Bruce Biegel of The Winterberry Group recently gave a presentation introducing Outlook 2013: Data Driven Marketing, Today and Tomorrow, Act On reports. His report is packed with data about how various channels performed over the last year, set in a broad economic context.
Bruce Biegel of The Winterberry Group recently gave a presentation introducing “Outlook 2013: Data Driven Marketing, Today and Tomorrow,” Act On reports.
From Act On:
His report is packed with data about how various channels performed over the last year, set in a broad economic context. A few cherry-picked numbers: The US GDP grew slowly, ~2%; the S&P grew ~15%; unemployment fell below 8% for the first time since 2009. Advertising insert spend is down, direct mail is flat, and there’s a systematic shift to digital, which grew by 15.4%. Search still accounts for almost 50% of digital spend, with local demand growing, driven by increasing smartphone penetration.
In digital display advertising, marketers are shifting to audience targeting, primarily through real-time bidding solutions that leverage analytics, retargeting and 3rd party digital data (RTB is now ~10% of spend, up from 6% in 2011). No matter what type of marketing you’re doing, data should be driving your decisions.
Among the findings: Email spend continues to grow, despite open and click-through rates that fell to 2009 levels.
1. Marketers More Challenged Than Ever Before to Keep Up, Tap Into New Innovations
Keeping up with the pace of change is made difficult by factors including:
- Shifts in consumer media consumption outpace shift in spend
- Continuous innovation in digital media platforms and formats
- Organizational silos continue to fall amidst limited increases in staff; more cross-channel programs; new media shifts from test to roll-out
- Improving CTO-CMO collaboration as marketing and technology become increasingly integrated
2. Retail Marketing Transformation Accelerates, Targeting Connected, Convenience-Driven Shoppers
Retailers are paying attention to changing buyer behavior, and offering more ways to shop and buy.
- E-commerce continues to gain traction, but still accounts for only 7% of total retail spend
- M-commerce still in infancy, but grew 100% in 2012
- Local marketing for both national brands and SMBs gets increasingly digitized
- Investment growth focuses on joining “bricks to clicks”: Digital – POS integrations
3. The Next Chapter of Big Data: Integration, Implementation and the Rise of the Machines
Automated collection, integration and utilization of digital data
- Digital “sensors” grow in prominence (site tags, listening platforms, ad tracking solutions)
- Data platform implementations accelerate as companies move from planning to execution
- Digital data management improves as experience is gained in utilization, cost of collection vs. value of data
4. Attribution Requirements Turn Omnichannel, Remain a Pain Point
Omnichannel integrated marketing grows, making attribution and measurement more critical
- Most marketers still using inaccurate first- or last-click attribution models
- Integrated campaign delivery platforms will make response data easier to capture, assess and model
- Gaps in aligning digital and offline media measurement slowly close
- Amplified demand for analytics talent leads to more outsourcing
5. Data Privacy, Governance Become Top-of-Mind for Marketers and Legislators Alike
Demand for internal marketing data governance (privacy, security, best practices) to grow along with legislative focus
- Resolution of fiscal cliff frees legislative attention
- Marketing data governance seeks consistency across geographies; safe harbor as default without global alignment
- DMA & DAA lead more active response to maintain a predominantly self-regulatory environment
6. The Mobile/Social/Local Convergence Dominates New Investment and Priorities
Focus on customer recognition, location-based services and targeting grows, driven by integration of devices with geography, intent and time of day:
- Marketers focus on native local app ecosystems and improving mobile ad formats
- Intersection of m-commerce and shopper marketing
- Lack of access to device UIDs, cookies, standards, staff training and regulatory uncertainty inhibit growth
7. The Maturation and Immaturity of Social Media
Listening is easy, consumers keep shifting preferences, marketing activation platforms improve, agencies and marketers gain experience
- More than 50% of companies plan to increase social’s share of the marketing budget
- Social display, driven by programmatic buying and rich streams of social intent data (both declared and inferred), gains largest share of spend
- Social data models begin to provide a complex portrait of consumers’ social behavior, matched to traditional data attributes for insight/targeting
- ROI still a challenge
8. The Evolution of TV Engagement
With device proliferation, consumers utilize secondary screens while watching TV, creating opportunities for deeper marketing engagement
- What: Incentivized advertising, real-time social interactions during live events, delivery of rich, related content across screens
- How: Set-top box data, made non-PII and integrated with third-party digital delivery platforms; integration apps proliferate
- When: More tests in ’13; Roll-out requires deeper tablet/smartphone penetration, TV provider coverage and measurement
9. Data and Technology Combine to Enable Omnichannel Programmatic Marketing
- The ability to use automated, business rules-driven, integrated campaign execution platforms becomes more accessible to marketers
- Simplified user interfaces and faster data integration enable more “triggered” execution across channels
- Improved delivery of optimized creative and content, with greater variety and cost-effectiveness in versioning
10. Consolidation of Marketing Technology Into Scaled Stacks
VC investment and M&A outlook moderate-to-strong, buoyed by a low-interest, steady-growth, globalizing, highly fragmented market
- Ad tech shakeout coming as large stacks fill in missing pieces, causing to prices fall for attribution, optimization
- Digital agencies of all flavors – buying talent, clients
- Social media platforms, services – scale
Interested in how to get started with data-driven marketing? Download Act-On’s Introduction to Integrated Marketing: Getting Started with Marketing Measurement and learn how to choose, plan and execute a straightforward, useful set of metrics.