STEADY AD REV GROWTH . . . FOR NOW:  First up this week, some Q3 Ad Revenue data is starting to trickle in.  Not surprisingly, US Ad Revenue saw an increase of 4-5%, mostly driven by Olympic-related TV revenue and Political spending.  But the growth was choppy with Digital and TV increasing, Radio and Outdoor staying flattish, and Print decreasing.  Although I could argue even flat in a Political window is effectively down since any bounce from the candidates and PACs is being offset by decreases elsewhere.  It’s also worth noting the last paragraph in this article about uncertainty in the ad market over the next few quarters given the outcome of the Presidential election.  Regardless of your political leanings get ready for an interesting ride!  (link)

FB’S TARGETING RETREAT:  Well that didn’t take long.  After Facebook came under fire from lawsuits over its “Exclude People” audience targeting feature on its API, the tech giant has decided to eliminate that functionality for certain product categories.  The targeting tool will be moved from its Demographics section to something called Behaviors, and will automatically be disabled for ads in categories like housing, employment, and credit.  Seems like a no brainer for FB to change, and makes you wonder why they didn’t anticipate blow back on this in the first place.  (link)

HOME RUN ON SINGLES DAY:  Friday was Alibaba’s annual Singles Day online one-day sale, and the results were through the roof.  YoY sales increased 32% to a whopping one-day total of $17.7B (that’s with a B . . . in just one day!)  Top trends this year were the Americanization of the offerings – picture brands like Nike and Victoria Secret taking over China.  M-commerce was the other big headline, with an amazing 82% of Singles Day purchases being made on a mobile device.  Safe to say Alibaba’s bottom line, and the entire Chinese economy, look to be in good shape for at least the next year.  (link)

Have a great Monday guys!

POLITICAL AD SPENDING RETHINK: For decades conventional wisdom has told us fundraising and media spending were directly correlated to winning elections.  Meaning the more a candidate or PAC raised and spent on media, the better chance they had of winning.  This theory created an arms race which has increased political spending uninterrupted since 1996.  Well Tuesday’s Presidential election has cast a huge question mark on this school of thought.  Donald Trump’s use of social media for free exposure eclipsed anything candidates had previously done.  This viral success lessened the need to purchase paid media.  As a result, Trump drove overall political spending down in 2016 vs. 2012, and he still ended up winning.  So now the thinking is changing from outspending your opponent at all costs to spending just enough to establish awareness of your message.  It will be very interesting to see if this permanently alters political ad strategies moving forward, or if 2016 was just a flash in the pan exception.  (link)

HAILING HARMONIC: There was some nice press pickup about Pandora’s formal announcement on the launch of its Harmonic Audio Network.  Harmonic’s key differentiator from other networks is quality.  It’s exclusive inventory sourced from supply partners like TuneIn and AccuRadio, so advertisers don’t have to worry about double/triple buying the same audience which is being sold by multiple sales orgs.  Additionally, Harmonic will give advertisers incremental reach, beyond just Pandora’s inventory, at more efficient network CPMs.  More of a better product at a better price seems like a winning combination to me!  (link)

ANOTHER DATA MARRIAGE: Yesterday Adobe announced it was buying Tube Mogul for about half a billion dollars.  This is the latest example of a trend where data-rich DMPs and programmatic tech DSP’s are getting hitched.  This move will make Adobe more relevant deeper into the ad delivery process, and will help diversify its big data capabilities.  It will also streamline their offering to the marketplace, since clients and publishers can now work with one end-to-end solution provider instead of patching multiple companies together.  (link)

PPMs ON THE FRITZ: And finally, I couldn’t let the week go by without pointing out another Nielsen PPM mishap.  This time 8% of the PPM devices themselves “lost connectivity” during a week in early November.  While it was probably an issue with a Nielsen server or receiver that these devices connected through, it’s tempting to envision 8% of the PPM volunteers flushing their meters down the toilet at once.  Either way, it’s another major disruption to a survey with a chronically small sample size.  Remember this example the next time you hear a radio rep defend the reliability and accuracy of PPM as a measurement system.  (link)

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!

AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION MISSTEP: Facebook has found itself in a sticky situation regarding the targeting options it offers advertisers on its self-service platform.  A handful of individuals have initiated a class-action lawsuit alleging discriminatory practices based on FB’s “Exclude People” button.  The argument is that advertisers could knowingly avoid serving ads for things like housing and personal services to minority groups, which would violate a variety of Federal laws.  While FB is denying any discriminatory intent, including something as blatant as an Exclude People button on its API seems like they’re asking for trouble.  My guess is their self-service targeting options will be rejiggered sooner than later.  (link)

TWITTER TURNOVER: I usually don’t comment on individual personnel moves, but this one’s a biggie.  Yesterday Twitter CRO Adam Bain announced that he’s stepping down after five years in the position.  Twitter is trying to evolve into the next chapter of its existence.  And with moves like eliminating 9% of its sales force and losing its CRO, it’s not totally clear where direct ad sales falls within their new priorities.  (link)

TRITON’S SEPTEMBER RATINGS: The measurement division at Triton must be working overtime to catch up to present day, because they’ve released yet another Webcast Metrics Monthly Ratings.  This time it’s for September – just two weeks after the August monthly.  The September ratings showed solid growth, going +3% MoM from August, and +12% YoY.  So far this year the streaming industry’s AAS (Average Active Sessions) has grown 9% since January – which is impressive by any standard.  Check out the usual historical graph below.  (link)

“GO CUBS GO” MAKES THE CHARTS: And finally, just when you thought Cubbie-mania was dying down . . . the Cubs anthem “Go Cubs Go” surges onto this week’s Billboard charts!  Yes the song is cheesy, and yes it’s overplayed.  But every team (and every song) deserves it’s day in the sun, and today is definitely song author Steve Goodman’s day!  (link)

Have a great Thursday everyone!

OFF-PLATFORM MARRIAGE:  First up today is news of a partnership between Apple and NBC/Universal, in which NBC will begin selling Apple Newsfeed inventory on its ad network.  Apple is a great device company but it’s historically struggled in the media sales arena – remember them shuttering iAd a year ago?  So this move seems to make sense for both sides.  Apple and its partners get to monetize their content while NBC gets to sink its media sales teeth into a new batch of off-platform inventory.  Not all of these deals work out, but this one seems to have some of the right elements to make it successful.  (link)

NOW THAT’S MINNEAPOLIS COOL:  You might recall last month when Pandora’s Chicago office won the “Crain’s Coolest Office” Award.  Not to be out done, our Minneapolis office is getting in on the action with their own accolades.  This time it’s from the Minneapolis Business Journal, who is featuring Pandora as one of their Cool Offices in the city.  I think I see a trend here . . . create a modern floor plan with a tech flair, pack that space with talented people who love coming to work, and you end up with one of the best offices in the city.  Pandora knows this formula works in market after market, which is why so many of their offices have a certain look and feel.  Now the rest of the world is discovering the secret too!  (link)

THE GHOSTS OF AD TECH PAST: And finally, AdExchanger published a good look back piece on the last 10 years of AdTech, as a way to predict where the industry might be headed.  It’s interesting to think that entire innovation-based sub-industries within AdTech/MarTech can reach maturity within just 8-10 years (yes, that’s how quickly tomorrow’s innovation will lap even today’s shiniest tech toys).  I also liked the “winter is coming” reference to traditional media platforms who are trying to compete with digital measurement and attribution.  Learning lessons like this from the past can help us all compete on tomorrow’s digital battlefield.  (link)

Have a great Wednesday guys!

OUR DUTY TO VOTE:  Hey guys – I’m off today, so no full blog.  But I do want to share one thought on the importance of today.  No matter your political affiliation, I believe we’re all obligated to fulfill our civic duty and vote.  That statement is less about the candidates or the issues – I know most of us are less excited about today’s choices than we’ve been in a while.  Instead we should all vote as a tribute to those who have served in our armed forces protecting our freedoms, especially the freedom to vote.  This includes our forefathers who earned our liberty during the Revolution, all the way up to today’s service men and women.

If you think this is overstated take a look at the picture below.  It’s a heart breaker i know, but I think it captures the level of sacrifice our soldiers and their families make.  The best way to honor this commitment is to step into the voting booth.

MOBILE MULTICULTURALISM:  Tomorrow the election is upon us (finally)!  So I wanted to offer up one more piece of marketing insight from the campaign season.  On Friday AdWeek ran this article on how Priorities USA, which is a Dem Super PAC, has approached Hispanic and African American outreach during the home stretch of the political cycle.  Their strategy is to effectively “own mobile” on platforms such as Pandora, due to the high mobile usage rates amongst those segments.  It’s been known for years that Hisp/AA voters are more likely to be “skip generation” desktop owners – meaning the don’t have a regular web-based computer in their homes.  So when smartphones started to proliferate in 2007-08 this group bought phones and started using them as their primary computers.  This has created a mobile fluency which over indexes the gen pop for time spent on smartphones.  Therefore, when campaigns want to reach these voters they go even harder into mobile than they normally would.  And mobile-heavy platforms like Pandora become the perfect vehicle to run this strategy.  http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/priorities-usa-bets-mobile-gotv-ads/306624/

THE BEST SALES DECK EVER (SERIOUSLY):  Editor’s credit to Scott Walker for finding this one on LinkedIn.  I normally don’t cover Sales How To stuff on this blog, but the attached example is truly best in class.  Just think about how many times you’ve spent the first 20 minutes of a presentation throwing up your product features while your audience is glancing down at their phones because they’re just not as interested in your product as you are.  Or what about all those times you heard “it looks great” at the end of a presentation, and then discovered they bought a competitor because they didn’t believe in the results your product would yield but didn’t want to tell you face to face?  Now check out the following link as the author walks through one of the simplest and most highly effective blue prints for every sales pitch you’ll ever do.  And you even get to see the screenshots!  If you’re in Sales spend time with this one – it will make you better at your job.  https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-ever-seen-4f4ef3391ba0#.sytnd28n5

WHAT I LEARNED AT HARVARD:  And finally, yesterday I was privileged to speak on a Digital Marketing panel at the Harvard Business School.  This was a first for me, and I’m a believer in taking away at least one learning from every new thing I do.  What I expected to learn is that everyone at HBS is a genius who engages in theoretical conversations way above my IQ level.  This was not the case.  Instead everyone who presented or asked questions brought something important to the broader conversation, regardless of their education level or mental acumen.  But I did learn one thing that set these students apart – their uncompromising drive to make themselves better at what they’re doing.  The conference was sold out, despite the fact that students paid more than $100 each for a ticket, and it was on a Sunday.  So while many of their 20-something counterparts were figuring out which bar to watch yesterday’s NFL games at, these students got up early, dressed business casual, and fought to sit in the front row so they could be part of the conversation with the panelists.  This commitment to going the extra mile was overflowing in yesterday’s conference.  And the best part for the rest of us is that you don’t need a Harvard MBA to be committed . . you’ve just got to want it more than most!

Have a great Monday guys

THE WHO’S WHO OF RELEVANCY:  Yesterday many of you heard Tim’s reference to a global consultancy called Prophet, and their annual Brand Relevancy Index.  The index rankings are a combination of critical mass of usage and innovation which positively impacts the user experience.  The top of the list is dominated by the usual tech titans (all beginning with the letter A interestingly . . . hmmm).  But what may be surprising is who’s peeking around the corner just outside the top 10.  Pandora moved from outside the top 50 on last year’s index to number 11.  Conversely Spotify dropped out of the top 50.  Here’s what Prophet had to say about that:

“Another surprise for the coauthors was seeing Spotify drop out of the top 50, while Pandora surged ahead. Spotify was hurt by lower scores in “pushes the status quo” and “always finds new ways to meet my needs.” This shows how important innovation is to staying relevant.”

This is a lesson in the importance of staying on the cutting edge by constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation, no matter how successful you’ve been previously.  Great way to think about our business and a great list to be on! (link)

YOUTUBE RED BLUE:  Some of you may remember the launch of YouTube Red a year ago – that’s their ad-free subscription service.  According to The Verge YouTube only has 1.5M paying subs after one year, which is less than one percent of its total uniques.  Compared to Apple Music’s 10M subs, and even Tidal’s 2M subs, after one year respectively, this isn’t a very positive report card for YouTube.  The fact the YouTube has been available for 10 years as a free service probably isn’t helping convince people to hand over their credit card #s.  Not to mention that fact that there’s no exclusive content on YouTube Red, like you might see on Netflix.  The lesson here – you need to provide an improved offering which is differentiated from what users can get for free if you expect them to pay for it.  (link)

DATA GOES SHOPPING:  And finally this week, I thought this AdWeek article on how Retailers in the fashion sector are using data and predictive analytics to drive their business was worth sharing.  If you think about it, Retailers need to know what not to have on their shelves just about as much as they need to know what to stock, because the space and money invested in their inventory is a fixed asset.  Using data mining tools usually reserved for Big Data to help them get in front of emerging trends, even down to size and color, are now helping retailers make their floor plans more efficient and improve their bottom lines.  (link)

Have a great Friday (and weekend) everyone!

DIGITAL VIDEO INSIGHTS:  Several of you forwarded me this fascinating AdAge article about a digital video efficacy study conducted by Google.  The cool part about this piece is that you can read the results and then actually watch the ad they tested.   It’s interesting that pacing of the creative had the biggest lift at +6% for the fast read, helping prove the importance of shorter video units.  And the fact that vertical video ads actually performed worse than standard horizontal video is good to know as marketers kill themselves to produce vertical creative.  Granted this is just one study from one (big) publisher.  But the results lead to the conclusion that not all digital video ads are created equal, and the shiny new creative variants aren’t always better than the tried and true versions.  (link)

SHARE OF EAR UPDATE:  Edison is out with their latest Share of Ear study – RAIN link below.  What’s cool about this research is that Edison has done it for long enough that we can now glean some long term trends.  For instance, when the first SOE study came out in 2013 AM/FM Radio commanded a 52% share of audio listening in the US – in three years that’s dropped 8 points to 44%.  Conversely Streaming used to get 11% of the total listening time – now it’s up 6 points to 17%.  Think there’s a migration pattern here?  Within the streaming slice of the pie you can see some parity amongst the 13-34 YOs, while Pandora is dominant within the adult demos.  For all you Pandas reading this, Ron Rodrigues has already posted the updated numbers in SF Libraries.  Always great ammo for your next call!  (link)

SOMEDAY IS TODAY:  Not sure if you’re aware of this, but last night there was the an important baseball game.  In an epic Game 7 the Cubs exorcised over a century of demons to beat a never-say-die Indians team.  I’m not a sports writer, so anything I say here won’t do the moment justice.  Instead I thought I’d pass along this video, which Hunter Bradford was circulating around the Chicago office yesterday.  If you’re a Cubs fan this one will speak to your passion and pain for the Cubs and Wrigley Field, which is part of who you are.  If you’re not from Chicago this might help explain the importance of the moment to an entire city.  The W is flying proudly today!  (link)

Have a great Thursday guys!

DOWNLOADS DWINDLE:  In another sign of the apocalypse for the digital download industry, Billboard is reporting the lowest number of purchased downloads in a given week for its #1 song than any time since 2006.  This week’s #1 is “Closer” by the Chainsmokers.  The poor guys only sold 84,000 downloads in their week at the top of the charts, which is the fewest since Hinder’s  #1 song “Lips of an Angel” – remember that jam?!?  It’s just another proof point that the age of buying downloads is going the way of the vinyl record, 8-track, cassette, and CD.  But music lovers take heart . . . while the delivery system may change over the years, passion for the artist and the music are still constants!  (link)

DIGITAL REVENUE ROUNDUP:  Yesterday the IAB released stats on US Digital Ad Spending for the first half of 2016.  The results were not surprising – Digital continues to surge at +19% YoY, on the strength of mobile which comprised 47% of the total spend.  Some interesting inside the numbers observations include web advertising actually declining -10% YoY for the first time in forever, and rich media/site sponsorship revenues also declining -20%.  The top 10 Digital Publishers are still ball-hogging 74% of the total rev – which is still a mind-blowing stat to me.  The WSJ has a nice summary of the data in the following link. (link)

PRIORITIZING PERISCOPE?:  Here’s an intriguing question – can Twitter make Periscope the dominant live streaming platform despite the fact that it couldn’t make Vine successful?  That’s the question at hand as the other big players in the Social Video space ramp up their live video offerings.  Periscope was another one of those new tech darlings from 2014 which broke ground as an innovative social platform.  But as sometimes happens, they sold to a bigger fish who didn’t move with enough urgency to maximize their opportunity.  And now Twitter is left with a solid product which has good scale, but has lost their presumed lead to the other guys.  I’m guessing it won’t take more than 6-12 months to know which direction this is headed.  (link)

Have a great Wednesday guys!

THE DEEP END OF THE DIGITAL POOL: If you’ve ever wondered where the big digital money resides, look no further than this Business Insider article featuring WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell.  $1B in spending with Facebook seems like a lot until you read that WPP is spending $5B with Google in 2016 (what?), which is up $1B since just last year.  While those jaw dropping numbers make for a good headline, the most important part of this article is his call for both publishers to improve on the “3Vs — viewability, verification, and value — to prove they are being transparent about the success of ad campaigns on their platforms.”  It goes to show that even the biggest fish in our digital pond need to be held accountable with the rest of the industry.  (link)

SOCIAL VIDEO AD DILEMMA: There’s little doubt that today’s social video platforms are a big hit with younger demos.  Snapchat and Instagram have even replaced texting as the primary way teens and young adults are communicating these days.  But it turns out that there’s a pretty big disparity between raw usage of these publishers and their efficacy as advertising platforms.  The following AdWeek article discusses the differences between the two publishers from an ad perspective.  What’s most amazing to me is the following stat – that over 50% of Snapchat and Instagram users either “hate” or “rarely notice” the ads.  I get that advertising is generally considered a burden by consumers who rarely enjoy the ads, but over half the ads being loathed or not being noticed at all is a pretty big challenge for marketers to overcome.  No wonder advertisers are starting to question viewability and attribution of the social video sites.  (link)

CABLE MUD SLINGING:  And finally today, there’s a good bit of finger pointing happening in Cable right now as Nielsen and ESPN spar over the accuracy of Nielsen’s November Cable Ratings.  The numbers show a 1.4% decline in cable viewership in just the last month, led by ESPN who shed 621,000 unique viewers since October.  Both numbers are so staggering that ESPN is claiming there are inaccuracies in the survey.  This has forced Nielsen to recall and review the November ratings to determine if ESPN’s concerns are valid.  In response Nielsen took a swipe at ESPN, who had the biggest single-month decline in the network’s history, by saying ESPN “has experienced a sustained decline in subscribers since 2014.”  Time will tell if this is a Nielsen or ESPN issue.  In the meantime it’s an ugly scene in Cableville to be sure.  (link)

Have a great Tuesday guys!