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Advertising | Revenue

Q&A with Jack Essig, SVP, Publisher & Chief Revenue Officer, Hearst Men’s Group

 

Jack Essig, SVP, publisher & chief revenue officer, Hearst Men’s Group talks new initiatives, advertising partners and the group’s booth at the 2016 North American International Auto Show.

When you joined Hearst in 2011, the Hearst Men’s Group (HMG) was just newly formed. How has your go-to-market strategy changed or evolved since then?

JackCropJack Essig: Upon joining the newly formed Hearst Men’s Group, I set out to align four credible men’s brand —Esquire, Popular Mechanics, Car and Driver, and Road & Track—as one coherent group buy. The winning strategy we developed leverages the Group’s dual audiences—enthusiast and lifestyle—to uniquely amplify our partners’ campaigns across the broad range of men’s interests, from style to culture and from DIY to auto. To help achieve this, I assessed our structure and talent with the aim of creating a more efficient use of resources. We have benefited tremendously from shared marketing and art teams, as well as the strategic selling of our teams’ category experts. These relationships help widen the field of advertising partners, and in many cases encourage advertisers to consider other brands in our group.

Can you talk more about how the HMG enthusiast brands also help advertising partners to influence a broader lifestyle audience?

Essig: Having the auto-focused titles in our group has given the lifestyle titles a distinct advantage with advance knowledge of launches, budgets and priorities for automotive manufacturers. This information has allowed us to create overarching strategic programs that can be customized to connect with the audiences specific to each title. For example, we know that the average enthusiast influences more than six car purchases a year. This represents a powerful selling tool for us in making the case why an auto manufacturer needs Car and Driver and Road & Track but should also consider the Esquire and Popular Mechanics audiences to ensure far-reaching market penetration for in-market consumers. Through this strategy, we are able to expand from the enthusiast space to create more lifestyle opportunities across the rest of the Men’s Group (and the rest of the Hearst portfolio, too). The result has been Esquire having number one market share in auto in its competitive set at 33 percent.

Tell us about some of your most recent wins and successes?

Essig: From 2014 to 2015, we more than doubled the revenue tied to the multi-title deals that encompass the Hearst Men’s Group titles—Lincoln MKC and MKX, Mercedes GLE Coupe, and Ford F-150, among others—and outside the Men’s Group, across the Hearst portfolio—Toyota “New Rules of Car Buying” and “Inventionaries,” Chevrolet Malibu Cruze. Leveraging the relationships within Car and Driver and Road & Track has been instrumental in expanding the conversation with automotive partners to include Esquire and Popular Mechanics. Conversely, we have seen growth in Car and Driver and Road & Track’s non-endemic business with partners such as Clarks as a direct result of the deep relationships within Esquire and Popular Mechanics.

HMG is hosting a booth at North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) this year. Why is making a big splash at the Auto Show a great strategic move for the group?

The auto industry is at a pivotal moment where next-generation products and technologies rapidly evolve, and Detroit remains at the nexus of it all. Having a presence at NAIAS where all these big ideas make their world debuts puts us in the right place at the right time to put a stake in the ground and proclaim the Men’s Group as the most credible, preeminent partner and creative voice for brands to reach the right audience—enthusiast, lifestyle and beyond. The booth itself will serve as a hub where we will meet with partners to discuss the upcoming year, form new relationships and interact with consumers.

Can you tell us a bit about what will be at the booth?

Essig: The Hearst Men’s Group booth will be on the floor at NAIAS and will be a respite from all of the industry action at the Auto Show. Our activation will bring to life the editorial positioning of each of the Men’s Group brands as well as the creative solutions we have developed on behalf of our partners. Video screens will show reels of our recent successes, staff members will be handing out issues to attendees and we will have a private conference room in which to conduct meetings with clients, partners and press. In addition, we may throw a few happy-hour celebrations.

One of the key parts of Auto Show is the Consumer Days. What are you most excited to share in terms of interaction with the Men’s Group consumers?

Essig: Consumer Marketing will be heading up our efforts during the Consumer Days at the Auto Show. They have giveaways and offers planned to drive subscriptions and keep our brands top of mind with this captive audience.

What are you most looking forward to for the division in 2016?

Essig: We have continued to see advertisers working in a deeper way with fewer partners. The Hearst Men’s Group satisfies that need, with a reach that is both deep—in the auto/tech/style space—and wide—reaching one in five U.S. men. My goal for the Men’s Group is to continue with our successful formula and bring in even more exclusive, market-share deals within the auto space and beyond. We have the editorial products, the right audience and the ideal means for connecting with that audience across all platforms. If you are looking to reach men, you should be working with the Hearst Men’s Group.

Note, this interview was republished with permission from Hearst.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

5 Successful sales habits to try now

Take on 2016 by capitalizing on high-value sales opportunities, including leveraging programmatic to new heights and, of course, improving interpersonal relationships with prospects and customers. As the sales, and revenue generators, of our firms, locking in the fundamental habits below will allow us to remain successful even as the bumpy digital landscape continues to evolve.

Let’s take a closer look at how all of this possible:

1. Understand advertisers’ buying trends
Wouldn’t it be great to have a crystal ball so you could see what your prospects want and when? If only ad sales was that easy. Yet, there are other instructive ways to give your prospects what they want. Before you pitch, get to know which product lines they are focused on, what type of advertising they value and understand the goals of their campaigns. Once you have this information, it is important to document it. Whether you put this information in your CRM, notebook or Excel document doesn’t really matter. What’s important is to be able to easily reference this as you build out your individual account plans. Just watch the effectiveness of your next pitch soar.

2. Adopt high-CPM ad units
Choose high-CPM ad units that are most valuable to you and your digital business. This means adopting native, whole-page takeovers and online video. Given that video ad prices are capable of commanding 10x higher than the price of display ads, web publishers should leap at the opportunity. The bottom line is that high-CPM ad units are the most profitable sources for publishers, but also more valuable to the advertiser—and that’s how you should approach it in your pitch.

Among these high-CPM options, native ads probably stand out the most. It has attracted a ton of hype, and yet, only 4% of total online advertisers placed native ads from January-November last year (a total of 7,220 brands across the sites MediaRadar tracks).

mediaradarfig1

3. Take advantage of programmatic
Ninety-five percent of all national consumer magazine media companies have already started selling programmatic, according to MediaRadar data.* Programmatic advertising has made it much easier for marketers to purchase advertising and expand reach. Publishers can also manipulate programmatic advertising to their advantage to leverage their audience and grow profit.

4. Identify up-selling opportunities
The probability of closing a new prospect is 5-20%, while the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60%-70%! Yet, upselling is something that reps sometimes lose focus on as they want to hunt and close a new account. As sales leaders, it is important that we focus on helping reps identify upsell opportunities and set goals for each account. By inspecting what we expect in weekly meetings, we can coach our reps to get stickier with our clients and become a more integral part of their business and success.

5. Increase client engagement (also known as “Old Faithful”)
No matter what changes happen this year in the industry, focusing on continuing to earn our client’s business is how we create lasting partnerships. People buy from people. Statistically, 38% of clients don’t renew due to lack of relationship. Make sure to engage with your clients before, during and after the sale. Proactively reach out to clients so you can get a better idea of their needs and address concerns. This will help you build confidence, show them that you are there to help and excel in the above mentioned four tips.

*Data source: MediaRadar 2015

**Data source: https://www.groovehq.com/support/upsells

Jen Wilga (@JenniferWilga) is a dynamic sales champion who is leading MediaRadar’s global expansion efforts. She joins the team with over 20 years of experience in SaaS solutions. Prior to joining MediaRadar, Jen played a critical role in developing and executing the sales strategy for Careerbuilder’s HR SaaS solutions. Jen received her BA from Misericordia University.

 

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

The rise of VR for immersive storytelling and advertising

Bearing witness has been one of the essential boons for journalists when it comes to delivering stories few have access to: “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it,” is one such adage that comes to mind.

But with the rise of cameras that can record a scene in 360-degrees, stereoscopic video (which creates depth) and a new generation of headsets accessible to consumers, the ascent of VR as a new storytelling staple is clear. Coupled with collaborative partnerships across the technological and media landscape, the chance for VR to enable the “presence” of a user — in other words, to make her feel as if she is actually reacting to the environment she is immersed in — is now unprecedented. With this, “bearing witness” is taking on a different meaning.

The bottom line? The chance for VR to encourage empathy can potentially transform journalism and viewers’ understanding of the world. Plus, it might also create the type of immersive advertising and sponsored content that no ad-blocker could deny.

New York Times as Pioneer
The world took notice when the New York Times recently gave away 1.31 million Google Cardboard headsets to its print subscribers, solely to bring them into the VR experience. The simplicity and crudeness of the cardboard is its genius, Wired’s Marcus Wohlsen argued. “It’s cheap enough to be handed out for free; we smartphone users supply the only part that’s expensive,” Wohlsen wrote.

This sort of accessibility is key to the potential for VR to actually reach mass audiences instead of a tiny subset of early adopters. Producing VR work is already an expensive endeavor. While outfits like the New York Times Magazine, Frontline and Vice News — with their stories on the refugee crisis, the Ebola outbreak and last year’s Millions March against police brutality, respectively — have made major dives into VR storytelling, they are part of “the 1 percent” of news organizations that can afford to do so. Headsets like the one from Oculus Rift and other apparatuses for viewing VR are expected to become cheaper and therefore more mainstream, but it’s a far cry from the ubiquity of simply the smartphone. (Although YouTube, for one, has said it wants to bring VR to anyone with a smartphone.)

That’s why the Times’ home delivery of Cardboard units to use with a smartphone was a win in more ways than one. First of all, it delivered the headsets with its newspaper, acknowledging that traditional distribution system — and subscription — as a precursor for this modern news consumption. The Times is also planning to extend its virtual reality endeavors into sponsored content, as Sebastian Tomich, the Times’ senior vice president of advertising and innovation, told Contently. “Any format the newsroom is pursuing, you can assume that we’ll pursue it on the brand side as well,” he said.

Enticing for Brands
It’s not a surprise, then, that other brands and publishers are considering VR’s potential. Writing for TheMediaBriefing, Chris Sutcliffe notes that a VR environment can be enticing to brands and other publishers, as brands are already relying more on “experiential events” to help communicate their brand messages. The “rawness” that VR environments offer and the audiences they attract could potentially provide a new revenue stream, he writes. Designer Rebecca Minkoff, for example, is selling her own cardboard VR viewer for $30 for viewers to see how she filmed her runway show.

All this is not to say VR doesn’t have its hurdles. The recent Tow Center report on virtual reality acknowledged producing such work involves a series of trade-offs, especially around production time, quality and the capacity to reach wide audiences. Tom Kent, the standards editor at the Associated Press (which is also stepping into VR) also wrote a strong statement on Medium of some of the ethical questions that could impact VR journalism in the future, which New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan also discussed.

The Times’ release of its VR documentary “The Displaced” coincided with a range of critiques, from the difficulty of using the Cardboard unit to questions of the authenticity of the story. Michael Oreskes, NPR’s news chief and a former Times editor, cautioned, “Our stories can’t be virtually true. They must be fully real.”

As we ponder how VR fact-checkers would operate, we can also consider the vast potential of what immersive journalism—and advertising—could do to create a whole new dimension in audience engagement.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Trust in ads triggers action

Traditional media outperforms digital ads (online and mobile) in consumer trust according to The Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising 2015 Study. In fact, TV ads lead all paid media with 63% of global respondents reporting complete or somewhat trust, followed by newspaper (60%) and magazine (58%) ads. Online video ads, the highest rated of digital media advertising, was trusted by less than half of all respondents (48%) and performed below radio and pre-movie ads (each at 54%).

The study surveyed 30,000 online respondents in 60 countries to measure consumer response to paid, earned and owned advertising mediums. Important to note, survey responses were based on reported behavior and not actual metered data.

In terms of earned media, word-of-mouth remains the most trustworthy type of advertising with eight in 10 respondents (83%) completely or somewhat trusting the recommendations from people they know. Social media appears to be an influencer of trust with two-thirds of respondents (66%) stating that they trust consumer opinions posted online in reviews, etc.

As for owned media, seventy percent of respondents reported completely or somewhat trusting of branded websites, followed by brand sponsorships (61%) and opt-in emails (56%).

Trust and action appear closely correlated. For example, respondents that trust the opinions of friends and family say also they also take action on these opinions at least some of the time (83% each). In fact, the study shows that action exceeds trust by more than double digits for ads served in search engine results (47% trust; 58% take action), ads on social networks (46% trust; 56% take action) and text ads on mobile phones (36% trust; 46% take action).
Millennials more than Gen Z, Gen X or Baby Boomers reported the highest level of trust in digital advertising, online video ads at 54%, search engines 52%, ads on social networks, 51%, banner ads 47% and text ads on mobile at 41%.

Media planning is more important than ever to target audiences and ensure success metrics match objectives. Understanding consumer trust across platforms is an important measure in optimizing campaign performance.

Global Ad Trust Report

Advertising | Industry-Research

Advice for addressing waterfall inefficiencies

Inefficiencies brought on by the legacy “waterfall” cost publishers both monetarily and operationally. But even as new ad serving technologies have emerged to solve for these issues, many publishers are still grappling with major challenges around outdated inventory allocation methodologies. PubMatic has released a white paper, entitled Decision Manager: Your Inventory. Your Rules., which outlines the key challenges and solutions in inventory management and monetization, and describes how publishers can leverage a technology platform to realize the full potential of their digital assets.

The white paper addresses the challenges that publishers face in inventory management and demand sourcing, and how they can achieve maximum yield optimization. PubMatic’s Decision Manager is an important step towards achieving the holistic, cross-platform marketing automation platform of the future.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

Will streaming help interactive tv ads stick?

TV ads have always been decried as a format of the past, rarely targeted or personalized. But interactive TV ads offer the potential for demonstrable viewer engagement and feedback. And that’s the promise of Hulu’s new deal with TrueX, a unit of 21st Century Fox. Using technology from TrueX, Hulu will give viewers of Fox shows the option of watching a 30-second “engagement” advertisement instead of the approximately two and a half minutes worth of ads that are sprinkled within an episode.

It’s the most high-profile instance yet of interactive ads within streaming TV. The question now is whether the circumstances surrounding the Hulu-TrueX deal will get other networks and brands to jump on board—and make this kind of engaged advertising more the norm.

Breaking Through on Streaming
Interactive TV has been one of those Holy Grail quests that’s been tried and failed for years. The problem, however, is that marketers have been looking at the wrong screen when it came time to developing interactive ads. It was understood that some people were cutting the cord and streaming online content onto a “proper” television screen through an Xbox or Roku. But taking advantage of the use of laptops, mobile and tablet devices was not a key strategy. That’s why some of the earliest attempts at interactive ads bombed.

The point now, however, is to utilize the benefits of digital video, as Joe Marchese, president of advanced advertising products at Fox Networks Group and founder of TrueX, told the L.A. Times. “Digital video is an on-demand, non-linear medium, and having an ad format that fits this experience is a win for advertisers, publishers and viewers alike,” he said.

TrueX had already tested interactive ads on streaming sites before Hulu. This past May at the upfronts, TrueX reported on one such trial with the TV show, ”The Mindy Project.” They found that the typical viewer clicked 4 times in the ads, spending 52 seconds in the unit, with a 2.9% clickthrough rate. Plus the ads had a 96% completion rate.

Another example of interactive ads fitting well was during the Game Awards — an online-only awards show for videogames. During the show last year, which attracted about 2 million online viewers, users were able to click on ads during the show to download the different games that were nominated. For one of the games advertised during the show, sales “increased by 15 times during the weekend the awards show aired, producing seven figures in revenue for the game over that period,” the New York Times’ Nick Wingfield reported.

In-Stream Purchase Unit
In the same vein, Hulu announced last year moves beyond traditional video ads with an “in-stream purchase unit” with Pizza Hut. Consumers can place an order within the ad itself before returning to whatever content they were viewing. There’s also a “360” video ad that will let users pan around through a 360-degree viewpoint within the ad. And the point of these advertisements was to get the tactile response of consumers watching on different mobile devices.

While Fox is the only media company allowing these new ads on Hulu right now, TrueX is also open to servicing the entire industry with these ads, opening the door for ABC, CBS, Viacom and other organizations to perhaps learn from Fox’s example.

“This type of attention transfer lifts all boats,” Jamie Auslander, TrueX’s VP of research, told AdWeek in May. “It’s as impactful as six video ads.”

Other media outlets will likely take a cue from Fox only after learning how these 30-second advertisements play out among viewers. But if TrueX has its way — and if its previous studies on this kind of advertising hold true — the ads will be a hit.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Time well spent? Inside the FT’s time-based ads sales effort

When it comes to finite resources, perhaps none is so keenly felt as the limited number of hours in the day. And, as more content creators vie for this precious time—across a proliferation of delivery platforms and devices—creators of digital content have steadily seen their online objectives reduced to a frantic race for audience numbers, pageviews and click-throughs. Some leaders in the industry, however, are looking to change the conversation to one where time spent is the metric that matters.

Last fall, the Financial Times began testing ad sales based upon a new cost-per-hour (CPH) metric. Its initial foray went well and in May of this year they announced the official launch of a new time-based measurement system. The FT’s US Commercial Director, Brendan Spain, says the decision to initiate a new method for transacting ad value based upon time was prompted by an increasing sense among marketers that they their digital ad investments might not be as valuable as once thought, given revelations of high bot traffic and ad-viewability limitations.

“We decided that, given our audience, as well as the registration and subscription information we have behind our readership, that we had an opportunity to go the other way to create a very transparent product that marketers could be confident in,” says Spain. Now, a year after this idea was conceived, Spain believes that the need for better metrics is at least as great—if not greater—than it was then.

In part, the need stems from new concerns over agency rebates, which have increased the demand for transparency into the ad-buying landscape. However, Spain says that he’s also seeing an increased desire for brand dollars to be allocated to digital, which requires publishers to deliver more substantive KPIs, beyond the click. Spain notes that “There’s no KPI-uplift for clicking” while CPH measurement, on the other hand, “offers recognition that there are marketers are doing something besides trying to sell a pizza, that there are other KPIs that need to be looked at.”

That said, despite a desire for something better, there’s still a hill to climb in terms of getting any new metric to gain wide acceptance. “There’s not a line for CPH on agency spreadsheets and let’s face it, those spreadsheets are a window into the minds in the middle- and back-office,” Spain says, emphasizing the need for education on both the client and agency sides.

There is also a question of standardizing the time-based metric in order for it to scale. The Economist recently rolled out its own take on selling time-based advertising. Unlike the FT, The Economist opted to cap its attention measurement at 30 seconds. The Wall Street Journal has also reportedly explored a time-based approach that would be based upon incremental blocks of time. Differing models can create confusion in the marketplace, though Spain points out that it is still early days and the FT is among an increasing number of publishers testing out what makes the most sense. The important thing, he says, is that “the vast majority of premium publishers agree that time is transactable.”

To date, the FT has worked with 15 brands on 19 campaigns. Eight percent of their digital inventory is being served through CPH, a number Spain says adds up to a not-insignificant amount of incremental revenue on the FT’s P&L. The positive impact also affects its advertisers who are seeing 10% more active time in view than if they purchased CPM campaign. They are also currently in the process of surveying all of its clients who have tested CPH buying so far to better evaluate and document its effectiveness. “Everything we’re doing is evidence based,” says Spain. “It is really important that we’re not just putting a finger in the air.”

Despite its promise, time-based sales are not right for every campaign. As Spain points out, CPH works best to achieve objectives such as ad recall, brand awareness and recognition, and purchase consideration. He also doesn’t foresee the FT moving entirely away from CPM-based sales, though he points out they’ve never been a CPC environment. By Q1, his goal is for all of the FT’s top clients to be aware of CPH and see its value based upon evidence-based case studies.

There are metrics that can be very easily manipulated, says Spain. “You can buy likes, retweets, followers—all that takes is a five minute Google search to figure out how.” What needs to be emphasized, however, is that there are things you can’t buy. “You can’t add another hour to a CEOs day to read a publication. We need to un-muddy the waters. One of the ways to do that is to focus on metrics that are a lot harder to fudge.”

As he considers the bigger digital advertising picture, Spain has high hopes: He believes that an attention-based approach can bring more brand ad dollars to quality partners; increase marketer confidence that their ads are being seen and are engaging consumers; give publishers a means to value attention at a scaled level rather than a flat rate; and maybe even drive some of the bad inventory out of consideration or drive it out of the market altogether.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Display advertising deserves more credit for inbound phone calls

According to Marchex’ 2015 Click-To-Call Commerce Mobile Performance Report, click-to-call has emerged as the most common form of purchase-oriented activity from mobile ads. They report that click-to-call commerce, in which a consumer makes a phone call from a mobile Web page or app and makes a reservation, appointment or purchase, will exceed $1 trillion this year.

In its most recent white paper, Marchex set out to determine whether display ads are influential in driving consumers to make purchase-oriented calls. According to The Missing 98%: Why Display Advertising Isn’t Getting the Credit It Deserves, “The advertising technology ecosystem has historically focused on tying display ad exposure to e-commerce purchases, or other online actions such as filling out a lead form or visiting a product web page. However, for most advertisers, the goal of a display advertising campaign is offline, such as an inbound phone call or in-store purchase.”

According to the report:

Not much click-to-call activity occurs directly from display advertising units.
Whereas a paid search campaign that uses call extensions may see call-through rates as high as 20%, Marchex research has shown that it can take an average of 500,000 impressions from a display ad with click-to-call functionality to generate a quality phone call.

But display advertising does influence consumers to make a phone call in the future.
Data from beta customers of Marchex Display Analytics shows that it can take an average of 8,000 impressions from a display ad to influence a phone call within 2 weeks. In other words, display ads influence 60 times more phone calls than they do a direct click-to-call. On average, they found that approximately 2% of phone calls occur directly from display ads or landing pages, and the rest occur in the days or weeks following exposure.

Marchex identified three major challenges of view-through attribution for phone calls:

  1. Lack of a common identifier across online and offline
  2. Cross-screen attribution
  3. Latency

The white paper outlines these challenges in greater detail and makes suggestions on how to address them.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Growing the receptivity of digital ads

Multiscreen users spend the same amount of time viewing video on TV as they do on digital platforms, yet they are less receptive to digital ads reports Millward Brown’s research, “AdReaction: Video Creative in a Digital World.” The study surveyed more than 13,500 multiscreen viewers (for example, people who own a TV and either a smartphone or tablet) in 42 countries on video usage and what they think about video advertising. Now that video ads are playing across multi-platforms, new creative approaches in advertising are essential to ensure consumer receptivity is strong across all screens.

The average consumer, across the globe, between the ages of 16 and 45 in today’s media environment watches 204 minutes of video a day, split equally between TV and online. Forty-five minutes of the average online viewing time is done on a smartphone, while desktop accounts for 37 minutes and tablet for 20 minutes. Digital’s share of total video minutes is higher (42%) among 16-24 year olds among 35-45 year olds than (29%).

It is important to note that consumers reported 50% negativity toward smartphone video ads with computers and tablets trailing at 46% and 45% negativity, respectively. In contrast, live TV had just 30% negativity toward ads. Interestingly, ad viewing using mobile app rewards, where users watch videos to advance to a new level or get tools, rated 54% in favorability, making it the most preferred digital advertising format and skippable pre-rolls (44% positive) and skippable mobile pop-ups (41%) were next allowing consumers to push past their negativity toward mobile ads.

Advertising | Industry-Research

US ad sales will grow by +2.2% this year, with digital surpassing TV ad spending faster than expected

Digital media ad revenue will surpass TV ad spending faster than expected, according to Interpublic-owned media buying and research firm Magna Global. According to its US Media Owner Revenues Forecast, advertising revenues grew by +1.6% in the first half across all media categories. While digital media remained dynamic, growth is increasingly contrasted between social and video formats (from +30% to +50%), search (+10%) and banner display (+4%). Magna Global predicts that digital media ad revenues will reach $66 billion and that digital will surpass television in 2016 to become the #1 media category, one year earlier than previously expected.

According to Magna Global, Media Owners Advertising revenues showed little growth in the first half of 2015. Ad sales grew by +1.0% in 1Q15 and +0.8% in 2Q15 (all media including direct marketing, excl. P&O). However, they predict that 2016 will show stronger ad revenue growth than 2015, but has reduced its growth forecast to +3.3% from +3.8%. Traditional media will decrease by 2.9%, while digital sales will grow by +15.1%.

The 2015-2016 National TV upfronts were down in terms of volume, for the second year in a row, with CPM increases in the low single-digit range (compared to mid-single digit a year before). Interestingly, the decline of the impression supply seems to have reached the point where inflationary tension might soon come back into play.

Key figures from Magna Global’s forecasts by media segment:

  • TV ad sales will decrease by -2.6% (vs. -1.2% in 2014) excluding P&O.
  • Print ad sales (newspapers and magazines) will decline by 12% to 14% this year and next.
  • Social and online video ad sales continue to show explosive grow in the short term with full-year ad revenue expected to reach +48.2% and +38.4%, respectively.
  • Mobile video will also grow by +69% as smartphone and tablet usage continue to grow as more and more content is made available across all screens through apps.
  • Search remains robust (+11.8% this year) with mobile search up 46% and desktop search up only 1%.
Advertising | Perspectives

Who’s winning at sports content?

It is generally recognized that good storytelling is not the exclusive domain of media professionals. Today, great stories come as readily from consumers and brands. At Advertising Week, Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint led a panel of diverse—and talented—sports storytellers: Morgan Flatley CMO of Gatorade & Propel, PepsiCo; Jaymee Messler, President of The Players’ Tribune; Adrienne Lofton SVP, Global Brand Marketing of Under Armour; and Lisa Baird CMO of the US Olympic Committee. What emerged was a picture of brand-audience relationships and a marketers’ desire to create distinct content experiences that are brand, channel and—above all–consumer-centric.

Baird said her content strategy starts with the objective of getting the next generation of young people interested in the Olympics. “We don’t try to recreate Olympic sport,” she said, “NBC does a phenomenal job at that.” Instead, her content strategy revolves around telling the story of hometown Olympic spirit which helps young people see themselves in the stories and forges a personal connection between them and the Olympics.

KintAdWeekPanel3For brands like Gatorade and Under Armour, the objective might seem more straightforward: selling product. However, brands like these are clearly using content to deepen engagement and tell a story that brings their brand values to life. Lofton said that one of her objectives is to take the brand from the playing field to all aspects of the athlete’s life. The trick, of course, is competing with the thousands of messages that inundate consumers on a daily basis. And while television is part of Lofton’s marketing strategy – particularly for reach and driving awareness – Under Armour’s content initiatives also live on a wide range of digital channels. “We drive people to Instagram or Snapchat to give them a peek behind the curtain to the athletes we have great relationships with.” These social media endeavors might be solo, or with a trusted media partner such as ESPN.

Gatorade’s Flatley said that they take a similar approach, using a lot of television because of its broad audience. “But we are also hyper-aware of where the teen athlete is going: how the use different media channels and how engage with on them,” she said. They also experiment with emerging tools, such as virtual reality: The Gatorade Bryce Harper Virtual Reality experience literally took fans inside Harper’s head as he faced the pitcher with the game on the line. Flatley noted that the VR experiment didn’t reach a mass audience, but offered a great opportunity “to experiment with new technology that allows us to go deeper.”

The Players’ Tribune, founded a year ago by Derek Jeter, is an experiment in letting athletes tell their own stories, according to Messler. As with Gatorade and Under Armour, The Players’ Tribune recognizes fans desire to get inside athletes’ minds. Her first objective for the new site was to establish the brand, so she relied heavily on the social influence of the players themselves. However, as the site matures, Messler said they are beginning to take a more scientific approach to develop their content distribution strategy. In both content development and analysis, Messler believes in “A nice combination of the intelligent and emotional.”

Certainly—whether a brand, organization, or media outlet—all content creators are focused on evaluating the effectiveness of their strategy and investment. Baird said it can be easy to focus on retweets and other social numbers, but given her more complex objectives—such as inspiring young athletes to not only develop an affinity for the Olympics, maybe even to join a sport and dream of becoming future Olympians—measurement is a tricky subject. She is optimistic that she’ll be able to track a link between her content and membership in the Olympic National Governing Bodies such as USA Wrestling or USA Volleyball.

The stakes are high and rivalry is fierce: as Morgan from Gatorade pointed out “There’s a high bar for all of us.” Certainly this is true, whether the storyteller is a brand, media company or organization of any type, as all compete for a share of consumer’s finite attention.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

ONE by AOL: Simplifying digital ad complexity to improve creativity—and results

Like the Jetson’s robot maid, Rosie, technology was supposed to make our lives easier. But we could use a little more Rosie and a little less complexity in the digital media and marketing industry as brands scramble to create content and advertising experiences that are optimized across an ever-expending proliferation of devices, screen-sizes, and formats. There are those, however, who believe that automation is an answer to some of this complexity: AOL, for one, continues to build more automation into its ONE by AOL platform in an effort to “allow the machines to do what the machines do best and allow the humans to do what they do best,” according to David Miller, the Company’s VP of Ad Product Management.

Marketers’ biggest concern, says Miller, is keeping their creative relevant and figuring out what is working (and what’s not). “We are trying to let the machines do that so marketers can focus on being more creative and strategic.”

To that end, AOL has expanded the company’s ONE by AOL open automation platform to allow marketers to simplify the creation of multi-variate premium cross-screen advertising. This means that marketers can create content once and—using AOL’s flexible HTML-based templating—easily deploy that content across mobile, video and desktop. While creative assets are core, the system can also incorporate many other elements such as product information, social feeds, SKU information, local retail locations, and any number of other things that brands want to get in front of consumers. “Historically, advertisers have to build five, 10, even 15 different combinations of assets for each different format—desktop, mobile, pre-roll—we want to drastically simplify that,” says Miller.

The ONE by AOL platform also connects with AOL’s audience platform, which incorporates first-party, third-party, and advertiser data. This allows marketers to target specific audiences with customized experiences. Perhaps even more importantly, ONE by AOL provides marketers with a way to clearly evaluate the performance of any given combination of assets against specific demographic segments. “We want to leverage all of the data to allow marketers to look at each individual combination of assets shown to a specific group and be able to compare the ROI of this combination aimed at this group to this other combination aimed at another demographic, then be able to easily change things up to improve results.”

This is achieved through a combination of technological integration and transparency. ONE by AOL provides insights that go beyond impressions and clicks to include insights on the impact of specific pieces of creative on ROI. The goal, says Miller, is to allow marketers to create increasingly relevant, useful advertising. “We need to see the convergence of the right brand experience with the appropriate consumer experience, which revolves around relevance and utility,” he says.

Miller points out that premium brands have long since moved away from “the big ‘click here’ button…the kind of bad ads that cause more ad blockers to be installed.” The rise of ad blocking, according to Miller, can be directly correlated to bad ads and poor consumer experiences.

Miller notes that, as an industry, we need to increase our focus on creating great experiences. “At AOL, we’re trying to figure out how to help move the industry forward overall and simplify life for our marketing partners so that they can focus on the next big cool thing.”

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