Cannes Lions 2021 wrapped up last week and the festival was once again, packed with informative content and a spotlight on the world’s most exciting advertising creative.
One session that caught our attention was a great fireside chat with Alvin Bowles, VP Business Engineering & Partner Solutions at Facebook and Kirk McDonald, CEO of GroupM North America on the topic of the measurable impact of creative. Although the industry understands that creative is critical, the ability to measure its actual effect has been challenging.
Bowles described a new open-source tool that allows for creative meta-data tagging to include richer information about the creative such as creator information allowing for deeper insights by source of creative rather than stopping at the brand and product level. This allows for enriched attribution metrics and the ability for creators to see their impact on the media execution.
McDonald described GroupM’s innovative approach to less interruptive creative executions and explained that the user experience must be respected above all. As consumers continue to give their attention to specific content that is available through digital channels, brands need to find integrative ways to engage. The overarching theme was around cultivating more consultative partnerships with media partners and prioritizing a much higher involvement in the creative process for media investment agencies.
Using data to identify and execute on appropriate “moments” to connect and engage with consumers is key. McDonald further commented on GroupM’s investments toward more sophisticated measurement approaches that could adapt to a more creative-content focused delivery. With media mix modeling being a core part of the agency’s service, increasingly they are looking at adding new signals to measure effectiveness including the context in which an ad is served and deeper layers of engagement. On a positive note, there seems to be an increasing amount of collaboration with clients as they are getting more comfortable sharing critical data to make all of this happen. As outlined in IAB Canada’s newly released CDP guide, the marketer-owned potion of data is invaluable to the process of advanced media activity.
Finally, the conversation turned to Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion. McDonald explained WPP and GroupM’s commitment towards enabling new majority-readiness across their clients. As part of this initiative, GroupM invited their clients to pledge a 2% percent investment across their media expenditure towards black-owned media and then went further to expand towards a 5% pledge towards diverse-owned media. Citing low volumes of ownership as part of the systemic challenge the industry faces, GroupM is investing in black and diverse accelerators to help stimulate growth.
This positive course of action is an example of purpose-led innovation. We agree with Facebook and GroupM and would love to see more work in the area of servicing the entire community of consumers. It is also important that the industry develops measurement tools and frameworks to capture cause-based activity. Where traditional metrics focus on one-dimensional KPIs, purpose-led initiatives need a more robust approach to measure impact.
IAB Canada will discuss this need with our DEI Working group as well as the IAB US Measurement Working group that is currently mapping out a modernized global compendium of metrics that will inform dashboards for years to come.
If you are interested in participating in our DEI working group or the IAB Canada Measurement working group, please contact us at [email protected]