Complexity and uncertainty are looming for marketers and advertisers entering the daunting territory of automated trading. As a payoff, however, there also exists great opportunity: to take advantage of the efficiencies and targeting precision brought about by data-driven advertising; opportunity to measure, analyse and adjust campaigns on the fly to maximise ROI; and, opportunity to streamline previously disjointed business processes, minimising wastage of information, energy and money.
As Garth Agius, media director, Neo@Ogilvy, explains, one of the obvious benefits to marketers is the ability to communicate, cost-effectively, with clients past and present.
“If you can identify people who have bought your product before from cookie IDs, DSPs (demand-side platforms) make it incredibly easy to speak to that person again, with tailored creative, through retargeting. It is the next step in taking traditional CRM direct mail online.”
It is in this intersection of CRM and advertising that Julian Tol, CEO of Brandscreen, sees the chance for businesses to combine two misaligned marketing functions. “Previously, you’d have the folks in the bank or the travel company or the credit card company, and they would run their customer database… And that customer database would be the the arteries, the bolts, the crown jewels of the company. And what we had then is the separate activity in a company: advertising. Advertising grew up, from TV and print and radio, and the advertising guys would walk around and do their thing and create lots of wonderful television commercials and brand communication.”
The problem, of course, is that the CRM and advertising functions hadn’t been formally introduced. For CMOs and chief executives, the greatest opportunity in automated trading is to leverage their companies’ existing customer data to guide online advertising campaigns.
