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The new age of predictive measurement: 5 benefits of a ‘total search’ approach

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By Tom Brand

Digital agency Found’s Tom Brand tells us that Google Analytics 4 is ushering in a new era of predictive measurement, enabling a ‘total search’ approach to bring search engine marketing and ad targeting together.

Predictive measurement is increasing in importance and capability, with advances in machine learning and Google’s GA4 deadline (when the old Universal Analytics will be discontinued in favor of this predictive measurement tool) approaching in July this year.

Google describes GA4 as “the future of measurement” so if you aren’t prepared to significantly shift the way that you strategize and structure your digital marketing campaigns in 2023, you’re going to get left behind.

This new era will make adopting a ‘total search’ approach a necessity. Doing so provides multiple business benefits, beyond just keeping up with competitors.

A holistic view of search

There are two questions we have to start by asking ourselves. First, are you technically prepared to move from Universal Analytics to GA4? Quite simply, you must fully prepare your business to make that reporting transition.

And, second, has your marketing function shifted its strategic approach to search engine marketing (SEM) in order to best make use of the holistic activity view that predictive measurement facilitates?

If not, expect your competitors to lead the way. Those who are taking a holistic view of their digital presence and search efforts are already learning from and improving their marketing efforts at scale. How? Because they are effectively using predictive measuring tools.

Predictive measurement uses a non-siloed view of online activities and machine learning to deliver insights on overall marketing success. To fully leverage the amazing potential of predictive measurement tools like GA4, you should expand your approach to digital activities, including search engine marketing efforts, and start employing a more holistic (and strategic) mindset.

What is total search?

Put simply, total search is the viewing of multiple performance marketing channels as one cohesive, collective whole. Channels like search engine optimization and pay-per-click easily become siloed and even compete to drive value. Total search, as a data-led approach, aligns all digital marketing activities to ensure the achievement of shared digital goals.

It doesn’t matter which channel drives results for your business. As long as your brand sees growth, senior leadership will be encouraged to invest in your team.

How a total search approach to digital marketing can help you compete

There are two types of prospective customers online: those searching for you (who you need to get in front of using SEM); and those who are casually browsing (who you want to search for and target with your ads). With a total search approach you can ensure that you strategize and devise campaigns designed to work for both kinds of prospective customer with a singular goal: conversion.

To have a fully optimized conversion funnel for your business in 2023, you need to be viewing the very top of that funnel in 3D. Why? Because predictive measurement tools facilitate that kind of advanced analysis, and because a total search approach creates digital marketing activities that consider and cover the entire top rim of that funnel.

Why you should adopt a total search approach

First, a total search approach helps you to maximize search engine results page (SERP) coverage. It’s all about gaining greater online visibility and creating as many opportunities as possible for your brand to get discovered in search.

Second, it gives a 360° view of the top of your funnel. The modern digital customer experience is rarely a traditional, linear journey. It’s more like a fly buzzing around inside of a jar; bouncing around from pillar to post and experiencing your brand from different angles, in multiple different directions. You need to ensure that your brand presents consistently, no matter how a user finds you.

Third, it can help you to spend money more efficiently. Allocating the right budget to the right places is a priority for every marketer. Adopting a total search strategy will allow you to make better decisions about your marketing budget.

Fourth, with total search you can make faster and more informed decisions, taking insights gleaned from every area of your search performance to make decisions with a far richer and wider collation of data sets. By looking at your search data holistically, you can learn far quicker than by looking at each individual element of search performance in a silo.

And finally, total search will improve your organic search and paid media efforts simultaneously. You can combine the data view from all of these activity channels to determine which keywords actually drive you the most traffic, conversions and revenue – allowing you to optimize all activities at the same time.

Whether it’s Google search, a Facebook ad, or a TikTok that gets a user’s attention, a total search approach will allow you to benefit from predictive measurement and maintain ownership of your brand’s digital presence. If you haven’t already, you must add this to your year’s strategy.

Feature Image Credit: Marten Newhall via Unsplash

By Tom Brand

Sourced from The Drum

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Watch: Making Better Marketing Decisions, with Paul Dervan

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Sourced from The Association of Advertisers in Ireland

On Tuesday 30th of November, Paul Dervan joined us to host “Making Better Marketing Decisions” an event for anyone working in marketing and communications for brands and businesses.

In many ways, advertising is about trying to predict how our communications will influence future consumer behaviour. Predicting this successfully is very difficult. In this fascinating webinar – Paul Dervan shared insights on how to make better decisions in advertising – based on the mistakes he has made, the lessons learned and insights from the global experts he has tracked down and quizzed on effectiveness in marketing.

Paul is the author of ‘Run with Foxes – Make Better Marketing Decisions’ and also the CMO for Ireland’s National Lottery.

Over the past 20 years, Paul has held numerous leadership marketing positions in various companies. Previously he was the Global Brand Director at Indeed, the world’s largest and fastest growing job site, with over 250 million visitors every month.

He also started a Marketing Campaign Lab, where he created and tested hundreds of marketing experiments in America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Before that, Paul was with PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker brand, as Creative Director for their Full Tilt brand. Prior to that Paul was Head of Brand for O2 in Ireland and Brand Director for Telefonica Digital.

Sourced from The Association of Advertisers in Ireland

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Facebook rolls out whitelists and better live stream controls in brand safety tweak

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By Imogen Watson

Facebook is retooling its brand safety features, rolling out whitelists that better allow brands to control the content their ads are seen next to.

The expanded toolkit will see the implementation of two types of whitelist.

To let brands create whitelists of publishers for the off-Facebook, app-based Audience Network, it has introduced publisher whitelists. Facebook will look to expand this to in-steam video later in the year.

And a content-level whitelisting tool will be available to advertisers that are clients of ad-vertification partners Integral Ad Science, OpenSlate and Zefr.

Allowing advertisers to work with partners to create ‘dynamic content sets’ through this tool, partners will be able to update and adjust video content placement ‘routinely’.

The retooling of brand safety features follows on from tests on a select group of advertisers last November, which were largely welcomed by brands.

While advertisers were already able to see where their ads might appear, Facebook decided to make the controls more sophisticated in ordr to dial back advertisers’ brand safety concerns.

Overzealous blocklists

While the introduction of whitelists to Facebook’s platform has been widely welcomed, the roll out comes amid a fight against blocklisting.

In their quest for protection from ad misplacement, advertisers around the globe are doubling down on automation and, in particular, blocklists.

One side-effect of blunt blocklisting has seen top media owners penalised to the tune of $3.2bn a year across the US, UK, Japan and Australia according to research from real-time brand safety business Cheq.

LGBT+ publishers have been particularly hurt by the application of blocklists. A further study from Cheq found 73% of LGBT+ stories are flagged as ‘brand unsafe’ with terms like ‘lesbian’, ‘bisexual and ‘drag queens’ making it onto advertisers keyword exclusion lists.

Beyond the introduction of whitelisting, Facebook will now let advertisers opt out of its in-stream ad testing from pre-vetted entertainment, news and sports partners.

While this was already available at campaign level, this option will now be provided at the ad account level.

Cracking down on Covid-19 misinformation

Facebook’s decision to offer advertisers more control over their ad placement follows mounting pressure to better moderate the content within its walls.

Amid the coronavirus crisis, fake news has re-emerged as a sore spot for Facebook.

To counter growing issues emerging from the spread of fake news, the platform stopped advertisers from targeting people interested in ‘pseudoscience’ as it attempted to crack down on coronavirus misinformation.

And over in India, the platform introduced a chatbot and news hub – designed to debunk coronavirus falsehoods after the Indian government issued an advisory to social media companies to clamp down on the circulation of false information.

Facebook is not alone in facing brand-safety criticism, with the behemoth’s key rival Google experiencing some brand safety issues of its own in recent weeks.

To close loopholes exploited by bad actors in pursuit of ad fraud, as of April Google now requires advertisers running ads across its platform to verify their identity.

Prior to the pandemic, one in four advertising dollars went to the Facebook-Google duopoly. However, both members are expected to post a downturn in advertising revenues as brands tighten their belts amid Covid-19.

Other major platforms are also fighting against downward ad spend. While Apple experienced an ‘uptick’ in product sales towards the end of Q2 2020, it has admitted its advertising business has taken a hit, as companies pause search spend on platforms such as the App Store.

On the broadcasting side, ITV revealed last week (6 May) that demand for advertising in April fell by 42% year-on-year, with total revenue down 7% at £694m.

By Imogen Watson

Sourced from The Drum

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Let’s Keep Influencer Marketing Accountable

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One of the top challenges facing influencer marketing is one common across the entire arena of digital marketing: brand safety.

At this year’s Cannes Lions, Unilever’s Chief Marketing Officer Keith Weed warned that influencer marketing has an integrity issue. The proliferation of fake followers, aided and abetted by a lack of transparency and proper measurement reporting, threatens to destabilize the entire industry.

Weed warned that the industry must take “urgent action now to rebuild trust before it’s gone forever,” and he pledged that Unilever’s brands will never buy followers nor work with influencers who buy followers.

Any brand conducting influencer marketing programs should heed the call to ensure greater transparency and integrity.

The relationship between social media and influencer marketing is at a crossroads. To be clear, the challenge is not one of growth: According to a recent study by the Association of National Advertisers, 75% of brands use influencer marketing, and almost half are planning to increase budgets in the next year. However, in order for influencer marketing to continue to thrive, brands will need to improve their campaign strategies.

Brand safety is of paramount importance in the development of influencer marketing tools and in ongoing campaign monitoring and management. Campaigns – and the technologies that support them – should be designed to track telltale signs of suspicious activity such as sudden bursts in followers or suspicious letter replacements in profile names, such as the use of “1” to replace the letter “I.” More sophisticated algorithms can flag dramatic shifts in performance and unanticipated engagement patterns.

In addition to ensuring transparency and integrity, influencer marketing campaigns should focus on authentic engagement. Influencer marketing is inherently social; when implemented well it can be an open (but directed) conversation that is amplified to the masses. This is why it is vital to focus on follower engagement.

While metrics like volume are of course important (e.g., follower count, posts per day/week, etc.), engagement may have the biggest impact on meeting or even exceeding KPIs. One of the highlights of influencer marketing is the opportunity for a brand to leverage an influencer’s unique voice. That unique voice has a big impact on the type of content an influencer can produce for brands — and it is that unique, authentic voice that ultimately drives consumer engagement with the branded content.

For brands, a trusted environment is one of the most effective places to engage consumers. Passionate influencers who authentically weave branded stories into social platforms that consumers trust are the ones who deliver powerful results.

Whether it is a story told through a blog post, video, a picture, or any combination of these, working with influencers can bring brands and products to life with engaging, custom content delivered to the right audience — amplified through the channels that has the potential to make the greatest impact.

But to help ensure that this marriage between influencer marketing and social not only survives, but thrives, it is up to everyone in the industry to work to ensure that engagements remain authentic, honest, transparent, and measurable.

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By Katie Paulsen, Vice President of Influencer Marketing, RhythmOne

Sourced from MediaPost

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Why brand advertisers are shifting to attention-based metrics

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By Jessica Goodfellow

After a troubling year for digital advertising the world’s biggest brands are cautiously re-embracing programmatic. Although, they are now turning to attention-based metrics to better ensure brand safety and overall return on investment (ROI).

This was the consensus shared from attendees at The Drum’s recent Programmatic Punch event. Speaking on Thursday (9 November), participants in a panel that explored the growth of programmatic across apps, mobile and video said this shift towards more inventory quality assurances has been prompted in part by Procter & Gamble chief brand officer Marc Pritchard’s keynote speech earlier this year, in which he called for greater transparency in the digital supply chain, which he called “murky at best, fraudulent at worst”.

Now that media buying using programmatic technology accounts for 72% of display advertising spend in the UK, publishers, agencies and big brands are beginning to rethink the tendency to “race to the bottom” when approaching programmatic by simply chasing views or clicks.

What’s more, the walled gardens of the internet each have different standards for what denotes a ‘view’, with Facebook counting a view as three-seconds or more versus YouTube’s 30-seconds.

Facebook said last month that it doesn’t believe there is value in a one-size-fits-all currency when it comes to video viewability, instead preferring to offer advertisers flexibility to trade and buy video in a way that drives value for their business.

While Facebook’s argument is that some clients buy as cheaply as possible where other more luxury clients care about view duration, this only works to further muddy the waters of viewability, according to panel participants.

Which is where attention-based metrics come in. In traditional CPM (cost per thousand) buys, all impressions are valued equally, e.g. an impression that lasts one second on a viewer’s screen is valued the same as an impression that lasts 30 seconds. Attention-based metrics breaks that model down in order to allow advertisers to trade on how long someone watched and was engaged with their ad.

“Completed view doesn’t tell you too much, how many people are paying attention for a second, two seconds? That is the big opportunity moving forward – moving into an attention economy,” said Jon Hook, vice-president EMEA of brands and agencies at AdColony.

“That tech is there so it is up to advertisers to demand that from their partners,” he added.

In line with this, the Financial Times (FT) developed a new cost-per-hour (CPH) metric which is designed to attach value only to impressions lasting more than five seconds whilst the user is engaged with the page and, therefore, to deliver greater brand impact for each dollar of advertising spend.

CPH was informed by research which showed that brand awareness, uplift and association all increase the longer an ad is in view.

While attention-based metrics is not a new concept, adoption rates have been slow. However, Aurelia Noel, global digital partner at Carat, revealed that there is a demand for this fledgling type of trading from “more mature advertisers”, naming Diageo, Mondelez and Heineken as examples of the type of brands who are recognising the difference between viewability and attention.

“At end of the day this year was the year of brand safety and viewability…In video especially, a lot of inventory still cant be tracked, neither by IAS or others. Outside of just changing the way we measure our campaigns, we also need to change the way we plan and manage our campaigns,” Noel added.

Responding to this, Clementina Piazza, programmatic director of Integral Ad Science (IAS), said video is a “very tricky area” to agree on standards, and that in-app is “even trickier”.

“It is about time [we brought] all of those available solutions together and understanding what are the limitations of the available solution and how the interpreting solution can react to those. It is an IAS technology challenge but also a challenge overall with regards to how many environments support it,” Piazza said.

Noel also believes that advertisers are not harnessing ‘moments’ – that is when is the best time to connect with a customer.

“Even when we have the right moments, the creative falls short because we are not taking advantage of creative optimisation, whether in display or video,” she added.

By Jessica Goodfellow

The Drum’s media reporter covering everything from publishing, TV, social media, radio and technology.

All by Jessica

Sourced from THEDRUM

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YouTube clarifies stance on ‘hate speech’ and ‘advertiser-friendly’ content

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By Gillian West.

YouTube has made changes to “address advertiser concerns” around ad placement clarifying its rules on hate speech.

Speaking via a blog post, YouTube said it would not allow adverts to appear alongside “hateful” or discriminatory content. However, some vloggers have complained the rules are too strict and will affect their income.

The announcement clarifies the kind of content that will not earn money on YouTube describing “hateful” content as any video that promotes discrimination or “disparages or humiliates” people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or “other characteristic associated with systemic discrimination”.

Advertising will also not be placed next to videos using “gratuitously disrespectful language that shames or insults an individual or group.”

Videos deemed to not be “advertiser-friendly” could remain on the video sharing website as long as they don’t fall foul of the new guidelines which also advise users to refrain from making “inappropriate” parody videos.

According to reports, users have criticised the move with one – Captain Source – telling the BBC that the algorithm used to determine “advertiser-friendly” content was far from perfect.

“Context around many words is incredibly important and needs to be addressed,” they said.

Others also pointed out that mainstream news networks posted inflammatory debates that could fall under “incendiary and demeaning”, and that music videos often push the boundaries of sexually-explicit content but still carry ads. “Why punish the little guy, but not the big networks?” asked user Eugenia Loli. “This is a double standard.”

Back in August, some YouTubers had complained that their videos had been flagged as “not advertiser-friendly” so were no longer earning ad revenue.

YouTube parent company Google has been dealing with many ad misplacement issues over the last six months with Havas Group making headlines back in March, pulling its clients ads from YouTube and Google over brand safety fears.

By Gillian West

Sourced from TheDrum

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Brand Safety is a Two-Way Street

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Sourced from The Drum

Advertisers’ concerns about endorsing objectionable content have forced Google to introduce solutions that protect customers’ brand safety. However, these updates do not favor creators, and Google certainly does not seem to realize that YouTubers have their own brands to protect…

James Waugh, is the co-founder of Bidio

Over a year ago, when Google rolled out programmatic guaranteed – a method of delivering ad campaigns brokered directly between a publisher and a media buyer using algorithms – when advertisers weren’t so worried about the quality of their ad placements. But in the past few months, this ‘brand safety’ issue has escalated significantly – here’s a useful timeline from Digital Content Next.

Since March, 250-plus advertisers have pulled over $750m from the open exchange. In response, Google’s chief business officer posted about “expanded safeguards for advertisers,” plus DoubleClick announced several enhancements, allowing publishers to transact fixed-fee deals programmatically.

Now dangerous and derogatory content is not eligible for monetization, and “machine learning systems can’t always discern context or distinguish commentary/humor from hate speech.”

Furthermore, YouTube recently announced channels won’t be considered for its Partner Program until they reach 10,000 views. This clearly shows Google’s priorities are not aligned with aspiring creators’ best interests.

Google does not seem to realize that YouTubers have their own brands to protect. Video producers care about their viewers’ experience, just like advertisers worry about quality of their ad placements. Creators are beginning to ask these questions:

Which brands/advertisers appear on my channel? YouTube does not provide that information.

How much does AdSense pay me compared to similar creators? Apparently, one million views is worth about $2,000, according to popular belief.

How much of my revenue does YouTube take? 45%!

What percentage of Alphabet’s revenue comes from YouTube? Nobody outside the company knows… YouTube’s financial information is hidden within Google’s quarterly reports.

In the early days of YouTube, multi-channel networks helped rising stars increase their production value by providing access to resources and equipment. Recently, the YouTube Partner Program has usurped that business model, offering YouTube Spaces to high-profile creators, especially those involved with YouTube Red. As a result, their network is becoming the Hollywood of the internet, but many users prefer to stay independent.

Header bidding has given content producers the power to increase competition for their ad inventory. Before this new auction logic, Google’s waterfall system gave AdX unfair advantages over third-party ad servers and exchanges. Now publishers take the highest overall bid, instead of the first one above a threshold.

This benefits publishers with technology resources, but what about independent creators? YouTube does not facilitate direct bidding, but it is now possible for creators to sell programmatic guaranteed inventory via their own private marketplaces, without sharing revenue, or sacrificing authenticity.

Full Transparency

YouTube should provide complete visibility to both advertisers and creators. Video-level transparency – revealing where ads appear and how much they cost – is the obvious solution, but Google can’t break down the walls enclosing its data jungle. All they can do is work with comScore and media buying agencies to whitelist ‘safe’ content.

Total Control

So why can’t YouTubers control which ads appear on their channels? All content creators deserve to make informed choices and maximize their bottom line. That is why I believe that artists should be empowered to reject or accept bids. Currently, Google shares most of its ad revenue with ‘preferred’ creators. Big brand advertisers don’t care as much about channels with fewer subscribers and views, despite high engagement.

Moreover, why can’t YouTubers establish price floors? Setting minimum bids may not change what sponsors are willing to pay, but at scale, throttling access to premium inventory heightens competition, which drives up the going rate for exclusive placements.

Contextual Targeting to the Rescue

What is the best way for advertisers to learn about consumers online? They should get to know people based on what they watch, instead of tracking their behavior. Ads following us around the web are certainly annoying, but they also limit publishers’ ability to monetize premium content. Many advertisers identify target audiences on reputable media platforms, then serve intrusive ads through cheaper, low-quality networks.

Don’t give up half your ad revenue to any supply-side platform!

Developing your own private marketplace requires a lot of resources, which up-and-coming video producers often lack. However, with a democratized ad network, independent creators get sponsored without compromising the integrity of their work. Artists, journalists, and entertainers upload original productions, then advertisers compete for temporarily exclusive logo placements in the corner of select videos, with clickable watermarks indicate a direct relationship, which builds consumer trust. Ultimately, this enables authentic and cost-effective influencer marketing, while promoting transparency and control.

James Waugh is the co-founder of Bidio, follow his company on Twitter here

Sourced from The Drum

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