Now more than ever before, today’s media ecosystem is overflowing with more channels to browse. More content to consume. And more marketing messages to process.
If you’re overwhelmed by this chaotic landscape, you’re not alone. But according to eMarketer’s 2024 Global Media Intelligence Report, we’ve entered a period of “peak media,” where overall time spent with all channels — both traditional and digital — is likely to either plateau or decline in the back half of the decade.
With consumers predicted to spend less time in front of their screens (or engaging with content at all), it’s crucial marketers make sure their measurement strategies are sound, their messages are relevant and, most importantly, their line of sight to real campaign performance is clear. And that all starts with an omnichannel approach.
The omnichannel imperative
As individual channels draw fewer eyes and ears, an effective omnichannel marketing strategy isn’t just a nice-to-have option — it’s a necessity. In a panel discussion at Brave New Worlds 2024, Ampersand SVP of Data and Analytics Justin Rosen put it like this:
“It is definitively true that if you are not spending in a targeted way across all channels in some capacity, you will be missing a piece of your audience.”
The benefits of a cross-channel approach are evident. By casting a wide net across touchpoints, advertisers can deliver targeted, contextually relevant messages to consumers — regardless of where they’re watching, listening or playing.
But while the proliferation of channels is creating new opportunities for advertisers, that expansion is making it increasingly challenging for those same advertisers to reach their core audiences effectively, let alone accurately measure campaign outcomes. According to new research from Forrester, 70% of market leaders feel that reaching audiences across multiple touchpoints is more difficult today than it ever was.
So, how can marketers successfully navigate the shifting tides of fragmentation, more accurately assess the incrementality of their marketing activities and enjoy the real benefits of an omnichannel approach?
Success hinges on one thing alone: data.
Streamlining the path from insight to action
Effective cross-channel marketing isn’t just about delivering messages across a wide array of touchpoints. It’s also about linking those marketing activities to real, actionable results. But as we’ve already established, it’s not quite so simple.
In today’s ecosystem of walled gardens and antiquated data collaboration technologies, performance data is often left isolated. This would be fine if every conversion was influenced by marketing activities in a single channel. But in a world where the average consumer might see hundreds of ads in a single day, getting a comprehensive view of marketing attribution while using data from just a single source is little more than a pipe dream.
Instead, to connect impressions and interactions from every touchpoint across the funnel, marketers need some sort of connective tissue — the kind that has historically been provided by large, first-party datasets or supplied by trusted identity providers.
“Marketers today are really savvy — they want to do everything,” says Rosen. “A large starting sample [of first-party data] with rock-solid identity that is as close to first-party as possible is the magic bullet.”
By linking all their disparate identity sources at scale, marketers can weave together signals from across their tech stacks, tying every consumer interaction and marketing message back to each campaign’s designated KPIs. The numbers back this up. Again, as reported by Forrester, 88% of marketing leaders who use identity resolution to connect data across their tech stacks reported they that are meeting or exceeding their customer insight goals, and 78% say they are able to improve their agility and decision-making capabilities.
In turn, that overarching view powers insights that make the true promise of omnichannel marketing possible: delivering the right message to the right audience in the right medium at the right time.
Building measurement that matters
On paper, it may seem an identity-powered, omnichannel measurement strategy is a no-brainer. However, the realities of complex team structures and incomplete datasets mean executing said strategy is often easier said than done.
In a recent Adweek webinar, TransUnion VP of Marketing Solutions Kathi Stevens and Jeremy Rose, Head of Unified Marketing Measurement at Bayer, outlined three areas marketing teams should be focusing on to make their omnichannel measurement strategies a reality.
First, teams should be looking inward and assessing the strength of their own data. According to Stevens, understanding your data — and ensuring that data is clean — creates the foundation required for precise measurement at scale. It’s a classic case of garbage in, garbage out. Without strong data, teams could end up with poor-quality insights, even with the highest-quality measurement solutions.
Second, marketing teams should be keeping open lines of communication with their measurement partners. A data team might have strong internal alignment, but without buy-in from media buyers or business partners, faith in measurement models will only extend so far. One potential solution for this is to integrate as many partners as possible and as early as possible in the measurement planning process, ensuring unrestricted visibility and limiting the surprise element in results reporting.
Finally, measurement success in the modern marketing ecosystem requires a close examination of KPIs. While return on ad spend can be a crucial indicator of performance in many marketing use cases, it isn’t the only solution. Instead, marketers should be tailoring their measurement KPIs to their campaign goals rather than trying to fit an engagement-shaped peg into an ROI-shaped hole.
“One of the most important things is to make sure that measurement is aligned to whatever it is we're making decisions on," Rose asserts. "If they're not aligned, then what's the point? You're going to have a model that is answering questions that you don't care about anymore.”
Wrapping up
After a decade of rising media consumption numbers, the dawn of the peak media age represents a sea change in how audiences worldwide watch, listen and play.
However, a shift like this also represents an opportunity for marketers to rethink how they approach their campaigns. With the right measurement approach, realizing the true promise of a cohesive, integrated, cross-channel marketing strategy isn’t just a possibility, it’s well within reach.