Operative Blog

FFL and Digital Media

Anyone know what time of year it is?  That’s right, it’s fantasy football draft season.  If you’ve played before, you know that draft season is the most stressful time of year.  This is when you have to sit down, look at all the players that are available and decide which ones will help you win a fantasy football championship.  There are many strategies that you can deploy, and the most conventional is to draft running backs- fast, furious and early on.  Why?  They are the steady players that give you consistent point production.  But, fantasy football has changed.  Some NFL teams now use multiple running backs (AKA running back by committee).  Other teams have moved away from running the ball all together and have opted for the exciting air attack.  This opened up opportunities for fantasy owners to structure their teams around additional point contributors like a Quarter Back like Drew Brees or a Wide Receiver like Larry Fitzgerald.  Decisions, decisions. 

How does fantasy football relate back to digital media? 

Well, it’s also technology budgeting season.  Today’s publishers and specialty ad networks feel the stress of making technology decisions for 2011.  They have to sit down, review all the projects they are going to push for and make a stake in the ground that “these are the initiatives that will put us in the best position to win”.  

Many of these projects will fall into 2 categories.  The first category is revenue.  Plain and simple, if that project is successful, it will directly help you make money.  There should be no ambiguity.  Some example projects include:

• Developing custom creative programs to help you attract new brands
• Building a mobile, video or  social media ad server that promotes engagement metrics or gives you a competitive advantage in the market place
• Introducing rich media tools

The second category is around helping companies drive efficiency inside and outside their organization.  Below are some examples of efficiency-focused initiatives:

• Syncing your publisher/partner/network management systems
• Evaluating and deploying reconciliation, reporting and billing tools
• Integrating with proposal , IO and media planning applications

In order to be successful in 2011, media companies need to do both.  You MUST do both.  If you don’t innovate, you won’t attract the big ad dollars.  If you only innovate and forget about the back-end efficiency, you’ll lose all the customers you won or have a ceiling on the amount of customers you can take-on due to inefficiency.  Quite the predicament. 

For most media companies, there are the few factors contributing to this problem:

1. You’ve got 1 engineering team and they are drinking through a fire hose.  I don’t care who you are…if you’re a digital media owner in some capacity, your engineering team has too much on their plate and not enough time.  Furthermore, with all the new technology in the market place, it’s just getting worse and worse.
2. Most publishers, even today, still run their business on excel.  There’s not one platform in place that you can use as a springboard for innovation.  Not one place to connect all these new things that you’re buying or creating.  This is also the reason your operations teams are so busy.  They have to log into 10 different systems to get their jobs done. No wonder there is so much demand for projects that create efficiency.
3. A large percentage of the technology and business leadership within media organizations still promotes a “let’s build it all” type of mentality.  For example, the industry hasn’t matured enough where the role of the CIO is relevant – there’s no one to advise the CEO on best practices on how to get information, drive revenue and scale (all at the same time).

If this sounds familiar and your ability to be successful depends on your engineering team executing, consider some of these ideas:

1. Make a list of all the projects you have on your plate for 2011.  From there, put a “$” next to each one that your sure will help you drive revenue next year.  Then, put an “E” next to the ones that will help your bottom line (efficiency gains, speed to market, etc.).  Getting clarity on what these projects actually “mean” for the business is the first step.  
2. From there, make the decision to partner with a company that can offer an enterprise platform to help you run your day to day business and gain those efficiencies (inventory management, proposals, packaging, trafficking, reporting, financial reconciliation, etc.).  Make sure your partner has an API and SDK to help you innovate.  You’ll find there are companies that can not only help you get deal with a lot of your “E”s, but also enable you to innovate the “$”s.
3. It’s important to ensure that the company’s technology culture has a strategic focus on revenue and strategic value creation.  I ran into one publisher recently who calls his engineering team “Team Money”.  That’s because their engineering leadership has a mentality of selecting projects that will help the company drive new revenue by establishing partnerships with companies that help them achieve greater efficiency.   This is a cultural change and isn’t always easy.  Engage your CEO in this concept – make it a big deal towards hitting the 2011 revenue number.

By focusing your engineering teams on things that are exciting (like drafting quarterbacks and wide receivers) and partnering with a company that can help you innovate and scale (your work horse running back), you’ll be in a better position to be successful in 2011…successful in beating your competition, meeting the new demands of brand advertisers, raising employee satisfaction in your engineering department and keeping both the top and bottom line on the up and up.

The world of creative in online advertising is constantly evolving. It seems that every month we’re reading about new types of creative that can be implemented on a publisher’s web site. While many still use plain images to do their advertising (and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that!), we are beginning to see that advertiser’s want to directly engage the user…and when they do, it leads to quantifiable results.

While Flash® is still considered ‘Rich Media’ by many, it is quickly becoming ‘standard’ creative in this day and age. Flash® ads are now so common that even as a user myself, I do not feel that it captivates my attention like many of the newer brands of creative – ads such as push-downs, interstitials, and floating ads, while sometimes annoying to the user, also present a better opportunity to capture the user’s attention.

So if you are a publisher and want to get involved in the freshest types of rich media, here are 3 things to know so that you aren’t caught off-guard by the newest creative types.

1. Rich Media Vendors are the way to go.

If you’ve yet to take a dive into the world of rich media, know that there are specialists out there whose core competency is building and serving high-end rich media. Providers such as Pointroll, Media Mind(formerly Eyeblaster) and Eyewonder specialize in this type of work, and can handle any questions you may have about rich media as well as assist you and your advertiser in the creation of your product. Operative has developed partnerships with several of these vendors as well- reach out to us if you would like an introduction!

2. Rich Media creative is served differently than standard creative.

Standard ads are served through an ad tag on your website. These ad tags contain a specific size and directly correlate to a specific position on your page. There is very little complexity here. When delving into a high-end rich media creative, the equation changes. Take a “pushdown” for instance:  This ad is meant to load as a standard ad, but when you mouse over it, it “pushes” the content of your page down as the ad expands to a greater size. To create this type of movement, the code within the ad interacts with the code on your web page, creating this action. Obviously this can be a complicated process, which leads us to…

3. There will be some frustrations!

Most publishers can attest to the struggles obtaining creative in time for an on-time campaign launch. When using rich media, the struggle may increase. As a publisher, if you know you are going to be using rich media, it is best to plan for it! Rich media creative often require extensive testing in a custom set-up test environment (make sure you have one!) before setting the creative live to your actual web page. These ads often do not work the way you expect them to on the first try, so it’s imperative to test them before launch. This, of course, means you’ll need the creative in your hands well before the launch- so make sure you plan ahead for this when scheduling campaigns and working with a creative developer!

Diving head-first into the world of rich media is an exciting step for every publisher…and can lead to increased revenue. But know that a lot of work, and often times, a lot of patience is a part of the package! All in all however, employing rich media on your site can be a tremendous benefit to both you (higher CPMs), and your advertisers (more customers)!

For more information, please click here.

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Blogged by Christopher Lane, Operations Manager

Operative provides outsourced Ad Operations for both agencies and publishers across the globe. Chris Lane is one of Operative’s senior technical and tactical experts for all things Publisher, providing advice to publisher clients on a variety of subject matters including campaign performance to troubleshooting and product optimization.

According to the Bain Study “Building Brands Online”, in the next 3 years, brand marketers will spend close to 40% of their budget on cross-platform campaigns (up from roughly 25%).  That’s about $52,000,000,000 being spent on cross platform campaigns in the near future.  Unless you start making changes in your organization to satisfy this new rise in demand, you won’t get a dime of it.

Let’s explore why.

What do these new demands look like for marketers?                            

A marketer looking for ‘cross-platform’ means they want to use multiple advertising platforms or vehicles to convey an advertising message.  For example, a brand like Nike may want to reach women at home, on the move, during recreation and at work.  To do that, Nike needs a number of options to distribute the advertising message: display media, online video, mobile, social media, TV, outdoor, newspaper and magazines.  And, the list continues to get longer.  For example, in the last 2 months, hundreds of publishers scrambled to build their iPad app, knowing that a decent percent of their audience will flee to the digital magazine version of their product. 

Marketers are starting to require multiple touch points in their campaigns, increasingly digital.  The people who spend the money are aware that digital is an accountable, efficient way to build brand equity and are putting pressure on their marketing departments to become more cross-platform as a result.  They are looking to get a single message to a consumer across different digital and non-digital advertising channels.  In fact, according to the Marketing and Media Ecosystem 2010 Booz & Company analysis, 89% of all marketers are developing ideas that cross media platforms, including digital.        

What can media owners and publishers do to keep up with these demands?

Let’s take a break from the macro-level talk and get into the day to day reality of the situation.  The media buyer that you met at a cocktail party nine months ago calls you up. 

“Hey – long time, how are you?… Great, great…Listen, we are doing this thing for my client and they are trying to reach men between the ages of 18-49 that are interested in buying a car.  And um…they are really trying to do this across multiple outlets…something that covers all the standard online ad units, but something that’s custom too.  So, if you could put together something that’s standard, custom, across video, mobile, online, social, that’s targeted to male car buyers between the age of 18 and 49 that live in the north east, that’d be great.  Oh, wait, I need it by this Friday OK?  Thanks, you’re the best.”

Only 1 type of publisher will get this order- the one who CAN execute.  If you can’t scale, you’ll spend all of your time reacting to these requests and looking for data.  This leaves very little time to sell, brainstorm and get creative. 

Translation – you likely won’t get this deal. 

So, what’s holding publishers back from executing cross-platform campaigns?

1.    Technology and data fragmentation is still a huge problem.  A typical publisher uses 30+ systems to run their business.  The data is fragmented, yet absolutely necessary to access to stay competitive in this new market place.  There’s one ad server for video, one for mobile, and one for display.  If you want to include a TV component or a print component, there’s a whole different set of systems to access to see if the inventory even available, and at what price.  If you plan to offer ad space on an iPad app, well you have that to deal with now too. 

2.    Business resources necessary to complete the RFP or contract oftentimes don’t even sit on the same floor- let alone same office. You may have other sales teams within your company that you may need to consult with to get them on board with your client’s ideas.  They are usually removed from your digital business goals, have not been vested in the process of selling to this client, and have their own agendas in mind. 

3.     Ad operations teams are typecast and segmented by the media they implement.  For many publishers, one team traffics standard and display rich media.  Another team traffics mobile or uses an outsourced mobile ad network.  TV and print production teams don’t even sit in the same office as you.  These are not ideal conditions for selling a cross-platform deal.

What can publishers do about it?

1.    Take a leadership role by getting all of your data in one place for Sales.  Plan for the future.  According to the Ecosystem study mentioned above, 67% of media owners said they need to upgrade their supply chain capabilities in 2010.  Part of this investment translates into having one screen to access your inventory, products and rate cards available for video, mobile, display, social and even TV, radio and newspaper.  This needs to happen, regardless of the number of ad servers or execution systems you may use.  Integrate it all into one central place so at the time of proposal, Sales has all the information they need when they get the call from that media buyer. 

2.    Centralize ad operations teams and production resources.  Fragmented ad operations teams are unable to help sales drive revenue that comes from cross-platform.  While it would be difficult (today) to have the same ad ops team that implements TV also traffic digital, there are steps you can take to move in the right direction.  Get everyone communicating with each other through one platform.  The carrot is integrating their specific ad system into the platform that everyone uses.  This will make them want to be on that platform.  By merging several departments onto one system, new proposals, orders, demands and alerts from a cross-media sales teams would be visible to everyone. 

How do these steps help publishers deliver cross-media campaigns?

By implementing these steps, Sales will be able react quickly to client demands.  They will also have more data to educate buyers and move upstream in the buying process, getting closer to the people holding the budget.  Executives can get a larger share of wallet from existing and new customers.  Ad operations and production resources can become a strategic partner to ad sales teams and help provide a competitive advantage over other publishers competing for the same dollars.

Of course, this is not easily done.  Someone with influence in your company needs to step in and be the VP of Change.  Someone who has power.  Someone that cares about revenue.  That cares about your brand.  Someone that is forward thinking enough to adapt before it’s too late.  If you can get the right people behind you, integration of data becomes easier, centralization of operations starts to fall into place and the company will start to rally towards a common cause- $52,000,000,000.

For more information, please click here.

Welcome to the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, “Ecosystem 2.0, Revenue the next wave“.  650 digital media leaders are here in Carlsbad, California- 30% more attendees than last year.  It’s Monday morning, February 22, and one of the resounding messages so far has been the fact that interactive marketing will grow next year.  2010 is about new services, products, and transparency- it is all about growth.  As an update, the Terms and Conditions 3.0 will take effect today and was based upon feedback from over 100 companies.

In one of the opening sessions, Jory Des Jardins from Blogher introduced Frank Cooper  from Pepsi.   Jory praised Pepsi’s innovative approach to interactivity.   She mentioned an example about  a consumer tweeting that they are thirsty, and suddenly a butler appears on the screen to offer a Diet Pepsi.  Companies like Pepsi are taking big risks which means they are taking a leadership position. 

Frank Cooper, Senior Vice President, Chief Consumer Engagement Officer, Pepsi Co Americas Beverages:

“We have a chance to make brands more appropriate to everyone’s lives.”  He believes the marketing that has been built for the last 75 years is now not relevant.  Brands need to add value to our lives.  The truth is that right now we are in the middle of a brand marketing crisis.  Less loyalty, lower prices, dysfunctional messages across the board, these are all problems with marketing today.  The truth is that brand marketing has NOT really changed in quite some time. 

As an industry of digital marketers, we need to rethink, redesign and rebuild brand marketing.  Brands provide consistent value and consistent price.  But identity value has become even more important to consumers.  How can brands bring new value to the audience?

Brand behavior must change from ‘only sponsorships’ to ‘opportunities based on experience’.   We must also build our brands around social networks. The consumer has to be able to sell for us and leverage outlets that are ‘connected’.  The digital space has technology that allows us to relate to consumers in a deeper way.  Social media allows brands to highlight people and elevate their experiences with a brand or product. 

Ultimately, advertising has to add more transactions, better value or higher prices to be successful.

"Managing The Ad Sales Process"- Paid Content and Operative

This morning we sponsored a breakfast with the folks at Paid Content.  Media luminaries Pam Horan (OPA), Riley McDonough (Reuters Media) and James Smith (The Huffington Post) discussed the challenges of digital media ad sales and sales operations. 

We’d like to thank Paid Content for kick-starting our morning with great content. 

And special thanks for Pam, Riley and James for divulging the report card of their solutions providers, debating the long-term value of ad networks, and reminding us that our job as media publishers is to get closer to our customers/consumers byleveraging people, process and technology.

Check back in tomorrow for a full recap on the breakfast, anecdotes on the ‘cute vs. ugly impressions’ in your product catalog, and best practices to growing your business immediately and in the future.

Thanks to RJ Lewis’s post on Friday of last week, I found an awesome video.

Last week at the WPP/24/7 Real Media Summit in NYC, they kicked off the conference with a 9 minute video parodying the death of traditional media.  Sir Martin Sorrell clearly focusing the company on digital media suggesting that they currently spend 12% on digital media but that will increase dramatically.

This video is worth a watch, especially if you buy or sell digital media.  Thanks RJ!

Lorne

From:  E-HeathCareSolutions

…they could all force publishers to change the way they sell and operate in the near future.

Have you ever had one of those digital media moments where you thought, “cmon, really?!”  Well, on Monday morning I attended Digiday at the W Hotel in NYC and for a moment, thought exactly that… for a minute.  I think it was brought up numerous times that it’s no longer appropriate to call your inventory sold and unsold, but more like ‘reserved and non-reserved’ as Darren Herman put it.  I thought to myself, hmmm, ok, let’s go with that…it sounds better than remnant for sure…but then later that day, it was then proclaimed ‘premium and sub-premium’…I guess because ‘non-premium’ sounds too much like a fake Louis Vuitton handbag sold on 5th Avenue next to the hot dog vendor – you might buy one, but you’ll feel a little icky after.

Believe it or not, all this renaming and debating over what to call unused inventory went on all morning.  All of a sudden, these silly proclamations started to make me think.  If people are spending all this effort debating over what a specific category is called, there must be a disturbance in the force; the growth of this ‘sub-premium’ inventory is growing exponentially.  Jason Kelly from Time, Inc agrees that with “…the growth of  Twitter and other social media, non-premium inventory is growing at a rapid pace, which also means finding premium inventory is getting harder.”  He also added that “non premium display has great opportunity for growth.” 

So as sub-premium inventory grows at such a rapid pace, the dynamic of how advertisers interact with consumers is changes along with it. 

French children are told a story in which they imagine having a pond with water lily leaves floating on the surface.  The lily population doubles in size every day and, if left unchecked, will smother the pond in 30 days, killing all the other living things in the water.  Could the growth of sub-premium inventory threaten publishers ability to compete in the future?  The answer is yes - if you don’t take action.  Here are some thoughts on how agencies are looking to innovate and some action items publishers can take to keep competitive in this newly evolving landscape.

1. Agencies are Buying Audience:  You may say, “duh” to that, but with all the impressions available on the Internet,  coupled with new technologies, there are more and more ways for agencies to buy audiences.  Darren Herman, who runs digital media at the Media Kitchen and is also President of Varick Media Management, talked about their own data initiatives and is working with 27 different data providers to mine data for audience segments. 

2. I also traded some emails with Steve Katelman from OMD and when I asked him what the next big initiatives were for agencies, he said “It’s all about audiences and the evolution of real time bidding.”  These activities signal that agencies are pushing the envelope and taking media buying to the next level since brands are getting smarter about which agencies they work with. 

3. To make things even more interesting, GroupM decided to go against the IAB initiatives for Ts and Cs by claiming ownership of data it collects.  According to GroupM’s COO, John Montgomery, this is a way to “…protect the confidentiality of our clients’ campaign data and information.”  One does wonder if this becomes a trend, how it could create a dynamic  of publishers competing against their own customers OR new price pressures down the road.

So now what?

As a publisher, you need to start to understand your audience.  Quantcast is  great way to take a first step at understanding the segments you can offer – but that won’t be enough.  Taking action on that data and integrating it into your product catalog so it’s easily findable by your ad sales team, will ensure you are ready to sell the way agencies want to buy. Now, that’scompetitive advantage.  This was echoed at Digiday by Janet Balis, President of Digital Media Strategies, who spoke on the importance of, at the very least, keeping an up to date “product catalog and sound inventory management strategy” as the industry looks towards more advanced ways to reach consumers.

Industry vet and pal of mine, Nick Johnson from NBCU mentioned that “mining data and looking for specific audience segments is a big focus for us…we are in the business of unlocking data to create value for our clients and their clients.”  In order to do this, Nick added, “You need to operate more efficiently and look for places in your business that don’t scale and fix them.”  If you want to elevate your game, you need to fix the basic data fragmentation issues in order to solve for the future.

Even if you can get your house in order for this audience revolution, there is still a miss-match in terms of how you set up your resources.  Currently, “50% of ad ops time is focused on 15% of the revenue,” says Josh Wetzelfrom Pubmatic.  Basically, this means that in addition to getting your data in order, you may have to find ways to free up your ad ops resources to stay focused on big ticket integrations and less on the more repeatable, low CPM, ‘sub-premium’ tasks.

I look forward to your comments.

Lorne

Marti Funk (Sportgenic), me, and Steve Patrizi (LinkedIn)

After going attending iMedia in Austin last week and spending lots of time with VPs of Ad Sales & Media Directors, one thing is still clear.  It’s really hard to get in front of an agency to influence an RFP.  It requires effort, research and diligence…and since all those things sound like “work”, too many media sellers take the easy way out; just trying to get on the RFP.  By just trying to get included in the circulation of a document that’s already been co-authored by your competition, you are setting yourself up for certain failure.  Failure may be too strong; you may get a small spend, but most times, you’ll never hear back from them or if you do, you may hear something like, “you weren’t the right fit” or “we went in another direction”…sounds like a interview rejection. 

Now, in defense of media teams everywhere, there are some real obstacles to influencing the agency.  Last Monday morning down in Austin, I attended John Durham’s (Catalyst SF) panel titled, “Trading Places”.  This is where 4 heads of media sales got on stage with 4 heads of media buying to air their issues.  The publishers brought up great points around why its so hard to get in front of and deal with an agency:

1) David Blumenfeld mentioned how “agencies are always looking for that outside the box idea, but make sure it’s inside the spreadsheet.” 

2) My favorite one was the cream cheese incident by Carter Brokaw from Meebo…where you get a meeting with a power person at an agency to join your pitch and the only person there is a junior media buyer asking “where’s the veggie cream cheese?”  They also came to the meeting without a pen or notebook. 

3) And of course, the classic, “We need you guys to really surprise us on this one, get creative and we need a response from you by EOD tomorrow.”

So now what…it’s hard to get a meeting with a decision maker, it’s hard to get the lion share of the budget, it’s hard to influence the RFP and when you do win the biz, it’s hard to keep them coming back.  Here are some thoughts to help you navigate through these erratic waters:

1) Getting a Meeting with a Decision Maker:  people with the “power of the pen” are often getting lots of emails and calls.  Hundreds per day.  Sorting through the clutter is time consuming and usually emails are just skimmed for pockets of interesting ideas.  If you are sending an email or leaving a voice mail, make sure you are giving someone a good reason to call you back.  Find out why their previous campaigns failed, if they post a personal blog and what challenges their clients have had in the past taking products to market. 

That said, you can do all the right things and still not get the meeting, so then what?  Educate your media buyer to sell for you.  I had lunch with Darren Herman from The Media Kitchen yesterday.  “Don’t ignore the media buyer”, he said.  Most of the ideas he takes on are ones that are pitched to him from his media team.  If you don’t think your media buyer can share 3 compelling reasons with their boss on why you should be included, get back in there (and keep it simple, don’t overwhelm them with slideware).

2) Getting ahead of & Influencing the RFP:  I sat in Scot McLernon’s Upstream breakfast last week, also in Austin and this was a big topic.  Lizzie Widhelm, VP of West Coast Sales for Pandora Media sat on the panel and had some interesting ideas.  “Find the opportunities where there are not opportunities already.”  Like, if you wanted to sell to Coke, Pepsi or Gatorade, go to a food an beverage show since that’s where people are trying to figure things out.  “You won’t find many digital media folks there at all.”  Get your idea out early and plant that seed ahead of time at the right levels…by the time an RFP is under way with an Agency, that seed will be planted in cluttered soil and the chances for growth are slim.  

3) Keeping them Coming Back:  Back at an iMedia a couple of years ago, Randy Wooton from Microsoft Advertising Solutions said a “5% increase in customer loyalty can equal a 25-85% increase in overall profit.”  Ad serving language is often times foreign to a sales rep.  Make it easy for your sellers to report back to your client in business friendly terms & have all your data in one place.  This way, when you call on them to become part of the next big idea, you know what happened in the past, where things went wrong and what they could do better.  If you can’t influence the RFP, at least when you get it, having the information at your finger tips around what they paid, if it delivered on time and what you optimized for them during the campaign, can go a long way.

Although some of this may seem like actual “work”, keep in mind pain ripples within AND ouside your organization.   If you are frustrated, chances are, your customer is frustrated too.  Being prepared for meetings and helping to educate them on a consistant basis will often benefit you both.