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To quote Ferris Bueller: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

That’s especially true for those of us in digital marketing where technology and trends evolve daily. Because things move so quickly, it’s easy to forget about all the progress we’ve made. At Centro, we’re taking a pause to reflect on the product features and releases rolled out this year in our DSP.

HMTL5
Back in 2010, Apple was the first major company to block Flash for iOS. Six years later, Google finally sealed Flash’s fate when it announced Chrome would no longer support it as well. There are numerous benefits to HMTL5, including load time and security. Centro DSP was one of the first DSPs to offer first-party hosting of HTML5 and at no additional charge. Since making the offering available we’ve helped advertisers seamlessly transition thousands and thousands of ads.

MyAds
In 2016, Centro DSP made a significant enhancement to creative management and workflow by introducing MyAds. MyAds allow users to create and save campaigns and ads independent of each other. It also helped users by organizing their ads all in one place with improved filters, a search function, and simple ad previewing. Once an ad is saved in MyAds, the review process begins immediately, and audited and approved ads associated with a campaign activate instantly.

Campaign Pacing Update
This summer, Centro DSP enabled an updated pacing system that gave users access to new options for setting spend at both the group and campaign levels. This change also eliminated the need for a budget buffer – giving greater clarity on what is budgeted and spent.

New Account Hierarchy
In September, Centro DSP transitioned to a new account hierarchy to better organize and segment client data in your account. At the highest level folders became brands, and within each brand, groups and campaigns were made mandatory. This important change ensures client-specific audiences and creative are maintained separately. It also paves the way for other exciting features in the future.

Geographic Reporting
Last month, we were pleased to introduce reporting by geography as an added function. Geo Reports give views into campaign metrics at the country, region, and city level. In addition to providing insight for optimization, campaign management is more efficient as local markets no longer need to be set up separately for reporting purposes.

Last But Not Least
Minor updates can have a major impact on usability and your day-to-day. We hope the ability to copy groups, target by browser language, and manage apps through the domain list made your life a little easier.

We have big plans for 2017 and hope you do, too!

Tell me something I don’t know!

That’s what I find myself shouting at the TV when I watch baseball games these days.

I don’t need to be told the pitch was outside. I can see that—even without that pervasive electronic pitch tracker. I don’t need to hear the same stale hyperboles repeated over and over again – that the player up to bat has grit and heart and that undeniable ‘it factor’ that propels his success despite his meager skill. I certainly don’t need to be fed the exaggeration that whatever fans happen to be in the ballpark that night are the greatest in the game.

As a fan of the sport, I’m tuned in because I already have a fairly sophisticated understanding of the game. Announcers are often stating the obvious and not telling me anything I haven’t heard before or don’t already know, leaving me bored.

So, after time, my attention begins to shift elsewhere -- to several different places, which becomes overwhelming and fragmented. It goes to different broadcasters on another channel, who possess a deeper knowledge of the game and provide more articulate sound bites. To the radio, where the detail in the play-by-play is more nuanced and rich, the POVs more objective. To the beat writers, who offer a deeper look into a player’s background and state of mind. To the nerdy baseball blogs, that incorporate progressive baseball stats and metrics into their analysis.

This isn’t unlike what happens in the digital media space. Standing out and creating competitive difference in an oversaturated, disconnected digital media market requires actionable and valuable insights in one place -- those are the goods that enable agencies to retain clients, grow accounts and drive client happiness. Without them, a client goes elsewhere – to a different agency, or perhaps to multiple agencies to handle smaller and more specialized portions of their ad business.

Agencies are there to be change makers in the digital landscape, to provide thoughtful and comprehensive insights for clients – to tell them what’s performing, what’s not and how things are trending. Providing that value keeps an agency in business, and keeps a marketer informed on what campaigns are working and where their money is going. In baseball terms, they’re there to tell you something you don’t already know about your game.

But these days agencies come and go, as evidenced by the estimated $26 billion in ad spending that was up for review last summer. The good news? The agencies kept on as digital partners are the ones giving marketers their money’s worth.

The problem is, as we’ve explained in great detail, there are a number of roadblocks preventing agencies from providing meaningful intelligence. It’s a tools and time issue. Teams are using outdated, disconnected systems, resulting in too much effort spent doing manual tasks and not strategic work. There’s no time left in the day to report and analyze on what’s happening with campaigns in any efficient manner. And, even if there were, many agencies are dealing with a sub-par roster of metrics and analytics tools to track, report, and review campaigns.

And you better believe marketers and clients take notice.

We hear a lot of grievances of that nature – things like, “the agency keeps providing the same media plan quarter after quarter, year after year, and we aren’t trying new things or learning anything new.” Sound familiar? While that approach may build in safety and predictability, the learnings at that point are scant.

Another complaint we hear a lot comes from CEOs and CFOs who feel they are operating blindly as to what’s happening at the ground level of their businesses. Leadership lacks a transparent view across the entire organization and, with data spread across various systems and servers, taking a strategic approach to business can feel impossible.

Regardless of the type of business, executives at the top need to be able to make the right decisions at the right time. Is the company profitable? Are revenue goals being met? Are new clients being retained and is there a conversation around a new customer pipeline? Is the current client mix the right one? How are teams performing? What teams should be growing and what teams won’t be able to grow? Are productivity metrics being met? Can leadership access the right data across all teams and campaigns and make sense of it?

What ends up happening without an ability to obtain answers to these questions: a relentless focus on correcting the symptom and not the problem.

Minimizing the guesswork and gaining these insights are the key to building a successful digital agency.

Centro Platform is what instant, actionable intelligence about your client's business – and your own – looks like.

Centro Platform provides unparalleled access to data across the entire digital media process. Information that is both accurate and up-to-date is available on demand – all in one system of record.

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. Pull reports and analytics in an instant, with charts, graphs and visualizations for easy export.

Centro Insights is invaluable when making business-level decisions. As an end-to-end solution, Centro Platform collects the immense amount of data running through your business daily and aggregates and visualizes the data for users. Over 150 unique data fields across the Centro Platform funnel data to the Insights module. Metrics range from qualitative (account team, brand name, campaign name, vendor and property names, etc.) to quantitative (measures of time, rates, spend, and more), allowing you to surface the data and narratives that drive your business.

Centro Platform Insights unites cross-functional teams and applies checks and balances from research through billing facilitation, resulting in accurate and updated data. Account teams gain data that allows them to analyze profitability of campaigns; team leads access YTD spending and rates for vendors; strategists are better equipped to negotiate with vendors; analysts have instant access to performance metrics for all campaigns one place; and finance teams can access billable and vendor payable information.

This means everyone – from buyers and planners all the way up to leadership – is operating informed and in concert with the entire team.

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

 

 

“We are rapidly approaching the most wonderful time of the year again. In preparation, marketers have been gearing up for the holiday shopping season — which comprises as much as 30 percent of retailers’ fiscal-year sales. And this year, the stakes are higher than ever. As consumers get bombarded with advertisements and promos, it becomes more important than ever for retailers to distinguish themselves. This is where beacon technology can make a difference.”

Read more from Centro’s Noor Naseer in Mobile Marketer

"Since 2013, programmatic has made up more than 50 percent of ad spending in the U.S., and forecasts indicate it will account for $27 billion worth of digital display buys in 2017. The numbers are pretty persuasive, and you may feel compelled to shift away from traditional media-buying methods. But how can you successfully implement programmatic campaigns if you don’t know where to start?"

Read more from Centro's Dan Raffe in Cynopsis Media. 

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

negotiate

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

 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

insights-page

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].