DIGITAL AUDIO-PALOOZA:  The IAB has just released its second Digital Audio Buyer’s Guide, and it’s jam packed with 23 pages of everything you need to know about our industry.  They aggregated a combination of Edison, eMarketer, and Comscore information into one very neutral (and credible) summation of where Digital Audio is today, and where it’s headed tomorrow.  For my money, the two most important stats are the critical mass achieved with eMarketer’s prediction of 181M monthly streaming listeners in the US by 2017, and mobile engagement with Comscore’s tally of 15% of In-App time spent listening to music – both charts are below.  I know getting through this much data is a little bit of a grind, but it will give you a great foundation of knowledge in our industry to help you do your job that much better!  iab_digital-audio-buyers-guide-nov-2016

HOW LITTLE VIEWABILITY IS TOO LITTLE?:  There’s a growing conflict in the industry over the efficacy of Snapchat’s embedded video ads.  Specifically around the question of its primary user rendered video unit, which has an average viewability duration of just under 3 seconds.  The question is whether viewing 3 seconds of a video ad, whose creative is probably :15 or :30 seconds, can achieve marketers’ goals and is worth paying for.  Before you answer those questions keep in mind Facebook doesn’t even count a video as being viewed until after 3 seconds, and that’s the average view duration for Snapchat.  You can see the dilemma clients and agencies are facing – they want to utilize social video platforms, but how can they get their money’s worth? (link)

COLD CALLING 101:  And finally today, a fellow sales blogger named Zachary Lukasiewicz has compiled a series of “cold call” best practices, which I thought was worth circulating.  Some of these seem a little dated (leaving many voicemails lately?), but the points on effective email and social media outreach are very relevant to today’s digital media sales environment.  As you read this keep in mind half the pitches for 2017, from a dollar value standpoint, will happen between 12/1/16-2/28/17  – so tomorrow we’ll enter upfront prime time.  And one of the immutable laws of sales tells us the more new biz dev outreach you do now, the more you get to pitch, and the more you’ll eventually close. So no better time than today to use some of these tips to get the most out of your new biz activity level!  (link)

Have a great Wednesday guys!

STREAMER WANNA BEs:  You remember the old saying from The Godfather, to keep your friends close and your enemies closer?  Well keep this in mind as you delve into terrestrial radio’s “what if” world of streaming strategy.  I find it amusing that all of these radio execs are full of ideas on how to measure and monetize streaming (a market Pandora single-handedly created), when just 4-5 years ago these same guys were in denial that streaming was even real radio.  Now the AM/FMers have come full circle with a flurry of thoughts about ratings geo-fencing, ad insertion, user registration, and dedicated streaming sales staffs.  If I commented on everything listed in this Inside Radio article you’d be reading all morning.  So let’s just leave it at this – print a copy of this article, save it in a folder, and then reread it a year from today.  I’ll bet you a dollar that than 10% of the ideas being thrown around will actually be in motion by then.  “You’re weak, Fredo.”  (link)

NATIVE BLACK OPS:  I rarely, if ever, cover a book review in this blog.  But I found the NYT review of the book “Black Ops” by Mara Einstein a fascinating dissection of the state of native advertising.  Is Red Bull’s sponsorship of extreme stunt sports an advanced form of experiential advertising?  . . . of course.  Is the fact that Jimmy Fallen only makes jokes about the one NFL game NBC carries each week a form of product placement? . . . hell yes!  In fact, the line between actual content and advertising is more thinly blurred today than at any time in the history of marketing.  Which is exactly why engagement-based advertising has become such a powerful ad platform, and why total ad blocking will never be realized at the individual consumer level.  Even if you don’t read the whole book, this review is worth five minutes of your time.  (link)

THE RISE OF PMPs:  And finally today, I need to hand it to Pandora’s Jeremy Randol.  Back in August’15 he predicted that programmatic buying would begin shifting from RTB (open exchanges) to PMPs (direct deals between premium publishers and advertisers).  Based on this forecast publishers would need to staff up on programmatic specialists to set up and run direct Deal IDs, which is exactly what Pandora did.  A little over a year later the marketplace seems to be moving towards this position, as noted by Zenith’s forecast in the following AdExchanger article.  You can easily see the evolution sequence – exchanges were first in as aggregators of remnant inventory which could be moved efficiently via machine.  Then publishers and clients realized a more important benefit to programmatic in the ability to buy advanced audience segments at scale by working together to match data.  Hence the PMPs overtake RTB in the end.  Should be interesting to watch this play out over the next year or two.  (link)

Have a great Tuesday guys!

BY THE NUMBERS:  There were some notable early online shopping numbers coming out of the Thanksgiving weekend.  According to Adobe $3.3B in online purchases were made on Black Friday which was +21% YoY, and another $1.9B were made on Thanksgiving day which was +12% YoY.  Of that T-Day number an amazing 40% of purchases were done via a mobile device.  Think about it . . . you’re sitting in a home on Thanksgiving with a computer most likely in reach, but you still make the purchase from your phone.  Today’s Cyber Monday is supposed to be even more lucrative, with $3.5B in sales forecasted today alone.  If CM online sales hit anything north of $3B it will be up double digits over last year, which would signal the start of a very merry holiday season for online retailers indeed.  More to follow as totals come in over the next few days.  (link)

CREATING A MILLENNIAL CULT:  I stumbled upon this one over the weekend on LinkedIn, and thought it was worth sharing.  We all know millennials must be approached by marketers differently than the “spray and pray” advertising which worked on previous generations.  But what’s the magic combination of marketing techniques that helps a brand stand out and eventually develop a cult like following with this group?  The attached link summarizes what seems to work for a handful of market leaders.  The key ingredients include having a genuine back story which disrupts an industry’s status quo, is promoted by social influencers, while focusing on experiences over just possessions, and still stays grounded in a noble cause.  Sound like an impossible combination for brands to attain?  Well here’s a list of who’s doing this and winning the loyalty battle of millennials.  (link)

WHAT’S HOT:  And finally, AdWeek is out with it’s annual “Hot List” of movers and shakers in the digital world.  For this year’s Hottest Music App there’s a split decision.  Spotify claimed the Editor’s Choice – not surprising given the general bias AdWeek has towards them. As for the vote itself, Pandora claimed the People’s Choice with 51%, compared to Spotify’s 32%.  Not making any statements here, but doesn’t winning the popular vote but still not winning sound familiar?!?  . . . just saying.  Regardless, the people have spoken and Pandora is the clear cut favorite!  (link)

Have a great Monday guys!

AMAZON AD MYSTERY:  So this is interesting . . . at least one industry insider is reporting they heard ads on Amazon’s streaming service, despite the fact that it’s supposed to be an ad free platform.  Assuming ads were in fact heard, it’s hard to see this as a mistake – the process of getting creative trafficked through an ad server doesn’t just happen on its own.  So is Amazon testing ad delivery on its music streaming platform?  And will this mean they plan to offer an ad supported non-sub option in the future?  Obviously you can’t sell an ad free subscription to listeners and then still run ads, so some kind of product expansion would have to be in the works.  Keep your ear to the ground on this one.  (link)

CBS RADIO’S DIGITAL PLAYBOOK:  On Monday CBS Radio completed is S1 SEC registration, which is the paperwork that precedes an expected IPO filing.  The vast majority of info in the S1 is financial gobbley-gook, but RAIN has managed to read the whole thing and extract the points which are relevant to CBS’s digital audio assets.  CBS Radio’s digital footprint is quite a bit behind that of iHeart, so I don’t think this info will be life changing for the pureplays. But it’s still interesting to take a peek inside CBS Radio’s playbook.  (link)

PAY FOR PERFORMANCE AORs?:  You might recall a few months back there was speculation in the industry about Omnicom agreeing to a pay-for-performance relationship with McDs under their new AOR agreement.  While exact details of their contract wasn’t made public, the agency community is siting that deal in a trend where clients are going away from Retainer or Billable Hour agency fee structures to one that’s tied to client’s achievement of revenue goals or other KPIs.  It’s understandable why clients would want to do this – it variablizes a good chunk of marketing cost and makes their agencies walk the walk on results.  But the complexities of how to do this in a way that’s fair to both client and agency is daunting.  The simple question of how to judge upper funnel branding efficacy compared to last click purchase attribution is just one example of the quandary.  Then add multiple agencies working on one account and you’ve got a measurement mess on your hands.   The following AdExchanger article outlines the challenges being worked through as we speak.  For once I’m glad this is someone else’s problem to solve.  J  (link)

And finally, who’s not in the mood for a Thanksgiving themed media cartoon?!?  In all seriousness, I’d like to wish everyone a happy and restful Thanksgiving.  It’s the one holiday where you can truly relax with friends and family while you over eat and watch endless amounts of football.  So use this time to rest and recharge . . . we all deserve it!

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

AD SUPPORTED ON-DEMAND:  AdWeek is featuring an article today on Pandora’s latest value exchange ad innovation – the ability for listeners to earn on-demand functionalities like Replays and Skips in return for interacting with an advertiser.  During the launch eBay will be featured during a holiday campaign – there are some nice collaboration quotes from both Suzy Deering, eBay’s CMO, and Alan Schanzer, Pandora’s SVP of Agency Relations.  This new functionality represents a major expansion of Pandora’s CPE (cost per engagement) ad platform, a method of pricing and delivering guaranteed interaction, which was first debuted for Pandora’s Sponsored Listening product during Fall’15.  Great coverage of a powerful new suite of ad products! (link)

HEADER BIDDING 101:  Some of the most common blog-related questions I get are around the concept of Header Bidding . . . What is it?  How does it compare to PMPs and Open Exchanges?  And what are the advantages/disadvantages for the various partners in the HB transaction?  I think the attached Digiday article gives a pretty good summary of what HB is and what it isn’t.  In theory HB is supposed to connect advertisers and publishers without needing a direct PMP deal, or without having to bid battle on open exchanges like Google’s Doubleclick.  But in reality HB is only as good as the inventory prioritization publishers make of it.  In simplest terms, think of a publisher’s inventory as a waterfall where impressions cascade from the top of the falls (that’s the guaranteed IO’d business), and comes crashing into the foamy churn on the rocks below (that’s the remnant business sold on open exchanges).  Now picture the water flowing between those two points along the height of the falls – the various points along the falls are different ways to buy that publisher’s inventory, including PMPs and HB.  The order a publisher decides to prioritize it’s impression delivery determines how affective each of the demand channels are.  So the higher up the falls Header Bidding pulls inventory from, the better it is as a purchasing tool, and vice versa.  I know this is sort of dense stuff, but it’s good to be versed in.  (link)

DIVERSIFYING MADISON AVENUE:  And finally, yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a pretty wide-ranging piece on the continued mindset reverberations being felt up and down Madison Avenue due to the outcome of the Presidential Election.  This is along the lines of the questions I posed last week in my “Surveying The Echo Chamber” blog post, only this article is a much more in depth introspection on everything from marketing to “coastal elites” vs. “middle America”, all the way down to agency staffing which currently looks more like a hipster ridden Brooklyn coffee house than a cross section of the US population.  There’s a ton of feedback in here from client and agency leaders alike.  Since WSJ has a paywall I’ve linked this as a pdf.   advertisers-are-grappling-with-a-stark-realization

Have a great Tuesday guys!

ATLAS SHRUGGED:  First up today, news out of the Facebook camp that they’re discontinuing their Atlas ad server offering to third party publishers.  Three years after the Atlas launch, this retreat is an admission that FB was unable to mount a serious threat to Google’s Doubleclick  – which is pretty much the industry standard for ad serving.  It’s also due to the reality that ad serving, as with many aspects of Ad Tech, has become highly commoditized in the last few years.  So what used to be special and command a premium has devolved into a low margin utility.  Don’t expect panic in the industry over this announcement.  😉 (link)

THE SKINNY ON TV:  Throughout 2016 much has been made of the erosion of set top TV ratings as viewers migrate to OLV.  Behind the scenes there’s an even more important battle being waged between traditional cable operators and new cordless digital content providers.  Since the late 1970’s TV has come into American homes via the cable cord and packaged in a “bundle” – think of paying a flat monthly fee for hundreds of stations even if you only watch a few.  This forced monopoly has been a cash cow for the entire TV industry since consumers had to buy the entire menu even if they just wanted a few items.  But now internet TV providers are bypassing the traditional cable cord, and are beginning to offer “skinny bundles”, which are a smaller subset of stations at a fraction of the price.  The prediction is that skinny bundling will hit critical mass within the next few years and effectively end the era of one size fits all cable force feeding.  Should be fascinating to watch this evolution.

NEW TWIST ON A QSR CLASSIC?:  And finally today, here’s a funny piece of news to “chew” on.  McDs is changing their Big Mac after sticking with the original recipe for the past 49 years.  Why are they doing this and what will a reformulated Big Mac accomplish?  Maybe it’s just a marketing stunt akin to the Coke/New Coke move from the ‘80s.  Or maybe they’re trying to modernize the look, size, taste, or whatever of this menu staple.  Regardless of whether you end up in the New or Old Big Mac camp, consider this one stat that’s been circulating inside McDs HQ for the last few months.  An internal market research study revealed that only 1 in 5 (just 20%!) of millennials have ever even tried a Big Mac.  So regardless of how long it’s been on the menu or how well known the brand is, the taste buds of today’s core QSR consumer have passed the Big Mac by.  So who’s ready to try a BM2.0?!?  (link)

Have a great Monday guys!

FLAT IS THE NEW UP:  The radio industry has just completed its Q3 revenue reporting.  As you can see on the following chart, the broadcasters were pretty evenly split between mid-single digit increases/decreases YoY.  When looking at these numbers it’s important to keep in mind that not all broadcasters are created equally.  The “big 3”, controlling about 2/3 of the revenue, are iHeart (+1%), CBS (flat) and Cumulus (-1%).  So pretty much call Q3 a wash for the industry.  What’s notable about being flat is that Q3 was supposed to experience a big Political spike, but that obviously didn’t happen.  Industry experts are estimating that Broadcast radio ended up getting less than 2% of total Political dollars, which tells you how little value the campaigns see in radio as a vehicle to reach voters.  The only good news here is that radio won’t be up against a big Political comp # in 2017.  J  (link)

1998 WANTS ITS TO DO LIST BACK:  Radio Ink has just wrapped up its annual Forecast conference in NYC.  At this event various industry bigwigs and experts gave advice on how to compete during the upcoming year.  In the following link Gordon Borrell, one radio’s top consultants, gives a handful of suggestions.  While I generally respect Mr. Borrell for his insights and his company’s research, these tips show you just how far behind the curve radio has fallen.  Use email to contact clients . . . what the?  Help your clients build a new website . . . c’mon man!  If this is the best terrestrial radio can do next year, the rest of the digital media universe can rest easy during 2017!  (link)

GENERATION GAPS:  And finally this week, the following visual is an oldie but goodie which keeps making the rounds on LinkedIn.  As a card carrying member of Gen X, I can tell you these characterizations are pretty much spot on for at least my generation.  Why is this stuff important to know?  One of the top “soft skills” is Sales is being able to mirror the person you’re working with.  So unless they’re exactly like you from a demo/geo/qualitative background, you’ll need to bridge some sort of gap.  And the more you know about their tendencies the more you can relate to them.

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!

DISRUPTION 101: Disruption.  It’s a word everyone in marketing loves . . . is your product disrupting a stale industry, and are you disrupting business as usual in a stagnant organization?  While many talk about the concept very few really commit to the act of disrupting.  But every once in a while someone comes into a new role, like Diageo’s CMO James Thompson, who breaks the mold by challenging conventional wisdom and actually disrupts the status quo.  In this example, Mr. Thompson’s banning of powerpoint decks within his org was a true game changer, because it forced Diageo executives to break out of their comfort zones and find new ways of communicating with one another.  And if you think this wasn’t a break through move, try doing your next big presentation without your friendly pp deck.  Makes you wonder what other work habits you can break to truly disrupt business as usual.  (link)

MORE FB AD METRICS SHENANIGANS: This morning Facebook is dealing with blow back from yet another error in their self-reported ad metrics.  As you’ll recall a few months back they were caught miscalculating the amount of time users spent with their videos by 60-70%.  Now the problem is with their display metrics.  Over the last year FB hasn’t accurately deduplicated visitors who make multiple visits – in other words if one person visits FB twice they may be counted as two visitors.  Additionally, there’s been an overestimation of total time spent on FB by 7-8%.  According to FB none of these miscalculations resulted in overbilling (of course not!), but it’s another example of problems that can occur when one of the industry’s largest “walled garden” publishers continues to self-measure, ask you to trust their numbers, and then bill you for it.  The only positive part to this story is that I get to roll out my all-time favorite programmatic-themed cartoon one more time!  (link)

POP QUIZ TIME: And finally, who’s ready for a pop quiz this morning?!?  The good folks at Nielsen are showing off their Connected Car research chops in the form of a fun and (thankfully) short quiz.  I scored a 75%, which I guess is a C in most schools.  See how you do.  In all seriousness, the more versed we all are on in-car digital technology the better prepared we’ll be to compete on tomorrow’s media battlefield.  Enjoy!  (link)

Have a great Thursday guys!

SURVEYING THE MIRROR: Many industries, including Media, have been doing some introspective soul searching since last week’s Prez election shocker.  Beyond the question of what could Trump’s policies mean for specific industries, business leaders are wondering how so many polls could have been so wrong, and are now concerned that other big data applications they’re using may not be accurate either.  The NY Times article below hypothesizes why this happened.  One theory is that pollsters and data analysts live in a socioeconomic bubble which is far different from middle of the road America.  So when they design questionnaires, survey respondents, and interpret data they bring a host of preexisting biases which are generally younger, better educated, more urban, have a higher income level, and are more logical and less emotional than John Q. Public.  This creates poll results which are skewed more closely to those studying the data in the first place – sort of like the echo chamber effect.  If this theory is accurate (and I think it is), researchers will need to get a heck of a lot more honest about the biases they’re unintentionally bringing to their work before survey accuracy can improve.  (link)

SNAPPY IPO?: Well, that didn’t take long.  Just as Snapchat officially became the darling of the moment in digital media, its parent company Snap, Inc. has started the process of going public.  The timing seems right, as Snapchat still has tons of momentum in both user growth and ad monetization.  But as hot publishers of yesteryear (aka Twitter) can tell you, the good times won’t necessarily last forever.  And the ability to cash out at just the right moment is as important as the product you built in the first place.  (link)

PRINCE  V. TIDAL: Finally today, it looks like Tidal and the estate of Prince are getting into a legal scrape over streaming royalty payments.  In an ironic twist Tidal, who prides itself on being of the artists for the artists, is being accused of short-paying Prince’s estate during a contract renewal in August.  It feels like a difference of interpretation which could easily get worked out ahead of any court proceedings, but the PR doesn’t look great.  Prince was one of those artists who really limited the platforms his music was distributed on.  So it seemed like a feather in Tidal’s cap to have the deal.  But now that partnership seems a little diminished.  (link)

Have a great Wednesday guys!

TOMORROW’S MARKETERS’ DILEMMA:  PwC is out with a fascinating assessment of the consumer journey in today’s mobile age.  If you have time click on the link for “The Marketers’ Dilemma” and download the white paper.  But if you don’t, at least read the CMO.com summary article in this link.  The concept of a non-linear purchase funnel, where consumers are just one tap away from a purchase at just about every moment, has ramifications for retailers and publishers alike.  It really puts into perspective the inherent value of engagement, and its time spent proxy, as a marketing must have of the future.  If you consider yourself a marketer, and plan on being in the business for the next several years, this article is a must read!  (link)

GROUP M REDOUX:  Yesterday Group M announced the reorg of its six primary North American agencies under two umbrellas called Media Investment and Platform Solutions.  These moves are an attempt to standardize it’s processes around data and programmatic to better leverage Group M’s collective scale.  In simplest terms, think of one data ecosystem using a single set of partner vendors across all six agencies, instead of six different agency-specific systems.  One other notable in this reorg is that Lyle Schwartz, the architect of Group M’s research and analytics systems, will now be heading up the Media Investment side . . . instead of the Platform Solutions team.  The fact that an analytics guy will be running investment of one of the four major HC’s tells you everything you need to know about Group M’s commitment to data and measurement.  (link)

BEST PLACES TO WORK:  And finally today, look who showed up in AdAge’s Top 50 Best Places To Work for 2016?!?  It’s no surprise to anyone who works at Pandora that we made the list.  Tim Westergren and the ELT have made scaling the P’s positive culture a mission which is thought about and acted upon every day.  What’s even more impressive than coming in at #47 is to consider who else is on the list.  The vast majority of the Top 50 are smaller boutique agencies, and there are no other digital publishers on the list at all.  So not only is Pandora a great place to work, but it’s in a special category unto itself amongst the national digital publishers!  (link)

Have a great Tuesday guys!