Category: Uncategorized

Originally posted on Brand Innovators

by Shane Schick

February 24, 2022

When Rupert Hodson uses the phrase “content recommendation platforms,” he knows that many people in the marketing community will instantly associate it with the sensationalistic or clickbait-style headlines that appear beneath articles on their favorite websites. 

He also knows that, as soon as anyone takes a closer look at Dianomi, they’ll realize how differently his company has approached this space. 

Headquartered in the United Kingdom, Dianomi has spent nearly 20 years helping brands place native ads with the ideal publishers to reach their target audience. Unlike Taboola, Outbrain or many similar content recommendation platforms, however, Dianomi has remained exclusively centered around publishers serving the business and finance sectors. 

By contextually targeting ads to professionals engaging with the finance vertical, Dianomi has been able to grow dramatically since its 2010 expansion into the U.S., which now accounts for 80% of its business. According to Hodson, its co-founder and CEO, Dianomi’s clientele includes seven of the top 10 global asset managers and six of the top 10 US banks.

Dianomi’s network, meanwhile, now spans more than 350 publishers, which offers brands access to digital channels that include web sites but also mobile apps and publishers Apple News channels. 

“The fact that we sit across all these publishers, and because we have fixed positions, we’re not competing with other sorts of demand sources,” Hodson told Brand Innovators, adding that Dianomi ensures the right experience by turning down the vast majority of advertisers that come its way because they’re not the right fit. “For an advertiser, if you’re a big US Bank, you can’t afford for your ad to appear next door to gut cleansing ads. That’s just a no-go.” Trust,Transparency and Brand safety have always been front and center of everything we do for both our advertisers and publishers

Last Spring, Dianomi completed its IPO, the first of U.K. and Ireland growth investor BGF’s portfolio companies to do so. The next step, according to Hodson, is a move into categories that interest the same high-income earners, but in their off hours. 

“We had publishers who said, ‘We love what you’re doing on monetizing our financial content, but we also have lifestyle content. Can you help us there?” he said, giving travel-oriented credit cards aimed at affluent readers who are engaging with travel content as an example. “Premium lifestyle advertisers are an exciting growth opportunity for us but again, it’s super important that we remain laser focused on creating a premium advertising environment for both our advertisers and publishers. We see automotive, travel, health and the premium end of the direct to consumer marketplace as key areas of focus.

Hodson shared some additional insights on content recommendation, native advertising and how Dianomi continues to differentiate itself: 

‘Performance Marketing’ Is Best Defined Through A Brand’s Unique KPIs

Dianomi works with plenty of advertisers who are trying to achieve conversions, but this can mean different things depending on the brand in question. Some might be looking for a click through to their website where the reader can engage with their content, but others want people to sign up for a newsletter, download an app,  sign up for an account or apply for a credit card, etc. Transparency on conversion has been a core driver of our ability to work with brands on an always on basis, as is our ability to optimize activity to conversion on a publisher by publisher basis.  

“In many ways, we work like a lab with our clients, sharing the learnings and optimizing the campaigns together and it’s very synergistic. Consequently, many of our advertisers are always-on, bidding to the efficient frontier, because there is really no reason to come off the platform if they are hitting their KPIs.

Even as much of the ad industry is trying to grasp the impact of Google’s recent decision to replace cookies with Topics, Hodson said that Dianomi, having focused on contextual targeting in its purest form since inception, as well as contextual lookalike targeting, is future proofed and well positioned to capture the opportunity that the depreciation of cookies is opening up. 

“We see time and time again that contextual targeting capabilities out perform behavioral targeting, with the latter being what the programmatic advertising ecosystem relies on. The trick is delivering contextual at scale. This is one of our core USPs.”

There Is Still Plenty Of Room For Creativity In Native Ad Experiences

Last year, Dianomi launched what Hodson called “streaming podcasts.” Readers can click “play” directly on a native ad unit and become listeners to the podcast. It’s a good case in point in how native ad creative will continue to evolve in order to provide a better user experience, Hodson said.

“I don’t quite like the phrase ‘snackable content,’ but it is that sort of approach where they’re trying to ensure that you keep that engagement,” he said. 

Marketers should work with companies like Dianomi as a sort of lab partner, he suggested, where its algorithm and team can help test variations on a campaign to maximize results. This can lead to some unexpected strategic moves; Hodson recalled one asset manager client which ended up using data it gathered through digital advertising with Dianomi on a nationwide  billboard campaign in the UK. 

Analytics Can Only Help When You Make The Effort To Produce Excellence

With 18 million articles a month running across its network of publishers, Dianomi has developed sophisticated capabilities in terms of guiding marketers to the best placement opportunities. This includes the ability to show data on content that is trending well or identifying “white spaces” that show where audiences are waiting to be provided new or different content. 

That said, Hodson pointed out that native ads need to adhere to what are considered premium best practices. Depending on their goals, for instance, some evergreen content might perform well over a longer period, while other content should be more timely. Information needs to be “digestible” for busy audiences with low attention spans. And of course, native ads have to provide genuine value.

“Our targeting will help,” he said, “but ultimately it’s reliant on  the brand producing high quality content that generates interest. That content can be in the form of written articles, infographics, videos or podcasts. It takes us back to the basics of successful advertising: delivering high quality advertising – why we focus on premium brands, into professionally curated and relevant content – our premium publisher partners, in a privacy friendly manner – targeting through context, not user data. And this is all done through our reach to over 440 million unique devices on a monthly basis.”

Originally Posted on LondonStockExchange.com on May 24, 2021

London Stock Exchange today welcomes Dianomi, a leading provider of native digital advertising services to premium clients in the Financial Services and Business sectors, following its successful IPO on AIM at a market capitalisation of £82 million.

The Company successfully raised £37 million through a placing of both existing shares and new shares. The £5 million raised by the issue of new shares will be used to expedite the Group’s organic growth and to expand the Group’s sales and marketing capabilities in North America and EMEA. The Company will trade under the ticker “DNM”.

Dianomi was established in 2003 and operates from its offices in London, New York and Sydney. The Company provides over 400 advertisers, including blue chip names such as Aberdeen Standard Investments, Invesco and Baillie Gifford, with access to an international audience of 438 million devices per month through its partnerships with over 300 premium publishers of business and finance content, including blue chip names such as Reuters, Bloomberg and WSJ.

Adverts served are contextually relevant to the content of the webpages on which they appear and mirror the style of the page, which enhances reader engagement. Spending by the Financial Services industry on digital advertising in the US alone has grown from $10.85 billion in 2017 to $19.62 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $23.56 billion in 2021 (source: eMarketer). 

Rupert Hodson, CEO of Dianomi said: “The response from investors to our IPO has been very gratifying. Joining AIM is an integral part of our strategy to significantly expand our business. Digital advertising is a rapidly expanding market as people shift to doing more online and our objective is to benefit from this trend and grow our market share. 

“Our IPO was a team effort and I would like to thank all of our people and advisers, who have been instrumental in getting us to where we are today. I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome our new shareholders to the register. We very much look forward to life as a public company and to seeing our business continue its growth journey.”

Advisers to the IPO include:

– Panmure Gordon, NOMAD, sole bookrunner and sole broker
– K&L Gates LLP, Company legal counsel
– Fieldfisher LLP, Broker legal counsel
– RSM Corporate Finance LLP, Reporting accountant
– Novella Communications, Financial Public Relations Adviser

On April 27th, 2021 Rachel Tuffney spoke with MassMututal’s Kristin Lane, VP and Head of Consumer Activation & Engagement, in the Brand Innovators Consumer Engagement Summit. 

In their conversation, they focused on how MassMutual has pivoted successfully to a work-from-home environment and the different partnerships that MassMutual leverages to build and engage with their community.

 Click the image above to watch the full livecast and discover more content on the Brand Innovators website.

Dianomi’s EVP, Rachel Tuffney, spoke with American Express’ Courtney Colwell for Brand Innovators‘ Women in Marketing Livecast Series

On March 25th, 2021, Brand Innovators welcomed Dianomi’s EMEA Sales Director, Anand Sindgi, to their stage for their Brand Innovators Marketing Innovation – International Summit, featuring the BILivecast with Victoria Yasinetskaya, Chief Marketing Officer, PagoFX.

Originally Posted by MarTech Series

By Rachel Tuffney

With third-party cookies gone from the ad industry’s menu, what’s the next substantial solution? Easy. Contextual targeting. While we’ve seen a few industry experts call for tech innovation to replace cookies, advertisers should be leaning in on what consumers are asking for from the ads they are served.

For instance, remember when publishers were blacklisted for seemingly no reason in March when their ads were considered offensive against pandemic-related news content?

Contextual targeting could have immediately been a workaround.

With 67% percent of consumers reporting that they are more likely to engage with contextual ads on trusted publishers, there is an opportunity for innovation in contextual and native advertising. Especially because whichever new identification process becomes the norm, advertisers will need to evolve as very few brands (B2B or B2C) have enough first-party data in their marketplaces.

Why Contextual Marketing?

Before digital advertisers implement a contextual strategy, it is important to understand that contextual targeting has evolved in the past decade. What was considered contextual in the past has, like most things, advanced. By using the latest technology, advertisers are able to identify relevancy at scale. Contextual targeting is privacy compliant since it is not based on consumer behaviors making it a quality solution in a cookieless world.

Another benefit is the transparency contextual provides and the ability for advertisers to look at the traffic being sourced from different publishers and determine which traffic source is the most profitable. Contextual allows advertisers to A/B test and adjust bids accordingly. Ads and content that are contextually aligned also help to improve ad attributions and brand lift compared to when ads and content are not aligned.

Keeping the Consumer Top of Mind

Having easy access to consumer data is something that advertisers have been able to leverage for many years. However, the evolution of consumer privacy law is making third-party data obsolete for digital advertisers.

Contextual targeting does not only meet the needs of B2B and B2C marketers and publishers but it also provides consumers with relevant content while meeting their own personal digital privacy needs. Advertisers should think through working with publishers who have created contextual targeting opportunities that truly understand a consumer’s behavior. For example, a consumer reading up on investment classes like ETFs across top business publications might be served a white paper on ETFs by a blue-chip brand at the end of the article.

Don’t Let Consumer Privacy Laws Scare You Away From Contextual Marketing

There have been many changes to GDPR and CCPA—as well as conversations at the state and national level in regards to adopting similar privacy regulations. This presents an opportunity for advertisers to educate key stakeholders on the importance of contextual as a solution and the opportunity to reach new customers.

While many U.S. companies are still waiting for the looming changes to third-party data, others like The New York Times and Dow Jones have already announced first-party data plans. The New York Times took a proactive approach to ensure the organization is GDPR compliant. The publisher made changes early last year due to a significant amount of subscribers being located in Europe.

Dow Jones, part of the News Corp group, recently shared that the publisher had released a tool that provides first-party data including audience insights both before and after a campaign is launched for advertisers.

New York Times immediately switched to contextual targeting and found they were able to continue to grow ad revenue. Even if a brand doesn’t currently operate in countries or states that have stricter consumer privacy laws they should experiment now with contextual. Californianians voted in November for stricter privacy guidelines with the CPRA signaling a wider trend that other states are already following (and new Vice President-Elect Harris, who championed CCPA in her home state of California, is rumored to be setting up a similar consumer protection bureau at the federal level). This is a trend that is just beginning.

Contextual is right for these times and will continue to play a role in targeting as we move into the new year. It helps publishers at a time when they’ve struggled with being blacklisted and are looking for solutions beyond cookies and third-party data. It’s also great for brands as it allows them to put their messages into context. Consumers benefit from relevant content that contextual provides. In a year in which everything has been turned on its head, marketing campaigns don’t need to be another headache. Consumers crave content they care about, and marketers want to provide the most relevant information to lead to conversions. Contextual targeting is not a maybe as we head into 2021; it is the only way forward.

Originally published on MarTech Series

Unique Ability to Reach the Financial Web Drives 64% YOY Revenue Growth in US in Q3 and Underscores its Role as a Key Revenue Stream for Publishers and In-Context Solution for Premium Brands

In an otherwise disruptive and challenging year in the publishing industry, Dianomi, the financial and business-focused native ad marketplace for premium brands and publishers, reported 58% revenue growth on a year over year basis, as well as an expanded roster of the world’s leading business and financial publishers as well as new brands. The company now serves more than 8.5 billion ads on 220 premium publications, reaching more than 340 million readers per month across the U.S., EMEA, and APAC.

“During the pandemic, we saw media consumption among the professional and business-minded audiences our publishers serve continue to grow and sustain,” said Rupert Hodson, CEO and co-founder of Dianomi. “Brands are seeing that our audiences seek out information to help them manage their businesses, their clients and their own portfolios, unlike the general population, which has experienced dips from news or election fatigue. They also appreciate being able to precisely connect with readers with relevant information about topics they’re actively leaning into, whether that’s more on asset classes like Gold or ETFs or on socially responsible or conservative investment strategies.”

Publishers who have joined or expanded their presence on the Dianomi platform include Dow Jones titles such as Barron’s, MarketWatch and The Wall Street Journal as well as The Washington Post, Kiplinger, The Times (of London), New York Magazine, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and TMX Money.

In addition, financial institutions and other premium brands who have begun working with Dianomi to better reach affluent, professional audiences include Aramco, FXCM and Schroders.

“Readers around the world are seeking out our trusted news, information and analysis to help them make their most important decisions in these uncertain times,” said Dan Shar, Chief Commercial Officer, Barron’s Group and GM, MarketWatch. “Our partnership with Dianomi centers around collaboration as we work together to think creatively about the best ways to provide maximum value to our readers.”

“Though most revenue channels were set back this year, Dianomi has been an outlier, growing monetization against all odds,” said Andy Price, Head of Revenue Operations US for Kiplinger’s parent, Dennis Publishing. “They have been a partner to us for almost a decade now, thanks to the impressive brands they work with and the quality of their content recommendation. Their reliable performance and commitment to quality standards have been invaluable, more than ever this year.”

“Dianomi has been a wonderful partner, consistently delivering advertising content that has exceeded our expectations and objectives,” said Kaja Szczechura, Head of Media Activation & Performance, Net Natives for NYU Stern School of Business.

“I have been using Dianomi’s native advertising services for a number of years, across different organisations and I’ve always been impressed with the reach and effectiveness of the platform. It’s also a real pleasure working with the team who are always willing to discuss different ways to target very niche audience groups,” said Caleb Culverwell, Senior Content Marketing Manager, Barclays Private Bank.

As brands look to reallocate ad budgets from social platforms and third-party, data-targeted display to more brand-safe environments, Dianomi rolled out a premium lifestyle vertical in H2 2020 to answer to advertiser demand for more premium, in-context and brand-safe solutions that operate at scale. Based on the same premise as its financial vertical, Dianomi’s lifestyle network is built on contextually relevant, premium publishers with cookieless targeting and charged on a performance basis. Dianomi has proven its ability to bring premium brands and publishers in the professional services and financial industries together and is building upon that expertise for lifestyle brands and publishers, starting initially with automotive, fashion, travel and hospitality verticals.

Are investors ready to put the difficulties of 2020 behind them? New data from Dianomi suggests that even before November’s market gains, investors’ appetite for news and analysis on leading asset classes was increasing at pace – and that investors were seeking out positive coverage.

Global stock markets rose sharply during the first half of November, as leading pharmaceutical companies announced positive news on potential vaccines for the Covid-19 virus. The gains reflect investors’ hopes that it may finally be possible to begin moving past the pandemic.

However, investors’ optimistic view of equity markets – and of other asset classes – appears to pre-date the vaccine announcements. Dianomi’s analysis of online financial coverage reveals that in October, investors consumed 17.2% more articles about equity markets than in September; even more impressively, consumption of fixed-income coverage was up by 22.9% in October.

Moreover, investors have in recent months been overwhelmingly opting to read neutral or positive coverage of these asset classes. By contrast, only a small proportion of articles consumed, both in fixed-income and in equities, could be characterised as negative, Dianomi’s analysis reveals. This represents a stark reversal since the summer, when the majority of coverage of these asset classes consumed by investors expressed negative sentiment.

In other words, Dianomi’s research suggests that not only are investors seeking out more coverage of leading asset classes, but also that in most cases they are looking for analysis where sentiment is positive, or at least neutral. Negative takes on fixed-income assets and stock markets have accounted for only a very small proportion of the content consumed in recent months.

The data reinforces the idea that investors are beginning to look through market volatility in search of opportunities – and that many investors are determined to capitalise on the potential upside for asset prices. In November, stockbroking platforms in the UK struggled to cope with the volumes of orders posted by investors as prices rose following the vaccine announcement.

November’s Presidential Election in the US may also be part of the picture, with political uncertainty in the world’s largest economy having worried investors for much of 2020. An end to that uncertainty – albeit with the potential for unlikely surprises with President Trump contesting the election outcome – may have boosted investors’ confidence.

Dianomi’s data certainly suggests investors have been shifting to a more upbeat view of the outlook for stocks and bonds. The aggregate sentiment of the stock market coverage consumed by investors was negative throughout July and August, Dianomi’s analysis shows, before turning positive in September, where it has since remained. In the fixed-income arena, aggregate sentiment remained positive over the summer – though only just – but moved sharply higher over the autumn months.

Investors’ consumption patterns when it comes to coverage of real estate and commodities also suggest a shift in sentiment. Overall consumption of content on these asset classes fell sharply during October, Dianomi’s data shows, but in both cases, investors have been seeking out more upbeat coverage. The proportion of articles that express negative sentiments has fallen sharply since the summer in the case of both real estate and commodities.

A move to a more positive outlook across asset classes may presage further gains to come on global markets with investors determined to capitalise on good news. For example, further positive announcements on Covid-19 vaccines and treatments – and a final determination of the Presidential race – offer potential for new market upside given the current sentiment of investors.

Investors appear minded to see the case for the upside. Indeed, October’s most-read article in Dianomi’s analysis underlines the point. MarketWatch’s story, headlined “Most investors now expect the US stock market to crash – why that’s good news”, is a classic example of looking for the positive takes during a potentially worrying time.