Mobile Marketing June 2018 issue

ISSUE 29

JUNE 2018

| NEWS | VIEWS | ANALYSIS

G-FORCE What will 5G bring to the mobile marketing party?

MID-TERM REPORT What sort of shape is the ad tech industry in after months of scandal

ROOM SERVICE HotelTonight CMO Ray Elias outlines the brand’s approach to mobile

FAIR EXCHANGE Tapjoy CEO Steve Wadsworth on why brands should tap into the power of rewarded in-app video

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BRAND STRATEGY Flipboard’s Marci McCue on the company’s evolution and approach to mobile

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THE GENERATION GAME

Hello and welcome to the latest print edition of Mobile Marketing.

Tim Maytom looks at the likely impact of 5G services on mobile marketing

Transparency also comes under the spotlight on p18 as we look back at some of the scandals that have rocked the digital marketing world this year. And on p6, Tim Maytom looks at the impact that 5G is likely to have when it starts to roll out in earnest.

As he reports, it’s fast, but coverage is not likely to be as ubiquitous as 4G. Then to close the issue, on p42, Adjust’s Andreas Naumann investigates the practice of SDK spoofing and how it is affecting the app install business.

Enjoy the issue!

David Murphy, Editorial Director

SUBSCRIBE If you want to be sure of receiving your copy of the print edition of Mobile Marketing three times a year, you can subscribe today to go on our controlled circulation list. It costs just £30 (UK) or £40 (rest of the world). To take out a subscription, just send an email to subscriptions@ mobilemarketingmagazine.com and we’ll tell you what you need to do.

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12 pages of opinion and analysis from members of our Digital Experts Council

Fyber’s Alon Golan on why brands are missing a trick if they ignore in-app advertising

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Tapjoy CEO Steve Wadsworth on the benefits of rewarded in-app video advertising

Urban Airship’s Alyssa Meritt on the power of marketing orchestration

DIGITAL EXPERTS COUNCIL

COVER INTERVIEW: TAPJOY

THE IN-APP OPPORTUNITY

MARKETING ORCHESTRATION 101

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In this issue, we have an interview with HotelTonight CMO Ray Elias (p12), in which he explains how the brand has managed to remain true to its original vision, while keeping mobile at the centre of how it operates.

We also hear from Flipboard’s Marci McCue (p5) about the curation network’s evolution, and the power of mobile to take your brand global. And in our cover interview (p24), Tapjoy CEO Steve Wadsworth outlines the power, and transparency, of rewarded in-app video advertising.

CONTENTS

DATA DILIGENCE Weve managing director Martin Weller considers transparency, verification and consent in the GDPR era

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ROOM SERVICE David Murphy talks to HotelTonight CMO Ray Elias about the ultra-competitive OTA (online travel agent) market and the benefits of a mobile-first approach

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GETTING PERSONAL WITH CDPS Teavaro’s Ben McDermott argues that Customer Data Platforms are set to usher in a new era of data usage

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THE TRANSFORMATION CHALLENGE Outsystems’ Nick Pike on why FMCG brands are slow to adopt digital transformation

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REBUILDING TRUST Sharethrough’s Ally Stuart offers advice on rebuilding consumer trust in an evolving digital landscape

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MID-TERM REPORT

It’s been a rocky ride for the digital marketing industry in the first half of 2018. Tyrone Stewart looks back on some of the major scandals and the efforts the industry is making to regain the trust of both advertisers and consumers

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SPOOFING IS FOR REAL Adjust’s Andreas Naumann looks at the threat posed by SDK spoofing

Editorial director: David Murphy – david.murphy@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0)7976 927062 Managing director: John Owen – john.owen@mobilemarketingmagazine.com +44 (0)7769 674824 Commercial director: James McGowan – james.mcgowan@mobilemarketingmagazine.com News and social editor: Tim Maytom – tim.maytom@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Reporter: Tyrone Stewart – tyrone.stewart@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Marketing Executive: Trish Pencarska – trish@mobilemarketingmagazine.com Design: Konstruct Studios Ltd – info@wearekonstruct.co.uk Contributors: Marci McCue and Andreas Naumann Print: Monster Media Management – info@monstermanagement.co.uk Mobile Marketing is published by Masterclassing Ltd., 57–61 Charterhouse Street, London, EC1M 6HA www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

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27 cities. 150 events. 6000 brand marketers.

Countless connections.

In 2018, join brands and marketing professionals around the world at the most talked-about events in the digital industry.

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JUNE 2018

BRAND STRATEGY

By Marci McCue, head of marketing and communications at Flipboard

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he year 2010 marked significant developments in how people consumed content. Although the web had come a long way, no one could fully appreciate the coming impact mobile devices would have on the way we discovered, shared and consumed content.

At the time, websites felt cluttered with articles and ads competing for attention, and the advent of social media added a new layer to content discovery. Now people scrolled through streams of comments, images or links, making it hard to keep up and find the important stories.

This complex and cluttered environment lost the beauty and pacing that print could bring to a story. Flipboard was created to bring it all together and make it beautiful and touchable – offering a curated platform where people, publishers and advertisers all had a distinct space in which to breathe and engage with the world. The pivotal release of the iPad later that year aligned perfectly with our vision.

MOBILE-FIRST When Flipboard launched, we didn’t have a product on the web. We saw that smartphones and tablets would become the primary content consumption devices. We launched on the iPad in July 2010 and by the end of the year, we were on the iPhone, and soon after, started development for Android.

That transition from tablet to smartphone marked an important evolution in the Flipboard app: building for a hand-held experience instead of the larger iPad meant that, instead of flipping left to right, the magazine would flip up (a much easier motion with your thumb while holding the phone). And, with the phone, there was a new use case: people wanted to check Flipboard when they were standing in line or walking to the train. So, where on the tablet people generally took their time and browsed topics, on the phone we needed to offer users quick, easy access to the best stuff. So we created a new ‘highlights’ feed called Cover Stories – now called the ‘For You’ feed – that enabled users to flip through some of the best stories from everything they were following.

Recognising that different mobile audiences have different mindsets when using our app or website became part of our DNA. Today, we deliver a package of news for people at 7am as they get ready for the day, we share long reads on Sundays, and if you’re flipping through Style we may surface the recent red carpet images so you can indulge in a few moments of fashion.

A PLATFORM FOR EVERYONE There are three things we’ve learned on our journey so far. First, mobile is instantly global. While we didn’t build Flipboard in other languages at launch, almost immediately people around the world started downloading it and customising it with their local language sources. Apps today should consider the global use case even if they are only in one market, because their users are everywhere.

Second, it’s important to have guiding principles. When building an experience, it’s important to question how it’s advancing the company’s values. For us, we had several ways to test this. In the early days we’d ask ourselves: are we delivering something that makes people feel it’s a special experience, is there a WOW factor? Does the new release make us feel ‘appy’ like everyone else? Does it uphold our belief in surfacing great journalism and getting people to the stories that matter to them? Is it something my mum would want to use?

Lastly, mobile-first matters. For brands that want to reach mobile audiences, the options are still very fragmented, not at all consistent and often low quality.

The best path to reaching people on mobile is to be among the apps users are willing to go to when it comes to investing in themselves.

What’s unique about Flipboard is that it’s not just a place to keep up. We’ve created a curation platform to advance people lives, publishers’ business and brands’ voice. Editors selecting sources and stories, algorithms indexing and surfacing curated content, and the people sharing their own collections are all features designed to give our audiences around the world the best way to stay informed or get inspired to engage in the world.

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THE GENERATION GAME After years in development, it seems like the mobile industry is finally ready to make the leap into 5G. Tim Maytom explores what the industry should expect from the 5G revolution, and what work still needs to be done to unleash the future we’ve been promised

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f you’ve got your finger anywhere near the pulse of the mobile and digital industries, it’s easy to read the swells and gullies as topics attracting a surge in interest and then, more often than not, fading away. QR codes.

Beacons. Wearables. The Internet of Things.

Cryptocurrencies. All have surfed the zeitgeist, promising transformative change, and most have dipped quietly below the surface again, becoming just another part of the vast digital ecosystem that makes up our daily life.

When it comes to these tides of interest, 5G appears to be cresting a wave right now.

Following years of debate over spectrum ranges, infrastructure requirements and more, the mobile industry finally seems to be approaching its next great leap forward in carrier technology.

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JUNE 2018

JAMES ROSEWELL 51DEGREES

4G IS JUST NOT THAT BROKEN standards, released its first formal standard for the ‘fifth generation’ of mobile connection. This is providing us with a clearer picture of exactly what 5G will offer.

Networks are bidding on spectrum bands, test zones are cropping up across the globe, and hints at hardware manufacturers working on 5G prototypes abound.

But for all the chatter that 5G is actually here, how close are we to meaningful change? When can consumers expect to see an actual rollout?

And what kind of new services can 5G actually offer, in an age when mobile devices appear to be reaching the limits of their capabilities?

BREAKING DOWN 5G For all the excitement surrounding it, definitions of 5G have focused on nebulous claims of faster speed, lower latency and more connections, with little in terms of concrete details, at least until recently. In December 2017, the 3GPP, the international organisation that governs cellular

It’s helpful to talk about 5G in the context of the technology it’s replacing. 2G, which arrived in the early ’90s, transformed wireless phone technology by adding support for text messages. With 3G, the ability to transmit data alongside text messages and calls arrived, while 4G meant that those transmissions could happen with greater speed and improved reliability. Like 4G, 5G will bring improvements to existing services, but like 3G, it will also comprise a new suite of technologies that will once again transform what cellular communication means.

Exactly which technologies will be bundled as part of ‘standard 5G’ and which will be separate is still being agreed among vendors, but the most common choices focus on enabling devices to send and receive data simultaneously, making more efficient use of frequencies, and increasing the bandwidth of mobile networks.

In terms of user experience, this means two main improvements. To start with, 5G will be

fast. While the initial specifications called for by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) govern mobile base stations rather than the speed on individual devices, tests by AT&T achieved speeds of up to 6Gbps at its test site in Austin, Texas. That’s enough to download a 100Gb movie in 4K quality in less than three minutes.

In addition, 5G will also have much lower latency – the time it takes for data to be stored or retrieved. The ITU defines 5G as having transfers with a maximum latency of 5ms, down from 4G LTE’s 20ms, which will provide a smoother experience for activities like video chatting and playing online games.

So far, so good.

However, 5G also has limits. The high frequencies involved in 5G will have trouble penetrating solid objects like walls, windows and even foliage, so rather than the blanket coverage of 4G, we should expect to see ‘pockets’ of 5G deployed in busy areas – airports, shopping malls, commercial centres etc. Retailers and other businesses will be able to buy 5G ‘pucks’ to provide coverage. All in all, the technology will feel closer to wi-fi, both in terms of speed and coverage.

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“The GSMA doesn’t expect 5G globally to reach double digits in terms of coverage until 2025, which reflects the cautious nature of networks,” says James Rosewell, founder and CEO of device detection firm, 51Degrees. “The business case isn’t strong for them to jump on it in the way that they did with 4G LTE technology. 4G’s just not that broken – they’ve invested heavily in it, whereas 3G never really lived up to the expectations, it didn’t really deliver, and of course 2G was a stopgap technology to move from analogue back in the 1990s.

“Where it will make sense is in large population centres where there’s high population density, and an opportunity to get the devices with 5G

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radios into people’s hands, and those two things have to work together. What we’ll start to see in places like London in the UK is 5G starting to appear in 2020, as far as consumers are concerned. So we’re still 18 months away from it appearing in any meaningful way.”

Even the networks who are trumpeting the advancements of 5G are also happy to admit they’re not giving up on 4G LTE. T-Mobile has already said that it expects portions of its existing 4G network to reach gigabit speeds soon, thanks to innovations in network efficiency, while Sprint is collaborating with Ericsson on speeding up its 4G LTE connectivity alongside its 5G infrastructure.

THE JOURNEY TO CONVERGENCE That limited coverage will also impact some of the other deployments where 5G has been heralded as a key component. 5G’s low latency has been held up as a crucial element when it comes to self-driving car technology, enabling vehicles to receive updates and instructions much more quickly, and ensuring they drive safely and efficiently. But if that coverage only exists in dense urban areas, where self-driving tech struggles, the improvements will be limited.

The Internet of Things has also been identified as a big winner when it comes to 5G. A 5G network will be able to support far more connections and will therefore enable many more connected

JUNE 2018

devices to operate in a given area without slowing down data-intense tasks like streaming video or cloud-based computing. But given that most IoT devices will be running on fixed-line wi-fi networks, will that make any difference?

“There’s been a lot of talk about smart metering and 5G – 5G isn’t a smart meter-enabling technology,” says Rosewell. “Smart meters require very, very low bandwidth, and they can tolerate extremely poor latency. A firmware update on a smart meter, it doesn’t matter if it takes two days, so those are very different network conditions. 5G can be used for that, but it’s certainly not a design goal.”

However, some industry experts are claiming that 5G’s speed and low latency will enable a far more important advance: true convergence between wired and wireless internet connections.

The scope of 5G may be limited to start with, but where it exists, it could open up a whole new world of services.

“It isn’t the first time that we’ve looked at the whole area of convergence and interworking,” says Robin Mersh, CEO of the Broadband Forum.

“We actually did this around four to five years ago. There was an effort to do this with 3GPP, with a lot of effort put into that work, but it was too early in the cycle. The difference this time is that the technologies have obviously moved on, in terms of virtualisation and network slicing, and these new efforts are making the ideas around network convergence much more real.”

Convergence could allow for truly networkagnostic services, with VoIP calls that pass between broadband and wireless connections without interruption, for example. The practical applications of this idea have barely been explored because of the differences between various cellular connections and what fixed-line broadband could provide, but 5G could bridge that gap.

convergence may end up being a more practical goal than IoT in every household device and selfdriving cars with perfect manoeuvrability. But we still haven’t really addressed what that means for marketers, and how they should be preparing for the advent of 5G, whenever it eventually turns up.

With the expected limited rollout and focus on dense urban areas, 5G-capable mobile devices are likely to remain at the premium end of the market for a while. And while that will mean only a few consumers are likely to be accessing 5G at the beginning, their expectations will be higher than ever, and marketers will need to make sure they are delivering a flawless customer experience.

“5G will shine a light on poorly performing operations,” says 51 Degrees’ Rosewell. “The people who are going to invest in 5G handsets, just like 4G, are going to be affluent consumers who are happy to pay a little more for the latest technology. They’re going to have very demanding expectations. What [marketers] should be doing in 2018 and 2019 is making sure their infrastructure and their operation is efficient and lean, so that it’s ready for 5G, not trying to overlay 5G on something that’s already broken.”

ROBIN MERSH BROADBAND FORUM

ONCE YOU REALLY CAN DELIVER SERVICES THAT CAN ROAM BETWEEN FIXED LINE AND WIRELESS, ONCE THE NETWORK IS IRRELEVANT AND PEOPLE JUST HAVE CAPABILITIES, THEN WHO KNOWS WHAT YOU CAN DEVELOP?

5G will remove any excuses that publishers, marketers and ad tech firms have for offering a secondary experience on mobile.

Consumer expectations will be high, with both network operators and device manufacturers pushing 5G in order to make their investment worthwhile. The time for clunky ad tech that slows down page load times is coming to an end. It’s the kind of progress that many in the industry have been calling for, but when the wave of 5G progress finally hits the shore, anyone unprepared could very quickly find themselves all at sea.

“It’s a bit of a loaded term, but the whole idea of ‘build it and they’ll come’, to a certain extent, applies to network convergence,” says Mersh. “Once you really can deliver services that can roam between fixed-line and wireless, once the network is irrelevant and people just have capabilities, then who knows what you can develop?”

DEMANDING EXPECTATIONS Given the limited scope that 5G will have, at least for the foreseeable future, this kind of network

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JUNE 2018

ROOM SERVICE

David Murphy talks to HotelTonight CMO Ray Elias about the company’s mobile-centric approach to matching consumers and hotel rooms

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JUNE 2018

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f you wanted a name for a company that summed up exactly what it does, then HotelTonight is arguably about as good as it gets. When the company launched in 2011, its mobile app matched distressed hotel room inventory with customers seeking a late deal, enabling them to book a room for that evening, but only after 4pm, with HotelTonight making a commission on the booking. Seven years and 28m app downloads later, HotelTonight is in more than 1,700 cities in 35 countries, employing 275 employees across six offices, but CMO Ray Elias says the company has, for the most part, stayed true to its original mission.

“Hotels get cheaper the closer you get to stay date, so that’s a market dynamic we have been able to capitalise on quite well,” he says. “We have done a good job of educating consumers that that’s the way it works and we have also kept our focus on hotels. We are in the best and most profitable aspect of travel, so we are going to stay focused on it. It’s so easy for consumers to access the other services such as flights and cars, so we don’t see a need to play in that space.”

That said, the rules on that very tight booking window have been relaxed a little over the years.

The time of 4pm the same day moved to any time the same day, then out further to seven days. Finally, last August, the booking window opened out more dramatically to 100 days. Elias insists, however, that the changes have all been driven by the company’s customers.

“It’s our customers who have asked for this more expansive booking window,” he says.

“They were asking us to be more available.

‘Last-minute’ is a relative concept. For some it’s the same day, for others it could be a few days or even a few weeks.”

While HotelTonight remains a last-minute booking platform first and foremost, Elias says that since the extended booking window launched in 80 markets last year, the company is seeing 26 per cent year-on-year growth in extended bookings. And it’s having an impact in other ways too.

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“In addition to booking further out, it also provides an opportunity to book a longer length of stay and also to watch prices,” he says.

“Previously, you couldn’t see our inventory or book beyond seven days out. Now we have brought in features that allow you to watch specific hotels and prices. This is a pretty powerful feature and we are seeing good growth around it. We are also seeing people spending time in the app, wanderlusting, looking at the different markets and the hotels available; it’s a fun experience.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t have the challenge of competing with other types of apps, but I think we execute very well in our customer communications. With notifications, we try to limit them to things that are timely and relevant and things our customers have asked for. And on social media, we don’t focus on trying to get a booking. It’s really all about telling stories and driving a narrative through snack-sized travel stories that get people inspired to open the app and look. Just as we were born in mobile, our marketing has been born in social, not as a bolt-on after the fact, but as a core competency.”

COMPETITIVE SPACE Over the past few years, the online travel space has become incredibly competitive.

As Elias notes: “It’s the largest eCommerce category in the world, so there is plenty of room for a lot of players.” HotelTonight’s point of difference is centred on three pillars: value, simplicity and brand.

On value, Elias says: “We typically have the absolute best value – the absolute best inventory at the lowest price – and we work very hard on that.”

On simplicity: “Being a mobile-only product, we can’t afford to build an experience that looks like an old-school desktop website, so things need to be simple and intuitive. So when someone searches for a hotel, we don’t provide 100 options, and ask the customer to figure it out for themselves. They see 15 options that are tailored to them, and the more they use the product, the better it gets. When you’re making decisions on the fly, nothing knocks the serendipity out of it more than getting too many options, most of which are not appealing to you.”

In fact, HotelTonight’s proud claim is that it has the easiest and fastest booking process of any hotel-booking app, enabling a user to book a room with three taps and a swipe in less than 10 seconds.

LAST-MINUTE IS A RELATIVE CONCEPT. FOR SOME IT’S THE SAME DAY, FOR OTHERS IT COULD BE A FEW DAYS OR EVEN A FEW WEEKS

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Finally, on brand, Elias says: “This space is full of utilitarian brands that are very well known and successful, but that don’t have the most dynamic brand personalities. We try to set ourselves apart as being the brand in the know, with the local knowledge. Accessible but candid, that’s our tone of voice.

“The two major players in the OTA (online travel agent) space, the Booking and Expedia groups, own just about every major player. So while they all present a different user experience, their hotel database on the back end is the same, but people don’t realise this. We are the largest independent player in the space and it’s a great position to be in.”

Not that it’s all about hotels. As has been written many times before, the biggest accommodation provider in the world today doesn’t own a single room of its own: Airbnb. I wonder how much of an additional competitive threat Airbnb presents.

“From an industry perspective, Airbnb is a disruptor of course,” says Elias. “But from a HotelTonight perspective, we see people using us in complementary ways. People booking a hotel experience on HotelTonight are looking for a different experience

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altogether from Airbnb. Our customers love the hotel experience and the amenities. It’s very different from booking an apartment, so we see consumers using both services in different ways.”

MOBILE-LED APPROACH Back in 2011, HotelTonight’s mobile-led approach was a key point of difference, but now, Elias concedes, most OTAs have a mobile offering and tend to do mobile very well. Today, then, it is not such a point of difference as it once was, but it is no less central to HotelTonight’s business model in spite of that.

“Mobile is huge,” says Elias. “If people are not moving wholly to mobile then, at the very least, it’s an important part of their discovery process.

If you look at millennials, they represent a huge demographic and half their hotel bookings are made on mobile devices. Nearly half the world is comfortable now doing all their travel planning and booking on mobile.

“One of the things that’s really cool about that is the fact that the ability we have to track and measure with so much precision, including the ability to measure offline activity, has given us a big competitive advantage.

“Because people are on their mobile devices, we can see where and when they are engaging with us, where they are physically located, what the engagement looks like. And all we do with that data is to create a better user experience and present content to the right people at the right time in the right place.

We have a robust machine-learning platform tasked with personalising and curating hotel recommendations, and that’s a big differentiator for us.”

GDPR The mention of data brings us nicely on to the GDPR. The General Data Protection Regulation came into force in Europe on 25 May, and the pressure to be compliant by that deadline has seen many companies who deal in customer data scrambling revise their privacy policies, secure or re-secure a positive opt-in from their customers, or in some cases, shut up shop in Europe because they feel compliance is not possible. So I wonder how much GDPR stress Elias and his team have been under of late.

“It hasn’t been an issue,” he says. “We don’t collect email addresses from anyone who has not booked with us, so we don’t have any personal information on anyone unless

they have booked a hotel room through us.

Yes, we have taken steps with our customers to verify everything, but in general terms, we have an incredibly engaged audience because they are our customers.”

So what’s next for the company? Elias says the challenges remain the same. ‘This is an incredibly competitive space,” he says. “If I think about the war chest I am competing against, billions of dollars, we are relatively well funded but I have to be incredibly clever and find things that set us apart.

“In terms of our ability to succeed, however, the sky’s the limit. Things are shifting dramatically from a social perspective – the way people travel these days, especially millennials. It’s three-day weekends and people using HotelTonight to skip the commute. Half of bookings made by people now are within the same market, so half the bookings we see for hotels in San Francisco are made by people in San Francisco.

It speaks to how people are spending their time: more and more frequent hotel bookings for shorter periods and a lot fewer planned, three-week summer vacations, so we are in a great position to continue to capitalise on that.”

Users can book a hotel on HotelTonight with three taps and a swipe in under 10 seconds

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SUMMITS 2018

Time Well Spent At each Summit, you’ll have the chance to discuss your issues with companies that can help you tackle them. You’ll also hear from some of the sharpest brands using mobile today.

There’s no better way to stay informed than by investing your time in the Mobile Marketing Summits.

2018 EVENT DATES 10 JULY

Mobile Retail Summit New York

20 SEPTEMBER

Mobile Marketing Summit Toronto

26 SEPTEMBER

Programmatic Summit London

04 OCTOBER

Mobile Marketing Summit London

15 NOVEMBER

App Marketing Summit New York

23 NOVEMBER

Programmatic Lunch London

07 DECEMBER

Programmatic Lunch New York

Find out more and register

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JUNE 2018

MID-TERM REPORT So far 2018 has been a very eventful year within the digital advertising and technology spaces – and we’re still only halfway through it. With that in mind, Tyrone Stewart takes a look back at everything that’s happened so far, and what we can expect for the rest of the year and beyond

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his year we’ve witnessed a whole host of incidents, including the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data scandal, deaths involving self-driving cars, more brand safety issues involving the likes of YouTube, and much more. So, in light of all these problems, how is the industry shaping up?

DATA SCANDAL Perhaps the biggest story within the industry this year has been the data scandal involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. News of the scandal was broken by a combination of Channel 4, the New York Times, and the Guardian – with all reporting on how Cambridge Analytica had collected the data of around 87m Facebook users without permission back in 2014.

The revelation put pressure on Facebook over the way it handles personal data and caused users on the platform to partake in a #DeleteFacebook campaign. Pressure is also still being piled on by lawmakers in both the US and the UK over the possibility that Cambridge Analytica used the data to target political voters on both sides of the pond.

“Facebook is an incredibly powerful tool with an extraordinary reach, but with this power comes problems,” says Charlie Smith, UK managing director at Blis. “Politicians and consumers lack clarity around Facebook’s role in society and in the tech ecosystem, and this means consumers aren’t fully aware of how their data is being used.

And politicians have failed to regulate Facebook like other communications industry giants.

“The solution is clearly some kind of regulatory action. People need to be made aware of what they’re signing up to and what’s happening to their data. Facebook in turn needs to take responsibility for the data it holds.”

With the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) added to the scandal surrounding Facebook’s handling of data, the social network has begun taking more of this responsibility by putting in place new tools and policies, while providing more of an insight into what it does with people’s data.

“As a result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook and a lot of the big advertising agencies will have tightened the strings on their privacy policies, which can only be a good thing,” says Aaron Brooks, co-founder of influencer marketing platform, Vamp.

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CHARLIE SMITH BLIS

PEOPLE NEED TO BE MADE AWARE OF WHAT THEY’RE SIGNING UP TO AND WHAT’S HAPPENING TO THEIR DATA. FACEBOOK IN TURN NEEDS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE DATA IT HOLDS

“Since trust in social media platforms has taken a hit since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook is being completely explicit about how it will follow the new regulations.

Having said that, it won’t change how companies advertise on Facebook because the companies will be responsible for ensuring their own compliance.”

Facebook isn’t the only social media company to have been hit by the scandal. Twitter has also admitted that it sold data access to Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University researcher who passed on Facebook user data to Cambridge Analytica.

With the scandal adding to the ongoing issues that all the social platforms have with fake news in general, it can be argued that social media giants have an air of “naivety and arrogance” about them, according to Jon Mundy, freelance ad tech and data specialist.

“It could be said that Facebook demonstrated remarkable naivety in its casual disregard of the importance of personal data and willingness to allow third parties to exploit it, but there’s also an arrogance,” says Mundy.

“The attitude that the data generated by its vast user base is its own property and it had every right to build a business on the back of it. The lack of any single authority to constrain it until the rise of the GDPR only cemented that. Of course, that attitude has been shared by many others, most obviously Google, but also the ad tech industry at large.”

The attitudes presented by the internet giants become more evident when you look at the

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industry around them, and how it has begun identifying what’s wrong and working on making it better for all.

“While media sellers are fighting to build a more trusted, transparent and inclusive environment, the internet giants continue to threaten the industry reputation as they fall short on getting a handle on data privacy. The tech giants are perceived as accumulating massive amounts of data on individuals, without clarifying how this data is being used,” says Mike Shaw, VP EMEA at DataXu. “With a large proportion of media budget being invested on Facebook and Google, the tech giants urgently need to review their business and monetisation models – not only for their own sake, but for the sake of the entire media industry.”

BRAND SAFETY While Facebook has been at the heart of the biggest data scandal of the year, when it comes to brand safety, all eyes have been focused on YouTube, with the Google-owned platform struggling to keep ads away from racist, paedophilic and extremist channels, despite having filtering options in place. But while YouTube has been at the forefront of the issue, the problems run much deeper and extend to programmatic advertising as a whole.

“This year, brand safety has been one of the biggest worries on marketers’ minds.

Fraudulent activity and poor ad placements are hindering the further growth of a premium programmatic marketplace. As a community, we must come together and adopt standards that can ensure ad quality and stop fraud,” says Steve Wing, managing director for the UK, Ireland and Nordics at Rubicon Project.

This idea of competing organisations coming together to ensure that ads appear only in brand-safe environments is starting to take shape. Note April’s formation of the Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB), which includes representation from agencies including Dentsu Aegis Network, GroupM, Havas Media, Horizon Media, IPG Mediabrands, MDC Partners, Omnicom Media Group, and Publicis Media.

Despite such initiatives, however, brand safety remains an ongoing challenge, and a highly subjective issue, since what one brand considers to a non-brand-safe environment will be considered OK by another.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all description of brand safety and that’s why it’s a constant challenge for the industry,” says Stuart Flint VP EMEA at Oath. “What one brand deems safe territory may be different for another. And with the battle against ad fraud, some brands’ objectives are more focused on performance versus the environment they’re engaging consumers in. Brands need to have the right partner in place who puts the needs of the consumer and the customer first. They need to be able to trust that partner to understand the nuances of their brand, create campaigns and deliver the right content to the right audiences that meet their business objectives in a safe environment.”

Transparency, like brand safety, muddies the water a little more and, some feel, is a difficult concept to pin down – how much do companies have to reveal in order to be considered transparent? It’s a question that puzzles Maor Sadra, managing director and chief revenue officer at AppLift.

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“Transparency in my humble opinion is still a very vague and unclear term,” says Sadra. “If the expectation for transparency is ‘placements’, I would ask ‘why?’ What value does anyone get from a report showing 50,000+ placements where their ad was shown? An advertiser utilising placement transparency to try and build a very short whitelist is an advertiser who doesn’t understand the value of digital advertising.

“If the expectation for transparency is transparency in the media and cost funnel, this I would very much say is a requirement and a necessity for any advertiser that evolves their understanding that digital advertising is a pure data game.”

publisher quality issues, ad fraud, measurement and data privacy. A broad range of solutions is key to tackling the issue head on, for example, whitelisting in mobile apps, or the use of pre-bid technology to combat domain-spoofing.

across price, placement, optimisation and use of data – then media platforms and vendors would be judged solely on the merit and the value they bring back to the advertiser, which is how it should be.”

“Moving forward, there will inevitably be more scandals – but this doesn’t mean it’s time to lose hope. Quite the opposite: it should spur us on to take action to protect the reputations of brands, agencies and tech partners alike. Only in this way can we make brand safety trend for the right reasons in 2018.”

Could blockchain help the ad tech industry address its issues? Many believe the tech, created by a faceless person or group known as ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ when Bitcoin was introduced almost 10 years ago, has the potential to transform many aspects of the world around us.

RE-EVALUATING RELATIONSHIPS

While its origins lie in cryptocurrency, it has expanded into many other areas, such as advertising, consumer payments and digital rights management, among others.

Moving forward, all parties within the industry need to work together to improve both brand safety and transparency – whatever definition of the two they eventually decide to agree on.

Only by doing so will confidence and trust in digital advertising in general, and programmatic in particular, be restored.

On a positive note, all of these scandals, around data, brand safety and transparency, are forcing the ad tech industry to take a long, hard look at itself, and to re-evaluate some of the relationships that have been in place for many years. One of these is that between media buyers and ad agencies, where the level of trust has definitely declined. Fixing this, says Paul Wright, CEO of Iotec, lies at the heart of the transparency problem.

Blis’s Smith believes that, where these issues are concerned, the time for passing the buck is over.

“We in the tech industry have a responsibility to address negative perceptions – and quickly,” he says. “We can do this by implementing concrete measures to improve trust, tackle persistent

“Trust can be restored if media buyers are willing to be transparent about how they buy media and ad agencies are able to communicate openly why they are choosing to work with certain suppliers over others,” says Wright. “If true transparency existed across the board –

Last November saw the launch of Truth, with the pledge that it would be the first media agency in the world to use blockchain smart contract technology to provide advertisers with 100 per cent transparency.

The company is owned by TMG, which at the time, said it had launched Truth in response to the erosion of trust between advertisers, media agencies and media owners, in an industry “where middlemen and the layers involved in media planning and buying can easily strip 80 per cent of the value between brands and media owners”.

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MIKE SHAW DATAXU

WHILE MEDIA SELLERS ARE FIGHTING TO BUILD A MORE TRUSTED, TRANSPARENT AND INCLUSIVE ENVIRONMENT, THE INTERNET GIANTS CONTINUE TO THREATEN THE INDUSTRY REPUTATION AS THEY FALL SHORT ON GETTING A HANDLE ON DATA PRIVACY

Blis’s Smith believes that blockchain will be the key to solving the industry’s most debilitating issue of transparency. “Put simply, it offers advertisers the possibility of knowing how their media buying is executed, without any outside interference or alterations,” he says. “Of course, there is a long way to go before blockchain becomes an industry standard. It has limitations – speed, for example – which have prevented its use in media buying. Its strengths lie in data transactions, which are much more effective than traditional methods.”

suspicious about blockchain as well, as the two terms are often spoken in the same context,” says AppLift’s Sadra.

On the other hand, alongside the growth of blockchain, cryptocurrency itself has had a rather turbulent existence over the last 18 or so months, with stocks soaring and tumbling frequently, while a number of companies have used initial coin offerings (ICOs) to raise money for cryptocurrency ventures.

The rise of ICOs over the last few years – with around $9bn (£6.6bn) invested since the beginning of 2016 – has not been widely viewed as a positive for the industry, with people questioning the legitimacy and intentions of those taking the fundraising avenue. One such person questioning ICOs is Randy Apuzzo, founder and chief technology officer at Zesty.io, who believes ICOs are purely “a money grab”.

“While the cryptocurrency hype has somewhat deflated in the last couple of months, many are clear about the value of blockchain in disrupting industries. With that said, the deflation in cryptocurrency, and specifically ICOs, has led many to be

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“I now believe that for blockchain to make its way into the ad tech/martech world, it needs to be disassociated from cryptocurrency.

However, once you take away the financial interest, it becomes difficult to impossible to get anyone onboard. For blockchain to disrupt any side of our industry, it needs to solve reallife problems like attribution, fraud, validation and viewability.”

“The value of blockchain goes beyond digital trading and currency. When new companies attach their business applications of blockchain to a tradable coin, it diminishes

the true function of blockchain and gives blockchain technology a bad name on a global scale,” says Apuzzo. “Going forward, companies will need to leave the tradable currencies behind and use blockchain in core technology if they want the business world to take them seriously.”

In leaving the tradable currencies behind, one use of blockchain could be to offer greater security and flexibility within brand loyalty programmes.

“Looking forward, it is likely that brands will start using blockchain technology to power loyalty programmes. But for any who contemplate a universal currency, they should carefully evaluate the implications,” says Howard Schneider, VP of loyalty strategy at Kobie Marketing.

“Every good programme offers a compelling value proposition for the consumer, but a programme that rewards customers in ways that don’t drive repeat visits is only hurting itself. At the very least, brands that are contemplating universal loyalty currency should ensure exclusivity in its category or

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vertical – meaning customers can’t easily redeem blockchain-based points for a similar product or service.”

of fake videos to manipulate people through propaganda – a more widely problematic use of deepfakery.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The potential negative uses of AI technology even prompted a group of UK lawmakers within the House of Lords to set out recommendations for the ethical development of AI to ensure the correct use of machines.

Another technological advancement that has been in the spotlight this year is artificial intelligence (AI) – with the light shining on everybody, from Google, and its AI voice booking appointments over the phone, to Uber and a self-driving car death.

With the growing use of machines, fears are becoming heightened, with the possible exploitation of the technology becoming more of a factor. Starting at the back end of last year, people (who apparently have little productive to do with their lives) have been using AI to map the features of celebrities onto pornographic videos. These videos are known as ‘deepfakes’.

Deepfakes are just one example of AI technology being used for mal-intent. Reports have also warned about the danger of criminals, terrorists and rogue states taking advantage of the technology. It’s feared that they may use it to cause harm through automated hacking, the conversion of drones into missiles or the use

Of course, despite all of the negativity surrounding AI, there are also some positives, and it is certainly here to stay.

“Over the last 12 months, the AI sector has boomed. Businesses across the spectrum have been racing to adopt a technology which promises to transform not only our industry, but every aspect of our lives,” says Stephen Upstone, founder and CEO at LoopMe. “The promise of AI is that through the power of data and algorithms, we can improve the human experience. But following the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, trust in internet companies and data-driven technologies has fallen. We expect the tech

industry’s innovators as a whole to push back, placing a stronger emphasis on how data can empower consumers and provide better experiences. Personalisation remains a hot topic, and increased adoption of AI technologies will be the principal driver of improved advertising experiences.”

Upstone makes an important point. If machine learning can be deployed to crunch data in volumes humans can only dream of, it can help brands deliver more relevant advertising, and also help the likes of Facebook and Google to monitor and vet the gargantuan amounts of content being uploaded to their servers every minute of every day.

At this point in time, however, the jury is very much out on whether the ad tech industry has the collective will to solve the key problems threatening its future prosperity and even survival. And politicians are becoming impatient.

The ad tech industry faces a stark choice: to get its act together under its own steam, or to leave it to the regulators and risk working to rules that are likely to be stricter and far more draconian than anything the industry itself would impose.

The clock is ticking.

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METRICS THAT MATTER The evolution of the ad industry has been a game changer for brand marketers. From brand safety and transparency to performance and ROI, it turns out that honesty really is the best (ad) policy, as Tapjoy CEO Steve Wadsworth explains to Mobile Marketing

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here was a time, not so long ago, when consumer brands could afford to operate at arm’s length from their customers. Marketing messages were broadcast to the masses to communicate the launch of a new product or promotion, and the masses duly listened and headed to the nearest supermarket to fill their shopping trolleys. At least, some of them did.

Those days are gone. These days, any brand with any sense knows that it needs a direct relationship with its customers. As Aline Santos, EVP of global marketing at Unilever, wrote in a blog post last December: “The challenge is … to build direct, one-to-one relationships with millions of people. To be able to personalise at scale.” That was written some 18 months after Unilever had proved how serious it is about developing these oneto-one relationships, with its $1bn acquisition of the direct-to-consumer razor business Dollar Shave Club.

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DIRECT CONSUMER RELATIONSHIPS Steve Wadsworth, CEO of Tapjoy, and prior to that an 18-year Disney veteran, agrees wholeheartedly with the sentiments expressed

by Santos. “The world is moving to a place where all businesses are looking to establish direct consumer relationships, and being able to reach, target and both acquire and manage relationships with those consumers is a core skill that any brand or business needs to have,” he says.

And when it comes to building one-to-one relationships, nothing does it better than mobile.

Currently, however, Wadsworth feels that the way that brands go about trying to engage with consumers via digital advertising, including mobile, is largely broken.

“When you look at the traditional model of display advertising, it does a disservice to digital advertising, because you get content surrounded by ads and people then feel that

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the ads get in the way of the experience,” he says. “What people have forgotten is that there is meaningful cost and value that goes into producing great content, and that needs to be transparent to the consumer. Whether it’s an article or a game, a lot of value and resources go into building it, and it’s the advertising that makes it available for free. But digital media has buried the idea that there is a clear value exchange model in the creation of the content and the delivery of that content for free, paid for by the advertisers.”

The way Tapjoy operates, the value exchange model could not be any clearer. It enables advertisers to reach mobile users while they are in app, usually, but not exclusively, playing a game. As an example, when the user gets to a point where they have run out of lives, rather than having to stop playing or opting to buy lives, Tapjoy offers the user lives in return for engaging with some branded content. This is usually in the form of a video, with a clear call to action at the end of it.

Now you could look at this model two ways. A cynic might say the user is almost being bribed to watch the ad, so how can that possibly work?

Those who agree with this line of thought might be interested to learn that in Mary Meeker’s latest Internet Trends report, she highlighted the trend of consumers engaging with in-app rewarded video ads; and in a Millward Brown study, in which consumers were asked to rate different video ad formats for advertising, this type of advertising was the only one to get a top rating.

As Wadsworth explains, it’s nothing to do with bribery, more about honesty. He says: “You can’t be more transparent than to say to the consumer: ‘You want to continue engaging with this valuable content for free; here’s some advertising content from a brand that lets you do that.’” This transparency, he says, is one reason why in-app rewarded video advertising performs so well. “The advertiser gets fullscreen, full attention engagement from the user.

And you have to remember, this is what the consumer chooses to do with their free time, and the brand is enabling that engagement, so there’s very positive brand association.”

the brand gets 100 per cent viewability. “We integrated MOAT into our SDK just over two years ago and our stats are way above the MOAT norms in all respects: human-viewable, audio on, 100 per cent share of voice and 90 per cent video completion rates,” he says. “This is an environment that, as a brand marketer, you should not avoid.”

And yet, in spite of all the supporting arguments, many brands still do. While Tapjoy counts many big names among its advertiser clients, including 20th Century Fox, BMW, Adidas and P&G, there are many more who remain somewhat ‘sniffy’ in their attitude, not so much towards the ad format – the ads, most now created in Tapjoy’s own Interplay Studio, are highly interactive and creative – but towards the medium in which they appear: mobile games.

“We get much less pushback now than we did a few years ago, but there are still instances where a brand says they don’t want to be in a mobile game, they want to be in some premium publication, and my response to this is that they are trading off true consumer engagement against an association that is tenuous at best.

“Ultimately, any smart marketer is going to want to be where the consumers are. So where are they? They are on mobile. They spend their time in apps, and the largest category of consumers in apps outside of social is games, so brands need to be where their customers and prospects are.

“On top of that, I presume they want a marketing or ad experience that’s highly engaging and delivering 100 per cent of their media value at every opportunity. This is exactly the experience available in mobile apps and freemium mobile games running advertising in particular.

Publishers realise that they can integrate the ad experience into the core app experience and make it part of the value proposition, and through that, get complete engagement by providing access to premium content. So any smart marketer is going to want to be there.”

TAKING BACK CONTROL Leaving aside the general inefficiency of much of digital advertising, Wadsworth’s other big issue is with the way it’s sold and measured.

“Most brand advertisers buy media through an agency and trade desk or DSP programmatically on a CPM basis, and while the advertiser may say they care about cost per completed view (CPCV), when they are buying on CPM it tells them nothing about that,” he says. “They get suckered into the number of impressions they can buy because CPMs are so low. We might say the CPCV is 2 cents, which is a CPM of $20, and the advertisers and agencies say that’s too high. But if you look at what they spend on impressions that then get a much lower CPCV, that’s a much more expensive process.

“The metrics that really matter are viewability, completed video views, engagement rates and time spent in ad, click-through rates on the end card call to action (CTA) at the end of the video, and downstream metrics like how many people actually went on to install the app, buy the movie ticket or learn more about the product and brand. We sell on the downstream metrics, but that is not how most advertisers buy.”

If this is to change, Wadsworth feels that marketers need to be much more aggressive with the partners they work with – agencies, DSPs and the rest of the ecosystem. “They need

BRAND-SAFE As Wadsworth notes, in-app rewarded video is also a very brand-safe environment, in which the app is controlled by the publisher and reviewed by the app store managers, and

20th Century Fox has enjoyed success using Tapjoy’s platform to push big movie launches such as Ferdinand. @mmmagtweets

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mobile gaming environment. The studio crafts contextually relevant rich media ads, playables and gamified experiences, as well as interactive end cards which provide a call to action at the end of the video ad. Campaigns designed by the Interplay Studio have achieved average clickthrough rates that are 3–5 times greater than traditional mobile video ads and average in-ad engagement times of almost 30 seconds after the video completes.

YOU CAN’T BE MORE TRANSPARENT THAN TO SAY TO THE CONSUMER: ‘YOU WANT TO CONTINUE ENGAGING WITH THIS VALUABLE CONTENT FOR FREE; HERE’S SOME ADVERTISING CONTENT FROM A BRAND THAT LETS YOU DO THAT’

to take back some control and be much more prescriptive about how things should work,” he says. “They are the ones with the money. They need to drive how it’s going to work and they need to insist on transparency on where their money goes, not just at a high level, but the actual downstream impacts, such as what were the most effective traffic sources? It needs a clear, prescriptive approach from marketers that requires transparency and is data-driven, and focuses on the downstream metrics that matter.

“Ultimately, it will be more complicated than a CPM model, and perhaps that’s why some people shy away from it. But if you want more, you have to be prepared to manage more to get the outcome you want, and if you do, that outcome will be a lot more meaningful.”

Wadsworth feels that the way advertisers buy media programmatically also needs to evolve.

“Most brands are buying programmatic, which is what everyone else is doing, and so you end up with the lowest common denominator,” he says. “We are now seeing an increase in programmatic guarantees, where we will sit with a marketer and they will say they are prepared to pay this cost per completed video view, they have a set of users they want to target, and we can guarantee we can deliver on that by setting up a private marketplace (PMP). This is where the market is going because general programmatic buying is a bit of a fog compared with more targeted PMP deals, so that’s where we are trying to move brand marketers to.”

CREATIVITY COUNTS Creativity is also important to Tapjoy. In March, it launched its Interplay Studio to create custom-branded ads that are optimised for the

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“Creative is key to what we do,” says Wadsworth.

“The games themselves look great, so the ads need to look great too. The ad needs to be as good as the content it resides in, so it feels like an integrated part of the experience, more native. For me, creative is an enabler of deeper engagement with the consumer. High-quality video will drive engagement for the user and then wherever possible that should be followed by some form of interactivity. It is an interactive medium and when the user connects with the brand, they understand and retain their key messages, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.”

Looking ahead, Wadsworth says he can only see this trend of brands seeking direct connections with consumers accelerating.

He says: “We are going to see an increasing requirement that brands become more datadriven and focus on building as tight a direct relationship with consumers as they can, allowing them to communicate with people in a much more targeted, personalised way. We will see a shift away from high-level CPMs towards the metrics that matter, especially in digital video, and also an increasing shift of dollars towards mobile and apps, which is where people spend their time.”

And what of GDPR and the more stringent requirements it puts on all those in the ad tech industry – and elsewhere – who process personal data, to be transparent in terms of how they do so?

“GDPR is a good thing,” says Wadsworth.

“That’s the value of being transparent with the consumer; you do not have those issues.

They only become issues where there is stuff happening behind the scenes to extract value from the consumer without them being aware of it. It is becoming mandatory to be honest and direct with consumers about how digital marketing works and what it does for each player in the ecosystem, and in-app rewarded advertising is a clear answer to that.”

+

Tapjoy has been nominated for Best Mobile Campaign – Ferdinand UnBULLievably Entertaining

The creative they deployed was so delightfully fun and enjoyable that families

couldn’t help but engage. Most impressive to see was the post-reward ad engagement: over a minute in total! This really speaks to Tapjoy’s skill in understanding what their audience responds to and delivering creative accordingly.

–Izzy Hedges, Executive Vice President, International Media – Vizeum Campaign Objective: Drive engagement and ticket sales across movie-going parents with young kids in 16 countries for the upcoming theatrical release of Ferdinand.

96%

Video Completion Rate (average of all 3 ads)

67s

Average Time Spent (average of all 3 ads)

220

pieces of campaign creative

CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE DEADLINE: 27 JULY Now in their ninth year, the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards celebrate excellence in marketing across the globe. mobilemarketingmagazine.com/awards

INTRODUCING

DIGITAL EXPERTS COUNCIL Over the following 12 pages, we present content from members of Mobile Marketing's Digital Experts Council.

We hope you enjoy it.

For information on becoming a member, contact: james.mcgowan@mobilemarketingmagazine.com

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DATA DILIGENCE Weve managing director Martin Weller looks at transparency, verification and consent in the year of GDPR

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he GDPR bell has tolled, marking permanent changes to data collection as we know it. The ad tech space has already seen a number of casualties: with risks of non-compliance so high, vendors not meeting GDPR requirements are dropping out of the market or fundamentally changing their offering to avoid legal challenges. Now more than ever, brands and players in the ecosystem have to deliver complete transparency and real perceived value if they are to be given consent to use people’s personal data in return. How do we achieve this? Three key industry issues underpin this new era in personal data protection: transparency, verification and consent.

TRANSPARENCY The conversation around transparency isn’t new, but it has become business-critical this year. One of the industry’s latest initiatives in achieving transparency is the IAB Gold Standard, designed to raise standards in digital advertising by addressing key issues including ad fraud, brand

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AS THE DUST SETTLES POST-GDPR, IT’S INCREASINGLY CLEAR THAT TRANSPARENCY, VERIFICATION AND CONSENT WILL BE THE DEFINING PILLARS OF OUR INDUSTRY FOR THE FUTURE AHEAD

safety and ad blocking. It does this by pulling together three existing initiatives: ads.txt, JICWEBS’ DTSG (Digital Trading Standards Group) and the Coalition for Better Advertising’s Better Ad Standards. By raising standards and weeding out bad practices, consumers and brands will be better placed to benefit from improved advertising experiences and confident in brand-safe environments, something which Weve is committed to as a founding Gold Standard member.

Initiatives like this are placing the onus for greater transparency on data providers, but do you know where your suppliers’ data comes from? Many providers’ inability to obtain named consent from publishers to legally use their data has led to a number of ad tech players leaving the market in the run-up to GDPR. Weve has always been, and will always be, clear on exactly where our data comes from. Backed

by O2, one of the UK’s largest telcos, we see 2bn data events per day – that’s 100 times per person (up to 20 times that of other mobile players). These network events combine to create the most comprehensive, end-to-end view of our customers in market, and this first-party, telco-derived data forms the basis of our marketleading audience intelligence, mobile-led media and award-winning measurement. Can all of your suppliers say the same?

VERIFICATION At the core of verification is the identification of real people and their behaviours. For advertisers, the benefits of audience verification are immediate, leading to less audience waste and, in turn, more budget for the platforms, tactics and campaigns that are effective. But as the wider digital ecosystem continues its seismic growth, there is an increasing need for better control and improved safety measures; in terms of mobile advertising specifically, it’s critical that measurement options keep pace.

An area that has grown significantly in recent years is mobile location targeting, which accounted for over 42 per cent of total mobile ad spend in 2018. But alongside its growth is a rising industry trend of mistrust in the accuracy and efficacy of location-based data sources: 65 per cent of marketers have expressed concern around the quality of location data available in the market, and it is widely perceived that up to 80 per cent may be imprecise or fraudulent.

While most location providers rely on probabilistic modelling and pattern recognition to address this, Weve’s telco backing provides a truth set to verify against. Using anonymised and aggregated O2-owned audience data, we verify location accuracy by comparing aggregated scores for app publisher GPS signals with the location of phones connected to any of O2’s UK cell towers. Aggregating millions of location signal comparisons enables us to index the sources of location data and score the quality of location signals, enabling us to eliminate bad data and unreliable sources, and ensuring that the verified location behaviours of audiences are reflected in campaign delivery and attribution. After all, ad verification is quite simply about ensuring that as a brand, you get what you pay for.

CONSENT Many aspects of GDPR applicable to ad tech are still ‘open to interpretation’, but clear, explicit opt-in is undoubtedly the watertight method for operating within the confines of GDPR. Are you asking questions about the details of your suppliers’ consent? It’s important to understand the source of the consent, whether from apps, mobile web, the bid stream or an SDK. Some are taking a risk by solely operating under the cover of ‘legitimate interest’, but with this must come an explanation in their privacy policy, proving that processing the data is necessary, while balancing it against the individual’s interests, rights and freedoms.

Weve has always taken data protection and data security very seriously. In the lead-up to GDPR, O2 undertook a compliance programme across the organisation to address the changes required by the implementation of the regulation. O2 communicated with all its customers to advise them of the change to data protection laws, and provided information on new data rights and O2’s privacy policy. Customers were contacted to confirm their marketing preferences, which included receiving marketing communications from O2 and Weve on behalf of advertisers.

As the dust settles post-GDPR, it’s increasingly clear that transparency, verification and consent will be the defining pillars of our industry for the future ahead. Providing the crucial bridge between consumers and devices, the connectivity that telcos generate has never been more valuable. Weve is the only telcobacked media owner in the UK, and well placed to continue confidently managing personal data protection to plan, execute and measure campaigns with confidence.

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GETTING PERSONAL WITH CDPs Ben McDermott, lead consultant at Teavaro, argues that with the advent of GDPR, Customer Data Platforms will usher in a new era in data use

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ith new regulation, heightened consumer awareness and headline-baiting controversies, it is fair to say that personal data is very much this year’s hot topic. But it is one that digital marketers have been grappling with for years, both strategically and technologically.

As the GDPR deadline has loomed, it has been easy to focus on the losses. For media owners and advertisers, there are losses in freedom and functionality within their marketing stacks.

For their ad tech partners, a loss of autonomy

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and ‘controllership’ have caused some to give up the game in Europe entirely (at least until they can figure out a better way). All in all, this and other developments – browser cookie default settings, for example – point to the loss of third-party data as a strategy.

But what of the gains? In Teavaro’s view, there are many to be had. Certainly, the changes needed in order to comply before the door slams shut have been hard and fast. But if one aims beyond just ‘compliance’, then the GDPR’s requests for granularity, transparency and control – all former buzzwords that were actively

sought out at marketing conferences – are very much aligned with the goals of digital marketers.

Of course, already mentioned is the impact on the third-party providers of ad tech services.

But one technology has seen interest surge: the Customer Data Platform (CDP).

TAKE CONTROL Why? Well, the fact that the CDP keeps the control with the lawfully decreed data controllers might be part of it. Unique to the ad tech ecosystem, CDPs do not begin pitches with: “We take your data and…”. The first-party

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ethos points to the new data strategy. As platforms that create a persistent, unified customer database, dealing in single-customer views and accessible to other systems, CDPs allow companies to take control of their data future and move to a first-party data strategy.

CDPs also play well with others, a factor crucial to the need for quick gains that the rigours of digital marketing – and indeed, GDPR – have brought. Rather than a replacement platform, CDPs are connectors, working with legacy technology, CRM systems and ad tech partners alike. A happy medium between nimble ad tech providers and in-house control, CDPs augment that which exists with that which is needed – to bring new functionality with respect to what has come before. As Luma Partners’ Brian Andersen pointed out, CDP vs DMP is “not an or … it’s an and”. They do different things. They have much to learn from one another and a similar mission, namely, personalisation. (Source: Martin Kihn, research VP, Gartner, writing on AdExchanger.)

IDENTITY MANAGEMENT This brings us to identity management. The GDPR has only heightened marketers’ need for a “single source of truth about their data”, according to Chris O’Hara, from Krux, writing on eConsultancy; not least for the effective application of the data subject’s wishes. The functionality that allows CDPs – like our own at Teavaro – to gain traction is the capability to consolidate different types of identification data points and first-party data to create and activate customer profiles and valuable insights for digital marketing across multiple channels. With such functionality, Teavaro has been able to solve the GDPR permissions issue for its clients.

This is where the customer relationship rises in importance. The regulation requires data controllers to take control of the entire use of data, and not pass it (and thus the seeking of permission) down the line to agencies and ad tech partners as, notably, the IAB consent framework wants to. The idea that these partners demand that media owners collect consent on their behalf and yet maintain data controllership does not stand up to scrutiny. If no service relationship exists between the data subject and an agency or ad tech provider, then why would the data subject view them as a data controller? More simply, if they don’t control the permission, how can they control the data?

In his negative view of the CDP’s efficacy, Martin Kihn at Gartner points out that ‘identity management’ is marketing shorthand for ‘cross-device’, and that “requires something that CDPs do not have: an identity graph”.

But he is wrong: they do have this (or at least, Teavaro does), using first-party identifiers.

True, to expand that across the ecosystem will require alliances and co-ops, just as any identity graph. But unlike an ecosystem built on third-party opacity, the data owners will enter these partnerships as equals and, most importantly, in control of their customer data.

This exposes another important reason for the rise of the CDP: first-party data activation.

Just as the GDPR has put the customer relationship at the centre of the data question, it has restored the control of the data to the data controller. Media owners and advertisers alike are faced with the conundrum that their silos of data bring: how can we realise the value of the resource we have? While DMPs were a step in the right direction, much of the third-party data partner ecosystem spirited that value away. And so, when CDPs provide the functionality to unlock that value, suddenly the painful transition from a third-party to a first-party data strategy does not appear as hard as it once seemed.

IF ONE AIMS BEYOND JUST ‘COMPLIANCE’, THEN THE GDPR’S REQUESTS FOR GRANULARITY, TRANSPARENCY AND CONTROL ARE VERY MUCH ALIGNED WITH THE GOALS OF DIGITAL MARKETERS

Advertisers and media owners alike should be focusing on a strategy that enables them to extract all the marketing potential of first-party data, utilising up-to-date, unified customer profiles to deliver better customer experience while improving engagement and sales. This can be achieved by partnering with providers that help bridge silos, not create new ones, and which seamlessly connect in real time, pulling data from different sources in a secure and GDPRcompliant way to create promising marketing insight. This is what CDPs can facilitate.

The data controllers – media owners and advertisers alike – are being compelled by GDPR to hold the customer relationship sacrosanct. This is hardly a loss to the scrupulous marketer. What’s more, the entire marketing ecosystem must do the same: another gain for the data controller. For the many marketers who seem to be struggling with the new data landscape, the way the marketing industry has responded, not least with new technology that fits new needs, should provide hope for the post-deadline future and beyond.

@mmmagtweets

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JUNE 2018

THE IN-APP OPPORTUNITY Alon Golan, head of product marketing at Fyber, explains why, faced with a choice of in-app, desktop and mobile web, brands can’t see the wood for the trees

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e’re living in exciting times in the tech industry. 20 years ago, mobile phones were for crackly calls, 120-character texts and, for many of us, playing Snake. Now, they’re changing the world. Both mobile web and app use is increasing in comparison with all other platforms.

Advertisers have had mobile strategies for a while, but this has often meant merely transferring desktop campaigns to mobile web, completely ignoring mobile apps, which are the real jewel in the mobile crown. It’s something we’ve been saying at Fyber for some time, but little has changed. Whatever the reason, whether habit, a fear of change or stagnation, it’s important we challenge the status quo and change our behaviour to truly make the most of mobile.

The numbers speak for themselves: average users spend considerably more time in app per day than they do on mobile web: three and a half hours compared to less than an hour for mobile web, according to eMarketer.

This means those who are open to the promise of the mobile space but focus on mobile web are throwing a whole lot of precious ad spend in the wrong direction. There are a range of reasons why apps have become so important, not least that mobile video and gaming – some of the most important uses for apps – are booming. In the future, they’re likely to become even bigger with the onset of connected TV and the IoT. So if you’re seeing ‘mobile’ as synonymous with the mobile web environment, you’re missing the point.

DATA, IDS AND COOKIES One of the most fundamental differences between mobile web and in-app is how and where these environments source data. The infamous ‘cookie’ – a small file installed on a device which stores client and website data – has become standard. Apps don’t use cookies, and advertisers have subsequently been trying to find ways to ‘translate’ what they know – cookies and web targeting – into in-app identifiers.

This is a case of forcing a square peg into a round hole. It’s always best to go native,

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and apps work best with user and device IDs – indeed, these are becoming some of the most persistent identifiers nowadays. The irony is that app advertising IDs are actually significantly more reliable than cookies, and allow much more enhanced tailoring, yet advertisers shy away from them as ‘unfamiliar’.

What’s more, the permissions around them are a lot clearer, meaning they have not suffered the extensive negative press that cookies have received of late: Apple’s IDFA (Identifier For Advertising) and Google’s GAID (Google Advertising ID), for example, have been mostly unharmed. This makes it a lot clearer for both tech companies, who can be sure they have the relevant permissions, as well as for consumers, who can be safe in the knowledge that their data isn’t going anywhere it shouldn’t be.

VIEWABILITY, TRANSPARENCY AND BRAND SAFETY There has been a whole lot of bad press around viewability, transparency and brand safety in recent months. These are omnipresent problems in ad tech, and in-app is no exception.

But the specifics of the challenges – and the solutions required to overcome them – are different. Fundamentally, the app environment is considerably safer than browser-based environments such as desktop and mobile web. Problems usually take the form of issues such as bots, hidden banners and app-bundle spoofing (this is where apps misrepresent themselves by sending fake bundled IDs).

These can be combated with state-of-the-art algorithms which detect and cut off fraudsters, as well as prevention in the form of pre-bid verification filters, ensuring your partners use these too. There’s also the added benefit that all apps are accessed via Apple or Google stores – both of which are rigorous when it comes to vetting for quality and safety. As for viewability issues, the fight is well and truly on in the in-app space. Measurement solutions have conventionally been desktop-based, but in-app environments are seeing the arrival of highquality measurement capabilities, the pinnacle of which is the IAB’s Open Measurement SDK.

CONNECTIONS WITH THIRD-PARTY TECH VENDORS The industry has been seized by a programmatic mania over the past couple of years, and while the initial response was primarily desktop-based, programmatic has now made its way to in-app. And with consumers spending so much time in app, it’s crucial that advertisers understand the differences between an app and a web pagebased environment.

While apps can still integrate via API or a tag, the most common method is the implementation of an SDK, or software development kit (a line of code embedded in the app’s code). Different SDKs can give app developers a plethora of functionalities, such as the ability to render certain ads, viewability measurement (as mentioned above), mediation and others. As they exist separately to the app but are embedded within it, app developers can control and monitor these SDKs in real time, updating them when necessary without having to go in and rebuild a whole new app. That said, app developers are mindful of making their app too heavy with code, meaning they are picky about which, and how many, SDKs they integrate with. This means that while there are benefits to the SDK being located directly on the client (eg. in the app itself vs on a server), mobile apps often require a different approach to scale from web-based environments.

MOVING FORWARD The verdict is clear: there’s a whole world of difference between in-app and browser environments, and focusing simply on mobile web in one’s mobile strategy leads to false conclusions, as well as the neglect of an enormous section of consumers. Rather than just focusing on the fact that people spend more time on their phones than before, it’s important that we work on gaining a full understanding of the app world. Then we can make sure that advertising is always in line with consumer trends, and not just playing catch-up.

THE NUMBERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES: AVERAGE USERS SPEND CONSIDERABLY MORE TIME IN APP PER DAY THAN THEY DO ON MOBILE WEB @mmmagtweets

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SPONSORED

JUNE 2018

MARKETING ORCHESTRATION 101 Alyssa Meritt, head of strategic consulting at Urban Airship, explains how marketing orchestration is helping brands to capitalise on the data they have across every channel

channels. If you’ve got questions, don’t panic – you aren’t the only one. Here are answers to five of the most common questions about marketing orchestration.

1. What is marketing orchestration and why is it important?

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he future of marketing is here and it’s called marketing orchestration.

When used correctly, marketing orchestration helps brands amplify the value of behavioural data, create better ROI and leverage existing marketing technology investments across all of their engagement

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At the most basic level, marketing orchestration is the planning and coordination of elements to produce a desired effect. Specifically for marketing, it’s the channel, data, technology and team structure to deliver personalised messages to the right person in the right moment on any engagement channel in your stack. It’s a lot like a real-life orchestra: best-inclass performers collaborating and working in unison for an audience.

In the same way that an audience has an expectation about what they’re going to experience when they buy tickets to an orchestra performance, customers now expect more instantaneous, coordinated and personalised reactions for every action that they take. As a result, marketers are faced

with a challenge: understanding consumers’ behaviours well enough to meet that expectation across channels and devices.

2. How does marketing orchestration impact customer journeys?

Marketing-prescribed customer journeys are becoming less and less possible. Marketers need to be able to respond in smarter ways to whatever their contacts are doing, and meet them where they’re at. The ability to leverage user-level data from across their martech stack is essential. That requires excellent APIs and an open framework that allows marketers to access actionable customer data and automate real-time responses.

3. How do you think about message frequency and orchestration?

The answer to this question depends on your value proposition, your customers and how well you understand them. Some apps or websites have valid use cases to send lots of messages. For example, one pharmacy client offered a preference centre where people

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actively chose to receive prescription refill reminders via email, SMS and mobile push notifications. This made sense. It wasn’t annoying to the users because they actively opted in and received their preferred multichannel experience. You need to ensure that the value you exchange with customers is within their expectations of the service. You want to provide utility and value every time.

Beyond that, brands need to map out a customer-centric way to convey information on different channels. For example, with email you’re able to say a lot more than you can in a very short-form SMS. Part of getting this right is about making sure your brand tone and voice comes through in each of these channels.

4. Can transactional messaging be orchestrated? Is that advisable?

Yes. People tend to welcome transactional messages most because they’re tailored to and triggered by their behaviour – an order has shipped, a bill is available etc. Orchestrating transactional messages – and giving users a

chance to tell you their preferred channel – is the gold standard. Certainly, if I’m travelling and my bank wants to let me know about suspicious activity on my account, I’d want to receive messages on all of my channels.

Whereas, if a bill is due, maybe I want to be notified via just one channel. So, especially for industries like retail, finance and insurance, the ability to orchestrate transactional messaging by user preference is a really powerful tool.

5. Can you provide a few use cases for orchestrated messaging in different verticlals?

For travel brands, orchestration is about making sure the traveller gets what they need to have a great experience. Time-sensitive alerts, day of travel communication, loyalty reminders etc. all contribute to increased customer satisfaction and perhaps even cut call centre costs. So there are a lot of really tangible business benefits with orchestration.

Retailers also have a lot of different kinds of messaging to send: sales alerts, order

confirmations, cart abandonment messages etc. Orchestration means retailers will have more engagement and less churn from various channels, because it creates a better way to make messaging strategies more customer-centric.

For media, nothing is more important than speed and scale, and delivering breaking news to the user when they want and need it, on the channel or channels that make the most sense. And, of course, media companies often have subscription-based audiences. Putting a customer-centric messaging strategy in place helps engage new users and turn them into subscribers – as well as keeping current subscribers engaged and loyal.

Want to learn more? Urban Airship’s Digital Growth Platform is making marketing orchestration a reality for marketing teams at some of the top global brands. Get in touch with us today at www.urbanairship.com/ contact to chat further.

@mmmagtweets

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SPONSORED

JUNE 2018

THE TRANSFORMATION CHALLENGE Nick Pike, VP UK and Ireland for OutSystems, explains why many FMCG businesses are slow to adopt digital transformation

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he fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market is highly competitive, with digital technologies reshaping consumer demand, changing how people shop, how they decide what to buy and even how they receive their goods and parcels.

While businesses in this sector are often the early adopters of innovation, as they need to stay ahead, remain competitive and look to cut their bottom line, the industry still faces challenges with digital transformation. In particular, FMCG businesses are daunted by lead times and delays, as well as the cost for IT and business departments (who are not always aligned) to deliver on their digital transformation strategies.

A 2017 survey by PwC, CEO Viewpoint 2017: The Transformation of Retail, found that while digital transformation is viewed by many FMCG companies as critical, their strategy, planning and implementation are much slower than desired. The survey found that the three biggest barriers were the IT team’s ability to deliver on the strategy (69 per cent), a lack of leadership to define a digital transformation strategy (67 per cent) and a lack of the prerequisite skills to execute the strategy (64 per cent).

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So how can FMCG companies overcome these barriers? There are three key parts of the process, outlined below.

1. Break down the silos A key initiative that should be employed across large FMCG organisations is a policy to break down the silos that exist between different departments. That’s because the structure of many organisational silos often seems to work against the interests of customers. Crucial to success is staying close to the customer for your product or service and learning how you are missing, meeting or exceeding their expectations.

To do this, organisations must bring people together, so they begin to understand the interdependencies between departments, the impact these have on customers and how they can better work together in order to deliver a quality service.

2. Find the right digital transformation partner Innovative companies like Coca-Cola and Nestlé are leading the way with impressive cross-platform digital campaigns, committing

serious spend to their various digital channels.

But very few organisations can do this on their own. Companies should therefore seek help to meet the complex and constantly changing digital landscape by finding the right partner to help ensure their transformation journey meets the needs of their business.

Often, organisations simply don’t have the expertise or the resources to commit to the programme and it stalls before it has even started. An external partner can help to accelerate the time it takes not only to get these projects off the ground but also to make sure that they are executed efficiently.

3. Look to adopt a mobile-first approach The best aspect of the mobile channel is that it gives brands the potential to engage with their customers or their internal departments in real time, processing data and improving business practices and communication as and when it happens.

Companies should therefore ensure that any digital programme includes mobile as a central part of the initiative.

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As more and more organisations are looking to deliver their digital transformation initiatives, so they are also now utilising low-code platforms in order to do this quickly and easily. Lowcode enables them not only to develop with speed but to make changes just as quickly.

This means that they can adopt an iterative approach to development, getting end user feedback and then tweaking and changing the solution in line with that feedback.

with OutSystems to implement this application.

Not only was the new app developed rapidly, but by working with OutSystems, Total Produce found that it didn’t need to hire any more developers to deliver the project. The solution has been rolled out across 25 drivers servicing UK schools, and Total Produce is now looking at further digital deployments across other parts of the business in the UK, Ireland and other locations.

At OutSystems, we have a strong history and enviable track record of working with FMCG businesses such as Safeway, Bacardi and Jerónimo Martins, to name but a few.

The value in embracing digital technology for business transformation is clear. Successful transformation, however, is much harder to achieve, especially as demands constantly evolve. As organisations look to put digital at the heart of the business, this often requires significant cultural change as well. This type of cultural and technological shift may seem a large undertaking for some traditional FMCG brands, but in today’s digital age, it is the difference between staying competitive in an ever-evolving landscape or the risk of disappearing altogether.

One company in particular that successfully implemented a digital initiative last year was FTSE 250-listed Total Produce. Total Produce is the largest fruit and vegetable producer in Europe and the fourth largest worldwide. In 2016 it won a large UK government-funded contract, Fruit4Schools, to provide fruit to every child attending a UK state primary school.

In order to do this efficiently, it needed an application that would capture an electronic signature of delivery. Total Produce partnered

COMPANIES SHOULD ENSURE THAT ANY DIGITAL PROGRAMME HAS MOBILE AS A CENTRAL PART OF THE INITIATIVE

To learn more, visit: https://www.outsystems.com/case-studies

@mmmagtweets

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JUNE 2018

REBUILDING TRUST

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e walk around with an ocean of information at our fingertips, but despite how transformative the internet has been, the core value exchange that underpins it is eroding.

For free content to continue, brands need to see a return on their ad investment. Publishers need to make enough money to continue investing in producing meaningful content. And people need to feel that the user experience and content they get is worth returning to and seeking out without installing an ad blocker.

This system is ultimately built on a foundation of trust. When trust is lost, the system fails. Ad fraud makes brands lose trust in their investment and lowers publishers’ yield and revenue. When publishers see lower yield, they have to pump more ads onto each page to survive. This makes the user experience worse, meaning trust is lost in the publisher and their content.

Brands fight for attention, publishers fight to keep the lights on and consumers just want to be left alone. This is not sustainable. To rebuild trust, the industry – and especially advertisers -- need to take the following three steps.

our changing relationship with media. The phone has become an extension of ourselves.

So how does this relate to advertising? Intimate technologies lead to people rejecting interruptive, foreign objects in favour of things that fit in.

Modern media companies such as Twitter or Facebook would never consider putting a banner ad or interstitial on their platform. Those are outdated monetisation solutions.

On mobile, interruptive ads are not just bad ads – they make people lose trust in the brands and publishers that run them. This ultimately makes them question the value exchange of the ad-funded internet at large. This is one reason why native advertising has grown so significantly over the past few years.

2. Respect people’s data Digital advertising and programmatic advertising brought about the opportunity to understand more about each reader, and the potential to tailor the advertising experience on an individual level.

It started as a joke suggestion in our office, but we thought the point behind it had massive implications. So we surveyed 350 millennials to see whether they would rather lose their phone forever, meaning they could never get another, or their pinky finger.

From an ad tech perspective, narrow audience targeting is brilliant, first-party cookies are great and knowing everyone’s location all the time is useful for proving footfall attribution. But users generally aren’t so keen on this. Research shows that the majority of people in the UK don’t want to be tracked, most of them find personalised ads creepy and almost everyone wants more control over how brands use their data.

A staggering 46 per cent of millennials would choose to lose a finger rather than lose the phone from their pocket forever. A phone is as essential now as a core limb. This says something about

Personalised advertising still has a place, but only if it is done transparently. According to a recent YouGov survey, about a third of the digital population doesn’t have an issue with

1. Ads should fit in

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Ally Stuart, managing director, EMEA at Sharethrough, offers advice for rebuilding consumer trust in an evolving digital landscape

www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com

personalised ads. They appreciate the value exchange and want their ads to be relevant.

Of that section, there is a smaller segment of people who are open to opting in to personalised advertising, if it is done transparently.

So, what is the strategy for everyone else?

Employing a cookie-based targeting strategy simply isn’t enough any more. Targeting only with cookies in the current world of GDPR, ad blocking and mobile cookie blocking means subtracting almost everyone on iOS, people who block ads and Android impressions with unmatched cookies. That leaves some Android users, desktop holdouts and people who can’t work ad blockers In this world, content-driven publishers will thrive. Outlets as wide-ranging as the Financial Times, CNN, Vogue and Auto Trader have curated audiences. With or without cookies, advertisers know who those audiences are, and can use additional targeting signals like context to drive further relevance and granularity.

3. Stop misinformation By ignoring which site an ad appears on, advertisers incentivise the propagation of fake news. By investing so much in social platforms, advertisers have lowered the revenue of editorial publishers that fund important, highquality journalism.

There is no proof that targeting users wherever they are found improves performance. In 2017, JPMorgan Chase audited its programmatic investment and found it was running ads on about 400,000 sites. When it whittled that down to 5,000 sites there was no detrimental impact on the scale and performance of their ads.

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The 80/20 rule definitely applies for audience targeting on open web. The top 1,000 brand name publishers – News UK, Vice, Guardian, Sky, Disney, MailOnline, CNN etc – not only have the same reach as the long tail, they have other unique qualities: editorial voice, trust, integrity.

People visiting these sites do so with a different mindset. Social is about scrolling through a feed, while publisher sites are destinations people visit for curated article content, editorial experience and a clear voice.

A 2017 study by Sharethrough and Qualtrics found that premium publishers have something of a halo effect. Respondents consistently trusted these publishers over social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This was because they believed in the integrity of the information they got from the editorial sites.

People want access to media at all times and have strong feelings about how their data is collected and used. They also value the content and editorial voice of premium publishers. Armed with this knowledge, there is a lot the ad industry can do to regain user trust.

MOVING FORWARD

Brands must make sure they create respectful ad formats that earn people’s attention rather than stealing it. People don’t always like being targeted as individuals, so brands need to test complementary ways of finding an audience. Finally, they can invest more in the editorial web. We have a responsibility as an industry to keep quality journalism alive, and editorial publishers provide access to a curated audience.

If the ad industry responds now, then we can maintain the ad-funded model for the foreseeable future.

@mmmagtweets

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JUNE 2018

SPOOFING IS FOR REAL E ven in 2018, fraudsters continue to develop new ways to steal data and revenue from advertisers. SDK spoofing is the latest form of mobile ad fraud, plundering advertisers’ budgets by generating legitimate-looking fake installs.

networks), and the data was often nonsense, or the URL parameters were filled with data that did not meet its intended purpose. Over time, the fraudsters discovered why their fake installs were blocked and adapted their methods accordingly.

SDK spoofing (aka replay attack) is a form of ad fraud that has been spreading rapidly.

Fraudsters use the device information of unsuspecting users to fake app installs. The connection is real; the device data is real; the device is real – all of which makes it incredibly difficult to detect SDK spoofing. Once the scheme is complete, advertisers are out of pocket and the end user is unaware that they’ve been party to a scam. It’s bad enough that there is no interaction between the user and the intended ad, but the bigger problem is that there is no actual install.

Since mid-2017, fraudsters have been collecting real device data. They do this by using their own apps. The intent of their data collection is malicious, but that does not mean that the app has no added value for the user.

On the contrary, the more useful the app is, the greater the number of users and thus the amount of available data to be garnered.

The damage is difficult to assess: according to initial investigations, it is distributed on any given campaign across all markets, with up to 80 per cent of all installations attributable to SDK spoofing fraud. This means that advertisers could be losing 80 per cent of their ad budget on a single campaign. As always, advertisers with the largest budgets and highest payouts per install see the most fraud

HOW IT ALL STARTED Until now, the visibility and understanding of a URL structure in the early stages have been very low, making it easier to detect and block spoofing attempts. Fraud attempts came from data centres or VPNs (virtual private

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A source that generates real device data makes life much easier for fraudsters. They no longer have to randomise or curate data because they now have access to the real thing. Since fraudsters can break open the SSL and read the URLs for all server-side connections in plain text format, they can understand which URL calls represent certain actions within the app, for example, opened first, repeatedly opened, and even various in-app events such as purchases and more.

With callbacks and near-real-time communications that demonstrate the success of installations and events, the imposters can now test their setup by simply creating a click and an appropriate install session. It’s just continuous trial and error. Once an installation is successfully tracked, the scammers have found a URL logic that allows them to simulate installations from scratch.

Andreas Naumann, fraud specialist at Adjust, considers the threat posed

by SDK spoofing

To make matters more difficult, this huge leap in the evolution of fraud goes hand-inhand with a second and equally effective development in the sophistication of SDK spoofing: URLs are no longer retrieved from data centres or through VPNs. Instead, they are routed directly through the app, which the fraudster has access to on the device of an unsuspecting user. Rather than sending this URL directly to Adjust’s server (or through an anonymising network), the fraudsters now send it to their app or the app they have access to on a user’s device, and the app then executes the URL on the user’s device.

HOW THE PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED In order to prevent these replay attacks, we had to test many different methods before we finally found a solution. A signature hash that cannot be guessed or stolen, and used only once, adds a new dynamic parameter to the URL. The additional common parameter must be generated for each app to be backed up. To do this, marketers have to get in touch with their attribution company in order to develop a solution together.

The chance that you yourself are affected

by SDK spoofing increases with the number of marketers who protect themselves from the new type of fraud. Because one thing is certain, when opportunity costs increase, SDK spoofing will continue to spread and target smaller budgets too. It’s only a matter of time before we see high rates of SDK spoofing installs across the whole market.

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