Today in Digital Marketing - Pause and Pay: Surprising Results from TV's Newest Ad Format

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, April 29th. Today, you mocked them at first, but now the results on pause ads are in, and they're kind of amazing. Also, Threads makes a big move. Does the ad business need its own nutrition label? And Google's video ads push beyond YouTube. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:00:21 That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected.

Starting point is 00:00:48 Be Zen. New research says that pause ads, which pop up when streaming viewers take a break, might be a bigger opportunity than we thought. According to new data from the Video Advertising Bureau,

Starting point is 00:00:59 around 50% of streaming viewers have taken some action after seeing a pause ad. Pause ads appear during breaks in viewing, like when a viewer steps away to grab a snack or handle other brief tasks. These ads have been adopted by various platforms like Max, Hulu, and Peacock, all members of the VAB, by the way, which includes heavyweights like Disney, NBCUniversal, and Paramount. The study also touched on other trends shaping the streaming landscape. Notably, half of the 1,600 TV consumers surveyed have used subscription

Starting point is 00:01:32 services to watch live sports over the past year. In particular, a viewership growth in women's sports, highlighted by record-breaking viewership for events like the Women's World Cup and Women's March Madness. Also, 73% of viewers said they prefer to have all episodes of a streaming show available at once rather than dripped out weekly. Older viewers showed a preference for free ad-supported streaming TV channels versus paying for a premium plan. In terms of engagement, when it comes to interactive advertising, the study found ads that viewers can click on for more information via email or directly on their devices saw the highest engagement with 67% interaction. As for those QR codes, they lagged way behind with only 36% percent engagement. The gloves are off. Threads has created a paid bonus program for creators. The program sets targets for each invited creator based in the U.S. focusing on the performance of their posts, like the number of views and frequency of posts. These creators also have to have a

Starting point is 00:02:42 public Threads profile. And yes, it is invitation only for now. So how do you get an invite? Well, to get one, you need an average of 2500 views per post at the minimum. And there has to be some text in it. So not just meme images, and no competing watermarks from like TikTok or YouTube, and posts that are tied to brand partnerships don't count in that. All of this, of course, is the latest salvo in the war for Twitter's refugees. Once the app rebranded to X, it started pushing harder on its creator compensation program as well. If previous programs, like those done on TikTok and YouTube, are anything to go by, this move by threads could very well bring in more eyeballs. More eyeballs

Starting point is 00:03:25 should mean more options for ad placements, once Meta opens threads up for ads, of course. And if there's enough inventory, we might even see a small drop in the CPM rates across Meta's platforms. The ad tech consulting group DeepSea has unveiled a new tool aimed at improving transparency within the murky world of digital advertising. The Publisher Research Portal helps advertisers and intermediaries assess the quality of websites used for programmatic advertising. According to DeepSea, the platform functions like a nutrition label for digital publishers, providing insights into a website's ad load, for instance, or the presence of pirated

Starting point is 00:04:05 content and stability of its traffic. The company says unstable traffic might suggest the use of inorganic methods to inflate visitor numbers, which of course can be a critical advertiser for advertisers. A Deep Sea executive said their goal is to become sort of a similar web, but for advertisers, with tools that cater not only to the buy side, but also to the supply side platforms and ad exchanges. This allows platforms to vet and monitor publishers a little bit more accurately. The new initiative comes in response to findings like those from the Association of National Advertisers, which reported significant waste in ad spending because of fraudulent or low-quality sites. Despite efforts to establish guidelines for managing those issues, challenges in enforcement still stick around.

Starting point is 00:04:51 The new platform has already attracted some big-name attention, with companies like The Trade Desk and TripleLift already participating as beta testers. The European Union recently introduced legislation that forces social media platforms over a certain size to report stats, like the number of users, the number of moderators in each region, and so on. Most of these platforms are, of course, public companies, so those numbers are already sort of available. I say sort of because while companies have a fiduciary duty to report their top line numbers, they can really do it whatever way they want. Are the daily actives down? Let's report monthlies instead. The EU Digital Services Act, though, requires platforms to use their metrics,

Starting point is 00:05:37 logged in users and logged out guests. And according to those numbers, X lost just under 1 million active users in the region from last August to the end of January. In total, they have about 62 million logged in users in Europe. So how does that compare to the rest of the world? Assuming we use daily active users as the closest comparison, the EU makes up about 25% of X's global active user base. So while the platform isn't seeing growth, nor is it anywhere near Elon Musk's ambitious target of 600 million users by next year, it also isn't facing a steep drop off in users either. X says its existing user base is engaging more deeply with the platform. Quoting social media today, quote, X's main strength is that

Starting point is 00:06:24 it's a habitual platform for many, with communities around sports in particular still highly aligned with the app. They've established communities there, made connections, and they can maintain their activity as always. The changes of the app and Elon's broader political commentary don't really mean a lot to them, and most seem happy to continue using the platform as they always have, unquote. It's the season for new styles and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes.

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Starting point is 00:07:45 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Google today announced some changes to its display and video 360 platform. Until now, most of that platform focused on YouTube, but now it's moving more into placements on streaming TV. The company brought executives from major players like Warner Brothers Discovery to talk about the better results they got from reduced frequency. That's something, of course, you can manage better across different surfaces if you've got them all in one place. Google has also expanded its Instant Deal tool, previously exclusive to YouTube, which now facilitates private auctions for premium publishers like Disney. They've also got a new commitment optimizer tool in DV360 that can give you more flexibility in inventory management and media planning.

Starting point is 00:08:29 Finally, on the privacy side, Google announced it had open sourced its publisher-advertiser identity reconciliation technology known as PAIR. This will help secure data transfers between advertisers and publishers without, Google says, compromising user privacy. My wife and I spent the entire weekend playing Fallout 76. We have two Xboxes. This is how we do it. But yeah, I don't know that I'm proud of it, but man, that's a compelling game.

Starting point is 00:08:58 It's gotten so much better. And if you're not familiar with it, it's a multiplayer game. So you're in a world with about usually about 20 or 30 other people. And you can create these camps, so you can build walls and things and set up vending machines. So as you collect stuff out in the world that you need to build, or you need to repair your weapons or whatever, if you have too much of one thing you can actually sell those things to other

Starting point is 00:09:18 people. You can build a vending machine and list things for sale at whatever price. Now, it's not real money, of course. It's caps, which is the in-game currency. You can't convert it to real money. But you need caps in the game to do stuff. And then this morning, I realized, wait a minute. Xbox lets me play in a web browser.

Starting point is 00:09:35 Why don't I just leave? Why don't I log in this morning and leave my game open in a new window so that I was online, so that people could buy stuff from me, and just have people buy stuff. And it's been working. So all day, I've just had my window open. And I keep hearing this, which is anyway, I don't know why it brings me such pleasure. I feel like I've, you know, like hacked the rules of the game somehow, but it just does. Anyway, that's it for today. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Pause and Pay: Surprising Results from TV's Newest Ad Format

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