Dubai: Digital media is “a clearly defined area of doubt and uncertainty”, Ipsos Connect chief digital officer Andrew Bradford told delegates at the Arabnet Digital Forum on Tuesday.
Nevertheless he and panellists at an earlier workshop at the Madinat Jumeirah conference centre did their best to work through the uncertainty and offer a vision of the future of digital marketing.
Bradford, in his keynote address, was keen to stress that the fundamentals of brand marketing would remain the same, and professionals should not be bamboozled by the technology — digital content should be salient, should aim to form relationships with potential customers, should rank first in recognition and it should be easy to interact with.
But the means of content delivery would change as media publishers and advertisers worked more closely and as media currencies converged.
“Measuring demographics doesn’t seem to cut the mustard, as we say in the UK,” he said. “But if you want to compare TV and online, you have to use demographics right now because television doesn’t produce other metrics. The MRC [Media Ratings Council] in the US I believe has a plan to migrate viewability data into television and as we see more and more use of smart TVs I’m sure we’ll see an increase in the amount of behavioural data.
“One of the things we’ll see in the next couple of years is this online metric moving into TV, whereas over the last couple of years we’ve seen things going the other way with GRP [gross rating point] data.”
An earlier panel moderated by Careem’s vice-president of marketing and analytics, Yousuf Tuqan, heard video content would exceed 80 per cent of global internet traffic by 2019, but measuring success of video-related marketing was still problematic.
“We’re still trying to what works best for video, but one thing we know is that internet video, with internet TV and all the enhancement it can bring does for sure bring a level of interest and engagement,” said Victor Kim Heng Ho, global trade marketing manager for Dailymotion.
“What would happen if we had no measures? What would you want to measure?” asked Ian Manning, Facebook’s head of agencies for Middle East and North Africa (Mena).
“I’m not convinced that people would want things like likes, shares, impressions, reach. If we had a clean slate, what’s one the thing we’d want to know about? It’s really about brand value. How can this piece of communication, this campaign, actually drive brand value — more sales, more value of sales. That’s really what we should pay for when we’re measuring. I think the digital industry has fallen into a trap — because we have it, let’s measure it.”
Asked by Turqan for predictions about the way digital media would change in the next 12 months, Rob Derderian, DMS’ director of sales for the video vertical, highlighted real-time response and instant reaction in marketing through channels like Facebook Live.
Manning said Facebook Live, allowing live-streaming from phones, would be a game-changer for video content, and saw advertisers increasingly creating mobile-only content rather than cross-platform content.
Waseem Afzal, OMD’s executive director of integrated solutions, said he foresaw greater investment in digital channels, with better quality content, and a need for more nimble, live marketing.
He predicted video content would be more fun, and advertising more in-depth, engaging more with people’s interests.
