It’s nearing the end of 2022, and the trend of advertisers having their digital marketing efforts disrupted by privacy-safe regulations by tech giants and government legislation continues. With Apple’s App Tracking Transparency evolving since iOS14, Google’s still-in-testing privacy sandbox, and the incoming deprecation of 3rd party cookies by major browsers, marketers will need to evaluate their strategies and review – are you doing marketing in a future-proof way? If not, how do you start to ensure durability of your marketing?
In this article, FiveStones and our Creative Solutions lead Bradley provides 3 solutions which are meant to be longstanding and cost-efficient. The key is to start early, allowing you room to optimize and adapt according to your company goals.
SOLUTION 1: MARKETING WITH CONSENTED 1ST PARTY DATA
Marketing heads & tech giants like Google tout that 1st party data allows advertisers entry into delivering personalised customer experiences. The gist; when you have data that’s been officially granted to you by the customer, it allows you to reach the customer with messaging that is specific to them – therefore giving the marketer better returns.
It sounds simple enough, but it means brands must build better relationships with their customers in order to get that first party data. Asking a customer to fill in a form in return for a promo code may not be enough, they’re more likely to want transparency that you’re using their data for personalised experiences that will “delight” them.
Here’s some ways you can collect 1st party data. Do note, to ensure you are privacy-compliant you should always have an opt-in so customers can decide if they want their data used for advertising.
- Customer surveys
- Website visitors
- Website/ App users
- Service subscribers
SOLUTION 2: TARGETING AUDIENCES IN DEMAND SIDE PLATFORMS
Platforms from Google like Display and Video 360 (DV360) and Google Ads have ready audiences which you can use in your targeting, such as their affinity, in-market, demographic and others. These platforms also have a Customer Match function, which allows you to upload consented first party data for targeting in DV360 and Google Ads.
DV360 and Google ads in particular are built with automation and machine learning in mind, meaning campaigns can be run with less granular data – one strong reason why DV360 and Google Ads are durable for marketers.
That said, Google is still in the stages of investing into new privacy-preserving technologies. As their current audience targeting capabilities are built on existing signals, Privacy Sandbox is their larger initiative to ensure that marketers using their platforms can continue targeting audiences even in an era where 3rd party cookies are deprecated or when privacy regulations are stricter.
SOLUTION 3: INVESTING INTO ADVANCED CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
This solution involves companies revisiting if their creatives are durable and cost-efficient i.e. if it’s used for a one-off project, or if it’s built for many purposes. We’ll share 2 advanced creative solutions which will allow marketers to lean into the latter.
Solution 3.1: Repurposing valuable social assets into display ads
This solution entails repurposing valuable social assets which your consumers have interacted with, and converting it into a display ad. This “Social to Display” ad solution enables you to increase the cross-channel reach of your brand and to break the boundaries between social and display environments.
Your company is then re-focusing on users in a broader display environment within platforms like DV360 or Google Ads, but with an ad that resembles your valuable Social asset.
To learn more about the benefits of Social Display ads, and how automation can be introduced into the workflow, read our article here.
Solution 3.2: Data-Driven Creative templates
Investing into creative templates which are data-driven are a great way for companies to save on overall resources as they can be adapted to be used more than once. Such creative templates allow marketing to change campaign messaging, imagery, CTAs and others.
The best way to illustrate is via an example of a data-driven creative with a backfilling strategy.
Let’s say you’re a Jewelry brand running a campaign with a creative that has 4 product slots. You can serve ads to prospective customers with backfilled product slots from “Watch” category, along with products from other potential categories like “Jewelry”, “Gifts”, “On-Sale”.
To take it a step further, if you are doing remarketing and your customer has blocked cookies on their browser (meaning you are limited in creative personalisation ), the creative can still be developed with a “prioritized rule” – in which the customer would see a creative backfilled with generic “on sale” items.
For a more detailed example, watch a clip from our webinar here, where we share a case study from Australian brand Gregory Jewellers.
AN EXPERT’S CLOSING NOTES
A further recommendation on future-proofing creatives from Bradley, our creative solutions lead, is that companies can be smart by building robust creative templates that can be used for many purposes and have custom options built in to allow them to show different messages, CTAs, layouts, images, automated products via feeds, smart filtering and logic. Brands should have a one-time investment that sets them up for campaigns with many different data driven strategies.
Brands should have a one-time investment in a creative solution that sets them up for campaigns with many different data driven strategies
Bradley Lancaster, Creative Solutions Lead, FiveStones
If advertisers build campaigns that have multi-targeted strategies, combined with fallbacks for messaging that is shown if a target can’t be found, then you are covering all use case scenarios in one creative profile.
For a visual example of creatives with more than one data-driven strategies, watch our video featuring Dynamic Remarketing creatives templates for Best&Less below:
To learn more about marketing or advanced creative solutions, connect with us!