Marketers are always competing for consumer attention throughout the year. Still, the 2022 holiday season, which this year also coincides with the world´s biggest soccer event, presents an even more significant challenge. As a result, marketers must lean into audience-based targeting to unlock valuable opportunities and increase efficiency.
A sophisticated audience strategy requires the right target, at the right moment, in the right channel, with the right data. So how can advertisers capitalise on this holiday season?
The importance of unlocking new audiences and leveraging new channels
Many advertisers fall into a pattern of doing the same type of campaigns over and over. Eventually, your audience will be tired of hearing from your brand. Finding the right target means testing and scaling your audience strategy to reach new consumers. For example, marketers can monitor who engages with their ads and eliminate low-performing segments. In that case, they can narrow their audience to the optimal targets.
With a refined audience, marketers should focus on personalized engagements and high-performing channels and formats. For example, native ads can be seamlessly integrated into a webpage and often perform well because of their ability to blend with a chosen environment. In a world where consumers see thousands of ads daily, creating advertising that doesn’t feel overt and promotional goes a long way toward increasing engagement. With native ads, marketers can experiment with different copy, images, placements, and capacity to optimize results in real time.
Also Read: How Does AI In Marketing Boost Digital Marketing Tangents?
Shifting consumer behavior and the Workday Consumer
While leveraging new channels is one part of it, the other is understanding your audience. The pandemic forever changed how people work, blending personal and professional environments. As a result, the Workday Consumer unapologetically switches between employee, personal, and consumer modes throughout the day. Marketing to this new behavior requires brands to better recognize and reach their consumer throughout the day, across devices, as they mix work and personal tasks.
Advertisers need sophisticated technology to reach consumers with relevant content when engaged with the brand.
The value of multi-platform campaigns to boost reach
Thankfully, the advertising technology available today can meet consumers where they are across devices and channels. Unified end-to-end platforms, like Xandr’s marketplace, deliver control and flexibility to buyers and allow them to tap into the power of digital and video. In addition, many advertisers are experimenting with new and emerging marketing platforms to reach shoppers, including connected TV (CTV), gaming, and retail media.
Multi-platform capabilities, like Microsoft Advertising’s Smart Campaigns, help advertisers of varying sizes and budgets connect with customers across leading advertising and social media platforms, including Google, Facebook, and Instagram, while using one interface.
The role of first-party data in a cookieless world
While the deprecation of cookies continues to be delayed, forward-thinking marketers are also considering the cookieless future as they plan for the current holiday season and beyond. There will be several solutions to this challenge.
While we continue to test and learn, now is the time to start organizing and leveraging first party data. Moreover, audience networks offer a way to leverage first-party data at scale. Lastly, your tagging infrastructure provides an opportunity to secure insights and create first-party relationships.
The greatest gift for marketers this holiday season is the technology, reach and scale currently available for audience-based targeting. Additionally, tapping into the right target, moment, channel, and data will ensure that consumers unwrap relevant and valuable advertising.