News You Can Use

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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New Study Confirms Advertising as Key Driver of the U.S. Economy; Advertising is a Major Contributor to GDP, National Employment and Labor Income

• Posted: November 23, 2015

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and The Advertising Coalition commissioned a study which highlights the industry’s considerable economic benefits.  According to this study, advertising contributed $3.4 trillion to the U.S. GDP in 2014, which represents 19% of the nation’s total economic output.

The research by IHS Economics and Country Risk provides a comprehensive assessment of the contribution of advertising to national, state, and regional economic activity across 17 industries.  This study includes information on the positive impact of advertising on employment, salaries, wages, consumer sales, and the overall economy.

According to Bob Liodice, President and Chief Executive Officer of the ANA, “this new study underscores the essential nature of advertising in promoting both business and economic growth in this country.”

IHS researchers also examined the effect of a tax proposal that would alter the treatment of advertising as an ordinary and necessary business expense. The proposal would only allow businesses who advertise to deduct 50 percent of all annual advertising expenses with the balance to be amortized over five years.

Speaking about the impact of the tax proposal, Liodice commented, “The very fact that this industry contributes nearly 20 percent to the nation’s GDP sends a powerful reminder to policymakers that advertising is an essential stimulus to the U.S economy that should be promoted and not subjected to a tax. We have long known that the economic value of advertising extends into other sectors like manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, retail, and numerous other areas of the economy. ANA is proud to see data that affirms that advertising is a major contributor of revenue and a true engine of job creation in the U.S.”

The full report, an executive summary, and related materials are available from the ANA.

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RIP Millennials: Marketing Will Be ‘Age Agnostic’ Next Year-Hotwire PR Study Finds Companies Will Target On Passion, Not Numbers

• Posted: November 23, 2015

According to the study, “Communications Trends Report,” released by Hotwire PR, marketing and communications professionals will focus on reaching millennials based on their passions rather than as a single demographic group. Brands will seek to engage consumers with age-agnostic content that emphasizes values.  This Advertising Age article by Lindsay Stein analyzes other findings from this study.

Additional trends from the Hotwire PR study include:

-The advertising industry is not prepared for mobile ad blocking, especially since Apple enabled apps that stop ads from popping up on smartphones and iPads through its iOS 9 operating system.

-The rise of virtual reality.

-The most successful campaigns in 2016 will offer relevant and useful services.

-Values will continue to be at the center of the communication strategies of many brands.

-Expanded use of hyper-targeted content will result in specific messages for each consumer subset within an audience.

This article discusses additional key marketing and communications trends for 2016.

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Brands Look Far and Wide For a Niche in Virtual Reality

• Posted: November 23, 2015

According to Robert D. Hof, writing for The New York Times, advertisers and agencies are hoping that virtual reality will be the next medium for influencing consumer purchasing behavior.  This article considers what types of ads are most likely to work on virtual reality platforms.

Devices that enable consumer interaction with virtual reality are becoming increasingly common. According to this article, virtual reality headsets, such as the Oculus Rift permit viewers to navigate three-dimensional videos and animations. In addition, virtual reality movies, shows, and stories are on the horizon.

According to Adrian Slobin, global innovation lead at the digital agency SapientNitro,

“VR is a way to create intense moments and rich, enveloping experiences that can help bolster a brand’s story.”

Among the points discussed by Hof:

-Advertising that occurs inside other virtual reality content will play a major role.

-The most effective ads will probably be interactive.

-Virtual reality apps that provide utility, such as virtual test-drive apps for car manufacturers, may attract consumers.

-The opportunity for native advertising exists.

Challenges related to virtual reality campaigns include:

-Uncertainty about the type of programming, besides games, that will catch on in virtual reality to provide a place for advertising.

-It is difficult to predict the form the advertising will ultimately take without a consensus on the type of content that will succeed in virtual reality.

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Connected TVs Marry New and Old Viewing Habits

• Posted: November 23, 2015

More than 50% of the U.S. population is expected to watch streaming content on connected TVs by 2016, and that percentage is expected to increase to 60% by 2019.  In the new eMarketer report, “US Connected TV Usage: Digital Content Gives the ‘First Screen’ New Life,” connected TVs are defined as TV sets connected to the internet through built-in internet capability or through another device, such as Blu-ray players, game consoles or set-top boxes.

In addition, it is important to note that connected TV is a household phenomenon more than a personal one, so that household penetration is an important metric.

According to this eMarketer article, viewing habits for connected TV more closely resemble linear TV than other digital platforms.  eMarketer refers to studies by both Nielsen and Tremor Video that found that the share of average US audience on connected TV devices peaks during primetime.

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The Relationship Between Product Placement and the Performance of Movies: Can Brand Promotion in Films Help or Hurt Moviegoers’ Experience?

• Posted: November 23, 2015

The authors of this September 2015 article in the Journal of Advertising Research, Reo Song, California State University, Long Beach; Jeffrey Meyer, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio; Kyoungnam Ha, University of New Haven, West Haven, Connecticut, studied the relationship between product placement and the performance of movies.

Their study examined how product placements related to the performance of the media context through word of mouth about the movies. The authors analyzed whether advertising in the form of product placements in films impacted consumer enjoyment of the movie, and, in turn, whether the related positive or negative WOM about the film impacted box-office revenues.

The authors investigated the relationship between product placements and the performance of 122 movies released between 2000 and 2007 and found that product placements had both helpful and harmful consequences. This finding elucidates the heretofore unknown relationship between product placements and programming performance.

-Product placements exhibited a positive relationship with movie revenues, but when used in excess the relationship with revenues turned negative.

-The relationship between product placement and the benefits a consumer receives from media programing is robust across movies with different budgets and qualities.

Important managerial implications suggested by this research:

-Both media programmers and advertisers may need to reevaluate the widely assumed negative effects of product placements based on the findings of this study.

-Firms that produce media programing and those that place advertising in such media can enjoy a win–win situation from product placements, especially if those placements involve major brands that are familiar to consumers.

-However, too much of this positive can become negative. As the number of placements passes a saturation point (44, as the current study demonstrated), the relationship with movie performance turns negative. In particular, programing firms that give in to the temptation to allow too many placements may suffer weaker programing performance when holding all other factors constant. The average number of placements in the current sample was 16, suggesting that movie studios might understand both the positive and the potential negative effects of product placements.

-Studios should continue to limit the number of product placements to a reasonable boundary and avoid excessive placements (e.g., more than 50), which generally appear associated with poorer box office performance.

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MRC Scraps Fully Loaded Requirement For Mobile Ads, Issues Updates On Viewability

• Posted: November 16, 2015

Joe Mandese discusses the updates issued by the Media Rating Council to its guidelines for mobile viewable impressions in this Media Post article.  These updates include a requirement for an ad fully “loaded” to be counted for measurement.

The MRC’s three significant updates:

-Elimination of the “Loaded Ad” concept. Since measurers can now successfully measure viewable impressions in mobile within the in-application environment,

the MRC has concluded that the “Loaded Ad” metric is no longer necessary.

-Additional evidence has been found that “Count on Decision” approaches for served ad impression measurement should be eliminated as a valid method for counting served impressions.  Therefore, as previously announced, the MRC will work with the IAB to eliminate Count on Decision as an acceptable method for counting served ad impressions in the near-term future.

-Cross-industry collaboration has been strengthened with a large working group of interested parties and organizations to obtain data in order to answer questions surrounding viewability requirements applied to mobile environments.

The MRC expects to release final guidelines for public comment in the first quarter of 2016.

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