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New Climate Voices’ partnership with Centro (now rebranded as Basis Technologies) illustrated how digital advertising can shift opinions on climate change even among highly-skeptical audiences.
As lack of trust in media, institutions, and science seems to steadily increase, the challenge of overcoming these divides feels daunting. This is the challenge that New Climate Voices has taken on. The organization was launched before the 2020 election cycle by conservative leaders from the science, faith-based and government communities with the mission to drive conversation, generate critical thinking and change opinions among conservatives who are skeptical around the causes and impacts of climate change. Basis Technologies was engaged by the organization to design and execute a digital campaign to shift the opinions of these specific audiences on this important topic.
Together, we devised a one-month video-centric campaign in select congressional districts targeting climate skeptics. To bring relevancy and trust to our skeptical audiences, creative messaging appealed to conservative voters by featuring credible, high-profile conservative voices who both believe in the reality of climate change and want to mitigate its damage. We utilized sophisticated data models for targeting to reach persuadable audiences and those identified as moderate climate skeptics – neither believers nor deeply-entrenched deniers. Success was measured by monitoring opinions and views pre- and post-campaign amongst controlled and exposed audiences in a rigorous research program designed and executed by Wick, a technology-forward opinion-research firm that is a leader in emerging research methodology.
The campaign generated a 10.7% Lift in ‘Climate Change Concern’ and a 7.4% reduction in ‘Climate Change Denial’ among targeted conservative voters. New Climate Voices and Basis demonstrated that delivering a precisely targeted audience thoughtfully crafted messages from influential peer voices in a visually engaging medium, at effective frequency levels is a successful recipe to affect and drive perception.
Here are four impactful campaign elements.
Trust-Worthy Messaging: Establishing trust and educating audiences on relevant data points are vital elements in a communication strategy to shift opinions on contentious topics such as climate change. To increase perception with conservative and moderate voters that climate change is happening, humans caused it, and it is cause for concern, New Climate Voices created a series of videos for conservative voters utilizing authoritative spokespeople aligned with their values. A U.S. Air Force General, a Climate Scientist who is also an evangelical Christian, and members of the GOP were leading ‘voices’ on this campaign.
Persuadable Audiences: We wanted to reach moderate climate skeptics -- those designated as “cautious” or “doubtful” according to a Yale study, who could be persuaded with the right messaging. To reach this audience, Basis identified swing districts with a high concentration of voters who were doubtful of climate change. Leveraging voter file research and climate non-believer modeling with audience data partners L2 and HaystaqDNA, we identified a middle range of voters that were neither believers of climate change nor hardened deniers. Using the voter file, custom modeling segments were created for media targeting as well as polling research.
Frequency and Sequential Retargeting: The campaign delivered long and short-form videos and retargeting display ads speaking directly to conservative values. Message frequency averaging 7+ views per voter during the 4-week flight ensured adequate exposure to influence and change perception. Rotation of creative units was dictated by pre-campaign message testing in efficacy, with sequential retargeting and strategic messaging frequency building the story of climate change.
Smart Measurement : A polling research study designed and conducted by Wick measured both pre-post and treatment-control groups. A mix of collection modalities including IVR polling to landlines, text message to cell phones, and email/online panel was used to abate mode bias and maximize response rates across demographic groups. Prior to launching the advertising campaign, a treatment group and a randomly assigned control group were surveyed to evaluate awareness of and opinions about climate change. They were surveyed again after the advertising campaign to measure “Absolute Lift,” a method considering news coverage or other outside forces that may have affected the audience’s views during the campaign flight.
Digital channels are an effective way to influence voters. Among targeted Republican voters, the campaign resulted in a 7-percentage-point increase in belief that global warming is happening, a 10-point increase in understanding that global warming is human caused, an 11-point increase in global warming issue importance, a 13-point increase in worry about global warming, a 12-point increase in perceptions of personal harm, and a 16-point increase in perceptions of harm to future generations.
Opinions can seem deeply entrenched, but this effort demonstrates how a thoughtful approach to messaging and precise targeting can move the needle. When legislation and elections can be decided by very narrow margins, the difference between winning and losing could come down to how campaigns affect perceptions.
Basis Technologies’ Candidates + Causes Group has been driving perception on the most prominent public issues for more than a decade. Our technology and services have been trusted by agencies and consultants in politics, public affairs, and advocacy. We’ve collectively worked with 1500+ political campaigns and independent expenditure committees, and 2000+ issue advocacy advertisers over the past 15 years. Reach out at [email protected] to learn more.
It’s never easy to say goodbye to something we’ve owned or worn for years, to something that’s comfortable and familiar, to something that holds so many memories, and has become a part of our identity.
Centro, our company name, is one of those things to me. The name holds the memories of highs and lows, challenges and struggles, collective successes, and personal failures.
Centro began on this day, October 15, twenty years ago. I didn’t have experience in building a company; just a dream and vision on how the right software could have a huge and positive impact on the global media industry. Seamless processes, better organization, increased intelligence, enhanced collaborations, etc. -- we had an opportunity to improve the overall health and well-being of our industry.
It also began with a parallel vision for a better corporate culture – with a leadership framework that understood that success is always predicated on the quality, character, intelligence, and ethics of the people it could convince to join its mission. “Lasting success can only be achieved through dedication to growth and well-being of the individual, not the corporation,” I wrote in late 2001.
Life, at times, invites us to let go of the comfortable and familiar. It sends signals, in the form of opportunities, to shed our conches and try a new and oversized shell that gives us more space to grow on our life journey.
After twenty years, we (Centro) are officially changing the name of our corporation to Basis Global Technologies.
This change signifies our longstanding commitment and mission to develop a leading cloud-based workflow automation and business intelligence software platform for marketing and advertising. We are committed to providing our customers software and services that:
Our Challenge
Over the past twenty years, our industry has become more complex and disconnected. This has created undue strains and burdens on marketing organizations and teams leading to higher labor costs, increased workforce turnover, deteriorating unit economics, decreasing levels of customer service, lower efficacy of paid advertisements, reduced gross margins, and declining profitability. As new channels and formats are introduced, new supplemental and peripheral technologies and solutions are brought forth, creating a need for new skillsets, guidelines, rules, and standards for marketers to consider and implement.
Additionally, post-pandemic, we’ve been hearing about media companies experiencing massive shortages of workers and talent, leading to a cascading amount of work, stress and exhaustion for those in our industry. It is enormously difficult to run an efficient, happy, healthy, and fast-growth business when dealing with this amount of complexity, disconnection, and operational chaos spread over an insufficient supply of talent.
I believe this is our industry’s No. 1 problem. Until we solve the issue of compounding complexity, increasing disconnection (people, processes, and platforms), and a shortage of skilled professionals,
our industry will continue to degrade and the greatest asset we have, people, will continue to leave.
Industry Talent Crunch
A common solution is to add more talent. However, talent is becoming harder to find and increasingly more expensive. This leads to a spike in personnel costs and a corresponding reduction in profitability. Among advertising agencies, given current trends and the downward pressure on agency fees, there are numerous drawbacks to this strategy. The tangential talent solution is outsourcing or offshoring. In this industry, it’s referred to as finding bodies who can “handle your mess for less.” However, offshoring comes with its own challenges including reduced transparency, higher error rates, geographic and cultural disconnection (on top of general disconnection), and international financial and legal complications. Additionally, the cost of labor is increasing in developing countries, offsetting the benefits.
Transformation Through Automation
Spending more time, energy, and money trying to recruit talent from competitors, investing in professional training of thousands of new workers, or establishing an offshoring and outsourcing practice does not address compounding complexity.
Instead, our industry can invest time, resources, and energy fixing the root of the problem so, as more digital elements develop (AR/VR/MR, service bots, holographic content, voice search, etc.), we can integrate them easily, seamlessly, and cost-efficiently into common processes while not adding stress and undue burden on the people we care about most: our employees.
Almost thirty years ago, professor, scholar, and author, Dr. Shoshana Zuboff, published the phrase, “Everything that can be automated will be automated,” which was later labeled as Zuboff’s First Law. She was ahead of her time.
The digital transformation of industries, focused mainly on the automation of work, is predicted to be one of the fastest-growing global sectors over the next two decades.
Our market needs automation. Professionals need a comprehensive suite of applications that automate manual operations, standardize business processes, and improve marketing and advertising performance. I believe that reducing the stress, workloads, anxiety, and burnout among talent should be our sector’s top priority. Solving these problems creates a better, more enjoyable, more nourishing, and healthier industry.
This is the next chapter for Basis Technologies.
This established financial services institution wanted to create a digital campaign that built on their previous marketing efforts. The goal was for current and prospective members to apply for checking accounts and credit cards.
Transparency: The client did not have historical data of budget allocation toward working media.
Thought Leadership: Data-only reporting did not develop any insights or forward-thinking strategy. Also, no backend algorithms with optimization were in place.
Service: The client had no day-to-day servicing of the marketing campaigns and had ongoing team attrition.
Transparent Relationship: The Basis Technologies team educated the client on how to create significantly more efficient digital campaigns.
New Strategic Thinking: Basis Technologies helped to revise the client’s budget allocation to 55 different targeting tactics that explained behavioral attributes.
Raving Fan Service: Basis Technologies’ dedicated team provided a human touch and reporting insights during weekly in-depth performance reviews.
Consumers have developed an appetite for dynamic content and authentic stories—they're looking to organically navigate their way to a purchase decision, as opposed to being pushed through a sales funnel. Designed to disrupt the display ecosystem, native advertising reimagines consumer connection in more meaningful and less disruptive ways. Read our Native Advertising Guide to learn more.
Having a point of reference for how we are performing is valuable—both in our personal and professional lives. Benchmarks provide useful information for goal-setting by helping us to understand where we're succeeding and where we can improve. However, finding these starting points is not always easy.
Media professionals often come up against this issue when working on advertising campaigns. In planning, they need guidance on what KPI metric and value they should strive for. While the campaign is running, they can benefit from having something to compare to, ensuring that they're moving in the right direction. At the end, they need the ability to report on how a campaign performed relative to other advertisers.
Market Trends, a benchmarking tool exclusive to Basis, was created to address this pain point. By analyzing information from 250,000+ line items and 14,000 brands, Basis gives users access to four graphs with performance and spend data across channels, verticals, properties, and KPIs.
With just a few clicks, advertising professionals can access a consistent source of reliable data, directly in the platform. Users no longer need to waste time browsing through multiple pages to get the information they want. Today, programmatic buyers can access the following graphs:
For each graph, users can customize the data by filtering by date range or by any of the 26 different verticals. See below for a sample "Performance by KPI" Market Trends graph:
Start creating more data-driven media plans and eliminate the time and cost associated with collecting, researching, and organizing information to guide your advertising choices—let Market Trends do the work for you!
Reach out to learn more about how you can utilize Market Trends to strengthen your media strategies.
If you are in the financial services industry, the competition for customers is fiercer than ever.
Digital ad spend for the financial services industry is expected to hit $24.49 billion this year, and will climb to $30.75 billion by 2023. That’s nearly double what the industry was spending back in 2019.
There’s a good reason behind the jump: customers are re-approaching financial services en masse in light of a rapidly changing world. Nearly three-quarters of Americans said they’re revisiting their financial planning due to the pandemic, which is fairly unsurprising given the economic chaos of the past 18 months. Additionally, by 2024, more than 79% of American adults will be using digital banking—a trend that has accelerated with both COVID and the continued growth of fintech companies.
Between the impact of COVID-19 and the rise in digital banking, financial services companies have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reach customers when they’re re-considering their financial institutions of choice. Whether you are a fintech startup, a hundred-year-old Wall Street institution, an insurance company, or a local credit union, it’s never been more important to differentiate your brand and stand out from the pack.
Here are five tips to help any financial services business in their digital marketing campaigns:
1) Video
In an incredibly competitive field, you want to make sure your company stands out. A video ad (or a series of video ads) can help give your brand personality in a way that resonates more than just words. Plus, with US adults watching an average of 2.5 hours of digital video per day, it’s a good way to meet consumers where they are—whether that’s a streaming platform, a news/information site or a social media feed. Speaking of which...
2) Get Social
In today’s data-rich world, personalization is key, and few places are better for ad personalization than social media. Two-thirds of customers say they expect financial services companies to understand their unique needs and expectations, which means it’s critical you demonstrate that type of personal attention in your ads. By utilizing social media’s unique ability to target hyper-specific audience segments, you can create ads that feel especially relevant to the specific needs and expectations of different customers.
3) Think Local
Even in an increasingly global and digital world, customers care about the impact a business can have on them locally and/or in person. Nearly half of all Google searches are seeking out local information, and 72% of consumers that conduct a local search subsequently visit a store within five miles. This is where geo-targeted ads come in. If you are a finserv institution with brick-and-mortar locations, geo-targeted local ads can steer customers directly to your doors. Meanwhile, if you are a digital-only brand, you can use geo-targeted local ads to demonstrate the convenience of your online offerings...which could help customers avoid having to do such location-based searches in the future. Either way, it’s a valuable part of any financial services brand’s ad campaign.
4) Look Toward the Future
With the economic uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Millennials and Gen Z are growing increasingly interested in their financial futures and/or turning to financial advisors for help. According to astudy by Northwestern Mutual, 19% of Millennials and 25% of Gen Z said they didn’t have a financial plan before the pandemic but are looking to develop one now, and more than one-fifth of both Millennials and Gen Z said they didn’t have a financial advisor pre-COVID but are seeking to work with one now. Financial services brands should make a concerted effort to reach these customers now, as they look to establish financial relationships that could last for years to come. (One way to reach them? Read up on Gen Z and the future of digital advertising.)
5) Direct Taps to the Apps
With this spike in digital banking and an overall move toward digital for all things finserv, financial services companies have an easy choice when it comes to the CTA for any digital ad: their apps. A Salesforce study found that 68 percent of customers say COVID-19 elevated their expectations of companies’ digital capabilities, and “implementing new technology” simultaneously became the top priority among financial services leaders during the pandemic. Directing customers to your app—and using an ad to demonstrate the app’s top customer-centric features—will help you show off any new investments you’ve made in your tech, while appealing to today’s more demanding customer base.
Want to learn more about financial services marketing? Check out the four trends shaping financial services marketing, or take a look at our Finance in 2021 infographic for additional insights about the consumer and market trends driving change this year.
As marketing and advertising professionals leave their current roles for companies that better serve a diverse array of needs, their teams are struggling to grapple with the fallout of The Great Resignation.
In this episode, Corean Canty, COO of talent platform We Are Rosie, weighs in on the current talent landscape and shares what organizations must provide in order to appeal to sought-after professionals.
Recently, Marketing Brew ran a story about the ongoing trend of brands bringing their programmatic advertising in-house. The rise of in-house media operations has seen the likes of Chase, Molson Coors and Ally Financial take their programmatic ad buying into their own hands.
As you might imagine, given how big some of those brand names are, there are some serious upsides to in-housing your programmatic. However, as the article notes, a successful transition from agency to in-house programmatic buying isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. A few major differentiating factors can make all the difference, and before making any decisions on whether to in-house your programmatic media buying operations, it’s important to consider all the possible benefits and risks of any such move.
Let’s take a quick look at the possible upsides and potential pitfalls of in-house programmatic ad buying, as well as what concrete steps brands can take to mitigate those risks before they begin their programmatic in-housing journey:
First, let’s examine some of the positives.
The motivation behind many in-house media buying teams is a desire for more transparency in the programmatic advertising process. Our industry has seen story after story after story after story after story covering the problems stemming from a lack of trust between brands and their agency partners when it comes to programmatic advertising, so we won’t bore you with the details here. Needless to say, the ability to shirk any further concerns around programmatic transparency by saying “Forget you, I’ll do it myself!” is certainly one of the primary appeals of in-housing programmatic. Having that sort of direct, unfiltered data is no doubt going to appeal to any brand looking to capitalize on its digital advertising efforts, be it programmatic or otherwise.
Then, of course, there are the cost savings: large, mid-sized and challenger brands alike can all stand to save money from cutting out the middleman and doing the programmatic buying themselves. Cutting down on managed services fees—combined with data consolidation, integration and storage cost savings—can equal some serious dollars for a brand’s marketing department. At Basis Technologies, we’ve seen the results first-hand, with brands that in-house their programmatic using Basis achieving a 48% ROI, according to a Forrester study.
Of course, there’s the then-obvious follow-up question of “Are the savings ultimately worth the hassle of having to do everything ourselves?” That brings us nicely to our next topic: the potential risks of in-housing.
There’s a good reason people choose to outsource tasks like programmatic ad buying: it can be complicated, time consuming, and require additional personnel and platforms. Why spend upfront costs on training, talent and tech when you can just pay someone to deal with all of that for you?
In the Morning Brew piece, employees from several brands speak to the need for truly investing in the process of programmatic in-housing. It is not, as they note, something you just “try for a year” or hire a few people to do on your behalf. Rather, it involves the same planning, preparedness and commitment as any other major strategic decision.
What’s more, many (but not all!) DSPs involve an unspeakable amount of monotonous, time-consuming manual work—in the Morning Brew article, one VP described it as “deathly boring”—and the time an in-house team spends executing programmatic ad buys can come at the expense of things like strategy and creative discussions. With talent shortages already a problem in the industry, hiring for such positions can be difficult, to say the least.
Between the upsides and the potential risks, brands clearly have a lot to consider when it comes to in-housing their programmatic ad buying. Those looking to shake up their programmatic strategy should be careful to consider all these concerns before making a choice on whether to proceed with in-housing or stick with outsourcing. However, should you decide to move forward with the transition, there are a few major choices that can make all the difference between in-housing being a transformative decision or a bust.
Ultimately, three key factors can determine whether your brand’s in-housing is a success:
1) The Platform
Your choice of DSP is the foundation upon which your new in-house team will rely. Investing in the right platform can set your team up for success from the outset and will have the tools and capabilities to grow with you as your programmatic efforts increase. What’s more, it can help you make the absolute most of your talent—be they entry level employees or media planning veterans. Think of it this way: you can hire the best driver in the world to lead your new racing team, but if you put them in a 1994 Toyota Camry, they’re probably going to get smoked by that perfectly adequate driver behind the wheel of a Tesla.
So, what does the “right” platform look like? At a minimum, it should address the central problems you were looking to solve when you brought programmatic in-house in the first place: transparency and cost. The right platform should make it easy to see where your dollars are going, find out how a buy performed, and bring everything together into one holistic view—all while respecting the time, competing demands and varying experience levels of your in-house media services team.
This leads us nicely to the next key factor...
2) The Time
On many DSPs, programmatic ad buying is a time-consuming, monotonous process that’s tedious for your talent and takes time and resources away from things like strategy and creative planning. The same problems used to plague email marketing before the advent of marketing automation software, which transformed the industry by streamlining the email marketing process and boosting the productivity (and sanity) of digital marketers.
Today, brands have the opportunity to leverage DSPs that utilize automation for a similar purpose: to take care of time-consuming manual tasks and free up time for your in-house media services team to focus on other, more worthy responsibilities.
While we’re on the subject of time, it’s also important to take the time to plan the transition from agency-driven programmatic buying to an in-house team. And it will take time—we’re talking months or even years here, not weeks. To make the most of the switch, you’ll need to find the right partner to set your team—and your organization—up for success. Which brings us to our last factor...
3) The Training
As you make your way down the path to self-service, it’s critical to identify reliable outside voices who can offer their experience and expertise. Start by looking for someone with digital chops who has done this before. Confirm their media expertise, and ensure they have a viable pool of resources you can tap into. You want a partner who can give not just comprehensive training to your new in-house team, but leave you feeling confident in your ability to take the programmatic reins once they’re handed over (and, of course, that you can still reach out to should you have any questions or needs later on.)
In sum, any brand looking to bring their programmatic buying in-house should try to find a partner that offers not just a DSP, but a platform that automates those “deathly boring” manual tasks, brings together all relevant communication and data into one place for increased transparency, and provides comprehensive training to help you on your path to programmatic self-service.
As with any major strategic decision, there are a myriad of other factors that can help facilitate or impede the success of programmatic in-housing. But if you get it right on those big three, you should be set up for success—and, with it, the transparency and savings in-housing provides.
The idea of in-housing programmatic can seem daunting (just look at that “risks” section up above!) That’s why we put together our Programmatic Readiness Guide. The guide can help you and your brand assess what would constitute the ideal solution for your digital buying needs, prepare your organization for digital buying success, and determine programmatic readiness throughout your business, people, process, technology and future. Whatever your thoughts are on in-housing, we hope you’ll give it a read.
Praxis provided patient recruitment support for a clinical trial to treat Covid-19. They asked their CSM and Basis Technologies’ Managed Services team for help with strategy, set-up, and optimizations. With assistance from their CSM, it was easy to access Hulu’s premier inventory. Basis’ Platform Deals helped them explore inventory they wouldn’t have otherwise considered.
Generate awareness about the trial to enroll participants; reach a wide audience at an optimal CPM.
The eligibility criteria, and time-window to participate in the study are very stringent.
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Courtney Walczak, Media Planner & Buyer, Praxis
"By using Algorithmic Optimization, there were fewer manual optimizations involved, which allowed for more time to work on analyzing performance."
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