In the way that a lot people are freaked out about the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency, many in our industry are gnashing their teeth at the growing insurgency that is consumer ad blocking.
In essence, just like many of the middle class in this country are shouting their frustration with the government through the vessel of the Trump campaign, people are revolting against the often intrusive and mostly irrelevant ads that are being served up.
This is not the time or place for partisan politics, so I won’t comment on the presidential primaries, but I can tell you that ad blocking will be mitigated, if not eliminated, as a concern if we as an industry rededicate ourselves to consumer engagement and relationship building.
No more scattershot desktop and mobile buys using outdated data; no more creepy, relentless cyber-stalking — otherwise known as bad retargeting.
No, we are at a key inflection point in the programmatic revolution to truly deliver the highly targeted and relevant real-time marketing that we’ve been hyping and striving for over the past several years. By now, programmatic methodologies have been tested and refined to the point where we can finally actualize the great potential of programmatic.
Reach your audience with always-fresh insights
The key is the ability to gather the multitude of consumer signals from all platforms, including desktop, mobile, social media and the Internet of Things — much of it first-party data. Then we must process and organize it in a coherent manner whereby these always-fresh insights can be applied to all marketing initiatives, from paid advertising to email marketing.
As the inevitable ad tech and martech integration happens, brands should be able to seamlessly communicate with their customers and prospects, utilizing, again, always-fresh data.
I repeat this because it speaks to the benefits of “live audiences.” What I mean by that is that we finally have the industry-wide ability to build audience segments with “live” information gleaned from an ongoing monitoring of the internet in a cross-platform way. This can enable us to achieve and maintain uncompromising relevance to each and every consumer and not creep them out as we have done in recent years with bad retargeting.
As a consequence of applying outdated information — as ancient as 30 days, in many cases — with little regard to frequency capping, the industry has given itself a black eye by really annoying consumers to the point where they’ve decided to opt out via ad blockers.
The imperative for brands is to be able to assemble these audiences quickly and constantly replenish these segments with a never-ending, always-on stream of data signal collection to ensure engagement, not creeped-out alienation.
By enhancing precision and control, we can actually take a predictive approach on behalf of our marketer clients. Targeting a live audience allows you to enter and nudge their subconscious without following them around the internet and bludgeoning them with incessant, unwelcome sponsored posts on Facebook.
Take a page from DJ Khaled
If you’re still skeptical, I ask you to turn your attention to DJ Khaled, the king of Snapchat. The hip-hop producer has amassed millions of followers by chronicling the minutiae of his daily life in a humorous and charismatic way.
In this way, Khaled has offered a brilliant path forward to growing a digital fan base, one that is rooted in the core belief that engagement and relevance is something that has to be fed and watered every day, all day.
He’s played a big part in revolutionizing the way audiences consume content on Snapchat and how brands communicate with their customers. Snapchat’s Live Story has turned into a potent platform for brands to offer their customers and fan bases intimate views of their cultures and products.
Yes, drive conversions with live, always-fresh audience segments that reach your exact market in the moment they are consuming content relative to your brand. Bless up!
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