The parade of data-driven advert platform launches by firms that don’t historically monetize by way of promoting seemingly can’t be stopped.
Prior to now month alone, Walmart-owned Sam’s Membership, the lodge chain Marriott and Volta, which manufactures charging stations for electrical automobiles, have all launched or rebranded their promoting and programmatic income teams.
Final November, music labels obtained into the combo with the launch of WMX, Warner Music’s advert platform.
And the beat goes on. The most recent instance is Common Music Group (UMG), a prime music label which final week launched its data-driven ad-targeting platform referred to as the UMusic Media Community.
Common has some owned-and-operated media, together with a social media-based leisure firm referred to as Insurgent Labs aimed toward teenagers and a youthful demographic, in addition to Mercury Studios, which works with artists to create content material. It additionally has a TV and movie manufacturing group referred to as Polygram Leisure.
However the UMusic community primarily aggregates stock from throughout Common’s footprints on main social media platforms.
“What we’ve executed as a fundamental step is aggregated our stock throughout the platforms to provide manufacturers entry to what we now have,” mentioned Richard Yaffa, EVP and international head of Common Music’s model and company group. “We’re actually centered on bringing all of those belongings collectively by way of our companions.”
Yaffa, who oversees the brand new media community, wouldn’t title particular platforms, except for YouTube (which, duh – it’s the primary music video platform). However he did say that for now at the least the UMusic enterprise is concentrated on video adverts and video content material.
There are different elements of the Common Music enterprise for manufacturers that wish to work with a number of particular artists on content material manufacturing or do advertising integrations like getting a model featured in a music video.
However the UMusic community is extra of a programmatic-minded platform. Reasonably than choosing artists, manufacturers and companies can search for audiences, equivalent to younger males aged 18 to 30 or younger girls in sure markets. The platform then assembles a media plan to suit.
The corporate additionally layers in its personal knowledge, a few of which Yaffa mentioned is quantitative knowledge that may be immediately used for focusing on and attributing audiences, together with its personal advertising knowledge.
“UMG has our personal knowledge group that we make the most of to assist market our artists,” he mentioned.
Yaffa additionally cited the qualitative knowledge Common maintains as a part of the “pulse-taking” train it does with its viewers, together with fan surveys and monitoring their attachment to sure manufacturers or subjects. Within the on-line advert platform world, that falls below model elevate or model sentiment measurement following a marketing campaign.
There are a number of potential progress routes for the enterprise. One choice, which Yaffa mentioned the UMusic Media Community is “considering” however hasn’t but adopted, is to do viewers extension campaigns primarily based on Common’s knowledge and recognized audiences. (That’s the everyday retail media play, the place audiences are focused throughout the net.)
The issue with viewers community extensions, although, is that they rely totally on show adverts – and UMusic is primarily video. Additionally, they depend on a really giant first-party knowledge set of identifiable and trackable internet customers. Common Music might attain tens or lots of of hundreds of thousands of followers, however they achieve this primarily in environments the place customers can’t be retargeted elsewhere – social media walled gardens and real-world venues.
Media partnerships are a precedence, nonetheless, Yaffa mentioned. The Common Music Group for Manufacturers arm of Common, for instance, introduced a deal with Condé Nast final 12 months to assist a product referred to as Condé Nast Licensed Video Plus (CNCV+), which locations in-stream video adverts alongside the journal firm’s portfolio, significantly for video content material.
“We will work with Condé Nast and others to create culturally related content material,” Yaffa mentioned. “After which we are able to ship our media and prolong our audiences by way of that.”
