Digital Remedy CEO & Founder, Mike Seiman, recently spoke with 60 Second Marketer on the attribution trends to watch out for in the OTT and CTV ad space. As we all know, OTT streaming video consumption has skyrocketed since the pandemic hit. With COVID-related lockdowns keeping folks at home, streaming content accounted for 25% of total TV viewing time, up from just 19% in “the before times” of Q4 2019. Not only did the total amount of streaming time increase, but cumulative time spent watching streaming video in Q2 2020 surged to 142.5 billion minutes a week—a 75% jump from the same time the previous year.
With such a major shift in audience behavior, it’s no wonder that 60% of advertisers are planning to shift their ad spend from traditional linear TV to OTT or CTV. And it’s not only the growing share of audience that makes OTT so attractive to brands. Over 80% of marketers say that better ad targeting and greater attribution are key reasons for the shift, with OTT allowing them to more easily reach more precise audiences and measure return on ad spend.
Here are some of the key takeaways marketers should look for in their OTT attribution reporting in order to gain better insights and greater ROI:
As the possibilities behind OTT targeting and measurement continue to take off, brands need the right tools and experts on their side to tap into the insights and strategies that can help them make the most of the outlet. Working with a partner that can help navigate the space delivers a much better OTT/CTV experience and increased ROI.
For more insights, you can check out the full piece here, and follow Digital Remedy on LinkedIn and Twitter for additional updates.
Mike Juhas, EVP of Client Services at Digital Remedy, recently spoke with Small Biz Daily to discuss the the things that small businesses should consider before bringing their programmatic buying in-house.
With some brands and ad agencies considering bringing their programmatic buying in-house in attempt. tocut costs and gain control, many may underestimate just how complex the programmatic landscape is, and the toll it will take on their team’s time and resources to effectively implement and maintain an in-house programmatic function. Here are some of Mike’s key takeaways:
Working with a trusted partner is critical to not only optimizing your strategy, but also your operations. Managing one partnership gives you much wider access to more data, more channels, and more opportunities.
Interested in hearing more? You can read the full piece here, or follow Digital Remedy on LinkedIn and Twitter for more industry insights.
Flip was featured in the recent product roundup from Streaming Media Magazine.
What new feature has been introduced to the market recently?
OTT ad measurement and attribution has been evolving rapidly. Originally, advertisers relied on video completion rates and impressions, and that was pretty much it. Recently, measurement solutions have started to emerge that let brands track what happened after the ad was served. Did someone visit the brand’s website? Did they buy a product? How much money did they spend? These solutions, Flip being one of them, are able to take this type of media and associate a direct return on ad spend, and even optimize that return on ad spend as the flight progresses. Additional offerings are continuing to emerge that allow brands to get even more granular, taking into account things like incrementality or incremental sales lift analysis, which is a huge focus on our Flip H2 Product Roadmap.
What does it do?
Incrementality answers the question: Which of these conversions would not have happened otherwise?
A brand’s digital advertising presence typically extends into multiple media types far beyond OTT (social, display, search, etc.), with an established consumer demand and brand awareness. Incrementality determines the actual lift a campaign generates above that existing demand. Through Flip’s incrementality offering, advertisers can isolate and measure the true impact of the OTT/CTV campaigns they run with us, while accounting for the basic fact that often they’re doing a ton of other things in other mediums that are hitting the same people. What we want to know is which of those people converted because of our OTT/CTV touch specifically, and what impact did this touch have on other media the brands are running.
Why is this important?
Digital marketers face growing pressure to identify the channels and tactics that generate the most value for a brand’s bottom line. As a result, marketing efforts, including targeting and measurement techniques, have
become more sophisticated in recent years. Marketers of all sizes want to know the true impact of their campaigns and are now rethinking how they can best evaluate them.
The industry is evolving from a conversion-performance focus to the more objective measure of incremental lift. Traditional performance metrics like clicks and impressions are losing their luster, and higher-value metrics like revenue and net-profit are difficult to obtain. While traditional metrics only scratch the surface, incrementality goes deeper.
Ben Brenner, VP of Business Development and Strategy at Digital Remedy, was recently interviewed by MarTech Series on how ad tech and marketing trends will shift as we continue to head deeper into 2021.
As we all know, advertising trends and investments in adtech took a shift during the pandemic. With changing audience behaviors, more and more marketers saw the need to shift the outlets they used to reach those customers in 2020.
“In the past year, as stay-at-home orders were put in place across the country, more and more eyes turned to streaming, forcing advertisers to shift their budget towards the growing outlet [of OTT/CTV]. While the impact of OTT/CTV on the advertising industry was inevitably going to grow, the pandemic certainly accelerated it.” – Ben Brenner
As consumers flocked to streaming services, there has been an influx of ad tech innovation as a result to meet the demands of the industry. There has been a whole different type of “streaming wars” going on behind the scenes as companies work to develop the technology and build an ad-supported ecosystem for the streaming generation. Products like Flip allow advertisers to connect OTT ad views to physical actions and conversions, providing full-funnel attribution.
You can read the full article over on MarTech Series, and follow along with Digital Remedy on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more updates.
Mike Juhas, EVP of Client Services, sat down with Campaign Magazine last week to discuss how brands have pivoted their advertising strategies to embrace the comeback of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament.
After the tournament was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the teams returned to the courts this year, and advertisers revisited their campaign strategies to try and reach the millions of viewers tuning in.
“The top-tier advertisers are always utilizing March Madness, and now medium-sized, smaller advertisers are getting involved on the online side. The linear point of entry is so high, and inventory is so limited. Digital expands that a lot.” – Mike Juhas, EVP of Client Services, Digital Remedy
Multiple platform options, including OTT and CTV, are appealing for advertisers of all sizes this year. Although March Madness hit a bump in the road last year, the increase in streaming will continue to make the tournament attractive to more advertisers moving forward. To hear more from Mike Juhas, you can read the full article here.
Learn more about our OTT capabilities by checking out Flip, our award-winning OTT attribution platform. And be sure to follow along with us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram for more Digital Remedy updates.
Digital Remedy CEO & Founder, Mike Seiman, was recently invited onto The Tech Talks Daily podcast with Neil Hughes to talk about the startup story behind the organization, and you can now take a listen to the full episode via Apple Podcasts here. The conversation covers a range of topics from the early days of Digital Remedy, up to the current state of OTT and how Flip, our OTT attribution solution, is helping advertisers grow in that space. Flip has been revolutionizing the way advertisers measure their OTT campaigns, and the product was recently shortlisted for a Digiday Video & TV Award under the category of “Best New TV/Streaming Ad Sales Program or Product.”
To stay updated on more from Digital Remedy, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
After such an unpredictable and challenging year, determining the shifts in consumer behavior and technology can be difficult as we plan for the road ahead. Our CEO, Mike Seiman, recently spoke with Toolbox Marketing about a few lessons from 2020 that could shape how the ad tech industry conducts business in 2021, you can read the full piece here, or take a look at some key takeaways below:
For more industry insights from our team, and to stay updated on all things Digital Remedy, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
COVID-19 has put an increased focus on the data that advertisers collect and leverage to better reach their target audiences. Last week, our Director of Legal Affairs, Gracielle Cabungcal, was featured in Toolbox Marketing where she shared some tips on how ad tech companies can best optimize their data privacy practices during this uncertain time.
With GDPR going into full effect, and CCPA looming over the ad tech industry this year, data privacy has already kept advertisers up at night. And with the added challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, new data collection techniques and practices have come to the forefront, launching a new level of concerns and changes the industry must now face in its approach to data privacy and compliance. Gracielle lends her expertise to help marketers remain vigilant and get themselves ahead of the curve for any additional obstacles that 2020 may throw their way.
Check out the full piece here, or follow Digital Remedy on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to learn more.
As the election quickly approached, it became increasingly clear that political advertising as we knew it had changed once again. Campaigns were embracing connected TV more than ever before, but with it still serving as a relatively new medium, the category represents a fraction of the overall media spending pie.
Our very own EVP of Marketing, Tiffany Coletti Kaiser, spoke with Adweek on the benefits of CTV advertising in a political setting, how we’ve seen campaigns embracing this new medium, and the speed at which these teams are churning out content to manage the up-to-the-minute information needed to survive in current and future election cycles. Check out the full article here.
COVID_19 is impacting the ad tech industry in more ways than one. Our EVP of Marketing, Tiffany Coletti Kaiser, shares how lead gen and pipelines will be impacted in AdExchanger.
It’s a little difficult to strike handshake deals when, you know, you’re not supposed to shake hands.
An increasingly denuded 2020 events calendar – the live event components of the upfronts are the latest cancelations – could soon start to have a chilling effect on their ability to attract new clients.
“Lead gen and pipeline will be impacted,” said Tiffany Coletti Kaiser, EVP of marketing at digital media solutions company Digital Remedy. “The question is not if, but when.”
Screwed … together
Of course, everyone’s pretty much in the same boat, which helps leaven the impact – for now.
“If we’re screwed, we’re all screwed in the same way,” said Maor Sadra, CEO of Berlin-based user acquisition platform Applift.
In Sadra’s view, the ad tech industry at large can probably tolerate at least a couple months of the new normal without any ill effects.
Remote work is relatively common in the tech world, and, if anything, the coronavirus crisis is generating higher eCPMs for publishers. There’s also no reason to imagine we’ll see a slowdown in ad spend from companies that sell virtual goods, such as games and utility apps.
There will come a point, though, when the sales funnel starts to evaporate. Events usually generate roughly one-third of Applift’s sales leads, and the company hasn’t been able to attend any since January.
Several Applift employees were supposed to meet with representatives from Publicis a few days ago, but an hour before the plane was scheduled to take off, the holding company put out a memo cancelling all external in-person meetings.
“In a way, this is almost like a test of brand positioning in the market,” Sadra said. “Hopefully our SEO and our positioning is good enough for people to remember us if they’re looking for a partner.”
But Applift, unlike some others, is lucky in that it’s somewhat insulated in case of a dry spell. The company, which is profitable today, was acquired by German conglomerate Media and Games Invest in June 2019, and that provides a helpful cushion.
“If I was burning cash right now and was in a position where I needed to make certain moves, it would be a very different story,” Sadra said.
In terms of sales targets, Applift, which sets its targets quarterly, is playing it by ear. March will remain unchanged, but Applift will most likely recalibrate in April, Sadra said, “and hope for the best.”
B2B account-based marketing vendor Demandbase is doing much the same. Although the sales team is currently on track to hit quarterly goals despite the pandemic, “we are being realistic that things may shift and are fully prepared to address any changes,” said CEO Gabe Rogol.
No more steak dinners?
Companies in certain industries – teleconferencing, home entertainment and pharmaceutical, for example – can take the long view and implement thoughtful, data-centric strategies. They’re well positioned to weather most of the business-related vicissitudes coronavirus brings.
Getting creative
Videoconferencing is the obvious replacement for the lack of in-person engagement. But there are also other ways to create connections while in quarantine.
Since networking during happy hour at trade shows isn’t possible, Criteo, for example, is encouraging its commercial team to use LinkedIn and Twitter to reach out to other registered attendees of canceled events to request virtual one-on-ones.
“Outside of just replacing conference networking, social media is a great tool for salespeople to utilize to continue building leads and connecting with contacts,” said Criteo CEO Megan Clarken. “By connecting with potential clients online and engaging with what they’re posting and sharing, salespeople are able to build virtual relationships while in-person meetings are on pause.”
But some companies are putting a whole new spin on virtual conferencing.
Cockroach Labs is a computer software provider that develops commercial database management systems and usually relies heavily on events to capture leads and generate broad awareness. Without events to attend, it created a “virtual badge scan” that uses a landing page to capture contact info and then makes a small donation to Women Who Code for every email address it gets. One-on-one meetings with company reps are incentivized with the promise of a larger $50 donation.
“The silver lining is the impact this will have for new creative ways to build out a [go-to-market] strategy,” Jim Walker, VP of product marketing at Cockroach Labs.
But, perhaps, there’s also another benefit: Cutting down on unnecessary meetings that should never have been meetings in the first place.
