Author: Joe Sabol / Source: Marketing Land Data-driven marketing is today’s norm. The vast majority of digital display ads this year — 73
Data-driven marketing is today’s norm. The vast majority of digital display ads this year — 73 percent, according to recent eMarketer forecasts — will be purchased programmatically and incorporate data-driven targeting to activate. It’s also projected that 2017 will be the first year when digital spend surpasses TV to become the largest part of the overall ad budget, on average.
What’s more, marketers are expanding beyond using data to just guide ad placement, reaching deeper to let their data inform the formation of ad content. It would seem that the great data march is unstoppable, and that its influence over the entire advertising process is growing.
And yet amid this paradigm shift, some roles in the marketing process are ahead of others, particularly when it comes to creative, and especially when it comes to video creative. Raised in the pre-digital era of monolithic channels (TV+print) and the culture of the “big idea,” some marketers remain skeptical of both the “why” and the “how” of subjecting the most artistic and recognizable parts of advertising to the cold and dispassionate hand of data.
Dynamic video is going to change all of that.
The old-school creative approach
Many people in the top ranks of agencies were drawn into the advertising profession because of their unique ability to communicate with audiences through video and sound. And while the creative development process has always relied on data to drive consumer insights and big ideas, granular, individual-level consumer data was rarely used to drive creative outside of print-based direct response ads or CRM (customer relationship management) programs.
In digital, this granular consumer data has mostly been applied to optimize the programmatic placement of the creative.
Only recently has discrete behavioral data arrived as a ubiquitous asset capable of driving the composure of creative assets themselves. Advertising has always been a little art and a little science, for sure. But traditionally, the role of science has been to target the placement of the art, while the role of producing it was left to the artistic judgment of trained professionals.
And so when developing TV ads, customer data was something that creative professionals would draw on for inspiration, but it was no longer…
COMMENTS