Data-Driven Thinking

GDPR and Apple’s App Tracking Transparency have put an end to behavioral targeting. The result? The rise of contextual targeting.

The language of Wall Street has become the language of ad tech, an industry on the cusp of major change because of a new bill in Congress, the AMERICA Act.

While American gamers are more open to in-game ads than many believe, any such activations must bear the hallmarks of creative and technical excellence.

If we set ChatGPT aside, AI has the potential to transform how marketing and ad tech handles data transfer between platforms.

As Mark Zuckerberg has said, the metaverse is still years away. So, for the near term, Meta’s opportunity is in messaging.

Any new regulations can potentially throw a wrench into your operations. Prepare for what’s to come with this breakdown of what these laws are and their effects on marketing strategy. 

Consumer expectations have changed, as have the best strategies for reaching them. Across social, search and display, many old tactics no longer fit the bill, writes Steve Wendling, VP of media at MMI.

Why does accurate marketing measurement remain so elusive? Let’s evaluate some of the most commonly used tactics.

How can marketers get the most out of their limited marketing spend and zero in on investments that most powerfully impact revenue?

If we are to build a more virtuous circle of data usage, consumers must be at the center. How do we get there? The industry must break its addiction to deterministic data, writes Audigent CEO Drew Stein.

Change – even change that restricts data collection or use – doesn’t have to be a negative for digital advertisers, writes Leigh Freund, president and CEO of the Network Advertising Initiative.

Retail media may still be a nascent industry, but it is quickly becoming integral to retailers’ advertising strategies. And, as traditional advertisers like Sainsbury’s or Tesco join the retail media space, there are issues and questions the market must urgently address.

Mobile banner ads have made a major comeback. The sheer volume of requests spurned by programmatic mediation have catapulted banner ads back into the ad tech spotlight.

When agencies pursue proprietary solutions, they ultimately abandon them for a superior market-based one. So, agencies should focus on producing effective campaigns and leave the tech to the technologists.

As brands continue to explore what customer data platforms (CDPs) are and how best to use them, the introduction of reverse ETL tools and deconstructed CDPs have only further muddied the water. 

As the economy fluctuates and budgets tighten, 2023 will be a year of adjustment. In the face of these conditions, and the removal of IDFA, app marketers will need new ways to find scale for their app advertising campaigns, writes Levi Matkins, CEO of LifeStreet.

Companies throughout the ad tech ecosystem are reckoning with the fact that, due to the revised definition of “business purpose” in the CPRA, they may no longer qualify as “service providers” under California privacy law. Davis+Gilbert’s Richard Eisert and Zachary Klein break down what to expect.

Data sharing creates liability. Many brands and publishers employ consent management platforms (CMPs). However, true privacy compliance requires more than that, writes Dan Frechtling, CEO of Boltive.

A probabilistic and iterative model like the digital twin of the customer (DToC) may be more useful during uncertain times, when customer behavior becomes harder to predict based on historical data, writes Lizzy Foo Kune, VP and analyst at Gartner, Inc.

In 2023, we’ll see a Great Meta-reversal, a shift toward rich content and experiences that build enduring, engaged communities. Rather than building a separate experience for each mode of interaction, brands now have the tools to integrate the consumer relationship across many digital touch points, writes Mitch Ratcliffe, partner at Metaforce.

In the two years since the beginning of the end of third-party cookies, we have learned quite a lot about the promises and problems with a post-cookie web. Now, as web developers, we can be pretty confident the end will come – if we can make a few key things happen, writes Don Marti, VP of Ecosystem Innovation at CafeMedia.

When faced with a recession, brands should focus on fundamental changes that save money and drive efficiency while seeking ways to get more out of their data, technology and ad spend, writes Nancy Marzouk, CEO and founder of MediaWallah.

Programmatic OOH – paired with new cross-channel management capabilities – means prospects can now be served OOH ads on their actual journey to the store as part of a more holistic marketing strategy. Omri Argaman, chief marketing officer at Zoomd, explains why OOH campaigns can have a massive impact and how to maximize it. 

Many marketers think of cost per acquisition (CPA) as the holy grail. But a better metric to consider is the lifetime customer value: acquisition cost ratio, also known as LTV:CAC, writes Cary Lawrence, CEO of Decile.

Meta’s wide reach and success around low-funnel objectives can be worth it. CPMs might be high, but if a brand’s cost per order has remained stable, it’s likely a worthwhile investment. For advertisers focused on higher funnel objectives like awareness or reach, however, there are alternatives, writes Amy Rumpler, SVP of paid search and social media at Basis Technologies.

There are three key ways in which the industry can do a better job of selling customers on the value exchange they’ll see from sharing their data with brands, writes Scott McDonald, President and CEO of the Advertising Research Foundation.

The advertising and ad technology industries undergo a major landscape shift every five years or so, and we’re in the middle of a seismic change with third-party signal loss. As with every exploration and monetization of a new frontier, the next era of digital advertising requires a recommitment to shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration, writes Bob Walczak, CEO of MadTech Advisors.

Brand safety’s detrimental impact on diverse, equitable and inclusive media goals is a question of automation gone wrong, ham-fisted implementation and industry leaders choosing the easy route, writes Charles Cantu, CEO and founder at Reset Digital. In this column, he reviews how brand safety’s DEI problem has developed and recommends steps advertisers, agencies and brand safety organizations can take to overcome it.

In a recent terrorism advisory bulletin, the Department of Homeland Security increased levels of concern for potential violence against LGBTQ, Jewish and migrant communities. It’s now more important than ever for brands to have strong ethics and flex their ad dollar muscles. They must demand that social media platforms do all they can to rein in hate speech and insinuations of violence on their platforms, writes Michael Benedek, CEO of Datonics.

The post-cookie marketplace must be reimagined for active customer data collection in which both the customer and brand are incentivized to create a more direct and reciprocal relationship in which both reap the benefits. Matt Chmiel, strategy director at Siberia, recommends four steps that will help brands make the journey from passive to active data collection.