MarketingCharts staff
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from MarketingCharts, a Watershed Publishing publication providing up-to-the-minute data and research to marketers.
Some sobering results from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Google Digital Academy: on a 100-point scale, marketers working at advertisers around the world score their organizations’ digital capabilities at an average of just 57.
Worse yet, that number hasn’t budged since the last time the survey was fielded 18 months earlier. To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers surveyed 2,200 marketers at 141 advertisers in 41 countries around the globe. So where are advertising organizations having the most trouble?
The study results show that mobile advertising is the biggest pain point among channels, with an average digital capability score of just 45, followed by mobile web and apps (51.1) and display media (55.9). Respondents seem more confident in their abilities to master social media (66.6) and search (65.5), while video (52.1) also presents challenges.
Marketing analytics scored an average of almost 60, but advertisers gave themselves low scores in testing (49.8). Digital targeting (53.3) is also a troublesome area.
The findings found advertisers especially weak in mapping the consumer journey, tailoring content to match the stages of that journey, using ROI metrics to adjust the marketing mix across channels for greater impact, and measuring the effects of their campaigns on actual business outcomes such as sales. Attracting and retaining critical digital talent and receiving support from finance, legal, and IT were also seen as hurdles.
There is one silver lining, though, if it could be called that: in a corresponding survey of 2,900 employees at 126 advertising agencies in 28 countries, respondents seemed more confident in their abilities. Their overall score of almost 68, for example, while not world-beating, was more than 10 points higher than their advertiser counterparts. In fact, agencies scored themselves higher than advertisers in each of the 15 capabilities measured.
The biggest gaps between agencies and advertisers? Mobile advertising (62.4 for agencies vs. 45 for advertisers); display media (68.7 and 55.9, respectively); and digital targeting (67.2 and 53.3, respectively).
The findings found advertisers especially weak in mapping the consumer journey, tailoring content to match the stages of that journey, using ROI metrics to adjust the marketing mix across channels for greater impact, and measuring the effects of their campaigns on actual business outcomes such as sales. Attracting and retaining critical digital talent and receiving support from finance, legal, and IT were also seen as hurdles.
There is one silver lining, though, if it could be called that: in a corresponding survey of 2,900 employees at 126 advertising agencies in 28 countries, respondents seemed more confident in their abilities. Their overall score of almost 68, for example, while not world-beating, was more than 10 points higher than their advertiser counterparts. In fact, agencies scored themselves higher than advertisers in each of the 15 capabilities measured.
The biggest gaps between agencies and advertisers? Mobile advertising (62.4 for agencies vs. 45 for advertisers); display media (68.7 and 55.9, respectively); and digital targeting (67.2 and 53.3, respectively).