Happy Monday, marketers! Here is our weekly roundup of recent performance marketing and digital marketing industry news, reports and insights to help get your workday off to a productive start.
Trust in an AI-powered world
In a LinkedIn post, Randy Wootton, CEO at Rocketfuel makes an interesting analogy about the mistrust between the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War, and the mistrust in digital marketing today. Wootton says the “trust crisis” we face today is not rooted in ideological differences but–instead–in the volume of data that exists in the world today. We have more behavioral data available now than ever before, significantly more data than any individual can possibly process and interpret on their own. As such, we have turned to artificial intelligence to do the processing for us, and just like during the Cold War, the key to trust lies in verification.
One-to-One Marketing Should Have Been Solved Years Ago
Brands are still struggling to deliver on the promise of one-to-one marketing, writes the CEO of Flite in a Campaign U.S. op-ed. He contends: However, quite frankly, with the availability of tools, technology, mountains of data and armies of software engineers, this problem probably could have been solved many years ago. Those of us in technology use the word problem a lot, but for the marketer, the better description would be opportunity. The brands that harness the power of data to truly achieve personalized marketing stand to win big.
UK Publishers are Mixed on Performance of Facebook Instant Articles
While still early, publishers are starting to gauge how beneficial posting fast-loading content directly to Facebook via Instant Articles can be to them, both in terms of traffic performance and revenue as reported by Digiday. All the major U.K. publishers are publishing to Instant Articles to greater or lesser extents. The BBC and the Guardian were among the first, with the Guardian in particular going all in. The Economist, Financial Times, The Sun, Trinity Mirror, Daily Mail, Business Insider U.K., among others, are all testing it. So far, views in the U.K. are mixed.
How Publishers Can Help Brands Navigate The Content Marketing Crossroads
In an AdExchanger Data-Driven Thinker post, Jim McGinty, senior director of content marketing at IDG says Marketers are having a hard time keeping pace, forced to create more content assets than ever. At the same, 62% of brands believe that “producing engaging content is their greatest content marketing challenge,” according to a Content Marketing Institute study. Simply adding mass isn’t the solution. Savvy marketers must use their knowledge of the customer, market and purchase consideration process to ensure that they provide a steady supply of content to move their initiatives forward.
Confidence in Programmatic Advertising Drops 9% in One Year
As reported by PerformanceIn, confidence in the ability of programmatic to deliver value for money has taken a dip since 2015, from 95% to 86%, despite a drop in the perception of associated risk. This comes as part of a global survey of 107 digital marketing professionals by ExchangeWire and OpenX, showing that growing concerns over viewability are leading a portion of marketers to question the worth of automated media buying. Nicolas Bidon, CEO of programmatic ad platform Xaxis. believes programmatic has fallen victim to its rapid uptake, with climbing rates of CPM enough to shift perspectives on value.
