As the daughter of a first-generation Cuban mother, it’s been vital for Sofia Santiago, Senior Director of Global Pricing & Inventory at Match Media Group, to “reclaim the culture.” We had the honor of chatting with her about the importance of reclaiming her cultural roots and preserving her Cuban heritage, as she puts it.

Santiago’s desire to honor her roots stems from her deep appreciation for her family’s history. By tracing her family tree, learning Spanish, and cooking traditional Cuban dishes, she’s actively built her cultural identity and hopes to pass her Cuban traditions to future generations.

Join us as we explore this digital media and advertising veteran’s journey of embracing her cultural roots, navigating her identity, and achieving remarkable success in the media industry.

Cuban to the Bone

Although Santiago is only half Cuban, in her eyes, since her maternal side is of Cuban descent, it’s enough to be considered full-blown. Even though her father is Irish American, much like myself, she feels that a child is always more of their mother than their father.

Getting in tune with her Hispanic roots is something she takes pride in. Santiago has even visited Cuba and brought her daughter, who is now eight, to explore and learn about the country’s rich cultural heritage. Her trip to the largest island of the West Indies was filled with excitement and lots of family activity, where she got to learn more about herself personally and the people she comes from. The trip also served as an eye-opener for her.

Let Santiago tell it: Cuba is not the place for vacation. Why, you ask? Necessities are scarce. “It was tough just to get the basic necessities, and that’s going there as a tourist with money to spend,” she explained. “So you can just imagine the people actually living there.”

In the same breath, she pointed out that not a single person asked her for money and that when they saw her with her baby, they showered her with offerings like baby clothes and candy, which is a testament to the hearts of the natives she came in contact with, no matter their circumstances. Witnessing the resilience and strength of the Cuban people in the face of adversity profoundly impacted Santiago. It further deepened her appreciation for her heritage and the importance of embracing cultural roots.

Professional Success in the Realm of Online Dating 

Much like the experience of dating app users, Santiago’s career path has been one representative of being selective, setting clear intentions, embracing opportunities, and forging one’s own path. From early on, she’s always been a fan of numbers, as they came easy to her as a child, which continued into adulthood. 

“In​​ professional roles, I like being able to tell stories and make cases with those numbers,” she shared. “I like being on the publisher end of media, but I was always more interested in how I could support operations internally versus a client-facing role. So pricing and inventory always made sense to me.”

Ironically, the operations professional doesn’t consider her employer, Match Media Group a publisher, considering they don’t publish content like a traditional publisher does. Match Group owns the largest global portfolio of popular online dating services, including Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, OurTime, and other dating global brands. And since marketers can leverage the aggregated audience, data, and insights from millions of global users across the company’s portfolio, the company is a great partner for advertisers looking to reach diverse audiences.

How do ads work on dating apps, you’re wondering? They mostly come in native ads, mainly geared towards men. Female users hold the most value on dating apps, and Match Media Group is cautious about messing up the user experience for women. As a digital ad sales professional in the dating app world, having a unique perspective on user experience has been a valuable tool for Santiago. 

Her career growth and dedication reflect her professional satisfaction and the positive impact she has made at the company. After all, she has been at Match Media Group for eight years.

The Future is Bright for Sofia Santiago

As we celebrate Hispanic American Heritage Month, Santiago’s story is a testament to the importance of hard work and consistency while working towards elevating your success. 

She recognizes the importance of mentorship and pays it forward and has been fortunate to have exceptional mentors throughout her career who have guided and inspired her along the way. She is committed to mentoring junior professionals, sharing their experiences, and helping others navigate their career paths. She also advocates for diversity and inclusion, contributing to a more equitable and welcoming workplace environment.

“I’ve been really lucky to have had great bosses throughout my career in this industry, and I think the common thread amongst them is that they entrusted me and given me the autonomy to make my own decisions,” Santiago shared. “I think I’ve just been fortunate in that regard. It’s impacted my desire to mentor others in more junior roles and share whatever knowledge I can with them based on my experience.”

The post HHM: Match Media’s Sofia Santiago Says Her Career and Online Dating Have Two Things In Common: Numbers appeared first on AdMonsters.

All mobile users are not treated equally, especially those with Android versus those with iOS. After all, they are two completely different operating systems, so it’s best to know the key differences to attain the success you want as a publisher. Both giants in the mobile ecosystem contain specific characteristics that demand careful consideration from publishers.

During a breakout session at AdMonsters Pub Forum Coronado Island, Joey Stern, Ad Systems Manager at TuneIn, led an exciting discussion during his session titled “Navigating Multi-Platform Madness: Unleashing Revenue Opportunities Within Complex Mobile Strategies.” The session is one to highlight as it delved into the critical differences between Android and iOS, emphasizing the role of privacy, app longevity, and user habits.

In the extension of the session below, Stern left further insight regarding strategies to combat the privacy constraints that come with both platforms, ways to unlock opportunities for audio monetization, optimizing ad revenue on Android’s extended lifespan, understanding diverse audiences, and leveraging app release info to quickly resolve any issues that arise. Learn more about the world of mobile according to Stern below.

Yakira Young: Can you explain some of the differences between Android and iOS platforms that app publishers should be thinking about?

Joey Stern: The biggest difference is how they handle privacy. iOS is much more locked up than Android. Android allows for a much more extended period of app updates, while iOS has a longer period of system updates, meaning Android users will be on newer app versions, while iOS users will get held back at some point, and those users may still offer valid revenue. Don’t just assume all mobile users have the same habits; test to see what divergences exist.

YY:  How can publishers navigate the very different approaches of iOS and Android as it pertains to privacy?

JS: Staying up to date is key here. This is a constantly moving goalpost and legally fraught.

• Pay attention to both the political decisions and the financial ones.
• Make sure you have a trusted privacy partner and meet with them regularly, not just when a big change is coming up.
• Understand that location can be a big factor in what platform/client your users are on, so privacy strategies should be location and device-specific where needed.

YY: What advice do you have for businesses looking to monetize audio? 

JS: Start understanding your demand options now, and figure out where to layer that in with existing audio. Companion Banners for audio ads are key drivers. Understanding the long tail of your users can help drive campaign revenue more than in-video ads. Also, server-side delivery (especially with Smart Speakers) is a huge opportunity, and having a DAI you trust and understand is key. This is new territory, and being nimble will be necessary for success.

YY: With apps on Android having a longer lifespan, how do you optimize ad revenue from these apps over an extended period? Do you utilize any particular tactics or approaches to maximize ad performance in such cases?

JS: With Android, the goal should be stability because there are various devices. Clear and actionable metrics are necessary to ensure a good user experience across a much bigger variety of possible screens. It also helps to build out ad requests with some flexibility or external configuration ability that isn’t app release-centric (request timers, ad units, etc).

YY: How should publishers go about understanding their audiences on both Android and iOS platforms? 

JS: TEST TEST TEST TEST. Look at different devices and check the basics:

• Clicks
• View Thru Rate
• Render rate
• Viewability

Your biggest asset is understanding your audiences by device and geography. Combine those data points to know where to offer higher-value users and when.

YY: How can getting app release information into your reporting help find issues as they are happening?

JS: Errors are so much easier to track when you understand what version of the app users are on. So it’s important to make the app version part of your key value reporting for tracking an issue quickly. Also, sometimes bulk user settings (logged in vs. new users vs. registered, for example) can help determine *who* and which issue is affecting vs. version which tells you *when*.

The post Diverse Approaches to App Inventory for Enhanced User Insights appeared first on AdMonsters.

Doing so profitably starts with performance marketing, which allows advertisers to reach their audiences at scale — and pay for results rather than impressions. 

Marketers can use the strategy across apps of all verticals and categories to stimulate specific down-funnel actions. And performance marketing is achievable across channels — including connected TV (CTV)

CTV is now in more than 90% of US households, creating a tremendous opportunity for advertisers to engage with new audiences. This is especially true for non-gaming apps, which can leverage the mobile gaming apps’ technology, strategies, and tactics to acquire high-value users on CTV and beyond. 

Let’s explore the unique challenges that non-gaming apps face in scaling their UA, how mobile apps across the board can efficiently optimize toward specific business goals, and what the dawn of precision performance marketing on CTV means for profitable mobile audience growth. 

Unique Challenges for Non-gaming Apps 

Revenue from non-gaming apps recently surpassed that of gaming apps in the US, signaling a shift in consumer behavior and an opportunity for further growth. The non-gaming category is diverse, from food delivery and finance to health and wellness. But most brands share the challenge of stimulating down-funnel actions, such as purchases, orders, or subscriptions. 

While gaming apps often rely on in-app advertising or in-app purchases as their primary source of monetization, as gamers spend minutes or even hours at a time in the app, non-gaming apps often need users to take a particular action in a limited amount of time in the app to generate value. 

For example, a food delivery app doesn’t just need people to download their app, even though that could technically qualify as UA. Instead, they need people to download the app and place their first order. Acquiring high-value new users, or those likely to make that first-time order and further purchases, requires first identifying those consumers and then reaching those audiences at scale. 

There’s a ton of data to consider, but apps don’t have to go it alone. Performance-driven data partnerships can help brands connect with high-intending audiences, measure success, and continually optimize campaigns to maximize ROI and drive incremental growth. 

Fueling More Targeted, Profitable Growth With Performance Marketing  

In the example of the food delivery app, advertisers can use performance marketing to understand the impact of their advertising beyond installs. With cost per event (CPE) analysis, campaigns can start to optimize toward the specific “event” of the first-time order. 

This performance-based approach enables marketers to understand down-funnel consumer behavior, and anything from completing a level to making a purchase can be optimized as an event. Starting with an app’s business goal, learning periods, and experimentation, marketers can identify an ideal channel mix that yields users most likely to take the specific action.

Machine learning coupled with powerful data analytics can help app advertisers find their ideal audience and continually optimize campaigns in real time to yield more of those specific down-funnel events. This allows apps to scale UA profitably and avoid ad waste on consumers unlikely to generate high lifetime value (LTV).  

Opportunity in CTV for App Marketers  

While CTV is a new and exciting marketing channel, its pricing model has historically been based on impressions, charging brands for eyeballs rather than results. This can seem hard to justify in our current economic reality, especially for apps operating on thinner margins. 

To leverage CTV efficiently, marketers should test its advantages as a performance channel and shift their buying from a CPM to CPI (cost per install) model, making it a natural extension of their UA campaigns. 

Marketers should prioritize collaborating with channel partners that provide a single access point across mobile and CTV for their performance campaigns. This enables transparent omnichannel reporting that delivers deeper insights for more holistic optimization across channels. 

For example, while tapping into performance-based buying on CTV, marketers can still track performance on a CPE basis, optimizing toward channels where users convert on the desired event, such as first-orders for food delivery apps, as mentioned earlier. This ensures sustainable, cost-effective ROI while increasing user LTV.

By only paying for installs, advertisers turn impressions into a powerful value add for additional brand awareness. For example, users who see a CTV ad for a dating app may not be able to install it immediately, but they may do so later, creating a halo effect from the campaign that delivers long-term benefits. 

As viewership reaches new heights and ad spend projected to grow 21% this year, app developers and marketers neve have had a better time to reach incremental new audiences on this channel. 

With CPI pricing, efficient performance marketing for apps — relying on the same measurement infrastructure as mobile — is more than possible on CTV. In fact, CTV may be all but necessary to stand out in the increasingly competitive app marketplace and scale revenue through the acquisition of high-value users.  

The post How Mobile Apps Can Profitably Scale UA with Performance Marketing and CTV appeared first on AdMonsters.

Minus all the fancy tiers, their initial subscription model, and the exclusively intriguing content attracted subscribers and made them the category leader and most popular SVOD platform that they are today.

These days, they are just doing too much, and it shows after a recent Q1 earnings call, their CEO Reed Hastings acknowledged a need for something to change.

“Think of us as quite open to offering even lower prices with advertising,” Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings said Tuesday after announcing earnings.

Netflix Sees New Lows

It’s quite clear to the majority of the world that Netflix has been making a ton of changes, and in January, they raised the price of the standard tier plan by $1.50, making it now $15.49. For their premium plan, which includes “Ultra HD,” subscribers are paying a whopping $19.99 a month, phew!

With this being said, it comes as no surprise that Netflix announced on Tuesday an alarming net global subscriber loss of 200,000 in the first quarter of 2022. Simply put, it’s getting too pricy, and their competitors, other major legacy-owned premium streaming services, are way cheaper.

This news also led to Netflix’s stock market value decreasing, now at ~$212.75, and the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) platform predicts it will lose two million subscribers in Q2 yikes.

This is the first time Netflix has lost subscribers in over ten years, and they’re wearing their hearts on their sleeve regarding how they feel about it.

These all-time lows have Netflix execs contradicting themselves as they are now exploring other avenues of advertising.

Hastings said: “Those who have followed Netflix know that I’ve been against the complexity of advertising and a big fan of the simplicity of subscription.”

“But as much as I’m a fan of that, I’m a bigger fan of consumer choice. And allowing consumers who would like to have a lower price and are advertising-tolerant to get what they want makes a lot of sense. So that’s something we’re looking at now.”

Who Even Has Their Own Netflix Subscription These Days?

At this point, the streaming service recognizes how password sharing may have contributed to this loss, as it disrupts the platform’s ability to monetize the service entirely. Netflix claims that password sharing took place in around 100 million additional non-paying households, including 30 million in the U.S. and Canada.

Netflix will do anything to get their numbers back up, and they’re looking to crack down on password sharing. According to analysts, this pressing issue has led Netflix to consider charging users who share passwords with people outside their homes an additional $2 to $3 a month. (They’re already testing password-sharing crackdowns in Latin America.)

Now this sucks for consumers.

How Will Netflix Make This Happen?

Since Netflix has excluded itself from this aspect of the media industry for so long, the only way it will be able to bring its new ad-based subscription tier into fruition is by partnering with ad tech firms. We bet that they’ll also launch a self-service option, or build out their own ad tech, as other streamers have.

According to Netflix execs, they plan to start selling ads in the next year or two, and ad agencies and CTV tech companies are yearning for a piece of the pie. “Netflix has some of the most coveted Connected TV inventory in the world right now,” said Adam Epstein, co-president of Perpetua, an ad tech software firm.

The Trade Desk has developed a reputation for partnering with media companies and publishers on ad tech and seems to be an optimal fit for Netflix to partner with on their ad infrastructure. TTD most recently linked up with Disney+  to provide the media conglomerate with programmatic activations, as well as the ability for buyers to execute digital upfront commitments across all of  Disney’s inventory — including HULU‚ via one deal ID.

“Netflix has been really good at licensing and producing content that resonates specifically in different geographies,” said Andre Swanston, senior VP of the media and entertainment vertical at TransUnion, the consumer data technology platform. “They should use that same mindset to customize these ad models.”

What Does This Mean for Other SVOD Platforms?

The ad-supported video-on-demand market has evolved and is now “too big to ignore.” Some consumers have shown that they are open to settling for a cheaper option with ads, like on Hulu, so Netflix thinks it could work for us if it works for them. But will this ultimately take away from Netflix’s credibility and reputation? They took pride in being ad-free for so long.

Some of Netflix competitors also suffered losses after news  broke about the streaming giant’s potential plans to break their ad-free promises. After-market trading of Roku was down 6.5% to $109.18, while Paramount Global sank 5.2% to $34.38, Walt Disney dropped 5.2% to 125.07, Warner Bros. Discovery went down 3% to $23.75.

If Netflix was the first SVOD to see these kinds of extreme losses, one might predict that other SVODs can expect to see similar results in the near future.

Other Variables Affecting Netflix Subscription Decreases

Many believe other variables contribute to the massive Netflix subscription decline. For one, ad tech twitter has found that TikTok has hypnotized the consumer, so we are sure that takes away from SVODs.

The most interesting theory I’ve seen on the Netflix subscriber decline is the rise of TikTok. All of our free time to consume entertainment is now taken. And it’s zero sum going forward.

So time spent scrolling TikTok is time you aren’t watching Netflix. https://t.co/02ec6Sacws

— Dare Obasanjo (@Carnage4Life) April 21, 2022

And then, of course, there is the new content or lack thereof. The Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards days are over, and many consumers feel that this new Netflix content just ain’t it.

Netflix: we can’t figure out why we’re hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Also Netflix: pic.twitter.com/sDGqiXL75l

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 21, 2022

The post Netflix Considers Ad-Based Subscription, Could Shake up SVOD Business appeared first on AdMonsters.

Here are six takeaways from AdMonsters PubForum Vancouver:

1. “RevOps as Fixers”

Hallway conversations focused on careers and work culture within revenue operations. A consistent throughline was that ops is increasingly called upon to troubleshoot or hack together solutions for a fairly broad range of projects. Many view this as a career boon since it allows for greater involvement in top company priorities. Sadly, however, the root of underlying frustration was that many publishers still don’t have unified internal data and reporting, which means that sleuthing can be slow going. On the upside, I got the gist that more media companies now recognize the growing importance of ops and are putting resources into recruiting and compensation.

2. Video Is on the Rise, but Still Operationally Challenging

Most digital publishers are at least experimenting with video. A few, like A+E, have shifted to put video front and center, while others (my own company, Granite, included) are running a combination of instream or outstream videos alongside articles. Advertiser demand is robust, but implementation still tends to be problematic. Complaints ranged from expensive rates for video players and content delivery services to discrepancies and serving errors on video advertisements. In spite of endless daily VAST errors, there was tangible excitement about video’s growth potential. More and more consumers are ditching traditional TV for internet-based solutions ranging from OTT/CTV to short-form clips found throughout the web. As bandwidth increases, so will viewership and revenue.

3. Mobile Web is a ‘Tale of Two Cities’: iOS vs. Android

iOS monetization (or lack-there-of) was top of mind. Cookie-restricting features built into Safari have significantly hampered the ability for advertisers to target ads, and therefore reduced the value of impressions by as much as 40% compared to similar impressions on Android devices. Media companies are trying lots of clever hacks to lessen the hurt. For instance, teams with direct sales are increasingly using iOS impressions for make-goods or to fill non-targeted line items. Others are experimenting with larger-format ads or simply a higher ratio of ads to content.

In sharp contrast, Android has been fueling 2019’s mobile revenue growth. People are on their phones ALL THE TIME. Volume is up big for Android web as well as in-apps. At the same time, increased advertiser demand and improved auction dynamics are lifting Android CPMs.

4. Storm Clouds Are Ahead with Privacy and Cookies

Companies are preparing for California Consumer Privacy Act compliance in similar ways that they did for Europe’s GDPR. One fear is that eventually there may be many slightly different laws governing specific countries and states—a true nightmare scenario for anyone working in ad operations. Also, based on financial numbers, teams recognize a substantial difference between ‘opt-in’ and ‘opt-out’ consent.

The tenuous fate of cookies also sparked anxiety in Vancouver. Will more browsers follow Safari’s example? Will Google’s own reliance on advertising shield the industry from sweeping changes? Can publishers collect first-party data and make it available (fast enough) to advertisers at scale? Why are there so many ‘unified’ ID projects?

5. Advertisers Are Shunning Controversial Topics

Several publishers observed that certain topics (especially within news and politics) are becoming increasingly difficult to monetize because advertisers are trying to avoid divisive or polarizing articles. Negative keywording isn’t a new feature for the industry, but historically it was used by only a small segment of advertisers to avoid relatively specific topics (most often pornography, drugs, and gun violence). We’re now seeing more widespread use of a much broader set of terms (for instance the phrase ‘climate change’ or the name ‘Donald Trump’). The implications for newsrooms could get a bit scary if weaker financials start to have an implicit silencing effect on which stories get assigned and resourced.

6. Shifting to ‘Fewer, Better’ Partnerships

Programmatic ad sales is now mainsteam and emphasis has shifted from signing as many new deals as possible to culling down and concentrating on ‘fewer, better’ partnerships. Several industry trends align with this more concentrated approach:

• Companies are keeping their most important SSP bidders on-page, but moving smaller SSPs to server-to-server solutions (usually EB or TAM).
• DSPs and savvy advertisers are starting to pursue supply path optimization (SPO) to funnel more of their spending through the most effective channels.
• Advertisers are increasingly seeking verified performance guarantees. In-display, the most common KPI is viewability which has motivated pubs to remove below-the-fold ads in favor of lazy-loaded slots. Fewer impressions then need to be sold, ideally to higher-paying demand sources.

Not much about the future of our industry is certain, with new legislation and ever-advancing technology keeping everyone on their toes. It was clear from the days we spent together in Vancouver, we work in a dynamic, maturing industry that continues to deliver big opportunities and big challenges.

The post 6 Takeaways from AdMonsters PubForum Vancouver 2019 appeared first on AdMonsters.

One interesting thing about this year is that it’s drilled home that if you’re in ops, you’re only partially in ad tech, per se, and ultimately you’re in the media business, full stop. And there’s much more to the media business than maximizing your revenue on the ad exchanges. Over the course of 2017, we’ve had good reason to think about user experience, regulatory issues, workflow, communication, and issues around strategy that can feel more philosophical or psychological than strictly technical. A number of people at AdMonsters events in recent years have talked about how ops is being elevated within publisher business orgs. Well, this is part of what happens when ops gets elevated. You start to deal with more and more big-picture issues.

As we do every year, we’ve taken some time in late December to put together an AdMonsters highlight reel, from the site and beyond. For all of you out there, this is a chance to recognize how much ground we’ve covered, and also how far these important conversations have come since the beginning of 2017.

A Few Good Units: Mobile Challenges Going Into 2017

We started out the year thinking about big changes underway in mobile monetization. Looking at how the year has played out in mobile, it’s kind of eerie how much this article foreshadowed. Google was gearing up for an assault on intrusive ad units, publishers were getting familiar with IAB LEAN. Apprehension was creeping in, as it became clearer that getting on board with platform publishing was no clear line to mobile revenue. Would native prove to be publishers’ ticket for realizing mobile’s revenue potential? At the end of 2017, it sounds like the answer to that last question is “yes.” And by revisiting this state-of-mobile-monetization assessment from January, it’s evident that whatever insights we’ve harvested this year, the seeds were planted early on.

The Legal Connection: How Ops Avoids Regulatory Pitfalls

The intricacies of the law are not necessarily “wheelhouse” material for ad ops. And yet, ops’ strategic position—facing users, working with tech vendors, and interacting with a variety of stakeholders within a publisher’s business org—puts them at the front lines of a bunch of issues that have real legal implications. This article provides a road map for how ops can identify possible legal issues, escalate them to the right person or team within their company, and set up processes to reduce and mitigate the mess-ups that land publishers on the wrong side of digital laws and regulations.

What’s Ahead for the Header

At AdMonsters, hardly a week went by in 2016 without some kind of mention of header bidding. The practice truly went mainstream that year. By the spring of 2017, that brought a new set of questions: How can publishers keep this revenue growth moving upwards? How will the technology advance from here? How do we solve for latency and provide the best user experience possible? What will it take for S2S to take off, and do publishers need it to take off? What does it mean that Google is jumping into the S2S game with EBDA? How will header bidding affect the bottom line of agencies and vendors? We’re still wrestling with some of these questions, and we’ve spent 2017 reckoning with the positives and negatives of a world where header bidding is standard practice.

The Unwalled Garden: LiveIntent on Scaling the Identity-Based Marketplace

In this March interview with LiveIntent COO Dave Helmreich, I mentioned how it was already sort of cliché to pejoratively throw around the term “the Duopoly.” Of course publishers knew Facebook and Google together own an outsized share of the digital ad marketplace, and they weren’t necessarily comfortable with that arrangement. So what action might they take to retain market share, scale on their own terms, and hold onto the data they need? This interview dives into all of those questions, and lays out how publishers can benefit from developments in identity marketing. Another interesting bit: Helmreich shares some thoughts on the promise of the partnership we now know of as the Open ID consortium, which has remained a topic to watch all year and recently added 15 new member companies.

Ad Ops Decoder: What Is Ads.txt?

This has been a big year for initiatives aimed at reducing ad fraud, and ads.txt in particular has captured publishers’ interests for its apparent simplicity and practicality. The discussion around ads.txt hasn’t had a clear epochal moment to speak of—it’s more like a gradual climb, from education to implementation to buy-side incentivization, then more education and implementation—so it’s not easy to pick one AdMonsters article where the whole storyline came together. So, let’s just highlight the Decoder piece where we talked about how ads.txt works, what it aims to solve, and how it might accomplish what it’s set out to accomplish.

Invasion of the First-Price Auctions

Second-price auctions have long been the modus operandi of the programmatic market. But we started to see some challenges to that model this year, as several of the leading SSPs started experimenting with first-price auctions, and industry leaders made predictions that programmatic’s future lay in the first-price model. This article recognizes that discussion, then backs up and explains why we’re so reliant on second-price auctions in the first place—then asks questions about how exchanges might get around the challenges presented by a first-price model. This is part of a continuing discussion—the transparency of first-price auctions sounds great on paper, but as the programmatic market stands, buyers and sellers would have to put a lot of trust in the exchanges for the first-price method to take off.

Online and Offline Aligned: Conde Nast’s Print/Event/Digital Convergence

Let’s talk workflow for a minute. AdMonsters may be (mostly) focused on digital media, but many media companies don’t have the luxury of being so specific. In working across departments to grow overall revenue, publishers often face challenges in bringing together offline and online revenue sources. Conde Nast had a really compelling case study along those lines: They wanted to bring together information about digital, print and event revenue streams—then look for points where they could grow, and understand how to work with advertisers to make that growth happen. It’s a complicated proposition, but Lauren Farber, Conde’s Senior Director of Business Operations, and Al Villa, FatTail’s VP, Account Management, told us about what they had done together to make the process as clean and efficient as possible.

Ops Keynote: The Coming Consolidation of Ad Tech, Mar Tech and Commerce: Mastercard’s Jay Sears on Our Bright Future

That title is a mouthful, but Jay Sears, Mastercard’s SVP, Media Solutions, had a lot of ground to cover at his Ops keynote in June. AdMonsters touched upon the “convergence of ad tech and mar tech” as a sort of refrain throughout 2017, and Sears’ talk summarized some of the high points succinctly. In short, he told the room at Ops: If you’re in this business to be acquired, you’re doing it wrong. There’s more action at the end points of the industry—the publisher and brand sides—than there is among the intermediaries. Publishers and brands are making more data-driven decisions, and the ad tech/mar tech convergence is enabling the faster growth they need. Sears reminds us we need to ease back on the ad tech jargon and speak in the same language as consumers and business partners—in part, because we have many of the solutions they need, and it’s in everyone’s best interest to let them know how to find and use those solutions.

The New Dichotomy

For ages, digital media types talked about the dichotomy of premium versus “remnant” (or whatever prettier name you want to put on it) inventory. But quietly, as the possibilities within programmatic have exploded, the conversation has shifted to a new dichotomy: custom branded media on one side, and “traditional” media on the other. Here, Gavin Dunaway wraps up a summary of how ad creative has evolved in programmatic, and how that’s blurred the lines between premium and remnant as we once knew it. And he looks into the new challenges and advantages of the current landscape, and the current state of branded/sponsored content and native advertising (let’s just call all of that “custom content”). Also, what’s programmatic guaranteed have to do with this? That comes into play, too…

The State of GDPR: Publishers’ Questions Answered

Throughout much of 2017, publishers have been wondering out loud how much they should be worried about the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation. How should they be preparing for its May 2018 implementation, if they’re not based in the E.U.? If they don’t comply, will its stiff penalties be enforced? It’s been a troubling issue for publishers, especially here in North America, where E.U. privacy regulations can seem anywhere from esoteric to extreme. But toward the end of the year, the answers publishers sought became clearer. After asking questions for months, we rounded up all the answers we had about GDPR—and finally, the path toward compliance appeared to be pretty well lit.

The post Best Of AdMonsters 2017 appeared first on AdMonsters.

We’ll be live blogging sessions in the main room Monday and Tuesday. Keep refreshing this page for the latest.

9:04: AdMonsters Chairman Rob Beeler has taken to the main stage to welcome the attendees and ask out loud whose idea it was to serve moonshine at last night’s dinner. (Right, that was a thing, too…)

9:05: We look for a theme for every Publisher Forum. This time, it’s: “Are we out of gas?” With all the pressures publishers feel from all corners of the industry, it can feel like we’re living in a country song. Publishers used to focus on one key issue at a time. Right now, it feels like things are speeding up. “One of the biggest moves we’ve made as an industry is a text file. It can feel like The Upside Down,” Rob says.

9:24: Rob has spun through all the introductory details, and now Seth Rogin has taken to the stage to talk about a topic near and dear to his heart: “Real News: Truth and Tech Are the Solutions We Need.” Seth has come up through the New York Times, then Mashable, and now Nucleus, a platform that reaches audiences through their hometown news pub. They’re relatively new: “If we’re not in your city, we’re about to be.” He says advertisers didn’t get tired of news; they got tired of Scotch tape.”

9:27: Why unite local news pubs? Seth is into “mission-based media.” He’s not interested in taking a political side. He started as a writer, but in the days before nationwide health care, he wanted to make sure his fellow writers would stay fed and healthy, which meant he wanted to figure out how to monetize media better. And today, he says, we need more civic engagement, and media is crucial in that.

9:30: The people who live at the intersection of media and technology will drive the future of this industry, Seth says. And in doing that, “we have to stand up to the lies.” Media has always felt a bit uncomfortable, but you have to stand up to the discomfort, he says.

9:31: Mike Shields at Business Insider recently published an article with the headline: “The advertising industry has been living a lie.” That lie is what’s breaking the industry. The industry is not broken in itself.

9:32: The first lie is that audience is enough. If it were true, there are plenty of easier places for advertisers to be seen. You see ads on the walls of a bathroom in a bar. But if you saw a Rolex ad in a bathroom, you’d wonder what happened to Rolex. Consider the internet analogy. Environment matters more than ever.

9:34: Next lie is that people visit thousands of sites. In reality, the average user visits six apps on the regular. You can’t find your audience simply anywhere on the web.

9:34: Next lie is that advertisers don’t want to be around news. The idea is that news is upsetting. But news publications have entertainment or sports verticals. Publishers need to align their verticals. Build an ROI first and thank advertisers for supporting journalism later.

9:37: Next lie is that there is no third option for national audience buying. Now, does anyone in this room, Seth asks, not have a national audience?

9:38: Next lie is that young readers don’t read news. Nucleus has been aligning legacy media brands–news, sports, weather, etc.–and found they’re reaching more millennials than some major digital pure plays. The political climate in the U.S. right now demonstrates young people are very engaged in news.

9:39: Next lie is that brands support morals over money, and will not support content that divides people. We pat ourselves on the back for driving slimy people out of the media industry… occasionally. In reality, a lot of those people were supported by advertisers just fine for decades. Brands decided there was ROI in supporting them. We can be upset about that… but Seth doesn’t want to get upset. Return on investment and return on intolerance are not the same thing.

9:42: We hear brands’ C-level people say one thing, and their media buyers do another. Seth heard one of those such buy-side people say recently, “I had to turn the fraud back on to show the client money.”

9:43: Quality pubs need to understand their power. If someone is making a transaction, you’re in power, and you can take a stand. You don’t want to look back and wish you’d done more. You craft your legacy by taking a stand, by standing up against lies, and there are so many opportunities to do that right now.

9:44: The culture needs media, and the culture needs quality content. Where you are seen drives how you are seen. Being seen on a premium brand site matters. This shouldn’t be a provocative thing to say, but publishers have to explain it. Agencies will tell you they see your audience elsewhere on the web. Publishers have to keep articulating for the importance of reaching that audience on premium sites.

9:48: There are initiatives, like the Future of Marketing Initiative, that are being studied by institutions of higher learning, and they need publisher feedback.

9:51: Media doesn’t need to take a side, Seth says, but it needs to take the side of the truth.

9:52: Rob wants to ask a question. Say you’re a brand, and you want to reach your audience, but you know there are people hanging out on the internet and calling out brands for advertising on certain sites. You’re one impression from getting called out on Twitter. Seth says he’s not interested in shaming brands for supporting bad content. What we need to do is show the ROI for premium pubs is better.

9:55: There’s a question of when a topic becomes brand-safe again, after being at the center of bad news. Seth says there can be a point of healing or something like it. Rob mentioned the Ariana Grande concert shooting as an example. Seth pointed to where Grande came back and addressed her audience.

10:02: Rob is welcoming this morning’s sponsor speaker, Tout Founder and CEO Michael Downing, talking about “What They Didn’t Tell You About Making Video Work.” Tout is not, he says, an ad tech company. They’re a company that helps publishers distribute their video. The problem is that you have about 60 sites in this industry that drive 90% of the business, and Tout is trying to open up the marketplace. There’s premium video out there that needs an audience.

10:06: Let’s talk about the phrase “pivot to video.” Will video save us? Or will we lose our minds trying to make basic video tech work on our sites, create meaningful conversion in video, and make programmatic effective?

10:08: Consumers do love video, and 85% of the audience will engage with it if it’s there. Video increases time on site, and pages with video have lower bounce rates and higher social sharing rates. We’re seeing these numbers accelerate over time, and it’s happening faster on mobile.

10:10: Now, 85% of video consumed in digital is less than three minutes in length, but the average view time for live video is 7 minutes 30 seconds. Live video is complicated where monetization is concerned…

10:11 You have video-rich pubs and video-poor pubs. That presents an opportunity for some of the bigger video pubs to bring their content into new environments. There’s a mix of third- and first-party driving engagement in digital.

10:11: The tech in video can be messy and convoluted. Publishers struggle with basic implementation. Many pubs have attempted to replace their video tech in the last five years, and they often have fewer tech resources in-house than they need. Video creates fiction when you have pubs where engineering is not really part of their core competency.

10:14: YouTube will work for DFP… if you’re using DFP. But tech is the “number one blocker” in making the video market “an elitist market.”

10:15: Conversion and audience reach is hard. You probably won’t drive scale purely on your own sites.

10:17: Monetization is a mine field. Standards don’t play well; companies don’t speak with each other or connect in a meaningful way. The average fill rate from programmatic in video is 18%. We thought it was going to be amazing for fill, and it’s not. Not all video views are treated equally. A video watch page (like a YouTube page) is priced much more highly than an editorial page with a video placed in the content.

10:21: You need an actual economic model around the video you’re pushing out into the web, like pre-roll that monetizes wherever the video goes.

10:23: Tout is looking at how video is performing. They’re taking a lot of publisher feedback and doing the analysis to make it valuable to other pubs.

12:09: Following a round of attendee breakout sessions, we’re back in the main room. Jesse Clemmens, Manager, Publisher Development North America at Facebook is going to share a bit about monetizing OTT in the morning’s second full sponsor session.

12:11: Question is, is OTT a new channel, a repeat of mobile, or a hybrid of both? Jesse thinks it’s a hybrid.

12:13:We keep saying “eyeballs are shifting,” and now they’re shifting to video. Mobile has blown up quite a bit in the last couple years. Jesse hopes we can use learnings from the mobile shift to navigate OTT. OTT revenue right now substantially lags behind OTT consumption. What’s the difference between a roadblock and a speedbump?

12:17: Programmatic infrastructure for OTT is underbuilt. Direct sold teams are really good at selling “video everywhere,” so the need for programmatic infrastructure is relatively small. But there will eventually be more supply than direct teams can sell. Audience flow may be hard to control, but we may be seeing inventory going unsold.

12:19: SVOD is in the lead. But we may hit a tipping point where users decide they don’t need to add more subscriptions to their packages. There will be a shift toward ad-subsidized models at that point. We can see some parallels in digital music, which has become good at delivering content however users want to pay.

12:20: Many digital video ads aren’t ready for the big screen yet. That’s a supply chain problem. Agencies have gotten pretty good at transcoding for mobile, but the large screen/HD is another story.

12:21: Server-side tracking is also becoming the norm. Server-side ad insertion partners are on the rise. That makes transitions to ad breaks smoother, but it moves tracking to the server side too. The counting is not being done by publisher and advertiser in tandem. That makes entities more susceptible to domain spoofing and other forms of fraud, Jesse says. We need to solve for fraud in OTT.

12:23: Cross-device attribution was difficult in the shift to mobile. OTT can learn from it. With OTT, though, you have so many different device types, methods for creating device IDs, privacy settings, but Jesse thinks we’ll figure it out as an industry, and the leaders will be “participatory” in determining how tracking happens. Collective work will need to happen, because we have a lot of open questions still.

12:25: That gives Facebook a good foundational perspective to start working on these problems. Facebook can’t just “go with the flow” because its model demands a people-based monetization approach.

12:27: Facebook has some ideas about reducing supply waste and cross-device selling, based on its Audience Direct product for direct sold ads. Facebook data “is fairly common currency,” but if pubs can sell at higher rates, that’s good for the industry.

1:35: After a hearty lunch, we’re back in the main room for the State of Ad Ops, where the AdMonsters team selected a few choice analogies publishers came up with last night, based on our prompts at the Sunday workgroups. To start, ad tech is to complexity as, uh… Jaime is to Cersei? Is this business that incestuous? Viewability probably is to complexity as a hangover is to an 8 a.m. presentation, though. Or as nailing Jell-o is to a wall.

1:37: Randall Rothenberg has been quoted in the press as saying viewability has been solved, Rob says. Do we agree? Seems like the room disagrees, not to slam Randall. The metrics just aren’t aligned.

1:39: Rob has called a winner in this analogy game: “Agencies are to communicative as Hodor is to Hodor.” Thing is, Rob says, if we were to have this conversation with agencies, they’d probably say the same thing about publishers. We’re not speaking the same language and we need to cross the divide.

1:41: TAG has been a great conversation-starter on the Publisher Forum listserv. There’s a lot of concern, and the conversation will continue… and so that’s why we get analogies like “TAG is to transparency as DFP is to support articles” or “… as a fake ID is to a bouncer at the door when you’re 17.”

1:43: For the next conference, we might have to throw in some ominous music whenever someone mentions GDPR. Especially if we’re saying things like “GDPR is to foreboding as Stephen King is to horror,” or “GDPR is to foreboding as obnoxious is to New Jersey.” Rob points out that not a lot of people got into ad ops to become specialists in E.U. law.

1:46: “Mobile is to lucrative as the Ice Age squirrel is to the acorn:” Rob says that if you have kids, this is going to sound right. But hey: “Mobile is to lucrative as analogy problems are to fun.”

1:49: “Rob Beeler is to ad ops as…” This could get hairy. “Dick Clark is to New Year’s Eve?” Possibly generational. “Atari is to video games?” Burn… Anyway, the next PubForum might have a completely different prompt. We’ve prompted attendees to brainstorm startups that could solve their problems. We try to keep it fresh.

1:51: Time for our next sponsor session, Rob Lewis, Sales Director at The Media Trust, talking about “Ad/Revenue Ops: Time to Reset Groundhog Day.” Rob L. says he was recently at an event where this was the preferred topic at a bunch of buy-side people.

1:53: How sad is it that mobile directs have become boring, Rob L. asks? This is incredibly common stuff, and different parties along the supply chain deflect blame. Is what you’re seeing a source, or a symptom? Everyone runs into the same problems (pixel problems, encryption problems, etc.). Many apparent problems are symptoms of problems upstream. And with GDPR (will authorities go after big players or make an example of smaller players?), security, and fake ads on the scene, it’s going to get harder for publishers.

2:01: With all of this, it’s really important to tell your upstream partners what you want. You know how tight security is at a big office building in a major city? Security should be as tight on your site. You have creative specs. Do your partners know them, and do you enforce them? There should be consequences for not meeting security demands, too.

2:03: Define ad quality specs, whether they’re your own or the IAB’s. Share your policy–discuss with the CISO, and with legal, IT and sales teams.

2:04: Take a scan of your site, all your domains. Recognize who you partner with. Recognize who belongs there. See who you find, and what kind of behavior. And enforce your policies upstream.

2:05: One publisher found 600 domains on their site. They expected no more than 250. Naturally they wanted to know who the heck the other 350 were.

2:07: Rob (Beeler) agrees the CEO or president always has a particular knack for finding malware. Rob (Lewis) says it’s always after midnight or first thing in the morning, too.

2:10: Cookies with a long life span could be awesome if they’re people, Rob (Beeler) adds. But the longer they live, the less likely it is they’re people.

3:37: After the afternoon’s round of breakouts and a few minutes for coffee and snacks, we’re back in the main room for the Digital Media Leadership Awards. Lori Tavoularis (SvP, Digital Revenue and Operations at tronc) is sick and couldn’t fly to Nashville, on doctor’s orders. In her stead, for this panel, John Martin (Managing Director at NASCAR), who Rob is giving the “Newcomer of the Year” award for doing a lot for the community in a short period of time. Tim Messier (Director of Audience Data at Cox Automotive) and Megan Latham (Global Head of Advertising Operations at Bloomberg) are both here, though, and on the dais. Rob tells us Tim was the person who first brought him to an AdMonsters event, back when Rob was a young ops person who didn’t realize there were even other people doing the same job as he was doing.

3:46: Megan started out with a rough idea she wanted to work in advertising or marketing, and ended up in account management, trying out a bunch of different tasks and seeing what she liked and what she didn’t.

3:47: John wanted to go into coaching. He’s still “in sports,” as far as he’s concerned. He’s worked with a number of broadcast and sports/entertainment companies. He didn’t set out to get into ops, but he found it “pretty wild.”

3:49: Tim observes the word “trust” has been coming up all day. You need it at every level of a business. We need to “focus more organizationally on the concept of trust.” We can all benefit by internally developing a philosophy of trust.

3:51: Megan says Bloomberg is a cross-platform org, and that can be a strain for teams. Everyone benefits from trust, and she’s taken it for granted, she says, before Tim mentioned it.

3:53: Rob says that he thought he was doing people on his team a favor when he would say, for example, “You get a chance to work on mobile strategy today.” But to those people, it just looked like more work. Rob had to figure out where to take the weight off, so they felt motivated to try new things.

3:56: John says he’s been surprised to find how often people expected a lack of transparency, talking about transparency like it was a goal.

3:57: Megan says it’s important to reach the right person at the right time, in the right environment, when they’re in the right environment. Environment matters, per Seth’s keynote, and isn’t addressed enough. John points out it’s always a good time to offer a racing fan a beer, though.

3:59: Tim has been working on audience data strategy. Context is important, but at the end of the day you can only sell what you can generate.

TUESDAY, 9:03 a.m.: And we’re back for another full day of Publisher Forum! Editorial Director Gavin Dunaway is launching right into Industry Buzz. What has 2017 been if not the Year of Transparency? Mark Pritchard has been demanding it on behalf of P&G… but what if Pritchard himself wasn’t being completely transparent about his motivations? What if P&G had intended to pull tons of spending out of digital anyway?

9:09: We’re seeing the War of SSPs in 2017, and DSPs are feeling the pinch of header bidding. How much of this was expected? Probably not all of it…

9:10: Ads.txt is ramping up, although at the moment we’re still prepping for the effects.

9:11: Publishers are being more cautious about adding header partners, considering who brings unique demand. Will there be a price war among SSPs in 2018? The take rate for a sustainable SSP business is around 16%. There’s a lot of attention on take rates right now, which have long been… less than transparent.

9:12: First-price auctions are on the rise, with buyers advocating for them and DPS enabling them. But we’re seeing “shenanigans,” with intermediaries mucking up the waters.

9:14: Programmatic guaranteed is interesting, but right now is it like the case of the blind man and the elephant? Programmatic guaranteed differs from one campaign to the next. Is this an opportunity for the sell side to come together and define programmatic guaranteed, and put the heat on the buy side to stick to that definition?

9:16: Blockchain is also interesting, but it’s still nascent for ad tech. There’s a lot of buzz around AI, but right now what we’re talking about with AI is more like machine learning. AI might make life easier for ops, when it comes to creative testing and other factors.

9:18: There’s “a lot of panic” around the Coalition for Better Ads. Native could present an opportunity to stay ahead of Google’s demands, based on the Coalition’s findings.

9:19: Fluid placements could have a bright future. If you can be fluid with content–loading site content in accordance with what you expect will be the best for this particular user–why not with ads?

9:20: Time-based guarantees are in the news, with some in the industry questioning whether there’s much of a future for it. For publishers who are doing it, it’s complicated, and it can require a lot of building–but they’re doing it.

9:23: Eric Franchi, formerly of Undertone and currently an entrepreneur and investor, has taken the stage for a fireside keynote talk with Gavin on “Innovation Arena–The Investor Viewpoint on Ad Tech and Digital Media.”

9:25: Customer success rather than advertiser success drove things for Undertone, Eric says. He was with Undertone during a period of massive change, particularly programmatic (which upturned the ad network space). Undertone neither embraced nor rejected RTB, he says. Programmatic was empowering buyers with technology, and Undertone’s competition embraced it. Mobile was the second major evolution point–10 years ago, he says, we wouldn’t have predicted Google and Facebook would end up in the position they’re in today.

9:30: Eric invests in startups and advises more mature companies. If an ad tech or mar tech business is successful and able to scale right now, they’re in a good position, he says. The field has narrowed through consolidation, the leaders have emerged or remained, and it’s easier to make sense of the marketplace.

9:32: We’re coming off of the era of mobile and social, Eric says. That’s been a huge change and the industry is still figuring it out, but users have spoken. Any screen that can become addressable is in play from a marketing perspective. Interactivity has blossomed. Voice will be 40% of searches in coming years, and this is a huge opportunity. And VR/AR will present opportunities that we can’t entirely predict yet. “You’re not going to be sitting there with a phone for the rest of your life,” he says.

9:34: Gavin says he received a press release about self-driving cars… and the advertising opportunity there. And chatbots are increasingly popular for search in Asia. “You don’t want an answer, you want the best answer,” Eric says about search. You don’t want Google to turn up a whole page of sponsored results. And not a lot of companies are focused on voice right now.

9:36: Google is “showing us what Google of the future is, and it’s soon,” and leaning toward being “completely AI-driven,” says Eric. Alphabet is coming out with more and more devices that present opportunities to interact with the internet, which means more opportunities to deliver relevant search results.

9:38: Eric has a few examples of companies he’s following: Uru Video uses AI to understand what’s happening inside videos, rather than looking at contextual data. In order to do that, the tech needs to recognize shapes in the video. Uru has been looking at how to use computer vision for brand safety. It’s early, but the thing about AI is that it keeps getting better over time, with more input it receives.

9:41: Pulpix, which came out of Y Combinator, is a French company that uses AI to find and recommend engaging video content. You know how easy it is to fall down a YouTube hole. Pulpix “wants to bring that opportunity to every publisher.” You get a playlist of recommended video driven by AI, to keep people engaged on the publisher’s site. And there are obviously implications for advertising as well.

9:44: Why don’t people want to talk about mobile? Gavin asks the room. No response. So people evidently don’t even want to talk about why they don’t want to talk about mobile. Eric says there are a few reasons for this. The infrastructure of mobile didn’t support what desktop could support, where advertising is concerned. You need to be mobile-first, but not mobile-only. It calls for a re-imagining of cross-platform strategies. And the Coalition for Better Ads is recommending wiping out certain ad units in mobile, Gavin points out. Question is, are the publishers in this room hosting the kind of ad units the Coalition is targeting? Rob observes the Coalition is calling for important moves, but there’s some hesitation about how Google is the entity driving those moves right now.

9:51: Data is driving the identity-based world. Customer data platforms are interesting to Eric, he says. You’re creating capabilities for personalization across multiple platforms. It’s interesting for publishers to think about themselves as brands, he adds. Publishers want to connect with users across different platforms, and they need data to do that. That’s where the future is pointing, and publishers need to be in the center of those conversations.

9:55: Google and Facebook are hiring AI talent, and they’re pretty aggressive about doing so. That talent isn’t all that common. It’s interesting to look at other companies, then, and see who they’re hiring. Who’s hiring PhDs?

9:56: Question from the room about the dangers of “runaway AI”–the dystopian view–and how those fears factor into Eric’s investment decisions. Eric says it’s a small concern, but the broader concerns of AI are real. Elon Musk has founded an org to address this.

9:58: IBM is doing really interesting things with AI, Eric says, and there’s room in the market for “a fourth” (up there with Facebook, Google and Amazon). Whether that could be IBM remains to be seen. There are applications beyond optimization engines in AI.

10:05: Now we’re switching over to the next session, FreeWheel’s sponsor session. Geoff Wolinezt from FreeWheel and Megan Latham from Bloomberg are on the stage, and we’re recording a podcast live from the dais, Geoff’s “OK, so…” podcast. Megan has told us a bit about her background. One thing she’s pointed out is that even if you happen to find yourself in a role you don’t enjoy, you still have opportunities to learn.

10:11: “Bloomberg at its core is a technology business,” Megan says. They’re working with a ton of data and tech. Other media businesses are looking to Bloomberg for insights. But there’s a data safety issue when you’re using that much data, Geoff says. Megan explains they draw hard lines around terminal data. They use market data for targeting.

10:15: Sales, ops and planning teams are completely cross-platform at Bloomberg, Megan says. They think about the advertiser and their challenges, not about the platform.

10:18: Bloomberg does a lot of direct business, but they’re growing the programmatic business in tandem. Geoff wants to know how they strategize with partners and products. Megan says they have multiple SSPs partners, but they’re very selective about who they work with. They’re “extremely vigilant” about brand safety, but they are active in the open market and not just PMPs. There are some markets around the world, for example, that are less mature, where the open marketplace is an important place to be.

10:23: Geoff wants to know how Bloomberg handles UX in so many environments. Megan says that with a “fickle audience,” UX needs to be top of mind. Rules (like competitive rules) are different between TV and digital. They have to ask whether they should serve, say, a 30-second ad on digital. Even while setting up a media plan, they were thinking about these issues. Geoff points out agencies are very concerned about this stuff, too. And the six-second spot is becoming more accepted. Megan says they’re thinking about six-, eight- and 15-second spots. You don’t want to spend 30 seconds watching a pre-roll ad for short-form video. When those longer pre-roll ads come up, people will lean away and wait for the ad to end, which we see happening in our day-to-day lives. Six-second ads, when done well, are very memorable, she says.

10:28: You need to think about environments where the user is viewing, says Megan. Can you insert a mid-roll commercial break? How, when and where? Geoff points out that the way he watches video online is massively different from the way his kids do. “People are watching despite how they’re watching.”

10:33: Geoff wants to know if Megan has changed her mind about any her former core beliefs about the industry. She says she used to believe the big, splashy unit was the way to go. She’s learned how to innovate and grab users in a way that’s not “in-your-face.” You don’t need to explode things to be engaging, and at Bloomberg, a CEO is not going to be clicking through on a splashy ad.

10:38: Brian Chisholm from OpenX is on the dais now, talking about auction mechanics. Good auction mechanics are transparent, he says, with both buyers and sellers. Auction mechanics that are not transparent are not so good, and you have to wonder whether their main beneficiary is the middleman.

10:41: OpenX has an auction integrity checklist for pubs. Non-transparent auction mechanics are one point. Is there a “shadow first-price auction” going on? That happens today by manipulating paid-to-bid ratio, which is something DSPs talk about more than pubs, but it;s the difference between the advertiser’s bid and the price where the auction clears.

10:44: Why does this matter for pubs? Well, exchanges are making pricing decisions on pub inventory without pub consent. Return on ad spend could be impacted, and buyers may bid less aggressively, causing CPMs to decline. Rebates might shift to less competitive marketplaces, too. Publishers ought to talk to not only their SSPs (to understand the kind of auctions they’re running), but to DSPs (to get their POV on players in the market).

10:48: Unauthorized resale of publisher inventory is a factor. You want to see one supply path for each supplier. Unauthorized resale devalues pub inventory, exposes pubs to ad quality risks, and opens the door to domain spoofing. Publishers ought to do programmatic test buys of their inventory, communicate with partners, take a hard stance about reselling their inventory, and adopt Ads.txt.

10:53: Question from the audience about DSPs and SSPs consolidating, collapsing into each other. Brian thinks they’ll generally be winnowed down to fewer than 10.

10:55: Rob points out that a lot of programmatic is built around “gaming the system” in one way or another. Will first-price auctions help? If we know what buyers are willing to pay, will that help publishers price their inventory?

The post AdMonsters PubForum Nashville: The Live Blog appeared first on AdMonsters.

On Tuesday, Digiday reported time-based guarantees have “hit a wall,” as the popular discussion in digital advertising has moved on to things like brand safety. Reading the coverage, though, it sounds like Digiday has reached this conclusion by talking to a publisher who’s seeing fewer time-based campaigns coming through the door, a publisher who’s satisfied with time-based ad sales at the moment, and a publisher who says it’s too soon to predict the future of time-based deals. If time-based deals are slowing down, though, I want to know: Does that mean their moment in the limelight is over, or that it hasn’t truly arrived yet? AdMonsters has been championing transacting on time, and other attention-based metrics, for a long time, and we’re holding out for them. The buy side is usually slow to adopt new approaches. New tech solutions that make the process more efficient—which time-based sales can really use at this point—may accelerate adoption. Our take is that where we’re at with time-based transactions is more a symptom of a slow ramp-up than of a quick death.

Artificial Intelligence’s Slow Burn Heats Up

This week, eMarketer released a new report, “Artificial Intelligence for Marketers 2018: Finding Value Beyond the Hype.” AI has been around for decades, in one capacity or another, and it helps people perform basic tasks on the internet constantly without the average layperson even noticing. But AI is a hot topic right now among marketers, and that’s a more recent and overt development. So why now? Well, it’s taken a while for marketers, broadly, to understand how it can work for them. We might suggest, in addition, that AI is hitting a certain scale and pricepoint where marketers can explore its potential.

Apple Cookie-Blocking Already Costs Publishers Big Bucks

Last month, Apple changed its policy for handling first-party cookies in Safari. At the time, I and a bunch of other people predicted the changes would create problems in mobile for publishers, specifically by pushing advertisers toward Facebook’s large logged-in audience. Digiday reported this week that some programmatic-heavy publishers have already been feeling the effects of the new cookie policy, and it’s hitting them right in the bottom line. CafeMedia’s Paul Bannister went on record to say his company’s CPMs in Safari are roughly 10% lower than what he’d expected for this time of year. Meanwhile, Ranker’s Clark Benson saw its yield on Androidincrease compared to Safari.

Video Distribution Works for GQ

GQ has been hard at work arguing a case against the old line that publishers can’t make money from distributing video on social media platforms. And evidently it’s paying off for them. Digiday details that video model this week, and summarizes it as: “Build something that works with GQ’s direct audience, then package it for its distributed viewers.” The strategy involves producing video series, and distributing them across GQ’s O&Os, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. They’ve taken care to look at what lengths of video, content verticals, and metrics work best for which platforms. Over here at AdMonsters, we’ll be exploring video distribution strategies in our next playbook, “Building a Video Business.” For the interim, GQ’s story offers a compelling case study.

Senate Bill Demands Disclosure from Digital Political Ad Buys

A new bill was introduced to the U.S. Senate this week, with the goal of requiring more disclosures around political ad campaigns running on large digital platforms. It’s called the Honest Ads Act, and according to Recode, the proposed law would affect political ad buys of $500 or more on any digital property (i.e., site, social network app, ad network) that nets at least 50 million unique U.S. visitors per month in at least six months of any year. When a political ad buy meets those criteria, the platform running the ads will need to disclose data around who or what the entity buying the ads is, what audiences they’re targeting, and the cost of the ad inventory. In other words, if passed, the law would hold digital platforms to a similar standard that broadcasters and newspapers are held to, where political ads are concerned. The Honest Ads Act comes along following ongoing revelations in the news about the extent to which Russian agents had bought ads on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and elsewhere, in an attempt to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mark Warner (D-VA) sponsored the bill, with support from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

Zombie Sites Ate Ad Spend from Major Brands

BuzzFeed reporters say they’ve uncovered an ad fraud scheme, in which ads from more than 100 brands ran on “zombie sites” populated with pirated content or gobbledygook. The scheme is described as a session-jacking redirect ploy, and BuzzFeed indicated all the sites implicated were running code from 301network, operated by Nashville-based marketing agency 301 Digital Media. The company’s CEO has denied knowledge of any fraudulent activity and stated the company is in the process of shutting down its ad network. It’s still unclear how wide-ranging this scheme was or is, but BuzzFeed claimed it’s possible bad actors could have pinched millions of dollars.

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At the same type, an abundance of video ads—many on autoplay—is a chief reason Internet users are embracing ad blockers. Advertisers are wary of the programmatic video market because of rampant fraud and mislabeling. In addition, they’ve become more circumspect regarding viewability, completion rates, and other metrics. Finally, as GeoEdge reports, video advertising has proven a handy medium for delivering malware, and the growing trend of phishing attacks, during a time when online security is a prime concern.

The digital video space is undergoing some rough growing pains as it matures, and publishers that aim to keep driving revenue from video advertising need strategies for optimizing and evaluating performance—both for the advertiser and the end-user.

Going beyond the basics of digital video advertising, the AdMonsters User Experience: Optimizing Video Advertising–developed with the support of GeoEdge–looks at numerous factors affecting user experience, including formats, security concerns, and latency. It also dives into best practices for evaluating various pieces of video technology including the player and the ad server. In addition, we discuss the relevance of metrics like viewability and completion rates, as well as programmatic challenges and opportunities.

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And yet, despite all those morbid proclamations, it’s 2017 and we’re still living with Flash. In the publisher-side ad ops world, folks are living with a heck of a lot more Flash than they’d really like. Apple, Google and Mozilla couldn’t kill it by having Flash disabled by default in Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Publishers will tell you (or anyone willing to listen to them vent for a few minutes) how creative agencies seem to be unable to break their Flash habits. If Flash is what agencies are most comfortable building in, and if agencies are more comfortable sending lightweight Flash files out into the pipes instead of those much larger HTML5 files, then Flash is what publishers will get in ad creative. If the publisher doesn’t like it, they’ll have to figure out how to deal with it—using a DIY Flash-to-HTML5 converter tool, onboarding a rich media vendor company, working alongside buy-side clients to rebuild ad files, or whatever else works.

Flash has survived for years in spite of so many influential parties’ attempts to the contrary. We saw Steve Jobs rail against Flash. We’ve seen major browsers disable Flash. We’ve seen publishers try to put the pressure on advertisers to just tear off that Band-Aid and stop building in Flash. We’ve seen Google and Mozilla seemingly try to put a pillow over Flash’s face, by ceasing development on their Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tools, Swiffy and Shumway, respectively. It had become clear enough that the only way Flash was going to die would be if Adobe itself pulled the plug.

But considering Adobe is looking at the end of 2020 as Flash’s kill-by date—that means we’re still going to have nearly three and a half more years before it’s over. To frame it another way, December 2020 is five and a half years beyond the point in 2015 when Google announced it would start pausing Flash content in Chrome! We’re in the middle of a long march to the sea, my friends.

Predicting what might happen in three years of ad tech and digital media is about as useful as a long-range weather forecast in the northeastern U.S. You’re welcome to give it a shot. But regardless, shutting down Flash will likely accelerate some of those opportunities we’ve been hearing about to take a lead in bringing the ad space up to date, and maybe to profit in the process. A lot of tech vendors have been receiving and distributing Flash creative from advertiser clients without pushing back—they haven’t had the incentive, because they’ve gotten paid one way or another. But if there’s money to be made in offering services to convert Flash files to HTML5, we might see more vendors adding that tool to their kits. Some publishers are doing this already, on their own part, and charging buy-side clients for the trouble. It’ll possibly be a brief window of time to capitalize on, though—the awareness is present now, but if Flash goes away, so will the opportunity to convert it to HTML5.

But when that happens—imagine all that HTML5 creative flowing through mobile channels, the way it’s supposed to in mobile. What will that do for ad experience, and for publishers’ ability to monetize their mobile web properties? One can dream. Hopefully it won’t take three years to get an answer.

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