NDA, in partnership with Xandr, is collecting the views of some of our industry’s leading figures for their predictions on 2022 and beyond. Next up is Benoit Cacheux, Global Chief Digital Officer, Zenith.
What are the most exciting innovations in planning, buying and delivering digital advertising?
With the additional time given on the changes related to third-party cookie deprecation, this has created more space for the industry to design better targeting solutions for the future. Whilst there’s a flurry of solutions, we are genuinely excited about the work being done on identity solutions across many players. Our CORE ID solution by Epsilon, a company Publicis Groupe acquired in 2019, is innovative and unique with its identity graph built on digital transactions. At Zenith, we believe our clients will benefit greatly from the integration in 2022 of the Epsilon identity graph with The Trade Desk’s own identity solution.
What channels provide the most exciting opportunities for digital advertising in 2022?
The social landscape has been fundamentally transformed over the last two years with a healthy level of diversification, offering our clients more options to build reach and engagement. The recent innovations around social commerce are the ones to watch in 2022. Zenith is working closely with TikTok as part of our recently announced partnership, where we are a Commerce Founding Partner for TikTok. Connected TVs also provide an exciting new canvas for integrated video planning. 2021 was the year where it became widely tested and we believe it will be part of most plans in 2022.
What new formats will deliver better results for advertisers and better experiences for consumers in 2022?
The journey between brand discovery and buying a product keeps getting shorter. Social commerce formats across Meta, TikTok and Snap are offering new innovative ways to build product engagement and drive sales. The role of influencers in social continues to grow as well and the ability to turn your influencers from brand ambassadors to sales agent with formats allowing you to sell products and track revenue easily. Our Fluency programme for influencers provide a great platform for brands to build connectivity with influencers and generate new sources of revenue.
How will the distinctions between brand and performance advertising evolve?
The distinction between brand and performance is a distinction created by marketing professionals to make sure there’s a rigour in the way marketing budgets are planned across the journey. However, consumers do not think in terms of brand and performance. To be successful, it’s important to remove these artificial silos and be focused on planning your investment across the journey by effectively blending brand and sales messaging at the right point in the journey. The ability to accurately define the contribution of each channel across this brand and performance journey will be the key to success. Zenith is very focused on solving this problem through the evolution of attribution models which cover both offline and online and are not reliant on third-party cookies.
