BOSTON – An omnichannel advertising strategy starts with the understanding that putting consumers first drives every other decision about how to reach them among a growing number of media channels. Implementing such a strategy can be challenging inside corporations with varied marketing teams that compete for internal resources while also focusing on different media outlets.
“Each team is trying to optimize their channel and budget,” Jim Nail, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said in this episode of “Delivering on the Promise of Omnichannel Advertising,” a Beet.TV series presented by Mediaocean. “By starting with a strategic layer, individual pieces of it are operating within that omnichannel plan.”
He foresees companies developing strategies to address the fragmented media marketplace, giving marketers a way to harness various sources of consumer data to develop a consumer-focused strategy.
“There’s still some technology and data barriers that need to be worked through,” he said. “There’s a lot of people working on that, but we’re still pretty far away from having a reliable, scaled dataset that gives that level of controls to marketers.”
How Upfront Sales Will Change
The pandemic’s economic consequences have significantly affected the advertising marketplace, as uncertainties make media planning much more difficult. The lack of predictability is likely to have an effect that outlasts this year’s disrupted upfront sales season.
“We’ve heard for years and years that, ‘Oh, the upfront is outdated and is obsolete, we don’t need it anymore,’ and very little has changed,” Nails said. “Assuming that the networks and media companies see that the sky doesn’t fall on them, they’re still able to sell their inventory, they’re still able to make a good profit, there will be less pressure to go back.
Advertiser demand for greater flexibility is likely to force traditional media companies like TV broadcasters to behave more like digital outlets let marketers adjust campaigns and spending levels with more audience-based targeting. Over-the-top video channels are driving that push into TV.
“That ties in with the change we’re going through in terms of audience-based buying and convergence of traditional linear with OTT,” Nail said. “You don’t necessarily want that schedule locked in months and months in advance. You want some degree of flexibility.”
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