Publishings Digital Consumer

Sanjay Nazerali, Chief Strategist of Carat, a global media market leader in digital media, writes about how YouTube influencers are rewriting the marketing rulebook. Working in strategy at one of the world’s largest media agencies, I’ve witnessed countless pitches about influencer marketing and the growing power of creators. With engaged audiences in the millions and passionate fans hungry for content, YouTube creators are already an established channel for brands looking to run ads. In fact, Carat’s latest analysis suggests online video investment (including YouTube) can be increased by 3X compared to planned level. But increasingly, these influencers are also becoming attractive partners for deeper collaborations. Clients are initially enthusiastic, assuming this is the digital age’s answer to celebrity marketing and endorsement. Then the thorny business questions arise, such as: So what’s it actually doing for my brand? Do I do an endorsement or product placement—or what? Isn’t it just for millennials, beauty brands, and makeup tutorials? These have always been tough questions to answer. Even though almost everyone has been jumping on the influencer bandwagon, few understand what “influence” really is or how it works. Until now. Celebrity marketing and influencer marketing offer fundamentally different benefits for brands. Together with YouTube and Nielsen, my team analyzed the results of hundreds of brand and creator videos in the U.S. and the U.K to understand the impact of influencers for brands. It’s a critical first step in establishing a business-led rulebook for this new world—and it’s already changing how I approach my own plans. 1. Influencers are not the same as celebrities Influencers, however vast their reach, are absolutely not “today’s celebrities,” and celebrity marketing and influencer marketing offer fundamentally different benefits for brands. For instance, we found that celebrities are more effective at driving recall than creators (84% versus 73%). Given that a celebrity’s job is to be famous and memorable, that makes sense. Where YouTube creators really start to gain the upper hand is in deeper brand involvement. Brand familiarity is a good example. If we want to get an audience to really understand us, our work, our values, or our products, then collaborations with YouTube creators are 4X more effective at driving lift in brand familiarity than those with celebrities. When it comes to purchase intent, it’s an even match: our research found that influencers were just as likely as celebrities to drive buying decisions. Influencer marketing appears to play a fundamentally more pragmatic role. Why? My hunch is that it’s because fans feel very connected to the YouTubers they love. The best creators have formed authentic bonds with their fans, which means fans trust what they have to say, and turn to them for brand and product recommendations. 2. It’s not just a ‘beauty’ thing Beauty brands were one of the first to team up with influencers, and creators have established a huge presence among the YouTube beauty community. About 86% of the top 200 beauty videos on YouTube were made by creators rather than professionals or brands. But what’s interesting about our findings is just how far influencers stretch beyond the beauty category. We tested nine additional categories, including auto, alcohol, snacks, and toys. Across all nine categories, working with influencers leads to lifts in brand metrics, from familiarity to affinity to recommendation. In some categories, such as snacks and alcohol, they can have even more impact, driving significantly higher than average purchase intent. So the idea that influencer marketing is purely for young people who are looking at fashion and beauty brands simply isn’t true. 3. The ‘how’ matters as much as the ‘who’ Celebrity marketing has historically focused on endorsement, sponsorship, and product placement. Influencer marketing has developed far more options, and it’s important to understand which of these work best—and for which marketing goals. Deep thematic integrations with creators stand out as driving the highest results for brands. These are more involved integrations where the influencer plays a role in creating a piece of content – such as a demo – with the brand. It’s far deeper than product placement and it works more effectively. While there were many consistencies across categories, we also saw some nuances, which are important for clients to understand. We found that simpler brand integrations, like a product endorsement or just featuring a creator in an ad, also showed positive results for brand affinity in all categories tested. Of course, deep collaborations can be more than some brands are ready for. For some objectives and categories, simply running their own ads on YouTube creator content will still be the easiest and most effective way to tap into the power of these influencers. 4. Don’t lose sight of why people love YouTubers We often assume that the right influencer is either an aspirational version of our target audience or that they’re just like celebrities. Neither of these assumptions is correct, and it’s perhaps here that celebrity and influencer marketing differ the most. Whereas celebrities need to be trendy and stylish, consumers expect creators to be friendly, funny, and, yes, sometimes irreverent. Irreverence is interesting, because it drives credibility. Irreverence strongly suggests independence, and it’s this that builds trust. It can also be incredibly valuable for brands. If a creator usually ridicules things they don’t like, you can be sure that when they praise something, they mean it. Humour is also interesting, because it reflects a sense of community. YouTube helps forge a special relationship between followers and influencers, one that reflects a sense of co-ownership. This familiarity creates a degree of intimacy that makes the use of humour seem much more natural than it would do with celebrities. This is probably also why we see celebrities, such as Dwayne Johnson, increase their influencer scores when they get really active on YouTube. Prioritization and strength of attributes by gen X and gen Y associated with celebrities are different to creators. --- For the full article, visit http://bit.ly/2z6MHng (link is external) Is it Hype? Or is it Real? Decoding the Influence of YouTube Influencers Read more at http://newyork.advertisingweek.com/CALENDAR/-google-seminar-2017-09-26-1... (link is external)

Leading radio streaming service Pandora partners with Oracle Data Cloud (link is external) on two important measurement initiatives: a custom offline sales meta-test of consumer packaged goods (CPG) campaigns and automotive Buy Through Rate (BTR) measurement. Connecting online ad exposure to offline sales requires billions of data points. Massive scale is crucial. With more than 76 million logged-in listeners per month, 1 billion data signals every day, and cross-platform reach, Pandora is uniquely positioned to provide our advertisers with the crucial data they need. In both the CPG and Auto studies, Pandora‘s listener data was matched anonymously, one-to-one with Oracle Data Cloud user-level data set. Pandora’s cross-platform media was then connected with offline transactional consumer data from the Oracle Data Cloud. For marketers, being able to accurately measure a campaign’s impact on in-store sales truly is the holy grail. With 67% of the buyer’s journey (link is external) happening online, digital marketing has never been more directly connected to offline sales. It’s also the thing that keeps marketers awake at night and a challenge that here at Pandora, we’ve taken to heart. Campaign-level sales insights are equally important for automotive marketers as their CPG counterparts. Yet, auto purchase cycles are even longer and more complex, making sales attribution a struggle. Pandora is proud to lead the charge in this space and is the first non-endemic publisher to leverage Oracle Data Cloud Buy Through Rate at a raw impression/user level, exposing detailed and granular campaign-level insights. --- For more information, visit http://bit.ly/2g3Ic5u (link is external)

Learn more about Krux’s data management platform solution ‘marrying human insight and machine learning’. People are unique, from their different characteristics to preferences to behaviors. People engage with brands in infinitely different ways, and they certainly don't fit neatly into standard audience personas. More granular and dynamic audience segments can be discovered and defined through Salesforce DMP machine learning capabilities powered by Einstein. Salesforce DMP Machine-Discovered Segments deliver: Machine-learning algorithms that detect similarity and correlation between users to find hidden patterns and behaviors Prescriptive audience recommendations based on all data sources Unique audience personas that differentiate and augment the value of your first-party data Intelligently targeted and personalized engagement Complete analysis and actionable data to discover, activate, and measure Key Features include: Programmatic Attribution Modeling: Smart insights for smart ad buys and activation across all screens, channels and systems. Turnkey Lookalike Modeling: Audience expansion in which you control the tradeoff between reach and similarity, without reliance on external black box providers. Restricted Data Leasing: Safe, supervised data flow to authorized partners according to times, terms and conditions of your choosing with automated tools for auditing and verification. --- For more information, visit http://bit.ly/2xghY5Y (link is external)

Learn more the Audience Center 360, a Google analytic solutions data management platform that helps brands make strong decisions based on a complete understanding of their audience insights, and create relevant and engaging experiences across the entire customer journey. --- For more information visit, http://bit.ly/2xSzX6a (link is external)

Seven independent ad tech companies debuted a programmatic consortium on Thursday that pools their supply- and demand-side cookie IDs into one shared identity asset. The consortium is helmed by AppNexus, MediaMath and LiveRamp, which provides the data matching. Other launch partners include Index Exchange, Rocket Fuel, LiveIntent and OpenX. And it’s a shot across the bow of Facebook and Google, which suck in a majority of digital ad dollars. “The big giants have had an advantage over the open internet in that they have their own deterministic identities for users that allows more precise targeting and cross-device matching,” said AppNexus product VP Patrick McCarthy. Ad tech platforms like AppNexus, Index Exchange and OpenX have the combined online reach marketers want, McCarthy said, but an advertiser must match its data against each platform independently and use LiveRamp to create one-to-one matches. “A universal cookie ID eliminates all the user syncing that goes on between platforms and the lower match rate that necessarily goes with it,” he said. While Google and Facebook have users who contribute deterministic data, the newly formed ad tech consortium can apply first-party data from advertisers and logged-in data from publishers. Marketers and supply sources who are a part of the consortium will access for free the shared cookie pool. LiveRamp’s cross-device graph IdentityLink can be extended to the campaigns, but LiveRamp is still considering commercial terms for ad buyers who want to add a cross-device matching component, company CMO Jeff Smith told AdExchanger. The lack of a unique identifier to date has been one of the biggest factors in fueling concerns around transparency, fairness and control in the digital advertising ecosystem For now, though, any marketer who wants to take advantage of the consortium’s cross-device offering must be a LiveRamp IdentityLink customer. Smith is acutely aware that LiveRamp gains a new business funnel, noting that onboarding potential consortium partners is “definitely is a benefit for us.” “And hopefully the broader benefit is if everyone standardizes around a common identity, the value and efficiency of their marketing will go up,” he added. While the DSPs and SSPs in the consortium may not view it as a new business play, “there certainly will be benefits” that could lead to budget and supply-source consolidation, said MediaMath product VP Philipp Tsipman. For instance, a European video supplier working with MediaMath on a campaign could match its viewers one-to-one with MediaMath’s cookie pool. If that relationship were to occur through the consortium, the match rates would be higher and the profiles would be more robust, since suppliers across the web are contributing data as well. AppNexus’s McCarthy said the system doesn’t cut off buyers from suppliers that don’t use the consortium, but “they will get better matching and better results, so it could naturally funnel more budgets to suppliers that participate.” The market needs “a unique identifier that is neutral,” said OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan in a statement about joining the consortium. “The lack of a unique identifier to date has been one of the biggest factors in fueling concerns around transparency, fairness and control in the digital advertising ecosystem.” --- For the full article, please visit http://bit.ly/2fLZtAB (link is external)

Released on September 22, 2017 at a political microtargeting conference held in Amsterdam, in response to the recent announcement by Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg on changes to how they conduct political ad campaigns. Dear Mark, Your statements on Facebook’s new policies for political advertising were issued as we started a global symposium on micro-targeting in Amsterdam (https://www.ivir.nl/amsterdam-symposium-on-political-micro-targeting/ (link is external)). We are a group of leading international academic experts and civil society representatives from the fields of law, communication, political science and economics who are conducting research on political targeting. Fairness, equality and democratic oversight are key in democratic societies. We appreciate the initiative you have taken and strongly encourage further dialogue and action. Moving this forward we strongly believe that the principles of transparency and disclosure are essential. Facebook should share publicly the full range of paid political contents, disclose the sponsoring actors, and identify the categories of target audiences. This should be done globally as this is an issue that affects elections worldwide. We encourage you and other platforms and actors to join this dialogue to contribute principles for transparency and disclosure. Transparency is a first step in the right direction. Digital political advertising operates in a dynamic tension between data and humans, commerce and politics, power and participation. Some of these tensions can be resolved by transparency, others not. The way forward is to engage with governments, regulators, election monitoring bodies, civil society and academics to develop public policies and guidelines for ensuring fairness, equality, and democratic oversight in digital political campaigns. Can we count on you? Natali Helberger Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam Claes de Vreese Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam Balazs Bodo Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam Mauricio Moura George Washington University Max von Grafenstein Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin Jessica Schmeiss Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society Sabrina Sassi Universite Laval Tom Dobber Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam Jeff Chester Center for Digital Democracy, Washington, DC Kathryn Montgomery American University, Washington, DC André Haller Institut für Kommmunikationswissenschaft, Universität Bamberg Damian Tambini Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science Simon Krischinski Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mains Daniel Kreiss School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Digital marketing companies, especially Facebook (link is external) and Google, allied with super-size broadband ISPs (AT&T, Comcast, etc.), defeated (link is external) a bill that would have given Californians the right to have a say in how their digital information can be used. The bill primarily required (link is external) opt-in consent (an informed, informative okay) before our data could be used to help advertisers target us via a home or mobile Internet connection. Google, Facebook, AT&T, Comcast and their partners don’t want individuals to be able to decide for themselves whether they want to be part of these companies’ commercial surveillance system. Working both independently and collectively, the digital marketing businesses can now seamlessly (link is external) gather, analyze and use all our information—whether we are on a mobile device a PC or even watching TV. Our mobile phones and apps send them details of where we go and what we do. All of our “profile” information is collected into a single record, which often contains an ever-growing (link is external) array of other data—about our finances, health, what our kids do, what we view online, where we shop and for what, our race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and more. Google and Facebook use this data to generate massive revenues from advertisers, marketers and political campaigns. AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have long had “Google envy,” believing that their monopolistic control over the broadband connections most Americans rely on should also shower them with even more financial rewards. That’s why phone and cable companies have scooped (link is external) up digital ad companies, such as Yahoo and AOL. Their vision for the future is to profit significantly by selling us to advertisers when we use our digital devices to stream video, listen to music, play games, etc. The California bill was based on the safeguards that had been enacted by the FCC at the end of the Obama administration, but that President Trump eliminated (link is external) earlier this year and. Google, Facebook and the others knew that if California enacted such consumer safeguards, it would set a powerful precedent. That’s why they engaged in a deceptive (link is external) ad campaign, used their political donations (link is external) for clout with lawmakers, and sent lobbyists to the state to tell tall tales of how Americans have their privacy protected by the FTC. A terrific coalition (link is external) of privacy, consumer, education, children’s advocacy, civil rights and civil liberties group fought for the California bill. We are proud that CDD played a modest role. We will all be back, stronger than ever, when the California state legislature reconvenes next year. But the lesson here is a valuable one and joins the now-almost-daily examples where Google (link is external), Facebook (link is external) and the others misuse their power. The forces of advertising and marketing, now fueled with the ever-growing capabilities of digital applications, undermine the ability of America’s communication and information gatekeepers to effectively serve the public interest. It’s a story that has been repeated throughout the 20th century with the mediums of radio, broadcast television and cable. It’s also always been true of the Internet companies. Protecting our privacy, by stopping these companies from so easily grabbing and monetizing our data, is one way we need to address the problem. The Europeans are about to do precisely (link is external) that—and the U.S. needs to do the same. That’s a very important beginning for what must be a new national agenda protecting the digital rights of all Americans.