Back‑to‑school shopping is underway: How retailers can maximize sales

Meaningful connections, by design

3 Advertising Strategies That Can Be Applied to Your HR Department

Understanding e-filing patterns to build better advertising strategy

Online tax filing on the rise, retail on the decline, data finds

How QSR Marketers Can Score Big Around Game Days

What the US data protection law will mean for ad tech and marketers

Exponential Interactive’s Garage Team Mazda Video Campaign Delivered More than Double Post-Engagement CTR

Codename Bali: Microsoft Wants to Give ‘Control of Data’ Back to the Customer

Top 3 Tips to Get Your Video Marketing Strategy Ready for 2019

Predictions for 2019: What’s Coming to Online Video Advertising?

Competition, consolidation and fighting for survival: Ad tech predictions 2019

Understanding Consumer Behavior Influences EV Purchases

Forget CTR – it’s Time to Unleash the Potential of Digital Video Campaigns

How Retailers Can Best Use Video Advertising to Increase Holiday Sales

Think Tank: The Luxury of the Self

Unsung Heroes – the sales advocate: Maija Gwynn, Exponential

Does ‘Viewability’ Need A Health Check?

Why Video Is the Next Performance Marketing Solution for Auto Marketers

BuzzFeed, Digitas and 72andSunny shortlisted for the Digiday Worklife Awards

Expert: How to use data post-GDPR

Video Advertising Trends: Q&A with Jim Johnson

The Unintended Consequences of Relying on Consent with GDPR

Where We Are Today With Machine Learning

Where All the Fans Have Gone

How Brands Can Win Over World Cup Fans in 2018

A Closer Look: What Will the Advertising Industry Look Like Post-GDPR?

Aside from GDPR, Many Changes On The Horizon For User Data

A Look Inside the Modern Sports Fan: NFL vs. NCAA vs. MLS vs. MLB

Data Puts Some Automotive Stereotypes to the Test

Phish “phans” and how data informs marketers

Data is the air that marketers breathe, yet it’s not always clear how to approach it. What data should I be using? How can I make all my data fit together? What types of audiences and segments do I need to reach the right consumers? These are just some of the questions on the minds of marketers. (more…)

Portrait of a travel-minded consumer

Portrait of a travel-minded consumer There is new data that paints a picture of what consumers are doing online in the days and weeks leading up to travel. This is what marketers need to know. When consumers travel, prepping isn't only about best airfare or the cheapest hotel - not even for those who are traveling for work. Of course, marketers know that travelers will be looking into restaurant and hotel information, but the new data out from Exponential, focused on travelers to Las Vegas, breaks that information out into time frames that could give marketers a great chance to engage and convert those consumers. For example, people who are traveling for extended stays in an area begin packing for their trips about 90 days before leaving; during this time frame, the consumer is most interested in package deals - so hotel/airfare combinations, or meal packages are likely of interest. Then, at about 60 days out, consumers will begin looking at events - concerts, local interest hangouts, sporting events. This is the point when business people, especially, begin booking hotel stays. "Travelers are some of the most valuable audiences for marketers. To help better understand their decision making, we explored behaviors that travelers exhibit before arriving at a popular destination such as Las Vegas. We found four types of visitor, each with a unique sequential pattern, that serve as a blueprint for marketers looking to reach these traveler segments," said Bryan Melmed, Vice President, Insights, Exponential. For restaurants and comedy clubs, targeting consumers who are about 45-30 days out of a trip is important because this is when traveling consumers begin making their actual decisions about entertainment and dining for the trip. Then, for retailers, about 15 days pre-travel, consumers will begin looking at local shops to plan their shopping visits. While this information doesn't guarantee that marketers will engage traveling consumers, knowing what these customers are looking for prior to leaving for their destination can go a long way toward creating a sense of engagement.

Exponential’s Jim Johnson Featured on Advertising Week on How To Persuade a Generation of Marketing Skeptics

Gen Z & Brand Loyalty: How to Persuade a Generation of Marketing Skeptics Generation “Z” comprises of people born generally between 1995 up to 2010. Although there is little agreement on that specific date range (or even the term Gen Z itself), the one thing that’s certain is that these individuals are unlike any other demographic grouping we’ve seen in history. Most obviously, they’ve all grown up within a technologically driven world where any information is a quick search away, lending itself to instant gratification. They are also the most ethnically diverse cohort in the U.S., with an estimate from Frank N. Magid and Associates putting the makeup at 55% Caucasian, 24% Hispanic, 14% African American, 4% Asian, and 4% multi-racial. For marketers, the challenge remains the same; capture attention and demonstrate that your message, product or service is worth it. What’s changed are the rules around how to engage, maintain loyalty, and ultimately provide some value in exchange for that engagement and loyalty. How can this be done with this new emerging group? I outline some ideas below. Keep in mind that the COPPA Act restricts data collection and marketing activities aimed at children under the age of 13, so all of the recommendations here assume that this has been taken into consideration. 1. Mobile + Location While millennials are often mentioned as a mobile-first generation, it’s really Gen Z who grew up not knowing what a busy signal meant. All they’ve known is texting, messaging and instant access to the world in the palm of their hands. It’s all a double-edged sword for marketers, really. On one hand, you have access to a group of people who are always connected in some way, either via apps, mobile web, messaging services or even streaming audio. On the other, you have a group of people who have become accustomed to tuning out marketing messages regardless of device. The trick is to use their mobility as the key to strike up a conversation, offering some value exchange in return. Location based mobile providers offer insight into the places they visit, how often they frequent them, and how long they stay there. This context is hugely powerful in understanding the physical world Gen Z lives in, and marketers can take advantage by encouraging them to return to those places they frequent, inviting their friends along, or sharing their experiences in exchange for monetary or loyalty based incentives. Even in the absence of any incentive, knowing that this generation prefers sharing experiences over consuming goods (similar to millennials), a simple reminder of their good times can be enough for them to return in the future (think of Facebook’s “On This Day” meets retargeting). 2. Gen Z is More Fiscally Conserative: Marketers should respect their experiences Although they are young, they are not without life experience. Gen Z grew up with 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror” altering their sense of security and safety at home. The Great Recession of 2007-2009 had them watching their parents struggle through the housing crisis and its economic aftermath, that in many ways is still felt today. This manifests itself in how they view money and spending. Lincoln Financial Group goes so far as to compare them to the “Greatest Generation” that grew up during the Great Depression, further mentioning that their top three priorities are getting a job, finishing college, and safeguarding their money. Without delving deeply into the impacts of lower consumer spending on deflation, it’s clear that the economic stakes are high and that marketers have their work cut out for them in convincing this group to part with their hard earned money. In recognizing their life experience, we also need to consider their consumer experience. Understanding these key factors is vital to recognizing the need to add value to a product or service wherever possible, which brings me to my next point… 3. Aim for 1:1 Connections Omnichannel Marketing promises to deliver a consistent and seamless consumer experience at every touchpoint, regardless of channel and device. While there are some technical hurdles for marketers to overcome in order to correctly identify a consumer for a true 1:1 conversation, one way to clear these hurdles without getting bogged down in cookie or device matching is to segment consumers based on need. At each stage of the purchase decision making process, a consumer will need additional information about your product or service, and will expect to find it via your website, social media pages or search. Customer journey mapping will help you better understand the signals your customers are sending you at each stage, enabling you to meet them halfway with pull marketing tactics such as content that provides answers to FAQ’s about your products and services, or customer testimonials to highlight your top product and service benefits. Since Gen Z are digital natives with their smartphone as the centerpiece of communication, offering this information in a mobile friendly way is a must (ie. social media channels, mobile video, or opt-in SMS and email marketing vs. traditional whitepaper downloads). 4. Think Creatively and Sparingly Gen Z, not unlike every generation of kids and teenagers before them, tend to view the world as the “grass is greener somewhere else”. Media consumption offers an escape from the everyday drudgery of suburbia, school and siblings, and advertising should do the same. Millward Brown’s 2017 AdReaction study not only mentions the fact that Gen Z is “significantly more likely to skip ads, (is) turned off by invasive, interruptive formats, (and is) highly discriminating and more averse to advertising in general.” They also note that they “prefer short content and the opportunity to interact with ads” as well as recommending that “the best ways to engage them are through music and humor.” Interestingly, the same study found that they are more open to ads appearing in traditional media formats over digital, likely due to their status as “digital natives” and the tendency for some less tasteful publishers and marketers to overload the digital ecosystem with poor user experiences in favor of profits. 5. Have Something to Say Marketers may understandably be a bit gun-shy about making social commentary or borrowing from current events in the face of increasing consumer backlash across social media channels (think Pepsi and its Kendall Jenner spot), but Gen Z is especially attuned to social causes and the brands that support them. After all, they may be young, but they’ve already lived through some major historical moments, ones that will shape how they purchase and consume products and services over their next 40 to 50 years. The brands that respect and honor the world they live in will be the ones who ultimately gain their loyalty.

Exponential’s Nicole Liebmann featured on Malaysia’s Business Radio BFM 89.9FM

New Way of Mobile Engagement Nicole Liebmann, Head of Mobile for APAC and South Africa at Exponential is responsible for leading the revenue and operations for the company’s mobile solutions. Nicole shares four mobile campaigns by Exponential as case studies on the new way of mobile engagement.  

One on One: Bryan Melmed on a Better, More Relevant Ad Experience

Exponential is a "digital advertising experience provider" across desktop, laptop, and mobile, with a global footprint, says Bryan Melmed, VP of Insights Services. In this podcast, Melmed shares forceful, sometimes controversial views on big data, cross-device targeting, and programmatic — and breaks down human behavior into three intriguing layers. (more…)

Exponential’s Director of Creative Strategy Jason Bercovici published in Advertising Week on Short-Form vs. Long-Form Video

Short-Form vs Long-Form Video: The Answer is Sometimes Both For marketers, deciding between short-form and long-form video has been challenging. On one hand, consumers have short attention spans, and on the other, studies have shown that longer video can perform better. Both short and long formats have value. When deciding between the two, marketers should first consider the goal of the campaign. Goals for video campaigns can vary from upper funnel brand discovery to lower funnel clicks. Determining performance on marketing-based goals can be a bit complicated to pin down. So, advertisers often look at video completions and clickthroughs when measuring video campaign effectiveness. Clickthroughs are supposed to represent interested people who visit a site or social pages and then ingest more information about offerings. If site perusal is your goal, short video is best. Not only do short videos offer more scale, but there’s an inverse relationship between clickthroughs and longer viewing. Why produce a long video when you want people to click away rather than watch? The most popular metric for video ads is completion rate. In theory, completions represent people who attentively watch your entire video. But confirming viewers’ attention is complicated. One important variable to consider when measuring attention is whether the viewer can skip the video. Standard 15 and 30-second, non-skippable pre-roll ads have average completion rates around 70%. But formats like YouTube’s skippable TrueView or Facebook’s easy to scroll past video ads average less than 30%. Are so many more people really paying attention to non-skippable ads? Or are they tuning out while the ads play?

Considering Short-Form Video

Considering Long-Form Video

Using Short and Long-Form Together

Exponential’s Director of Creative Strategy Jason Bercovici featured in Huffington Post on Short-Form vs. Long-Form Video

Short-Form vs Long-Form Video: The Answer is Sometimes Both For marketers, deciding between short-form and long-form video has been challenging. On one hand, consumers have short attention spans, and on the other, studies have shown that longer video can perform better. Both short and long formats have value. When deciding between the two, marketers should first consider the goal of the campaign. Goals for video campaigns can vary from upper funnel brand discovery to lower funnel clicks. Determining performance on marketing-based goals can be a bit complicated to pin down. So, advertisers often look at video completions and clickthroughs when measuring video campaign effectiveness. Clickthroughs are supposed to represent interested people who visit a site or social pages and then ingest more information about offerings. If site perusal is your goal, short video is best. Not only do short videos offer more scale, but there’s an inverse relationship between clickthroughs and longer viewing. Why produce a long video when you want people to click away rather than watch? The most popular metric for video ads is completion rate. In theory, completions represent people who attentively watch your entire video. But confirming viewers’ attention is complicated. One important variable to consider when measuring attention is whether the viewer can skip the video. Standard 15 and 30-second, non-skippable pre-roll ads have average completion rates around 70%. But formats like YouTube’s skippable TrueView or Facebook’s easy to scroll past video ads average less than 30%. Are so many more people really paying attention to non-skippable ads? Or are they tuning out while the ads play?

Considering Short-Form Video

Considering Long-Form Video

Using Short and Long-Form Together

Exponential CEO Dilip DaSilva featured in Adotas on Transparency

Is Transparency The Answer To Achieving Accountable And Effective Marketing? The Answer May Surprise You Recently, Proctor and Gamble called on the media buying and selling industry to get its act together and demanded transparency into the whole supply chain. When I buy Proctor and Gamble’s products, I don’t ask them for transparency into their supply chain. In fact, I buy their products knowing that I will get high quality products at competitive prices because I can choose between many competing brands. Ad tech is also a competitive space, so why is our industry the only one where customers need supply-chain transparency? I believe the reason is that marketers and their agencies have often chosen to believe that efficiency will drive better results. A focus on efficiency means investing all your marketing through a single partner, like a trading desk or DSP, to reap the benefits of tactics such as execution simplification, deduplication, frequency control, viewability, and cost transparency. The argument for consolidating all spend through a single platform is that by eliminating waste you drive higher ROI and better results. But can focusing too much on efficiency result in less effective marketing? The tradeoff when focusing on efficiency through consolidating spend via a single platform is that you end up with less competition, slower innovation and complacency. With fewer partners, it is harder to compare partners against each other and keep them accountable. Agencies and marketers who choose efficiency over competition may have short-term gains, but will eventually regret that decision in the long-term. For example, several years ago, Proctor and Gamble decided to leverage Audience Science as their single platform, yet they recently abandoned the single platform strategy for multiple platforms. Agency holding companies like WPP decided to acquire their own tech stack, but it became challenging to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation from many ad-tech startups . All agency holding companies have used efficiency to rationalize consolidating spend with a reduced set of platforms. This may benefit the agency holding company, trading desk or DSP, and the cost-saving arguments may seem compelling to a marketer, but is it the most effective strategy for consistently driving the best results for a brand? Competitive Marketing Will Consistently Beat Efficient Marketing To remain top of mind and gain market-share over competing brands, brands need to constantly innovate. Innovation in ad tech moves quickly and how a partner performs depends on their evolving tech, algorithms, data and people. A partner that is a top performing partner one quarter may fall behind in subsequent quarters and others that may not have performed in the past may develop new algorithms or add new data to improve their performance significantly. And there are always newcomer partners with unique offerings that could drive better results. An agency that leverages the full breadth of competitive partners and startups to create a dynamic, competitive environment for the brands they represent, will consistently drive better results than an agency that focuses on efficiency and restricts their competitive environment. Achieving A Competitive Marketing Environment Leveraging partner competition to create a highly effective marketing machine requires creating a competitive environment that is both fair and transparent. By fair, all partners are measured on a level playing field, with a marketer clearly defining their objectives and selecting an attribution vendor that can accurately measure which efforts are directly impacting the brand’s desired end results. The attribution model is paramount. For example, an attribution model that does not align well with desired outcomes means that partners may focus on strategies that appear to drive results, but are not as effective. A common example is last-click attribution, which is notorious for rewarding partners who focus on lower-funnel retargeting strategies over upper-funnel prospecting strategies. Creating a level playing field means all partners have the same setup with regard to leveraging first-party data for optimization and targeting, and all partners are driving both lower-funnel retargeting strategies and upper-funnel prospecting strategies. When some partners are chosen for lower-funnel retargeting strategies, and others for prospecting, it results in an uneven playing field and undermines a key goal of creating a competitive environment. Competition is further enhanced by providing transparency to partners into how they are performing relative to other partners. Providing all partners a daily or weekly scorecard that compares partners on end result performance along with details on budget, impressions, and other metrics will go a long way towards ensuring all parties are accountable and working as hard as possible for the brand. In an ideal competitive environment, a marketer leverages four to eight partners and splits the total campaign budget into a test budget and a top-performer budget . The test budget is dedicated to testing all partners with an evenly split budget. The top-performer budget is allocated to one or two of the partners in the test pool that are consistently performing the best. If a test partner does well in a month or quarter, then they can participate in the top partner pool with their total spend incrementally increasing to ensure that they continue to drive similar performance at higher scale. The worst performing test partners should be rotated out and replaced by new partners. It is important to resist the temptation of reducing all spend to one or two top-performing partners. Although this may produce better short-term results, it reduces competition in the long-term, and does not provide a benchmark to constantly keep the top performers accountable and working hard to drive the best results. I believe that the unusual requirement for supply-chain transparency in our industry is a result of agencies and marketers placing too much emphasis on efficiency. With a reduction in partners, marketers are unsure how to keep their partners accountable and hence, the need for transparency. Yet, does transparency equal accountability? Instead, marketers should singularly focus on driving end results, and can run a far more effective and accountable marketing strategy through leveraging a dynamic, competitive environment. If any partners are inefficient, serving too many impressions or non-viewable impressions to each consumer, or are taking too much margin, their performance will suffer relative to other partners. Competition is the most effective means to keep partners accountable, so why not leverage it to consistently drive the best results?  

Exponential’s Tim Sleath is Featured in Response Magazine on Google’s Ad Filter

Ad Blockers Not Concerned With Google Ad Filter; Marketers More Wary MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Google’s announcement of its coming ad blocker for its Chrome web browser (the most-used web browser in the U.S., with a 44.5 percent market share) is spurring comments from ad blocking companies and marketers. The Wall Street Journal has reported several ad-blocking companies say they won’t be replaced by Google’s efforts. But some marketing insiders are viewing Google’s move more warily, with trepidation to the growing power of Google. Preethy Vaidyanathan, a senior vice president at Tapad, told Direct Marketing News Google’s foray into ad blocking is a conflict of interest. “This is Google’s monolithic attempt to write the rules to ad blocking, while simultaneously circumventing its own policies to ensure publishers and Google still get paid,” he said. “What marketers can learn from Google’s ad blocker launch is the importance of personalization and creativity in attracting consumers. Brands that solidly understand who their ideal customers are will be able to pivot their advertisements to provide informative, engaging and educational utility.” Udayan Bose, CEO of search marketing company NetElixir, told Direct Marketing News budgets and focus may shift toward in-app advertisements due to GoogleFilter. “Once the ad block feature gets implemented, the majority of users would not have to go for a third-party software to block ads,” Bose said. “This will effectively reduce Google’s dependency on software like Adblock Plus, and result in significant revenue growth for Google.” Bose added he believes the ad blocker will not make a big impact on AdWords/DoubleClick display ads. “In fact, the market share may marginally grow as smaller advertising platforms with borderline ad practices, like text-link ads and interstitial ads, apparently will be thrown under the bus,” he said. Direct Marketing News also spoke with Tim Sleath, vice president of product management at Exponential. He said the marketing world is seeing “the friction as the internet develops from something open into a collection of very large walled gardens – walled jungles? – with the open part of the internet increasingly marginalized – and that should give everyone pause.” And Rich Sutton with Trusted Media Brands told Direct Marketing News he supports Google’s move. “It’s in everyone’s best interest, including Google’s, to improve the audience experience and eliminate advertising that is unreasonably interruptive,” Sutton said. “This industry shift allows the ad tech ecosystem to be held accountable for creating experiences that are truly consumer-friendly.” Google says the technology is expected to arrive early in 2018 with the aim is to help publishers shift to less intrusive ad formats.

Exponential’s Tim Sleath Weighs in on Google’s Ad Blocker

Four Marketing Experts Weigh In on Google's Ad Blocker When Google announced it would launch an ad blocker for its Chrome web browser in a blog post last week, consumers who bemoan the overuse of pop-up ads likely breathed a sigh of relief. However, the marketing world viewed the move more warily, with trepidation to the growing power of Google. Currently, Google and Facebook dominate the digital advertising industry; the two companies reportedly accounted for 89 percent of all digital ad revenue growth in 2016 according to the IAB. And antitrust experts and media industry leaders are concerned about any move that would give the tech conglomerates even more market power. Google Chrome is already the most-used web browser in the US, with a 44.5% market share. According to the blog post, Google's ad blocker will be turned on by default, screening content and flagging advertisements that don't conform to standards laid out by the industry trade group Coalition for Better Ads. If a website consistently violates these standards though, the filter will then block all ads on that website. In addition to the ad blocker, Google also announced the introduction of a tool called “Funding Choices” that will allow publishers to ask readers to either disable ad blockers or pay to view content without ads — and Google would get a cut of the payment. It's this tool that has those in marketing questioning the approach, as well as, the overwhelming power the ad blocker would give Google. Here's how the marketing world responded: Preethy Vaidyanathan, SVP Product at Tapad Consumers dislike intrusive advertising, so a filter to weed out the industry's bad actors is seemingly good in theory. Advertising, however, fuels a free internet. Google's new ad blocking Chrome extension is a conflict of interest. This is Google's monolithic attempt to write the rules to ad blocking, while simultaneously circumventing its own policies to ensure publishers (and in turn, Google) still get paid. Google is writing the rules of what an "intrusive" ad means, setting up Google payment platform workarounds; they are both building the walls while collecting admission to view the gardens. Instead of acting as consumer advocates, with this extension consumers will no longer dictate the rules to content. Consumers will not be able to access certain publisher content without paying. Google's payment platforms will become the new shepherd to the internet, with the Google Chrome ad blocker creating a gated marketplace. What marketers can learn from Google's ad blocker launch is the importance of personalization and creativity in attracting consumers. Brands that solidly understand who their ideal customers are will be able to pivot their advertisements to provide informative, engaging and educational utility. Udayan Bose, CEO of search marketing company NetElixir It could mean the rise of in-app advertising. Budgets and focus may shift towards in-app advertisements due to GoogleFilter. Once the ad block feature will get implemented, the majority of user would not have to go for a third party software to block ads. This will effectively reduce Google's dependency on software like Adblock Plus, and result in significant revenue growth for Google. The ad blocker will not make a big impact on AdWords/DoubleClick display ads. In fact, the market share may marginally grow as smaller advertising platforms with borderline ad practice like text link ads, interstitial ads apparently will be thrown under the bus. While this step is definitely pro-consumer, we believe it also helps Google extend its already substantial influence and control on the industry. There are two important trends that support this step – a) extensive use of ad blockers by millennials and GenZ b) Mobile has displaced desktop as the first screen. Both these trends will only grow in the future and Google wants to increase its influence and reach therein. Tim Sleath, VP, Product Management at Exponential On the one hand, I can only applaud the move to fewer, better ads and acknowledge the Coalition for Better Ads are involved in deciding what constitutes a “bad ad”. I will shed no tears for the impact this has on Eyeo's self-appointed judge, jury, executioner approach. However, I can only lament that the option to go “ad-free” requires users to pay via Google Play…and, therefore, be logged in to transact using Google. We are seeing the friction as the internet develops from something open into a collection of very large walled gardens (walled jungles?), with the open part of the internet increasingly marginalized – and that should give everyone pause. Rich Sutton, CRO Trusted Media Brands Since the industry starting buzzing about Google's solution, I've been in favor of it. It's in everyone's best interest, including Google's, to improve the audience experience and eliminate advertising that is unreasonably interruptive. This industry shift allows the ad tech ecosystem to be held accountable for creating experiences that are truly consumer-friendly. Marketers will be challenged to incorporate more human interaction alongside their technology solutions. They'll be challenged even more so now to think like a consumer and produce experiences consumers would want to interact with. Most importantly, marketers will be challenged to develop new and innovative campaigns that engage a consumer in an authentic way and run on brand safe platforms. Google will be the driving force behind all of us to adapt our strategies and ultimately win the loyalty of the consumer.

Exponential’s Tim Sleath featured in DMNews on Google Chrome and Adblocking Software

Google Chrome to Ride Shotgun on Unacceptable Ads How offensive or annoying is that? That's a real question for those in the business of assessing what types of ads viewers might consider beyond the pale: Especially now, when ads that don't make the cut may be blocked before any human sees them. Ad blocking software is what many people rely on to stop annoying popups and noisy videos that play online when they want to watch or read something. However, those extensions required downloads and sometimes fail. They could prove far more effective if they are integral to the browser. Google has plans to do just that in Chrome, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The standards Google would apply would be based on the research of the Coalition for Better Ads. Its Initial Better Ads Standards drew on over 25,000 consumer ratings of digital ad experiences in North America and Europe, this past March. Marketers who ignore the standards, thinking that it will only affect some of their ads, may suffer unanticipated consequences. According to the Journal, Chrome may keep out “all advertising that appears on sites with offending ads, instead of the individual offending ads themselves." Like the one bad apple, one bad ad can spoil the entire marketing barrel, which is a very high price to pay for poor judgement. What do marketers think about Google getting into the ad monitoring act? Some admit that ads can be very intrusive, and they serve neither the marketer nor the viewer when they create bad experiences. If marketers don't reign themselves in, then someone else should do it for them. That's the view of Rich Sutton, CRO at Trusted Media Brands. He says: "It's in everyone's best interest, including Google's, to improve the audience experience and eliminate advertising that is unreasonably interruptive. With such a large portion of Google's revenue reliant on advertising, it makes sense the company would want more control of ad blocking options. It may be that Google is taking preemptive steps to help solve a problem that no one in the industry benefits from - a poor, intrusive advertising experience on the web." Sutton accepts that it makes sense for Google to be involved because it benefits from ad revenue directly. It also pays fees to Eyeo, the brand behind AdBlock Plus, to keep its ads unblocked. Tim Sleath, VP, product management at Exponential, points out: “Given they already pay into Eyeo's ‘acceptable ads program,' disintermediating that player and controlling the user experience makes sense." He also believes the ad guidelines will result in a better experience that ultimately, would benefit all involved (with the exception of Eyeo, of course). However, Sleath also points to a potential pitfall: “Google's big problem is making itself the judge and jury (and yes, potentially executioner) for this – it's definitely on the EU's competitiveness radar. Google will have to be scrupulous about only applying the CBA's rules completely impartially.” Along the same lines, Kate O'Loughlin, SVP of media at Tapad raises the “walled gardens” issue that she expects would be exacerbated by allowing “Google to close the ecosystem under its opaque control.” The potential to fall into the “nefarious pay-to-play model” that ad blockers apply to let only certain ads through could end up corrupting the objectivity the standards supposedly stand for. O'Loughlin is not completely pessimistic about it. She does see it forcing marketers to make necessary adjustments, “to create better ads that engage with consumers in more authentic, non-intrusive ways.” More effective ads are the result that Brian Baumgart, CEO and co-founder of Conversion Logic  anticipates as the Coalition for Better Ads extends its rearch to “provide a deeper understanding of” what appeals to customers. That discovery “could provide insights for marketers' to achieve 1:1 marketing,” he says. Just about all of us would agree that annoying ads don't do anyone any good. But the question is whether or not we will trust Google to censor them out for us. That's something that not everyone would likely agree on.

Exponential’s CEO Dilip DaSilva featured in Exchange Wire

The YouTube Boycott & Brand Management in the Age of Trump This recent incident of hundreds of brands boycotting YouTube and Google is very different from anything we have seen before. The situation all seemingly started with an article breaking the news of video ads appearing alongside extremist videos and, within a week, hundreds of brands decided to boycott YouTube. Writing exclusively for ExchangeWire, Dilip DaSilva, CEO, Exponential, asks whether this is an orchestrated event. These brands are likely not talking to each other and collectively deciding to pull out. Yet, this situation has snowballed fairly quickly, which leads us to scratch our heads wondering why. We are all puzzled, because I don’t believe this response is about brand safety alone or even about supporting terrorist organisations, as described in the initial article. I believe something else is going on and it would be helpful to understand the context. After Trump was elected, a global grassroots movement developed to boycott publications that post or support hate or fake content. Groups like Sleeping Giants have sprung up and have made it their mission to spot and boycott brands that support certain publications. No brand wants to be called out and boycotted by this grassroots movement, as it can have a major and immediate impact on their revenues. And it can have a lasting negative impact on the brand. Breitbart was the first content site that was targeted and now over 1,000+ brands have banned advertising on the site. I believe people contacted the brands to let them know they would boycott their products if they did not stop advertising on Breitbart. This grassroots movement developed and grew via social media and is global. People are fired up. It is the same movement that saw massive protests during the Women’s March in cities across the world; and is the same movement that’s flooding the phone lines of every representative in congress. People within this movement are contacting the brands and the press. Google continue to serve adSense ads on Breitbart, as they want to take a neutral stance and leave it up to the advertisers to decide where they run. Google have taken a similarly neutral stance with YouTube. The company believes that allowing advertisers to better choose on what content they run is the way they can navigate this situation. This grassroots movement cannot boycott a publisher like YouTube or Google and have much of any impact on the publisher’s bottom line. However, they can threaten to boycott the brands that support YouTube and Google. I believe this is how hundreds of brands ended up boycotting YouTube in a matter of days. Brands are clearly highly sensitive to being caught on the wrong side of this movement. It may also be possible that this grassroots movement is punishing Google because they continue to support Breitbart. In a time when power has tilted too far in favour of large corporations and the government, Trump’s presidency has become a catalyst for activating a large group of people who have just started realising how to flex their muscles. We have already seen this with people boycotting Nordstrom for carrying Ivanka’s brand and a similar boycott of Under Armor and Uber because of their CEOs’ support of Trump. Now this movement seems to be going after Google for supporting Breitbart. Given this perspective, it seems that adding better filtering to avoid inappropriate content is not going to end the boycott. As the saying goes, with all free products like YouTube, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. Google make money by attracting consumers to their content and then getting advertisers to pay to display ads to those consumers. Consumers have little power in this dynamic and Trump’s pro-business position tilts the balance even further in favour of corporations. However, the Trump presidency has activated people around the world, and consumers are connecting with each other to fight this new world order. As they fight back with their wallets, brands are having to react. What is different now is that consumers are banding together around a shared initiative and brands have to figure out how navigate this shift in power towards consumers. Google are in a tough position. They would rather not have to censor content and leave this to the advertiser. They will have to weigh whether continuing to support content like Breitbart is worth the cost of the boycott. And should they cut off Breitbart, it will only further embolden this grassroots movement. For the first time, Google have to face this new shift in power created through consumers banding together on social media. In the case of brands, they will need to be much more agile and make sure they do not get caught on the wrong side of this movement. In the past, it might have been safest to remain neutral and avoid controversy. However, with consumers who are activated and banding together, some brands may have to decide whether they need to take a position that demonstrates that their own values are aligned with the common values of this movement.

Exponential’s CEO Dilip DaSilva Talks The Youtube Boycott & Brand Management in the Age of Trump to ExchangeWire

The YouTube Boycott & Brand Management in the Age of Trump This recent incident of hundreds of brands boycotting YouTube and Google is very different from anything we have seen before. The situation all seemingly started with an article breaking the news of video ads appearing alongside extremist videos and, within a week, hundreds of brands decided to boycott YouTube. Writing exclusively for ExchangeWire, Dilip DaSilva, CEO, Exponential, asks whether this is an orchestrated event. These brands are likely not talking to each other and collectively deciding to pull out. Yet, this situation has snowballed fairly quickly, which leads us to scratch our heads wondering why. We are all puzzled, because I don’t believe this response is about brand safety alone or even about supporting terrorist organisations, as described in the initial article. I believe something else is going on and it would be helpful to understand the context. After Trump was elected, a global grassroots movement developed to boycott publications that post or support hate or fake content. Groups like Sleeping Giants have sprung up and have made it their mission to spot and boycott brands that support certain publications. No brand wants to be called out and boycotted by this grassroots movement, as it can have a major and immediate impact on their revenues. And it can have a lasting negative impact on the brand. Breitbart was the first content site that was targeted and now over 1,000+ brands have banned advertising on the site. I believe people contacted the brands to let them know they would boycott their products if they did not stop advertising on Breitbart. This grassroots movement developed and grew via social media and is global. People are fired up. It is the same movement that saw massive protests during the Women’s March in cities across the world; and is the same movement that’s flooding the phone lines of every representative in congress. People within this movement are contacting the brands and the press. Google continue to serve adSense ads on Breitbart, as they want to take a neutral stance and leave it up to the advertisers to decide where they run. Google have taken a similarly neutral stance with YouTube. The company believes that allowing advertisers to better choose on what content they run is the way they can navigate this situation. This grassroots movement cannot boycott a publisher like YouTube or Google and have much of any impact on the publisher’s bottom line. However, they can threaten to boycott the brands that support YouTube and Google. I believe this is how hundreds of brands ended up boycotting YouTube in a matter of days. Brands are clearly highly sensitive to being caught on the wrong side of this movement. It may also be possible that this grassroots movement is punishing Google because they continue to support Breitbart. In a time when power has tilted too far in favour of large corporations and the government, Trump’s presidency has become a catalyst for activating a large group of people who have just started realising how to flex their muscles. We have already seen this with people boycotting Nordstrom for carrying Ivanka’s brand and a similar boycott of Under Armor and Uber because of their CEOs’ support of Trump. Now this movement seems to be going after Google for supporting Breitbart. Given this perspective, it seems that adding better filtering to avoid inappropriate content is not going to end the boycott. As the saying goes, with all free products like YouTube, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. Google make money by attracting consumers to their content and then getting advertisers to pay to display ads to those consumers. Consumers have little power in this dynamic and Trump’s pro-business position tilts the balance even further in favour of corporations. However, the Trump presidency has activated people around the world, and consumers are connecting with each other to fight this new world order. As they fight back with their wallets, brands are having to react. What is different now is that consumers are banding together around a shared initiative and brands have to figure out how navigate this shift in power towards consumers. Google are in a tough position. They would rather not have to censor content and leave this to the advertiser. They will have to weigh whether continuing to support content like Breitbart is worth the cost of the boycott. And should they cut off Breitbart, it will only further embolden this grassroots movement. For the first time, Google have to face this new shift in power created through consumers banding together on social media. In the case of brands, they will need to be much more agile and make sure they do not get caught on the wrong side of this movement. In the past, it might have been safest to remain neutral and avoid controversy. However, with consumers who are activated and banding together, some brands may have to decide whether they need to take a position that demonstrates that their own values are aligned with the common values of this movement.

Exponential’s Tim Sleath featured in Digital Marketing Magazine on Brand Safety

Brand Safety Management Requires the Human Touch It's not often issues such as 'programmatic advertising' and 'brand safety' make the BBC national evening news, however, that's exactly what happened last month thanks to the ongoing furore surrounding brand ads appearing alongside inappropriate online content. The recent crop of big name brands withdrawing ad budget from Google/YouTube follows on from the controversial ANA report in the US last year, which flagged up the very poor levels of transparency in the programmatic advertising industry and the very high levels of mark-up being applied by media buyers. When Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) chief brand officer Marc Pritchard recently made a speech characterising the current levels of transparency in the advertising supply chain as “murky at best and fraudulent at worst”, he sounded last orders on the outdated practices of many media buyers. In his address to the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting in January, Pritchard told his audience that P&G had “come to its senses” and would no longer continue to invest in a media supply chain that was complicated, non-transparent, inefficient and, potentially, fraudulent. The global superbrand has given its agencies and media suppliers a year’s notice to clean up their acts – or else. For many, then, the game is up. Fortunately, for those intent on delivering the value, transparency and brand safety that advertisers such as P&G will increasingly demand, there is a ready-made answer in the form of machine learning. It’s ironic that while much of the media coverage of machine learning to date has positioned the technology as an existential threat to media buying firms and the jobs of those employed by them, in light of Marc Pritchard’s comments, Machine Learning may be the one thing that can actually save the beleaguered industry and restore its reputation as a valued partner to the business sector. In fact, I would argue that the capabilities of machine learning point the way forward for media buyers on how to deploy their human resources to best effect. Let me explain why. Rise of the machine – and the human The use of programmatic technologies within the delivery of ad campaigns over the past few years, has risen drastically. With this use of automation expected to increase within the next year or so, we can anticipate that it won’t be long before its influence crosses paths with the planning of campaigns, whereby machine learning will be able to displace a considerable amount of the manual time and effort involved. The reason? No human planning team of any feasible size can ever hope to replicate the capabilities of machine learning, which can quantitatively evaluate millions of individual customer journeys every hour, producing insights into consumer behaviour at a level and depth that’s never previously been attainable. The insights provided allow the machine to automatically identify and target audiences with relevant ads or messaging and deliver these at a frequency tailored to every stage of the consumer's individual journey. If media buyers are struggling to resource and execute on planning or delivery, therefore, machine learning can help. However, for the planning and delivery elements to work successfully, it is vital that they are underpinned by a solid foundation of strong supply chain management. We’ve argued before that trusting machines for planning and delivery of online ad campaigns can free up human resources to dedicate to customer experience and data strategy, but, equally, given the current industry emphasis on brand safety, machine learning can also be applied to support the processes and tasks needed to run in brand safe environments. Only human Machine learning certainly has a role to play with brand safety, but only providing you have set up a safe environment for the machine to work in. This, in practice, requires manpower. The current generation of media agency managers must decide for themselves where machine learning can be deployed successfully and which elements of service delivery require the human touch and the comprehension and intuition that only human experience can provide. For example, personalisation of marketing is one area where machine learning can help deliver a finely tuned user in real time. Leveraging multiple data points to iterate creative or landing pages is an effective way to ensure the most relevant and helpful path to purchase. However, other elements of marketing that should not be automated are the brand story and promise, the vehicle that brand message is delivered in, and the context in which that brand message appears. We know that the art of persuasion is inherently human, and no machine can replicate the emotional level in which we make purchase decisions - that ‘gut feeling’. The creative or delivery mechanism in which we bring our message to the user must respect their privacy and their sense of security in a non-intrusive way, and the message must be delivered in a context that makes sense so that all elements a brand’s consumer outreach are in perfect accord. The best way to ensure this is through having a human oversee the emotive aspects of marketing, its creative design, and, crucially, its ultimate placement on media channels that complement the original message. We can rely on machines to help us gather data and make rational decisions, but true persuasive balance is struck when we inject those elements that make us human into the mix and come up with a message that it at once both practical and provocative. If you are a client of a media agency, like Marc Pritchard of P&G, it’s time to challenge your agencies and vendors to embrace the benefits of machine learning and redeploy human resources to help deliver the brand safety, transparency and value for money you need.  

Exponential’s Tim Sleath’s Feature on Brand Safety in Digital Marketing Magazine

Brand Safety Management Requires the Human Touch It's not often issues such as 'programmatic advertising' and 'brand safety' make the BBC national evening news, however, that's exactly what happened last month thanks to the ongoing furore surrounding brand ads appearing alongside inappropriate online content. The recent crop of big name brands withdrawing ad budget from Google/YouTube follows on from the controversial ANA report in the US last year, which flagged up the very poor levels of transparency in the programmatic advertising industry and the very high levels of mark-up being applied by media buyers. When Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) chief brand officer Marc Pritchard recently made a speech characterising the current levels of transparency in the advertising supply chain as “murky at best and fraudulent at worst”, he sounded last orders on the outdated practices of many media buyers. In his address to the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting in January, Pritchard told his audience that P&G had “come to its senses” and would no longer continue to invest in a media supply chain that was complicated, non-transparent, inefficient and, potentially, fraudulent. The global superbrand has given its agencies and media suppliers a year’s notice to clean up their acts – or else. For many, then, the game is up. Fortunately, for those intent on delivering the value, transparency and brand safety that advertisers such as P&G will increasingly demand, there is a ready-made answer in the form of machine learning. It’s ironic that while much of the media coverage of machine learning to date has positioned the technology as an existential threat to media buying firms and the jobs of those employed by them, in light of Marc Pritchard’s comments, Machine Learning may be the one thing that can actually save the beleaguered industry and restore its reputation as a valued partner to the business sector. In fact, I would argue that the capabilities of machine learning point the way forward for media buyers on how to deploy their human resources to best effect. Let me explain why. Rise of the machine – and the human The use of programmatic technologies within the delivery of ad campaigns over the past few years, has risen drastically. With this use of automation expected to increase within the next year or so, we can anticipate that it won’t be long before its influence crosses paths with the planning of campaigns, whereby machine learning will be able to displace a considerable amount of the manual time and effort involved. The reason? No human planning team of any feasible size can ever hope to replicate the capabilities of machine learning, which can quantitatively evaluate millions of individual customer journeys every hour, producing insights into consumer behaviour at a level and depth that’s never previously been attainable. The insights provided allow the machine to automatically identify and target audiences with relevant ads or messaging and deliver these at a frequency tailored to every stage of the consumer's individual journey. If media buyers are struggling to resource and execute on planning or delivery, therefore, machine learning can help. However, for the planning and delivery elements to work successfully, it is vital that they are underpinned by a solid foundation of strong supply chain management. We’ve argued before that trusting machines for planning and delivery of online ad campaigns can free up human resources to dedicate to customer experience and data strategy, but, equally, given the current industry emphasis on brand safety, machine learning can also be applied to support the processes and tasks needed to run in brand safe environments. Only human Machine learning certainly has a role to play with brand safety, but only providing you have set up a safe environment for the machine to work in. This, in practice, requires manpower. The current generation of media agency managers must decide for themselves where machine learning can be deployed successfully and which elements of service delivery require the human touch and the comprehension and intuition that only human experience can provide. For example, personalisation of marketing is one area where machine learning can help deliver a finely tuned user in real time. Leveraging multiple data points to iterate creative or landing pages is an effective way to ensure the most relevant and helpful path to purchase. However, other elements of marketing that should not be automated are the brand story and promise, the vehicle that brand message is delivered in, and the context in which that brand message appears. We know that the art of persuasion is inherently human, and no machine can replicate the emotional level in which we make purchase decisions - that ‘gut feeling’. The creative or delivery mechanism in which we bring our message to the user must respect their privacy and their sense of security in a non-intrusive way, and the message must be delivered in a context that makes sense so that all elements a brand’s consumer outreach are in perfect accord. The best way to ensure this is through having a human oversee the emotive aspects of marketing, its creative design, and, crucially, its ultimate placement on media channels that complement the original message. We can rely on machines to help us gather data and make rational decisions, but true persuasive balance is struck when we inject those elements that make us human into the mix and come up with a message that it at once both practical and provocative. If you are a client of a media agency, like Marc Pritchard of P&G, it’s time to challenge your agencies and vendors to embrace the benefits of machine learning and redeploy human resources to help deliver the brand safety, transparency and value for money you need.  

Exponential’s Tim Sleath Featured in Marketing Tech on Transparency

Solving Transparency: what do you mean by 'transparency'? I am often asked these days about our stance on transparency – the subject comes up in RFPs and has become the subject du jour in the same way as engagement, attribution and viewability. As with these other trends, the term has been forced to carry more baggage than it was originally intended to. Let’s recap on the transparency debate. It stems from the ANA Transparency Report of May 2016, which was specifically about advertisers being misled  by agencies who may not be acting in their best interests. This was when the fire started. However, it’s important to note that there was smoke long before this as far back as May 2011.

Cost and measurement

Proving genuine value

Exponential’s Doug Conely on Survival in the Age of Machine Learning

If you’re currently employed as a media planner or media buyer, there’s a very good chance that you won’t finish this decade in the same role. The reason? (more…)

Exponential’s Rick Abell featured in Digiday’s “WTF is VPAID?”

VPAID has two big advantages compared to the standard VAST video script: Interactivity and measurement. "VAST is for your vastly vanilla type of creatives, whereas publishers that adopt VPAID will get paid because it allows their video players to accept more ad types", said Rick Abell, vp of global publisher development for ad intelligence firm Exponential.

(more…)

Exponential featured in Digiday: Domain Spoofing Remains an Ad Fraud Problem

Because programmatic advertising has automated so much of media, more and more marketing dollars are underwriting fraud without advertisers’ knowledge. One major trick unscrupulous publishers are using is domain spoofing. While not exactly new, domain spoofing is getting into the public eye thanks to the rise of fake news.

Domain spoofing remains a huge threat to programmatic, by Yuyu Chen

Because programmatic advertising has automated so much of media, more and more marketing dollars are underwriting fraud without advertisers’ knowledge. One major trick unscrupulous publishers are using is domain spoofing. While not exactly new, domain spoofing is getting into the public eye thanks to the rise of fake news.

The recent “Methbot” scheme — which spoofed more than 6,000 premium publishers in the U.S. and generate as much as $5 million in fraudulent revenue per day — was the first public display of this risk. The way it works is that a buyer may see the URL for reputablewebsite.com (be it CNN or Huffington Post or any number of sites out there) but, in reality, is buying from a completely unrelated site, disreputablewebsite.com.

“Methbot was just one form of domain spoofing. It was unfortunately treated as a one-off incident, and industry attention subsequently died off,” said Rick Abell, vp of global publisher development for ad intelligence firm Exponential. “There are many more Methbot-type bots out there that have not yet been detected or reported on that are causing just as much damage.”

Since a publisher creates the bid request by itself, the publisher can put whatever URL, location and content on the page it wants, explained George Levin, CEO and co-founder for ad tech firm GetIntent. But domain spoofing isn’t just about fake news. It is one of the major underlying problems of programmatic, according to people interviewed for this article.

“I see lots of inventory from our 55 supply-side platform partners that has mismatched domain information and page information,” said Levin. “SSPs should have an algorithm to detect this problem, but many flow it to demand-side platforms. SSPs and DSPs can keep their eyes closed and feel comfortable because clients don’t know this anyways.”

Brands typically don’t receive log-level data from their agencies, so they don’t know what they are buying, said Mike Driscoll, CEO for analytics firm Metamarkets. For an advertiser, it boils down to how closely it works with ad partners who are connected with the end publisher, said Exponential’s Abell.

Publishers put their inventory up on an ad exchange, letting hundreds of parties bid for that impression. If an SSP wins the impression, it usually doesn’t serve ads directly by itself — it optimizes yield by letting hundreds of ad networks, other SSPs and DSPs bid on this impression. Then an ad network could put together a site list and includes all sites through that SSP, and then passes it off as its own site list, saying that it represents those sites. This ad network might resell the impression to another ad network and on and on until someone finally serves an advertiser into the impression, he explained.

“If any of those parties along the way misrepresent their inventory, domain spoofing could happen,” noted Abell. “The more hops there are, the more risk that one of the partners along the way is doing something unsavory. This also means their tag is nested in several iframe layers deep.”

Blacklists and whitelists — used by advertisers to block undesirable sites — wouldn’t help because those approaches can hardly verify an impression. Since a bid request has to go through many hoops (a tag within a tag within a tag), it is difficult for even verification vendors to catch fake domains, he said.

Stuart MacDougall, chief technology officer for performance marketing firm SourceKnowledge, thinks that fake domains are more of human negligence than an engineering problem.“Sometimes people just don’t check,” he said. “Brands outsource programmatic to agencies. Agencies are going through trading desks and buying a bunch of ad traffic without looking carefully because the supply chain is just too long.”

If people cared, the industry would have done a lot to improve ad fraud and fake news. But buying cheap media at scale is still what everyone is looking for today.

Machine learning and the customer journey

Machine learning and the customer journey by Doug Conely

As we dive into 2017, the marketing industry conversation around big data has evolved into a discussion on the growing use of machine learning and the inevitable disruption this will create among planning and campaign delivery teams.

Over the past few years, those working in manual campaign delivery have already felt the impacts of programmatic technologies. Over the next twelve months and beyond, we can also expect automation to extend its reach into manual campaign planning, thanks to the widespread adoption of machine learning. In fact, as the benefits of machine learning become more widely understood, brands are likely to demand a change of their agencies.

The reason? Machines can quantitatively evaluate the consumer journey of millions of individual customers more quickly, efficiently, and effectively than any human planning team could ever hope to replicate, producing valuable insights into consumer behavior at a depth and level of detail that was never previously possible. These insights, in turn, can then be used by the machine to automatically deliver relevant messaging to consumers at a frequency appropriate to their stage of the consumer journey.

Machine learning will displace audience planning and manual campaign optimisation thanks to its ability to automatically adjust delivery based on the consumer journey, driving higher frequency messaging to high intent users and delivering lower frequency to users showing enough interest signals to justify targeting with brand awareness messages.

For many agencies, the main barrier to the adoption of machine learning will be internal skepticism about the ability to automate campaign planning and optimization activity in a sophisticated way. Others may initially reject the introduction of machine learning simply because they don't understand the process involved.

What's more, my organization's own journey with machine learning has shown us that, as the algorithmic complexity increases and results improve, it can get harder to explain why the automated decisions are being taken, further mystifying the subject for many.

For this reason, here are few conceptual steps to help explain the way that machine learning works in practice.

Machine learning can expose the breadth and depth of consumer passions and needs

Ad platforms can access a range of anonymised audience data including demographics and location but we find the most useful, or predictive, are user interests. Manual planning processes most often look at subtle differences between high-level interests, like sport or cars, but online interests can reveal the true depth of passion or need. For example, an interest in "football" is more insightful than "sport," while interest in "Manchester United" or even "Jose Mourinho" exposes real passion that is a stronger signal for brands. This increases the range of interests available from dozens to tens of thousands, making automation necessary.

We can build an anonymous picture of a person's interests and needs

For an individual, these interests can be associated with their anonymous device profile. At a given point in time, the profile describes their observed breadth and depth of interests and needs. A newer profile, a result of newer cookies or devices, will be relatively sparse, but older profiles will contain a range of interests where the recency and depth of interest indicate current passions and needs. New needs show up in real time while old interests fade away.

The consumer journey for each brand plays out through their changing interests

For a given brand, we have seen how these consumer interests and needs can evolve over time, as consumers move from awareness to consideration to intent, from "low lift" (or "low probability to convert relative to the average") to "high lift" for the brand as the interest signals increase in depth.

For instance, take a last-minute booking for a hotel break. The first time a hotel brand might be alerted to this is from a search or visit to their site. However, underlying the booking is a consumer need that is identifiable (such as the desire to attend a nearby concert or exhibition) and the machine can identify such triggers and use them to include individual anonymous consumers into a "consideration" set.

Machine learning can understand the relevance of the brand to each person

At this stage, machine learning can now consider the entire observed population and map it against buckets of intent from "high" to "low" for an individual brand. This shows how likely each user is to buy from your brand in the next 30 days relative to the average.

Crucially, though, people move between the buckets in real time. So, in aggregate, people will move up into higher buckets as display new interests but also move down as interests wane. This is the aggregate picture that the machine sees for the purposes of delivery. At this point, the machine doesn't care about causation (why the user is doing something), just correlation (the fact that statistically they are more interested and therefore the advertising is more relevant to them).

In this way, machine learning allows brands to create a responsive, personalized ad delivery strategy for literally thousands of individual customers simultaneously and in real time.

Machine learning can automatically deliver against the brand audience

By delivering at a higher frequency to your most likely prospects, you ensure that your brand's message is prominent as the customer reaches the critical decision point and not the message of your competitors. Where these audiences are scarce, the machine will look for lower lift audiences to stay on pace and on budget. Thus, the campaign is exposed to a broader reach with lower lift to consumers with some potential to make a purchase in the future. This, of course, is the object of most branding campaigns in the first place, so that fact that machine learning can provide this automatically means that the writing is on the wall for manual planning and optimization teams.

Working through the stages outlined above, therefore, is the automated equivalent of the traditional ad campaign planning process, but with results that are faster and more cost-efficient, as well as insights that are far deeper, more complex and potential far more commercially valuable than anything human planners could ever produce.

If you are a client of a media planning and buying agencies, it's time to challenge your agencies and vendors to embrace the benefits of machine learning, deliver on the promise of programmatic and automation, and free up their human resource to concentrate on customer experience and strategic data management.

Pre-Inauguration Anxiety By the Numbers – How President Trump is Affecting Consumer Sentiment

Pre-Inauguration Anxiety By the Numbers – How President Trump is Affecting Consumer Sentiment by Bryan Melmed, VP Insights, Exponential

A dramatic political transition is mesmerizing the nation. It’s not so much that things are changing, it’s that the change was entirely unexpected -- and when it comes to uncertainty, Trump is the gift that keeps on giving.

As a result, a significant percentage of the U.S. population is exhibiting signs of heightened anxiety. We see it in our data, in the aggregate, across millions of anonymous user profiles, and almost entirely in Democratic areas.

In heavily Democratic areas such as New York and San Francisco, traffic on sites offering support for anxiety is up 32.7 percent. We see 21.1 percent more users are looking for relief from insomnia. Interest in other mental health issues is up 12.2 percent. (This is especially telling as interest in most health conditions has fallen; people anxious about external issues tend to ignore their health.) In Republican areas, these indicators are all flat to negative.

It’s a challenging environment in which marketers will struggle to stay positive, seem relevant, and somehow capture the attention of a restless populace. Here is some advice.

Consumers will stick to their routine

For most individuals, anxiety isn’t readily apparent. Low-level anxiety can simply keep people in their routine. That’s a problem if you’re in the business of changing consumer habits.

We found that anxious consumers are 23.1 percent less likely to change their phone plan and 2.9 percent less likely to consider a new credit card. They are even more likely to stick with familiar television shows and same music, being 32.9 and 50.3 percent less likely to try something new, respectively.

Seeking control

Another common response by anxious people is a focus on what gives them a sense of control. For example, our data shows that debt reduction planning jumped 25.6 percent in Democratic areas, but remained flat in Republican strongholds. Content related to home cooking and DIY projects were up 22.3 percent and 12.7 percent respectively. Readers fled from issues they couldn’t control -- a range of topics that included politics, the weather, and even hair loss.

Avoiding risk

Anxiety makes people especially averse to risk, and consequently they avoid new commitments. After the election, interest in moving dropped 43.1 percent. Content on university courses saw 16.9 percent less traffic. 25.3 percent fewer people resolved to quit smoking.

The impact on relationships was especially stark. Dating sites had 17.1 percent less traffic and there was a 52 percent drop in wedding planning. Content on new pregnancies was down 18.1 percent. (Conversely, there was a 23 percent jump in birth control topics.)

Acting modestly

In a time of anxiety, conspicuous consumption is clearly passé. Interest in dining and nightlife in Democratic areas fell 16.7 percent, even as it grew slightly in Republican areas. New car content was 12.1 percent less popular. Coverage of high fashion fell 32.5 percent, 16.9 percent fewer people were interested in luxury handbags, and there were 13.1 percent less jewelry buyers. Some of this money shifted to discreet indulgences including spa visits, sleepwear, and home audio equipment.

Lessons from the past

We are witnessing a sudden but not unheard of shift in consumer sentiment. Marketers should be forgiven for feeling whiplash, especially in that these events have a personal impact as well. Unfortunately, many of our instinctual reactions are wrong. Consumers want practical solutions, not emotional reassurance. Cutting ad spend weakens market share and prolongs an eventual recovery. The best strategies involve adaptive positioning, clear messaging, and even more careful targeting.

The good news is that what we are going through is hardly unprecedented and by international standards not even that severe. Still, it’s a sober moment that should command your attention. The turbulence of the next few months will serve as a test that puts some marketers ahead and leaves others far behind. 

MediaPost features Exponential’s Bryan Melmed: Is Your Data Telling the Truth?

Everyone lies at one point or another -- especially when they are asked to describe themselves. Marketers tend to rely on surface demographics such as age, gender and income, but unfortunately, people even fudge these for a multitude of reasons. How can advertisers be assured that the data they’re receiving is accurate? One way you can be more confident in the data is by looking at its origin. Some sources are simply better than others. Let’s take a look at a few that should be approached with some skepticism. Dating sites Many free dating sites make the bulk of their money selling user information to advertisers, ignoring the fact that a dating site is hardly the best environment to glean the truth. In fact, a University of Wisconsin study found that about 81% of people who are dating online are lying about at least one physical attribute -- height, weight or age -- all factors that an outside party could notice right away. If that many people are lying about something easily observed, how many are willing to lie about things that are not so obvious? If you’re the one purchasing this data, be cautious -- as if you were on a first date with a stranger. Entrepreneurship-oriented Sites Entrepreneurs have lofty ambitions, and generally fall somewhere between wildly optimistic and delusional.  Entrepreneurship-oriented sites are good places to spot “liars” online, especially when the truth is a barrier between an amazing idea and its next round of venture capital. According to our research, even personal income data from self-styled entrepreneurs is significantly inflated. For example, users on venture capital sites are 8.55 times more likely to over-report their income, closely followed by funding sites (8.51x), franchise sites (7.73x), and startup content (7.42x). Job and Career Websites Another place where users tend to overstate their current or most recent salary is on job and career sites. Our research shows that income data from users on these sites is 6.28 times more likely to be inflated. This makes sense, as users here are likely presenting an ideal professional persona to make them more attractive to recruiters -- and more worthy of a higher salary at their next gig. But this is not good news for advertisers who gather income data on these sites. Loan Management Sites On the other side of spectrum, there are places where people are actually underestimating their income: loan management sites. According to our data, people are 8.56 times more likely to underreport their income on student loan sites, and 9.75 times more on general debt sites. Debt can be such a heavy load that it skews perception about all financial matters.  So unfortunately, income data here is also misleading. What’s the solution? Yes, people lie -- but an understanding of the psychology of why is half the battle. If your customer feels burdened with debt, that’s now your reality. Advertisers need to meet claims about data with a wary eye. Approach your data with discretion instead of blind faith or wild assumptions. You may just have your most successful campaign yet.