• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, August 6, 2018

82% Of Marketers Expect Big Boosts In 2019 Digital Media Budgets by Steven Cook, Contributing Editor CMO.comJuly 26, 2018

As marketing leaders head into next year’s business planning and budgeting season, understanding the marketing and media landscape takes on added significance. The Nielsen 2018 CMO Report examines how marketers are navigating digital transformation and allocating their resources.

• Marketers are feeling the pressure and difficulty of getting their arms around how to deal with media and data fragmentation and the complexity of today’s media options
• Agencies still have a big role to play to help their clients navigate the media issues and complexities we’ve discussed
• Overwhelmingly, the No.1 marketing objective was customer acquisition. This is where digital is impactful

The study comprises a survey of 165 mostly director-level or above respondents, as well as one-on-one interviews with five global CMOs from a range of industries. Topics include media cost, ROI measurement, campaign strategy, new martech tools, data sets, social media, omnichannel integration, transparency, and effectiveness.  

To get the insights on the study, CMO.comspoke with Nielsen report authors Eric Solomon, SVP of marketing and strategy, and Brett House, VP of product marketing and strategy.

CMO.com: This is Nielsen’s first CMO study. Why now?

• Solomon: In the past few years, we’ve seen CMOs from the largest brand advertisers in the world become more outspoken about concerns they have with the role, delivery, use, effectiveness, measurement, and other topics around media, particularly digital media and brand advertising. So we decided to dig deeper into these topics to better understand the issues, concerns, beliefs, and expectations around media, as well as understand other key topics for marketers today. 

CMO.com: What was the overall takeaway from the study?

• Solomon: Overall, we saw that marketers are feeling the pressure and difficulty of getting their arms around how to deal with media and data fragmentation, and the complexity of today’s media options. They are struggling with tools, technology, data, analytics to measure ROI, effectiveness, and attribution as they now have responsibility to report marketing ROI and delivered value to the C-suite. Things have not come together in a holistic, useable, simple way for marketers yet.
• House: We also heard from our CMO interviews and study respondents that media fragmentation has created department silos in organizations where objectives, data, and revenue goals aren’t integrated and aligned. We clearly heard from people that they need help to operationalize a non-siloed, integrated process where all marketing departments can look at data across mediums in comparable ways, apples-to-apples, with a consistent methodology.

CMO.com: What are some other insights that have important implications?

• Solomon: Something noteworthy that we saw was that 43% of CMOs and marketers are actually pleased with their agencies and were planning to increase spend going forward. 
• House: Marketers are continuing to hire more specialized agencies to help them navigate digital transformation. They need relevant creative versions developed efficiently and quickly, while managing costs for specific media channels that each have different creative objectives.

CMO.com: What did CMOs say their most important marketing objectives are, and how are they realigning their marketing budgets and activities to achieve these?

• House: Overwhelmingly, the No.1 marketing objective was customer acquisition. This is where digital is impactful. The report highlighted that 82% of respondents are planning to increase their digital budgets by about 50% in the next year. This planned spend aligns with how highly they rank customer acquisition. 
• The second-highest ranked objective was brand building, which is focused on the top and middle of the funnel. It’s needed to fill the pipeline and generate the number of customers you need to achieve your goals. This is where mediums like TV and radio play a big brand-building and reach role.

CMO.com: What are your headline comments for becoming a better 21st century CMO?

• Solomon: Invest in the right technology to better integrate your stack, and invest in the right data, particularly the quality of the data and where it is coming from. Do the best you can to break down internal silos to have a true omnichannel, customer-centric approach. There are also things that are still true from the past, like making sure your tactics are aligned with your strategies. 
• House: Take control of your data, get it integrated and in one place, and create a workflow that enables multiple departments to plug into the single data source. This will help break down silos and align goals.

For a complete summaryof this discussion, please visit here.