Privacy, platforms, and power shifts: 3 trends reshaping marketing and measurement

The Drum interviews Christine MacGregor (KMac), a Google/YouTube veteran and now Chief Commercial Officer at Smartly, to discuss three key trends reshaping marketing and an integrated, holistic approach. We explored how brands like Uber are finding success by embracing new enabling tools. From measuring to planning to connecting to your funnel.

KMac, please set the stage for us. This year in particular, we've all felt the rapid changes in the industry and the accompanying changes in the way marketers work. Why did this happen?

We are witnessing an interesting power shift in the marketing world. There are several important trends that require our attention.

1. The rise of dynamic consumer behavior: Media consumption is not linear. Consumers can seamlessly navigate a complex ecosystem of channels and create multi-touchpoint experiences. This fragmented effort reinforces the need for a holistic approach to measurement across multiple platforms.
2. Ad spend moves to social: Social media has become a dominant force in media consumption. Consumers are glued to these platforms, spending an average of 1.3 hours on them every day, with Gen Z spending as much as 4 hours on them. This change in behavior has led to a significant shift in advertising spend. Similarly, budgets traditionally allocated to television are increasingly being redirected to social media campaigns. reason? it works. Facilitate multi-touchpoint experiences and enable brands to connect with consumers throughout their journey.
3. Privacy plays a central role, and with it comes creative power. Consumer privacy concerns have never been higher. According to Google, 91% of people want brands to be transparent about how they use the data they collect. And more than half of consumers will switch to a brand that prioritizes data privacy. This has led to tighter regulations and the imminent obsolescence of cookies by the end of 2024. Traditional measurement methods that rely on cookies become obsolete and campaigns become ineffective. In this privacy-focused environment, creativity is a key differentiator. Compelling stories, engaging visuals, and emotional connections are essential to cutting through the noise and resonating with consumers.

What are some of the challenges brands are facing in this new landscape and how can they be addressed?

Many brands today struggle with three common problems:

• Rethinking the funnel: The traditional marketing funnel is broken. Consumers can watch his TikTok videos on Monday and purchase the products on Tuesday. This means brand metrics such as reach and frequency are even more important to understanding the top funnel. However, measuring these metrics has traditionally been siled and outsourced, creating a disconnect between brand and performance teams. Ideally, we will see a shift to real-time collaboration between these teams towards more holistic measurements to make better investment decisions.
• Comprehensive cross-platform measurement: Today's consumers seamlessly navigate different platforms. Marketers need a media mix that reflects this behavior. Reaching customers across multiple channels drives stronger brand recall. Omnichannel campaigns can significantly increase brand awareness. While the exact percentage may vary, research from The Marketing Interactive shows an increase of up to 54%. However, it is important to strike the right balance. Too high a frequency can lead to advertising fatigue and rising costs. Privacy regulations and walled garden restrictions make measuring campaign performance across platforms extremely complex. Collaborative solutions and a common measurement language are essential to understanding how each channel contributes to the overall strategy.
• Speed ​​to action: Consumers are constantly connected and consume information in real-time, especially through social media. Marketers need to deliver fresh, relevant creative content at scale. This requires access to real-time insights and the ability to quickly adjust strategies based on audience reactions. Traditionally, measuring results against brand metrics like reach and frequency can take months. Modern marketing requires change. Move beyond a wait-and-see mentality and embrace real-time, performance-driven campaigns.

So how can brands adapt to this privacy-centric, multi-touchpoint world? Metrics like reach and frequency, traditionally siled for upper-funnel analysis, are now more It seems like it's becoming important. Are there any innovative solutions to address this challenge?

That's exactly right. Reach and frequency are important for understanding how your brand message resonates across multiple touchpoints. However, effectively measuring these metrics in a privacy-focused world is a major hurdle.

At Smartly, we are excited about the potential of innovative solutions like Brand Pulse, the first of its kind in the industry. This technology allows brands to tackle these challenges head-on by providing real-time reach and frequency planning and insights. This helps advertisers understand how early interactions across platforms, the first impressions customers encounter, actually influence their purchasing decisions.

How does this help marketers deal with all these privacy rules and different channels?

Brand Pulse helps marketers in several big ways. First, fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle at the top of the funnel to get a complete picture of your customer's journey from start to finish. Until now, marketers have considered things like reach and frequency (the number of people who saw an ad and how often) in addition to the overall campaign performance. By connecting these dots, you can understand how you're reaching your audience throughout the funnel, from awareness to conversion.

Second, we use a great technology called Real-Time Reach and Frequency (RTRF for short), which is built directly into our media and creative management products. This allows you to see exactly how many people are seeing your ad (and how much it's costing you) across social media, without having to count the same person twice. It's a first-of-its-kind, privacy-first approach. This means you can tweak your campaigns on the fly and make sure your ads aren't shown to the same users multiple times across platforms.

This has huge implications for the media industry, essentially merging planning, execution, and optimization into one continuous cycle. It means viewing the entire advertising process as an ongoing conversation rather than a series of separate events. This continuity allows us to not only respond to market changes, but stay one step ahead, making every decision informed and making every dollar count. It's about making the whole process smarter, not harder.

Are other brands implementing technology to overcome these marketing-specific hurdles?

Uber is a great example of brands using these new tools to improve the effectiveness of their media spend. We recently worked closely with Kevin Joy, Global Performance Marketing at Uber, to deliver an agnostic measurement solution with Brand Pulse. As Kevin says, this is “very important to understand how much effort an investment will take.” This allowed the team to understand how media investments were being made across different channels, ultimately optimizing campaigns and achieving great results.

Similarly, Kinesso UK&I has found success with this technology, allowing them to reduce their cost per incremental reach by 90%. Ultimately, understanding how media investments are made across different channels is key to optimizing campaigns and maximizing revenue.

By leveraging the power of advertising technology to manage ad spend across the funnel, marketers are empowered to navigate the complexities of the new advertising landscape and shape the future of customer engagement.

Learn more about Brand Pulse.