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For some, the holidays is a time to feel gratitude and reflect on the blessings of the season. For sellers of media, it’s a mad scramble to do their utmost by Dec. 31 to maximize their bonus if they’re lucky — or make up for lost revenue ground if they’re not. “It’s not for the faint of heart,” said Tom Morrissy, president of the agency Noble People, recalling his days as former publisher of celebrity weeklies including OK! and Entertainment Weekly. And the fourth-quarter scramble has gotten more intense with the rise of digital. Whereas print magazine issues would all eventually have a closing deadline, digital is always open for business. The barriers to launching or adding to a campaign are lower in digital than in print. No doubt with all the digital publishers missing or struggling to make their numbers this year, it’s an especially tense time. “It is a bad year,” said Michael Hess, a longtime seller who now advises sales management through his company, Core 6 Advisors. “R...

Facebook’s ambitions to produce TV-like content has a problem: Creators still aren’t happy with the money they’re making off commercials and sponsorships Facebook sells. As a result, show makers are pushing Facebook to let them do the selling — and say they’re willing to take their shows to other platforms if the terms don’t improve. Sources at four companies that have sold shows to Facebook, including one major media conglomerate and three digital publishers, said they have pushed Facebook to make it easier for them to sell mid-roll ads. They’ve also pushed Facebook on being able to sell sponsorships for Facebook Watch shows. Facebook has been hesitant to open up these opportunities, these sources said. “The response is always: ‘We’re considering it, but we’re not there yet,’” said one Facebook-funded shows partner. Facebook is selling mid-roll ad breaks programmatically, according to two ad buyers. The company is hesitant to open up these slots to publishing partners because it...

Digiday’s “Research in brief” is our newest research installment designed to give you quick, easy and digestible facts to make better decisions and win arguments around the office. They are based on Digiday’s proprietary surveys of industry leaders, executives and doers. Amazon is eating the world . Just about everyone is saying it these days. The Amazon avalanche is coming to ad tech, too. In its third-quarter earnings call, Amazon announced that its advertising business grew 58 percent year over year to $1.12 billion. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer nec odio. Praesent libero. Sed cursus ante dapibus diam. Sed nisi. Nulla quis sem at nibh elementum imperdiet. Duis sagittis ipsum. Praesent mauris. Fusce nec tellus sed augue semper porta. Mauris massa. Vestibulum lacinia arcu eget nulla. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Curabitur sodales ligula in libero. Sed dignissim lacinia nunc. Curab...

Shop-in-shops are set up to benefit both parties: The brand moving in gets increased brand awareness and the chance to test physical retail, and the hosting retailer gains access to the brand’s novel customer base. But if not a cooperative effort, they could prove failures across the board — and, lately, department stores have been letting their old, stuffy tendencies get in the way. “Retailers are hard to work with,” said Aubrie Pagano, co-founder and CEO of custom apparel brand Bow & Drape, who has partnered on shop-in-shops with retailers including Lord & Taylor and Bloomingdale’s. “There are very strict rules about signage, displays, press, other brand partners, photography, video, … It can be a frustrating experience, if you’re a nimble startup used to doing things your own way.” The situation is reminiscent of the brand-influencer partnership: When a brand gives an influencer a bunch of guidelines on how to relay a message, authenticity is lost along with the ...

Branded content renewals are generally a tough sell, with renewal rates historically hovering below 40 percent . But branded podcasts appear to be bucking that trend, as advertisers continue to hunt for ways to spend uninterrupted time with audiences. On Thursday, the second season of “DTR,” a podcast produced for Tinder by Gimlet’s content studio, Gimlet Creative, launched, getting a featured recommendation in Apple’s podcast app. “DTR”’s renewal is just one of many that have come through this year. Every single show produced this year by Pacific Content, a podcast company that’s produced shows for advertisers including Prudential, McAfee, and Slack, has been renewed. All but one of the shows that Gimlet Creative has produced a full season of have been renewed for a second season. An upcoming branded podcast that Midroll produced for a non-profit so pleased the client that they ordered more episodes before the first episode was released. Branded podcasts have a long way to go before...

Tierney Wilson, director of digital strategy for the agency January Digital, recently got what was once an unusual request. A makeup company asked how it could negotiate its co-op ad dollars with department stores to make sure the dollars were spent a certain way. An ask like this used to be uncommon. Stores like Macy’s, Nordstrom and Walmart have historically had autonomy over how to spend brands’ co-op advertising dollars. Co-op dollars are the funds that come from a percentage of a brand’s sales through a department store and which the store uses to promote the brand. For many brands, co-op advertising, also known as wholesale marketing, has long been a black hole, agency and brand executives said. But with department stores’ retail sales declining , partly due to the rise of Amazon, marketers are demanding that the stores get smarter about how they spend the co-op dollars, said Wilson. Meanwhile, agency executives think that digital gives brands permission to ask for m...

Radio broadcaster Global is tapping traditional news publishers’ first-party data to provide better targeted audio ad campaigns for its advertisers. Over the last year, Global has paid publishers, including ESI Media, Dennis Publishing, MailOnline and Haymarket, to overlay their first-party data into campaigns that run across its digital audio exchange Dax. These second-party data deals have been applied to roughly 15 of the 350 audio ad campaigns Dax runs a month, according to the broadcaster. Dax negotiates a flat fee with each publisher, according to Oliver Deane, director of commercial digital for Global, though he wouldn’t share additional details. With radio stations like Heart, Capital FM and Classic FM, Global is not a direct rival to news publishers when it comes to competing for display ad revenue, making second-party data partnerships like these appealing to both sides. For news publishers constantly on the lookout for new revenue options, decoupling audience data from...

The fear and disappointment that gripped brands in the wake of the brand-safety crisis on YouTube in March has been replaced with pragmatism and caution in the latest one. Last week, investigations by the BBC and The Times of London found ads that ran against content and comments that exploited kids, which pushed brands such as Adidas, Mars and Diageo to freeze spend on YouTube. The platform has since deleted hundreds of accounts and removed 150,000 videos. British advertisers’ trade body ISBA called Google execs to a meeting with top marketers to dress them down over the problems. But despite the tough talk, marketers for the most part aren’t threatening to pull ad spending, unlike the previous brouhaha. Now, marketers are more likely to take the onus on themselves to institute proper whitelist strategies. “We [L’Oréal] can’t say we’re not going to use this channel because of certain issues [like brand safety]. At the end of the day, consumers are there,” said Stéphane Bérubé, L’Or...

Welcome to Co-Produced, the podcast about the many hands that make cool ideas, and how they come together. In conjunction with the 2017 Digiday Awards, this four part series will bring together creatives, brand marketers, and account professionals to reveal the central role of creative collaboration in building some of this year’s most impressive nominees.  Episode 3- Something Massive and Plum Organics recruit parents to ‘Do Your Partner’ Episode 1 – Condé Nast and Reynolds Brands make Cooking Magic Episode 2 – Deep Focus and Engine Media use data to bridge cultural divides Episode 4 Coming Soon The post Co-Produced, Episode 3: How Plum Organics gave parents a sexy pep talk appeared first on Digiday . from Digiday http://ift.tt/2hyWX1y from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2k94Z5k

Facebook is spending more on individual shows for its Watch video-viewing section as the company scales back the total number of deals it signs with content partners. In doing so, the company is also looking for longer periods of exclusivity for the programs it funds. Facebook launched Watch in August in an effort to bring more TV-like video programming to its platform. Instead of short, 60- to 90-second clips that work well within the news feed, Facebook wants more long-form material for Watch — and is willing to pay for it. Budgets for the first batch of “spotlight” (short-form) shows for Watch, which totaled in the hundreds, were roughly $10,000 to $40,000 per episode . For “hero” shows (TV-length original series), Facebook was willing to spend anywhere from $250,000 to more than $1 million per episode, according to sources. While Facebook is no longer using the “spotlight” or “hero” labels for shows in conversations with original content partners, multiple sources said Facebook ...

A few weeks ago, Irene Krahling, digital strategist at Day One Agency, was sitting in a brainstorm meeting when she suddenly received a push notification on her phone. “HQ is about to go live,” it read. She felt the urge to sneak away to tune into her new favorite trivia app but decided to share the game with her colleagues instead. Soon, the whole meeting had stopped and everyone began to play along. “My boss was like, ‘Hold on a second, let me see this game,’” said Krahling. “It went live, and everyone was, like, ‘We’re sold.’” HQ Trivia, the free iOS app that offers live trivia games, has become a viral sensation in the past month, and advertising agencies, filled with competitive individuals, have fallen in love with the game. When HQ Trivia goes live during weekdays at 3 p.m. Eastern time, marketing professionals across the country gather in groups around someone’s smartphone, shouting answers to trivia questions on a range of topics, from science to sports to pop culture. All ...

Sexual harassment and bias and sexism are systemic cultural problems in the ad industry. They’re directly connected to the domination of men in this industry, which grossly misrepresents modern society. At agencies, we should treat them as an internal, industrywide brief that needs solving. The industry needs to evolve from being a “whisper network” and change the male mindset that believes it’s acceptable in an informal, creative and idea-driven agency culture to cross boundaries that you wouldn’t think of crossing at a party at your own home. So, where to start? Or, rather, where do I start? That’s what every man in the industry should ask himself. As a male, founding partner of a boutique ad agency in Amsterdam, I find myself confused and angered at how endemic sexual harassment is within the industry. Though we’re a small agency consisting of a handful of people, we’re very conscious of fostering a creative-driven culture that is above anything based on real respect for people...

To help advertisers cut through a blizzard of marketing and advertising during the holiday season, publishers are luring them with pop-up shops and events. A number of lifestyle publishers, including Clique, PopSugar and Domino, are opening holiday-themed pop-up shops or events that will run through the end of 2017. On Dec. 1, the Clique-owned beauty site Byrdie will open the Byrdie Beauty Lab, a 2,000-square-foot shop where people can buy beauty products Byrdie created with Nordstrom and take free beauty classes taught by big-name makeup artists. A few blocks away, Domino will open up a 3,000-square-foot pop-up shop in SoHo with Home Depot where people can attend free workshops and buy products chosen by Domino editors. On Dec. 9, PopSugar will open Deck the Hauls, an Old Navy-supported installation at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, where custom gift boxes will be sold. These events and others like them are part of publishers’ latest effort to respond to companies’ need to show t...

Rebecca Minkoff sees more possibilities for virtual reality in retail beyond laying a pair of goggles on a store customer’s face and letting them watch the latest fashion show. In fact, the brand wants to be the first brand to meet and sell to customers in a virtual reality world, once customers are actually ready to shop in a virtual setting where nothing they see is actually real — and it’s working with  VR company Obsess and Walmart’s tech incubator, Store No. 8 , to get there. Since that hasn’t happened yet, the company is using data and insight gathered from its experiments with the technology to inform product   design and store layout decisions. “We have this relationship with technology that starts with taking an early lead and then turning that digital innovation into business innovation,” said Craig Fleishman, the evp of corporate development and general counsel at Rebecca Minkoff. “Our goal with virtual reality is to get the right product in front of the rig...

Publishers are feeling growing pains as programmatic video rapidly grows. Some publishers are wasting up to 20 percent of their programmatic video impressions, even though programmatic video ad spend in the U.S. tripled from $3 billion in 2015 to $9 billion in 2017, according to eMarketer. This is largely being driven by video ad networks that win auctions but then, finding nobody they can resell the ad space to, don’t complete the purchase. The publisher is left without any revenue for the unused space. Video specs like video player ad-serving interface definition  tags let buyers and their vendors  install their own code on publisher webpages.  The flexibility of these ad tags was originally intended to help buyers better detect ad fraud and track user interactivity with their ads, but it is being abused for arbitrage as more money pours into video. Some vendors use this ability to their advantage by running their own auctions on the publisher’s browser after ha...

After growing to 1 million users in the last year, DriveTribe, a content creator and platform for car enthusiasts, is starting to drive commercial deals with brands. Just before launch last November, the company — founded by “The Grand Tour” hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond — announced funding of $6.5 million (£4.9 million) from 21st Century Fox and $5.5 million (£4.1 million) in Series A funding led by Breyer Capital and Atomico. With less pressure to make money to survive, DriveTribe has spent a year working with brands like Porsche and Sky Sports F1 in noncommercial partnerships to find the most sustainable revenue model. In January, it plans to work with four brands on a retainer-type partnership for three months, where DriveTribe will provide a number of services, like creative solutions and access to its users and influencer network. The key currency, said DriveTribe CEO Jonathan Morris, is access to behavioral data on its community in real time. “We found...

Today, Snap launched a redesign of Snapchat. Snap announced the redesign was coming in its third-quarter earnings call on Nov. 8. Marketers have since expressed optimism about the redesign, hoping it will help grow users on the platform, which has continued to suffer revenue and user growth losses quarter over quarter. Will the redesign live up to expectations? Here’s what marketers need to know: What’s changing: The major change of the new redesign is the separation of media from social content. To the left of the camera screen is a new Friends page. To the right is a new Discover page. The new Discover page The new Discover page will now include shows and content from publishers and creators, along with Snap Map, Search and Our Stories. New Snap Map tiles will occasionally appear in Discover. The new Discover page shows content in a full-screen, vertical scroll format, where previously, the content was presented horizontally. Promoted Stories, which launched on Nov. 24 , n...

We are finishing up our eighth issue of Digiday Magazine, which you’ll get before the holidays. In this week’s Rundown, we look at reasons Facebook and Google will be constrained in 2018, Wired’s play for digital subscriptions and Facebook Watch’s stumbling start. Back to basics The platforms fever is slowly breaking. The fire sale of Mashable for $50 million, when it raised $46 million, was a somber sign that the age of distributed publishing is coming to a close. BuzzFeed is cutting staff and ousted its sales head, Greg Coleman. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer nec odio. Praesent libero. Sed cursus ante dapibus diam. Sed nisi. Nulla quis sem at nibh elementum imperdiet. Duis sagittis ipsum. Praesent mauris. Fusce nec tellus sed augue semper porta. Mauris massa. Vestibulum lacinia arcu eget nulla. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Curabitur sodales ligula in libero. Sed dignissim lacinia nu...

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By Eric Hoffert, SVP video technology, AppNexus As millions of users are cutting their cords and shifting to viewing television without a cable or satellite TV subscription, questions are now emerging about the fundamental nature of TV content, including how to monetize it — and how consumers view it. Will Netflix-style subscription-based business models dominate, closing off all quality content behind paywalls? Or will IP addressable TV drive an entirely new and more affordable advertising-based model that enables advertisers to reach audiences right in their living rooms with relevant messaging? Will traditional pre­-roll video ads and commercial breaks with multiple slots for ad-supported television programming survive and thrive, or will entirely new video ad strategies and formats change the content experience in a transformative way? According to  eMarketer , 170 million people — more than 50% of the US population, — are streaming TV content via connected TV devices. Th...

Last spring, flush with $21 million in venture capital funding from investors including Time Warner, bringing its total funding to $52 million, millennial-focused Mic launched nine new verticals to cover subjects like social justice, pop culture, women and finance, broadening its original mandate as a news site. Mic planned to hire 35 people and reassign others to staff the verticals. (It’s made 25 of those hires so far.) Mic founder Chris Altchek said at the time that these were “long-term permanent channels.” Money isn’t everything, though. Nearly a year after Mic started that expansion (begun in January with the launch of money vertical The Payoff), the verticals vary widely in their publishing output, social media presence and impact. Navigating Trump’s America, Mic’s vertical devoted to all things Trump, published 50 articles in the second half of November alone. Strut, a beauty vertical, posted 50 in November (all November numbers apply through the 27th). But Slay, Mic’s femin...