One of the bonuses of programmatic, the buzz word for digitally targeted, real-time marketing and a major topic at Pacnet 18 this year, is that it levels the ‘paying’ field. Whether your budget is big or small, it assures that each dollar is optimally used because it is basically a bidding system on an open exchange.
“Programmatic came into our lives and made everything easier,” said Danielle Johnson, Mogo Interactive, who spoke during the Feb. 11-14 gathering which drew more than 700 Paciolan users and vendors. “Every time a website is loading, there’s an auction that’s happening in that millisecond it is loading, and they are basically matching the value of that impression with the price you paid for that impression, so you know you are, in a most efficient manner, hitting the right audience at the right time. There is no praying and spraying; it’s very precise and incredibly efficient because it is automated. You are on a level playing field with those with bigger budgets.”
Michal Lorenc, head of live events and ticketing for Google, says Google views this marketing cycle as the “Age of Assistance.” Understanding what people are looking for has created the ability to help them find it through digital devices. “Digital marketing is all about supporting; helping someone when they want it through digital devices,” Lorenc added.
The next evolution of that is “programmatic premium,” where, “if it makes sense, you are still able to create exclusive relationships with publishers for guaranteed inventory in an automated, direct fashion,” Johnson added.
It’s all made possible by the worldwide, enthusiastic, programmable popularity of Search. “Bottom line: The world is digital, the people we want to reach are online and the most efficient, scalable, and measurable way to reach them is programmatic,” Johnson said.
She has watched the evolution of marketing from the traditional billboard, in-stadium, radio and TV advertising, known as “praying and spraying – hoping a message resonates with the right person at the right time,” to the reservation buying of digital, the direct transaction between a publisher and advertiser. Neither was very efficient or measurable.
It’s important when talking about programmatic to talk about how consumers are engaging on line, Johnson continued. They use multiple devices over time, moving seamlessly on all different channels. “We can buy all these programmatically and be flexible so you have the right mix to reach your audience wherever they go.”
It’s an “I-told-you-so” moment for Michel Lorenc, Google head of ticketing and events, who has been making the rounds preaching search engines for three years now.
People use Google for everything, he said. “Seven of 10 people at your venue have used Google in their decision-making process and most likely bought their ticket online.” Also, over half of music consumption is happening on mobile devices.
“The fastest-growing use is actually in the living room, on the large TV, because they can change the device, share, comment, and rewind,” Lorenc said.
“Google helps you engage with your fan in a commercial transaction. Search is very, very important,” Lorenc said. Over the last two years, it has become very complex, and programmatic is the component that helps manage search.
Google also operates YouTube, the second-largest search engine in the world. Over 1.5 billion people use YouTube on a monthly basis.
People who watch five or more pieces of content on a professional sports team user channel are four times more likely to buy tickets. “With implementation of programmatic, we can help you target only those people who watch five or more pieces of content,” Lorenc said.
Maps is another marketing marvel. “Do we go anywhere without putting directions on our phone? The number of uses and every use means more data, more pieces of information we have collectively, which we can use to target those people in the right format at the right time with the right message,” Lorenc said, describing programmatic. And it’s all possible because consumer expectations are higher.
“How many of you get frustrated when WiFi is slow on the plane, 30,000 feet in the air?” Lorenc asked to describe the escalation of expectations. “The need for immediate information is enhanced today.” On one hand, people are tuning out because they are tired of commercials but, on the other, if they need something, they welcome commercial information. It just has to make their lives easier.
For programmatic to work, marketers need to know and segment their audience and measure the right behaviors. That cannot be done manually; it has to be automated for scale, Lorenc said.
For example, two days of targeting season ticket sales to people who watched a one minute, 12 second YouTube video of the new University of Minnesota coach arriving in town was a highly successful marketing outreach. “It was the right message, right person, right time; that’s the concept of programmatic,” Lorenc said.
Red Roof Inns targeted travelers stranded at airports due to delays in real time with a very basic “Stay at Red Roof” ad and saw a 60 percent increase in bookings. To do that, you need automation.
Audi took real time weather data and only invited targeted buyers on a test drive at preferred good weather times and days. Of 535 sunny-day test drivers, they saw a 51 percent conversion rate, which translated into $13 million in revenue. It’s a basic concept — if you want to test-drive a convertible, you should do it on a sunny day — but arranging it that way took automation.
But to Johnson’s point, you don’t have to have a big budget to practice programmatic. Matt Biggers, University of Colorado, has made conscious decisions to shift resources to maximize the move to digital.
While Colorado has been doing digital marketing for five years, this year is really about digital first. “We now have enough tools where we can do that,” Biggers said, citing his data warehouse, Salesforce marketing automation, DOMO (through Pac 12) and Mogo, which they began using through Learfield, before Learfield bought Paciolan.
“It came down to the fact we needed digital expertise. This area changes so dramatically and fast, we cannot do it in-house with our current staff and have scale,” Biggers admitted.
They started getting serious this fall with the football campaign. “Tracking is the separator, especially cross-device conversions,” Biggers said. He needs to know it is the same the person who saw something on his phone and later on his desktop; he needs to know that conversion was interconnected so engagement isn’t double or triple counted. “Measurements need to be confidence building,” Biggers said.
Now he can see how many touchpoints led to a purchase per customer and if, at some point, a person has been served too often and never purchased, those resources need to be reallocated to someone else. Conversely, knowing who is buying can lead to finding look-alike/act-alike customers to target.
During the football campaign, Colorado spent $56,000 to generate $507,000 in sales, Biggers reported. “The way I look at it, we impacted $507,000 worth of sales through digital advertising. We’re not measuring all the touch points. It doesn’t take in the fact they drove by the billboard or watched the game; even customers can’t recall that. I still believe in a mix. That path of conversion can be long, it’s another piece of data I didn’t have before.
Aly Knight Grubb, Fox Theatre, Atlanta, is a fan of automation and digital, but also advised peers to keep content in mind. “We have to know how we’re showing up in the digital world – we’re getting more intentional about how our graphic looks. If your creative isn’t really strong, none of it is going to work.”
Fox Theatre wanted its brand at the forefront, rather than appearing as an event-centric afterthought. To that end, the Fox logo is now front and center, drawing the eye.
“If you don’t have a strong budget, I recommend getting graphic designers to get strong look for your digital so you are grabbing equal attention when you do show up,” Grubb said. Bottom line – be recognizable.
Programmatic builds your brand, but change based on real time is critical. Refresh, automate and find a partner; it’s a digital world, they said.
PRODUCT INNOVATION FUELS MOBILE FIRST
Q&A: Kim Damron, President and
CEO, Paciolan
To Kim Damron, attending Paciolan as president and CEO with new owner Learfield at her side this year, the clear message from Pacnet 18 was that mobile continues to consume the world. “We need to always be thinking about mobile,” she told VenuesNow during this post-conference Q&A. Paciolan transacts 120 million tickets annually and has been turning up the heat on programmatic marketing.
What are the biggest takeaways from Pacnet 2018?
The biggest takeaway was product and how we’re accelerating product innovation through Learfield’s multimillion-dollar investment [Learfield bought Paciolan last year]. We’re getting product innovations out to the customer sooner and accelerating the Paciolan platform. It encompasses all the fundraising and ticketing into one platform.
What is the big difference this year with Learfield in the mix?
We’re taking advantage of the product technology synergies within the Learfield family with Sidearm and Mogo Interactive, starting with the official website of our customers and moving through the ticketing pages. Our customers saw how you can follow the journey of the ticket buyer through this programmatic advertising and through the Learfield companies.
How has that customer journey changed?
We’re partnering with the best distribution partners and getting behind the leaders in where people are going to find events. With Google, going to programmatic is the next level; with Facebook, the next level is distributed commerce. You have to start with Google with over 78,000 searches a minute related to live events. We’re expanding that partnership, continuing to be one of their gold partners, which is key. Also, with Facebook this year, the leading reach with younger audiences, we’re taking advantage of distributed commerce within the Facebook app. That ties into how we’re leveraging product and technology to make it easier for fans and customers to find your tickets. We not only work with these channels, but we’re enhancing all these channels this year. With Google, we started off doing search advertising and now we’ve moved into the programmatic space. Feld is a great example of that on the search side. We’re doing all national search campaigns for all seven Feld brands.
What other takeaways would you highlight?
We’re focused on the arts through Learfield acquiring TicketsWest and West Coast Entertainment. That was probably one of the key takeaways. As well as getting to know the rest of the leadership team at Paciolan.
Is there a personal highlight for you from Pacnet 18?
The Women Leaders panel was great. Last year, there was one male in the room. This year, it was 25 percent male. Men wanted to learn how to be more supportive of women. Some of the gems that stick in my mind are women needing to embrace and celebrate men who support women and we all need to work together. You are as good as your team – that’s how that works. When Jacque Holowaty [Spectra Venue Management] said emotion is OK in the workforce, that resonated with a lot of people. How do we work better together to all accomplish our goals? —Linda Deckard
DIGITAL STATS
Google has 7 products that have over 1 billion users (Google Search, YouTube, Google Play, Gmail, Android, Maps, Chrome). (Source: Google)
70% of attendees in live event venues used search during the ticket buying process. (Source: Google)
There are over 1,300 searches per second for live events on Google. (Source: Google)
YouTube has 1.5 billion active monthly users. (Source: YouTube)
People around the world watch a billion hours of YouTube content every day (Source: YouTube)
82% of all digital display ads are programmatic. (Source: eMarketer)
46% of all U.S. media spend will be digital by 2020. (Source: Forrester Research)
Facebook has 2 billion active monthly users. (Source: Facebook)
Instagram has 800 million active monthly users. (Source: Facebook)
SPEEDING TOWARD DIGITAL
Digital marketing is bringing new and younger fans to National Hot Rod Association events.
The traditional target market for NHRA has been the 18-49 male, with an average fan being a 46-year-old male. That fan is still an important part of the advertising mix, which includes traditional media, email and texting, but Kristen Wentzell, senior director of marketing for the NHRA, has begun redirecting some of her $10,000-$60,000 per event marketing budget toward the 18-34 age range. The NHRA markets 24 events at various tracks and some draw up to 100,000 fans. The season starts at Pomona (Calif.) Raceway in February and ends there in November.
Wentzell has found that the new fan initiative has to be educational. “The NHRA is sensory; it’s about being there and seeing cars racing 1,000 feet at 330 mph in under four seconds,” Wentzell said. “You can show that in a video, but you can’t explain how it feels, how it smells. It’s a challenge to bring in new fans.”
She began this year, with Paciolan’s help, with a Tickets Make Great Gifts campaign targeted to the digital audience. Traditionally, the NHRA waited to promote Pomona until after the holidays, well into January, to avoid the advertising clutter in December. This year, they jumped right into the holiday crowd.
Through Paciolan’s CRM lists and digital marketing campaigns, they found a look-alike audience demographic from the tons of ticket data available, looking for people with a high propensity to buy because of their interest in automotive, other racing endeavors or in NHRA sponsors.
“With digital we were targeting the right people at the right time with the right message,” Wentzell said. “We saw conversions in December when we normally don’t see a lot of people buying.”
With digital, it takes time to optimize campaigns, she added. “Last year, on average we started four to six weeks out from each event. Now we’re going to take this formula through and start a minimum of eight weeks out for every event. We’re increasing our digital budget and it will better allow us to optimize the campaign. It gives Mogo and Paciolan time to understand who is converting, who is clicking. That’s what optimization is. We’ll gear our dollars toward those types of folks.”
Wentzell also plans to expand her renewal campaign, usually advanced through emails and texting, with more digital. “When we email directly, it’s not an extra cost to us. We can enhance it though..”
With digital, she can measure return on investment, far more efficiently than watching the call center light up after an ad ran on TV. “People are so segmented now with how they consume, it’s difficult to understand. We still need a call center and we still need to advertise through traditional media, but the future for us is programmatic TV and radio, with Apple TV, Pandora, Spotify, that type of platform,” Wentzell said. “All these new advertising opportunities where people are consuming.”
“We are adoptive of technology,” Wentzell said. “Whatever comes out, we put our hand up and say we want to try it.” She is elated that, since being bought by Learfield, Paciolan (which serves 10 NHRA tracks as ticketing provider) has so many additional options to offer up. — Linda Deckard