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DataEventsTrendsUncategorized

3 Tips for Reaching Shoppers During Key Seasonal Events

June 23, 2016 — by MediaMath

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Father’s Day and graduation season are now behind us, but they’ve left good lessons on how to strategize for your marketing campaigns during smaller seasonal holidays and events. I recently shared three tips with Biz Report’s Kristina Knight in an article on how to better engage buyers during so-called “small-time” holidays.

Consider the bid price for CPM-based campaigns

Historically, we see increased ad volume for key retail holidays such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. With more demand, CPMs tend to rise, so it’s important that you bid high enough to win valuable impressions. Advertisers should prepare to increase bids up to two weeks prior to Father’s Day as that is when the majority of Father’s Day campaigns launch.

Whitelist it

Create whitelists to hit in-market users for websites across the top verticals for Father’s Day, including: sporting goods, home & garden and consumer goods. Contextual targeting is also an effective tactic. You can leverage channels such as Father’s Day, Automotive, Sports and potentially use custom keyword channels that you can curate yourself depending on your campaign goals.

Tie the campaign across devices

Look into third-party data providers that can provide segments across channels, including audiences by mobile activity. Some examples include:

  • Apps by genre: Shopping and Lifestyle, Sports, Games
  • Purchase Intent: Retail, Automotive and Boating, Technology
  • Mobile-app based channels: Targets in-app users through contextually in categories such as: Shopping Apps, Top Ranked Apps, High App Usage

DIGITAL MARKETINGMediaPROGRAMMATICUncategorized

3 Steps CMOs Can Take to Get More Out of Agency and Tech Partnerships

June 22, 2016 — by MediaMath

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With the convergence of adtech and martech in addition to endless amounts of data at marketers’ disposal, the state of programmatic marketing is shifting. In order for marketers to thrive in an ever-evolving landscape, they must maximize relationships with agencies and tech partners so that clients have access to the best media buying, data management and measurement capabilities to achieve programmatic success.

While brands should do a lot of the heavy lifting for their partners, marketers must also be honest about how they can improve some of their processes and behaviors to let their partners best help them. In partnership with The CMO Club, we released a whitepaper called “Evolving Your Agency Partnership Model to Drive Programmatic Success,” highlighting three key factors CMOs should consider to improve relations.

  • Centralize and activate your best data: First-party data is increasingly becoming one of a brand’s most valuable assets as it helps to target and engage audiences in a meaningful way, wherever they are. According to a June 2015 Econsultancy report, more than six in 10 respondents said first-party data drove the highest increase in customer value. Of those who were surveyed, 36 percent said a technology partner could add value to their agency relationship by management and activation of first-party data.
  • Be choosier with your metrics: Three-quarters of marketers say they have, at best, a qualitative understanding of the impact their activities are having on their business. To boost results, identify quantifiable marketing goals.
  • Upgrade your attribution approach: Step it up a notch and tap into multi-touch attribution. This way, you’re able to see exactly what led a customer to convert at all points – both online and off. In fact, 36 percent of CMOs said better measurement through more sophisticated attribution was an area in which tech providers could help brands achieve.

Click here to download the full report and learn more.

DIGITAL MARKETINGMediaTechnologyUncategorized

MediaMath Brazil: To Educate the Market is Key to Growth Consolidation

June 21, 2016 — by MediaMath

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This article by Karen Ferraz originally appears on ExchangeWire and has been translated from Portuguese to English below:

The company specializing in programmatic media, recently celebrated its two years of operation in Brazil with a staff three times its original size, positive results for the first quarter and annual growth in the triple digits. Fernando Juarez, MD of MediaMath for Latin America, and the new country manager Brazil Mario Rubino, told the ExchangeWire Brazil that the expectation is to maintain the pace of business by the end of the year to consolidate this growth and develop the market with educational initiatives on the use of programmatic technologies.

Latin America is currently the fastest growing region for MediaMath, Juarez sees this as a clear message that the adoption of programmatic media technologies is growing by the agencies and marketers in the region. The company now has operations in 13 countries in the region, such as Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Guatemala.

“These last two years represented a spectacular growth for the company in Brazil. We are excited about the continued growth and the company’s future growth in the country and we want to further boost this advance in the program market, ” says Juarez. According to him, Brazil should become very soon the largest market for the company in the region, overtaking Mexico, which is still the largest due to the rapid development of trading desks.

Ad tech saw some of its competitors leaving the Brazilian market during this period, driving MediaMath’s ambition to win more participation in the region and advance on the dominance of big players such as Google and Facebook. To Fernando Juarez, Brazil is definitely experiencing the beginning of a growth stage in programmatic, which creates many opportunities triggered by increased investment from advertisers seeking more efficiency. But this also bring more challenges, especially in overcoming knowledge gaps on new technologies in digital and programmatic marketing.

Programmatic media has allowed advertisers from around the world to reach their audiences and get better results, both in costs and in the way that ads are delivered. “Whether in time of economic crisis or not, any marketing professional is seeking the best result from the money being invested; therefore, programmatic is in a time of growth around the world,” insists Fernando Juarez, noting that the country is one of the largest economies in the world.

Going forward, the goal of MediaMath Brazil is to grow faster, consolidate this growth and collaborate with the education market, said Mario Rubino, who took over the local leadership of the company a month ago. “The digital market is understanding and increasingly interested in the use of platforms like ours, digital spend is migrating to programmatic media. The market is becoming more concentrated, as some competitors have left. So the mission is to continue working to serve our customers well and bring our products and knowledge, ” he adds.

Educating to grow

Educating the market has been one of the main pillars of the company’s strategy since it began its Brazilian operations in 2014. In recent months, this approach gained a further boost with the launch of the New Marketing Institute (NMI) in São Paulo. NMI, the company’s educational arm, is present in several cities of the world and was created to help meet the growing demand for marketing professionals in digital and programmatic.

For the country manager, Mario Rubino, this is a natural process of maturation, as experienced by the more mature markets, where advertisers and agencies begin to better understand how the use of the platforms can deliver more results. Thus, the company has developed educational programs with clients, agencies, and trading desks, as well as partnerships with major education groups in Brazil. “It’s part of our mission to educate and train people to work in this new market and it is amazing how soon we can see the interest in these initiatives.”

DataTechnologyUncategorized

The Seeds of Paid and Owned Convergence are Starting to Bloom

June 17, 2016 — by MediaMath

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This article originally appeared on iMediaConnection and is written by Jenn Vlahavas, VP, Account Strategy, at MediaMath.

My dad is 70 years-old and retired in Arizona and has never really understood what I do. First it was “computers,” and now he tells his friend I “do the internet.” When I came into my current role almost three years ago, I used a direct mail example and said, “OK, Dad. Let’s say you get only two pieces of mail in the mailbox tomorrow. One is a 50-percent off coupon for a tub of Enfamil formula, and one is $50 off a round of golf at Pebble Beach. Which is junk mail?”

He enthusiastically raised his hand and shouted, “The formula coupon!” I told him, “No, they are both junk mail because they were both unsolicited. But because one aligns with your life stage, lifestyle, and passions, you don’t perceive it as intrusive. That’s what I do — help deliver advertising that is more relevant to consumers.”

Tapping into the various data signals from across first-, second-, and third-party data has become crucial to making marketing more relevant to consumers. In the recurring marketing mantra of “Right person, right time, right channel, right message,” this is “right person.” The convergence of your paid and owned media, plus integrated audience management and execution at scale, is how you get to the rest.

This probably sounds like stuff you’re heard before, but the transformation possible if we get this ideal future state right is enormous. It can change how brands interact with customers for the better by bringing the full customer experience to life. Using my dad as an example, he may get an email from Pebble Beach for $50 off but not respond because he’s distracted or busy (like most of us). But when paid and owned media come together, my dad might then see a video ad from Pebble Beach with a shot of the scenic views from hole 16 with the same offer.

If it’s the “right time” and because he’s 70, he will likely pick up the phone to book a round. The convergence of paid and owned marketing channels allows for Pebble Beach, in this case, to track my dad’s ad exposure sequence across historically disparate channels. And the use of audience management tools allows Pebble Beach to attribute the phone-based sale to my dad, closing the loop — and also ensuring he doesn’t get another $50-off offer.

Think of the current state of many marketers’ worlds:

  • Data applied in a siloed way, without one view of the customer. Why can’t, for instance, a Millennial mom not also be a high-value customer? Shouldn’t your customers be able to exist in overlapping segments to maximize their chances of converting?
  • No way to compare the various measures of success to understand what is and isn’t working in your marketing efforts. How many app installs equal one video complete, for instance?
  • The absence of owned marketing channels, which is almost like stopping a conversation with a target customer mid-sentence.

And then consider a marketing landscape where you can:

  • See and better understand customer behaviors across a broader range of marketing touch points.
  • Deliver more relevant messaging to these customers to improve business outcomes across all channels.
  • Reduce media waste by, for example, ensuring that a marketer isn’t paying to show an ad for a product a user has already purchased.

We already have clients seeing the benefits of connecting their technologies in this way. One major brand identified high-value audience segments from their email system and exported them to our TerminalOne operating system to boost ROI and execute media at scale. Both campaigns we ran saw better CTR and CPV compared with other email-only segments. We expect our clients and other marketers to increasingly test the waters of these paid and owned integrations. Competitive advantage lies with those marketers who unify their advertising and marketing to deliver on the promise of seamless relevancy for consumers wherever they are. Not to mention, connecting owned and paid strategies can actually make marketers’ lives easier by reducing workflows such as extra pixeling and better controlling data proliferation.

Marketers must integrate their martech with their adtech to boost ROI across all of their marketing-related investments, to better understand customers across touch-points, and to deliver stronger, more personalized experiences to end users across channels, formats, and devices. Those who don’t do this will falter longer-term.

EventsTrendsUncategorized

Forecast for Father’s Day

June 16, 2016 — by MediaMath

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While not as big of a retail holiday as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day spending in the US is projected to reach a record-high of $14.3 billion this year (to give context, Mother’s Day totaled $21.4 billion this year).

According to the National Retail Federation’s annual survey conducted by Prosper Insight and Analytics, shoppers say they plan to spend an average $125.92 on Father’s Day gifts, up from $115.57 last year. Much of that spend will be put towards dining out or other outings, clothing, gift cards and consumer electronics. Sporting goods, personal care items, automotive accessories and home improvement/gardening supplies were other top categories.

The Analytics team at MediaMath analyzed Father’s Day campaigns we ran from 2012 to 2015 to get a sense of consumer shopping patterns seen by our own advertisers during this time of year. Check out the insights in the infographic below and click here to download the full version.

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DataTechnologyUncategorized

Amnet and MediaMath Talk the Future of Programmatic in the Agency

June 15, 2016 — by MediaMath

As the programmatic experts for the Dentsu Aegis Network, Amnet specializes in media buying in addition to the planning, analysis and activation of audience data. With brands needing more from their agencies and other partners to succeed in a dynamically shifting marketing landscape, Amnet is committed to innovating, partnering with the right companies and helping their clients identify the best KPIs to meet their business goals. Erich Wasserman, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer for MediaMath, recently sat down to interview Curtis Nishijima, Chief Operating Officer for Amnet, about performance driven through technology partnership, driving business outcomes for brand clients and the future of programmatic in the agency. Watch the full interview here.

DataUncategorized

5 Questions with PushSpring

June 14, 2016 — by MediaMath

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We have recently partnered with PushSpring to offer their standard and custom segments within MediaMath’s TerminalOne platform. This partnership increases our mobile in-app targeting offering greatly across North America. I was recently able to chat with their Co-Founder & CRO, Tyler Davidson, to get his thoughts on mobile marketing, behavior and targeting.

  1. Where do you think advertisers face the most challenges when it comes to data and mobile marketing?

Whether you’re looking at the stats from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report or Ben Evan’s Mobile Ate the World, there are a few mega trends that advertisers cannot ignore.  Mobile continues to command an increasing share of consumers’ time spent on connected digital media, especially in the app universe.  Advertisers have a diverse array of technology and data options to provide them with alternatives to reach the right audiences via leading platform players like MediaMath, across their ever-increasing number of connected devices.  Specific challenges advertisers face, include: i) inability to target app audiences using the same cookie and data options available on the web; and ii) lack of persistent cookies in the Safari browser environment.  Again, these issues are being tackled by the top platform and data players—and I’d like to believe that PushSpring and MediaMath are solving parts of these equations.

  1. What are some call-outs about consumer mobile behavior that should be on advertisers’ radar in 2016?

At a macro-level, there are a few trends that can’t be overlooked—the ubiquity of smartphones, the increasing time spent in mobile apps and emerging types of app engagement that are happening with certain sub-segments on the audience spectrum.  There’s also an advertiser shift towards buying programmatically and leveraging native content and advertising units that can be customized for audiences based on available first-party and third-party data.  Programmatic media buys now account for somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of digital marketing, with MediaMath and other platform players paving the way for advertisers to reach audiences at scale for all device types.

From a consumer behavior perspective, marketers should also be aware of the shift towards more dynamic storytelling forms of media, including images, video and messaging platforms—as evidenced by the meteoric rise of apps like Snapchat, Instagram and a long list of real-time messaging platforms like WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook Live video.  Each of these apps (and many others in the marketplace) are providing marketers with new ways of engaging with audiences that go beyond traditional forms of digital advertising, across both earned and paid media categories.  Examples include: sponsored Snapchat Lens campaigns by Taco Bell and Gatorade, branded MSQRD face morph filters for Marvel’s Iron Man and the 150 million-impression earned media sensation of the woman with the Chewbacca mask on Facebook Live video.   Advertisers (and platform players) need to have an awareness of this shift to apps and the evolving forms of engagement, because it’s no longer good enough to view standardized ad units as the only form of media for engaging with people on mobile devices.

  1. By 2020, consumer behavior is projected to catch up to the ad dollars being spent, with 45 percent of total ecommerce expected to transact on mobile, generating roughly $284 billion in sales (Digiday). Yet conversions are still lagging on mobile. What needs to happen for advertisers, especially retailers, to get mobile shoppers to convert?

The retail market is massive, and eCommerce is taking a greater share of retail receipts with every passing year.  Some companies, like Zulily, have reported huge percentages of their business being transacted entirely by smartphone and tablet devices   However, the role of mobile devices in the eCommerce landscape shouldn’t be viewed exclusively through the lens of “how many sales/conversions are happening on a mobile device?”  Consumers are also using mobile devices in many ways in retail, including:  the rise of Starbucks as one of the largest mobile payment ecosystems on the planet, the use of mobile devices for consumers to comparison shop in brick-and-mortar retailers, the use of device-originated data to inform sales and marketing attribution models and so on and so forth.  So, for retailers to be successful with mobile, they need to understand who their customers are and how they can be activated and engaged from a mobile perspective.   There’s no one-size-fits all model.

  1. How do custom segments, based on apps, help marketers identify and target users at a more granular level?

The sophistication of marketers has improved dramatically over the past five to 10 years, as has the availability of high-quality tools and data, giving marketers an edge in targeting and understanding their users.  Marketers can use device-originated data, including app audience data, to build segments for targeting based on the presence/absence or usage behaviors inside those apps.  We’ve seen some CPG marketers interested in targeted consumers that have retailers where their products are distributed.  We’ve also seen marketers for music and video streaming app publishers seek to establish a beachhead with customers that haven’t yet selected a streaming service. And, for many marketers, there’s the ability to target customers of their competitors with offers to attract ’switchers’—this is especially prevalent in the telecommunications, banking and streaming media businesses.

  1. What opportunities will this type of targeting produce for marketers, especially when utilizing mobile advertising ID targeting?

We believe that marketers will seek high-quality data sources that can be used to activate audiences across all devices and platforms. We’ve heard from a number of Chief Marketing Officers that they want a variety of targeting and activation alternatives, to enable them to maintain a degree of marketing flexibility and efficiency.  The mobile advertising ID is the primary identifier for smartphones and tablets, providing advertisers with the ability to target high-quality data sets linked to the identifiers to target audiences anonymously and efficiently across all platforms.  It’s also important to note that mobile advertising IDs provide consumers with a certain level of control over the ability to remain anonymous or opt-out of targeted advertising entirely.

DIGITAL MARKETINGMediaPROGRAMMATICUncategorized

Target Key Audiences Across Devices in Real Time

June 13, 2016 — by MediaMath

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Direct Marketing News recently published an eBook on programmatic ad buying and how it has increasingly helped marketers target and convert customers at scale.

Numerous marketing executives share their thoughts on the evolving landscape, including our very Joanna O’Connell, CMO at MediaMath. O’Connell advises marketers to seek out wisdom from brands when considering programmatic.

“Talk to brands you admire and understand what they’re doing and how they’re thinking about programmatic, ” O’Connell says. “Marketers need to think about programmatic in terms of powering marketing of the future — real time, data driven, addressable, and scalable — which is crucial for a brand looking for long-term competitive advantage.”

To read the full eBook, click here.

DataTechnologyUncategorized

14 Facts About What CMOs Want from Agencies

June 10, 2016 — by MediaMath

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In which areas have agencies been most helpful in educating brands? What do brands find most important for excellent agency support? Are brands having their agency partners activate their first-party data?

Based on The CMO Club and MediaMath whitepaper “Evolving Your Agency Partnership Model to Drive Programmatic Success,” released on May 31st, we compiled some of the key stats from The CMO Club’s survey of 72 brand marketers on how they are partnering with their programmatic partners. Click here to download the full version of the infographic.

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