At this years Digiday Media Buying Summit in Palm Springs industry leaders, brand executives and fellow media buyers gathered to discuss the rapidly changing media buying landscape and how brands are adapting. A vast range of topics were discussed such as the impact of generative AI, CTV buying, tech FOMO, Google Performance Max and driving brand as well performance results.

1. Generative AI

• What we are seeing and hearing: Google and Meta have begun auto-enabling generative AI enhancements, allowing the platform to create or apply changes to ads such as adding music, adjusting images, creating sitelinks, developing copy variations and more.
• Why this matters: These generative AI enhancements help to improve performance but are still very new, making it challenging to ensure all ad variations are being presented as brands intended.
• Our Approach: We have found success utilizing dynamic search ads that auto populate headlines on text ads based on keyword searches. For one of our travel and tourism clients it drives the majority (53%) of clicks to their site. We advise our clients that while these enhancements are designed to boost performance, they don't generate perfect ads every time. We recommend a phase of testing to optimize their impact effectively.

2. CTV Expansion

• What we are seeing and hearing: Amazon catapulted their way to the top of most sought after CTV ad space upon implementing an opt-out-based ad-supported tier for their 200MM monthly viewers. And as Netflix’s ad-supported user base also continues to grow, we anticipate enhancements in scalability and targeting capabilities, offering more value to advertisers.
• Why this matters: Unlike for traditional TV, we can now measure actual sales driven from CTV through pixels and interactive ads with QR codes. As targeting becomes more robust and inventory continues to grow in the CTV space the cost of buying placements has come down, allowing more advertisers to enter the space.
• Our Approach: Through our internal trading desk, Apex, we are able to activate CTV campaigns efficiently at scale through private marketplace deals across multiple providers without upfront commitments and minimum spends.

3. Tech FOMO

• What we are seeing and hearing: Platforms are incentivizing new tech usage through ad credits and promising AI integrations.
• Why this matters: It may seem enticing to get free ad credits, but these tests require initial investment and unique creative to be built with no guarantee they will deliver results. Therefore it’s important to avoid committing to too many tests at once. There is also an increasing number of companies touting AI capabilities; however, many are simply utilizing machine learning, which has been the backbone of programmatic buying for years.
• Our Approach: Our agency conducts a rigorous vetting process to ensure all tech tests will deliver results against new audiences without impacting current media mix performance.

4. Google Performance Max

• What we are seeing and hearing: There is a lack of detailed information from Google regarding which specific placements are yielding results, the demographics of the audience engaging with these ads, and which creative elements or messages are having an impact.
• Why this matters: Google PMAX is a great way to expand reach across all Google products especially when working with small budgets however there is limited opportunity to optimize without detailed reporting.
• Our Approach: We recommend testing PMAX as an extension of your current Google campaigns and verifying the quality of conversions through third party measurement.

5. Brand Building AND Performance

• What we are seeing and hearing: Solely investing in high converting tactics hinders your ability to build a relationship between brands and your customers. We are able to measure consumer acquisition cost from virtually every tactic now but not all tactics should be evaluated by that metric.
• Why this matters: Data direct from partners like Meta and Google needs to be evaluated through third parties to verify their true effectiveness.
• Our Approach: We create proprietary dashboards for our clients that merge performance from our full funnel integrated campaigns with their internal data, organic social and google analytics allowing us to see the full picture of what is actually driving results.

In Conclusion

Generative AI and tech innovations are reshaping advertising, bringing dynamic and unpredictable features. These new tools are exciting but call for a careful, experimental approach. With CTV advertising on the rise and tech investments tempting, it's key to strategically test and critically evaluate these options to make sure they truly benefit your brand without compromising quality or effectiveness. Interested in learning more about how AGM can support your next campaign? Get in touch