Platforms continue to create a fairly easy process to buy mobile media, but marketers don't understand the mechanics of integrating media channels and technology. Many still drive mobile ads to a Web site or landing page. Retailers don't recognize that consumers carrying smartphones stand within 200 feet of their stores, and it's helpful to retarget a display ad on a publisher's site or serve up a search ad on Bing, Yahoo, or Google Local or Maps to drive foot traffic into the store. TagMan CRO Nancy Marzouk said the company tested mobile app tag management for iOS and Android that it plans to roll out at the end of July. "A large percentage of the ecosystem remains clueless about the possibilities of mobile," she said."We pushed to develop a mobile tag management system, because a lot of clients believe it's undervalued, but they don't have the tools or data to validate it." Marzouk said many of TagMan's biggest clients garner 20% of conversions from mobile. iProspect's U.S. clients will invest about 6.5% of their online ad budgets in mobile this year. Overall, mobile dollars managed through iProspect rose 90% between January and June 2012, according to COO Brian Kaminski. Marketers are leaving millions of dollars on the table. "I see the gap widening between those who get it and those who don't," Kaminski said. "I would have initially argued this year the gap would close significantly. Now, I'm not so sure." The more sophisticated marketers understand mobile isn't just a transactional vehicle, Kaminski said. Those are the ones who won't allow opportunities linked to ecommerce to pass. During eBay's recent second-quarter earnings call, CEO John Donahoe said eBay and PayPal mobile should each transact $10 billion in volume this year. The numbers were revised upward. eBay had estimated mobile shopping would hit $8 billion on eBay $7 billion on PayPal. Globally, mobile ad marketplace Adfonic's total ad requests rose 15%, sequentially, with 8,256 active campaigns in Q2. Europe experienced the strongest growth at 23 billion ad requests -- up 34% sequentially, surpassing North America at 19 billion for the first time. Marketers underestimate the ability to reach consumers on mobile platforms. High-value verticals like automotive take between $50 and $100. Most verticals acquire customers at a cost proportionate to the typical customer lifetime value for their industry, according to an Adfonic report. Click-through rate (CTR) performance varies significantly across regions. Adfonic, which supports about 5,000 campaigns monthly, said CTO Wes Biggs, found the most popular verticals in North America, technology and telecoms, generates a more than 37% CTR, for example. Gender targeting also improves performance. Globally, Adfonic sees a 164% uplift in tech and telecoms campaigns targeted to males. Media and budget silos will hinder growth, Kaminski said. "In many cases, companies have separate marketers in charge of running in-store and online campaigns, and this slows innovation," he said. "I also think the nuances of managing mobile display are trickier than managing mobile search." Mobile investments are not advancing as quickly as many experts estimate. They continue to grow, but not as quickly as if the media tied in with other channels. Kaminski suggests setting metrics per device, such as tablet, desktop and mobile phone, to get the full benefits from mobile, similar to the way marketers might set metrics for search or display marketing.
Score another one for live, premium Web content. The Atlantic Coast Conference’s digital network just launched a new channel with YouTube. The deal marks the first and only official partnership between YouTube and a major collegiate sports conference, according to Frank Golding, director of North American Sports at Google’s video unit. Launched in 2011 by Silver Chalice and the ACC, the ACC Digital Network produces daily conference coverage, including highlights, news and analysis, along with behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, historical content and coverage of all championship events. For the ACC, a partnership with YouTube means a partnership with Google. “As part of our partnership, we will be offering a series of Google Hangouts following select ACC game matchups for fans to directly interact with our analysts,” says Jason Coyle, COO of Silver Chalice. Per the new partnership, the ACC Digital Network has also agreed to deliver 20 live events in Olympic sports. New to the ACC Digital Network programming lineup will be a weekly live studio program on Saturdays throughout the football and basketball seasons. Through the live streaming, fans will have access to school-specific news up to game day. In addition, the channel will feature condensed replays of the ACC Network productions of football and men’s basketball games. The fall live game schedule is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
YouTube and Unilever have teamed up to launch a dedicated channel to Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, on the video-sharing giant’s site. The video hub will house more than 40 Arabic TV shows the same day they air during the month of Ramadan, at YouTube.com/Ramadan. Unilever is the hub’s main sponsor, and more content will be added throughout the month. Partners are responsible for uploading and managing the content -- via the hub -- themselves. There is also a new advertising platform that will help them monetize their content. "Unilever, Google and YouTube have a strong global relationship based on bringing digital innovations to the public," said David Porter, Unilever's media director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). "We are delighted that two of the Arab world's most beloved Unilever food and beverage brands, Lipton and Knorr, will bring a great online viewing experience to millions of people during the holy month of Ramadan." In an interview with AMEinfo.com, Alfonso de Gaetano, Google's industry head for the Gulf region, explains the new advertising platform. "Our previous format was not super attractive in terms of value branding proposition,” he says, “but now with YouTube being there it becomes super attractive for partners who prefer video [advertising].” He adds: "All content from all global premium partners is available in the region. Anyone from MENA can watch content from the U.S., UK, Europe and so on. But this (Ramadan initiative) is the biggest program we have that is specific to MENA. Now we're moving in this direction of adding partners and building content that is really attractive to local communities." According to de Gaetano, MENA users generate 167 million video views on YouTube every day, which puts the region slightly behind the USA. Daily views have soared 112 percent since last October, he says.
Vibrant Media, the contextual advertising company behind in-text advertising, will expand its services to offer support for full-page brand and mobile ad units. The company will begin this fall with offerings for the Apple iPad, followed by iPhone and Android, and then other tablets. Viewable ads will also become a focus for Vibrant this year. "About 40% of viewable ads are never seen," said Vibrant CEO Cella Irvine. The ads expand from a keyword or an image on a page. Brands like Procter & Gamble, IBM, BMW, Chrysler and Jaguar tap into in-image placements where viewers must hover over the ad for three seconds before it expands. About 4% of users complete the task. The ads get between 40% and 50% completion rates for 15-second spots. Earlier this year, the company launched Lightbox Video, a technology that opts-in viewers with a three-second countdown. IBM ran a campaign aimed at turning IT professionals into brand advocates. Along with the Lightbox technology, Vibrant ran a Twitter feed in the ad unit and asked people to tweet or retweet their impression of the video or the advertisement. Irvine said this service expands the supply of video inventory because it's not limited to pre-, mid- or post-roll ads in a video. Vibrant has undergone a transformation during the past nine months. Aside from expanding its services from in-text ads to branding, video and interactive ads, the company in January acquired Image Space Media, an in-image advertising technology company. The 12-person New York technology startup had zero revenue, Irvine said, but the company will close out this year with revenue "in the high single digits." Irvine said the ISM acquisition will help Vibrant generate "healthy revenue growth" this year, along with the March hire of CRO Sheila Buckley, former chief digital officer at the Weather Channel.
Hiring Marissa Mayer was a huge statement for Yahoo, but as a wise man told me privately, the company gets no points for simply anointing her. To use a sports analogy, it’s akin to hiring a defensive-oriented coach at a franchise known historically for its offense (or vice versa). The move made headlines, but only results will matter. In Silicon Valley the move drew applause, but there’s a silent majority who are wondering: “Is Yahoo really ready to pause and reset strategy?” This might be why Mayer’s first memo’s message was “Keep Moving,” realizing that Yahoo “has been through a lot of change in the past few months, leaving many open questions around strategy and how to move forward. I am sensitive to this. While I have some ideas, I need to develop a more informed perspective before making strategy or direction changes.” Everyone is expecting Yahoo to take a 180-degree turn and move away from being “the premier digital media company” to taking on Google and Facebook head-on through products, innovation and technology. It’s perfectly plausible that Mayer’s pitch to the board was a utopian, bold and ambitious plan to reclaim some of the value created by Google, Facebook (and Twitter) over the past decade at the expense of Yahoo’s market cap. Let’s face it: an outsider (coming from Google, no less) can make that pitch to the board, awhil n incumbent like interim CEO Ross Levinsohn had to (I’m speculating) stick to what he views as the reality on the ground, which is what the New York Time’s David Carr echoed very recently: “In business, people will tell you that everything else is secondary to being first. And Yahoo, despite its tattered reputation, is No. 1 in 10 content categories, according to the measurement service comScore, including news, finance, sports, entertainment and real estate.” Former Yahoo executive Mike Walrath (who sold RightMedia to Yahoo) was brutally candid when he opined: “I think the idea that Yahoo was ever a ‘truly great technological innovator’ is a myth. Yahoo’s strength has always been its audience and media assets, not its great technology. Their last 2 CEOs have been ‘product leaders’ who could ‘help return the company to its roots of product development and technical innovation.’ It hasn’t worked. The more Yahoo tries to fight Google, Facebook and the like on front lines of product/technology innovation, the more they play into their opponents’ strength, and the further behind they fall. Yahoo has been tilting at windmills trying to fight Google for more than 10 years, and the results are clear.” In fact, I think it will be easier (but not necessarily successful) for Mayer to take the billions from the proceeds of the Alibaba sale and acquire Yelp (Yahoo Local?), Twitter (Yahoo Social?), Groupon (Yahoo Commerce?) and/or Foursquare (Yahoo Mobile?) than try to build, develop and grow internally (maybe that’s why Twitter and Foursquare investor Fred Wilson recently wrote: “Yahoo Is No Longer Dead To Me”?) But acquiring those companies is expensive -- and integrating them into Yahoo will be challenging, with no recipe for success. Indeed, Mayer wasn’t only Google employee #20, she was there until recently, seeing Google’s shift toward becoming a media company, acquiring Zagat, funding video content at YouTube, etc. In that vein, in some ways, Google is trying to be more like Yahoo. So why would Yahoo now try to emulate Google? Enter the Contrarian View As such, I will take a contrarian view (what else is new?) and suggest that before long, Mayer’s alleged outlook will change from clashing against Facebook and Google via products, innovation and technology to innovating via technology to deliver enhanced content and advertising experiences as personalized products (or something like that). My company provides video content to Yahoo as an official partner, so I will avoid getting too specific, but it’s clear to me where Mayer can help Yahoo in video and where she can’t, where she can help them improve and be successful and where she will fall flat on her face and lose the ground made up by those who have made Yahoo Video successful. Wanting is one thing, knowing is another Mayer is no idiot: she left Google for redemption after Google CEO Larry Page excluded her from his inner circle. An unremarkable or unsuccessful Yahoo tenure will only validate Page’s decision; a successful one will vindicate her. But her tenure can only be successful if, and only if, she plays to Yahoo’s strength, which is media and content. Boards and investors sometimes realize that with increased risk comes return, but executives tend to be risk-averse and pragmatic (Mayer’s got all the money she needs, and she wants to win). As per Levinsohn, the decision to go with Mayer was tough, and given everything he’s done since joining Yahoo, perhaps unfair. But life’s unfair, and it goes on; I’m guessing he’s already being courted by starry-eyed boards elsewhere. As such, life’s good for him, as his stock has soared since replacing his predecessor. He can stay or he can go; either way, he’s a winner. In an ideal world, Mayer and Levinsohn combine forces and accelerate Yahoo mojo in media by leveraging technology to innovate how consumers engage with content, which would play to both their strengths.