Time to Rethink your CRM Advertising Strategy, Courtesy Latest IAB Report

Advertising measurement is a terrific science. When done right, it can drive sustained revenues with a retained customer base for a very long period of time. Even in 2020, CPM remains the most preferred choice of ad sales payment, despite programmatic specialists nailing down on new-age ad performance metrics such as the number of clicks, installs, completed views, and buy-ins.

Ad sales growth has made the most daunting impact on the current CRM and Customer Experience Management systems. Modern CRMs are working in sync with different elements of marketing automation, customer experience management, customer support, social media interactions, and sales forecasting. In the recent times, largely powered by the supremely dedicated refinements in the Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and data visualization techniques for CRMs, we have witnessed maturity of Customer Relationship and Engagement standards, at least as far as retail internet, Mobile gaming, E-commerce, and service industries are concerned.

According to the recently published IAB report on the status of Internet Advertising Revenue, digital advertising revenue growth is slowing down as the ad sales market reaches a certain degree of maturity in 2020. During the Q1 2020, US ad revenues stood at $31.4 billion. IAB found out that the total revenues for 2019 was $124.6 billion. While this may sound encouraging to most ad sales companies, the growth in Q1 2020 has been the slowest since 2010. In fact, IAB and PwC report predicted continued negative growth in Q2 2020, resulting due to COVID-19 uncertainties and shifting audience behavior during the lockdown.

Ad Sales today is very different today in June 2020, than what it was in 2019. In fact, due to COVID-19 induced event cancellations and fewer face-to-face meetings, sellers have experienced a significant decrease in their Ad CPM (62%). Programmatic sellers are still resilient toward their CPMs for 2020, especially when it comes to promoting their programmatic inventory on newer advertising platforms such as podcasts, Connected TVs, Live Video/ AVOD, and digital radio. In fact, podcasting and digital radio are the most resilient ad sales platforms during the COVID-19 months, as per IAB’s report on “Covid’s Impact on Ad Pricing.”

Despite a significant slowdown in the desktop CPMs, ad sales specialists should continue to develop their inventories for desktop, in addition to shifting to other digital advertising channels such as Video, Podcasts, Digital messaging (WhatsApp/ Instagram/ Facebook Messenger) and display.

In 2019, desktop and mobile garnered a total of ~$22 billion in revenue across mobile and desktop devices. During the same period, ad revenue from audio advertising fetched $2.72 billion, growing at 21% YoY from 2018.

Why You Should Programmatically Build your Ad Sales Model in 2020

When programmatic makes up for more than two-thirds (81%) of the total non-search advertising revenues, you ought to re-evaluate your current CRM elements.

With the maturity of advertising metrics for social media, Connected TV/OTT, display, and other non-search media, there has been a consistent demand from Programmatic ad sales teams to organize all of customer data and insights in one place.

Around these demands, CRM advertising too has evolved significantly in the last 2-3 years, at least promising to provide every media agency a 360-degree view of their digital engagements with each customer on a chronological scale.

With larger segmentation of customer database available to marketers within their CRMs, alongside real-time insights and action recommendations, ad sales and marketing teams can leverage CRM advertising in a more useful way. CRM advertising standards have evolved from just driving shoppers/consumers to their buying destinations from any online platform, to contemporary standards of user experience, app-based interactions, and retention-focused purchasing recommendations– something you would find with Amazon Advertising or Instagram Advertising. From automating ad-focused campaigns to championing conversations across interactive platforms, CRM advertising is quickly becoming the crux of new-age customer engagement and experience management strategy.