Retailers feel there are too many channels to effectively sell through

A TV remote control.

Online shopping has never been more convenient for consumers, who have access to a plethora of channels through which to engage with their favourite brands.

However, this same variety is confounding retailers, with 47% saying there are simply too many channels for them to effectively deliver the best sales experience.

This is according to Wunderman Thompson Commerce & Technology’s “Brands don’t fail... eRetail!” report, which found nearly all (94%) retail...

19 April 2023 | Content Marketing

Alfi research shows promising growth for programmatic advertising

Half of senior advertising executives expect spending on programmatic advertising to increase dramatically over the next three years.

This is according to a survey by the Florida-based artifical intelligence (AI) advertising SaaS platform, Alfi. The research also found that, when asked to pick the three most important benefits of programmatic advertising, 94% of those asked cited automation.

Programmatic advertising involves the automated purchasing and management of...

9 August 2021 | Advertising Technology

The antidote for an acute case of martech bloat

Marketing budgets are bouncing back to pre-Covid levels after what has been a tough year. But how marketers decide to invest that money has changed, with more resources being redirected to digital-first strategies. For example, the retailer Next recently announced it will now prioritise online marketing, stopping all other forms of marketing and promotion of its physical stores. As they change tack, marketers are expected to expand their investment in martech tools to support their digital...

27 May 2021 | Advertising Technology

The key to cookieless marketing has been in our hands the whole time

The cookie has long been crumbling, and Google’s announcement to move the industry towards a cookieless future should come as no surprise. While it may seem like brand marketers and advertisers have been preparing for this moment for years (pre-pandemic, even!), are UK businesses really ready for the road ahead?

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not necessarily all about “future-proofing” marketing efforts, and it’s even less about preparing clients for alternate...

22 April 2021 | Advertising Technology

Let’s be direct: Why supply and demand needs to move closer for programmatic

Bringing transparency to the programmatic supply chain has been on the digital advertising agenda for some time, but the ad budget constraints of 2020 combined with ISBA’s revelations around the ‘unknown delta’ have propelled it to the top of the industry’s wish list. As 2021 continues, there is widespread determination to resolve transparency issues once and for all; to move programmatic advertising out of the shadows, shine a light on inefficient and outdated practices, and enable...

16 February 2021 | Advertising

The cookie is dead: Long live identity graphs

Despite being the backbone of programmatic advertising since the launch of the first banner ad in 1994, the third-party cookie’s reign is set to come to an end. In under a year’s time, Google is planning on following competitors such as Mozilla and Apple in eliminating the cookie from its browser.

The death of the cookie represents a fundamental change in how marketers interact with and personalise messages to consumers. Tracking how people browse the internet, third party...

4 December 2020 | Advertising

Ad execs still clinging to crumbling cookie methods as creatives look to the future – survey

The move by Google to end third-party cookies by 2022 has caused something of a difference of opinion in certain marketing sectors, according to a new study.

The report, from Mymyne, a provider of contextual audience optimisation, which polled 100 senior marketing professionals, found that while almost two in five (39%) respondents in creative roles felt as though the impact of Google’s move would be ‘highly positive’, only 13% of ad execs felt the same way.

27 March 2020 | Advertising

AI for programmatic is great – but tragedy shows us why human judgement remains vital

Artificial intelligence has been an indispensable tool for programmatic ad buying. But algorithms can’t always tell the difference between positive and negative sentiment — you need a human for that.

This was brought home to me in the days following Kobe Bryant’s death in January. The tragic event spurred a tidal wave of activity on social media, which triggered ads for his jersey and other memorabilia items. This came across as tacky to many consumers. One of my...

18 March 2020 | Advertising

For luxury brands, the possibilities of programmatic cannot be ignored

For luxury brands, creating customer relationships, and the revenues they bring, is everything. A $25,000 watch or $150,000 vehicle is rarely an impulse buy, but instead a purchase achieved after many different points of engagement. 

An increasingly higher percentage of all ad budgets is being taken up by programmatic advertising, and luxury brands and their marketing efforts need to hop on board with this trend. Digital advertising has the power to use contextual targeting and...

3 December 2019 | Advertising

Privacy and real-time bidding: An updated guide for adtech vendors and publishers

Until the summer of 2019, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s privacy regulator, had not been particularly pro-active in enforcing the law on data protection in respect of the use of cookies and programmatic advertising based on real-time bidding (RTB).

This all changed in June and July of this year, when the ICO published respectively a detailed report into RTB practices and an updated guidance note on the use of cookies. There are some key points...

29 November 2019 | Advertising