Tags containing: "marketing"

Digital benefits entice new news subscribers

July 25, 2023 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Advertising messaging is an important trigger in increasing people’s willingness to pay for online subscriptions. New academic research, Effects of Advertising Messages on Willingness to Pay for Online News, from Bartosz Wilczek, Ina Schulte-Uentrop, and Neil Thurman, evaluates effective advertising strategies for online subscriptions. The study focuses on four types of advertising appeals: digital-specific, social, normative, and price transparency. The findings indicate that digital-specific features appeal. Aspects like personalization, online-first delivery, and online-only offers significantly impact participants’ willingness to pay. This suggests that emphasizing the unique digital advantages of online news can increase sign ups and subscription interest.

Messaging impact

This research sets out to address two crucial questions. First, it seeks to uncover the most potent individual advertising message (digital-specific, social, normative, or price transparency appeal) to drive people’s willingness to pay for online news.

The study also looks to understand which combination of advertising messages among digital-specific, social, normative, and price transparency messaging ultimately boosts people’s willingness to pay for online news.

Messaging appeal

The different respondent testing shows that digital messaging is the most potent. Social messaging that emphasizes community membership and offline and online events also positively influences participants’ willingness to pay. This finding suggests that fostering a sense of belonging and engagement within a community can enhance subscription intentions.

Normative messaging, which focuses on the importance of supporting independent, inclusive, and watchdog journalism, has a moderate positive impact on willingness to pay.

Interestingly, the price transparency appeals, which provide information on the news industry’s critical financial situation, do not significantly impact willingness to pay. This suggests that while consumers may value transparency, it may not be a primary motivating factor for subscribing to online news.

Combining messages

The research reveals that combining advertising messages can increase people’s willingness to pay for online news. Combining the normative appeal with the price transparency appeal is the most convincing. In comparison, other combinations of advertising messages do not yield significant effects on people’s willingness to pay for online news.

What’s surprising is that neither the normative nor the price transparency appeal is sufficiently convincing on its own. However, combined, they effectively increase audiences’ willingness to pay for online news. Moreover, the findings suggest that adding a digital-specific or social appeal to a subscription pitch that includes both a normative and a price transparency appeal is ineffective. One explanation could be that the more appeals a subscription pitch contains, the longer and more complex it becomes—which might decrease its effectiveness. This suggests that the efficacy of a subscription pitch depends less on the quantity and more on the quality of arguments and how well they work together.

Digital news publishers can leverage these insights to tailor their advertising strategies and enhance subscription uptake. By highlighting the unique features of online news, fostering a sense of community, and emphasizing the societal importance of independent journalism, publishers can increase consumers’ willingness to pay for online news subscriptions. However, it is important to note that normative and price transparency appeals may have a limited impact on subscription intentions on their own, suggesting the need for a multi-faceted approach to advertising online news subscriptions.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Consumer behavior will never be the same again

May 20, 2020 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Covid-19 has affected everyone and everything. Health, work, relationships, education, dining, shipping, and shopping … every aspect of our lives has been impacted. And, according to Accenture research, this impact will leave an indelible mark on consumer behavior, particularly when it comes to how and with whom people spend their money.

In its report, “How COVID-19 will permanently change consumer behavior,” Accenture points out that the pandemic is reshaping industries in real time, “rapidly accelerating long-term underlying trends in the space of mere weeks.” And consumers are struggling to figure out how to shift many activities to digital alternatives.

Though some businesses are beginning to resume offline operations, many are holding off. And even when health officials and governments give the green light, many consumers will be hesitant to resume business as usual. But even more significantly, this experience will have accelerated and transformed many consumer behaviors.

Post-Covid consumers

Accenture has defined five new types of consumers, based upon the way in which they are responding to the crisis.

The Worrier (21%)
The Individualist (33%)
The Rationalist (39%)
The Activist (8%)
The Indifferent (11%)

Because consumer response to the pandemic varies widely, Accenture says that “the days of one-size-fits-all marketing are over.” Thus, companies will need to understand how different segments of their consumer base are reacting and develop customized and personalized marketing strategies for each type of consumer.

Accelerating trends

According to Accenture, the virus has accelerated three long-term trends:

1. The ever-increasing focus on health

Brands should heed this change and make it a priority to support healthy lifestyles for consumers, shoppers and employees. Having a “health strategy” will be a strategic differentiator in the foreseeable future.

2. A rise in conscious consumption

Consumers are more mindful of what they’re buying. They are striving to limit food waste, shop more cost-consciously, and buy sustainable options. Brands will need to make this a key part of their offerings (for example, by exploring new business models and caring for their own employees).

3. Growing love for local

The desire to shop local is reflected in both the products consumer buy (for example, locally sourced, artisanal) and the way they shop (for example, supporting community stores). Companies will need to explore ways to connect locally. This might be through highlighting local provenance, customizing for local needs or engaging in locally relevant ways.

Ecommerce

Undoubtedly, ecommerce adoption has been one of the clearest trends accelerated by the pandemic. Accenture found that one in five consumers who ordered their last groceries online did so for the first time—but for consumers aged 56 years and above, this was one in three. The trend toward digital commerce is expected to continue even once businesses reopen. Consumers report that the proportion of instances they shop online will increase from 32% to 37% after the outbreak, illustrating the clear need for a substantial increased investment in this channel.

Time well spent

Many people will continue to work from home and travel less for the foreseeable future. Thus, offerings that keep them connected and improve their home-based experiences will be highly valuable. As parents and educators look toward the possibility of remote education becoming part of the standard curriculum, technological and informational tools that facilitate remote learning will be highly appealing.

Leisure pastimes have also significantly shifted. Accenture believes that the changes will cause long-lasting, or even permanent effects. According to the report, more than half (61%) plan to continue watching more news after the outbreak, while 55% will prioritize more time with the family. Entertainment, learning, and DIY have also seen a rise.

Covid-19 is a health and economic crisis that has a sustainable impact on consumer attitudes, behaviors, and purchasing habits. Companies need to pay close attention to their consumers’ evolving expectations and changing behavior in order to effectively serve them, and market to them.

Perspectives

Tear down the funnel and build a pyramid: The shift from purchase funnels to mobile customer journeys

August 6, 2019 Peggy Anne Salz, Founder and Lead Analyst – Mobile Groove

In a market where the cost to acquire an app user is rising through the roof, and the increase in app abandonment (the number of users who quit an app after one use) is alarming, it’s clear that the traditional focus on top-funnel metrics is fatally flawed. Our focus on a linear journey is completely out of line with user lifecycles. Mobile had forever altered the consumer path to purchase and funnel models no longer fit.

Architecting campaigns and strategies that prize acquisition over retention doesn’t just force marketers to burn considerable cash. It blinds them to the key engagement activities and metrics that are the sure-fire indicators of highly valuable and deeply loyal consumers who are primed to engage with content—and more.

It doesn’t matter whether the goal is to drive registrations, encourage consumers to volunteer information such as personal preferences that will allow you to deepen the customer relationship, or sell subscriptions: Ensuring a predictable and sustainable cash flow quality trumps quantity every time. In the App Economy, success isn’t a numbers game. It requires strategies that get the right users into your app—and keep them coming back.

A strategy that harnesses AI and machine learning to connect with customers in a relevant way based on an analysis of the millions of data points and signals that communicate their context via mobile and in-app can be a bonus. But even the best mix of analytics and analysis will miss the mark if marketers segment their audience by static demographics, not dynamic actions.

Embracing the engagement pyramid

First and foremost, marketers need a firm grasp of the hard data around the “who” of their customer base. However, they must also command the soft skills around the “why.” They need to understand what motivates their audience to take action in the first place. Effective app marketing engages with users throughout the lifecycle based on these two inputs.

But an ongoing data investigation by Phiture, a leading mobile growth consultancy based in Berlin, and CleverTap, a full-stack customer retention platform, ads a third dimension. They’ve built a framework to measure and analyze the user engagement we observe.

Published for the first time last month, Phiture’s framework offers marketers a more nuanced view of user engagement and a roadmap to increase retention. The authors of this must-read resource (Andy Carvell, Kevin Bravo ,and Tessa Miskell) present the Engagement Pyramid, a model that breaks engagement down into three layers:

Acknowledgment, where users show an appreciation for the app, but not high intent. (For example, opening the app or reading a push notification.)
Interest, where users deliberately interact with the app and demonstrate a willingness to do more. (For example, tapping on items in a feed, consuming content and initiating search queries.)
Conversion, where users follow through and complete a core action that is aligned with the purpose and value proposition offered by the app. (For example, booking a trip with a travel app or managing money with a finance app.)

Maslow and measurement

The framework gets high marks on several counts. It bravely questions the practice of monitoring DAU (Daily Active Users) or MAU (Monthly Active Users), or employing performance metrics that simplify engagement into binary terms (counting users as engaged or not). It also gives the concept of a purchase funnel a rehaul, literally turning it on its head in a hat tip to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Maslow’s theory in psychology divides our human needs into five levels, placing the most basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid and elevating our most complex needs to the top of the pyramid, the Engagement Pyramid inspires marketers to aim high—and be highly focused on outcomes.

Above all, the authors open our eyes to the model and the mindset marketers must embrace to increase meaningful engagement and stop churn before it starts. “It’s important to understand that engagement is a continuum, ranging from low-value to high-value actions,” they write on their latest blog. “A user may traverse this spectrum rapidly within the space of a few sessions, or remain stubbornly stuck in a low-engaged state for days, months, or years, without necessarily abandoning the app.”

Tracking events and asking questions

Applying the framework doesn’t just equip marketers to analyze key user actions and assign them to the proper layer in the Engagement Pyramid. It enables marketers to assess the value of user engagement and the potential impact on the business. “Observing how layers grow or shrink over time gives an indication of how well the app is performing,” the authors write.

Are more users performing actions that demonstrate Acknowledgement at the bottom of the pyramid than are striving to complete events associated with Conversion at the top? Review your app onboarding strategy and double-check that your user acquisition campaigns are designed to attract the right users from the get-go.

Is there a high correlation between the number of users who belong to the Acknowledgement layer and the number of users who progress to Conversion? Read that as a signal that you can scale campaigns, increase spend and aim high—because you can.

Piecing together the retention puzzle

While the authors don’t specifically address it in their framework, insights into how users engage and how much it’s worth also empower marketers to enhance the user experience and—ultimately—increase customer lifetime value.

This was the focus during Cutting-Edge Retention Strategies, a recent webinar and fireside chat where I was a guest along with Jessica Osorio, Lead, Mobile Growth at Mozilla. While she doesn’t formally apply the AIC framework (our discussion preceded its release by roughly two months), her analysis of engagement metrics and their impact is just as rigorous.

“All apps face a really steep drop in retention on Day 1, just 24 hours after the app install,” she told me. To plug this “leaky bucket” and deepen user engagement with the app, Mozilla has improved the onboarding experience, adding what it calls the “welcome journey.” It’s during this stage that Mozilla delivers a series of automated push notifications and in-app messages to “walk users through all the things to do with the app that we know will drive the most value for them.”

Osorio is also realistic about the “natural usage frequency” and the importance of setting reachable targets for how (and how far) her company can drive app engagement. “We want users to come back and enjoy the app, but it’s not a target we miss if the users don’t come back on a daily basis,” she said. “For us, it’s not DAU or WAU. It’s about building products that meet users’ needs and journeys that surface that value from the start.”

Audiences evolve, and marketers must keep the pace with app messaging, ad creative and the value proposition tailored to match with the needs of users as they move through the app journey. Whether companies embrace new frameworks to assess engagement or architect customer journeys to boost loyalty, the increased interest in retention marketing has profound implications. It also demands marketers master the capabilities to reach and segment users based on what users do (and don’t do) in-app with messaging that motivates them throughout the customer lifecycle and the life span of the app.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Neurological research proves it: Context affects advertising effectiveness

February 28, 2017 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

The effectiveness of advertising depends, to some degree, on the content that surrounds it. In other words, content context has a direct impact on the way advertising is received. A new research study, “Why premium editorial content” from Teads, a native video advertising marketplace, analyzes why premium editorial content creates more impactful environments.

Teads partnered with Neuro-Insight, a neurological research firm, to better understand how premium content neurologically changes the way people recall advertising messaging. Four premium publishers, Conde Nast, Forbes, Time Inc. and The Atlantic participated in the research to expose video ads within their premium editorials on mobile. Consumers were also exposed to the same video ads within their personal Facebook feed in order to compare the two experiences.

The research revealed that premium editorial content is 16% more personally relevant and engaging than social news feeds. Interestingly, regardless of the personalization capabilities in a user’s Facebook feed, consumers still felt more personal relevance to the premium content. Users invest more of themselves in the premium editorial consumption experience.

Total Recall

What makes this finding so important? Premium editorial delivers a more powerful memory impact and a more memorable advertising experience. For the detailed-oriented left-side of the brain, premium editorial had a 19% greater impact on memory and for the emotional right-side of the brain, it had an 8% greater impact on memory. Memory encoding drives higher ad effectiveness and is an influencer of consumer purchase behavior.

Interestingly, both premium editorial content and Facebook social feeds create high impacts on long-term memory, however, premium content generates a greater and more even activation in both the left and the right sides of the brain. The triggering of both sides of the brain offers the best opportunity for broad video advertising creative approaches to influence a consumer’s long-term memory. Premium content is unique because of its impact to both the left- and right-side of the brain, meaning, it has an equal and considerable opportunity to influence consumers.

It’s not just that premium publishers offer advertisers a quality audience, their content also creates a higher impact on advertising. Teads’ research concludes that content with a high level of engagement is more likely to impact the memorability of online video advertising. Importantly, premium content raises the level of impact that social platforms cannot duplicate.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Location moving up in marketing priorities

March 29, 2016 Research Team—DCN

Location is fast becoming one of the most powerful means for identifying and delivering on consumers’ real-time intent. It also offers a means to create purchase incentives and foster engagement and provides the ability to tap into precise moments of decision making.

Forbes Insights, in association with xAd, has released a new paper entitled Location: A Strategic Marketing Imperative. For this paper, Forbes Insights conducted interviews with some of today’s leading brands on how they’ve effectively leveraged location.

According to the paper, location-based mobile advertising has become more than simply a nice-to-have tactic in a marketer’s toolkit. Rather, it’s fast becoming a strategic imperative in today’s data-driven, highly competitive landscape. Given mobile ubiquity, and the impact of apps such as Uber, Tinder and Yelp on consumer’s expectation of personalized, relevant experiences, location-based services promise to enhance consumer experiences, whether purchasing products online or browsing the aisles of a brick-and-mortar retailer.

Forbes Insights looked at how top brands are using location-based marketing to support four key developments in consumers’ buying journey. These include:

Keeping Pace With Consumer Expectations
Bridging the Gap Between Online and Offline
Reinventing the In-Store Experience
Beyond Search and Social—A New Category

Forbes Insights found that, as these trends develop, location-driven campaigns promise to close the gap between online and offline worlds; browsing and buying; expectation and delivery.

Industry-Research

Instant messaging use rises as more people opt for closed platforms

October 7, 2015 Research Team—DCN

The popularity of instant messaging (IM) has soared over the past year, with a 12% uplift in daily usage as more people opt for closed messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Viber. Over half of internet users worldwide (55%) are now using instant messaging every day, while 76% are using it on a weekly basis, according to Connected Life, a study of over 60,000 internet users worldwide from global research consultancy TNS. Despite this, social platforms are still rising in popularity with a 6% uplift in daily usage. As people’s online habits become ever more fragmented, TNS asserts that brands need to tap into the growing popularity of IM and other emerging platforms. The research shows an increased need for a content-driven approach across IM, social and traditional channels.

Among TNS’ key findings:

The US still lags the ‘mobile-first’ markets with 35% of US internet users using IM every day, but is catching up quickly (up 10% compared with 2014).
Instant Messaging (IM) is particularly dominant in emerging “mobile-first” markets, with daily usage rising even higher in markets like China (69%), Brazil (73%), and South Africa (64%).
Facebook has maintained its position as the world’s favorite social platform; almost one third of global internet users (30%) say they use it every day.
Facebook’s dominant position among US internet users is even stronger at 53%, followed by YouTube (26%), Instagram and Twitter.
TNS found that although IM users are wary of brands interrupting them, they are more concerned with how content they share impacts their own image.

TNS data reveals that consumers are even more connected to each other, and across multiple platforms. While IM popularity is rising, traditional social media platforms are still holding strong, allowing content to go viral more quickly. The challenge, says TNS, is for brands to create content that consumers actually want to share.

DCN White Ops Bot Benchmark Report Header

DCN-Research

2015 DCN Bot Benchmark Report: What makes a publisher premium

September 28, 2015 DCN

The 2015 DCN Bot Benchmark Report: What Makes a Publisher Premium, conducted with digital advertising security company White Ops, examines bots in advertising traffic across 32 DCN premium publisher sites. This 32 page groundbreaking Report offers insights into ways in which the industry can contribute to solutions. Areas covered in the Report include display inventory, video inventory, viewability, traffic sourcing and retargeting, audience development and content policies, bot sources, malware, impact of current events, usage patterns, false positives and much more.

Key Results:

The study examined more than 30 billion total impressions.
DCN publishers see significantly less bot traffic overall (3 percent) compared to other advertising campaigns deployed across a wide variety of websites. (11 percent).
The average bot percentage for DCN participating sites was 2.8 percent.
Display inventory was one quarter of the level rate found in the ANA The Bot Baseline 2014 study.
Video inventory was one tenth of the bot rate found in the ANA The Bot Baseline 2014 study.

Download the full report here.

See the press release here.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

MMA Releases Guidance Report on Location Audience Targeting

June 15, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Drawing from its SMoX Study, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has released a new Guidance Report entitled, ‘Location Audience Targeting’. From the report:

Mobile has changed the way we think about digital audiences. Before the advent of the ubiquitous mobile phone, traditional marketing and advertisement strategies that were “location based” had a very different meaning than “location based marketing” does today. Options for location-based mobile audiences have expanded far beyond the simple geo-fence campaign, and offer both sophisticated targeting options and insights on reaching the consumer on their mobile device with the right message at the right time.

No longer just a tool for “in the moment” targeting, major brands are now leveraging the rich contextual information that location provides to create highly-targeted audience segments, enabling them to strategically target consumers at specific points in their day, not just when they’re within close proximity of a brand’s store or restaurant. For many major brands, the use of audience targeting is still a fairly new tactic, yet one that is predicted to explode in popularity in the coming years due to its ability to yield an incredibly high lift in store visitation (SVL), particularly when used in combination with more common proximity targeting tactics such as geo-fencing.

Detailing how brands like Denny’s, Goodwill and Walmart are using audience targeting to increase store visitation, the report builds on an earlier MMA white paper released in February. The Report provides key insights and takeaways on:

How to create location based audiences
Leveraging the data behind location-based audience.
Incorporating non-location data to enrich profiles
Guidance on optimal ad formats and creative
5 case studies detailing how brands are using audience targeting

Perspectives

3 Marketing Takeaways from Day 1 of Collision

May 6, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

This week nearly 7,500 people from 89 countries made their way to two airplane hangars in downtown Las Vegas for Collision, a “new kind of tech event,” in which tech is approached as an intrinsic part of every aspect of business. In addition to sessions on four main stages—Center, Enterprise, Builders and Marketing—the event attracts speakers and attendees from Fortune 500 companies to nascent startups, along with no small number of VC and Angel investors. What they all have in common is a focus on what’s next and driving the innovation that will take us there.

While tech was undoubtedly the underpinning of the vast majority of sessions and conversations, marketing was also central to many discussions—given that few of the “big ideas” brewing at Collision will go far without it.

Here are my three marketing takeaways from Day 1 of Collision:

eMarketer founder and CEO Geoff Ramsey

Programmatic with polish: Without a doubt, speaker after speaker confirmed the growing dominance of programmatic. In fact, eMarketer founder and CEO Geoff Ramsey kicked off the day with a slew of stats, including that we can expect to see $15 billion worth of advertising bought programmatically this year, comprising 55% of all display. And while Digiday’s Ricardo Bilton pointed out that “The promise of programmatic is that it is intensely efficient,” a number of people throughout the day made clear that they were looking forward to the continued evolution of programmatic to be more creative and contextualized. Howard Pyle, VP of Marketing at IBM, said that while programmatic is “a convenient way to make marketing function more like a machine” he remains focused on creating customized experiences that best suit his different customer segments. Thus, he is exploring how he can create “unique experiences at scale.” And Anthony Mazzarella, SVP, Agency Sales, at Celtra says that this creates an opportunity to “bring marketers and the media closer together,” which can only make the experience better.
Data is a game changer: “The job of marketer is changing” according to Paul Berry, founder and CEO of RebelMouse, who believes that there used to be a lot more guesswork and intuition around which aspects of customer information would help them make good business decisions. However, giving the influx of real-time data and increased ease of use, “today’s marketers can swim deeply in all of the insights,” emerging with information that they can readily apply to their strategies. At L’Oréal Rachel Weiss, the company’s VP of Digital Innovation, says they’ve moved way past Facebook Likes and are focused on really getting to know their customers. To do so, the company recently began to hire data scientists, who help shape all aspects of customer experience and marketing.eMarketer’s Ramsey also emphasized the incredible potential that wearable data offers marketers though he noted that marketers are “struggling to manage the torrents of data pouring through all of these different devices.” But with the rise of increasingly personal data, Vivek Sharma, CEO of Movable Ink says he sees a rise in “data-inspired creativity.” And of course, there will remain the responsibility to use “data in a way that’s not creepy,” as Tariq Shaukat, EVP and chief commercial officer of Caesar’s Entertainment Corporation put it. “Data offers an amazing opportunity to do better things for customers,” he said. “You give your data in exchange for a great experience. When you explain it to customers and do it in a way that adds legitimate value for them, you will find that customers really do appreciate it.”
Rachel Weiss, VP of Digital Innovation, L’Oréal and Paul Berry, founder and CEO of RebelMouse

Customer experience and marketing collide: Pyle of IBM believes that it is essential for marketing to emerge from its corporate silo and be better integrated into the entire business so that the insights marketers have about customers are better reflected in product development and so that marketers can better create customized content experiences that fuel business objectives. L’Oréal’s Weiss noted that customers believe “they are their own brand first, and that every product they use should be built around them.” At Movable Ink, Sharma finds an increased demand for “personalization on the fly” because customers expect messages tuned to things such as location and weather. He sees content marketing intersecting with context to create value for the customer. “Rather than asking someone to buy trainers, tell them about road races around them. Then, when the time is right you can offer them the right shoes.” Berry at RebelMouse observed that “it turns out that it is very hard to capture people’s attention” and that brands must continually focus their marketing tactics on serving their needs. “Today, there’s no tolerance for a mediocre experience.”

Industry-Research | Video

Measuring ROI Holds Marketers Back from Original Digital Video Investments

May 5, 2015 Research Team—DCN

Content marketing that leverages digital video is seen as one of the best storytelling mediums by marketers and is garnering bigger, standalone budgets accordingly, yet these same brand advertising executives are challenged with justifying its ROI, according to a qualitative study— Content Revelations— from DigitasLBi and IAB, and conducted by Advertiser Perceptions. According to the research, measuring ROI vs. other media is the top obstacle among marketers for increasing their spending on original digital video.

The report finding are summarized in an Infographic. Key takeaways include:

Two-thirds of marketers and agency executives believe that original digital video will become as important as original TV programming within the next three to five years.
Original digital video is expected to climb from 37% of marketer’s total video budgets in 2014 42% in 2015.
The majority of marketers (64%) anticipate increasing their digital video ad spend in the next 12 months.
Measuring ROI, followed by content quality, audience/campaign measurement and price are the top obstacles preventing marketers from spending more on digital video.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

Programmatic: Both the Villain and the Hero

April 30, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

Nothing makes a narrative more compelling than a villain: evil that must be overcome so the hero can prevail. Maybe that’s why every few years a new nefarious buzzword arises that both energizes the digital media industry and rattles the cages of the establishment. But the business of digital media is just not as tidy as a formulaic series. The real problems are complex. And the bad actors aren’t parading their final 15 minutes of fame on Dancing with the Stars, they are lurking in the shadows, profiting from marketers’ best intentions and the great content created by others. While the story of programmatic is barely a few years old, the plot lines are deep and we’re clearly still early in the first season.

It wasn’t too long ago that programmatic was referred to as the latest chapter in digital media’s “race to the bottom.” The word was associated with everything bad in the digital advertising supply chain because it started off as a murky pool of third parties offering marketers an easy way to reach massive (if dubious) audiences and for publishers to offload “remnant” inventory at bargain basement prices. Unsold inventory from great brands mixed with a whole lot of garbage—the old ad network model. This (thankfully brief) period in the story of programmatic did little for anyone besides intermediaries—though it did help draw attention to the fact that digital advertising processes were ripe for change.

The reality is that programmatic emerged as a response to the complexity of the digital ad buy and has evolved into a way to automate as much as possible, making digital media easier for marketers to buy and potentially more profitable for publishers. Our research shows that forward thinking media companies have wisely jumped into the programmatic fray in order to address marketers’ desire for efficiency while also leveraging their first party audience data to deliver highly targeted, efficient and impactful campaigns.

Yes, a whole lot of programmatic inventory is still remnant but that is starting to change as more premium inventory becomes available for programmatic buys. In fact, a growing number of our members are starting to see programmatic guaranteed and preferred deals that rival direct deals in terms of CPMs. The big difference is that the programmatic deals—those that have pre-agreed prices and guaranteed high-quality inventory—offer automation of the back-end processes.

As representatives for the digital content brands that marketers trust, it is our responsibility to shine a light on any “trust parasites” in programmatic and to work with advertising and agency partners to maximize their confidence in the value they will receive when they put money into programmatic. The rise of programmatic direct and private marketplaces offer an example of how this is taking shape. And right now, buying direct from a trusted premium publisher is the best way to execute a programmatic campaign without risk.

Villain’s and heroes aren’t what we need to focus on in the story of digital media. However we do need to recognize that there’s a lot at stake here if all of the players don’t work together to educate the market, given the predictions that programmatic will dominate digital advertising within a few years. If you are one of the few still debating whether or not to embrace programmatic: Stop now. Automating the bidding, buying, securing and execution of an ad campaign in real-time using machines rather than paper and humans is a no-brainer.

If you put on your marketer cap, it’s fairly obvious. Do you want your ads to be viewable meaning actually show up in the active window? Absolutely. Do you want your ads to be in front of humans rather than bots? Um, of course. Do you want your ads to run in a clean, well-lit brand-safe environment? Yes, please. Do you want all of the above as easily as possible? Bring it on.

With every change, every challenge comes an opportunity to step up and “save the day.” And there are few better examples of the opportunity for digital innovation than programmatic. Get on board and let’s drive this narrative forward.

Image credit: kosmolaut.

Industry-Research

Data-Driven Marketers Diversify Across Channels

April 8, 2015 Research Team—DCN

The Modern marketer is a multichannel strategist, relying most heavily on email, direct mail, and social media according to the DMA’s 2015 Response Rate Report. DMA’s research found that 65% of respondents use two or more media types in their marketing campaigns, with 44% reporting they use three or more. Of the seven key channels examined (Mobile, Email, Online Display, Paid Search, Telephone, and Direct Mail), Email ranked at the top, with 8% of respondents reporting they used the channel in their marketing campaigns.

Mobile represented the smallest sample in this survey, which the DMA interprets as indicating that it is not yet being fully utilized by marketers. However, mobile shows the greatest promise for growth over the next 12 months — with 73% of respondents indicating plans to increase their usage. The report also finds that the mobile channel is rarely used on its own; 98% of mobile users employ at least three types of media in their campaigns— and 65% use at least five.

The report is available at the DMA Bookstore for $299 for DMA members and $499 for non-members.