2013 Digital Marketing Trends in Analytics for Advertising Agencies

A few of Traffic’s best and brightest were amongst the audience at the recent AIMIA conference. Under discussion was the small matter of ‘The Future of Advertising’. Like us, it’s probably a subject close to your heart. So what exactly does the future hold for brands and agencies? While ‘analytics’ and ‘data’ were the buzz words for digital marketing leading up to 2013, ‘insights’ are shaping up as the next holy grail.

There was a time when an advertising agency built a profile around the target market, came up with a creative campaign and sent it out into market hoping for the best. But with the dramatic rise of digital in everyday decision-making, that old way of working is dead. And long may it rest in peace.

We can now know every consumer and their preferences in meticulous, even intimate detail. That knowledge is based on which websites they’ve seen and what locations they’ve visited, the words they’ve typed and the buttons they’ve clicked. We have the technology to serve up slightly different content for the same campaign, tailored to the individual consumers. Two people sitting in the same room at the same time can be viewing different versions of the same brand’s ad.

Data on every consumer action is constantly being collected in the electronic world. Google Analytics has given every teenage webmaster, small business owner, and Mum and Dad entrepreneur the ability to track their website traffic. Stats are available at the click of the finger. While there is no shortage of data, the big question remains. Where are the insights? What does 67% of users or 1% click-through really mean for your business?

For a digital agency, reporting on performance and data is no longer enough. Clients still love hearing stats but what do all those numbers add up to at the end of the day? Their true value lies in how we interpret those impressive sounding numbers. The agencies that are able to recognise patterns and anomalies from data, gather intelligent insights into customer behaviour and devise big ideas that capitalise on these, will be the ones delivering success for their clients in our data-saturated world.

Along with ‘insights’, the other hot topic under discussion for digital marketers and advertisers was ‘relevance’. For a taste of what that means for 2013 and beyond, you can read about it here.