Through a Brand’s Lens: Navigating the Ever-Changing Advertising Landscape

By Zaid Roberts, Senior Director, Advertiser Solutions, PubMatic

Amidst economic challenges and global unrest, the UK’s digital advertising market continues to grow. In 2023, the UK digital advertising spending increased by 11% to a total of £29.6 billion and is expected to reach £32.1 billion in 2024. However, how brands approach digital media strategy is not simply a case of increasing budgets year-on-year; strategic shifts are happening in audience planning, activation, measurement, and creativity. Many of these changes are driven by the increasing value technology partners provide as consumers’ digital media consumption fragments.

A laser focus on maximising effectiveness

In the past, media plans were relatively predictable. In the early 2000s, a big product launch would see the majority of the total budget go to linear TV for maximum reach. By the mid-2010s, search took the top spot thanks to the dominance of its last-click attribution model.

Today’s media plans are much less predictable and much more fluid. For example, TV might take around half of the budget for a big product launch, but the activation will be more targeted and skewed towards addressable TV rather than linear. Many brands are constantly adjusting their channel distribution thanks to updated econometrics and media mix modelling (MMM), with modern measurement techniques driving increases in digital advertising spend.

This focus on effectiveness pivots marketers’ thinking from “where can we save money” to “how can we drive incremental performance.” Underpinned by the flexibility offered by programmatic technology, this laser focus on effectiveness means that budgets seamlessly flow between channels while return-on-investment (ROI) increases.

Business outcomes trump impressions and clicks

For marketers focused on effectiveness, short-term digital metrics like cost-per-click (CPC) are off the table, having been replaced by more meaningful metrics such as cost per attention, cost per sale, and customer lifetime value.

Letting go of legacy performance metrics isn’t easy though. Some brands advocate using an engagement framework to build understanding from the bottom up (e.g., what is the measurable value of someone signing up for a weekly newsletter or spending 10 minutes on your website?). These are the insights that enable marketers to understand how media impacts the bottom line rather than, for example, increasing unprompted brand awareness that is difficult to correlate to sales.

This understanding of how media impacts the bottom line is enabling brands to run upper- and mid-funnel campaigns in the same way as they run lower-funnel campaigns — focusing on outcomes with tangible objectives. From a technology perspective, brands and their agency partners are investing in platforms that can ingest, manage, and analyse the data that can prove what moved the needle on those outcomes. In many cases, this involves building bespoke attribution models — a huge leap forward from last-click attribution models that essentially benchmark all channels against search, creating unrealistic expectations.

Breaking down creative boundaries with data and insights

The latest Media Nations report highlighted the dynamic nature of media consumption and the growing popularity of video content that is spurring the growth of video advertising budgets. Many brands have two separate, but intertwined, video advertising tactics: an always-on component and discrete campaign bursts for specific promotions. However, with audiences constantly shifting from platform to platform, and trends within those platforms coming and going in a matter of days, reaching and engaging target audiences is more challenging than ever.

The modern-day equivalent of a homepage takeover or a TV roadblock requires constant monitoring of the latest trends in online video and the creation of multiple versions of video advertising assets designed to seamlessly integrate into the user experience of the platform on which they’re served. Both data and asset production need to move at the speed of culture.

Combined with the “outcomes and effectiveness” approach described above, this concept of moving at the speed of culture results in more impactful video campaigns, because ads are connected to specific subcultures and targeting is based on a deep understanding of the most valuable audiences. This can be a challenge for some agencies that still operate in silos, but it’s an approach that works for brands, and agencies need to keep up or risk losing clients to more flexible, on-the-pulse competitors.

Technology must deliver full-circle value

The approach that brands are taking in 2024 — focused on effectiveness, measuring outcomes, and increasing creative volume — means that technology platforms need to adapt and deliver value full circle: from real-time audience insights; to omnichannel activations and optimisation; to support for emerging creative formats. More than ever, brands — and therefore their agencies — want data-driven insights and tools that are easy to understand and use.

Brands recognise that traditional media planning, buying, and measurement models are no longer effective. They are now looking for technology platforms that have adapted to offer solutions that simplify their media supply chain, maximise their media investment, and seamlessly integrate the next emerging channel — whatever or wherever that may be.