Once an afterthought in martech, affiliate marketing is rapidly becoming a darling in the digital ecosystem. In the latest Advertising Week article, William Hamer-Jones, VP of Partnerships & Affiliate, outlines how data technology is strengthening its position. He also discusses to how unlock the ability to make real connections to real people and integrate affiliate marketing with your wider marketing mix for valuable, measurable outcomes. Read more to learn how this channel is harnessing data to create new opportunities and overcome barriers in the marketing landscape. 

View the full article: https://advertisingweek.com/are-you-taking-a-data-driven-approach-to-affiliate-marketing/

with Elizabeth Schwartz, Mike Miller, and Nancy Hall about the depreciation of third-party cookies, new regulations and consumer trends to learn how Matterkind helps advertisers reach consumers amid dynamic adtech industry changes.

View the full article: https://blogs.oracle.com/advertising/post/agency-spotlight-matterkind-helping-amid-dynamic-adtech-industry-changes

By the end of 2020 direct mail was a $16bn market, with a core group of loyal industries that continued to spend, such as finance and telecommunications, an engaged audience that spends time opening and reading mail, and new product developments, like Informed Delivery and advanced addressable mail, that integrate aspects of digital media and help position direct mail for the future.

Matterkind UK is proud to have achieved certification for the IAB Gold Standard 2.0. The IAB Gold Standard is an initiative which aims to improve the digital advertising experience, helps compliance with the GDPR and ePrivacy law, tackles ad-fraud and upholds brand safety. We encourage all of our partners to get involved, and certify in this program, so that we can help ensure the sustainability of the digital ecosystem. Matterkind is built on trust and transparency, and we always want to be able to demonstrate this to our clients. 

Krunal Patel, General Manager, Matterkind UK, “We are delighted to have achieved certification in the IAB Gold Standard. At Matterkind, we have robust practices and it’s always rewarding to know that this is validated by an initiative which is raising the standards for the industry”.

Within this program, we are also advocating for specific initiatives from the IAB Tech Lab; ads.txt, sellers.json, and OpenRTB supplychain object. These initiatives are important for increasing transparency and trust in the digital advertising ecosystem.

What is Ads.Txt?

The mission of the ads.txt project is simple: Increase transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Ads.txt stands forAuthorized Digital Sellers and is a simple, flexible and secure method that publishers and distributors can use to publicly declare the companies they authorize to sell their digital inventory. Also, and importantly, there is the app-ads.txt initiative which seeks to solve the same problem for mobile and OTT applications. More information can be found here.

What is sellers.json?

sellers.json provides a mechanism to enable buyers to discover who the entities are that are either direct sellers of, or intermediaries in, the selling of digital advertising. More information can be found here. 

What is SupplyChain object?

The SupplyChain object enables buyers to see all parties who are selling or reselling a given bid request. More information can be found here.

A new blog post last week by Google quickly made headlines in national news media, putting the focus back on the upcoming loss of third-party cookies. David Temkin, Google’s Director of Product Management for Ads Privacy and Trust, reaffirmed that Google plans to end support for cookies in its Chrome browser next year. Temkin and Google were also clear they will not be joining other initiatives to replace alternate user-based identifiers – such as UID 2.0 – that track cross-website behavior on an individual level.

In this blog post, IPG’s Arun Kumar offers his take on the news and how IPG agencies will be prepared to help brands navigate this change, while continuing to advocate for a balanced and respectful approach to marketing that delivers value to individuals and businesses and respects people’s rights.

What was announced?

Google announced that it is targeting mid-2022 for the removal of third-party cookies from its Chrome browser. In our conversations with Google in advance of its announcement, Google assured us of its continued support of the third-party cookie in Chrome until the standards bodies have agreed on a solution for delivering relevant ads and the industry has had time to implement those standards.

Google is encouraged by the results from early tests by the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which is a privacy-focused solution that aims to deliver relevant ads “by clustering large groups of people with similar interests.” Accounts are anonymized, grouped into interests, and user information is processed on-device rather than broadcast across the web. Google has been simulating transactions and believes FLoC can be an effective replacement signal for third-party cookies. Google will make FLoC-based cohorts available for testing this month.

What is the expected impact of Google’s announcement?

If, like us, you have been following Google’s positioning in the market, this news isn’t “new.” We always knew Google was going to limit the use of third-party data and would have a solution that only aggregates data outside its walls.

This blog post will certainly reinvigorate the attention on Google’s commitment to third-party cookie deprecation and seems to add urgency to the standards body, W3C, to align on standards for reaching audiences with relevance in a post-cookie world.

Google has confirmed that once this is in place, it will no longer develop against third-party offerings. This can be challenging for partners and clients that rely on third-party environments like DMPs to help facilitate the translation of their audience approaches.

What does it mean for Acxiom, Kinesso, Matterkind, and all IPG agencies?

We are committed to ethical data use, digital responsibility, and conscious marketing, ensuring a balanced, respectful, and accountable approach to marketing that delivers value to individuals and businesses and respects the rights of people.

We appreciate that Google’s approach is standards-based and is supportive of its alignment with the work of bodies like W3C. In particular, we welcome the progress being made around FLoC. We trust this commitment from Google means it will continue to support the use of third-party cookies in Chrome until the standards bodies have agreed on the solution, and the industry has had time to implement it. In short, we are trusting that the final industry-based approach will indeed address the needs of the industry.

It is encouraging to hear Google believes all of this can be achieved by mid-2022, though non-FLoC approaches appear to be moving more slowly, which could conceivably mean the timeline slips to 2023.

We look forward to working with Google to test and evaluate these new approaches and solutions. We will begin testing its privacy sandbox this Q2 and are among one of the first groups being allowed early access and testing. We will be ready and prepared if Google does, in fact, hold to the announced timeline of mid-2022.

We will be working with Google on alternative approaches over the next 12-18 months to identify opportunities that allow us to scale audience buying within the Google environment. This merely puts additional emphasis on how we understand and translate first-party data assets. We are also working closely with publishers as part of our addressable marketplace initiative, which would qualify as first-party context.

With the real-time buying of addressable audiences firmly in place and with audience capabilities quickly expanding, how do you enable a real- time performance to improve real- time results?   How do you implement a faster feedback loop?

It’s a simple question and often a throwaway buzz-phrase, but the real application requires brand investment and can deliver tremendous results. To build a faster feedback loop, it requires coordination between internal and external teams, technologies and data, and it needs to be specifically relevant to your brand.

Without a solid foundation, your measurement structure will eventually collapse.

So where should YOU begin? Start by breaking down Faster Feedback Loop from your perspective:

Faster: Everyone is capable of moving faster speed with organizational and operational efficiency. If there is work to do here, this is where you begin as it’s the foundation for enabling faster feedback. You will know if there is work to be done if:

1. Silos exist between data, analytics, media, marketing, strategy or measurement

2. Clear process and ownership plans are not in place (Hello RACI)

3. An established data governance approach is lacking

4. The roles, owners and use cases for your MarTech/AdTech are not clear

Feedback: Understanding what data is possible to secure from active campaigns is almost as important as knowing what you need. You can determine what you need by clearly defining the end goal. Is it acquiring more customers, better customers or other brands’ customers? Once you have your need defined, then confirm the data is available to you. If your end goal or data available is not firmly established, this is where you begin. You will know to start here:

1. Alignment between internal teams on the ultimate business goal does not exist

2. You do not have access to/ownership of performance/media data (via DCM, DSPs)

3. Data is not currently being collected or organized in a usable manner

Loop: Defining how the data will be collected, processed and applied is the end game. The elements above provide the foundation to developing the ‘loop,’ which is a connection between the data collection, procession and application in your MarTech and AdTech. If you have elements above established, this is where you start. Establishing the loop is the most bespoke step of the phase, as it’s dependent on the teams and tech you currently have in place.

A faster feedback loop is fundamentally about the close alignment of data and activation to drive better consumer experiences and better business outcomes, and requires the fundamentals to be in place.
The benefits are clear for media performance – true in campaign performance feedback on performance tied to a business goal drives better media performance – but, there are additional benefits. Insights gained through the feedback loop can inform other disciplines of media and creative. A faster feedback loop surfacing consumer response, enables businesses to be more responsive to quickly changing consumer behavior.

Afterall, as Mark Twain said, “The secret of getting ahead, is getting started.”

Popularity of streaming or OTT (Over The Top) services and CTV (Connected TV) devices is now mainstream. It may be hard to remember a time before streaming services existed in our lives, but there’s actually quite an interesting history that has already unfolded. As we all know, there is an abundance of choices available to us as viewers. Market leaders such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video have been joined by dozens of other services, such as Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, and Quibi.

Let’s look back at how the OTT & CTV industry has grown and what it means for the advertising industry.

On Demand On Your Terms:

Netflix started in 1997 to disrupt the market leader of renting DVDs/video tapes, Blockbuster, which rented DVDs/video tapes via stores; Netflix did it by mail. In 1999 Netflix announced its new subscription model, $15.95 per month, which allowed Netflix members to rent up to four movies at a time, with no return-by dates. In 2000 Netflix abandoned late fees and return-by dates in favor of a monthly subscription plan priced at $19.95 per month. I attribute the main reason of Netflix success to their efforts of delivering better customer experience and starting a subscription service. In 2007, Netflix expanded its business with the introduction of a streaming service, while retaining its mail-order rental service. Blockbuster also started a streaming business that year, as well as running a DVD rentals business through its stores. Blockbuster tried several streaming services, but nothing took off. For instance, in 2011, it started Blockbuster Movie Pass with Dish Network, providing access to a streaming service, movies and games-by-mail for $10 per month. But the package was only available for subscribers of Dish Network. The rest is history. Netflix became the de facto leader of the OTT industry while Blockbuster diminished.

Hello (Connected) TV:

The growth of the CTV industry is also impressive. In the early days of streaming, most audiences connected their PCs to their TVs. Viewer preference and desire to watch premium content on a big screen led to the genesis of the CTV industry. Netflix fueled the adoption of CTV devices by creating and distributing the Netflix app to all available CTV devices. In fact, after Netflix decided not to build its own video player, businessman and previous employer Anthony Wood left the company and started Roku, launching its first device in 2008. Netflix was smart to build up scale of CTV devices that could stream their services, while paying device makers very lucrative incentives for preferential placement in their UI and a button on remote controls to increase ease of use and adoption.

Big Screen Gets Big Attention:

Apple launched Apple TV in 2007. It was designed to feed a big-screen TV with the movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, and photos that were on your Mac or PC. Samsung launched the first Internet connected TV in 2008 and rebranded it to Smart TV in 2010. The promise of Samsung Smart TVs was to offer all streaming apps in one place and using a single remote control. Amazon took a different path to becoming a leader in both OTT & CTV industry by launching different video services, starting with Amazon Unbox in 2006. Amazon Unbox evolved to Amazon Video On Demand, then to Amazon Instant Video, to Amazon Video, and finally to Amazon Prime Video in 2018. It took Amazon only 12 years to transform their brand and finalize their offerings. However, Amazon has accumulated significant scale of Fire TV devices in the last six years.

Enter, the Platform:

The initial business model for CTV device manufacturers like Samsung and Roku was to sell devices. For Apple and Amazon, it was to keep their services (iTunes & Prime) relevant and reputable. The business models have evolved, and Samsung, Roku, and Amazon have built advertising platforms to complement their business as their margins on devices are very thin. CTV ad platforms have been filling the gap between linear and digital advertising in the era of TV audience erosion and finding a similar audience in digital. CTV ad platforms offer similar functions and capabilities as digital advertising and deliver lean back experience with premium content. The platforms offer audience targeting, better reporting, measurement, server-side ad insertion (SSAI), ability to use VAST tags, and interactive ads, just to highlight a few features that are table stake in digital advertising.

Connecting the Dots (and Spots):

Advertising on OTT services and CTV device have been growing, but it still has some challenges. OTT/CTV advertising is fragmented and needs operational standards for smooth implementation.  Additionally, OTT/CTV advertising lacks standard ID for audience targeting and measurement. Each platform has different IDs, and where & how buyers can use the IDs are different from platform to platform. Most OTT/CTV ad platforms still fail to report content & apps that an ad ran on. The other challenge is that different parts of an agency buys OTT/CTV ads. This is one of the impediments to faster OTT/CTV adoption. A digital team would assert that targeting disciplines and a focus on buying audience is a more relevant skill set for digital buyers than TV buyers who have historically focused on buying GRPs. On the other hand, TV buyers believe it is their purview to supplement TV reach and reach the viewers that are not watching linear television leveraging OTT/CTV.

The origin of OTT services and CTV devices was rooted in the desire of viewers wanting to watch their favorite content whenever & however they want. There is research showing that people prefer and engage with relevant ads delivered to them without disrupting their viewing experience. I am hopeful and excited that OTT/CTV advertising can deliver that experience consumers are looking for, and it will be advantageous for brands that leverage all of the capabilities of OTT/CTV advertising.

Across the digital marketing and advertising space, there have been many noteworthy announcements around how advertising is being disrupted by the death of the third-party cookie. Including for example, upcoming changes to the Chrome browser announced by Google and now Apple’s announcement of a new consent framework to the mobile ID that is expected in iOS 14 this year.

Kinesso is our partner and parent company. Read the original article on Kinesso.com

The proliferation of location-driven apps, smartphones and IoT-enabled devices has resulted in a plethora of data in just a few short years. And the volume of location data is set for explosive growth. Just think of all the apps you use every day that require your location such as Seamless, Airbnb, Tinder, Uber, Waze, Snapchat, Instagram, Hotel Tonight, TaskRabbit and Amazon to name a few. Each of these apps pinpoint where consumers are at a specific time. Location-targeted ad spend is projected to reach $35.5 billion by 2021 and $38.7 billion by 2022, roughly 45% of total mobile ad spend.

Kinesso is our partner and parent company. Read the original article on Kinesso.com

Over the past year, I’ve seen a lot of exciting technology come together across Kinesso’s media measurement and optimization capabilities. One area that is particularly exciting is scaling experiments to drive incremental ROI optimization, and I hope to convince you to get excited about this area too. 

Experiments are improving

When I first started in media, it was difficult to garner excitement about experiments. They were often underwhelming on insights, slow, and expensive. Think back to those Spot TV DMA tests and how long it took to align on test parameters, wait for the test to complete, analyze the results, and debug confounding factors like localized promotions. 

Kinesso is our partner and parent company. Read the original article on Kinesso.com