The programmatic industry continues to work toward the eMarketer projection that by 2016, 42% of programmatic ad dollars will go through “programmatic direct” channels. Rubicon Project is one of the companies trying to lead that charge. The digital ad tech firm doubled down on programatic direct technologies last fall when it acquired two of the bigger independent startups in the space -- iSocket and ShinyAds. Rubicon Project has since launched a new platform called “Orders” for programmatic direct (the company calls it "direct order automation"). The company’s decision to lean in on programmatic direct appears to be paying off. Rubicon Project on Tuesday announced that its programatic direct business has grown over 150% year-over-year in terms of managed revenue. The mobile portion of the business -- which is where Rubicon initially focused -- has grown even more, jumping 200% year-over-year. During the second quarter of 2015, “Orders” accounted for 17% of Rubicon Project’s total managed revenue -- or about $36.6 million. During the second quarter of 2014, “Orders” accounted for 10% of the company’s total managed revenue -- about $15.4 million. The company says over 2,500 buyers and sellers are now plugged into the platform. Programmatic direct is expected to continue growing. Recent research from AdExchanger Research found that nearly three-fourths (71.9%) of programmatic budgets are allocated to open exchanges right now, but that number is expected to decrease to 63.6% by 2016 in favor of private marketplaces and programmatic direct platforms.
Real-time bidding (RTB) and programmatic tech requires audience data to inform the algorithms. But that’s much easier said than done for marketers in some of the highly-regulated industries -- such as healthcare and finance -- where they have to play by different rules when it comes to data security. In a bid to bring those players into the programmatic space, Segmint decided to bring the programmatic space directly to them. The data-driven marketing firm on Tuesday announced it has rolled out a new technology, dubbed SegmintReach, built specifically for marketers in regulated industries. Segmint asserts its platform allows banks, healthcare providers and others to use “sensitive” first-party data for digital campaigns carried out via programmatic. Currently, marketers in these regulated industries can anonymize first-party data, but a Segmint representative says that’s “only one part of the equation.” “Anyone can anonymize their data right now an use it to reach existing consumers on their own media,” the Segmint rep said to Real-Time Daily. “What this solution does is take sensitive first-party data and then use it to power consumer acquisition campaigns across the open Internet” via RTB exchanges. The banks, healthcare providers and others partner directly with Segmint and gives their first-party data to Segmint “without sharing that data with any other parties,” the rep explained. “This is not the first time banks have anonymized their data, or done digital marketing in general,” another Segmint spokesperson acknowledged to Real-Time Daily. “But it is the first time they have been able to deliver targeted one-to-one cross-sell messages using [first-party data] via RTB. Where previously all advertising has been mass media buys typically using third-party data, or some other types of programmatic buying, but not one-to-one real-time delivery to current customers through RTB.” This means banks can send personalized messages -- such as a unique loan offer -- to a consumer anywhere on the Web, not just on their own site or other secure location. “This real-time bidding integration is what was impossible before because banks cannot share consumer data with unregulated third parties,” a Segmint rep declared. In beta test with several unnamed U.S.-based banks, Segmint claims its new tech allowed the banks to engage nearly five times more often with customers. The company claims 73% of total sales of consumer lending solutions during the testing period were attributed to SegmintReach, and that the banks saw a four-and-a-half times return on marketing investment.
It wasn’t long ago that Apple Maps was the butt of many jokes (for example, check out the HBO comedy series “Silicon Valley”: “How bad is it? Don’t tell me it’s Zune bad.” “…it’s Apple Maps bad.” Gasp!). But the company has slowly been reinforcing its initial product for the last three years, through various acquisitions, and a partnership with location data firm Factual. Factual announced today that it has partnered with Facebook, and that Apple has extended its contract with them. Facebook plans to use the data in many features, including Facebook Business Pages, places search, Check Ins, and Place Tips. Facebook will receive data only about U.S. places, while Apple has access to data in 50 countries. “The idea behind Factual,” says Vikas Gupta, director of marketing and operations, “was if [a large number of smaller] companies band together, they can create a data cooperative that rivals that of the largest web platforms,” specifically data powerhouse Google. Factual’s mission is to make data accessible to anyone who needs it, with a core focus on location data. As a neutral data provider, they do not produce any consumer-facing products or compete with their app partners. Apple and Facebook, Yelp and Bing, and hundreds of other companies all subscribe to Factual’s Global Places data, which tracks non-residential places in 50 countries. As a part of many partnerships, those companies will also share data with Factual, allowing them to build a more accurate data set with each new client. Accurate location data, which many think of as just user location data, is made up of three components, says Gupta: user location data, places data and place attachment, which is the technology that overlays user data with places data. An example of the difference would be knowing the precise latitude and longitude of a user without knowing whether they were in a coffee shop or a hotel, or if that hotel had been demolished last month to make way for a coffee shop. Gupta says that location data is Factual’s first priority, but it has always planned to expand into other data verticals, though that may not be soon. “We have an expansive definition of location data,” he says.
Marketers aiming to increase their companies’ focus and spend on effective multicultural marketing are not going about it correctly. Some aren’t going about it at all. And when they do have a “strategy” in place, it is often agency-focused, tactical, and all about advertising campaigns, not a long-term strategy. Unfortunately for a lot of companies, the CEO and board don't see the value, according to a new survey from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and Geoscape, “Activating the New American Mainstream.” The survey found that half of the 150 North America-based senior marketing executives polled feel there actually is some level of support for multicultural engagement strategies from the senior levels of the organization, but it isn’t coming from not from the top. Sixty-six percent feel they have support from the CMO, and 70% feel they have the support of brand management for multicultural marketing initiatives. But over half say the CEO does not share that opinion. When asked to rate commitment levels, only 20% of marketers felt that multicultural strategies were mandatory and unanimously embraced across the organization, and just over a quarter believed that the multicultural market was “mission critical” for the organization. About one-fifth of those polled said they invest in excess of 15% of overall marketing budgets to engaging with multicultural markets: 28% spend less than 5%. And while over half do see their multicultural market investments increasing over time, only 15% believe this increase will be significant; 2% anticipate a decrease in investment. Hispanics currently represent 18% of American households, but were responsible for nearly half of the growth in consumer spending from 2013 to 2014, per Geoscape. Asian-American and Hispanic markets accounted for two-thirds of the total economic spending growth. Liz Miller, SVP of marketing with the CMO Council, tells Marketing Daily that tapping a multicultural agency isn’t enough; a perspective shift within a company is mandatory. “We are short-changing what multicultural should be. Quite frankly it isn't about a campaign, but much more; it needs to be part of the conversation about data and personalization.” More than half of respondents (54%) said their multicultural efforts are deployed through a total market approach, where all multicultural segments are integrated with pooled resources. Other responses revealed a focus on specific multicultural segments, with 17% targeting Asian-American and African-American consumers with separate resources but one strategy; 9% targeting Hispanic, Asian-American and African-American consumers with separate resources and dedicated strategies; and 7% targeting only Hispanic consumers with separate resources. So even among those who are implementing multicultural efforts, the majority (71%) are doing so through a shared approach. Miller says that an authentic strategy goes far beyond communicating with customers. “Are we asking the right thing of our data? Are there norms and behaviors that, if we understand them, can lead to new products and new opportunities for revenue optimization? We have relegated multi-cultural to advertising and communications.” She argues that without a multicultural commitment within the marketing organization, the company may well launch a successful campaign, and acquire customers from diverse ethnicities, and then have no idea how to retain that customer, continue the communication, and measure lifetime value, beyond campaign ROI.
Carls Jr recorded their third appearance on the leaderboard with a 130% increase in digital engagement. The brand's recent commercial, featuring UFC star Ronda Rousey, was the driving force behind the increase.
Not only are there millions of ads flying around online video sites, there are the actors who appear in them, and sometimes those appearances violate contracts, because these are TV commercials being seen elsewhere. Or it can be a violation of terms because the contract has expired. Last week, Extreme Reach, a video advertising management and delivery solutions provider based in Needham, Mass., introduced a tool for uncompensated agencies, brands and talent that can capture all that data and wave the red flag. For now, it’s an open-platform solution that everybody can use free of charge, although there is a better version that comes for a fee. The new Talent and Rights Usage Safety Tracking Tag, or TRUST makes it possible to get real-time verification that digital video ads comply with talent and rights contract terms. Mistakes about those rights are surprisingly frequent (because there are possibly tens of thousands of contracts out there), and not so surprisingly, expensive. “Our research across the board has revealed that over one-third of the TV commercials that run online are not compliant with the terms of the talent and rights agreements established for those commercials,” said Tim Hale, Extreme Reach’s chief talent officer, in an email conversation. “We've also researched the costs, fines and penalties incurred as a result. Whether the issue is late payment, breach of contract, or use beyond expiration, it's clear that compliance issues are costing advertisers and/or their agencies millions of dollars per year in unexpected costs.” As anybody who has spent a year or so in the communications business can tell you, internal communications is not its strong suit. Hale explained that “because of disconnected workflow or miscommunication, a large number of commercials either pay talent late or accidentally use a commercial past its expiration date.” The part of an agency that deals with the TV end of contracts may not fully communicate with the online folks. You get the idea. Hilarity ensues. When they run a commercial past that date, agencies or publishers are subject to hefty fines from SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ unions that has begun paying a lot of attention to screw-ups like that. And when ads run thousands of times online -- that’s not at all unusual -- those fines mount. “We've seen numerous cases costing hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Hale wrote. “Those are the ones that affect jobs, agency relationships and advertiser reputations.” Extreme Reach’s TRUST tag cross-references ad impression data against contract terms to ensure everything’s copacetic. And as explained, it works a lot like other digital ad tags that provide verification, analytics and fraud prevention, so, Extreme Reach says, “ it’s easily compatible across ad servers, publishers and other media vendors.” It tracks across Internet, mobile and other connected media and analyzes and verifies in in real time. If there’s a mistake, it’s reported. Extreme Reach offers, “for a small CPM charge,” an expanded TRUST service that it says, addresses compliance issues “more proactively,” and offers provides greater control and additional capabilities. "Our main focus right now is on achieving scale. This is a brand new product and a relatively new issue in the digital video ad world, so there’s an educational component we still need to work through,” a spokesman said. “As clients begin to understand the value of our free version, we expect to generate interest in our upgraded version.” pj@mediapost.com
In today’s programmatic era, the advertising industry has invested in endless amounts of technology to create, distribute and measure ads. As a result, the conversation has shifted away from performance. Industry headlines and conversations are being commandeered by inputs such as viewability and completion rates. These are important pieces of the equation, but why aren’t we talking about what matters most? At the end of the day, advertisers want to see results, which means moving the needle on ROI. How much toothpaste are we selling? How many more people came to the restaurant? Are we selling more shoes at one department store than another? These are the questions our technology should be answering.Take TV for example – television ads still reign as the format with the most spend, yet that industry isn’t nearly as inundated by conversations on whether viewers get up and leave the room, mute the commercial, or flip channels. TV continues to see investments because of the output – sales, brand lift, etc. This is what the online ad tech industry should be focused on, too. If we invest as much in figuring out how to measure online ads and its effect on sales as we do the inputs of these measurements, the digital ad landscape will advance immensely. Inputs and Investment Demographic testing, volume of a video ad, completion rates – these technology inputs are important, but it’s time we shift focus to what’s actually driving consumer action. The most important piece of technology marketers should invest in are decisioning engines. For decades, brands and agencies have been using simple tools such as age and gender, reach and frequency and, most recently, viewability to optimize media delivery. But for brands and agencies to get more out of their spend than just awareness, they need to invest in a results-driven decisioning engine. Individual bidding decisions should be built to maximize results. In addition to building awareness, a decisioning engine should also be proving sales, ROI, Web site visits and foot traffic. Marketers should invest in a decisioning engine that understands their campaign objectives, activates various types and sources of data, and learns what audiences, creative and media are driving the best results in order to apply that to current and future campaigns. Results In today’s programmatic era, it is close to impossible for a human being to determine what exactly is driving results. Instead of looking at the metrics that drive sales, look at sales. The equation is becoming too difficult–there are endless models and algorithms we have at our disposal to get to the solution. But it’s the solution that holds the most weight. Know the marketer’s objective, and deliver a campaign that achieves that–sometimes achievement does not involve getting a 70% to 80% viewability or high completion rates. Adding technology to the mix—while vital—is another mean, not an end. Digital advertisers need to strike the right balance of tech (to measure results) and marketing intelligence (to set goals, reach individuals and drive results). It’s marketers who turn the dials on technology, after all. As an industry, we are in danger of losing sight of what matters to our clients, the marketers. How does advertising impact consumer behavior? In a brand’s strategy and planning meetings, will the CEO be more interested in how long a consumer watched a 15 second spot, or how many people bought the product? Let’s not lose sight of the forest for the trees.
The Albarda household quite likes “Jane the Virgin.” I am not sure if we are in the demo for this show, but actress Gina Rodriguez and her TV family, friends and enemies make for wonderful entertainment. We also really appreciate the inclusion of voiceover actor Anthony Mendez and his quick recaps at the beginning of the show. If you are familiar with his voice and style, please imagine it for a minute voicing the rest of today’s article. Hello, friends. Where were we? Let’s see: The industry is going through a period of great change, and all marketers are busy shifting money away from traditional media to their new loves, “digital and content.” They do this even though malvertising in digital is up 300% and will cost global marketers around $6.3 billion dollars in 2015, according the ANA. And MSN is the latest online media outlet to be hit by it (so never mind the belief that malvertising only happens when you use dodgy and/or cheap digital media). Both Google and Amazon announced they are killing ads created in Flash starting Sept. 1, as they are seen as the favorite tool used in the malvertising hacks. Never mind that the data we — marketers — gather from consumers, or our very own personal data for that matter, is being hacked at the same or even more alarming levels. As a result, some of you might be speaking to your divorce lawyers this coming week. We also learned that GroupM downgraded its ad outlook for the year by almost a full percentage point. But for mobile advertising, North America is the fastest-growing region, increasing 76.8% year-over-year in 2014, and eMarketer estimates that mobile advertising will expand to $28.72 billion in 2015. How we measure the success, impact and ROI for mobile advertising is something we basically do not know. Nor do we know much about mobile malvertising. Apart from mostly ignoring the painful malvertising problem and data insecurity, CMOs are admitting they don’t know if any of their marketing investments, with their large and growing digital share, actually matter at all: According to a study from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, which surveyed 255 U.S. marketing executives this summer, only 36% of marketers said they are able to measure the short-term impact of marketing analytics on their business. But fear not. We are inventing ever more ways to interrupt consumers’ daily lives with new advertising opportunities. AT&T has found a way to inject ads when we use its Wi-Fi network. And Hulu starts selling ads on its network via programmatic — even though our favorite hero/villain, Sir Martin, complains that online video ad growth is being hampered by poor measurement. As a result of all the bad industry news, and the general malaise in the world of Wall Street, media and agency empires’ value have shrunk alarmingly in just one week’s time. Even the digital frenemies of the media and marketing world — Google and Facebook — were not immune, losing $79 and $14 per share respectively from their most recent highs. So it was quite the week. Let’s see what the new week brings us. (OK, switch back to normal voice. All of the above was reported last week across the various MediaPost publications. Want to see the stories – or check that I’m not making this stuff up? Here's the link: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/mediapost-weekend/).