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As digital video becomes increasingly popular, Centro talks to more and more clients that want to transition traditional TV assets to digital. Recently, a tier-two automotive dealership approached us with such a request.
The dealership had historically relied on broadcast television campaigns, but wanted a video-focused digital strategy for consistent messaging and resonance with its target audience of in-market auto consumers. This meant the solution needed to source video inventory and layer in targeting at scale. In order to measure the campaign's performance against traffic and awareness, the client selected CPC and CTR as the primary campaign KPIs.
Download our case study to read more.
It should be no secret to those of us in the digital media industry that the space is constantly evolving, bringing new trends, complex jargon, and sophisticated tech to the table on what feels like a weekly basis. It should also be no secret that in order to be successful, companies need to be able to adapt to the frequent and fluid needs of their customers. Easier said than done, right? Well, we think we can speak to this a little bit, because we've been in the digital media business for more than 15 years.
The key? It's not just about the hottest tech, or being the smartest team in the conference room. It's about customer service -- and combining that behind-the-scenes service with keen insights and innovative tools.
A bit of background: We started as a services company in Chicago back in 2001, and we managed and ran campaigns. Media execution was our bread and butter. We've since evolved, both in scope (with new products, offerings, and full-scale digital partnerships) and city space (we're 32 offices strong now). Part of that evolution is because we know that in this day and age marketers need digital partners to execute more than just individual tactics. And that's what true customer-centric service is: being adaptable and proactive in the marketplace.
We call it Raving Fan Service, and we tout it a lot. As we should. It's one of our differentiators. But what does Raving Fan Service really mean?
It's not just lip service. One of the easiest ways to digest this Raving Fan Service concept is to think of the standard service operating model. With the rise of digital – and programmatic especially – we're all operating in an extremely hi-tech, but not so hi-touch, world. There are an overwhelming amount of vendors that exist in the digital media marketplace, and they're all promising different things: sophisticated in-house tech, but no human touch behind the scenes to offer help, or data and reporting without insights that match up to unique business strategy or campaign goals, or perhaps performance and digital tactics that are lackluster when compared to budget and investment.
You're right to feel skeptical of customer service promises. At Centro? It's like a bundled cable package: everything is in one spot.
We know we're quick with RFPs because of the software and platforms we built. We know we're an operations machine because of the brains behind our technology and optimizations. But we also know that in order to keep customers happy, we have to build service into the cost of doing business. That level of service runs the gamut: from webinars, educational training, hands-on campaign management, and lunch and learns, for starters.
Even that is oversimplifying the process. Because there's so much that's bundled in there – and it doesn't mean anything until you see the results, and you see how every team works together to service our customers and provide a close look at your campaigns every step of the way. We make it look easy, but there's more than meets the eye.
We understand a smart media strategy is at the core of every successful digital media campaign, so we offer a whole suite of services to help you hit every KPI and achieve every business objective. No matter the platform, the campaign, the KPI, we serve as an extension of your team throughout the entire relationship – from onboarding and education, to campaign management, strategy, execution, and reporting. We connect our customers to solutions, technologies, and human communications that put their media dollars to work.
Let us introduce you to some of these solutions over the coming weeks. Who is involved and what does it take? We've got Client Development, Media Strategy, Ad Operations, Data & Insights, and Digital Innovations to cover. Stay tuned to our blog.
In the meantime, visit centro.net for more info or reach out to [email protected].
Remember that distinct feeling of accomplishment when you were taking tests in school, and you not only passed the test but aced it? This week, Centro Academy brought that feeling back to the students at our Centro Certified DSP training event. Luckily, all of them aced it!
The programmatic advertising era has challenged all of us in the industry to strengthen our sense of curiosity, ask more questions, and learn new skills. This is exactly why Centro launched Centro Academy. It's an educational program where programmatic advertising buyers come to our Chicago headquarters and become #CentroCertified in two different tracks:
During this month's immersive 2-day program, buyers were trained on a variety of DSP tools and techniques such as:
And they learned all of this in an intimate, classroom setting. Because, at Centro Academy, we know that two brains are better than one, and you learn just as much from each other as you do from the sessions. We encourage interactive group work, questions, and getting to know your fellow students. And then, after each day, students are required to take a test to apply what they learned to become #CentroCertified.
So, what were some of our most-talked-about topics and conversations for the March 2017 graduating class? Here's a sneak peek, but you'll have to come to our next training event to learn even more!
Missed the training event? We have another one coming up next month. Reach out to your Centro representative for more details!
At Centro, we know that keeping up with the trade pubs and latest trends can be tough and time consuming. To make that easier, we've compiled all the articles, reports, and other bits of awesomeness you may have missed, but should definitely read. Enjoy our latest list below!
Programmatic Native Ads Are Growing, But Banner Habits Are Hard to Break
In the programmatic ad buying world, native ads are becoming a much larger part of the volume being traded on ad exchanges. But, so far, programmatic native ads remain a tiny slice of the overall advertising market, while widely derided banner ads continue to reign supreme. If native ads promise a better consumer experience, why have publishers and marketers been so slow to adapt?
Facebook Gives Advertisers Guarantees for Ads with Sound and More
In response to advertiser demand, Facebook has started offering new verification metrics for video ads, including the ability to only count views when the volume is on, measurement of MRC viewability standards, and the option to buy completed views (not just their previous 10 second version of a “completed" view).
Facebook is Giving All Advertisers Cross-Platform Stats in Its Latest Push for Transparency
Just when we thought the sun had set on Atlas, it appears again. This time, it's being added directly into Facebook's dash. TBD on whether this access to “advanced measurement" will give brands a clearer picture on how Facebook fits into the holistic attribution mix.
Facebook Debuts Video App for Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV
In February, Facebook announced they'd be rolling out their TV app for Apple, Chrome, Fire, and Samsung devices. It seems as though the roll out has already begun. Apple TV owners can now download the Facebook Video app. With Connected TV device ownership on the rise, it's no surprise Facebook is looking to capitalize on this trend by building new video apps for streaming. Social and TV continue to head straight for each other on a collision course.
Broadband Pay-TV (BPTV) is For Real
Though Google received lots of press about their recent YouTube TV announcement, it's certainly not the first skinny bundle service offering designed to appeal to the growing cord-cutter generation, and it definitely won't be the last.
The One Chart That Should Scare Snapchat Investors
The dancing ghost officially went public. There was much fanfare and an opening price of $24. However, there is one pesky problem. Since the launch of the clone product in Instagram, user growth on Snapchat has dropped pretty significantly. Signs point to 2017 being a bumpy year for Snap.
The Future of AI in Fashion
Read how fashion brands and retailers are leaving their old methods behind and embracing artificial intelligence and machine learning to track customer behavior and high and low-performing products to predict what new categories and pieces will sell.
Amazon Alexa Has 10,000 Skills, But That Growth Creates Challenges
Just 18 months after launch, Alexa has seen tremendous growth in its voice-controlled Skills topping the 10,000 mark. Yes, you heard that right. Many brands have been part of this rush, but Amazon is still quiet on where there may be paid media opportunities.
Netflix's Interactive Storylines Will Destroy Actors – and Relationships
The streaming service has announced that it will give viewers control of how stories unfold – the principle of the 80s choose-your-own-adventure books applied to the small screen. Netflix will launch the interactive storylines trial later this year, starting with a children's show.
March's DIAL is also available as a PDF. Download here!
With the rise of automated buying in digital media, it can often feel like technology has replaced human optimization and service and the ability to offer personalized messages to customers.
But that doesn't have to be the case. If you're using the tools correctly, marketers should be able to leverage both data-driven tech and dynamic creative to develop campaigns that stand out in an oversaturated digital market.
That's why, for our next 3T webinar, we're exploring how marketers can build effective creative that aligns with campaign goals and KPIs. Because tech and tailored messages can, and should, go hand-in-hand and are essential to success in digital advertising.
Join us and Centro's VP of Creative Services, Martin Betoni, as he dives into how marketers can begin to understand and embrace the creative environment.
Martin will discuss:
"With publishers scrutinizing who gets into its header bidding pipes, demand sources who can’t illustrate their value will be relegated to the lower levels of the waterfall, fighting for scraps."
Read more in MediaPost from Centro's Jessica Burget about choosing a header bidding partner.
In consumer advertising, incremental gains count for something. But in political advertising? It's a zero-sum game. You either achieve a goal or you don't.
The 2016 election season produced winners and losers — from the presidency to down-ballot measures and congressional races. For those of us in digital media and advertising who were part of this cycle, there's much to be learned that can be applied for future elections.
The Flow of Ad Dollars Is Based on Trusted Relationships
Advertising, especially in politics, is a people-driven business. As the industry (e.g., media companies, agencies, tech companies, etc.) braced for the election season a year ago, there was a fair number of industry folks who believed that, due to the high number of competitive races, political ad dollars would virtually fall from the sky. All they would have to do was catch them — so they thought. The simple plan would be to send a salesperson to D.C. to drum up business, or even to open an office in D.C. and hire a couple of specialists in the field.
And significant money was spent in the 2016 cycle, but the political winds were blowing it in the direction of marketing consultants who had already cultivated deep relationships with political groups. Most companies with existing political accounts were able to credit them to strong networks, political expertise, and tech savvy.
Political teams knew there was a need for digital capabilities in order to engage the public, with campaigns spending 23% of their social media budgets on mobile targeting in 2016, and 49% toward social, but they worked with partners that they trust to help them execute.
Data and Digital Dominate Political Advertising
Data-driven and digital strategies gained momentum leading up to the election. We saw a large number of down-ballot candidates prioritizing digital ads over other media because of the precise targeting to local audiences.
A rising number of candidates also incorporated more data into their campaigns compared to elections two and four years ago. Local campaigns turned to programmatic advertising for its cost-effectiveness and targeting efficiencies, while agencies managing statewide Senate or ballot initiative strategies emphasized geotargeting in areas where candidates had low support.
Many agencies used predictive modeling to assess how different types of messaging affected the likelihood of turnout and to identify areas where the candidate or ballot measure lacked support. I know of an instance when a campaign team analyzed its supporters and discovered particularly low awareness and weak support with cord cutters, leading them to invest in connected TV platforms. These are real-time data points that can influence the media mix.
Political campaigns increasingly invested in digital by reallocating advertising funds from mail and print to tech-based strategies. But, because banner ads don't inspire the same emotional connections videos do, candidates have continued their love affair with video — and television, in particular. However, they're also creating shorter, punchier, more “raw" videos that play well in digital channels such as social media.
The Data Was Not Wrong
Perhaps one of the biggest stories to come out of the election was how wrong the polls were when it came to predicting the outcome of the presidential election. Many questioned whether the data itself was faulty, but numbers do not lie. How people read those numbers, however, definitely matters.
Keep in mind that data was used for plenty of races and ballot measures, and they served those campaigns well. With the national election, the overall message from many state-by-state polls was that the presidential race was going to be close — and it was. But there were some assumptions made, such as predicting turnout likelihood based on recent voting history, which may have proved incorrect. Interpreting polling and voter file data is crucial to the overall marketing strategy.
The election may be over, but its effects on the advertising and media business are far-reaching. Digital media innovation tends to begin on the consumer side; then the political arena adopts it, and tried-and-true tactics make their way into advocacy.
With the end of this election cycle, issue-focused advertising will now ramp up as advocacy groups petition the new administration and Congress on a variety of causes. I expect real-time, data-driven advertising to play a stronger role in advocacy than it has in the past, especially as marketers become more sophisticated in their digital tactics.
Ad exchanges are not a new piece of the digital media puzzle, but they've been in focus lately as marketers continue to funnel their ad dollars through online marketplaces, while also navigating the programmatic advertising land mine that is brand safety. It can be hard, for both buyers and sellers alike, to make sense of it all. But one of the best ways to safeguard against fraudulent activity and low-quality inventory is to do your due diligence on the various ad exchanges that exist in the digital market right now.
Sure thing. Picture a digital marketplace. There are no shortage of terms and pieces of technology that are part of this virtual marketplace, but to avoid further confusion, it's often easiest to think of ad exchanges as the intermediary between publishers selling their ad space through SSPs and marketers buying inventory through DSPs. An ad exchange's job is to announce each impression, in real-time, and ask buyers if they're interested in buying said impression and at which price. Keep in mind: in the automated buying world, this happens in a matter of seconds as webpages are loading.
Wrong. Programmatic advertising and real-time bidding (RTB) are not the same things. Programmatic is a very broad term that simply means automated technology infrastructure that enables media buying. It's the overarching umbrella term you'd use when describing automated buying, and RTB falls under that umbrella. But RTB is its own thing. In simple terms: RTB is a buying method of purchasing a single impression via an auction-based system in real-time – aka what's described above.
Wrong again. They're similar in that both are handling massive amounts of publisher inventory. And it's easy to get them confused because ad exchanges and ad networks are providing similar offerings and services. One of the key differentiators is the fact ad networks are, on some level, more specialized than exchanges. Networks pull together inventory from groups of publishers and resell to advertisers, but an ad exchange could house inventory from multiple ad networks and plug into an SSP for an auction-based buy. An easier way to look at it: Picture the ad exchange as a shopping mall. The ad networks can be the stores or even the shoppers.
You've been wrong twice now. Three strikes and you're out.
To keep it simple and easier to digest, you should break it down into “buyer” and “seller,” and the larger point is that buyers and sellers need a tech access point. That can mean different things. For example, an advertiser could access it through an in-house bidding platform, or through a vendor’s DSP that it uses directly. Or an advertiser could work with an agency, and access exchanges through its own bidding tech, like a trading desk, or through a DSP.
There are a number of ways to protect your brand and have your ads appear on brand-safe and brand-friendly websites. When bidding through ad exchanges, there are pre-bid settings such as publisher blocklists – effectively selecting and screening a list of sites where you don't want your content to appear. Another way to ensure placement control is to utilize private marketplaces.
It's not as confusing as it sounds. It doesn't matter if you're using an open marketplace or a private one: all the buying is still done via real-time bidding. The difference? Private marketplaces are customized, invitation-only marketplaces where publishers make their inventory available to a select group of buyers. A private deal typically involves a separate negotiation between a buyer and a seller to agree upon a deal. The technicalities aren't super important – it involves Deal IDs and coding – but what is important to note is the access to premium inventory that might not otherwise be available in an open marketplace that can be littered with fraudulent and unsafe sites. Private marketplaces and private deals are also beneficial to sellers (i.e. publishers). Sometimes publishers looking to monetize their inventory in open marketplaces are left with mediocre and low-paying advertisers who are on the hunt for cheap inventory.
Like any decision that affects your business and your bottom line, there are several considerations to take into account when evaluating tech. Are you concerned careful vetting and ensuring your ads appear on appropriate sites? Are you looking to tap into a niche market and target local consumers? Are you just getting started and in need of some extra attention and service?
Centro Brand Exchange, the largest premium and private ad exchange on the market today, is built on the quality and strength of its brand-safe inventory. We connect more than 2,000 trusted journalistic news sites to demand across more than 6,000 brands. And, because our exchange is invite-only and the result of leveraging longstanding publisher relationships, we can be confident that we're offering high-quality inventory and deep access to local inventory.
In fact, Centro Brand Exchange has a 96% “Ideal" rating from Trust Metrics, as well as coverage in 98 of the top 100 metropolitan areas, and includes the No. 1 or No. 2 newspaper site in 20 of the top 25 markets.
And, if you need a little help getting started, you can always scale your campaign initiatives with Centro's team of best-in-class digital specialists who can help you make sense of it all. Learn more about Programmatic Advertising with Centro.
"With the right plan, SMBs can target specific audiences and gain significant traction in the market. The potential ROI boost is major: Programmatic gets your brand in front of the right eyeballs, regardless of what type of content they’re viewing."
Read more about programmatic advertising from Centro via Business.com.