Online advertising is crucial for every business looking to grow in today’s modern world. While the benefits of online advertising may be widely known, there are also risks that come with digitizing your marketing strategy.
We asked members of Ad Age Collective to share their take on the major risks that have come up for online advertisers in the past few years. Read their responses below and learn how to defend your business against these possible pitfalls in the world of online advertising.
1. Privacy protection
Consumers are getting increasingly antsy at companies who invade their privacy. Seeing ads follow them around the web via retargeting can create ill will. To combat this, have a transparent, visible privacy policy that explains what you will and won't do to make consumers more comfortable. Some companies are taking it one step further and offering and/or bundling privacy tools directly to the consumer. - Patrick Ambron, BrandYourself.com
2. Programmatic ads on fake news sites
Fake news became ubiquitous in 2016, and advertisers were caught in the middle. Programmatic advertising placed ads on fake news sites and sites that misaligned with brand belief. Today, agencies need to prepare and prevent marketplace confusion by demanding transparency where possible, being transparent with clients and understanding clients' purpose and how it translates in the media landscape. - Maggie O'Neill, Peppercomm
3. Misleading bot traffic
Ad tech's processes to measure consumer action is byzantine; sometimes dubious numbers are born of its poor design. Sometimes, farms harvest our clients’ dollars using bots (and in a few cases, grids of physical robots) to mimic tap/swipe actions, stealing dollars and inflating the perceived influence of the destination. With consumers’ justifiable demands for privacy, fixing this is a challenge. - Scott Montgomery, Bradley and Montgomery (BaM)
4. Taking metrics at face value
With people moving fast, measurement is sometimes thought to mean simply downloading a metrics or conversion report, plopping it into a deck and claiming performance. Parse various views of advertiser data from publishers and platforms. Do some digging. Reframe what you see so your customer has a more nuanced view of what you see, how you recommend moving the needle and why. - Moira Vetter, Modo Modo Agency
5. Single-channel marketing strategies
The risk is relying solely on one marketing channel to deliver a brand’s message. Smart agencies deliver fully-integrated marketing campaigns that include social, influencers, email, promotions and experiential marketing so that online advertising can actually convert. At Kindred, we believe it takes multiple channels and vehicles to work seamlessly in order to effectively acquire the consumer. - Monika Rose, Kindred Creative Group
6. Digital-only tactics
It is actually interesting to see the growth of online business versus in-person or brick-and-mortar starting to slow. The path to "80% of sales being done online" is now starting to seem less realistic, so being a 100% digital agency would be a mistake. - Erik Huberman, Hawke Media
7. Brand safety
With the rise and proliferation of fake news and controversial content across the digital ecosystem, brands now face the new and unsolved problem of brand safety. A few recommended steps to reduce the placement of ads in unsafe environments include: partnering with multilingual brand safety partner(s), use pre-bid DSP targeting and perform post-bid verification. - Anas Ghazi, WPP
8. Steep competition and noise
A pro of online advertising is that anyone can get into it; A con of online advertising is that anyone can get into it. Our pool is getting increasingly noisy and messy, thereby blinding consumers to advertisers' messages. This growing melee necessitates the reemergence of true creativity where trained professionals can help brands break through with meaningful, insightful creative. - Reid Carr, Red Door Interactive
