By Ari Lewine, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of TripleLift. See the featured article on Adweek.
The post Video by TripleLift: Effective Alone, Better Together appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The great evolution of digital video has been written and worried about for over a decade now. Advertisers want to know where viewers get their content, if Connected TV ads are really working, and what they can do to keep reaching consumers despite their changing video habits. There’s a lot of talk, but not much practical guidance.
So, we’ve set out to fill the void. Digital video is progressing at a dizzying speed. You – advertisers – deserve simple, concrete solutions to keep up with these changes and reach your target audience. And, if you apply them right, you will come out looking like the rock star marketers that you really are.
But first, there are two important things you need to know about the “evolution”:
Data shows that In-Break video ads are effective – consumers have a more positive perception of the brand and are more likely to consider purchase after exposure. But how can we harness that performance and accelerate it so your ad dollars go even farther?
The real, concrete solution that you’ve been waiting for…
“Effective alone. Better together”. It’s that simple.
Think back on this last year and your own digital media habits. You probably streamed at least one video in the past month, and most likely within the last day. And either before or after you watched that video online, you were browsing sites to research a product you were thinking about purchasing, you were catching up on the latest news or investigating some entertainment gossip. The point is, you spent a decent amount of time consuming content where those In-Break ads can’t reach you but In-Feed ad experiences can.
Like In-Break video ads, In-Feed video ads are effective alone. In fact, they can increase purchase intent among consumers by 9X compared to industry norms3 and they are 2X more engaging than the typical banner ad.4 But when an In-Feed video ad is paired together with an In-Break video ad, they’re even better. Together In-Feed and In-Break ads see 2.5X higher favorability compared to In-Feed alone.5
Maybe your video viewing method of choice is Connected TV. That isn’t surprising given the average U.S. consumer is projected to spend 34% more time consuming digital video on their Connected TV this year than they did in 2019. Sure, In-Break video ads can effectively reach consumers on CTV, but is that enough to make them sit up and take notice of your brand?
Going beyond In-Break Advertising
TripleLift is pioneering CTV Integrated Ad Experiences, which include Brand Integrations, Split Screen, and Dynamic Overlay. These formats integrate seamlessly into a show in a non-interruptive way while still attracting attention. When paired with In-Break video ads, these units drive 2X higher brand awareness than In-Break alone,5 by either priming the audience for the In-Break ad experience or serving as a reminder of the messaging. Again, both units are effective alone, but even better together.
If 2020 taught us anything it has proven the need for simple, real solutions that allow marketers to keep up with changing consumer habits and make programmatic video buying more effective. With streaming on the rise and the next big app in the works, fluidity in buying and knowledge of the options will be the key to driving brand success.
Now you have the knowledge and can explore your options here. Just remember: effective alone, better together.
1 eMarketer, “Average Time Spent with Media in the US”, 2021
2 eMarketer, 2021
3 TripleLift, Kantar MWB Norms: Consumables, Video Format: n=457, 2021
4 TripleLift, Sticky Eye Tracking Study Average, Video Format: n=10, 2021
5 TripleLift, Millward Brown Brand Lift, Video Format Study, 2021
6 eMarketer, “US Time Spent with Media 2021 Update”, 2021
4 TripleLift, MediaScience In-Show Integrations Study, 2020
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]]>The post Adform Expands TripleLift Partnership with Direct Integration appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The newly launched direct integration with TripleLift, one of the world’s largest independent multi channel SSPs, gives Adform’s advertisers a more efficient way to buy unique native, video and display inventory across the globe.
“We’re excited to offer direct access to the largest independent native exchange through Adform’s Integrated Advertising Platform. We pride ourselves on reacting swiftly to our customers’ needs, so partnering with TripleLift is a logical choice that will provide advertisers direct access to unique premium supply within brand safe environments. We look forward to evolving our partnership and working closely with Triplelift,” said Gustav Mellentin, EVP, Co-founder, Adform.
Vittorio Capasso, Partner Manager at Adform said: “TripleLift’s premium native and video scale across In-Feed & In-Article placements in the US is unparalleled because it not only performs but it remains cost efficient and is backed by highly responsive regional Partner Management teams to support our requirements, deals and objectives throughout the campaign lifecycle”.
Richard Kanolik, Programmatic Lead at Vodafone UK, a leading technology communications company and key Adform client, said: “In a UK market where publisher content credibility and brand safety is now key, it is reassuring to know that TripleLift’s direct-only publisher relationships, best-in-class content standards and partnerships with NewsGuard, IAS and JICWEBs are in place to avoid monetizing inappropriate content whilst ensuring video reach across a diverse publisher landscape.”
As the industry grapples with an influx of websites promoting misinformation and hate speech, TripleLift is among the first supply-side exchanges to forge a partnership with NewsGuard, the company that rates the credibility of news and information sites. The partnership provides advertisers’ an additional layer of protection, and helps to ensure that ad dollars are working towards meeting campaign objectives.
Koto Ayodeji, TripleLift’s Senior Director of Platform Partnerships, said: “As a result of this partnership with Adform, buyers are benefiting from not only more working media dollars, but also superior win rates and a larger addressable audience. Our Partner Management team is looking forward to working more closely with advertisers and scaling the partnership in 2021.”
In 2020, Adform’s partnership with TripleLift, across all formats, yielded a 35% increase in ad spend. This growth comes on the heels of consumers’ increasing the amount of time spent with digital media by nearly one hour in 2020; the biggest increase since 2012. With total digital time on track to surpass 8 hours by the end of 2022, Adform’s integration with TripleLift offers advertisers access to a direct and transparent path to native, video and display inventory at scale.
Adform is the only global, independent and fully integrated advertising platform built for modern marketing. Its unique enterprise technology – Adform FLOW – harnesses superior user experience and a scalable, modular and open architecture, to enable seamless management of the whole campaign lifecycle. It provides clients with enhanced control and transparency across their advertising operations, including ownership of all data from their campaigns. Since 2002, Adform has developed technology to enhance human/machine collaboration and deliver augmented intelligence, thereby amplifying business results for its clients around the world.
TripleLift, one of the fastest-growing ad tech companies in the world, is a technology company with products at the intersection of creative and media. Its mission is to make advertising better for everyone — publishers, advertisers and consumers — by reinventing ad placement one medium at a time. With direct inventory sources, diverse product lines, and creative designed for scale, TripleLift is leading the next generation of programmatic advertising from desktop to television. Working with 90% of the publishers on the comScore 200, 100% of the brands on the AdAge 100, and 100% of the top 20 global DSPs, TripleLift has grown its revenue by high double digits since inception and has now recorded five years of accelerating profitability. TripleLift has appeared on the Inc. 5000, Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Crain’s New York Fast 50 for four consecutive years, and has been on Business Insider’s list of Hottest Ad Tech Companies for the last two years. Find out more information about how TripleLift is shaping the future of advertising at staging-newtl.temp312.kinsta.cloud.
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]]>The post Tastemade’s Head of Business Development On The Future of Connected TV appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>In this month’s Partner Spotlight, we sat down with Jeremy Strauss, Tastemade’s Head of Business Development, to learn more about how the global modern media company is thinking about the next era of Connected TV, from the advertising experience for their 300 million monthly active viewers to relationships between digital studios and linear networks when it comes to premium programming across the food, home and travel verticals.
Please tell us about yourself and your role at Tastemade.
I have been at Tastemade for over three years, and have had a long career in the entertainment sector launching and scaling new businesses. As the current Head of Global Business Development, my main responsibilities are to find new ways to expand the distribution of our streaming network and to drive increased engagement, which leads to increased revenue. I am also focused on finding new ways to monetize Tastemade’s content library and brand through various partnerships around the world.
Have we actually reached a tipping point of CTV consumption or do we still have a few years?
Will CTV services continue to grow in the U.S.? Absolutely. As linear TV continues to decline and shifts its viewers from traditional TV environments to CTV viewing, CTV usage will continue to grow. But I think that this consumption will come at the expense of other forms of consumption; I do believe that we are nearing saturation in terms of overall content consumption.
What should we make of the “streaming wars”?
First, we need to understand that this war is not a single war, but rather a series of battles across many dimensions and involving an increasing number of parties. Yes, Netflix, Disney, and HBOMax/Warner Media continue to spend a lot of money on content, but the battlefield is still evolving, and we’re likely to see both new casualties and new players in the mix. Secondly, the outcome is still to be determined: will it be a winner take all or will several players win? Can ad-supported models and SVOD both generate massive scale, and which partners will end up successfully unlocking part of the scale for themselves?
In your opinion, why is lifestyle programming best positioned to succeed in CTV? Why do you believe that lifestyle programming is best for CTV success?
I believe that there are several factors: 1) the programming is brand safe, and 2) the nature of the programming unlocks so much opportunity for additional ad products like in-show placement, take-overs, etc., which may be more challenging with comedy and dramas that are more talent-centric and that invites a slew of issues and complexities.
I also do believe that for offerings like FAST (Free Ad-Supported Television), lifestyle has the unique brand positioning that is better suited for linear consumption than for VOD. Linear consumption invites itself for longer sessions and higher tolerance for ads.
How have scale and targeting capabilities evolved since you first began?
At Tastemade, we have seen massive growth in our streaming network across new channels, new markets (now in over 40 countries), more viewers, and viewers watching more each month. This scale makes our network attractive to advertisers — both brands and agencies buying direct as well as programmatically. With this growth, we continue to refine how we can enhance the value of our inventory by unlocking enhanced targeting based on our content and our audience.
What is the future of relationships between digital studios and linear networks?
This relationship will evolve along two fronts. For most digital studios, the opportunity for linear networks will evolve such that these digital studios are a source of content for those networks that are successful, and thus have an ability to commission new shows – similar to the model that TV has supported for decades – just at different economics.
I do think that for a handful of brands, including Tastemade, there will be an opportunity to significantly scale a linear network business around the globe as users increasingly adopt these services, and new ad products drive increases in revenue.
As an early adopter of TripleLift’s CTV Advanced Advertising Formats, how do you foresee users interacting with these types of ad experiences? And, what will the future of CTV monetization look like?
We’re still learning what enhances the viewing experience for our audience and what is the most compelling brand/product placement that yields strong revenue performance.
We are optimistic about the opportunity, but I do not think it’s the absolute future of ad monetization. There is no one single future; ad monetization in a CTV environment will yield scale across a variety of formats and offerings, and we have to figure a way to leverage them all.
What is the best recipe you have made while stay-at-home orders were in place?
Fillets cooked black and blue style with a side of roasted brussel sprouts or asparagus. Three keys to this are: 1) a great skillet, 2) quality olive oil, and 3) a great butcher.
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]]>The post TripleLift Ushers in Next Era of Digital Video Advertising with Full-Funnel, Suite of Video Solutions appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Video portfolio includes In-Feed, In-Break and In-Show formats
Audiences now consume video in an almost infinite number of ways. Whether that is scrolling on a website or in a mobile app, watching online video or viewing a show on connected TV, video is everywhere and so are the advertising opportunities. To help brands and advertisers reach audiences wherever they are watching, TripleLift is launching a full funnel suite of video solutions for online video and connected TV. The suite of solutions includes ad formats and experiences for the three ways audiences consume video content: In-Feed, In-Break and In-Show.
Jacqueline Quantrell, TripleLift’s Chief Revenue Officer, reflects on the next era of digital advertising: “As video consumption habits evolve and time spent across all devices remains on the rise, it is increasingly important for video solutions to reflect these changes. As a top three programmatic video supply partner1 with over 25,000 publisher partners across online video and connected TV, and the only Supply Side Partner to offer a full funnel portfolio of video solutions, TripleLift is uniquely positioned to help advertisers achieve their performance goals.”
With TripleLift In-Feed video formats, advertisers can reach audiences directly within a feed of content. These ad units match the unique look and feel of each publisher site and offer customized branding that can drive up to 9X the purchase intent compared to a standard digital video ad.2
For advertisers looking to drive both awareness and consideration among target audiences, TripleLift’s video portfolio includes In-Break formats for online video and connected TV including In-Stream Video and Connected TV Spots.
And, currently in a private beta, TripleLift is pioneering new programmatic In-Show ad formats that are organic, integrated and less interruptive than traditional television advertising. TripleLift In-Show ad formats include CTV Integrated Ad Experiences: Dynamic Overlays, Split Screen Units, and Brand Integrations, all informed by machine learning technology and a creative team of integrated marketers, and all delivered dynamically via automation. TripleLift’s integrated ad experiences effectively deliver upper funnel metrics including increased engagement3 and brand awareness.4
Learn more here about how TripeLift’s video portfolio can help you achieve your KPIs.
1 DV360, Feb 2021 Inventory Availability Report
2 TripleLift, Kantar MWB Norms: Consumables, Video Format: n=457 campaigns
3 TripleLift, MediaScience In-Show Integrations Study 2021
4TripleLift, Millward Brown Brand Lift, Video Format Study 2021
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]]>The post Part 2 : A Nickel’s Worth of Freestar Advice, Insights from CEO Kurt Donnell appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Welcome to TripleLift’s Publisher Spotlight Series. Every month we share an interview with one of our publisher partners, highlighting unique stories and uncovering valuable insights. This month, we are featuring a two-part spotlight with Freestar’s CEO, Kurt Donnell. In Part 1, Donnell offered readers an inside look at Freestar’s impressive growth, what attracted him to the company and how his team remains devoted to client satisfaction. Now, Donnell shares how the Freestar team is navigating industry challenges, what publishers should be considering when it comes to video and gives us a sneak peek at what’s ahead for the company.
From all appearances, Freestar’s publishers are thrilled to be working with you – what do you think they would say is the best part of your partnership?
A lot of companies can offer similar technology to ours, but the service and the custom solutions that we offer are truly unmatched in the industry. As much as we will continue to iterate and innovate on our tech and products, I feel that our publishers would overwhelmingly say our best feature is our team, which is very intentional. I firmly believe that if you take care of your employees and take care of your customers, a lot of other things will take care of themselves. Accordingly, we start with our employees and constantly push ourselves to give them what they need to be successful which in turn lets them better serve our clients.
As a company, we understand that we will always be a client-facing organization first and foremost, and it shows in our day-to-day internal interactions. One of our most active Slack channels (which happens to be my personal favorite) is our NPS channel where the whole company gets real-time, unfiltered feedback from our publishers when responses to our monthly NPS survey are submitted. It is always so great to see people across every team in the organization come together to celebrate and/or learn whenever we have new responses come in from publishers.
The industry faces immense change with the imminent death of the third-party cookie, Apple’s iOS 14 update, and a myriad of new state-led privacy regulations. How can publishers best prepare for these changes?
For anyone that has been in this industry over the years, we all understand the only real constant is change and that every three months or so there will be something new to address. GDPR, CCPA, and the other U.S. states to follow – and potentially federal mandates – are just one element of the change in consumer protections. Add in the third-party cookies and IDFA changes and publishers rightly have a lot to be thinking about, however we as an industry have always found ways to address changes and challenges, and this will be no different. While I don’t know that anyone can definitively say what the solution will be to address the lack of third-party cookies, there are already so many different solutions being tested that I have no doubt there will be viable options that meet the needs of publishers and advertisers alike.
For a single publisher, who is handling all of their ad tech in-house, I’d recommend trying to test as many targeting solutions as possible in 2021 and staying up-to-date on the future of privacy and the demise of the third-party cookie through the various industry resources (such as AdExchanger, Digiday, eMarketer, AdWeek to name a few). There is also no shortage of online webinars that cover the various changes in the industry. Finally, I encourage publishers to join the conversation when possible through groups like IAB or Prebid.org.
With regard to privacy compliance, it is important for publishers to vet their Consent Management Platform (CMP) provider thoroughly and remember that you often get what you pay for. A free tool simply cannot offer you the same service as a solution you pay for. As a self-proclaimed “recovering attorney”, I would also be remiss if I didn’t suggest you seek the advice of counsel on anything you do or implement on your site that is compliance-related.
For publishers, e-commerce companies, or app developers that don’t want to go it alone, ad management companies like Freestar can often help mitigate the headaches of addressing the ever changing world of ad tech (in addition to increasing revenue!). As ad tech is all we do, targeting, compliance and all of the other nuances of our crazy industry are challenges we work to solve all day every day on behalf of our clients so they don’t have to. But I am admittedly a bit biased on this point.
In the last year, we’ve witnessed an acceleration in the demand for premium video inventory across all formats. In-app and in-feed are no exception. Are there any trends or insights that Freestar has uncovered that publishers should consider when looking to increase yield as it relates to video?
What I like to encourage publishers to do is to add video and video advertising opportunities to their site without monetization being the sole purpose behind the initiative. We always take a balanced approach with our publishers around user experience and revenue, and that is especially important with video products. Video products in the right place at the right time will not only drive better revenue, but will also keep your users coming back and consuming more content – which ultimately is what we all want for the health of the open web.
Do you have any sneak peaks of advancements that either publishers or advertisers should be looking out for in the coming months?
We are working toward offering a number of unique ad unit experiences that will be available exclusively for direct-sold and PMP deals. As we continue to grow that piece of our business, we want to ensure we offer both publishers and advertisers unique solutions that meet their needs. We also will continue to add new features and support for additional ad units and integration types to our app monetization platform that is very unique in the ad management space. Lastly, we will continue to build on our Ideal Ad Stack technology to ensure we optimize the value of every ad impression we manage for our publishers. Ultimately, we remain committed to building products that further cement Freestar as the one-stop shop for publishers, e-commerce sites, app developers and advertisers who want to optimize revenue and performance.
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]]>The post TripleLift Acquired by Vista Equity Partners appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The following email was sent to all TripleLift employees immediately following an all-hands meeting where Co-Founder and CEO Eric Berry announced the acquisition of the company by Vista Equity Partners.
TripleLift announced today that a majority stake of the company will be acquired by Vista Equity Partners, a leading private equity firm focused on software, data and technology-enabled businesses. Vista’s involvement will accelerate global growth and further drive product innovation for TripleLift.
This is one of the largest transactions in the history of ad tech and a wonderful outcome for our company, our shareholders and our employees. This alignment will also create positive effects for our customers and partners as it provides us with the ability to service them in an increasing number of ways.
Let me provide some details about this agreement, explain why we entered into it, articulate what it means to our future and share what comes next.
What are the details of this investment?
TripleLift has been acquired by Vista Equity Partners. This should be a moment of pride for every TripleLifter past and present. We started the business in 2012 with a central idea to bring Native ads to the open web. Through your hard work, we have delivered on that original thesis, expanded to become a large and well regarded programmatic exchange, and have begun commercializing a truly differentiated CTV business. These three chapters of our company’s history – and our ability to demonstrate proficiency in each one of them – is what created the value leading to this transaction. TripleLift and Vista will be working together to evaluate key drivers for successful growth moving forward.
Why did we make this decision?
TripleLift has grown over 70% annually since 2015, and we are committed to building on our leadership position going forward. This acquisition ensures that we are well capitalized to follow through on our strategic plan:
Vista is a value-added investor with an extensive track record of helping companies achieve excellence by contributing professional expertise and proven best practices. They will be a powerful resource as we move into this next chapter.
What does the acquisition mean?
At the highest level, let me start with the old adage: “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Vista made this investment in TripleLift for the growth opportunity ahead of us. They bought us for our strategy, our priorities, our brand and our values. None of that changes. As we always have, we will revisit our plans as market circumstances dictate, but we will now have those discussions with Vista instead of our current board of directors.
Mike Fosnaugh, the Co-Head of the Flagship Fund at Vista remarked to me the other day: “Your team has built something extraordinary. Our goal is to help you reach the goals we’ve been discussing. We will help you grow into your ambitions, not change what you’ve built.”
What happens next?
We anticipate that the deal will officially close in Q2 2021, once government regulators have had a chance to review the acquisition. Until and beyond that point, it is business as usual. We’ve got an industry to keep changing.
Thanks to everyone on this team for living our values and driving us to this day.
Eric
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]]>The post A Nickel’s Worth of Freestar Advice: Insights from CEO Kurt Donnell appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Welcome to TripleLift’s Publisher Spotlight Series. Every month we share an interview with one of our publisher partners, highlighting unique stories and uncovering valuable insights. This month, we’re featuring Kurt Donnell, President & CEO of Freestar in a two-part spotlight. Read on for Kurt’s insight on Freestar’s impressive growth, what attracted him to the company, and what it takes to remain devoted to client satisfaction.
Thank you for speaking with us! Can you tell us about your role at Freestar?
Thank you for having me. It has been a pleasure working with TripleLift over the years.
My role as President and CEO has continued to evolve since I joined the company in January 2019. When I started with the company, we were still under 30 people and needed to build or formalize a lot of areas of the business from both a systems and employee standpoint. In the first year or so, I spent a lot of time working to ensure we had a scalable foundation in place for some more basic things like accounting and HR and automated a number of time-intensive processes. I also was hyper-focused on building a very customer service-oriented business, both from a culture standpoint and hiring the right teams, which has paid dividends as evidenced by our NPS scores that are consistently above 70 on a monthly basis. Of course helping to chart the long term vision and direction of the business has been a huge priority since day one.
As we have continued to grow, now over 75 employees, my focus has shifted a bit more to hiring, team structure and leadership development. I always want to ensure we have the right people in the right roles, and that they have the bandwidth and tools to execute at a high level. Accordingly, I spend a lot of time with employees at all levels of our organization to understand and alleviate their pain points and do a lot of work with our management group to encourage accountability and ownership.
What attracted you to the company?
With regard to what brought me to Freestar, I met the founders of Freestar early in their journey and almost joined them 2 years before I eventually did. Perhaps foolishly, I decided to go another direction and joined YogaWorks as EVP of Partnerships and General Counsel where I had the chance to help the company through its IPO and significant growth through acquisitions. Throughout my time at YogaWorks, I stayed in touch with the Freestar founders and was continually impressed with what they were doing and the way they were doing it. I also realized I missed the constant change and need to adapt in the world of ad tech, so it was an incredibly easy decision when the founders asked if I would be interested in coming on board to help lead the next stage of growth.
Being able to join the company when I did was truly a blessing. There were already so many good bones in place, we just needed some operational and administrative improvements that we have thankfully been able to implement. The last two years have undoubtedly been the most fulfilling of my career and it truly feels like we are just getting started.
Freestar has seen unbelievable growth over the past few years. How has the company changed since you first started?
We have certainly changed a lot from a headcount standpoint in the last couple years, tripling in size and hiring 39 new employees in 2020 alone. During that time we went from having offices in Phoenix (our headquarters), New York and Los Angeles to a majority remote team in 2019 when we shifted our focus to hiring the very best people, no matter where they were located. Our early adoption of remote culture unknowingly set us up incredibly well to become a fully-remote company in 2020, which we plan to continue indefinitely.
With our decision to hire employees outside of cities with offices, we had to evolve our culture to ensure that we were still growing incredible employees despite not seeing them daily. We instituted a number of things in 2019, like full company offsites, which we have since switched to very successful virtual retreats in 2020, an ongoing monthly speaker series, new women’s and diversity committees, and more.
Another major change was weaving our obsession with client satisfaction into everything we do. Much of our success – such as being the number 1 fastest growing company on the 2019 Inc. 5000 list which we followed up with a number 36 ranking in 2020 – has been driven by retention and growth of existing customers, not just new customers. We spend a ton of time and energy to improve our processes and we never allow ourselves to rest on our laurels. Be it increasing headcount on our client success team, improving our external dashboard, building new ad products or making upgrades to internal systems, we always strive to get 1% better each week and make our customer’s experiences with us remarkable.
We’ve all learned over the past year that prioritizing mental health is important. What are some of the things you’ve been doing lately when you need to take a break?
There is no denying that the pandemic has taken a toll on all of us in a myriad of ways. While working from home certainly has its perks, it is very easy to instantly be at your desk when you wake up in the morning and find yourself there until well after dinner time. As a result, my team and I have taken a deeper look at our home office lives and have been trying to set the example that getting outside and taking mental health breaks is important. I personally make it a point to try to walk or hike most days of the week, squeeze in golf whenever I can, and take road trips to get a change of scenery while flying has been out of the picture. Like most companies, we have also been extra flexible for our employees with children, allowing them to work schedules that match up with the needs of their family which is ultimately the most important thing in their life.
Click here for part 2 of our conversation with Freestar’s CEO, Kurt Donnell.
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]]>The post TripleLift is the Go-To Alternative for Social Platforms appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>In 2020, we saw hundreds of brands and small businesses pull ads from social platforms after it became clear that their content moderation practices allowed for the spread of misinformation and hate speech.
While these platforms have taken small steps to stamp out fake news and hate propaganda, reports of assaults against fact and truth continue to crop up. These steps are simply not enough to give buyers confidence that the reputation of their brand remains safe.
If you’re a Marketer looking to allocate dollars with confidence, TripleLift can help…
The grass is greener, and cleaner with a trusted SSP partner.
TripleLift offers tools to help Marketers make decisions that align with their brand’s ethos, messaging, and as always: performance goals. Our 100% direct relationships with our massive publisher network mean you don’t need to compromise scale and reach for quality.
Brand Safe
Effective
Easy
Getting started is easy. We can convert your social ads into beautiful, scalable Branded Video and Native placements, so you can be up and running on your DSP of choice in less than 24 hours.
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]]>The post The Unsteady State: A Renewed Look Into The Longevity of Yield Management appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The Ad Tech industry is as dynamic as ever. Market shifts occur every day through audience behaviors, acquisitions, new partners, regulatory changes and more. Simultaneously, the promise of incremental revenue and audience attraction has many publishers finding themselves racking up complex tech stacks.
As new macro trends emerge and revenue opportunities abound, publishers need strategies that can withstand the test of time. But, assessing each partner’s value in relation to publishers’ overall strategy comes at the expense of time and money. What if an established approach is still the best way for publishers to set themselves up for success, no matter the market volatility or business complexities they face?
Yield management has been in practice since the advent of programmatic; it is the study of a publisher’s programmatic stack to see which partner is able to provide the most, and best, demand relative to the supply publishers have available or that goes unsold. In practice, yield management requires a delicate balance of assessing workflows at a granular level to identify which partners give you the most bang for your buck. Publishers who have committed to yield management have a recipe for success that approaches market changes with data and analytics.
Most publishers stand to learn from these early yield adopters, especially as more changes to the industry are expected to roll out this year including SPO, identity & privacy, and inventory quality. However, few publishers today are equipped to support the type of ongoing analysis needed to withstand these changes.
SPO
Publishers are no longer the only ones within the ecosystem looking to streamline their buying paths. Buyers are becoming more aware of the effect of supply paths, especially reselling, and are looking to maximize their buying power with only a few key partners, cutting out middlemen. It will be imperative that publishers work with SSPs that are in good standing with top DSPs and have the technical expertise to keep up with SPO optimizations from clients and DSPs, alike.
Through yield management, publishers can collect data on where demand is coming from to understand the value of each SSP in correlation with each DSP, and therefore buyer. SSPs who can assist with this analysis will be better suited to provide insights and potential adjustments to combat client shifts, leading to higher revenue and fill rates for the publishers and better delivery and win rates for clients – a win, win for all.
Privacy & Identity
Third-party cookie deprecation has been in discussions for years, but it won’t actually go into effect until the end of 2022. While competing solutions and initiatives are being introduced, debated and reimagined, publishers can begin to take action by taking a look at their own tech stack and proprietary data.
First-party data will be crucial to success when third-party cookies disappear across platforms. Leaning on yield management practices now can help publishers leverage their first-party data to identify which audiences a publisher currently has and will potentially have in the future — and mitigate risk. Until third-party cookie adjustments come into play, publishers can utilize their own data and overlay it with performance and brand data to lay the foundation for more strategic selling. These patterns can then be leveraged for matchmaking opportunities with buyers to access inventory via PMPs, audience packaging, and more.
Inventory Quality
Inventory quality has always been touted as an important metric for publishers to make their inventory more distinct and valuable for buyers. However, metrics like viewability and CTR have conflicting impacts from one side of the exchange to the other, with demand believing higher quality must equate to higher yield, when in reality improving placements do not always equate to more revenue for the publisher and a better audience response.
Reducing “low-quality” placements based on viewability and CTR, alone, can come at a cost to publishers. Without disciplined experimentation, a core principle of Yield Management, publishers could see themselves out of meaningful revenue from remnant demand. Likewise, for high quality placements publishers could underestimate the potential return on investment of making minor adjustments.
Check Your Tech
With these imminent changes on the horizon, and others that are yet to be seen, publishers should focus on owning and understanding their partnerships and information. Going back to basics, and creating a framework built off of a methodical approach to data, will provide clarity to any challenges and changes that arise.
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]]>The post The Advantage of Quality Scale appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>As the industry grapples with issues of brand safety, performance, and how both can scale, we sat down with Pete Erickson, Vice President of Publisher Development, to discuss TripleLift’s approach.
Let’s start with what you do at TripleLift.
I’m responsible for bringing new publishers onto the TripleLift platform. I help make sure we bring on supply, but the right kinds of supply, for our buy-side clients to run on.
The terms “quality” and “scale” can mean different things. How do you think about them?
For agencies and brands that need to run campaigns, the first piece is that we need to make sure we have scale to meet their performance metrics. A platform that doesn’t have scale would mean buyers need to run their campaign longer than they want to, or just not meet their metrics. The fact that we have scale is important. The second piece is quality. We need to offer buyers the type of content and audience that they want to run their ads on.
Just to really dig into this for a moment, there is this idea out there that buyers have to make a tradeoff between scale and quality. Is this still the case?
Not so much anymore. Prior to 2014, there actually was a lot of lower quality supply on real-time bidding exchanges. At that time, buyers who wanted premium publishers had to reach out in the more traditional, direct way. The joke back then was that real time bidding was a race to the bottom.
Quite a contrast from where things are now.
Yes. TripleLift is a large global company and we’re working with publishers from the largest media companies in the world, definitely the comScore 100, all the way to mid- and long-tail publishers. And it’s vital to us that everything in our supply is brand safe, that everything is going to perform well and convert well for our buyers, across everything.
How do you decide what’s a quality publisher?
We do have automated systems, with all sorts of high-tech stuff running across the platforms, but you need humans to fine tune it. With any computer learning algorithm you have to run it, analyze it, tweak it, optimize, and so on. That’s part of the value we’re bringing to clients and publishers. In a lot of cases there are just common sense checks that folks on our team do, like going through a site, clicking through articles, and reading them.
What are you looking for when you decide to kick a publisher off the platform?
Brand safety and performance issues. From a brand safety perspective, misinformation is something we have always been careful about not allowing onto our platforms.We need to be on top of whether a site is misleading people about, say, a vaccine. Our partnership with NewsGuard, a company that vets thousands of sites, has been super-valuable in helping us keep those sites off our platform.
And what kind of performance red flags are you looking for?
Viewability is a major one. We look at viewability up front to make sure every single publisher is meeting our standards. There are many others. Bounce rate, for example. If users land on a site, then leave immediately, that tells us something. Maybe a publisher is trying to pump new traffic from various sources that are themselves low quality. And we don’t want our advertisers wasting money on stuff like that.
You’ve made the point that this process can actually benefit publishers.
The benefit to publishers is that each of them is plugged into our platform with thousands of other publishers who meet our standards. That ends up attracting good brands, good agencies, and big campaigns. Our publishers know they’re going to be on the receiving end of those campaigns, and that when they perform really well, that means bigger budgets from buyers down the line.
Let’s touch on a related point, which is that you connect directly with all of your publishers, in the technical sense, which brings efficiencies and trust to buyers.
The analogy I like to make about directness is that if you’re buying a car, and you buy it from a private party, you’re going to get a better deal than if you go to a dealer, or someone who’s aggregating a bunch of listings from dealers.
The buyer doesn’t pay the intermediary in that example.
Right. That’s how it works in programmatic as well. TripleLift is 100% direct in our integrations with publishers. So you avoid what we call the “tech tax,” where if you’re involving more companies in the re-selling of inventory, everybody is going to take their fee or slice of the pie.
And of course with a less direct path, a brand can’t be sure of the ultimate environment where their ad appears.
When a brand ends up where they don’t want to be, more often than not it’s because they bought through a non-direct supply path. That happens when a publisher works with an SSP that doesn’t have enough demand. So they sell to another SSP. As soon as you do that, you lose control. At TripleLift, we won’t allow another SSP to plug into us. We don’t think it’s good for publishers or buyers.
It would seem daunting to forge direct relationships with so many publisher partners, but the roots of those actually go back to your native business.
At our core, we are a native platform. In our early days, there was a technical reason for our direct relationships, we needed to work directly with publishers to design the look and feel and size and location of ads. So we built our entire platform on those direct relationships.
Today, we have direct relationships with 780 parent publishers encompassing 24,000+ sites and 2,200+ apps. Relationships we’ve built one-by-one.
Thanks so much, Pete!
Thank you.
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]]>The post Google’s Affinity & In-Market Audiences are Now Available on TripleLift’s Inventory Globally appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>We are excited to announce that as of March 2021, TripleLift advertisers can apply Google’s Affinity and In-Market audience segments to their campaigns in Display & Video 360 and leverage expansion tools across all devices at no additional cost. These features can increase scale, raise awareness and drive consideration among potential customers.
We’re extremely proud of the collaborative efforts between both TripleLift and Display & Video 360 to make these audiences available to advertisers.
Interested in using in-market and affinity audiences?
Step-by-step instructions can be found in our Display & Video 360 Activation Guide.
To learn more about how to apply Google Audiences to your TripleLift campaign contact DV360@triplelift.com
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]]>The post Publishers: What you need to know about Apple’s iOS 14 Update appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>After much anticipation across the industry, Apple is now giving users the choice to block the IDFA (identifier for advertisers) at the app level as part of its iPhone and iPad operating system update. What this means is that all apps are required to obtain user permission to collect and share a user’s data upon download. The move from an opt-out to an opt-in standard marks a sea change for addressable advertising on Apple devices.
We have been working to prepare for this since Apple first announced plans for the privacy-change over a year ago. And while there are still many unknowns, we are committed to helping our partners navigate these changes and limit the impact on their business.
Here’s a look at what we know now, and what publishers can do to prepare for the changes ahead.
In addition to giving users more control over their data by limiting the IDFA data available for attribution across mobile apps, Apple will provide a new attribution solution through its SKAdNetwork and App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework.
SKAdNetwork is a privacy-first method developed by Apple to help marketers measure the success of their campaign by attributing mobile app installs on Apple devices while giving app users the ability to set preferences for the use of a device identifier called IDFA. In the absence of IDFAs, Apple has provided the SKAdNetwork API as an attribution framework.
For publishers to ensure that they are able to support SKAdNetwork, make sure you are on the latest version of your advertising SDKs and confirm that they support the SKADNetwork OpenRTB signals. TripleLift will then indicate the relevant signals to demand partners.
For Publishers on Amazon Transparent Ads Marketplace (TAM), please log into your APS Pub Portal and toggle SKAdNetwork demand to ON for TripleLift.
Update your app’s info.plist file: Publishers should include the SKAdNetworkIDs of all DSPs to whom they want to sell to in their info.plist file. Please see all required TripleLift SKAdNetwork IDs here
SKAdNetwork ID Format: Apple’s requirement is that the SKADNetwork IDs in the PList should be in lowercase form i.e. 7ug5zh24hu.skadnetwork. Having a SKAdNetwork ID in uppercase can break tracking.
Publishers should determine how they are going to set up, test and manage their ATT prompts. Since a publisher only has one opportunity to prompt users to opt-in to sharing IDFA, it’s business critical for publishers’ to put their best foot forward.
Does your Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) have A/B testing data you can leverage to increase your opt-in rates? Key examples that we recommend testing against include:
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]]>The post The Real Cost of Fraud and Low Quality Environments appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>In today’s ad ecosystem even the biggest brands and most premium publishers can fall victim to fraud and low quality inventory. TripleLift’s Max Dowaliby, Senior Director of Product, joined us to offer a deeper look at how TripleLift is helping buyers and publishers to protect their brand, budget and business.
There’s been a good deal of discussion about programmatic ad fraud lately, but you’ve said that fraud is part of a larger set of problems that TripleLift is solving.
That’s right. We think about ad quality from a number of angles, and fraud is obviously a very important part of that. But so is understanding where ad dollars are going, knowing that the publishers that you’re working with are legitimate, and making sure the ad is viewable.
Let’s touch on all those issues, but starting with fraud specifically.
When people say “ad fraud,” they generally mean invalid traffic from bots. It’s really important to an advertiser that their ads are in front of human eyes. With human eyes, you get actions, like clicks for purchases, or signing up for an account. If those ads are being shown to fake people, there’s zero chance that those fake people can take the action the advertiser wants.
What steps has TripleLift taken to combat invalid traffic?
Our goal is to ensure that our buyers and our partners never have the opportunity to buy a single impression that can be identified as fraud.
We’ve built a deep relationship with WhiteOps. We were one of their first supply side partners. Every ad is pre-scanned by WhiteOps for fraud before brands have an opportunity to bid on it. If WhiteOps tells us that they believe that an ad opportunity stems from a bad actor, we don’t hold an auction.
How do you deal with publishers that might feature hate speech? That’s a huge concern for advertisers.
We’ve taken a hard stance that we won’t monetize content that is identified as misinformation or malicious content. Last year we began partnering with NewsGuard, an organization that uses trained journalists to rate the quality of news and information sites, all by hand. Their trust ratings help us to monitor publishers for misinformation, hate speech and calls to violence. Anytime a publisher appears on their list, if we work with that publisher, we drop them.
Can you give a sense of how many sites you had to drop?
After we measured our impression volumes, it turned out that we never had a significant problem to begin with. We started to think, why was that the case? It boils down to the fact that we have direct relationships with all of our publishers. We can pick up the phone and call every single one of them.
So those direct relationships are very helpful from a buyer perspective.
Our direct relationships with publishers are important to advertisers in two ways. The first is an efficiency gain — you’re not paying a margin twice or even three times in some cases. The second is that you avoid uncertainty of the ad experience. Without directness, you don’t know where some piece of inventory originates, which can introduce brand safety and some of the other issues we’re discussing.
Since we’re talking about buyer concerns, let’s touch on how TripleLift deals with viewability.
We work with all of the industry leading partners here. MOAT is a huge partner of ours. We are compatible with every viewability vendor and ensure that none of the inventory on our platform falls below a certain threshold. We don’t want to hold auctions for inventory that have a very low likelihood of ever being viewed.
We’ve touched on social responsibility and the ad ecosystem. Is there anything you want to add about that?
The programmatic ecosystem in general has a responsibility to understand that it directs a lot of money, and where these ad dollars go has a dramatic impact on a lot of things. It’s unfortunate that sometimes only the brand gets blowback for where their ads end up, but not those who are monetizing the malicious content – there are multiple parties here (ourselves included) who should be held responsible.
At TripleLift, we want to make sure we are not funding entities that promote misinformation, hate speech, or calls to violence. We also want to protect our brand partners; no brand wants to see their ad next to hate speech.
But with the policies we’ve discussed at TripleLift, just choosing the right SSP can solve so many issues for brands.
Brands should know what inventory they’re buying, and some inventory just shouldn’t be available for purchase. If you think about it, spending on malicious sites takes dollars away from genuinely good content on the internet. That’s part of why TripleLift has created initiatives to direct advertising dollars to good causes. For example, through our Exchange Traded Deals, curated inventory packages, buyers can help to advance equality by directing spend to minority-owned publishers. There is social capital in this, but there is also real money flowing between the advertisers and these publishers. And that good outcome happens because of programmatic advertising.
Thanks so much, Max!
Thank you.
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]]>The post Every Meeting Makes a Difference: Helping Women Back Into the Workplace appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>True to form for 2020, the end of the year brought about one last piece of bad news: in December, the US saw a net loss of 140,000 jobs. And if that wasn’t upsetting enough, the research further revealed that women actually lost 156,000 jobs while men gained 16,000 – meaning 100% of the net job losses belonged to women.
A Stalled Workforce
Before the pandemic, women were making huge strides in entering the workforce; once COVID hit, many women’s careers took a backseat, to take care of their families, or by job losses. Crain’s Detroit further dives into these losses:
The share of women between the ages of 25 and 54, so-called prime-age workers and those most likely to have young children at home, who were either employed or looking for a job, dropped to 73.5 percent in April from 76.9 percent before the pandemic (Source).
Many women have made the decision to leave the workforce, in order to balance their family lives with the demands of parenting through a global pandemic, when many children are being schooled online at home. The fact that this workforce exodus is happening with less frequency for men indicates we still have a long way to go in closing the wage gap and in ensuring the brunt of caregiving does not fall solely on women.
Employment Gaps at the Intersection of Race and Gender
It gets worse:: Black and Latinx women were hit the hardest by these job losses. The effect this will have on BIPOC families could be devastating. The Center for American Progress reports that “67.5 percent of Black mothers and 41.4 percent of Latina mothers were the primary or sole breadwinners for their families, compared with 37 percent of white mothers.” Not to mention, the intersection of race and gender creates cumulative barriers that women of color must face when job-seeking, from wage gaps to outright discrimination when interviewing.
The Women’s Initiative Network (WIN) is Angry— Rightfully
As Melinda Gates writes in Time, “COVID-19 has helped us see the failures of our social contract with new clarity, and all around the world, people are refusing to look away.” In fact, she goes on to write, in one survey nine out of ten people were hoping for a more “sustainable and equitable” world after we come out the other side of this pandemic.
Here at TripleLift the Women’s Initiative Network (WIN) is an employee resource group whose mission is to uplift and advocate for all women at TripleLift and in the broader community. We, too, want to see a more sustainable and equitable world, and we don’t want to wait to do it. As women who are privileged to have jobs during a time when people are facing terrible losses— and when women, especially women of color, are facing disproportionate losses— we wanted to turn our anger into action.
Every Meeting Will Make a Difference For These Women
This is why TripleLift is bringing back our Every Meeting Makes a Difference initiative.
TripleLift started Every Meeting Makes a Difference at the beginning of the pandemic to provide meals to frontline and clinic workers through World Central Kitchen. We saw enormous success with our partners who participated in meetings in an effort to drive meals for those who needed it most. This time, we are looking to support nonprofits focused on women’s employment in an effort to ensure the US does not repeat another December 2020 job report.
Now, for every meeting that clients take with TripleLifters we will donate to three charities to support women in and out of the workplace:
Empathy without action can feel hopeless, so that’s why we’re taking action. This is just the beginning of a much larger conversation to have about protecting women’s career development while also removing barriers created by systemic inequity. WIN and TripleLift vow to continue to fight the good fight and listen for ways to create progressive, inclusive, and sustainable change. It starts with just one meeting.
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]]>The post Educational Tools in the World of Digital Learning appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Welcome to TripleLift’s Publisher Spotlight Series. Every month we’ll share an interview with one of our premium publishers, highlighting unique stories and uncovering valuable insights. This month, we’re speaking with Samuel Youn, Director of Programmatic Revenue Strategy at Chegg. Read on to learn about Chegg’s yield optimization efforts and the changes they’ve seen in remote learning over the past 10 months.
Thank you for speaking with us Samuel! Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your role at Chegg?
As Director of Programmatic Strategy, my goal is to grow programmatic revenue on all of Chegg’s surfaces to subsidize or even completely offset the cost of our services for students. I started my programmatic advertising career in 2013 at a company that was later acquired by Chegg in 2016.
Chegg owns and operates several websites that reach over 30 million students per year, and is the leading direct-to-student learning platform today. We strive to improve educational outcomes by putting the student first in all our decisions. In short, we support students on their journey from high school to college and into their career with tools designed to help them pass their tests, pass their classes and save money on required materials.
What drew you to programmatic strategy? How have you seen that strategy evolve since you began working in programmatic?
Like most people in Programmatic Advertising, I didn’t intend to build my career in this space, but I fell into it fortuitously. What drew me into strategy was the quick moving nature of the industry, data-driven results and the open-ended opportunities for improvement. It’s an amazing career that marries creativity, data and technology — best of all, it is measured by revenue! Being able to tie revenue to our student mission has made my career even more rewarding.
As programmatic technology has evolved, it has opened the door to better processes built around technology and data. The watershed moment in my career thus far was the emergence of header bidding. This fundamentally changed how we operated; for the first time, data was democratized for publishers, allowing us insight and most of all, control over how auctions were mediated. As a result, our processes and organization changed to emphasize engineering, AB testing and data analysis.
Speaking of evolutions, obviously much has changed recently in the way that students are learning. How has your business changed since the start of the pandemic?
Chegg has always believed that the modern student would need greater support through online services that were accessible and affordable. Even before the pandemic, Chegg was focused on the inevitable transition of education going digital; the pandemic certainly accelerated this transition.
Fortunately, our business didn’t need to change, but we had to ramp up our systems to support the massive growth as students transitioned to remote learning. We experienced 82% YoY growth in content views and our paying subscribers grew by 69% YoY in Q3 (per our Q3 earnings report).
From a programmatic lens, we took the down-market effects of the pandemic and used it as an opportunity to reset our yield strategy. Maximizing yield is our constant goal; we pivoted our strategy to focus on tech-driven yield optimizations as we know that these changes could improve yield even in a down market. Even though CPMs may have decreased at a macro level from economic trends, our ability to maximize auctions through mediation and viewability optimizations has shown lift in our AB tests.
We also emphasized strategies that were most sustainable and forward thinking. To do that, we examined our setup closely, and created a strategy around the quality of our ad placements and demand path. Our focus became creating the most attractive inventory for buyers and providing the most efficient paths to advertising budgets. We recognized that these two approaches could make an immediate impact, but also would set us up for success once the market recovered.
Would love to learn more about your yield optimization efforts. What metrics do you look at as measurements of success? What are some tools that you use to increase viewability?
Our goal is to make our inventory valuable and efficient for buyers. Viewability is our best indicator for value, as we’ve been able to measure that each decile increase in viewability correlates to an increase in CPM. To improve viewability, we’ve made shared goals between Product and Ads to ensure that we are moving towards product design that keeps viewability a priority.
Efficiency is important for Supply Path Optimization as well as Demand Path Optimization. To measure efficiency, we first assess how much revenue an SSP is contributing to our stack. If the percentage of revenue is low from a specific SSP, we may consider removing them to eliminate low performing paths to our supply, and for our own operational efficiency internally.
However, an even more telling metric is valueAdd. ValueAdd is a metric that we created to describe the difference between the winning bid for any specific partner and the second highest bid. To do this, we capture log level data which includes every bid response from each of our header partners, regardless if they win or lose the auction. This metric tells us the margin at which each SSP wins an auction by (incremental lift). If we find that a partner has a very low percentage of total revenue contribution to our stack, but that has very high valueAdd, we may consider keeping them in our stack. Why? Though they win auctions infrequently, they win auctions at very large margins which equates to significant incremental revenue.
What trends in the digital learning space have surprised you the most over the past ten months?
We already anticipated that our users would depend on us more during the pandemic, but we were really excited and surprised at how fast new students engaged with us internationally. The pandemic is truly a global challenge and it is impacting schools around the world. We’re really happy that so many students are finding us for support during these challenging times.
Do you have any predictions for what the next year will look like for digital learning?
If I’ve learned anything this year, it is to be wary of predictions. That said, a silver lining from this pandemic has been that many students and teachers have been forced to test the limits of what is possible with remote learning, and have learned that a lot can be accomplished online.
Our recent studies have shown that two out of three US undergraduates would welcome more online learning after the pandemic ends. Professors have also warmed to the idea of online teaching, as now roughly one of two professors feel that online education is an effective teaching method. Our surveys also showed that teachers and professors feel better prepared to teach online, improving by 38% since May.
What are some of the advantages of working with Chegg right now that advertisers should know about?
We believe Chegg has more direct-to-student relationships than any other institution. Advertisers have a brand-safe opportunity to be an integrated and visible partner in our student mission in helping increasing access to modernized learning experiences at a low cost.
We have several branded opportunities that integrate directly into the student experience, all of which can be transacted programmatically. The best example of this is our custom Hero unit, which functions as a rewarded video ad unit that unlocks paid features for students free of charge. This unit requires engagement from the user and is a full-page experience that supports both display and click-to-play unmuted video.
Given that we provide unique & compelling services, our students are willing to engage with our advertisements. We have multiple surfaces under the Chegg brand which facilitate different student needs, and we’d love to build partnerships with brands to build unique integrations through all aspects of the student journey.
Last question! Now that we’ve finally made it to 2021, do you have any resolutions for the new year?
I am eager to take the positive momentum from the end of this year and build upon it for a great 2021 — both professionally and personally!
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]]>The post Reflections on 2020 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The following post contains excerpts from a recent email sent to all TripleLift employees by Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Ari Lewine.
—
2020 was bizarre.
We came into the year with huge expectations for growth, found ourselves tossed around by the pandemic, quickly righted the ship and ended with our biggest and most profitable year ever. We certainly didn’t draw it up that way but, collectively, we really made it work.
As a company that sits at the middle of a vibrant ecosystem, we know that we only win when everyone wins — our customers, our partners and our employees. If one is out of kilter, our business can become off balance. When Covid hit, we knew immediately that our success was going to be determined by the support we gave, as well as the support we got in return.
In early April, we planted the green shoots of our recovery by focusing on this very notion – supportiveness – in three different ways:
This Lift Letter is about how we made the idea of supportiveness a reality.
Supporting our Customers
We have the opportunity – actually a responsibility – to support those both upstream and downstream in our business waterfall.
Supporting Society
No company operates separate from the world. And, increasingly, we have found importance in contributing to the greater good.
Supporting Our Employees
Around the world, people have needed to adjust to a new normal. We tried to make it easier to handle these challenges.
Each one of these things, on its own, is small. Taken together, they make a huge difference.
When I look at what we did last year, laid out like this, it makes me so damn proud to work at this company. I hope you feel the same way.
— Ari
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]]>The post Demystifying the Value of Brand Integrations appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>A lot has changed since March. The Coronavirus pandemic has made us rethink our government, work and family institutions. In part to connect with others and sometimes just to check out, we’re leaning into a living room experience around video content.
Streaming television has become the new international pastime and it just so happens that the eruption of the streaming wars — with new services from Disney, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and Quibi — coincided with the necessary isolation of COVID.
Experts across industries are talking about how trends that were unfolding over a matter of decades, are accelerating into a matter of months. Nowhere is this more evident than in the streaming wars, where the consumer behaviors of the next two years are likely to define the winners and losers of the next two decades.
There are several new models emerging for brand-supported television including:
All of these trends are accelerating as the transition continues from traditional linear TV to streaming. Consumers in OTT environments will no longer accept the old fashion. They want brands to facilitate access to the programming they love, not get in the way.
To preserve a consumer experience that allows brand-supported TV to compete with brand-free and commercial-free content, AVOD streamers are moving away from interruptive ad formats and towards more integrated ad experiences.
The new viewer-first ad experience will ask fans what they want, not just what they’re willing to tolerate. This begs the question, what will happen to the $100B global market for television advertising? Now, in ad-free environments — integrations and product placement have always been the de facto “ad product” if you will. And the market is ripe for both investment and technological innovation. According to PQ Media Research & Insights, last year marked the 10th consecutive year of double digit growth for product placement revenue in the U.S., representing a more than $11B opportunity.
TripleLift has pioneered a programmatic OTT solution for integrating brands into premium programming in post-production.
The best part is, this requires no additional resources of show producers. And because no physical product is needed on set, it opens up the windows for marketers to get involved.
The emerging “new normal” that everyone’s talking about is going to require new measurement. One of the first things we have to do is figure out if this new model is even going to work. So we’re starting with just that: publishing first-of-its-kind research to determine how audiences are engaging with our new ad products.
So far the industry has yet to develop scientific methods to assess the return on investment in integrations. Production costs can be prohibitive. And there’s no “unit” or “unit cost”, therefore an academic approach to ROI analysis falls short.
We’re designing measurement solutions from the ground up that directly correlates with business outcomes — and invite new conversations and new questions from stakeholders throughout the entire value chain, about the efficacy of integrations in television.
Questions such as:
In partnership with MediaScience, TripleLift integrated 8 brands across 3 different categories (Alcohol, CPG and Food & Beverage) into three different versions of the same episode: 1.) one that only had ad breaks without any integrations, 2.) one with just integrations and 3.) one version with integrations and their accompanying ads. This allowed us to have a control and exposed group, inching us closer to uncovering new insights about brand integrations in OTT.
To learn more about the insights discovered, download our research paper
Targeting the Consumer Psyche – How OTT Brand Integrations Deliver Impact
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]]>The post Ending the Year on a “Four-Peat” High Note appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The email below was sent by CEO Eric Berry to all employees on the occasion of TripleLift earning distinctions from Inc., Deloitte and Crain’s, each for the 4th year in a row.
To all TripleLifters,
As the year is wrapping up, I have some more good news to report.
TripleLift has just completed a “four-peat” of distinctions in the business world. For four consecutive years, we have earned the right to appear on three important lists: The Inc. 5000, Deloitte Fast 500 and Crain’s Fast 50. To appear on each list, companies need to demonstrate high rates of growth. And TripleLift has been bringing the goods for four straight years.
The Inc 5000 ranks companies across industries by revenue growth over a three-year period. In that span, TripleLift ranked #1,402. The Deloitte Fast 500 measures the fastest growing technology companies in North America and we came in at #202 on their list. Crain’s placed us at #24 on their list of fastest growing New York-based companies alongside impressive peers such as Lemonade, Peloton, Noom, Compass, WeWork and Brooklinen.
The best part is that our metrics continue heading up. None of these surveys takes into account the full calendar year 2020, where our exponential growth has continued. So when we submit again next year we should have a good chance of making it five-for-five. We already know that 2020 will be our 9th consecutive year of high double digit (or more) revenue growth, and our 5th year in a row of accelerating profitability. Meaning: we are doing better year-over-year in our bottomline, even as we are getting larger in our topline.
You routinely hear me talk about the balance of the human and math sides of our business. We focus attention and resources on our people to unlock success that materializes in our numbers. So, while we routinely celebrate our human accomplishments, it’s incredibly gratifying to receive acknowledgement for the results themselves.
Exceptional growth, driven by exceptional people.
Congratulations to the whole team on these great distinctions.
Eric
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]]>The post Navigating Evolving DSP Dynamics with Mediavine appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Welcome to TripleLift’s Publisher Spotlight Series! Every month we’ll share an interview with one of our premium publishers, highlighting unique stories and uncovering valuable insights. This week we’re speaking with Phil Bohn, SVP of Sales and Revenue at Mediavine. Read on to learn how Mediavine uses SPO requirements as a differentiator and the surprising trait they have in common with Alexander Hamilton!
Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions Phil! For starters, can you tell us about your role at Mediavine?
Sure, and thanks for having me! My official title at Mediavine is SVP of Sales and Revenue. Most of my time is spent managing the Sales team, forging relationships with potential new partners/marketers, improving relationships with existing partners, or improving products, all in the name of revenue.
As part of my role, I am also required to use no less than 700 adtech acronyms per day. It is a very well kept secret in the industry that acronyms are negotiated upon hiring. (I kid, but actually just preparing you for the avalanche of acronyms below.)
How are you dealing with the SPO opportunities of sellers.json, ads.txt, and more coming from DSPs?
From the beginning, our goal at Mediavine has been to establish a safe, performance-driven environment for advertisers, therefore any efforts to improve transparency on the buy-side are aligned with our core philosophy. We’ve had to build out some functionality, but so far we have been able to accommodate these changes.
Supply Path Optimization is a little different. There are no set rules and a brand, an agency, or the DSP could be directing the optimizations. This means that SPO is one of our key discussion topics with partners and we’ve built internal reporting to monitor for any significant drop-offs from specific advertisers or DSPs, either through a single exchange or all exchanges.
As of today, we haven’t had any major issues and the few times there were concerns we were able to explain our strategy: Mediavine is providing the technology to allow thousands of independent publishers to add their billions of high performing ad impressions into the ecosystem, so keep the bidding and buying flowing!
Do those changes make it difficult to prove your directness as a network?
Mediavine strives to find solutions well in advance of any deadlines required for such initiatives, so we’re never struggling to adapt at the last minute. However, these initiatives did require an extra layer of communication to understand how DSPs were auctioning off ads.txt and sellers.json, and to ensure Mediavine passed all necessary requirements.
We view these requirements as a way to set ourselves apart from other ad management providers and as an impetus to create a seamless solution for publishers and buyers. Once we explain the value proposition of the Mediavine Script Wrapper and our other products, plus our exclusivity clause with publishers, it is relatively easy to prove our directness.
Are you seeing better performance or a specific share of voice from certain DSPs vs others?
Our robust internal reporting focuses on dozens of metrics, and alongside an additional reporting set from our revenue partners, we have a unique snapshot into Mediavine’s performance levels. While we aim for diversity in our programmatic revenue streams, there are obviously a few publicly traded companies who tend to have a higher share of voice than others, but it isn’t by design.
According to our reporting, we generally perform better than our cohorts in key revenue-driving categories. While this could be what they tell all the publishers to boost their adtech self-esteem, we are extremely confident in our reporting and performance.
Mediavine is the only Comscore Top 5 Lifestyle publisher with an audience that skews more than 70% female. Was that by design, or a natural development that you leaned into?
It was absolutely by design in that Medavine prioritizes a clean and safe environment for marketers. We knew if we could scale our business with these priorities at the forefront, we would achieve higher CPMs and RPMs for our publishers. It turns out Food, Parenting, DIY, and Travel is very brand-safe content and tends to skew very female.
In other words, much like Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, Mediavine is “reliable with the ladies!” (If you haven’t seen Hamilton: An American Musical, you have my sympathies. Please finish reading this blog post and go immediately to get a Disney+ subscription and watch. You’re welcome!)
From a publisher perspective, what are the challenges that programmatic is facing right now that keep you up at night?
The current decline in bids from iOS/Safari traffic and the impending Chrome Cookie Massacre of 2021. For many, if not most of our 7,500+ publishers, Mediavine is their primary source of income. Continuing to optimize earnings for these small businesses in a rapidly changing ecosystem is both a challenge and our top priority.
What are some of the advantages of working with Mediavine versus other publishers in your competitive set?
Mediavine’s technology has been the linchpin of our company from day one. We built our own Script Wrapper and all of the optimizations within it, as well as our own instream video player, outstream video player, Open RTB server-to-server connections and, starting this year, our audience engagement framework and first-party data collection product, Grow.me.
We have dedicated engineering teams to maintain, improve and grow all of these products. Mediavine’s technology and the people behind it set us apart in every respect.
What has been your greatest learning moment this year? Why and what did you take away from it?
Last year, we built our own Open RTB server-to-server solution. The plan was to use this to connect to smaller exchanges, minimizing latency. After extensive testing and optimizations, we’ve improved performance from all of our revenue partners over traditional on-page integrations. We expect to remove all on-page integrations in early 2021, dramatically improving pagespeed, SEO, viewability, and other key metrics.
Most of our exchange partners have told us that match rates are a major pain point in S2S connections, but we have solved for this issue and look forward to fully implementing our in-house S2S-only Script Wrapper in 2021.
So, here’s to 2021, the year of the Ox and the first 100% publisher-built server-to-server Script Wrapper! (Aka, the S2S-SW. Whew, just hit 700 acronyms for the day on the dot with that one. Clocking out to watch Hamilton now.)
For more information about TripleLift, our publishers, or how to be featured in a publisher spotlight, please contact us here.
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]]>The post TripleLift Crosses $1 Billion Dollar Lifetime Ad Spend Milestone appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>On November 8th 2020 (at precisely 1:49pm EST), TripleLift reached $1 Billion in lifetime ad spend. The email below was sent by CEO Eric Berry to all employees commemorating this significant milestone in the company’s history.
TripleLift started with a vision about improving advertising. It was a risky and untested idea and it required creating an entirely new part of the programmatic ecosystem. Over the next several years, we were incredibly fortunate that the market validated our approach to the degree that we quickly became one of the fastest growing ad tech companies in history, and have sustained that growth across time.
TripleLift has now crossed $1 billion in lifetime ad spend. A billion dollars have now run through our pipes. More impressively, over half of that total has transacted this year alone. It took us nine years to get to a billion but, with half of it coming in just 12 months, we are growing…fast. That’s an average rate of increase in ad spend over 70% every year of our existence.
TripleLift was fortunate to have started with a view about how to improve advertising that was aligned with where publishers, marketers and consumers wanted the ecosystem to go. But we’ve been even more fortunate that the publishers and marketers we work with are indeed true partners that are excited to collaborate with us on the next stage of our journey.
We believe that good fortune is an important part of any company’s success. But we also believe that successful companies have a clear view of what defines them. For TripleLift, it’s our three P’s:
We believe these principles have been instrumental in our success, and also position us well for the future. We know that technology continues to move forward at break-neck speed, and we have solutions for that. We know that television is ripe for disruption, and we have products for that. We know that privacy policies will create both challenge and opportunity, and we have plans for that. Our latest products – and those quickly emerging from our roadmap – will get us to where we are going tomorrow.
Forgive me if this note feels like flag waving. But this is a seminal moment in the history of our company and I could not be more proud of what we have accomplished together.
In honor of our achievement, we’re giving every TripleLifter the chance to make a donation to meaningful causes. While this has been a good year for our company, it has been a difficult year for so many people: in our industry, our home countries and around the world. To share the good fortune born of our hard work, we have selected 6 causes that can use our help. We’re donating $69,718 — the amount of ad spend we brought in during our first year of operations. Select the one that is most meaningful to you, and we will direct your slice of the dollars.
There seems no more fitting way to mark this achievement, to honor how we got here, and to pay it forward on our way to the next $1 billion.
Eric
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]]>The post Not All Native is Created Equal appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Authored by: Sonja Kristiansen, VP Platform Partnerships, TripleLift
The very definition of Native – fully integrated, non-standard ad experiences – is the reason that placements are so varied today. When something is defined as “non-standard,” there is sure to be a wide array of approaches and interpretations of the meaning.
The IAB’s Native 1.2 Spec was introduced in 2017 to provide guardrails and clarity around the identification of Native ad types including In-Feed, In-Article, Peripheral and Recommendation Widget placements. These ad types vary dramatically by aesthetic, user experience, and performance. Few DSPs give advertisers the ability to select between these ad types and as a result, many marketers still aren’t clear on what kind of Native placements they are buying programmatically. Instead, they are beholden to algorithms that determine which Native placement type they end up with.
In comparison, video, another form of advertising with an array of creative experiences, has wide adoption in targeting, transparency and reporting around the different formats available. The idea of having no controls across in-stream, out-stream, CTV or in-banner video buying would be absurd. As a result every leading DSP with video buying capabilities has targeting controls for different placement types, enabling marketers to pick and choose the video inventory that best suits their goals. Although standard for video, most DSPs are still grappling with how to integrate this level of sophistication into their Native inventory targeting.
Early Adopters
TripleLift placements are classified by placement type in the bid request, making it possible for DSPs to decision on behalf of advertiser needs. DSPs like DV360 and Zemanta are paving the way by providing their buyers with Native Placement Type targeting capabilities, giving marketers more opportunities to be selective in their Native needs.
With this targeting capability, it is important for advertisers to understand the key differences between Native placement types such as user experience and performance, to make an informed decision.
User Experience
One major difference in Native ad types is the design of the placement itself, and ultimately the user experience. In-Feed ads are integrated into the stream of content, and often match the look and feel of the publisher environment, while Recommendation Widgets group multiple ads, typically below articles and feeds within fixed placements.
From an advertiser perspective, these are dramatically different ad experiences, yet, they are all defined as “Native”. Advertisers may be surprised to learn that their Native ad is running alongside a group of other ads within a widget, when they intended their ad to live within the stream of content with 100% SOV, like 90% of TripleLift placements.
Performance Polarization
Aside from user experience, different Native ad types have very different performance benchmarks. In a blind placement type test conducted by TripleLift and a major DSP, In-Article performance was 64% higher than Recommendation widgets, while TripleLift’s In-Article performance was an additional 22% higher than other exchange’s In-Article placements. When considering the visuals above, this may come as no surprise — performance follows user attention, and user attention lives within the stream of content they intend to consume. Considering that most programmatic advertisers optimize towards user attention and performance, the Native placement type marketers choose can make a meaningful difference on campaign success.
Continued Change
As the advent of Native Placement Type Targeting nears, transparency across the entire buying ecosystem will be imperative. We expect to see a wave of adjustments come over the industry as more information around placement type location and performance becomes readily available to help marketers make informed decisions. For DSPs, we anticipate more controls will be added to bring parity to targeting across all formats, including Native.
Reach out to us to learn how you can start targeting quality Native Placement Types today.
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]]>The post From Magazine to Global Entertainment Network: How Complex Networks is Diversifying Their Business appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Welcome to TripleLift’s Publisher Spotlight Series. Every month we’ll share an interview with one of our premium publishers, highlighting unique stories and uncovering valuable insights. This week we’re speaking with Alex Mason, Senior Director, Yield & Programmatic Operations at Complex. Read on to learn about Complex’s recent partnerships, their efforts to shine the light on important issues (like voting) to Gen Z and millennial audiences, and some “hidden gems” from Alex to shake up your usual content consumption.
Excited to hear more about Complex, thanks for chatting with us Alex. For starters, can you tell us a bit about what you do?
Thanks for having me! I head up programmatic and yield for Complex Networks, which includes Catalyst, our B2B initiative providing yield and revenue ops solutions for other publishers. It’s a lot of ad tech management and data analysis, my two favorite things, but I just tell my parents I make sure the ads show up on our sites.
How has Complex evolved from a portfolio perspective since you’ve been at the company?
The portfolio itself hasn’t changed too much, but our monetization strategy across Catalyst has. Beyond our O&O properties (Complex, First We Feast, Sole Collector, Pigeons & Planes), we represent 40+ publishers in categories endemic to Complex like music, pop-culture, sneakers/fashion, and sports. A majority of these publishers have actually been with us for many years, but it wasn’t until recently that we formalized Catalyst as a product offering and became set on expanding. We’ve spent the last year rebuilding our ad stack from the ground up, optimizing deal workflows, expanding our analytical capabilities, and turning things off and back on again, all of which have proven to be beneficial projects for our Catalyst publishers.
Do you have plans to add more sites any time soon?
Absolutely. Since it was announced earlier this year, we’ve added a few new publishers, Blastbeat Network being the latest, which consists of sites such as Metalinjection.net and Metalsucks.net. In addition to the websites we work with, we also provide in-app solutions and represent a wide range of YouTube creators, so partnerships of all shapes and sizes are welcome. At the end of the day, we’re a publisher looking to extend our monetization expertise and resources to other publishers, so I’m excited to see Catalyst grow. For those interested, we accept inquiries at https://complexcatalyst.com/.
It looks like a lot of those sites center around rock and heavy metal music – is there a strategic reason behind those partnerships?
More of a coincidence than a strategy to corner the heavy music market, though that sounds fun. Music is a category that we already cover pretty extensively, so being able to add 8 sites that specialize in a genre with a dedicated audience just makes sense. While our partners have historically fit into one or more of the categories I mentioned above, I’d like to see us branch out into new areas or expand on already existing ones like gaming and current affairs/news. We have a large audience with a wide array of interests, and I believe it’ll be beneficial to build up our contextual categories as we get closer to the cookie-ocalypse.
Have you noticed any interesting trends in any of Complex’s areas of focus due to Covid-19?
For sure. Specifically on the content side of things, having to quarantine pushed us to experiment with new franchises we probably otherwise wouldn’t have tried. In some cases they were completely original, drawing from our expertise in areas like food or sneakers, while others were extensions of existing IP like Hot Ones… 10+ series in all and featuring big-name talent like Tracy Morgan, Issa Rae, G-Eazy, and more. Some were even shared with brand partners, like HP, who we worked with on new series Sneaker Battles and DIY Closets. What we found when surveying the industry is that 90% of respondents said remote production wouldn’t deter them from watching our content so long as it was still interesting and entertaining — two qualities we consistently deliver on.
Most recently though, we announced our first free, open-world, virtual experience called ComplexLand. It’ll feature 5 days of shopping, merch drops, discussions, music, and food, and will be coming to mobile and desktop browsers December 7 – 11 at ComplexLand.com. We’re taking our annual convention ComplexCon to our audience and I for one am excited to give my avatar a fresh fit.
As someone who primarily works on a laptop in Excel crunching numbers, it’s been cool to see the innovation. I want to give a big shoutout to everyone involved in the production, execution, delivery, success, and everything else that goes into the creation of these ideas.
What are some of your “hidden gems” of Complex – the types of content that people may not expect when they think about you, but they should definitely check out?
Everyone should check out Complex World, our youth culture current affairs docuseries which has put out new episodes biweekly since April. The Complex World team has done incredible work covering some of today’s most important issues, such as voter suppression, immigration reform, and environmental racism, in a voice that resonates with our largely Gen Z and millennial audience. To me, it’s been a standout, fresh take from the other news providers taking up my feed, and seeing a new episode becomes a highlight of my week.
We also just launched Pull Up & Vote, a new company-wide initiative to educate and motivate our large, young, and diverse audience to check their registration, double-check if they’re unsure, and to make a plan for how they’ll vote in this 2020 presidential election. We’re providing vital information and resources to our audience like how to vote by mail, how to find your polling place, and where both candidates stand on the most salient issues for young voters. It’s great working for a company that uses its resources and reach to support important causes, especially right now.
Last question – it’s time to tackle that major project and you need the perfect tunes to get in the zone. What are you turning on?
I’m turning on my streaming service of choice’s “Rap Bangers” playlist or some older pop-punk like Alkaline Trio. I need some energy while I’m working and either of those will do it for me. Some new albums I’ve been listening to a lot lately are SuperGood by Duckwrth and In Sickness & In Flames by The Front Bottoms.
For more information about TripleLift, our publishers, or how to be featured in a publisher spotlight, please contact us here.
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]]>The post TripleLift Black-Owned Auction Package Available in Display & Video 360 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Last month, TripleLift launched our Underrepresented Voices offering, enabling our advertisers to run across our premium publishers that are majority owned by People of Color, Women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Our goal was to help amplify voices that matter in a time when different perspectives, ideas, and beliefs are more important than ever. We are thrilled that so many of our DSP and Brand partners have chosen to take part in this package.
We are excited to announce that at the end of September, TripleLift’s Black-owned pubs will have a spotlight within Display & Video 360’s Marketplace UI alongside peer exchange inventory that supports this movement. This inventory will live within a dedicated TripleLift auction package (Display & Video 360 Always On Deal) that buyers can easily select to seamlessly add to their media plans.
We’re proud to have partners like Display & Video 360 that support these Underrepresented Voices, and look forward to continued collaboration with them to highlight more causes that matter in the future.
If you are interested in activating on this offering, please reach out to your TripleLift or Display & Video 360 representative to learn how to access the auction package featured in Display & Video 360’s Marketplace UI.
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]]>The post Human Connection in a Time of Social Distancing: A Conversation with The Meet Group appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Welcome to TripleLift’s Publisher Spotlight Series. Every month we’ll share an interview with one of our premium publishers, highlighting unique stories and uncovering valuable insights. This week, we’re speaking with Nick Hermansader, Senior Vice President of Advertising at The Meet Group. Read on to learn about how The Meet Group is rewarding both users and advertisers alike (literally).
Thanks for sitting down with us Nick. We’d love to learn a bit about you – can you tell us about your role at The Meet Group?
Absolutely, thanks for having me. I lead advertising at The Meet Group for our US based dating and livestreaming apps MeetMe, Skout, Tagged and GROWLr. Each app caters to a slightly different audience, but the end goal is the same – bring people together to meet, socialize, and have fun in a safe, online environment. That’s more important now than ever before. We’re meeting the universal need for human connection.
What do you love most about working from home? How have you kept your team engaged and motivated while remote?
It’s certainly been an adjustment and was a struggle to balance work, life, and family at the beginning but we’ve since hit our stride. My favorite part is when I’m working in my basement office and my two year-old sneaks down to show me an art project he made or (most recently) brings me a pizza bagel that he and mom made for lunch. I definitely don’t get those moments at the office.
The team has adjusted incredibly well. We were already partially remote with team members spread out across the country and the globe, so it was rather seamless. We still hold our regular meetings virtually and we have weekly coffee breaks where we talk about the latest TV and movies or play a quick online game for some fun competition.
While we’re on the topic of love, what are some of the activities that you’ve enjoyed while at home?
Surprisingly, I think we’ve watched less TV than before quarantine. Staying at home has forced us to spend more time outdoors since we’re inside working all day. In fact, we took the opportunity back in May to rent a house in South Carolina and isolate there for a month. My parents joined us to help take care of our son so we could focus on work during the day. It turned out to be a wonderful experience that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. He got to spend more time with his grandparents than he ever would have and we got a lot of time together on long walks and spending time together outdoors while the weather was still a
bit chilly up here in the Northeast. Other than making sure I was caught up on the Chicago Bulls documentary, The Last Dance, we didn’t have the television on much at all down there.
Have you seen more app downloads/user engagement during the pandemic, or less?
We have seen unprecedented engagement during the pandemic, especially within our livestreaming product. All of us have been searching for ways to break up the monotony and boredom of quarantine, much of which is caused by our inability to socialize in person. Our products enable our users to do just that. Not only can they discover others to chat with, but in Live, they can actually see and talk to those people virtually.
The Meet Group is one of the largest providers of livestreaming dating games in the world. We have been experiencing over 195,000 dating games played each day across our apps, an increase of 104% since the declaration of a global pandemic in March. At the start of the pandemic, video was a replacement for real-life interaction. Now that things have opened up a bit more, it is a filter to screen potential dates for connection and compatibility before meeting in person. Daters are increasingly demanding a video chat first, to prequalify potential dates.
What are some of the advantages for advertisers of working with The Meet Group versus other publishers in your competitive set?
First and foremost is scale and diversity. We’re managing over 10 billion impressions per month across the US portfolio of apps. Our users are coming back every day and this provides a great opportunity for advertisers to consistently get their message across. We also offer many different audiences with the various apps whether it’s US-centric (MeetMe), internationally-focused (Skout), African American (Tagged), or the gay community (GROWLr). Additionally, we have a great first-party data set because 100% of our active users are logged in. This is the way the industry is trending so publisher-owned data is only going to get more valuable as cookies and mobile ad IDs are being deprecated.
Does The Meet Group have any new and exciting offerings that advertisers should know about?
We have traditionally offered standard mobile ad products due to our size and reliance on open exchange demand. However, our livestreaming platform has allowed us to expand into other products – the largest of which is rewarded video. The influx of in-app purchases in Live has enabled us to introduce this opt-in ad experience in which a user voluntarily watches a video ad and receives in-app currency for doing so. It is great for the users because it gives them an opportunity to participate in the economy of Live without having to make a cash purchase. They feel included and it may even encourage them to make a purchase in the future. Advertisers benefit because the user is actively choosing to engage with their brand instead of it being forced in front of it. They may even form a positive subconscious association between the brand and the reward they received.
We’re also exploring unique ways for brands to incorporate into Live. The in-app currency is used to purchase virtual gifts so I believe there is an opportunity for brands to sponsor these items. It would not only elevate the perceived value of the gift to have a brand name on it, but the sponsorship itself could subsidize the cost for users so they don’t have to pay out of pocket for it – creating more good faith for the advertiser and possibly encouraging future purchases from users.
For more information about TripleLift, our publishers, or how to be featured in a publisher spotlight, please contact us here.
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]]>The post TripleLift’s Policy on Political Advertising appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>As the election draws near and the political season hits its apex, we want to clarify our position on political advertising. This topic has become a hot button issue for our industry.
TripleLift accepts political ads from major party candidates at both the national and state levels of government. In our business, we can either accept ads from all major parties or choose not to accept ads from all major parties. We cannot ethically refuse ads from a legitimate party just because we don’t agree with their platform or politics. If we did, we would become ultimate arbiters of truth or policy in the name of democracy and we cannot, in good faith, take on that role.
We have put practices in place to govern our actions. Those practices are as follows:
Limit PAC Spending. We will closely monitor advertisers known as Political Action Committees. PACs were given great latitude by the U.S. Supreme Court case known as Citizens United to spend large sums of money in support of candidates and causes. No company is under obligation to accept that advertising. We will apply our own judgement and accept and reject PAC money as we see fit. If we believe any particular PAC advertising promotes hate speech or misinformation, we will apply a human lens to reject or remove that advertiser from our platform.
Encourage Publisher Tools. We provide tools to our publishers for them to make decisions on the advertising they wish to accept — political or otherwise. We have recently sent a communication to all of our publishers, reinforcing the existence of these tools and educating them on how to apply their own filters of acceptability.
Monitor our Platform. Our ad building process is driven by technology. That technology enables us to ensure that major elements of ad units fit seamlessly into their environments. However, when it comes to copy points, our ability to monitor and act on content we deem inappropriate is manual. We do have policies and will remain faithful to them. But our challenge is similar to that facing other major platforms like Facebook (for example) — applying human oversight to large-scale, technology-built activities requires vigilance. We will be alert during this campaign season and will react proactively and reactively where we see issues arise.
Root Out Misinformation Sites. While tangentially related to political ad spending, TripleLift forged a partnership earlier this year with NewsGuard, the company that fights misinformation by rating and reviewing thousands of news and information websites for credibility and transparency. We have already removed about two dozen sites from our roster that do not meet acceptable levels of credibility. We did this to ensure we do not monetize misinformation or hate speech, which is bad business, inconsistent with our company values, and in conflict with how our advertisers want to spend their dollars.
Learn more about how we’re approaching political advertising in this cycle.
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]]>The post TripleLift Adds Ben Winkler As First-Ever SVP, Agency Strategy, To Accelerate The Next Phase Of Its Pivot To An Omni-channel Business appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Industry veteran joins from OMD to increase product innovation in partnership with agency leaders
TripleLift, one of the fastest-growing ad tech companies in the world, announced the hiring of Ben Winkler as Senior Vice President, Agency Strategy. The role was created in response to four years of consecutive growth greater than 70%. TripleLift’s trajectory is attributed to its omni-channel strategy, which drove a steady increase in new and industry-first advertiser products across desktop, mobile and television. In July, as ad spend continued to scale, the company passed $500m in lifetime publisher payouts. Increasingly, that spend is coming through new revenue channels and being spent on new ad products.
Winkler brings a powerful combination of expertise in brand strategy, media investment and industry leadership to the role. During his nine years at OMD, Winkler served in C-level roles driving senior relationships inside and outside the company. As Chief Transformation Officer, he created OMDs first-ever programmatic upfront. As Chief Investment Officer, he was responsible for $12B in annual media spend and reorganized the broadcast team into a platform-agnostic video investment group. During that tenure, he led or supported critical client engagements including Hasbro, Cigna, Pepsi, Apple, State Farm, Eli Lilly and CBS. Winkler will partner across TripleLift disciplines to develop the executive level strategy that will lead to deeper, stronger and more solutions oriented relationships with holding companies.
As TripleLift continues its expansion into display, video and OTT products, the company identified a need to work more closely with agency leaders to innovate within and beyond the current product set. “Ben is a creative problem solver and storyteller who builds and shapes advertising programs with a client-first mindset,” said TripleLift CRO Jax Quantrell. “As we take our business to the next level, it’s valuable for us to add those skills along with his strong track record of digital transformation.”
After more than 20 years in agencies, Winkler sought new challenges to keep him connected to that part of the industry. “I have a deep understanding of agency and holding company motivations, business drivers and challenges — many of which can be solved with creative technology. TripleLift has built killer products that are foundationally about transparency and clarity. They don’t just perform, they help close the perceived trust gap in programmatic media. And because programmatic is unquestionably the future, this company and this role are ripe with opportunity.”
TripleLift co-founder and CEO Eric Berry said the timing was right to make the hire. “We have weathered the storm of the current pandemic and are in a strong market position. The competitive and fast-moving nature of our business means that we must continue to invest in the future. Bringing on a head of agency strategy will enable us to accelerate our roadmap. Ben is an excellent fit for both our culture and ambition.”
Winkler starts at TripleLift on September 14th and will report to Quantrell.
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]]>The post Learning from 2020: 5 Trends to Help Maximize Your 2H Strategy appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>2020 has been a year of disruption. We have seen almost every aspect of society be altered in some way. This has forced consumers to re-evaluate their day-to-day routines and brands to reassess who they are and how they operate. Here at TripleLift, we have gathered our knowledge and insights to bring you our top 5 trends that will shape the rest of the year and, potentially, beyond.
From bulk buying to online shopping, COVID-19 has transformed our buying habits seemingly overnight. Online shopping gave consumers access to safe, contactless purchases when in-store shopping couldn’t. In fact, consumers spent 7% more online during the first two months of the pandemic than they did during the entire 2019 holiday season1. With online retailers working to meet this demand, we expect to see an exponential increase in online spending for the remainder of the year.
As over half of consumers’ TV viewing time in 2020 is spent on an OTT subscription-based service2, advertising inventory has surged 54% YoY 3. These ad placements have both high viewability and memorability. As a matter of fact, 65% of people who use a second screen while streaming have looked up a product that’s been advertised in a TV show4.
It isn’t a surprise that mobile use continues to climb, especially with more consumers staying indoors for the first half of 2020. Time spent on mobile phones increased 11% to 7 hours and 31 minutes a day and is expected to remain consistent in 20214. This opens up further inventory while also heightening the competition for consumers’ attention. The combination of this rise in activity and heightened focus on privacy will stir things up for advertisers this year.
Convenience is everything to shoppers – 9 out of 10 choose a retailer based on accessibility5. The call for faster delivery times drove demand for “Buy Online, Pick Up in Store”, or BOPIS, over the past few years. In a recent survey, 54% of respondents researched a BOPIS option on most purchases to eliminate shipping time6. Once consumers are in-store for pick up, BOPIS also provides an opportunity to upsell.
Holiday sales are expected to increase 3-4% YoY with eCommerce spend rising by at least 13%6, especially with a larger focus on social distancing. The spend attributed to mobile devices is quickly growing, up 21% from 2018 to 2019, as 81% of consumers said they have purchased gifts on their mobile device7. Having simple click-through URLs and a streamlined website make eCommerce even more convenient for shoppers.
While the first half of 2020 has seen unprecedented change, learning from consumers’ behavior will help maximize performance during the remainder of the year. Our mindsets should evolve to an online-first approach with marketing and selling while incorporating tried and true methods of advertising. Strategizing around these trends will help bolster your 2020 Holiday plan and help discover key learnings for years to come.
Sources:
1Adobe: Online Shopping During COVID-19 Exceeds 2019 Holiday Season Levels
2 eMarketer: 2020 Digital Video Trends, Average Time Spent by US Adult, Social Network Users, US Holiday 2019 Review & 2020 Planning
3 The Trade Desk: The time is now for Connected TV Whitepaper
4 eMarketer: US Mobile Time Spent 2020
5 National Retail Foundation: Consumer View Winter 2020
6 Digital Commerce 360: The Shopper Speaks: So what about the holidays?
7 Mobile Marketer: Smartphones are most popular devices for online shopping
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]]>The post Directness Test Reveals the Perils of Resold Impressions appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Introduction
The programmatic ecosystem is rife with duplication and redundancy, resulting in operational and financial inefficiencies for both the buy and sell-sides. In fact, many articles have been written searching for “the lost 15%” of programmatic spend that often seems unaccounted for. We went searching for that delta and revealed compelling insights.
At TripleLift, we believe that following the most direct path to an impression yields the greatest benefit to both marketers and publishers. In order to test this theory, we conducted an A/B test to measure performance across different buying channels – one direct, and one through an intermediary exchange – to demonstrate the quantitative impact of removing intermediaries from the supply chain.
The Test
This analysis evaluated the same campaigns, launched by the same brands, bidding on the same publisher inventory, with the same bidding strategies, on the same DSP. The only difference between path A vs. B was the inclusion of an intermediary exchange, adding a hop to the transaction, and taking a nominal fee (5-10%). In this case, the intermediary exchange was reselling the same publisher inventory available in the original exchange. Our test looked at over $680,000 in live media spend, representing 385M impressions that ran over a 30-day time period.
Executive Summary
Buying inventory directly – with no intermediary exchanges or resellers – improves your campaign performance, auction performance, and bottom line.
The Results
The test yielded significant differences in performance across path A vs. B, and a variety of key programmatic metrics:
What It Means for Buyers
At the end of the day, being an effective buyer of media means two things: having transparency into the inventory and maximizing performance. Checking sellers.json and ads.txt files helps with the former and this test shows that performance is optimized through the most direct paths to inventory. Taking a sample $100k media budget, buying programmatic media directly – without the presence of resellers – directly delivers 14m more impressions on 2.2b fewer bids, leading to more clicks and other performance KPIs.
For more information on directness and this study in particular, reach out to us….directly.
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]]>The post Rooting Out the 3 Biggest Problems in Programmatic Advertising appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>As the old expression goes: ‘ad tech giveth and ad tech taketh away.’ Ok…that might not be an actual expression, but we all know it’s true. Programmatic media has given us scaled impressions, data targeting, publisher monetization and so much more. But, along with each of these innovations has come some unintended – and undesired – consequences.
At TripleLift, we see three main challenges to a clean, programmatic media:
Taken together, these three problems create waste, reduce the performance of your buys and make for brand safety challenges that are a stain on the ecosystem.
The burden should not fall on advertisers to police the industry, so at TripleLift, we have taken it upon ourselves to be the solution. It’s all part of something we call our Triple Lock Promise.
We promise 3 things:
Let us tell you how we do it and what it means for you.
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]]>The post Success Stories From Women at the Top: CafeMedia’s Shobha Doshi appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Welcome to TripleLift’s Publisher Spotlight Series! Every month we’ll share an interview with one of our premium publishers, highlighting unique stories and uncovering valuable insights. This week we’re speaking with Shobha Doshi, VP, Programmatic Strategy & Operations at CafeMedia. Read on to learn about how Shobha became an important piece of the CafeMedia puzzle and her advice on maximizing your potential.
Thanks for joining us Shobha! To kick things off, can you tell us about your early career? What do you think was key to getting your foot in the door?
My very first job out of college, where I studied marketing and psychology, was on the Marketing team at Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Right after that came my first foray into the digital advertising world as a Media Planner at The New York Times. At that point, I took a break from working to get my MBA. Having some real-world business experience really helped me to apply a lot of what I was learning in the graduate program and set the path for my next step. Once I graduated, I joined up with CafeMedia (then CafeMom!). I’ve been at CafeMedia for almost nine years, which is a lifetime in our industry.
When did you know that Programmatic advertising was an area you wanted to focus on?
I’ve always been interested in marketing in some form or another, but originally fell into digital by chance at NYT. When I continued to pursue it at CafeMedia, there were a small handful of us who kicked off programmatic advertising as a kind of second job. And it took off like wildfire. I find it such an interesting space because it’s always evolving. You can count on coming across something new frequently and that has continued to challenge and educate me.
What intrigued you the most about CafeMedia and what keeps you engaged?
After working at two large companies, I wanted to get the experience of a smaller company. Everyone I met there was smart and savvy, and it felt like a scrappy company where I could learn so much and grow as they grew. And that’s exactly what’s happened — I went from being a Sales Development Manager to helping build the Programmatic team from the ground up. Our goal is to help our publishers do what they love best and excel at, which is creating amazing content for their users and not having to worry about managing their ad revenue. CafeMedia is a leader in the programmatic ecosystem, and I want to make sure we continue to push forward and innovate with our partners alongside us.
What advice would you give to women who are interested in a career in ad tech?
As with many industries, women are underrepresented in ad tech, and that’s even more true for women of color. I would encourage women to fight for themselves — speak up, ask for what you deserve, and keep on pushing until you get it. It has been and will be a long road, but we are our own best advocates and can continue to set a good example for the next generation of women coming into the workforce. I would also add that for those who have already found some success, we should take up the responsibility to pay it forward and help up-and-coming women to succeed.
What tips do you have for achieving the ever elusive work/life balance?
First of all, acknowledge that it’s hard. You don’t have to “have it all” — you have to do what works for you and your situation. There may be weeks that are more work, but make sure that there are weeks that are more life and family too. Get help, in whatever form that takes, and don’t be afraid to ask for it. Find a company that cares about YOU and will help with creating that balance.
How have you been handling the Covid-19 pandemic from a work perspective?
Our HQ is in New York City so, similar to many other businesses there, the office has been closed since March. The majority of us were actually remote before the pandemic, so we were in a good spot to make the virtual transition relatively smoothly. We had already heavily embraced Zoom, but now we’ve added in virtual happy hours and more frequent check-ins. I’ve been encouraging my team to remember to take time off, even if it’s to do nothing, since it’s been easier than ever to forget that everyone still needs recharge and reset time.
From a publisher perspective, what are the challenges that programmatic is facing right now that keep you up at night?
Similar to a lot of others in the industry, I’m constantly thinking about identity, privacy, and third-party cookies going away. We’ve been planning for this for a long time and are always testing solutions and partnerships that will help to mitigate a lot of these issues. We’ve also leaned into context and our advertiser partnerships in a big way. CafeMedia has been very vocal in the industry to make sure that independent publishers have a strong advocate and are encouraging other partners and publishers to do the same. It will be a landmark time for our industry, and I think we’ll come out of it with some really innovative and groundbreaking ideas.
What is one lesson you wish you had learned earlier in your career?
Imposter syndrome is real, most commonly for women — I wish I had realized earlier what I was feeling and how to address it. I believe it held me back from pushing forward in certain situations and points in my career, though I was fully capable. It has been a process to fight it, and it still rears its head sometimes, but I continue to remind myself and encourage other women to be aware, be confident, and know yourself.
When you’re not making things happen at CafeMedia, what do you like to do for fun?
Spend time with my two boys and husband — we’ve had to be more creative these days to find activities to keep us busy and get out of the house safely, so we end up in our backyard a lot running around. I also love to read, so whenever I can, I’ll have my nose in a book. Pre-COVID, I really enjoyed traveling and hope we can get back to a new normal where that’s possible again. In the meantime, I’ve been exploring local hiking spots to get outdoors for a change of scenery.
For more information about TripleLift, our publishers, or how to be featured in a publisher spotlight, please contact us here.
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]]>The post TripleLift Triple Lock Promise appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>You’ve set your strategy, planned your media and designed the perfect creative. The last thing you should have to worry about is the quality and safety of your media placements. But depending on who you’re buying from, that’s likely your biggest concern. At TripleLift, we hold our media to higher standards, so we created the Triple Lock Promise.
Zero Resold Impressions
Media dollars should go to media, not resellers. Bidding on directly sourced inventory increases your win rate by 4x while decreasing your CPM by at least 25%. That is why our 36 Billion daily impressions are sourced directly from publishers.
Lowest Industry Fraud Rate
Because we scan for fraud before the bid, our inventory is 99.6% pure. While we know that there are super savvy criminals that stay one step ahead of the industry, we humbly brag that we have the lowest fraud rate in the industry (0.4% according to White Ops).
No Misinformation Sites
We believe in the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so we’ve partnered with NewsGuard to ensure your media dollars only go to credible sources. By removing sites from our platform that have been flagged for misinformation, hate speech and other malicious content we don’t fund bad actors…and neither will you.Since we built our inventory from the ground up, we don’t need any of the gimmicks that help other exchanges get their scale. Our inventory is clean and our aim is true.
To learn more about TripleLift and our Triple Lock Promise, ping us at partners@triplelift.com
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]]>The post TripleLift is the Direct Exchange appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>What does it mean to be the No Waste, Brand Safe, Lowest Fraud, Omni-Channel, High Performance, Direct Exchange? To us, it means building relationships directly with publishers, investing in respected partners and technologies and offering only the purest inventory. For our advertisers directness delivers so much more.
Reach out to us to see for yourself how much your campaigns can benefit from the world’s: No Waste, Brand Safe, Lowest Fraud, Omni-Channel, High Performance, Direct Exchange.
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]]>The post TripleLift Forges Partnership with NewsGuard as Ad Industry Confronts the Funding of Misinformation Sites appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift will use NewsGuard’s ratings of news sources to root out low credibility sites and remove sources of funding
TripleLift, one of the fastest-growing ad tech companies in the world announced an agreement to work with NewsGuard, the company that fights misinformation by rating and reviewing thousands of news and information websites for credibility and transparency. TripleLift will use NewsGuard’s rating system to remove sites from its roster that do not meet acceptable standards of credibility. The agreement was made as a response to the increasing number of websites positioning themselves as news but instead operating in misinformation.
The monetization of these sites has become a flashpoint in the advertising industry. The properties – sometimes referred to as fake news sites – have proliferated over the last few years, publishing opinion and conspiracy theories that are often confused by consumers as fact. Consumer advocacy groups have demanded brands stop advertising on sites due to their potentially harmful or hurtful content. The recent boycott by brands of Facebook has received a great deal of attention, but content shared on its platform actually originates from standalone properties on both sides of the political spectrum. TripleLift, which prides itself on offering premium inventory to its agency and brand customers, is actively working to rid its platform of these questionable properties.
NewsGuard has worked with agencies and publishers, but this is the first time a programmatic ad exchange – or Supply Side Platform (SSP) – has struck a relationship. “In service of offering brand safe environments for buyers, we have been manually removing websites from our roster that we believe to be in conflict with appropriate news standards,” said Max Dowaliby, Director of Product Management at TripleLift. “But our core competency is building ad products, so at some point our decisions become subjective. NewsGuard gives us the ability to use a respected third-party system, managed by experts.”
“As a Supply-Side Exchange, TripleLift cuts checks to 3,500 properties every month,” said Jordan Bitterman, CMO of TripleLift. “We’re proud of our scale and how we help fund such a large number of premium publishers. Our partnership with NewsGuard is important to help ensure we do not monetize misinformation or hate speech, which is bad business, inconsistent with our company values, and in conflict with how our advertisers want to spend their dollars.”
NewsGuard assesses websites based on nine criteria including: does not repeatedly publish false information, gathers information responsibly, regularly corrects or clarifies errors, avoids deceptive headlines and reveals conflicts of interest. The company employs a team of trained journalists and experienced editors to review and assign ratings. It was founded by Co-CEOs Steven Brill, who also founded The American Lawyer, Court TV and the Yale Journalism Initiative, and Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
“The plague of misinformation that our society faces today–from health and medical hoaxes to toxic propaganda–is often unknowingly funded by programmatic advertisers,” Brill explained. “We’re pleased to see Triple Lift taking the lead among SSPs in ensuring that ad dollars spent on news content are directed toward trustworthy sources instead–using our transparent, humanly curated data about source reliability to do so with fairness, accuracy and transparency.”
TripleLift will address their publisher roster each month based on NewsGuard’s regularly updated rankings. This partnership comes on the heels of TripleLift’s “Help Journalism” programmatic media initiative designed to boost the struggling news publishing industry which has been hit hard during the pandemic with sharply declining revenue in part due to a rise in advertisers’ excluding news and news sites from their buys.
About TripleLift
TripleLift, one of the fastest-growing ad tech companies in the world, is a technology company rooted at the intersection of creative and media. Its mission is to make advertising better for everyone— content owners, advertisers and consumers—by reinventing ad placement one medium at a time. With direct inventory sources, diverse product lines, and creative designed for scale using our Computer Vision technology, TripleLift is driving the next generation of programmatic advertising from desktop to television. As of January 2020, TripleLift has recorded four years of consecutive growth of greater than 70 percent, and in 2019 added employees and locations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. TripleLift is a Business Insider Hottest AdTech Company, Inc. Magazine 5000, Crain’s New York Fast 50, and Deloitte Technology Fast 500. Find more information about how TripleLift is shaping the future of advertising at staging-newtl.temp312.kinsta.cloud.
About NewsGuard
NewsGuard was launched in September 2018 by award winning journalist and media entrepreneur Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz. The company provides credibility ratings and detailed “Nutrition Labels” for thousands of news and information websites. NewsGuard rates all the news and information websites that account for 95% of online engagement across the US, UK, Germany, France, and Italy. NewsGuard rates each site based on nine apolitical criteria of journalistic practice, including whether a site repeatedly publishes false content, whether it regularly corrects or clarifies errors, and whether it avoids deceptive headlines. It awards weighted points for each criterion and sums them up; a score of less than 60 earns a “Red” rating, while 60 and above earns a “Green” rating, which indicates it is generally reliable. For more information, including to download the browser extension and review the ratings process, visit newsguardtech.com/get-newsguard/
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]]>The post Programmatic Video Buyers Playbook appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Programmatic digital video is one of the fastest growing channels for ad spend, and is continuing to take on a larger share of overall spend. Today, it seemingly consumes every second of our day as it continues to proliferate new verticals, channels, platforms, and places and provide advertisers with more ways than ever to connect with people.
As a buyer, having an agile video strategy will help deliver return on ad spend, drive legitimate conversions, and help you stay relevant no matter what trends emerge. We’ve put together the Programmatic Video Buyers Playbook for advertisers looking to create an agile video strategy that not only connects with their audience but can also withstand the test of time.
Our playbook will help you identify:
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]]>The post Weathering Covid-19: How IBM Watson Advertising Navigated the Year’s Most Surprising Curveball appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Welcome to TripleLift’s Publisher Spotlight Series! Every month, we’ll share an interview with one of our premium publishers that highlights unique stories and uncovers valuable insights. In our first series post, we’re speaking with Amanda Dean, Head of Programmatic Partnerships and Strategies for IBM Watson Advertising. Read on to learn about how Amanda and IBM are dealing with Covid-19 and how Watson is doing its part to help!
Thanks for joining us Amanda! First, we’d love to get to know you a bit. Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself – your role and what you like to do for fun?
I have been at IBM Watson Advertising since April of 2016. I lead our major demand partnerships with SSPs, providers like TripleLift, re-marketers, and programmatic tech platforms. I work with Product and Compliance to ensure we are providing a premium user experience and new ad formats all while striving to monetize our inventory in a privacy safe manner.
I bought my first house last Summer and am learning to garden. I am hoping I have inherited my mom’s green thumb. So far so good! I love the outdoors and travel! Spending time at the beach on Fire Island, hiking, skiing, and scuba diving are all things I love to get out and do. For relaxation, I love to watch stand up comedians, anything HGTV, and read trashy romance novels. It’s great escapism – especially these days on lock down.
We’re sure that like everyone else, you had no idea this pandemic was coming. What was the moment when you realized that this was a big deal? Did you encounter any specific, significant work-related issues that you had to overcome when the pandemic started?
I was on vacation in Mexico and they started to issue State Department warnings on the Hotel TVs. That’s when I knew this was very, very serious. We flew home March 20th and spent the next 3 months in quarantine.
Luckily, we didn’t encounter many work issues. Our main challenge was to ensure our team was safe and healthy and stayed that way. We started working from home and have been sailing fairly smoothly since. We are being more flexible on work hours and when someone’s kid or pet shows up on a call- it’s embraced and enjoyed instead of seen as a hindrance. I’ve particularly enjoyed seeing my colleagues’ home life and have some major home office envy.
Once you knew that Covid-19 would impact your business, what steps did you take to ensure that IBM Watson Advertising stayed successful?
I am so proud of the steps IBM took. The Product team pulled together a knowledge hub of all things Covid. Using AI and the Watson Ads platform, we were able to produce a section on the sites and apps that provide local infection rates and trends in real time for every county in the US. The Watson ad provided crucial information on the pandemic, guides on sanitizing, staying safe and even offering ideas of things to do. We have been staying in touch with our clients to ensure we share the info we are producing.
I felt it was important to take care of our staff and ensure they were doing ok through all this – we became more flexible, checked in regularly and began reinforcing the importance of self-care. We also reached out to partners to make sure they knew we were here for them, provided any optimization opportunities and any forecast data we could, given it was Spring storm season.
We went back to basics. We are constantly optimizing our mix of units, floors, and partners to ensure we provide a strong demand mix and quality ad experiences for our readers. When demand took a major hit in mid-March, we took a look at our ad footprint and reduced our capacity so we didn’t flood the market. We leaned in with partners to gauge where demand was still strong (like Video) and worked to provide them a path to that inventory. Having strong, mutually beneficial partnerships is key. Regular calls and updates with partners help ensure we can weather the economic storm together by capitalizing on opportunities.
How are you keeping your team engaged and do you have any tips for other leaders like you?
We are hosting video happy hours where we do more than just talk business. Recently, we asked the team to share a few photos of a trip they took and talk about what they learned or enjoyed. It was so fun to see all the places folks have been. You get to really know your team by sharing these kinds of personal experiences. Having that personal connection is key in times like these. It has been a great team building exercise.
Clear deadlines and expectations of what needs to be done are important. Using Tools like Slack and text messages make it easy to facilitate individual check-ins and ensure everyone is doing ok, adjusting, and able to accomplish what they need. As I mentioned before, we are being flexible with work hours and encouraging colleagues to take time off to decompress. My best piece of advice is to be supportive of the employee’s whole life. Offer flexibility, support, understanding, and empathy.
What consumer trends are you seeing on your site that have surprised you over the last few months? What industry shifts did you anticipate and which did you find surprising?
Everyone loves the Sinkhole videos!! There’s not been one major trend that’s really surprised us. We were incredibly happy to see demand returning as early as it did in June as areas started reopening in certain parts of the country.
We all expected the downturn in demand as businesses closed. For me the surprising part has been the number of companies that are surviving and innovating through all this. We’ve all heard that the Lumascape companies would merge and purge. We’ve seen some companies go, but I’m encouraged by those that are evolving and staying relevant. With challenges come opportunities. I’m excited to see what opportunities emerge in our industry for marketers and publishers as we move forward.
And finally, it’s 11pm and Netflix is shaming you with their “are you still watching?” popup. What show have you been binging?
I tend to binge watch shows like Below Deck or Say Yes to the Dress as my guilty pleasures! I also love nature documentaries: BBC Nature, Nova, Nat Geo, and Animal Planet have heavy rotation in my channel selections. I’m a big Nature nerd!
**For more information about TripleLift, our publishers, or how to be featured in a publisher spotlight, please contact us here.
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]]>The post How Agile is Your Video Strategy? Part 2 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>In our last post, we provided a series of tips for advertisers looking to create an agile video strategy. In this post, we continue to help you with more ways to solidify a winning video strategy.
Shifts in consumer behavior that hinge on personalized, always-on access to video, across every screen, have made video the largest pool of online content according to Deloitte. Leading video to become the place where every ad tech provider wants and needs to be. However, too much of anything can be bad for you.
As video consumption continues to expand, the advertising market is beginning to shrink. Once known as the wild west of the industry, video is trying to combat the rise in fraud and change its reputation. Last year 44% of publishers told Digiday that they plan to cut back the number of ad tech providers they work with and will only continue using partners who can show substantial value. Advertisers simultaneously are looking for partnerships that can do more for less. The result has been mergers and acquisitions of companies looking to gain scale or inventory advantages.
The Rise of Header Bidding
The advent of header bidding, gave every buyer access to the same placements at the time. According to Digiday, this led to the commoditization of video supply, and created an opportunity for bad actors, an increased tech tax, and a suboptimal user experience. Now publishers are starting to take back control, cutting out unnecessary vendors as the industry makes way for a new wave of preferred partners. While no one partner can do everything, those that can provide a holistic offering will be better suited for preferred partnerships.
Know Your Source
For publishers who are still vetting video partners, The Drum recommends accessing quality demand through existing SSP integrations. As discussed in a Deloitte study, video content creators who reduce their product portfolio and work with direct, “no-reseller” partners can expect to see a better experience for the user and greater cost efficiencies, leading to a happier buyer. TripleLift’s direct relationships with partners ensures publishers are getting more revenue for every buyer dollar, across a suite of video products like outstream, in-stream, and OTT.
The Most Direct Path is often the Most Efficient
For buyers, streamlining vendors is just as important as publisher’s minimizing their partnerships. However, viewer fragmentation makes this a bit more challenging. To keep up with shifts in viewer behaviors, buyers often work with many vendors and publishers, which comes at a cost. Buyers are now looking to these partners to help them navigate a space that is increasingly confusing and convoluted — those who can’t, are being removed. Having a partner that can provide access to a large amount of premium inventory, guarantee transparency, and deliver on multiple video strategies will make for good vetting criteria for the 28% of brand marketers who are looking to cut down on supply partners they work with.
Without streamlining video supply paths, buyers might find themselves with a hefty bill to pay. The video space has normalized expensive pricing models with CPMs upwards of $40. However, unless buyers are going straight to the publisher, 38% of their buy is eaten by the infamous “tech tax”. Finding an SSP partner who can streamline the supply path will allow buyers to significantly lower their CPMs and will provide publishers with higher revenue, making it easier for both parties to select preferred video partners.
Less is More
Assessing the quality versus the quantity of vendors available can help provide clarity in an opaque space. Opting for the most direct path to supply is a benefit for both the buyer and the seller, creating operational efficiencies for both sides. When assessing your video strategy, remember that less is more.
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]]>The post Apple’s Privacy Move Throws a Proprietary Wrench into Advertising’s Collaborative Process appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>This article is written by Julia Shullman, General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer at TripleLift. It was originally featured in AdAge.
This week, Apple announced several new privacy features for devices and apps running on iOS 14, in its latest attempt to demonstrate superiority in privacy, especially in online advertising.
Apple users will now be able to restrict their devices from sending precise location data; control access to their clipboard; see when apps are using cameras or the microphone; see standardized information and have an opportunity to make a choice on app data uses across different apps or involving third parties. These new features also require app developers to declare how they and their vendors use data and to update the existing high-level reporting API made available for attribution and conversion by advertisers and their ad tech vendors.
At first glance, these are all welcome, user-friendly improvements. However, on deeper reflection, the announcements service to highlight Apple’s disconnect from the advertising industry—that its unilateral approach creates consumer confusion and has an anti-competitive impact.
Transparency and control over the use of data in digital advertising, and accountability to prove support for them, are particular areas of focus for companies.
Each of these new Apple privacy features appears aimed at empowering users with greater transparency and control over data collection and use. This is in marked contrast to other approaches, particularly by browsers, such as Apple’s own Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Protection, Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection and Google Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox proposals, which make privacy decisions for users without asking them.
The problem is, Apple is disengaged with the rest of the digital advertising industry, which is generally focused on designing collaborative, standardized solutions that can meet user privacy and data protection needs across different browsers, device makers, operating systems, apps and their vendors.
Collaboration is hard, and it takes time to rethink industry interoperability. Even Google opened Privacy Sandbox to public collaboration and comment for two years, and now supports GDPR standards like IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework. Both decisions are likely motivated by commercial and competitive concerns, but are driving collaboration nonetheless.
Apple receives a lot of public credit for its privacy features. But, its AppTrackingTransparency and additional controls over access to its Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) look and sound a lot like industry’s collaborative, consensus-driven privacy work in aligning standard data-use categories and user choice for GDPR and IAB, TechLab and other industry association work on CCPA, Privacy Sandbox and Project Rearc.
Privacy is a fundamental consumer right, and consumers deserve standardized solutions which meet a range of user choices and data protection needs across all device makers, operating systems, apps and their vendors.
These new Apple features come at a time when the digital advertising ecosystem is attempting to re-architect its systems and data-sharing practices to keep up with fragmented privacy regulations, user expectations and commercial product and strategic changes. Now, instead of devoting time to collaborative technical standards influenced by collaborative policy and legal alignment, the digital advertising ecosystem will need to divert resources to build for yet another proprietary solution—designed without their input or expertise.
Apple’s specification is just different enough from other solutions—like IAB’s Transparency and Consent Framework and CCPA Solution; Google’s Consented Providers solution for GDPR and Restricted Data Processing solution for CCPA; Android’s Limit Ad Tracking solution; MoPub’s GDPR and CCPA solutions; proprietary “cookie” banner controls; and the standards set forth by the Digital Advertising Alliance and the Network Advertising Initiative—that companies have yet another standard to build to, and support.
The launch of proprietary privacy features don’t just impact the road maps of businesses. Consider the user experience of moving between an increasing list of connected devices, operating systems and apps. Each presents a different (but overlapping) set of data uses and different choices to make, and each handles the transparency and control differently. The picture is fragmented and makes no sense. That experience can only lead to more confusion and demands from the public and, likely, well-intentioned but commercially influenced legislation to “fix” opacity in data collection, uses and choices in digital advertising. And, inevitably, the commercially influenced solution puts control in the hands of a few companies.
We need to push the industry to break this cycle of increasing fragmentation before we all lose credibility to do the right thing collaboratively. If not, only a few companies will survive, and publishers and advertisers will lose choice in the vendors they wish to use. The few survivors will be those that are able to build to these fragmented standards and somehow convince their clients, regulators and consumers that their solutions make sense and are legally compliant. We’ve already seen that support for multiple GDPR proprietary and industry standards is nearly impossible for companies and makes little to no sense to users.
What if, instead of developing its own interpretations and standards which undercut its app publishers, Apple promoted standard-setting work instead? What if, similar to Google, Apple supported technical standards work in privacy through its position as a device, operating system and app maker, to help the digital advertising industry be held accountable to user transparency and choice through an access-controlled identifier—and one which doesn’t just place power in itself or platforms?
What if Apple aligned on standard definitions and taxonomies for data uses, and other major companies’ controlling devices and operating systems followed suit?
User transparency and control over identity, data collection and use are broken, and are influenced by many commercial and strategic factors. It is time for a truly collaborative technical and policy reset.
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]]>The post TripleLift is the Go-to Alternative for Facebook appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Is your brand socializing with content you’d rather not be on Social?
More than 100 brands are pulling ads from Facebook and are boycotting the platform for allowing the spread of hate speech and misinformation via their content moderation practices.
Small businesses in addition to goliaths like Coca-cola, Honda, and Unilever have pulled their dollars with the sentiment that this is no longer just a brand safety issue, but a moral and societal safety issue. If you’re a Marketer looking to allocate dollars with confidence, TripleLift can help.
The grass is greener, and cleaner with a trusted SSP partner.
TripleLift offers tools to help Marketers make decisions that align with their brand’s ethos, messaging, and as always: performance goals. Our 100% direct relationships with our massive publisher network means you don’t need to compromise scale and reach for quality.
Brand Safe
Effective
Easy
Getting started is easy. We can convert your Facebook ads into beautiful, scalable Branded Video and Native placements, so you can be up and running on your DSP of choice in less than 24 hours.
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]]>The post Pride Never Ends appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>A post by Henry Holmes,
Sr. Interaction Design & Engineer,
DE&I Co-Representative for LGBTQIA+ at TripleLift
If any of us were sitting in TripleLift’s NYC headquarters today we could step outside and make our way beside NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, past Washington Square Park’s famous arch, into West Village along Christopher street, to the Stonewall Inn. A mere 5 blocks and 50 odd years ago this was an epicenter of radical, paradigmatic change to which we can trace the modern origins of Pride Month. We owe so much of today’s culture and comfort to activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who made themselves heard and would take no less than real change for an answer those years ago.
The 21st century has a short attention span and an even shorter memory, so it’s worth acknowledging some of the modern conditions we take for granted and how they came to be. One such reality is the increasing presence of historically underrepresented voices in mass media. Another is the expectation of progress and accountability that gives us confidence in a better tomorrow. Still more, there is the collaboration of so many millions of people across disciplines, identities and perspectives that make the internet a worthwhile place to be. These truths were built and fought for, and they require care and attention to remain.
TripleLift prides ourselves on supporting the publication of high quality content wherever it happens to be. Our work would matter so much less without the passionate, diverse and inclusive ecosystem of publishers and advertisers we work with every day.
Before this pride month is over, we wanted to acknowledge that we materially benefit from the work of all the LGBTQIA+ individuals who put their safety on the line at the Stonewall Inn demonstrations in 1969, and in so many countless ways and places in the many years before and since. The vibrant ecosystem of creativity and expression that drives us to consume content, challenges us to grow, and inspires us to build a better world has deep roots in Black Trans activism, in Black communities, and in Black imaginations.
Our future demands that we follow in the footsteps of Marsha and Sylvia in pursuit of a more just and equitable world — one we can be proud to live in.
The post Pride Never Ends appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The post Update: Discipline in Uncertain Times appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>On June 25, TripleLift reversed the majority of the cost-cutting measures taken at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic.The e-mail below was sent by CEO Eric Berry to company managers preceding a company all-hands meeting that day.
—
With a full quarter of Covid behind us, I want to update this team on the state of the company as well as the important actions we are now taking.
Our business is trending in the right direction and we have largely good news to share. We must nonetheless operate with guarded optimism and ongoing prudence given the continued uncertainty.
THE GOOD
When the pandemic hit, I wrote to this team that being disciplined would allow us to emerge in a relatively strong position. We moved very quickly to do just that. Our New York HQ closed on March 11th, and by April 2nd we had taken our major cost saving actions. In that time, we created a number of forecasts for revenue and aligned our expenses to reflect a new normal for the economy based on a conservative revenue model. As predicted, April was a bad month. May was better. June is better still. We will finish the quarter right around our target revenue model. This is something we should all be very proud of and it is a testament to the effort that the team as a whole undertook to adapt quickly to new working conditions and new demands from your professional and personal lives. Thank you.
THE CAUTIOUS
Achieving the target case gives us flexibility to take steps to ease many of the measures we instituted a few months ago. We currently have line of sight to positive EBITDA on the year, which is a feat given the environment that all companies find themselves in. That said: our business is highly dependent on Q4, for which we still have very little visibility. The current economic “recovery” we are seeing may well be temporary in nature, driven by the initial financial stimulus. It also has the potential to be adversely affected later in the year by the hasty re-openings in many states and countries — we are already seeing additional Covid infection spikes in some regions. This continued and extraordinary uncertainty drives our need to be vigilant as we move forward.
THE ACTIONS WE ARE TAKING
Even as we sit at the intersection of the improved indicators in our business and continued uncertainty in the global economy, the nature of our industry means that we must continue to invest in the future. Therefore, we are taking the following actions.
Reverting Compensation. All employees who have had their pay reduced will see a complete restoration of their compensation to pre-Covid levels effective July 1.
Returning from Furlough. For the second time since we created the 3-month furlough program, we are bringing back employees. These colleagues play an important role in our plans moving forward and we are excited to welcome them back. When added to the colleagues we brought back on May 1, we have returned more than half of our originally furloughed population. We will be bringing back all of the furloughed employees whose skill set and expertise are aligned with a strict focus on our investments for the future, and we will unfortunately have to part ways with the remaining employees in our furlough program.
New Hires. We will move forward with opening a number of positions deemed critical to our short- and long-term future. In addition to our core business, we will make additional investments in support of key parts of our strategic roadmap. Two important notes. First, we considered our furloughed population for these roles and, where possible, prioritized those colleagues to fill them. Second, we will place an emphasis on finding candidates from underrepresented populations in our commitment to greater diversity, equity & inclusion.
Thank you for your patience as we have navigated the last few months.
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]]>The post How Agile is Your Video Strategy? Part 1 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Thanks to its incredible ability to connect information to audiences, video growth continues to rise. Today, it seemingly consumes every second of our day as it continues to proliferate new verticals, channels, platforms, and places and provide advertisers with more ways than ever to connect with people.
While video opportunities seem to be infinite, there is a limit on audience attention. We’ve pulled together a series of tips for advertisers looking to create an agile video strategy that not only connects with their audience but can also withstand the test of time.
Today, the IAB landscape outlines the variety of video options – content forms, distribution methods, devices and delivery platforms, and ad types. It shows the wide breadth of video but also proves the overwhelming complexity for advertisers, with over 1,000 possible buying combinations to choose from.
As more innovation is introduced, it’s important to focus your video strategy around your goal rather than a specific outlet. Consistent optimization of what available video options perform best for you will help create a focused video strategy.
Tip: Finding a partner who can do those optimizations for you will save time and money.
TripleLift continuously monitors and optimizes your campaigns. You share your goals and we’ll provide curated deals based on specific KPIs and filters, removing wasted budget, minimizing manual effort, and delivering better performance.
As new outlets continue to emerge, bad actors responsible for fraudulent activity are likely to be found. New product areas where ad tech is relatively immature have seen an increase in fraudulent activity. Juniper Research estimates that buyers will end up losing $44 Billion a year to fraud, by 2022.
Gaming is a particularly lucrative opportunity for fraudsters, given the highly engaged & sought-after young audience that is known to spend 7+ hours a day playing.
Based on a MOAT study, there has been uncovering of bots spoofing gamers and collecting on virtual currencies and ad spend, unbeknownst to the gaming publishers.
You might be wondering why, if the industry knows that this is an issue, it is still happening. For video, where fraud is particularly tricky, buyers are known to demand more impressions than can be supplied by premium publishers, according to eMarketer, providing a delta for bad actors to prey on by creating illegitimate traffic advertisers will pay for.
Tip: A direct supply path will not only help ensure that the traffic that you are buying is legitimate, but it will also help maximize your budget by limiting the tech tax. More importantly, ask your partners what they are doing to remove fraud before you bid on it. Working with partners that have a solution that validates every impression as human, ensures you’re only delivering your message to your desired audience.
Stomping out fraud with TripleLift is easy. With a no-reseller guarantee and a partnership with WhiteOps that verifies every single impression you bid on, you know exactly what you’re getting at no extra cost. We’ll even guarantee new opportunities like gaming and OTT where we continue to build our supply, providing you with new and unique inventory that is safe.
Audience behaviors are changing even faster than expected in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All areas of video are seeing increased viewership. Even linear TV, which had its worst quarter in history with over 1.8MM subscribers falling off in Q1’20, has seen a small resurgence. However, TV is estimated to decline post-pandemic as digital and OTT properties continue to encroach on time spent.
In addition, as live events continue to be postponed and canceled, live streaming/digital events are a solution for publishers to engage audiences and provide a revenue source. Live-streamed sports are expected to take off, with over 36.5 Million US viewers already watching sports digitally, according to eMarketer, and expected consistent year over year growth into 2023. However, the sporadic nature of events like this can make it difficult for buyers to plan. In fact, US advertisers reported that before COVID-19 they took 5 to 6 months to plan video campaigns but are now planning in half that.
Tip: To make the most of your campaigns and effectively reach audiences where they are watching at that moment, be flexible and work with partners who can help deliver on multiple video strategies – iIt will make it easier to pivot when needed.
Finding new and innovative ways to reach audiences is at TripleLift’s core. With a growing suite of video products available, advertisers can utilize proprietary or industry-standard formats that perform against a variety of KPIs.
As a buyer, having an agile video strategy will help deliver return on ad spend, drive legitimate conversions, and stay relevant no matter what trends emerge.
To learn how TripleLift can help create a well-rounded and efficient media plan, with a suite of inventive and standard video offerings, download the Programmatic Video Buyers Playbook or contact us.
The post How Agile is Your Video Strategy? Part 1 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The post UK Lift Talk: The New Era of Programmatic appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>There is a lot going on in the world, in our industry and in our personal lives. And, inevitably everything will continue to change. But, with big change comes big opportunity. We hosted our first UK Lift Talk to discuss the implications as well as the positive possibilities that are being born from our current environment in order to help us continue to survive and thrive.
In a recent panel discussion, we were joined by Hilary Umeh at The Trade Desk, Georgia Lateo at Dentsu Aegis and Ben Hancock at CNN. Our UK Sales Director, Harry Charalambous moderated the panel discussion.
Some topics covered during this Lift Talk are:
Watch the full session now.
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]]>The post We Stand United appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Authored by: Eric Berry, CEO, TripleLift
Black Lives Matter. Simple as that. At TripleLift, our approach to diversity, equity and inclusion focuses on supporting our employees unequivocally and taking an actionable stand in the industry.
It is clear that the recent murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and countless others represent only a fraction of the scope of cruelty taking place in America today. And, of course, this is just a glimpse into the struggles of Black Americans.
We are committed to building a company that is inclusive and avowedly anti-racist. We may all be experiencing this differently, but we are all in this together.
TripleLift has work to do and there are actions that we will take now and over time — to ensure both sustained effort and impact within our company and across our industry. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion will be raised up and more formally institutionalized within our efforts as a company — which we believe will contribute to a more just society. We are choosing this moment as an opportunity to move our small community forward in the interest of collective good.
As an example of that good, TripleLift is supporting the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, America’s premier legal organization fighting for racial justice. Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, LDF seeks structural changes to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and achieve racial justice in a society that fulfills the promise of equality for all Americans.
Every virtual meeting we hold during the month of June will unlock $5 to support this essential service working tirelessly to bring about systemic change.
If it makes sense to join us for a meeting to help address your digital media plans, let’s hop on a video chat. Right now, the world needs strong and consistent allyship more than ever. It is time to put in the work and to practice radical empathy and kindness.
Every meeting makes a difference.
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]]>The post TripleLift Lift Talk: France appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>There is a lot of change going on in the world, in our industry and in our personal lives. And there will continue to be lots of change. But, with big change comes big opportunity. Our recent virtual Lift Talk in France discussed the implications of these changes as well as the positive possibilities that are being born.
For our first ever Lift Talk in France, we spoke about the steps we can take right now to set programmatic up to thrive in this new world order with Jean-Baptiste Rouet, Chief Programmatic Officer at Publicis Media, Charles Duquesne, Lead Principal Account Manager FR & BE at The Trade Desk and Karine Rielland Mardirossian, Directrice Générale Déléguée Digital at Media.Figaro. Our, Head of Publisher Development, EMEA, Julien Gardès. moderated the panel discussion.
Some topics covered during this Lift Talk are:
Watch the full session now. Please note that the session took place in French.
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]]>The post Ask the Experts: Deals Best Practices, Part 2 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Welcome to our second installment of chatting deals and campaign best practices with some of TripleLift’s finest. In our last post, we talked to Thomas Yi about the work Campaign Management does to keep everything running smoothly. Today we’re talking to Benazir Shareef, Senior Partner Manager, for her perspective and expertise on running successful campaigns.
“We are continually analyzing data to provide industry insight, and we are helping with creative messaging to make ads more engaging.“
Partner Managers understand their clients’ needs in and out. What does a Partner Manager do daily to ensure campaigns are delivering in full?
Benazir: In order to ensure campaigns reach their full potential we diligently monitor the campaigns and proactively reach out to clients as soon as any changes in spend are noticed. As PMs we need to know the campaigns inside out, from budget, flight dates and KPIs to all the DSP targeting overlay.
Once the campaign is live the most important part is to make sure creatives are approved and that we are hitting the daily budget. From this point on, monitoring and keeping in communication with the traders are the two most important parts of a successful campaign as a lot of times changes are made to campaigns that might limit the spend. If a campaign is consistently under-pacing and we are not addressing it the client is likely to move the budget without consulting us, so being proactive is always the key.
Buyers seem to really connect with our deals offering. What is it about our deals that really works for our buyers?
Benazir: There are several reasons why buyers across different agencies and brands connect with TripleLift deals
Finally, with all the product lines and capabilities TripleLift has to offer, what’s one thing you want your buyers to know about us that they may find helpful for their campaigns?
Benazir: I would like my clients to know that they should consider TripleLift not only as a partner but also as a trusted advisor whose support goes beyond campaigns. We are continually analyzing data to provide industry insight, and we are helping with creative messaging to make ads more engaging. Overall, we are working towards launching new products to reinvent ads across all mediums.
We thank Benazir for her time and attention she brings to her clients. If you’re interested in activating a deal, reach out to your TripleLift representative or contact activate@triplelift.com — a Partner Manager and Campaign Manager will be there to help!
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]]>The post Ask the Experts: Deals Best Practices, Part 1 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>According to eMarketer, 2020 is supposed to be the first year that deal spend surpasses open exchange spend — by 11%! We know that deals work well. We’ve seen great performance across our deals for Branded Video, Native, and now Direct Display. But for all the great performance we’ve seen, we’ve also seen confusion about when to activate a deal or how to set up campaigns in a way that doesn’t negatively impact deal spend.
To help prepare buyers for this move towards the future of deal spend, we’ve created a two part series where we’ve interviewed two rising stars at TripleLift: Thomas Yi, Director of Campaign Management and Benazir Shareef, Senior Partner Manager. Today’s installment features Thomas Yi, who is an expert on all things campaign management and what it takes to knock campaign KPIs out of the park.
“From knowledge sharing initiatives, to updated collateral and everything in between, Campaign Managers are always seeking ways to improve efficiencies and processes at TripleLift.”
The Campaign Management team is tasked with making sure deals are running smoothly and delivering on KPIs. What’s a typical day in the life of a campaign manager like?
Thomas: The campaign management team prides itself on being able to wear many hats. Generally speaking, Campaign Managers will kick their day off with an organizational and housekeeping routine. Once finished with the typical housekeeping items like checking on emails, investigating ticket requests, and doign creative audit, Campaign Managers will jump into a range of requests: from generating tags and providing demo links for clients, to building RFP plans and decks, setting up campaigns, and investigating blockers and bugs.
Campaign Management recently packaged up inventory for our Evergreen Deals for Direct Display launch. Can you tell us a little about how those packages are created? What goes into that process?
Thomas: Through Triplelift’s partnership with IAS and MOAT we are able to measure the viewability of every placement on the Triplelift exchange. With this data we create inventory packages of placements that meet certain viewability criteria. After packaging this inventory to meet 50/60/70 percent viewability needs, we create Evergreen deal ids for each DSP integrated with Tripelift that make it easy for our clients and brands to target this premium inventory through any platform they use to execute their digital buys.
Afterwards, we are consistently evaluating and refreshing the placements in each package on an ongoing basis.
Campaign Management are troubleshooting experts when it comes to deals. What’s some practical advice you’d like our clients to know when running a campaign on deals?
Thomas: Triplelift is proud of the fact that we are able to offer many different deal types across a wide range of our offerings. In the interest of time I will focus on best practices for Native performance deals.
Best Practices:
We thank Thomas for the expertise his team brings to the table. If you’re interested in activating a deal, reach out to your TripleLift representative or contact activate@triplelift.com — a Partner Manager and Campaign Manager will be there to help!
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]]>The post In the Kitchen with Jen Carroll appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>One of the best places to connect is in the kitchen, so that’s where we met with Bravo’s Top Chef All Star, Jen Carroll. Jen spilled tea with long-time friend, and TripleLift Senior Director of Sales, Rita Kline, while she walked us through a favorite recipe that has a lot of versatility: Broccoli Tabouleh with Tahina.
When Jen isn’t giving private cooking demonstrations or competing on Top Chef, she keeps busy with her Philadelphia restaurant, Spice Finch, and catering consultancy company, Carroll Couture Cuisine.
Jen highlighted that in times when ingredients may not be easy to get, we should feel comfortable substituting fresh spices, meats and veggies. For this specific recipe, dill or tarragon could easily take the place of cilantro or mint. This flexibility and ability to deal with change is a quality that translates out of the kitchen, especially today. There are no perfect days, but keeping a positive perspective can navigate challenges gracefully.
Order take-out from your favorite local restaurant and if you are planning on booking an event in the future, try to do it now. Most restaurants are being lenient with cancellation policies amidst quarantine restrictions. You can also make donations to individual Go Fund Me funds or the James Beard Foundation’s Open for Good fund.
Want to Connect with Chef Jen Carroll?
You can follow and DM Jen here:
Broccoli Tabouleh with Tahina
Tabouleh Ingredients
Tahina Ingredients
Tabouleh:
Watch the video below
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]]>The post Practice Safe Media: It’s Time to Have “The Talk” appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>In a world where every impression counts, understanding where your partners have been and where your spend is going is more important than ever.
We believe that everyone should Practice Safe Media. But what does that mean? And, how do you do it?
We created this infographic to show you how to protect yourself and your media plan.
Want to learn more? Let’s keep talking, contact us.
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]]>The post Every Meeting Makes a Difference: Helping People on the Frontlines of Coronavirus appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Authored by: Jax Quantrell, CRO, TripleLift
Update: May 4, 2020
One month ago, we saw an opportunity to make a difference for the extraordinary frontline hospital and clinic workers during this time of need. We announced that we would be donating to World Central Kitchen to deliver warm meals for each meeting we held in the month of April.
Within weeks of launching “Every Meeting Makes a Difference,” we received an enormous amount of support from our industry colleagues through virtual meetings, events and social engagement. We’re proud to say that we have doubled our original pledge and donated 5,800 meals to World Central Kitchen.
World Central Kitchen has served more than 3 million meals to vulnerable communities and frontline healthcare workers in over 155 cities in more than 25 states and territories. By going about our normal work day, together with our clients and partners we were able to make a difference for our healthcare heroes.
We are grateful for every person who supported us this month for “Every Meeting Makes a Difference” and thrilled to announce that we are extending this initiative through the month of May.
________
Original post dated: April 8, 2020
The Coronavirus is taking its toll on everyone. Companies are challenged, industries are reeling, and large swaths of the world are sheltering-in-place. Yet, there are heroes emerging among us — the healthcare professionals who are facing incredibly dangerous challenges. They are working tirelessly to save lives while putting their own health and safety on the line.
In the advertising industry, we are…working from home. Each day, we’re creating and recreating marketing plans that address the fast moving nature of this moment in history. We are each surely rising to our own occasion. But, it is still so hard to reconcile the work we’re doing – taking place through the relative safety of Zoom and Slack – with the life saving efforts playing out in hospitals around the world.
While most of us don’t have the training to tend to the sick, we do have the ability to help the heroes. TripleLift is supporting World Central Kitchen, the organization delivering fresh, hot meals to medical professionals and relief workers. Every virtual meeting we hold during the month of April will unlock 3 meals to feed heroes working on the frontlines. We are committed to donating up to $10,000 during the month.
If it makes sense to join us for a meeting to help address your digital media plans, let’s hop on a video chat. And then, just by going about our jobs, we will together make it easier for so many others to go about theirs.
Every meeting makes a difference.
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]]>The post 14 Ways Our World Will Change After Coronavirus appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Authored by: Jordan Bitterman, CMO, TripleLift
There’s an old adage that goes: “It takes 21 days to form a habit.” To put that into perspective, most of us have been quarantining for far longer than that. In that time, we have been working differently, socializing differently and spending our money differently. Even if many of our activities go back to normal in the months ahead, a whole lot of change is underway.
On this 50th day of my own shelter-in-place – more than double the amount of time that it supposedly takes to form a habit – I marked the occasion by writing down some predictions for how the world might change when we ultimately emerge from the most serious aspects of this pandemic.
As an advertising community, it’s critical for all of us to study the implications in order to help our brands survive and thrive through this downturn.
Rise of self-serve.
We will see increased investment in automation that replaces human workers in favor of self-serve systems – think: more self-checkouts at retailers. Much of the technology will be accessible through our own mobile devices, not just in-store kiosks. The bet will be made that doing business this way is cheaper in the long-term and more hygienic in the short-term. For marketers, there will be more opportunities to use the interfaces of those systems, as well as the data they throw off, to target our messaging.
Going cashless.
Debit and credit cards are already a big part of life – only about 30% of purchases in the U.S. pre-pandemic were made with cash. But there’s still so much room to go. Post-Corona, people won’t want to touch money and it will be easier to go cashless with the proliferation of self-service technologies. Credit card and payment system companies stand to benefit more quickly than they might have previously planned. Still: marketing to consumers in this space is about to get a lot more cluttered.
Decline of traditional broadcast.
Here’s what we know: streaming is fast becoming a habit, cord cutting is spiking, content production has largely shutdown, the fall tv season will be delayed and consumers are subscribing to an increasing number of OTT services. Digital video (a category that includes streaming services) accounted for 8% of all “time spent with media” just 5 years ago. That figure has been growing by a point each year and eMarketer had projected it to hit 14% in 2020. But, due to the habits formed during this quarantine, the shift from linear to streaming will accelerate even faster than the most bullish projections. By the end of this year, we might actually hit the metric predicted for 2022. Marketers had already been shifting their video mix but, when dollars come back, we should see an even greater shift to digital video: in-stream, out-stream and especially OTT.
The ascendency of eSports.
This trend has been coming for years (is it “the year of gaming” yet?), but ad spend hasn’t caught up with usage. It’s entirely possible that the NBA and NHL cancel the remainder of their seasons and that Major League Baseball doesn’t see a single pitch this year. As time spent playing online continues to grow, media & sponsorship dollars will ultimately flow. It might not happen immediately, but we will see it take off with the next economic recovery.
Subsidized WiFi infrastructure.
Living and working in areas of the country with poor connectivity is suboptimal for the affected communities – quarantine or no quarantine. Much has been written about the challenge of school kids not being able to properly e-learn due to low bandwidth. By the transitive powers, that means many businesses have also been at a deficit. Moving forward, governments (perhaps the states, since our federal government can’t seem to rally) will fund improvements, enabling their citizens to better compete. That means: more online services and accelerated opportunities for brands and media companies in rural areas.
Essential Cloud.
The Cloud has become the underlying technology of this generation. What the phone companies were to the 20th century, the Cloud companies are to the 21st. Infrastructure from Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM, along with applications like Zoom, Slack, Instacart and Venmo are the way we operate now. We will look at this period of time as the moment when Cloud went from smart business to essential living.
Reduced influence of cities – Part 1.
They’re expensive, they’re congested and they’re petri dishes for disease (relatively speaking). With technology becoming optimized for rural areas, more people will be able to balance their careers and their preferred lifestyle. It’s not just suburbs that could swell, all of those towns in the special issues of Outside Magazine (“Anytown, Colorado” and “This Place, New Mexico”) will become destinations for migration. Employers will follow…and so will brands.
Reduced influence of cities – Part 2.
They aren’t just expensive for citizens – they’re also incredibly expensive for businesses. White collar companies have only made the math work by packing workers into open seating and expanding additional operations to more cost-efficient, secondary locations. Local businesses like restaurants have had to shutter due to reliance on razor-thin cashflow. And, if you live in New York, you know that retail vacancies were already a problem in every neighborhood. Cities are in for a long reset.
Commercial real-estate correction.
The average price of commercial real-estate in London recently was $88/square foot. New York: $83. Boston: $65. Between this (hopefully short-term) economic downturn, the long-term correction coming to cities, and the likes of WeWork and Knotel offering month-to-month solutions, the overall commercial market will see immense downward pressure. Companies will exercise out-clauses, seek smaller spaces and use their leverage to negotiate better deals.
Remote working.
We will go back to the office. But, even companies with previously strict work from home policies will relax their rules. At first, some will be more accommodating because of the ongoing fears of their employees. Over time, it will become a more accepted standard practice since we now have a better gauge on how to evaluate good remote work performance…and bad. The implications are many, including the continued reinforcement of many of the projections above.
Copying the Amazon Model.
Beyond the core businesses of .com and AWS, think about the even bigger juggernaut Amazon has created. All of these divisions – many of them built via acquisition – are perfect fits for the new normal: Audible, Twitch, IMDB, Ring, Alexa, Fresh, Prime, Prime Air and The Washington Post. Each one is built for the Cloud and each complements most of the others. We will see even more corporate investment shift toward cloud-based businesses, looking to the Amazon model as the gold standard.
New data-first industries.
With more-and-more data exhaust being created by all of our cloud-based activities, new start-ups will form to utilize that data (hopefully non-PII). Their aim: helping clients acquire new customers and service current ones — CRM on steroids. Governments will lag in regulating this data giving industries a head start to build out their categories.
New entry level work.
As we see fewer cashier jobs (and bank tellers, and stock clerks), we will see a rise in logistics jobs – from coding to analytics to warehousing. All of these roles will be critical as we shift from in-person to remote demand. As we try to make our way back from double-digit unemployment, these burgeoning job categories will aid our recovery.
Big shakeout in DTC.
Yes, there’s bloat across categories and not all would have survived anyway. But can 50 companies selling $300 watches and 100 companies selling $150 sweatpants really survive in an economic downturn? (Answer: they cannot.) Direct-to-consumer won’t go away, but we will see many of the current ones fold and new categories sprout from the ashes.
All-in: there will be lots of change. But, with big change comes big opportunity.
Billions of dollars are up for grabs in the shifts that are about to take place. Brands that throw out old assumptions and take chances, will adapt, survive and thrive. It’s going to be a rocky road, but it will be a prosperous one for those that keep their ear to ground.
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]]>The post TripleLift Inventory Now Available Directly in Display & Video 360 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Authored by: Chelsea Murray, Account Director, Platform Partnerships, TripleLift
Marketers now have direct access to TripleLift Native, Video and Display supply in Display & Video 360. TripleLift is the world’s largest source of In-Feed inventory with premium placements that blend seamlessly with the look & feel of publisher pages.
Here are some of the key benefits of a direct integration:
More working media dollars.
Consolidation in the programmatic supply chain allows new and existing buyers to maximize the value of their working media budgets. In addition to this, direct buyers have access to net-new publishers that weren’t previously available via intermediaries as well as larger audience pools across all publishers.
Trading workflow improvements.
With a direct integration, buyers can select ‘TripleLift’ as an exchange in the same place they select all other key partners on Display & Video 360. Those looking to extend the reach of Social campaigns will reap the benefits of the direct integration beyond ROI — they now have the advantage of scale too. Buyers can repurpose their Social assets for Native programmatic and leverage Display & Video 360 Native capabilities.
Better performance across the funnel.
We’ve seen positive increases in performance in moving to a direct integration, most notably win rate. Better win rate means more working media dollars at play, which clients have been thrilled about.
For more information on how to access this inventory, reach out to dv360@triplelift.com
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]]>The post The Value of Digital Storytelling During A Time of Disruption appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Storytelling is one of the most effective ways to keep your brand top of mind and create new connections with consumers. What happens during a time of disruption? How can brands unlock consumer attention without coming across as tone-deaf or insensitive?
TripleLift explored how to effectively approach digital storytelling amidst today’s challenges and limitations with Erin Vogel, SVP, Content Lead, Central Region at Spark Foundry, and Dan Richardson, Senior Partner, Managing Director, Invention+ at Mindshare. Our GM of Branded Content, Jason Kleinman, moderated the conversation.
Authenticity is key.
Authenticity can be framed around a simple question: Does your brand support Gay Pride and your employees beyond creating a rainbow logo in June? Mattel launched “Play Room” and made downloads and printables available in reaction to insights that play is still important. Audible made books of various education levels available in different languages, immediately.
Recognize and support your users.
Who helps sell your products? Miller Lite made a donation and set up a virtual tip jar to support millions of bar and service staff out of work.
Recessions tend to drive innovation.
Brands are getting scrappy to develop platforms. With production limitations, some are reusing assets and tapping users and creators to develop an authentic story. Chefs are creating demos in their home kitchens with brands’ products.
Will consumers’ changed behaviors become ingrained?
People are now used to getting things delivered and cooking at home. What will life look like when we come out on the other side? Initially pantry stocking was a big focus of consumer behavior. Can brands provide value with recipes so that these products are used in meals.
Navigating Corporate Social Responsibility.
As brands wade into the good will space, how do they break through? It’s worth considering what their customers are struggling with. How are they treating their employees?
What are they doing for society?
What kind of value and entertainment can you offer?
Support creators and users of your products by having chefs host cooking demonstrations in their home kitchens.
Watch the full video now.
With nearly 150 participants across brands, agencies, publishers, and technology partners – we are especially thrilled to share that we continued our company-wide initiative, Every Meeting Makes a Difference , by donating to World Central Kitchen to fund warm and fresh meals for COVID-19 frontline workers.
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]]>The post How Media Spend Can Help Journalism appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Authored by: Jordan Bitterman, CMO, TripleLift
The Paradox of Journalism in the Age of Corona
So much of human existence right now feels like a giant unknown. We are in the midst of a global health scare the likes of which nobody currently alive has ever experienced. There simply aren’t any parallels.
We do know this, however: there are people and industries that are critical to our ability to navigate this crisis. Doctors, nurses and hospital workers are helping us care for the sick. Farmers, warehouse workers and grocery clerks are ensuring the proper functioning of our food supply.
Yet, perhaps one of the most critical jobs right now – important and oftentimes dangerous work to help us survive and thrive through this pandemic – is being done by journalists.
News gathering organizations are reporting from the frontlines, wading through an endless and fast moving ocean of information — all in the interest of keeping us informed. In times like these, journalism has never been more important for the proper functioning of society. Who else will separate fact from fiction, speak truth to power and provide important context to arm us with the insights needed to make decisions that keep ourselves and our families safe?
Still: news publishers are facing a ‘crisis within the crisis.’ Consumer demand for the news has never been higher, but advertiser demand for those impressions has fallen off precipitously. Traffic to news sites is up 57% since the start of the Coronavirus outbreak, but CPMs are down 20% in that same timeframe. In a world of supply and demand, this shouldn’t make sense. But, there’s a straight-forward answer as to why this is happening and a simple solution to address it.
Monetization has fallen due in large part to the decision by some very large brands to steer clear of the news category entirely. Many of those advertisers simply do not want the message association, so they are blacklisting Covid-19 content or the news category entirely. There are a number of studies that show brands actually get a lift from running ads adjacent to news, but it has become conventional wisdom – false as it may be – that news content is undesirable content.
While this pandemic is an unpleasant story, without the support of brands, news won’t be able to properly function through this period and will be forever changed moving forward. Choking off this category isn’t helping anyone.
Your Advertising Dollars Can Do Double Duty
Investing in quality news content at a time when it’s being consumed at peak levels not only makes business sense – driving reach and achieving ROI at reasonable CPMs – but it also funds an important pillar of society. Your brand can be associated with that support.
Put simply: brands have the opportunity to reach their objectives while playing a role in the survival of journalism.
#HelpJournalism
TripleLift has created a curated package of impressions to help brands position themselves thoughtfully within the world’s most respected news content. Attributes of this package include:
Update June 4, 2020
GroupM is the first holding company to join the effort, and has signed more than a dozen of its clients to the program, focusing on 600 multicultural and local news sites. “This topic is of great importance to us,” John Montgomery, executive vice president of global brand safety at GroupM told MediaPost, “Journalism is essential to the proper functioning of society, especially at a time when there is a great threat to the health and financial wellbeing of almost everyone on Earth. Imagine, not having essential news reporting during the Great Depression or on 9/11. That’s what’s at risk right now.”
Since the Help Journalism curated deal is based on individual deal IDs, any agency or brand wanting to participate can do so in a way that makes sense to them. Media buyers can be as broad or as surgical as they would like. If a marketer wants to direct news spend to a particular region of the US, a particular European country or even against a specific set of news publications – large or small – we can allocate dollars accordingly.
Learn more about our #HelpJournalism package here or contact us for more information.
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]]>The post Discipline in Uncertain Times appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>On April 2, TripleLift implemented a number of cost-cutting exercises that included a layoff equal to roughly 7% of staff. The email below was sent by CEO Eric Berry to company managers, following a company all-hands meeting where the scope of those exercises was communicated.
We are all affected by the coronavirus. It has shaken our world in a way with no precedent. We may have loved ones, friends, or friends of friends that have succumbed to the disease. This is truly a global tragedy. Yet the reach of this extends beyond those directly battling or potentially exposed to the virus. It has attacked the core of our society – including our social nature and the global system of trade. We have all been forcefully thrust into this new world and it is truly painful. It is painful because of its direct health consequences. It is painful because it has lowered our quality of life. And it is painful because the economic collapse has forced companies like TripleLift to respond with measures like those we took this week.
This difficult time has yielded difficult choices. Employee and compensation reductions are hard pills to swallow. Everyone at TripleLift is affected, though some more acutely than others. The company’s intentions with the actions we have taken are three-fold: ensure our ability to navigate these turbulent waters on our own terms, create reversible decisions that are actionable as the economy recovers, and treat every one of us with respect and humanity.
As challenging as this has been, these decisions will have positive effects for the company moving forward.
Expenses. Our expenses are now controlled such that we can break-even at a significantly lower revenue total than our original plan over the remainder of the year. The likelihood of negative outcomes for all industries has significantly increased, but our revised operating plan immediately places our company in a strong position to withstand the crisis. To go along with our new expense plan, we have eight-figures of cash in the bank, built up over four years of accelerating profitability.
Products. Our product roadmap is still completely in-tact, with a suite of ad products that are right for the times: native, display, content and video. Additionally, we made the decision to continue the growing investment in our OTT products – a category that will see even larger demand as society emerges from its quarantine.
Service. We have lost a number of well-regarded colleagues and we feel deeply that they are no longer with us. But, in every choice we made, we considered our customers and partners. Through careful and precise planning, we have ensured absolutely no adverse impact in our ability to deliver services, nor any disruption in the uptime of our platform.
Being disciplined is the principle that has guided our tremendous growth to-date and being disciplined will allow us to emerge from this time in a relatively strong position. Advertising budgets will eventually return to their normal levels. And we will be better positioned strategically, competitively, and financially to succeed than we were going into the pandemic because we were prepared to look like we overreacted, and because we understand that being prepared to look like you overreacted is essential to surviving a moment like this one.
As I said at the conclusion of our All-Hands meeting: I am confident in a number of things today.
I am confident that today is a bad day for everyone.
But, I am also confident that:
Eric
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]]>The post The Advertising Industry Is at the Beginning of Its Next Cycle appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>This interview was originally between markenartikel, a prominent German publication, and TripleLift General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, Julia Shullman. The original article can be found here.
markenartikel: Recently, Google announced that it will say “bye-bye” to third-party cookies. What problems will advertisers face with this change? What do the restrictions mean for businesses?
Julia Shullman: It is a fundamental break that will make it difficult to maintain the status quo. Advertisers face two challenges if they continue with business as usual. First, they will need to ensure they have an alternative browser ID to use to deploy their own data, so they can measure the delivery and effectiveness of their ads across different digital properties through various ad tech vendors and platforms. Second, they’ll have to find a way to maintain the use of the ad tech vendors of their choice to do this. Publishers, and their ad tech vendors, face similar challenges.
For us, the announcement by Google actually represents a great opportunity for advertisers, but also for the industry at large. The advertising ecosystem has become misunderstood by consumers and the parties within the ecosystem.
The foreseeable end of third-party cookies is an excellent forcing function (coming on the heels of Safari and Mozilla). Our industry is at the start of the next cycle in ad tech and has the opportunity to rethink advertising. We can focus on providing a more transparent and efficient experience by rethinking how user data is collected, used and shared, and providing ads that are informative, respectful and, non-intrusive and fit within the flow of publishers’ environment.
TripleLift is well positioned as a vendor focused on maintaining direct relationships with publishers and providing advertisers a direct path to supply.
markenartikel: GDPR has already been applied in Europe. For marketing, this means that third-party data can only be used with the permission of the user. How has this worked in practice so far? Have these conditions proved to be an opportunity for better quality?
Shullman: The interplay between the online consumer experience, transparency and user choice requirements in GDPR, and the existing ePrivacy Directive, is challenging. However, does that require a complete interruption of a user’s online journey with consent banners blocking access to content or forcing a user to login?
In Germany, in particular, there’s a debate about whether a publisher and its ad tech vendors require consent to use cookies or to use other identifiers associated with browsers and devices that consumers use which deliver and measure ads. Many believe if a publisher provides transparency and choice to their users and restricts their ad tech vendors’ use of their users’ data, the user experience shouldn’t be ruined.
We see publishers and advertisers using privacy regulations to push for better control and transparency in their supply chains and for better consumer transparency and choice.
markenartikel: What is the alternative for third-party cookies? Is there a market solution, an ID?
Shullman: If industry is looking to replace browser identifiers and potentially other device-related advertising with another identifier, a variety of proprietary and industry alternatives and coalitions exist. However, at least today, none of these solutions come close to having the breadth of data and infrastructure of large consumer-facing platforms like Google.
We need to talk about identity and understand why it is not working in the transfigural sense and how it should be managed and controlled in the future across the entire ecosystem. We need to do this from both a consumer and commercial perspective.
We support industry-led solutions or simple interoperable proprietary solutions designed to try to fix the ecosystem in order to make it work better — including creation of an alternative solution for browsers and other device identifiers, whether used at a user or cohort level. Ideally these solutions are incubated and managed by an existing industry association like the IAB, which we believe is well-placed given its relationship with IAB TechLab.
Industry factions should not quarrel across different constituents or across different markets. That will end with no viable industry solution, leaving the large platforms designing and deploying the ultimate solution, not because it’s best but because the industry couldn’t get its act together to align on the right solution.
markenartikel: What role could data alliances play?
Shullman: There is certainly a role for data alliances — whether related to online identifiers or related to data deployed using those identifiers. Those data alliances, however, will only work if their solutions are aligned with the solutions of the ad tech vendors they rely on.
markenartikel: Which data will determine the success of campaigns in the future?
Shullman: Data that’s been appropriately collected and over which the user has appropriate permissions and controls. The parties looking to deploy that data must have an appropriate mechanism to deploy and use it in a transparent and privacy protective manner.
markenartikel: To what extent has GDPR and e-privacy brought the topic of data ownership into the focus of companies? What are the advantages of first-party data, and how can companies proceed to generate this data in a data protection-compliant and secure manner?
Shullman: I’m not sure GDPR and e-privacy have focused on data ownership. Instead, they’ve focused on a consumer’s right to transparency and control over who can collect their data and how it is used.
Those requirements benefit companies with direct consumer relationships like large platforms with consumer-facing products or devices that don’t have to share data with other parties. They also benefit publishers and their vendors.
Ironically the requirements don’t really benefit advertisers because it isn’t well known to consumers that their data may be collected by a brand in one circumstance (e.g. when a consumer buys a good or product from that brand) and then the brand uses that data later to target the user on a publisher’s digital property where the brand’s ad is being shown.
So, between publishers and advertisers, the requirements favor publishers who can more easily explain to consumers that data collected by them on their digital properties is being used to tailor ads on those same digital properties and protect that data from being shared too broadly.
markenartikel: Which advertisers benefit from third-party data? Are they still important for the acquisition of new customers as well as cross or upselling?
Shullman: Advertisers do need to rely on the data of others (e.g. publishers and other technology providers) when looking to draw in new consumers. Privacy regulations certainly make this more challenging and benefits consumer-facing platforms and companies that can allow advertisers to benefit from their services and vendors using this data without actually sharing the data with them.
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]]>The post Our Operational Plan: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>By Eric Berry, TripleLift CEO & Co-Founder
These are challenging times: for the world and our industry. Like everyone, TripleLift is monitoring all the bends and turns in the road.
We have been receiving emails from customers seeking clarification for our operational plans. The short answer is consistent with one of our cherished company values: we continue to “crush it daily.” Throughout this time, we have maintained all of our operations. While not through face-to-face meetings, we are well armed with our laptops, e-mail, Zoom, Slack and Trello. Through the cloud, we forge on with our mission to help make advertising better for everyone.
We are open for business for all of our customers: publishers, brands and agencies. You can contact us via all the same channels you always have — whether it’s to support the business we already do together or to inspire new pathways to drive results. We have been building packages to help steer your business through these times and will continue to roll them out in the days and weeks ahead.
We intend to release our new display and video products as promised in Q2. These products have been created with their inventory directness in mind — the kind of placements that are even more effective when results are a necessity. They were conceived months ago, but are perfect for the times we live in today.
We are also pushing forward with our plans to bring initial product tests to market later this year in support of our forthcoming OTT portfolio. While the global economy is reeling, we know that now, and in the future, media solutions must continue to evolve to meet customer demand. Here, too, we are proceeding full steam ahead.
For as long as these challenging times last, we will be here. We take pride in being a go-to ad tech company: a long-term planner, fast-turn executor and a future bellwether. Deep inside our DNA is a need to reinvent ad placement one medium at a time. So, for us, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
We all may have to practice social distancing, but let’s keep our businesses close.
Drop us a line today and let us know how we can help you.
The post Our Operational Plan: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The post In the Face of an Economic Downturn, Programmatic May Be Well Positioned appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>This article is written by Michael Lehman, SVP and Head of Global Supply at TripleLift. It was originally featured in AdExchanger.
Prior to the first report of the coronavirus in late December, many had speculated for the better part of two years when the next economic downturn would arrive. Whether the virus sparks a complete downturn or temporary correction is unclear, but due to the inextricable link between consumer spending and advertising, the media community’s shared anxiety is growing daily.
However, there’s reason for the programmatic advertising sector to anticipate stability. Programmatically transactable digital media – and the companies that power it – has a few defining characteristics that suggest it would fare better in challenging times. Advertisers should take note.
Ultimately, during times of instability, we can expect a flight to accountability, agility and continuity.
Accountability
While programmatic occupies a larger section of the marketing funnel, it is still primarily a highly targeted, mid- to lower-funnel protocol frequently used for direct response campaigns that align with last-touch attribution. This manner relies less on the speculative nature of branding and more on the data-driven, outcome-based formula that feeds programmatic algorithms industrywide.
When results can be so cleanly tied to spend, that spend should continue to be justifiable, even in a downturn.
And as brands look for cost-savings, one of the first places they look is their agencies. One more forward-thinking move is for brands to invest in and take more control of their programmatic strategy and budgets to save costs and invest in a more efficient form of media. This could have ripple effects downstream that also benefit the programmatic entities that power those transactions.
Continue reading the full article on AdExchanger here.
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]]>The post 10 Tips to Make the Most of Working Remotely appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Remote work has become the new normal for many businesses that want to offer flexibility to their employees. But for many employees, working from home is uncharted territory. While it has many perks, working away from the office can bring new challenges to team collaboration or balancing work and personal life. It can also cause general feelings of isolation.
When done well, remote work can actually work better for you. Many remote workers cite fewer distractions and longer stretches to deeply focus as the number one reason for why they prefer working out of the office.
We asked our most successful remote employees how they make it work for them. Here are their 10 best practices for working remotely.
Whatever you normally do, stick with it.
Don’t change your alarm. Normally listen to a podcast during your commute? Okay, great. Then listen to podcasts. Just at home. If you like to exercise in the mornings, continue to do so. The key here is simply to be consistent with your existing routine, whatever that might be.
Get dressed as you normally would for work. Don’t work in your PJs!
Why does what you wear matter?
First off, it sets the context of the day. But also remember your meetings and calls may include video, so you’re going to want to be presentable.
Have a place in your home that’s dedicated to work. It’s challenging psychologically to work from the same couch where, let’s say, you typically watch Netflix. Vice versa, when you are on the couch relaxing, it’s easy to slip back into responding to just a few more emails or slacks. Your time relaxing and not working is as important as your time spent working. Having a clear physical separation makes both easier.
If anything, check-in a bit more frequently than you otherwise would.
Even beyond 1:1s, lean toward over-communicating when working from home. Not sure you should tell your manager something, like perhaps you just finished a project or maybe you are struggling with something? Go ahead and do it. There are a lot fewer clues to pick up on when you don’t work near someone and more frequent check-ins can help solve that.
Assume every meeting will be video-enabled. Make it the default. For a whole host of reasons, communication is more effective when people can see one another.
That means you should make sure you have headphones or an audio situation you like, and that you’re comfortable with the settings in the virtual meeting service you may be using. Generally, a short video conference is better than back and forth conversations via text messaging tools.
In an office, there are all sorts of things, both subtle and unsubtle, that make things like scrolling Instagram taboo. At home, it feels so natural!
Simply put your phone away. Like in another room. I bet your mind is already whispering that this idea is stupid. “We’re all adults who can control ourselves, right!? We don’t need to actually put it in another room. That’s a bit excessive…”
It’s actually hard because many of the 200,000+ brilliant people working at Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Twitter, Apple and more are focused on making sure you pick up your phone and use their apps. As much as possible. And they are really good at what they do. The best way to avoid it is by never giving them a chance.
Want a little nudge to ensure social media and other distractions stay in control? Check out Google’s Chrome extension StayFocusd. When you decide to have a break, go ahead and grab the phone from the other room and play with it to your heart’s content.
One of the main challenges people mention when working remotely is loneliness and lack of social interaction. There simply isn’t a perfect alternative to being around other people. But there are things that can make this easier. Here are some ideas:
When working in the office, many breaks happen naturally. You get lunch with friends. You get into a conversation with someone you run into. At home, that doesn’t happen. Make sure you schedule breaks for yourself. I recommend 5 minutes every 25 minutes, but many folks prefer longer breaks. Do what works for you. Just remember to take a break every once in a while.
You may want to consider some sort of formal way to “end your day,” whether that’s exiting your messaging apps, turning off your computer, going for a walk, etc.
Our suggestion for a short break? FaceTime with your friends and family. See how they are doing and support one another.
Leave the house. Depending on where you are, it may not be advisable to go towards crowded places, but just walking and seeing people can be nice.
You can reframe working from home as the “ability to work from anywhere.” It’s a chance to do things you might otherwise not get to, like walk your dog after lunch or make a mid-day coffee just the way you like it. Don’t be hard on yourself. Some people immediately enjoy and prefer working remotely, while others find it to be an uncomfortable adjustment that takes some getting used to. Just know you always have your team you can turn to.
The post 10 Tips to Make the Most of Working Remotely appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The post TripleLift in W&V: The End of Third-Party Cookies and the Opportunity It Presents to the Industry appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, Julia Shullman, spoke with reputable German publication W&V about the death of third-party cookies and the huge opportunity it presents for the digital advertising industry. The interview was originally published in German here, a translated version is available below.
Shullman: The end of third-party cookies is a side effect of a much broader issue. The advertising ecosystem has become inefficient, complex and misunderstood — misunderstood by consumers and even the parties within the ecosystem.
On any given ad transaction, there could be upwards of 1,000 tech vendors receiving and using information associated with a cookie or device ID. So, while there’s been a lot of innovation, people have become fed up with disruptive, irrelevant ads and are concerned about how their data is used.
Publishers and advertisers have lost trust in their ad tech vendors. Many ad tech vendors are fighting to maintain the status quo. And the ad tech vendors trying to do the right thing, like TripleLift, find themselves sometimes stuck in the middle of publisher and advertiser commercial interests.
The industry has to therefore rethink advertising, and the foreseeable end of third-party cookies is an excellent opportunity to force this change. We now need to focus on providing a more transparent and efficient ad tech experience by focusing on offering ads that are informative, respectful, non-intrusive, and that fit within the flow of a publisher’s environment. This fits perfectly with TripleLift’s mission and product suite, particularly our native product offerings that provide more control over the rendering of assets to publishers.
Shullman: Historically, most industries only make radical changes when the clock is ticking.
Two years should be a reasonable amount of time, but the industry needs to take a major step back, define what we’ve gotten right and done wrong over the past 20 years, and really rethink how advertising should work today.
That requires defining the issues we are trying to solve, admitting to and putting aside certain commercial interests, and ensuring the right experts are working on the solution. That means a cross-functional team of product, technical, policy and legal experts well-versed in commercial interests, policy concerns and nuanced legal requirements.
Shullman: We see it as a great opportunity for the industry to bring together the right cross-functional team of experts across product, technical, policy and legal (globally) from publishers, ad tech, advertisers and agencies. As I said before, the key is that team acknowledging and putting aside certain commercial interests and honing in on a workable, simple and innovative solution that doesn’t just try to replicate the current ecosystem, but really learns from the industry’s failures to date to redefine how advertising should work today.
Shullman: The internet is global. While regulations are, of course, different market to market, the industry should be able to define a baseline that allows for some adaptation market to market. As an example, almost all privacy regulations are predicated on the Fair Information Practice Principles and contain basic requirements like notice, transparency, choice and control. If we don’t do that, the industry will be stuck with a few large platforms, no choice of vendors and stalled innovation.
Shullman: Log-in alliances are certainly part of a future solution, but the underlying technical infrastructure needs to be revamped to properly support them.
Shullman: I’m not sure brands haven’t given enough attention to their data. Brands care deeply about their consumer relationships and messaging. Instead, I think brands need to better understand that the demise of third-party cookies without the right solution to replace them and the increase in privacy regulations make it harder, if not impossible, for brands to deploy and use their own data — not just for targeting but also for basic measurement and reporting.
W&V: Apart from IAB’s Project Rearc, do you see any current potential solutions for the succession of TPC?
Shullman: We support industry-led solutions designed to clean up the current inefficient and misunderstood ecosystem. Those solutions can be incubated and managed by an existing industry association like the IAB, which we believe is well-placed given its relationship with IAB TechLab.
What we’d hate to see is quarreling industry factions across different constituents or across different markets that ends with no viable industry solution, and the large platforms designing and deploying the ultimate solution not because it’s best but because the industry couldn’t get its act together to align on the right solution.
Shullman: That is certainly a possibility. As previously noted, if publishers, advertisers and independent ad tech come together to work with Google and each other, we should be able to avoid that outcome as much as possible. Unfortunately in these situations, the industry tends to miss the big picture. Even when Google and others offer an olive branch and opportunity to help define standards, we can’t get out of our own way and end up losing out on a great opportunity to collaborate. We certainly hope we don’t lose this opportunity.
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]]>The post Following Record Growth Year, TripleLift Adds Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Marketing Officer appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift is excited to announce the hire of Julia Shullman as General Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer, and Jordan Bitterman as Chief Marketing Officer. Both roles were created in response to a record growth year in 2019 when the company achieved ad spend of $300 million (USD) and hired more than 150 new employees. TripleLift’s growth is attributed to the steady increase of new supply partners in parallel with deploying new and innovative advertiser products across channels — from desktop to television.
“These new roles signal the next phase in what’s been a remarkable time for TripleLift. We have expanded our offerings, distanced ourselves from our competitive set and are poised to lead the industry on important issues,” said Eric Berry, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, TripleLift. “Both Julia and Jordan bring us deep expertise, but they’re also both passionate leaders who are eager to make an impact on our company and the industry. That aligns perfectly with our goal for growth, and our desire to make advertising better for everyone.”
As General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, Shullman sets the company’s privacy and public policy strategy by navigating the complex and changing industry and regulatory landscape. She has built a successful career working on policy matters, leading on issues around data use and privacy, while also promoting industry innovation, efficiency and trust.
“Ultimately, what drives success for TripleLift is when people have a good experience with ads. That happens in part when we exceed regulatory compliance and provide levels of transparency and control to engender trust with consumers and all of our clients and partners,” said Shullman. “I’m excited to help lead TripleLift during this time of unprecedented regulatory and industry upheaval in its ambitious goal to modernize what has become an inefficient, complex misunderstood ecosystem.”
As Chief Marketing Officer, Bitterman is responsible for TripleLift’s presence in the marketplace including audience definition, brand stewardship and activation of campaigns & events. He is a well-regarded strategist and leader, has a background spanning both ad agencies and operating companies, and is one of the industry’s most dynamic voices.
“The biggest insight compelling me to join TripleLift is that the company has been growing both top and bottom line financials — at speed — while still being a bit of a secret in the industry,” said Bitterman. “There’s a magic here that was so enticing to become a part of. What marketer wouldn’t look at that and want to add their contributions to help scale new heights?”
This announcement follows four years of profitability and a six-month string of accolades that recognize the company’s rapid and sustained growth, including: Business Insider’s 18 Hottest AdTech Companies, Inc. Magazine’s 5000 list, ranking No. 55 for advertising and marketing, Crain’s New York Fast 50, which honors companies based on consecutive three-year revenue growth, and Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2015 to 2018. The 2019 Inc., Crain’s, and Deloitte honors mark a three-year streak for each list.
Julia Shullman, Data & Privacy Expert, Industry Influencer
Previously, Shullman served in senior roles at Xandr including lead attorney for AppNexus’ Publisher Technology Group and most recently as Chief Privacy Counsel. In these roles, she helped launch prebid.js, develop an industry GDPR compliance framework as the Chair of the Steering Group for the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework, and guide other industry standards as a member of the NAI board. She began her career focusing on mergers & acquisitions at UBM, and Latham & Watkins. Shullman holds a B.A. in Government and Psychology from Georgetown University and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.
Jordan Bitterman, Creative Strategist & Innovator
Previously, Bitterman served as VP, Digital Strategy & Sales at IBM, Chief Marketing Officer at The Weather Channel, Chief Strategy Officer at Mindshare, and Senior Vice President at Digitas. He is responsible for creating the ad industry’s NewFronts and for launching the first-ever live-streamed concert series. Bitterman began his professional career at The White House in The Office of Presidential Press Advance and holds a B.A. in marketing from The George Washington University in Washington D.C.
See our full press release here.
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]]>The post TripleLift Partners with LiveRamp, Bringing Enhanced Addressability to the Open Web appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift is excited to announce that we have partnered with LiveRamp®, the trusted platform that makes data accessible and meaningful. With this partnership, TripleLift becomes the first native exchange to offer programmatic people-based marketing on the open web.
Marketers continue to lean into walled gardens because 100 percent of their users are logged-in, which allows for precise and accurate targeting. Programmatic has long relied on fragmented third-party cookie syncing to provide identity resolution — until now. TripleLift’s integration of LiveRamp IdentityLinkTM (IDL), a person-based identifier, now empowers marketers to deliver their custom native ads across the TripleLift Exchange with the same quality and performance as within the walled gardens. Marketers will be able to leverage native creative executions with enhanced addressability for targeting and measurement capabilities, matching the quality and performance of walled gardens. For publishers, identity resolution promises to unlock a great share of digital ad spend and this solution is available today.
TripleLift has been the industry leader in bringing native to the open web. The company was the first to leverage its dynamic templating and computer vision technologies to flawlessly deliver and scale in-feed native ads that match the look and feel of a publisher’s page. Today, TripleLift stands as the largest independent native exchange according to Google, programmatically powering the world’s largest publishers and apps.
“We’re excited to be the first native exchange to offer people-based buying through LiveRamp’s IdentityLink and ATS,” said Ari Lewine, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of TripleLift. “We are focused on offering consumer-first approaches to programmatic in a world where third-party cookies are less useful.” And this integration couldn’t be more timely. On January 14, 2020, Google announced that Chrome would block third-party cookies within two years — giving a long but decisive timeline to a reality that will forever change programmatic targeting, attribution and measurement.
IdentityLink, coupled with LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS), is the next step in delivering full end-to-end, people-based addressability on the open web. ATS provides a privacy-first and transparent solution rooted in user authentication with publishers. The joint solution helps publishers prepare for evolving privacy regulations and future-proof against browser-based cookie policies. It’s more important than ever to support publishers in unlocking new revenue streams, building first-party data strategies to maintain programmatic yield to keep them profitable and ultimately, ensuring a thriving open web.
“It’s critical that we strike the right balance between delivering a pristine, personalized and privacy-safe digital experience to our readers, while simultaneously attracting advertiser attention and dollars,” said Alvaro Palacios, COO and CFO at Newsweek. “Thanks to the partnership between TripleLift and LiveRamp, we’re able to extend our programmatic footprint, powered by people-based marketing, while maximizing output and maintaining our brand authenticity.”
IdentityLink matches user activity at the person level across devices and browsers with deterministic accuracy, allowing for a level of targeting effectiveness and more accurate measurement that has previously never been possible on the open web. ATS allows publishers to match consented user data with a LiveRamp IdentityLink in real-time, which enables people-based advertising on cookie-less inventory across the open internet. It provides enhanced user privacy by offering control over how their data is being used with a single opt-out that applies to platforms and publishers that leverage IdentityLink.
“Google’s announcement to discontinue support for third-party cookies in Chrome did not catch us off guard. LiveRamp has been actively taking steps over the last several years to move beyond the expected evolution from the cookie-based model. LiveRamp, TripleLift and a large number of technology platforms and publishers stepped forward to create new infrastructure that provides solutions to build a new, safer internet,” said Travis Clinger, Vice President of Global Strategy and Partnerships. “Through our partnership with TripleLift, we’re unlocking more personalized engagement with consumers, powered by accurate, deterministic data and enabling better targeting and measurement for marketers. Consented addressability is the only path forward for publishers and the open web, led by durable, people-based identifiers.”
See our press release here. To learn more, reach out to your account owner or PublisherClientService@triplelift.com
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]]>The post TripleLift Granted EDAA Seal of Trust appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>We’re thrilled to announce that TripleLift has been certified by the European Digital Advertising Alliance (EDAA) and has received the Trust Seal.
What is the EDAA?
The European Digital Advertising Alliance (EDAA) manages the European self-regulatory programme for Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA). Their main purpose is to provide companies involved in data-driven advertising across Europe the ‘AdChoices Icon’, a symbol that provides consumers with easy-to-understand information about data-driven advertising as well as sharing information they need to make an informed choice about personalised ads.
Why the EDAA Trust Seal Matters
TripleLift has undergone a thorough certification process to validate that 100% of our native, video, and display ads are compliant with industry standards for the collection and use of OBA user data, in agreement with the EDAA policies and practices.
The Trust Seal showcases our commitment to bring trust and transparency to the industry, in addition to giving consumers complete control and access to their user data.
Being granted the EDAA certification is one of the many initiatives we are a part of to boost transparency in the digital industry. Read about how we are tackling CCPA and our IAB UK Gold Standard recertification.
To learn more, please contact privacy@triplelift.com.
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]]>The post How OTT Services Are Looking to Further Capitalize on Product Placement appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Advertising spend on product placement in the U.S. has risen from $4.75 billion in 2012 to $11.44 billion in 2019, according to Statistica. Forrester recently predicted in a study that companies will double their marketing expenditures for product placement on Netflix 2020.
TripleLift Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Ari Lewine, had the pleasure of speaking with a leading newspaper in Germany, Handelsblatt. The main topic of conversation was how OTT services such as Netflix and Hulu will increasingly be capitalizing on product placement and how we are working with them to provide this service.
The original article, in German, can be found here. A translation of the article has been provided below.
Why Netflix could soon be running more surreptitious advertising
Streaming services are looking for new sources of income. One of them is product placements — and a U.S. company wants to offer completely new technical possibilities.
The scene takes place in a typical American diner. While the actors discuss excitedly, something changes in the background: The poster that just now advertised the company’s milkshake now shows the logo of the Nordstrom department store chain. When the camera pans outside across the parking lot, the lettering of the hip salad bar “Sweetgreen” suddenly appears on the building opposite.
Welcome to the brave new world of television advertising: personalized commercials that are placed in the Netflix or Hulu series by computer program. Where one customer sees a Coca-Cola on the table, the other sees green tea. Where one customer sees a bag of chips, another sees a muesli bar. Well noticed in the exact same scene.
This is how Ari Lewine, one of the founders of the start-up TripleLift, imagines the future of advertising in streaming services. In his demo, the entrepreneur has just shown what is possible. “Product placement has been around since the 1940s,” explains the company’s Chief Strategy Officer in his office in New York’s NoHo district. “Streaming services do it too,” he says, listing well-known examples: The KFC giant cup of chicken in “Stranger Things,” the shopping trip to the West Elm furniture store in “Queer Eye,” or the Nokia smartphone in “House of Cards.”
All these products are the result of deals between the production companies and the companies. They agree in advance which phones or brands will be shown in which series. Sometimes the payment for this goes in cash. Other times the chains advertise the new series or content in return.
What distinguishes TripleLift from classic product placement: “We can incorporate the various brands after production by computer and tailor them to the individual customer,” explains Lewine. “You’ll still be seeing this in your living room in 2020,” he says.
The new technical possibilities come at a time when more and more streaming providers are competing for viewers. In addition to the pioneer Netflix and Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, AppleTV Plus and Peacock are or will be launched in the U.S. They all promise ad-free content for a monthly subscription fee.
“We don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call the current environment a ‘streaming war’,” says analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak of Pivotal Research. He predicts that many new players will push up costs significantly over the next two years.
Subscription fees alone will hardly be able to finance the ever increasing production costs. The providers are therefore looking for other sources of income. Since classic advertising is out of the question, they might be willing to accept more and above all personalized product placement.
According to the data service Statista, spending on product placement in the US has risen from $4.75 billion in 2012 to $11.44 billion in 2019. The market research firm Forrester recently predicted in a study that companies will double their marketing expenditures for product placement on Netflix 2020.
“The industry has been very responsive to our offering so far,” says Lewine. To gain better access to broadcasters and production houses, Triplelift recently hired former Fox manager Michael Shields.
Controversial Form of Advertising
The company relies on so-called computer vision — a technology that analyzes images and videos the way people see them. The technology calculates where in the picture a table can be seen, and where a can or a smartphone can be placed.
So far, TripleLift has been doing business mainly with its technology for so-called native advertising — advertising that adapts to the website and almost comes across as its own article or video. Instead of creating them manually, TripleLift’s software automatically adjusts advertising to hundreds of formats on different devices.
Lewine knows that this form of advertising is controversial. He therefore focuses more on advertising that can be identified as such: He offers customers ads with a logo superimposed over the video, making it clearly visible who is behind it. This is done by software that finds the best location by itself.
TripleLift was only founded in 2012 and has more than 300 employees worldwide. According to Lewine, the revenue in 2019 was around $300 million — almost twice as high as the year before. Moreover, and Lewine is particularly proud of this, TripleLift was profitable last year. “This is the fourth year in a row that we have been profitable,” Lewine emphasizes, without mentioning a figure.
The income from venture capitalists is rather modest at $16.6 million in total. Lewine does not want to hear about an IPO or sale at the moment: “We do not need any new capital at the moment. We’re growing so fast too.”
Most recently, the company, which has been placed on the list of the next billion-euro companies by the magazine Forbes, also expanded in Germany. There, TripleLift was able to win Burda as a customer and currently employs five people in Berlin and Cologne.
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]]>The post California Consumer Privacy Act: How TripleLift Is Adopting the IAB CCPA Compliance Framework appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>As of January 1, 2020 the California Consumer Privacy Act, better known as CCPA, will take effect, granting rights to California consumers regarding access to, deletion of, opt-out of sale, and the sharing of personal information to third parties by businesses.
This privacy initiative is a first of its kind in the U.S., and allows California residents to:
This data may include, but is not limited to, personal information, browsing history, geolocation, cookies, mobile ad ids (MAIDS) and device identifiers.
California is the most populous U.S. state, with 40 million residents, so the potential impact to advertising is significant. The full impact is yet to be seen, as much of the legislation is still being finalized and enforcement of CCPA is not expected until July 2020. But with fines to businesses ranging from $2,500 to $7,500 per violation, it’s important for companies to understand how to be in compliance.
As of January 1, 2020, TripleLift is a signatory to the IAB CCPA Compliance Framework. Our adoption of the IAB framework aligns with our core mission of creating user-centric advertising that earns consumer attention.
How will TripleLift adopt the IAB framework?
TripleLift will send the us_privacy string via the OpenRTB Privacy Extension to participating DSPs.
TripleLift urges publishers and DSP partners to become members of the IAB CCPA Framework to support each party’s efforts towards compliance with the CCPA.
Learn more about how to adopt the IAB Compliance Framework for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Have questions? Reach out to privacy@triplelift.com.
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]]>The post The Hottest Advertising Trends from the Last Decade & Top Predictions for the 2020s appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The year’s end brings plenty of nostalgia, and saying goodbye to a decade feels like a good time for reflection about where we’ve been and where we’re going. Advertising is constantly evolving, and much has changed in the last 10 years — a period that saw TripleLift’s founding. So we asked our leaders to weigh in our their most memorable advertising industry moments from the last decade, and what they predict will be a game-changer in the 2020s. See what they had to say:
What was the most memorable advertising moment of the last decade?
Some of the most memorable advertising moments have been effective brand integrations and high-quality content marketing. Netflix’s “Stranger Things” was a major topic of conversation when the show noticeably integrated brands like Eggo waffles and KFC into the storyline. While the streaming platform doesn’t have traditional ad breaks, it was hard to miss these prominent product placements. On the other hand, Dollar Shave Club’s viral video proved that high-quality content can take on a life of its own and help a growing direct-to-consumer brand connect with a large scale of consumers.
One major trend you predict for 2020s?
The decline in linear TV and the decline in midroll advertising signal that our relationship to media is changing. I expect an abundance of new, innovative ad formats that will reshape how we consume video.
What was the most memorable advertising moment of the last decade?
The most important moment in advertising was the advent of “content as the ad.” For me personally, that’s been Red Bull sponsoring and creating content around extreme sports and alternative events and music. Their ethos extends beyond their products and commercials. It runs through the veins of experiences the brand produces every day. Audiences believe in their messaging because they can experience it personally.
One major trend you predict for 2020s?
The pendulum will shift from direct response back to branding. With privacy regulations changing the face of advertising, there will have to be less focus on data and efficiency and more focus on creativity instead. Innovative formats and creative storytelling will be much more instrumental in competing for consumer engagement. Advertisers who can leverage contextual audience data in their creative will come out on top.
What was the most memorable advertising moment of the last decade?
One of the most transformative moments in advertising this decade has been the rise of large consumer tech platforms. Social media giants, in particular, delivered a new wave of advertising capabilities that led to the growth of direct-to-consumer brands, but also of foreign interference in elections, and a sea change in regulation.
One major trend you predict for 2020s?
What was the most memorable advertising moment of the last decade?
For me it was Oreo’s Dunk in the Dark Tweet during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout. Advertisers pay upwards of $5 million for a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl, but all anyone was talking about the day after was an ad created by a brand that paid $0 to buy ad space. Oreo just thought more quickly, reacted faster, and participated in the moment. That one clever tweet was indicative of the changing landscape of advertising and started a transition in the way advertisers connect with their customers. It’s no longer the year-long, million-dollar production budget that produces the best ads, but rather it’s the companies that participate in the discussion and create more consumer-friendly advertising experiences.
One major trend you predict for 2020s?
The rise of micro-influencers. We all know that the Kardashians have made millions of dollars running influencer marketing businesses. They have millions of followers and get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single social media post promoting a brand. In the 2020s, I think that’s going to shift from mega celebrities to niche influencers who may only have 10,000 followers. Micro-influencers individually don’t have the same scale as the Kardashians of the world, but they tend to have a much closer relationship with each of their followers. If they promote a product, they are more likely to have a high conversion rate for the advertiser. Smart brands who find a way to be part of the conversation with niche influencers will reap outsized rewards.
What was the most memorable advertising moment of the last decade?
In 2012, Red Bull sent Felix Baumgartner up to space in a hot air balloon. While millions of us watched live on the internet, he jumped back to earth from 128,000 feet. I felt every emotion as he took that first step — wonder, fear, euphoria. For the brand, this was a brilliant next step in what they’d been communicating for years: Red Bull gives you wings. Every once in a while, I think back to that feat and I’m still in awe of it as a human achievement as well as a brand event.
One major trend you predict for 2020s?
As linear television continues to feel pressure from Connected TV, everyone’s business models will have to change. Traditional media companies will need to find new sources of revenue, as will their digital counterparts. Beyond the 30-second spot, we will see new, technology-enabled innovations: in-show product integrations, commercial overlays and reward-based video viewing, among others. One (or more) of these innovations will stick-the-landing for creators, networks and viewers to become as ubiquitous in the next decade as the standard commercial has been in decades past.
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]]>The post TripleLift Named One of Business Insider’s 18 Hottest Ad Tech Companies of 2019 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Business Insider recently released their list of “The 18 Hottest AdTech Companies of 2019“, featuring TripleLift and honoring its Chief Revenue Officer, Jacqueline Quantrell, as a star to know.
This is the cherry on top of a seriously sweet year. In 2019, TripleLift was honored with three fastest-growth awards — each for the third year in a row, as well as awards for our diversity and inclusion efforts.
TripleLift is reshaping the digital advertising landscape with consumer-centric advertising that drives results for advertisers and unlocks new revenue streams for digital media publishers, app developers and television networks. The company has been profitable every year for the last three years, and in 2019 achieved revenue of $300 million.
“Building one of the fastest-growing companies in New York with some of the brightest minds in ad tech is a great pride of mine. I’m so proud to be part of the team that has stayed true to our mission of helping advertisers and publishers earn consumer attention all while being profitable. We’re excited about continuing to grow that mission.”
—Eric Berry, TripleLift’s Co-Founder & CEO.
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]]>The post How TripleLift Stops Ad Fraud in Its Tracks appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>An eMarketer’s 2019 report on fraud revealed that between $6.5 and $19 billion are lost to fraud yearly.
Read that again.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how many working media dollars are lost because fraud protection vendors evaluate fraud using different methodologies, but knowing that the number is in the billions is alarming. Buyers may feel the impact of fraud on their media budget, but may not know where to start when it comes to choosing supply partners who best protect their budgets.
According to White Ops, industry benchmarks for invalid traffic (IVT) are 9.6% overall and 11.2% for video.
TripleLift has taken a diversified approach to tackling fraud pre-bid and post-render across multiple partners. This allows us to get closer to pinpointing exact instances of fraud — and stopping each in its tracks.
Below, see how TripleLift compares to industry benchmarks.
As certified members of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), we will continue to iterate and evolve our fraud protection methodologies and partnerships so that we can do our part to help clean up the programmatic ecosystem.
For more information on our inventory quality practices at TripleLift, reach out to inventoryquality@triplelift.com.
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]]>The post TripleLift Commemorates Growth Awards by Planting 3,756 Trees in Honor of Its Clients and Partners appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift is excited to announce that it will plant 3,756 trees to commemorate the honor of being awarded three fastest-growth business awards for three years in a row. Each planted tree represents a relationship built with an agency, publisher or partner that has worked with the company, helping to fuel its growth since its founding in 2012 by Eric Berry, Ari Lewine, and Shaun Zacharia.
As the technology company that invents, powers and scales ads that earn consumer attention, TripleLift is reshaping the digital advertising landscape with consumer-centric advertising that drives results for advertisers and unlocks new revenue streams for digital media publishers, app developers and television networks. The company has been profitable every year for the last three years, and in 2019 ranked on three fastest-growth awards lists: No. 562 overall and No. 55 in the Advertising and Marketing category on the Inc. 5000, No. 149 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 2019, and No. 21 on Crain’s New York Fast 50. What makes this year’s wins most notable is that they represent the third year TripleLift ranked on each of these lists.
“We are proud of TripleLift’s growth trajectory over the last few years, and our awards are a testament to our partners for allowing us to build a better online future that’s thoughtful and respectful,” says Ari Lewine, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer. “As we began to think about how to commemorate this, we considered the significance of profit in the context of a world that’s facing real environmental hurdles. There is a famous quote by filmmaker and activist Alanis Obomsawin that says, ‘When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can’t eat money.’ We’ve built a better internet. Now we’re doing our part to build a better planet.”
Beyond the symbolism of growth and beautification, trees provide vital clean air resources, water filtration, and habitat for 80% of the world’s species of mammals, insects, fungi, moss, and plants. “They also provide jobs to over 1.6 billion people, absorb harmful carbon from the atmosphere, and are key ingredients in 25% of all medicines,” according to One Tree Planted, the non-profit TripleLift will work with to plant trees across North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
One Tree Planted notes that only 13-17% of the annual funding needed for restoration and conservation is met, and most of that funding originates from government or philanthropic sources. Out of the approximately $50 million contributed each year, only $10 billion is invested by the private sector. By supporting global reforestation, TripleLift is directly contributing to advancing corporate social responsibility and making a commitment to a more sustainable ecosystem — online and offline.
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]]>The post Holiday Shopland: What European Advertisers Should Know About Holiday Shopping in 2019 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The holiday season is a joyous occasion for consumers, but it can be tricky for advertisers. Knowing how to get consumers’ attention, in the right environment and at the right time, is challenging. And it continues to be more stressful with every passing year, as competition for attention grows and marketing channels evolve rapidly.
TripleLift is here to make this holiday season less stressful for you! Our latest board game-inspired infographic features holiday stats that can help you make the most of your campaigns across European markets. These surprising stats just may change the strategy for your upcoming holiday ad campaigns.
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]]>The post The Future of Storytelling: Industry Thought Leaders Reveal What’s Next for Video Advertising appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>In a world where advertisers are constantly competing for consumer attention, how can brands stand out? By prioritizing authentic storytelling. This is especially critical for video advertising, because strategic changes can make or break whether an ad gets watched or ignored.
TripleLift set out to find out how thought leaders in the industry are using video to cut through the noise and make real connections with audiences. We invited Alyson Griffin, VP of Global Marketing at Intel; Dave Kersey, SVP Group Director at Carat; and Beth Traglia, Director, Content Strategy and Social Media Marketing at Farmers Insurance to our ‘The Future of Video Storytelling’ event in Los Angeles to discuss how they leverage video advertising to tell authentic stories. TripleLift’s General Manager of International, John Stoneman, moderated the conversation.
So, what’s next for video advertising?
Brands will need to leave their comfort zones and take creative risks in order to stand out. Watch the full video below to see how brands are creating concierge-level experiences with personalized video, why over-branding can actually break trust, and how a willingness to fail may just generate the best ideas.
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]]>The post Creating Your SPO Strategy? Here Are 7 Questions You Should Ask Your Exchange Partners appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>If you thought Supply Path Optimization (SPO) was simply about cutting, think again.
In the early days of SPO, when buyers became frustrated with duplicative auctions, cutting seemed like a simple solution. But soon, buyers found that cutting didn’t ensure that their bid wouldn’t be resold to the very exchange they cut.
Modern SPO is about choice. It’s important to partner with exchanges that bring value to your supply path and help your media dollars go further. But how do you determine that? It’s time to have ‘the talk’ with your exchange partners.
Here are 7 questions to ask each exchange before you decide its fate.
Sellers.json is a file that a SSP hosts to identify the publishers it’s integrated with. The file identifies each publisher ID and whether the publisher has a direct or intermediary relationship. You can access it by going to your exchange’s website URL and adding sellers.json at the end (example: staging-newtl.temp312.kinsta.cloud/sellers.json). If the exchange doesn’t have a live sellers.json file, ask when it will support one.
A sellers.json file will offer a basic outline of this, but your SSP should be able to elaborate on this data. Exchange directness refers to the principle of an exchange direct relationship with publishers versus impressions that are made available through an intermediary. While there’s no perfect ratio, the premise is that the fewer the intermediaries, the more efficient your buy will be.
Publisher networks, fee-based wrappers, and resellers are all different types of intermediaries that all bring varying degrees of value. An exchange that cares about offering transparency will be able to communicate what types of intermediaries they work with and provide insight into what value each brings to their exchange.
Not all intermediaries are created equal, and if you’re going to continue running through one, it’s important to know whether it offers an actual advantage. Your SSP should be able to specify what value each intermediary brings to the supply path.
If you don’t know how reselling is affecting your bids, it’s time to get a clearer picture of your supply path. Don’t shy away from asking your exchange for a detailed picture of what and how you are buying.
If you want to reduce reselling, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask for more direct partnerships through your exchange. An exchange should be able to create a deal that makes only direct publishers available to you, or be able to blacklist publishers you’d like to exclude.
As the industry continues to move toward transparency, your exchange should also be at the forefront of new initiatives to simplify the supply path. If an exchange is committed to helping your media dollars go further, they will have a tactical plan for making their integrations as valuable as possible.
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]]>The post How to Make Sure Your Holiday Native Ads Make the Nice List appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Would your holiday native ads make the naughty or nice list?
Native is all about context, and advertisers who want to earn consumer attention will need to consider ways to optimize visual campaigns that play up the spirit and emotions of the holiday season. Here are some best practices for your getting your native ads on the nice list this year.
We sourced some of our favorite native holiday creative across industries. Download your industry lookbook!
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]]>The post Holiday Shopland: What Advertisers Should Know About Holiday Shopping 2019 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The holiday season can be a stressful time for advertisers. You’re trying to stand out, earn attention, and reach ambitious sales goals, all while also trying to find time to actually enjoy the holiday season.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.
Check out TripleLift’s latest board game-inspired infographic featuring holiday stats that can help you make the most of your campaigns. These surprising stats just may change the way you optimize your holiday ad campaigns:
Enjoy the road to holiday shopping!
Now, grab your holiday lookbook! Click to view.
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]]>The post TripleLift Gets Recertified for IAB UK Gold Standard and JICWEBS appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>As part of our commitment to bringing transparency to the digital advertising industry, TripleLift has been certified by the IAB UK Gold Standard 1.1 and recertified by JICWEBS.
These initiatives ensure that the industry is constantly improving its digital advertising standards, focusing particularly on transparency, ad fraud, and brand safety. TripleLift is committed to being a part of initiatives that help improve transparency across the industry, empowering our partners and clients with the knowledge they need to maximise their ad revenue.
The IAB UK is committed to building a sustainable future for digital advertising. The organization created the Gold Standard 1.0 in 2017 as a key initiative of this vision. Their latest update, 1.1, was released earlier this year and adds new complex standards for technology companies to meet — including new criteria that must support ads.txt and the Coalition for Better Ads principles.
“Congratulations to TripleLift on their Gold Standard 1.1 certification — demonstrating its continued commitment to upholding best practice principles,” said Keren Tal, Digital Ad Standards Manager, IAB UK. By evolving its practice to ensure brand safety and fighting ad fraud, TripleLift is helping to build a sustainable future for digital advertising as a whole.”
To gain recertification, the IAB UK verified that at least 90 percent of the traffic TripleLift delivers includes a valid ads.txt file, while a minimum of 99 percent of the domains we work with conform to the Coalition for Better Ads standards.
JICWEBS, the Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards, is an independent organisation that oversees the development of Good Practice and Standards for digital ad trading in the United Kingdom. Our reaccreditation means that we are now fully certified under the JICWEBS Digital Trading Standards Group (DTSG) for brand safety. Previously, the only requirement for JICWEBS inclusion was registration along with an audit that needed to be completed in six months.
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]]>The post Why SPO Will Be the Best Development in Programmatic Native Advertising appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The current programmatic marketplace is much like the olive industry.
That’s according to TripleLift’s SVP, Global Marketplace Development Michael Lehman. During his presentation at Programmatic I/O New York 2019, he explored how one olive from a tree in South Africa can have many permutations: It can be converted into bottled olive oil, sold in a jar with other olives, or served as an appetizer at a high-end restaurant — each carrying its own monetary value based on the context in which it’s sold.
“This concept, that a single asset based on its chain of custody can turn into a variety of different assets at a variety of different values, is really the same concept that is at the core of the mechanics of today’s programmatic marketplace,” said Lehman.
Advertisers have an idea of how a supply path is “supposed” to work, but the reality is, the mechanics don’t neatly follow that model. Due to reselling, a single impression goes through an average of 15 auctions, which creates a condition where buyers bid against themselves. Resellers also come with additional fees, but often there’s not a clear understanding of the value they provide.
The key to simplifying this? Supply Path Optimization (SPO). Lehman reveals how SPO will be essential for creating meaningful changes to how supply is managed, considered, and decisioned — and why impulsively cutting won’t be the answer.
Watch the full video now.
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]]>The post Decoding SPO: The Guide for Unlocking More Efficiency appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Supply Path Optimization (SPO) is the industry’s latest buzzword — for good reason. Buyers have long struggled with the downsides of header bidding, including duplicative auctions, media waste, and little insight into the value of convoluted supply paths. SPO is meant to be the long-awaited answer to this lack of transparency, but SPO is also a series of approaches that means different things to different buyers. Data shows that reducing hops can help you increase ROI, but before you make major changes to your supply paths, it’s important to know which moves will be the most effective.
We broke through the noise to identify:
It’s time to get better insight into what you’re buying. Our latest whitepaper, Decoding SPO, will help you understand how to approach Supply Path Optimization to get more efficiency and drive value for your campaigns. Download the guide now.
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]]>The post Rethinking and Predicting the Future of TV Advertising appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>This article was originally featured in Adweek.
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Television is arguably the greatest ad vehicle ever invented. There is tremendous excitement in advertising to treat it like digital media, with all its amazing tech, data and precision.
I worry this excitement is causing too many of us to miss a critical point, though. The shift from linear TV to streaming is nothing short of revolutionary, and the advertising that supports this content warrants a revolution of its own.
That revolution won’t happen by simply making TV ads more targeted or addressable. As TV goes over the top, it’s time to rethink the basics of TV advertising: how and when ads get delivered and how much control users have over that experience. Postponing this conversation means that by the time the industry gets targeted TV advertising sorted out, there won’t be enough people left watching commercial television.
Think for a moment about how much time you spend streaming these days versus watching live TV. What about your kids? It’s become standard for multiple generations to watch television with a minimal amount of traditional ad spots.
Nearly every major Netflix or Amazon original series features an abundance of product placements and brand integrations. Consumers don’t object to them because they don’t look and feel like ads, at least not in the way most people think of traditional TV ads. This is a win for brands that get to connect with non-traditional audiences. And yet, Netflix never misses a chance to talk about the fact that we’ll never see ads on the service. That’s because the company understands that our collective tolerance for interruptive TV advertising is waning. But by and large, the advertising industry continues to ignore this reality.
OTT advertising requires an entirely new ad approach. Here are five ways that revolution can play out.
There is an intuition in entertainment that listening to the consumer is the winning business model. Many companies speculate that fewer, better ads that put the consumer first lead to more completed streams, higher pricing and greater revenues. Some have proven it. The best manifestation of this is finding an optimal mix of ads, which may differ by viewer, content and ad experience, taking into account the lifetime value of a viewer over months or years to refine what that optimal mix should be.
We’ve already seen this as more brands ink product placement deals with ad-free streaming services. Netflix brought in an estimated $15 million in product placement alone for Stranger Things Season 3, including a high-profile deal with Coca-Cola. Placement deals are gaining momentum as more consumers cut the cord.
If you’ve watched broadcasts of Premier League soccer and PGA tournaments, you’ve experienced promotions that creatively share the screen and complement the content, often during team huddles or when a manager makes a visit to the mound. Expect more experimentation like this.
In the 1990s, there was an oft-repeated promise at advertising conferences that you’d soon be able to “buy Ross’ shirt” on Friends. The industry has been talking about this prospect for decades, but neither technology nor consumers were ready for that. The current generation of viewers, however, expects their content to be active and participatory, and they have the payment mechanisms built into their phones and TVs to facilitate quick purchases. It’s time to develop creative ways to blend streaming and shopping, which may start at the series conception stage.
There’s an overwhelming amount of amazing content available right now and a myriad number of streaming options. Let’s say you’re not sure you want to commit to paying for CBS Access, for example. Maybe a brand like GM could enable you to watch an episode or a season of the new Star Trek series in exchange for viewing ads or sharing some basic information? Brands serving as gatekeepers to new content may give them a better path to earning attention from their target audiences.
While we don’t know the full potential of OTT advertising, we’re starting to see creative experimentation across the industry, like new ads that display on Hulu and AT&T that appear when a viewer pauses a series. And we’ll continue to see more. One thing we do know is that the answers to TV’s ad future surely won’t be found in the past. Addressable TV is great, but it won’t be enough if we don’t recognize that everything about TV is changing and that our ads need to keep pace.
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]]>The post TripleLift Founders Discuss Their Journey to $138 Million in Revenue and Three-Year Streak on Inc. 5000 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>For the third year in a row, TripleLift was named to Inc. 5000’s Annual List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies. In the 2019 list, TripleLift ranked No. 562 overall, No. 55 in the Advertising and Marketing category, and No. 49 in New York City.TripleLift continues to reshape the digital advertising landscape with consumer-centric advertising, leveraging its dynamic templating and computer vision technologies to flawlessly deliver and scale in-feed native ads, branded content experiences and programmatic OTT brand integrations. Now, we speak with the three co-founders, CEO Eric Berry, Chief Strategy Officer Ari Lewine, and President Shaun Zacharia, to hear what has helped make them successful and what’s next for the future of the company.
Eric: This is an incredible honor. Over the past eight years, we’ve built a company with truly incredible people whose dedication, passion, and drive have enabled us to really reach this level of growth across the world. Having been on the list for three consecutive years, while being profitable, and now while having revenue significantly in excess of $100 million is, more than anything, a statement that the entire company is operating at such a high level, that we have such a tremendous team that is so capable and can bring on such great people. I’m honored to be a part of this great organization.
Ari: I think its tremendous validation that you can both focus on user-friendly advertising and build a successful business simultaneously.
Shaun: Getting recognized as one of America’s fastest-growing companies is a meaningful milestone. Doing so three times in a row with an accelerating growth rate speaks to the promise of our vision to invent, power, and scale ads that earn consumer attention.
Eric: TripleLift was built on the idea that great user experience should be the foundation of any advertising experience. But we simply didn’t know the answer about how to make this simple, scalable and effective. We had to iterate nearly a dozen times to get the right mix, the right technology, and the right commercialization. And even then, we have to keep thinking about how to disrupt our business — which in turn has created innumerable more opportunities.
Ari: Many have said that in order for advertising to be effective, it needs to stand out and do something to grab someone’s attention. I think the major challenge for us has been balancing earning consumer attention while driving significantly better performance for marketers.
Shaun: Building a two-sided marketplace from scratch is generally regarded as one of the more difficult things a company can do, and doing so with an offering that’s unprecedented in market only makes the endeavor that much harder to pull off. While we’ve been quick to embrace and drive change, our perseverance and overall commitment to doing the hard work associated with delivering against our mission has been a driving force behind our success. What’s particularly exciting is that once a two-sided marketplace gets going, it benefits from powerful network effects that result in significantly greater value to customers, allowing us to further our mission.
Eric: TripleLift is built around an idea and not a product. We’re built around the notion that advertising should be part of a great user experience instead of forcing a specific type of user experience. We’ve been really thoughtful about how to expand that idea into all the different channels where people consume content, and all the different ways people consume content.
Ari: In general, the bar is being raised in ad tech. There’s more emphasis on solving fraud, running in brand safe environments, and industry initiatives like ads.txt. It tends to be that as the industry continues to improve and raise the bar of quality, companies who have quality as a core focus tend to thrive.
Shaun: As we approach the later stages of the innovation cycle that brought us highly disruptive technologies such as real-time bidding and programmatic advertising, the fastest-growing companies will be those who pioneer net new technologies and markets beyond the application of programmatic advertising to increasingly mature markets such as display and video.
Eric: TripleLift’s mission is inventing, powering, and scaling ads that earn consumer attention wherever people consume content. We invest aggressively in R&D to think about the best monetization opportunities to compliment user experiences and to effectively commercialize them across the various markets in which we operate.
Ari: We’re focused on continuing to drive user-friendly ad experiences across new areas like TV and branded content.
Shaun: In addition to capitalizing on our pole position within one of the single-fastest growing market segments within digital advertising, TripleLift is pioneering new and exciting OTT ad experiences beyond the traditional ad break, such as product placement and other brand integrations that align with consumer preferences and can be activated programmatically. As the streaming wars kick off between Netflix, Amazon, Disney, AT&T, Comcast, Apple, and others, our solutions have the potential to transform the $100B television advertising industry.
Eric: It’s always important to understand how the product that you’re building fits into a large idea — and how you plan to effectively build a company around that idea.
Ari: Ask customers, or prospective customers, for feedback every day.
Shaun: Never stop investing in the development of your mission, strategy, and values.
Eric: We’ve only raised $16.5 million. If anything, I would try to have raised less.
Ari: I prefer to think about, and live in, the current moment. I try to avoid analyzing the past.
Shaun: Memorialize the ride.
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]]>The post Telling Better Brand Stories Through Video: Industry Thought Leaders Share How appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>If there’s one area in advertising where innovation continues to thrive, it’s video. In the age of distraction, savvy brands have learned that leveraging sight, sound, and motion to earn consumer attention can also lead to a more powerful connection with their audience. But the landscape is competitive, in both creativity and strategic execution.
TripleLift’s Video, Vines & Storytime event brought together industry thought leaders to share how brands can build emotional connections with audiences through video. Our VP of Publisher Development Michael Lehman led the discussion for our panelists, Intel’s Alyson Griffin, Starcom’s Jeff Pray, and Essence’s Oscar Garza.
In this discussion, the panelists share how listening to and deeply understanding your target audience can help you elevate and change your video strategy, how data can empower you to push the envelope, how a global vision that also feels localized to every region can be executed, and why there’s so much potential to make airplane commercials better for us all. Watch the full conversation below.
Interested in how branded video can increase consumer attention for your brand? Contact us at brandedvideo@triplelift.com.
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]]>The post TripleLift Names TV Advertising Executive Michael Shields General Manager of Advanced Advertising appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift has named Michael Shields General Manager of Advanced Advertising. The television advertising executive will spearhead TripleLift’s ad product innovations for over-the-top television (OTT).
Audiences continue to gravitate to internet-connected television environments with fewer traditional ads and shorter commercial breaks. As advertisers try to make sense of this new advertising ecosystem, TV networks are pivoting to find new ways to sustain audience attention and show profitability, while also reducing their overall ad load.
Over the past year, TripleLift has invested in developing innovations for advanced advertising for OTT, which will offer new formats, targeting capabilities and integrated brand experiences that deliver value for consumers and advertising clients.
“As consumer attention evolves, so must advertising,” said TripleLift Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Ari Lewine. “Michael’s experience in working with creative agencies and show creators will be instrumental in developing innovative ad solutions for TV that not only resolve industry pain points, but also enhance the content viewing experience and allow brands to build meaningful connections with audiences.”
TripleLift’s OTT solutions evolve the traditional 30-second spot into brand messages that are woven within the content and will be available to a broad base of advertisers at scale. Innovations will take shape in a variety of formats, such as in-action six, overlay, brand insertion, and production insertion. TripleLift’s approach to advanced advertising hopes to balance the varied interests of content creators, programmers and brands.
At TripleLift, Shields will focus on creating a scalable, liquid marketplace for brand integrations. This includes developing the technology that allows for seamless integration of brands into television content, helping networks and streaming services build scalable businesses from brand integrations, and working with show creators to find opportunities for brand and product insertions that enhance storytelling.
In his previous role as Senior Vice President, Sales Strategy and Business Development for Fox Networks Group, Shields was part of a team that successfully experimented with audience-first ad products, and was instrumentally involved in developing in-action, integrated ads, new formats and pricing models, and lowering ad loads across the Fox portfolio. His previous roles include two tenures at Viacom, where he led the development of digital ad products and, earlier, developed the company’s digital advertising strategy.
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]]>The post TripleLift Moves to First Price Auctions appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift’s Exchange officially transitioned to first price auctions. This switch, which continues to use proprietary placement-level data to maximize win rate and minimize clearing price, demonstrates our commitment to providing more market-driven and transparent auction dynamics.
Second price auctions were created to protect buyers in an ecosystem that lacked a robust buying pool, but due to a variety of soft floor strategies they offer limited ways for buyers to verify that they are paying a true second price.
In the current programmatic landscape, most impressions have multiple bids and first price auctions offer more transparency and pricing that better reflects the market value of an impression. In a first price auction, bidders are able to more accurately model their spend, since there is no difference between the bid and win price.
Google primed the market for this switch when it announced Google Ad Manager’s move to first price in March 2019 — paving the way for first price auctions to become the new industry standard.
Both buyers and publishers will gain increased visibility into the true market value of an impression and market rates will begin to normalize as historical data is used to set the most appropriate bid price.
For buyers, TripleLift’s algorithm will ensure that buyers pay the most optimal price for inventory that is best suited to deliver against the established campaign goals. Increased transparency will position publishers to more effectively gauge the true value of their inventory and manage pricing strategies.
If you’d like to learn how first price auctions fit within your advertising strategy, contact your TripleLift representative.
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]]>The post State of Programmatic Video: Tactical Advice for Advertisers from TripleLift & MillerCoors appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>On July 9, 2019, TripleLift & MillerCoors co-hosted a State of Programmatic Video Breakfast event in Chicago to explore the ever-evolving video advertising landscape. With so many video formats and programmatic approaches, it’s important for advertisers to understand the nuances of each and how they can be used to deliver against your brand objectives — and then develop a strategy that reflects that.
TripleLift’s Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Ari Lewine kicked off the event by sharing his insights for creating an effective programmatic video strategy. Then, Megan Sullivan, Manager of Marketing Data Strategy, MillerCoors joined to discuss the tactics that brands can use to deliver results.
In this video, you’ll get an insider understanding of how the convergence of OTT, CTA and Pre-Roll has changed the way brands think about the new video ecosystem, the biggest capabilities and challenges of OTT inventory today, the most important tactics ad tech partners should employ, and why it’s critical that creative be designed specifically for the media channel where it will run.
Watch the full discussion below and hear what’s on the rise for video in 2020.
What does today’s programmatic operating model look like for a client, and where do we see it going?
It is important for clients to consider a decentralized approach by refining their list of direct relationships with DSP partners. A refined list of partners will help streamline efficient communication from brand strategy, media planning and activation.
How has the agency model evolved as programmatic continues to become the way that all media is transacted?
As all media channels converge from traditional platforms to programmatic, the most important task will always be coordination. Agency teams will continue to be at the center of this process and will be vital in leading this coordination between clients and ad tech partners.
How has the way brands think about the new video ecosystem changed now that OTT, CTV and Pre-roll converge?
A key first step is for an organization to level set internally and ensure all teams are using the same vocabulary when defining video. From there, it is important to create best practices that align with key video success metrics (CPCV, VCR, Viewability etc.). Lastly, develop an approach where each video channel is aligned with specific brands, based on how well it can achieve specific KPIs that include both online and offline metrics.
What are the capabilities and challenges of OTT inventory as it stands today?
The main challenge advertisers face today is the amount of OTT players in the space. That’s a good thing because it means it’s working and worth your ad spend. However, the drawback is the amount of time that goes into testing and learning what drives best performance, which inventory has the most scale, and available targeting capabilities. Once those capabilities are more defined, it will be a clearer process from start to finish. Our industry will get there, because the consumers are already there. It will just take time, so patience is key.
How is creative development being refined today now that there are new video inventory sources available outside of traditional TV ads?
It is important for the creative to be designed specifically for the media channel it will be running on. For instance, a 30-second or 15-second TV or pre-roll spot will not have the same impact in environments that lend themselves to streaming long-form content in the OTT space. At the same time, in environments where earning consumer attention needs to be quick and precise, a 6-second video ad could perform best on a mobile device.
What is one of the most important tactics for Ad Tech partners to consider when working with brands in the programmatic video world?
Always remember that brands take time to develop a thoughtful, cohesive strategy and tech stack where all elements are supposed to work together through a specific process. Ad Tech partners that can seamlessly integrate with a client’s existing DSP or DMP partners will have a key advantage in the space. This approach only allows for more opportunities to test, learn and develop best practices.
What is on the rise for 2020 that marketers should be focused on?
It will be imperative for advertisers to learn how to identify opportunities that can help them scale campaigns effectively beyond the walled gardens. To do this, it will be incredibly important to diversify your media spend while also ensuring high-quality inventory sources are being included in your media strategy to drive efficiencies.
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]]>The post Eye Tracking Study Reveals the Video Ads That Actually Get Viewed & Why appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Video ads face a higher engagement hurdle. Where other ads may only need a quick scan to be effective, video ads rely on true engagement with the video’s story in order to drive brand recall or action. The first step is actually getting a video ad to be seen on the page. Even if a video ad unit meets a viewability KPI, if the unit doesn’t drive meaningful engagement, it can result in inefficient media spend.
So how can advertisers optimize their video ads to not only be seen, but to be watched in full and convert to a sale?
TripleLift recently leveraged an eye tracking study through Sticky to test what effectively drives a user’s eye to a video ad and what keeps them there longer. In this study, respondents were given a series of articles to read, but were not instructed to pay attention to any special elements. The articles consisted of a mixture of traditional outstream video ads and TripleLift’s own Branded Video ad format. Through the use of eye tracking technology, we tracked where respondents eyes naturally navigated across the page and for how long. Below are the findings.
In the eye tracking study results below, the heatmap represents a calculation of the number of eyes on a specific location on the page combined with the time those eyes spent on that location.
Traditional outstream video ads are designed to interrupt a user’s attention, by either displacing the content on the page or delaying the start of content the user wants to engage with.
Despite the fact that these ads scream for attention, users have come to know and anticipate this design as disruptive — and have subsequently become accustomed to ignoring these types of ads entirely. In the heatmap below, the video ad and area surrounding the video lack colored shading.
That’s because in our study, less than half of respondents stopped to look at those areas of the page.
TripleLift Branded Video Ads, on the other hand, performed extremely well in the study. Our video ad format is unique because its design follows a native philosophy, employing dynamic templating to display ads that match the design of publisher — seamlessly fitting into the feed of content.
In this heatmap, the video and its surrounding area have high concentrations of color, with at least 75% of respondents actually seeing video ad on the page.
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]]>The post Video Advertising & Our Brains: Watch Ari Lewine at IAB UK Engage 2019 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Are video advertisers ignoring their very own wisdom? TripleLift’s Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Ari Lewine believes so.
At IAB UK Engage 2019, Ari’s presentation ‘Video Advertising & Our Brains’ highlights that while both banner blindness and ad blockers are on the rise, the industry’s response has generally been to make ads bigger and more intrusive. Instead of offering a naturally engaging experience, the industry has convinced itself that relying on forced views is working.
But really, it alienates people — and the industry knows it. There’s ample evidence to show that video engagement and brand recall are suffering due to ineffective video ads. Ari also reminds us that those in the advertising industry are also consumers. If advertisers find an ad annoying, so will their audiences. So, why do ineffective ads persist? Ari believes it’s due to cognitive dissonance — the act of knowing one thing and feeling or doing another. In this video, Ari unpacks why humans act against their own knowledge, and introduces ways to fix that with a new business model that centers people. He also unveils a new non-interruptive video format that matches the look and feel of a publisher — one that receives view rates as high as 75% and 38% higher brand recall than traditional outstream video.
Watch the full video below!
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]]>The post TripleLift’s CEO Eric Berry Named Winner of EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2019 New York Awards in Marketing and Advertising appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Ernst & Young LLP (EY) named TripleLift CEO and Co-Founder Eric Berry an Entrepreneur Of the Year® 2019 New York Award winner in the category of Marketing and Advertising on Thursday, June 20, 2019, during a special gala event at the Marriott Marquis.
Eric was first announced as a finalist in May after being selected by a panel of independent judges. The Entrepreneur Of The Year Program recognizes entrepreneurs who demonstrate excellence and extraordinary success in areas such as financial performance, innovation and commitment to their businesses and communities, and is widely considered one of the most prestigious business awards programs in the U.S.
“Entrepreneur Of The Year has a respected legacy of recognizing trailblazing leaders who are disrupting industries and changing the world at large. It is a great honor to be recognized by this prestigious award.” — Eric Berry
We congratulate Eric on this exciting win!
As a regional award winner, Eric is eligible for consideration for the Entrepreneur Of The Year National competition. Award winners in several national categories, as well as the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Overall Award winner, will be announced at the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Awards gala in Palm Springs, California, on November 16, 2019. See the full list of 2019 New York regional winners.
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]]>The post TripleLift & KPEX Partner, Bringing Native Programmatic to New Zealand’s Premium Media Consortium appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift is officially partnering with KPEX (Kiwi Premium Ad Exchange), the publisher consortium comprising all of New Zealand’s largest media brands. With this collaboration, TripleLift will enable custom-designed in-feed native ads across KPEX‘s premium publishers.
TripleLift set the standard for respectful advertising, leveraging computer vision technology to programmatically deliver in-feed, user-friendly ads at scale. Now, TripleLift stands as the largest native advertising exchange and serves 176 billion monthly impressions across the world’s leading publishers. February marked the opening of the company’s Sydney office, bringing in-feed native programmatic advertising to the Asia Pacific region for the first time. Since then, our regional team has been partnering with the region’s leading publishers, agencies, and DSPs to bring progressive creative ad formats to the local programmatic ecosystem.
KPEX launched in 2015 as an alliance between New Zealand’s four largest media brands: Stuff, NZME, Mediaworks, and TVNZ. Today, it is the official programmatic sales channel for 14 local publishers, offering RTB access to New Zealand’s most premium and brand-safe online ad inventory from 74 of the country’s most popular sites, including Stuff, NZ Herald, Newshub and 1News Now. KPEX’s scale enables it to reach 20% of the population every single day, and 80% of New Zealanders every month.
By combining forces with KPEX, TripleLift is drastically increasing its local reach and scale in New Zealand, allowing brands more effective opportunities to engage their audiences within fully brand-safe advertising environments alongside editorial-style content.
Simon Birkenhead, KPEX CEO, said, “Native ads are a high growth channel for KPEX due to the impact they generate for advertisers. We’re excited to partner with TripleLift to enable its global advertisers to reach audiences in New Zealand.”
Kevin Delie, TripleLift’s Australia & New Zealand Country Manager, said, “KPEX brings a sophisticated programmatic offering with a rare and impressive combination of brand safety, prestige content, and scale. We’re thrilled to be partnering with them to bring best-in-class ad experiences to the New Zealand market.”
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]]>The post How Advertisers Can Inspire More Spending on Dad appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Mother’s Day spending has long dominated the parental holiday season, but Father’s Day’s is quickly catching up. Father’s Day spending has increased by 70% in the last decade. In 2019, consumers are projected to spend the most they ever have for dad — totaling a projected $16 billion. Check out our infographic for insights on how much consumers are projected to spend on gifts, who’s spending the most, and how they plan to spend it.
As brands and agencies approach Father’s Day, here are important tips to keep in mind for ad campaigns that successfully drive sales.
What do you get for the man who has everything? This is often the conundrum for consumers who are too overwhelmed with the question of what to get dad that they end up making impulse decisions that are convenient — whether they’re happy with them or not. That’s why 28% of consumers say they often look to retailers for recommendations. The storytelling in your ads should be inspirational and suggest different gift options for various dad personalities. Try visual formats like carousel and scroll that can tell multiple related stories in one visually captivating native experience.
Consumers have plenty of choices for where they’ll spend their money, and they’re growing tired of the same old go-to gifts. That’s why 45% are specifically searching for a unique gift that stands out, 35% say they want to give something that creates a special memory, and 23% are planning on giving dad an experience gift this year. That means that no matter what you’re advertising, the storytelling for your campaign has to stand out and create an emotional, memorable experience. Try formats like image, cinemagraph, and branded video.
Late shoppers will be in full force during the holiday weekend. Data shows that during the week leading up to Father’s Day, department stores see high increases in foot traffic, while foot traffic to electronics stores the day before Fathers’ Day exceeded the average by 42%. More than half of consumers will be using their mobile devices to search for gift options. Make sure your ad campaigns nearer to the holiday weekend make it seamless for consumers to go from online browsing to brick-and-mortar pick-ups.
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]]>The post Want to Drive Incrementality with Native? How a Leading E-Commerce Brand Did It appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Incrementality has become the new industry buzzword when it comes to campaign measurement. Because incrementality focuses on the specific additive results that would not have been generated without a given campaign, it allows advertisers to measure the return on their investment. Brands and agencies are actively seeking more detailed views on performance, and incrementality can help them pinpoint how creative and strategy directly build additive revenue. But what exactly does a successful model of incrementality look like? Below, we showcase how one brand achieved it successfully leveraging native with Storygize and TripleLift.
A major e-commerce brand wanted to use native advertising to increase revenue, scale and conversion rates, while maintaining a CPA goal of $80.00 or lower. Storygize, a performance DSP, worked with Native SSP partners including TripleLift to position the brand across appropriate publishers.
The brand wanted to reach their target audience of busy families and professionals with special dietary preferences looking for easy and affordable ways to eat healthy. They launched a native advertising campaign that would resonate with their target audience.
In an effort to increase revenue and scale, Storygize used contextual targeting, third-party data, and lookalike models to attract and engage prospects in contextually relevant landscapes. Prospects who engaged with the initial ad were retargeted with relevant messaging to convert them into customers.
A Conversion Lift Study was conducted once the campaign was live for 90 days to evaluate both prospecting and retargeting executions to determine incrementality.
Study results demonstrated how the native campaign drove both reach and engagement at lower costs while increasing overall revenue. The partnership and campaign continue to ensure incrementality and drive down acquisition costs.
Download a copy of this case study. Interested in developing your own native campaign to achieve incrementality? Contact sales@triplelift.com.
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]]>The post TripleLift Co-Founder & CEO Eric Berry Named Finalist for Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2019 New York Awards appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift CEO and Co-founder Eric Berry was named a finalist for EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2019 New York Awards.
EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year® is widely considered one of the most prestigious business awards programs in the U.S., recognizing entrepreneurs and leaders of high-growth companies who are excelling in innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities, while also transforming our world.
Eric’s inclusion in the list of finalists speaks to his success since co-founding TripleLift in 2012. Under his leadership, the company has launched new products across native, branded content, branded video, and OTT to further support our mission to reshape the digital advertising landscape with consumer-centric advertising. Between 2012 and 2017, TripleLift grew at least three times each year, and in 2018, the company saw 2x growth as it neared $100 million in revenue — earning it a position on the Crain’s New York 2018 Fast 50 list. TripleLift continues to grow globally, with company openings across Germany and Australia.
As a finalist, Eric is in great company. In its 33 years, Entrepreneur Of The Year has recognized business leaders who are disrupting industries with new technology and products in more than 145 cities and more than 60 countries throughout the world. The program has honored entrepreneurs Howard Schultz of Starbucks Coffee Company, John Mackey of Whole Foods Market Inc., Pierre Omidyar of eBay, Inc., Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn Corporation, and Mindy Grossman of HSN, Inc. Past winners from New York include KIND Healthy Snacks, aden + anais, Happy Family Brands, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and Frontier Communications.
“Inclusion on this list of finalists is a huge honor for me and TripleLift. We pride ourselves on being trendspotters and providing forward-thinking solutions to embracing those trends. 2019 will continue to be a year of growth and innovation for TripleLift as we continue to empower advertisers and content creators to offer integrated ads that provide consumers with non-disruptive experiences.” — Eric Berry
We congratulate Eric on this wonderful achievement!
Award winners for Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2019 New York Awards will be announced at a special gala event on June 20, 2019, at the Marriott Marquis. See the full list of 2019 New York regional finalists.
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]]>The post TripleLift’s Programmatic in a Post-Cookie World Panel appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>On May 8, 2019, TripleLift hosted its first ‘Programmatic in a Post-Cookie World’ Panel. The panel occurred on the heels of rumors that Google would be making significant changes to consumer privacy within Chrome in the form of blocking or limiting third-party cookies. On May 7, 2019, Chrome substantiated some of those rumors with an announcement about its proposed changes that would enable consumers’ control over cookies and tracking.
The programmatic ecosystem is fundamentally changing in real time, so we gathered a set of industry thought leaders from across the ecosystem to discuss what the impact will be and how publishers and advertisers can prepare themselves. Our panel featured host Ronan Shields of Adweek, and panelists included Michael Balabanov, SVP, Sales – North America, Guardian News & Media; Travis Clinger, VP of Strategic Initiatives, Live Ramp; Joella Duncan, Director of Media Strategy, Equifax; Ari Paparo, Founder & CEO, Beeswax; and Jay Wells, Sr. Director Strategy & Planning, Merkle.
The main message from the panel? This is a time to pivot. Our panelists shared how Firefox’s ETP and Safari’s ITP impacted their ad performance, what the Chrome changes really mean, the targeting tactics that are set to win and lose, and how their businesses are changing their advertising strategies. They also reveal each of their predictions of what the role of the third-party cookie will be in the future.
Watch the full discussion below!
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]]>The post Can Branded Content Go Programmatic? appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>The future of branded content is programmatic.
Yes, you heard that right. But that may also leave you with questions: How can in-depth, customized brand storytelling — that often requires tons of heavy lifting and resources — be delivered programmatically?
TripleLift Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Ari Lewine recently took the stage at PROGRAMMATIC I/O San Francisco to show how we’re changing the face of branded content to make this a reality. No, this doesn’t mean we can create authentic, compelling content using bots in 200 milliseconds. Programmatic is often associated with ads that can be transacted through real-time bidding, but programmatic is a philosophy by which brands can help simplify content creation and extend the reach of that content to target consumers.
“When we talk about branded content going programmatic, we’re talking about applying the basis of programmatic, which is, ‘how do we use technology, data, and automation to make media more effective, simpler to execute, and more scalable?’” — Ari Lewine
TripleLift has a history of being the first to invent, power and scale ads that earn consumer attention. Five years ago, TripleLift was the first technology company to allow advertisers to transact in-feed, native ads programmatically through RTB via their DSP of choice. Now, non-social native programmatic is an industry that has amassed $10.4 billion in ad spend, according to eMarketer.
In that spirit, TripleLift is now leveraging technology and data to bring programmatic to branded content — a segment of advertising that continues to face hurdles in creation, launch, and measurement. Brands, agencies, and publishers looking to access and build more robust branded content campaigns will find these new developments enlightening.
Watch Ari Lewine’s full PROGRAMMATIC I/O San Francisco presentation now.
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]]>The post TripleLift In the News: How Will a Post-Cookie World Affect Programmatic Advertising? appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>It’s a rumor that has taken on a life of its own, and for good reason.
Credible word got out that Google was considering blocking or limiting third-party cookies in Chrome. This could mean monumental change for programmatic, which relies on third-party cookies for targeting and measurement. While the question remains when, how, and to what extent Google will limit third-party cookies, the truth remains that consumers want more privacy and control of how their personal data is collected, used, and shared — and web browsers are responding to this pressure. Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) and Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in Safari have already set third-party cookie restrictions. Now Chrome is in the spotlight to make a move toward consumers’ calls for more privacy. But Chrome also has the largest market share — making the potential effects of such a change much more significant.
So, what would programmatic look like in a post-cookie world?
TripleLift’s leadership recently shared their insights on how the advertising industry will have to prepare and adjust to potential changes in Chrome. TripleLift CEO Eric Berry penned an Adexchanger column: “How Will Google’s Move To Restrict Third-Party Cookies Affect Publishers? and TripleLlift CSO Ari Lewine offered his take in an Adweek column, “5 Ways Advertising Could Change If Chrome Blocks Third-Party Cookies.” Below, see highlights from their pieces.
“Audience targeting of nearly any sort would only be available on these platforms. This ranges from sophisticated behavioral targeting, to retargeting and more mundane tracking like frequency capping. Marketers that have email data may only be able to activate on the big consumer platforms. And only these platforms would be able to perform post-view attribution of any sort. With trust in Facebook at rock bottom, and with trust in Google steadily declining, Amazon may be well-positioned to pick up material share, albeit at the expense of independent ad tech.”
IP addresses “may be increasingly valuable as IPv6 grows in prominence (it’s now at roughly 25%). While there are clear shortcomings with this sort of targeting, it is better than nothing – especially for simple measures like frequency caps.”
“Context grows significantly in prominence and may quickly develop into being the easiest channel for scaled programmatic activation. Publishers will also likely aggressively evaluate and monetize their own data. This includes email and demographic data.”
“Publishers may also potentially ask users for additional data, “based on a key like an email, for access to articles. It is possible a publisher coop could emerge, allowing publishers to share data based on IDs and monetize more effectively across the ecosystem using the data they’ve collected. The programmatic ecosystem may suffer, and there may be a move toward automated guaranteed or similar transaction types.”
“If publishers cannot monetize as they have previously, they could potentially move their content entirely behind paywalls or take a metered approach, leveraging tools such as Google’s Funding Choices or, potentially, Apple News. More publishers moving to a paywall, which historically has not been very viable, could potentially improve the appeal of Apple’s News subscription – which otherwise might be a fairly unattractive proposition – for both consumers and publishers.”
“It is likely in Google’s interest to have an independent ad tech ecosystem, especially if Chrome’s changes might otherwise cause significant, potentially ‘anticompetitive,’ harm…. For example, exchange bidding could pass a hashed ID of the Google cookie to its partners and similarly make the same available on a server-to-server basis for various pixel calls. To the extent that Google is the only platform that makes this available, it would have the added benefit of effectively forcing everyone (except Amazon) into exchange bidding if they want user data, and thus into Google’s single auction. That said, Amazon is well situated to provide a similar, competitive service through its transparent ad marketplace product. These moves, combined with click post-backs and other mechanisms, could circumvent much of the cookie-blocking moves. This may be more wishful thinking than a likely outcome.”
Read the full post, “How Will Google’s Move To Restrict Third-Party Cookies Affect Publishers?” on AdExchanger.
“Context will become king. In the current advertising landscape, the primary consideration is the person receiving the ad, but that focus would shift to what the user is consuming, where they are consuming it and what their mindset is. Key indicators like keywords, time and location and environmental factors will shape the new targeting.”
“Ad experiences will need to capture consumer attention more effectively. As advertisers gather more contextual data around user behavior, they’ll need to imbue that relevance into their creative. Formats will be tasked with doing the heavy lifting in order to compete for engagement. As such, banner ads and intrusive pop-ups will be less effective. Advertisers who focus on high-impact formats like native, video and branded content (which often already outperform other formats) will have a higher potential to resonate with their target consumers.”
“First-party data will become more valuable for targeting users. Many publishers are already installing first-party cookies on their sites to collect this level of user data and others will likely follow suit. We’ll also see a significant increase in paywalls for content while publishers who want to continue an ad-monetization model will offer free content but with registration requirements that request more detailed data points in exchange for access.”
“The challenge is that this data still won’t be available to DSPs, so advertisers will have to work with publishers to combine first-party data insights into their programmatic strategy in a way that’s also privacy compliant. Expect an increased usage of insertion orders and/or programmatic guaranteed offerings, with data and decisions moving from the buy-side to the sell-side.”
“Walled gardens have direct access to their audiences and the means for easily securing consent for first-party data. Because of this, walled gardens will be one of the few areas where brands and agencies can leverage first-party data. That could make advertisers more dependent on these channels for reaching consumers.”
“Advertisers will begin to focus heavily on channels that don’t rely on third-party cookies. This will include email, traditional TV and OTT and in-app advertising as these systems help advertisers leverage persistent device IDs for targeting. There also will be new, more seamless ways for brands to leverage their email and CRM data to publishers for the purpose of targeting.”
Read the full post “5 Ways Advertising Could Change If Chrome Blocks Third-Party Cookies,” on Adweek.
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]]>The post How Advertisers Can Help Mom Get All the Attention She Deserves appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Mother’s Day can be a powerhouse holiday for advertisers. Last year, consumers were projected to spend an estimated average of $180 per person, totaling a whopping $23.1 billion in spend in the U.S. Ready to capitalize on spend this holiday season? Check out our infographic that tracks industry trends of how much consumers spend on gifts, and when and where they shop most for the holiday.
As brands and agencies enter the buying season for Mother’s Day, here are important things to keep in mind for developing campaigns that successfully drive both awareness and purchases.
Targeting for this holiday will come down to two major factors: age group and what they value. For example, if you’re targeting Millennials and Generation Z, keep in mind the platforms and publishers where they spend the most time, but also the fact that 45% of 18 to 34-year olds plan on giving experience gifts like trips, concerts, and memberships. Because every age group will be actively purchasing for Mother’s Day, your campaigns should consider where each group consumes content and what they are most likely to purchase.
Run-of-the-mill ads will do you no favors when it comes to sentimental, personal holidays like Mother’s Day. Brands can stand out by focusing on compelling stories that evoke emotions of love, gratitude, and gratefulness. Ad formats like branded video, cinemagraph, and carousel that integrate motion and interactivity can give you more room for creating compelling stories.
Over 13% of shoppers start as early as a month before the holiday, more than a quarter of shoppers start two weeks ahead of the holiday, and nearly 50% complete their shopping within 24 hours before the big day. Your creative messaging may shift accordingly from “buy early” calls to action to “get those last minute gifts now.” And so will your campaign goals: Early shoppers may purchase successfully online, while late shoppers will need help accessing nearby physical locations to purchase gifts for their loved ones. Early planning will ensure you make the most of the Mother’s Day buying season.
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]]>The post The State of Mobile Advertising & What’s Ahead for 2019 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>For most of us, a mobile device isn’t just something we use, it’s an extension of ourselves.
Mobile devices are now the official source for wake-up calls, weather predicting, navigating to your destination, fulfilling immediate shopping needs, solving burning “Google it” questions, social conversing, and connecting to the outside world. One study observed that Americans check their phones every 12 minutes, while eMarketer estimated that US adults spent an average of 3 hours and 35 minutes per day on mobile devices in 2018, with 86% of their mobile time in apps. Inc. concluded mobile usage may even be higher than 4 hours.
And even when doing other activities, we’re still tapped into mobile devices — often using them as second screens when we’re engaging with other screens. The concept of continuous partial attention was coined by Linda Stone in 1998 to describe consumers’ tendency to stay connected by continuously splitting their attention between multiple content sources. A recent Nielsen study found that 28% of adults “sometimes” do this, while 36% report using second screens “very often,” and 9% “always.” But we turn to mobile most for our video content, too. Over 55% of the US population regularly watches video on mobile, and the average smartphone video viewer is estimated to have spent 44 minutes watching videos on their device in 2018. Table users spent 38 minutes. Now in 2019, mobile is predicted to “surpass TV as the medium attracting the most minutes.”
The increasing time spent on mobile devices gives them the top position for facilitating human connections — and undoubtedly the area most primed for brands to connect with their consumers. After all, with smartphone users 50% more likely to expect immediate purchases, it’s no wonder why mCommerce sales reached 39.6% of total US ecommerce sales in 2018.
If you follow industry talk, every year has been the “year of mobile.” Interestingly, though, 2018 was first year the numbers proved that. The first half of 2018 was the first time mobile advertising reached $31 billion — amounting to 63% of total U.S. digital ad spend in the first half of the year. In that time period, native mobile ad delivery prevailed in ad spend, with 48.4% on phones and 6.3% on tablet, in comparison to 45.3% on desktop.
As digital video advertising reached $7 billion in 1H 2018, it couldn’t have been possible without mobile, which took 60% of that. eMarketer estimates that in 2019, US mobile video ad spending will reach $15.93 billion in 2019, and that $20 billion more will be spent on mobile advertising than will be spent on TV.
As consumers spend more and more time on mobile devices, advertisers and publishers will benefit from more frequent opportunities to engage with consumers anywhere. This, of course, means shifting budgets and placements accordingly, but it also means rethinking the way the industry advertises on mobile. Historically, this has translated into shrinking banners into mobile screens that are hard to read or interact with, or offering pop-ups that are disruptive and disliked by consumers and Google alike. On the other hand, native ads outperform banner ads overall, and they shine on mobile because of their ability to integrate seamlessly within the feed of content. When considering mobile formats, advertisers will need to get more creative to offer immersive, personalized ad experiences that encourage interactivity — in both storytelling and functionality.
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]]>The post TripleLift Enters Australia and New Zealand appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift, the world’s largest native advertising platform, has announced the opening of an office in Sydney, Australia, which will service clients across the Asia Pacific region. The team will be led by Country Manager Kevin Delie, an early TripleLift employee who relocated from New York to Sydney in mid-2018 to oversee the company’s APAC business.
“Kevin has built what was just a solo operation into an integral part of TripleLift’s overall global growth,” said John Stoneman, General Manager of International. “Several of Australia’s largest publishers are now clients and the ad requests delivered in the region number in the billions per month. We look forward to an even more significant expansion with the team we are onboarding there.”
Delie, formerly leading the Publisher Development team based at TripleLift’s NYC headquarters, has helped hundreds of the world’s largest publishers launch and grow native programmatic offerings, including BBC, CBSi, Microsoft and many more, giving TripleLift the largest comScore-verified reach of any native platform in the world.
TripleLift has brought on Penelope (Coleman) Lloyd to lead publisher relationships nationally for Australia and New Zealand. Lloyd brings a wealth of publisher experience, having worked at Disney, Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment Co. Most recently, she oversaw Domain’s transition to a programmatic-first strategy as their first programmatic sales hire.
Luke Sroba joins TripleLift as Partner Manager where he will provide consulting and support for agency trading desks and DSPs across the region. Sroba spent the past five years in various roles at Publicis Media, first at Vivaki leading the Zenith and Razorfish programmatic operations and most recently as Product Director, responsible for programmatic partnerships and product development within the DTI (Data, Technology and Innovation) division of Publicis.
Serving as Sales Director, ANZ, Ethan Robinson has over seven years’ experience with startups, including TripleLift for the past three. He started in New York as TripleLift’s first mid-market seller and grew to lead partnerships with some of the company’s largest global clients, including Johnson & Johnson, Estée Lauder, BMW and Coca-Cola. In the Sydney office, he will work with tech platforms, agencies and brands to enhance their native display and video strategies.
“We’re focused on partnering with Australia’s most premium publishers, currently including REA Group, Domain, Gumtree, Mamamia and Interplay Media, and delivering more than 4 billion monthly ad requests in Australia and 500 million in New Zealand since a soft launch nine months ago,” said Delie.
Amy Jansen-Flynn of REA Group said, “TripleLift’s solution has allowed us to seamlessly integrate native ads across the realestate.com.au experience. This has supported a more diversified programmatic product portfolio, helping us to deliver better overall solutions for our programmatic advertising partners.”
TripleLift also credits its success to investment in buy-side tech partnerships including more than 50 DSPs. The Trade Desk SVP Mitch Waters said, “TripleLift has been an important partner for The Trade Desk on the Unified ID solution. We are delighted that brands and agencies in Australia will now benefit from a new native advertising platform and TripleLift’s shared commitment to increasing cookie coverage across the global independent internet.”
On the agency side, TripleLift is working with local market leadership to bring progressive creative tools to brands’ programmatic strategies. Cadreon Partnerships Director Flaminia Sapori said, “Triplelift has only been in the local market for less than a year and they have been leading the way in programmatic native advertising with the correct balance of strong tech and high-quality inventory. We look forward to our continued partnership with TripleLift and to continue driving great results for our clients.”
To contact the office in Sydney, Australia, please email anz@triplelift.com.
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]]>The post 5 Things TripleLift’s VP of Brand Strategy & Activation Learned at Brand Innovators Dallas appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Picture this: An intimate gathering of 50 leaders in advertising and marketing, sharing their insights and strategies in a non-competitive setting. Sounds like a dream, right? Brand Innovators makes it a reality, hosting Marketing Innovation sessions for leaders to share knowledge that can help them improve and scale their businesses.
Trisha Tomaszewski, TripleLift’s VP of Brand Strategy and Activation, recently attended Brand Innovators Dallas. Here, she gives us her top insights from the powerful event:
“How do you develop a monogamous relationship with your consumer?” That was a question posed by Carlos Fonseca, Senior Vice President of Marketing Science, MetLife. A relationship may sound extreme, but as brands strive to differentiate themselves in the age of new media, they’ll need to feel less like a brand selling a thing, and more like an accessible participant in a two-way conversation. That means listening as much as talking, and responding with only thoughtful feedback. Discussions in the panel began to incorporate Brene Brown’s power of vulnerability — echoing the idea that being open can help brands build long-lasting trust with an audience. As President and Chief Creative Officer of New Honor Society, Heidi Singleton, best articulated, “We have a civic, or human, duty to care for the consumers rather than just sell a product.”
Because marketing exists within a creative realm, CMOs have often been considered mainly creative types — but we’re seeing major shifts in skill sets. As tech functionality becomes an intrinsic part of communication, more marketers are also experts in analytics and technology. Wade Allen, of Brinker International, serves as both the brand’s SVP Chief Digital Officer and CIO, focusing on the role that tech plays on the brand side and agency side. Each time a consumer interacts with a tablet in the brand’s brick-and-mortar locations, it’s an experience Wade was responsible for. It was critical for him to understand how other areas of the customer experience could make marketing more effective. For the next generation of CMOs, it will be critical to be a “utility player” — well-rounded in multiple disciplines like storytelling, analytics, and technology, and integrating them into your everyday work.
Janelle Anderson, VP, Global Marketing for American Airlines, chose her role because she wouldn’t only be in charge of marketing, but also in charge of customer experience. For her, “marketing isn’t just a function. It’s all about customer experience.” Having insight in both departments strengthens the overall brand marketing and gives her more control for making sure they’re always in line.
For brands these days, overall results aren’t enough. As technology offers advancements in attribution, curiosity is driving brands to have deeper relationships with their agencies and partners. They want to know on a more granular level how their large budgets are being spent, and want one central place to monitor it all. This call for transparency isn’t about distrust, but rather about gaining deeper insight the brand can use across its business functions. Agencies should be ready to deliver on these asks.
The typical, “What’s next in the industry?” question came up. But Trisha saw that often we have to reflect on the technology we’re using and see if it’s actually optimized to engage. Roshen Matthew, AVP of Digital Media & Emerging Technology at AT&T, encouraged the room to go deeper with technology partners and leverage them better, rather than focusing on always doing something new. John Stancliffe, Lead Online Marketing Manager – Video & YouTube at AT&T echoed that, saying that often videos can be made more effective by simply customizing not only the end card, but also different points throughout the video to make them actionable. Using technology should be a means to understanding how to anticipate and fulfill a consumer’s need.
Audio technology is increasingly integrated into every technology experience. Janelle Anderson reminds us that with the shift to voice technology also comes the challenge for brands to find their “sonic voice” with respect to this new digital age. And ultimately, the challenge of how to stay human.
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]]>The post As DTC Brands Flock To OTT, They Must Reframe Ad Strategies appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>This post originally appeared on MediaPost on February 6, 2019.
By Ari Lewine
There are now over 400 direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands that have collectively raised $3 billion in capital since 2012, according to an Inc. article. These DTC brands have built and sustained successful businesses largely through social media advertising on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, but that’s now changing.
There’s more competition than ever among both DTC and large brands, and social media platforms, with their ever-changing algorithms that hurt viewability and deplete brands financially with diminishing returns.
Now, the very DTC brands that once found success on social are scrambling to more traditional media to find their audiences — including traditional and connected TV.
However, we’re quickly seeing that when you move a social-media strategy to streaming television, the ad strategy needs a new framework.
What’s made DTC brands successful on social media is the rapid iteration of creative that’s highly tailored to their customers. As consumers interact and share content, the platforms collect first-party data that goes back to the brand, helping it refine and produce more creative quickly.
15- and 30-second TV ad spots, on the other hand, have been traditionally resource-heavy in both cost and creative bandwidth — which ultimately reduces the scale at which brands can release these types of ads.
And while DTC brands seek to use connected TV and OTT to reach their target socially media- savvy Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z, these audiences are the very people cutting cords the most and subscribing to streaming, specifically circumventing traditional media’s rising costs and ad loads.
To see Ari’s three major recommendations for DTC brands to thrive in OTT advertising, check out the full article on Mediapost!
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]]>The post TripleLift Gives Buyers Confidence by Adhering to IAB UK New Initiative ‘Transparency FAQs’ appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>TripleLift, the world’s largest native advertising platform, echoes its advocacy for IAB UK enterprises by becoming one of the very first native advertising companies to be listed under its Transparency FAQs initiative.
Back in August 2018, TripleLift received its IAB UK Gold Standard seal, which had three simple but fundamental aims: to reduce ad fraud, to improve the digital advertising experience, and to increase brand safety.
With this new tool called Transparency FAQs, TripleLift answers 20 common questions brands and agencies usually raise when trying to get the most value out of their advertising campaigns. Covering the areas areas of pricing, placement and data usage, Transparency FAQs address questions such as, “What is your business model and how do you make money?”, “What brand safety measures do you use?”, and “Given GDPR, what legal basis are you providing your services under?”
“Our inclusion in this initiative follows our belief that transparency in the programmatic ecosystem is essential and a key component for our buyers and sellers. We want brands to be able to deliver their messages in fraud-free, transparent environments and participating in this program makes complete sense.” said John Stoneman, TripleLift General Manager, International.
Tim Elkington, Chief Digital Officer, IAB UK, spoke about the importance of establishing industry trust. “IAB UK’s new Transparency FAQs are an important step towards creating more transparency within the digital advertising industry. The FAQs give companies the opportunity to provide extra information about their business models and practices so that advertisers can better understand the role they play in the value chain. We’re really delighted that TripleLift has answered the FAQs and demonstrated their commitment to increasing transparency.”
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]]>The post Dish Network Leads Reveal the Keys to Successfully Transitioning Programmatic In-House appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>Trisha: I’m super excited to connect. We get a lot of questions from both advertisers and agencies about why brands bring programmatic in-house and how to successfully execute in-house buying. I’d like to start by hearing your story and background. Did you know you wanted to get into programmatic?
Michelle: No I’m old, it didn’t exist. I enjoy data and learning trends. I’m inclined to look at the numbers behind things and ask why. Essentially, I have a natural curiosity that lead me to a role that is more numbers and trends driven.
Patrick: To interject, did you know you wanted to go into marketing? Did you have a degree in marketing?
Michelle: Definitely. I have a marketing degree and business background.
Trisha: How did you discover programmatic? Was it your first job, did someone approach you?
Michelle: I started in traditional marketing, there was no programmatic when I started. I started in TV, print, then email. Drifted into email compliance, paid search, campaign management and eventually programmatic.
Erin: I don’t even have a marketing degree (which I might get shamed for) but I have a Master’s in Women Studies. I also like data and statistics and wanted to get involved in the digital space. I’ve had every job in digital you can think of and eventually came across programmatic about 7 years ago.
Patrick: Oh wow, early stages of programmatic!
Erin: One of the things I like about programmatic is that if you have the curiosity to teach yourself, the sky’s the limit.
Trisha: For people who are not familiar with what you do at Dish, what is your official role at DISH?
Erin: I am a Programmatic Manager on DISH’s centralized marketing team. Michelle’s role has been bringing programmatic in-house for the past 3 years. This past May we completed the transition for display and I joined to help with the execution and scale our programmatic capabilities to other business units at Dish.
Patrick: Do you feel like the dust has settled or is there still some growing pains of having that responsibility under one roof?
Michelle: Everything has been fairly smooth as we’ve built our own in-house agency for internal clients here. There are still some growing pains but that’s to be expected. We are however achieving our metrics with a lean team, added transparency and cost savings only two quarters into the process.
Trisha: It sounds like as DISH has brought programmatic in-house, you two have had to clarify what your roles and responsibilities are? What advice /feedback would you give other brands that want to bring programmatic in-house.
Michelle: Setting expectations with internal stakeholders about what this team will and will not be scoped to do. If a brand brings programmatic in-house to streamline costs and create transparency, then a trading team may be an excellent solution. If a goal is a behind the scenes view of everything happening, then consider staffing for more client facing (even internal client facing) roles. A person who enjoys being a hands on keyboard trader is not typically the same person who excels at Account Management. They are two different types of people and this is partly why setting expectations is so crucial to the success of an internal programmatic team.
Erin: I would also say, investment in talent is important. DISH has set the bar high for wanting to invest in people who have already been in the programmatic space. There are a lot of different roles from traders, analyst, ad ops and others that an agency supports. It isn’t as simple as hiring a couple of traders and saying we have an in house programmatic team.
Michelle: It’s also important to think about the right culture fit. Is someone going to thrive in a more corporate marketing culture vs. an agency? What does the career satisfaction look like beyond the honeymoon phase? The goal is to find someone who is skilled, not well read about programmatic.
Trisha: Where does programmatic buying fall within DISH’s marketing funnel?
Michelle: Our goal is to have a full funnel approach and bring in as many channels as we can. The goal is to drive more sales with the proper attribution model beyond last touch. When I started at Dish, viewability was incredibly low while partners were getting credit because they cookie-bombed and that wins in a last-touch model. As a brand, we were blindly trusting partners without looking into how they helped drive sales. Now we look at viewability and want to properly measure across the ecosystem, giving appropriate credit to everything from upper funnel prospecting tactics to lower-funnel retargeting.
Trisha: By focusing more on viewability, did your acquisition cost go down?
Michelle: Yes, our acquisition costs improved as we increased viewability.
Erin: The attribution discussion is so important on the brand side. Brands should view attribution as a continuous dialogue. Changes and adjustments are always happening in the digital world and attribution is never fully solved for. Something we see at Dish is a constant need to solve it and then revisit it.
Trisha: Last year Buzzfeed broke a story about the FBI was investigating a fraud scheme in the digital landscape, with so many bad players, how does DISH avoid them?
Michelle: Our relationship with our DSP is incredibly important, we look to align with the top partners that provide complete transparency as well as ensuring we have third party verification in place as a double check and an internal audit team that is agnostic from our media team as a triple check.
Trisha: My last question before the lightning round is you buy Native and buy TripleLift. What are your thoughts on native?
Erin: I’m super excited that we’re able to tap into native programmatically, there is so much opportunity to explore it! There’s a lot that we can be doing with different types of creative (video v., display units) we’ve only scratched the surface. I think for the user it presents a really nice way to engage with a brand outside of a traditional banner. One of the things I look for when dealing with a native partners is how easy are you going to make my job? Triplelift has made it extremely easy to work, even in the complicated ecosystem of native.
Trisha: Great! Lets jump into the lighting round, Favorite podcast?
Michelle: Work related I like Behind the Numbers, there’s a lot of good tidbits.
Erin: I’m going outside of work, I am a huge Two Dope Queens and I’m so sad it’s over!
Trisha: Facebook or Instagram?
Erin: Instagram all day everyday
Michelle:..I have to say Facebook
Trisha: One thing you do everyday
Michelle: I run everyday
Erin: I walk my three pack of greyhounds
Trisha: What should every trader know?
Erin: Don’t be content with current results.
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]]>The post TripleLift Introduces The First Native Awards: Celebrating the Best Ads of 2018 appeared first on TripleLift.
]]>We’re excited to reveal TripleLift’s very first Native Awards — a celebration of the best native advertising campaigns of 2018.
Each year, brands and agencies up the ante in their advertising, taking advantage of new native formats, developing out-of-the box creative, and capitalizing on the power of programmatic to scale their campaigns. This all leads to higher performance and an overall better advertising experience for consumers.
To celebrate that spirit, TripleLift wanted to award the brands and agencies that shined in native programmatic in 2018.
Now, from the best eye candy to killer content, see the winners of the top-performing native ad campaigns!
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