Successful omnichannel advertising strategies require a holistic approach involving people, process and technology. The ultimate goal of that approach is to reach target consumers among the growing universe of fragmented marketing channels while also avoiding wasteful media spending.
“The linchpin for omnichannel anything is really to start with the audience and with the consumer, versus starting with the channels,” George Manas, president and chief media officer at OMD USA, said. “It’s all about planning that reflects how consumers actually consume media and move about the world today.”
In this episode of “Delivering on the Promise of Omnichannel Advertising,” a Beet.TV series presented by Mediaocean, Manas describes OMD’s approach to omnichannel marketing that includes strategies to reach consumers inside the “walled gardens” of digital media that have vast troves of their own consumer data.
Part of the strategy involves moving past prior ways of doing things, such as organizing people into specialized teams that now need to collaborate on omnichannel efforts.
“We recommend that clients organize themselves more like we have, which is about bringing together different skillsets into a truly integrated planning organization,” Manas said about his company’s XMP team for cross-media planning and optimization. “That is a migration of digital skillsets and competencies, along with marketing science, into our core planning function.”
To help formalize its processes, the company created OMD Design as a codified approach to audience-based planning and strategizing.
“That codified process really helps us break with some legacy ways of working, and really tries to institutionalize a more modern, audience-based approach all the way from consumer insights gathering to recording and optimization,” Manas said.
Technological Underpinning
A key challenge is developing the technological underpinning to support people and those processes, and more effectively harness data.
“There’s not a single platform that solves it all. It’s really about platforms talking to each other,” Manas said. “It’s more about building out the capability and infrastructure to really integrate and synthesize different data sets and disparate systems into a unified work flow.”
Walled garden environments like Google, Facebook and Amazon that command about 60% of the U.S. digital ad market make omnichannel strategies more challenging. However, Manas said those hurdles aren’t insurmountable.
“We see our role enabling more of that capability that works more in harmony with the walled gardens rather than against them,” Manas said.
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