AD NETWORKS
PR Newswire | May 09, 2023
Rakuten Advertising has launched Audience Engine—a groundbreaking technology that compensates publishers based on the purchasing power of their most valuable audience segments while offering advertisers innovative personalization features. Debuting at Rakuten Advertising's annual DealMaker event, Audience Engine empowers publishers to utilize first-party data to establish tailored commission rates that leverage audiences with the highest potential value for advertisers. Publishers can then deliver personalized messages and offers to incentivize those audiences.
This collaboration between publishers and advertisers results in custom campaigns that ensure optimum performance and fair incentives for publishers.
"Audience Engine turns the traditional affiliate commission structure on its head by prioritizing audience value over clicks," says Nick Stamos, CEO at Rakuten Advertising. "Typically, advertisers set commission rates based on campaign goals like promoting a new product or pushing for new-to-file customers. Now, publishers can put a price tag on the strength of their audience and set unique commission rates on the segments most likely to be valuable to a specific advertiser."
"We were excited when Rakuten came to us with the Audience Engine opportunity," said Rose Blackmore, Global VP of Partnerships at DealMoon. "DealMoon was already starting to tackle audience segmentation for more precise targeting and the potential to track results via Audience Engine was icing on the cake. By combining our technologies, advertisers now have a clear path to elevate their programs to new heights."
Audience Engine is a welcome and timely addition to advertiser toolkits as the industry shifts away from decades of reliance on third-party cookies. As first-party data takes center stage, brands and publishers are looking for new ways to collaborate on personalized privacy-conscious customer experiences.
In addition, advertisers will be able to enhance affiliate campaign personalization by incorporating their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data in Audience Engine. CRM and publisher first-party data will be used to set distinctive commission structures at the sweet spot of the intersection between the purchasing power of a publisher's audience and a brand's own customer base.
"The innovation of Rakuten's Audience Engine grants advertisers the ability to reach defined segments of [SlickDeals'] savvy community and thereby lift core metrics with more compelling and relevant offers," said Joe Coyle, Director of Partnerships at SlickDeals, an established shopping destination for over 12 million deal enthusiasts.
"Audience Engine brings powerful, entirely new capabilities to the affiliate channel. Publishers can activate and monetize proprietary audience segments, and advertisers gain the ability to personalize affiliate campaigns in a privacy-conscious environment," said Stamos. "Until now, it wasn't possible to personalize in this way through the affiliate channel, and the only workaround was to run ad-hoc campaigns that offered little visibility into performance by audience segment. Now brands can deliver tailored, optimized messaging to customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle."
To learn more about Rakuten Advertising's Audience Engine capability, contact ra-audienceengine@mail.rakuten.com.
About Rakuten Advertising
Rakuten Advertising delivers performance-driven, brand-driven, and people-driven ad solutions that help the world's top brands connect with unique, highly engaged audiences – from first impression to final sale. Backed by industry-leading technology, global media properties, and the largest, high-quality partner network, Rakuten Advertising taps into data and experience to develop the strategies and ad experiences that will drive engagement, sales, loyalty, and beyond.
A leader in the industry since its beginnings, Rakuten Advertising is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc. (4755: TOKYO), one of the world's leading internet service companies. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices throughout EMEA, APAC, LATAM, and North America. Learn more at RakutenAdvertising.com.
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ADVERTISER PLATFORMS
Business Wire | April 18, 2023
Rituals, as routine as running errands and doing chores, are also key audio-consumption moments in people’s lives and create positive environments for advertisers, according to new research conducted by MAGNA’s Media Trials unit and leading multi-platform audio content and entertainment company, Audacy. The study found that advertisers who aligned with listeners’ rituals saw a greater lift in brand excitement (+10%) and brand relevance (+8%).
The study, Aligning with Rituals: The Contextual Foundation of Audio, also noted that consumers experience greater “feelings of connection” with brands that synchronize with their audio rituals, by +12%, compared to +3% for non-aligned ads. MAGNA and Audacy tested both genre-based ads—such as a telecom brand advertising during an entertainment broadcast—and ritual-based ads—such as destination advertising during a “me-time” ritual--to examine the spectrum of contextual-alignment opportunities.
“We’ve studied contextual in video before, but this is our first time to study it in audio, so we wanted to explore how consumers reacted to all types of audio advertising, from contextually aligned to non-aligned, across every daypart and layers of the funnel,” said Kara Manatt, EVP, Managing Director, Intelligence Solutions, MAGNA. “We were especially intrigued to note how daily rituals imply moments of calm and continuity in listeners’ lives and that brands that tap into these touchstones benefit tremendously.”
Contextually aligned ads have the propensity to both excite (+10%) and create relevance (+8%) for brands, especially among those who are in-market. Further, contextual alignment boosts brand metrics that matter most, such as brand favorability (+8%), search intent (+12%), and purchase intent (+9%).
Just what are consumers doing as they stream podcasts and listen to music? A ranking of typical listening rituals featured in a previous Audacy study, Audio Rituals was topped by running general errands (85%) and doing home maintenance (84%). Consumer engagement levels, though, were most heightened during me-time moments (73%), putting my child to bed (70%) and exercising outdoors (68%).
Audacy’s Audio Rituals study also determined that 74% of listeners incorporated audio into their daily rituals and 40% planned their day/activities around audio content.
“Audio advertisers can amplify the effectiveness of their buys through ritual moments,” said Idil Cakim, SVP, Head of Research and Insights, Audacy. “Study participants agreed that the stronger the match between advertisement and content, the better the outcome for KPIs like brand favorability and purchase intent.” Seventy-eight percent of participants agreed that strong content/ad matches mattered in brand favorability and 80% for purchase intent.
Other key findings include:
Mood Boosters: Participants who felt “energized or excited” by their audio content also were 24% more likely to state the test ads “caught my attention” (+24% lift) and were more likely to be open to the ads at the time of listening (+16% lift). These engaged and excited listeners also were more likely to search for the brand (+10%).
Contextual Enhancement: Contextually aligning ads amplifies the information shared in audio ads – this is especially true among in-market audiences, who agree that these contextually-aligned ads “taught them something new” (73%).
Dialed-In Dispatches: Regardless of the type of contextual alignment (ritual or genre-based), each approach has the propensity to drive search intent (+15% and +16%, respectively).
Aligning with Rituals: The Contextual Foundation of Audio ran controlled testing among 1,920 weekly audio listeners who listened to 30-minute content blocks, ranging from podcasts to news, sports and music, interspersed with ads from three brands, covering the retail, telecom and travel industries. The participants answered a range of questions to determine advertising effectiveness and establish their mood and receptivity.
The full study can be found here.
About MAGNA
MAGNA is the leading global media investment and intelligence company. Our trusted insights, proprietary trial offerings, industry-leading negotiation and unparalleled consultative solutions deliver an actionable marketplace advantage for our clients and subscribers.
We are a team of experts driven by results, integrity and inquisitiveness. We operate across five key competencies, supporting clients and cross-functional teams through partnership, education, accountability, connectivity and enablement. For more information, please visit our website: https://magnaglobal.com/ and follow us on LinkedIn.
About Audacy
Audacy, Inc. (NYSE: AUD) is a leading multi-platform audio content and entertainment company with the country’s best collection of local music, news and sports brands, a premium podcast creator, major event producer, and digital innovator. Audacy engages 200 million consumers each month, bringing people together around content that matters to them. Learn more at www.audacyinc.com, Facebook (Audacy Corp), Twitter (@AudacyCorp) and LinkedIn (@Audacy-Inc).
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ADVERTISER PLATFORMS
Business Wire | March 24, 2023
System1, Inc. (NYSE: SST), an omnichannel customer acquisition marketing platform, announced today that it has been named Microsoft Advertising’s 2023 Supply Partner of the Year Americas for the second year in a row.
The highly coveted award is given to the supply partner who has shown excellence in partnership with Microsoft Advertising across the board. System1 has a longstanding relationship with Microsoft spanning over 8 years, and in 2022 worked closely with the Microsoft Bing team to implement telemetry across our network to help pave the way for future feature adoption as Microsoft continues to innovate.
“Winning the supply partner of the year award two years in a row is a validation of our team's commitment to excellence, innovation, and delivering exceptional value to our customers. We couldn't do this without the collaboration of our Microsoft partnership,” said Kerstin Gibson, Senior Vice President Strategic Partnerships, System1.
“Microsoft Advertising is delighted to show our appreciation and acknowledge System1’s deserved win with the Supply Partner of the Year, Americas award. The caliber of nominations this year was the best we have ever seen, and this makes our winners’ achievements all the more significant,” added Katherine Eills, Global Partner and Awards Lead, Microsoft Advertising.
About System1, Inc.
System1 combines best-in-class technology & data science to operate its advanced Responsive Acquisition Marketing Platform (RAMP). System1’s RAMP is omnichannel and omnivertical, and built for a privacy-centric world. RAMP enables the building of powerful brands across multiple consumer verticals, the development & growth of a suite of privacy-focused products, and the delivery of high-intent customers to advertising partners. For more information, visit www.system1.com.
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