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CTV Data Is Massively Fragmented: Here Are Three Ways The Industry Is Stitching It Back Together Google Aligns With Consultants On Cloud As Marketing Converges With The Enterprise Quantcast Is Starting To Make Money Off Its CMP Footprint The Walled Gardens Are Eating Open Programmatic – Here’s How They Do It Learning Google’s Dizzying Policies: 20 Minutes With Prabhakar Raghavan On His New Job Leading Ads And Commerce Ad Sales Prez Rita Ferro Talks Disney’s Digital Evolutions – And Ambitions AT&T’s Xandr Data Can Now Be Applied On Non O&O Properties Google Revamps Ecommerce Ads Pitch With New Formats And Shopping Hub Disney Takes Full Ownership Of Hulu

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CTV Data Is Massively Fragmented: Here Are Three Ways The Industry Is Stitching It Back Together

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 at 12:30 am.

The tsunami of data surging into TV introduces a massive amount of complexity and fragmentation into what used to be a simple media buy.

“It’s really complex to buy, and that’s spooking a lot of buyers off,” said Tracey Scheppach, who buys addressable connected TV (CTV) with her agency Matter More Media.

CTV, which is content viewed on a TV and delivered over the internet, is the frontier for this data-driven transformation because it is theoretically (though not often in practice) addressable. Companies are swooping in to use that data to provide new capabilities in targeting, audience marketplaces and measurement.

But only some types of companies within the CTV ecosystem can collect viewing data or identity data about their viewers.

Ironically, those with the least TV inventory (or none at all) have the most data: digital MVPDs, direct-to-consumer apps, smart TVs, ad servers and companies with SDKs installed.

Programmers, who have the bulk of the TV inventory, need to own the distribution channel in order to get consumer data.

Their content frequently lives across combinations of devices and apps, all of which share different amounts of data or require different technical setups. And consumers also watch content across multiple services, making it difficult for one company to understand identity or a viewing footprint.

So although precise data exists, it’s heavily siloed on different platforms, which is why addressability with the scale of linear remains a pipe dream.

The industry is bringing this data together in three ways: through technologies designed to stitch together capabilities like targeting, measurement, frequency management and optimization; through partnerships between distributors and programmers; and through the formation of industry standards.

With A New CRO, Twitch Levels Up Its Advertising Ambitions

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 at 12:04 am.

At any given moment, 1 million people are watching Twitch, tuning in to the half a million people who stream themselves playing video games every day.

The audience can be on par with a national cable network, according to a Nielsen study of concurrent viewers conducted in January.

Twitch checks three coveted boxes for advertisers: video advertising supply, a scaled, engaged user base of 15 million daily unique visitors and access to a young, male audience. Sponsorships and influencer marketing, measurable via an in-house research panel, checks a fourth box.

With a strong groundwork laid through its work with entertainment and gaming brands, Twitch is getting serious about its advertising business, which means making inroads in serving advertisers who want to reach young men – not just active gamers.

In November 2018, Twitch brought in Walker Jacobs to serve as Chief Revenue Officer, replacing a CRO who led the company through its first seven years of sales. Jacobs worked in TV early in his career, at Turner, and most recently was COO at Wikia, which attracts an audience similar to Twitch’s. Twitch is hiring rapidly and setting up offices in new markets, like Atlanta, to complement its New York and Los Angeles home bases.

by AdExchanger // Posted on Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 at 12:03 am.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

ITP Consolation Prize

WebKit, the software underlying Apple’s Safari browser, introduced a new way to attribute ad clicks on the web in compliance with its Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), built-in tech that strips cross-site tracking from the browser. Safari is prohibiting user-level measurement by bundling campaign and conversion measurement into segments of 64, so companies can run attribution at a relatively granular scale, but can’t carve out individuals, according to a blog post. Safari’s restrictions on third-party vendor tracking apply, so an ad impression and conversion event needs to be identified separately by first-party publishers or merchants, after which Safari (not a measurement firm or agency) confirms the sale. “Critically, our solution avoids placing trust in any of the parties involved – the ad network, the merchant, or any other intermediaries – and dramatically limits the entropy of data passed between them to prevent communication of a tracking identifier,” writes John Wilander, WebKit security and privacy engineer. More.

Open Wide

Twitter has increased ad loads for many prominent users, such as reporters and celebrities, reports the Los Angeles Times. People started registering the increase in ads this week, and Twitter confirmed the changes are part of an experiment. Three years ago, Twitter quietly added many influential users to an ad-free feed or served fewer ads to these individuals because it wanted to maximize their time on platform. Now it appears to be testing the exact opposite strategy. “It’s plausible that Twitter may be trying to increase ad load as a way to sustain revenue growth despite a declining user base,” writes the LA Times. More.

Dotdash Makes Bold Move With Amazon-Exclusive Paint Line

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019 at 12:20 pm.

Amazon is primed to splash some color on a new product category: paint.

But rather than slap on its own private label, home improvement site The Spruce lent its name and home décor expertise, selecting and naming the 32 colors of paint. Paint manufacturer KILZ produced the line.

KILZ and Amazon first approached the digital media brand a year ago to help launch the millennial-focused paint line, called The Spruce Best Home.

”The paint company and Amazon got together, and said there is a market here, and they needed a partner to do it. And that was us,” said Neil Vogel, CEO of The Spruce’s publisher, Dotdash.

Best Home is the first product co-created by Dotdash, and it took over a year for its commerce team to get off the ground – from contracts to picking out the colors to designing the paint labels.

The Spruce used data about its content as well as input from its editorial team to inspire the line.

Roku Takes New OTT Planning Tools To The Upfront

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019 at 9:00 am.

Roku has spent the past few years showing advertisers the incremental reach they can gain by buying over-the-top TV (OTT).

On Wednesday, the smart TV operating system launched Activation Insights, an OTT planning tool that helps buyers plan OTT buys by understanding how much budget to shift from linear TV to maximize returns.

Brands know they need to move budgets from linear as more people cut the cord, but they play it conservatively when they aren’t sure exactly how much of shift will achieve the best ROI, said Alison Levin, VP of ad sales and strategy at Roku.

“Brands and buyers understand streaming is mainstream,” she said. “They know their audience is there but have very limited information on how much budget they should be moving to get the right audience.”

The tool provides that information by marrying Roku’s subscriber data with the data collected from the automatic content recognition (ACR) technology that is baked into more than 10 million smart TVs that carry Roku’s software. Through ACR, Roku can gauge which of its viewers subscribe to linear TV and how much of it they watch compared to OTT. If Roku knows that a specific household watches linear TV heavily, for example, it may suggest the buyer not waste money on an OTT buy, and vice versa.

“With the combination of the two, we can understand if your brand was exposed to the campaign on linear or not,” Levin said. “We have this unique view into what’s happening on the streaming side as well as on the TV side.”

Comcast Technology Solutions Has A Unified Platform To Deal With Wonky Workflow

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019 at 9:00 am.

On Wednesday, Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS), a division of Comcast Cable, rolled out the beta version of a self-serve platform that automates the complex process of connecting a media plan to the creative workflow and also unifies linear and digital ad management.

The CTS ad suite ingests an advertiser’s media buy – which could include hundreds or even thousands of line instructions – and all of the associated creative assets, including ad versions. The media buy is automatically matched with the proper assets and the ads get sent off where they need to go across TV, radio and digital video platforms. There’s also cross-channel reporting available once the ads are delivered.

Ads are only delivered if the system sees that the proper talent rights are in place, and a partnership with a global video distribution platform called Peach enables international ad delivery with global clients in more than 100 markets.

CTS has 19 media agencies using its solution in beta across the United States.

Digital Advertising Platforms Struggle To Keep Pace With Growing Acceptance Of Marijuana

by AdExchanger // Posted on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019 at 12:05 am.

"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today’s column is written by Richard Eisert, partner at Davis & Gilbert.

Marijuana legalization is heating up across the country.

As of this month, 33 states permit marijuana use for medicinal or recreational purposes, and an additional three states have decriminalized marijuana use. More states continue to eye potential legalization, with New York, New Jersey and Connecticut all currently debating expanding decriminalization beyond just medicinal use.

And, on the federal level, the 2018 Farm Bill removed “industrial hemp” from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, essentially decriminalizing the use of hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD).

Yet, while the legalization trend is undeniable and the cannabis market continues to grow, businesses are finding it hard to market their products online, due in part to the reluctance of publishers and networks to accept or run advertising for cannabis and CBD products.

Sudden Death For Cookies (Finally)?

by AdExchanger // Posted on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019 at 12:04 am.

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community.

Today’s column is written by Paul Cimino, president at Cimino Collaborative and head of data strategy at Prohaska Consulting.

I saw the vulnerabilities of cookies as far back as 2013.

In an article titled, "The Cookie Has Five Years Left Says Paul Cimino," I called the cookie “a very weak computing mechanism.”

“They are flawed, invasive, have privacy issues and have to go,” I said. “I think it will take five years to kill cookies. At that point, it'll be like birds chirping and flowers blooming, because we'll find some kind of value proposition that allows consumers to trust us and opt into personalization. I term it, ‘tailor, don't target.’”

I was a year off and wrong about the birds and flowers.

Google and Apple have each just tightened control of third-party cookies for Chrome and Safari users, making it more difficult for advertisers and companies that use deterministic and probabilistic cookies to track digital advertising behavior and performance across websites.

Hulu Advertises Ad-Free Service; Spotify Experiments With Car Interfaces

by AdExchanger // Posted on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019 at 12:03 am.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

Ad-Free TV

Hulu took an important step earlier this month when it started running a commercial featuring “the Old Spice guy” – a Procter & Gamble icon – pitching Hulu’s ad-free subscription offer. That may seem like less of a first step than a cheeky way of selling ad-free TV with a TV ad, but Hulu had never promoted its ad-free option. Hulu initially didn’t want its audience skewing too heavily to ad-free subscriptions because it “needed the economics associated with a dual revenue stream in subscription and ad revenue,” CEO Randy Freer said on a recent Recode podcast. Sixty percent of new subscribers come via the ad-supported product, but that number is declining. And now Hulu is gearing up to promote the ad-free version, which is twice as expensive as the “limited commercial” option ($12 compared to $6). Whether the ads make up for that extra $6 per month depends on the subscriber, but the viewer experience and likely the stickiness of Hulu’s service improves with the ad-free option. The Streamable has more.

Audio Things

Spotify is testing a hardware device with a smart assistant to learn more about how people are listening to audio in the car. Cleverly dubbed “Car Thing,” the device links to a consumer’s Spotify account and connects to the car via Bluetooth to provide Spotify with more information about the in-car experience and user driving habits. The Car Thing test will run in the United States in the next couple of weeks with a small group of Spotify premium users. Spotify claims that Car Thing isn’t a signal that the company is getting into hardware. “Our focus remains on becoming the world’s number one audio platform,” it said in a blog post. But Spotify has trademarked the name Car Thing, along with Voice Thing and Home Thing, indicating the streaming audio platform may have plans for a smart assistant or speaker of its own, The Verge reports. More.