Read on Digital Market Asia

As companies gear up for another year full of challenges and opportunities in the marketing technology domain, following are six key trends marketers should be aware…

Cross-device targeting

The APAC region is a driving force in mobile adoption with 3.6 billion mobile users and a staggering mobile penetration of 89 per cent. It’s hardly surprising that mobile advertising will remain high on the agenda for 2015, growing an average 30 per cent year-on-year until 2017. As the path to purchase becomes less linear, brands will move away from previously siloed marketing techniques and adopt a more holistic attitude to media buying, where highly targeted and personalised ads are served across all channels and devices from a single point of creation.

Data management
Programmatic adoption in APAC is growing, with 49 per cent of marketers already using it and a further 24 per cent planning to do so in the next two years. This increased use of programmatic will both require and generate huge volumes of data. In 2015, marketers will increasingly need tools for data mining and management, as well as expertise on how to maximise the use of this data.

Technology platforms – including single-platform marketing operating systems – will match this data against anonymous user profiles to deliver deeper insight. This will enable brands to market to consumers more effectively, while delivering full transparency into campaign performance. When brands are able to manage their data in this way, and technology providers can become data advisers, programmatic will become a driving force to promote growth and innovation within a business.

Campaign performance
Marketers in APAC – particularly in South East Asia – are reluctant to abandon Cost Per Click (CPC) as the primary means of measuring campaign performance. In 2015, cross-screen attribution in the region will catch up with innovation in cross-screen campaigns to give marketers a clearer view of campaign performance. There will be a definite move towards metrics such as Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), Conversion Rate (CR), and Lifetime Value (LTV), which actually deliver against advertisers’ goals and provide a tangible ROI.

Overall this will lead to an increase in transparency. Next year, CMOs in APAC will have far greater insight into how their media budget is performing and how much is spent on digital. There will be a need for greater impression accountability with inventory being placed under the lens. As a result, the days of non-human traffic constituting a large proportion of impressions will begin to fade.

Multiscreen measurement
The need to understand consumer behaviour and measure campaign performance in the emerging multiscreen landscape will bring a greater reliance on cross-device tracking technology. In 2015, all major players in the marketplace will require a relevant solution to allow the impact of ads to be measured across all screens, reducing dependence on traditional cookie tracking. With the development in technology to measure cross-device, advertisers will be able to react with a more sophisticated digital media buying strategy to truly establish marketing ROI.

Social recommendation
As social media adoption continues to grow, spend on social advertising in APAC will increase accordingly. Marketers in the five key markets of Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea will increase social advertising spend by an average of 21.6 per cent per year to reach $5.8 billion by 2019. As well as global channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, messaging apps including Line, Kakko, and WeChat are already widely used in Asia. Line is predicted to have 1 billion users in 2015, making it a prime target for advertising.

As the reach of social networks continue to grow, the distinction between earned and paid media will become blurred, and social recommendation will become a priority. Marketers will depend on social management tools to define specific business goals, target key audience segments, and measure campaign performance. Linking social to other digital media buying will provide marketers with a more complete overview of their digital campaigns, allowing brands to measure goals effectively and understand the value of advertising across all media types.

Bring creative back!
With an ever-increasing number of new digital marketing points purchased via automated channels, such as SMS-based marketing and Digital-out-of-Home, alongside the maturity of more commonly traded placements, creative will become key. Ad formats and the underlying visual will need to evolve to work with these different digital placements. They will need to adapt visually, contextually and creatively so that the unit is more engaging and suited to the digital location. For example, banner ads on mobile phones will be replaced as native creative becomes increasingly important, providing ads that are more engaging and suited to the page content. Video and mobile video advertising in particular will increase as the creative adapts to the placement.

 

Written by Matt Ware, Commercial Director APAC, MediaMath & Frith Fraser, Director, Platform Solutions, MediaMath