Let’s see what this week’s numbers say about online advertising, shall we?
- The customer experience (CX) is a top priority for CMOs. But despite the emphasis placed on delivering excellent experiences, companies fail 12% of the time. So finds Qualtrics XM Institute in a recent survey of almost 24,000 consumers across 23 countries. Certain industries tend to fare better than others, per the report’s findings. Streaming services and supermarkets were rarely associated with “very poor” experiences (4% each). Department stores (5%) and online retailers (10%) are also infrequently providing “very poor” experiences. Government agencies are the worst offenders, with 22% of recent experiences deemed “very poor”. The health insurance (16%), mobile phone provider (15%) and credit card provider (15%) industries also were flagged for an above-average share of “very poor” recent experiences. Two factors stood out as the most-cited by respondents when asked about a recent bad experience: service delivery issues (46%) and communication problems (45%). With regards to communication problems, a recent survey found that while they’re commonly cited by consumers, they’re not among CX professionals’ key priorities.
- Attribution models such as last-touch attribution often give a skewed view of marketing impact by inflating the role of immediate, direct actions, such as clicks or direct conversions, while downplaying the influence of channels that drive indirect, longer-term impact, according to a report from Analytic Partners. The report contrasts traditional attribution models, which credit specific actions like clicks, with Commercial Analytics, a broader method that uses “Test & Learn” experiments to capture the long-term impact of each channel on sales. This approach reveals where traditional models may misjudge a channel’s effectiveness by either over- or under-estimating its contribution. As a result of the analysis, Analytic Partners found that paid search and direct marketing (DM) are shown to have highly inflated effectiveness scores in attribution models. In particular, last-touch attribution over-estimates the role of paid search by 190%, giving it far more credit than it deserves for driving conversions. By contrast, brand TV and other upper-funnel channels that are usually oriented to building brand awareness are significantly under-estimated in last-touch attribution models. Brand TV, for example, is undervalued by 90%, such that its longer-term, indirect influence on conversions is largely ignored. Press, another upper-funnel channel, is under-estimated by 33%, although it should be noted that direct response TV is also under-estimated (-79%). Limited data and attribution models also fail to track digital channels correctly, according to the report. In particular, social media is heavily impacted by attribution flaws, with 88% of impressions untracked due to factors such as ad blockers and privacy settings. Search is the least impacted, with only 15% of impressions “lost” due to these models’ drawbacks.
- The forecast for US B2B marketing and advertising spending has been downgraded for this year, Plural Analytics notes in its latest projections. Having originally forecast a 4% rise in B2B marketing spending this year, the firm recently revised its estimate downwards to a modest 2% increase, due to lower-than-expected tech spending. That’s in contrast to B2C marketing spending growth, for which the forecast has been revised upwards to 5%, from 4% early this year. That’s more than enough to offset the weaker B2B outlook, such that the forecast for total marketing spending in the US this year has been revised slightly upwards (to roughly 4.7%). The largest component of B2B marketing spending this year will be internal labor, though its $30 billion total will remain relatively unchanged from last year (+2%). At $23 billion, the next-largest portion of B2B marketing spending this year will be events/sponsorship, up 8% year-over-year. The 2024-2028 compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) for both of these spending segments are forecast to be similar to this year’s growth, at +3% and +8%, respectively. One spending area where a large upward trend is predicted is paid digital media. This year Plural Strategy projects a 1% decrease in B2B digital ad spending, but that will be followed by a 2024-2028 CAGR of 11%. During that period and as a result of that growth, digital ad spending will overtake traditional ad spending for B2B firms, with this milestone forecast to take place in 2027, when digital ad spend will total $17 billion and traditional ad spend $14 billion. Interestingly, the smallest area of B2B marketing spending is also set to be its fastest-growing. While tech and data spend is projected to rise by a modest 4% this year to $7 billion, the forecast 2024-2028 CAGR jumps to 12%, which would result in total tech and data spending of $12 billion in 2028, not far behind total traditional ad spending.
