Prediction: Holiday Ecommerce Sales To Jump 17.2% & Borrell: It’s All About Your Salespeople

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By Radio Ink -

 

September 27, 2016

That’s according to the latest holiday sales forecast from eMarketer. The research firm says total retail sales will increase 3.3% to $884.50 billion and holiday retail e-commerce sales will jump to $94.71 billion. If that happens, e-commerce sales will make up 10.7% of total holiday retail sales, giving that category its largest piece of the pie ever.

As expected, Amazon is expected to be a big driver of the e-commerce numbers. And smartphones are now playing a bigger role in e-commerce sales. eMarketer predicts that sales on smartphones will exceed those on tablets for the first time in 2016, totaling $67.23 billion for the entire year, or 58.0% of retail m-commerce sales. The reason for the explosion of sales on mobile phones: “Bigger screens, better mobile design, and simpler payment options.”

 

Borrell: It’s All About Your Salespeople

In one of the final sessions at the Radio Show last week in Nashville, Gordon Borrell hosted a presentation called “Radio – the Local Media Company of the Future.” Borrell said whether or not your salespeople understand digital will be a big driver of your success, especially understanding Facebook, which he says a lot of advertisers are turning to. And, Borrell said, “In a lot of cases, your salespeople are not very bright.”

Borrell says his research shows that 41% of advertisers plan to spend more money on digital next year and 29% plan to increase their digital budget by cutting other media budgets. What budgets are the cutting? Print first, followed by TV and then radio. He says advertisers plan to pick two or three traditional media to compliment their digital and if you (radio) can compliment that, they will buy you. They understand that radio drives traffic to their digital products, such as their websites. “You need to have a rep that knows what he’s doing.”

And, not surprisingly, Borrell reported that advertisers are being bombarded by media sales calls. He says advertisers are now being contacted by sales reps about 24 times every month. They speak to about 5 of them and they prefer to be contacted by e-mail. Borrell says his research revealed that advertisers want better pricing and proof of R.O.I., better educated sales reps and they want reps to improve the way they contact them.

 

Programmatic's Evolution: Where Are We Now, Where Are We Going?

• by Tobi Elkin@tobielkin, Yesterday, 4:14 PM

At a panel on the evolution of programmatic media, industry heavyweights shared their vision on whether programmatic has delivered on its promise and potential. The consensus? There’s way more to come, with targeting, attribution, and creative key focuses in the near term.

“We’re in the third inning,” said Mark Zagorski, CEO, Exelate. “The first inning was a about reducing friction between buyers and sellers, and the second was about inventory and price optimization. Now, we’re in the era of audience verification and targeting. The system is more efficient and we’re more accurately reaching audiences,” he said.

However, the industry is coming into a time when it needs to think as much as it does about technology about creative, according to Gregory Raifman, president, Rubicon Project. Raifman said he recalls a time when there were poorly targeted ads. “Now people are frustrated that targeting is too good. We’re overtargeting, and now there’s ad blocking. We must figure out how to create a better environment to engage consumers in a more relevant way.”

Tim Cadogan, CEO, OpenX, was circumspect: “We have to help publishers, marketers, and the consumers reconstruct their relationships. Ad blocking is a fraying of the relationship."

Cadogan maintained that using technology from companies like his can help. “We’ve been focusing on price optimization, but we haven’t focused enough on quality optimization yet. We need to focus on the creative and ad relevance,” he said. He predicted in five years that the industry will focus more on tying targeting to relevance. Zagorski said that programmatic, at its best, delivers relevance, real-time optimization, efficiency, and targeting. Even so, he said, people will still want to block ads.

Cadogan cited Pepsi’s six-second ads, which he finds interesting: “But will this work for consumers? And will it work well enough for the marketer to get their message across?”

Eric Franchi, cofounder, Undertone, is focused on bringing new creative ad formats to programmatic. “We think that will bring a lot more interest from brands into the space,” he said. With respect to measurement, “we  [as an industry]need to go beyond impressions and clicks toward the attention metric such as engagement. We need to first understand if we’ve captured consumer attention -- and from there, focus on metrics such as engagement which are appropriate for digital brand advertising.”

Cadogan called on ad quality and inventory quality themes his company is focused on. “People put malware in the creative and turn your computer into a farm that perpetuates more fraud. OpenX tries to make sure there’s no malware in the creative.”  

Attribution is also top-of-mind for these programmatic executives. “If you’re an advertiser and you’re allowing publishers to keep score for you, you’re not layering on individual recognition, and you don’t know who’s watching which ads in which sequence. You’re making poor decisions," said Scott Howe, president and CEO, Acxiom. "In five to 10 years we’ll say it’s fraud because of last click attribution.”

Zagorski took the opportunity to emphasize that ad fraud underscores the importance of independent measurement: “There is a need for independent measurement companies—those that are not beholden to those they measure,” he said. He noted that Facebook is opening its system to Acxiom, Datalogix and others for independent measurement.

Howe also emphasized that advertisers know their audiences better than many third parties and shouldn’t “fall victim to using someone else’s [audience] segments.”

Cadogan asserted that scale and standardization matter in programmatic, and that custom ad units are tough to trade in an automated system. However, he said if they’re digitally addressable and standardized, they can be traded.

Howe said that his clients will do some $300 million in targeted TV this year. With advertisers like Procter & Gamble pulling back on targeting, what does that mean for the rest of the business? “Some companies are outliers. P&G is one of them. The targeting needs of CPG [consumer package goods] companies are light, but for considered purchases such as auto, they’re heavy,” Howe explained.  

Franchi sees progress: “We’re coming out of the impressions and clicks era. Viewability is getting there. We’re fans of engagement—what did people do after seeing an ad?  We like the idea of moving to the idea of attention as a metric,” he said.

Cadogan telescoped five years into the future, with self-driving cars as an example: “If they’re a real thing, what will you have in front of you in that car? A really big screen.” He predicts advertising and media on that screen, plus more augmented reality and virtual reality.

TV Views On Smartphones Soar

• by Wayne Friedman, Yesterday, 10:19 AM
• Recommend (3)

Live TV viewing declines have slowed down, with smartphone usage still showing rapid growth.

In the second quarter of this year, Nielsen says average live viewing per day of viewers 18 years and up was four hours and nine minutes -- a two-minute decline versus the same time period a year ago.

There was an eight-minute decline from 2014 to 2015.

By contrast, in the second quarter, smartphone time with apps or on Web sites soared -- climbing to one hour and 43 minutes from 1:09 -- a 34-minute gain. There was a nine-minute improvement in the second quarter of 2015 from the second quarter of 2014.

PC internet activity area grew -- 14 minutes to 57 minutes per day -- the reverse of 2015 versus 2014, when PC Internet use dropped 5 minutes -- to 43 minutes from 48 minutes.

Like TV usage, PC usage has dropped when it comes to individual channels viewed/visited. The average number of TV channels viewed by month in May 2016 was 19.8 down from 19.9. The average number of Web sites visited on personal computers was 54.9 sites down from 61.1.

But smartphone sites visited -- as well the the average number of apps used -- has climbed. Average sites visited was up to 43.8 from 38.4 with apps growing to 27.6 from 27.3.

Confessions Of A Middle-age Millennial

By Eric Trow, Columnist Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016

Millennials have regularly been the subject of misunderstanding, even teasing, due to their unconventional beliefs and practices. Still, since they represent the largest, most powerful generation to hit since the big bang of the Baby Boom, marketers, researchers and planners like me continue to watch this group of consumers with borderline obsession. In my own observations, I’ve discovered the Millennial generation is not only different than prior generations, it’s contagious. Unwittingly, the rest of us are becoming more like the segment we’re all trying so hard to figure out. I’m a balding, shining example. I may technically be a Baby Boomer — the guy I see in the bathroom mirror confirms that (once I put my glasses on to see him). But recently, I’ve not been acting my age. My attitudes, expectations and behavior are shifting. In a very un-Boomer-like way, I’ve come to expect convenience, ultra-quick response and immediate gratification. I insist on having options. I question traditional authority figures. I’ve even become more comfortable with digital interaction than personal interface. I believe in supporting local businesses and I appreciate brands that have a good story to tell. While I wasn’t looking, I became a (middle-aged) Millennial, drawn to brands that deliver on Millennial values, even though I’m undeniably well outside of the defined demographic fence line. It’s another example of the Millennial Effect – a profound societal mindset shift that is permeating the entire culture and influencing consumer behavior across the generational spectrum … including Boomers, the group that still controls 70% of the disposable income in this country, according to a recent Deloitte report. Those who are actively marketing to the Boomer demographic may be able to appeal to this modern mindset. Oh, and those targeting Millennials may find they can expand their market to include a few Boomers, too. As you examine your own brand, consider that your Boomer’s profile may have deviated from the traditional model outlined in that old PowerPoint. Today, your marketing and business practices should be addressing these evolved standards that Boomers are adopting from their Millennial counterparts: 1. We increasingly want instant gratification.  As you engage your target audiences, look for ways your brand can respond to growing demand for instant gratification when it comes to both your communication and service. 2. We are embracing technology more every day.  Boomers are nearly as dependent on mobile devices as younger generations, especially as new apps and technology make it easier to manage everything from our health to investments. 3. We connect online. According to Pew Research Center surveys from the past several years, Adults 65+ are now driving social media growth as usage among other segments has leveled off. Explore ways to be part of the “Booming” online conversation and make it easy for them to share the good word about you. 4. We crave convenience. As tolerance levels wane, make sure you’re not losing customers — of any age — just because you’re more cumbersome to do business with. 5. We want control. How much control of the business transaction are you giving to your Boomer customers? Look for ways your target can choose or specify how they want to do business with you. 6. We do our research. Encourage customer reviews of your business and make that feedback easy for other Boomers to find. 7. We want to be healthier and more responsible.  Be sensitive to the growing demand for natural, healthy and responsible products. Merchandise how your brand is delivering, whether that’s in the way you responsibly manufacture, source your materials, or support the local community. 8. We question traditional authority.  Look for ways your brand can build a network of consumer advocates who have the power to influence their peers. Then make it easy to tout the merits of your company. I’m not sure when it happened, but considering my current attitudes and behaviors, I’ve become a middle-aged Millennial. And many of your customers have as well. How will your brand cater to the expanding Millennial mindset among your Baby Boomer target? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hail an autonomous Uber via the app on my iPhone 7 so that I can make it to my rheumatologist on time......(LOL)

Traditional TV Viewing Slips, But Dominates Video Use

• by Wayne Friedman, 8 hours ago

Although traditional TV viewing -- live and DVR use -- has slipped to some extent over recent years, it is still the dominant way that viewers consume video.

In the first quarter of this year, consumers 18+ spent on average 35 hours and 26 minutes weekly with traditional TV (live and DVR), according to new research from the Video Advertising Bureau, from Nielsen data.

Watching video on PCs was next -- but far behind -- at 1 hour and 49 minutes. Viewing via gaming consoles was at 1:38; multimedia devices, 1:33; DVD/Blu-Ray, 58 minutes; and smartphones, 23 minutes.

Even among younger 18-24 users, traditional TV was still dominant: 16 hours and 18 minutes a week in using traditional TV (live and DVR); gaming consoles were next at 4:17; video on PCs 2:01; multimedia devices, 1:55; smartphones, 54 minutes, and DVD/Blu-Ray, 48 minutes.

VAB notes that overall video consumption has risen over the past year -- in the first quarter of 2016 versus the same period a year before -- by 2% among consumers 18 years and older.

TV-connected devices (4 hours/9 minutes), PC video usage (1:49), smartphones (23 minutes) and tablets (9 minutes) are all higher. Traditional TV (live and DVR) fell 24 minutes to 35 hours and 26 minutes.

Reaching Generation Z

By Diana Gonimah, Columnist Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016

With lower attention spans and higher media exposure, brands will need to cut through the clutter to draw Gen Z’s to their ads. (Generation Z, also known as “post-Millennials,” commonly refers to the cohort of individuals born after 1996.) Marketers might need to refresh their ads more frequently for this group than any other generation. To get their attention, marketers can also attach their ads to exclusive content preview clips for new movies or game highlights from major sporting events. Align your brand with relevant events. Social campaigns activated around events allow marketers to gain visibility in front of millions of Gen Z’s following sports tournaments, video game releases and more. Of course, not all Gen Z’s are interested in the same events. Use social to test a variety of creatives, each aligned to a different genre or subcategory of events and monitor ad performance to identify the events your Gen Z target audience is interacting with. A brand recently aimed a healthy-living campaign at Gen Z’s on Facebook and Instagram. The company, which has partnerships with major sports leagues and entertainment brands, set out to determine which content — ads attached to sports/entertainment versus the client’s standard branding — would drive engagement. The company found that ads aligned with events, especially sports events like March Madness and Major League Baseball, generated 34% higher engagement and 30% higher video view rates than ads featuring the company’s branding only. Quantify the impact of your investment in events with proper measurement. Similarly, another company forged a partnership with the Video Music Awards and launched a real-time Twitter campaign targeted at Gen Z females. To measure how this initiative impacted brand equity, the brand’s marketing team set up a Nielsen Brand Effect study, which revealed that the Twitter activation drove a 13-point lift in recall, a 6-point lift in awareness and a 5-point lift in purchase intent. Divide your Gen Z audience into different holdout segments to identify the right frequency and time frame after which your creatives start seeing diminishing returns. The nonprofit mentioned above saw that the rate at which Gen Z’s engaged with ads on Instagram peaked at 1.5 weeks. Meet Gen Z’s where they are. Social platforms have a huge Gen Z user base and boast high penetration and daily usage trends among these audiences. For example, Instagram’s 500M+ user base, which skews younger, is a gold mine for marketers looking to reach millions of young people with a lower investment. Invest heavily in social. A retailer that had maintained high awareness for decades among older generations decided recently to reach out to Millennials and Gen Z’s. Partnering with a series of celebrity influencers under the age of 25, the brand launched a mass awareness play on Facebook and Instagram. With a $200,000 investment across both platforms, the campaign reached 50 million unique people globally. In contrast, the television commercial slot most likely to reach young people — Sunday Night Football — requires a $600,000 investment, and provides just a fraction of this reach. Port learnings into channels beyond social. Your relationship with Generation Z doesn’t start and end with one or two campaigns. Social advertising enables you to access a range of insights about this audience – insights that are pertinent outside of digital platforms. Your learnings on social — such as which creative, languages, geolocations yield the best results — can inform your strategy for other channels, including TV.

What Do Investors Want From Radio? & Radio Dominates The Growing Marketplace

 

By Radio Ink -

 

September 21, 2016

 

  

What Do Investors Want From Radio?

That question was answered by Wells Fargo analyst Davis Hebert during his detailed economic presentation Wednesday morning at the Radio Show in Nashville. Hebert also said he expects radio to see a 1-2% increase in advertising revenue this year, and in 2017 he expects radio to give back about 1% because of fewer political dollars. So what do investors want? Here’s Hebert’s list.

Hebert says investors want to see more core revenue growth and do not want to see one company growing at the expense of another. They also want to see a new growth catalyst; he mentioned NextRadio and that it could be the catalyst the industry needs. Investors want to see radio produce better results from events, digital, and mobile. They want to see debt reduced, especially from radio’s two biggest companies, iHeartMedia and Cumulus. Investors are worried that millennials are spending more time consuming audio on their smartphones than listening to radio and want radio to define its place in the dashboard, especially as cars become more connected.

 

Radio Dominates The Growing Marketplace

By Radio Ink -

 

September 20, 2016

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A new report from Nielsen highlights how the growth of the way consumers take in their audio has been very good for the radio industry. In Nielsen’s latest State of The Media: Audio Today report, the ratings firm says radio continues to dominate the growing audio marketplace, with more than 268 million Americans tuning in on a weekly basis. The report also states radio is doing exceptionally well with Black and Hispanic audiences.

Nielsen says those two groups combined represent more than 73 million weekly listeners, and spend more time with radio each week than any other.

“Since 2012, AM/FM Black listenership grew by nearly a million people aged 12 and older. During that same time period, Hispanic radio audiences grew by more than two million people. Today, radio reaches 92% of Blacks and 97% of Hispanic audiences 18 and older on a weekly basis.”

When you dig into the specifics, Hispanics spend 12 hours and 50 minutes each week listening to the radio. That’s a 15-minute increase from last year. Their top music genre is Mexican Regional and they like to listen during the middle part of the day, as 70% of their tuning happens outside of the home.

Black radio users spend more than 13 hours each week tuned in to the radio, with Urban Adult Contemporary being the most listened-to format for this group. Additionally, their preferred time to engage with the medium is during the afternoon drive.

Lots Of Questions Over Post-Diary Ratings

LotsQuestionsOverPost-DiaryRatings

 

By Adam Buckman

 September 21, 2016 8:54 AM EDT

LotsOfQuestionsOverPost-DiaryRatings

Nielsen announced plans last week to replace its paper ratings diaries with a system based on data from cable and satellite set-top boxes. However, many broadcasters still aren't sure how it's going to work. “They haven’t really told us that much about their plan going forward," said Raycom's Billy McDowell. Added Cordillera's Terry Hurley: "I'm hopeful, but skeptical."

 

A task force of at least eight Nielsen executives traveled to Phoenix last week to meet with small-market broadcasters and lay out the company’s plan to retire its maligned paper ratings diaries once and for all by early 2018 in the 140 remaining markets where they are still in use.

 

 

 

But even after Nielsen went to all that effort, broadcasters who met with the ratings firm in Phoenix complained that they still don't fully understand the new system, how much it would cost or how it might impact their businesses.

 

“I don’t know a lot of details,” said Mike Meara, president of broadcast for St. Joseph, Mo.-based News-Press & Gazette, among those who got the pitch at the NAB Small-Market Television Exchange in Phoenix.

 

“I’m hopeful, but skeptical,” added Terry Hurley, president of St. Paul, Minn.-based Cordillera Communications. “Many years of failed initiatives leave us a little skeptical."

 

“They haven’t really told us that much about their plan going forward except that the diary will be eliminated and they plan to use a set-top box and the PPM meter where available,” said Billy McDowell, VP of research for Raycom Media.

 

Everyone agrees the retirement of the paper diaries is long overdue. They are seen as grossly inaccurate and they measure viewership only during the four so-called sweeps months each year — February, May, July and November.

 

The diary system lost its accreditation from the Media Rating Council in 2010.

According to Nielsen’s announcement last week, the paper diaries in the remaining diary markets will be replaced with a system that will derive household viewing data and demographic information from a combination of cable and satellite set-top boxes with so-called “return-path” capability and Nielsen’s own national people meters that are already installed in all 210 DMAs as part of its national ratings sample.

The new system will provide broadcasters in even the smallest markets with ratings 12 months a year, although the ratings will not be immediately available.

 

“We have electronic metered panels in all 210 DMAs,” said Kelly Abcarian, Nielsen's SVP of product leadership, who spoke with TVNewsCheck. “Data from a given device or platform is the measurement means of the future,” she said. “And many devices have return-path capabilities.”

 

Nielsen has deals to collect data from Dish Network and Charter Communications, she said.

Nielsen’s plan is to have this new electronic system up and running by mid-2017, leading to the end of the diary system the following year.

 

The new system earmarked for the remaining paper-diary markets differs significantly from the system Nielsen has put in place in the 140 diary markets over the past two years.

 

It uses a special Nielsen meter, known as a code reader, to record viewing patterns in Nielsen homes. That viewing data is then combined with demographic data derived from the closest Nielsen people-meter markets — the methodology that has been dubbed “viewer assignment.”

 

Nielsen is not going ahead with installing the code-reader-based system in the remaining 140 markets because it could take up to 10 years or more to roll out that system, according to one of the broadcasters.

Nielsen's new set-top initiative may be driven by competition from ComScore (formerly Rentrak), which already has a system in place for small markets that uses return-path set-top data.

 

“The choice for [TV station] companies will be: Do I go to Rentrak/ComScore or stay with Nielsen?” Meara said.

 

“Nielsen’s approach is much different than ComScore’s,” McDowell said. “[Nielsen plans] to create samples using available data in the market — from return-path data, from PPMs, from code readers or whatever they have available in each market. 

 

"ComScore gets all of the return-path data it can out of a market. Nielsen will take the available return-path data and select homes to build a panel in that market so it’s representative.… ComScore seems to have more return-path data [than Nielsen]."

 

Earlier this year, Raycom decided to go with ComScore in 23 of its diary markets.

Some broadcasters are concerned the Nielsen sampling will be too small.  “If they can get more MVPDs to participate, that’s the key,” Hurley said of Nielsen. “It would appear at this point that ComScore is winning the race. That makes them viable."

 

Cordillera owns stations in 11 markets. All of them are Nielsen stations, but some also subscribe to ComScore, Hurley said.

 

“Another concern for small companies in small markets is that normally a change in methodology does not come at a cheap price,” Meara said. Nielsen officials didn’t discuss fees at the meeting he attended last week, he noted.

 

Nielsen has not yet applied for an MRC audit for its newly announced return-path measurement system. Its code-reader measurement system is now being “actively reviewed” for accreditation, reports David Gunzerath, SVP and associate director, MRC.

 

ComScore’s local-market system is also in the midst of the accreditation process, he said.

Despite the questions, McDowell is encouraged that Nielsen is finally getting rid of the diaries.

 

“And going to electronic measurement, which has the potential to be more stable and have potentially larger samples, that is a good thing.

"If Nielsen can be successful in this effort, we will have choices [and] we will have more information on local markets. The more focus you put on local markets, the better local markets look [to advertisers and agencies]."