UDECAM 2015 : The future of advertising For you, key points worth remembering

UDECAM is a french media association gathering the main media agencies in France, whose goal is to share the best practices, improve the exisitng ones and predict the future of media and advertising environment.

2000 guests showed up to this new edition. This year, most debates revolved around one single theme : creating value for advertisers.

Having been to the show, ADINTIME gives you a summary of this important day for the media industry.

1.Advertising is a growth hacker

Kantar Media CEO, Andy Brown, explains the strong correlation between GDP growth and amount of money spent in advertising. Unlike the UK, Germany or the USA – where advertising expenses per capita are up twice what they are in France- « France is not a high spending market for advertising ». The latter emphasizes that French advertisers should increase their ad spending to re-start an economic virtuous circle.

Pierre Conte, (Group M, CEO) agrees points out that marketing is essential to trigerring growth and while France stands only at 70% of Germany’s marketing pressure, despite a context in which French households trust is improving and national growth is expected.

Furthermore, Marie Cheval (Boursorama CEO) reminds us of the importance of “statutory” or traditional media such as Press, TV or Outdoor advertising: These media are particularly acclaimed by virtual companies who interact with their customers through virtual relationships, like many online banks whose campaigns in TV or press have made lasting impressions (Boursorama, B for Bank, Hello Bank…).

Finally, Bernard Mourad (President at Altice Media, the group owned by Patrick Drahi who just bought the Express and Cable Vision in the US) puts things into perspective and explain their investment policy in press media: 

“The first media [Press] was born four centuries ago. What are ten or fifteen years of transition over its four centuries of existence? If we keep it, we manage it differently and we redeploy brands that have existed for forty or fifty years, I hope they will keep on lasting. We must recreate more powerful groups keeping in mind the independence of editorial lines ” 

2. DATA, your new business developer

The data: where can we find it, and what shall we do with it ?

“The data provides a new way of management of the company” claims Alain Levy, CEO of Weborama.

4 key points to sucessfully develop a data strategy within your company.

Point 1 : What data is available to my company ?

First proceed to an internal audit: 
Which data do we have available about our customers ?
Where is that data?

You will find them in your CRM, your customers and prospects databases, people registered to your email campaigns, profiles of visitors to your website …

Point 2: Set up your data heritage

The ultra-targeting has become one of the key factors to a successful advertising campaign. Digital now allows us to go deep in the customisation of the delivered message. That is why it is important to sort your data by category. The more organized your data (by age, region, city, gender, interests … depending on what you hand), the more relevant the ads delivered to your target will be relevant.

Point 3: Valuing your data

Once your data is clean and organized, you can use it to refine the knowledge you have about your customers. This allows you to:
Be more specific in the offers you send to your customers, hence a more relevant message because it’s more likely to meet your prospects’ existing needs.
Analyse and thereby anticipate the behavior of your customers. This will enable you to be more in sync with your customers’s needs at the right time with the right product.

Point 4: Increase your data heritage

Once valued, your data gains in effectiveness if coupled with other data. For instance you can mix your CRM data with your behavioral data. You can do so through either partnership or purchases from “data provider” to acquire additional data on pre-determined audience segments.

3. “Tsunami Alerts” of Adblocks by Pierre Chappaz

Teads’s CEO provider comes back on “Adblockers” and pulls the alarm on this phenomenon which is growing phenomen as more and more users equip themselves of such software to block advertising on digital. Today, nearly 200 millions internet users have adopted an andblocker. Losses are estimated at 20 billions for the advertising industry in the world. 

According to Teads co-founder, aggressive formats such as interstitials (videos or others) andpre-roll non-skippables video encourage users to be equipped with adblockers and thus endanger the entire digital advertising ecosystem.
In Germany, 61% of pre-rolls are ad-blocked. The trend goes towards “native” advertising, meaning it must be disseminated in a context related to the subject of the ad, an audience identified as captive audience or to the most important social influencers related to the subject.

4. Speech by Jean Marie Messier on Convergence, tomorrow’s media landscape/trend in Europe

Jean-Marie Messier speech on Convergence, the trend for coming years In the media industry. Heckled and disavowed during the crisis that rocked Vivendi in the 2000s, the current technological and societal revolution of our environment seems to confirm what the investment banker had anticipated 15 years ago about the changes we are witnessing today. 

“The new convergence boundaries are, in my opinion, connected objects, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Everything that alters the relationship to life itself.” 

“Four phenomena alters convergence: the development of broadband, the rise of social networks and new lifestyles where the use has become more important than the possession, the explosion of data and the birth of the cloud.”