Google Just Confirmed It's Coming After TV's Money

Business Insider

• LARA O'REILLY
 
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• OCT. 2014

YouTubeGoogle is hoping its big YouTube names like Zoella can help it price its ads at a similar rate as those of TV shows.

Right at the end of Google’s Q3 earnings all the company revealed it was ramping up its latest strategy to steal advertising money from broadcast TV networks. It will do this using the same method broadcasters use to secure millions of dollars in upfront advertising deals.

Over the past two years Google’s YouTube has held “Brand Cast” and "New Front" events across the world, showcasing its brightest content, throwing a glitzy party, and then holding negotiations with the world’s biggest brands and ad agencies in the hope of securing millions of dollars in advertising commitments.

Brand Cast and New Fronts mimic the “upfront” events TV broadcasters have run for decades, where they too hold fancy events for advertisers and media buyers, which take place in the spring to showcase their most attractive programming in the fall. The idea is to create a short, sharp window for advertising sales in which advertisers feel forced to lock in the best deals they can. That system has kept prices for TV advertising high (even though advertisers can feel as if they’re locking in discounts because they’re buying in bulk.)

In April, Google launched “Google Preferred,” a new ad package whereby brands pay a premium price to place their ads on YouTube videos the company deems to be in the top 5% of quality for sections like Fashion & Beauty and Food.

This method of packaging up its digital property like TV in the hope of bringing the price of digital advertising more in line with TV ads appears to be paying off.

Omid Kordestani, Google’s newly appointed chief business officer, said on the Q3 earnings call that the company had signed upfront commitments with major brands like General Motors and Coca-Cola and the world’s biggest media-buying agencies: IPG, OMG, Digitas, Carat and SMG.

In the US, Google says the Google Preferred option is now “nearly sold out” (remember that short, sharp window of limited availability to keep prices high).

Kordestani said:

I think we’re going to definitely continue working on this. If you look at our history, we’re very used to the selling model that was all about performance [i.e. not brand advertising that commands more revenue]. And then as we added properties like YouTube and Brand and Mobile, we’re … gaining a better understand of how to work in this upfront process …

We’re just going to continue getting better at [figuring out] how to package this inventory better and then the tools that are needed, and then on the selling side, just get better at also working with the agencies and our advertisers and marketers to get this type of selling right.

Google has long been touting how its properties are fast becoming the go-to branding platform, to the detriment of TV. In April, Google’s former chief business officer Nikesh Arora said the marketing industry was at a “significant industry moment” in which marketers who historically built their brands on TV were “reorienting” their creative, planning, and investments, with digital at the center.

Increase radio revenue with location based Mobile ads.

InsideRadio
Monday October 27, 2014

 Location based marketing is another digital tool for radio can offer to clients — something new and proven to work.   Marketron VP of mobile solutions Martin Kristiseter explains that location-based mobile advertising is a new form of advertising that can pinpoint a consumer’s location and provide a specific ad to their mobile device based on the audience as well as place and time.

Kristiseter says, “If the station has a relationship with a Toyota dealer, for example, that dealer is fighting several other brands for a category buyer, like luxury, economy, SUV, or others. Location-based ads let a car dealer working with a radio station reach the buyers who are shopping for a car, whether on the dealer lot or even the lot of a competitor.  The dealer can send a call to action — a monthly payment, special rebate or other ad to car shoppers while they are shopping.  The message is obviously hitting a real prospect.”

Some car dealers have doubled their radio spending in order to use this technology.  “We can even reach people who have been on a car lot in the past, like over the past two weeks, with a special offer or message from your dealer. While about 70% of the campaigns we deliver on a monthly basis are for auto dealers, the solution can drive qualified foot traffic for other advertiser verticals including QSR, casual dining, retail, and more.   Being able to complement spot buys with hyper local and targeted mobile ads based on a consumer location can increase foot traffic and sales for your clients.”

Has Online Gone To War Against TV? And Is 'TV Everywhere' Dying?

• by P.J. Bednarski, 69 minutes ago
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Such excitement. The last few days have been so noteworthy, starting with HBO’s announcement, and then CBS’s, that they would start stand-alone streaming services, and continuing with the Adobe/Nielsen alliance that, essentially, creates a better online measurement tool for advertisers. Online video has a new momentum--almost like an unorganized marketing campaign. I hate the term, but online video is...trending.

Now this. At a broadcast engineers luncheon in Los Angeles yesterday, Mark Aitken, vice president for the ginormous Sinclair Broadcast Group told the group that new delivery modes, like OTT, are eating away at the television business, and if broadcasters don’t get their act together, “it will be a sorry state of affairs 10 years from now, if we are still around.”

The account, reported at TVNewscheck.com, was full of fear, trepidation and paranoia and whether that’s good for the business or not, it’s an interesting, and revealing temperature check since Sinclair either owns or manages 164 stations in 79 markets and has a reputation for saying what others just seem to mutter about.

Well,  Aitken didn’t mutter. According to an account at the TV Technology Website, he said,  “War has been declared. Google has declared war on the TV ad industry. If your competitors believe they’re engaged in war with us; if we don’t acknowledge that, we’re going to lose. They are decidedly after what we’ve got… viewers, advertisers, content… they after making lots of money.

“You see a massive migration of content to the Internet; to the wireless industry. If you’re a content producer, you’re doing the right thing, looking for a distribution platform that generates the most revenue.

“I ask… why is it not a status quo that content isn’t coming to broadcasting? We exist as islands. We don’t function as an industry. The broadcast industry really has to unite, at least in a virtual sense. So what can we do to become a viable competitor in the marketplace?”

Mostly Aitken was pointing to legislative and regulatory roadblocks that he thinks leave broadcasters at a disadvantage, but he also noted that broadcast management also has a technological disconnect between what’s on the air now, and what’s possible.  “We believe broadcasting is being marched, quite literally, to the cliff,” Aitken told the crowd.

If that’s the view of one influential broadcaster, consider the latest take on current events from MofettNathanson Research newsletter, which took to commenting on the tone and substance of  last week’s Time Warner investor day (the one where the HBO stand-alone service was announced).

“The ultimate irony of Time Warner’s investor’s day last week was that after years of leading the charge to protect the wall around [the] pay-TV ecosystem, CEO Jeff Bewkes showed up a with a sledgehammer,” Nathanson wrote, adding, a sentence later, “We think Time Warner has now shifted its view from doing what’s best for the industry and the ecosystem to what’s best for their company...So what does this mean? For starters it’s clear that Time Warner’s support for the TV Everywhere initiative has waned. Though TV has slowly improved over the last few years, the technology has remained cumbersome at best with the user experience across various distributor platforms uneven, to put it mildly.”

And like Aitken in his own way, Nathanson says the message from Time Warner was that OTT is where the action is headed, and out of business is where a lot of cable networks should be headed. The MoffettNathanson newsletter quotes John Martin, Turner Broadcasting’s CEO, more or less predicting it: “There are too many networks in existence today in the United States. We would not want to be an owner of a small niche marginal network...One of our competitors has 14 networks that are below the top 60 [in ratings]. Goodbye.”

Digital Ad Revenue Hits $23 Billion In First Half Of 2014

by Laurie Sullivan, October 20, 2014, 12:51 PM

Internet ad revenue rose 15% to $23.1 billion during the first six months in 2014, compared with the same time period in 2013, per an IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report released Monday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The report, prepared by PwC US, estimates that search revenue rose 4% to $9.1 billion compared with the first half of the year in 2013. Mobile revenue rose 76% to $5.3 billion. Mobile search contributed $2.7 billion, mobile display contributed $2.5 billion, and other mobile media contributed $103 million.

Brands continue to increase their commitment to interactive advertising, and mobile is seen as a crucial part of the marketing mix, per Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). He said that with revenue in the second half of the year traditionally surpassing the first half of the year, the industry expects an even stronger full year compared with last year.

Three advertising verticals contributed about 46% to revenue: retail at 21%, financial services at 13% and automotive at 12%.

Display-related advertising revenue rose 6% in the first half of 2014 to $6.5 billion, and accounted for 28% of digital advertising revenue overall.

Social media revenue -- including advertising on social platforms as well as social networking and social gaming Web sites and apps -- rose 58% to $2.9 billion in HY 2014, compared with the same six months in 2013.

Impression-based advertising for the first six months in 2014 rose 34% to $7.8 billion, and performance-based advertising at 65%, to nearly $15 billion.

Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, in a research note published Monday, compares the IAB findings to observations made in the national TV advertising sector during the same period. "In other words, our conviction that national TV advertising is growing in-line with the state of the economy and that it is not experiencing an accelerated shift of spending from offline to online is affirmed with this data," he wrote.

"We have previously noted that on our estimates, contrary to generally prevailing views among some of the analyst community, internet-related advertising slowed in 2Q14, just as did television advertising and other media more broadly," Wieser writes. "This is a core component of our view that television is not suffering from a radical shift of spending trends beyond the vagaries of the advertising economy’s quarter to quarter moves. More specifically, new data from the primary trade group for internet advertising, the IAB, total online advertising (including that which ran on mobile devices) grew by 13.8% during the second quarter of 2014, decelerating from 16.4% growth in the first quarter."

Growth rates for Internet-related advertising are also much slower than we saw during the same periods in 2013, Wieser explains. Last year's comparable figures were more than 18.0% during the first quarter in 2013 and  more than 17.6% during 2Q13.

Notably, the half-year Internet ad revenue since the IAB began measurements in 1996 began at a base of $83 million -- rising to $4 billion in 2000, and $20 billion in 2013
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Programmatic Can Dial Up Radio's Digital Revenues

AdExchanger

I chose this essay because it was felt that digital sales is driven only by television which is not so and the author below explains best how digital fits well with the advent of programmatic advertising and the real time bidding process. Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.September 15, 2014

Today’s column is written by Frost Prioleau, CEO and co-founder of Simpli.fi.
September 15, 2014

From programmatic’s perch on the bleeding edge of advertising technology, it could be easy to dismiss radio as an advertising medium of a bygone era.

But despite the tectonic shifts in the radio industry and listening habits of Americans, radio reaches 92% of all Americans age 12 or older every week, estimates Nielsen Audio. 

Combined with an emotional connection driven by music, on-air personalities and community spirit, it’s easy to understand why radio remains an important part of the local advertising media mix.

The radio advertising industry was worth nearly $5 billion industry in 2013, according to Borrell Associates. Digital advertising sold by radio reps accounted for $500 million, a 22% increase from the previous year. For the most part, these digital revenues are from digital services such as search engine optimization and social media management, which leverage radio’s strong referral patterns for online search and social media engagement.

However, it seems that very few stations so far have tuned into the opportunity in targeted display. That will begin to change as targeted display drives a dramatic increase in local online ad spending in 2015, when Borrell predicts targeted display will account for 20% of all local digital media revenues.

So how can radio stations use programmatic to dial up their digital revenues?

Complement The Core

Radio is a personal medium that inspires passion and loyalty. Whether it’s tapping your toes to the sounds of your favorite country artists or arguing with sports talk personalities, the emotional connection of radio has long been a hallmark of its effectiveness. Targeted display allows you to extend the “tribes” of listeners that gather around the fire of a radio frequency into the digital word. A station that sells spot advertising during Rush Limbaugh’s radio show can find even a bigger audience of “dittoheads” in digital, increasing the average campaign size with a simple audience extension package.

Customize For Your Community

Radio also plays an important role in the communities they call home. From high school sports to summer music festivals and automotive end-of-model-year blowouts, radio advertising, remotes and sponsorships fuel awareness and attendance at many regional events. Pre-packaged audience segments don’t reflect the unique flavor of your community. By using unstructured data in programmatic display, your station can create a “local lens” that is unique to your region with keywords and domains that reflect what makes your town home.

Package For Social Performance

Radio’s strong referral patterns to social media have driven stations to offer social media engagement programs as part of their digital services. More than 83% of small businesses have Facebook pages and see them as an important part of their marketing efforts. Radio drives more social media engagement than TV, newspapers or cable advertising, in the form of “likes” and comments. Offering targeted display through the Facebook Exchange allows radio stations to further boost social media return on investment for their local advertisers with cost-effective, targeted advertising.

Make Mobile Matter

Broadcast radio, by its very definition, is linked to specific geographies. We listen to radio while we are on our daily commute, running errands and traveling to grandma’s house. The average weekday time spent listening by adults is 3 hours and 3 minutes, and on the weekends that rises to 5 hours and 15 minutes, the Radio Advertising Bureau reports. That’s nearly a full day of listening while on the move, making radio and mobile advertising perfect partners.

By combining geotargeted mobile advertising with radio advertising packages, advertisers can create a bridge between radio spot advertising and their online presence. Better yet, they can create urgency that gets listeners out of their cars and into stores.

Last week, as the radio industry’s best and brightest converged on Indianapolis at the NAB/RAB RadioShow to discuss the future of the storied medium, it became clear that digital will be critical to radio’s long-term relevance. While digital offers new possibilities, it will also stretch radio sales reps to learn new skills.

Station managers said their teams need education to sell digital solutions with confidence, and many fear that digital will cannibalize their existing business. But with targeted display, radio stations can keep local advertisers tuned in to the value of radio, while turning up the volume on ROI.

Nielsen To Reprocess All Ratings Affected By Glitch, Begins Releasing Some Of It

by Joe Mandese, 6 hours ago

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Nielsen late Tuesday night updated clients on TV ratings that have been reprocessed following the discovery and disclosure of a “technical error” that caused a glitch in ratings for national broadcast networks and syndicated TV shows over a several-month period beginning March 2.

Nielsen said that following conversations with various clients, it now plans to reprocess all of the ratings from that date forward, and provided a timetable for various reprocessing updates.

Nielsen said that ratings from the week of Sept. 22nd -- the traditional start of the 2014-15 prime-time season -- have been reprocessed and reissued to Nielsen customers.

However, Nielsen said that reprocessed ratings for new season shows airing as earlier as Aug. 18 would not be released until Nov. 17 -- a couple of weeks later than the Oct. 31st date it originally told clients when it disclosed the glitch.

Nielsen In Hot Water With NYC Broadcasters

TVNewsCheck
By Harry A. Jessell

October 14, 2014 5:54 AM EDT

 

The ratings firm met last Friday with representatives of New York City stations to explain how it plans to improve the ratings by increasing the sample homes and perhaps deploying new PPM technology that make use of program audio to track what people are watching. The meeting followed concerns of the broadcasters that the June ratings were down 20% from the prior year in the key adults 25-54 demo.

      

Last Friday, Nielsen publicly acknowledged that its national TV ratings since March were flawed and that it would be reissuing the numbers at the same time as its arch-rival Rentrak was boasting of a big investment by WPP and watching its stock price soar.

That was just part of Nielsen's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Earlier in the day, at a meeting in New York, more than a dozen Nielsen executives tried to placate a large contingent of unhappy New York broadcasters who have been complaining about a sudden drop off in ratings in the No. 1 DMA last spring.

According to one broadcaster in attendance, in June the stations' aggregate ratings fell around 20% over the prior year in the key adults 25-54 demo, a loss of 2,250 ratings points that is having a big impact on revenue.

Nielsen did not promise to reissue any numbers at the meeting, the broadcaster said, but talked about improving the ratings by increasing the sample homes and perhaps deploying new PPM technology that makes use of program audio to track what people are watching.
In response to questions about the meeting from TVNewsCheck, Nielsen issued a statement attributed to Matt O'Grady, Nielsen's EVP and managing director of local media, among those at the meeting.

 

 

The statement acknowledges that Nielsen has had a "series of meetings” with New York broadcasters on what Nielsen is "doing to improve and expand our measurement capabilities for local media," but it doesn't address the broadcasters' specific complaints about the spring ratings shortfall or what Nielsen might do about them.

"Capturing a representative measurement of how consumers are viewing video across all types of platforms is the No. 1 priority for Nielsen," the statement says. "We are increasing our sample sizes and have announced 60 markets thus far — including New York — where we are adding tablet and smartphone viewing of local TV content to the ratings, and actively evaluating big data sources to add greater stability.

"We are also testing the inclusion of out-of-home viewing, and more granular qualitative data to the mix. The viewing pie is expanding and our goal is to ensure that the ratings pie grows, as well."
In addition to O'Grady, the large Nielsen delegation at the Friday meeting included Steve Hasker, global president; Brian West, COO; and Lynda Clarizo, president, U.S. media.

Among those on the broadcast side on the table were the heads of the Big Three O&O groups — Rebecca Campbell of ABC, Peter Dunn of CBS and Valari Staab of NBC — as well as the GMs of WABC and WNBC — Dave Davis and Michael Jack. Dunn doubles as the GM of WCBS.
Lew Leone, GM of WYNW and WWOR, represented Fox, while Bob Marra, station manager of WPIX, reportedly was there for Tribune.

Rentrak Finds Itself On A TV Ratings Roll

TVNewsCheck

By Adam Buckman

TVNewsCheck, October 10, 2014 3:19 PM EDT

Recent major deals by Rentrak are shaking up the Nielsen-dominated world of TV audience data. The data it derives from millions of cable and satellite set-top boxes is enhanced with data about consumer spending patterns, and many are seeing it as a needed alternative in a new-media world.

 

 

With two high-profile deals announced in just the past eight days, Rentrak appears to be gaining momentum in its challenge of Nielsen as the nation's primary provider of TV ratings.
Yesterday, Rentrak and global advertising giant WPP said WPP was acquiring a 16.7% stake in Rentrak by buying $56 million in Rentrak stock and by accepting $98 million of Rentrak stock in exchange for the TV viewing measurement unit of WPP's Kantar Media that competed with Rentrak.

Story continues after the ad

Hours later, WPP's major media buying agency, Group M, said that it would begin using the Rentrak data in its planning and buying presumably along with Nielsen numbers.
Thursday's WPP announcements came less than a week after Zenith Media and Rentrak announced jointly that Zenith would adopt Rentrak’s “massive and passive TV currency for local television buying.”

And more such developments could be on the way. “I can’t tell you [about deals that might be in the works],” Rentrak CEO Bill Livek told TVNewsCheck in a phone interview. “I will tell you that if these were seismic events, they usually come in a pattern,” he said.

Regardless of whether the deals are "seismic" enough to shake up the Nielsen-dominated world of TV audience data, they drew the attention of Wall Street. Rentrak’s stock price shot dramatically upward on Thursday with shares (NASDAQ: RENT), rising $7.56 to close at $72.07 per share, an 11% percent increase.

 

Although Rentrak and its representatives avoid mentioning the word “Nielsen” when asked about the competitive landscape in TV ratings, the company has nevertheless been positioning itself as a Nielsen alternative.

Rentrak and Nielsen use different methodologies to track TV viewership. Nielsen extrapolates viewership from small samples of homes in each TV market that are equipped with electronic boxes or are asked to record what they are watching in paper diaries.

Rentrak extracts ratings from millions of cable and satellite set-top boxes. It enhances its ratings with data about consumer spending patterns.

Without mentioning Nielsen by name, Zenith and Group M officials made clear that their involvement with Rentrak was a rebuke of the ratings leader.

“Zenith is proud to be at the beginning of a big industry change,” said Rob Jayson, chief data officer for Zenith, in a prepared statement released jointly by Rentrak and Zenith. “For the first time in industry history, we are replacing the low-response rate, highly unpredictable surveys and diaries with massive and passive measurement. We expect to see significant reductions in costs for our clients as well as dramatically improved service.… We expect that this new Rentrak-based currency will become the new gold standard for all of local TV ad spending.”

For his part, GroupM Global Chairman Irwin Gotlieb said that " legacy sample methodology simply can’t keep up" in today's fragmented mediascape.

“Television measurement needs to move toward census-based methodology. Our agencies are doing such refined targeting and segmentation, and that work can only be supported by census data," he said. "It is our hope that we can act as catalysts in moving the industry toward greater data reliability and accountability.”

On Tuesday, MediaPost.com took some of the luster off the Zenith announcement, quoting an executive there as saying that Zenith was merely conducting a three-market test of the Rentrak data.
“If we see success and increased reliability and increased performance and increased cost savings, we will roll it out to additional markets,” Zenith Optimedia Chief Data Officer Rob Jayson told MediaPost.com. “Our intention is that the test will go well. We do quite strongly believe in this.”
When asked about the Zenith deal, Livek would neither confirm nor deny the three-market test scenario. “Zenith is a client of Rentrak and they’re moving toward having us as the currency in local markets,” Livek said. “This is a process. Zenith is 100% committed to work with us in all of their local markets as the currency.”

Even before these most recent announcements, Rentrak has been busy making news. Since January, the company has been steadily growing its roster of high-profile clients, including the owned-station groups of all four broadcast networks. One network — CBS — signed up for Rentrak data. Rentrak also added several ad agencies this year — including Hill Holliday and Wyse Advertising — plus one giant producer of TV programs, Sony Pictures Television, the first (and so far only) major studio on Rentrak’s client roster.

When asked whether his goal was to displace Nielsen, Livek said he saw the two co-existing.
“We’re reinventing the measurement business, he said. "I live in reality. I believe reality is [that] we live in a world where, economically, multiple currencies exist — the British pound exists, the European euro, the Chinese RMB and down the list, along with the dollar.

“In media, it’s very simple,” he added. "We have two currencies and [Rentrak’s] currency serves a lot of purposes because of the granularity and stability" of the data it produces.But outside observers were more blunt about the Nielsen vs. Rentrak situation. “The bottom line is Nielsen has been lazy for a long time,” said Bill Hague, senior vice president of Frank N. Magid Associates, a TV consulting and research firm. “They have horrible customer service, their samples have not gotten better or bigger and competition is good.”
 

Nielsen did not immediately reply to a request for comment from TVNewsCheck.

"Traditional Don Draper-style advertisers are being replaced with so-called "Math Men."

Mad Men, AMC
Business Insider
October 13, 2014By Katie Richards

Creativity was once thought of as the heart and soul of advertising, but the rise of programmatic and the obsession with real-time bidding and targeting has made it nearly impossible to deliver a powerful piece of creative that really stands out online. 

In principle, it's simple: advertisers pick what types of people they want to reach online, set parameters around what they're willing to spend, and then let algorithm-powered software automatically buy their ads for them in live auctions, so they get the best possible price.

But here's the problem with that.

If an advertiser or a brand wants to push an ad through the programmatic pipes, the ad needs to fit a standard model. That way the ad can actually go through the complex, automated process and end up on a webpage.

Unfortunately, this means that the ad is constrained to a little box that no one really wants to look at or pay attention to: and most of the time, this is the banner ad. Even though a banner ad is plain, boring even, it's widely accepted as the standard ad unit for programmatic because it's what the technology can support. There's little room to be innovative within the constraints of a little box. 

In the past, creative people went into advertising because they wanted to design and paint on big canvases — TV screens and billboards. They literally had outsized portfolio carriers, larger than suitcases, which they took to job interviews to display their past work.

But the money is flowing out of TV and print and going online, increasingly in the form of programmatic ads. Programmatic is a growing part of the business. In the future as much as 80% of online ad transactions may be automated, some industry folks believe.

So if a person wants to earn money by being creative in advertising today, they probably don't want to be in the print or TV business. They want to be on the digital side. And, more often than not, digital is now where the money — and the stock options — are.

Not everyone is completely on board just yet though. Sir John Hegarty, a founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, recently blamed technology and data for what he calls a "creative deficit" arguing people get distracted by the technology and forget to focus on what the technology can actually deliver. 

Hegarty, who is often called an advertising traditionalist, argues new technology isn't the answer for advertisers. The idea is what really matters. He also says TV revolutionzed the ad world much more than the arrival of digital did and it's still the most powerful medium out there. 

Dylan Mouratsing, an evidence director for Manning Gottlieb OMD, dsiagrees with Hegarty's theory andtells ExchangeWire that new technology and data become a way for advertisers to build stronger, more relevant campaigns.

"One common misconception is that use of evidence straightjackets creativity," says. "This is something traditionalists struggle with, and it’s a process of education to get away from that. One of our central beliefs is that using the body of data that’s available on a given project doesn’t lead to less creativity, but actually creates a more fertile ground for original work."     

Danny Hopwood, the head of platform at Publicis Groupe's digital unit, VivaKi, says the industry should not lose hope on the creative quality of ads delivered programmatically. Hopwood argues programmatic is not actually killing creativity: "It has just taken a different guise. The increase in smart technology means you can now be creative with not just the message but the method of delivery and the audience itself," he says in a report from AOL UK on the status of programmatic advertising.

There are also a handful of companies working to create ad units that are engaging and can still be delivered through the programmatic pipes. For example, digital advertising company Undertone recently announced Virtuoso, a platform that aims to serve "high impact digital ad campaigns." In other words the company is trying to bring more dynamic ads units online, thinking outside of the standard banner ad box. 

It's not altogether impossible and many marketers feel that there's a lot of room to be creative through programmatic. The AOL UK report suggests positive feelings about the ability to be creative with programmatic are high. Almost half (48%) of marketers surveyed said programmatic actually enhances creativity, while 28% disagree and 24% felt it has no impact.

Plus, the number of active advertising technology companies is quickly growing, emphasizing there is a clear market in practices such as programmatic, despite an old-school hankering for traditional creative. Ad tech companies were a big part of this year's Cannes Lions Festival agenda, an annual event that celebrates the creativity of advertising.

So while programmatic may be killing creativity in the traditional sense — think Don Draper conjuring up the Lucky Strike "It's Toasted" campaign to a board room of adoring agency juniors — it may not be necessarily killing it all together. Instead, programmatic is creating a new era for creativity, complete with a new meaning of what it means to be creative.

Programmatic Rocket Scientist To Skeptical Ad Exec: "Robots Don't Buy Things"

 Joe Mandese, October 2, 2014, 1:55 PM

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At least not yet, Rocket Fuel CMO Eric Porres said in response to Jen Brady Thursday morning at OMMA RTB. Brady, a self-described skeptic of programmatic media-buying, is founder and CEO of Chicago-based agency Fred & Associates, and she said that as far she’s concerned, programmatic should be spelled “problematic.”

In fact, If I’m not mistaken, she used that term in a Freudian slip when she said “fraud” in programmatic media buying “totally exists,” and then went on to describe her “problematic partners” in the sector.

Or maybe she meant it literally.

In either case, she picked it up from PHD Chief Operating & Digital Officer Craig Atkinson, who kicked off of the aptly named “Can A Robot Make You Cry” panel discussion, sharing a personal anecdote about a malaprop his son made when he asked his father, “Why do you keep talking about problematic media” around the house?

Much of the panel focused on the same discussion preoccupying similar panel discussions across the industry and articles and columns in the industry trade press, including MediaPost’s.

That said, Porres believes the problematic parts of programmatic may be over-exaggerated, because the technology skeptics say is contributing to “fraud” and “non-human traffic” can also be used to shed light on the most human behaviors. You just need to know what to look at.

“Robots don’t buy things,” Porres pointed out, as an example of a metric people could utilize to understand what portion of their programmatic media buys are actually being served to humans.

Later in the morning, during a separate presentation about how a giant consumer marketer is tackling and taming the problem, Kellogg Co. Senior Manager of Digital Media Jim Kiszka demonstrated how Kellogg’s internal trading systems now scientifically account for it. Basically, he showed how they are able to factor what portion of their programmatic audience deliverability is actually viewable to people, and they benchmark their buys -- the prices they pay and how they measure the return for it -- based on that.

Currently, he said that approach has increased Kellogg’s reach of viewable impressions vs. the rest of the industry. He’s no Polyana either, noting that Kellogg’s trading team doesn’t expect to ever get to 100% viewable delivery, but it can improve and Kellogg can account for the portion that isn’t viewable. In other words, they’re using scientific methods to account for and plan their media buys.

The approach Kellogg is using, based on Kiszka’s presentation, is lightyears ahead of others in the industry and I recommend other clients and their partners take a close look at it. It is the right approach to what is still a problematic form of media-buying. Just like the other problematic areas of media-buying that the industry has confronted, adapted and improved on over time.

In terms of potentially problematic partners, I know Rocket Fuel is not one of them. And it’s not just beause of how scientific they approach the marketplace. It’s how they make their market inside of it.

“I’m being measured on my ability to deliver a human audience,” Porres explained, adding, “We don’t get paid if we don’t… We can’t afford to deliver ads to non-humans.”

That’s reason enough for me. But I don't buy media, personally or programmatically. But I do know the difference between fraud and Freud.

The Redefinition Of Television Is Leaving Advertising Behind

• by Joe Marchese, October 2, 2014, 3:33 PM
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There’s a lot of talk about redefining what is considered to be “TV” in this fast-changing media landscape. It’s appropriate that the FCC’s Media Bureau is currently mulling whether to expand the legal definition of television to include digital services (notably, though, only ones that pre-schedule their programming, so Netflix wouldn’t count here). Following on the heels of this year’s insanely digital-heavy upfronts, we in advertising are dealing with a world where what we consider to be “television” looks very different from how it did only a few years ago.

All these events bring up an important issue: If we’re redefining what television is at every turn, still, from what I can tell, the industry isn’t rushing to redefine the advertising that supports TV-quality content. As TV evolves, sticking traditional commercials on digital platforms is just going to look more dissonant than ever. Have you ever watched a TV show online and been bombarded by the same commercial for the same product multiple times, during what seems like way too many commercial breaks, and ended up hating both the advertiser and the show? That’s just a terrible user experience. Analog-style, frequency-based planning just doesn’t work in a world that’s going digital.

  

The redefinition of television may literally leave advertising behind. From Netflix to HBO Go to Amazon Prime, the most-talked-about new video players are all either subscription-based or have an ad-free premium version. If you control any portion of the massive, multibillion-dollar advertising industry, no matter how small, this should deeply concern you.

And maybe that’s why, as a fellow MediaPost writer noted earlier this week, traditional TV ad revenues are surprisingly higher than a lot of digital folks would assume, and they aren’t shifting the way we might expect them to. In fact, they’re still growing.

Here’s my theory: There simply isn’t a quality alternative for buying media in digital, at least not nearly as good as in “traditional” TV. I can tell you why TV dollars won’t go online in 10 words: TV impressions are 100% of the screen for 30 seconds. And until digital starts to face this fact, television advertising’s transformation is going to lag behind television’s own.

Key to Cross-Platform Advertising Is Creating A Single Metric

TelevisionNewsDaily

• by Manish Bhatia, Jane Clarke, October 1, 2014, 7:00 AM
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The proliferation of media devices may be a consumer’s dream, but it’s made conducting business more difficult for advertisers and publishers. Accurately accounting for audiences across TVs, computers, smartphones, tablets, and an ever-growing list of devices has created a measurement nightmare resulting in inefficient allocation of available ad inventory.

Fortunately, there is a path for our industry to make true cross-platform measurement a reality – one that can bring both buyers and sellers together through the use of a single, unduplicated metric on which both sides can transact.

Media companies would benefit by being able to sell against their entire audience, not just their digital or TV audience. Advertisers and their agencies would be able to plan more effectively and across screens, creating a unified media plan that leverages multiple touch points to reach target audiences rather than continuing to rely on inefficient and time consuming siloed campaign planning using unconnected data-sets.

How can this development of a single, unified audience metric be accomplished?

1. Develop a scalable way to measure across platforms. Traditional measurement panels are necessary but not sufficient for cross-platform measurement. While panels are fine for independently measuring each media platform, building a ‘single-source’ panel with overlapping samples across all measured media at a granular enough level is cost prohibitive for the industry.

Fortunately, unified methods of measurement that combine the benefits of person-level measurement from panels with the reporting granularity of census data hold the key to scalable cross-platform measurement. More importantly, this census data – such as tagged Web pages and apps in digital and set-top box data in TV – provides the granular touch points between platforms to produce audience de-duplication algorithms that work at the network, program and episode level.

This ability to de-duplicate audiences is fundamental to marketing. Advertisers want to know how many people they are reaching with their messages and how often, and media companies get paid according to how they can deliver on those propositions. Without the ability to de-duplicate audiences, accurate reach and frequency metrics remain a mystery.

Moreover, it leads to media being planned and bought in silos, which drives massive inefficiency in allocating dollars across the most appropriate platforms to effectively reach audiences. Efforts to estimate duplication are as limited as the approaches used. Passive, electronic, persons’ level measurement is the most accurate means to measure duplication. Once applied to a larger census based data-set, it unlocks the insights the industry needs.

2. Validate digital measurement to deliver a Human GRP comparable to TV. Digital measurement on the server-side can be messy. Cookies do not accurately measure audiences. Ad impression counts often get inflated due to non-human traffic. Many other ads are either delivered out-of-view, out-of-geography, or in non-brand safe environments.

Without the ability to validate server-side measurements and translate them into metrics that correspond to the behavior of actual humans, marketers can’t make decisions that align with their strategies. And perhaps more significantly, these metrics will not be comparable to TV audience metrics, which have historically met the reasonable standard of reaching humans with an ‘opportunity to see’ the advertising.

Therefore, digital measurement requires audience validation that cleans up the mess and can simplify it in terms of a single Human GRP that is comparable to TV. While the concept and usage of GRPs is not new in digital, recent advancements in viewability and NHT detection promise to make this metric even more precise, delivering a true Human GRP. An accurate Human GRP makes it easier for the industry to plan, buy and sell advertising across platforms.

3. Build a flexible system that can accommodate an evolving definition of cross-platform. As device proliferation continues – for example, Apple unveiled yet another screen with its new smartwatch – the challenges of cross-platform measurement have the potential to become more complex by relying on traditional measurement methods. By adopting a scalable system that can easily integrate new platforms into a unified view of cross-platform behavior, the media industry will be able to jump from screen to screen as seamlessly as consumers do.

This means avoiding multiyear R&D efforts to figure out how to incorporate new platforms into the mix and having the ability to quickly allocate dollars to the right media platforms. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in digital, it’s that the landscape changes constantly – why reinvent the wheel every time that happens?

Adopting this approach to cross-platform audiences and advertising enables a single metric on which media buyers and sellers can easily transact. It means media companies get paid for the full audience they deliver and advertisers can spend more wisely to achieve maximum impact from their campaigns, a natural win-win that the entire industry can rally around.