Brand Safety in the age of data-driven marketing — An interview with John Montgomery, EVP of Global Brand Safety at GroupM

Originally published by Janina SG with OpenOcean

The lure of getting to the right person at the right time, in the right place with the right message, is fraught with complexity, fragmentation, measurement challenges and brand risk. Tom Henriksson, General Partner at OpenOcean talked with John Montgomery, Executive VP of Global Brand Safety at GroupM, about what has led to this and the need for the industry to become even more data-driven to address the demand for measurable results and efficiency requirements.

Tom: John, you have had a very distinguished career in the media-agency business, please tell us how you got into this?

John: Believe it or not, I decided I wanted to be in advertising when I was still in high school (once the realization set in that I wasn’t cut out to be an astronaut or Formula 1 champion) — and since then, advertising is the only career I have had. But if that sounds one-dimensional, it really isn’t. Throughout this journey, I have been lucky to work for some remarkable companies in wonderful places, in a wide variety of responsibilities and with even more amazing people.

Tom: What have been the highlights of your career so far?

John: There are so many potential highlights I can point to — but I think that working in different countries (or even cities) has allowed me to experience new cultures and explore different skills. If anyone asks me for career advice I’ll tell them to go and work in a different country, no matter how much you are enjoying the one you are in. It’s life expanding.

If I have to choose one event, maybe testifying in front of the Senate Commerce committee (in front of John Kerry and John McCain), on behalf of the industry on privacy self-regulation would qualify as a highlight.

Tom: What are the main phases and changes you have seen the agency-business and ad-industry go through in the last three or so decades?

John: There are quite a few:

The trend towards in-housing has come and gone and most recently come back again with more energy. It’s more substantial this time, and I think that most clients intend to take at least a part of their business in house, be it organic social, data or programmatic. Whether it is in-housing or out-housing, l believe that clients will realize it’s more complicated than they thought, and it may be hard to find and keep good people in an in-house agency environment.

The rise of marketing procurement. Marketers are under enormous pressure to deliver measurable results and the media budget is a major item on the balance sheet. This has resulted in more frequent media pitches with massive pressure on media pricing and agency income. This must lead agencies to re-examine the business model — from service based to outcome based. And agencies will have to embrace automation to start to meet the efficiency demands of advertisers.

However, the biggest disrupter by far has been Digital. And it hasn’t all been good, and it is certainly not easy (or inexpensive). The lure of getting to the right person at the right time, in the right place with the right message, is fraught with complexity, fragmentation, measurement challenges and brand risk (and more recently risk to users in the form of disinformation, data security and fraud). But digital is a step change — we will never go back to the relative simplicity of linear media with national and regional TV channels, print, radio and out of home as the only media options. Whilst digital share of revenue is growing, and exciting opportunities emerge via areas like geo-location and advanced TV, most clients are still worried about the basics: measurement, safety and risk in the digital supply channel — and these issues are not easy to solve.

Brand safety and more

Tom: GroupM is today the world’s leading media trading business. How would you describe your role at GroupM?

John: My title is Global Head of Brand Safety and that means trying to identify and address all risks clients face in the digital supply chain. Financialrisks like exposure to Ad Fraud, low Viewability and Ad-Blocking, legal risks like data privacy and protection and IP infringement and reputational risk like contextual brand safety.

Tom: Brand safety has been a hot topic for the last few years. What have been the drivers of this?

John: Complexity and bad actors.

Complexity and fragmentation have caused financial risk for digital advertisers. Measurement has been complicated (witness the debate about the definition of a viewable impression) and the ecosystem has attracted many intermediaries who have extracted value from the digital supply chain, confusing clients about the value that they are getting from their digital investment.

Bad actors emerge wherever there is money to be made and there are plenty of opportunities to make money from invalid traffic (ad fraud), disinformation and IP infringement.

Tom: In a real-time “bidding and ad-placement” world, can we really protect advertisers from ad-fraud? How?

John: Programmatic advertising is unfairly blamed for being “unsafe”. Programmatic is just a way of buying. It is up to the buyers to use the best policy and technology to ensure that we buy quality, brand safe impressions for clients.

In programmatic, a buyer has a great deal of control over about where they buy, what technology they use (to ensure brand safety) and how to measure success. The smart Programmatic buyers optimize to quality, brand safe impressions — the enemy of brand safety in the Programmatic world is the unsustainable drive to lower pricing.

Tom: Do you think the big platforms, Facebook and Google, are doing enough to ensure brand-safe environments for advertisers? Further, are they sufficiently protecting the privacy of their users?

John: The big platforms have increased the sophistication of brand safety tools dramatically in the last two years — social it is a much safer environment today.

But the level of new content uploaded to these platforms every day is stupefying and they are struggling to contain the volume of harmful content. The AI they are employing isn’t good enough yet and there just aren’t enough people to catch all the bad stuff before it gets onto the platform.

They have the smartest problem solvers and engineers in the world and they have huge resources. They need to do more.

What is next?

Tom: The digital advertising industry has been perhaps the biggest adopter of new technologies, like AI & Machine Learning. Do you think AI will long term help take advertising effectiveness and brand safety to a completely new level?

John: AI and Machine learning is already being widely used across ad-tech — in audience definition, buying algorithms and optimization. I believe that agencies will transform into more efficient companies by making wider use of automation for repetitive buying and operations tasks.

Tom: With the explosion of data-sets (soon we might even be tapping into people’s brain signals), data-volumes, and data-crunching tools, how do agencies stay on top of all developments to continue advising and serving your clients? What kind of new skills and solutions are needed at agencies?

John: We need more data scientists and people who can discern patterns from data. We call them mathemagicians. The hiring profile in our agencies has changed dramatically.

Tom: Would you like to share some predictions on what will happen next in your field?

Clients are drawn to agencies that can be more nimble (fast and operationally efficient) but still help them with big strategic and creative ideas. That is requiring agencies to change the way they are organized, (in and out-housing, client teams, collaboration across disciplines) use technology to automate processes and invent new business models likely based on outcomes rather than a service model. Those that are able to respond are most likely to succeed.

Tom: Any hot startups you might already be working with that we should know of?

John: We commonly don’t do much with early stage, but here are some of the categories that interest us:

• Commerce:

^How to sell better on Amazon (Stackline, Flywheel)

^How to enhance DTC (Mikmark, smartcommerce, brandcommerce, shopalyst)

• Loyalty/CRM (Hatch Loyalty, Drop, CrowdTwist)
• Influencer Marketing :

^ Companies that can identify better attribution solutions

• Emerging Media & Channel (GetCargo, Retail Technologies)
• Dynamic Creative Optimization (hard to find solutions that really work!)
• AI that can evaluate and work with large datasets