Category: Blog Post

We live — and marketers work — in an omnichannel world. As the digital landscape becomes more complex, today’s consumers are navigating it seamlessly, slipping from one channel to the next without missing a beat on the goal they’ve set out to accomplish. In fact, an impressive 86 percent of shoppers regularly hop across two or more channels while shopping. 

To consumers, cross-channel activities aren’t given a second thought. But from the marketing and brand experience standpoint, the omnichannel reality is a lot more complicated. Let’s look at what omnichannel success requires in the modern marketing era. 

Table of Contents

• What is Omnichannel Marketing?
• What Is an Example of an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy in Action?
• Why You Should Use Omnichannel Marketing
• Omnichannel Marketing Best Practices

 

What Is Omnichannel Marketing?

In the simplest of terms, omnichannel marketing is an approach to marketing that addresses the customer experience on each channel — everything from desktop browsers and mobile apps to social media, podcasts, and more — as well as how customers transition among channels to make purchases. The importance of this comprehensive approach to marketing — one that prioritizes the consumer journey and maintains consistency across it — cannot be overstated. 

Customers are more likely to remember brands, view them favorably, and make purchases with them after being exposed to an integrated omnichannel marketing campaign. So, what does it take to build and execute such a strategy? Keep reading to learn more.

 

What Are the Four Pillars of Omnichannel Marketing?

While the concept of omnichannel marketing is a grand one, the implementation of such a strategy is, in fact, highly tactical. In general, there are four major pillars that support omnichannel marketing: data and insights, strategic planning, channel selection, and reporting and measurement. Let’s dig into each one in more detail. 

 

1. Data and Insights

The backbone of omnichannel marketing relies on a data-driven, strategic approach to properly identifying, interacting with, and engaging consumers. The end goal is to understand your customers and prospects — particularly as it relates to how and where they shop and engage with content — and to deliver targeted, relevant ad placements, creative, and messaging. 

Proper execution of an omnichannel strategy typically requires both first-party data (what you know directly about your customers) and third-party data (information from outside sources that reveals new dimensions of these customers). However, collecting this data is just the start. Marketers must then put in the work required to interpret and understand what the data means as it relates to real-world behaviors. 

 

2. Strategic Planning

With a solid foundation of audience data and insights, marketers can then go about making a strategic plan for reaching those audiences across channels. A key part of this step is to solidify your budget and prioritize who to target with your ad spend and in which channels. 

Omnichannel marketing is, by definition, a strategy that aims to reach target audiences across the many channels that comprise their customer journey. However, it’s unrealistic to think that a brand can reach all audiences across all channels all the time. This is why the data and insights discussed above are so vital. Approached correctly, they will reveal the most valuable audiences— both existing customers and prospects — for a given brand, as well as their most impactful touch points. 

 

3. Channel Selection

With an understanding of a brand’s target audiences and their customer journeys, it’s time for marketers to decide how to allocate their budgets across channels. A strong omnichannel marketing strategy can include email marketing, social media, search, digital display, digital video, CTV and OTT, out of home, print, mobile, a brand’s own website, affiliate, social influencers, and more. It seems like the list never ends.

The logical question arises: Does my brand need to be present on all of these channels? The answer depends on the brand, its customers, and its resources. While the goal of omnichannel marketing is to create a seamless, unified customer journey across all channels frequented by a brand’s target audiences, it’s important to establish priorities. The goal should be to cover as many channels and platforms as possible, assuming your audiences are on them, but to still be able to do so in an impactful way. 

There are a tremendous number of channels from which to choose, and ensuring a diverse marketing mix is valuable, as it helps engage customers wherever they are in their customer journeys and on the platforms that matter to them. Furthermore, including a variety of touchpoints, platforms, and tactics in your plan can help ensure no single channel becomes oversaturated. Ultimately, however, plans will need to operate within the reality of a brand’s marketing budget, which is why strong data and targeting are so important out of the gate.  

 

4. Reporting and Measurement

Finally, we come to reporting and measurement — as vital a pillar of omnichannel marketing as any of the others, but the one that’s perhaps most likely to be overlooked. Proper reporting and measurement enable advertisers to evaluate the execution of their campaigns in a holistic way to understand which tactics and channels are performing well (and which aren’t). 

Omnichannel marketing is an always-on endeavor, and that means reporting and measurement should be too. By understanding how different channels are performing and interacting with one another, marketers can shift budgets and efforts accordingly, even while campaigns are still live and running. By committing to continual reporting and measurement, marketers can unlock a cycle of continuous improvement that enables greater efficiencies and the ability to test new audiences, channels, and tactics that might be of interest but perhaps weren’t included in earlier planning. Furthermore, proper reporting and measurement enable marketers to identify shifts in consumer behaviors, marketplace realities, and channel performance before they can significantly impact a brand’s omnichannel results. 

 

What Is an Example of an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy in Action?

From a consumer standpoint, we rarely spend time thinking about how we become aware of and start purchasing from a brand, nor do we think about the many ways in which our favorite brands communicate and interact with us. Omnichannel marketing, at its best, is seamless in that regard. 

Let’s consider how a modern fashion brand might employ an omnichannel marketing strategy to provide a unified and personalized experience to its prospects and customers across various platforms and channels.

• Online store and mobile app: The brand has a user-friendly online store and mobile app that offer a wide range of clothing and accessories. Customers can browse the products, add items to their cart, and create wishlists. Their activity and preferences are tracked to provide personalized recommendations.
• Personalized and retargeted display advertising: The fashion brand employs data-driven advertising campaigns across various platforms. Some ads leverage contextual data to reach likely targets. In other instances, a person who recently viewed a specific dress on the website might see retargeted ads featuring that dress on other websites they visit. 
• Social media advertising: The brand also runs targeted display advertising campaigns on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. The ads direct users to the brand’s online store or encourage them to download the mobile app.
• Location-based mobile ads: The brand might also use location-based advertising to send targeted offers and promotions to potential customers’ mobile devices when they are near one of the company’s store locations. 
• SEO and paid search: The fashion brand optimizes its website for search engines to ensure that it appears in relevant search results when potential customers are looking for fashion products. The company also employs paid search ads to attract potential customers actively searching for fashion products online. 
• Video advertising: The brand amplifies its omnichannel marketing strategy by incorporating video ads across YouTube and other online platforms that showcase its latest collections, styling tips, and customer testimonials.
• Email marketing: The company also sends personalized email campaigns to its subscribers. These emails include abandoned cart reminders, personalized product recommendations based on browsing history, exclusive offers, and updates about upcoming sales or new arrivals.
• Social media: The company maintains active profiles on popular social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. It regularly posts high-quality images of its latest collections, style guides, and user-generated content. 
• In-store experience: The brand ensures its physical stores are aligned with its digital efforts. In-store tablets allow customers to browse the online catalog, check product availability, and even place online orders for items that might not be in stock.

In this omnichannel marketing example, the fashion brand leverages multiple platforms and channels to create a seamless and integrated customer experience. The goal is to provide convenience, personalization, and engagement at every touchpoint, ultimately driving customer loyalty and increasing sales. 

As extensive as the above list is, it’s really just a starting point. Additional consumer touchpoints leveraged by the brand could include user-generated content, print, direct mail, OOH and DOOH, TV advertising, chatbots and customer support, loyalty programs and more. 

 

A Real-World Omnichannel Marketing Case Study

Every brand should be thinking about their prospects and customers in an omnichannel capacity. So, what does that look like when it comes to campaign planning, execution, and results? Consider the example of a power tool company that was recently looking to drive sales during two campaign flights — one right before Christmas and one during springtime. To do this, the company employed a mix of full-funnel tactics to create awareness among new prospects and drive individuals to purchase its tools at a major retailer.

With its campaigns, the brand reached potential customers across the U.S. through video, OTT, social media, and display ads. Specific tactics included: 

• Video retargeting: The brand placed a pixel on its landing page and retargeted anyone who visited with a video.
• Pre-roll contextual advertising: The brand placed ads within content categories focused on homeowners, DIY projects, home projects, crafters, and outside yard work.
• Social to display ads: The brand leveraged its existing social assets from Facebook to create display ads in a seamless execution.

The combination of tactics and channels enabled the brand to exceed campaign goals, driving more than 11,000 conversions and a 0.20 percent click-through rate. The results were a testament to the company’s unified omnichannel approach to aligning its efforts with the full customer journey. 

 

Why You Should Use Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing enables a seamless purchase journey for consumers every step of the way. Furthermore, with proper planning and execution, omnichannel marketing allows advertisers to quickly adapt their marketing tactics and advertising campaigns without losing contact with consumers and ensuring continued access to the data and insights needed for continual optimization. 

The importance of omnichannel marketing within today’s highly fragmented digital world cannot be overstated. Consider:

• Increased customer retention: Businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies achieve an average 89 percent customer retention rate, compared to a 33 percent rate for those without omnichannel approaches.
• Higher lifetime value: Customers engaged through omnichannel strategies have a 30 percent higher lifetime value than those who engage through only one channel.
• Consumer demands for consistency: Roughly 75 percent of consumers expect consistent experiences across channels.
• Growth of mobile influence: Mobile commerce has been a significant driver of omnichannel strategies, with more than 40 percent of e-commerce transactions taking place on mobile devices in 2023.

Let’s delve deeper into why omnichannel marketing is so successful in driving improved campaign results, marketing ROI, and customer relationships. 

 

Today, Shopping Is Omnichannel

Today’s marketing must be omnichannel because, quite simply, today’s shopper experience is omnichannel. Consumers no longer adhere to the traditional distinctions between online and offline shopping. Rather, they seamlessly navigate a multitude of interconnected touchpoints. 

As technology has advanced, the concept of omnichannel has redefined the way consumers interact with brands. From browsing products on mobile apps and websites to engaging with brands on social media and exploring physical stores, the modern shopper expects a cohesive and unified experience. An omnichannel approach ensures that customers can effortlessly transition among platforms, digital interactions, and in-person experiences while enjoying consistent branding, personalized recommendations, and convenient options tailored to their needs, like click-and-collect or home delivery. 

 

Omnichannel Data Provides a More-Complete Understanding

A properly executed omnichannel marketing strategy provides brands with a unified 360-degree view of how consumers engage with them across every step of the customer journey. Importantly, the data and insights gleaned from an omnichannel marketing approach serve to improve brand experiences that extend well beyond just marketing and advertising. Customer engagements, transactions, and feedback provide valuable information that can help a company improve its customer service, technical support, brand initiatives, and even its product design. 

 

Omnichannel Marketing Improves Personalization

Research has shown that 80 percent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences, and as younger generations acquire more buying power, that imperative becomes even stronger. Omnichannel marketing, given the more comprehensive approach it takes to understanding and engaging customers and prospects, enables brands to better customize their efforts to individual consumers based on where they are in their journey, the product they’re seeking, and the relationship they have already established with the brand. 

 

Omnichannel Marketing Best Practices

Omnichannel marketing requires a significant amount of planning. Here’s where marketers need to be focusing their efforts: 

 

Have a Deep Understanding of Your Customer’s Journey

Understanding the customer journey is paramount to achieving success in omnichannel marketing. By comprehending the intricate path a customer takes from awareness to purchase and beyond, businesses can tailor their strategies to align seamlessly with each touchpoint. This knowledge empowers advertisers to deliver consistent messaging, relevant content, and personalized experiences, regardless of the channel or device a customer uses to engage a brand. 

In the dynamic landscape of omnichannel marketing, a deep comprehension of the customer journey serves as the compass guiding advertisers toward building enduring relationships with consumers and achieving their goals. By harnessing the right data and insights, businesses can identify customer pain points, optimize transitions, and ensure a cohesive narrative that resonates with customers. This ultimately helps build trust, foster loyalty, and provide the convenience and satisfaction that modern consumers demand. 

 

Pick the Right Channels

Omnichannel marketing doesn’t mean being everywhere. It means being where your customer is — and ensuring your messaging and image are consistent in those places.

Selecting the appropriate channels for an effective omnichannel marketing strategy demands a strategic approach. Begin by understanding your target audience and their preferences. Research which platforms they frequently use and how they engage with content. At the same time, analyze your product or service to determine the best opportunities to showcase its features. Likewise, consider the nature of your brand message; some channels are better suited for visual content, while others excel in delivering in-depth information. Choose wisely. 

 

Stay on Top of the Data

When a brand is running different creatives across different channels, the data begins to pile up quickly. Before you even get started with these campaigns, be sure to outline a plan for data collection, organization, integration, and optimization. With multiple incoming data sources, it’s easy to get lost quickly in an avalanche of spreadsheets. Selecting a data analytics solution that works for your brand will help avoid this fate.

Be sure to collaborate across departments to ensure a holistic approach that aligns with your brand’s business goals. Continuously monitor channel performance and adapt based on results to focus resources on channels that yield the highest engagement and conversions. In the end, a meticulous blend of audience insights, campaign results, and data-driven decisions will allow your omnichannel strategy to thrive.

 

Hire an Expert If You Can’t DIY

Omnichannel marketing is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t have a team that can make all the steps of omnichannel marketing a priority, you’re better off not doing it all. Hiring experts makes sense for teams that don’t have the time or expertise to connect the dots across the many touchpoints of the customer journey.  

Are you ready to unlock the full power of strategic omnichannel marketing for your brand? We’re here to help. Let’s talk about what Digilant can do for you. 

The 2023/24 NFL season kicks off Thursday, September 7th with the Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Detroit Lions. After the 2022/23 season saw an average 16.7 million viewers per game, advertisers are wise to use in-game TV ads to reach fans. But, if big-budget TV ads are out of reach for your brand, fear not. 

Today’s fans are omnichannel viewers. They’ll scroll through social media while watching games, subscribe to players’ podcasts, and browse in-game analysis or post-game highlights on their phones. All these actions provide ample opportunities for brands to create relevant and memorable interactions.

With all these new channels, it may feel overwhelming to decide where to begin. Ahead of the 2023/24 NFL season, we’re helping advertisers create a winning strategy by looking back at key trends and media habits in the 2022/23 season. This gives advertisers insight into where they can reach their audience in the coming months as they tune into football games or NFL-related content.

 

The Impact of the Hollywood Strike on TV

Before we jump into key trends, it’s important to note that this NFL season will launch at a unique time in television history. As the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA remain on strike, TV networks will eventually run out of new content to premiere. 

A gap in new content would seemingly lead to fewer consumers watching TV. However, experts are confident that consumers won’t stop watching. Rather, they’ll simply shift their viewing habits. Two genres unaffected by the strikes are reality TV and live sports. These genres are poised for significant viewership in the coming months—just in time for the NFL season.

 

Key Trends from Last Season and Their Impact on the 2023/24 NFL Season

 

Amazon Prime Video Coverage of Thursday Night Football

To keep up with more people streaming TV than watching cable or broadcast television, major broadcasters offer game coverage via their respective streaming platforms like NBC using Peacock, for example. In fact, Amazon was the first to test a streaming-exclusive broadcast. 

Last season, Amazon made an inaugural run covering Thursday night NFL games on its Prime Video streaming service. While it fell short of traditional broadcast viewership, their regular season coverage still delivered an impressive 9.58 million average viewers per game.

Going into this year’s season, Amazon made a “litany of updates to its ad services,” to entice advertisers. Most notably, advertisers can now “run audience-based creative…using Amazon insights to serve different creative to different users all in the same ad break,” according to Amazon Ads VP/Global Sales Alan Moss. Additionally, to give brands the same reach they’ve come to expect with linear TV, advertisers are “promised the potential to extend ad buys within Amazon to make good on any rating shortfalls.”

 

The Power of the Second Screen

In 2022, 49% of viewers used two or more screens while watching football. Sixty-nine percent of viewers used a second screen — typically a mobile device or laptop — to find more information about a product or service after seeing an ad. 

Brands have a great opportunity to align their ads with NFL-related content using contextually placed display, video, or social media ad units. With NFL-specific ad buys, your message appears within contextually-relevant publishers alongside content such as: 

• Betting/odds predictions
• Opinion & expert analysis
• Key storylines throughout the season

Because consumers are viewing these ads on mobile or laptop devices, advertisers can utilize ad creative that drives them further down the funnel. Incorporating action-related content encourages consumers to click to learn more, driving them to your website.

 

Audience Reach Goes Beyond the Field as NFL Podcasts Grow 

Since 2021, just under 900,000 new podcasts have launched. Nearly half of U.S. consumers (42%) are monthly podcast listeners, while more than a quarter (26%) listen weekly. 

Every industry has seen an influx in podcast content as the value of this media form has become increasingly obvious. Sports — specifically the NFL — are no different. In 2021, the NFL teamed up with iHeartMedia to launch the NFL Podcast Network. This partnership included “the distribution of NFL Media’s existing podcasts, as well as the co-production and distribution of two dozen new original podcasts… focusing on NFL history, inside access, and more.”

Additionally, networks across the industry — Barstool Sports, Wave Sports + Entertainment, and LockedOn — continuously add new content to the mix as players, teams, coaches, and analysts throw their hats into the podcasting ring, growing their audience, reach, and influence all while monetizing their content.

As advertisers look to the upcoming season, podcasting provides a great outlet to reach fans beyond Thursday, Sunday, and Monday game schedules. With a host of targeting options — show, content, genre, publishers —advertisers can reach their specific audiences as they tune into NFL content throughout their week. 

 

Stay Flexible and Tuned in to Trending Moments

As the NFL season approaches, one of the best tools advertisers can incorporate is to stay flexible and ready for whatever may come their way. Think back to the 2013 Super Bowl. No one could have predicted a stadium-wide blackout during the halftime show. But, Oreo’s fast thinking “you can still dunk in the dark ” post garnered them 525 million earned media impressions

Having a solid strategy in place at the start of the season — incorporating some of the channels and strategies above — ensures flexibility to jump in on trending conversations and critical moments in the season. 

 

Digilant’s Solutions to Reach NFL Fans

It’s never too late to add football and NFL-related ad buys into your media strategy. Digilant has custom, data-driven NFL and Football omnichannel packages at the ready to help you score big with fans this season. Contact us today to get started.

For years, media buying centered on the idea that only people interested in a specific industry or product would visit certain websites. The publisher or site itself had to contextually align with the topic of your ad – otherwise known as endemic advertising placements.

As consumer data and audience insights have evolved, advertisers have begun to view ad placements how they view consumers — multifaceted. We now know that ads don’t need to only appear against certain topics, categories, or content. We can use targeting and data analytics to reach the right consumer, no matter where they browse. This shift has positioned non-endemic retail media advertising at the forefront of media buying.

So, if you’re wondering which tactic – endemic or non-endemic advertising – is suitable for your brand, keep reading as we’ll dive further into what these terms mean, their benefits, and how to incorporate them into your media playbook.  

 

What is Endemic Advertising?

The term ‘endemic’ is defined as native or natural to a specific environment or its surroundings. When taken in the context of advertising, it refers to ad placements that are contextually relevant or native to the market in which they are placed. 

This is an especially fruitful tactic when buying ad space within retail media networks (RMNs). Suppliers —  whose products are available on the retailer’s website, pay for ad space within the retailer’s network (website, app, emails, etc) —  to promote their products within the customer shopping experience. 

 

How Endemic Retail Media Advertising Works

Retail endemic advertising is the primary format by which ads are bought and sold within RMNs. Take Walmart’s DSP, for instance. Brands who sell their products at Walmart gain access to exclusive first-party ‘Walmart Connect’ data and in-market audiences (Walmart Connect) to reach shoppers at every stage of the shopping journey. They provide premium behavioral and audience data for brands to target consumers, such as previous buyers or in-market shoppers. 

Additionally, this exclusive partnership gives brands access to premium endemic ad placements within the shopping journey. Brands can highlight their products at the top of search results on Walmart.com or use sponsored product carousel ads within the Walmart app, to name a few examples. The ad formats themselves lend to a simple path to purchase with features such as ‘add to cart’ and ‘buy now’ highlighted directly within the ad.

As consumers have diversified where and when they shop, RMNs have stayed in step, offering ad placements beyond their websites and apps. Walmart, for example, offers endemic advertisers opportunities to advertise across their social media pages, across their email marketing, or with in-store displays. 

Endemic advertising’s structure is simple yet effective. Shoppable ad formats directly within retailers’ networks enable brands to reach active shoppers interested in their products with straightforward click-to-purchase formats. 

 

Benefits of Endemic Retail Media Advertising

The benefits of endemic advertising for advertisers are rooted in the system’s structure. Brands can access exclusive ad placements to connect with consumers while they are in an active shopping mindset. It enables them to create more relevant ad campaigns tailored for shopping audiences. 

One might wonder why retailers are willing to display ads as they might distract from the shopping experience. Simply put: offering ad space across the network provides an additional revenue stream beyond retail sales. However, the benefits of endemic ads are more than an opportunity to drive dollars.

Shopping is inherently a discovery process; consumers seek new products to try or compare to others. Because these ads use first-party audience targeting, the retailer knows the consumer will be interested in the brand or product. So, the suggested products and ads tailored to individual customers create a personalized, relevant shopping experience. Happy consumers are always a win for retailers. 

 

Amazon’s Shift to Non-Endemic Retail Media Advertising

Traditionally, ad inventory on Retail Media Networks (RMNs) was exclusively available to brands selling their products or goods on the respective retailers’ sites. Since its advent, brands and retailers have benefited from this highly successful and symbiotic relationship. This is why industry experts were thrown a curve ball with Amazon straying from the mold. 

During the Amazon ‘Unboxed’ Conference in October 2022, the eCommerce giant announced that non-endemic brands could start purchasing sponsored display ads on their website. With solutions at the ready, Amazon solidified its ambition to expand its advertising services beyond CPG and endemic clients. 

This announcement marked a significant shift within RMNs, opening a whole new world of opportunities for advertisers who don’t sell products or services on retailer websites. 

 

What is Non-Endemic Retail Media Advertising?

Non-Endemic retail media advertising refers to using retailer ad space to promote a product or service not sold by the retailer by identifying attributes of a retailer’s main or best customers. The retailer can then sell ad space on their website to non-competitor brands whose audience overlaps or mirrors theirs.

 

How Non-Endemic Advertising Works and its Benefits 

GoPuff, a food and consumer goods delivery company, allows advertisers to reach consumers using sponsored product ads and product features in promotions.

While sponsored products and product features are better suited for endemic advertisers, the company recently expanded its advertising capabilities to appeal to non-endemic advertisers. Companies that don’t sell products within the GoPuff platform can now target the platform’s 2.6 million active users with “ads at checkout.”

The key to successful non-endemic advertising is to find considerable overlaps in the audience base. For GoPuff, Hulu was the perfect partner for a launch campaign. GoPuff’s core audience group consists of males, between 25 and 34 years of age, living on their own or with roommates in major cities throughout the US. While GoPuff doesn’t offer TV streaming services, this audience overlaps perfectly with the cord-cutting demographic Hulu works to convert to subscribers. And so far, these platforms are seeing success, with an engagement rate of 5% during the first month of the partnership.

This approach presents GoPuff — and other retailers — with valuable opportunities.Because GoPuff doesn’t offer the service, it runs no risk of lost business. However, by enabling non-endemic advertisers to purchase its ad inventory, GoPuff diversifies its revenue stream with online ad revenue. As for non-endemic advertisers, they reap all the same benefits of endemic ads alongside the ability to access previously unavailable inventory. This helps diversify their digital marketing strategy to reach shoppers during every stage of the buying journey. Furthermore, non-endemic retail media advertising enables brand discovery for consumers, opening doors to new companies, products, and services that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. 

 

Digilant’s Endemic and Non-Endemic Ad Solutions through Premier Retail Media Networks

Endemic and non-endemic retail media ads provide advertisers with excellent opportunities to get their products or services to the right audience at the right time. Furthermore, they’re a powerful solution to engage with consumers today and in a cookieless future.

 If you’re interested in learning more about these retail media advertising opportunities or access to retail media networks, we’re happy to chat.

Artificial intelligence has all but dominated recent news. As technology advances and is incorporated into different aspects of our lives, you may be overwhelmed, or even scared, trying to understand how the technology works, let alone how to use it. 

Before you get too overwhelmed, however, consider that AI is already a substantial part of our daily lives, and has been for years now. The personal assistants on our phones, smart speakers in our homes, autonomous vehicles, and customer service chatbots: all artificial intelligence. It’s present in the background of our lives, streamlining, personalizing, and improving some of our more mundane tasks and experiences: social media feeds, eCommerce experiences, online shopping, real-time traffic and weather conditions, purchase verifications and online banking platforms, to name a few. 

In advertising, AI reflects a similar pattern. Many media buyers have used predictive AI in their buys for years, whether they realize it or not. In fact, more than 80% of industry experts integrate some form of AI technology into their online marketing activities. 

It seems all roads point to even more improvements, advances, and applications of AI in media buying. As such, it’s more important than ever for media buyers to understand how the technology works and ensure they are harnessing the power of its technology. 

In this blog post, we’ll cover exactly what artificial intelligence is, the different types, its functions in media buying, and why it’s a necessary technology for the advertising industry.

 

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is an umbrella term for the concept of reproducing human intelligence and cognition in machines. These machines can then execute activities and streamline tasks, learning and improving as they go. There are two forms of artificial intelligence: predictive and generative. 

What is Predictive AI?

Predictive AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that use statistical models, machine learning algorithms, and data-driven approaches to make predictions about future outcomes based on historical data. Predictive AI foresees future events or outcomes based on historical data.

Let’s look at a simple example. Imagine you ride your bike to work every day. Over time, after trying different ways to get to work, you will learn which route is faster or which road or path is better according to the day of the week or based on the weather outside. This is exactly how predictive AI works. You feed the computer or algorithm with large amounts of historical data so that it analyzes and predicts future outcomes based on past learning and applies the learnings to any new data it receives in the future.

What is Generative AI?

Generative AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that generate new content or outputs based on a given set of input data. Generative AI uses machine learning algorithms and deep learning techniques to create new outputs, such as text, images, music, or videos, that are similar to a given training data set. Generative AI models can be used for tasks such as image generation, text generation, and anomaly detection.

This is the type of AI currently making head waves in the news as it’s the basis for companies such as ChatGPT and Dall-e.

 

How does AI work in programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising leans heavily on the use of predictive artificial intelligence. These algorithms can quickly analyze large volumes of data from different sources and draw conclusions from them. When applied to programmatic advertising, this has various use cases.

1. Identifying patterns in consumer behavior

Every touchpoint that a brand makes with a consumer can be turned into a data point for artificial intelligence to sort and analyze. Part of this analysis reveals patterns in customer behavior that can then be used to tailor the ad experience based on specific interests or preferences. 

2. Predicting Outcomes

AI can analyze data to identify the likelihood that a consumer takes a certain action. These predictions can then be used to better shape the customer journey. Knowing how consumers act based on search history or previously clicked-on ads enables brands to serve more strategic ads tailored to these typical outcomes.

3. Predictive Analysis

One of the most significant benefits of AI in programmatic advertising is that it can be constantly used to improve future campaigns. Analyzing past metrics, AI can identify which channels, targeting strategies, ad formats, and targets are working well and which are not. This information can then be used to optimize future campaigns, improving your ROI. 

 

Will AI replace human media buyers and planners?

As you were reading the use cases for AI in programmatic media buying, you may have thought, “But, that’s my job.” In short, yes, AI can almost replicate the brain of an experienced media buyer in a machine or algorithm so it becomes capable of predicting, planning, and optimizing media. 

Don’t panic. The key word is “almost.” 

Though machines can certainly make programmatic advertising more efficient, faster, and easier to implement, there remain many factors that need human input and link AI to an overall media buying strategy. Additionally, when you bring efficiency to the media buying process, media buyers are freed from the more tedious tasks, allowing them to focus on the strategic and creative elements of their jobs.

 

Why should you use AI in advertising?

AI-backed strategies create a more personalized experience for the customer. Because AI analyzes campaign data to identify patterns, advertisers can deliver more tailored ads based on the customer’s interests and needs. This provides a more personalized, relevant, and positive customer experience. And every advertiser knows a happy customer is of great value as they are more likely to be a loyal, repeat shopper.

Additionally, brands and advertisers can save money and time by completing tasks faster than humans and making fewer mistakes. AI-powered systems enable advertisers to streamline their efforts, make quicker decisions, adjust to consumer patterns, provide better value, and improve ROI. 

In summary, AI applications in programmatic provide the following benefits:

• Better personalization
• More relevant ads for customers
• More efficient budgeting
• Reduced costs and decreased ad waste
• Operational efficiencies 
• Increased engagement and conversions

 

How do people and businesses benefit from AI?

AI applications in programmatic advertising will continue to evolve and grow as technology improves. With every new application, your advertising efforts can be significantly enhanced. And, as mentioned previously, customers will continue to benefit from more personalized tailored ad experiences. 

Task AI to do all the heavy lifting for your advertising so that you and your team can focus on creating the best possible strategy to reach your audience and improve your ROI.

In 2023, U.S. programmatic digital display ad spending is expected to reach nearly $150 billion, accounting for more than 90 percent of total digital display ad spending. And, as astounding as that figure is, that’s only a part of the picture. As fast-growing channels like connected TV and digital out-of-home are increasingly transacted programmatically, the influence (and complexity) of programmatic advertising will continue to grow. 

Programmatic advertising is a vital part of the modern marketing playbook. Here you’ll gain a foundational understanding of programmatic advertising and how you can leverage it to reach and engage your audiences.

Table of Contents

• What is Programmatic Advertising?
• What Does Programmatic Advertising Look Like?
• Why Does Programmatic Advertising Matter?
• How Does Programmatic Advertising Work?
• What Are the Benefits of Programmatic Advertising?
• How Do You Get Started with Programmatic Advertising?

 

What Is Programmatic Advertising?

Simply put, programmatic advertising is the practice of using technology to automate the buying and selling of ad impressions on media. It uses algorithms to enable advertisers to target segmented audiences using real-time data in ways that simply can’t be accomplished manually, and to do so with accuracy and at scale.

The programmatic ad industry is rife with jargon and acronyms, but from an advertiser’s standpoint, there are just a few basics to know: Brands and agencies use a demand-side platform (DSP) to indicate which impressions they want to buy and how much they want to pay. Publishers and app developers use a supply-side platform (SSP) to deliver their available impressions to brands and agencies. DSPs and SSPs collaborate to automate the buying and selling of digital advertising inventory by integrating with ad exchanges, enabling real-time bidding, and facilitating data sharing for optimization. 

There are multiple ways to buy ads programmatically. The most common methods are as follows: 

• Open Auction, or Real-Time Bidding (RTB): In open auctions, hundreds of buyers can compete for inventory in real time without any restrictions or pre-negotiated deals. 
• Private Marketplace (PMP): These invitation-only marketplaces are more exclusive and feature negotiated minimum prices and non-guaranteed volumes.
• Preferred Deals: These one-to-one deals feature a fixed price and non-guaranteed volumes.
• Guaranteed Deals: These one-to-one deals feature a fixed price and guaranteed volumes.

 

What Does Programmatic Advertising Look Like?

Programmatic advertising is especially attractive to brands and agencies because of the high degree of customization and data-driven targeting that can go into these media buys. Additionally, programmatic advertising supports a wide array of ad formats, ranging from fairly basic executions to highly dynamic ones.

What types of digital ad formats are there and what do they look like?

Need help visualizing the variety of digital ad formats you can leverage to reach your audience? Below is a breakdown of some of the most popular programmatic ad formats, such as:

Native Ads

Native ads reflect the look and feel of the environment in which they appear. They are meant to fit into its surrounding content, providing a more seamless advertising experience than other formats.

Read our full explainer on native advertisements.

Display Ads

Display ads can be static or animated, and combine imagery, text, and a URL link to drive audiences to landing pages. Display ads come in a variety of sizes, with the most common being 300×250 (Medium Rectangle), 728×90 (Leaderboard), 160×600 (Wide Skyscraper), 300×600 (Half-page ad), 320×50 (mobile leaderboard) and 300×250(medium rectangle). 

Video Ads

Video ads typically appear before, after, or during streaming content. However, some might expand the definition of video ads to also include display ads that contain video within them.

Audio Ads

Audio ads are formatted as — you guessed it — audio. These are delivered via streaming platforms, like podcasts or music streaming apps like Spotify, Pandora, or iHeartRadio, for example.

Advanced TV Ads

Advanced TV ads are advertisements that are not watched through a broadcast, cable, or satellite connection. This includes advertisements viewed on connected TVs, over-the-top (OTT) devices, and linear addressable TV. Advanced TV advertising provides sophisticated targeting based on household IP addresses and device types.

Social Ads

Social ads allow advertisers to connect with prospective customers via third-party social networking platforms, in the form of display or video ads. Social Ads are commonly used to drive brand awareness and reach new audiences. Display, video story, and messenger ads are common formats in social media advertising.

Search Ads

Search advertising leverages keywords and phrases to deliver web users advertisements on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, based on their search queries. Search ads allow advertisers to drive sales by quickly engaging people who are usually in the market for a specific product or service. Common formats for search ads include text, display, video, shopping, local search, amongst others.

Retail Media Ads

These advertisements are typically videos or banner ads within a retail media network that state they are sponsored.

Programmatic advertising in action:

Here are just a few real-world examples of the powerful results programmatic ad buys can deliver across industries:

• Higher Education: A prestigious university tapped into programmatic advertising to drive interest in specific undergraduate and graduate programs. The organization leveraged a combination of data-driven tactics to target its desired audiences and encourage them to fill out a “request for information” form. The resulting programmatic campaign drove more than 47 million impressions, more than 74,000 clicks (a click-through rate well above industry standards), and 108 conversions.  
• Enterprise Software: A B2B enterprise software company operating in a category with very little differentiation leveraged programmatic advertising to drive brand awareness and audience engagement. Fueling its campaign with B2B data segments and behavioral data segments, along with its own CRM and search data, the company launched a targeted campaign that achieved an impressive 0.44 percent CTR, exceeding its goal by more than 210 percent. 
• Automotive: A top-10 auto brand turned to programmatic advertising to drive traffic to specific landing pages intended to encourage conversions like nearest location finder, learning about offers, and submitting an inquiry for a specific vehicle. By monitoring the programmatic campaign’s real-time results, the brand was able to home in on specific audience segments and implement strategic retargeting that took into account hourly trends. This approach drove more than 6,000 actions on the client’s landing pages and helped to inform the auto brand’s fall savings event campaign.  

 

Why Does Programmatic Advertising Matter?

As the examples above illustrate, programmatic advertising is a great way to drive both awareness and conversion for brands across all industries, both B2C and B2B. Over the decades that programmatic advertising has existed, its technology and tactics have become increasingly more transparent, sophisticated, effective, and measurable. 

In 2022, digital advertising accounted for nearly 72 percent of U.S. media ad spend, and eMarketer expects that percentage to grow to 81 percent by 2026. Given the targeted, data-driven capabilities that underpin digital advertising, this isn’t surprising. But that doesn’t mean your life as a marketer is getting simpler.  

The complexity of the digital ecosystem, and the ad opportunities within it, continues to grow, with new channels, platforms, and technology emerging all the time. Compared to the traditional advertising world, dominated by a known list of top networks and publications, the online world is a vastly fragmented and constantly changing landscape. 

In other words, it’s not humanly impossible for advertisers to keep track of the many digital destinations vying for (and deserving of) their media dollars. But with programmatic advertising, and the tech behind it, you can. 

Programmatic advertising is absolutely essential when it comes to meaningfully leveraging digital advertising. If you’re not leveraging the power of programmatic advertising, you can bet your competitors are—and it won’t take long for your brand to see its own share of voice and relevance dwindle. 

The importance of programmatic advertising will only continue to grow. Need proof? Consider the following: 

• By 2024, U.S. programmatic digital display ad spending will reach $168 billion.
• Programmatic digital video advertising spending in the U.S. will reach $75 billion in 2023, up from $63 billion in 2022.
• Programmatic radio advertising spend in the U.S. crossed the $1 billion mark in 2022.
• Programmatic DOOH ad spending increased by nearly 500 percent between 2019 and 2022.

More and more media is being transacted programmatically every year. If advertisers haven’t embraced this space yet, they’re going to increasingly find themselves left behind, even in channels where traditional media buying was once the norm.

 

How Does Programmatic Advertising Work?

OK, so what does a programmatic media buy look like? While there is a great deal of nuance behind the technology that powers programmatic advertising, as well as the types of auctions cited earlier, a basic programmatic buy looks like this:

1. A person visits a page on a website. 
2. The owner of that website, through its SSP, puts the ad impressions on that page up for auction. 
3. Advertisers, through their DSPs, automatically bid on those impressions.
4. The highest bidder wins the ad impression. 
5. The winning advertiser’s ad creative is served to the website visitor. 

Once the creative is served, the website visitor sees the ad and potentially clicks and converts. Regardless of their action (or inaction), the result is captured and communicated back to the advertiser. 

All of the above steps happen in about a tenth of a second—and this process happens billions upon billions of times per day across the digital ecosystem. 

The 4 Components of Programmatic Advertising

We’ve mentioned that the behind-the-scenes technology of programmatic advertising is complicated, and that’s true. But ultimately, there are four components that advertisers need to understand. 

Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs)

As mentioned, DSPs are used by media buyers at agencies and brands to manage and purchase digital ad impressions across multiple ad networks and exchanges through one interface. They can target their ads based on a variety of data parameters, including demographics, psychographics, behavior, and contextual relevance. Importantly, advertisers don’t have to worry about picking the right destinations for their campaigns; the DSP does that work for them. 

Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs)

On the other side of the transaction, SSPs enable publishers and app developers to offer their available ad impressions to a wide variety of exchanges and DSPs. By opening up their inventory to as many potential buyers as possible, SSPs help publishers maximize their revenue.

Ad Exchanges

An ad exchange is a marketplace for ad impressions that sits in between DSPs and SSPs. It’s essentially a trading floor where the respective platforms go to access the inventory for sale. Advertisers use an ad exchange to buy ad impressions, and publishers make their ad impressions available via exchanges. 

Data Management Platforms (DMPs)

DMPs are unifying platforms that are used to collect and organize all of the data generated by and used to power programmatic advertising. They allow publishers and advertisers to analyze data from all available platforms in order to glean insights and segment audiences. 

 

What Are the Benefits of Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising is an essential tool within the modern marketing playbook—and for multiple reasons. The data-driven automation of digital ad buying unlocks plenty of benefits for advertisers and publishers alike.

Programmatic advertising is built on the following pillars — all of which are designed to help advertisers do their jobs better. With programmatic advertising, advertisers can drive: 

Improved ROI

Programmatic advertising’s advanced targeting and measurement capabilities help brands eliminate wasted ad spend. Advertisers can quickly identify their best-performing audiences, tactics, and channels while a campaign is in-flight and can double-down in the areas that drive the highest ROI. 

Campaign Optimization based on Real-Time Feedback

Unlike traditional advertising channels, programmatic advertising enables real-time campaign optimization based on performance data and insights while campaigns are in flight, sometimes with the help of predictive AI models. 

Greater Scale

With programmatic advertising, brands and agencies can scale their audiences as needed to hit desired reach and conversion goals. One of the key ways that advertisers can grow their audiences for programmatic campaigns is through lookalike modeling, which finds new audiences based on what advertisers know about their existing customers and prospects. This can be done at the start of a campaign or any point during its execution.

Improved Relevance

The granular targeting that’s possible with programmatic advertising, coupled with the ability to deliver personalized creative, lets advertisers deliver campaigns that are actually relevant to their audiences. Advertisers can target their ads based on thousands of data points, including demographics, interests, context, sentiment, behavior, IP address, purchase intent, CRM data, and more.

Transparency

Programmatic platforms provide advertisers with transparency and control over their campaigns. Advertisers can monitor the performance of their ads, track impressions, clicks, conversions, and other metrics in real-time. They can also set budget caps, bid strategies, and targeting parameters, giving them control over their ad spend and campaign outcomes. Additionally, they can block sites or only run across a specific set of sites

Opportunities to Test and Learn

In addition to being able to funnel spend toward the highest-performing audiences, channels, and tactics, programmatic advertising also allows advertisers to test new marketing messaging and creative and see how they perform in real time. These insights can be used not only to help the existing campaign, but can also be put to work in broader messaging initiatives and future campaigns. 

Programmatic advertising is not without its challenges, but its benefits far outweigh the potential hurdles. The key is to partner smartly to avoid potential obstacles and move forward confidently.

 

How Do You Get Started with Programmatic Advertising?

Advertisers looking to get started in programmatic media can choose to handle the function in-house or to work with a programmatic advertising partner. In many cases, marketers find that in-house management of programmatic advertising can quickly drain internal resources, as successful programs demand significant time, dedicated expertise, constant training, and ongoing education. For these reasons, programmatic advertising partners represent a valuable alternative.  

How to Choose a Programmatic Advertising Partner

Contrary to how some people speak about the automation of programmatic advertising, successful campaigns are not a “set it and forget it” endeavor. The human touch remains vital to achieving the greatest ROI with programmatic campaigns, which is why bringing in a partner that specializes in the technology and strategies that drive programmatic can be more than worth the cost. 

In selecting a partner, look for one that understands the level of nurturing that goes into a strong programmatic campaign and is willing to monitor and optimize results on an ongoing basis while delivering transparent results and insights. Your programmatic advertising partner should be steeped in digital expertise and demonstrate a proactive, agile style of working—and be readily available to answer your questions and provide feedback. 

 

Digilant: A Trusted Programmatic Advertising Partner

At Digilant, we live and breathe programmatic media. We recognize that this dynamic, fast-evolving space requires dedicated resources with experience in monitoring, interpreting, and optimizing campaign performance every step of the way. We’re data experts and technology enthusiasts. We’re passionate about programmatic advertising and get genuinely excited about the opportunity to uncover new audience insights that can be put to use in current and future campaigns. The proof is in our partnerships and perspectives. 

Are you ready to unlock the full power of programmatic advertising for your brand? We’re here to help. Let’s talk about what Digilant can do for you. 

According to eMarketer, retail media ad spending will continue its tremendous growth and shows no signs of slowing, rising from $45.15 billion in 2023 to $106.12 billion by 2027. These numbers speak to the power of retail media advertising and the opportunities they create for brands and agencies everywhere. 

What is Retail Media Advertising?

Retail media advertising is the buying of media on a retailer’s media network. These retail media networks enable retailers to monetize their digital properties — websites, apps, and email newsletters — by selling advertising inventory to third-party brands. 

Retail media networks provide brands with unique and previously unattainable advertising placements.  Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, retail media networks provide first-party audience and shopping data that help marketers reach their desired audiences with greater precision, personalization and relevance, and enables marketers to come away with powerful insights.

Let’s take a closer look.

Tap into First-Party Data

Retailers have access to troves of consumer data — like online and offline purchase history, home addresses, birthdays, and purchase frequency for example — which they’ve collected through loyalty programs, store credit cards, and online accounts. When compiled, this information paints a clear picture of a person’s brand and product preferences, interests, and even possible next purchases. Let’s look at an example to understand how this works.

Melanie is a regular Walmart shopper and a member of the Walmart+ rewards program. She makes weekly trips to a store location in Austin, Texas with routine purchases of all gluten-free groceries, gardening supplies, mystery books, and eco-friendly cleaning products. Additionally, she usually makes online purchases on Walmart’s website for large-breed dog food. With this information, Walmart can assume that Melanie is a homeowner (garden supplies), living in Austin, Texas (in-store shopping habits), owns at least one dog (dog food purchases), and is environmentally conscious (eco-friendly cleaning products). 

This deterministic data is what makes retail media advertising so appealing to savvy brands and advertisers. It is this data that enables advertisers to connect with relevant audiences to promote products and services aligned to the consumer’s preferences, interests, and values — and drive conversions. 

Deliver improved relevance and personalization

With access to shopping data as specific as the flavor of ice cream a consumer likes or the cadence at which they purchase new toothpaste, RMNs enable brands to take their targeting to the next level. This data provides the framework to deliver personalized offers, ad creatives, coupons, or discounts tailored specifically to a customer for greater impact and engagement.

Let’s go back to our example with Walmart and Melanie. Below are a few examples of how advertisers can use retail media advertising to reach Melanie with relevant ads and offers.

• A new dog-food brand wants to promote its treat suited for medium and large-breed dogs like Melanie’s. Through a RMN, the brand can reach Melanie with an offer for 10% off her first purchase. 
• Melanie is a regular gardener. By partnering with a retail media network, a garden supply company can showcase the best products for Melanie based on the specific season and climate in Austin, Texas.
• An eco-friendly CPG brand wants to reach likely customers. By leveraging a retail media network the CPG brand can tap into the RMNs first-party data to reach Melanie, and those like her who’ve purchased other eco-friendly products.

Reach ready-to-buy consumers

The way consumers search for products and services has changed; approximately 63% of consumers visit Amazon or Walmart.com for initial product research. So, while consumers browse and shop, advertisers can reach them in a ready-to-by mindset. There really is no better time to get your brand in front of consumers than when they are just one click away from converting. With retail media advertising, advertisers can capitalize on the moment to drive business. 

Gain detailed and thorough insights and analytics

Whether impression, click, or sale, all the metrics occur in the same platform making it easy for advertisers to better track and understand the ROI of the RMN ads. 

New approaches for new consumer habits

With access to more devices and screens than ever, consumer shopping habits have evolved — from the way they research products to the ways in which they purchase them. Advertisers can ensure they reach and engage their desired audiences with relevant and personalized digital experiences by leveraging the power of first-party data and retail media advertising.

Interested in learning more about the power of Retail Media Advertising? Reach out to our team to learn more.

Streaming now tops broadcast TV and cable TV. This should come as no surprise, as the average American household now has 22 connected devices. With more connected devices than ever, people have shifted away from traditional ways of accessing and consuming their favorite content. Advertisers must keep in lockstep with changing consumer habits and trends to continue to drive engagement and meaningful connections with their existing and potential customers. 

This is why Digilant is proud to provide its clients with transparent advanced TV solutions and capabilities, enabling advertisers to reach their audiences and measure engagement in privacy-compliant ways. Moreover, Digilant simplifies the media buying process. With its tiered advanced TV inventory packages, Digilant provides advertisers clarity into what inventory they’re buying, so they can easily and confidently invest in one of the most powerful and effective channels yet.

Our Partnerships

Digilant has partnered with industry-leading advanced TV platforms like Samsung, FreeWheel, Magnite, and Peer39 to offer advertisers:

Extensive reach

Through our partnership with Samsung, Digilant clients gain access to  1 out of 3 U.S. households, or nearly 70 million TV devices. Samsung’s broad reach provides Digilant’s clients with greater opportunities to engage target audiences in today’s device-rich world.

Premium inventory

Partnerships like those with Magnite and FreeWheel enable Digilant to offer clients access to more than 90% of premium ad-supported OTT providers such Hulu, Max, Peacock, Paramount and many others. Furthermore, with our Peer39 partnership, we can help advertisers reach their audiences via contextual advertising on major publishers like ABC, BBC, and Bloomberg. 

Precision targeting

With advanced TV and our reach and scale, we enable our advertiser clients to engage their customers with greater precision — even those hard-to-reach audiences. And, with solutions like automatic content recognition, advertisers can unlock additional data to reach net-new audiences 

Transparency

Digilant provides transparency, in all phases of the media buying process — pricing, inventory, and reporting — so advertisers can feel confident about their media investments.

Measurability

Understanding the impact of your advertising campaigns is essential to business success. By leveraging Digilant’s measurement capabilities, advertisers can tie their CTV investments to in-store traffic and even sales.

Furthermore, with Digilant, advertisers can leverage the power of advanced TV to engage their audiences with ad units that go beyond standard video, like those that layer on geo-targeted information, QR codes, rich media, and voice-to-action commands that activate a person’s smart speaker. By partnering with us, advertisers can engage audiences on “the big screen” and across all their favorite devices to capture audience attention and engagement wherever they are paying attention.

Investing in the future

Sophisticated, future-forward technologies that enable omnichannel engagement and measurement amongst key audiences are critical to advertisers securing their futures in our hyper-connected world. And, with third-party cookie deprecation on the horizon, solutions that help advertisers prepare for and adapt to a cookieless programmatic digital ecosystem are tantamount to driving success. Digilant is committed to finding, building, and providing solutions and capabilities that help our clients succeed, while also providing world-class support.

With advanced TV, advertisers can start experimenting with cookieless programmatic advertising well ahead of third-party cookie deprecation, leveraging the power of household targeting to reach and measure every device within a home. Furthermore, advanced TV enables advertisers to up-level their omnichannel strategies — a critical component to driving awareness and engagement amongst today’s consumers. 

While advertisers have ample opportunities to reach consumers across their many devices, it also means that attention is divided between them. According to Samba TV, 93% of linear TV ads only reached half of U.S. households. With advanced TV, however, advertisers can drive incremental reach — by engaging audiences who consume content on traditional TV and digital devices — targeting, and measurement across platforms.

Advanced TV with Digilant

Today’s digital ecosystem is vast and complex — but it doesn’t have to be. Digilant can help simplify digital advertising and alleviate your team’s workload by providing expert services in media strategy, buying, execution and reporting. We make it easy for you, and your clients, to succeed. Learn how Digilant, and our advanced TV offerings, can help you achieve your campaign goals and objectives by contacting us here.

Holiday shopping doesn’t result solely in little brown paper packages tied up with strings. 74% of Americans would prioritize travel and experiences over traditional wrapped presents for gifts. Recent data suggests consumers are backing this intention with action as 47% of Americans made holiday travel plans in 2022. Additionally, those who planned to travel spent $2,441 over the holiday season, upwards of $1,000 more than the average consumer.

With the peak holiday travel days just around the corner, advertisers are busy honing and solidifying their strategies to capture their consumers’ attention and dollars. While consumers brainstorm destinations, compare prices, and browse different travel accommodations, reaching them with strategic ad placements, formats, and messaging that speak to where they are in their customer journey is essential. To help travel advertisers this holiday season, we’ve put together a three-step media plan encompassing the top tactics and strategies to reach Americans before they hit the road, sky, and sea.

 

Stage 1: August to September

Reach your audience across all channels

As summer comes to a close, consumers aren’t quite ready to book their holiday trips. However, it’s still essential for brands to remain top of mind. Use these pre-booking months to heavy up ads across all channels with an omnichannel approach. This is the smartest and most effective way to ensure you reach travelers as they switch between channels and devices. 

As consumers incorporate more and more devices into their everyday lives, it can be difficult to know what channels work best. As a starting point, we recommend the following four high-value channels to help our clients reach their audience:

1. Advanced Audio and Podcasts: U.S. consumers spend ⅕ of their daily digital media time with digital audio, totaling 1 hour and 43 minutes of listening per day. This gives advertisers a great opportunity to reach consumers even when they aren’t looking at a screen, integrating your brand in between their favorite music or podcasts. 
2. Paid Social: Consumers are increasingly leaning on social media as a search engine tool,so much so that approximately 40% of Gen Z prefer TikTok or Instagram to Google when researching places to go. Delivering captivating ads at the awareness stage ensures you stay top of mind with consumers as they casually browse for travel inspiration across popular social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest. 
3. Mobile: Mobile is edging its way toward being the most used device for consumers. In 2022, consumers spent upwards of 5.5 hours every day browsing their devices. There are ample mobile-first solutions — geofencing, in-app inventory, mobile-rich creative — that you can lean  on during these months to ensure you stay top of mind with busy consumers. 
4. Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH): What more timely way to reach travelers than while they are on the road? DOOH inventory is constantly growing, giving advertisers powerful opportunities to reach consumers while they are in travel mode. Consider investing in ad placements where consumers are already in a travel mindset such as at airports or EV charging stations (great for reaching road trippers!).

 

Stage 2: October to Early November

Catch Consumer Attention with Engaging Creatives

This timeframe marks the most essential period of the holiday travel season. Consumers are no longer browsing but ready to buy and book. During these critical months, eye-catching creatives will help differentiate your brand and stand oute this holiday season. 

Consider leveraging high-impact ads as engaging creative formats will drive viewability and engagement across all screens, like:

• Quizzes
• Interactive map & directions
• Weather triggered ads
• Coupon Download

 

Double Down on Top Performing Channels

The omnichannel tactics mentioned in Stage One can help your brand remain top of mind with consumers in pre-booking months. However, data and analytics from those campaigns will also be of great value during Stage Two. 

A look back at the top-performing channels and tactics during August and September can help identify which channels were best at moving the needle among consumers.  At crunch time, you’ll already have insight on where to shift campaign budgets to drive success.

During these key timeframes, continue to track campaign performance and measure ROI to ensure you’re using the best tactics to reach consumers and getting the most bang for your buck.

 

Stage 3: Mid-November to December

Leverage Smart Data to Reach Top Audiences

There’s always time to win last-minute dollars. As consumers book last-minute travel, consider focusing campaigns on retargeting consumers who have interacted with your brand most. 

During this hyper-competitive and quick-moving time of year, smart data partners ensure you effectively and efficiently reach your most valued target audience. As timeliness becomes hyper critical, consider using the following data types to hone in on specific audiences. 

• Purchase or transactional data: This data is built from consumer-consented, real-world, behavioral-based spending insights such as merchant category, frequency of spend, spending amount, time period, and offline vs. online spending. Leverage these third-party segments to ensure your advertising efforts reach those most likely to be interested in your travel products and services (i.e. consumers who have flight bookings, hotel stays, rental car reservations, etc.)
• Booking Data: Access close to one billion monthly unique traveler profiles across more than 200 of the world’s top travel brands. This premium global travel data and traveler intelligence uses loyalty programs and booking data to reveal travel patterns, trends, and behavior that brands can then use to target in-market travelers.
• Location data: A great tool for experience, activity, or restaurant brands, location data allows you to target consumers before they arrive at a location, while they’re at a location, and after they leave a location. When a prospective customer is physically close to your location, you have a much better chance of persuading them to purchase from you.

 

Don’t Delay! Consumers are Already Booking Holiday Travel

To take advantage of competitive pricing, experts advise travelers to book their travel at least two months before their intended departure date. With just under three months to Thanksgiving, advertisers are in the essential timeframe to reach consumers while actively researching their upcoming plans.

Digilant’s Digital Advertising Solutions 

We understand the holiday season can feel overwhelming as advertisers work to win the attention and dollars of travelers. Our team of expert media strategists is eager to create a custom plan built toward reaching your specific audience at every stage of the customer journey. Contact us here to get started today.

Every few years, the digital advertising industry is left to cope with tremendous change spurred on by tech giants. Most recently, Google’s promise to eventually deprecate third-parties cookies and Apple’s move to do away with IDFA in the name of privacy protection have presented significant targeting and tracking challenges for advertisers and marketers. Organizations have been hard at work developing alternative solutions to mitigate the impact of these changes on the industry. While there are many solutions from which advertisers can choose, one would be remiss to overlook data clean rooms.

What is a data clean room?

Digilant defines data clean rooms as privacy-safe, cloud-based environments that allow two parties to match aggregated data based on a shared identifier. This process is facilitated by an identity graph or an alternative ID, like The TradeDesk’s Unified ID 2.0 (UID 2.0) or LiveRamp’s RampID. In data clean rooms, data is matched in privacy-compliant ways so that businesses always remain in control of their data and personally identifiable information (PII) is never exposed. 

Why data clean rooms?

As we near third-party cookie deprecation, data clean rooms present marketers with a privacy-safe, cookieless way to aggregate and enrich their data sets. 

Take LiveRamp, for instance. Their vast network enables marketers to aggregate various data sets like CRM, ad server, publisher, and audience data via their Safe Haven enterprise platform. This privacy-safe data clean room allows for holistic, deep-level data analysis. Combining these data sets enables businesses to gain profound insight into the customer journey. This intelligence allows organizations to improve their audience modeling, enhance their targeting strategies, and analyze consumer trends. Furthermore, with LiveRamp’s RampID, businesses can combine the buy and sell sides of the ecosystem in one centralized and privacy-safe environment. 

While data clean rooms may present a powerful option for navigating identity and privacy changes, organizations must perform their due diligence to understand which solution (or combination) will best equip them to navigate a cookieless, privacy-first world. Despite their potential, data clean rooms are not a one-size-fits-all solution.  

Businesses with rich first-party data sets, like D2C brands and publishers, stand to reap the greatest benefits of using data clean rooms because they rely on first-party data. Furthermore, large companies with robust data assets will find data clean rooms easier to implement than smaller, leaner organizations. And, of course, the larger the data set, the more resources are required — specifically those with technical knowledge and skill — to implement the solution. Once in place, organizations must dedicate the appropriate resources, like data scientists, to examine and extract data insights. While data science teams are likely the most affected by data clean rooms, they’re not the only teams impacted. Clean rooms require agreements with each partner participating in data sharing, putting added strain on legal and partnership teams as well.

Promise, potential, and possibility

Partnership is a critical component of data clean rooms. While this may lend itself to obstacles, it opens the door to teamwork and cooperation across the entire digital ecosystem. As privacy-safe data sharing becomes increasingly popular and data clean rooms pick up steam, the industry will evolve, becoming more collaborative and making exchanging and leveraging data as frictionless as possible, opening the door to even more possibilities.

Working with a data-first company that understands evolving trends is critical to implementing and leveraging new technologies that drive business outcomes. With the right support and partners like Digilant, even smaller or new organizations can implement and leverage data clean rooms to reap the same benefits as large enterprises. 

The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is still a few weeks away but is already shaping into a history-making tournament. The games kick off July 20th as co-host nation New Zealand faces off against Norway. The month-long tournament will conclude on August 20th, with the final match played in Sydney. This will mark the first time Australia and New Zealand co-host matches and the first time the event will occur in the Southern Hemisphere. 

The firsts don’t end there, as it’s also the largest cohort of teams ever to compete. Thirty-two nations will compete over 64 matches. Eight teams – Haiti, Morocco, Panama, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Vietnam, and Zambia – will make their World Cup debut. Looking to secure a “three-peat,” the U.S. team enters the tournament as the favorite after taking home the trophy in 2015 and 2019. 

Advertisers have an excellent opportunity to reach and engage with fans in what’s sure to be a buzz-worthy and exciting tournament. With that in mind, we’ve put together a guide of what’s to come and how advertisers can best take advantage of captive audiences during games and across World Cup-related content.

Record-setting viewership

As the women’s tournament gains global popularity, it’s estimated the games will reach two billion viewers worldwide, an increase of approximately 79% from the previous World Cup. 

While an estimated 1.5 million people will watch the game in person, those of us at home can access the game through the tournament’s exclusive broadcaster, Fox, via its main cable broadcast network, its TV streaming service (FoxSports One) and its app (Fox Sports). This approach enables Fox — and its partner advertisers — to stay in step with viewership trends, driving reach amongst those who prefer broadcast television and cord cutters. Additionally, they will air Spanish-language games across Telemundo and Peacock. 

Media opportunities for advertisers

The 2023 games are poised to set records in terms of viewership. Naturally, as more people watch, reactions, interactions, and fanfare across all forms of media will also increase, providing even more opportunities for brands to interact with fans outside the 90 minutes of play. And if the past is any indication, 2023 will be rife with opportunities for advertisers everywhere; consider, for instance, that in 2019:

• There were 4.6 million interactions across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram during U.S. vs. Netherlands Match on July 7th, 2019
• Alex Morgan, the U.S. team superstar, garnered 1,425,000 social engagements
• The U.K.’s best-selling tabloid saw a record-breaking number of women’s football readers, up 500% from its previous peak
• The article ‘Megan Rapinoe Explains Shock Absence From USWNT’s Women’s World Cup Semi-Final Win Over England’ accumulated 35,000 views alone

Beyond the sheer increase in projected viewership, another trend will create more buzz and opportunity during this year’s games. As disparities in female and male sports media coverage remain prevalent, more fans and athletes are voicing their opinion encouraging media companies to shift their priorities. Among soccer fans on Twitter, 63% felt women’s football should receive equal coverage to men’s games, and they’re backing their sentiment with the most valuable currency they can offer: attention and engagement with content — as many as 60% of football fans on Twitter plan to watch the Women’s World Cup.

As consumers continue to voice their opinion and actively tune into more content, FIFA, broadcast networks, and media companies have taken note. They are spending more on giving the games the attention they deserve, creating more opportunities for advertisers to get their brand and messaging in front of captive fans.

Best Practices and Approaches for Engaging World Cup Fans  

Advertisers no longer solely rely on in-game TV ad placements to engage with World Cup fans. In 2023, the competition is truly an omnichannel experience sweeping nearly all forms of media and channels. Below, you’ll find four tactics advertisers can implement throughout the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup to make the most of the 30-day soccer spectacular. 

1. Leverage ACR Technology

In 2019, 14.3 million U.S. viewers tuned in to the final match on television. This data illustrates TV’s tremendous power today — even in a device and media-rich world. However, reaching audiences on television alone can be a costly endeavor. A 30-second spot during the 2019 championship averaged $506,665, a budget far from reach for most. 

Luckily, advertisers don’t have to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to get in front of fans while they tune into matches. Instead of relying solely on TV, advertisers can use automatic content recognition (ACR), a technology that captures viewership behaviors across linear and OTT. This data is then used to create verified audience sets that can be used and scaled to reach consumers who have tuned into matches and target them within the TV environment and across other connected devices, for a true omnichannel approach.

2. Don’t forget contextually targeted ads

Advertisers can lean on AI-powered contextually targeted ads to showcase their brand next to the most relevant and brand-safe news and coverage of the tournament. Whether a display ad within an article or a pre-roll video before game highlights, advertisers can target specific sites covering World Cup content. With contextually target ads, advertisers can advertise on:

• Match previews and team profiles for all of the countries competing for the World Cup
• Breaking news, opinion, and analysis of all the major storylines throughout the tournament
• Team training and press conference soundbites from players and coaches 

This approach allows advertisers to stay top of mind when audiences are engaged with World Cup content while cutting through competitor noise that might be more prevalent during primetime tournament hours.

3. Think about Paid Search

There will be an increase in searches related to the teams, players, scores, and highlights. However, it’s critical to consider what other terms or topics may be top of mind for fans beyond the gameplay. For example, in the lead-up to the Women’s Euros in 2022, search interest for the “sportswear” category was up 35% compared to the year average. 

Consider how your business correlates to some of these searches and take advantage of Google intent signals to connect with fans actively researching your products.

4. Engage impressionable audiences with Paid Social

FIFA has publicly acknowledged the importance of breaking into the coveted Gen Z audience during the 2023 World Cup. As many know, one of the best ways to do so is through social media, especially on their favorite platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This is the first women’s World Cup since the 2020 boom of short-form video powerhouse TikTok – it will be interesting to see how the app impacts social media usage and impressions throughout the tournament. 

While the exact impact is yet to be tallied, there’s no doubt social media will play an essential role throughout the competition. Take advantage of impressionable audiences through tailored strategies targeting World Cup content throughout social platforms. 

Reach World Cup Viewers and Fans with Digilant

Interested in creating a timely and targeted media plan leading up to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup? Learn more about how we can kick your media plan into full gear ahead of the competition. Contact us here to get started.