It’s time to rethink how advertisers approach online advertising. Digital activity has traditionally been associated with performance marketing. However, as consumer behavior online changes and migrates toward video consumption, mobile, audio, and voice, advertisers must reimagine what ‘digital’ means. Damien Bennett, director of strategy, Incubeta, explains how in three steps.
Digital advertising has traditionally been associated with performance marketing and used primarily as a tool to drive sales, while traditional channels such as TV and print have been used to drive awareness.
Consumer behavior on digital is changing; however, video consumption is on an upward trajectory, as is migration toward mobile, audio, and voice.
We need to start thinking about creating a new digital playbook, to challenge the way we talk about digital advertising and the role it plays within the broader marketing remit. There should be three chapters to this new playbook: moving the boundaries beyond performance, refocus on creative and creativity, measuring beyond sales.
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The Digital Landscape Today
One of the reasons digital spend is increasing so quickly is because it is so measurable, but measurement tools do have limitations, and it’s difficult to introduce new channels and techniques into this overall measurement piece. Another issue is that commonly used methods of targeting, such as third-party cookies, are being increasingly challenged.
We are also seeing new online consumer behaviors, with more people watching video content online, listening to podcasts, and using voice search, all behaviors that allow advertisers to reach them in different ways and mindstate.
Spending – even despite the current pandemic – has increased exponentially over the past five years, and that will continue. In 2014, in the U.K. £9.2 billion was spent on digital advertising – by the end of last year, that had more than doubled to £19.2 billion, according to eMarketer.
Yet much of this spend has been in the performance space, marketing geared towards driving sales, with the ‘traditional’ channels of TV, radio, and press more commonly used to drive awareness.
Consider that in 2019, the eMarketer forecast found 46% of that £19.2 billion was spent on search advertising, paid search advertising specifically. That’s a huge swathe of budget spent on just one consumer digital behavior when trends online are changing rapidly.
Yes, the money is moving closer to where the consumer is, with one eMarketer report showing growth in mobile ad spending going from £2.9 billion in 2014 to 13.8 billion in 2019, and video spend stands at £2.9 billion. But are we doing it in the right way?
Here are some suggestions for the digital playbook of the near future:
1. Move the Boundaries – Why We Have to Move Beyond Performance Alone
Advertisers often view consumer journeys as a funnel but this has significant limitations – no journeys are linear. Consumers are in a constant state of exploration, and it’s important to target ‘out of market’ audiences as well as ‘in’. It’s also important to think beyond online and track the omnichannel value of digital marketing. There have been huge improvements in terms of people’s ability to be able to track beyond the online sale.
Think about a car retailer, for example. There are very few people who are actually in the market to buy a car, but there are huge numbers of people who are relevant for automotive retailers to target. You see that across industries, whether it’s travel, finance, or retail, it is important to target those who are out of the market – something that I think we sometimes lose sight of as digital advertisers.
The so-called ‘funnel’ isn’t bringing this to life. How to think about consumer behavior is as this ongoing loop, this infinite loop of exploration, being interested, and finally purchasing.
Finally, we need to continue to test, we need to continue to adapt, and we need to continue to adopt. This base is going to be constantly changing. Take voice search, which has massively grown over the past two years: advertisers should test, adapt and adopt this immersive channel, which will disrupt search advertising at large – a core element of digital marketing today.
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2. Refocus on Creative
Too often, advertisers repurpose digital content from other channels, and simply, it’s not fit for purpose. The way people react with digital creative is different from that on TV, for example, so it should be built with that specific channel in mind.
We also need to challenge the assumption that print or TV ads take precedence over the digital execution. As of last year, more money was spent on digital channels than traditional ones.
Think beyond carousel ads – we have so many tools at our disposal to bring creative to life but rarely use them, or use them effectively enough. There are many tools that can make ads more interactive or personalized: digital advertising needs to be ‘digital first’. Repurposed ads can never be as successful as those designed for the environments they will run in.
Take a campaign we ran for Amazon. It had found that lots of people owned Alexas’ but they weren’t using the full range of functionality. Our solution was a voice-enabled ad unit to help bring to life the full range of functionality for Alexa. By clicking on speech bubbles within the ad, users could experience what it was like to control a smart home with Alexa – bringing to life the full functionality of the digital assistant for people.
Know when to personalize and when to be consistent. There is a huge amount of value in terms of being consistent, and it’s striking that right balance between having your overarching brand message, as well as the personalized message, which will resonate for audiences. It is important for display advertisers to remember that consistency is really important in brand building, and not to sacrifice that at the expense of personalization.
3. Measure Beyond Sales to Capture the ‘True’ Value
We need to bring to life the value of digital media beyond the final sale because that will be fundamental to future digital growth as I expect marketers will increasingly move their branding budgets to digital platforms and channels.
The future of digital advertising is likely to be beyond a performance base, so it is important to remember the relevance of traditional marketing measurements in this space, such as reach, share of voice, and brand recall. There is a lot of value in traditional marketing measurement models.
A common mistake I see brands making in digital marketing is not being 100% clear on what their strategies are, and the consequences of those.
It is crucial to know what the objective of the activity is so that there is a clear and measurable KPI to measure success against. We need, also, to ensure that we are telling compelling stories to the people that we work with, whether that’s the CEO or the CFO. We have to make sure that we’re really bringing to life what the purpose of the campaign was, what our strategy was. And why it was successful or not.
It’s time to reimagine what ‘digital’ means to us as an industry. It is tempting to over-index on the performance piece, which can be hugely successful but does not tell the full story of how real people act, interact, and react online. By bringing the best of online and offline thinking together, with a test and learn philosophy to new and emerging channels and formats, the internet can be a better place for us all.