Verizon To Acquire Yahoo’s Core Assets For $4.8 Billion

What Happened
Verizon announced on Monday morning that it has reached an agreement to acquire Yahoo’s core assets, primarily its internet business along with some real estate, for $4.8 billion in cash. Verizon says it plans to integrate Yahoo’s internet assets into AOL, which it acquired for $4.4 billion last year. Pending the usual regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close in Q1 2017.

Why Brands Should Care
Much like buying AOL, this Yahoo acquisition should give Verizon’s ad business a strong boost in terms of audience reach and user data. The online properties and user data that Yahoo brings complements the mobile properties and user data that Verizon already has, and the combined data pool should significantly increase the cross-platform targeting capability of Verizon’s ad operations, similarly to the way that buying AOL’s ad operations has. Granted, the operation likely won’t be able to truly challenge Google and Facebook’s dominant positions in the mobile advertising space. But by joining forces, it might emerge as a competitive rival that provides an alternative for brands to consider when it comes to digital advertising.


Source: Ad Exchange

Videology Integrates Nielsen Data To Enable Combined TV And Online Targeting

What Happened
Videology, a New York-based video ad firm backed by Comcast, has added Nielsen data to its platform to help ad buyers target and measure the same audience across TV and digital. Although the integration is not exclusive, Videology says it is “the only video and tech platform that has a true one-to-one integration,” tying TV viewership to online and offline behavior to offer advertisers better ad attribution.

Why Brands Should Care
With its addition of Nielsen data, Videology now offers brands a way to converge TV ad buying with digital video efforts to more effectively reach audiences across platforms. In a similar manner, programmatic ad firm TubeMogul recently tapped Facebook’s API and Nielsen data to allow brands to extend their TV audience targeting to social media. As more digital ad platforms start to incorporate viewer data from Nielsen, they provide brand advertisers with new tools for running data-driven, cross-platform campaigns.

 


Source: Marketing Land

SXSW 2016: Buzzfeed Launches New Ad Product To Help Brands Reach Social Audience

What Happened
Buzzfeed, master of viral videos and sponsored content, announced at SXSW on Saturday that it is launching a new premium ad product designed to help brand advertisers better reach audiences on mobile, desktop, and various social channels where Buzzfeed has built strong followings. The new ad product, Swarm, will allow brands to run campaigns simultaneously across all of Buzzfeed’s web and mobile properties, as well as six of its social platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, Vine, and Snapchat Discover.

What Brands Need To Do
As media consumption continues to fragment, it is becoming increasingly important for brands to reach out to consumers on as many media platforms as possible. This new ad product from Buzzfeed can mitigate some of the stress of running a multi-channel ad campaign, and also give brands a comprehensive look at where they are most likely to find their target audience. Last month, NBCUniversal also launched a new ad division specifically for handling multi-channel ad campaigns. As new holistic ad products become available, brands would be wise to experiment with such products to get in front of more people.

 


Source: AdWeek

NBCUniversal Launching New Ad Division For Data-Driven, Multi-Channel Targeting

What Happened
NBCUniversal is launching a new division designed to allow marketers to target audiences across its TV, digital platforms, and social media channels. Dubbed Audience Studio, the new division aims to offer brand marketers a one-stop shop for ad buying and cross-platform targeting by tying together four platform-specific ad buying products NBCU has introduced over the last few years. Audience Studio’s new data management platform will allow brands to combine their first-party data with data from NBCU and other third-party services, and use the data set to target audiences across NBCU platforms.

What Brands Need To Do
Previously marketers had to manually navigate each product to execute a multi-platform campaign. By unifying these platforms under one division, Audience Studio simplifies advertising across all channels using the same set of targeting data, making it easier for brand advertisers to plan and execute a multi-platform campaign that focuses on the people instead of the channels.

 


Sources: Wall Street Journal

Event Recap: Top Themes From IAB Mobile Marketplace 2015

On Monday, the Lab attended the Mobile Marketplace 2015 event organized by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to hear what industry leaders have to say about some of the biggest challenges in mobile marketing, including measurement, programmatic, and personalization:

Break Down Data Silos To Solve Cross-device Measurement
Cross-device measurement has been problematic, saddled with a reported 30% overstated reach and only 59% accuracy in demographic targeting, according to Mark Trefgarne from Facebook. As George Ivie pointed out during his session on common issues in mobile measurement, “There’s nobody accredited for mobile viewability”. As audience fragmentation will continue with increasing multi-device usage, cookie-based tracking is no longer reliable.

Instead, “mobile is the key to mapping devices back to a single user”, declared Gabriel Chen from M&C Saatchi Mobile, before recommending marketers and brands “break down the data silos” to better understand consumer behavior. Similarly, Trefgarne emphasized the importance of people-based marketing in his presentation: Facebook’s social login equips brands with targeting tools to measure user activities across multiple devices.

Bridge The Gap Between Online And Offline With Actionable Data
Besides difficulties in cross-device measurements, another key point of discussion at the event was how to use mobile-generated data to gain actionable insights into real-world user behaviors. It is estimated that, by 2020, consumers will own an average of 10 connected devices, whose omnipresent network of connectivity could essentially eliminate the concept of “being offline”, according to Mark Trefgarne from Facebook.

But we don’t have to wait for the future: Jeff Malmad from Mindshare pointed out that in our mobile-first age, location, sensors, and context are already providing brands with opportunities to connect with consumers. Similarly, Ravi Pahilajani from MEC also recommended marketers use a wide range of mobile-generated data—location, behavioral, or even devices’ meta data—to paint a holistic digital footprint that bridges the gap between online and offline behaviors.

Engage Mobile Users With New Media Tools
Mobile is driving growth in real-time bidding ad spending, noted Ravi Pahilajani, and as a result, brands can deliver targeted messages at the right moments and places, which has led to alternative forms of mobile engagement. Video ads, for example, can create rich consumer experience with interactive ad units.

Similarly, audio serves as a seamless way of engaging with audience. Karina Montgomery from Pandora encouraged brands think about their sonic brand images—a distinguishable aural identity that can help brands stand out to consumers suffering peak distraction.

Balance Digital and Humanity With A People-First Approach
The Lab’s Josh Shabtai explained how “we’re approaching a new era of intimate commuting” during his presentation of The Lab’s 2015 Outlook. People use their devices in such intimate ways that it has begun to have an actual emotional impact in the brain. Brands must find ways to be empathetic and truly understand the emotional context behind ad messaging.

Similarly, Y&R’s David Sable stressed that it is important to “build experiences for life, not experiences for machines”. There is such a reliance on algorithms to form bonds with consumers that story telling gets lost or forgotten. It’s not a question of digital vs. not digital, but rather, a question of what people genuinely want.

 

Event Recap: Three Themes From The 4A’s Transformation Conference 2015

Every year since 2009, ad agency leaders have gathered to discuss ongoing trends and the future of the ad industry in the annual 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies) Transformation Conference. And at this year’s event, the spotlight was firmly on programmatic.

Programmatic Is The Future
The event kicked off with the release of a White Paper report on the transformative potential of programmatic buying, and throughout the event, the current industry practice and positioning of programmatic ads were discussed at length, with the general consensus being that programmatic is valuable both as an audience targeting tool and as an automation process for buying ads. As the White Paper concludes:

Advertisers and their agencies must align with technology providers here, as well, to promote greater visibility into the new infrastructure being created. Accountability, trust, quality and value are four key pillars on which the foundation of a programmatic future must be laid.

TV Will Continue To Be A Powerhouse
Many attendees still trust TV based on its 60-year track record and solid research. John Montgomery, GroupM’s COO, told 4As that traditional TV business will continue to deliver audience as a “real powerhouse” that is “100% viewable”. It offers volume and scale like no other medium, said Montgomery, and “video pales in comparison”.

Cross-platform Targeting Ties Everything Together
While TV advertising drives awareness and word-of-mouth, digital screens are more personal, and content is chosen very specifically, lending to a more direct engagement with users.  As advertisers continue to expand their campaigns across different screens, the full value of video advertising can be unleashed by shaping the messaging by platform.

A panel led by ESPN Research. for instance, highlighted some results from their “Valuing Video” study on the effectiveness of video ads across TV, digital, and mobile platforms. Digital video impressions combined with TV impressions drive performance—especially purchase intent, ESPN concluded.

Head image taken from www.aaaa.org

How IFTTT Just Made App Automation Simpler

Read original story on: TechCrunch

IFTTT, the leading platform for app automation, has been quite popular with developers and early adopters, and now the company is trying to make the tech more accessible to more consumers by rebranding.

Along with its original IFTTT (short for “IF This, Then That”) app being renamed to a simple “IF”, it’s also launching three free new apps — Do Button, Do Camera and Do Note — that will respectively let users trigger up to three actions each to make connected things work. If successful, this move could speed up the automation of our online and mobile actions in and between different apps and services.

 

By The Numbers: Google And Facebook Fighting Over Social Logins

According to recent research by Statista, in the past year, Google has been narrowing its gap on Facebook in the fight over third-party social logins. Back in the last quater of 2013, Facebook had a 10% lead on Google in social logins, an advantage that shrank down to a mere 3% by the end of last year.

Social logins are incredibly valuable to companies like Google and Facebook because it extends their reach into other web domains other than their own, collecting more data about their users’ interests and habits cross websites and platforms and ultimately building a more comprehensive profile of their consumers.

Best Of The Lab 2014: OTT Flourishes As Big Data Gets Personal

The past year saw monumental growth for the over-the-top (OTT) market, as more brands and content providers jumped in this flourishing market. You can read our extensively researched white paper to learn about the OTT revolution happening in our living room.

Meanwhile, everything you do online is duly noted as part of your personal big data. Check out our joint study with 140 Proof on how and why people manage social profiles across multiple platforms.

What the Living Room Revolution Means to Brands

140 Proof and IPG Lab Present A Network For Every Interest