Megan Harbold

Instacart not having negative keywords as an option is the best example of what "machine learning" actually costs brands to support. The best solution I've found? Take their auto applied keywords and make their bid the lowest possible (30 cents). I built a really solid ads structure supporting each of our Target sku's and woke up to us bidding on "Ben and Jerry's" as a "optimized auto applied suggesition" for our Vanilla Ice Cream Whey. Gee, I wonder what sophisticated dev team decided "auto bid on product title". Yeah, in the world of CPG there could neeevvverrr be issues with that. Who leads this team and how much do you make. (Hint: too much). Happy Friday to everyone except overpaid leadership that don't actually understand what they're building and get paid boat loads of money for it.

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Marketers Vastly Understate The Sales Effect Of Creative And Significantly Overestimate The Impact Of Targeting Per Advertiser Perceptions and NCSolutions: * System1Group Chief Customer Officer Jon Evans says, “Creative is the number one factor in explaining the performance of your advertising, and yet most marketers still don’t realize it. That means that those who focus on getting the creative right have a huge competitive advantage.” * Andrew Tindall, System1’s SVP of Global Creative & Media Partnerships, asserts, “We need to be bold, unapologetically say no to things to get time to make better ads, and partner with the right agencies the bring the talent, tools, and knowledge to make work that works.” * Les Binet and Sarah Carter caution, “Don’t target too narrowly. It may be efficient, but it’s rarely effective. Tight targeting means low sales and profits.” Via the link below, executive summary, video explainer, and deck.

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Subliminal advertising has been a topic of fascination since the 1950s, but does it still work in today’s ad-heavy environment? 📺 One fascinating fact: consumers process millions of bits of information unconsciously every day, meaning many ads still affect us even if we don’t realize it. But with attention overload, the real question is—should brands focus on what’s hidden, or on capturing attention openly and authentically? Check out this insightful piece by Infillion’s Jamie Auslander on the evolution of subliminal messaging in advertising. #Infillion #AdvertisingTrends #SubliminalMessaging #ConsumerAttention #MarketingInsights

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Amazon's Prime Video Ads Disrupt Streaming Market - Prime Video now defaults to an ad-supported tier, with a $3 increase for ad-free. - Amazon's entry adds massive ad inventory, pressuring Disney and Netflix. - Amazon's lower ad costs, driven by its ecosystem, challenge competitors. - More users are choosing cheaper ad-supported streaming plans over traditional TV. - Streaming services must adapt as Big Tech reshapes the ad market. 🌎To learn more join the AdTechGod Slack Community : https://lnkd.in/g-XzVDkX ✉️Sign up for the Marketecture Media newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gm85yuaf 📖 Article here by Yahoo https://lnkd.in/gaN52e_K

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Great read from Bill Duggan about the importance of standardization when it comes to retail media networks' measurement. "Retail media networks are walled gardens—they are ad ecosystems that don’t share data—making it difficult to compare RMNs. To optimize investment, marketers need to be able to make apples-to-apples comparisons between RMNs," writes Duggan. #PerformanceMeasurement #Retail #Media #Advertising

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Measurement is key to maximize (and prove) marketing impact. Kroger shares how they hold traditional reach mediums like CTV accountable to actual conversion outcomes. Explore more from LiveRamp's #RampUp24 here: https://lnkd.in/eWWh3cGk

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FROM COOKIES TO CLARITY - The Israelites' golden calf story mirrors digital advertising's misplaced trust in third-party cookies. - Early ad tech fraud exposure showed addressable targeting's unreliability and data manipulation. - Google and Meta now use AI targeting, recognizing hyper-specific targeting's flaws. - Studies show 1:1 addressable data is inaccurate; broader targeting strategies may be better. - The ad industry should shift to AI-driven broad targeting, focusing on fundamental marketing principles and real outcomes. 📖 Article by AdExchanger : https://lnkd.in/gZms44JV 🌎To learn more join the AdTechGod Slack Community: https://lnkd.in/g-XzVDkX ✉️Sign up for the Marketecture Media newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gm85yuaf

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LinkedIn's venture into Connected TV (CTV) advertising highlights a significant shift in B2B marketing, aiming to intersect personal and professional lives of users. By tapping into streaming platforms such as Roku, Samsung, and NBCUniversal, LinkedIn provides its B2B marketers with an innovative channel to engage with audiences beyond the typical work environment. This expansion underlines the platform's unique approach—utilizing detailed user data to target ads more effectively, based on professional roles and workplace information. Explore how LinkedIn’s new CTV placements can enhance your B2B marketing efforts. Learn more: https://buff.ly/3PSDLfa #marketing #advertising #digitalmarketing #content #cmo

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Some good points are made by PubMatic’s Andrew Baron in AdExchanger’s latest Data-Driven Thinking column. Ironically, cookies were never that big of a problem in the first place—your humble, anonymous cookie is far less personal than a hashed email (which, as the FTC recently reminded us, is in fact still PII). But to the writer’s point, years of worrying about their impending deprecation have led to some very positive changes. First- and carefully curated and enhanced second- and third-party data will always yield better results, assuming you can protect the privacy of the consumers who produced it. And yes, whatever more personally identifiable data you’re working with—whether it’s sell-side targeting, modeled audiences, or contextual signals—alternative IDs have shown great promise in creating a layer of privacy protection. However, the real challenge arises when these identifiers traverse the bidstream and are shared with third parties. No matter how secure your encryption, once data leaves your control, it’s vulnerable to exploitation or reverse engineering. Anything can happen. The signals aren’t the problem—it’s the way we’re sharing them. We built Symitri to solve these inherent privacy challenges in adtech infrastructure. By ensuring that personally identifiable data never leaves the control of its owner, Symitri offers truly deterministic targeting without sacrificing privacy. With Symitri, you can achieve precision, performance, and privacy—no compromises necessary. #Symitri #Privacy #DataProtection #Trust #TRUSTX https://lnkd.in/eS9Aem8B

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4 CPG Marketing Myths That Are Flat-Out Wrong (and How to Fix 'Em) Alright, fellow marketing nerds, let's talk shop.  I've been working with CPG brands for years, and I keep hearing the same tired myths that are holding them back.  Time to crack open a cold one and bust some marketing misconceptions before 2024 ends: ⏳Myth 1: Marketing programs take forever to set up. Reality:  With the right tools and a bit of hustle, you can get campaigns up and running faster than you can chug a pint. 🤝Myth 2: I need a whole army of partners to run one campaign. Reality:  Find a partner that can do it all (perhaps AirBaton 😉), and streamline your operations.  💸Myth 3: Cool campaigns cost a fortune. Reality:  Creativity doesn't have to drain your marketing budget.  We can help you brew up impactful campaigns without emptying your wallet.  🛠️Myth 4: New vendors?  It's not worth the pain of setup. Reality:  Sometimes, you gotta shake things up to get the best results. New partnerships can bring fresh ideas and unlock untapped potential. At AirBaton™, we're all about cutting through the BS and helping you craft winning CPG strategies. Let's raise a glass to innovation and collaboration! 🍻 DM if you wanna partner up and work on your 2025 campaigns. #CPGMarketing #BreakTheMyths #InnovateAndCollaborate #AirBaton

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Your digital advertising just got a privacy reboot 🔒 Discover how data clean rooms enable brands and publishers to securely collaborate on audience insights while protecting customer data. LiveRamp's new guide explores 12 ways that top marketers: ✨ Build richer profiles from data locked in silos 🎯 Optimize targeting and frequency across walled gardens 📊 Measure granular ROAS and incrementality metrics Learn how smart marketers are turning signal loss into business wins: https://lnkd.in/d-xFJP_q #datacollaboration #dataprivacy #measurement

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While cookies are phasing out, retail media is ramping up to provide alternative opportunities to reach target audiences. (84%) US marketers said they are more likely to invest in retail media. #firstpartydata #retailmedia #nonendemicadvertising #advertising #adplatforms https://lnkd.in/gANqzZ85

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New to Incrementality testing? Here’s a simplified roadmap 🗺️ 📍Start by testing the overall incrementality of each channel to find the average lift 📍Next test each channel’s prospecting and retargeting campaigns to understand incremental lift by tactic by channel 📍Then test specific campaign types (Pmax, ASC, DSA, etc.) to see how incremental each campaign type is 📍Finally, you can begin testing different components of your campaigns. Like: -attribution settings -bid strategies -broad match vs phrase match -different ad types or creatives Rinse and repeat 🛁 Tools like Stella makes this very easy to execute.

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Think of clean rooms as the secret sauce for retail media growth! Retailers, armed with first-party data, are teaming up for greater reach and scale. LiveRamp's VP of Industry Sales, Retail & CPG, Kevin Dunn, tells Beet.TV how clean rooms create a secure, collaborative environment.

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There are five large CPG companies (okay, maybe ten) capable of doing their own advanced measurement of digital media spend over an extended period of time – we’re talking about either multi-touch attribution (MTA) or sales lift and incrementality not solely tied to individual campaigns. The vast majority of top 25 CPG companies don’t have the internal resources or have partnered with data or measurement companies to help them understand what is working and what is not. Even the large CPG clients with massive data science capabilities find it difficult to sustain delivering insights where sales outcomes drive digital advertising decision making. They either lack the data, have challenges with carry through (comparing exposed audiences with users who actually bought) or simply have other priorities. Some CPG clients rely on their agencies for measurement work, but more than likely there are media and data providers helping with the measurement (sometimes grading their own homework) but ideally, third party measurement providers are involved. The “easy button” for activation in CPG has been to use major players like The Trade Desk and the LiveRamp Marketplace, even the Amazon DSP. CPG purchase data from a wide variety of sources is available, although a material source of inventory will be going away soon with Oracle Advertising ceasing operations in September. Measurement has gotten much harder. Changes in Apple’s privacy policy a couple years back has made it tougher to measure the effectiveness of digital campaigns in Apple devices. In spite of Google’s reversal on the deprecation of cookies, the writing’s on the wall and by giving consumers the choice to be tracked (or not) we all know how that’s going to end up – same way as 80% of iPhone users telling the App not to Track. I’ve been very encouraged over the last 6 weeks since I started my new gig at Scanbuy. Client-side execs at large CPG companies who own 1PD strategies are genuinely interested in the quality and scale of our purchase data: 100% opt-in from receipt scans and loyalty card programs, and 13MM MAUs representing spending across all classes of trade. Key brands and categories are well represented. The best part is we offer flexibility in measurement. Do it yourself if you have the data science team and the chops. Use our measurement partner. Use your own measurement partner after a short certification process with Scanbuy. Learn what is working and what is not. Optimize. Learn some more. You have to license the data in order to do measurement. Use this approach with your CTV spend. And other digital tactics. I find CTV the most interesting because so much spend is going there. Wouldn’t it be great to measure the sales impact? Hit me up or wait for me to ping you. We’re here to help CPG Innovators do cool things. #CPGmarketing #purchasedata #CTV #analytics

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I reference Pacvue's quarterly report for benchmarks and trends pretty frequently, which is why I'm more than a little excited to be included in this quarter's release. Things that caught my eye: -The CPC inflation on Amazon is real, 6.8% increase YoY for Sponsored Products -Walmart's CPC went up by a double digit % but their base is so low that a jump still puts them well below Amazon, something to watch -Instacart is riding steady in costs which is helped by a lower amount of competition in daily spending YoY, (odd considering Easter demand was closer to Q1 last year but it might be a function of more diverse ad offering YoY taking dollars from sponsored products)

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The need to shift DTC strategies is a lesson in learning from past examples. Prioritizing consumers at each step, brands are leaning toward practices that include them more in the process for growth that's led by retention, profit, and an increase in sustainability. #DTC #Retail #FashionBrands #Consumers

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The news is out – Google is keeping cookies, but marketers and the industry now have flexibility to evolve beyond relying solely on them. Travis Clinger, LiveRamp's Chief Connectivity and Ecosystem Officer, explains why cookies alone can’t provide the personalized, engaging experiences that consumers crave. Not to mention… 🍪50% of the web is already cookieless and so is the future of AI chat-bots and the iOT 🍪Cookieless solutions work better – just ask Omni Hotels & Resorts, which saw 4x better conversion rates with PAIR 🍪Cookieless solutions are already changing the way advertisers work, from CTV to Retail Media Networks ➡️Read more about LiveRamp’s perspectives on Google’s announcement and discover how we’re striving to make every consumer experience addressable and measurable (without cookies):

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What. A. Rollercoaster. George London at Upwave via Marketing Dive does a masterful job discussing Google's reversal to now retain cookies after years of touting their deprecation. Quote: "The repercussions of Google’s failed experiment are far-reaching. The credibility of privacy-enhancing technologies has been tarnished by association. Many advertisers have doubled down on potentially less privacy-friendly alternatives to #cookies, or feel vindicated in never having tried to move off cookies at all. The uncertainty surrounding the open web’s future has accelerated the flow of ad dollars into walled gardens, ironically concentrating more user data in the hands of a few tech giants." This was a good read for anyone in the #digitalads space.

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