Striving for a better ROI in a difficult environment, media agencies are rising up to the challenge(s).
In a world that is consistently changing at a rapid pace, agencies playing a crucial role between the client and the consumer. They are evolving to remain capable of understanding the market’s new demands and ensuring the best ROI for their clients.
New tools. The past couple of years have been hard on the GCC. The region is undergoing a major structural change. It struggles to find a stronger, more sustainable economic model. Add to that the recent technical prowess that is changing the face of media, marketing and communication.
The head of Annalect, Raouf Ketani, says that some factors are supposed to help marketers achieve better ROI:
the explosion of collectable data
the plethora of marketing and ad technologies
the rise of machine learning algorithms
the multitude of analytics techniques
Instead, they are turning the worlds of advertising and marketing on their heads. “So many great new digital tools are available today to analyse, activate, optimise and measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. We also have widespread understanding of the use of the data we collect to drive marketing decisions and measure marketing ROI. However, just as data and technologies proliferate, the number of metrics and channels is also increasing substantially, to create an ever-
growing and complex environment,” he says.
Explosion of data. The deputy managing director at Mindshare UAE, Zahi Lawand, puts things in perspective: “It’s no longer about multiscreen but a plethora of screens and touchpoints. Each generates data and leaving valuable traces for experts and marketers to dissect and utilise. A study by IDC on data states that more than 90 per cent of the world’s existing 4.4 zettabytes of data has been created in the past few years and that the figure will rise to 44 zettabytes by 2020. Not to mention the 50 billion connected objects that will form the Internet of Things, the third wave of digital disruption – and many of these connected objects will be our clients’ products and brands. Furthermore, the acceleration and evolution of programmatic and data management tools are reshaping all conversations. Accordingly, picture the challenge to manage this wealth of data available and how to use all of this information to create robust ROI models. The race to data mining, automation and ROI is on and these three are interconnected; one leads to the other. Accordingly, if done right, [this will] open up many more opportunities to launch better and improved predictive models.”
Better collaboration. There have been breakthroughs, namely a true collaboration between both agency and client. “We managed to break the tides and create our own reality with many of our clients,” Lawand says. But this reality is no longer consistent or restricted to client, agency and publishers alone. “Nowadays, the conversation is happening with many stakeholders, such as data and tech experts, content specialists, connections planners, performance and biddable talents, all the way to trading and, similarly, with our clients. Consequently, it’s becoming difficult to bring all of the information into a meaningful story and showcase business impact and ROI,” he adds.
Of course, complexity and opportunity are two sides of the same coin here. Along with the challenge of understanding the tools and channels, while setting the right objectives with the right partners, come more transparency and efficiency, with a wealth of new occasions to get closer to the consumer and, eventually, get him to buy more. Ketani sums it up pretty simply: “The new directive to marketers today is clear: stay on top of this wave of fast-moving technological evolution, focus on the right metrics, or risk losing ground to more agile competitors.”
Causes and effects. The tools now have a direct impact on the marketing strategy itself. They force marketers and agencies to work on numerous levels in parallel.
“When it comes to different ROI models, it’s quite an extensive list, but the end result is the same: is my marketing plan impacting the business positively? By how much? What’s the role of each channel or tactic? What’s my future plan?” asks Lawand. “To identify this, you need to separate the effect of many parts, which are constantly moving and changing, starting from the market condition and the economy, all the way to investments. Models such as media mix modelling and attribution tools are critical in this day and age to be able to answer these questions.”
What metrics? The choice of the right metrics is now as important as anything else. Picking the right metric is no easy feat. With a variety of objectives comes not only a variety of channels but a variety of metrics as well.
The most common ones are:
Ratings
GRPs
CPP
Reach
CPL
CPV
CTR
CPA
CPM
CPC
Web engagement
Social engagement and sentiment
Ad conversions
The best metrics to measure the efficiency of marketing campaigns and, ultimately, ROI, should always depend on the right combination of technology, analytics and true organisational business goals. Ketani adds that there is no standard set of metrics; it really does depend on the campaign and business objectives. Every strategy must use a combination of metrics from three distinct categories: reach and traffic generation/quality of traffic (for example, in social media, sentiment analysis–driven metrics, such as satisfaction ratings, quality of engagement over time and engagement rates are necessary to complement the overall campaign analysis); conversion (conversion rate, cost per lead, cost per engagement, etc.); revenue (ROI to help identify which marketing channels are driving sales, or the cost to acquire a customer, etc.).
Where to start? According to the business integration director at Starcom, Pankaj Paragani: “One must be focused on metrics that define success. To have good measurement metrics in place, we must ensure that:
the metrics set up before the campaign starts
the investment is focused on channels that are measurable
the metric(s) directly impact(s) the KPI we’re trying to measure
Align metrics and objectives. “The best metric is one that comes closest to a business impact indicator. Wherever possible, it should be sales/acquisitions/bookings. Otherwise, [it should be] a metric closest to the actual sale that has a high correlation (sign-ups, leads, etc.). In general, we try to steer clients away from using metrics such as impression volumes, CTR, etc.. In today’s digital landscape, they don’t have an impact on the final outcome,” says Paragani. Metrics will prove useful if and only if they are properly aligned with the campaign’s objectives and have clear, measurable business objectives. “The best metrics are entirely dependent on the objectives of any given campaign. The complexity of the media landscape, with its different advertising platforms and consumer behaviours, makes it difficult to define any set of metrics as ‘the best’. Calculating ROI differs between agencies and there are various ways to obtain accurate ROI calculations,” says Amplifi’s head of trading – UAE, Abdallah Bibi.
Use research. Setting the objective of any given work requires good consumer insights. This is why research plays a key role. “We live in a convergent world. So, how do we plan for this when there are so many different data sources?” asks Bibi. “Using Dentsu Aegis’ bespoke consumer research – the consumer connection system – we place the consumer at the heart of our planning and measure their behaviour across bought, owned and earned channels across every stage of the consumer journey and across different category mindsets. With this robust base, we can help clients set objectives for their upcoming media campaigns. With that in mind, a preferential metric is weighted based on its relation to the set objectives. Once these objectives are selected and ranked, we commit on delivering them.”
Different clients, different metrics. For example, performance clients – airlines, banks, e-commerce players, etc. – measure their success by looking at Cost Per Acquisition and comparing this to historical benchmarks. Other clients, such as FMCGs, measure success by studying the impact of a campaign on brand health indicators – not generic ones like brand awareness, ad awareness, etc., but by measuring more specific indicators that signal an intent to purchase, explains Paragani.
Bibi adds that a car launch would weigh the engagement and reach more than hard sales for an airlines promo. He says: “In our experience, brand campaigns (focusing on reputation and recognition of a brand) rely on reach, engagement and positive sentiment.”
Track performance, stock data. Ketani adds: “To help track every campaign and, ultimately, the effectiveness of each channel, every campaign must include a tracking parameter that allows the analytics platform to gather and organise data from all channels. Once all channels are tracked and quantifiable, the marketer can focus on the right metrics. It boils down to this: collect all data, but use metrics that matter (particularly to the CEO and CFO).”
Then what? What to do with this information? Ketani notes that we are only halfway there. “Cloud storage facilities and data management platforms are important. The former allows you to store extremely large amounts of data with a fully elastic storage facility – where you only pay for what you use. The latter is particularly significant as it provides a single view of a user across all channels by integrating different data sets (including third-party data). However, this only takes you halfway,” he says.
Analyse it. “You still need to make sense of and analyse this data, and take marketing decisions to increase ROI in your future campaigns. For this, we use various analytics techniques, such as econometrics, predictive analytics and regression modelling. This involves using statistics to examine and determine patterns in the data. This approach helps us measure the true effectiveness of our marketing campaigns, and enables us to continuously refine our audiences,” explains Ketani.
Use RTB. For many industry players, programmatic media buying, or real-time bidding (RTB), is an extremely efficient way to reach the right consumer with the right message, at the right place and the right time.
“With the introduction of programmatic in the past four years in our market, it has proven to be a highly efficient way of buying audiences as opposed to contexts. Extremely powerful
machines enable intelligent decision-making in real time, which has now become the backbone of the way we plan and invest. This has definitely defined newer currencies to measure success against KPIs set by all stakeholders. More meaningful data is powering the strategic output, which, in return, is providing demonstrable uplift in media performance and driving down costs,” says Bibi.
Ketani explains that RTB “helps you:
action the data you analysed and the insights you gathered
measure your marketing success
optimise your campaigns all in-real-time.
It does this by connecting and being part of your marketing technology stack. Programmatic is a true convergence of offline and online marketing success based on a one-true-consumer data view.”
Paragani agrees: “Across agencies, programmatic is increasingly proving to be a very efficient way of buying digital ad space for obvious reasons.” However, he warns: “It’s important that performance isn’t measured in silo, in order to ensure that de-duplication vs. other digital channels doesn’t become a major issue.”
Use CRM. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is also an important approach. “CRM and digital marketing have evolved significantly. One of the great marketing and advertising technology advancements in recent years is the ability to use CRM data in digital marketing channels,” explains Ketani. “This gives marketers the capability to use everything they know about their own customers to cross-sell, up-sell and find prospective lookalikes on digital display, search and social advertising channels. This also helps reduce ad spend wastage by targeting the right people with the right message, taking us from one-message-fits-all to true, digital audience-centric advertising.”
Maintain communication with clients. This only works if agencies and clients speak the same language and both understand all of the layers of today’s communication. As Lawand says, the capability is available. It’s a learning process that keeps on improving. “But it takes two to tango. If clients are not fully invested in this, it won’t go anywhere. It’s not a short process. It requires the agency and the client to partner, build the right model and KPIs, and keep on adapting as they move forward.”
Agility and continued cooperation are indeed crucial, as campaigns now have a life of their own and keep evolving while they’re live.
“The biggest challenge for us is to be able to implement a good process – both internally in the agency and externally with clients and vendors – that allows us to collect good-quality data. We subsequently work with the client to align on a data roadmap. Beyond this, once the campaigns go live, we need a partnership with the client. Then they share business performance data, so that we can understand the business impact and ROI, and take learnings and benchmarks for campaigns going forward,” says Paragani.
Don’t forget traditional media. Being focused on digital doesn’t mean that traditional media and techniques should be forgotten. “One effective way of combining measures for traditional media vs. more modern media channels is through modelling. But, in addition to using sales/acquisitions as the dependent variable, one can also model on a proxy variable, such as landing page visits, newsletter sign-ups, etc. This proxy KPI is a more direct indicator of media ROI and can help break down specific channel performance. Also, it is key to single out media performance, especially in sectors such as FMCG, where many factors besides media impact the final sale,” explains Paragani.
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