Brendan Moorcroft is CEO at Mediabrands Audience Platform, a unit of Mediabrands and part of agency holding company Interpublic Group.

Earlier this week, Mediabrands announced the acquisition of social agency Spring Creek Group. Read more on PaidContent.

Moorcroft discussed the acquisition, audience buying and the strategy ahead for Mediabrands Audience Platform.

AdExchanger.com: First, can you talk a little bit about what Mediabrands Audience Platform is?

BM: Sure. It was about this time last year we had a leadership change as Matt Seiler was confirmed as the new CEO of Mediabrands. At that time we looked at all of the practices and specialist entities that we had outside of our two main agencies of UM and Initiative and we saw an opportunity to bring together assets aligned to the consumer opportunity that was being presented to us.

In our own words – “Mediabrands has evolved the specialist practices of Reprise Media, Cadreon, Ansible, and now it’s going to form a constellation of data driven services and enabling technologies called the Mediabrands Audience Platform.”

We describe the Mediabrands Audience Platform (MAP) as a platform that improves insight and results by helping our agencies find, buy, and engage their most valuable audiences. This is an evolution of the practices of Reprise, Cadreon and Ansible.

And, why buy Spring Creek Group?

Most of the assets for MAP we had within, but one of the clearest gaps and opportunities for us was social.

And when we define social, it’s every element of social. It’s the intelligence that you can glean through monitoring, listening, and capturing insights through conversation. It’s the ability to create and form communities around content, around conversations. And, it’s the ability to execute paid campaigns on social platforms today like the optimization it can do within Facebook and others.

On the client side, what were you hearing that made you pull the trigger on Spring Creek?

Social is becoming one of the most critical platforms to communicate with audiences, period. Social is not just a campaign tactic. It’s systemic to client activity, to client business. Clients are looking at us to fulfill and provide strategy on how to leverage the big platforms that exist today. We heard that consistently from every one of our brands within the clients that we manage. This is a critical element to communication planning moving forward.

Given the role of the strategic communications planner at Initiative or UM and the potential benefits of the Spring Creek acquisition to them, how much of it is about the digital channel versus a communication with the consumer that is uniquely mined in social?

That’s one of the reasons why we’re so interested in creating that whole platform, not just the social piece. Think about the combination of the data that you can capture through what we learn which people are searching or tweeting or blogging, etc. – and what about the creatives they’re engaging with, sites they’re searching for or content they’re reading?

You now start to imagine all of this consumer-centric data that’s starting to be fused together to form communications planning at UM and Initiative. We see the audience platform as a massive engine to provide the intelligence, data, and insight to our agencies of UM and Iinitiative – and to a lot of other IPG agencies, too.

What would you say is the connection between Mediabrands Audience Platform, Spring Creek and television?

Sure. We’ve had a partnership with Visible World through Cadreon for the last year or so. This is another great avenue for us to provide the digital intelligence and help the systems of addressable TV. We see a huge opportunity to take and append the data that we’re getting back from cable boxes and the addressable over-the-top hardware that’s going into TV. So imagine now, with more granularity and with faster turnaround, we can start to see the chatter about topics, shows and content that are being developed in the traditional world.

We see even more opportunity with TV moving forward. We’ve got a great partnership [with Visible World], but we’re exploring with some other providers. We’ve had a relationship with Simulmedia and Brian Weiser, a former Mediabrands employee. We’ve had conversations with Microsoft and others. We really do see an opportunity for TV to start to be impacted. Expect to hear more from us in the next couple months about what our next step with TV is going to be. There will be a push within the Mediabrands Audience Platform to do this.

Let’s take a look at Cadreon specifically. Can you articulate what component Cadreon fulfills within the MAP architecture?

It’s not a surprise that Cadreon, given their leadership, technology and services team is actually playing a larger role within the Mediabrands Audience Platform – we had to imagine what the future of an agency looked like when we created Cadreon. We obviously have had an incredibly successful run over the last couple of years and have been growing at an amazing rate. And so, we’ve applied a lot of that philosophy in the creation of MAP, which Cadreon is a backbone of. But we’ve also got to look at the depth of experience and intelligence that we can glean from Reprise and Ansible – together with Cadreon, these are product capabilities that come to life in what we call the “benefit bundles” within Mediabrands.

One of the pillars of these bundles is a way for us to clarify the product and services of the specialist entity. So when we talk about Cadreon, we talk about Cadreon as a one-to-many solution. If I’m starting to look at a mass audience strategy, Cadreon fulfills the requirement for marketing to many targeted groups of people and is far more efficient than what we have been able to do with digital in the past.

But in a search engine, it starts to become more of a one-to-one conversation. So with Reprise and Ansible, we start to talk about in the capability of one-to-one within the benefit bundles.

Yet, [three groups] are powered and managed as one integrated team within the Mediabrands Audience Platform, which helps us leverage intelligence across all of the digital platforms.

So the term “trading desk” has been associated with Cadreon in the past. Are you comfortable with that association, or has it changed?

I’ve never been comfortable with that. That’s one of the functions of Cadreon – to be able to buy media through trading tools in liquid exchanges. Yets, that’s one thing Cadreon does. But – and we’ve talked about this a great deal over the last couple years – we think the role of Cadreon is as important to fueling insights and intelligence across media platforms, as much as it is to actually buying and optimizing media. That’s why, in the positioning of MAP, we talked about finding, buying, and engaging audiences. That’s really what Cadreon has been about for the last couple years in digital display. We’re now trying that philosophy across search, social, video, addressable TV and mobile.

Getting back to Spring Creek and filling the social silo for the client, if you will, shouldn’t clients start thinking about it more holistically – in a cross‑channel kind of way? Making sure all those channels are working efficiently would seem to be most critical. How do you respond to that?

I think we’re in position today where we have a little bit of everything [on the client side]. Certain clients – large, big, global network clients – want things controlled and managed via one single choke point. And so, at that point, when they hire an agent, they look at the holding companies and they piece together all of the specialist capability into one group. And so imagine the way we served Johnson and Johnson. We put together the best of Mediabrands. And, we’ve had partnerships with RGA. So a client like that looks for a holistic overview and wants to know that all of the those specialties are within the holding company.

And you have other clients that want to ensure that the best of breed specialists are represented. In that case, they want to work with a specialist creative entity, CRM entity, specialist media entity and so on. Honestly, we’re still seeing a good mix of both types of clients. It depends on the way clients are structured and what information or what teams they’re involving in-house or not.

But, I think that there is a shift. I’ve talked a little bit about it in recent weeks. I think we’re also starting to see a shift back to creative and media being closer together again. While you still see the media AORs as a platform to build on, I think you are starting to see close partnerships developing with creative entities again. That’s really exciting.

Finally, with Mediabrands Audience Platform, what’s in it for “brand”?

So, we have a definite intelligence today about how people look engaged with digital experiences, whether it’s in search, community, chatting, disclosing statuses. Whether it’s watching digital video, engaging in games – it doesn’t matter what it is. There is so much data that we are starting to capture about what people are doing that we are able to glean intent. And we’re able to see if we’re shifting the perception of a brand, of a product just as much as we’re able to say, “Yes, we can get the consumer to take an action, and therefore judge us on the cost per action.”

The blend between those is really what we’ve been about – we can support ways of creating and distributing really rich, beautiful stories that shift people’s perception on a product or a brand just as easily as we can use an algorithm to optimize to an action of a sale, lead, downloading a white paper, etc.

I think the great opportunity is that we have more measurable data to act on more quickly. The opportunity to support brand-based initiative is rich, fertile ground for us to explore right now. I think this is one of the greatest parts of doing what we’re doing, to help support great brand messages.

To view the original article:

http://www.adexchanger.com/agencies/mediabrands-audience-platform/

Chandra is formerly general manager of digital and social media at Telstra. At Reprise Media his primary duties will oversee the agency’s investments in social media monitoring, content, digital community management and social CRM.

“We are broadening our capabilities moving into the next phase of social media development, which is the business application of social media and its measurable impact on company performances,” said Reprise Media managing director Dave Fernandez. “Midu’s appointment adds to our capabilities to amplify clients’ media effectiveness and build social platforms that show tangible returns in terms of brand consideration and engagement, as well as sales and customer service.”

Fernandez said Reprise Media, which has one of the industry’s largest social media practices, was already in conversations with clients on the application of social media in areas such as sales force coordination, call centre integration and customer satisfaction solutions.

At Telstra Chandra directed several avenues of the development including creating an ROI model for Telstra’s investment in digital and social media, building insights based on data, setting up social media monitoring platforms, social media guidelines, implementing a social CRM and mobile marketing platform, as well as developing the telco’s digital youth program.

Reprise Media’s clients include Hyundai, Target, Bunnings, ZUJI and South Africa Tourism.

For more information:

Reprise tackles social media

Reprise Media appoints former Telstra exec Midu Chandra for social media marketing director role

Reprise appoints Midu Chandra to focus on ROI in social media

Reprise Media names social media head

Reprise Media is well versed in navigating large, complex corporations from our work with Verizon, American Airlines, Hyundai, and Kia. Thank you TopSEOs for your continued recognition. Congratulations SEO Team!

(originally published by Simon Canning in   The Australian July 25, 2011 12:00AM)

MASTERCHEF completely dominates online conversations about entertainment TV shows in Australia, but judges may have cruelled the program’s ratings chances when they voted off lifeguard Hayden Quinn last week.

More than 90 per cent of online conversations about Australian TV shows centre on MasterChef, but the failed contestant dominated positive social network and blog chatter about the show.

Analysis of Twitter, forums and blogs showed Quinn, who was voted off the show on Thursday despite being tipped as a shoo-in to win, averaged nearly twice as many positive comments as the next-closest competitor, publicist Dani Venn.

And the research by search media company Reprise Media, part of UM, has also revealed that the show’s strong ratings translated into even strong online media buzz.

Reprise measured nearly 39,000 conversations about the show on the internet compared with just 2952 for the closest competitor, Nine’s crime series Underbelly. Seven’s top reality show, Australia’s Got Talent, also struggled to compete in the online conversation stakes with just 1423 discussions. The survey confined itself to drama entertainment programs, which explains why ABC public affairs program Q&A did not feature.

Reprise managing director David Fernandez said the results showed that the Ten Network, which managed to extract a major increase in the price of sponsorships after the surprise success of the first series, may still have undervalued the show.

“Hayden has generated more positive buzz than any other contestant,” Mr Fernandez said.

Just 5 per cent of conversations surrounding Quinn were negative, compared with 12 per cent for Venn. But when it came to people commenting online about Quinn, a massive 34 per cent of all conversation was positive.

“What we are saying is that these properties have a much stronger value than I think even Ten realise,” he said.

“I was surprised to see the results. We do listings for brands across the group and they are not doing anything like this.”

According to reports the deal follows meetings between CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Baidu CEO Robin Li and could see Facebook launch a standalone site and help it reach its billion user target.

The Chinese service will be unconnected to the Facebook’s international Facebook.com  site with no integration. The lack of integration will almost certainly be a condition imposed on Facebook to meet China’s strict censorship rules. China is fearful that activists might use the service to organise dissent as has happened in other authoritarian states across the Middle East in recent months.

Both Beijing-based Baidu and Facebook have declined to comment on any deal, but according to Bloomberg Facebook has held talks with potential partners about how to enter the Chinese market. These have been “exploratory and may not result in an agreement”.

“We are currently studying and learning about China, as part of evaluating any possible approaches that could benefit our users, developers and advertisers,” Palo Alto, California- based Facebook said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg at the time of the China meetings.

Zuckerberg met with Baidu’s Li when he visited China in December. He also met with other potential Chinese partners including China Mobile and Sina Corp.

This latest report follow rumours in February that also linked it to Baidu. If Facebook does launch a Chinese language version it will be its second attempt. It tried three years ago in 2008, but the site was closed after issues with censors.

Now users trying to access the site from China receive an error message. But with around 420m internet users, the Chinese market is probably the easiest way for Facebook to reach the next significant milestone of a billion members.

In January Twitter added its seventh language with the addition of Korea.
A closed Chinese version of Facebook could help it get around sticky issues such as its use by activists (along with other social media sites) to co-ordinate protests that eventually led to the downfall of the Egyptian government.

During the uprisings in the Middle East China attempted to block talk of Egypt on Twitter-like service.

Gary Sin, MD of ZenithOptimedia Shanghai said that if Facebook managed to open in China, it would be a good news for the media industry as its audience base is huge. However he warned: “The China market is unique and many media formats cannot be completely duplicated, for example, Sina Weibo  and Twitter. It will take a very long time for China to completely open up to foreign players.  Even if China does allow Facebook to form local partnerships in China, it would probably be under certain conditions.”

Arun Kumar, head of digital, Mediabrands Asia-Pacific added: “Although we have no information on the exact nature of the deal, what we can say is that Facebook is not coming to China in the form that it exists in other parts of the world as it would not comply with Chinese [censoring} laws.
TenCent and others like renren are far ahead of the curve in terms of users and social networks/blogs are fairly mature in the market. Facebook will not be able to operate in its current form.”

Kumar added that the final product that users will see from this is possibly a different service and/or brand. “The main question comes down to what is the value that this network will bring if you remove the halo of the Facebook brand name?” he said. “Competitors are not very strong in the app environment. This is where the deal could potentially bring added value to the Chinese customers and where Facebook could monetise the opportunity.”

Last night, Reprise Media Denmark was honored at the Danish Internet Awards (DIA 11) for its superior client work and results over the last year. The team walked away with the following awards:

Best Search Agency (Reprise Media)
Best Media Agency (IUM and Reprise Media)
Best Landing Page Award (IUM and Reprise Media)

Congratulations to both teams on all of their hard work!

The complete list of winners can be found HERE.

Popular Mechanics calls it “stylish.” Autoblog describes it as “seriously attractive,” and The Los Angeles Times says its upscale appearance outshines both the “dowdy” Toyota Camry and the “bulbous” Honda Accord.

It’s the 2011 Kia Optima they’re talking about in such flattering terms, and that’s notable because it’s simply unheard of for a mid-size sedan to get such rave reviews when it comes to appearance. Mid-size sedans are affordable, practical family cars that fill a utilitarian need, getting people from one place to another – they’re not generally known for their looks.

To read the full article, visit OMMA Magazine

Yesterday, eBay announced the acquisition of eCommerce fulfillment and marketing tech company, GSI Commerce for $2.4 billion.  AdExchanger.com asked the following members of the ad ecosystem:

 “What is your take on the acquisition of GSI Commerce by eBay?”

• Jake Bailey, Chief Evangelist, Rich Relevance
• Rick Corteville, EVP, Global Accounts, Reprise Media
• Joe Zawadzki, CEO, MediaMath

 Jake Bailey, Chief Evangelist , Rich Relevance

 Net-net, we think this is a powerful attempt by eBay to compete with some of Amazon’s strengths…

• Non-Auction selling: eBay has historically had trouble managing and selling large catalogues of structured merchandise (I.e., SKU-level with inventory vs. one-off items), so this will be a nice win in this respect. In other words, this aligns well with their push to selling more fixed-price products to consumers (non-auction).
• Fulfillment: Amazon has been very successful in offering fulfillment for some of their sellers. One of GSI’s key strengths is in their logistics and fulfillment capabilities.
• A competitive question: Along these lines, this move may also be perceived a threat to existing GSI clients. They may not want to “become a fulfillment partner for eBay” because eBay is already heavily competitive in some of GSI’s key categories such as Toys and Sporting Goods.”

 Rick Corteville, EVP, Global Accounts, Reprise Media

•  The purchase is a smart one for eBay as GSI Commerce is one of the leaders in their industry.
• Commerce is one of the growth areas that we see in the industry so eBay is further positioning themselves for the future.
• This space will evolve from standard commerce enabled websites to mobile, applications, social media, gaming, etc. where users can make transactions.
• It will be interesting to see how eBay treats the assets within GSI Commerce’s Marketing Services capabilities. These assets include affiliate marketing (Pepperjam), attribution modeling (ClearSaleing), and even a full service digital agency (TrueAction) which could propel what eBay can provide to their clients.
• How they staff/evolve these services/products will be key as they have the potential of being strong revenue drivers.
• In addition to Commerce, we see another growth area in CRM/Analytics which these Marketing Services companies can help drive. This will assist in bringing users back to the commerce environment through proper profiling / segmentation / tracking / re-targeting which can lead to higher conversion rates and more sales.
• From a Search Marketing perspective, eBay has an internal paid search team which could also be leveraged as a service to clients to promote their online retail locations.
• However, a missing area here is SEO. Building a strong content presence for commerce experiences will be key to eBay’s partners ranking well within both the major search engines along with the niche/vertical ones.
• eBay could also take an approach similar to those of companies like Searchandise and Rich Relevance where they could work in an eBay shopping feed into the commerce purchase process of a stand-alone commerce site. This could drive additional revenue from eBay’s .com site through a performance pricing model.
• The international component here, specifically in EMEA, is also very interesting as users in Central and Eastern Europe become more comfortable transacting online. Investing within those markets now could give eBay a leg up versus Amazon.

 Joe Zawadzki, CEO, MediaMath

•  Low whistle. It’s a significant move because of the thesis behind the acquisition: they are selling off most of the B2C elements of the business – RueLaLa and ShopRunner – and retaining all of the B2B marketing services and technology assets.
• eBay as an advertiser is buying a vertically integrated tech stack.
• eBay as an agency to other marketers (their small to mid-sized businesses, and well as larger Marketplaces customers) bought a platform to not only power clients’ eBay efforts, but efforts off eBay.
• Coupled with the “inhousing” of their data assets recently, eBay seems to be focused on being a one-stop-shop for retailers, small and large. E.g., . prospecting, monetization across existing demand, fulfillment, payment processing, hosting, etc.
• It’s a significant leading indicator: a marketer willing to spend $2B to create technology differentiation, and a good signal about what’s necessary to succeed in marketing going forward – build, buy, or partner your way to technology-powered marketing services.

Yahoo and Reprise Media plan to release findings from a six-month study Wednesday on how mobile devices influence search behavior across handsets, tablets and desktop devices. It turns out that devices, desire and demographics change search behavior. MediaPost got an early peek.

It should not come as a surprise that walking and typing on qwerty keyboards creates a different need than tapping the glass on a touchscreen. One thing is certain — the experience churns out very different results that will influence paid search, search engine optimization and display campaigns.

Men, for example, are between 7% and 9% more likely to search on mobile devices, compared with women. Taylor Schreiner, senior director of strategic research and insights at Yahoo, says it’s important for marketers to understand the nuances of the change and that their brand campaigns will connect with searchers on a mobile device, even before the desktop. Consumer reaction to the message could turn out considerably different.

The findings from the study show the desktop drives the highest percentage of searches on branded terms, followed by iPad and mobile phones. On mobile devices, fewer brand-based searches, along with nearly 50% less keyword terms, compared with desktop searches make up a search query.

On mobile phones, in general, the focus turns to proximity and terms such as “shoes” rather than “Cole Haan,” unless the consumer wants to find a store like the “Gap.” Most people will use one word to search on mobile phones, whereas iPad and desktop users prefer two words.

While mobile searches remain relatively consistent among all age groups, the percentage of branded searches on a desktop rises for those ages 25 and older. Typically, as people age, they are far more likely to search on branded terms on a desktop, but that’s not true on mobile and tablet devices. As users search more on mobile devices, companies also could see a shift to branded terms.

Today, the share of subcategory searches on mobile devices includes general merchandise, retailers, apparel, restaurants, home, books, luxury items and toys. Searches on the desktop shake out a bit different as general merchandise still tops the list, followed by retailers, home, apparel, books, restaurants, toys and luxury items.

In a blog schedule to post later Wednesday, Schreiner points to iPads, which get more searches per user on TV and movie topics than any mobile device — nearly as many as the desktop. It makes sense because the iPad offers a better video experience. But just months after its launch, the iPad got more searches per user on investing and real estate, compared with PC searches. He suggests that early adopters are likely more affluent and want information on such topics.

The mobile Web might show promise, but analyst firm eMarketer points out that speed, size and design cause frustration among early adopters. “Users under age 45 were significantly more likely to complain about the speed of the mobile Web, and respondents under 55 were frustrated by the size of mobile Web displays,” according to the post. “Only one group reported greater frustration with any aspect of the mobile internet: Fully half of adults age 18 to 24 were annoyed that some Web site designs did not work at all on their phones.”

The bottom line: marketers need to pay more attention to change and how search campaigns will play out across a variety of devices hitting the market.

Reprise Media has appointed John Anagnost president, U.S. Mr. Anagnost comes to Reprise Media from Bloomberg LP, where he was head of audience marketing for Bloomberg.com and Businessweek.com. Previously, he was global director-search marketing services at Neo@Ogilvy. Mr. Anagnost will work closely with data and analytics and research resources to help develop new digital tools and processes focused on understanding consumer intent. As part of the Mediabrands Ventures collective, he will assist in the creation of new services and enhancements to current resources within Reprise Media.