As another month nears its end, we bring you a customer-focused issue of Spotlight. Here at Novatiq, we believe that one of the major trends in digital marketing is consumer empowerment, in terms of the quality of the digital content people consume, the control they have over their data, and their relationships with brands and publishers. This month’s Spotlight shows just how embedded this trend is becoming as digital media evolves.
What we have for you today: The low down on Advertising as a Service, new video formats, traditional vs. digital marketing, and new sources of value for telcos.
Missed our April’s newsletters? Don’t worry, you can read it on our blog here.
Traditional advertising strikes back
Having lost ground to digital for years, traditional advertising is having a moment with 10.2% growth in spend forecast for B2C service campaigns and 4.9% for B2C product campaigns. Likely reasons for this shift include frustration with digital ads that clutter websites and ruin the user experience, greater trust in traditional advertising, and fallout from the loss of third-party cookies. Certainly, digital advertising remains the most-complained-about advertising media, making up close to half of all complaints in the UK and nearly two-thirds of cases.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Digital marketers, publishers, and the adtech industry are working on ways to overcome these and other challenges to retain the hearts and minds of web users. The key: consumer empowerment.
Content and control
One way digital is looking to remain at the forefront of marketing is by offering new and compelling experiences to customers. Take NBCUniversal as a case in point. The company is launching new ad formats that blur the line between content and commercials, such as the Attention Lab, which augments creative with advanced metrics testing and eye-tracking to keep customers engaged. Other innovations include advertising in the metaverse and interactive content in TV programmes.
But it’s not just through great creative that consumers are being put first ‒ they’re also being given more control over their data. Google, for instance, has announced plans for a tool that will enable people to moderate for themselves what kinds of ads pop up on their screens.
It’s a theme that Apple’s been riffing on too, most recently with an advert highlighting the privacy concerns of tracking IDs. It’s no coincidence that Apple has an alternative to peddle, but the ad does provide further evidence of the move towards a privacy-first, customer-centric model for the web.
CX and the skills gap
According to the Drum’s Digital Agency Census, alongside data and privacy changes (particularly related to the depreciation of third-party cookies), CX is a key driver for the transformation of the sector. However, with brands, publishers, and platforms alike also majoring on these areas, it’s little wonder that relevant skills are going to be in short supply.
Training will help, and so too will automation. Some responses to the loss of third-party cookies, including our own Fusion platform, enable personalised, privacy-first advertising at scale to be entirely automated. Solutions like ours that work within the existing programmatic ecosystem will help brands and agencies meet their CX and data objectives and help the industry compliment the resurgent traditional media.
New sources of value for telcos
Finally, and leaving consumer empowerment aside, another big story this month is the news that Vodafone and Three are in merger talks. The merger will help consolidate the industry so that telcos can better leverage the opportunities of 5G and take on OTT service providers. Such moves will help telcos overcome the challenge of continuing to deliver growth and shareholder value when large multinationals.
As we set out in this whitepaper on the subject, telcos can also find a route to growth by opening new revenue streams ‒ including in digital marketing. Have a read of the paper and see why we think telcos could have an important role to play as enablers of verification services for privacy-first digital marketing.
The telco industry wouldn’t be the first vertical to make a move into the digital advertising space. Just this month, Marriott has launched a media network that lets brands engage with travellers on its apps and TV screens, using anonymised data on its guests to help brands target their ads. Here we have an example of a brick-and-mortar hotel brand becoming a publisher to unlock new sources of revenue and growth for its business and shareholders.
More ways to get inspired
We’ve been hard at work this month continuing our journey to embed our innovative telco-based identity solution for the open web at the centre of the emerging digital marketing sector. We’ve also produced some more thought-provoking blogs for those of you looking for some further reading. This month, we’re explaining what telcos stand to gain from offering verification services as a new business stream, and we also take a look at McKinsey’s report into post third-party cookie strategies for advertisers.
Circle back in June for more news and inspiration.
