Logiq appoints advertising industry veteran Christopher Andrews as COO
Logiq, Inc. (OTCQX: LGIQ, NEO: LGIQ), a leading provider of digital consumer acquisition solutions, has appointed Christopher Andrews as chief operating officer, succeeding John MacNeil who has been appointed SVP of mergers and acquisitions.
Andrews brings to Logiq over 20 years of business leadership experience, proven talent for unlocking revenue opportunities, and helping private and public companies build world-class IT operations. His career has been dedicated to integrating technologies, people and data for driving profitable growth and long-term success.
As a former Ogilvy Health and WPP chief technology and information officer, he brings to Logiq an extensive record of achievement, including creating $150+ million revenue streams through technology innovation, unique client solutions, targeted tech stacks, and data management platforms.
As Logiq’s new COO, he will initially be responsible for leading the company’s DataLogiq operations and preparing them for the previously announced planned spinoff into a Nasdaq-traded SPAC. He and MacNeil are anticipated to transition with the DataLogiq business to the new entity of which Logiq shareholders will continue to have a large stake.
“We welcome Chris’ exceptional skills and experience in digital marketing, particularly as DataLogiq begins to hyper-verticalize its market focus and establish valuable leadership positions in these spaces,” stated Logiq CEO, Brent Suen.
Commented Andrews: “I’m excited to join the amazing Logiq team at this critical stage in its growth and development. I see DataLogiq enjoying a unique opportunity to become a leader in performance marketing by enabling hyper-verticalization into compliance markets, such as for cannabis and CBD. I’m looking forward to helping it realize high returns from its extensive go-to-market investments.”
Added Suen: “Chris’ appointment has also enabled us to better focus John’s experience and strengths in M&A to ensure DataLogiq’s smooth transition in becoming its own Nasdaq-traded company. He will also help DataLogiq leverage its Nasdaq status to aggressively pursue M&As in a target-rich environment of highly complementary acquisitions.”
Andrews most recently served as chief digital officer and COO of MediaJel, where he transformed its operations into a scalable digital marketing solution for regulated industries. He earlier founded and served as CEO of D&B Labs, where he helped early-stage high tech start-ups advance their go-to-market investments. Prior to D&B Labs, he served as the chief digital officer of Kubient, a cloud-based software platform for digital advertising.
He previously served on the board of TenFour before it was acquired by Acuative. He holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and Master’s in management from New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Logiq Board Transitions
As part of the company’s strategic transformation, which includes its announced plans to spin off its DataLogiq business to a Nasdaq-traded SPAC and the announced acquisition of a privately-held operating company (“PrivCo”), MacNeil and other company directors, Lea Hickman, Josh Jacobs and Matthew Burlage, have stepped down from the board.
The PrivCo is expected to nominate additional board members following the transaction, as well as make additional executive appointments. Logiq’s board now consists of three board members, with one serving independently.
“We are immensely grateful to Lea and Josh for their valuable contributions over the last two years and Matt for his over eight years of exceptional service to the board,” commented Suen. “Their dedication, guidance and support have been immensely helpful as we’ve navigated some very rough waters due to the global pandemic and worked to preserve and rebuild shareholder value through strategic transactions. We wish them the very best in their future endeavors.”
Over the course of last year, Logiq implemented a restructuring plan designed to position the company for growth, organically and through acquisition. By late November of 2022, it began to see strong traction in the DataLogiq business with its annualized revenue run-rate approaching $40 million.
About Logiq
Logiq Inc. is a U.S.-based provider of e-commerce and digital customer acquisition solutions by simplifying digital advertising. It provides data-driven, end-to-end marketing through its results solution or providing software to access data by activating campaigns across multiple channels.
The company’s Digital Marketing business includes a holistic, self-serve ad tech platform. Its proprietary data-driven, AI-powered solutions allows brands and agencies to advertise across thousands of the world’s leading digital and connected TV publishers. For more information, visit www.logiq.com.
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How to Manage and Install Conversion Tracking for Programmatic, Native and Beyond
With all the effort you put into building your creatives and running your ad campaigns, you want to be sure you can accurately track and measure the performance of your campaigns, and ensure you’re getting the ROI you expect from your ad dollars.
This is why conversion tracking is one of the most important aspects of your programmatic campaign, whether that’s to track sales, leads, or mobile installs. But if you’re just starting your marketing efforts, where do you start? We’ve got the 101 on conversion tracking here.
What does conversion tracking do?
Conversion tracking allows you to track a customer who has clicked or interacted with your ad in some way. Sophisticated conversion tracking can help you trace the path a customer has taken from ad click, to the pages they visit on your site, to finally the end-goal you want that user to take—-whether that’s buying a product, signing up for a newsletter, installing an app, or even calling your business.
It gives you a detailed view into the common behaviors on your website or app, so you can also potentially make optimizations—either to your ad campaigns and creatives or to your site itself, to better improve the performance metrics you want to see.
How do I create a conversion tracking pixel?
In order to track custom conversions, you’ll need to install a tag on your site—but tools like the Logiq Digital Marketing platform make it straightforward and easy for businesses of any size.
When you log into the platform, you’ll see the Conversions tab under the “Tag” section. Here you can customize the conversion you want to track so you can easily then report on it later in the “Insights and Analytics” section.
To add a custom conversion tracker to a tag, you will need to enter the following information:
Conversion Name: Specify a name for the conversion event. Metrics will be associated with this conversion name in the LDM reporting dashboard.
Target Keyword: Enter the keywords or phrases that match what the platform should look for. For example:
To track conversions for users that view one of several shopping cart pages that have different URLs but all contain the word ‘shopping_cart’ in the URL, then use Match Type ‘CONTAINS’ and enter ‘shopping_cart’ in the Target Keyword field.
To track conversions for users that land on a specific appointment confirmation page, use match type ‘EXACTLY’ and enter the whole URL in the Target Keyword field, like ‘https://mysite.com/page/appointment_confirmation’
Value: The monetary value to you of a conversion event of this type. If five matched conversion events occur in a day each with a value of $5, and an additional $10 event occurred that day as well, then your reporting will indicate $35 worth of matched conversions that day.
Within the platform, you can even add multiple conversion events to a single tag, like shown here:
How Do I Install A Conversion Tracker?
After configuring your conversion parameters and saving, the tag you need for your site will be automatically generated in the “Tags” section. If you use Google Tag manager on your site, you can also click that button so it’s specially formatted and ready to be pasted there.
Once you save everything, you can place this tag on your site (yourself or via a tag manager) or on the pages to be tracked so that the platform can accurately collect and report data
How to Run a Real-Time Report on Conversions
Once the tag has been in place and you’ve been running campaigns, it’s easy to run real-time reports tracking your performance. Simply enter the “Insights & Analytics” section and add a graph. Then you can select “Matched Conversion” or “Matched Conversion Value,” and choose any filters you want to include (like Country, Advertiser, or Device), and select the date range you want to report on. Then you can save and see exactly how well your campaign has performed, and make any adjustments as needed.
Looking for help in getting your conversion tracking started or installed? Contact us at [email protected] and we can walk you through, or set it up for you!
What is Native Advertising and Why Should I use It in My Marketing?
By now, most of us are familiar with traditional display advertising—typically the banner ads on the right hand side or top of a web page. And while these static ads can be effective at driving brand awareness, marketers have been expanding their messages to include more engaging and dynamic formats.
One of the most promising of these new formats has been the introduction of native advertising, which are ads that appear to be more cohesive with the page content and design. These ads often look just like a page’s content (though usually are marked with a small “ad” or “promoted” copy), so the viewer can engage with the message just like they would with a website article or slideshow. In short, native advertising allows the ad experience to blend in with the form and function of the user experience and site in which it is placed.
Promoted search results and sponsored social media posts are popular examples of native ads. Both formats provide the same kind of value to users as the organic search results and user-generated social media posts.
Benefits of Running a Native Advertising Campaign
According to native advertising research, native ads generate nearly 9 times higher click-through-rate (CTR), and generate a 18% higher purchase intent than typical display ads.
What’s more, they can be complimentary to your existing campaigns, and can be created simply by reusing your existing ad assets, so it won’t take a whole new creative team to implement and get off the ground
Here are 3 business-boosting reasons to start implementing native advertising into your existing campaigns today
Build More Brand Awareness. When creating Native Ads, you are not only creating lead gen ads but creating ads that show who you are. By telling stories, educating, and evoking emotion, native ads boost brand awareness. Native ads allow you to humanize your ads, creating an authentic connection between your brand and the consumer. The key way to create brand awareness is through content. With relevant and engaging content, your brand recognition will soar.
Drive Better Campaign Performance. Native Ads realistically capture more attention because they look so cohesive with the page. When consumers engage with the page, they also can become their own marketing channel. With their likes, retweets, and shares, these engaged customers automatically boost your ad metrics.
Reach the Right Customers. Unlike content you write for your own site, native advertising allows for the use of programmatic advertising technology to only display the ads to the audiences you target. Within advertising platforms, you can target specific audience segments based on interests, job function, and geography to ensure the success of your campaign
How to Build a Native Ad
If you use a self-serve digital marketing platform like the one offered by Logiq Digital Marketing, it takes only a few steps to get your native ad ready to go. After you upload raw assets like your ad copy and logo, the platform can then translate these assets to the publisher so that the publisher themselves can assemble the ad to make the creative feel native to the content.
In the LDM platform, you can easily create a native offer that will include the title you want to use, the description of what you’re offering, along with your icon or logo or featured image you want to display next to the ad. This gives the publisher everything they need to know about how to create your ad on the site.
Even better, native offers within LDM can be associated to native creatives in a ‘one-to-many’ fashion, which allows you to easily associate this native copy with many different creatives. This allows you to run the same offer with different targeting rules, so you can A/B test your ad or reach multiple audience segments using the same image or video assets—making your marketing more effective and efficient.
What Will Programmatic Advertising Look Like in the Metaverse?
As we spend more and more of our lives online, the opportunities to reach customers digitally have only expanded dramatically. One of those ways getting plenty of attention right now is the concept of the “metaverse”, a word that’s commonly being used today to describe the concept of a digital life online.
Brands and marketers have already started exploring the world offering exclusive opportunities to their consumers. For example, Nike has offered customized avatars and shoes in the game Roblox, Coke launched its first virtual drink within Fortnight, and McDonalds plans on launching a virtual restaurant that will enable food to be delivered to your “real-life” house.
Even as a small business, now’s the time to start understanding this technology and aligning your marketing strategy around the trends of the future.
What Exactly Is the Metaverse?
The metaverse is just the latest word to describe a “digital universe,” where we interact digitally the same ways we do in the physical world. This can include everything from holding office meetings via VR headset, buying billboards in a digital space, or displaying art (like NFTs) in a digital gallery.
How Will Programmatic Advertising Fit In the Metaverse?
While brands are still in the early days of experimenting with the metaverse, programmatic advertising—the ability to reach a targeted group of consumers based on their interests—will no doubt follow soon. Brands already are using programmatic technology to display in-game advertising. For instance, in some online sports games, ads can be dynamically placed on digital billboards based on a consumer’s interest. Ads in the metaverse will likely work in a similar way. As you walk down a digital block in the future, say in VR or with augmented glasses, the ads you see will likely be tailored just for you.
Challenges Facing Advertising in the Metaverse
Despite technology enabling this hyper-personalization in new digital realms, the same concerns that currently face the industry will persist in the metaverse. A few of the challenges include:
Standardized Technology. Despite the hype around the metaverse, there’s not a single “standardized” metaverse yet. This makes implementing programmatic technology as every solution must be customized. As people start to gravitate toward certain platforms or digital spaces, standardization will follow, and it will become easier to implement broadly.
Brand Safety. As a business, you still want to ensure your ads are appearing next to the types of content you want your products associated with. The metaverse will need controls to ensure that you have oversight into where your message lives.
Data Privacy and Security. Just as people are rightfully concerned about their digital privacy today, these concerns only proliferate in a space like the metaverse. Consumers will want control over what they share and who they share it with in order to be comfortable with these kinds of ads. The deprecation of the third-party cookie has also led to a proliferation of possible solutions to market to consumers based on their identity, so this problem will need to be solved before programmatic goes mass market in the metaverse.
What Should I be Doing Now to Prepare for the Metaverse?
Having a strong programmatic advertising plan and addressing today’s current concerns will put you in the ideal position to be ready for the metaverse when it becomes mainstream. In the end, just like native, display, or video advertising, the metaverse will simply be another channel and medium where you can reach your customers. By starting to pay attention now, you can ensure you can stay ahead of the competition far into the future.
Looking to learn more about how we’re envisioning the metaverse? Schedule a call with one of our programmatic experts to find out how you can start putting plans in place today for tomorrow’s technology.
Why Engagement May Be the Most Important Metric for Your Business
In a cookieless world, businesses need to be even smarter about their customer acquisition and marketing efforts. One effective way to achieve this is to better understand your customers with engagement-based segmentation strategies.
Though it can take time to get results, this type of strategy provides longer-term effectiveness and has been shown to increase conversions by up to 200%. Engagement segmentation works by examining user behavior on your site and segmenting user groups based on certain rules.
These rules combine to help predict future user activity and intent. This allows for the creation of “softer” signals compared to “hard” actions like “Add to Cart.” These kind of signals can help smaller companies finally create effective, granular remarketing and lookalikes, despite having a smaller scale.
Why Engagement Signals Matter
By tracking the right engagement signals, you can turbocharge your marketing efforts and increase your conversions and sales. Here are just a few reasons to track engagement signals:
Build Accurate Target Consumer Segments. With engagement segmentation, brands now have an opportunity to target consumers based on their responsiveness to the brand’s website. It allows the brand to target consumers who have a genuine interest and have a higher potential to become a customer.
Better Understand Consumer Behavior. When using an engagement strategy, your consumers are deemed engaged or highly engaged based on numerous factors and metrics. When analyzing these metrics, brands will be able to understand their consumers and their behavior more fully.
Craft Personal Marketing Messages. When brands more accurately understand their consumer’s behavior, they will be able to complete a marketing campaign and strategy that will target their ideal consumers. In this marketing strategy, the brand will be able to create personalized messages based on consumer behavior. For example, you might send a “Buy Now” email to a highly engaged customer versus a softer awareness message to a newly engaged customer.
How Engagement is Measured on Your Site
When a user first lands on a page that contains the tag, the tag begins tracking their engagement with the page’s content. As the user interacts with page content—by reading, scrolling, zooming, or clicking for instance—they are marked as ‘Engaged’ and then eventually ‘Highly Engaged’.
This creates a powerful database of customer information that can be used for retargeting and remarketing, ensuring you curate the customers most likely to make a purchase.
What Kind of Engagement Signals to Look For
Once an engagement tracking tag is placed on your site, you can start understanding user activity on every page that contains the tag. For each device that visits your site, the tag reports behavior that indicates user engagement with page content. This can include activity like:
Time spent on each page
Number of pages visited
Hyperlink clicks on page content
Mouse movement (on devices with mice)
Scrolling through page content
Using Engagement to Retarget and Remarket
After creating segments for your most engaged users, you can then create more detailed retargeting rules to ensure your ad spend goes toward the customers most likely to make a sale.
Your engagement tracking combined with the right retargeting technology can make your marketing spend go further than ever before, especially for companies looking to grow their business.
Looking to get started tracking engagement on your website? We can help walk you through the proprietary technology needed to get started. Email us at [email protected] to start segmenting your customers today.
Fleeing FloC: What Google’s Pivot to “Topics” Means for Your Business
In preparation for Chrome’s move to deprecate the third-party cookie, Google has introduced a number of alternatives in recent years. One of their initial plans was known as FloC—Federated Learning of Cohorts—which worked by grouping users into their interests. However, based on still-existing privacy concerns, Google has scrapped that idea, and instead introduced a new possible solution, called “Topics.”
“Topics” works by enabling the browser to store information about a user for up to three weeks, assigning a user specific interests based on an initial 300 topics. Those topics can include things like “fitness,” “travel,” or “movies.” Websites can then share up to three of a user’s interests with advertisers.
Since the initiative is still in early stages, there are still a number of pros and cons industry experts are considering. Google itself remains open to feedback on the initiative as well. We put together some of the pros and cons to keep in mind as you consider how to incorporate the next possible generation of technology into your business.
Pros: What Industry Experts Like About Google Topics
Industry insiders agree that the new framework is a lot easier to understand than FloC, and so could lead to wider acceptance and adoption. Here’s what they like about the new initiative:
Simpler Framework. Users and advertisers will have a better experience because of the simplicity of “Topics.” Google has simplified that integration, while keeping user data relatively randomized and unique. “Topics” are based on browsing history and top interests, and Google will only keep these for three weeks, keeping a user’s interests new and fresh.
Increased Privacy. This effort continues Google’s attempts to create a healthy web, where users can feel protected but also keep the advertising industry alive. They arrived at Topics as the solution gives users more “meaningful transparency and control”.
Better Targeting for Context Clues. Rather than gathering specific browsing information from users, this solution enables advertisers to better understand the topics users are diving into that represent their top interests. This further shows the shift to better understanding and targeting context in advertiser’s bids to reach users.
Cons: What Industry Experts Don’t Like About Google Topics
Experts still worry the new solution doesn’t do enough to either promote privacy or accurately enable advertisers. Here are the top concerns:
Still Collects Data Without User Consent. Users still aren’t explicitly a part of the process, a similar complaint as third-party cookies. Google says it does plan to implement controls for users to view their topics and edit them, but what exactly that will look like is still unclear.
Topics are Far Too Broad. Advertisers worry that 300 topics aren’t nearly enough to accurately reach their intended audiences. After years of being able to deliver very personalized advertisers to a precise user group, brands worry that they will be shooting their campaigns into the dark.
Anti-trust concerns. Publishers and advertisers are still wary of Google’s plan to eliminate the third-party cookie, arguing that the move puts Google in a stronger position overall. EU publishers recently sued the tech giant claiming exactly that, so it remains to be seen how legislation will affect these initiatives.
The Future of Advertising
There’s no doubt the industry will keep discussing and debating the next generation of personalized and programmatic advertising, and Google remains a major player in what that might look like. Even though the cookie isn’t set to disappear until 2023, businesses need to stay on top of these changes so they can still reach the right customers in the future.
Still looking for a partner to help you guide you through the next generation of advertising technology? We can help. Our team of experts can give you a jargon-free walkthrough of exactly what you need to know to prepare your business for the coming changes. Send us a note at [email protected] to talk more.
Our Logiq Consumer Marketplace team recently traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada, to attend Mailcon. Mailcon convention is a “global community that connects marketing professionals with the latest technology, trends, and strategies in email marketing, lead generation, marketing automation, and mobile and omnichannel marketing.” We caught up with Toni Bounds, VP of Reengagement, to see her take on the convention and how Logiq is thriving in the space.
What are some of the biggest takeaways from Mailcon?
It should be no shock that inbox engagement drives deliverability and increases customer longevity. That’s why it’s extremely important to continue investing time into testing (new campaigns, systems, etc) to keep your email list engaged. Many of the speakers provided real-life examples of how they use engagement campaigns, which was extremely helpful in brainstorming campaign ideas for our internal brands.
What do you think other people should know about marketing right now? Do you have any advice for people who are entering this space?
Invest in understanding your audience; personalization is key! The email landscape is constantly changing and growing. Users are forced to shuffle through advertisements, junk & ‘actual’ useful mail in their inbox. That is why we as marketers need to discover new & unique ways to distinguish ourselves.
We must make our content stand out. How can we do this? Personalization! Send users what they want and need. It would help if you always were capturing and utilizing the new data coming in from your campaigns. (e.g. sending a newsletter out with several topics or offers to understand what performs best). If the user clicks on the subject line ‘What homeowners should know before making any home renovations’… you should be tagging that user as such. Then you can send them relevant content/offers related to their interests. The more engaged a user is, the more valuable they are to your overall program.
Lastly, keep up with current trends and industry talk. You should be connecting with industry experts and leveraging your network. For example: Are you experiencing a deliverability issue within your email program? Did your delivery rate for (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. inbox provider) drop significantly overnight? You may not be the only one having this issue. The forums are quick to bring industry disturbances to light and share recommendations for proceeding.
How do you think Logiq is thriving in this space?
We take pride in generating quality leads! We only send users who explicitly show an interest and opt-in to our brands. Clean your list. We then run all addresses through an email validation process before adding them to our list. The first email to a new user is essential! Sending to invalid email addresses can quickly tarnish your deliverability (IP, Domain, brand reputation, etc). So start strong.
We have a team of detail-oriented people! We love our data. To succeed in the email game, you need to analyze your deliverability and sending stats (e.g. Campaign, Segment, ESP, IPs, Inbox Provider, etc.) every day. You need to be hands-on and know your data. For example, are you seeing changes in open rates or click rates? Have you seen a spike in bounces, complaints, or unsubscribers? Review these stats and keep up on the data.
What are you looking forward to in 2022?
We are looking forward to growing our overall email program & strategy! We want to execute new ideas, new brands, new offers, and new industry partners. We are also taking our personalization to the next level with a new strategy, finding new and unique ways to leverage and build upon our data to give customers the best experience possible.
We are learning new trends, preparing new strategies, and entirely investing in our audiences. With 2022 just kickstarting, Mailcon has helped Logiq enter the new year strong! To find out more, contact us!
How To Ask the Tough Questions About Ad Transparency
For too long, digital advertising has been a black box for most ad buyers. An advertiser sets a campaign budget, and all along the way, that budget is chipped away by agency fees, platform fees, data fees, and publisher fees–with little if any insight into where the money is going. But in order for a business to get the most value out of their ad spend, they should be prepared to ask their advertising partners the tough questions to get more transparency. We put together some important questions to ask so you can best navigate your way through the black box.
Can You Break Down the Fees You Charge For Running Programmatic Advertising?
Fees, charges, and markups are charged throughout the advertising industry’s supply chain. With companies running their business with the end goal of making money, it’s inevitable that fees & charges will apply. The problem with these fees is that you might be paying more than what the media is worth. According to one IAB report, “only 45 percent of total programmatic revenue went to publishers.” Rarely do media buyers know how much income the publisher is receiving, and this lack of transparency can cause your ad budget to not go as far as it might otherwise. To help get a handle of typical fees, the IAB created a Programmatic Fee Transparency Calculator to help break down the different vendors that might be charging a fee. That allows advertisers and media buyers to know how their money is spent and how much return on their investment in programmatic technology they will get back. Your advertising partners should be able to break down these fees by vendor type in a very similar way. If they can’t, that can be a red flag that they might be taking more off the top than they should be.
Where Will My Ads Be Running?
When an advertiser sets a budget, unscrupulous agencies and platforms sometimes set out to deliver the most possible impressions for the least amount of money. But when it comes to your brand, you need to ensure you’re getting quality over quantity. You should be asking where your ads will be running, and get a report after a campaign’s conclusion, so you can see exactly what sites and apps and on what devices your campaign ran.
If you’re paying too little for ad placement, it’s likely your ads are running on slow loading pages or next to low-quality content, which can make your brand reputation suffer. Even worse, your ads might be running on sites running fake traffic—meaning your ads won’t ever even be seen by a potential buyer. A transparent partner should be able to answer questions about your ad placement confidently without vague answers.
Do you bake your fees into the campaign’s CPM?
Advertisers will often set a flat CPM for a campaign—say $10 for 1000 impressions. What your platform partners won’t always tell you is that they’re taking $2, $3, or even $4 off the top of that CPM, meaning you’re only actually submitting your bid to the publisher at $6. This can result in lower quality and fewer impressions than it could be if your partners were up-front about the fees they might be taking. Of course, every business has operating costs and needs to make money to stay in business, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t be upfront about those costs, so you can better plan and manage your business costs.
Within the Logiq Digital Marketing Platform, you can be sure that you know exactly where your ad spend is going. Within the platform, you can see exactly how much data segments and fraud prevention tools cost, and even see bid data. We’re upfront with platform fees, so you won’t ever be surprised by your ad bill. In fact, many of our clients see better performance because of this transparent model. But whether you use LDM or a different platform, getting a clearer picture of where your spend is going will help you run stronger campaigns with real results. Looking to learn more or get a demo of transparency in action? Contact us at [email protected] or schedule a demo here.
A new year brings new opportunities to evaluate your business and advertising strategies for the months ahead. There’s no better time to start planning and setting goals for your advertising budget. If you’re looking to stay a step ahead of your competitors, tap into this year’s adtech and marketing trends with our handy guide to 2022 below.
Calling Out the Cookie… Again.
In 2021, Google announced its plan to delay the phase-out of third-party cookies in Chrome’s browser until 2023, giving advertisers more time to prepare for alternative solutions. The delay comes from Google in part from its need to work with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Marketing Authority (CMA) and working closely with other regulators to ensure advertisers can effectively replace third-party cookies in the time required.
That doesn’t mean advertisers should stop thinking about how they will prepare for the phase-out of third-party cookies. In preparation for the change, Google has released the “Privacy Sandbox,” which has multiple proposals for Chrome’s solutions. In these proposals, you’ll find the “Federated Learning of Cohorts,” also known as FloC. FloC is a complex attempt to create a group of similar users in a decentralized system. Though browsers have so far rejected this option, it’s worth staying up-to-date on the latest proposed solutions. Google is still testing FloC, and you can read more about it on Google’s Privacy Sandbox website.
Shifting Context.
In 2022, advertisers should expect a “new normal” due to increasingly strict privacy laws and regulations affiliated with the death of the third-party cookie. With Google planning to phase out the third-party cookie in 2023, advertisers are asking “now what?” As part of the solution, many have started testing contextual targeting. Contextual targeting uses a website’s content, keywords, and other types of metadata available on a page to help inform ad buying decisions, rather than the private user data that the cookie uses.
To read more about contextual targeting and how it can be your new solution to the phase-out of third-party cookies, read our blog, What is Contextual Targeting?
Connecting into CTV.
Connected TV, or digitally enabled TV, has come into its own over the past few years and the advertising opportunities within it have exploded, so much that specialized agencies have popped up to help brands with their CTV ad buys.
Not all agencies and CTV buying platforms are created equal, however, so if you’re looking to dive into the CTV space, be sure you ask a few key questions to your partners to ensure your ad spend is going to the right places:
Where will my ads appear? Just like on the web, TV has both premium placements and content that might be less than desirable. If you’re getting a cheap rate, you may want to investigate the channels and content your ads will be appearing next to.
What brand safety measures do you enable? You want to be sure your buyer works with partners that can protect your brand from bot traffic, negative or irrelevant content, and outright fraud. Your buyer should be able to provide detailed reports about this information if you ask.
How do you charge your agency fee? Understand how the agency makes its money so you can be sure you’re getting a fair and transparent pricing for your ad buys. CTV buying can seem like a black box, but an agency should be able to give you a breakdown of where your dollars are going, including their own fees, targeting and data fees, and platform fees.
Minding the Generation Gap.
Gen Z will have more influence on the economy and media landscape than many may have expected, and this will only increase in 2022. Gen Z will drive how we think about products and ads, and they will pave the way for how we continue to build the web.
Going into the year, advertisers and publishers will have to work on delivering content that is engaging and provides value to younger audiences. Content creation will need to be bigger and more important than it used to be and brands will have to invest in creating richer content to keep up with Gen Z. To find out more on how to attract Gen Z users, read our blog The Power of Gen Z.
Picking the Right Platform(s).
Social media continues to grow in new ways and into new platforms, and with it, the percentage of buying decisions made with social platforms in mind has increased. Many brands and agencies are moving into social commerce because of the benefits of enhanced engagement and specific targeting, especially as consumers expect to be able to buy anything at any time.
Social platform commerce and ad buying capabilities continue to get stronger, but smart agencies and buyers can extend that reach to programmatic channels with the right technology partners. Consumers are more and more comfortable engaging with ads that look and feel like social media ads, so it can be helpful to explore platforms that offer “social creative” like Logiq’s Digital Marketing platform so you can save money on your ad creative and run your ad buys across thousands of websites programmatically.
If you’re looking for a partner to help you navigate these adtech trends and more, reach out to us at [email protected] and we’ll help create a 2022 plan that meets your business and advertising needs for the year ahead.
7 Last Minute Holiday Ad Tips to Help Your Business Close Out the Year Strong
More than 85% of consumers will shop online this holiday season according to research firm NPD. As the year pushes to close, you can help your business reach those consumers by ensuring your ad campaigns are performing at their best. We put together a list of tips to ensure you’re getting the most out of your year-end ad spend.
Control Your Ad Bids. You want to be sure you’re reaching your most valuable consumers this time of year. To do that, you should take advantage of bid modifiers. These advanced controls let you bid more for a customer in a particular location, with particular attributes, or in a particular context.
Watch the Weather. Is the weather outside frightful? You can use weather targeting tools to specifically target based on weather conditions in the zip codes or DMAs you might be targeting. If you’re advertising for in-person retail, for example, you can ensure you aren’t bidding in the middle of a big winter snowstorm!
Create Social Interactive Ads. It’s hard to get a consumer’s attention online these days, but the right creative can catch a customer’s eye and convert to a sale. One of the most effective ways to do this is to use your familiar social media posts to create interactive ads. With tools like LDM’s Social Ad Builder, you can use your existing social posts on Facebook and Instagram as your ad creative to save money and boost engagement.
Offer Free Shipping. Nearly half of customers consider free shipping when they choose where to buy from. If your customers see the offer for free shipping after they click your ad, they may be more likely to buy from you. You might even consider making the offer directly in the ad creative to increase your CTR.
Embrace the Emotion. Customers are more likely to respond and remember your ad if they can connect to a specific emotion. Using video or connected TV ads can help increase this likelihood of connecting authentically with your customers. Even in display ads, you can use specific colors to help evoke certain emotions you want to convey.
Pace Yourself. Pay attention to the pacing of your year-end campaigns, making sure your ad spend averages out across the days with most impact. You can also use day-parting to ensure you’re reaching customers only during the times and days they’re more likely to see your ad.
Stay Positive. The right brand safety and natural language processing tools can ensure your message is only appearing next to articles or content with positive emotional sentiment. You want your brand to be remembered and recalled within a positive context, rather than a negative or neutral one.
The end of the year is a great time to look back on the successes you’ve had so far and look forward to make a plan to reach all your goals in 2022. If you need help finishing your year-end campaigns out strong, or if you’re looking for a partner to superpower your ad campaigns next year, reach out to us at [email protected].
