The recession is on everyone’s mind. Brands are cutting costs on ad spend, big tech platforms are laying off hundreds of employees, and marketers are under pressure to find performance-driven solutions with restricted access to data.

Brands need an innovative paid media strategy and outside-the-box thinking to navigate the “data desert” and develop a highly profitable return on ad spend.

What is the Data Desert, and how did we get here?

The paid media landscape (that you knew) is dying. Pre-pandemic, it was a lush garden fed by deep roots of consumer data. Then in 2021, Apple began rolling out its iOS and switched to an opt-in privacy framework. Fields of low-hanging fruit were replaced by an arid terrain, suffering from a drought of engagement insights. The golden age of social media marketing was over.

Unwilling to change course, brands chose to carry and hope for the best. Wandering the data desert provided too much for some brands. Without sufficient data, learning periods extended in duration, targeting became less precise, and cost per conversion increased.

Fear of a looming recession sent paid media marketing campaigns into a tailspin, with senior marketing leaders pausing campaigns altogether. Digital ad spending is estimated to grow YoY to $422.8 billion, but is down by 6.5% of expected projections.

How to Plan Your Escape

Paid campaigns need data to thrive. With so much water leaving the proverbial bucket, marketers must look elsewhere to tap an ample supply. Fortunately, influencers’ first-party data pools provide a solution to this problem.

Content creators are not outsourced creative directors and production studios, they are valuable hubs for gathering first-party analytics.

Influencers are sitting on an oasis with deep pools of data insights (views, engagements, clicks) pulling from years of previous campaigns. Agencies can take this data, amalgamate it into buyer personas, and leverage customer data platforms, like InfoBip, to cure a brand’s thirst for the data drought and leverage the analytics for omnichannel performance-driven campaigns.

Quench Your Thirst For Data

Influencer data can interject life back into your paid media marketing, but you need to consider the following:                                &nb sp;    

• Influencer activations produce first-party engagement data that can be collected and amalgamated into valuable audience segments.

• Data collected by influencers on one channel can be repurposed for paid campaigns across other social platforms.                                              

• Leveraging organic social engagement data from past and present influencer activations can significantly boost advertising efficiencies and ROI, enhancing the reach and performance of paid social investments.

Many brands fail to connect organic data derived from past and present influencer activations to their awareness and performance campaigns on social channels.

Brands can mitigate the risk of an upcoming recession by increasing advertising efficiencies and maximizing their return on investment through an influencer and paid social strategy.

 

Content creators are not outsourced creative directors and production studios, they are valuable hubs for gathering first-party analytics.