Digital Display Advertising from the Enterprise Perspective

With the right data and strategy, digital display advertising can be a major driver of conversions and sales. But the landscape changes quickly, so marketers need to stay alert and adapt, or risk poor results.

 

To better understand enterprise marketing strategies—the highs, lows, and what is coming out on top—OMI recently collaborated with Ascend2 to survey 170 enterprise marketers working for companies with more than 500 employees. As Media Post reported, the results bring to light how enterprise marketers are navigating the shifts across digital display advertising. Here are some of my top takeaways from the report:

 

Display advertising is effective but measuring results and identifying the right audience remains a challenge.

The overwhelming majority of respondents say their digital display advertising is effective, with 33% responding it is extremely effective in driving conversions and sales, and another 61% saying their strategies are somewhat effective. However, measuring ROI and other performance metrics is a challenge for 42% of those surveyed. Additionally, 41% say identifying and reaching the right target audience is the most significant challenge.

 

Channel integration is essential to optimize campaign performance.

The majority (88%) of enterprise marketers report that their digital display advertising is integrated across channels, with 36% noting their efforts are extensively integrated. However not as many report using programmatic. New programmatic algorithms and automations make it easier for marketers to reach their target audience more efficiently, but only 24% of the enterprise respondents report using programmatic extensively.

 

Ad fraud is a top concern.

Enterprise marketers rely on digital display advertising, but they’re still worried about their budget going down the drain – 84% are concerned about digital ad fraud or BOTS wasting advertising spend or impacting their ROI. More than 20% of those surveyed say they are very concerned, while 61% say they are somewhat concerned.

 

And there may be good reasons. Some estimates assign 30-35% of digital marketing campaign activity as fake bot activity. Research from the Association of National Advertisers indicates that more than $20 billion (23%) of the $88 billion their members spent on programmatic advertising over the past year was wasted. To address this issue, OMI and our digital activation partner remove non-human activity BOTS from digital media campaigns, which reduces overall campaign spend and improves ROI.

 

Nearly 3 out of 10 enterprise marketers lack transparency on critical campaign elements from their marketing vendors.

With 96% of enterprise businesses surveyed relying on marketing vendors to support their digital display advertising initiatives, you would expect a high level of trust between businesses and their marketing vendors. But when it comes to critical campaign elements, only 18% report full transparency from their digital display advertising agency partner. About half find the transparency with their vendors satisfactory, leaving 29% saying the transparency is low and could be improved.

 

Transparency in the media activation and buying process is needed more than ever today. Media activation, the process of executing and implementing a campaign across channels to reach the target audience effectively, takes specialized expertise to know which strategies deliver the best results for a campaign – such as the use of deterministic vs. probabilistic methodologies for targeting an individual (not a company or a household).

 

The full survey, “Digital Display Advertising From the Enterprise Perspective,” is now available for download. Feel free to use our findings and please reach out if you have any questions for our team.