When it comes to your digital media buy and online acquisition programs, do you ever question where your spend is actually going? Do you ever wonder who is actually seeing your ads, or maybe if they are even being seen at all?
For many marketers and brands today, these questions never truly get answered. As they are presented with reports as long as their arm, showing the “success” of their campaigns along with customer acquisition metrics. However, what many marketers aren’t drilling down into is agency and advertising accountability.
As long as the results appear to be impressive, they aren’t sitting down and asking the right questions about their media spend and how it is being received. This leaves brands and marketers in a sticky situation.
Within the realm of online media buy, there is approximately only a 50% chance the impressions reported on are actually being viewed by anyone, let alone your target audience. Even then, when they make the cut, it’s incredibly tough for most agencies to measure which ads served were most effective for the client, which ads lead to customer acquisition and directly impacted the campaigns ROI.
In a world where marketing and advertising campaigns are less about ‘awareness’ and more about measurable results and conversion, it’s now more important than ever for marketers to be aware of where their media budget is being spent. This is where the four key steps of accountable advertising come in. To ensure they are receiving maximum value from their media spend.
Get involved with your customer journey
Understand your customer and their journey. Develop a 360 degree view of your customer journey as you work to develop your campaign. The ability to use the right tags to target your customers is vital in the customer journey process, and will begin to optimise and convert the content that they see in the most relevant way possible.
In truly understanding who your customer is, their journey and the way they operate, you’re going to be able to start achieving results from the get-go.
Look deeper and have viewability
When you consider that 50% of the online ads you purchase are never seen, it’s really the equivalent to throwing 50% of your digital advertising budget into the rubbish bin. Of course, with any media buy, there’s a testing phase to determine what is working and what requires fine-tuning, however the right technology and tracking tools allows attribution where it’s due and removes the guess work from your success.
If you understand where your leads are coming from and how they are converting, you have the ability to enhance these. At the end of your campaign, viewability and accountability means better results, better ROI and ultimately a successful campaign.
Keep your attribution (and data) clean and clear
There’s the transparency that viewability brings, and then, there’s clear attribution. This is where the strength of your data comes in. Being able to tell which consumer responded to which ad on which channel, and where they made a purchase/signed up is worth its weight in gold.
Ensuring your data is clean, and you’re not measuring the same person, across multiple channels but counting them as an individual is incredibly important. Without understanding the customer journey and viewability, having clean, clear data is impossible. Without clean and clear data, the results and success of your campaign won’t be accurate and you will lack insights, learning and information.
Adjust and optimise your campaign
So you’ve asked all of the right questions and truly understand who and where your consumers are, you understand where they are seeing your media spend and how they are responding and converting. It’s now time to optimise.
Optimisation is a conversation we frequently have at Global Red, and it’s one step in this process that absolutely cannot be missed. Like your media buy itself, if you aren’t optimising your campaign by using solid data, you are not only losing accountability but also throwing away your budget from the start.
Using clean and clear data, optimisation allows you to focus on the elements of a campaign that truly work and continues to build your success and achieve results.
Embracing accountability in digital advertising is one core metric of success for marketers. Knowledge is power, and success breeds success. For those that choose to turn a blind eye and remain in the dark about their media spend, as every marketing and media dollar continues to be scrutinised, jumping on the accountability bandwagon is critically important.
For those who truly understand their campaigns, the metrics, the conversions and results, the sky is the limit and you and your brand will reap the benefits and generate brilliant returns.
Tim Penton is the head of media at Global Red.