Commentary

Gulf Between Off-Site, On-Site Digital Engagement Is Slowly Killing Your Business

Literally hundreds of companies that dot the Luma Partner’s Lumascapes can easily develop custom creative; target and serve relevant ads, analyze and optimize campaigns and data; track behavior and engagement across most every device in the digital landscape; and drive consumers to specific web sites.

Yet, very few, if any, companies are using the same sophisticated tools, technologies, platforms and integrations used by adtech to form digital connective tissue between brands, publishers, content and consumers to connect customer’s off-site and on-site experiences in a meaningful way.

This missed opportunity is a glaring one.

Marketers spend a great deal of time and expense attracting and nurturing potential customers in a personalized way, but more often than not, they receive roughly the same experience as the average Joe coming to their web site cold.

Unlike the unbundling (and re-bundling and unbundling) of creative and media that has occupied the overall marketing conversation of the past two decades, digital tech giants, such as Adobe, Salesforce and Oracle, have each been headed in a different direction.

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They slowly built their competitive war chests over the past 10 years, offering a more comprehensive integration between media and creative, while the rest of the industry argued over the best approach.

These massive Silicon Valley juggernauts are slowly but methodically developing a complete view of every customer with the ability to execute personalize messaging and media both on and offsite, using a completely integrated solution.

These companies are creating the incredible ability to use customer centricity and single-source consumer profiles that will allow brands and agencies to create audience segments and personas, and predict behaviors across both web and mobile.

Using data aggregation, management and activation, this single source of data allows for the analysis, execution and optimization for new and existing customers throughout the sales funnel. Whether it be reaching new prospects that have been modeled against or the bread-and-butter existing customer segmentation, this novel solution will provide a big leg-up on maximizing lifetime value (LTV).

This level of intelligent customer identification is the first step before actually reaching audiences with content in context, both on-site and off-site.

As an added advantage, single-source-of-truth creates a natural rallying point for both creative and media teams alike. Unfortunately, on the agency side, traction has barely even begun. Why?

First, contracts and licenses for sites and email solutions are typically held between the client and the enterprise-level solutions. Second, the bulk of today’s agencies are simply not as integrated as they claim to be. Period. It’s a common chorus, but the truth is fiefdoms and subject matter expertise (SME) silos keep departments and holding company partnerships from having real discussions about what’s best for the client.

Creative agencies are reliant on off-site tools (dynamic creative optimization or DCO) and on-site multivariate (MVT) testing tools; media agencies lean heavily on intellectual property in DSP/DMP evaluation and execution. Very rarely shall the two twine.

With the acquisitions of companies like Krux by Salesforce and TubeMogul by Adobe, these behemoths are moving beyond existing customer monetization and opening the door to a connected world of sourcing new customer prospects using search, social, display and in some cases, connected TV.

Silicon Valley is doing their part; now it’s our turn. The next move for agencies and brands will be to break down the final silo of the digital world and create a complete and personalized user journey. Applying a bit of HaaS (humans as a service) to the issue, might just be what’s needed in this ever-changing tech landscape of tools.

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