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(Crain’s Chicago Business) – Let’s say you’ve been out of town for, oh, the last decade.
The last time you picked up Crain’s, Chicago’s economy was stung by high-tech flops from the dot-com bust. Now, though, you’re quickly sensing that there has been a shift: You learned that 13 Chicago tech companies have gone public or been acquired so far in 2012, and 17 did so last year, according to tech-community group Built in Chicago. You see that 31 digital companies here raised at least $1 million in 2012 and that 169 tech startups launched here since the beginning of 2011.
You want in. You want to launch your own startup, or work at one or invest in one. But considering you’ve been out of the loop for so long, you’re not sure where to start. Who do you need to know?
Customer insight and retention drives every publishing company throughout the world, for without the customer we would not exist. Publishers must work to ensure the right audience views the right content – both editorial and advertising – so consumers will engage with the message. This leads to growth and the continued success of the publishing business.
As publishers, our main value proposition is to serve as the conduit between advertisers and the consumers they wish to reach. We work to assure our advertising clients that their ads are being seen by not only customers, but the right customers.
At Tribune Media Group, we are testing a variety of tactics to improve our website and increase retention among readers and advertisers. Recently, we asked readers to sign up for a free digital membership that allows us to better track and understand who is visiting our websites and what content they are consuming when they get there.
By studying the habits, patterns and interests of our users, we can better understand not just what customers do, but why they do it. This research, known as deep consumer insight, allows us the opportunity to provide more targeted content for our readers and to more finitely delineate for our advertisers the customer segments that are more likely to respond.
To measure the success rate of these initiatives, Tribune Media Group developed a program called Media Optimization. Media Optimization allows advertisers to easily take advantage of all available print and digital delivery channels, producing cost-efficient and effective results. With multiple distribution channels now available, advertisers need a way to find an optimum combination to meet their reach and ROI objectives. And, for the first time, these results can be measured akin to how advertisers measure return on investment for their direct mail program.
Tribune Media Group’s media optimization capabilities match advertiser customer data and newspaper subscriber/recipient/registered user data, along with sophisticated demographic overlays, to help advertisers select the most desirable media channel. And most importantly, post campaign results can now be measured via a backend match-back analysis at the household level.
Looking forward, Tribune Media Group will continue to extend media optimization and work to increase the number of publishing partners that actively participate in the subscriber database consortium.
Susan Jacobs is VP Retail Advertising, Chicago Tribune Media Group
In case you missed it, here’s a great article by Tom Chavez, CEO of Krux and a strategic partner of Centro’s.
In this recent AdExchanger.com column, “Charting the Path to Direct Sold RTB Advertising,” Tom delves into the perils of a type of data leakage he calls “cookie licking” and talks about how savvy marketers and publishers seek to build programmatic revenue without sacrificing control of their precious data.
He presents some thought-provoking answers to the following two questions:
Keep your eyes open for a mention of Centro’s ability to deliver data to media owners safely, a benefit, Tom notes, that most exchanges don’t offer.
Read the column then come back and tell us what you think.
http://www.adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/charting-the-path-to-direct-sold-rtb-advertising/
Remember the good old days? When you used to treat yourself every day by curling up with your local newspaper or weekly magazine in your favorite chair? You’d turn the pages slowly, and even clip out a few ads or articles to post on the fridge or send to Mom.
This was the publisher-advertiser relationship at its best – our industry hummed along quite nicely when advertising was seen by the target audience and it caused them to act. At least one thing that will never change is that we’ll always strive for impact and rejoice when it occurs.
Now imagine a nightmare: What if print advertisers only paid newspapers for the ads that were seen by their intended target? As in, “Hey, our ad on page 5, Section B wasn’t seen by 34.5% of the audience, so we’re only sending you a check for part of the contract.”
Not possible? The stuff of a futuristic Sci-Fi world where devices are implanted in our eyes and monitored by unseen beings?
I hate to break it to you but – brace yourself – something like this is coming soon to the ever-disruptive Internet near you.
As we speak, technology, systems and business practices – in fact, entire companies! – are forming around what have been coined “Viewable Impressions.” And while we can’t – yet – track user eyeballs, the ability to quantify consumers’ viewing behaviors will have an amazing impact on our industry, creating additional value around premium media and impossible headwinds for media that the average person will never even notice.
Once viewable impression (VI) metrics are exposed for ads, how can we ask advertisers to pay for media that’s not seen by our targets – or is only seen by machines? It’s unthinkable.
Machines don’t vote and they certainly don’t buy things. When the technology behind capturing these eyeballs becomes more and more efficient and advertisers start demanding to see their ads’ VIs (and they will), we’ll see this new metric take off as fast as “cost per click” did.
At Centro, we actually believe this is great news for the industry – and it’s especially great for premium publishers. Yes, it will be disruptive, but it contributes directly to Centro’s overriding vision to make digital advertising beautiful. Why? Because beauty (aka ‘quality’) drives value, and viewable impressions help us reach this goal.
It doesn’t take much effort to calculate that 30% to 50% of the multi-billion dollar business of digital advertising will be discounted fast. Publishers will be under pressure to “design for the view” which means no more ad placements at the bottom of the page in no-man’s land, where it sits far apart from quality content.
We also predict that these new realities will force publishers to consider some complex choices:
One, they’ll have to either incorporate visible impression technology or build their own. Though that last part sounds a bit daunting, it will give publishers the power to measure and revalue their own inventory.
As RFP’s asking for “viewable impressions only” become standard, publishers will need to know how to accurately forecast against these requests. In order to do so, it’s imperative to begin measuring what percentage of a publisher’s current inventory is viewable. From there, they can begin to accurately forecast for these requests.
Two, publishers can take a long term approach and begin to redesign their sites for the future, working towards a new standard of viewable impression transparency in 2013 and beyond.
The only thing publishers cannot afford to do is nothing.
At Centro, we recognize that the movement towards viewable impressions is coming – and it may be coming faster than any of us are expecting. But this new metric brings with it new promise. It creates opportunities for sites to proactively create a better experience for their advertisers and drive performance through ad placement.
It also creates an Internet where there is a clear division between premium and non-premium inventory – also a good thing for publishers.
We’ve got some early data on visible impressions and would love to talk more about it with you – we’re dedicated to helping our trusted partners plan for the future.
Digital Place-Based: Increasing demand for digital signage coupled with the decreasing costs for LCD panels is expected to help fuel growth for Digital OOH and commercial applications worldwide to the tune of 17.3 million units by the end of 2012, according to IHS iSuppli Signage and Professional Display’s most recent Market Tracker report.
What’s interesting is that the separation between ad-supported digital OOH and commercial applications are merging more and more each day – a perfect example is what is presently happening in the quick-service restaurant (QSR) vertical.
What was initially intended to act as a dynamic platform to display menu items and promotions has turned into a secondary revenue stream for franchises across the country. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC, Taco Bell, and Dunkin Donuts among others have all installed digital display boards over the past two years, and they are proving to be a new platform to reach consumers in a variety of mindsets (fast-paced, low-cost, late night, etc.) .
As more and more commercial applications reach the mainstream, the more we’ll see the creation of micro-networks that allow for specialty targeting opportunities (reaching business/weekend travelers through Rental Car locations, etc.).
Strategy Analytics is reporting that the global Connected FPTV (flat-panel TV) market will grow at a healthy rate of 45% annually during 2012 to reach 91 million units. And while only 40% of all FPTVs sold in 2012 are projected to be internet-enabled, this figure is set to rise to nearly 80% of all FPTV unit sales in 2016.
Upgrades to smart TVs in the developed markets and increased demand in the developing regions will ensure growth will pick up towards the end of the forecast period in 2015 and 2016. As more and more of this technology becomes adopted among manufacturers in the coming months and years, the opportunities associated with the space are going to skyrocket.
But even now we’re seeing that growth come in a variety of platforms. A recent study by Frank N. Magid Associates shows that currently 21% of consumers connect to the web through their TVs, up from 16% in 2011. What is interesting about this number is the fact that it is being driven by a variety of sources – from gaming consoles and peripherals like TiVos and Blu-Ray players, to smart TVs and stand-alone devices such as Apple TV and Roku.
Scale in the space was almost inadvertently delivered as a secondary feature on PS3s, Xbox 360s and Wiis, but we’re starting to see strong growth among the delivery of smart TVs to US consumers. With an expected 18.1 million smart TVs to be sold in 2012, and households now upgrading LCD TVs once every 6 years, we should see significant growth in that segment over the next 18 months as the economy improves and people make upgrades. This puts smart TVs on course to become the primary source for consumers within the connected TV space.
Time to introduce a new adage to the information age: If you want to know how best to layout an office space, talk to the window washer.
Maybe not the first choice, but when you consider the volume and variety of floor plans a window washer sees over the course of a day, week or month, you start to realize there is a sea of potential insights you might not be considering in your own design.
And when you think about how much there is to consider – cube farm v. closed offices, common space v. work space, enough offices, enough meeting rooms, enough lighting, natural lighting, etc. – you realize there are a lot of opportunities for missteps.
The same holds true as it relates to layering new media within your digital strategy and media mix. The continuing proliferation of screens and devices – both mobile and stationary – throughout the US has an ever increasing level of importance on consumers’ day-to-day lives.
As marketers, the challenge is to determine when, where, and with whom our message is most likely to resonate. Included correctly, the properly placed mobile, social, video, streaming audio or digital out of home execution can have tremendous impact on the overall success of a campaign. But leveraged incorrectly the results can be far from ideal.
With the introduction of each new screen and technology comes the corresponding behavioral shift by consumers. Suddenly, smartphones are your daily weather forecast, digital OOH is your morning news fix, desktops are DVRs and tablets are primetime programming.
For someone else, mobile is the grocery list, a CD collection is now a monthly streaming audio service, the e-reader is a public library, and scrapbooking is done exclusively on a retina display.
The ability to recognize trends, apply insights and identify scale that can make digital campaigns a success is an on-going challenge when you consider how accessible entry into the digital space now is.
Consider that between Google Play and iTunes, there are currently over 950,000 apps in the marketplace; even more amazing is the fact their combined downloads will surpass 30 billion within the calendar year.
The US has over 180 Digital OOH networks littered throughout the US, offering everything from national networks in malls, movie theatres and health clubs, down to localized healthcare provider networks in Houston, convenience stores in Pittsburgh and gas stations in Louisiana.
In addition, you have connected TVs, social TV, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Netflix, HuluPlus, Google TV, Apple TV, Roku, and a host of applications that have led to the socialization and gamification of television. Outside of pure-play vendors in the streaming audio space (of which there are many – both legal and otherwise), there are well over 1,200 sites across the US offering internet radio solutions.
Which leads me to my point: New technology with a side of scale is often the tastiest item on the menu for marketers, but the biggest challenge is being able to separate the gristle from the meat.
That’s where Centro comes in – we have the benefit of exposure to thousands of consumer-targeted campaigns that include countless forms of new media across verticals. In other words, we’re like the window washer for the advertising industry, except that instead of providing a unique perspective on floor plan decisions, we’re providing data-driven insights and guidance at scale that help agencies identify and build out digital recommendations that meet client objectives.
The other obvious benefit of being window washers for the industry? A clear outward view on the world that we live in.