Why CMOs Are Overhauling Their Digital Strategy

Why are so many chief mar­ket­ing offi­cers (CMOs) in the UK over­haul­ing their dig­i­tal strat­e­gy? A recent Cen­suswide sur­vey of 100 UK CMOs and mar­ket­ing VPs at com­pa­nies with a turnover of at least £20 mil­lion found that a vast major­i­ty (95 per­cent) of CMOs over­hauled their dig­i­tal strat­e­gy in 2017. The change comes in light of con­cerns over the last year by CMOs about brand safe­ty (83 per­cent of sur­vey respon­dents) and ad fraud (77 per­cent of respondents).

These grow­ing con­cerns have right­ly led mar­ket­ing heads to make changes and be more inten­tion­al about trans­paren­cy expec­ta­tions with sup­pli­ers and agen­cies they work with. In fact, the research found that 44 per­cent of CMOs plan to review their rela­tion­ships with sup­pli­ers and 43 per­cent intend to review the agen­cies they’re cur­rent­ly work­ing with. Fur­ther­more, 93 per­cent have said that the agen­cies and sup­pli­ers they’ll work with from now on will have to be able to prove brand safe­ty and transparency.

Amidst all this con­cern over brand safe­ty and ad fraud, it’s inter­est­ing to note that Adobe has led the way for some time regard­ing trans­paren­cy, hav­ing been the first com­pa­ny to offer refunds to clients with signed mul­ti­source agree­ments (MSAs) in the event of fraud­u­lent ad buys. Adobe also led the charge against walled gar­dens that tra­di­tion­al­ly don’t offer full site-by-site analy­sis of ad buys. And because Adobe doesn’t own any media, the com­pa­ny can guar­an­tee a client’s ad buy is always per­formed in the best inter­ests of the client instead of Adobe.

Giv­en the grow­ing con­cerns over brand safe­ty and the find­ings of the Cen­suswide sur­vey, it’s clear that CMOs want a high­er lev­el of secu­ri­ty and trans­paren­cy to pro­tect their brands and pro­vide their clients with the same qual­i­ty and secu­ri­ty they expect from the sup­pli­ers and agen­cies they work with.

Brand safe­ty remains a real con­cern. What changes in dig­i­tal strat­e­gy is your brand con­sid­er­ing in light of these con­cerns? Please share in the com­ments below.