Happy Friday, marketers! To close out the week, we’d like to share some recent and noteworthy items in the digital marketing world.
P&G Shakes Up Tech Providers Behind Global Programmatic Buying
As reported yesterday in AdAge, Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest advertiser, is breaking up duties for its seven-year-old Hawkeye programmatic digital-media-buying operation as it looks to save at least $1 billion annually on media spending and $500 million more from agency and production fees globally over five years.
The changes to P&G’s programmatic buying operation include parting ways with the original tech provider, AudienceScience, in favor of different providers in various parts of the world such as Neustar and The Trade Desk.
Consorting with the Frenemy: Ad Tech Players Partner For Shared Identity Matching
Seven independent ad tech companies debuted a programmatic consortium on Thursday that pools their supply- and demand-side cookie IDs into one shared identity asset. The consortium is helmed by AppNexus, MediaMath and LiveRamp, which provides the data matching. Other launch partners include Index Exchange, Rocket Fuel, LiveIntent and OpenX. According to AdExchanger, it’s a shot across the bow of Facebook and Google, which suck in a majority of digital ad dollars.
“The big giants have had an advantage over the open internet in that they have their own deterministic identities for users that allows more precise targeting and cross-device matching,” said AppNexus product VP Patrick McCarthy.
Social Commerce Hasn’t Quite Taken Off in the Way it Was Predicted To
According to eConsultancy, while 52% of marketers said it would be the most prominent trend of 2016, you could argue that live video or influencer marketing ended up stealing its thunder. It seems that despite mobile commerce rising in popularity – and with one in four users trying to purchase a product on social last year – many brands have struggled to find the right balance between social media and ecommerce.
In fact, a recent survey suggests that 45% of adults have no current interest in clicking on a ‘buy now’ button, while a further quarter don’t even know the technology exists. Meanwhile, many brands are scaling back on chatbots after Facebook reported a failure rate of 70%.
