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iHeartMedia To Acquire Programmatic Radio Platform Jelli Is The IAB’s Consent Framework In Trouble? OTT? CTV? OMG What’s The Difference? BlockThrough Buys PageFair To Rework Its Ad Blocker Solutions Technology S4 Capital Reports First-Ever Earnings Jerry Buhlmann To Leave Dentsu Aegis Network Podcast: All About Dotdash Can Snap’s Executive Shakeup Bring The Company Back To Growth? Pandora Launches Podcast Genome Project To Fix Discovery And Monetization

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Nielsen Lures IBM Watson’s David Kenny To Become Its New CEO

by Rae Paoletta // Posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2018 at 12:44 pm.

Nielsen's hire of IBM Watson honcho David Kenny as CEO, first reported on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, is a major bet for the measurement company as it rises to meet new competitive challenges and prepares for a possible sale of the business.

Kenny oversaw IBM’s artificial intelligence initiatives, using machine learning to support enterprise customers across a large number of verticals, including healthcare, energy and marketing. Previously, he was CEO of The Weather Company, president of content delivery network Akamai and the founder of Publicis-owned digital and programmatic incubator Vivaki.

Importantly for Nielsen, he has experience making sense of large, unstructured data sets, a key challenge for the firm as it works to migrate away from yesterday’s panel-based measurement system to incorporate new methodologies.

“Particularly for Nielsen, [Kenny] brings much-needed world-class expertise in television (Weather Channel), artificial intelligence (IBM Watson), advertising (Vivaki) and consulting (Bain),” Elgin Thompson, managing director at Digital Capital Advisors, told AdExchanger in an email. “It’s that unique combination of leadership and dynamism that should excite Nielsen shareholders, customers and employees.”

Kenny is also connected to several private equity firms, as The Wall Street Journal notes. Earlier in his career, Kenny was a partner at Bain & Company, which bills itself as “the leading consulting partner to the private equity industry and its key stakeholders.”

Retailer Survival And The Role Of Digital Marketing

by AdExchanger // Posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2018 at 10:08 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 Jenny Darroch, dean and professor of marketing and entrepreneurship at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate Online School of Management, Claremont Graduate University.

In the wake of the Great Recession, it appeared that brick-and-mortar retail was all but over. Pundits used terms like “retail apocalypse” as weak consumer spending led to deep declines in sales, which were already lagging due to the rise of online shopping.

Even in today’s strong economy, household incomes are not keeping up with inflation, and consumers are spending their money on other priorities, such as education, healthcare and housing. Many established retailers continue to struggle in this environment. JCPenney, for instance, has seen declines in profits and store traffic. Sears is closing stores and filed for bankruptcy, months after it began thinning its marketing department.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, as some retail stores see growth. In August, Target reported its strongest same-store sales numbers in 13 years, and traffic to its stores rose 6.4% during the second quarter – the biggest increase since 2008. American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. has also had tremendous growth in the past year, gaining a solid 86.5%, compared to 29.87% industry growth.

How OMD’s John Osborn Brings His Creative Background To Media

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2018 at 9:59 am.

After 25 years at BBDO, John Osborn jumped to the media side as the US CEO of OMD last year.

He joined the media agency at a time when it was trying to bring content closer to media, and parent Omnicom was encouraging more collaboration among its agencies.

“The work we’re doing creatively has to be rooted in who we’re talking to, how they go about their lives and how we can engage with them,” he said. “Creative in a vapor doesn’t do anything. It’s got to be connected to media.”

In addition to bringing a creative perspective, Osborn navigates the agency through a quickly evolving landscape of technologies, buying methods and client demands. OMD, which launched in 1996 as a media-buying agency, is trying to evolve into a more well-rounded marketing agency as clients’ needs shift.

“We’re not a media-buying shop,” Osborn said. “We’re a full-service marketing agency.”

He spoke with AdExchanger.

AdExchanger: Why did you move to the media side?

JOHN OSBORN: I went through a few years when media was bookended on the back end of the presentation. In many instances now, it’s the starting point, because media is closest to the consumer.

Hurdl Is Using Wearables To Make Concert Marketing DTC

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2018 at 7:00 am.

Aside from dedicated fans, most people who show up to a concert never hear from the band again. That fleeting relationship poses a challenge for musicians. How can they get people to come to their next concert? Or buy merch?

Hurdl is solving that problem with connected LED wristbands, which live event attendees activate using their mobile phones. After a show, the band can thank fans for coming via text, and then later send additional messages about upcoming shows or a link to buy merchandise.

“We are the only LED wearable that starts a marketing conversation,” said Hurdl founder Betsy McHugh, a former tour marketing manager. “We are building out a marketing system that live events can use to find these customers.”

McHugh founded the company in 2015 with $4 million in seed funding.

“There was no way for the artists I was managing to have a direct dialogue with the fans,” McHugh said. “They all had challenges talking directly to the consumers, either at the venue or continuing that conversation afterwards.”

BuzzFeed CEO Talks Roll-Up; Insta Cracks Down On Fake Activity

by AdExchanger // Posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2018 at 12:03 am.

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

Digital Media Roll-Up

In an interview with The New York Times, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti mused about a possible roll-up digital of digital media companies. The obvious candidates would include BuzzFeed, Refinery29, Vox Media and Group Nine. Benefits could include larger payments from social ad platforms. “If BuzzFeed and five of the other biggest companies were combined into a bigger digital media company, you would probably be able to get paid more money,” Jonah Peretti told the Times. More. Reading between the lines, Recode’s Peter Kafka later tweeted, “Roll-up talk is another way of saying that the would-be buyers for big digital media guys – the tv guys – aren’t buying.”

Searching For Real Love

Instagram will crack down on inflated account metrics by removing fake or third-party generated likes, followers and comments from its platform. The company has built a machine learning tool to identify fake activity and will alert account holders that it has deleted inauthentic content. The announcement is just the beginning of a wider clean-up effort for Instagram. Read the blog post. Unilever CMO Keith Weed, who sparked a rallying cry against influencer marketing fraud in Cannes this year, endorsed the changes. “Dishonest practices like buying fake followers or fake engagement from bots pollute the entire system,” he told Marketing Land. “We should all be encouraged by these steps from Instagram to identify and address this type of activity.” More.

iHeartMedia To Acquire Programmatic Radio Platform Jelli

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Monday, November 19th, 2018 at 4:02 pm.

Radio giant iHeartMedia said Monday it will acquire programmatic radio platform Jelli. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

iHeartMedia has been working with Jelli since 2015 to power its private marketplace, SoundPoint, which represents programmatic inventory on its 850 broadcast radio stations. Jelli also powers Katz Expressway, the independent programmatic marketplace run by radio sales rep firm Katz. Jelli will continue to power Expressway, which will remain independently run by Katz.

Jelli’s platform automates radio buying, adds a targeting layer and allows buyers to better measure spend. Its ad server, which is installed in 2,300 radio stations across in the United States, allows buyers to target, measure where an ad ran and understand how many people heard it in real time.

Through SoundPoint, buyers can also layer on iHeartMedia’s first-party data from its digital properties to target buys against audiences.

“We look at what Facebook and Google have accomplished by bringing data to the mix and offering advertisers control and insights, and we’re trying to mirror that,” said Brian Kaminsky, president of ad product, programmatic and data operations at iHeartMedia.

Jelli, which manages $2 billion in media through its platform, will operate as a standalone company within the iHeartMedia group and continue working with broadcast radio stations and buyers across the industry.

Zenith Forecasts Slower Programmatic Media Growth As Data Costs Go Up

by James Hercher // Posted on Monday, November 19th, 2018 at 3:50 pm.

Global programmatic advertising will grow by more than $13 billion next year and the year after, but its growth rate has stalled and it’s making slower-than-expected headway in taking share from non-programmatic media, according to Zenith’s 2018 Programmatic Marketing Forecast published Monday.

Programmatic display advertising will clear $70.2 billion this year, according to the report, $13.7 billion more than last year. But next year’s forecasted growth of $13.6 billion is relatively lackluster, considering the expected momentum behind programmatic.

Zenith was once cautiously optimistic that, by the end of its five-year forecast, digital display advertising in many markets would be entirely programmatic, said Jonathan Bernard, the company’s head of forecasting. But now only Canada could feasibly be fully programmatic and Zenith is walking back its growth forecast for programmatic’s share of digital.

Data, infrastructure and other peripheral considerations like brand safety, viewability and ad verification increase costs associated with buying online media – but that money isn’t going to ads. Hence, the slowdown in actual programmatic media spend, Bernard said.

While it’s more difficult to accurately measure these additional costs compared to surveying ad spend, Bernard believes they will be important for media mix reviews, because they make programmatic activations more effective.

Next Stop, Brand Lift: DTC Sofa Startup Burrow Sees Success With Subway Ads

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Monday, November 19th, 2018 at 12:35 am.

Digitally-native direct-to-consumer brands are super-smart performance marketers, but they also appreciate the importance of branding – and they’ve been spending big on out-of-home advertising, particularly in the New York subway system.

“The MTA is very excited,” said Erica Amatori, director of marketing at Burrow, a less than two-year-old DTC customizable sofa brand headquartered in Manhattan. “They’ve noticed this trend – and it’s definitely being reflected in the prices.”

Buying out half the ads on one side of an entire train, for example, went from $250,000 a month to over $300,000 this year.

“These ads also let us hit our core demo, which is split evenly between males and females in the 25 to 35 age range who have a household income of $80,000-$100,000 and more.”

But, it’s worth it – at least for now. New York City is a petri dish of journalists, media buyers, startups and tech-savvy young professionals, and that makes it an excellent test market for new marketing initiatives, Amatori said.

“New York is the test budget for everything we’re doing,” she said. “We’re testing out-of-home in our best-selling city, which is New York, because that’s where awareness is highest. If it performs, we take it to other metro areas, like DC, LA or Chicago.”

When Burrow ran a subway ad campaign earlier this year with its branding agency Red Antler, direct site traffic increased by more than three times and organic traffic doubled. In a post-transaction survey, 60% of people attributed their purchase of a Burrow sofa to the brand’s subway ads.

“We thought subway ads were just top-of-the-funnel, but we’ve found that they’re actually a really big part of a buyer’s decision process,” Amatori said.

AdExchanger caught up with Amatori to talk OOH, measurement and why DTC brands are so obsessed with subway ads.

OTT? CTV? OMG What’s The Difference?

by Rae Paoletta // Posted on Monday, November 19th, 2018 at 12:30 am.

Everyone wants to talk about over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) right now, but they’re often confused for one another. They’re also used interchangeably by many marketers, brands, and sometimes, by the most erudite reporters.

With all the TLAs (three letter acronyms) we love to employ in this industry, we thought it’d be a good idea to ask the experts how they differentiate CTV and OTT. For TV buyers, these definitions are critical, as it directly influences the way they transact across various platforms and devices.

There’s just billions of dollars riding on these definitions. No pressure, though.

So, what’s the difference between OTT and CTV?