The marketing, publishing, advertising and communication industries have historically been on the cutting edge of diversity efforts with customers. Yet many continue to fall behind internally, writes Jeffrey L. Bowman, co-founder and CEO of Reframe.
A marketing campaign is nothing without a strong measurement strategy. Each channel and tactic you are investing in needs to be held accountable to business results. Confirmation bias creeps in when you consider a KPI that is easily manipulated but isn’t a true reflection of business results, writes Elise Stieferman, director of marketing & business strategy at Coegi.
The emergence of large-scale data and identity resolution platforms with audience graphs across devices and households is a major step forward to helping reclaim control over reach and frequency. But there’s no single solution to the problem, writes Seraj Bharwani, chief strategy officer at AcuityAds.
How will the high-stakes game of antitrust chicken between Google and the US Department of Justice play out? It could be a first important proactive step toward true structural change – not just at Google but across many of the biggest players in the industry, writes Arnaud Créput, CEO of Equativ.
Clean rooms are riding a wave of momentum as the ad industry looks for ways to use aggregated, anonymized data sets to predict audience identity. Yet, despite a catchy name, clean rooms aren’t necessarily as “clean” as they promise to be, writes Drew Stein, CEO of Audigent.
The term “machine learning” seems to have a magical effect as a sales buzzword. Couple that with the term “data science,” and lots of companies think they have a winning formula for attracting new clients. But there is a need for best practices in data science and for companies to invest in and fully support talent that can apply those principles effectively, writes Jasmine Jia, associate director of data science at Blockthrough.
Let’s face it: The “open internet” includes a lot of good things, but also a lot of crap. And it’s a disservice to responsible media owners and content creators to bundle them in with nefarious operators that pirate content and operate solely to siphon legitimate ad dollars away through arbitrage, writes Ruben Schreurs, group chief product officer at Ebiquity.
Last week, I tuned into the entire FTC forum on “surveillance capitalism” and data security – all five-plus hours of it (you’re welcome?) – and this is my main takeaway: The online advertising industry needs to find a new way to talk about itself.
A federal privacy law is perhaps the only way the digital media industry can stave off Big Tech companies, which are aggressively trying to define privacy on their own terms, writes Jason Bier, general counsel and chief privacy officer at Adstra.
Sephora is the first company to be fined under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to the tune of $1.2 million. Cory Munchbach, president and COO of BlueConic, weighs in on what this first instance of CCPA enforcement means for other brands and the future of privacy.
When the GDPR was passed in 2016, it was a wake-up call for anyone that handled consumer data. Now, four years since its implementation, GDPR’s efficacy remains unclear, writes Jessica Jacobs, global director of partnerships and growth at Incubeta.
Ad tech must quit its addiction to user IDs and instead start focusing on how we can innovate in other areas: audience targeting, managing frequency and improving measurement (especially conversion attribution). Meanwhile, contextual and geo-based targeting are a great way to reach an audience and get better than expected ROI on campaigns, writes Ian Trider, VP of RTB platform operations at Basis Technologies.
Managing digital campaigns for the mid-market is hard. Mid-marketers need to consider speed, smarts, scale and spend. But pick three, writes Marilois Snowman, CEO and founder of Mediastruction.
Commerce and retail media suddenly became an incredible tailwind for online advertising. But anyone banking on retail media networks to power programmatic growth for years to come needs a reality check, writes AdExchanger Senior Editor James Hercher.
Like F1 cars, the marketing world also generates data. The difference is it’s not connected to anything that can help brand managers make the kind of data-fueled decisions that have been a game changer for F1 teams, writes Andy Hopkinson, strategic director of Extreme Reach.
Today, there are so many flavors of in-housing. The term itself has become a bit like “programmatic,” where the meaning across organizations varies so greatly that there’s little point in using it on its own. What matters now isn’t how brands define “in-house” or if in fact they “in-house” at all – it’s whether they approach their digital advertising strategically and thoughtfully, writes Dan Larden, head of UK at TPA Digital.
Marketers will soon be unable to rely on third-party data to understand customers at scale, and the jury is still out on how first-party data can power measurement. In an ID-free world, there are three ways partnerships can help marketers achieve holistic measurement to drive business outcomes and ROI: enhanced data, expedited insights and enablement of scale, writes Susan Tillou, SVP, global head of partnerships at Analytic Partners.
Advertisers in the U.S. are missing out on 46% of their addressable mobile audience. And desktop doesn’t fall behind. 40% of the audience is currently not reachable if you rely on IDs. Instead of opting for solutions that only get you halfway to your goals, keep three main points in mind: scale, accurate targeting and sustainability, writes Aaron McKee, CTO at Blis.
Many brands, startups and well-known CPGs are missing the more effective retailer data sets at their disposal: loyalty programs, writes Lauren Littlejohn, director of data science and research at 84.51°.
To make the most of AI, advertisers must diversify data analytics teams to bring varied perspectives and talents to data collection and decision-making, writes Ashley Tsai, head of analytics at mSix&Partners.
Marketers today have many data sources available to them, giving them the option to tailor data sets based on their specific needs. Whether it’s for audience segmentation or business operations, it can be tempting to buy the biggest data set available. However, it’s important that marketers think twice before diving in, especially when it comes to location data, writes Jeff White, CEO of Gravy Analytics.
It’s no secret that, even in a perfect world, the “rules” of marketing are constantly changing. A recession is only going to exacerbate the inconsistency tenfold. You’ll do yourself a favor if you understand now that there is no blanket strategy, writes Tom Shea, co-founder and CRO of Adgile Media Group.
The release of Google’s Imagen tool has certainly made news feeds more entertaining in recent months. Who doesn’t want to see pictures of a raccoon dressed as an astronaut or a corgi cycling through Times Square? But while Google’s new text-to-image generator is a really interesting development that illustrates the potential of AI, this type of technology can’t replace human creatives in the advertising industry, writes Graham Wilkinson, chief innovation officer at Kinesso and Matterkind Global.
Looks like Apple wants to launch a DSP. With Google’s recent (and second) third-party cookie delay, maybe it’s going to take a company like Apple, with a track record of technical innovation, to develop the next privacy-centered targeting solutions for digital advertising, writes Nico Neumann.
A YouGov study found that people are more likely to sign up for an online platform if they can see how their information will be used. This presents a trust opportunity for marketers, writes Lauren Wetzel, COO of InfoSum.
At this year’s WWDC, Apple announced updates to SKAdNetwork, its privacy-adjusted mobile measurement framework. For marketers, embracing, understanding and developing a robust strategy for SKAdNetwork is essential for user engagement and measurement on iOS. From there, the key will be maximizing the value of first-party data and designing long-term acquisition and measurement strategies – based on user consent for targeted advertising, writes Katie Madding, chief product officer at Adjust.
Google launched Google Analytics 4 (GA4) back in October 2020 to unify digital web and app analytics. Its push toward the new solution underscores the need for advertisers to implement a data strategy built on first-party data. But now the question is whether brands should prioritize the switch to GA4 before the sunsetting of Universal Analytics (UA) in July 2023 and what this transition means, writes Jessica Jacobs, global director of partnerships and growth at Incubeta.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is coming to the European Union. But rest assured – it will have implications for United States brands, too. The DMA will implement a clear set of rules prohibiting tech giants, including Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple, from engaging in specific practices that might be viewed as “anti-competitive.” While it seems that the act aims to create a fair playing field, the actual outcomes may be more nuanced, writes Chris Comstock, chief product officer of Claravine.
Meta lost in court against French ad-tech champion Criteo, and it will now have to grant better access to its inventory. Meanwhile, France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, just deemed Google Analytics illegal – a move that the Italian data privacy authority has just followed as well. What happens now? It turns out there may be a server-side solution, writes Hugo Loriot, partner at fifty-five.
While programmatic advertising has its faults, it is still evolving. And as it has matured it has become a powerful, efficient and effective tool for brands to surgically disseminate their commercial messages to highly targeted consumers. But that doesn’t mean there’s no work to be done, writes Eric Warburton, SVP of technical account management and platform partnership success at Horizon Media.
