Tag Archives: data

blogging, commenting, data planning, Mediated

2,056 days later I’ve returned to Mediation; to find that nothing, and everything, has changed

So, where were we? It has been 2,056 days since I last posted to this Mediation blog. That’s well over half a decade since I shared my thoughts on the un-negotiated data-based contract between advertisers, media platforms and audiences.

It would be a pointless task to try and list out the changes, evolutions (and revolutions), disruptions, procrastinations, legislations, debates and discussions that have characterised the media and marketing industry over that time. They are vast, and profound.

Or are they?

A look back to the Mediation posts of 2014 (there were six) shows I covered the following topics:

The Un-Negotiated Contract: How the model changed, and why the fight for access to data and information has never mattered more … explored the role of data in media and marketing, and implications for data transparency and consumer privacy.

In the Netflix Spark: Why the arrival of the SVOD platform heralds a more even distribution of the future for everyone … I discussed streaming and its impact on the video advertising ecosystem.

Being a true version of yourself: Lessons on transparency from Kyle and Jackie O, and Bethany Mota … explored influencers and brand authenticity.

Weapons of Mass Contagion: why our amazement and anger at Facebook’s emotion experiment is misdirected … wrestled with the surprise and shock at social media algorithm’s ability to influence our feelings and emotions (be kind, it was 2014).

What’s your Story?: a tale of two narratives, and a big lesson in the power of narrative via Jamie Oliver and Thank You Group … covered the nature of brands and storytelling.

And in Reunification isn’t going to happen so get over it: Why media is already planning for a future that’s here already. and why that’s awesome … posited on agency and holding group structure and specifically the debate over a return (or not, as I predicted) to full-service.

So five and a half years ago the debate was largely grounded in data, media business model disruption, influencers and authenticity, brand storytelling, and how agencies and holding groups can best structure to deliver outcomes and client objectives.

What’s astonishing is how little the industry’s topics of debate have changed … yet just how much the discussion and developments within those topics has moved on.

If you are a consumer living within the European Union or the US State of California, government legislation has made huge steps to negotiating the contract between your personal data, advertisers and media platforms. In the last half decade the progress on this topic, in terms of public awareness and legislation has moved dramatically – tho the latter probably more than the former.

Consumer perception on social media (with its inherent biases and dangers) and the role it plays in our society and culture has moved on significantly. The original debates on Mediation around this topic look nothing short of quaint in a world in which social media’s pivotal role in politics, social equality, extremism (in all its forms), and data transparency is still being fully understood and debated. As is its role in the media ecosystem of major brands with an eye to brand safety.

Influencers have ridden the roller-coaster of Gartner’s hype cycle and have, arguably, now found a plateau of productivity following their trough of disillusionment. That said, the normalisation of influencers and KOLs for some brands has been tempered with its rejection by other brands in favour of more centralised and authentic brand narrative and messaging.

Indeed, the perceived role of brands (by marketers and some agencies) has also evolved, the most recent iteration being a bout of purpose-driven marketing, which reached a recent zenith, until everyone looked around and realised that every brand’s purpose was exactly the same; to basically be ‘here for you’. For many brands, the search for a post-Purpose model seems to be more than well underway.

Meanwhile in media land all the shifts – both seismic and nuanced – that were underway 2,056 days ago have only accelerated. Streaming’s march has continued, with the arrival of entrants like Disney+ only adding more credibility and urgency to the clear direction of travel.

I was wrong on the reunification of media and creative, which did come to pass after all… just not in the way that I imagined. Rather than agency brands reuniting across the media and creative divide, instead new models have emerged. On one hand the holding group brands themselves shifted from back-end infrastructure to marketer-facing agency brand. Or on the other they de-branded to create completely new integrated offerings for clients – particularly those with global scale.

An honourable mention for the progress that audio has made in the last half decade, mainly due to podcasting. The continued rise of Spotify will only be accelerated by the very chunky investments they are making into original audio content and talent.

Also TikTok, the platform that captured and then created a cultural moment of content creation that took not just other social platforms but the entertainment industry at large by surprise. There’s a lot more to come from them.

And mentions also to the gaming industry – with which brands still seem to be struggling to find a way to authentically engage, and to Ecommerce, although it probably has over-inflated mental availability right now among the media and planning community.

The last 2,056 days were less kind to some corners of the media landscape. Print and magazines continue to have a horrible time – with some notable exceptions that have managed to both diversify and also tap into a recurring revenue model (including The Guardian with its successful membership and supporter model).

Mediation’s time away saw the most damage however to long-term brand building and marketing investments. Short-termism, an over-reliance on performance-based planning and the pursuit of efficient over effective media planning has, frustratingly, flourished. We’ll come back to that I’m sure down the track.

That’s hardly a comprehensive assessment. I’ll not try to pretend that it is. But after the longest break, we are (kind of) up to speed.

So why now? Why return to Mediation after an absence of more than two thousand days?

The answer is both short and long. The short answer is because Covid, obvs. Like many people, the last few months have been one of contemplation and consideration. I count myself more than fortunate that I am in the luxurious position to be able to find time in the current moment to contemplate its implications. For many millions of people this horrible current situation is characterised not by mindfulness, but by stress, fear, anger, anxiety and loss. I am in a very, very fortunate position.

The longer answer is that I’ve found myself returning over the last few months to the reason I originally began writing Mediation back in 2006. Over eight years I attempted to negotiate the future of media and communications. The negotiations were between legacy and next-generation media platforms; between established models and new ways of thinking. They were between those invested in building something new and those invested in preserving the status-quo.

The mediating was also between brands and audiences, the nature of their relationships and interactions (albeit fleeting), and between the different corners and elements of the industry; the holding group behemoths and the rogue start-ups.

Through all of that, the question was how to mediate a better tomorrow? What can we learn from the new things under the sun whilst building on the best of what has stood the test to date? How can media be accessed and leveraged by brands and marketers in meaningful and effective ways that works in everyone’s interests?

I believe that question is as urgent as ever. It is a question being revisited with renewed urgency in this time of change and upheaval. Old assumptions are being questioned and new models and beliefs are being explored and tested.

There is much to debate and discover.

It’s good to be back.

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advertising, data planning, debating, marketing, opinionating

The Un-Negotiated Contract: How the model changed, and why the fight for access to data and information has never mattered more

this post first appeared on Mumbrella

At some point in the last decade a long-established contract between people, media and brands fundamentally changed. What is gradually and incrementally replacing it is an un-negotiated contract – in which information is the new currency, insights and utility are the new value, and the fight for the control of data -whether you realise it or not – is one in which you are already engaged.

The nature of the contract we’re currently negotiating will have huge implications for consumers, brands, media businesses and governments. Whether its the strategies employed by brands, the deals made in market, or the data that’s shared with our governments – how this emerging contract nets out will affect us all, and is already shaping the industry around us.

The broadcast interruption model that emerged in the 1950s was a ruthlessly effective and potent means of value exchange. Everyone involved (which was everyone) won. It was ruthlessly simple – brands gave broadcast media dollars which paid for content that people viewed, and which brands interrupted to get people’s attention.

mediation_broadcast_interruption_model

The model was so awesome that it even accommodated channel-neutrality – it worked as well for print and radio as it did for TV, but at some point in the last decade this ruthlessly simple and effective model started to break down. Fragmentation of channels led to fragmented viewing and audiences – necessitating more investment by brands to reach the same number of people. Set-top and on-demand technologies allowed viewers to skip brand messages (although the evidence is that this was largely off-set by higher viewing in PVR households), the internet changed, well, everything … and a new generation of media businesses and brands emerged that weren’t dependent on the broadcast interruption model – or more specifically the currency that drove it.

Because what sat at the heart of that model and the old established contract – its currency – was the ad. Adverts were what media organisations sold, what brands placed and what viewers watched. They were the centre of the contract’s gravity – so much so that the very concept of advertising became synonymous and interchangeable with its most predominant vehicle … the advert.

What has tacitly emerged over the last decade has been a fundamental reworking of the relationships between the various participants in the deal – to the extent that I now think we’re working with something that looks more like this:

mediation_unnegotiated_contract

The emergence of new media businesses built on data – rather than broadcast ad interruption – is one of the key drivers of this new as yet un-negotiated contract. Google, Facebook, Twitter are of course the obvious examples but so too are companies like Amazon and Ebay – they revenue-generate based on the data they accumulate, and the insight this subsequently generates for advertisers. Ads are still of course part of the equation but they are no longer the point of the model … rather information is.

Better information allows and enables brands to have better contacts and connections with people … something Will Collin discussed on Mumbrella back in October in a brilliant piece that made the case for a focus on reciprocity in how brands engage people – I’ve called it utility above but the point is the same. It’s about how data and information fuel better brand ideas – ideas that are not only increasingly necessary in our fragmented cluttered world, but which are also proven to generate disproportionate ROI versus optimisation of the channel plan.

So far so nice theory, but so what? Well, what this affords us is a framework to understand the various terms of engagement being played on in what will probably be come to be understood as the data wars. Early skirmishes and alliances in an emerging contract based not on ads, but on information.

New models are emerging between brands, media owners and agencies based on information and data rather than just ads media spend. For example this case of how Twitter data is delivering new targeting capabilities.

Ads are, of course, still in play but data and information is what the new contract is predicated upon. Expand ‘media’ in the above model to include (media) agencies and you understand why the positionings around Audience Management Platforms and audience data are so vital to those involved – its about who controls the insight (and therefore the revenues).

It’s also why brands are (1) increasingly asking why they shouldn’t retain full control and analysis of their own data and (2) why some brands are looking to cut media out all together and go direct to customers (existing or potential) based on the data and information they own. Nike have used this strategy with Fuel, whilst brands like Burberry use a hugely disproportionate amount of their own media to reach people direct. Its also why media businesses now ruthlessly collect and protect first party data, and why the sharing of that data with frememies to match the demand-scale generated by agency groups makes media owners so nervous.

But its between people and the media where the contract is perhaps most vociferously being negotiated. Between Google and the European Courts with legislation that allows people to force Google to delete their data (or at least the links to their information); Facebook’s privacy settings tidy-up was part of this negotiation, as is any site’s publication of it’s cookie and targeting policy.

The other huge players in this part of the negotiation are the telcos (and I include Apple in this bracket) – whose efforts to win the Triple Play wars were awesomely captured by Nic Christensen here last month. This is important for two reasons … first, the Telcos are emerging as some of the biggest accumulators of data – that makes them significant players in the emerging contract and secondly, like the big Bay Area media companies, the data they accumulate can be appropriated by government agencies without our explicit consent.

The fact is that it has been the emergence of this new model, and the concentration of such vast quantities of people’s data into new media businesses and telecoms companies, that has fueled US, UK and other government agencies desire and demand to acquire that data as part of their ambition to ‘master the internet’.

And yet despite all of this the contract remains un-negotiated.

The conversations and debates required to do so are fragmented and diverse, but there are huge implications for brands, agencies and media businesses depending on just how that negotiation pans-out. Who own’s people’s data? Who gets to sell or target and re-target based on that data? How aggressively should and could brands pursue collection of their own customer data? Should it be made more explicit that someone’s data is being captured for advertising or targeting purposes?

To be absolutely clear, it is my opinion that this new contract is an eminently good thing. It is the emergent data and information-based value model that has given all of us access to search, social media, online marketplaces, and a world of information, education and entertainment.

What the contract promises is awesome – but to deliver, it must first be negotiated.

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