| Media Buyer & Planner Today | | | | | #1 Digital Ads Face Moment of Truth | The trust between ad agencies and their clients continues to erode as the large spending brands take more aggressive steps to demand digital ad accountability. Procter & Gamble's Marc Pritchard is set to deliver another ultimatum on digital ad transparency and agency relationships at the Dmexco conference in Cologne, Germany. Gerry Preece, an agency consultant who spent more than 20 years at P&G, tells Adweek he is "stunned by the number of senior marketing people who really don't believe they're getting an ROI." And he says small advertisers are going to begin cutting budgets and pressuring digital sites and their agencies much like P&G and Unilever. Agencies are facing growing pressure to prove the quality of their digital metrics when buying advertising for their clients. | WHY THIS MATTERS: Preece says "for decades" the buying and selling of advertising "was all about personal relationships, handshakes and lots of trust." Those days are over. Based on the action of brands large and small, handshakes no longer matter. As search consultant Avi Dan says, clients "want to know exactly where every [digital] penny is going." Billions of digital ad dollars are at stake. | A Take: Adweek | | #2 Verizon Offers Customers Rewards for Data | A new rewards program by the telecommunications giants, called Verizon Up, provides credits that wireless subscribers can use for concert tickets, movie premieres and phone upgrades, The Wall Street Journal first reported. It comes with a catch, however. Customers must give the carrier access to their web-browsing history, app usage and location data. Verizon will use that information to deliver targeted advertising to its customers as they browse the web. The trade-off is part of Verizon's effort to build a digital advertising business to compete with web giants Facebook and Google, which already possess much of the same information from their users. | WHY THIS MATTERS: Verizon saw its core wireless business revenue generate $89 billion in 2016, a 2.7% decline from 2015. So the company is looking for a way to supplement that by selling more digital advertising which currently brings in $7 billion a year. Verizon, which currently garners just 4% of the U.S. digital ad market, still has a long way to go to catch Google which takes in 41% and Facebook, which captures 20%. | Two Takes: WSJ | MediaPost
| | #3 Musical.ly Pitches Ad Packages | The lip-syncing app developed by two Chinese entrepreneurs in 2014, with over 200 million registered users worldwide, is gaining popularity in the U.S. And while it U.S. user base is still relatively small, the platform is pitching three different ad products to media agencies, Digiday reports. Musical.ly is similar to Snapchat in that it allows users to make funny faces and strike poses in front of their phone cameras as they lip-sync hit songs for up to 15 seconds. Most of its users are 13-24 year-old girls and women. The ad formats it is offering, according to media buyers, are vertical video ads that show up in a curated section on a homepage tab, custom challenges where social stars create videos around brands and challenge their followers to do the same, and standard influencer video posts. | WHY THIS MATTERS: Much like Snapchat in its early days, Musical.ly is facing advertiser resistance because of high ad pricing. Some of the ads cost $300,000 per day and multi-ad packages can run as high as $2.5 million. Marketers and their agencies say they would be interested in advertising if the pricing came down. "We've always had inklings of interest in testing Musical.ly across a number of brands and verticals," says one buyer, "but it has been too expensive. I'd imagine the entry point pricing will have to come way down if it wants to be a scalable business." | A Take: Digiday | |
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| 89 | Percentage of millennials, ages 26-35, who have Facebook accounts, according to data from RBC Capital Markets. That compares to 59% who have Instagram accounts, 40% who have Snapchat accounts and 41% signed up with Twitter. | – Reported by eMarketer | |
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| Strong 'Ninja Warrior' Leads NBC | by Michael Malone
NBC was the top scorer in Monday ratings, putting up a 1.2 score in viewers 18-49, per the Nielsen overnights, alongside a 5 share. That topped ABC's 1.1/4. NBC had American Ninja Warrior at a flat 1.5, matching its season high, before Midnight, Texas fell 22% to 0.7. On ABC, which won the previous Monday, Bachelor in Paradise slipped 19% to a 1.3. A repeat of To Tell the Truth got that network to the end of prime. CBS and Fox were at 0.6/2. CBS had a Big Bang Theory repeat, then a fall preview special at 0.8, then repeats of Mom, Life in Pieces and Scorpion. On Fox, two hours of So You Think You Can Dance scored a 0.6, 25% down from last week. The CW rated a 0.2/1 with Supergirl and Hooten & the Lady repeats. | |
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| • TONY WEISMAN was named U.S. chief marketing officer at Dunkin Donuts. He was most recently North America CEO at DigitasLBi. His former agency handled the Dunkin Donuts account for more than six years. Alan Wexler, global co-CEO at Publicis.Sapient, will also oversee DigitasLBi North America until a replacement for Weisman is named. Both agencies are part of Publicis Groupe. Weisman held his Digitas position since 2013. Prior to that he was CMO of Draft Worldwide. He also held assorted positions at Leo Burnett. • ANTHONY VITAGLIANO was promoted to president and chief creative officer at Digital Kitchen. He was previously director of experience design and has been with the agency since 2003. • KAVITA VAZIRANI was named to the newly created role of executive VP, strategic insights and analytics at NBCUniversal and will lead a new research group focused on aligning all of the company's sales research, insights and data capabilities across every platform and partnership the company offers. Vazirani was previously with Comcast Cable and held the position of senior VP of media strategy and media sciences. | |
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