Bryan Scott, Ozone’s marketing head shares the company’s shortlisted entry for this 2020’s Media Brand of the Year…
We’re very excited to be shortlisted for Media Brand of the Year at the MediaWeek Awards in what is only our second year of operation. So excited in fact, we wanted to share it with you. We hope you enjoy reading it…
Thanks to an unprecedented collaboration between the UK’s biggest publishers, The Ozone Project has built a digital advertising environment - based on trust and fairness - to meet the needs of the modern marketer. Over the past twelve months, Ozone has made great strides in positively changing the digital landscape for advertisers and agencies.
Background
“Digital advertising is broken and it’s up to us to fix it”.
Phil Smith, Director General, ISBA
It was time for the system to change:
Trust in advertising had reached a historic low: The Advertising Association created an action plan to tackle bombardment, excessive frequency, retargeting and data privacy issues
The ecosystem is broken: ISBA and PwC’s landmark transparency study highlighted the need for change; 15% of marketing funds lost to the unknown and the average campaign appearing on 40k+ websites.
Processes deemed unacceptable and unethical: Since GDPR’s arrival in 2018, the ICO has been consistent in its criticism of the misuse of personal data in programmatic advertising.
Programmatic advertising had failed to fairly represent the interests of premium publishers, instead favouring entrenched buying behaviour with large platforms, an over-reliance on adtech metrics, misuse of brand safety technologies designed for unregulated environments, and most importantly undervaluing the highly attentive nature of premium publisher audiences. Despite premium publishers experiencing significant digital audience growth, marketer investment had not followed this trend. With the largest platforms controlling over 80% of the UK’s digital display spend, our aim was to offer advertisers a better alternative.
The Big Idea
Simple in its expression, yet strategically challenging in its delivery:
One that works firstly for advertisers by offering more effective, compliant and brand-safe digital solutions, yet at the same time building a more sustainable future for premium publishers, while also creating better online experiences for consumers. We are creating a future where all three can thrive.
Making it happen
At the heart of our proposition is a historic and groundbreaking alliance between News UK, The Guardian, The Telegraph and Reach - a partnership that creates the UK’s largest premium content platform. By allowing our publishers to focus on delivering the most attentive audiences through reader-first strategies, Ozone has been able to be unashamedly advertiser-first. We have focused on closing the programmatic gap between advertisers and publishers and offering marketers what they have told us they want:
A transparent and easy way to reach highly attentive audiences at broadcast scale, in brand-safe, known environments that are trusted and proven to deliver real results.
Results
Twelve months of outstanding progress, summarised in twelve points:
Delivered broadcast scale audiences: Through near universal coverage of the online adult population - 99.6% reach - with 91% reading every week and 63% every single day
Built a platform alternative: Monthly reach of 45.1m online adults is equivalent to all Google sites, and greater than all Facebook (44.0m) and Amazon sites (43.1m)
Expanded our trusted, brand-safe alliance: With more editorially-governed, regulated brands from The Stylist Group, DC Thomson, Bauer Media, Time Out and ESI Media
Created easy advertiser access: Through single point of access to the UK’s biggest pool of first-party premium publisher inventory and data
Future proofed and compliant:: A ‘privacy by design’ approach meant Ozone was built GDPR ready
Succeeded with first party data: Significantly improving audience addressability by using first party data to identify c.75-80% of our users rather than the market average of <50% for third party cookies
Grew opportunity with contextual targeting: Live advertiser trials are showing massive uplifts in addressable inventory - upwards of 85%+
Integrated with advertisers and agencies: Live programmatic integrations established with a number of agency holding groups and major multinational clients - many more in the pipeline
Demonstrated brilliant effectiveness: Across 2019, with 28 campaigns measured by Brand Metrics, Ozone has driven brand uplift +21% greater than the global benchmark
Delivered advertiser ROI: e.g. 2x ROI for a homeware client and a 3x ROI for a luxury holiday brand
8x year on year increase in brand count: Including clients such as P&G, Boots, Lloyds, Lidl, Toyota, Sky, Vodafone and HM Government
+602% year on year growth in advertiser spend: including +90% increase from Q1 to Q2 2020 - during a global pandemic and an inverse experience to most businesses in our space
At a time when many media brands have been incredibly challenged, Ozone has demonstrated significant success and growth. We’ve already come further than most people imagined, and trust us when we say there’s even more to come.
Sources: Comscore April 2020, PAMCo 2 2020, Ozone internal, Brand Metrics Jul-Dec 2019, Client feedback
