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Challenges, Budgets, Digital Transformation & Skills

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Challenges, Budgets, Digital Transformation & Skills

Many different types of businesses have struggled over the past few years, and as a result, the marketing profession has had to adjust its goals, duties, and skill sets.

A company stops innovating and evolving, and it often undergoes a transition. There is less of a need for radical change when a company moves in parallel with its market, updating its products, services, Digital Marketing, and proposal to attract new consumers and increase the lifetime value of its present clients.

Marketers’ responsibilities as senior executives now include acting as revenue and growth drivers and company accelerators. They must also develop strategies for attracting and retaining the talent they need to succeed in today’s highly competitive, customer-centric (CX-focused) e-commerce marketplace.

What are the most considerable difficulties facing marketers and managers overseeing them in this more digital world?

Most significant obstacles facing the business world of marketing?

The most effective forms of digital marketing use online and offline methods of reaching and interacting with consumers. However, chief marketing officers (CMOs) and other top marketers have difficulties as budgets get cut, and upper management expects data to make educated business decisions.

So, let’s take a look at four of the main obstacles:

Delivering Greater ROI on Marketing Budget

It is now much more straightforward for marketers to calculate their efforts’ return on Investment (ROI), thanks to the wealth of data available across digital platforms. However, that isn’t very easy because 20% of C-level marketers name increased return on investment as their top challenge.

Return on investment (ROI) is significant since it illustrates the worth of marketing activities and can help chief marketing officers evaluate the success of each campaign. This will allow them to develop and launch more effective advertising in the future with more reliable information.

Achieving a Positive Return-On-Investment is complicated. If you have evidence to support your proposal, your leadership team is more likely to endorse it. CMO, Americas, Tech Industry.

These days, top marketers place a premium on return on investment (ROI) because it aids in selecting the most productive marketing strategies. It reveals trends in consumer habits and demonstrates marketing’s effect on revenue.

Attracting New Talent to the Marketing Team

It’s widely known that there’s a worldwide skills gap in the digital realm. The Economist Group emphasized combining technology and skill for marketing success.

There is a critical lack of talent, especially in these vital sectors that are given below:

  • UX designers
  • General digital marketers
  • PPC specialists
  • Data analysts
  • Search Marketing
  • Martech
  • CX specialists
  • Search Marketing

It’s hardly surprising that in today’s highly competitive digital market, most of these positions are concerned with either boosting the customer experience or increasing brand awareness. What’s remarkable is that general digital marketing skills are valued almost as highly as PPC, CX, and data analysis expertise.

Unlocking the Power of Data to Push Growth

Marketers’ valuable resource is data. It helps marketing teams and their managers learn about their customers, find ways to personalize their communications and launch effective campaigns.

Data is abundant, but it can be challenging for many CMOs and senior marketers to know how and where to use it. Smaller businesses might sometimes struggle to find skilled personnel to manage their data and turn it into actionable insights.

This is because many organizations are either relatively small in size or have limited resources, so they need marketers that can handle everything from content marketing to sponsored search to social media marketing.

Similarly, businesses will have to rethink their strategies for gathering client information in light of the decline of third-party cookies. While tools like first-party and zero-party data make this possible, businesses still need to adapt their thinking and give customers incentives to trust their personal information.

Integrating Traditional & Digital Marketing

Traditional and online marketing need to work together in all fields. Nowadays, customers encounter several connections along the marketing funnel, expecting a consistent experience from the beginning to the end.

Therefore, CMOs and senior marketers emphasize multichannel marketing as a consumer engagement and retention strategy. In the words of one chief marketing officer in the nonprofit sector: “We need a better understanding of the need to be omnichannel focused and digitally seamless.”

Marketing Skills & Digital Skill Shortages

Senior and mid-level marketers on workforce capabilities found that both groups felt severely limited in digital marketing expertise, particularly in data analysis, digital marketing strategy, and user experience design.

It’s a worldwide challenge for business executives to find and keep employees with the right mix of digital skills. Research on digital skills and employment trends reveals an employer’s nightmare as the employment landscape shifts to favor workers. Companies also offer attractive compensation and benefits packages to attract and retain talented individuals.

Leaders face the additional difficulty of filling skill shortages within their organizations through the training of both current and incoming employees.

In 2023, What’s Next For Marketing?

Marketers, especially those with cutting-edge knowledge and experience, have a promising professional future. In addition, chief marketing officers and other top marketers can see positive results from their efforts using a data-driven, customer-centric approach.

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples

Introduction

With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.

Types of YouTube Ads

Video Ads

  • Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
  • Types:
    • In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
    • Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.

Display Ads

  • Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
  • Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).

Companion Banners

  • Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
  • Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.

YouTube Ad Specs by Type

Skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
    • Action: 15-20 seconds

Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
  • Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1

Bumper Ads

  • Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
  • File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 640 x 360px
    • Vertical: 480 x 360px

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
  • Headline/Description:
    • Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
    • Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line

Display Ads

  • Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
  • Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
  • File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
  • File Size: Max 150KB.
  • Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
  • Logo Specs:
    • Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
    • File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
    • Max Size: 200KB.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
  • File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).

Conclusion

YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!

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Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists

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Why We Are Always 'Clicking to Buy', According to Psychologists

Amazon pillows.

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.

To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.

Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots

Salesforce’s evolving architecture

It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?

“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”

Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”

That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.

“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.

Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”

Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot

“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.

For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”

Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”

It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”

What’s new about Einstein Personalization

Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?

“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”

Finally, trust

One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.

“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”

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