With another Dmexco behind us, we’re talking to experts in the market to hear their insights on this year’s show.
Anna Forbes, UK General Manager, The Trade Desk
The one thing on everyone’s lips at Dmexco this year? The exciting potential of Connected TV.
It’s not surprising — TV has long been one of the most powerful mediums for advertisers and the injection of technology will only make it more so. Combining the channel’s inherent impact and scale with the precision afforded by programmatic will be transformative for advertisers and consumers alike. But while we can all recognise the exciting future of CTV, questions remain.
With Apple announcing its entrance to the already crowded streaming market this week, are we close to reaching peak subscription? And how much longer can Netflix hold off before its forced to introduce ads?
Of course, it wouldn’t be Dmexco without a little healthy industry debate and one thing we could agree to disagree on was the future of the cookie. Cookies have developed a bad rep for being synonymous with annoying ads and relentless retargeting — leading many to claim the death of the cookie to be imminent.
But what it’s easy to forget is that the cookie is fundamental to the free internet. Without cookie-driven advertising, the internet would cost consumers or have to be privately run.
So, while I agree that it’s inevitable the cookie will evolve, instead of counting down to its death, let’s be grateful for what it does for us now.
Norman Rohr, senior vice president of marketing, Uberall
DMEXCO kicked off with Salesforce CMO Stephanie Buscemi’s trust-themed keynote. At a time when trust is not at an all-time high — in politics, data privacy, or even the news media — Buscemi made a strong case for why trust in brands is more important than ever.
Trust drives customer loyalty and growth, but it has to start from within. Buscemi challenged brands to not just ‘talk the talk,’ but to walk the walk. But if actions, not words, build trust, what can brands do?
By increasing corporate transparency, engaging in two-way dialogue, and turning diversity into a KPI, trust can be built from within, and become an integral part of brand culture.
Today, consumer trust in brands is undeniably tied to online ratings and reviews. In a session on brand trust and customer reviews, Uberall co-CEO Florian Huebner spoke on how TOTAL online uses reputation management tools to drive offline sales, noting that 97 percent of consumers say they’re influenced by ratings when making a purchase decision, and 84 percent trust an online rating as much as the recommendation of a friend. For brands, this means that reputation management is crucial to winning and keeping customers.
Marketing technology can help enhance and streamline reputation management, but the consumer is still the focus, and as Huebner put succinctly, ‘Reviews are the new currency.’
Brands that are timely and meaningful in their responses to reviews stand the best chance of earning consumer trust. In a ‘near me’ search for goods and services, consumers inevitably favour the company with the better ratings. As such, engagement with reviews really is the name of the game when it comes to trust.
Sairah Mojib, Head of Marketing, EMEA, Widen
The evolution of DMEXCO: This year, DMEXCO feels less gimmicky than 2018. In 2019, the event is taking networking and discovery more seriously, with an emphasis on the challenges today’s marketers face: saving marketers time, increasing productivity, and building a memorable, recognisable brand that stands out among competitors.
The use of out-dated digital assets: We’re in an era where time quite literally means money, but we’ve found creative agencies are still wasting precious hours repurposing old, out-dated versions of assets from their clients.
One agency we spoke to at DMEXCO was given a client’s logo to localise for twenty countries. Upon execution, the CMO noticed they had worked with an obsolete logo, which meant the entire project had to be reworked.
Preserving brand perception: Another challenge companies are facing relates to the control of assets, and how this directly relates to brand perception. One bank we spoke to at DMEXCO has a pressing need to control the way photos are being used.
Not having the access to the right photo or image at the right time can be detrimental to an organisation’s marketing strategy.
Consequently, in this case the bank feels its lack of control over its visual assets is harming its brand and how it is perceived by its customers and stakeholders.
