MarketingTech 2019 year in review: Influencer regulations, CMO battles, and social change

2019 in digital marketing, through the reporting eye of MarketingTech, has seen something of a two-pronged approach. While the exploration of emerging technologies and their use cases, from voice search to AI to blockchain, continues, it has been tempered with a more measured and nuanced focus.

While this publication found plenty of column inches to tell the stories those making the most of their technological bets this year, from Mastercard, to Starbucks – and will continue...

3 January 2020 | Advertising

On Black Friday, try showcasing your values instead of slashing your prices

This Black Friday, French cosmetics startup Typology won’t make a single euro cent in profit. That’s because instead of slashing prices and scrambling for customers, the company is launching a campaign called “#BlackForGood”, donating its profits to environmental charities. “This campaign is intended to be a positive and encouraging call to action for those who agree that Black Friday could be better,” says founder Ning Li.

27 November 2019 | Advertising

Gartner finds UK marketing budgets are on the slide – but optimism for the future

Analyst firm Gartner has put together something of a gloomy series of missives around the digital marketing sector in recent months – and its pessimistic look on UK marketing budgets released today is no different.

The company’s 2019-2020 CMO Spend Survey has revealed UK marketing budget allocations are overall ‘significantly’ behind their US counterparts. Yet while spend is cooling off in certain areas, others are seeing something of a boost.

The...

25 November 2019 | Advertising Technology

For cybersecurity marketers, a sense of clarity is desperately needed

Security marketers are all battling to differentiate the problem they are solving and how the solution or service they provide helps to solve that problem better than anyone else. Driving home this latter point isn’t always easy given how crowded the enterprise security stack is today.

According to CSO, the average enterprise organisation has 75 security products deployed on their network and even more alarming is that 20% of global employees would sell their credentials,...

15 November 2019 | Best Practice

Demystifying influencer marketing: How brands can build relationships with a data-driven culture

When it comes to the practice of working with influencers, I come across a lot of fear and caution amongst marketers. Whether it’s the fear of influencer fraud, uncertainty around how to measure results, or an inability to understand the impact of their investments, people remain wary.

Yet, influencer marketing is one of the highest potential practices for brands. An influencer’s voice can often be seen as more credible than a brand’s own. So, it has never been...

8 November 2019 | Branding

SocialPubli: On the importance of micro-influencers and getting influencer marketing into a wider campaign

What do you think of when you hear the term ‘influencer’, or ‘influencer marketing’? The chances are that it’s someone who is either famous for being famous, or a bona fide famous person making a killing from some soulless shilling. Either way, you may wonder: just how are they getting the ROI from this?

At DMWF Global in London back in May, accounting software provider Sage made an interesting point. Could you name any big influencers in the accounting...

18 September 2019 | Advertising

Back to life: It’s the ‘new’ New Year – and a huge opportunity digital marketers overlook

For decades, marketers have made a moment of “back to school”, setting their sights on mothers and, in more recent years, fathers.  But according to new data from Pinterest, limiting marketing to families with kids focused on back-to-school is a miss for advertisers.

On Pinterest, we see a renewed enthusiasm from people of all ages for organisation, health, positivity, activities and refreshed routines in September. It’s almost like people are hitting refresh...

3 September 2019 | Branding

Whether in-house, outsource, or anything in between, agencies can – and do – help

Programmatic is now mainstream – expected to account for almost 90% of digital display ad spend in the UK next year – so brands naturally want to understand it better and gain more control over how their advertising budgets are spent.

To achieve this greater level of understanding and control, many brands are taking steps towards in-housing programmatic. An IAB study conducted across multiple European markets revealed that 86% of programmatically active brands already...

30 August 2019 | Advertising Technology

Wikipedia co-founder calls for social media strike to fight ‘long train’ of abuses

One of the co-founders of Wikipedia has called for a two-day strike of social media to protest against ‘serious grievances’ and a ‘long train of abuses’ by the platform arbiters.

Larry Sanger had posted a ‘declaration of digital independence’ on his blog at the start of June in which signatories – numbering just over 300 at time of writing – can advocate for decentralised social networks. The primary principles of decentralised...

1 July 2019 | Campaigns

Who’s taking it to the next level in customer experience? Well, nobody, says Forrester

Amazon may have stolen the crown as the world’s most valuable brand, but who are the companies pushing the boundaries with regards to customer experience?

According to the latest analysis from Forrester, Lexus, Regions Bank and USAA are among the best performing US brands – but nobody is taking things to the next level.

The 2019 US Customer Experience Index ranked brands out of 100, with 75% or above being designated as ‘good’, and 85% or better as...

12 June 2019 | Best Practice