Efficient budget allocation in a fragmented media world

ADZINE: Media consumption is highly fragmented. How do you use your technology to accurately capture and evaluate media consumption across target groups?

Michaela Schmitz: Our cross-media measurement platform collects comprehensive campaign data and uses panels to validate and deduplicate it. Especially when measuring walled gardens such as Google, Amazon, or Meta, we use our direct integrations in the process. Among other things, we rely on comparing hashed email addresses to verify campaign reach reliably. This gives us a robust and precise measurement across target audiences.

ADZINE: Are social media or streaming services also measured?

Michaela Schmitz: Yes, we work with clean rooms that allow us to match our data with the data of platform providers such as Netflix, Amazon, Meta or Disney+, considering platform-specific setups. Via these direct and deeply technical integrations, we can validate campaign reach.

ADZINE: What trends in media behaviour have you discovered in your data?

Michaela Schmitz: Media usage is more fragmented than ever before. Usage is generally less loyal to fixed channels and is more strongly oriented towards content and interests. This means that targeting is becoming more complex for advertisers, and reach needs to be built up differently. Younger target groups, especially Generation Z, are moving across streaming services and walled garden platforms or are active in gaming platforms. Traditional linear television hardly plays a role for them, unless certain formats are available via streaming platforms.

ADZINE: What does this mean for media budget allocation?

Michaela Schmitz: The fragmentation of media consumption makes a broad budget allocation essential. First, advertisers should identify where their audiences consume content and ensure their brand is in those channels. Brands must also identify new and incremental reach potential to reach target groups effectively today. PlayStation or Twitch, for example, are interesting channels through which younger target groups can be easily reached. Today’s fragmentation requires highly targeted allocation strategies that can be adapted dynamically. Measurement is an excellent way of identifying trends. We observe that large advertisers increasingly analyse individual channels in great detail and make targeted investments.

ADZINE: Why shouldn’t the entire budget be invested in the best performer? What opportunities does budget diversification offer?

Michaela Schmitz: Reach can be built up more efficiently through diversification, mainly when platforms serve different target groups. One option, for example, is to look at the net reach of your campaigns, focusing on incremental reach and overlaps and derive appropriate strategies to increase incremental reach. Those who continuously analyse reach trends, costs and target group coverage can flexibly adjust and optimise budgets even within ongoing campaigns.

ADZINE: What key figures are necessary to diversify media budgets effectively?

Michaela Schmitz: Daily data on reach across channels, CPM, target audience distribution and cost trends are prerequisites to allocating media budgets more effectively. By looking at these metrics, advertisers can recognise when it is worth shifting budgets from one channel to another – for example, if comparable target groups can be reached more cheaply in other channels.

ADZINE: The increasingly fragmented media use is one thing, but are more channels making it into the marketing mix?

Michaela Schmitz: Yes, we are noticing an increasing expansion of the marketing mix. New channels are being considered, and we are integrating those new channels into our solution. For example, we have already created an integration with Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, YouTube, Meta, and numerous other CTV providers. Using pixel measurements, we can also map advertising inventories from other channels, such as Samsung or LG, and we keep growing the number of integrations. This development also has to do with digital advertising becoming more normal. People are now going back to basics, such as reach and advertising impact.

ADZINE: How does this return to the basics manifest itself?

Michaela Schmitz: Digital advertising is now an established part of the media mix. The phase in which it was primarily about clicks and impressions is over. Instead, the focus is increasingly on net reach and advertising impact – in other words, answering how many people were reached, how often and how accurately the target group was reached. Not always one-to-one in the most direct way, but it does ‘click’ in people’s minds that consumers build up a positive association with a brand and, later in a store, make the corresponding purchase decision to favour this brand. This classic media dialogue is becoming more important again.

ADZINE: Given the observed changes in media behaviour, what is the best strategy for advertisers to use their online advertising budget optimally?

Michaela Schmitz: The advertising strategy should be based on three principles: Firstly, brands should minimise dependencies on individual platforms and be present in different channels. Secondly, the fragmentation of media consumption calls for diversifying media budgets across those channels. The third principle is “measure, measure, measure”. Many companies still advertise blindly or only look at their channels in isolation. Budget allocations are then often gut decisions instead of being data-driven. This is why daily insights should be generated to identify optimisation potential. Only those who systematically analyse their campaigns will recognise quickly enough which channels deliver reach effectively and where investments are worthwhile.

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