Where Do These Global Companies Stand At The End Of Q1: Performance, Insights, And Statistics
We bring you insights and earning calls on various media companies, publishers, agencies, brands, and tech companies performing on a quarterly basis. The iteration focuses on media companies’ financial performance in the 2020 first quarter and taps all the vital data.
Q1 2020 earnings and performance
Though the waters are choppy ahead, we are optimistic that the worst is behind us and have learned to live with the new normal. Consumer habits are changing and the future is more accelerated towards the digital economy. The media landscape has changed especially the TV front and the focus is on opening businesses again with advertising driving the demand.
Q2 Outlook
Q2 advertising for publishers is estimated to be significantly down as much as 25-30% Y-o-Y and for some even 50-55% down. Few companies like Facebook, Snap, Dotdash expects Q2 revenue to be flat or slightly up Y-o-Y. Here are a few key points to consider:
- Google revenue declines by 15% year- over -year, though search activity increased. Advertising spends decreased due to coronavirus recession. However, other advertising mediums are growing like connected TV, ads in video games, or ads in video conferencing.
- International TV ad sales are down by 30-35% Y-o-Y whereas programmatic revenue decreased by 40-45%.
- Performance ads are down year-over-year and demand from industries like restaurants, travel, retail, auto, and luxury has declined.
- Some advertisers seek opportunities and increase spending in financial services, insurance, telecom, technology, streaming services, and app downloads. Gaming and streaming are gaining a strong foothold and permanently taking a share of our time and wallets.
- CPM’s down by almost 50% giving an advantage to advertisers for huge bargains. New and existing advertisers are looking to acquire new customers at a lifetime low value.
- With no new live events expected on TV till September/October, it will boost the growth of CTV.
- Attribution for marketers is easy as most sales are online than in-store. The animation is expected to be robust in Q3 and Q4.
- 90-95% workforce for media companies are operating from home and CMO’s can justify spending using data-driven advertising with trackable ROAS.
Let’s take a look at the financial report card of the global giants.
The Trade Desk
The opening remarks from the trade desks on the present scenario are as follows – Programmatic’s greatest feature is ‘Agility’. One can easily start and stop the programmatic campaigns, unlike linear television. Early April witnesses advertisers stopped/pause ad spend in certain verticals especially travel and remained active in health, technology, games, home, and garden.
However, by mid-April year-over-year spend decline stabilized, and as the month progressed things started improving. Advertisers were trying to adapt to the present environment. For instance, restaurants changed their messaging to “We are open” or “We deliver.” Consumer products focused on pantry loading and travel companies planned to waive off cancellation fees for bookings. Basically, advertisers started to strategize on how to run businesses on the other side of the pandemic. Now, every company is trying to work out an advertising strategy to connect to consumers and gain share once the economy gets going.
CTV is a clear winner as linear TV’s life is shortened. Unlike traditional TV ads investment where brands and agencies commit billions of dollars without knowing the content and audience, they have the freedom to be more deliberate, liberal, and agile on CTV.
Roku:
- Pandemic has accelerated the shift to streaming by viewers due to excellent content and value.
- In the short term, the video advertising business has slowed down due to budget cuts and low spending by advertisers.
- In the streaming business, active accounts grew roughly 38% Y-o-Y with an increase in new accounts of more than 70% Y-o-Y.
- Streaming hours grew roughly 80% in April and the increase in streaming hours per account is approximately 30%.
- It is estimated that ad business will grow at a slower pace and gross profit margin will be lower than expected for the year.
- The behavioral changes of TV ad buyers are positive in the long-term and more people are expected to stay home to control spending in the light of economic hardships and the shift to streaming business will grow further.
Google:
- In March there was a sudden slowdown in ad revenues owing to COVID 19 and lockdown orders. The first two months of Q1 reflected strong growth. Google search and other advertising revenues generated $24.5 billion, up 9% Y-o-Y.
- After the 2008 crisis, the Google search can be adjusted easily-quickly turn-off and back on which is cost-effective and ROI based. At the inception of the coronavirus crisis, users’ interest was more for information on the virus and non-commercial topics providing less opportunity for monetization.
- Q2 looks difficult for the advertising business.
- YouTube advertising revenues were up 33% year-on-year to $4 billion however there were different performance trajectories for direct response and brand advertising.
- Direct response continued to grow throughout the quarter but brand advertising growth grew for the first two months of the quarter and declined in March. This resulted in the slowdown of Youtube ad revenues by the end of March.
- Similarly, networking ad revenue was $5.2 billion, up 4%Y-o-Y for the first 2 months of the quarter, and declined in March in the low-double-digits year-on-year.
Spotify:
- Ads are a small part of the business, nearly 10% of the overall revenues. Therefore it is less impacted compared to other businesses.
- From a long term perspective, it will be an opportunity to move from linear to on-demand due to COVID 19 crisis.
- It is suspected that advertisers will move from pure reach to more measurable ad formats -mostly analog ad formats.
- The conjecture on advertising and consumption front is what is already happening of linear shifting to digital.
Learn more: Spotify Adds $1.7B To Market Cap In 23 Min Post A Deal With Joe Rogan, World’s Leading Podcaster.
Rubicon:
- The first half of April’s revenue was roughly 30% down until it showed signs of stabilizing in the second half.
- CTV continued to grow at a slower rate in April with a Y-o-Y increase of nearly 10%. Ad slot availability grew by roughly 25% compared to pre-COVID 19.
- Being an omnichannel SSP there has been diversity in ad categories and even more after the merger with Telaria. Certain verticals were highly impacted like travel in entertainment but e-commerce, technology, and direct-to-consumer were benefitted.
- Upfront deals are canceled and focus is shifted to spend from linear to the spot market that programmatic serves.
Microsoft:
- Reduction in ad spend affected Search and LinkedIn business and assumes that the advertising spend will not improve in Q2 as well.
- Search revenue ex-Tac increased by 1%.
Apple Advertising:
- The economic slowdown and uncertainty on business reopening have impacted the advertising business – which is the sum of App Store search ads, Apple news, and third party agreements on the advertising front.
- This slowdown and uncertain future will have a strong effect on the Service business for the June quarter.
Verizon:
- Owing to the COVID-19 crisis, ad revenue declined by 10% in the second -half of March and the rate of decline only increases in April.
- Industry forecasts a fall of 20-30% in digital media and Verizon media results are likely to be similar.
- It also experienced a decline in advertising and search revenue due to hold back or cancellation of campaigns by advertisers and users searching for fewer commercial terms providing less opportunity for monetization.
- Finally, some staggering numbers were seen- 200% up on gaming, 40% up on video, and 10 times up on the collaboration tools. 800 million calls a day, is double the amount on Mother’s Day, the biggest day of the year.
Netflix:
- Increase in subscriber growth in March and is a pull forward for the rest of the year leading to an assumption that subs will be light in Q3 and Q4.
- Filming is stopped globally except Korea and Iceland.
- Customer services are fully restored with 2000+ agents working remotely.
- With the lockdown orders coming into effect in LA, animation production is up and working from home whereas the post-production of 200+ projects is in pipeline remotely.
- Series writers’ rooms are operating virtually.
- Netflix has invested in Open connect, a pioneering cache system that puts content library as close to members’ homes as possible. This enables ISP’s to run their network efficiently and at a lower cost. However, some countries networks may face issues due to the increasing usage of the internet.
Omnicon
- The company doesn’t collect weekly revenue numbers by the agency and roll them up at the Omnicom group level.
- Q2 downfall is expected in double digits and year-on-year revenues will be down.
- The future is challenging but the company expects to get many of those people back as they move into the year ahead.
Learn more about the quarterly performance of other media companies: Financial Report Card Of The Global Giants And Industries In COVID-19
A One-stop Guide On All You Ever Need To Know About AdTech In 2020
AdTech or Advertising Technology did around $800 Billion Worth Of Business In the US alone in 2019, making it one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.
Are you trying to understand ad tech? Just as advertising is the business of making advertisements, ad tech is the business of using technology to make advertisements faster, quicker, and efficient. The business is driven by powerful algorithms and data points. While it is not rocket science, but for the uninitiated, it can be challenging to understand what is ad tech and how its product and services work.
The ad tech industry fuels the global economy with big investments, employment, and ad spend. Digital advertising has reached new heights of complexity, with the rise of programmatic advertising, AI, and automated interactions between computer systems reducing human intervention. Today’s omnichannel ad campaigns reaching to different platforms all at once from publishers’ websites, mobile apps, social media to search engines. Campaigns using tailor-made and highly targeted ads to reach audiences. This process involves many participants- advertisers, publishers to third-party vendors. The technology used in advertising to store, manage, and deploy data is far more sophisticated.
This guide will give you a sneak-peek into the world of technological advertising and understand the growing ad tech industry. As you read further, you will understand the ever-changing ad tech ecosystem.
What is Ad Tech?
Ad Tech also is known as Advertising Technology covers a range of tools and software that can be helpful for brands and agencies to plan, strategize, and manage all digital advertising activities.
The AdTech ecosystem consists of two major entities – the advertiser (Demand-side) and the publisher(Supply-side).
On one hand, advertisers want to run effective campaigns and optimize their budgets to reach the target audience, gain customer insights, and measure ROI.
Whereas, on the other hand, publishers cater to the need of advertisers and generate revenue through ads by displaying ads on their publications like websites, apps, etc, increase ad impressions, bids for ad slots and visitor insights. These are significant factors that publishers need to consider to maintain the platform User Interface (UI).
Adtech helps advertisers and publishers achieve their goals in harmony by providing solutions that meet the demands of both parties. A few examples of AdTech platforms include Pubmatic, Adroll, MediaMath, SmartyAds, and many more.
Image Credit: MarTech Advisor
Programmatic Advertising Explained
After a brief understanding of ad tech, let’s step into the world of programmatic. You will come across concepts like programmatic advertising, Real-time bidding, and programmatic direct. Let’s discuss it:
Image Credit: Martech Advisor
- Programmatic Advertising Definition:
It is projected to be the game-changer for digital advertising. Programmatic automates the process of buying and selling online advertising space with the help of technology and data. This means, with the introduction of programmatic publishers, advertisers or agencies don’t have to sit across to discuss ad size, rates, et. Ad buying is done through algorithms and data insights.
- Programmatic Direct:
This a type of Programmatic digital advertising, where a publisher bypasses auction and reserves a portion or entire ad inventory for a particular buyer or advertiser at a fixed cost per mile. (CPM). Put simple, here the buyer and seller are known to each other and the ad placement is done programmatically.
- Real-Time Bidding (RTB):
Another type of programmatic digital advertising and also known as an open auction. RTB is when inventory prices are decided through an auction in real-time and open to both advertisers and publishers. This is the most feasible and preferable method of programmatic ad-buying because of scalability and flexibility.
The AdTech EcoSystem
Image Credit: Martech Advisor
The process of digital media buying is similar to the traditional media value chain except AdTech has multiple components in the ecosystem to keep the management of advertising campaigns easy for demand and supply-side platforms. Here are the key components of the AdTech supply chain:
1.Media agency: Responsible to allocate the advertiser’s expenditure budget across the channel. It is not involved in the creative aspect of ad campaigns.
2.Agency Trading Desk (ATD): Plans, buys, and manages ads across different platforms and is a set of services provided by the media agency.
3.Demand-side Platform (DSP): An essential platform for advertisers to buy, search, display video mobile ads. It enables advertisers to buy ad placements in real-time on the publisher websites made available by ad exchange and networks. Some of the DSP players are Simplifi, Smarty Ads, App Nexus, Double Click, and more.
4.Data Management Platform (DMP): DMP’s collect data from sources like websites, apps, social networks, campaigns, CRM’s, and more. Using AI and big data analytics to gather first and third-party data, advertisers, and marketers rely on them. DMP players are Lotame, Oracle Blue Kai, SAS data management and more
5.Ad Networks: The unsold inventory will be bought by ad networks from publishers and try to sell to advertisers using their technology. The popular programmatic advertising platforms for the ad networks are Taboola, Google Double Click Ad Exchange, Rocket Fuel, and more.
6.Ad Exchange: A dynamic platform to buy and sell ad impressions between advertisers and publishers without any intermediaries. Open X, App Nexus, Rubicon Project Exchange are examples of programmatic advertising platforms.
7.Supply Side Platform (SSP): The platform allows publishers to sell display, mobile ad impressions to potential buyers in real-time. Some of the key SSP players are MoPub, AerServ, App Nexus Publisher SSP, and more.
8.Ad Server: This platform is used by advertisers, publishers, ad networks, and ad agencies to run their campaigns. It determines which ad will be displayed on a website and also collect ad performances data such as clicks and impressions Double click for publishers, OPen X Ad server, Ad butler, and more are the examples.
Learn more: Programmatic Advertising Platforms in 2020: A Complete Guide
Is Programmatic advertising worth it?
The programmatic advertising statistics say it all. According to Zenith’s Programmatic Marketing Forecasts 2019, 69% of digital media will be programmatic in 2020.
- The total amount spent programmatically will exceed US$100bn for the first time in 2019, reaching US$106bn by the end of the year, and will rise to US$127bn in 2020 and US$147bn in 2021.
- 72% of digital media will be programmatic in 2021
- Ad spends growth is slowing down to 22% in 2019 due to industry challenges of privacy and supply-chain.
- Brands need to develop new targeting techniques using first-party data and customer data platforms in response to the ongoing death of the cookie.
Programmatic Display Advertising fastest-growing segment.
- The ascent of programmatic display advertising has been rapid. In 2012, only 10.4 % of global digital display spend was programmatic. However, it ballooned to 65.3% in 2019 and it is estimated that the share of programmatic display advertising will grow 69.2 5 and 72% in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
- How does it translate in dollars? In 2012, total digital ad spend was $37.8 billion and the programmatic display market was $3.9 million. Fast forward to today, digital display ad spend is $162.3 billion, out of which $106 billion is invested in programmatic display advertising. In 2021, global digital display ad spend is estimated to reach $204 billion, with $147.1 billion going to be programmatic share.
Image Credit: Marketing Charts
Programmatic marketing by country
One of the benefits of programmatic technology is it shows real-time data that helps companies take swift actions to adjust their strategy as per customer requirements. Digital marketers are considering buying programmatic media in-house due to its transparency. Programmatic has undergone massive growth in the following 6 countries out of which the UK and the US are the most advanced programmatic markets in the share of digital media.
Image Credit: Marketing Profs
As per eMarketer forecast, Programmatic ad spending will reach $59.45 billion in 2019, accounting for 84.9% of the US digital display ad market. It is estimated that 87.5%, or $81 billion, of all US digital display advertisements, will be bought via automated channels in 2021.
Image Credit: eMarketer
The above programmatic advertising statistics prove that the investment has increased Y-o-Y and marketers prefer programmatic advertising to buy digital display ads. Marketers are increasingly allocating their advertising budgets to digital advertising channels as it provides precise data that helps to reach customers effectively.
Learn more: 5 Programmatic Advertising Case Studies That Yielded Exponential Results
Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged in AdTech Industry
Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are two buzzwords in recent times. And why not, as it brings efficiency in whatever we do.
However, AdTech is a messy market now. Ironically, the good and bad part of AdTech is the abundance of data. True, we certainly have all the information to better understand the customers but most marketers aren’t aware of how to leverage the data and use it forward.
The way you advertise-is going to change extremely right before your eyes- thanks to Artificial Intelligence. Not all in the AdTech world have the analytical skills to evaluate the big data as not many are trained to use it and are misinterpreting them.
Adtech partnering with AI can help lower CPC prices, higher click-through rates (CTR), conversions, and better ROI. Let’s check out how AI can help the Adtech industry find better solutions in the following areas.
- AI in Ads Positioning
Developers don’t need to sit and determine which ad position will drive maximum revenue for the website. With the help of AI, employing machine learning algorithms study historical data to find relevant ads for the targeted user group.
Adtech has not used heatmaps previously but AI algorithms use them to learn where the visitors on the website are going and present them with the relevant ads. AI will help marketers to find the best ad positions by studying the maps in detail.
- AI in Ad Network Selection
There are many Ad Networks that provide different kinds of ads to websites owners and required to sort ads according to the websites. This is called Ad mediation and apt to earn high revenue for the websites.
By employing AI for ad optimization it reduces human effort by using a data-oriented approach that includes data, facts, and intelligence to make sure only relevant ads reach the end-user. Data will be user or website’s past history and facts will be website content, geo, and timing. Machine learning algorithms are employed to enhance the best ad-user match.
- Analytics
In the Adtech world, data analytics is not ‘taken seriously’ and publishers.are not happy about it. The AI-based approach will drive reporting and analytics to new levels.
Analytics will help publishers understand the content that drives the audience, placement of the CTA button to turn one time users into loyal users, and increase traffic. It will be a win-win situation for AdTech and parties- publishers, platforms, and users.
AI is the Future of Advertising
Today, digital advertising cannot exist without AI. Behind most online ads are the sophisticated delivery systems in place powered by AI. These systems place the ads before users, the coordination process happens in real-time and generally is automatic. It’s called programmatic advertising.’
According to eMarketer, 86.2% of all digital display ads will be bought via automated channels and nearly $19 billion in additional spending will enter programmatic display platforms between 2018-2020.
Also, 90% of mobile display ads are bought programmatically. On the other hand, AI also powers advertising products offered by Facebook and Google. In 2017, 90% of the new advertising business was captured by these firms.
In recent times, brands are under more pressure to deliver relevant, personalized, and contextual ads to individual customer preferences.
How AI makes Programmatic Advertising better
More companies are turning to AI for creating advertising relevance at scale.
For instance, if you want to advertise on Facebook,-an AI-powered algorithm determines the relevance of the score of your ad. This means that the score impacts the ad delivery directly and influenced by the experience of the ad delivery to Facebook users. Expect a low score if the ad is not liked or is irrelevant.
This decision is made by machine and is beyond your brand’s control independent of strategic or creative decisions
A marketing company like Phrasee launched an AI tool that writes Facebook and Instagram ads. The AI tool assesses a brand’s voice and copy, then the machine writes the ad that performs better than human-written ads. Recently, it helped reduce one client’s cost per lead by 31%. Another AI-powered tool is Albert that helps automate media buying, testing, and optimization. It enhances ad performance and delivers relevant ads to the right person. This shows that relevance at scale is possible in advertising.
Emerging Programmatic AdTech Trends 2020
Image Credit: MarketingToolbox
1. AI in Programmatic Advertising:
Technologies such as artificial intelligence(AI) and machine learning (ML)have involved programmatic ad buying or bid optimization. Programmatic campaigns are used by companies for more targeted net across platforms. By 2020, it is expected that there will be a shift towards automating technologies like AI and ML to get the most from data.
2. First Part Data Move Made Important by GDPR:
After the announcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, last year on cookie crumble or removal of third party cookies is gradually turning out to be beneficial. The regulations protecting the privacy of user data initially looked limiting to ad tech experts but is resulting in cleaner and more reliable data over time.
Learn more: Digital Advertising Industry Plans To Replace Cookies With First-Party Data
3. Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) and Mobile Location:
Digital DOOH combined with mobile location data has the potential to help marketers to drive conversions in the offline world. Integrated ‘home-to-out-of-home’ programmatic advertising approach provides a smooth experience to the customers.
4. Voice-activated Ads:
The adoption of voice-based to in-home smart devices has grown rapidly. Gartner predicted by 2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done through voice-first browsing. Amazon sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices in 2018 compared to 2017. A recent survey by VoiceBot.AI revealed 25% of respondents orders everyday household items through voice assistants followed by apparel and games and entertainment.
Programmatic advertising helps marketers to optimize these ad spaces across in-home smart devices, to on-app audio ad opportunities, and connect to consumers through in-store ads, ads in elevators and taxis, and more.
5. Wearables will enhance programmatic advertising:
Wearables collect data on location, lifestyle, health metrics, and more. The market penetration of smartwatches has grown multifold over the years and programmatic advertising is already making its way into this medium. For instance, it helps advertisers run banner promos to customers on their Samsung or Sony smartwatches. The wearable ecosystem has a huge potential to grow and programmatic adtech can bring greater opportunities.
6. 5G in programmatic advertising:
The high speed and no buffering will encourage the rise of more users to spend time on videos on mobile devices. It will enhance other technologies such as AR-enabled ad displays, VR without headsets, and innovative new digital outdoor mediums.
This will give programmatic advertising new opportunities to run more interactive ads without any lags across mediums. By 2024, the use of 5G in AdTech is predicted to grow to 1.4 billion.
7. Evolution of Personalization:
With Gen Z and Millennials- the biggest demographics -personalization is a priority as they like all things customized. Personalization in advertising is going to be inevitable as the choices of the new generation are different. Therefore, programmatic customization by advertisers is increasing offering personalized, relevant messaging to their target group.
8. Blockchains and Ads.xt:
Ad frauds are increasing over the past few years. A cybersecurity firm Cheq reports that ad fraud damages will touch $26 billion in 2020, $29 billion by 2021, and $32 billion the year after that.
The only way to handle the frauds is by bringing transparency in programmatic advertising. Blockchain and Ads.txt (an Interactive Advertising Bureau initiative – Authorized Digital Sellers) can help to remove unrequired middleman, domain spoofing, and verification of publishers and allow transactions using cryptocurrencies.
Learn More: Advertisers Look For Greater Transparency In Programmatic Ad Buying
9. Programmatic TV, podcasts and audio Ads set to grow:
The content on TV has changed drastically. There is a paradigm shift in TV viewing from cable TV to over-the-top(OTT) like Amazon Prime or Netflix via an internet connection.
Programmatic advertising has a larger role to play to ensure marketers get the best of both worlds. Programmatic TV is also going to get more important with its data-driven approach for buying and delivering ads.
Programmatic in podcasts and audio advertising is also growing. Apps like Spotify and Soundcloud are seeing more user acceptance and a new advertising landscape is being created for companies to monetize on.
10. Omnichannel Programmatic:
Forrester defines omnichannel marketing as ‘the practice of digitally sequencing advertising across channels, which is connected, relevant, and consistent with the customer’s stage in their life cycle.’ This is how programmatic advertising is going to be in 2020 and beyond.
A single marketing resource or an ad can be customized programmatically suiting various platforms through programmatic AdTech.
11. Agencies to work on outcome-based pay:
Discussions are making rounds to switch to an outcome-based remuneration model. With increasing ad frauds and agencies promise programmatic tech, advertisers fear how their budgets were used and where their ads placed. There was a lot of wastage in the space. Media buying companies started giving outcome-based remuneration more prominence. Gradually, advertisers would like to see the full cost chain of their programmatic buys, pushing agencies to outcome-based pay.
12. In House programmatic advertising v/s agency.
An IAB report suggests that nearly 40% executing programmatic trading via in house and 50% publishers also have an in-house model. This means advertisers are looking for more transparency, control of their ad strategies, and outcome.
It makes more sense to have an in-house team for strategizing programmatic ads and an agency partner for implementing parts of it instead of having a full-stack programmatic AdTech in house.
Wrapping up
Yes, Adtech is complicated but the best part is that it allows integrating the whole toolset into a single system. According to Zenith Media, the ad spends on digital media will reach $329 billion in 2021. However, there are major concerns and challenges -Ad Fraud, transparency, and privacy issues need immediate action.
There have been big changes and improvements over what advertisers and publishers used to have earlier but it still needs more work and their expertise to handle the challenges and resolve for good.
5 Programmatic Advertising Case Studies That Yielded Exponential Results
Advertising has come a long way from the early ’70s and with technological shifts, there are incredible options to reach the target customers effectively. We have witnessed the rise of programmatic advertising with the advancement in the digital world.
For the uninitiated, programmatic advertising can be described as automatic buying and optimizing digital campaigns through real-time auctions, where ads are bought at the same time when a visitor loads the website instead of buying directly from the publishers without human interference.
Programmatic advertising is becoming a star strategy and businesses spend almost $60 billion every year. It is forecasted by 2021, 88% of all digital display ad spending will flow via automation.
Image Credit: eMarketer
Explore these five programmatic ad case studies to comprehend how brands are building compelling and successful campaigns.
1. BoxFresh
Challenge:
The men’s footwear brand had lost ground to sports brands like Nike and Adidas over the last couple of years because of its reliance on brick and mortar stores over online sales. The brand aimed to re-establish its brand in the UK and German markets, establish a connection to drive loyalty and repeat business with its target customers.
It concentrated on creating branded casual men’s footwear but reached a point where one in four consumers preferred Boxfresh for their purchase.
Solution:
The brand focused on video-led campaigns advocating their brand ethos- simplicity, value for money, nonconformity and authenticity which are in alignment with target consumers’ own values. Ads on Facebook were segmented based on demographics and interests as well as through first-party based lookalike audiences build. Video campaigns provided tailored messages to the audience’s stage in the buying cycle.
With the newly launched e-commerce website, the brand initially did not retarget cart abandoners and purchasers but model and optimize lookalike audiences prospecting campaigns.
Result:
With a programmatic display campaign, the brand soared above Google benchmarks disrupting the competitive market. The assurance that the brand is connected with the audience own values, display adverts had a click-through rate (CTR) 233%higher than Google’s benchmarks in the UK and 800%higher in Germany. 85% of the users who visited the site through prospecting activities are new users.
The digital agency Europe regional head added,
“The storytelling technique has had incredibly positive effects on the creative performance, which has resulted in great return on spend for Boxfresh. However, it’s important to remember that display is not the final touchpoint in the purchasing journey. Using Cadence, Rakuten Marketing’s data insights and attribution platform, revealed conversion rates for SEO and PPC grew by 169% and 50% in the UK when display campaigns ran alongside other channels. Likewise, the average order value increased by 20%.”
2. ASUS
Challenge:
ASUS has barely 0.3% market share in the Indian Smartphone market. 34% of sales are online and have more than 35+ handsets. With a low market share, it is important to revive the brand and plan a programmatic campaign to attract customers at the buying stage and create brand awareness.
Solution:
The brand integrated real-time data to send feedback on the effectiveness of each audience combination to web ASUS with their OCMPID.
When a user likes something, he adds to the cart. This shows that the user has a higher chance of buying it. On the other hand, there is a chance that he could accept another better deal for a more fitting product. Therefore, the best way was to target the audience through ads based on the cart.
The brand divided the audience into various segments based on – price range, featured buying habits and buying characteristics of the user on Flipkart.
These ads were programmed to reach the consumer on a real-time basis and here it is – when a user adds an ASUS phone in the cart, the brand was informed of the effectiveness of the creative audience combination.
For instance, if a user adds Xiaomi with 3500 mAh battery, ASUS would target them with ads that had 5000 mAh batteries at an even better price.
Results:
Due to a real-time programmatic approach, ASUS met its target to sell more than 1 million units leading to targeting efficiency went up by 3 times. In less than a year, the ASUS market share rose from 0.3 to 3%, a 10x growth.
3. The Economist:
Challenge:
To increase the subscriber base and grab the reader’s attention who are reluctant to try the Economist. Using creative programmatic display, the goal is to reach 650,000 new prospects and stimulate a change in perception.
Solution:
The campaign utilized Economist content and headlines that contained humor, wit, and sparked curiosity. The publication analyzed the extensive audience data which included information on how subscribers responded to the publication’s web and mobile app. Using this data, the Economist determined what content attracted and when. The idea was to link Economist content to the stories ‘the reluctant readers’ were presently reading.
The advertising creative was built in real-time. It matched viewers’ profile and page context to the Economist’s feed before serving an ad to the right people with the right context. For instance, someone could see a featured ad that linked an Economist’s story on US cops using firearms to the story of a police shooting in the Guardian.
Image Credit: Banner flow
Results:
On a £1.2 budget,
- 3.6 million taking actions
- 650,000 new prospects
- ROI of 10.1
The Economists followed up this display campaign with another focus especially on millennials and social networks. It won the 2016 Gold Best use of Programmatic award.
4.Missing People
Challenge:
British charity ‘Missing People’ is an ideal example of how to maximize a small programmatic budget. The charity needs to rescue all the missing children across the UK. With the use of programmatic OOH advertising, it intends to increase reach and impact.
Image Credit: Banner flow
Solution:
Programmatic OOH will help the charity to target those who might miss or disregard print appeal. It also helped to understand that people respond to messages relevant to their area in which they live. And through programmatic it could make a more targeted and location-based appeal.
The move from print to digital was crucial for the charity as it helped to save lives and allowed ads to be adept, creative changing once a child was found.
Result:
Ross Miller, director of fundraising and communication said, “the use of e programmatic use of out-of-home increased the response rate from 50% to 70%.”
5. O2
Challenge:
In 2016, O2 intended to make its “tariff refresh” TV ad more engaging and attractive for a mobile audience. It also wanted to repurpose its TV ads and make them interesting for mobile users.
Solution:
O2 created a system whereby it could take data about mobile usage-device, location, and others to offer personalized messages and video ads based on the user’s profiles.
More than 1000 versions of personalized video ads were made that integrated real-time with the user’s device and location.
Coinciding with the company’s sponsorship of the Rugby World Cup, it launched a website for the users to create rugby-inspired avatars. Using data from the website, O2 launched a campaign targeting those who accessed the website, giving them a personalized video ad and addressed them by their first name and invited to visit the avatar site. It also included a personalized call-to-action button to know whether they have already created the avatar or abandoned the process before finishing.
Result:
Personalized ads had a 128 percent click-through rate and an 11 percent increase in engagement.
Wrapping up
So, are you ready to use programmatic advertising? Well, programmatic adverts have immense potential for all kinds of business in any verticals. Simple but brilliant creative programmatic campaigns can be created to reach the right audience.
TikTok Appoints Former Disney Chairman As New CEO To Capture New Markets.
- Disney veteran Kevin Mayers who oversaw the launches of Disney+ and ESPN+ is leaving the company after 27 years to become the new CEO of TikTok.
- Mayer will take the lead on ByteDance’s music, gaming, and emerging business along with heading TikTok.
- Mayer will start on June 1 and report directly to Bytedance CEO Yiming Zhang.
- TikTok had an immense impact on the music industry and grabbing eyeballs of gaming and esports companies.
TikTok appoints Kevin Mayer as the new CEO after being poached from Disney. Kevin Mayer who was passed over for the Disney CEO role is taking a jump from the entertainment industry’s most esteemed names to one of its most dynamic new arrival.
TikTok’s new CEO plans to explore business opportunities in music and gaming as the company looks to capitalize on a recent increase in app downloads. Mayer, head of The Walt Disney Company’s direct-to-consumer and international business said in a statement,
“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to join the amazing team at ByteDance. Like everyone else, I’ve been impressed watching the company build something incredibly rare in TikTok – a creative, positive online global community – and I’m excited to help lead the next phase of ByteDance’s journey as the company continues to expand its breadth of products across every region of the world.”
Advertisers and brands taking advantage of music trends
TikTok is a significant player in the music industry for discovering new artists and making songs to hit status. The platform contributed to the grand success of Lil Nas X’s record-breaking “Old Town Road” and more recently with chart-toppers like Doja Cat’s “Say So” and Megan thee Stallion’s “Savage,” which are all featured in the TikTok videos.
Advertisers have found new ways to use TikTok music and dance trends to their advantage in order to drive brand awareness among the Gen Z audience. Brands like e.l.f. Cosmetics and Warner Bros. have used original music and dance challenges to attract the audience and generate billions of views and user engagement on the app. As quoted by Business Insider, Evan Horowitz, CEO of the creative agency Movers+Shakers said,
“I think the nature of TikTok as a platform is that it’s one. It’s only natural that brands that create really good music.that the community on TikTok really resonate with, that music can start to trend and be successful outside of the platform.”
Gaming and esports companies jumping onto the bandwagon
Video games companies and esports brands have shown keen interest in the TikTok app as it continues to be popular among Gen Z users of the app.
Many esports brands like FaZe Clan, Team SoloMid (TSM), and 100 Thieves have officially created verified accounts whereas video game content is slowly taking up TikTok’s content recommendation landing page (ForYou). It’s too early for gaming creators on the platform even though esports companies are slowly and carefully exploring TikTok in recent months. Jason Wilhelm, CEO of TalentX Gaming told Business Insider,
“For TikTok, they haven’t really found what is the best way forward for gaming yet. You need a lot of requirements in order to stream video games. TikTok obviously is not set up for that right now, but that is something that we’re going to be figuring out.”
TikTok has seen a significant surge in users since the pandemic hit U.S – 315 million downloads across the iOS and android app stores in 2020 Q1, that’s the most download for one app in a single quarter as per mobile data analysis group Sensor Tower.
Also read: YouTube Shorts: Will it be Able to Capture Tik Tok’s Audience?
Financial Report Card Of The Global Giants And Industries In COVID-19
Media companies are facing distress owing to the pandemic crisis, particularly those relying on advertising revenue. The current situation is precarious that compelled companies to roll out furloughs, pay cuts, or layoffs.
Even though publishers are recording high traffic, there is a mismatch in demand and supply in the ad market. Subscriptions are a silver lining for publishers but again sustainability is in question. Many businesses are impacted due to cancelled live events like sports that would bring a vast sum of revenue. Newsstands sales have also witnessed a fall.
Keeping the above factors in mind, below is the analysis of leading media companies’ financial and quarterly reports and their progress in this crisis.
CONGLOMERATES
Bertelsmann: Ad funded businesses were affected while music, services, and education business performed well.
The German media conglomerate Bertelsmann’s revenue declined by 2.7%. The advertising-funded business Q 1 was “highly affected” by the pandemic. Within the digital business RTL Group specifically, the revenue was down 3.4 % owing to the cancellation of ad bookings at the start of March or postponement of productions.
Music business BMG, its Arvato services business and its education business performed well. Subscription to the online streaming services was up 34% Y-o-Y.
Comcast/NBCUniversal: Broadband business upticks whereas rolling out Peacock streaming service.
Comcast is a large company with its broadband business marks an uptick with signups. and revenues up by8.8%. On the other hand, its theme park, TV and film production business is on hold.
NBCUniversal and newly acquired Sky TV cannot broadcast live sports. The company expects the advertising business to be down significantly in Q2
NBCUniversal Q1 revenue was down 7% and it rolled out ad-supported Peacock streaming service to Comcast customers in April.
Disney: Theme Parks and Sports Broadcast Shut, Disney+ subscribers up.
The crisis led to shutting down of theme parks, and productions and theatre movie releases were put to hold. Ad revenue at its TV business was affected as ESPN couldn’t air any live sports.
However, it stepped up the launch of ad-free streaming service in European countries. Disney+ had 33.5 million subscribers by the end of Q1 and an average of $5.63 in monthly revenue per paid user. Disneyland Shanghai did reopen, at 30% capacity on May 11.
WarnerMedia (owned by AT&T): Q1 Revenues severely hit.
Recently, folded its Xandr advanced advertising unit into a bigger WarnerMedia business.
Q1 revenues of WarnerMedia was down 12% on the year-ago quarter to $7.4 billion due to lower ad revenues in March on sports cancellations. Movie productions are also on hold.
PUBLISHERS
News Corp: Circulation and Subscription revenue grows, Ad revenue takes a hit.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp includes various leading and established brands like The Wall Street Journal, The Sun, and many more in U.S, U.K, and Australia.
Overall revenue declined 7.8% to $2.27 billion in Q1 due to weak ad business, low ad revenues, and negative currency movements. April ad revenue for Dow Jones declined 20% from the prior year whereas for News Corp Australia and News UK fell by more than 45% which includes negative currency impact.
The Wall Street Journal reported circulation and subscription revenue growth by 1% reaching a record subscriber base of 3 million overall, of which 2.2 million are digital-only.
The New York Times: Focus on Subscription Revenue to thrive in the post coronavirus world.
The NYT is leading more emphasis on subscription revenues to reduce its dependency on ad revenue to be in a better position and thrive post coronavirus world.
NYT recorded the highest quarterly increase in new digital-only subscriptions-up 587,000 in Q1 -leading to a 5.4% increase in subscription revenue to $285.4 million. Ad revenue fell by 15% and likely to fall further in Q2 somewhere between 50% and 55%.
“Other revenues” segment is estimated to fall around 10% as licensing revenue from Facebook News is expected to be “more than offset”- by lower revenue from its live events and its TV series.
TV AND CABLE
Discovery: Their channels are new sports.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav on the Q1 earnings call said, “Our channels are the new sports — the numbers are huge” around its lifestyle channels like HGTV, Food Network, and DIY. The engagement with the characters and talent is enormous. Discovery is also saving money productions through the pandemic as the film shows from home.
Total revenue declined from 1£ in the first quarter to $2.68 billion and expects advertising revenue to fall significantly in 2020. Many sports events are postponed and 90% of the sports deals have force majeure provisions or provisions to not pay for the content that is not received.
Fox: Fox News gains the largest audience.
Revenue for the three months to March 31 rose 25% supported by the forecast of Super Bowl in February, an increase in political advertising, and growth in affiliate revenue. But in March entered coronavirus crisis leading to the postponement of sports events and suspensions of entertainment shows.
80% who signed up for Fox Nation streaming service from Fox news continued to become paying subscribers and advertisers from sectors like technology and communications looked for the transition from sports buy to news buy. Ad revenue within local TV stations to be down 50% from last year.
ViacomCBS: Streaming revenue continues to grow and more on its way441.2 b
Revenue for Q1 fell 6% to $6.67 billion of which advertising revenue marked a 19% drop though a comparison to last year would be unfair when it aired Super bowl and basketball tournament.
Streaming continues to grow- domestic and digital revenue up by 51% to $471 million and had 13.5 million streaming subscribers. It intends to build “a broad pay streaming product in multiple markets” over the next 12 months. It announced a distribution deal with YouTube TV, which will carry 14 ViacomCBS channels
DIGITAL GIANTS
Alphabet or Google: Faring well in this crisis and a better situation.
Q1 revenue stood at $41.2 billion, up 13% Y-o-Y basis(including Google cloud revenue and the ‘other bets’ segment).
According to CFO Ruth Porat, Youtube’s March revenue “decelerated to a year-on-year growth rate in the high single digits” and Google Network March revenue declined “in the low double digits.”
Google Cuts Marketing Budgets by 50%, Freezes Hiring, and launched a “Journalism Emergency Relief Fund”.
Baidu: A closer watch on the signs of recovery in the upcoming result.
Chinese advertising giant Baidu was the first to report the coronavirus crisis set to affect media companies and expect a revenue drop of between 5% and 13% due to advertiser pullback.
In April, it suspended updating content on certain newsfeed channels within its app due to government directives which may impact its marketing services revenue. On May 18, Baidu will give the next quarterly update, and would be worth watching whether there is any recovery in the ad business.
Amazon: The advertising business grew as directly related to eCommerce sales
Amazon’s Q1 revenue soared as consumers quickly shifted to shopping online amidst the coronavirus crisis. Conversely, revenue rose 26%, and profit dropped 29% compared to last year’s quarter. The cost grew to finish the surge in orders
In the financial statement, the ‘other’ category is advertising business- revenue grew by 40% to $3.9 billion in Q1. The growth is consistent with a little downward pressure in March but no major impact as its directly related to eCommerce sales. ‘
Facebook: Post Strong Earnings, Exceeds Projections
Facebook ad revenue grew by 17% Y-o-Y to $17.4 billion despite the instability in the digital ad market due to COVID-19.
Facebook saw strength in the advertiser’s vertical- gaming, technology, and e-commerce whereas travel and automotive were the weakest verticals in the first three weeks of March.
Facebook had Pledged $2M Grant Funding To Support Publishers Financially.
Snapchat: Users and Revenue Increases, ad spend declines
Snapchat reported in its Q1 2020 earnings – strong gains in both users and revenues but a dip in advertiser spend despite the growing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. the company reported a 44 percent (Y-o-Y) increase in its first-quarter revenue to $462 million. Snap benefited as people used animated lenses to keep in touch with loved ones in this lockdown. Snapchat’s daily active user (DAV) base reached 229 million.
Direct-response advertising accounts for more than half of the company’s revenue and clients in sectors like gaming, e-commerce, and consumer packaged goods continue to spend even during the crisis.
Twitter: Work in progress over AdTech concerns
Twitter’s user growth jumped in March as people rushed to check the latest news updates related to the coronavirus. Despite a 9% growth in daily users, revenue was up only 2.6% to $807.6 million and reported a loss of 8.4 million in Q1 results.
In comparison to its competitors, Twitter doesn’t have a direct-response advertising business. Therefore, the company is improving its mobile application promotion products and rebuilding its ad server which is expected to be up and running by Q2.
Mobile Gaming Industry Bank On People Locked Inside Homes Due To COVID-19.
- Even as stock markets plummet two sectors actually doing well are streaming services and online gaming.
- The mobile-gaming category is finding the brightest spot even as other businesses face the heat of countrywide lockdown owing to coronavirus outbreak.
- The mobile gaming category is more than a $60 billion-a-year market and seeing a massive surge in ad revenue.
Even as businesses across sectors face the heat of lockdown owing to coronavirus pandemic, online gaming has witnessed a welcome spike. There are more than 2.6 billion gamers, each spending over eight hours per week playing worldwide.
Why it matters
As hanging out gets difficult, gamers are active members of their communities, socializing with each other and exploring the virtual world – A world free of coronavirus. Recently, Netflix CEO admitted that when it comes to screen time, video games and not streaming services is their biggest competitor. For instance, Netflix has 167 million members, whereas one of Epic’s games, Fortnite, has over 200 million users.
Driving the news
Video games used to be played on big screens through expensive consoles but now when we think of video games, we will think of our mobile phones instead. Mobile gaming is emerging as a dominant digital ad platform and marketers are planning to leverage it as the world goes online from home.
- The months of quarantine and pandemic has changed brand engagement with the consumers. People are streaming entertainment, watching the news, and engaging with friends and family on playing games especially mobile games. Therefore, marketers are reimagining their brands and agencies are restructuring to communicate effectively on behalf of the brand and seize every opportunity on the way.
Yes, the trends are changing. The future of addressable video lives is now in the palm of your hands. The app is your TV and mobile gaming is primetime.
By the numbers: AdColony new survey in March 2020 showed mobile gaming jumping more than 24 percent as the mobile audience grew more reliant on smartphones for entertainment while sheltering in homes.
- Increase in mobile game downloads by 60 percent compared to the 30-days before the survey month March.
- The increase in casual mobile games is 28 percent whereas board game downloads grew 16 percent and there were major acquisitions too.
- Word game download grew 8 percent with a six percent lift in the already high number of sessions.
- Hardcore gamer categories like action, adventure, and role-playing have started to move upward.
61 percent of marketers polled said the coronavirus situation is leading to changes in content that they are comfortable having their ads placed adjacent to.
The big picture
Mobile games have more reach than traditional T.V. Additionally, they are backed by the best parts of digital buys – addressability, creativity, analytics, and attribution. This allows advertisers an opportunity to rethink how to leverage sight, sound, and motion to engage customers combined with the surge in users.
With In-app gaming, the brand is safe and accountable. For viewability, fraud, and accuracy, measurement vendors have built programmatic solutions, and data is defined and virtually universally accessible. In these uncertain times, the app has a lot of scope with innovative opportunities for smart marketers to go big on consumers.
Wunderman Thompson Brings Agency Office Buzz To Employee’s Homes.
COVID-19 has compelled the world into self-isolation which means working from home indefinitely- which is challenging for highly collaborative and creative industries like marketing and advertising. Technology bridges the gap of connectivity but nothing can replace the buzz that comes from working in a busy agency. Therefore, Wunderman Thompson Canada is keeping you company with the ambient noise of an agency office from the pre-pandemic times.
The 8-hour soundtrack spans from 9 a.m coffee to 4 p.m happy hours, every elevator ping, chatter, and email notifications of a typical office day, recorded by the agency’s remote employees. The audio is called ‘Isolation Station’ on SoundCloud and is hoping that this tracklist might recreate the familiar and nostalgic buzz which will help employees feeling sick of working from home in the pandemic, get the feel of a more productive setting. Even the track names remind of office life with titles such as “But first, coffee” and “Beer o’clock”.
Wunderman Thompson Canada executive creative director Ari Elkouby said that they tapped real Wunderman Thompson Canada employees to record themselves having conversations with colleagues over Microsoft Teams and on their mobile devices to make the soundtrack truly authentic.
“We created a story map over the course of eight hours and got employees to contribute to different parts of the day. That dialogue was mixed over an audio bed of office ambient sounds to complete the track.”
Ari Elkouby also mentioned that Isolation can be scary and less ideal for many, however, this is to show the team and industry that we are together and provides much-needed comfort in a creative and fun way. Who knew that a conference room discussion meet can be so nostalgic?
This is similar to a campaign from the New York Public Library, in which the sounds of the bustling New York City were recreated.
This is also an interesting read: Noise-O-Meter By Bose Rewards Rising Noise Level With Discounts On Its Headphones.
Publishers Withdraw Ad Inventory From The Market To Protect Ad Prices
Generally, conventional wisdom says a publisher would sell more ad units at a lower price in a weak market. However, publishers are doing the opposite and pulling their inventory to take a short-term revenue hit and protect their inventory price from falling further. This will help their business in the long run by not falling into the trap of price cuts which would be difficult to win back.
Programmatic advertising market operates under an auction system, lower advertiser demand, and higher web traffic to publishers site has pushed programmatic ad CPM’s down by 10%-20%. Since buyers are now more loyal to price than brands, publishers are preventing prices to tank further to a point of devaluing their inventory over the long term. While some publishers are reducing their inventory in the open market to keep the prices from falling further, others are using ad slots to push internal subscriptions or eliminating ad slots from the pages. For instance, Buzzfeed is getting rid of display ads that receive lower viewability scores.
Unfortunately, the publishers are acting independently and not considering the impact on the broader market. They aim to protect their own inventory prices from falling low as they fear it will take a longer time to return to the previous levels especially if advertisers are buying at a bargain now and unwilling to pay more later when things are back to normal.
As quoted by Digiday, Andy Ellenthal, CEO of the ad sales reporting platform STAQ shares a similar opinion and said, When advertisers return to their normal spending amounts, “they’re going to absolutely remember that a publisher was 25 cents in April of 2020.”
Image Credit: Digi Day
As per the above STAQ graph, the average U.S. display ad CPM in the open auction has fallen from a high of $1.34 on March 1 to $0.91 on May 3.
Even though average CPM has bottomed out on April 8 at $0.83, Andy Ellenthal believes CPM’s will not experience a U-shaped recovery but more of an L-shaped recovery, a slow and steady upward trend. This means publishers whose CPM has fallen least will have to cover the shorter route to return to previous prices.
DigiDay interviewed a few publishing executives and one publishing executive said,
“I’ve got to manage my supply to keep it in balance with demand, and demand has fallen so fast that now we’re trying to get ahead of the game. How much supply can we take off the table to control the CPM without actually truly hurting our business more than it’s hurt now?”
A second publisher executive said that the removal of one ad unit across their sites is equivalent to more than 1 billion monthly impressions. It is a generous number but not significant enough to move the market. Media Math’s DSP sees more than 180 billion impressions each day.
On this Ethenall said,
“These publishers always have to strike a balance between fill and yield. Chances are they are not going to fill 100% of their ad slots right now. If you have a billion impressions that go unsold anyway, what’s the value of them if they’re only pulling down pricing for your better impressions?”
Many publishers have adjusted their floor price to a minimum level at which the inventory can be sold. However, the lower ad demand has made the publishers pull inventory and protect prices as inside programmatic advertising, everything revolves around “Price.”
One of the publishers used to increase floor price by 15% every two weeks since the beginning of Q1. However, in the second half of March, a significant number of impressions went unsold. The publisher could have reduced the price to sell his inventory but he didn’t and said, “in no way do I want to drop my floors to 25 cents because I don’t want crappy ads coming in.”
Lower the ad prices, the higher the chances of giving in to undesirable advertisers who can jeopardize the ability to attract genuine advertisers. Publishers use this opportunity of lower demand to seek out prospective advertisers, but they are wary that lower CPM can alleviate advertiser’s interest in doing programmatic direct or private marketplace deals.
Publishers are also looking at this opportunity to experiment repurposing of impressions that can boost their other businesses and become less reliant on advertisers. For instance, if a publisher can see that house ad proclaiming its subscription product can attract more subscribers and yield than those impressions to advertisers, they would monetize on house campaigns and not take revenue from programmatic advertising.
Noise-O-Meter By Bose Rewards Rising Noise Level With Discounts On Its Headphones.
Wunderman Thompson and Bose launches Noise-O-Meter to bring noise-cancelling savings to loud homes.
The new normal for millions of office goers is Working From Home (WFH) owing to COVID-19 pandemic. Many are able to maintain their productivity while working from the home offices but it may not be true for all. The volume indoors can be so high that the streets outside may sound calm and quiet.
To combat this cacophony, Bose is taking a singular approach and offering savings on its newest and innovative noise-cancelling headphones: The louder your home office, the larger your discount.
The new video ‘Noise-o-meter’ is developed by Wunderman Thompson, Dubai, and launched it in UAE. It measures ambient noise levels and instantaneously converts the decibels into discounts.
Bose Noise-Canceling Headphones 700 was launched in a new era of audio technology. Bose partnered with Wunderman Thompson Dubai, which engineered a unique algorithm for interpreting sound data. Thus, offering Bose fans a playful, enriching, and rewarding way to get their hands on these unrivalled headphones. The video ad is a blend of creativity and innovation.
Pablo Maldonado, Executive Creative Director at Wunderman Thompson Dubai, explains:
Unwelcome decibels are everywhere, from the whooshing hairdryer to that rattling washing machine and those boisterous neighbors. We wanted people to have some fun even as they save more and bring the calm inside. What makes Noise-O-Meter extra rewarding for us is the fact that it was dreamt up and brought to life from our home offices!
Real-Time Marketing Is Disruptive, But How Real It Really Is?
80% of business buyers expect companies to respond and interact with them in real-time suggests a report.
To date, most real-time marketing of leading brands focuses on demand generation, advertising, promotion, sales, and service. In Gartner’s report last August, Vice President analyst Mike McGuire said,
“Event-triggered and real-time marketing will have the biggest impact on marketing activities in the next five years…However, before marketers can realize the benefits of these technologies, they must first become proficient in predictive analytics and delivering personalized communications.”
The research firm reports brands are combining behavioral analytics and marketing automation to deliver real-time marketing efforts based on specific customer behaviors -but according to the findings, many marketers lack a ‘real’ business case for real-time engagement.
REAL PROBLEMS OF REAL-TIME MARKETING
The primary problem is, there are 7,000 marketing technology solutions but there is no way to connect and combine all the different systems together in a way to deliver sustainable real-time marketing efforts, points out Pegasystems Product Marketing Manager Andrew LeClair.
He shares that there is data all over the place but our systems and people are not connected. In his Discover MarTech presentation, he said,
“There’s a bunch of complexity. We’ve got inbound that’s over here and outbound over there — and paid is off on some island somewhere nobody knows. Not to mention all the other systems that touch the customer — things like customer service or billing applications.”
Marketers are unable to put multiple platforms together to create a centralized decision-making authority- one that can deliver actual real-time marketing events based on customer engagement and behavior.
HOW TO MAKE REAL-TIME MARKETING WORK
Image Credit: Marketing Land
With real-time in batches taking hours, hundreds of data integration, disconnected inbound and outbound- customers get lost in the shuffle.
During the webinar, LeClair said there is a need to find and deliver the next course of actions across channels in under 100 milliseconds. What does this mean?
This means real-time marketing is reliant on four specific capabilities- detection, data, decision, and delivery. At first, marketers must be able to detect or sense a customer’s need or opportunity. This means having systems in place to detect opportunity via simple events like conversations with CSR, or click-through emails. Conversely, there are non-events – events that were expected but didn’t happen.
After the events have been detected, data needs to be gathered before the next best action. According to LeClair, marketers need to access and assemble real-time information – customer’s emotions, intent, and behaviour. Data throws some light on their end goal and their location is also needed. All this information is essential to identify their context and what are their needs
After a comprehensive data assessment, the next best action can be determined and optimize for a real-time marketing opportunity. This may include delivering the right content at the right time, a personalized offer, or sending emails to follow up or more.
When marketers have fine-tuned these four capabilities, they can determine whether or not it’s time to sell to the customer, nurture the relationship or decide not to engage if it doesn’t add value to the given situation.
On the Under 100- milliseconds challenge, LeClair said in the webinar,
“From initial detection to assembling our data to making that decision to then executing — and how that impacts the customer experience — if we’re able to do all of that in less than 100-milliseconds for any channel, that is the ideal state. That’s where the best in class organizations live and breathe.”
BENEFITS OF REAL-TIME MARKETING
LeClair shared the results of the impact of real-time marketing efforts from a Total Economic Impact report conducted by Forrester on Pega’s clients. Companies generated $226 million worth of incremental revenue gains and $193 million in retained revenue on implementing Pega’s real-time marketing tools. He further commented,
“Because we’re sensing needs in real-time, we can be proactive in our retention efforts, reducing our churn, reaching out to the customer before they even get the chance to think about leaving, And that’s really, at the end of the day, how we optimize for customer lifetime value which is what all of this is about.”
