Rachna Narem, Senior Partner, Director, EightBar
RachnaNarem is a versatile marketing professional with deep knowledge of analytics and strong client relationships throughout North America, Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America. She leverages 18 years of hands-on modeling and analytics experience to provide strategic consulting and leadership to variety of clients, translating insights into short-term tactical and long-term strategic recommendations for continued growth.”
What happens if there was no Advertising?
Advertising plays a major role in modern life. ... Advertising is one of the most important and a basic ingredient in today's business environment. Advertising helps producers or the companies to know their competitors and plan accordingly to meet up the level of competition. Advertising helps making people aware of the new product so that the consumers come and try the product.
Advertising Historically – Traditional advertising?
The internet has revolutionized advertising in the most astounding way. Not only has it changed the way ads are broadcast, but it’s changed the way consumers act towards them. During the pre-internet days, advertising was carried out via cheesy infomercials on radio, fuzzy old televisions, and billboards.
How did Advertising evolve in the internet era – Digital advertising?
- Advertising is evolving along with the technology and advancements in science. Digital media helps brands to be more engaged and helps consumers become more informed about their buying decisions. It is difficult to have that targeted reach by merely “existing” with a website online. Now, you need to reach out on social media and make sure your site can be easily interacted with across tablets, smartphones, special apps, and even tech-enabled wearables.
- Today, advertising has become multi layered (watching TV, while simultaneously posting on Twitter, viewing their Instagram feed, and shopping on Amazon), more data and quality driven and has to be delivered quickly (programmatic and real time media – automated technology of media buying) to reach the consumer, before the competition does.
- Sustainability advertising geared towards promoting social, economic and environmental benefits (sustainability) of products is becoming popular, as Advertisers no longer want you to remember technical specs of their products, they want you to feel specific emotions when you think or interact with their product. This brings you closer to the brand.
- Companies are looking to Segmentation which helps target consumers by common interests, behaviors, demographic and psychographic attributes. Segmentation leads to Personalization. No more “One Size fits all” approach. Personalization would be achieved by measurabilityand is not confined to clicks and conversions anymore, but goes beyond measuring eye focus, heart rate and emotional response and using the data to build a targeted strategy.
Is there still future for Traditional/ non internet advertising in the digital era?
Linear TV has changed to digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising and advertising in over-the-top media services. Typically, digital marketing strategies are much lower cost than traditional advertising and often have a better Efficiency/ROI, butLinear TV should not be forgotten, as it helps to drive brand awareness and increase the long-term impact of the brand. Demand advertising generated mostly by digital media has a short-termimpact, and we can track and measure its efficiencies and impact in the short term whereas Brand advertising(awareness/ consideration – Channels like TV) has a long-termimpact, and its impact is felt in the long run, even after 6 months.Brand generates demand. If the brand advertising stops, we are going to see the efficiencies and (eventually) revenue declining.
Future of Advertising, which is “Now” –
- Omnichannel marketing has and will take over traditional ‘email’ or ‘social’ marketing campaigns.The key is to use similar content and creative across channels so that consumers can connect the dots across devices and advertisers can drive the same message across different channels.
- New Sources of user data like biometric and behavioral data and voice samples is helping AI powered systems to look for patterns to predict user behavior to a bigger extent. New tech like VR and AR glasses, smart assistants and gadgets will help advertisers to run in new channels and reach targeted audience. Some employers like Ikea and departmental stores have used AR to make online shopping easier by presenting a visual product search, thus bridging the gap between offline and online.
- With the rise of ad blockers, issues of data privacy (Opt In and Opt Out/ GDPR) and data ownership have changed the industry forever and will keep having an increasingly bigger impact on it. Ten years ago, only geeks cared about where their data is stored and what this data is. Nowadays, a dating app becomes a matter of national security.
- Ad blockage, bot traffic and data privacy issues gave birth to Blockchain Technology (universally trusted ledger of transactions), where advertisers will finally be able to track the value generated by a user over time. Lifetime value of a customer will be more important than the cost of a click.
- Blockchains paved the way to NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) which are unique digital identifiers of either physical or digital products that advertisers can use to buy and sell things as single tweets or .jpeg files and will soon become lifestyle items, such as eBooks or Netflix subscriptions.
- New markets and prospects would come into place, as only half of the population is connected to the internet as of now, there is more than 3.5 billion population who are yet to be exposed to internet, but with technological and futuristic advancements that can become a reality, which would generate more opportunities to reach broader audience.
- With 5G tech, wireless internet will be faster and more abundant, even in rural locations, providing a seamless and consistent branded experience for your customers.
The future of advertising most likely belongs to the biggest and/or the smartest, at least on more developed markets.
