Blog & News

Introduction

Based on what you’re looking to find, data (and information more broadly) are often entirely free. Now, this certainly isn’t true of trade secrets and the like, but otherwise there’s a lot to be gleaned from simply paying attention to current events and, where your own business is concerned, to consumer patterns. That’s what data really is when everything is taken into account – information we’re willing to acknowledge and, to the best of our ability, act upon. What Genius Monkey has long recognized is that advertising data as a concept is more than a set of figures on a spreadsheet – it is a window into how your customers connect with your brand, with your various interfaces, and finally with the transactional aspect(s) of your business. Taking matters beyond mere accumulation and observation is where our platform comes into play.

Shopping used to be more of a sport than a necessity. People would look forward to leisurely walking the malls, stopping in at each store to see if there were any good deals on things that might interest them. Well, that ship has sailed!

Nowadays, everybody is in a hurry, and they want to spend every moment they can in the most efficient manner. We are now a nation of instant gratification, getting what we want now, and not having to wait until we happen to be in the right area of the store we suspect might have the merchandise. With a bit of online help, mobile or not, we can find out all the info we need before setting foot outside!

As the New Year approaches, the excitement for the coming year fills the air as we race to the finish line of 2019. But, in the advertising world, this anticipation can feel more like a race to the starting line as marketers hustle to glean as many insights as possible from the closing year in order to prepare for the one up ahead.

Of all the marketing insights unearthed in 2019, there were a few we found particularly compelling. So, on your mark… get set… here are our top five marketing insights of the year… go!

What is your target audience up to? Quite a bit, in fact. The prospective consumers you’re hoping to reach are doing all sorts of things at any given moment. Some are entirely disconnected from their various devices, while others are checking their mobile phones as tablets stream media content of some sort a foot or so from where they’re seated. Your audience may have a common interest in what you’re selling, but their online engagement is far from uniform. Genius Monkey has made a business of paying attention to this reality, and it’s paid off in the form of measurement tools that help our clients to both reach likely customers and measure their advertising results against their advertising investment(s).

Take a look around. The next time you’re at a red light, count the number of earbud-wearing drivers you see. The next time the dog needs a walk, try to spot the elusive media-less runner. What type of content are busy parents consuming while they make dinner? What is everyone listening to these days? What’s the latest trend?

More and more, the answer is: streaming radio stations, music, and podcasts. “Background TV” has given way to purposeful multitasking content, with podcasts hitting the ears of 25% of Americans weekly and streaming music hitting 900 billion songs–with a “b”–in the past 12 months.

How much can any one person do entirely on their own? The question is, of course, rhetorical. Even the most competent human being presently moving about modern society is dependent on countless tradesmen, industry professionals, and laborers of all sorts to keep our civilization intact (well, mostly intact). Unsurprisingly, this logic also extends upwards. No single business can operate independently of thousands of others which jointly maintain the economy and serve the marketplace in their own ways. At Genius Monkey, we ardently believe in the principle of collaboration as being a net positive for all. Here’s an overview of the role it plays in digital advertising.

There’s so much of it - video footage, that is. The art/act of filming dates back well over a century… nearly a century-and-a-half, in fact. And during its early decades, the opportunity for an individual to create footage of their own was limited by the expense and relative unwieldiness of the available technology. Jump cut ahead a few generations and you’ll observe that the advent of smartphone technology has created an entire population of individuals capable of capturing life images via quality photographs and videos. Which, of course, is why there’s so much of it. It’s also become an expectation in the minds of many who regard moving imagery as an essential aspect of engaging with brand content. Genius Monkey is closely tied in with this movement and has some ideas as to how it can best be incorporated into a digital video advertising schematic.

As anyone with more than three hours of corporate experience has perhaps observed and noted, it is true that all major companies presently doing business have to exist in two ways:

• 1. In the public-facing way their customers know and expect; and
• 2. In a behind-the-scenes way that allows them to maintain a competitive edge.

Now, wherever these two can overlap, they almost invariably do. But often these aspects of a company’s identity run necessarily and inevitably parallel to one another. Imagine how a family-friendly and legitimately wholesome restaurant chain might find it beneficial to adopt an aggressive acquisition strategy for purposes of maintaining a regional foothold. How does that chain’s advertising message articulate its outward image while acknowledging its growth efforts?

Using multiple channels to execute your marketing strategy is, often times, a wise choice. But trying to understand and compare data from multiple channels (such as paid search, social postings, email, traditional marketing, etc.) can be overwhelming and very time-consuming. But how else can you capture all your marketing data in one place in order to gain “big picture” insights?

Three words: Data automation aggregation.

Data automation aggregators are third-party platforms that collect, clean, and consolidate data from multiple sources to create a single, manageable format of value-adding product information to boost insights.

This month marks the 10-year anniversary of Genius Monkey. The Genius Monkey dream began back in 2009 when digital advertising as we know it today didn’t yet exist. In fact the word “programmatic” wasn’t an advertising term that was commonly used like it is today.

Fun fact: Genius Monkey was one of the first organizations to coin the term “programmatic.” Pretty cool, right? As we celebrate this special Banana-versary, let’s look back on the past ten years of our company’s evolution. It’s been quite a ride.