7 Alarming Ad Signs You Can’t Ignore 🚨
- by
- Alec Newcomb
The 7 ad signs and a hard question.
Read Time: 3 minutesI’ve been buying media since 1995, and I love it so much that I teach a class on it at UNH.
I’m worried about the new mix of factors that are killing brands.
Here are 7 things that are making your job, of reaching the right person at the right time with the right message, harder:
ON YOUR RADAR 👀
- Ad Fraud. It’s real. It’s larger than you think (I just had someone tell me yesterday that they were shocked by the % of Ad Fraud in their Google Ad account).
Learn More > $84 Billion in 2023, It’s 19% of CTV too, Ad Fraud peaks in Q4 - Consumer Privacy laws led by lobbyists hurt you, do little for the consumer, and let the big media platforms win.
- Google Analytics 4 sucks compared to its predecessor, and our general ability to measure has gone down. We know less and must infer more.
- Google Search Traffic is going down and will get double-digit worse next year.
- TikTok may get banned, but it will likely get sold by Jan.
- Bing is not going to save us. 🤣
- AI and Algorithms are mostly black boxes, so it’s hard to understand what worked and why for Ads.
What CAN WE DO?
Channel Diversification to De-Risk
- More Linear TV. Yep, at sub $7 CPMs vs $10.27 Avg CPM for Meta its 30%+ Cheaper and no fraud.
- More Digital Audio: Spotify, iHeart, Pandora, and Podcasts have good CPMs, targeting, and ROI.
- More YouTube: 81% of the US population uses it, for 48 minutes monthly, and even your Mom spends time on it.
More Testing to Prove What’s Working
- Creative Testing
- Channel Testing
- Geo Hold out Testing
- Incremental Testing
- A/B/n Landing Page Testing
Using Generative AI to Lower Ad and Content Costs 40%+
- Creative Ad Pipeline
- Video Pipeline
- Landing Page Pipeline
- Content Pipeline
Better Data as AI Needs Good Signal
- Capturing all of our 1st party Data: Website, Mobile, Email, SMS, ChatBot, Calls, etc.
- Buying Data 3rd party Data that we can append easily
- Partnering for Unique Data. I’ll send to my email list if you will send to yours 🙂
Media buying is changing. Gone are the days of an Excel sheet and some quality bargaining with ad reps.
You need to think like an AI. What data can I feed it? Where can I get that data? How do I do a statistically significant test to see if that Ad/Channel/Partner adds incrementally to my sales? How would I rework my production pipeline to scale this?
And please get on top of your Ad Fraud. It’s likely over 20%, today.
