Month: October 2018

Interview with M&M on Global trends pre Festival of Media

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What are the key trends and insights driving global media in 2018?
The key insight is that not everything is as it seems. We have come to question so many things around digital media and we are seeing erosion of trust across the board. No one can ignore this as a trend. The positive trend though is a thorough reevaluation of
where advertisers place media. This is encouraging for those who love this industry versus those who just want to make high margin revenue. It means that premium advertising environments are becoming far more sought after and the belief that context and environment are not important is slowing fading and becoming a distant memory. I hope we see this trend continue and the blind, low CPM retargeting networks fade away.

What is the toughest challenge the industry faces?
We have to get ourselves out of the vicious cycle of pitches begetting lower and lower CPM campaigns. This type of behaviour means agencies squeeze publishers, only looking for low cost inventory, and then find themselves at a higher risk of fraud, which then creates mistrust. We need agencies to charge properly for their services, clients to pay for quality service from whomever is best placed to provide it and then we will see a move away from opacity. We are still confronted by too much of a ‘we have to pay less than last year’ attitude. It is a path that leads nowhere for all involved.

What does success look like for you in 2018?
Spotify is on a very exciting journey. My role was to re-look at the European business and accelerate positive momentum and a strong proposition in market. We are well on our way to doing that, and it has been a lot of fun. 2018 is a year in which the topics of audioand programmatic are converging, so we look forward to working with key advertisers and partners on bringing this innovation into the mainstream. Success stories leveraging data and dynamic audio creative suggest this is just the start of a fabulous year.

The second area I will be focusing on is showing the industry that we have some of the best video advertising inventory in town. We only sell completed video impressions, with 100% viewability. Audio has traditionally been our bread and butter but video is a large part of our business and we want more brands to enjoy its benefits. Our current customers all report strong results so we hope the education we are doing across the industry will be music to people’s ears.

What is the key to winning new business?
I  don’t think that has ever changed, whether on the agency or publisher side. All you need to ask yourself is whether you are helping the advertiser grow their business. New business needs to be built on insights that unlock something fundamental (and often
very simple) that will create a reaction in consumers. Too often in new business one gets carried away with internal structures and technology. Keep it simple and customer-focused and you can win.

What do you find clients want more than ever?
There is still an eternal hunt for the new thing, the first thing etc, but actually if you just come up with great ideas those usually win out. As I mentioned there is a trend for better environments and contexts taking us back to the basics of advertising. Note
that 2017 was a very strong year for traditional channels like radio, outdoor etc. At Spotify we continue to innovate, which is what makes the company an exciting place to be. And where we develop innovations our partners get to be the first to try things
out, which makes selling a whole lot easier.

How does the industry develop measurement standards for digital that are universal?
Sucha big question.. The only possible answer is relentless collaboration involving both the biggest and smallest players and this is going to be even more true with the GDPR implementation. My view is to worry less about common measurement and keep focused on common standards. Some of the basic requirements are very low in terms of viewability etc. I believe we should raise the bar significantly as a starting point. ‘Three seconds partially-in-view’ inventory should not be the benchmark.

How important is inclusivity to your business?
Inclusivity is enormously important to Spotify. As you might expect from a Swedish business, inclusion is at the core of the Spotify culture and values, and we are putting a great deal of focus on D&I initiatives. Indeed, just this week we held our annual, global, Diversity and Inclusion Summit at Spotify’s Stockholm headquarters, which was an opportunity for members of staff from all over the world to discuss ideas and opportunities to drive change and innovation where needed at Spotify and to make us even more of a leader in this space.

How do media owners and tech companies capitalize on the changing media landscape?
Combine good environment, trustworthy inventory and clever use of technology and data. Technology has a bad rep at the moment, but it is not technology that is the problem, rather how it is used. Used correctly you can achieve great things.

Audio is seeing a resurgence and we are very happy about that, but that’s not about traditional ‘radio’. Across connected cars, homes, voice assistants, speakers, TVs, fridges, you need an audio strategy that is future proof. However, we believe the real opportunity is in combining audio formats with video to generate the greatest impact. The media landscape is definitely changing and Spotify is in a great place to be at the heart of it.

Marco will be speaking at Festival of Media Global next month and Spotify is one of the key partners of the event.

Happy 30th! The Zenith Media impact on my career.

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Zenith Media is 30 years old today.  There has been a lot of water under the bridge since then, our industry has changed in so many ways but nevertheless, that agency shaped many of my thoughts and approaches and I am grateful for those early years.

I was first encouraged to apply to agencies by my brother who was a sales exec at Autoexpress who said that ‘I would be good on agency side’ and he told me to write to Andy Tilley the MD of Zenith at the time. So I wrote, I faxed, multiple times and eventually got an interview with Tim Greatrex. I got the job.

What was Zenith like back then? What was Media like? Well let’s start with the shed at Paddington, no, not the Paddington you know today, the high rises, the fancy station, the river with its restaurants and cafes, no this was derelict land in the middle of council estates and drab, redundant looking office buildings, a place where people looked unhappy at all times, except when you walked into the one pub, straight opposite the building, The Dudley. The Dudley was a place we spent a lot of time, well most lunches and evenings to be exact, it was ‘our local’ it was home from home and so much fun was had there. People were ejected, fought, laughed, competed, celebrated, commiserated, met the loves of their life or of the night, you name it. The Dudley could solve most ills. The king of the Dudley was of course John Lynch although everyone went from CEO to graduate, each with their side of the pub, even press and TV had subtle areas of dominance.

The office atmosphere as a graduate was exactly what you might have imagined, full of testosterone, a buying floor, TV in particular, it was full of smoke as we smoked all day long and although a male environment, many strong women flourished. I worked for two strong female leaders in Yvonne Scullion and Tracey Stern, I hope that set me up for the rest of my career to appreciate female leaders as the equal of anyone, but there were many more future leaders with Anna Campbell, Cyanne Bonnell, Rachel Forde, Marie Carey, Natalie Cummins amongst many others. It was a time where we learned to be accountable to clients, if something went wrong then we had to ring up our clients and explain, not hide behind email, we had to fight for our media plans, it was a time where your TV schedule was everything and I had sleepless nights if I was not securing what I had personally committed to, somehow the platform buys and AI and Algos of today blunt that or at least give you excuses. No, I had to fight with Mark Finnegan who invariably stole my centre break of coronation street on Friday for his newspaper accounts, to me it was everything.

By today’s standard no doubt it was a non PC environment and would not live up to the standards we ask of people today, but the class of ’96 onwards created a strong bond that to today is still probably some of the closest ties we have in media. I know we all root for each other and our careers and the media world actually revolves around the silent axis of ex Zenith employees. Just like publisher side revolves around Microsoft.

We were taught to work hard, play hard, and we have all learned that that approach needs tempering with the advent of always on technology, but the fundamentals still hold true. Enjoy working, and you won’t mind going the extra mile, have a great team and atmosphere around you and everything seems possible. In those days we could switch off and head home, difficult today, in those days, working from home was unheard of, mainly as we lacked technology to connect us, but the heart and soul of Zenith and what it taught me to expect from work remain about giving a shit about your colleagues and your work.

A testament to Zenith that there are many still there to this day, at least in the group and many returning in recent weeks, perhaps we are all destined to return to the place we loved the most? So many behaviours are now being realised to not be acceptable anymore but it was not all bad, there was a lot to look back on and celebrate and every time I walk in Zenith reception anywhere in the world there is always that reminder. What we all long deep down is to receive a farewell card of the ilk we used to get back then – we wish limping phone repair man well.