Marketing Predictions for Publishers and Advertisers in 2022

To say that the marketing landscape has experienced significant changes would be an understatement. The ever-looming demise of third-party cookies, the push for first-party data strategies, and the need for building and enriching own customer information is daunting. Let alone keeping up with global marketing trends. However, with some fine-tuning of strategies and preparations for possible disruptions, you’ll be able to improve your ROAS well into 2022. Just keep these seven strategies in mind. 

7 Marketing Strategies to Help You Thrive in 2022

1. Leverage First-Party Data

It’s no secret that consumers are demanding more privacy—especially more control over their data. Once third-party data completely phases out, first-party, permission-based data will be required to target users across media platforms, channels, and devices. If it’s not in your plan for 2022, it’s time to adjust. There are many benefits to implementing a first-party data strategy, from improved targeting precision to closing the attribution loops and everything in between. You’ll better integrate customer data from various touchpoints to create a better user experience and improve overall marketing performance. With first-party data, you’ll be able to go beyond understanding your consumers. You’ll use predictive analytics and targeting to increase your audience reach and optimize messaging. 

2. Keep Contextual Advertising Top of Mind

It’s often easy to confuse behavioral advertising with contextual advertising. The former targets the user’s actions before reaching a particular web page—the latter targets based on the environment in which the audience is browsing. So while behavioral targeting might seem like an upgraded version of contextual advertising, there are still plenty of benefits of contextual advertising. This includes the fact that contextual advertising is more accessible and more affordable to implement. Behavioral advertising relies on vast amounts of data and tools to collect and optimize it. Whereas contextual advertising can still provide a certain level of relevance in its way. It’s also not constrained by privacy legislation since it doesn’t rely on intimidating personal details to serve to advertise. You’re also less likely to appear in environments that you weren’t expecting to show up, such as adult or extremist content, for example. And all in all, sometimes context matters more than behavior, so be sure to consider this in your digital marketing strategies. 

3. Earn Trust with Transparency

We’re currently in the age of the empowered consumer. Personalization, privacy, and trust matter most. But, unfortunately, while marketers and consumers can agree that personalized experiences are a priority, there’s often a disconnect with understanding what enables personalization. 

According to a 2020 Microsoft Survey, consumers are willing to share their personal data with a company or brand in exchange for:

• 57% personalized rewards or discounts on frequently bought items or services
• 57% personalized pricing (i.e., discounts or money back)
• 56% free samples of products or services
• 47% free access to contact 
• 40% more personalized customer service

Of course, these percentages change at various demographic levels. Still, in general, we can say that the red thread should start with clear communication about the value exchange and make personalization purposeful. By tailoring personalization to meet customer expectations at every touchpoint, you deepen your connection with your customers, you get a more engaged audience, strengthen their loyalty and trust, and in return, achieve business success. 

4. Offer Real-Time Engagement

The age of the empowered consumer includes a “Mobile Mind Shift.” As Forrester’s research puts it, consumers reach their mobile devices about 100-200 times per day. In these “mobile moments,” they’re expecting companies to understand their context and offer relevancy. The moments are endless. This could be someone making an impulse purchase, requesting information from customer service, or trying to use up their loyalty rewards. But this goes beyond mobile phones. You should also understand their real-time location, real-time attributions to combine real-time data activation with real-time targeted audience segments to deliver the right message at the right time and optimize it at every touchpoint. With an oversaturation in digital advertising markets, this is crucial. It may sound like a lot, but the companies that position themselves best in these categories will then win, serve, and retain customers throughout their user journey. 

5. Embrace Multi-Touch Attributions

Google announced that it was doing away with last-touch attribution, and now is the time to switch to multi-touch attribution to better evaluate the impact at each touchpoint. See what drives better conversion and which channels you might be lacking in. Multi-touch attribution models allow advertisers to have a more granular, person-level view than other traditional methods. It also provides visibility into the success of touchpoints across the entire customer’s journey. So rather than having consumers escape specific marketing messages, you can switch to a more data-driven approach to customize messaging and meet consumers at the right channel, at the right time. You’ll also improve the consumer experience with more impactful messaging and gain more flexibility in understanding which initiatives work best and which need to be optimized or removed. 

6. Stay Ahead with CTV Advertising

Omnichannel marketing integrates and cooperates with various channel organizations consumers interact with to create a consistent brand experience. Disney is an excellent example of this, such as its website, in-store, and streaming experience. One channel that has been discussed enough is CTV. It’ll probably be the defining 2022 media, and you should consider this alongside your other digital marketing strategies. We’re at the point where consumers choose streaming services over traditional television formats such as cable and satellite. Statista’s research confirms that at the start of 2021, 70 million households maintained cable subscriptions, while at the same time, advertisers could reach more than 84 million households via connected streaming TV services. EMarketer released CTV ad spending projections across the next three years: expecting it to hit $13.4 billion this year, $17.4 billion in 2022, and $21.4 billion in 2023. Other benefits of CTV advertising include reaching more millennials and Gen Zers who favor CTV over other TV formats. In addition, it’s more cost-effective to reach premium networks than linear TV. Not to mention the more unique opportunities with CTV than linear TV. You’re also guaranteed 100% viewability and higher completion rates since CTV is non-skippable. Remember how we also mentioned contextual targeting earlier? With CTV, you can apply contextual targeting to reach your audience through relevant content. And, you can enhance your attribution measurements by partnering with specific partners to measure a campaign’s performance impact both online and offline. 

7. Go to the Next Level with Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is all around us. But have you thought about its specific use cases to first-party data? It’s essential to optimize data offerings, enhance monetization strategies and heighten the value of the user experience. With AI-powered technology, publishers can harness new capabilities to provide advertisers with high-value, first-party data. It also enables them to build off of scalable, privacy-safe data solutions. Combining the power of AI with valuable first-party data will give publishers and their partners the ultimate significant competitive advantage. In addition, AI and machine learning solutions will help increase strategy effectiveness and data process and enrichment. This is also coupled with predictive modeling to offer the most valuable capabilities made possible by machine learning. 

Embarking on Your 2022 Marketing Strategy

Marketing plans and execution should always be set up for success. With the proper preparations and strategies, they can be. With the new privacy updates, first-party data will be needed to best leverage and optimize your targeting strategies. Alternative strategies should also be considered, such as contextual advertising and providing the best value and experience for customers. Leveraging all the strategies as mentioned earlier help you create optimized, real-time digital marketing campaigns. All you need to ensure is that you tap into the advertising market with the right AI and machine learning technologies to unlock the full potential of your data.