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Perspectives

Defining the publisher of the future

Since the dawn of the printing press, publishers have been navigating the forces of technology. From the advent of newspapers and magazines in the 17th century to the more recent emergence of electronic media like radio, television, the internet, and mobile devices, content creators have needed to continuously adjust their business models to adapt to new technologies, channels, and consumer behavior. 

Today, the pace of that change is accelerating. This year, for the first time in history, digital advertising is set to surpass all offline advertising mediums combined. Analysts estimate that advertisers will spend almost $130 billion on digital media in 2019 in the U.S. alone.

Yet even as digital dominates and content creators are leveraging new and exciting media for storytelling, publishers are looking toward the future and preparing themselves for the next set of opportunities and challenges on the horizon. To succeed in the hyper-speed world of the modern digital economy, publishers should focus on three large issues that will help determine their success or failure.

1. Bring the focus back to media quality

The trailblazers of digital advertising have always been pushed and pulled by centrifugal forces, especially those on the sell-side. As hundreds of millions of people first moved online, advertisers raced to get their messages in front of those digital audiences. And an immediate income stream was born for anyone who could drive traffic or, more important, capture attention.

At the dawn of the programmatic era, increasing complexities came into play. And this may have pulled the pendulum too far toward scale and away from media quality. These days, consumer choice at an all-time high and publishers face increasing competition from walled gardens. So, it is vital for publishers of all sizes – from big cross-channel players to digital-only hubs – to regain that focus on media quality. 

Beyond the big three issues of brand safety, viewability, and fraud, publishers need to realign their thinking and their metrics to better match consumer behavior. For example, in the fight against non-human forms of traffic, questions such as “did a person ‘see’ our content?” sometimes override the more important question of “did a person actually ‘read or watch’ our content and for how long?” Let’s swing that pendulum back to consumer-focused media quality.

2. For publishers, media quality is the top job

Publishers must keep their focus on what truly matters: engaging their audience through compelling storytelling. This includes building an advertising experience on their properties that puts the user experience first. This must include integrity around validity, viewability, and brand safety.

When it comes to demanding higher quality ads and organic content on the web, publishers have a huge opportunity to move the needle. Publishers have the advantage of providing consumers and brands with a curated platform that offers a more  controlled experience, enabling them to tell their story and reach consumers in an impactful way that drives an emotional connection.

This level of command over content allows publishers to control the conversation with their advertisers, share peace of mind with their partners, and better demonstrate the value of their media and audiences. 

3. Valid, viewable, and safe is only a starting point

How can publishers tell if their efforts to build a better ad experience are successful? New and nuanced forms of measurement hold the key.

While consumers may never love all forms of advertising, we know from research that they  find certain types more tolerable. The job of providing better advertising that meets those can’t fall on publishers alone, of course. It will take buy-in from advertisers, agencies, and all industry players.

More important, when publishers themselves measure media quality only in terms of things like brand safety, viewability, and invalid traffic, they are missing out on other relevant signals. A publisher that is achieving a holistic view with their metrics is able to see if their content is connecting to a brand’s message or if it’s engaging an audience.

This holistic view comes from more sophisticated measurement, offers answers to questions such as:

  • Is there ad clutter?
  • Who are the returning users?
  • Which formats are in play? (i.e., infinite scroll vs. photo galleries vs. sticky player)
  • What is the site experience? (i.e., navigation or content discovery, which can be especially valuable for full-page branded content campaigns)

In short, valid, viewable, and safe is just a starting point. The publisher of the future will set a higher bar. Through a better understanding of performance, monitoring context, and applying more advanced ad quality metrics, the industry will be able to launch ads that resonate, are viewed and interacted with, and, ultimately, serve the interests of both advertiser and viewer. All because the entire ecosystem better understands what the audience wants.

The publisher of the future is now

More than ever, as attention spans continue to shrink in the modern digital landscape, publishers need to understand what truly influences attention, quality, and engagement. By focusing on these signals, publishers will not only delight their audience, but they have the power to make brand advertising more effective.

The publisher of the future looks forward with optimism and a strong conviction for storytelling. The publisher of the future recognizes they have the opportunity to deliver entertainment and experiences the world truly desires. It starts with helping marketers connect with their audiences sustainably and ethically, protecting an ecosystem that citizens rely on every day.

You are the publisher of the future. And the future is now.

About the author
A person looking at the camera Description automatically generated

Dave Constantino is the Senior Director of Client Development at Oracle Data Cloud, where he is responsible for driving revenue across the full measurement solutions suite encompassed by Moat Analytics, Contextual Intelligence, Moat Outcomes and Moat Reach. He joined Oracle with the Moat acquisition in 2017, where he focused on scaling the sales team and revenue for the business with strategic publishers and platforms. Prior to Oracle, Dave has held various roles as a SaaS leader and in sales.

Advertising | Perspectives

Improving viewability creates new opportunities for premium publishers

The calendar has flipped to a new year. Strategies formulated in are being put into action. CES has wrapped in Las Vegas. Gaudy digital advertising forecasts have been delivered by prognosticators. And advertisers are jumping up-and-down and complaining about fraud, brand safety, transparency, and viewability.

Actually, not so fast on that last point.

Favorable reports issues by several analyst groups – some of which have a vested interest in marketplace chaos and inefficiency – suggest progress is being made on thorny issues that have plagued the digital advertising category for years. Specifically, there appears to be improvement in the area of viewability, which is considered a bellwether metric by many in the business. One report by Integral Ad Science’s found that overall desktop display ad viewability rate across buy types was 60% in H1 2018, up from 55% in H2 2017.

Clearly, there’s a long way to go to get the issue under control. It’s widely acknowledged that billions of dollars will continue to be wasted this year, the market appears to be stabilizing. Marc Pritchard, the  Chief Brand Officer at Procter & Gamble – and unofficial industry spokesperson for all things related to digital advertising problems – summed up the state of affairs neatly at CES this week when he described the situation as “largely finished with round one.”

Double-Edged Sword For Publishers

This market trend has a few different implications for publishers specifically, especially as more granular aspects of the trend are examined.

For example, while publisher-direct advertising continues to outperform programmatic across most categories, the performance gap is closing.  Programmatic made a bigger improvement during the time period. That’s an angle that will be celebrated by the duopoly (Google, Facebook) and big media agencies alike (agencies generally prefer programmatic because of its ability to scale).

On the other hand, the display advertising category hasn’t had much positive news to share in recent years – if any at all, with FBI probes and such dominating headlines. And these overall improvements help the sales pitch for everyone competing in the sector. Display advertising remains a relatively new and oft-misunderstood channel, and these developments will resonate with increasingly skeptical media buyers (and, as importantly, their financial backers).

Publishers’ Marching Orders

In the wake of recent news and developments, publishers have myriad opportunities for consideration in the wake of improving market conditions.

Start Spreading The News

Media buyers are overwhelmed with pitches from all directions: Google has stepped up its outreach efforts. Companies sprout up daily with new ways to execute online advertising. And their clients (internal and external) are constantly demanding increased ROI on ad spend. “In spite of all the talk of how ‘easy’ it is to advertise online and the incredible level of investment in the marketing automation sector, I’ve never see the ad business as complex or noisy as it is today,” says Karen Moked, vice president of marketing at Digilant, a programmatic ad company. As a result, reaching media buyers through the haze of activity swirling around them isn’t easy, but getting to them and helping them understand how viewability is evolving and the increasing role it can play in their operations in light of improving effectiveness is critical, for obvious reasons.

Minimize Friction in the Buying Process

Perhaps the biggest obstacle publishers have to engaging with advertisers is the fact that their customer experiences are not always optimized. In fact, it can be downright difficult for consumers to purchase some publishers’ ad products. New market developments such as increased viewability can be used as a talking to point to help jump start internal discussions around how to streamline the customer buying process. Given that most publishers can’t invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the automated systems that Google and Facebook have in place, some creativity is required.

Performance Close the Loop with Compelling Reports

Media buyers spend half their time planning and executing programs, and the other half creating reports. Publishers are well-served by providing post-campaign analysis and reporting support in two ways. First, it helps advertisers understand the performance of their investments, and premium publishers have a great story to tell around engagement and audience quality. Second, when done effectively, performance reports it helps streamline the buyer’s workflow, which is always a welcomed offering, and by extension positions the publisher favorably for the next campaign.

Opportunity is Knocking

For the first time in recent memory, the digital advertising community is headed into a new year demonstrating optimism about its state-of-affairs, specifically in relation to pressing issues related to viewability, fraud and brand safety. This environment should translate to attractive new opportunities for top-tier publishers. This is not just because a rising tide lifts all boats, but also because of the group’s differentiated value propositions vis-à-vis the duopoly’s. Realizing new successes is by no means a foregone conclusion and will require savvy execution, but 2019 is poised to offer favorable conditions for high-end publishers.

About the Author

Tim Bourgeois (@ChiefDigOfficer) is a principal at East Coast Catalyst, a Boston-based digital media audit company.

Advertising | Perspectives

Demand for media quality is a challenge and an opportunity

It’s hard to deny that the landscape for digital publishers is a challenging one. Pools of advertising revenue are shrinking, competition is at an all-time high. A variety of strategic pivots — from video to subscription models revenue models — have yet to fully mature. Furthermore, traditional advertising models are strained by a buy-side that increasingly demands that publishers hit ever more stringent media quality targets. In short, it’s an environment where every penny counts, and where it’s essential that premium publishers maximize the value of their inventory. For many, that means employing tools that can curb factors like ad fraud and low viewability, which can erode the value of premium content.

Fraud

Ad fraud is often positioned as a buy-side problem. Fraudsters use a variety of techniques, from bot networks that generate artificial traffic, to domain spoofing tactics that allow them to impersonate premium publishers. For buyers, it means stolen ad dollars that never impact consumers, and for publishers, it means an obvious loss of revenue. However, ad fraud has a more insidious impact on digital publishers. Not only does it erode the revenue bottom line, but it also erodes trust. The loss of trust damages long-term relationships and reshapes the way major advertisers apportion their budgets over time.

Recently, a digital publisher serving the technology, healthcare, and financial sector experienced an unexpected spike in bot activity. The spike prompted advertisers to question the validity of the publisher’s inventory and could have led to a breakdown in trust and, ultimately, a loss of significant revenue. To combat this, the publisher in question employed a fraud optimization solution to isolate and sequester invalid traffic at the ad server level, reducing fraud across their inventory by over 78%.

Viewability

Like fraud, non-viewable inventory has an unparalleled ability to erode value for publishers. Pressure from major brand advertisers — including highly publicized ultimatums from Unilever CMO Keith Weed, P&G’s Marc Pritchard, and media buying giant Group M — have moved viewable inventory from a nice-to-have in digital advertising inventory, to table stakes for many of the worlds top advertisers. Publishers who find themselves unable to deliver highly viewable inventory may find themselves missing out on significant revenue.

However, demand for highly viewable inventory also presents an opportunity. Publishers who can meet higher viewability standards stand to earn a premium on that inventory given high demand. Recognizing this potential for untapped revenue, a pop culture publisher recently sought to increase viewability across its inventory. Using a publisher optimization solution, the publisher was able to substantially raise viewability from a baseline of 53% to 77.3%, easily hitting a 70% viewability threshold on all of its inventory, opening the door to premium advertiser dollars.

Moving forward

As publishers are increasingly challenged to adapt their business model to a changing ecosystem, it’s easy to feel that rising media quality standards are just one more pressure point. In reality, with the right tools in hand, growing advertiser demand for improved media quality presents an untapped opportunity. Publishers who are able to meet demand can grow trust and more importantly, tap unrealized revenue on high-quality inventory to support their premium content.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

Digital can change for the better, viewability is the proof

It’s hard to see change when you’re in the moment. Progress is something that’s best observed in hindsight. It’s easy to let the challenges of the day grab your focus. Going the next few feet often feels more important than miles you’ve already come. I think about this often when I look back on the changes that have taken place in our industry over the last four years.

Viewability has been completely overhauled. It wasn’t so long ago that even the most hard-nosed media buyers were resigned to the idea that 30% of their ads were destined to be below-the-fold, partially loaded– in effect, unviewable. Today those numbers have improved dramatically. Even the least demanding buyers know that they can get to 60% viewability, and with the right tools and solutions in place 100% viewability is within reach. In retrospect, it seems crazy that we ever accepted anything less.

What’s going on

You can tell the same story about fraud. Just a few years ago the conventional wisdom held that fraud levels of 30% (or or even 50%) were an unavoidable. To reach real people, you had to go to through a mountain of bots. It was the cost of doing business, and an “unofficial tax” on digital advertisers. But that was before the industry reset its thinking about what is actually possible. Today, thanks to advances in fraud detection, most advertisers would consider a fraud threshold of just 2% to be the upper threshold of what is acceptable.

Today, “fraud free,” “viewable only,” and “100% brand safe” are all commonplace. These would have seemed out of reach for advertisers just a few years ago. And those aren’t just slogans, they’re promises with meaningful business implications.

Why it matters

There’s a tendency to get lost in the weeds, or to think about metrics as goals unto themselves. As focused as we are on reducing fraud, improving viewability, or protecting brands those things aren’t really the end goal. A more viewable ad ecosystem means cost savings for advertisers, more efficient CPMs, and better ROI for your marketing dollars.

When we accepted that only 50% of our ad buys were reliably fraud free we were accepting that we might be throwing away about half the money we spend in digital. Half of an advertisers million dollar ad buy could go to waste. For publishers that meant half a million dollars going into the pockets of fraudsters instead of into their revenue column. A healthier ecosystem means better business opportunities for everyone.

What’s next?

The work of cleaning up the digital advertising industry is just beginning. We’ve made great strides in desktop environments, but the conversation is already moving with the audiences as well. New platforms like mobile in-app, proprietary platforms, and over-the-top video all face challenges of their own. But those challenges shouldn’t deter us. Instead we should look back at the incredible progress we’ve made and realize that that same kind of transformation is possible in every new environment.

Advertisers and publishers can continue to carve out big opportunities on mobile, video, and social the same way they have on desktop. That’s why we believe that the work we do is so important. We want to encourage everyone to keep rethinking what they’re willing to accept from the digital ecosystem. It’s the only way to keep improving value, effectiveness, and revenue to move digital forward.

Harmon joined Integral Ad Science in 2013 to support the company’s accelerated growth and demand for its media quality solutions. In his role, Harmon is responsible for strategic partnerships and integrations of Integral’s digital technology solutions with both publishers and platforms.

Harmon is a veteran of the online media industry, leading and mentoring teams on both the publisher and agency side of the business.  He is a frequent speaker and writer in the digital advertising community and is an advocate of both the art and science of digital marketing.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Research proves it: Viewable marketing campaigns get results (but how much is enough?)

Viewability is at the center of every digital media buy. It’s the metric that assures consumers have an opportunity to see a digital advertisement. The Media Rating Council (MRC), an independent third-party, has established a framework for measuring and reporting viewability. The MRC’s standard for viewability includes two factors: the amount an ad is shown on screen and the amount of time the ad is viewed on screen. A display ad is considered viewable if half its pixels are on the screen for one second. A video ad must be on screen for at least two consecutive seconds. The standard is meant to be a minimum threshold for determining an “opportunity-to-see.”

To evaluate the impact of viewability and measure its effectiveness, Magna, IPG Media Lab, Moat and The Trade Desk joined together to analyze ad viewability rates as related to overall campaign performance. The research specifically focused on direct-response advertising. While the MRC set the standard, Magna’s research focused on better understanding the relationship between how viewable an ad is to how effective it is.

Not surprisingly, the research shows that the more viewable a digital ad is and the more screen time it has, the more likely it is to be effective. The more viewable campaigns are, the more likely they are to lead to a consumer action to buy, click or register, etc.

However, viewability is one of many factors connected to a campaign’s success. Additional metrics such as ad interaction also show a positive relationship with conversions. Specifically, Magna reports a direct relationship between consumers who interact longer with ads during exposure and their conversion rates. For example, the longer consumers interact with ads during exposure, the more likely they are, at some point, to convert to an action.

The research provides confirmation that the MRC baseline of viewability is clearly connected to ad effectiveness. It is significant to note that the research also proves that higher levels of viewability required by some agencies (80% to 100%) has no additional impact on ad effectiveness.

It’s important for marketers to experiment and test viewability rates and engagement levels to find the best performing combinations. Importantly, measurement of campaign success should include metrics that relate to performance goals. Other metrics such as such as cost, conversion task, target audience, ad format, frequency and others may also to the story of an ad’s performance.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Brands are stepping up their media governance

It was just a matter of time – we all knew it had to happen eventually – but the other shoe is dropping on digital advertising’s most glaring weaknesses: accountability and fraud. Brands are taking steps to exert more control over growing online advertising budgets, and rely less on external agencies to do the job.

This is according to a new survey from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) of 35 global companies with more than $30 billion in ad spend. To wit: nearly 9-of-10 say they are pulling back spending in ad networks that don’t allow third party verification, and three quarters of them say transparency is an “escalating” issue.

Though short of revolutionary, these survey findings indicate a meaningful attitudinal shift among brands: now more comfortable with the digital channel, and under pressure from CFOs and CEOs to get waste under control, they’re putting pressure on the source – the media buying function.

Former Mediacom CEO Joe Mandel set this process in motion back in March of 2015 at an Association of National Advertisers meeting when he declared: “I personally believe we’re living through the least transparent time for the media industry in our careers”. Fast forward to May of this year, when WFA’s survey was conducted, and we’re beginning to see empirical evidence of the backlash.

What this means for different constituents in the digital marketing ecosystem:

  • Whenever there’s talk of “digital media” in general, it’s important to remember that Google and Facebook comprise 70%+ of the activity. So evolving media buying practices are largely targeted at getting Google- and Facebook-enabled advertising under control.
  • These media buying shifts are significant, especially in light of the TV, radio, and print channels over the second half of 20th century, which were remarkably stable; it tooks brands awhile to respond to fraud and viewability issues because they hadn’t really had to deal with media buying challenges since the introduction of TV advertising in the 1950s.
  • As brands get more comfortable with theirs hands on the online media buying controls, new opportunities will emerge for channels beyond Google and Facebook. Nearly half of respondents in the survey indicate they are shifting away from using CPM as the key pricing metric, and this favors niche players and premium brands.
  • Agencies have been bracing for this market shift for years, and have been aggressively investing in their technology infrastructures and talent pools as a way to prepare. (See WPP’s list of investments on Crunchbase.) As is the case with brands, agencies are maneuvering to become less reliant on Google and Facebook, and those that haven’t are vulnerable and risk obsolescence.
  • Peripheral players in the ecosystem – lawyers, auditors, verification companies and watchdog groups – are boosted by these findings. Almost 90% of survey respondents said they already have or are planning to include “specific media/financial audit right clauses” in contracts, suggesting that brands are putting agencies on notice, and plan to keep a closer eye on activity moving forward.

Given that digital will soon account for nearly half of all advertising spending – and was barely its own unique line item as recently as 2000 – brands are smart to be re-thinking their approaches to online media buying. Indeed, many industry experts will credibly claim that these changes are long overdue. Regardless, the trends signal an interesting new chapter in digital marketing, where opportunities will emerge for organizations – brands, agencies, and publishers alike – that evolve to accommodate changing marketplace demands.

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

Advertising | Perspectives

What will it take to wake digital advertising’s sleeping giants?

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

Digital media veterans may find solace in this passage from Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.

“Gradually” could best describe the glacial change to the mobile web we witnessed from 2000 through 2007. But then Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and “suddenly” we couldn’t move fast enough to keep up with consumers.

In every case of digital transformation, there have been “Sleeping Giants” offering premature and often prescient hints that turn into rapid change seemingly overnight. This acceleration is normally brought on by a significant tipping point whether it be a disruptive technology, competitive move, or a provocative press headline.

In digital advertising, Marc Pritchard’s January speech demanding independent accountability didn’t really cover new ground. His points were issues that the industry had discussed many times over the previous years. But it certainly mattered when Pritchard said it (and the press covered it). At that moment, in that room, in his voice, to that audience, to the IAB he said: “The days of giving digital a pass are over.” He urged the rest of the ad industry to follow P&G’s lead. “It’s time to grow up. It’s time for action.”

By virtue of the ad dollars he controls, Pritchard is a giant in the industry. While the issues he called out are far from new—particularly to a savvy industry vet like him—the very fact that he so directly addressed them shook the industry.

However, despite his call to arms, alarm bells continue to sound. Just this past Monday, Digiday reported that up to 80% of Facebook’s video advertisements weren’t viewable. We first heard this more than a year ago. Facebook tried to fend off the whispers for as long as it could —going so far as to state last year, “we have our own measurement and how we measure.” Yet these whispers have risen to a general outcry. And independent measurement coupled with industry press will carry the message far and wide.

Many have called out issues of brand safety over the years, including the more recent renegade Sleeping Giants Twitter account. However, the March headlines out of the UK that reported on extremist content on YouTube changed things overnight. Major advertisers pulled their campaigns. UK and French governments surfaced regulation discussion. Chase Bank began individually whitelisting the sites where its ads could appear. Premium publishers have long highlighted the brand halo that respected content confers on the ads that surround it. But this chorus of major advertisers decrying the effect of negative contexts triggered a precipitous escalation of the issue.

DCN has led the “Duopoly” discussion since 2016 regarding the lopsided competitive environment with Facebook and Google. But it was Margrethe Vestager’s $2.7 Billion decision out of the EU that will drive Google to change its business behavior going forward. (Side note: Read this and be highly skeptical of the motivations of anyone who argues this decision is EU “protectionism.”)

But there is a much larger sleeping giant about to rise and roar.

DCN and its counterpart organization for the marketers, ANA, have been systematically documenting the issues of building a quality advertising supply chain over the past three years. We started with the shift to viewable impressions. Both organizations have intensely studied invalid traffic and bot fraud across the web. The ANA also recently studied financial transparency and the economics of the ad tech tax. And comScore studied the value of environment and, in turn, brand safety.

But documenting the problem does not go nearly far enough. So DCN’s board bravely accepted ANA’s challenge and, in Sept 2016 began to build out a premium digital marketplace called TrustX.

We set out to answer to these demands:

  • 100% premium publisher inventory in an open RTB private marketplace. Check.
  • 100% human and viewable ad supply, or advertisers don’t pay. Check.
  • 100% priority on brand safety and campaign efficacy. Check.
  • 100% trading transparency down to the publisher URL. Check.
  • 100% financial transparency from bid to delivery, reporting and billing. Check.

If you do the math, digital advertisers are wasting away more than $10 million per day on overpaying for a murky digital advertising supply chain. I can’t imagine this sort of waste is escaping a CFO or CEO these days. And let’s not forget the ripple effect caused by their dollars and brands being associated with criminal ad fraud or extremist material on predominantly user-generated content experiences like Facebook and YouTube. It is clear that the market demands a solution to these problems—one with scale, simplicity, efficiency, and accountability.

On behalf of the premium publishers, we have stepped up and built it: TrustX. I’ve been informed by the TrustX management team that nearly every major agency and brand is leaning into TrustX as exactly what our market needs.

So, the only remaining question is who are the Sleeping Giants that will ensure that digital advertising grows up – not gradually but now, suddenly ?  Which advertisers and partner agencies will take a stand at scale making the true economic commitments necessary to drive the transparency and accountability priorities that TrustX represents and the industry needs?

Advertising | Industry-Research

What marketers need to know about the impact of negative digital advertising experiences on their brands

Programmatic advertising will account for 80% of all digital display advertising in 2017. However, this technology-driven ad buying process has seemingly created as many problems at it’s solved, in the forms of both wasted ad spend and brand risk exposure. In response, CMOs are taking steps to protect and safeguard their brands by reducing spend in certain digital channels until better controls and compliance measures are in place.

With all of the talk over the past couple of years about ad fraud and compromised viewability rates, we as an industry have sort of overlooked the implications of online advertisements that are seen, but in sub-optimal settings. That is to say: How are consumer behaviors impacted when they interact with ads in an unseemly or unexpected context? (Example: a banner ad layered over a hate group recruiting video on YouTube.) Marketers need to understand the impact of these negative advertising experiences.

This issue, to be sure, has been a persistent problem for advertisers since the early days of the business. One needs to look no further than Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) of Mad Men’s Sterling Cooper agency. They launched the firm’s new television department and charged it with monitoring a client’s ad buy just as the medium took off. Fans of the show quickly learned what media buyers the world over already know: Advertisers do not appreciate their promotions running anywhere but in the slots they’ve approved.

Managing this challenge across the digital channel has been a problem since the first banner ad was sold in the early 2000s. And it has only worsened in the wake of programmatic. To date, this issue has evaded intense scrutiny because the digital channel is some much more cost effective than its offline counterparts. But, as advertising economics continue to evolve and companies become smarter about managing a multi-channel environment, brand safety in the digital channel is gaining steam.

Leading this movement’s charge are private companies such as Integral Ad Science and industry organizations like the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and and CMO Council. Indeed, digital marketing auditing is emerging as a cottage industry unto itself as advertisers are becoming more aware of inefficiencies in the channel. 

To that end, this month, the CMO Council released a report titled “How Brands Annoy Fans: The Impact of Negative Advertising Experiences,” which explains the steep consequences associated with ads running in undesirable places.

Here’s what you need to know about the findings:
  • Almost half of survey respondents say they would consider defecting from brands who fail to control where their ads appear. This suggests that marketers should be “deeply concerned” over the integrity of content environments.
  • 66% of those surveyed say their respect for brands decreases when they encounter ads near hateful, inappropriate, or distressing content.
  • Where an ad runs is just as important as its message. And consumers seem less likely to give their preferred brands “a pass” for appearing in inappropriate environments or next to jarring content.
  • 85% of those surveyed expressed some level of concern about how easily they are directed or redirected to offensive or objectionable sites.
  • According to publishers, consumers are actively contacting them to ask if their properties endorse certain content, given their stated values.
  • With increasing fervor, consumers are demanding that brands respect their time and their messages appear in environments they trust.

The bottom line: Context matters. All parties in the digital advertising ecosystem must ensure that great advertising experiences are delivered in equally excellent environments.

Tim 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.

Advertising | Perspectives

We need to solve digital advertising’s quality control problem now

An explosive investigation in The Times of London found advertising from reputable brands like Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar and the NGO Marie Curie running on YouTube videos promoting extremism and pornographic content. So, by extension, those companies were helping to fund pro-Nazi, ISIS and other terrorist propaganda.

Despite YouTube’s investment in software to weed out such content, its continued existence — coupled with the advertising that appears on it — shines a harsh light on advertising’s poor quality control. And News Corp.’s CEO Robert Thomson released an incisive statement in reaction, saying that the industry’s actions are undermining its stated priorities, and vouching to bring its advertising under its own authority.

It’s clear that attaining actual solutions to this problem requires much more soul-searching within the entire industry, and a change in current operations.

A Looming Problem

In many ways, the recent report in The Times is not that surprising. Publishers and advertisers have found themselves in unwanted territory on the internet before, as we previously wrote in DCN. The attention fake news garnered at the end of last year was a game-changer in that regard, as it spotlighted the money to be made from hyper-partisan sites with misinformation. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft’s pledge last December to share information, to better eliminate extremist content, was therefore a lauded effort.

But even though Google says it has a “zero tolerance policy for content that incites violence or hatred,” blacklisting is apparently not enough. And ad quality has long been an issue before “fake news” became the term du jour in media and marketing circles. The pervasiveness of fraud and viewability issues has demanded better standards for metrics, and better advertising so that consumers don’t just reach for the ad blocker. Google doubled-down by removing 1.7 billion ads last year that defied its policies — which was more than twice the number of ads it took down in 2015.

But with Facebook and Google together controlling well over half of the digital ad market, that leaves smaller players in a desperate scramble for the scraps, undermining concerns about integrity.

Who’s to Blame?

Which brings us to the question: Is programmatic advertising to blame, or is it a scapegoat for other problems the industry can’t yet address? Marie Curie, for instance, claims it was absolutely unaware its ads were appearing alongside the content of a pro-Nazi group. Sandals Resorts, which had its advertising appear next to an Al-Shabaab video, meanwhile, blamed Google’s mishandling, stating the video hadn’t been categorized as “sensitive.”

The advertisers were quick to express their deep concern and withdraw their advertisements, but the “hands off, we didn’t realize it” response is not the kind of reaction that engenders trust. And that is the bigger concern here. News Corp’s Chief Executive Robert Thomson called this out in a statement. Some of his choice lines deserve highlighting:

“We are in an era in which integrity is priceless, yet digital distributors have long been a platform for the fake, the faux and the fallacious, highlighting an issue which we have long stressed – that they have eroded the integrity of content by undermining its provenance.”

“Ad agencies and their programmatic networks are also at fault because they have sometimes artificially aggregated audiences, and these are then plied with content of dubious provenance – the agencies win, the fabricators of the fake win, and advertisers and society both lose. Affinity and integrity are core elements of a sustainable relationship between advertiser and consumer, and yet affinity and integrity are far too often missing in the modern marketplace.”

If the demand for money and efficiency is eroding the integrity of content — not to mention that of brands and platforms — everyone involved must collaborate to gain that trust back. And that means investing the time, energy and resources in some not so quick-and-easy moves.

Identifying Solutions

One potential solution that puts the advertising industry back into the hands of advertisers is to rely less on programmatic and more on in-house ad networks. News Corp, for instance, is testing its own digital ad network to ensure a “high quality audience for advertisers.” The Scandinavian publisher Schibsted also has its own in-house ad network, and focusing on that has helped decrease ad-page load times while doubling viewability from 40 to 80 percent. Vox too has its own in-house ad platform. And alongside BuzzFeed, Mic and other publishers, it’s expressed an aversion to programmatic. Digital Content Next recently announced the formation of TrustX, a cooperative digital advertising marketplace made up of many DCN member companies, including NewsCorp and Vox.

The reality is that individual ad networks are not yet mainstream by any means. Most advertisers are not big enough or rich enough to opt out of automated advertising, and smaller publishers don’t have the size to build their own network.

What is possible, though, is a more consistent, industry-wide approach to addressing these issues and testing solutions. That means worrying less about the bottom line — at least for now — and taking collective responsibility for this problem. And more human oversight over the entire industry — even over programmatic advertising — is the first big step. Just as Facebook has acknowledged it can’t just rely on an algorithm to stamp out fake news on its platform, marketers know that it can’t rely on automation alone. Doing so only stands to create more problems for an industry already on the edges of consumer trust.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Programmatic versus publisher-direct online ad buying: What do the data say?

Anyone who’s been buying digital advertising for more than a minute has been faced with the daunting question from marketing and non-marketing executives alike: “So, how much of this advertising is actually legit, anyhow?”

The industry has been hounded by issues relating to viewability, engagement, and outright fraud for the past couple of years, and the general business press regularly covers the subject matter. So the very same executives who authorized TV, print and radio advertising budgets without raising question one only a few years ago – when the “half of my marketing budget is well-spent, but I’m not sure which half” maxim was fully embraced – now regularly engage in forensic assessments of ad buys. Such is the life of the digital marketer.

So it is helpful that companies like Integral Ad Science (though not an entirely objective player in the digital marketing ecosystem) working to keep track of developments via its bi-annual Media Quality Reports.

However, depending on one’s point-of-view, the data can be considered a sign of improving conditions, or confirmation that we marketers knowingly *throw away* 10% or more of our budgets to fraud, deception, and advertising malpractice.

Here’s a look at IAS’s most recent report, which offers an analysis of “hundreds of billions” online display and video ad impressions during the first half of this year:

  • IASfigureConditions Are Improving. Though there continues to be a good deal of waste in the system, the overall state of online advertising is showing signs of improvement. For example, the U.S. market saw a significant drop in “objectionable content” impressions during the first half of 2016 versus the previous period (9.5% versus 14.0%). Most industry experts agree this is due to more sophisticated tools and digital ad buying practices, as one would expect in a growing and evolving industry sector.
  • Buying Direct Has Its Benefits. The incidence of ad fraud when buying advertising direct from publishers is dramatically lower than when buying programmatically (2.2% versus 8.3% in the U.S.), though it’s also typically more expensive, making the equation palatable for most marketers.
  • Viewability & Clutter Are Continuing Concerns. Fewer than half of all display ads – regardless of how purchased – get viewed for more than five seconds, and more than 10% of ad impressions are jammed onto pages with more than four ads on the page. These issues are compounded via mobile devices, which we cited in a recent article on the pros and cons of programmatic as “just a messy consumer experience”.
  • Bigger & Vertical Are Better. Large format, vertically-oriented display ad formats (300×600, 300×1050, 160×600) all tend to have better viewability than their smaller, rectangular and square counterparts – being viewed for more than five seconds about half the time.
  • Global Video Ads Are Best Purchased Direct. Viewability of video via programmatic means are only viewable at a 3-in-10 ratio, versus nearly 7-in-10 via publisher direct. This metric constitutes the biggest relative weakness of programmatic in the study.

While IAS’s analysis of the first half of 2016 has many encouraging findings, it’s also clear that the programmatic marketing industry has plenty of opportunities for improvements in the coming months and years.

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

Advertising | Perspectives

Publishers need automation, too

Digital advertising has been a boon for brands. Automation technologies allow them to hone in on their exact audiences, and—quite literally—cherry pick the impressions for their campaigns. Want to target East coast moms with high household incomes who’ve visited your site within the past two weeks but only pay for impressions that we in view? No problem! Solutions are available and ready to help. And thanks to their big budgets, VC-funded technologists have rushed in, developing new tools to help brands and agencies optimize every component of their campaigns. Publishers, on the other hand, have been the technologist’s afterthought.

For years, publishers have been at the mercy of advertiser demands, who’ve forced the digital publishing industry to adapt to big changes that dramatically affect their bottom lines. Unfortunately, they’ve done so without the technology or automation to help make it happen (although header-bidding just may be the big exception to this). As a result, they’ve seen serious risks to their yield.

This is an urgent issue. The industry can’t continue to benefit one side of the market—the advertiser—without equally benefiting the other—the publisher. Markets function best when all players benefit equally. It’s fair to say that the digital advertising market isn’t functioning as well as it could be, and that as an industry, we must focus on providing publishers with better automation tools, or face an ecosystem with fewer premium publishers.

Case in point: viewability. There are myriad ways automation will help publishers with viewability, both reactively and proactively. For instance, the publisher ad server and the agency ad server will always report different viewability counts; that’s just a fact of life. For the publisher, reconciling those discrepancies is a time-consuming and manual effort. And that manual labor makes it difficult for publishers to defend their counts, forcing them to accept counts (and revenue) that are lower than they should be.

While advertisers are easily able to target impressions based on viewability, the same isn’t true for publishers. So how do we level the playing field? If publishers had access to accurate and automated measurement and reporting, they’d have a much better sense of which ad units are likely to be in view. Moreover, they could automatically direct to those units for campaigns where viewability is a targeting criteria. Such a capability will allow publishers to meet their viewability guarantees with far less impression waste.

As it stands, challenges like discrepancies represent untold sums of lost revenue, vast amounts of time spent sifting through data to reconcile and invoice campaigns, along with make-goods that take valuable inventory away from future campaigns.

But discrepancies are not the problem per se, they are a symptom of a bigger problem – the imbalance of power between the buy side and the sell side. The former has all of the tools, automation and budgets; the latter is asked to compromise far too often. If more of the publisher workflow was automated, we could begin to level the playing field. And that would do more than just drive higher yields for publishers—it would ensure that advertisers continue to have ample premium and brand-safe environments in which to engage their audiences.

Dave Marquard 2(3)Dave Marquard is currently Vice President of Product Management, Publisher Solutions and RTB Products at Integral Ad Science. For the past 15 years he has held leadership roles in product management, engineering, and marketing at internet technology and enterprise software firms such as Google, IBM, and Lombardi Software.

Advertising | Perspectives

Facebook: When the fox guards the hen house

Facebook: ” We have our own measurement and how we measure.”

Last night, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook has been overestimating the time spent on its highly-lucrative video programming for two years. I’ll let you review their report. After reading it, I thought it would be relevant to share the transcript from a panel I moderated on Wednesday at the Conference on Time and Attention in New York City. On the panel were three premium publishers and Facebook’s Head of Sales for North America, Erwin Castellano.

The excerpt below covers a part of our conversation that’s relevant to the WSJ article exchange, highlighting the significant gaps between how Facebook measures time spent and how the rest of our industry does.  As I pointed out before moving on to the rest of our panel discussion, Facebook is able to set its own rules because — together with Google –Facebook captured 90% of the growth in digital advertising in the first quarter of 2016.  Advertisers will have to determine for themselves if or how this information will impact their spending. I’ve already concluded that this type of confusion only does a disservice to our entire industry.

Transcript from
Publisher Panel at Conference  on Time and Attention (Wednesday, Sept 21st)

Note that the following excerpt starts at 2:10:

Erwin Castellano, Head of Sales, Facebook, N.A.: You asked a question. On Facebook, we do not sell on MRC.

Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next: You don’t?

Facebook: We don’t.

Kint: You said your ads are “in view.” So what does that mean?

Facebook: So we have our own measurement and how we measure.

Kint: OK, I don’t want to go down a rathole but…

Facebook: but fortunately the ad has to definitely be in-view. We are later this year going to offer I believe for advertisers the ability to buy 100% in-view so that means both the top and bottom portion of the ads will have to be in view or some portion.

Kint: Both the top and bottom of the ad are in view?

Facebook: Right.

Kint: For a minimum of one second?

Facebook: I don’t know the time measurement. We haven’t said so we’re using our own measurement.

Kint: OK. (sighs).

Facebook: The reason we’re not on MRC is MRC doesn’t break out any sort of guidance on mobile. It’s just based on desktop and today Facebook’s audience is 80% mobile. Look, MRC has stated that they recognize that the value and impact can be extracted earlier in a mobile newsfeed but that they haven’t given guidance yet on what the appropriate measure should be on mobile just yet.

Kint: (sigh). We’re talking about time and attention but I’m on the MRC committee and I think that guidance is out. There is separate guidance for desktop, separate guidance for mobile. I think it’s 50% of the ad for a minimum of one second so maybe you’re just not there yet.

Facebook: (inaudible)

Kint: Or haven’t agreed to it yet. Certainly if you’re Facebook you can decide what the rules are, no disrespect, that’s a respectful comment to your business. You’re capitalists.

Kint: So… I’ll tie it in a bow.  If we’re building the bricks in the house of time everybody has to agree on what the bricks are…hopefully as an industry.  Otherwise we’ll get stuck in stupid discussions for a long time. We’re trying to create consistency and build an industry here…

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