The Digital Landscape

There’s an old saying in the Marketing world… “I know HALF of my advertising dollars are wasted, but I don’t know which half”.?

I don’t know who said that originally but in my years in media I have heard the quote from CEOs, CMOs and Media Directors on multiple occasions.?

This statement was associated with broad focused media where the goal was to reach as many adults 25-54 as possible.?Then came specialized media where the programming was targeted towards certain demographics etc.?Fast forward to the last 5 years with Programmatic advertising.?This form of targeted marketing takes the digital fingerprint of the consumer and feeds them ads based on their past activities or interests.?

For those not in the advertising world:?Its when you search for a new car online and suddenly your Facebook feed is full of ads from car dealerships.?

Targeted ads are better received by consumers and the advertising dollars spent by marketers go directly to the people who are looking for their product.?

This is Great! But there is a catch.??From the Marketer to the Consumer those ad dollars go through 3-6 layers of transactions before reaching the designated set of eyeballs.?And each layer takes a percentage of the advertising budget before passing to the next.?In the end about 50 cents for every ad dollar spent is served to the consumer.?That does not even account for fraud which is everywhere in the digital world.?Fake impressions, BOTs Malware etc.?

This puts us back to the “I know HALF my advertising dollars” quote.?But this time the ads are targeted and in most cases are better received and can be acted upon instantaneously.?Then there is Social Media, E-commerce, Specialized Content and experiences, Influencers… ?And the latest buzz Artificial Intelligence!!!?

·???????A side note on Artificial Intelligence:?This is not the AI from the movies (Yet).?These are computer programs that with enough data can predict and present actions and phrases.?They are task managers that take the results of their output and continue to improve on those results until the user is satisfied.?

So how do marketers traverse the new media landscape??The same way it has always been done, with research and analytics.?Instead of a marketing team looking at the latest Nielsen demographic numbers to determine what TV program, radio station or cable network they want to place ads on.?There are dozens of Ad-Tech companies that have specialized algorithms and planning software designed for this purpose.?I know because I have recently sent my resume to many of them.?These systems interact with the servers on a digital level and create an effective plan of action to reach the right consumer all within a tenth of a second.?The result is less waste, less fraud and a media campaign that not only targets known consumers but also markets to the unforeseen new customer.?

THOUSANDS of companies are under the umbrella of “Marketing Tech” with new ones launching daily.?But at the end of the day the goal is the same: connecting brands with consumers.?

While I understand this is an oversimplification of the digital landscape and I purposely didn’t include acronyms.?My success in my career has always been to communicate complex processes in ways that can be easily consumed and understood.?There are experts in each of these next generation marketing options.?But instead of a siloed approach, companies need employees, like myself, with a strong understanding of research, software, media sales and this landscape as a whole that can guide an effective marketing plan.?

I am not a writer but during my current hunt for my next career I wanted to put some thoughts on paper.?Maybe I’ll get lucky, and the right decision maker will read this and…

Thank you for reading and please share your thoughts.