Advertising Strategy: Adapt and Keep Current or Flounder

Technology is shifting the advertising landscape, pushing marketers and consumers to reimagine how and where they connect with brands. Every year, your advertising strategy should be closely evaluated and evolve with the shift in the technology landscape. As a result, it’s imperative that businesses of all sizes and industries keep current on the latest trends because leveraging them can set you apart from your competitors and positively impact your bottom line.

How can you familiarize yourself with the constant evolution of ad tech? You can dedicate a role(s) to keeping current on the latest trends, solutions and processes in order to decipher what is right for your business and more importantly, your budget. You can also find the right partner to own this for you.

At MESH, we’re constantly keeping a pulse on shifts in ad tech–especially the fast-changing digital space. In fact, this year, we’re seeing three key types of advertising technology impacting our strategic advertising recommendations for clients:

  • ISP targeting. This stands for Internet Service Provider targeting. Audiences can be built to target specifically those individuals browsing on internet service providers of various large firms (such as AT&T, Comcast/Xfinity and CenturyLink). This type of targeting works well for B2B advertising campaigns and targeting organizations such as universities, hospitals, and insurance providers because they often have large enough ISPs that allow for a much more targeted message and audience.
  • Addressable TV. This type of advertising is the ability to show different ads to different households while they are watching the same program. With the help of addressable advertising, advertisers can move beyond large-scale traditional TV ad buys and instead focus on relevance and impact. While this method is not necessarily cheaper than broadcast TV (right now it’s usually a higher CPM), a message in addressable TV has more weight–the conversion rates are typically higher, resulting in a similar or better ROI than traditional broadcast.
  • Voice Activation. 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020, per comScore, and one in four shoppers used voice assistants in their holiday shopping during the 2017 season, per CTA. While voice activation advertising is still in its early stages, it will soon become an important form of advertising to consider in marketing campaigns. It’s projected to work well for any product or service provider such as restaurants, retail and upcoming events.

These examples are just a few among the many digital solutions available to all businesses. No matter if you are a small local shop or a Fortune 500 business, you should be open to incorporating the latest technology innovations into your marketing plans that are specific to your industry.

So, are you keeping current? Do you have time to read the 1000s of articles on the latest advertising technology? The right partner can help keep you current and ultimately support your ad strategy in growing your bottom line.

Laurie PierceDirector of Media‍[email protected]