New Research Studies from Conversant Media

Conversant Media has released three new studies about digital marketing and advertising that are worth a look.

1. First, What's Driving Marketing in 2014 summarizes the results of a recent survey of digital marketing and advertising pros on what they expect to do with their marketing resources for the balance of 2014. It's worth a look. Download here. (No reg req)

The second is a fascinating study of the agency media planning and buying process. Learn important information about the media that planners consume regularly, the details of the RFP process, and who actually makes the media buying decision.Download here (No reg req)

The third is a major study of senior retailer marketers. The paper outlines their plans, attitudes and interests as 2014 unfolds. Download it by clicking here. (Reg req)

Hope you find them valuable!

A little Friday Levity

http://www.honestslogans.com
http://consumerist.com/2013/10/24/11-company-slogans-that-say-what-we-know-to-be-the-real-truth/

Great post by John Conley of Dotomi on the power of big data to drive personalization and improved marketing results

Find it here:

3 Steps for Using Big Data to Drive Faster Marketing Growth

Anyone else feel ancient after seeing this video?

The Simple Rules of Cross-Device Marketing

Every year we have a white-hot topic in digital marketing. This year it's cross-device marketing.

And apparently it's not just something we're talking about; we're also implementing it in a big way. In a recent survey of hundreds of senior buyers conducted by research company Ad Perceptions, more than 89 percent of respondents expected to pursue cross-device marketing efforts in 2013. The survey, conducted in February of this year and underwritten by ValueClick Media and Greystripe, also revealed that buyers expected to spend an average of 30 percent of digital dollars against cross-device efforts.



That's a lot of money, which makes it absolutely critical that we figure out how to spend that money the best way possible. Here's my list of the six essentials to doing cross device marketing right.

Focus on the consumer, not devices or channels

We all know that it can be problematic to think and plan in device or channel-based silos. Doing cross-device right requires that we build plans around the customer and their particular cross-device usage patterns. Consumer media time is highly fragmented, and they use different devices for different tasks. True cross-device marketing refers to targeting the same individuals across the devices that they use to access the web.

Reaching some people via PC and other people via a separate mobile campaign isn't really cross-device marketing, and a great deal of industry research has shown that reaching people across their devices drives significantly better results.

This isn't a semantic nuance -- it's fundamental to marketing in a multi-device world. According to research from Sophos, the average American spreads their digital usage across about three devices. And comScore says that fully one-third of digital time is now spent on mobile devices. To reach and persuade the user in the most powerful way we need to move our messages with them as they flip between devices throughout their days.

Ensure sound user-to-device matching

It's darn hard to link all of an individual's devices and behaviors to a single user ID. The Sophos study I mentioned earlier said that on average our digital behavior is stored across 12 IDs. An ID for your PC, another two or more for your phone and tablet browsing, and a number of IDs for the various apps you use. Uniting all of these data spaces to one common ID is very difficult -- very, very difficult.

I'm going to outline two different approaches companies use to accomplish user-to-device matching: inferred device matching and login-based matching.

Inferred device matching is a multistep process that, like it says on the tin, infers a match between a user and a set of devices. Broadly, doing it involves a couple of steps. First, you need to associate everything that happens on a single device to one device ID. All the data sets for each of the IDs on a device must be aggregated to a single profile.

Then you have to find ways to associate devices together to a household level. One of the key methods used is by examining the IP addresses we use. Multiple devices on a home IP, for example, are much more likely to be used by the same user than devices that connect via different households.

Household level matching is an important advance for the industry. But it is not -- emphatically not -- user-level matching. Consider a household with a family of four -- mom, dad, and two teens. If these users are typical Americans, there would be 12 devices associated with a household ID. A brand might get better results by targeting the dad across all these devices than by advertising on 12 random devices. But a great deal of that media would be wasted because pops really only uses three of them.

Device-to-user matching is inexact. Broadly, matching is enhanced with more data points. So, for example, seeing two devices connecting on the same IP address provides some evidence of them being used by the same person. But if that IP address is for the Starbucks at 40th and Lex, the likelihood for user-to-device accuracy based upon one recorded connection per device is quite low. We need more data to make a more accurate determination.

Now, if two devices both connect at the same 16 distinct IP addresses over a five-day period, there's significantly more certainty that they share the same user. It's still possible that those two devices aren't used by the same person, but the more data points you add to your equation, the greater that likelihood becomes. IP addresses aren't the only thing that can be used to infer a match. Similar browsing habits, for example, could also provide some additional assurance of a match.

Shared devices have the potential for clouding the soup even more, though new methodologies for associating sets of behavior on a device with different users have been deployed by some providers. 

Inferred device matching is the most common method in use today. The other method is based upon recording first party logins on different devices and then matching these PCs, phones, and tablets using that login as a data point. If, for example, I login to the same financial portfolio account on PC and smartphone, the odds are pretty good that both devices are mine, or at least often used by me.

This user-to-device matching method works best for a company that has a lot of logged-in users. Otherwise, scale would be a real challenge. Further, what's absolutely critical here is that any PII must be disassociated from that profile. Note also that login-based matching has a high degree of accuracy, but this method also has the potential for mismatch if the logins are shared. Nothing is 100 percent -- at least not yet.

Shared devices can create problems here as well, and it's likely that login-based solutions have or will deploy inferred device matching in some form in addition to login-based matching. In short, the level of accuracy is a very important consideration because it's reaching the same users across multiple devices that has such a great impact on results.

Leverage rich behavior and interest insight across all devices and channels

The availability and depth of user interest data to target individuals often varies significantly by channel and device. You can, for example, get really granular in audience development in PC-based display, but interest-based targeting in mobile is often more rudimentary. One key reason is that pure-play mobile vendors see less of a user's total digital activity.

But they do have some really valuable information that pure-play PC vendors don't have: rich, reliable understanding of the mobile behavior of a person. And you need both.

In my view, doing cross-device right requires use of a profile that has both rich interest and behavior data and sound device-usage insights. Interest-based targeting should be just as rich for tablet and phone users as PC users. That requires great user-to-device matching combined with deep audience behavior and interest data.

Look for three kinds of cross-device scale

Whether your brand is large or small, make sure that you field cross-device programs with the scale necessary to really move the needle.

In cross-device, you need to pay attention to three kinds of scale:

• Number of cross-device profiles: How many cross-device profiles can be reached? Potential cross-device reach varies quite widely.
• Number of data points per profile: You can ignore this if you are truly a mass marketer. But if your targeting is at all granular, make sure that your partner can provide enough profiles at the necessary level of specificity. Note also that unique data points are more valuable than common ones.
• Number of potential cross-device ad opportunities: Bigger inventory footprints increase the odds that appropriate inventory can be associated with a cross-device profile so that more impressions can be delivered.

Note also that scale is in many cases inversely related to profile accuracy. To some degree, higher accuracy standards may reduce the number of profiles available. It's like any QA standard -- the more precise the spec, the fewer things that will pass it. The implication here is to inquire about the accuracy standard and ensure it lives up to your needs.

One other thing to be aware of is that scale is constantly increasing for many vendors in the industry. Today a partner might have 30 million profiles, next month 34 million. Just make sure that your expectations match the scale they can offer when you sign that IO.

Engage using the interactive strengths of each device

This is where I'm going to lose some of you. We have to make a real effort to capitalize on the characteristics of the medium if we are to maximize cross-device campaign results. Recognizing that standard units are easier to execute and sometimes key to delivering an acceptable overall CPM, we also need to identify and include more engaging and interactive units in our programs.

Many people choose mobile programs, for example, made up almost entirely of 300x50s, those little slivers at the bottom of your iPhone screen. Reported interaction and click rates for such units are rather high -- but much of that performance probably relates more to fat-finger syndrome than actual noticing value.

Make units with real stopping power a centerpiece of your programs. Add multiple ways to interact. Give people a choice of CTAs. These are all good best creative practices -- but they are arguably even more important to maximizing cross-device performance metrics because they increase the likelihood that they will actually see and experience the multiplicative effects of brand exposure on multiple screens.

Make learning and insights a priority

Cross-device is not something you can set and forget. All industry stakeholders are learning and improving their approaches -- and results -- every day. Set learning objectives with every campaign. What additional cross-device target insight can I learn from this effort?

Genuine multi-device behavioral understanding is in its infancy. Help your baby grow. Your programs can progressively reveal unique aspects of your audience's unique cross-device behaviors. They can provide perspective that can also help guide strategies in other areas of marketing. Ensure that you the partner or internal analytical resources necessary to determine more than your campaign CTR and CPA.

Conclusions

For years many marketers have approached mobile and tablet advertising with a combination of facts and hunches. Let's make a concerted effort to minimize the hunches in 2013. As you formulate your cross-device programs, ask the questions necessary for you to identify the strategies that can really meet your needs. Lots of people are getting great results from cross-device marketing, but the best results are going to go to those that focus on the essentials as they formulate their action plans.

Thanks to iMediaConnection for publishing this first.

Tag Management 101

Have an interest in tag management? Check out the new section on the MasterTMS.com website: http://www.mastertms.com/tag-management-101. Lots of great info.

Don't Miss This Data Driven Marketing and Tag Management Webinar!

We've got an exciting webinar on the way at Mediaplex. Join us on April 18 at 1PM Eastern for a presentation in association with Forrester Research on Data Driven Marketing and Tag Management. 

Brand leaders are working hard to make “data-driven marketing” a reality for themselves and their teams. Websites can be an incredibly rich source of marketing data, but most marketing organizations use tag management and data collection methods that are outdated, incomplete and error prone.

Join our guest, Senior Forrester Reasearch Analyst James McCormick and Mediaplex President David A. Yovanno as they discuss the importance of accurate website data and tag management.

You will learn:

  •  The 6 tenets of marketing intelligence and effective data collection

  •  Why effective and accurate site tagging is critical

  •  How brands are changing the ways they manage website tags

  •  The 4 leading tag management myths and why they matter

  •  How tag management helps marketing agility and site performance

  •  The 5 tag management “must haves” for today’s marketer

It’s time to get real about your website data and how tag management can help you achieve your business goals.

Register now to ensure a place in this fascinating session:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/623045472

10 Short Quotations that Sum Up the Year in Digital Marketing

A lot happened in digital this year, but sometimes just a few sentences can explain a lot. What follows are 10 short quotations from digital leaders -- statements that embody the news, ideas, and trends that shaped digital this year. Give them a look!




Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO

"Challenges ahead" image via Shutterstock.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

"Carpentry background" image via Shutterstock.



Frank Cooper, PepsiCo CMO

"Broken pencil point" image via Shutterstock.



Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO

"Runner" image via Shutterstock.



Ben Silbermann, Pinterest CEO

"Close up of a note paper with push pin" image via Shutterstock.



Mark Pincus, Zynga CEO

"Tree branches on blue sky" image via Shutterstock.



Jack Dorsey, Square CEO and Twitter chairman


"Hand of business women" image via Shutterstock.



John Battelle, Federated Media executive chair

"1100101 blue" image via Shutterstock.



Larry Page, Google CEO

"Night traffic" image via Shutterstock.



And last but not least...

DR Marketers School Brand Marketers on How to Do a Website Right

The conventional way of viewing marketing is that there are brand marketers and direct response marketers with very different tasks and goals -- it is sort of the great industry divide. But while the KPIs of one group may differ from those of the other, there's a lot we can learn from people on the flipside from us.

In my view, online sellers have a strong edge when it comes to building powerful and compelling websites and online experiences. They know what works for their needs and how to get it done. Here are six approaches they use for websites that brand marketers should consider.

Have clear objectives, goals, and measures

A direct response site is built for the express purpose of delivering on a clear and simple set of objectives -- driving sales, purchase frequency, basket size, or lead gen rate. Many brands that don't sell online don't have the same sense of focus when they build their presences. They may have generalized objectives, a laundry list of creative brand experiences, house product information, or any of a host of other reasons. But they often don't put KPIs and measurement in place that assess performance or identify ways to improve.

Part of this is because "branding" appears to be a more elusive objective than sales. But in my view, "branding" should be measured in distinct concrete actions such as CRM program adds, Facebook "likes," Twitter follows, video views, pages consumed, etc. Whether or not these measures are a perfect determinant of branding success is unimportant -- clearly they aren't. But any brand should be able to identify tangible actions that indicate brand development. Just because these measures aren't perfect doesn't mean we would be better off flying blind.

To determine your brand website KPIs, consider:

Your purchase funnelWhat steps does the consumer need to take in order to ultimately make a purchase? How can the site speed people through the steps or get more people on their journey?

Your biggest needsIn general, most brands need to increase awareness, purchase, or buying rate. Identify KPIs that reflect your greatest need.

Your purchase cycleIdentify steps that reflect the hours, days, weeks, or months in the buying cycle. If there is a business reason, for example, for why you want people to sign up for monthly emails, then why shouldn't you measure your site on the extent to which it drives them?

Then design your measurement plan at the same time as you are designing your site. That way you can ensure that you will have the best possible data on which to measure success and optimize. If you already have a site, take a couple hours to learn about many of the measurement and testing solutions available so you identify data partners that can truly meet your needs.

Really have an SEO strategy

Many brands spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on websites, creating rich experiences that very few people ever actually see. Many brands appear to spend 90 percent of their effort on appearance and 10 percent on text content.

Search engines are getting better at interpreting visual content, but the vast majority of their focus is on text and the extent to which the text on your site speaks authoritatively about a particular topic, category, or need state. DR marketers know this -- most focus the majority of their energy on the text side, though they still pay attention to aesthetics. However, they understand that getting listed well for category terms requires richness of text content.

The distinction here is for category versus branded terms. It usually isn't hard for brands to get listed No. 1 or thereabouts when someone searches for their brand name. But most people in most categories search first for generic category terms. "Pickup truck" or "half ton pickup" versus "make and model name." 

The balance is to make content rich pages that aren't so text heavy that they put people off. Or is it? There are lots of techniques for parsing text content -- onto tabs on the same page, for example. These solutions also recognize that websites should be tailored to the passionate more than the dilettante. People who go to websites are by definition more interested than people who don't.

It's easy for brands in "mundane" categories to underestimate customer interest in specifics. But every category has its hardcore users and believers. Gearing content to them pleases these potential brand evangelists just as much as it does Google and Bing. It also requires more pages -- pages individually dedicated to a broad swath of specific generic keywords.

To ensure that you get the most out of SEO, make sure someone on your extended team really understands what to do with site structure, formatting, tags, etc.

Avoid "wishful wording"

Make sure that your content is written the way people actually talk about your product and category. This has clear SEO benefits -- your tomato sauce brand will have a lot more U.S. traffic to itssolanum melongena dishes if you call them "eggplant recipes" than if you go all high-brow and say "aubergine recipes."

But there's a larger issue, and that is that brands often talk to themselves and use terms that their customers are unfamiliar with. Brands sometimes use barely known subbrands instead of category terms and parse their content according to company divisions rather than customer thinking.

An online seller knows that the store needs to make it easy for people to buy. Brands that don't sell online have the same imperative, though many resist the current category thinking and try to impose their own thinking. It rarely works. There may have been a time when we could impose thinking on consumers, but this is no longer the case.

Manage your tags

More and more brands are recognizing the need for tag management solutions. All of the first- and third-party tags on your site help you collect information, but they can also increase page load times. The more tags you have, the greater the delay.

Unmanaged tags also pose the danger of data leakage and piracy. What happens on your site is your business. When you choose third-party partners to collect data, you are agreeing to share the data with them. They may also be sharing that data with others and without your express knowledge.

There's another issue -- in many organizations, getting even the simplest tag loaded onto a site can be difficult and time consuming and may require IT involvement. This can slow your ability to change vendors, add new technologies, and the like. Also, it's easy to leave old tags on sites when there is no simple way to manage them.

In just my first few weeks working at Mediaplex, I saw analyses for new clients that show that their sites bear tags from vendors they haven't used in months or years. Some bear so many tags that page loads are slowed by a second or more. By stripping off the individual tags and replacing them with a single piece of lightweight code, these sites were able to markedly increase load times and end the risk of data loss to unknown third parties. Tag management solutions also made it easier to comply with DAA privacy guidelines.

Commerce sites have generally been faster to adopt tag management solutions than brand sites. They know that slow pages and data leakage can make a big difference to revenue. Brand sites should care just as deeply. The same frustrations that can ding online stores can also determine if your customer's first visit to your brand site will be their last.

Customize your site experience

More and more online sellers are using third-party technologies to anticipate the likely needs of site visitors so they can deliver customized homepages and product assortments to them. The broad principle is that the website is behaviorally customized to you. Most of us are very aware of this technique when we visit Amazon, but its use is spreading rapidly to other online sellers. For example, I buy some wing tips and the next time I visit the site I see suits, dress shirts, and dress socks on the homepage -- that sort of thing. The site is betting that it understands what I might like to buy.

The feasibility of doing this on a "brand" site would depend upon your traffic, profit margin, and customer segmentation. But it's worth looking into. At the very least, consider having a registered user experience that adds value versus a first time visitor experience.

Stop thinking "Brand" versus "DR"

Our industry seems to accept the idea that there are some marketing teams focused on hard goals and others on soft goals like brand liking and imagery. The reality is that whether or not you sell online, your marketing needs to deliver on both. Amazon sells online but places a great deal of effort and energy on making its trademark appealing and meaningful. Similarly, the people at Charmin didn't create those cartoon bears to bring American families joy and laughter. The joy and laughter are a means to attract attention and engagement so we'll buy the darned toilet paper!

Spend time thinking of innovative ways that your "brand" website can help you measurably sell more product. Just because competitors have a common "gimme" site design doesn't mean it's the right one. View your site as a way of connecting brand imagery to tangible purchases. How you do that really relates back to your biggest brand needs.

There will undoubtedly be those who think that boiling branding down to selling more product now misses essential intangibles that are necessary to building a strong and lasting brand. I agree. But it doesn't follow that a focus on tangible brand measures negates the value of those intangibles. It simply says that it's better to know that you're doing something for the business than to punt on any measurement at all.

Friendly Advice and Support for Agencies After the iMedia Agency Summit

Yesterday in Phoenix a panel of industry pioneers discussed the ideas and attitudes that helped them create this wonderful, exciting, crazy mixed-up space where we all make our livings. When the panel moved to audience participation, discussion turned to what our industry needed for the future.

There were many great ideas, but I’d like to posit that the most important thing that can happen for digital is that agencies begin to have more confidence in their own value and uniqueness.

I mean that in an incredibly supportive sense. After spending three days with these agency innovators, it's rather difficult not to come to the conclusion that agencies are collections of remarkable and talented people. But that they are compensated by many clients as if they are full of cogs and flywheels. Functional yet wholly interchangeable.

The agency world has become commoditized. No great revelation there, I know. But perhaps worst of all, that commoditization seems to have sunk into the way that many agencies perceive themselves. Too many discussions center around what they would like to do but alas they cannot afford to.

I made the switch from buy- to sell-side about two months ago, and one of the first differences I felt was in the spirit of the people in the organization I worked for. On the sell side, there is a sense of collective confidence. What I remember from the agency side were endless discussions of limitations and barriers.

Agencies possess arguably the most important piece of the puzzle – creativity. Brands need ideas more than ever, and what constitutes an idea has evolved from a creative-driven concept to an integrated idea reflected in execution, media, and more.

Agencies, inasmuch as your identities get defined by activity, the commodity assessment is tough to live down. But that’s not really what you sell or should be selling.

As I sat in the main session at iMedia, I kept thinking about the parallel to the coffee business in the 1980s, and how the name of the game was to deliver a modicum of profitability by cutting costs. Cutting the percentage of expensive Arabica beans in favor of the cheap yet bitter Robustos. Then slashing the price to eke out a little volume. The race to a bitter bottom.

And then! Starbuck’s and Gloria Jean’s upended reality. And tens of millions of people who would never have dreamed of spending a whole dollar on a cuppa suddenly stood in line to pay $4.

Hey, there are and will always be agencies that exude confidence. This post isn't for you. This is for all the great people who don't always feel their greatness because they feel trapped in a race to the botom of comp and service. You’re not cups of generic coffee. You’re Venti Mochas with Whip. It's time to get your collective groove back. Or should that be foam?