Technology provided some of the best features for online advertising, such as the ability to shift budgets from one campaign or media to another in real-time as needed.

But still, after all this work that has been done across the industry by some highly intelligent people, 38% of media buyers admit to not leveraging competitive data to shift media buys in real-time. The remainder do, according to recent survey results from BrandTotal, which analyzes how CMOs and marketers are leveraging competitive analytics for digital media buying.

BrandTotal commissioned a survey through Pollfish looking at how social competitive advertising analytics and intelligence affect real-time changes to digital marketing strategies. The survey, fielded in February, consists of 550 respondents who work in marketing across brands.

When asked about frequency of ads in their campaigns, the majority of respondents said they “only sometimes” make changes or optimize social media spend for some promotions. About 38% said they didn’t do it regularly. Some 18% said they typically set it and forget it, not making changes once the media buys are done.

More than half said they shift their media-mix buys to a different social channel based on what competitors do. 

The survey also revealed that 25% of respondents said the most valuable insight from competitive analytics comes from their competitors’ ad creative. While 23% of respondents felt that the most valuable insights were on their competitors’ price- or quantity-specific promotions, some 19% pointed to media-spend flighting information, 19% also pointed to consumer demographics and competitive targeting, and 18% pointed to consumer behavior such as sentiment and engagement beyond click-through rates and CPMs.

When ranking tools, no clear winner emerged among survey respondents, ranking all tools in the space as average with the highest rank at 3.8 out of 6.

BrandTotal suggests the data shows current tools may not address the needs and concerns of today’s marketers amidst the consumer shift to social commerce. 

Each tool was rated by BrandTotal, with rankings:

• Insights on campaign flighting and timing of launching promotions received a rating of 3.8
  
• Real-time visibility into category competitors was rated at 3.7
  
• The ability to optimize media budget by having visibility into competitive ads, consumer engagement and real-time response like contextual intelligence was rated 3.5
  
• The ability to better target customer audiences and outsmart the competition was rated 3.4
  
• The ability to shift advertising and media spend was rated 3.3
  
• The ability to adapt messaging and positioning was rated 3.3

CMOs and brand markets said they regularly monitor and flag items manually to media buyers. In fact, 63% said they manually monitor competitive insights, competitor brand ads and campaigns with their marketing team.

Some 55% said competitive analytics helps their brand spend more efficiently resulting in greater return on investments of social advertising.