Table of contents for Dec/Jan 2017 in Marketing

The first time I wrote about adtech in depth was in 2012. My editor had tasked me with looking at every aspect of this emerging ‘thing’ from several angles: advertisers, agencies and publishers. This is not a sequel. That’s not what this issue is about. This issue is for advertisers and advertisers alone. To benefit from this issue requires little previous familiarity with advertising technology and terms like ‘programmatic’, ‘real-time bidding’ or ‘automated trading’. It’s premised on the fact that clients can no longer leave the purchasing of digital advertising entirely up to agencies. That’s not to say agencies don’t still add value. They surely do offer benefits, but of different kinds to the former. Programmatic removes the efficiencies of scale in media buying, but because adtech is so complex…

MEDIA TRANSPARENCY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PROBLEM, NOW IT’S WORSE The irony of media agencies being quick to deny there is a media transparency problem is that there has always been a transparency problem in regards to media buying. The growth of digital media and the technology platforms required to deliver the associated transactions has simply made it easier for all involved to make additional revenue from the process at the expense of the advertiser. Yet it is not as if the old media commission system was any better. The fact is that media buying has been rife with rebates and kick-backs, beyond the agreed and declared media commission rate. In fact, in the heyday of the media accreditation system there was significant money to be made for the media…

In the order of things, we’re placing the data management platform (DMP) at the very start of this list of components for one main reason: the DMP is the bridge that connects adtech with the other layers in the martech stack and external and internal sources of data. A DMP’s goal in life is to ingest all data at your disposal in order to paint as full a picture of the customer and their experience as possible. As the link to the rest of your martech stack, the DMP’s hunger extends to email campaigns, CRM, online behaviour and everything else. Every marketer dreams of having single, consistent experiences for members of their audience across devices and systems: email, website optimisation, programmatic advertising, SMS and the rest. Simplifying a little, the…

Advertisers can sign up to marketplaces built around virtually anything – from year-round contextual opportunities to seasonal opportunities. Since programmatic sales entered the video space a little over nine years ago, the market has continually evolved. Originally, ‘programmatic’ was all about the open marketplace, and allowing advertisers to purchase video ad space on an audience basis through cookie-based targeting. Achieving scale was the core focus, across numerous publishers. A few years later we saw the introduction of private marketplaces – invitation-only marketplaces where premium publishers offered their video ad inventory to a selected group of advertisers, using a ‘Deal ID’ to transact. These one-to-one relationships gave buyers access to reserved inventory in a premium environment, usually at fixed rates. Then, in 2015, we saw the next evolution in programmatic buying,…

Whether you and your team are programmatic newbies or ninjas, one thing remains central to success – working with trusted partners. Automation is everywhere and it’s the future. Proven in manufacturing and service industries, it’s now on a fast track trajectory in digital media. Everything that can be automated will be and programmatic is at the forefront. So, advertisers, publishers and vendors alike all need to take the opportunity to embrace it and make it work for the benefit of us all. The recently released ‘Magna Programmatic Growth Report’ found that the global spend on programmatic advertising will more than double to an estimated US$42 billion by 2020, while non-programmatic ad spends will increase by just 25 percent in the same period. Locally, the AdRoll ‘State of the Industry ANZ…

10% mobile video as a proportion of programmatic spend (APAC) 24% desktop video as a proportion of programmatic spend (APAC) Online video has been the big gainer in recent years. As the discipline matures, legacy formats are slowly phasing out. And video, which mainly means pre-roll thus far, has been embraced more readily as a brand advertising format. Desktop display inventory may represent the majority of programmatically traded advertising today, but by 2019 over half of all spend will be on video, according to Magna Global’s ‘Programmatic Intelligence Report’. The same report says that, globally, desktop video will rise from an 18% proportion of programmatic spend to 27%. At the same time, mobile video spend will rise from 8% to 28%. Interestingly, when asked, Australian marketers show little indication of…

 TV viewership is higher than ever. The average Australian watches around 85 hours and 12 minutes per month of ‘TV’. But what is TV in 2017? That stat comes from OzTam, the official ratings provider of Australia’s TV industry, which bases its ratings on linear, programmed TV, including free-to-air and Foxtel, including shows watched on catch-up within seven days of them airing. “Nine expects more than half of its TV inventory will be traded programmatically by mid-2017.“ It does not count on-demand streaming services such as Netflix and Stan, but fragmentation is still a major force due to the proliferation of second and third channels for each of the major TV networks, as well as their online catch-up services. It’s on these catch-up services that programmatic advertising began and these…

In the US, at least one print specialist ad exchange has emerged. Adstrix boasts more than 3500 publications, a combined circulation of 80 million and 120 million readers. Print? Yes, print. Maybe. Since Time Inc, one of the largest magazine publishers in the world, announced in early 2015 that it would begin selling print advertising programmatically, programmatic print has remained an enigma. US retailer Target was the first brand to give it a go, buying ads, via its agency, in People, Entertainment Weekly, Time and Sports Illustrated. “Our overall strategy is to use automated marketplaces as a way to alleviate some of the work we have humans doing, so they can do more custom content integrations,” Kristi Argyilan, Target’s senior VP of media and guest engagement said at the time.…

Above the fold Any area of a web page that is viewable without the viewer having to use the vertical scroll bar. Ad space in this area is usually more expensive since it is more likely to be viewed by the visitor. Ad blockers Software enabled through a person’s web browser that can prevent ads from being displayed. Ad clutter How much advertising is on the page versus content; 3% to 6% is average. Ad exchange A sales channel between publishers and ad networks that can also provide aggregated inventory to advertisers. They provide a technology platform that facilitates automated auction-based pricing and buying in real-time. Ad network A company that connects advertisers to web sites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is aggregation…

MODEL 1 IN-HOUSE/SELF-MANAGED Brand owns contract with vendor and hires internal resources to manage operations. This is the fully in-house model where the advertiser owns the tech and controls the operations. For large organisations and big advertising spenders, this is often the end goal, although in reality they may need to go with a service managed by the vendor or an agency until they have enough experience to be able to hire internal resources. Foxtel is one Australian example of a brand that has taken both the contract and operations fully in-house. Should you take adtech in-house? It’s certainly not for everyone. The answer to that question will ultimately rely on your unique circumstances, but here are some things to think about. Organisations vary widely in their digital maturity, and…

The more data available to use, the more effective is programmatic advertising. Marketers in some industries will have an abundant supply of first-party data – banking, retail and travel, for example – while many others won’t. But that’s where second- and third-party data comes in. Data-as-a-service (DaaS) is a rapidly growing category with many types of organisations commercialising their data, and many that were already in the data game, such as credit rating providers and credit card companies, getting tech savvy to take advantage of the programmatic age of advertising. FIRST-PARTY DATA First-party data is the data your organisation owns. It’s names, emails, CRM data and cookie data captured through your own website. It’s your secret sauce, the only type of data that can be your competitive advantage alone, and…

First click, last click, even allocation, starter-player-closer, adjacency, latency, pathing… Attribution modelling is nobody’s favourite topic. But understanding the role different touch points play in a customer or non-customer’s journey is vitally important to improving marketing effectiveness, and the idea that ‘last click wins’ is difficult to defend. “Brands are attracted to digital advertising due to its transparency and programmatic advertising efficiencies,” says Ben Sharp, managing director of AdRoll in Australia and New Zealand. “However, the sums spent on digital are now so vast that any inefficiencies have become costly.” Attribution models can go a long way to addressing such waste, but many marketers still struggle to understand the opportunities of attribution. In fact, in the IAB ‘State of the Industry’ report into adtech usage among marketers and agencies, more…

DSPs can provide a high degree of scalability and reach almost all of the world’s top publishers through open marketplaces. Advertisers often still need the ability to connect directly with publishers to get the absolute best inventory at prices they can better forecast against. Anything that involves direct negotiation between an advertiser and a publisher is known as ‘programmatic direct’. OPEN MARKETPLACE Auction: RTB, public Programmatic direct: No Guaranteed impressions: No Ad exchanges open to anyone in which instantaneous auctions are facilitated. Not many (smart) advertisers buy from open exchanges anymore without the help of a DSP, as it controls for targeting, brand safety and ad fraud. Ad private exchanges may specialise in different formats such as video or channels such as mobile Examples: DoubleClick Ad Exchange (Google), OpenX Ad…

Mobile activation best practice One size doesn’t fit all. Mobile inventory still costs more, so don’t replicate a display ad or 30-second pre-roll for a smaller screen. Send messages that are complementary to desktop, TV and other media. The user’s context is different; so add value with that in mind. Video completion rates drop quickly. According to TubeMogul data, completion rates for mobile video pre-roll ads drop from 72% for a 10-second ad to 51% for a 30-second ad. (Note: these specific numbers are from Southeast Asia data, but the trend is universal.) Beware fumbling thumbs. On desktop advertisers can get away with an entire creative area being clickable. Not so on mobile. Accidental taps are very common, so make sure to customise mobile creative with a limited and defined…

“If stacked, the paperwork generated between radio stations and agencies across Australia each year would reach 170 metres high.” If stacked, the paperwork generated between radio stations and agencies across Australia each year would reach 170 metres high, as tall as the Australia Square Tower in the Sydney CBD. That’s the visualisation provided by AudioNET, the industry partner appointed by Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) to automate the radio buying process and deliver a fully operational, all of industry automated holdings system. The CRA Automation and Programmatic Committee, established late in 2015 and chaired by NOVA Entertainment chief executive officer, Cathy O’Connor, selected AudioNET to create automated holding software that will allow agencies to interact with the traffic management systems of all radio stations. The Committee selected a system that will…

Digital video is quickly becoming the new hero of the ad world, thanks to its combination of the TVC’s propensity to stir emotion and the targetability of the digital stream. But in an always-on, multi-channel marketing strategy and a fragmented media world, executing video buys can be a complicated undertaking. For maximum effectiveness, audiences need to be targeted precisely and pieced together from a number of sources. Hence, digital video requires multiple buying styles, unlike the relative ease of buying a TVC timeslot. In order to reach consumers and execute a video strategy that delivers results, programmatic approaches are helping to manage the complexity. Savvy marketers are making it their business to understand programmatic, and integrate it into their advertising and marketing strategies. Today’s marketer should have a clear understanding…

At the end of the day, it always goes back to what sort of relationship you’re trying to create with the customer. Thomas Davenport and John Beck, authors of The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business, suggested as far back as 2002 that, in an information-flooded world, the scarcest resource isn’t ideas or even talent: it’s attention. They argued that companies must learn to effectively capture, manage and keep consumers’ attention or else they’ll fall hopelessly behind. Fast forward to 2016, whereupon our information-flooded world is reaching near Biblical proportions, the mission of holding on to attention has never been more challenging or critical. And of the many challenges marketers face in capturing consumer attention, dealing with the ever-increasing number of marketing technologies available has to be the…

Almost everyone I know would say I’m an optimist and see the best in all situations. I believe that if you seek, you will find – but I know that the journey in this case doesn’t look easy. With a lot of heart, a bit of brain and some courage I can tell you that there is a wizard at the end of that long, windy, yellow brick road. For many, the current brand-agency relationship isn’t where it should be. Brands have tried to embark on this ‘yellow brick road’ journey, only to find more and more confusion. At TubeMogul, we don’t believe that this needs to be the case. We strive to instead give our partners the knowledge and tools to make their relationships work – whether that means…

With human and non-human traffic fraud costing advertisers around the world billions of dollars (US$7.2 billion to bots alone in 2016) this is another front in the battle to reduce wastage in digital ad spend. Fraud detection is closely linked to viewability – as well as brand safety – because tools often offer monitoring both or more factors to give comprehensive ratings of ‘quality’ for impressions and campaigns. DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science offer competing solutions, both providing data on the quality (or ‘authenticity’) of activity by tracking viewability, ad fraud and brand safety. Tools like these show advertisers how many of their ads actually had a chance to be seen by a real person. It’s a simple thing, but incredibly complex to ensure in the world of online advertising.…

Media planner. If sourcing media planners from media agencies, you'll want to probe their knowledge of programmatic to ensure they have some level of familiarity with the hands-on operations of a programmatic media buying platform. The benefit is they'll come pre-prepared with the bigger picture view of a brand's media plan and how each part fits together and complements the other. Media operations specialist. Ad traffickers and advertising managers from publishers and media agencies can play a useful hands-on role to leave media planners with more of the strategic and optimisation work of campaigns. Check that they understand real-time bidding environments and the nitty gritty of creative rotation in ad servers, which a good DSP will take care of. Data analyst. As these are very comfortable with data sets, you'll…

13% mobile display as a proportion of programmatic spend (APAC) 52% desktop display as a proportion of programmatic spend (APAC) What is there to say about display advertising? It’s the most familiar, the oldest and the least sexy advertising format in the marketing universe, yet it’s still around. The perennial staple has become richer, bigger, even better looking and it’s still growing. In the US alone, eMarketer predicts US$27.47 billion will be spent on programmatic display ads in 2017 – almost three times as much as in 2014. Bear in mind that programmatic is growing as a proportion of total display advertising, from 49% to 72% in the same period. But for how long? Desktop display accounts for around 44% of all global programmatic buys. It is projected to drop…

 In marketing, there are two types of ‘native advertising’ commonly referred to. One is paid content (aka sponsored content, advertorial, partner content) – an article on a website or in print that’s paid for by an advertiser. “Advertisers can run the same ad on multiple sites, but in each case what the user sees will look totally different.” But the ‘native advertising’ that’s of interest in the context of programmatic is slightly different*. Like the former, it’s designed to blend into a publisher’s website. The most prevalent for most readers will be ‘sponsored posts’ on Facebook, where the ad unit is a box with a headline, image and sometimes a short description inviting readers to click through and read more. The same can be seen on publisher sites. Almost universally…

 Of all the so-called ‘traditional’ advertising media, out-of-home has enjoyed the most consistent growth over the last few years, in both ad spend and audience. The industry is seeking to capitalise on its successful pivot towards digital and location-based interactivity by creating a world-first platform for trading inventory programmatically. “Such a platform, although ambitious, would be a world first in its all-of-industry scope.” Almost a year after seeking expressions of interest, the Outdoor Media Association (OMA) announced in March 2016 it had invited eight parties to respond to its request for proposal (RfP) to build the Australian out-of-home media industry’s automated transaction platform (ATP). Such a platform, although ambitious, would be a world first in its all-of-industry scope. “We are embarking on this ambitious world first with unanimous industry support…

Brands like L’Oréal use programmatic buying to target and address consumers more strategically through their entire path to purchase: from discovery to exploration, through to the purchase and beyond. Marketers recognise that programmatic buying is more than a direct-response tool: it can be leveraged to reach consumers more strategically across the entire customer life cycle. This includes the discovery and awareness phase, where programmatic buying can support brand building. In fact, 61% of marketers already use programmatic buying for objectives that include branding (Forrester’s Q1 2015 Demand-Side Platform Wave Online Survey). Marketers who think programmatic buying is not fit to drive branding still have certain misconceptions. Many continue to think of it as a mechanism to buy cheap impressions and remnant inventory – a bad reputation ad exchanges have acquired…

Digital advertising is programmatic. Advertising will be programmatic. It’s on that foundation this issue was built. All the issues discussed within are a symptom of this foundation overlapping with other trends in marketing and technology. As are all those yet to be discussed, a few of which we’ve identified as ones to watch develop over the coming 12 months: 1. OWNERSHIP In terms of ownership, we discussed brand-agency-vendor relationships in detail earlier in this issue and there’s a good reason for that. The models and structures of contracts and operations will only become more important. What’s crystal clear, however, is that the degree to which adtech is used in media buying will only increase, therefore decreasing the appetite for risk and being left in the dark, as well as tolerance…