Dave Reed talked with Bill Fisher from eMarketer for the publication’s State of the UK digital ad market report. The below are some insights from their interview.
Good advertising
“I think the best anecdote to perceived ills in the market is doubling down on quality. The UK has lots of examples where it’s leading on that. Quality means using first-party consumer data and modelling off it, or using high-quality third-party data to target consumers in a better way. This means leveraging programmatic not just for long-tail, relatively low-CPM buying…maybe doing it at a lower frequency, having a meaningful message.”
“It also means coordination of consumer experience not just in paid media but also across paid, owned and earned experiences as well. Across all these things, I’m excited and optimistic that some of these issues—fraud, viewability, ad blocking—are immediately compatible by focusing on common sense, consumer-first principles.”
Premium media
Inventory quality will continue to be a focus into 2017 in EMEA.
“I think the UK has a leg up on that in the sense that private marketplaces or some kind of prearranged deal that’s executed in an automated way are fairly standard here—50 to 60 percent of things classed as programmatic are also classified as some sort of direct/private marketplace deal.”
“We’ve moved into a world where a marketer will try to get reach against tens of thousands of opportunities a day across TV/print/OOH/radio etc. to a world of connected devices and multiple screens—literally hundreds of opportunities to get possible touch points with the consumer.”
Regarding the growth of new formats: “Some are new, some are held as new,” Reed said. “Out-stream, ad units that can be different lengths on video but with the same content, are getting some help from the supply chain. Video on both desktop and mobile will continue to take the lion’s share of growth…seeing some interesting growth in format, native and non-paid channels that we think programmatic can inform.”
Data
“There’ll be continued growth for marketers in complementary verticals sharing data (data collaboration), and publishers who increasingly expand into partnerships that are data-driven. We’ve seen a lot of retail space clients branch into partnership with brands they sell, or developing media propositions.”
Measurement
“There’s one general effect of measurement in marketing, and that’s revenue. The closer you can get to being able to tie marketing activity to revenue, either in the short term like a purchase, or in the long term in something like lifetime value or complete brand loyalist metrics, the closer you can get to that, and the better off you are. If you start there, you’ll tend to shy away from things that don’t actually show ads to people, unless you think unseen ads drive real revenue. Often marketers are left with an imperfect link between brand loyalty, short-term revenue or long-term customer value, and then it can be useful to introduce a number of inner media metrics. Viewability can be one of those but it shouldn’t be the effective function of your marketing to show viewable impressions—it should be to drive business outcomes.