Has the pandemic changed what businesses are doing with their ad budgets? Altimeter analysts say interest in digital formats continues to grow, as 58% of marketers expect to buy more mobile ads. Their findings were presented in Altimeter’s 2020 State of Digital Marketing report which included responses from 476 organizations. About 17% of marketers spend between 21% and 30% on digital. Nearly the same number spend between 60% and 70% on digital.

Every year, marketers hope to acquire new customers. In 2020, that has been a top goal for 40% of businesses. And 39% of businesses hope to boost revenue from existing accounts.

Gauging the Impact of Content

To achieve these goals, 52% of businesses will rely on digital tools to help them personalize content. And 42% hope to improve the overall performance of digital outreach. While it’s important to set goals, it’s equally important to agree on how to measure the successful achievement of these goals. The following percentages of organization use these forms of measurement:

• Click throughs, shares, and comments, etc.: 74%
• Warm leads or qualified leads increased: 68%
• Revenue attributed to the outreach: 66%

Those numbers show that marketers still measure consumer interaction with their pieces of content. Clicks remain one indicator of interest, but marketers have developed additional sophistication. At least 34% can now track how often the client engages, for how long and in what ways. This kind of tracking requires using specific platforms, expertise, reporting and cooperation between departments. Automation may reduce some of the expenses of this kind of tracking. Marketers aren’t likely to give up this kind of measurement as it helps them understand which content delivers ROI.

Developing Audience Personas

Your clients rely on several pieces of information to develop their target audiences. Businesses told Altimeter researchers that they often use the following schemes:

• Demographic data (age and gender) 55%
• Psychographic data (beliefs and values) 36%
• Online behavior (clicks, shares) 45%
• Propensity to buy the product 40%
• Account information (customer history) 47%

This information isn’t always easy to find. You can help your clients pinpoint key data points about their target audiences by checking out the AudienceSCAN profiles which are available from AdMall by SalesFuel.

However, understanding who the key audience is and properly personalizing marketing messages are two different things. Companies say they are able to personalize messages “at optimal levels” in real time when they use:

• Social media 52%
• Company website 51%
• Mobile app 50%
• Email 46%
• Display ads 46%
• Paid search 29%

It’s worth noting that 52% of marketing say they’re in the process of implementing better real-​time personalization for paid search. Another 47% says the same about native ads.

Buy More Mobile Ads

Some digital channels will benefit from more increased spending than others as we emerge from the pandemic. More than half of marketers will allocate additional funds to Facebook (62%), display ads (55%), and mobile or in-​app ads (58%). Slightly fewer will increase advertising on in-​store or digital billboards (36%), in-​device IOT (43%) and paid search (43%).

Now is a great time to follow up with your clients to review whether they plan to spend more on digital advertising in 2021 and whether they'll buy more mobile ads. And you can also advise them on the formats that will deliver the best ROI.