In this issue we see some big buys from brands doubling down on AdTech inhouse, we highlight a key insight into the balance between branding and performance marketing and take a look at how native is becoming used as a vehicle to amplify social campaigns to media.
1. 📊Walmart acquires ad-tech startup Polymorph to capture more brand dollars💲
Brands will be able to target audience segments based on shopping behavior, serving ads and tracking the results through a self-serve automated platform to take advantage of header bidding and real-time auctions. Benefits to advertisers will also include real-time capabilities for managing ads and spend, sophisticated ad targeting and measurement tools.
2. 💰Publicis pays $4.4 billion for Epsilon to extend digital reach💥
The acquisition is to position Publicis as a leader of data-driven personalized experiences at scale and to counter the marketplace dominated by Facebook, Alphabet’s Google and digital marketing specialists that track and target individual clients via their smartphones, while navigating tougher data-protection laws.
3. 86% of European brands are in-housing programmatic despite GDPR constraints⚙
A new IAB report found that larger brands with worldwide footprints are beginning to coordinate in-house efforts across markets as part of multi-year plans even in the face of regulatory scrutiny. Brands tend to allocate internal resources for strategic activities, with an overall 65% of brands surveyed currently buying ads programmatically, with two-thirds of Europeans brands showing that programmatic ad spend has increased.
4. 📊Digital metrics is blocking business value creation⛔
If you go back 20 years, 80% of the spend in media was probably focused on more broad, brand awareness stuff like TV. Move on 20 years and all the spending is going into digital and it’s going to the bottom of the [marketing funnel] like last click, where you can attribute to a [customer] conversion.
A lot of the focus on the bottom of the funnel in performance marketing is directly impacted by the power of the brand. Weak brands with less trust are a big hurdle to overcome. You’ve got to spend more money to get more people to transact because there’s less resonance, less trust, less affinity”.
Read more on Australian Financial Review
5. 👁🗨Driven by social, native accounts for nearly two-thirds of display ad spend💸
Social advertising can also influence nonsocial native campaigns. And as advertisers get more experience with programmatic native outside of social networks, they may direct more budget that way based on positive results.
“We have brands that are heavy up in social; they find native to be a nice bridge to extend their messaging and get customers in a new way.” — Craig Aron, senior vice president of strategic business development at buy-side native platform Bidtellect.
That’s it for now and we see you in two weeks with goodies!
Have a great weekend, y’all!
❤️ Best,
Team Socius
