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How to unlock the power of your marketing technology How to unlock the power of your marketing technology

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How to unlock the power of your marketing technology How to unlock the power of your marketing technology

Regardless of the source, there’s one thing the research has in common; the analysis reveals the success rate of digital transformations is horrible. Embarking on a journey to marketing technology transformation is also not without disappointments. But the sky is not falling just yet, my friends. Read on for a proven approach to unlock the power of your marketing technology and tip the odds of transformation success in your favor.

Don’t be a martech hyper-consumer

The pandemic provoked a noticeable acceleration of digital technology usage, especially the cloud, for things like remote work, online purchasing, operations, and business decision-making. However, based on my research, most marketers didn’t make substantial changes to their core marketing technology stack. That’s a good thing because whenever my hyper-consumer gene kicks in, I almost always experience a heavy dose of buyer’s remorse. With that said, let’s begin the journey to unlock the power of your marketing technology with this advice:

Do not purchase another platform, point solution, service, or analyst report until you read this article and share it with the rest of your marketing organization. If you’re in the process of procuring one of those things, stop. You’ll thank me later, I promise.

I know that advice will provoke some nasty emails and phone calls from friends, partners, and former colleagues in the marketing technology business. I’m willing to take the hit and risk a few expensive meals, extravagant conferences, and yet another logo-embossed 1GB thumb drive, notebook, plastic water bottle, or bamboo cutting board. Besides, despite the popularity of Martech.org as the guiding light of marketing technology common-sense advice and education, a few marketers will undoubtedly miss this article, so there should still be some prospects with whom they can engage.

If you’re like many of the marketers I’ve advised over the years, one of the biggest challenges is securing a consistent budget to build out a martech stack that’s fit for purpose. I’m not talking about a bunch of disconnected technology that you pay for but never use, like some of the tools on my workbench from my last online shopping spree (I know, but there was a big sale). I’m talking about a martech stack designed and implemented to help you create remarkable customer experiences, do more work in less time, and achieve your primary business and marketing goals.

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There are many possible reasons for this budget challenge. Here are some of the more popular rationales:

  • Leadership doesn’t believe marketing is worth investment because it’s a cost center, not a profit center.
  • IT doesn’t want to provide the dollars necessary for modernizing a messy, disconnected, underutilized, aging collection of tools.
  • A solid, compelling business case complete with potential ROI has not been articulated.
  • You’ve been burned by questionable — and expensive — martech investments, and the office of the CFO has become the department of “No” (which is typically an IT department function).

Avoid shiny objects

For marketers clever enough to get the budget they want and need, rather than starting with the business problem they’re trying to solve, they buy the promise of a shiny object martech solution only to find that the results don’t live up to the hype or solve the problem. And you and I both know you’re not going to the boss to admit that those precious budget dollars you spent would have been more effectively used as wallpaper in your home office.

If you’re at the point as you read this where you’ve been mesmerized by a shiny object martech tool or persuasive marketing technology salesperson, take a deep breath and step away from the purchase order. And please, don’t think you’re alone if you felt slightly uncomfortable (or guilty) as you read that. We’ve all been there at one time or another. 


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Define, prioritize, and align your goals

If you’re still reading, congrats. You’ve taken the first step to breaking the cycle of making unnecessary and potentially risky martech purchasing decisions. What now, you ask? I have three words for you.

Define. Prioritize. Align.

Before you spend another penny on marketing technology, there’s important work to be done to define, prioritize, and align your business, marketing, and customer experience goals. Defining and prioritizing your goals across these three inextricably related areas is the first step toward clarity of purpose. It sets the foundation for everyone, not just marketing, to understand and embrace predetermined short-term and long-term targets the company, business units, and individuals plan to achieve over a specific period.

Prioritization will help the marketing organization focus on the essential tasks first, support organizational alignment efforts, and provide the operational clarity needed for effective execution. As the Harvard Business Review article “How to Prioritize Your Company’s Projects” so rightly says, “…prioritization at a strategic and operational level is often the difference between success and failure. But many organizations do it badly.” Don’t be one of those organizations.

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Finally, alignment is a powerful construct that can unite the marketing organization and the entire company around goals. Clearly defining business, marketing, and customer experience goals makes it easier to begin the often challenging process of strategically aligning three of the most critical areas of a thriving business that puts the customer at the center of all they do. And when you do that and do it well, that’s when the magic starts to happen.

Ways of working: People and processes   

Another important to-do before spending another penny on marketing technology is to thoughtfully and thoroughly review your marketing organization’s ways of working, specifically people and processes. It’s all about how a team (and greater organization) works individually and collectively. You’ll elicit and document use cases for each role, including desired outcomes and dependencies. The goal is to understand the roles, people, and team practices that make the marketing organization go before buying or implementing marketing technology. Think of marketing technology as the enabler of those people, processes, and team practices.

Please note that we didn’t start with the technology; we left it for last. We can focus on marketing technology with our business, marketing, and customer experience goals defined, aligned, and prioritized. The big question is how well any marketing technology you select, implement, and use will support the fulfillment of the goals defined previously.

Assessing your marketing technology ecosystem

Regular assessments are essential to unlocking the power of your marking technology. Here are five areas of focus that will help kick your optimization efforts into high gear:

  • Inventory – This collaborative effort helps everyone in the marketing organization understand the platforms and point solutions that comprise the current marketing technology stack. The deployment, use cases, and integrations between martech platforms, legacy systems, and any third-party products are analyzed and documented to create a holistic view of the martech stack. I can’t tell you how often I work with clients on the inventory process and discover marketing technology they didn’t know they had (or were paying for). There are no shortcuts, so make sure you start here.
  • Implementation – In most cases, SaaS marketing technology platforms and tools don’t require much in the way of implementation; pay your money, get login access, and off you go. But in certain instances, there will be a need to deploy and configure a platform or point solution. In many cases, martech vendors will provide this service or introduce you to a partner. Either way, you should thoroughly document the implementation and configuration of all marketing technology platforms and point solutions. As configurations and usage patterns change over time, update the documentation to reflect those changes.
  • Integration – One of the most important criteria when selecting a marketing technology vendor is the availability of an Application Programming Interface (API) or native “connectors.” In the early days of marketing technology, integrating various platforms and point solutions required custom coding, time, and a substantial investment. Today, marketers can unify their digital ecosystems faster and more effectively than ever for a unified view of their customers and marketing efforts. Do your homework and make sure any martech products or services you’re considering provide a flexible, effective, and affordable path to integration.
  • Utilization – Over the last few years, you’ve undoubtedly heard or read that martech utilization is a struggle for many marketing organizations. In 2020, Gartner’s analysis indicated that marketing leaders were utilizing only 58% of their martech stack’s full breadth of capabilities. But you didn’t need to read a  research study to know this. You’re living it, every day – am I right? What I said earlier bears repeating; before you spend a penny on any marketing technology, you must take the time and effort to define, prioritize, and align your business, marketing, and customer experience goals. With the results of this vital work as your guide, you can determine how well any marketing technology will support the fulfillment of these goals before you buy and enjoy a higher level of utilization after integrating into your stack.
  • Investment and ROI – Turning again to Gartner’s research, the 2021 Annual CMO Spend Survey showed that, even though marketing budgets tightened a bit, martech spending dominated at 26.7% of the total budget, higher than spending on third-party agencies, labor, or media. Most marketers I’ve spoken or worked with consistently identify proving the ROI of martech spend as one of their most significant impediments to success. To maximize your investment and return, you should closely examine the digital revenue drivers and the human, process, and technological costs impacting the ROI of your martech stack via the key performance indicators (KPI) you use to measure success. Here’s where you can enlist the help of your CFO. They love using spreadsheets and pivot tables.

Your future state martech stack awaits

There you have it—a proven approach to unlocking the power of your marketing technology. Sure, it’s going to require some work, time, intelligent people and a nominal investment. But armed with prioritized and aligned business, marketing, customer experience, technology goals and the knowledge gained from a thorough assessment of your current environment, you can envision a future state that optimizes your martech investments and ROI. And if you do it right, you could also enjoy deeper customer engagements, more meaningful relationships, and more revenue. 


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About The Author

How to unlock the power of your marketing technology How

Gene has been a Martech Healer for three decades, inventing the future while helping organizations and leaders ‘Ride the Crest of Change.’ A serial entrepreneur since his first newspaper delivery start-up, Gene developed early innovations in social media networks, digital-out-of-home narrowcasting, and SMS mobile marketing. He currently serves as the chief strategy officer and head of consulting at GeekHive, a New York-based marketing technology consultancy helping clients maximize their investments in martech.

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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.”

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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.”

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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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