DMEXCO @home 2021 – setting new priorities in the digital economy for a post-corona world

Dr. Dominik Matyka, Chief Advisor DMEXCO

Whether in the automotive industry, retail, the service sector, or the digital industry – the world is currently undergoing an accelerated shift in all economic areas. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic in particular is acting as an additional catalyst for the rapid transformation of many business models. Over the past year and a half, it has demanded a fundamental rethink, while at the same time setting a wide range of innovative business ideas and technologies in motion.

DMEXCO 2020 – Attitude Matters with Remote Matchmaking in a Pandemic

Dr. Dominik Matyka, Chief Advisor DMEXCO

Never before has attitude been more important than this year, as industries, disrupted by the corona virus struggle between economic and human survival from a home office. Remote working and social contact through digital interfaces has become the new normal. Events in the Corona crisis, such as the #StopHateforProfit initiative involving Facebook, Coca-Cola, Unilever amongst other corporates highlight a need for the digital industry to have a clear attitude. In line with our ‘Attitude Matters‘ motto, we have published a DMEXCO report  featuring a comprehensive study on the topic of attitude. An overwhelming majority (89 percent) believe that companies have a responsibility to solve societal challenges and over half (54 percent) believe that there will probably not be a return to business as usual.

At DMEXCO, we have digitized at speed to create the brand new platform DMEXCO @home  to take the leading conference, fair and European networking hub for the business of the future fully virtual. After months of lock down and uncertainty, we are looking forward to hosting an intensive exchange with our colleagues, industry experts, our community and new visitors on September 23 and 24 from wherever they are in the world, via desktop or mobile screen.

Like many working teams, we are in a pandemic white space and have had a great deal of interest from our community on how it will work, particularly with the unique networking and social interaction functions. These two functions have been at the core of our development of the digital platform and we want to let our visitors know what to expect. With a design, reminiscent of social media interfaces, there will be several matchmaking possibilities on the platform:

• platform-wide there will be interactive contact suggestions via a free text search in the Communications Center;
• via a ‘Discovery Graph’, a Snap Map style visualization of the community with a filter function so that a visitor can search for contacts according to their business needs;
• with a click on an interactive ‘Brandcard’ located in the ‘Show floor’, a visitor can enter a virtual exhibitor space, manned by a team of contact persons and click on an interactive exhibitor profile (green signals that a team member is online and available);
• a visitor can make group video calls with up to 10 people, communicate via a messenger function or via a schedule-a-meeting feature.

Every visitor can create their own profile, entering their area of interest, company, position etc. We, as humans, need physical social contact but it could be much easier to search for contacts online with a filtered search function, than through a physical anonymous crowd. Europe is at the global forefront of GDPR regulation and each matchmaking possibility on the DMEXCO @home platform will be preempted by an ‘opt in’ function for personal consent to ensure privacy.

In the mobile marketing world, an industry central to DMEXCO @home consumer concerns for privacy have been a barrier to uptake of some new technologies, for example, location based marketing. Aside from Generation Z, comfortable with using apps that track their whereabouts on their mobile phone, most consumers are reluctant to broadcast their location and movements. This attitude, despite de-identification technology, has hindered the development of location based marketing in the mobile marketing sphere. In this strange world of today, consumers now have a strong health incentive to allow bluetooth low energy to be activated on their smartphone and use the Corona warning apps. Again GDPR compliant in Europe, the government promise of anonymity is a key driver to consumer uptake. Will Corona disruption cause long term changes in consumer behavior and drive location based marketing forward?

Nobody can predict precisely how long Corona will disrupt or what the long term impact will be. Today, there has been a huge global shift to relying on digital technology and experimentation. In April, a survey revealed that our DMEXCO Community believes that in the longer term, the pace of digital transformation will accelerate. With these opportunities, come digital corporate responsibility and the right attitude. Foursquare, who will be speaking at DMEXCO @home , have committed the company’s tech with a distributed team of volunteer technologists, to helping in pandemic times and are sharing aggregated and anonymized foot traffic data from across the USA with health authorities. Snap, an important player in mobile social media and speaker at DMEXCO @home, after its research revealed that anxiety was high amongst its users, has rolled out a mini app with partner meditation app Headspace. Who would have predicted that Apple would cooperate with Google? At DMEXCO, we may have this year been relieved of carbon offsetting our business travel with our DMEXCO forest initiative but green pressure is here to stay and will affect all industries. Not every company will have the same attitude but having an attitude on how brands can drive societal innovation and take digital responsibility is business relevant.

With DMEXCO @home we are looking forward to offering the platform for the mobile marketing industry to come together, join the discussion, innovate, have an attitude and push the reset button for collective future solutions. DMEXCO @home is the new way to network, to interact, to exchange. It’s real. Get your Ticket to DMEXCO @home now!

5 steps to avoid wasting your display advertising budgets

 

Tiago Vila Verde, Head of Analytics, mediasmart

There is a myriad of advertising partners available to buy media and help mobile advertisers to reach their target audiences, and advertisers need to follow clear criteria to find the right ones. In the world of data driven advertising, it is a common (and logical) practice to distribute advertising dollars based on the cost per conversioneach partner is delivering, and those delivering the best price, or in other words, the best ROI, will get the bigger budgets.

Using neuroscience to successfully transform the XR experience

Simon Gill, Chief Creative Officer at Isobar

It seems trying to predict the future is a very human trait. It speaks to both our curious and creative nature. However, the popular William Gibson quote “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” would suggest we don’t need to look too far. I felt this, when seeing the Webby Awards winner DOTA2 Championshipin 2017.

At MWC size REALLY does matter

JC Oliver, Global Chief Creative Officer
at Unlockd

“Who turned out the lights?” was the concerned refrain that rang out across the hallowed halls of CES when the electricity decided to pack up in January.

“Where are my long johns?” was the concerned refrain that rang out at Barcelona airport when I arrived from the sun-dappled shores of Australia to the whispers of Storm Emma that stroked MWC this year – I mean seriously…I really did not pack the correct clothing for a Barcelona that saw the first snowflakes since 2010.

The Evolution of Non-Organic Traffic

Danielle Blumenstyk Peterman, Content Marketing Manager at AppsFlyer

Remember the good old days? When you wanted to boost your organic traffic, so you embarked upon a UA campaign, knowing that you could rely on the organic multiplier to then increase your reach 1.5x or even 2x on a good day? Yeah, those golden days of bliss. Sadly, those days are gone.

 

Wait, what happened?

First off, organic app discovery is largely broken. The sheer amount of apps in the two major stores (over 2 million in both the App Store and Google Play) makes it nearly impossible for users to find your app in the hay stack, even if they happen to be looking for a similar one. With so many possibilities for every search term and keyword, the chances of a user landing on and installing your app are slim to none.

Has Mobile killed the bank branch?

 

Neil Ballinger, Head of UX at Nimbletank

Now that Smartphones are bedded into our culture, banking as we know it is on its way out 

Banking as we know it, is on its way out. Traditional products, services and the branch are becoming redundant. It’s not time to call in the demolition teams yet, but there can be no denying that smartphones and their surrounding technology have completely changed the way younger people think about banking.

Mobile devices have changed us from a nation of owners to lifestyle livers.

A trend most evident in town high streets, where shops have closed down and turned into trendy restaurants and cafes because we no longer spend our time going from store-to-store with shopping bags. Instead, we sit on our sofas buying clothes and homeware on our smartphones.

Smartphones are saving us from the mundane tasks of life. Such as a weekend appointment to visit to your bank manager to open a new account, order a credit card or discuss a mortgage.

Mobile has disrupted the way we need to look at banking. No longer are users looking to create a relationship with a bank manager. Saturday appointments will be a thing of the past, when you can simply download an app and order a card to your door. An unpleasant process has been turned into a simple one.

Millennials are holding the Scythe

Banking and financial services are being driven forward the emergence of the Millennial generation, empowered by their devices. Millennials find no importance in building relationships with bank managers. They think of money, credit, pensions as utility services that they can carry around like their music. As house prices become less affordable and having a healthy pension to retire on is becoming less realistic, Millennials are saving to spend in the here-and-now, making life-long relationships with banks obsolete.

Smartphones and related technology are giving young people the technology they need to view financial products as utilities rather than relationships to be built. With the emphasis within the Financial sector and Fintech centred around making their products simpler, more accessible and user-centric, it’s easy to imagine the landscape of the physical bank being done away with very soon.

Challenger banks in the West such as Atom Bank and Monzo are already rethinking the relationships people have with their banks. Smartphones are at the centre of both of them. The implications of Fintech companies such as these go way beyond customer service and the physical context of a bank branch. Challenger banks are tapping into the lifestyles of their consumers and creating new services to improve and simplify their lives.

Exciting advances in Fintech are happening all over the world. Among a multitude of truly innovative companies, China’s WeChat allow users to split their bills with friends, Spixii, a UK company have created a Chatbot using powerful AI technology that will buy and manage all of your insurance policies through you, all through an app. Thirdly, StashInvest in the US allows customers to make and control investments from their smartphone app.

Similarly, to Challenger banks, all these services are turning a boring, complicated or tedious process into a simple utility task.

Technology is dictating

Mobile is not the only technology that has emerged and helped to change the face of banking. AR, artificial intelligence, voice UI, smart assistants have all changed our expectations of how we interact with faulting services. Technologies such as Chatbots, which are dramatically redefining the customer services industry and products such as the Amazon Echo illustrate where traditional banking models are failing.

They’re not evolving. They’re sticking to the same models and are not changing their approach with the changing values of their customers. If a bank sells you a credit card, it differentiates its product by offering you sub-products such as air miles, cash back and rewards. Whereas, modern technologies are becoming invisible and are only focussing on improving the lives of customers.

Customer centricity is key

Physical banks are a thing of the past. They’re a need from an age where we lacked technology to manage our money how we wish. Their death won’t be immediate, but as the values of the general population aligns to those common within millennials, they will disappear.

Why are Millennials so important in this? Often thought of as the neglected demographic, they focus more on utility and experience than ownership. Whereas they don’t own as larger proportion of the world’s wealth – as older generations die and incumbents are born with the same expectations of Millennials, they will have a stronger and more shaping influence on the world of finance.

There has never been a better time for big banks and financial players to think about customer experience and value innovation.

How You Can Achieve High Performance With Perfect Performance Marketing

Shumel Lais, Founder & CEO at Appsumer

Effective performance marketing is data-driven by design, demanding marketers monitor and measure mountains of disparate data points and performance “signals.” But marketers can no longer compete on their knowledge of “surface” data such as the cost per acquisition grouped by ad networks and partners. To gain and maintain competitive edge performance marketers must strive to distil granular data, including creatives and sub-publisher information, into deeper insights.

Weve Source: The Art and Science of Mobile Engagement

Harry Clarke, Creativity & Innovations Manager at Weve

There is always something to compare in advertising. Content vs context, data vs creativity, technology vs humanity. All the conversations start off with one question: who will win? Yet in every seminar and workshop I’ve attended and every article I’ve read, we all reach the same conclusion: there are no winners.

The truth is, they are all cornerstones of the advertising world we work (and live) in, working together to enhance and evolve our output.

A view from the top: does mobile have a seat at the boardroom table?

Written by Jon Hook, VP of Brand & Agency at AdColony

At the MMA London Forum we took a step into the boardroom with Dan Hagen Chief Strategy Officer at Carat UK and Keith Moor the CMO at Santander, to understand if and how mobile has impacted the way executives plan and execute marketing campaigns.

How has mobile changed the way that you plan your campaigns?

As with any other medium, the starting point is always with the consumer, not a device or screen. Mobile enables advertisers to derive a real time and data rich portrait of a consumer than previously possible, in large part down to location signals (giant caveat being GDPR!). Whilst this is deeply valuable, the real challenge is where mobile sits in the marketing mix.