Maarten Albarda

Meet Maarten at MediaPost Events

• Maarten attended OMMA at SXSW, March 07, 2014
  3/7: AT&T Center | 3/8: Textile, 310 E 3rd St, Austin
  

Articles by Maarten All articles by Maarten

• Lessons Learned From Start-Up Pitches in Media Insider on 10/05/2018
  

  Number one: A focused presentation with a clear goal sharpens the deck.

• The End Of 15% Agency Commission? in Media Insider on 09/21/2018
  

  In a story not widely reported, two large media sales companies in the Netherlands have done away with 15% commission.

• Keeping Marketing In-House Can Have Unintended Consequences in Media Insider on 09/07/2018
  

  Marketers, driven by the promise of lower cost and better/faster execution, often find the grass is not much greener on their own side vs. on the agency side.

• Buying An Online Ad Is Like Booking An Airline Ticket in Media Insider on 08/24/2018
  

  Digital ad pricing is about as clear as mud -- in the same way airlines' fees can be wildly different for two seats right next to each other.

• Streaming Is Challenging Live TV in Media Insider on 08/10/2018
  

  Linear TV was still the live-event king during the FIFA World Cup, but numbers were up significantly for live streaming of the event.

• NYIAX: Quiet Revolution, Or Further Nail In The Coffin For Transparency? in Media Insider on 07/27/2018
  

  I am not an expert digital advertising technologist by any stretch of the imagination, but I follow closely what happens in digital ad and marketing tech, since it's having such a profound effect on every aspect of our business. Which is why the New York Interactive Advertising Exchange (NYIAX) interests me.

• Forget FANG -- Here Comes FAWA in Media Insider on 07/13/2018
  

  I would say that FAWA - encompassing Facebook, Amazon, Walmart, Alphabet - is better for digital advertising than any combination that involves fewer letters. I expect Walmart Media Group to become a force to be reckoned with, just as Amazon has.

• The 8 Media Partnership Commandments in Media Insider on 06/29/2018
  

  The World Federation of Advertisers has issued its eight "principles for partnership" in a Global Media Charter published last week . In it, the WFA outlines some ways to improve (rebuild?) the relationship between marketers and media agencies.

• Despite Scandals, World Cup Remains Marketers' Draw in Media Insider on 06/15/2018
  

  It's no doubt true that FIFA's brand name has an enormous smudge on it, which won't be going away anytime soon. However: While the global football-loving population positively hate FIFA, they love football and the World Cup.

• The Five 'Whys' To A Pitch in Media Insider on 06/01/2018
  

  If you are or ever have raised a toddler, you are very familiar with the "why" phase, where every request or instruction is met with a "why?" This is exhausting and sometimes eye-opening, because the question is usually asked with complete honesty and as part of the child's learning process. It forces you to think about the nature or reasoning of your request, and makes you articulate things you take for granted as logical. Perhaps this was what inspired industrialist (and Toyota founder) Sakichi Toyoda to come up with the idea for the Five Whys, which became the grounding principle for the Toyota problem-solving methodology, and is now widely used for many purposes. This approach is highly useful for solving marketing problems, too.

Comments by Maarten All comments by Maarten

• Official And Confirmed (Indirectly): Feds Are Probing Media-Buying Practices by Richard Whitman (Mediapsssst on 10/10/2018)
  

  Henry: I suspect the interest to explore a potential case stems from the fact that the government is a large advertiser in its own right. So it might be that help is sought from experts to understand practices and nuances in advertising deals and dealings. If the probe concludes that the government in its relationships with their agencies has suffered financially, a case might be brought forward but I am going to guess that it would be settled out of court pretty quickly. If such a case was to come forward, I assume other advertisers might also start a negotiation process for themselves, if they have solid reason to believe that their circumstances are similar to that of the government's case. Note: this is all specualtion of course, and I have no legal background to back up any of these assumptions.

• Retailers Turning To Self-Checkout Shopping by Chuck Martin (Connected Thinking on 09/26/2018)
  

  And not just a US phenomenon:https://www.esmmagazine.com/albert-heijn-checkout-free-store-amsterdam/55730

• The End Of 15% Agency Commission? by Maarten Albarda (Media Insider on 09/21/2018)
  

  Thanks Koenraad for the update from Belgium, and not surprised to see some other markets have followed suit. I think one other reason to do away with the commission is perhaps to be able to negotiate easier deals with the agency hold co’s? As you said it helps determine volume and discount for advertisers, but perhaps also makes the total volume deal with agency hold co’s easier to calculate? Dank je!

• 'Great British Baking Show' Rises Quietly To The Top by Adam Buckman (TVBlog on 07/10/2018)
  

  And this season will be the last season for the show in its current format. The BBC lost the show to Channel 4 in the UK, and with it all the presenters. Paul Hollywood has been the only one making the transfer - all others pledged their loyalty to the BBC.http://www.itv.com/news/2017-04-14/great-british-bake-off-mixed-reaction-to-new-line-up/The C4 show, with new presenters along with Hollywood, has done very well. Let's see if PBS can cut a deal with C4 for a continuation.

• Why I Fired AT&T by Steven Rosenbaum (Media Insider on 07/09/2018)
  

  Same experience, different company. Time Warner became Spectrum, and Direct TV is the only alternative to cable in Charlotte. My bundled Spectrum TV, Phone, Internet bill was about to go from $206 to close to $240. So we switched a couple of things around and downgraded to basic cable, now paying $115. We already had Prime so it was an easy decision.We also switched from Verizon to T-Mobile and lowered a phone bill of close to $200 to $60 with many more relevant bells and whistles and excellent customer service.As they say, it pays to shop around. And it pays to re-evaluate!

• Ad Execs To RFP: RIP by Joe Mandese (Research Intelligencer on 03/21/2018)
  

  I think what we are talking about here is a very specific type of RFP. If I understand the context correctly, this is an RFP issued by a marketer to a (group of) potential programmatic platforms. They state "here is how much money I have, here is who I am after. How are you, platform, going to deliver this and at what price point?"I can believe that this variety of RFP is declining, as the demands of programmatic have become more sophisticated (i.e. beyond pure lowest cost) and some have taken this in house.The "other" RFP is the one I am more familiar with, which comes from marketers seeking a change to their total eco-system of marketing. They are unhappy with (or unclear about) the performance of their marketing dollars, they feel their eco-system has ballooned into something that does not work as well as it should (i.e. silo-ed, with redundancies and inefficiencies, etc.) and the outputs of their marketing eco-system do not reflect the world that their consumer lives in. The occurence of that RFP is not going away, but growing, in our experience.

• Marketing's 2017 Shiny Object Obsessions? Bah, Humbug! by Maarten Albarda (Media Insider on 12/29/2017)
  

  Thanks Paula: same to you and yours!

• The Disappearance Of Advertising-Supported Media by Maarten Albarda (Media Insider on 09/22/2017)
  

  Ed: thanks as always for thoughtful comments. I would say I am not barking up one particular tree, but at least three: Advertisers need to do a better job briefing what they want/need, and use the (growing) data for insights around understanding their target audience, and where the advertiser might have an opportunity or permission to inject their message. Advertisers also need to do a better job at evaluating and optimizing their buys, regardless of the medium. Mobile Oil wasted money on me, but more importantly, in general with an over-the-top frequency. Agencies need to do a better job planning and buying. They need to educate and evolve the advertisers (back) to media planning principles that actually haven't gone away but have been neglected. They need to push back on briefings that are mostly focused on "efficient", "reach" or "low cost" to a better articulation of who they need to reach, how/when/where they might reach them and how much they need to be in front of them and with what type of content.  Platforms, whether TV, USA Today or Facebook (or any programmatic related entity), need to do a much better job at setting some guidelines and monitoring buys to ensure they are not counter-productive to the consumer experience. Mobile Oil should absolutely advertise in an F1 race. But perhaps 4x and not 15plus times. NBC should "protect" Mobile from itself (if their instruction led to this waste of ad budget) or their agency (if they were the ones instructing). In our work with advertisers, we absolutely call them out on this. It is, after all, their money. And I can dream, can't I?

• The Magic Of AI -- And Amy Ingram by Sarah Fay (AI Insider on 07/07/2017)
  

  Hey Sarah: I, too, have used Amy. She is a miracle worker most of the time. But just like any other person learning how to read and make independent decisions, she is not without mistakes. The other day, a participant in a call scheduled by Amy, sent me and Amy an email that he was running behind and could we start 15 minutes later. I was fine with that, but Amy, not grasping that the call was going ahead but a little later, messaged me that the other party had let her know he was now unavailable at the scheduled time so she had gone ahead and cancelled the call, and was looking to reschedule.Confusion ensued and I managed to let the other party know that 15 minutes later was OK. I think Amy is now still trying to reschedule the call even though it took place already...It is the first mishap I have encountered, and I will let the developers know. Perhaps they can tweak Amy's learning algorithm appropriately. Other than this incident I have been impressed!

• A Little Media Island Called The USA by Maarten Albarda (Media Insider on 06/12/2017)
  

  Hi Kevin: I am well aware of some of these limitations. Yet, the ANA exists, as does the 4A's and the IAB. And they collaborate and discuss issues of mutual concern (and/or fall out over issues of concern... "coughtransparencycough"). Limitations aside, I think the real point of my post is not to say that the US should seek more/better industry-wide collaboration. The point is that other parts of the world are innovating marketing and advertising at the speed of light just as much as the US is. And it pays to pay attention to some of those initiatives as they could be imported/adapted to the US just as easily as some of our stuff gets used over there.

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