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There were many prominent themes in the marketing industry in 2019 – data privacy, AI, and social responsibility among them – but the concept set to have the biggest impact on marketing plans and creative choices in 2020 is the return to brand-building (and the shift away from short-termism).

Advertising effectiveness experts Les Binet and Peter Field were the first to introduce the now ubiquitous “60/40 rule”: To be effective, a brand should spend roughly 60% of its media budget on long-term, brand-building activities, and 40% on more targeted sales activations.* Their research also led them to the following conclusion: Short-termism is undermining advertising effectiveness. As the incidence of short-term campaigns has increased, advertising campaign effectiveness has steadily fallen…

“Reality is frequently inaccurate” — Douglas Adams

Digital media promised precision and has delivered something closer to a marshmallow. While media numbers are known to be susceptible to invalid traffic generated by bots, now WhiteOps, a cyber security company with a long history of fighting fraud, is uncovering vulnerabilities in the conversion metrics. Conversion metrics are the foundation of return on ad spend analysis such as multi-touch attribution.

In a recent ACA webinar, Dan Lowden of WhiteOps explained how bots are infiltrating the conversion events such as test drive bookings and credit applications used to calculate media effectiveness and Cost Per Acquisition. Additionally, marketers allocate media dollars to consumers who showed some interest in the product through re-targeting efforts. Marketers are seeing this as an increase in leads that never seem to convert.

Quebec marketers gathered recently in Montreal for an ACA Executive Forum entitled “Measuring What Really Matters.” It was an opportunity to explore marketer expectations and needs regarding cross-platform measurement.

The ACA had invited measurement experts George Ivie, Executive Director & CEO of the Media Rating Council (MRC); Catherine Malo, Chief Digital Officer and General manager, Member services, Numeris; Cynthia Pachovski, Vice President, Nielsen Media & Marketing Cloud Canada Lead; Bryan Segal, Senior Vice-President, Canada, Comscore and Pat Pellegrini, President & CEO, Vividata.

Marketers that want to reach a receptive, affluent, urban audience should consider tuning in to podcasts.

At a recent ACA webinar, findings from The Canadian Podcast Listener 2019 study were shared by Jeff Vidler, president of Audience Insights, and Jeff Ulster, chief content and technology officer at The Podcast Exchange (TPX) and owner of Ulster Media.

The third annual study, which surveyed 3,000+ adult Canadians and 1,500+ monthly podcast listeners, aims to help marketers understand advertising opportunities in Canada’s podcast media sector.

There are over 300,000 new immigrants coming to Canada each year. By the year 2036, Canada’s multicultural consumers will represent 34% of the population while some urban centers across the country will reach over 80%. There is no question that the face of Canada is undergoing rapid and profound change, and marketers need to adapt to this change now.

That was the picture that Bobby Sahni, President & Co-founder of Ethnicity Matters, painted the morning of ACA’s Executive Forum, “Marketing to the New Mainstream”, which took place in Toronto last month.

What do brands like Ferrari, Apple and Starbucks have in common? Consumers don’t just love their products—they love their brands.

At a recent ACA webinar, Graham Robertson, author of Beloved Brands, explored the concept of building a brand idea and how it helps brands truly connect with consumers.