How near-time audience insights improve marketing effectiveness

I spend a lot of time talking to marketers about how to make their media investments work harder and reduce the pressure they’re under from other stakeholders. Given current events, it’s no surprise that the need to understand their audiences better is front and center of these conversations. In a recent article, the International Monetary Fund noted that the global economy is facing “an increasingly gloomy and uncertain outlook” amid slower growth, higher-than-expected inflation and war in Europe. The repercussions of this backdrop for consumers are profound: Their purchasing power is reduced. Marketers who are experiencing media inflation and budget cuts themselves are facing implications that are just as clear. They need more reliable and timely insights about audiences' changing behaviors to help their organizations through these testing times. This uncertain picture is complicated further by ongoing changes to the data economy. As two MIT Media Lab professors wrote in this Harvard Business Review article, consumer mistrust, government action and market competition are converging to force businesses to make fundamental changes to how data is sourced, managed and used. Unlocking faster, smarter, deeper insights Marketers know all too well the challenges surrounding this trend. For example, from a measurement perspective, multitouch attribution tools are no longer fit for purpose in a privacy-focused world. While marketing mix modeling remains a reliable way to measure the long-term, strategic impacts of media campaigns, what’s missing is a way to measure where, when and to what extent consumers are interacting with campaigns and delivering growth over the short term. The good news is that there is a solution to help solve this conundrum. Here at Gain Theory, we've developed Sensor, an innovative tool that provides deep insights about audiences that marketers can use to optimize all their media on a weekly or monthly basis. Sensor has been delivering real-world results for several years. One multinational beverage company, which measures the relative effectiveness of its media spend across digital platforms, credited Sensor with delivering a 30% year-on-year improvement in media ROI. In addition, a global automotive manufacturer, which used Sensor to measure and optimize an omnichannel marketing campaign, saw the campaign deliver $56 million in additional revenue and a 2.5% uplift in margin. Crucially, companies like these are benefiting from being able to measure the impact their media investments are having on audiences with privacy-compliant data. Want to compare how successful your paid social campaign was with high-income males in Miami versus low-income males in San Francisco? Using granular geographic data, every ad placement on every channel can be analyzed on a daily basis. It can also be combined with other data such as local weather, economic indicators and promotions to create deeper insights. Want to know how effective your radio advertising is at driving different audience groups to shop at your online store, compared with ads served on podcasts? Thanks to cross-channel analysis, this data can be displayed on a dashboard that enables marketers to make smarter investment decisions. Want to see if millennial moms and Gen X moms respond differently to TV ads about the same product but with different creative on two different networks? You can measure the effectiveness of ad placements at a number of levels, including creative, network and partner, to understand how each one resonates with a specific audience group at a granular level. Three key business benefits Having a more in-depth and timely understanding of who is interacting with your media, as well as how and when, enables you to do several important things to drive growth. First, you can act tactically to improve ROI—for example, determining if a campaign, channel, creative or network is resonating with one audience group but not another, so you can change the one that is underperforming or reallocate the budget. Second, you can make investment decisions more quickly by gaining access to relevant data in a matter of weeks. Third, you can build trust by using data that is compliant with a privacy-first approach to advertising. As every marketer knows, this is now a strategic necessity. About Gain Theory Gain Theory is a leading marketing effectiveness and foresight consultancy. Our vision is to accelerate growth for ambitious brands by giving clients the confidence to make better data-informed investment decisions. Available in 111 markets, our award-winning solutions include data strategy, harmonization and visualization, advanced analytics and modeling, and high-touch consultancy services that are delivered by an experienced, client-focused team. As a WPP consultancy, Gain Theory also has access to a range of unique resources, skills and talent to create a truly differentiated offering. www.gaintheory.com

How near-time audience insights improve marketing effectiveness

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