|
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM NEW YORK INTERCONNECT
|
|
|
| Wednesday October 18, 2023 |
|
Insights and Highlights from Advertising Week New York 2023
FOMO and Lessons Learned at Advertising Week 2023
By E.B. Moss
On the first two days of Advertising Week the energy of the attendees felt like a crowd frenzied by FOMO. Lines to get in to register on Monday were long. On Tuesday and Wednesday, “Fear of Missing Out” made lines to get to star-studded keynotes (all five Sharks together with Arianna Huffington… Jay Shetty… Issa Rae!) — or even ones led by popular execs — were even longer. We studied signage and the digital-only schedule (when the app behaved) to plan our agenda. We learned the difference between the “Lower Level” — home to destinations like the Female Quotient’s “Equality Lounge” and the sacrosanct “CMO Lounge”, versus the “Lower Level 2” (?!) for the VAB-sponsored “Screening Room” and the Amazon Ads “Marketplace” — where attendees could get a different tchotchke each day. (Thank you for the satin pillowcase.)
And then as we learned our way around, we got inundated with more knowledge.
The darlings of haute topics, like AI and Retail Media, were big on the first days’ schedule, and will have presence throughout the four-day ad-a-palooza. But veterans of Monday and Tuesday could relax into focusing on the day-to-day media we know and love, like Out of Home, the new-ish familiarity with CTV, and Programmatic with a touch of Podcasting. But FOMO about even the familiar was sparked, in part, by one of the most fraught times ever in advertising, since, as we learned FAST and from voices like Barry Frey of the DOOH trade association, DPAA, what’s old is definitely new. Again.
Even the platforms and providers themselves are on a learning curve. As Dana Ortiz, VP, Platform Marketing & Emerging Brands at A+E Networks, said of her panel with Wurl, a data-driven CTV distributor, “For the past few years we have been ‘strength training’ as we built our individual FAST channels into a multi-genre portfolio. We apply as much rigor to marketing those as we do our traditional brands. Each channel has its own unique positioning, brand promise and marketing strategy; the only difference is tactics. Wurl has been helping us understand how to target and transact our prospective audiences in an incredibly efficient way.”
Connecting to What’s New
On the CTV side, even panel titles acknowledge the frenzy. For the “CTV Gold Rush” panelists including Mike Fisher Executive Director, Investment Innovation at GroupM and Michelle Aragon, Michelle Aragon, VP, Head of Brand Marketing & Strategy Spectrum Reach, acknowledged that CTV consumption that exploded in 2020 has created a “gold rush” reminiscent of the Wild West where tonnage of inventory and audiences became a shiny new object, but per many of the learnings coming out of Advertising Week, concerns about transparency and measurement can tarnish the reality.
Part of that perceived gold rush have been the past year’s headlines that streaming has overtaken cable/broadcast, but as mentioned in the panel “How Repeating CTV Ads Affect Viewers and Brands” with Nexxen and Magna, new research shared a harsh reality. Streaming is bigger and better than ever, but still challenged in programmatically delivering a TV ad experience. One symptom of that are overly repetitive ads. Magna asked how the user experience with that over-saturation impacts ad performance. Turns out, 68% of viewers think repetitive ads are intentional on the brand’s part. Guess how that impacts their perception of the brand.? “But wait, that’s not all!” 44% think it’s the streaming platform’s fault, which makes them want to drop services. So, that negative sentiment is causing brands to lose connections, even “leading to a significant decline in brand purchase intent.”
What’s the solution? More learning curve in how to work with agencies and partners to manage ad frequency. Or keep shifting how we operate: the research also shows that viewers prefer a longer ad break up front and longer uninterrupted viewing experience.
|
 |
|
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM NEW YORK INTERCONNECT
Meeting of the Minds
One partner who is working to amplify those good results in brand lift and other outcomes through both linear and digital tv inventory, is New York Interconnect. CEO, Andrew Kandel asked two high profile panelists to address message fragmentation and how/when they consider strategic balance through a refocusing on the full funnel. There was a “Bennifer” marriage of minds, with overall agreement on best practices between Ben Ochnio of Publicis Collective and Jen Soch, Executive Director, Channel Solutions for GroupM.
When Kandel asked how local media can protect brand building as the industry focuses more on audience chasing and conversions, Soch said teams should “get deep into the conversation” to really understand clients’ KPIs and provide tailored solutions. She encourages flexibility, stating local teams should be part of bigger conversations, not siloed. It’s about “finding the audience and hitting them with the right message,” requiring adaptability. She mentioned openness to addressable, OOH and podcasting.
On utilizing media assets wisely, Ochnio said: “It’s about owning a space for the brand… you have to be comfortable with that being part of your mix or a different approach into an audience.” He also stressed the importance of a seamless process for buyers and planners for maximum efficiency, and that we as an industry must continue to push for consolidation. He also addressed the challenge of planning and buying these days, saying: “Our clients are pushing us to be more integrated…and that’s how we need to approach the marketplace as well — to be more upstream. Sometimes that’s not a reality, but when we come to the marketplace, it needs to be something that is more of a brief. That requires us on our side to have more integrated teams … to say how do we accomplish this with your set of solutions?”
“I love a good brief,” Soch agreed. (To which Kandel, referencing the roots of AWNY’s current venue as the old Manhattan Mall, said, “Well, this IS the old briefs department of JC Penney, right?”)
On a more serious finish, Kandel brought up the issue of balancing planning and buying with the value of local sports and other compelling activations. Soch alluded to the major influence that data can have on planning, and the value of big events like a Giants/Jets game, while Ochnio used an example from the US Open to demonstrate how owning a space at a local level could enhance a national campaign… or even figuring out more Las Vegas “Sphere”-like opportunities to connect DOOH, video, events and more. Both painted New York Interconnect as a key player for embracing change and innovating within the industry, suggesting an era of greater partnership between buyers and vendors for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
|
|
|
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM NEW YORK INTERCONNECT
Good GeoFencing Makes Good Neighbors
Brands rely on agencies; agencies rely on cutting edge vendors; and as the cookies crumble, everyone is talking about relying more and more on creatives. Mike Law, CEO of Carat offered a good kumbaya goal: “The industry is in this moment of transformation and I think there’s a reality check: we have to work as a team — and a lot of people are really focused on trying to get that work done. This is a time that partnership is really critical, not a clients versus agency/agencies versus partners time — but a time to be at the table together, so hopefully that’s the spirit of this type of event.”
The Sum of the Parts
One new pairing at the table is with DOOH provider, Adomni and… TikTok! An entirely new program that’s the first of its kind for the major social platform was revealed on Wednesday, basically taking advantage of digital home screens in a brand way.
Adomni CEO, Jonathan Gudai, said: “there’s a convergence that’s happening in the world of digital and social where brands are realizing that you want to connect your messaging from the phone to outside the phone and Adomni and TikTok are rolling out a program that enables brands to do just that: It’s truly video everywhere.”
And the OOH space is stepping up its attribution game. In a spirited discussion led by OAAA’s CEO Anna Bager, Clear Channel’s Dan Levi said OOH companies now provide weekly optimization intel on campaign performance and creative tweaks – “not yet real-time, but we’ve progressed from delayed PowerPoint reports of the past.” As Levi stated, “It used to be the goal of optimization. Now we’re literally sitting with clients and talking about what you can do with the creative to change it.”
Kochava’s Charles Manning added OOH can now deliver enhanced insights through approaches like anonymized geodata to analyze viewsheds of banners against timestamps. This feeds a household graph thus showing lift and impact.
Paramount’s Puja Vohra discussed optimizing OOH during the season versus just premiere. As she said, “To optimize in real time is how we think about DOOH.” She also highlighted OOH innovation opportunities, like Paramount using cranes to hang Frasier billboards playing off the name Crane.
The panelists agreed measurability is just the beginning, and that the next horizon is demonstrating OOH’s incremental impact and value in moving key audiences. According to one panelist, “the important takeaway is this is not stopping with measurability, it’s continuing with the other advanced elements.”
(Fun Brand Fact: Manning explained the company’s name origins: “Kochava is a Hebrew term. It means star. And our logo has a star on it and the premise was that with the naked eye you can see about 5000 stars in the sky, but with the right tools you can see entire Galaxy surrounding them. Our tool set allows you to see your stars — which are your users — with visibility into and management of billions of data points.”
|
|
|
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM NEW YORK INTERCONNECT
Hard Won Lesson
Advertising Week not only delivered lots of learnings, but lessons learned and shared by industry executives. There should be an equal focus on the so-called “soft skills” — which can be hardest to master — including in building relationships. Some of the best points on applying thoughtful leadership that will actually help, as the panel title suggested, “craft the future of marketing.”
Andrea Brimmer, Chief Marketing and Public Relations Officer, Ally, suggests in creating content we “come back to the touchstone, the focus, of remembering who we are there to serve… And be brave; you can’t control everything, and especially when the industry these days feels like I’m on a bucking bronco.”
Tressie Lieberman, Yahoo’s Chief Marketing Officer, shared the “Three Cs” with which she guides her team: “First is Connection. Second is Creative: not just THE creative; you have to be highly creative. That’s even how we think about media plans and ALL the things that go into marketing. Anything is an opportunity to make an impact on how people feel when you’re a brand. The third is Collaboration. It’s really important that it’s not about, ‘oh, do we have to check the box and make sure marketing is here for this,’ it’s getting an opportunity to be there. I really want us to be the team that people are asking, ‘where is marketing? We have to have them here because they’re connected, because they’re creative.’”
Lessons from another panel were taken to heart by GSTV CEO, Sean McCaffery, who shared his POV that balances what we’ve been frantically aiming to learn this week with a reminder of what’s important:
“Looking at the Advertising Week agenda, it’s refreshing to see so many conversations about reaching people in the right place, time and moment with authentic value and cultural connections. These panels however are battling for mindshare with currency, technology (AI anyone?) and automation conversations that risk drowning out the important reminder that consumers must always be first and at the center of all our conversations. Dr. Marcus Collins [Professor, University of Michigan] framed it well in his House of Culture conversation [on Monday] using a game time analogy of courtside seats vs the experience in the upper levels. One must walk in each and all those experiences to get a holistic view of culture.
“I think his point about understanding so many more perspectives is applicable to everything about this week, from culture to comms planning to consumers, and the accelerating pace of change for us all.”
So let’s breathe. And remember there are stars we can’t even see. Yet.
|
|
