Welcome to July’s edition of Impression Picks! This digital marketing roundup serves as some food for thought for you from Impression’s experts and the wider marketing community. Each month, we will highlight an interesting article, insight and campaign of the month.
This month features thoughts from our strategy team, including; Technology Director, Aaron Dicks, Head of Paid Social, Amy Stamper and Head of Digital PR, Damian Summers. As always, we hope you enjoy the content and insights we provide as a part of our monthly roundups.
Back to the future? Media effectiveness measurement in 2023 and beyond
Marketing attribution has always been a hot topic, but it’s reaching peak relevance in 2023. This is caused in part by the changing third-party cookie landscape, changing consumer behaviours, and actions taken by digital media platforms in response to various policy and legal changes.
Media effectiveness measurement seeks to establish the incremental sales volume — in both the short and long term — that a piece of advertising exposure gains. From this, a return on investment figure can be calculated.
For the last decade or so, digital attribution has been the focus of most advertisers and it is very good at attributing for digital channels. However, most make no allowance for the effect of brand or offline advertising on incremental results. Not all brands have large budgets to advertise offline, however, all brands are capable of building some brand equity which can be understated by such measurement.
Increasingly, with buyer journeys spanning multiple screens and devices, even multi-touch attribution (“MTA”) have struggled to stay relevant even though it has been the basis for the majority of digital media buying until recently.
This year, many advertisers are looking to the past to re-establish (for some) long-forgotten measurement strategies, such as media-mix modelling, or often also called “econometrics”. These statistical studies have remained in the mainstay for larger brands with data science teams, or those investing significantly in traditional media, however for the majority of advertisers these studies have either been forgotten, or never started.
Conversely, with the current investments and excitement in machine learning and artificial intelligence, some data scientists are turning to modelling to fill our measurement gaps. Regardless of whether or not you have data science capabilities in-house, I would recommend staying close to industry changes and remaining informed on the evolving dialogue around the measurement topic, as more is about to change in digital attribution in the next 12 months than ever before.
I’d recommend watching Les Binet, a master of effectiveness measurement in the second video on this page. And, if you’d like to hear from agencies on the topic of attribution, see this article on The Drum.
Article by: Aaron Dicks
100 million sign-ups in 4 days – is Threads changing the game for social networks?
The latest social network innovation from Meta has surfaced – Threads. Threads is designed in an obviously competitive way to Twitter, a network that has seen its influence decline since Elon Musk’s takeover, and has generated 100 million sign-ups within just 4 days.
But will Threads keep up the momentum and take over Twitter (or, as Elon might prefer us to say – the platform formerly known as Twitter, now X)? And most importantly, what does this emerging network mean for marketers?
Threads provide its users with a seamless login in which profiles can be imported straight from Instagram, reducing data entry barriers, and the time needed to set up a profile and thereby playing into optimal user attention rates. Providing a simple and clean user experience, with brands and users alike being excited to try out the new platform. In comparison to other networks such as Instagram and TikTok, the feed of Threads appeared less personalised – and content wasn’t especially new with many brands initially copying their latest Tweets. However, with such a hefty and instantly-acquired user base, it is only a matter of time until we see this network mature further.
Looking into the future, we will inevitably see ads on the platform – and I reckon it won’t be taking too long until we as marketers need to account for this in our planning. The usual blockers for ads are a lot lower on Threads compared to any other emerging platform, and here is why:
- Brand Safety is usually the biggest barrier when expanding ad platforms. However, as users sign up to Threads with their Instagram handle, Threads is a lot less anonymous than for example Twitter. Instagram is the place to go for sharing holiday photos, life events and to chat with friends, making it a lot harder for users to be a keyboard warrior in front of everyone they know.
- Meta already owns a powerful ads system in which Threads placements could easily integrate.
- The user base is already over 100 million – big and growing
- Ready-made ad personalisation. Users already own accounts on Instagram (likely Facebook, too), meaning that Meta knows all about the Threads user base already.
For now, Threads opens up a lot of exciting potential opportunities. However, as with all things on the internet, people can become bored quickly and more on the next big exciting thing – Threads usage is already dropping a little after an explosive start.
Is Threads going to succeed in keeping people engaged? Momentum is key here, but only time will tell.
Insight by: Amy Stamper
You are awful! Netflix commands attention with its latest merging of realities
This month, Netflix released its sixth series of Black Mirror, featuring its first episode ‘Joan Is Awful’. In the episode, the Black Mirror writers turn their focus on AI, content consumption and us, as Joan’s life and her decisions start being broadcast as a new series to subscribers of ‘Streamberry’, a fictional streaming service.
The episode shines a light on our habit of skimming through T&Cs before purchasing or committing to a service, putting the fear in viewers, with searches for ‘Netflix terms and conditions’ spiking following the release of the episode. As part of its campaign for the new series, Netflix also launched a real-life ‘Streamberry’ site (https://streamberry.tv/) and accompanying ‘You Are Awful’ (https://youareawful.com/) domain allowing anyone to become the star of their own awful biopic.
The sites themselves have naturally amassed coverage and links from 100s of domains, including Yahoo, Mashable, The Sun, The Independent and Radio Times to name a few. While 100s of viewers have uploaded pictures of themselves to become stars of the show, to then find themselves plastered across social media and billboards around the UK.
Netflix has successfully combined an understanding of its audience, along with PR, social and OOH to make its opening Black Mirror episode a reality. It’s tapped into something we all encounter on a daily basis, displayed it through a fictional series, but blurred the lines with its marketing channels using the media to completely immerse viewers in its dystopian world, involving lovers of the show and intriguing newcomers to find out more. It’s a real lesson in knowing your audience, what engages them and activating the right channels to command their attention.
Campaign review by: Damian Summers
Look out for our next Impression Picks in August for more digital marketing articles, insights and campaigns to inspire your digital strategy. Have any further questions? Get in touch!
