The Biggest Holiday Shopping Trends of 2016
Mobile a major factor in global
e-commerce sales this holiday season.
Did you know that worldwide retail e-commerce sales will climax at $1.9 trillion by the end of this year?
According to eMarketer, this year’s US holiday retail e-commerce is forecasted to grow 17% hitting $95 billion, and will represent nearly 11% of total holiday retail sales – the largest share of the pie, ever.
So, what are the biggest marketing trends we’re seeing as the holiday e-commerce season ramps up?
1. Sales growth driven by smartphones
Double-digit growth is expected all the way through 2020 when sales will hit $4 trillion. E-commerce is huge, especially during the holiday season and mobile is a driving factor of this growth.
Retailers are in fact embracing mobile and seeking to improve the user’s purchasing experience on mobile.
Improved user experiences, bigger screens, and easy, efficient, and convenient payment methods are likely the main reasons why sales are improving on smartphones.
But more improvement is required to motivate more mobile conversions.
Earlier this year, GfK on behalf of Facebook IQ ran a study of 2400 adults who used mobile phones, tablets, desktops or laptops to research or buy items from online stores over three months. Consumers bought across a range of categories including consumer electronics, clothing, home appliances, home goods, and beauty (AdWeek).
Although 55% of participants chose to purchase on mobile because of the convenience factor, the study revealed there are significant challenges that still exist for mobile sales.
70% of participating shoppers stated that mobile website and app experiences can still be improved, and that includes a more streamlined final payment process.
Privacy problems, the inconvenience of multi-screen sequential browsing issues, accidental clicks on small screens, and clunky check out processes were all concerns expressed even by mobile friendly consumers.
2. Local mobile search will rise
Multiple consumer touch points are important in the process towards a completed conversion. One of the biggest pros of having a brick and mortar store to service consumers is enabling clients to actually touch and feel a product – a critical, real world touch point.
Interestingly enough, prospective clients are doing so with products in store and on their screens, simultaneously. Mobile in-store searches are up by over 30% according to Google.
Shoppers are increasingly buying on their screens within stores, despite the checkout being so near.
Take me as an example, I’ve been to Ikea a lot this past month (like 5 times and we’re only halfway through the month). Each and every time, I’ve hopped on Ikea’s free WIFI on my iPhone and run some searches before adding items to my online cart.
In fact, Google tells us that 43% of mobile shoppers in consumer electronics have purchased products on their phones while looking at said products in the aisle.
With so much information available at their fingertips for digitally savvy shoppers always looking for deals, you can bet this trend will keep on growing well into 2017. For marketers, this means capitalizing on programmatic geolocation targeting capabilities.
3. Retailers are focusing on unique in-store experiences, supported by strong social media presence
The holidays is one of those times of years when delighting consumers isn’t just part of the spectacle, it’s a necessity.
Over the top window displays, mini-concerts, and special promotions are all part of pushing consumer desire to buy. A couple weeks ago the Hudson’s Bay in downtown Toronto had Mariah Carey perform as they unveiled their always well received holiday windows. The event generated a tonne of hype and free social media buzz produced by the audience in attendance.
Creating memorable experiences is a major retailer responsibility to curate demand, considering consumers know that there is always a deal happening somewhere.
Millennials in particular, drivers of the global economy, generally believe the experience is just as important as the product.
Retailers need to turn to technology to improve the already hectic holiday shopping experience if they hope to boost sales. Self-service technology like in-store kiosks to help with navigation or stock checks (e-catalogs), or express checkout services are all ways that retailers can engage consumers in store and win this holiday season.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
18 Simple Ways You Can Segment Your Audience Data in 2017
Marketers must re-examine their audience data and segment creatively. Look beyond just demographics.
We’re midway through November already. The holiday lights are out, the Christmas décor is going up. Soon, we cue the endless music.
Yes, 2016 is coming to a close and as the end draws nearer, it’s high time we start thinking about next year’s revenue goals and ad budget. And to do that, advertisers need to re-examine first, and foremost, their audience data.
Earlier this week we mentioned the importance of audience data in programmatic buying. We argued that ensuring that you have granular audience segments in place to run specific and individual campaigns, rather than broadly scoped ones, will help you find greater success.
While simple demographics like age, gender, and location are great starting points, marketers need to get more specific.
So in the spirit of specificity, here are 18 different ways marketers can segment their audience data to double their ROI in the New Year.
Demographic Segmentation
Demographic segmentation is one of the most common ways advertisers can segment their audiences. These common attributes include the following familiar categories which form the basis of how marketers determine how to market their products.
1. Age
2. Household Income
3. Gender
4. Geolocation
5. Language
6. Education
7. Seasonal
These basic demographics are important to consider because based on, for example, the age groups of your audience, your messaging and even medium may change.
If you’re a cell phone service provider, the creatives you use to reach a millennial audience will be entirely different from your messaging for the baby boomer generation. The packages you sell may differ based on the needs of each age group. On top of this, gender and geolocation will affect the way you design your creatives and where you deliver them.
But wait, there are WAY MORE ways to segment your audience by demographics:
8. Birthday: If you can further segment your audience by birthday, this means you can even run special birthday offers. Sephora, for example, does a great job with this with their Beauty Insider VIB birthday gifts.
9. Weather: Weather based targeting is gathered the same way as geolocation and can influence what products marketers may choose to promote, as well as the messaging that goes along with it.
For example, a fitness clothes retailer may run an ad featuring anti-rain gear in a rainy weather geolocation, and hot weather gear elsewhere.
10. Life Stage: You ever change your status to ‘engaged’ on Facebook and then suddenly, you’re bombarded with ads for diamond rings and wedding gowns (yes that happened to me)?
Life stage targeting can be incredibly effective because it’s based on a period in life your audience may be particularly conscious of.
From upcoming nuptials, to entering college for the first time, retirement, or pregnancies, these are major life events and stages that marketers should consider to deliver the right audience to the right audience at the right time.
Behavioral Segmentation
11. Cart Abandonment: For many consumers, price, timing, and shipping are often the culprits behind cart abandonment.
But segmenting out clients who do so – clients who are often on the verge of converting – can help you tailor your retargeting campaign messaging to remind them about what they’re missing out on or if prices change.
12. Type of Shopper: Is your audience a bargain shopper, a luxury shopper, an online-only shopper? Different ‘types’ of shoppers respond to different sales and discounts. The way you sell to a bargain hunter from a luxury shopper vary greatly.
13. Buying History: What does your audience’s historical shopping data look like? Do they buy similar items? Are they always on the hunt for a new tech gadget?
Knowing your audience’s click and purchase history is great for upselling by suggesting similar or complementary products at the final check out.
14. Engagement Level: Highly engaged customers are your best customers because they also act as your brand advocates. Engaged customers spend more on average according to 12ahead, and brands can take advantage of their loyalty by rewarding these clients.
Segment out your highly engaged audience and reward them by allowing them to contribute their ideas to product improvement like Starbucks’ ‘My Starbucks Idea’ or Lay’s Do us a Flavour campaign.
15. Psychographics: It’s like demographics, but more related to your audience’s affinity towards specific values, hobbies, political views, and spending habits. As Hubspot puts it, “demographics explain ‘who’ your buyer is, while psychographics explain ‘why’ they buy.”
It’s important to segment out your psychographic information because you might have two or more completely different sets of psychographics to one set of demographics. Your single male audience aged 25-35 located in Vancouver may all be sports lover, but only half may be inclined to do sports while the other prefer to watch sports.
Social Data Segmentation
16. Brand Affinity: Brand affinity segmentation identifies groups of audiences that have a certain attraction to specific brands and the lifestyles they espouse. For example, Nike and the Just Do It attitude.
You can segment your audience out by specific brands or even by a competitor’s with similar products. If you’re an start up sports gear company attempting to disrupt the market and challenge dominating brands, marketing based on brand affinity can be one way to target your competitor’s audience.
In other cases, brand affinity is an excellent way to inspire cross or co-branded marketing initiatives like this example between BMW and Louis Vuitton.
17. Lifestyle: Your audience segments by lifestyle are ascertained usually by a combination of psychographic, past purchasing data, and behavioural data.
Be it the Savvy Entrepreneur, the Fashion Insider, the Tech Enthusiast, or the Health and Fitness Junkie – lifestyle segments are usually where brands find their brand advocates, influencers, trend setters, and early adopters.
These are the groups of individuals who categorically identify with a certain way of life that is aligned with the brand.
18. Interests: What are your consumer’s favourite television shows, movies, and sports teams? What kind of music do they listen to? What cuisines and restaurants do they love?
These are examples of interests that your audience may identify with which can in many ways dictate the types of promotions you may execute whether online or off.
Now you have 18 more ways to segment your audience data. Now get out there and get creative with your segmentation and double that ROI in 2017.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
7 Tips That Will Take Your Programmatic Buying to the Next Level
Knowing your audience at large isn’t enough. You must segment in detail.
Programmatic is all about selling to specific audience segments. Knowing your audience is therefore key to success.
It starts with identifying your audience’s most urgent concerns. Decoding your audience’s main problems will have a profound impact on not just your marketing and messaging, but also on the way you conduct your business overall.
1. Knowing who your audience at large isn’t enough. You must segment in detail.
Audience segments will allow you to clearly define your targeting parameters. Demographics like age, gender and location are great, but they may not be granular enough. For example, say you’re a travel company and you know you have a strong millennial audience. But segment deeper: pockets of your millennial audience may prefer to travel at very specific times of the year and to certain places only. Some may prefer quiet, luxurious retreats, while others prefer extreme outdoor adventures.
Properly segmenting your audiences will allow you to target with more precision and relevancy which are keys to conversion.
2. Understand the Customer Journey
Knowing your audience helps you learn why your audience buys. But getting to know your customer journey helps you determine the how and when they buy.
How do you do this? Make sure that you’re properly tracking your audience’s behaviour and actions as they visit your website. If you work with a DMP, events based data can provide a lot of insight into your audience behaviour.
- Consider the average time spent between first website visit and first conversion. This tells you how long it takes your audience to decide to buy.
- What’s your audience’s pathway towards a conversion? This tells you precisely which pieces of content your audience views before they convert which helps highlight good content from bad.
- Which sales channel results in the highest sales? Knowing your rate of sales per channel helps to identify your best performing channels so you can reallocate your resources to focus on those, or optimize your other channels.
Dissecting all of this will help you optimize your customer’s buying journey and user experience towards more conversion.
3. Set Clear Goals
As with everything in life, setting goals leads to success. The same goes for programmatic buying, so ensure your goals are clear, measurable, and attainable.
Ask yourself and your team, what goals you want to achieve. Do you want to generate more online sales? Or boost brand awareness? Or perhaps you want to influence offline consumer behaviour?
Keep the following KPIs in mind:
- CTR (click-through rates)
- CPA (cost-per-action), CPC (cost-per click) and CPM (cost-per mille)
- Conversions
- App installs
- Viewability
- Reach and frequency
Programmatic buys enable you to measure your audience’s online buying behaviour at nearly every point of the purchasing funnel. Beyond these tangible results, marketers also want to measure brand impact.
While harder to measure, it’s not impossible to correlate. Look to lift in branded searches, social media engagement growth, and attitudes towards your brand as indicators of brand impact even when you’re executing programmatically.
4. Invest in Brand Safety with Premium Inventory
For marketers, there are a number of things that are top of mind when you run a campaign. First, your ad spend budget is finite. You need to make sure that what you spend ensures maximum ROI. Second, your brand reputation is at stake every time you run anything digitally.
So how do you make sure your brand stays safe but you get the most bang for your buck? Invest in your own brand safety and go with premium inventory.
But keep this in mind, not all “premium inventory” are equal. Premium inventory is set within the context of high-quality, brand-safe content – on trusted and reputable properties.
Working with vendors that have exclusive relations with publishers can ensure that your ads only land on these properties. However, for added brand safety look for vendors that provide additional anti-ad fraud security measures. Vendors that work with GeoEdge or Integral Ad Science are concerned with putting your brand safety first.
Demand more from your advertising partners and get a better understanding of how their premium inventory is bought and sold. Ask them which other platforms and exchanges do they work with? The answers will tell you the types of security measures your ad partner has in place to prevent ad fraud and ensure your ad dollars aren’t wasted.
5. Always Employ Data
If you’re running your campaigns without insightful audience data, your ads might as well have never been seen.
The more granular and accurate data you have, the more opportunities you have to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of your campaigns. Data helps determine how well you target, how far reaching your ads are, how many conversions you will achieve, and ultimately, how much revenue you make.
Data can come in the form of 1st party, generally the data you as a marketer collect, 2nd party, non-proprietary data unique data retrieved from a partner, and 3rd party data, aggregated data usually from DMPs that can be built into custom targeting segments.
While each are important on their own, combining your data layers will transform your targeting capabilities and help your campaigns perform better.
6. Use Relevant Creatives
We’ve talked about the significance of relevant creatives before and we’re going to say it again. If your creatives and messaging aren’t relevant, all your audience segmenting and granular targeting parameters are wasted efforts.
If your campaign messaging isn’t relevant to your target audience, it won’t resonate and therefore won’t result in the actions you aimed to stir from your potential customers. Additionally, if you’re always using the same ad copy for your campaigns, you reduce the power of that ad’s ability to persuade.
Split test your creatives, from copy, to images, to the colour of your CTA buttons to optimize for the best results. Refresh your creatives often so you don’t bore your audience.
Consider using Dynamic Creative Optimization platforms (DCO). DCOs can drive better engagement by swapping out components of an ad dynamically, in real time. DCOs can help increase the efficiency of this process, and helps deliver the most relevant creatives depending on your audience’s pass behaviour and targeting parameters.
7. Go Mobile – Now
Everyone has gone mobile. That includes your audience. Are you reallocating enough budget to the mobile market? Optimizing for mobile right now may be one of the best things a marketer can do to boost their campaign results.
In 2015, the Pew Research Center estimated that 64% of American adults own a smartphone of some kind. For many, their mobile devices are their primary way of retrieving information.
In the US, programmatic digital display ad spending will reach $22.10 billion this year – an increase of nearly 40% over last year. A big driver of this growth in programmatic spending is mobile and eMarketer predicts that US mobile programmatic ad spend will reach $15.45 billion by the end of the year to represent 69% of all US programmatic digital display ad spend.
The shift towards mobile has been happening for years and marketers must adapt. Realize that the executions that worked on desktop may not work on mobile. Experimentation on the mobile frontier may be what puts you ahead of the competition.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com.
4 Ways to Optimize Your Holiday Campaigns for Maximum ROI
From segmenting your data to using a CMP; consider the following.
Put away the pumpkin spice lattes, it’s nearly time to switch over to the egg nog. Every good marketer has at this point fully planned and scheduled their holiday marketing strategies. Campaigns are just about ready to launch. But of course, there is always room for improvements.
Before you launch those campaigns, consider the following 4 ways to optimize your performance campaigns for this holiday season.
- Target creatives according to segmented audience data
If you combine the power of compelling creatives with insightful audience data, you can target your audience more precisely and with relevancy. Consumers are much more inclined to engage with ads that are relevant to their needs. The more interruptive the ad, the more likely they’ll put the blinders on.
Let’s take the Amanda Foundation’s fantastic campaign which is a prime example of how useful segmented audience data can be for targeting.
Each of the advertiser’s creatives uses a shelter animal to promote adoptions. But the messaging is uniquely tailored to the audience based on known browsing behaviour/interests, and demographic data.
So if the viewer is a known foodie who loves trying new restaurants, delivering them creative number three would be perfect to inspire engagement.
- Consider using a Creative Management Platform
Creative management platforms (CMPs) are powerful design tools for the programmatic marketer. CMPs are less technical than Dynamic Creative Optimization tools (DCOs) but also allows designers to make large ad sets as well as small changes to individual creatives. CMPs often have pre-set creative templates that cuts down on design time and makes duplication and customization simple.
It’s a scalable creative production environment where you can create and iterate on only the best performers.
- Remember the importance of “Micro Moments” on mobile
According to Google, 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a business within 24 hours and 28% of those searches results in a purchase. A lot of research is in the pre-sale buyer journey and this will spike as we head into the holiday season.
Google’s series on “I-Want-to-Buy Moments” examined one shopper’s micro-moments (by way of searches, clicks and website visits) over the course of one month to understand how much and how digital research played a role in her purchasing decisions.
The study shows that there are over 1000 digital touch points over a single month leading up to the consumer’s purchase.
Google also shows us the breakdown of her mobile versus desktop search paths:
So how can marketers win in these ‘micro-moments’?
Be there and be useful. Considering how much research goes into a consumer’s journey now a days, retargeting your ads is a good way to re-engage consumers with buying intent. Remember, although a lot consumers do their research on mobile, buying still happens mainly on desktop. Even upon checkout, marketers can reintroduce promotions, deals, and suggested products for upselling.
- Rotate your ads – or run dynamic creatives
Static banner ads are alright, if they’re well targeted. But banner blindness is indeed a real problem. Keep your visitors curious by rotating fresh creatives in to replace stale ones.
You can up your performance by employing dynamic html5 creatives as well. Why show case only one product, when you can highlight multiple? This is where using a CMP comes in particularly useful as these platforms are often equipped with dynamic creative templates where you simply have to plug in your raw assets.
Best Buy does a really good job at this. Get more out of your ad placement and do more to entice with fresh creatives.
So if you’re not already doing these four things to optimize your campaigns, now is the perfect time to start before the holiday mayhem begins.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com.
11 Optimization Tools that Will Improve Your Marketing
Looking for tools to help you optimize your marketing stack? Look no further.
What tools do you use to get your online marketing done? Are you a content creationist? Are you a brand marketer? Or perhaps, a social media maven?
Whichever category you fall under, the reality as a marketer is that your stack is often overflowing with tools. But which are the most useful? Which can actually improve your efficiency rather than just adding another layer of work in your daily life?
Look no further! We made you a list of 11 essential optimization tools to help improve all you marketing efforts.
Content Optimization
HubSpot
HubSpot is well known for its CRM and especially for its all-in-one inbound marketing software. There are a number of great features that HubSpot offers that’s worthy of highlighting, but let’s focus on their content creation solutions.
HubSpot’s content editor incorporates content layout and copy creation while enabling you to preview how your work will look across devices. This is an incredibly useful tool considering how most readers engage with content on their mobile devices now a days. Adding CTA buttons and building landing pages are seamless in this process as well. But on top of this, SEO optimization is built-into the editor so you can say optimize for keywords while you write and say by to WordPress plugins.
CoSchedule
Similar to HubSpot, CoSchedule offers a great content creation solution for teams. Like HubSpot, you can easily plan and schedule your posts with their content calendar. But CoSchedule has the added feature of being able to schedule your social media posts immediately after you’ve finished writing and scheduling your content.
If you’re like a lot of marketers, you might be using a lot of tools from Google Docs and Analytics, to Evernote and more, so CoSchedule can be a good choice because of all its integration capabilities.
But one of CoSchedule’s best tools is its Headline Analyzer. Just enter your blog headlines and CoSchedule will give you a full analysis with an EMV (Emotional Marketing Value) score out of 100 and a breakdown of the ‘word-type’ components to help you write catchier, more click-worthy headlines. Best of all – it’s a free tool available to everyone.
SEO Optimization
Yoast
If you’re using WordPress to create content, you’re probably familiar with the Yoast plugin. If not, you should be. The basic version enables you to add a focus keyword for your content and provides you with content analysis to improve your readability and SEO.
We all know the importance of building up your blog or website’s SEO so you end up indexed properly across major search engines like Google and Bing. In addition to the XML sitemaps Yoast can generate for you and the keyword optimization, there’s post title and meta-description editors that allow you to fix exactly how your content will be viewed when links are shared socially too.
SEMRush
Equal parts competitive intelligence suite, and SEO optimization solution, SEMRush is a versatile tool in any marketer’s stack.
SEMRush gives insights into your competitor’s strategies across display, organic, and paid search, as well as back links. The company has expanded into display and video analytics recently, but its bread and butter has always been keyword analysis. You simply enter relevant keywords to get an idea of the keywords your competitors are using for their SEO and PPC campaigns, their long-tail keywords, and even their geo-targeting parameters. Leveraging the data on how your competitors are positioning themselves can also help you strategise your next move better.
Moz
Similar to SEMRush, Moz offers great keyword information. But in addition to this Moz helps decipher crawl errors and even provides you with a page optimization score. For publishers and web masters, this is a great tool to run an instant audit of your on-page SEO to optimize for specific and relevant keywords that your competitor is also using. Bonus, its page opportunities identifier helps you uncover what opportunities you’re missing out on your pages to help you improve your search ranking potential.
MonitorBacklinks.com
If you haven’t discovered monitorbacklinks.com, now is the time. Building a strong network of backlinks is important for improving your site’s ranking and boost traffic. Monitorbacklinks.com helps you identify the sites on which the best quality backlinks directing to your site are located.
This helps you identify where the best opportunities lies to build new relations and more content, and ultimately place more backlinks to push traffic towards your business.
Website Performance
Visual Website Optimizer
Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is a favourite A/B testing software for marketers. Even with no understanding of basic coding, Javascript or HTML, you can tweak and optimize your website and landing pages for better performance. You don’t have to go to your developers and ask for help, VWO really makes it easy to split test multiple versions of your site.
After a simple integration process require you to plug in a small script into your site’s header to verify your domain, you’re ready to start testing. And you can test almost everything from URL split tests, A/B test headlines and images, CTA buttons, or generate heat maps to understand where people are clicking and how to boost your conversions. Bonus, VWO offers a number of analytics and reports so you can identify where the major fixes need to be made.
Optimizely
Like VWO, Optimizely gives you the ability to experiment with your site to optimize towards the best user experience and ultimately conversions. The big difference with Optimizely has to be its mobile optimization tool. If you have an app, this is a great tool to edit your interface on the fly AND run split tests on mobile to ultimately roll out new upgrades in phases, or re-engage your audience.
Social and News Monitoring
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a monitoring tool that helps you keep an eye on your content and understand what performs best based on audience engagement across social. But in addition to this, BuzzSumo allows you to identify the influencers that create and share content relevant to yours.
There’s a “Trending Now” stream that helps you keep a finger on the news pulse running across social. You can filter this according to your own viewing preferences as well. Bonus, there’s a back links tracker and a Facebook analyzer that helps you identify which of your Facebook content is doing best to optimize towards superior social content.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of those essential tools that almost every social media marketer has in their arsenal. We’re all aware that through Hootsuite you can schedule and share social media content across multiple channels. It’s an all-in-one social platform.
But, you can keep an eye on your competitors or industry relevant news by adding their social accounts into your stream. For example, keep an eye on everything eMarketer is posting to their Facebook page by plugging them into your Hootsuite Facebook stream.
Their Twitter stream is even better: you can add a stream based on keywords. For example, if you add a stream and specify you want to follow keywords like “Performance Marketing” or “Digital Marketing”, these tweets are filtered in and you only see the most relevant tweets in this stream, rather than everything like in your actual news feed.
Feedly
The best way to start your mornings? With a cup of coffee while scrolling through Feedly, the ultimate news aggregator. Feedly compiles news feeds from a massive number of online news sources all into one news feed that’s personalized to you. Feedly isn’t so much an optimization tool, but using it definitely helps optimize your workflow.
You can sort your news according to subject matter like Business, Design, or Marketing, and get through the most relevant news in the most organized way possible. It’s the easiest way to stay abreast of all of today’s digital marketing news.
And there you have it, 11 essential optimization tools to help improve your marketing that you should be adding to your stack, now. Did we miss anything? What’s in your marketing tool kit?
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com.
How Performance and Data Cuts Through Noise to Reach Millennials
Millennials expect more value, less disruptive user experiences from ads.
For advertisers, building brand awareness is essential to your quest for undying brand loyalty which, we hope, turns into never ending sales. You want to cut through the noise, connect with your audience, and get them engaged.
But the fact of the matter is that traditional “spray and pray” marketing just don’t work anymore. We know it’s expensive, often wasteful, and can potentially have the exact opposite effect of what you want for your brand. If your ads are being ignored by consumers, they might as well be invisible.
Traditional “Spray and Pray” Marketing Doesn’t Work on Millennials
Take the Millennial consumer. Born between 1980 and 2000, they are the biggest generation in U.S. history (92 million). According to Neilsen, they’re also the most trusting when it comes to advertising. Last year, the United States Census Bureau reported that Millennials now outnumber Baby Boomers, representing more than a quarter of the U.S.’s population. To top it off, their makeup is more diverse. Millennials are the driving force of change for the global economy, yet Business Insider reports that advertisers are failing to reach them.
The reasons aren’t exactly shocking. Daniel Newman, Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum, discussed in an article on Forbes stating that “millennials don’t want to be talked at.” As one of the most tech savvy audiences out there today, “they are used to having control over the information in their day to day lives, and their interactions with brands online is no different. They want to control their messaging,” Newman explains.
Performance and Data is the Secret Formula
This is where Performance marketing and most importantly data is essential for cutting through the noise to actually engage Millennials.
Real-time audience profile data layered over campaigns enables advertisers to target dynamically, based on purchaser intent and behaviour. Performance strategy enables advertisers to run campaigns based only on successful actions so ROI is actually measurable, down to the click.
Millennials expect more value and better, less disruptive user experiences from ads.
“Layering data enables the exploration and prospecting window to be shortened. What that means is conversion data can be collected at early stages in the campaign so your focus can be shifted from identifying the audience to actually driving performance.”
Debrani Ghosh / Programmatic Client Services Director
ClearPier
Debrani Ghosh, Programmatic Client Services Director at ClearPier, tells us that “from a performance stand point, layering data enables the exploration and prospecting window to be shortened. What that means is conversion data can be collected at early stages in the campaign so your focus can be shifted from identifying the audience to actually driving performance.” Read: drive results equals drive more sales.
Ghosh, who has over a decade of media buying experience in the programmatic space working at independent trade desks and DSPs, also added that when applying data, we should also look beyond generic data like age and demo. Instead, create consumer profiles based on behavioral and contextual intent for more precise targeting.
Megan Sun, Director of Publisher Relations at ClearPier, explains, “A good example is when you know a user is conscious about organic, locally grown, ethical food choices and is in market for a car. Do you think they’re more likely to purchase a gas guzzler vehicle or an electric economy car? Looking at your data and using it to your advantage in campaign would make the user happier because you can deliver relevant ads, while boosting results in campaign performance.”
Relevance is Key to Engagement
If Millennials are pre-occupied with authenticity and controlling the information they receive, then advertisers should make it their top priority to personalize their ad targeting down to the creative level.
Sun also adds, “With growing budgets for online media versus traditional methods like print and radio, online advertising is being cluttered with irrelevant ads to the user. While big custom executions hit the user on endemic sites, targeting users based on their behavior increases ROI for advertisers. The practice of driving performance by layering data is beneficial to audiences because, ultimately, it produces more relevant ads that add to the user’s experience, even when they’re visiting non-endemic sites.”
Combining Data with Performance strategy means trackable results, less ad spend waste for advertisers, and superior audience targeting. In other words, advertisers need to get on the Data train to drive Performance. Show your ads to consumers only when they want to see it so you’re brand doesn’t get ignored. Then sit back, and watch the results roll in.
Want to learn how First-Party Data and Performance can drive your sales? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
Is Branding Versus Performance an Outdated Notion?
Advertisers are shifting towards a blended approach, combining the strengths of one with the other.
What is the difference between performance and brand marketing? If you’re like me and have been working in the adtech/agency world, you know that performance and brand-based marketing teams approach advertising differently. Skill sets vary as well with agency folk generally deemed more creative, whereas performance marketers are seen as analytics focused.
The Brand Tradition
Branding has always been a high-cost but poorly measured tradition. There is no denying the persuasive powers that creative campaigns have over consumers, but at what cost?
Take for example Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” launched by Unilever in 2004. The campaign tackled two goals: sell more Dove soap and change the way we as a society think of beauty. The campaign has been cited repeatedly as groundbreaking and bold. More than ten years after it originally ran, we still remember it.
Dove’s campaign has become an iconic part of a cultural shift in the way we think of beauty and self-love. Jennifer Bremmer, Unilever Marketing Director, has stated that in a survey conducted ten years post-campaign, three times as many women felt they were responsible for their own definition of beauty than the 23% the global survey in 2004 found (AdAge).
Dove’s sales increased from $2.5 billion to $4 billion during the campaign’s run.
So we know that brand campaigns work since overall sales increase or decrease indicates a campaign’s level of success. But brand campaigns are still notoriously difficult to track on a more granular level and therefore optimize.
And while this is one example of a successful brand campaign that drove sales, Unilever reportedly allocated over $8 billion in 2014 alone to its global advertising budget. That’s a lot of money. A lot of which has traditionally gone towards TV, of which the results are nearly impossible to track. Just because a lot of people saw that $8 million “America is Beautiful” Coca-Cola spot that ran during the 2014 Super Bowl, doesn’t mean everyone went out and immediately bought a Coke.
The Performance Path
When it comes to performance marketing, tracking is an essential part of all executions. Compared to brand campaigns, which are more about building relationships with consumers, direct response is all about making the immediate sale.
High-performance campaigns where clear goals are set and ROI easily measured are valuable to marketers trying to squeeze more out of their ad budgets.
The amount and quality of data and programmatic technologies available to performance marketers that enable them to target “the right ad at the right person, at the right time and place,” across screens are invaluable.
Performance goes beyond broad demographics, it relies on audience behavior, contextual data for precise targeting, and the ability to optimize and iterate efficiently across channels.
And while historically branding and performance have functioned separately, times are changing.
The Need for a Blended Approach
Unilever may have an $8.3 billion ad budget (2014), but nearly a quarter (24%) of its global spend goes towards digital (Business Insider). More recently, the company has worked on cutting ad spend by using a “zero-based budgeting” model that forces brand managers to “start from scratch to justify marketing and other outlays,” before more budget is assigned (AdAge). Sounds a lot like testing from a performance standpoint, no? In any case, the same approach is being executed for other brands including Heinz and Kraft.
Nike and its diverse array of athletic-wear lend itself to both brand and performance marketing.
Advertisers are shifting towards a blended approach, combining the strengths of one with the other to maximize reach, engagement, and measurable results. With consumers engaging with media across so many different devices and channels, often simultaneously, we can no longer treat branding and performance separately. They are two sides of the same coin.
A blended performance and branded approach, where technology enables superior targeting and strong creatives, helps cut through to audience resulting in better user experiences.
Ultimately, this will help advertisers overcome the threat of ad blocking that has become so prevalent in 2016. Delivering simultaneously relevant and entertaining ads for display and mobile is only the beginning. Once we acknowledge that the division between performance and brand advertising is an outdated way of thinking, we’ll be able to see new opportunities in video in the ongoing digital evolution.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
The Top 3 Emotion Driven Campaigns at the Rio Olympics
A look back at the 2016 Rio Olympic Game’s best branded campaigns to inspire us to be better marketers.
Seldom does a spectacle come along that draws as many eyes as the Olympics. It is an extraordinary feat to garner the attention of millions, and inspire such raw emotional reactions from around the world simultaneously.
Although Nielsen ratings have reported that U.S. television viewership numbers for this year’s Olympics were significantly lower than years past, there is no denying that brands made big waves digitally. Just over 27 million viewers tuned in to Rio’s opening ceremonies compared to the 40.65 million viewers of the 2012 London Games (CNBC). The near 30% decline in television viewers may be frustrating news for networks, but is indicative of a larger shift in the ways people are engaging with media, globally (Variety).
For marketers, the shift in screens from TV to digital is worth taking note. Although the games have officially ended now, advertisers should be re-examining the ways in which top brands leveraged the Olympics creatively and across screens.
We look back at the 2016 Rio Olympic game’s best brand executions that reached the podium, and inspires us to be better marketers.
1. “Unlimited” by Wieden + Kennedy Portland for Nike
Nike’s “Unlimited” campaign, which hails the everyday athlete as heroes, was ranked by Google as the most memorable campaign of the games. Among the top 12 brands that Google tracked that aired ads during NBC’s broadcast, Nike topped the list with 3.5 billion total impressions.
One of the most meta and most interesting video ads was “Unlimited You” which has garnered nearly 36.5 million views to date on YouTube. The spot shows how to inspire viewers by imagining the ordinary as extraordinary while maintaining viewer attention through the use of hyperbole. Featuring house-hold sports names like Serena Williams, Kevin Durant as well as those not so well known, the video reminds audiences that there are no limits. With Star Wars: The Force Awakens actor, Oscar Isaac, added into the mix as a fourth-wall breaking narrator, Nike’s “Unlimited You” gave a fresh take on the typical “inspiration sports ad.”
2. #ThatsGold by Ogilvy & Mather Brazil for Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is no stranger to the emotional-sell. From its iconic “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” commercial in 1971 – often cited as one of the most well-known ads of all time – to its “Open Happiness” campaign in 2011, Coca-Cola isn’t just a drink, it’s a feeling. Whether it’s a feeling of hope, peace, joy, or overwhelming achievement, you always “Taste the Feeling” with Coca-Cola.
The brand’s global Rio Olympics campaigns is no different. The “#ThatsGold” campaign is all about the thrill of winning starring 79 athletes of varying disciplines from 23 countries. An appropriate angle that reminds us that the Olympics is what it is – a competition.
Coca-Cola has been sponsoring the Games since 1928, but what’s interesting about this year was the brand’s ability to up audience engagement by tapping into real-time brand moments through social media. The #ThatsGold hashtag helped both its marketers and fans to capture relevant gold moments. In doing so, Coca-Cola illustrates how to get in front of audiences and get them engaged across multiple channels.
3. #DoWhatYouCant by Leo Burnett Chicago for Samsung
Samsung’s “Do What You Can’t” campaign is a powerful example of emotional selling. The campaign features six main athletes from around the globe that have defied impossible odds to be able to make it to the Olympic stage including Tom Daley of Great Britain, Shelley Watts of Australia, and Gabriel Medina of Brazil. The campaign also demonstrates the inspiration that comes from imagining a united world in full harmony, as seen in “The Anthem,” which has been viewed 29.8 million times on You Tube already.
One of the most moving ads, however, is “The Chant” featuring South Sudanese track star Margret Rumat Rumat Hassan for Samsung’s new cord-free IconX earbuds. Considering the fact that South Sudan was not yet recognized as a country just five years ago, Hassan’s achievement story – a symbol of South Sudan’s achievements – are what makes this ad so powerful. 2016 was the first time the country participated in the Olympics.
From the idea that barriers are made to be broken, to the feeling of winning; Nike, Coca-Cola and Samsung’s global campaigns for the Rio Olympics were hugely successful. They’re gleaming examples of how to make the emotional-sell work for today’s digital, multi-channel audiences. The challenge for marketers is to continue to reach the right audience and inspire them, no matter the channel. When it comes to sports related campaigns always remember: playing on the viewer’s heart strings is what brings home the gold.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
More than a buzzword: Programmatic (Part 4: Control)
After identifying programmatic control issues in our last installment of More than a buzzword — we’re now ready to explore the solutions. By offering control to publishers and advertisers, programmatic advertising can execute enormous numbers of transactions with ease, speed and improved efficiencies making it the optimal tool for improving the bottom line in digital media.
“Programmatic can only be effective when the control levers are handed over to buyers and sellers,” explains Jagdish Narigara, ClearPier’s director of product management, “Platforms need to act as more than a service provider — they need to step up and mentor customers, facilitate deal conversations, provide smart insights, act as a neutral third party to manage digital assets as well as executing transactions per contract.”
When it comes to targeting a direct audience, programmatic is the clever solution for both advertisers and publishers as it’s best for direct response.
Let’s take a look at the publisher’s perspective
With more and more publishers getting on board with programmatic opportunity, folks are starting to understand the potential of optimizing their sales channels through this method.
When it comes to solutions for control, this is what publishers seem to desire:
- — Protection against inventory commoditization and price dilution while operating on automated algorithms
- — Establishing a managed gateway in efforts to provide single point of entry for every approved buyer where the inventory is traded at real-worth
- — To sell differentiated inventory through appropriate sales channels — they want to define buyer access priorities, bid bias and selling rules. Essentially enabling publishers to have their say in automated decision making processes at every sales decision
- — To define and implement quality standards for creative using programmatic controls to deliver safe and pleasant brand experiences
- — Control over their data — enforce stringent consumption policies and protect data leakages. “This is just pre-requisite,” says Narigara, “This would motivate them to overlay their first-party data over programmatically learned data and run audience-extension programs on programmatic. This is otherwise hard to imagine.”
- — Access to their performance and transaction logs to derive smart insights to validate and realign their programmatic strategy
- — By gaining control over propensity and probability acumen generated by programmatic algorithms, they want to produce more relevant and rewarding content to take their businesses to new levels.
Then there’s the advertiser’s perspective
“Advertisers have already tasted the fruits of programmatic,” says Narigara about programmatic’s growth in the industry, “They have an unmatched platform to justify and attribute every dollar spent.”
Programmatic is on the rise and is taking the advertising world by storm. In fact, according to a recent survey by World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), surveyed brands have doubled their investments in programmatic ad trading year on year and 44 per cent of their programmatic budget is targeting online display advertising.
“Advertisers want to take control back from the Trading Desks and intermediaries by establishing their independent Trading Desks (ITDs) and Demand-side Platforms,” says the WFA report, “And they have started moving towards that. In 2014, 30% of the surveyed brands have started using them.”
Highlighted solutions for advertisers are:
- — Offering bidding platforms with different objectives — from profit maximization and CTR maximization to win percentage maximization. The idea of having bidders aligning their objectives with impression bids in efforts to deliver advertiser objectives (not DSP’s/ATD’s)
- — Control over inventory selection; organized to avoid irrelevant queries with the ability to select which inventory to buy and ignore — they want to define inventory criteria via programmatic and expect machines to honour that
- — Protection against fraud — a programmatic platform that can help advertisers distinguish between human versus fraud traffic
- — Access to a publisher’s premium and guaranteed supply — and they want it through Unified Holistic Auction with multiple bid options for each tier of inventory. According to Narigara, auctions are currently taking place in Silos.
- — Advertisers also want access to their transaction logs, bid landscape, performance insights, conversion funnel discernibility and success/failure analysis — in efforts to derive new intelligence and better strategies and operations
Programmatic is the future of digital advertising.
“It is still in nascent stage, when it is implemented in its true sense, it will take the industry to new horizons!” says Narigara.
Share
[sgmb id=”1″]
More than a buzzword: Programmatic (Part 3: Control)
Having addressed issues and solutions with transparency, More Than A Buzzword is now focusing on issues with control in regards to programmatic advertising.
Programmatic isn’t just technology, it’s a business solution to Jagdish Narigara, ClearPier’s director of Product Management.
“It gives immense opportunity to define, implement and execute innovative business strategies — enabling innovative business models to tap into hidden potentials in media buying and selling,” says Narigara, “As with every business avenue, there comes issues with control.”
Both publishers and advertisers want control — but there are concerns from each side when opting for programmatic. Let’s take a look at some of the issues that may arise.
From the publishers perspective
For publishers who are looking to restructure and re-strategize their premium, exclusive and guaranteed sales channels, programmatic can help tap into that with high potential.
“Programmatic can bring synergies to enable holistic impression monetization strategy across different tiers of inventory,” says Narigara.
But there are still challenges in terms of control that publishers may face when operating programmatic.
There are concerns surrounding the possibility of machines eroding value — value being channel, content, audience or inventory, according a survey of AOL Platform Clients. This survey also revealed that 54% of publisher executives still have concerns/ambiguity over control provided by programmatic platforms.
“Publishers with strong brands, quality environments and great content are often frustrated with programmatic because it tries to treat their differentiated product as a commodity! It is the same as treating a Styrofoam tomato from a fast food chain as if it was an heirloom tomato from Whole Foods,” says Pam Horan, president of Online Publishing Association, “Ad environments are not a commodity! Great media brands frame the marketer’s ad within a strong consumer relationship. Publishers need control over managing the entry point, inventory and price.”
Publishers also want control over which types of ad creatives that are allowed to run on their sites. With stringent creative guidelines, publishers want to be confident in machine-based decision-making platforms when it comes to what, where and how ads are being placed.
Then, there are some publishers who are dubious when it comes to relinquishing control over their data. “They fear that if this data is exposed to programmatic decision making and ad serving algorithms, they will have no control over other parties obtaining the data in the lengthy value-chain,” explains Narigara.
Advertisers are also being held back from fully embracing the programmatic approach.
With 33% of advertiser panelists stating that brand safety issues are actively inhibiting the adoption of programmatic approaches because of decreased control over where their advertising may be viewed, according to the IAB and Winterberry Group survey — control issues with programmatic are also of concern from the advertisers front.
Advertising spend risks include: ad-stacking, bots and un-viewable placements.
Due to the lack of audit measures when it comes to inventory running through programmatic platforms, confidence in the inventory and its source end up in question.
“There is still a gap between the owner of the impression and seller of the impression,” says Narigara, “Because of this, advertisers may suffer.” Metrics may be impressive, but the actual impact may be mediocre.
With Internet users getting more savvy, there are growing concerns when it comes to reach. “Out of 5.3 trillion display ads served in 2013, only 2 out of 20 web users clicked on the ads. Moreover, annoyed with the distracting animations and sounds of ads, people are responding by blocking ads altogether,” A Shopparity survey reported, “22.7% of web surfers have already installed ad blockers and the use of ad blockers is growing over 40% year over year.”
This leaves us with a couple big questions: can we restore the interest of consumers and can programmatic revive the advertising industry?
In our final installment of More than a buzzword, we’ll explore programmatic control solutions.
Share
[sgmb id=”1″]