Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

What Will You Bid For These Pyjama Tops?

In our Digital Strategy Sessions there is often a moment when the executive teams realise that digital marketing and media doesn’t come with a rate card that can be negotiated over a good lunch in Soho.

Nowhere is this more true than when reviewing the programmatic auctions that drive modern digital media markets. For executives used to well-thumbed pricing manuals for TV spots, out-of-home billboards or double-page spreads, this new environment can be disorientating.

Traditional media formats benefit from a baked-in sense of value and price. This may be down to an established econometric model, a long-held benchmark, a missive from the procurement department or simply the deal done by the media agency at an away day. Just like the company furniture, executives are comfortable with price and value. In contrast, when entering an auction-driven modern media market, the lack of historical payments to lean back on can be discomforting.

One of the disconcerting aspects of attending an auction – offline or online - for the first time is not having a definitive price for the items you want to buy. The cost is determined by your budget and the value of the auction lot in your own context.

To draw upon a simple example from my family history, long before the digital world, a much-loved uncle of mine...

Digital Marketing Grows Up

Digital marketing has grown up. For a good period of time digital marketing played by different rules than other areas of the brand business. However, now digital is the majority of marketing, with the associated elevated levels of investment, it has come under the scrutiny that all commercial activities attract. 

This moment of maturity was brought into sharp focus - with headlamps on full-beam - when Marc Pritchard, the grandest of grand fromage at P&G, stood up recently and announced that, ‘the days of giving digital a pass are over’. What did he mean by this?  To my mind, it was a combination of calling out the illusory emperor’s clothes and a grand reveal showing that the inner workings of adtech were not magic. In fact, as Pritchard threw the curtain back, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg could have been standing there exclaiming - 'Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain!'

Let’s call the subsequent period of maturity Post Marc Pritchard or PMP.

The only real surprise is how long it’s taken.  For a long time executives have been blinded by the digital light.  A couple of years ago, I accompanied...