Lately, things haven’t been easy for the digital publishing industry. Increasing competition, the constant emergence of new-age technology platforms, and dwindling customer loyalty have made it difficult for publishers to navigate several pressing challenges.
From enabling end-to-end visibility and transparency across the advertising landscape to curating strategies that help win digital audiences, they’ve found it challenging to stay ahead of the ever-evolving scenario.
Read on as we shed light on some of the most vital aspects publishers must know about modern customers and why they don’t know.
5 Things Publishers Must Know
For publishers, crafting the perfect digital marketing opportunity to take their business to the next level is a top priority. This is possible only when they deeply understand their audiences and the associated needs. The more they’d know about their targeted segments, the better they’d be able to create tailored advertising content to engage them.
But unfortunately, many publishers continue to rely on legacy tools and traditional approaches that make it impossible to have a sound understanding of their customer’s specific needs and unique buying journeys.
Because these systems and approaches restrict access to critical first, second, and third-party data, unearthing insight into customer behaviors, preferences, and associated personalization cues becomes tough – impacting customer satisfaction, business growth, and revenue.
Even those that invest in modern analytics solutions fail to get insights into consumer needs because they lack people with the right analytical skillsets.
If publishers want to grow despite the challenging environment they are in, here are five things they must know about their consumers:
- Consumers expect personalized messages and offers
Today’s consumers are incredibly particular about the products and services they want (and receive). Personalized messages and offers are a mandate, which is why publishers must offer audience-specific targeting that helps them get in front of the right audience at the right place and at the right time.
2. They are increasingly seeking digital capabilities
Whether it is a self-service portal that allows them to book digital advertisements on their own or an online payment portal that enables them to pay their invoices online – today’s consumers are increasingly seeking digital capabilities that are contextual, relevant, and highly interactive.
3. They are more likely to engage with ads on trusted publisher sites
As online content consumption witnesses a steep rise, consumers worldwide are placing increasing importance on sites they know and trust. Publishers are under immense pressure to enable transparency and visibility in their advertising campaigns and offer consumers more control over what content is delivered, when, and where.
4. They want the buying journey to be seamless and consistent
Irrespective of what location they are in, what devices they are using, and where they currently are in the buying journey, modern consumers expect seamless and consistent experiences. They want publishers to reach an incredibly vast and diverse audience and deliver advertising content that aligns with their unique and specific needs.
5. They expect publishers to leverage creative ad formats and deliver truly unforgettable ad experiences
Today’s consumers also expect publishers to deliver genuinely unforgettable ad experiences. Since consumers have different purchasing needs and paths, publishers need to uncover more profound insights into their audiences and campaign management outcomes. They can then build solutions, offer services that meet customer preferences and deliver the best value for the buck.
The Steps Publishers Must Take
Understanding consumer needs requires publishers to embrace practices and solutions that aid them in unearthing fitting insights about their audiences.
By focusing on first-party data, these solutions can allow publishers to pivot between promotions, campaigns, and programmatic ads while maintaining the level of control and transparency needed over processes and spending.
Here are some steps they can take to curate strategies that perfectly align with consumer needs and preferences:
- Create clear user personas based on consumer demographics, behavior, transaction, and browsing history and enrich these cohorts with added data layers.
- Mobilize cohorts of audiences to enable your internal teams to make informed decisions about what ads to create and for which audience segments – ensuring an optimal mix for the marketing strategy.
- Unify your data sources to create a single view of customers and bridge organizational silos to keep everyone on the same page – so that teams can target audiences when they are ready to take action.
- Deliver personalized messages and offers and forecast the following best action confidently by leveraging AI and machine learning models while minimizing errors and ambiguities.
- Leverage advertising technology to combine valuable data from multiple sources and efficiently manage digital inventories to create winning digital strategies.
The Road Ahead
Delivering the right message to the right audiences at the right time, place, and format doesn’t come easy for publishers. But the process can certainly be streamlined by investing in a real-time bidding platform that leverages custom machine learning models to create audience cohorts and enable predictive modeling & heuristics.
A platform like ASK1, powered by machine learning, can help publishers clearly define audiences, unearth contextual and relevant content cohorts, and enable successful campaign delivery. By deploying machine learning to expand and narrow audience pools, ASK1 can allow publishers to deliver the right messages that resonate with their audiences and meet their advertising goals.
By constantly unearthing insights across customer data and campaigns, the platform encourages staying on top of results via easy-to-understand dashboards and reports. This programmatic platform delivers capabilities across automated workflows, smart bidding, and dynamic creative optimization, helping you achieve better ROI on your campaigns with minimal effort.
