Now, more than ever, it’s time for marketers to take advantage of great opportunities to harness data to make campaigns work that extra bit better, argues Richard Robinson, managing director & VP EMEA, Turn.

The latest IPA Bellwether study showed that marketers’ confidence in "their own financial prospects", is high, at 22.4%. However, that is down from 25.3% in the second quarter of 2015, and while the drop might not seem so bad, the current level is at a two-and-a-half-year low.

One of the contributing factors here is that optimism in the economy is down to a nine-quarter low of 6.8%; almost half the level in the second quarter. The knock-on effect on marketing budgets is most evident in shrinking sectors like PR, market research, and direct marketing.

However, the same cannot be said for online advertising, which appears to be burgeoning. Online advertising went up 7.8% over the third quarter, and is accelerating too (growth was just 6.8% in the second quarter).

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Long gone are the days when lack of a digital strategy made a business seem eccentric or even insane. Disruption is accelerating and consumers embrace it.

So, with online marketing the healthiest channel in our industry, the next question for marketers is: “How can I take advantage of the great opportunities with online advertising to make my campaigns work that extra bit better?”

Find better ways to track ROI

Digital measures are coming under tremendous pressure at the moment, and just last month WPP’s mercurial boss Sir Martin Sorrell pointed out that many ‘old’ media channels have some of the most reliable metrics. “[Digital] measurement is a problem,” he told the BBC’s Today programme two weeks ago. “There are robots that watch videos rather than human beings. There are ad blockers.” Could both conspire to bring the whole digital industry into disrepute?

Digital can give you all the answers, but it needs calculated, as well as creative, marketing approaches. Well-planned, well-executed and well-measured campaigns will show your ROI and help you keep, and grow, your budget.

Like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, consumer media habits appear to change the moment you measure them. With ever-increasing focus on measuring advertising performance and understanding ROI, marketers who can do this are winning. Simple as that.

Connecting the digital advertising dots across channels

Online and offline are more intertwined than ever. Take a short walk anywhere and you will likely bump into someone with glazed eyes staring into a black mirror of the mobile variety. This meeting of online and offline can also be seen on the high street. Online continues to erode offline sales and the high street is feeling the pinch.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) showed that footfall dropped by 3% in June, on top of a 1.5% fall in May. Online convenience is changing both our shopping habits and town planning as people vote with their hands, and opt to click and collect, instead of pounding the pavement.

Such trends are symptomatic of more time spent online. Social, 4G mobile, and WiFi mean these trends are only going to continue. How brands use and connect digital formats – from mobile and desktop, right through to social media – will separate the winners from the losers. With so many ads online, brands must use data-driven insights to ensure they reach consumers at the right time and with quality, relevant content, as they move across screens. This is where programmatic and real-time system solutions will come into play; providing marketers with the data to do this, and to drive a seamless brand experience for the cross-channel consumer.

What’s the answer?

How marketers keep on top of the fragmenting media on offer is tremendously important. Constant analysis means marketers can make better decisions about where to spend, when to spend, and if they should spend at all.

Campaigns themselves are unrecognisable. Single concepts or designs unleashed into the world as billboards or TV ads are a thing of the past. Creative is malleable, tweaked and adjusted, modified and improved dependent on audience, feedback, time of day, and a multitude of other factors. Real time isn’t just a consumer experience, it’s a business model.

Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO) is about improving campaigns after they have launched, based on consumer browsing habits. Multi Touch Attribution can help marketers refine their media mix in the same way. For example, if your campaign works well up to the shopping cart, but then consumers aren’t converting, you can compare messaging exposure patterns against profiles that have converted, and then improve your segment media mix and sequencing.

Despite all this confusion, some marketing principles are as true today as they were in the days of Bernbach or Ogilvy. Getting the right message to the right person at the right time is the principle every marketer aspires to.

Yes, it’s easy to get distracted from this core principle. It’s even easier to coast along without any idea of how you achieve the insight necessary to actually make it happen.

Whilst consumer media habits are ever-changing, utilising the data left behind provides the insights into consumer behaviour that marketers need to mine if they are to succeed.

Once you know your insights, you know your audience that bit better. By qualifying and quantifying these insights, marketers are able to design a programmatic strategy that places different values on each audience segment, in order to decide on the right maximum bid price, and design campaigns that get you a step closer to that elusive, essential principle of right person, right time, and right message.

Programmatic is an enduring buzzword but, with marketing budgets under pressure, it’s vital to make sure your investment counts. Marshall McLuhan, the father of modern media theory and author of Understanding Media, said the medium is the message – know your medium and how the consumer interacts with it. Programmatic makes each impression count, as you know the audience viewing your ad is the right one for your brand.

But taking advantage of data and creating something that works means bucking the pessimism in the market and creating real value. Today’s programmatic technologies are sophisticated enough to allow modern marketers to monitor and measure campaign performance in real-time; to see what’s working and what isn’t, and adjust both media and creative quickly in line with those results. This makes it possible for brand marketers to execute well-planned digital marketing campaigns that don’t just shove any old ad in front of the customer, but employ context and control to help a brand connect with their audiences in a creative – but, more importantly, relevant – way.