Pizza Hut secured a place on the leaderboard for the first time this year. The brand's recent ads promoting the Grilled Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza supported a 151% increase in engagement.
Google co-founders have been contemplating the acquisition of Twitter for nearly as long as the social site -- launched in July 2008 by co-founders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass -- has been around. Now Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin may get the chance. Bloomberg reports that Alphabet, Google's parent company, has hired Lazard Ltd. to evaluate the deal. The acquisition would provide a long list of benefits to Google's advertisers that also use Twitter to run campaigns, as well as brands with strong search engine optimization strategies. While the move doesn't mean a done deal, it's clear the Google co-founders have been contemplating its options, as they have for years. Rumors of an acquisition began in 2009, but recently resurfaced after being dormant for years. "Twitter hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Allen & Co. to solicit potential buyers after receiving interest from Salesforce, people familiar with the situation have said," reports Bloomberg. The social site has been trying to shape its business model, but its growth has stagnated for more than a year. Google's relationship with Twitter continues to play out like an on-off love affair. The search engine inked a deal with the social site early on and then again in 2015, which provides a means for Google to pull in every real-time Twitter tweet into search engine results. Social has not been one of Google's strongholds. In 2010, Google launched Buzz, a social networking microblogging site. The site provided a way for users to share photos and videos, messages and links. About a year later, it shuttered the tool. Next came Google+ in 2011. The advanced HTML5 platform allowed users to drag-and-drop their friends, family, classmates, co-workers and other custom groups into social circles to share content. Video chat came along, too, but the site never really caught on. "By 2014, Google+ underwent a series of leadership changes, followed by a massive redesign of the service," writes CB Insights in a post published late September 2016, as part of a list noting 23 of the biggest "Google Goofs." "However, these moves failed to substantially enlarge the user base. Although Google+ is still in operation with an audience of about 111 million active users (compared to Facebook’s reported 1.7 billion monthly users), it’s hardly the first name that comes to mind when mentioning 'top' social networks," per CB Insights. Twitter may be just what Google needs to finally build out its social strategy. And assistance from a former financial adviser could help. "Lazard served as the financial adviser for Google’s $625 million takeover of software developer Apigee in September," according to Bloomberg.
Adweek’s Noreen O’Leary, one of the most widely-read and respected writers covering the advertising beat over the last generation died on Saturday after a battle with cancer. She was 59. O’Leary was a Pittsburgh native who studied at Carnegie-Mellon University. She spent nearly her entire career at Adweek, joining the publication in 1985, but also had pieces published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. She was particularly well known for in-depth and revealing stories about the industry’s agency world and those who led it—many such stories becoming the subject of immediate water cooler conversations throughout Adland. As Adweek noted in an obituary posted last night, “O'Leary will be remembered particularly for several profiles that changed the perception of her subjects—sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. The highlight, many in the industry agree, was her profile in 1992 of ad legend David Ogilvy, who let her into his French chateau for several days, years after cutting himself off from the press." Commenting in the story, Adweek Editor Jim Cooper said of O’Leary, "She was as tenacious as she was gracious, and we will miss her and her byline very much indeed." O’Leary is survived by her husband Chris Garland. Funeral services will be held this Saturday, October 8, at McVeigh Funeral Home at 208 North Allen Street in Albany, N.Y. Calling hours are 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., followed immediately by a memorial service at 3 p.m. From 4-7 p.m., there will be a gathering at The Olde English Pub, Quackenbush Square, 683 Broadway, also in Albany.
Pizza Hut secured a place on the leaderboard for the first time this year. The brand's recent ads promoting the Grilled Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza supported a 151% increase in engagement.
Google co-founders have been contemplating the acquisition of Twitter for nearly as long as the social site -- launched in July 2008 by co-founders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass -- has been around. Now Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin may get the chance. Bloomberg reports that Alphabet, Google's parent company, has hired Lazard Ltd. to evaluate the deal. The acquisition would provide a long list of benefits to Google's advertisers that also use Twitter to run campaigns, as well as brands with strong search engine optimization strategies. While the move doesn't mean a done deal, it's clear the Google co-founders have been contemplating its options, as they have for years. Rumors of an acquisition began in 2009, but recently resurfaced after being dormant for years. "Twitter hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Allen & Co. to solicit potential buyers after receiving interest from Salesforce, people familiar with the situation have said," reports Bloomberg. The social site has been trying to shape its business model, but its growth has stagnated for more than a year. Google's relationship with Twitter continues to play out like an on-off love affair. The search engine inked a deal with the social site early on and then again in 2015, which provides a means for Google to pull in every real-time Twitter tweet into search engine results. Social has not been one of Google's strongholds. In 2010, Google launched Buzz, a social networking microblogging site. The site provided a way for users to share photos and videos, messages and links. About a year later, it shuttered the tool. Next came Google+ in 2011. The advanced HTML5 platform allowed users to drag-and-drop their friends, family, classmates, co-workers and other custom groups into social circles to share content. Video chat came along, too, but the site never really caught on. "By 2014, Google+ underwent a series of leadership changes, followed by a massive redesign of the service," writes CB Insights in a post published late September 2016, as part of a list noting 23 of the biggest "Google Goofs." "However, these moves failed to substantially enlarge the user base. Although Google+ is still in operation with an audience of about 111 million active users (compared to Facebook’s reported 1.7 billion monthly users), it’s hardly the first name that comes to mind when mentioning 'top' social networks," per CB Insights. Twitter may be just what Google needs to finally build out its social strategy. And assistance from a former financial adviser could help. "Lazard served as the financial adviser for Google’s $625 million takeover of software developer Apigee in September," according to Bloomberg.
Adweek’s Noreen O’Leary, one of the most widely-read and respected writers covering the advertising beat over the last generation died on Saturday after a battle with cancer. She was 59. O’Leary was a Pittsburgh native who studied at Carnegie-Mellon University. She spent nearly her entire career at Adweek, joining the publication in 1985, but also had pieces published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. She was particularly well known for in-depth and revealing stories about the industry’s agency world and those who led it—many such stories becoming the subject of immediate water cooler conversations throughout Adland. As Adweek noted in an obituary posted last night, “O'Leary will be remembered particularly for several profiles that changed the perception of her subjects—sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. The highlight, many in the industry agree, was her profile in 1992 of ad legend David Ogilvy, who let her into his French chateau for several days, years after cutting himself off from the press." Commenting in the story, Adweek Editor Jim Cooper said of O’Leary, "She was as tenacious as she was gracious, and we will miss her and her byline very much indeed." O’Leary is survived by her husband Chris Garland. Funeral services will be held this Saturday, October 8, at McVeigh Funeral Home at 208 North Allen Street in Albany, N.Y. Calling hours are 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., followed immediately by a memorial service at 3 p.m. From 4-7 p.m., there will be a gathering at The Olde English Pub, Quackenbush Square, 683 Broadway, also in Albany.
Facebook recently announced that in November it would be shutting down FBX, its desktop ad exchange that allows advertisers to buy retargeted desktop ads on Facebook’s platform through third-party partners. In a move that supports the company’s position as the industry’s mobile advertising leader, you could say that Facebook also grew the walls around its garden to new heights. Facebook’s often-unpredictable decisions can leave publishers feeling high and dry, but this time they aren’t the only party affected. Starting Nov. 1, this most recent change will have a major impact on marketers heavily invested in specifically reaching Facebook’s desktop audience. According to Facebook’s Q2 earnings report, of the $6.44 billion in revenue that quarter, 84% came from mobile ads. This is an overwhelming majority, to be sure — but when you are talking about billions in revenue, the remaining 16% is still a tremendous amount of media budget. If you’re an advertiser, and you know that the best way to reach a potential buyer of your product or service is through desktop retargeting and desktop-first strategies, then maybe Facebook isn’t the only scalable place to be targeting those particular consumers anymore. Of course Facebook has enormous scale and reach. But the good news for advertisers is that the ecosystem outside of Facebook — the open Web — consists of hundreds of premium Web properties with unduplicated audiences. This is where the majority of online content is created. The open Web has existed since the advent of the ad-supported Internet, and was built for this very reason: to enable advertisers to reach targeted, unique audiences with their content. And the best part? They can do it at scale. The evolution of ad tech and the industry’s constant innovation toward better user experiences has led to scaled connections between consumers, content and advertising. Sponsored content units, a primary ad unit in FBX, are designed to belong in the content environments they are served in. Now, the open Web already has the right tools in place: programmatic connections and buying tools for high-quality inventory sources, native-only demand-side platforms, openRTB 2.3 etc. And platforms are fully equipped to assemble and deliver this exact type of sponsored content ad unit in real-time, at scale. Moreover, there is an important distinction to draw between ads surrounded by content residing within social networks, and ads within content created by publishers on the open Web. As social platforms become more focused on user-generated content, brands are increasingly at greater risk, while publisher properties remain dedicated to the same objective they have always had: providing quality content, both editorial and sponsored, that their readers will find valuable. Publisher properties live in the thriving, massive ecosystem of the open Web. Today, brands, marketers and publishers are armed with advanced tools and technology as never before, which allows them to maintain control over, and continue to grow, the distribution and monetization of their content with these audiences. For marketers concerned about what the end of FBX will mean for their media plans, there is a pre-existing solution to their problem: the smart advertising ecosystem of the open Web. Which means, as it turns out, that this was never really a problem at all.
How does a global seller of other people’s products measure the effectiveness of its digital campaigns? Samantha Druss, senior digital marketing specialist for Etsy, discussed the 11-year-old brand’s new global #DifferenceMakesUs campaign during a keynote conversation at the OMMA Social conference in New York last week. The campaign, which launched on Sept. 14, is playing out on Facebook, Instagram and through digital advertising. It’s designed to raise awareness and to highlight that everyone has different styles, different attitudes, and that’s what Etsy stands for. Sellers were invited to participate by uploading products that work with the theme and using that hashtag on Instagram, Facebook and their other social channels. It partnered with creation platform Canva so that the look and feel would be consistent, on-brand and easy for sellers to execute. The hashtag had 14,598 posts on Instagram as of Oct. 1. Druss says Etsy first started running paid ads on Facebook at scale at the end of last year, but kept a social conversion mindset. Video in carousels has been effective, she adds, as well as local targeting and the use of Facebook’s “lookalike audience” tool — people who share the qualities of those who have the highest purchase intent. It’s important not to exhaust an audience by honing in on too small a target, she says. The metrics Etsy is looking at are sales, site activity and search impact. The social focus is on engagement and the editorial merchandising calendar touches all the typical themes: Halloween, astrology, gifts under $30, crocheting. Etsy tests different creative variations against different silos, with the first priority being to capture attention on fast-moving Facebook scrolls. It’s important that content align with the target prospect’s interests as performance determines the win rate through the ad bidding structure. Originally, Etsy would run campaigns with multiple ad variations in a campaign. Facebook will quickly determine which two in 10 are most relevant, and those are the two that will then get the most ad budget. It’s all about seeing what drives the most efficient cost per purchase. With earned media, Etsy is looking at fan engagement. With paid media, it’s more of a community building and retention strategy. In “old media,” Etsy is prospecting — capturing new users. Audiences are brought in to reach all of them on Facebook. What’s next for Etsy? Druss is “really keen” on testing with Snapchat and sees a lot of opportunity in Pinterest. She cautions marketers to keep their own data and not trust just what Facebook tells you. Data is key. When starting out, really understand the platform. Read case studies and understand the opportunities. Know your audience and make sure content is the focus, with content specifically on brand. In terms of prioritizing in a marketplace where inventory is not in their control, Etsy relies on its own back-end tech support and constantly tweaks based on cost per purchase. Localized targeting is most effective for reaching niche users, she says, in terms of what they’re doing offline.
If all were well, it would be good news. Newspapers have had a bonanza year, as far as stories go, what with Brexit and a change in leadership in one party, a challenge in the other. Then there was the Olympics and Paralympics, not to mention Euro 2016. Instead of ringing in the good times, however, print's slow-motion, painful fall off a cliff gathered momentum this morning as another pair of results show ad revenues and circulations plummeting. OK -- so the Telegraph Media Group GBP150m writeoff applies to accounts filed at the start of the year, so do not fly in the face of what should have been a good year. However, Trinity Mirror's report that print revenue is down 21% and circulation is down 6% in the third quarter of the year, takes us across what should have been a very good time for the papers. It's a similar story at the Daily Mail owner, DMGT, which announced at the end of last week that it was cutting 400 jobs after print advertising fell an astonishing 19% in September, having fallen 12% in the 11 months to the end of August. Clearly the start of the new Premier League season, doubt over Brexit and a leadership battle in the Labour party did nothing to slow down print's demise. So the good news is that digital revenue is up. At Trinity Mirror, digital display is up nearly a quarter but here is the rub. Print's very sad demise is a little like a guy sitting at an old-fashioned money-counting table. On his left, there are banknotes, on his right, coins. To the right, things look good as fresh deposits bring a larger, shiny heap that everyone's been talking about. On the left, however, just a single note accounts for many coins. No matter how many coins get deposited on the right-hand side, they do not make up for the breeze blowing notes out of the window. The world of online news has seen newspapers swap dollars for dimes. The trouble is, of course, that news is now entering another stage -- mobile. Here publishers could end up swapping those dimes for nickels as they come face to face with the huge influence of social media, particularly Facebook, as well as start-ups that seem better enabled to quickly package up the news and get it shared widely than brands with a print background. The truly troubling aspect for print publishers is that routine visits to home pages to search for news under a single brand have plummeted. That means that so has the opportunity to serve curious browsers multiple pages of stories accompanied by ads. The power of social sees people dip in and out of multiple news sources, taking a page from here, another from somewhere else. If you throw in ad blocking, and consider that one in four male Millennials are estimated to be shunning ads, then you start to see the harsh reality facing print. Don't get me wrong -- as a journalist with print roots, none of this is reported on with anything other than a sense of sadness. But there you have it. No matter how you want the world to be, you'll always find it as it is.
If you attended last week’s Skift conference in New York City, there were a few technologies that were continuously mentioned whenever the subject turned to those things that would truly transform the world of travel. One was AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the ability to better serve customers by using data to anticipate needs and provide recommendations and solutions. Related to that was the power of voice technology and the ability to speak to devices that would be able to respond to natural language. And the third was virtual reality and its ability to help people discover and experience things in a truly immersive and compelling way. The question wasn’t if these three areas would revolutionize our industry, but when. Nearly all of the big brands and OTAs that spoke at the conference indicated they are busy exploring and developing things related to these areas — no doubt pouring considerable dollars and endless hours into these efforts. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the wherewithal or technical skills to fully optimize voice or get our products directly integrated into Amazon’s Alexa or other platforms. And AI isn’t something you just do yourself, although companies like WayBlazer and their link to IBM Watson technology are giving travel brands the tools to begin to leverage the possibilities. That leaves virtual reality. And the good news is that you can begin to harness some of VR’s undeniable potential for as little as a few hundred dollars — making this future cornerstone of travel accessible to even the smallest of businesses. For many of us, it means dipping our toe in the VR waters by recording 360° video and then wrapping it in a branded mobile app you build, or simply publish it to an existing platform like Samsung VR or YouTube 360°. This allows your video to be readily viewed in VR devices like Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR, and they can also be embedded and viewed on other platforms, such as your website. While you could easily and justifiably spend huge amounts on high-quality production, you can also begin to experiment with VR yourself by using inexpensive cameras like the Kodak PixPro ($447), 360fly ($399) or many others that are affordable introductions to 360° photography and videography. It feels a bit like the “old days,” before smartphones, when we had staff running around our hotels and attractions with inexpensive flip cameras capturing the guest experience from a human perspective like never before. Of course, there’s more sophisticated equipment like the GoPo Odyssey which was developed in partnership with Google and links together 16 different cameras. Even at a retail price of $15,000, it isn’t so expensive that a destination or a good-sized resort couldn’t readily justify the expense as a way to create an abundance of engaging and shareable content. There are also companies like Matterport that are popular in the real estate category that make it easy to showcase accommodations and physical space in 3D. For $4,500, you can purchase their special camera and get access to related services that allow you to easily document your property and have it readily transformed into a virtual tour that can live on your website or be used with Samsung’s VR devices. No matter what approach you use, investing in VR isn’t about chasing the latest trend or fad, as VR will increasingly be how people will discover and first experience brands and it’s what consumers are telling us they want today. In a recent study of more than 1,200 mainstream U.S. consumers, nearly 74% stated that they were “Interested” or “Very Interested” in travel, tourism and adventure experiences delivered via VR as opposed to only 67% for movies and recorded videos and 61% who were interested in using it for gaming. Just as compelling, while consumers like 360° videos and imagery presented in any form, research shows that they typically engage for one minute in a non-VR environment versus an incredible 10 minutes in VR! While it’s true that VR hardware currently has relatively low penetration, it does present a great opportunity for travel brands to put their logo on these devices and get them into the hands of curious customers who are eager to experience VR for themselves. Here’s a chance to outfit guest rooms, cabins and seat backs with VR devices that allow travelers to experience aspects of your product or surrounding area. With your well-crafted 360° content in hand and the holidays right around the corner, a VR headset adorned with your brand could be a great gift item for top customers and Google Cardboard (at $5-10 per unit) could be an affordable premium item to liberally hand out at select trade shows and events. As you consider your own approach to VR, there is no shortage of brands you can look to for inspiration. Marriott has been playing with VR since 2014, even adding it to the room-service experience at select hotels and Lufthansa recently introduced VR headsets at the gates and check-in at several airports to better show off their aircraft and upsell clients to premium economy seating. Speaking at the Skift conference, Arnold Donald, president and CEO of Carnival Corporation, said they view VR as vitally important to their brand because it’s “hard to sample a cruise” and that he was urging his team to develop the kind of VR that would allow a user to not just see how a cruise experience looks but, more importantly, to sense how it feels. As with any new technology, the best way to understand and leverage VR is to use it for yourself. Whether you’re doing it to learn, to garner public relations and drive social engagement, or to solve specific business issues, the opportunities are everywhere and the cost to test the waters are no longer a barrier. For all of us in travel, the future is virtually now.
It should seem a no-brainer that different ad environments demand different kinds of ads. But there are slow learners. After years of online video, some advertisers still throw their TV commercials online, unaltered, though that dunderheaded custom seems to have abated. Still, on social sites and mobile apps, a lot of advertisers just don’t get it. This topic came up a lot at Advertising Week. On one panel, as reported by phys.org,, Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble’s chief brand officer explained, “We have to really identify how do consumers engage with every single platform and then what is the creative experience we need to give them. But it also has to look like one brand because people have 5,000 ads coming at them every day and that's 10 times what it was just 10 years ago.” That sounds difficult, put that way. But the concept seems clear enough, and with all respect to Pritchard, adapting ads to platforms seems labor intensive perhaps, but far from impossible. Frank Ambrose, media director at Heineken USA put in this way in the phy.org piece: "You get the three-second audition. If you are relying on the 14th or 15th second to do the heavy lifting of the ad, it's not going to work." To put it in Heineken terms, an advertiser gets one sip. Not everybody’s going to drink the whole bottle. At MediaPost’s OMMA Video day, also held during Advertising Week, Twitter gave a presentation that featured Nick Childs, Initiative’s chief creative officer, who show by word and example just how difficult, and just how simple, fixing an ad for social and mobile can be. The biggest takeaway seems so obvious: Given just a few seconds to get your point across, Childs advises advertisers to flash that logo quickly. Not only does that do a good piece of business--even the fastest thumb probably can’t beat that quick visual--but it can also set up a different vibe. An unusual message from a familiar advertiser may have a lot more impact if we know the sponsor is seemingly going off script. That may mean an advertiser might need to authorize several different versions of the same ad. But Childs says, it’s probably worth it. I can’t believe this is any deep, dark secret. And yet, apparently, it doesn’t always happen. After his presentation, I asked him why every advertiser wouldn’t prepare ads with the logo upfront, just for those Twitter and other social media uses. The answer seems to be that some advertisers just don’t want to. But what a strange place to draw a line in the sand. pj@mediapost.com