If you work in digital marketing, it's more than likely you've seen a derivative of the now infamous Lumascape that displays the myriad of players and technologies that make digital marketing incredibly complex and exciting - however, it's also easy to feel overwhelmed.
Here is a brief overview of digital marketing and how it compares to traditional advertising as we move into an omnichannel advertising reality. If you're a Mediaocean customer or simply interested in learning more, you can participate in our , hosted by the Mediaocean training team.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the strategy and processes that connect advertisers with their audiences across digital channels. An advertisement itself is a piece of creative shared via digital inventory - the space a publisher makes available for advertisements on its platform.
Digital refers to a number of different channels, all used to uniquely engage audiences and tackle various goals of the conversion funnel. The digital channels include display, search, mobile, social, and video. Originally referred to as "interactive marketing" digital allows consumers to interact with ads and communicate back to brands.
Thanks to the vast amounts of targeting technology and capturing of data in digital marketing, advertisers are able to reach both large audiences and more granular segments without compromising scale. This includes being able to target by specific attribute including demographic, behavioral, psychographic, and more. Not only can marketers target groups of people, they can also target specific devices and even individual users regardless of what device they may be using.
Additionally, digital marketers are especially determined to measure success of campaigns. A number of user engagements can be tracked such as impressions, clicks, website hits, leads, and actual purchases. In as much, digital makes it easier than traditional media to track Return on Investment (ROI), helping marketers to see the efficacy of campaigns and make better decisions for optimization and the future.
How does digital differ from traditional advertising?
Traditional refers to linear TV, print, radio, direct mail, and out-of-home (often known as billboard) advertising. A key differentiator of these mediums is that the messaging is a one-way conversation. This defines traditional as "broadcast advertising" in that it reaches out to consumers, but consumers do not communicate back.
Moreover, traditional's targeting is much broader as it is typically defined by only an estimate of viewership. If an advertiser wanted to execute more granular targeting by coupling different demographic and behavioral attributes, they would be unable to, as publisher audiences are more loosely defined with traditional media.
The final major difference - which is often times used as a point of argument among the two sides, is measurement methods. If a potential customer views an ad on linear TV and later buys that product in-store - it is nearly impossible for marketers to connect the action back to the advertisement with precision. What marketers are able to do instead, is measure sales lift prior and post campaign. Another method is including a specific phone number or email address in advertisements whenever possible, so that conversions can be directly attributed.
Despite digital's advantages, traditional media channels are still largely popular for consumers and the two can be seen interacting as media convergence becomes more prevalent. Media convergence is the blending of media forms into one platform for purposes of delivering a dynamic experience.
How does digital marketing stack up against traditional in the modern era of omnichannel advertising?
A recent report by eMarketer concluded that in 2020, digital ad spend will account for 55% of the $614 billion total ad spend worldwide, which is 4.8% higher than 2019. It is projected to grow an additional 16.4% in 2021. Medioacean has $150 billion in total annual media spend running through our platform which gives us a broad purview into the key trends and a strong foundation for our omnichannel advertising platform.
For more information, download the Marketer's Guide to Omnichannel Advertising and watch a recording of The Omnichannel Imperative.
