We are pleased to bring some new features to our latest AdSphere build.
Exclude Response Type Filter
The introduction of a new Response Type filter “Exclude” makes it possible to exclude creative results where any combination of URL, SMS, TFN (toll free number) or MAR (mobile app response) elements exist. As an example, let’s say you’re interested in studying brand/dr campaigns that use any combination of URL, SMS, and MAR but you want to remove any creatives that have TFN. Previously, there was no way to do this but now you can select TFN together with the new Exclude button and click Apply! This will make it easier to isolate pure web based direct-to-consumer campaigns and much more.
Category / Sub-Category Fields
Campaigns in AdSphere can be assigned to one or two different categories / sub-categories. We have added fields for this in various reports so that users can easily determine which are assigned to each brand and ranking reports can easily be sorted using these new fields as shown below:
Track when new networks are added or removed from a brand or creative’s media schedule
In our May build of AdSphere, we added some new features on the network details page includes Active / Inactive network tabs, Active Weeks Counter, and Consecutive Weeks Counter. To read about these features, please click here. To put the finishing touches on these new features, we have added the ability to schedule recurring reports that key off of new Active or Inactive networks being added to a brand or creative schedule. As you will see below, when clicking the blue excel button, on either the Active or Inactive tab, will allow you make a variety of choices. In the upper section of the pop up dialog, you can request an excel output for either Active or Inactive networks. On the bottom section, you can optionally choose to have an automated weekly report scheduled and emailed to you every Monday based on any of the following conditions: When there are new active or new inactive networks, Only when there are new active networks, Only when there are new inactive networks, or run weekly whether or not there are new active or inactive networks.
There are multiple use cases for these new capabilities. It’s now easier than ever to track a particular brand or creative and be alerted should a new network be added to the schedule. You could also be alerted should a network be removed from the schedule. The reports you receive on Monday will alert you to any changes that were made in the prior media week.
In this latest build of AdSphere™, our team has worked hard to squash many bugs while adding some great new features!
A new “Media Week” field has been added to airing detail reports to assist users who like to pivot table data by media week when running multi-week and lifetime exports.
Track When Networks Are Added or Removed From Schedules!
We are also debuting some enhancements to our network details page which will be expanded over the next couple of development sprints. The idea is to help users better track when networks are added or removed from schedules. Eventually, you will be able to setup reporting for any brand or creative that you wish to monitor to alert you when any of its networks go online or offline from week to week!
For this current release, you’ll notice at the bottom of the network details page two new columns have been added named “Active Weeks” and “Consecutive Weeks”. Active Weeks will reflect how many historic weeks there has been activity (at least one airing) for each network. Note: The system is using calendar day/weeks. Consecutive Weeks will show the number of continuous weeks of activity for each network. In the example below, the addition of a “new” flag shows networks that are new from week to week. Intended to be used as a weekly reporting feature, the new flag will only be shown when running reports for “last week” timeframe. When a network has been added back to the schedule, its consecutive week value will be zero and it will be flagged “new” in the Active tab for the week. As you can see below, Fox, GSN, and Discovery Life meet this definition. Starting at zero, the consecutive week value for these networks will increment each subsequent week as long as there continues to be activity. Should a network experience a week with zero airings, then its consecutive weeks counter will revert back to zero and it will appear in the “inactive” tab.
The newly added “inactive” tab shows lifetime statistics for all “inactive” networks for the period being studied. Also, when you are using “last week” date range, any network that was on the air two weeks ago, but had zero airings last week, will appear in the inactive tab and flagged as “new”. All other inactive networks will be shown with their lifetime data. Consecutive Weeks column will not appear on inactive tab as it will always be zero for inactive networks.
Please note that the default sort of both active and inactive tab favors any networks that are flagged new. These will be sorted first by spend and then all other networks will be sorted by spend. Whenever a network’s status changes in the last week period, either going from active-to-inactive or inactive-to-active, these networks will be flagged new on both active and inactive tabs as appropriate.
In an upcoming AdSphere release, we’ll activate the weekly tracking email feature whenever there is a network that changes status. Also, the new excel output for inactive tab will become operational at that time.
Keeping Track of your Filter Settings!
Over the years, there have been a lot of filters added to AdSphere. Many of us have experienced that moment when you run a report and something just doesn’t look right. Thus begins a game of discovering the offending filter and/or you can click the blue edit button, find and click the “reset”button, and have all of your filter settings put back to default.
Now, there is a better way. We are excited to release the following new feature as it will make AdSphere™ even easier to use! When you use ANY filter in the system, AdSphere will now track which filters are being used and allow you to reset any of them individually. In the following example, 5 different filters have been applied including custom date range, brand classification, creative duration, category, and a network filter. To reflect this, AdSphere shows the number of filters applied (5) with a small drop down arrow menu that you can expand for more details.
As you can see below, all of the filters options are listed. The status of all filters are shown so you can see which have been applied. In this example, it’s easy to see the 5 filters that have been changed/applied. Now, if we’re having a problem with a report caused by a rogue filter, it will be easy to find the culprit and reset just that one filter.
Global Search – Creative Export with Play Buttons!
Let’s say you want to create an excel output for all creatives in AdSphere that have the word “Hockey” in the creative name – or any other word or phrase of your choice. First step is to use Global search and enter the search term or phrase. Note: Global search allows you to put quotes around phrases when you only want to return results that match the phrase exactly. Next, click “View All” link for creatives. As you’ll see below, there is now a blue Excel button on the creative details page that will allow you to export the entire list of creatives with all details and creative play links which are valid for 30 days.
As always, we would appreciate reports of any new bugs or issues that you may experience with this new build.
We look forward to receiving your thoughts, ideas, and feedback on how we can make these features work better for you! Feel free to comment below.
If Covid taught the television advertising industry anything, it’s that performance-based metrics saved the day. While traditional TV advertising metrics were trying to figure out how to properly count pandemic eyeballs, performance-based television advertisers were counting consumer responses and consumer actions in real time. Joseph Gray, CEO of DRMetrix comments, “It’s amazing when during a huge media disruption you have one sector of the industry that has 20/20 vision. Performance-based television advertisers could see what was really happening with their TV advertising investment and KPIs in real time down to the network, daypart, and creative level. What they discovered is that response levels were at an all time high while media rates were at an all time low. Moreover, performance-based television advertisers could measure that consumers were still responding, engaging, and buying.”
In the early fall of 2020, DRMetrix released a study regarding the impacts of Covid-19 on the direct-to-consumer (DTC) television advertising industry. The study showed that the top 50 DTC web/mobile advertisers reduced their expenditures during the quarantine lock down period by 34% while the top 50 performance-based advertisers increased their media expenditures by an incredible 76.6% helping to save the day for many television networks.
DRMetrix’s new “Covid Edition” 5 x 5 industry study covers trends in the larger direct-to-consumer industry from 2016 – 2020 and shows the impact of Covid-19 on different classifications of the industry. The study stands as a testament to those performance-based television advertisers who helped to sustain the industry during difficult times and profited in the process. It also stands as an excellent case study for all of the web/mobile advertisers that have been flooding into television in recent years proving that performance-based techniques can help them make television more accountable similar to online advertising. Gray reflects, “When advertising on television, these advertisers don’t have to give up measurement and accountability. They can have their cake and eat it too if they discover and implement performance-based television techniques.“.
Download DRMetrix’s new 5 x 5 Industry Study by clicking here.
This topic gets a lot of attention these days. DRMetrix clients often ask, “When will DRMetrix monitor over-the-top (OTT) or connected television (CTV) campaigns?”. At the moment, we can only reply, “We don’t know” but we hope this blog post will provide some clarity and perspective on the topic.
As the evolution of the smart TV has taken root, the hope has been that these, and other smart devices such as Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, etc., would be able to use automated content recognition (ACR) technology to track and confirm ad delivery at the consumer glass or device level. Unfortunately, each OTT provider is currently operating within their own walled garden. That is to say, that they have imposed contractual requirements that prohibit the use of automated content recognition (ACR) technology, which is required for ad monitoring.
There are a couple of basic requirements for ACR ad monitoring to work:
The smart TV or device needs a reference database of commercial fingerprints to be able to recognize specific commercials.
The smart TV or device needs to be running ACR technology to be able to compare live audio or video data against this database to find commercial matches.
Requirement 1 refers to “Ad Discovery” where technology attempts to detect ad breaks and looks for unknown ad content. Today, human operators need to review unknown content to discover new ads from which to create unique ACR fingerprints. When a new ad is identified, it must also be properly associated to the advertiser, brand, industry category, etc. If advertisers decide to run unique ads for OTT and CTV campaigns, it would be difficult for companies like DRMetrix to gain access to these commercials in advance for fingerprinting purposes. That said, it would be feasible for DRMetrix to detect OTT and/or CTV airings for existing national ads that we already have in our database.
Requirement 2 is reliant on requirement 1. Additionally, the consumer owned smart TV or smart devices would have to be running ACR technology as this is what enables the recognition of unique ads. Here is where the OTT companies have effectively created their “walled garden” model. The smart TV and smart device manufacturers have to negotiate with the OTT companies in order to carry their apps. This is currently playing out between Roku and Google’s Youtube TV where recently both parties have been unable to come to terms where Roku is willing to continue carrying the Youtube TV app. Historically, the OTT companies have made it a requirement, as part of their contractual negotiations, that the smart devices must turn off their ACR capability once a consumer launches the OTT’s company’s app. If the device manufacturer doesn’t agree, then they are not allowed to carry the app. This is a struggle between opposing interests with consumers caught in the middle. Unfortunately, this means that the smart TV or smart device is unable to use ACR (point #2 above) as a method of detecting ads being delivered to consumers through their devices. This is a big challenge currently which is only dwarfed by the issue of consumer privacy with many consumers turning off the ACR features of their smart TV or smart device by simply opting out. Some consumers don’t want their electronic devices spying on them and reporting to third parties the programming and commercials they are watching. Both of these issues make point #2 above impossible which is the only way these devices can report on the commercials that are being delivered to individual consumers.
These are some of the issues that frustrate the monitoring of OTT campaigns. CTV campaigns are somewhat similar in that they are targeted to specific consumers where one encounters the issues of ad discovery (requirement 1) and ACR ad recognition (requirement 2). It has been difficult to determine upon ad recognition whether said ad is being inserted as part of a CTV campaign vs. a local cable or regional ad insertion. There may be ways to solve these problems but it would require working with individual smart TV and/or smart device companies each of which would only provide a partial view of the marketplace. The limiting factors are the scale that any one smart TV or smart device manufacturer has as well as how many of their users have not opted out of the ACR ad monitoring features. Because there hasn’t been enough consolidation in the marketplace to date, the costs of collaborating with various smart TV and/or smart device companies continues to be cost prohibitive. Of course, this may change in the future.
At DRMetrix, we have talked about subscribing to a variety of services and doing ad discovery and ACR ad recognition off of the OTT streams. The problem is, DRMetrix would be one consumer of many and the ads we would see and report on would be of limited value. For example, we could report those commercials that we discover running on our individual OTT streams but we would not be able to report on the size, scale, airings, or ad expenditures of various OTT campaigns. As we would love your feedback on this issue, please consider leaving us a comment or question!
Following the success of it’s AdSphere™ research system, DRMetrix has been introducing a host of new features for its airing verification service known as “AVS”.
Unlike AdSphere™, AVS™ can be used to track airings for brand as well as direct-to-consumer campaigns.
Agencies and advertisers are finding AVS™ to be the most cost effective solution for tracking airings across 130+ national cable networks. Airings data can be pulled down on a near real-time basis by integrating with the AVS™ API and/or agencies can pull down airings into media buying systems such as CORE on a daily basis. AVS™ has recently integrated with Core Connect to completely automate the process.
AVS™ allows users to subscribe to their own campaigns as well as competitive campaigns. A built in custom report generator allows users to create individual outputs for different team members. If an agency team is working on a particular account, they can receive airings data delivered for that campaign, as well as key competitive campaigns, on a daily and/or weekly basis. The user interface of AVS™ is incredibly easy to use allowing different team members to login and setup their own outputs without requiring IT support.
AVS™ is capable of reporting the “break type” for each airing detected on national cable networks allowing agencies to differentiate between national and local “DPI” break airings. For compatibility, users can assign their own network codes by network and break type. This eliminates the traditional requirement to pay for two encodings to separate airings by break type. In fact, AVS™ doesn’t require creative encoding so there is no costly requirement to replace air tapes in order to test drive the AVS™ service!
As part of a suite of automation tools, agencies can use the new AVS™ creative upload feature to have their creatives pre-registered before going to air. This way, airings data is immediately available. Users can also assign ISCI codes, unique creative names, and more as part of their creative submission.
Last, but certainly not least, DRMetrix launched a new BI tool called AVS™ Dashboards. Now, in addition to pulling down airings data, AVS™ users can visualize airings data across multiple brand-campaigns and share the interactive reporting with colleagues and clients. Unlike expensive BI tools such as Tableau, Microsoft BI, etc., the use of AVS™ dashboards is completely free and agencies can setup as many dashboards as they desire to share internally and/or with third parties. The framework designed for AVS™ dashboards can be completely customized by users on a fee basis. This is a great solution for agencies or anyone who wishes to customize their own BI solution building on DRMetrix’s existing AVS™ dashboard framework.
To learn more about the new AVS™ Dashboard offering, please click to watch the video below.
For clients interested in using AVS data with Google Data Studio, DRMetrix has created the DRMetrix AVS™ Connector. Information on how to use the new connector can be found by clicking here.
Existing AdSphere™ subscribers have access to a free tier of AVS™ which allows them to monitor unlimited creatives for up to 20 brand-campaigns a year. If users require more, they can purchase additional brand-campaign subscriptions as needed. Rather than charging by creative, DRMetrix charges a yearly fee of either $250 or $150 for each additional brand-campaign subscription which includes reporting for unlimited creatives for 12 months. At the $250 rate, users can switch monitoring from one brand-campaign to another at any time throughout the year. At $150 the monitoring is limited to a single brand-campaign for 12 months. Over the course of the year, whether a brand/campaign launches one or dozens of new creatives, all are covered under one low yearly fee.
If you would like to learn more about AVS™, or AVS Dashboards™, please contact DRMetrix at info@drmetrix.com
It’s been a long time coming. With our latest AdSphere build, 28.5 minute airings will be treated as any other format allowing users to rollup total airings and spend by brand. Similar to other creative lengths, you’ll also be able to filter 28.5 minute creatives by product, lead generation, and brand/DR classifications. Instead of having separate brand classification sections for short and long form, there will instead be a single Brand Classification button as shown here.
When you open up the Brand Classification menu, this is what you’ll now see. All creative lengths have been unified and may now be selected which is the new default in AdSphere.
One of the things we love the most is that you can now bring all of the short and long form airings & spend together in a single view. Users won’t need to create separate short and long form reports anymore! For example, if you want a single report showing all new short and long form brands, this will now be possible. Gone are the days of having to view short and long form creatives separately.
If you would prefer to exclude long form airings, all you’ll need to do is open up the brand classification filter and unclick the 28.5m format.
For retailers using Adsphere™, they’ll be able to receive a single weekly excel output showing the aggregated spend for each ASONTV brand which will include both its short and long form spend.
We look forward to your feedback! Feel free to comment here or send an email to feedback@drmetrix.com
San Diego. May 21, 2020. DRMetrix, the direct-to-consumer television industry’s leading research company, has released a new research paper showing the impact that Covid-19 has had on last year’s top 50 DTC TV advertisers. “Over the past five years, online and mobile-based companies have increased their TV expenditures an average of 26% each year exceeding 7 billion on national networks in 2019. During the national quarantine, however, the top 50 prior year DTC advertisers have collectively reduced their TV expenditures by 33.8% over the prior year period”, says Joseph Gray, CEO of DRMetrix. DRMetrix’s research shows that not all DTC advertisers have pulled back. In fact, some have taken full advantage of higher TV viewership levels, buying more ads than ever before!
For some, it makes sense to buy during a time when rates are significantly discounted while viewership levels are at record heights. They are not alone, other direct-to-consumer sectors have dramatically increased TV buys. For example, AS SEEN ON TV product campaigns have increased their ad frequency by as much as 135% since the start of the quarantine period. This is especially impressive considering AS SEEN ON TV ad expenditures were down over 26% in 2019.
DRMetrix’s new research paper provides insights into why some advertisers are measuring success and increasing their buys while others are pulling back. A full list of the top 50 DTC advertisers for 2019 is provided along with advertising expenditures for pre-quarantine and quarantine periods compared to the prior year. The full research paper can be downloaded by clicking here or visiting www.drmetrix.com.
About DRMetrix
DRMetrix was founded by industry veteran Joseph Gray who has been in the direct-to-consumer television industry for 30+ years. DRMetrix monitors over 130 national TV networks 24/7/365 using state-of-the-art automated content recognition software. Direct-to-consumer ads for all creative lengths are tracked including spot, 5-min, and long-form which include web addresses, mobile app response, SMS, or toll free numbers. DRMetrix works with leading agencies such as Horizon Next, Havas Edge, Group M, ID Media, Ocean Media, as well as leading television networks such as A&E, AMC, GSN, INSP, and Hallmark Channels. For more information, please visit www.drmetrix.com and be sure and download our latest direct-to-consumer industry study.
Easy to build, real time competitive dashboards are coming! Creating these dashboards will be free to all existing AdSphere clients. They will be configurable within DRMetrix’s AVS system and each dashboard can be customized for specific groups of brands & creatives. Bundled with AdSphere, AVS access includes monitoring for unlimited creatives for up to 20 brands a year. Any of these creatives or brands can be utilized with any number of easy to create dashboards!
Please click on the image below to launch our Youtube Video overview of the types of data visualizations that will be included in the first generation of these configurable competitive dashboards!
DRMetrix released its newest 5 x 5 industry study today as a revision to its prior study released at the end of Q3 ’19. The new study includes the complete data set for 2019 and well as an updated section regarding television attribution challenges & solutions.
5 x 5 Industry Study
DRMetrix has also been tracking the recent impacts of Covid-19 on the direct-to-consumer television industry by providing a daily/week interactive tracking page on its website.
On behalf of everyone at DRMetrix, we wish safety and health to all of our industry friends during these trying times. We will get through this together and, for those of us spending quality time at home, we hope this ‘light’ reading material will help the time pass quickly.
TV viewing should be on the rise due to the coronavirus pandemic leaving millions of Americans housebound. For direct-to-consumer television campaigns, who are able to measure consumer response and campaign performance in real time, will greater television viewership levels help to sustain the industry or will there be a pull back? The U.S. economy relies heavily on consumer spending so how consumers respond to this type of advertising in coming days will determine the impact to this 17.8 billion dollar industry sector. If traditional brand advertisers pull back, will we see more direct-to-consumer advertising filling the gap and, if so, what types?
To help answer these questions, DRMetrix has published a new interactive chart on its website that shows the daily airing count (ad units) for different classifications of direct-to-consumer advertising across 130 national networks monitored by its AdSphere research system. The chart shows ad units by day beginning March 1 and will update daily. One can see a recurring decrease in ad units on weekends which is normal. It may take a week or two before the chart begins to paint a picture of what’s happening.
CLICK PICTURE ABOVE TO SEE LIVE CHART
DRMetrix’s chart shows the ad units for different classifications of the direct-to-consumer television industry as follows:
Traditional Direct Response (“DR”) Campaigns
(Campaigns using differing phone, web, or SMS codes in order to better track consumer results back to specific networks, dayparts, and TV creatives).
Short Form Products – Traditional call-to-order $19.95 types of campaigns. Lead Generation – Campaigns that don’t advertise the full price of the product or service (ie: call for free information) 28.5 Minute Infomercials – Those late night program length advertisements
Brand/Direct Campaigns
(Campaigns using a single vanity phone or URL which makes it more challenging to measure the immediate impact of television)
Vanity 800 – Campaigns using a vanity 800 call to action Web/Mobile/SMS – Campaigns that use a vanity web, mobile app, or SMS call to action
To learn more about these classifications, and historical trends over the past 5 years, please download DRMetrix’s latest industry study.
DRMetrix wishes to extend our thoughts and prayers for everyone’s safety and health during these trying times. As an industry, we will get through this together. Due to the cancellation of PDMI East, we will be celebrating our industry’s accomplishments, and honoring the top advertisers of 2019, at PDMI West in September.
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3/25/2020 Update – New “Cause of Change” section has been added to the report today. For each brand classification, the top 10 daily brands are listed with the number of (+) plus or (-) minus ad units compared to the prior day. Each brand listed includes a clickable play link. Enjoy!
4/14/20 Update – Added toggle at top of graph to switch between daily or weekly data views. Access historic cause of change results for any prior day or week by “clicking on” data points in top graph.
