B2B marketers would love to know where their ad dollars are performing efficiently. Channel99 is trying to take the guesswork out of it.
Channel99 today launched a new solution for scoring the performance of digital campaigns by channel providing insights into performance and opportunities for optimization. This is based, in part at least, on Channel99’s “view through” technology where a “smart pixel” is used to measure and verify B2B advertising performance.
The solution integrates with a range of digital advertising channels as well as with ABM vendors, such as Demandbase, that incorporate ad platforms among their offerings. Initial integrations include LinkedIn, Google Display, YouTube, Facebook, Demandbase, Rollworks, Microsoft, TikTok, Reddit and X.
Performance by target audience. The solution does not offer a one-and-done answer to the question, “Which channel works best?” Rather, it tests channels’ comparative successes in reaching — and engaging — target accounts. If display, search or social performs badly with a set of target accounts, they might just be the wrong accounts to target in that channel.
In the above example, LinkedIn dramatically outperforms other, unnamed vendors. Even though Vendor 2 shows more visits, there is less engagement and much less influence on pipeline and opportunities. What’s more, the cost of each engagement is more than double that of LinkedIn.
Take away the “head-scratching.” We spoke with Channel99 founder and CEO Chris Golec about the significance of the new product. “We wanted a whole new level of insight and take the head-scratching away from the marketer in understanding what’s really working and what’s not working,” he said.
Vendor effectiveness, he confirmed, was highly dependent on target accounts. “Quite often we find companies using vendors for the wrong audience. Or, their audiences are so big and they don’t think the vendor works when the reality is that the vendor was highly effective for half the audience; but it’s all mashed together so you can’t see that.”
As data continues to accrue, and looking down the road, Golec imagines a world where, for a select list of accounts, Channel99 could tell the marketer which channel will be most effective. “Stop the guesswork,” he said. Channel99 is also engaged in layering genAI on top of the solution, so that it will respond to natural language prompts asking, for example, how to change an account list to make a vendor more effective.
Channel99 vendor scoring is available for a free, 30-day trial.
Why we care. For B2B, at least, Channel99 is quietly seeking an answer to the timeless John Wanamker conundrum: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” The solution described here responds to that conundrum with numbers; with a set of KPIs that can be compared at a glance.
The next question, of course, is: “I see what’s not working. Can I make it work by making changes?” That seems likely to be the next stop on Channel99’s route.
The post Channel99 introduces digital channel scoring for B2B appeared first on MarTech.
About the author
Kim Davis is currently editor at large at MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for almost three decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Shortly thereafter he joined Third Door Media as Editorial Director at MarTech.
Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.
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