It’s impossible to start the wrap of the week that was without touching on the growing noise around Brand Safety on YouTube and Google Display Network (GDN) and the advertisers who have pulled their spend. It’s a good reminder that everyone should be using 3rd party verification and we should be proactively monitoring reports and all partners.
How is Google responding? Google is actively working to address all brand safety. The Google US blog has published promises to expand on Brand Safety with “new tools” and “increased resources”. We’ll see what this means.
Now on the other news:
- Adobe had their annual digital summit last week and are now firmly in the “Marketing/Advertising” cloud space. The business case they’re presenting is somewhat compelling, especially given they have integrations on the cable/broadcast side; plus they’re trying to be data neutral and not take a position in monetizing data (compared to someone like Oracle). Adobe’s offering sits across their creative and analytics offerings (so they’re offering planning, optimization, and creative tools), which is highly relevant to UM as we have more than a few clients that sit on this stack e.g. US Army, BMW, CVS, FCA, GoPro, Hershey, Hulu, J&J, and Sony (so expect Adobe to have a few direct client conversations). I’m working with Adobe on a date where they can come into each office to present their new story and what it means for clients and how we can best jointly partner/engage. Also, don’t forget that TubeMogul (now owned by Adobe) will now sit in the Advertising Cloud product set.
- Foursquare‘s enterprise offering has been announced. The CEO has an exhaustive write up here. The offering sits somewhere between what a Placed offer, but with a higher sample audience given Foursquare SDK integration into a lot of apps (Snapchat, twitter, etc). Foursquare are claiming to be able to give insights across 5,000 retailers. The offering is only available to retailers and not media agencies (there is no media agency offering at all at this stage).
- SXSW has been and gone and there’s far too much for me to write about here. The IPG MediaLab have specific write-ups across Travel, Restaurant, Retail, CPG, Health, Fashion, Auto, and Entertainment category insights. Ping Ben Hone if you want a copy relevant to your client vertical.
- Back in January, Uber announced it was making some of its journey insights available via a new tool called “movement”. Access is now available here. It doesn’t seem to cover all cities (or at least my version is only showing cities where I have used Uber). The tool as it currently stands is of somewhat limited media agency value but is free to sign up for, so worth at least playing with in case it sparks an idea.
- Instagram has made it easier to make posts shoppable enabling tagging of ads with more info. to deep linking to buy. The offering is US only for now and is only available if the eCommerce backend is BigCommerce or Shopify. It’s also restricted to apparel, jewellery and beauty products. The roll-out is also gradual, so it’s not available on all accounts yet. So while very limited, it’s definitely something to watch.
- In separate Instagram news, there are reports on Bloomberg that they will offer the ability to book appointments directly within their app. While more tailored to small businesses, considered in context of the shoppable ad news, it suggests Instagram is moving towards a full eCommerce/retail strategy.
- Jivox who are in the Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) space shared an update with me on their BlueKai data integration. They can now do BlueKai target audience decisioning on the DCO side rather than as a targeting layer. This means you can buy a broad-reach audience (at a lower CPM) and then use BlueKai data only as needed for DCO.
- Knotch (who I mentioned back in January) have now launched their branded content search tool “Knowledge” (link here). While still in beta, it is useful if you need to get a sense of what stories and messages competitors to your clients may be pushing in native channels.
- Sticking with native, Outbrain has updated their data capabilities and can now target native ads with data from Krux, Adobe, Bluekai or client data via Liveramp (overview here). So if you have been holding back on native because of targeting concerns, this could solve your problems.
Joshua
PS. A distraction of the week is this ad from Adobe, which shows what happens when you get customer identity and experience right (during a bank robbery). Enjoy.