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When Verdin Marketing signed on to Basis in 2019, they were hoping for three business-level benefits:
On-board Basis and take advantage of workflow tools, the built-in DSP, and access to emerging digital media vehicles.
Basis enables Verdin Marketing to stay on the cutting edge of media through education and access.
Education: The Basis Technologies Media Innovations Team keeps the buyers up-to-date on new media types, landscape shifts, and emerging media.
Access: The Verdin buyers can now access innovative inventory and media types such as CTV on Roku, Audio on Spotify, and native ad units.
Verdin’s clients have access to Basis’s portfolio of over 1200 evergreen PMPs. These private marketplace deals unlock premium inventory and targeting.
For Verdin, using Basis isn’t about saving hours—it’s about bringing more value to their clients with the same budgets. Basis gives Verdin the tools and options needed to make those budgets work harder.
Since launch, Basis put powerful tools in the hands of the Verdin Marketing team. The team makes quick, hands-on optimizations in the DSP, regularly tests new partners and audiences, and quickly pulls granular reporting.
The team also now has access to many more media options for their clients—interesting audiences, direct opportunities, social channels—and the reporting to prove success, all without spending more money.
With Basis, Verdin has first-party proof points about the effectiveness of digital media allowing them to shift budget to digital and capture more revenue.
Using the Basis Universal Pixel, Verdin is also building proprietary audiences to share between non-competitive clients.
With the additional control and media opportunities Basis provides, Verdin was able to increase CTR for their largest client by 23% and provide a 140% increase in site traffic without increase budgets.
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TV and digital have battled over share of budget for the past decade. What if, instead of weighing their pros and cons, marketers discovered how these tactics can succeed together? Even more, what if the increased fragmentation of TV could be improved via automation?
In this month's webinar, Centro's Derek Newman and WideOrbit's Frederick Lee share how marketers can win by leveraging TV and digital together.
At Centro, we know that keeping up with the trade pubs and latest trends can be tough and time-consuming. To make that easier, we’ve compiled all the articles, reports, and other bits of awesomeness you may have missed, but should definitely read. Enjoy our latest list below!
Two-Thirds of Global CMOs To Boost Spend and Scale-Up Tech in 2021 [:02]
A new report from the CMO Council finds that 65% of CMOs are planning to boost spending through 2021, with a heavy investment in marketing technology. Over 70% of marketers are turning to automation to improve efficiency and work more effectively.
Apple Says IDFA Changes Will Go Live ‘In Early Spring’ [:03]
Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that in early Spring the company will start requiring apps and advertisers to get permission before they can use the IDFA for tracking and ad targeting. Apple claims “unlimited personal data” is not necessary to provide a good digital experience and says this move will give app users control over how their data is handled.
What the F**k Is FLoC? Google Opens Up on Post-Cookie Roadmap [:03]
Google has opened up on its new approach to delivering and measuring ads sent to Chrome users once it finally lays the tired third-party cookie to rest. The incoming scheme has been the subject of much fear and speculation due to its market-shaking potential. The Drum explores what we can expect from FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts).
Google Claims FLoCs Can Be Nearly As Effective As Cookie-Based Ads [:05]
Google’s Chrome browser is making its case for interest-based cohorts—or FLoCs (aka, federated learning of cohorts) —available for public developer testing starting in March. On Monday, Google shared the latest results of its own experiments with the FLoC API. Google says its simulations demonstrate that cohorts can drive around 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared with cookie-based advertising.
The Future of Video Gaming is Bright—Even As Real Experiences Return [:04]
Globally, the video game industry was one of the best equipped to handle the turbulence of 2020. Not only did engagement skyrocket as consumers stayed at home, but the industry pivoted to ensure it was doing everything it could to keep consumers engaged. Branded crossover events, virtual concerts, and celebrity influencer participations all fueled a groundswell that shows no signs of receding—even as the COVID-19 vaccine promises to allow people to be together again IRL.
Who's On First? Why Mobile Increasingly Isn't My 'Second Screen' [:03]
Every new medium gets on base by comparing itself to the most established and valuable medium, and for most of the last century, that's been the television screen. So it shouldn't have been surprising that mobile screens—both hand-held smartphones and tablets—would be characterized as the "second screen" relative to TV. But increasingly, it's actually the primary one.
Inside Big Tech’s Podcasting Goldrush [:08]
This year, 38% of marketers are planning to boost podcast spend. That will drive one in every five digital audio ad dollars toward podcasts in 2021, equating to over $1bn. The major tech players, from Spotify to Apple, are making big moves with increased investments to develop and acquire quality content, ramp up distribution, increase scale, and offer innovative advertising solutions.
How ‘Horizontality’ Is Driving M&A in Ad Tech [:02]
Speaking at Adweek’s Outlook 2021 event, Terry Kawaja, CEO of investment bank Luma Partners, said ad tech will see continued investment activity around CTV, data & identity, mobile app, and audio as companies look to strengthen their positions and expand their core competencies.
The path to programmatic may seem daunting, but don't worry—we broke it down for you.
When it comes to programmatic buying, there are typically four different options: Outsourced Managed Services, buying self-service via a tech-based platform, starting on a path-to-self-service, or getting left behind! Don't be the latter—let someone guide you with outsourced Managed Services or gain full control with a digital buying platform. Otherwise, take the time you need to adjust and identify current and future needs, and start on a path-to-self-service.
How do you know which path is right for your team and business? Read our Programmatic Readiness Guide as you assess the ideal solution for your digital buying needs, to help you find out.
In recent years, many advertisers have considered bringing programmatic media buying in-house. For others, a lack of infrastructure and support make it difficult to take the plunge.
In this episode, Centro's EVP of Media Services and Operations shares the different ways advertisers can approach in-housing, as well as how to best prepare beforehand. Finally, she shares how advertising professionals can enhance their careers in today’s crowded and fast-evolving media environment.
As marketers - and media buyers, in particular - a lot of money flows through our digital hands. Depending on company size and program ambition, it can be a daunting amount. The larger the budget, the greater the impact even the smallest mistakes can make.
This is where reporting and budget pacing comes in, playing an absolutely critical role in ensuring you avoid any spend disasters and stay on course to meet performance targets. In this article, we explore the extensive improvements you can make to your program and day-to-day processes by monitoring pacing effectively, and, more importantly, how you can do it.
Budget pacing dashboards are arguably the most valuable that can be made. Understanding precisely how much you’re going to spend is equally as important as knowing how much has been spent. The manner in which you can expose such insights can be done in myriad ways, but the most straightforward (and therefore most common) is a linear calculation. It’s simply total spend, divided by days passed thus far in the period you’re reviewing, multiplied by the number of days remaining. Exposing this in visual form is an ideal way to learn if you’re on the mark, or if adjustments are required. If you’re managing multiple budgets, it’s easy to break these out by duplicating charts and filtering for the various accounts/campaign categories that you have.
In the chart below, spend and forecast are showcased together in one column. It’s an essential visualization that quickly reveals how much you’ve spent, how much you’re forecasted to outlay, and where that forecast sits in comparison to your budget. It’s a simple graph, but it conveys a lot of information instantaneously.
An alternative way to look at this would be via a running total. The line graph here provides an indication of how much you’ve spent, how you’re trending against your target budget cap, and whether there have been any major spend swings - or surprises - day-by-day in the budgeting cycle to date.
Aside from uncovering the progression and direction of spend, it’s also vitally important that marketers know where their investments have gone. There are a couple of visuals to help with this that can additionally double-up in functionality and help expose any issues that need to be resolved.
The first is a simple pie chart that shows the overall percentage of spend coming from the main advertising channels, for which search is dominant. However, while this succeeds perfectly in telling a good story about where the money is going, there could be lurking issues that will go undetected due to the volume of data usually in play. A suspicious spike in spend on a single day, for example, may not necessarily be displayed clearly here as it becomes lost in the overall percentages.
For that reason, I also like to show the total spend across the given time period. As this chart is intended to look for immediate issues, it’s focused on just a short time period. These are stacked line graphs, which will clearly show peaks and troughs that may warrant further investigation.
Both of these visualizations can, and should, be duplicated for the major areas of spend. Device, network, advertising channel, and publisher are all good starting points. If you’re running display or RLSA campaigns, an audience, or even demographic, set of charts would also be valuable to have on hand.
With the how and the where covered, I also like to have straightforward lists showing the top spending campaigns. It’s useful to understand what generally eats up most of the budget and it can be easily monitored for any outliers. I like to have, as a starting point, Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Keywords.
The intent with all of these graphs is to help peel the covers off what’s going on with your campaigns; exposing the details and following the pennies and where they go. It’s incredibly easy for any campaign to have some measure of wasted spend, but these charts will help to identify and resolve some of them.
Not only do they help to understand where money goes, but they also help to monitor for issues. Any large swings in spend will be easily caught and remedied by simply having the right dashboard in place.
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Our universal reporting and analytics technology is instrumental in driving consistent growth for marketing teams large and small. See for yourself how powerful it can be.
The typical person can be exposed to more than 4,000 advertisements each day. Not surprising, given that people around the world spend an average of 170 minutes online per day! There are so many opportunities for advertisements to cross their screens.
If an advertisement catches your eye and it’s a product or service that you are interested in, there’s a good chance that it's part of that brand’s digital campaign strategy. This is where a media buyer comes in—it's their responsibility to strategically plan and place advertisements online to drive specific results for brands.
In digital media, there are two main parts to a media buyer’s job—media planning and media buying.
Media planning includes:
Media buying includes:
Brands and agencies rely on media buyers to ensure that their online advertising dollars are spent efficiently and effectively. Media buyers are also instrumental in tying online advertising dollars back to business objectives. This often includes increasing brand awareness, driving online sales, increasing site engagement, and more.
There are many tools available to help media buyers streamline day-to-day processes. At Centro, we are fortunate to have Basis—our own comprehensive & automated digital media platform that allows our team to run direct, programmatic, search, and social media buys through a single interface. This platform is the foundation of our company and has enabled us to service over 1,000 media teams throughout the years.
Some of Basis’ features include:
So as people continue to spend more time online and see thousands of ads each day, know that media buyers are behind the scenes, carefully crafting digital campaigns to place a lot of those advertisements. Hopefully these media buyers are using platforms like Basis to make their jobs easier and ensure advertisements are put in front of the right people, at the right time, and the right place!
When COVID-19 hit early last year, the world of healthcare marketing seemed to come to a halt. Media budgets and the people who controlled them paused, leaving marketers to reflect on how to move forward and the changes that would likely come due to the global pandemic.
While messaging and targeting may have changed, the one thing about healthcare marketing that hasn’t changed is that caring for and improving the lives of patients remains at the center of the industry.
Whether it’s advertising healthcare facilities, hospital service lines, new drugs, updated medical devices or simply continuing education for healthcare providers (HCPs), healthcare marketing still revolves around patients. What has changed is the way HCPs reach and engage with their patients and other people in their fields, and how healthcare marketers help them accomplish that.
Healthcare marketing is still focused on simplifying care for patients and keeping the relationship between HCPs and patients strong. However, things are now shifting to a digital-first approach.
A good example of these changes relates to telemedicine. It’s true that telemedicine isn’t exactly a new advancement in medical technology—in fact, it’s been around for decades—but its usage numbers saw a significant spike in 2020.
With the pandemic leaving people in quarantine and unable to visit their HCP, telemedicine offered a way to keep patients and HCPs connected and ensure that patients still received the care and attention they needed. The challenge that healthcare marketers faced was that telemedicine wasn’t the most popular or well-known service, to either HCPs or their patients.
While healthcare marketers couldn’t entirely control HCP usage and adoption of telehealth services, they could help get patients on board for doctors who already signed on to the “new” platforms. Shifting patient-centered campaign messaging away from showcasing service lines, clinic locations, and offerings, and towards making it clear that a patient’s HCP was still available, just in a different way, was integral to keeping relationships between patient and HCP strong.
Despite a gradual and hesitant adoption of a new technology, as it turned out, telemedicine’s shining moment in the midst of a pandemic impacted the healthcare industry more than anticipated. FAIR Health reports that the United States saw a 5,680% increase in telehealth claims, from privately insured patients, from May 2019 to May 2020. According to a survey from Doctor.com, 83% of patients expect to use virtual appointments even after COVID-19 dies down.
While there will always be a number of issues or conditions that do require an in-person visit, for the remaining conditions, the number of patients likely to choose a virtual appointment over going in-office are strong and keep rising.
Another big change in Healthcare marketing is the balance between non-personal promotion (NPP) and personal promotion budgeting and strategy. Previously, NPP budgets had taken a back seat to personal promotion, like drug sales-rep meetings or event booths and sponsorships.
While effective, personal promotion was a bit outdated and challenging even before COVID-19 entered the scene. Since COVID-19 forced a sort of evolution in the outdated practices of engaging with HCPs, NPP has increased rapidly. MM&M surveyed medical marketers recently, and 45% said they were increasing NPP, with 73% of those individuals citing COVID-19 as a significant factor for that increase.
This is by no means bad news—it’s actually a big step towards a more digitally evolved healthcare industry which benefits everyone involved. But it also presented a unique challenge for healthcare marketers… how do you make non-personal promotion feel personal? This question pushed marketers to work smarter and reevaluate how HCPs are targeted online and how they’re consuming media, which is something that will last long after COVID-19 ends.
In short, COVID-19 gave the healthcare industry, and thus healthcare marketing, a big push into the digital space, where it will remain long after COVID-19 dies off. Telemedicine, more non-personal promotion, and the ever-evolving digital solutions for healthcare, are here to stay. And, so is the responsibility of healthcare marketers to keep communicating the industry trends to both patients and healthcare providers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Connect with us to learn more about healthcare marketing with Centro!
As a digital marketer, analyzing and unraveling data is a critical part of the game. Aside from defining precisely what you want to track, an increasingly important consideration is how often you plan to review the metrics you’re focused on. And guess what? It’s impossible - and unworkable - to simply throw a blanket over different metrics and treat them all with a single formula. Depending on the model and strategic objectives of a given business, marketing teams need to adopt their own distinct analytical cadences.
For some marketers, that means tracking key performance indicators on a week-over-week basis, as opposed to once per month, or even once a quarter.
The benefits of conducting weekly evaluations are many. Primary among them is that they help you pivot and adjust your campaigns more quickly and keep things on pace to meet monthly goals and benchmarks. Regular performance check-ins allow you to identify specific aspects of your ads - whether that is creative, messaging, or keywords - that are resonating with your audience and then iterate as required on those that clearly aren’t before they drain your budget. You may, for example, have just added a bunch of negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing up on irrelevant searches and in the process damaging your relevance score. Comparing campaign performance for the current week against that of the preceding week helps expose if those alterations had any impact. Similarly, if you increased bids in an attempt to improve your visibility on the search engine results pages, you can track how that affected key metrics including conversions, CPA, ROAS, and Profit. By gleaning this type of information in weekly cycles, you become empowered to design goals that reflect evolving capabilities. Even if you’re running a longer campaign with a slow release of promotional material over the course of a month - say, on social media and your blog - it’s still important to look at your campaign metrics on a weekly basis in order to stay agile and modify your tactics based on near real-time data.
In this blog post, we explore what effective weekly performance analysis looks like using dashboard features complete with real client data.
Overview:
Format: Single Value Tiles and Line Charts
Time Period: Week-Over-Week
Metrics: Impressions, Clicks, Cost, CPC, Conversions, Revenue, CPA, ROAS, RPC, Profit, Conversion Rate, AOV
In this widget, we’re presented with two different views of the same fundamental data points. On the right, we’ve got an easily digestible snapshot of the primary KPIs in aggregate, and then on the left, we can see those numbers broken down by day in a time series line graph. A marketing dashboard should be viewed as a steering wheel for optimum performance and this handy visualization helps you smoothly navigate the digital ecosystem of your industry. Within seconds, you can pinpoint any anomalies and major events and evaluate whether your campaigns are trending according to your forecasts.
We can see from the data showcased here that throughout the previous seven days our client generated revenue of a little over $294K compared to $220K the week prior. That’s a 30% to 35% increase, week-over-week, and something that certainly warrants a more exhaustive investigation into the cause.
A swift glance leftwards at the line graph tells us that the variance came from across the entire week, with one particularly meaningful spike on a single day. Armed with that insight, you can then switch over to more granular dashboards to really dig into what triggered the spike. By observing how your metrics fluctuate daily from a weekly perspective, you eliminate any overhasty conclusions from your analysis and avoid latching onto false signals that could easily result in a misallocation of funds.
Overview:
Format: Table
Time Period: Week-Over-Week
Metrics: Impressions, Clicks, Cost, Revenue, Conversions, Profit, ROAS, CPA, Conversion Rate, CTR, CPC, and RPC
As all digital marketers will attest, campaign performance typically varies widely by segment, whether that be by channel, publisher, or any other dimension you’re working with. Once you’ve learned about the state of your program at a very high-level from the charts above, you can then dive deeper into some selective elements.
We can see, for example, that the upturn in revenue was across both Google and Bing despite fewer impressions, a negligible difference in clicks, and incredibly, in the case of Google, far fewer conversions week-over-week. It’s also worth noting that Bing is doing a great job at complementing this particular client’s PPC strategy, bringing in the conversions at a much lower CPA and significantly higher ROAS than Google. Such insights are extremely valuable because they help you continuously optimize your initiatives, exploit previously unforeseen pockets of improvement, and reshape the strategy behind how you’re distributing your marketing dollars to reach your end-of-month - and yearly - objectives.
Overview:
Format: Stacked Bar Charts
Time Period: Week-Over-Week
Metrics: Spend and Revenue
Completing this dashboard look, we have a series of stacked bar charts depicting further granular visualizations of spend and revenue. With marketing campaigns continuing to grow in their complexity as more data, channels, and tools become available to advertisers, the main purpose of this widget is to help you simultaneously compare totals and determine which sharp changes at the item level are likely to have had the most influence on the movements we saw in the components above.
As marketers, we’re tasked with making crucial monetary decisions on behalf of the company every day. By tracking this type of information weekly, you can get a sense of whether a particular device, network, or advertising channel is performing better or more poorly than expected fairly quickly, ultimately empowering you to either pause or invest more heavily in ads where appropriate.
The cycle of experimenting, measuring, and optimizing is rigorous and never-ending. What automated weekly reporting does is provide the actionable insights you need to form better hypotheses and drive accelerated growth by connecting effort with outcome at both micro and macro levels.
Once you have that capability at your fingertips, you can pinpoint market trends like never before and outpace your competitors absolutely everywhere.
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Our universal reporting and analytics technology is instrumental in driving consistent growth for marketing teams large and small. See for yourself how powerful it can be.