The Many Benefits of Contextual Advertising.
The deprecation of third-party cookies for digital advertising has been a hot topic in the industry for many years. Third-party cookies have long been used by advertisers to track users across different websites and target them with personalized ads. However, with increasing concerns about privacy and data security, major browsers including Safari and Firefox have already deprecated third-party-cookies, with Google joining the brigade early this year, with plans to complete the task by the second half of 2024.
This shift has significant implications for digital advertisers, who must find new ways to target and reach their audiences. One alternative that has been gaining traction is contextual advertising.
Contextual advertising involves placing ads on websites that are contextually relevant to the content being viewed by the user. For example, a pet food brand might place ads on a YouTube video teaching you how to potty train your dog.
There are several benefits to utilizing contextual advertising. Let’s explore my top four benefits:
- Privacy-Friendly: Contextual does not rely on tracking individual users across the web. This default setting can help build trust with consumers who are increasingly concerned about their online privacy.
- Increased Engagement: Contextual advertising is more effective in reaching engaged audiences, as ads are placed in relevant contexts where users are more likely to pay attention and increase campaign performance.
- The Right Audience & New Audiences: Contextual will target ads based on the content being viewed rather than user data, allowing advertisers to tap into new markets and demographics that they may not have reached with traditional targeting methods.
- Mindset: For this one, let me tell you about a real-life example. Over the weekend, I was looking at some accessories for my Solo Stove for an upcoming camping trip. I didn’t buy, and today I was on a parenting website because my child has a rash, and I was served a Solo Stove Ad. My mindset was focused on taking care of my child, therefore I didn’t engage with the ad. Had I been served the ad while browsing outdoor and hiking content, my mindset would have encouraged me to convert.
In conclusion, while the deprecation of third-party cookies presents challenges for digital advertisers, the shift toward contextual advertising offers a promising alternative. By focusing on contextually relevant placements and respecting user privacy, advertisers can reach their target audiences, uncover new audiences, and increase ROI.
Reach out to info@weare4d.com to learn about 4D contextual solutions for Display, YouTube, OLV, CTV, and Mobile In-App.
AI, the technology innovation marketers cannot ignore.
The role of marketing to deliver effective and results-driven customer experiences has never been more important. Consumers are inundated with content, making it even harder for marketers to cut through the noise and effectively engage audiences. But with the rising growth of generative AI and predictive analytics, the future is looking bright.
As AI capabilities continue to mature, the synergy between machine intelligence and advertising technologies is unlocking unprecedented opportunities for advertisers, publishers, and consumers alike. AI has the ability to process vast amounts of data at remarkable speeds which is accelerating the new era of data-driven decision-making. Machine learning algorithms analyse user behaviour, preferences, and engagement patterns, allowing advertisers to create highly targeted and personalised campaigns.This not only enhances the relevance of ads but also optimises ad spend by directing resources towards the most promising audience segments.
Using AI to enhance customer experiences is one of the hottest trends hitting our industry right now – and for very good reason. Let’s explore how various AI use cases can support brands in looking to build trust, drive personalisation, improve engagement and deliver the most effective and enjoyable customer experience – no matter where consumers are or what device they are on.
Personalisation:
- AI analyses vast amounts of customer data to create detailed profiles and understand individual preferences.
- Personalised recommendations, content, and offers can be delivered in real-time based on the customer’s behaviour, history, and preferences.
- Dynamic personalisation in marketing messages, website content, and product recommendations leads to a more tailored and engaging customer experience.
Chatbots and Virtual Assistants:
- AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants provide instant, 24/7 customer support, addressing queries and issues promptly.
- Natural language processing (NLP) enables more human-like interactions, enhancing the conversational aspect of customer service.
- Automation of routine tasks allows human agents to focus on more complex issues, improving overall efficiency.
Predictive Analytics:
- AI analyzes historical customer data to predict future behavior and preferences.
- Predictive analytics enables businesses to anticipate customer needs, allowing them to proactively address issues or offer relevant products and services.
- This proactive approach enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Voice and Image Recognition:
- Voice-activated AI interfaces, like virtual assistants, provide a hands-free and convenient way for customers to interact with devices and services.
- Image recognition technology enhances the visual search experience, allowing customers to find products by uploading images or using their device’s camera.
- These features contribute to a seamless and intuitive customer experience.
Customer Journey Mapping:
- AI helps businesses map and analyse the entire customer journey, identifying pain points and areas for improvement.
- Predictive modelling assists in forecasting potential bottlenecks or issues, enabling proactive intervention to enhance the overall customer experience.
Sentiment Analysis:
- AI analyzes customer feedback, reviews, and social media sentiment to gauge customer satisfaction.
- Businesses can promptly address negative sentiment and capitalise on positive feedback, demonstrating a commitment to customer-centric values.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR):
- AI-driven AR and VR technologies enhance the online shopping experience by allowing customers to visualize products in their real-world environment before making a purchase.
- Virtual try-ons and immersive experiences contribute to higher customer satisfaction and confidence in purchasing decisions.
Fraud Prevention:
- AI algorithms analyse patterns of behaviour to identify and prevent fraudulent activities, protecting both businesses and customers from security threats.
Seasonal Snapshots with 4D : Cyber Week
It’s long been recited among industry veterans, marketers and the wider trade press; data is the holy grail of digital marketing. And for good reason. Gaining access to, and activating on, rich customer data, is key in enabling you to reach your audiences in the right place and time. Yet many businesses are plagued with data fragmentation, and what once was a challenge a decade ago, still remains one of the biggest concerns faced by businesses today. The rise of digital has only generated more and more data, arming businesses with the insights they need in order to deliver a strong digital marketing strategy. However, the vast majority of businesses have data sitting in various places throughout their organisation creating data silos. What’s more, many businesses have numerous teams each wanting to gain access to different dimensions of data for their own remits, making it somewhat tricky business. This fragmentation not only causes internal tensions and disparate ways of working, but severely hinders the inner workings of a well-oiled data-driven marketing machine.
And, to add salt to the wound, these businesses have tried everything in their power to streamline their internal workings. Huge investments have been made into their tech stacks, with the promise of their data being managed in one central location to drive revenue, but the reality is starkly different. In fact, in a survey we ran a few years back, almost half of UK CMOs (45%) estimate poor data handling risks costing their business between £250,000 and £5m every year.
Why does data fragmentation have such a big impact?
When we think of data, it’s often an easy analogy to think of it as the fuel that fires any good digital marketing strategy. And so when we think of the tech stack, specifically the required technology to manage this data, I sometimes think of it as the plumbing for any given business. In order for the data to flow seamlessly throughout a business, and support the various business functions as it should, it needs to flow through a well orchestrated pipe-system in order for it to truly be utilised.
The challenges we find so often with our clients is that the data is not always accessible to the teams that need it. These teams require this rich fuel in order for them to build and activate audiences on a daily basis. In turn, the insights derived from this data are often not available in a format that can inform a targeting strategy to bring the data to life. This disjointed flow and limited access to insight not only creates more time wasted by teams trying to grapple with the silos, but eats into the investments made into the tech stack – the stack that promised so much, yet seems to deliver nothing.
Why is the technology not working?
It is. The issue is, it needs a driver to run it. No technology, AI or machine learning is useful without the human touch. Technology platforms designed to manage data are incredibly sophisticated bits of tech, but they need expertise in order to truly deliver results. As part of any effective data strategy, it is just as important to focus on ‘people and process’ along with building an effective technical infrastructure for the business. And this is how we approach every single client here at Silverbullet; the perfect blend of mind and machine to ensure the full potential of data is unlocked to drive powerful business outcomes. To aid the coming together of skills and processes, businesses need to consider new ways of working to enable:
- More teams to have access to data to inform targeting, and deliver marketing
- More teams to be empowered and collaborate with each other rather than working in silos
- Expert partners to design and build the perfect infrastructure for any given business
Your Centre of Excellence.
A centre of excellence is a team – a shared facility or an entity – that provides leadership, best practices, insights, support and/or training for a focus area. Designing a bespoke centre of excellence for your business will help streamline processes, remove time wastage and enable teams to work closer together for the holistic business goal: reaching the right consumer in the right moment and time, to drive business ROI.
Building your very own centre of excellence will enable clear ownership and governance of the Marketing Technologies and wider tech stack, empowering day-to-day management along with encouraging contributions and collaboration across multiple teams to feed into the capability roadmap.
A Centre of Excellence will:
- Encourage a culture of sharing socialising insights
- Upskill teams and knowledge sharing
- Support the driving best practices and expertise
- Enable Governance and Auditing of data assets, data use and management of the platforms
A frictionless future, powered by data, delivered by expertise.
Data is the holy grail of your digital marketing strategy. In a world where the third-party cookie is on its way out, first-party data once again takes the crown. Whilst the industry finds new ways to fill the scale gap left in the cookie wake, what is non negotiable for businesses wanting to thrive in the new marketing age, is the design, deployment and activation of a well-oiled first-party data led strategy. If you want to find out more about how Silverbullet can help, please do get in touch by dropping us an email with your name and availability, and our marketing team will schedule. Or, simply ping me a message via my LinkedIn.
Silverbullet Graduate Schemes: Everything you need to know.
Silverbullet’s secret to success is the people on the ground. We are committed to supporting our employees – not just in their day-to-day jobs and career progression – but as individuals.
At Silverbullet we offer the opportunity for those just starting out in their career to learn, develop and gain invaluable experience from truly talented individuals.
We understand that no one individual is the same and therefore offer a variety of employment routes and schemes, such as:
- Graduate Schemes – opportunities for those who have graduated from university and looking to carve out a career in marketing and advertising technology;
- Apprenticeships – opportunities to combine work, learning and obtaining qualifications within the digital marketing industry;
- Internships – short term work placements for those looking to gain that all essential work experience within a high-paced and exciting work environment.
Regardless of the route you take, we will offer:
- A competitive salary and benefits package.
- The chance to learn and work with some of the best people in the industry.
- The opportunity to work with some of the world’s biggest brands, publishers, media agencies and leading technology providers in the digital marketing space.
- First-hand experience of new technologies.
- The opportunity to grow a desired skill set for the new marketing age companies.
- A supportive and fun working environment.
- The opportunity to carve out your career in the direction that suits you.
- The ability to work flexibly.
- Lifelong learning.
Let’s take a deeper dive into our Graduate Scheme.
If you join us as a graduate, you will initially undertake the role of an Analyst. Check out the live job posting HERE to find out what that entails.
The Silverbullet’s Graduate Scheme lasts 12-months. During this time, you will work across all the different areas of our expert services division, moving from team to team approximately every three months on a carousel basis to ensure you gain varied experience across the business. The core teams you will work within, include:
Strategic Services
- The Strategic Services team are responsible for ensuring clients’ business objectives are understood and translated into best-in-class data strategies that hit targets and drive ROI.
Technical Services
- The Technical Services team supports clients in the end-to-end completion of a digital marketing transformation journey, through the seamless implementation and integration of technology platforms, focused specifically on the Customer Data Platforms. This includes supporting clients bridge knowledge gaps, develop use cases, work with data teams to understand data structures, configure platforms, set-up campaigns, conduct quality assurance/testing and provide staff training.
Enterprise Support
- Made up of Project Managers and Account Managers, The Enterprise Support team help with the day-to-day management of our largest clients. They ensure projects are working efficiently and the client is happy. This team also support on internal projects within Silverbullet.
Data Science & Engineering Team
- The Data Science and Engineering team work on technical tasks for clients. Coding in SQL, JAVA or PYTHON is part of their everyday jobs. The team look for trends in client’s data that would not be visible to the naked eye. They prove/disprove hypothesis for the client to inform their marketing strategy.
Within each department you will learn the various responsibilities and the technologies we work with, whilst getting stuck into projects specific to that department. Depending on your background and where you want to go in your career, we can tailor the time spent in each department to meet your needs.
Skills and training you will gain access to.
During the 12 months graduate training period you will be provided with training and development in the three-core areas:
- (M)adtech Foundation Training
- Technical & Software Training
- Soft Skills
This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone looking to step into a very exciting career in the (m)adetch and digital marketing space. If you are interested in working with Silverbullet as a graduate in the Services Team, please send your CV and covering letter expressing an interest to: Email Lisa@52.56.218.224
Top 3 things marketers need to consider with contextual video advertising
With the deprecation of third-party cookies fast approaching, brands are starting to double down on strategies to target their most valuable audiences. Contextual targeting provides a solution for brands to hone in on the right consumers at the right moment with the right creatives.
Video is the most popular advertising format, thus attracting increasing attention from both brands and agency marketers. If context is king, then contextual video is the paradigm.
We sat down with industry experts Gadi Baram, Product Manager, and Julia Golub, Senior Sales Director, at 4D Context Outcomes Engine, to discuss the top 3 things marketers need to consider with contextual video advertising.
1. Computer Vision and Visual Signal Recognition: Decipher your video visually with intelligence
Unlike the oversimplified way of using metadata to decipher a video, 4D technology is built on the latest machine learning models. Most solutions in the market use metadata to target video, focusing simply on extracting text or audio information and not relying on the holistic context of the data.
By breaking down the video into keyframes and tapping into advanced computer vision and visual signals, 4D deciphers the actual visual entities and events taking place in the video. This technology allows 4D to understand what the video content is really about and therefore allows advertisers to target video content that’s truly relevant to their brands.
2. Celebrity and Brand Presence: Upgrade your targeting to the next generation
Wouldn’t it be amazing to target a brand or a celebrity across videos?
4D Video context targeting enables advertisers to do just that by seeking out videos that feature known figures such as actors, politicians, celebrity chefs, and more so that they can align their message with content that matches their brand.
Brand Presence allows advertisers to go beyond traditional video targeting and own the moment for their brand by targeting content that showcases their own brand logo, or conquering competitive brands and swaying consumer opinion during the valuable awareness stages of the marketing funnel.
3. Campaign Performance and Optimizations: Keep optimizing your performance powered by machine learning algorithms
Maximizing outcomes is at the heart of the 4D engine, and being able to draw insights and learnings is what makes 4D unique. 4D enables advertisers to use the learnings behind their performance data to apply statistically significant optimizations such as adding or removing keywords in real time to dramatically improve campaign performance across metrics that matter. Brands and agency teams are further empowered to apply these insights to their entire media mix extending beyond contextual targeting and including SEM, social, OOH, and more to ensure consistency and drive results across the board.
Contextual video targeting is here to stay. As marketers continue to express interest in video context targeting at scale, the industry will be able to unlock video-level data and enable tech players in both the martech space and the wider technology sector to work together to bring forth new sustainable, compliant, and privacy-first solutions. Being aware of some of the ground-breaking tech that already exists, such as 4D Context Outcomes Engine, is one of the ways to stay ahead of the curve, garner learnings, and drive results for brands across the globe.
To learn more about contextual video, check this tactical guide of IRIS.TV, 4D, and Digiday: The marketer’s guide to contextual video.
Frame-by-Frame: Looking past the noise to find the most effective context
Silverbullet Group and Making Science announce joint venture
The UK data and digital transformation company and global digital marketing consultancy will provide solutions for a privacy-centric, cookieless future.
Silverbullet Group and Making Science have announced a partnership which will see the two companies combining their respective products, services, and talent to deliver solutions for the privacy-first, post-cookie era. This collaboration encompasses data and digital transformation solutions centered around first-party data, analytics, and future-proofed solutions for the cookieless marketing age.
The joint venture will revolutionize and expand the services of both companies, from first-party data strategy design and deployment, technical implementations, and integration across AdTech and MarTech platforms, data and analytics and post-cookie solutions. It will also lead to an attractive Google offering including expert knowledge and Google Marketing Platform Reselling Partner, and advanced contextual video solutions across YouTube and TikTok, as well as leverage established partnerships with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and leading CDPs such as Treasure Data, a Softbank-owned platform.
Furthering the capabilities of contextual intelligence – targeted advertising based on website content and relevance – will be another focus of Making Science and Silverbullet. By leveraging 4D’s algorithms, brands will be able to reach customers in the right place, time and moment, while keeping their brand safe and suitable. This advanced computer vision video solution can identify objects, logos and potentially unsuitable content to avoid, among various signals, allowing for sophisticated targeting across all addressable channels.
“We are always looking to increase our capabilities for our clients, and the joint venture with Silverbullet does just that,” said José Antonio Martínez Aguilar, CEO and founder of Making Science. “The expanded talent and product pool accessed by the partnership harnesses not only Silverbullet’s reach across the US, UK, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, and Australia, but Making Science’s significant ‘offshore’ capabilities as well. This will give our clients and partners the opportunity to expand the scale and scope of their work as we head towards a cookieless future.”
“The joint venture with Making Science could not be better timed. As Google has confirmed the deprecation of the third-party cookie, our clients are seeking new improved solutions for the privacy-first era. Making Science’s deep relationship with Google, extensive talent base, and impressive client relationships blends perfectly with Silverbullet’s proprietary 4D product, extensive first-party data skillset, and global client footprint. Thus creating significant value for our combined clients and shareholders.” says Ian James, Co-founder and CEO, Silverbullet.
Partnerships of this kind are vital within the context of a growing digital advertising market, one that is estimated to reach $786.2 billion by 2026 and growing at a rate of 13.9%. At the same time, online media activity is increasing in momentum – in 2021, global programmatic ad spend reached $155 billion, YouTube achieved $28.8 billion in ad revenue, and the Customer Data Platform marketplace accelerated to $3.5 billion – concerns around data and privacy are mounting, especially since Google finally set a date for the deprecation of third-party cookies.
Get Ready With Me: CDP Readiness
Unsurprisingly the TikTok trend of “Get Ready With Me” has surged over the past six years. The digital generations of today are transfixed on tips and tricks videos that are scattered across social media platforms in the bid to discover the secrets of how to be successful.
For me, I love a ‘tips and tricks’ article or video as much as anyone, and so thought I would create my very own “Get Ready With Me” style blog. No no, you will not be watching me get ready for a night out, nor will you be discovering the secrets of my beauty regime.
However, you will be discovering how your business can be as ready as it needs to be when it comes to unlocking the potential of customer data. So put that moisturizer down, and read on.
Why customer data?
The holy grail for many marketers is to intrinsically understand consumers and audiences to better serve them experiences that matter. While the allure of the “single customer view” is stronger than ever, it is important to make sure your business is set up correctly in order to reap the benefits and drive value. And, the technology that unlocks these benefits is something called a CDP (Customer Data Platform).
Let me share a snap-shot of what CDPs can offer your business, in its simplest form:
- The collection and unification of all first-party data. The purpose of a customer data platform is to connect all the data that marketers use to understand and engage their customers with. The CDP does this by acting as a single source of truth for first-party customer data, with all a brand’s data on an individual customer. This means relevant experiences and scaling customer journeys.
- Managing customer data through a privacy-first lens. CDPs manage first-party data and consumer privacy and data rights by controlling the data flows between different marketing systems and managing consent. They can handle consent at group, brand and market level, and then all interaction with the customer will honor the customer’s wishes.
- Customer data activation CDPs can create audience segments that can be used across the rest of your marketing platforms and channels. This means improving messaging relevancy and recognizing effective opportunities to give value to your customers.
Silverbullet’s bread and butter has always been supporting businesses to realize the benefits of their data and tech, and so I thought it might be useful to pull together some best practices surrounding CDP readiness.
It’s time to “Get Ready With Me”, and explore the below four steps to be ‘CDP Ready’:
- Analyze Where You Are Currently. Fragmented data often resides in silos across various business departments, including marketing, sales, customer support, etc. Before you even begin to think of implementing technology, it is important to take an honest look at the internal structures and processes to identify where the gaps may be, and where improvements need to be made. Ask yourself and your team questions such as: What systems are currently in place centered around customer data? Do you know what customer data it includes? Is third-party anonymous data mixed in? How many applications are in your martech stack? And how does data get from one application to another? Having a good idea of what is and isn’t working before you transform your business, is a fantastic starting point.
- Have A Clear Strategy In Mind. In close alignment with step one, you need to ensure you have a clear overarching objective, strategy & potential tactics in mind before you begin your journey. This includes ensuring you know what it is you want to achieve by outlining your outcome(s). Understand what about your engagement with customers you want to change and challenge how a CDP supports you in doing that. A CDP can be an extremely important piece in the puzzle in driving strategic conversations that bring together fragmented teams to deliver business objectives. A CDP is not just a marketing system; it can help the overall running of a business including the product, design, innovation, and customer support which all helps to improve the customer journey. Set your strategy with some KPIs so you can measure and adapt as you go.
- Get your Data Ready. CDPs take the heavy lifting off your hands to turn raw customer data sets into a cohesive customer picture. Increasingly, businesses are managing larger volumes of data, and so the humble CDP helps to improve the quality of your data to build valuable customer profiles. Identifying all the data sources you want to connect to your CDP is paramount. From there, a CDP should be able to take over the process of importing and keeping that data, so you have easy access to real-time information. CDPs, like any platform, will only work effectively with good input. Filling it with messy datasets will limit its impact and data should be clean and standardized first.
- Secure buy-in from the whole organization. CDPs are focused on breaking down the silos, to allow more people across an organization to access valuable information to drive results. Essentially, it is about making the data easier to use, which requires full transparency and buy-in across the organization. My good pal and colleague Alex wrote about the importance of creating a strong buy-in and culture in his DataTalks blog HERE. A big part of embedding a CDP into your business is about teamwork and culture. You need a task force behind you and your tech in order to extract its utmost potential.
Summary.
CDPs – on the whole – are designed for speed to value, ensuring businesses can “plug and play” in multiple systems to build a single customer profile that puts data at your fingertips, for years to come. However, driving a successful CDP adoption is not just about the technology itself, but also about embracing change, and implementing a brand new culture throughout your business. Teamwork makes the dream work, right?
Silverbullet has been supporting businesses transform their data and tech culture since our very beginning. We live and breathe data. So let us help you do the same.
Oh, and if you need some beauty tips, do not hit me up. I’d be totally useless.
The meaning of creating a ‘Business Culture’
1. Why is it important for businesses to create a culture? And how is this possible in a remote world, with a global team
A company culture is all about creating an environment that surrounds us as individuals within an organization. It’s a collection of shared values, visions, beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes that people in the workplace share. All organizations have a company culture, but the most successful companies operate a culture directed by its senior leadership team through the cascading of its company mission, visions, core values, and morals.
Now, it is important to have clearly defined corporate goals and missions so everyone in the company knows what they are contributing to. From there, clear corporate values can be created so that those within the organization know how to align their way of working and behavior to that of the business. For those on the outside considering joining, communicating the culture helps them know whether they are likely to fit in and to determine whether it is a company that they would like to work for.
A survey conducted by Speakap, which gathered responses from a thousand employees in both the UK and US, reinforced how powerful workplace culture can be when it comes to attracting and retaining staff. 58% admitted they would take a job with a competitor that demonstrated a better workplace culture over one that failed to recognize the importance of company culture and the impact it has on its workforce.
It is therefore fundamental to live and breathe the culture rather than advertise something that just doesn’t exist otherwise retention of employees is likely to become a challenge.
2. Creating a culture can take time, what tips or advice would you give to other HR teams in how they can build an authentic culture across their org
There have been suggestions that organizations are struggling to grasp what makes a positive workplace culture, and therefore many businesses may be directing their efforts incorrectly. Organizations often mistake physical perks and amenities as being a critical part of workplace culture. By focusing on “superficial benefits” organizations are demonstrating a misunderstanding that may be counterproductive.
While these things no doubt contribute to a healthy and positive culture, organizations should review their entire workplace practices and consider how these practices are impacting on the company culture as a whole. Although benefits such as free lunches and regular social outings may be appreciated, they are unlikely to be a deciding factor in attracting staff to your business or retaining them in the long run.
Instead, companies should look at more substantial aspects such as:
- Respect, trust, and integrity throughout
- Openness, honesty, and transparent communication between staff and leadership
- A commitment to training and upskilling employees
- Recognizing and rewarding performance
- Promoting fairness and equality for all.
In a company that operates a positive company culture, all of these commitments are filtered down into operational practices and company policies and procedures are applied on the ground.
Given the trends, it is reasonable to predict culture will continue to become an influential aspect of the workplace going forwards. Recruitment and retention have become one of the biggest challenges for employers, and for those companies needing to recruit and retain talent where skills are in short supply, these factors become even more important.
After all, creating a positive environment internally is only going to spill out externally helping to create a positive reputation amongst clients, suppliers, and partners therefore creating a positive company brand.
3. Ensuring team members strike the perfect balance between work and life isn’t always easy, especially in start-up like businesses and fast-paced environments. How does HR support the Silverbullet team in ensuring employees don’t reach that burn-out stage and lose the balance?
This can be a really difficult aspect to manage, especially in a remote working environment where there are no office opening hours, no trains to catch, and the company is operating across the globe in different time zones. This can be managed in a variety of ways and often will come down to line managers and their teams however a key piece of advice would be to ensure the culture from the top down, is streamlined.
If a junior team member is consistently seeing their managers and senior managers working evenings and weekends, it will plant the seed of guilt for logging off on time. If employees are given deadlines or invited to meetings outside of their work hours, it sets the wrong precedent.
However, when businesses are global and teams work across various regions, it is near impossible for employees not to work outside of their local hours. It really cannot be a one size fits all approach.
Where HR can support is in a few ways.
- Provide flexibility where possible: If hours cannot be flexible, think about other ways you can make changes. Mental health days, days in lieu, etc. Again, this will be very dependent on the industry you work in, but think about the flexible benefits you can provide that fits within your structure.
- Have policies in place that set out expectations and flexibilities for working hours and ensure that they are applied consistently.
In short, this is a very complex area, and should be managed daily by line managers, leadership teams and HR in unison. If there’s a common thread that your teams are burning out, then something isn’t working. The key is to track progress, make note of challenges and then pull your heads together to help overcome them.
4. With wellness becoming a huge part of our daily lives – not just at work, but in our personal worlds – how can businesses ensure they are supporting their employees?
According to Mind, 1 in 6 workers are dealing with a mental health problem such as anxiety, depression or stress. This can affect their work, how they interact with others, and how they manage stress in the workplace. In turn, this can impact an organization, thus a vicious cycle takes place.
A business should put its people first, and when they do, ultimately organizations perform better when their staff have healthy minds, feel supported and motivated, and ultimately, focused.
Each business will approach wellness and mental health very differently, but it should 100% be embedded within any organizational structure. Building trust and integrity are key drivers of engagement and organizations that support staff reap the benefits in terms of loyalty and commitment from all employees.
What we do here at Silverbullet, is:
- Encourage ‘off the record’ chats: Working remotely has so many benefits but it also prevents that human one-on-one experience. No longer can you have a natter by the coffee machine, or go for a walk with a colleague to blow off some steam. So we have to be a little more mindful of our teams and their wellbeing. We encourage our line managers to put time in with their teams to check-in on a human level. This can be over zoom with a cuppa, or now as we step back into a physical world, over lunch or in the meeting room. Take the time, it is so valuable.
- Continue to grow our capacity to manage Talent effectively: we are putting a lot of time and resources into our HR functionality and focusing on who we want to be as a business. Empowering managers to manage and drive changes in business culture is key. We are also listening to our employees as who better to ask what the workforce wants than the people on the ground.
- Work hard, play hard: Silverbullet is made up of the most hard-working people in the industry. However, there is always time for fun. Work celebrations, social events, fun initiatives and incentives, a global sense of humor and well, some off-the-record slack channels that only our team members are privy to…. Silverbullet works hard, and plays hard, and we believe that truly is the recipe for success.
See our full values here: http://52.56.218.224/culture/
Topics and Keyword Targeting: A Match Made in Heaven
‘Topics’ has become a trend in 2022, as the rise of advanced contextual takes centre stage. This month we explore why.
Contextual 2.0 is taking industry headlines by storm. And for good reason. With the third-party cookie set to sunset by the end of 2023, businesses are seeking new ways to reach the right consumers in the right place. At its simplest, for contextual targeting to work, an advertising system needs to know what your campaign is about so it can place your ads on relevant web pages. And oftentimes, this is done through two key functionalities:
Topics: Broad topics in which a given campaign would fit into, such as fashion, music, food, etc. Selecting a topic makes your ad eligible to run on websites related to your topic. Pretty simple, right?
Keywords: Use for precise targeting within your topics and subtopics. Brands can identify keywords that will help algorithms and machines to match your ad to website content.
Individually, these are useful for a brand no question. But, together, they offer incredible opportunity and scale.
Understanding Keywords.
In the world of data and digital advertising, keywords are like the bricks that build the bridge between campaign content and the advertising marketplace. When it comes to contextual targeting, keywords are still an essential part for advertisers to target the right customers in the right environment, because the solution is largely based on the content. But it doesn’t mean it is the only solution to launch a successful advertising campaign. Nowadays, topic targeting has become even more popular in the market for helping brands to scale their campaigns effectively and efficiently.
The Game Changer: Topics.
Before the launch of ‘topics’ targeting, it was typically a slow process for clients to manually add keywords to create and scale their contextual strategy, which in reality needs hundreds of keywords to be effective. However, topics have become a true game-changer for brands and their agencies as it fundamentally changes how they create contexts for advertising. When brands want to gain scale and increase reach, topics become vital because it removes the laboursome work, and instead allows them to select a number of topics which in turn builds huge scale.
How does this work in practice?
All brands have to do is to start by selecting several topics to target against their general customer segments, and then simply add on different keywords (especially long-tail keywords) to make the campaign more customizable and relevant to other niche but unignorable user scenarios or undetermined potential growth points.
To conclude.
The combination of keywords targeting and topics targeting is legendary, making the combination of customizable and scalable become possible in one single moment. More importantly, 4D is offering full transparency for all the covered keywords behind topics, rather than making it a black box that can not be easily customized or analyzed by advertisers. The performances of keywords individually will be accessible and analyzed by 4D Outcomes for advertisers to easily optimize the campaign performance in one click.
Click here to find out more about 4D today!