Programmatic: Buying or Media?

Posted on Monday, 5 March 2018 8:46 am by

Young hipster man making a good-bad signI’ve been asked a couple of times if I’m pro- or anti-programmatic. My answer, sometimes to the asker’s frustration, is “it depends.”

Whether or not a medium works for you depends on many things. The first, and most fundamental question to ask before purchasing any media is “does the target audience use that medium?” That’s forgotten a lot these days, particularly in the world of cheap digital media. Just because a medium has a lot of reach, doesn’t mean you want to buy it, regardless of the price.

Here’s how I think of “programmatic.”
Continue reading →

Posted in digital marketing, Media, Travel | Tagged , , ,

The #1 Ingredient in AdTech “Special Sauce”…

Posted on Friday, 2 March 2018 9:45 am by

dd510f76-ce1f-45a1-b8bb-0ce02bb72789_1.ea8d127e179f3b4760f9ab2493c4503f…is Russian dressing*.

In other words, there really isn’t anything secret. Good …aaS products are good because they have good people and process. The technology is mostly generic.

Takeaway: Make marketing and advertising technology decisions on people, not the algorithms. Because marketing is about people, always.

*Unless it’s Ranch. And if you eat that, it’s between you, your doctor, and your undertaker.

Posted in Leadership, Philosophy | Tagged , , ,

8 Surprising Lessons From Black Panther Marketers Can Use TODAY…

Black-Panther-TChalla-posterSorry. Just kidding. You can get back to getting your hustle on, or whatever it is that GaryVee is suggesting.

Aside | Posted on Monday, 26 February 2018 7:16 pm by | Tagged ,

Virtue Signaling and Fake Marketers

“Marketing has changed forever” is the gospel according to the fake marketers.

Wrote Malcolm Auld in his brilliant article yesterday. Since we’re in the era of fake news, fake traffic, fake impressions, fake agencies, and fake presidents, let’s call out the charlatans for what they are. Fake.

To stiffen your resolve against the onslaught of BS from marketing charlatans, I encourage you to read Mr. Auld’s excellent How the fake marketers used virtue signals to establish credibility…

Aside | Posted on Thursday, 22 February 2018 8:12 am by | Tagged , ,

We Couldn’t Afford To Buy Records

Screen Shot 2018-02-21 at 5.30.48 PMI have been under the mistaken impression that Duane Eddy, the King of Twang, was no longer with us. I just learned today, courtesy of Premier Guitar, that Mr. Eddy is still with us, going strong and will celebrate his 80th birthday on April 26th.

In an interview in this month’s Premier Guitar, he describes tuning his guitar quickly when listening to the radio to learn country music songs. The songs were never quite in A440 because everything was tuned to whatever piano was around. The reason for his need to tune quickly to the radio?  “We couldn’t afford to buy records.”

That’s a common theme from many of the legendary early stars of rock and roll. They made do with what they had at hand. Though hard work and talent, they shaped rock music with sounds and themes we hear to this day. Check out the video below to see the crowds Mr. Eddy was drawing as he helped start rock and roll. And please read the interview with him in Premier Guitar. Utterly fascinating.

Happy 80th, Duane Eddy!

 

Aside | Posted on Wednesday, 21 February 2018 8:02 pm by | Tagged ,

Media Whitewash

Posted on Wednesday, 21 February 2018 8:29 am by

The ever thought-provoking Don Marti wrote something in “This is why we can’t have nice brands” on February 17th that reminded me of a standard direct mail practice:

“Twitter has a solution that keeps its ads saleable: just don’t show any ads to important people. I’m surprised they can get away with this, but given the mix of rip-off and real brand ads I keep seeing there, it seems to be working.”

Back in the heyday of direct mail, we had small but important lists of people that we never wanted to promote. That list included the executives in our company*, state attorneys general and staff, and regulators of various types, among other folks.

You’d never want to accidentally put an aggressive direct mail piece into the mailbox of an AG who was running for governor, for example. The suppression file of a few thousand names was worth its weight in gold in avoiding legal issues and was trivially easy to do in the merge/purge.

But how does suppressing one’s own executives in direct mail relate to Twitter? Continue reading →

Posted in Branding, digital marketing, Direct Response, fraud, Media, Social Media Marketing, Strategy | Tagged , ,

Humans

$_3How many humans are in each segment of your category buyers? And how many humans are in each audience at each publisher?

You need to know the answers to both questions for your campaigns to be successful.

Not cookies. Not MAIDs. Not devices. Not size of the “graph.” Always think and act in terms of humans FTW.

Aside | Posted on Monday, 19 February 2018 11:34 am by | Tagged ,

Unilever Drains the Digital Swamp?

Posted on Monday, 12 February 2018 8:40 am by
558827-conversational-platforms-gartner-2017

Want to know what a “platform” does? Well, this doesn’t doesn’t help.

Unilever’s Keith Weed will speak at the IAB today. He’ll talk about his frustration with the lack of the “3 Vs” (viewability, verification, value) in social media platforms. But he’s really looking to have his Marc Pritchard moment by threatening to pull Unilever’s spending from social media platforms, with the following manifesto:

Unilever’s transparency commitments

  • Unilever will not invest in platforms that do not protect children or which create division in society.
  • Unilever is committed to tackling gender stereotypes in advertising through #Unstereotype and championing this across the industry through #SeeHer and the #Unstereotype Alliance.
  • Unilever will only partner with organizations which are committed to creating better digital infrastructure, such as aligning around one measurement system and improving the consumer experience.

Bravo for Unilever. Money is oxygen to Facebook and Google. Removing it, in the form of advertiser money, gets the message across. Advertisers and society are frustrated with the “we’re just a platform” B.S. that they hide behind.

The only quibble I have with the Unilever transparency commitments is the corporate-speak. Why not just say*:

  • We won’t spend our money at publishers who publish garbage.
  • Our ads will treat all people with respect.
  • We’ll only buy media that we can measure.

As you listen to and read comments on Mr. Weed’s talk, watch the use of the word “platform.” When you hear that word, it means that the owner of the platform is a middleman who can charge a toll and takes no responsibility for what happens on the platform. In other words, a platform is where a fool and his money are parted by the owner of the platform.

Takeaway: Stop buying non-transparent garbage inventory. Stop feeding “platform” middlemen with your media dollars. Demand accountability from everybody in advertising. And win.

* I’ll just call these the Pilipczuk transparency principles™.

Bonus content Continue reading →

Posted in Branding, digital marketing, fraud, Leadership, Social Media Marketing | Tagged , , , , ,

Self-Deception in Thought

Posted on Friday, 9 February 2018 11:59 am by

“The wish is parent to the thought, and that is why nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each person wishes, that they also believe to be true.”  Demosthenes

So Dr. Robert Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, starts his speech “Liberal Arts, Free Expression, and the Demosthenes-Feynman Trap.” Feynman, in character, said it more simply in 1974:

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool.”

We all have our jobs to do and have ways to do them successfully. Those systems are built upon a series of beliefs. Most of the time, we don’t have to worry about the underlying assumptions upon which are beliefs are built. We just do our jobs.

As Demosthenes and Feynman warn, the hardest thing to avoid is our own self-deception in thought. The commonly accepted ways of doing things might not be right. Those assurances from “experts” might not be based on rigorously-proven and tested underlying assumptions. The only way to know is to ask.

Takeaway: Every once in a while, seek out the skeptic or the Advocatus Diaboli, and ask “why?” And really listen.

Posted in Leadership, Philosophy | Tagged , , ,

Name Those Ads

It’s been two days since the Super Bowl. Quick, and without thinking too hard, write down:

  1. The ads you saw on the Super Bowl on Sunday
  2. The digital ads you saw this morning as you read the news with coffee

Notice anything?

Aside | Posted on Tuesday, 6 February 2018 8:52 am by | Tagged , , ,