Connected TV on the Rise

There’s no shock in finding out that consumers are watching large amounts of video online, nine hours per week in fact, according to Tremor Media.

What may come as a larger surprise is that consumers are watching 12 hours per week on their Connected TV devices—more than any other device – and that 38% of consumers visited a website mentioned in an ad they saw on their Connected TV. The issue is that advertisers aren’t adopting Connected TV as quickly as consumers.

Do they feel the channel isn’t developed enough? Perhaps, but Microsoft is stepping in helping to develop the space further.

New Developments in Connected TV Advertising

On Friday, Microsoft released their Xbox SmartGlass app. The app will integrate Windows phones, tablets or PCs to display complementary content and serve as an additional remote to the Xbox360. And while there aren’t any announced ad opportunities to target simultaneously across all devices, it’s good to see the adoption of multiple screens being used together.

In addition, California-based YuMe has provided perhaps the most robust solution thus far in the Connected TV space. They are coming pre-integrated on several LG and Samsung televisions. They seem to be taking the lead in making this space a more lucrative ad opportunity. According to YuMe, consumers are willing to watch ads if the video services they support remain free. If consumers are willing to watch an ad, there is clearly an opportunity for advertisers to take advantage of.

It seems as if the stage is being set for Connected TV to have its “the year of mobile” moment.

It will be interesting to see how Connected TV continues to fill a gap between online-video and television. How willing would you be to run ads on Connected TV? What will have to change in order for you to consider it?

Learn more about Connected TV Advertising at Centro.

Update: We’re happy to report that most all of the Centro employees in the Northeast region are back on their feet, even in spite of the snow the most recent Nor’easter dropped on the region. In true Centro form, the NY office peeps are already busy organizing a fundraiser so they can donate to the New York Cares Hurricane Sandy Relief Effort. Go Centrons!

As the East Coast tries to recuperate from the ravages of Hurricane Sandy, Centrons in the Chicago home office and across our 28 other locations are wishing the best for our Northeast Region Peeps.

According to Jason Tosney, Vice President of Sales for the Northeast Region, area offices in Boston and in Washington, DC were mostly unaffected by the storm but the New York and New Jersey offices have been closed due to lack of heat, water and electricity.

“When the storm hit, our number one priority was to ensure that our staff, clients and industry friends were safe. Once that was established we’ve been using our limited cell service to ensure that our staff has shelter.”

Jason said that about 50 percent of Centro’s New York City and New Jersey staff is displaced from their homes right now, a situation aggravated by lack of available hotel rooms. But in true Centro fashion, none of that was at the top of mind as the situation was developing.

“Our employees are so resilient, they were all worried about ‘How are we going to get to work’ and ‘I’ve got campaigns to finish’ which is awesome. Thankfully DC and Boston have picked up our work as we wait to get our lives back online.”

Centro’s Giving Tree collaborative is in the process of figuring out how to best help from afar, but in pure Centron fashion coworkers with electricity have opened up their homes to the displaced as they wait for the city to roar back to life. “We’ve just all banded together,” said Jason.

From all of Centro to our Peeps in the Northeast: Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Patricio Robles’ recent piece on Econsultancy.com, “Technology is not a panacea for agencies,” is a perfect example of the kinds of important conversations our industry should be engaged in more often.

“Technology alone is never a guaranteed solution to problems of complexity, and in fact, more than a few companies have harmed themselves by throwing more and more (and more and more expensive) technology at a problem,” he writes, and, much like the rest of his thought-provoking piece, it’s an excellent point.  In fact, Cardinal Path, a leading digital analytics consultancy, has conducted research across over 700 companies via their Online Analytics Maturity Model that proves companies over-invest in technology at the expense of people and process.

Technology is absolutely not the only answer to an industry struggling with the increasing complexity of a fragmented media landscape – but it can be a very powerful one.

Patricio notes that “When it comes to the complexities digital advertising is creating, it’s important to recognize that the ever-growing number of channels (the “search, social, big data, owned media, branded entertainment and other new media” Swinand refers to) is a big part of the problem. For agencies grappling with a complex digital advertising ecosystem, it’s worth considering that trying to be everywhere is increasingly going to lead nowhere.”

Every good marketer knows that having a rock-solid portrait of a target customer will lead to finding a waterfall of websites, mobile apps, and legacy media where he or she can be engaged – but selectivity is the key to success.

To that point, I believe that the real issue here is not too many choices, but the lack of ability to manage them efficiently.  That’s why I mentioned Centro, because they are investing heavily in their automated media-buying software.

Agencies partner with Centro in order to take a lot of the time and expense out of successfully managing digital campaigns across a large array of sites and vendors.

More and more agencies are recognizing that they don’t have the manpower, expertise and/or budgets required to deal properly with this level of operational complexity – even when being thoughtful and highly selective in determining how to best reach their audiences.

Read more on this topic: Andrew Swinand’s piece in AdAge called “Want to Win the Race to the Bottom? Don’t Invest in Tech”

Centro’s Green Team participated in a field trip to Growing Power, a Chicago urban farm that “promotes equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities.”

During our time at the farm, we were able to learn the importance of safe planting within the city and providing a safe haven for urban youth, as well as supplying affordable, healthy produce to all Chicago community members.

Volunteers helped to transport and sort through a variety of herbal plants, created viable fertilizer, and laid woodchips to replenish soil within Chicago hoop houses (small, plastic-covered greenhouses).

Volunteers were also given the opportunity to tour the facilities and learn about urban farming techniques such as aquaponics, a method of growing crops and fish together in a re-circulating water system.

Centro’s Green Team had an overall great experience and cannot wait to get involved with Growing Power for future projects!

Visit the Growing Power website.

• In collaboration with BOLO, The Agency Post surveyed advertising professionals to understand the state of their agency. The study offers interesting findings across different categories, such as outsourcing services, client interests, areas where agencies feel unprepared, including media, ROI analysis, mobile, and segmentation, and internal staffing. For example, 93% of respondents stated they will not be hiring in the next six months, which could lead to more agency strain. Read More: State of the Agency Infograph
• Tablets increase news consumption according to a new PewResearch study. “While most (55%) of tablet news users say the news they get on their tablet is replacing news they would have gotten in other ways, nearly as many (43%) say the news they get there is adding to the overall news they consume.” This further proves that high quality news sites serve as great environments for marketers due to high readership/consumer penetration. Read More: Are New Devices Adding to News Consumption?
• “Today’s small and medium-sized businesses are well aware that, in the modern marketplace, to ignore digital channels is to be left out in the cold,” according to eMarketer. A recent study found that 40% of small and mid-sized firms plan to increase their digital spending budget within the next 12 months, while only 3.7% said they plan to decrease digital budgets. These businesses recognize that their audiences are more fragmented, which is also pushing them towards a multi-channel approach. Read More: For SMBs, a Path Toward Digital

In the wake of the iPhone 5 maps blunder, alternative mapping options have been all the craze; to the point that Apple CEO Tim Cook even suggested going elsewhere in the meantime.

One such suggestion is Waze, an Israel-based traffic and navigation app. Since Cook’s suggestion to use Waze, the app is adding 100,000 users daily. Waze isn’t taking this lightly, they are capitalizing on the opportunity.

On November 7, Waze is releasing ads on the app in the US and they aren’t using banners. Instead, they are taking a much more creative and useful approach. Waze will be integrating ads into the map itself through in-map coupons driving users to a nearby retail location.

While click-to-map ads are fairly common among mobile advertising, Waze is integrating this straight into its interface. I think it’s a great opportunity to utilize mobile ads in a native map environment. While the lasting power of Waze might be diminished when Google releases a maps app or when Apple releases a usable maps application, for the time being they are capitalizing upon their growth opportunity with style.

The opportunity is similar to click-to-map or geo-targeted mobile execution, but how willing would you be to use an in map coupon on Waze instead of traditional mapping opportunities?

When dealing with the digital analytics space, all marketers are essentially looking for the same thing: To quantify the effectiveness of their strategic media campaigns.

Advertisers naturally maintain this same expectation in the mobile realm. However, breaking into a new media space raises a critical question: What types of user engagement will effectively drive valuable user interaction on a mobile device?

A recent article featured on Adotas.com highlights the core goals of marketers in the digital space and those goals’ existence in relation to mobile media metrics. The piece breaks metrics into three key categories: Interest, intent and conversion.

Interest metrics target the scope of a mobile user’s search for information on brands and products along with corresponding price points and time spent interacting with a particular brand or product.

Intent metrics identify leads to store locations and e-commerce sites. Such metrics can include clicks to call nearby store locations and links to digital retailers, store maps and driving directions.

The final category, conversion metrics, focuses on the point of sale; conversion metrics are defined as purchase actions made by smartphone or tablet devices or variations on in-store coupon redemption with a mobile device.

These topline categories provide a simple structure for better understanding measurable actions on mobile devices. Breaking out metrics categorically can be a straightforward way for advertisers to visualize strategic options and better measure the return on their mobile advertising investment.

Read Mobile Metrics that Matter here.

• With the rise of digital media, print days are numbered. After nearly 80 years, Newsweek has decided to end their print edition on Dec 31. “Editor Tina Brown and President Baba Shetty announced today that starting in 2013 there will be no print Newsweek, just a global digital edition, Newsweek Global, that will publish to the web, e-readers, tablets and other devices. Eliminating the print edition will mean substantial savings for Newsweek, which was reportedly losing $20 million a year, as well as staff cuts.”  Read More: Newsweek to End Print Edition in Quest to Cut Losses
• By 2015, more than half of U.S. internet users will us a tablet, according to eMarketer. The rapid growth of the tablet media audience delivers a wealth of opportunity for advertisers. Even better, these seized opportunities are proving to be quite successful based on numerous studies focused on CTR, brand awareness, etc. Despite the success, some marketers remain hesitant to go all in, as they wait for the number of tablet users to go up and the cost of tablet ad development and buys to go down. Read More: Tablet Ads Deliver Results, but Barriers Remain
• Advertising is on the rise around the globe and across nearly all media types, according to Nielsen’s Global AdView Pulse report. Gains in areas such as Internet (+7.2%), radio (+6.6%), and TV (+3.1%) offset the 1.3% decline in magazine spending in the first half of 2012, leading overall advertising investment to be up 2.7%. This is further confirmation that digital media is becoming a priority. Read More: Worldwide, Internet Ad Spend Grows More than Other Media in First Half of 2012