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Think market conditions are slowing investment in marketing? Think again.
Even in the face of persistent inflation and economic uncertainty, businesses are prioritizing their martech and adtech stack(s). More than three-fourths of small and midsize US businesses say they’re preparing to invest in marketing tech tools in the next 12 months, and while close to 40% of B2B marketers are facing budget cuts, nearly 45% of those same marketers are planning to spend more on martech this year.
It may seem counterintuitive at first, but once you start to think about it, it makes perfect sense: Marketing and advertising technologies are designed to improve efficiency, save time, and free up staff for more complex work. If you want to accomplish more with less budget, investing in martech and adtech can help you accomplish just that.
But for marketers interested in onboarding new technological solutions, there’s a lot to evaluate. With more platforms and systems popping up seemingly every day (have you checked out the marketing technology LUMAscape lately? Phew!), how do decision-makers sift through and evaluate which ones will have the biggest impact on their business?
To find out, we talked to two marketing thought leaders at Basis Technologies: Katie Risch, Chief Marketing Officer, and Jeff Mathews, VP of Growth Marketing. Read on for their expert insights on some of the tech solutions that are proving impactful for brands and agencies across the board, as well as a rundown on how to evaluate which technologies will best complement your people.
Katie Risch: There are four areas I believe marketers should invest in from a technology standpoint:
The first is advertising, and ensuring you’re selecting a platform that is built to support RTB, direct, social, and search ad buys all through one interface, and that can provide holistic reporting across all advertising so you can get a single view of your ad performance.
The second area is data management. Ensure you are set up to capture and activate media buys against your CRM so that when cookie deprecation hits, you’re prepared to still engage with your audience in a direct fashion.
The third area is project management. Having a project management tool that captures all marketing projects and tasks and can keep your team organized and efficient is critical if you want to scale, while also building accountability into the way you work.
The last area is AI. Identify which generative AI tools would be most beneficial to your team to help them ideate and move faster. This can best be accomplished by having your team start to organically test different tools before going all in with one.
Jeff Mathews: When figuring out the best adtech and martech solutions for your company, you’ll want to customize your selections based on your specific objectives and industry environment. This is an ever-changing landscape, so focus first on leveraging key foundational platforms off of which you can build the rest of your tech stack. For instance, making the most of your CRM system is key, and that involves ensuring you have reliable and accurate data about your target accounts and contacts to work with, as well as routine data hygiene practices.
Once you can safely and confidently rely on your data, you can start acting on it by adopting marketing automation platforms to develop smoother workflows and email marketing strategies, as well as advertising tools to help you spend your budget wisely, creating brand awareness and demand for your product and services with your targeted audiences.
Data analytics platforms are also extremely important in helping you track and measure your success and more easily identify gaps in your strategy. As you become a more sophisticated operation, that data will also inform what other types of technologies you might need in your stack to fill in holes in your strategy or maximize performance in specific areas.
KR: Ensure you know what problem it is you’re trying to solve for. Identify which of those problem areas are the highest priority and would benefit the most from technology, and then tailor your budget accordingly. There tend to be a lot of one-off requests for different tools throughout a calendar year, but if you come in knowing the problems that need the most immediate attention, you can develop a well thought out process to vet and test various tools before deciding on a solution.
JM: It's easy for marketers to rush into adopting new technology with hopes it will solve all their challenges. However, successful marketing leaders know the key is in strategic decision-making. First, identify your unique needs and objectives, which will guide your technology choices effectively. Collaboration is essential; gather insights not only from your team, but also from experts across the business within the sales and revenue operations departments. Prioritize scalability, integration, and vendor reliability. If you’re still unsure, start small, ensuring alignment with long-term goals. By taking these steps, marketing leaders can make tech adoption a success story that enhances their team's capabilities and drives significant outcomes, while avoiding unnecessary additions to their toolkit.
It’s not such an overwhelming process once you break it down, right? While there’s likely a bit of extra stress around investing in new adtech and martech solutions in today’s uncertain economic landscape, by considering the solutions and processes Katie and Jeff outlined above, marketers can ensure a smooth transition towards business growth, improved efficiency, and happier employees, to boot.
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One of the tech solutions marketers are thinking about most right now is generative AI—and if you’re wondering how marketing and advertising professionals are using this technology, you’re not alone.
We surveyed over 200 marketing and advertising professionals to get a pulse on how your peers feel about generative AI’s uses and risks, and how they predict it will develop in coming years. Check out our brand-new report, Generative AI and the Future of Marketing, for all our top takeaways.
Sparkly pencil pouches. Crisp new planners. Notebooks stacked meticulously by color. Aisles filled with crayons, colored pencils, glue sticks, and lunch boxes as far as the eye can see. Ah, the rush of back-to-school shopping!
For many brands, this time is almost as exciting as it is for students. Back-to-school shopping provides opportunities for high customer engagement, increased sales, new product releases, and more.
Because the season offers so much potential, it’s critical for marketers to aim for straight A’s in their back-to-school campaigns. As such, we’re here to outline some key strategies retail marketers can use to get top marks.
Ready? Grab a seat, pull out your notebook and find your favorite new pen—class is in session!
The difference between an 8th grader and a freshman in high school is a significant one (don’t believe us? Find one, they’ll tell you!). And just like students can change drastically from year to year, so too can the audiences that advertisers are trying to connect with. As such, it’s important to understand who your audience is right now.
We know, we know: This is true for any campaign. But for back-to-school campaigns, it’s especially important to understand your audience and the ever-changing factors that are influencing them. This includes demographics, behaviors, pain points and needs, motivations, and preferences, as well as additional factors that shift from year to year.
Perhaps the most significant factor to consider in 2023? Economic uncertainty. Sure, inflation is easing up and layoffs are decreasing. But interest rates continue to climb, and consumers are still worried about rising prices and job security. Couple that with the fact that payments on federal student loans will resume in October—which will have a notable impact on many millennial parents—and it’s no surprise that consumer behaviors are different this year.
Just how is this economic uncertainty shifting consumer habits? For one, people are financing their back-to-school purchases in new ways: An increasing number are opting to use “buy now, pay later” plans, or to purchase on high interest credit cards. Both payment methods signal that shoppers are feeling cash strapped, that they don’t have a lot to spend on unnecessary items, and that they are likely to prioritize value over brand loyalty.
Which leads us to our next key strategy for back-to-school campaigns in 2023:
Brand and store loyalty take a backseat during key shopping periods when wallets are tight. So, given today’s economic uncertainty, it’s especially important that brands use their media campaigns to highlight the value that consumers get by purchasing at their store or buying a specific product.
This focus on value carries more weight than ever today and can come into play in multiple ways in a campaign. One such way is to signal a percentage off opportunity, a bundling opportunity, or other savings incentives associated with your brand or product. And while offering discounts can drive conversions, it’s not the only way to communicate value. Brands can also offer options that prioritize convenience—such as the aforementioned buy now, pay later plan or a buy online, pick up in-store option. Yet another way to lead with value? Speak to product quality. If your brand can offer a durable item with easy pick-up and returns, be sure to make that clear to shoppers this back-to-school season.
By offering and emphasizing value—in terms of cost savings, product quality, and convenience—brands can help alleviate some of the pressures of today’s economic uncertainty for families, which can help foster positive brand perception both during and beyond back-to-school campaigns.
“This is all well and good,” some marketers might say. “But our team planned and launched our back-to-school campaign already. What can I do?”
We’re so glad you asked! Much like students can’t simply rock their first test of the year and then coast through the rest of the semester, marketers’ jobs aren’t done once their back-to-school campaigns go live.
August is prime time for back-to-school shopping—which means it’s also prime time for marketers to optimize their campaigns regularly to ensure strong media impact. Using data to inform your decisions, here are some of the areas you might consider optimizing:
Beyond optimizing their campaigns, it’s also a great time for marketers to ensure they have reporting set up in a way that keeps data clean and organized. That way, they can leverage insights in campaigns later in the year, as well as develop insights on media performance to get a head start on strategies to win during next year’s back-to-school efforts.
For marketers working on back-to-school campaigns, it’s important to have a holistic understanding of target audiences, and to understand the unique factors at play in this moment. By seeking to understand your audience deeply, your team can better meet your target consumers’ needs.
In 2023, this likely looks like leveraging value-first messaging to show consumers why they should opt for your brand or product, especially amidst today’s economic instability. Beyond this messaging, marketers can further level up their back-to-school campaigns by ensuring they are optimizing throughout the entirety of the campaign, and by setting up reporting in a way that makes data easy to use to inform future campaigns. By utilizing these strategies, marketers can ensure their back-to-school campaigns are as big of a hit as pizza day in the cafeteria.
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We know that in addition to optimizing their back-to-school campaigns, marketers are in the process of planning their holiday campaigns. To keep you sane during this busy time of year, we created The Digital Marketer’s 2023 Holiday Advertising Checklist. This ultimate checklist covers everything you need to know to ensure a successful 2023 holiday season—including key dates to plan for, how to leverage data, goal-planning, and more.
Welcome to Scout! Each week, our team tracks down the best digital marketing articles, POVs, and reports—so you don't have to. Here’s what to read from the week of 8/4/23 - 8/10/23 to stay ahead of the curve:
Sometimes, Generative AI can feel a bit like magic. But while AI is an exciting opportunity for the industry, some prominent agency leaders say they’re seeing a lot of hesitance from clients who are hypersensitive to GenAI’s risks and want to know for themselves just how that magic trick works.
Ads at the movies? Nothing new. But programmatic ads at the movies? That’s what National CineMedia has planned. Starting in Q4 this year, the cinema advertising company will sell movie screen inventory through programmatic guaranteed and PMP deals, as well as on the open exchange through vendors like Place Exchange—a programmatic SSP for digital out-of-home and place-based media.
Meanwhile, if you’d rather connect with consumers eating their popcorn at home, a new study shows that the majority of streaming TV viewers prefer to watch ads to save $4–$5 per month on their subscription fee. Cost savings are great, but viewers are also praising Max, Disney+, and Netflix for delivering a better ad experience compared with their competitors.
Content-level transparency has long been commonplace in linear TV, but it’s still mostly absent from CTV ad buys…for now. Many publishers have begun moving toward providing genre-level (or even show-level) data to buyers post-campaign, and with Hollywood labor strife threatening the 2023-2024 TV season and fueling a slow upfronts buying cycle, the time may be right for an uptick in transparency.
With more and more states legalizing marijuana, the cannabis market boom is in full swing. Curious as to what 2023 pot proponents have in common, and what drives their decision-making? This piece has seven smoking hot insights on cannabis consumer perceptions, behaviors, and personas to pass your way.
Show off your marketing chops with our question of the week. This week’s hot topic: digital ad spend in B2B advertising.
In 2019, what percentage of total B2B ad spend was dedicated to digital channels?
Get the answer, plus expert insights on what B2B marketers should know in 2023, right here.
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It’s been less than a decade since the cannabis adult-use market opened up in Colorado in 2014. In that time, medical cannabis has been legalized in 37 states and Washington DC, while recreational marijuana has been legalized in 23 states, plus our nation’s capital. And as policy has evolved, so too have the behaviors of cannabis consumers.
Curious as to what these pot proponents have in common and what drives their decision-making? We’ve got you covered: Here are seven things marketers should know about cannabis consumer perceptions, behaviors, and personas in 2023:
The public continues to favor cannabis legalization for medical and recreational purposes. A huge share of US adults—nearly 9 in 10—say that marijuana should be legal in some capacity, either for medical and recreational use by adults (59%) or for medical use only (30%). Just 1 in 10 say marijuana use should not be legal.
This combined governmental and grassroots support is resulting in even more markets opening up as well as cannabis consumer numbers increasing. In fact…
As more states legalize or decriminalize marijuana use, the legal US cannabis market is expected to grow 12% by the end of 2023 to $29.6 billion. By 2027, that number is projected to increase to $45 billion in total legal sales. The biggest drivers of cannabis industry growth will be new adult-use markets like Missouri, New Jersey, and New York, while mature western markets like Colorado and California, despite a post-Covid sales correction, will still account for a large portion of legal sales through 2027.
Dispensaries that advertise in those new markets should focus on building the awareness needed to light up initial business. Pro tip: One channel that more and more cannabis brands are spending on to spread that awareness? Digital out-of-home.
In a survey of more than 5,300 US adults, 42% of respondents said they’ve used cannabis in 2023, up from 39% in 2022. Most consider themselves recreational users (58%), as opposed to medical users (42%), but 53% say they consume for both reasons. Also tracked was their frequency of use: 31% of user respondents reported cannabis use multiple times a day, with another 12% using once a day, 21% a few times a week, 5% once a week, and 11% a couple of times a month.
The forecasted increase in cannabis use will provide a big opportunity for advertisers to gain new customers. Meanwhile, leveraging first-party data to apply tactics like retargeting will help brands to encourage repeat sales.
From Cheech and Chong to Harold and Kumar, the “stoner dude” persona has hung over marijuana users like a dark cloud. But recent data shows that cannabis consumption is truly spread across consumer demographics, behaviors, and life stages.
From those who use cannabis recreationally, to those who rely on it for medical purposes, to users more interested in CBD, there's a variety of personas spanning ages, genders, races, incomes, marital statuses, and education levels. (Want a deeper dive? Check out our piece on cannabis consumer personas.)
Trends in marijuana use vary by demographic, too. According to Gallup trends, 26% of adults ages 18 to 29 indicated they smoked marijuana between 2019 and 2022, up from 17% between 2013 and 2015. Marijuana use has also climbed among adults ages 30 and 64, but has been stable (at a comparatively low level) among senior citizens.
And the “dude” part of “stoner dude” continues to apply less: A Harris Poll survey found that 37% of American women ages 21 and older use cannabis, with more than 1 in 4 women using it at least once a month, primarily for anxiety relief, better sleep, and alleviating pain.
With so many cannabis consumer segments to connect with, leveraging an automated, omnichannel advertising approach can both increase efficiency and effectively find customers where they spend their time. And, targeting prospective consumers who look like these personas is a great way to tap into additional audiences.
With myriad ways to use cannabis both recreationally and medicinally, it’s key to keep track of how consumers are engaging with various product types. In 2022, cannabis tinctures, topicals, capsules, and flower sales declined, while sales spiked for beverages, edibles, vapes, and pre-rolls. This product category shift may reflect the increase in recreational users, who prefer more portable and shareable products.
Given all the ways to consume cannabis and all its stated benefits, what factors are influential in choosing a cannabis product? In a recent study, when asked to rank their two most important considerations, most respondents (60%) said “THC level”—a 9% increase from the year prior—with “price” ranking second at 58%. When it comes to price, 39% of customers are purchasing less expensive alternatives this year to maintain consumption levels while reducing cost. However, when asked, “How much are you spending on cannabis compared to a year ago?” 73% stated that they are actually spending about the same or more.
As of now, cannabis advertisers are cautioned against mentioning potency or price in their ads. Instead, advertisers should focus on their brand values as well as what sets their brand and products apart.
All that shopping around to compare prices comes at a cost to brands’ customer loyalty. In the past, branding and strain type were significantly more important to cannabis consumers. Today, those consumers are showing less brand loyalty, increasingly shopping around to save money.
Since it costs less to keep a customer than to earn one, cannabis companies that collect and activate first-party data from satisfied customers may find success reaching back out via advertising to stay top of mind as those shoppers are price-hunting.
The cannabis industry continues grow like a weed, and ongoing support for its legalization is anything but smoke and mirrors. Cannabis marketers who can capitalize on that growth—finding cannabis users and speaking to their behaviors, preferences, and motivations for using their favored products, in a highly compliant way, of course—could see an increasing amount of another green inside their cash registers.
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To learn more about cannabis consumers, how marketers can navigate state-by-state cannabis advertising regulations, and how to set your campaigns up for success, it’s high time you checked out our cannabis advertising guide, Cannabis Marketing in the Roaring 2020’s.
At Basis Technologies HQ in Chicago, there’s a certain summer event we all look forward to every year. For an extended period of time, we get to focus on connecting with each other, moving our bodies, and trying new things.
Oops—wait, did you think we were talking about a company-wide Lollapalooza excursion? Nope, it’s Wellnesspalooza that’s got us excited!
What is this intriguing event with its incredibly original name, you ask? To answer, we'll have to start with the corporate manifesto that’s guided Basis Technologies for over 20 years. The manifesto lays out Basis’ vision, mission, core ideology, and more. Central to its philosophy is our goal to create a new kind of workplace—one where each employee has everything they need to achieve personal growth, well-being, and happiness.
With that vision in mind, we created Wellnesspalooza: a two-month-long series of events aimed at providing our employees with the tools, resources, and information they need to take care of their physical, mental, emotional, and financial health.
Let’s take a quick look at just a few of this year’s Wellnesspalooza offerings:
Preventative healthcare—which gives medical professionals the chance to identify problems before they start—is a vital part of staying healthy. Unfortunately, many of us in the United States don’t go to the doctor until we’re sick. It’s such a problem that the US Department of Health and Human Services has an entire initiative aimed at helping more Americans access these life-saving services.
That’s why a core component of this year’s Wellnesspalooza is encouraging our Beeps to connect with a Primary Healthcare Provider and schedule an annual physical exam. As an incentive for scheduling their annual physical, in addition to participating in our other Wellnesspalooza events and activities, US employees can earn up to 30% off their healthcare premiums for next year. That’s right: We're essentially paying our people to take care of themselves!
OK, maybe the topic of preventative healthcare is a little dry, but the wonders of Wellnesspalooza extend far beyond the health screening and survey. During Wellnesspalooza, we offer a variety of virtual activities and workshops focused on developing physical, mental, emotional, and financial health. Previous years’ Wellnesspaloozas have included everything from bouquet-making workshops and soccer games to kickboxing and cooking classes. Here’s a few examples of what we’re offering this year:
At this point, we’re sure you’ll agree that Lolla has nothing on Wellnesspalooza. And for those of you on the fence: well, why not enjoy both?
To learn more about Basis Technologies’ guiding principles, workplace culture, and benefits, check out Life at Basis Technologies. Maybe next year you’ll be taking yoga classes, meditating, and hanging at the cookout right along with us!
Welcome to Scout! Each week, our team tracks down the best digital marketing articles, POVs, and reports—so you don't have to. Here’s what to read from the week of 7/28/23 – 8/3/23 to stay ahead of the curve:
With production stoppages and delays disrupting the release of new TV content, advertisers are having a tougher time reaching their target audiences and investing in new advertising opportunities. Learn more about how the ongoing Hollywood strikes are impacting the TV advertising industry.
Apple’s next iOS update is buzzing with more user customization, a new mindfulness app, and...Link Tracking Protection. The new feature will strip user-identifiable data from URLs within Apple apps like Safari Private Browsing, Messages, and Mail and may make it tougher for advertisers to thoroughly measure campaign success.
In other news on the data privacy front: In an effort to meet evolving regulatory requirements in the EU, social media behemoth Meta announced that they will begin asking users for their consent before using their data for targeted advertisements.
Whether you’re a generative AI skeptic or a ChatGPT enthusiast, this next-generation tech is proving to be a powerful disruptive force in the digital advertising world. This eye-opening report details how marketing and advertising professionals from top agencies, B2B and B2C companies, non-profits, and publishers feel about generative AI’s impact on the industry.
Show off your marketing chops with our question of the week. This week’s hot topic: Threads (the up-and-coming new sewcial social media app from Meta).
How long did it take Threads to reach 100 million users?
A. One month
B. Two weeks
C. Five days
D. 12 hours
Get the answer, plus news on the latest innovations in search engine marketing and social media, right here.
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What’s new in the realms of paid search and social media? This month, Laura Kubiesa, Basis’ VP of Social Media Investment, and Lindsay Martin, Group VP of Search Media Investment, compiled all the latest news, trends, and resources for easy access.
Earlier this month, Meta released Threads, its Twitter competitor where users can share text, photo, or video posts, as well as like, comment, share, and repost others’ content. One of the platform's biggest assets is its connection to Instagram: Registration has been called “incredibly easy,” and users can automatically follow influencers, content creators, and friends they're already connected with on Instagram. Thanks to a slick signup process and an almost-instantly relevant content feed, Threads was able to capture more than 30 million users within just 24 hours of launch. (Note: the platform is without advertising opportunities...for now.)
You’re saying they have even more users?
In just five days, Threads reached 100 million users. Whoa. Conversely, user traffic on Twitter slowed upon its launch—according to Similarweb, traffic to Twitter was down 5% for the first two full days Threads was available, compared with the previous week (and was down 11% year-over-year). To add to the drama, Elon Musk and Twitter are already accusing Meta of stealing trade secrets to build this new platform.
ByteDance has launched its own publishing company, 8th Note Press, to capitalize on the success of BookTok, a highly engaged community on TikTok where users discuss and share books. Many authors have found overnight success from BookTok, and some are now concerned that the social media company’s promotion of its own books will compromise the ability of authors unaffiliated with 8th Note Press to achieve virality.
Pretty sure Gaston isn’t the target audience here.
Next year, there will be nearly the same number of social media users in the US as there are TV viewers, which eMarketer calls an “historic audience shift.” While it’s estimated that Meta and Twitter will see slight declines, other major social platforms will see increases in users, led by Reddit, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Advertisers who have leveraged Meta heavily for paid social initiatives should look to expand and diversify their social strategies and dollar allocation to tap into the growing user bases of other social platforms.
Google recently launched a new feature to improve where advertisements appear—and where they don’t. Brand Exclusions allow marketers to add a layer of control so Performance Max will not serve for branded queries that advertisers want to avoid across Google search and shopping inventory. Advertisers who require brand exclusions, or advertisers who require specific budget parameters associated with branded traffic, can monitor how this may impact reach, performance, and conversions.
Lizzo knows what to do.
Two new AI-powered Google campaign types aim to boost consumer interest through the path to purchase. Demand Gen integrates top-performing video and image assets across a variety of other Google ad formats such as YouTube and Discovery, while Video View campaigns are intended to complement Demand Gen efforts to maximize views. Initial testing showed Video View campaigns achieved an average of 40% more views than in-stream skippable cost-per-view campaigns.
Marketers can now tap into data from audio, long-form, and YouTube Shorts to identify songs that are trending with the Gen Z audience. Google’s algorithm will package such songs into the Gen Z Music Lineup, allowing advertisers to place ads near media that uses the music this audience is listening to. Read more from the official release here.
Great googly moogly, that’s a lot of Google updates!
An eMarketer report projects YouTube to earn over $15 billion in ad revenue in 2023, while holding an 8.3% share of US video ad spend and anticipating double-digit growth for YouTube’s CTV offering this year. How does the platform compare to its competition? YouTube is, of course, part of Alphabet, which ranks highest in the world for net digital ad revenues; YouTube on its own would be number six on that list, behind Meta, Amazon, Alibaba, and ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company). Meanwhile, TikTok’s share of US video ad spending continues to climb and is right on YouTube’s tail. For CTV specifically, only Hulu beats YouTube in US ad revenue, whereas YouTube leads in share of streaming time across its 236 million viewers.
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Over the past several years, the B2B advertising landscape has evolved dramatically. Perhaps the most notable shift is the rapid increase in digital ad spend, from just 29% of total B2B ad spend in 2019 to 47% in 2023. That’s a growth of more than 62% over just a few years!
This digital transformation is due to a variety of factors, including the lasting impacts of the COVID pandemic, a new demographic of younger B2B buyers, prolonged economic uncertainty, and the explosion of both time and advertising dollars spent on digital channels.
Amidst this digital revolution, B2B marketers face a challenging task: Find the right balance of channels and targeting to reach key consumers with the right message at the right time. To help B2B marketers as they approach this challenge, we called on Sean Cleary, Basis Technologies’ VP of Integrated Client Solutions, to answer a few key questions. With nearly 15 years of experience spanning campaign management to client and media services, he brings a wealth of knowledge to the B2B advertising space.
Read on for Sean’s top insights for B2B marketing in 2023:
Sean Cleary: To run a successful B2B campaign, marketing teams need to think about what their unique story is and how they’re going to tell it. Once they’ve got that nailed down, the focus shifts to getting that story in front of the right audience on the right channel.
In the last few years, we’ve seen this big shift to digital channels. And with these digital channels, there are now opportunities to hone in on targeting so you can get your message in front of the right audience for your specific product or service. Take, for instance, TV. Many teams might think of it in the more traditional format of buying in mass scale. Or radio, where you’re paying for ads that are reaching very broad audiences. But now, with digital channels like CTV and digital audio, we can leverage former mass broadcast formats into more targeted, efficient, and relevant activations. In other words, we’re not wasting money on scale here.
Beyond CTV and digital audio, there are a few other digital channels that B2B marketers are really leaning into to get their specific story in front of the right audience. Digital out-of-home is one, especially now that there are more screens in more places. Thanks to this explosion of DOOH screens, B2B marketers can now reach target audiences in contextually relevant environments. Take, for example, having a presence on a screen in a hospital elevator. For a health tech company, this would be a prime spot for reaching decision-makers at hospitals who might be looking for new technology solutions.
Another is social, but this is a channel where it’s especially important to think about the specific message you’re telling via a specific platform. For instance, many teams want to leverage TikTok, and that’s great. But TikTok is a fun, quirky environment, and the same creative that works on, say, LinkedIn, isn’t going to be as effective in this space. So, you may be able to connect with the right people on TikTok, but if you’re not connecting with them in the way that they are wanting to be engaged with then it’s not necessarily worthwhile to do.
SC: Effective segmentation and targeting. The focus on these has increased a lot in the past few years, likely because digital channels have exploded and advertisers have realized how much more specific you can get with your ad spend thanks to digital segmenting, targeting, and measuring capabilities.
For B2B, in particular, advertisers are often looking to connect with a very specific group of people, and they need to give specific messaging to that audience. Teams want to spend the right amount of money and have the right impression thresholds as they reach these audiences.
To do so, it’s important to have really rich audience data, and to be able to slice, dice, and activate it in a strategic way. Because there are a lot of people B2B brands could target—but what’s important is focusing in on specific audiences, ensuring ad spend is aligned with those people you want to target, and not wasting ad spend elsewhere.
SC: One thing B2B teams should be paying attention to is keeping their data clean and organized. Depending on who you’re partnering with and where you’re running ads, some folks will promise you leads. But the question is: Do you really want other people handling your potential customer data? Do you have confidence that they have the security and compliance in place to be able to manage that data responsibly?
This is important when it comes to privacy compliance, as well as regulation of your own customer data. Because when we think about recent developments in regulation, we know that consumers have the right to ask anyone who has their data to not use it anymore. So what happens if you got a consumer’s data from someone who got their data from someone else? How are consumers able to opt out?
For folks trying to get those leads, it’s beneficial to capture them directly (ideally, through a form fill on your own website). If you capture the leads yourself, you have a lot more control over the ability to qualify those leads and guarantee your practices are privacy compliant.
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Interested in working with experts like Sean to level up your B2B marketing efforts? Connect with us and learn how our media strategy and activation services can ensure your B2B campaigns are telling your story on the right channels and in a compelling way.
First off, let us provide a quick disclosure: This blog post was written by a human.
It’s a bit crazy to think that, this time last year, no such statement would have been necessary. Sure, if you got enough monkeys with keyboards together for an infinite amount of time, they would eventually have written this very piece (along with the complete works of William Shakespeare). That’s just science. But in 2023, there’s a new player in the content creation game, and it has the potential to disrupt just about every aspect of digital advertising: Generative AI.
The next generation artificial intelligence tech burst onto the scene late last year with the debut of ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, both from Silicon Valley AI pioneer OpenAI. ChatGPT, in particular, became an over(five)night sensation when it reached a million users in just five days. And in January 2023, ChatGPT was estimated to have 100 million active users—making it, at the time, the fastest-growing consumer app of all time. To put that in perspective, it took TikTok nine months (and Instagram two-and-a-half years) to hit 100 million users.
One of OpenAI’s biggest early investors, Microsoft, has since poured an additional $10 billion into the company and announced a host of new AI-powered features, including a ChatGPT-powered Bing search engine that launched in May 2023 to its million-plus person waiting list. And that interest could be a big (dollar) sign of what’s to come: Microsoft estimates that gaining just 1% more market share in search could translate to an additional $2 billion in ad revenue.
In turn, Google introduced the world to Bard, its own AI chatbot, and invited users to test its new Search Generative Engine, or SGE, which Google says “uses generative AI to give you more information and context to your searches.” Bard initially stumbled out of the gate upon its February 2023 release—pumping out inaccurate information that embarrassed its owner and rattled Alphabet’s stock price—but Google has turned things around in recent months as it introduced new AI-powered features in Google Docs and Gmail and rolled out Bard to new key markets, sending Alphabet stock soaring.
And another potential player, Meta, has spent nearly 10 years and billions of dollars on AI, but had to remove its new chatbot “Galactica” from the internet after just three days after receiving “an avalanche of complaints about Galactica’s mishaps”.
Altogether, AI is already proving to be a powerful disruptive force in the tech world, and the wider implications of this potential AI revolution could be extraordinary. Microsoft’s own founder, Bill Gates, has called AI as major a tech innovation as the internet or the PC, and also warned that AI’s emergence will inevitably result in the loss of white collar jobs. Or, as the Harvard Business Review put it, “The question isn’t whether AI will be good enough to take on more cognitive tasks but rather how we’ll adapt”.
But how will AI—be it generative or otherwise—affect marketing and media buying?
In some ways, AI already has its virtual fingerprints all over digital advertising. Machine learning, which most would consider falling under the larger “AI” umbrella, is at the heart of programmatic advertising and real-time bidding. And digital advertising platforms leverage AI to facilitate custom campaign optimizations, facilitate time savings, reduce ad spend waste to optimize media, increase conversions with best device type, placement, and price, and inform decision-making with real-time data and insights.
Top agencies and brands have relatively quickly found additional applications for generative AI today. According to a recent Basis survey, nearly three-quarters (72%) of marketing and advertising professionals say they currently use generative AI tools as part of their digital marketing/advertising work at least once a month—embracing the tech for everything from content creation to research to personalization. And that large group of early adopters may be the first domino to fall in a new, AI-driven future of marketing, with approximately four in five marketers saying they believe AI will radically transform digital advertising in the next 3-5 years.
Now, how will AI shape the future of the industry? To find out, we asked Basis Technologies’ April Weeks (EVP, Media Services & Operations), Amy Rumpler (SVP, Paid Search & Social), and Ryan Manchee (SVP, Brand Marketing) for their perspective on all the latest buzz surrounding AI and its potential impact on media, marketing, and digital advertising:
April Weeks: It's an interesting time to be in the industry. During a relatively short period of time, AI has become a consistent topic of conversation with what seem to be endless opportunities. The rate of evolution is fast. I believe benefits and opportunities will start to emerge across the advertising industry that enable more efficiency and potentially better work.
Amy Rumpler: I think they're very exciting, and honestly, not that surprising. AI has been integrated with media in various ways for a while now, although most of those developments have been on the back end, driving innovation like how ads are targeted to—and appear in front of—consumers.
Recently, those features have started to take more of a front seat for media buyers to explore and interact with. In social, for example, Meta's Advantage+ features use machine learning (or AI) to help you create campaigns that can efficiently and effectively reach the right audience with a variety of creative options and optimize in real-time to drive performance. ChatGPT and similar AI models are taking these concepts a step further by making the interaction between the person using the tool and the tool itself feel more conversational and less transactional. I'm interested to see if that helps build trust and confidence in AI and its ability to do the job requested of it. If people believe the machine can do what you're asking it to quickly, effectively, and to the standards of what you'd expect if a person was behind the controls, then adoption will rise—which benefits both the tools’ continuing to improve, and the individual’s ability to focus on other tasks.
At the same time, I think like any other evolving technology, there's a need for better understanding of how these tools will be used, policed, and controlled that's necessary to address (and probably should have happened before they became broadly available to begin with). For example, if we're using an AI app like ChatGPT to return search query results, then we need to be able to control what information these AI systems have access to, how they compile it, deem it credible or accurate, return it in a way that's not discriminatory, inflammatory or fictitious, and credit the original source (if available). Without a strong legal precedent, and an internet full of false information, I think this question has to be addressed immediately and should be a primary focus of this discussion.
Ryan Manchee: I’m absolutely fascinated. Twenty years ago, when I first started in the advertising industry, the most significant innovations were around rich media advertising, ad serving, and search. Mobile was nascent, and dial up was still commonplace. Seeing how the industry adapts and adopts new technology is what makes our jobs so much fun. I believe we are in the very early stages of AI, but seeing how the language models allow for greater accessibility and exploration of this technology is going to drive smart, creative ways to rethink approaches to marketing.
AW: The impact will be significant and likely on a similar scale to the emergence of the internet, and the disruption that resulted across the industry. Current processes, workflows, and performance insights will be automated and ultimately change how work is created, delivered, and possibly monetized.
AR: I hope that AI will help further streamline and automate the work we do to create, implement, and optimize campaigns so that strategists, creatives, and analysts can spend more time improving and ideating and less time on manual tasks. When it comes to search and social specifically, I fully believe AI will be integrated in how we develop and optimize content, research keywords and other targeting opportunities, identify new partners and placements for plans, and adjust things like budgets or flight dates in more automated ways than we can imagine based on our surface level experiences with AI thus far.
RM: I'm bullish on the possibilities, but I don't think anyone has it figured it out quite yet. My hope is that the hype around AI will bring a renaissance to creativity and redefine what we mean by “personalization”. Is a hyper-personalized ad really just swapping out the copy of a city name, distance to a location, and plugging in the weather while swapping a background image in an ad? Or is it about creating an experience that is inspiring in a unique and compelling manner? I don't view AI as a threat to anyone's job in the next three-to-five years, but I do believe it will take the place of responsibilities from three-to-five years ago (and today).
AW: Marketers should keep a close tab on AI developments within the industry, start to identify how AI could be leveraged within their organizations, and begin testing to gain early learning.
AR: The first thing marketers should do is take time to educate themselves on what's currently possible and test the tools that are publicly available to start to get familiar with them—including their capabilities and their limitations. There's a lot of speculation in the news right now, but I think the best way to start to envision how AI might change or benefit your current role is to experiment with it yourself.
RM: Explore, experiment, and get more people and teams involved. There are creative opportunities and challenges, there are legal challenges and opportunities, and there are operational workflow opportunities and challenges. Don't make rash decisions, but have some fun and stay curious.
AW: AI will drive increased automation and fundamentally shift how we work across the industry. What today takes a week will be compressed to a day with an increased level of insight and intelligence.
AR: I think it will revolutionize the way we as marketers think about creating and implementing advertising campaigns, and it will equally impact the way we as individual consumers of media interact with and experience content, entertainment, and the internet at large—and in a shorter period of time than some might think.
RM: While most of the focus right now is on the visual and content outputs of AI, the biggest innovations in the industry will come from how it helps marketers more smartly plan, execute, and optimize their digital media.
AW: The industry should embrace regulation at the onset. As we've seen, regulation is an important part of digital advertising, and establishing the right regulatory framework early will enable adoption and maximize the benefits of AI.
AR: Yes, absolutely.
RM: It's too early to regulate, but early adopters should be aware of potential legal challenges. With that said, my high school freshman son has classmates who have attempted to pass off AI generated essays as their own, and this is being regulated!
AR: Advancements in AI are going to cause a paradigm shift that causes younger generations to reconsider career focus areas, create rise to new fields of expertise, and reshape the future of how we use and support digital, connected, AR, VR, and internet-enabled devices and tools. But it's also going to require a deep understanding of how to get the most out of the machines powering the systems, as they've not yet developed to the point that they can 100% operate independently and return accurate information or recommendations without better inputs from their human users.
People need to understand that they can't assume these tools are going to return the same quality of outputs as they [humans] could. As an example: if you ask an AI to write a poem describing tulips, it might be factually correct, but it also might be nonsense that doesn't connect on an emotional level the way you or I might write a poem describing tulips. The same is true if you ask an AI program to develop an ad promoting a new brand of diapers to women who have just given birth. There are just some things that an AI program can't yet fully grasp or understand, but that a person maybe could.
RM: Watch out for the fakes. Both the companies that are jumping on the AI bandwagon calling their pseudo tech AI, and the fake information, fake visuals, and fake work. Our future will not be given over to AI, but these wonderful new tools and systems will help the smart, creative people in our industry continue to do amazing work.
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With so much hype around generative AI’s applications in marketing and advertising, it can be hard to discern what current adoption looks like and how your peers and competitors are thinking about the future of this new technology. To provide some insights in this arena, we surveyed over 200 marketing and advertising professionals from top agencies, B2B and B2C companies, non-profits, and publishers. Download our report today to explore how marketers like you feel about generative AI and gain new insights on how it’s poised to shape the industry going forward.