'Marketers should measure creativity, creatively, and longitudinally with regards to LTV'

Taking to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity stage, leaders from Ascential and Amazon Ads delved deeper into how creative efficacy is harder to gauge in times when every marketing dollar needs to work harder than ever. 

During the fireside chat, they also broke down the mechanics for effective and accurate creative campaign measurement, and how to cultivate the right conditions for success.

As per Ruslana Zbagerska, Vice-President of Technology and Product Development, Amazon Ads, the team at Amazon Ads is focused on helping brands build connections in times when consumers and their attention span is shrinking as they are engaging with brands through multiple devices in different ways and looking for the brands that they can trust and relate to, today.

“The best way to start building these authentic connections is starting with your story- Who you are as a brand, what you stand for and your values, amongst others. Bring these as part of your story to the forefront and find new innovative ways through different creative experiences to engage with consumers across the shopping and entertainment journey,” she said.

She further stated that brands should really focus on three key things- what is the message, what is that authentic story that they want the customers to relate to and what is the right moment of relating to that story. This is then followed by leveraging new and innovative ways of starting or building the connection.

Commenting as to what it means for the customer journey if one was to consider the viewpoint above in measuring the impact, Duncan Painter, CEO, Ascential Digital Commerce, stated that because people today are engaging less and less and more with advertising owing to the 10x fragmentation of mediums, brands today really have just 10 seconds or less to present and land a message whilst capturing the consumer’s imagination in a performance environment in a longitudinal way.

“Too many brands today focus on short-term performance measurement and are therefore not able to understand longitudinal measurement in terms of the Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) that comes through the impact of the work they’re doing,” he said.

He also went on to add that with a lot of new formats coming into the picture, there is a very different impact on both the short-term and long-term goals/objectives of brands. 

“But Social Commerce, Influencer Marketing, etc are very effective formats for driving marketing activity. In fact, when we look at the impact of the same, the commerce channels in China are experiencing that advertising has driven almost 20% market share of the entire commerce market into Douyin- the TikTok of China,” he said.  

Adding to this, Zbagerska, also emphasised that marketers are leaning heavily towards influencer marketing and that over 50% of marketers are flowing or shifting their ad dollars towards it given the efficacy of the medium.

Sharing as to what are some of the technological changes that are taking place in the ecosystem, Painter stated that while Generative AI has surely been a buzzword during the Cannes Lions 2023 even though generative LLM models have been there for the past two decades and have only bounced up leading to massive excitement today, the same, like other technologies such as predictive AI, will soon become a part of the general mix.

“If you think about sponsored ad solutions, we have been using AI for years to actually help advertisers reach the right customers at the right time, with the right message and create relevant relatable experiences, as using technology and making the most out of it is in our DNA,” Zbagerska pointed out.

She also suggested that when measuring their holistic campaigns, advertisers should focus on the term ‘holistic’ and not just KPIs such as brand awareness, cost per acquisition, immediate sales etc. because it is all about every single engagement throughout the journey and what value the campaign creates for the brand.

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