Digital advertising is broken. Despite significant evolution and development over the last two decades, participants are unhappy and performance continues to deteriorate. I feel the core of this is that the advertising value exchange is incomplete. Even as digital media spend surpasses $100 billion this year, performance will disappoint and viewers of ads will come…
During a recent trip to the chiropractor, it occurred to me that technology vendors and marketers are way out of alignment when it comes to measuring the impact of marketing programs. The tension began several years ago when a new software category emerged, clinically dubbed “marketing automation,” which promised to turn the craft of marketing…
Amazon is releasing new Alexa experiences for kids and parents, including the Echo Dot Kids Edition, which it says allows children to access age-appropriate content with their voices. But it begs the question: Do children need voice-enabled devices and services to access said content? And just because Amazon–or any platform–can make a voice assistant for…
It started for me with a new television. When I set up my new smart TV, I noticed that there, right next to the traditional networks, were upstart new publishers–sharing space on my screen like equals. That, it struck me, is the new consumer economy. People now have access to publishers, to brands and to…
Brands have only scratched the surface of their marketing potential. Nearly 70 percent of digital sharing happens outside of social networks, out of sight of most marketers. I call this messaging area the conversational space. It encompasses all digital messaging and represents a huge opportunity for understanding consumers better than ever before. Consumer conversations have…
The recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, as well as the looming rollout of GDPR, are sending the marketing world into a speculative tizzy. There are a few early ramifications that have been starting to come to fruition that are having a material impact on the ability of brands, publishers and influencers to conduct business…
The retail world is shifting like a pair of tectonic plates. One is erupting upward, with retail titans soaring to new heights and delivering innovative shopping experiences inspired by insight and fueled by data. The other plate is being pressured downward, with long-established stalwarts of the economy being driven to extinction. Toys “R” Us and…
The price of falling victim to cybercrime is much costlier than simply losing data. Cyberattacks can permanently tarnish a company’s reputation. Take the Target breach, for example. Last year, Target agreed to an $18.5 million multistate settlement from a 2013 incident when hackers gained access to over 40 million customers’ credit card information, marking this…
Life is persistent. If I close my eyes, I know the coffee on the counter will still be there when I open them. If I run to the other room and back, it will remain fixed in position on my return. Even the baristas and other patrons in the room will all vouch for its…
Every brand has a community. It may be comprised of your customers, partners, brand ambassadors or best sales prospects. The trick is not just having a community (and believe me, you have one whether or not you’re actively engaging with it) but managing that community so that it provides value to all members and, hence,…
Solving consumer needs means something different today than it did 10 years ago. We now have apps for absolutely everything, personalized vitamins delivered to our front doors, technology that runs our homes on autopilot and every form of entertainment on demand. It can appear as though consumers’ fundamental needs are more than met. But that…
It’s time for loyalty to evolve from a transactional system to a personal, dynamic relationship between brands and their customers. Now that personalization has become the norm, we want to feel known by the brands we choose time and time again. And as we give brands greater access to our data and our wallets, we…
Digital marketers looking to boost their return on investment must incorporate email into their strategies. According to studies, email marketing is still one of the most effective tools–even among millennials. In 2016, a survey of marketers revealed that the median ROI for an email campaign was 122 percent; that’s four times higher than that of…
As marketers, our roles have evolved dramatically over the past five to 10 years. We are no longer marketers in the traditional sense of simply message and media, but in an expanded role that includes targeting, advanced analytics, customer experience, machine learning, artificial intelligence and more. Throughout that time, however, one role marketers have continued…
Influencer marketing has become what social media was seven years ago: something brands know they should do but are not entirely sure how to measure or even where to begin. Today there’s skepticism around the authenticity of follower and fan count, influencers are becoming expensive and the legal aspects are getting trickier to keep up…
Our industry is addicted to jargon. APIs, programmatic, DMPs, DSPs, PMPs, backfill–all of this technical language is fine when we’re talking about machines, but it overlooks the most important part of the ad tech equation: people. Although we talk the talk about ad personalization and people-based marketing, widely adopted industry terms like “users” feel anything…
Much has been made of the fact that television ratings for this year’s Super Bowl, Oscars and Winter Olympics have decreased significantly compared to past years. These massive live tent pole events have typically been a ratings bonanza for the major networks, keeping viewers glued to the action and to the commercials that accompany them,…
In the Economist a couple weeks ago, Marc Pritchard of P&G described the current advertising business operation as “archaic.” He clarified his remarks at the 4A’s Accelerate conference to note that both the client and the agency are culpable in that description, but the fact remains that much of the press around our category portend…
Despite the current strength of the global economy, with record stock prices and low unemployment, we live in a time of deep discontent. Fears of the pace of innovation, of downward economic mobility, of the possible loss of jobs to a machine or an overseas worker and of the loss of social status in an…
To get 20 of the busiest, most important marketers in the world to gather and put their minds together to predict and guide the future of marketing, you know something must be up. This year’s Cannes Lions will see a unique event: the formation of a CMO Growth Council at which a score of the…
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