Interesting opportunities can catch us by surprise. ThinkMedium’s founder, Dennis Buchheim, has joined Snowflake, leading adtech/martech, media, and entertainment GTM. With this news, ThinkMedium is “on hiatus” — and its inaugural team is beyond grateful to everyone who enabled our success. Please reach out to Dennis via LinkedIn or ThinkMedium email to be connected with consultants who can help you (or to discuss Snowflake!). And watch for ThinkMedium part 2 down the road… Thank you!
A HEALTHY ADS ECOSYSTEM IS OUR GOAL
Ongoing privacy, safety, and efficiency shifts mean that advertising and media companies can’t afford to focus on short-term goals in isolation. Instead, it’s critical to manage medium-term growth effectively but responsibly, understanding and optimizing for constraints, while acknowledging each of our roles in enabling a healthy ecosystem.
An insufficient focus on ecosystem health has resulted in supply chain inefficiency, lack of transparency, consumer opt-outs, publisher monetization declines, and more. Through appropriate collaboration, a sustainable advertising and media industry can support all participants — consumers, marketers, agencies, publishers, and technology providers — in achieving their goals. And we can ensure that digital content and services remain freely accessible and useful.
This industry initiative will explore perspectives and experiences to develop practical recommendations for solutions that may be most viable given evolving privacy requirements.
(ThinkMedium’s POV on Safety, one of our 3 focus areas)
The concept of brand and consumer safety across the ad industry is relatively straightforward and is not a new issue, but the increasing complexity of advertising and media environments has created immense operational challenges – making it imperative to prioritize the right solutions.
(ThinkMedium’s POV on Privacy, one of our 3 focus areas)
Data privacy has been a key issue in advertising over the past decade and has resulted in massive change across the industry – with many advertisers and media companies still not well positioned to navigate ongoing shifts. We propose a principled approach and solutions framework that can support the industry in achieving a sustainable state.
(A ThinkMedium POV on the TV of Tomorrow conference)
Some key takeaways on the state of the TV industry, both today and into the future: 1/ Collaboration is happening and bearing fruit across the industry. 2/ Incentive alignment remains the number top barrier to progress. 3/ Data and consent will drive priorities; when done well, it will open up new models and efficiency.
(A ThinkMedium POV from the ARF AUDIENCExSCIENCE conference)
Key takeaways from attention session: 1/ The ads and media ecosystem needs to align on attention: What is it? And how can it be used? 2/ If we can’t agree on biometric or onsite behavioral metrics for attention, results will be inconsistent. 3/ Without precautions, buy-side attention optimization may not drive sales and could negatively impact consumer safety.
(A ThinkMedium POV from the ARF AUDIENCExSCIENCE conference)
Some takeaways from cross-media measurement sessions: 1/ Premium video players should be commended for taking joint action toward solving a complex problem. 2/ A holistic view is needed on how JIC work intersects with other industry initiatives and company efforts. 3/ We need collaborative development of systems that are optimal for the new landscape, not just bridging gaps.
(A ThinkMedium POV from the Green Media Summit)
While measurement was described as the number one need, the lack of specificity made it sound like a blocker to progress. In our blog post, we discuss how differentiating between proxy and direct measures creates an immediate path forward for pursuing ecological sustainability within the advertising and media ecosystem and how to move past the impasse of “perfect being the enemy of good.”
The three members of the ThinkMedium team have all developed strong personal missions related to ads, and the goal of a recent exercise was to push ourselves on why “privacy, safety, and efficiency” instead of the dozens of other possible focus areas (e.g., creative, video, brand vs. DR, effectiveness).