Steel Recaps April’s Top Marketing News of 2024

As a service to our clients and partners, Steel summarizes the top stories in marketing and advertising each month. Please reach out to Kirsten Cutshall for more discussion on this month’s marketing news or with anything that is on your mind. We would love to hear from you!

Video Transcript:

I am Kirsten Cutshall with Steel Advertising. It is April 29th and here’s the top marketing news that we’re thinking about right now. 

First up, one of the fastest moving trends to come out of AI-enhanced tools has been hyper personalization.

Deloitte recently reported that 90% of consumers find personalized advertising appealing to them. 

Hyper-personalization refers to the ways brands can now tailor their marketing to individual customers by combining data, analytics, AI and automation together. By making use of multiple opportunities for personalization during the customer journey, brands can meaningfully engage customers, deepen relationships, and improve customer experience over an extended period of interaction.

If you think this is too forward-thinking to execute right now, think again! Deloitte’s recent white paper presented a practical roadmap for how current, basic tools can be used to apply hyper-personalization throughout the customer journey right now. Basic building blocks include: 

• Segmented campaigns
• Unique landing pages
• Recommendation engines
• Omni channel customer service
• Chatbots
• Dynamic website content
• Pre-populated form fields
• Loyalty and reengagement programs

So marketers, it’s time to review your customer touchpoints through the lens of a hyper-personalized journey. 

Next up, when will the election campaigns really impact your media buys?   

with Presidents Biden and Trump as 2024 presidentia frontrunners, analysts forecast an unprecedented surge in political ad spending. Unlike the pandemic-impacted 2020 cycle, this year anticipates record-breaking expenditures, presenting both obstacles and avenues for advertisers.

This month, Edelman published predictions and strategies to navigate this year. The summary: 

• Political campaigning is expected to peak from August to October
• News and business programs on major broadcast networks will be most affected. 
• Existing inventory constraints and price premiums will increase. 
• NBC’s Olympic coverage is expected to experience premiums even though recent Olympic viewership numbers were down. 
• Costs on social media platforms are projected to rise substantially, led by Meta’s Facebook & Instagram. 
• And despite recent controversy, TikTok remains influential for younger demographics. 
• Advertisers in battleground states and key election demographics will likely experience the greatest competition for inventory.  

Proactive strategies include 

1. Securing inventory early
2. Lightening spending in highly competitive markets or dates
3. Being on guard to avoid association with sensitive political topics.

Finally, advertisers should consider YouTube a serious competitor for living room TV viewership.

YouTube is gearing up for its annual Brandcast event in New York City next month. This event reaffirms YouTube’s status as a major player in living room TV viewership. 

Nielsen’s latest report revealed that YouTube commanded nearly 10% of all TV watch time in March, maintaining its year long dominance as the most-watched streaming service on TVs. Yep – Netflix trails behind at around 8%. 

Not only is YouTube dominating streaming services, but streaming viewership is growing – up 12% over March 2023. For the same period, cable dropped 10% and broadcast dropped 4%. So…YouTube’s rise is expected to intersect with cable TV’s shrinking 28% share – establishing itself amidst the traditional TV players. YouTube’s CEO has emphasized the platform’s commitment to living room TV, highlighting recent strategic investments in premium content like the NFL Sunday Ticket. 

If you have not been taking YouTube seriously in your TV mix, then it’s time to take another look at your media plan. 

That’s it for today. Feel free to reach out if you want to talk about these topics or anything marketing. Have a great week!