Adform, the only global, independent and fully integrated advertising platform built for modern marketing, announces the findings of research into achieving Effortless Modern Marketing, conducted with more than 1,000 marketing professionals across the UK, EMEA and the US, in conjunction with leading market research firm, Dynata.
As well as highlighting a significant lack of readiness for life without third-party cookies, the research also reveals marketers’ priorities are centred around finding time and cost efficiencies in a more transparent supply chain, and a desire to move towards ‘brand gardens’ – a purpose-built, future-proofed ecosystem where modern marketers are empowered with complete data ownership and management.
Louise Kloster, SVP Marketing at Adform, warns the industry’s current lack of preparation for the deprecation of third-party cookies signals a significant problem: “With Chrome’s deadline looming at the end of the year, marketers must act now to find a first-party ID solution that works for them – one that works without prejudice and, most importantly, is future proof. We have already seen success with publishers that have made the transition to first-party ID solutions following Firefox and Safari’s removal of third-party cookies – but further education is clearly required especially after a challenging year where marketers have not prioritised working on first-party IDs. Marketers understand the value in maintaining transparency, efficiency, and flexibility to provide a balance of control and neutrality, but this research highlights the need to implement innovative solutions to truly achieve effortless modern marketing both now and in the future.”
The research also reveals marketers believe enhanced data ownership will unlock a range of much-needed benefits; the concept of a closed, brand-owned ecosystem – underpinned by first-party data, transparent costs, and operational adaptability – is viewed positively by around three-quarters of Spanish (73%), Polish (74%), UK (78%) and US (78%) marketers.
Globally, over three-quarters (79%) of respondents believe a brand garden would increase flexibility and data control, while more than two-thirds (70%) state the resulting improvements to trust and data transparency would be advantageous to their business outcomes.
More than nine in ten (92%) global marketers state cost and time efficiencies are key challenges in their supply chain, with almost two-thirds (63%) ranking these savings as the primary benefit of working with a single provider on a global scale. In addition, more than three-fifths of Nordic (61%), UK (63%), and Italian (65%) marketers say they lack control over their supply chain and this is a significant reason to move towards a clear, centralised point of oversight when deploying marketing campaigns.
Most likely, this is due to at least half (50%) of marketers prioritising rapid response capabilities in the ever-changing market, with greater time efficiencies enabling better agility. This also indicates a strong preference for consolidation and transparency throughout the supply chain to achieve greater control, likely driven in part by the findings from the recent ISBA programmatic supply chain transparency study.
Adform and Dynata’s Effortless Modern Marketing report looked into current trends and sentiment regarding control and transparency, identity, cost efficiencies, and user experience. The survey was conducted in 12 markets across Europe (UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Poland) and the USA from 1st to 13th September 2020, analysing responses from 1047 marketing professionals.
Looking at each of the regions included in the survey, the following percentage of brands do not have a solution in place for the removal of third-party cookies:
While the following percentage of brands currently have a solution based on first-party IDs:
Adform is the only global, independent and fully integrated advertising platform built for modern marketing. Its unique enterprise technology – Adform FLOW – harnesses superior user experience and a scalable, modular and open architecture, to enable seamless management of the whole campaign lifecycle. It provides clients with enhanced control and transparency across their advertising operations, including ownership of all data from their campaigns. Since 2002, Adform has developed technology to enhance human/machine collaboration and deliver augmented intelligence, thereby amplifying business results for its clients around the world.