Ad Age “Media Guy” columnist Simon Dumenco’s media roundup for the morning of Friday, April 14:
Today we’ve got death, war and branding (see Nos. 1 and 2), a social media copycat (No. 3), real cats (No. 6), fake news (Nos. 4 and 5) and … Trump-related trolling (No. 7). In other words, pretty much a normal day. Anyway, let’s get started …
1. Media darling of the moment: MOAB.
Artist and activist Melissa Etheridge joined the latest episode of Ad Age and iHeartMedia’s “Tagline” podcast series to talk about collaboration, mashups and creativity.
Etheridge was joined by host and Publicis Media President of Global Innovation Adam Shlachter, Visa Chief Brand and Innovation Officer Chris Curtin and JinglePunks President and Chief Creative Officer Jared Gutstadt, not to mention the mixologist Brian Floyd, courtesy of “Tagline” sponsor Bulleit Frontier Whisky.
Here’s a taste:
Now that marketers have been reminded of the internet’s dark side, whitelists are top of mind.
Last year, many digital ad players felt like they’d gotten a handle on fraud and celebrated passing TV in U.S. ad revenue for the first time. Then the perils of programmatic advertising roared back in the form of fake news sites and offensive YouTube videos, all underwritten by unwitting major marketers. Brands like Procter & Gamble and Chase are now scouring the web to reassert control, assembling lists of preapproved publishers worthy of their budgets. Major ad buyers such as GroupM and Omnicom Media Group are working on similar solutions to offer clients.
The ad-supported world wide web is abruptly in danger of shrinking from a sprawling, inventive and untamed territory to a set of safe spaces for advertisers, possibly changing the character of the internet in the process.
(TrendHunter.com) The Keruo L7 smart pocket projectors are designed with versatility in mind to provide users with the ability to project their projects, entertainment and much more wherever they are. Powered by…
(TrendHunter.com) Rather than implementing a traditional loyalty program for customers, Domino’s worked with the CP+B creative agency on the creation of a unique new way to engage and reward its most loyal fans….
Gav Thompson, founder of mobile network Giffgaff and former chief marketing officer at Paddy Power, has joined estate agent Yopa as chief marketing officer.
The deadline to enter the Creative Tech Awards has been extended from to midnight on 27 April.
How Amazon gained permission from Apple and what this means for brands.
The finale of Broadchurch, the ITV drama starring David Tennant, attracted record viewings for the channel this year, peaking at 9.3 million viewers last night.
Attempting to speak with someone who’s fluent in martech is not easy.
For starters there is the jargon, a miasma of buzzwords and phrases. You might, in the very same sentence, encounter both “holistic consumer experience” and “tag management system.” Although smiling and nodding does help, trying to make sense of what they actually mean is far more effective.
In short, the idea behind martech goes like this: Today’s consumers are empowered and demand more from the brands they engage with. Marketers want to meet these expectations — they really do! — but doing so requires a deep understanding, or one-to-one relationship, of who they are and how they engage with them.
Let’s say you’ve recently been in a conversation about marketing technology where at least somebody didn’t exactly know what martech is. They got through by saying things like “consumer journey,” “Lumascape” and “Marketing tech is going to be the hottest trend this year, no doubt.”
We’re not saying that person was you. But to help end the confusion one sometimes encounters over marketing technology, here’s an easy explainer.
What is martech, anyway?
Rob Norman’s recent Ad Age op-ed argued that the real cost of ad fraud to marketers was signficant but not anywhere near as bad as the headlines suggest. Publishers suffer “zero direct loss,” he wrote.
Let’s get on the same page.
We must differentiate good publishers — i.e. the sites you’ve heard of, like ESPN.com, WSJ.com, WashingtonPost.com, etc. — from other sites that carry ads — e.g. 000000000.com, wkexsfmw.com, etc. Those sites can never, ever be found or visited by humans. So where do they get their traffic? Right. Bots, or euphemistically “NHT,” for non-human traffic. One hundred percent of the traffic to these sites comes from bots. But yet, it’s not so obvious in the campaign reports on which marketers rely. Why? 1) Campaign reports often don’t show line item details of where the ads ran.” 2) Bad guys with domains like wkexsfmw.com cover their tracks by pretending to be good site like ESPN.com. And 3) the traffic they buy can pass all fraud filters, because the bad guys have A/B tested their bots and are sure they will get marked as not NHT (i.e. clean).
I’ve been feeling a sense of dj vu about Snapchat and I’m not happy about it.
Specifically, I’ve been having flashbacks to circa 2008-2009, when Twitter was becoming a media chattering-class obsession and felt like it was on the verge of going mainstream. At the time, I wrote a couple columns for Ad Age simultaneously declaring my love for my Twitter (as a user) and expressing my fears about its long-term prospects. Because I wasn’t seeing much in the way of a convincing business model from Twitter management; the revenue that Twitter was drawing from marketers often seemed to fall into the experimental bucket plus “look at us embracing the hottest new platforms” us-too-ism.
Back then, there was enough starry-eyed optimism about any and all social media that readers roasted me for daring to question Twitter’s long-term growth, because surely something as awesome as Twitter would be able to somehow make money on such an awesome user base, which was then growing exponentially. One British reader even angrily called me a “muppet” — i.e., an unthinking puppet mouthing the sour sentiments of, I gathered, Luddites and other cranky technophobes.
(TrendHunter.com) A creative director in Finland decided to get creative so he took his wife’s ultrasound scan data for their soon-to-be-born child and used it to make a 4D ultrasound that could be viewed in…
(TrendHunter.com) These alternatively sweetened snack options range from crunchy cashew clusters to Keto diet energy bars that are high in protein and stevia-infused, replacing traditional sugar additives with a…
Capital has announced evening presenter Roman Kemp will host the important breakfast show as parent Global hopes to reverse a recent slump in audience figures.
For M&C Saatchi, the Dreams ad is probably not one that indicates the creative reboot it had been looking for.
Weetabix, the UK’s best-selling cereal brand, is to be bought by US consumer group Post Holdings in a $1.76bn (£1.4bn) deal.
Sky and Virgin Media are reportedly in advanced discussions over a deal to bring Virgin Media to AdSmart, Sky’s targeted ad network.
Bad publicity is harder to come by, no matter how hard you try.
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