In this article, The Trade Desk outline the challenges that marketers are currently facing, and explain how their new digital advertising experience, Solimar, can help them overcome these challenges and achieve their goals.

We are at a unique moment in time, both for business in general and for marketing. If the last year has shown us anything, it is the power of marketing that helps businesses differentiate and drive growth.

But with that comes new pressure to prove the business ROI of marketing, which is driving more marketers toward digital and programmatic than ever before.

Marketers have a unique opportunity to use this shift to become even smarter leaders, by providing answers to critical business questions like:

• How to balance the long-term focus on consumer trust and privacy while improving the advertising experience and making it more relevant
• How to unleash the power of first party data in a privacy-compliant way
• How to associate the company with premium content

In the words of O2’s chief marketing officer, Nina Bibby: “the opening up of demand and the economy brings hope. There’s rarely been a universal similar moment in time where marketers are in a unique position to tap into that hope, elevate it and embrace it”.

1. Find focus with precise goals

Competition for consumers across many industries is hotter than ever as marketers are under pressure to prove return on investment on every decision they make. They need to deliver campaigns that achieve real business outcomes and goals, such as driving awareness, consideration, or conversion.

As consumers’ media consumption has become increasingly varied and fragmented, finding the right ad position at any given time is impossible without applying data and technology. A sophisticated ad buying platform like The Trade Desk’s – with its new upgrade, Solimar – brings the maximum amount of smart decisioning to every single ad impression, based on clear goals set at the start of a campaign.

Prioritising goals and supporting decisions with rich data allows marketers to be more strategic and focus on the things that tech can’t do. Instead of having to manage thousands of campaign variables, platforms like ours can surface the priority decisions that can make or break a campaign.

2. Make data meaningful with AI

Marketers understand their target audiences best. They can activate data on their best million customers to find the next million most valuable customers.

“Today, we’ve got more data available, it’s easier to access but the important question is, is it all relevant and meaningful and can you action it? It’s not about the data but how you use it – that analysis and that sorting to make it actionable and usable is key.” Susan O’Brien, Just Eat’s VP of brand, said.

This is the crux of the modern marketers’ dilemma. Marketing teams have so much data at their fingertips, but don’t always have the right tools to know which data points to prioritise and act on. Activating a campaign can feel like sitting in the cockpit of a 747 plane, and being expected to take off despite having no flight training and no co-pilot.

The good news is that artificial intelligence – like KOA, the AI which sits behind The Trade Desk's Platform – is really effective at handling massive amounts of data. This means the technology is much more like a modern, automatic car – a vehicle that gets you to your desired destination, while giving you all the assistance you need to drive smoothly. All you have to do is sit back and let the car’s software help you identify blind spots, stay in lane, and optimise fuel performance. Just like that, a powerful platform guided by AI can optimise decisioning, seamlessly incorporating the right data as necessary. In fact, on average, the platform sees more than 1 trillion ad opportunities per day – that’s roughly 13 million ad opportunities every second, which is well over 100 times the volume of global search – and automatically sorts, analyses, and prioritises them for the marketer.

Solimar’s special advantage is bringing the priority decisions that take a campaign to the surface. Based on goals set by the user, the platform knows what the important decisions are, and brings the user new insights whilst making them. It does all this via a very simple, intuitive user experience, where the marketer stays in control by always seeing which data-driven decision the platform makes.

3. Thread the needle between privacy and relevance

Giving consumers the experience they deserve in the modern marketing landscape comes down to two major factors: delivering relevant, timely ads and taking a privacy-conscious approach to data.

Consumers have come to expect ads that are relevant to their interests and demographic. Ads for pension schemes targeted at a young stay-at-home dad or cookery classes being targeted at a high-flying chef could result in frustration. Not only that, but even when the right ads are served to those with relevant interests, they must be appropriately timed, spaced across the right channels, and delivered at the optimal frequency.

Philippa Snare, SVP EMEA at The Trade Desk, said: “The seamless delivery of relevant ads must be balanced against protecting users’ privacy. Our research earlier this year showed 79% of UK adults are concerned about the collection and use of their data on the internet, so the advertising industry must do all it can to grant consumers greater transparency and control over how their data is used.”

Marketers making investment decisions that prioritise the privacy of their customers must ask themselves, which tools are really transparent? Which technologies can really show me what’s going on behind the scenes?

Industry initiatives like Unified ID 2.0 put the consumer back in the driver’s seat by granting them the transparency and power to control their own data, all in an easy-to-use central hub.

Seizing the marketing moment

Now is the time for marketers to step up and seize this unique moment in time. That’s why The Trade Desk is launching Solimar, the biggest platform upgrade in our history, to help marketers succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.

To learn more about Solimar and join our product launch, click here.