What are the Critical Factors Reshaping Advertising Strategies?
As consumers increasingly use mobile devices for shopping, social interactions, and entertainment, campaigns must adapt to these new patterns to seamlessly integrate with the consumers day, explains Oussama Yousfi, Regional Director, Middle East & Africa at Adwake.
Two pivotal factors have dramatically reshaped how modern advertising impacts brand performance: the rise of mobile-centric consumer behaviour, and the growing demand for data protection and data navigation.
First, the ubiquity of smartphones has transformed consumer habits, with individuals increasingly turning to their mobile devices for shopping, social interactions, and entertainment. This shift requires brands to create agile, mobile-optimised campaigns that meet consumers where they are, leveraging personalised content to capture attention and drive engagement.
“Changing consumer behaviours can significantly impact the performance of mobile marketing campaigns. As consumers increasingly use mobile devices for shopping, social interactions, and entertainment, campaigns must adapt to these new patterns to remain effective,” adds Oussama Yousfi, Regional Director, Middle East & Africa at Adwake.
Second, the intricacies of data navigation have become a critical consideration. As consumers become more privacy conscious, advertisers must balance transparency and consent while utilising data from diverse sources to refine targeting strategies.
This evolution has also spurred advancements in ad measurement tools, enabling more precise tracking of campaign performance and consumer interactions.
How are ad measurement metrics evolving?
As consumer journeys become increasingly fragmented across devices and platforms, relying on outdated metrics such as last-click attribution provides an incomplete and often misleading picture of campaign performance. Advanced measurement techniques can offer a holistic view of the customer journey, capturing all interactions contributing to a conversion.
Oussama discusses three primary metrics to optimise strategies, ensuring they meet consumer expectations and achieve business objectives.
Multi-Touch Attribution:
Traditional last-click attribution is being replaced by multi-touch attribution models, which consider all touchpoints a consumer interacts with before converting. These models provide a more comprehensive view of a campaign’s effectiveness.
Cross-Device Tracking:
With consumers using multiple devices, cross-device tracking has become essential. It allows marketers to understand the complete user journey and accurately attribute conversions.
MMPs:
MMPs play a crucial role in the evolving landscape of ad measurement. They provide unbiased, third-party attribution, aggregating data across various channels and devices to offer a holistic view of campaign performance. MMPs help track user acquisition, engagement, and retention metrics, ensuring marketers have accurate and actionable insights. They also aid in fraud detection, enhancing the overall quality and reliability of data.
These innovations collectively enable marketers to picture their campaigns’ performance comprehensively, from initial engagement to final conversion.
However, advertisers must address other factors before upgrading measurement metrics to ensure advertising success.
When ads are not properly targeted, they often reach the wrong audience, leading to low engagement and poor conversion rates. This inefficiency results in wasted advertising budgets, as money is spent on impressions and clicks that do not generate meaningful returns.
According to Oussama, marketers must be wary of three critical mistakes.
Neglecting Ad Creative Quality:
Even with precise targeting, poor ad creatives can result in low engagement. Marketers often underestimate the importance of high-quality, engaging creatives tailored to the target audience’s preferences.
Failure to A/B Test:
Not conducting A/B tests to compare different ad versions, targeting strategies, and platforms is a missed opportunity. A/B testing provides data-driven insights into what works best and should be continuous.
Lack of Adaptation to Platform Differences:
Assuming that a strategy that is successful on one platform will work on all can be a mistake. Each platform has unique user behaviours, ad formats, and engagement patterns. Campaigns should be customised to fit each platform’s specific characteristics.
Moreover, irrelevant ads can frustrate users, damage the brand’s reputation, and decrease customer trust. Inaccurate targeting also means missing out on potential customers who might have been interested, further diminishing the overall impact of the campaign and not getting the most possible value from ad spend.
Diversifying ad spend is crucial for maximising the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Marketers can reach a broader and more varied audience by allocating budget across multiple channels. This can reduce reliance on a single platform, mitigating risks associated with algorithm changes or shifts in user behaviour.
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How to Diversify Ad Spend?
Marketers can mitigate the risks of relying too heavily on a single channel or platform by spreading their budget across various networks. This approach helps reduce costs by optimising performance across different ad networks and enables brands to reach a broader target audience and engage more effectively.
“Using a mix of ad formats across different networks can capture the attention of different audience segments. This diversification helps in reaching a wider audience and reduces reliance on a single network,” says Oussama.
He also discusses implementing a ‘test and learn’ strategy that helps marketers identify the most influential networks. By running smaller test campaigns on various platforms, they can gather data on what works best and scale up successful strategies.
Strategic partnerships with key players like Adwake can lead to negotiated rates and exclusive placements, capitalising on channels such as DSPs, direct apps with high DAU, and smartphone partners.
Catch Oussama Yousfi, Regional Director, Middle East & Africa, Adwake at Vibe Martech Fest on June 5 and 6 at Hilton Dubai Palm Jumeirah. For more details, visit Vibe Martech Fest.
