What’s New at Blinkfire Analytics: Inventory Valuation

The idea around “one-size-fits-all” doesn’t always perform as advertised: clothing, products, fitness, website design, and healthcare, for example, often work best when personalized. The same could be said about valuing owned and earned media – one size doesn’t fit all.

Each team, league, media company, athlete, and brand comes to the social media, digital, and OTT table with unique, authentic, brand-specific qualities. Some have star players, own better records, or sign bigger sponsors; others have more followers, a larger global appeal, are based in big cities, or speak different languages.

Whatever your specific “traits” are as a team or athlete, they will translate differently into how you look at and value the social media, digital, and OTT landscape. Media is constantly changing, so valuation needs to be nimble.

With that in mind, we’ve added more options to the Blinkfire Inventory Valuation — giving you the power to set the social media, digital, and OTT values that make sense for YOU.

Below we’ve highlighted a handful of questions + answers that encapsulate our mindset around Inventory Valuation and why we built it.

TRANSPARENCY

Q: I’m looking for third-party valuations, and this makes it seem like I can make up whatever numbers I want. Why don’t you just copy a valuation methodology (from another vendor) that we are comfortable with?

A: One word: transparency. We believe it’s important that valuation is not a black box.  When companies are valued, valuation reports include the numbers and data that reflect said valuation. We feel if we are going to allow you to edit valuation methods, the customers receiving these reports should understand how social, digital, and OTT are valued.

When users export reports, it will show the advertising method and value used for each social media network (and when applicable, social media channel as well). 

CHANGING MARKET + MEDIA

Q: How do social media CPEs, CPMs, and CPVs change as the market, media, and economy change?

A: We have baseline values set in place for the different advertising methods, but offer the ability to customize them.

Use Case: At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, publishers, brands, and rights holders decreased their marketing spend. When demand declines, supply increases, causing prices to decrease. CPMs across TV, digital, and social media steadily declined during the first two months of COVID-19. If a team wanted to value specific inventory during the pandemic period, they’d have the ability to alter their CPMs based on the current environment.

VALUING SOCIAL MEDIA

Q: For most esports organizations, Twitch is their most valuable channel (versus other sports). How is that reflected when using Blinkfire’s Inventory Valuation?

A: Different sports use different ways of engaging their audiences. For example, Twitch is engaged with and valued more by an esports organization than a football team. Therefore, valuation needs to mirror how both teams would pay to engage those audiences, allowing for the esports team to increase their CPE, CPV, or CPM, while the football team may decrease their CPE, CPV, or CPM. 

ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL

Q: Should a team based in a mid-market US city value their social media the same way a large, global team does?

A: One size doesn’t fit all. The St. Louis Cardinals with an audience in Missouri and Southern Illinois can’t value their social media platforms the same way Chelsea FC does. The EPL team not only has a global presence, but also a sales team that sells to specific markets in the USA, EMEA, Japan, etc. 

CHANNEL VALUATIONS

Q: My team’s main Twitter account should be valued differently from our Indonesian channel. Is there a way to change this? 

A: Yes, through Inventory Valuation – Channels. You can do this not only for Twitter, but also Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, VK, Sina Weibo, and Tencent. Some social media handles are targeted specifically for certain markets — and language or geo-targeting values can be wildly different. For example, a US team’s main Twitter account would see a higher CPE, CPM, and CPV compared to its Indonesian channel.  

Blinkfire users have always been able to customize platform-specific CPE, CPM, and CPV from our baseline values, but now we allow for more specificity and variability.  

PAID SOCIAL

Q: Why can I only value Instagram Stories by CPM?

Blinkfire mimics how paid social works (across each platform). Since you can only buy an Instagram Stories ad by CPM, that is the way Stories will be valued on our platform.