Big Tech’s walled gardens have become inhospitable and overgrown – time to take your ad dollars elsewhere

Big Tech’s ad spend appetite is larger than ever but the value it can offer has perhaps never been lower. We are witnessing a digital ad industry in flux. 

Regulation is playing a role, but as Big Tech grows ever greedier, healthy competition has turned into fear-based strategies that aim to hamstring rather than help. 

Case in point: Apple has severely limited Facebook’s ability to advertise to iOS users. It claimed privacy was the driver, but we’ve since seen Apple focus on advertising as its next major growth driver. They’ll be exploiting the very consumer data they claim to hold sacred. This means advertising via Facebook has become less advantageous because you don’t know who you’re reaching. Apple is happy to sell you this same audience directly but they’re only willing to share ancient metrics like opens and clicks with zero insight into who engages–hardly the makings of an insightful campaign. 

At the same time, Google has made multiple attempts to migrate to a post-cookie world. It has settled on an approach that infers interest in various high-level ad topics based on browsing history. It too will share clicks but they’ll have a challenging time homing in on granularly targeted audiences. 

Advertising has become more expensive and campaign spends need to stretch further than ever. That starts with understanding real results. Not obscured opens and clicks, but actual engagement by real people with attribution so that you can tell if a campaign has been successful. 

It’s a new ad era and audiences count

Spamming digital cookies on the cheap no longer constitutes a sound strategy. Soon it won’t even be a viable option. Big Tech’s latest plays are a step in the right direction from a privacy perspective, but measurement remains stuck in digital’s dark ages. 

Today, it’s all about the audience. Who you target matters. What consumers do when they see your ad matters. The ability to track if the ad ultimately generated ad revenue matters. 

So why are advertisers settling for less? 

People-based data answering a new market need

Market offerings are changing so fast, some companies and brands are having trouble keeping up. Many have not even heard of the option to advertise based on people-based audiences. It has never been a better time to brush up on what people-based can deliver for your campaign. 

Let’s review some of the benefits of a people-based approach:

• Know who you’re targeting. Using 100% opt-in, personally identifiable information (PII), you can understand who you are targeting and who engages, making it possible to tailor messages and run multi-phase campaigns. 
• Advertise across channels. The audience you want to reach engages with a range of platforms so why advertise on just one or two? Reach exactly who you want across email, mobile display, OTT and connected video, social media and more. 
• Get granular. Define exactly the audience type you want to reach (e.g., pet-owning women over 55 in a certain region). 
• Customize your approach. When you know you’re targeting a certain audience, you can design messages most likely to appeal to the audience and tailor the message specifically for the channel.
• Measure better. Ditch opens and clicks for a comprehensive view of who engages with your campaign with attribution layering that lets you understand exact ROI. 

People-based campaigns in action

A national furniture retailer reached out to BRIDGE because it was concerned its ad spend wasn’t going as far as it could. 

The retailer wanted to drive traffic to 32 specific store locations, identifying women over 35 in specific geographies as the target audience. BRIDGE was able to build a custom audience of 500,000 women that could be reached across display, mobile, social, and video. The campaign experienced an incredible 12,000% ROI, driving $13M in revenue based on more than 6,500 store visits directly attributed to the campaign, and over 8,400 store purchases. 

What can people-based do for you? Deliver results Big Tech can only dream of…