Superbowl shows sports marketing fragmentation??, unified commerce era, creativity in B2B??, Whatagraph product expansion and other ??marketing topics

Welcome to the March issue of Summarized, a marketing newsletter by Whatagraph, where we share our latest articles, case studies, top news from the digital marketing world, and platform updates?each month.

Sports marketing needs to adjust to fragmentation and the Super Bowl was the best example

Reaching sports audiences on a single screen is no longer enough. They are no longer simply passive spectators watching at home, at the stadium, or at a sports bar. As Nielsen research on sports marketing suggests, nearly half of fans (41%) turn on the traditional TV even while streaming sports events on another screen. This “multiscreening” rose by 5% annually and 10% among GenZ audiences. They watch augmented live streams, interact with their fantasy teams, and check social media for the latest memes.?

According to AdImpact stats, linear TV claimed only 59% of viewership of the recent Super Bowl, while YouTube got 14%, and other streaming services over a quarter (27%). Brandwatch indicated afterward that 2.65M posts were made from over 500k accounts, amounting to 11k mentions a minute. And all the talk mostly was not about the players, teams, or the game itself. For example, 148k mentions (5.6%) were made about Taylor Swift, while her boyfriend and the most talked about player, the Kansas City Chiefs’ Travis Kelce, garnered barely a fifth (1.1%) of her mentions. 57 ads were shown to 115.5M viewers, from 53 unique advertisers (not counting FX and Universal), each at the cost of $7M per 30-second ad.

But was it all worth the spend? Did the advertisers reach their target audience as they wished?

They may not have, due to several ongoing factors.

Firstly, the concept of last-touch attribution is already outdated. The fact that somebody purchased a Buffalo Bills jersey as a gift, doesn’t mean that they should be bombarded with ads for the Bills right now, often in duplicate. Their own preference for, let's say, Las Vegas Raiders is not individually or uniquely tracked.

Third-party cookies are now gone, driving the adoption of universal IDs and the need to recognize the same user, whether they’re in an app, on the web, or watching streamed CTV. This builds actual context for the individual’s engagement and preferences and allows delivery of precise or complementary messaging, for example, on the phone the fan is interacting with, without disrupting the main event, the TV stream of the game that they’re watching in the background.

With identity solutions, like Genius Sports’ Fanhub ID, brands can track a genuine fan journey without losing the context of their overall interactions. When they go to buy the Bills jersey, the brands will still know about their previous 200+ Raiders interactions for tickets, content, and on retail sites. They will keep the focus on the Raiders events and merch rather than suddenly switch to Bills just because of that single purchase.

This is the era of unified commerce - is your agency ready?

The first era of digital advertising was defined by search, followed by social. Today, the industry is in the middle of the third wave in digital advertising - and it’s going to be the most transformative yet.

- Robyn Wheeler, Chief Revenue Officer of Fetch (America’s No. 1 reward app and the leading consumer-engagement platform)

Retail media networks are experiencing unprecedented growth, with ad spending expected to hit $100 billion in 2026. Monetization of first-party data is done not only by retailers but also by mobile platforms, hospitality brands, credit card companies, and more. RMNs offer a targeted approach within individual retail environments, excelling at capturing real purchase behavior and where and when the consumers shop. A powerful solution, commerce media, is emerging and predicted to generate $1.3 trillion of enterprise value in the U.S. by 2026. It integrates seamlessly into, and importantly reaches beyond the retail landscape. It is a pathway to more accurate and comprehensive insights into campaign performance throughout the entire customer purchase journey. As a comprehensive strategy, commerce media ensures reach and influence with audiences across the full funnel and the wider internet.

A category of full-funnel ad tech solutions called retail-agnostic media platforms (RAMPs) is emerging. Those allow brands to harness first- and zero-party data, to connect with customers directly and transcend the single-retailer environment. Mobile apps such as Instacart, DoorDash, UberEats or Fetch are good examples. As part of the unified commerce strategy, RAMPs provide a constant, multi-channel flow of user-permitted purchase data, in effect making ads the content that the users agree to consume.

With advertising agencies able to steer their clients to the right partners and tech stack, brands can finally achieve truly unified commerce, a fully integrated approach that aims for a seamless experience across all possible consumer channels and touchpoints. Despite all of its current uncertainty, this new era of advertising is dynamic, consumer-centric, and filled with possibilities for brands to amplify messages and connect with diverse audiences in meaningful ways. No longer is advertising merely about delivering the message or generating clicks. The focus now, according to Robyn Wheeler of Fetch.com, will be creating a better experience, for everyone.

How will your campaigns adjust to this new era of advertising? Are they retail-agnostic yet?

Is there a place for creativity in B2B marketing? Even more, there's a need. And B2B influencers may be the key to fulfill it.

According to a PR Web survey back in 2018, over half of B2B decision-makers have found B2B marketing boring. The situation seems to be getting worse, as in 2023 the Power of Provocation study discovered the number rose to a staggering 82%. Only one percent of the decision-makers were of the opinion that B2B marketing “demonstrated a meaningful understanding of the human experience”. This shows a massive opportunity for B2B marketers to redefine their approach to communication, and social media platforms such as LinkedIn may be the ideal place to start.

Why LinkedIn? With an 875M user base, 48.5% of U.S. users engage at least once a month, 40% do so organically at least once a week, and 50% of brands perceived as having “higher quality” after advertising on the platform. But it's not just about the numbers - LinkedIn offers a community of creators from various industries, making it an ideal platform for B2B influencer marketing.

A recent campaign for Hootsuite’s Social Media Career Report featuring some of the creators on the platform achieved impressive results - 1.2M impressions, 20k+ engagements, and over 8100 link clicks over the first few weeks, according to Hootsuite's VP of marketing.

What were the main learnings?

What works in B2C also works in B2B. LinkedIn’s users are diverse, and simplicity is key. Remember the users’ inherent humanity, as a marketing director by day on LinkedIn might be buying make-up on TikTok at night.

K.I.S.S. - Keep Influencer Strategies Straightforward; know your audience, align with the influencer’s tone, and provide added value. Do your homework and investigate the influencer’s crowd as you would any media outlet. Ensure their crowd matches yours and the fit is natural.

Let influencers take the reins of the messaging - you already know their tone matches yours. Set up clear goals and boundaries, but provide freedom between those.

Creativity should not be stifled by ROI; you need to, first and foremost, provide value to your audiences. Leverage the allure of freebies, as per the streetwear playbook - people, including influencers, love free stuff.

And finally, play the long game - once an influencer campaign is successful, make sure to forge lasting bonds and deep, ongoing partnerships, reaping stronger connections and brand loyalty.

What B2B advertisers need to realize is that the competition on social media platforms is not just their peers but the B2C brands as well. They need to stand out and build authentic bonds with the audience. Every interaction involves a human on the other side, whether in B2B or B2C. Understanding the audience, delivering value and creating lasting connections in a two-way relationship are core to the success in B2B as well. Only personalized and relationship-drive B2B marketing is able to cut through all the noise and create a lasting impact.

What’s your experience with bringing B2C know-how and tools over to B2B marketing?

Google has banned impersonation and false affiliation in Ads

“In March 2024, Google Ads will update the Unacceptable business practices portion of the Misrepresentation policy to include enticing users to part with money or information by impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with or endorsement by a public figure, brand, or organization.”

Mid-February, Google announced changes to the Misrepresentation policy in Google Ads, addressing deceptive practices involving impersonation and false affiliations. This policy has already been rolled out in March, with French advertisers having until April 2024 to comply with the changes.

The Misrepresentation policy prohibits deceptive practices such as scams, impersonation, false advertising, and phishing. Among specifically forbidden practices are concealing or misrepresenting information about a business, impersonating other brands, and advertising products and services that cannot be delivered or in a way that could endanger users’ health, life, or safety, as well as using phishing techniques to collect user information. Marketers must ensure their ads do not deceptively claim association with well-known brands or entities to manipulate users.

Google declared it may take action against accounts that receive regulatory warnings, settlements, or direct complaints regarding unlawful business practices. It also stated that violations of this policy will be considered severe and egregious. Accounts found to be in violation will be suspended and banned from future advertising on the entire platform. Appeals will be considered for reinstatement only in exceptional and compelling cases. The overall goal is to build greater trust between platforms, advertisers, and users.

Do you think the new measures and policies in place will affect your advertising on the platform?

What's new at Whatagraph in February?

February was indeed an exciting month for the Whatagraph users, as we launched the product expansion and added great features and backend updates:

Product expansion, new "Organize" feature and webinar

We added new features and updates in February, including the new "Organize" environment.

You can now intuitively aggregate, blend, group, and unify your marketing data in Whatagraph. Here's an in-depth article on marketing data organization use cases.

If you missed a webinar where we explored the update, watch the recording here.

Duplicate multiple widgets at once

With this update, you can duplicate a group of widgets in your report or dashboard. Create a copy of an entire report page or repeat just a few widgets a couple of times when necessary.

There are two options: duplicate your group in the closest available space or create new rows right below. Learn more in this article.

New widget architecture, general widgets update, and dimensions as columns

There has been a massive update to how widgets work in Whatagraph. We've rebuilt the widget architecture on the backend from scratch. More details here.

That will bring improved visualization capabilities to Whatagraph shortly. For now, you will notice two significant changes:

Dimensions are now set as columns by default in table widgets. That makes the tables much easier to analyze, read, and present. You can turn this on and off in widget settings.

Adding "ascending/descending" sorting to ALL widgets, including single-row breakdown charts, is now possible. For example, if you want to add sorting to impressions broken down by gender or something similar.

New icons in the library

A minor but highly requested addition to the Whatagraph icons library! Like other icons, you can now add marketing sources' logos to your single-value and list widgets.

Stay tuned for more icon customization updates coming soon!

That's all for this month! If you enjoyed this issue, please follow us on LinkedIn and stay subscribed to the Summarized to receive more updates in the future.

The Whatagraph Team