A Cookieless World Conclusion
Blog
As 87% of people now believe data privacy is a right, not a privilege,[1]we, as marketers, should do better to address their growing concerns around how their information is collected and used. It is not only a matter of legal compliance, but also a matter of trust. In that context, although the recent evolution in the cookies landscape has triggered legitimate concerns around the potential consequences on advertising efficiency and on market dynamics, we should all welcome any change promoting user privacy as a collective, meaningful progress. Of course, these changes come with their own set of challenges and uncertainties, and the industry will probably have to make do with less - but better - data. As we have seen in this report: The leading web browsers are moving away from third-party cookies, creating a fresh paradigm for the digital marketing industry. In 2023, we consider using third-party cookies for advertising purposes should be a relic of the past. Apple is going even further, requiring apps to explicitly obtain consent to keep tracking users.[2] Some digital marketing activities are impacted, such as data management, audience activation, and performance measurement. Marketers must reconsider how they manage data. This means questioning their current value exchange, improving communications around data privacy, and revisiting their technology needs. To keep engaging consumers, marketers should investigate the possibilities offered by contextual targeting and cookieless audience targeting alternatives such as persistent IDs. To measure future performance, marketers will have to combine multiple techniques, from in-platform attribution to incrementality measurement to media mix modelling. A solid testing roadmap will be more important than ever. There is no silver bullet for this evolution, instead, each brand must develop its unique combination of responses. It is fine if your organisation has not figured out the best option yet. You are not running behind as there is still time to adapt – but you should not wait any longer to plan your transition to a new model. We expect discussions around privacy and identity to stay at the forefront of the debate even after we have pivoted to the cookieless world. This is why at dentsu we constantly monitor the martech landscape and are committed to working alongside our clients and partners to imagine and implement solutions that work for all. As a global leader in search marketing, we have implemented advanced cookieless strategies for the world’s largest brands for the last 10+ years. We are using this know-how to help our clients not only thrive in a world free of third-party cookies but do so with speed. Digital advertising has always been one of the most dynamic and exciting marketing spaces - and we are confident the best is yet to come. [1] Microsoft Advertising in partnership with iProspect, 2020 Consumer Privacy and Brand Trust Survey, Dec 2019 – Mar 2020, as featured in the report In Brands We Trust, published in April 2020 [2] Apple Developer, App Store, User Privacy and Data Use, as accessed on May 4, 2020 0
3 mins read
Playing a gig to 10m in Fortnite
Blog
This week we have seven stories including the biggest ever event in Fortnite, the rise of subscription retail, Spotify’s new focus on podcasts, and what the Super Bowl did to Netflix. This week's top stories... DJ Marshmello plays to 10m people in Fortnite Last weekend the video game Fortnite hosted a gig by Marshmallo, with over 10m people attending in avatar form. You can see a clip on YouTube, and the full set is available exclusively on Apple Music. Fortnight has over 200m registered players, and generated over $300m in revenue *a month*. Clearly a very big deal, and another example of Chinese media that is big globally Unilever has bought Graze, the snacks company Graze is very famous among office workers in London; there always seems to be someone you share a mailroom pigeon hole with who subscribes to their snacks. Now Unilever has bought them, giving credibility to the direct to consumer and subscription retail models. P&G has bought This is L, the women’s sanitary products company This seems like a natural fit - This is L started off as mail order, but is now in thousands of stores. There will be lots of synergies with P&G’s business, and they get to work with some very smart entrepreneurs. We will see many more subscription-based start-ups. Ikea is trialling a subscription model This model is more like rental than purchase, but it lets people take possession of furniture with the option to return it when they don’t need it anymore (e.g. moving house), or when they fancy a change. Ikea then takes it back and reconditions it, extending its life. This seems very smart, and very in keeping with modern lifestyles. Spotify has bought podcast producer Gimlet Spotify is ramping up its podcast content by buying Gimlet, which makes shows like Start Up and ReplyAll. It’s a recognition that music fans don’t only want to listen to music, so being able to offer a good range of podcasts is likely to keep people on the platform for longer. It’s also very likely that this will improve Spotify’s targeting - knowing what podcasts a person likes arguably tells you more about them than what music they like. But then there is the issue of advertising. This BBC article thinks that this will bring targeted ads to podcasts, based on Spotify’s knowledge of its signed in users, but it doesn’t seem to be clear if they premium Spotify users will get targeted ads in their podcasts. Insights into kids’ media use in the UK Based on interviews with about 400 kids a week, Kids Insights sees a levelling off for YouTube as kids turn to more mobile native services like TikTok. They also say that about 20% of kids have access to a smart speaker, and that retail is becoming more important as a place to hang out for teens, as they are getting more autonomy over their own spending. & finally - even though the Super Bowl had the lowest ratings for years, it hit Netflix One sign of the Super Bowl’s continuing popularity is its impact on Netflix. Even though it didn’t break any records for viewing it still got 100m people watching in the US - and this resulted in a 32% drop in Netflix viewing compared to a normal Sunday. Playing a gig to 10m in Fortnite 0
3 mins read
Instagram's new algorithm for 2019
Blog
Instagram's new algorithm for 2019: What's changing and how to prepare your brand 0
1 mins read
Instagram's new algorithm for 2019: What's changing and how to prepare your brand
Blog
In order to protect the personal information of its users, Instagram introduced new changes in its algorithm that limit the search of hashtags in the platform. Only companies verified on Instagram can search for hashtags or track the activity of other verified business accounts. Learn about the most important considerations to take into account to best apply the new changes in your brand's social media strategy. Check: To protect personal information, only verified companies can search for hashtags and analyze the activity of other verified business accounts. The verification process includes linking a Facebook page with the Instagram account, indicating that you are opting to share public information about your business with others. Limited hashtags: One of the changes in access to public Instagram data is the limits on the amount of hashtags that can be searched to avoid abuse of personal information. Verified commercial accounts can search up to 30 hashtags in a seven-day period. Putting many hashtags in a post is now penalized by lowering the performance and it is recommended to use maximum 5 hashtags per post. Publication: The frequency and time of publication will be taken into account. It is important to remember that to reach the followers many times less is more and you should not saturate the profiles with a very high publication frequency. In the same way, the quality of the contents is key. The images must be clear and eye-catching for the audience and must be complemented with relevant texts that are of interest. Interaction with the contents: Very short comments or with emojis will not be reflected in the interaction activity of the publications. Comments must have at least four words to be considered as interactions. New options for brand management: A new option is to look for labels and @mentions of your brand. This will allow to know how the users of your brand speak, independently of a hashtag, so you can participate in the conversation with a comment on your publication. Prepare your brands and update them with the changes of the platform to avoid losing digital terrain. Hands on! Instagram's new algorithm for 2019: What's changing and how to prepare your brand 0
2 mins read
Google Marketing Platform made easy
Blog
Feeling a little overwhelmed by the wonderful world that is Google Marketing Platform? Have you been told numerous stories about the software and its capabilities, but you still don’t have a clear idea of what it is and if it’s the right move for your business? Not to worry, you are most certainly not alone. Welcome to the Google Marketing Platform Beginners Club! My name is Bobbie, and I am the GMP Account Executive at iProspect. As the newest member of the GMP team (and founder of the Beginners Club), I understand how daunting it can be researching the various platforms and the information overload that soon follows. As Google Marketing Platform Partners, it is our responsibility to simplify this information into a language that everyone can understand, so you can fully appreciate what a powerful technology it is and the endless, constantly evolving tools it can provide for your business. The three platforms that we specifically specialise in at iProspect are Display and Video 360, Campaign Manager and Search Ads 360. Together they make an incredible ecosystem that allows a business complete control and autonomy across their online advertising and search campaigns. To get you started, below are simple explanations of what each platform is, what it does and just a small number of the incredible benefits each one can deliver: Display and Video 360 (DV360) DV360 allows an advertiser or business to bid in an automated online auction for advertising space in real time, as it becomes available on a publisher’s website. The platform permits the user to format their advertising campaign with specific guidelines and brilliant control. When advertising space then becomes available, the system follows these unique guidelines as an indicator as to whether it is worthwhile bidding for the space in the online auction. Just some of the features available in DV360 when setting up a campaign include: · Precise audience targeting · Detailed budget and spend allocation · Controlled placement and location of ads · Sophisticated brand safety filters · Real-time reporting that gives you an invaluable insight into how your campaign is performing Simply put, you can choose what advertisement is shown, to which demographic, at what time and where that will be! Search Ads 360 (SA360) A search engine management solution, SA360 provides the user with the ability to optimise, report and manage numerous search campaigns across multiple engine accounts, all from one interface. Agencies and marketers no longer have to review and make edits on each separate engine. SA360 allows for bulk uploads of new campaigns, ability to copy and paste campaigns between engines with the click of a button, and bulk edits all within one platform. Below are just some of the SA360 features that allow a user to save time, act quicker and achieve better optimisation: · Bid strategies that automatically adjust by predicting the best bid for a keyword to achieve your unique business goals · Gather valuable search insight with Floodlight tags · Measure every aspect of your campaign performance with powerful reporting tools Campaign Manager (CM) This is the platform that we find our clients know little or nothing about, but for the right business, is arguably the most powerful of them all. I personally like to refer to Campaign Manager as the cogs that run in the background, working hard to provide the other platforms with as much intelligence and data as possible. Of course, SA360 and DV360 work perfectly fine as standalone platforms, but for a best in class solution, CM is what we would highly recommend. So, what can CM do? · Creation of floodlight tags – these are pieces of code generated in CM, that a user then places on specific pages of their website. The tags fire when a user visits a page, recording a conversion and providing vital data about how users interact with your site and their journey to conversion. Floodlight tags also allow you to create audience lists by capturing a user’s cookie ID. These lists can then be pulled through to DV360 and used for re-marketing campaigns · Placement tags/ad tags – a user uploads their creatives to CM and assigns them to a placement, creating a placement tag. These tags allow CM to serve the creatives directly to publisher’s website as and when requested · Reporting and attribution – the reporting and attribution tools available in CM provide marketers and in-depth insight into a user’s journey and how effective their campaigns are performing. As SA360 and DV360 can be fully integrated with CM, you can track your search and display activity in this one central platform Want to know more? The above only scratches the surface of the Google Marketing Platform capabilities, but gives you a top-level breakdown of each platform and what they can do for your business. If you would like to discuss anything that you have read here today, please contact the iProspect team at GMP@iProspect.com who would be happy to help. 0
5 mins read
Brand Safety in Display and Video 360
Blog
Managing verification (brand safety and fraud) effectively is a key challenge for all marketers, and one that shouldn’t be swept aside or thought of lightly. It can take a lot of time, energy and money to build a brand and so it may seem unfair that one particularly unfortunate ad placement can be devastating to those efforts. And yet, this is the state of play and highlights why we need to be diligent and resourceful to tackle this challenge head on. Thankfully, Display and Video 360 is here to help you with best-in-class brand safety features and integrations. The ability to bid on the open exchange is one of the key benefits of buying programmatically - allowing for true scale which is accessible to all. Of course, this scale brings challenges of its own, as the number of domains available is huge and ever increasing, and there’s no guarantee that all inventory is safe. Whitelisting Perhaps the most robust route to tackling both brand safety and fraud is whitelisting, which is essentially positive targeting. Here, you provide the platform with a list of domains that you have determined to be brand safe. When determining this list, there are a few things to consider for each domain: 1. Is the content of the site limited to a particular age group (or, is the site ‘safe for work’?) 2. Does the site contain, or is the site likely to contain, content that may not be appropriate, or could show my ads against controversial topics/products? 3. Is the site created for genuine content creation and use? (Not for monetisation of fraudulent clicks/impressions) You can take this further than brand safety, and consider the relevance to your site, the alignment with your own brand and/or product, or simply consider a site that is part of your user journey. Once created, your ads will only show on these sites giving you control and confidence. While indeed powerful, this is no silver bullet and there are a few key considerations. First, the majority teams unfortunately don’t have the time to put together a list of any real volume to allow for that scale or to keep it updated as new inventory becomes available. This is where we can help – we have multiple whitelists that our teams at Dentsu Aegis have put together which you can leverage and utilise. Second, even a list with real volume is going to limit reach versus the open exchange. There’s a balance to be had here between the two, and it’s a sliding scale which needs to be considered by each advertiser based on their goals and needs at that point in time. Blacklisting Naturally, we follow whitelisting with blacklisting, or, negative targeting. We can blacklist URLs for sites we know are not safe and do not conform to the three questions we asked ourselves above. While less robust than whitelisting as the platform may still buy ad space on new inventory and unsafe sites that you are unaware of, it doesn’t have as much impact on limiting reach. Plus, you are able to negatively blacklist against keywords which look at the content of the site and/or page. You may want to exclude ad space on pages which use profanity, mature language, controversial or fake news, or perhaps simply controversial terms or topics. We recognise that creating these lists take time so once again, we at Dentsu Aegis have blacklists (both domains and keywords) that you are able to leverage in the platform. Native Filters in DV360 While whitelists are great at ensuring you are displaying on a brand-safe site, there is still an element of risk associated with the content. Display and Video 360 uses Digital Content Labels to exclude content based on a suitability rating (similar to Movie Ratings – ‘Mature Content’, ‘PG’). You can then apply Sensitive Category Filters which allow you to exclude content that has been identified as discussing the likes of: Gambling, Drugs, Weapons, Travel Accidents and Politics. These two filters add real nuance to your approach, allowing you to show content on great inventory which may occasionally have unsuitable content as sometimes a blacklist/whitelist only approach may be, too black and white… Third Party Integrations If you want to apply a little more nuance to your brand safety feature set, we recommend utilising one of the third party verification tools that is integrated with DV360. These enable you to block High Risk sensitive category content but allow for Moderate Risk where you wish. For example, this may block sites promoting gambling, but not automatically veto ad space because there is a mention of a term related to gambling on the page. Sweeping Approach The in-platform tools do a great job at protecting your brand, but there is always more that can be done in what is undoubtedly an ever-evolving process. If you are using a whitelist, it is important to ensure you update with new URLs or apps that come into play which are brand safe so you do not miss out on what could be premium inventory. Where you are not using a whitelist, use the Verification tool in DCM to blacklist URLs that the platform thinks are of a high risk, or in a sensitive category you would like to exclude. These features are to be used in conjunction, not one alone provides both a robustness and nuance. At iProspect, we can provide you with Brand Safety recommendations, audits and recurring check support. 0
5 mins read
Importance of measurement
Blog
Measurement is a pillar of effective marketing. Without understanding how to collect complete data, where it comes from and why it is important, marketers cannot make intelligent decisions. Why is it important? Measurement of data is fundamental to any successful marketing campaign, as today’s customer journey is highly fragmented across channels and devices. With proper measurement, marketers can track each touchpoint in a user's journey – even if that person uses multiple devices and interacts with various channels. Understanding this relationship is more important than ever in today’s digital world. What is measurement? In the ‘classical’ definition, measurement is ‘values made meaningful by quantifying into specific units. Measurements act as labels which made those value more useful in terms of details. (Source: www.business dictionary.com/definition/measurement.html) In simpler terms, measurement is the action of counting everything that matters. Measurement can be defined as the assignment of a number to an action or event, which can be compared with other actions or events. For example, most often these will apply to KPIs (key performance indicators) or events of value. These can include sales, leads, revenue, or any other action the end user may take. How we categorize measurement is important because it allows us to compare measurements. Advertisers are constantly trying to optimize their investment, website, and everything about their online and offline experiences. In addition, measurement underlies everything that marketers evaluate, including attribution. Intelligent business decisions Accurate and complete data can only be collected through good measurement practices. Bad data leads to poor or misguided decisions. Organizations that tie marketing metrics directly to business objectives are 3x more likely to hit their goals. (Source: Google/IPSOS Connect, March 2016, Digital Devices Bridge the Physical World.) Three key principles of good measurement are: 1. Choosing the right KPIs Many advertisers are still using outdated KPIs to measure their marketing activity. Essentially, they’re using bad data. As an example, for many businesses the days of looking only at lead forms is long gone. Why? Because users may not always fill out forms on mobile devices. So, the number of lead forms is no longer an accurate way to measure things. In a similar way, the practice of advertisers still looking at clicks as their main metric is not as reliable. Advertisers need to focus on other metrics that drive business results; impressions and viewability for example. 2. Understanding the customer journey With more than half of all web traffic now coming from smartphones and tablets, the user journey is becoming more and more complex. In fact, data shows that 75% of online adults begin an activity on one device but continue or finish it on another. As user behavior evolves, advertisers must adapt their approach to measuring and analyzing it. Source: 1 Google/IPSOS Connect, March 2016, Digital Devices Bridge the Physical World, n=2013 US online respondents 18+ 3. Measure the correct KPI for users along the customer journey With digital advertising, clients face increasing pressure to differentiate their advertising based on the individual user. Measurement is the backbone of this concept. 0
3 mins read