The Global Review of Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising (DDMA)

Over 3,000 experienced marketing and advertising practitioners across 17 global markets (including the United States, Hong Kong, India, Germany, amongst others) have given their views on the state of DDMA. These were compiled through an online survey of advertisers, marketers and other industry participants (collected between July and September 2015 by 17 independent trade associations).

Whilst the complete Global Review’s findings are not released until the 8^th December, we can provide an executive summary of the UK market findings.

• Confidence is waning: Whilst 61.1 percent of UK marketers rated themselves as very or extremely confident in the value of DDMA and its prospects for future growth, this has decreased 10.3 percent from last year. This decrease has been seen in a number of countries globally but the significant decrease for the UK puts it in the top 5 largest decreases in confidence globally.

• Spending has increased and will continue to increase: 52.9 percent of marketers saw an increase in spending on DDMA over the past year. Certain channels have seen an increase, such as direct mail, email, contact centres, web content, digital display advertising, addressable TV, and SEO/SEM. The research also shows that 64.3 percent of marketers are expecting the spending to increase next year, particularly in channels such as social media, mobile and web content.

• Top performing channels aren’t all digital: Supporting some of the recent research from the Customer Acquisition Barometer 2015 in regards to how customers want to be contacted by brands, marketers felt the performance of direct mail, email, social media and web content also increased over the past 12 months. This stands in contrast with digital display advertising, digital out-of-home, SEO/SEM and contact centres which were viewed as having declined in performance over the last year.

• Consumer-focus remains a priority: Similar to the findings from last year’s report, the desire to be customer-centric was the top factor marketers stated as having invested in DDMA. The second most important factor was marketers desire to align with customer media preferences.

• Legislation worry is increasing: Greater than one in four (28.8 percent) UK marketers were highly or substantially limited by regulatory barriers which they felt were limiting their ability to pursue DDMA initiatives. This has increased substantially from last year, by 8.5 percent. Nearly two-thirds (64.4 percent) agreed that increased regulation would negatively affect their business.

The GDMA’s DDMA report 2015 is published in full here in partnership with the Winterberry Group, supported by sponsor MediaMath.

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