The most _______ time of the year

The key hits:

• Publishers are finding advertisers more willing to plan for the fourth quarter prior to the period than last year, though not entirely.
• The delta variant is delaying commitments to advertising creative and content.
• While there’s some urgency to get branded content campaigns on the books now, video and audio are likely to be the backbone of publishers’ Q4 ad businesses.

In the pre-pandemic era, publishers’ fourth-quarter ad sales were well underway in August. Last year, for obvious reasons, deals were done on the fly during the period. This year is shaping up to be a hybrid of the two, as publishers’ advertising businesses have weathered the worst of the pandemic but the delta variant has continued to put advertisers on edge.

“2020 was all very late planning. 2019 was definitely more forward planning focused. This year is somewhere in the middle,” said Ryan Pauley, chief revenue officer of Vox Media.

Publishers like Meredith and Vox Media are in the midst of fourth-quarter planning conversations with advertisers and their agencies, but the advertisers are hesitant to commit to specific creative messaging because they are unsure what the cultural tenor will be through the fall and into the holidays.

“Two months ago, prior to the delta variant, all of the briefs were about holiday travel and what is it like hosting events this year and assuming we were more back to normal in the creative. Now the holdup is let’s not pretend we’ll be too back to normal, so there’s a little bit of stalling in what the actual creative and content will be. It’s caused some delays,” said an executive at another publisher who asked to remain anonymous.

Meredith evp of digital sales Marla Newman said she has seen a bifurcation for the fourth quarter between advertisers that are doing deals ahead of time and those adopting a real-time approach and planning to pick up inventory throughout the period. To deal with that duality, Meredith is relying on its more expansive, long-term deals with advertisers — such as its deal with Walmart that includes connecting Meredith publications’ recipes with Walmart’s grocery business — to provide the publisher “our good foundation,” she said. Then the publisher, like others, will be spending the next few months building atop that foundation as ad dollars from more tentative advertisers hit the market.

“Do we have the visibility to fully say, ‘The quarter’s done; we’re going to be up.’ We don’t see that yet,” said Newman.

“We’re waiting for Q4 to happen as it’s happening,” said the unnamed publishing executive.

Some advertisers may be sitting on the sidelines for now, but given the historical importance of the holidays for industries …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron