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Don’t let fraudsters steal your cheer this season. Here are ways you can stay safe while gearing up for the holidays. The most wonderful time of the year is quickly approaching. While it's an exciting time for most, it's an even better time for swindlers working hard to take advantage of your generosity while you’re shopping, traveling, or exchanging gifts with friends and family. According to a 2022 AARP Fraud Watch Network™ Report, three-quarters of U.S. consumers have experienced or been targeted by at least one form of holiday-related fraud. There are several ways fraudsters will attempt to rob you of your festive mood this year but remaining vigilant against fraud is one way to lower stress during the busy holiday season. Following are six fraud schemes you should be aware of and how to prevent them. 1. Fake Social Media Gift Exchanges Exchanging gifts with friends, family, and coworkers is exciting – especially when you finally find out who drew your name for Secret Santa. This is fun in real life but never fall for online gift exchanges that pop up on your social media feed with people you’ve never met, as its most likely a scam. According to the Better Business Bureau, one notorious example of this scenario is the “Secret Sister” gift exchange campaign that quickly gained popularity years ago on Facebook. The scam promises that each participant would receive up to 36 gifts in exchange for sending one gift. Victims of this scam then enter their name, home address, and then some of their friends and family’s personal information before adding it to a list of other participants. Once added, you send a gift to a “stranger” but never get anything back. Now fraudsters have a database filled with vulnerable information that can be used to commit identity theft or in other scams. How to avoid it: For starters, always be aware of the new variations of the scheme that inevitably pop up each year. The BBB recommends that when someone promises gifts or cash by mail, email, or social media, you should: Ignore it. Report social media posts. Never give your personal information to strangers. Be wary of false claims. 2. Gift Card Scam Gift card scams are on the rise. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), nearly 40,000 consumers reported losing $148 million in gift card scams in the first nine months of 2021. Common gift card scams include fraudsters demanding people pay a fee with a gift card because they are in trouble with a government agency, like the Social Security Administration, for example, or need money for a friend or family member who needs the funds. They will demand funds from a gift card to fix a “problem” with your account and threaten to freeze it if you don’t act on their request. To avoid this scam, remember that it's not real if someone demands you pay them with a gift card. No legitimate government or agency will ask you to pay with this payment method. 3. Fake Website Scam Have a holly, jolly holiday season free of fraud. The holidays bring some of the busiest shopping days of the year. With that comes a more significant opportunity for hackers and fraudsters to target you, your business, and even your family with elaborate schemes. More than ever, consumers are choosing to shop online rather than visiting brick-and-mortar stores for all their holiday shopping needs. For example, U.S. shoppers spent a record-breaking $9.12 billion online on Black Friday, a 2.3-percent increase from the last year (1). Fraudsters are keen on trends like this, and as a result, fake website scams are growing in popularity. Scammers will create phony websites and fake online businesses, add fake “positive” reviews, throw in a fake street address (or sometimes use the actual location of an unsuspecting business), and wait for payments. Unsuspecting customers who fall for the scheme submit online payments or wire transfers for a transaction (2). Sadly, because the company does not exist, you can’t track scam artists and recover the funds. Checking to see if a website is legitimate is a simple way to prevent this type of fraud. To do so: Carefully look at the address bar and URL. Double-check the domain name — scammers will spoof domain names to make them look like legitimate websites, such as Yahoo (Yah00). Always check your address bar to ensure you will be redirected to a legitimate site before clicking on a link. Look out for poor spelling and grammar. 4. Fake Charity Scam Fake charity scams run year-round but are especially rampant during the holidays when people are in the giving spirit. According to the FBI, charity fraud schemes seek donations for organizations that do little or no work — instead, the money goes to the fake charity’s creator. This scam can come in many forms, including emails, social media posts, crowdfunding platforms, cold calls, and more. Follow these tips from the FBI to prevent this type of scam: Give to established charities or groups whose work you know and trust. Be aware of organizations with copycat names or names like reputable organizations. Do your research: use the Federal Trade Commission’s resources to examine the track record of a charity. Give using a check or credit card. If a charity or organization asks you to donate through cash, gift card, virtual currency, or wire transfer, it’s probably a scam. Practice good cyber hygiene: - Don’t click links or open email attachments from someone you don’t know. - Manually type out links instead of clicking on them. - Don’t provide any personal information in response to an email, robocall, or robotext. - Check the website’s address — most legitimate charity organization websites use .org, not .com. 5. Package Delivery Scams More online shopping means consumers are eagerly waiting for packages to arrive. Unfortunately, that means fraudsters are devising new ways to scheme you. In a delivery notification scam, fraudsters will send a fake text message or email that says a major delivery carrier needs you to “update delivery preferences” by clicking on a link (3). This is very similar to common phishing emails also used to solicit personal information. In some instances, you might receive a voicemail message stating to return a call or a “missed delivery” tag on your door with a call-back number. To avoid this type of scam, never click on a link or call if you aren’t expecting a package. Also be on the lookout for: Poor spelling or grammar. Requests for sensitive or personal information, or to update delivery information. Requests to send or move money. A sense of urgency. If you are waiting on a package, the Federal Communications Commission recommends directly contacting the delivery service or seller using a verified number or website. 6. Holiday Travel and Online Airfare Scams Based on survey reports, nearly 111 million Americans plan to travel for a December holiday such as Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa this year (4). If you plan to travel by plane, you should be aware of online airfare scams. Earlier this year, the BBB Scam Tracker found that scammers were creating fake airline ticket booking sites or customer service numbers to charge travelers for rescheduling fake flights. Picture this scenario: You’re searching online for cheap flights and find what appears to be a great deal with a well-known airline. You book the flight either online or by phone. Shortly after, you receive a call from the company stating there was a sudden price increase, or an extra fee tacked on to finalize the booking. That's when you realize you purchased tickets through a scam website or phony customer service number, which was a ploy to get more money from you. Another scenario may include fraudsters sending you a fake email or text message claiming your real flight has been canceled. If you call to book another flight without verifying the claim, you have just given your credit card information to a scammer. To avoid travel scams, the BBB recommends you: Do your research. Double-check flight details before calling support. Confirm the URL before you enter personal and payment information. Be wary of third-party websites. Make online purchases with your credit card, as you can usually dispute them. You Become a Victim of Fraud. Now What? If you took all the steps to prevent a fraudulent attack or holiday scam and it still happened, don’t worry. You aren’t alone. Acting quickly against fraudsters is the first step to stopping them. Here are ways you can recover after an attack: Think locally and report the scam to your local law enforcement. Match the agency to the crime: find the correct government agency to help you handle your case. Focus on emotional healing. This time of year is filled with lots of hustle and bustle, but don’t let that distract you from staying alert to common scams and nefarious schemes like those above. Staying vigilant during the holiday season means you can celebrate the holiday season with friends and family without fearing a fraudulent disruption. Sources: Investopedia: Online Retail Sales Hit Record $9 Billion on Black Friday North Dakota: Fake Website Scams Federal Communications Commission: How to Identify and Avoid Package Delivery Scams The Vacationer

Leaders from the PDMI’s member companies share their visions of what the new year holds in store for performance marketers. By Thomas Haire This is the cover story of Results Magazine's December 2022 issue. Click here to read this feature via our digital publication website or simply scroll down to continue reading here. Forget "the new normal" — when are we going to get a year any of us could describe as "normal" in any way, any time soon? As 2022 wraps up, we can look back and see that this was the year most Americans — no matter their beliefs — came to terms with how to live in a world that will include Covid-19 for the foreseeable future. But just as that acceptance arrived, so too did economic uncertainty primed by the worst inflation in more than 40 years. Consumers came out of the heart of the pandemic primed to spend — but faced new challenges. Whatever issues consumers face influence performance and direct-to-consumer marketers. In this industry, we started the year worried about the supply chain, customer satisfaction, data privacy, and the shifting balance between linear and streaming TV. Now, as we look ahead at 2023, what’s the buzz? Well, how things play out in the linear/streaming/CTV wars remains of paramount importance to brands and their media buyers. At the same time, a possible economic recession (or are we already in one?) hovers over the horizon like a storm cloud. It’s these topics — and many more — that we heard about as we reached out to our PDMI member companies (more than 130 strong) with a simple ask: give us your two fearless predictions for 2023. It’s an exercise we’ve done now since the end of 2020, and it’s always intriguing. Who put themselves on the line this year? Executives — or full teams — from 10 PDMI member companies decided to share their expertise by offering their wisdom about the next 12 months. Give them a read — and then hop over to our YouTube channel to watch our Jan. 17, 2023, Winter Seminar Series webinar featuring more leaders from our PDMI councils kicking around their own predictions for the coming year. Dieter Ammann, Fulfillment Express Stagnation: as the economy sinks, the entire DTC business will suffer because people won’t have extra cash to spend on the many frivolous things they spent money on in the past. The Team at Blockboard We should not fear the next recession. Now more than ever, each dollar matters. Heading into 2023 and on the cusp of a recession, advertisers need 100-percent transparency to ensure effectiveness in their media investments. Shifting their traditional business models to include innovative technologies will help companies through the challenging times ahead. CTV will become a primary marketing channel. In 2022, 92 percent of U.S. households were reachable by CTV programmatic advertising, including more than 110 million among Gen Z and millennials. As audiences continue to flock to streaming, CTV will need to be prioritized, and marketers should be testing now before they are behind. The Team at Bluewater In 2023 we predict more "Great Marketing Migration." We expect more clients to make the turn to performance marketing. It’s our time to shine, driving the most effective direct-to-consumer strategies and results for clients. Fourth-quarter 2022 saw huge companies make tightening moves (layoffs for Amazon, Meta, and Twitter included). This tightening will precipitate a heavier migration to performance-driven marketing. The financial pressure to outperform a 2022 that showed an economic downturn for many companies means they will look for more value from every marketing venture and expect to squeeze more performance from each advertising asset. That pressure creates great opportunity for companies like Bluewater, who thrive at driving measurable results. We also predict 2023 will bring more consolidation and aggregation of streaming platforms. This will open even more opportunity for performance marketers like Bluewater in the wildly fragmented streaming ad market. 2022 brought the merger of Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, as well as a merger of HBO Max and Discovery+. At some point soon, someone will take a page out of the Jeff Bezos’ book and "start with the consumer and work backwards," so they can get all the content they want aggregated in an easy-to-use centralized way. Geoff Crain, Kingstar Media Earned media will become a primary focus for many brands; and AI advancements in conversational marketing will continue to improve the customer service experience. TikTok will continue to grow and attract an older, more affluent audience in 2023. Advertisers can take advantage of this by creating content in-house or using micro-influencers. This form of "earned media" does not require any paid media as it will often grow organically and lead to added revenue and engagement. Calling an 800 number and waiting on the phone to speak with a live agent is a trend that has been declining for years. AI technology is advancing and replacing live agents. Brands are now able to use chatbot technology to build conversational marketing via live chats online. Consumers can communicate in the chatbot and receive instant, personalized responses. This leads to higher brand loyalty and repeat purchases. Lucio Maramba, Maramba Insights Inc. Our current advertising infrastructure will have to adapt and evolve to augmented reality, just as it has with the addition of streaming and social media ads. Our industry needs to be ready to embrace this new category and be ready to leverage our proven flexibility to make sure we stay on the leading edge of how to properly, and responsibly, adapt and deploy direct response content via this new advertising vehicle. I also expect to see inventory and opportunities for advertising on streaming platforms to explode. The key will be the evolution in the ability to track and manage the results. Our industry will need to navigate the balance between privacy regulation and our ability to get the data we need to accurately manage our campaigns. Alex Nazarevich, LeadsRx A big shift to performance-driven marketing is here. With ad budgets under pressure, we will continue to see ad dollars migrate away from brand to channels delivering quantifiable results. This brings a fresh urgency to measurement capabilities that deliver insights growth marketers need to scale their best-performing channels aggressively. AI, a martech buzzword for years, finally comes into play. The big shift to performance-driven marketing, coupled with resource constraints across many teams, paves the way for AI to deliver value through augmentation of marketers’ efforts. The Team at Pacific Media Technologies Consumers will spend more in 2023. The new year will be a jumble of mixed signals, reflecting a unique environment characterized by opposing forces: exuberance as the pandemic wanes, tempered by caution in the face of economic turbulence. In a nutshell, consumers will not be shy about spending in 2023. The U.S. economy will not fall into a recession in 2023. If the Fed stamps out inflation in the near-term by forcefully reducing its balance sheet, it will drive up interest rates, cool financial markets sharply, and possibly create a modest recession next year led by short-lived consumer cutbacks, according to this bold outlook. The Team at Paymerang Automation and adoption of new technology will continue to be at the forefront of companies. More companies are seeing the benefits of going digital: boosted efficiency, visibility into cash flow, reduced operating costs, real-time data insights, and, most importantly, fulfilled employees. Economic uncertainty has accelerated the need for automation as most companies struggle more than ever to do more with less. Partnerships are also the key to growth in the media market. Strategic partnerships mutually benefit those who share the same goals and mission. For example, Paymerang provides best-in-class finance automation solutions that help clients combat labor shortages and shrinking budgets. With automation, users can focus on what matters most to them. Both partners can successfully grow together. Gregory Silvano, Buyist A resurgence of television advertising. What’s old is new. 2023 will see additional states implementing California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)-like legislation and more big-tech changes like cookie-less browsers. This will lessen the allure of some digital marketing and bring marketers back to television advertising for its broad reach and cost-effectiveness. Fern Lee and Lori Zeller, THOR Associates Influencer marketing is going to become a hybrid of traditional and digital tactics that will rest its laurels on word-of-mouth brand fame as well as user-generated content (UGC) creating brand awareness and driving conversions, while at the same time collecting consumer data and redefining the marketing landscape. Social media, as we know, it will change. TikTok will outmaneuver Instagram and Facebook. Decreasing ad revenue on those platforms will create financial havoc. Artificial intelligence will serve consumers easy and open purchasing apps embedded in the advertising on these apps. Data capture will struggle to adhere to the privacy rulings of the FCC and FTC. As a result, chief revenue officers, chief experience officers, and chief marketing officers will have refined responsibilities that all will fall under the chief information/technology officer. SIDEBAR 2022 in 10 Words or Less These same 10 PDMI companies and leaders also shared their feedback to another question — one that gives us a quick last look back at 2022 before we buy the ticket and take the ride into 2023: Give us a headline — 10 words or less — to describe 2022 for you, your company, or the industry, and then tell us why. The insights below are revealing and give an even deeper perspective to each’s predictions for the coming year. Dieter Ammann, Fulfillment Express Tremendous growth in the DTC marketing industry propelled us forward. The Team at Blockboard Blockboard maximizes advertising performance by guaranteeing zero-waste ad campaigns. Blockboard is a programmatic 2.0 platform that leverages Web3 tools to pre-verify every ad call, vet each impression, and ensure truthful, no-waste results for all ad campaigns. Blockboard is strengthening the relationship between the advertiser and its consumers by guaranteeing real, human-viewed results. The company is leading the next generation of digital advertising and combating fraud in the market by delivering transparent and performance-driven results to CTV/OTT advertisers. The Team at Bluewater A welcomed migration. We would summarize 2022 as a welcomed migration of clients moving from general to direct-to-consumer marketing. This year, Bluewater welcomed many new clients that left their general agencies in search of our direct-to-consumer expertise. From lead-gen to tech to big-brand CPG companies, the migration is well underway, and we see no turning back for these brands. Geoff Crain, Kingstar Media 2022 pushed us to revamp our USP and test new mediums. With rising costs and declining response rates, we saw many brands struggle to maintain pre-pandemic sales numbers. This made Kingstar focus on redefining its USP and helping brands achieve KPI targets beyond the first sale. We also increased our focus on the iGaming vertical and capitalized on the growth in this area. While linear TV is still the best way to reach a mass audience, today’s consumer landscape is fragmented. People are watching content on a variety of channels, and it was important for Kingstar to continue to develop our omnichannel expertise and multi-platform advertising approach. Lucio Maramba, Maramba Insights Inc. Steady growth in a cautious market, heavily reliant on analytics. The pandemic has brought us back to basics when it comes to data. If there is a silver-lining, it is the recognition that our current technology allows us to more accurately track results, across all platforms, and that proper analysis has allowed us to adapt and evolve during uncertain times. In 2022, our partnerships with our clients were stronger than ever, as they embraced and leveraged the insights gleaned to optimize campaigns and identify new opportunities. Analytics has experienced a sort of renaissance, and everyone benefits from accountable media. Alex Nazarevich, LeadsRx Fail fast, pivot quickly: every customer counts. The Team at Pacific Media Technologies We changed, applied new technology, adapted, learned, and grew. In many ways, 2022 will be remembered as a breakout year fueled with optimism and hope but clouded with altogether new challenges for businesses. While the advertising industry continued to emerge from the restrictive business conditions of the previous two years, old lessons from the past were reaffirmed. Businesses must always remain flexible, nimble, and efficient to create the resilience required for business success. The Team at Paymerang Paymerang provides finance automation for the modern enterprise. Paymerang, a strategic partner and prominent accounts payable (AP) automation provider, delivers streamlined invoice and payment automation solutions that bring AP departments into the modern age. Paymerang saves AP departments thousands of hours annually, enhances visibility, increases accuracy, improves efficiency, and earns rebates while reducing paper, fraud risks, and operating costs. This allows teams to focus on more client-facing activities and mission-critical goals while exploring new ways to run their businesses more strategically and profitably. Gregory Silvano, Buyist Yet another new normal. We had pre-Covid, Covid, and we’re now in the first stages of post-Covid e-commerce. E-commerce marketers have been hit with privacy changes though iOS and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), inflation, a pending recession, a new retail environment, and more this year. Nobody could have guessed how 2022 was going to play out at this time last year, when we were concerned about global supply chain issues. Fern Lee and Lori Zeller, THOR Associates Results. ROI. Revenue Every year, we goal to bring results, ROI, and revenue to our clients. 2022 was no exception. Our team strives to deliver best-in-class performance-based marketing initiatives. When we say team, we are happy to share that 2022 made us "proud mamas," as we birthed THOR Digital. Collectively, we create omnichannel strategy and execute from fruition to completion opening the funnel for consumer engagement.

You’ve no doubt heard the doom-and-gloom around the predicted economic downturn headed our way. Financial guru and prognosticator Jamie Dimon has been leading the chorus, predicting an almost-certain U.S. recession in the next six to nine months. We’ve been here before, just a few short years ago. In 2020, the U.S. experienced its worst recession since the Great Depression. You may have blocked this out, but recall that in March 2020, the Federal Reserve lowered fund rates to virtually 0%. The U.S. economy shrunk a record 31.2% in the second quarter after falling 1.5% the previous year, prompting stock markets to plummet. In April 2020, our country saw 20.5 million jobs disappear, ratcheting the unemployment rate up to 14.7% — and it stayed in the double digits for months. All of which compelled the U.S. Congress to come to the rescue with billions of dollars in aid. And while the economy did rebound — with 33.8% growth — in the third quarter, it wasn’t enough to fully recover from the tremendous hit it had already taken. When confronted the threat of another recession, businesses naturally respond by tightening belts and slashing budgets — including their marketing budgets. They certainly did just that during the Great Recession of 2008, when the U.S. ad market declined by 13% as businesses reduced their ad spends. All indications point to companies doing the same this time around. However, for performance-based advertisers there is hope. Click here to continue by visiting River Direct’s blog post on direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing during a recession.

Frank Cannella looks back, shares wisdom, and prepares to leave Cannella Media DTC ready for its next 40 years. By Thomas Haire This is a feature story from Results Magazine's September 2022 issue. Click here to read this feature via our digital publication website or simply scroll down to continue reading here. "A lot of times, businesspeople forget how interconnected everybody is," says Frank Cannella, founder of Burlington, Wis.-based Cannella Media DTC. "One campaign can feed thousands of families. What happens in our industry should not be taken for granted. I know that, often, we’ve been considered the Rodney Dangerfield of advertising. But for those of us who’ve been in it — for me, 40 years plus — it’s something to be proud of. The smart entrepreneurs of our industry — our clients — have figured that out. And on the media vendor side, they’ve also been able to adapt and endure." As his agency pushes on toward its 40th anniversary, three years hence, Cannella is stepping into retirement in October. At age 65, he says it’s time. "I’ve gone from the father of the infomercial to the grandfather of the infomercial," he adds with a laugh. Cannella’s path leads back directly to the beginning of the infomercial era, around the time that then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration deregulated TV advertising. When asked about his most memorable moments, he starts there. "Obviously, the most important one was being young and naïve and challenging the media industry to accept program-length commercials back in 1982," he says. "The second was meeting a young, smart guy with great ideas and energy and a do-anything attitude, named Rob Medved. We’ve been together since 1995." Cannella also credits a pair of key clients with transforming the agency’s business. "We went from being a consultancy into being a cable media broker — which turned us into the kings of cable for a long period of time," he says. "But then we got involved with our client and partner Tristar, with a product called the Banjo Minnow. That really expanded our media buying capabilities. And then, coming right off of that, was Tae Bo. We were the primary agency behind Tae Bo’s media buying because of our cable inventory." The agency’s creation of a per-inquiry (PI) media platform in the mid-2000s — which Cannella and Medved led — "obviously transformed the business dramatically," Cannella says, as did adding short-form buying in more recent years. "We’re a company that’s evolved over time." He also points to the creation of the trademark-pending Direct Response Listing (DRL), for which he gives much credit to Medved, as a key point in Cannella Media’s success. "That changed the media world again," Cannella says. "Now, all of a sudden, instead of a listing showing ‘Paid Programming,’ it actually had information like "Drop 3 Dress Sizes" and "Buy Real Estate With No Money Down." We could turn that ‘Paid Programming’ listing into actual direct response ad copy." Cannella speaks often of an entrepreneurial spirit in the direct response and direct-to-consumer marketing world. And he believes that Cannella Media’s ability to continue to transform itself to fit the times starts there. "I have always described us as media entrepreneurs. We’ve learned to adapt, grow, evolve, and succeed where others have failed in this industry," he says. "And our industry has always been dominated by marketing entrepreneurs. So being an adaptive, evolving media company came very naturally to us in order to serve our clients properly and for them to succeed. Working with entrepreneurs is totally unpredictable and motivating. They keep you on your toes, and that’s what’s made this business so much fun. Working with entrepreneurs has taught us to be really good entrepreneurs ourselves." Cannella also credits the agency’s tight partnerships with media outlets. "Our strong relationships with media vendors over the years have been equally important. So many have listened to our concerns, industry challenges, and given us underlying support in so many ways that, inevitably, it has made both Cannella Media and our clients successful," he says. "One of our company mantras is to create a true win-win-win for all the players in the game. And I think a lot of that’s been done by having that great three-way relationship with our clients and the media vendors." Another key moment in Cannella Media’s development was the 2005 acquisition of Bill Raymond’s Los Angeles-based agency Media for the Masses. That led to the opening of a West Coast office headed by Raymond, who remains executive vice president and managing partner of the L.A. location. Raymond remembers being awed, initially, by Cannella. "I was introduced to Frank through a mutual client. At the time, all I knew was that Frank Cannella and his team were the ‘Kings of Cable.’ They controlled the media," he says. "When Frank and I first met, I was young — around 30 years old — and I would be lying if I told you I was not nervous around Frank. I also was quite the arrogant, know-it-all kid, so Frank and I butted heads quite a bit in the early days. But I learned a lot. In fact, I nicknamed him Papa Frank. So, thank you, Frank, for putting up with me." If you’re noticing a theme of long-term internal partnerships and aloyal team, that’s not a coincidence. Cannella often speaks of the agency as a family. "Perhaps, it’s my Italian heritage," he says. "We grew up with strong family ties. It formed, for me, a management style that spoke to being loyal to our Cannella staff and therefore, as necessary, to their families during times of crisis and times of celebration. I like to think of myself as being a leader, but I have been successful surrounding myself with great people and therefore, I still say I’ve never worked a day in my life. If you hire great people and let them do their job, then you only have to weigh in when necessary or asked." Because of this, Cannella feels comfortable handing off the reins. "At this point, the foundation has been laid, and the team knows what to do. And they’ll continue with our ‘Golden Rule’ philosophy of treating others as you wish them to treat you," Cannella says. "With Rob and Bill, we’ve built a heck of a company, and it will continue for many years to come because of the foundation and internal mentoring. That’s one reason I would like to see us all back working together in an office environment: for that mentoring — both among peers and also sharing the Cannella philosophy with newer members of our team." When asked what he hopes is next for his namesake agency, he adds, "The simple answer is another 40 years — that they can continue this great machine that we’ve started. I hope it continues the philosophies, the mantras, and the family going in that spirit for years to come." Raymond echoes the founder when asked what Cannella Media’s next steps might be. "Knowing that we will continue to run the company with the principles Frank taught us is more important than where the business is headed following Frank’s retirement," he says. "The core of the business will not change. We will continue to be an entrepreneurial and results-focused organization that treats our clients, media vendors, and staff the way we want to be treated. We will continue to skillfully navigate the market, whether that is expanding further into digital or exploring shorter lengths on new platforms. Our focus will always be on addressing the problem/solution with strong creatives supported by data driving all decisions. We will continue to enhance our resources in these areas to deliver positive client results." What’s next for Cannella himself? "It seems like everybody answers this question with, ‘Sleeping late and golf.’ But I’m an early riser, and every morning I share my coffee with The Wall Street Journal. Everybody in my circle knows that. That won’t change. And I don’t golf," he says with a smile. Cannella adds that he and his wife Susan — who split their time in Napa, Calif., and St. Petersburg, Fla. — will "spend more time planning our travels, seeing the kids and grandkids, and entertaining friends. Life has been good to me. Sharing it with those close to me makes it even more rewarding. And I hope I continue to be invited to the Cannella Media parties." As he readies to take those final steps out the door, Cannella is striding with gratitude. "A sincere thank you to our clients who have trusted us and put their dollars with us over the years," he says. "To the vendors who have listened to us — not only in the good times when we’ve celebrated, but also the bad times when trends changed, and we needed help. They’ve been there." Cannella continues, "And, of course, thank you to the staff. We’ve got Cannella family members who’ve been with us for years. Turnover is a more recent phenomenon for us. For many years, we had very little turnover, and I think that speaks volumes for what we do. We must be doing something right in creating an environment." Cannella Media DTC LLC Locations: 848 Liberty Drive, Burlington, WI 53105 12100 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 650, Los Angeles, CA 90025 Phone: Burlington: (262) 763-4810 Los Angeles: (323) 935-4995 Website: www.cannellamedia.com

Eleven women who lead media agencies take a crack at just a few of the questions answered on stage during the "Women Warriors" panel at PDMI West on Oct. 26. By Thomas Haire This is the cover story of Results Magazine's September 2022 issue. Click here to read this feature via our digital publication website or simply scroll down to continue reading here. At PDMI West in San Diego on Wednesday, Oct. 26, PDMI E-Commerce Council member Fern Lee — CEO of New York-based THOR Associates — hosted a roundtable discussion among a group of women who serve as top-line media agency executives in performance and direct-to-consumer marketing. Titled "Women Warriors: Media Executives Discuss the Present and Future of Performance," video of the session is available on our Youtube channel by clicking here. The session dove into how these executives are providing clients media channels with unique opportunities, through the journey from direct response to brand response and via connected TV (CTV) and OTT, along with numerous other marketing initiatives. The ability to navigate these channels and run a profitable media agency speaks volumes to these leaders and their business acumen. Results asked Lee for just three of the many questions that she had her group address in front of the live audience. She agreed, and we then flipped these questions out a group of women who serve in media agency executive leadership positions in business from across the PDMI membership. Read on for the thoughtful responses from 11 of these women — including some who sat on stage in San Diego. How do you feel your "inner warrior" has contributed to your agency’s success? Nancy Arnold, owner and chief marketing officer, Diray Media: Successfully partnering with strong, inspired, innovative and caring people. We are women-owned and led, and fiercely passionate about our clients’ success. At Diray, performance is more than an objective; it’s in our DNA. We see challenges as opportunities. And we define success as our clients’ success. Diray was there for the media shift from broadcast to cable, and the commerce shift with the rise of the big box store (Walmart) take-over. We see a lot of similarities in the navigation of that shift to the rise in streaming, Amazon’s takeover of e-commerce, and the proliferation of ways to reach people and drive performance. We work in a real-time, test-and-learn environment, which requires a nimble, agile, and forward-thinking approach. These values led the last 35-plus years of success and are why our team continues to inspire and deliver growth. Denira Borrero, COO, Omni Direct: Our world changes daily based on various market conditions, the media landscape, current events, and the business priorities of our clients. To succeed in this business over the long haul, you have to approach every day with a warrior-like passion for digging into the data and responding quickly to consumer, market, and technology trends. That includes having resilience and staying power to overcome the ups and downs of a performance marketing business, because it’s through failing, learning, and pivoting fast that we are able to profitably scale campaigns at record pace. We enjoy going into the fight every day on behalf of every client and every campaign, and I believe that has been part of our secret sauce for remaining competitive and relevant for more than 20 years as an agency. Anat Freed, vice president and managing director, Kingstar Media: I have never really thought of myself as a "warrior" and certainly credit the success of Kingstar Media as the result of many great people who are committed to growth and excellence, as opposed to a solitary focus on that excellence. It has taken a lot of focus and discipline during the past 19 years to grow and expand the core business, along with a lot of hard work, patience, and compassion in our constantly changing media landscape. My expectations are high — for my staff, vendors, and partners. I always try to see both sides and lead the teams to achieve the best possible outcome for all. Christena Garduno, CEO, Media Culture: As a female CEO and leader who built a career from the bottom up, I’ve faced my fair share of difficulties. But since I know others depend on me, I strive to be strong, driven, and quick on my feet to adapt and tackle problems. During the pandemic, instead of worrying about our company’s future, I spent my time analyzing market trends and researching how to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic. My findings became beneficial and helpful for our company during those tough times. Through my dedication and hard work, I was not just able to create innovative business strategies, I have also influenced my team to give the same level of effort and commitment in trying to reach our goals. When I reflect on my success as a leader, I can’t help but think about how I depend on my team just as much as they depend on me. So, I always seek opportunities to learn and improve myself. Where I cannot provide solutions, I keep an open mind to gain new insights and maintain honesty to instill trust and confidence in my team and our clients. Since challenges are inevitable, I always carry a positive mindset and a bright attitude as we face difficulties. I also try my best to influence positivity, where everyone on the team recognizes the bad and good in every situation and still chooses to focus on the good. This leads us to taking meaningful actions when something terrible happens to achieve the outcomes we are aiming for. Michelle Green, president, Two Twelve Direct: Any success our agency has achieved is attributable to a focus on trust as a principle and intuition, giving us an ability to authentically connect to our stakeholders. Amid an industry that can be transactional and transitory in nature, I’ve focused on building enduring relationships with our clients, team members, and industry partners. This is not something that is achieved overnight; it takes commitment day in and day out, but the reward is a sense of inner calm that steadies that inner warrior, knowing we have done everything possible to build equity capable of withstanding the ups and downs of an oft-volatile industry. Karen Kluger, founder/CEO, Touch-Point Integrated Communications: Staying relevant in our rapidly changing media world is critical to our agency’s successes and equally — if not of more importance — to the success of our clients. Balancing branding and response is a skill that DR agencies have had to master as they go hand-in-hand now, along with the use of technology and data to perfect our trade. Collaboration with our clients, ensuring we build profitable and balanced media programs delivering not only against KPIs but providing the ability to scale and grow businesses, is critical. It takes aggressive strategic moves to keep our agencies competitive and profitable and our business takes no prisoners. We must be secure in what we know our strengths to be and be knowledgeable and confident enough to turn any weaknesses into strengths. "Fate whispers to the warrior ... You cannot withstand the storm, and the warrior whispers back ... I am the storm." — Jake Remington Marianna Morello, CEO, Manhattan Media Services: Being known as a "trail blazer" and winning the Folio Award in this category, I guess I have always been an "inner warrior." I have been a fighter from the day I opened MMSI 27 years ago to do my best for our clients and also to keep a balance with our vendors. But times have changed — especially in the past two years — and we have to fight much harder to help our clients make it through these difficult times! MMSI is an agency that works so closely with our clients to be sure we can assist them to achieve the ROI they need to stay profitable. With that as our goal, we have expanded from just a print media agency to add a division for digital/social media. Kelsey Bugden and Andrea McEvady are our pros who head up this division. We also provide out-of-home (OOH) media when the marketing plans call for it. The "inner warrior" is someone who changes with times and seeks the best solutions for our client’s needs! Jennifer Peabody, president, Havas Edge: I’ve been cursed and blessed with a mind that is in perpetual overdrive. In my free time, I create lists of "things to explore," running the gamut from professional to personal topics I am interested in learning about. I believe this thirst for "what’s next" has helped Havas Edge evolve over the years to stay relevant in an ever-changing landscape and to be future-focused by consistently challenging where we are and where we are headed. Asieya Pine, president, Lockard & Wechsler Direct: Some believe a warrior is fearless, but I don’t think anything can be accomplished in life without a little fear: fear of competition; fear of failure; fear of not being the best. To me, the warrior spirit is about overcoming these natural fears to persevere in the face of tough challenges. In this regard, my inner warrior is tested every day. Our clients have entrusted us with huge sums of money that could make or break their companies. Our many employees and their families depend on us for their livelihood. This means that most of my decisions are high-risk decisions, and the agency is depending on me to decide correctly. Sometimes, it’s even just about taking action in the face of what could be paralyzing indecision. It could be something as simple as taking the lead on a hard conversation, or it could be something as complex as choosing how to invest now for success later. I think of the last three years, in particular. If not for a warrior spirit, I would never have had the strength to endure the challenges of the pandemic or the courage to make the significant investments we made in order to not only survive but continue to be the best at what we do. Gina Pomponi, president and COO, Bluewater: I wake up every morning and the voice in my head says, "Let’s take over the world today!" Then I have a couple cups of coffee and rein myself in just a touch. In all seriousness, the warrior inside of me is focused, determined, and highly driven to succeed. I bring it every day to everything I do and always have. I believe it has made me more successful at all three agencies I’ve helped build. The opportunity with Bluewater was different. Not only did I have the opportunity to build a successful media business, but as a partner, I was also doing it for myself this time around. Bluewater Media was a successful and reputable creative production company prior to me joining. Andy Latimer and the other partners stepped back and let me do my thing. I developed a media team with structure and processes and set it for scale. My primary focus was to bring in new business and feed the strong media team I set up. I did this immediately — and drove significant growth each year. I’ve always loved building media businesses. It’s like a drug. But my inner warrior really comes to life when it comes to my clients. I love to put a strategy together for a client who has a challenge and see it succeed. I love to know that we played a role in the client’s success, and in turn, ours as well. There is nothing like being a direct marketer and seeing immediate results. It’s exhilarating. It’s the fire we all live to stoke. But this time, I didn’t stop with TV media. I developed an account management team to keep us on strategy and act as the internal client voice across services. Next, I took over the digital media team and brought it together with TV media, as it should be. Bluewater’s creative may have set it apart as a leader in direct-to-consumer strategy but the combination of our creative warriors with the media-and-analytics warriors created one of the top full-service, direct-to-consumer agencies in our industry. That makes my inner warrior smile. We are well poised to take a client challenge, then develop and build a successful campaign! Carrie Smith, COO, Apex Media: When asked how my "inner warrior" has contributed to our organization’s success, I can’t help but to reflect on the 30-plus years Apex Media has spent building a legacy in our industry, serving hundreds of clients, generating billions of dollars in revenue for them. It’s very humbling to be part of something of this magnitude. When I think about my "inner warrior," I know she is passionate about facing this ever-changing world with: the wisdom gained from all life’s experiences; embracing a daring attitude to navigate through the unknown; creating daily routines to achieve balance between career and home life; nurturing a natural curiosity to learn new things, along with embracing necessary change; and a serving mindset that continues to provide value to our clients. What channels do you see providing the least or the most growth opportunities for today’s marketers — and why? Arnold: Connected TV (CTV) is the biggest growth opportunity for our clients today. It is an emerging sector that exploded in 2020. It still has maturing and much innovation to come via new formats, e-commerce, and content opportunities. Utilizing CTV has allowed us to expand our audiences (demos, ages, etc.) and reach those we couldn’t otherwise reach via linear (cord cutters). It is very fragmented, and there is debate and confusion on how best to approach it. Still, now is the time to invest in a test-and-learn strategy so you are ready for the future. Linear TV is still a driver and not going away, but streaming full-episode content is growing and certainly here to stay. Borrero: The fastest-growing channels for paid media continue to be in the digital space, including social media and search, but we’ve seen a drastic movement of offline TV viewership into streaming OTT platforms. The pandemic hyper-accelerated this inevitable trend, and we expect ad dollars to continue shift at exceptionally high rates into these channels in the next 12 months. Freed: I see the most opportunity for growth on TikTok and CTV. While my specialty is linear TV, I can’t deny the year-over-year growth in terms of new users and time spent. More users and more time spent means more impressions for marketers to take advantage of. Both channels also will see a decrease in CPMs as supply is anticipated to grow to keep up with demand. Garduno: Digital marketing is where the most opportunity for growth lies. Marketers can amplify their reach and increase revenue by investing in digital marketing: social media, web content, blogs, and email marketing. In the digital age, smartphones have been embraced all over the world thanks to the development of the internet. This allows marketers to reach potential customers through their mobile phones anytime and anywhere. Social media is undoubtedly a top-tier digital marketing option to reach more customers within a short time. Social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms can definitely boost reach. These pages give an avenue for brands to showcase their products and services, highlighting quality, functionality, and value to consumers. Social media also connects brands to consumers on a personal level because it creates a platform where they can communicate directly through messages and comments. Before making decisions, buyers often do their research to check and compare goods and services. Marketers should also do search engine optimization (SEO) to achieve the best search results and increase website traffic. Digital marketing is the way for marketers who hope to improve their performance and reach. However, they must conduct proper digital marketing activities. Marketers should also avoid ignoring the competition and develop better marketing strategies. Green: One of the fastest growing channels for digital and DTC marketers and has been through utilizing influencer content on social media platforms. Repurposing the content for ads to scale and drive more ROI, this will continue to grow. However, I think what’s old is new again. Television is presenting marketers with areas of growth as, with new technology, an audience-based approach is more portable now than ever. How TV is activated for linear and OTT will vary, but there will be more ability to target more refined audiences. With continued fragmentation and more people home, TV will stay powerful. Kluger: Print (trades, magazines, and newspapers) falls into the "least growth" category. Decreases in printed circulation, as well as immediacy of digital news, continues to push readers online versus waiting for printed versions of publications. Per PwC’s Entertainment and Media Outlook, by 2025, 51 percent of magazine and 41 percent of newspaper ad spend will become digital dollars. Consumers are spending less time with traditional channels. eMarketer says there has been a 14-percent decrease in traditional media consumption from 2018 vs. projected final 2022 figures, while digital consumption is projected to increase 29 percent during the same window. Despite trends, we still see magazines and newspapers resonating well with an older demographic. And select print categories — niche and select mass publications — continue to be viable options for endemic brands. From a "most growth" perspective, streaming leads the field. Increased FAST partners, pending ad-supported tiers for Netflix and Disney+, the ability to reach viewers in a less cluttered video environment, and the lower cost-of-entry vs. linear make the tactic prime for growth. Tentpole events, quality content (as illustrated by the Emmys) and advanced geo/demo targeting capabilities increase the appeal and will continue to drive advertisers to the channel. For example, one of our clients typically allocated more than 50 percent of its media budget to linear TV. With a reduced media investment for the upcoming year, the team reevaluated TV’s budget allotment and its role in the integrated campaign. Replacing linear with OTT/streaming, TV’s role shifted from umbrella coverage to a targeted, focused tactic. Capitalizing on targeting options, spend was concentrated against priority segments and geography, providing the benefits of the channel with a lower out-of-pocket commitment and minimal waste. Morello: Twitter and Facebook are slowly leaving our radar as the best growth opportunity. Twitter users are more focused on what users are saying, and view it as a source of news, so interaction with ads is on the lower end. With a plethora of advertisements on Facebook and new privacy changes with the iOS software updates, not only are we seeing a decrease in the targeting availability, but also with the numbers of users interacting with ads daily. Short-form video platforms like TikTok, as well as audio platforms like Spotify for podcasts, can offer a new style of advertising that is not only fresh for the viewer but palatable and appears more natural. Peabody: As consumption evolves, all media becomes relevant and should be on the table for brands to consider. Consumer behavior is dynamic and, therefore, impressions are fluid from one channel to another throughout the day. The opportunity to reach a consumer shifts across channels, so portfolio management is the best media investment strategy to capitalize on scalability. Pine: It’s an ongoing challenge to answer this question because the way people consume media continues to change each year. When I started in this business 23 years ago, there were just three top-performing media types: TV, print, and radio. Today, there are almost too many to list. As the ways of delivering content proliferate, so do the ways of advertising. I know everyone is probably tired of hearing the words "an omnichannel approach," but that really is the key to success today. Media has become so fragmented that the only way to grow is to hit all of the key touchpoints in order to reach your target audience. Of course, this creates another challenge. Those who experiment with too many new channels at once tend to get overwhelmed as they struggle to understand which one is making the greatest contribution to their overall revenue. It can get very confusing, very fast. Our approach is to sit down with marketers and help them identify their target customers and take the time to understand how they consume media. For example, with many of my DTC clients, we have learned that both streaming video and connected TV (CTV) perform well as drivers of new sales. The CTV landscape is still rapidly evolving, but we’ve seen it effectively add incremental growth to linear TV campaigns and provide the scale needed for growth. Such top-of-funnel marketing is also helping improve conversions on social, search, and email campaigns. The combined reach and frequency of these channels is still the key to our clients’ success. A few additional channels with significant growth upside are TikTok, podcasting, and influencer marketing. The biggest challenge with these channels is the ability to create enough content with the right messaging (and pricing) in a short amount of time. That’s what’s necessary to get to the scale required for incremental success, but no one has quite figured it out yet. The most important thing, which I tell our clients all the time, is to keep testing while using different channels to create multiple points of contact. In other words: keep your media mix as diverse as your audience. Pomponi: Streaming channels are experiencing the biggest area of growth. Consumers want to watch what they want when they want. However, right now there are multiple choices, and it can be overwhelming for the viewer to figure out which options they should sign up for — and if they are like me, they have signed up for almost everything and then have the arduous task of signing in and out of each service to find what they want to watch. Not to mention, each subscription comes with a separate monthly cost. This must and will change. Imagine having to pay for each cable channel separately! It sounds ridiculous, but that is what consumers are currently doing in the streaming space. My guess is that in the very near future, companies will start bundling OTT options and offer consumers discounted, pre-made service bundles with a single sign-on and only one monthly subscription fee for all OTT content (Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, etc.). I also project that these companies will sell airtime to advertisers, once again changing the way media is bought and sold. I have to assume the current cable providers like Comcast will lead the way. Cable providers must evolve to stay relevant and profitable. They need to swim with the stream, not against it. Once this happens, consumers will have all streaming options/content through one provider — a "Stream 360" model is going to become the norm. With this being said, linear TV is far from dead. Linear TV remains the best top-of-funnel option for cost effectively reaching the age 50-plus audience. Seventy-three percent of TV households still have linear TV. One thing we know for certain is that individuals are consuming news, entertainment, and information across many sources including, linear, OTT/CTV, digital channels, and more. As marketers, we understand that crafting omnichannel media strategies to cost effectively reach a response audience is a must. No matter the target audience. Smith: I love to listen to others as they answer this question — there is always so much to learn when you lean in and listen to other industry leaders’ perspective. This question reminds me of the time in my career when I immersed myself in the digital marketing world. I went to every seminar available with the intention of soaking up whatever was being taught and shared. At every event, I heard the same reoccurring message: "TV/radio (traditional media) is dead!" This was troubling to me. I couldn’t subscribe to the thought that where I had just spent the last 18-plus years of my career was going to be nonexistent — or dead, for that matter! I realized quickly — and it was clearer than ever — there is no good or bad media. The focus should be on the audience you are trying to reach, then research where/how to find that audience, and simply engage with them there. Although there might be a media channel that appears to be slowing down or not in growth mode, to me that is irrelevant if that media channel has an audience that your client is looking to connect with and reach. That said, knowing that streaming has been around for a while, the FAST channels are exploding — it is exciting to watch this recent growth! And we should all be looking at how we can reach our audience on this channel. P.S., TV is so not dead! It’s evolved. What do you see on the horizon that you believe will change the way media will be transacted in the future? Arnold: We are already transacting media via programmatic and demand-side platforms (DSPs). It’s only a matter of time before media companies will have both linear and digital media inventory available in the open marketplace. But it is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Depending on the type of audience an advertiser wants to reach, a buying strategy in a mixed marketplace that requires looking at performance data holistically to maximize return and drive results will be the demand. We’re also gearing up for a future of shoppable ads that will change the way consumers engage with brands and speeds up the path to purchase. If you look at how Instagram and Facebook have made shopping on social media so easy, leveraging backends like Shopify, be prepared for further takeover of integrated shopping in your media. TV, being the most trusted form of advertising, is a born influencer. Now add convenience and personalization — could this be the recipe that surpasses social commerce? This is an area to be watched — no pun intended. This will be DTC on steroids, and we are all over it. Borrero: We’re seeing offline and online buying models converging with the proliferation of new ad tech solutions, and programmatic buying techniques penetrating the offline world. Also, subscription-based streaming platforms are moving into advertising-based models and vice versa. With more streaming choices and supply in the market, we do anticipate that the OTT world will offer more favorable direct response buying opportunities. Freed: Automation will continue to change the way media is transacted in the future. More of the media will be bought programmatically, hopefully in the linear space like we are seeing currently on digital. In addition, we will start to see streaming platforms open up to advertisers to generate revenue as a way to offset losses in their subscription bases. Even with high CPMs initially, it will be great to have more options for our clients in Canada as, right now, CTV is very limited. There will also be more pressure on marketers and agencies to focus on strategy, planning, and attribution. Garduno: Nowadays, people can communicate with their family, friends, and colleagues regardless of location because of technological development. Digital media will become an avenue not only for disseminating and accessing information but also for other daily needs — communication, shopping, education, work, entertainment, and many more. The use of mobile phones will continue to increase; thus, the future of digital marketing requires a mobile-first strategy. Businesses should start exploring mobile video marketing and emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Marketers should be aware of how human interaction will change through the rise of these digital platforms. Digital media will keep evolving as new tools emerge, so marketers should be quick to adapt to new technologies and trends. Green: I don’t think you can necessarily make a distinction between a direct response advertiser and a general one anymore. They are all performance-based marketers who want a return on advertising spend. In the case of traditional direct marketers selling products, they can no longer easily evaluate media performance because they can’t control the flow of direct sales to their websites with the dominance of Amazon and other marketplaces. Therefore, traditional metrics like CPMs have become a mainstay for direct marketers as a basis for negotiating and evaluating media transactions. Conversely, what were traditionally thought of as general advertisers are now competing for DR and paid airtime to fortify their upfront buys. They evaluate their transactions based upon CPMs as well as a campaign’s ability to move the needle in terms of consumer engagement and sales. The line between these camps isn’t just blurred now — it’s gone, and because of that, I think we’ll see more competition for inventory no matter how the airtime or advertiser is categorized. Kluger: With the consumption patterns of consumers crossing all platforms, there is a need for a primary, unified cost measurement, e.g., audience-based CPM, to evaluate and plan all channels by a consistent metric. Identifying the currency and/or vendor that is the most appropriate for client and their goals will be a collaborative effort between the agency and client. Secondary elements such as attention, ability for unique partnerships and custom/branded content, e-commerce activations, product integrations, custom creative units, and targeting capabilities, etc., will also play a crucial role to elevate brands, create direct revenue streams, and deliver measurable outcomes. The ability to measure all elements of a campaign will be critical to ensure the true value of all tactics is realized with timely and accurate insights to continue to grow and evolve campaigns while driving budget allocations and flighting. Morello: Influencer marketing, especially with the new wave of Amazon Storefronts for influencers of any size, is something we have our eyes on. Influencer marketing is effective for those looking for very niche markets — likely on the younger end — who have disposable income and are ready to spend. With the ability to go viral easier than ever with TikTok, many users see influencers as someone they trust, and are quick to buy at a good recommendation, especially if they want to stay on trend. As a whole, digital advertising is becoming more accessible than ever for businesses of any size. With low daily budgets, customizable durations, and hyper-specific data, the landscape consistently offers something for advertisers of all sizes. In the future, we believe that the most-effective campaigns will be ones that utilize a more native approach, whether that be through influencers or user-generated content. Peabody: We are already seeing the appetite for alternative currencies to forecast and measure audience delivery, and this will challenge agencies and brands in their assessment of multiple investments. There will be less apples-to-apples measurement with different methodologies at play, however, the media impact will still be what matters most to Edge clients, and therefore our media transactions will still be based on ROI. Pine: As mentioned, audiences are fragmented into more channels, content, and platforms than ever before. Viewers consume much of their media on demand, and that raises many questions about how to account for those impressions. What is the impression duplication among all these media? How do we identify it? We’ve already seen a big shift in the way television media is being measured with the inclusion of CTV households and impressions. The way the major media companies distribute content in the future will continue to evolve in this way. Looking ahead, I believe we will see further consolidation of video, where media will only be sold cross-platform — and that will cause a significant shift in how media is priced and measured. This integration is going to require marketers and agencies to focus on how to reach the target customer and come away from broad, impression-based buying. Pomponi: Media has evolved significantly since I started in the industry back in 1990. I’ve seen the explosion of national cable networks, the launch of unwired networks, digital media launch and take off, and now streaming services. I believe we are moving toward a world of video consumption and away from tuning into a specific channel at a specific time — and ultimately away from "watching television." Content is king, and video content is the king of all kings. The ability to watch whatever you want on any device you want already exists, and consumer behavior is shifting in this direction, especially with the younger demos. This convergence has been slowly coming for a while but was propelled forward a great deal by COVID, and the impact the pandemic had on consumer behavior. Now that’s not to say it’s going to happen overnight by any means. I believe we are probably about five to 10 years out from this new world completely taking hold. Advertisers will be challenged continually on how to most cost effectively reach their desired audience, and that will become increasingly difficult as the media landscape continues to change and fragment. But veteran marketers have seen the evolution of the media landscape and consumer behavior during the past few decades, and — as expected — we’re evolving with it. We now can reach specific audiences programmatically, although it comes at a premium cost. We will also see more brands developing their own video content as entertainment, and the increase and evolution of what we currently refer to as product integration. A strong agency balances this with direct IO buys, linear TV, and digital outlets for an effective omnichannel approach. Smith: I think, more than ever, we are moving into a consolidated and automated media environment. There is quite a bit of good that comes with automation; however, my hope is we as an industry can continue to build and grow relationships and not allow automation to replace that. Apex Media prides itself on bringing innovative ideas and concepts to our clients: our hope is, as the media environment continues to automate quickly, that we don’t lose sight of the creativity and innovation that brings impactful results to our clients. You can’t replace innovation with automation!

In today’s digital world, having an advertising strategy that covers multiple platforms is more important than ever. While many brands focus on search and social platforms, connected TV (CTV) advertising may be a viable option for those with a larger budget. CTV is a great alternative to linear television, especially for brands looking to expand their reach by tapping into an audience of cord cutters. To begin, by definition, CTV advertising is any ad that streams on a television screen. It’s just like your regular linear television ad, except it’s within your CTV app. Examples of this would be Netflix, Roku, and Discovery+. This doesn’t necessarily include over-the-top (OTT) ads. OTT is defined as anything that streams online, can include any pre-roll ad on a website like YouTube, and can be accessed through mobile or desktop devices. OTT streaming viewership has also increased and is expected to grow in Canada. The difference is that OTT is more fragmented now; there are many different places Canadians and Americans watch TV or other content. Ads are spread out across a variety of platforms like YouTube and Hulu, all with their wide selection of audiences. A Deep Dive Into CTV Advertising Linear TV has about 16 minutes of ads during an hour of programming. CTV has about half of that in the same time frame. Similarly, both platforms do not feature skippable ads. However, with CTV, audiences aren’t usually changing channels during the shorter commercial breaks. The targeting features are very similar to Facebook and Google, since advertisers can target by gender and age and then layer in behavioral demographics. With linear television, you’re picking the program and hoping that your audience is watching it. Brands that layer in the demographic details and pixel targeting to measure the response that CTV is driving will see more success. They’re going to be a step ahead of those that are throwing the impressions into the void and aren’t sure how the viewers are responding or engaging. Why CTV Advertising is Beneficial for Both Canada and the U.S. Canadian CTV audiences are small, especially when compared to the U.S. However, there is still a strong case for investing in it. While Canada is about three to four years behind the U.S., the market is growing and is expected to continue growing as penetration increases — almost 100-percent year-over-year growth. American advertisers need to be mindful that certain apps like Hulu aren’t available in Canada. However, many are entering the market. Roku is still in its infancy in Canada. It’s only been available for about a year. Some other major providers include Samsung, Juken, Xumo, and Deline. CPM rates are going to be higher in Canada than in the U.S. due to low supply and high demand. This can then alter the KPIs a brand may have. However, CTV is still a great platform to target exact demographics. How Brands Can Measure Success The first step to measuring CTV performance is to use a demand-side platform (DSP) like The Trade Desk or DV360. These platforms offer a pixel that can be installed on a website; typically, as a code that is passed into the footer. These work similarly to social media pixels, in that any visit that is driven by a CTV impression can be tracked through the funnel. The way these pixels work is that if a viewer is watching a CTV ad and visits an advertiser’s website, they can map that site visit on the mobile phone back to the viewer that watched that CTV ad. This is because the DSP is mapping the IP and the device within the household that is watching the same CTV ad. The DSP can track all viewers of CTV ads and retarget them with a more down-funnel mobile video or clickable banner. These can then lead the retargeted person back to the advertiser’s site. Again, this is all trackable and is one way to measure performance from the CTV ads that can justify more investment. A Prediction for the Next 5 Years In the next five years, CTV could take on a similar format to cable pre-streaming services. There will be some consolidation with some of the players in addition to what we’ve already seen. It’s been apparent in Q1 reports: Netflix stocks took a very large hit, and CNN completely closed down its streaming platform. There are so many platforms to choose from, that when combined with the increasing living costs, people can’t afford to indulge in all these streaming services. In the next five to 10 years, we could see a consolidation of the major players in the CTV space, and they’ll either buy one competitor or grow to the point where others can’t compete. Anat Freed is vice president and managing director at Kingstar Media. With two decades of experience, she has successfully strategized, built, and delivered CTV advertising campaigns for clients. With her knowledge of the Canadian and American advertising landscape, businesses have been able to surpass their KPI goals. She can be reached via email at anat@kingstarmedia.com.

In July, the PDMI Government Affairs Council worked to consider member companies' recommendations for official comments on behalf of the association in response to the Federal Trade Commission's announcement of changes to the Telephone Sales Rule (TSR) and Dot-com Disclosures (a guidance initially released in 2013 to businesses on digital advertising and marketing). Though a member consensus could not be reached in order to submit a comment regarding the TSR, the Government Affairs Council — working hand-in-hand with the PDMI E-Commerce Council and other interested members — found common ground among members in time to submit a comment for the PDMI by the FTC's Aug. 2 deadline. Drafted and submitted on behalf of the PDMI by BakerHostetler partners Linda Goldstein and Daniel Kaufman, the comment can be read by clicking here.To review all of the public comments submitted regarding the Dot-com Disclosures proceedings, please click here. As always, the PDMI and its Government Affairs Council will stay abreast of any regulatory action at the state or federal level that could affect its members and performance/direct-to-consumer marketing more generally. Keep an eye on this space as well as the PDMI's social media outlets for updates.

Accounts payable (AP) leaders must cut through a lot of hype around automation. From self-service supplier onboarding and touch-free invoice processing to digital payments and bots that respond to supplier inquiries, emerging technologies promise to replace workers with machines. As tempting as it sounds, the key to optimizing AP lies in balancing people and process automation. AP leaders must find automated solutions that redefine the role that humans play, otherwise they risk deploying a fractional solution that takes the organization one step forward and two steps back. That’s why more AP leaders are embracing automated systems that combine advanced technology with white-glove service. By putting people at the center of automation, organizations can achieve faster payback, stronger supplier relationships, reduced risk of fraud, and better business continuity. Balancing People and Process Automation Automation is transforming finance. Consider the way that organizations pay suppliers. During the past two years, the percentage of businesses that pay their suppliers with a paper check has declined by 7 percentage points. What’s more, 4 percent of all businesses now make all their payments to suppliers electronically. (1) Accounts payable (AP) leaders must cut through a lot of hype around automation.Accounts payable (AP) leaders must cut through a lot of hype around automation.ns pay suppliers. During the past two years, the percentage of businesses that pay their suppliers with a paper check has declined by 7 percentage points. What’s more, 4 percent of all businesses now make all their payments to suppliers electronically. (1) Ninety-two percent of treasurers say that increased efficiency was the primary reason for transitioning to electronic payments. Eighty-two percent of treasurers cited cost reduction. (2) Beyond digital payment methods, new generations of more capable automated systems are emerging that eliminate friction across the invoice-to-pay lifecycle. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have made especially big strides in AP departments in recent years. These technologies are generating tremendous value, and companies of all sizes and across all industries are using them to uncover opportunities to earn early payment discounts, identify fraudulent transactions, and more. About half of the activities (not jobs) carried out by workers could be automated. (3) At the same time, technology is transforming the workplace itself. Rapidly evolving machines are performing more tasks previously done by humans. Work activities like data collection and data processing are easily automated, for instance. But that’s not to say that technology will spell the end of finance jobs. In fact, the best results are achieved when humans work cooperatively alongside automated systems. More jobs will be changed, rather than lost or gained, as machines complement human labor in the workplace. (4) The most powerful automated systems are meaningless without people. For starters, someone needs to manage and troubleshoot automated systems. Someone needs to talk a supplier through their frustration with an erroneous payment. Someone may be required to explain the benefits of electronic payments to a supplier. Humans will always be needed to step in to assist with unusual or risky situations. And there always will be payment exceptions that require human intervention. Humans may no longer do routine work. But they will play a big role in an automated environment. Unfortunately, many approaches to AP automation are so focused on replacing human workers that they miss this fundamental point. Only when AP departments combine advanced technology with human workers will they achieve optimal benefits. Partnering with a finance automation provider that keeps humans“in the loop”can help an organization migrate to electronic payments faster, drive supplier adoption of digital payments, strengthen supplier relationships, ensure business continuity, and mitigate fraud risk. To learn more about automation, visit: https://www.paymerang.com/industries/media/ Institute of Finance and Management (IOFM) Association for Financial Professionals (AFP), 2022 Payments Cost Benchmarking Survey McKinsey Global Institute McKinsey Global Institute McKinsey Global Institute

By Matt Timothy Recently, I had the opportunity to join a panel discussion on the topic of “Blockchain in Media and Advertising.” As a new member of the PDMI, we were excited to see interest in blockchain technology and immediately said yes to its fantastic Take 20 series. But what can really come out of a 20-minute conversation with a lawyer, an agency executive, and the platform perspective? As it turns out, a lot! Our 20-minute discussion was both engaging and illuminating. After taking part, I have some additional thoughts to share. My first takeaway: the industry needs to have more of these open and frank discussions — a lot more. The current state of the ad market is unnerving, to say the least. The promise of marketing automation comes with some peril — a lack of transparency, an overreliance on black-box operating systems, unnecessarily complicated campaign executions, and opaque (at best) accountability frameworks. The scaffolding that the industry has built around programmatic is like a big Jenga tower. The more we play with it, the less stable it appears. Second: Blockchain is more than crypto — and the world needs to know. Blockchain is a technology that can help stabilize our industry, but we need to decouple it from the roller coaster ride of coins and NFTs in the minds of advertisers. Blockchain has many uses, and we need to make this clear. Our discussion was a big step in that direction. Third: Inevitability. Ron Hadler, vice president, data and innovation, at Red Door Interactive, said it best: the adoption of blockchain (or something equivalent that provides trust, transparency, and confidence) is inevitable in our industry. Scaffolding should not be confused with a permanent structure. Blockchain is part of the foundation of the next generation of effective and efficient brand storytelling. The amount of ad spend that gets wasted — tech fees from a myriad intermediaries, chronic fraud, or even simply incompetent execution — is chilling. The widespread complicity of major ad industry stakeholders who profit directly from the complexity of the black-box world of programmatic should be the sign that urgent change is necessary. The wake-up call is ringing loudly. Fourth: Make these changes before they are made for you. Christopher Boone, associate at Venable LLP, noted that governments and regulatory bodies are starting to understand the promise and potential of blockchain in areas beyond the crypto marketplace. If blockchain delivers transparency, trust, and accountability, why not take control of our own destiny by improving the operating landscape ourselves? Our discussion made it clear that we need to make a solid step in that direction. A big thank you to our moderator, Chris Foster of Modern Postcard, for guiding us all through the conversation. Blockboard was proud to be a part of this vital discussion and is equally proud to be one of the PDMI’s newest members. Take 20 is a bi-monthly 20-minute webinar that focuses on topical industry conversations hosted by PDMI, the premier trade organization for performance marketers. Matt Timothy is executive vice president of sales and marketing for Blockboard. He can be reached via email at mtimothy@myblockboard.com.

If you do a quick Google search for "E-commerce Marketing," you're going to find a wide range of different e-commerce marketing strategies that may or may not work to grow your e-commerce business. Rather than just writing a bunch of e-com fluff, we want to tell you "exactly" what e-commerce strategies work and should be implemented in your business right away. So, if you're ready to start getting e-commerce results in 2022, follow this e-commerce guide below and dominate your niche. Let's get started. What Is E-commerce Marketing? Just in case you don't know, e-commerce marketing is going to refer to the action of driving awareness and action toward a business that sells its product or service digitally. E-commerce marketers can use SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), social media, digital content, search engines, and email campaigns to attract visitors and encourage online purchases. Types of E-commerce Marketing There's a wide variety of e-commerce marketing strategies and tactics at your disposal. To give you a sense of what an e-commerce marketing strategy looks like, let's take a closer look at the most common marketing channels and how you'd use them to build an online store. (1) Content Marketing When you hear "content marketing," you might think of blogging and video marketing — content that is meant to improve your website's ranking in search engines and answer questions related to your industry. But if you're selling a product online, do you really need articles and videos to generate transactions? You sure do. Here are some ways to use content to market your e-commerce store. Blog Posts: Blogs are a great way to showcase your e-commerce products and go in-depth to help users understand your products better. Video: While contextual content is great, videos are powerful and can give potential customers an experience with your products without having to buy them first. Reviews: You can also write reviews on your products to explain the pros and cons. You also can ask customers to contribute with reviews. (2) Search Engine Optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) can be a very powerful e-commerce strategy to sell online products. SEO focuses on driving organic traffic to your e-commerce store by ranking keywords that are closely related to the products you sell. For example, if you're selling beach towels, you'd want to rank on the first page of Google for keywords like beach towel, towel for the beach, buy a beach towel, dark blue beach towels. SEO is a process that takes time; it's important to remember that if you're going to be doing your own search engine optimization or you outsource SEO to an SEO expert, SEO relies on creating online content that covers a topic in-depth. Take our beach towel example: to give us better odds to rank for that keyword, we'd want to create content that targets beach towels. Since Google is the largest search engine and owns around 85 percent of all global search engine traffic, you want to make sure your SEO follows Google's guidelines. You can learn more about that here. As you're learning now, SEO can integrate with many other areas of your e-com marketing — it can relate to content marketing, social media marketing, email, and more. (3) Email Marketing Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to collect leads and turn those leads into paying customers. The great news: email marketing can be fully automated. If you're not familiar with automation, it refers to setting up an email campaign that can collect leads, nurture leads, or turn leads into customers without you having to be there. An email marketing system has to be built before you can enjoy the automation, but once it's built, it can run its own as long as you have email marketing software to power it. Your email list should be one of the highest converting traffic sources you have. There's a lot of different ways to build your email list, here's a few ideas that work great: Giveaways BOGO offers Discounts Holiday prices Free gift Free shipping Surprises (4) Social Media Marketing Social media is a powerful digital marketing strategy to implement for your e-commerce brand. While I'm sure you're already using social media marketing, the question you have to ask: is my social media marketing working? Unfortunately, most people don't utilize social media correctly to get a positive ROI. Here's how you can change that. Your Primary Social Media Platform — Instead of posting content on multiple platforms, the key is mastering one (1) social media platform and then expanding from there. You need to figure out which social media platform is best for your brand. Which social media website do you perform best on now? What Do Your Customers Want To Consume — There's a wide range of social media content types you can use to determine what content gets the best results. Does your audience prefer contextual posts or video? Does your audience respond to discounts or giveaways? Does your audience engage with funny memes, or is it more professional? The key is figuring out what types of content perform the best with your audience. Get Those Feedback Loops Going — If your social media content is not getting responses and engagement, it's time to open the stage and give them the mic. You need to start having conversations with your audience, and pay close attention to what they say. Look for patterns to repeat — this can give you direction and insights to what content they want to consume. You can also use paid social media placements to reach more customers. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok all have paid ad opportunities. While this article will not dive deep into social media ads, there are a few important things you should be aware of. If you already have an email list of paying customers, you can use that email list to build look-a-like audiences to target. Facebook allows you to have private groups; this is perfect for building strong communities of loyal fans. Social media ads are still relatively affordable compared to other advertising options. (5) Search Engine Marketing While we discussed SEO earlier and how it allows you to drive organic traffic to your e-commerce store, you can also pay to get into Google — this is called search engine marketing (SEM), also referred to by pay-per-click marketing (PPC). Google PPC is the fastest way to get your store in front of potential customers, but at a cost. SEM can be a powerful marketing strategy, but you can also lose a lot of money if you don't know what you're doing. It is one of the quickest ways to get on the top page of Google; you can launch a Google PPC campaign in just a few minutes. Google gives you a variety of different targeting options and campaign options to help you sell more products. (6) YouTube and Video Marketing Video is the most powerful digital marketing strategy you can use. If you're watching a video, it feels like a one-on-one conversation. Video is more engaging than reading an article. Digital trends prove that video is the most important weapon in your marketing arsenal. Are you using video effectively? YouTube is the world's second-largest search engine, and it is the top video search engine. YouTube also has big SEO benefits, so hosting your videos on YouTube is the right strategy to use. YouTube makes it easy for users to engage with your video. You can record videos and upload them there, or you can do livestreams. You'll want to make sure you're creating videos about your products and brand. Not only can you utilize the YouTube platform with video content, you can share that video content on all of your other online platforms to reach more people. (7) Affiliate Marketing If others can sell your products for you, why not? Sure, profit margins are always going to be discussed. But is it better to sell a product more — or not at all? If I'm bringing in 30-percent profit margins for a product, I'm glad to give someone 15 percent of that so I can make 15 percent I would have never made otherwise. Right? There's also a hidden benefit of affiliate marketing many people don't talk about — the branding and marketing component. If you bring on 20 affiliate marketers, they will be out there actively promoting your products. This is a quick way to get in front of a much larger audience. Remember, if it wasn't going to sell anyway, wouldn't you rather make a few percent than nothing at all? E-commerce affiliate marketing can be a powerful way to immediately begin seeing more sales. (8) Influencer Marketing Influencer marketing focuses on people or brands that influence your target market. The term is commonly used to denote Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube accounts with several thousand followers, but it could also mean a celebrity or community that your target audience follows or belongs to. Influencers already have existing communities of followers that know, like, and trust them. Due to this, it's easy for them to get attention around your online product. If you can find an influencer in the same niche as your product, it could be a great way to bring in some fast sales. Optimize E-commerce Products Now, let's talk about making your products perform better. (1) Product Images Product images are extremely important. You want to make sure potential customers can view the entire product. This means you should be using multiple images for each unique product. These images should be of the highest quality. Consider adding a relative background to your images to enhance the experience. (2) Product Videos You should also utilize videos on your product page. These give potential buyers a more in-depth experience versus just having product images. E-commerce Marketing Tips There are countless e-commerce marketing tactics that you can employ to drive visitors to your online store beyond the traditional methods that we reviewed above. Let’s get into some more creative ways you can market your e-commerce business. (1) User-Generated Content If you have great e-commerce products, customers will write about them. However, sometimes you have to remind them to create that content. Imagine if you have an army of customers writing content about your products — it can be POWERFUL! (2) Loyalty Rewards/Program You always want to take care of your most dedicated customers. You can do this by giving them rewards - like a loyalty program. A loyal customer is a long-term customer. Every e-commerce merchant wants repeat business, right? A loyalty program provides an incentive for a customer to continue doing business with you through relevant offers and discounts. It can help you with: Repeat customers Repeat referrals Customer retention Word of mouth Reviews Testimonials (3) Shopping Cart Optimizations This is where your money is made or lost; it's the most important page on your website. Yet, for most e-commerce business owners, it's an afterthought. Don't think like that. Instead, think how you can make it better. Focus on: Access to instant customer service Money-back guarantees Great shipping options Clear, simple return policy You want to make sure you give potential customers every reason to buy from you. (4) Responsive Web Design You likely already know this: having a website that is responsive on all designs is extremely important. For instance, a brand that was worth $45M — despite their e-commerce store being not fully responsive — was selling tens of millions in products. Can you imagine how many sales they were missing? We live in a time where mobile is king now. People love shopping from their phones, and they want an easy process. If they're having trouble accessing your site on mobile, they'll go elsewhere and you're going to lose the sale. E-commerce Marketing KPIs So, what are the most important e-commerce marketing KPIs? With paid Google ads or paid Facebook ads, you can track your ROI fairly easily as long as you're using the right tracking codes. The same can said about your affiliate marketing, as programs track these KPIs for you. If you're tracking ROI from SEO or your email list, that can be very difficult. You can track a lot with Google Analytics, Shopify, and WooCommerce. Some of the most important KPIs are going to be website visits, click-through rates, conversion rates, and customer acquisition costs. Make sure you're using all the tracking tools you can so you can get accurate data to determine e-commerce ROIs. Put the Right Tools in the Right Spots As we've discussed, e-commerce businesses have many marketing tools at their fingertips. If you use digital and inbound marketing the right way, you can create powerful campaigns that are designed to help your online store attract customers and grow. These same e-commerce marketing tactics and strategies have generated billions in sales. They are very effective, but it can take time to find the best e-com marketing strategy to use for your specific business. If you want to learn more about being successful in e-commerce and want to rub shoulders with some of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet, make sure to join PDMI. You can become a member here.

By Derric Haynie “What do you even do?” That’s a question I used to get, back when I was running an advertising agency, by prospective clients who needed help with Facebook or Google ads. As a fellow agency owner, you may already know the answer. Typically, what we’re doing for an ad account client boils down to three things: Segmentation/targeting Creative/copy Strategy And good agencies have a strong process around all of this to ensure the three pieces work cohesively within the budget and goals of the client. For better or worse, all three core aspects of the “job to be done” by agencies are now completely (not partially, but seriously 100-percent completely) replaceable by technology, and that technology is on pace to get significantly better and more prevalent during the next three-to-five years. Now, this doesn’t mean that an agency will be completely replaced, but it does mean that your employees will be managing the tools and AI, more than doing that typical day to day grind that we all know and love (or hate). Hey, maybe this will be good for you, as you can decrease costs and keep prices relatively the same or move them down slightly while still improving margins. Don’t believe me? Let’s dive into each of these three pillars of ad agencies, and I will give you examples of some of the tools putting you and your team out of business. Segmentation / Targeting We already know that platforms like Facebook and Google are pretty good at optimizing their own algorithms to find us the most-likely-to-convert customers at the cheapest price, but it doesn’t stop there. Take a look at this list of key tools for segmentation and targeting already on the market and widely in use today: Prescient-AI Beam City Preflect Ads AdRoll AdYogi AdScale DotDigital Madgicx RevealBot All of these tools are, in some way, auto-optimizing your targeting and creating custom segments without needing a human to intervene. That said, many of these tools still require oversight by a smart human. They do not completely remove the expertise required, but they certainly reduce the time spent and cost of creating all those niche targeted ad sets — or even sitting in a conference room with the client and hypothesizing on which segments to create, etc. What this means is that a smart internal marketer is more likely to be capable, and have the time, to manage an ad campaign. They have less of a need to lean on the expertise of the agency, since the agency is likely just leaning on the expertise of the AI tool with very little value add. Creative/Copy Have you heard about Miquela? The Instagram influencer who is 100% AI-generated. No one has actually ever seen her because she doesn’t exist. Yet, she has 3 million Instagram followers and rakes in tons of money in sponsorships and collaborations. In the next five years, creating content will no longer require a camera. You’ll be able to take whatever products you have, hand them over to an AI engine, and that AI engine will create hyper-realistic photo and video ads with AI actors and AI settings. Want to be under the Eiffel Tower? No problem. On top of the mountains in Aspen? Sure thing. And, of course, that comes with AI-generated copywriting, which can be created at scale, tested against each other, and quickly the AI can come to the right conclusion on which copy/creative/setting/sentiment and hundreds of other factors are contributing to conversion. In fact, AI can test these aspects of creative and copy cheaper than your content team — and more effectively. They can swap out one word, remove one actor, change a dog to a cat, etc. Think about it: you don’t need to pay actors, you don’t need to fly people to on-location sets, and you don’t need to hire writers to come up with some witty copy. I’m sure you are thinking, “But, Derric, surely this AI is going to suck, right?” Here’s the deal, the AI of the last 20 or so years has been pretty bad at replacing humans for things like comedy, drawing out an emotional response from a user, etc. But what these AI-learning tools are doing is analyzing an ad — both visually and from a copywriting perspective — tagging it with dozens or hundreds of attributes, and then tracking that ad's performance. Doing this across billions in ad spend and thousands of companies results in an insanely powerful AI that can, in fact, compete with and even replace content teams and writers. Here are some of the tools doing this today, and while they mainly still require creative input and censorship/guidance from you or your team, they are certainly streamlining the process of making massive amounts of creative, at scale, without bringing in a design studio or the like: Confect Pencil Savvy Copysmith Krome Image Labs Smartly What this means to me is that your content team is going to be doing less to no work, while other teams like influencer, merchandising (for product photos), and perhaps simply the internal marketing team members who pull review callouts or other elements of social proof, will be the ones adding content into a library, allowing the AI to include it on its whim, and test new content for viability and return-on-ad-spend (ROAS). Side note: Shout out to the really powerful attribution tools helping to make ROI clearer and thus help our AI make better optimizations and decisions. A shortlist of my favorites: RedTrack Prescient AI Rockerbox Measured Strategy The last pillar to be replaced completely with AI will be strategy. Clearly there is a lot that goes into creating a successful advertising campaign, and much of it starts before running a single ad. It starts simply with just having a good product and product experience, then moves to pricing, landing pages and product detail pages, offers, discounts, social proof, and any other aspect that you can imagine is “unseen” by the AI engines working to optimize ad campaign performance. While I can’t tell you all of your business strategy will be fully optimized by an AI in the next five years (it will probably take closer to 20 years for that), I can stand by my original premise that all advertising strategies for any company that has proven to have some sort of mild success with advertising, can and will be completely automated in the next five years. Many existing tools are already optimizing budgets across platforms, optimizing budgets based on revenue, customers, products — including whether products are in-stock, close to selling out, or close to expiring — or profit margins. And, yes, there are even tools that will auto-split-test your landing pages/product detail pages, test your pricing and/or discounting strategy, and test your merchandising (these are typically just called “personalization” tools). The ones that I see doing a great job of optimizing strategy now and into the future are: Prescient AI: new to the scene but powerful tech, primarily focused on cross-channel attribution and budgeting. Pencil: primarily focused on extracting strategy (and optimizing for learnings automatically) from the creative testing process. AdRoll: nearly full automation of the cross-channel advertising process, but currently more on the “helping you do” side, than “done for you.” Measured: Really great at understanding incremental ad spend by channel and automating the cross-channel budgeting. What this means to me is that all quantitative aspects of strategy — such as pricing, discounting, and many aspects of split testing on landing pages — are soon to be done exclusively by AI, thus reducing the need for a conversion rate optimization expert, or expensive consulting firms to run customer surveys and tell you more about your customers (I’m sure they will still exist, but they may be less relevant, since we will have easier ways to gather similar information). Final Thoughts Clearly there has been a big shift in advertising and ad-tech over the past 20 years, from the original “helping me see,” to “helping me do,” to “doing it for me.” Within the next five years, with the proliferation of AI and consolidation (or expansion of feature sets) of all these tools listed here, there will be tools or platforms that single-handedly manage all of your ad spend across all major channels, including creative, targeting, and ad strategy. And this AI platform will be able to test all of these things, iterate, and improve, without any human intervention. All the human will need to do is set budget and goals (typically in terms of ROAS or cost-per-acquisition). What are you going to do to prepare for this? My suggestion: invest heavily in understanding the tools, use and embrace them, and be on the bleeding edge of this transformation. It’s the only way to ensure you don’t go extinct. Derric Haynie is Chief E-Commerce Technologist for EcommerceTech.io — where e-commerce stores go to research, discover, and buy the right tools to grow their store. He and his team are working hard to map the e-commerce technology landscape and help merchants track and manage their tools, build their technology roadmap, and hold their tools accountable for their performance. He can be reached via email at derric@ecommercetech.io.

Following up on April’s popular webinar conversations, the PDMI continues a deep dive into one of the industry’s hottest topics. By Thomas Haire This is the cover story of Results Magazine's June 2022 issue. Click here to read this feature via our digital publication website or simply scroll down to continue reading here. When the Media Ratings Council officially stripped Nielsen of its TV ratings accreditation last September, the move set off a firestorm in marketing circles. An already expanding ad tech and audience measurement universe seemed to go into overdrive, as media outlets, media agencies, and the clients they serve sought quick and definitive currency solutions. Still, more than nine months later, such a solution for all marketers seems far off. The leadership of some major network groups — such as PDMI member NBCUniversal, which made a currency deal with iSpot.tv (parent of PDMI member DRMetrix) — and the expansion of new technologies have helped marketers find new avenues to measure audience and performance. But what was once a space with one clear leader is now as fragmented and cluttered as can be. With this in mind, the PDMI’s Brand Response Council set out to find some answers about these frictions in the audience measurement space during a two-episode run of its Take 20 webinar series in April. The first episode, on April 13, featured attribution experts Shira Witelson of RSLT and Meghan Glenn of Flowcode, with the second session, on April 27, welcoming ad tech and measurement leaders Cody Tunney of Yangaroo and Jessica Hogue of Innovid. The webinars were viewed by two of the PDMI’s three biggest online audiences in 2022 — the topic clearly a hot button for all in performance marketing. That made the choice for this issue’s cover story clear — let’s further the conversation and insights. We welcome back both Glenn and Tunney — each representing PDMI member companies — for more feedback on the topic, while also welcoming two other PDMI member company leaders: LeadsRx’s AJ Brown and DRMetrix’s Joseph Gray. Read on to hear their feedback — and in some cases, their pitches — for how the performance and direct-to-consumer marketing industry can solve these pressing issues. The fragmentation of media and measurement may result in siloed and specialized measurements: a best-in-breed OTT measurement platform, another for linear, and yet another for CTV. What is currently available, and what are key trends for the future? AJ Brown, co-founder and CEO, LeadsRx: As the OTT (over-the-top) and CTV (connected TV) markets continue to explode, companies like JamLoop and Ideal OTT are providing platforms to help customers improve marketing performance of advertising on streaming services — and they are using data and insights tools such as multi-touch attribution to impartially measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. Both companies are poised to dominate with their OTT and CTV demand-side advertising buying platforms. In a recent press release, Leif Welch, JamLoop founder and CEO, said, "OTT and CTV advertising truly combines the best of digital and traditional linear TV advertising. It has digital’s granular audience targeting and measurement capabilities, combined with a big-screen TV, lean-back viewing experience inside brand-safe content. Now that advertisers recognize that OTT/CTV is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ but rather a necessity to reach cord-cutting consumers, they need to understand the impact on their broader marketing mix." Meghan Glenn, sales director, media, Flowcode: Having spent my career in local media, I can confidently say that Flowcode is building the only universal, best-in-class measurement tool across all of these delivery methods. Media consumption isn’t siloed; the most important detail is the user journey across these screens; and the ultimate goal is conversion. With Flowcode placed in content and experiences across screens, brands can see real, intentional, humaninteraction with their messaging in real-time. This is both attribution and proof of performance, but sophisticated QR marketers are going to be able to determine interest and intent at all stages of the funnel while optimizing and serving content accordingly. It isn’t linear vs. OTT vs. CTV anymore. It’s just on-demand content. Reporting will be de-siloed and cross-platform, and all TV is performance media. Which emerging measurement businesses are worth testing and trying based on your experience? Joseph Gray, founder, DRMetrix: Since iSpot.tv acquired DRMetrix last October, I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about this facet of the business. In the early evolution of this space, probabilistic models — often referred to as "spike analysis" — were developed to try to attribute digital activity to TV advertising. I’ve been outspoken on this topic for years, having covered it in each of DRMetrix’s past yearly industry studies. Our latest industry study is freely available to download from the main menu of our website and includes a section dedicated to TV attribution. Each year, we use TV occurrence measurement data to expose serious problems with the probabilistic model. For those advertisers using a vanity call-to-action, there is hope as newer technologies, such as smart TVs, have created a more viable approach to media measurement and attribution. To differentiate this type of model from probabilistic, it is often referred to as deterministic. iSpot is one of the leading companies in the space that uses a deterministic approach to TV attribution and measurement across linear, OTT, and CTV. During the past few months, iSpot.tv has become a front runner as NBCU, and many others, have embraced its best-in-breed measurement platform. Last year, iSpot.tv began integrating data from more than 20 million additional smart TVs in a deal with LG Ad Solutions. This is in addition to the existing opt-in panel of nearly 40 million connected TVs from Vizio Inscape. This represents the largest footprint of licensed smart TV data in the TV measurement industry. With data from 12 million set-top boxes also under license, iSpot’s total TV device footprint is now over 50 million. Glenn: QR, of course! There is no other measurement tool that is based exclusively on real human interactions. Flowcode is not looking at a supposed site traffic list or basing performance off Nielsen ratings. The technology gives publishers, brands, and content creators the ability to measure verified audience response as it’s happening. What are agencies and brands looking for when it comes to an audience measurement solution? Brown: Agencies know the power of marketing measurement tools, specifically multi-touch attribution and customer journey analytics. They are methods of showing the brands they represent how their advertising is working — and showing them what is not working. The latter can be extremely helpful if a client is hellbent on sticking to an advertising medium they swear still works (because it always has, they assume) or that a particular creative they prefer has to keep running because, well, they like it. With an unbiased view of all touchpoints in a marketing campaign, it not only opens the eyes of the advertisers, but sometimes the agencies, as well. If an agency can determine that the radio ad featuring the company founder is not performing as well as the on-air personality’s read of the company’s ad, it’s time for a tough conversation with the marketing team and the founder. The data doesn’t lie, and it doesn’t favor an ad, a medium, or a campaign based on any preconceived notion. It just says, "These touchpoints in the customer journey are working well together; and this touchpoint or two is not contributing value on your path to improved return-on-ad-spend (ROAS)." We at LeadsRx are always excited when an agency, or better yet a brand they represent, has that "ah-ha" moment when they realize they have the data and insights to improve marketing performance. Glenn: The simple answer is verified ROI. It isn’t about mass distribution anymore, but rather that there is a measurable result behind every impression served. Flowcode not only enables conversion at the point of message delivery, but it also provides audience insights that can be used to drastically amp up efficiency in everything from messaging to delivery method. Gray: Quite frankly, a solution that works. With a panel of more than 50 million, iSpot.tv can directly tie household-level ad exposures to household digital activity. If a panel household was exposed to a TV ad via linear, CTV, or OTT, we can often measure the results deterministically by tracking the anonymized household IP address with the household digital activity, which includes visiting a website, placing an order, etc. A panel of this size and scale will answer a myriad of critical questions, allowing for high levels of media optimization, measurement of household saturation, as well as reach, frequency, and impressions that are all deterministically measured. If you could wave a magic wand, what type of audience measurement service would you create? Glenn: I am lucky enough to be working with it already! In the future, we will see increased applications of things like AR/VR to create bespoke content experiences that deepen the viewer engagement post-scan and supplementing IP-level reporting with things like conversion metrics, foot-traffic attribution metrics, revenue-per-scan metrics, and very granular demo, interest, behavior metrics associated with scanners’ personal devices. Gray: The current and future generations of smart TVs hold the key to solving many of the problems that have held back progress in television advertising. To be able to measure ad exposure — as well as business outcomes — has been a boon to digital advertising over the years. Finally, this same fidelity of measurement is available to help move the television industry forward! What level of confidence do you have in the output of current audience measurement metrics? Cody Tunney, executive vice president, analytics, Yangaroo: There are so many details being addressed in audience measurement right now. We can zoom in at the smallest atomic level and debate "What is an impression?" or "Did the spot actually air?" Or we could zoom out to the end of the measurement process and examine the different kinds of attribution models. In terms of confidence: the conversation has started, our eyes are open to the strengths and weaknesses of each option, and I am confident that we will come to great agreements. We are far from having the right answers because the video-viewing environment is rapidly changing. Glenn: Every piece of media is moving toward measurability, but, that said, I would be wary of anything that is based on supposition or delivery. Gray: I have very little confidence in probabilistic models, but I am excited about deterministic models. The panel sizes will continue to grow in scale but are currently large enough to provide incredible insights. Being able to understand real reach and frequency, the impact of different ad formats, and how it all correlates to business outcomes is groundbreaking for the television industry. What might become the new audience guarantees and/or possible established rate bases? Glenn: We could see an increase in performance-based pricing and conversion metrics. I would expect to see more strategic buys at higher rates and perhaps differences in actual volume of delivery. Gray: With deterministic models of audience measurement, the current metrics of GRP and CPM may well survive, but these models also open the door to guarantees tied to measurable business outcomes. For someone who has been in accountable advertising for more than 33 years, this makes a lot of sense! Tunney: The biggest problem with changing audience measurement sources is the impression guarantee. There are many legacy brands that have amazing established audience guarantees, and with change, there are risks. And those risks have real dollar consequences for some brands. What barriers do challenger brands have to overcome to find a seat at the audience measurement table? Glenn: The tried-and-true metrics of impressions and GRPs are going to continue to have their hold on an industry that is historically slow to change. Gray: On the deterministic side of the industry, it’s all about scale and proficiency. Big datasets such as those produced by millions of smart TVs, create many challenges. At iSpot.tv, we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary. That’s 10 years to build and scale a best-of-breed TV deterministic measurement platform. This year, DRMetrix also celebrated its 10-year anniversary of serving the DR and DTC industries. Tunney: Data from any one smart TV manufacturer is generally not a large enough sample size for the kind of insight that performance brands are seeking. It’s directional, not deterministic. Companies like iSpot are aggregating the ACR data from the different smart TV manufacturers, which makes it more valuable and a greater sample size. Who benefits most from new media measurement methodologies? Brown: Any brand or business can benefit from tools that measure the effectiveness of their marketing and advertising, but especially direct-to-consumer/e-commerce companies, agencies and their clients, and media companies. As mediums such as podcasts, OTT/CTV, and TikTok and YouTube continue to expand their reach with advertising, knowing which channels work for a brand to reach consumers comes down to measurement. Be it attribution (multi-touch or point solutions), customer journey analytics, or incrementality, there are vendors and tools with the know-how to collect data in privacy-compliant ways, and people to examine the data so it makes sense to their agency or radio/TV representative, an enterprise’s marketing team, and the leaders of the businesses competing for consumer attention. Glenn: Everyone. Viewers will appreciate better, more relevant, bespoke content and opted-in engagement. Brands can benefit from better advertising performance and more engaged audiences. Media companies will benefit from increased viewer loyalty and happier advertisers. Gray: All stakeholders in the television industry benefit from the technology that has made deterministic solutions possible: from the largest media companies, like NBCU, to individual brands. Consumer electronic companies who are creating smart consumer devices benefit. Let’s not forget about consumers who benefit by seeing ads that are more relevant. In the DR world, it’s easy to make the mistake of overdelivering on frequency, which consumers hate. It is often wasteful and encourages consumers to skip ads. As agencies learn to better optimize placements, and measure creative fatigue, consumers and advertisers benefit alike. Tunney: Generally, media sellers benefit from looser audience measurement methodologies — that’s not to be accusatory. Brands and agencies benefit from the most precise data available, because it helps them determine the best place to reach their audience and achieve the desired outcome. Are brands and agencies pushing for new audience measurement standards, or is the big push coming from the businesses playing in the burgeoning measurement space? Brown: Brands and agencies are pushing for audience measurement tools that provide impartial and unbiased data across all marketing channels — or at least have a cross-channel measurement tool to verify that data pulled from point solutions do not give biased credit to any single marketing or ad channel. It’s a mix of agencies driving the growing attribution industry — as they want to do right by their advertising clients and keep those clients — to enterprises asking for help to measure their marketing effectiveness. In one case study, ZQuiet, the maker of a break-through anti-snoring mouthpiece, worked with its agency Hybrid Media Services and LeadsRx to identify what marketing channels were working best at aiming its ad dollars in the right direction. Dan Browdy, COO of Zquiet, says, "It’s been an invaluable tool to us to make sure our ad spends are working. Return-on-ad-spend is everything in direct response, and with improved analytic tools in 2018, we saw a 20-percent increase in ROAS; then working with LeadsRx, we have increased that at least 5 percent each year since." Gray: The big push is coming from digitally native direct-to-consumer brands that desire to measure the results of their television advertising like online advertising — which is very deterministic. They also want to use a vanity call-to-action to better brand. They are often advertising a vanity website or phone number, which makes traditional DR measurement impossible. Without deterministic attribution solutions, these brands will struggle from less-optimized campaigns where they are unable to accurately measure the business impact of their offline advertising. In recent years, we’re seeing the greatest interest in deterministic measurement solutions from these types of advertisers. What "big thing" occurs in terms of audience measurement by the end of 2022? Brown: Keep an eye out for conversion intelligence that combines artificial intelligence and machine learning with attribution. It’s essentially predictive analytics, as AI knows what creative will work best — down to specific SEO-effective words and graphics — before a campaign launches. Then, through multi-touch attribution and customer journey analytics, campaigns can be measured to see what touchpoints or combination thereof are working best to push customers through the funnel. The theorem is (AI x ML) attribution = conversion intelligence. That should mean improved marketing performance, an increased number of marketing-qualified leads, and increased sales. Gray: There have been so many breakthroughs in just the past 12 months, I can’t wait to see what happens by the close of 2022. To name a few, iSpot.tv acquired DRMetrix and Tunity, expanded its smart TV panel by partnering with LG Ad Solutions, recently aligned with Twitter, became the first NBCUniversal partner for alternative measurement — including for the Olympics and Super Bowl — and just closed a $325 million deal with Goldman Sachs. Tunney: First, audience measurement and improved data availability will only benefit the brands and agencies that are both willing to change and willing to absorb the insights. We could dissect and disrupt every single aspect of the advertising measurement process, but if we aren’t willing to do something with it, then it’s a futile exercise. By the end of 2022, I would love to see a unified impression across linear and CTV. By connecting the metadata behind the ad creative at the point of distribution, Yangaroo and Innovid can provide a truly consolidated view of an ad’s audience across linear and CTV.