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CPG, TV Measurement Clients Fuel Nielsen Marketing Cloud’s Growth Charter Invests In TV Analytics Upstart 605 To Up The Ante On Audience Data Tracing The Timeline Of Sizmek, Ad Tech Rollup And Duopoly Alternative Buyers Run Into Roadblocks In OTT Trackability Performance Agencies Take On Big Brands As Measurement Moves Up The Funnel Sizmek Buys Rocket Fuel For $145M Facebook Shares More Audience Data Via Carefully Controlled 'Clean Rooms' Android And iOS Updates Pump The Brakes On Location Data Rubicon Project Acquires NToggle For $38.5M To Clean Up Bidstream Traffic

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Viacom And Discovery Bid To Acquire Scripps Networks; TheSkimm Poaches Brandon Berger From Ogilvy & Mather

by AdExchanger // Posted on Thursday, July 27th, 2017 at 12:03 am.

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

Battle Of The Broadcasters

Viacom and Discovery are bidding to acquire broadcast company Scripps Networks for as much as $10.6 billion. Scripps owns channels like HGTV and The Food Network, which are still popular even as consumers shift from cable TV to over-the-top and digital video. Both Viacom and Discovery think Scripps would give them the makeover they need to sell attractive skinny bundles and give them more clout in negotiations with cable providers. Discovery may be the more attractive buyer, as it’s evolved its traditionally nonfiction programming to reach all demographics. Viacom owns networks targeted to kids and teens like MTV and Nickelodeon, which are tanking in viewership. More.

Closed Loops

TheSkimm, a newsletter geared to young women, poached Ogilvy & Mather digital chief Brandon Berger to oversee new revenue streams it’s spinning out of the daily email. The company has a video production arm, ads and a subscription package, but it’s also a strong affiliate partner. For instance, theSkimm worked with Starbucks over the 2016 holidays on custom-branded versions of the newsletter with two-for-one discounts. Target also has a partnership with theSkimm that includes ecommerce affiliate links and in-store signage in book aisles. What connects those partnerships is the ability to directly attribute value: Starbucks by tracking the claimed coupons and Target through affiliate links and sales on specific books. "TheSkimm moves product," co-CEO and co-founder Danielle Weisberg tells Business Insider. "We know how to connect with our audience." More.

Facebook Outlines Messenger Advertising Plans, But Remains Focused On Video

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 at 4:50 pm.

Facebook is pretty much minting money at this point.

Despite concerns over ad load maxing out in the news feed, Facebook posted revenue of $9.32 billion for the second quarter, up 45% year over year from $6.43 billion.

Mobile ad revenue at $8 billion was responsible for the vast majority of Facebook’s overall revenue in Q2, and it’s still growing. Mobile ads represented 87% of revenue for the quarter, up from 84% at this time last year.

Although CFO David Wehner reiterated that core Facebook is the primary driver of business, there’s inventory waiting in the wings.

Facebook doesn’t disclose revenue numbers for Instagram, but the platform reached 700 million monthly active users in April. Of those, around 200 million people are using Instagram Stories every day.

Monetization is too new on Messenger for Facebook to break out revenue numbers – Facebook rolled out ads in its messaging app in early July – but with 1.2 billion monthly active users, the scale speaks to the revenue potential.

And WhatsApp, Facebook’s other messaging property, is a green field that Facebook has hardly even begun to tap from a monetization perspective.

But doubling down on monetization in Messenger, and then perhaps WhatsApp down the line, will be the last phase in a three-step process, Wehner said.

Four Ways Business Insider Is Upping Campaign Viewability

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 at 2:30 pm.

Because 30-50% of direct campaigns on Business Insider transact on a viewable CPM, getting those campaigns to deliver the contracted amount without wasting inventory helps the publisher’s bottom line.

Making sure campaigns deliver within those stringent requirements – including 100% viewability – is one of the jobs of Marc Boswell, SVP of revenue operations and client services at Business Insider.

Publishers like Business Insider have already taken steps to improve viewability, like site redesigns and lazy-loading ads – where ads render only when the user scrolls down.

Business Insider is also looking beyond its own site to improve viewability. It’s ensuring its advertiser partners aren’t making their ads less viewable, and leaning on viewability partners to automate more tasks around campaign optimization.

Here are four ways Business Insider is giving more of its ads the opportunity to be seen.

Match Media Group’s Ad Biz Takes User Experience Into Account

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 at 12:00 pm.

Match Media Group runs an ad business for a dating subscription company. Because ad business revenue accounts for only a small piece of the pie, the ad team always considers the effects of its ads on the user experience.

“A fairly good parallel is Amazon,” said Peter Foster, GM of global advertising and brand solutions. “They run an ad business that drives as much revenue as they can, but doesn’t run afoul of the ecommerce business that’s the core of the company.”

The media group keeps its ad load relatively light and monitors how changes in ad load affect subscriptions, engagement and time spent with content.

“We don’t serve an ad every time we feel like we could serve an ad today. We are being slow and steady on purpose,” Foster added.

Match Media Group sells ads both direct and programmatically and has embraced header bidding on desktop and mobile web. Mobile app ads have been trickier; technically and creatively, Foster would like to see improvement.

Although it’s interested in serving programmatic ads on its mobile app, Tinder, Match is working with just one third party at the moment: Facebook Audience Network, which it brought on in February. No one else has a solution that comes close – yet, Foster said.

Programmatic native, ideal for mobile environments, still isn’t viable because it’s difficult to quickly render ads. Top partners can’t deliver quality ads at scale. Current mobile ads often run subpar creative.

Foster talked with AdExchanger about how Match Media Group thinks about the user experience for its apps, how brands are changing their view of dating sites and the differences between mobile web and app advertising.

CPG, TV Measurement Clients Fuel Nielsen Marketing Cloud’s Growth

by Kelly Liyakasa // Posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 at 6:00 am.

Nielsen’s specialty is media measurement, not mar tech.

But a slew of new Nielsen Marketing Cloud wins may help change that perception.

Despite the presence of data management platforms from Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle, Nielsen Marketing Cloud just had its largest-ever quarter for new DMP client wins since it acquired eXelate in 2015.

CPG marketers were a large part of the success, said Damian Garbaccio, EVP of the Nielsen Marketing Cloud. He’s taking over for Mark Zagorski, who became CEO of Tremor in June.

“It was a little fortuitous that five to six of the largest top-20 CPGs all happened to do RFPs for DMPs in the first year of our acquisition,” said Garbaccio.

Garbaccio, the former eXelate CRO, now reports directly to Nielsen’s US Media president, Lynda Clarizio.

But Nielsen Marketing Cloud didn’t always sit under Clarizio’s commercial team – it recently transitioned from the product leadership group manned by Nielsen product maven Megan Clarken.

That transition helped spur Nielsen Marketing Cloud’s DMP wins because it could now access Nielsen Watch clients who use the measurement company’s ratings system.

Ad Tech Desperately Needs Data Exchange Standards

by AdExchanger // Posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 at 12:04 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 Sanjay Agarwal, vice president of engineering at Drawbridge.

In the ad tech ecosystem before OpenRTB, proprietary protocols caused long integration cycles, more code complexity and maintenance and custom logic for parsing requests.

The OpenRTB protocol replaced all proprietary protocols for sending ad requests from supply-side platforms (SSPs) to demand-side platforms (DSPs), resulting in faster integrations and a scaled ecosystem as a whole.

While this solved the SSP-DSP interaction almost a decade ago, there is still unfortunately no standard format for exchanging data between data management platforms (DMPs) and DSPs, posing a major point of friction in connections between DMPs and DSPs. There is a strong need for the standardization of data formats and the transport layer to push data from a DMP to a DSP.

While this problem has been around for a decade or so now, the proliferation of data providers has made standardization all the more pressing. While the DMPs and DSPs certainly stand to benefit from standardization, the real winners at the end of the day would be marketers. They would be able to more seamlessly leverage first- and third-party data, get campaigns set up quicker, more easily receive data back and never have to worry about integration timelines.

Nielsen Will Count Hulu And YouTube In Ratings; OOH Gets More Digital

by AdExchanger // Posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 at 12:03 am.

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

Following The Eyeballs

Nielsen will count viewership on YouTube’s and Hulu’s skinny bundles as part of its official TV ratings, reports Alex Bruell for The Wall Street Journal. Nielsen will measure Hulu and YouTube programs on its C3 and C7 metrics, which assess viewing within three to seven days of airing, across desktop and mobile. Hulu and YouTube join Sling TV, Playstation Vue and CBS All Access as OTT providers measured by Nielsen, but “this is the first time we see major digital distribution platforms like Hulu and YouTube coming into the TV ratings,” said Megan Clarken, president of product leadership at Nielsen. Nielsen will only measure the ads on Hulu and YouTube that also air on live TV. More.

Get Outta The House

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is definitely going from a deeply siloed marketing channel and becoming part of the greater digital ecosystem. TouchTunes Media, which operates a network of screens, games and digital jukeboxes in bars and venues, inked a deal with DOmedia and Rubicon Project for programmatic access. Clear Channel, which integrated some of its digital signage with Rubicon’s OOH marketplace late last year, announced a collaboration with Cuebiq to add mobile analytics and attribution for advertisers using its advanced advertising suite. Vistar Media, a startup OOH media firm, will now support the VAST video ad format. “This allows media owners to accept the standard digital creative format from the online world, opening new sources of demand,” reads the release.

Outbrain Acquires Native DSP Zemanta

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2017 at 11:18 am.

Outbrain acquired native DSP Zemanta for an undisclosed sum Tuesday. The deal will bring together Outbrain’s scaled native supply with Zemanta’s demand, laying the groundwork for Outbrain to position itself as a leader in the still-nascent programmatic native ecosystem.

Outbrain bought the DSP because it expects native advertising to become larger than display advertising in the next five years, but that native advertising technology lags.

“Most of the media-buying tools used by marketers were made for a display world and are not optimal for native executions,” said Gilad de Vries, SVP for strategy at Outbrain. “With a platform like Zemanta, which has access to the largest native supply pool in the world, marketers will be able to scale their native efforts much more effectively at scale than anywhere else.”

Outbrain already works with Zemanta. The DSP bids on billions of Outbrain native impressions a day. The company became an Outbrain DSP partner last year.

Zemanta has raised just less than $9 million since it was founded in 2007, in contrast to Outbrain’s $194 million over the same period. Zemanta sold some of its publisher-focused technology to Sovrn last September for an undisclosed sum.

IPG Attributes Negative Q2 And H1 To CPG Spending Cuts

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2017 at 11:01 am.

Spending cuts in the CPG sector had a negative impact on revenue growth at IPG this past half year.

The holding company saw revenue decrease in both Q2 and H1 at -1.7% to $1.9 billion and -0.6% to $3.6 billion, respectively, the company announced on its earnings call Tuesday.

Growth at Mediabrands and McCann Worldgroup were “offset by an unusually soft tech and telecom sector along with slow growth in financial services and significant cuts in packaged goods,” said IPG CEO Michael Roth.

While the CPG sector only makes up 10% of IPG’s revenue, it still had a “disproportionate negative impact on the quarter,” dragging revenue down by 0.8%, Roth said.

“We think our clients are overreacting, frankly, in their cuts,” he said. “CPGs are going to have to spend dollars to maintain market share.”

While Roth attributed slowdowns in telecom, tech and financial services to client losses like USAA, TD Bank and Sprint, the packaged goods sector is struggling with disruption from digitally native competitors and competition with cheaper private labels from retailers.

In order to cut costs and remain profitable, CPGs are adopting zero-based budgeting models, reducing media spend and consolidating their agency rosters. It’s an issue affecting the entire agency industry, Roth said.

Marketing-Mix Modeling: Leaping Over The Walled Gardens’ Gates

by AdExchanger // Posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2017 at 8:58 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 Matt Voda, CEO at OptiMine.

In the last six months, both Facebook and Google have launched formal, public marketing-mix modeling (MMM) partnership programs. Participating vendors are allowed special access to more detailed campaign data for use in their marketing-mix models.

Because these models do not use consumer-level data to measure marketing performance, on the surface, they appear to be somewhat incongruous with the mainstream mindset toward tracking individual consumers.

This is especially true when considering the fact that both Facebook’s and Google’s measurement platforms rely heavily on their own consumer tracking to report campaign performance. Google even doubled down on consumer tracking by launching a free version of its own attribution platform, which makes the MMM partner program announcement seem even more of a head-scratcher.

So, what is going on here?