Time for a simple approach to display

With heads buried deep in how best to innovate display’s role in evolving digital marketing, it’s easy to see how the industry has steadily created a language that barely resembles everyday English. DSPs, RTB, DCO, DMPs – all terms that are common lingo for the ‘in-the-know’ display marketer. But the industry needs to take a step back and ask whether these terms mean anything to our peers in the wider digital marketing sphere?

That was somewhat of a rhetorical question – because, unfortunately, our jargon isn’t readily understood by peers and is isolating display from other digital marketing sectors. This is something that came to our attention on the back of research we conducted at this year’s ad:tech to identify how easily digital markers recognise the terms we use in display. Under a third of marketers (32 per cent) can decipher the term RTB, even less can decipher DSP (26 per cent) and only 4 per cent are aware of the term DCO.

So why is this such a major concern? Two reasons spring to mind:

• First reason: Channel integration and a quest for multichannel marketing means that digital marketers from across the board are working in ever closer proximity with each other. Mobile marketing, for example, is in the midst of a massive boom as brands look at how to engage with the on the go consumer. Display clearly has a big role in the mobile marketing mix, but integrating one with the other will be an on-going challenge if the two industries struggle to understand each other’s acronyms.

• Second reason: Campaigns are becoming ever more internationalised as brands look to drive brand awareness across different regions. But unfortunately each market is at a different level of maturity – so while the front runners have pulled away from the pack by embracing innovation, remaining regions have been left behind having to grapple with complex technologies and understand a sea of new acronyms that aficionados in the industry are intent on using.

Aside from making a concerted effort to avoid abbreviations mentioned, the display industry should be concentrating on making its industry as straight-forward to grasp as possible to positively respond to these issues. The industry has evolved in a way that means there are far too many point solutions that marketers have to grapple with, specialising separately in dynamic creative optimisation, product re-targeting, exchange buying and campaign optimisation.

We found that that only 6 per cent prefer having to grapple with the many solutions – in fact nearly three quarters (73 per cent) said that if they could use a fully functioning single platform to run all elements of their digital marketing campaigns in the next five years, they would do so.

Platforms that encompass all solutions in a single place are a suitable answer. Incorporating display ad serving, rich media, video, mobile, dynamic ads and real-time bidding in one place will not only make display more approachable, but it will help prevent the industry from becoming further engulfed in riddles.