Digital advertising spend will surpass television in 2017. This according to eMarketer, which is forecasting that digital ad expenditures will grow to $77.3 billion, while spending for television will increase to $72.0 billion.
This growth comes in spite of continued advertiser concern regarding transparency and the fact that 40% to 60% of their working digital media dollars are being absorbed into inventory margin.
With this as a backdrop, we have noted a couple of interesting trends in the digital media space, that directly and positively addresses these concerns.
First and foremost, there have been a number of agencies that have embraced a more transparent model when it comes to digital media planning and placement. They are looking to directly appeal to advertisers’ opacity-busting inclinations and their desire to improve working media ratios.
What are they offering? In short, they are structuring their service and financial management models to eliminate the hidden fees, double charging, rebates, kickbacks and media arbitrage practices employed by a host of traditional media agencies operating in the digital space.
The common link among these progressive agencies is to take more of a consultative approach to working with their clients to solve for the best method to drive brand engagement and to improve consumer experiences. These shops fundamentally understand the importance of integrating customer relationship management (CRM) and online media to create personalized customer interactions across each stage of the marketing lifecycle.
Recognizing the rapid advances occurring on the data analytics and ad tech fronts, they are agnostic when it comes to their role as a full-service or managed service provider. These agencies have come to realize the importance of integrating first, second and third party data and that from a privacy and data governance perspective advertiser ownership of such data may be a more appropriate path forward.
Additionally, they are open to working with their clients to help facilitate direct relationships between advertisers and technology providers to eliminate duplicate costs and boost transparency. They have a comfort level with direct-bill third-party media payment processing models which afford advertisers the opportunity to see exactly what the net media cost is.
For advertisers’ who are comfortable using the agency’s technology stack, no problem. For those that are interested in migrating that ownership in-house, they will consult and work to design and implement an approach that will work best for their clients. This could include everything from identifying DMP, DSP and ad server options to suggesting viewability optimization, fraud prevention and modeling tools. This new breed of agency recognizes that cutting out the middlemen from these areas can greatly enhance an advertiser’s working media ratios.
The benefit of this approach is profound when one considers that according to a recent survey by Technology Business Research (TBR) among 240 ad technology users in North America and Western Europe, they found that “only about 40% of digital advertising budgets are currently going toward working media” and that “the second biggest allocation – 31% of budgets – was going to pay for technology” with the balance being applied to “pay for agency services.”
The second trend that is having a meaningful impact in the digital advertising space is the continued expansion of services offered by technology consultants including IBM, Deloitte, Accenture and McKinsey. These firms have made strategic acquisitions and or built resource bases in the creative design area which allow them to complement their technology integration offerings and provide comprehensive end-to-end solutions. These firms’ gains will likely be to the detriment of traditional advertising agencies as the roles of data management and digital media continue to grow in the coming years.
As Jon Suarez-Davis, Chief Marketing and Strategy officer for Krux recently stated: “Marketers want absolute transparency across the value chain.” Mr. Suarez-Davis’ opinion, based upon his experience on both the ad technology and client-side, where he managed digital media for the Kellogg Company, is that advertisers “would like to have the technology and other non-working costs (that aren’t related to impression delivery) separated.”
As the comedian Bill Hicks, so accurately opined:
“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.”
The agencies and consultants that understand this dynamic and have a willingness to morph their service delivery and compensation models to address advertiser desires in these areas will be well positioned to boost their relevancy and revenue growth potential in the coming years. Those that don’t may struggle to keep pace as advertisers take a more proactive approach to optimizing their digital media investment.