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Making a key big data move, Comcast has quietly scooped up a small video metadata specialist to delve deeper into the programming that it delivers, improving the viewing experience for subscribers while opening up possible new advertising revenue opportunities for the giant US MSO. As reported first by Multichannel News (link is external) and later confirmed by Comcast, Comcast Corp. (link is external) (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) bought the ten-year-old metadata firm, Watchwith, late last year. Terms of the deal, which closed last month, were not disclosed. But a Comcast spokesman did say that Watchwith will be folded into its growing Comcast Metadata Products & Social Services (COMPASS) division and that all of its staffers will be staying on. Based in San Francisco, Watchwith is a 15-employee firm that specializes in tracking video information on a scene-by-scene basis. Its technology enables producers and editors to tag their video programs manually to gather "frame-level" data on those programs. The Watchwith system also offers media-analysis technology that enables content and service providers to tag programs automatically using computer vision and machine learning methods. Comcast has already relied on Watchwith technology to add new features to its X1 IP video platform. For one thing, the cable operator uses the firm's metadata in XI's "auto-extend" feature, which automatically extends the length of DVR recordings, especially sports events, that run longer than the original scheduled air time. Watchwith technology also powers a new sports highlights feature on X1 that automatically creates metadata tags so that viewers can skip directly to key plays in a sporting event recorded on their DVRs. Thanks to such capabilities, Watchwith offers some promising new ad possibilities for both service and content providers. Last year the company introduced an in-program "contextual" ad platform for IP-capable set-tops like Comcast's X1, as well as smart TVs and mobile devices. That platform allows programmers to offer interactive ad avails within shows at pre-set cue points, going beyond the more disruptive pre-roll and interstitial ad spots that are now available. It also bought Arris's Media Analysis Framework (MAF), a cloud-based machine learning and automated metadata-generation platform that ties into Watchwith’s own digital advertising platform. (See Arris Ends Dream of Set-Top Software Riches (link is external).) — Author Alan Breznick, Cable/Video Practice Leader --- For the full article, visit http://ubm.io/2lJDTjW (link is external)

Resonate’s HI-RES Intelligence-to-Activation platform enhances your understanding of your audience with unique insights about their motivations, values, media consumption habits and behaviors–to illuminate why they make the decisions they make–or don’t make. Then Resonate puts your message in front of them – wherever they are online. Statistics: 58% of consumers are more likely to be influenced by their friends and family 47% of consumers are less likely to think immigration strains the US economy 41% of consumers are more likely to believe that the country is on the wrong track Resonate's solution helps you engage voters based on issue and policy positions, candidate platforms and personal values that impact their voting decisions. Leveraging these motivations – the reasons why people act – yields substantially better results than traditional demographic, behavioral, contextual and voter file targeting methods. Political and advocacy campaigns no longer need to rely solely on demographic and behavioral targeting to reach the right audience. Resonate layers motivations and values onto traditional audience building. Campaigns engage with audiences based on a combination of over 7,000 attributes. From education to GOTV, Resonate engages supporters and persuadable voters based on the specific issues that matter to them. They target, deliver, and optimize your ads based on our ground-breaking methodology. Resonate provides comprehensive measurement and reporting on both traditional web metrics (including click through rates or video completion rates) and effectiveness metrics such as lift in favorability or intent to vote. Connect with the right audiences during every phase of your campaign 1: Educate: Resonate helps campaigns of all types amplify its presence. From candidate name recognition to ballot initiatives, your message will be seen. 2: Persuade: Only Resonate can help you reach persuadables based on the issues they care about most. Whether you need to get your message in front of people who have not yet formed their opinion or reinforce your stance with supporters, you can be sure your ad dollars are being spent wisely. 3: Mobilize: Ultimately, winning any campaign is decided by the actions of your supporters. From traditional GOTV to signing petitions and attending rallies, Resonate connects you with the audience most likely to act. --- View Resonate's case studies by visiting http://bit.ly/2lAzMqr (link is external)

Mattel, Inc., the leading global childhood play and development company, today announced a new strategic partnership with Alibaba Group, the world's largest online and mobile commerce company. Leveraging Mattel's iconic brands and expertise in play as well as Alibaba's wealth of data and insights into the Chinese consumer base, the expanded partnership aims to re-shape the way parents in China think about play. Alibaba Group's unrivaled scale and data-driven approach to consumer insights will enable Mattel to tailor their market and product strategy. With more than 440 million active buyers across its e-commerce platforms, Alibaba is helping Mattel meet the ever-growing and changing needs of Chinese consumers with a strategic omni-channel approach spanning online-to-offline (O2O). As part of this expanded collaboration, Mattel will not only be marketing and selling to China via Alibaba's B2C marketplace Tmall.com (link is external), but also leveraging the company's media ecosystem to develop and promote learning resources and educational content – inspired by Mattel's beloved brands and characters – to help parents and families get the most out of play. Additionally, Mattel will be working with Alibaba's A.I. Lab to develop new and innovative products, designed to aid child development through the use of cutting-edge technology and smart, interactive learning. "Play has a tremendous impact on a child's cognitive, social and emotional growth," said Margo Georgiadis, CEO of Mattel. "By combining Mattel's unmatched expertise in childhood learning and development, with Alibaba's immense reach and unique consumer insights, our goal is to help parents in China raise children to be their personal best." "Alibaba empowers leading global brands to digitally transform their businesses and address the fast-changing Chinese consumer landscape," said Daniel Zhang, CEO of Alibaba Group. "We look forward to supporting Mattel's growth through our robust data and commerce technology infrastructure, which will help to elevate their overall business from product development to brand-building to rural penetration for this unique and massive market." Ms. Georgiadis added, "The multi-billion dollar toy category in China is highly fragmented, with tremendous potential for growth. Working with Alibaba, we see a terrific opportunity to develop and lead the category." Mattel and Alibaba will begin product development immediately, with initial availability planned for mid-2017. --- For the full article visit http://bit.ly/2lbJDAI (link is external)

After a long and fair rulemaking process during most of 2016, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted ground-breaking privacy rules (link is external) last October protecting the personal information of broadband Internet service customers. Both industry—including powerful phone and cable companies that provide the majority of broadband connections—as well as consumer, civil rights, and privacy groups, had ample opportunity to make their case—which they did. Public-interest and grass-roots organizations used their limited resources to advocate for consumers’ basic right to access and use the Internet (via Internet service providers—ISPs) in private, without having their information gathered. Industry and its allies tried to oppose or water down attempts to give their customers meaningful privacy protections. Despite a significant power imbalance between the parties, the process resulted in rules that give consumers and citizens legal rights that many assumed are already theirs to enjoy, but which they, in fact, had been denied until this historic broadband privacy rule making. Prior to the Privacy Order, it was not since the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that U.S. regulators affirmatively granted consumers meaningful online privacy rights on this scale. While the Federal Trade Commission has played an important role as the lead agency in protecting the privacy and data-security rights of U.S. consumers for a large section of the U.S. economy, it has not enacted any policy that that would restore the power imbalance between consumers and large corporations in our ever-growing commercial surveillance world. The FCC broadband privacy rule, however, aims to provide the public with some fairness and balance to the lopsided relationship between the average individual and data-insatiable powerful ISPs. The FCC rules set limits on what Internet service providers may do with the highly sensitive data that they have already collected in the course of providing internet service (a service for which consumers already pay dearly with their pocket books). “Sensitive” information includes precise geo-location, financial information, health information, children’s information, social security numbers, web browsing history, app usage history and the content of communications. The most important aspect of the rule requires Internet service providers to obtain an opt-in consent for the use or sharing of such information for purposes other than providing broadband service, such as billing. What this means is that unless you ask me and I give permission, what I do on the Internet is off-limits for ISPs to monetize. The final rule emphasized the distinction between sensitive and non-sensitive data. The FCC felt it had to accommodate industry pressure to follow the FTC’s framework, which is based on that agency’s very limited authority to protect consumer privacy. Advocates and the FCC recognized that the distinction between sensitive and non-sensitive information is less and less meaningful in an age when companies can use data analytics and modeling to infer the most personal traits of an individual without ever collecting “sensitive data.” What is particularly noteworthy is that the new FCC rule grappled with the concepts of what kinds of uses and sharing are permissible and which are not. The rule, in fact, makes it clear that it is precisely the unexpected and unrelated or secondary uses of data that a company must first obtain permission to use before it can do so. In other words, each of us has a right to control the collection, use, and exploitation of data about us. This important and basic human right was finally made into a legal right with the 2016 FCC Privacy Order. It should stay that way, even with a new leadership at the Commission. The benefits that accrue to each of us individually and as members of a group, as well as to society at large, from this new policy safeguard, are manifold and invaluable to an equitable, just, and fair democracy and marketplace. Without an opt-in, there would be no limitations placed on how ISPs can use the data about us. As we all know too well, the existing individual privacy self-management model in the U.S., which typically offers only an opt-out, has proven to be ineffective in putting limits on corporate data uses and sharing, although the public expresses an increasing opposition to these corporate surveillance practices. Not only do the FCC privacy rules affirm the basic individual right to have one’s privacy protected and individual autonomy preserved, the requirement to obtain an affirmative consent prior to any secondary uses by ISPs is equally critical in guarding against profiling and group discrimination. The profiling of an individual, or the association of an individual with a class of people, requires very little information about the person who is being profiled. So, the less data collected about others like me, the less likely that I will be profiled. While not perfect, and just a small safeguard in this world of ubiquitous and constant data surveillance, this rule helps to guard us against the classifying and predictive analytics that often represent a biased, discriminatory, and entrenched inequality that incorporate past inequities into decisions about the future. Given that the rule identifies information about children as sensitive data, it is also important in protecting the fundamental rights of children to enjoy privacy and freedom from age-inappropriate commercial exploitation. The use of data about us as consumers and citizens during the 2016 elections, moreover, should serve as an important reminder of how pervasive technologies of data surveillance analytics have become. Political campaigns and special interests have unfettered access to commercial data and marketing practices designed to influence how we think, act, and vote, but there are no regulations or corporate practices that aim to curtail these developments’—unless, that is, we hold onto the FCC broadband privacy rule now and build on it in the future. Given the ominous start of Ajit Pai to his FCC chairmanship—he has already used his “delegated authority” to undermine important communications rights—we are now facing the very real likelihood that the new chairman will do away with the rule that was adopted by the previous FCC Commission. (CDD recently filed an Opposition to Petitions for a Stay of the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Privacy Order in response to a filing by a coalition of industry associations and interests.) Similarly, there is a real risk that Congress might repeal the rule via the Congressional Review Act, which would prevent the FCC from revisiting broadband privacy rules at all in the future. But Americans want to have control over their lives and data, and want to be able to make decisions unencumbered by powerful corporate interests. Thus the FCC and Congress must preserve the privacy rights of broadband internet customers! --- Written by Katharina Kopp, Deputy Director, Director of Policy for Center for Digital Democracy

Quotient Technology Inc (link is external), a leading digital promotions and media company connecting brands, retailers, and shoppers, today announced the launch of the Quotient Media Exchange (QMX), a data-driven solution where advertisers can leverage Quotient's reach and exclusive data to serve targeted media across the web and mobile. QMX incorporates purchase data from retailers across the Quotient Retailer iQ (link is external) network, allowing the company to reach a national audience or a single retailer's customers. QMX combines in-store transaction data with online engagement and purchase-intent data from Quotient's flagship brand, Coupons.com (link is external), and the company's thousands of publishing partners. Quotient's forward-looking proprietary data allows Quotient to make intelligent predictions about what shoppers are planning to buy, and when they are planning to shop. Through QMX, advertisers can run digital media campaigns targeted at consumer segments based on category purchase, brand or store affinity, geolocations, or other custom criteria that serve brand objectives. As of today, QMX has a potential audience reach of about 55 million in the U.S. "We're excited to bring an efficient and powerful media solution to the market," said Mir Aamir, President and COO at Quotient. "Now that we have broad retailer reach and scale, QMX is the next logical step as we seek to serve our CPG partners and other advertisers looking for better ways to target consumer segments with effective digital advertising." QMX enables advertisers to serve data-driven media on leading publishers, including social media properties such as Facebook, Quotient's many retailer partner sites, as well as Quotient's vast network of web and mobile properties, including Coupons.com (link is external). Additionally, QMX can integrate media with digital coupons through Quotient's Retailer iQ platform, offering brands a unique ability to combine targeted brand equity messaging with effective consumer conversion to drive sales. In addition to targeted media, QMX enables brands to measure the effectiveness of digital advertising campaigns to drive sales, based on the real-time shopper transaction data from Quotient's retailer partners...We distribute digital coupons and media through a variety of products, including digital printable coupons, digital paperless coupons, coupon codes and card linked offers. We operate Quotient Retailer iQ™, a real-time digital coupon platform that connects into a retailer's point-of-sale system and provides targeting and analytics for manufacturers and retailers. Our distribution network includes our flagship site and app, Coupons.com (link is external), as well as Grocery iQ™, Shopmium™, and our thousands of publisher partners. We serve hundreds of consumer packaged goods companies, such as Clorox, Procter & Gamble, General Mills and Kellogg's, as well as top retailers like Albertsons-Safeway, CVS, Dollar General, Kroger, and Walgreens. --- For the full article, please visit http://prn.to/2lCRpGV (link is external)

With the addition addressable TV to the Drawbridge Cross-Device Platform, brands now have the ability to seamlessly reach their audiences across desktop, mobile, connected TV, and now programmatic TV inventory sources, ensuring that both traditional cable subscribers and cord-cutters are exposed to your brand's message on all of their devices. If you're looking to reach TV viewers – not programs – contact us today to learn more. The New TV Landscape Reach Both Types of TV Audiences TV Audience Retargeting Amplify consumers’ TV engagement by reaching them before or after they have received a message via programmatic or connected TV. --- For more informaiton about Drawbrige Resources visit, https://drawbridge.com/c/tv_resources (link is external)

This is a case study of Facebook's work for Judicial Watch illustrating how the media, digital advertising & social networking company uses micro-targeting and tracking for political causes. --- Established in 1994, Judicial Watch (link is external) is a conservative non-partisan government watchdog organization that promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and law. It has filed lawsuits against the last several US presidential administrations. The organization wanted to reach its current supporters, educate them about the work it is currently involved in and encourage them to donate both online and offline. "With advanced matching for Custom Audiences, we can now reach donors who were previously invisible to us on Facebook for a fraction of the cost of other channels. We now have the ability to reach our audience with simultaneous online and offline messaging, which increases lift and our return on ad spend." -John Britten, Digital Director, Judicial Watch Judicial Watch wanted to determine if serving its supporters Facebook ads would make them more likely to donate. The organization used advanced matching for Custom Audiences to find and reach its supporters on Facebook, and encourage them to donate. Advanced matching for Custom Audiences is a targeting tool that allows advertisers to upload multiple data points at once to create an audience on Facebook. Data points include general information like first and last name, zip code, state, country, age and gender, and also email, phone number, mobile advertiser ID and Facebook app user ID. The organization then ran Canvas (link is external) and link ads (link is external) to educate supporters on the work it is doing on the Hillary Clinton email controversy. The interactive ads highlighted the results Judicial Watch has already achieved—including 20 active lawsuits and more than 180 Freedom of Information requests—and encouraged viewers to donate to the organization. Next, Judicial Watch used the conversion lift tool to segment its target audience of supporters into a test and control group. It then used offline events manager, a new tool that allows offline tracking on multiple data points, to evaluate how the ads influenced offline donations via the organization’s direct mail program. Using both tools, Judicial Watch accurately measured the impact of the ads on online and offline donations. Using a variety of Facebook’s advanced advertising tools, Judicial Watch reached and engaged with hundreds of thousands of supporters on Facebook and measured the impact in a statistically significant manner. Its campaign achieved: 40-point increase in in match rate using advanced matching 393,409 supporters reached on mobile 72% of those reached were age 45 and up (a key demographic) Statistically significant increase in offline and online donations among males and those age 65 and up 82% of Canvas viewed on average --- For more information on this case study, visit https://www.facebook.com/business/success/judicial-watch (link is external)

What can marketers learn from the latest data about voter behavior online? Voters make decisions before they're in the booth—by going online. To understand the influence of digital media and online video in the 2016 elections, Google partnered with two leading political consultants to survey primary voters. Here, they discuss what the results mean for marketers. This election cycle, people are increasingly going online before going to the polls. In the first two months of the year, the average registered voter gearing up for Super Tuesday researched the primary election online 85 times. And in just the last year, people have watched over 110M hours of candidate- and issues-related video on YouTube. To learn more about how registered voters educate themselves on the facts, candidates, and issues before the primaries, Google partnered with political consultants Julie Hootkin and Dr. Frank Luntz. As executive vice president at Global Strategy Group (GSG), Julie has been a consultant to members of Congress, governors, and mayors across the United States, and leads her firm's corporate impact practice, which helps businesses navigate the issues of the day. A preeminent pollster, Frank has been featured on major broadcast networks and is the founder of Luntz Global Partners, which consults Fortune 500 companies and political campaigns alike. How is voter behavior in this election cycle different from four years ago? Dr. Frank Luntz: As of this year, people are spending 40% more time online than on TV. Think about that. They know that digital platforms, whether desktop or mobile—from news websites to Google Search to YouTube—deliver far more convenience than traditional media. In political campaigns, television is still powerful, but voters believe it provides too much spin, too many half-truths, and too little detail. Digital empowers voters to find the precise information and facts they're seeking. They decide the search terms, the content, the time, the length, and well, everything else. As one Iowa Republican voter in our focus group said, "We're more informed than we've ever been because of the internet." We also see this in campaigns for consumer products, financial services, and every other category brand marketers care about. Today's voters are spending more time online, almost two hours for every hour spent watching TV. Julie Hootkin: We're living in an on-demand world. With just the touch of a button, we can watch a movie, order groceries, and hail a cab. Just as easily, we can visit a candidate's website, watch a campaign video on YouTube, and fact-check a candidate's position on Google. People are "on" 24/7, thanks in large part to their smartphones. For political campaigns, this means today's voters are more connected than ever before. They are spending more time online, almost two hours for every hour spent watching TV, and they are increasingly relying on their mobile devices to provide them with answers to their questions in real-time. Almost 60% of elections-related searches are now coming from mobile devices, representing nearly 3X growth since the last presidential election cycle. As a result, campaigns—and brands—have an unprecedented number of opportunities to inform, engage, and persuade voters through digital communications. How are voters engaging online vs. with traditional media? Julie Hootkin: Sometimes it feels like we are trapped in a debate that pits traditional against digital, but the truth of the matter is, it's not a zero-sum game. This goes for both political campaigns and brand marketing: TV is good for some things, and digital is good for others. TV continues to play an important role in introducing candidates to voters, particularly early on in the campaign cycle. But as voters move through the decision-making process and Election Day approaches, digital plays an increasingly important role. Why? We heard from a lot of voters that they don't feel like they get the full story from TV—anyone who's ever written an ad script can tell you, you can only fit about 76 words in a 30-second spot. Voters want more, and they find it online (link is external). People will watch content that matters to them—regardless of length. Dr. Frank Luntz: Voters generally dislike and distrust the over-the-top negative political ads they see on television. Don't get me wrong—they still make an impact. But the 30-second or 60-second spot is not as persuasive and informative as it once was. As an Iowa Democratic voter in our focus group put it, "TV ads don't tell you enough. They're a good starting point, but they're not a good way to make a decision." That's why voters turn to search, news sites, candidate sites, and YouTube to find the full, unedited story and unbiased facts for themselves. --- For the full article written by Kate Stanford, Director of YouTube Advertiser Marketing of Google, visit http://bit.ly/24Unrti (link is external)

Deep Root Analytics, a leading media analytics company that creates multi-sourced media data platforms for television audience targeting and ad monitoring, announced today that it has teamed up with D2 Media Sales to enable political & advocacy advertisers to target households using proprietary audience segments. Deep Root Analytics has created 26 proprietary segments of voters based on partisan or issue affinity and has pre-matched these segments to D2’s advertising platform, providing addressable TV advertising to nearly 22 million DIRECTV and DISH satellite households. “Today’s political and advocacy advertisers want the effectiveness and efficiency that comes with targeting very specific audiences with TV advertising,” noted Deep Root Analytics CEO Brent McGoldrick. “At Deep Root Analytics, we are focused on ‘bringing big data to big media.’ So, we are thrilled to work with D2 Media Sales and access their best-in-class addressable TV platform to enable our clients to communicate with nearly 22 million DIRECTV & DISH customers.” “We’re excited to bring addressable TV targeting capabilities to Deep Root Analytics clients,” said Mark Failla, Director of Political Ad Sales at D2 Media Sales. “Our targeting technology can serve campaign messages to the most data-qualified voter households, as defined by the advertiser, each time, instead of leaving it to chance.” The proprietary segments created by Deep Root Analytics and made available for addressable advertising via D2 Media Sales include: Reluctant Republicans Disaffected Democrats Swing Voters Senior Swing Voters Young Swing Voters Women Swing Voters Blue Collar Hispanic Persuasion Influentials GOP GOTV GOP Primary 2nd Amendment Voters Jobs Voters Free Trade Energy Voters Anti-Terrorism Immigration Social Conservatives Libertarian Voters Fiscal Conservatives Education Voters Health Care Voters High Disposable Income Minimum Wage Ballot Initiative Pro-Marijuana Ballot Initiative Anti-Marijuana Ballot Initiative The segments created by Deep Root Analytics do not utilize customer data provided by DIRECTV & DISH. --- For more information visit http://bit.ly/2cMQGiR (link is external)

The Power of Algorithms: AudiencePredictor™ and AudienceExcluder™ Pursue your best audiences by utilizing The Trade Desk’s proprietary targeting algorithms. AudiencePredictor™ employs third party data to identify users who fit your ideal voter profiles. Similarly, AudienceExcluder™ gives you the power to save budget by not serving ads to users who are unlikely to meet your conversion goals….Another important part of the programmatic ecosystem is the push to strategically unite messaging across all devices. Desktop cookies, once thought of as the holy grail of media tracking, have given way to cross device targeting and location analysis. As the average number of connected devices steadily rises, omnichannel marketing is becoming crucial in reaching users with the right message, at the right moment, on the device they’re using at that moment. This capability ensures device appropriate messages are sent throughout the target user’s day. An ad delivered during the work day, for instance, will go to the user’s desktop, while mobile ads are delivered during lunch and after work. With Factual’s datasets integrated into The Trade Desk platform, campaign managers can use hyperlocal segmentation to target mobile users. This level of precision enables candidates to target users in a specific area at the right time. ... Clients of The Trade Desk can tap into Semcasting’s Political Data Suite, which uses IP and location data to target audiences with precision accuracy and maximum reach across devices. With nearly 100 percent of registered voters have been mapped to party, early voting, absentee voters, registered independent party preference, voter activism in Primaries and GOTV, as well as high-value donors and repeat donors, political audiences have never been easier to reach. ... The Trade Desk’s partnership with L2 Political enables clients to access L2’s 160 million record national voter database. This data includes complex vote histories, party IDs, issue profiles and hundreds of fields of demographic and consumer ... Reach current voters on The Trade Desk with i360. With more than 60 political, issue and lifestyle segments, constantly recalibrated and refreshed based on incoming data, i360 provides both the quantity needed to have an impact and the quality necessary to serve meaningful content to responsive audiences. ---- See The Trade Desk Election 2016 PDF attached below.

Politics is about fundraising, message management, and getting out the vote. Using Semcasting voter history data, the Smart Zones platform has been optimized to support voter registration goals and donor profiling, and identify and to target activist interests and propensities, such as participating in a GOTV program or attending a town hall meeting. The Proof Is in the Numbers Over 145 Million Registered Voters Reach more than 145 million registered voters in their neighborhoods, and by congressional and local district designations. Registered Voter Activity Profiles Profile categories, include primary participants, donor activity, high value contributors, repeat contributors, interests in Special Causes. Full Voter Coverage Online Reach voters on the devices they prefer when they are online. Reach them at over 10 million public WiFi hotspots. Use Smart Zones for targeting sporting events, public offices, hotel venues and convention centers—anywhere voters gather and candidates reach out to their constituents. --- For more information visit http://bit.ly/2ipGkI1 (link is external)

Powered by unique census-level data, 605’s state-of-the art analytics tools and methodologies transform raw data into precise and actionable insights on a national basis. Dolan Family Ventures (DFV) announced that it has acquired Analytics Media Group (AMG), a leading data analytics and technology business with deep political, marketing and analytics expertise, and launched 605, a new independent audience measurement and analytics business focused on optimizing marketing and programming initiatives within the media and entertainment industries. 605 has expansive relationships with partners across the country that provide extensive, privacy-protected, set-top box viewing data to ensure that its analysis is based on a vast and credible footprint of data representing key individual and regional demographics. “Our experience in the industry tells us there are major gaps in audience measurement and television analytics in the current marketing and programming landscape,” said Kristin Dolan, founder and CEO of 605. “The acquisition of AMG and the subsequent launch of 605 immediately establishes a company with real scale, significant resources, profound analytic capabilities, extensive set-top box data and management experience. 605 is creating a new generation of products and services to enhance media buying, planning, programming and audience targeting. This fills a critical need for media and entertainment businesses in today’s rapidly changing viewing landscape.” 605 launches as a fully-formed and well-financed company to provide solutions using data-driven, census-based audience measurement, addressing some of the challenges in measurement that exist today. 605’s set-top box data is unique in terms of its footprint and the rights granted which enables a deeper, broader and more granular analysis to deliver actionable insights to programmers, brands and advertisers. Advanced Advertising & Data Partners: Data Services: Data onboarding, processing, normalization, and hosting End-to-end data management including QA and ETL processes Data systems architecture, integration, testing and optimization Data monitoring, reporting and real-time analytics Custom services including audience/CRM, product, platform and network-based data analytics Advertising Analytics: Target audience identification with custom models and segmentation for data-driven campaigns Creative, offer, and message testing Primary research (brand awareness, recall, response) Campaign planning, measurement, reporting, and optimization tools Impressions-based reporting & verification Return on Investment (ROI) experiments and analytics Programming Analytics: Census-based measurement Audience analysis and segmentation Second-by-second programming analytics Tune-in conversion analysis and optimization Path analysis (lead-in, lead-out) Cross-platform behavioral analytics (linear, non-linear, OTT) Content, creative and message testing Audience-based ad planning, sales and reporting tools 605 is a newly created fully-operational and well-financed company that offers unique, independent audience measurement and analytics that optimize programming and marketing initiatives within the media, sports, and entertainment industries. The company was created by Dolan Family Ventures through its acquisition of Analytics Media Group and access to set-top box data from an extensive network of partners across the country. --- To learn more, visit our website at 605.tv.

The ease of promoting and profiting from fake news (link is external), the use of social media to spread disinformation and twist the truth and the ability to microtarget voters on all their devices reveal how political campaigns and special-interest groups are taking full advantage of the “Big Data”-driven digital marketing system that Google and Facebook have helped unleash. Campaigns now have needle-in-the-haystack capabilities, provided by commercial marketing and media companies, to find and motivate an individual voter. The Trump team (link is external), for example, was able to identify someone from rural America who felt “disenfranchised (link is external),” had not voted in recent elections (and didn’t show up in polls as a likely voter), and then use a data-and-digital-concocted brew to trigger emotions and behavior (link is external). Behind the digital curtain that informs and entertains is a commercial surveillance system whose function until recently has been primarily to sell us junk food (link is external), credit cards and retail products (link is external). But in 2016, the system was fully deployed for political gain. Just take a look at the techniques used by the Trump, Clinton, Sanders (link is external) and other political campaigns that describe how they reached and influenced voters. They are right out of the digital advertisers playbook: IP address (link is external) targeting, geofencing (link is external), pixel profiles (link is external), Data Management Platforms (DMPs) (link is external), algorithms (link is external), data onboarding (link is external), moment scoring (link is external), header bidding (link is external), and programmatic advertising (link is external). Electoral campaigns — from all sides — are fusing cookies (link is external) (data files placed on our web browsers) with information gathered by consumer data companies (link is external) along with our voter files (link is external), which illustrates how our commercial pursuits and political interests are being merged today. Advances in the best way to use all the information routinely captured and analyzed about us, and which has been greatly expanded by our use of mobile phones and apps, have helped companies to create highly detailed personal dossiers that merge our online and offline information, make predictions about how we — or others like us — will respond, and then orchestrate desired behaviors. Google boasts to its advertisers, for example, that it can help them connect with us in a “micromoment (link is external)” — just at the point when we may make some decision. Facebook, for its part, assures marketers they can use its system to influence the decisions of “real people (link is external).” There is little standing in the way of a Trump, Clinton or any other political effort from easily acquiring access to the huge reams of personal information now available (link is external) through commercial data companies, sold by publishers and online enterprises (link is external) and used to target us (link is external) when we log on to social media such as Facebook. The digital marketing and data industry has largely been immune from any regulation under the Obama administration, either on consumer data collection practices or business operations. The US is still one of the only advanced-economy countries (link is external) without comprehensive privacy legislation (link is external), and what little we have is already under threat (link is external). For the vast majority of Americans, there is practically no legal way to turn off or stem the flow of their information. The government’s “hands-off” approach to how Facebook, Google and the rest of the digital marketing industry operate has helped unleash powerful and unaccountable forces that helped elect our next president. Political campaigns can buy data from internet and other companies about our finances (link is external), health concerns, race, ethnicity (link is external), shopping behavior (link is external) and geo-location, along with what we read online and what our political interests are. Leading data companies including Nielsen (link is external), Neustar (link is external), Oracle (link is external) and Acxiom (link is external) sell this information to political campaigns and others working to influence public opinion. Political data firms such as Cambridge Analytica (link is external), which worked for Trump, layer on predictive modeling and psychological tools (link is external) to help identify “personality traits,” behavior and “what really drives … decision making.” Trump’s White House chief strategist Steve Bannon sits on its board (link is external). This company, which also helped support the Brexit “Leave” initiative (link is external), says it has compiled “5,000 (link is external) data points on over 220 million Americans (link is external).” Cambridge Analytica is the US affiliate (link is external) of the SCL Group (link is external) in the UK, which engages in political (link is external), commercial (link is external) and defense (link is external) work (including “PSYOPS (link is external)” — psychological operations). According to its website, SCL’s specialties include “behavioural polling, behavioural microtargeting, StratCom and target audience analysis” (a service it is helping NATO (link is external) perfect). SCL’s operations illustrate how data analysis is being used today, from trying to win “hearts and minds” in Afghanistan (link is external) to selling us Big Macs or a President Donald Trump. According to the company (link is external), they “combine commercial and public big-data sets with large-scale quantitative research to predict everything from whether people are likely to vote through to what products and services they are most likely to buy.” Its work with political campaigns takes advantage of the “predictive power of data” and uses “physio-lingual analysis tools to uncover subconscious … reasoning (link is external).” Such capabilities benefited Trump, who only won because, as Cambridge Analytica itself wrote (link is external), “The president-elect flipped Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by margins of less than 2 percent. If Hillary Clinton had taken those last three states, she would have won the election. Trump won those three states by a combined margin of approximately 107,000 votes.” The company also explained: The 2016 presidential election showed that the use of data to identify, persuade and turn out voters has become increasingly sophisticated. Cambridge Analytica’s data science, digital marketing and research teams informed key decisions on campaign travel, communications and resource allocation.... Every week Cambridge Analytica collected responses from 1,500 to 2,000 people in each battleground state. It used this research and data to model scores for all voters across key states: which candidate they preferred, which were "persuadable," the issues they cared about and how likely they were to actually vote on Election Day. Every voter in each battleground state was also segmented by ethnicity, religion and the issues that concerned them most…. When, in the final weeks of the race, the firm’s data scientists recalculated voter turnout and recalibrated their models to show how Donald Trump could win, the GOP candidate revisited states like Michigan and Wisconsin…. Online ads placed by the firm were viewed a staggering 1.5 billion times by millions of Americans …. If Hillary Clinton’s campaign was the Titanic, then Donald Trump’s campaign was a speedboat: nimble, flexible and able to adapt fast.” The Trump campaign also used digital targeting to conduct “major voter suppression operations,” according to a report in Bloomberg (link is external), focusing on African-Americans, young women and white liberals — with tools including an onslaught of what are called “dark posts (link is external)” on Facebook. These targeted messages included “a South Park-style animation of Hilary Clinton delivering her infamous 1996 'super predator' remarks." Marketers use dark posts to deliver targeted content to only on the Facebook newsfeeds (link is external) of individuals, not on the ones operated by the companies that generate them. Giles-Parscale, another online marketing firm working for Trump (link is external), was part of “Project Alamo (link is external),” a digital data initiative spearheaded by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. “Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing (link is external),” said Brad Parscale, who is now assembling a nonprofit advocacy group (link is external) designed to press Trump’s agenda from outside the White House. How Trump, Kushner and their operatives use the considerable data assets controlled by the White House (which was expanded under Obama (link is external)) and work with their new outside digital operation should raise concerns, at the very least, from civil libertarians and others. Google and Facebook likely will continue to be friendly ports of call for Trump and the GOP. They provide a host of services to both major political parties’ campaigns and have benefited from the Big Money (link is external) pouring into them to target voters online. To help campaigns “understand the influence of digital media and online video in the 2016 elections,” Google hired (link is external) Republican pollster Frank Luntz (link is external), along with Julie Hootkin from the Global Strategy Group (link is external), to offer insights as “guest editors” on the company’s principal website set up for advertisers. Google also promoted (link is external) ways political advertisers could take advantage of YouTube (link is external), its search engine and all its other tools for marketers. It offered this advice: “Voter decisions used to be made in living rooms, in front of televisions. Today, they're increasingly made in micromoments, on mobile devices.” The GOP was reported to have awarded Google a major share of its “largest digital ad deal ever,” earmarking $150 million to buy online video ads, according to Ad Age (link is external) last May. Facebook also offers targeting opportunities (link is external) for political campaigns (link is external), which are encouraged to buy ads and other products to appeal to its more than 162 million US users, enabling campaigns (link is external) to target by age, gender, congressional district and interests. Campaigns can also supply their own data to Facebook, which will help them target (link is external) individuals. Facebook has promoted as an advertising “success” story (link is external) its fundraising targeting for the conservative group Judicial Watch, which included a mobile ad (pictured right) prominently featuring a headshot of Hillary Clinton alongside the headline, “Hillary’s Email Scandal Exposed.” The case study explains, “Advanced matching for Custom Audiences is a targeting tool that allows advertisers to upload multiple data points at once to create an audience on Facebook. Data points include general information like first and last name, ZIP code, state, country, age and gender, and also email, phone number, mobile advertiser ID and Facebook app user ID.” So many companies (link is external) now specialize in or supply data to political campaigns, as well as offer ways to influence (link is external) voters more precisely (link is external). There are even data made available to Republican campaigns by Democratic-oriented companies. For example, data analytics specialist L2 (link is external), which has been helping Donald Trump since early 2015, offers a predictive modeling product (link is external) that scores voters on “likelihood of support” on dozens of issues, including their views of Black Lives Matter, church attendance, fracking, gun laws, gay marriage, the Mexican border wall, transgender bathrooms and many more. HaystaqDNA (link is external), a political data firm started by operatives of President Obama’s previous campaigns, sold some of its own data (link is external) to L2 (and which were used, according to a former Trump data official, to “pinpoint a specific type of would-be supporter.”) But it’s more than just data gathering and online targeting that concerns privacy and democracy advocates. Pursuing monetization at any cost overwhelms what’s left of the boundaries that separate news from advertising or purposefully deceptive content — and the public is being conditioned to accept (link is external) fake as real. The online giants have effectively fashioned a brand-focused online echo chamber

GroupM, the media investment management group of WPP, today announced the global launch of [m]PLATFORM, an advanced technology suite of flexible media planning applications, data analytics and digital services. The platform will improve advertisers’ ability to use audiencedefining insights from hundreds of data sources to find and communicate with their consumers across all media. [m]PLATFORM makes it possible for media planners at GroupM agencies to use the most detailed consumer data to achieve results for their clients. It is supported by a team of data scientists, technologists and digital practitioners from across GroupM specialist companies and Xaxis. [m]PLATFORM unifies data analytics and digital services including search, social, mobile, digital ad operations and programmatic into one team delivering a completely open and fully transparent data and technology architecture. Brian Gleason, most recently Global CEO of Xaxis, is named CEO of [m]PLATFORM, a products and service organization within GroupM. He will lead the continuous development of market-leading technology to ingest any data important to identifying a client’s audiences and applications that efficiently engage them on any platform. For clients, [m]PLATFORM delivers objective insights and the power of choice across data, technologies and key performance indicators in their GroupM agency’s scope of work. “Marketers are under tremendous pressure to deliver results from media investments. This flexible platform approach enables us to focus $7 billion worth of investments we’ve made in data and technology over 10 years to help them realize a marketplace advantage,” said Kelly Clark, CEO GroupM Global. “Our agencies will now have deeper consumer insights and the most robust technology in the market.” [m]PLATFORM connects wide-ranging WPP data sources across Kantar and Wunderman; third-party data providers; GroupM’s data from unique agreements with global media partners; and clients’ own data when they choose. This allows the creation of the most complete consumer profiles within a brand’s target audience, including rich demographics, technology usage, behavioral insights, purchase history, location data and more (varies by region according to local regulations). The connected platform ensures insights carry through the whole communications process: •[m]Core is the first full-stack audience intelligence platform combining cross-platform data (display, mobile, video, offline CRM, apps, etc.) for a singular consumer identifier, [m]ID. •[m]Insights is the largest audience-centric media planning tool with cross-channel planning, creative workflow management, unified audience frequency capping and location-based and indemo reach management. •[m]Analytics marries online and offline campaign-level data to [m]ID to enable analytics, attribution and optimization •[m]Report merges data into a single, intuitive visualization dashboard with actionable intelligence. GroupM is building a global organization to support [m]PLATFORM. Four regional Presidents will report to Gleason. Recently named President of Platform Services in North America, Phil Cowdell is now President [m]PLATFORM, NA. Lucas Mentasti is named President, [m]PLATFORM, LATAM. Presidents in EMEA and APAC will be named shortly. Also on the [m]PLATFORM global leadership team is Nicolle Pangis, Chief Operating Officer; Jack Smith, Chief Strategy Officer and Bob Hammond, Chief Technology Officer. Pan-regional collaboration will ensure consistent information and experience to global clients, but with the bespoke strategic point of view of their selected GroupM agency. “The rise of digital and mobile technologies, media fragmentation and expanding ecommerce create a pivot point in marketing where the scientific application of data to media strategies is essential. Today, marketers have to know their customers in richer detail than ever before, or else they won’t reach them. [m]PLATFORM is an audience-centric approach enabling our agencies with individualized consumer insights and technologies to reach audiences without boundaries,” said Gleason. “The technology development teams reporting to Brian demonstrate his ability to continuously innovate winning solutions for clients,” said Clark. “Now, the best of our technologies, whether built, acquired or partnered are consolidated under his remit to enable our agencies with an unparalleled ability to reach audiences and deliver outcomes for their clients.” --- About GroupM GroupM is the leading global media investment management group serving as the parent to WPP media agencies including Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom, Maxus, Essence and m/SIX, as well as the programmatic digital media platform, Xaxis, each global operations in their own right with leading market positions. GroupM’s primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP’s media agencies by operating as leader and collaborator in trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, and proprietary tool development. GroupM’s focus is to deliver unrivaled marketplace advantage to its clients, stakeholders and people, and is increasingly working closely for the benefit of clients with WPP’s data investment management group, Kantar. Together GroupM and Kantar account for over 50% of WPP’s group revenues of more than $20 billion. For more information visit http://bit.ly/2h504vf (link is external)

British ad tech company Unruly has turned to IBM Watson to create a new cognitive powered psychographic targeting tool to increase the effectiveness of digital video ads. Unruly DNA (link is external) combines the company’s emotional intelligence tools with IBM Watson’s machine learning capabilities to help identify and engage the people most likely to increase a brand’s sales. Unruly is tapping Watson’s Personality Insights service from the Cloud to help advertisers to learn how and why people think, act and feel a certain way. The Unruly DNA (link is external) tool analyzes social media and other digital data from consumers and learns personality traits such as empathy, trust, assertiveness and imagination. Scott Button (link is external), Unruly’s Chief Strategy Officer, said: “Cognitive technologies and artificial intelligence have made massive strides in the last few years and are now at a point where they can recognize quite subjective and very human qualities, such as emotion and personality.” Unruly’s new audience targeting tool creates profiles of light buyers, who, according to academic research¹, are more likely than heavy buyers to increase sales because they have a greater capacity to purchase more. Unruly DNA then generates a recommended list of third-party audience segments based on these characteristics, which can be used by advertisers to improve the efficiency of their targeting. “We’re really at the beginning of the journey when it comes to using cognitive technologies in advertising. Machines can be a powerful tool for marketers to recognize human desires and aspirations. We’re really excited to be at the forefront of this new world with integrating Watson capabilities into our Unruly DNA tool, helping brands increase penetration and sales by targeting their light buyers,” added Button. Unruly’s new tool is built on large scale consumer panel studies with more than 10,000 respondents combined with insights from social media accounts of participating consumers. By tapping IBM Watson, Unruly DNA uses a mix of linguistic analysis and machine learning to determine the sociodemographic and psychological profile of each panelist, clustering and aggregating the profiles based on buying patterns and purchasing frequency. For example, Unruly DNA has uncovered that Maybelline shoppers are highly imaginative, Glaceau shoppers like to explore new things and Tresemme shoppers are particularly agreeable. Through the same AI technology, Watson describes popular figures like Oprah as analytical and emotionally aware and Pope Francis as genial, helpful and active. “The future of marketing lies in unlocking insight from vast amounts of digital data – from emails, to tweets, to social media posts and purchase history,” said Harriet Green, Global Head of IBM Commerce. “Luckily Watson is there to help: it plays the role of a dedicated analyst, assistant and trusted advisor helping marketers to make better, more informed decisions. We are delighted that Unruly is leveraging the power of Watson to open the way for more targeted and accurate marketing campaigns which are better for retailers, FMCG brands and consumers alike.” --- For full article, visit http://bit.ly/2hHxOia (link is external)

Nielsen announced it has entered into an agreement with Tribune Media Company to purchase Gracenote, the industry’s premier provider of media and entertainment metadata. With this transaction, Nielsen will acquire the data and technology that underpins the programming guides and personalized user experience for major video, music, audio and sports content. The acquisition extends Nielsen’s footprint with major clients by including Gracenote’s global content database which spans across platforms including multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), smart televisions, streaming music services, connected devices, media players and in-car infotainment systems. Gracenote provides reference information for over 12 million movie and television listings and 200 million music tracks, and drives the interfaces of the major streaming digital media services, as well as the connected technology systems in over 75 million automobiles. The company is the industry standard for automatic content recognition (ACR) technology, powering the discovery and recommendation engines used by world’s largest television, music and automotive companies. By bringing Gracenote’s capabilities into its measurement framework, Nielsen will have the ability to provide clients with deeper analytics on consumer behavior and offer an unprecedented view of audience engagement from discovery to consumption. As part of the Nielsen Total Audience (link is external) measurement framework, Gracenote’s intelligent metadata will help meet our clients’ needs in an addressable world where marketers target customers and optimize campaigns in real time. The inclusion of this data will also allow media companies to optimize their content for specific audiences. In addition, Gracenote’s long-term client relationships across TV, audio, sports and auto will be further amplified through Nielsen’s global reach and position as the leader in audience measurement and intelligence. The transaction is expected to close during the first quarter of 2017. “Gracenote’s metadata and content recognition technology fuels the interfaces of the major video, music and in-car infotainment systems that consumers engage with every day. This acquisition provides Nielsen with a significant asset in our mission of measuring and understanding consumer behavior,” said Karthik Rao, President, Expanded Verticals at Nielsen. --- For more information, visit http://bit.ly/2h82VIe (link is external)