The upcoming Google chrome changes have been a buzzing topic in the programmatic advertising industry for almost over two years now, pushing brands and vendors to build alternative solutions to audience behavior tracking and targeting. Many businesses have been successful in finding ways to target without using cookies. Samantha Weiss, VP of Data Strategy and Programmatic, recently sat down with Venture Beat to talk about how our client, Stop & Stop, has been using Artificial Intelligence to target audiences. “AMP began testing cookie-less solutions in the back half of 2021 to prepare for the eventual deprecation of third-party cookies. We believed it was critical to test new targeting while we had long standing targeting and measurement capabilities to benchmark against. We knew it would be incredibly important to hit the ground running, rather than begin testing once third party-cookies were no longer available. Google’s recent announcement delaying the removal of third party-cookies to the back half of 2024 anchors our position on preparing for the cookie less world. We are excited for the additional time as capabilities & betas continue to be introduced and opened. We will use the extension to focus not on what we are losing with the deprecation of cookies, but rather how we create optimized and efficient media plans with the targeting that is available. One partner we have seen great success with is Dstillery. We partnered with Dstillery in Q4 of 2021 to test their ID free Custom AI Solution. We saw strong results in our e-commerce campaigns, outperforming cookie-based audiences by 72%. With Google’s first extension, we have iterated on the models and data utilized for the ID Free segments. With the added time, we are excited to continue to optimize the segments and move these audiences from testing budgets to always on targeting capabilities.” - Samantha Weiss (VP, Data Strategy & Programmatic) Read the full Venture Beat article here.
Perfect Isn’t Worth It: Hot Takes from the 2020 Media Innovation Day Think about your favorite brand – and if you can’t pick just one, don’t fret. You can focus on your top three, or five, or whatever number will get you through this exercise. Got a few in mind? Great. Now ask yourself: what makes the brands you’re thinking of so wonderful? Is it the quality of the products they sell? The tone of voice they take on? Or maybe, just maybe, is it the fact that they connect with you on some level that you can’t quite put your finger on, but know is there? If that’s the case, then you probably love your favorite brands because they feel real to you – and that makes total sense. Because as people, we tend to favor brands that feel honest, authentic and human. Despite this affinity, there aren’t as many brands that have this real, human element to them as there should be. That’s because brands have long equated success with perfection, holding themselves to a standard that, in actuality, puts them at the risk of seeming fake. So, as we wondered where we as marketers should draw the line between achieving success and losing humanity, we decided to gain further insight into the matter. That’s why we sat down at this year’s Media Innovation Day and listened to a series of industry experts share their thoughts on the topic of “Being More Human” in the land of brands. Now, we’re going to break down some of our key takeaways. Let’s Get Personal It’s always nice when things have a personal touch to them, isn’t it ? Well, according to Bertrand “Coca” Cocallemen, Teads’ Global Creative Director, this rings true for brands, too. When brands can create personal experiences for consumers across all touchpoints, it’s highly beneficial for the brand as a whole. For example, during his Media Innovation Day presentation, Coca recalled a rich media unit Teads created for a Dior perfume launch. What started as a 60-second video transformed into an interactive in-content unit that allowed the model, Jennifer Lawrence, to maintain eye contact with users as they scrolled through the page. This use of eye contact proved to be eye-catching for consumers and successful for Dior. Not only does the use of eye contact in an ad increase ad recall and lead to better overall metrics, but it can help brands become more personal and recognizable when paired with clear branding. Since simple optimizations such as this can make advertisements feel more personal and engaging, we as digital marketers can weave tactics with a human touch into the work we create for our clients in order to help them find success and build a world of better brands. Trust Us During his discussion on The New Media Experience, Brian Stelter, Chief Media Correspondent at CNN, honed in on the responsibility brands have to build trust with their consumer base. According to Stelter, gaining a trustworthy reputation for CNN was built on honest journalism. For us as marketers, it comes down to creating content that our clients’ consumers can connect with. Since a show of simple humanity can go a long way on making an impact with viewers or consumers, we want to help our client base find moments where they can have these trust-building interactions with consumers. Don’t Worry: Everybody Makes Mistakes One final key takeaway from the 2020 Media Innovation Day pertains to quite possibly the most human thing there is: making mistakes. Everybody does it – even brands. And according to Adam Petrick, Global Director of Brand and Marketing at PUMA, what matters most isn’t whether a brand messes up or not, but how they reach out to consumers after a mistake is made. When brands reach out to consumers and own their mistakes in a way that stays true to their brand mission statement, they add value to their brand in a way that is honest and human. For PUMA specifically, Petrick explained that their company mantra is to be “Forever Faster” – always a step ahead, acknowledging that they aren’t perfect and turning any mistakes they make along the way into learning experiences that can improve and grow their brand. While the “Forever Faster” mantra is specific to PUMA, the thought of maintaining transparency with consumers is something any brand can get behind. By weaving humility into our clients’ brand platforms and practices, we can help them all feel more human and relatable. So Let’s Get Real With all of this in mind, we now ask ourselves: what’s next in the media industry? For us, it’s finding ways to take this human approach to marketing and use it to drive engagement and connections. Stacy Mienro, Head of Twitter Arthouse said it best: “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” Since the rules of branding are what put the pressures of perfection in place, our job is to help our brands impart a bit more humanity into everything they create and how it shows up in the world. Sometimes, that might be achieved by adding a personal touch to ads wherever possible. Other times, it could entail capitalizing on moments where we can build trust with consumers. And once in a while, it may simply require us owning up to our mistakes should they ever be made. Hey – we’re only human, after all. Authors Thays Tejeda Kristen Forbes Nikki D'Amato Marianne Lukes
What is Cross-screen Marketing? Cross screen marketing, also known as multi screen marketing, is the digital marketing practice of synchronizing a comprehensive campaign across the different screens a user is likely to be interacting with while relaxing. As media and marketing professionals, how do you tap into the ever expanding landscape of multi-screen, multi-tasking, multi-engagement devices/screens that are ubiquitous in our world today? This question results in a domino effect evoking many more questions: How are we best equipped to deliver a brand's message, value proposition and ultimately elicit conversion? How does the multi-screen environment change the marketing funnel? How do we utilize the various screens to effectively engage the fragmented consumer who simultaneously use these devices? How do we gauge the duplication of reaching the same users vs. gaining necessary reach into the right target that may not be downloading a mobile app but is a regular visitor to a website via their laptop? Benefits of Cross Screen Marketing Our target audiences are multi-tasking across devices. Even among those with just a television and computer (two screens), 52% of users report that it's somewhat or very likely that they're using another device while watching television. With each screen added to the mix, that percentage rises, 60% of smartphone users (3 screens) and 65% of tablet owners (4 screens) say that multi-device use is the norm while watching TV (source: eConsultancy, May 2012) Planners must understand the impact that multi-screen usage is having on their clients' brands as the stats derived by recent studies highlight the importance of creating a multi-screens strategy: According to a report conducted by Videology, a video advertising technology, brands who implement multi-screen marketing experience 9x brand lift An eMarketer study of TV and online video found brands achieve a 7% reach increase when adhering to a multi-screen approach A co-authored study with Google and Nielson found multi-screen users have 17% more ad recall Marketing in a Multi Screen World: What to Consider Time of Day Whether it's a TV ad to launch to increase awareness followed by that person searching for more info on their work desktop, then targeted by a location based incentive on mobile or longer brand engagement via a tablet in the evening, day parting is key to making this a continuum of messaging not just singular efforts. Consumption Habits We need to understand the consumption habits of our audience in order to maximize how we weight each channel in the overall media mix, so we can reach them in the right place at the right time. We should take advantage of what these different screens and their particular experience 'opportunities'? offer. When developing a media strategy, marketers need to consider all screens, what their audience consumes on each screen and when the audience consumes the content. The era of the connected consumer has just begun. To succeed, marketers must adapt media planning and buying strategies to fit the needs of the multi-tasking mavens.
