The Outcomes Disconnect

The complexity.

In the ad tech industry, brands’ success metrics come in many different shapes and sizes. These metrics vary based on the brand needs and where they are defined based on their timeline in a campaign life cycle. For simplicity sake, let’s look at the two types of success metrics, starting with the most granular and tangible metrics and then shift gears to review what general marketing metrics brands strive for. As we do that it is important to distinguish that different teams that work across campaign life cycles from start to finish, oftentimes define success metrics independently.

Let’s look at programmatic trading teams that handle campaign activation in Demand Side Platforms (DSPs). Programmatic traders work with brands to define success metrics that tend to   analyse clicks, views, time on page – tangible metrics that they can optimize on. These standard metrics have been embedded into the adtech infrastructure and have been backed by billions of dollars.

On the flip side, brands and marketers define success a little differently and in certain instances refer to them as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These metrics include, driving brand awareness, increasing conversions and boosting visibility across new product lines.

While both sets of teams have a unified goal to drive success and outcomes for a campaign, the challenge lies in the fact that programmatic traders and brands define these outcomes differently. As such, there is a large disconnect and a lack of understanding between how performance metrics such as clicks or views, correlate to larger KPIs that brands are striving to achieve. The easiest example to consider is, the idea that there is no advocate that a certain amount of clicks on a specific brand page will lead to a certain number of downloads. The dilemma of disconnect has persisted in the industry for years, and continues to be a massive source of pain for brands across the globe.

The hope.

As the industry evolves and new technology emerges as a result of third party cookies being deprecated, brands will need to consider solutions that will marry the disconnect between outcomes and KPIs, identify the correlation between activities, and offer strategies that rely on contextual as the new starting point.

The truth.

In truth all outcomes matter. There isn’t a set of outcomes that brands have to focus on; they are unique based on brand goals and verticals. By tapping into technology that connects outcomes to KPIs to performance goals, brands will see success in their campaigns.

The future.

4D Context Outcomes Engine solves for the disconnect that brand marketers and programmatic trading teams often face trying to define how metrics like Click-through Rate (CTR) are able to increase brand recognition and so forth. 4D Outcomes bridges the gap between programmatic targeting and analytics, to derive specific performance drivers that result in powerful marketing outcomes.

With 4D, brands are able to identify correlation between metrics such as indexing and the impact certain tangible keywords can have that drive a higher CTR, and insights into specific contexts that can improve their outcomes. Moreover, with 4D Outcomes activation teams are able to have full transparency into how they can improve their campaign. This is possible because 4D Outcomes was designed for brands to have learnings and actionable insights at their fingertips.