Skip to Content Skip to Navigation Skip to Enquiry Skip to Sitemap

ADMA WA Guru Breakfast: 2020 Digital Marketing Insights

Article by
5th March 2020 in

With 2020 off and racing, now is the time to adapt to the rapidly evolving changes in digital marketing.

Last Wednesday, Bonfire’s Data & Innovation Manager Sam Gabell shared his biggest digital marketing predictions for 2020, with over 170 professionals at the ADMA WA’s Guru Breakfast at Fraser’s Kings Park.

Focusing on four key topics – Google Analytics’ Future, Podcast Advertising, Cookie Wars and Subscription Models – his presentation highlighted how each would impact Australia’s marketing landscape over the next 12 months, and what businesses can do to prepare.

1. Google Analytics’ Future

Last year Google introduced a beta version of the new App + Web property model. It enables users to measure both their app and website data in one handy location, creating a unified view of the cross-channel customer journey. Marketers should take note as Google has strongly hinted that this model represents the future direction of their analytics product moving forward.

Unfortunately, any historical Google Analytics data will not be carried over to the App + Web platform due to the fundamental difference between the data models. Additionally, Google has introduced significant changes to the reporting interface that will impact how you report on user activity. Thankfully, it’s relatively easy to implement the new tracking library through Google Tag Manager, or another Tag Management System. There are significant advantages to early implementation of the new platform, including starting to collect data under the new model for future comparative analysis and familiarising your teams with the new reporting structure.

2. Podcast Advertising

Research has shown podcast consumption has been growing exponentially over the last three years, driven primarily by the continued adoption of smartphones and wearable devices. Contrary to popular belief, consumption is growing across all age groups, making podcast advertising an attractive proposition regardless of your target audience. Other advantages of podcast advertising include no current ad blockers and its relative low-cost comparative to its high levels of consumer engagement.

The recent advancements in podcast analytics, including the ability to measure engagement with specific advertising and the introduction of dynamic ad insertion make podcast advertising more appealing for data-driven marketing. In addition, Google has started scraping podcasts to surface snippets of transcribed audio within the search results page. Podcasting now has the ability to not only drive new awareness of your brand with key demographics but also to potentially boost your visibility within Google too.

3. Cookie Wars

Over the last five years, the AdTech industry has faced a growing threat from evolving restrictions to how browsers record and track anonymous users around the web. This threat has significantly intensified in the last eighteen months with the introduction of extraordinary limitations imposed by privacy-focused web browser vendors (Safari and Firefox). The nature of the introduced restrictions means that the effects are no longer isolated to just the AdTech industry but are now being felt across the entire marketing ecosystem. Specifically, Safari’s introduction of a seven day/twenty-four-hour expiry to first-party cookies, and other identification mechanisms, early last year has significantly impacted web analytics, a/b testing tools, personalisation/recommendation engines and all other products that rely on client-side browser identification.

The restrictions are ongoing and likely to become even more extraordinary as the macroclimate around privacy and data reform intensifies. Strategic brands will now be considering how this new normal affects their future plans for attribution, analytics, personalisation, marketing and branding.

4. Subscription Models

“Advertising has become the tax that poor and technically illiterate people pay.” – Scott Galloway

Consumer attention is an increasingly finite resource despite there being more demand for it than ever before. In addition to several macro factors impacting the market dynamics of the Attention Economy, there is now a new existential threat impacting brands access to monetizable consumer attention. Following the highly publicised Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 and the subsequent ongoing data and privacy reform, enthusiasm for ad-based business models has decreased. Risk-averse venture capital is starting to question the sustainability of monetisation models that require high-levels of consumer data. This threat to advertising has created a climate for subscription-based models to thrive. Examples can be seen across nearly all industries traditionally reliant on advertising including media, television and social networks.

Brands may encounter difficulties targeting their ideal consumers through advertising, digital or otherwise, as the demographics for ad-based platforms continue to trend towards consumers with less disposable income and thus a lower socio-economic status. Data and privacy reform will continue to build momentum through 2020, making diversification critical to a pragmatic marketing strategy.

Thank you to ADMA WA for organising the event, and to Sam for highlighting the most critical digital marketing trends that will impact businesses this year.

Bonfire is a proud ADMA partner, if you’d like to attend future events click here.

Stay up to date with the latest news from the brightest minds.

Newsletter

Enter your email below for all the latest news and resources.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Close enquiry the form