Nielsen 'Evaluating' Plan To Stop Russian Operationsby

 

Nielsen 'Evaluating' Plan To Stop Russian Operations

• by Wayne Friedman , Yesterday

As more TV and media-related companies suspend or scale back their business with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, Nielsen says it is still working on an exit plan.

In a statement, the company said: “Due to the escalating situation in Russia and Ukraine, Nielsen is actively working with its clients and vendors in Russia to pause new business and evaluating a plan for its existing operations in Russia."

Nielsen did not provide specific details.

An increasing number of U.S.-based TV and media companies have suspended operations in Russia during the last two weeks. Most recently, Discovery Inc. said it was stopping operations, with 15 channels going off the air.

Other media companies including Netflix, WarnerMedia, Amazon, TikTok, Google, Apple, and Facebook have also suspended operations. Virtually all movie studios that had film productions operating in Russia have halted operations.

Major U.S.-based consumer brands are also suspending operations in Russia, as well as marketing efforts.

Earlier this week, the Association of National Advertisers said that of the estimated 23% of 180 ANA members that do business in Russia, 25% have suspended or reduced their media spend in that country.

 Share the following with your local-direct clients. Philip Jay LeNoble, PhD

COMMENTARY

I'm Outta Here: Customers Are Quick To Jump After Bad Service Experience

• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

Email teams may wonder why customers go dark for a time or disappear entirely. 

Here’s a clue: A dismaying 76% of shoppers will give up on a brand after three negative service experiences, according to a study released Thursday by Coveo Solutions Inc.: “Can You Still Bank On Customer Loyalty?” -- up from 73% last year. 

Another 12% will drop out after a single bad experience. And frequency aside, 96% say a negative service experience affects whether they will buy from the company again. 

People aren’t bothering to complain first: 46% rarely, if ever, gripe before jumping versus 44% in 2021. 

This means email marketers will lose response without ever knowing what hit them. And they will be tasked with winning those customers back, or at the least dropping them from their lists after a certain inactive period. 

The causes of complaint vary with the generations. Baby boomers want to speak to a live person, and 52% will drop the brand if they can’t. 

In contrast, 40% Gen Z will jump if they can’t resolve an issue on their own. 

But other issues also contribute to this tenuous grip on customer loyalty. For instance,  22% of customers overall will abandon a brand when they are getting conflicting information from customer service and support agents.

This speaks to the need for better information systems: 41% of the information given to the average person in customer support is incorrect.

“Service is a crucial element in keeping customers happy and ultimately, preserving brand loyalty,” says Sawan Deshpande, vice president and general manager of service at Coveo. “But every customer journey is unique and no agent can account for the nuance of every single support touchpoint alone.”

The solution is AI, Deshpande argues. 

Arlington Research, working on behalf of Coveo, surveyed 4,000 consumers in the U.S. and U.K. in January 2022, with the numbers evenly distributed between each country. 

 

Radio & Television Business Report

• the HOT List

Saga’s New Story: A Local Direct Leader In Q4

By

 Adam Jacobson

 -

March 10, 2022

0

With CEO Ed Christian “unscripted” and sharing with investors and Wall Street analysts “what happens in the kitchen” in describing how Saga Communications gets its revenue each quarter, SVP/Operations Chris Forgy offered a peek at what the company’s top three ad categories were in the final quarter of 2021.

At the same time, CFO Sam Bush shared details on something Forgy praised as “beautiful” to Saga’s bottom line — its Local Direct prowess.

The No. 1 ad category, as shared by Forgy during Saga’s Q4 ’21 earnings call, is Home Improvement. This includes windows, siding, electrical contractors and plumbing, and illustrates how Saga’s mid-sized and small market properties are, in some ways, replacing the daily newspaper as a go-to for such community-based businesses.

The No. 2 ad category? At Saga in Q4 ’21 it was Professional Services, inclusive of attorneys, tax preparers, and financial planners.

Automotive is the third-largest ad category at Saga.

“We can’t plan on national dollars, where we have to have the bedrock of business we control,” Christian said on the earnings call. The comment came after Forgy noted, “We control the things we can and don’t worry about the rest.”

This helps to explain how Local Direct was flat in Q4 2021 — compared to Q4 2019. For FY 2021, it was below FY 2019 by just 3%.

Furthermore, Local Direct was responsible for 50% of Saga’s 2021 net revenue.

This success is expected to continue in 2022, with Bush noting that Q1 pacings are up 11% — even with March slowdowns tied to economic challenges related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 

Horizon Finds Nearly Half Of Americans Expect Brands To Condemn Russia, Support Ukraine

• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, 9 hours ago

Nearly half of American consumers say they will only support brands that explicitly condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to research released late Thursday by Horizon Media.

The study, which was fielded March 3-7, reaffirms a growing sentiment among consumers that the brands they support must take active steps to make the world a better place.

While many of those prior studies have been fielded in response to climate change, social injustice, public health related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and various attacks on democracy, Horizon's is likely one of the first to explicitly ask consumers about brand activism related to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

"Forty-nine percent believe that brands taking a stance is not enough," the report asserts, adding that "they have to have an obligation to act."

The finding comes as many major brands doing business in Russia have already stopped marketing in Russia, and as Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to "privatize" the facilities of American corporations in Russia.

Horizon's study also found that a majority (60%) of American consumers feel brands need to communicate publicly about what they are doing in response to the Ukraine crisis, and that they expect brand marketers to donate supplies (81%) or money (77%) to humanitarian causes helping Ukrainians.

While the report doesn't explicitly address how American consumers would respond to brands that do not take proactive steps condemning Russia and supporting Ukraine, it does note that "calls for boycotts of brands" are mounting.

"Boycott conversations have coalesced around removing Russian products as well as boycotting brands that have not yet divested," Horizon's analysts note, "showing brands that the time to act is now."

Iconic American brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonald's already have discontinued operations in Russia.

While 46% is the average for all marketing categories, consumers told Horizon they expect to take action. Explicit expectations vary by type of marketer (see data below).

Returning to providing latest news on TV and radio

 Hi all: I'm sure most of the hundreds of stations receiving LeNoble's Media Sales Insights have been wondering where it went for the last few weeks. My precious wife Donna had fallen on a patch of ice late January, had corrective surgery from a broken femur and spent another 10 days in a rehab hospital. Just came home and I've been chief cook and bottle washer from sunup to sun down. So now you'll see more of the latest news right here. So pass it on to everyone at your stations to enjoy more of what our family of friends in TV and radio have bee see since 2008. Philip Jay LeNoble, PhD.

COMMENTARY

Upfront Market 2022-23: Expect More 'Secondary Guarantees'

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 8, 2022

With all the headlines around new measurement and currencies in the news for national TV advertisers, we might think new cross-platform metrics are just around the corner -- especially for the upfront advertising market starting this summer.

Tone down your expectations.

We should think more about “secondary guarantees” -- which would not replace primary Nielsen viewing guarantees, but where some brands would make new deals that also would include older legacy TV viewers' promises.

To be fair, these might be limited in nature -- according to the specifics of the brand, over a tight time period, and around a narrower targeted measure for, say, a select group of shows.

Yes, there are tons of qualifiers in that last sentence. Well, it’s a start -- or should I say a continuation of efforts that began in recent years.

Last year, for example, A+E Networks talked up “secondary guarantees” for marketers.

It did this by shifting away from typical demographics metrics-attached deals to total audience guarantees as its primary mode of transaction, where demographic viewing groups -- 18-49 viewers and 25-54 viewers, for example -- were offered as secondary guarantees.

This followed a more adventurous move by A+E in May 2018, in which the network group became what was believed to be the first to make business-outcome guarantees for a select group of advertisers targeting specific criteria.

New secondary guarantees would go further -- and that might lead some to ask: What's the incentive for TV networks to give themselves more work -- and possibly make it more difficult for to monetize their ad inventory?

Well, there are lots of incentives -- including the promise of more healthy linear, TV-based cross-platform advertising for the future -- linear TV, connected TV, or whatever.

TV networks are doing their part, pulling in all sorts of new measurement from a number of non-Nielsen companies. Some -- like Disney Advertising, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and WarnerMedia -- are either doing a number of tests with media agency holding company groups -- or, in NBCUniversal's case, actually give “certified” status to measurement companies like iSpot.tv.

There is still a long way to go -- like requiring independent Media Rating Council accreditation, according to many executives. They don’t want -- as MediaPost Editor In Chief Joe Mandese has said many times -- to have media content companies "grading their own homework."

New secondary guarantees can be seen as a testing hedge for certain brands to see whether any of these new measurements offers results with stronger, more predictable attribution data and successful business outcomes.

Working on these "secondary guarantees" will enable marketers to get in on the ground floor. But the key here comes down to the word "working."

 

COMMENTARY

Upfront Market 2022-23: Expect More 'Secondary Guarantees'

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 8, 2022

With all the headlines around new measurement and currencies in the news for national TV advertisers, we might think new cross-platform metrics are just around the corner -- especially for the upfront advertising market starting this summer.

Tone down your expectations.

We should think more about “secondary guarantees” -- which would not replace primary Nielsen viewing guarantees, but where some brands would make new deals that also would include older legacy TV viewers' promises.

To be fair, these might be limited in nature -- according to the specifics of the brand, over a tight time period, and around a narrower targeted measure for, say, a select group of shows.

Yes, there are tons of qualifiers in that last sentence. Well, it’s a start -- or should I say a continuation of efforts that began in recent years.

Last year, for example, A+E Networks talked up “secondary guarantees” for marketers.

It did this by shifting away from typical demographics metrics-attached deals to total audience guarantees as its primary mode of transaction, where demographic viewing groups -- 18-49 viewers and 25-54 viewers, for example -- were offered as secondary guarantees.

This followed a more adventurous move by A+E in May 2018, in which the network group became what was believed to be the first to make business-outcome guarantees for a select group of advertisers targeting specific criteria.

New secondary guarantees would go further -- and that might lead some to ask: What's the incentive for TV networks to give themselves more work -- and possibly make it more difficult for to monetize their ad inventory?

Well, there are lots of incentives -- including the promise of more healthy linear, TV-based cross-platform advertising for the future -- linear TV, connected TV, or whatever.

TV networks are doing their part, pulling in all sorts of new measurement from a number of non-Nielsen companies. Some -- like Disney Advertising, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and WarnerMedia -- are either doing a number of tests with media agency holding company groups -- or, in NBCUniversal's case, actually give “certified” status to measurement companies like iSpot.tv.

There is still a long way to go -- like requiring independent Media Rating Council accreditation, according to many executives. They don’t want -- as MediaPost Editor In Chief Joe Mandese has said many times -- to have media content companies "grading their own homework."

New secondary guarantees can be seen as a testing hedge for certain brands to see whether any of these new measurements offers results with stronger, more predictable attribution data and successful business outcomes.

Working on these "secondary guarantees" will enable marketers to get in on the ground floor. But the key here comes down to the word "working."

 

COMMENTARY

How To Keep Pace With Inflation's Major Impact On U.S. Hispanics

• by Cynthia Correa , March 7, 2022

Axios recently reported that U.S.-based Hispanics are feeling significant pressure from inflation, which is impacting their purchasing power in tangible ways.

Considering the fact that this particular community has been an opportunity segment for brands over the last several years, how should marketers respond? What do they need to take into consideration in order to stay relevant?

Despite having been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and resulting job loss, now coupled with rising inflation and growing economic inequality, Hispanics still voice faith in the future—even if they feel less optimistic about the economy.

Why is that? While most Americans would see little cause for optimism in situations like these, Hispanics, as a whole, are more inclined to pursue the American dream and work to improve their living standards. They have a resilient mindset and firmly hold the belief that the younger generations will outpace and do better in life than the previous generations. That alone propels them forward.

Additionally, during challenging times, Hispanics resort to their community network. They are likely to have strong social ties and people to turn to for help.

That said, there are different things marketers should consider doing to keep pace with Hispanic consumers during this high inflation period.

Consumer research. Now, more than ever, it's important that advertisers understand their target audience and not go by existing consumer segmentation models. What may have worked in the past may not be the case any longer.

Conducting consumer research at a time like this will help marketers understand their audiences' pain points and how they are changing their behaviors and attitudes in response to price inflation and economic hardships.

The results will help marketers develop effective marketing plans that can lead to improved product/pricing strategies, promotional offers, rewards and loyalty programs.

Content marketing When inflation rises, consumers shift their focus to content that provides them with important information as it relates to their finances, getting their families ahead, tips and advice for managing their money, and overall well-being. This is a good way to strengthen relationships with customers and build brand loyalty.

Extend generosity. If your brand is in a position to extend special deeds like offers, discounts or contributions, those actions contribute enormously in ensuring consumers will remember your brand for being there and doing good. A great example of this is PepsiCo's Juntos Crecemos Program, which set out to distribute $10,000 grants to minority-owned businesses who have been negatively impacted by the pandemic.

As a Hispanic myself, I am hopeful that we will head into better times soon. In the meantime, as marketers, we must continue to be vigilant, listen to the voice of our audience and offer them positive contributions to help them thrive.