Navigating the turbulent waters of digital marketing
Mairead Hill
Digital marketers are grappling with a perplexing challenge.
Rising CPCs, Ineffectiveness, and Public Scrutiny
The dominance of these mammoth platforms in digital advertising has brought them under increasingly intense scrutiny. Leading to more regulations, shifting the sands of digital advertising, and transitioning us into a cookie-less world. Here, we will delve into the complexities of rising CPCs, platform ineffectiveness, and growing public scrutiny.
The cookie-less era heightens the challenge of escalating CPCs. Cookies, the traditional backbone of digital advertising, have previously facilitated targeting and measurement, allowing digital advertising to thrive.
The absence of third-party cookies has left marketers justifying depleting performance to their seniors. This transition has disrupted advertising models, reducing the precision of ad targeting. Marketers must now seek new methods to reach and engage their target audience effectively.
Platform Ineffectiveness Amidst Dominance
This doesn’t impact just marketers and businesses. It also affects the larger advertising platforms this legislation aimed to disrupt. Once regarded as stalwarts of digital marketing, these platforms are now being scrutinised for their reduced efficiency in the cookie-less era. Marketers are grappling with diminishing click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates, which have eroded the perceived value of these platforms.
The Predicament of Rising CPCs
On top of this, CPCs continue to rise. This surge in CPCs can be attributed to several factors, including heightened competition for limited advertising real estate and shifts in consumer behaviour as more people search for a bargain while still wanting big-name brands. As businesses vie for the attention of their online audience, the cost of acquiring a click has escalated, placing pressure on marketers, particularly those with limited budgets.
This current cycle of dominance and ineffectiveness creates a challenge. While the industry giants continue to dominate the digital advertising landscape, their market power enables them to command premium CPCs.
Yet, as explained, their very dominance exposes them to greater scrutiny. As these platforms amass extensive user data and wield significant influence over the digital experiences of billions, they face heightened accountability for issues such as data privacy, the spread of misinformation, and user experience. Additionally, with such huge revenues and so many clients, your leverage as a customer to them is small, so their consideration of you will also be small.
Conclusion - What to Expect in 2024?
In response to these complex challenges, marketers must embrace changes and adapt quickly. Exploring alternative advertising strategies, diversifying marketing channels, and with a depletion in the amount of data available, marketers need to look more creatively to assess their ads for effectiveness and make sure they stand out in an increasingly saturated advertising space. After all, data and creative go hand-in-hand in marketing and with the data becoming weaker creative needs to step up.What can digital marketers do to counteract these pressures?
- Look at other smaller platforms and think about how effective to your market they could be.
- Make sure you are streamlining your campaigns, and trim the fat not just by turning off campaigns, but also by checking keywords etc. especially in your Google Ads.
- Make sure you have a checklist of optimisations that you check and carry out regularly.
