Zag ???? - Understanding the new Landscape for Digital Performance Marketing, How Challengers are Embracing Racial Equality, Digging into a 'Cookie-le

Deep Dive

?? Who's having issues with digital performance marketing? Yea, you're not the only one...Anecdotally, we’ve been hearing from Rival friends and clients who spend on Facebook that iOS 14’s privacy changes continue to hinder performance - even for those with Facebook’s Conversions API implemented. This is particularly problematic for smaller businesses, who may have lower spends and fewer conversions or tracked events to inform optimization algorithms. As Google, Facebook and even retail media partners like Amazon increasingly lean into ad buying models and distribution algorithms that favor larger advertisers - and their larger data sets - the era of democratized access to customers in digital may be coming to an end. We’ve admired?Dr. Grace Kite ?and her work at Magic Numbers for a while, and?here she provides a great deep dive ?into a lot of the compounding factors that are driving marketplace consolidation as algorithms mediate more and more consumer interactions.

Challengers in Action?

???? ???? Racial equality has become a big part of the brand purpose conversation, especially in the US, over the last few years.?92% of Americans believe ?it is important for companies to promote racial diversity and equity in the workplace, and 68% of Americans believe companies have “more work to do” on this front. So many big brands came out with big, sweeping promises after the murder of George Flood in 2020, and yet a year later very little of the?$50B collective commitment had been spent , and the money that had was largely tied to sneaky ways these companies could make more profit. There’s a ton to unpack there on why and how this has happened, but we instead want to highlight?this great overview ?and analysis of how challenger brands are doing it differently - how they are actually building racial equality and social CSR into who they are, not just what they say.?

?? We talk a lot (and do a lot of work) in the challenger banking space, but it’s mostly on the retail consumer side - i.e. a checking/savings accounts for the the masses. But banking (and almost every category) is becoming increasingly fragmented as brands and products are developed for specific niches and audiences. High net worth banking is a really interesting segment of the fintech industry to look at and learn from. How do you deliver on the prestige and exclusivity that a HNW customer is looking for through a digital-first or digital-only experience? How do you make something new seem safe and trusted? Check out?Monument ?and?Pennyworth ?from the UK to see how two challengers are doing it.?

?? Most of the challengers we talk about are products or services. But what about platforms? There are challenger and incumbent platforms as well that need to fight to constantly reinvent themselves if they want to stay relevant.?This Ted Talk ?from Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri is a really interesting watch to understand how Instagram is viewing the challenges and opportunity of NFTs, and trying to disrupt their own business before someone else does.

?Grab Bag?

?? Ad fraud is on track to grow over 20% to reach?$120B this year . $120 BILLION. What?!

?? Facebook has been facing some huge headwinds from Apple’s iOS privacy changes and a general industry push towards users understanding and owning their own data online. There must be a ton of pilot projects running internally to come up with new products to fit this new tech and cultural landscape. One that’s come to light recently is a?“privacy safe” ad offering .?

?? What does cookie less actually mean? Check out?this great explainer ?from Ad Exchanger.

Rival this Week

????Punchy Episode 3 ?brings back a familiar face in?Marcus Krzastek? one of the first hires at VaynerMedia 12 years ago and now Chief of Staff for all of Vayner X.?

???We’ve kicked off research for our next?Rival Spark ?trend analysis. We’ll be looking at “pragmatic purpose” - how true brand purpose comes from how a company makes money, not what they say they care about. If you are or know a brand that you think we should cover as part of this research, please reply to this email and let us know!

Challenge of the Week

?? Are you doing everything you can to take advantage of the shifting landscape of digital performance marketing?