The promise of MTA persists, but continues to evolve: One out of two marketers think MTA is the future of attribution, but their focus on unified measurement increases in an effort to overcome data and organizational challenges. (State of Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) 2021 — Marketer Benchmark Survey)
Marketers’ obsession with reach greatly hinders their media productivity and growth prospects: Unfortunately, “going broad” is still seen as the best approach to drive growth by most marketers (78%), although segments like the movable middles can increase ROAS by 50% and drive higher penetration compared to reach-based planning. (Outcomes-Based Marketing Research Initiative)
It may seem perplexing that marketers today are having a meaningful debate about growth, considering ‘growth’ should be at the core of the marketing mission; however, marketing and growth strategies are complex, competitive, and contextual, and the more marketers can become educated on all leading frameworks, the better they’ll be equipped to align marketing activities to drive growth to their business. (The Great Marketing Growth Debates)
Is MTA dead? While there has been a lot of negative press on its future given challenges around loss of identifiers, the curtain has been pulled back to assess and reveal three key roadblocks to the approach, including data, organization, and methodology, as well as reveal a path forward to overcome these hurdles. Long live MTA.(Attribution is Hard)
Data is fueling a seismic shift from brand to customer experience as the growth engine of the future, however one in three marketers were hamstrung in 2021 by data complexity and risk preventing them from reaping the full potential benefit of rich insights and data-driven experiences. (Data Maturity Survey)
Despite all the investment in data, only 1 out of 10 marketers are really satisfied with their data capabilities. Data governance, operating models, MarTech and talent are key challenges on the journey to activate data for growth and this benchmarks where marketers are on each. (The State of Consumer Data Readiness in Marketing)
Changes in privacy and trackability will continue to create confusion to both consumers and marketers alike. Marketers were not prepared for changes like Apple’s introduction of iOS14 and underestimated the degree to which consumer concerns about online privacy influence their online behavior. Are we preparing for what’s next with cookie deprecation? (Personal Data, Privacy & Smartphones: The Marketer/Consumer Disconnect.)
The rise of privacy regulation and the importance of consent is reshaping how marketers think about delivering personalized, relevant experiences - diluting the potency of identity solutions that attempt to stitch together 3P data and igniting a rush to acquire 1P/2P data assets that harness contextual data to predict intent and deliver relevant customer experiences. (DATT Unplugged: Future Proofing Customer Centric Marketing in the New Identity Landscape)
The convergence of data-driven marketing and experience delivery is transforming and expanding the role of the CMO, demanding mastery of new skills and magnifying the importance of leveraging a common language to build cross-functional leadership consensus and deliver a cohesive capability investment strategy. (DATT Unplugged: Future Proofing Customer Centric Marketing in the New Identity Landscape)
MOSTT and MarCaps framework featured in Harvard Business Review helps leaders identify their organizational design and capabilities needed to build a competitive, next generation marketing function. The framework has been used to guide marketing transformations at companies across industries, including consumer packaged goods, transportation, financial services, and retail. (Harvard Business Review Feature)
Research has shown that a 1% of increase in market-capability “fit” leads to a 2.5% growth in revenues, to that end we created with MarCaps an assessment tool that measures quantitatively the fit of your marketing capabilities. (Marketing Capabilities Benchmark Tool)
High performing marketing organizations excel at market-capability fit and have capability profiles geared for higher growth and success up 3x more than low performing organizations. (MOSTT unplugged event)
More and more consumers are willing to boycott brands whose ads appear next to unsafe content – To avoid this for your brand, we developed the brand safety and suitability strategy guide and explained it over a 5-session webinar series in partnership with Twitter.
These were our “greatest hits” in 2021.
We do this work to support architecting the future of marketing globally for our 800+ members across 15 countries. We look forward to working with all of our new 2021 members as we take on the biggest challenges facing marketers today and advance the practice and profession of marketing in this ongoing era of unprecedented change, challenge and opportunity.
In the coming months, we will be conducting groundbreaking work in all of our think tanks, including:
We learned a lot in 2021 and, as you can see, we have a very ambitious agenda in 2022. If you are interested in learning more about or participating in any of these projects, please reach out directly to me at [email protected].
