In May of 2023 AdDaptive’s Senior Director of Communication and Brand Strategy, Laura Goldstone, wrote an article that was published on the Digiday homepage titled Why brands are seeking more nuanced, humanized audience segmentation for campaign success. The article touches on the importance of audience empathy when it comes to segmentation and accurate targeting. 

Finding the human side of digital advertising can be difficult for many tech-focused agencies whose decision-makers rely solely on raw data. However, empathy plays a crucial role in advertising and allows brands to connect with their audience on a deeper level. Understanding the preferences of each target account or segment based on previous engagement gives advertisers the actionable insights needed to determine the ideal media mix for future campaigns. 

Empathy in targeted advertising creates a sense of brand trust and authenticity, which elevates the customer journey throughout the flight of each campaign. Ultimately, humanization in advertising leads to the creation of meaningful connections that drive engagement, brand loyalty, and, in turn, revenue.

Read more in AdDaptive’s byline on Digiday: 

Why brands are seeking more nuanced, humanized audience segmentation for campaign success

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AdDaptive was thrilled to sponsor and attend the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit held May 22-24 in Palm Springs, CA. It’s always a great opportunity to connect with clients, prospects, and industry experts to get a pulse on the state of advertising. There were many interesting panels and topics discussed at the conference. Here are a few highlights.

Strategy Optimization Through Analytics

Our own VP of Sales Ted McNulty gave an insightful presentation: Optimizing Your Strategy with Transparent Analytics. He discussed the importance of having analytics lead your advertising strategy to strengthen your future targeting efforts. With actionable analytics and the context behind the numbers, you will also gain a better understanding of your audience. These insights can be leveraged by sales teams for more personalized outreach tactics that help you meet your prospects where they are in the buying process. With analytics driving your campaign strategy and decisions, you can feel confident in delivering strong ROAS. 

The Personal Touch of Programmatic

Another theme discussed at the conference was the notion that programmatic advertising is losing some of its “personal touch” and is being compared to “mass media.” The modern advertiser knows that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to connecting with prospects. In order to gain that additional level of personalization, you have to understand your audience. Actionable analytics can help fill in the blanks about your audience from their media preferences to what type of messaging they need to make their purchase decision. This additional audience knowledge can help you send the right message at the right time and avoid that “mass media” comparison as you easily move prospects through the funnel.

Ad Spend Trends

Over the past few years, ad spend trends have been fluctuating. In 2023, brands are still proceeding with caution in their campaigns. Some believe ad spend decisions are tricky during a time of economic uncertainty, but they don’t have to be. With actionable insights, you can choose the perfect media mix for each campaign by personalizing your media mix to your target audience’s preferences. Using this approach, you can feel confident that each ad spend decision you make will result in reaching high-priority accounts and maximizing ROAS. 

Third-Party Cookie Updates and Alternatives

Coming off the news of Chrome depreciating third-party cookies for 1% of users in 2024, the conference was buzzing with “cookie talk.” Many cookie alternatives were discussed in different panels as industry leaders began preparation for the final goodbye. Now that losing third-party cookies feels closer than ever before, many industry experts are looking for new ways forward. At AdDaptive, we are proud to have never relied on third-party cookies in the first place. While others are scrambling to change their approach, AdDaptive is continuing to lead the way with our cookieless IP targeting and diversified approach. 

The Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit was an amazing experience. It’s not often that all of our peers are together in one place discussing what we do best. We are thrilled to walk away from this conference with more knowledge on how to continue supporting our partners and with new ideas on how to keep innovating in the ad tech space. 

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The annual Mirren Live conference took place on May 16 & 17, 2023 with both live and virtual options to attend. The event was hosted at the Barkley headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri – home of the famous Kansas City-style barbeque. The 35+ conference sessions provided high-level industry insights and thought leadership from over 60 esteemed industry-leading speakers, with focus points ranging from agency growth to creativity, innovation, and much more!

AdDaptive was a proud sponsor of Mirren Live this year, with a booth and 3 on-site employees ready to discuss the current needs and pain points that agencies are facing. We enjoyed seeing knowledgeable, familiar faces in the industry as well as meeting some new professionals with fresh ideas. AdDaptive also hosted a virtual booth, which remains accessible here. 

The buzz at Mirren Live revealed that the hottest topic among advertisers this year is the unpredictability of the economy in terms of advertising budgets and their subsequent allocation. Determining how to appropriately allocate ad spend among media types for each campaign is top of mind for advertisers. With fluctuating budgets, agencies are wary of legal, economic, and industry shifts that could impact the future of advertising.

Placing ad campaigns on hold isn’t an appealing concept from either an agency or a brand perspective. But even the largest campaign budgets are still facing longer-than-normal wait times for flight launches thus far in 2023. Brands are looking for agencies to take on even more of the steps in the advertising process, but with resources stretched thin each media buyer is currently doing the work of two or three people. Partnering with an ad tech vendor with a full suite of transparent report offerings and a service team, like AdDaptive, can alleviate the ever-growing workload for agencies of any size.

Several sessions at Mirren Live also discussed the use of AI and its potential effects. Some agencies have recently elected to use AI to handle their RFIs and RFPs, as well as backend revenue operations and tracking. AI promises a creative revolution that might turn the tables of work culture, in many ways that still remain to be seen.

Another hot topic at the conference was lead generation versus top-of-funnel focus. Many brands have been fixated on lead generation which might result in neglecting prospects at other stages in the pipeline. This is frustrating for agencies who understand the importance of top-of-funnel tactics, and the need for actionable insights to guide and support said tactics. Building brand awareness is equally important to generating leads, and the use of actionable insights help determine each account’s location in the sales funnel and helps you target them with accuracy based upon their previous engagement with the brand and its various campaigns.

As the chatter at Mirren live proved, accurately measuring campaign performance requires changing the definition of success. Different metrics can prove different benefits and advantages to each advertising approach when properly analyzed. A full suite of reporting insights gives a holistic view of campaign performance at scale, considering not only the goal KPIs but all measurements. Reaching the goals of each campaign has become more nuanced, and comprehensive insights are needed now more than ever for true optimization. It’s all about how clearly and in-depth the vast amount of analytics are interpreted.

Trust in AdDaptive’s robust suite of reporting solutions for the transparent analytics you need to achieve campaign success, from one flight to the next. 

Stay tuned for more ad tech industry conference reporting from AdDaptive!

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