News You Can Use: December 1st, 2017

For our second industry news roundup, we saw crucial developments in popular eCommerce and social media platforms. Read our insights as to how brand marketers can best use these changes to position themselves for success.

Like Ads on Facebook, Your TV Ads Are Going To Stalk You [Bloomberg]

• FCC is set to approve ‘targeted ads’ for broadcast TV, which means networks can harvest data on consumer watching habits.
• The concern: How will this information be regulated? Should networks inform consumers of how they handle their viewing information?
• This “next Gen TV” changes our view of broadcast TV in the digital age. Broadcast TV is now competing with likes of Connected TV and Cable TV networks.
• Data collected by broadcast TV changes the way marketers view advertising on broadcast TV — making it a much more lucrative investment.

Our Take: Broadcast television’s advertising capabilities are shifting, and soon they’ll be on par with digital devices. This is a clear sign that lines are blurring between Connected and Broadcast TV. In fact, forecasts project programmatic TV to increase to 4 billion in 2019. Sling TV’s programmatic ad revenue increased 263% from first to second quarter. As the industry moves towards automation, we predict that most broadcast TV ad space will be bought programmatically in the next 2–5 years.

Amazon Is Developing a Free, Ad-supported Version of Prime Services [Ad Age]

• Amazon Prime now has a free subscription option with ad-supported video.
• This presents an opportunity for marketers to shift away from expensive TV advertising, into ad-supported Amazon video.
• Amazon has an opportunity to get broadcast quality ad inventory. This service will be a great revenue stream, comparable to broadcast television networks.

Our take: SVOD platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime are ad-free, denying marketers the opportunity to reach younger cord-cutting audiences on Connected TV devices. With this “freemium” version of Amazon Prime, advertisers can now target over 235 million Americans who don’t have Prime subscriptions. It’s another push for Amazon to become a mainstream broadcasting solution for brands looking to branch into TV advertising. Connected TV devices like Fire TV bring new opportunities for marketers to perform precise targeting within the TV ecosystem. You can learn about how this can be done, on our own blog.

Half of Marketers Agree: Predictive Modeling and Data Management Tools Boost ROI [eMarketer]

• In a poll by eMarketer, 50% of respondents find that analytics and predictive modeling boost marketing ROI, while 45% find that data management tools do this.
• In general, tools that directly handle data are helpful for marketers to reduce tedious data-entry and free up time for creative messaging.
• A key challenge for many marketers: Predicting ROI to forecast the benefits of a marketing technology investment. 44% felt the need for a tool to predict ROI.

Our take: This poll is quite telling about the evolving standard in marketing tools moving into the next few years. It also signals a paradigm shift in marketing standards — could ROI-predicting tools be the next strategic ad-budgeting solution for marketers? Could this type of tool eliminate certain market research or analyst jobs? We predict new marketing automation and business intelligence tools will make a huge impact in the next 1–2 years.

More Than Geofilters: Snapchat Can Now Target Users AND Locations [Ad Age]

• Snapchat has more advanced marketing tools for brands to target audiences precisely.
• Along with filters, the platform now offers audience filters. This type of filter can reflect the time of day, user interests, identify different items in your Snap, and more.
• With audience filters, you can now target users based on behavioral attributes. For example, I took a Snapchat of a dog and my filter read “Soothie’s best friend,” with a dog bone. This filter not only showed my username, but it knew that a dog was present in my video.
• Snapchat offers a mix of paid and earned media delivery — very effective CPMs for brand marketers.

Our take: Despite Snapchat’s recent lackluster quarter, don’t underestimate Snap Inc. — it still holds great value for advertisers. With the ability to harvest data and retarget users via Pixel (a recent ad technology Snapchat released), Snapchat offers new behavioral targeting methods. Their tutorials on using their ad platform show that they are looking to expand their advertising capabilities. This is not a platform for marketers to skip out on!