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!

Google and Facebook are Booming. Is the Rest of the Digital Ad Business Sinking?
If you compare numbers in the recently released IAB/PwC report to publicly reported numbers from Google and Facebook, it begs the question: is the rest of the digital advertising industry actually shrinking?

Blocking Ad Blockers Boosted Facebook’s Desktop Ad Revenue 18%
Facebook’s ability to stay one step ahead of ad blockers like Adblock Plus has paid off: desktop ad revenue grew 18% year-over-year this quarter (compared to around 9% in previous quarters) to over $7B.

Instagram Begins Testing Tagable, Buyable Products in Photos
We’ve seen other platforms test the purchase power of their network, and now Instagram is throwing its hat in the ring. Retail and fashion verticals have certainly seen success on the platform via inspiration, and now they are hoping to see some true shopping potential. The roll-out is extremely limited and the product is not yet a paid opportunity, and like Twitter and Pinterest, it will require deep backend integration with the platform.

Twitter Shuts Down Vine
The platform that launched a thousand social influencers, 6 seconds at a time, is no more. The move was both shocking and not-so-shocking, as the fledging Twitter works to become profitable again. Twitter appears to be doubling down on their livestream capabilities via Periscope and passing (or relinquishing) their social influencer breeding ground to others (read: Snapchat).

Lack of Understanding is Biggest Threat to Native Ads
By 2021, native display ad revenue in the U.S. will account for 74% of total U.S. display revenue. But first, we’ve got to get better at defining and showcasing the ROI to clients who are struggling to understand the rapidly evolving space.

Apple Takes Another Step Toward TV Vision With Suggestion App
As Apple looks to expand the reach of their set-top television box (ie; Apple TV), they have released a new app called TV to make it easier for consumers to find shows from providers such as CBS, ABC, and HBO. But not Netflix. Or Amazon. But it does have voice commands via Siri.

Time to Retire the Term 'Programmatic'
Is ‘programmatic’ overused and/or misused? Because of the evolving nature of programmatic advertising, it is important to have a consistent definition in conversation and across the industry. And if it is not about the “buying and selling of data-driven media through automated tools,” then it is not programmatic.

Gartner Digital Marketing and Advertising Hype Cycle 2016
The yearly report that breaks down the technologies that are overhyped, on the rise, and starting to see a level of maturity. The analysts predict three overarching technology trends: transparently immersive experiences, the perceptual smart machine age, and the platform revolution. Download the report, or read through their blog post highlighting the big takeaways.

"Make no mistake that programmatic is one of modern advertising's most fundamental building blocks. With programmatic, you'll have access to the largest, most diverse audiences and numerous data points -- all in real time."

Read more from Centro's Tom Burg on iMedia.

Negotiating the best partnership possible with a seller can lead to major returns for an agency or advertiser. Unfortunately, the current state of the industry and the way we’re managing our digital media operations makes negotiation difficult. Communication is disjointed. The files and formats we’re working in are outdated. And without much historical data and insight, there’s just not much to use as leverage.

Most agencies lack access to a database of rates for vendors (data that would tell you, for example, that Autotrader usually sells this ad space/size for $X and Cars.com sells the same for $Y). This makes it really difficult to get sellers to drop rates, since there is nothing to base the starting negotiations on. At the same time, over the course of negotiation, the information received from sellers isn’t shared across the internal agency teams -- meaning within an agency, different teams could be getting different rates on the same execution from a vendor!

There is also often a communication gap between agencies and sellers. Excel does not force sellers to comply to a format, nor does it support the practice of comparing competitors in an apples-to-apples fashion. One seller might respond to an RFP by “completing” the Excel spreadsheet they received from the agency, while others will simply fill out the cells that they choose to and with information they think best.

Snapshot: Negotiations are crucial to an agency’s success and should result in better rates and executing new opportunities. The problem is, without points of reference or a templated approach, agencies lack leverage and struggle to build a profitable and professional partnership with vendors.

Real Concerns from Real Digital Media Professionals
I’m a planner/buyer/strategist and I show my value to my team, my client, and my boss by constructing campaigns that are rooted in strategy, showing thoughtful ways to achieve the client goals. However, getting to this point is a challenge for me. My time is spread so thin across campaigns that are already live – troubleshooting, optimizing, and working with our finance teams to correct billing issues. And for campaigns getting ready to launch, countless hours are spent on more menial tasks. The time it takes to properly research and negotiate is a luxury I cannot afford. On top of all this, I know other teams within my agency have worked with certain vendors or have navigated complex new executions and I’d love their intel. The trouble is, I have no good way of sourcing that information.

The Solution: Centro Platform

Centro Platform improves and automates digital media operations by centralizing processes, teams, and data into one holistic platform. It provides the insight you need to negotiate confidently, and a place where buyers and sellers can come together, speak the same language, and get down to business – faster and more efficiently than ever before.

With Centro Platform, you can welcome sellers into the system to complete RFPs in a planning grid that is built with a series of checks and balances designed to guide and streamline the submission process. Versions of proposals are stored for both buyers and sellers to reference at any time.

All of your team members can communicate with ease using Platform’s internal messaging. Planners, buyers, analysts, and any other interested team members will be able to discuss proposals, options, and more -- all in the context of a campaign.

This is negotiating with an edge. This is Centro Platform.

Platform Features: Buying Workflow

• Compare proposals from sellers as you move through the negotiation process. Centro Platform takes care of the guesswork – highlighting what was changed, what was added, and what was removed.
• Proposals and communication are stored for team review so nothing is lost in inboxes and next steps are always clear.
• Buyers and sellers communicate in the same language as they review, respond, and collaborate on RFPs and IOs all in Centro Platform.
• Bi-directional integrations with leading ad servers, DCM and Sizmek, automate campaign setup getting you from IO to launch faster.

 To learn more about Centro Platform or request a demo, visit centro.net or email [email protected].

"By pushing further into digital ad targeting, Snapchat is sending a clear message to media buyers: This is an ad platform that can’t be dismissed. But what does its latest push mean for advertisers? Does Snapchat offer a better marketing platform than what brands have seen before, or is it just the same old digital advertising we’ve seen? The short answer: It’s a little bit of both."

Read more from Aubry Parks-Fried on Adweek's Social Times.

You’re at the eye doctor for a check-up, and, as the technician adjusts the refractor and clicks between lenses, you’re asked to read the chart of letters on the wall. Are the letters clearer with option A or option B? What about option 1 or option 2? This continues until you’re able to clearly read the smallest line on the chart. A, Z, E, wait … is that a P or a B? More clicks and more questions.

Your best vision is achieved through a series of adjustments (unless you’ve been blessed with 20/10). Once you’ve found the right power lenses for your unique prescription, the results have a tremendous impact on your day-to-day life. No more headaches. No more squinting. Maybe less wrinkles? (OK, probably not). But, you can move through your day with greater clarity, control, and confidence.

What if we applied the simple principles of the vision chart to the more complicated parts of our work life? Wouldn’t it be incredible to constantly evaluate performance, look for blurry spots, and make tweaks and adjustments until things are just right? The problem is: There’s not enough time for this level of monitoring. After all, we barely make it to the eye doctor once a year, and now we’re talking about optimizing on a daily basis?

From where we’re standing in digital media, we cannot see the letters on the wall and we don’t have the vision to figure out a way to fix the problem. There’s too much to do. Too much clutter and chaos obstructing our view.

Ironically, an agency’s biggest value-add in today’s digital landscape is the degree to which they can optimize campaigns. But, with so many steps required to get from insight to action, many agencies are incapable of monitoring and enhancing campaign performance to the best of their abilities.

In a dream world, teams are able to quickly track whether performance is meeting client goals and, if it’s not, they’re able to make suggestions and revisions on the fly in order to stay on track with campaign KPIs.

But today’s digital media world is not that simple. The complexity of digital media, combined with all the moving parts necessary to set up a campaign (all the while using inefficient tools and systems that slow down the day-to-day), adds up to agencies not having the means to efficiently plan and create campaigns. And, not to mention, once campaigns are live, performances needs to meet client expectations. But, using today’s tools, digital media teams don’t have the means or the time available to monitor or report on what is and isn’t working in real-time.

All of this takes a toll, and can lead to a number of potential issues across the entire lifecycle of campaign planning.

For instance, sometimes campaigns are set up incorrectly. Teams are using multiple systems – Excel, email, internal campaign tools, you name it. Or different people worked on prior campaign executions and sometimes access to historical data is not readily available.

Or maybe the campaign isn’t launched at the right time and doesn’t go live.

And typically it takes forever to pull the necessary reporting and data. Many external agencies don’t have access to IO and planning data across all of their campaigns, clients or even vendors. When it comes to campaign analysis, agency teams are logging into multiple systems – ad servers and third-party data platforms for their delivery data, or Excel and Prisma for contracted data – and it’s a time suck to match client goals in one system to campaign performance in another system. Perhaps the campaign is time-sensitive and has a small flight window, and it’s critical to understand what’s happening in real-time.

But, with Centro Platform, each piece of data you need to run a smart and successful digital media business is available on demand.

Centro Platform is what optimization for your media teams looks like.

With Centro Platform, you radically improve the productivity of your team and your operations. Information is available daily on the platform, meaning there’s a 36% increase in time spent on monitoring and reporting on campaigns – so there can be a stronger focus on hitting KPIs and delivering on what clients expect.

Platform Features

Centro Insights
Insights is a customizable report builder in Centro Platform, with drag & drop functionally and visualizations, that provides an agency-wide view across campaigns. Centro Insights enables media teams to quickly pull reporting and data into pivot tablets, allowing them to uncover what’s working and what’s not and make informed business-level decisions.

Campaign Performance & Analytics
Centro Platform provides a rich view of delivery performance against a campaign contract to show pacing, CTR, and many additional metrics updated daily. Extract data and pull reports and analytics out of the platform for additional sharing and evaluation. Alerts and notifications call attention to issues on delivery or performance. Resolve these issues quickly by using the message center to contact your seller or return to the planning grid to revise the contract and issue an updated insertion order. Need to fix an inaccuracy? Adjustments update an ordered campaign with corrected delivery details to accurately record and account for mistakes.

Centro Platform brings data to one unified view and enables optimizations or revisions to occur in the same system as planning, execution, and reconciliation. With a deeper understanding of your campaigns, you can optimize toward KPIs, and, ultimately, put more money toward working media.

Client Approval & Insertion Orders (IOs)
Centro Platform automates the process of creating IOs and storing those contracts in the system for reference, tracking and revisions. The platform keeps the order process as straightforward and clear as possible, and you’re able to optimize and revise campaigns smoothly by looking at data delivery against contracted line items and shift budget to reach your KPIs.

Data Integrations
Centro Platform is integrated with ad servers DCM and Sizmek, plus integrations with Facebook and Google, to help you launch and optimize your campaigns quickly. And regardless of the third party tracking you’re using, Centro Platform makes it possible to align delivery and performance data against the contracted information.

To learn more about Centro Platform or request a demo, visit centro.net or email [email protected].

 

Centro kicked off its internship program last summer in Chicago with 15 interns – or Centerns, as they’re called. This past summer, Centro expanded its internship program to include regional offices. Of those 12 interns spread across our regional offices, 7 were hired on full-time.

We talked to two of those former Centerns about their internship experience, and how it prepared them for their current full-time roles.

Caroline Green, Associate Programmatic Buyer – Dallas

I graduated from Auburn University in May 2016 with a degree in marketing and finance. As I got closer to graduation, I was interviewing with different companies and unsure of what exactly I wanted to do, but I was very intrigued by the digital industry. I knew that I loved the creativity involved with advertising, but with a background in finance, I wanted to combine creativity with strategy and analytics. And someone told me about Centro. I’m from Dallas originally, so I moved back after college to work as a programmatic intern for Centro.

I learned so much about the programmatic industry during my internship – and I had barely any understanding of what programmatic was before. During my internship, I spent most of my time getting trained from current associates and buyers – which helped prepare me for my current role. They taught me how to bid on advertising spots, how to keep a campaign on track to spend in full and perform, and how to use all of Centro’s software.

I’m now an Associate Programmatic Buyer in Dallas. I would be lost without the knowledge I gained during my internship. It’s a little bit different now that I have my own accounts to “pace” (track spending), but I’m in a pod with three people, and it’s very nice to have others to lean on while I still have questions. I continue to learn more and more things every day that help me do my job.

My advice to a prospective intern would be: Definitely be willing to learn, and don’t get discouraged when things seem overwhelming or unfamiliar. I’ve never asked so many questions in my life, but everyone was willing to answer them, and it paid off to learn so much!

Emma Tapper, Associate Programmatic Buyer – Chicago

I am originally from Chicago, but I attended University of Wisconsin-Madison where I majored in journalism and minored in digital studies – and studied abroad in Cape Town!

After graduating in May, I was lucky enough to intern at Centro’s Chicago office as a Brand Exchange intern. I worked with both the supply and demand side on a day-to-day basis. I am still on the Brand Exchange team, but now I’m an Associate Programmatic Buyer.

My current role differs from the intern work I did during the summer, but the internship fully prepared me. Throughout the summer, we had different meetings with various departments, which helped all the interns understand how Centro operates and why each department is so important. And the atmosphere at Centro is absolutely amazing. I don’t know a single person who has had a comparable internship experience to mine. I would tell a prospective Centern to get to people at the entire company and in different departments – not just the team they work with day-to-day.

If you have more questions about our internship program or would like to apply to be a part of the program, please reach out to [email protected].

Think of the people who demonstrate a high interest in products and services without pulling the trigger – the shoppers who abandon a cart full of goods before checking out, or browse high-end phones without signing up for a contract. This type of behavior has made remarketing a backbone for any digital strategy. And demand side platforms (DSPs) finally allowed for marketers to scale remarketing across a vast range of inventory sources, without sacrificing transparency and control to a network.

But, programmatic is capable of so much more than just remarketing. DSPs have opened up access to a wealth of targeting options and formats that can be served anywhere at any time. Make sure you are taking full advantage of all opportunities a DSP can offer.

Contextual 

Contextual targeting is an excellent way to expand outside remarketing, and has become much more sophisticated. You no longer have to hand select sites and apps individually to build a channel. Content is analyzed and sold on the page-level, ensuring the highest relevancy and the most reach. DSPs give you flexibility to buy and optimize at will with full insight into where the ads are delivered.

Audience

Audience targeting is a great complement to help build awareness and remarketing pools. Audience relies on many aggregated signals from online and offline behavior. There are dozens of providers with tens of thousands of targeting segments ranging from in-market, demographic, interest, and more. In a DSP you can easily research and match these audiences to your customer profiles or the products being advertised.

Mobile and Video

Even experienced remarketers may overlook additional digital formats and limit campaigns to desktop display. As user behavior dramatically shifts channels, including mobile and video is especially important. By only being on desktop, you might miss a portion of your target entirely.

Mobile and video have other targeting options and benefits to consider. Hyperlocal and geo location let you reach consumers who might be near one of your stores or about to visit a competitor. Audiences can be built off more than one parameter as well. People who have shopped at sporting goods stores and traveled to ski resorts can be classified as outdoor enthusiasts. Video campaigns add an interesting layer with the ability to remarket off completion rate. Watching a full ad is another solid signal of interest to leverage.

Remarketing is a great entry point to digital advertising and programmatic. If you’re not thinking beyond a single targeting tactic or inventory source, you’re missing out on opportunities to engage with customers and have a complete marketing strategy.

To learn more about how Centro DSP can help activate new tactics, visit centro.net.

The vast amount of manual work required to plan digital media campaigns today, even in the programmatic space, is almost too hard to comprehend. All told, there are roughly 70 manual steps.

The worst part?

Most of the work is still done in Excel and Outlook, regardless of whether agencies are pitching a large, innovative new campaign or renewing a familiar, quarterly execution.

Manually keying in data, switching contexts to source information, and an overall absence of structured or guided workflow all significantly slow the process down. Additionally, employees at agencies tend to rotate between clients as needs change, creating inconsistencies across teams. The lack of control, paired with the staggering amount of manual work, results in erratic delivery to clients, and often scares agencies into a smaller circle of partners and executions – limiting their abilities and talent.

Snapshot: There’s so much work and manual effort in planning a campaign that it can inhibit an agency from branching out, both creatively and strategically. It’s easier to work with the same partners, time after time, but this restricts the agency’s ability to build the best plan possible and could potentially make them a less appealing partner to clients.

Real Concerns from Real Digital Media Professionals
From a media team’s perspective, strategists, planners, and buyers need to continuously evaluate and work with new partners, and provide clients with a strategically-sound plan. Pain points for this team include a time-consuming process, resulting in lackluster campaigns that are not as strategic, thoughtful, or unique. Media teams also struggle with the inability to easily share information in order to plan better in the future.

It’s often hard to find the time or the resources with the amount of manual effort required when planning a campaign. Assessing partnerships without a template means varied responses from publishers, making it tough to compare and contrast. Additionally, there’s little time and limited resources to meet with and understand new or unique partnerships, so teams often default to a standard set of vendors (typically at an agency these are Google, Facebook, a DSP, and some endemic sellers).

The Solution: Centro Platform
Centro Platform automates many of the manual tasks of planning so that you can focus more on strategy and less on inputting data into Excel. Feel a sense of freedom and empowerment knowing that all your work is in one place, that the system will alert you to items needing attention and will ensure that you receive all necessary information before proceeding. With a rich database of sellers and contacts, new opportunities are a simple RFP away and can easily be compared/contrasted with competing partners to be sure you get what you want.

This is what digital media planning in 2016 looks like. This is Centro Platform.

Platform Features:

RFP Automation

• Streamlined operations begin with Centro Platform’s planning grid – offering users edit modes and the ability to export/download. It also reduces the need to manually re-enter information.
• Centro Platform’s dashboard offers a personalized view of projects and notes, with simple navigation to keep teams on track. Once complete, campaigns can be archived – which keeps your dashboard clean and your sellers informed.
• Alerts and notifications make for a dynamic to-do list that keeps buyers and sellers collaborating.
• Start the RFP process faster and reduce manual data entry by using Centro Platform’s ability to copy campaigns and plans for simplified renewals or replication.
• RFPs are more uniform and reach sellers faster with Centro Platform. Contact many sellers at once or create custom streams of review depending on client need. Automatic updates on status keeps everyone informed.

To learn more about Centro Platform or request a demo, visit centro.net or email [email protected].

Back in 2015, we conducted a workplace satisfaction survey with Digiday. What did it tell us? That workplace satisfaction and happiness is a growing concern for the industry, and nearly half of digital media employees are ready to switch jobs within the next year.

A recent survey from Campaign only confirms our research. The report, coming out a year later, found that nearly half of digital media employees say they suffer from low morale, and 63% of those are actively searching for a new job.

Head over to Campaign to read more.