AD TECH AND MARTECH
Moloco | October 03, 2022
Moloco, a machine learning company, today announced that advertising and search product executive Bill Michels has been appointed General Manager of Moloco’s Retail Media business unit. Prior to joining Moloco, Bill Michels was the Executive Vice President of Product at The Trade Desk.
Michels brings more than two decades of successful leadership across product management, engineering, data strategy, and business development for some of the definitive companies in advertising and search. He was previously Chief Data Officer at Foursquare after spending 10 years at Factual, most notably as Chief Operating Officer responsible for product, engineering, and data partnerships before its merger with Foursquare. While at Yahoo!, as Senior Director of Product Management, Michels worked in Search, where he launched and led Yahoo! BOSS and several initiatives for international search monetization.
In this newly created role, he will oversee product and business development for Moloco’s continued innovation in the retail media category. Notably, Michels’ search experience will be invaluable to further capitalize on Moloco’s use of first-party intent signals from shopper’s search, browse, and purchase history to show relevant, highly performant ads right at the point of purchase.
“Bill Michels has been at the forefront of adtech as a product and business leader. His track record of bringing breakthrough technologies to scale speaks for itself. Bill’s vision has helped define the products and businesses that make up the sponsored search and demand-side advertising ecosystems today,” said Ikkjin Ahn, CEO and Co-founder, Moloco.
“Bill Michels has been at the forefront of adtech as a product and business leader. His track record of bringing breakthrough technologies to scale speaks for itself. Bill’s vision has helped define the products and businesses that make up the sponsored search and demand-side advertising ecosystems today,” said Ikkjin Ahn, CEO and Co-founder, Moloco. “Our team is looking forward to his leadership and collaboration as we make progress toward our goal of creating a more equitable and profitable digital economy for companies of all sizes.”
Retail media is estimated to reach $100 billion1 over the next five years and is one of the fastest-growing segments of the digital marketing industry. While large online retailers such as Amazon have demonstrated that retail media drives profitability, sales acceleration, merchant revenue, and customer satisfaction, most companies don’t have the resources, time, or expertise to develop an in-house performant sponsored search solution that scales. Moloco’s Retail Media Platform uses advanced machine learning to securely unlock the value of an e-commerce marketplace’s own first-party user data and automate highly relevant sponsored ads throughout the buyer journey. With Moloco, marketplaces enhance, rather than disrupt, the shopping experience and drive demand for their merchants when and where it matters most.
“Building upon the world-class machine learning infrastructure that Moloco has created for its Moloco Cloud DSP product, we are able to provide marketplaces and their merchants with a powerful platform to grow their business, while providing consumers with highly personalized experiences,” said Bill Michels, GM Retail Media Platform, Moloco. “It’s an exciting opportunity to build a product that leverages rich first-party signals to optimize for the multiple constituents in Retail Media - retailers or marketplaces, merchants, and consumers. Moloco’s Retail Media Platform touches on several components throughout my career and I am looking forward to leveraging them to build something special with the amazing team here.”
Michels holds an MBA from Columbia Business School where he was a Beta Gamma Sigma Scholar. He earned his BA from Colby College. Michels lives in Southern California and will work closely with Moloco’s Retail Media business and product teams around the globe.
About Moloco
Moloco’s goal is to make the digital economy more equitable and profitable by delivering advanced machine learning to companies of all sizes. With Moloco’s machine learning platform for growth and performance, every app publisher and online retailer can now unlock the value of their unique, first-party data. Moloco Cloud DSP enables performance marketers to scale user acquisition quickly and achieve greater lifetime value through battle-tested prediction models. Moloco Retail Media Platform enables online retailers and marketplaces to establish their own performance ad business. Moloco was founded in 2013 by a team of former Google machine learning engineers. Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., Moloco has nine offices across the US, UK, Korea, China, Japan, and Singapore. For more information, visit www.moloco.com.
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PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING
IAB Europe | October 03, 2022
IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem, today announced the results of its annual ‘Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising Study’.
Now in its eighth year, this study has become an industry benchmark and helpful insight to show how programmatic advertising attitudes, adoption and strategies are evolving. This year the study tripled in responses with over 1000 industry professionals taking part across 29 markets in Europe. The respondents represent four stakeholder groups – advertisers, agencies, publishers, and ad tech vendors – to ascertain the views and directions from the entire ecosystem. More than half of the respondents across advertisers, agencies and publishers manage annual advertising budgets of €1m or above.
Nick Welch, Head of EMEA Programmatic Sales at IAS and Programmatic Trading Committee Chair at IAB Europe said: The “Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising 2022 Study’ serves as an important annual benchmark towards programmatic strategies in digital advertising. The widening of the research shows its focus across various players in the industry from multiple markets. We’re grateful for all the respondents to the study and helping set the agenda for the coming 12 months. Even amongst the backdrop of tightening budgets and further media scrutiny, it’s encouraging to see that investment in programmatic is likely to increase. Alongside this, we’re witnessing tremendous appetite across growing environments such as CTV and audio. However, marketers must play a crucial role in these areas, ensuring that balance is found between optimising media spend, data transparency and delivering a targeted and enjoyable consumer experience.”
Positive Outlook Driven by Connected TV
All stakeholders (74% of advertisers, 80% of agencies and 68% of publishers) are expecting their programmatic investment to increase over the next 12 months. There seems to be consensus around connected TV as a key growth area; more than 50% of all stakeholder groups cite this as a key to programmatic growth over the next 12 months. Voice, almost non-existent as key to growth in previous years – makes a strong appearance this year with 32% of advertisers and 28% of agencies citing this as a key growth area.
Commenting further on the investment trends, James Collins, SVP, Media Network, Rakuten Advertising said “The annual Attitudes to Programmatic Report from IAB Europe is an important indicator for the industry on the opportunities and challenges for programmatic advertising. It’s positive to see that CTV remains the largest growth area for programmatic, with key learnings in this report hopefully the industry can take a step closer to capitalising on this opportunity.”
Media Cost Efficiencies Are Key to Investment
More than a quarter of advertisers and agencies ranked cost efficiencies as the most important driver for programmatic investment. This is closely followed by granularity of controls and transparency of reporting. Advertisers also cite costs as a barrier to investment; 22% ranked it as the number 1 barrier. Quality of media is also a concern (38% ranked this as the first or second barrier to investment). For agencies, hiring and training staff is a key barrier to programmatic investment.
Advertisers Shift from In-Housing to a More Dynamic Approach
In 2021 50% of advertisers said they had an in-house model. This seems to have dropped significantly to 16% in 2022. There seems to be a more hybrid or dynamic approach with advertisers tapping into a range of methods such as outsourcing to a DSP, independent trading desk etc. This is perhaps being driven by the struggle to source the correct talent, paving the way for consultancies to play a more vital role in the process.
Interaction and Quality Metrics Are Key to Measurement
When asked which metrics are important to evaluate display campaigns that are traded programmatically, the majority of advertisers cited social interactions as the most important, as opposed to sales which was the top metric in 2021 (59% vs 37%). For agencies and publishers, it is in delivering quality metrics (60% and 53% respectively) that is most important.
Shift in the Type of Data Used for Audience Targeting
The study shows a decrease in the use of first-party data alongside an increase in second-party data. Whilst 2021 showed first-party data was the priority for advertisers, agencies, and publishers in 2021, this is now ranked third behind second-party data (the most popular priority averaging 57% with agencies leading at 60%) and third-party at 49%.
The report, written by industry experts from IAB Europe’s membership, and forms part of a comprehensive programme of pan-European educational and guidance outputs published by the IAB Europe Programmatic Trading Committee. The full report with accompanying graphs can be downloaded from IAB Europe’s website HERE.
About IAB Europe
IAB Europe is the European-level association for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem. Through its membership of media, technology and marketing companies and national IABs, its mission is to lead political representation and promote industry collaboration to deliver frameworks, standards and industry programmes that enable business to thrive in the European market.
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PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING
Zype, TripleLift, Vevo | September 30, 2022
Zype, the leading video API and infrastructure platform, and TripleLift, the advertising technology company reinventing ad placements, today announced an integration that allows joint customers to leverage In-Show advertising within playout streams on connected TV (CTV) platforms.
Customers using Zype’s Playout 2.0 to curate and deliver digital linear programming for OTT platforms can now leverage TripleLift's In-Show solutions to provide unique, non-disruptive, integrated ad experiences within the CTV environment. With these new advertising capabilities, Playout 2.0 users can create dynamic monetization opportunities for brands. These innovative ad placements allow content owners to reduce the number of ad breaks without decreasing revenue per stream, while also ensuring a brand-safe environment for advertisers alongside contextually relevant content.
TripleLift’s In-Show solutions dynamically and seamlessly insert brand assets directly into television programs during the post-production process and can take place days, months or even years after show filming is complete. Using machine learning, TripleLift determines where to insert a branded asset within the content, based on context and audience profile resulting in a better experience for advertisers and viewers, with a 12x increase in brand awareness and a 3.6x increase in audience engagement.
Vevo, the world's leading music video network, recently announced that it is using both Zype and TripleLift’s technology to support overlay ads for brand-building and contextual targeting against expertly curated music video programming on connected TVs.
“At Zype, we’re always looking to work with innovative advertising technology partners that can offer our customers greater opportunities for monetization and an improved streaming experience for the end-user,” said Matt Moore, senior vice president of Product at Zype.
“At Zype, we’re always looking to work with innovative advertising technology partners that can offer our customers greater opportunities for monetization and an improved streaming experience for the end-user,” said Matt Moore, senior vice president of Product at Zype. “TripleLift's technology provides just that, with a focus on greater ad engagement and a better viewer experience, which presents an incredible alignment with our vision.”
TripleLift’s In-Show solutions allow Zype customers using Playout 2.0 to:
Leverage a unique post-production solution for product placement. Identify contextual moments and surface areas to superimpose a brand’s message or product into a show’s content with no disruption to the storytelling.
Create a break in the action by showcasing impactful ad creative. Capture audience attention at optimal moments with a bespoke :06s ad format that scales back video content during natural, narrative breaks.
Reinforce brand messaging without interruption. Enhance the traditional lower-third with a non-disruptive integrated ad experience that is contextually relevant for the brand.
“Streaming TV has changed what viewers expect of their television experience. We know that viewers want a television experience that is more integrated and less interruptive and OTT content publishers need better ways to help brands reach their audiences,” said Michael Shields, general manager, connected TV, TripleLift. “Together with Zype, we’re making it possible for content publishers of all sizes to create and fulfill ad inventory in their linear playout channels through innovative, non-disruptive ad placements that meets viewer expectations and drives better outcomes for advertisers.”
For more on this new integration, please visit www.zype.com.
About Zype
Zype provides infrastructure for digital video, with a cloud-based platform to manage and distribute enterprise-grade video across web, mobile, TV, and social media. Offering both developer-friendly tools such as customizable APIs as well as turnkey solutions for automated app publishing and playout, Zype's SaaS enables video creators, publishers, or distributors to quickly build, launch and manage superior video products at scale. With a wide ecosystem of video connectors and technology partners and an award-winning support team, Zype's customers confidently increase reach, engagement and monetization by delivering premium entertainment experiences. Founded in 2014 and acquired by Backlight™ in 2021, Zype is a privately held company with more than 300 customers worldwide. www.zype.com.
About TripleLift
TripleLift is the advertising technology company reinventing ad placement at the intersection of creative, media and data. Our marketplace serves the world’s leading brands, publishers, streaming companies and demand-side platforms, executing over 1 trillion ad transactions every month. Customers choose us because of our addressable offerings from native to online video to connected television, innovations that insert brands into content in real-time, and supportive experts dedicated to maximizing partner performance. Part of the Vista Equity Partners portfolio, TripleLift has appeared on both the Inc. 5000 and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for five consecutive years, has been named to Business Insider’s list of Hottest Ad Tech Companies for three straight years and was awarded Most Innovative TV Advertising Technology by AdExchanger in 2021. Find out how TripleLift is shaping the future of advertising at triplelift.com.
About Vevo
Vevo is the world's leading music video network, connecting an ever-growing global audience to high quality music video content for more than a decade. Founded by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment in 2009, Vevo offers fans worldwide a vast array of premium content to choose from, showcasing official music videos alongside a constantly developing lineup of live performances and innovative original programming. From top superstars to rising new talents, Vevo brings incomparable cross-promotional support to artists across the musical spectrum, at every stage of their careers.
Vevo has consistently evolved over the past decade to lead within today's ever-changing media landscape, embracing partnerships with a number of leading distribution platforms to deliver extraordinary content within ad-supported environments. With more than 25B views across television, desktop and mobile devices each month, Vevo brings music videos to the world – when, where, and how fans want them.
Vevo is available on YouTube, Samsung, Samsung TV Plus, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Echo Show, PlutoTV, Apple TV, Roku, Comcast (Xfinity X1 and Xfinity Flex), VIZIO, Sky (NowTV and SkyQ), Foxxum, XITE, NetRange, Redbox, T-Mobile Play, Virgin Media, Xumo, Telstra, Foxtel, Fetch, Rogers, Shaw, Local Now, Google TV, Android TV, Cox, ViX and Vewd.
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