Media

Why You Need A Data Management Platform

We use data to uncover truths about our audience, but the way we do it has rapidly evolved. Gone are the days of relying on an unhindered collection of big data, because today we can uncover a single source of truth about granular segments.

This shift occurred in the wake of new privacy laws, scandals and growing concerns about the large Black Boxes and Walled Gardens of the advertising world (e.g. Facebook/Google). But what if, rather than depending on those forces, you could simply leverage all types of your own and trusted partner data in ways that inspired confidence and actionable insights?

A Data Management Platform (DMP) Can Do That

Although a DMP is not a panacea for the data challenges of a Walled Garden world, it provides opportunities to organize and leverage data in a variety of ways across the open web and apps:

Defining and targeting niche audiences
Controlling for timeliness and frequency
Enabling message sequencing
Measuring campaign performance

These are just a few of the primary-use cases to get the most out of your media investments.

Don’t have a lot of first-party data? Generate your own. Data management platforms can collect all types from scratch. Tracking, storing, segmenting and insights help power campaign optimizations in real time. These capabilities drive efficiencies that are cross-platform, improving valuable KPIs throughout the campaign.

Data management platforms also house trusted second-party data, which is transparent in nature, scalable and accessible. Furthermore, the solid gold that is first-party data can be transformed into liquid oil via predictive modeling, which produces targeted results at scale by leveraging only the third-party data that is most predictive of success.

Already have your own DMP, but unsure where to begin? Consider Empower’s popular thought-starting questions:

Who is the DMP owner?
How do you define positive ROI from a DMP investment?
Who will control onboarding of first-party data streams?
For first-party modeled audiences, what methodology does the DMP utilize?
Who will create audiences, and from what data sources?
What integrations does the DMP need to hook into?
What’s the pricing and billing model?

These are just a handful of questions that must be answered – and have been answered by Empower for several clients. We’re here to provide them for you as well. Ready to take control of your data? Email our data solutions team for more information: datasolutions@empower2020dev.wpengine.com

Data Intelligence

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Influencer

Why Boosted Posts Aren’t Part Of A Paid Social Strategy

Advertising on social media is essential in today’s shifting media landscape, where more people are cutting cords and crossing over into the online world.

Paid social media advertising remains a cost-effective and customizable solution for businesses, with Facebook still considered to be the best choice because it offers a variety of tailored and proven ad options. One of the common questions asked of paid social experts and advertisers alike is about one of the many tactics housed in Facebook’s advertising arsenal: the Boosted Post.

According to Facebook’s Ads Help Center, Boosted Posts are organic Page posts businesses can put budgets behind in order to promote them as ads. They then show up in targeted audiences’ Facebook or Instagram feeds with a “Sponsored” label to indicate their status as paid social ads.

Comparing Boosted Posts and Facebook ads, however, is not apples-to-apples comparisons. It’s closer to likening a singular apple that’s been hanging out in the fruit bowl for a while now to a five-course dinner (with dessert!) at your favorite restaurant – at least when it comes to advertising on a large scale. Boosted Posts, while technically ads, aren’t as beneficial for bigger businesses as some of Facebook’s other advertising objectives. Here’s why:

Custom is Key

Because Boosted Posts are usually constructed out of owned, organic content and are promoted straight from a business’s Page, the opportunity to customize them is cut off at the knees. Boosted Posts will look, act, and populate as if they were normal Facebook or Instagram posts, save their “Sponsored” tags. You can’t tailor Boosted Posts’ creative assets to align with an objective or audience – a common practice in advertising across the board. Plus, there are only three places a Boosted Post can appear: in the desktop and mobile versions of Facebook’s News Feed and in Instagram’s Feed, but only if it’s elected and eligible. Rather limiting, isn’t it?

In Ads Manager, (Facebook’s all-in-one tool for creating, managing and measuring advertisements on Facebook’s network) there’s an array of ad types that can be modified and reconfigured as necessary in order to meet business needs. Depending on the objective, ads can include various arrangements of videos, images, carousels, collections, and catalogs with headlines, links, calls to action, and text. Instant Experiences – newer, high quality and extremely interactive ads, custom-made by merging assorted creative assets together into different configurations –encourage viewers to engage with a brand and take immediate action while still on the platform.

Ads Manager also gives businesses automatic access to all of the placements offered on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network, allowing Facebook’s algorithm to optimize and display ads in areas where the audience spends the most time. Delivering ads to an audience in the right place at the right time is crucial when advertising in the modern era, so placing ads on Facebook’s widespread network is a smart, efficient way to reach a broad group where the content will resonate.

Center Ads Around Audiences

Creating core and custom audiences is a crucial component of any paid social media strategy, but Boosted Posts are seriously lacking in this capacity. Targeting options include age, gender, location, and interests. There are also “suggested audiences” presented to advertisers engaging in Boosted Posts, but they typically only include people who like the business’s Page or friends of people who like the Page. On paper, it sounds like an agreeable idea, but because the targeting options are so basic, Boosted Posts essentially advertise in an echo chamber. They don’t truly reach the requisite number of viewers to expand a customer base.

In contrast, Facebook’s Ads Manager, particularly in conjunction with the Facebook pixel process, can be a considerable advantage in reaching potential brand adopters. Combining Facebook’s data with information commonly owned by businesses –customer files, website traffic or app activity – can help create robust audience segments with a range of applications. Audiences can be included, excluded, mirrored, retargeted, tested, copied, and more to help a business reach the group of people most relevant to achieving their business goals. One of the integral elements of advertising successfully on social media is understanding and appealing to people outside your brand’s inner circle; Ads Manager makes it easy to generate audiences with characteristics similar to those observed in current customers, communicating brand messaging to a new community likely to connect with it.

Metrics Make Life Simpler

Engagement alone is not a practical advertising metric for any company. Funneling dollars into plans that rely on likes, shares, clicks and comments is a great way to get numbers that aren’t actually indicative of activity. And yet, engagement is really the only KPI you’re able to glean from Boosted Posts. Currently, the objectives Boosted Posts center around are website clicks, promotion and Page engagement – all of which return engagement-based metrics. The objectives available for Boosted Posts never span the full length of the marketing funnel which leaves both current and potential customers suspended between awareness and action.

Facebook Ads Manager, on the other hand, has 11 objectives that are sectioned into different categories by where they sit in the marketing funnel. Within each category, the objectives are defined by what they are designed to achieve, from reach at the very top of the funnel to store visit conversions all the way at the bottom. The metrics vary depending on what approach is taken, but what is returned is clearly connected to the chosen objective. The relevant measurements provide actionable insights, which play an important factor in helping further success long-term.

Boosted Posts do have their place. They’re an inexpensive way for small businesses to increase brand awareness and recall in their immediate service area. They can help increase engagement with a business’s Page and, in turn, lay the foundation for a relationship between brand and consumer. With larger businesses, though, Boosted Posts shouldn’t factor into social media plans. The lack of customization, targeting, and measurement capabilities severely limit effectiveness.

So what’s our advice? Ditch the questionable apple and put your budget (and appetite) behind something that isn’t bite-sized and unfulfilling.

Paid Search

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Empower’s Connected TV Panel Experts Dish Out Key Insights on Growing Trend

The burgeoning age of “cord cutters” has initiated one of the hottest new trends in our industry: Connected TV (CTV).

At its core, CTV is simply an internet connected television/device; think Roku, smart TVs and gaming consoles. Though CTV has been primarily consumer driven, it’s now a ripe and exciting opportunity for advertisers. Where once content (and your video ads) streamed on a desktop or mobile device, CTV amplifies it to a bigger screen for a more immersive experience.

Source: State of the Screen

As more TV offerings and subscription services flood the market, marketers buying video are constantly facing the questions of who, what, where and when.

As part of Empower’s 2019 CTV Panel, five experts from The Trade Desk, Telaria, Alphonso, Dish Network/Sling TV and Fox Networks came together to discuss the latest and greatest in the CTV space. Here are a few key takeaways.

Inventory

CTV offers a surplus of inventory that is now at the fingertips of advertisers. It’s a whole new medium with a range of pricing options, aimed to reach users on the device of their choice. While tactics like addressable TV have grown exponentially in scale, the cost and reach options within the digital CTV environment is a unique benefit. If utilized correctly, CTV will ultimately provide a more diverse universe, giving advertisers even more options.

Live events are not immune to CTV’s reach, either. Spectacles like the NBA Finals, World Cup and the Oscars all have CTV ad spots available for advertisers who traditionally couldn’t afford linear television buys, but can now access premium TV-like video inventory.

Targeting & Measurement

Along with the vast amount of inventory, CTV allows us to merge the precision of digital audience-driven targeting to the beauty of a linear television environment. Instead of using cookie and device IDs like traditional digital targeting, CTV targets a person or household via an IP address. Empower partners with data providers like TruOptix, who specialize in CTV targeting with segments including from demographics, intent, purchase behavior and more.

CTV gives way for more measurement and real-time optimizations like frequency, unique reach and app-level insights. With partners such as Cuebiq, Millward-Brown and Nielsen, Empower is able to make timely data-informed decisions. For example, we can understand lift and store traffic in the midst of a campaign instead of a post campaign report, allows us to optimize strategically in the moment.

Other Key Points

While CTV might deserve a spot on your media plan, advertisers will find it most effective in conjunction with their existing efforts.
Brand safety is still something to keep an eye on. We’re not sounding the alarm, but DO NOT have a set-it-and-forget-it mentality when it comes to monitoring brand-safe placements.
CTV is part linear and part digital, so create your plans holistically and don’t get sucked into silos. While CTV is consumed like linear television, it’s measured like digital media.
Roughly 30% of the US population is “unreachable” via linear television. A majority of these individuals or households are millennials – with about 50% of millennials only watching CTV.

Programmatic

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Influencer

WOMM This Way

Experiential marketing is one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s arsenal. Why? Experiences such as events, sponsorships, pop-ups, PR stunts, street teams and the like, when done well, get people talking.

That’s important because word-of-mouth marketing is the most preferred source of information consumers use when making a decision. In fact, 83% of Americans have recommended a product or service to someone else, and half of Americans would choose online or offline WOM if they only had one source of information to rely on. Those stats are nothing to sneeze at. We’re also in an age where much of the populace values experiences over things. Before Marie Kondo encouraged us to thank our extra shoes for their service and clean out our closets, the experience economy began taking center stage, with a focus on events and travel over ‘accumulating things.’ Shared experiences build community, which we overwhelmingly crave. They are memorable. They give us a story to tell – and who doesn’t love a good story? A well-done experiential event weaves a brand into that narrative, fostering affinity, loyalty and advocacy. 82% of consumers say participating in experiential marketing is more engaging than other forms of marketing. So, give the people what they want!

With that in mind, when Buffalo Wings & Rings (BW&R) came to us asking for our recommendation on how to up the ante for the tailgaters at Cincinnati Bengals games at Paul Brown Stadium and incorporate the brand, we knew experiential and WOMM were the way to go.

Right On, Right On, Right On

It’s so important to find the right influencer to represent a brand for an experiential event – and that means looking beyond the follower count. Brands and agencies are shifting focus towards aligning an influencer to the brand more authentically, and the trend will shift to nano, micro or medium-level influencers who garner strong engagement, rather than the mega superstars who simply rack up impressions. I’m not saying reach isn’t important, but one honest, vocal influencer that lines up with a brand’s core audience, mission and content will resonate much more than a raw reach grab.

For our BW&R tailGREAT event, we needed an authentic influencer passionate about the brand that spoke to our audience, they’d love to interact real-time on-site and would inspire and motivate organic social posts. The reactions of fans and ample interest of the local media in our project proved we made the right choice with Bengals great Jim Breech. We gave fans a memorable story to tell – “remember when Jim Breech and Buffalo Wings & Rings crashed our tailgate?”

See the BW&R tailGREAT case study

To the Internet… and Beyond!

A great experiential event is a lot of work to do well. It requires planning, organization, site checks, negotiations with vendors and a holistic vision – we all saw what happened at the (now infamous) Fyre Festival. More than that, it’s important to understand the complimenting elements that can extend or really knock an experiential event out of the park.

Don’t forget to record feedback during the event to gauge the effectiveness of your work. Technology and social media can also help track and amplify the experience, but it is important to reinforce your messaging with an element that goes forward after the event is over. A brand can also tap into the nostalgia of the shared experience and re-engage with participants, but it is savvy to forecast these details well in advance.

For tailGREAT, we instituted a mechanism to gather contact information from folks at the event. We also coordinated a sweepstakes giveaway with the Bengals, where people could experience their own tailGREAT at a local restaurant and be surprised by the Bengals and mascot Who Dey. We made sure to incorporate learnings from our first activation into the second, creating efficiencies and enhancing the experience even more for participants.

All in all, we crashed eight tailgates, gave out hundreds of fresh, never frozen wings and generated publicity value that far exceeded the out-of-pocket budget for the project. We reaped ample local coverage in radio, TV and print outlets (FOX, NBC, CBS and WLWT affiliates, WLW). BW&R fancied the moniker tailGREAT so much, they trademarked it and are seeking to replicate the activation in other markets. BW&R also awarded Empower its 2017 Marketing MVP Award at the end-of-season franchisee convention in June 2018, where the content we captured during the activation was used to encourage franchisees to show customers to not just tailgate, but tailGREAT with BW&R.

Experiential Influencer

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Current Social Trends: Here’s What You Need to Know

The social sphere is a crazy place. Opportunities to advertise are ubiquitous, popping up in all new shapes and sizes on a variety of platforms.

This means marketers need to be creative to make sure their brands rise to the top of the newsfeed. After attending the Social Media Marketing World conference, here are three key takeaways for staying on top of social trends from a few of our favorite speakers.

Get Comfortable with Video (Especially Stories + YouTube!)

According to the Founder of media giant Social Media Examiner, Mike Stelzner says that 70% of marketers plan on doing more with video this year. To help show how much video has already grown, consider how 100M people consumed Stories daily in October, 2016. By February, 2019, that number ballooned to 500M people daily (growing 15x faster than in-feed content!).

If you don’t have the means to create video, leverage influencers and content creators. They’ll help you reach new and unique audiences, all while giving your brand a relatable and trustworthy voice.

Pro Tip: Don’t know how to work with influencers? Start by engaging with your consumers on social. If you need some inspo, check out UCLA’s Basketball team on Instagram Stories. They’re leveraging their own basketball players to dish up premium content to followers. Things like all-access passes to pre-game huddles and half-time pep talks for prospective students, fans, and donors may seem simple, but it’s been one of the team’s most successful tactics for social engagement to date.

Focus on Measurement and Determine Which Metrics are Relevant

It seems like it’d be easy to nail down the most relevant KPIs, right? Well, If you’re curious about which metrics to start with, take it from Facebook Marketing expert Mari Smith: “Content is king… but engagement is queen, and she rules the house”. Harnessing new technologies like Facebook’s analytics platform lets Marketers advance their insights, tracking things like engagement and even conversions through the funnel categorized by action taken.

Pro Tip: Remember, not everyone is ready to buy your product or lean into your brand the first time they see it, no matter how stellar the content is. One way to build this strong engagement and brand loyalty is with an Evergreen strategy. Evergreen Campaigns keep your audience “on the verge of purchase” (@jonloomer) and engaged with your content and brand.

Take Pride in Your Organic Content

While paid ads are great – even necessary to stay relevant – we can’t forget the importance of a strong organic feed. In order for your paid ads to truly work, says influencer and business strategist Jasmine Star, your organic content and community management must be engaging. With nearly 300K Instagram followers, Jasmine revealed firsthand that if her organic posts aren’t resonating with her followers then her paid ads won’t perform as well thanks to the algorithm.

TLDR; more organic likes = better paid performance. Boom!

Pro Tip: Your organic content only reaches 1-6% of your audience. Let’s flip the script on that by building out a robust content calendar, sharing at least once daily for 30 days. Sit back, relax, and watch your organic reach grow with a consistent strategy.

As you can see, the world of social media is constantly changing and evolving. Being able to adapt and stay on top of trends is key for brands and individuals who want to be seen and heard. So as we continue to evaluate our social strategies and tactics, keep in mind our three major takeaways from the social and measurement experts themselves.

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Media

Harnessing Automation Within Search

Much of the conversation around automation focuses on disrupting labor processes in sectors like manufacturing, service and retail. With each passing day, it’s apparent that no sector is immune to automation.

Digital advertising – specifically Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – is no exception. At Empower, our Search team sees automation as an opportunity to expand the possibilities of our clients’ SEM campaigns. Machine learning technologies give us the power to help answer a million-dollar question: What is the perfect creative message? There are a handful of machine learning technologies allowing advertisers to deliver creative messages that are most likely to resonate with consumers. Three key search tools that accomplish this include Responsive Search Ads, Dynamic Search Ads and Automated Extensions. Each carry their own set of pros and cons.

Responsive Search Ads

What Are They?

Google Ads will automatically test different combinations and learn which combinations perform best. By adapting your ad’s content to more closely match customers’ search queries, responsive search ads can improve performance.

The Advantages

This allows you to feed Google’s algorithms various permutations of headlines, descriptions and extensions to crash test messaging combinations with the goal of determining the optimal creative mix. This can also help inform messaging for future campaigns.

The Disadvantages

Less creative control. Unfortunately, you can’t dictate the sequencing of your creative assets in Responsive Search Ads. Brand voice and messaging is sacred ground, so implementing this tool should be done delicately.

Dynamic Search Ads

What Are They?

When someone searches Google with terms closely related to titles and frequently used phrases on your website, Google Ads will re-purpose these titles and phrases to generate a clear, relevant headline for your ad and send the user to a pertinent landing page. This is best for advertisers with rich, thorough websites with an abundance of content.

The Advantages

Without Dynamic Search Ads, even well-managed accounts with an abundance of keywords can miss relevant searches, experience delays developing ads for new products or inaccurately detail what’s truly available on advertisers’ websites.

The Disadvantages

With the exception of feed-based targeting that you control, Dynamic Search Ads are not recommended if your website changes rapidly (for example, a site with often-changing daily deals).
Since a computer is writing your headlines, the brand hazard is even greater than with Responsive Search Ads. You cannot “feed” the creative delivery process in the same fashion. You’re wholly dependent upon how the automated process interprets your site.

Note: Using machine learning techniques similar to Dynamic Search Ads, Ad Suggestions is a similar tool designed to produce machine-generated variations of your existing text ads that may boost performance of your search campaigns. It should be noted that Ad Suggestions are subject to the same brand hazard concerns.

Automated Extensions

What Are They?

Extensions expand your ad with additional information—giving people more reasons to choose your business. Instead of manually crafting them, i. automated extension are created and shown automatically below your ad and often boost performance.

The Advantages

Similar to Dynamic Search Ads, this cuts down on manual creative upload. Furthermore, Automated Extensions help harmonize your website with the user experience within search engines.

The Disadvantages

For the same reasons Dynamic Search Ads are tricky, Automated Extensions require a level of creative forfeiture. You’re automatically enrolled into the feature, so you’ll need to opt-out, which is backwards from many other tools. If – and only if – you trust your website and Google’s algorithm to relay your site’s information, give Automated Extensions a go.

Digital Search SEM

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Marketing

Featured In Adweek: 3 Reasons Why New Grads Are Choosing The Midwest Over Madison Avenue

Coastal Cities Aren’t All They’re Built Up To Be. When you think of America’s hotbeds of entrepreneurial, innovative talent, you probably think of familiar places like New York, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.

Life in the big city was once the destination for wide-eyed college graduates looking to make their mark, but bigger isn’t always better—in cities or the agencies inside them. The epicenter of innovation has slowly shifted from the coasts into the heartlands where one must not sacrifice ambition, talent or quality of life.

While it may sound too good to be true, here are three clear truths I shared in Adweek on why Midwest-living and mid-sized agencies are enabling people and businesses to flourish.

Adweek Midwest

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Media

Prime Day Upstages – And Could Shape – The Holiday Shopping Season

Amazon has become a true force in the U.S. economy. For quick proof, you need not look further than these stats: Each month, nearly 200 million people visit Amazon.com. Their sales make up nearly 50% of retail ecommerce sales in the U.S. Nearly 1/3 of the U.S. population are Amazon Prime Members.

When those 200 million people aren’t visiting amazon.com, they’re still interacting with Amazon products and services. Food is a great example. A consumer could scan through Amazon’s streaming service looking for new cooking shows. Mid-episode, they’ll ask Alexa what ingredients make up the recipe they’re watching. Then, they’ll head to the nearest Whole Foods to purchase said ingredients. At every step, they’re engaging with Amazon.

They’ve redefined the consumer landscape in more ways than one. Their most recent Prime Day saw a 71% uptick in sales ($7.16 Billion) compared to year prior. Granted, this increase was inflated due to Prime Day being extended, but Amazon still drove 29% more sales per hour in 2019 versus 2018*.

Amazon also sold over 175 million products – which put the two-day event ahead of both Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. The focus has historically been on bigger ticket electronic goods along with Amazon’s own high priority products. 2019 was no different, with the top-selling deals being Echo smart device and Fire TV device-related.

Prime members bought pretty much everything at astounding levels. Over 48 hours they tallied:

100k laptops
200k TVs
300k headphone sets
400k pet products
1MM+ toys

Their competitors didn’t sleep on the event either. Knowing not everything on Amazon would be discounted – and that consumers would be in a buying mood – many took advantage of the day to promote their own sales and competitive pricing. Even though 1/3 of the nation falls within the Prime member bucket, that still leaves a very healthy 2/3 of the U.S. population looking for deals elsewhere.

Walmart had thousands of rollbacks and special buys in a week-long event titled The Big Save event. Target had its version –Deal Days – offering discounts over the same period as Prime. Both retailers made these promotions available to all consumers (no membership required) and bolstered their offering with their omnichannel fulfillment capabilities. Even eBay got in on the fun, launching a Crash Sale that would take effect if Amazon’s site went down – making light of a possible repeat of the issues that plagued Amazon’s 2018 event.

Speaking of repeats, Prime Day has become a certified yearly event. The next iteration can be penciled in for mid-July 2020. Brands will need to start planning from a deal/inclusion standpoint very shortly. Consumers can expect an even longer event next year – seeing as that’s been the trend. Possibly an additional 12 hours, or even a third day.

Competitors need to be ready as well. It’s one thing to respond to a successful venture by a competitor, it’s another to counter with your own revenue-focused approach. Piggybacking off Amazon during Prime Day is fine, but these retailers need to carve their own path in order to shift the consumer mindset.

Ultimately, Prime Day could very well be an indicator for what’s to come on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the remainder of the holiday shopping season. The clutter and competition should be even more chaotic since this period is a more traditionally established tentpole, but don’t be surprised to see the same e-commerce titans bubble up towards the top. It’ll take clever marketing, promotions and differentiation from competitors to conquer consumers’ wallets. Prime Day, and the surrounding hullabaloo, laid the ground work for what we could see in the upcoming holidays.

Target and Walmart are big enough to create their own full-scale sale events. They both offer omnichannel fulfillment. They both have burgeoning digital media offerings that can use their limitless stockpiles of consumer data to drive highly tailored, time-sensitive offers. And as noted, they have about 2/3 of the U.S. population ready and willing to participate. They just need them to fall in line.

*Empower saw similar success across clients using Amazon Advertising Console during Prime Day. Clients drove upwards of 250% improved revenue and nearly 30% improved ROAS within their Amazon Ads campaigns compared to prior period.

Amazon eCommerce Search

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Keeping Influencer Marketing Authentic: How To Get Around Fake Followers

Influencer marketing. It’s a unique, clever and ever-changing practice that most brands either already use or have seriously considered.

With such a wide range of business applications from product awareness to event attendance, influencers offer a level of third-party credibility that brands oftentimes cannot achieve on their own. While most of us are on board, a recent article by Forbes highlights one thing marketers are wary about when it comes to influencer marketing: fake followers.

It’s no secret that the Internet – especially social media – is rife with fraudulent or inactive users. In fact, last year Facebook reported that it disabled 583 million fake accounts in just a few months. Influencer programs can carry a hefty price tag, so why should we spend money on eyeballs that potentially aren’t human?

Here are a few tips and tricks for avoiding fake followers and getting the most bang for your buck on influencer programs.

Look Beyond Vanity Metrics

While the digital landscape cleans up its act, or at least attempts to, there are plenty of data points that indicate campaign success other than a high following. Stacy DeBroff, CEO and founder of Influence Central reinforces this by saying they’ve “seen a large increase in brands and agencies looking towards engagements over impressions to gain a better understanding of how the campaign performed.” With your influencer campaigns, take into consideration engagement rates, customer sentiment and performance of previous sponsored content (if applicable).

While social platforms have been notorious for dragging their feet on bot-traffic issues, there is progress to tout, as previously noted. Check out the chart below for number of accounts removed over the past year from Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Don’t Be Shy In Asking For What You Want

Since many important metrics like Instagram Story views or number of Swipe-Ups aren’t readily available on the marketing side, be upfront in asking influencers to share that information with you. Brittany Hayes, influencer behind the lifestyle and design blog Addison’s Wonderland, says she gets asked for things as simple as screenshots of impressions, blog views or audience demographics. It’s great to leverage proprietary solutions where possible, but access to first-party data is always the way to go.

Use Tools

According to the ANA’s recent ad fraud report, the estimated loss of money attributed to bots in 2018 was a whopping $5.8B globally. While a staggering number, this is down 11 percent from the $6.5 billion reported in their previous study in 2017. Alongside abated (albeit large) losses, nearly two thirds of marketers plan on increasing influencer marketing budgets in 2019.

Why? There’s still more to gain than lose when working with authentic influencers to connect with key audiences and build credible word-of-mouth… as long as you have the right practice in place. Ryan Derrow, Senior Vice President, Media Innovation at Empower emphasizes a proactive process that includes technology partnerships and active campaign management. “With people and technology combined in a focused effort against fraud, the numbers clearly show that the issue can be largely overcome.” Tools like the end-to-end software platform Klear or online engagement rate calculators will help you make a strategic, well-informed decision.

Rest assured that there are several ways you can verify influencers and measure their followers to get the most out of a campaign. Go out there, stop fretting the fake followers and embrace the relationships.

Influencer

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Media

E-Commerce: Paid Search’s Latest Battleground

As noted in our past article, Prime Day Upstages-And Could Shape-The Holiday Season, the most recent Amazon Prime Day was a roaring success.

The ecommerce giant saw a 71% uptick in sales ($7.16 Billion) compared to year prior and, over the course of two days, the event totaled more unit sales for Amazon than both Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. By putting their immense stockpiles of customer data to use in paid media offerings, retailers like Amazon have found another revenue stream beyond their hauls from product sales. Search ads are a prime example, which advertisers can buy through Amazon Advertising Console. These ads allow advertisers to place unique, tailored ads in front of Amazon.com users based on recent search and purchase behavior. They also offer the potential for these same advertisers to interact with consumers the second before purchase – either to fortify their brand or possibly swoop in and conquest a competitive sale.

Seeing all that’s at stake, if brands want their share of the ecommerce landscape, they need to play well with Amazon and other retailers. Nowhere is this truer than the paid search landscape these online retailers have devised.

Paid Search at the Retail Level

Amazon, Target and Walmart all have paid media platforms – selling ad space along the organic listings and Product Detail Pages (PDPs) of their own properties and properties across the web. It’s an approach taken right out of Google and Facebook’s playbooks, then ratcheted up a few notches due to the proximity of competitive brands and the point-of-no-return/bottom of the funnel status of their site visitors.

Take baby products on Amazon for example; among organic listings for the keyword “diapers” are paid ads. These appear in the following formats:

Sponsored Products Ads (SPAs)
- Product-specific placements appearing throughout the search results and PDPs
Sponsored Brand Ads (SBAs)
- High visibility placements that show above, to the left of and below the search results
Product Listing Ads (PLAs)
- Display ad placements appearing on the product detail, thank you and review pages

As it relates to paid ads, whichever brand represents the best combination of bid + consumer affinity/preference will likely win the auction and have their ad served. Very much the definition of a second price auction, where every brand is vying for a generic term (diapers) that no one truly owns. The winner of the auction will possess the right mix of bid and relevance in relation to the individual consumer.

Defending Your Brand

Using the previous “diapers” example, a person may search for the brand phrase “Pampers Size 4.” As expected, the organic results shown within Amazon will be very focused on Pampers products. But above those organic listings could be a Sponsored Brand Ad (SBA) for Huggies. And intermixed within those organic Pampers listings could be Sponsored Product Ads (SPAs) for Luvs or Honest Company. These paid competitive entrants cloud the landscape and put a potential sure-fire conversion for Pampers in serious jeopardy.

Nowadays, getting a consumer to your products on an online retailer’s site isn’t enough. The paid landscapes the Amazons, Targets and Walmarts of the world have created contain an added layer – at the last moment in the funnel –any brand’s biggest competitor could easily infiltrate if they’re willing to pay enough to steal share.

The Good and the Bad

On one hand, the ad environments Amazon and other retailers have created represent an opportunity for brands to fortify their message the moment before purchase. To ensure consumers get that one final push they need to officially convert. Solidifying brand loyalty in the process.

On the other hand, these ads represent a scare tactic in its purest form. Forcing advertisers to purchase ad space on their own product pages. Because if they don’t, someone else will. It’s not just the lost sale that will haunt, it’s also the wasted energy expelled to push that user down the entire funnel, only to lose them at the very last moment.

There are safeguards built into similar platforms that keep such things from happening. Google Ads, for example, has quality score. Amazon and other retail channels don’t have safeguards like this. Amazon uses its understanding of the consumer to serve the best possible ad. The assumption being if someone is searching for Pampers, they’ll likely be served an ad for Pampers, since it aligns with their interests.

In doing this, they’ve left the door open for the cutthroat competitive mentality that permeates most of their ad placements.

Can Non-Amazon Retailers Gain Traction?

Both Target and Walmart have made ecommerce a huge priority. Target went the rebranding route – creating their own media arm and renaming it Roundel. Walmart lured execs from media giants such as CBS and NBC Universal to help buoy their advertising business. But, Amazon is still Amazon. It’s the largest player with the largest product catalog and the largest consumer mindshare. Target and Walmart may chip away, but Amazon will still be king commerce.

As of right now, there’s a wide gap of who’s using what. In a recent study by Digiday wherein they surveyed media buying execs:

90% bought media via Amazon this year
23% bought media via Walmart this year
16% bought media via Target this year

Future investment in these platforms suggests Amazon will maintain its stronghold. 80% of respondents planned to increase spend in Amazon this year, while only 20% and 14% planned to increase investment in Walmart and Target, respectively.

Another strike against non-Amazon players is their managed service approach. Target insists all search media driven through Target.com be run by their in-house team, which is unconventional to say the least. This causes conflict since – more often than not – manufacturers paying for these services already have their own paid search campaigns supporting their products. Having two separate entities running search ads for the same products can be a recipe for disaster if strategic cooperation doesn’t exist. And, when one of those entities is as large as Target (Roundel), that isn’t always possible.

Amazon, on the other hand, offers a self-service advertising platform. They also recently launched their own pixel-based attribution offering that can track consumers from media click (via Google Ads, Facebook Business Manager, etc.) all the way to purchase on Amazon.com and going a long way towards removing the closed-off data approach that has historically permeated most paid media platforms.

Where Advertisers Should Invest

Despite Amazon’s overwhelming edge in both market share and resources, there are always going to be consumers that are Target loyalists or Walmart fans. A well-rounded approach will hit as many consumers as possible. To accomplish this, advertisers need to understand people have options. One out of every three U.S. consumers are Amazon Prime Members – a staggering number. That leaves 2/3 of the nation up for grabs.

If brands, however, don’t invest in Roundel or Walmart Media Group, they’ll likely be alienated by those retailers and eventually see reduced support from them. In order to reach as many consumers as possible (and to keep all partners happy), dollars need to be distributed across all platforms. The key word being distributed. They don’t necessarily need to be distributed evenly, they just need to be distributed.

There are a lot of mouths to feed in the ecommerce landscape. Keeping all those mouths fed might just be the biggest challenge of all.

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