3 Changes Marketers Need to Prepare for in 2023

In this week’s Marketing Minutes, I’m handing over the reins to Coegi’s @Ryan Green, who recently returned from @AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in New York. Today he’s going to be sharing his biggest takeaways from the event….

As Sean has pointed out several times in this newsletter, there are big changes on the horizon for digital marketing in 2023. These were confirmed by both the presentations and conversations with attendees at the Programmatic I/O conference in New York last week.

Whether it was Google, the FTC, L’Oreal, or Wall Street analysts, all agreed that increased scrutiny by regulators, coupled with signal loss from cookie deprecation, will impact advertisers’ ability to conduct business as usual.??

While the tea leaves have been visible for several years now, it is imperative that brands and agencies take action now to position themselves well for the future.? Below are my three main takeaways from the conference:

1) The regulatory landscape is taking shape

For those of us who have been active in Europe during the rollout of GDPR, and have proactively abided by CCPA and CPRA every step of the way, we will be well-positioned to move forward in a more tightly regulated environment.? But a GDPR-like framework seems to be a best-case scenario for the ad tech industry.??

As David Shonka, partner at the law firm Redgrave LLP, pointed out, there is bi-partisan support for sweeping legislation at the federal level. Some lawmakers would like to see ALL personalized advertising made illegal, down to keyword-based tactics like paid search.? While conference attendees believe that ‘Google won’t allow this to happen’, it is on the table, and a more general framework like GDPR may feel like a win at this point.? Initiatives like the Institute for Advertising Ethics, while positive and noble in nature, are a last-ditch effort by the industry to self-regulate.??

2) Incrementality > Attribution?

Three different presenters touted incremental approaches to measuring business and marketing performance.? First, Amy Corner from American Express outlined their approach to media mix modeling. They have use cases for both media mix and MTA models, depending on what overarching business need they are solving for.? Media mix modeling helps AMEX understand the halo effect around media and which macro factors affect acquisition costs. Nikhil Lai from Forrester also touted how incremental approaches allow the halo effect of media to be captured, and how creative testing across the funnel is more effective.??

Finally, Marjorie Chelius from Mockingbird, a DTC startup baby brand, discussed how market testing and media mix modeling, along with post-checkout surveys, help her 40-person brand achieve significant ROI. The models allowed them to confidently turn off branded paid search and retargeting, without seeing any decline in CAC or revenue.??

3) TV buying is as complicated as ever?

Even Wall Street is confused by conflicting information from TV providers. Steven Cahall, Managing Director at Wells Fargo, pointed to Netflix’s loss of customers as a harbinger on streaming TV as a whole. The very next day, Netflix exceeded all expectations and saw a double-digit percentage increase in its market cap. He highlighted how sticky linear TV buying has been while conceding that the practice of increasing CPMs for live sports and entertainment, against an aging, declining customer base, is untenable in the mid-term.??

Steven also predicted negative growth for social and programmatic channels, claiming that these are the first channels to get cut during a recession. However, that hasn’t been the case in my experience and goes against predictions from several industry research firms that we follow.? Which side will be right? Time will tell, but the conflicting predictions between industry and Wall Street add even more uncertainty in the short term.

Thanks for reading and thanks to Sean for letting me take over this week!

Ryan Green, VP of Marketing & Innovation?- Coegi