Mason Interactive is proud to announce that we are expanding our programmatic advertising capabilities with a seat at The Trade Desk, and that we’ve a new media team to manage our clients advertising on the Trade Desk.
The Trade Desk is the leading demand-side platform (DSP), a platform for advertisers to purchase and manage digital advertising campaigns across various channels and devices, including display, mobile, video, audio, and connected TV. It provides access to the world’s largest inventory of digital media, and integrates with various data providers, while offering advanced targeting capabilities, audience segmentation, and contextual targeting.
With this new partnership, Mason Interactive is proud to offer clients a comprehensive suite of services to help them reach their goals. The Trade Desk’s advanced technology will enable our teams to make data-driven decisions and measure the performance of campaigns in real-time.
As we continue to stress the importance of diversifying spend across alternative platforms – and ultimately becoming less reliant on Meta and Google – here are a few reasons why The Trade Desk could be right for you:
Reach a broader audience
Diversifying the media mix allows brands to reach a broader audience by utilizing different channels and tactics to engage with customers.
Reduce risk
Relying on a single marketing channel or tactic can be risky because changes in the market or industry could have a significant impact on the effectiveness of that channel. By diversifying your overall media mix, brands can reduce their risk by spreading their marketing efforts across different channels and tactics.
Increase brand awareness
Exploring new channels to engage with customers can increase brand awareness and help brands reach new customers who may not have been reached through their current marketing channels.
Adapt to changing consumer behavior
Consumer behavior is constantly evolving, and diversifying your media mix allows brands to adapt to these changes by utilizing new channels that are more aligned with changing consumer preferences.
This new partnership will provide our clients with the tools they need to succeed in today’s increasingly competitive digital landscape. We are excited to offer our clients access to The Trade Desk’s innovative platform and help them take their campaigns to the next level.
If you’d like to learn more about how Mason Interactive can help you reach your goals with The Trade Desk, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We look forward to working with you!
Social media platform, TikTok, has taken the world by storm, with millions of users logging onto the app every day to watch short-form videos. However, the app has also faced scrutiny from various governments over concerns about privacy and security. Recently, there have been talks of banning the app altogether, which could have significant implications for businesses that rely on TikTok for their marketing and advertising strategy.
If you’re a brand or business that has invested time and energy into the platform, it’s important to ensure you’re diversified, and start planning for the possibility of a TikTok ban.
Here are some steps you can take to prepare for the reallocation of ad spend, content, and resources if TikTok gets banned:
Stay Informed
Keep yourself informed about any updates regarding the potential ban of TikTok in your country. This will help you make informed decisions about how you allocate your advertising budget, internal resources, and content strategy.
Explore Alternative Platforms
Start exploring other social media platforms that may be able to fill the void left by TikTok. Depending on your target audience, platforms like Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, or Snapchat may be viable alternatives. Hint: You should probably be across these platforms, too!
Review Your Content Strategy
If TikTok is banned, you’ll need to adjust your content strategy to ensure you’re still able to reach your target audience. You may need to produce different types of content or focus on different messaging. If you are working with influencers or content creators on content ideation and opportunities, talk to them about cross-platform opportunities.
Reallocate Your Ad Budget
If you do lose access to TikTok, you’ll need to reallocate your advertising budget to other platforms. Based on competitive research and analysis, you can determine which platforms are the best fit and adjust your spend accordingly. If you’re unsure of how to prepare, we can help!
It’s worth noting that these steps are simply precautionary. We don’t know for sure if TikTok will be banned, and if it is, we don’t know when that will happen. However, by taking these steps now, you can be better prepared to adjust your strategy if necessary.
Summary
In conclusion, if TikTok gets banned, it’s not the end of the world. There are other social media platforms that can still help you reach your target audience, and by staying informed and being prepared, you can make a smooth transition to those platforms. So don’t panic – plan ahead and be ready for whatever the future holds. Reach out to our team if you’re interested in exploring new ways to get in front of your target audience, and reach new customers.
It’s been a few months since ChatGPT entered the national consciousness, and I wanted to take a few words to describe how it – and AI in general – is affecting Search Engine Marketing. I’m going to start with what I know to be true, proceed to what I believe to be true, move on to informed speculation, and then draw some conclusions.
Executive Summary
Increasing Automation is a fact of life; anyone who resists it should get ready to enjoy their retirement; the front door to the internet is wide open; our clients are well-positioned to take advantage of these opportunities.
Bing is trying for piece of Google’s lunch, by integrating Chat GPT into their platform, and Google is rolling out their own version soon.
As an illustration, here are four searches for the same thing, on Google, YouTube, Bing, and Chat GPT. Google, YouTube, and Bing are three versions of the same dish, while Chat GPT’s is totally unique.
A Search for “best book to learn guitar” on Google
A Search for “best book to learn guitar” on YouTube
A Search for “best book to learn guitar” on Bing
A Search for “best book to learn guitar” on Chat GPT
To us, this comes down to platform diversification. We don’t get to decide where our customers are, the customers get to decide. We have to be in front of them, regardless of whether they are on Bing, Google TikTok, or Chat GPT.
Things I know to be true
MSN was the king, Google came on seemingly overnight, and hasn’t let go.
I know that when I started in this business, clients advertised on MSN (Bing), Yahoo!, 7 Search, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Lycos, and more.
MSN was by far the highest-trafficked of those. According to Pew Research, in May of 2002, MSN had 43 million unique visitors, Yahoo! had 38 million unique visitors, and Google recorded 36 million unique visitors.
I know that Google came on overnight. I was sitting with a client around 2001/2002, he was having a hard time finding what he was looking for on Yahoo, so I said “try Google.” He responded with something like “Guggle? Giggle? What’s that?” I can’t imagine anyone saying that in 2003.
Today, in 2023, Google has 93.37% of the search pie, Bing has 2.81% and Yahoo! has 1.13%.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is one of the world’s most valuable companies, with revenues of $283bn in 2022 and a market capitalization of $1.3trn.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) now powers Chatbots to access the internet via typed conversations, and receive colloquial, “chatty” responses as a reply. Chatgpt, made by the startup Openai, leads the field. Just two months after its launch, Chatgpt was being used by more than 100m people, making it the “fastest-growing consumer application in history”, according to ubs.
So to recap, Search Engine Marketing is somewhere between 20 and 25 years old, it’s a huge business, and Google owns most of it.
Things I believe to be true
I believe that MSN, Yahoo!, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, and the like, are hungry for a piece of Google’s $283 billion in revenue.
I believe that technology and automation are increasing at an exponential rate, and that they are here to stay.
I believe that anyone who does not use Chat GPT (or the like) should get ready to enjoy their retirement. The Legend of John Henry comes to mind.
Recapping: Google is the defacto front door to the internet; but history suggests that it might not be much longer; automation should be leveraged to our client’s benefit.
Things I can prognosticate
Because my job is to grow my clients’ businesses, it behooves me to forecast how these new tools will affect them.
Let’s talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) first. Clients have asked me “why should I pay you when I can just have Chat GPT write my articles?”
A few things:
We already use Chat GPT to research and get some ideas started.
I don’t want a client that thinks the only – or even main – part of SEO is to churn out keyword-rich articles.
Google can (today) detect AI-generated articles, so a human hand is (yet) needed to oversee this content.
Content is only part of SEO, and things that make that job easier should be celebrated. This creates savings for clients and frees up valuable resources on the agency side to focus more on strategy.
Search Engine Marketing, specifically Pay-Per-Click advertising, is more complicated, because it will create new ways to advertise. As above, we already use Chat GPT for research – although its keyword research is nowhere near as good as Google’s own tools – and ad copy creation assistance.
Here are my educated guesses about how this will develop:
New models will emerge charging advertisers to influence the chatbot’s answers. For example:
Pay MSN a fee, and when you search its Chat-GPT’s-interface for your product, you show up in the answer with links to your website.
Expect to see product listings/images surrounding these chat replies.
People will lose confidence in these Chat features if they fear their objectivity has been compromised by advertisers… if they can tell.
Clients will need to be on more platforms if/when users migrate to Chat Enabled Search Engines. Clients do not always have an appetite to try new platforms, but it is our job to convince them.
So I can make a reasonable guess that this new technology will be good for me and my clients because A) its usage will separate the good agencies from the bad B) It frees us up to have more strategic, intelligent conversations, because it saves us time C) it creates new and exciting ways to promote brands.
Summary
Google is the defacto front door of the internet, but there is nothing saying that it has to be forever.
Bing is starting the Chatbot Search Wars because there’s so much money to be made there by wresting even a small %’s of Google’s business away, but I think it’s more likely that Google will implement its own version of Chat GPT.
AI is already assisting our work flow by making it smoother and faster, and it will create opportunities for clients to try new platforms.
There’s nothing like connecting with like minded people, discovering new brands, and learning about unique success stories IRL. In a post-pandemic world, the days of congregating in musky hotel lounges are kind of over. We came across GROW a few years back, and sponsored one of their in-person events in 2021. It’s safe to say that their events have come a long way.
Fast forward to 2023, their small but mighty team has set the stage for the future of retail conferences. The curated – and highly vetted – experience is created with the new era of founders and marketers in mind.
I recently attended their Spring conference in Los Angeles. Here are my top five takeaways for e-commerce brands looking to stay ahead of the game in 2023.
Storytelling Is The Future Of Marketing
Whether your brand is big or small, you’re competing for the same eyeballs as Nike or Sephora.
Consumers are overwhelmed with content, and brands that develop engaging ways for their customers to identify with their story or products are much more likely to stand out. Storytelling humanizes the brand and allows people to relate to it on a deeper level. By creating a compelling narrative, a brand can differentiate itself from competitors, build trust and loyalty with customers, and ultimately increase sales.
Jake Karls, co-founder of Mid-Day Squares highlighted that “storytelling is the vehicle to grab the consumer’s attention today”. Brands need people to opt in, and ultimately want to be a part of the conversation.
If I show you a picture of a chocolate bar that’s vegan, gluten free – you’re going to scroll by it because it doesn’t matter to you. It doesn’t have meaning. If I tell you a story about how our machine broke down, and it caused this whole domino effect of problems, you’re involved – you’re part of that story. That makes you feel like you’re buying a product that you actually care about, and that you are a fan of.
There’s more to conversion rate optimization than making minor adjustments to your product detail pages. As more and more businesses invest in CRO, those that don’t risk falling behind.
From leveraging post purchase surveys, to compiling reviews and making sense of social listening reports, applying customer insight or feedback is one of the countless ways that brands can drive meaningful impact to better meet customer needs, stay competitive and maintain market share.
Through CRO testing, brands can gain insights into how their customers behave on the website, what they like, and what they don’t like. This information can be used to inform other marketing efforts, such as content marketing and social media.
Content Marketing (In Context)
Content has and continues to evolve, and it’s no secret that brands are finding it hard to keep up. Brands need to take a strategic approach to creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Need a little motivation? Compile a list of all of your content, and categorize it by product. Then walk through your website as if you were a customer, and pay attention to where people might get stuck.
The meaning of content in context can vary depending on the brand and the audience it’s trying to reach, and making updates by adding (or removing) content accordingly can help brands to attract, engage, and retain customers.
Building Meaningful Partnerships
Pay-per-post is out. Sliding through a content creator or public figure’s DMs is in. The space between brands and “influencers” has become increasingly gray, and brands need to develop authentic relationships that last.
For canned-water company Liquid Death, a viral campaign with Tony Hawk is just as valuable as a gifting opportunity with a YouTube personality who speaks to a niche market. In either case, their most successful partnerships are born when there’s a mutual understanding of creative control, and the expectation is rooted in freedom of expression and trust.
By working with the right ambassadors and influencers, brands can reach new audiences, generate high-quality content, and build trust and loyalty with customers.
Growth at all cost is over
Finally, efficiency was a recurring theme that can’t be overlooked. Brands can, and should, be leaning more into profitability by reducing expenses, increasing efficiency, focusing on high-margin products and services, pricing strategically, and increasing customer retention.
By focusing on retaining existing customers, who are often more profitable than new customers, brands have the opportunity to emerge stronger on the other side. This can involve improving customer experience, offering loyalty rewards, and developing targeted campaigns. One panel highlighted that looking at lifetime value (LTV) based on sales channel or product can offer insight into where to invest in your expansion plan. Think: segmented and aggregated.
In conclusion, there has never been a more exciting time to be in digital, and brands have a unique opportunity to engage customers in a way that hasn’t been adopted industry wide. The rules and status quo are out the window, and those that are looking to stay ahead of the game in 2023 should focus on storytelling, post-purchase insights for CRO, building meaningful partnerships, and evaluating existing infrastructure to lean more into efficiency.
