Sky ‘sciences the shit’ out of stuff: Google doesn’t

While Sky is using ad tech science for its benefit, Google is mysteriously failing to get it right at even the most basic level, writes Dominic Mills.

In The Martian, a stranded Matt Damon vows to ‘science the shit out of this‘ in order to survive his abandonment. (Thanks, by the way to ‘MB’ for telling me about the line: I knew I could find a use for it.)

Last week, I saw Sky science the shit out of some ad technology, and Google try – and utterly fail – to science its way through some old media.

Let’s start with Sky. Twenty-plus years ago Sky’s ad sales team invited me to early-evening dinner at Langan’s. All the Sky team were already there, armed with alcohol. My first reaction was that I was late. Then I realised: I was the ‘second sitting’, and they’d been there since lunch. (They had more fun at the dinner than I did.)

These days Sky Media is a very different beast. Fighting for your share of ad revenue involves a lot more than entertaining at Langan’s. It’s more about sciencing the shit out of everything, and last week, with the launch of Sky AdVance, we saw what this means.

You can read the official version and see Sky Media deputy MD Jamie West on video here.

In fact Sky has been sciencing the shit (to the tune of about £20m a year) out of quite a lot of tech stuff over the last few years, from Sky IQ (now folded in to its data partnerships offering) to AdSmart, and to start-up technologies like Elemental and Sharethrough.

One of the interesting things about this is the way that Sky is challenging the perception that all original ad tech is the natural property of Google, Facebook or Amazon, and anything developed by a different – old-school, even – media owner is just not at the races.

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So what is Sky AdVance and why does it matter? Well, in a nutshell, it’s a platform that enables advertisers to seek what many would regard as the Holy Grail: the ability to join up, and sequence, TV and digital advertising – or as Sky puts it, “let audiences see the right ad, at the right time, in the right sequence, and on the right screen.”

Now that’s a big promise, but Sky AdVance comes to the party – and apologies for mixing my metaphors here – with a mighty big bazooka in the form of a household panel of 3m. Yes, that’s 3m – just under a third of its TV homes and, Sky boasts, 1,000 times larger than Google’s Kantar panel – giving granular viewing data from the 500 channels on the Sky platform that can be combined with knowledge of online and mobile habits.

In theory, therefore, this means a number of benefits for advertisers:

– See how many viewers have been exposed to TV spots or a sponsorship and then amplify that message online, adjusting the message by recency and frequency

– Use TV viewing data to create digitally targetable audience segments – i.e. audiences that follow a particular show, series or genre

– Tell sequentially logical advertising stories at appropriate times and on appropriate screens

– Reduce wastage, clutter and irritation (and possibly slow the relentless progress of adblocking – providing they don’t overdo it).

Sky says it has tested AdVance so far with 20 advertisers, and one car brand – hmm, let’s guess it’s the Vauxhall Mokka – has seen digital interaction rates 65pc higher for those who had already been exposed to TV spots than for those who hadn’t.

Now Sky says it is looking for advertising partners to test AdVance between now and its official launch in January. Judging by the buzz among the audience at the coming-out party at One Marylebone last week it won’t be short of brands and agencies wanting to give it a try.

Of course, all this comes at a price: a hefty CPM premium based, as I understand it, on the number of data levels that are used.

As far as I can tell, with the exception of Channel 4’s Ad Journey, there is no other product like this on the market. Competition, therefore, is unlikely to knock the price down – and anyway, no media owner that has invested heavily in this kind of tech will be want to enter into a price war since, for the first time, they have a way to push digital rates up rather than suffer their endless decline.

It also helps them bulk out their offer – from just a supplier of audiences and impressions that can be substituted – to something more substantial and irreplaceable.

Google’s F for Fail

If Sky is using ad tech science for its benefit, Google is mysteriously failing to get it right even at the most basic level – at least in the way it is using direct mail.

Yes, that’s surprise #1: Google uses direct mail to target small business owners (like me, which is how I know about it).

Last week I received a mailshot inviting me to use Google Adwords (complete with £75 worth of credit when I spend £25) to, in the words of Raja Saggi, its head of small business marketing, ‘find new customers and grow your sales’ by driving visitors to my website.

Well, ok. Except that, apart from my company name and address – well done for getting that bit right! – there’s no personalisation whatsoever. No ‘Dear Dominic’, no ‘Dear Mr Mills’ or no ‘Dear Company Director’.

Personally, if someone I don’t know wants to sell me something, they should at least greet me by name.

But worse than that, I don’t even have a website. You’d have thought that even the most basic audience segmentation – say ‘small business owners with websites’ – would have revealed that.

Odd, isn’t it? Here’s Google, the company with potentially more access to me, my interests and my history, and yet it makes apparently no effort to get it right. It sounds like arrogance to me.

But then, judging by the ads that are served to me based on my web browsing history, I’m not surprised they are failing to science the shit out of direct mail.