[Understanding Marketers] There’s a professional perspective on advertising (Part 1): How does it differ between a marketing department placing its own ads and “customer referral ads”? What is data-driven advertising?
In the world of marketing, the most common competition is about designing eye-catching advertisements. But a golden apple needs to shine outwards to be revered as a treasure. How can a beautifully crafted advertisement be seen and make people fall in love with the brand? This is the expertise of “ad placement.” Today, we interviewed Tony, an expert from Linker AI Smart Advertising, to share what the expertise of “ad placement” entails and what “data-driven ad placement” is.
First, as an advertising consultant for Linker, could you share your insights on the roles and expertise involved in advertising sales and project management within a marketing project?
Let me illustrate this with the example of working with a completely new client. We are the experts in “ad placement.” Our expertise includes research on different advertising channels, determining which ads to run on which channel, when to run them, and how much to run for the most benefit. We also know how to control the daily ad spend. This is different from advertising agencies, who know how to create the most eye-catching content, while we know how to put content in the right place.
Before collaborating, we will gain a deep understanding of our clients and clarify the goals of this advertising campaign. “Advertising” is not necessarily about selling products. Other common functions include building brand awareness, increasing followers and driving traffic, which are “not immediately effective but contribute to the long-term growth of the brand.”
Our clients typically have clear goals when seeking cooperation. However, if they lack specific goals or visions, or if their goals are deemed difficult to achieve through our assessment, requiring a longer timeline or the integration of other resources, we will provide objective data and suggestions from a consultant’s perspective for client evaluation. Ultimately, we will collaboratively develop a comprehensive advertising campaign plan and provide our projected potential impact. In conversion advertising, the most critical factors, “budget” and “time,” will have the greatest influence on conversion rates—that is, determining how many consumers will be attracted by the advertising and purchase the company’s products.
Second, most client companies that work with Linker already have departments responsible for marketing planning, advertising, social media, etc. In this situation, why would a company need to partner with a professional advertising consultant like Linker?
We typically encounter two types of customers:
- First, there is a shortage of marketing personnel.
Advertising is actually a skill that requires time to study and experience to develop. If a company only has one or two marketing talents, they are already overwhelmed with tasks such as designing advertising content and arranging public relations activities. They cannot possibly spend time tracking the effectiveness of different advertising channels and researching customer groups. They may end up spending their advertising budget on intuition, which is a huge waste of money . It would be better to spend more budget to hire professional advertisers to ensure that the advertising budget is used in the right places.
- Secondly, while the company has a marketing person who also acts as a pitcher, his experience and perspective are not as broad.
After all, generating a large number of potential new customer groups every week is a very difficult task for humans. A typical company’s marketing professionals are perfectly capable of looking at reports and simply “placing ads,” but what about analyzing which channels to use, what copy to use, and what hidden clues lie in the data from the reports for different products, campaigns, and advertising goals ? Will using GDN or Google keywords achieve wider reach for this campaign? And which ad designs are most likely to be successful? Clients come to us seeking these kinds of professional insights.
Third, Linker’s main focus is “data-driven advertising.” Could you briefly explain what data-driven advertising is?
First and foremost, I must say that data-driven advertising isn’t about having robots do the work for you and then sitting back and waiting for results to fall from the sky. Data analysis is an additional tool for reference, but interpreting, integrating, and utilizing the suggestions from AI robots is still something we need to do with human intelligence.
Our AI robot can be simply understood in two parts: ” an extra brain to observe the market and help you sniff out more target audiences ” and ” an extra analyst to help you point out the results of each campaign, evaluating good and bad plans .” We certainly know that this is very useful information, but how to use it depends on the experience of advertising professionals and consultants.
For example, if I want to sell a beauty food product today, with the main selling point being “edible whitening injections,” the marketing department would definitely think of advertising to consumers who like to read women’s magazines and read about medical aesthetic clinics. But what else? With the same consumers and the same channels, sales quickly reach their limit. Linker’s AI robot can solve a problem that plagues marketing departments. The robot “expands” weekly based on big data. By reading people’s online behavior, we connect new keywords and new potential customer groups from the vast sea of people for advertisers to reference. Have you ever thought about associating “beauty food” with customers who “redeem airline miles for upgrades”? The robot does that for you. Should you use the suggestions the robot “generates”? Should you use them now or later? That’s decided by human experience and wisdom. But by constantly discovering new consumers and testing new audiences, our clients’ products will never have trouble selling.
4. I’d like to ask Linker what a “data-driven” marketing strategy is? What benefits can data bring us in the pre-, during, and post-marketing stages of a product?
Before collaborating with clients, data can be used to predict the effectiveness of an advertising campaign based on market research and analysis. We then use this information to align with the client’s goals, providing them with a reference point for precise planning when developing their marketing strategy. If the client desires higher and more diversified results, we can also use the current big data as a foundation to discuss how to revise the strategy and whether the timeline needs to be recalculated. This ensures that we have a general grasp of the outcome before starting, preventing us from groping in the dark.
The mid-term period begins with advertising campaigns. Using the pre-planned goals as the minimum target, in addition to connecting with the previous point about keyword and audience scaling on pre-determined “effective” channels and continuously testing and optimizing advertising performance , we also leverage data to identify new advertising channels and timings suitable for this objective . It’s somewhat like conducting A/B testing on an iPhone, but at a higher frequency, weekly or even daily. The data is constantly uncovering new advertising ideas; what tests show good results? Use them! What tests don’t? Cut your losses and don’t waste budget. There’s no such thing as a perfect ad; what we can do is continuously test and optimize, always striving for 99.9 points.
Later, we can simply consider it as “near the end of this cooperation period and the closing of the project.” Through reports generated by AI data, we analyze the actual effectiveness of this advertising campaign for our clients to see if it aligns with our goals. We can also conduct effectiveness analysis on each detailed action of the advertising campaign, summarize strategic suggestions for the next advertising campaign , and verify through this experiment what elements and methods can be incorporated into future marketing plans, etc.
While the basic framework can be described using pre-, mid-, and post-stage methods, advertising itself is not something that involves rolling updates, adjustments, and testing. From a learning perspective, we can understand data-driven advertising in this way, but in actual operation, it definitely involves the interactive application of various methods. The nuances rely on professional experience and the judgment accumulated through learning by doing in each advertising campaign.
Thank you, Tony, for sharing with us today. The knowledge you gained was both broad and deep. In the next article, we will continue our discussion on “What precise insights do professional pitchers have that set them apart from ordinary people when it comes to advertising?” Let’s learn these secrets together with all marketers and advertisers! Stay tuned!
Special thanks to: Tony Wu, Advertising Manager at Linker.
Specializes in integrated marketing solutions (including advertising, SEO, KOLs, and social media) for all types of brands, helping them identify their real marketing pain points and plan to achieve each stage’s goals with different budget levels. Has served industries including Japanese home appliance brands, Japanese kitchenware brands, beauty groups, leading Taiwanese convenience store chains, and various cross-border B2B companies, currently a Senior Account Manager at Linker.
Digit Spark, part of the Zhenhao Internet Media Group, integrates its six sub-brands offering data application services to provide enterprises with comprehensive and precise optimization services across five key areas: “Industry Customer Targeting,” “Performance Optimization Strategies,” “Digital Tool Integration,” “Online Voice Cultivation,” and “Brand Value Promotion.” It drives brand success through data technology.
