IN CASE YOU MISSED IT….
One of Tuesday’s afternoon panels, “When Programmatic Buying Gets Placement Right,” continued the discussion about the much-buzzed about programmatic solution to putting the right ads in front of viewers and consumers. Sharethrough CEO Dan Greenberg – prefacing the statement with the acknowledgment that it would be controversial – said that he’d advise programmatic advertisers to max out their buys at about a thousand-ish sites, or even within the hundreds. Otherwise, he said, “You’ll probably end up on sites that a) you’ve never heard of and b) you shouldn’t be on” from a brand safety perspective.
Tim Sims, SVP Third Party Integrations for The Trade Desk also discussed getting the most bang for your buck. “Through transparent insights and third-party verification vendors,” he noted, you can maximize what’s best for you while “also thinking about brand safety.”
That said, he didn’t fully agree with Greenberg that advertisers need to limit themselves to a small number of sites. Instead, he suggested a combination of verification and reliable data could protect advertisers from fraud and brand unsafe content.
Media iQ EVP, USA Sales Michael Chock noted that that it was important to consider the littler placement options as well. “Just because a site is not top 500 doesn’t mean it’s not going to be brand safe.” Programmatic lets you be more expansive, he suggested, as long as data and analytics underpin what you’re doing.
Meanwhile, FRWD Director, Media Technology & Innovation Nathan Eide said that for his company “transparency goes beyond just brand safety.”
“It’s, ‘What am I really getting for every dollar spent, and where can I find efficiencies in that dollar?'” he said. “Clients need to be more forceful in demanding that their agencies tell them exactly what the CPM they’re paying is,” he said.
Audience data needs to underpin everything that marketers do, and it’s ideal to track their behavior across devices over a period of time, added Sims. “The marketer’s holy grail is to participate in a [consumer’s] … journey throughout the day,” he noted.
In the end, though, Chock said the future of the ad industry is “everything going programmatic.”
“We can actually trigger ads based on the weather,” he suggested as an example. “It opens up the world of all of these devices, and opens up new ways to connect with our customers.”
ALSO AROUND TIMES SQUARE…
Adam Lowy, Director, Advanced TV, Digital & Analytics for Dish and Sling TV, on “A Bird’s Eye View into OTT”: “You have to be all in on [advertising for OTT]. Your whole underpinnings have to look at OTT as the next step, of let’s get all in and do it. Q1 to Q2 of this year our revenue was up 138%. … Things are changing fast: Programmatic is growing in leaps and bounds; the increases are astonishing to me.”
Jason Krebs, CBO of Tenor, about his Tuesday panel “Emotional Intelligence: GIFs and Visual Expression in Mobile Communication” (as part of “The Attention Summit”): “The use of visual imagery in mobile messaging is rising dramatically. We want people to walk away from this session with a better understanding of how marketers can reach these people by tapping into the power of emotions. Nothing is more effective than one person specifically choosing advertiser content and sharing that directly with their friends.” Fun Fact: What was the first concert you attended? “Kool & the Gang at Great Adventure in New Jersey in 1985. They were terrific. And if you don’t know all the words to ‘Get Down on It,’ then that’s your fault.”
Tim Cadogan, CEO of OpenX, on his Tuesday panel “The Next Era of Programmatic”: “The consolidation around quality and rapid move to bring transparency to the supply chain are the two most important trends in digital advertising right now. If quality and transparency remain key, there is no reason why programmatic won’t grow a much larger share of the digital ad ecosystem. Programmatic will continue to capture spend as publishers and buyers instill trust in the companies that can prove them with the greatest value – we’re already starting to see the industry consolidate around the highest quality tech solutions available.”
TOP OF THE MORNING
Molly DeWolf Swenson wants to change the way people create and consume news, and she’s hoping to do that as head of brand and co-founder of RYOT, one of the world’s most prolific virtual reality producers. Acquired in 2016 by the Verizon/Aol/Huffington Post, RYOT is about “making the important interesting,” she explains. That’s something she’ll have more time to talk about Thursday at the “Crafting Immersive Experiences: A New Language” panel. Cynopsis caught up with her ahead of that particular experience for a chat.
RYOT wants to be the home for virtual reality news consumption. But doesn’t that turn serious topics into video games?
“You’re right that the way mediums are evolving changes the way news is consumed. But people want to get closer to the story and see what’s happening. From town crier to radio to television to livestream – all of that is us trying to get closer to the story. Technology is agnostic; creators infuse it with meaning. As a platform, we’re barely scratching the surface of what it will become.”
What makes immersive experiences important to talk about in today’s media environment?
“When there’s so much content creation everywhere, it’s about how do you cut through that noise – can you use emerging platforms to do that? From a news or media maker perspective, there’s something of a mandate to experiment in those mediums to tell better stories and reach more people.”
What’s the most misunderstood element about immersive experiences?
“When playwrights decided to make movies, they were bad at it because they were only filming as if they were in the front row of a theater. Then people came up with the close-up and revolutionized the medium. It’s the people who grow up immersed in the medium who are the ones who revolutionize it and not the ones coming from a traditional medium. Augmented reality and virtual reality are not the same thing.”
So how do we know VR isn’t just a fad?
“Fads and trends are incremental to what already exists. There’s going to be something that is the iPhone of mixed reality that’ll harness it correctly. Augmented, mixed reality is here to stay; the question is what is the device that ultimately mainstreams it. I don’t think we’ve seen that yet.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE
Walter Thompson and Kantar Futures‘ executives revealed their findings in a new study and discussed the global perception of American brands during today’s political atmosphere at Advertising Week on Tuesday. In the panel “Brand America: What does ‘America First’ Mean for Business?” they noted that the brand of the entire country has taken a hit under the current White House administration, with over 1/3 of consumers in Mexico, Russia and the UK having negative perceptions of the US. That said, overall perception of American brands continues positive in India and China. Recommendations? American and international brands need to think locally and emphasize authenticity, while strengthening consumer connections through personalization.
BY THE NUMBERS
72 percent of brand advertisers engaged in programmatic buying are concerned about brand integrity and control in digital display placement, the Chief Marketing Officer Council and Dow Jones announced in a new report released Tuesday, “Brand Protection from Digital Content Infection.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Fear is not a strategy. Fear is a killer.” – Brian Klugman, actor/writer/director, Head of Creative Blk-Ops
TOMORROW AT AW
For the final day of AW (but not our final newsletter), we’ll look at panels including “Masters of Monetizing Content” and “Attention Is the New Currency for Advertisers,” plus report back from Wednesday’s panel “Are Brands & Agencies Really the New Movie Studios.” Plus, we’ll tune in for a chat with Pandora CRO John Trimble, who’ll share where he thinks advertising and media will be taking us in the future. Be sure to set your dial to Cynopsis!
