The rise of CTV has created a certain amount of confusion among media owners as to who they should be speaking to at agencies. Max Noss, Head of AV at JAA Media, says the independent agency provides clarity by operating a hybrid CTV team, combining the digital team and the AV team – and therefore combining the skill sets of both specialisms.
In this edition of the Buy-Side View, Noss discusses the benefits of this hybrid approach, the “lost art” of agency-media owner relationships, and coming from a media family.
What is your biggest bugbear when it comes to video and CTV advertising?
Previously it was always cross-platform planning. That was a huge conversation with everyone trying to work out how we were going to do it properly. But I actually think there’s been some really good strides on that in recent years. And our planning in particular is now fully joined-up thanks to external systems, but also a lot of internal planning work that’s gone on. We have a lot of internal systems that people have been working on for a long time to line up with the likes of Project Origin, TechEdge, etc. So that would have been my bugbear, and if you’d asked me any time in the last ten years, I probably would have said that.
But actually now I’d say the most consistent one would be the lack of importance that is given to creative. Obviously that’s not something which is in our scope of work. But I know from campaigns I’ve worked on through the years that it doesn’t matter how good our media buying or planning is; if the creative isn’t doing the right job for it, it’s just not going to work. So not to go against creative agencies because they do some absolutely fantastic stuff. But I’d say that would be my most consistent bugbear, where you know you’ve done a great campaign, but you’re not sure the creative is lined up to the objectives, so there’s only so much you can do.
How do you think the role of the agency has changed over the past ten years?
The big difference from my perspective is that we’ve moved away from just being media buyers, and it’s a lot more strategy and advising on more than just planning and buying. Especially now we’ve got so much automation in the industry, and that’s great. But that’s only really taken on all the transactional tasks and nothing else. So I think our value increasingly has come from helping the clients to navigate the landscape mainly, and in my aspect, that would be the TV and AV landscape, but obviously the team do that across all media as well. And I think it’s using that expertise to not just execute plans, but make sure that we’re doing it the right place at the right time, and that the aims are going to be fulfilled by the end of it.
The other thing that I would mention, which is a real key strength of our agency and something we pride ourselves on, is the agencies still need to have these great relationships with media owners. I think that is becoming a bit of a lost art. So I’d say that’s a huge part of our business, because at the end of the day, those relationships pay dividends for our clients.
Which do you think video advertising is the most effective for – generating awareness and brand-building, or driving short-term sales?
I won’t go for the generic, ‘it’s great for both’, although it is. I think it’s definitely brand-building remaining the greatest strength, particularly on linear, BVOD and now premium CTV – maybe less so FAST and AVOD channels. If I relate back to how I watch TV, that’s when I’m really engaged, and that’s when you trust the environment. And I think actually the CTV/SVOD providers have done a really good job of being thought of and seen as just TV now. So if I think about how myself, my parents, anyone that I know watches TV, most of the time now, they put the TV on and they don’t necessarily realise they’re going on to Netflix. They just open up Sky, for example, they go to a tile where the program is, and they’re instantly there. So I think they’ve cottoned on really well to that trust thing that TV does.
But obviously on the flip side, we’ve got better targeting, we’ve got measurement, we’ve got attribution, and that means that video can play a good role in the short-term in those sales as well. So I think the best campaigns that I’ve worked on do a good combination of both and not just one. But it is very important that you don’t just end up doing one and cannibalising the other.
One that I would highlight that has made good strides is Prime Video, with the stuff that you can put onto the ad now to give the viewer something to do in terms of action. Especially if you’ve got a product on Amazon, I think it’s really effective to have ‘click here to add to your basket’, for example. I think that blends both really well, and it’s not a crazy expensive add-on that makes you question whether it’s worth doing. It’s just part of their offering.
What team within your agency handles CTV, and why?
I find this a really interesting question because I’ve seen it from the media owner perspective. The amount of times that media owners have come in and gone, ‘we’re never sure if it’s the AV team or the digital team or is it another team or is it five different planning teams?’ So I think that was something that we were actually well ahead of the game on. Even before I started here we’ve had a hybrid CTV team, which is a combination of the digital team and the AV team, so we get all the key skill sets across both.
We meet up every week and discuss all of our CTV briefs between the two teams. And I think that’s been really successful – again going back to relationships – because the media owners know who they should be speaking to, and nothing gets missed between any briefs, because every single brief goes to the CTV team, and therefore no one can miss something, or not have their idea said because they weren’t in the right meeting.
How is the growth of CTV changing your TV buying strategy?
We still have a really big core of DRTV, but the focus has shifted. So we still retain that, but we’ve now got CTV and BVOD being integral to the majority of our AV plans. We actually plan everything line by line and make sure that what we’re recommending is the right thing for the client. It’s not like, we’re going to do linear, we’re going to do BVOD, we’re going to do some CTV, and let’s see what happens. It has to make sense for the outcomes that they want.
And as the space has grown, I think the market has actually moved in our favour in terms of pricing. When Netflix and Amazon first launched to market, trying to explain a CPM of pretty high numbers to advertisers that are used to low ones for linear TV was pretty difficult. Obviously it needs to be eight, ten times more effective for it to be a similar sort of CPM. But because of the growth in the market, and those CPMs coming down to being a lot more in line with what a client would expect to be paying to be in those premium environments, that means that we’ve built up quite a lot of confidence in recommending it, knowing that it will work for them.
Which metrics do you value the most when it comes to video and CTV advertising?
This does genuinely depend on every brief. We like to look at every single brief with fresh eyes on every occasion. So it doesn’t matter how many times we might have done a similar campaign. We always make sure we start fresh and make sure we’re getting the right thing. And what they’re trying to achieve is obviously top of that importance, and usually it comes back to business outcomes.
So from a media perspective, what do I value? Obviously incremental reach, effective frequency, and attention. But we do like to incorporate quite a lot of brand lift studies where possible. And that’s a good thing for media owners to offer as a bit of added value, because it just gives the brands a lot more confidence. Even if they’ve not seen a huge uplift on the transactional side, if they’ve seen their brand metrics go up, then it justifies it to the right people internally.
What I would say is that there is a huge focus on impressions in isolation a lot of the time. In new business briefs and pitches, the feedback you might get is, ‘we looked at it on an impression versus impression basis.’ And it does frustrate me a little bit that people consider impressions to be the same across different media. That’s one thing that I think is really important not to look at just in isolation, because they’re not the same, they’re not always apples for apples. So it’s a combination of delivering the right reach and frequency, and then bolting on the quality metrics as well. Impressions tell you what you’ve bought; incremental reach and outcomes tell you whether it worked.
Which person in the industry inspires you the most today?
This is quite a tough one because I’ve been very lucky to work with a lot of really inspiring people over my time. I’m really lucky at JAA that their senior board here are all quite different in terms of their skill sets, but they’re all really successful and good people to speak to, especially for advice. We have 85 people now, and I feel like everybody that comes into that building knows what our skill set is, and what value we can deliver for clients. It’s quite inspiring that the leadership has been able to do that.
But I’ve also been really lucky to be in a family who work in the same sort of industry. So I would be wrong not to say my dad [Steve Noss] is my biggest inspiration. Last month the Marketing Week awards came out and we were both nominated in different categories, which is really cool. He had a media agency in Leicestershire when I was growing up, so that got me interested in the industry.
And then also my uncle [Rob Noss] has been at Mindshare for 30 years, so he’s been a really good person to speak to, and for someone to be in a leadership role at WPP for 30 years, I always found that quite inspiring too. And my wife [Jess Noss] is also a TV buyer at Mediaplus UK, so I would be remiss not to say her. As I say, I’m very lucky that I’ve got a good group in my family that I can speak to.
Out of all the video and TV advertising campaigns you’ve been involved with, which are you most proud of?
Again I feel like I’ve been really lucky clients-wise. I’ve had a complete variance, which is really cool, it means that every month is a bit different. We work with loads of amazing charities. I feel really proud to work with them. It’s great when you feel like you’re making a difference when those campaigns go really well. I also mainly worked with really high-growth furniture brands when I first started working, with unbelievable sales targets, which was obviously really hard work but quite rewarding again when those campaigns were going well. I’ve enjoyed working on equity clients, for example we’ve recently done a campaign with Channel 4 Ventures, and it’s quite nice seeing brands go on TV for the first time. And then most recently, I’ve been working with a gambling brand, which has been really interesting because they do so many different aspects of the AV landscape.
So I’d say the most proud would be Midnite, which is a gambling brand. It may well be recency bias because I’m working on it at the moment. But since launch last year they’ve sponsored the Club World Cup, they’ve sponsored the UFC, and we’ve started CTV – we’re buying that through loads of different routes, which is really interesting. It feels like every single week there’s a new challenge, and they’re really a great client to work with. They’re really responsive and nice people that have good opinions and challenge us in the right way. They’re probably the one that I’m proudest of because I feel like it has cut through in a pretty difficult industry. Hopefully a lot of people saw the bucket hats at BOXPARK this summer at the World Cup, because they sponsored all the BOXPARKs and gave out hundreds of thousands of bucket hats, so that was pretty cool.
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