The Pupil Becomes The Master: Five Things Mobile Advertising Can Teach Desktop Marketers

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Mobile companies understood mobile-specific strategies long before the widespread adoption of mobile devices and increased adoption of smartphones and tablets. With more than three years of experience and state of the art mobile expertise, there is a lot that can be learnt.

Fred Joseph, COO of S4M, offers some takeaways for planning and executing campaigns for the mobile era:

1. When it comes to creatives, keep it short and catchy

Some brands are used to creating long scenarios as used on desktop (i.e. a 25 second video). However, what we’ve learnt from the mobile user experience is that users have short attention spans. Very short. The shorter and the stronger the message, the more likely a user will be engaged – and bearing in mind that our attention spans have dropped from 12 seconds (in 2000) to 8 seconds (2015) according to a survey conducted last year by Microsoft you really need to make every decisecond count!

Keep things short and sweet and move away from disruptive banner ads that have a tendency to distract users in a negative way rather than enhancing their mobile experience. See a recent example by Adidas here: Adidas ‘Superstar’

Smart marketers need to think more along the lines of immersive augmented app experiences, where they are giving something enhancing to consumers.

For example, this Christmas, S4M’s in-house team created a 3D cube interactive format for mobile devices (the cube is interactive on desktop by clicking and dragging the cube: on mobile it’s tactile) which was used as a holiday greeting for their clients, a format that is only interactive when viewed in a mobile browser.

2. Location is the new cookie

Geo-fencing and geolocation are key to targeting the right individual due to the intimate and individual nature of the smartphone. They allow for a clearer understanding of user behavior by following the entire customer journey. There’s also the benefit of being able to measure mobile investments and mobile store campaigns enable the measurement of direct ROIs. Geolocation can also deliver personalized advertising scenarios and transform ads to a service. For example, presenting a store locator or helping users locate the nearest point of sale can prove an extremely helpful service. There’s no imitating users or delivering irrelevant ads when efficiently dealing with location data.

A great example of this is the Adidas mobile-to-store campaign. The goal of the campaign was to drive sales to Adidas brick and mortar stores, assign a value for mobile in store-conversions and prove that mobile brings incremental value to the business. They pursued this by leveraging location extensions in the search ads, which meant users were directed to the store locator page and thus boost in-store traffic. They then pulled pertinent information from the Adidas retail stores, plus relevant industry data and developed a unique way to report an applied conversion rate. The results proved that mobile ROI brought a 680% incremental increase in ROI and a 20% conversion rate from mobile store locator to in-store visits. For desktop marketers, location is one of the biggest considerations to start making when planning a campaign.

3. The power of now

Users increasingly expect to get what they want in the immediate context and in their exact moment of need. There is a huge battle waging for a customer’s attention and it’s being battled out in ‘mobile moments’ (anytime that a user pulls out their device). The power of immediacy must be harnessed and understood properly by marketers, who need to make sure their customers can get what they want in that precious mobile moment.

A great example of this is played out in how we search. Google processes an average of over 40,000 search queries every second, or 3.5 billion searches per day…or putting it into a wider context that’s a staggering 1.2 trillion searches per year (Google search states here).

This recent post from Think with Google discusses the idea of the “micro-moment” (or mobile moment), the small everyday moments in life that prompt us to search the web with an intention of acting immediately.

Image Source

A few examples of micro-moments:

• Your juicer just broke. You need to search to find a new one, or research the best or most economical ones currently available.
• You just watched a news report about the snowfall in New York. You search to find out what you can do to help.
• You see a product you’re thinking about buying in a store. You search to find out if you can get a better price or find a better option.
• Your child wants to play in a park but it’s pouring with rain. You search online to find out where to go.

Each moment where a customer is engaged with their mobile device provides an opportunity to impress or disappoint.

Fail to deliver timely ads and not only do marketers risk losing out on immediate sales but on a longer term they also risk their brand equity and being shut out by consumers irked by invasive messages that would otherwise have been useful had they been properly timed.

4. Cross-channel

When marketers truly understand their customer’s journey they can better adapt the channel mix taking into consideration multiple mobile devices. Companies need to ensure that their marketing departments are set up to effectively orchestrate the cross-channel mix and that the ad can follow the user whatever mobile device they are using (be that a smartphone, tablet, watch or other wearable).

When designing a creative that’s headed cross-channel, check that it works across devices (iOS to android to desktop) and that any calls to action are integrated and flow across the campaign.

For example, when you create a video ad on desktop, it can’t be used on smartphones as it won’t play and deliver the same way. The same applies for smartphones to tablets. This means that not only does a marketing strategy need to be mobile-dedicated, the creatives need to be device-specific too.

Marketers also need to take into consideration the cross-channel operating systems (OS) between iOS devices and Android devices. Never assume that just because a customer has a MacBook that they’re also using an iPhone – increasingly customers make frequent daily journeys between iOS and Android devices so creatives that play out well on both will reach the customer whatever their OS of choice is. The brands that follow this journey with ease will reap rewards.

5. Don’t hide from the mobile world

Desktop marketers need to bear in mind that desktop users are also mobile users. Even if the user started and ended their journey on a desktop, there will likely have been mobile device usage along the way. This doesn’t mean that a desktop strategy will suffice for a mobile advertising campaign, however.

Digital strategy campaigns need to contain a mobile-specific strategy. With the increasing adoption of wearables, mobile devices are not going away; in fact, more are being added to the mix. The brands that are already responding to this explosion are the early adopters who will win the trust of consumers. They will be respected rather than reviled by users as their content will be relevant, useful and timely.

Conclusion

The companies that will excel with marketing strategies that truly reach their customer with the right message, well presented, executed at the right time and in the right context will doubtless win the trust and respect of the consumer while increasing sales and customer retention in a way that is second to none.

Mobile marketers are now adopting strategies that include such a powerful mix of consumer considerations to capture that small “mobile moment” and the desktop marketers who embrace these new power tools will similarly reap rewards. The pupil has certainly become the master!

Here Is A Quick Explanation Of How A Demand-Side Platform, Or DSP, Works

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A demand-side platform is a company that provides technology for media buyers to purchase ad placements, typically via bids in ad exchanges' real-time auctions. Simply, a DSP is a computer-based platform that automates media buying across multiple sources.

In the world of digital, the term "buying" has been replaced by "demand". Its inverse is "supply" so publishers and media owners are now considered "supply side." In a DSP, data are treated like media in that it is layered across the buy and becomes just another part of the cost.

DSPs do not own, purchase, represent or resell inventory from publishers, but connect to an ad exchange or a Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) so that publishers can sell inventory themselves. An SSP is a DSP, but from the publisher or content producer's perspective, so it is a technology platform that automates the selling of ad impressions for publishers and media owners.

An SSP typically might include capabilities like Real Time Bidding (the dynamic process of buying and selling impressions instantaneously in which the highest bidder "wins" the right to place a display ad while the audience attributes are fixed in real time), yield management and the appending of audience attributes.

Yield management, or yield optimization, from a publisher perspective, is the process of figuring out how much your impressions are worth and how can you manage the flow of inventory to make the most money? SSPs look at each impression available on a web publisher's site and then match the impression with an available ad from an ad network or exchange. Typically this has been done as an assessment of remnant inventory, but could be applied to all inventory. Certain DSPs can also be channel specific, just for video or mobile ads.

Companies in the DSP space include Google's DoubleClick Bid Manager and Invite Media, DataXU, MediaMath, X+1 and Turn. Companies providing SSP technology include AOL, AppNexus, Google, OpenX, PubMatic, The Rubicon Project and Right Media.

Martech Landscape: What Is An Ad Exchange?

marketingland.com

How do ad exchanges work, and do they differ from ad networks or supply-side platforms?

Billions of dollars are transacted on digital ad exchanges annually. Ad exchanges make it possible for advertisers, agencies and ad networks (You can read more about ad networks here) to buy digital ads across a number of publisher sites in automated auctions. Just about every type of digital ad format can now be bought and sold on an exchange, including display, video and native ads on both desktop and mobile. In this installment of Marketing Land’s MarTech Landscape Series, we aim to cut through the jargon and explain what ad exchanges are and how they work.

How Do Ad Exchanges Work?

On an ad exchange, thousands of publishers can make unsold ad space inventory available for advertisers to bid on automatically — as opposed to traditional one-on-one sales negotiations. The buying and selling happens programmatically, which is mostly a fancy term for automatically (Check out our primer on programmatic), between software platforms.

Advertisers and agencies typically connect to an ad exchange using what is called a demand side platform (DSP) — MediaMath, Turn, DataXu and AppNexus are some of the big DSPs. Ad networks also often buy impressions on ad exchanges, then mark them up and resell the impressions to buyers on the networks. Publishers typically make impressions available on an exchange through a supply-side platform (SSP). We’ll get to more on SSPs in a bit.

On ad exchanges, advertisers can target audiences — groups of users that exhibit certain browsing behaviors or fit specific demographic and interest profiles of their customers — across a large set of publishers. At the moment a user reaches a page on a website or in an app, an ad impression on the page can come up for auction on the exchange. The buyer’s bidding platform can analyze data from multiple sources — the user’s cookies or mobile identifier, data from the publisher, demographic and purchasing behavior from third-party data vendors or a buyer’s own data — to figure out whether to bid on the impression and how much to bid.

Open Exchanges and Private Marketplaces

You may have heard the term “open exchange.” This just means that nearly any buying system can access and bid on the inventory available on the exchange; it’s open to all buyers. Open exchanges differ from ad networks in this way, and ad exchanges are typically more transparent than ad networks because buyers can see the market price of an impression.

Whereas open exchanges came about to provide more transparency to the bidding environment than ad networks offered, private marketplaces are sort of a hybrid of both — bidding transparency with control over who the buyers and sellers are.

Advertisers and agencies, nervous about fraud in open exchanges (with good cause), often want to be choosier about where their ads appear. Likewise, publishers often want more control over which buyers get access to their inventory. So most open exchanges now offer what are called private marketplaces or private exchanges.

Private marketplaces are still automated bidding environments, but publishers can invite preferred advertisers or an agency to a private pool of impressions. Publishers can also set pricing floors for inventory sold on private marketplaces. Typically, the inventory made available on private marketplaces is also considered higher quality than what the publishers will make available on open exchanges.

Supply-Side Platforms and Ad Exchanges: Are They The Same Thing?

Publishers use supply-side platforms (SSPs) to make inventory available for programmatic buying, and multiple publishers can plug into an SSP. Multiple sellers on one platform sounds pretty much like an ad exchange, right? The lines between the two are blurring as the technology has advanced and SSPs have attracted a critical mass of publishers.

In addition to facilitating ad transactions, however, SSPs are designed to connect to multiple ad exchanges, ad networks or any combination of open exchanges and private marketplaces and offer tools designed specifically for publishers to optimize their sales efforts and improve fill rates (sell more ads) at the highest CPMs.

More and more companies operate what are essentially ad exchange-SSP hybrids. And going a step further, there are now a growing number of companies that offer a “full stack” of ad tech with products including for sellers to auction impressions and buyers to bid on those impressions. Rubicon Project, DoubleClick and ONE by AOL are among the examples of companies that offer products for both parties.

What Are Some Of The Major Ad Exchanges?

Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) is the big one. Verizon-owned AOL operates exchange-SSP hybrids for display and video called ONE by AOL: Display and ONE by AOL: Video. The Rubicon Project, AppNexus, PubMatic and OpenX are among some of the biggest independent exchanges.

Search vs. Display Advertising in 2016

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Beginners and seasoned advertisers alike often struggle with the question of whether to use search ads, display ads, or both. There are several different factors to take into consideration when deciding which type of ad is right for you. Whether you’re just starting your digital advertising efforts or have years of experience but are still looking for the right direction when it comes to search vs. display ads – this article will help.

Here is a look at four different factors that can help you decide if search or display ads are better for your PPC goals. Plus, I’ll throw in a bonus with one way that you can combine both for optimal results.

1. Search Volume

The first big difference between the two types of ads is that display ads use a push approach, while search ads use a pull approach. In other words, people who come across your search ads are already looking for your product, while people usually see display ads because they were targeted after watching a video, reading emails, or browsing the web. Knowing the difference between these two approaches can help you quickly determine the right strategy based on your brand or product/service awareness.

To help determine just how familiar searchers are with your brand or products, you can use the AdWords Keyword Planner tool and Google Trends to determine search volume. If your brand or the products you sell have a good amount of search volume, then it’s a good idea to start out with a search advertising campaign. On the other hand, if there isn’t much volume, you might benefit more from creating display ads that will ultimately help build awareness of your brand and products. Below you can see keyword ideas based around “ppc services” along with search volume and keyword competition.

2. Brand Awareness

If you are a new company or are selling a product or service that people are unaware of, you may want to start by focusing on branding with your display ads. The Google Display Network is a great way to get in front of potential customers who don’t know your brand yet.

To use a real life example, the display network is almost like advertising at a sports arena. There are sponsorships and banners all over the arena, yet everyone is focused on the game. This is still a good investment for advertisers, however, as they know their audience and can relate their brand or ads to their sporting experience, making those ads extremely relevant to the target audience.

This is a similar approach to display advertising – even though people who see display ads are usually doing something else online, you can target a specific audience so they’ll pay attention to your ads, making your investment worthwhile. Display ads allow you to target people based on demographic or what keywords are in the content they are reading.

In addition, if you know the specific sites your audience spends time on, you can target those as well by bidding on specific sites on the display network.  Keep in mind that just like someone at a sporting event may not buy a product right away, the audience you’re targeting might not make a purchase immediately. However, when they are in the market for your product or service, they’ll be more likely to remember your brand.

3. Limited Budget

The next way to determine your strategy is by looking at your budget. How big is it? Where is there room to grow based on data?

If your budget is limited, search ads are probably the best option to start with. Building your brand with display ads will usually take a much larger budget and will not likely have a positive ROI. This is because search ads typically have higher conversion rates, and will justify an increase in budget. Once you can rationalize spending a larger budget, you can then decide whether to put those extra funds into your successful search campaign or expand to the display network.

4. Urgent Services

If you consider your business an “urgent” service, it’s probably a good idea to start with search ads. An “urgent” service can include a wide array of companies, such as locksmiths, tow trucks, taxis, DUI lawyers, and plumbers. These are services that someone is not normally going to pay for if they are reading the news and happen to see your display ad. However, when someone gets locked out of their house or their car breaks down, they are likely to search for a service to help them immediately.

Another consideration with “urgent” services – remember that these are most likely going to be searched for on a mobile device. That means if you have a business with an “urgent” service, you should be advertising on mobile. If you’re ready to take it to the next step for these types of services, try using a call extension to help the searcher convert quicker and give you their business. Below is an example of call extensions when searching for “tow truck” on a mobile device. The searcher can click the Call button in red and it directly calls the advertiser.

A Combination of Search AND Display PPC Strategies

The last way to pick between search vs. display advertising in 2016 is by doing both at the same time and see what works. The above factors still remain but for a lot of businesses, both work. I recommend doing this by running two separate campaigns, one on the search network, the other on the display network. Mixing the two campaigns can be a hassle to view metrics, and more importantly optimize. When you separate your campaigns, you can see metrics side by side. This will allow you to make a better decision on to which one to move forward on, and maybe that means you consider both. Below is an example of running a search and display campaign at the same time. As you can see, it is easy to see high level metrics from the campaign view. You can then easily go deeper to ad groups and keywords to optimize without have to differentiate which are from the search or display campaign.

What should you choose?

In my expert opinion, I would answer the question “should I use search or display advertising in 2016?” with a simple answer: it depends. As I outlined above, there are several factors that should go into you making that decision so make sure you go through each consideration area before diving into a choice.

With Canvas, Facebook Ads Can Now Take Over Your Entire Phone

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Facebook released a new ad product called Canvas that lets advertisers create a full-screen ad on the mobile News Feed.Wendy’s wants to shove a cheeseburger in your face, virtually. Facebook handed over the tools to the fast-food chain with a new advertising option called “Canvas,” which opened to all advertisers Thursday.The new ad unit provides a full-screen experience for advertisers within the News Feed on mobile. The ad appears as a traditional post on Facebook, but once users click, their screens will be taken over with a full-screen display ad. The ads can feature still images, text, videos and call-to-action buttons.“We’ve only built the shelf. What’s more exciting to me is what is going to happen when this gets into the hands of the creators," Jessica Watson, the product design manager, said at the global launch event of Canvas in Facebook’s New York headquarters. Wendy’s was one of several advertisers who built hundreds of Canvas ads for Facebook through its beta tests. The company was joined by Universal Pictures, BMW and Burberry. In January, Facebook Vice President of Global Marketing Carolyn Everson shared Target’s work on the product during the holiday season at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.Facebook will be selling these ads on both a cost-per-thousand basis, like TV, for brand advertisers, as well as cost-per-click, a metric used by online advertisers looking to generate click-throughs or conversions. The new units are certain to boost Facebook’s mobile ads, which now account for 80 percent of the social network’s revenue.Facebook revenue — almost entirely from ads — rose 52 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015 to $5.6 billion, up from $3.6 billion a year ago.The new mobile takeover ads will give advertisers a bigger canvas and more impact on mobile devices. Wendy’s ad provided a glimpse at the layers of its cheeseburger. It was “a burger’s journey,” Brandon Rhoten, Wendy’s, vice president of advertising, said at the launch event.Rhoten said the company was impressed by the ability Canvas gave it to tell a story but also to try direct sales. Unlike a clothing retailer, Wendy’s does not sell its main products online. Yet, in its Canvas ad, Wendy’s included a link to its store locator. The average view time of Wendy’s cheeseburger ad was 65 seconds and 2.9 percent of viewers clicked through to the store locator.Facebook's new ads can be built purely with Facebook's tools, the company announced Thursday.PHOTO: FACEBOOKFacebook users can react to Canvas ads by using the “like” button — and the five new reactions — as well as by commenting and sharing just like they can with other ads on the social network.Full-screen mobile ads in a vertical format have gained traction in part from a push by popular mobile storytelling app Snapchat. Neither Facebook’s Canvas nor Snapchat’s ads are the traditional pop-up. Instead, they can be interactive.“Facebook’s Canvas app can be great for advertisers with more complicated offerings or a need for more involved storytelling. It’s also very helpful if brands are trying to avoid building microsites,” Andy Amendola, director of digital strategy at ad agency The Community, wrote in an email. “I’m looking forward to having more space to play creatively while keeping the engagement within the Facebook experience.”Canvas is now open for anyone in the creative community. The system requires no coding or software and works on Android and iOS. “We wanted to make a tool so even smaller advertisers could use it, just like Madison Avenue,” Paresh Rajwat, product lead for News Feed ads at Facebook, said at the launch event. Facebook declined to provide the exact breakdown of prices. It does not charge based on components, so even the most data-heavy experiences are available to any advertiser. The same product is available to all markets overseas. The Facebook team has noticed advertisers have opted to use less video for slower connections.

In App Ads Leaking Personal Data To App Developers

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A new Georgia Tech study has found that in app ads are leaking users personal data to the developers of the mobile app itself. This could potentially give data miners a way to mine personal information by simply developing a free app with in app ads. Georgia Tech conducted the study on 200 users using a custom-built Android app and testing the Google Ad network. Due to “leakage” between the ad network and the app developers software, the app developer could gain access to personal data.

Researchers found that 73 percent of ad impressions for 92 percent of users are correctly aligned with their demographic profiles. Researchers also found that, based on ads shown, a mobile app developer could learn a user’s:

• gender with 75 percent accuracy,
• parental status with 66 percent accuracy,
• age group with 54 percent accuracy, and
• could also predict income, political affiliation, marital status, with higher accuracy than random guesses.

On desktop advertising is protected by the Same Origin Policy but according to Georgia Tech the same rules do not apply to mobile app developers.

“People use their smartphones now for online dating, banking, and social media every day,” said Wenke Lee, professor of computer science and co-director of the Institute for Information Security & Privacy at Georgia Tech. “Mobile devices are intimate to users, so safeguarding personal information from malicious parties is more important than ever.”

Georgia Tech has contacted Google about the mobile in app ad leakage issue and has given the company its research and findings.

“Free smart phone apps are not really free,” says Wei Meng, lead researcher and a graduate student studying computer science. “Apps — especially malicious apps — can be used to collect potentially sensitive information about someone simply by hosting ads in the app and observing what is received by a user. Mobile, personalized in-app ads absolutely present a new privacy threat.”

Has Programmatic Advertising killed creativity in marketing?

econsultancy.com

Programmatic advertising is currently one of the most talked about channels in digital marketing. 

Econsultancy founder Ashley Friedlein mentioned it several times while discussing his top digital trends for 2016.

It has become a hot topic as, although there’s a general sense that it’s an effective marketing channel and one worth investing in, many in the industry also struggle to understand how it works.

And it’s also commonly criticised for relying too heavily on automation, thus removing the creative element from marketing campaigns.

To see whether this is the case, we spoke to two seasoned digital experts, namely:

• Clare Deloford, Digital Development Associate Director at ‎Starcom MediaVest Group
• Jan Mikulin, Global Head of Digital Marketing at Grayling

You can watch their answers below, or read a brief summary of what they had to say.

And to learn more about programmatic advertising, come along to our Creative Programmatic event in London next week.

These videos were created in partnership with Wooshii and are the first in a series of interviews we’ve carried out with senior digital marketers from various agencies and brands.

Now, on with the show...

People often accuse programmatic of killing creativity. Do you agree with this point of view?

Clare and Jan both strongly disagreed with the suggestion that programmatic kills creativity.

According to Jan, it’s incumbent upon marketers to think about how the technology can enable them to be more creative.

The technology has a momentum around it which in turn creates a need and a desire for more creativity.

Clare said that the ability to run targeted, personalised ads actually encouraged greater creativity. 

How do you think programmatic will impact the role of marketing professionals?

Clare said that programmatic has been quite difficult for marketers to understand, which creates fear and apprehension, however people now realise that it’s a very important technology.

And by automating the buying process, marketers will have more time to invest in content creation and richer experiences which are really important for every brand.

Jan suggested that programmatic has seen a similar cycle to other advancements in advertising and communications.

There was initially a flurry to understand how it worked, then marketers gradually got to grips with it, now we're beginning to use it as a standard operating procedure, and that process will start again soon when a new marketing technology appears.

How has programmatic affected the relationship between agencies & clients? Are there misgivings over transparency?

Another major criticism of programmatic is that the process isn’t transparent, which can lead to mistrust between agencies and their clients.

Jan said that things will only turn sour if the agency had a poor relationship with their clients in the first place and wasn’t being upfront and honest.

However, he also referenced an IAB report which shows that only 45% of people who use programmatic in agencies actually understand the technology and the concept behind it.

That lack of knowledge can potentially impact the entire industry in terms of trust and failure to generate ROI.

Clare said that Starcom MediaVest tries to educate its clients to ensure everyone understands how the technology works.

For example, it has an online tool where clients can run a dummy campaign and take a look “under the hood”.

Marketers are more comfortable with programmatic once they see how it works.

9 digital marketing rules we need to establish

imediaconnection.com

One truism I've learned in assessing and developing people in the workplace is that people's greatest strengths are almost always their greatest weaknesses. Perfectionists, debaters, influencers, analyzers, you name it. People's greatest strengths are almost always too strong. Digital marketers are no different. Rather than continuing to be plagued by these weaknesses masquerading as strengths, let's establish nine rules in digital marketing to save us from ourselves.

We will not accept last click/touch attribution

We come in contact with a number of marketers and agencies who want to use last touch to measure conversions. We know this isn't right, so we ran research internally across billions of impressions to determine if last touch had any merit. What we found is that for every 100 signals provided by last touch, two -- yes, two -- are directionally accurate in actually driving a better outcome for the marketer. This isn't to say that optimizing to last touch won't make the campaign appear better, but it won't improve your ROAS much, if at all.

Because every ad server and site analytics platform is built on last touch or click, it's what marketers use. To drive real performance using online media, though, a multi-dimensional attribution model is required. But this doesn't mean a multi-six-figure study. Much simpler models can be built in-house or through your vendors and partners. However, it takes a commitment and more effort than just believing what the ad server says. With a bar of "2 out of 100," raising it is rather easy.

We will not freak out at every sensationalist headline

If we do one thing well as an industry, it's write sensationalist headlines that send every marketer (and, in turn, agency and vendor) into scramble mode. "56 percent of all ads are never seen by a human!" "$7.2 billion will be lost to fraud in 2016!" Of course companies use these headlines the way a teenage boy uses a horror movie on a date: to get marketers to jump into their arms for safety.

There are two reasons this is such a problem. The first is that these fire drills almost always cause the marketer and agency to stop the work they're doing on something important to address this perceived urgent matter. The second is that a quick look at the calculations or data behind the stories always show why the story is more hype than substance. As smart marketers we should not seek to be first to address every potential problem, but instead to understand the full scope of new information and prioritize it appropriately.

We will expect digital to be measurable, not magical

Each channel within a media plan should be measured to its fullest, but none should be expected to have super powers. Let's take a local business that uses TV advertising. When considering digital media these local businesses often ask, "Will I know exactly how many sales I make from digital?" It depends on what the business sells and the digital media tracking available. That said, there is absolutely no way the TV can measure this. While it's easy to think this is a local/small business problem, that's unfortunately not the case. There are many Fortune 500 marketers who still want more provable metrics from digital despite plenty of proof consumers spend as much or more time with digital than they do broadcast media.

We will focus on important metrics, not all metrics

It's 2016, and clients who provide us with specific meaningful KPIs before a campaign launches still lament a low CTR a few weeks into a campaign. In these situations it was never part of the pre-campaign discussions, and often it was even agreed that CTR would not be something measured at all. Just because it's measurable doesn't mean we should make it better.

This is a common example, but similar occurrences happen across a variety of metrics: a branding campaign launched only for the marketer to ask how much revenue has been driven, for example, or a direct response campaign launched only for the marketer to question why the campaign isn't generating email sign-ups. We've looked at our data internally and often see different metrics such as these mentioned here containing opposing characteristics for optimization purposes. This is to say that optimizing to one would directly lead to harming the ability to achieve the other. Think through the metrics before a campaign launches, both to know what should be optimized and what shouldn't.

We will look at all channels -- digital and otherwise -- as additive and not competitive

We've spoken with countless clients who are doing TV and paid search, but won't do display because "it never performs as well as paid search." This touches on a few of the rules we hoped to establish earlier in this discussion (last touch, magic versus measured), but there is another dimension as well. All media in the marketplace work together additively to create a customer for a brand. Individual media vehicles may work better than one another due to how well each is suited to the target audience. One channel may be more efficient for a brand than another given the state of the brand in the market and where consumers are getting stuck in the purchase process. If advertising targets the right audience in a channel that makes sense for that product and category, no one channel is "better" than another. They're different, serving different purposes throughout the purchase funnel, each catalyzing the other and augmenting results.

If the cost per sale in paid search is $8 and the cost per sale in display is $30, the cost per sale is $38 (assuming no other media are running.) It's not "sometimes $8 and sometimes $30."

Foundation first

We are not cats, and marketing is not a laser pointer. Yet marketing's shiny objects consistently distract us from our objectives and cause poorer performance than could have been achieved with the same budget.

Imagine a client who just discovers a new gaming app on their phone. They then see several other people playing that same game -- at the grocery store, on a plane, and at work. The marketer then wonders why that app isn't in their media mix. After all, it's a new game and they could be first! It's then left to the rest of the marketing team or the agency to remind the marketer that there are foundational elements of the marketing mix that aren't yet paid for: more robust SEO, an improved site experience, or a DMP installation. Sure, picking out a refrigerator for a brand new house is more exciting than approving blueprints, but handling foundational items first leads to achieving goals more quickly.

Medium + message + data

Data is an added component to a successful campaign over the traditional media "medium + message" equation. By being additive, it is now included in the foundation with the other two. While identifying and optimizing to the right data points around an audience is important, creative is a forgotten but crucial element of campaign success. Hours are spent planning and understanding digital media, but often a banner gets thrown together at the last second, or a 30-second video made for TV is used for an online video campaign. Several studies have been done showing the power of good creative in online media, and nearly every time that creative was developed specifically for the online medium.

Stop the pricing beat-down

A large agency with a large brand recently put out an RFP demanding rate reductions in its display and video. Having worked agency-side, I know how this goes. There weren't a lot of innovative ideas in the media plan this year, so the team needs some good ideas to go into annual meetings. Savings never upset anyone, and digital vendors are taking buyers to jeans and sunglasses parties all the time. They can afford the haircut!

In 2013, it was common for the buy-side of the industry to believe "there is just more quality supply than quality demand." We now know this isn't true. Between viewability, fraud, and contextual quality, quality supply is limited. This is causing the price of desirable inventory to go up because we can now differentiate it from the undesirable inventory.

Between inventory costs going up and the ANA-led rebate crackdown, marketers are feeling more worked over than ever. I understand this feeling, but reacting by demanding better pricing (in media or in an agency's fees) will have the exact opposite effect the marketer desires. Paying an agency less will get that marketer less experienced staff on their business or longer fill times on open positions. Paying less for inventory is not going to stress a DSP or SSP's margins; it will just net the marketer lower quality inventory. Marketers should focus first, next, and last on value, or what the marketer gets in return for what they're spending.

We will stop obsessing over perfectly researched and planned budgets

The reality is that in digital, success can be achieved with multiple budget levels. There are general guidelines though, and a nationally targeted $5,000 pre-roll campaign at $25 CPMs won't likely make any real impact. But the general ability to measure and optimize so many elements of a digital campaign means results can be better achieved through real-time optimization. Once a success threshold is achieved, it's simply a matter of scaling that strategy until there is no more inventory/audience, or the marketer hits diminishing returns. In other words, a marketer can plan the right reach and frequency all day, but if the results aren't happening, why spend the money? Plan for success, not a budget that needs to be spent.

So, what did we miss?

Surely there are more. Please contribute your thoughts below, and we can make this article the last we need for a while about ground rules to get on the same page when creating great digital marketing.