Our own Doug Grumet, SVP of Media & Analytics, was recently interviewed for eMarketer’s latest report on Digital Ad Spending by Industry by Ross Benes. The report analyzes digital ad spending from three countries and details fascinating findings, like that US digital ad spending will reach $129.34 billion in 2019, up 19.1% from last year.    Doug spoke with Ross in depth about the shifting media landscape of the largest industries and how AMP Agency is adapting with the trends to drive greater efficiency and a stronger customer experience.    In the report, Doug shares, “Our retail and CPG clients are very active in mobile. The rationale there is around bridging the offline and online worlds. Can I leverage mobile as a retailer or as a CPG brand to either push brick-and-mortar or pull people into the ecommerce funnel?”   Check out the full report from eMarketer here:  https://www.emarketer.com/content/digital-ad-spending-by-industry-2019

On the heels of the upfront presentations, there were two major trends that came up time and again this year: Mergers & Streaming. And as has been the case in recent years, each network group took turns touting their ‘scale and brand safety’, while trying to compel the advertisers and agency attendees that their best bet would be to spend their marketing dollars with them instead of their competitors.   Mergers and Acquisitions Between ABC/Fox/Disney, Warner/Turner/ATT, and NBCU/Comcast – these massive evolving media conglomerates were front and center during upfront week and were prime targets of the comedians as well. “Because it’s AT&T, the reception will be very bad. Because it’s AT&T, the after-party will only have two bars,” Conan O’Brien joked at the upfront presentation, poking fun at the new parent company of WarnerMedia. It’s becoming harder and harder for these network groups to cover each of their properties in one presentation, but they all tried. Comcast/NBCU were able to cover NBC, Bravo, USA, Oxygen, SyFy, Telemundo, NBC Sports, and E! in just over 90min. Thanks to the Disney acquisition, Fox’s presentation focused only on the network’s primetime programming and sports, since Disney now owns most of their cable properties. And Disney sure had a lot to share. Their 2.5+ hour presentation covered ABC, ESPN, Disney, Freeform, FX, and National Geographic. Turner Media has also been renamed to the aforementioned WarnerMedia. They covered TBS, TNT, TruTV, Cartoon Network / Adult Swim, Bleacher Report, and CNN in a swift hour and 15 minute presentation.   What it means The synergies across multiple properties within one network group should allow for more comprehensive cross-property and cross-platform marketing solutions for our clients. Consolidation of ownership is not always a good thing from a competition standpoint. But as a savvy team, we’ll find ways to use these changes to our advantage and leverage our media dollars to secure the best opportunities.   Streaming is King Everyone is coming for Netflix. With live TV viewership continuing to decline, networks are looking to where the eyeballs are migrating – streaming services. After proudly touting The Office as the #1 show on Netflix, Linda Yaccarino, Chairman of Advertising and Client Partnerships at NBC Universal, informed the audience that they would soon be launching their own ad-supported service. WarnerMedia made a similar announcement on Wednesday morning – another yet-to-be-named streaming service. CBS and CW also made time in their presentations to discuss their already live services. But the biggest streaming news came out just hours before the Disney/ABC presentation on Tuesday afternoon when it was announced that they had taken full operational control of Hulu by virtue of the extra 30% share they acquired from Fox. With their stake in Hulu, and Disney+, which is expected to rollout in November, Disney is poised to make an impact in the streaming space.   What it means This biggest story in the video landscape over the last few years has been the migration from live TV to streaming. There is only a finite number of ratings that networks can sell, and each year that number shrinks. Over the last few years, networks have been pushing budgets towards their full episode players and over-the-top devices to capitalize on these additional impressions. While adaption was slow to take hold, it is now the new norm and is expected to grow over the coming years. Adding this element to media plans is a necessity to keep pace with changing consumption patterns.   Remaining Questions and Predictions While the newly formed media-monopolies and their streaming services seemed to generate the most buzz during upfront week, there was plenty more packed into the presentations.  Here are some additional big questions that advertisers were left with, and how our team at AMP sees them playing out:   How will CBS and ABC be affected by the departure of their biggest shows, Big Bang Theory and Modern Family? There are certainly big holes to fill, but networks are put in this situation every year. CBS will fill their slot with The Unicorn, a new comedy about a widowed father, and ABC will have one more season of Modern Family before they’re forced to fill that slot.   How is The Masked Singer a successful show? The Masked Singer had some great lead-ins when it premiered this January, and FOX has been promoting the program heavily. While successful in season one, ratings declined each week, and it would not be surprising to see lackluster numbers for season two as the novelty wears off.   Will viewers adapt as TBS veers away from comedy with dramas like Snowpiercer? Snowpiercer seems like a perfect fit for the sister network, TNT alongside Claws and Animal Kingdom, so placing it on TBS is an interesting choice. Viewers may take a little while to adjust, but expect lots of promotion across the old Turner networks.   Can CW continue its success in finding younger viewers with more superhero shows (Batgirl), and a Riverdale spinoff (Katy Keene)? CW knows exactly who they are. While not a linear ratings giant, they serve younger audiences well and excel in the FEP space. We expect CW to continue over-performing with the hard to reach younger demographics. The television industry has seen some major changes in the past few years, and buyers have been forced to adapt and evolve. Networks, advertisers, and viewers are all shaking things up and keeping the industry on its toes, creating a media buying landscape that it is constantly changing. We’re excited to see how this all plays out this coming TV season, and we’ll be back at it next year with more trend analyses and predictions for the 2020 season and beyond.

Our own Sara Whiteleather, VP of Media, was recently interviewed for eMarketer's latest report on Global Digital Ad Spending by Jasmine Enberg. The report details fascinating findings, like the fact that for the first time, digital will account for >50% of total global media ad spending.   Sara spoke with Jasmine in depth about the shifting media landscape and AMP Agency’s focus on driving greater efficiency and a stronger customer experience through the convergence of digital and traditional channels.   In the report, Sara shares, “Brands are continuing to break down the traditional marketing silos and think about customer experience first and foremost. That applies to traditional vs. digital and paid vs. owned. They’re thinking holistically about how to reach consumers across all the different touchpoints in the full marketing ecosystem.”   Check out the full report from eMarketer here: https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-digital-ad-spending-2019  

In early 2018, the AMP Boston Media strategy, buying and planning team was tasked with planning and executing Spindrift’s first national, multimillion dollar campaign with the goal of increasing overall recognition of the brand. In a sea of clear “natural flavors”, Spindrift is the first and only sparkling water in America to be made with real squeezed fruit. I mean, when was the last time you saw a clear raspberry?! On top of that, the fruit used in Spindrift is sourced from local farms and made in small batches so it’s a drink that you can truly feel good about. Flavors include Grapefruit, Lemon, Orange Mango, Strawberry, Blackberry, Raspberry Lime, Cucumber as well as two newer flavors, Cranberry Raspberry and Half & Half. Yum!   The goal of the campaign was to target both male and female sparkling water drinkers and educate them on Spindrift’s real ingredient difference. The media strategy approach was rooted in strong preliminary audience research, determining the best mix of digital and traditional channels to reach this target. The media team did a deep dive into not only the audience’s media habits but also their attitudes toward things like grocery shopping, health and wellness, and overall lifestyle choices. Giving the Spindrift consumer a personality helped us envision where they were on a day to day basis and how they consume media, resulting in a strong, strategically rooted media plan designed to drive business results.   The campaign is a multi-channel approach, which launched first w ith search, social and programmatic display in May and then expanded to Print, OOH and Digital Content partnerships in June and July. The campaign will run for the remainder of 2018, with the majority of the spend condensed in the summer months. OOH units are focused on five key markets – Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and Chicago. The creative, led by Mistress Agency out of LA, highlights the simplicity of the ingredients in Spindrift and the tag line “yup, that’s it”. Recently, Kristen Bell was tapped to promote Spindrift through a series of videos that are currently being promoted through programmatic, YouTube, paid social and our direct content partnerships. When Kristen is a superfan of the brand, you know it must be good!  Check out the following coverage to learn more about the campaign:   https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/322201/spindrift-launches-first-national-ad-campaign.html   http://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/07/11/superfan-kristen-bell-touts-spindrift-sparkling-waters-first-national-campaign   https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/spindrift-sparkling-water-taps-kristen-bell-to-launch-first-national-campaign-300678950.html   https://marketingindustrynews.com/2018/07/11/superfan-kristen-bell-touts-spindrift-sparkling-waters-in-first-national-campaign/   Happy reading and grab yourself a delicious Spindrift – real squeezed fruit and sparkling water, yup that’s it!

It’s rare to go a full day without reading a headline in your email inbox or on a news site highlighting the rapid demise of the retail industry. Many brands that have become household names are undergoing massive business restructuring or shuttering their doors altogether. Shopping malls that once served as go-to destinations for many communities are experiencing increasing vacancies. The perception largely driven by the media is that brick and mortar retail is a sinking ship, but what is the reality? Deloitte set out on a nearly year-long study to better understand the state of retail as it stands today and the driving forces behind recent changes. And what did they find? The silver lining.   Despite the onslaught of negative press, retail is still growing and in many places, thriving. Backed by a stable and growing economy, consumer confidence is at an all time high. Experts predict that in the next five years, online sales will grow 11.7 percent annually, and in store sales by 1.7 percent.1 That’s healthy growth across the board. Deloitte found that a big contributor to the success of brick and mortar stores actually comes down to income. Today, shoppers in lower income brackets prefer to to buy in physical stores. As the wealth gap continues to widen, more and more Americans are losing their discretionary incomes and landing in this low earning bracket. The purchases they make will likely be in person, so brick and mortar stores stand to benefit the most from this change in the distribution of wealth.   With this in mind, here are a few marketing priorities to consider:   1. Fine tune your customer acquisition strategy Yes, you know a lot about your customers, but are you investing into the right channels that will lead them (and other audiences who look like them) to make a purchase? As mentioned previously, even details like household income (HHI) play a significant role in the way people shop. Consumers with a low HHI may compare prices online before ultimately going into a nearby store to make a purchase. Your marketing dollars should be aligned with these behaviors. For many brands, it may be time to reevaluate how consumers search, and ultimately buy. Find an agency that can help you understand the unique features of your most profitable audiences, and then identify the right mix of channels to activate them. Small optimizations on the front-end can have a big impact on long-term growth.   2. Make it easy for consumers to compare prices and find inventory at nearby stores Eighty-one percent of consumers do online research before making a purchase.2 Whether shoppers are becoming more cost conscious or simply cost aware, the fact is they are more informed than ever before. Retailers should leverage local ads to motivate store visits. Solutions like Google’s Local Inventory Ads and Brand Showcase Ads allow shoppers to quickly locate information on the products they’re looking for as well as their availability in nearby stores. Google also has a feature that allows advertisers to adjust bids for individuals with a certain income range (from the top 10% to the lower 50%), who live within a certain geography. If you’re a multichannel retailer who sells discounted items, you may want to increase bids for searches that originate in an area in the lower 50% household income level. To measure the impact these ads are having on driving purchases in stores, check out Google’s Store Visits tool. Store Visits uses anonymous, aggregated data to measure the number of people who click or view ads and later visit a store.   3. Build superior storefront shopping experiences The digital and physical shopping experience shouldn’t be planned in silos, rather they should be developed as a consistent end-to-end experience. Forty-two percent of in-store shoppers search for more information while in a physical store3 and savvy retailers like Sephora are combining digital elements into their physical stores to make it easy for shoppers to explore, find and purchase the products that are right for them. Discount retailers like Marshalls are making the physical shopping experience more social by encouraging store visitors to share their unique finds with their social networks using the hashtag #marshallssurprise.   4. Leverage partnerships to grow awareness and sales Brands and retailers often market to the same consumers, so by working together, their power is magnified. With ecommerce set to experience double-digit growth over the next five years, digital co-op investments are a great way for brands to increase their exposure online and drive sales across channels. The right agency can help you identify, manage, and measure the outcomes of these opportunities.   While the Retail industry is alive and well, we are seeing a massive shift in the way multichannel retailers operate to meet the changing needs of their consumers. And let’s not count out pure-play e-tailers. Amazon is working hard to turn low income shoppers into loyal customers. Individuals who receive government assistance can qualify for a reduced $5.99 a month Prime membership, and EBT cards can now be used to pay for qualifying groceries. We expect that as brands compete more on price and free shipping becomes more universal, consumers from all income brackets will begin to make more purchases online.   As Socrates once said, “the secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”   Here’s to building the new.   You can access a copy of the Deloitte study, The Great Retail Bifurcation, here.   1 IBIS World 2 GE Capital 3 Google, Ipsos  

Someone recently asked me if there are any similarities between SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and poetry. At first it seemed like a forced question—a half-hearted attempt to connect two unrelated pursuits in order to make sense of a narrative that appears otherwise pretty jagged. That narrative being, of course, my life—as I’ve recently made the sharp and odd detour from freelance poet to SEO Coordinator in an ad agency. But I’ll tell you what I’ve found so far: poetry and SEO share more than you might expect at first glance. “The right words in the right order” This is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous definition of poetry, praising a tasteful economy of language. But think about it—is there a better description of SEO? A great title tag requires a hailstorm of googling for search volume and competition: consider all possible synonyms, with plurals, singulars, and mix the words around in every conceivable order until you hit that magic balance where the most highly-searched, relevant words and phrases that other companies aren’t using enough are perfectly placed in the right spot in the tag. Working within Constraints A few areas of SEO thrive on some pretty hard and fast limitations. Particularly in Meta Data, where Best Practices require Title Tags under 60 characters and Meta Descriptions under 155 characters. That means you better come up with something pretty compelling, ideally with choice keywords, in under the length of a Tweet. Poetry likewise has a long history of limitations, from the constraints of formal poetry (where there are strict rules on rhythm, rhyme, number of lines, and in some cases even subject), to the bizarre experiments of Dada (the great Dada writer Georges Perec penned a whole novel completely excluding the letter “e”). Works on Multiple Levels Good SEO satisfies two very disparate crowds: real live searchers and search engine crawlers. It takes great skill to speak the language of the people while playing by the complex rules of the search engines. In a similar way, memorable poetry is satisfying on the surface level while rewarding those who reread for another level of deeper meanings. Although, as far as I know at this point, search engines don’t seek out the same things that lovers of poetry do—but I wouldn’t put it past Google to incorporate a taste for verse in its SERP algorithms.    

Programmatic is no longer a buzzword – it’s the buzzword. And at the 2016 DataXu summit held recently in New York, programmatic was the core focus of two days of learning. With everything from campaign management to performance attribution on offer, attendees were able to design their own tracks by focusing either on programmatic platforms or trends. A full recap of the summit can be found here (https://www.dataxu.com/blog/dataxu-summit-2016-event-recap/). We at AMP have been working closely with DataXu this year to expand our team’s programmatic capabilities as well as our knowledge, a team effort that paid off during the second day of the summit. DataXu recognized AMP as having the first users to complete the DataXu Professional Certification, a multi-level digital curriculum designed to measure user proficiency not only in the DataXu platform, but also on core programmatic concepts. With programmatic ad spending projected to account for more than 80% of all digital display spending by the end of the decade, it is more important than ever that the AMP team remains ahead of the curve through partnerships with platforms like DataXu. Find further reading about the Professional Certification, please visit dataxu.com/training.

https://youtu.be/_BKhs9RyBIM AMP Agency leverages Lotame's Data Exchange and DMP to power MomentAware (a proprietary in-moment marketing solution that delivers the industry's most detailed audience segments) to increase engagement by 250% and decrease data cost by 83% for a leading Pet Care Brand. OBJECTIVE:  AMP Agency wanted to support a major Pet Care Brand with advanced audience targeting in order to find a niche group of pet owners most likely to respond and engage with their marketing and recruitment efforts. To do this, they relied on MomentAware, AMP's proprietary solution backed by Lotame's Data Management Platform, which marries AMP's rich demographic, psychographic, CRM and location data with a massive network of device signals (~150 MM unique mobile devices monthly). STRATEGY:  Using MomentAware and Lotame's Data Management Platform in tandem, AMP's data points provide valuable insights into consumers' pet ownership and preferences ( Dog/ Golden Retriever, Cat/ Persian), the pet owner's choice and location of grooming and veterinarian care, frequency of pet care, even the approximate location and times pet owners walk and exercise with their pets. AMP was able to enhance their existing data with additional demographics, interest, and purchase behaviors from Lotame's Data Exchange to create a robust profile of the pet owner and ensure marketing messages were delivered when and where pet owners are most receptive to messaging and offers. RESULTS:  By employing MomentAware, consumer engagement, as measured by click-through rate, increased by 250%, showcasing the advanced relevancy in regards to targeting. Thousands of new pet owners were identified that weren't included in standard third party audience segments and the advanced device graph opened up an opportunity to message consumers across devises, in the moments when they're most likely to engage. In addition, AMP Agency was able to generate data costs savings of 83% for this Pet Care Brand. Want similar results? Get in touch- info@ampagency.com  _________________________________________________________________________ About AMP Agency:  AMP Agency is a full service marketing agency with offices in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles At AMP, we believe in better ideas created a different way. It's in our heritage. Through the years, we've morphed from a non-traditional marketing agency into a full-service shop. Today, we're a team of 200+ intellectually curious individuals who are eager to solve your business challenges. About Lotame:  Lotame is a universal cross-device data management platform that is humanizing the consumer decision journey by empowering enterprises to deliver more relevant content, products, and services. Lotame unifies and enriches the world's data to create more meaningful relationships and increase commerce and brand loyalty.