From a Digital Rejuvenation to a Data Revolution – 10 Key Trends that will Dominate in 2011
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared here in iMedia Connection.
About a year ago, I published an article where I bravely (some might say recklessly) identified the 10 technological trends that would impact digital marketing in 2010 (10 developments in digital that will shape 2010). The good thing about such an undertaking is that no one can really prove you wrong; that is, unless you remind one to look at it again a year later. Nevertheless, as 2010 is coming to an end I decided to revisit my old list and come up with a fresh one for 2011. If 2009 was the year of global recession, 2010 has been a promising year of “rejuvenated growth” in digital media. Everywhere we looked and turned, new companies, products and possibilities began to emerge. Here are a few that ignited in 2010 and will blaze through 2011.
1. Media trading & public exchanges
A year ago DSPs were novelty; today they are a power to reckon with. In a recent post Adam Cahill of Hill Holiday estimated DSPs spend at 10% of total US display and predicted that it could go up to 50% within two or three years. It is somewhat of a surprise to see most DSPs closing 2010 as independent companies, Invite Media being the obvious exception. As this segment matures, one can expect to see mounting pressure from buyers to increase transparency and decrease margins. In 2011, we will also see growing support for mobile, video and rich media over RTB exchanges (e.g. Microsoft’s Advertising Exchange for Mobile, BrightRoll’s video exchange and adBrite’s video and rich media exchange).
2. Private exchanges
In parallel to the growth of public exchanges and DSPs, agencies and publishers have been actively pursuing an alternative solution – one that would retain the efficiencies of a public exchange, yet provide qualified media opportunities to agencies and help publishers protect inventory grading and avoid channel conflict. For most of 2010, the idea of private exchanges was nothing more than a dream but it’s quickly materializing with both publisher driven solutions like the one announced recently by Weather.com and AdMeld, as well as with agency driven solutions like Vivaki’s “private ad slots”.
3. Social unrest
“The Social Network” is making serious waves, and it’s not just at the box office. Facebook reportedly has about 24% of display ads (albeit only 9.5% of ad-spend) and is well positioned to reshuffle the display space as we know it. Facebook’s media buying APIs have spawned a foray of SEM providers like ONE Media, Efficient Frontier, Marin Software, Kenshoo and Adobe SearchCenter into display. What we need to be aware of is that Facebook’s strict serving, tracking and data sharing policies are disrupting the status quo between marketers, third party servers and publishers. If you thought social display was an easy segment of the notoriously fickle social marketing category, think again…
4. Proprietary data
We all know that data is king. However, it seems that data brokers like Bluekai and eXelate might be facing some serious challenges, as both publishers and marketers increase efforts to control and monetize data themselves. Massive efforts by agency groups to aggregate and leverage marketing data are reaching critical mass. Havas’s Artemis and WPP’s ZAP are agency created tools that enable optimization without requiring third party data. More advertisers are starting to connect CRM data into integrated marketing platforms where it can be used to analyze performance and retarget consumers across marketing channels. On the publisher side, sites like Yahoo have developed new ways to leverage registration and visitation data to offer sophisticated targeting and optimization capabilities on top of their media.
5. Dynamic creative optimization going mainstream
2010 was a good year for DCO. Kicked off by the Google / Terracent acquisition in late 2009 the consolidation trend continued in 2010 with the MediaMath/Adroit and Yahoo/Dapper acquisitions. However, quickly following the hype was the realization that creative optimization is not an easy execution when done in a silo outside the main campaign workflow. Focus has shifted to execution, service, reliability and scalability. As DCO makes its way into marketing mainstream there are still some operational hurdles to overcome.
6. Remarketing heaven
Last year I discussed the benefits of combining media and creative optimization. Today this is done with great success by performance optimization companies like Criteo, Fetchback, Dotomi, Next Performance and Acerno (Akamai) who use media and creative optimization for retargeting, mostly based on CPC or CPA models. Using quantitative methods, their success confirms the logical assertion that finding the right audience and telling the right story work best when done in concert.
7. Nailing down ad-effectiveness
One of the main reasons big brands still have reservations about investing in digital ads is the lack of a global metric that can accurately assess brand impact and brick and mortar sales. For years, marketers have been reluctantly using brand survey solutions such as Dynamic Logic, Insight Express, Vizu and AdEffx (Comscore), all the while waiting for something that would resemble the good old TV GRP. Nielsen seems to be listening; they recently announced a “major step forward” in online advertising measurement, aiming to move digital closer to the TV model. In 2011 we will see additional new ideas from companies like MediaMind, focused on measuring actual consumer actions rather than surveyed attitudes.
8. Figuring out attribution
Measuring ad-effectiveness is all about capturing the value created by marketing activity. The next logical step is to attribute that value to the different activities (channels, buys, etc.) in order to understand what constitutes success. Although attribution has been a hot topic for years, I believe 2011 will be a turning point where many more marketers, including brand focused agencies will effectively apply attribution modeling and gain a 360° view into consumer behaviors. Driving this trend right now, are companies like ClearSaleing, Visual IQ, Coremetrics, Theorem and others. It’s key to keep in mind that there’s no one “right” solution – attribution is individual to the marketer and to the campaign; and almost always requires customization.
9. Mobile display
As always, mobile marketing remains as challenging, as it is promising. The wild fragmentation of devices, technologies, vendors, etc. makes any mobile display campaign a small nightmare. However, there are reasons for optimism. Nielsen predicts smartphone penetration in the US will cross the 50% line in 2011. Using Adobe Flash 10.1 and HTML5 one should be able to achieve significant reach relatively smoothly. With the increasing acceptance of buy-side third party serving (unfortunately still excluding iAds), marketers can even start thinking about managing and tracking mobile together with other portions of their media plan.
10. Basic rich media
Advanced rich media executions have secured a distinguished place in marketers’ minds and wallets. Technological innovation will continue to drive new creative and groundbreaking executions in advanced rich media. But, it’s also important to recognize how far basic rich media has evolved as well. The “do it yourself” wizard-like tools allow users to create templated ads utilizing basic rich media formats and features, including panel expansion, video, etc. In some cases, ads are constructed automatically using existing web or other assets. Companies like AdReady, Clickturn, iPromote and others have been promoting this category to marketers at a cost-friendly price. The low price point opened up rich media to both marketers and publishers, who traditionally tend to stick with standard banner ads. With all that and much more going on, we can expect 2011 to be as exciting (and confusing) as 2010. Let’s meet again in a year and see what 2012 will look like…
Eldad Persky, VP Products at MediaMind
that other award to The Hurt Locker back in 2010, winning the Stevie finally makes things right for Avatar… At last, James Cameron can get some closure!
Perry. Facebook has yet to publish viewership numbers for Obama’s appearance but it’s safe to say Facebook Live is well positioned to grow to much higher numbers considering the broad reach and stickiness of Facebook. The rise of Facebook Live exemplifies the true nature of Facebook as a platform for brand marketing rather than direct response.
Dean was followed by Bettina Sherick of 20th Century Fox, who is trapped in a time warp between old fashioned TV-era expectations and a very modern digital marketing nightmare. While describing the unbelievable challenges involved in the production and global distribution of movie trailers, Bettina observed that the forces that push forward new and exciting capabilities are the very same ones that drive fragmentation and complexity.