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Industry-Research | Perspectives

Mobile marketing is huge. But how are marketers supposed to make it work?

In the wake of this year’s U.S. presidential election, it’s admittedly difficult to place a whole lot of confidence in data of any kind (regardless of which side of the political isle you reside). Fortunately for us digital marketers,  one or two percentage points don’t often have monumental effects on our campaigns. More often than not, we pursue initiatives knowing that online is still an emerging channel, and—warts and all—is still more effective than its offline counterparts, even considering its weakness when it comes to reporting and performance data. Indeed, no matter the not insignificant margins-of-error we digital marketers know to be real and plan for, we also know that online channels provide us with superior insights and performance causality as compared to their offline brethren.

mmakantar1And it’s with these realities top-of-mind that we delve into this issue of Industry Research, where we examine the 2016 Global Mobile Trends Report, produced by Kantar Millward Brown and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). These organizations undertook the research, which encompassed MMA’s Global Smarties and Cannes Mobile Lions finalists, to identify mobile marketing trends, and understand the business impact of a winning mobile campaign.

Marketers of every stripe know that mobile-related activity on the internet exceeded desktop sometime around 2014, and has been on an upward trajectory ever since. Yet, though mobile has been a hot topic for several years, marketers continue to struggle to make it work successfully. And with good reason: The ecosystem is evolving at warp speed, so there are no absolute best practices to follow. The Kantar-MMA study provides tips and tricks for how to make the channel work for you. Here’s what you need to know.

Mobile Delivers on Branding Initiatives

Takeaway: Be open to using mobile platforms in new ways to renew your brand’s relevance among your target

Marketers flocked to the digital channel initially for its amazing tracking and conversion abilities. As the channel has evolved, stratification naturally occurred. Today, digital segments — organic search, paid search, display, email, etc. – have been defined and categorized for different jobs. And mobile, for the foreseeable future at least, is emerging as an effective branding tool.

Marketers Have Shifted Mobile Efforts from Sales to Equity & Engagement

Takeaway: Top performers consider deepening consumer engagement as important a mobile campaign objective as increasing sales

The study illustrates case studies from Samsung and Sony Pictures to show the impact that mobile techniques can deliver on mobile efforts aimed at getting consumers involved. Samsung used a campaign to get iPhone users to experience the Galaxy S6. Sony relied on mobile advertising to engage consumers about an upcoming movie (Goosebumps), which eventually landed in the #1 spot during opening weekend.

Mobile-First Campaigns Out-Perform Mobile Bolt-Ons

Takeaway: Mobile forms a creative cornerstone and can be bolstered by other channels

To say ‘great mobile campaigns put mobile as the cornerstone’ may seem redundant, obvious, or both. But mobile ads only accounted for about ⅓ of the U.S. marketplace last year. While mobile is growing faster than desktop (50%+ annually, versus ~5%), desktop will continue to be the majority digital advertising channel for at least a few more years.

So for all of the focus on mobile by Google and the other digital titans, mobile advertising is still adolescent and a needs to mature aggressively in order to evolve into a digital marketing best practice. In the meantime, sophisticated marketers who develop a genuine understanding f the channel will reap benefits until others catch up.

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BourgeoisTim Bourgeois (@ChiefDigOfficer) is a partner at East Coast Catalyst, a Boston-based digital consulting companyspecializing in strategic roadmaps, digital marketing audits, and online marketing optimization programs.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Omni-channel marketing is a must this holiday season

Early holiday indicators demonstrate that marketing to the hyper-connected consumer is necessary. The bar is set high to deliver a compelling, contextual and consistent brand experience across all communication channels. Why is omni-channel marketing so critical this holiday season?

Compared to last year, 6 in 10 consumers report that they will shop only online this holiday season, two-thirds of consumers will shop both online and offline and only 34% will shop mostly in-stores reports Yahoo’s Holiday and Search Insights 2016 report. In all, 37% of consumers said they will shop more online this year than a year ago.

Key findings include:

Holiday shopping is an omni-channel experience

  • 79% of consumers plan to purchase holiday gifts both in store and online

Shoppers are relying more and more on mobile as a “go-to” resource during the busy shopping season

  • On Black Friday, share of searches on mobile devices increased from 26% year-over-year

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the busiest shopping days of the year, many will not shop on these designated shopping days

  • 29% of holiday shoppers plan to stay away from shopping during Thanksgiving Week

As brands look to create multichannel promotions, it’s important to maintain their brand authenticity. Brands should stay true to the consumer experience across the multiple marketing channels as a key differentiate in the holiday fury.

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Industry-Research | Perspectives

Survey reveals how marketing pros make data-based decisions

Marketing has become a data-driven function and its success hinges on whether marketing managers can reliably measure the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives. The key to achieving this lies in our ability to collate and analyze diverse datasets so we can make informed decisions based on quantifiable information.

Success, among today’s marketing pros, means improving the bottom line and deepening customer relationships, while keeping teams in tune with an evolving marketplace.

A recent study by Ascend2 surveyed some 50,000 marketing professionals in an attempt to address the hot topic of marketing data management, revealing how marketers currently compile and reference their various data sets.

Most important data management goals

The three most important goals of marketing data management are:

  • improving ROI measurability
  • improving data quality
  • increase data use/accessibility

Data addresses many of the challenges facing marketers.

ascend2Crafting and adapting a marketing strategy to changing circumstances can be difficult with a lack of data. Predicting and preparing effectively for negative trends becomes much harder with poor insights. Even reporting to senior management or investors without sufficient data can create additional obstacles to gaining support for further campaigns.

This is where data can provide a lot of support. Ascend2’s research has found that 54% of professionals believe that data helps marketers arrive at “more accurate decisions.” Marketing data management can help managers guide their activities through real life decisions and marketing scenarios.

“I speak with marketers all the time who tell me the same thing – if you’re really going to be agile with your messaging and distribution strategies, then you need the ability to see what’s happening, across all channels, at a glance,” said Ben Carpel, CEO of Cyfe, a solution for creating performance monitoring dashboards.

Managing successful strategy
Managing strategy is directly connected to data management. More efficient use of data enables marketing managers to access it and make informed decisions based on it, quickly and easily.

Roughly 60% of the Ascend2 respondents reported that their use of data makes substantial contributions to the success of their overall marketing activities. In contrast, only 40% of companies and professionals rated their work “somewhat unsuccessful” or “very unsuccessful.”

“With data coming from so many different places, it can be difficult for a company to develop a consolidated view and an integrated approach to cross-channel marketing,” wrote Kerry Reilly, Adobe Campaign’s director of product marketing, in a recent op-ed. “It requires too much data maneuvering, the data’s not always in sync, and there’s lots of room for error.”

Outsourcing data management
Producing and managing this data can be a complex task, requiring highly skilled and analytical talent. Many companies don’t have this niche expertise inside of their organizations, leading to heavy reliance on SaaS, outsourcing to service providers or embarking on long-winded hiring processes.

Results from the Ascend2 study indicate that a lot of data management is provided by third-party organizations, while 64% of companies outsource all or part of their marketing data management. Only 36% of businesses manage their own marketing data in-house.

The modern marketing function is in a state of flux, and emerging data solutions put pressure on marketing leaders to constantly adapt to changing requirements. Despite this uncertainty, it is crucial that business units have a clear understanding of where the responsibility for data lies.

This is a fundamental imperative in day-to-day management activities, as 54% of businesses allocate data management and analysis to their marketing departments, whereas the other 42% share it between departments or even only with IT department.

Effective data and resources
Nearly all companies in the same study (97%) agreed that the effective use of marketing data is increasing. Marketing data management is a trending topic, and it’s constantly evolving.

In some cases, marketing data is being used to maximize profitability. Earlier this year, McKinsey demonstrated how tweaking prices by 1%, as informed by smart data modeling of marketing trends, has the power to boost operating profits by 8.7%.

There are many advances in the world of resources and tools within the data management space, allowing marketers to get closer to the data and deeper into its quality. Access to real-time and predictive data is currently a trending demand.

“Real-time data is critically important. Otherwise, business leaders may be making decisions off data that is no longer relevant,” notes Suzanne Mumford, head of marketing for the Google Analytics 360 Suite. “The business landscape changes so quickly, and stale data may inadvertently lead to the wrong decision.”

Data-driven marketing wins
Data-driven strategies are becoming more popular in the world of marketing, yielding campaigns that are more calculated and therefore primed to deliver effective, measurable results.

Relying on data for marketing decisions makes for superior visibility, more strategic planning and a better-equipped team, which is transforming the strategic marketers’ approach.

JoeLiebkindJoe Liebkind is a Berlin-based writer. He has worked with startups in sales and marketing roles in Berlin and New York. Find him on Twitter.

Perspectives

Trump and the Game of Thrones Effect: Why the election polls got it wrong

On election day morning, according to the majority of pollsters, Hillary Clinton seemed to have it in the bag. Nate Silver, predicted Clinton at a 71% win. A Clinton win was also forecast by 61 other national polls, including Fox, Reuters, Economist/YouGov, USA TODAY/Suffolk, and NBC News/SM. Indeed, as the votes started coming in on election night, you could feel the palpable shock among newscasters, as their precious data proved to come up so clearly wrong.

So, how did beloved data whiz Nate Silver and 61 other national polls mess up so “bigly”? Did the polls happen too late, before the impact of the additional Clinton email scandal hit? Did voter turnout have a play in it? Were samplings flawed? Or was it something else—something that perhaps speaks to deeper gaps in our understanding of human behavior and flaws in our overall approach to polling?

Public vs. Private Personas
One angle that is circulating is that many polled who said they were not going to vote for Trump were not telling the truth. Indeed, polling firm, Morning Consult reported that voters were more likely to say they want Trump in the White House anonymously online versus a live telephone interview. Meanwhile, Arie Kapetyn, director of the University of Southern California (USC) Dornsife Center of Economic and Social Research, whose organization jointly runs The Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California tracking poll (one of the few polls that did predict Trump as the winner) told reporters, “There’s some suggestion that Clinton supporters are more likely to say they’re a Clinton supporter than Trump supporters are to say they’re a Trump supporter.”

This theory that there was a discrepancy between what Trump supporters shared publicly versus what they did privately, is also supported by our Outbrain study authored by Roy Sassons, Outbrain’s Chief Data Technologist and Ram Meshulam, Outbrain’s Organic Recommendations Team Lead. The study revealed a significant gap exists between what we read privately and what we share publicly with friends.

Outbrain’s Research
Sassons and Meshulam’s research was comprised of two billion views on several hundred thousand articles from the world’s largest content and news websites. These views were then observed over three time periods between 2015 and 2016. Online content was split into categories using a natural language algorithm and was rated according to the ratio between the number of readers that read an article about a certain topic, and the number of readers that shared the article on Facebook.

What this data ultimately revealed is that categories that received many views and few shares did not reflect well on the personality of those who consumed them. In fact, most of them could be considered superficial, sexual or blunt.

On the other hand, categories that received many shares and little views were much more flattering. They tended to be more deep and intellectual.

And Outbrain’s data also revealed that this wasn’t isolated to a certain country or region—it was a global pattern. (Which might also explain why polls were so wrong regarding the controversial Brexit vote in the United Kingdom.)

Take, for example, specific content like “Game of Thrones.” When Sassons and Meshulam did a deeper dive on this content, they found that articles that were shared the most on Facebook focused on profound analysis and storyline prediction. Additionally, articles with a feminist spin that were focused on strong female characters, were also extensively shared.

Meanwhile, while the articles people read the most were focused on the show’s violent and sexual scenes, they rarely shared these stories on Facebook feeds.

The Silent Majority
Call it what you will: the “Game of Thrones Effect,” the “Trump Effect,” The “Brexit Effect,” what it adds up to is all the same. When it comes down to it, what we tend to share and present to the world is ultimately very different than who we are privately. This is something that the majority of election polls seemed to neglect in their analysis.

Further, if you couple this with our current social network-dominated society, in which the ordinary reader has tremendous power, sometimes equivalent to that of a magazine editor, you can also see why so many in the media world—Nate Silver, the pollsters, the bewildered newscasters reading the results on TV—may have felt like the rug was pulled out from under them.

In the age of social media, we decide what content we see based on our surroundings. The people connected to us in our network are exposed to the content we share and that, in turn, dictates what is exposed to others in their network. Since that decision is not always made based on the level of interest we really have in that specific content, the current “world map of interests” that everyone sees becomes distorted. This, in turn, eventually feeds the algorithms that recommend more content to us.

A recommendation system, be it human or automatic, must take this under consideration. It should find creative ways to fix these biases, or balance these representations with rich data from a source that reflects reader’s true preferences. Otherwise, expect more polling misses ahead.

jb_final_hannah_thomson-4Jennifer Bassett (@Jabers) is Outbrain’s Managing Editor. She has 10+ years of experience in the content strategy and editorial space. She began her career as a book editor and has consulted for top agencies, non-profits, and media companies including Memorial Sloan Kettering, Havas Worldwide New York, and Interbrand. When she’s not talking content, she’s playing music with her bands The Missing Footage and The Living Kills. You can read more of her writing at Outbrain.com and jennifer-bassett.com.

Perspectives

Media winners and losers post-election

Donald Trump’s ascent to president-elect of the United States was a complete shock — that is, according to mainstream media experts and journalists, many of whom initially considered his campaign a joke.

Now, just as Americans are divided, the media is even more polarized, with journalists forced into a moment of self-reflection as they gear up to cover the new administration. Let’s take a moment to consider how the media business fared during the campaign and election cycle.

Ad Spending

Losers: Hillary Clinton’s campaign; the broadcast industry
Winners: Donald Trump’s campaign; earned media

Compared to the 2012 elections, 2016’s presidential race proved to be a loss for the candidate who invested in running expensive television ads. As of late August, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and pro-Clinton PACs had spent more than $90 million on political advertising following the primaries while Donald Trump spent nothing, as Variety’s Jan Dawson reported.

By late September, it was obvious this unevenness had affected the broadcast industry: Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. took back its political-spending forecast for the year because of the unpredictability of the campaign, the Wall Street Journal’s Austen Hufford and Rebecca Ballhaus reported. The move sent broadcast industry stocks tumbling.

Following suit, Gray Television Inc., which owns stations in 51 markets across the U.S., also “withdrew its guidance for political advertising revenue for the rest of the year.” The primary reason above all else was the uncertainty from Donald Trump challenging the status quo — in this case, not putting in the ad dollars expected for a presidential campaign. Instead, Trump largely took to Twitter and free media to get his point across, and the simple messaging associated with his campaign helped enable its efficacy.

As Hufford and Ballhaus wrote, “Industry watchers are divided over whether the lower spending is a short-term anomaly caused by the abnormal nature of Mr. Trump’s campaign or a sign of a broader rollback of the importance of television advertising.”

One thing is certain: A frugal campaign that results in a victory is a win.

Pollsters and Data Journalists

Losers: Nearly everyone who predicted a win for Clinton.
Winners: Nate Silver for hedging; Allan Lichtman

From the New York Times to the Huffington Post, nearly every major media outlet using data science had specified that Donald Trump had a slim chance at winning — and so everyone in that crowd lost. “I’ve believed in data for 30 years in politics and data died tonight,” Republican strategist Mike Murphy declared in a tweet. “I could not have been more wrong about this election.”

But as numerous journalists and analysts have written since the elections, the wrongness has more to do with the failure of interpretation rather than a direct failure of numbers. Writing in Vanity Fair, Nick Bilton argued this is nothing new. “Polling has grown less accurate in recent years as society has changed,” he said. He cited how landline ownership in the U.S., a traditional polling method, has diminished, alongside the willingness to pick up the phone when an unfamiliar number calls. Then there’s the silent majority: “What’s clear now is that most of those who decided not to speak publicly about what they really planned to do in the voting booth were Trump supporters,” he wrote.

In an op-ed for the Guardian, data journalist Mona Chalabi argued that the obsession with “predicting opinions rather than listening to them” is to blame. Chalabi, who used to work at FiveThirtyEight, said that data journalism can be consumed by its own arrogance, to the extent that simply saying “it’s complicated” is not good enough. And Americans, who crave simplicity and a desire to know, wouldn’t have accepted that answer anyway.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight took heat for giving Hillary Clinton less of a chance than other sites, so he earned a slight repreive post-election. And then there’s the case of Professor Allan Lichtman, who uses a simple “13 keys” approach with true/false answers, and predicted that Trump would win. He now has picked the right winner since 1984 (though he was off on the popular this time, as Clinton won that).

Regulators and Mergers

Likely Losers:

Donald Trump regularly accused the media of being out to get him and claimed the elections were rigged. Now it looks like his administration would likely block certain mergers and acquisitions that would consolidate media power, notably the $85.4 billion AT&T/Time Warner deal.

The point of acquiring Time Warner — which owns CNN, which Donald Trump has frequently touted as biased — was for AT&T to diversify its revenue sources. As Jim Puzzanghera wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “the deal would transform telecommunications giant AT&T, which bought DirecTV last year, into the nation’s largest entertainment company.”

But Trump says the deal is precisely the kind of power structure he’s fighting against, as “it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” Comcast’s 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal is just as bad. “Deals like this destroy democracy and we’ll look at breaking that deal up and other deals like that,” Trump has said. “This should never ever have been approved in the first place.”

Still, the stock market has rallied since the election in the assumption that Trump will not follow through on a lot of his promises, so we’ll see if he backs up his rhetoric with action.

Social Media

Losers: Facebook and other social media for allowing the spread of fake news, and filter bubbles
Winners: Facebook and Twitter on election night with massive audiences and interactions

What happens with too many algorithms and an excessive number of news sites available on social media? Confirmation bias becomes the norm and it’s easy to miss out on other views, for one. That’s long been a concern as Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites — but especially Facebook, with its enormous power and reach. It’s in no small part why many Americans may have been shocked at the election results if nothing on their News Feeds hinted that such an outcome could have been likely.

But in the lead-up to the election — even as it helped Americans register to vote — Facebook’s series of missteps have shown the social giant is struggling to come to terms with the role it played in the U.S. election. Critics argue that Facebook allowed fake news, hyper-partisan websites and conspiracy theories to run rampant and spread untrue and misleading information. As Mark Zuckerberg remains firm that 99 percent of Facebook’s content is authentic, BuzzFeed’s Sheera Frenkel reported that an anonymous internal task force has formed within the company to take on fake news. And both Google and Facebook recently announced plans to stop allowing ads on sites with fake news.

Meanwhile, social media continues to dominate during big news events, and election night was no different. Twitter had a record 75 million tweets about the election that night, while Facebook had 115 million people generating 716 million likes, posts, comments and shares related to the election, and 643 million video views too. So while social media has been under the microscope for the spread of fake news, it still has massive reach and is becoming an ingrained media habit that’s hard to supplant.

Perspectives Image
Perspectives

DCN’s recommended reading: week of November 17, 2016

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

 

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Interstitial ads shown to alienate, not engage

More than 50 years later, the wisdom of Herbert Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian professor and philosopher who famously observed in 1964 that “the medium is the message,” continues to strike a chord, underlining the inextricable link between the mechanics of how companies deliver their message and the influence these messages have on customer behavior and brand perception.

It’s all about engaging in a way that adds value to the “conversation” — and the rules of engagement that held true for the delivery of more traditional content and communications go double for mobile. It’s a medium where evidence is mounting that advertising and marketing approaches that merely retrofit online display advertising to smaller screens are patently out of sync with the requirements of consumers in the “mobile moment.”

Consider the findings of a recent report published by PageFair, which documented the meteoric rise in the use of adblocking technology on mobile devices. Studies like this document a clear disconnect between what content companies want to deliver and what consumers are willing to accept. However, most studies, including the PageFair research, draw from empirical data, not user surveys, to explain people’s growing fatigue with mobile advertising. Until now precious few have dared to delve into the real and root cause of brand affinity, or frustration.

This is where a new report by neuromarketing companies True Impact and Neurons Inc., and commissioned by MediaBrix, an in-app mobile video advertising platform for brands, breaks new ground, documenting the “how” and “why” behind consumers’ negative response to interstitial ads.

The Brand Receptivity Neuro Lab Study, which was designed to help marketers understand how consumers react to and engage with different ad formats, relies on technology to monitor people’s neuro and biometric responses before, during and after the delivery of a mobile ad. Respondents were wired up to neurometric and physical eye-tracking devices, and each consumer was asked to complete a post-exposure interview and survey.

The aim was to explore how different methods of delivering the same ad inside a mobile app (also known as an in-app ad) impact respondents’ receptivity to advertising. To test this hypothesis researchers measured the emotional and physiological impact (heartbeat, attention and the feeling of “wanting” that drives urges and decision marking) messages from two brands, MillerCoors’ Smith and Forge Hard Cider and a popular CPG brand, had on respondents during their sessions on a gaming app.

Among the findings:

  • Viewers were twice as likely to have a negative emotional response to a full-page interstitial ad than to an embedded, opt-in ad format. Pupil dilation, heart rate and other biometric data revealed that full page video interstitial ads aroused the brain’s “fight-or-flight” center, which explains why interstitial ad viewers also focused 22% of the time they did spend looking at the ad searching for the “X” button to close down the ad altogether. In contrast, respondents “actually watch the embedded, opt-in units,” with close to 90% of viewers watching the full 30-second video, compared to only 25% of viewers watching an interstitial ad.
  • Embedded, opt-in ad viewers don’t just watch the ad; they also spend three times as much time fixated on the brand creative and they’re 8 times “more cognitively engaged” with ad message.
  • Overall, embedded, opt-in ad viewers spend 9.5 times more time “understanding/considering the embedded value exchange offered by the ad” than they do considering the interstitial ad unit. This deep engagement with embedded, opt-in ad units resulted in 70% of those viewers remembering the product and 73% understanding the brand offer. For viewers who experienced interstitial ads the results were 40% and 49% respectively.

Significantly, the study found that embedded, opt-in ad viewers are also more motivated. Motivation, which is a key brain imaging metric refers to the feeling of “wanting” that ultimately drives desire and decisions. High motivation levels in the brain therefore imply purchase intent and action.

“Those who experienced the contextual ad unit [embedded, opt-in ad unit] had four times a feeling of motivation according to neurometric measures,” the study concludes. In total 25% of embedded, opt-in ad viewers said the ads made them want to keep using the app.

This is a far cry from the “fight-or-flight” reaction triggered by full-page interstitial ads — and should send alarm bells ringing in board rooms everywhere on the planet, according to Richard Kosinski, MediaBrix President & Global CRO. “The key message is that the interstitial, the most common ad format, is also the format that users find most annoying and disruptive,” he explains. “Publishers need to consider formats that do not create a negative experience for their readership.”

He urges the industry to “rethink ad delivery and ad format” and remember the core importance of the user experience they deliver, not just the content.

The explosive growth of mobile apps — and the increase in the amount of time consumers spend on them daily — turns up the pressure on publishers to rethink mobile advertising and how they monetize their content. “Eyeballs have clearly shifted to mobile and mobile apps and publishers have to focus their efforts on creating a good user experience for their audience,” Kosinski says. “Our research shows that just running interstitials on mobile and in apps isn’t the way to achieve this.”

This dovetails with the 2016 U.S. Mobile App report released by audience measurement company comScore. It estimates that mobile now represents “almost two out of three digital media minutes.” As a result, mobile apps are approaching 60% of total digital time spent by consumers by platform.

Kosinski, a 25-year veteran in the media business who has held a variety of senior roles at brands including The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo!, CNET, Quantcast and Westwood One, advises content companies to rethink mobile ad creatives, not abandon them. The positive response by respondents to embedded, opt-in ad formats suggests that consumers might whole-heartedly embrace monetization models that reward them for watching a video, for example. “The result is a better experience for the consumer, who gets to read the article behind the pay wall, and higher engagement and higher CPMs for the publisher that enables this value exchange,” he says.

Opt-in ad experiences put consumers in control, but it’s not enough for publishers to change their creative message. They should also embrace the formats and delivery mechanisms proven to provide a positive user experience. This milestone study doesn’t just provide the industry with valuable blueprint to improve ad receptivity, human attention and brand recall. It bravely delves into the emotional and physiological traits and triggers publishers must understand to ensure their message (and marketing) is truly aligned with the mobile medium.

Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.

Perspectives

Be prepared for the weather to impact the holiday shopping season

The National Retail Federation (NRF) has issued a sunny forecast for holiday sales, within the months of November and December. They are calling for a 3.4% increase in brick-and-mortar sales and a 10.3% increase in online holiday sales. The NRF’s holiday sales forecast is based on an economic model that uses indicators such as consumer credit, disposable personal income, and previous monthly sales releases.

Of course, savvy retailers and those who work with them – as advertisers, partners, distributors, etc. – will also be watching our forecasts as will their potential customers. No matter how much money buyers have in their wallets or bank accounts, if the roads are hazardous due to a winter storm, traditional retail will suffer slow days at the register. If the same storm takes out power in a part of the northeast, online sales will also be hurt. And as happened in 2015, if there is fall like warmth in the air, no amount of marketing is going to move those winter parkas.

As the leader in pinpoint and long-range forecasting for business intelligence, we work with companies in every industry to help meet their specific needs. Supply chain and inventory, promotions and advertising, even foot traffic and web traffic all are impacted by weather.

If you or your partners and advertisers are counting on strong Holiday Sales, here are a few things you should know, brought to you by the meteorologists and analysts of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions. (Spoiler Alert: If you are counting on November-December 2016 behaving like 2015 you’re likely to be taken by surprise.)

November Turkey & Shopping Season:
Look for a calm start throughout much of the U.S. But don’t expect it to stay that way.

  • After a mild start to November, we are expecting temperatures to cool to near or even below normal from the northern Plains to the Northeast. This change includes cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit to New York City and Boston.
  • An active storm track through the northern Plains into the Great Lakes may enhance the risk for some snowfall particularly across northern Plains and Upper Midwest. Week three of November and beyond is the best chances. This can impact travel, airports and roadways on the negative side for this region.
  • Some lake effect snow looks possible during the holiday week as well as colder air filter over the relatively warm waters. Right along the lake-shore may be too mild for all snow, but just inland, travel can be rough in spots.
  • The Southwest looks to remain warm and dry.
  • Southern Plains, southern Rockies and most of the Carolinas mainly dry with weak impacts from cold fronts compared to areas further north.

The Big December Holidays:
This year won’t be as mild as December 2015 and retailers should be ready.

  • Compared to last year, it is expected to be much colder across the northern tier and slightly warmer across the southern tier.  Temperatures were close to 60 in Chicago and in the 70s in New York City around Christmas last year, which is 25-35 degrees above normal. This year should be closer, or perhaps, below normal around Christmas in these cities.
  • With a colder air mass around, lake effect snow can be more impressive downwind of the Great Lakes. Buffalo, Erie, Syracuse are just a few cities that can be impacted with heavy snowfall.
  • The northern Plains through the Great Lakes into the Northeast will see fast moving storms featuring some snowfall, likely more than we last year along with colder conditions.
  • The Northwest looks to feature a more active regime this season, with more opportunities for rain and mountain snows.
  • The Southeast will be mainly mild and dry, but increasing cold fronts will provide cooler conditions north during this time near the New Year.

What does the forecast mean for retailers
aes_retail_onesheet_finalRemember, consumer behavior is based on consumer’s perceptions based on recent years – not on historical averages. Winter parkas and sports equipment that had to be sold at a discount following last year’s holiday season in many parts of the U.S. will be in higher demand this year. But the winter weather can also take away from foot traffic to retail outlets and create supply challenges can also give to online retailers.

  • Compared to last year, Holiday shoppers in the Northeast will perceive this year colder and snowier and this will ultimately affect consumer behavior with a holiday season that looks promising for retailers selling winter-related products.
  • Above average snowfall and colder weather during the month of December for the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, and Interior New England has the potential to cause moderate to high disruption for brick and mortar stores. However, the same disruptions for retail outlets could mean a boost in online sales.
  • December appears to have a stark jump in demand for winter related merchandize and with the expected long, extended winter, inventory levels will have to keep up.
  • Delivery of products will be dependent on the frequency and quantity of snowfall. Maximum daily snowfall may exceed 6 inches in the northern tier of the country as rounds of wintry weather plagues cities from St. Paul, MN to Boston, MA.  This will increase the likelihood of shipment delays so it is essential businesses ensure timely and effective management for high risk areas.

Ensuring Bright & Profitable Holidays
It’s a fact that weather impacts nearly every part of our economy in the U.S. and globally. It drives demand, impacts supply lines, and makes clear winners and losers in a competitive retail landscape.

The difference is business intelligence. AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions works with clients to give them a more complete operational view on a location and SKU level and driven by AccuWeather SmartWarn™, the most advanced weather forecast engine in the world.

SmartWarn has the most complete global real-time and historical weather data including unique real-time datasets from around the world with exclusive observations, satellite, and radar platforms and the most robust database of forecast models, proprietary patented technology, and comprehensive validation results – SmartWarn helps AccuWeather deliver forecasts with Superior Accuracy for enterprises in every industry.

A surprising number of global enterprises are still taking big chances with the weather, using two-year averages instead of detailed, long-term analysis, relying on free weather reports that don’t cover the season, and allowing each location to make its own determinations ad hoc rather than establishing a corporate standard.

Although Halloween is barely behind us, it’s not too early to start thinking about Holiday Shopping. Whether you’re thinking about your own list of loved ones or the profitability of your holiday season, it’s too important to leave up to chance.

mark-ebelMark Ebel serves as Vice President of Business Services for AccuWeather, leading all aspects of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions commercial solutions division. Worldwide in scope, Ebel’s main areas of focus include the development and oversight of AccuWeather’s B2B strategic plan and product innovation roadmaps to deliver a new level of business intelligence.

Perspectives Image
Perspectives

DCN’s recommended reading: week of November 10, 2016

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Perspectives | Policy

How the new FCC privacy rules can work for our industry

In late October, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved sweeping new privacy rules, which require Internet providers Service Providers (ISPs) to obtain affirmative opt-in consent before collecting and using sensitive consumer data. Importantly, sensitive data was defined broadly by the FCC to include financial and health data, geolocation, social security numbers and—for the first time—browsing history and app usage data. ISPs would need to offer consumers a way to opt-out of the collection and use of non-sensitive data. With Donald Trump’s election, a Republican-led FCC is likely to withdraw or significantly alter these privacy rules. So, where do we go from here?

It is important to note there is significant precedent and support for requiring a higher data collection threshold for ISPs. In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a report, entitled “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change,” which laid out a framework for how companies should protect consumer privacy. The report drew lines between practices that would meet an average consumer’s expectations and those that would not. In their argument for a heightened requirement for ISPs, the FTC noted that “ISPs serve as a major gateway to the internet with access to vast amounts of unencrypted data that their customers send or receive over the ISP’s network. Thus, ISPs are in a position to develop highly detailed and comprehensive profiles of their customers—and to do so in a manner that may be completely invisible.”

In addition, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), the industry’s self-regulatory body, holds ISPs to a heightened requirement because they are in a unique position to “collect all or substantially all” of a consumer’s data. As the DAA Principles note, ISPs or “service providers” must “obtain the consent of users before engaging in online behavioral advertising.” For comparison, the DAA requires only that websites offer consumers a way to opt out.

This differentiated treatment of ISPs exists for good reason—there are fundamental differences between ISPs and other actors in the ecosystem. While the FCC has asserted on several occasions that it has no ability to regulate edge providers (aka websites), FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler also recognizes the difference between ISPs and edge providers. He has noted that consumers have fundamental choices about which websites they visit, while they do not have the same kind of choice when it comes to their ISPs. Indeed, the above-mentioned FTC 2012 Privacy Report notes that data collection and use by publishers like members of DCN tends to meet consumers’ expectations because that data collection and use occurs within the same context.

As we noted last February, context matters. DCN members go to great lengths to provide a trusted experience for consumers because our members understand that consumers have a myriad of places from which to get news, entertainment and information on the internet. This trusted experience and direct relationship with the consumer is also the value proposition for advertisers. Ubiquitous and non-transparent tracking by 3rd parties undermines the trusted experience that premium publishers are striving to create for their audiences.

As Ben Thompson notes in his post-election wrap, digital advertising has been built to be mostly direct marketing and data arbitraging on the failed premise that consumers don’t really care about their individual privacy or right to use the web without being tracked by 3rd parties. But the reality is that consumers do care – they’re limiting their online activity, clearing cookies, enabling Do Not Track signals and increasingly adopting ad blocking software. The current dynamic that favors a clear (and legal) arbitrage opportunity is actually harming advertisers and publishers along with the consumers they both serve and need. To continue ignoring these consumer concerns is likely to invite more regulatory scrutiny and foster an unhealthy digital economy. But, more importantly, ignoring these trends is also a missed opportunity for premium publishers who are best positioned to benefit from increased consumer trust.

While there will be significant debate about whether the FCC should have acted and whether the rules should be repealed, let’s be clear: Value should be shifted back to companies that collect and use consumer data transparently and in ways that meet with consumer expectations. In this way, the FCC privacy rules may serve to help publishers. If more companies act in an open and respectful manner, perhaps we can begin to repair the consumer trust issues that have battered our industry. In a world where context matters, premium publishers matter.

Advertising | Perspectives

How out-of-home is evolving to join the digital paid media mix

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising has been around for generations in the form of billboards, posters, public transport hub walls, bus benches and more. While these paid media placement opportunities are still around, they’ve been quietly undergoing some significant digitally-enhanced upgrades, including programmatic bidding, viewability tracking and intent-oriented targeting.

As a result, OOH is the first “offline” media realm to join the ranks of connected digital media platforms. Let’s look at how this trend is taking shape.

Why Media Buyers are Looking for Better Digital Options
In the early days of the internet, display ads were all marketers needed for their messages to be seen. Now, however, the vast majority of display ads, both on desktop and mobile, don’t command much attention at all.

This is largely because audience members have become desensitized, developing “banner blindness. However, there are plenty more issues in play: ad blockers, viewability measurement challenges, bot traffic and rampant fraud, all of which are making alternative digital ad media types increasingly attractive to buyers. One study from Integral Ad Science found that just 43% of online display ads are “human-viewable.”

Naturally, as a result of these challenges, advertisers and media brokers are hunting for new ways to reach eyeballs. If no one pays attention to your ads, then you’re simply wasting your money.

Why Media Buyers Struggle to Justify Unmeasurable Placements
In the age of granular conversion tracking and sophisticated attribution modeling, media buyers need to have the ability to demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) on their placements. This type of measurement is relatively straightforward when buying ads on Facebook, for example, but most offline media simply can’t compete in this regard.

If they can’t prove how many people saw or remembered the ad, and then gather data suggesting the extent to which the ads impacted sales, they can’t determine whether the buy was any good. It’s easy to run an ad continuously – knowing how many people saw and paid attention to it is the challenge.

Online media has, to a large extent, spoiled the viability of buying offline media. We have access to all this big data – nearly anything done in the digital world can be traced with ease – which makes it easier for marketers and other professionals to see what’s happening as a result of advertising. That’s why there’s rising demand today for similar tracking in offline media too.

The day may come when print publications use internet of things-enabled nano-chips to track ad views and attention biometrics to collect data that will later be used for audience segmentation, automated nurturing and strategy refinement. In the meantime, only outdoor advertising has the one-to-many reach to justify investing in better transparency and reporting for advertisers and media buyers. That said, smart industry players are evolving cautiously, as “big brother” privacy concerns come into play whenever behavioral tracking comes up.

Digital out-of-home media is therefore steering clear of keeping records associated with individual audience members, with several initiatives now in play that can provide performance metrics based on attention-correlated eye movements. Trade groups like Route and TAB now offer media measurement and audience estimates for OOH advertising in the UK and the US respectively.

How Digital OOH Is Addressing Offline Media Accountability 
OOH sellers are investing in development as well. Clear Channel Outdoor Americas is partnering with mobile carriers like AT&T to track whether people who see billboard ads eventually buy the products promoted. “In aggregate, that data can then tell you information about what the average viewer of that billboard looks like,” Andy Stevens, senior VP of research and insights at Clear Channel recently told the New York Times. “Obviously that’s very valuable to an advertiser.”

Following a successful pilot last year, with 1000 screens placed in 20 supermarkets across Canada, Montreal-based Impax Media recently hired Dominick Porco and Bill Ketcham, both alumni of the Adspace Digital Mall Network executive team, to oversee the relatively new company’s push to take over the US.

The Impax platform offers digital advertising on screens mounted at the checkout line at grocery stores and other retail outlets. Impax’s screens can be seen whether the lane is closed and locked or open and in use. Each screen provides advertisers with the information they need to track ROI on media spends, while protecting viewer privacy. The screens are set to display brand-sponsored content and store announcements, running in a loop.

“Our plan is to install an average of eight screens per month in each of 167 supermarkets, starting in August of this year,” says Porco. “At that rate, Impax will be active in 10,000 supermarkets within five years, reaching over 130 million shoppers every four weeks, on a network that will consist of 80,000 screens – by far the largest digital network in the US.”

The Internet of Things Makes Programmatic Booking Possible
For those interested in enabling it on their smartphones, beacon technology allows people to receive notifications about sales at stores as they pass by them. With beacons and near-field communication (NFC), advertisers can more accurately target people based on their location away from home, when they are 41% more receptive to advertising. So advertisers can already target people based on where they are, whether serving up messages via mobile push notifications or via video clips on big, wall-mounted screens.

With programmatic bidding currently under development for the OOH industry, buyers may soon be able to more accurately target their appropriate audiences, and sellers will benefit from being able to offer a fully optimized media asset.

Imagine the power of being able to serve up messages to individuals, no matter where they go in the real world. Creepiness aside, this is personalization at its most extreme. pers

Programmatic DOOH will allow marketers to reach audience members in high proximity to points of purchase, across multiple touchpoints, and on a budget that works for the client while also meeting business objectives. With the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure on the rise and back end targeting processes ready to take place in real-time, this type of contextual relevance is around the corner.

The Benefits of Today’s OOH Placements
In the age of complex, individualized customer journeys, media buying success hinges on omni-channel exposure, and digital OOH is proven to be a major performer in this regard. A study from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America found that when people see OOH ads and eventually interact with advertisers online, nearly a quarter of these interactions take place within 30 minutes of viewing.

DOOH is proven to be cost-effective, too, with CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) starting at $1.50 and maxing out at about $35, according to one recent industry-wide inventory assessment. The only media channels that are less expensive – radio, magazines and static billboards – feature zero viewability reporting capabilities.

OOH advertising’s joining of the digital paid media mix means people are exposed to promotional content that they actually want to see. This increases the chance they’ll respond to the ads positively, boosting conversion rates and profits for the advertisers, while earning money for venues as well.

JoeLiebkindJoe Liebkind is a Berlin-based writer. He has worked with startups in sales and marketing roles in Berlin and New York. Find him on Twitter.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

Three key takeaways from the media leaders at Folio’s C-Summit

As part of its annual show October 31-November 2, Folio hosted a one day C-Summit. The invitation-only event focused on top strategic imperatives for magazine media organizations. Led by Hanley Wood CEO Peter Goldstone, the day provided an intimate conversation between panelists and attendees.

Here are three key takeaways from the discussion:

1. People matter (a lot): Many of the day’s speakers expressed that competitive recruiting and managing millennials to their fullest potential are significant challenges. Across the board, it was apparent that these leaders feel that having the right people to drive the organization from both strategic and tactical levels is a top priority.

“We need to teach all employees to think about the end game and how they can contribute Give them a voice, an opportunity to express ideas and concerns… We need to give them pride of ownership in solutions.”

—Bonnie Kintzer, CEO TMBI

“It used to be that the people in charge knew everything…Well, we’re in a learn-together mode now, particularly as we try to build new lines of business. Of the 46 people we have hired at AIM since January, 32 have job descriptions that didn’t exist before they were hired.”

—Andrew W. Clurman, President & CEO, Active Interest Media (AIM)

“The scariest thing is to have an opportunity but not have the capacity to deliver. For example, we find that companies want to connect with customers by feeding them, but staffing the event side has been a challenge… Creating the right culture is absolutely critical.”

—Catherine Neville, Publisher & Founder, Feast Magazine

“Running a media related company over the past 10 years has been a tough job. There are a lot of dead men walking. Employees are key to transforming business. You need to attract, retain, and develop people who will change your business or you will be one of those dead men walking.”

—Tom Kemp, Chairman CEO of Northstar Travel Group

2. Advertising is data and context driven: Digital advertising is increasingly driven by data—particularly in the B2B space, which is focused on lead-generation. However, context matters as does bigger-picture understanding of what the advertiser’s objectives are and how to creatively accomplish those goals.

“Advertisers are asking: What is the value you are going to give us, how are you going to bundle stuff? That said, they don’t always really know what they are asking. They want, and need you to know more about their biz than they do.”

—Jim Elliot, President James C. Elliot Co. Inc.

“We have to be sure we are producing products our customers want to buy, not just what we want to sell, so that we continue to have the relationship with them that supports the business. And yes, we need to be able to provide as much audience data as possible. We’re thinking less about selling advertising than selling all the assets we have.”

—Tom Kemp, Chairman CEO of Northstar Travel Group

“Programmatic is inevitable because it is a far more efficient for sellers and buyers. At Hanley Wood, we love programmatic because we have the data. What we’re seeing is a bifurcation in the value proposition between what publishers brought to the table—the value of our insight around the data and the audience—versus the value of the content and placing ads in context.”

—Peter Goldstone, CEO, Hanley Wood

“Thinking about some of the new players…yes, they are taking dollars away and disrupting things because they play by their own rules. But we must continue to behave in a way that is extremely responsible because of our brands’ reputations. We’ve been successful with our ad-sales guarantee. We’ve partnered with Nelsen to measure return on ad spend. We spend a lot of time on measurement and in our strategic partnerships. It is an area of emphasis and focus to demonstrate efficacy.”

—Mark Rothschild, SVP, Meredith Digital.

3. You’ve got to put your money where your progress is. Despite a seemingly endless desire to innovate, the reality is that resources are finite and making smart decisions about what to fuel and what to fold is critical.

“We have to focus on how to grow the business despite managing a mature print portfolio. There’s always a lot to do, but what do you choose not to do is just as important. As you think about your portfolio, resource allocation decisions are imperative.”

 —Peter Goldstone, CEO, Hanley Wood

“We looked at a lot of areas with underperforming assets, many outside the US, which we are in the process of selling. We are focused on being a strong US and Canadian content producer. The hardest parts are the print versus the digital pieces of the game.”

—Bonnie Kintzer, CEO TMBI

“There are lots of new shiny ideas that pop up in this industry. Yes, some are good…but others aren’t, and you have to be able to tell the difference, or figure it out fast.”

 —Jim Elliot, President James C. Elliot Co. Inc.

“As an industry, there’s a drag of products that need to close, that have served their purpose, but closing them creates an opportunity to start something new. And there’s always a new opportunity.”

—David Carey, President, Hearst Magazines

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