marketing truth or hype 2017-beckon report-beckon · 2019-01-29 · 3 [email protected] it’s been...

BECKON OPENS ITS DATA VAULT TO REVEAL WHICH HOT MARKETING TRENDS ACTUALLY WORK AND WHICH, WELL, NOT SO MUCH.

MARKETING TRUTH OR MARKETING HYPE

WWW.BECKON.COM [email protected]

CONTENTS

INTRO 3

FINDING NO. 1: PLANNING (AND PACING) MAKES PERFECT 4

FINDING NO. 2: CONTENT—LESS IS MORE OR MORE IS MORE? 8

FINDING NO. 3: WHAT TO DO ABOUT VIEWABILITY 11

DRIVING FORWARD 14

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It’s been a year since we published our first Marketing Truth or Marketing Hype

report, which put some of the buzziest marketing trends to the test to see if

they actually delivered the results their proponents promised.

The report was a big hit. We heard from tons of marketers who loved having cold,

hard facts that cut through the noise and showed what worked and what didn’t.

And now we’re back with a new report for 2017. As before, our report

draws from the vast store of tagged, integrated and normalized marketing

performance data in the Beckon system, representing more than $20 billion in

spend across every channel imaginable. Holding so much clean, trusted data

from the world’s biggest brands makes Beckon uniquely positioned to provide

an objective, industry-wide view of what’s working best across it all.

By measuring the real-world performance of marketing trends and

assumptions, we clear away the hype so you can focus on what will produce

the best results. Keep in mind, the numbers in this report are averages from

across our sample. Still, it’s a perfect opportunity to check your own data

and benchmark your results. For instance, let’s say you’re unhappy because

viewability of your online ads is only around 70%—since our findings show an

average of 54%, you can cheer up!

Let’s jump into this year’s findings.

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FINDING NO. 1

The buzz: Agencies aren’t delivering the visibility they promise in

the media plan.

The truth: Planned vs. actual tends to match up in the end. It’s the

pacing that’s a problem. Good pacing lets brands adjust spend,

strategy and creative on the fly for maximum ROI.

How often does this happen to you? You collaborate with your agency to map

out the spend and impressions you expect for media buys. But then, during the

campaign, the agency misses the weekly or monthly targets. Are you getting

shortchanged?

No. We find that by the end of the campaign, agencies generally deliver the

visibility they promise—Beckon data shows that, on average, campaigns wind

up with just a one percent delta between planned and actual impressions.

However, there’s still a big problem. Agencies don’t deliver those impressions

when the business needs them.

In some cases, we saw a budget-busting flood of impressions right out of the

gate (because consumer interest was strong and spend wasn’t capped).

More typically, however, brands get noticeably fewer impressions than

agreed on at the early milestones. Then, after a four- to five-week delay, total

cumulative impressions catch up. In one 19-week campaign, impressions lagged

for 10 weeks—the campaign was half over before impressions caught up to

(and eventually surpassed) the planned number.

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WEEK 1 WEEK 10 WEEK 19

Both scenarios—a flood at the start or a rush at the end—create unnecessary

challenges for brands.

Getting all the hits up front in one big burst means we can’t test, learn or

optimize. Consequently, conversion rates will likely be lower than we hoped

and we may miss sales targets. If we want to get back in the game to make up

for these shortfalls, we have to allocate more spend.

When impressions roll in later than planned, it’s even more problematic. As

above, it hamstrings our ability to test, learn and optimize because we have

limited impressions to work with early on. (This is especially hard if your brand

has strong seasonality or short campaign windows, because the optimization

window is already condensed.) What’s more, missed milestones for spend

and impressions likely mean missed milestones for sales and conversions. We

may get the conversions eventually, but telling the boss the sales numbers will

probably hit a month late is never fun.

So, why are delayed impressions a thing, and what can we do about it?

As you might expect, impressions are a function of spend. Beckon data shows

a strong correlation between underspending and being short on impressions

early in a campaign. That said, optimal spending out of the gates isn’t

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always straightforward. Sometimes, it can take weeks to test new audiences,

messages and creative, and discover what market factors are helping or

hurting performance.

In these cases, to avoid the problems that arise when actual impressions lag

behind planned impressions, it makes sense to plan for spend and impressions

to ramp up as the campaign unfolds.

Beckon data confirms this. We found that campaigns that ramped spend and

impression goals, rather than hitting the ground running on day one, were

more likely to hit milestones for impressions.

When brands and agencies team up to create plans that help pacing stay close

to targets, we’re able to experiment, see what’s resonating (and what’s not)

routinely over the course of the campaign, and reallocate spend accordingly.

Paying close attention to planned spend and impressions versus actual is also

a solid recipe for maximizing ROI. According to Beckon data, campaigns with

close alignment between plan and actual throughout averaged 117% of planned

impressions, and used only 73% of their planned spend. In contrast, campaigns

that strayed further from plan fell short of their targets, hitting 87% of planned

impressions, and spending 86% of their planned budget.

CLOSELY ALIGNED CAMPAIGNS

CAMPAIGNS THAT STRAY FROM PLAN

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RECOMMENDATIONS

• If your agency is not already doing so, request media plans at a weekly or

daily granularity. That way you can not only track actuals, but the timing

for actuals.

• Set up a cadence with your agency for reviewing how performance is

tracking to plan. Use these calls to strategize how to right-size spend and

impressions (or in the case of flooding, how to optimize your campaign

going forward).

• None of this is possible without clear, constantly updated visibility into

how a campaign is tracking against your media plan. You’ll want a

marketing intelligence platform that automates data management, delivers

clean, trusted data and insight, integrates your media plans, and displays

them side-by-side with actual performance.

• You can’t afford to wait weeks or months to see how you’re tracking.

Before the campaign kicks off, build a dashboard with all your KPIs,

including a chart for planned vs. actual tracking.

• Agree on planned targets with your agency—you can even look into

establishing a service level agreement on pacing.

• If your campaign involves new channels, audiences and/or messaging,

build in a window to test and learn by planning modest targets for spend

and impressions that ramp up later in the campaign. Can’t afford a

temporary drop in total impressions? Keep a high-performing campaign

running a few weeks longer, overlapping it with the start of the new

campaign.

• In many cases, Beckon data showed a steep decline in campaign

performance once targets were reached. If you hit your goals and have

spend left over, don’t let it go to waste! Talk to your agency and make

sure your dollars continue working as hard for you as they did earlier in the

campaign, or ask to reallocate that remaining spend to a future campaign.

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FINDING NO. 2

The buzz: Content is king! To drive engagement, pump out

lots of content.

The truth: Less content, managed for optimal impact, drives

greater engagement at much lower cost.

In our 2016 report, we noted that, compared to the previous year, brands

created and posted three times as much content (images and video) in

free social media channels and paid media channels. Yet total consumer

engagement with that content (views, clicks, likes, forwards) remained flat.

In short, more volume, higher spend, and no lift to show for it. Further, we

found that, on average, a tiny 5% of branded content drove 90% of total

engagement. Most generated next to nothing.

We suggested that, to drive higher engagement at lower cost, brands

prioritize performance instead of volume. We thought brands could benefit by

examining the content pieces that dramatically outperformed the rest, while

doubling down on brand standards and content quality in an effort to generate

fewer, better content pieces.

Judging by our findings this time around, brands took those lessons to

heart. Beckon data shows that in 2017, 20% of content drove 90% of total

engagement—a huge improvement over the 2016 findings, because it shows

consumers are engaging with roughly 4x the number of content pieces than they

did in the previous period. Even better, brands did more with less, securing 15%

higher overall engagement on roughly two-thirds the content volume.

20% OF CONTENT PIECES GARNER 90% OF ALL ENGAGEMENT

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2016 2017

One global brand that refashioned its content strategy along these lines saw

extraordinary success: Compared to the previous year, it garnered more than

twice as many engagements per post while reducing cost per engagement

by 64%!

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RECOMMENDATIONS

• A quality-based, “less is more” approach to content is more effective and

much less costly than throwing oodles of content against the wall in the

hopes that some pieces stick.

• Track engagement closely to see what customers are responding to. Work

with your agency to identify trends in high-performing posts. Are they

a similar format? Is one channel more effective than others? Do certain

designs or messages resonate best? Adjust course to make more “hits”

and fewer “misses,” and allocate more spend toward top performers.

• Pay close attention to content with a high earned-to-paid ratio. This means

your message is resonating well with customers, and their amplification

(earned engagement) is helping your dollars go even further. Allocating

more spend towards this content is a wise bet.

• Consider ramping up your commitment to user-generated content. Tuning

into your audience and putting their stories in the driver’s seat can spark a

nice boost to engagement. We’ve seen it work best for consumer brands,

but managed well it can apply to all brands.

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FINDING NO. 3

The buzz: Viewability is the new KPI.

The truth: Yes, it is! But few brands are tracking it, much less

acting on it. Improving viewability is an easy boost to ROI.

Most brands have heard rumblings about the importance of viewability, but

Beckon data shows only 8.5% of brands tracking it.

Some context: Not all online ads are considered “viewable.” The generally

agreed-on spec is that, for an ad to be considered viewable, 50% of its pixels

must be visible to a viewer for at least one second. Ads that aren’t viewable

don’t generate awareness, nor do they move consumers toward a sale.

According to the data in Beckon, average viewability is around 54%. That

means roughly 46 cents of every media dollar is wasted on ads that no one

ever sees.

ON AVERAGE 54% OF IMPRESSIONS ARE VIEWABLE

Now, this number can vary depending on the factors at play—programmatic or

traditionally bought, ad size, country, ad vendor or channel, and so on. Still, given

the billions of dollars spent on ads each year, everyone agrees it’s a problem.

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The good news is that improving the percentage of ads that consumers see is

easier than you think. And it’s a high-value proposition—according to Beckon data,

brands that track viewability alongside their other KPIs and make improvement a

priority increased viewability of their ads by 27.5% over 12 months!

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Partner with a respected third party like Moat that audits and tracks

the viewability of your online display ads. If you want to integrate your

new viewability data with the rest of your spend and performance data

so you can see it all side by side, you’ll need to bring it into a marketing

intelligence solution like Beckon.

• Start talking to your agencies, asking the tough questions and

challenging assumptions about your ads. Request viewability metrics

from your agency—many ad publishers report on viewability, but it’s

often left out of the reports shared with brands.

• Ask your agency to negotiate make-goods or credits where you see low

viewability. You’re on solid ground in doing so—the IAB recommends that

ad publishers establish performance benchmarks, and have a remediation

plan in place to determine what happens should an ad placement miss its

viewability benchmark by more than 10%.

• Once you have viewability data that you can slice and dice in a marketing

intelligence tool, look for trends around the ad sizes, placements, types

of creative, and publishers that perform best. Industry reports show that

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interactive ads, mobile ads, video ads, and non-programmatically bought

ads generally yield higher viewability. Test to see if that holds true for

your brand.

• Viewability is important, but it’s not the only KPI. Be sure you’re also looking

at cost per viewed impression and metrics that measure outcomes, like

click-through rates and conversion rates. You’ll see the full impact of your

media spend and get deeper insight into what’s working and what to adjust.

• Lastly, remember that you can always move away from partners that are

crimping viewability and making little effort to improve!

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DRIVING FORWARD

There you have it, a roadmap for navigating three of 2017’s buzzy marketing

trends. A great place to start is to benchmark our findings against your

brand’s current results to see where you stand. We know every brand has

unique audiences and challenges, so when in doubt listen closely to what your

performance data is saying.

At Beckon, we love using data to deconstruct marketing trends like these,

cutting through the noise and uncovering opportunities for strategic

advantage. We hope you find it useful and inspiring! We’d love to hear how

your efforts are going, and we look forward to connecting around ways

Beckon can help.

ABOUT BECKON

To grow your brand, you need integrated, unbiased data and insights you

can trust. You need Beckon, The Source of Truth for Marketing™. Beckon’s

rock-solid data management and real-time marketing intelligence power

better, faster decisions that let you do more with every marketing dollar.

LET’S TALK

Want to learn more? Get in touch at [email protected]—we’d love

to connect.

marketing truth or hype 2017-beckon report-beckon · 2019-01-29 · 3 [email protected] it’s been...

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