The media marketing and advertising landscape has become much more fragmented, unpredictable and vast with the rise of digital channels. The amount of consumer choices, heightened expectations for personalization, and the need to optimize based on real-time data insights make managing campaigns and achieving desired outcomes challenging today.
New research from the Chief Marketing Officer Council, “Optimizing Outcomes in Media Marketing,” in collaboration with NCSolutions, finds two in three marketing leaders not very confident in their current media marketing and advertising strategy to effectively produce critical outcomes such as winning and retaining customers, increasing brand loyalty and enhancing customer experience (CX), among others.
“Today’s CMO must be incredibly agile in order to successfully navigate a fragmented and unpredictable media landscape,” says Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. “They have to be able to learn quickly and pivot fast when things aren’t going to plan. They need to make smart decisions based on data, not only gut hunches.”
“In our survey of marketing leaders, we learned they resoundingly do not feel confident in their ability to drive direct outcomes through their marketing and advertising efforts,” says Deirdre McFarland, SVP of marketing at NCSolutions. “A vibrant partner ecosystem already offers help for many of these obstacles. Brands can seek partners to run more efficient campaigns with targeting and optimization solutions.”
The report notes a growing interest among marketers for a data clean room, which can provide a host of benefits in media marketing and advertising. Chief among these benefits are in-depth analytics and the ability to have more access to analytics — which can lead to optimization and better outcomes.
“Optimizing Outcomes in Media Marketing” examines the impact of media marketing and advertising, where marketers can improve their capabilities, what they should be planning over the next 12 months, what challenges need to be overcome, and more.
How do you measure media marketing/advertising performance?
| Tactic | Percent |
|---|---|
| Sales lift | 64% |
| Return on advertising spend | 59% |
| Reach of targeted audience | 47% |
| Brand lift | 45% |
| Clicks/online engagement | 41% |
| Marketing mix modeling | 30% |
| Multi-touch attribution | 28% |
| Purchase intent | 26% |
| Impressions | 23% |
| Last-click attribution | 22% |
| Cross-media measurement | 18% |
| Other | 3% |
Where can media marketing/advertising make a difference?
| Tactic | Percent |
|---|---|
| Customer acquisition | 66% |
| Drive customer growth | 46% |
| Increase brand loyalty | 43% |
| Connecting with the customer | 30% |
| Enhance customer experience | 25% |
| Customer retention | 24% |
| Direct-to-customer marketing | 18% |
| Conquest for new customers | 17% |
| Expand partnerships | 14% |
| Win back campaigns | 7% |
How important is optimizing media and audience for an in-flight campaign?
| Extremely | 40% |
| Very | 43% |
| Moderately | 14% |
| Slightly | 1% |
| Not at all | 3% |
What gets in the way of optimizing in-flight campaigns?
- Lacking the right data inputs
- Lacking expertise and resources
- DSP/media partner/publisher doesn’t provide the tools
Source: Optimizing Outcomes in Media Marketing
Methodology
The report is based on a survey of more than 160 marketing leaders in North America, predominately in CPG and retail. Additionally, we conducted in-depth interviews with executives from companies such as Blue Buffalo, Red Wing Shoe, and Cuisinart.
NCSolutions has been helping CPG brands, publishers and retailers improve advertising effectiveness for over a decade. With a mission to improve advertising effectiveness for all media, the NCS team has pioneered new ways to target, optimize, measure and enable sales-based outcomes.
The Chief Marketing Officer Council is the only global network of executives specifically dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide range of global industries.
