Category: News & Press

Concrete Steps to Prepare for a Cookieless Future

by Digilant VP of Product, Wes Faris, via Street Fight

Many digital advertisers breathed a huge sigh of relief when Google postponed its announced ban on third-party cookies from early 2022 to 2023, giving the industry more time to adapt.

But this was not a reprieve but a delay of the inevitable.

A largely cookieless digital future, at least on desktops, remains squarely on the horizon, and smart marketers should be using this gift of extra time to get a better handle on identity solutions and the other tools and strategies that will be needed to execute and measure campaigns without the real-time retargeting enabled by cookies.

No one has to make dramatic changes just yet. But allocating a five-15% budget now for cookieless programs can enable advertisers to determine the best choice for them among the identity solutions providers looking to offer cookie replacements.

Identity solutions coming from LiveRamp, Lotame, and Parrable, and a host of emerging startups can do some heavy lifting currently done by cookies. These identity solutions essentially serve the same tracking function as a cookie but are based on a hashed email or other anonymized identifiers.

Because they’ll almost certainly be opt-in, what these identity solutions won’t do, at least not initially, is scale.

The biggest change for digital marketers who’ve grown comfortable with cookies is realizing that the future may not be nearly as automated as it is now. Executing campaigns without cookies will require more hands-on strategizing and monitoring of campaigns, and it will force marketers to be proactive when it comes to culling third-party data providers and ad-tech partners that rely too heavily on cookies for their data and analytics.

 

Read the full piece here.

The Pot Market Is Blazing New Trails

The marijuana space is growing considerably, as more and more states permit recreational use, but serious obstacles remain

by David Ward via ANA

With an increasing number of states moving toward legalizing recreational use of pot and publishers growing more accepting of cannabis-themed advertising, marijuana brands are headed for the mainstream. Recently, Digilant EVP of Media Operations, Shaun Gibbons spoke with David Ward regarding the shift in attitude toward marijuana consumption and how digital publishers are loosening or ending those advertising restrictions.

“Cannabis advertisers can build manual site lists of endemic publishers, but they can also get access to pre-approved PMP (private marketplace) inventory through companies like Acuity Ads. If the inventory quality is uncertain, layering on exclusion and inclusion lists and investing in PMP inventory is a great place to take back some control of where your ad creatives are running.”

–Shaun Gibbons, EVP Media Operations

Read the full piece here.

The way that healthcare and pharma consumers, both B2C and B2B, interact with brands is undergoing a massive shift. Consumers are spending more and more time on digital and consuming content on emerging channels like Connected TV (CTV) and digital audio. And healthcare and pharma brands are wanting to go beyond offline channels like TV to drive brand building and sales – and they are looking for data to do so as effectively as possible. Brands in healthcare and pharma are leveraging data not only to better communicate with consumers, but to learn more about them — not just as data points, but as patients and physicians — to deliver more personalized experiences.

The goal with data is to make it actionable. And for advertisers working with Digilant, actionable data is one of the most important tools that can be used to drive connectivity between consumers and brands. 

We’re excited to share that Digilant has partnered with Lasso, the world’s most comprehensive platform for healthcare marketing and analytics, to deepen our commitment to bringing smart, healthcare, and pharma digital marketing solutions to advertisers.

Today’s most successful healthcare and pharma digital marketing teams recognize that both patient-level and physician-level data is critical to driving brand awareness and growth. Harnessing the power of over 40 billion medical claims and RX transactions made available from data sources like DMD Connects and Purple Lab, healthcare and pharma brands can reach and engage highly targeted audiences across both traditional and emerging digital channels including programmatic, email, social, connected TV (CTV), and beyond. 

“Along with the fast-growing healthcare sector and focus on consumer privacy, the healthcare and pharma industries need access to accurate and privacy-safe data and insights more than ever,” said Raquel Rosenthal, CEO of Digilant. “We are thrilled to have found a partner like Lasso who is leading the charge for healthcare marketers and creating opportunities for impactful connections between brands, physicians, and patients.”

About Lasso 

Lasso is the world’s first and only omnichannel healthcare marketing and analytics platform that allows you to plan, activate, and measure your HCP and DTC campaigns across programmatic, social, email, and connected TV — all in one place. Learn more.

To read the full announcement click here. 

 

How managed service can save your brand time and money

by Kristina Knight featuring Todd Heger

via BizReport

Managed services are not new in the digital space, but with the ever-growing amount of advertising and content options, more brands are looking into the benefits. Managed services can offer brands a wealth of information at a much-reduced cost. Digilant CRO, Todd Heger, weighs in on how these emerging channels are set to disrupt the online space.

“As the vendor landscape continues to grow, especially as we see new players in identity resolution, contextual data, CTV and audio, it’s important to find a partner that can and will do the heavy lifting for advertisers. An ideal managed service partner will be platform-agnostic and will push the boundaries on digital media strategy and execution — always with the advertiser’s goals in mind.”

Read the Full Piece Here.

By  Mike Addonizio via Street Fight Mag

Beginning with its iOS 14 update this week, Apple will require apps to ask users for permission (opt-in) to collect and share data on all Apple devices, most notably iPhones.

That’s just potentially one shoe dropping in the mobile advertising space. Google has yet to announce whether it will follow suit and make the Android Advertising ID (AAID) on Android devices opt-in as well at some point.

Because it has become so mobile-centric, how Facebook/Instagram adjusts to the lack of identifiers on Apple devices may provide a broad template for advertising on mobile devices, while also offering clues for how to execute desktop advertising once targeting becomes more challenging…

Mobile advertisers looking to continue to engage audiences on Apple devices should already be preparing for the post-IDFA world and beyond. But many of those broad lessons will need to be applied in the post-third-party cookie desktop world soon enough.

To learn more about the unknowns or Post-IDFA and options for advertisers, read the full piece here.

Predictions Roundup: Organic Search and Cookie Depreciation

via Street Fight

The team at Street Fight asked industry experts for their 2021 predictions around topics such as local commerce, media, and advertising. Digilant CEO, Raquel Rosenthal weighed in on the cookie depreciation and measurement:

“As advertisers settle into the new year and face the depreciation of third-party cookies, we’ll start to see other forms of measurement, like econometric or media mix modeling, rise in importance. Standard online measurement has been built around 1:1 measurement using a cookie or a device. With third-party cookies largely going away in the next year and the “walls” of walled gardens like Google and Facebook getting higher, the traditional forms of measurement will become more difficult.

We’ll see more measurement solutions that are underpinned by identity resolution come to market. The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, and MediaMath are some examples of companies jumping in on this. Similarly, we’ll see advertisers themselves making internal changes to their tech stacks and marketing programs to support identity resolution, whether that’s adopting a CDP, investing in a data onboarding partner, or running campaigns specifically designed for list building.”

–Raquel Rosenthal, Digilant CEO

Read the full piece here.

Targeted digital advertising campaign focused on specific goals help brands reach shoppers at home

By Elizabeth Crawfod

via Food Navigator

As consumers continue to gravitate to ecommerce for groceries and limit trips to retail stores, CPG companies will need to shift more of their advertising dollars to digital from traditional. Read about specific marketing tactics and sales strategies brands can use to ensure a strong ROI when making this switch. 

“I know this sounds really basic, but companies need ot take time to think of a strategic plan when it comes to digital. There are a lot of companies out the right now that are quickly shifting dollars to digital and taking a ‘let’s see what happens’ approach… a better approach is to first identify concrete objects and measurement of success that can be attributed to digital, and then identify the best channels and tactics to achieve those goals.”

–Mike Addonizio, Digilant VP of Paid Media

Read the full piece here.

2021 Predictions

By Rieva Lesonsky via SmallBizDaily

What will 2021 bring small business owners? Small Biz Daily asked entrepreneurs and experts to share their small business insights and predictions for 2021.

More companies will focus on hiring where the talent is rather than a company headquarters or office location. Due to the impact of COVID-19 on remote work in a growing number of cases, recruiting efforts are shifting to focus on attracting, hiring, and retaining the best and most qualified talent regardless of the individuals’ home base. Through this approach, companies, especially those located outside of major metropolitan areas, will gain access to larger and more diverse pools of talent that are attracted to their specific employer culture and brand versus a desirable geographic location.

-Raquel Rosenthal, CEO, Digilant.

Read more.

How to improve social marketing efforts in 2021

By Kristina Knight via BizReport

Social media has come to be an important part of marketers’ efforts to reach consumers because of the coronavirus pandemic, and as many shoppers have taken to online shopping it’s time for brands and marketers to up their social media strategy. Here’s how Digilant CEO, Raquel Rosenthal sees social media being used in 2021:

“We should expect to see the role of social evolve to become that of a true sales channel. The growth of social commerce has been slow to start, but as social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok expand commerce and shoppable ads features it will become a no-brainer for marketers to look to social as a channel to convert consumers. The best social campaigns will use content that is primed to elicit action, using user-generated content or influencer content that feels sincere and fosters consumer connection,”

-Raquel Rosenthal, CEO, Digilant.

Read more.

According to new data out from App Annie the time people spend in mobile – using apps, etc – is skyrocketing in 2020, and that likely has many wondering just what businesses can do to engage these users. We asked a digital expert for advice.

Our CEO, Raquel Rosenthal advised being smarter about how voice and privacy:

“With voice search adoption on the rise, 2021 will be the year for marketers to audit existing campaigns and web content and start generating new content that is optimized with voice search in mind. Don’t forget privacy regulations and user consent. As privacy regulations bleed past the CCPA to more states, it’s important for marketers to re-examine their privacy policy, the data they collect and the data that is ultimately necessary to use for marketing and advertising purposes.”

-Raquel Rosenthal, Digilant CEO

Read more.