Tags containing: "advertising"

Infographic: Online Video Advertising Insights

April 24, 2014 DCN

With nearly all of our favorite websites now featuring video content, online video advertising is no longer a market for just YouTube and Hulu. The market for online video advertising, while young, is already enormous and it’s growing rapidly. Last year eMarketer forecasted that digital video ad spending will grow to $9.1 billion in 2017, and nearly one third of marketers are already shifting budget from online display and television advertising into online video ads, according to a 2013 study from Adap.tv and Digiday.

For publishers and advertisers there are still many challenges and questions about how to best capitalize on online video advertising. For example: What is the ideal duration for a video ad? What are some sophisticated ways to package video with traditional digital advertising to increase brand visibility?

To begin to answer these questions and gain insights into the online video advertising market, MediaRadar analyzed thousands of online video ads across more than 100 websites between November 2013 and January 2014. The study revealed some very interesting trends.

A few quick takeaways:

While the vast majority (79%) of online video ads are either 15 or 30 seconds long, 30 second ads are about 10 times more likely to have a skip option than 15 second ads. Perhaps counter-intuitively, shorter ads can deliver more brand messaging than longer ads.
When it comes to the high-impact packaging of online video with various forms of display and rich media ads, there are opportunities to be an early adopter within certain categories. While 52% of video ads on food websites are accompanied by display ads, just 11% of ads on tech sites also feature an accompanying display ad.

The findings are summarized in the infographic below:

Perspectives | Revenue

Q&A with Rachelle Considine, President Future US, on Cross-Platform Advertising

March 19, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights… If you want to learn more, keep an eye out on our site for more interviews. Today’s Three on Three interview is with Rachelle Considine, President Future US on the subject of cross-platform advertising.

Q: What is the biggest hurdle in creating, selling and delivering a cross-platform advertising initiative?

A: One of the biggest hurdles we face is changing the mindset of the client/advertiser. Our users have migrated cross-platform and expect to have a seamless experience when they consume our content across various platforms. However, the advertiser does not always see the same value of an impression across platform. To help mitigate this issue, we sell one digital impression to our clients unless specified “mobile only”, “desktop only”, etc. We believe that the value should be the same if not more if you reach a person in the environment of their choice.

We recently overhauled GamesRadar to not only be a mobile optimized site but also incorporate responsive design. This has helped us with the battle as our ad performance has increased and the feedback we have received from the advertising community has been extremely positive.

Q: Describe a recent cross-platform advertising campaign that you think is particularly innovative or successful:

A: One recent cross-platform campaign we ran was for Activision’s Call of Duty: Ghosts title. We ran their creative across the desktop, mobile and tablet versions of GamesRadar. It served the advertiser’s need to reach their target wherever they were accessing gaming content.

Really, this comes back to our revamp of GamesRadar. We know that gamers are not on desktops anymore and we needed to make this site not just mobile-optimized, but truly responsive. It was important that we had a launch sponsor on board who understood what we were doing, one that is really out there testing the marketplace. We worked closely with Activision’s agency and made sure their creative looked great across screens.

In the past, our click through rate—which I am not a fan of as a measure—was not as high as our competitors. Well, Activision reported that we were the best performing site of all the gaming platforms they worked with. They got it: Activision loved the fact that the experience is built for the audience in their specific environments. It is crazy to say, but some advertisers still don’t get it. Their mindset is stuck in the desktop.

Q: How do you approach the cross-platform sale organizationally?

A:When I joined Future in 2009, one of the first things we did was combine the sales teams. Everyone became responsible for selling across all platforms. We further consolidated the teams and they now not only sell across platform but also across brands. This has allowed us to compete for bigger advertising dollars and non-endemic clients. This was not an easy thing to do. We actually had to approach it as “change the mindset or change the people.”

We are way past the magazine sale. We don’t sell games; we don’t sell technology. We sell audience. With the cross-platform, cross-brand approach we can give advertisers a larger total reach or allow them to go after a specific audience. At the end of the day, we create content people care about. We enable the advertiser to reach an audience that is engaged and influential with their peers.

As President, Rachelle Considine oversees all of Future U.S. and is a member of Future PLC’s global management board. Previously, in her role as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Considine led all marketing and sales across Future’s games, technology, and men’s special-interest markets. She drew on her expertise in working with some of the world’s most well known brands, including Best Buy, Hyundai and 7-11, to apply new ways to connect with readers and partners to grow the company and viewership. Considine joined Future U.S. in 2009 as General Manager of the Games Advertising Group. Prior to joining Future, Considine served as Vice President of Sales for What They Like, Inc. and earlier in her career, she held several management roles in the video game industry, notably as the National Sales Director for Fox Interactive Media/IGN Entertainment and MySpace Games Group. Considine began her media career partnering with such clients as PeopleSoft, Edmunds.com and WesternUnion.com as an offline media planner, and served as an online media planner for Starcom Worldwide and Starcom IP.

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Also in this series:

Q&A With Greg Jackson, Chief Data Officer, Everyday Health Inc. on Cross-Platform Advertising

Q&A With Jeff Misenti, Chief Digital Officer, Fox News on Cross-Platform Advertising

Revenue

Q&A With Greg Jackson, Chief Data Officer, Everyday Health Inc. on Cross-Platform Advertising

March 17, 2014 DCN

This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights… If you want to learn more, keep an eye out on our site for more interviews. Today’s Three on Three interview is with Greg Jackson, Chief Data Officer, Everyday Health Inc. on the subject of cross-platform advertising.

Q: What is the biggest hurdle in creating, selling and delivering cross-platform advertising initiatives?

A:The biggest challenge in cross-platform communication is the accurate and timely linking of users’ attributes across devices. Many publishers have the capability to personalize an experience or target advertising to specific segments within a single platform. However, without a mechanism to identify the same user as they migrate between devices, the continuity of content and advertising messaging, as well as, measurement is lost.

At Everyday Health, user registration provides the foundation for our cross-channel attribution. With over 65 million users and a third of all US physicians registered on our properties, we are able to bring together an individual’s activity and interests to provide a seamless targeting platform for content and marketing.

Similar to Pandora personalizing a music experience, Everyday Health personalizes health content. An Everyday Health registered user specifies their initial health interests, and our content personalization engine begins customizing their experience on site and in newsletters, regardless of the access device. As a user provides feedback into what they like or don’t like, the targeting algorithm becomes further refined for a better, more relevant experience that delivers higher engagement.

The same applies to the user targeting capabilities we provide our advertising partners. As a user migrates between devices, our registration data and shared ad serving platform, facilitate the continuity of a marketer’s campaign. More importantly, we are able to measure the impact of those campaigns on a user’s offline behavior for true ROI measurement.

All of this is made possible by a singular data platform that provides a holistic view of a user’s interests and activities and a capacity to leverage that information in real-time across platforms. At Everyday Health, we have invested well over $100 million to aggregate and engage our registered audience with personalized content and marketing because relevancy matters.

Q: Describe one of your recent or forthcoming cross-platform advertising campaigns that you think is particularly innovative or successful.

A:We believe that every digital campaign is a cross-platform campaign regardless of whether it’s intended or not. Users will access content whenever, wherever and on whatever device they want and it is our job as digital publishers and marketers to migrate our messaging across these platforms. We deliver most campaigns to the target user agnostic to platform, instead optimizing for engagement and offline impact.

Everyday Health has been delivering cross-platform solutions in digital for over ten years, and are now beginning a new cross-platform integration between digital and TV. We have matched our health audience to set-top box data to better understand the TV programming that specific user segments are watching. We are now working with a major pharmaceutical company to concentrate their TV marketing to those stations and programs where their target audience over-indexes. While 1:1 addressable TV at scale is still developing, this new audience-centric approach across TV and digital platforms will amplify the media dollar impact of both channels and deliver ROI improvement.

Q: How do you approach the cross-platform sale organizationally?

A:Our sales team is solution oriented, not aligned by channel. We understand that a marketer’s key objective is to inform and motivate their target audience to take action. It’s our responsibility to know our audience, provide engaging solutions across devices, and then optimize delivery based on the real behavior impact each is having. To be successful at this, we cannot be constrained by channel silos but instead leverage the best delivery mechanism for driving consumers to take action.

As audiences become more mobile, marketers are beginning to acknowledge the need for cross-platform buys. The channel specific agencies, budgets, and strategies are beginning to converge and our investment in audience, data and platform will insure we can successfully support their objectives for the future.

Greg Jackson is the Chief Data Officer for Everyday Health. As CDO, Jackson is responsible for establishing data acquisition and utilization strategies for the firm and he is directly responsible for the company’s Precision Health Data Institute. Jackson also oversees Health Reach, the company’s off-portfolio targeted media solution. Prior to joining Everyday Health, Jackson served as President and CMO of Fathead. He has 20+ years’ experience in operations management and direct marketing, with a focus on cross-channel marketing, user engagement and lifetime value optimization, and audience monetization.

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Also in this series:

Q&A with Rachelle Considine, President Future US, on Cross-Platform Advertising

Perspectives | Revenue

Q&A with Peter Longo, CEO IDG TechNetwork & CDO IDG Communications, on Premium Programmatic

March 10, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights… If you want to learn more, keep an eye out on our site for more interviews. Today’s Three on Three interview is with Peter Longo, CEO IDG TechNetwork & CDO IDG Communications on the subject of “Premium Programmatic” advertising.

Q: How would you define premium programmatic as it compares to what we’ve come to know as “programmatic advertising”?

A:Quite honestly, the definition is constantly changing. What we thought was programmatic two years ago, and what we thought it was six months ago, and where it is today are all very different. As advertisers continue to experiment, this definition is going to keep shifting. Ask me in a month what it means.

When we talk about premium programmatic at IDG Communications, part of it has to do with how the inventory is positioned and structured, and part the advertisers we deal with. At IDG TechNetwork, premium programmatic actually competes with our direct-sold inventory. However, while our IDG owned and operated brands such as Computerworld and CIO still have brand-specific reps, for the IDG TechNetwork, we have combined teams so that advertisers can deal with the same rep much of the time.

We position premium programmatic the same way we do all of our sales: What is the audience you are trying to reach, what are the campaign parameters, and how can we best deliver results? The conversation starts the same way we’ve always approached it. We talk about their objectives, who they are trying to reach and what they are trying to achieve.

Q: Describe the way in which your organization handles programmatic?

A:Five years ago, we decided to create our TechNetwork, which includes more than 500 publisher sites, as a way to provide scale to our owned and operated business. Three years ago, we decided to go into programmatic because, as a network, we had a lot of programmatic at our disposal and wanted to deal with it effectively.

The way we use premium programmatic gives us the ability to create micro audiences at scale. For example, say an advertiser wants to reach people interested in cloud computing at companies with more than 500 employees. With data and programmatic, you can build a sizeable audience even for something really targeted. Now we’ve got our owned and operated sites and the network inventory combine that with first-party data, and that gives us a demand-side platform so we can buy programmatically, as well increase the size of these audiences.

The data makes a big difference. It allows us to create this micro audience and use creative rotation to deliver the most value. When an impression is served, we factor in what we know about the person behind the impression: Have they visited our sites? Have they read any articles that are part of our product suite? Have they visited our shopping cart? This information lets us figure out where they are in the buying cycle so we can serve the right ad, be that one that is for someone just starting to research or someone ready to make a purchase decision.

The ability to use first-party data also keeps us from undercutting display. The advertiser can be specific about who they are targeting. So, we build value back into the chain programmatically. At the end of the day, it is a very specific way of doing advertising. If there is value, we’ll maintain our CPMs because, with programmatic, there’s not a lot of places to hide.

Q: What types of marketing initiatives lend themselves best to leveraging programmatic, and what advice would you give publishers weighing programmatic pros and cons?

A:We’ve done a ton of direct response in premium programmatic. It goes back to the very specific audience, a very specific individual or group—those are the ones that work best. We don’t see it used much for general branding campaigns.

The value of programmatic always comes back to reaching a very specific profile at scale. Marketers are looking for efficiencies and results. One of the great things about programmatic is that you know almost instantly how something is performing and, as a publisher, you have a lot of flexibility to adjust the audience you are targeting.

I realize there’s still some hesitation on the part of publishers to incorporate programmatic into the mix but I would encourage them to continue to test it and to evaluate pricing models as well. The biggest fear among publishers is that programmatic is going to devalue pricing. Do some testing around performance. You can build a lot of value back into the pool with data mining.

Keep in mind that programmatic can dramatically expand the audience you offer your advertisers, and it can put you back in control because you can be the arbiter of what is good on the web.

Peter Longo is the CEO of IDG TechNetwork Chief Digital Officer of IDG Communications. Longo, who joined IDG six years ago, has built IDG TechNetwork into the leading tech vertical ad network and exchange and has defined and led IDG’s data-driven strategy. In 2013, Longo assumed added responsibilities as IDG’s first Chief Digital Officer. In that role, Longo oversees all digital operations in IDG’s U.S. media subsidiary, IDG Communications, including ad operations, development of creative systems and functionality, demand generation, branding, video, and mobile. Longo brought to IDG a 20 year career in media sales and senior management. He began his career at CMP Media but in 1991 moved to Ziff Davis Media where he held several executive positions. Longo rose from associate publisher to publisher, group publisher, and executive vice president with titles such as PC Magazine, PC Week/eWeek, and Computer Shopper. In 2003, he joined Zinio, first as executive vice president and then rose to president at the digital magazine provider.

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Also in this series:

Q&A with Neil Johnston, Cox’s EVP of Strategy & Digital Innovation on Premium Programmatic

Q&A with Chip Schenck, VP/Programmatic Sales & Strategy, Meredith on Premium Programmatic

Q&A With Jeff Misenti, Chief Digital Officer, Fox News on Cross-Platform Advertising

Perspectives | Revenue

Q&A with Neil Johnston, Cox’s EVP of Strategy & Digital Innovation on Premium Programmatic

February 25, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights… If you want to learn more, keep an eye out on our site for more interviews. Today’s Three on Three is with Neil Johnston, Cox Media Group’s Executive VP of Strategy & Digital Innovation on Premium Programmatic.

Q: How would you define Premium Programmatic as it compares to what we’ve come to know as “Programmatic Advertising”?

A: The value proposition of programmatic advertising is the efficiency and scale that automated buying confers. Premium programmatic retains these values, while adding in the safety and fidelity of guaranteed site-direct buying. Technologically speaking, this means bypassing an RTB exchange in favor of exposing and booking a subset of inventory directly against a publisher’s primary ad server.

This has advantages for both demand side buyers and supply side publishers. Buyers are able to selectively access quality, site-specific, high impact inventory in a highly efficient way, while publishers are able to increase yield by accessing the high demand programmatic sales channel in a transparent and optimized way.

Despite the moniker, “Premium” does not necessarily mean better – it’s simply another buying tool that suits certain campaigns more than others. The name is more a reflection of the relative scarcity of this guaranteed inventory compared to the rest of programmatic space, as well as the higher prices that come with that. Premium may be better suited to certain branding campaigns, for example, while RTB might be better leveraged by performance campaigns run through DSPs that can optimize against its scale in real-time.

Q: Describe the way in which your organization handles programmatic?

A: Our CMG properties leverage the technology of our subsidiary, Cox Digital Solutions (CDS), on the programmatic supply-side to excellent results. Some of our sites seek to maximize yield, others maximize fill, and still others are most concerned about protecting CPMs and direct sales channels. CDS’ proprietary dynamic floor optimization technology lets us optimize demand tailored to our properties specific needs.
On the sell-side, our inventory has been included in private exchange deals facilitated by CDS through our partners at Casale Media to buyers such as MediaMath. We are currently exploring our options to expose guaranteed inventory programmatically.

Q: What types of marketing initiatives lend themselves best to leveraging programmatic and how can the premium approach better deliver?

A: Practically any campaign, shy of a truly integrated/native one, can benefit from the advantages of programmatic. While there is currently a bias towards premium for branding and RTB for performance, the lines are blurring, as scale and measurement improve optimization in the premium space, and transparency and viewability improve brand safety in the RTB space.

My advice here is simply that while programmatic will evolve, it’s here to stay. So get educated. And, more than anything, get started.

Neil Johnston is Cox Media Group’s (CMG) Executive Vice President, Strategy and Digital Innovation at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta where he oversees Strategic Development, CMG Digital and the company’s growing portfolio of digital investments. Johnston previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Cox Media Group. He also was Cox Radio’s Chief Financial Officer from September 2000 until it was made private in 2009.

For premium access to Cox Media Group inventory, please contact Andy Levi at Cox Digital Solution ([email protected]).

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Innovation | Perspectives | Research

Q&A with Joe D. Weir, VP of Digital, A.H. Belo on Mobile Advertising Innovation

February 14, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Q: In mobile advertising, what is the most important thing to consider?

A: I think that it is the ability to reach the consumer where they are. “Where they are” means two things: First, it can mean geolocation. But it can also mean where the consumer is within the buying cycle.

For example, I am going to dinner. So first we need to think about how we play a part in where they are physically. Then we need to think about where they are in their decision making process about dinner. At that point, we factor in our relationships with businesses, grocery, restaurants, to help marry up the consumer and “where they are” with our advertisers.

People are using mobile more often, in more places and more ways; they are using it in line to buy movie tickets or at the grocery story, or pumping gas. But behind all that may be them doing something bigger. For example, maybe they are in the process of buying a car and using mobile to explore and research products.

We need to understand how the consumer is using mobile so we can connect them with content that helps them make better decisions or, as we’ve done through our partnership with cars.com, to bring buyers together with sellers in the marketplace. Another factor to keep in mind is the importance of reviews. An exciting opportunity for us has been matching up consumer reviews with other content.

Mobile helps change the landscape because of its mobility, but also because of its connectivity. It allows for more data points around various topics.

Q: Describe one of your recent or forthcoming mobile ad initiatives that you think is particularly innovative:

A: First let me tell you a bit about our approach. The way we’ve looked at mobile is that we’re trying to build a network of mobile access. We have variations of our content that is HTML5 that can be pulled up and rendered on whatever device consumers are on—mobile or tablet. We also have applications that we’ve launched for iOS and Android and we’re working with Windows right now.

If you look our stuff, you’ll see things like “Dallas’ Best Burgers” and “Dallas Skyline”. Obviously, we also have our core offering like Dallas Morning News as websites, epaper and applications. One of our strengths, as with a lot of newspapers, is sports.

I think one of our most innovative stories is in sports. So it is an understatement to say that High School football is big in Texas. In December, we had a game that broke the national High School attendance record with more than 54 thousand attendees. Needless to say, we’d been creating all this content around High School ball and realized we needed a mobile play in that space.

The way we created the SportsDay High School app, and the way we sold the whole campaign, is a good example for media companies. The app delivers all of the content we were creating, but we also built live score delivery into it, which is really optimal for mobile. It also includes push notifications and alerts for teams you are interested in. So what we did was work hard to create an app experience audiences would really want.

Then we sold a single sponsorship to the app as part of a much larger package, which had print, desktop and mobile components. Albertsons sponsored an entire High School Sports package. It even includes a community element where Albertsons honors top players at a banquet. Mobile, for us, fits into something bigger. It allows us, as publishers, to pull together revenue opportunities that might exist in a range of areas as one larger sale, which delivers more to the advertiser as well.

Q: What is working in mobile advertising, and what do we need more of, in order to drive success in this area?

A: We need a couple of things. First, there needs to be as much standardized delivery of advertising as possible.

We also need the best ease the integration of mobile into our existing business. There are a lot of media companies right now who, with their mobile, are doing ad serving with x company over here and then on desktop, with y company over here. And all of those systems are separate and don’t talk to each other. All media companies need to look at their technology stack and figure out how their technology can support the needs of salespeople. It needs to be very efficient for pre-sales—to understand how big the audience is and what the opportunity is. It also needs to be efficient for post-sales—I’ve closed the business and need to implement the campaign across platforms.

We have this great group of sales people who go out into the market every single day. Their job is to sell audiences and those audiences exist on mobile, print, desktop, tablet. So to make the most of that, we need to create the best technology stack to distribute the ad dollars seamlessly across our different platforms. The easier this is for sales people, the easier it will be to get those dollars in the front door.

Joe D Weir leads sales of all digital offerings of DMNmedia and is responsible for product development and digitally related strategic initiatives. Prior to joining DMNmedia, Joe had been with Belo for 18 years. His most recent position was Vice President of Digital for Belo since 2009. His responsibilities included digital strategies for revenue and audience growth across new media platforms. Weir was named a “Digital All-Star” in 2010 by Broadcasting & Cable magazine. In 2009 he was named “Outstanding Young Alumnus” from his alma mater Hardin-Simmons University and in 2008 he led WFAA.com to be honored with a National Edward R Murrow for online innovation. Weir currently serves on The University of North Texas RTVF (Radio, TV and Film) Executive Board.

Also in this series:

Q&A with Brian Colbert, Chief Revenue Officer, About.com on Mobile Advertising Innovation

Perspectives | Research

Q&A with Brian Colbert, Chief Revenue Officer, About.com on Mobile Advertising Innovation

February 10, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Q: In mobile advertising, what is the most important thing to consider?

A: From an ad creative standpoint, there is still a tendency for advertisers to cram too much information into too small of a space on mobile. While phone screen sizes have increased over the years, they still pale in comparison to desktops and always will. The hardest thing for advertisers to accept in mobile advertising is that “less is more”. Be quirky, be relevant, be interesting but most importantly, be concise.

Secondly, it is still baffling the amount of blue-chip national brands that don’t have mobile websites. Consumers have grown to expect mobile-optimized experiences and advertisers risk damaging their brand image if their mobile experiences are not up to par.

Lastly, brands need to realize that mobile is the primary digital platform now. It’s a mobile world and brand strategies need to adapt faster to harness the full capabilities of the mobile platform.

Q: Describe one of your recent or forthcoming mobile campaigns that you think is particularly innovative:

A: We continue to iterate on our mobile platform with new ad executions, but one that has proven to be extremely effective is having our 320×50 ad unit stay fixed on the screen as the user scrolls. Because our content is long-form in nature and requires a lot of scrolling, we felt that having the banner disappear as the user scrolls, which is fairly typical with the mobile web, was not the optimal ad experience. We feel we have achieved a good balance of providing an impactful mobile ad unit for our advertisers yet not disrupting the content experience for our users.

Q: What is working in mobile advertising and what do we need more of in order to drive success in this area?

A: More and more advertisers are beginning to take advantage of mobile rich media and some executions that leverage the functionality of the phone—GPS, accelerometer, touchscreen—have made the ads much more fun and engaging than their desktop counterparts. If done well, mobile ads can actually enhance the user experience.

But the balance that publishers and advertisers need to keep in mind is that there’s fine line between “engaging” and “intrusive”. The use-case for mobile often differs than desktop and users are less inclined to tolerate ads that disrupt their user experience since they are often on-the-go and under greater time constraints.

Brian Colbert is the Chief Revenue Officer for About.com, where he oversees premium and programmatic sales, ad ops, sales development and yield management. Prior to joining About.com in October of 2013, Brian was Vice President of Mobile Advertising Sales at Pandora. Previously, he was the Senior Director of Mobile Advertising Sales and Strategy at ESPN. Brian has a B.A. in Political Science from Duke University and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business in Finance and Strategy.

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Also in this series:

Q&A with Sol Masch, Director of Mobile Sales & Strategy, Time Inc. on Mobile Ad Innovation

Q&A with Joe D. Weir, VP of Digital, A.H. Belo on Mobile Advertising Innovation

Perspectives | Revenue

Q&A with Sol Masch, Director of Mobile Sales & Strategy, Time Inc. on Mobile Ad Innovation

February 6, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights… If you want to learn more, keep an eye out on our site for more interviews. Today’s Three on Three is with Sol Masch, Director of Mobile Sales & Strategy, Time Inc.

Q: In mobile advertising, what is the most important thing to consider?

A: The place to begin is always around the KPIs and defining those so we can figure out how to make a campaign a success. On mobile, most clients want engagement. The question is, what does engagement mean? Then you can define the right message, the right user and appropriate data targeting. Often, engagement is defined as getting a user to interact. Then you have to create rich messaging that drives interaction. But the message can also be delivered in the form of content that will prompt interaction. We are definitely getting more requests for native and we’re looking at how it lives on the mobile screen and how it will engage readers.

One of the big differentiating factors for mobile versus desktop or other platforms, is the idea of time spent. This is a big misnomer as a KPI on mobile. Agencies often want to drive campaigns based upon how much time people are spending interacting. We don’t find that time spent is the best KPI. If you can engage a user in five seconds—if they go through the entire experience and you get them to want to share the content—you have engaged them, in a matter of seconds.

We see that it is important to be more sensitive to the issue of time on mobile. Often we see that people use mobile during “found time,” which is a couple of minutes on the bus or waiting for an appointment. Mobile demands quick hits that are just as powerful as longer times spent on other devices. The trick is in designing those experiences that last less than a minute, or even just a few seconds, to deliver impact and engagement.

Q: Describe one of your recent or upcoming mobile campaigns that you think is particularly innovative and why it worked.

A: We recently did a campaign with Infiniti promoting the Q50 vehicle. What’s interesting about the Q50 is its intuitive features: You step into the car and it knows all of the personalized features you like such as seat and mirror position.

Given how personalized the Q50 experience is, we wanted to create a similar ad experience that knew the user and that was intuitive about them as well. With our database targeting we are able to identify our print readers through our partnership with Apple and on Facebook and Twitter, et cetera. We developed an experience that gave users not only content from their favorite brands but also content tailored to their specific taste. So if we identified a mobile user as a Time reader who likes technology, the ad unit would contain a bunch of tech articles. A business enthusiast would get business news articles. We tailored this experience so that it leveraged the right brand with the right reader, but also the exact right content.

This campaign was extremely successful. By delivering the right content through the ad experience, we saw engagement levels lifted three to five times.

Q: What is working in mobile advertising, and what do we need more of, in order to drive success?

A: I think that mobile is getting a lot less clunky and more sophisticated, which is a good thing for users and the industry. A few years ago, there was marketer resistance around investing in mobile because experiences on the desktop, with flash and sexy animations, couldn’t be replicated on mobile. Now we are seeing beautiful, rich experiences on mobile that have excited a lot of marketers. These improvements have fueled their interest in investing in mobile and is making it a larger part of their multimedia platform spend.

However, we still need less fragmentation and more simplicity. Mobile is still a challenging landscape to navigate. With different devices and different operating systems, mobile is a much more complex environment to run a rich media experience in and to format them to work properly. All that device and screen variation is holding us back.

Devices and operating systems will keep on coming and we need to simplify it for the marketing and advertising community. We have made progress over the past year. I’ve seen a lot more publishers and agencies adopting IAB Rising Star units, which has been a big help for the mobile advertising industry. The more we can establish standards, the more it will help everyone. Within the structure of standards, we will be able to innovate even more.

Sol Masch, Director of Corporate Mobile Sales & Strategy for Time Inc., is responsible for mobile ad monetization across Time Inc.’s network of 32 million monthly mobile users – including brands such as People, Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, TIME, Sports Illustrated, Real Simple, Health, Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine. Prior to joining Time Inc., Masch served as the Mobile Advertising Director for Viacom Media Networks. In this role, he built Viacom’s mobile business from $0 into a multimillion dollar business. Previously, Masch was co-owner of Not13, a full service mobile marketing agency and content provider dedicated to providing interactive campaigns and services on mobile devices for Elektra Records and Fuse TV.

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Also in this series:

Q&A with Brian Colbert, Chief Revenue Officer, About.com on Mobile Advertising Innovation

Q&A with Joe D. Weir, VP of Digital, A.H. Belo on Mobile Advertising Innovation