Digital-Strategie ausgebaut

Am fünften CNN Davos Debrief haben Alain Dehaze, CEO Adecco Group, Urs Rüegsegger, Group SEO Six, John Defterios, Emerging Markets Editor CNN mit Moderator Richard Quest, CNN International Business Correspondent, das aktuelle Weltgeschehen eingeschätzt und einen Blick in die Zukunft gewagt. Ebenfalls vor Ort war Rob Bradley, Head of Digital Advertising Revenue and Data von CNN International. Die Werbewoche hatte die Gelegenheit, mit ihm über die neue Programmatic-Advertising-Abteilung bei CNN International und über aktuelle Trends der digitalen Werbemassnahmen zu sprechen.

Could you quickly explain why CNN International established the section Digital Advertising?
Rob Bradley: CNN has done digital for many years. I suppose now it’s ramping up its presence digitally, even further, mainly because we’re moving towards thinking about audience first not individual platforms. Our audience views our content on TV on the phone on their Tablet or desktop, at work on the train, when they’re travelling. So we try to make sure, when we’re presenting that content, it’s in the right platform where people are actually consuming it. What I mean is, our advertising needs to represent this too. So we’re moving to where the majority of our campaigns are cross-platform.
What is nice for me to see is that we’re sometimes getting bigger digital spends as we are on TV. So combining the two is very unique for us.

So you’re saying, digital is even more important than TV nowadays?
I wouldn’t say digital is more important. TV is still the biggest platform we have. I’d say it’s as important. What digital does is allow you to be incredibly targeted. Digital allows you to understand a lot what is going on in a campaign, which you can’t always do on TV. So it’s a kind of harvesting the information you get from digital and that allows to give the client personalized information on that campaign. So the combination of the two is what’s powerful.

Would you say, targeting and reporting is gonna be the main topic this year?
I’d say targeting is the first thing people look for in campaigning. But more and more with digital, it’s branded content or sponsored content. We have a creative agency in the house, spread around the world in four different cities and they create content for the clients. This content is video-led normally. The client can have feature-pages, social-communities. So it’s about getting targeting in place, yes, but also about delivering messages in a creative way.

How do you see Ad-Blocker – problem or chance?
I think it’s a problem for the whole industry, a big education-piece needs to happen. Look at it this way: incredibly quality content, that comes at cost, right. And then we get to help fund that content. So internet-users need to understand that if they want that content they’re gonna have to be shown adverts that allows us to sort of pay for the content. I think it’s that way also to deliver the messages. Our user experience is paramount, so we’re not showing ads to everyone in their face left right and center and doing this incredibly high-impact full amounts. So actually the thing is that people need to understand that if they’re not gonna see ads they’re gonna start getting less quality content, or content which didn’t necessarily had the proper research into it.
Luckily for us, we have a huge scale, so the ad-blocker problems ar not hitting us massively. But we’re definitely having a very close eye on and we’ll create a strategy in place.

Don’t you think people would rather pay more for the content than being forced to pay by watching a lot of not necessarily quality adverts?
Lots of companies are now doing that. But their subscription based model doesn’t go so far though. I think their subscription is not enough to pay for the content, they still need advertisement. That’s just part of it. So yes, people can start paying for content, like via micropayment. But I always think, people would still prefer to gain that content for free and put up with the adverts as long as they’re not too intrusive or follow around too much.

You are concentrating on programmatic strategies and implementing data-oriented strategies, like integrating social media. What solutions for programmatic advertising are you developing right now?
Data’s been around in the industry for a while now and we’re very careful how we manage that data. People are interested in certain areas of content so we’re showing adverts based on that interest.
One thing we’re really pioneering is reporting. Reporting is basically trying to understand how deep we can go when it comes to clients campaigns and understanding how the campaigns performed. So moving away from just the CTR. I think the industries relied on the CTR for too long. So we’re moving towards the point of reporting: the number of hours that ads had been viewed, the engagement, so the amount of time people consume that video or being on that page which has ad-features, the types of people being on that page. Reporting is also based on people’s interest, like if they are reading sports for example, business, finance or news.
So reporting really is about to kick in to the industry. But very few media-owners do well at the moment. Most clients normally get a spread-sheet which says about the CTR and has the different ad-impressions and clicks and so on. So the reporting side, what people looking at, is gonna come into this year quite heavily – for the smart publishers anyway.

Do you see big differences in the US and Europe when it comes to reporting?
My role is very global so I see the differences in the markets very well. From that perspective I’d say London is not behind New York. It has advanced and sometimes even more advanced technology than NY. Well, NY leads the slight majority, but London is not far behind and Western Europe is the second most advanced market in the world. There are pockets, like Holland or France which are incredibly advanced.
Places like Asia, Africa, Middle East and South Amercia are still quite far behind. A lot of things like programmatic or Data-management, reporting – we can go there and influence the market. Meanwhile, in Western Europe there are many big media-owners trying to win the budget.

How about China?
We class China as a very key market. We have good reach in China, and it is advanced. If you look at some of the advertisement that comes out of Hong Kong, that leads the way, Shanghai and Beijing as well. Its got almost 650 Million Internet Users. We see China as a big opportunity for us and they can be advanced, they are very good technical, so they’re not far behind.
If you look at India and Africa: it’s this new generation of millennials and young people, they may not even have a computer, but they’ve got a smartphone. And that smartphone is where they’re reading all of their news, all of their content and keeping up to date. As a brand we need to ensure that we are delivering the right content and in the way they want to consume it. The way you deliver that content needs to be different and the way you actually deliver the advertisement needs to be different.

So, you’re strategy for 2016 is mainly concentrated on mobile?
If you look at my strategy for 2016, half of it has to do with mobile. If you compare our desktop users to our mobile users, over 50 percent of our audience is now mobile, which is a huge amount. And if there are big stories, such as the Paris attack, it went up to 80 percent consumption on mobile. We need to make sure to deliver the information on mobile now as much as we are desktop.
We’re living in a digital world now. Turner, who owns CNN, is in the state to moving away from traditional advertising on TV, even moving towards more long form native advertisement. So that 30 seconds spot may start changing over the next few years. You will see more and more creative solutions on TV, just like you’re seeing online right now.

What is your vision for the future for digital advertising?
I think what’s gonna happen is; we need to get these personalized advertisements, but doing it in a way they trust the media-providers and then moving away from standard advertisement. There are very smart ways of delivering advertisement.
The future will be much more video when it comes to advertising, and much more mobile. Mainly it goes into the direction of being more creative. You know, an advert could be an information based video to be about the moon sponsored by one of the technical brands, like Microsoft. That would still be delivering a message, that Microsoft are doing technology but then also giving people kind of information, like who landed on the mars. That’s the kind of thing I’d like to see more.

Interview: Ursina Maurer

CNN International hat im Frühling 2015 die neue Abteilung Digital Advertising Revenue and Data geschaffen.Rob Bradley ist seit Mai 2015 als Head of Digital Advertising Revenue and Data für CNN International tätig. In dieser Position beaufsichtigt er die globale Optimierung der Reichweite von CNN International, den internationalen Ausbau der Programmatic Strategie des Unternehmens sowie die Implementierung moderner, datenorientierter Strategien, einschließlich der Integration sozialer Medien. Des Weiteren leitet Bradley ein neues Expertenteam, das mit regionalen Vertriebsleitern von CNN International zusammenarbeitet, um neue digitale Komponenten für integrierte Werbung sowie Sponsoring-Lösungen zu entwickeln.