Category: Blog

Part 3 of a 3 part series that dives into the opportunities and challenges pertaining to the removal of persistent IDs in digital advertising featuring LoopMe’s Data Advisory Board members.

Privacy is at the forefront of digital advertising, and in recent weeks, the focus has been escalating as companies are planning to make significant changes to the use of persistent identifiers in digital advertising.

In a recent press announcement we shared details of the company’s tech performance with ALL persistent identifiers removed, including Apple’s IDFA, Google’s Ad ID and third-party cookies. We have been preparing for the changes by testing our system’s ability to adapt and perform without these specific attributes and ran scenario testing that surprisingly revealed that our AI-powered predictive models retain 96% of their previous effectiveness, giving us further confidence in LoopMe’s ability to deliver lift across campaigns while the industry undergoes these technical changes.

We also took this opportunity to sit down with LoopMe’s Data Advisory Board, including Greg Coleman (Chairman of LoopMe board and former President of Criteo and Buzzfeed), Wenda Harris Millard (Vice Chairman of MediaLink), John Montgomery (Executive Vice President of Brand Safety at WPP’s GroupM), Rishad Tobaccowala (former Publicis CGO), Eric Eichmann (Spark Networks CEO, former Criteo CEO), Iain Jacob (CEO, Chair, NED), Lynda Clarizio (former President, Nielsen US Media), Mainardo de Nardis (former OMD CEO) and Wanda Young (CMO at Samsung Electronics America) to have a discussion about the future of digital advertising in a privacy-centric world.

Moderated by LoopMe’s CEO and founder Stephen Upstone, we’ve launched this three part series that will answer questions about the impact of digital advertising on marketers, consumers and how we’ll all navigate the post-IDFA world.

Q: What impact will these changes have on measurement and attribution?

Wenda: 

Measurement and attribution is one of the most important areas that need to be addressed in a post-IDFA world.  Without a privacy-centered set of technologies that protect the consumer, we’ll see certain current attribution models weakened, meaning we’ll see a decrease in campaign performance.  Fortunately, there are companies like LoopMe that are way ahead of the game on this, having taken an integrated approach to measurement using AI and multivariate data analysis.

Mainardo: 

Wider, smarter, holistic approach to measurement & enhanced mix modeling. More complex decisioning process. Finally reaching beyond digital.

John M: 

These changes make it more challenging for companies (agencies, marketers and research companies) that use 3rd party data to measure media performance and attribute impressions to the most effective media. If not addressed these changes could make digital effectiveness more difficult to define.

Lynda:

These changes will make measurement and attribution a more complex, challenging task as there will need to be greater reliance on numerous, disparate data streams and the ingestion and integration of these data streams at high volume and at scale. 

Iain:

Measurement and attribution are entering a new era of maturity that can deliver powerful competitive advantage. To win requires powerful data science capability and the ability to deploy sophisticated AI to predict and optimise real business outcomes. To date, much measurement and attribution has in reality confused correlation with causation and led to poor decisions.

Q: What are the impacts to consumer experience?

John M: 

Unless alternative methods of targeting and managing frequency are used, consumer experience could be negatively affected. Users do not want to see irrelevant ads at an unmanaged frequency level. This will only undermine the quality and trust of digital advertising as a medium.

Mainardo: 

Enhanced. Relevant. Safer.

Wenda: 

Initially, before marketers discover some of the new and best tech companies addressing the targeting issue without the use of cookies and other identifiers, the consumer may experience advertising that is less relevant to their needs and interests.  That leads to less effective campaign performance and therefore lower ROI on advertising investment.  In short order, though, I think that as advertisers and their agencies discover the power of LoopMe and others providing quality solutions to the issue, we will see better and better performance and a more trusting, loyal consumer.  And that, of course, translates to better financial performance.

Iain:

Consumers don’t care about advertising, they don’t generally ‘seek out’ relevance, the vast majority of advertising’s impact comes from subconscious processing and emotional appeal. This is why use of data has to be way smarter at matching media and creative deployment to valuable business outcomes such as building brand equity.

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here of a 3 part identity series.

 

Part 2 of a 3 part series that dives into the opportunities and challenges pertaining to the removal of persistent IDs in digital advertising featuring LoopMe’s Data Advisory Board members.

Privacy is at the forefront of digital advertising, and in recent weeks, the focus has been escalating as companies are planning to make significant changes to the use of persistent identifiers in digital advertising.

In a recent press announcement we shared details of the company’s tech performance with ALL persistent identifiers removed, including Apple’s IDFA, Google’s Ad ID and third-party cookies. We have been preparing for the changes by testing our system’s ability to adapt and perform without these specific attributes and ran scenario testing that surprisingly revealed that our AI-powered predictive models retain 96% of their previous effectiveness, giving us further confidence in LoopMe’s ability to deliver lift across campaigns while the industry undergoes these technical changes.

We also took this opportunity to sit down with LoopMe’s Data Advisory Board, including Greg Coleman (Chairman of LoopMe board and former President of Criteo and Buzzfeed), Wenda Harris Millard (Vice Chairman of MediaLink), John Montgomery (Executive Vice President of Brand Safety at WPP’s GroupM), Rishad Tobaccowala (former Publicis CGO), Eric Eichmann (Spark Networks CEO, former Criteo CEO), Iain Jacob (CEO, Chair, NED), Lynda Clarizio (former President, Nielsen US Media), Mainardo de Nardis (former OMD CEO) and Wanda Young (CMO at Samsung Electronics America) to have a discussion about the future of digital advertising in a privacy-centric world.

Moderated by LoopMe’s CEO and founder Stephen Upstone, we’ve launched this three part series that will answer questions about the impact of digital advertising on marketers, consumers and how we’ll all navigate the post-IDFA world.

Q: What are the main priorities for advertisers to align with these identity changes?

John M: 

The priorities don’t change. Marketers must get the right message in front of the ideal consumer the right number of times (and in the appropriate environment). The priority for marketers is to find other ways of identifying users who are most likely to buy, be that through AI-driven predictive modelling, contextual targeting or to focus on better creative quality in digital advertising (great creative advertising remains one of the best segmentation tools available to marketers).

Wenda: 

Marketers and their agencies need to work together to ensure that consumers’ privacy is protected, while at the same time developing new ways to target the consumers who are most likely to buy their goods and services.  We will need to create industry standards for acceptable ways to reach these consumers in a post-IDFA world, and that includes vetting safe new technologies that earn desired results with anonymized data.

Mainardo: 

They need to make sense of their first party data strategies, to have a clear understanding of the importance of content and the knowledge that creative intelligence allows. They need to be ready for constant adaptation to change. Having a holistic market view and focus on business KPIs.

Lynda:

In addition to the comments from my esteemed colleagues, I’d like to add that brands need to demand independent measurement of the business outcomes they seek to achieve from their marketing.  Brands cannot rely on the large digital media platforms to measure themselves without third party verification.

Iain: 

The main priority for advertisers is to take control of their data strategy and be smart in choosing data suppliers and partners that genuinely build the advertisers’ capability.

Q: Why is there such a heightened scrutiny on consumer privacy?

Wenda: 

It’s been building for a long time, but consumers’ awareness of the issues has been heightened recently by the number and scale of data breaches that have “hit home” with them personally, whether the breach happened at their banking institution or a favorite retailer.  Stories about hacking and foreign interference in our politics have been front-page news these last few years, creating genuine fear and concern for all — for consumers, for businesses and for government.

John M: 

This is a complex confluence of events. Consumer’s data has been misused for too long and that has caught the attention of the legislators and the press. There has been active publicity about data breaches and data misuse (e.g. Cambridge Analytica) and 3rd party cookie data has been conflated with more serious data infractions such as these. In addition, the large platforms have identified the heightened awareness around privacy as an opportunity to position themselves as privacy friendly “owners” of data by securing permission from their billions of users.

Mainardo: 

Privacy matters. It’s all about trust. And trust and reputation drive growth.

Lynda:

We have reached a tipping point.  There has always been scrutiny but it has been heightened by multiple data breaches and increasing abuse of consumer trust in connection with how consumer data is used to target advertising and to proliferate disinformation, hate speech and other harmful content.  

Iain:

Privacy sits at the heart of trust. Lack of consumer trust is a brand and company killer. It may take a while to hit the bottom line, but with damaged trust you cannot have a sustainable business, period.

Read Part 1 of a 3 part identity series here

 

Part 1 of a 3 part series that dives into the opportunities and challenges pertaining to the removal of persistent IDs in digital advertising featuring LoopMe’s Data Advisory Board members.

Privacy is at the forefront of digital advertising, and in recent weeks, the focus has been escalating as companies are planning to make significant changes to the use of persistent identifiers in digital advertising.

In a recent press announcement we shared details of the company’s tech performance with ALL persistent identifiers removed, including Apple’s IDFA, Google’s Ad ID and third-party cookies. We have been preparing for the changes by testing our system’s ability to adapt and perform without these specific attributes and ran scenario testing that surprisingly revealed that our AI-powered predictive models retain 96% of their previous effectiveness, giving us further confidence in LoopMe’s ability to deliver lift across campaigns while the industry undergoes these technical changes.

We also took this opportunity to sit down with LoopMe’s Data Advisory Board, including Greg Coleman (Chairman of LoopMe board and former President of Criteo and Buzzfeed), Wenda Harris Millard (Vice Chairman of MediaLink), John Montgomery (Executive Vice President of Brand Safety at WPP’s GroupM), Rishad Tobaccowala (former Publicis CGO), Eric Eichmann (Spark Networks CEO, former Criteo CEO), Iain Jacob (CEO, Chair, NED), Lynda Clarizio (former President, Nielsen US Media), Mainardo de Nardis (former OMD CEO) and Wanda Young (CMO at Samsung Electronics America) to have a discussion about the future of digital advertising in a privacy-centric world.

Moderated by LoopMe’s CEO and founder Stephen Upstone, we’ve launched this three part series that will answer questions about the impact of digital advertising on marketers, consumers and how we’ll all navigate the post-IDFA world.

Q: In light of recent announcements, what is your perspective on how the industry will navigate a post-IDFA world?

Wenda: 

The good news is that this is not a new issue for technology companies, publishers and most marketers. There has been a lot of conversation and press about this, resulting in a variety of new developments in how best to protect consumer privacy while still moving businesses forward by meeting their marketing objectives.  I think we can expect to see innovation in many areas, including measurement.

Mainardo: 

I see confusion and denial, over a longer period of time while we live through a hybrid phase — cookies are not all disappearing tomorrow. Some very different contracting opinions. It will take some time to spot the opportunities. Some will do better than others in an increasingly competitive scenario.

John M: 

This will necessitate a changed perspective on behavioral targeting which has driven digital marketing for the last 15 years.

Lynda:

In the short term, there will be disruption for sure as the industry has become over-reliant on IDFA and cookies for targeting.  In the longer term, the industry will emerge stronger as this will spur innovation in measurement in a manner that better protects consumer privacy.

Iain: 

Recent developments around IDFA and third-party cookies have confirmed to brand owners that they need to take control and responsibility for their data strategies and how consumer data is being used on their behalf. Likewise, reliance on reported data from walled gardens is at best problematic. Advertisers need to increasingly work with smart providers that can build their insight and predictive capability, not just in lower funnel metrics, but in brand building and the development of valuable business outcomes.

Q: Who will ‘win’ and what’s at stake?

Mainardo: 

The winners will be those who better understood what was coming, and when. Those who had a wider spectrum instead of a narrow approach, however deep it may have been. And those who understand the importance of creative intelligence and the need to optimize content, not just audiences, while other signals are already diminishing.

Rishad: 

The ability LoopMe has to automatically learn in-flight, reacting to a changing environment and matching advertising creative to current consumer behavior, is not the norm for advertising today, and would be difficult to recreate. The LoopMe platform works by having 1,500 algorithms (including some of the latest deep learning models, built and updated by the data science team of over 25 people) competing with each other on every campaign, automatically swapping to the best performing algorithm every 10 minutes, based on live data, which is measuring results against that campaign outcome. You have a real time data infrastructure, built and honed over years, and with all the data from prior campaigns, which is making decisions at quickly (<5ms) and at scale (millions per second). Moreover, your tech and methodology means you are in a great place to not only survive the demise of personal identifiers like IDFA and the associated moves to improve personal privacy, but it gives you long-term stability to adapt to the new way of working in this ecosystem. I think you have a long runway of growth ahead of you. 

Wenda: 

Those companies that provide full transparency for both consumers and businesses will be winners. That will require a cooperative effort to help educate everyone — consumers, businesses and government — about the difference between personalized and privacy-safe anonymized data and why it matters.  Ultimately, everyone is a winner.  Marketers will gain heightened levels of consumer engagement and trust, yielding better financial results and longer-lasting relationships with their customers.

John M: 

The most obvious winners are the companies that have the strongest first party relationships with their direct customers and of course the platforms that have been securing agreement from their users to use their data.

Lynda:

The winners will be those that can dynamically leverage and aggregate first party data in combination with anonymized third party datasets and real-time survey and other opt-in data — and, as Wenda says, doing this in a manner that provides full transparency for brands and consumers alike.

Iain:

In this new world those that have the ability to build better understanding and predictive capability around brand development will win. Businesses that can take multiple streams of data signals and use powerful AI techniques to learn, optimise media and develop more effective advertising content as a consequence, will prevail. However, this is easier said than done and in a world of overclaim advertisers need to choose their partners very smartly.

 

2020 was a year like no other. It goes without saying 2020 brought us a multitude of challenges. As we move ahead into a new year, we’ve reflected on our recent Corporate Social Responsibility achievements.

While we have always valued diversity, inclusion and CSR at LoopMe, in 2020 we formalized a company-wide effort to organize, communicate and support various initiatives around diversity, inclusion and the greater good for our communities.

Since television was introduced in the living room some 70 years ago, TV commercials have been widely recognized for their ability to influence consumer actions, increase brand affinity and ultimately drive sales.

Over the last 5 years, TV consumption habits have drastically changed. Consumers now have a myriad of choices when viewing content – from streaming services to on-demand viewing. 

Marketers are faced with the challenge of how best to measure TV advertising success, often relying on reach and frequency as their key metrics to determine ad performance. 

However, given the fragmentation of the TV landscape, the ability to measure reach and frequency has become a bigger challenge, leaving marketers with a lack of understanding of the outcomes generated from TV advertising.

At week’s AdAge Streaming Next event, we discussed how outcomes-based TV advertising is possible and the tools available to marketers to measure consumer intent. 

I was joined by ITN Networks and Matterkind, providing both a publisher and buyer perspective on their strategies for TV planning, buying and measurement. 

Our panel session covered topics such as:

• What does my customer do after they have been exposed to the ad (the KPI)?
• What combination of screens gets my outcome fastest and most efficiently (ROAS)?
• How can I get this data in real time to make decisions and optimizations before all my marketing dollars have been spent?

Describe your side hustle?

I produce rap, hip-hop, and neo-soul music for musicians in mainly Chicago, but also around the country. I go by Acr0bat. Long story short, I make the instrumentaIs for the artists who sing or rap over the instrumental. I use a variety of different equipment to do this from Ableton, various Akai products, and Teenage Engineering’s OP1. What I’ve found throughout doing this, is that there are many talented artists who don’t have the resources to record or make music how they’d like to. So on top of the creative process, I find helping people make music how they envision is really rewarding.

What inspired you to get started?

I started making beats, when I was in middle school. I found it as a really great creative outlet, so I kept with it. I love getting creative with my music to make something outside of the mainstream norm, and this is one of the reasons they keep me going. I think throughout the years I just get inspired when I hear something different or something I’ve never heard before. Some artists who are examples of this inspiration include Knxwledge, Hudson Mohawke, Flying Lotus and Monte Booker.

What are your main goals and objectives?

Maaaaaaaaan this is a hard question, but I think about it a lot. Of course I’d love to work with some more popular artists, but I don’t think that’s an end goal. And if I was being cliché, I’d say I’d want producing to be my main source of income, but I don’t. I really like ad tech just as much. It’s a balance. I guess for now, my goal is just to continue to have fun with it.

Do you have a social media presence?

Instagram: @Acr0bat1

Twitter: @Acr0bat

YouTube: Acr0bat Produce

Spotify, Apple Music: Acr0bat

MODERATOR: Monique Braham-Evans, 212NYC Board Member & Account Executive, LoopMe

PARTICIPANTS:

• Steffon Isaac, Founder,The CLU Studio
• Arnetta Whiteside, Associate Director, Multicultural Research and Knowledge Management, Publicis Media
• Shayna Walker, Director of Diversity & Inclusion and Campus Recruiting, Horizon Media
• Sheryl Goldstein, 212NYC Board Member & EVP, Member Engagement & Development, IAB
• Deborah T. Owens, CEO, Corporate Alley Cat
• Carl Bernadotte, Head of Executive Recruiting, Consumer Marketing & GMS, Facebook, Inc.
• Carolynn Johnson, CEO, DiversityInc
• Nobles Crawford, Former 212NYC Board Member, Candidate State Committee, 71st AD & Senior Media Manager, Hygiene and Home, Reckitt Benckiser
• Sophia Woodhouse – President 212NYC

Over the last two weeks, I put together a group of panelists and spent time researching race relations in the advertising industry. Today’s webinar raised so many voices, each with a different perspective that created a truly enriching conversation. 

“Acceptance & Desensitization”

I opened with the acknowledgement of racism having long been alive and well in the United States.  In fact, it’s pervasiveness and steady hold over how things are done in this country has led to an almost acceptance within the Black community.  Accepting it’s unsafe to drive while Black.  Accepting we can’t enjoy nature by jogging in certain neighborhoods or bird watching in public parks. Accepting that crying out to breathe, the most basic of bodily functions, can in fact go completely ignored.  

Accepting the belief that we not only practice, but pass on to our children, that we have to work twice as hard, and be twice as good.  Accepting that certain clothing choices can come with certain consequences. Accepting that we’re never really safe, not even in our own homes. This acceptance, however, is more like defeat. We’ve become desensitized to the attacks on our children, the brutalization of our women and the killing of our men. 

Hearing it in this circle of trust amongst these thought leaders, that laid bare their feelings on such personal matters as Blacks themselves was a moment of realization for myself.  While we have in fact adopted this culture of suppression, we moving forward cannot afford to be desensitized.  

“I’m tired” 

One panelist detailed how she initially welcomed the many emails and messages of apology, shame and regret as race relations came to a boiling point in recent weeks.  However, as she noticed that the same people reaching out never once spoke to her prior to, or even once acknowledged her presence, she began to feel overwhelmed.  It became tiring to receive these empty messages of compassion that as soon as the headlines change and we’re on to the next news cycle, so would their level of self-expressed empathy.  However, another panelist chimed in that while it is tiring, we have a long road ahead of us before racism gets anywhere close to being dismantled.  Yes the learning and unlearning has to happen at a fast and almost dizzying pace, but we have to persevere and we have to keep pushing forward.

In short, this country has to do better.  Humanity has to be restored with how Black people are viewed, and how Black people are treated.  Yes, Black Lives actually do Matter — and until our lives are no longer in danger, then and only then can we live up to the principle and comfortably say that ALL lives matter.  That cannot be the chant that Americans choose to rally around for now though because all lives aren’t currently under threat.  In fact, as different as each of the panelists were, all were in agreement that we are now in a time where we have to move beyond words, and focus on actions.  We have to hold companies and leaders accountable, and no one can shift the responsibility onto someone else.  It’s our shared duty to show up and speak up in the fight against racism.  Silence serves no one and it is no longer an option.  You also don’t have to work in Diversity and Inclusion to take part in this movement.  Just simply ask yourself, “what can I do today?” to be a part of the solution, and then do it.  

Together, let’s make this time be different.