How AdTech and Versatile Marketing Go Hand in Hand

By Artjom Jekimtsev, Founder & CEO, Adverttu

With the world entering uncharted territory, now is the time for marketers to get creative with campaigns.

FinTech firms were already rewriting the rules on what great marketing looks like, but the global economy’s sharp, sudden stab of the brakes increases the need for innovative, daring advertising.It’s one of the secret sauces that will help financial organisations thrive in coming months.

Successful advertising has always drawn on three fundamentals; creativity, scale,and a message that breaks through cultural and social lines.

This trifecta has made one mainstream media format resilient amidst digital’s rise – out of home (OOH) advertising, and while these three characteristics are truer than ever, it’s appropriate to add a fourth– technology.

Peppy partners

Out of home advertising’s relationship with financial services is well documented. Banking institutions have long ploughed money into the medium, harnessing its credibility, memorability and affinity for communicating big bold concepts.

Last year, American Banker revealed that outdoor advertising grew 5.2% in the US to the tune of $8 billion. UK banks are no different – Metro Bank recently invested sizeable sums in its first ever OOH campaign.

Many a UK challenger brand has won customers in the same way. In fact, at one point in time it felt like you couldn’t move for all the Revolut, Starling and Monzo adverts across the nation’s capital. They were on London buses, in Tube and train stations, and on digital screens peppered throughout the city.

This strategy rapidly built the collective credibility of these brands and their customer bases grew at unimaginable pace, however, it’s important to analyse these examples from the advertiser’s perspective.

These companies have been raised in the digital age. This poses a problem for traditional out of home providers.

Marketing Concepts teams and brand managers want the same insight, analytics and flexibility as digital. Stakeholders within these businesses also expect quantifiable data – precise ROI reporting, accurate attribution, better trackability and real-time optimisation impact data.

Wasted spend is simply not an option in 2020.

Technology tricks

This heady mix has fuelled out of home advertising’s evolution.

In fact, across every business sector, AdTech’s symbiotic technologies, from computer vision to AI and machine learning algorithmic number crunching, have increased accountability and transparency.

Another positive effect has been versatility. AdTech has enabled bright marketers to flex their creative muscles, especially thanks to transit advertising’s new media canvases. These now extend far beyond trains, buses, taxis and other transport hub real estate. They incorporate personal cars and Gig Economy vehicles, commercial vans and HGVs, and even mopeds and e-cargo bikes.

Financial firms are the engines of global commerce, brands are expected to move forward with the times. They can never sit idle. Transit advertising reflects this momentum in the most tangible way – it is literal kinetic energy in the form of adverts that move.

Companies are already utilising data to improve customer satisfaction, outperform competitors and digitise services, so why should their out of home advertising strategies be any different?

Brands have a choice to make. Will they put some stale aspirational mantras on a billboard or instead think deeply about how to reach a new wave of customers, investors and financial evangelists spread across urban, suburban and semi-rural landscapes, all of which have different behaviours, expectations and personalities than their parents and grandparents?

AdTech is answering the previously unanswerable questions like who precisely saw my advert, what did they do afterwards and what did they buy. Whether an organisation’s goal is to drive new retail accounts, build brand awareness or grow customer loyalty, technology-powered advertising is crucial if companies are to weather the impending storm.