At The NewFronts, More Talk Of Predictive Advertising, AI, Scale And Outcomes
Amazon’s Kelly MacLean with PepsiCo’s Drew Ingram at the IAB NewFronts
If you wanted to hear the latest about predictive advertising, artificial intelligence, scale, return on investment and generating outcomes from some of the top ad-tech and measurement companies, Wednesday was a good day to be at the IAB’s NewFronts.
In addition to those sales pitches, a handful of media buyers and marketing clients were on hand to share their POVs on KPIs, amd ROAS
One early speaker, Ameneh Atai, GM of audience measurement at Nielsen, had some rough news for the group. According to Nielsen’s soon-to-be-released annual Marketing Report, 54% of marketers are looking to reduce their budget in 2025. Those marketers are looking to shift to more digital media with cheaper inventory and put more emphasis on performance campaigns and newer channels such as CTV and influencer marketing.
Nielsen’s Ameneh Atai
Atai said ad execs who have been around a while shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve all seen “this sort of knee jerk reaction during uncertain times, and we are certainly in uncertain times,” she said, adding “what we know is that companies who lean into the fundamentals, the ones who lean into the details that matter, those are the ones that emerge stronger.”
And those newer tactics may be perceived by marketers are effective, but NIelsen’s data shows maybe they’re not.
“Brands are not investing enough,” she said. “50% of brands don't invest enough in media to achieve their maximum ROI and they're under invested in digital video by 66% and in digital display by 60%. But what I really want to emphasize is shifting budgets from high reach channels to digital channels can have a devastating impact on brand equity and long term ROI.”
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Offering help to marketers was Kelly MacLean, VP of engineering science and product for Amazon Ads and the Amazon DSP. Working with Amazon’s powerful tech and data can help marketers conquer fragmentation, MacLean said.
“Today, I'm excited to share how we are continuing to make full funnel a reality with our new Amazon DSP experience,” she said. “Amazon DSP brings together exclusive supply like Prime Video, direct integrations with premium publishers across the open internet and our best in class signals to help you eliminate waste and drive performance.”
MacLean said AMazon has developed a publisher-specific cleanroom to help publishers get full value of their data and help them build direct connections with advertisers at scale.
With marketing budgets tightening (there they go again) MacLean told the marketers “this upfront season, we know you're balancing two seemingly impossible goals, build brand awareness and drive measurable performance. But you shouldn't have to choose between reach and precision.”
Amazon’s Performance Plus product uses programmatic techniques and real-time conversion signals in artificial intelligence. “And in early testing, we've seen Brand Plus helped a prominent supplement brand see an 80% improvement in ROAS and 1.5 times greater reach, all with better cost efficiency,” she said.
Drew Ingram, director of paid media for PepsiCo, talked about a campaign for Lays that the company ran through the Amazon DSP.
“The DSP helped us to not only find those audiences, but optimize in real time to drive the KPIs,” Ingram said. “ Not only did we drive success, but it was also an efficient buy.” Amen to that.
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Peter Crofut, VP of business development, agencies & brands at Wurl, said Wurl’s contextual tech delivers ads not only to the right audiences but reaches consumers in the right emotional moment in the content they are watching.
“How can advertisers deliver well-timed streaming TV ads to audiences? The answer lies in contextual intelligence, and contextual intelligence requires a detailed understanding of the content on screen,” Crofut said. “I think our industry needs to pivot to what we would call premium moments, and those are the moments where your ad is going to best resonate with a viewer.”
Crofut brought out MIke Treon, head of CTV & video strategy at PMG to talk about a campaign for a quick service restaurant.
“It's more important than ever for us to find the resonance, resonance for brands with consumers, in terms of hearts and minds,” Treon said. With Wurl helping to create emotional targeting, the campaign generated a 48% sales lift and a 40% lift in store visits. “That was one of the top performing strategies for us in terms of restaurant business,” he said.
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The “new” Teads was introduced by Neala Brown, senior VP, strategy & operations. In the past, Teads focused on measuring attention.
“Last year, we shared the recipe for what we believe drives outcomes: the right mix of reach, efficiency and attention. Now our focus is on maximizing that recipe to elevate outcomes for our clients,” Brown said. “Now we're ready to not just theorize, not just measure and not just activate on attention, but to transact on it.”
She said Teads has created a curated inventory set that outperforms on attention, beating the norms of social platforms and elevating outcomes from the very first impression. It is also offering a range of guarantees.
“We also know that not all reach is created equal, and we're in the final stages of creating attentive reach curves to help identify the optimal ranges to deliver better outcomes,” Brown said.
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Comscore’s Jackelyn Keller and Steve Bagdasarian introduced comedian Harshil Shukla who spent ten minutes riffing about the state of the television industry, measurement in particular.
Shukla emphasized Comscore’s new “Don’t DIY Data” campaign, which reminds brands and media owners that accurate third party measurement is key
Keller noted that they were having some fun, and that presentations like this ought to be fun. But she added that measurement and currency are serious topics that, in the face of walled gardens, Comscore is addressing
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Upwave’s approach was to look at marketers as superheroes like Batman and Upwave as their Robin-like “brand outcomes sidekick.”
“With Upwave, you get the power of the only software platform solely focused on measuring and optimizing brand outcomes, cross channel capabilities, across CTV, digital, retail, media, linear and more,” said Upwave CEO Chris Kelly, who donned a cape for the occasion.
Upwave is developing its own sidelike, using “AI from the future” to summarize campaign performance and give optimization recommendations. Another AI tool measures campaigns against industry benchmarks.
Lindsay Weaver of Universal McCann
Kelly said brands are looking to capture both the top and bottom of the marketing funnel, but he said it isn’t .”about blending performance and branding together, but recognizing them both discreetly.”
Upwave was joined by agency, media and DSP execs. “Up wave goes beyond just reporting on brand lift. We can see performance by partners, tactics, audience, you name it, and understanding really what the drivers of results are,” said Lindsay Weaver, senior VP, data & analytics at Universal McCann.
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Future Today talked about the additional premium content its networks were streaming, including its recently announced collaboration with Chuck E. Cheese.
The company also talked about its new advertising Marketplace.
“What we are announcing today is essentially a solution that leverages contextual signals, but goes beyond the traditional ways of leveraging contextual where you're running a travel ad against travel content, or a food ad against food content,” said Future Today co-founder Vikrant Mathur.
“What we do is we bake in other signals, such as the geography where the consumption is happening, the device where the consumption is happening, the time of the day when the consumption is happening. And using all of these different signals, using machine learning, using AI, we build out audience segments and essentially a graph that's built on probabilistic and predictive modeling so that you can still get the same level of accuracy with respect to targeting.”
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Doug Rozen, who recently joined Cadent as president, introduced what he called “the new Cadent.”
The company now offers new capabilities, new media, new technology and some new standards, “ he said. We predict, we assemble and we orchestrate growth between brands, publishers and consumers . . . it is really about setting a new standard for predictive advertising.”
New Cadent board member, former Hulu and Netflix ad sales chief Peter Naylor, interviewed Katie Klein, chief investment officer at Omnicom Media Group, who described the bottom line for agencies and their clients.
“We need to continue to get away from more rigid approaches to media investments that are maybe based on legacy definitions and roles of channels to ones that are much more agile, more data informed, and more rooted in business outcomes,” Klein said.
“Practically speaking, what that means is audience centric planning that will help to inform investments utilization of AI, predictive analytics,” she said.
Naylor noted that buyers had to perform balancing acts, between predictive and reach media.
“There is an inherent tension. But for us, that balance is figuring out how we integrate the two together, because both things are very, very important for clients,” she replied.
At the same time, there’s also a need to balance content with technology, Naylor added. .
“We are going to continue to see content companies that are developing more tech capabilities. And some companies on the tech side, they're investing more in content,” Klein said. “In an environment where decisions have to be made, to have partners that truly do have these solutions for clients that can span both sides of that is incredibly compelling. I think it probably remains to be seen who's gonna maybe rise to the top that can truly do both very, very well.”
The industry seems to be headed in a direction where marketers want to work with fewer better partners. Klein said marketers will choose the company that delivers the most effective media activations and the best results.
Cadent director Peter Naylor with OMG’s Katie Klein