How Social Media Advertising Solves Browser Based Display and Search
By
Montse Guasch

While online display and search advertising have been two of the biggest drivers of advertising spending for years, many advertisers are struggling to achieve their business goals through just those two channels alone. Unfortunately, brands are limited to advertising across websites that conform to standardized ad formats. This encourages the use of programmatic inventory which is subject to a good deal of fraud. In a February 2016 study, “The Bot Baseline: Fraud in Digital Advertising,” the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) determined that fraud will cost digital advertisers worldwide $7.2 billion this year. Moreover, DoubleVerify estimated fraud could be claiming as much as $1 million a day for its clients alone, according to its Q1 2015 “DV Fraud Protection” whitepaper.

As a consequence, the industry has shifted toward “emerging new media solutions”, or as we refer to them, “autonomous marketing platforms”, which make challenges with cookie-based information, bots, fraud, viewability and cross device attribution all but disappear. Autonomous marketing platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat are not only resolving the long standing issues with commodity display media, they are leading a new trend of advertising that focuses on creating seamless experiences for their audiences.

Marketers can now think about how to adapt their marketing campaigns to mimic true consumer conversations. Autonomous marketing platforms offer native solutions that can easily insert brands into real-time conversations, allowing them to capitalize on trending topics. They focus on prioritizing relevant messages through superior targeting and technology. These platforms are able to use basic tactics to distribute their display and video ads in highly personalized ways by leveraging CRM data, creating lookalike audiences to expand reach, and tracking cross device attribution for a better ROI optimization.

Spending on digital display advertising in the US was expected to total $27.05 billion in 2015 with Twitter surpassing Yahoo in total U.S. digital display ad revenues for the first time. Facebook and Twitter will take 33% share of the US digital display market by 2017, according to new figures from eMarketer.

These autonomous marketing platforms have mobile at their core. Their audiences spend most of their time engaging with apps on the go, so it is no surprise that for the first time, mobile is expected to surpass desktop in display ad spending in the US, increasing from $9.65 billion in 2014 to $14.67 billion. Meanwhile, desktop display ad spend is expected to continue to decline, falling to $12.38 billion, from $12.56 billion the previous year.

Autonomous marketing platforms are creating a new and better way of advertising.  As a result, we see a new definition of advertising – one based on pure technology, where completely accurate personal and profile data enables more relevant conversations for consumers and endless targeting solutions for advertisers to connect with their audience. And the best part is that all of these attributes can be run at a huge scale. What does this mean for the future of display advertising? As is the case for all evolution, those who adapt will survive.

Montse Guasch is a Senior Director of Marketing at Adaptly.