The Feed

New TV consortium aims to simplify ad market

A number of the biggest TV operators have teamed up to make a concerted effort to simplify targeted advertising in the industry after complaints it has become both too fragmented and unwieldy. 

Comcast Corp, Charter Communications, Altice USA and Dish Media, plus smart TV manufacturer Vixio, are part of the eight-company consortium, Go Addressable, which is aimed at making addressable TV advertising more navigable.

The details

• Advertisers who once spent most of their advertising budgets on national and local TV are finding it harder to reach consumers who are increasingly switching to streaming services and digital media; a growing number of marketers is requesting TV partners offer options that target ads to bespoke audiences, much more like big digital platforms. 
• As digital ad opportunities grow, advertisers face having to piece together advertising space from a variety of streaming services, smart TV companies and cable operators, according to Larry Allen, vice-president and GM of addressable enablement at Comcast Advertising, part of Comcast.
• Go Addressable won’t be developing technology or systems to tackle the fragmentation problem, Allen says; instead, it will meet monthly to highlight problems, examine solutions and look for industry players who are in the best position to implement them. 
• One challenge it is looking to tackle is the elimination of jargon that will allow different targeted ad companies to speak in a consistent way about processes and products.

Key quote

“The buyers need a solution to their fragmentation problem. That’s a massive constraint on the market and the buyers that either bought individually or had to patchwork together or went through aggregators. Unlocking that scale across multiple endpoints is really the endgame” – Larry Allen, VP and GM of addressable enablement at Comcast Advertising.

Sourced from the Wall Street Journal

Google serves almost half of all ads on ‘fake’ news sites, study finds

Researchers at the University of Michigan who examined a list of sites described as “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical ‘News’ Sources” found 48% of all ad traffic was served by Google.

In addition, almost a third (32%) of ads on what were described as “low credibility sites”, like Breitbart, Drudge Report, and Sputnik News, were provided by Google, Morning Brew reported.

The details

• Fake news sites were those full of what researchers said were either pseudoscience or just downright lies; “low credibility” sites were marked by hyper bias, using data collated by an associate professor at Merrimack College.
• Researchers also discovered that between them the “top-10 credible ad servers”, including the likes of Lockerdome and Outbrain, are responsible for almost 66.7% of ad traffic on fake news sites and 55.6% on low-quality sites.
• Google says that last year it removed ads from more than 1.3 billion pages that breached its policies.

Key takeaway

In April this year Google announced the introduction of dynamic exclusion lists, allowing advertisers to stop their ads from appearing alongside content they want to avoid.

“Once advertisers upload a dynamic exclusion list to their Google Ads account, they can schedule automatic updates as new web pages or domains are added, ensuring that their exclusion lists remain effective and up-to-date. This feature will be available to all users within the coming weeks,” said the announcement.

Sourced from Morning Brew, Google

Data privacy is the main barrier to mobile marketing growth

Consumer concerns about data privacy and the need to meet regulatory requirements like GDPR are the main barriers to growth in mobile marketing, according to WARC's survey of over 500 marketing professionals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in association with the MMA.

This is just one of the findings from WARC and the MMA's State of the Industry 2021: Mobile Marketing in EMEA report which analyses current conditions and future trends in mobile marketing. WARC subscribers can read the full report here, while a free sample is available here.

Why it matters

The data-driven approach to mobile advertising is being challenged as audiences, publishers and advertisers give greater attention to data privacy – 62% of marketers believe the 'death of the cookie' will significantly impact their mobile marketing strategy.

As a result, more sustainable identity solutions need to be found. The most effective brands can use this to their advantage, though, as greater levels of privacy offer a chance to innovate on the creative front.

Takeaways

• More than one-third (35%) of marketers say consumer concerns about privacy/security are a barrier to mobile marketing's growth, the most reported answer.
• Metrics and measurement, ad fraud and budget levels have all lost relevance as barriers to growth amid the rise in concern around privacy.

Sourced from WARC and the MMA's State of the Industry 2021: Mobile Marketing in EMEA

58% of TikTok users delay brand engagement so as to not interrupt content browsing

Three in five (58%) TikTok users say they delay visiting a brand website or app so as to not disrupt their content browsing, according to a survey of Southeast Asian consumers by AppsFlyer, TikTok for Business and Toluna.

Why it matters

Delayed user activity suggests advertisers need to look beyond immediate click behaviour when measuring brand engagement. This poses difficulties for accurate audience measurement; an issue made more prominent in Southeast Asia given the popularity of dark social channels and a fragmented brand discovery process.

Takeaways

• TikTok has the lowest rate of users who click on the link after seeing a brand ad, at just 14% of users.
• Instead, it reports one of the highest rates of users delaying a visit to a brand website/app so as to not disrupt their content browsing.

Sourced from AppsFlyer, TikTok for Business, Toluna, WARC Data

Banking on Southeast Asia’s rising middle classes

Many of Southeast Asia’s tech giants, like Grab, Gojek, and Shopee, are competing to offer payment services such as BNPL to the region, where e-commerce spending is rocketing as incomes rise and more people have access to the internet via smartphones.

Why it matters

With consumers able to manage an increasing number of everyday services online, demand is rising for cashless payments and credit, but, for many, traditional banks are not an option. Digital buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) services are stepping in to fill the gap: sign up is fast and easy, and the choice of providers is growing rapidly.

Takeaways

• BNPL services are often part of bigger projects: PayLater, for example, is at the heart of Indonesian ride-hailing app Gojek’s evolution into a super app. Other big-tech players in the region, such as e-commerce giant Shopee, have launched their own BNPL offerings, seeing them as a potential route to becoming full-blown banks.
• Tech companies combining e-commerce and BNPL can amass a view of customers’ financial lives that is unparalleled, allowing them to collect highly granular data that helps create a detailed – and valuable – understanding of a person’s credit rating and spending habits.
• For many in Southeast Asia, BNPL may be the first time they have used a digital financial product, and the first time they’ve used credit to buy anything.

Key stat

KPMG researchers in 2019 calculated that some 73% of people in the region had no formal-sector bank account, and at least 18% had no access to credit.

Sourced from Rest of World, The ASEAN Post

Amazon in Australia: Not yet No 1

Australian consumers have yet to widely adopt Amazon shopping, according to a survey commissioned by digital experience platform Sitecore, with the e-commerce giant’s sales in Australia falling short of initial market forecasts.

Why it matters

A study finds that the Amazon juggernaut is not the first site Australians go to when shopping online and internet commerce players still have an opportunity to expand their share of the market if they can offer comparable levels of service and personalisation during the customer journey. 

Four findings

• The survey of nearly 3,000 Australian consumers showed only slightly over a fifth see Amazon as their first destination for online shopping. 
• One third of Australian shoppers end up on Amazon based on search results and 31% of consumers first shop around on other sites.  
• Despite the high trust and personalisation of Amazon’s shopping experience, 4 in 10 Australians would like to reduce the amount of shopping they do on Amazon.
• Gen Z in Australia are more likely to shop directly from brands online rather than Amazon – 75% vs 66% among the older generation. 

Key insight

The survey showed Amazon’s retail offering is seen as more tailored to consumers. Nearly one in three Australian consumers are finding Amazon’s shopping experience to be more personalised when compared with other retailers. On aggregate, Amazon shoppers in Australia would move to other retailers if they provided the same incentives, discounts and purchase experience as Amazon. 

Sourced from Sitecore

Amazon advertising costs have risen 52% in past year

The average cost-per-click (CPC) of Amazon advertising in the United States has risen rapidly over the past year and growth has accelerated in 2021, according to data from Marketplace Pulse.

Why it matters

Brands are rapidly increasing their Amazon advertising investment and this has driven the cost of advertising up. The cost-per-click is likely to rise in the future as well as consumers spend more on Amazon and brands see advertising as a requirement for success on the platform. This has also caused Amazon to rapidly grow its advertising business, which doubled its share of the online ad market between 2018 and 2020.

Takeaways

• Advertising on Amazon now costs, on average, $1.20 per click - up 29.0% from the start of 2021 and an increase of 51.9% from June 2020.
• This has pushed up the average cost of selling on Amazon, from $6-$7 per sale in 2020 to $9-$10.

Sourced from Marketplace Pulse, WARC Data

Privacy lawsuit launched over claims of massive data breach

IAB Tech Lab, which develops standards for the digital advertising industry, is being sued by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties over what the council describes as “the world’s largest data breach”.

Tell me more

The case is aimed at members of the IAB, including Google, Facebook and Amazon, and is necessary, the ICCL says, because the Data Protection Commission in Ireland and regulators in other jurisdictions have not followed up on formal complaints made by the ICCL over the last three years. The case has been filed under the EU’s GDPR legislation in Hamburg, where the New York-based IAB Tech Lab has an office.

The details

• Dr Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the ICCL and a former ad industry executive, says people are not aware of the huge scale of personal data that is collected and shared about them as part of programmatic advertising.
• Included in the lawsuit are what are described by the ICCL as “secret dossiers” on individual internet users. The basis for the case is that no-one has consented to this data being collected or shared.
• The organisation says it hopes the case will result in the online ad industry being forced to stop tracking people online. The industry, however, maintains that nothing that could identify individuals is shared.

Key quote

“These secret dossiers about you – based on what you think is private – could prompt an algorithm to remove you from the shortlist for your dream job. A retailer might use the data to single you out for a higher price online. A political group might micro target you with personalised disinformation” – Dr Johnny Ryan, senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

Sourced from Irish Times

Five things OOH is good at

As lockdowns ease, summer arrives and more people are out and about, a new OOH Playbook, based on a three-year study, highlights that OOH advertising is particularly good at driving five core brand outcomes.

Key takeaways 

• Ad Awareness is all about long-term memorability. Large format and small format with contextual messaging are key to driving this brand outcome. 
• Positive Brand Impression is linked to frequency of messaging and is driven by high-frequency environments like roadside, bus and transport. 
• Quality Perception is influenced by the company you keep – media plans that want to drive quality metrics need to include premium sites, premium environments or premium production techniques. 
• Recommendation is driven by high dwell-time environments and is understood through Confirmation Bias – we spend more time with things we like. 
• Value for Money is about making people feel that what they’re paying for something is worth it. This is driven by high dwell-time and premium environments. 

Key quote

“There are some findings that raise the importance of different facets of media planning that have often been underplayed. For example, the importance for planners to look at frequency levels and the role that dwell time plays in the purchase funnel. Understanding the role of OOH beyond a CPT raises the bar of OOH media planning” – Jennie Roper, Head of Insight at Kinetic.

The research 

A three-year study of £2.2bn of media investment across 46 brands, led by Kinetic, was analysed against YouGov Brand Index data and Route audience impact data. Machine learning quantified brand uplift outcomes at a granular level, while a meta-analysis identified key trends and behavioural science. 

Sourced from Kinetic

Consumer anxiety ‘at all-time high’ in India due to pandemic

Indian consumers, especially those in more rural areas, are suffering acute anxiety as a result of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Deloitte.

Research from the consultancy firm shows concerns about healthcare and financial worries are at the root of the widespread anxiety, as the country emerges from a devastating second wave of the pandemic which has hit rural areas especially hard.

The details

• 45% of consumers surveyed said they were anxious about their health, the health of their extended family, and their own financial wellbeing.
• The sentiment is especially pronounced in rural India, where families tend to be poorer, rarely have any kind of medical insurance and have often spent a large part of what they have on COVID treatments and hospital visits.
• This translates into an unwillingness to spend, especially on discretionary items, and may prove a significant drag on the country’s economic recovery.

Key quote

“The problem this time is very deep in rural India. In addition to a good monsoon and good festive cheer over the next six months, I think we need some stimulus which will give more money in the hand of the end consumer” – Sanjesh Thakur, Partner with the Risk Advisory practice at Deloitte India.

Sourced from Economic Times

Media subscription services see better retention post-COVID

Media subscription services have seen a better retention rate of new subscribers since the coronavirus pandemic began, according to data from digital content management company Piano. The company's clients include CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Le Parisien.

Why it matters

Publishers are shifting to subscription models as advertising revenue declines and this latest data suggests they can expect greater success at retention.

However, there needs to be a focus on engaging users from the start, as churn is highest in the first month and a sizeable share of subscribers become inactive and ultimately cancel.

Takeaways

• Three-quarters (75.7%) of monthly subscribers that joined after March 2020 (when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic) were still subscribing three months after joining.
• Before the pandemic, the retention rate after three months was far lower at 68.6%.

Sourced from Piano, WARC Data

Why attention strategies must vary by brand

The amount of attention required to make a campaign successful is dependent on factors including the profile of the advertiser in question, and the brand’s desired outcomes, according to a new report.  

What’s happened?

Marketing consultancy Ebiquity has announced the creation of an innovative media trading currency based on attention. The composite metric – dubbed ‘aCPM’, or cost per thousand seconds of attention – integrates media cost data from Ebiquity with digital and TV advertising attention data from Lumen and TVision respectively.

However, the report warns that brands should not amend media plans to simply pursue the cheapest aCPM, as they often have done with audience-based media buying.

Two hypothetical scenarios

• Advertiser ‘A’ is a new brand with a complex new product to communicate to the market. This requires an “absolute minimum” of five seconds’ average dwell time across different media. The report recommends TV media as a cost-effective way to deliver the required attention.
• Advertiser ‘B’ is a well-established brand with extremely distinctive assets. Its task is to trigger and reinforce existing memory structures to build mental availability. As such, it does not need to impose a minimum attention time threshold on media buys. Social media may be a more cost-effective option.

Key quote

“The better you understand your communication task and the amount of attention required to get the job done, the more likely you will be to develop the optimal attention strategy” – Ebiquity, The Challenge of Attention.