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How Kellogg’s Speed Team Is Launching Brands With Startup Principles Legit Brand Creative Is Getting Hijacked – And Advertisers Need To Start Paying Attention After A Bumpy Road, Ooyala Sells Video Platform To Brightcove For $15 Million Meet The Ex-Googlers Who Built ThirdLove, The DTC Challenger To Victoria’s Secret Scott Hagedorn Named CEO Of Omnicom Media Group Highland Math Forms First Data Co-op Of Data Sellers Under S4, MightyHive Plots Expansion Beyond Its Google-Centric Roots Amid WPP’s Focus On Creative Transformation, Triad Launches A Consultancy LiveRamp Adds Connected TV IDs To IdentityLink

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Comic: Great Expectations

by AdExchanger // Posted on Friday, February 15th, 2019 at 12:03 am.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem...

Disney Owns Ad Tech Now; Amazon Tries Loyalty Fulfillment

by AdExchanger // Posted on Friday, February 15th, 2019 at 12:03 am.

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

Disney’s Castle … And Walled Garden

Disney has often been discussed as a potential buyer of ad tech, but hasn’t shown much interest in the category. It bought a majority stake in the streaming video technology BAMTech in 2017, and ended up taking a $469 million write down on the deal. But now Disney is bringing on an ad tech property, TrueX, with the acquisition of 21st Century Fox. The big question for TrueX customers is whether Disney will internalize the tech, using it exclusively across Disney properties, or will retain it as a standalone ad tech business, Ad Age reports. Others major media owners face the same question, such as Comcast–Freewheel and AT&T–AppNexus. “Buyers want cross-marketplace solutions that allow us to implement in a consistent way," says Adam Gerber, president of global media at GroupM’s Essence. "The more walled gardens that go up, the more separation that's created, the more challenging it is for us to innovate. For us to innovate at scale we'd need to do a bunch of one-off [tests]. That's not efficient.” More.

Seize The Moment

Amazon came out of beta with Amazon Moments, a subscription and loyalty program fulfillment solution. “Some marketers, especially in the loyalty space, created rewards programs that are points-based, and then had to figure out how to source physical products as rewards, how to get them to the customer, ship them, and so on,” Amazon’s head of digital marketing, Amir Kabbara, tells MediaPost. With Amazon Moments, a company can set requirements and their customer acquisition price, and Amazon will offer specific rewards or items that meet the price and then fulfill the delivery. It’s a way for brands and media companies to take advantage of their own research, he says. For instance, if a network knows people who watch the first seven episodes of a show tend to finish the season, it can nudge viewers by offering a reward after seven episodes. More.

Scott Hagedorn Named CEO Of Omnicom Media Group

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2019 at 4:34 pm.

At agencies, data-driven talent is rising to the very top.

Hearts & Science CEO Scott Hagedorn was named CEO of Omnicom Media Group (OMG) Thursday after 15 years with the company. Hagedorn succeeds Page Thompson, who will retire after 40 years at Omnicom.

Omnicom has not yet named a replacement for Hagedorn at Hearts & Science.

Over the course of his career, Hagedorn has worked across OMG at OMD, PHD and RAPP, which is now part of Omnicom Precision Marketing Group. As head of Omnicom’s data science platform Annalect, Hagedorn helped pioneer programmatic media buying across OMG.

In his new role, Hagedorn will build platforms and products that lead to client growth and recruit the right talent. OMG has already deployed Omni, an identity-based data platform that pulls media planning, buying and creative processes into one system, across all its media buying subsidiaries.

Next, Hagedorn aims to provide verticalized data packages to clients. For example, a CPG client may want to use Omni based on IRI or Nielsen Catalina data, while an auto client might want to focus on Polk data.

“I’m going to pull the vertical teams out of each agency and chat about which data sets can have the most effectiveness for a client through Omni,” Hagedorn said. “We’re modeling data and using that to write the marketing rules for how the business should behave.”

The Big Story: Is IAB DTC?

by Ryan Joe // Posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2019 at 12:43 pm.

The Big Story is a breezy podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts.

The IAB’s Annual Leadership summit wrapped this week and increasingly, the show has moved to focus on DTC companies like ThirdLove, the startup underwear brand that keynoted this year’s conference.

That’s quite a shift from the past two years, which saw P&G’s Marc Pritchard and Unilever’s Keith Weed take the big stage. And it’s an even bigger shift from the IAB’s inception, when it was a publisher focused trade org.

Our editor Sarah Sluis made the long trek there and back. On this week’s episode of “The Big Story,” she describes what happened at the show, why the IAB might be making the wholesale shift to DTC and how DTC principles are effecting even the biggest companies.

Also, we talk about a potential economic downturn, and what that might mean for the advertising industry. It’s a little bit of a thought experiment, since it’s not clear if a recession is in the cards – it seems like someone keeps unnecessarily shuffling the deck – but if one does hit, the environment today looks a lot different than it did in 2008.

And finally, we talk podcast consolidation. With EW Scripps, iHeartMedia, Pandora and Spotify all making big plays to enter the podcasting industry, does that change the game for programmatic advertising?

Honestly, not so much. Following up on Alison Weissbrot’s incisive reporting on the topic, the team looks at what exactly is inhibiting more advanced advertising in podcasting. Hint: It starts with UX and ends with A-P-P-L-E.

Hearst Appoints Mike Smith As Chief Data Officer

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2019 at 11:05 am.

Hearst Magazines named Mike Smith as its first chief data officer Thursday.

When Smith joined Hearst in 2013, he introduced programmatic to its sites and oversaw programmatic buying.

As chief data officer, Smith will oversee data use in programmatic campaigns, branded content, direct sold campaigns, sales operations and editorial.

“When Troy [Young] became president of the magazine media company last summer, it was important to the leadership team to accelerate the cross-pollination of skills across the organization,” Smith said. He will continue to report to Young.

Making Hearst’s sales and business operations more data-driven, for example, means applying data much differently than Hearst would for a standard programmatic campaign.

Using machine learning, Hearst is analyzing its Salesforce data to learn how it can better allocate resources to serving its advertiser clients. When the publisher wins or loses an RFP, it collects feedback to locate patterns – with quick findings that can be distributed to managers and team members on Slack.

For programmatic, Hearst is thinking about the evolution of audience buying. Platforms like Facebook, Amazon and Google allow marketers to upload customer data and target, but don’t allow marketers to analyze how their audience behaves on those platforms.

Intuit Plugs Into CTV, But Linear Television’s Still Got Game

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2019 at 6:00 am.

Connected TV: Intuit is getting into it. But the financial software company is not giving up on television’s biggest tentpoles.

“We’re doing the blocking and tackling of strong reach and awareness building, but we’re mixing it with more experiential and digital,” said Lauren Stafford Webb, Intuit’s VP of brand marketing.

A balance between traditional and digital is “critical to reach our target where they are – and in a place where we can get attentive eyeballs,” she said, noting that CTV is a way to “complement what is happening live.”

That’s why Intuit is testing targeting segments for addressable TV with help from its media agency, Dentsu-owned Carat, using Merkle’s M1 people-based marketing platform.

But the goal is to reach a broad audience of financially active and aware 18 to 54-year-olds who are “technology inclined” and involved in managing their daily finances. And, in some cases, the most effective way to get that sort of broad reach is to hit people when they’re sitting on a sofa in a living room.

Conscious Couplings: My Wish List Of Advanced TV Match-Ups That Could Change The Game

by AdExchanger // Posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2019 at 12:04 am.

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

Today’s column is written by Lindsey Harju, co-founder at Blinc Digital Group.

Love is in the air – and not just in the seasonal aisle at Target.

The smell of chocolate and roses got me thinking: Which advanced TV couplings could blossom into epic affairs if struck by Cupid’s arrow?

I’m not talking about mere mergers and acquisitions. Teaming up can mean so many things, including combining capabilities to deliver new products or mixing what is considered old with the new to create unique value.

If I controlled the purse strings at certain companies, I would set my sights on these potential power couples for 2019.

Pubs Spurn Apple Subscription Offer; IAB Europe Preps Consent Framework 2.0

by AdExchanger // Posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2019 at 12:03 am.

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

Too Big A Bite

Publishers are raging against Apple’s proposal that it take an outrageous share of revenues from a planned “Netflix for news” subscription product. Under Apple’s plan, a new paid tier of Apple News would allow subscribers to access unlimited content for a monthly fee. After Apple takes 50% of revenues, all publishers in the program would split the other half of revenue based on how much time users spend with their content on the app, The Wall Street Journal reports. The New York Times and The Washington Post haven’t yet agreed to license content to Apple News due to concerns over the revenue model. Publishers also fear they wouldn’t get access to data, like credit card information and emails, if their news is distributed through Apple. More. Related: Twenty percent of Apple’s services revenue come from traffic acquisitions cost paid by Google, but that number is starting to grow at a slower rate. More at CNBC.

See You Later, Integrator

The IAB Europe will release the second version of its Transparency and Consent Framework later this year, which it expects Google to join as a tech vendor once the update is complete, MarTech Today reports. The trade group needs a TCF version 2.0 “to accommodate requests from European publishers for more granular controls and more complete accommodation of the ‘legitimate interests’ legal basis,” IAB Europe CEO Townsend Feehan said in a statement. An integration with Google would be a boon for the digital media ecosystem in Europe, where many publishers and buyers are prevented from using data for personalized advertising because Google and the IAB Europe’s consent frameworks don’t sync. It would also be an important confirmation that Google, the industry’s legal and regulatory bellwether, believes the TCF is GDPR compliant. More. And AdExchanger has more about how Google’s delays impact the digital advertising landscape.

Criteo Starts To Stabilize As Retargeting Losses Continue

by James Hercher // Posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2019 at 2:50 pm.

Criteo brought in $670 million in Q4 2018, beating expectations but still 1% below its revenue from the year before, the French ad tech leader reported Tuesday.

Criteo’s earnings for the year were flat at about $2.3 billion. But CFO Benoît Fouilland said the stability is a positive sign, considering Criteo was coming out of more severe revenue drop-offs in its previous 2018 disclosures.

“The quarter clearly marked an inflection point since the third quarter when we saw negative growth,” he told AdExchanger.

Fouilland said the Q4 improvements were driven by stronger holiday sales, with “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” becoming part of the global retail vocabulary, and growth of Criteo’s non-retargeting products, which accounted for 13% of the total business. The company’s “new solutions” include a prospecting product, CRM data onboarding, HookLogic’s retail and shopper marketing business and a mobile app-install service.

Criteo is racing to bolster its new solutions because retargeting is diminishing, largely due to wireless companies and browser operators taking stronger stances against tracking users and targeting ads. For instance, Safari’s ITP policy is particularly challenging for retargeting vendors.