| ADVERTISING
DoubleVerify announced a measurement offering that will allow advertisers to measure signals that offer a strong proxy for viewability on CTV. DV’s Fully On-Screen Completion measurement capabilities provide insight into quartile completion metrics and fully on-screen metrics, enabling advertisers to understand how many impressions were played to completion and identify drop-off points along the way, and confirm that impressions originate from sources that deliver 100% of the ad’s pixels on the screen consistently. “Viewability measurement in the CTV environment has been challenging for multiple reasons – from technical execution to lack of agreed-upon standards,” said Matt McLaughlin, COO of DoubleVerify. “DV’s innovative approach to measuring ad presentation on CTV is a market first. It extends to both the app and device levels, and represents a close proxy to traditional viewability available to advertisers today.”
Cross-screen advertising technology company Sabio shared the results of a CTV fraud analysis from its technology platform App Science, which cross-referenced location, census, traffic, content, device technographics, and third-party app data to identify some of the telltale signs of fraud in the CTV space. While fraudulent methods like server-side ad insertion, platform mismatch, and app ID spoofing have been behind the high profile CTV fraud schemes, other indicators that can serve as early warning signs include:
· Improper Site IDs: only 12.5% of Roku site IDs meet the IAB standards. The remaining 87.5% have their own naming convention, which is not necessarily fraud but opens up risks when buying inventory.
· “One-Time” Devices: a large portion of devices (22.4%) are classified as “one-time,” meaning they have device IDs that have been seen only once in the system. People typically use the same connected TV or streaming stick to view video content repeatedly.
· Operating Systems: 5% of CTV devices and operating systems are obsolete, which should be monitored to ensure that traffic coming from these sources is declining. When traffic from these sources increases in certain weeks, this needs to be evaluated further.
“CTV fraud schemes like ICEBUCKET, DiCaprio and Monarch have already siphoned billions of dollars from advertisers,” said Sudha Reddy, VP of Product Innovation at App Science. “The industry must learn from these operations, identify the tactics behind them, and proactively put measures in place to weed out this suspicious behavior in the future.”
Acxiom announced a new offering that integrates audience insights and strategy, media analytics, addressable advertising, advisory and digital platform services under a brand dubbed ConneCXions. “By bringing together Acxiom’s customer intelligence capabilities with Kinesso and Matterkind solutions, clients are in a position to bring their media, digital and offline marketing together and break down the silos that limit marketing performance,” said Arun Kumar, Chief Data and Marketing Technology Officer at IPG.
Hulu is launching a new tool that will help small and medium-sized businesses buy ads on the service. The “self-service” Ad Manager tool offers advertisers with a minimum spend of $500 access to support, with ads vetted via a series of automated and human review processes. Hulu said it is recruiting businesses to join a beta test.
Centro launched a new product, Basis Assistant, that’s a web browser extension for digital media buyers to track the changes they make on campaigns running through any self-serve walled garden ad platform, and consolidate the information in one centralized location. “Effective teams do not just ‘set and forget’ campaigns on digital ad tools. Basis Assistant enhances our use of multiple advertising technologies by creating a well-organized process for managing tactics across all campaigns,” said Carol Gleeson, founder and CEO of Gleeson Digital Strategies. “Combining Basis Assistant with the Basis platform empowers us to consolidate insights that highlight our value to clients, and also make our most effective strategies repeatable.” Basis Assistant is compatible with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, LinkedIn and all web-based advertising tools.
Personalization is a key to success in advertising – now more than ever, according to Innovid’s new study, “2020 Consumer Attitudes on Personalized Advertising.” When asked if personalization matters, 43% of respondents said it was important that the online ads they see are personalized, incorporating geography, interests and behaviors. Twenty-nine percent said they would be more likely to buy something if an ad was personalized, and 31% said they tend to be more loyal to brands that embrace personalized ads. “Advertisers aren’t doing enough to personalize across channels, despite strong demand among consumers,” said Stephanie Geno, SVP of Marketing, Innovid. “COVID-19 is also accelerating the need to be more personalized as a one-size-fits-all approach in this environment can turn off customers, hurt your reputation and undercut revenue.”
Speaking of personalization, Clinch, a provider of cross-channel dynamic creative optimization technology to advertisers, announced the launch of a video rendering engine, Clinch Xenon, to provide customization and control for video editing that makes it easier and more cost-efficient to produce assets required for omni-channel personalization. “Clinch Xenon is purpose-built to personalize video at scale today and into the future,” said Oz Etzioni, CEO of Clinch. “Clients and partners are now able to enjoy much greater control over their video parameters, without any creative or production limitations.”
The Advertising Research Foundation announced a collaborative research initiative designed to establish methods for applying randomized control testing to cross-platform advertising impact analysis. The proof-of-concept study, named RCT21, will apply experimentation methods to measure incremental ROI of large ad campaigns run across multiple media channels at once, including addressable linear TV and multiple major digital media platforms. “The digital platforms have championed the value of random control tests and have made them a cornerstone of their success,” said Scott McDonald, CEO of the ARF. “ARF has highlighted the scientific progress that has been made on ‘incrementality,’ but we needed to take it farther to have more extensive impact on existing marketing practice.” The ARF is conducting the research in collaboration with 605, Central Control and Bill Harvey Consulting. A select number of national advertisers are also being recruited to join in the project.
The Black Lives Matter protests have had a bigger impact than the coronavirus on the volume of posts that top advertiser brands are sharing on social media, according to data from ListenFirst. In June, during the Black Lives Matter protests, top brands shared 44,938 new posts on social media, a decrease of -27.83% from June 2019. In comparison, in March 2020 when the coronavirus was becoming a pandemic, they shared 58,754 new posts on social media, -14.35% less than the number of new posts they shared in March 2019. Between July 1-12, top advertisers shared 19,151 new posts on social media, a -21.63% decrease from the number of new posts they shared during the same period in 2019.
Mediaocean is acquiring 4C Insights, a marketing tech firm specializing in audience data and planning on streaming video and social media. “The COVID crisis will be remembered as a tipping point in the digital disruption of many industries including advertising,” said Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise. “Mediaocean and 4C together will lead the evolution of modern omnichannel advertising by addressing the needs of global marketers and agencies – transparency, neutrality, intelligence and accountability.” Mediaocean in paying over $150 million in cash and equity in the deal, which will make Lance Neuhauser President of Mediaocean; 4C founder Alok Choudhary will become Chief Scientist at Mediaocean, a role he currently holds at 4C.
Freaks 4U Gaming GmbH, a marketing agency specialized in targeting PC and console gamers, has expanded its complex, building an additional three 4K studios and three control rooms. Looking to integrate control solutions that could both improve production quality and simplify operator workflow, Qvest Media, the project’s main technology and product supplier for 4K slow motion operation, audio and video routing, IP KVM systems, studio lighting and grip equipment, introduced Freaks 4U to TSL Products. The company integrated three units of TSL’s TallyMan TM1+ Broadcast Control and four licenses of its Flashboard Technical Display systems into Freaks 4U’s new facility. “For Freaks 4U Gaming, the most beneficial feature of the TallyMan system has been its ability to control multiple routers, vision mixers and multi-view displays in one place, keeping all routers connected with the option to deploy an automatic update if there are any signal changes,” says Timo Krey, senior broadcast engineer at Freaks 4U Gaming GmbH. “Since we are working with a large router with 160×160 SDI channels, we need to be able to manage routing on a device with over 5,000 sources and destinations. TallyMan makes it easy to keep an overview of everything on one display and offers significant workflow improvements for the production crew.”
STREAMING
TEGNA’s Justice Network will relaunch on July 27 as True Crime Network. “True Crime Network capitalizes on the rapid growth of several distinct segments of media and entertainment: over-the-air television viewing, on-demand and binge streaming, podcasting and the true crime genre,” said Brian Weiss, President and GM, TEGNA’s entertainment multicast networks. “Our audience has spoken passionately about their desire to binge true crime mystery content.”
Eighty percent of streaming viewers watch ad-supported content and 60% would choose to watch free content over a paid ad-free service, according to SpotX’s report, in partnership with Mintel, “CTV Is for Everyone.” Key findings include:
* Every type of consumer can be reached by CTV, as the audience is extremely diverse and includes all ages, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and family compositions. The median age of US CTV viewers is 45 years old.
* CTV viewers are highly engaged, as over 60% watch every day at an average of three hours, a significant increase from just 46 minutes in 2018 (according to Nielsen).
* Seventy-five percent of CTV viewers consume some sort of live programming and 48% of those audiences regularly watch sports.
* Only 16% of CTV viewers stream alone. Most audiences regularly consume content with others, usually a partner or kids, and sometimes with friends.
* 42% of CTV households earn more than $75k.
* Personalization of CTV ads is improving with nearly 60% of streamers saying they have seen ads for products that they have an interest in, 17% considering making a purchase because of an ad they viewed, and 12% making a purchase because of an ad they were exposed to.
Crash Cinema, purveyor of classic Hong Kong action films, inked a deal with US streaming company Bingey TV to launch the streaming channel Crash Kung Fu Theater on platforms including Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire.
Topic, the streaming service from First Look Media, is now available to customers in the US and Canada through Apple TV channels. After a seven-day free trial, viewers can subscribe directly on the Apple TV app for $5.99 per month. Launched in November 2019, Topic focuses on “intensely curated content from creators who have passionate points of view.” |
