Anna Bager, Executive Vice President of Industry Initiatives at IAB kicked off the 2018 IAB Video Symposium. Bager stated that with 56% of adults now owning a streamable tv, we are seeing growth in ad spend in video. In fact, 60% of all ad spend is now in video. We are seeing key times to reach consumers, a time we call Personal Prime Time, which we consider points of greatest engagement.
Linda Yaccarino, Chairman, Advertising and Client Partnerships, of NBCUniversal took the stage in a session titled “Overcoming Video’s Legacy” and explained that while there is a lot of discussion about brand safety, it’s not something you need to worry about when you have premium content. On the other platforms there are concerns for the safety for the consumer and for the society as a whole. What is happening with your data? With my data?
She continued that there are three main parts of this social contract: Responsibility, Transparency, Accountability and introduced CFlight as the future of measurement, delivering impressions added across channels and screens.
Yaccarino quipped, “TV isn’t going anywhere. It’s going everywhere.”
“Current measurement doesn’t reflect the brand’s investment in premium content. We are going to see different success metrics for different industries, putting the focus on outcomes.”
In the next session titled “How to Tell Brand Stories with Impactful Video”, Sydney Levin, Executive Video Producer of T Brand Studio, The New York Times opened with her success ideals. “Tell authentic stories. Understand what the story is and find the right subject to illustrate it. Video helps make the intangible tangible. The world is digital, digital is social, social is mobile, and mobile is video.”
Sara Holmgren, VP Integrated Brand Marketing of Macy’s introduced some work from Macy’s. “Both brand love and commitment are connected to consumer engagement. We expect our video to be emotionally engaging. inspiring and driving value. It is important for us to pull an idea all the way thru the execution.”
Kristen Hartley, Worldwide Content Director, Telco, Media & Entertainment of IBM Originals interjected with her thoughts on the way to captivate on mobile in her most recent campaign. “We were Facebook first AND mobile first. We worked on how to tell a wonderful story that looked beautiful. That’s what it takes to Stop the Thumb Scroll.” You have to move beyond data. You have to use your instincts and be visually engaging in the first 3 seconds.
Levin agreed. “We are living by a lot of FB stats. 3 seconds. ¼ of a second to make a memory.”
Holmgren added this insight, “Marketing is an uninvited guest. But with video they have the choice to engage. It all starts with a consumer insight rooted in a brand truth.”
“Be willing to take chances.” Hartley added. “Look at the data and understand what’s their next best action? Hyperpersonalize your audience. Partner with great people. Partner with people who will push you and will always have your brand in mind.”
“Every brand is looking for growth. They want consumers to buy more, engage more, just be more present with everything you are.” Hartley continued. “For IBM it’s about where you are in the world. It’s about what you can do. Enabling people to do the best things they can do, while telling a unique human narrative.”
“Video success is both visually arresting and evokes an emotion” capped Holmgren.
The following session was titled “Beyond the Measurement Morass: What Metrics Matter”. Helen Katz, Senior Vice President, Global Director, Data & Contracts at Publicis Spine and Andrew Snyder, SVP, Head of Video at Meredith Digital spoke highly of the CFlight and the idea of cross platform measurement. Katz applaud the MRC effort for duration weighted effort. “We need to continue the effort to standardize this.”
Echoing the IAB Direct Brand Economy mantra, Eric John, Deputy Director of Video at IAB explained “Enterprise value is fueled by data.”
Snyder interjected, “We’ve been using data to better understand consumer intent. We have seen signals that 50% of people who view video are in-store later. We have to make it easier to reach people on each platform and measure it.”
Katz explained that to her, “strive for progress not perfection. Keep testing and moving forward. Ask did it drive intent? Sales? Agencies are coming to the table as outcome based. Moving beyond impressions, duration, and viewability to actual sales/performance. But traditional metrics don’t go away. They are needed for consistency across channels.”
“If it’s not a buyer/seller conversation, it’s not going to work,” concluded Snyder.
Eddie Revis, Senior Director, Marketing & Brand Development at Chobani took the stage in a session called “The Ultimate “Flip”: Chobani’s Fusion of TV & Digital”. He started with, “We have to talk about the importance of creativity not just delivery. Be obsessed on creative and targeting. Doing it better. When we put our valuable dollars in the market we have to be disciplined.”
It is important to link online and offline. At Chobani there’s a dedicated brand creative in-house. It is a creatively lead organization. So they ask, where is the audience and what will motivate them to take that activity we want them to do? Their first step is to map out every possible touchpoint.
100+ versions for the most recent campaign created in house. If it’s not working, we kick it out. Revis admitted, “You have to not fall in love with your own stuff. It’s sad to see some of your kids leave, but at the end of the day you have to drive product.”
Revis explained, “We are using video to build awareness, upper funnel; to break thru in a different way; to refine the audience. We are testing shorter forms of video. We just want to tell the story better. It becomes more hard hitting. And we can optimize messages in real time, both incentive and message testing. What is great is that creative doesn’t have to do everything for everyone.”
Optimization is the key to using video well and Chobani is using multi-touch attribution as their key optimization/measurement tool. This is a work in progress and it is too soon to report on results.
In the next session “OpenAP State of the Market”, Bryson Gordon, Executive Vice President, Data Strategy at Viacom introduced the idea, “We have to do better than female, 18-49. There’s an activation gap between what brands know about their customer and how they can activate against their specific knowledge. We have to be able to sse all the data brands collect to get to the right audience.”
OpenAp is more than a consortium, it is like a software company. Every 6-8 weeks engineers push out new features. And they are building a plan based in reality across all publishers and maximize de-duplicated reach.
“We are aligned in what the vision of the marketplace looks like and we are also aligned on getting there quickly,” Gordon explained. “We are moving away from tonnage to data science.”
Lauren Wiener, CEO at Tremor Video DSP was next on stage in a session called “Taking Back Control in Our Brand Safety Focused World”. She stated that 75% of brands have experienced brand safety issues this year, but only 26% have done anything about it. There are three parts to this concern. Supply chain (Ads.txt verification). Combat Fraud. Brand Safety.
It was suggested by the audience that when questioning brand safety, his brand assumes that consumers know ad targeting isn’t perfect. Users would blame the platform not the brand.
The Town Hall discussion indicated that Fake News is beyond news we don’t agree with, it can be truly damaging. Your brand can be highjacked and marketers think they are advertising somewhere and they aren’t. Interestingly, you can really drive traffic with fake because fake can be way more interesting than truth. A key part of the solution is to use IAB taxonomy and remember that context matters.
The next session was called “The Rise of E-Sports in the Direct Brand Economy”. Mike Sepso, Major League Gaming & Senior Vice President at Activision Blizzard introduced Esports as the first live sport that has emerged in a post-TV era. Authenticity is key in the space. The Overwatch League sponsorship deals and integration into the broadcast, gets thru ad blocking but even harder to measure. Franchises are set up similar to NFL but the overall league is modified to be global because it is a global event. Sepso’s advice? “Go with the big players in this emerging marketplace.”
Manuel Neto, Senior Vice President, Senior Director of Marketing at Hearts & Sciences interjected, “Big advertisers are coming to gaming, but a concern is brand safety, especially with guns, is important.”
Sepso explained, “The way Esports fans behave is the way all consumers will behave in the future.”
“The Future of TV and Skinny Bundles” was the final session. Brett Jenkins, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer at Nexstar said that it’s not the distribution that is creating the disruption. It’s the content. ATSC 3.0 changing the transport layer to be IP based, like OTT and can deliver content like OTT delivers. With this technology, broadcasters will better be able to understand viewers preferences and deliver better choices.
Scott Alexander, COO, LKQD, Colin Petrie-Norris, CEO, XUMO and Will Richmond, Editor and Publisher, VideoNuze took the stage and discussed Skinny Bundles as a growing part of the market, even to goliaths like ATT. It is changing the way consumers consume television. There is a trend where TV is being democratized by streaming tv.
Distribution and creation have been disrupted. Who is creating content is growing and how consumers are consuming is changing too. This means monetization models are also changing. Lots of sports are going to Direct to Consumer channels, but more broadly-based content might need to be ad supported because this content lacks the driven consumers you see in sports. The question we need to ask is, “How can we take the premium nature of tv and combine it with the digital aspects of the Cloud?”
