Study on Digital Advertising 2020: Convergence, data and metrics are changing the advertising market
New technologies offer innovative opportunities
In the coming years, new technologies - such as artificial intelligence (AI) - will offer advertisers further opportunities to interact with consumers in innovative ways. For example, three-quarters of advertisers are using or plan to use intelligent personal assistants using AI in the next 12 months.Let's now take a closer look at the trends that will shape the future of digital advertising.
A single budget for advertising and marketing teams
Traditionally, advertising and marketing have been two separate areas, each with its own team and budget. This demarcation is now being broken down and the teams are growing together to deliver a seamless consumer experience.1. Most advertising and marketing departments now share a common budget. A single team handles digital marketing, creates ad campaigns, and makes decisions about sourcing new technologies.2. Information is centralized in this way, and advertisers can handle much of digital advertising in-house. Nearly 60 percent of advertisers rely on internal staff to optimize ad spend for Facebook and Instagram, compared to 57 percent for Google.
Trusted data as the holy grail
The number of consumer-related data sources that brands are using to expand their digital advertising strategies continues to grow. With more and more ways to capture and leverage consumer data, companies are getting within reach of the Holy Grail of the advertising world: delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time.1 Advertisers are using a range of data sources to build out their strategies, including proprietary CRM data (such as email addresses and phone numbers), online data (information consumers leave behind while browsing a brand's website), and demographic data (such as a person's location transmitted via mobile device). Use of unique data sources for advertising purposes averaged 5.4 last year, and is expected to increase to 6.2 data sources next year.2. Nearly all advertisers use their customer relationship management (CRM) as a first-party data source: 94 percent of respondents currently use CRM data to target their desired audience.3. Ninety percent of advertisers use some form of anonymous online data to better reach consumers through digital advertising. Two of the most popular anonymous data sources are anonymous first-party data (anonymous data they have collected themselves) and second-party data (anonymous data that companies share with each other for mutual benefit).4. Data management platforms (DMPs) are coming into play in the effort to capture and analyze all the available data from a wide variety of sources. The question is no longer whether a company will implement a DMP, but rather when. While such platforms are still relatively new territory for brands (only 20 percent of companies have been using a DMP for more than three years), the situation is already different for advertisers: 91 percent are using or planning to use a DMP.
Facebook and Google benefit from investment in video ads
Facebook and Google attract advertisers because they have huge audiences and can interact with individual consumers - and with their real identities. And with their strengths in mobile and programmatic video advertising, Facebook and Google will continue to set the standard when it comes to advertising in the digital world.1. In the coming year, 66 percent of digital ad spending will go to Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram - and that number doesn't include the many platforms or advertising services owned by these groups.2. Mobile and video content are increasingly being used in digital advertising and on platforms like Facebook and Google. Last year, 65 percent of companies increased their budgets for video advertising.
More sophisticated metrics for measuring success factors
Advertisers therefore have more and more data at their disposal. This also improves the possibilities for measuring the effectiveness of customer dialog. But the question of how companies can best measure success signals has not yet been fully answered. Traditional KPI metrics such as impressions continue to be used. But there is a shift toward more complex indicators, such as a customer's lifetime value.1. When asked about the most important metrics, advertisers ranked the complex concept of a customer's lifetime value first (27 percent), followed by the relatively simple analysis of impressions or web traffic (19 percent).2. Advertisers use a variety of methods to analyze results. Many traditional tools, such as spreadsheets (42 percent), are still popular. But more teams are now using a DMP (55 percent) and web analytics solutions (50 percent). This undoubtedly represents a technological inflection point in evaluating performance, measurement results and attribution.
Swiss companies are also affected by these developments
Guntram Friede, Head of Marketing for Salesforce in Switzerland and Austria, observes similar developments in Switzerland: "We see a clear strengthening of the trend towards data-driven marketing activities in the Swiss B2B and B2C markets, as well as the desire of many companies to understand consumers even better, engage them more, and personalize their experiences more and more across the board via a unified marketing platform and the seamless integration of innovative technologies, such as artificial intelligence."And according to Friede, data protection will also have a significant influence on advertising and marketing in the future: "The introduction of the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will also further reinforce this customer-centric thinking, as Swiss companies must now ensure that individuals' privacy and security rights are taken into account in all marketing activities."Download the Digital Advertising 2020 Study from Salesforce down.
