Elephants never forget. Buffalos never forgive. And AdTech never learns to put the consumer first.

The laws of unintended consequences and history repeating itself

Promo codes could be a key solution in a cookieless world, adding the glue between publishers, advertisers and the consumer, but only when adtech learns from its previous mistakes and puts the consumer first. History says it wont!

We’ve all been there [insert AdTech conference of your choosing].

Someone in trendy plastic glasses and a novelty shirt – probably the guy below – has just flashed up the image of the gate above. They pause for effect before their next great punchline. Maybe they raise an eyebrow – they’d spent all night practising in front of the mirror after all. Two minutes earlier they’d cracked the now infamous “I’m the only thing holding you back from your coffee break/lunch break/afternoon glass of wine or beer” joke.

We’re never wrong

20 years ago, it was the AdBlocker – not the twenty ads on a page, multiple videos all playing at the same time, banners, skins, recommendation widgets – hindering our ability to generate revenue from our digital ad spend. For the last couple of years, it’s been GDPR – not the liberties we’ve been taking with our customer’s data, or the terrible experiences we’ve created around gaining consent  – that’s to blame.

And now I see history repeating itself with promo codes.

We need to wake up and smell the coffee. We have an open field to play in here – the only reason we’re failing to engage with customers is because of us. And our inability to do what we’re supposedly known for as an industry which is and genuinely listen to consumers.

To come back to the chump from the AdTech conference – it’s us putting up the gates. And we need to stop.

Let’s journey back

The year is 1997. Online banners are 2 years old. And Jakob Nielsen had just carried out a piece of research that concluded that advertising doesn't work on the web. Not only did it conclude this, it concluded that unethical design pays off – users tend to click on banner ads that look like dialog boxes, complete with fake OK and Cancel buttons that actually takes users to the advertiser's site.

Deceptive, unethical, and ranked #3 among the most-hated advertising techniques. Still, fake dialog boxes got many more clicks than regular banners, which users had already started to ignore in 1997. It's no surprise he was hesitant to publish the research!

Ten years ago, Chartbeat’s CEO shared insights from two billion site visits across the web. They found that a stunning 55% spent fewer than 15 seconds actively on a page. You’d think that would have been all the evidence marketeers needed to move away from clicks.

In the early years of the internet and digital advertising, perhaps all parties could claim naivety – often found in emerging markets. But it has now been almost thirty years since the first digital ad, and despite the huge array of evidence to support what we all intuitively knew, clicks remain king.

The trouble is clicks are easy to measure.

As consumers, we know that our path to purchase is not a straight line. Even less so with higher value items. But as soon as we sit at our desk, we are transported into a parallel universe where all conversion happens in straight line. And last click attribution is the only data point that matters.

Marketers are from Mars, DPOs are from Venus

The story becomes more other worldly when you consider how much brands spend on developing their brand – a coherent and cohesive voice, all the assets – and then communicating that brand. Done well, the brand is instantly recognisable, and can register emotion with the target audience, even with the outline of the image, or the colour.

With the dawn of the internet, brands suddenly had the opportunity to communicate directly with the consumer. Yet with the arrival of GDPR, it’s as if marketeers have completely forgotten about all that work they’ve done on branding.

Having spent a small fortune on paid digital media to achieve that “holy grail” of a click, you then confront the consumer with a demand for consent. The tone in complete contrast to the brand the company has spent so much money on creating. Maybe the legal department were given a secondment to marketing for the week?

In one click you go from “Nike: Just do it” to “In order to enhance your experience across our platforms and show you more relevant information, we use cookies and similar technologies, both Nike-owned and third-party”.

As many of you will remember my work with the ICO as GDPR was rolled out in the UK, I am huge supporter of improving the open access web.  But remembering the Chartbeat data that 55% of consumers leave within 15 seconds, and most consent questionnaires take far longer than 15 seconds, these types of experiences just baffle me.

Loyalty over sales madness

In spite of the evidence that we shouldn’t be chasing clicks, we do. In spite of the fact we know buying journey’s aren’t linear, we expect that a purchase will follow. And then to top it all off, in spite of the evidence that half of our visits will leave in a matter of seconds, we flood the site with barriers to purchase – ranging from the required to the indulgent. Consent requests, newsletter signups, app installs, survey forms, and promo codes are just a few examples of what gets thrown at a consumer when a site identifies them as a new first party cookie. 

With the loss of 3rd party cookies, there has been a rush for first party data to facilitate organic media, repeatable sales and increased life time value (LTV) of a customer – given the decline in ROI from digital paid media. If you can increase the LTV of a customer, then it enables you to spend more acquiring the customer in the first place.

And the key to driving LTV is loyalty. So all of the above at least in theory makes sense.

But like many theories, the practice doesn’t quite work out. Along the way, no one actually thought about the customer, and the tail started wagging the dog. And now the loyalty / engagement drivers are actually distracting the new prospect from making a first purchase, and without a purchase, there is no LTV.

There is clearly stickiness to a customer who installs the app, and increased profitability of returning customers via a newsletter, with customer feedback an invaluable tool to evolve the experience. However for a new customer (as acknowledged by the need to request consent), it is probably a little too early to demand such commitments, let alone all three on the first visit.

Very few people ask someone to move in (on to your phone) on a first date. Try to set up a regular date night (newsletter) is surely once the novelty / romance has died down, and asking what they think about you so early on is just needy.

So why remotely risk a sale by distracting the prospect with loyalty hooks?

One final attempt to prevent a saler

At the end of the process, brands are surprised by basket abandonment. Having spent all that money on getting the consumer to the site, and just as the consumer is ready to checkout and purchase their basket they leave. Why would a consumer go through all of this time and effort, only to leave at the final step. Which brings us back to the Nielson eye tracking studies. Through thousands of hours on web browsing, consumers have trained themselves to ignore ads and find the content, and with an ecommerce journey, they have trained themselves how to buy the best price. With one of the best adverts that there is a better price out there, being the voucher / promo code box, often just above where you place your payment details. Instantly telling the consumer that there is a better price out there, simply by searching the brand name and voucher codes. Now when the consumer heads off to find the better price from a deal site, one of three things happens:

-        The consumer finds a promo code, but for a different site, where they purchase. Resulting in a happy consumer, and unhappy brand

-        The consumer finds a promo code, for the same site, where they purchase. Resulting in a happy consumer, a happy brand, and a happy deal site

-        The consumer finds a promo code, which doesn’t work. Resulting in a unhappy consumer, an unhappy brand, and likely an oblivious deal site

So, if and it’s a big if, we can make promo codes a seamless consistent part of the customer journey, then Adtech has a prime new weapon, that puts the consumer first, giving it the best chance to win. Those that get it right, will be richly rewarded, and the aspiration of customer loyalty achieved. Those that get it wrong will struggle in a world of ever decreasing customer acquisition ROI, and having to rewin the customer time after time is downward spiral.