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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 8/19/22 - 8/25/22 to stay ahead of the curve:
What’s new in the realms of paid search and social? Here's a master listicle of news, trends, and resources from the past month, including announcements and insights from Microsoft, Instagram, Snap, and TikTok.
As brands continue to grapple with inflation and economic uncertainty, more and more of them are having to raise prices just to stay afloat. How are marketers approaching inflation-borne challenges? Here, the New York Times explores the “new playbook” for weathering the storm.
As stronger data privacy laws put the squeeze on marketers and third-party cookie loss looms on the horizon (albeit a horizon that’s been pushed a bit further off...again...) more brands are “straight-up ask[ing]” customers for data in an effort to future-proof their data collection methods.
Data clean rooms are another privacy-friendly data collection method marketers have been considering as they plan for cookie deprecation—and one that’s gotten some serious hype. Here, Digiday gets down to brass tax. Our favorite line: “Most marketers wouldn’t know what to do with a data clean room if they had one.” Tell it like it is, Digiday!
It’s not the first time monthly streaming has exceeded broadcast in terms of viewership, but it is the first time that streaming has also surpassed cable. The downturn in both sports programming and new content on traditional television likely contributed to the shift. Just another day in the rise of OTT and CTV...
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Hi. How are you?
Are you feeling balanced, energetic, and content in your day-to-day life? Or are you, like three in five Americans, dealing with emotional exhaustion or the inability to put in more than minimal effort at work?
It’s been a rough several years, to say the least. We’ve watched a staggering number of tragedies unfold—the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, mass shootings in the US—as our daily lives have simultaneously been upended by economic hardships like inflation, supply chain crises, and food shortages.
As a leader at Basis Technologies, I’m constantly thinking about how to support our people in the context of global stress, trauma, and burnout. And as Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, I’m very aware that events like the pandemic or the civil and social unrest that have occurred over the past few years impact different populations in different ways.
I know a lot of leaders today are wondering how to support their workforces through times of turbulence, and how to broaden their leadership skills to support their employees who have experienced a tremendous amount of harm and hurt during these unprecedented times. It’s a journey we’re all on together, and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. However, I’ve learned a few useful strategies in my time as a DEI leader, particularly in the last several years, and I'd like to share them with you:
If you’re a working professional, you likely already know the answer to this question. It may be a buzzword, but it’s a buzzword for a reason: I’m talking about burnout, a condition so widespread that even Beyonce is talking about it. If that isn’t a sign to pay attention, I don’t know what is!
According to the World Health Organization, burnout is defined as a combination of three factors:
Doesn’t sound like good news for professionals or organizations, does it? Unfortunately, burnout might be described as an epidemic unto itself—especially in the tech sector. Consider the following:
Put simply? Burnout is a serious threat to the wellbeing of our employees and to the success of our businesses.
At the same time, the research bears out what many of us already know from lived experience: that people with marginalized identities are impacted in different and more intense ways by both global turbulence and burnout. On top of the various upheavals in the world, certain groups are dealing with the daily burden of underlying stressors like racism, transphobia, and ableism, to name just a few.
Women, for example, by and large carry the burden of household caretaking responsibilities—whether that be for children, parents, or other relatives. And in 2020, many of the support systems that women relied on to support that caretaking (such as schools and daycares) shut down. Even today, those same systems can close unexpectedly due to COVID outbreaks.
Here’s another example: Research shows that Black and brown people are disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. My Black and brown coworkers have had to deal with more sickness and death in their communities than others in the past several years due to a plethora of factors caused by the history of anti-Black racism in the United States.
Are burdens like these going to impact how coworkers who belong to those communities show up to work? Of course it is. As leaders, is it our responsibility to make the process of showing up as easy as possible? That brings me to my next point...
In this moment, a lot of leaders want to “just get back to business.” And while I feel that desire as much as the next person, I also know that you can’t get back to business if everyone’s not 100% there.
Your people are your best asset: They’re the heart of any organization. You need them healthy and vibrant and committed. As leaders, if we don’t consider all the external stressors that are affecting our people and make sure we’re providing an environment that mitigates some of that harm, then our employees won’t be able to come in and focus on the job at hand.
To that end, I want to share a few of the things I know can make a difference to combat burnout during turbulent times:
Validating your teammates’ experiences is the first step to leading through turbulence, and it’s a crucial one. That’s why my first recommendation is to acknowledge what’s going on.
For those of you who haven’t seen the latest research on burnout, it may have felt incredibly validating to read my post thus far. Why? Because it legitimizes your personal experience. When leaders acknowledge that global turbulence inevitably impacts employee emotional and mental health, they open the door to communication, trust, and understanding between them and their people.
Of course, simply acknowledging that it’s been a rough several years isn’t enough to support your workforce through upheaval. Setting up systems of support and care is how leaders can actually mitigate burnout. If leaders do their best to create safe spaces where their people can access resources that bolster their mental, emotional, physical, and financial health, they’ll be giving employees the support they need to focus on their jobs.
Here are a few examples of the benefits, perks, and resources Basis Technologies offers our people to help nurture their wellbeing:
Even more, Basis Technologies offers resources that are geared specifically towards supporting members of marginalized communities. Here are a few examples:
While systems of care can help address the collective impact of turbulence and burnout, it’s also sometimes necessary to create tailor-made responses to specific events. For Basis Technologies, this came up around the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022—a decision that rolled back reproductive rights for a huge chunk of our workforce, creating significant barriers to essential healthcare services.
We responded by committing to cover travel expenses for employees and dependents on our medical plan to obtain abortions where they are legally available. It was a simple decision for our leadership team: We are committed to taking care of our people, and ensuring that all our employees can access reproductive healthcare is part of acting out that commitment.
This last one’s pretty simple: In the context of continuing global turbulence and high rates of burnout, sometimes you just need to give your people a break. For example, in the wake of the Highland Park mass shooting earlier this summer, Basis Technologies reached out to our people to let them know it was OK to take some time away from work to process and decompress. Additionally, a few months ago, we rolled out Flex Fridays, an initiative that gives our employees every summer Friday afternoon off to catch their breath, take care of themselves, spend time with loved ones, or take care of anything else they might not have had time for otherwise.
Here’s the bottom line: Good leadership today looks a lot different than good leadership pre-2020. People are trying to survive in a chaotic world, and that has an impact on how they show up to work. In order to both support our businesses and lead ethically, leaders need to embrace new practices that show our people we are evolving with the times.
The Great Resignation has shown us that professionals are leaving organizations because they want to work for leaders who are aligned with their values. They want to know what their leaders stand for—and it’s our job to show them.
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To learn more about Basis Technologies’ benefits and workplace culture, check out Life at Basis Technologies.
What’s new in the realms of paid search and social media? Basis’ Senior Vice President of Paid Search and Social compiles all the latest news, trends, and resources each month for easy access.
Google's latest insights briefing reveals how inflation and pent-up consumer demand have set the stage for conflicting priorities when it comes to consumer spending.
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced automotive ads, an audience network expansion and new ad formats for dynamic remarketing, expanded customer match capabilities, and a variety of other ad targeting and campaign types expanding to new markets outside of the US. While many of these features are already available through Google, they’re a welcome addition for advertisers looking to better reach Microsoft’s 724 million monthly active users.
According to eMarketer, 61% of consumers start their product searches on Amazon, while 49% begin on a search engine. Social media takes up a significant piece of the pie as well, with Facebook and Instagram accounting for 34%, and TikTok accounting for 11%.
As part of their initiative to provide better tools for businesses, Twitter's location spotlight feature lets brick-and-mortar businesses include maps to their addresses and up-to-date business hours at the top of their profiles.
New research from eMarketer highlights why advertising on YouTube is different from other platforms. The platform's differentiators may factor into why advertisers continue to see success by investing in the platform—case in point, eMarketer also recently shared that Youtube is the most trusted platform for social commerce.
As “the new era of entertainment” has taken hold, users are seeking always-on options for discovering new ideas, education, and content. With 46% of users engaging in the platform without distractions or multi-screening, the TikTok audience is often deeply attentive, engaged and tuned-in.
eMarketer’s Reimagining Retail podcast team weighs in on which communities they believe are having the greatest impact on commerce in the US. There are a few great examples here of advertisers connecting with these communities to become a part of conversations surrounding important topics.
New insights illustrate Snapchat's ability to power more meaningful connections between users and brands. Because Snap was built to allow close circles of friends to connect, their users are positioned to be more authentic (and happier!) than those engaging regularly with other platforms.
A new survey from Snapchat shows how users celebrate inclusion and how they would like to see brands show support. Nearly half of Snapchatters agree that brands engaging in the platform should reflect inclusion in a meaningful way, as Snapchatters are more likely to do their research to ensure that brands regularly share inclusive content, reflect it in their mission statement, and in their organization.
BeReal is rising in popularity with a simple concept: every day users have just a few minutes to take and post an unedited, unfiltered picture of themselves. Instagram has taken notice, and recently launched a “dual camera mode” feature that's very similar to BeReal’s UI. Here, Social Media Today speculates as to what this feature could mean for future updates in Instagram.
In a research study with the Boston Consulting Group, Meta found that 1 in 3 consumers in Asia Pacific said they chat with businesses at least once a week, and over 40% are messaging businesses more frequently than before the pandemic. This report includes some good tips on how brands can use Messaging to fuel a variety of goals and objectives through deeper consumer engagement.
Google asked industry experts, analysts, and content creators to hypothesize what the shift toward more virtual experiences in the metaverse could look like in the early days of adoption. The experts discussed three key areas where VR could easily become adopted in mainstream media consumption.
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 8/12/22 - 8/18/22 to stay ahead of the curve:
Between new bans on hyper-personal social ad targeting in the EU and proposed legislation to break up tech behemoths in the US, it's been a banner year for digital advertising regulation across the globe. The latest? Bipartisan lawmakers in D.C. are eyeing regulatory action around TikTok’s data practices. Get up to speed on all the latest.
Regulators’ concerns aside, you might consider putting that dance challenge you learned with your kids on your resume, because more and more agencies and brands are hiring folks whose sole focus is to create engaging content for TikTok. As one agency’s creative director said, “Hiring TikTok content creators isn’t the future, it’s the now.”
Amazon has struck a first-of-its-kind deal with Nielsen to provide panel-based ratings for NFL’s Thursday Night Football streaming broadcasts. The tech giant says it will combine demographic-based insights with access to sales, awareness and engagement data to give advertisers a “powerful combination of first and third-party measurement.” Still unknown: will Tony the Tiger provide commentary from his new Twitch channel?
Watch out, Amazon Prime: After previously considering agreements with Disney and Comcast, Walmart has announced a new deal that will bundle Paramount+ with its Walmart+ membership for no additional charge—this right on the heels of reporting strong Q2 eCommerce revenues and ad sales growth that surpassed Amazon. Will a Grubhub+/Food Network GO bundle be next? Only time will tell...
You may have heard that audio is digital advertising’s fastest growing category, but in order to invest effectively, advertisers can’t think of the format as a homogeneous bucket. See why it's critical for marketers to think about who is listening to different types of audio, and why. (Bonus: once you’ve got your audio ducks in a row, the World Cup could be the perfect opportunity to let them fly.)
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It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and you’re hopping online for your weekly team meeting. As you chat with your coworkers before the meeting officially starts, you notice that everyone on the call looks a bit…exhausted. Sound familiar?
Though every organization is different—and there are certainly those that prioritize rest and overall employee wellbeing—it’s no secret that tiredness and burnout are common in the marketing world, across all levels of employees (see: The Great Resignation).
There are many causes of burnout, but one thing’s for certain: in the context of economic upheaval, brands need to be firing on all cylinders. To that end, let’s explore a powerful solution for both minimizing burnout and maximizing efficiency: workflow automation.
Over the past several decades, media complexity has soared. We can’t be the only ones who remember the dark ages of only having to choose between Netflix and Hulu, as opposed to ten additional streaming TV platforms…(Right?...Bueller?)
Here’s an example of the factors media buyers had to juggle in 2000:
Annnnd now:
If we’re being honest, this doesn’t even scratch the surface. Consider the expansion of vendors, cost types, and buying and tracking methods—and once you sprinkle in the complexity around consumer data and privacy regulations? I mean, c’mon.
While many marketing organizations have embraced new technologies to help manage this fragmentation, those technologies are often disparate point solutions which, funnily enough, add to the complexity. In a recent survey, the majority of advertisers reported using 7 platforms in a typical day, and 9 for a typical ad campaign. On top of that (and likely because of it), advertising professionals reported spending an average of 6 hours per week on low value, repetitive tasks.
It's no wonder marketers are feeling tired.
In a marketing context, workflow automation is the use of processes and technologies to reduce redundancies and minimize time spent on duplicative, low-value tasks throughout the entire lifecycle of a campaign. Digital advertising workflow automation can look like:
Now that we’ve defined the elements of workflow automation in digital advertising, let’s dig into a few of its (many!) benefits
An effective omnichannel campaign has many moving parts. Now, imagine the added challenge for marketers that have to sign on to a different platform for each of those channels. And when it’s time to pull a report for that campaign? That’s a lot of different data sets to standardize and compile!
By uniting disparate channels, and all parts of the media buying process, into one platform, workflow automation can help mitigate the complexity of today’s digital media landscape.
Remember those 6 hours per week that advertisers are losing to low-value, manual work? Workflow automation can give those precious hours back to organizations by streamlining the campaign management process.
What does that streamlining process look like, beyond uniting channels and campaign functions into a single workflow? Leveraging advertising automation throughout the advertising workflow will also boost efficiency and reduce manual labor. For example, marketers can leverage AI-powered Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) to automatically build thousands of digital ads that vary in real-time based on retargeting, creative personalization, audience segmentation, and more.
Remember when we mentioned the impact of The Great Resignation on the advertising industry? One solution to preventing turnover on your team is having an automated and standardized workflow. This allows your people to sidestep time-consuming, manual processes and focus on high-level, fulfilling tasks. Sounds like the kind of work most marketers want to spend their time on, right?
Beyond these benefits, an automated advertising workflow can empower multi-dimensional reporting, granular campaign optimizations, streamlined financial reconciliation processes, and more!
Advertising workflow management can feel like a daunting task—but it doesn’t have to be. In today’s complex digital landscape, brands and agencies can automate marketing workflows by embracing platforms that address the entire lifecycle of a campaign, rather than point solutions that only add to the complexity.
Basis, for example, helps users with all-channel activation, negotiation and contract management, real-time monitoring and campaign reporting, increased collaboration and communication, and much more—all through a single interface. It’s no surprise that 77% of Basis users report being able to move from planning to activation faster, and that 80% agree that it makes their job easier.
At the end of the day, isn’t that what most marketing teams strive for? To embrace tools and innovations that give them the time and energy to focus on creative, high-level work? That’s the promise of workflow automation: fulfilling work, efficient processes, and—best of all—happy teammates.
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For an even deeper dive into all things advertising automation, check out our guide.
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 8/5/22 - 8/11/22 to stay ahead of the curve:
After Google’s recent announcement that it will delay third-party cookie deprecation to 2024, ad execs have been putting the “pro” in procrastination. It’s understandable given everything on marketers’ plates right now, but the trend doesn’t speak well to our industry’s future-proofing abilities.
Speaking of Google, the US Justice Department’s antitrust division is reportedly getting ready to sue the tech giant as soon as next month over claims that it illegally dominates the digital advertising market. Digital advertising regulators sure are bringing the heat this summer!
Buckle up, advertisers! Earlier this week, Uber’s main competitor announced the formation of their own media network: Lyft Media. The move positions Lyft to better capture digital advertising dollars through formats like digital rooftop screens, in-car tablets, and their mobile app.
Ahh data—it's a blessing and a curse for many modern marketers (though likely more of a curse for those who don’t know the joys of data consolidation). See how interactive, graphic data visualizations can help improve KPIs and ROI while enhancing collaboration.
Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to combine HBO Max and Discovery+ into one branded streaming option and detailed their forays into making some of their library accessible on a free, ad-supported TV (FAST) platform. Both developments are expected to further complicate the fragmented connected TV landscape.
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Marketers today have access to an array of analytical tools to make sense of their data and accurately measure performance metrics—from customer data platforms (CDPs), to bespoke homegrown systems, to good old Google Analytics. For advertising professionals, few such solutions have more valuable features than AI-powered custom dashboards, which can dynamically showcase brand stories and help you finetune your campaigns for optimal performance.
With tools like custom dashboards, marketers can get a more robust read on their data to better understand consumer behavior and anticipate next moves. And at a time when economic storms are putting brand loyalty on the line, and mis- and dis-information is a constant threat to brand safety, marketing organizations that can stay agile and data-driven will be best equipped to succeed and earn consumer trust. Let’s explore how bringing data to life through interactive graphic visualizations can help you improve your KPIs and ROI while simultaneously enhancing collaboration—both internally and externally.
Dashboards provide a visual summary of the metrics that are most important to your marketing operations, empowering you with a quick and easily-digestible overview of how the main elements of your program are performing—all in real-time. This ease-of-use means you can access critical insights without having to rely on your IT department or data analysts to parse and interpret the information for you. Advanced dashboarding tools also include discovery features that can help you explore data far beyond the most basic metrics.
Creating reports manually is an incredibly time-consuming process. You need to gather data from disparate sources, organize and stitch it together in spreadsheets, run your analyses, create visuals, and then distribute them to the appropriate stakeholders. The intricate process can often lead to calculation errors and analytical inconsistencies that themselves translate into potential wasted costs.
Automated custom dashboards, however, do all that menial work for you. And, against the backdrop of the Great Resignation, relieving your talent of manual tasks—and subsequently empowering them with more time to focus on higher-value strategic initiatives—can help your organization avoid higher rates of cost-sapping staff turnover.
Recent research revealed that advertising professionals use an average of nine platforms for a typical ad campaign and touch seven of those platforms in a typical day. The fragmentation makes it all the more difficult for marketing organizations to develop the kinds of fluid, cross-channel, hyper-personalized experiences their consumers expect—particularly when it comes to drawing meaningful holistic conclusions from multichannel campaigns.
Custom dashboards can help solve this problem by allowing you to bring all your data together in one centralized location. From there, you can determine the best metrics and graphics for showcasing your campaigns’ performance and results.
Marketing professionals can often feel pressured to make changes to improve campaigns before they’ve even had a chance to fully analyze and dissect performance. By utilizing custom dashboards, you can ensure you’re always making informed decisions based on the latest insights while boosting confidence in the data you’re using to make those decisions. You can also easily see how current and projected performance compares to your overall goals and then confidently reallocate budget and resources to optimize your media spend.
In the new work-from-anywhere reality where teams are often scattered across the country (or around the world), it’s important to consider how your tools can help foster cross-organizational collaboration. With the right dashboarding tools in place, marketing teams can simply create a report and seamlessly deliver it to any relevant internal and external stakeholders through one file or shared login. Gone are the days of needing to manually process spreadsheets or rely upon third-party programs, which inevitably slow down decision-making.
Whether your challenge is data consolidation, preparation, crafting presentations, or analysis, automated dashboards remove the barriers to collaboration and essentially act as a facilitator for ongoing discussions—if/when stakeholders ask questions, you can provide answers on the fly—streamlining the feedback process and allowing you to develop quick, actionable plans. The result: a simpler path to profitability.
Custom dashboards can help fuel employee fulfillment and productivity by replacing once-complex analytical approaches with powerful graphic storytelling that makes it easy to analyze and understand performance. Compiling data from all relevant reporting sources in a single location and highlighting the most relevant insights for your team can help them see how their work directly relates to results and overall business goals. For many employees, this is a huge motivating factor that can guide their work in the areas that matter most.
Traditionally, digital marketing success has meant demonstrating your team’s impact on revenue and the robustness of your marketing-generated sales funnel. But new research shows that KPIs like customer satisfaction, content engagement, customer acquisition costs, customer retention rates, mobile analytics, and customer referral rates are all growing increasingly important to modern marketers.
With basic reporting technology, it’s difficult to fully drill down into what initiatives are powering those aspects of business performance. Intuitive, data-rich visuals can change that, however, empowering marketers with better visibility into aggregated marketing impact and ROI. Suddenly, it’s possible to see what products, offers, and creatives are resonating with specific customers and segments across individual devices and channels.
Key players in sales and marketing often utilize performance reports to illustrate the effectiveness of their strategies and secure buy-in from their superiors. With custom dashboards, you don’t need to sift through dull, static spreadsheets while preparing your presentations—the dashboard has all the features you need to automate the illustration of those insights to your audience. And the engaging nature of the visuals can help you keep decision-makers informed with the most relevant insights.
Whether you’re speaking with a manager, board members, investors, or clients, custom dashboards make it easier to demonstrate performance and (ultimately) earn that much-desired buy-in.
Custom dashboards can offer users an array of benefits, but when it comes to improving KPIs and ROI, not all dashboarding tools are created equal. Here are a few key features to look for if you’re in the market:
Easily change parameters and uncover hidden insights from your data sets.
Create bar graphs, pie charts, boxplots, data maps, and other forms of visual reporting illustrations.
Move your dashboard elements around to keep the most important ones front and center. A drag-and-drop editor also allows you to easily add or remove graphs so you can focus on the data that best suits your business needs.
Instead of creating dashboards from scratch, choose from a list of predefined templates and then adjust it according to your specific needs.
Use more than one custom dashboard for the different aspects of your marketing initiatives. Examples include campaign performance with delivered spend, groups and tactic performance, and location targeting performance, among others.
Easily export your dashboards into PDF, PNG, or CSV files, or create logins for your internal and external stakeholders to view your dashboards on their own time.
Create alerts that inform you when any key metrics you’re tracking on your dashboards experience volatility.
Step back in time to see which behaviors led people to click on your ads.
Change is constant in marketing. Getting access to tools that can help you better manage and interpret data will set your organization up for future success in this fast-moving landscape. Custom dashboards offer the flexibility, portability, and insights marketers need to optimize their strategy for today’s world.
Data Canvas from Basis Technologies empowers users to create customizable, live dashboards that help tell the stories of their campaigns, simplifying the reporting processes and eliminating errors from manual calculation. Curious? Visit our dashboards page to find out 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 7/28/22 - 8/4/22 to stay ahead of the curve:
Is it just us, or are legislators across the globe hitting the gas pedal when it comes to digital advertising regulation? While the American Data Protection and Privacy Act is still in draft, if this federal legislation does pass, it will pre-empt state data privacy regulation.
When Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (which lets users decide if they want to be tracked on the apps they visit) as part of iOS 14.5 last year, it felt like a paradigm-shifting event for mobile advertising. However, a new report suggests the impact has been less dramatic than expected.
Speaking of Apple, after years of increasing privacy standards to curb targeted advertising on iPhones, the tech giant is adding a curious new addition to its App Store homepage: ads. The move will almost certainly ruffle some feathers among competitors—and, potentially, anti-trust regulators.
You made it through three data-privacy-related and thus slightly-stress-inducing articles—here's a cookie! (No, not that kind...) Advertising automation is poised to help advertisers navigate the changing landscape of targeting and data with agility and scale. Here’s what all the excitement is about.
Warc’s bi-monthly Global Advertising Trends analysis reveals that media inflation has fully infected linear TV: Advertising costs have increased a whopping 30% from pre-pandemic levels! (P.S. In the U.S., record midterm ad spending is also a factor here.)
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Each month, Basis Technologies’ Programmatic 101 series tackles a different facet of programmatic advertising—from best practices for buyers, to competitors in the space, to trends you should know.
Isn’t it strange that, in the age of Alexa and robot waiters, the majority of advertisers have to wrangle nine separate platforms to manage a typical ad campaign?
It’s true that our industry has seen great advancement in the realm of automated media buying, namely via the adoption of programmatic advertising. But along with programmatic’s many benefits has come the need for more talent, platforms, and integrations. The marketing landscape is fragmented and complex, yet few brands and agencies have adopted technology designed to manage that complexity.
Enter the missing link: Advertising automation. What is it, what benefits does it offer, and what does it look like in practice? Read on to find out.
The phrase “advertising automation” describes a variety of technologies and methodologies designed to streamline the entire lifecycle of a campaign. That’s right—the entire lifecycle! These tools encompass everything from planning and buying, to optimization and analytics, and even reporting and financial reconciliation.
What does advertising automation look like in action? Here are a few examples:
The cumulative effect of these automated solutions creates organizational agility, cost-efficiency, and time savings for brands and agencies. It also makes marketers’ jobs more enjoyable by eliminating frustrating manual tasks.
Now that we know what advertising automation is and what it looks like, let’s dig a little deeper into the benefits it offers. The combined impact of tools like bid shading, machine learning, and automated reporting produce two main benefits: Time savings and cost-efficiency.
Advertising automation technologies save time by eliminating the need for humans to perform tedious and error-prone tasks, handing those tasks off to technologies that can execute them quickly and without error. Marketing teams that invest in advertising automation platforms are more efficient: Case in point, Forrester Research found that agencies who implement Basis see, on average, a 35% increase in digital team efficiencies.
Take, for example, the consumer expectation for personalized media. According to Salesforce, 70% of consumers report that a company understanding how they use products and services is very important to winning their business. Yet delivering personalized customer experiences in the age of ever-increasing media fragmentation and complexity is a tall order. Marketers must build creative variations, target audiences precisely, and deeply understand cross-channel campaign performance. Here are a few examples of how the process of personalization is streamlined in an advertising automation platform:
First, marketers can use dynamic creative optimization (DCO), combined with customer data, to automatically generate thousands of ad variations. Once the campaign is live, they can leverage automated reporting to quickly communicate performance to stakeholders. Best of all, workflow automation unites the entire campaign process—planning, negotiating, buying, reporting, analytics, optimizations, and billing—into one platform, removing the need for marketers to waste time switching between systems as they balance the nuances of a personalized approach.
Beyond freeing up time for marketers to tackle more high-level, strategic tasks, advertising automation increases cost-efficiency for brands and agencies in a variety of ways.
Consider the impact of the following automated solutions across a campaign’s lifecycle: First, automated bidding solutions assess the optimal dollar amount to spend on each impression. While the campaign is running, AI-powered budget pacing monitors budget spend and alerts advertisers of significant over- or underspend. Simultaneously, built-in protections automatically safeguard against ad fraud. Together, these and many other aspects of holistic advertising automation ensure precision in campaign bidding, performance, and optimization.
The cost-efficiency offered by advertising automation extends to reducing the high costs of employee turnover as well. Organizations that implement advertising automation reduce the number of hours marketers must spend each week on tedious, manual tasks, and provide the opportunity for strategic, fulfilling work. In turn, organizations retain their best marketers for longer periods of time.
For over twenty years, Basis Technologies has been on a mission to create a better industry for advertising professionals via advertising automation. Our team is constantly working on new platform tools and features that eliminate manual tasks and boost efficiency for our partners.
Want to learn more about how automation will shape the future of digital advertising? Check out our guide, Meeting the Moment with Advertising Automation.