News You Can Use

Marketers Overwhelmingly Call for Third-Party Measurement of All Digital Media Owners’ Inventory

• Posted: December 7, 2015

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) surveyed its members to understand the perspectives of marketers on the issue of the viewability verification procedures used by digital media owners.  The results of the survey emphasized the need for third-party verification.

Among the findings:

-97 percent of ANA respondents believe that all digital media owners’ inventory should be measured by a third party.

-90 percent of respondents said they are not fully confident that their digital working media meets industry viewability standards.

-61 percent of respondents indicated they would shift their spending elsewhere if digital media owners did not provide independent measurement.

-Nearly two-thirds of respondents feel “very strongly” that a digital media owner should have internally derived metrics accredited by the MRC.

According to this press release, some large media owners do not allow third-party measurement vendors to report viewable ad impressions to their clients. Instead, they utilize internally derived metrics that have not been independently verified.  Currently, more than 20 firms are accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC) to measure digital advertising viewability.

Bob Liodice, ANA President and CEO, commented on this issue, “During a time of intense scrutiny on transparency and accountability, it’s vitally important that all digital media owners measure viewability by an independent third party, consistent with industry standards. That’s just ‘table stakes’ for digital advertising.”

The ANA will continue working with the Media Rating Council and other industry trade associations to elevate the importance of this issue and drive industry standards.

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One Marketing Metric to Rule Them All? Group Believes It Has One.  Lengthy Test Across 100 Brands is a Step Toward Linking Marketing to Cash Flow

• Posted: December 7, 2015

The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) has developed a method to measure brand value and predict movements in market share.  Jack Neff, writing for Advertising Age, analyzes this “Brand Choice” metric.

MASB was established seven years ago by a coalition of academics, market researchers, and marketers. It recently concluded Phase I of its Brand Investment & Validation project.  MASB tested a “Brand Choice” metric based on surveys of approximately 500 people per brand. These consumers were asked to select among several competing brands in a category as if they were winners of a prize drawing.

According to David Stewart, Marketing Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and MASB chair, “We believe by linking this Brand Choice metric to some pretty simple metrics like market share, price premium and distribution coverage, we can actually generate estimates of future operating cash flow, which allows you to get at the value of a brand.”

He also pointed out that this is the first time the Brand Choice Metric has been studied across such a broad array of brands in consumer packaged goods and automotive.

Phase II of the project involves comparing how the MASB’s metric compares to other brand valuation and evaluation models.  MASB will also study what factors reliably drive its Brand Choice metric – including marketing spending, advertising quality, and social media. Study parameters are still in development, and will likely take 18 months to test.  As a result, Mr. Stewart doesn’t expect results until 2018.

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MMA Releases White Paper on the State of In-Store Beacon Technology

• Posted: December 7, 2015

According to this press release from the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), the organization has released the latest update from their In-Store and Beacon Working Group. This white paper, “Understanding the Beacon Proximity Landscape,” defines the beacon ecosystem and outlines the opportunities and challenges facing retailers, brands, publishers, and consumers.  The privacy imperative is also addressed.

Sheryl Daija, Chief Strategy Officer of the MMA, stated, “Together with our member companies that are at the forefront of location marketing, the MMA is taking the lead in helping all stakeholders understand the state of the technology and the magnitude of the opportunity as well as provide guidance on best practice privacy measures.”

The paper concludes that beacons are receiving significant attention and high adoption rates because of their ability to provide real-world insights and location-triggered mobile engagements. Implementation, measurement, and best practices are also addressed in this paper.

 The full white paper is available for downloading from the MMA.

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Cyber Security is a Top Priority for Marketers

• Posted: December 7, 2015

Cyber security is a major concern for executives in the US and Europe, but not for Asia-Pacific executives according to this eMarketer article.  More than 500 business executives in the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific were surveyed.  The article contrasts the leading technology priorities of executives in these three geographic areas.

58% of US and 41% of European respondents to a CNBC survey conducted by Mindmover and Lightspeed GMI ranked cyber security as their leading technology priority in the next 12 months.

However, executives in Asia-Pacific have different technology priorities.  Only 25% of these executives felt that cyber security was their primary technology concern.  Executives in this region ranked mobile ecommerce, internet of things (IoT), connected devices, mobile application development and cloud technology as higher priorities.

This eMarketer article also refers to research by PricewaterhouseCoopers showing that 45% of US CEOs and 21% of CEOs worldwide considered cyber threats, including lack of data security as an area of “extreme concern.”

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For more on this topic, check out the Advertising Tab in Morning Coffee.

 

 

It’s About Time, Literally: Ad Industry Eyes Temporal Planning

• Posted: December 7, 2015

Joe Mandese presents information on a new media planning tool, RFT (reach–frequency-time), to be introduced by Telmar early in 2016. This tool calculates reach and frequency based on the amount of time consumers actually spend with media.

According to this article in Media Post, RFT is not intended to replace conventional reach and frequency models, but it expands the options available to advertisers and agencies.

Telmar conducted a pilot study as a “proof of concept” for the RFT analyzer using candidates for the 2016 Presidential election.  This Media Post article provides additional details about this study.

According to Telmar President Corey Panno, the new RFT analyzer isn’t intended to be used as a form of media-buying “currency,” although it will be replicating the studies and offering the tool in markets where there is little or no audience data available, including emerging markets in Africa, Asia and South America.  But the real purpose of the analyzer is simply to give planners and ad executives another way to think about the role of consumer time spent with media plays in planning reach and frequency.

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Finally, Guidance on Social Media Ratings

• Posted: November 30, 2015

The Media Rating Council (MRC) has issued an official set of social media measurement guidelines.  In conjunction with the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, the MRC has released an in-depth 40-page document, which outlines common practices.

Also participating in the development of these guidelines were social media vendors, publishers, measurement organizations, ad servers and ad networks. In addition, the guidelines were reviewed by buyer-side trade organizations.

According to this article in Media Life Magazine, these guidelines cover methods used for measuring a number of types of social activity, including tracking and counting users accessing content within social media, interaction and/or engagement with social media content,

and consumer “listening” and sentiment.  The guidelines also cover the measurement of user-generated content and video.

The article includes these excerpts from the guidelines:

“In order for a user-action to be considered part of social media audience activity it should be trackable/measurable (publicly or privately), fall within the campaign time period (for campaign level or advertising counting) or defined measurement period and include all valid traffic.”

“Examples of trackable/measurable user-action may include interaction (clicks, shares, retweets, likes, favorites, etc.) with social media content, application downloads or social shares from a brand website to social media platforms.”

The Media Life article also provides a direct link to the guidelines.

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Q&A with ESPN’s Artie Bulgrin: Research Has to Be Future Forward

• Posted: November 30, 2015

In this Q&A with Artie Bulgrin, Senior Vice President Global Research and Analytics, ESPN, Charlene Weisler, writing for Media Village, discussed the concept, “Research Has to Be Future Forward.”  The issues covered during this interview included the impact of data on the role of research, ESPN’s involvement in programmatic TV efforts, cross-platform viewing trends, the development of industry standards for cross-platform measurement, as well as the future of research.

On the question of whether an industry solution for standard cross-platform measurement will be developed, Bulgrin replied:

“We are getting closer, but the industry needs to do more work on education and gaining consensus for standardization. We have more companies than ever pursuing cross-platform measurement including comScore, Nielsen, Symphony Advance Media and Reality Mine, to mention a few. I am hoping this competition will lead to innovation and speed to market. But there are different definitions of cross-platform measurement out there and I’m not sure which will be supported by the industry. . .”

In response to Weisler’s question, “What do you see as the future of research?” Bulgrin replied:

“Research will become even more vital for revealing strategic insights and understanding human behavior in a future where the flow of data never stops. Researchers must become multidimensional in their skills to include technology, science and analytics. This was the main reason we created the ESPN Lab in Austin — to bring advanced science and methods to the study of media and advertising; an approach that gives us deeper insights on how people are interacting with media and advertising right now in order to be better prepared for the future.”

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Majority of European Video Buyers Use Programmatic, AOL Report Finds

• Posted: November 30, 2015

According to AOL’s “2015 European State of Video Industry” report, 98% of video buyers surveyed in European markets buy digital video programmatically. On the sell side, 97% of those surveyed are selling digital video programmatically instead of using traditional models.

AOL, working with Advertiser Perceptions, collected quantitative data on digital video from 411 brands, agencies and publishers in the U.K., France, the Netherlands and Germany.

Among the findings of this report:

-Mobile video is the “most robust growth area” in digital media, with 42% of buyers surveyed reporting a rise in mobile digital video budgets last year.

-42% of advertisers surveyed said they buy digital video directly from publishers.

-48% of advertisers said they’d brought programmatic video-buying capabilities in-house, and 47% said they planned to do so in the next year.

This report included the varying concerns of buyers and sellers concerning programmatic digital video.

Buyers: Need to integrate into existing process and systems and an inability to access premium inventory at scale.

Publishers: Perceived risk of the commoditization of content, a lack of existing process and systems, and a lack of expertise.

Both buyers and sellers surveyed cited viewability issues and fraud scores as important when measuring campaign performance.

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The Industry Starts To Rally Around Location Data Accuracy, But It’s A Long Road Ahead

• Posted: November 30, 2015

Allison Schiff, writing for Ad Exchanger, discusses the major challenges impacting increased use of location data, which include:

-The lack of a systematic way to discern between different types of location data, including how granular it is or when it was derived.

-Inaccurate location data appended to ad inventory.

-The need for increased industry information around how location data is generated.

-Understanding exactly what an advertiser wants to achieve using location data.

-Lack of industry standards, education, quality control, transparency, and technology issues.

-Additional OpenRTB guidelines on how to transmit location data, minimum thresholds, for accuracy and precision, and data freshness parameters.

The Mobile Marketing (MMA) is in early talks with the Media Ratings Council (MRC) to develop official standards for location data transparency. The goal of this partnership is to standardize measurement of offline foot traffic generated by mobile marketing.  According to MMA CEO Greg Stuart, achieving this goal will bring “clarity into a space that is today burgeoning with varied methods and competing claims. Standardization benefits us all.”

Additional issues that will have to be addressed include: consumer privacy concerns, fraud, transparency of location data between publishers and users, and consent around selling location data to third parties.

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How Brands Using Social Media Ignite Marketing and Drive Growth: Measurement of Paid Social Media Appears Solid but Are the Metrics for Organic Social Overstated?

• Posted: November 30, 2015

The 2015 Warc Prize for Social Strategy is a competition that challenges marketers to demonstrate how effectively they had used social media in their marketing efforts.  In this September 2015 article in the Journal of Advertising Research, Gian M. Fulgoni, co-founder and chairman emeritus of comScore, shares the insights he gained as a judge when he reviewed the finalist case studies submitted by companies worldwide in competition for the Warc Prize for Social Strategy.

Fulgoni commented on his experiences:

“As a judge, I was struck by the creative use of social media and the positive impact it had on many business results. My thoughts can be crystalized into five dimensions—what I call the “Five S’s of Social Marketing”:

-Social as a Supplement to media spend

-Social as a Substitute for media spend

-Social as a Savior

-Social as a Soft Metric of effectiveness

-Social as a Sales Driver.”

The author also discusses the details of some of the winning campaigns from this competition: Coca-Cola, ‘Share-a-Coke US’; Oscar Mayer, ‘Wake Up and Smell the Bacon’; and Chobani Yogurt: ‘#PlainInspiring’.

The case studies for the 2015 Prize for Social Strategy demonstrate that social media has become central to the marketing efforts of many brands and organizations, according to Fulgoni. He also discusses the challenge of isolating and measuring the business results of social media campaigns for both organic and paid forms of social media.

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