Omnicom Media Group MENA To Provide Complimentary Media Space To Charities
Omnicom Media Group MENA has decided to work together with regional media owners in the Middle East to provide complimentary media space to its long-standing partner charities. This initiative is a part of the company’s COVID-19 relief efforts. This noble act will help Dubai Cares, Gulf for Good, and Médecins Sans Frontières to reach out to a larger audience with their call to action. The COVID-19 campaigns are mainly aimed at education, health, and critical support for people especially children who are in need in the region and beyond.
The response from the media industry is astounding. The media partners currently include Backlite Media, Digital Tree, DMS, Elevision Screens, Eye Media, Future Tech, Group Plus, Maddict, MMP, Reach MENA, and Snap Inc. They have offered free media space to promote various charities and draw support for their causes. Omnicom Media Group MENA also provides creative support.
Omnicom Media Group MENA has shared a long-term relationship with these three non-profit organizations and supported their causes over the years. The latest initiative is a step to ensure to get the means for the mission of these charities towards the community continues when donations are down due to coronavirus crisis.
Mario Stephan, Executive Director MSF UAE said,
“This pandemic is like no other we’ve seen in modern times, impacting our patients, our staff, and our programs. Only together can we muster hope to get through it successfully.”
He further added,
“We’re very grateful for this initiative as it will help drum further support for our patients. It’s important we never lose sight of the less fortunate than ourselves, even now.”
Alanna Turpin, Sustainability Lead at Omnicom Media Group MENA added,
“Our industry has a very powerful talent that’s acutely needed right now. It’s the ability to raise awareness, rally and move people to achieve great things through collective action.”
In this crisis, it’s about saving people from illness and poverty. It’s urgent our charity partners get the resources they need to alleviate the suffering. Media owners with available advertising inventory they wish to commit to this effort can contact us at CSR-MENA@OmnicomMediaGroup.com”.
Verizon Media Expands DSP to Offer Premium Native Ad Inventory.
Verizon Media has announced the expansion of its demand-side platform bringing in premium, programmatic, and now its full native marketplace inventory, formats, targeting, and measurement into a single unit.
The DSP gives a unified solution to the advertisers to check on every aspect of their buys across all formats and inventory purchases- from planning, buying, and management to optimization.
Today, people are using more screens and devices than before. Therefore, it becomes challenging for advertisers to provide a personalized and unified experience across the media mix. This level of fragmentation eventually leads to using different tools for different formats and then measuring the success of each of them would be laborious. But now advertisers can have access to omnichannel inventories including mobile, digital out-of-home, CTV, video, and audio along with native advertising from a single dashboard.
According to Iván Markman, the chief business officer at Verizon Media,
The Verizon Media native experience was separate from the programmatic capabilities in our DSP…Now both are one, and this includes a lot more consistency planning and measurement and attribution. Over the last few quarters, we’ve looked at bringing more transparency and insights to our DSP.
The expansion of DSP’s functionality provides exclusive access to native ad inventory from Verizon’s owned and operated properties like Tech Crunch, Yahoo, and Huffington Post. The robust native marketplace format and premium inventory along with the programmatic offering, supported by 1st party data will help advertisers navigate a cookie-less environment.
In an era when media agencies are on hiring freeze if not headcount cutbacks, it was essential for the company to improve the efficiency of the tools. Markman stated, “You can now do more with less.“He further added,
Sometimes you’d have seven different platforms for things like digital out of home and native then display. Many of our clients have unfortunately had to furlough some team members or lay off their workforces. This helps with performance.
YouTube Reorganizes Its Measurement Program With Five New Partners
Google made notable changes to the line up of partners of its YouTube Measurement Program(YTMP) that debuted in 2017 to give advertisers access to trusted and independent solutions for driving and tracking the marketing performance of the video site.
Google made some tweaks to how it classifies partners in the YouTube Measurement Program and welcomed new partners to the program or specific categories. YouTube has made it easier for advertisers to search for the right service provider for their needs.
YouTube added five new partners – Channel Factory, Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, Sightly, and VuePlanner to the program. Existing partners include Pixability, Zefr, Tubular Labs, and Wizdeo -though it has dropped one of its founding partners who is no longer on the list ‘Open Slate’. Apparently, the brand safety company is at a contractual standoff with Google.
AdAge reports that Openslate refused to sign the new agreement with Google. It believed that the contract would limit what it can report to the clients when ads ran next to videos with sensitive or harmful content on YouTube like hate speeches, illegal substances, or violence.
Under new terms, without Google’s approval, OpenSlate would not be able to inform the client that includes Nestle, GroupM, and Procter & Gamble – if their ads run next to YouTube channel that has historically shared violent or inappropriate content.
OpenSlate told in an e-mail statement to AdAge,
“Advertisers rely on OpenSlate’s independent, third-party measurement to ensure they are running in suitable environments.”
It further says,
“Google is a valued partner and we endeavor to resolve our differences,”
A Google spokesperson told AdAge,
“We’re excited to expand the YouTube Measurement Program and look forward to working with the nine partners who have already signed on. We also remain open to any other third parties who help meet our clients’ needs joining the program in the future.”
After the reorganization, advertisers can search by services under the newly created categories: brand suitability and contextual targeting, content insights, and brand safety reporting. Partners will be classified and sorted based on these categories.
As outlined on the YTMP website, Channel Factory, Integral Ad Science, Pixability, Sightly, VuePlanner, and Zefr were added in the Brand Suitability and Contextual Targeting category while DoubleVerify and IAS were added to the Brand Safety Reporting category. Meanwhile, Pixability, Tubular Labs, and Wizdeo were added to the Content Insights category.
Also Read: Everything You NEED TO KNOW About Advertising On YouTube In 2020
As quoted in Adexchanger, David George, CEO of Pixability, one of the first companies to join in 2016 said, the time was ripe for a revamp.
“Simply put, there’s demand in the market from brands and agencies that want to work with third parties,”
YouTube is growing exponentially in terms of engagement and ad revenue. Although due to coronavirus led volatility, YouTube is facing a significant decline in CPM’s in some cases, however, YouTube drove $15 billion ad revenue for Alphabet in 2019.
Tony Marlow, CMO at Integral Ad Science said,
“For a platform that generates over 500 hours of new content every minute, it makes sense that they are constantly evaluating the efficiency of their programs.”
IAS has been providing brand safety verification since 2018 but it wasn’t under the measurement partner program until now. The measurement program also offers access to the participating partners to alpha and beta programs and additional resources.
Theresa Go, Pixability’s VP of platform partnerships said,
“There is an undercurrent of technical support we get through the program. We’re able to leverage Google to make sure we’re providing the best products we can in the market.”
Google Cuts Marketing Budgets by 50%, Freezes Hiring.
Key Points
- Budget cuts and hiring freezes across marketing and across Google.
- An internal document reveals Google is cutting its marketing budgets by as much as 50 % for the second half of 2020.
- The marketing budget cuts may be a way to combat reduced advertising earnings in the wake of coronavirus.
- The development comes in less than a week from where Google is scheduled to discuss Q1 2020 results on 28th April.
Google is doing what other big tech companies are or will be doing soon to mitigate the coronavirus impact – cutting marketing budgets. An email viewed by CNBC, sent to the marketing employees this week was about budget cuts and a new hiring freeze for full-time and contract employees.
The e-mail stated:
There are budget cuts and hiring freezes happening across marketing and across Google…We, along with the rest of marketing, have been asked to cut our budget by about half for H2.
In 2019, Google spent $18.46 bn which includes employee compensation. One important area that required advertising was Cloud, as it competes with Amazon and Microsoft by hiring more sales representatives.it is unclear how such areas will be affected that need wide consumer reach.
However, Google confirmed that some areas’ budgets are being cut but not every area will be impacted as it adjusts plans.
A company spokesperson said in an emailed statement to CNBC,
As we outlined last week, we are re-evaluating the pace of our investment plans for the remainder of 2020 and will focus on a select number of important marketing efforts….We continue to have a robust marketing budget, particularly in digital, in many business areas.
Sundar Pichai, CEO in his memo last week stated,
The clear lesson from 2008 is that preparing early is key to weathering the storm and emerging in a position to continue long-term growth…We are reevaluating the pace of our investment plans for the remainder of 2020. That starts with taking a more critical look at the pace of hiring for the rest of the year.
…we continue to invest, but will be recalibrating the focus and pace of our investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel.
Sundar’s announcement emphasized that the company will not cut back in areas where consumers needed Google’s support for their growth and success. It will also continue with digital advertising which is in line with the stay at home audience.
Travel advertising earnings plummets:
Recently, a search marketer who knows travel advertising well tweeted the collapse of travel-related advertising and one of the contributing factors to a negative impact on the earnings.
When nearly 10% of your business is as a performance marketing supplier to Expedia and Priceline, and they stop advertising, the knock on effects are strong: https://t.co/TKNFl3YgOs
— Martin MacDonald 🏴🇪🇸🇺🇸🇧🇧 (@searchmartin) April 23, 2020
Following the news, Google shares had dropped nearly 2%.
In The Absence of Third-party Cookies, Publishers Wants to Strengthen Relation with Advertisers
With the death of third-party data, publishers are in the prime position as holders of the first-party data on consumers, and they are hoping to have a strong relationship with advertisers. The big revolution in the digital world without third party cookies and the trackers within internet browsers that builds all of the digital advertising – was on top priority for all the attendees at the IAB three – day Annual Leadership Meeting in California.
In a panel discussion, Stephanie Layser, vice-president of advertising technology and operations at News Corp said, “A privacy-first identifier is really important and needed in our industry as a whole.” He further added that without this, the ‘cat-and-mouse’ game will continue, eventually not able to identify the users at all.
No third-party cookies mean there will be an ecosystem of walled gardens. Facebook and Google, publishers will start having their own end-to-end platforms and safeguard consumers’ data within their walled gardens. Publishers may concentrate on the first-party data obtained from their sites to build identifiers and exist within their closed ecosystems. Undoubtedly, publisher first-party data can become the dominant currency of the digital ad market.
Scott Messer, senior vice-president of media at Leaf Group said .“You store your information in and use their identifiers, but you don’t get the user identity back. He further added, “And that’s actually a sustainable model, minus the leaking.”
However, Facebook and Google, especially the latter can take advantage of identifiers that Chrome runs through its browser and so publishers need to give more insights than the basic audience data. Publishers need to present quality and privacy-compliant benefits of consented data to buyers for getting attention. Messer further said that the key to publishers gaining control is bringing people insight than pushing more audience or data.
For rebuilding digital advertising in the absence of third-party cookies, publishers need to act to make sure they have the systems, strategies, and processes in place – like organize their identity graphs, build consistent systems or definitions of audience segment to put insight to use. Also, it is essential for them to successfully integrate their direct customer relationship with advertisers’ data and campaign objectives.
The Vice President of Meredith, Chip Schenck said publishers and advertisers should work together to build products that go beyond financial objectives and advertisers learn more about end-users.
“Partnership is what do you have and what don’t you have, how can I fill the gaps that you have, and what are the things I need that you could help me with, beyond financial remuneration,” said Schenck on redefining partnership,
The absence of third party cookies can tighten the bond between the advertiser and publisher giving way to open exchanges. It acts as a catalyst to publishers who need to ensure that technology tools and business models are in place to be at the top of the ad ecosystem.
