MarTech Interview with Deborah Kilpatrick, Co-founder and VP of Marketing at SourceKnowledge – a mrge company

Deborah Kilpatrick, Co-founder and VP of Marketing at SourceKnowledge – (a mrge company) joined us for a chat to discuss the effects of AR/VR and AI on modern digital advertising and marketing in this catch-up:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Deborah, tell us about yourself and more about SourceKnowledge?

I am the co-founder and VP of marketing at SourceKnowledge, a mrge company. As an ardent advocate for the open web, I co-founded SourceKnowledge in order to help retailers and e-commerce brands attain incremental lifts in sales with advertising outside of the walled gardens. It’s also important that publishers have competitive platforms bidding on their traffic and this is a central tenet of what SK is about.

Prior to co-founding SourceKnowledge, I independently founded and ran my own successful SEO and SEM consulting business, dSide Marketing. I also worked at one of the world’s first search engines, Mamma.com, as their Product Marketing Manager. In this role, I directly managed the brand’s marketing strategy as well as product marketing within its paid-search advertising program.

SourceKnowledge, founded in 2009, is an ad network that helps performance marketers and e-commerce stores get an incremental lift in sales outside of Google, Facebook and Amazon.

As part of mrge, a global one-stop provider for commerce advertising, our advanced platform and tools allow for precise campaign management for our thousands of advertisers and increased page yield for our publishers.

When it comes to digital advertising trends today, what are the top features impacting modern campaigns? How are you seeing global brands dovetail their online ad efforts and moreover, how are they doubling down on the measurement and metrics processes to understand what’s working well?

Some of the top features impacting modern campaigns are artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR), sustainability, and data privacy.

AI is reshaping advertising and streamlining processes, creating personalized content and optimizing campaigns.

AR and VR create immersive brand experiences, allowing customers to virtually experience and interact with a brand’s products.

Consumers are growing more conscious. Sustainable values are coming to the forefront, as consumers favor sustainable, ethical and eco-friendly brands.

Data privacy and regulations are changing marketing practices. Marketers must prioritize data compliance, consent, and transparency in how data is used and stored, which in turn affect the personalization and targeting of content.

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When it comes to digital advertising and marketing, brands have started using influencer networks to capitalize on reach: what thoughts do you have surrounding the future of this trend?

Leveraging the power of influencer networks provides a great opportunity to enhance a brand’s reach and engagement through authenticity. Influencer marketing continues to pave a path for brands to break through search blindness and get seen across social channels by the right audiences.

Some anticipated trends include a greater emphasis on performance and engagement as opposed to just follower count, increasing popularity of short-form video content (i.e. TikTok), the use of AI / virtual influencers and an emphasis on transparency and authenticity.

If content is perceived solely as sponsored, it gets overlooked. Micro-influencers however, often have genuine voices and promote brands and products that they themselves use. They are able to be effective niche marketers with a clear and authentic voice. Video content about a brand or product from a trusted figure helps break through ad-noise and opens people up to receiving product recommendations without it being pushed upon them.

How can brands further optimize how they use and measure influencer networks to drive brand growth and impact?

Brands can further optimize how they use and measure influencer networks to drive growth and impact by identifying the right influencers to work with, utilizing micro-influencers, and aligning with social issues and sustainable practices.

Identifying the right influencers to work with is key to building a successful influencer campaign. Brands should make sure that the influencers they work with have an audience that aligns with their target demographic, so that the content and the products resonate. Just because an influencer has a large following, it doesn’t necessarily mean that any brand or products will perform well. Finding the right niche is key for brand authenticity.

Using micro-influencers has proven to be effective for brand growth. While these influencers have a smaller following, they generate a high degree of trust and authenticity with their audience that can foster a loyal customer base. This is a great example of quality over quantity. Micro influencers are often paid for clicks or conversions, so it’s a performance based campaign while larger influencers are paid by the size of their audience.

Aligning with social issues and sustainable practices is increasingly important today. Consumers are becoming increasingly socially conscious about their shopping habits. Find influencers that align with your brand’s values to further resonate with your audience.

In the overall digital ad and digital marketing sphere, what do you feel will change in the near- term to reshape the way advertisers and marketers will be expected to work?

In the near-term, the digital ad and digital marketing sphere will undergo significant changes, reshaping how advertisers and marketers work, notably the rise of micro-influencers in response to search blindness, AI and data regulations.

People hate ads. With increasing search blindness, marketers will prioritize more personalized content to better capture user attention, leading to the rise of micro-influencers who can provide more authentic recommendations to their loyal audiences.

AI will continue to drive automation and gain precedence, when it comes to the creation of content and the optimization of campaigns for example.

Stricter data regulations will compel marketers to focus more on user privacy and transparency, emphasizing first-party data.

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Can you comment on the growing use of AI in this space and thoughts around AI and the future of adtech / martech?

The integration of AI into adtech and martech is transformative. The countless uses for this within the industry — content generation, data analysis, predictions, precise targeting, and campaign optimization to name a few — are reshaping the industry as we know it.

While AI provides marketers easy and streamlined solutions to improve customer engagement and ROI, it also comes with ethical considerations, notably when it comes to data privacy and algorithmic bias.