Marketing

US advertisers will collectively spend upward of $50 billion on digital advertising in 2014, according to new figures from eMarketer. This represents the fifth year in a row of torrid growth, reflecting broad economic and advertising industry trends that have driven nonstop, double-digit gains across virtually all industries since the trough of the Great Recession in 2009.

A while ago, I wrote about terminology I wanted to rid the industry of, with immediate effect. It was (to date) one of my best-read and most responded-to columns on MediaPost. But it is not just the over-usage of industry lingo that is bad for the industry. Even worse is that the industry is still holding on to marketing terminologies and definitions of yesteryear.

Many brands may be “mother-approved,” but which ones score the highest marks? Based on research by YouGov, personal care brands were the best perceived by mothers, with Dove and Johnson & Johnson taking the top two spots, respectively.

While ecommerce remains a small part of sales in consumer packaged goods (CPG) overall, the health and beauty category is a bright spot digitally, having seen much success in its direct-response efforts. Roxanne Barretto, assistant vice president of US digital for L’Oréal, spoke with eMarketer’s Danielle Drolet about CPG digital ad spend trends for the year ahead, as well as predictions on direct response (DR) and mobile.

Just a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to address a gathering of marketers from the New York financial services community, about optimizing ROI through sports. While my remarks centered largely on best practices in assessing sponsorship impact, I prefaced those perspectives with a brief look at the potential rewards that can be derived from a well-planned and thought-out sports marketing partnership.

Beyond messaging, how do segments vary in their usage of communication channels and devices? Does channel access vary across age or income “segments”? With respect to health care insurance, do concerns over the exchange of personal information affect communication channel preferences?

  By Lee Vann / Captura Group

Earlier this year we saw the closure of two major efforts by the mainstream media to connect with Hispanics in the U.S.

CNN launched “CNN Latino” last year. The goal of the cable news network was to build an audience around syndicated news and entertainment shows in Spanish. Broadcast TV stations in several markets with large Hispanic populations – including WDFL in Miami and KBEH in Los Angeles – carried the programming.

As consumers switch between multiple devices daily, advertisers are looking to cross-device advertising to track and target users across channels. According to data released in February 2014 by Conversant, 59% of US senior-level marketers and agency decision-makers cited cross-device advertising as a digital channel they planned to use this year. This trailed second-place video by just 2 percentage points.

The relationship between marketing and procurement has improved substantially and is driving measurable results according to Optimizing the Procurement & Marketing Relationship – an ANA Survey due out later this month.

The U.S. economy hinges on the 10 leading TM states where Multicultural purchase power makes up about a third of the base and also a major contributor to the incremental Buying Power. In fact, over 4 in 10 new consumer purchasing dollars are generated by Multicultural segments in the Top 10 TM states as opposed to 1 in 5 in the other 40 states.  By Santiago Solutions Group

The 2014 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament may not kick off in Brazil until next month, but viewers are already planning on how they’re going to watch the matches. And based on polling conducted by Instant.ly for YuMe, digital devices are reshaping game viewing.

Americans have no shortage of options in every aspect of their lives. The proliferation of devices for consuming content has enabled more choices than most can count. But the “problem” of having too many options—including a growing expanse of content—doesn’t seem to be having an impact on our TV viewing preferences.

Recently the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) released a report that updated research from 2011 on the status of agency remuneration by marketers. Soon there were many articles written about the fact that procurement is now in many instances the lead negotiator with agencies, with marketers playing a secondary role.  Apparently this is bad — really bad. Qualifications like “marketers take back seat” and “pencil and paperclip buyers control agency remuneration” were some of the kinder descriptions.

Amid the squeeze on drug companies due to patent expirations on blockbuster drugs, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced in April an asset-swapping/joint venture deal, which includes Novartis picking up GSK’s cancer drugs and the two companies forming a joint venture on their respective nonprescription drug consumer units. The venture, GSK Consumer Healthcare, will combine the businesses of Novartis brands including Excedrin and Prevacid with GSK brands including Nicorette, TUMS and Aquafresh. Cheryl Policastro, director of shopper marketing and insights at Novartis Consumer Health, spoke with eMarketer’s Christine Bittar about selling over-the-counter medications and some of the differences between marketing prescription and nonprescription drugs.

The American public is slowly but steadily regaining confidence in corporate America with people now viewing corporate America more positively than they did before the start of the economic decline in 2008, according to the 2014 Harris Poll Reputation Quotient™ (RQ™) study.

I know this will come off as somewhat arrogant, but marketing is far more important now than it ever has been in the past.

I think its official – Hispanic Millennials are on the top of most of Hispanic marketer’s minds these days. As I’ve discussed in past articles, all the buzz and excitement around Hispanic Millennials has led to a lot of research that has only started to scratch the surface into this complex and largely misunderstood segment of the Hispanic market. This is why my agency, Sensis together with our partners at ThinkNow Research have decided to undertake an ambitious research initiative called The Hispanic Millennial Project.  By Jose Villa – Sensis

AHAA will honor McDonald’s for its legacy of anticipating these critical demographic shifts, pioneering the total market approach, and putting the ethnic consumer at the heart of its company-wide strategies.

Multicultural is ‘the’ growth epicenter fueling the nation’s economy. In Q1 2014 again, the changing face of those newly employed and their incremental impact in the overall U.S. economy was clearly driven by Multicultural segments, largely by Hispanics. A solid Total Market strategy that puts the newly employed in the center may be translated into real topline growth.  By Santiago Solutions Group

Over the last 18 months, I have been fortunate to work with quite a few CMOs and integrated marketing leaders from many well-known brands. Their businesses are very different from each other, as are their product portfolios and their distribution and marketing approaches.  All these senior marketers are very aware that their consumers and indeed their own world has changed and continues to change at breakneck speed. I believe there is no need to explain this fact to them anymore; they live it every day.