June 9, 2022
To Stop the CMO Revolving Door, Bring Brand and Performance Together
To close out 2019, we collected thoughts from our experts across all of our offices for a new year-end series to find out their wishlists, predictions, and resolutions for 2020. Read the first post in the series covering the performance ad channels you already know. Editor’s Note: All posts are now available! See our experts’ takes on various marketing tactics and also digital strategy for 2020.
Today’s post features emerging ad platforms that offer enticing new audiences and targeting, often incremental to the incumbent main players. If testing runs in your blood or you feel the need to move beyond core search and social ads, the platforms covered in this post are poised for a potential breakout opportunity in 2020. However, being an early adopter of new ad technology has its challenges and typically requires plenty of patience and testing to get right. Here are our experts’ ambitions and hopes for Pinterest, Quora, and Reddit advertising next year.
Contributor: Jess Holterhoff, Sr. Account Manager
The top item on my Pinterest wishlist item would definitely be Shoppable Pins, similar to what Instagram has done with product tags in posts. If users are able to complete their entire transaction on Pinterest without leaving the interface or even their browsing experience, it should lead to more spontaneous buying. Pinterest could be the catalog of the internet, with no brand restrictions like Amazon.
My resolution with Pinterest is to introduce Pinterest Trends data into more conversations with brands I work with to confirm ideas and recommend new targeting opportunities or even product ideas. Whereas Google Trends deals in global search data for what people need now, Pinterest Trends keyword and auto-complete suggestions tap into the pulse of Pinners, which will help brands beat competition to the punch on emerging trends. That makes it useful regardless of whether you’re currently running ads on Pinterest.
One 2020 prediction I have is that we’ll see increased brand investment in Pinterest from home, athletic, wedding, and travel brands. The recent “home feed” update is more intuitive for content consumption and mimics the instant immersion of some of the fastest-growing social apps. Users will have more control over the content that Pinterest recommends, which could lead to higher engagement for brands in top Pinterest categories.
Quora
Contributor: Judy Workman, Sr. Account Manager
Quora has become a channel on many advertisers’ (holiday) wish lists this year both because of its unique targeting options and its unduplicated audience, the subset of Quora users who you won’t reach on the major platforms.
There is already so much that Quora Ads does well, but I do have a few items on my wishlist for 2020 to make the platform even more powerful, and for a wider number of brands.
- More Data Segmentation. Do you advertise on Facebook? If so, you’re likely accustomed to the wealth of data breakdowns Facebook provides. Wouldn’t it be great if Quora provides similar analyses? As a data aficionado myself, I would greatly appreciate being able to slice and dice the data in many more new ways.
- Video Ads. Right now, Quora only offers static image and text ad options. I would love to be able to test video ads on Quora, which I think are a perfect fit for the education-oriented audience often found on Quora.
- Dynamic UTM Appending. Want to track Quora ads into your customer data to see what drives the best quality customers or prospects? You’ll have to manually append your UTMs, making ad creation pretty time-intensive. If Quora had the ability to generate UTMs for me, I’d have more time for eggnog!
Perhaps you’ve heard that Quora is releasing a Lead Gen Ads beta in 2020. One of my easiest resolutions to follow through with this year will be to test this new ad type, garner some insights and share with my team – and you all as well, of course!
Cheers to more Quora testing and features in 2020!
Reddit Ads
Contributor: Tia Fung, Account Manager
Reddit is currently the #6-ranked website by traffic in the US according to Alexa, and it’s still one of the fastest growing from a user standpoint. For digital marketers, though, it’s still a largely unexplored ad platform. For us, 2019 was a year of exploration and discovery on the platform. It’s not going to work for every brand, but when you can find your community there and find ad messaging and creative that meshes with the nature of the communities you’re targeting, there’s huge potential.
Our top wishlist item for 2020 is increased audience targeting capabilities. From look-a-like audiences for prospecting to user lists for retargeting, Reddit has to play catch-up with other social platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn, or even similarly young platforms like Quora Ads. As far as resolutions go, we’re committed to leveraging Reddit’s growing video presence. Since 2018, Reddit has seen a 38% growth rate for video content, and with our brands creating more video ad assets than ever, it’s a great way for them to create really unique messaging that will speak to a really qualified audience that’s otherwise really difficult to advertise to.
That’s two posts on 2020 in the bag, two more still to come. To get the rest of this series and other great performance marketing news and tips to your inbox all next year, join our email community.
For more in this series:
MT’s Performance Marketing in 2020 #1: Paid Search, Paid Social, Amazon, Shopping, and YouTube Ads
MT’s Performance Marketing in 2020 #3: Programmatic, Mobile Apps, ABM, and CRO
MT’s Performance Marketing in 2020 #4: Attribution, MarTech, Google Data Studio, Ad Creative
