| | Media Buyer & Planner Today | | | | | | | | | #1 NBCU Creates Combined Linear-Digital Metric | | Two months before the crucial upfront ad sales market begins for the next TV season, NBCUniversal has created a new metric that unifies linear and digital viewing of an ad campaign, Broadcasting & Cable and other media outlets report. The new metric is called CFlight and is comprised of Nielsen measurement of linear viewing and digital measurement combining data from comScore, Moat and other research companies that counts co-viewing but holds digital impressions to tougher, TV-type standards. For example, only digital ads viewed to completion will count as part of viewer measurement. NBCU has been discussing the new metric with large media agencies for months and several endorsed the single guarantee metric. WPP's Group M, Omnicom and IPG's Magna have all endorsed the new metric. NBCU has already tested it during the Winter Olympics, selling a majority of its ads based on a metric similar to CFlight, according to Dan Lovinger, executive VP for sports ad sales. NBC will give agencies who used CFlight a dashboard to access and keep track of it. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: Media buyers want metrics that can measure both linear and digital video ad viewership together and offer a single guarantee for an ad buy so this is another step in that direction. And NBCU is planning to offer the CFlight metric in its upfront sales. It plans to work closely with the media agencies to fine-tune the metric to account for de-duplication of viewers using multiple screens and other details. Like the C3 metric when it was first adopted, NBCU's CFlight is not yet accredited by the Media Research Council, which oversees media measurement. | | Three Takes: B&C | Ad Age | MediaPost | | | | #2 Japanese Firm Buying Industry Disruptors | | The kyu Collective, a four-year-old holding company and division of the Japanese marketing and communications conglomerate Hakuhodo DY Holdings, has acquired a majority stake in The Kepler Group, an agency specializing in data and software-driven ad buying, Business Insider reports. Among kyu's other recent acquisitions are consulting firm Sy Partners and design shop IDEO. The holding company's CEO Michael Birkin says the strategy is to identify upstarts in different ad categories that will make his company a more nimble alternative to the giant traditional agency holding companies like WPP or Publicis. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: It's an indication that upstart ad holding companies are growing and out to eat traditional holding companies' lunch. Todd Sawicki, CEO of ad tech company Zemanta, told Business Insider of the Kepler acquisition, "They are one of the first agencies started around the idea of programmatic. They are a 'Moneyball' agency." That means they are using analytics and technology to dictate client strategy. | | Two Takes: Business Insider | MediaPost | | | | #3 Spotify Faces Sales Static | | In the aftermath of its initial public offering, the streaming music giant is looking to put more emphasis on its ad business to bring in revenue in addition to its subscriptions, Digiday reports. At the end of 2017, about 45% of Spotify's 159 million monthly active users were premium subscribers, up 29% from the prior year. And while subscriptions have been where the money is for Spotify, the site wants to boost ad revenue too. But, according to ad buyers, it faces some obstacles. First, it's cookieless. Unless an advertiser's measurement solution uses mobile device ID's, the streaming service won't fit into a generic programmatic display campaign, which uses cookies for measurement. An ads can't be targeted by composer or subgenre. However, Spotify does have a wealth of first-party audience data from both premium and free memberships. And that is a plus for the platform. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: It's always a challenge when a primarily subscription site moves more into advertising. And while Spotify does have a large amount of user data, in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, it will have to decide how much of its user data it is willing to share. While Spotify wants to continue with its premium subscription service as its main source of revenue, it is expanding into a lot of developing global markets where there will be more users who want free subscriptions rather than paid. | | A Take: Digiday | |
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| | 2 | | Number of consumers in millions worldwide who will pay for products and services with a mobile app by 2019, according to a survey by Juniper Research. That would be up by 30% from 2017. The number seems relatively small on a global scale, but many people right now are concerned about both digital privacy and security, so there currently are a low number sold on the use of mobile wallets for payment. | – Reported by MediaPost
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| | Fox Wins With 'Empire' | by Michael Malone
Fox won the Wednesday ratings race, with Empire, despite being down, still leading the way to a best-in-class 1.5 score in viewers 18-49, and a 6 share. That topped the 1.1/5 put up by CBS.
Empire lost 15% from last week for a 1.7 and Star slipped 13% to 1.3.
On CBS, Survivor was off 6% for a 1.6 and was followed by an NCIS repeat. Criminal Minds decreased 9% for a 1.0.
ABC was at 1.0/4. The Goldbergs was down 7% for a 1.3 and Alex, Inc. dropped 18% from its premiere at 0.9. Modern Family went up 7% for a 1.5 and American Housewife lost a tenth for a 1.2. Drama Designated Survivor scored a flat 0.7.
NBC did a 0.8/3. The Blacklist scored a flat 0.9 and was followed by repeats of Law & Order: SVU and Chicago P.D.
Telemundo and Univision both rated a 0.4/2.
The CW weighed in at 0.2/1. A Riverdale repeat led into Life Sentence, which was up a tenth of a point at 0.2.
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| • TRISH ADAMS was named president of Portland ad agency Opinionated. She is a 20-year veteran of Wieden+Kennedy, most recently as a group account director. Opinionated was founded last year by former W+K creative executive Mark Fitzloff, who worked with Adams at that agency.
• JON ALFERNESS has left his position as senior VP of ads and commerce at Pinterest after less than one year. He had joined the company from Google, where he was VP of product management for its shopping and travel products. LAWRENCE RIPSHER, senior VP of product, will now oversee both ad products and Alferness' consumer advertising duties.
• MICHELLE ROUFA was promoted to executive creative director at mcgarrybowen New York. She was previously group creative director of the Dentsu Aegis agency, where she oversee the Verizon account. • CHRISTINE BIRCH has left her position as head of domestic marketing at Sony Pictures, as first reported by Variety. She had been on a leave of absence following the studio's investigation into allegations that she used marijuana while working. She was given a leave of absence and while no wrongdoing was found, an agreement was reached where she would not return. Birch joined Sony in 2016 from Focus Features, where she was president of marketing. She had earlier spent 12 years with Sony.
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