Overalll -- Hire more analysts and put more effort into training
Benchmarking is critical, we need more of it in the ecosystem.
Benchmarking allows organizations to develop plans on how to make improvements or adapt specific best practices, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance
Still hard for Publishers, Agencies and Ad Tech to hire quality talent; if you can't hire the talent supplement them with top notch hands on consultants
Every company should hire more analysts, please
Train everyone, then train them some more For Direct Sales in 2018, I am seeing a tale of two cities, 2018 seems to be good for some new breed (7-10 years old or less) and video publishers but not so good for existing/traditional publishers
Most companies spend so much time living quarter-to-quarter/month-to-month/day-to-day and very little time thinking about next year, and more importantly, the next 3 to 5 years
Many companies we know and love that are not called Google, FB, Amazon, Netflix, Amazon or Microsoft are consistently decreasing in top line revenue, welcome to a world of uncomfortable yearly expense cuts
Recurring revenue streams win -- Amazon Prime is the best example of this at $119 per year, Salesforce as well where payment is made upfront
AGGREGATORS/PLATFORMS -- Companies with the best first party data continue to thrive YouTube does a much better job of generating revenue for publishers than Facebook doesOath CEO departs amid lackluster performance -- hopefully that change helps the organization regain what it could beAudio (e.g., Alexa and Google Voice) is most like the Facebook news feed we should call it the audio feedAudio monetization will be huge one day, I just have no idea how When will a VC write a check for $1B and build a search engine from scratch to compete with Google? Or is that just impossible in today’s market?Snap hired a CMO to run sales -- this is what happens when you have a self-serving consultative sales organizationAmazon hired my friend Arianne Walker as Evangelist, Alexa Automotive at Amazon -- best title everOne of the Murdoch’s will end up running Disney after IgerSnap probably went public too early, was not ready and made many mistakesOwning a news organization is like owning a Sports franchise -- high level indirect influence like the recent Time Inc purchase by Marc Benioff and, of course, Bezos buying the Washington Post
RETAIL -- Amazon is linking Retail and Advertising like never before 50% of retail consumers start their search on AmazonAmazon has 49% of all US digital retail sales -- amazingVoice is easier to interact with then the screen, just a matter of time until it is monetized -- manicure your orders via Voice may be nextMalls go to a We Work model -- short leases with more pop up storesClick and Collect is critical for grocery -- Walmart and Amazon win long term, Whole Foods high end and Wal-Mart low endRetail still needs to make big bets in technology and TRAININGMore mergers in CPG and/or retail to fight the growing power of Amazon Are Amazon prices too low, do they stop competition, what happens if they eventually raise prices and we are all stuck since there is no competition
PUBLISHERS Digital, TV and Print -- OTT is still hot Publishers Direct Sales organizations need to change to keep up with the marketing ecosystemPublishers need more analysts -- replace one highly paid salesperson with 4 analysts at the same priceQ3 Direct revenue for traditional media companies is down again looks like Q4 will be down as well -- each Quarter is down 5 to 10% Year over Year. What to do with your Direct sales team? Consolidate? Reduce? Hire more senior people? Only go after large deals? Go 100% programmatic? Can't maintain status quoEvery publisher should be organized and/or have VERTICAL/CATEGORY expertisePublishers need clean programmatic data and benchmarking dataFrom David Carrie of Hearst -- the degree of difficulty of running a money losing business is zeroMost publisher sales people hate using SF this needs to changeShould pubs think differently about the advertising experience that subscribers vs non-subscribers receive?Connected TV is a $1 billion advertising revenue business for Hulu and $250 million for RokuThe frequency of ads on Hulu is horrendousConnected TV usage is huge and growing -- 180M+ in the US, most popular are Smart TV’s Roku and Amazon Fire plus some game consoles Podcast advertising is tiny across the 70 million monthly listenersPrint needs new ad products to better measure attributionI don’t believe this about Print, but according to emarketer, there is a very pessimistic outlook for newspapers and magazines. TV radio and out of home advertising is resilience but Print is notNon TV based Video is very hard to fill and monetize across the board -- 40% is goodToo much CHURN in the Branded ContentBrand Safety becomes critical as too much content is mistakenly classified as inappropriate in order for the ecosystem to be ultra conservativeAccording to LinkedIn Vice has over 3300 employee that’s just crazyOTT is the future of television advertisingOTT has 6 to 8 minutes of advertising and traditional TV has 16 minutes
MARKETING -- Time to differentiate yourselves AI and Machine Learning will underpin all of marketing in the future, the large Marketers will have a significant advantageSmart Marketers want to deal with small niche agencies that specialize and are nimble, not the holding companiesMarketers need to become storytellers, some are well on their wayAdvertising is not allowed on smart speakers but sponsorships are, when do we see some true form of advertising on these devices?Many DTC brands have never worked with an agencyDTC spends marketing $’s wisely and are very disruptive to traditional brandsAlways test new initiatives, like radio, to see if they move the needle. I have heard that radio works on many occasionsOTT is hard to buy If you are a marketer, trying to figure out how to unify a buy across all forms of video, whether it may be linear, addressable, OTT or digital, it’s very difficult -- we need a unified, standardized way of being able to plan and buy media this is a HUGE opportunityMost DTC companies are not engineering led but product driven and they rent the complete supply chainAttribution modeling still suxMarketers still use agencies for Radio and TV buyingDTC can outsource everything but customer data and relationship managementNo real Chinese global brands -- is this an opportunity for one of them?
AGENCY/CONSULTING HOUSES -- agencies need to rebrand themselves Agencies should change their name to marketing consultants. The agency name is toxic in the industryIPG’s Acxiom acquisition is a sign of desperation for the agency worldNo talented individuals want to work for OLD school agenciesAgencies are happy with having flat revenue YoYAgencies like Mediacom, are building more tools on top of the marketing and media buying technologies of Google, Facebook and Amazon -- they need to do this to surviveAll holding companies are looking to grow via acquisitions not organicallyHolding companies just really hold marketers backAgency should not be in the advertising business but should be in the engagement businessAgencies are trying to move from services business to solutions businessAgencies need to use the arrival of the consulting else’s to push for more innovationAccenture interactive is growing at over 20% in the last Quarter, though unsure of the revenue figureWhere is KPMG?