30-second summary:
- ClickZ interviews The Trade Desk’s Philippa Snare, SVP of EMEA, for our ongoing Peer Network series.
- In her Peer Network briefing, Snare discusses the benefits of ethical ad buying, addresses the changes in media consumption during COVID-19, and provides some insight on how this is impacting marketing trends.
- Snare notes that people’s media consumption habits are changing, in part due to being home more. People are consuming audio and visual content in more traditional ways, and this includes younger generations who are watching TV on connected devices.
- Snare emphasizes the importance of continued consumer outreach during COVID-19. Ads should not go dark, but it should also be thoughtful and appear beside good quality, trusted content.
- Two specific areas of growth from The Trade Desk include connected TV (CTV) and digital out of home advertising.
- Snare recommends marketers visit The Trade Desk’s Edge Academy and enroll for free to learn more about CTV and how marketers can use it in their portfolio of channels.
For our ongoing Peer Network Series, ClickZ was honored to feature Philippa Snare. As SVP of EMEA at The Trade Desk, Snare leads the operational headquarters in driving revenue and new client acquisition strategy across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Prior to joining The Trade Desk, Snare led Facebook’s Global Business Marketing division, overseeing large teams across EMEA.
Before that, Snare served as CMO for Microsoft UK, (Read more...) marketing for the entire Microsoft portfolio. She’s also a fellow of the Global Marketing Academy.
In her Peer Network briefing, Snare discusses the benefits of ethical ad buying, addresses the changes in media consumption during COVID-19, and provides some insight on how this is impacting marketing trends.
Facilitating the purchase of ethical ad buying
The Trade Desk helps clients and agencies buy programmatic advertising and place ads on the best possible sites for the best return on their marketing investments.
Says Snare, “The Trade Desk is a buying platform, but what makes it unique is we’re trying to support the open internet. We want to make sure that we have access to high quality, ad-funded journalism while making sure those ads are ethical and that the entire buying platform is transparent.”
Changes in media consumption force marketers to adapt
People are at home more because of COVID-19 and this is changing how they consume news.
“Being home has shifted the way consumers are consuming news, including what devices they’re using,” explains Snare. “People want factual data. They don’t want to hear opinions or sensationalized information, so they’re turning away from social platforms to more trustworthy sources like the BBC in the UK to regain their confidence in the content that’s being provided.”
Snare pointed out that this is true of the younger generations too, with Gen Z (the “TikTok” generation) consuming information via audio and TV.
“There’s a beautiful love affair rekindling for high quality content and production,” says Snare.
In Snare’s view, COVID-19 has been an incredible accelerator of digital marketing because of digital’s agility compared with traditional linear advertisements that can take months to plan, create, and launch.
She notes an example from her time at Microsoft.
“We were doing some Office 365 advertising and we had one of the first versions of digital billboards go live,” explains Snare. “Well, we put up a billboard that was poorly targeted, but got feedback very quickly via social channels. We were able to change that billboard within 24 hours, and answer some of the criticisms that were showing up on social media. That got loads of traction because we could show we were listening to what customers were saying.”
Trust, truth, data, and CTV
Snare notes that big brands provide confidence to consumers, particularly during times of crisis. Now is the time to support customers and instill confidence in them, not to go dark on your advertising.
“Going dark creates more ambiguity and less confidence for your consumers,” explains Snare. “The brands that have showed up throughout the pandemic, in whatever format they’ve chosen, are the ones that are going to continue to gain market share for their own products and services.
Snare also emphasized the importance of making sure your brand’s ads are next to really good quality content. People are moving away from social platforms because they don’t trust that the news is factual, and brands are doing the same.
Says Snare, “Companies don’t want their brand next to fake information. What I find most interesting is that brands who have boycotted these platforms have said it’s made absolutely no difference to their return on investment.”
Another trend that Snare identified is the focus on a data driven approach to marketing as a much more secure way for marketers to prove ROI and have confidence that they’re investing budgets wisely.
“The two specific areas where we’ve seen biggest growth from a Trade Desk point of view is connected TV (CTV) and digital out of home,” says Snare.
“Out of home might not be in airports and transit and travel areas now, but in shopping malls in Dubai and in highly targeted digital out of home there’s still a massive opportunity.
More on CTV
The Trade Desk is seeing an enormous adoption of CTV, but consumers are also more discerning about what they want to pay for regarding subscription services like sports channels.
Source: The Trade Desk
Says Snare, “The way we’re consuming entertainment is causing marketing teams to be much more focused on an omnichannel approach, on making sure they’re using the right channel or the right screen for the right audience.”
Younger audiences are engaging with TV in a way that they’ve never done before.
A data driven approach can target those audiences in a much more specific way, identify patterns, and help marketers understand how people are consuming media on different channels.
Snare recommends marketers visit The Trade Desk’s Edge Academy and enroll for free to learn more about CTV and how marketers can use it in their portfolio of channels.
“There are many different content modules that can help you learn, from the basics of how to use a buying platform all the way to the virtues of using CTV or VOD as a channel,” says Snare.
“You can also learn how CTV connects with display on the traditional or native advertising you might already have running.”
The changing role of the CMO
When asked about the changing role of the CMO, Snare pointed out that marketing used to be distributed throughout organizations.
“The role was more of a support service to pre and post sales, but it’s shifted,” says Snare. “Marketing is now a revenue generating function, especially if the CMO owns the digital channels. It’s about online sales and completion. The CMO can bring just as much valuable data, content, and insights to the customer as the commercial leaders. COVID-19 has been one of the biggest accelerators of the shift to digital with the introduction of a new revenue stream online. That is the job of the CMO. Now, they have a credible place at the table.”