3 Ways to Maximise Your Digital Campaign

Here are my top three tips for getting the most out of your digital campaigns based on the findings from a recent innovations and insight event.

1. The audience is in control

The audience is more in control and more fragmented than ever. According to Global WebIndex, consumers use an average of 5.78 social media accounts across various applications, turning to messaging apps and smaller networks to share more personal information, while using larger networks like Facebook to read and view content.

Fragmentation is further complicated by an increased use of VPNs, private browsing windows, deleted cookies and ad-blockers, which have major implications for measurement. comScore data shows ad blocking is becoming a growing global phenomenon, with 18- to 24-year-old males being 100% more likely to use ad blockers than the average user.

David Evans, head of digital and insight at CNBC, believes that while it is currently tech savvy people who are using ad blockers, the concerns have already reached the general public’s consciousness, so we’ll see more and more people embracing the technology.

Key Takeaway: Demand verified impressions so that you know exactly where every ad impression is delivered, and whether it has been seen by human eyes in a brand-safe environment.

2. Get smarter by combining different data sets

With high audience fragmentation, it becomes essential to understand how different channels are performing. Simon McDonald, managing director of DVJ Insights, discussed the importance of combining survey data with external data to optimise brand tracking. He advised brands to consider three things: the power of high impact creative; the fact that not all media channels create the same level of engagement; and that campaigns have varying rates of decay. This analytics combine to give what McDonald calls a ‘reality performance score,’ indicating a brand’s true exposure to its audience. This allows marketers to maximise media ROI by adjusting live campaigns based on creative power and ‘wear out’.

That’s not to say ‘traditional’ survey data isn’t important. Paul Eldon from Ipsos talked about the benefits of using familiar devices like phones and tablets equipped with real-time signal encoding and audio matching, to provide audience ratings at any time on platforms people are already using.

Key Takeaway: Don’t rely on one set of data. Combine big data with traditional survey data to get optimum results, and then adjust your campaigns accordingly.

3. Attention is the new oil

More than 67% of worldwide ad spend is allocated to brand campaigns, yet only 25% of digital is spent on branding, according to Moat’s Ciaran O’Callaghan. So how can advertisers implement effective brand advertising online? One of the issues is that there’s no consistent measurement of success in digital, so as a safe bet brand marketers still plough most of their budget into TV.

With the younger generation spending less time watching traditional TV and more time online, O’Callaghan believes that attention is the new currency. Rather than clicks and impressions, he argues that we should be looking at metrics such as an in-view time of 35+ seconds; scroll depth of more than 80%; scroll velocity, which helps you to understand if your audience is actually reading or just skimming the page; and whether content is audible and visible on completion.

Repucom’s Andy Milnes presented a case study about Coldplay and Beats, to demonstrate how to quantify and value brand exposure in video content. Image recognition software picks up the product on the screen to determine the quality of the integration from a visual perspective – its size in relation to the rest of the screen, the amount of time on screen, location and the context, i.e. which other brands or products appear around it. Weightings are applied based on how the product has been integrated; this is then combined with audience views to create a monetary value.

Key Takeaway: Digital is measurable, as long as you don’t only rely on traditional clicks and impressions. Demand attention metrics to determine real engagement with your audience.

With technology trying to keep up as media consumption becomes more fragmented, measuring content is an area that’s constantly developing. One thing’s for sure, it’s a topic that marketers can’t avoid.

source – http://bit.ly/2qL7hbJ