Great post on AdExchanger.com about the Holy Grails of digital advertising. Seems to be a hot topic intersecting many industries from technology, advertising, and media, to businesses that focus on digital interactive and marketing research and intelligence.
The quest for the most versatile digital media planning and buying tool has evolved to mythic proportions. But the question remains, who will be crowned king of technology and advertising innovators?
The very best platforms seem to maximize the media planning and buying process most efficiently. However we must be aware that the notion of the Holy Grail remains elusive, as functionality continues to scale and evolve organically, which eventually replaces version after version with additional features and improvements. This is where the conversation gets interesting. The following are some of those specific digital “Holy Grail†functions and features.
Real-Time Bidding at Scale
This capability is robust in itself, but if it were to be strongly aligned with a cross-platform distribution platform, the tool will be boundless in its potential to transform digital advertising forever. Once media space or digital “real estate” can be selected and media plans built through a real-time auction and bidding engine, with complete reverse auction and pricing criteria selection, the advertising industry will be flipped on its head. The ad industry will simply be “Googlefied”.
The power of buying is back in the hands of the advertisers, which enables price discovery on a high level. Let’s see how much a Sportstron billboard is really worth at Staples Center versus Oracle Arena. This will give advertisers an opportunity to optimize the value of their marketing campaigns while justifying the actual validity of campaign strategies, audience traffic measurement, and the cost of digital units per placement. Tie this in with an audience hyper-targeting feature, and this platform will be beyond nirvana.
The Digital Back Office
There are companies out there that are super stellar at this. MediaBank’s OX Platform enables layered agency to client login features that takes you through the buying and execution process with scale and comprehensive analytics tools when integrated with their complimentary AX suite for data aggregation. It will be interesting to see what else they have up their sleeve once all of these different suites become a unified and consolidated process. But can it be crowned king of innovators?
True “Grailness” can only be achieved when media planning, execution, tracking, and optimization can be unified into a multidimensional process that incorporates both traditional and digital vehicles. The management layer will have to be versatile in being able to handle multiple users with various roles assigned from a strategic media planner, to an execution master, to a research guru that wants to do an apples to oranges comparison of media delivery. It gets difficult when you deal with multiple media platforms. MediaBank is certainly in Lancelot form. Let’s see what happens when they come out with a new integrated optimization platform, VP.
Mobile Marketing
Everyone knows that this is the staple click-through for digital out-of-home. Aggregators have developed capabilities to include mobile in their core offerings but this integrated aspect for digital destination advertising has not caught on as quickly as mobile offerings alone perhaps because the re-targeting element is still in infancy. The key here is to find “sweet spot” locations that bring together two different audiences’ identifiable mobile patrons as they congregate in specific digital signage zones that are geographically and demographically addressable.
The Cross Digital Attribution Tool
This tool can come in many forms: as a media planning analytics gatherer, as an optimization kit, or as a media buying platform that can harness multiple channels seamlessly. Why not build an integrated tool that can do it all? This is where the conversation gets interesting, because each one of these functions is a holy grail. Cross platform attribution will consist of a single platform on a global virtual network through which networks and advertisers can harmoniously participate in media selling and buying. This tied in to the real-time auction and bid engine will prove revolutionary for the industry, giving the power of discovery back in the hands of those who want it: the brands looking to efficiently manage their marketing campaigns.
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