The Rise of the Platform Marketer. Lee John

behemoth audience platforms have spawned a massive ecosystem of advertising technology, or “ad tech” companies to supply data, targeting, and measurement tools intended to support or enhance addressability. One need only glance at a LUMAscape11 infographic to imagine the number and complexity of these tools. There are literally thousands of companies that are developing technologies to help us optimize on these platforms.

      So, the crucial question is: who is going to take advantage of addressability at scale in 2.0? The opportunity is there, but most of the market is constrained in its ability to scale its addressable spend to make a significant impact. Our belief is that there will be noteworthy winners and losers. Most marketers who are moving their brand spend into more direct, measurable media tools, such as programmatic, performance-based, and direct response, are still working through the traditional marketing funnel. That funnel is narrow, with awareness at the top and little to no addressability. They end up spending marketing resources to contact people they don't know. And often, adverse selection is a problem, where people who don't have a high value potential are the ones cascading down the funnel. This, in turn, presents a targeting dilemma: a small audience of people who can ultimately be converted, wasted remarketing dollars, and a generally less valuable client base. It's only at the bottom of the funnel, after the restricted universe of converted customers comes out, that marketers can have insights about the outcomes of their marketing tactics. The result is a very inefficient funnel that's simply not scalable – all because you started out with no addressability at the top.

      Historically, even in the most direct-response-focused industries, budgets have been heavily concentrated on the upper and lower parts of the funnel. One insurance advertiser we know spends more than $700 million in media, with more than 70 percent of that budget going into top-of-funnel tactics, such as television, print, sponsorships, and guaranteed display. This advertiser also spends more than $200 million a year at the very bottom of the funnel on things like branded search, aggregators, ecommerce, and call center experience. All told, this advertiser spends less than 15 percent of its combined consumer budget in the mid-funnel, where consumers actually consider, engage with, and decide which products they will buy from which brand. We call this the “cinched belt” phenomenon. Spend is fat at the top and bottom but cinched tight in the middle. The reason for this has not been a lack of desire to spend more in this area. This insurance marketer would love to find a way to productively spend another $100 million in the mid-funnel.

      Until recently, lack of addressability has been the primary constraint to spending in the mid-funnel. Once broad awareness and share of voice were established, little could be done to engage with individual consumers as they moved through consideration and into decision. Direct mail was used to target individuals whom we believed were in-market, but that medium is now in decline. Email and display were used to relentlessly and impersonally retarget with diminishing returns. Once these tactics were maxed out, marketers were out of ideas for how to stay engaged with consumers through the buying process. So they saved their dollars to really unload on the consumer once they typed the brand name into Google or appeared on the site.

      Enter the addressable consumer experience. Now the advertiser can take advantage of increased addressability to drive more targeted, timely interactions with the consumer through the key moments of the cycle. A single consumer can be engaged with an individually targeted message in the Facebook newsfeed, receive a personalized offer on the landing page, get remarketed with a relevant search ad, and receive follow-up via an outbound call – all with a singular brand voice and highly engaging content throughout.

      Essentially, we can widen the funnel and place addressability at scale at the top by using data and analytics to target and maximize spend against high-value customers and prospects from the outset. First- and third-party audience platforms are enabling not just targeting but delivery of immersive, highly branded content, such as native and video, across devices. This means the traditional separation between right-brain and left-brain thinking around brand versus performance falls away, leaving a more powerful, integrated approach. And there is a cascading effect all the way down the funnel.

      Advertisers now have the opportunity to expand the boundaries of the mid-funnel. In effect, if one equates the mid-funnel with the space between mass media awareness and the ecommerce transaction, the marketer's definition of the mid-funnel must expand dramatically, eating into the traditional boundaries of the upper and lower portions of the funnel.

      At the upper end, fewer dollars will be allocated to untargeted messaging through things like national television, and more dollars will be allocated into addressable, programmatic tactics meant to drive consideration through relevance, such as addressable TV and programmatic video. At the bottom end, things like A/B testing and offer optimization will get pulled up into the mid-funnel as tactics integrated into the rest of the addressable experience. In essence, addressable and accountable spending has won most of the budget, which is what most advertisers have been seeking. That insurance marketer can now let that belt out several notches, and overall return on ad spend has increased.

      This shift will drive greater returns but will require some fundamental changes to both organizations and external supply chains. The expansion of the mid-funnel boundaries requires re-organization of internal functions for most marketers. “Brand” functions that own domain over certain media like display and social from direct marketing organizations no longer make sense. Organization around media (having separate owners for search, email and display) should be questioned.

      Similarly, external marketing supply chains with disconnected components where multiple tech platforms and agencies attempt to deliver the integrated mid-funnel in silos will create complexity and insurmountable barriers to the addressable experience. Consolidating the supply chain to fewer, more vertically integrated suppliers and platforms will become the norm.

The knowledge and insights gained as the audience travels through the funnel extends down into the channel, creating a larger universe of people who can now be brought into the funnel and are more likely to convert (Figure 1.2). This ultimately reduces the targeting dilemma, and this is how we scale. The result is more productive customer marketing, characterized by greater conversion rates. More knowledge means more targeted remarketing efforts. More efficient targeting, greater conversion, and more effective remarketing; they all lead to a richer customer portfolio.

Figure 1.2 The Evolving Marketing Funnel

      Our experience has proven this – in a big way – time and time again. Our clients have been able to increase their addressable impressions by more than 400 percent. In many cases, they have increased their addressable media spend by over 300 percent. Cost of leads and cost of conversions have decreased by as much as 30 and 40 percent, respectively. We have seen remarketing pools increase more than 500 percent. Average lifetime value of acquired customers has increased by more than 60 percent. And these results aren't atypical. They are commonly seen among our clients who take this opportunity seriously. Imagine the competitive advantage over those brands that don't.

The Mechanics of Addressability at Scale

      Digital Addressability

Digital addressability involves the use of customer data, whether it is anonymous or identified. Figure 1.3 depicts the addressability spectrum, in which anonymous individuals move to partially identified and identified status over time, as the customer relationship expands and data is being collected. And as both the level of knowledge and the level of identification increase, so does the value of the customer.

Figure 1.3 Addressability Spectrum

      Ultimately, the objective is to drive as much content as possible to that most valuable quadrant, where you have as much information on an identified customer as possible. But even in the far right lower quadrant, you will see that, as long as you have individual-level data, you can still drive a lot of value from anonymous consumers.

The Digital Audience Platforms

What is enabling

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