Tag Archives: media

May 9, 2013 · 1:58 pm

Have Publishers learnt from the past?

I was recently prompted to think about the sales policies of publishers when Criteo approached us to buy their inventory through a Criteo network. On the face of it one could argue it would be a good buy for us, potentially unique inventory, sourced through publisher deals that by many peoples opinion is good quality and high up the adserving priorities of the publisher. Obviously after about 1.5 secs I decided I was unlikely to contribute to the clever business model of Criteo by filling their coffers so they can then go pitch direct to our clients and move the business. That is not what this post is about but it set in motion some ideas that I think publishers should consider.

Companies like Criteo, have created a good business and are doing well in their niche but they got there through persuading publishers that they should sell to them quality impressions, in some instances first look, even above direct and brand channels at a low cpm vs those direct channels but high vs the RTB market. They deliver good business for them and everyone is happy.

Problem is that they buy a lot of it and need to get rid of it and so they want other people to buy it from them ie trading desks and potentially Ad networks / Managed DSPs. The demand in the exchanges has increased significantly since many of those deals were done and so cpms for quality inventory like this will likely create a higher cpm than they bought from the publishers. So that means then that trading desks are buying good inventory from Criteo rather than direct from the publisher? Is that what the publisher had in mind when they sold or agreed to the positioning of the sale?

I think it raises questions that publishers yet again have to face, is it better to sell at a flat cpm or find other channels to monetise. A lot of big names are doing this and for me makes no sense, if you want your inventory to be monetised, come see us rather than put us, your direct buyers second to someone who is re selling it to us? It is time to ditch the flat cpm and embrace the auctions and private market places.

We can also offer transparency to the publishers as to how well their inventory is performing and we can partner to create improvements for them and us. The alternative is sell and see no insights. In my view that era has ended. Publishers, come talk to us we can help you with that.

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February 22, 2013 · 11:35 am

Do we do enough to change our advertiser’s business?

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Since the dawn of advertising and media our business has been evolving and adapting to the changing consumer landscape. Rishad Tobaccowala, our own Chief Strategy Officer described agencies as cockroaches for their ability to survive against the odds. It is not just agencies though, publishers, tech firms, Ad Nets have all pivoted to some extent or another, it is in our DNA.

We have been focused on our own internals and what the consumer has been up to but the advertisers we work with have more or less stayed the same. Yes they have embraced new ways of reaching their target audiences and moved at varying paces to use digital and so on, but give or take they have the same or similar teams, structures and demands.

It strikes me that we as agencies don’t do enough to challenge that, we are happy making sure our own businesses are future proofed but how much time do we spend telling the clients that they need to change fundamentally? Why are we restructuring, creating new businesses, skills sets and yet we don’t spend much time explaining to the client that they should be future proofing. Would we suggest a new structure to their media team, propose that they need new skill sets or a new unit? I am not sure we do and it is not our fault in many cases. Everyone has heard of the jumping flee story, if you keep putting the lid on eventually they stop jumping and I think we are all a little like that at times, we have ambition to change things with our advertisers but often it is rejected as too difficult or their incentives are not aligned.

In this new world of RTB, programmatic buying and data where all our businesses have evolved to a greater or lesser extent, in some cases creating new businesses and structures, what are we telling our clients? Are we suggesting they carry on the same or should we be telling them to think differently? Do they need a centre of excellence in this space, how can we get established and sometimes entrenched brand managers to adopt these new philosophies quicker? 

If we are all future proofing – what are we asking our advertisers to do other than buy media differently? We need to think bigger and challenge our very important customers to do the same.

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November 19, 2012 · 6:25 pm

We have reached a new level of self harm in digital measurement

ImageAh the Ads are on – cup of tea anyone?

Digital media will eat itself then be sick all down us. Viewability is the latest craze to hit those who must have historically worked offline with frustrated metrics and now want to take it out on digital. When I moved to digital in 2000 we beat our chest with just how much we could measure. We could measure every time an Ad was shown! Every time someone clicked on it! Every time someone bought something! On and on it went, glory times. Until we realised that just because we could measure it, it was not necessarily a good thing.

Digital tracking issues started with no reach and frequency metrics! Everyone has been scrabbling to replicate the TV world. I am often asked how we measure brand metrics – well we can look at certain key numbers like engagement etc but ultimately if you want to track brand engagement then measure it with a survey, just like you do on every TV campaign. As we have evolved so have our measurement approaches but we are entering a new era of self harm. Viewability.

I am not even going to get into the fact that the tech is ill tested and nascent and needs some really thorough analysis. Or that the measurement can be carried out by any number of different companies each with a different way of tracking, so no consistency whatsoever. No lets look at what we are doing to the industry vs the offline world.

Could someone explain to me how marketeers (and / or agencies) are starting to nail digital on something like viewability and yet TV and Press are sat laughing at our complete stupidity. The TV market has it sorted. They came up with a plan 40 years ago, they got everyone to buy into it. Ratings, indexes, context, reach, frequency and a brand survey. Nuff said everyone liked it, pretty simple – lets not dig too much further or upset the nice little market place we have going. Otherwise how can you explain that in digital there are people clamouring to only pay for viewable impressions when a multi billion pound TV marketplace trades off people leaving the room, making tea, talking, texting on Twitter when the Ads come on. Press? Lets not go there.

If we are not careful in this digital business of ours we are going to measure ourselves into the ground. In TV the metrics are broad and deliver against some key criteria that they plan against, the industry has made it simple for advertisers to spend money and not question the fact that a 20,000 person panel in the US powers $65b TV market . Viewability is a classic example where we are setting a bar so high vs the other the channels because we can. For those who are challenging the industry from an advertiser perspective – should then turn the spot light on their other media expenditures. I would ask that we take some time to establish some very clear guidelines and transitions and not go in like a bull in a china shop just so we can show off at the next pitch. Lets do things right, for the good of the industry, not just the next sell.

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November 16, 2012 · 4:55 pm

Data Driven – Reality Based Media Panel at Monaco Media Forum

A panel moderated by Brian from Digiday talking about data driven display market and the role of programmatic trading from an advertiser, agency and human perspective. We covered privacy, a cookieless world and how the media agency has and will have to change in the future. A very enjoyable panel overall.

Panel consisted of VivaKi, Adobe, Taykey and Nugg.ad

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July 20, 2012 · 10:52 am

Agencies and publishers are polarising structures based on the perfect storm

Technology killed the admin star.

One of just many debates raging around the new world of programmatic buying and exchanges. Are we seeing the death of the buyer? The death of the seller? Has the world of computers stripped advertising of all its creativity? Lots of big questions and debates but over the last six months, one common thread has become apparent; there is no value in execution in the long term.

Two or three big themes have converged in the last year, they have been around for longer of course but they have been lit up by the tech debate. The first is that in my view too many businesses sold their value on execution and delivery. These are necessities and you can’t not have them but is that where the value is? Is that what you charge more for? I don’t think so, the agency world in particular suffers from focusing a lot on service and delivery and execution over real value add strategy and quality creative thinking.

In itself that is not the end of the world, many advertisers want perfect execution of course, but what it ends up being then is an easily quantifiable, discountable service that becomes very commoditised – tell me the difference between two media agency TV departments? Secondly lets combine that with the fact that the world of Paid, Earned and Owned means that clients are now not only trying to squeeze costs and fees they are starting to see these new approaches as a gateway to spending less. I have just finished doing preliminary judging and of about 40 entrants at least 37 boasted / moaned (not in so many words) that they had little or no budget to make their campaign work.

So we have smaller budgets based on the social buzz doing the heavy lifting for us and we have fees for service and execution being cut – that leaves us with only one alternative – start to charge for ideas and creativity, for strategic guidance so that the execution is less crucial to the revenues. This works more now than ever as to make the social buzz work for you, good ideas and strategy are needed to do it..it is no coincidence that the non traditional media planning and buying teams in agencies are the fastest growing divisions. Big sponsorships, events, social strategy, performance strategy, content, these are where the future lies backed up with technically led brilliant basics.

To gain traction strategically you need to invest in good people. You also need more of them. Investment  in the current climate is not straight forward so you need to rebalance the organisation. The investment in time and people from a strategic perspective needs to increase and at the same time you need to make execution more efficient allowing you to free up people and resources to focus on intellectual capital. So Enter the third factor  - programmatic buying.

Ask a customer if they want to pay for a load of people bogged down in admin, or people actively thinking about how best to run their business and make it a success, the answer will invariably be the latter, but that’s what we all do in the main at the moment. Clients pay for people and hours spent on too much Admin and not enough thought, this situation needs to change. Technology and programmatic buying/selling is now allowing all companies to achieve efficiencies. Whether it is publishers like the Guardian or agencies through trading desks technology is freeing resource to focus on value rather admin.

Publishers are moving fast now, after a stuttering start, they are moving rapidly, trying to find ways to move more and more into programmatic sales, now with words like premium and brand being attached. They are opening parts of the site, previously sacrosanct such as home pages to the evils of tech. Trading and execution is taking a back seat as Partnerships, strategy, event type words come to the fore – BIG ticket sales are now the focus.

Some recent people decisions are a reflection on that with people like Vevo choosing Partnerships people over sales people and Yahoo re-evaluating structures and there are many more. I am sure The Guardian will be looking to Tim Gentry to help them achieve better margins and a more efficient approach to the market, the signs are there..

So for me the message is clear – we all need to find a way to make money from clients and customers who want to pay less for service and execution and spend less on advertising. Armies of people pushing excel around is not going to be the answer.

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May 31, 2012 · 8:51 pm

Creating change – it is not all plain sailing

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Two days in Chicago at the VivaKi Nerve Center Management meeting and one thing really struck me, that change even when it is really needed is pretty tough. Key to getting through it though is by having a plan and sticking to it. The VNC started in 2008 and we were laughed at, Curt Hecht who leaves us this month was there at the start and he recalled some of the comments at the time. That plan though has been sturdy and continues to be at the core of everything we do and it is resistant to country whims and individual blocks and that change we are bringing can not be stopped now.

VNC was a slow burn Internationally but in recent times things have accelerated rapidly. Over the last two days we have had people from the VNC from US to Australia and everywhere in between and each person was ringing the bell on the old models, it is time to step up and be prepared to change. Only two years ago we had VNC in US, UK, Dubai and Spain. Add to that now Italy, France, Germany, Australia, China, Russia and more to come, amazing growth.

Trouble with change is that it unsettles and some people don’t want it and are willing to slow things down and say ‘it’s not like that here’ and excuses to that effect. The encouraging thing though is that those people are becoming far and few between now and most people have started to embrace. I met recently with Maurice Levy and it was clear where he expects to see development, what areas should be moving faster and that is the biggest encouragement of all when it comes from the top.

Change your mind or change the people was a phrase mentioned by someone recently and I agree. I have always loved change, it is so exciting and creates so much opportunity so I assume everyone will but I am afraid that is not always the case. The VNC over the last two days has presented some amazing work and propositions and it is no wonder it has been copied by most of the other groups – whether it was market leading Partnerships, the worlds first and largest trading desk, driving innovation through The Pool, VNC has lead and shown the people laughing behind their hands that in fact it has become a blueprint.

The work we are doing with our agencies is moving so fast in many many markets and the ambition in the room has been palpable so expect to see more and more from this group over the coming weeks, months and years.

See you Chicago, it has been a pleasure (apart from your terrible airport).

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July 27, 2011 · 1:49 pm

Trading Desks are in for the long haul, not the sale.

I cant decide where to start on this post, there has been so much going on in the hectic world of ad exchanges in the last few weeks. Top of the bill was an excitable debate between an Audience on Demand employee and a disgruntled DSP. The key issues raised around conflict of interest included agencies being forced to put spend through their trading desks, lack of impartiality etc etc.

Interwoven with this debate was the fact that so many companies are approaching us at the moment, DSPs, Data targeting companies etc all with interesting premises I suppose but all with one thing in common, they all need to make as much money as possible, as fast as possible. Lets talk about conflict of interest..I use the DSP marketplace including Triggit which was involved in the above debate. How many shall we say there are, that are currently aiming for Trading Desk revenues – 4? 5?. Everyone is coming to town, everyone wants a piece of the action, but when they get into town they realise that a couple of those 4/5 have been busy for a few months / years and pretty much wrapped up the business. Its not to say thatagency groups will not test and learn, we do in the US and there is definatley room for more than one or two but for some, the market’s not big enough. What happens then? They need to fight for revenues, they need to say why they are better than each other and especially better than Invite to try and find the big ticket, except I am not sure there is a big ticket at the moment. So then they resort to the last option which is to try and undermine the credibility of a trading desk to try and open up some cracks of opportunity.

The conflict of interest for those guys is they have to make money to keep the VCs happy. The agency group trading desk model is not in the same boat. Audience on Demand’s sole purpose in life is to navigate on behalf of its clients a very complex market place and deliver great results. They are in it for the long haul, they have much more to lose. AOD messes up on a client it can jeopardise the whole business. Yes there is pressure to deliver..but its to deliver results not revenue first and foremost. In a competitive marketplace as the agency landscape is, the more things you do well and right, the more chance you have of retaining the client.

So whats better then? An organisation like Audience on Demand that has a remit to make sure it is working with the best, understanding strengths and weaknesses – and believe me all these tech companies have them – or a heavily invested tech company struggling to make ends meet. Who is actually going to have the interests of the client? I can tell you, it’s us. Anyone who thinks that agencies and clients are naive enough to accept sub standard strategy and results just because its in house is a) clearly lacking in understanding of how an agency works and b) underestimating the clients and Account people. If a client asks about our impartiality we can show them the full vetting we do of all DSPs, I can show them the data compliance methods we have in detail for every supplier, I can show them the results in detail where an acceptable flat cpa or cpc is not acceptable as it encourages the supplier to focus on growing their margin rather than delivering the lowest metric. I will show you 100′s of people who live and breath this space and understand it better than any individual tech company thats trying to undermine it.

Conflict of interest is doing what you have to do to stay afloat in one of the most competitive eras of all digital times vs doing what’s best for our clients. Finally it is always worth analysing who is throwing the mud, its often one of those people who came in to town too late and cant find anywhere to hang their hat.

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May 18, 2011 · 9:58 pm

Did someone at the ICO get pissed at lunch? Privacy lunacy

So the story so far..after many years of neglect the governments of US and UK decide we need to manage better the laws around privacy. The US agrees that we don’t need a law but the relevant bodies should show clear guidance and management of the issue, proving that the industry will be responsible. The US have done that, it’s still a little disorganised but it’s getting there.

At the same time in the UK we were doing the same. Everyone working together and moving towards an acceptable solution. It was loosely agreed that cookies required by a company to deliver a service, think about how intuitive Amazon is or how your bank remembers you etc etc. Everyone was happy with that approach. At the same time the advertising and targeting industry was looking, similar to the US at another self regulation approach. There was a number of options but it was going in the right direction.

As I had mentioned before, based on information from Evidon, consumers had shown not a fear of being tracked but rather a desire to be represented appropriately and therefore receive the most relevant advertising and or slick process through ecommerce websites. This to me is crucial, absolutely crucial and the government needs to understand this point further.

So all was going smoothly. Then someone went to lunch and got pissed at the ICO because when they got back they decided to throw all that out and do a number of things:

1. You need agreement from the user to cookie them, before you start to do it
2. They tightened up the rules for advertisers as to what is a crucial cookie and therefore exempt vs one that just makes your life easier.
3. They then left all that hanging with no actual solutions.

It is absolute lunacy, we are left with chaos, are we really suggesting pop up boxes and drop downs and virtual signatures before being able to drop a cookie? Perhaps we should just go the whole hog and ask for permission in writing as one European country is discussing.

This approach is a major departure from where the Government was only weeks ago and has caught everyone off guard, ecommerce is at risk as is most of the digital advertising business and hence why it is lunacy. The point in this blog however is simple, the only reason they could have had this short term turnaround is because they went to lunch and got pissed because frankly there can be no other explanation.

This needs of be sorted out, I am sure it will be and I know everyone is working closely together as agency groups, advertisers and industry bodies, so nobody panic. If all else fails get down the pub with the ICO boys and try and persuade them otherwise.

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January 24, 2011 · 2:36 pm

Why Ad networks can’t become agencies but the reverse is not true.

The latest debate in the display space is whether or not ad networks are going to have to become agencies and go direct to clients to sustain their business. It’s a fair assumption, the likes of Specific and others will hire agency people, create better strategies and approach clients. The latest article can be found here on exchangewire.

It’s a believable concept but one that is out of sync with the way the industry is heading. Although there is a lot of hype around ad exchanges and targeting / data opportunities, within an agency, exchange trading remains a line on a schedule, albeit a complicated one. The exchange space asks many questions of agencies but that is around change and adapting, once its all settled down, it will revert to being an important channel like search and crucially will be integrated into all the other channels.

Over the last few years clients have been on a journey where in the main they have consolidated channels, first digital overall and then they have dragged search in where specialists have held on for some time. It’s not only channels but they are integrating their media agencies both within countries and between countries with more and more international pitches. Anyone in a major agency will have lived that in the last few years. So after all of this integration I think it is unlikely they will want to start farming individual channels out again, especially when it may be big news in the exchange world but within agencies, it’s just another new channel. Time and time again through research, better coordination and integration has shown better results for the advertiser so there is no reason to split out exchange trading.

There is also some realistic areas to take into account. Clients spend 80% of their budgets on offline, 60% of their digital budgets on search, the rest is split all over. So its fine for an adnetwork to go direct but they will never fill the roll of an agency. The agency roll is more than buying and is across all media channels, its events, experiential, etc etc, it’s also highly people heavy and Ad networks have been used to high margins, low headcount.

So direct is fine but will struggle in the UK marketplace, however I think with time the agencies could start to deliver an ad network experience and product within the context of their huge global corporations. Of course there is middle ground, some chameleon organisations that act as an agency or a network, but their offer only goes so far to be a real threat.

I dont think we need to start a war between agency groups and ad networks, I am sure we will all find a way, but I know what side I would want to be on.

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June 26, 2010 · 6:55 pm

Cannes Lions Festival – You dream it, we deliver it

Monday to Thursday was the plan, but then work got in the way! So instead we went for a Tuesday afternoon flight, one that I of course missed by one minute, one minute that cost me 8 hours! I eventually arrived via Amsterdam and immediately got out into the thick of the event, it’s an impressive set up, there are not many places where you can meet up with all of your work colleagues from across the industry in one single city which is buzzing with both work and play conversations.

Down at the Gala event it was heaving with people from across the business, the business being very varied. Media groups, advertising groups, content companies, digital, film, music you name it, all here. A lot of drunken idiots as well to be fair, in fact some people were such imbeciles I was amazed they had been let in the country!

It was a fantastic evening, I met with Christian and Kate from AOL at their own party on a roof top, very civilized and a great ease into the evening, obviously as a reciprocal arrangement from zeitgeist, who should I see there but Damian Burns, Global Head of Agency Relations and Ben Faes from Google. Later in the evening there was Tom George from MEC, Stephen Haines from Facebook and a few other golden oldies. Although of course most of the talk is social, there is some interesting conversations about what has been seen and heard during the day. Apparently the Ben Stiller/Yahoo event was a little weird and did not entirely work, that said by then we outside the cleverly Yahoo sponsored ‘gutter bar’ which was the end destination most evenings and stayed open until way beyond you should have been in bed, luckily it was next to the Martinez where I was staying, so that worked!

The next morning after 2.5hrs of sleep Vivaki and Microsoft had their ‘steering committee’ meeting which lasted for some hours and covered the state of the nation between our two companies, an interesting meeting with some grand ambition which I am looking forward to working on in the coming months. After a lovely lunch a couple of meetings around ad exchanges (my topic of choice at the moment) and then on to the football. Microsoft hosted a great event with all of the UK people seemingly choosing their beach club to watch, great atmosphere not least as the US were playing and the Americans were getting very excited about their game too, we exchanged cheers through the afternoon, although i suspect they were less sure what they were cheering for!

Later at the awards I took my seat, waiting to see what award winning work looked like, there was some great stuff, I loved the recruitment work from one agency that distributed a calendar with a resignation letter for each day, waiting for the day you had had enough. The Aides campaign from TBWA France was also the rudest thing I have seen on the web, a willy chasing a vagina round a homepage and eventually having sex once safely inside a condom was pretty risqué, but brilliantly done.

All the winners can be seen here

An evening spent with Google was very entertaining and good to be on the inside when they win a big lawsuit with CBS! It also appears that I was sat down to one of the men who has contributed most to the uk digital scene, our own Bruce Daisley, winner the next night at the NMA awards for the accolade. I am very pleased, if disbelieving for the lad, he is a great practitioner and a great guy, he is just no good at hosting jollies as he reminded me of our jaunt to Germany for the football.

The next morning I got the chance to see the Microsoft Experience centre, packed full of their three screens, windows 7 phone, Xbox and Kinect. All of them looked amazing and full of potential for an advertiser. As I went round though It just reminded me of how little of this stuff the average planner or advertiser has seen or experienced. There is a gap between the possibility and the reality, I don’t think advertisers see how a touch sensitive table could drive their crm or sales. The Xbox is a home entertainment system with connectivity, content and games, do advertisers see this? I don’t think so and even worse I don’t think the agency folk are much better. If you get a chance go experience it!

As my trip came to an end and I got a chance to catch up with some other agency friends on the way home I thought to myself what a fantastic event, yes there is a lot of fun and drink and socializing but it’s a chance to bring a lot of very interesting people together and the opportunity to see some great work and technology.

A 4 hour delay on the way back, rounded the whole trip off. Thanks to Microsoft, sorry I did not make it on your video blog, I must have been as dull as my blog. When I got home I had an iPhone 4 waiting for me, that’s my next post..

Au Revoir

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