Media Magnified

The 2024 Retail Innovation Conference & Expo in Chicago was a transformative experience for everyone in attendance, myself included. From June 4–6, I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the dynamic world of retail alongside industry insiders, top brands, local retailers, and leading executives. Attendees engaged in a dynamic and immersive experience which included a store tour, networking opportunities, and informative workshops that provided a comprehensive view of the latest trends and technologies.

#RICE24 highlighted the cutting-edge strategies and technologies that are reshaping how brands and consumers interact. It became clear that maximizing consumer connections is paramount for sustained growth in a dynamic retail environment. The conference underscored the shift towards value-centric approaches over traditional price-based strategies, emphasizing the importance of forging meaningful connections with consumers in today’s fast-paced retail landscape.

Consumer Connections Matter

The retail industry is always evolving — so are the needs and demands of consumers. Despite retail’s fast pace, it is still critically important for brands and advertisers to understand their core consumer. By learning the shifting needs of consumers, brands can offer value, incorporating benefits—rather than pricing discounts to spark sales growth.

Brands can maximize their consumer connections by:

• Simplifying the buying process
• Humanize digital experiences
• Building immersive wow experiences

Fostering Community

Create space and a support system to lean into the customer’s experience and engage with them directly and often. Doing so provides some of today’s most successful brands with valuable insights. Consider social channels and groups as a forum to gauge interest and sentiment quickly. Developing a customer advisory board is another way to foster a sense of inclusion that can build genuine advocacy and ambassadors.

Diamonds In the Data

#RICE24 also spotlighted the role of data analytics in driving strategic decisions. Successful brands were noted for leveraging first-party data alongside retail media data from platforms such as Amazon’s AWS Marketplace, Google’s Ads Data Hub, and Meta’s Clean Room. This approach enables brands to refine their strategies effectively, supported by clear KPIs for measuring success.

Understanding and maximizing consumer connections is at the core of Harmelin’s planning process. Through research and discovery, we continuously evaluate shifts in industry trends, consumer behaviors, and media habits. Maximizing consumer connections is just one of the many insights from #RICE24 our team of retail specialists will be sharing and applying to generate performance growth and push our clients’ business forward.

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In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for success. As such, I attended the Meta Performance Marketing Summit in San Francisco, California in early June—a premier event that brought together leading advertisers and agencies to explore cutting-edge strategies for optimizing the customer journey on Facebook and Instagram. This summit provided invaluable insights into leveraging data, creative innovation, and AI-powered tools to enhance campaign performance. In this blog, I will share key takeaways from the event, highlighting how these strategies can drive superior results and maximize return on investment.

1. Leverage High-Quality Data

Customer signals are the cornerstone of Meta’s platform and critical to success with AI investments. By utilizing the Conversions API, businesses can collect and enhance data to improve their Meta campaigns. Key considerations include:

• Event Coverage: Ensure the right events are shared via the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API.
• Event Effectiveness: Send priority parameters to maximize the event match quality score.
• Deduplication: Add effective deduplication keys with each event.
• Data Freshness: Share events as close to real-time as possible.

2. Prioritize Creative Excellence

Creative diversity and optimization at scale are essential for accelerating ad performance. AI tools can significantly enhance an advertiser’s creative arsenal. Meta has introduced several generative AI features, including image and text generation, text overlay, and image expansion to fit all placements. Additionally, given that video accounts for over 60% of time spent on Facebook and Instagram, investing in Reels is crucial, as Reels is driving video growth on both platforms. Meta recommends following Reels creative essentials (9×16 video with audio and key messaging) and collaborating with creators/influencers from their creator marketplace (or Harmelin’s influencer team) to bring authenticity to campaigns.

3. Embrace Automation

In the AI era, advertisers must utilize all available AI tools to move quickly, test, learn, and iterate. Meta’s Advantage+ tools (Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, Advantage+ App Campaigns, and Advantage+ Catalog Ads) are strongly encouraged for achieving optimal results. Case studies from Hulu, OGEE, and Sephora demonstrated that these tools significantly improve targeting, optimization, creative personalization, and cost efficiencies, as well as providing valuable insights through real-time performance data, allowing for swift adjustments.

Testing the latest tools and technologies from Meta gives advertisers a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. As an agency, it is our responsibility to evaluate the potential benefits these tools offer to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of our clients’ campaigns, ultimately leading to better performance, higher engagement, and improved ROI.

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Industry experts came together to discuss and share insights on the latest trends in cookieless technology, privacy, AI, and Supply Path Optimization (SPO) at the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit on May 15-17 in Palm Springs, CA. Attendees, including media agencies, technology experts, and vendors, engaged in panels, town hall meetings, and knowledge-sharing sessions with data providers, publishers, platforms, and media agencies.

Day 1: Focus on Privacy and Sustainability.

• Cookieless Future and Privacy Sandbox: Google’s announcement about delaying the depreciation of third-party cookies and discussions on Privacy Sandbox dominated the conversation. While the Sandbox is expected to become one of several solutions in a cookieless world, uncertainties and regulatory dissatisfaction remain. Emphasis was placed on alternatives to third-party data, such as retail data, CTV inventory, linear TV data, URL mapping, and lift studies.
• Profitability and Sustainability: Speakers introduced new strategies focusing on sustainability, inclusivity, digital safety, brand assurance, and privacy compliance. A significant increase in Made-for-Advertising (MFA) sites renewed attention to SPO metrics, such as attention metrics, ad collision reports, and bid filtering. Sustainability, including carbon emission, was framed as an advertiser’s continuous responsibility and an ongoing process like brand safety and viewability measurement.

Days 2 and 3: AI and Performance Metrics, Steaming Video, and Programmatic Audience.

• AI Integration: AI, including generative AI, is gaining trust across the industry. While challenges persist, there is optimism that AI will address skepticism around upper-funnel channels like CTV and DOOH, due to a lack of immediate measurement solutions. AI is also expected to enhance ad verification methods, accelerating brand safety optimization amidst rising fraud.
• Targeting and Privacy Compliance: Innovative audience targeting solutions that comply with privacy regulations were discussed, entailing consent management platforms, suppression lists, niche geographic targeting with polygons, and first-party data usage. Data providers are diversifying their portfolios and exploring cookie-independent sources by integrating first-party data with AI to build and activate new audiences.
• Streaming Video and Multi-touch Attribution: The intersection of streaming video and programmatic advertising was a key focus, with a shift from last-touch attribution to multi-touch and MMM approaches. New metrics like incrementality and retail data integration were emphasized alongside case-by-case testing of alternative ID graphs.
• Effective Communication in Programmatic: The summit concluded with recommendations on improving programmatic communication: simplify internal and external language, focus on business success KPIs instead of individual media channel results, and reduce wasted media spend with thorough preliminary research. The importance of creating a distinct persona for each touchpoint of brand introduction is essential in campaign planning. This approach ensures that different individuals are targeted effectively at every stage of their interaction with the brand.

Main Takeaways

1. Google’s postponement of cookie depreciation is only a temporary delay.
2. Supply Path Optimization remains crucial and necessary.
3. Advertisers need bridge metrics to transition from old measurement systems and must update KPIs.
4. AI is enhancing internal operations and campaign effectiveness, though clients remain cautious.
5. Agency programmatic teams face challenges in educating traditional media buyers, collaborating with offshore counterparts, and training AI models, all while managing their core responsibilities.

The Digiday Programmatic Summit highlighted the industry’s evolution towards a cookieless future, with a significant focus on privacy, AI integration, and sustainable advertising practices. After listening to all the shared insights and strategies, it became clear that while challenges persist – particularly regarding third-party data & measurement alternatives and regulatory compliance – innovative solutions and technologies are paving the way forward.

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The 29th edition of Harmelin Media’s Annual Media Report includes new TV shows by media companies and independent streaming services, YouTube updates, and news across live sports leagues with notable matchups to mark on your calendars.

Today’s TV is a social and cultural touchstone, providing common ground for conversation and shared experiences. Watching popular shows or events can connect us with others, from recapping ‘Love Island’ with friends to engaging in the broader cultural conversation around the 2024 Presidential election coverage. Whether we’re laughing at a comedy, predicting plot twists in a drama, or cheering for a team in a sporting event, TV creates lasting memories and offers diverse content to suit various interests and moods, allowing us to escape daily life and immerse ourselves in different worlds and stories.

The content you’re about to discover is available via streamers, broadcast networks, cable networks, and YouTube–and that’s awesome. There is a wealth of quality content available for us to explore and make a part of our lives. The following pages are written to help you answer the question we face when we sit down to relax:  so…what are we watching?

Download PDF

For more information contact us.

This year’s Search & Performance Insider Summit took place from May 1st to 4th, in Nashville, TN. It featured a comprehensive agenda of engaging speakers and leadership from brands, agencies, and vendors, and covered topics from gamifying new product launches, the cookieless future, agile testing principles, and maximizing Performance Max. However, all these topics were just delicious side dishes to the 40-oz tomahawk steak of the conference – Artificial Intelligence.

AI is coming, AI is here, and AI has been here. It’s been used for years in ways that haven’t generated the current headlines, it’s becoming an integral part of daily operations for numerous agencies and brands, and its capabilities are increasing very rapidly.

If the window hasn’t fully shut on using AI as a competitive advantage, it’s only open a sliver.   Set some basic guidelines, but empower your people to experiment, discover efficiencies, and start getting comfortable with a product that will soon be on par with Microsoft Office as part of their daily lives. Below are some of the topics that were discussed regarding AI and its impact.

Same Money, More Scope: Agencies and vendors will be expected to produce more with the same amount of fees. This can be a win/win. Brands get better testing and better results while agencies, nimble in AI, can create more in less time than their current output, effectively increasing their hourly fees.

Your Job is Safe: Or at least some facsimile of it. But will it be you in it? Your number one competition isn’t the scary Artificial Intelligence machine, it’s the college graduate who knows how to use it better than you. Keep up your skills and your professional development when it comes to AI, and you’ll land on your feet.

Is Paid Search Safe? Is SEO? Your mileage may vary on responses, but the answer was generally “no.” How and where we search may change, but the need for professionals who know how to get to the top of the rankings will remain. There was also optimism that generative AI would help create a more robust search marketplace that would allow other engines to become more viable competitors to Google. This could expand the need for paid search and SEO professionals as there would be more engines that agencies and brands would need to utilize and consider.

The Human Touch: The most popular way attendees were utilizing AI was to help with content generation, but the common refrain was that it served as a “good rough draft.” It should not be considered a panacea for the human element of content creation. It’s a thought starter, a writer’s block breaker, and an editor. But it also has a real “garbage in, garbage out” element.

AI won’t turn lead into gold, and it won’t produce content from scratch that you can go post on your website. AI content can be highly inaccurate, outright fictional, or completely nonsensical. However, it can provide nuggets that, in the hands of knowledgeable copywriters, can be used to create engaging, valuable, and SEO-friendly content.

As stated earlier, there was more to the conference than just AI, but I found the other sessions to be more inspirational than informational.

Fight for what you believe in: Nobles Crawford, Assistant Vice President of Consumer Activation, Couture, L’Oreal gave an outstanding presentation on capturing new consumer behavior. His idea for gamifying the promotion of Prada Candy was not just inspiring in its execution, but also in Mr. Crawford’s relentless pursuit of his vision. Four times he kicked the idea up the ladder to senior management before finally receiving buy-in. On the campaign’s first day, it generated the results that they expected for the first two months – leaving the company struggling to meet consumer demand. The takeaway from this, perhaps my favorite of the conference – prepare for success. It’s our nature to spend so much time thinking about what failure entails that we don’t consider what happens when we wildly succeed.

Slow down for a bit so you can end up going further: Abby Wolf of Discover reviewed a case study that demonstrated how slowing down and implementing agile test methodologies into your campaigns can lead to better results, faster testing cycles, improved communications, and stronger record-keeping. It’s also incredibly handy come review time to help illustrate what you accomplished this year.

Who moved my cookies? Somebody moved your cheese a long time ago; now your cookies are going away too. How are agencies and brands going to adapt? What are the best tools and content strategies to help capture first-party data? Depending on the industry and resources, these answers were very different, but there was agreement that it is time to start dusting off our old marketing textbooks and get back to the old targeting and testing principles that we have been letting cookies and retargeting do for us. See above about slowing down and implementing agile test methodologies.

I’d like to thank the people at Mediapost for organizing such an informative and engaging conference. The performance and paid search landscape is changing rapidly, and it was great to have a forum to discuss how other companies and agencies are adapting.

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The 2024 Tableau Conference has wrapped up! Each year, Tableau (a Salesforce company) holds a 3-day conference to bring together the massive Tableau community and unveil their latest and greatest features for business analytics and data visualization. Being a Tableau shop since 2012, Harmelin Media has taken the opportunity to attend the Tableau conference over the years to keep a pulse on best practices and learn a few tips and tricks along the way.

This year, pulse was not just a metaphor – it was a headlining product at the conference. Part of the growing list of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered Tableau tools, Tableau Pulse is an intriguing concept. Pulse is designed to deliver short, summary-level information (data, charts, insights) to a user through embedded, email, or mobile deployments. In simple terms, Tableau Pulse is aimed at bringing Executive Summary information to the forefront, leaving the dense dashboards and complex data tables to the Business Analysts.

At the core of Tableau Pulse is Einstein — Salesforce’s AI brand. Salesforce Einstein has been part of their ecosystem since 2016. Initially focused on the Salesforce CRM (Customer Relationship Management) suite, the Einstein brand has permeated the larger Salesforce product portfolio since its introduction. With Tableau, Einstein is a rebranding of the long-existing statistical natural language tool called Narrative Science, which Salesforce acquired in late 2021. Much of the functionality within Tableau Einstein is familiar to us because Harmelin Media has experimented with Narrative Science implementations since 2016. That said, Tableau Pulse is the best packaging we have seen for the natural language feature, so we are excited to get our hands on it.

Tableau Pulse and the other AI features in Einstein are not currently available to us. To use them, we – like all other Tableau customers – need to move to Tableau Cloud. Tableau Cloud is a simpler Tableau Server environment hosted by Tableau. Harmelin currently manages an array of servers (hosted in Microsoft Azure) to power our Tableau environment. When we move to Tableau Cloud, we will have all the benefits of Tableau Server, including Pulse and Einstein, while not having to manage uptime and server resources. Other benefits include more frequent updates and newer features, which allows our Reporting & Analytics team to provide better, more innovative insights. Harmelin’s move to Tableau Cloud is scheduled for Q4 2024.

The 2024 Tableau Conference echoed much of the technology landscape over the past 12-18 months, putting all its emphasis on the benefits of Artificial Intelligence and how its use with data can improve insights and beef up analysis. With our incredible data-gathering tools and knowledge of industry trends, Harmelin Media is in a prime position to take advantage of the latest and greatest from Tableau.

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