TVN’S TV2020 CONFERENCE

Station, Agency Execs Tackle Advanced Adv., Spot

Experts will discuss the latest developments in targeted advertising, automation and the impact of industry consolidation on spot TV sales at TV2020 in New York on Oct. 16.

By TVN Staff | August 14, 2019 | 5:42 a.m. ET.

Advertising executives from broadcast station groups and top agencies will examine the cutting edge in automation and addressability as well as the future of spot TV sales at TVNewsCheck’s fourth annual TV2020: Monetizing the Future.

Frank Comerford, chief revenue officer of NBCU Owned Stations; Lyle Schwartz, chief integration officer for GroupM; Michele Toller, VP of Empower MediaMarketing; and Frank Friedman, VP of consumer engagement at the E.W. Scripps Co., will join moderator Janet Stilson, TVNewsCheck contributing editor, for a panel discussion at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 16, at New York’s Javits Center.

Frank Comerford

Lyle Schwartz

“Targeted advertising is evolving beyond age, gender and income demographics to a far more sophisticated picture of the consumer,” said Kathy Haley, TVNewsCheck’s publisher and co-founder. “Frank, Lyle, Michele and Frank are on the cutting edge of developments there and in automated advertising. Their conversation will look at those dynamics along with the fate of rep firms as station groups consolidate and how that may impact the sale of national advertising.”

Michelle Toller

 

Frank Friedman

TV2020: Monetizing the Future is presented at NAB Show New York. This year’s conference will examine a range of issues facing the broadcasting industry, including advanced advertising and ad technology, diversifying revenue streams, technology leaders on IP and the ongoing cloud transition and broadcast leaders on the industry’s future.

Produced by the National Association of Broadcasters and co-located with the Audio Engineering Society’s East Coast convention, NAB Show New York will be held Oct. 16-17 at the Javits Convention Center. With more than 14,000 attendees and 300+ exhibitors, NAB Show New York showcases the best in next-generation technology for media, entertainment and telecom professionals with conferences and workshops focused on television, film, satellite, online video, live events, podcasting, advertising, corporate A/V, production and post.

To register for TV2020, click here.

COMMENTARY

Will D2C Brands Change How TV Ads Are Bought, Sold, Measured?

• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, August 8, 2019

The emergence of digital-first, direct-to-consumer brands as a significant, growing pool of new TV advertisers was a big theme this past spring during the upfront. I believe that D2C brands will become such an important part of the TV ad industry over the next few years that they will end up reshaping in their own image much of how TV advertising operates.

Why do I believe this? One, because television generally, and TV advertising specifically, are in critical phases of transformation. Two, because digital technology and approaches are transforming every part of the industry. Three, because generational change in key leadership roles on both the buy and sell side are accelerating that change. Four, because TV companies themselves are all transforming to become direct to consumer.

And five, most importantly, because nothing reduces resistance to change like money. D2C brands represent not only a significant pool of new ad dollars for television -- but these brands and ecommerce are quite likely to represent the dominant spend on TV within five years.

What might the D2C-reshaped world of TV advertising look like? Here are some of my thoughts:

More focus on audience. Most D2C brands launched in a digital ad world that focused on audiences first and content second. While they certainly also value the importance of context and positioning, it is critical for them to find their audiences wherever and whenever they are on TV. 

As former P&G executive and fellow columnist Ted McConnell famously says, ”brands don’t have remnant customers -- so why should they view any audiences at any time as ‘remnant?’”

More focus on automation. D2C brands are expert in customer analytics, and they want to leverage data from their analytic systems across all of their media buys. That means buying units and time more precisely. That means buying across many properties. That means making and changing buys at the last moment. Faxes, phone calls and handshakes won’t be enough for them. Real automation in the TV ad “demand fulfillment” will become table stakes for TV companies.

More focus on scatter. D2C companies operate much more dynamically than legacy brands with their long, slow supply chains and complicated networks of distributors and retailers. D2C companies need more nimbleness, and most will be happy to embrace the flexibility of scatter over discounts in the upfront.

Less pomp and more performance. Folks who allocate D2C advertising budgets are under much more scrutiny for ROI on a daily basis than most of their legacy brand counterparts, so I suspect that we’re going to see less focus on the “pomp” that the TV industry showers on legacy marketers and media folks, and more focus on performance. In other words, there will be less focus on hosting celebrations of splendor honoring TV ad buyers on a weekly basis and more focus on discussing and improving the CAC (customer acquisition cost) of TV ad campaign spots relative to search, social and cost-per-click ads.

What do you think? Will D2C brands reshape the TV ad world in their own image?

ONLINE MARKETING

August 14, 2019

How Marketers Can Add Delight to the Customer Experience

Credit: Getty Images by d3sign

By Daniel Burstein

 

When we talk about the customer experience, there are some CX essentials that are proven to consistently increase conversion, like reducing friction.

However, do you stop at reducing the negative? Or do you actively work to delight customers? Here’s a simple example.

I was dining at a fancy restaurant on vacation recently. You know the type: dark mahogany woods, dim lighting to set the mood, candle flickering on the table. When I opened the menu — cue angelic chorus — I saw the light. Literally. The menu lit up. It was backlit with LEDs that automatically turned on when the menu was opened and turned off when the menu was closed.

Delight Is a Differentiator

An easy purchase experience is table stakes. That is what customers expect.

But an enjoyable purchase experience can be a real differentiator and have an outsize impact on customer satisfaction.

In fact, we surveyed 2,400 consumers sampled to reflect a close match to the U.S. population’s demographics, and split them in half — asking one group to think of a company they were satisfied with, and the other group to think of a company they were unsatisfied with.

When we asked them about that company’s marketing, the most frequent response from both satisfied and unsatisfied customers was that “the purchasing [experience] (whether online or in person) is easy.”

But the biggest differentiator was the enjoyability of the purchase experience. The second-most frequent response from unsatisfied customers was that “the purchasing experience (whether online or in person) is enjoyable (46%). For unsatisfied customers, purchase experience enjoyability dropped all the way down to the eighth-most-frequent response (10%).

How to Spark Joy With Your Customer Experience

Hopefully, you’ve already mapped out the prospect conclusion funnel. The goal is to get an understanding of what conclusions customers need to make at each point in their customer journey. When you do this well, you lead the right customers to the ultimate conclusion — they should purchase your product.

Can you find ways to add delight to that journey, as well? Try this. On a Friday afternoon, or even a Wednesday hump day lunch, pull up that mapped-out prospect conclusion funnel with your marketing team. Pass around some beer, ice cream, or whatever your brainstorming lubricant of choice is. Step into the customer’s shoes and think about some ways you can add delight in the customer experience.

Or to borrow from Marie Kondo — take each step of that customer journey and ask yourself if is sparks joy.

Not every step will, of course. But if there is no delight in the process, can you add (or perhaps take away) something from that experience to make it more enjoyable for the customer? Are there little lifts you can add here and there?

To go back to the light-up menu example I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the restaurant tapped into a real point of friction. Fortunately, I’m young enough that I don’t have this challenge yet, but for many older patrons it can be extremely difficult to read a restaurant menu in a low-light setting. So if you are a customer expecting to have that challenge, and then you open the menu and it lights up — that is truly delightful.

Here are some other ideas to catalyze your thinking:

• Listen to Your Customers — Monitor current customer behavior to understand what gets them excited, especially what gets them excited enough to share on social media. After discovering customers were pairing wine with Cheez-It snacks, Kellogg’s delighted customers by packaging Cheez-It and House Wine together in one box.
• Beyond Social Media Listening, Actually Go and Meet With Your Customers — When User Experience Designer and Architect Gregory Casey was designing a mobile experience for eBags, he actually asked customers to visit their homes and watch them interact with the mobile and tablet experience. He discovered they didn’t just want to instantly find a product, but rather delighted in the experience. For example, after she put the kids to bed, one customer would pour a glass of red wine, grab her mobile device, and browse through the latest purses. So he designed an experience to help make it enjoyable for the customer to browse as well, not just instantly find and buy.
• Think Outside the Box With Your Product — This is a trite phrase, I know. But it is used so often because the technique is so valuable. What presumptions are you making about your purchase experience and products? Could you challenge the model and do something different? When Flint McGlaughlin (CEO and Managing Director of MECLABS Institute, where I work) wrote his book "The Marketer as Philosopher: 40 Brief Reflections on the Power of Your Value Proposition," he didn’t release it as an ebook. And he didn’t print it like the traditional business book, with a glossy dust jacket. The book is handmade, with a full-grain leather cover. Because the book isn’t meant to just inform or be consumed, it’s designed to delight and foster reflection.
• Leverage the Physical World — E-commerce is a brutally efficient product search, sale, and delivery engine. And if you buy into the hype, e-commerce is the only thing that matters anymore. But if your brand has a physical presence, are you taking advantage of it to delight customers? If your brand doesn’t have a physical presence, can you create one (even temporarily) to delight customers? From the Barbican Center’s “Rain Room” that has more than 30,000 images on Instagram to illy surprising weary travelers at Newark Airport with free coffee, physical interactions are how we’ve delighted each other for millennia. Don’t let the explosive growth of the Internet blind you to that.
• Replicate the Physical Experience’s Delight E-commerce —Many companies have an e-commerce-only presence. They simply have no place to create a “Rain Room.” In that case, sometimes it is helpful to consider the physical shopping experience when mapping out ways to delight customers with the digital experience. I think we were all better at doing that in the early days of the Internet, before we became so accustomed to e-commerce as a natural part of life. So for my next example, I reached way back in the MarketingSherpa archives to the year 2000. Online beauty service com attempted to replicate the department store cosmetic counter gift bag by including a delightful extra with each purchase – two stems of orchids, a pretty silver compact mirror, a T-shirt, or a travel bag.
• When Something Goes Wrong, Make It Delightfully Right —Don’t stop mapping the customer experience at the product purchase. To maximize customer-lifetime value and word-of-mouth marketing, consider customer service, as well. For example, when a product stained a customer’s carpet, Man Crates sent a carpet cleaner to the customer’s home. It didn’t shirk blame. It didn’t put the work on the customer to return a product or file a claim. It just fixed the problem. How delightful.

COMMENTARY

The New Water Cooler Conversation: Is It Time To Cut The Cord?

• by Steve McClellan , Staff Writer @mp_mcclellan, August 8, 2019

Media analyst firm MoffettNathanson has been keeping track of the amount of commercial time on TV and cable channels. It found that the second quarter contained another 1% increase, on top of steady gains throughout 2018.

So much for all those promises by media companies to reduce inventory.

Last week, the analyst firm also reported another big jump in cord-cutting. In the second quarter, AT&T, Comcast and Charter had a combined loss of more than 1.2 million traditional video subscribers.

Gee, do you think there is a connection? I don’t think there is any doubt.

There’s nothing worse than having to sit through a bunch of loud, lame and irrelevant TV ads when all you want to do is sit back and be entertained by compelling content. Talk about disruptive.

Advertisers are people too, and they’re not stupid. They have to wonder how many viewers actually pay attention to all those lame ads. Do you?

Intuitively, we all suspect the number is pretty low, although we won’t really know the answer until every TV set in America is eyeball-tracking enabled and someone keeps score.

By the time that happens, streaming will be the dominant video watching medium. With their built-in cameras, just about every computer has eye-ball tracking capability.

I can count on one hand the number of live commercial TV shows I’ve watched this year. Most of it is sports, as well as saying goodbye to the gang on "Big Bang Theory."

I watch my fair share of TV, mostly taped or streamed. And not a week goes by when I don’t have a conversation with a friend who’s either cut the cord or considering it. It’s the new water-cooler conversation: Is it time to cut the cord yet?

It’s really just a matter of time. Cord-cutting solves a lot of problems for viewers and lets them cherry-pick the channels and other content they actually want to experience, not the bloated, overpriced packages that TV providers want to cram down their throats.

Of course, the networks and distributors know this, too-- which is why most those who want to remain in business are also thinking about how to tap into the streaming world that viewers are increasingly opting into as they cut the cord.

COMMENTARY

Who Cares About TV Cord-Cutting? Advanced Ads, Digital Sales Deliver

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 7 hours ago

Cord-cutting news headlines sound terrible for the traditional TV business. Or are they?

What was once a pay TV market of 101 million subscribers six years ago is now down to 87 million. Yet we keep hearing about higher upfront advertising revenues, growing affiliate revenue and improving content distribution to third-party buyers.

For the last five years, upfront revenues for broadcast and cable networks have risen 4.6% to 5.9% for each year, according to Media Dynamics.

In addition, we are finally seeing some major media companies releasing their first data for upfront digital advertising revenue. NBCUniversal, for example, says its upfront digital advertising deals grew 50% to $1.3 billion.

Other media companies also cite sharply improving results — although little actual data.

In somewhat of a related disclosure, Viacom now says 20% of its domestic advertising revenue will come from advanced advertising, hitting near $700 million in revenue this year. That’s a big piece.

Those last two pieces — digital media and advanced-advertising efforts — are key for future growth, according to many analysts.

Looking forward, where are the inflection points? Soaring double-digit percentages for traditional TV network CPMs (cost per thousand viewers) may be telling.

When should marketers be buying more advanced/addressable advertising inventory — even if expensive — and less of traditional TV media, now that those media buys are pricier?

Now, take a look at where local TV stations are when it comes to revenues — relying and focusing on those steadily increasing retrans dollars versus the iffy, and somewhat declining, local TV advertising.

And where are local TV stations on digital media selling? Many analysts say local TV stations are still performing in digital media with an overall lackluster effort.

Local TV stations might say local TV content — especially news content which has expanded over the last few years — is a reason to be positive. Perhaps local digital news content deals offer meaningful revenues, too.

All this means there are plenty of shifts in the business, including more cord-cutting. But growing emphasis in direct-to-consumer businesses for traditional TV companies also means a bigger shift in dollars to the obvious: direct-to-consumer revenues.

COMMENTARY

Brands Must Rethink In-Store Marketing As Consumers Shop in New Ways

• by Michael Boumendil , 2 hours ago

The brick-and-mortar store as we know it is set to experience radical disruption. As part of this disruption, it’s likely that we will soon see the end of in-store promotions as we know them. 

As Amazon blends online and physical shopping experiences, brands face the challenge of how to remain relevant in these reinvented spaces. Brands of all kinds need to find new ways to engage customers in and outside of physical store environments — especially Generations Y and Z, who increasingly interact with brands through smartphone screens, apps and voice-activated devices.

Retailers are under benevolent siege. Subscription services--for everything from meal kits to clothing--and food delivery upstarts are forcing them to rethink what the consumer wants and what to offer.

At the same time, innovations like Amazon Go, where shoppers pay automatically and leave without even reaching for their wallet or phone, are changing how consumers interact with brands when making a purchase. Additionally,  as mobile wallet, NFC and VR-AR technologies give us walk in, walk out shopping, marketers must think beyond physical merchandising and on-pack promotions if they are to boost consumer loyalty.

Retailers are also phasing in frictionless card-based shopping and preparing for future cashierless stores. Firms like Grabango and AVA Retail are helping retailers optimize legacy inventory management and checkouts, delivering advances such as cash registers that automatically sense the contents of shoppers’ baskets, debit card payments authorized at store entrances and ‘scan-and-go’ shopping -- without the big investments associated with cashierless operations.

As frictionless shopping becomes commonplace, brands need new forms of engagement to prosper -- drawing on the consumer touchpoints being created as different online content, AI, mobile interactions and in-store technologies come together in today’s shopping experiences.  There are a number of ways they can achieve this both in-store and in consumers’ homes.

First, AR and VR technologies extend brands’ ability to engage our senses because they open up much wider opportunities like exciting showroom effects and product animations. For example, one ice cream company’s music app soothes consumers with orchestral music lasting just enough time for the ice cream to be scooped perfectly from the tub.

And with the growing prevalence of sonic logos, brands and retailers in Europe have begun to test adding a brand’s audio signature to the ambient music playing in the store.  Tests have shown increases in brand and category sales when a recognizable snippet of brand music is played.

These new touchpoints offer brands a myriad of customer engagement opportunities. In the future, marketers will develop brand strategies based on a distinct, audio- and visual based brand identity across different interactions: special ringtones for consumers’ digital wallets, VR displays and smartphones purchases-

Today’s brands will remain relevant by using the retail store as a staging point in brand engagement as a voice-activated, VR and sensory-based market takes over.

If such strategies seem a world away, researchers at Millward Brown estimated back in 2013 that sensory marketing can add up to $100 million to a global brand’s value.  As branding opportunities in-store get stripped away, brands must turn to sensory and experiential alternatives to ensure their product is on the top of consumers’ minds when they are shopping.

New Research Shows MC Media Spend Disproportionately

New Research Shows MC Media Spend Disproportionately Low

Credit: Getty Images by Kiyoshi Hijiki

By Matt Ramerman

According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, the loyalty era of marketing is over. The opinion piece, penned by three senior Accenture executives, explores marketing as sequential trends that supersede each other.

The authors believe we are now moving into a new era of relevance. Briefly, each era is characterized as follows:

1. Mass Market (60s/70s) The era of mass production, scale, and distribution.
2. Segmentation (80s) More sophisticated consumer research enabled marketers to target customers in niche segments.
3. Customer-Level (90/2000s) Tech advances in Enterprise IT made it possible to target individuals under the watchword customer lifetime value.
4. Loyalty (2010s) The age of CRM, tailored incentives, and advanced retention.

Obviously, it’s technology in each of these phases that is the catalyst for change. The mass-market era of Coca-Cola and McDonald’s was made possible by cars, freeways, and the TV set for spot advertising. Equally, the loyalty era, with poster boys like Amazon, was brought into being by sophisticated CRM systems.

Now, we’re moving into an era of relevance — mass communication to the previously unattainable segment of one. New data techniques are increasingly being brought into play that exploit both explicit data — what is known about a customer (name, previous purchases, or contract type — in the case of wireless operators) and implicit data — information that can be inferred by behavior.

Related story: Could Blockchain Be the Key to Unleashing a New Era of Consumer Relevance, at-Scale?

Data used this way allows marketers to address individuals by name, based on their unique preferences, while — increasingly — the interaction happens via mobile messaging.

There’s evidence relevancy is taking hold. According to the latest survey from sales analytics firm, Periscope By McKinsey,personalized messaging triggers action — 31% of consumers are prompted to respond to messages about products relating to their interests; in particular, updates relating to product availability and price.

So why are so many enterprises getting loyalty wrong? To frame the question further, in the prior loyalty era, the goal was to bring customers to a brand by providing a reward of some sort, a discount offer, or a fremium service. This currency was brand goodwill, which created a relationship with consumers that kept them coming back.

Yet consumers don’t actually display loyalty based on these incentives anymore. Rather, they seek out the best deal for themselves in the moment of need. Enabled by the digitization of everything and the proliferation of smartphones, spontaneity is the norm.

And with a market that is flooded with offers and discounts, who can blame them? Loyalty may be created for the briefest amount of time, with a customer shopping at your store one day, but expect them to switch to a competitor the following week, because a different offer appeals. For enterprises, this ultimately becomes a race to the bottom, undercutting competition and eroding profits, while the goodwill (loyalty) dissipates as quickly as it was created.

A common mistake is that brands and enterprises use loyalty as a short-term tactic, rather than as a strategic aim. Loyalty is of course important, but it’s the mechanics of any given program that needs to change. This means scrutinizing the customer journey and identifying opportunities to offer amazing experiences that directly speak to individual customer preferences at appropriate moments of interaction, and not just at the top of the sales funnel.

These might include:

1. Before a Purchase — an offer based on something like cart abandonment behavior. A personalized message might showcase that garment (as a static image or in video format) and provide a link so that the customer can find their nearest store or an option to purchase it directly online.
2. After a Purchase — Onboarding a new customer who has recently signed up for a service, for example. The objective might be a warm welcome, an acknowledgment of what a particular customer has signed up for, and some orientation around next steps.
3. As Part of Ongoing Customer Experience — dynamic rich messages that augment the known metadata with third-party data, adding an additional layer of utility. A personalized notification from an airline, for example, based on a customer’s flight information that adds weather forecasts of the destination location.

In other words, creating relevancy goes much further than just offering personalized rewards, blending the customer experience with a range of other aims like product awareness onboarding and upselling.

Importantly, the more the interaction is helpful to the consumer, the more it has the potential to create loyalty. Gartner calls this “tailored help” and 88% of participants in its recent consumer survey reported not receiving it; yet, according to the firm, using tailored help in the form of mobile messaging increases commercial benefits (brand intent, purchase, repurchase, and increased cart size) by 20%.

What's more is the mobile channel is evolving. Where once enterprises had a few lines of text in an SMS, or video via MMS to interact on the mobile, now new, richer channels like RCS messaging and WhatsApp Business are giving enterprises the opportunity to add maps, barcodes, linked buttons, and more besides.

The era of relevance is becoming established. The price to pay for any brand that doesn’t get on board? Irrelevance.