| | Media Buyer & Planner Today | | | | | | | | | #1 Vox Expands Branded Content Offerings | | The publisher, which owns eight digital sites including Vox, SBNation and the Verge, is launching Explainer Studio, an expansion of its existing 40-person branded content division that will specifically make video "explainers" commissioned by advertisers, The Wall Street Journal reports. Explainers are video walk-throughs of topics like the opiod epidemic, the fall of Aleppo, or a description of fantasy football that educate the public on assorted issues. They originated on Vox in 2014, but those have been editorial department produced. The expanded explainers will be produced in conjunction with advertisers. The new studio will be run by creative director Graham Nelson. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: The growth of branded content studios continues to grow as publishers look for alternative ways to bring in ad revenue. And marketers have responded positively, although there has been some backlash from consumers who say they do not like being deceived by ad content masquerading as real news. Vox has a lot of experience doing the editorial explainers and those are quite popular. They just have to make sure that the ones they run on their sites are properly labeled as paid ads. | | A Take: WSJ | | | | #2 Advertisers Test NFL On Amazon | | The first few Amazon Prime telecasts of NFL's Thursday night football games have not brought in a huge number of viewers – just under 400,000 who watched for at least 30 seconds. That pales in comparison to the 15 million who watched the first two games on CBS and the NFL Network. But as Tom McGovern, president of Optimum Sports, tells The Wall Street Journal, "none of this is about mass reach." Instead, he says, "It's an opportunity to partner with Amazon and to understand, over the course of the season, Amazon consumers, NFL content, and how they may or may not interact within Amazon's core platform of e-commerce." Amazon initially sought $2.8 million for a package that included ad inventory in each of the 10 Thursday night games it paid $50 million to get the streaming rights for. But many advertisers paid around $1 million less than that for packages. Among the advertisers in the telecasts are Gillette, Pepsi, Hyundai, Showtime and Sling TV. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: One ad buyer said the Amazon NFL spots average out to be more costly than TV ads on a cost-per-thousand-impression basis. But most advertisers got involved because it could get them a closer relationship with Amazon in other areas, including gaining access to some of their customer data. The Journal reports that as part of the deal, Amazon has discussed delivering custom research for advertisers that could show how users reacted to an ad on Amazon.com, including whether they made actual purchases on the e-commerce site. "This is about a season-long understanding of how consumers engage in the content and in the broader platform," says Optimum's McGovern. | | A Take: WSJ | | | | #3 Industry Groups Want Ad-Blocking Standards | | Three major ad industry groups have joined together to push the Coalition for Better Ads (CBA) to create self-regulatory guidelines that would prohibit and prevent browser developers and other technology companies from making up their own rules when it comes to ad blocking, MediaPost reports. The Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have sent a letter to the CBA calling on it to adopt a framework called "The Better Ads Experience Program" that would require each company to follow the same standards. They say if unified standards are not followed, it will "create chaos in the marketing-media supply chain." | | WHY THIS MATTERS: The debate over ad blocking and how the industry should deal with it lingers with seemingly no end in sight. | | A Take: MediaPost | |
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| | 5 | | Number in millions of Pinterest followers of Walmart's senior manager of social innovation Christine Martinez Loya, she told an audience at the Brandemonium conference in Cincinnati this week. That compares to only 137,000 followers on Pinterest that her employer Walmart has. Her goal as part of the newly-revamped Walmart social media team is to elevate the chain's followers on that social media site. | – Reported by Ad Age
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| | CBS Wins With Football | by Michael Malone
CBS was the winner in Thursday ratings, as Thursday Night Football led to a 2.9 score in viewers 18-49, per Nielsen's overnights, and an 11 share. Runner-up was ABC at 1.4/5. CBS did a 3.0 the Thursday before. Thursday Night Kickoff dropped 14% to 1.9 on CBS, and the game, Eagles versus Panthers, did a 3.1. Last week's game, Patriots versus Buccaneers, scored a 3.2. ABC had Grey's Anatomy at a flat 2.0, then Scandal at 1.2, down 14% from its premiere. How to Get Away With Murder was up 11% to 1.0. NBC did a 1.2/4. Superstore was down a tenth of a point at 1.1 and The Good Place at a level 1.2. Will & Grace fell 15% to 1.7 and Great News posted a flat 1.0, before Chicago Fire was off 8% at 1.1. Fox scored a 0.9/3, with Gotham down 11% at 0.8 and The Orville up 11% at 1.0. The CW did a 0.7/2. Supernatural started off its season at 0.7, up a tenth from its May finale, and Arrow premiered at 0.6, same as its season finale. | |
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| • ALEXANDER "SANDY" BROWN has joined Rural Media Group at chief operating officer. RMG is parent company of RFD-TV, Rural Radio, The Cowboy Channel and RFD-TV The Magazine. Brown is former CEO of One World Sports, sports president at Univision Communications, managing director at ESPN Asia, president and CEO of CNBC Asia and president and CEO of Petry Media.
• RICK WILLIAMS and MARCEL YUNES are leaving their positions as creative directors at BBDO New York after more than 10 years, according to an Agency Spy report.
• KWON OH-HYUN is leaving his post as CEO and vice chairman of Samsung Electronics. He said he is resigning so the company can replace him with "young leadership to better respond to challenges arising from the rapidly changing IT industry." | |
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