DIGITAL MEDIA DIGEST: SEP ‘19
A monthly look at the world of digital from NORTH’s point of view
A Resurgence of Snapchat?
By Caroline Desmond, Director of Media Strategy
Snapchat appears to be experiencing a resurgence of popularity coupled with a renewed investment in the app experience and advertising options on the social app.
At the end of last quarter, Snap reported 203 million total daily active users, which is up 8% year-over-year and exceeds Snap’s previous goal to achieve 191.7 million daily active users. It is said that part of this growth is due to Snap’s Android app redesign. Earlier this summer, Tech Crunch quoted a Snap representative who said that the Android redesign drove a “10% increase in the retention rate of people who open Snapchat for the first time.”
In fact, Snapchat’s return to growth actually appears to have begun in Q1 2019 after three quarters of stalled growth in 2018.
Additionally, MarketingLand reported this week that the number of Snapchat users who watch longer videos on the platform is growing. (“Snap reports the number of daily Discover viewers has increased 35% year-over-year. The total daily time spent by users watching Shows more than tripled compared to watch-time during the second quarter of 2018.”)
With this, it makes sense that Snap is trying to capitalize on that additional time spent among users watching video to attract more advertising dollars. This month, Snap announced three major updates to its video ad offerings.
First, brands will be able to run video ads up to three minutes long. (Up until now, the maximum length for a “Snap Ad” was ten seconds.) Notably, users may still skip ads even though the longer length is allowed, so it will still be crucial to engage users early on in video content similar to the way brands design video to avoid being skipped in a YouTube pre-roll.
Second, Snap’s six second non-skippable Commercials just became more interactive. Snap announced that going forward users will be able to swipe-up on these ads to launch a web view, long-form video or camera attachment. (Originally, these ad units were introduced as view-only ads without any interactivity.)
Lastly, Snap announced better bidding options for advertisers. Previously, Snap Ads could only be bought on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Advertisers would pay as soon as the ad loaded, and there was little guarantee of how long the ad would be viewed. Now, advertisers will be able to bid on audiences more likely to watch a video ad for at least fifteen seconds. In other words, advertisers will be more likely to pay for actual views. Granted, this is something that has long been available to advertisers on other social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, but for Snap I guess we can say “better late than never.”
Apple Arcade: The Beginnings of a Gaming Revolution
By Izzy Kramer, Media Planner
Izzy Kramer here, North’s resident gaming expert, with another exposé on the world of video gaming. At Apple’s 2019 September event, Apple Arcade became available with the latest iOS update. In June’s Digital Digest I went in depth about what the increased accessibility of video gaming means for brands. Now with Apple Arcade available to consumers, it is gaining major buzz and blazing a trail for mobile gaming that brands need to pay attention to.
First, what is Apple Arcade? For $4.99/month, users have access to premium games thanks to the partnerships Apple has with 20+ game developers. This is a much different experience than just going into the App Store and downloading a game. We’re not talking Candy Crush. The quality and complexity of Apple Arcade games is significantly higher.
Shunal Doke of IGN put it well in saying, “for the last decade, premium smartphone games have fallen by the wayside thanks to the massive explosion of free-to-play games filled with microtransactions and constant advertising. Where the App Store (and, to be fair, smartphones in general) was originally filled with promise for indie developers looking to create unique, specially-suited-to-smartphone gaming experiences, it is now filled with blatant cash grabs looking to make a quick buck.”
The advance of mobile technology in tandem with the increased popularity and ownership of smartphones has created an opportunity for mobile gaming. (Put simply, everyone might not own an Xbox but they certainly have a smartphone in their pocket.) What has been a roadblock is smartphone users’ resistance to games that come with an initial price tag, creating a slew of free-to-play games with in-game purchases. Doke goes on to explain, “even PUBG Mobile, the current smartphone gaming behemoth, makes all its money from its tonnes and tonnes of in-app purchases.”
With that, game developers (like those mentioned above) have been making and distributing premium, mobile-designed games but have received little traction thanks to the price tag and lack of visibility. Even worse, for smaller developers this means the investment put into a game never pays out, making for a risk not worth taking.
This is why Apple Arcade is monumentous. The Verge said it beautifully: “Apple Arcade could be the beginning of a new epoch, one where developers could find a more humane way of making money off their games.” Apple Arcade allows users to access the premium games they are looking for (on-the-go, no doubt), while being able to pay the developers for the game they created.
As alluded to Apple Arcade is a service with no in-game purchases or ads. So if it doesn’t include advertising why, as media planner, am I talking about it? Other companies are expected to get in on the action. Google has already announced their Play Pass at the same $4.99 price as Apple Arcade. It won’t be long until other tech companies follow suit. In fact, we’ve already heard whispers of a cloud-based gaming service from Amazon coming next year. And I doubt Microsoft will want to be left behind as they are already working on expanding Xbox gaming to Android phones.
With the opposition already storming the category, Apple will need to keep the $4.99 price to stay competitive. Will that be enough to keep their developer relationships? As Julie Muncy of Wired puts it: “I’m going to try to keep in mind what games should be worth. Which is to say, games should be worth the cost of the labor it takes to make them….So we, as consumers, need to be mindful of who is and isn’t getting paid when we sign up for Apple Arcade [and the like]. Will this monthly fee allow the developers making games we love to continue to exist? And if this won’t, what will?”
While this is a revolution in gaming, we have seen similar shifts before in video and music streaming. From the development in these services we’ve seen companies emerge seeking brand partnerships for support, Amazon Fire TV, Hulu, and Spotify being prime examples. With this in mind, it is crucial for brands to be aware of this significant evolution in video gaming.
New Technology Solutions for Amazon Advertising: Sidecar Introduces AI Capabilities to Boost Amazon Ads Performance
By Madelyn Engel, Performance Marketing Manager
Amazon has quickly become the largest e-commerce destination on the web as well as the third largest online advertising platform. Amazon has joined the ranks of advertising platforms like Google and Facebook due to its massive audience base, over 200 million shoppers, and its prime position in the marketing funnel. While many platforms advertise to users while they are busy doing other things–scrolling through social newsfeeds, checking their email, or reading their favorite blog–Amazon targets them while they are actively shopping and shows them products they are already interested in, right at the end of their purchase journey when they are primed to buy. For marketers, it’s a no-brainer. As such, the number of advertisers and the number of investment dollars has grown rapidly. The e-commerce giant generated $10.1 billion in ad revenue in 2018, and is projected to grow its U.S. ad business by more than 50% in 2019.
However, the Amazon platform is still in the beginning stages of its offerings, creating a large gap between what advertisers have come to expect from a large advertising platform, and what Amazon is currently offering. Marketers commonly complain about the time-consuming campaign setup, limited reporting, and minimal bidding and optimization tools they have become accustomed to on other advertising platforms.
Amazon’s two biggest reported challenges are inadequate reporting data and optimization tactics. For digital-marketers, granular data and robust reporting tools are paramount to a campaign’s success. They rely on measurement and reporting to inform every decision from research, to execution, to optimization. Currently, Amazon’s dashboard provides limited metrics and limited lookback windows, with no time comparison data for month-over-month or year-over-year trends. Furthermore, the limited optimization options are highly manual and time-consuming to implement.
In answer to these problems, Sidecar has recently launched a new technology solution for Amazon Advertising. While many technology solutions are popping up to help advertisers manage their Amazon campaigns, Sidecar is the first to support all three of Amazon’s ad formats. Sidecar offers advanced AI and natural language processing to provide optimization and reporting features currently lacking in the Amazon Advertising platform.
Sidecar boasts, “Our technology automates manual management, streamlines reporting, and leverages our marketing expertise to unlock new opportunities on Amazon. Sidecar maximizes your advertising spend on the world’s most popular shopping destination.”
Key Features include:
- Campaign Structure Builder: Assign products to similarly performing ad groups and utilize smart bids that automatically surfaces bestsellers and pulls back spending on lower performing products. Campaigns automatically adapt to performance trends and newly added products.
- Search Query Manager: Sidecar evaluates search queries using their natural language processing to identify new terms being used to discover your products. This feature also promotes cohesive cross-channel strategies by using data and insights from other channels such as Google Search.
- Bid Management: Amazon’s bid range is often broad and doesn’t reflect performance. Sidecar dynamically adjusts bids on ad groups and keywords to maximize product performance.
- Advertising Eligibility Management: Sidecar manually excludes products using a set of retailer-defined rules, such as margins or brand policies.
- Reporting and Data Visualization: Reporting in Amazon is limited due to short lookback windows. However, Sidecar’s dashboard provides comprehensive time comparisons for more transparent reporting that shows how products correlate to ad spend and your bottom line.
Ultimately, Sidecar provides more automation and insights that marketers have become accustomed to in platforms like Google and Facebook, and it allows more time to be spent managing strategy. Sidecar also reports accelerated sales performance with more competitive advantages. One beta test account, VOLT Lighting, reported a 22% drop in average cost of sale (ACoS) in the first 30 days of using Sidecar for Amazon.
Due to Amazon’s high fees, marketers have little room for error when it comes to making Amazon a profitable channel. While we wait for Amazon’s advertising offerings to catch up to marketers needs, Sidecar may be the solution needed to run highly effective campaigns.
