Adobe’s AI analytics play, VideoAmp by the second, and more on Harry Styles’ mega fame: Datacenter Weekly
Plus: Macroeconomic news in a nutshell, your guide to Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022—and more.
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Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals.
Measuring advertising down to the second
“VideoAmp is rolling out second-by-second ad viewership as a deal currency, drawing on experience with Paramount’s BET as an early adopter measuring viewership not only of commercials but also longer-form branded content during its BET Awards last summer,” Ad Age’s Jack Neff reports.
The details: VideoAmp’s measurement, Neff notes, “combines input from smart TVs and cable or satellite set-top boxes covering more than 39 million homes.”
Essential context: “Second-by-second reporting for TV—in all its many forms—is still relatively rare for use as currency in deals, as ratings from Nielsen are still done based on average commercial minute viewing across programs or commercial pods,” Neff notes. “But Nielsen last year announced plans to roll out individual commercial measurements (still planned as part of the rollout of Nielsen One later this year, a spokesman said). And other measurement firms—including Comscore and iSpot.tv—previously have touted their ability to measure ads on a second-by-second basis.”
Adobe brings AI to marketing mix modeling
“Adobe is launching a marketing mix modeling service that uses artificial intelligence to assess return on investment in weeks rather than the months it typically takes for such analytics,” Ad Age’s Jack Neff reports.
The details: “Marketers can use the tool, which will be generally available as part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, to adjust media and marketing plans on the fly, or at least within a month or quarter, rather than taking a retrospective look at what happened in the past to adjust future spending.”
Essential context: “Adobe’s move comes as marketing mix modeling (MMM) enjoys a renaissance after years of losing ground to multi-touch attribution (MTA),” Neff adds. “Making the AI tool available across an already huge base of Adobe could fuel the growth of MMM further.”
More Harry Styles data
After we ran an item last week titled “Harry Styles’ mega fame by the numbers,” a bunch of Datacenter Weekly readers told us that they knew Styles was popular, but didn’t realize he was that popular. Well, folks, brace yourself for a few more bullet points:
• With Styles’ single “As It Was” having racked up 15 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, he is now the longest-reigning British artist to hold that distinction, having dethroned Elton John, whose 1997 “Candle in the Wind” spent 14 weeks at No. 1.
• The 2021 portion of Styles’ continuing “Love on Tour” stadium concert tour grossed nearly $95 million from 720,000 tickets sold across 42 shows—but the artist’s momentum has only accelerated since then. Last year, for instance, Styles was able to sell out New York City’s Madison Square Garden for five nights, but in returning to the iconic venue this past August, he sold out 15 nights (as we noted last week). But there’s more—much more: The 2022 leg of “Love on Tour” includes not only an additional 42 North American shows (which started in August and continue through November), but the 23 shows he played in Europe in July and August, as well as 14 shows coming up in Latin America in November and December.
• It’s entirely reasonable to expect that “Love on Tour” will bring in at least an additional $155 million or so by the end of 2022, which would bring the combined 2021-2022 gross above the quarter-billion-dollar mark. (Side note: “Love on Tour” continues in 2023 with dates in Australia—and Europe once again.)
A post-cookie data glossary
ICYMI: Privacy sandbox. Seller-defined audiences (SDAs). Match rate. Conversions API (CAPI) ...
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Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee.
This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.
