YouTube's Competition; TV Targeting Lagging

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YouTube Challengers

Facebook, Snapchat, Vessel and others are in talks with TV broadcasters to offer better terms for video programming than YouTube, sources tell The Wall Street Journal. YouTube competitors are courting suppliers like Viacom, Time Warner, NBCUniversal and 21st Century Fox. YouTube’s terms give 55% of ad revenue to content creators, but Facebook has offered at least one media giant 65%, say people familiar with the discussions. “Sharing of ad revenue is only one aspect of such deals,” write the Journal’s Shalini Ramachandran and Mike Shields. “Getting a better split with Facebook would mean little to media companies unless they could also guarantee their programming’s ad inventory is sold at a premium price. Discussions with Facebook are still at an early stage, and it isn’t clear whether media companies will get what they want.” More.

Lacking The Ask

In an interview with Ad Age, Global CEO of Havas Worldwide Andrew Benett says traditional TV budgets are slowly catching up to consumer viewing across screens. But marketers need to experiment more with targeting on the first screen, he adds. “I don’t think there have been any breakthroughs, and no one has cracked the code yet because there hasn’t been the ask,” Benett said. “You’re seeing different messages targeting different groups in any one campaign, but it’s not bought at the household level. It hasn’t happened in the first-screen market because it’s not in best interest of any of the cable operators or even the networks.”

Video Viewability Evolution

“We see [viewability] as a means to an end,” MRC SVP David Gunzareth tells Beet.TV. “We also see it as a stepping stone to another desirable end and that’s really to move the industry toward an audience-based currency based on GRPs. A prerequisite to having ad impressions that could be input into a GRP is that it has to be viewable. … For digital to operate on the same playing field as media like TV, it needs to be viewable.” In 2015, the MRC will push the industry to pivot to a GRP standard, he added.

WPP Reports Solid Year

WPP posted a 9.9% boost in year-end revenue, which totaled $19 billion in 2014. Organic revenue growth hit 8.2%, a noticeable jump on competing holding companies (such as Interpublic’s 5.5%, Omnicom’s 5.7% and Publicis’ meager 2%). What’s more, advertising and media investment management was WPP’s strongest-performing sector in 2014. “All in all, 2015 looks to be another demanding year, although a weaker UK pound against a stronger US dollar would provide a modest currency tailwind and positive impact on profits, unlike the fierce currency headwind in 2014,” WPP said in its release (PDF).

Advisory Alliance

Two new-wave tech advisory and research firms have teamed up in the name of digital disruption at the research level. Constellation Research and Digital Clarity Group, the two shops linking arms, will collaborate on forthcoming client projects to serve the buy side, Constellation founder Ray Wang said. While Constellation’s sweet spot is enterprise tech and offshore systems integrators, Digital Clarity brings digital agency experience to the table. As partners, joint projects will include creative to commerce executions. Press release.