Why learning, development, and transformation is a marketing prerequisite

Partner Content 

JCDecaux UK’s head of programmatic shares what is holding back industry growth and what is needed for the next steps towards transformation.

There is mounting pressure on marketers at all levels to learn continually and, in some cases, transition entirely into new and emerging fields.

I’ve lived this transformation. In 2017, I moved into a newly created role at JCDecaux focussed entirely on programmatic Digital Out of Home (pDOOH), a channel that was less than a year old.

Up to that point in my career, I’d dealt mainly with poster-specialist agencies and built relationships with people who were experts in Out of Home (OOH) and Digital Out of Home (DOOH).

In my new role, I was thrown into a world where I was talking to and building relationships with digital agency teams — people who worked across multiple channels and formats.

Today, with channels such as connected TV (CTV), pDOOH, and programmatic audio maturing, my team and I are working with omnichannel experts — people who fluidly traverse between broadcast and performance channels, direct and programmatic buys, and whose skills continue to evolve rapidly.

One thing I’ve noticed over the past few years is that digital buyers tend to be more comfortable leaning into channels such as CTV and can shy away from pDOOH due to how differently it’s perceived.

I fundamentally believe that this shouldn’t be the case and that digital buyers already have many of the skills required to plan, buy, and optimise pDOOH campaigns to an extremely high degree of efficiency and effectiveness.

Digital buyers are masters of first-party data integration

First-party data is regularly used to plan and optimise display, video, mobile, and CTV campaigns, however, it is under-utilised in pDOOH.

Research by JCDecaux and MTM found that less than half (43%) of pDOOH buyers integrate first-party data into their campaigns. The research indicates that this is leading to dissatisfaction in performance, while those that have mastered first-party data integration into pDOOH report higher levels of satisfaction with campaign performance.

Using first-party data helps brands create more purposeful marketing campaigns that build direct relationships with their audience. It also strengthens brand awareness and consideration and brings greater efficiency to marketing operations.

As Phil Duffield, vice president, UK at The Trade Desk, says: “Ultimately, better data integration is what will help the growth and the performance of prDOOH — without data integration, you can’t scale effectively.”

In-flight campaign optimisation for peak performance

Many digital marketers started out in paid search — arguably the first channel that provided buyers with the opportunity to optimise campaigns 24/7.

As display, video, and mobile campaigns transitioned from blind network buys to demand-side platforms (DSPs) and trading desks, search marketers’ in-flight campaign optimisation skills followed suit.

Today, the vast pool of marketers that are highly skilled in in-flight optimisation via a DSP or trading desk are somewhat overlooked by the DOOH industry. This is holding back the growth of the industry.

One of the reasons we’re often given for this lack of transition is that digital buyers’ knowledge of DOOH best practice is not where it needs to be to run effective campaigns, therefore, responsibility continues to lie with the channel specialists who are only just getting to grips with programmatic buying, creating a vicious circle of generally outdated thinking.

We talk a lot about transformation in the marketing industry but doing things the familiar way is the opposite of transformative.

Omnichannel, supply path optimisation, full-funnel

Digital marketers spin a lot of plates and wear multiple hats. They are largely responsible for multiple channels, tasked with continually reviewing and optimising their supply path, and work to both brand and performance objectives.

You could argue that bringing pDOOH into digital marketers’ wheelhouse creates added complexity, but I don’t believe this is true.

pDOOH is proven to improve the performance of online channels, therefore it stands to reason that it should be accessible to any digital team where it makes sense in the media mix of course.

The flexibility and control that a DSP gives you over pDOOH means that marketers can prime online audiences at the time of day and in places where audiences are known to be (using privacy safe mobile ID data) and automate creative optimisation to make creative as contextually relevant as possible. Ultimately, this makes the whole media mix work harder.

Finally, I want to touch on supply path optimisation (SPO), environmental impact, and inventory quality. pDOOH through JCDecaux is as close to a direct buy as you can get as we trade 100% of our programmatic inventory through our supply-side platform (SSP) VIOOH.

From an environmental perspective, JCDecaux is committed not only to reducing carbon emissions in our advertising solutions but also to making the built environment better.

We support our partners in their development through innovative solutions and business practices which integrate sustainable developments with highly functional operations.

We also offer the highest quality screens in the industry, in premium locations — much the same as digital marketers’ quest to reach audiences through premium online, mobile, and CTV publishers.

Advances in technology, automation, and data are revolutionising the marketing industry and require refreshed skills at an accelerated pace. Formal education programmes cannot keep up thus brands, agencies, DSPs, and trading desks cannot rely on graduates to plug the gaps.

Existing teams must dedicate time and energy into developing the abilities they need to achieve positive outcomes. Laying the groundwork for transformation efforts is essential to reaching goals.

This can be a lot for an individual employee to take on. Ask your employer how they can support your education, sign up for an online training course in pDOOH or even drop me a DM.

I 100% believe that encouraging people to be curious drives innovation and creates industry-wide open communication, both of which are essential to this much needed transformation.

Dom Kozak is head of programmatic at JCDecaux UK.