Google Makes Final Settlement In Location Tracking By Paying USD 391 Million
Google has agreed to pay a historic $391.5 million settlement to 40 states in the U.S over its location tracking practices. Last month, Google paid $85 million to the state of Arizona to settle the claims that the tech giant illegally tracked the location of Android users.
It is alleged that Google misled users into thinking they had disabled location tracking while the company was still collecting their location data. Oregon and Washington jointly led the investigation, which marked the largest privacy settlement by an attorney general. Oregon Attorney General Rosenblum said in the news release,
“For years Google has prioritized profit over their users’ privacy. They have been crafty and deceptive. Consumers thought they had turned off their location tracking features on Google, but the company continued to secretly record their movements and use that information for advertisers.”
In a statement, Michigan-stated Attorney General Dana Nessel said,
“The company’s [Google] online reach enables it to target consumers without the consumer’s knowledge or permission. However, the transparency requirements of this settlement will ensure that Google not only makes users aware of how their location data is being used, but also how to change their account settings if they wish to disable location-related account settings, delete the data collected and set data retention limits.”
The settlement aims to help consumers navigate online spaces while protecting their privacy. Location data is a key part of Google’s digital advertising business. Google uses the personal and behavioral data it collects to build detailed user profiles and target ads on behalf of its advertising customers. Location data is among the most sensitive and valuable personal information Google collects. Even a limited amount of location data can expose a person’s identity and routines and can be used to infer personal details.
It was revealed in the settlement that Google misled its users into thinking they had disabled location tracking in their account settings, when in fact it was still collecting their location data. Google has also committed to improving location tracking disclosures and user controls in 2023 as part of the multimillion-dollar settlement with the AGs.
What the settlement requires Google to do?
The settlement requires Google to be more transparent with consumers about its practices. Google must:
– Show additional information to users whenever they turn a location-related account setting “on” or “off”;
– Make key information about location tracking unavoidable for users (i.e., not hidden); and
– Give users detailed information about the types of location data Google collects and how it’s used at an enhanced “Location Technologies” webpage.
The settlement also limits Google’s use and storage of certain types of location information and requires Google account controls to be more user-friendly.
What Google plans to do?
A Google blog post stated that some of the location tracking practices detailed in the settlement had already been corrected by the company.
Google spokesperson told TechCrunch, “Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”
Google said it will also start providing more “detailed” information about the data it collects tracking during the account setup process and is launching a new toggle to turn off and delete your location history and web and app activity “in one simple flow.”
Interesting Read: Google Rolls Out Advert Target Frequency For YouTube Campaigns
Amazon Unveils New Video Advertising Solutions
Amazon unveiled a slew of new video advertising capabilities at its Unboxed event. A bright spot for the retailer in the midst of economic uncertainty is its highly profitable advertising revenue. Alan Moss, VP of Global Advertising Sales at Amazon Ads in a statement,
“We have to provide our advertisers the flexibility, efficiency and scale to be nimble and responsive as their needs change.”
These include features like campaign presets, campaign recommendations, and video creation tools. Tanner Elton, vice president of U.S. sales for Amazon Ads said in a statement, “We want to bring the power of video advertising to more brands, no matter their size or level of resources.” Here is a quick overview of 7 new features and programs follows:
1. Rewarded Sponsored Display
Brands can add an Amazon shopping credit directly into the Sponsored Display creative. Customers receive the reward by clicking on the ad and purchasing the featured product. This is an expansion of the rewarded ads already available across various placements, including Twitch and Fire TV.
Business owners that sell products and services in verticals that Amazon doesn’t carry, such as restaurants and hotels, can now use Amazon’s Sponsored Display ad product to market to Twitch viewers. The interesting part to note is it is available only to Sponsored Display Ads and not Sponsored Product Ads. The feature will soon roll out to U.S. advertisers in closed beta.
2. Sponsored Display for non-native brands
Amazon Ads is introducing Sponsored Displays for brands that do not sell in Amazon’s stores. This is currently offered to US advertisers in closed beta on Twitch. Previously, sponsored ads had only been available for brands that sell products on Amazon. Now, businesses that sell products and services in verticals not available on Amazon, like restaurants and hotels, can use Sponsored Displays to reach the highly engaged Twitch audience.
This is currently offered to U.S. advertisers in closed beta on Twitch. There needs to be more information regarding when or if this will apply to Amazon.com on-site placements and other owned media properties. If it does then this could be an excellent opportunity for non-native brands. Amazon’s increasing focus on revenue generation beyond its own ecosystem could pave the way for bigger opportunities in the future. Existing advertisers will face competition, which will lead to an increase in Amazon’s auction-based bidding costs.
3. Sponsored Display video creative
Sponsored Display video creative available worldwide empowers advertisers of all sizes, particularly small and emerging brands, to easily create video campaigns that showcase their products and stories to millions of customers on Amazon and elsewhere online. Advertisers can deliver immersive video ads—such as tutorials, demos, unboxing, and testimonials—and measure campaign performance with new video metrics.
4. Digital Signage Ads in Amazon DSP
Amazon Ads is enabling a new inventory opportunity for brands to create campaigns on Amazon DSP to run in physical store digital signage, allowing customers to view or engage with a brand in a physical environment, at the time of purchase. It will be available in November to eligible US advertisers via managed service, making it easier for brands to advertise within Amazon Fresh stores. With Digital Signage Ads in Amazon DSP, brands can now purchase ads programmatically, giving them more flexibility and control over where their ads are featured.
Campaigns can be scheduled based on store location, by daypart, or by location of the digital signage within the store. This creates more opportunities for brand discovery and will enhance the customer shopping experience by creating a wider variety of in-store ads. Amazon should roll this feature to other big stores like Whole Food stores and more placements in the DSP.
5. Sponsored Products campaigns with presets
Advertisers can now launch new Sponsored Products campaigns with preset campaign settings such as daily budget, bidding strategy, targeting strategy, and associated bids. With this feature, advertisers will see recommendations on how to set up performant, ready-to-launch campaigns—saving time and helping drive results from the onset. Amazon Ads found that campaigns launched with preset observed a 77% increase in clicks, and a 29% increase in conversions compared to campaigns that did not utilize presets.
This feature helps advertisers identify potential candidates for advertising and provides all the campaign settings tailored to the product being advertised. This is suitable for the launch of new campaigns that require high bids to attract traction. However, one has to trial and test to know the results.
6. Performance recommendations
Performance recommendations are in-console, actionable best practices for Sponsored Products campaigns. As advertisers browse the advertising console, performance recommendations work in the background, constantly looking for recommendations that can be adopted with one click such as new keywords and updated bids. This gives advertisers in-the-moment feedback to improve campaign performance based on rigorously tested and validated best practices.
7. Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)
In ad-tech, Amazon highlighted its Amazon Marketing Cloud, a data clean room solution, at UnBoxed. Increasingly, marketers are looking for clean rooms as third-party cookies are deprecated. The company is focused on improving signal coverage and ease of use. AMC now offers Sponsored Display and digital subscription events, pre-built instructional queries, and the ability to manage DSP audiences. Keerat Sharma, director, Amazon Marketing Cloud, and Ad Tech Solutions said,
“We are constantly thinking about how we can better help marketers, particularly as they grapple with accurately measuring campaigns and adapting to the changes happening in digital advertising. Offering more actionable insights and increasing interoperability across our ad tech suite are examples of how we’re building to help brands operate more efficiently and make more informed business decisions.”
Furthermore, Amazon touts its Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) clean room service, which supports more flexible analytics and enables marketers to build their own ad tech solutions. Over the past year, AMC’s active customer base has quadrupled.
The tech giant also expanded CTV Integrations and Metrics. CTV advertisers on Amazon will now be able to see how valuable their audience is with the company’s new “incremental household reach” feature. Brands will be able to measure the unique, incremental audiences that were reached by Amazon streaming TV ad campaigns, in addition to those reached by linear TV ads.
Additionally, brand selling on Amazon can feature a variety of interactive video ads that feature CTA options such as “Add to cart,” or “Shop now.”. Off-Amazon brands can include an opt-in CTA “Send me more” and provide follow-up information.
Interesting Read: The Journey From Deterministic To Probabilistic Marketing
Video Marketing Statistics You Can’t Ignore in 2022
Video is a great way to market your business. As a result, video marketing has become one of the most popular ways of marketing.
According to several portals, approximately 96% of people increased their consumption of videos about businesses, and 9 out of 10 people prefer watching videos about brands and companies. Moreover, 86% of businesses started using video as a business tool in 2022.
Therefore, video marketing statistics cannot be ignored if one wants to promote and advertise a business online. Videos are integral to marketing and promoting your products to new audiences.
This article will explore video marketing statistics you cannot miss in 2022.
Video Marketing Statistics You Cannot Ignore in 2022
To develop your digital/video marketing strategy, you need to know the latest video marketing statistics. Listed below are the latest video marketing statistics you simply cannot miss in 2022:
Increasing Internet Consumption
- According to Wyzowl, In 2018, the average time for watching videos was 1.5 hours per day. But in 2022, the number of hours increased to 2.5 hours a day.
- Moreover, research shows that people watch videos for about 19 hours a week, an 8.5 hours spike from the last four years.
Convincing Customers
- According to the survey conducted by Wyzowl, 96% of people have watched the tutorials and explanation videos to learn more about the products in 2022.
- Furthermore, 88% of people have said that they have been convinced to buy a company’s product after watching their videos.
- According to Hubspot, in 2018, 54% of people want to watch more videos about brands and companies to know more about their products.
- Also, research conducted by Animoto in 2018 suggests videos are the favorite type of content to view from a business across social media platforms.
- Social Media Week studies show that 78% of people watch videos every week, and 55% of people watch videos daily.
- According to Insivia, 95% of the audience can remember the products and their message when they watch them in a video rather than reading about them.
- According to 59% of executives, the audience is most likely to choose video over text about the same topic. 92% of mobile phone users are more likely to share the videos they watch about any product or company.
- According to Wyzowl, people are twice more likely to share videos rather than sharing blog posts or written articles. Therefore, video marketers and editors must post short, crisp, well-edited videos about their products. They can easily edit a video online and make engaging content.
Increase in Revenue
- According to Wyzowl, in 2022, 87% of business owners stated that video marketing has helped increase website traffic.
- Moreover, 94% of people also stated that videos helped them better understand their products, according to Wyzowl in 2022.
- 83% of business owners have stated that videos encourage visitors to visit and explore their websites for a long time.
- According to HubSpot, 87% of video editors are content with the ROI of their video editing efforts. Furthermore, 93% of business owners claim that videos are integral to their marketing strategy.
- WordStream suggests that incorporating videos into your business website’s landing page will increase your conversion rate by approximately 80%.
- Optinmonster research in 2019 shows that video marketers are 66% more likely to get better leads every year.
- According to Wyzowl, in 2022, 81% of video marketers stated that videos have helped them improve their product sales. Moreover, 49% said that videos had led to a reduction in support calls about various products as they allow customers to solve their queries.
- According to Wyzowl, 93% of video marketers have stated that videos have increased brand awareness to a large extent.
- According to Tubular Insights, 64% of consumers are likely to buy a product after they have watched a video about it on social media. Furthermore, according to HubSpot, video is the number one type of content marketers produce.
- According to Small biz Trends, 30% of people can recollect the video ads about products they have seen in the past 30 days. Therefore, you must make an impactful ad that interests the customers.
Video Usage Trends
- According to research conducted by Wyzowl, Video marketers consider videos a pretty important part of their marketing plan.
- According to research by The Marketing Helpline, video posts on social media get 48% more views than typically written posts about the products. Therefore, you can create and edit crisp and attractive posts about your products and share them on social media instead of posting a written post about them to promote your products.
- According to the statistics provided by Oberlo, Youtube with 88% is the most popular platform to edit videos, post, and share them, followed by Facebook with 76%, LinkedIn with 66%, and Instagram with 65%. Therefore, you can easily create and post videos on these platforms to gain new customers for your products.
- According to Hubspot, 73% of people prefer watching entertaining videos. Hence, to digitally promote your content, you can edit videos to make them fun and engaging enough for the audience.
- According to Limelight, 65% of consumers state that their favorite platform to watch videos is Youtube. Therefore, Youtube is one of the best and most important platforms to share your videos.
Video Marketing Channels
- According to Wyzowl, 88% of marketers have included Youtube as an integral part of their digital marketing strategy in 2022, which is 1% less than last year. However, 68% of marketers have included LinkedIn as a part of their marketing strategy, which is 5% more than last year. Therefore, video marketers consider LinkedIn a good platform to share their videos about their company and products.
- According to Wyzowl, 65% of marketers have plans to bring in Facebook as a part of their marketing strategy, which is 5% less than last year. Moreover, 68% of marketers have plans to include Instagram in their marketing strategy, which is 10% more than last year. This data shows that Instagram is a more popular platform for marketers to add videos about their company and products and share them rather than Facebook.
- According to WyzOwl, 46% of marketers have plans to host webinars about their company and products in their marketing strategy in 2022, which is 7% less than last year. This data shows that marketers prefer to share them on social media instead of conducting elaborate webinars to grab the attention of consumers quickly.
- According to YotPo, 30% of consumers have brought products mentioned in videos they have seen on Instagram. Moreover, according to Mention, 7 out of 10 people check out the website links in stories. Therefore, if you still have not included Instagram in your marketing strategy, it is high time you include the platform in your marketing strategy to get more engagement on your products.
- According to LinkedIn, posts with videos are shared 20 times more than written posts on the platform. However, 80% of the videos are watched with the sound off, so you should create videos that can be viewed without sound to gain the audience’s attention on LinkedIn.
- According to Wyzowl, 29% of marketers have plans to use Twitter as a part of their marketing strategy in 2022, which is 2% less than last year. However, according to the data provided by Twitter, the platform gets 2 billion views on videos daily, and tweets including videos have ten times more reach than tweets without videos.
- 99% of video marketers have decided to continue using videos for marketing in 2021. Moreover, data shows that more than 66% will spend more or the same amount on videos in 2022.
Impact of The Pandemic
- According to Wyzowl, the pandemic has drastically affected video editors’ plans for 2021 and 2022. However, the pandemic’s impact on video marketing seems to be gradually decreasing as 50% of video marketers expect the pandemic to affect their video marketing budget in 2022, less than 63% last year.
- According to Wyzowl, three-quarters of video marketers have stated that the pandemic would make it likely to produce more videos. At the same time, the other half said that the pandemic would decrease video production.
- According to Hubspot, 96% of people have stated that the pandemic has increased their video consumption.
Key Takeaway
Listed below are some key takeaways:
- Video has gradually become one of the most consumed content on the internet, so you must use this to promote your brand and products and establish a loyal customer base online
- Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn seems to be the most favorable platform for posting videos
- Furthermore, the statistics suggest that your account will likely get more reach and engagement if you include videos in your posts; therefore, videos will help your business and products reach social media audiences
- Higher engagement rates in videos ultimately convert to higher consumption rates and buy-ins, i.e., people are more convinced to buy a product once they watch a video about it online.
- Investing in video marketing is always a good option since video marketing helps you gain higher engagement, promote your products, interact with your audience and provide you with higher ROI
WeAreSocial reported more than 3.5 billion social media users in 2019. IBM partnered with Mettle CI to create fun and entertaining videos to explain technology easily to their audience, thus gaining popularity on social media.
Business owners and video marketers must take advantage of this extensive reach and promote their products online.
GroupM’s outcome media specialist ‘Xaxis’ launched a new programmatic media commerce solution in India
GroupM’s outcome media specialist, Xaxis, has launched a new programmatic media commerce solution in India called Discovery Commerce. This helps brands and advertisers navigate the evolving programmatic media commerce ecosystem and drives stronger outcomes from their media investments.
Interesting Read: Omnicom Partners With Walmart, Instacart, First Of Many eCommerce Deals at Cannes Lions
Discovery Commerce, the new programmatic media solution
– With Discovery Commerce, advertisers can leverage specific data signals associated with product adoption, search patterns, and purchase patterns. Next, integrate advertising tactics that drive sales, promote brands, and engage customers on e-commerce platforms.
– The solution leverages Xaxis’ programmatic expertise, strong global partnerships, proprietary technology, and tailored data touchpoints to drive consumers to make purchases across various platforms and retail outlets. In the following steps, the data and insights gathered through each touchpoint will be used to inform future campaigns and audience planning.
– Brands can use Discovery Commerce to better understand consumer behaviors and create more accurate target audiences by connecting online and offline data. This will aid in driving stronger e-commerce performance and building benchmarks for future campaigns.
– With the ability to reach multiple online environments, premium publishers, leading marketplaces, and shoppable media formats, the service provides consolidated and simplified consumer data management that unifies previously siloed consumer information.
– Discovery Commerce leverages this data using Shoppable Media, a solution powered by Xaxis’ own in-house creative and execution studio (XCS), to elevate brand outcomes. With AI, XCS understands real-time consumer behavior on retailer websites and recommends products based on that data.
– Shoppers can add branded products more conveniently to their preferred retailer’s basket, eliminating the need to remember brands when shopping online or in-store. As a result, consumers are able to browse, compare, and complete orders without leaving the ad.
Interesting Read: The Journey From Deterministic To Probabilistic Marketing
New Partnerships
Xaxis has onboarded numerous partners into Discovery Commerce, including key partnerships with Shopalyst and Flipkart that provide data, inventory, technology, and creativity capabilities.
Girish Ramachandra, Co-Founder of Shopalyst, said,
“We are happy to partner with Xaxis. With Xaxis’ Discovery Commerce solution, brands can make their ads instantly shoppable and help drive impressions to conversions in one seamless journey for consumers.”
Atique Kazi, president of data, performance, and digital products, GroupM India said.
“We believe there could not be a more exciting time to launch this solution as there are so many opportunities for brands and advertisers to capitalise on e-commerce platform growth. From consistent datasets to campaign measurement and optimisation knowhow, there’s various key ingredients when it comes to doing e-commerce advertising right.”
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Omnicom Group Launches In-Game Advertising Solution For Brands
The Omnicom Advertising Collective a portfolio of integrated marketing agencies within Omnicom Group announced a dedicated gaming offering called LevelUp OAC. The Marketing Arm and GSD&M will lead the new gaming unit. The responsibilities will be divided between the two agencies where The Marketing Arm has over a decade of experience in gaming brand strategy, content creation, influencer engagement, and experiential activation. GSD&M offers in-game advertising solutions as well as in-house game experience design and augmented and virtual reality capabilities. These agencies are also part of a unit called Omnicom Advertising Collective, which is a collection of creative shops organized by the holding company. The Collective is in charge of launching the gaming practice.
Interesting Read: New Video Game Measurement Allows Brands To Evaluate The Impact Of The In-Game Ads
The offering
With the offering, brands looking to enter the space will have access to creative and media expertise, such as in-game media planning and buying, experiential marketing, and influencer marketing. James Fenton, CEO of the Omnicom Advertising Collective, stated:
“LevelUp OAC brings together our most passionate and seasoned talents in the gaming space and offers a single source solution for brands who want to engage with gamers in an authentic, 360-degree way.”
Along with the expertise of TMA and GSD&M, LevelUp OAC brings together other capabilities to round out its offerings such as earned media, PR, commerce, and others. Additionally, the Advertising Collective will focus on other disciplines and verticals, including B2B, multicultural marketing, retailing, and the metaverse.
As examples of recent gaming-related work from the two agencies- GSD&M helps Pizza Hut deliver pizza boxes with an AR Pac-Man game incorporated into them. On the other hand, The Marketing Arm helps State Farm to incorporate its signature character Jake into NBA 2K22. LevelUp OAC plans to offer an end-to-end solution. As reported by Adage, Marketing Arm’s Andrew Robinson Jr said,
“There are a ton of gaming solutions for brands, specific boutique solutions, larger agency solutions, but I think there are very few that offer a top to bottom comprehensive solution. So everything from strategy, creative, media, experiential, influencer [marketing]—they are all the things that LevelUp offers.”
LevelUp aims to provide clients with a “general learning experience” about gaming despite its massive popularity. A critical part of that education is helping brands differentiate between gaming and Web 3.
Gaming Market
The new focus on gaming is driven mostly by big growth in gaming numbers. eMarketer research shows that Americans spent $47 billion on gaming services last year. Gaming analytics firm Newzoo also estimates that gamers worldwide will grow to 3 billion, up from 2.03 billion in 2015.
There is no doubt that Omnicom’s move is long overdue. COVID has brought massive growth to this sector, and it’s now reaching a tipping point for brand engagement. The company is working to grow its strengths in these areas as well – e-commerce, retail media, precision marketing, and performance media.
Interesting Read: Your Ultimate Guide to Understanding Gaming Advertising
YAAP Expands UAE Presence, Acquires Crayons Communications
YAAP a specialized content and influencer marketing company with operations in the UAE, India, and Singapore, has fully acquired Crayons Communications. In a 100% acquisition, Crayons Communications will merge with YAAP.
YAAP acquires Crayons Dubai
With Crayons Communications as a wholly-owned subsidiary of YAAP, clients can maintain their existing relationships with both organizations while gaining access to synergistic value.
In recent months, YAAP has expanded its market footprint and product offerings, resulting in stellar growth. Its clientele includes Coca-Cola, Visit Dubai, Lufthansa, RuPay, American Express, Disney, Amazon, and Square Enix, among other leading brands. In FY21-22, YAAP achieved impressive top-line growth of 97% and a 5X increase in profitability. Thereafter, it has been in the process of scouting for strategic acquisition opportunities across the GCC’s digital content and media landscape.
Crayons Communications boasts over 14 years of market presence in the Middle East with offices in Dubai, Riyadh, and Manama. From homegrown giants such as the Apparel Group and Kaya to MNCs such as Fitbit, Crayons Communications’ portfolio characterizes a rare balance of global-local clients and expertise developed by virtue of longevity.
Kunal Lalani, founder and chairman of Crayons Communications Group said YAAP coming in will create more opportunities for the company and all the clients will benefit from a wide array of new services.
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New services and solutions
Crayons Communications adds key markets to YAAP’s footprint across three countries and seven cities. YAAP is currently developing solutions suites pertaining to Web 3.0 and the Metaverse.
As innovations such as Web 3.0 and the metaverse become more popular, brands are increasingly interested in end-to-end service providers. The advertising expertise of Crayon Communications complements YAAP’s core strengths in influencer, performance, programmatic, and affiliate marketing, as well as Web 3.0 and the metaverse, resulting in an unmatched synergistic value proposition.
It is expected that the Crayons communication management will continue to work in their respective roles and that the workforce will expand.
And that’s what they said
Atul Hegde, Founder of YAAP-
“YAAP has been actively looking to expand its presence in the UAE in particular and the GCC region as a whole. The Crayons Communications acquisition comes at the right time and gives us a great platform to bring our award-winning services in Influencer Marketing & Performance Media to this part of the world. Crayons has a good foundation of established clients that will help us quickly ramp up our service offerings here. We want to be a dominant player in IM, Web 3.0 (with a focus on building for the Metaverse), and media services. Going forward, as the markets correct globally, it presents us a great opportunity for more such acquisitions in this region.”
Arshad Zaheer, CEO of Crayons Communications-
“I’m super excited to be part of the YAAP group now. With an added network of 7 cities and 100+ digital experts at YAAP, it opens up a whole new world of offerings for us in this region. We are known for always punching above our weight in the past with mega projects like the Chris Hemsworth film for Bayut, the Dubai super sixes property or The Bayut: your home, your choice awards, now our ambitions and goals will be much larger!”
Interesting Read: How Will Dubai’s Metaverse Sector Contribute To Its Economy By 2030?
Omnicom Partners With Walmart, Instacart, First Of Many eCommerce Deals at Cannes Lions
Omnicom plans to announce several e-commerce-related partnerships with major retail players during the Cannes Lions festival. Recently, the agency holding company struck its first strategic agency partnership with Walmart Connect.
Interesting Read: Omnicom Media Group Debuts Video Creative Intel For Advertisers
Cross-screen Planning it is!
Walmart Connect, a closed-loop omnichannel media business offers advertisers an opportunity to reach Walmart shoppers on Walmart’s site and app, across its physical locations, and on the web. The first strategic agreement lets all Omnicom agencies execute cross-screen planning against Walmart audiences in the Omni marketing orchestration platform. Planners can identify the domains, apps, and screens with the most effective reach and cost for Walmart audiences. Using the Omni ID, they can push advertisers’ first-party data to the Walmart DSP where it combines with Walmart audiences.
The retail giant is building a platform to leverage the scale of Walmart’s first-party data and strong customer relationships to help marketers deliver strong ROI in an increasingly fragmented environment. Walmart Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer Seth Dallaire said.
“Our partnership with Omnicom illustrates Walmart Connect’s focus on driving growth, improving product capabilities, and educating the industry on the role retail media platforms have in delivering measurable solutions that connect clients with omnichannel shoppers.”
The access to the WalmartDSP and within Omni will allow optimizing supply paths as well as inventory planning that will increase the investment efficiency for OMG clients. As quoted by Digiday, Megan Pagliuca, Chief Activation Officer, Omnicom Media Group said,
“We can take client first-party data, push it via the Omni ID into the Walmart DSP, then plan the right inventory paths to execute against. Having Walmart be a part of our planning capabilities gives a significant benefit to our CPG advertisers. And that is particularly powerful for the non-endemics because we can both use Walmart data, and then optimize towards other outcomes rather than in-store measurement.”
Another potential benefit of the deal is the ability to connect Walmart’s in-store TV network in its 4,700 stores to Omnicom’s programmatic OOH practice. Dallaire told Digiday,
“Omnicom has been leading the way in terms of that programmatic out-of-home space. So I see that as being a really interesting and fun area for us to collaborate.”
Interesting Read: Clean Rooms Explained: How Marketers Can Prepare For Cookieless World
Data, the oil to the e-Commerce vehicle
Omnicom making its second of a series of deals, at this week’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. The agency holding company announced a strategic partnership with e-commerce player Instacart which involves sharing data and new measurement capabilities that can more directly tie sales to TV advertising.
Instacart is building a roadmap to working within the clean room infrastructure of Omni – Omnicom’s open operating system which orchestrates better outcomes for clients across the entire consumer purchasing journey. The Omni clean room allows access to previously built partnerships with NBCU & Disney for planning and measurement.
Instacart has the full insight of the sales data – right from customers searching through checkout – across different touchpoints. Instacart provides CPG brands with aggregated, anonymized, and retailer-agnostic data insights across the entire Instacart app that allows advertisers to better understand their customers’ online buying habits.
The partnership advances OMG’s goal of providing brand executives with a holistic view of media investments, allowing them to prove the effectiveness and value of advertising. Ryan Mayward, Vice President of Ad Sales at Instacart explained,
“For example, in the future, a home cleaning supply brand can better understand how its ads on Hulu drove purchase of its products on Instacart.
We can also dive deep on basket analysis and content consumption trends with Omnicom to help that brand understand which products resonate most with audiences. Our vision is to equip CPG brands with the data and shopping insights they need to better understand their business and identify growth opportunities.”
Summing up the collaboration on insights and measurement, Officer Megan Pagliuca said,
“Omnicom and Instacart can help brands transform top-of-funnel, brand-building marketing channels to outcomes-based media.”
On the series of e-Commerce moves, Omnicom eCommerce CEO Frank Kochenash concluded that each collaboration offers unique capabilities to connected commerce which will benefit the client investment across all mediums.
Brightcom Partners With Intent IQ To Strenghten Its Adtech Offering
Brightcom, a publisher-side platform, is partnering with Intent IQ, an identity verification company. This will allow Brightcom to take advantage of Intent IQ’s bid enhancement service. It aims to better identify IDs in a cookieless environment, leveraging and maximizing monetization for Brightcom’s publishers’ portfolio.
Read More: Walmart Connect: Walmart’s Ambitious Advertising Plans For Its Programmatic Platform
Details: With this partnership, Brightcom Group intends to enhance its bidding capability in RTB and programmatic advertising environments. The loss of cookies in browsers makes it increasingly difficult to target online ads. Therefore Intent IQ’s identity device graph will aggregate Brightcom’s publisher SSP and DSP IDs into one Intent IQ Person ID. It will do this while returning partner SSP and DSP IDs when those are missing. CEO Etai Eitany stated that Brightcom is known for its ability to help site owners and applications generate revenue across a variety of devices and environments, such as display, audio, and video.
Intent IQ is a subsidiary of AlmondNet Group that holds 150 patents mostly related to ad targeting. The company currently uses first-party ID clustering as part of its targeting process. First-party IDs are grouped into interests, or mobile app IDs are grouped into devices visited by the browser. Intent IQ supports third-party cookie and cookieless environments, such as Safari and the future Chrome.
What’s ahead: eMarketer reports that US advertisers spent 41.2% more on programmatic display ads in 2021—the biggest annual increase since 2016. It is expected to reach $141.96 billion in 2023.
In spite of lingering uncertainty as third-party identifiers are slowly phased out, programmatic advertising is booming. It is expected to provide the required transparency to the marketers for their campaigns, especially in a cookieless environment. This works only if advertisers know where their ads are appearing and what kinds of audiences see them. Therefore, programmatic advertising can gain ground when advertisers, ad tech platforms, and publishers work together for a new normal.
Read More: Omnicom Media Group Sets Up Industry’s First Programmatic Private Marketplace
Admix And JGroup Partner To Bring In-Play Advertising To MENA Brands
Admix, the hypergrowth technology company guiding brands into gaming and the metaverse, has joined forces with the Dubai-based media powerhouse JGroup to bring In-Play advertising to the group’s clients in the MENA region.
A large part of JGroup‘s media mix will now include Admix’s In-Play ad placements for DOOH brand clients. There is a potential for further opportunities for MENA brands in the future that blend the physical and virtual worlds.
With In-Play, advertising within the games industry has been revolutionized by introducing premium, non-intrusive advertisements that blend seamlessly into in-game environments while enhancing the gameplay experience. The JGroup’s brands can programmatically access inventory from Admix’s portfolio of high-quality mobile game publishers, including Gameloft, Sir Studios, and Naxeex.
Research shows that the revenue in MENA-3 (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Egypt) is expected to rise to USD $3.14bn in 2025 at a 5-year CAGR of 13.8%, making it one of the fastest-growing gaming markets in the world.
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Samuel Huber, CEO and co-founder of Admix commented,
“The MENA region is a highly captive audience when it comes to gaming and virtual world experiences and it’s an honour to be able to introduce our In-Play tech there with such a major player in the MENA media market as JGroup. We’re looking forward to kicking off the partnership.”
Imad Jomaa, founder and CEO of JGroup added,
“We are thrilled to be expanding our network of advertising offerings to reach users in the metaverse. JGroup is always invested in providing top class innovative digital solutions to its media partners and clients. We are very proud to be part of this major milestone in the MENA region as a pioneer in the GCC media space. Always driven by its passion to deliver new solutions to its clients in the media ecosystem, Promofix is excited to commercially represent Admix services in the MENA region and be part of this new media transformational journey.”
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Leader Talks: Mutate Or Perish, Says Vikram Dhar, CEO, DMT Media From His 30 Years Of Advertising Experience
Vikram, thank you for taking time out for this interview. Can you tell our readers about your background and your career progression over the years?
I came to Dubai as a 23-Year-Old novice, to the Al Futtaim Group’s Economic Advisers Office as a Commercial Executive, in July 1977. It was an era of great expectations with the Ruling Family having grandiose plans for Dubai becoming the centre of the World. Thank God I have had the good fortune of witnessing this vision becoming reality. In 1986, Gulf News was being relaunched and I was headhunted by the new management team at GN to head their Sales and Distribution Dept. The new GN team then went on to create history by becoming the dominant newspaper of the region in a short span of 6 years. In 2005, GN decided to expand in alternate Media vehicles and I was given the task to spearheading the new Broadcast division. Gulf News Broadcasting launched in August 2006 and soon became one of the leading FM broadcast networks in the UAE FM Radio scene. I left GN in Oct 2015 to set up my own Media Consultancy.You are an Honours in Economics from the prestigious London School of Economics. How did you land up in the media world?
My entry into Media was more accidental than by design. There was an opportunity and I grabbed it with both hands. My education served me well both in terms of understanding logistics, costs pertaining to having an inhouse distribution division, marketing of products, product placement and most importantly building relationships with retailers and corporate clients.You started your career in the Dubai media city even before the term existed? How was it working in the media back in the ’90s? What do you think have been major factors in contributing to this exponential growth of the media city?
I started my career in Media in Dubai with Al Nisr Publishing – GN (not in Media City). When I first came to Dubai, the newspapers (Business Recorder & Emirates News) were B4 size cyclostyled sheets stapled together. Then Khaleej Times and Gulf News were launched almost simultaneously in April & Sept 1978. The ’80s & ’90s were an extremely exciting time for Media (especially print) with innovations taking place rapidly in technology, marketing, and sales strategies in this sector. The growth of the UAE in population and business and the stature of Dubai as the hub for the GCC significantly contributed to the vibrant print media industry. There were 4 major contributors to the growth of print media during this time:- The rapidly growing economy and population
- The absence of News Television, Cell phones, and Digital Media
- The first Gulf War
- Cricket in the UAE (Sharjah)
You’ve headed the Gulf News Broadcasting for over two decades. What are your thoughts on its evolution, especially the radio industry? Will it still fit in the media narrative in this constant digital world?
GNB (Gulf News Broadcasting) was launched in 2006 with 2 services in English (Radio 1 & Radio 2) in collaboration with Abu Dhabi Media. I directed the acquisition of the frequencies and managed the business till Oct 2015, (almost 10 years). In the ’80s there was only Dubai FM 92 and Capital Radio (AUH) offering FM services in English. (both owned and operated by the respective Emirate Govt). There were also services in Arabic from different Emirates run by the local Govts of each Emirate. Towards the end of the 90’s first Channel 4 (104.8 FM English) and HUM FM (1062. FM Hindi) were the first privately owned commercial FM operations. Commercially run private FM Radio came into its own in the 2000s with the launch of networks. This included ARN (9 services), Channel 4 Group (5 services), Abu Dhabi Media (8 services) GNB (4 services), and a host of private operators with one or 2 services each. Almost all services are music format stations in different languages. Recently, (since 2017) there has been a consolidation of networks with most single-language operators either shutting shops or selling out to larger networks. With the world getting glued to screens & visual content, more so with the COVID-19 situation, brands are increasingly parking most of their marketing budgets on digital mediums. How could the traditional media- newspapers, radio, outdoors, etc. withstand this erosion? Print Media (other than Govt funded Newspapers and periodicals) is fighting a losing battle both in terms of circulation and advertising revenues making them commercially nonviable.We will see over the next year several print publications shutting down as their digital versions gain traction. The writing has been “on the wall” since 2006, but the realization has come extremely late for the owners of print media. Most print media owners failed to mutate at the pace required to survive. The current pandemic has only accelerated the demise of print media.The severe recession in the current world economy has impacted all. The resulting decline in advertising budgets globally will impact all media. I believe that budgets will move to digital & visual social media platforms. The worst affected will be print and TV, with Outdoor and Radio also being impacted but less severely than print. All Media owners will have to mutate, and media planning and offerings will have to mutate significantly away from the 30-sec spot or single-dimensional hoarding to a more 360 approach with major value-added sops for clients. I also believe that advertisers will move more and more to deal directly with media owners impacting the role of the traditional Media Buying and Planning Agencies, who will also necessarily mutate with the changing market.
Can you shed light on your role at DMT Media? What’s your industry or sectoral focus in brand consultation? How does the company clientele look like?
DMT Media is a consultancy that offers services to Media Owners as well as Advertisers. Media Owners: Consultancy on how to make bottom lines more attractive. Setting up networks and optimizing resources currently available. Developing Commercial Strategies and tactical selling plans, positioning of the brand, rate cards development etc. Acting as MSR for emerging media networks Advertisers: Developing 360 marketing plans based on briefs received (offline & online, BTL and one to one) from clients. Buying of Media and negotiating with Media Owners. Supervising the execution of the campaign and preparing post-campaign reports.Everyone is speculating about the world post-COVID-19. What are the key changes you think the Dubai media city or the advertising industry, in general, will undergo?
The advertising industry will have to mutate with the rest of the world. Different Media verticals will have to pool their resources (advertising inventories) and offer bespoke solutions to clients. Media owners will have to group their offerings, working together and share revenues. Realization rates and overall media budgets will continue to shrink over the next 2 years as the world economy revives. The mantra will be survival, rather than profits. It is unlikely that we will see growth in overall Advertising spends till 2023 or later. Share of spend by Media is unpredictable, but I believe that advertisers are more likely to offer direct value adds to their customers rather than spend on advertising.While the whole world is buzzing with innovation in the digital space, we are keen to know about the latest happenings in the radio industry. Can you share a few insights on how tech is disrupting the radio?
Radio has mutated towards being a more visual media than purely audio. Most services can now be accessed through digital platforms with video feeds available for most programs either live or through podcasts. Most new studios are equipped with video cameras recording RJ action live. The next step is for stations to have digital footprints rather than FM. However, this is handicapped as:- All FM stations are licensed by individual Emirate local Govt.
- Absence of Digital Receivers in Cars.
Content consumption on digital platforms has skyrocketed, especially due to influencers. How can traditional media keep up with the pace and novelty of digital content?
This is more to do with the manner in which traditional media view content creation and dissemination.More and more content is now being bought by traditional media from independent operators/ influencers. I believe that the days of “influencers” are numbered as reliability & trust becomes more important. “Fake News” will keep traditional media’s trust alive.
While speaking about traditional media, people have gone as far as saying that it’ll be extinct by the next decade. Do you agree? If not, what are the areas where the traditional media has an upper hand that would ensure its survival and growth in the coming years?
No, I do not believe this to be true. Consumption of information, and sources will mutate. The “tried and trusted” traditional media brands like BBC, FT, CNN, Bloomberg, etc will mutate and survive through their digital avatars and will eventually find equilibrium in the changing world.Lastly, owing to your vast experience in media, what would be the contingency plan for media companies to sail through these tough times? In fact, to add to it, not just COVID-19, but we’d love to have your opinion on what the media companies, both traditional & digital, are doing wrong today, and how can they improve for good.
In all honesty, no one can presently answer this question. In a “Ceteris Paribus” economy, there will be a move to modern channels for information dissemination.The mantra for all media companies must be “Mutate or Perish”. But this is a mantra that has stood the test of time! Remember the days of the horse-drawn carriage and the invention of the automobile. What is so different about Media?