SPECIAL SERIES NEXT TECH AND THE FUTURE OF MARKETING AUGUST 7, 2017 CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? HOW VOICE TECHNOLOGY IS TRANSFORMING MARKETING AND COMMERCE. BY CHRISTOPHER HEINE A genius is a person of exceptional intellect. A Brand Genius is an executive who channels that exceptional intellect into persuasive, inspiring and influential marketing that changes how business is done. IT TAKES A 2016 Brand Honoree COMING SOON JONATHAN MILDENHALL 2017 Chief Marketing Officer HONOREES CONTENTS THE WEEK IN MEDIA AND MARKETING AUGUST 7, 2017 | VOL. LVIII NO. 21 Upfront FEATURES TALKING TECH 14 Why voice is poised to revolutionize search marketing. THE NEW WAVE OF PLATFORMS 18 What’s now and next, from AR headsets to self-driving cars. TOP STORY UPFRONT TRENDING 6 ‘The Ocho’ Goes Live How blockchain works; ESPN’S BOLD STRATEGY MAKES THE FICTIONAL SPORTS tech-savvy CMOs; bilingual shops; NHL NETWORK A REALITY FOR ONE DAY ONLY. BY DAVID GRINER and Smirnoff tap into data. While 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story might not have sparked a new pro sports league, it certainly created a legacy of fictional broadcast excellence: ESPN8: The Ocho. And last week, fans of “seldom-seen sports VOICE 1O from around the globe” finally got the news they dared not dream: The Ocho is becoming reality—if only for a day. How AI can help This Tuesday, Aug. 8, ESPN will mark the arrival of 8/8 by turning ESPNU into ESPN8: The Ocho, featuring an marketers solve big problems. array of real but rather odd sports. Unfortunately, Cotton McKnight and Pepper Brooks (played masterfully by Gary Cole and Jason Bateman in the film) won’t be providing scintillating on-air commentary, but viewers can DATA POINTS 12 still tune in to see arm wrestling, roller derby, disc golf and—of course—dodgeball. Decoding travelers’ social media posts. STAFF Adweek Names New CEO UPDATE! Jeffrey Litvack, who joined Adweek in January as an inspiration to the entire organization.” chief operating officer, has been promoted to CEO. “The legacy and strength of the Adweek brand, PERSPECTIVE Litvack’s extensive media leadership experience as well as the talent and energy of the team that BRAND NAME 30 includes having served as interim COO of Robb drives it forward every day, was a key determinant Summer staple Report and group president of ALM, in my decision to join the company,” said Coppertone. publisher of The American Lawyer. Litvack. “Since joining Adweek, I’ve Earlier, Litvack spent more than become even more convinced that five years at the Associated Press Adweek has a very bright future in in various senior executive roles, which we’ll help make sense of the including general manager of global digital challenges that CMOs are products. facing. And we’ll be a guiding force “As the brand marketing in educating and connecting the MOVER 32 ecosystem that Adweek covers market on digital transformation. Catching up with continues to rapidly transform, we must I couldn’t be more thrilled to continue AdRoll’s new president. keep pace and change along with it, and this journey as CEO.” PORTRAIT 33 I can’t think of anyone better suited to be at our The announcement comes as Adweek’s A New York agency that helm as CEO during these challenging and exciting editorial director James Cooper promotes Lisa wants to make waves. times than Jeff,” said Brian F. Martin, Adweek co- Granatstein, who has been named editor, vp, LOOK BACK 34 owner and chairman. “His decades-long career in content and events; David Griner, director of digital NBC’s legendary page publishing and digital-first orientation make him initiatives and innovation; and Stephanie Paterik, progam. eminently qualified to chart our course forward, who takes on the role of managing editor. and his drive and passion for the Adweek brand is –Chris Ariens ADWEEK PUBLISHES NEXT ON AUGUST 21. COVER: EDMON DE HARO TRENDING | THIS WEEK’S INSIGHTS fourth quarter of this year. Using Nasdaq’s exchange technology, the New York Interactive Advertising Exchange (NYIAX) will allow media buyers to purchase and sell future advertising inventory. Richard Bush, NYIAX’s chief product and technology officer, said the advertising industry, in some ways, missed a part of the automation revolution that Wall Street got right. “We’re not focused on the blockchain because we want to build the underlying blockchain [just for the sake of it],” Bush said. “We’re focused on it because there is a very tangible use case.” Because blockchain is such a broad technology, various industries are developing very different verticals on top of it, according to Jake Brukhman, co-founder and managing partner of the blockchain technology research and advisory firm CoinFund.io. “You have decentralized ride-sharing companies here and decentralized storage over there,” he said. “And you sort of have a mirror of all of the traditional technology areas but within the blockchain space being redeveloped on top of this technology, and then additionally some new verticals that really haven’t existed before.” Others seem to agree with blockchain’s promise—and have started their own marketplaces. In March, Los Angeles-based BRAND SAFETY startup MetaX teamed up with software firm ConsenSys to launch adChain, a curated white list of publishers and advertisers that will use blockchain to vet sources of inventory with NEW ADS ON a democratized voting system. Just in June, Bulgaria-based AdEx, an ad exchange built on the blockchain, debuted with a focus on streaming video. Another company, Brave, THE BLOCK launched by the inventor of JavaScript and COULD BLOCKCHAIN CURE ADVERTISING’S ILLS? IAB, co-founder of Mozilla, Brendan Eich, uses the blockchain for advertising and micro payments. GROUPM AND NASDAQ AIM TO FIND OUT. BY MARTY SWANT Still another, MadHive, is already making its way into the OTT space as well—an area of advertising that for a while was slower to adopt programmatic and addressable systems. t might still be early days for digital cur- Industry organizations such as the “The innovation of blockchain is that nobody rency, but marketers are increasingly Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Tech Lab and actually owns that ledger,” said MadHive CEO piggybacking on the rise of tender like the Data & Marketing Association are taking Adam Helfgott. “It’s a shared resource, just bitcoin and applying those concepts to notice. In fact, the IAB is quietly developing like electricity.” digital advertising. In a nutshell, they’re a blockchain working group to explore how All this activity doesn’t mean blockchain seeking a more transparent and efficient advertisers can use the technology. And while will be mainstream this year. There are also way of running online marketplaces. the names of the companies involved have not major limitations, the primary one being that ITech companies, publishers and media yet been divulged, the initiative illustrates the the speed of real-time bidding is too fast for buyers have begun experimenting with kind of interest that industry players have in the blockchain technology to keep up with. marketplaces built on blockchain—a digital emerging technology. At the same time, major media buying ledger that records transactions using “It is no longer the year of data—now it is powerhouses like WPP’s GroupM are just encryption for security and accountability. And the year of blockchain,” said Alanna Gombert, beginning to experiment. Jack Smith, chief although it’s still uncertain whether blockchain outgoing general manager of IAB Tech Lab. product officer for GroupM North America, is a game changer or a pipe dream, some say For the past six months, Purch and a said he’s “really bullish” on the technology. the system has the potential to create the kind dozen other publishers and advertisers “I don’t see any available solution that’s of transparency that advertising desperately have been testing a new blockchain-enabled ready to be scaled with a significant number needs by cutting off bot traffic and protecting advertising marketplace created by Nasdaq of transactions by 2019,” Bush said. “I just brands from unsavory content. that the stock exchange hopes to launch in the haven’t seen it in the market.” ILLUSTRATION: GETTY IMAGES 6 AUGUST 7, 2017 | ADWEEK TRENDING THE CMTO OMNICHANNEL OBSESSIONS MARKETING CHIEFS DISH ON WHAT KEEPS THEM UP AT NIGHT, WHILE REVEALING HOW HARNESSING DATA IN A CROSS-PLATFORM WORLD IS TOP OF MIND. BY KATIE RICHARDS Patrón Spirits CMO Lee Applbaum is laser-focused on keeping his liquor brands on the cutting edge of marketing. But like many of his industry peers, he’s worried about getting the data part of the equation right. “The chief marketer has always needed to be the individual responsible for driving the marketing in an enterprise and thinking about it in terms of cohabitating with your consumer, but today’s cohabitation occurs more in the digital ecosystem than ever,” Applbaum explained. As brand execs think more about the convergence of CMO and CIO roles, the reality is that marketing chiefs are now “CMTOs”—whether they prescribe to that newfangled job title or not. At more than 30 percent of organizations, Gartner found some portions of sales, IT and customer experience report into the CMO, while 62 percent of companies said CMOs are responsible for digital commerce. The research firm also recently reported that marketing chiefs now allocate 27 percent of their budgets to technology, which in 2017 will rival the amount that CIOs spend. While not every company has officially adopted a CMTO title, many of them from Hilton to Patrón are more fixated than ever before on the industry-wide shift toward omnichannel marketing—sometimes at the expense of traditional media.