7Pass

Balancing Branding and Performance in Modern Advertising

Jan Mehlhose, a strategist at CNQR, discusses balancing branding and performance in advertising. He traces his career from music industry A&R—signing Kool Savas—to marketing artists like Robbie Williams and David Guetta, pursued an MBA in Australia, and transitioned from the streaming service Tidal to CNQR to provide strategic marketing consulting. Mehlhose advocates a branding-first approach with continuous optimization of the balance between brand-building and performance, shifting toward performance as brand awareness grows. Brand-oriented channels include TV (the leading branding medium), Out-of-Home, press, and digital, while performance relies on Google Ads, Social Media, and Programmatic Marketing; he notes TV can also serve performance when targeted through channels such as ARD, ZDF, RTL, and ProSieben as well as niche stations. He mentions a self-developed data-aggregation tool and website pixels to track post-spot activity, and cautions that Connected TV, Spotify, and influencers remain underutilized. Content-driven, emotionally resonant creative will shape future performance advertising, especially for smaller clients.

Revolutionizing Ad Booking: Automation Cuts Time Dramatically

ADZINE interviews Jens Pöppelmann about automating the modern IO advertising business. He describes Nautilus, a system developed with IP since 2008, to automate the end-to-end media-booking workflow—from proposal creation and revisions to orders, adserver synchronization, creation, and invoicing. Automation has cut the typical quote-to-order cycle from about two days to 60–90 minutes, and streamlined invoicing so corrections can be issued via credit notes rather than rebooking. The revival of the Digital Booking Communication Formats (DBCFM) standard enables side-by-side version comparisons and change tracking, shrinking overall booking time from roughly an hour to 10–20 minutes. Market context notes that Ströer, IQ Media, Ad Alliance and ProSieben together account for about 39% of monetizable reach, with another 33% marketed through in-house systems. The interviewer emphasizes a need for both programmable and automated tools, and for cross-channel automation that still relies on human oversight for exceptions.

US-Riesen teilen sich den deutschen Streaming-Markt auf

Streaming in Germany is concentrated among a few platforms. JustWatch analyzed market shares for Q3 2021 and found Netflix at 32% and Amazon Prime Video at 31%, together accounting for 63% of streaming interactions on JustWatch’s platform, based on roughly 1.6 million monthly users. Disney+ followed with 18%, Sky with 7%, and Apple TV+ with 4%. RTL’s TV Now and ProSiebenSat.1’s Joyn were each around 1%. A separate AGF Videoforschung Convergence Monitor reported Netflix about 34%, Amazon Prime Video around 27%, and Disney+ near 8%. Differences across sources reflect methodology, but both indicate Netflix and Prime Video as the dominant players in Germany in 2021, with Disney+ and others continuing to grow and pressure incumbents.