‘Digital transformation’ courts a lot of attention these days. We have migrated from analogue to digital, VHS to DVD, and now just about every business is expected to undergo its own transformation. While the advantages of implementing a strong digital strategy are plentiful, not every transformation is a true success story. One tends to forget that the path to innovation is non-linear and that a whole host of skills, technologies, infrastructure changes and heated boardroom discussions are to be underway before an entire business can evolve with the times. 

The transformation itself can be risky and messy. In order to gain a more widespread insight into the state of digital transformation affecting the Adtech industry today, we surveyed over 200 media agencies and brands on their qualms and considerations for their businesses’ adoption of digital transformation. Respondents chimed in on the building blocks to transformation within their own organisations, as well as their greatest obstacles. When digital transformation is so wrapped up in mysticism these days, it may be best to step back and think about how we can detox our thoughts on digital transformation to date…

Creating culture

Take a moment to reflect upon the current structure of your business. Who are the decision-makers when it comes to digital transformation? Of the media agencies and brands we asked, 46% argued that the decision-making process lay with the C-Suite. In actual fact, the decision-making process should filter through the entire business in order to collate a unified vision. When just a select few decision-makers are spearheading possible change within an organisation, you risk missing out on collaborating with other potentially high-growth mindsets. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that 33% of all businesses agreed they struggle to justify investments to the board. 

27% of businesses also highlighted a “risk-averse culture” as a particular pain point when driving innovation forward. However, experimentation is a crucial part of the transformation. Startups operate with this mentality every day – but as businesses scale up, the desire to tread carefully often comes into play. An innovative business is not afraid to confront challenges, to fail fast and learn faster. This sentiment should ideally be shared by the entire company, and be a normalised aspect of culture. 

Getting resourceful

Now that culture has been embraced as a critical aspect of digital transformation, how do you get the ball rolling?  After all, the crux of ‘digital transformation’ is leveraging digital technologies to refresh and revamp a business. Many articles seem to claim digital transformation as some sort of one-stop-shop, a case of investing (heavily) in the latest, most agile technology. But for the vast majority of businesses we interviewed, issues with resourcing alone remain the two biggest obstacles to digital transformation. Leading the charge, 42% of businesses agreed they felt considerably challenged to source the right technologies to move their businesses forward. Furthermore, 34% of businesses claimed that an overall lack of time, skills and resources hinders their progress to digital transformation. A lack of resources across the board doubtless leads to an inability to experiment with new solutions, which 30% of businesses also agree has stopped them from moving forward.

Solutions to this issue will vary from business to business. But for many, this is often a case of looking at existing technologies and identifying where the pain points are, and then underlining what can be changed immediately. 

Making it cost-effective

Integrating digital transformation is a costly endeavour. When asking media agencies and brands about the financing for advanced technologies, 46% overall claimed this came out of their digital budget. Interestingly, 24% stated it was paid for by the marketing budget, followed by 20% for the ‘innovation’ budget. 

Still, an insufficient budget overall was listed as the third biggest pain point in digital transformation, tying with the inability to get the board to agree on investing. Everyone seems ready to cash in on innovative technologies without considering whether their end goal will attract a higher engagement and greater consumer focus overall. The supposed goldmine of digital transformation could, in fact, reveal itself to be a sinkhole if businesses fall into the trap of cashing in too early.

Digital transformation is rich in opportunities. It fundamentally changes business for the better. We live in an excitingly thriving and dynamic era, one in which innovation blooms rapidly and galvanises change. And yet, examining the salient barriers to digital transformation highlights a few common denominators. Issues with finance, culture, and resources stand at the forefront of these challenges, and while they may seem troublesome on the surface, businesses should not shy away from facing the future head-on. Your business is already transforming, just ensure you take a step back every once in a while to evaluate your strategy and give it a little detox. 

The post The Digital Transformation Detox appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Every four years the World Cup provides an excellent opportunity for TV equipment vendors, pay-TV providers and advertisers to cash in on the game that turns strangers into best friends and connects people in a new way.

While the World Cup will continue to be consumed on screens, the viewing formats are more diverse than ten, eight or even four years ago. TV has ceased to be linear – and the same goes for the ever so prominent TV advertising around the World Cup.

The who’s-who of Advanced TV

The World Cup isn’t the only football-related topic dominating the news. Amazon has made headlines in recent weeks by being the first ‘Silicon Valley player’ to enter the ranks of football broadcasters alongside the likes of Sky and BT.

While they may have only bought a small Premier League package for a week of games in December and on Boxing Day, with the challenges that selling fragmented audiences that come with it, this is a significant step and hints at the future of TV broadcasting rights.

It shows us that changing consumer habits have led to substitutions within the media players providing the video content. With subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), the likes of Amazon are not only producing immensely successful high-budget TV shows but are getting more involved in live sports broadcasting – one of the last strongholds of traditional broadcasters. They’re not giving up the fight, however, which means we’re currently seeing exciting changes in the world of TV monetisation.

Programmatic TV advertising promises benefits for both brands and broadcasters alike. It enables brands to target their audiences as effectively, as with any other digital media, directing ad spend into the most efficient channels.

It’s important to note that there is a variety of different programmatic options when it comes to Advanced TV. One of the most popular of course is Connected TV, which enables buyers to bid for programmatic ads that are shown to consumers who are watching video on an online player, such as iPlayer, a Smart TV or another Internet-enabled device.

Programmatic linear TV advertising is shown on traditional TV but backed with a data-defined audience pool. Last but not least, Addressable TV adverts are only shown to households using a traditional TV that aligns with a brand’s target audience.

As all of these different options have their own benefits, it is up to agencies to advise brands on which will work best with their specific media strategy.

Getting to grips with programmatic

We recently spoke to a range of brand and agency representatives about the biggest challenges they’re facing when it comes to Advanced TV. Around one in four of our interviewees (25% brand, 23% agency) are concerned that there is just not enough Advanced TV inventory available to buy.

Particularly in the US, programmatic opens up new opportunities for TV buying and shifts the process away from strict timescales. Furthermore, research by Innovid suggests that CTV impressions in the US have increased by 178% in 2017 year-on-year.

In the UK, eMarketer predicts programmatic digital video ad spend to climb from £967 million in 2017 to £1.58 billion in 2019. While Sky TV has become the most popular platform for out-of-home viewing, the mandatory registration required across all TV online platforms led to Channel 4 making all content on its platform All 4 100% addressable.

Looking at these facts, we can expect more programmatic buying options to become available in the future. While the highly coveted prime time spots around the World Cup games will have been bought months – if not years – in advance, programmatic media buying is the solution for those who won’t – or can’t – commit their ad spend around large TV events that far in advance.

Most of the agencies we spoke to already grasped the opportunity this year and made the most of the global football event; 63% of agencies ran a programmatic TV campaign during the World Cup.

These aren’t just commissioned by sports brands: the luxury sector is most keen to make use of Advanced TV during the World Cup, with 24% of programmatic campaigns run by our agency respondents advertising luxury goods. This is followed by sports (17%) and travel/hospitality and finance (14%).

This shows that the World Cup is a great opportunity to reach a broad audience. The target audience is diverse but clearly able to afford an affluent lifestyle – which makes the World Cup a dream come true for marketers.

Levelling the playing field

Research around programmatic media buying shows a split field: while many brands and agencies are charging ahead and using Advanced TV to its full potential, others are feeling unsure and need the right coaching around all things programmatic.

For beginners, it’s key to find the right team to get moving on Advanced TV. The opportunities are endless – but they need to start now to stay in the game.

The post Advanced TV – the Programmatic TV Buying of Tomorrow appeared first on PerformanceIN.

It’s true that first-party data is the foundation of customer relationships. It can provide rich, relevant and cost-effective insights into consumers — and, as such, it’s just what is needed to create highly effective, personalised ads. So why are many marketers struggling to make healthy returns on it?

It all boils down to data activation – the process of unlocking value in data through developing and acting upon insights that you uncover. It means putting the data stored in a data management platform – or DMP – into action.

As such, here we outline the five key challenges marketers are facing when it comes to data activation and, of course, how to overcome them.

Challenge 1: [In]accuracy

Today, brands collect enormous amounts of information about consumers, from what they like to buy to where they like to buy it. But too often, these insights are incomplete or inaccurate. The consequences of this can hurt a brand’s image and empty its pockets. 

To help overcome this challenge, brands must cross-reference first-party data with other (verified) data sources to create a more complete and up-to-date view. In this way, effective data activation requires building connections within your systems. By combining online and offline first-party information with other pieces of data such as browser history, location, device type and transactional data, it is certainly not mission impossible for advertisers to display a personalised ad to the right person at the right time.

Challenge 2: Regulation

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect next year and is calling for companies to change how they gather and use data. These new laws won’t just impact European businesses. Any brand that operates in the EU or uses EU data will need to comply. This poses new challenges for marketers and will force companies across the globe to transform how they collect and utilise first-party data.

As such, advertisers will have to do more than just hire a data privacy expert. Brands will need to shift their corporate cultures, putting respect for consumers’ privacy at the heart of the business, if they don’t already. Don’t forget that this is the foundation of building respectful and personalised relationships with consumers. Remember: data-activated, one-to-one marketing is not only expected by today’s customers, it is also the key to transforming transactions into enduring relationships.

Challenge 3: Scale

While some lucky companies have access to huge amounts of consumer data, most can collect only modest amounts, making it difficult for them to scale up marketing efforts. Brands can get around this limitation with the help of lookalike modelling, which means using the data they have, to identify and target similar-looking audiences.

Bear in mind, however, that it is no longer sufficient to think only in terms of, ‘People who bought this, also bought that.’ Data-activated marketing is based on a person’s myriad real-time needs, interests, and behaviours and in most business cases, it cannot be done without the help of technology.

Challenge 4: Multi-touchpoint customer journeys

As we all know, consumers move rapidly across devices these days. Yet the set-up of many advertiser’s tech stacks today still leads to delays in building a holistic view of their activity. Fortunately, cross-device data activation solutions do exist and they can provide advertisers with real-time insight. To this end, data silos must be avoided to ensure these can have the greatest impact.

Challenge 5: Interoperability 

As mentioned above, brands need to transfer first-party data quickly and easily across a plethora of marketing and analytics platforms, including walled gardens, which are closed software systems controlled entirely by the service provider, such as Facebook. This can be a struggle and often leads to a playoff between accuracy and scale. To help with this, advertisers need to find a data activation solution that can provide strong matching abilities and an unbiased approach.

Despite these challenges, data activation and personalisation is the lifeblood of modern marketing and technology has advanced to the point where marketers can use real-time data in a way that is meaningful to customers and profitable for companies. 

Marketers that leverage sophisticated data management technologies will be the first to boost returns on their first-party data. Activation is a crucial layer of modern, data-driven marketing and, while a DMP can help you manage your data, brands must not stop there. They should be looking for a data activation platform that addresses the above key challenges. 

Data is like fuel in a car and data activation is the ignition. Until you start the engine, the car doesn’t do much. While a DMP is great for collecting data from various sources and creating audiences, this is where its true potential lies. While there are challenges along the way, businesses can unlock a wealth of new insights and potential revenue streams by following the right strategy for data activation.

The post Five Barriers to Activating Your Data — and How to Tackle Them appeared first on PerformanceIN.