| | Friday reading
(Virtual?) OOH comes in for some stick
Any marketer will be familiar with out-of-home activations that seem too good, or clever, to be true, such as eyelashes on top of a Tube train being brushed by a giant mascara wand. The industry has realised that creative OOH activations don't have to be real to create buzz on social media, giving rise to a trend of 'virtual OOH'. But not everyone cottons onto the deception right away.
This week the CMO at Grind coffee vented his annoyance on LinkedIn about praise for an apparent OOH campaign for the new movie Twisters that appears to show a billboard upended in the middle of the pavement with the glass shattered. Suffice to say, it probably wouldn't pass Health and Safety. Some commenters contend that it doesn't matter as long as the activation has impact.
What do you think?
75% of CTV is programmatic
The IAB’s annual Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy report was released this week. Aside from the big numbers showing growth in digital video ad spending (expected to hit $62 billion this year, up from just $26 billion in 2020), the stat that jumps out is that programmatic accounts for three quarters of connected TV ad spend.
Why are advertisers choosing to buy this way? The IAB’s survey highlights easier campaign optimization, better ROI/ROAS and scale. Chris Bruderle, the IAB’s VP of industry insights and content strategy, told AdExchanger that some of this shift is likely down to smaller buyers moving from social video to newly affordable CTV.
CTV contains multitudes – spanning AVOD, BVOD, SVOD (all the VODs!) and online video that’s fit for TV, such as YouTube – and consequently the IAB survey highlights a wide variety of issues that advertisers are having when measuring effectiveness, such as co-viewing, brand safety, viewability and a lack of sell-side data.
Further reading: Retail media’s expansion into CTV has been one big area of growth – see our article from late last year on this full funnel evolution. Or read Insights Editor Ben Davis’ piece in Marketing Week on the gremlins in retail media measurement.
Lawsuit alleges Patagonia invaded privacy with AI analysis of customer conversations
A lawsuit filed in California against Patagonia last week alleges that neither the outdoor clothing brand nor its vendor Talkdesk disclose to individuals that conversations between the retailer and its customers and business partners are “being intercepted, listened to, recorded, and used by Talkdesk,” and that customer consent for this is not obtained.
Talkdesk’s AI-powered contact centre software is described in the suit as analysing “callers’ words to determine what the caller is talking about and how the caller is feeling,” and that customer communication is routed “directly to Talkdesk’s servers in real-time and transcribes these conversations as they occur”.
As highlighted by The Record, the suit alleges the software provider trains its AI models on “at least a subset of customer-engagement data and real-time data that flows through Talkdesk’s products,” and the data obtained from Patagonia “is a form of currency” with a value “well understood in the e-commerce industry.”
Though this sort of AI-powered transcript tech is not necessarily news to many consumers or marketers, the lawsuit highlights the growing appreciation of the value of first-party data in training algorithms. The debate around transparency and data privacy which was had during the implementation last decade of the GDPR and then the CCPA feels more relevant ever as tech stacks expand and third-party vendors proliferate.
Pret subscription was “too good to be true”
Pret a Manger has announced that it will be ending its subscription offering launched just under four years ago, which initially saw customers receive up to five drinks per day for a fee of £20 per month.
The subscription service has undergone changes over the years, with the cost first rising to £25 per month, and then £30 in April 2023. Alongside the £30/month price point, Pret also experimented with member pricing, offering subscribers a 20% discount on everything sold in its shops. However, in a message to subscribers, Pret's UK & Ireland Managing Director said that the business "never really got comfortable" with this dual pricing system.
The Club Pret subscription was a boon to Pret's fortunes during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, reportedly stabilising its cash flow at a time of unpredictable footfall and acting as a cornerstone of the company's return to growth . However, the company now wants to focus on "better value for everyone", announcing pricing discounts on staple products like all-butter croissants and filter coffee, which was famously priced at just 99p for more than a decade. Club Pret subscribers will still have access to preferential discounts - but at a much-reduced rate, with 50% off up to five drinks for £10 a month.
The changes have frustrated long-time subscribers, but Pret has admitted that the subscription offering was "too good to be true", and is clearly taking a hard look at profitability now that its lockdown struggles are a thing of the past. |
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