The Many Takes the Digiday Digital Media Buying Summit

The Many’s Group Media Director Crystal Chou recently attended the Digiday Digital Media Buying Summit in Palm Springs, CA. Attended by media professionals and vendors from adtech and publisher brands, the three-day event covered a variety of Digital Media Buying topics, spanning across a number of subjects - including the re-integration of creative and media, balancing brand and performance strategies, how to tap into content creators within social media, the latest measurement solutions, and more.

CRYSTAL'S TAKE ON THE SUBJECT MATTER:

These are all hot topics that we discuss at The Many on a daily basis - and lucky for us, we have Media and Creative all sitting under one roof. Our philosophy here is that the best and most impactful work comes from Media and Creative working closely together from the onset, and we practice that philosophy everyday no matter what stage of a campaign we're in.

When it comes to balancing brand and performance strategies, our stance has never been to choose one or the other. While it can be a very trying time for our clients in today's macroeconomic conditions, we firmly believe in the power of both strategies to drive both long-term and short-term growth. How we choose to balance between the two is bespoke to each client, and really comes down to the brand and/or product. We consider a number of factors - ranging from brand health, market maturity, historical performance, and availability.

We work with creators across the majority of our clients here at The Many, and have taken an integrated approach to our creator strategies as well - meaning we're thinking about the role of creators not just from an organic perspective, but also how and when we leverage them within paid media. While creators are now an essential part of most of our marketing strategies, the most important factor when considering creators is understanding their role within your overarching marketing objectives and strategies, and establishing and maintaining an authentic brand voice alongside creator work.

CRYSTAL'S KEY TAKEAWAYS:

As the advertising industry grew into a behemoth, the industry also evolved to silo out specialties to keep up the rapid growth in scale and complexity. Brand and performance execution became silo'd, as did creative and media. The industry is now returning back to a need for all of these things to come back together. This is something that The Many excels at, particularly with how our teams are structured, to make sure all elements of our campaigns are working effectively to maximize results.

As technology continues to innovate and the media landscape continues to evolve, marketers must stay open to new emerging channels to drive business results. Retail media and influencers are two prime examples and are both areas that The Many has tested and proven to be effective. At the end of the day, test and learn initiatives must be bespoke to our clients' overarching objectives and our guiding strategies, and must be set up in a way executionally to garner clean learnings.