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DIGITAL MARKETING Media PROGRAMMATIC Uncategorized

MediaMath Explains The Triumvirate Advantage

May 11, 2016 — by MediaMath

Mike Lamb, President, Commercial and Erich Wasserman, Chief Revenue Officer speak on the relationship between the brand, the agency and the technology in a programmatic marketing ecosystem.

In establishing this partnership Wasserman speaks to how the agency, MediaMath and the marketer can determine how best to utilize data.

“In some cases, we do that on behalf of the advertiser, in some cases we partner with the advertiser to enable them to do it themselves and in most cases we partner with the agency to enable them – to not only do it on behalf of a particular advertiser – but on behalf of a portfolio of advertisers,” Wasserman says.

DIGITAL MARKETING Media PROGRAMMATIC Uncategorized

Why Clicks Don’t Equal Brand Engagement

May 5, 2016 — by MediaMath

Our own Parker Noren, Director of Programmatic Strategy and Optimization at MediaMath, takes on brand engagement in a recent article published by Modern Marketing Xchange. Noren suggests it’s time to rethink how advertisers measure their branding efforts — focusing on users’ time on site or the number of pages viewed rather than solely measuring click-through rates.

Read an excerpt below to learn why it’s time marketers should nix the click:

Advertisers have historically depended on click-through rates and cost-per-click to determine the success of their digital branding efforts. However, these metrics have little relationship with what the brand is ultimately trying to achieve. You won’t find driving clicks in a brand’s strategic roadmap or brand health assessment. It’s time for branding marketers to move beyond the click and onto more accurate measures that align with their overall campaign goals and, in turn, improve brand engagement by optimizing to them.

Let’s first back up. In the past, the focus on clicks was largely due to a lack of alternative metrics. In a 2001 New York Times article, then president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau Robin Webster said that the click-through might have appealed to the early technologists who built the World Wide Web, who were excited at the potential of tying advertising to a direct sale, something previously difficult with TV and print advertising. In addition, Procter & Gamble were basing payments for its online advertising on click-through, setting a benchmark for the wider industry. At the time, there were not an established group of better measurements, though their conception was in development.

The industry has now evolved and added new metrics to the mix. But, just because there are more options now isn’t a strong argument alone to move on from clicks. So, why should marketers nix the click?

According to a comScore analysis, only 8 percent of users actually contribute to the majority of clicks (85 percent). To get to 100 percent of clicks, you only have to expand to 16 percent of users—meaning 84 percent never click. Likewise, in a 2015 MediaMath analysis, only 8 percent of e-commerce purchasers had clicked on a banner ad from any campaign run in the platform (i.e., not just the campaign from which they bought the product). This means advertisers focused solely on optimizing clicks are essentially ignoring the majority of their core audience. And, while mobile specifically garners stronger click-through rates, we all have experienced how easy it is to accidentally click on mobile ads, adding even more scrutiny to clicks as a metric of success.

In addition, click-based metrics are more susceptible to fraud. Over time, fraud perpetrators have become better at making clicking bots look like humans. Measuring success along metrics that are harder for bots to fake is a key step to mitigating fraud, though many advertisers are hesitant to pursue given it can result in lower CTRs and higher CPCs because it strips away the inflated numbers born from bots.

To read the full article via Modern Marketing Xchange, click here.

DIGITAL MARKETING Education Media Uncategorized

MediaMath Explains Education: New Marketing Institute

May 4, 2016 — by MediaMath

Joe Zawadzki, Chief Executive Officer and Mike Lamb, President, Commercial sheds light on the importance of empowering marketers through MediaMath’s educational arm — the New Marketing Institute (NMI).

“The way that we are going to show people that you can re-imagine performance and that marketing has been re-engineered is by getting the training stood up such that people are, at least, speaking the same language and all having the baseline level of understanding,” Zawadzki said.

DIGITAL MARKETING Media Uncategorized

MediaMath Explains Competitive Advantage

April 27, 2016 — by MediaMath — 2

Mike Lamb, President, Commercial talks about what sets MediaMath apart from its competitors, including the company’s commitment to the demand-side and to true outcomes for marketers.

“We have built a system and a business on the proposition that marketing can and should be accountable to true business outcomes, not to marketing outcomes — cost per click, cost per thousand — but to true business outcomes.”

Press play to learn more!

DIGITAL MARKETING Media Uncategorized

MediaMath Explains Goal-based Marketing

April 20, 2016 — by MediaMath

Erich Wasserman, Chief Revenue Officer, speaks on the importance of goal-based marketing and how this enables marketers to control their entire marketing ecosystem.

“As a primary input to our systems today, we asked our clients to think deeply about how it is that they make money so that we can translate that into outcomes, into goals, that we then optimize to,” Wasserman said. “When we partner with a client in a transparent way, they have all of the inclination to give us the information about their business, such that we can translate that into actual outcome-based goals.”

DIGITAL MARKETING Media Technology Uncategorized

How Can Technology Bridge The Gap Between Partners and Brands?

March 14, 2016 — by MediaMath

In Spain, programmatic advertising currently accounts for more than 25% of all digital investment. Whilst the market is much smaller than the UK and other European neighbours like France and Germany, it is starting to develop, but it is not without its challenges.

For starters, Spanish businesses typically work in a far more regimented way, which means that the organisational structures need to be readdressed across departments more frequently to ensure a smooth ebb and flow of data throughout the entire organisation. Breaking down these structures requires strategic partnerships to be established, which are focused on streamlining processes through the use of technology. Removing silos speeds up the capabilities required to adopt a more agile and holistic approach to fast moving programmatic needs.

However, the fact this disconnect exists does mean there are two different types of marketers in Spain, the digital pioneers and the digital agnostics.

The digital pioneers are very familiar with programmatic, committed to improving the effectiveness of their existing strategies and constantly looking to grow.

Whilst the digital agnostics lack a full understanding of the potential benefits of programmatic, are new to the techniques and associated processes of this developing form of advertising and find it all rather confusing.

This dynamic naturally creates a lack of cohesion and a clear divide. When you take these challenges into account, it’s not surprising that Spain has been slow to the programmatic party.

So what’s the solution?

Success in programmatic can often, although not exclusively, be determined by the extent to which agencies and technology partners connect at a strategic level. This partnership not only helps to create a fully aligned strategy and ensures that KPIs are met, it also highlights alternative processes, which can improve the performance of campaigns and the efficient use of budgets.

At Accuen, we believe that agencies like us serve as an effective layer between brands and their technology partners. These partnerships all need be focused on the same goals and objectives to operate successfully, but each also need to understand the value the other can provide to the overall programmatic strategy being delivered.

An agency trading desk acts as the forefront partner for brands, as agencies have the capability to negotiate global agreements with a wide variety of technology partners which advertisers can benefit from. This capability is essential to ensuring the right inventory is acquired and the right audiences are being targeted. If budgets are not being used in the right way, the effectiveness of campaigns will be diminished.

For agencies and technology partners to connect at a strategic level and create high performance strategies it is important that the needs and KPIs set by each individual brand are fully understood, specifically how they are going to evaluate the success of their programmatic activities. At the same time brands need to understand that programmatic is not simply another channel. It requires a greater level of education and transparency, so it is critical that brands understand that programmatic is the future of buying media not only digitally cross device, but across radio and TV as well. Whilst the latter is still for many territories a long way off, brands need to start thinking about a multichannel strategy and how programmatic can influence and drive engagement in other channels like performance, TV, and traffic to point of sale. Understanding these areas will increasingly become more important as greater focus is placed on the measurability of individual investment opportunities for specific audiences.

Breaking down barriers and establishing a universal need for a holistic approach however, is understandably rather difficult, but the dynamic nature of the programmatic landscape cannot be ignored. The solution ultimately lies in achieving greater clarity and more effective systems. There has to be great communication between both the tech partner and the agency in order to create value for the brand. For that to manifest itself into a tangible benefit for brand clients though, technology partners and agencies need to work together. There has to be a strong communication link between both parties and technology needs to be quick in providing solutions and recommendations in strategies in order to provide the best opportunity and potential results for each brand at an individual level.

DIGITAL MARKETING Events Media Mobile Trends Uncategorized

MediaMath’s Roundup: Mobile World Congress 2016

March 10, 2016 — by MediaMath

Five sunny days of networking, keynotes, parties and dinners completed what was a successful Mobile World Congress 2016, where over 100,000 attendees from 204 countries and territories descended on Barcelona with MediaMath being one of 2,200 companies exhibiting at the event.

This key global event – essentially a microcosm of the mobile advertising ecosystem – did not fail to live up to high expectations and while trade visitors were making sense of a fractured mobile landscape, it was brought together seamlessly allowing members to explore new products, partnerships and offerings.

Amongst the new innovations in mobile technology, there were a few key insights and learnings that caught our attention – noticeably how these advances are looking to change people’s personal and everyday lives through connectivity, as well as new services and apps, not to mention virtual reality headsets.

Picture this. What if you could make your retail experience truly mobile? This could mean the ability to identify consumer needs in-store through mobile and automatically have a sales agent assist you. For example, if you were looking for a suit from a bygone era, the store already knows what you’re looking for and can help you before you even consider asking them. And from a brand marketer point-of-view, imagine the ability to really hone in on omnichannel connectors and cross-channel components across all inventory to better target your consumer online and in-store. Well, that’s exactly what companies such as Broadcast Village, Trustly, Disruptive Digital Studio, Copsonic, Intel, Innovation City, Vibes and NTS retail are doing.

The importance of omnichannel and its role in driving programmatic performance is such that agency Cojecom’s CEO, Jérôme Soleymieux, shared a blog post last month to provide insight on their experiences and internal restructuring. In particular, with 5G expected to become a reality by 2018, everything really is mobile – so much so that at a panel called ‘The next $50B: How mobile conquers video,’ some great snippets could be heard such as “We are all carrying a TV in our pocket” and “Mobile video is in its early stages. It isn’t TV, it’s a new way to live your life on your mobile.”

A little closer to home at MediaMath’s stand G20 in Hall 8, our partners Ninth Decimal, Visual DNA, Lotame, Axonix, xAd and inMobi presented from Tuesday – Thursday at 11am and 3pm.

Here’s a rundown snapshot of what they shared:

Ninth Decimal : In “Physical World Behavior Meets Mobile Programmatic,” Michael Miner, VP, Business Development discussed understanding the real consumer through the behaviors they show in the physical world via their mobile device (such as uploading geo-location tagged photos to a photo-sharing app, checks weather app or location based shopping app). These behavioral actions help a brand understand their consumer – collecting and measuring these insights can be achieved intelligently through mobile programmatic.

Visual DNA : “Next Gen Mobile Data: Targeting by Personality” by Raj Dhanda, VP, Global Supply tapped into understanding the personality of internet users – whether they’re extrovert, introvert, open or conscientious to name a few. By means of patented quiz technology, where answers are more genuine as there are no incentives, it provides a benefit to the mobile ecosystem to understand audiences that reside in app environments for analytics and offers a greater monetisation opportunity.

Lotame : With mobile broadband accounting for 40 percent of total broadband (source: GSM Association) and 800 mobile operaters worldwide, it really is a ‘mobile first’ world according to “Mobile Audience Targeting with Lotame” by Ryan Rolf, Director, Data Sales. Focusing solely on mobile audience targeting, their platform can deploy your audiences powered by their taxonomy across any screen and tactic (video, display, email).

Axonix : In “Where advertisers reach first party mobile audiences in real time – An introduction to Axonix” by Simon Bailey, CEO and Zee Ahmad, Director of Programmatic, they discussed why data is important in programmatic today (answer: brands are able to deliver to the right audience at the right time) and also dived into the value of telco data specifically – data unique to telcos, which provides enhanced targeting.

xAd : “Location Based Marketing, Without the Guesswork” by Dorothee Bergin, VP, Programmatic shared knowledge on how the media landscape is changing (smartphone users spending almost 150 minutes on their phone per day – much more than TV at 113 minutes: Source: Millward Brown Ad Reaction Study 2014 – Daily Screen Usage) and how the digitisation of people and places brings the online and offline worlds together where it’s location that is the new cookie.

InMobi : “Understanding In App Mobile Data Signals & Creative” by Anne Frisbie, SVP, Global Alliances explored first party data coupled with a big data platform. With a focus on retail audiences, they looked at adding dynamic maps (interactive creative with a map showing current user location and location supermarkets which stock the brand), to different types of mobile ad formats and native advertising – to help brands understand and target their consumers effectively.

We capture the event in pictures via our Facebook photo album and give you a glimpse into the vision we shared at Mobile World Congress through our video.

If you missed us at Mobile World Congress this year or have any questions for the team, we welcome you to contact us.

DIGITAL MARKETING Media Uncategorized

InfoBits: Digital Marketing Made Simple

February 23, 2016 — by MediaMath

If you’re new to the ad tech space, you may have found yourself lost in translation. After all, what does modern display advertising really mean? And how are advertisers able to target users by simply tracking their online behavior?

That’s why we created a series of InfoBits to cut through the tech jargon, breaking down digital marketing terms into simple, digestible chunks of information. Stay tuned every week to get your fix of InfoBits and learn the basics of online marketing through these fun and digestible reads!

Check out Part 1 now on MediaMath’s Knowledge Center and stay tuned for Parts 2-4 in the coming weeks!

Here’s a sneak peak of what’s to come as we cover Display Advertising this week:

DIGITAL MARKETING Media PROGRAMMATIC Technology Uncategorized

2015 Trends Revisited

January 4, 2016 — by MediaMath

At the end of 2014, it was predicted that programmatic media buying would push UK ad spend over the £20bn mark in 2015. Whilst current data suggests the UK will now cross that barrier in 2016, last year has without doubt seen a phenomenal year of growth for the industry.

According to figures released in October by the Advertising Association/Warc, advertising expenditure reached a record high of £9,424m in the first half of the year, a surge which – combined with equally strong spending in other digital channels – has resulted in 5.8% growth overall throughout last year.

That rise in spend has understandably triggered a huge shift in how brands think and utilise their data. According to figures published on eMarketer in September, programmatic display ad selling alone will exceed £2bn in 2016. Furthermore, automated ads are expected to account for nearly 60% of the UK digital display market in 2015.

The issue is that the success of any programmatic strategy, much like any CRM strategy, is determined by the level of understanding a brand has around its customers. I predicted at the end of 2014 that 2015 would see a huge rise in large global brands using data obtained from non-traditional sources – including point of sale fulfilment information or shelf-level data. That seems to have come true in abundance.

As Marketing reported in July, Nestlé and Tesco are just two leading brands that are taking advantage of data-led ad technology. Establishing a richer level of data on customers provides a treasure trove of insights, which if leveraged in the right way, can have a huge positive impact on sales, especially when you deploy this knowledge across your ad campaigns and use it to target the right individuals. So what’s next?

The trick now is to see how this will manifest itself into even deeper connections and relationships in 2016. The approach that eBay, Nestlé and Tesco have taken is hard and fast proof of the right person, right message, right time approach in action. And that has definitely been a major development for this year as marketing and advertising campaigns have increasingly started to collide and become far more integrated than they have before. You only need look back to the events at this year’s Cannes Lions Festival – where there was a lot more talk around the collision of creative and data – off the back of the now infamous BA “Magic of Flying” campaign, which caused a storm in the industry last year when it won the Grand Prix award in the direct category, to see how much has changed.

Despite all these developments though, the process admittedly needs to be reformed to ensure an even greater level of precision is achieved, and then delivered. The experience has to translate into a positive and valuable end result. If a customer is unable to take advantage of a promotion or purchase a product they have seen advertised, the positive connection founded on solid interactions and beneficial data will inevitably break.

Which brings us on to cross-device marketing. This is where things get particularly interesting. According to Deloitte, 76% of the UK adult population now have a Smartphone. The way brands target consumers has therefore naturally had to adapt in response, and driven a huge surge in programmatic mobile buying. In fact, whilst (at the time of writing), the final figures for 2015 are yet to surface, in September eMarketer was already predicting that 56.1% of UK programmatic display ad spending would be going mobile, surpassing desktop and laptop spending for the first time. According to the IAB, the actual figure for ad spend on mobile was £1.08 billion in the first half of 2015, an increase of 51%. The figures released in October also showed that within display, video ad spend increased 56% to £292 million during the same period, acquainting to 22% of display revenue.

This shift away from traditionally siloed marketing strategies towards a more holistic approach to media buying allows brands to serve ads to customers far more seamlessly, at the most appropriate time.

With many questions still surrounding the EU General Data Protection Regulation, which serves to implement strict measures around personal identifiable information this year, the way brands are using and acquiring data is perhaps not working as co-operatively or as seamlessly as predicted. For some, the notion of opting into co-operation with other companies is far from becoming standard practice and consequently we are still seeing wasted impressions for wider audiences slipping through.

So where does that leave us?

For starters, programmatic has never been in finer health and as predicted it has definitely cemented itself as the future of digital advertising. Despite seeing vast amounts of growth, the industry has also faced a number of external challenges, and seen some markets accelerate strategies at variable rates. As the vice president for EMEA at Yahoo, Nick Hugh told Campaign that 2015 has seen a great deal of discourse enter the programmatic arena, with ad blocking and video dominating the agenda. That said, the focus on data and cross device attribution remain two of the biggest areas of opportunity as we now move into 2016 and closer to that £20bn target.

Culture DIGITAL MARKETING Media People Uncategorized

Looking Back, Looking Forward

December 31, 2015 — by Joe Zawadzki

In some ways, 2015 was the year of adolescence for MediaMath. We’ve matured, coming into our own and defining what we are as a company. We grew up, in geography, size and scale. And, at the risk of overplaying the metaphor, we’re starting to think about what being an adult means in terms of both ambitions and responsibilities.

Let’s start with what we know.

Today, MediaMath has the foundational technology, processes and people in place to achieve the marketing outcomes for thousands of clients. We’ve wrangled the fragmented pieces of our industry into a semblance of order. Due in large part to the hard work of our teams, this year we solidified our position as the largest independent demand-side platform. You’ve heard me say it before, but we are reaching escape velocity, with the resources, long-term vision and orientation to make 2016 a defining year for the industry and our place in it.

Starting with our clients, we have become increasingly focused even as we scale. One of the rewards of success is to be even more selective in terms of who we work with and how. As leaders in the industry, our clients are smart, sophisticated change agents who envision a powerful new future for their company’s marketing efforts and the very marketing profession. They are willing to both push and be pushed to see that vision manifest. Together we are challenging the status quo on measurement and metrics, creating brand new connections to media and data partners through private and privileged marketplaces—dissolving artificial internal and external barriers to create structural long-term success.

Advertisers don’t want more noise. They want the human and technical connection to a complicated marketplace. They’re asking: Who do I trust—from media partners, to data sources, to cloud, point and emerging technologies, to marketing services firms and agency partners—to achieve my most pressing business goals?

This year, we saw new adherents to ProgrammaticFirst—a focus on addressable media, data-and audience-driven marketing strategies, all optimized to true business goals—across most or all of their digital investments. New clients across the globe like Jet.com, Grainger and Dell have embraced this with great results and even more transformative ones to come. Our account model will help identify and cultivate clients toward this end, with our programmatic playbook effort led by Jocelyn Hayashi and our vertical strategy led by Abhijit Shome—both designed to accelerate outcomes.

To push the boundaries of where programmatic is relevant, we evolved how we work with our partners. This means shifting the mix of digital, mobile, video and social. We made real strides with our video solution throughout the year, closing it out with video spend breaking 10% in Q4, and mobile close to 40%. The combination of scale and willingness to innovate (scalable innovation!) had us first on most partners’ lists to create new and differentiated offerings, from Apple iAds to Time Inc.’s programmatic print, to unique relationships with global publishers like Globo, Daily Motion, Yahoo! and eBay.

In 2016, expect MediaMath to explore new frontiers like addressable TV, thinking about how to fundamentally improve the advertising infrastructure for consumers, brands, and the entire ecosystem that supports them with initiatives with Akamai, in member cooperatives and through direct investments in disruptive categories and companies. You’ll see “walled gardens” feel more like “gated communities” to our clients as a result of our focus on true incremental marketing outcomes for clients and willingness to share it with partners.

Our product and engineering teams were busy this year. A significant investment of time and capital went into stability and scalability, upgrading software, hardware and architecture to create capacity for the future. We have also committed to doubling down on our strengths in machine learning and data-driven insights with the hiring of Prasad Chalasani as our Senior Vice President of Data Sciences with a mandate to maintain and extend our lead in these areas.

A number of market-first products went into open beta. You’ll hear more about these in early 2016, but our focus on identity management and data management are unique offerings for our industry and will be married to strong commercialization efforts in the new year.

We’ve become increasingly involved in helping shape policy related to consumer privacy, helping define and promote best practices globally through our work on the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Direct Marketing Association, Network Advertising Initiative, Digital Advertising Alliance and other industry groups in which we hold leadership positions. We’ve also started the process of becoming SOC 2-compliant, a standard for regulating organizational controls related to security, privacy, confidentiality, availability and processing integrity.

We continued to educate the industry through the New Marketing Institute (NMI) and usher new talent into the digital marketing landscape via its Marketing Engineer Program (MEP). As of year-end, NMI has trained more than 4,000 marketers on certification content and graduated 36 participants from MEP with 100% placement rate, including our first six from our EMEA expansion of the program this year.

We made a number of key hires in 2015 to support our aggressive growth plans. Media industry veteran Peter Piazza joined as General Counsel in June. Rich Schmaeling came on board as CFO in September. Advertising industry pioneer Joanna O’Connell became our new CMO in October, joining from AdExchanger’s research practice. We plan to hire aggressively in 2016 as we continue to grow our footprint. And to support this growth, we rolled out a new 360-degree review process, visible by all individuals in the company and introduced an equity program for employees normally contemplated by companies substantially later in their lifecycles.

The move to our new global headquarters at Four World Trade Center in October marked a milestone in our growth. We have enough space to properly house half of our global employee base and host our clients and partners. As we prepare for 2016, we’re at the epicenter of the digital marketing ecosystem.

This is key, not just for our New York City contingent, but also for our EMEA, LATAM and APAC colleagues. It’s the right place to be at the right time, because I believe there’s a transformation happening in the industry. Huge new swaths of inventory will become addressable, while dynamic creative and media decisioning begin to converge. Leading marketers will start to implement custom attribution models and use them to take action, while true omni-channel executions will be seen at some scale.

There’s a lot to be done and I can’t imagine doing it with a smarter or more driven group of people. I’m incredibly excited about this coming year and hope you are too—see you in 2016!

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