Tag Archives: advertising

The Linear TV slow death. OTT/ CTV in, Linear TV out

Are you a cord cutter? Well, you are not alone. New research from eMarketer projects cable, satellite and telecom TV industry is on track to lose the most subscribers ever. This year, over 6 million U.S. households will cut the cord with pay TV, bringing the total number of cord-cutter households to 31.2 million.

I was an early Netflix adopter and loved it. It was convenient versus the alternative – a trek to the local Blockbuster. Boring. Getting a disc delivered in the mail encased boldly and unmistakably in a red envelope was a marquee moment now forever stamped in entertainment history. Movie entertainment suddenly had became affordable and convenient. Soon, streaming movies became possible with bandwidth infrastructure advances. Today, challenged with an abundance of viewing options, how the average person consumes TV content has changed immensely, and is expected to maintain its trajectory.

COVID Related Outcomes

The pandemic has revealed some brand new realities, accelerating adoption in unexpected ways in its wake. Technologies which have benefited from this unexpected boon are multi-platform gaming, Streaming services and gaming have done well. The leading Multi-player gaming communications facilitator ‘Discord’ has done brilliantly. Its revenues were up to $120M in 2020 from $70 in 2019 at a 188% clip. Streaming is an outright winner.

Zoom has become the new generic for conference calling. Memory recall – Remember Xerox. It used to be the generic for Copiers, couple of decades ago. The term ‘Streaming’ has become synonymous with watching movies and shows on Smart TVs, Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast and others.

Brands have noticed these changes and have begun to tweak their marketing mix & budget allocations with a focus on OTT/CTV to maximize ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). Linear TV continues to fragment as OTT/CTV advertising surges with near uninterrupted audience attention. Globally, new user penetration is moving at the +7% yoy clip with the United States in the lead

Linear TV is being challenged as a result of a ∆ in content consumption, abundance of supply, choice of streaming devices, global demography ∆’s and GenY and Z viewing habits. It is a global phenomenon.

Adtech Terminology

So what does this all mean to CMOs? First, an Adtech TV terminology clarity and recall in this fragmenting TV landscape –

What is Linear TV?

Linear TV is a traditional system in which a viewer watches a scheduled TV program at the time it’s broadcast and on its original channel. 

It also can be recorded via DVR and watched later. 

What is OTT? (Over the Top)

OTT is the delivery of TV content via the internet over the standard, closed TV system. 

Users are not required to subscribe to traditional cable or a satellite provider to watch TV content. 

Typically, video is delivered in a streaming or video on demand (VOD) format.


Popular OTT services include Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Mass media and entertainment conglomerates are also launching their own OTT services such as Disney+, HBO Max and NBC’s Peacock.

What is a CTV? (Connected TV)

A CTV is a device that can connect to a TV or a smart TV that facilitates the delivery of streaming video content.

Say hello to Roku, Apple TV, Xbox, PlayStation, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, and more.

Programmatic AdTech OTT/CTV Supply Side realities Brand Marketers need to know

  • CMOs/marketers are well aware that Cross-screen measurement supported by Martech identity platforms, digital, linear, OTT, and CTV can all be efficiently attributed.
  • Programmatic TV spend ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), my trusted KPI performs better on OTT/CTV versus linear TV
  • There is a shift from Linear TV (Networks like NBC, CBS, etc) viewing to OTT/CTV devices. Roku has been a pioneer.
  • Apple TV is the device to watch for marketers in 2021. Apple TV+ has quietly built a solid programming lineup with more in the pipeline. With $1 billion invested, reasonably priced at $4.99/month it has a captive audience on its devices
  • OLV (Online Video Impressions) – Users view pre-roll OLV creatives with a high rate of tolerance. In fact, only 17% of users feel that pre-roll ads are interruptive. In the OLV setting, pre-roll offers a locked-in experience for the users where there is a universally accepted transaction of watching an impression per piece of video, allowing brands to get more closely associated with the content.

Making the Global AdSpend Case to the Board / CMO / CFO

Hello Brands, especially Global brands check out the Global OTT segment numbers to support your marketing mix, budget allocations and forecasts.

  1. OTT Video Global users stand at 2,280 million with a +7% yoy growth
  2. Revenue in the OTT Video segment is projected to reach US$171,772m in 2021
  3. Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2021-2025) of 10.0%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$251,879m by 2025.
  4. User penetration will be 30.3% in 2021 and is expected to hit 34.8% by 2025
  5. The largest segment is OTT Video Advertising with a market volume of US$89,459m in 2021
  6. In global comparison, most revenue will be generated in the United States (US$60,734m in 2021)

#SSP (Supply Side Platform) History

Back in the day, publishers sold space to advertisers via direct sales by finding advertisers willing to display their ads on their websites. However, as the display-ad industry grew, a completely new problem emerged. Direct sales brought about the problem of ‘fill risk‘ – Oops, unsold inventory. To optimize and fill the gap a technological platform was born that would efficiently sell remnant inventory and automate the process. Welcome the ad network to the batting lineup. This pinch hitter served as a broker between publishers and advertisers. As more ad networks emerged, the space got crowded and the decisioning process got complicated. Next up on the plate to even the score – ‘Network optimizers‘ emerged as super Adtech platforms

Recall the ‘fill risk‘ and the unsold inventory issue. Now these super AdTech platforms were making decisions about which ad network would likely deliver the best performance – i.e. sell the publisher’s inventory at the best price.

In the late 2000s real-time bidding (RTB) emerged. As a result of RTB the ‘Network optimizers‘ shape shifted in to a brand new type of AdTech platform – the supply-side platform (SSP). This evolutionary technology could now allow publishers to optimize yield by simultaneously connecting their inventory to multiple ad exchanges and demand-side platforms (DSPs).

The following image recaps the players in the #Adtech space and the machinery that churns the wheels –

Looking for a SSP for your OTT/CTV spend? Think before you leap. Evaluate these 4 possible traps.

  1. Ad fraud (invalid traffic): Ad fraud, or invalid traffic (IVT), in programmatic OTT/CTV advertising remained around 20% throughout 2020
  2. Pricing – Some SSPs employ mandatory traffic validation procedures, where they scan all of the publisher’s traffic along with IVT (Invalid Traffic) at an additional cost (~ 0.1$/CPM value).
  3. Middlemen – There are situations when a publisher has an agreement with one SSP that is connected via some kind of provider (let’s call it X platform). The agreed-upon is CPM $18, but via X platform they see only $12, meaning the platform is pocketing ~33% (!). This doesn’t even include the fees that a tech vendor takes taking from the DSP.
  4. Negotiating Contracts for Impressions – For example, for 1,000 impressions, the initial rate is $21 (at the demand-side platform [DSP] stage). Then an SSP cuts a 17% fee, so the rate value becomes $18, then the X-platform charges a direct connection fee of 33% and so the rate becomes $12, and the IVT tool fee (Invalid Tool Fee) – a bot traffic detector adds an extra $0.3, so the final value is a paltry $11.7; The actual net CPM they’re getting is $11.7 from the initial $21 that the DSP is bidding, so overall, the middlemen are taking fees of 50% of the total.

These are some reputable SSPs identified by the folks at #Pixelate.

2023 Marketing Mix

The space is truly dynamic and fluid waiting for the next disruptor to step in just when you thought you there was stability. It is near end of COVID and the 2023 Marketing mix is going to look a lot different for the budget planning cycle. Do your research and work with trusted partners.

Why a Consolidated Martech Stack makes sense?

One of the more jarring tasks of many businesses I’ve worked with is selecting from the vast pool of tools to use. This is where having a marketing technology stack becomes fundamental to your business’ marketing strategies.   

But what is a marketing technology (aka ‘martech’) stack and why does your online business need one? Let’s discuss and break it down: 

What is a Marketing Tech Stack? 

This is marketing jargon that you will definitely hear more of if you haven’t already. Essentially, a marketing technology stack is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a group of tech-based tools that marketers and businesses use to improve their marketing activities. But it’s more dynamic than merely using several tools individually for their own siloed purposes. Instead, marketing technologies are ‘stacked’ to create an integrated series of tools that allows you to build seamless customer relationships across several different channels. 

Not only will the right martech stack iron out your processes, but it should focus on the impact of your marketing activities and drive more efficient marketing spend.

Why should I invest in a Marketing Technology Stack? 

Like I said earlier, the martech space is made up of thousands of online tools and technologies. The sheer amount of vendors offering the latest and greatest in marketing innovations is overwhelming. Just take a look at ChiefMartech’s latest edition of the marketing landscape for 2020, with over 8,000 solutions to choose from. (For some perspective, ChiefMartech reported only 150 solutions just 10 years ago!) 

Put simply, the martech space is colossal. And marketers are pressured to keep up with the growth. According to Korn Ferry, “27% of CMOs were concerned with staying ahead and taking advantage of digital technology trends.” 

With thousands of solutions to choose from, it’s vital for marketers and business owners to understand how the right tech stack will impact their businesses and which technologies will be fundamental to reaching their goals. 

First of all – as with other areas of your marketing strategy – one size does not fit all when it comes to building the right martech stack for your company. Your chosen technologies will be impacted by factors like your budget and the type of business you have. One key factor to consider is your target market; for instance, B2C companies will likely require slightly different technologies than a B2B company since they each typically use different channels and techniques to acquire and engage with their customers. 

What Elements Make A Great Marketing Tech Stack? 

So let’s take a look at the technologies I consider foundational to a tech stack, regardless of your target customer.

  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM): this is often a focus for you B2B-ers. CRMs track all customer relationships and marketing attribution for you and your sales force. Ultimately, CRMs are essential to gaining in-depth insights of how your marketing efforts impact your sales pipeline.
    [Tools to explore: Salesforce; HubspotCRM; SugarCRM].
  • Content Management System (CMS): by now, for most of you, this is a basic element of your tech stack that you’re familiar with. A CMS is the technology that powers your website, blog, landing pages etc. These web properties are often where you want to engage your customers.

  • Advertising and SEO: this element is pretty vast, but search engine optimization and advertising is key to your customer acquisition strategies regardless of the type of business you run. Many marketers use a combination of software for keyword research, display ads, ad tracking, and attribution. 
    [Tools to explore: SEMrush, Google Ads; HasOffers].
  • Email: Email marketing is still a very cost effective way to support sales, build brand awareness and gain trust with your customer base. Email marketing capabilities might even be readily available in other platforms in your tech stack; like in your marketing automation or inbound marketing platform, for instance.
    [Tools to explore: MailChimp; Constant Contact; SendGrid].
  • Social Media: technologies for this space help monitor your social conversations, schedule posts or curate content. Specific networks like Facebook and LinkedIn also offer social media marketing opportunities that may be a valuable addition to your own tech stack.
    [Tools to explore: BuzzSumo; Hootsuite; SproutSocial].  
  • Collaboration: these are some of my favorite tools to add to a tech stack. Collaboration software focuses on working efficiently and transparently with your team. There are a number of project management tools to choose from, or even tools that focus more on the customer journey.
    [Tools to explore: Trello; Asana; Slack].  
  • Analysis and Reporting: regardless of the technologies you choose to integrate with in your tech stack, you must always be able to access your data to measure your marketing efforts. For the most part, businesses will at least have basic website analytics tracking in place, which is a great way to start. But depending on your situation, you could explore building a full data warehouse to pull together data from various systems to make your reporting more accessible and rounded.
    [Tools to explore: Google Analytics; KissMetrics; HotJar].

Your marketing technology stack is critical to your organization’s success. It enables you to manage your brand efficiently, coordinate and execute campaigns, leverage existing content, and attract and convert customers in an increasingly complex marketing environment. However, putting together the right set of tools and technology may be extremely challenging. With so many competing options, features, and interoperability concerns to consider, piecing together your martech may feel like navigating a minefield. However, the right marketing technology can make all the difference when it comes to the behind-the-scenes task of managing your brand and marketing operations.

2021: How Your Marketing Tech Stack Needs to Change

S. ERNEST PAUL

Instead of a shiny penny approach where marketing leaders are trying out every new tool that emerges from the market, businesses focus on creating tech stacks that are smarter, more streamlined, increasingly connected, and dramatically more powerful. Here is what you need to know about marketing technology to lay the foundation for smooth brand management and marketing operations.

Top Marketing Tech for Your Business

Whether you are a B2B or B2C marketer, there is no doubt that you have struggled with lead generation. Both landscapes are increasingly competitive, and lead generation can pose one of your biggest challenges. However, lead generation starts with traffic, and there is an entire collection of tools you can use to help you take care of just that.

#1. From siloed tools to all-in-one solutions

As more marketing channels emerge, marketing teams will continue to specialize rapidly. However, more channels mean more to coordinate and manage. As individual disciplines branch off, marketing teams risk building unintentional silos that may ultimately undercut efficiency and brand consistency. All-in-one solutions consolidate and may eliminate the need for disparate point solutions. They are also powerful for aligning cross-functional teams—like marketing and sales—to work together in harmony with greater speed and efficiency.

#2. Tools that connect and interact well with one another

As the need arises, API-first tools empower businesses to add, remove, or swap out solutions with greater ease. Of course, APIs fuel the free-flowing exchange of data between tools, systems, and channels—another area that is top of mind for marketing leaders for the year ahead. This step-level for your marketing tech stack is all about connection. You need to merge it, find patterns, and learn. As marketing becomes more omnichannel driven, channels and software islands need to be connected through API integrations and data warehouses.

#3. Leveraging data to create personalized customer experiences

Businesses focus on creating increasingly personalized experiences for their website visitors and customers. They invest in improving data pipelines to trigger powerful, real-time experiences and communications between prospects and use existing users with sales teams based on visitor, user, and company information or activity. By planning to leverage data-rich tools to better understand the customer and their journey, businesses can deliver more tailored content and experiences to the right customers at the right time.

Strategy First, Technology Second

Keep in mind that a tool is not a strategy. It may allow you to compare different software packages by their features; however, the real value marketing software offers lies in the strategy and approach it enables and how it affects customer experience (the desired end-result). Before you build or update your marketing stack, it is crucial to devise your marketing strategy. This approach should be shaped around your product, desired audience, and how to reach them. Analyze your current marketing practices carefully and identify where they match the strategy and where they block it. Do the work, map your plan, and only when you have a defined need should you consider purchasing something new. Find out where you lack processes and where you need to do things differently and then choose technology based on that. Mapping out this process will give you a better understanding of the required tools needed for your business. Martech is all about devising the right strategy for your business and only then identifying the technology that will help you execute on that strategy.

The type of business you have will determine which technologies you might find important and how they should be organized. That said, there are certain technologies you should consider as foundational to your marketing technology stack as you build it. Your marketing stack can be broken down into three key stages:

Stage 1: Attract
Stage 2: Engage
Stage 3: Analyze and optimize

Although there are multiple sub-phases within the above, these three are the most common phases almost every business can relate to.

Google Ads – ad tech

When it comes to driving qualified traffic to your website, Google’s search, video, and display ads are the quickest way to get the results you need. Not only can you target people who show a specific interest in what you are selling, Google Ads acts as your first point of contact for lead nurturing tactics like remarketing, email marketing, and conversion optimization.

Demandbase – ad tech

Demandbase enables businesses to deliver personalized online ads to specific people at specific companies across the web while refining the message to convert them into customers.

Unbounce – landing page builder

There is no point in spending hours creating targeted ads only to send prospects to a generic, soulless landing page, as this is one of the quickest ways to lose potential leads and sales opportunities. Unbounce lets you quickly and easily create custom landing pages that will help convert more website visitors into customers. You can create and publish landing pages in minutes—with no code required. The powerful A/B testing functionality allows you to experiment with your messaging, design, and forms to understand the best ways to convert visitors.

Sprout Social – social media management

Sprout Social allows you to manage your entire social media marketing strategy from one place. It can help you attract and engage with hundreds of thousands of customers and prospects. With Sprout Social, you can streamline your publishing workflows, schedule posts at optimal times, and turn social data into meaningful insights. All of this is geared towards optimizing your social media strategy and better connecting with your audience.

Marketo – marketing automation

Marketo allows users to automate their marketing processes like identifying top prospects, creating personalized campaigns that scale, and finding and connecting with the right customers. It is probably overkill for a smaller business. However, if you are moving from a startup to scale-up, Marketo is ideal for those looking to grow and market to a larger audience with a high degree of segmentation.

HubSpot – marketing automation

The breadth of the HubSpot platform is incredible. Its products run the gamut from advertising, blogging, SEO, email, social media, call-to-action, and beyond. This low-cost, or free in some cases, platform is particularly popular with small businesses who cannot afford the wealth of software options that other more mature companies can.

Outreach – sales engagement

Marketing teams have always been good at generating and nurturing leads. However, they might not always be that great with handing those leads over to sales and making sure they are acted on. They often have little insight into whether reps have, in fact, advanced inbound leads or not. Outreach is a type of tool for teams who are serious about sales and marketing alignment. It tracks your reps’ interactions with prospects and customers and recommends prescribed sequences of communications based on that. Instead of logging marketing into one system and sales into another, both teams can use Outreach’s dashboards and tools, making sure no leads fall through the cracks.

Aircall – cloud calling

Every marketer knows that if given only five minutes to show the product to all new users and answer their questions, they would nail their monthly recurring revenue targets. The problem is that setting up so many screen-shares each day is a tooth grinding process. Aircall allows you to start a phone call instantly from pretty much every major software system out there. Getting visitors from chat into a face-to-face demo can all be arranged automatically in a matter of minutes to speed up the sales cycle drastically.

Tableau – business intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) software is an increasingly powerful tool in a marketing team’s arsenal, as it allows teams to track every dollar and every movement throughout the marketing funnel. However, the real power comes in connecting multiple data sources to gain invaluable insights, otherwise lost. Tableau is recognized as the cream of the crop for its visual-based data analysis. Their data visualization is head and shoulders above what traditional BI vendors offer. You can perform reasonably complex data visualization in a very intuitive, drag-and-drop manner, so your team does not need to be fiddling around with SQL and so forth.

LeanData – lead management

Conversions are not a nice, neat, and organized path from point A to B. The conversion process is often more like a winding road of intersections, tangents, and loops that involve an entire host of marketing touchpoints. To understand your marketing program’s real ROI, you need to know which individual components got measurable results. Without these, it is all too easy for marketers to invest in under-performing marketing channels that yield inadequate pipelines and revenue. LeanData connects with your Customer Relationships Management (CRM) to provide the most accurate, channel-by-channel view of your campaign performance so your team can decide how to spend money in the most effective ways. Different marketing attribution models may suit different business needs depending on the buyer’s journey length and complexity. LeanData features fully customizable attribution models that can be finely tuned to your business.

Optimizely – conversion rate optimization

Optimization and experimentation need to be a crucial part of any marketing strategy in 2021. Optimizely allows you to create variations of your existing website with multivariate, multi-page, or A/B tests and then tracks how customers respond to the different versions. The best part is that it is absurdly easy to use. You do not have to code anything to adjust your website with this tool. Optimizely has a visual editor that allows you to make changes by clicking instead of coding, which is perfect if you do not have a full-time development team at your disposal.

Ahrefs – SEO

Ahrefs is a suite of SEO tools that help websites, blogs, and companies do in-depth research on their competitors, grow their search traffic, and monitor their niche. What keywords or topics should you be trying to rank for? How many links do you need to build to rank for your chosen keywords? Ahrefs allows you to do all that and much more.

Zoom – webinars

Conference calls and one-on-one meetings are Zoom’s bread and butter, but it is also a fantastic tool for hosting webinars that will drive people to your website. Zoom provides a useful, easy, and effective way to hold webinars as it hooks into your CRM very nicely, and the video quality is unparalleled. The user experience for the business and participants is next level.

Madkudu – lead scoring

Marketing teams are not just responsible for filling the sales pipeline with quantity, but quality as well. There is no point in attracting hundreds of leads who would never be a good fit in the first place. Lead scoring is one of the best ways to guarantee that the leads they hand over to sales are of high quality. Madkudu is one of the most powerful lead scoring tools available and helps you calculate tons of valuable information, most of which is not visible to your sales team. Beyond only job titles and employee count, Madkudu can evaluate the predicted: revenue of each company; the size of specific teams; tech stack and tools a company uses; whether their solution is B2B or B2C; has a free trial; raised venture capital; and more, meaning your sales team can hone in on leads showing the best determinations of success.

Intercom – customer engagement and lead generation

Intercom’s conversational relationship platform can serve as the backbone of your entire marketing technology stack. You can use it to send targeted messages to visitors on your website, build chatbots to engage qualified leads 24/7 on your website automatically, and CRM. Intercom’s power comes through tracking and monitoring customer data so you can better understand your audience and properly serve them with the right content and messages. Intercom solves one of your biggest headaches when constructing your tech stack integrations. Even if a platform promises great results, it may do more harm than good if it does not integrate with the rest of your tools. Intercom has over 100 integrations with Google Analytics, Salesforce, HubSpot, and many more, so you can rest assured that everything will play nicely together.

Clearbit – data enrichment

Clearbit Reveal can be used to help de-anonymize website traffic. When a prospect visits the website, Clearbit uses its IP address to detect its company, industry, location, and the technology the company already uses. You can thus customize your communication with each individual and avoid those spray-and-pray tactics from years gone by.

Five Considerations for Your Marketing Tech Stack

As technology evolves, marketing tools become increasingly more granular. In the past, one tool could solve three different issues. But today’s marketers need an advanced solution for each channel, task, and function. You will soon find that, with more tools, simple processes become complicated and inefficient. Now, rather than selecting tools based on price or feature set, marketers need to consider various factors before making their decisions. As this is much easier said than done, here are five important questions to ask before purchasing a new software:

1. Do you just want something new or will it deliver results?

At one point or another, shiny object syndrome has gotten the best of us all. Make sure you are not buying a tool just because it is new and exciting. Instead, consider the current tools you already have. Is there a way to reach your goals without using this technology? Do not buy a product just because you can. Adding another tool to your tech stack will only waste resources and add unnecessary stress to your team. Remember, more tools do not always mean better results.

2. Does this integrate with the tools I’m using?

The most important consideration to make when constructing your tech stack is integration. Even if a platform promises impressive results, it can do more harm than good if it does not integrate with the rest of your tools. A new website management tool may promise to double the number of leads you generate. However, if it does not integrate with your CRM, it may require four different people to move leads from one system to another. Not only will this cut into productivity, but the manual data entry will dirty your marketing database and require an additional tool for database maintenance.

3. Have I researched all my options?

Even if a tool checks all the boxes, it is still important to consider other options as well. You should do some more digging and check out some online reviews. There are many high-quality tools on the market, but even though one might seem like a good fit, it does not necessarily mean that another will not be better.

4. Do I have the skills and resources to operate this system?

It is important to buy tools that are easy to run using the resources you already have access to. Some of the best, most advanced technologies may turn into a full-time job. If you are a small team, going with a less sophisticated option will make more sense. Choose a solution that will help you reach your goals without too much effort.

5. Should other departments have input on this buying decision?

It is always considered best practice to share resources and information across departments, especially when purchasing a new tool. Without input from all stakeholders, you will not be able to make an educated purchase. Be sure to consult with all parties involved before handing over your credit card.

Data integrity is a prerequisite for the subsequent technologies – M, AI and Predictive analytics to perform well. The A/B texting has to continually be performed to constantly optimizing campaigns.

Every organization is different from scale to audience to product and geography. The Martech stack has to keep all these factors in consideration

S. Ernest Paul

In Conclusion

Building the right marketing tech stack for any company is no picnic. It can be quite a gargantuan task. But it’s all about integrating the right technologies together so they’re working cooperatively instead of independently. Not only will you get a full, comprehensive view of your customer journey and marketing efforts, but you’ll uncover how to optimize your hard earned marketing dollars.