Month: November 2018

This is the state of Caxton Printer’s factory floor right now! “Our local newspapers are filled to the brim with inserts from our retailers ahead of the 2018 festive season, ready to be delivered to homes around the province,” says Gill Randall, Joint CEO of SPARK Media. “Retailers know that these inserts are probably the most important part of their Christmas campaigns. We’re ending 2018 with close on record sales for this time of year and would like to thank our media agency partners and retail clients for their continued support.”

On the back of attending Programmatic I/O in New York, Ashleigh Footit, Head of Techops, Programmatic and Performance at SPARK Media shares some insights into the state of programmatic advertising, brand safety and ad fraud both in the US and here at home.

After an intense two days spent at the world’s largest conference on programmatic advertising it was fascinating to see how America’s online publishers are utilising data and selling inventory programmatically. In 2018, more than $47 billion in the US was spent on programmatic display advertising with Facebook and Google taking a large chunk of the pie. By 2020 that figure will climb to nearly $69 billion.

In the United States, there is an average of 14.5 programmatic tech partners per publisher, whereas in South Africa, we have an average of just three. This is not a bad situation to be in as our ecosystem is less fragmented and we have more control over our inventory. However, it does highlight that we are still in the infancy stages of programmatic selling.  Programmatic is becoming more and more commonplace and the more that advertisers demand it, the more we’ll see that number increasing.

One of the US speakers, Taylor Schreiner at Adobe said that “Organizations are transforming to take advantage of programmatic. Brands are now more hands-on. They have a better understanding of the metrics they are facing, and they’re more specific in their directives to agencies. We’re seeing more clients who now have people in the organisation who are in a position to think about reach across channels.”

First party data is another big theme that came through – this is essential to publishers and needs to be a priority as a competitive advantage assisting in fighting against the duopoly that is Google and Facebook, who account for around 50% of programmatic revenue in the US. They continue to be successful because of their amazing audience intelligence, reach and measurement capabilities which advertisers are not going to pass up.

Relationships are key in this fragmented industry! The display ad tech Lumascape was shown multiple times highlighting this fact. There are many touch points available when it comes to making a deal and publishers need to ensure that they are talking to all parties involved. There is no such thing as set it and forget it. Secondly, CPM rates are lost to tech costs and the publisher comes out with only a fraction of what the seller initially spends.The issue of viewability came across a lot throughout the two day conference. A viewable ad is defined as 50% of the pixels of a regular creative or 30% of the pixels of a large size creative, are on an in-focus browser tab on the viewable space of the browser page for a minimum of one continuous second. (this description was even questioned a few times by brands). As far as many brands were concerned, 100% viewability has to be a non-negotiable and advertisers/buyers should not pay for a non-viewable ad.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) also came across quite strongly with a few interesting developments on the cards. We can’t escape the fact that AI is and will be an essential part of our lives. The Nest Cam Indoor security camera for instance learns who the regular members of your household are. If a stranger or visitor is in your home, Nest reports back to you immediately via your connected device. The Ricoh whiteboard is another great AI example – once you’ve made your notes on it you can email the contents to anyone around the world, with full translation capabilities. All of these things will add to the wonder that is big data which ultimately will assist advertisers to better target consumers.

It was evident that there’s a need for deeper conversations on brand safety between publishers, agencies and brands who all need to understand and explain what brand safety means to each of them. Some brands mentioned that they won’t pay if creative appears in a negative environment. However, they would consider an environment that has a positive spin next to controversial content. Unfortunately, safety tools are screening out these environments as the story contains black list key words. Private market places need to assist with this more.

Ad fraud and fake news is rife in the US industry, and ad fraud specifically, but on a lesser scale, here in South Africa. Publishers are fighting hard against these practices and buyers are turning to technology to assist with eliminating and reducing their ad spend on these practices that deceive.

There are many types of ad fraud but in general challenges in programmatic include invalid traffic (IVT), domain spoofing, page level scripting, ad injection, poor user experience etc. Low-quality human traffic is another issue, through paid media channels (incl. click bait) traffic is pushed to transit hubs by fake authors and instantaneously bounce off these sites, purely to serve ads and receive ad revenue. These are all things that advertisers and publishers need to be cognisant of. Publishers need to adopt ads.txt as a non-negotiable and advertisers need to be selective when buying inventory across the open market.

I learned that a dollar in does not equal a dollar out when it comes to programmatic and intermediaries are more prevalent than thought. But most importantly relationships are more important now than ever before. Successful partnerships between publishers, agencies and clients are open and honest about what works for them.

The conference was an enormous insight into the world of programmatic and even though we have some catching up to do, it’s an exciting time in our industry!

For even more on SPARK Media, visit their website or follow them on social media @sparkmediasa.

Ignition TARGET is SPARK Media’s programmatic and direct audience solution. Through their Data Management Platform (DMP) they collect and deliver customised interest based, demographic and in-market audiences.

Over 7.6 million people were collected in October across Caxton owned and affiliated websites, with 69.2% of traffic coming from mobile devices.

“Our in-market audiences are super exciting and interesting to potential advertisers with product and price specials. Users collected into these segments have actively shown an interest in a specific in-market category, i.e. they have searched for the product specifically or browsed catalogues within the product and price environment.

These audiences are already well down the purchasing funnel and just need a bit of a nudge from advertisers to buy products online or instore,” explains Ashleigh Footit, Head of Techops, programmatic and performance.

Top performing in-market segments include property, groceries and office, with the top growth segments being building supplies & DIY, furniture and appliances.

To access these audience insights and programmatic solutions, contact SPARK Media, or view the monthly DMP Performance report here.

Example of the DMP performance report

For even more on SPARK Media, visit the website and follow them on social media @sparkmediasa.

The Advertising Media Association of South Africa (AMASA) has announced two new additional members to its board of directors. AMASA welcomes Mpho Maseko and Parmeshan Moodliar to the table.

Mpho and Parmeshan join current directors Wayne Bischoff, Wayne Bishop, Karen Bailey, Lyn Jones and Rob Smuts. Wayne Bischoff says: “Both Mpho and Parmeshan are old hands at AMASA so to speak, having spent the past five and three years on the committee respectively. They have already added enormous value to the committee and we have no doubt that they will continue to do so as directors of AMASA.”

After working on the Monthly Forums portfolio for a few years, Mpho moved over to the Gordon Patterson AMASA Learnership Programme (GP-ALP) portfolio, an entry point into the media and advertising industries that provides young individuals with fully funded bursaries for the AMASA Media Management Course.  “This opportunity then created an easy transition for me to lead the AMASA Education portfolio from 2017/18,” she says.

“I believe the work that we do on the committee is crucial for the industry, serving the entire integrated marketing and communications industry and will always be of value to marketing and media professionals in South Africa.  Being involved in AMASA, now as a director, gives me the opportunity to give back to the industry that has developed me as professional and  exposed me to a wide spectrum of media and advertising professionals who continue to help build my skills and expertise.”

Parmeshan has spent the past few years on various profiles including the Workshop, Golf Day, Awards and Annual Party portfolios. He says: “Education remains the primary pillar of AMASA and this focus area, through the Media Management course and the Gordon Patterson AMASA Learnership Programme, facilitates new blood gaining access to and information about our industry as a whole.

I am extremely proud to be part of an organisation like AMASA that has stepped up and stepped in to drive debate and change around the current state of the media industry and in many cases, how these issues impact the future. While AMASA has always been synonymous with education and networking opportunities, we have also grown into a professional organisation despite the challenge of being run by volunteers,” he says.

“I have the primary focus of identifying and solidifying our relationships with our primary suppliers, sponsors and members who give of their time, resources and finances to assist us with what we do.”

Parmeshan will oversee the body’s commercial relationship with stakeholders in order to safeguard the financial well-being of the organisation. Being extremely passionate about transformation in the industry adds additional impetus to his role.

“Transformation must remain front and centre within the media and advertising sector. For me, any significant change starts with individuals who are willing to drive change from within themselves and their organisations. It is my hope and genuine belief that this personal change among many individuals will then affect change to the greater whole.

We need to take responsibility for our own industry and the time of criticism from the side lines without putting skin in the game yourself has ended. I would encourage all media professionals to get involved in our industry, even if it’s in a small way. You be will humbled by the difference you can make.”

For more information on AMASA visit www.amasa.org.za or find us on Facebook or Twitter.