Digital Marketing was birthed with great expectations…..
Low Cost + High Reach + ‘Targetability’ = Efficiency Messiah
Let us look at its attribute assumptions. Are they valid?
Yes, the display cost to ‘reach’ 100K people on a digital platform is significantly lower than print or TV ads.
Yes, there is a built in ability to deliver the ad to those who are best receptive to the product/service.
Yes, you can reach larger numbers of interested parties for the same budget than possibly any other advertising channel.
Source: IAB report on 2021 state of digital advertising
The 2021 figures (right) from the digital industry shows that its shine continues. Despite several questions on its actual efficacy - low conversion to sales, high annoyance from interruptions, low value delivered to consumers, blocked ads and fake impressions and ad fraud - money continues to be poured into the space ($189 Bn in 2021!)
So, has it been the Holy Grail it was touted to be? Not really!
“The effectiveness of digital ads is wildly oversold. A large-scale study of ads on eBay found that brand search ad effectiveness was overestimated by up to 4,100%. A similar analysis of Facebook ads threw up a number of 4,000%. For all the data we have, it seems like companies still don’t have an answer to a question first posed by the famous 19th century retailer John Wanamaker: Which half of my company’s advertising budget is wasted?” - Harvard Business Review
As indicated self-surveys show that 69% of people attempt some form of ad blocker. Although actual tracked ad-blocked sessions shows that the number is lower than that, at least 14% of US population use Brave browser that blocks ads intrinsically, and about 27% of the population have ad blocker installed in their preferred browser. All said, that is a significant percentage of real humans who will not be seeing ads.
And, then there are all the fraud and fake issues associated with ‘viewability’.
Such data and research has certainly created better management, metrics and visibility into the world of internet selling. For example efficacy measurement shifted from Frequency (clicks/views) to Reach (unique consumers touched). It also led to more micro segmentation, leaning from broad based demographics to “smart audiences”. This in turn was supported by copious amounts of individual data collected by browser cookies.
And, yet, user behavior shows that they find digital ads annoying. Now, certainly, there is the basic human driver to not want to be interrupted by ads when you are in the flow of consuming. This after all the driver behind the behavior to ‘Channel Switching’. And ‘Page Turning’. But, the promise of digital was that this time it would be different because the ads would be “relevant”, what with all the micro-targeting.
Source: Digital Advertising in the U.S. 2021 Report by Statista Survey
So, what is missing? Yes, there are technology hurdles towards measurement and those will improve as the industry continues to matures, true KPIs of measurement are identified, and, agencies are held increasingly more responsible to deliver on those KPIs.
Yet, the question that seems to not be asked in all this is - WHY Would the Consumer Care?
Why would a consumer WANT to VIEW your ad?
What BENEFIT is your ad providing?
How will it AID the journey that they are on, want to have, are thinking about?
The long standing core issue with digital advertising is the product itself, the ‘Creative’. For many years, it was simply a size-fitted version of an existing campaign. While, the creative itself has evolved over time and more digital first campaigns are being planned and created, the missing link continues to be the answers to the above questions. There are a couple of reasons for this.
STP Mismatch - The basics of marketing are not the same for different channels. While digital is like mass media, users on digital platforms do not behave/consume the same way as print and TV.
Organization Gap - While this is a post on its own, I’ll briefly summarize here. Digital departments are not always integrated fully with the marketing organization. In an integrated approach, a channel-specific view rather than an omnichannel perspective would be in play. This is linked to point #1.
Creating ‘personas’ based on demographics or psychographics, and, segmenting the population based on those, is the tried and tested approach in traditional product marketing. However, for the same product, the consumer’s behavior can be entirely different online. Let us go back to purpose of the Internet.
The Internet was about finding information by yourself, a.k.a. self learning. TV and Print were about disseminating information. Observing browsing behavior and correlating it with activity data (both search and click tracking) allows insight into the behavior.
Key Behavioral Pillars associated with digital consumption are
Self Driven, On Demand, Educative/Informative, Immediate Engagement, Follow on Interaction/action.
Therefore, ad experience and delivery needs to be pillared around these drivers.
SEGMENTATION
In this behavioral approach, segmenting the population based on psychographics is a good starting point and not the end. Like a pyramid, there needs to be layering on of additional parameters - Position in consumer journey, critical prompt junctions, and finally desire to execute.
Citation: This is How Social Fits in Your Customers’ Purchase Journeys
Conjoining multiple sources of data becomes a necessity to create true identities and segmentation. In the context of search, the words used provides insight into not only the psychographic profile, who the searcher is and therefore what may they be looking for, the words used also provides insight into where in the journey they are and what kind of information they may be seeking.
source: Augustine Fou
As an example the image on the left, shows how the same product can have different reference points based on funnel position and psychographic, therefore, creating several unique segments requiring different content to be delivered at each prompt.
And, that is for search. Triangulating this information with platform preference (even on a broader psychographic scale) allows for optimal distribution of the ad by creating relevancy to the consumer and increasing intent to view, leading to a better conversion probability.
TARGETING
For each point in the consumer journey, the type of Ad and it messaging, needs to be different, subtly positioning the product/service from collaborative discovery through definitive choice through to deliberate action.
POSITIONING
Position the ad along the right channels for maximizing engagement - top of funnel in google search, end of funnel ideally on the website e-comm platform. For commodity CPG it may end in a promotion or membership a online community or earned media ask.
The key in this is that this pull based approach allows the consumer to co-create their journey of discovery leading in to your product/service rather than being force fed and bombarded by “ME, ME, ME” ads that take a lot (attention, time, context) and give little (information, delight, entertainment). Obviously many ads provide entertainment but the metric here is either Lift, Retention or Conversion. Entertainment value has its place but it isn’t the sufficient condition for purchase. It can however align an inclined buyer favorable towards your brand/product. But, this is a intermission feed in rather than the opening act.
Needless to say, ads no longer exist as singularities, particularly in digital space. They coexist within the context of (social media) Communities, (informative and co-created) Content and should be viewed as an additional channel of creating Connection.
This kind of integrated approach requires a holistic top-lateral perspective from the marketing department that identifies each channel as unique AND a core part of the marketing mix model. We will explore this deeper in a follow on post.
This article was co-brainstormed with Augustine Fou, founder of Fou Analytics. Below are some of his related articles.
