HOW DIGITAL MARKETING IS CHANGING IN 2015 · data warehouses, analytics or attribution platforms, reporting systems and more. Measuring customer behavior and merging cross-channel

HOW DIGITAL MARKETING IS CHANGING IN 2015:

WHAT MARKETERS NEED TO KNOW NOW

TRENDS + OUTLOOK

Introduction

Cross-Channel Marketing Experiments Go Wild

The Digital Marketing Ecosystem Breaks In Two

A Unified Customer View Holds the Key to Cross-Channel

First-Party Data Rises to the Top

Programmatic Goes Everywhere

Beacons and Payments Redefine the Mobile Landscape

An Integrated Data Layer Emerges as a Technology Priority

Data Cooperatives Set the Stage for 1:1 Marketing

2015DIGITAL MARKETING

INTRODUCTIONThe digital marketing landscape keeps evolving and shifting under our feet, and there’s a lot to think about in terms of the profound changes that are shaking up the ecosystem. From industry consolidation and proliferation of new marketing technologies, to the growth of walled gardens, to the spread of programmatic, and ever-rising consumer expectations for relevant and timely user experiences, the landscape is more complex than ever.

To help you sort it all out, Signal asked our distinguished panel of in-house digital experts and thought leaders to weigh in with their outlook and insights for the 2015.

Here’s what we heard: This year, expect to see brands and agencies experimenting like crazy as they wire up new channels and test new technologies that connect the dots for better understanding their fast-moving, multi-screening customers. Foundational data layers and solutions that stitch together customer profiles across channels and devices will be a primary focus of these cross-channel trials. Driving these experiments is the realization that in order to truly know their customers, marketers need to stop wasting valuable first-party data. Marketers will be taking action to eliminate infrastructure gaps and blind spots in their cross-channel data collection—not only to pave the way for a unified view of each customer, but to improve marketing ROI through enhanced messaging, bidding, optimization, and measurement programs.

To learn more, read on. We hope you enjoy Signal’s expectations and trends for 2015.

Marketing is no longer a channel-by-channel game and connecting channels is the single most important driver of marketing success.”

Marc Kiven, Founder and CRO, Signal

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Study after study shows that orchestrating marketing activities across channels is a top priority for brand and agency marketers around the world. But there’s no silver bullet for keeping up with perpetually-connected customers as they move between smartphones, laptops, tablets, stores, call centers, kiosks, and more.

The obstacles remain daunting: Organizational silos. Fragmented point solutions. Lack of data integration. Wasted and stale data. Half of marketers are stymied by the gaps in their marketing infrastructures, according to Signal’s recent Cross-Channel Data and Technology Study.

But let’s be clear: the cross-channel revolution isn’t at a stalemate, and far from it. Marketers are doing more than just talking about cross-channel; they’re moving toward it in a thoughtful, concerted fashion. Savvy adopters are attacking the cross-channel beast step by step, and progressing carefully from one stage to the next.

In 2015, the experimentation will focus on cross-channel data collection as the launching pad for more relevant and cohesive interactions with consumers. Working toward a unified view of each customer, marketers will be wiring up mobile, web,

CRM, and point-of-sale channels in order to leverage more data to drive customer experiences. Brands and agencies will be building big data feeds to enable cross-channel modeling and distribution to a wide variety of endpoints, such as data warehouses, analytics or attribution platforms, reporting systems and more.

Measuring customer behavior and merging cross-channel data will be the precursors to the next, necessary step of activation. Achieving a total, actionable view of the customer’s cross-channel journey is still a ways off. We think marketers will get there in 2016. But in the coming year, it will be very exciting to watch the results of cutting-edge campaigns that will be utilizing the latest cross-channel capabilities.

ACTION STEPS YOU CAN TAKE:

Identify your cross-channel use cases. Plan the measurement and activity capabilities enabled by access to a unified view of each customer across channels that deliver business value to your company.

Conduct a data audit. It starts with reviewing your current marketing technology investments to identify where your customer data exists today, the relevant behavior data and attributes, and mapping the data integration points needed to tie it all together.

True cross-channel connectivity is a step-by-step process. Brands and agencies will start by tackling the biggest cross-channel initiatives that yield the

highest rewards and learn from those efforts for future planning.”

Tomas Rodriguez, Product Marketing Manager, Signal

CROSS-CHANNEL MARKETING EXPERIMENTS GO WILD


THE DIGITAL MARKETING ECOSYSTEM BREAKS IN TWO

Modern marketing is defined by complexity. Marketers operate in a tremendously sophisticated and fluid environment defined by a multitude of touchpoints, tools, data, and suppliers. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of steps from ideation to execution, all assisted by numerous technologies.

There’s no question that complexity is here to stay and will continue to escalate. But in 2015 the nature of that complexity will change, not in terms of increased quantity, but in the kind of complexity marketers face.

The new twist in 2015 will be a story of bifurcation. The traditional state of marketing technology has been an equilibrium between large suite vendors and entrepreneurial specialty solutions. This arrangement supports a healthy cycle of development to meet new challenges, growth, and the ultimate delivery of mainstream capabilities.

Moving forward, this cycle will be disrupted as the top end of the market breaks apart into two distinct groups: media and social behemoths, and large enterprise technology vendors.

Why now? Several changes drive the structural evolution – and growing complexity – of the marketing technology landscape:

• Overall market growth. Digital marketing growth continues unabated. According to Forrester Research, digital marketing spend will grow 12% to over $100 billion in the next 5 years. The financial opportunities and the need for accountability as those dollars are spent drive market activity.

• Marketing evolution continues. Marketers must meet consumers where they are, and that means interacting across new devices, channels, and technologies. There is a never-ending need for innovation; simultaneously there are new opportunities to delight consumers and a constantly rising bar for marketers.

• Non-traditional players vie for control of the media landscape. Several players – most notably Google and Facebook, but potentially also companies such as Apple – are asserting leadership roles in the marketing and media landscape and making moves from a new playbook based on their core businesses and vast resources.

The changing face of marketing technology complexity has huge implications for marketers. While these developments are disruptive, they are positive on average. It reflects a growing market where a rising tide lifts all boats, and firms have opportunities to innovate and create sustainable competitive advantages.

Fragmentation continues to disrupt the ecosystem in

the U.S. as the largest players build closed platforms and make acquisitions, while specialized companies and the flood of start-ups continue to innovate and evolve their capabilities.”

Joe Stanhope, SVP Marketing, Signal


Be ready to integrate. No system does it all, nor will it anytime soon. Take control of data and avoid lock-in by selecting solutions for integration capability as much as, if not more than, features and functionality.

Consider innovation a cost of doing business. Marketers are armed better than ever to benefit from a disrupted market. Experiment with new capabilities and data, and be ready to iterate – and even fail occasionally.


A UNIFIED CUSTOMER VIEW HOLDS THE KEY TO CROSS-CHANNEL

As marketers address the challenge of keeping up with customers who move constantly between devices and channels, the ability to create a unified profile or “view” of each customer has become the key to enhanced user experiences and improved ROI.

In 2015, marketers will focus on the capability to connect the dots as a customer travels from smartphone to desktop to store to call center – not just for tracking purposes, but to build rich profiles of the customer’s likes, behaviors, purchase histories, and loyalty status.

Today, a typical customer journey may look like this: in the morning, a consumer views an email on her smartphone; during lunch, she sees an ad and searches for product information on her tablet; later she makes a purchase in a store or on a laptop. To a marketer, this consumer may appear to be three or four different customers.

Compounding the duplicate identity problem is the fact that cookie-less environments — such as point-of-sale, mobile, and TV — are becoming more prevalent, creating blind spots that make her interactions difficult to verify or follow. Marketers are syncing data like crazy, yet gaps abound in what brands know about their customers.

To paint a more complete picture of the customer, digital marketing is evolving beyond the cookie to offer a variety of universal ID solutions with vastly different approaches for solving data collection and privacy/security challenges.

As marketers size up their options in 2015, they will gravitate toward identity solutions that enable them to collect data from web, mobile and offline sources, matching the data in a timely way, and creating unified profiles that can be sent to a data warehouse or any other endpoint of choice. The best solutions will give marketers the control they need to improve personalization, targeting, optimization, measurement programs and more. They’ll have scale for eliminating blind spots and optimizing match rates.

As marketers realize the advantages of owning their ID systems, they’ll choose identity solutions that are portable and transparent, working across all ecosystems rather than being limited to a single proprietary ecosystem.

The ultimate goal is stitching profiles together across channels and devices while respecting consumers’ privacy. That’s critical because while consumers want to be recognized and understood, they never want to be creeped out.


Think beyond the browser. Identity must go cross-channel into any device or touchpoint where customers interact with your brand.

Make identification actionable. Identity shouldn’t be isolated or static. Ensure that any matching and identification projects offer more than a number. Leverage identification to build profiles and segments, incorporate behavior and attributes, and port IDs into activation systems.

Identity and a panoramic, cross-device view of the

consumer is critical for cross-channel success. Brands that have a well-defined data strategy will lead the way.”

Mark McEachran, Director of Products, Signal


FIRST-PARTY DATA RISES TO THE TOP

2015 will be the year that marketers make first-party data their top priority. For many years, marketers relied too heavily on third-party data. It was convenient to buy tons of data, though it wasn’t cheap. And the practice inspired some bad habits among advertisers, who assumed that the data was fresh and true, and targeted their ads accordingly.

But as customers get more demanding and the tools for attribution get more sophisticated, first-party data (the information you own about your customers) becomes ever more valuable—and attainable. While there are costs involved in collecting, storing, and using that data, a data hub can make this process simpler. Just imagine the data hiding in the far corners of your servers, and pulling that information into a regular speaking relationship with your CRM, your ad networks, and wherever else it’s useful to have accurate, authentic data.

The 2015 first-party data trend also dovetails into the growing consideration of consumer privacy. Because first-party data doesn’t rely on tracking consumers as they move from site to site, it’s a more reliable method of collecting customer information. As first-party data is primarily made up of the information that consumers choose to give to brands that

they have relationships with, it’s easier to work with and trust.

Finally, third-party cookies may be on their way out. Their fate isn’t clear, but it’s evident that having a solid first-party data collection plan will insulate your company against changes in regulations and browser behavior.

Because the goal is to serve the right message to the right person at the right time, you need to match customer profiles. Once you pull all your first-party data together, matching user actions with user profile data, exciting things are possible—namely, connecting online and offline behaviors, and giving your customers the personalized experience they expect.

First-party data gives marketers the confidence of knowing where, when, and how their data was collected. This is the good stuff—the top-shelf data. By pulling it into your data hub, where all your customer signals are merged and sent to where they need to go, you’ve got high-quality intel you can use to run effective and efficient strategies.


Locate your first-party data. Identify and document all potential sources of first-party data and the policies associated with that data. Include all of your company’s data inputs: website, mobile app, CRM, point-of-sale systems, etc. Also include data collected natively or via third party vendors.

Develop a transition plan. Identify how current customer experiences and vendors can benefit from enhanced access to first-party data, etc.

2015 will be a major turning point for marketers

as they realize the competitive advantages that can be gained by leveraging their customer engagement data outside of programmatic, third-party audience segments.”

Josh Dreller, Director of Product Marketing, Signal


PROGRAMMATIC GOES EVERYWHERE

2015 is the year that programmatic becomes the norm for marketers. And it’s going to be everywhere, literally, from mobile and video to television and billboards.

Programmatic has taken the digital advertising industry by storm. A year or two ago, many marketers were nervous or skeptical about programmatic buying. Today eMarketer predicts that in 2015, programmatic will account for 55% of digital display ad spending. The efficiencies that programmatic buying brings to display advertising will be equally beneficial to almost every advertising channel you can think of.

But the real story is every other platform beyond display. Many marketers believe that anything that can be programmatic soon will be. Compared with buying ads directly, programmatic is easier, faster, and cheaper—no need for buyers to take long lunches with sellers (though those will be missed).

Programmatic ads are also more easily optimized by the buyer: If something is working well, you can double your spend there. If an ad placement isn’t working as well, you just turn it off. The power is in the hands of the advertiser.

Video and mobile DSPs have already popped up to take advantage of this emerging market. In 2015, 26% of video ad spending will be sold programmatically, and by 2016,

its share will be 40%. Mobile already accounts for 44% of all US digital programmatic ad spending; next year, mobile is likely to surpass desktop.

The use cases that result from the spread of programmatic buying will personalize our experiences in new arenas. Programmatic for television—known as addressable TV—will allow marketers to show a specific commercial to a specific viewer. This means that niche advertisers may finally be able to make the economics of TV advertising work to reach their narrow audiences.

Programmatic is even coming to out-of-home advertising. Grand Central Station could segment its visitors by time of day, noting which hours its halls are dominated by finance workers, service workers, or tourists. The station can then sell its digital billboard space accordingly, programmatically selling ads to fit each audience at the right time of day.

But as with all things programmatic, just because advertisers can now target highly specific audiences doesn’t mean that they necessarily have the creative to craft a customized message for each audience. It will fall to advertisers to make their messaging smart and effective, now that they can be certain they’re reaching the right market.


Develop a programmatic roadmap. Think of all the campaigns you’re running on all your channels. Which of them might benefit from a more targeted approach?

Consider both ends of the media spectrum. Programmatic will bring a broad set of opportunities, spanning private exchanges that make available broadcast television inventory to native campaigns.

Programmatic will be redefined as driving

automation and efficiency. All media that can be, will be eventually bought and sold programmatically.”

Warren Billington, Managing Director, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, Signal


BEACONS AND PAYMENTS REDEFINE THE MOBILE LANDSCAPE

Another new year, another “year-of-mobile” declaration. But this isn’t the screen that you used to know. The latest advancements in mobile technology now have mobile devices interacting with physical spaces through beacon technology and financial systems through mobile payments systems, such as Apple Pay. As mobile is no longer self-contained as a channel, 2015 will be the year the mobile scope widens and the savviest marketers will jump into this brave new world of data opportunities.

Earlier this year, a Google-sponsored survey found that over 66 percent of U.S. adults report using their devices while in-store for shopping support, including looking for offers and coupons, comparing prices, and contacting friends for advice on purchases. This creates great opportunities for marketers to leverage their location-based marketing potential.

Although Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology has been around for a while, this will be the year that proximity technology will come to the forefront, led by the enhancements to Apple’s iBeacon. The recent updates from the iOS 8 release, including enhanced privacy and rumored additional UI features, are encouraging retailers to embrace

the technology. During 2015, we’ll see accelerated adoption of beacons by major brands and creative new use cases from the valuable data collected on in-store customer engagement and activities.

With the launch of Apple Pay, mobile makes a big move in the financial transactions of US customers. Marketers will now have unprecedented access to transactional data from their customers as conversions will be recorded in-store, online and through mobile apps. In 2015, we’ll see an increase in domestic customers using mobile to complete purchases, enabled by Apple’s seamless, integrated experience. Marketers will start leveraging this newfound data goldmine by running more effective and efficient campaigns, fueled by validation through purchase data.


Embrace proximity technology. Even if you’re not prepared to send real-time messages or offers at this point, now is the perfect opportunity to start collecting in-store customer engagement data.

Integrate mobile payment systems into your online, mobile, and POS customer experiences. Apple Pay, Google and others will be competing to shape the domestic mobile payments ecosystem over the next year. Stay ahead of the curve by collecting as much transactional data as possible to gauge the effectiveness of digital campaigns and increase your overall ROI.

Mobile will merge with location, in-store, and identity initiatives as brands and solution vendors look to integrate the consumer’s physical

journey with the purchase journey.”

Jonathan Ricard, Head of Sales, North America, Signal


Consumer expectations are rapidly shifting to an event-driven, always-on world. Consumers are now accustomed to streaming video providers that remember where they’ve left off when they switch between a laptop and tablet, airlines that notify them of upgrades or impending flight delays on their phones, and stores that allow shoppers to place an order online and then pick up the items in a brick and mortar store just down the block.

For their efforts to be effective, marketers need to be able to execute at a similar real-time pace, across relevant channels, with the right personalized message. This means rethinking how and where data is collected, stored, accessed, analyzed, and made actionable.

To date, marketing technology stacks have largely been evolutionary, with varying support for consumer-level data sets across individual channels. This evolutionary approach is not limited to the technology layer, but extends across people and process too; organizational silos can present additional challenges to a marketer’s ability to execute, as can the availability of talent with the right skillsets.

The marketing stacks of tomorrow need a foundational data layer capable of aggregating customer-level data points from multiple sources, reconciling the same user across multiple devices, and consistently delivering relevant, personalized messages and experiences across all applicable addressable channels. While a single channel may be more relevant to the real-time conversation than others today (e.g. retargeting vs. direct mail), what’s often missing is a cohesive data strategy that takes into consideration data provenance, age, quality, and usage rights in a cross-channel environment.

Consumers expect you to deliver a consistent experience across every interaction—so gains you make in one channel may easily be lost if you’re unable to replicate them in other channels as well. This approach requires a higher level of sophistication: in 2015, data will not just be a means to quickly enhance a specific campaign, but an organizational asset that can give your company a competitive advantage in the marketplace.


Catalog and understand the types of data you have access to and what is relevant for you to use as a marketer.

Model the return on investment you’ll get from creating a data asset for your organization. Applications of the data asset can extend well beyond marketing into other business areas.

AN INTEGRATED DATA LAYER EMERGES AS A TECHNOLOGY PRIORITY

An integrated data layer will emerge as a key

requirement and foundational layer of any technology stack.”

Ana Milicevic, SVP, Global Strategic Consulting, Signal


The ability for two or more separate businesses to collaborate and drive better measurement and personalization is set to grow in 2015 as concerns around privacy, data leakage, and security are addressed by enhancements in technology platforms. With these concerns abated, data co-op strategies will expand to a level not seen before.

Imagine a large auto manufacturer that has spent years meticulously cultivating a prospective buyer through careful messaging. Over this period, they’ve learned a lot about the prospect’s preferences. After all this time, this prospect is now standing in a local dealership inquiring about a test drive. If the dealership’s sales representative knew about the prospect’s history and preferences, how would it impact their conversation?

Consider a large consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketer that has a solid media strategy and analytics based on designated market area (DMA) or zip code. If they recognized that a customer is physically in a grocery store and is pacing the aisle between the CPG’s product and a competing product, what reminders or suggestions could they make to ensure their brand is top-of-mind to this customer?

These are real-world examples of marketers wishing to share data in order to personalize and enhance their communication with customers. In 2015, these

concepts will move from guesswork to real-time precision.

The CPG marketing example can be used to illustrate the difference. Historically, the CPG measured activity in terms of DMA and zip codes. The brand could utilize instruments like coupons or collect point-of-sale data from retailers to get a general sense of how sales were going, but they had little ability to actually execute 1:1 personalization to an individual customer. The marketer had no idea about the identity of its customers, what level of affinity each individual person had for its brand, and what factors each person considered before making a purchase.

Data co-ops in 2015 will allow the CPG brand and other types of marketers to integrate with a wide array of options like loyalty programs, shopper apps, and proximity and geo-location techniques, all operated by external partners like retailers and grocery stores. These options all provide the ability to identify customers at this granular level of detail, enabling these marketers to execute on 1:1 personalization goals at last.


Identify the use cases for co-op data in your business. These are scenarios where customer insights or behavioral data from the buying journey could power more timely, relevant, or personalized interactions.

Map out your industry ecosystem. Identify potential co-op partners that possess pockets of data that would contribute to a fuller and more actionable understanding of customers.

DATA COOPERATIVES SET THE STAGE FOR 1:1 MARKETING

In 2015, marketers seeking alternatives to walled gardens

will find creative solutions in the form of anonymous, data-sharing cooperatives that protect consumer privacy and data security.”

Todd Chu, Signal SVP, Global Innovation, Signal

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HOW DIGITAL MARKETING IS CHANGING IN 2015 · data warehouses, analytics or attribution platforms, reporting systems and more. Measuring customer behavior and merging cross-channel