This year’s October Digiday Media Buying Summit was held October 3-5 in Naples, Florida at the Ritz Carlton. AdDaptive was proud to sponsor a third Digiday conference thus far in 2023, following the March Media Buying Summit and May’s Programmatic Marketing Summit.
Leaders from top tier agencies all around the country met to discuss the latest trends, news, developments, and opportunities in the ad tech industry. AdDaptive’s Sales Directors and Sales Managers were delighted to have the opportunity once again to connect with clients, prospects, and industry experts face-to-face. Topics of conversation and presentations ranged from omnichannel approaches, to the impending removal of cookies, to data transparency, and even AI. Here are some key takeaways.
Accurate Attribution and Measurement
Vendors and agencies alike have a constant focus on accurate ad measurement and proper attribution. With the impending changes coming from Google in the form of Sandbox initiatives and the accompanying removal of third-party cookies, alternative forms of measurement have been quickly gaining attention and popularity. This diversity of measurement tools and techniques also aids accurate tracking between various media types, especially newer formats like CTV.
Data Transparency
Another hot topic from various panels, presentations, and general conversations at the conference was data transparency. Transparency matters at two stages of the ad buying process – transparency between agencies and brands, and transparency between vendors and agencies.
Open sharing of data and insights builds trust and encourages future business with the ad tech partner or brand in question.
Brand In-Housing Still Provides Opportunity for Agencies
Transparency is also key when it comes to working with brand in-housing teams. A recent increase in in-housing initiatives is not necessarily a negative sign for agencies. Many newly launched in-house solutions only focus on one form of advertisement, such as search or social. They still need help from agencies to run and report on their programmatic advertising.
Brands with partial in-housing solutions still work closely with agencies around strategy, data onboarding, customer service, and analytics. There is still a large need for agencies, especially those who offer full transparency to their brands in a true sign of partnership.
Forming Strategic Ad Tech Partnerships
Speaking of partnerships, AdDaptive’s Senior National Sales Director, Michael Powell, spoke during a featured session titled “Leverage Strategic Partnerships for Programmatic Success.”
Michael’s presentation focused on the importance of finding an ad tech partner that offers accurate and transparent targeting, optimization, analytics, and insights alongside a wide range of measurement tools. This helps agencies and their brands stay ahead of the competition and appropriately prioritize their advertising efforts to maximize the success of each campaign. Finding a strategic partner like AdDaptive will significantly boost ROAS and streamline the campaign planning process.
As always, the October 2023 Digiday Media Buying Summit provided helpful industry insights for vendors and agencies alike, and AdDaptive was thrilled to participate in and sponsor the event. We hope to see some familiar faces as well as make new connections at the next Digiday conference – the Programmatic Marketing Summit, December 4-6 in New Orleans, LA.
Ready to speak with a digital advertising expert? Book a meeting below.
Add Video Advertising to Campaigns to Boost Engagement
October 24, 2023 |
Helen Bartkiewicz
The Popularity of Video Ads
Among the available digital advertising media types, video has been proven to be the most popular medium among advertisers, B2B buyers, and consumers alike when paired with display and native ads. As Hubspot’s 2023 State of Marketing Report shows:
Millennials in particular prefer to consume content through online videos over any other form. But still, among all generations of decision-makers 75% view work-related videos at least once a week, and two thirds of these decision-makers visit the company’s website after viewing said videos.
Marketers have also been picking up on the success of video. Since 2020, over 90% of digital marketers have considered video advertising to be an essential part of their media mix, with 88% reporting increased ROI thanks to their video marketing efforts.
So, what exactly contributes to video advertising’s popularity?
Prioritizing Audience Preferences Leads to Positive Results
Social media platforms – including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and more – favor video over static images and text-based ads and position them more prominently. Well-made ads in the form of a video are more appealing than short-form text, since they help potential buyers visualize a company’s product and/or service offerings in a format that is faster and easier to consume.
Considering the continual rise in popularity of TikTok videos and Facebook reels, it’s no wonder why advertisers have shifted their budgets towards videos. Especially since, on average:
AdDaptive is well versed in running video ads pre, mid, and post-roll across all screens and devices. Our trusted technology, along with the optimization skills of our expert account management team, deploys video ads in the most effective way, achieving an average VCR of 77% compared to the industry average of 70%.
Our Media Type Combinations report exemplifies the success that agencies and brands have experienced by adding video to their media mix. A combination of display, native, and video yielded the highest unique account reach at 93.05%. In contrast, when video was not included there was a sharp decrease across all levels of engagement. The addition of video to the foundational media mix of display and native advertisements increases CTR and landing page engagement significantly.
Trust in AdDaptive to help you strategically organize your media type investments, to increase campaign success and overall ROI with the use of video advertising.
Ready to speak with a digital advertising expert? Book a meeting below.
Breaking Through the Noise with a Tailored Advertising Approach
February 28, 2023 |
Matt Shore
Capturing attention can be difficult in the B2B advertising space, but the ability to tailor your approach to your audience’s preferences can help you break through the noise. By leveraging insights gathered from analytics reports and strategic conversations, you can unlock the full picture of your target audience. When utilized effectively, you can help build brand awareness and trust as well as provide the tools necessary to push prospects through the funnel by way of individualized conversations between sales and target accounts.
How exactly does this process work?
Once your target audience has been defined and your ad campaign has deployed, AdDaptive provides performance updates throughout the flight via the Campaign Analytics report. After the flight ends, you will receive the Site Analytics report showing which of the targeted accounts are interacting with your client’s website via your ad campaign. These actionable analytics paired with strategic conversations with our experts will give you a holistic view of your audience and the types of content that resonate with them.
Now it’s time to use what you’ve learned to break through the noise.
When you know your audience’s preferences, you can tailor your advertising approach to fit their needs. Build brand awareness and trust by sending engaging marketing emails to colder prospects to stay top of mind rather than being labeled “just another email notification.” Sales teams can leverage engagement data from said emails to initiate individualized conversations with prospects to meet them where they are in the buying process and begin building relationships. Think of this like sending a birthday card to a friend. You could sign your name at the bottom of a store-bought card with a generic birthday wish, but taking time to write a more personal message would stand out and show that you understand their needs.
What does this look like in practice?
In your Site Analytics report, you might notice one of your prospects has spent significant time on the “product features” tab on your client’s website. Your client’s sales team can take advantage of this info by reaching out to the prospect with the right message at the right time. For example, they could say “Hi (insert name here), we noticed you were exploring our product features page and thought you might be interested in this one-sheet explaining our solution a little more in-depth. Do you have any questions I could help answer?” This way prospects are being met where they are in their independent research process and are being provided another piece of content that will keep them informed, engaged, and moving through the funnel.
Let’s keep the prospects moving.
As prospect relationships grow, continued individualized conversations will help propel them towards purchase. With each campaign you will be able to learn more about your audience and hone in on the things that matter most to them. Just by simply running your ad campaign and interpreting your analytics reports through strategic conversations with our experts, you will know your client’s target audience best. Now you can provide exactly what prospects are looking for, making their buying process quick and easy.
Actionable analytics and a strategic partnership with AdDaptive are the most important tools for building lasting relationships with your prospects and tailoring your advertising approach to your target accounts’ needs. Laying a strong foundation of brand awareness and trust through individualized conversations with prospects will not only help push prospects through the funnel but keep them coming back again and again.
That’s the AdDaptive Advantage.
Ready to speak with a digital advertising expert? Book a meeting below.
In psychology, a schema describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them (source). Schemata are mental concepts that inform us about what to expect from an experience or situation. For example, your self-schema illustrates how you think about yourself and how you act in concordance with your perception of yourself (source). Your schema about public policies determines which political party you more closely associate with, or which laws and regulations you agree with or disagree with and why (source). And your schema about digital advertising encompasses your attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors related to your advertising experience via digital channels.
Like most things in life, our relationship with digital advertising dictates our response to it. The way we think about it, the first thoughts that pop into our head that we associate with it, the visceral reaction we get when we hear news about it…all these things and more contribute to our schema of digital advertising.
Even in a technological setting, or perhaps more so in this situation, our mindset matters. Because technology is a tool, our mindset contributes to how successfully we believe we can use the tool – or how effective the tool is at impacting us. Digital advertisers use tools to be successful and to reach audience members; they develop strategies around the implementation of these tools. Our mental and emotional relationship with digital advertising is important to reflect upon and understand, because it will affect our views of it as well as our reception to the technology used to complement it. Our attitude towards it, our relationship with it, and our response to it are dictated by our view of its role in our lives.
In order to understand its role, we can first personify it. Similar to the way marketers create a persona for their target customer base, we can create one here. How would you personify digital advertising? Is it a friend? Or an intruder? Would its career be in service, helping people live better lives? Or would it be a peripheral role that is more “nice to have” than crucial to the underpinnings of a healthy society? Does it embody a modern, cutting edge approach, or does it represent a passing fad? Understanding how you characterize digital advertising will help you in your analysis of its direction, trends, and gaps.
If you see digital advertising as something that perforates every aspect of life and should not be ignored, you will respond differently to news stories than someone who believes it is a fad that will fizzle away with time. Recognizing the meaning behind your relationship with digital advertising will reveal your stance and predict your reactions to future developments.
Understanding your feelings about digital advertising will also help you determine whether you want or need to learn more about it in order to more fully form an opinion rooted in truth. In other words, there is always something to be said about facts, though people are more likely to believe a fact that aligns with their preconceived notions about something. For example, eMarketer forecasts that US ad spending will grow 6.6% in 2018, reaching $220.96 billion (source). Does this statistic make you hopeful or worried? Display ads placed on your mobile devices will account for a large percentage of the advertisements you see and are a huge part of companies’ marketing strategies. Companies with extensive research and analytics resources would not be placing so much budget behind digital advertising if it were not expected to deliver favorable results. The reason companies’ expenditure on digital ads is growing is that people are responding to them – it’s as simple as that. Would you put the majority of your marketing budget behind an initiative that held more risk than reward? You may put a small percentage toward it to test it, but not upwards of 70% of your budget. Instead, wouldn’t you allocate your budget in favor of a channel that yielded positive results year over year? In a word, yes. The financial implications of the digital advertising industry explain why so many brands are spending more and more money on display ads in particular: They work.
At this point, you may be skeptical. You may be thinking, “They might work, but not on me.” But maybe they actually are working on you without your even realizing it. Non-intrusive advertising or native advertising may be registering in your subconscious as you peruse the internet, impacting your opinions or behaviors without your conscious knowledge or effort. Or, even more likely, maybe you simply haven’t been shown the right ads, so you perceive the advertising experience as more of a nuisance than anything else, which is entirely understandable. Depending on how steadfast you are in your beliefs, programmatic advertising may be able to change your mind.
One of the many powers of an effective programmatic advertising solution is that it is valuable to the recipient of the ad as well as the company deploying it. If the technology is powerful enough and the data is reliable enough, digital ads delivered programmatically should reach people who want to see them. The company deploying that ad would be happy that the impression was not wasted and that their budget went to good use; similarly, the recipient of the ad might actually be interested in the content or company behind the ad and be happy they saw that advertisement as opposed to one without much relevance. In this instance, the advertising experience is a positive one, and enough positive experiences can change resistors’ viewpoints drastically.
An effective programmatic advertising solution can do this – reach the people who want to be reached – at scale, and they can do it without violating privacy laws. This is especially advantageous in the B2B world, which often faces more hurdles than B2C concerning the content of ads or how to target individuals at businesses while adhering to their personal privacy. It is important to note that this is not impossible: There are ways to ethically manage advertising campaigns and target business influencers at scale without violating privacy laws. Some programmatic advertising technologies can target the right people at the right businesses with relevant ads at scale, creating a positive experience for the recipient of those ads as well as the company deploying them. That should be our collective aspiration – narrow targeting, large scale, minimized wasted spend, personal privacy, and content relevance. In this day and age, that vision is not so far-fetched; in fact, it is well within reach, if we use the right technological tools to get there. On the advertising side, we just have to be creative and bold enough to create the technology that can achieve such favorable results; and if we’re not there yet, we should keep working toward that ideal and reshaping the future of digital advertising to grow into something that benefits all parties involved.
If we can change our mindset, we can change our response as well as the outcome. Perhaps we should consider digital advertising objectively based on financial logic or the scientific placement of ads, or maybe we should approach it warmly like an old friend, listening to its newest improvements and supporting its positive growth. Maybe we should give it the benefit of the doubt, knowing that companies who deploy their ads programmatically have a better chance of giving us advertisements that are relevant to us. Some people may think about advertising pessimistically, but they are not the majority; better yet, we have the opportunity to change our minds and think about it optimistically, which could therefore carve out a better future for ourselves. As consumers, we should want to see ads that are relevant to us, especially if it can be done without our privacy being compromised (which it can). Our perception of advertising will dictate the future of the industry, since companies are paying attention and tweaking their offering based on what we need. As advertisers, we should want to minimize wasted spend by delivering ads to quality leads by understanding them and analyzing our ability to reach them through our technologies. We should be listening to what consumers want and tailoring our approach based on what they will respond to – which is founded in both what they need in that moment and their general feelings about advertising. A consumer’s positive mindset toward advertising can improve ROI on an advertiser’s campaign, proving their intrinsic link on the measure of success. By enhancing the advertising experience, we can create a more positive schema for digital advertising among our consumers, improving their psychological and physical reactions to ads and to the industry overall, which will help usher in a more positive future for advertisers and consumers alike.
In a recent survey of 1,000 marketers worldwide by Rakuten Marketing, respondents estimated they waste an average of 26% of their budgets on ineffective channels and strategies. Additionally, about half of respondents said they misspend at least 20% of their budgets.
The most common challenge with relying on probabilistic data in digital advertising is ineffective targeting, according to 49% of respondents in a recent Viant study.
The top two factors limiting the success of digital ad campaigns are audience reach (30%) and targeting inaccuracies (27%), according to a recent Viant study.
We hear you loud and clear.
Marketers want to target the right audience efficiently. They don’t want to waste money on ad formats and placements that don’t pan out. They want to be smart with their spending – as we all do. Programmatic advertising is the answer – if it’s done correctly.
Programmatic advertising automates media buys, saving time and resources (freeing marketers up to focus on strategy and creatives) and using an arsenal that has been proven to work. But the power of the ads is dependent on the programmatic technology. How accurate can the targeting be? How much will my ROI increase and my wasted spend decrease? These are important questions you should ask the company you use to buy your ads, because they’re crucial to your overall campaign plan.
For example, AdDaptive’s programmatic ad technology can consistently operate with pinpoint accuracy because of our multi-faceted approach to B2B IP targeting, combining offline and online data for the most holistic depiction of the customer and the most accurate way to reach them. Other approaches, when taken alone, aren’t as accurate, since they aren’t as comprehensive. For example, the industry is fairly divided on the topic of cookies. Cookies can help to provide more depth into an ad campaign, but they should not be used alone, since they are placed on browsers based on assumptions rather than validated offline data. If you rely solely on cookies’ inferred data, you may be wasting valuable budget dollars on impressions that are unlikely to convert. That’s why cookies should be a second-tier approach, whereas the first plan of attack should be to use validated data and geotargeting, which have proven to deliver the best results. When you’re only paying for served impressions, your money goes farther with this two-pronged approach and brings you more valuable leads.
In terms of reach, the ad company powering your campaigns needs to have a large enough database to provide an appropriate foundation from which to pluck out the key decision-makers and influential individuals that need to see your ad. Companies that have robust technologies and partnerships tend to be able to offer a wider variety of targeting options. In other words, if you have a larger playing field, you have more chances to find the right person. For example, say you want to draft the most talented pitcher to your baseball team. Are you going to have 10 players tryout or 100? The more players you see, the greater your chance of finding a highly talented pitcher. Now imagine what a company like AdDaptive could do with billions of data points and hundreds of millions of households – the possibilities are endless.
If you are a marketer, you will want to choose an agency that is making the right decisions on your behalf. And if you are an agency, you will want to partner with a programmatic ad company that has a large enough database and robust enough technology to deliver the impressions your clients want at the price they can pay. Look for companies that are continually making great strides to enhance their technology, broaden their database, and improve their targeting capabilities, thus ultimately improving their ability to deliver your ads most effectively. The programmatic ad tech market is still young, but the big players are doing whatever it takes to get ahead of the curve and set you up for success.
Check out our solutions and see why a company like AdDaptive can increase your ROI and put your ads in front of the right people at the right price.
