Commentary

Forecast 2019 - Fighting the Attention Wars

Alex: Trends in consumer behavior? Adjust your bets?

Geoffrey: Getting harder to find folks in true mass media. It will get complimented with a more surgical approach. 

David: with brand building of mass awareness and using data to ID who’s getting ready to buy a Casper mattress today. But someone still needs to know that brand when they go to make that decision. Premium high quality video does that well. Role for that long term complimented by the precision of data targeting and advance TV.

Colleen: abilities with data wail enable us to follow consumers through entire journey. How to connect that? use data to get smarter there. Mobile will be critical.

Albert: We’re going the way of the Millennial. Our behaviors shift toward what they do. We’re keeping pace with their personal evolution in the space. It’s the time shifting across the expansion of channels. The challenge is at what point in which channels will they engage and you can capture them? It’s about surgical measurability. Define when you can get them downstream. At what point are they going to lean in and buy what we’re selling? What is the right context to bring them into a lower funnel opportunity.

Alex: Measurement is still fragmented, imperfect, but so key to entire ecosystem. What changes to the world of measurement could happen this year? 

David: Nielsen plays an obvious role but we’re moving toward complementary techniques that can measure across our media plans and placement than force fit everything into one solution.

Geoffrey: Hopeful that cross platform identity solutions will prove profitable.

Albert: Measurement will come down to an individual model. When you look at the notion of data science, it will become a culmination of measurement techniques — data management, social monitoring, social data, plus what the client has in terms of market research to tell a story. The sum of the parts will mean something, not just a singular answer. The media landscape is too vast. The organization will need to acquire the appropriate resources to create your own cocktail in terms of measurement. The answer will be data science that has a modular approach to input.

Alex: It’ll have to be more bespoke. What will have to change to get brands to understand one size fits all doesnot apply?

Oleg: we don’t want to go from one to 1,000 ways of measuring. We had that in digital for years. If there is some kind of decoder ring for non walled gardens to come together, we want to minimize how many ways we understand a human behind.

Geoffrey: as advertisers work to make their businesses more unique, just plugging things into a black box isn’t going to be good enough.

Alex: GDPR last year, talk of some sort of privacy regulation coming to north America. How To protect balance between data mining and privacy?

Oleg: We can guess all we want how it will play out in U.S. Government approach is different. At its base, if we can get this process to a higher quality data, get away the noise. Simplify the user it’s good. Don’t want to shrink it too small, costs will be unreasonable.

Colleen: as GDPR like initiatives come here, important to be . As consumers start to question trust, will be a critical piece of equation. Also how brands speak to their consumers about this.

Geoffrey: What value is the consumer getting in exchange? Not enough discussion about the value of using that data.

Albert: Clients need to disclose the level of transparency and value proposition. How are they going to get personalized products, exclusive offers and opportunities? The problem is you can’t chase down transparency from the back end. The consumers aren’t stupid. They know there is no privacy. Companies can get ahead of this, make it part of our vision, mission, leadership rhetoric. Then you’d disarm them consumer mindset about what it means to give up their information. We have a backwards philosophy about it. That’s not the right moral approach to take.

David: Do people care enough About giving up privacy, having phones tracked. I don’t know that they care enough. If they don‘t care, lawmakers aren’t going to push to make those laws. fairly loose rules about it. People too comfortable with conveniences it providesa?

Alex: Seems like a positive way to engage with consumers, to say here’s what we’ll give you in return. What can brands do to get in front of that?

Oleg: starts with the seed. How transparent are you in knowing where the info is coming from. Using that information, being clear on where it comes from. 

Alex: When you look at landscape, is brand safety a problem this year?

Oleg: different tolerances for that approach. Cost of doing business as long as it is not too high. Should we look at that ad fraud ... we’re not in the industry of perfection. Is investment sufficient enough?

Albert: It should be foundational. You add brand safety as part of the cost structure. You just do it, you don’t talk about it. It will be the client expectation.

David: there’s content you don’t want to be anywhere near but there’s a middle ground of not objectionable but not high quality content, doesn’t have the same resonance that you have when TV brings. Grey area advertisers need to work their value exchanges. that area is the middle area, the idea that you don’t know what you’re getting will have aggregators on a buy, what am I getting? There isn’t a good answer for it. Different than TV, where value needs to be analyzed deeper.

Oleg: like antivirus on computers. One step behind someone who is developing a virus. We need to have it available to be as sure as possible we are preventing exposure. Be realistic about cost of doing bsuiness.

Coleen: becoming table stakes. We hold our partners to. On us to make sure partners are keeping up with the times.

Geoffrey: wherd in the funnel we’re engaging the consumer. Higher in the funnel we might have different tolerance,.

Alex: Ad fraud. DOJ put down first indictments a few months ago. FTC has signaled interest. What needs to happen to minimize risks?

Oleg: Open exchanges need to go away. That’s not going to happen.

Geoffrey: when you’re focused on non business metrics, there is much more concenr, where it needs to be cleaned up.

Albert: When you look at impressions and clicks, those need to be the elements that justify the insertion order. Move beyond that as it pertains to actionable behaviors. That shows actual consumer intent. Clicks are not enough to discern intent. Impression is not a measure of intent. Behavioral intent. They mean a lot less when a client is getting the revenue return.  If you’re selling high-level metrics as the media value, it’s going to be a struggle because clients know how much internet is being churned by people who can’t afford your product or buy bots. Have to move into a space that’s beyond impossible for a bot to accomplish. Store visits, for example. Then the bot conversation is not much of one for the client.

Oleg: bots are trained so well. Cost of doing this is slow. Cost of entry is low for bots.

Alex: push toward private marketplaces. How do you see balance between private and open? Which is better for media?

Oleg: Private is a waste of time. Applying all tracking, creating manual execution with inflated prices to feel safer, I’m still trying to understand at this point we care about aggregation, I feel programmatic is slowing us down because of manual work, cost.

Alex: Voice. Amazon doesn’t allow on Alexa but Google, Apple, are investing in voice assistants. How are you thinking about voice?

Colleen: we need to be focused on voice. The way from an advertiser perspective, ther eare ways of engaging that experience with Skills. Coty created a let’s get ready Skill. Be a utility to consumers, way to crack that. Connectivity to commerce is really interesting. Opportunities will come. 

Geoffrey: depends on the brand. Unclear what problem voice is the solution to? if it’s not addressing a consumer challenge ... used to be five years of mobile, we’re way past that now. Maybe that is the first year for voice.

Albert: UX will be the thing. People struggle with trying to map out what they can’t see. It’s a challenge to lay out an entire journey on voice. You must understand where voice is more convenient. It’s easier to talk to a phone for directions than tapping on an app. Consumers will remain ahead by using voice. Voice apps will start to replace the apps we know. Until there is expertise honed around the user experience, I don’t know how far voice will go in the near term. 

Alex: Digital OOH. Merging old and new worlds?

Oleg: Amazing to me, small percentage of overall investment in general but from Times Square to urinals, space is bigger than TV. Access becoming more digitalized, it has to cross over. Opportunity is right, scale is getting there. We need to understand what we did wrong previously band apply logic to this method.

Albert: The challenge has been lack of investment. Add that, the technological innovations can come, robust dashboards, advanced measurements in tracking. Foot traffic attribution can be tethered to something else. That’s the key. Gives it new meaning and value. There will be a resurgence around the power of what DOOH can do. Formats will proliferate. It will be a great thing. We just have to figure out how DOOH fits in the story line. 

Oleg: Fewer players to begin with. Environments tend to be safe.

David: OTT will replace the settop box particularly as 5G rolls out. That’s good for the “TV ecosystem.” It’s a change but allows people to have a suit to subscrib e to. Biggest change is ability to watch whatever you want when you want to. Pulling viewers away from live TV. Allows for more targetability, customizations. We’re seeing this change happen, 10 years we’ll be watching OTT without a cable wire.

Colleen: We’ll see OTT increase and grow over other mixes.

Oleg: Adoption is growing faster tha predicted. We need to measure it now so we don’t trip up. People didn’t use mobile web, they went to apps. OTT is great opp to get it right, how to measure that environment realistically.

Geoffrey: challenge is that there are so many ways to get infront of the same person. Tremendous cost to testing all those, dollars and time. I wonder if we’ll see consolidation? Does the world need 35 separate pipes to get to the same screen for one person?

Albert: There are like two last miles for OTT. First, its ability to keep pace with mobile. OTT is tracking to have the same ability at the back end. Once partners have the same target ability as mobile, it will make it hard to deny. Second, people are still protecting the linear institution. There are going to be crickets in the room when clients are like why are we spending money on linear when we can do OTT?

Next story loading loading..

Discover Our Publications