lay hands on each new gadget, this silent question is begged: “What does this portend for the future of media consumption and how quickly do I need to start worrying about it?” We have been through the year of the smartphone and the year of the tablet. This year, however, I think the most important new force will not be tied to a particular device, but rather to something much more nebulous. I’d dub 2013 the year of the cloud. The cloud is something that will not be prominently on display at trade shows like CES per se -- it’s not something that you can see or touch. Nor is it entirely new. However, the pipes are finally in place for it to begin more meaningfully impacting our lives. Broadband capabilities are now sufficient and ubiquitous enough to make cloud-delivery of content a reality. And it is fueling many of the devices being touted this year -- from transparent wall screens akin more to wallpaper than traditional televisions, to connected washing machines that can tell you if you’re using too much laundry detergent and perhaps, suggest a new brand of fabric softener. The introduction of cloud-technology into our daily lives sets up a bimodality of delivery approaches. On the one hand, you have devices, such as the iPhone, capable of housing incredible amounts of intelligence and content. On the other hand, the cloud is able to hold infinite amounts of intelligence and data. With the cloud, as long as there is a powerful enough Wi-Fi or broadband delivery system in place, the device doesn’t need to be quite as “smart” -- or in some cases, not as physically large. Take, for instance, the aforementioned transparent screen. It’s simply a difference between “local intelligence” sitting on a device, versus “cloud intelligence,” on a satellite hundreds of miles away. That said, the full realization of cloud-technology will change everything -- from the way we consume content to the devices that we consume it on. The promise of the cloud has always been the ability to seamlessly access data wherever and whenever -- across place, time or device. And that promise seems to be coming true. Although we’ve been talking for some time about the increasing ability to access content anytime, anywhere, there are still limitations. For instance, a movie downloaded to a tablet remains housed on that tablet. Or a game accessible via an X-Box is not simultaneously accessible on your computer. Cloud technology removes these remaining barriers, ushering in an era of constant connectivity. What will this mean for the media world? A cloud will benefit consumers, media owners and advertisers in tangible ways. For consumers, cloud-based delivery of news and entertainment content will allow complete flexibility in terms of simultaneous or sequential viewing of content across devices and provide a better user experiences. For media owners, this continuity will allow greater insight into a user’s viewing habits, thus improving the relevancy of programming offered to that viewer. For instance, if you know that a given user prefers to watch headline news in the morning on their tablet, receive stock market quotes or sports updates in the afternoon via smartphone, and view adventure movies in the evening via connected TV you could program accordingly, helping your audience find and enjoy what is most relevant to them. In turn, by building a better offering, media owners will attract more users more often, resulting in greater monetization opportunities. For advertisers, this seamless delivery will help brand marketers and their agencies to finally break down the barriers that prohibit holistic messaging across devices. These media silos exist partly because of operational inconsistencies between various platforms. Ad technology has been working to get around this problem in various ways. The cloud, however, will accelerate and facilitate this process by removing these inconsistencies and delivering seamless data sets across devices, eliminating silos, improving efficiencies and achieving unprecedented total campaign ROI measurement. In short, life in the cloud means that intelligence is no longer tied to a particular device. It can now follow you around the house, into your smart car, and to the corner kiosk. As an analogy, on the moon, you need to carry around a special tank to get enough oxygen. On earth, we’re surrounded by it. With cloud-enabled delivery, our days of space exploration are over, and the era of device-agnostic 1:1 consumer engagement has finally landed.
Real-time bidding has become so entrenched in online media buying that it’s hard to believe this market was nonexistent two years ago. Marketers have utilized the technologies to target consumers who are most likely to convert, serving creative that drives a consumer back to a website to make a purchase. But RTB can do so much more than serve as a line item on a media plan. In a world where the biggest of traditional channels – TV – is becoming increasingly fragmented, RTB has a lot of potential. While TV is still the best choice for building a brand, DVR and video on demand shrink the overall number of consumers who are exposed to ads, forcing advertisers to adjust. The data capabilities of RTB can fill in the gaps for reaching a mass audience with a brand message. The prevalent way RTB is used right now is to target users based on their behaviors on a site, which only leverages part of the available data. Many are not utilizing a combination of behavioral and content data, which gives advertisers a look at the content that users are consuming, in real-time. Scoring impressions based on content makes it very easy to align RTB display with simultaneous TV campaigns. Every execution is different, and there are a number of possibilities. For example, if advertisers run a TV plan that only shows during prime time, Monday through Thursday, RTB allows them to tailor display campaigns to match. So, not only are they targeting across screens during the same time frame, but they can also target those content types. Think of someone who turns to a laptop to check fantasy stats while Monday Night Football goes to commercial. The advertiser hits that consumer, at a greater effective cost. This should shake perceptions that RTB is strictly a DR tactic as well. If you’re running RTB alongside TV, there’s a clear opportunity for brand advertisers to raise awareness. Entertainment advertisers could benefit largely, because their campaign strategies typically involve spending a great deal of money in a short time. If they’re not utilizing RTB in the online portion of the campaign, then they’re either making a direct buy, which limits audience, or they’re using a network to spray ads across several sites and hope they’re hitting an interested audience. An advertiser ipromoting a film through “The Walking Dead” on AMC can utilize RTB to target similar online content channels and make sure they are hitting that audience. Entertainment advertisers typically have a date in mind – opening night, or the season premiere – and these campaigns are worthless if consumers see them two weeks later on their DVR. RTB remedies that. CPG brands could also benefit from RTB. This is a vertical that has to account for the decline of audiences in formats like print and radio, and the slowly shrinking cable subscribers. This may be the golden age of TV, where everyone has an opinion on the big shows, but fewer young consumers are subscribing to cable. The ability to communicate a brand message has to happen online. So what’s preventing brands from doing this right now? It primarily comes down to a lack of education. TV buying hasn’t changed in 20 years, and it’s a fairly easy process. Advertisers produce their spots, execute a buy, and the network pulls that spot and pushes it out on the agreed upon schedule (or run of network). Digital doesn’t go back 20 years, and as I said earlier, RTB barely goes back two. There’s always an educational lag, and an even greater comfort issue among buyers. TV lets brands cast a wide net, but that cost also means the message hits a lot of audience that may or may not be interested. There’s a lot of fat and very little efficiency, but it’s something that advertisers understand. That should get easier as media mix models get more advanced. RTB providers can already access set top box data and marry digital exposures to tune-in. That way, an entertainment advertiser can see if consumers who saw a display impression had any lift on tune-in. Marrying traditional media to RTB is going to become more commonplace in the coming year, as advertisers work harder to have multi-layered campaigns. While they might not totally understand RTB buying, they have to understand that conversations are happening digitally, through the phone, tablet, PC and smart TVs, and they have to have a presence in those arenas.