Month: May 2014

This time it is a one way ticket

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As anyone who is crazy enough to regularly read this blog will know, every so often I intersperse the world of digital media with some of my own personal experiences. Well today personal and professional collide as I contemplate for the first time in my career getting a one way ticket to the US and taking my family with me. Many people have done it before and many will do again but to me this is a big deal and one that brings equal quantities of nerves and excitement. 
 
I am moving to the US, the Big Apple no less to help shape a new chapter for Audience On Demand with a focus on client relationships and delivery. The crucial relationships we hold with our large agency partners and their customers as well as our direct customers. I am retaining my management of EMEA at the same time. I leave that business in incredibly safe hands and the management team of Geoff, Danny, Jean Baptiste, Anke, Sara, Lothar and Cesar who I know will continue to work as always in a collaborative and market leading fashion.
 
The US market is a behemoth that I think us Europeans take some time to understand and just as Europe is often over simplified by Americans,  I believe we have the same capacity in return. I stand in awe of the scale and complexity but the complexity I can handle, Europe with its multiple markets, currencies, characteristics, politics and all is hard to rival, you just need to spend time and effort getting to understand it all, and above all listen.
 
I join a great team in the US, my colleagues are a group of experts second to none and I know that we have a winning formula, I am excited to learn from all of them and I hope in return I will add value to the people who I will work alongside.  I have read headlines recently about consistency of leadership and a teams that have been in it from the early days as regards other agency groups well we have that in spades. The people I am working with have in the main been together for 5 years and more with leaders such as Frank from the very start of VivaKi so we have a strong bench. We live in times where mobility and global capabilities and sensibilities are central. When I started my career we were all living and working in our own domains now we are a single connected globe with advertisers looking for global insights and a joined up approach. I am excited that my amazing European adventure has now expanded into a US one, it makes sense and to any global advertiser I hope will be additive having someone who can discuss their business across the globe and for that reason I am grateful to VivaKi for giving me this opportunity.
 
Interestingly, when you look at different organisations I am proud of what VivaKi has allowed me to do and I have to also comment on my wife’s company Unilever who have allowed her to move to the US with me, with out missing a beat, it was truly impressive to see how empowering an organisation can be when it makes these moves possible. Just in a few short months we have moved people from US to UK, UK to US (not including me), US to Singapore, and many more before that, this is the new world we inhabit, and it is exciting to be part of it.
 
Now perhaps the hardest part will be navigating New York streets on my motorbike, or getting used to a new culture but I can’t wait, from memory there are very few motorbikes in NY so you will spot me around Hudson street! This is not just a work move but an adventure, our four year old son does not get it yet, but he will and he will love it, I need to keep my eyes focused keenly on him to try and soak up his wide eyed wonder and not get blinded by work stress and strain, it is vital for us all to enjoy our time here. I fully intend to do that, and can’t wait to get my feet under the desk and get stuck in, so New York, here we come.

Ad Fraud: Advertisers and Auditors have only themselves to blame

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Its Official! There is fraud in the Ad network business and it is big. The New York Times has written about it, see article here and so now at last it must be real. Why has it taken so long for people to take notice on the subject? VivaKi have been pushing this agenda for so long now and it is not being grasped or maybe more importantly valued by many. I will come back to what we are doing in this space, but lets get back to the ad fraud.

The media industry has always been pressured by constantly reducing pricing, every contract, every agency, every buy cheaper than the next. The advertiser is looking to reduce the costs and the ‘pitch consultants’ or rather auditors have done nothing to help that situation by creating a vicious circle of ever decreasing cpms, one agency bidding against the next. On and on it has gone, with those consultants taking their nice fees while the agencies get squeezed and squeezed. So where does this all take us? Well lets put aside agency fees and just focus on buying cpms and hope the agency gets to charge for it’s value in other ways.

The buying cpm is being reduced year on year on year and so agencies are turning to networks and other avenues to be able to hit the cpms that advertisers want. To be able to do that the only option at a certain point is to buy low cpm network inventory that is blind and very very long tail, all wrapped up in a glossy $35m marketing budget by the Ad network.  And with a nudge and wink everyone rolls over, the agency, the advertiser turn a blind eye. Years later, surprise surprise when the relevant technology becomes available and we discover that there is a lot of unsavoury, poor quality inventory being bought, there is uproar. Well come on – how did you think these companies made money?

I have no sympathy with the wailing and thrashing of bare backs about the state of the inventory because those same advertisers and auditors are the same that would not accept that if you take appropriate brand safety metrics including proper verification of inventory, whitelists, viewability tech and tracking to make sure the buy is quality and safe that there came a cost and a higher cpm. VivaKi Verified, the protection part of the Audience On Demand offering have been focused on all of these areas working with Adtricity and many others as well as having our own in house team that determine the best, safest inventory, but often times the cpm is deemed too high. Well there is a reason for that, because we are not buying click fraud, long tail, non viewed ads. 

So part of me wants to throw my arms up when an advertiser questions the well worn path of Agency Trading Desk transparency – we have the safest most robust approaches to brand safety and ability to show where every one of our ads appears – for that we have to invest. So for all the wailers out there currently, here are my final thoughts.

  • When considering the media purchase, when the glossy Ad Net is offering you a rock bottom price – you might want to ask how they get it? 
  • If you care about brand safety and every advertiser says they do – you cant accept a blind buy, I say it again – if they don’t tell you where every ad appears – you are fuelling the business that NY Times has picked up on. 
  • A challenge to auditors; seek value not price, it is in all your brochures, live it out and have the strength to tell a client they should pay more for better inventory, change your own business model away from ‘savings’ 

These headlines will become louder and let us see what happens, I will tell you, CPMs are going to rise, they have to because all those that have not been playing fair, who have been playing fast and lose with your brand, will have to improve because technology is going to find them out. When they are found out and they have to act more appropriately, their cpm will rise and then advertisers and auditors will have a dilemma – accept higher cpms for quality or continue to bury their heads in the sand and hope all this goes away.

Either way this is a good omen for those who have been banging this drum for some time and of course for genuinely premium inventory providers and for the rest I hope they suffer a lingering demise.