Data

How audio is changing lives for the better.

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This post was originally posted on http://www.spotifyforbrands.com

At Spotify, we understand the power of audio. Music and podcasts bring joy to millions all over the world, and we see audio taking center stage as a result of our day-to-day screen burnout. And at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, we saw more clearly than ever how audio is changing people’s lives for the better. 

There is nowhere better than CES to see where technology is headed. Spotify was there all week, seeing the many — and sometimes surprising — ways technology is being used in every aspect of our life. This central role of technology is leading towards a big macro trend known as the “quantified self.” This trend is all about how we are using technology to understand ourselves better as humans — and how we are diagnosing, reporting, and creating tools to enhance people’s lives. 

One key trend of the “quantified self” is the number of applications that have audio as central to the solution. Audio is now helping people live a better life, supporting when screens are not relevant or indeed, individuals can’t see the screens because of visual impairment. I wanted to highlight four of the interesting solutions we saw, some incredibly sophisticated and life-changing, some more for fun!

Take OrCam’s MyEye 2 — a wonderful piece of technology for visually impaired or blind individuals that scans full-page texts, money notes, people and more, then reads it back to the visually impaired person through a small device worn on the ear. If there is a product in a shop, the person can scan the barcode and the product details will be read back to them, translating the visual world into speech. 

In a similar vein, there is Addison Care, a virtual caregiver who monitors in the home, making sure the individual’s vital signs are strong, while assessing their movement to look for signs of trouble. The system calls out reminders to take medicine and is mainly voice activated, something that is more intuitive to many older people. It is yet another exciting use of audio and technology that is changing lives for the better.

Not everything is serious and life-changing. We saw a lot about how voice assistants are being incorporated into every device imaginable. One of particular note was built into showerheads, giving you the chance to catch up on the day ahead, the weather, commute and traffic as you shower and of course, call out your favorite Spotify playlist or podcast! As a marketer, thinking how to connect in a world of screenless devices and screenless moments is going to be vital — how could you take advantage of Alexa in the shower if you knew that’s where someone was streaming?

Finally, we saw how voice will play a prominent role in the future of the auto industry. Auto brands announced massive screens for the driverless cars of tomorrow, and more cars announced integrations with voice assistants. Per Axios’ Sara Fischer, “one of the big themes at CES this year has been the race to own the media experience when cars go driverless.” Fischer noted that Lamborghini’s Huracán EVO will be adding Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant this year, while Amazon and Exxon also announced a deal to allow voice-enabled gas purchases. Meanwhile, Anker and JBL both revealed new Google Assistant-equipped devices that can plug into cars new and old. It’s clearer than ever that our voices will be the remote controls of the car — ultimately shaping the future of how we listen.

Thanks to continuous innovation happening with earbuds, connected speakers, cars and more, audio already surrounds our daily lives. Even still, all of these developments at CES showed just how much the role of audio will grow in our daily lives in the future. Of course, as we at Spotify aspire to become the world’s largest audio network, I’ll be keeping my ears open as more new devices, gadgets, and integrations are launched in 2020. And exploring and executing creative ways to bring brands along the journey. Here’s to another year of listening!

BertozziBytesize: I LOVE CES.

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There, I said it.

I am a proud CES attendee since 2010. Every year between late December and early January my mind flitters to thoughts of Vegas and CES. Depending on how depressing the weather has been or how much fun we have had determines whether I dwell for a longer or shorter period of time!

Part of this comes from the fact that I still thank my lucky stars for the fact I can travel to Las Vegas, stay in amazing hotels, see so much and do so much as part of my job. I have a persistent gratefulness for the opportunity, same goes for Cannes and all the other events I attend. We are a fortunate group.

On top of that though, is still the feeling of excitement that I got the first year I attended as part of the VivaKi Nerve Center, part of the Curt Hecht, Sean Kegelman, Kurt Unkel crew. I had just left a very depressing role in a depressing company and had the chance, in fact was positively encouraged to come to Vegas, embrace CES and learn everything I could. That first year was an amazing year and we had a great time, That feeling has never left me.

When I hear or read people saying ‘ Oh no, I am not going to CES, that would be the last thing on earth I would choose to do’ I always think the same – Oh come on! followed by the thought that they were not invited or you are not doing CES right. CES is a massive opportunity to learn. Over the years I have written about my experiences – this one in 2013 on TV Measurement or in 2014 I wrote about the fact that data capture and usage was getting out of hand with my post about ‘Just because you can, does not mean you should. Also in 2014 I wrote about the in car tech that was flooding the conference. It was the first time that car manufacturers started to appear in droves. That post called ‘The one piece of tech you cant fit in your pocket.’ Featured in M&M. In 2015 I wrote for the Drum about how advertising feels like it is becoming out paced by technology and hardware driving consumer choices, like the fridge that orders for you and therefore could choose the contents for you. It turns out that Alexa and Dash buttons have taken that role!

You get the idea, this show is FULL of fascinating trends, companies, hardware and you can soak it all up, you can learn from it and you can bring it back to base. If you dont attend these shows everything you hear is 18th hand, you hear it from some guy, who was sent it by another person, which was released by their marketing team. You see and hear things you would never expect to and you become a more knowledgeable person for it. People often ask me one of my biggest lessons I have learned from someone and I always reference Curt Hecht who once said to me, if you dont go to these events but work in a company like the Vivaki Nerve Center which is meant to be future facing, then you are no different to the local digital guy from London who heard it all from their Google, Facebook, Twitter rep. Advertisers want to meet people who have just met Apple at their HQ or spent time with a product manager in Palo Alto. He wanted us to go off and learn, I loved that, because at the time the prevailing sentiment was that going to these things was just a jolly and a waste of time. They can be, if you dont do anything with them.

This year is my second with Spotify. The first year was my first week at the company! You can imagine that was a little crazy, this year I am so excited to be part of this amazing crew and we have a great set up in the C-Space that is designed to help people like me of the past to come and learn something about culture, how we fit into culture, how we use data and understand people through music. We will talk about how voice enabled devices and connected hardware are impacting our lives and where Spotify will fit in that, it is fascinating what’s going on right now and CES has never been more relevant and informative as hardware powered by data and AI is changing our day to day, I hope those who come to the C-Space will walk away having learned a little more.

As someone who works for a specific company, I dont get to see all the interesting behind  the scenes stuff I used to on the agency side, I see and learn different things now about advertiser businesses, agency businesses, our own hardware partners etc, so for those who genuinely do have a choice as to whether or not to come and chose not to, dont  make the same mistake again. CES is the most relevant conference for our industry and understanding culture, you just have to know where to look. If you want to come see Spotify, let me know, it is a pretty cool story!

Programmatic advancement? : Just look to Amsterdam

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A few years back, around 2012/13 we discussed how we could grow Audience On Demand more quickly in the region. How could we support all those smaller markets that could not sustain headcount dedicated to programmatic and yet wanted to be part of the picture. Back then we set up the ‘Amsterdam Hub’ for AOD and the very talented Anke Kuik came in to run it for me. We quickly built a buzzy and vibrant business servicing 10+ markets and successfully growing the programmatic footprint of AOD.

As was widely reported, VivaKi eventually decentralised all these teams and so the hub was no more.  Soon after that, I worked on global programmatic strategy across top clients and had the chance to see, hear and contribute to their progress. In almost all cases the advertisers were going back to basics and evaluating their tech, strategies, data plan and more, they wanted to set some common guidelines to many markets. As a result of many of these pieces of work we saw the re-emergence of the hub. Amsterdam is a particular favourite but I think it is fair to say you can find them all over, in London, Paris, US and so on, point being, the Hub is back.

However the big difference with the new hubs, either at a client or agency level are they are there to support ALL markets, big or small. They are there to support tech, data and media buying across a whole range of markets and with that you see a huge shift in how media is being traded, more so than ever before. The true potential of these hubs is becoming a reality, something that has been promised now for some years but is really taking shape and with that shifting the way we all do business. On my side having been a founder of a hub and now on the other side and working with them, it creates a fascinating dynamic as you have to work on many different levels. You need local expertise talking to local countries. You need local people talking to central hubs, you need International teams talking to the hubs. Wow, thats a lot of talking. It is all work and needs lots of coverage of teams, especially where hubs are at an advertiser level.

The thing is, these all take work to start with, but the benefits very quickly become apparent, as the rhythm settles in and people get used to the system, create a list of key partners, know where to go for certain inventory, on the sell side you start to see the benefits, especially where you have such strong, brand safe inventory as Spotify. Suddenly the much vaunted efficiencies of programmatic become apparent and we all start to benefit. Once the heavy lifting is done on the agency side or clients side and all their markets are adjusted to this new way of working then they can spend less time on execution and more on increasing sophistication of offering. Creating trusted market places of inventory, consolidating inventory decisions, partner selection, data strategy can all become the primary focus areas rather than the previously disjointed, inefficient work that happened five years back.

With every passing year this model is really starting to come together and I thoroughly enjoy seeing it, in some ways, even more from the Spotify side. I think we are going to see rapid acceleration (as if it can get faster) in programmatic. The clients and agencies are doing a great job of organising around this new world and I am excited to see how it progresses in the next five years!

BertozziBytesize: Spotify data: A Mirror not a Filter

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Meet Marco Bertozzi

We talk a lot about data at Spotify and how it shows a lot about how you listen to music. We have a tool that I love, which allows us to add our account and get a pen portrait on our listening habits.  Now outside of this we go to great lengths to add colour to this data but I could not resist checking myself out on this relatively simple analysis about my music listening. I was desperate to see if Spotify thought I was as uncool as most people say! Turns out, it’s not so bad. Perhaps the 152 plays of Waves was a bit much and the fact I generally like Pop, Deep House and House is not appropriate for a 45yr old, but hey – keeping it real..

‘Spotify says: Marco is in his forties and has recently been listening to music in United Kingdom, where he lives. During his 6 years on Spotify, he’s streamed 15,877 tracks, which is far more than the average user. Of those streams, 4,205 were unique songs; that’s also way more songs than average. Marco changes up when he listens based on the day of the week. He listens quite differently on weekdays and weekends. Marco doesn’t listen to Spotify on desktop, instead preferring to listen on his mobile device. Marco is a lean-back listener. He doesn’t engage much with the app when listening, often having Spotify in the background; he plays songs all the way through, often letting songs from radio stations play without interruption, and he rarely skips songs. Marco has recently been jamming to Rag’n’Bone Man and John Williams, though Sia and Calvin Harris are his favourites of all time. In the last few weeks, he’s had The Chainsmokers’s “Don’t Let Me Down” on repeat. And he has listened to “Waves – Robin Schulz Radio Edit” by Mr. Probz 152 times on Spotify – more than any other song. When you compare Marco with all active Spotify users, his listening is very diverse. He listens evenly across many genres, and these genres tend to be very different: Pop, House, and Deep house. He does, however, have a strong preference for listening at specific times of day to music of specific moods. For example, Marco chooses certain times of day that need more instrumental music. Marco tends to prefer listening to his favourite music, but lately, he has been listening to more new music than he normally does. Marco listens to some nostalgic music, but not particularly often. When in the mood, he listens to songs by Howard Jones, George Michael, and John Williams.’

Learn anything? Well you learned a lot about my moods, what platforms I am listening on, type of music and how it forms part of my day. This is just a snippet of how we can work with advertisers and power their moments marketing. Understanding People Through Music will give us all insights that cant be replicated anywhere. Spotify as the worlds largest music streaming service is in a unique position to help brands do this, its an exciting proposition!

NB: Some of the above tastes are swayed by my pandering to my son’s likes! Family account coming soon!

Cut the jargon? Cut the crap!

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I am sorry Bloomberg I don’t agree with your cut the jargon campaign. Cut the crap, you just cant be bothered to learn something new. I know I will get pelted with rotten tomatoes and urine but I am sorry, this is just a shield that lazy or ‘elder statesman’ of media like to hide behind because then they are not going to have to admit they either can’t or won’t learn something new.

The phrase that I like the best is ‘lets just talk plain english.’ I could translate that into ‘if I say lets talk plain english then perhaps they will some how find a way to make this new programmatic stuff sound something like press and TV that I have grown up with all my life.’ No. I wont. You know why? Because every industry has a language, in our industry every sector or media channel has a language. If you go around saying GRP or DPS or DDS no one chains you up at the stocks, but by God if you say DSP or DMP, the heavens open and thunder and lightening crackle down from above.

I do agree that we talk too much about the technology and not enough about what it can do, and I do agree that some people do like the over use of tech words, but that’s not the context I hear it in. What I hear is ‘all that DSP, DMP, three letter acroynm stuff’ yes, it is called SHORT HAND, abbreviation. You want me to say Demand side platform every time? Or would you rather like me to say ‘a buying platform that allows us to access inventory in real time and combining it with first, second and third party data’ oh you don’t understand data? Well here goes…actually no, since this tech is powering most digital media nowadays and since you work in an agency and may even run it or our a senior industry body leader of a media owner, how about giving it ago and learning about it.

Lets focus on marketing what programmatic can do, even the definition of programmatic, but lets not pretend we use too much jargon when really we just cant be bothered to learn a new trick. Right I am off down the Public House to read a Double Page Spread and perhaps later will log into Donovan Data Systems and check out my Television rating points for my last television advertisements.

 

2016 will be the year of breakups in programmatic

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images

First published in Campaign – link here

In the programmatic space, 2014 can be summed up as a year of snap decisions and bad relationships. There was a considerable amount of hot air and publishers, agencies and advertisers, to varying degrees, reacted to it in the heat of the moment. But 18 months later, I believe we will see a number of these relationships start to unravel.

Today I am so pleased to see that almost all major clients are embracing programmatic with a cool hand, understanding the pros and cons and planning for a future where data and tech are front and centre. The heat has come out of the programmatic kitchen and been replaced with good old fashioned brain power.

But that is not what I am writing about today — although related — I want to return to 2014. At an ANA event in New York last year, I joined a panel on the programmatic revolution, which followed the usual headline-grabbing presentation of whoever had run a survey that day. The air was full of fear and suspicion over transparency and media agencies were in the dock as usual. At that conference I called 2014 “the lost year” of programmatic in regard to advertisers and how they approached it. This was because the entire year had been a series of meetings, conferences and emails concerned with transparency and agency trading desks and all the good stuff we have come to know and love. Very few of those meetings were about the strategic direction advertisers should be taking in the programmatic space.

What happened last year was not just the headlines and the deafening ring of the cash till, as the myriad of consultants counted their earnings on the back of the fear and suspicion. It was worse: some big decisions were taken under those conditions. Major partnerships were signed, deals done and monies committed with an eye on outsmarting whatever the danger was — and that varied. Perhaps it was an advertiser that wanted its own tech deal to go around the agency or publishers wanting to out gun Google and Facebook. Perhaps it was procurement or the CEO asking questions of the brand manager and making them act. Whatever the catalyst was, decisions were made that are already starting to become irrelevant or just plain bad.

Next year will see the unraveling of these relationships; It will be the year that those deals and partnerships formed under intense strain will come apart. Publishers, advertisers and agencies all made decisions — some more than others — but with a new calm descending on the programmatic landscape, and the strong wind of transparency, clarity and understanding blowing through, we will see some of these deals undone. This will likely cause serious financial difficulties for some ad tech companies who sold the dream only to discover that waking up next to a partner who has already checked out of the relationship is a lot harder than they thought.

Anyone who tried to sell a service built around the notion that this topic was simple and easily solved will get called out this year. The market has moved so much in the past 12 months. Whether you are a publisher, agency or client, making a big decision last year was brave because the landscape today looks very different. We can only wonder who the jaded lovers are and who is thinking about how to break up the rather heat of the moment relationship.
Read more at http://www.campaignlive.com/article/why-2016-will-year-breakups-programmatic/1373982#z2CbdEY2Q3jC5yxj.99

Annual interview with Beet.tv in Cannes – entering good times in programmatic

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Every year at Cannes before the Rubicon Panel we discuss with Andy at Beet.tv where things stand in the programmatic industry and this year we discussed a brighter future. 2014 was the lost year to the topic of transparency but I sense we are over that now and have moved on to programmatic strategy and all the possibilities.

This year also marks a big step for us as we see the completion of the move of campaign planners and buyers into the agencies out of VivaKi and I hope will be the start of a new age in the agencies.

Programmatic in Cannes

Will media owners and tech vendors be scrutinised by procurement?

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25-30 Billion dollars of spend up for pitch. The whole industry is alive with comment on it. What does it mean for the agencies, who is up to lose the most and so on. The reason for it has been unclear, could it be digital capabilities, transparency, a stagnant commercial marketplace meaning advertisers have to extract more from their business, there have been many suggestions. Perhaps it is a simple as no one wanting to miss out.

All that said, the blog is not about that topic per se, more what impact all of this is having on the whole industry. There has not been too much of a knock on effect to the world of technology, technology that is now powering so much of the agency media landscape. Across the whole landscape deals have been done, tech fees agreed and contracts signed. The tech companies and tech/media companies are sitting back and watching this all play out with little impact to them, at least for now. But how long can that continue?

As all these pitches play out one thing is for sure, media fees will have reduced across the board, one way or another. Not to say that with increased billings they can’t find other offerings and models to make it up but at a media level, they will be squeezed. So those fees are reduced but the tech fees remain the same. The managed services and RTB networks and even one could argue Facebook and Google margins remain solid and published. So at what point does the advertiser start to turn their attention to those parties?

If the squeeze continues then how can an advertiser be happy that Criteo and Rocketfuel are taking 50+ of their IO and turning it into revenue for themselves (published numbers). Is the only answer to that ‘they are not an agency of record?’ If you can squeeze a percentage point out of an agency, how about 10 from the people your dollars eventually end up with? The topics of taking it house and aggressive sales tactics direct to advertisers such as Tubemogul and others also means that they are trying to take the role of the agency and so would surely have to make sure that their every transaction, their every margin on data and tech be revealed.

I think we are entering interesting times and auditors and procurement are going to run out of room on the agency approach, something has to give. In my eyes their valuable media dollars being passed to tech and inventory players will have to come under scrutiny a lot more than today, and if you want to be the partner that dis-intermediates the agency then you will have to answer to the same scrutiny an agency does, not just commercial but standards of protection, payment terms and all the other lovely stuff that goes with it. But first lets start with the 50% of the advertisers dollars that don’t make it into media.