Category: Blog

LoopMe appoint Scott Shulman as Vice President Sales North America Sales to lead the company’s growth in the market.

LoopMe, the world’s largest mobile video advertising platform, announced today that it has hired Scott Shulman as Vice President Sales North America as part of its ambitious expansion plan in the US.

Shulman joins LoopMe from RocketFuel, where he held the position of Vice President Strategic Sales before being appointed Vice President Agency Partnerships, and helped to take the company from start-up through to IPO, managing a team of 30 sellers and contributing $160 million of the company’s global revenue. As Vice President Sales North America for LoopMe, he will be responsible for driving the company’s development in the US, as it builds on successful relationships with brands such as Adidas, Netflix, Heineken, Microsoft and Samsung.

CEO & Co-Founder Stephen Upstone added ‘we are delighted to welcome Scott to the team. The US is a key market and Scott has an impressive track record at building hugely successful teams. His background in artificial intelligence and data made him the perfect choice to lead the US team from our New York office’.

‘I am passionate about companies that put technology and innovation at the core of their business’ said Shulman, ‘LoopMe’s commitment to developing new technologies has produced artificial intelligence and data offerings which will allow it to lead the market in mobile video advertising, and I look forward to making that a reality in the US’.

On Tuesday, March 8th, LoopMe held its first event in NYC to a packed room of over 50 industry professionals. Boldly titled ‘Mobile Video Will Eat the World’, the event featured speakers from LoopMe, Integral Ad Science and Innovid explore the newest developments in the mobile video space and offer an insight into what the future holds for the industry.

The phrase ‘Mobile Video Will Eat the World’ is based on Peggy Anne Salz’s recent Forbes article (it itself adapted from Benedict Evans’ 2014 talk), exploring the future of mobile in a period of intense innovation and development. The theme provoked a range of discussions, with particular emphasis on the need for mobile video media quality standards. In an industry constantly adapting and evolving, advertisers and publishers need to know that there are ways of verifying ad interaction and viewability – dollars will be kept away from mobile until there are such reassurances. For Michael Tuminello, Director Product at Innovid, ‘2016 is turning into the year for mobile verification’ – the adtech industry is waking up to the pressing need for clarity and reliability while delivering ROI.

One way to achieve this is by implementing machine learning and, at its pinnacle, artificial intelligence. As put by Joseph Ranzenbach, Senior Product Manager at Integral Ad Science, it’s unhelpful to send a human to do a machine’s job. Going beyond AB testing is important, and artificial intelligence is opening up new avenues for optimizing campaigns. As Pete O’Mara-Kane, LoopMe’s Head of Global Sales explained, it’s not just about ‘reaching the right person at the right time. It’s about reaching them at exactly the moment where they want to engage’. Furthermore, AI is working 24/7 rather than 9/5 – optimising in real time and reacting to events as and when they unfold. This doesn’t render AdOps teams redundant – these teams are vitally important in maintaining contact between platform and agency, catering to client needs and monitoring campaign performance.

We hope everyone enjoyed the event as much as we did. We would like to thank all of our panellists and speakers for their insights and opinions, and will be keeping a close eye on their opinions and insights.

Look out for more LoopMe events around the world over the coming months.

Like LoopMe on Facebook to view the full photo gallery.

 

Again, a busy week for ads this one!

We could have gone with a Cookie-fueled waiting game from everyone’s favorite Sesame Street Character , or a  cringe-inducing dry skin advert from Dollar Shave Club (featuring everyone’s favourite’s news reporter from Parks and Rec). But tongue-in-cheek and slightly left-field comedy doesn’t go any further than the newest set of adverts from Capital One, featuring a series of skits from Spike lee, Samuel L Jackson and Charles Barkley.

The fantastic trio, who collaborated with Capital One back in 2015 (with Spike Lee acting and directing) return with an easy going sense of fun and chill. Plus we never expected to hear Jackson belting out the top line to Rupert Holmes’s Escape (or as most people know it) The Pina Colada Song.

You can check out the set of ads here – a great use of two minutes!

Unfortunately for Heineken, it only extends as far as a VIP ticket.

A nice video from the beer making firm – showing how important it is to share all those masculine-dominated sports moments with your male football friends. Not the most imaginative of practical jokes but there’s certainly a latent feel-good-factor going on. There’s also a big budget element to it all.

Check it out yourselves here.

Published in ExchangeWire, 17th March 2016. 

The way in which audiences are profiled and defined across advertising channels stems back from a legacy of stereotypes within traditional media; which allowed advertisers to easily translate their marketing objectives to relevant ad delivery. Stephen Upstone (pictured below), CEO and founder, LoopMe, speaks to ExchangeWire about how these audience definitions are no longer relevant in today’s marketing world, and why opening your mind will make your advertising better.

When agencies send us a brief for a mobile video campaign, it usually outlines the target audience. This can be as vague as ABC1 males or as specific as AB females with children between the age of two months and three years living in the North London area.

These audience profiles are created by brands and media agencies in an attempt to ensure ad tech providers are delivering ads to relevant users, but are these pre-defined audience definitions actually going to help brands reach the people who buy their products; or are they simply an outdated method of targeting? Should we be perpetuating what is, essentially, just a form of stereotyping?

The first issue is the definition of ‘audience’. In digital terms, this will typically be the person who receives the ad, and will be outlined by the brand in terms of age, demographic, gender, area of the country, behaviour, etc. But in reality, a brand’s audience is anyone who buys the product. The problem with the digital definition of audience is that it depends on generalisations and assumptions – and, as we know, people very rarely conform to expectations.

Take, for example, a broadcaster, like Sky or BT Sport, running an advertising campaign to encourage users to subscribe to their latest football package. The audience for the digital campaign would probably be men, 18-55 who have visited football or sports sites. Of course, there will be a huge number of users who fit this profile and will be interested in subscribing. But what about the people who don’t fit, who would still be interested in the product? In the UK, 20% of football match attendees are women, that’s around two million people who wouldn’t be reached by this campaign, because they don’t fit the football fan stereotype, yet would certainly be relevant.

Read the rest of the article here.

Today marks International Women’s Day across the world, and as such we wanted to celebrate the gender diversity at LoopMe. In a mobile industry dominated by men, it is more important than ever to make sure that equality is represented in all areas. LoopMe is proud to have an incredibly balanced and representative community, and today of all days wanted to celebrate this fact!

 

MOBILE VIDEO WILL EAT THE WORLD

We’re excited to be hosting our first educational event in New York, Mobile Video Will Eat The World. Following the success of TV & Mobile: It’s All About Video and Mobile & The Movies we’re taking our popular educational breakfasts stateside, ready to delve into the realm of mobile video advertising.

We’ll be looking at the future of mobile innovation and what video can achieve in a period of huge potential. We are delighted to be joined by a fantastic array of industry experts ready to share their knowledge and experience on mobile video and the future of advertising.

Mobile Video Will Eat The World

A picture may be worth a thousand words but video is the ultimate tool when it comes to building a brand. As users become digital-first, viewing video on smartphones, tablets, desktops and connected TVs, advertisers must ensure they follow suit, embracing video as their go-to branding medium. Join LoopMe, Integral Ad Science, Innovid and our panel of industry experts as we discuss video best practice, effective video measurement and how to be creative with your video advertising.

AGENDA

8:30 – 9:00: Registration

9:00: Welcome

9:10 – 9:30: ‘State of Play – How to Make Video More Intelligent’ Pete O’Mara-Kane, Global VP, LoopMe

9:35 – 9:55: ‘Creating Media Quality Standards for Mobile Video’ Joseph Ranzenbach, Senior Product Manager, Integral Ad Science

10:15 – 10:35: ‘Advanced Video on Mobile – Challenges and Opportunities’ Michael Tuminello, Senior Director Product, Innovid

10:40 – 11:20: Panel Session – ‘From $5bn to $70bn – taking mobile video to the next level’ – Chaired by Tanya  Dua, Digiday Brand Reporter Panelists include: Rachel Pasqua, Mobile Lead, MEC Global Sonali Pathak, VP Business Development & Strategy, NBCU Melinda Toscano, Practice Lead, Mobile & Emerging Digital Media Marketing & Technologies, Joule Pete O’Mara-Kane, Global VP, LoopMe

11:30: Closing Remarks

Pete O’Mara-Kane, Global VP. Pete started his media career in the world of outdoor advertising at JCDecaux before moving into digital at BSkyB and Millennial Media, where he progressed to the Head of Agency Sales position before joining LoopMe as VP.

Joseph Ranzenbach, Senior Product Manager at Integral Ad Science. Joseph has a prowess and experience perfectly suited to discussing Media Quality Standards – having published a white paper on the legitimate use of location data in 2014. Before his time at IAS, Joseph was Product Manager at Place IQ and Employee #1 at the financial data platform PrivCo.

Michael Tuminello, Senior Director Product at Innovid. Having worked for almost 4 years at Innovid (during a period of award-winning innovation) and before that at Sizmek, Michael has the awareness and ability to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing video on mobile in the present circumstances.

Tanya Dua, Brand Reporter from Digiday as a chair and moderator. Having worked in digital media for over two years, Tanya has an acute awareness of the industry and significant experience hosting panels.

Rachel Pasqua, Mobile Lead at MEC, Melinda Toscano, Practice Lead & co-founder at Joule, Sonali Pathak, VP Business Dev and Strategy, NBCU,   For anyone wanting to attend the event, the sign up link is here, and be sure to look out for our recaps and summaries after the event has finished.

There seemed to be a creative flourish in the last seven days, as a spree of fantastically innovative and original ads hit the net. The first comes from e-commerce brand Klarna is as surreal as it sounds – a fish slides down a slide and smoothly glides across a polished floor. It has to be seen to be believed.

The second comes from Prism and Century Link and is an ad perfect for any aspiring cinophile. The combination of tongue in cheek humor and rather intense cinematic knowledge makes this a fun little ditty, plus it gives Paul Giamatti a chance to flex his acting (and chewing) chops.

But the winner this week (and this is strictly NSFW) comes from the Opera of Paris and Bret Easton Ellis with ‘Figaro’. The ‘American Psycho’ writer here uses the music from the Barber of Seville to turn the tightly wrought operatic form into an intensely carnal experience. Check it out below:

 

Published on the MMA UK Blog, March 2 2016

Mobile World Congress is a difficult show to beat, with over 90,000 industry professionals descending on Barcelona to learn about, experience and embrace all things mobile.

This year my attention was drawn away from the handset launches that have dominated in previous years by two main elements virtual reality and, as ever, the immense potential of data.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality has been touted as the next big thing in consumer technology for years, but it’s never managed to take a firm hold on our lives. This year, with Samsung’s Virtual Reality roller coaster taking centre stage, VR finally seems to be within touching distance.

Compatible with the high-end Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, the new Gear VR means that virtual reality has become readily available for consumers and brands for the first time. The introduction of the Gear 360o camera means that 360o video footage can be produced by the average user, ensuring it will definitely be on brands’ radar in the coming months.

While every day implementation of virtual reality is still a little way off, as it is only widely available through Samsung hardware, elements of VR can be incorporated into the everyday mobile experience. 360o video advertising formats have already been launched, where users can immerse themselves into different environments through their smartphones. By using the innate mobility of mobile devices, it’s possible for users to look round the back stage of a Coldplay concert, explore the summit of MT. Everest or simply drop in at a friend’s party on the other side of the world.

For brands the new 360o technology offers exciting prospects for their content and advertising strategies. A real estate company can serve an advert for a particular house and allow users to check out the street it’s on. Travel agencies can let their audience explore a hotel or cruise ship, film studios can offer behind-the-scenes tours where the user is in control. By offering users this added value, they become far more valuable as a brand.

Read the rest of the article here.

It’s difficult to work out when exactly adblocking started being described as a full blown conflict, but it was probably before the MWC. By the time the event started in Barcelona,  The Telegraph were eager to open with the provocative title ‘The War over Mobile Ad Blocking Has Only Just Begun’ – a description that certainly has a militaristic feel (and seems to mimic Gandalf’s closing lines from The Two Towers). So too does AdWeek’s soundbite about adblocking ‘destroying the ecosystem’ – like a type of weapon normally banned by the Geneva Convention.

This rhetoric is getting even more extravagant – Roi McCarthy, CMO of Shine Technology, said that their adblocker is ‘the single biggest threat in the history of advertising…it’s a stellar opportunity to reset the relationship with consumers’. These are big proclamations – Shine, it seems, is some apocalyptic event for advertisers, ready to bring about an advertising Second Coming.

While the adblockers are keen to paint the picture of crisis, Three are significantly milder on their calls for improvement. They are looking to stop users having to pay for advertising using their own data and encouraging better targeted ads. Though Three may decide to implement a network-wide ban on ads, this does not affect ad presence over WiFi. Given that network-based data only makes up about 16% of a users’ monthly consumption rate (the average iOS user consumes around 1.8Gb of cellular data compared to 8.9Gb over wireless), Three’s move will have a relatively minimal impact on the number of users blocking ads.

The problem with such antagonistic language is that it doesn’t help find a solution to the adblocking issue. Both advertisers, publishers and blockers need to have a discussion about why exactly consumers are turning towards adblocking in the first place. Solutions to this problem can come in a number of different forms – higher quality creatives, more relevant ads, or ad formats that feel less intrusive and more engaging. Certainly, the IAB’s recent decision to un-invite Ad Blocker Plus from their annual conference is not a way to form a proper dialogue.

Three’s move has provided an exciting and bold opportunity for the advertising industry to address the question of adblocking on mobile.  In a constantly evolving industry, organisations have to be ready to react to new trends and issues with satisfying solutions in transparent ways that put the consumer first. The same will invariably be true of adblocking, and, given the response of those at MWC, there are those ready to tackle the problems with vigour. But it might be easier without all the apocalyptic terminology.