Ben Young
Ben Young
September 21, 2018

One big thing

I saw another post from DigiDay, marketers upset at lack of transparency. It’s worth calling out – transparency is an option, if you want it, go get a partner that will deliver it.

Dmexco thoughts

Dmexco was a bit sweet and sour. That is, I love catching up with peers and meeting new folks in the industry. But it’s largely just one side of the industry so feels tone deaf.

There isn’t enough participation from the end users – marketers. I think the event could dramatically improve if it had more in-depth talks, or workshops to help demystify the landscape. Give marketers more reasons to come.

There is deep capability, expertise and experience attending (which is why I do enjoy it) – which is just waiting to be unlocked.

General trends of Dmexco prevail, European market tends to cater for generalist use cases vs US goes deep on specific capability. Startups get acquired earlier. Publishing houses are more prominent.

What the US publishers could learn from them – is deeper investment in technology.

Notable stories this week

  • The increasingly complicated race to solve media measurement via Axios own Sara Fischer.
  • Google launches Smart Campaigns, AI Driven Campaigns.
  • Twitter started to drive revenue to publishers sites. Smart. As a B2B advertiser – leveraging Twitter targeting off Twitter makes a lot of sense.
  • inPowered shares data on their content distribution by vertical. The numbers seem high but directionality is super helpful.
  • Amazon predicted to be the third biggest ad player this year. Surpassing $4.6b in sales.
  • Celebrating ads for good, Outbrain is proactively sharing content through its network – on how to help with the Hurricane Florence efforts. ?
  • ^ Great to shine the light on players in the space just being good citizens of the internet.
  • American Express delves deep in to custom content. <- Great to see their initiative with Vox further below.
  • LinkedIn launches dynamic ads.
  • Top 5 Mobile Ad Tech Trends at Dmexco (lots of data in here to digest). One that stood out: new roles: there will be an “Audience Gatekeeper” that decides how the audience should look across different channels. “Audience Managers” will oversee the customer lifecycle, while the gatekeeper ensures there is no overcontact in a particular segment. These roles lea to less over-contacting, which annoys customers, and to fewer calls requesting to be removed from a mailing list.
  • Also check out Ten things AdYouLike learned at Dmexco.
  • Conde Nast launches the Beauty Studio for experiential and content creation.
  • Unilad feels the pain of Facebook fall out.
  • [From us] An interview with Ben Kaplan, VP of Digital Ad Product Marketing at Meredith Corp.

Deals/M&A

  • Bild will start using Taboola for native.
  • Marc Benioff buys Time Inc, mirroring Bezos <> WaPo and Laurene Powell Jobs <> The Atlantic.
  • Adobe buys marketing-automation firm Marketo for $4.75 billion.

Campaign of the week

  • Vox launches the Goods by Vox, presented by Amex. A new sponsored content section.
  • Nat Geo + Heineken, takes the reader on a journey to the untamed reaches of Patagonia to find out how a biologist and master brewer tamed a wild yeast to produce a completely new kind of beer.
  • Submit your own and then view all 2018.

Smartest commentary

  • “Eyeballs don’t matter without the brand,” Harwood said. “I would rather have 1 million people recognize the brand than 1 million comScore uniques.”Ryan Harwood, Founder PureWow
  • ^ Something a lot of DTC brands are rapidly realising. And now looking to understand from their content, how to drive brand.
  • “Now the focus is on the content’s consumption or how many views the content receives from the targeted users within a particular execution. The content itself is essentially free and comes with the package; the advertiser pays for the consumption performance.”Ben Kaplan, VP, Digital Productions and Operations, The Foundry

Datapoints of note

Events

I’m also off next week, but resuming regular service come the first week of October.

-Ben

Solving media measurement, today
Nudge is a content marketing analytics platform that drives performance for leading brand advertisers and premium publishers.

 


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