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How LG Works Advertising Into Smart TVs Democrats, Left Behind Online, Push For More Digital Dollars Publicis Spine CEO Lisa Donohue Dishes On The Holdco’s Latest Data Centralization Strategy How Getting Back To Its Roots Helped KFC Navigate Its Future As A Brand Google’s ‘DMP-Like’ Measurement System Gains Steam UK CEO Of Hearts & Science: “Earning Your Keep By Buying Media Will Drag You Down” Facebook’s Post-Russia Ad Policy Changes Have Implications For All Advertisers How Clorox Brought Its Brand Back To Life On Digital Marketers Warm To Google And Facebook As The Blame Shifts To Ad Tech Middlemen

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At Omnicom, Accuen Declines While Annalect Grows

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2017 at 3:00 pm.

Omnicom’s trading desk Accuen shrank $9 million, or 0.2% year over year, in the US this quarter because clients continue to favor fully disclosed programmatic buys, the company said Tuesday.

In other markets, where nondisclosed buys have generally been more accepted by marketers, Accuen was almost flat, growing by just $2 million in the quarter.

“We haven’t lost clients, but we’ve changed the way we do business with them to a full disclosed method,” said Omnicom CEO John Wren on the company’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday.

But in exposing its programmatic margins to sustain relationships with US clients, Omnicom is also putting short-term pressure on those margins.

To accommodate margin disclosure, Omnicom, whose global revenue decreased 1.9% year over year to $3.7 billion, is taking programmatic specialists out of the Accuen silo and embedding them into its agencies.

“We’ve pushed this into the operating brands within the media company,” Wren said.

Programmatic isn’t the only service offering which Omnicom continues to change.

In addition to divesting $500 million of nonessential businesses, including legacy print shop Novus, Omnicom is creating bespoke teams across disciplines in order to break down internal silos.

Audience Segment Quality: Mostly Real Or Mostly Modeled? Does It Matter?

by AdExchanger // Posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2017 at 11:12 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 Leslie Wood, chief research officer at Nielsen Catalina Solutions.

Say the phrase “data modeling” in a room full of ad folks and watch them quickly become preoccupied with answering urgent emails.

Modeling has a reputation for being too complex — or too simplistic. It’s seen as overly theoretical by some and as a cheap trick by others, like a sleight of hand to cover deficiencies.

In short, it’s not well understood. But – spoiler alert – all audience segments are modeled to some degree, whether it's 10% or 50% or 90%. This is for several reasons, but most the important one is scale. If all advertising was delivered based only on recorded behavior, there would be a lot of good and useful data left on the table.

How LG Works Advertising Into Smart TVs

by Kelly Liyakasa // Posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2017 at 6:00 am.

Thanks to its smart TVs, LG Electronics controls a channel that can bring the granularity of digital advertising into the world of connected TV.

But LG is a consumer electronics manufacturer, not an advertising company, and in recent years it has learned how to accommodate a new business practice.

Its first foray into ad monetization began around 2011, when it embedded YuMe’s smart-TV SDK to deliver banner and pre-roll ads in the LG smart-TV navigation screen and its own applications.

But LG has since gone beyond display ads on menu screens.

In 2016, it partnered with OTT services provider Xumo to launch a streaming service, Channel Plus, which is baked into LG smart TVs.

Channel Plus has an interface like a channel guide, but showcases digital content instead of cable TV shows – which let LG go beyond banners.

“Serving pre-, mid- and post-roll video ads into [TV streams] serves a purpose,” said Matt Durgin, LG Electronics USA's director of content innovation. “It brings those experiences right into the TV stream by giving consumers content they want and then monetizes it with advertising.”

LG and Xumo use device-level insights to improve the viewing experience.

“Data is integral and necessary to run the system for a basic mechanics perspective,” said Xumo CEO Colin Petrie-Norris. “You need data so the consumer can find the content they’re looking for. It’s part of consent-based advertising, where there’s a value exchange, and maybe you get access to free or additional content [for viewing an ad].”

Beacons Are Still Trying To Find Their Place

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2017 at 12:35 am.

Although the industry is settling on a few practical uses for beacons, primarily as a helpmate for attribution, they’re just one marketing data point among many – a tactic.

“Beacons are only one piece of the equation, a component of a larger effort,” said Chris Cunningham, CRO of proximity and location data aggregator Unacast. “There are lots of other valuable location signals out there, including Wi-Fi, geofences, IoT and first-party apps.”

All are necessary ingredients to satisfy advertisers who are “no longer happy with click-through rate,” said Mike Blanchard, director of national mobile sales at Canadian TV and radio broadcaster Bell Media, which runs mobile campaigns for brands like Samsung, Volkswagen, and Johnson & Johnson.

“They want to align their massive digital budgets to real business objectives – to the impact their campaigns are having,” Blanchard said.

SITO, a location-based ad platform, helps Bell with the offline attribution piece. SITO builds profiles for users who click on an ad and tracks the location events associated with those devices throughout the day, including when and whether a device visits a store location.

To power its attribution solution, SITO, which sources some of its data from Unacast, needs an array of different location signals, like apps running in the background, ad requests and beacons.

Safari Tracking Change Hurts Some Pubs; Google's Latest TV Push

by AdExchanger // Posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2017 at 12:03 am.

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

Cookie Crumbles

Apple’s recent policy change to limit cookie-based tracking of Safari users [AdExchanger coverage] is already starting to hit publishers reliant on programmatic. CafeMedia, which sells about half of its inventory programmatically, has seen CPMs on Safari dip 10% or more from expected returns since Apple announced the new policy, according to Digiday. It’s difficult to isolate the impact of Apple’s tracking changes on CPMs, but those impacts are likely to escalate as iOS and Safari users update their service (a process that takes months). Advertisers that rely heavily on third-party audience targeting “have shifted slightly away from Safari visitors,” said Clark Benson, CEO of Ranker. And Android yields seem to be going up as more bids shift to that browserverse. More at Digiday.

Sell-ovision

Google landed a deal with CBS as the exclusive ad delivery stack for CBS All Access, the broadcaster’s entry in the ferocious streaming media market. Over the years, Google has made land grabs on linear television budgets with its own Fiber network tests, connected TVs, proxy battles fought by YouTube and a slew of TV-related products – with mixed success. “But over the last six months or so, Google has been quietly and deliberately trying to sell its ad serving software to big TV and video players,” writes Mike Shields at Business Insider. The push pits Google directly against Comcast’s FreeWheel, the category leader in ad delivery for streaming TV shows. More.

DAX Acquires AudioHQ, Adding US Presence For Programmatic Audio Platform

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Monday, October 16th, 2017 at 12:13 pm.

UK-based Digital Audio Exchange (DAX) has acquired AudioHQ, a US-based digital audio sales rep firm that works with media clients like Major League Baseball, SoundCloud, TuneIn and Slacker. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

DAX is a programmatic audio exchange owned by UK broadcast giant Global and consisting mostly of UK-based media supply. By snapping up AudioHQ, which has seven US-based sales reps, it enters the budding US programmatic audio market. It will also grow its audience from 130 million to 160 million globally.

The US digital audio market surpassed $1 billion last year, according to the IAB, while the US radio market will shrink by 4.4% to $13.4 billion this year, according to Magna.

“We’ve pushed into the US for a while now,” said Ollie Deane, director of commercial digital at Global. “We’re now a business that sells in multiple countries with an opportunity to recruit much bigger publishers.”

While the majority of AudioHQ’s business is IO-based, the firm gained some programmatic expertise when it became the exclusive US reseller for Triton Digital last year representing inventory on programmatic exchange a2x. Under DAX, the firm will gain access to technology and increase its programmatic sales capabilities as the category grows.

Today’s CMO Must Redefine Marketing And Identity

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, October 16th, 2017 at 12:13 pm.

“Managing the Data" is a column about customer and audience data strategy written by longtime AdExchanger contributor Chris O'Hara.

Today’s consumers are highly demanding. They expect curated movie recommendations from Netflix, one-click restaurant reservations from OpenTable, on-demand limousine service from Uber, limitless housing options from Airbnb and the world of commerce available 24/7 from Amazon Prime.

It’s a great time to be a consumer, but perhaps the worst possible time for the CMO of any other company. Just think: Uber doesn’t own cars. It is a technology company built from the ground up to deliver personalized service at scale to consumers. That’s what today’s marketing is all about.

Only a few short years ago, CMOs had a difficult, but simpler, remit: Build the brand and consumers follow. Absolut vodka was about as undifferentiated a product as anything in the market, but great packaging and a clever ad campaign made it a power brand. It thrived because the world still worked on the principles of “How Brands Grow,” Byron Sharp’s 2010 book.

Sharp posited that a marketer needed two things to succeed: availability in the consumer’s mind and availability of the product at the shelf. Brands like P&G’s Tide control lots of mindshare with mass media budgets, and P&G ensures it is widely available at every supermarket so a consumer can easily choose between it and Wisk at the “moment of truth.”

Is Attribution Bias Killing Brand Metrics?

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, October 16th, 2017 at 8:19 am.

"On TV And Video" is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.

Today’s column is written by Brent Gaskamp, senior vice president of North American development at Videology.

My overexposure to industry events has led me to really examine what’s being represented in our marketplace by different constituents versus the reality of what’s actually happening in the market.

Many marketers have long considered TV to be the best driver of ROI. Recently, however, as data continues to play an increasingly important role in evaluating return on ad spend, TV is taking an undeserved hit.

Since attribution data and the associated metrics tied to sales lift or conversions have their roots in digital media, TV may not be getting the true credit it deserves. Data-rich digital giants are often the winners in these kinds of attribution chains and the beneficiaries of redirected ad budgets.

The end result is a new kind of attribution bias aimed squarely against TV that could be costing the industry significantly. Unfortunately, it’s not just the TV companies that fall victim; it’s brands that are seeing their performance suffer.

Post-Merger Profitability: Upworthy and Good’s Happy Marriage

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Monday, October 16th, 2017 at 8:00 am.

The idea of accomplishing more together than apart sounds like a tagline for a social justice organization, but that’s what Upworthy and Good say happened after they merged 10 months ago to form Good Worldwide.

The two publications cater to corporations and nonprofits that want to align their brands with social causes and change.

Good excelled as a strategic partner for companies and by creating content for them, but it lacked expertise in distribution. Upworthy made do-gooder and moral outrage stories go viral on social media but has been faulted for click-bait content.

“We were competing against each other before,” said CEO Ben Goldhirsh, who led Good prior to the merger and serves as CEO of Good Worldwide. “I would be in a meeting, and the strengths Upworthy had that we didn’t have would be brought up.”

Post-merger, the two companies filled those holes in their offerings to advertisers, becoming the go-to publisher for socially aware campaigns.

Plus, the publisher met the ultimate business test: It’s profitable and growing. It recently signed six-figure deals with Hennessy, State Farm, Cigna and Nature Valley.

Democrats, Left Behind Online, Push For More Digital Dollars

by James Hercher // Posted on Monday, October 16th, 2017 at 12:27 am.

A year ago, the Democratic Party data-driven ecosystem, a network of consultants, liberal digital media agencies and campaign tech vendors, was confident it would hold the White House, flip the Supreme Court and maybe even reclaim a Senate majority.

Now, there is a sense of urgency as Democrats up and down ballots seek to reclaim the digital advantage they once had – despite their reluctance to invest in digital.

Digital media was home court for Democrats over the early 2000s, with influential liberal bloggers and the Obama campaign structure setting the pace on data and fundraising, said Jim Walsh, co-founder and CEO of the Democrat-aligned programmatic tech firm DSPolitical.

“But that’s changed on social and digital and we need to respond to it,” Walsh said.

The media mix shifts as decision-makers who believe in digital move up the ladder within campaigns, said Greg Berlin, co-founder of the liberal digital agency Mothership Strategies. “But I think we are at a point now where some folks in the party are still making dangerous decisions to not invest in digital.”