AudienceXpress, a TV audience-buying platform, has partnered with TubeMogul, a programmatic ad platform for digital video. The partnership will allow advertisers using TubeMogul to buy TV inventory in addition to digital video. AudienceXpress’ inventory comes from over 80 “ad insertable cable networks,” per a release. According to the release, TubeMogul is the first buy-side platform to tap into AudienceXpress. The partnership has been beta-tested since June 2014. "Programmatic TV is now a reality,” stated Keith Eadie, chief marketing officer at TubeMogul. “The brands and agencies we work with will be thrilled to have the same accountability and insight over their television purchases that they already enjoy for digital video campaigns.” Programmatic TV remains well behind digital video in terms of adoption and application, but some media buyers are already using the tech for TV buys. A recent study from AOL says that 8% of ad buyers are currently using programmatic to buy TV, with 12% saying they plan to increase their use of programmatic TV in the coming months.
IgnitionOne announced Monday the acquisition of Human Demand to strengthen its position in mobile marketing and advertising, and audience and tracking services. The technology will integrate into IgnitionOne's Digital Marketing Suite (DMS), adding services like mobile display advertising and cross-device tracking. The technology gives brands deeper reach into mobile audiences and users of mobile apps across display, video and rich media. It also adds features in cross-device tracking to support cross-channel attribution and user data. The most important change this acquisition brings IgnitionOne, its clients, and the industry is in automation. It supports improvements in mobile ad targeting through an integrated platform supported by accurate data. Brand marketers look for companies that can give them more from less -- meaning better integrated services from fewer vendors and partners. "They want this because they are not systems integrators," IgnitionOne CEO Will Margiloff explains. "Marketers want data from various media, Web site and CRM channels to work in concert with each other, automatically. We solve that monster problem." Along with Human Demand's 65 billion monthly mobile real-time bidding requests, IgnitionOne acquires the partnerships with major mobile ad exchanges, third-party data providers and access to thousands of mobile publishers. Tag an index for brand safety of more than 2 million apps onto that list. The Human Demand acquisition also increases IgnitionOne's programmatic inventory to include mobile-specific partners such as MoPub, Nexage, Smaato, and more, Margiloff said. The technology significantly increases the company's targeting and modeling capabilities in programmatic to include location-based targeting as well as app audience data. Programmatic buying has been a major part of IgnitionOne's strategy for years, even before the industry referred to audience-automated buying as programmatic. The company built a programmatic display module in its DMS. DMS, a digital marketing hub centralizing the ability to buy, manage and optimize digital media across search, display, social and mobile, offers a programmatic audience targeting service in the U.S. through its demand side platform (DSP) module, but Netmining also will benefit from this acquisition by expanding mobile advertising and targeting capabilities. Human Demand CEO Howie Schwartz also joins IgnitionOne based from the company's New York headquarters, along with his team. Margiloff said the integrated teams will work quickly to integrate Human Demand's technology into IgnitionOne's DMS to build out the company's vision of simplifying marketing, centralizing data and providing the industry with the most complete and integrated technology solution.
AnyClip Media, a programmatic video ad platform, has brought on Alex Liverant, former co-founder and chief technology officer of DoubleVerify, as its new CTO. “We are excited to welcome Alex to our senior management team," stated Oren Nauman, CEO of AnyClip. "With the market changing at such a rapid pace it is vital to develop technology that protects both content and advertising brands." The addition of Liverant helps AnyClip pitch itself as an ad platform that puts fraud at the forefront, given Liverant’s background at DoubleVerify. Per a release, having tech in place for "brand safety" is one of Liverant’s three main responsibilities. “The AnyClip network plays video to over 50 million unique users each month,” claimed Liverant in an earlier statement. “Understanding this interaction and how video content and advertising is consumed is both a huge challenge and a fascinating new field for me to enter into. This, combined with the challenge of building a safe, engaging environment for advertisers and content owners alike, is the reason I am excited to be part of AnyClip.”
Global mobile advertising nearly doubled last year -- jumping from $10 billion to $19.3 billion, according to a new estimate by the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Mobile Center of Excellence in partnership with IAB Europe and IHS Technology. North America accounted for the largest share of mobile advertising at 41.9%, just ahead of Asia-Pacific (38.9%), with Europe at 17.3%, the Middle East and Africa (1.2), and Latin America (0.7%). Coming off its small base, Latin America saw the highest growth in 2013, at 215% (to $144 million), although North America was still up 122% to $8.1 billion despite being a mature market. Mobile spending in Europe increased 90% to $3.3 billion, Asia-Pacific, 69% to $7.5 billion, and the Middle East and Africa, 45% to $225 million. In terms of ad type, mobile display had the most growth -- surging 123% to $3.6 billion -- while search was up 92% to $4.9 billion. Both categories were driven by wider adoption of smartphones and more affordable data plans driving mobile content use and local search. Ad revenue from messaging climbed 19.4% to $1.5 billion, with growth in SMS and MMS likely slowed by the shift to alternative platforms like WeChat, Line and WhatsApp. The $9.5 billion in search overall accounted for almost half (48.9%) of mobile ad revenue, with display representing 41.5% ($8 billion), and messaging, 9.6% ($1.9 billion). Anna Bager, vice president/GM of the IAB’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, suggested that the figures indicate mobile is becoming a key part of the marketing media mix. “In particular, as mobile ad campaigns become easier to plan, create, buy and measure — in great part due to programmatic strategies — these operational efficiencies are spurring the growth of the mobile display ad market,” she stated. Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe, however, added that many publishers still have to sharpen their mobile ad strategies and capabilities since growth to date has mainly come through in-app and native advertising rather than through brand campaigns. The study findings are based on reported data by local IABs and a “statistical and econometric model.” The data was harmonized to adjust for discounts and agency commissions. The IAB said the modeled data is based on variables such as smartphone penetration, 3G subscriptions and messaging volume.'Mobile users, India" photo from Shutterstock.
Being able to track campaign performance across devices has become increasingly crucial to advertisers as consumer attention shifts from desktop to mobile screens. To that end, Facebook on Wednesday rolled out cross-device reporting for ads, allowing marketers to see how people are moving among devices and across mobile apps and the Web. “Facebook already offers targeting, delivery and conversion measurement across devices. With the new cross-device report, advertisers are now able to view the devices on which people see ads and the devices on which conversions subsequently occur,” stated a Facebook blog post today. As an example, the company said an advertiser can view the number of customers who clicked an ad on an iPhone, but then later converted on desktop, or the number of people who saw an ad on desktop, and later converted on an Android tablet. In a recent analysis conducted between May 15 and July 24, Facebook found that among people who viewed a mobile Facebook ad in the U.S., nearly a third (32%) eventually clicked on the same ad on the desktop within 28 days. The conversion rate was lower over shorter periods of time. So within a week of seeing a mobile ad, 22% converted on the desktop, and after a day, 11%. The cross-device reporting relies on data from Facebook’s conversion pixel, a piece of tracking code used in conjunction with the social network’s software development kit (SDK), to get reports on which device someone saw an ad and eventually converted. The overall aim is to go beyond last-click attribution to see how different devices and app actions influenced a click. To see cross-device conversions for campaigns, advertisers can go to the Facebook Ad Reports page, click Edit Columns and select Cross-Device on the left-hand menu.
Global digital agency Essence, hired Rob Reifenheiser as North American head of media, charged with overseeing the agency's programmatic, biddable, planning, campaign management, investment and advertising operations teams across its New York, San Francisco and Seattle offices. Reifenheiser will work out of Essence's New York office and report to Christian Juhl, global chief executive officer of Essence. Reifenheiser most recently served as executive vice president, managing director at MediaVest. While there, he led the businesses for Wal-Mart, Heineken, Turner Broadcasting System, TD Ameritrade and Microsoft's Windows Phone. He began his career at Saatchi & Saatchi, where he was a group planning director for Procter & Gamble. He also previously served as managing partner, account director of the American Express and Sprint/Nextel accounts at Mindshare. "Rob's experience managing multiple accounts with budgets in excess of $1 billion is exactly the kind of expertise we were looking for to lead our rapidly growing business," said Juhl. "But what's even more impressive than his well-pedigreed resume is his obvious passion for implementing innovation on behalf of clients. I expect our partners will see immediate impact."
The Interactive Advertising Bureau is promoting the recently established viewability standards for both static display and video ads. My focus today is on the video ads. The standards contain both a pixel and duration minimum. For videos, the standard is a minimum of 50% of the pixels in the ad must be viewable within the browser, and must be in view for at least two continuous seconds. The idea is to prevent waste on the part of advertisers who understandably don’t want to pay for video ads that are “below the fold” and are often not seen by the viewer. Standards were created for several reasons, including the need for a leveling of the playing field for publishers. They are all vying for ad spending from brands, and can better compare their offerings if there are viewability standards in place. The idea is to also give brands a better sense of ad impact, since the standard won’t count ads that are not seen, which of course have zero impact for the brand. So what are my main objections to the standard? I certainly applaud the progress being made, and understand the need for firm standards, but I see some serious flaws. Fundamentally, I feel the IAB is misguided in their recent decision to consider video ads to be viewable impressions if fifty percent of the player containing the ad can be seen for only two seconds. Here’s my reasoning · Two seconds isn’t long enough. For our industry, viewability is a complex issue, and it should be measured in a more complex algorithmic manner. It’s not enough to say an ad in view above the fold for more than two seconds is enough to count it as a viewed ad. Consider Google’s proprietary PageRank algorithm. The PageRank algorithm ranks websites in their search engine results by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine how important websites are. This is not the only algorithm used by Google to rank the search results, but it was the first algorithm. Google doesn’t share all of their algorithm’s with the public in an effort for protect the integrity of their search results. It is my strong belief that the viewability standard of video ads should be similarly structured in order to protect the integrity for the advertisers. · A revised definition. If not the IAB’s standard, then how should it be defined? That’s a fair question. Ideally, the viewability would be based upon a measurement service that used a weighted algorithm to give a rank to ad inventory with detail down to the permalink URL. Each permalink and overall root URL could receive a score based on tracked events. I believe the IAB should provide this weighted ranking as a free service in order to protect the results and remove corporate interests from the process. I encourage the IAB to not specifically and publicly define the standard, similar to Google’s PageRank, but the viewability measurement service could track and score events such as auto muted, low volume, player position, player size, inactive browser tabs, OS type concentrations, geo-data, mouse activity, blacklisted known IP’s, and many other events. · What about the MRC? The IAB should work with the MRC (the body that established the viewability ratings) and act as a sort of referee through the creation of independent viewability and inventory scoring metrics. This is a better path than for-profit entities building the verification standards, which have obvious potential conflicts of interest. Let’s spend more initial time on a robust standard now, which will have long-term payoffs for all sides of the industry. · Online video isn’t the same as TV. Some contend that TV ads aren’t held to high standards in terms of viewability, and they’re certainly correct. The “viewer” could be outside playing with the dog or playing a game while the TV is on in the other room. Our industry is different because we need to ensure quality and brand safety through policing of the inventory. This inventory is under the control of mobile app owners and distributed websites, and needs to be properly managed in order to ensure the ads deliver value. The standards will of course need to evolve, and ideally we will be able to see advanced metrics such as how often an ad is viewable with all of its pixels and the entire ad is seen. Are my concerns likely to gain traction amongst the digital ad community? I understand that developing standards is difficult and instituting new ones that are algorithmically based might be a tough sell. However, the payoffs are immense and I think the IAB and ad agencies have an opportunity and obligation to work together to build better standards.
Advertising Age has posted an article arguing that ad tech isn’t a threat to agencies, but rather an opportunity. “Threats to the agency model seem to lurk everywhere. We're told, for example, that we should be worried about RocketFuel, Criteo and the like selling direct. I beg to differ,” writes Bob Ray, president of DWA and author of the post. "As Chairman Mao once recommended, letting a thousand flowers bloom is the best way to promote progress. And to the extent that ad-tech firms are successful at selling direct, the amount of complexity that marketers need to manage will only increase. The result? Agencies will become more, rather than less, useful to their clients.”
So Facebook truly is a mobile-first company after all as it launches its clever cross-channel tracking service designed to ensure that mobile adverts get their fair share of attribution and recognition by advertising agencies and their brand marketer clients. It's a useful tool for digital marketers to have. Seeing who has viewed or clicked on an advert in either a mobile format and then correlating that a desktop conversion, or vice versa, will help inform those running campaigns which messaging is working -- and crucially, how it is affecting sales. As we move to a more mobile world, this ability for the channel to get its fair share of thanks when a conversion is made on another digital channel can only be a good thing. It would appear the data is anonymous and linked to a tracking pixel, which advertisers will place in adverts to ensure they are registered as having been seen. Just before we get too carried away, however, it's worth pointing out a couple of truths we can easily ignore when waxing lyrical about digital marketing -- and in particular, social and mobile. It depends whom you get your figures from, but a general rule of thumb is that something like four in five UK purchases, at the very least, are made inside a shop and so cannot be correlated back directly to a consumer having seen an advert of any kind. Also, let's not forget that digital was around just over a third of the UK's near GBP18bn advertising spend last year, according to the Advertising Association. Yes, of course, it's growing as a proportion for reasons we all know only too well -- but still, two in every three advertising pounds spent in the UK went on traditional media. Delving deeper into digital's spend, mobile is around a sixth of the total, surpassing GBP1bn for the first time. So that's a lot of money, and it's growing hugely (particularly mobile video) -- but we're talking about the ability, right now, to correlate GBP1bn worth of advertising spend with the remaining GBP5bn of digital advertising. That would obviously only be the case if every campaign on every site from every advertiser through every exchange were all tracked by Facebook's pixel technology. So, to reflect, four in five purchases are untrackable, because they are in-store, and only one in three of brands' advertising pounds have the ability to be tracked and that's only if absolutely everyone in digital signs up. Even then, though, the question will remain whether seeing a digital display advert had an impact on a future purchase? Sorry if this makes me seem like a cynic or some miserable old hack because actually I think it's a great idea that, if done well, will help inform digital marketers far better. It's just that sometimes, every now and then, when digital marketers admire the latest shiny, clever box of tricks, we just have to remind ourselves that Facebook isn't the be all and end all of everything digital, and digital is not the be all and end all of all advertising.
According a new study by Nielsen, the rise of social TV has changed the television viewing relationship between viewer and show, and Americans are quickly warming up to this new behavior. With tablets, smartphones and laptops at their side, TV viewers can follow their favorite shows, share content and connect with fellow fans before, during and after a program. According to the study, a quarter of TV viewers reported that they were more aware of TV programs due to their social media interactions in a year-over-year comparison from 2012 to 2013. In 2013, 15% of viewers said they enjoyed watching television more when social media was involved. And when it comes to viewing content, 11% of viewers said they watched more live TV, and 12% said they recorded more programs in 2013 alone. In addition, data from Nielsen’s first-quarter 2014 Cross Platform Report shows that the average adult aged 18 and over now watches 5 hours and 10 minutes of live TV and 34 minutes of time-shifted TV per day. Impact of Social Media on TV Viewing (% of Respondents) Impact2013 Aware of more programs 25% Enjoy TV more 15 Record more programs 12 Watch more live TV 11 Sample shows online 8 Watch less because of spoilers 3 Source: Nielsen Q4, 2013 Looking at the effect of social media on ethnic TV viewers, compared to national averages, a greater percentage of African-Americans, Asians, and Hispanics report watching more live TV, being aware of more programs, recording programs, and enjoying television more as a result of social media. Social media has the greatest effect on Hispanic TV viewers, says the report, who show the highest program awareness, television enjoyment, and live TV watching of all ethnic groups. African-Americans are the ethnic group most likely to sample new shows online, and Asian Americans, who are also the fastest adopters of new technology, record more programs than any other ethnic group. With Social Media Ethnic Viewers More Engaged (% of Responses) EthnicityImpactTotalAfrican-AmericanHispanicAsian Aware of more programs 25% 26% 32% 29% Enjoy TV more 15 22 26 21 Record more programs 12 13 16 20 Watch more live TV 11 14 18 15 Sample shows online 8 14 10 5 Watch less because of spoilers 3 1 6 5 Source: Nielsen Q4, 2013 In addition to social media, consumers are also using the second screen to engage in other digital activities while watching television content. Among Americans aged 13 years old and older who own a smartphone or tablet, over two-thirds of tablet users and about half of smartphone users said surfing the web was the number one activity they choose to do while watching their favorite programs. In addition, over 40% of tablet owners said shopping or looking up actors, plots, athletes were the top activities they did while watching TV. In terms of smartphone owners, 29% said they emailed or texted friends about a program, and 27% said they checked sports scores. Connected US Viewers Watch 2nd Screens While Watching TV (% of Respondents) Screen PreferenceAdditional activitySmartphoneTablet Surfing Web 49% 66% Shopping 24 44 Checking sports scores 27 29 Looking up actors, plots, athletes, etc. 29 41 Emailing/texting friends about program 29 23 Reading discussion about program 12 18 Buying product/service advertised 7 14 Source: Nielsen, July 2014 The report concludes by noting that audiences aren’t just surfing through channels when the TV is on anymore; they are riding the waves of second screens, continually learning how to incorporate new interests into their style. And, as social media's effect continues to resonate with viewers, advertisers should find opportunities to join the conversations and activities that viewers are engaging with while watching TV. For additional information from Nielsen, please visit here.