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The State Of Programmatic At IAB Mobile Marketplace

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Today’s IAB Mobile Marketing event featured a deep-dive track on programmatic buying and selling in mobile, sponsored by Google. The first speaker was Marc Theermann, the head of mobile platform sales for Google, who shared a number of interesting insights. From a technical perspective it’s useful to note that HTML5 is emerging as the standard for building mobile ad experiences, having now eclipsed Flash.

Rich media is overwhelmingly commonplace on desktop, but has yet to take off on mobile. Meanwhile, mobile impressions are set to eclipse desktop impressions in the coming year, but the advertising spend on the latter is many times that of the former. This discrepancy is fueled by what basically amounts to inertia (or lack thereof) and client demand. Also, validation metrics and attribution have not matured quickly enough in the eyes of many marketers.

Programmatic is exciting for publishers because they can see who is buying their inventory, and is exciting for buyers because of more precise audience targeting. In recent years, the Google-owned DoubleClick ad exchange has grown enormously. It currently handles more daily transactions than NYSE and NASDAQ combined.

Next up was a discussion with Brian Long, CEO of TapCommerce. TapCommerce is exclusively focused on mobile and buying it programmatically. 95% of their revenue is from RTB activity. A major KPI of ads they place is app re-engagement, i.e. get people who have lapsed from using an app to use it again. Churn is enormous in mobile, as an app popular today can drop off enormously tomorrow and vice versa. That kind of churn not as apparent on the web. As such, the majority of in-app mobile advertisers today are for app downloads. TapCommerce has seen the best performance in full-screen interstitial units.

Programmatic is important because the efficiency that customer gets allows them to differentiate on price. Click-through rate is not as indicative because of accidental clicks. TapCommerce doesn’t usually look at CTR as a measure of success. Focused on conversions as measure of success. Meanwhile, Google focused on reducing click-spam (including accidental clicks).

Digital video programmatic buying on mobile is in a very early stage, but buyers are asking about it more. The trick is to make sure units are skippable because on mobile video ads can be obtrusive. Creative needs to be especially strong and a good user experience. Many apps have experimented with video ads and then dropped it because of user complaints. There haven’t been enough buyers so users of the same app saw the same videos over and over. Apps employing video ads need frequency capping in order to maximize ROI.

In general Q4 2013 was huge for retailers advertising on mobile, reaching people on tablets who were shopping. Game developers still dominate in-app advertising, whereas the mix on mobile web is more heterogenous.

The key suggestion given for publishers interested in programmatic was to try and send as many parameters as possible into the system; it helps catch more bids on the exchange. First party data, if available, is critically important for adding value in this context.

More Meaningful Metrics At IAB Mobile Marketplace

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Mobile measurement is one of the biggest challenges for marketers but some learnings at the IAB  Mobile Marketplace event demonstrate that we won’t be able to use that excuse for much longer.  And despite the lack of cookies, audience profile data, location tags, device IDs and more are giving marketers plenty of targeting capabilities.

YP’s David Petersen dove into some of the metrics his clients are using to prove the effectiveness of the platform. Initially, there are the engagement metrics, namely CTR, then secondary metrics if redirected to a landing page, etc. Far more interesting however, was store conversion rates as mobile allows brick and mortar clients to track ad exposure to store visits, leveraging location tags within apps. This seems to be of growing importance for mobile marketers as we get closer to mapping ad exposure to sales.

A YP client also mentioned the additional layer of store visit behavior they have access to through iBeacons. By placing these bluetooth beacons in stores, retailers can now begin to track movements within 1-100 ft in precision, using the phone as a proxy for shopper traffic. They can now understand time spent, which aisles shoppers were in and can offer proximity based messaging within apps.

Discussing The Value Of Data At The IAB Mobile Marketplace

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During one of the early morning sessions of the IAB Mobile Marketplace, Kelly Jones of Microsoft presented consumer research that they conducted with fellow IPG company (and office neighbors) MediaBrands. To those who’ve seen our 2014 Outlook, these trends will sound familiar:

  • Value Me: Consumers know their data is valuable, and are willing to exchange it for a reward.
  • Enhancing the Real: Technology, and in particular mobile, should enhance real life
  • Intelligently On: The shift from “always on” to more specific brand contact based on need-states
  • My Analytics: The “quantified self” should provide consumers insights that allows them to improve their lives

The key to all of these trends is the value exchange, providing consumers with a benefit in exchange for their data. In fact, one of the questions we often get from visitors to the Lab is, “Aren’t consumers protective of their data?” But this jaded perspective is more prevalent amongst marketers, not consumers: multiple statistics indicated that at least 50% of consumers were willing to share data. If anything, most consumers assume that their data is already being collected, so they may as well get something out of it. Marketers that provide some value—whether time, money, social status, and so on—will find consumers open to working with them.

UN Exhibit Uses BLE to Demonstrate The Danger of Landmines

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A one-day exhibit at the New Museum in New York City and sponsored by the United Nations Mine Action Service sought to educate the public about the dangers and horrors of landmines throughout the world. What made this exhibit unique was its use of a mobile app and BLE beacons (aka “iBeacons”) to power the experience.

Users were encouraged to download an app ahead of time called “Sweeper“. From the start screen you can proceed with the experience or learn more about landmines. If you choose to start, you are told to walk around the exhibit.

IMG_1934   IMG_1949

The exhibit was arranged with large scale photographs of landmine victims, as well as small informational stations about different types of landmines typical across the world.

IMG_1938

 

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Visitors were encouraged to wear headphones. If they didn’t have their own, headphones were provided. Every few feet, when the user entered the range of a particular BLE beacon, the user would hear an explosion, and a voice would explain that you had just stepped on a landmine. The voice would proceed to describe the horrific injuries you have received and the extent to which you have been killed or maimed. Lastly, it went on to describe the overall threat of landmines across the world and how they represent a terrible threat to civilians. On the app, when a landmine is encountered, it shows the type of landmine that you encountered and offered the opportunity to share the event socially to Facebook or Twitter. It also had a prominent button allowing you to donate to the cause of ridding the world of landmines.

IMG_1940     IMG_1942

The beacons were not coordinated with the explanatory signage, so there was no telling which landmine you were about to come upon. The beacons themselves were sourced from Roximity and worked fairly well. A staffer mentioned that they tuned the app to listen for the beacons at medium range. Too short a range would not trigger the “explosions” unless you were extremely close to the beacons. If the range were too large, the beacons could trigger before the guests even got off the elevator. It is a testament to the fact that with current technology, deploying a BLE beacon-based campaign includes a bit of art as well as science.

Your Engagement Is Being Observed: Facial Detection in Marketing

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Facial detection and recognition are burgeoning technologies that are beginning to be applied in the marketing industry in a multitude of ways. The technology is already having a profound effect on how we analyze audiences in the real world as it provides hard data on consumer behavior that we were traditional only privy to online. But that is just the start. Facial detection could reshape everything from security to loyalty programs and payment…and privacy concerns abound.

 Facial Detection vs Recognition

There is a key difference between detection and recognition.

Facial detection is the anonymized analysis of facial features to determine characteristics like age, gender, or ethnicity.  The image of a person in view is compared to a vast database of faces to make a determination. This is being used for audience measurement, particularly enhancing OOH and retail as well as emotional tracking for research.

Facial recognition is the positive identification of a unique individual based on their facial characteristics. It’s the difference between identifying a young adult male vs. Jack Pollock. With recognition, the image of an individual is directly matched against their archived profile.  This is primarily being used for security purposes within residential complexes, prisons, and airports but in the future it could hypothetically power loyalty programs. Imagine walking into a Starbucks in which a camera correctly IDs you and relays your favorite order to the cashier with your payment details already on file. You can simply pickup your coffee and walk out the door.

Detection and recognition are both done through software solutions that traditionally run on webcams and surveillance cameras. Facial detection, however, is the primary technology for marketing use cases.

Audience Measurement

There are a number of companies that are offering audience measurement solutions to determine the demographics of people exposed to OOH advertising, entering retail stores or other venues. These solutions can detect age, gender, size of the audience, distance from a display, dwell times and more. Lighting and range are certainly a factor and depending on the configuration, these solutions can range from 90% accuracy to far less. The result is a granular look at foot traffic, attention and audience makeup that can be used for ROI tracking and more. Simply put, it’s Google Analytics for the real world.

Beyond measurement, this data can be used for creative optimization, displaying media according to the audience in real-time.  Just take a look at Plan UK’s Because I am a Girl campaign which only displayed OOH video to females in order to raise awareness around gender discrimination.

 Emotional Recognition

Because this software can detect facial features and movements, we can also ascertain emotions or mental states. If my mouth curls upwards, for instance, I am generally happy, provided I am not Jack Nicholson in The Shining…which is something to consider. We are not robots. We respond very differently to stimuli so coming up with a standardized emotion score is impossible.

That said, emotional recognition can be a powerful tool for market research and focus groups, providing quantitative analysis of a measure previously untrackable. And there are a lot of vendors out there doing just this.

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Additionally, clever marketers have used emotional tracking to trigger different events and media. Just take Douwe Egberts Yawn Activated Coffee Machine, which uses facial detection to identify tired passersby before dispensing coffee.

 Privacy Concerns

Currently, facial detection has been deployed across the globe. There are often some careful limitations to how the data is collected. For instance, camera images are often not stored and at some times—as was the case with Plan UK—the metrics aren’t even being collected. Even so, consumers are wary about being on camera and being tracked. If marketers do decide to leverage this data for communication, they should use it to the consumer’s benefit, whether it’s offering enhanced service or simply being clever. If they do not, they will pay the price. Just check out some recent backlash from this tech being used to identify the makeup of bars in the US for reference.

 

Interested in learning more? Shoot us an email at [email protected].

New Study of Millennials Shows Coke Zero Is Refreshing, Delicious

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SPONSORED CONTENT

A new study by the Millennials Research Forum (MRF) has proven to a high degree of statistical significance that Coke Zero is refreshing and delicious. Over 65% of those surveyed, who were “digital natives”, indicated that the taste of Coke Zero was “just as great as” Coca-Cola Classic and were “amazed” that the beverage had zero calories. Another 30% also rated Coke Zero as being “refreshing” but were not as amazed to learn it had zero calories because “Zero” is in the name.

In terms of refreshment, 82.4% of Millennial smartphone users who shop with their phones weekly found Coke Zero to be “refreshing” while another 10.2% described it as being “delightful.”

Perhaps the most overwhelming result of the study came when those participating young adults who have made a digital content purchase in the last 12 months and were thirsty before consuming a Coke Zero were subsequently asked if they were still thirsty. A full 81% said they were no longer thirsty while another 18.5% said they were “not as thirsty but still kinda thirsty.”

SXSW 2014: Some Interesting Location-Based Projects

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SXSW has no shortage of official events, but there are many unofficial events worth attending. One such event that the Lab team swung by was the Location based Marketing Association (LBMA) “Retail Loco” event in downtown Austin. It featured a series of presentations and panels covering location-based marketing with special emphasis on the retail environment. During the keynote presentation by Asif Khan I took note of the following location-based  campaigns from recent years that I thought were relatively clever:

Parking Douche

Mobile app in Russia designed to shame people who park where they shouldn’t.

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McDonalds Happy Table

NFC-enabled table triggers animated experience on a mobile device that follows you as you move it across the table. An entertaining game for kids.

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Tesco Shoppable Wall

A digital OOH kiosk installed in Gatwick Airport that lets shoppers scan barcodes with their Tesco app and order groceries to be delivered to them when they return from their travelers.

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eMart Wifi Balloon

A series of branded truck-shaped balloons floated around a city in South Korea. By connecting to these floating wi-fi hotspots, customers were served mobile coupons redeemable through the eMart mobile app.

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Digital Billboard Collecting Donations

Users could donate to an organization supporting small business loans for African entrepreneurs. Donations from mobile devices are represented in real time by pennies forming a portrait on the digital billboard.

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Volvo Trunk Delivery

A service called Roam from Volvo would arrange for your online orders to be delivered to the trunk of your car. Delivery people would have a one-time code to open your trunk and place your items in it.

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Sesame Street Celebrates Pi Day

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Today Sesame Street launched a fun splash page starring The Count to celebrate “Pi Day” (3/14). The count is shown holding up a square sign which is rotating through each digit of pi. The fun twist is that the digits he’s showing are user-generated by kids. They are encouraged to draw digits and have their parents post them to Twitter or Instagram using the tag #SesamePiDay.

See the page here: http://www.sesameworkshop.org/piday/

It’s a really simple, fun activation designed to appeal to nerdy parents with young kids. In general I think hashtag-based campaigns can get too complex and layered in rules, messages and moving parts. Sometimes it’s nice to do something really really simple to bolster brand love and have some fun with an otherwise dry topic.

Full Disclosure: My wife works for Sesame Workshop, which produces Sesame Street

Privacy Chat App Omlet Launches At SXSW

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With both Assange and Snowden speaking at SXSW this year, privacy and surveillance have usurped much else at the Austin conference. It’s a fortuitous set of circumstances for Omlet, an app developed by Stanford PhD students and professors that gives users control over where the content they create is stored, controlled, and monetized. The idea is that the app decentralizes the location of the content, allowing users to manage their data in a granular fashion. It does this by linking with users’ Box and Dropbox accounts, accessing data from these available sources. Omlet does have some ideas about monetization, such as deals with these other storage services, but for now the app remains focused on usability and privacy before all else. It’s a sign of the times that, in the congested world of messaging apps, a new product has carved out an important space for itself by putting privacy first.

 

SXSW 2014: Deriving Value from Image Data

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What’s a picture worth? Premise and Skybox discussed how their approaches to image capture are creating value during the panel “Shelves to Space: What Images Say about Our World.”

Premise catalogues images on a micro-level: it arms its global team of 1100+ members with smartphones and sends them specific photo requests, like storefronts or types of produce. Individually mundane, these images can reveal valuable insights when aggregated, from whether a product is available to health concerns. Deviation from the mean can flag governments or NGOs to potential problems, like food shortages, before it’s too late. And Premise isn’t stopping at one-way communication: ultimately, its goal is to provide value to its contributors by giving them information they can act on at a local level, similar to Waze.

Skybox, on the other hand, is truly focused on the big pictures: it builds and launches satellites to take photographs that “index the Earth,” which are then stored and analyzed in their database. As a result, everything from ship movements to oil supplies to humanitarian crises can be monitored from above. And unlike Google Earth, which tends to update every 36 months, each of the 24 satellites pass over a given area eight times a day, giving users like commodities traders and insurance companies the most current information with which to make decisions.

While their methodologies are vastly different, both Premise and Skybox show how images can be turned into data at scale, which can then drive decisions on a macro level. As cameras proliferate and image recognition technology improves, we can only expect that pictures will play a larger role in companies’ strategies.