The Perils & Possibilities of Programmatic Buying

In a discussion during Advertising Week, The Perils & Possibilities of Programmatic Buying: Essential Factors to Consider brands such as Netflix and Kellog talked about their experience and insights as they dive into the world of automated buying. 

AdAge wrote an article on the event:

Why Netflix and Kellog Took Programmatic In House: http://adage.com/article/advertising-week-2014/netflix-kellogg-programmatic-house/295253/?utm_source=digital_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage&ttl=1412869072

My notes from the panel had a bit of a different emphasis.

• “Investment follows performance”. We are in the very early days of programmatic and these guys will throw a little money at anything once. They will pull the plug quickly if it doesn’t work and pump more money into it if it does work.
• “Element of art & common sense.” They both admitted that you can’t measure everything. Especially Kellog who is an offline brand and can’t directly tie grocery store sales to digital campaigns.
• Finally, private deals done programmatically give advertisers access to inventory & audiences without requiring them to commit to spending. They repeated that “investment follows performance”. It is my feeling that all of this is very one sided in the advertiser’s favor.

I have more to say about private deals and where programmatic stands right now but I will save that for other blog posts. 

High Impact Starts the Conversation, Banners Seal the Deal

We live in a polarized world. Discussions about high impact, premium and native advertising always seem to be at odds with conventional display. This approach is wrong. I am guilty of it. We are all guilty of it.

The truth of the matter is that the banner ad is celebrating 20 years of existence since it does serve a purpose. Used correctly within a plan, Click throughs lead to conversions and sales. They drive traffic into stores. 

So why all the hating on banners? Why don't they get the love they deserve? Because they are a useful part of a plan. Not an entire plan. 

Engaging with consumers starts with telling a story. Telling a story through text content, or showing an image the depicts a lifestyle, or showing consumers what you represent with video, or drawing an audience in with interactivity. Banners do a terrible job at this. 

Telling is not Selling

Once you have the audience's attention, once you have communicated your value proposition, once a brand has projected the lifestyle they represent, you have to close the deal. You have to remind the consumer that you are there. You have to follow them and pester them and remind them that you exist until the transaction is complete. This is the value of banners since the audience doesn't need to hear the story again and if they want to they can probably find it on their own. 

This blog post sounds like I am a big proponent of banners. I am not. However this blog post is my admission that banners do have their place and purpose. They have a purpose after the story has been told. They have a purpose after the value has been communicated. 

CheckM8 works with publishers, agencies and brands to create rich environments and ad formats that attract the audience's attention and then provide the canvas for visual and interactive story telling. We provide the vehicle for advertisers to connect with their customers so that they can follow up with banners and seal the deal at another time and place.

Otherwise, banners are useless.

Effective Formats for Mobile

Why Marketers Just Can't Crack Mobile by @AdAge 

This article from AdAge: (http://adage.com/article/news/marketers-crack-mobile/293249/?utm_source=digital_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage&ttl=1401113818) talks about how mobile is the "next frontier". Basically, that consumers are spending more and more time on their phones but advertisers are very slow to catch up to them with their spending. 

"Mobile is, without a doubt, the first screen for a great many users. Consumers spend 23.8% of their time with media on mobile devices each day, according to eMarketer, compared with 37.2% with TV. It may soon surpass TV as the screen claiming the most consumer time."

"And yet ad spending remains almost the mirror image. Advertisers spend 17¢ on TV for every hour of U.S. adult consumption of the medium; they pour 83¢ into each hour spent with print. For mobile, it's 7¢, according to eMarketer."

"Advertising, like any institution, can move glacially. Brands and agencies are just getting comfortable with SEO and banner ads, tactics now becoming obsolete."

What this says is that first movers are going to figure out the formats and tactics that work best, prove excellent results, and then when the mass market copy cats those tactics consumers will have already been bored with it and performance metrics will tail off. 

"What marketers expect from the device is shifting markedly as well: They want engagement, not simply impressions."

Currently, the most popular and least effective form of mobile advertising is the mobile banner. Everybody realizes that it is not working and are looking for new ways.

Smart publishers are implementing sponsored content. In stream Native content that blends with the mobile publisher's site. But what if your most effective messaging is not in words but in pictures and videos instead? 

Take a look at CheckM8's Page Roll format for phones, tablets & desktops: http://goo.gl/FevXa1 
**scroll to view the Aveda video. It only plays when in view of the user and pauses when out of view. Notice the branding "leave behind" when the video ends and collapses. 

CheckM8 also developed a more effective video banner that responsively adjusts to the device (desktop, tablet *& phone). See what Tim Tebow has to say about T-Mobile:  http://goo.gl/l8AN1Y

Will NHT kill Open Exchanges?

I attended 212 Interactive Advertising's (@TwoOneTwoNYC) Video Panel yesterday evening and got some great insight into where video advertising is going.

1 - It is getting significant enough that the problems and warts are coming to the surface and need to be addressed. People caring about the problems and the discussion around the problems are a significant step in growth.

2 - Non viewable ads and Bot traffic are so significant that it has it's own acronym: NHT Non Human Traffic. Its a problem that is getting agency attention as they need to solve it to attract TV dollars. 

3 - It is Ari Bluman's (Chief Digital Investment Officer, North America, GroupM) stated goal/directive that none of his clients will buy inventory on an open exchange by the end of 2014. All programmatic video buys will go to private exchanges since those premium publishers can be personally responsible for making sure the traffic is human, the ads are viewed and the content is appropriate. 

4 - Nobody mentioned directly buying or selling video inventory. Everything was centered around programmatic. 

5 - Natalie Bokenham, SVP Managing Partner UM, talked about how one of her top clients can't get enough digital video advertising inventory. The ROI on those campaigns have proven well worth it and they have a lot more buying to do before she sees that leveling off.