Tags containing: "digital marketing"

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Why marketers should be afraid of the dark

April 20, 2020 Stephen DiMarco, Chief Digital Officer, NA – Kantar

It’s not news that we’re in uncharted territory. Covid-19 has shut down entire countries and the impact on our daily lives is unprecedented. For marketers, there’s uncertainty and fear. Many are wondering, “Should we be advertising at all during this time? And if so, “What type of messages and content are consumers are going to be receptive to?” For those in the former group, indications are clear: You should be afraid of going dark.

In a pre-Covid-19 world, marketers faced plenty of challenges in creating breakthrough marketing that reaches consumers, impacts their behaviors, and ultimately results in increases for their businesses. In Kantar’s Getting Media Right study (Oct 2019), 47% of advertisers polled indicated that they weren’t confident their organization is able to integrate multiple data sources to produce actionable insights. This indicates that even in “normal” times, it’s difficult to be successful.

Business, just not as usual

While it may seem like the safe bet is to pause, or go dark, brands that do so stand to risk much, especially in the long-term. Overall, US advertisers are spending less, however, no single industry has gone completely “dark.”

And in fact, some industries are on the rise and spending more than this time last year, such as household supplies. This category includes products like batteries, paper goods and cleaning products, which have become some of the most crucial items in our “shelter in place” environment.

US media spend, household supplies (Source: Kantar Adscope)

Brands are still advertising, but with adjusted or revamped messaging. In certain verticals, advertisers are beginning to reinvest dollars in media, most notably: household supplies, pharma, automotive, and consumables. Seeing this ad spend growth holds the promise of working toward a recovery.

Consumers are listening

And consumers want to hear from brands right now too. Research out of Kantar’s Covid-19 Barometer from March indicates that only 6% of Americans surveyed say brands should stop advertising. Additionally, around 80% of those surveyed want advertisers to continue communicating in an educational and encouraging way, without exploiting the crisis.

Kantar’s Link™ database has shown that when an ad connects with people through emotions and makes them “feel good.” This, in turn, helps drive preference and choice at the time of purchase. Ads that appeal emotionally and authentically are more likely to result in increased short-term sales and long-term brand equity.

In support against going dark during this time is the simple fact that audiences are spending more time with media and content than ever before – especially those which can be consumed at home. In the past month, consumers indicated 30%+ increases in TV and TV On-demand/streaming and 26% increase in online video consumption.

Increased media usage in past month (Source: Kantar Covid-19 Barometer, 2020)

Connecting with consumers

Advertisers have an opportunity to expand into platforms where consumers are spending more time. So, they need to retool planning and funnel media dollars into these channels. Those who are ahead of their peers, having increased budget and optimized content to emotionally support their audiences, are beginning to expand into premium channels and platforms – like OTT – where they can effectively target more niche audiences. On average, premium online video is nearly 50% more impactful for brands than standard online media. Streaming and over-the-top content can also help drive measures like brand awareness and key message associations at nearly twice the average.

Average brand impact across channels (Source: Kantar MarketNorms® 2020)

More time, more attention – more opportunities to connect with consumers, even if the sale isn’t immediate. Now is the time to grow relationships and lay the groundwork for future prosperity. Over 80% of marketers recognize the need to consider ROI as a mix of both short-term (sales) and long-term (brand). However, only 54% actually measure a mix, with a large portion – 38% – focused primarily on short-term as an indication of success (Source: Kantar’s Getting Media Right, Oct 2019). At a time like this, that may not be realistic for all industries, so consider how best to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.

It’s true, it’s a scary time. It’s easy to let fear and uncertainty take hold and influence decision-making. But, if you can overcome that fear, peel back the curtain and let in the light, you don’t need to be afraid of the dark.

Advertising | Featured Post | Perspectives | Revenue

Local news: Forget national metrics and focus on your strengths

October 17, 2019 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

Regional papers depend on building communities based on geography. But younger people prioritize interest-based communities. So, how can local and regional papers build new relationships with digital natives?

At the latest World News Media Congress in Glasgow, the publisher of The Globe and Mail Philip Crawley spoke about the unsurpassed value of an engaged local audience. He argued that—while digital engagement metrics provide invaluable data about audience funnels and propensity to convert—there are metrics that are unique to regional media they consider just as important.

He used the example of the paper’s packed obituaries pages to illustrate how a local title can measure its tangible engagement with an audience through non-digital interactions. Ultimately, Crawley made it clear that the worth of a local title cannot be measured through ones and zeroes alone.

Regional titles have long been experts in measuring engagement. These metrics might be tallying attendance at events they organize, counting submissions to the letters pages, or by less concrete metrics like the willingness of the public to interact with their journalists.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily translate to sustainability, even for publishers that have the same drive to reinvest in news products. Whether it’s due to quirks of geography, unpredictable societal differences, or for any number of reasons, local news publishers have been hurting. Investment in the print product is no guaranteed panacea either.

The key issue for many is that they have struggled to find ways in which digital products can serve as a focus for local engagement as print editions once did. Another factor is the often top-down approach from regional publishers who try to use national-level engagement metrics for their regional titles. Crucially, they largely miss those specialist ‘obituary pages’ engagement measurements that are an indication that audiences are invested in a community with a news brand at its center.

What does local engagement look like?

The race, then, is for local titles to discover what local engagement looks like in the platform age before their business models become unsustainable. To the industry’s great credit, it has been quick to launch research projects designed specifically around that.

One, the Community Listening and Engagement Fund (CLEF), was co-founded by a group that includes the Knight Foundation and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The goal of this initiative is to develop tools that measure that engagement (as opposed to the many approaches around finding funding or cost-savings).

Meanwhile, Poynter launched the Table Stakes initiative, which focuses on diversifying revenue for local newspaper, public radio, or digital news organizations. And the recently announced Project Neon is explicitly focused on finding ways to intensify audiences’ engagement with regional publisher Archant’s titles. We can look forward to seeing useful findings from these efforts in a few years’ time.

Investment in an uncertain future

Those efforts are welcome—and exactly what the industry should be doing. The unfortunate reality, however, is that while regional publishers have the expertise and history of engaging regional audiences in print, digitally they are playing catch-up. This is particularly significant given their need connect with younger audiences—and from something of a standing start.

This is not a consequence of a lack of effort in engaging audiences. In fact, there has been plenty of excellent work done to discover how young audiences interact with news digitally. However, that hasn’t always helped local publishers build engagement with young people.

For instance, Research from Flamingo on behalf of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism demonstrates that, as a result of having grown up with ready access to the internet, younger readers do not necessarily share the same values or expectations about the purpose of news:

“They still need and want news to connect their world to the world – and fulfil an array of different social and personal needs – but they don’t necessarily see the traditional media as the best or only way to do that… They don’t need to seek it out, news comes to them.” As a result, the reality of engaging young audiences is that it is much harder to build a community around a geographical rather than an interest-based niche.

The Flamingo study also found that no news app was in the top 25 most-used app in their respondents’ phones. This implies that local publishers must have a presence on social platforms to reach those young audiences on which they are increasingly going to rely.

To make matters more difficult, social platforms do not typically offer user data or tools that are of value to local publishers. (Although Facebook’s most recent endeavor in this area is reportedly better in this respect than past attempts). Local publishers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, then, trying to build communities on platforms that don’t necessarily cater to them.

In an excellent thread on Twitter, The Los Angeles Times’ engagement editor Adriana Lacy argued that publishers having a presence on even the recently-launched platforms like TikTok will eventually help with that engagement issue. However, she also notes it might take precious time – something local publishers particularly are often short of – to see any real return.

Part of the solution

Local and regional titles have always relied on creating a community out of their local readers. Efforts like comments sections on pages are useful for eyeballing the levels of community engagement, but without a print title to provide those ‘obituary metrics’, and with younger audiences increasingly finding ‘news’ content through platforms and intermediaries, regional publishers have struggled to demonstrate they have the heart and trust of a community.

One potential solution is for regional publishers to double down on what the BBC World Service Group’s head of editorial partnerships Emily Kasriel has termed ‘Solutions-focused Journalism.’ As Kasriel put it:

“Another factor driving our SFJ initiative is the desire to better serve our audiences, particularly young people. According to recent BBC Audience Research, 51% of 16-18 year olds and 47% of 19-24 year olds in the UK ‘agree or strongly agree’ that they want news to also provide solutions. The figures were even higher in the developing world: 75% of Indians, 78% of Nigerians and 82% of Kenyans of all ages want their news to provide solutions and not just problems.”

Solutions-focused journalism, centered around local areas, are potentially how publishers can marry the interest-based communities of the internet to the local areas they cover. Here, they can happily use those platforms on which they have established themselves as both a place for discussion and to provide calls for action around those proactive, solutions-based causes they are championing. The UK’s Pink News, though an interest-based title, grew to be the largest LGBTQ+ publisher in the world as a result of its campaigning journalism, for instance.

In the city of Hull in the UK, that focus on providing solutions journalism appears to be bearing fruit for one regional digital publisher, for instance. Journalism.co.uk reports: “Constructive journalism project Hull Is This launched in November 2018 with early promise, reaching 37k hits in its debut month and 45k in January 2019. While page views alone are not always the best metric for measuring the success of editorial content, it does at least suggest demand for local, positive stories.”

Similarly, the Yorkshire Post’s high levels of trust in the community have been attributed in part to its campaigning journalism around loneliness in the region.

So, while there may not be a direct digital successor to the ‘obituary metrics’ that demonstrated there was a community around local print titles quite yet, it isn’t to say that it is impossible to recreate those communities in the age of platforms. Instead, it could be that regional publishers will find a new path by shifting from being passive but present in the community to a much more pro-active and campaigning force around which a new, younger community will form.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

The case for shifting CMO budgets from tech to creative services

August 27, 2019 Tim Bourgeois — Digital Media Auditor and Consultant

Most marketers can agree that we’ve collectively reached the point of marketing technology saturation. Or at least diminishing returns on investment. After all, the ecosystem has grown from a few dozen martech vendors at the turn of the decade to more than 7,000 today, and tens of billions of dollars in annual spending. At the same time, advertising budgets have only grown by about five percent each year. So martech growth had to stabilize eventually, and a new study shows one way to squeeze more ROI from the CMO budget.

The cost of losing creativity

In The Cost of Losing Creativity, Forrester Research makes an investment-based case for shifting dollars away from martech and into creative. Key takeaways are:

Martech Investments Are “Table-Stakes”: The proliferation of martech has resulted in a slew of homogenized brand experiences; technology is no longer a competitive differentiator
Creative-Fueled ROI Takes Time: More aggressive investment in the creative elements of the marketing operation will drive increased ROI but will require more than 24+ months to realize
A Team-Based Approach Is Required: There are too many moving parts in today’s marketing operation to handle strictly using in-house resources. So, CMOs have to partner with external specialists and other internal functions like the CIO and COO

Implications for the digital media ecosystem

This kind of thinking bodes well for the marketing community en masse and has been ripe for at least a couple of years now. In many ways, it suggests that companies that focus on core marketing and communication tenets – ideas and the compelling presentation of those ideas – will win the day.

For digital media in particular, this new research is consistent with themes we’ve been espousing, such as the appeal of premium publishers and personalization strategies. Elite platforms can take advantage of this movement by:

Helping brands to understand the role of your unique channel to high value audiences, and how the medium used to deliver great ideas is as important as the ideas themselves
Providing creative support in the form of both unique packaging (online, events, co-sponsored research) and nuts-and-bolts design and production
Emphasizing ROI-based outcomes of campaigns and engagement; premium platforms cost more, but also deliver more

Forrester makes no bones about the fact that while a focus on creative capabilities and output will deliver superior ROI, it won’t happen overnight. This isn’t a quick fix. Publishers can put themselves in a position to ride this wave by helping to educate brands on the underlying proposition as well as articulating how premium platforms can play a role in the strategy.

About the author

Tim Bourgeois is a marketing advisor who helps brands optimize ROI on advertising, technology and agency investments through digital marketing audits and strategy engagements.

Perspectives | Revenue

Blocked out: the dangers of overzealous keyword blocking

June 26, 2019 Alynn Beyder, Senior Product Marketing Manager – IAS

Brand safety has become an integral part of every marketers’ media buying strategy. One way that brands manage where their ads appear is by utilizing keyword blocking. While this can be a useful layer of protection, it isn’t a one size fits all or set it and forget it solution. Without proper monitoring, keyword blocking can create unintended—even unfortunate—consequences.

Blocking basics

No airline wants its message to run adjacent to news about a rash of problems with a particular type of jet. One way to avoid this sort of inherently negative placement is through the practice of keyword blocking.

Advertisers can choose to block certain categories of content — for example, anything related to drugs or adult content. They may also block particular keywords, such as “explosion,” “shooting,” or other topically sensitive terms. Of course, publishers are focused on providing relevant content to their audiences. However, they must also keep advertisers’ brand safety priorities in mind. Finding a delicate balance between the two can be tricky.

There is no “one size fits all” approach to achieve brand safety in the world of digital advertising. But keyword blocking can be a useful tool—if handled correctly. While effective in the short term, keyword blocking lists can get excessively long or stale if not maintained properly and updated on a regular basis. And this can hurt a brand more than help. Some advertisers may find that their ads are excluded from a publisher’s site entirely due to exhaustive keyword blocklists. Thus, they inadvertently miss out on the opportunity to reach their desired audiences.

When blocking breaks

Keyword blocking alone is not an optimal solution, but it can provide a layer of protection for conservative buyers. To make the most of this approach, however, it is important to revisit blocklists at least once a quarter. This is especially important given that words or phrases associated with a particular incident that was controversial news in March, for example, will have likely changed significantly by June.

Integral Ad Science recently reviewed keywords that were deemed as unsafe in the past due to breaking news, but that now may be acceptable. Remember the Las Vegas mass shooting that took over your newsfeed in 2017? IAS data uncovered that advertisers reacted to that breaking news story by blocking against “Las Vegas” and even “Mandalay Bay,” where the infamous shooter rented a room. Nearly two years after the incident, more than 120 advertisers are still blocking “Las Vegas.” Approximately 40 are still blocking “Mandalay Bay.”

The unintended consequence it that publishers promoting travel deals to the strip or tips on where to catch the best fourth of July fireworks are losing out on revenue opportunities due to dated keyword blocking. And at the same time, marketers who want to reach these travel-hungry audiences are deprived of the opportunity.

Better blocking

Ensuring brand safety is harder than ever, and there likely won’t be a catch all solution anytime in the near future. However, it is important to recognize that with keyword blocking, a “set it and forget it” mentality will not work. In fact, the entire process must be approached carefully from the outset and subject to regular review.

If your buyer insists on maintaining keyword blocklists as a key part of their strategy, then it is critical to reinforce good list hygiene. Too many blocked keywords limit distribution and will cost ad revenue. And ill-conceived or outdated block lists will deprive marketers from reaching the audience you are able to provide. This is an important issue that is negatively impacting publishers and marketers alike. I encourage you to work with your ad tech vendors and directly with buyers to help spread awareness and refine the approach to keyword blocking.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Consumers expect brands to pressure social media companies to clean up their act

June 25, 2018 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Today’s consumers expect brands to navigate the social media landscape more responsibly. A new Edelman Trust Barometer study shows that consumers across nine countries expect brands and marketers to think about content and context and to boycott certain environments when purchasing media. Consumers are aware of the influence advertisers have in the marketplace, given their impact on revenue. Edelman’s research shows that people lack confidence in social media and look to brands to leverage their influence to act on social media problems such as fake news and data integrity

Environment clearly matters, and brands are accountable for their choices. Nearly half of all consumers globally agree it is a brand’s own fault if its advertising appears next to hate speech. They also feel that the points of view that near a brand’s advertising and marketing messages are an indication of that brand’s values and what it stands for.

Additional findings from Edelman ‘s review of social media in 9 countries includes:

Only 40% (34% in the U.S.) trust that social media platforms will address fake news and hate speech.
60% (61% in the U.S.) report that they do not trust social media platforms to behave responsibly with user data.
40% (38% in the U.S) say they have deleted at least one social media account in the past year because they did not trust the platform to treat personal information properly.
Nearly two-thirds (62% and 48% in the U.S.) said that they want government to play a stronger role in regulating social media.

Importantly, consumers want brands to apply pressure on social platforms to protect them from inappropriate use of content and misuse of personal data. Nearly seventy percent of consumrs agree that brands should pressure social media to do more about false information and fake news and protect users from offensive/harmful content and to ensure personal data is protected and used ethically.

Consumers are demanding transparency and privacy protection from social platforms. However, they have little trust in them to fix these problems. And they clearly value the efforts that brands make to influence these issues. This represents an important time and opportunity for brand marketers to step in, act and enforce on behalf of the consumer. This with help rebuild trust in the media marketplace as well as in the brands that do so.

Perspectives | Video

Vertical video, brand safety, consolidation, and Meredith: Four predictions for 2018

January 8, 2018 Todd Krizelman, CEO – MediaRadar

In 2017, the advertising industry — both buyers and sellers — experienced many changes that will shape the space moving forward. Some were related to the constantly advancing technology that has become so important in the category. Others dealt with an increased demand for greater transparency from partners.

So, with the New Year now underway, there are several areas that I believe are especially critical for the industry to pay attention to in the coming months. Here’s a closer look at four of them.

1. Sharp increase in vertical video.

While Snapchat’s stock price is declining, at MediaRadar, we observe that the number of brands buying on their platform is rising sharply. One of the unexpected byproducts of Snapchat’s impact on the market is that those advertisers are now more actively running vertical video – everywhere. Simultaneously, we see more internet use of mobile phones than ever. As a result, we predict a continued, steady increase of vertical video as the vertical format becomes more common.

2. Brand safety becomes much more important.

In the beginning of 2017, it seemed like brand safety was a minor issue. However, ater repeated lapses at YouTube (and elsewhere), advertiser confidence is shaken. The scale of the problem is significant. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is taking no chances. She announced she had hired 10,000 people to manually watch videos. And the WSJ’s overview on the people doing the clean-up paints a bleak portrait of what they’re up against. We predict brand safety becomes an important part of 2018 campaigns.

3. Ad tech consolidation.

We believe there will be fewer ad tech companies at the end of 2018. Here are the headwinds the industry faces. First, MediaRadar observes more MSAs between agencies and ad tech players than ever before. Ad spend is being increasingly consolidated and concentrated. Second, high-profile brand safety failures from 2017 are decreasing the amount of buying on programmatic. Third, follow-on investments by venture capital has declined sharply into ad tech firms. And, finally, companies that sell direct are becoming more sophisticated selling against programmatic, as well as co-opting programmatic for their own benefit.

4. Meredith rises.

Industry pundits are quick to fret about the negative impact of disintermediation on traditional media businesses. But disintermediation doesn’t actually favor the new vs. the old. Des Moines-based Meredith Corporation is a wonderful example of this. In the past 10 years, they have been careful buyers, scooping up assets from Gruner + Jahr, Disney, Martha Stewart, Selectable Media, AllRecipes.com, and now Time Inc. They’ve also had big success launching new brands, such as their mega-hit, Magnolia Journal, in 2017. The result is a company that will have approaching $5B in annual revenue. The stock has gone up 6X in the past 10 years. Meredith is clearly a recognized leader in the new media hegemony.

As we look ahead, expect vertical video, brand safety and consolidation – as well as the growth of Meredith Corporation – to be top-of-mind among advertisers in 2018. Closely following any developments in these areas will be crucial to their success next year, and beyond.

Perspectives

Metrics that matter: email marketing

December 5, 2017 Tim Bourgeois — Digital Media Auditor and Consultant

Email marketing, which was likely the first digital marketing tactic to go mainstream, has experienced a public relations drubbing over the past decade. Maybe it all started in the wake of the CAN-SPAM act of 2003, and the category has yet to recover its shiny gloss. But savvy professionals know otherwise: When employed smartly, email can be one of the core components of a successful marketing operation.

Source: Smart Insights, GetResponse Survey

When thinking about your organization’s email marketing strategy and planning for improved performance, here are the metrics you need to keep top-of-mind.

1. Everyone’s Doing It

This statement applies to both individuals and corporations. According to Pew Research, 88% of smartphone users actively check email on their phones. Also, after being around for more than two decades, most organizations have some kind of either active or passive email marketing strategy in place – because it works. In a recent survey by Smart Insights and Get Response, more than 50% of marketers said email marketing performed good or excellent, outperforming all other tactics. And, eMarketer forecasts the U.S. email advertising market to increase from $343M this year to $500M+ in 2021 – not the skyrocketing growth we see in other digital categories, but not bad considering it’s been around awhile.

If you don’t have a formal email marketing strategy in place, prioritize its design and launch as soon as possible. It’s likely there’s an in-house list that exists somewhere and can be dusted off and put to use. If are currently engaged in email marketing, have a senior member of the marketing team assess its status and budget. Depending on the type of organization, the email marketing budget should account for 2.5% – 25% of overall marketing spending. A large, B2B company will skew smaller while a small B2C company will skew larger.

2. Be Wary of ‘Rate’ Metrics

Yes, this is an article on metrics, but too many organizations measure email marketing team performance on their rates: open rates, click-through rates, deliverability rates, etc. While meaningful in some ways, they aren’t very useful in the context of strategic marketing goals like branding, engagement, and conversions. Deep-pocketed technology companies with sophisticated marketing and sales operations like Constant Contact, Hubspot, Marketo, and Salesforce have force-fed the industry a set of metrics which, outside of small and specialized email teams, aren’t very meaningful. Senior marketing managers and non-marketing executives don’t need to understand the minutia of the operations, and sharing ground-level performance data with them only weakens the impact.

Email marketing performance is best viewed vis a vis other marketing tactics (direct mail, events, telemarketing, etc.) and its ability to contribute to customer acquisition and retention. While the true, absolute contributions of a tactic like email can often require sophisticated modeling and measurement operations – rolling up to attribution – the baseline metrics that are easy to track and serve as a reasonable proxy for attribution are engagement and sharing. Both are genuine measurements of the impact of an email’s content and strategies.

3. Take the Long View

Successful email marketing operations follow a 3-to-1 give-versus-ask ratio. That is to say, they only ask for something – a purchase, a piece of information – one time for every three times they give. While people have an overall preference to email-based communications from brands, their biggest point of feedback, according to an Adobe survey, is to make the correspondence “less about promotion and more about providing me information”. This is a big challenge for brands of all stripes, as hammering email lists to meet quarterly or year-end goals is a common tactic, but a short-sighted one.

While challenging, employing the 3:1 ratio isn’t as difficult as it might seem. A “give” to a user base could be a coupon, an entertaining but brand-promoting video, or a white paper or webinar pass. It takes some creativity, but most organizations have enough assets in place to make this happen without extraordinary effort. The important thing is to approach an email marketing strategy from a user-based perspective, and get the audience to look forward to opening your emails. It’ll pay major dividends over the long run.

To be sure, email marketing is capable of delivering on nearly every major marketing goal in our crosshairs: branding, awareness, thought leadership, engagement, acquisition, and retention. So, from a marketing strategy perspective, it’s not a question of “if”, but rather “how much”? That email marketing is the oldest and least shiny object among the current digital marketing toolset – which includes search, display, social, native, video, etc. – means that it might require an extra dose of support during budgeting season. But for most organizations, it’s well-worth the effort.

Tim Bourgeois (@ChiefDigOfficer) is a partner at East Coast Catalyst, a Boston-based digital consulting company specializing in strategic roadmaps, marketing audits, and online marketing optimization programs.

Perspectives

Measuring marketing performance and delivering on metrics that matter

October 31, 2017 Tim Bourgeois — Digital Media Auditor and Consultant

As we approach year-end, general managers and department executives across the world are in the throes of 2017 performance evaluation and 2018 strategic planning. Among their functional peers in sales, finance, operations, and human resources, senior marketing managers have unique challenges when it comes to measuring performance and justifying budget increases.

To wit: senior executive – CEOs, CFOs and line of business GMs – expectations of marketing operations have never been greater. Indeed, one study revealed that “80% of CEOs don’t trust or are unimpressed with their CMOs”. So it comes as little surprise that more than half of CMOs have been in their jobs for three years or fewer.

Indeed, it’s a constant struggle for marketing leaders to find solid footing amidst the shifting sands of digital enablement, big data, and artificial intelligence. After more than a decade of absorbing aggressive overtures from the internet giants, martech companies, and digital media concerns, the most senior executives have continued to approve bigger marketing budgets. Today, the marketing line item now accounts for more than 10% of revenues at some of the world’s largest companies, and CMOs are experiencing unprecedented pressure to justify continued investments and budget increases.

In a digital-first and data-intensive world, here are the measurement metrics that matter most:

1. Brand Awareness.

At the end of the day, it’s the marketing team’s job to deliver on two primary tasks, and defining and promoting the corporate brand is one of them (demand generation is the other). For companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and GEICO, brand management is the driving force of the business, and referenced in every strategic planning discussion. For the rest of us marketers, brand awareness is regarded as a ‘soft’ metric by the senior executives we report to. So it’s up to us to create a measurement strategy and educate the company on its importance.

How to Get There:

A digital-first approach – website analytics, social media listening, and competitive benchmarking – is the fastest way to measuring a brand’s relative share of voice and level of engagement with target audiences. The world’s largest brands invest heavily in monitoring their brand’s effectiveness through surveys, focus groups, and consumer recall. However, most companies can get a firm handle on a brand’s impact using solely internet-based techniques, and a digital marketing audit is a great way to initiate the effort.

2. Demand Generation & Capture.

From toothbrushes to jet engines, marketplace demand needs to be both generated and corralled, and it’s the marketing group’s responsibility deliver on this task. Some products, such as car insurance or residential real estate, are ‘bought.’ Thus, marketers in these segments are mainly focused on being in front of the prospective buyer with effective messaging throughout the sales cycle. In categories where items are ‘sold’ – think automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and enterprise software – marketers need to first educate prospective buyers about the need (perceived or otherwise) for their products, and then convince the prospect of their superior offering.

How To Get There:

Most of the large management consulting firms (like McKinsey) have invested significantly in some variation of a “customer lifecycle journey” methodology, and these are useful for helping to define the different points of engagement and identifying relevant metrics (for both new and returning customers). The first step for marketing teams is to define their unique customer lifecycle checkpoints – from awareness to engagement and consideration – and install metrics to monitor their relative performance over time (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.). Subsequently, most organizations require an education process, aimed at non-marketing executives, to generate consensus and buy-in on the measurement strategies.

3. Cost Per Conversion.

Cost per conversion, or “CPC”, is very much a digital marketing term, but the concept is straightforward and useful in both online and offline activities. The approach requires marketers to determine how much an engagement activity – such as an inbound phone call or watching a video advertisement on a website – cost to generate, and then work towards some performance metric. For example, most companies understand their prospect-to-customer conversion ratios reasonably well, if not specifically then intuitively. A car dealership, for example, might understand that that it needs to generate 10 visitors to the lot to generate one new customer, or 100 visits to its website to generate one email inquiry, and 25 email inquiries are required to get a new customer; and the average new customer generates $30,000 in sales and $6,000 in gross profit margin. With these metrics in mind, the dealership can comfortably spend $250 to generate a lot visitor or $1 to generate a website visit and accommodate its profit variables.

How To Get There:

Job one is to create the unique model specific to the business, and get a firm handle on the relevant metrics. A B2C company’s measurement strategy will be virtually unrecognizable to a B2B concern, but the general approach – cost modeling measurable actions – will be the same. Even just a handful of relevant ‘conversions’ can help guide a marketing group’s budget allocation in a meaningful way. Most importantly, these metrics allow marketing contributions to be measured vis-a-vis revenues and profitability, which are the most valued metrics by CEOs, CFOs and boards of directors.

For better or worse, long gone are the days of marketing operations that were considered in terms of vanity (or not considered at all). With marketing budgets continuing to swell, and rapid digital adoption making quantifiable performance measurement more accessible to companies of all shapes and sizes, senior executives are holding marketing accountable for revenue-generating contributions and ROI. In the long run, marketers will benefit from this evolution, as the quality of their contributions to profits and corporate performance increase, but the short term will continue to be bumpy as expectations get sorted out and responsibilities more clearly defined. Senior marketers can help accelerate this process by embracing core performance metrics and working to continually improve their performance in those specific areas.

Tim Bourgeois (@ChiefDigOfficer) is a partner at East Coast Catalyst, a Boston-based digital consulting company specializing in strategic roadmaps, digital media audits, and online marketing optimization programs.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Native advertising continues to grow, but compliance issues remain

March 15, 2017 Todd Krizelman, CEO – MediaRadar

Native advertising is a compelling and profitable way for publishers to offer custom ad opportunities in the form of articles, video, programmatic and sound. What’s more, it provides a creative outlet for marketers, resulting in increased demand and desirability for publishers.

With this in mind, we at MediaRadar felt it was important to take a closer look at native trends for a more thorough understanding of best practices, as well as channels. So we recently published a study that observes the native advertising trends that emerged in 2016. The study, “Leaders and Lessons in Native Advertising,” examines thousands of native ads from nearly 13,000 brands.

Here’s what we found:

37% of publishers are not native compliant. In December 2015, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its first-ever native advertising guidelines. At that time, only 29% of publisher sites examined were compliant. That number has increased by 119% year-over-year, however, with 63% of digital publishers having modified their native advertising to adhere to the FTC guidelines. Still, it leaves 37% of digital publishers that aren’t native compliant.

610 new advertisers bought native each month. Adoption and demand for native ad content was extremely high, with an average of 610 new advertisers using native content solutions each month. And many of these advertisers are open to purchasing digital packages – not just native as a standalone. This is good news for publisher ad sales because native continues to drive bigger deals for more revenue.

An average native campaign runs for two months. Renewal rates and campaign duration for native remain low overall. Based on 2016 data, native renewal rates are at only 33% across all media sites. An even smaller portion of those – 20% – renew less than 20% of the time. The average native campaign duration is only two months. However, sites with more established native programs have a 49% renewal rate. This includes sites with native programs where more than 50 brands are placing native buys.

Media & entertainment is most popular category. The top-five categories in native advertising from January to December 2016 include:

Media and entertainment (3,198 brands using native campaigns)
Professional services (2,017 brands)
Finance and real estate (1,246 brands)
Technology (1,231 brands)
Retail (1,153 brands)

Takeaways

Overall, there has become a greater demand for native advertising content. More publishers are familiarizing themselves with the FTC native advertising rules than ever before. However, there is still room for improvement, with more than one-third of publishers remaining non-compliant. And while the number of native ad campaigns continues to grow, renewal rates and campaign durations remain low.

Also, the media and entertainment industry is the most popular native advertising category, setting itself apart from the rest of the pack in terms of native ad adoption. But this may change in the coming years, as native becomes more popular and more industries begin regularly investing in native ads.

Todd Krizelman (@ToddKrizelman ) is Co-Founder and CEO of MediaRadar (@MediaRadar). Growing up near the epicenter of technological innovation in Palo Alto, California encouraged him to become an entrepreneur and co-found of one of the world’s first social media sites, theGlobe.com. Krizelman also held leadership positions at Bertelsmann’s Gruner + Jahr and Random House. With his expertise in ad sales and innovation, Krizelman joined veteran web architect, Jesse Keller, to found MediaRadar in 2007.

Perspectives

Omni-channel marketing is a must this holiday season

November 22, 2016 DCN

Early holiday indicators demonstrate that marketing to the hyper-connected consumer is necessary. The bar is set high to deliver a compelling, contextual and consistent brand experience across all communication channels. Why is omni-channel marketing so critical this holiday season?

Compared to last year, 6 in 10 consumers report that they will shop only online this holiday season, two-thirds of consumers will shop both online and offline and only 34% will shop mostly in-stores reports Yahoo’s Holiday and Search Insights 2016 report. In all, 37% of consumers said they will shop more online this year than a year ago.

Key findings include:

Holiday shopping is an omni-channel experience

79% of consumers plan to purchase holiday gifts both in store and online

Shoppers are relying more and more on mobile as a “go-to” resource during the busy shopping season

On Black Friday, share of searches on mobile devices increased from 26% year-over-year

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the busiest shopping days of the year, many will not shop on these designated shopping days

29% of holiday shoppers plan to stay away from shopping during Thanksgiving Week

As brands look to create multichannel promotions, it’s important to maintain their brand authenticity. Brands should stay true to the consumer experience across the multiple marketing channels as a key differentiate in the holiday fury.

Advertising | Perspectives

Seeing the data for the trees: Overarching themes from Advertising Week

October 4, 2016 DCN

Pictured: (from left to right) Simon Whitcombe, Group Director, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook | Jen McIsaac, VP, Retail Partnerships, Oracle Data Cloud | Paul Jankauskas, General Manager and Chief Revenue Officer, Verifone Media | Christopher Heine, Technology Editor, Adweek

I won’t lie: My positive experience at Advertising Week wasn’t that different from previous years. But, when you consider the magnitude and impact of an event such as this, that’s really no small feat.

Whether it’s brushing shoulders with some of the greatest minds in the industry, or gaining a pulse for significant topics—be they bubbling under the surface and overflowing within every category in the marketplace—there’s value to be lifted from the experience. Advertising Week is ultimately the place where crucial conversations take place in real-time about the real challenges we’re presented with at this particular moment in digital.

Nothing could be more advantageous.

The live performances weren’t anything to scoff at either, with musical acts from the likes of De La Soul, Common, The Roots, and Sting. Entertainment and networking aside, my focus was getting to the bottom of the massive data explosion in the industry and better understanding its grip on media companies, agencies, publishers, and marketers alike.

Getting on the Right Side of the Data Track
At Outbrain, a growing number of our internal marketing initiatives are being driven by data-supported research. And as a recommendation network that is powered by its own sophisticated algorithms, it has always been important for us to communicate the value of that data on both the brand side and media company side.

While more data is a huge opportunity, it is not without its complexities and challenges. This past week, our own struggles with data were echoed by leaders in the industry and solidified into some key themes:

1. Solving for Too Much Data Involves a Simplified Approach

With this new level of granularity, data is changing the conventions of how many brands have been built up until today. More importantly, it has raised a glaring issue, which was shared across panelists who have represented and worked alongside many legacy brands, including Jon Suarez-Davis, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Krux Digital:

“We’ve put together dumb pipes. And It’s not about putting in smarter dumb pipes, it’s about changing the system entirely.”

First, there needs to be a much deeper understanding of how the data has changed. Second, while data is now far more actionable than ever before, we can’t lose sight of how it drives business. This means applying clear objectives.

That’s because data can mean a lot of different things. From a user ID, to post campaign analysis, or, in our case, the consumption patterns of how audiences are interacting with our content across publisher sites.

The trick, according to Julie Fleischer, Managing Director of OMD, is simplicity and focus:

“The key is keeping an eye on what I’m trying to understand, what the best measurement approach available is, and what that mean in terms of whether it’s a complete or partial view. We need to stop looking at data as an answer, but more as an input to what we do. If we challenge where the flaws in measurement are, we can get to a better understanding of how to fill those gaps.”

.@jfly and @charliechappell on using data to drive brand decisions and what to be more mindful of | #AWNewYork #TestAndLearn pic.twitter.com/RN7dHdvaNy

— Outbrain (@Outbrain) September 28, 2016

When it comes to the data explosion, the challenge—and goal—is to find the metrics which are most indicative of wins and learn to measure what matters.

2. We Need to Put Data in the Hands of the Right People

A multitude of data types means a multitude of applications and outputs for data. And with that, a variety of potential business objectives that impact a variety of different stakeholders—whether it is informing product decisions, leading creative decisions, or driving better customer journey’s within the context of the content funnel.

Yet, currently, organizations struggle with interpreting and communicating all the data they now have at their disposal. Many are noticing a major talent gap when it comes to making their data actionable, due to poor cross-department translation and communication.

Charlie Chappell, Head of Media and Advertising at The Hershey Company, declared, “We need to get much more comfortable with much more data. We have to make that transition.”

Global Director of Business, Jeffrey Rossi shared similar sentiments about how data is used at Spotify, stating, “It’s not about just using data. It’s about living data. For us, the data goes into driving a product, we can market ourselves with data, and have conversations with data. It can’t be some jenky add on.”

So, while the digital advertising ecosystem is currently built to solve individual problems, we all need a much deeper understanding of the big picture to change the entire infrastructure of what we do. That means teaching up current talent and scouting the right new hires.

The only way to do it is to learn it.

3. Targeting for the Entire Dartboard and not Just the Bullseye

It’s easy to get swept up in the promise of reaching the right consumer on the right platform at the right time with the right message through data-enabled microtargeting but these insights don’t always live up to the hype. A real problem has been an over-reliance on these targeting capabilities as we try to lead with precision first. At the end of the day, though, context still matters.

In fact, that’s a large part of why Outbrain has been working with brands to better sequence the experience consumers have with their content. Overall, as an industry, we need to be thinking more holistically. Rather than just considering how we’re going to reach consumers, we need to invest in understanding all of the different touch points within the customer journey and create value for consumers at every point.

The impact of sequencing content for the customer journey with Outbrain, told by @EricHad during #AWNewYork‘s session on content & commerce. pic.twitter.com/z9ftC5dl6V

— Outbrain (@Outbrain) September 29, 2016

In the words of Tamara Alesi, Managing Partner and Integrated Planning Strategy at Mediacom, “You don’t always have to use the data on the front end, but to get smarter on the back end. That’s where you see your ROI.”

Looking Forward
As marketers and brands we sometimes get lost in our own worlds and forget about how our data impacts the customer experience. In order for us to not completely silo ourselves or our data; events like Advertising Week help center our work.

This week and fresh into Q4, we can all take these learnings and focus on innovation as well as better empowering the audiences we cater to online. In the quarter ahead, we will need to discipline ourselves when it comes to our data—focusing on how we want to use it and how it impacts our customers. Otherwise, all our data and tech is ultimately useless.

Eric Hadley (@erichad) serves as Head of Global Marketing at Outbrain (@outbrain). He joined Outbrain in 2015, and is responsible for the company’s global go-to market strategy and for driving strategic value and large scale opportunities with its premium brand and agency partners. Hadley has over 20 years of experience in marketing leadership positions in consumer, media and technology companies. Previously, he served as Head of Partner Marketing at Pinterest leading the social network’s agency outreach organization. Prior to his work for Pinterest, he held roles at Yahoo, The Weather Channel, and Microsoft. While at Microsoft, he was involved in the launch of its search engine, Bing.