In this exclusive “Masters of Media” series, Integral Ad Science (IAS) speaks to the Movers and Shakers of the APAC advertising industry on all digital matters.

Nic Jones is Head of Strategy, APAC at EssenceMediacom, GroupM’s newest and largest agency that is committed to delivering marketing breakthroughs for brands in the new communications economy.

In his role, Nic is responsible for overseeing EssenceMediacom’s strategy and planning function in the region. He is also the end-to-end experience lead in ASEAN and South Pacific for WPP Open, the bespoke global agency partner of The Coca-Cola Company. Additionally, he is currently driving the development of the agency’s addressable product offering and capability building in APAC.

With 16 years of experience, Nic has a deep understanding of all aspects of media and marketing transformation, from digital to above-the-line media, to addressable audiences, to data. He brings with him a proven track record of delivering innovation and integrated solutions to some of the world’s largest brands.

Questions:

IAS: Can you share your career journey in the digital media industry, highlighting key milestones and experiences that have shaped your professional path?

Nic: I’ve spent the last 16 years working in media agencies in the UK, China, and Singapore, and unsurprisingly, the job has changed a lot in that time. Working mostly in strategy roles, the role has changed from being a singular function to one that has to act as the bridge between the ever-growing number of specialisms and disciplines that have emerged.

It seems many marketers are on a constant journey of transformation and it’s been interesting to see how these have played out since the advent of digital advertising. We’ve been through several waves of digital advertising, from search, to social, and now retail, and while the pace of change has increased, the fundamental job of delivering value and growth for clients remains constant.

I currently spend a lot of time working with The Coca-Cola Company as part of the integrated WPP Open X model. It’s been stimulating to work a lot more closely with different disciplines and operating companies to provide truly integrated solutions for brands. I suspect we’ll see more agencies moving towards this consolidated agency group model for large multinational clients, given the potential upside from this integration.

IAS: If there’s one myth related to programmatic you’d like squashed, what would that be?

Nic: The perception that clients have the option to go down a programmatic route or a premium one. Programmatic has become a bit of a misnomer, one associated with cost-effective, broad reach through non-premium inventory. 

While there may have been an element of historical truth to this, the programmatic of today has a wealth of connected TV (CTV), digital out-of-home (DOOH), and broadcast video on demand (BVOD) inventory, to name a few, that can deliver a cost-effective, yet premium solution for clients.

It’s also no longer a blunt tool, and it has huge potential to deliver tailored messaging across valuable audience segments and platforms.

IAS: What challenges have you encountered in achieving audience addressability in diverse markets across APAC, and how have you adapted your approach to overcome them?

Nic: Addressability isn’t really anything new – the role of a media planner/buyer has always been to serve the right audience in the right context with the right message. The difference now is that technology has advanced to a point where we deliver both precision and scale, in a way that makes sense commercially. 

A lot of the reticence of embracing addressable planning and activation comes from the perception that it adds many layers of complexity and cost for only a marginal return. This has partly been driven by the industry, which has much to gain by making something seem more complicated than it needs to be. 

At EssenceMediacom, we’ve spent a lot of energy upskilling our people to be able to work with clients to identify the optimal addressable solution. This has had two main benefits:

• Addressable approaches are tied to a client’s maturity in the space and business opportunity, resulting in effective campaigns that operate on a singular insight with a suitably complex solution.
• Rather than bringing in specialists, upskilling all of our people has translated into more holistic human-centric thinking throughout the campaign cycle.
  
  

IAS: How do you foresee audience addressability evolving in the APAC region in the coming years, and what opportunities do you see for your company to further leverage this capability?

Nic: I see audience addressability taking a more central role in advertising and communications as a whole in the coming years. A number of our clients want to see greater value from media and creative working closer together to provide more relevant experiences to high-value audiences.

Technology, particularly on the creative side, will help remove some of the barriers to delivering addressable content at scale, particularly around cost and manual effort saved. We are working with partners to provide scalable addressable content solutions that can be plugged directly into current planning and activation processes.

We’re also seeing a lot more data opportunities opening up, particularly in the retail space that can be leveraged on and off retail platforms. This is going to benefit our clients as they look for more robust, deterministic segmentation.


IAS: Any advice for leaders on talent retention and supporting a hybrid workforce in the digital media space?

Nic: Focus on creating and propagating a culture that goes beyond corporate values and performance. While it’s important that agencies maintain a competitive and differentiated position in the market and that employees are advocates of that, having principles that promote inclusiveness are perhaps more important.

We live in a time where it feels like there’s a greater digital and geographic distance between people – due to hybrid working, reduced travel, or a pandemic-driven preference for simply doing something alone.

There is significant value in bringing people together to problem-solve and create something together, but this doesn’t necessarily need to be physically mandated. A culture that promotes collaboration and cross-functional support goes a long way in bridging some of these divides.

We’ve seen successes by promoting learning and development programmes, cultural inspiration days, and business challenge hackathons, amongst other initiatives, to give our people opportunities to get together in areas outside of the day-to-day.

IAS: What is your advice to the fresh talent entering the digital media industry, especially in the APAC region?

Nic: There’s never been a more exciting time to enter the digital media industry. Many of the promises of digital such as retail segmentation, fully addressable communications, and one-to-one transactions are coming to fruition for brands.

My advice for someone entering the industry would be to:

• Embrace the rapid pace of change and uncertainty – with experience comes inertia and as a digital native, you’re best placed to see the future opportunities.
• Find a good mentor – having a neutral sounding board is extremely valuable and it often helps to get an outside perspective on career development.
• Learn how to have a holistic view of communications – digital activation will shape the brand strategies of tomorrow, so elevating its value will stand you in good stead.

IAS: What’s your favourite book/podcast/movie, and how has it influenced your approach to strategy or leadership?

Nic: I’m a big fan of the book Emotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike by Greg Hoffman. In it, the former Nike CMO codifies some of his experience of what makes great storytelling and creativity that build global brands. 

With our industry becoming more complex by the day with an ever-increasing number of specialisms and products, it’s a reminder that great advertising isn’t purely the product of a specialist creative team working on an award-winning video. 

Where creativity is able to reach its full potential is where a culture of collaboration across specialisms exists, from creative, to media, to commerce and retail. In his words,

“Talent starts the game, chemistry wins it. Pass the ball. Create a culture where the left and right brains multiply each other. Drive radical creative collaboration between the minds, skills, and dreams of each other.”

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Integral Ad Science’s SEA Country Manager Megan Reichelt was honoured to speak on stage at this year’s GroupM Focal on the topic of AI and actionable data.

We are delighted to share some of the key insights she discussed on the day.

What innovative data/tech -powered strategies do brands currently utilize? And how does it impact their business?

Megan: Many local and global brands in Thailand are using ad verification to improve the quality of the inventory they are buying, which helps drive greater efficiency and effectiveness across their digital media buys. Thailand marketers are using ad verification tools to ensure that their ads are viewable, by a real person, as well as served in a brand safe and suitable environment. This means advertisers can understand exactly where their media budget is going, and use  insights and optimisation tools to reduce any wasted media budget and redirect their investments towards the inventory that will deliver the greatest business results. This includes a lift in brand awareness, consideration and even conversions. Ultimately, using ad verification tools helps brands maximise their media budgets by optimising towards greater quality inventory, delivering greater return on ad spend.

How can brands reach new potential target audiences beyond their existing customer base?

Megan: With the impending deprecation of cookies, marketers are seeking alternative ways to expand their reach, and target new audiences. One of the key strategies many marketers have begun testing is contextual targeting. In the past, contextual targeting was quite simplistic, you would target pages or publishers based on the category they fell into. For example a travel brand might target the travel section of a major news publisher. With recent technology advancements, and the introduction of AI, we have come a long way since then. 

Marketers can now use advanced contextual technology to reach audiences based on the specific content they are viewing, at the page level. It’s now possible to target users based on the context of the content they are viewing, as well as the sentiment and emotion of the page. Sentiment & emotion analysis now enables marketers to understand if a page is positive, or negative, or does it evoke feelings of happiness, or sadness, excitement or fear. This is really powerful as you can use all of these insights for targeting purposes, meaning you can reach new users, in the right mindset, before they make a purchase. If I refer back to the travel brand, you can target users who are viewing relevant travel content, no matter where they are on the web, and now you can also tailor this further by layering on emotions. Perhaps for an upcoming valentines day campaign, a hotel chain wants to target users who are viewing pages that evoke feelings of love. This is now possible.

Advanced contextual targeting technology can help increase scale, and have significant performance benefits when compared to traditional audience targeting solutions. IAS & Mindshare worked together with a major consumer electronics brand to activate  contextual targeting using sentiment & emotion analysis, and when comparing this to an alternative audience targeting solution, they achieved a 300% higher click through rate, and a 65% decrease in their cost per click.

Are there any other angles apart from Customer-related perspective that brand can leverage data and technology with?

Megan: One hot topic right now, is how brands can prioritise Sustainability and Responsible media buying. According to an IAS study, 94% of consumers believe that brands should play a role in advocating for environmental causes, and 76% of consumers are more likely to have a favorable view of brands that advocate for environmental causes. This means that when brands adopt sustainable practices, this has a positive impact on their brand reputation, customer loyalty, and operational efficiency. Data can be used to measure and analyse your marketing activities environmental impact, helping you to identify areas for improvement. 

IAS works with Scope3 and GoodLoop and uses data to measure the carbon footprint of a digital campaign. Marketers can then take these insights to guide resource optimisation, waste reduction, and energy efficiency strategies.

What trends about data and technologies do you see coming and impacting the business? And what would be the negative impact if the brand doesn’t adapt accordingly?

Megan: Optimising towards basic media quality metrics such as viewability is the foundation of measurement, and something many marketers have been doing for a number of years now. Today we are starting to see marketers look beyond viewability, as they are seeking new ways to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. One of these new methods is the use of attention metrics.

Attention has become one of the most talked about topics in the industry globally. Attention measurement allows advertisers to understand and evaluate how effectively their ads are engaging and resonating with their audience. 

In a number of studies we have conducted at IAS, we have identified that optimising towards Attention signals such as whether the ad is actually seen, and how long it is seen, the environment the ad is served in, as well as user interaction, is directly linked to improved business results across the entire funnel.  This includes boosting awareness, consideration and purchase intent, as well as driving a significant lift in conversions for performance campaigns too. In fact, in a recent study we conducted across multiple advertisers and markets, we  identified that impressions with high attention scores saw a conversion rate of up to 33x higher than impressions with low attention scores.

My advice to the marketers in the room is to ensure that when selecting an attention measurement solution, ensure you are looking for one that is directly linked to proven business results. Afterall, the ultimate goal is to achieve your media KPIs and deliver business results, across the funnel.

For more information on this topic or how IAS can help you with your digital ad campaign, you can reach out to Megan via mreichelt@integralads.com

The post Metrics to Performance – Unlocking New Possibilities for Regional  Marketers with AI and Actionable Data appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

Defining MFA and Ad Clutter sites

MFA, an acronym for Made-for-Advertising, epitomizes a category of websites built on catchy headlines, clickbait, and controversial content to drive traffic and ad revenue. Often sacrificing content quality, these sites inundate users with intrusive ads and pop-ups in a relentless pursuit of revenue. 

MFA sites aren’t sources of fraudulent inventory, per se. In fact, they typically perform well against traditional ad metrics, like viewability and click-through-rate, so these sites can check a lot of boxes for advertisers. However, once a brand’s campaign gets stuck in the world of MFA, the main issue becomes clear — MFA websites simply do not drive meaningful results and lead to wasted ad spend.

Distinguishing between MFA and Ad Clutter sites

While both MFA and Ad Clutter sites may exhibit similar characteristics, understanding the difference between the two is essential for advertisers who want to mitigate risk and maximize campaign performance. Ad Clutter sites share similarities with MFA sites in terms of intrusive advertising practices — but the key distinction lies in their monetization strategy. 

Unlike MFA sites, which engage in ad arbitrage by buying traffic and excessively monetizing it, Ad Clutter sites do not purchase traffic but may still inundate users with excessive advertisements. While these sites may compromise user experience and brand perception, they do not engage in the same level of deceptive practices as MFA sites.

Why it matters

Distinguishing between MFA and Ad Clutter sites allows advertisers to tailor their strategies accordingly, mitigating risks and optimizing campaign performance. By leveraging IAS’s MFA measurement and optimization products, advertisers can identify and block MFA sites at scale, safeguarding their brands and maximizing return on ad spend.

Though there are key differences, it’s important to note that both MFA and Ad Clutter sites are problematic for advertisers.

Navigating the pitfalls: Three main challenges of MFA sites

While MFA and Ad Clutter sites present a host of issues for advertisers, there are three reasons why they stand out as particularly detrimental to campaign success and brand integrity:

1. MFA sites often prioritize quantity over quality when it comes to content. To attract clicks and maximize ad revenue, these websites churn out sensationalized headlines, clickbait articles, and controversial content. Consequently, users are bombarded with shallow or misleading information, eroding trust and credibility in the digital space.
2. User experience takes a backseat on MFA sites, where intrusive ads, pop-ups, and autoplay videos dominate the landscape. These disruptive elements not only detract from the browsing experience but also hinder engagement and interaction with advertised content. As a result, advertisers risk associating their brands with negative user experiences, ultimately impacting brand perception and loyalty.
3. Advertising on MFA sites exacerbates environmental concerns. MFA sites often engage in more instant auctions for ad inventory than websites with typical ad loads, resulting in higher carbon emissions. In fact, there is a 73% decrease in carbon emissions when comparing quality sites to MFA sites. This discrepancy in carbon footprint undermines advertisers’ efforts toward carbon reduction goals, highlighting the urgent need for sustainable advertising practices.

The importance of a scalpel approach to MFA

Taking a scalpel approach to MFA is a key way to address these three major challenges outlined above. IAS’s MFA measurement and optimization product uses a scalpel approach as opposed to an all-or-nothing approach to effectively identify MFA at the subdomain level. Competitive offerings can only flag at the top-level domain, which doesn’t allow for the nuance of MFA subdomains that can be mistakenly generated off of a quality publisher’s primary domain.

By not flagging a primary, or top-level, domain as MFA, IAS is able to protect advertisers from low quality placements while still supporting quality publishers. Plus, IAS’s MFA product has been trained against Sincera’s deep library of metadata along with Jounce Media’s widely adopted list of MFA domains.

A data-driven look at ad performance on MFA sites

Global view of ad impressions on MFA

In an observational study conducted by IAS, we found the harsh truth behind MFA and Ad Clutter sites. First, we looked at how the rate of ads that end up on MFA sites varies globally.

The good news is that European sites for the most part fell below the global average of ad impressions on MFA sites, which is 3.84%. Looking at APAC, Japan hit the lowest global rate at 0.33%. But the bad news is that MFA ad impressions in the Americas often lay above the global average, climbing as high as 5.21% in the U.S. and even reaching 10.61% in Mexico.

Vertical view of ad impressions on MFA

Ad impressions on MFA sites also varied quite a bit by vertical — but all verticals came in above the 3.84% global average in this study.

We observed that the lowest rate, 3.85%, belonged to advertisers in the automotive vertical, while CPG followed closely at 4.14%. Retail rounded out the top three at 4.71% — still almost an entire percentage point above the global average.

The government/non-profit/education vertical is where things get dicey. These verticals, packaged together in this study, soared to reach an unprecedented MFA rate of 7.21%. The travel vertical also experienced a surprisingly high MFA rate of 6.84%.

Conversions and cost efficiency tell an even bigger story

After dissecting global MFA ad impression rates by vertical, we wanted to understand how conversions really differ on MFA and Ad Clutter sites versus quality sites.

Conversion rates on quality sites were 174% higher than those on MFA sites. Plus, conversion rates on quality sites are 91% higher than conversion rates on Ad Clutter sites — showing a major difference in low-funnel campaign performance on quality sites versus MFA and Ad Clutter sites.

Cost per conversion (CPCV) data followed a similar story. CPCV rates on quality sites were 51% lower than on MFA sites, and 25% lower than those on Ad Clutter sites, rounding out the notion that, when it comes to MFA, advertisers don’t need to choose between quality and cost efficiency.

IAS's AI-powered MFA solution helps advertisers increase conversions and reduce wasted ad spend

Through the fusion of advanced machine learning and real-time data analysis, our AI-powered model detects and blocks MFA sites at scale, empowering advertisers with unparalleled control over their campaigns.

With IAS’s new MFA measurement and optimization products, you can take back control of your media quality and cut down on wasted ad spend to drive superior results. 

ADVANCED MACHINE LEARNING FOR PROTECTION AT SCALE

We do not rely on a static site list to identify MFA sites. IAS provides the only solution that combines both supply chain data and site characteristics. Our AI-powered model intelligently and dynamically identifies MFA sites in real time so you can protect your campaigns at scale. 

When identifying sites as MFA or not, the fundamental question we want to answer is: is the site conducting ad arbitrage? To get to the bottom of this, we have to ask two key questions:

1. Is the majority of traffic coming to the site paid or organic? Supply chain data collected from our partner Jounce Media helps us find a conclusion to this question.
2. Is the primary purpose of the site to deliver content or ads? We then examine site characteristics collected from our partner Sincera to answer this question.

Our machine learning model then incorporates the Jounce and Sincera signals along with additional signals from IAS. If the majority of traffic coming to the site is paid and the primary purpose of the site is to deliver ads, then the model will flag the site as MFA.

INDUSTRY-ALIGNED DEFINITION OF MFA

Our MFA measurement and optimization product supports the ANA’s definition of MFA and has been trained, and is routinely vetted against, Jounce Media’s widely adopted list of MFA domains, resulting in the industry’s first pressure-tested solution for detecting and blocking MFA at scale.

DELIVER SUPERIOR CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE

The impact of MFA detection transcends conventional metrics. By avoiding MFA sites, advertisers can unlock superior campaign performance and maximize their return on ad spend.

Drive maximum efficacy across the programmatic buying process with IAS

IAS’s expanded MFA AI-driven product is now available globally. For more information, read more about finding and avoiding MFA sites or contact an IAS representative today.

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