Modern consumers connect with brands at an average of four to six touchpoints. They migrate from traditional platforms to digital devices to generate deeper insights before they take the desired action.

To survive in this increasingly technology-driven era, native broadcasters have no choice but to undergo a digital transformation, rethink their business models and embrace digital distribution as a new source of revenue.

The pros and cons of the new marketplace

As much as this shift to digital creates a more complex marketing and advertising landscape, it also poses several advantages and creates synergies between traditional and digital advertising.

For instance, it is now possible to obtain information on consumers and learn who they are, where they live and what their preferences are.

These inspired new marketing and advertising approaches, such as audience pool selection and hyper-personalisation, make it possible to target campaigns more appropriately and create messaging that appeals to individual audiences.

It also enables the tracking of campaign performance, monitoring of results and determination of conversion rates and return on investment. As a result, marketers and advertisers have increased their spend on digital channels in the belief that it is the best way to get in front of the right audiences.

However, a study by Accenture, which was commissioned by NBC Universal, found that television still generates superior brand-building ROI, that television has a significant enhancement or 'halo effect' on the impact of digital channels and that it helps generate a multiplier effect when paired with other channels in the same publisher ecosystem.

In addition, traditional ads create a higher level of trust, which compounds the success of efforts on digital platforms. The reason for this is that digital advertising space can usually be bought anonymously with a credit card.

Traditional spots have high production costs and broadcasters typically require a credit rating before concluding an agreement with the advertiser. This means that you will almost never see fraudulent advertising on traditional media, as the advertising costs are higher and the source is known. 

Another knock-on effect of the digitised marketing and advertising platforms is that it has created a lot of 'noise,' as people get inundated by content from all corners. Subsequently, some of the social media platforms have even created blocking software that enables consumers to block content from brands they no longer wish to see.

In this ocean of online content, it is also becoming more and more difficult for brands to stand out from the 'grey masses'.

Future-proof your business by converging marketing and advertising

For broadcasters, the key to get ahead of competitors and unlock optimal growth lies in establishing the exceptional capability to collate and interpret consumer data to gain a true, complete view of customers.

This will enable marketers to design the right campaign that consists of the right blend of traditional and digital marketing and advertising for optimal impact — at minimal budget. It will also enable marketers to set themselves apart from their competitors.

In addition, it will empower them to track their campaign performance in real-time and make the necessary adjustments timeously to drive optimal business results.

While this is the ideal, the reality is that most companies only have access to fragmented data sitting in marketing and advertising divisions that are operating in complete silos.

Converging your marketing and advertising will not only help you counteract this issue, but it will also deliver several additional business benefits. 

The benefits of converging marketing and advertising

How to converge marketing and advertising


1. Consolidate technology and capability

Marketing and advertising convergence can be achieved by consolidating the technology and capabilities into one marketing and advertising technology stack (MAD-tech).

The marketing department requires planning and campaign management tools to monitor and optimise their marketing campaigns, based on results and success, while the advertising sales department needs to utilise similar metrics for their clients.

2. Consolidate planning across all disciplines

To be successful in converging marketing and advertising on a single MAD-tech stack, you need a consolidated digital and traditional advertising and planning approach. This will ensure that the unique requirements and objectives of both functions are effectively achieved and utilised.

Advertising sales are more successful when driven by a fully integrated campaign strategy that leverages the unique proposition of all available media properties, audience pools and segments.

This leverages allows a reach for the right combination of end-users through the right media at the exact right time. The marketing department is dependent on these very same planning skills to create successful marketing campaigns.

3. Establish a singular data management platform 

A single data management platform will substantially enhance audience selection, which will improve the campaign success and click-through rates. This is because a DMP enables one to collect interest and behavioural data on the entire digital audience, while ingesting customer data to enhance the data set.

The same data and audiences can be applied to external and internal properties, which also increases the value of the inventory. It benefits the advertising department as it enables them to achieve optimal audience extension with data impressions. It also benefits the marketing department by enabling them to accurately target existing consumers on external properties such as social media.

Finally, the same data can be used to create custom segments for advertisers, creating a tailored advertising approach for specific brands. The segments can also be sold separately, using the connections into advertising exchange platforms via demand-side platforms and supply-side platforms.

4. Utilise one customer relationship management system

Both internal (marketing) clients and external advertising clients should use one customer relationship management system to determine how much value is kept for marketing, and how many impressions are sold internally versus externally.

Utilising such a single platform further enables accurate tracking and monitoring of the entire campaign history and makes it possible to leverage synergies between marketing and advertising optimally.

5. Establish and share a trading desk

Based on insights from datasets obtained from the DMP, the advertising team can achieve targeted audience extension and drive sales by placing ads with appropriate messages (external impressions) with the right online publishers.

The same external impressions can be shared with the marketing department to ensure consistent and appropriate communication across all consumer touchpoints.

6. Share creative services

Creative services across marketing and advertising are similar, except in that marketing uses its own branding for the applicable creatives, while advertising is designing creatives using external branding and CI (corporate identity), subject to a brief either from the agency or the advertiser directly.

These creative skills are needed in both areas and are more dependent on the media used (audio, video or display) than the actual brand.

7. Manage campaigns

The management of advertising campaigns is always based on a certain outcome and key performance indicators. Marketing and advertising typically utilise the same metrics, such as:
  • cost per thousand 
  • conversion per impression
  • cost per click, and
  • cost per action.
These are aimed at a certain return on investment and success rate. The skills to execute those campaigns are almost identical and learning from internal campaigns can both be employed externally and used for case studies.

Ultimately, to captivate the attention of their audiences in a multichannel marketing and advertising environment, broadcasters need a unified source of accurate consumer profiles that are updated in real-time, and that can be activated across traditional and digital channels through a singular, intelligent and scalable system. Converging your marketing and advertising will help you to accomplish exactly that.

For more information, visit www.accenture.com. You can also follow Accenture Interactive on Facebook or on Twitter.