Industry Insights

Now that we’ve safely landed in the new year (still recovering from a helluva rough 2020, though), take a moment to reflect. Visualize a snapshot of your life in 2019. Now compare that snapshot to your life in 2020. Do you see some major differences? If you don’t, then you’re not looking! A myriad of things has changed from 2019 to 2020. The biggest of which is evident in the new WFH (Work From Home) initiatives that have been implemented around the world.

In the world of marketing, data is king. Marketers use an abundance of user data to gather leads, increase sales, and personalize the customer experience. These data-first strategies have proven highly successful at converting customers, which is exactly why data is king. Data-driven personalized marketing allows brands to target their campaigns at precise individuals rather than splash their messaging to random mass audiences. But with increasing awareness around data privacy recently, ad personalization has encountered a few road blocks, forcing marketers to change how they collect and/or personalize consumer data in the age of digital privacy.

It’s a new year with a whole new–and bright–outlook on fraud prevention in the programmatic landscape. The pandemic of 2020 dramatically accelerated digital business efforts, and while some have speculated this could potentially make the digital supply chain more vulnerable to fraud, new research has shown that a good portion of fraud is already being effectively prevented. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is a global program composed of several digital supply chain contributors and ad tech companies–including Genius Monkey–that have banded together in a combined effort to fight fraudulent activity and promote brand safety within digital advertising.

While banks are an important part of our economy, they’re not the only component of the financial sector. Also included are real estate firms, insurance companies, and investment firms. Advertising for financial institutions can be challenging, as it’s always changing and very fast-paced. In fact, 51% of financial institutions report that their biggest challenge is keeping up with new digital marketing techniques. As technology evolves and customer habits change, the marketing strategies must change with them.

The year of 2020 has been a wild ride and it’s still going strong. This year has thrown marketers from every industry for a loop when it comes to customer patterns and advertising predictability, and while much of what we’ve learned this year has come at a high cost, we’ve learned a plethora of lessons involving consumer behavior, trends and overall ad effectiveness–and savvy marketers are continuing to adapt their campaign strategies accordingly.

With the release of iOS 14, Apple is making yet another big privacy-focused upgrade to iOS. One where users can choose to hide their device’s ID from apps so it can’t be tracked. Something many advertisers, particularly Facebook, aren’t happy about. But despite the uproar of Facebook and a handful of other social giants, there are certain programmatic advertising platforms who aren’t bothered by the privacy news at all. Why?

Genius Monkey is proud to announce that our programmatic platform has been listed among the top 1% of all ad vendors with The Media Trust, according to their recently released IAB Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) report. As a global leader in digital third-party risk management, The Media Trust provides real-time security, data privacy, performance management and quality assurance solutions that help safeguard, monetize and optimize the user experience over devices.

Gaming and music and apps…oh my! There’s a brave new world taking shape across the programmatic landscape, and it comes in a host of new platforms and channels for advertisers to explore. But not before gearing up for the journey. So plug in. Power up. And get ready…to play. Social media on the decline Smart devices have become a regular part of daily life, with the average person spending at least four hours on their phone per day and more than 65% of Americans using multiple installed apps in that time.

For luxury brands, loyal relationships and the revenues they bring in are everything. As Genius Monkey has advocated for years, programmatic doesn’t just sell $10 tubes of makeup and Happy Meals at McDonald’s … it also sells $30,000 diamonds and $500,000 homes. American short-story writer and novelist, F Scott Fitzgerald, famously wrote, “The rich are different from you and me.” Comparatively, high-ticket items are different from other goods, too. They do take longer to sell, but by implementing digital programmatic, the ROI and sales numbers are greatly improved.

AI is a boon to programmatic advertising, and the “intelligence” in artificial intelligence is getting smarter each day. However, because AI algorithms aren’t able to experience emotion or base decisions on gut instinct, there will always be a need for human oversight to help govern AI technology and ensure proper decisions are being made. Intelligence without oversight isn’t enough When the late Kobe Bryant passed away earlier this year, social media and news agencies went wild reporting the tragedy.