A lot of industry conversation has been devoted to the changing, or collapse, of the marketing funnel as shopping habits shift thanks to trends like the influence of social media and the introduction of generative AI to search.
While it may be wise not to get overly bogged down in the funnel – as Thomas Ives, Co-Founder at RAAS LAB, put it at Advertising Week Europe, “Consumers don’t think that way – they’re not thinking: ‘I’m here to be ‘brand-awareness’ed today’” – it’s still a valuable tool for analysing different marketing approaches and what they set out to accomplish.
Ives was speaking on a panel chaired by Paula Bacariza Perez, GM Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk, alongside co-panellists Rachel Morgan-Jones, Head of Media and Digital Planning UK at Diageo, and Barry Walsh, Head of Digital Strategy and Planning at Havas.
The panel discussion unpacked how marketers should balance brand and performance to make sure the whole funnel is working in concert, as well as the tactics that are delivering results for Diageo, RAAS LAB, and Havas and how success is being measured.
“If a customer wants to convert … just get out of their way”
Havas’ Barry Walsh kicked off the panel discussion by asserting that “The funnel still stands strong”.
“Marketing has always been about making sure your customers and your potential customers are aware of you, consider buying you over your competitors, and then actually go on to do something about it,” he said, emphasising that this goal still holds true.
However, he added that marketers should be making more use of channels that let them “shortcut the funnel” on occasion – such as a smart TV home screen takeover that leads to a shoppable experience.
“If the customer wants to convert – just let them do that. Just get out of the way to make that happen.”
Walsh’s point echoed a discussion from the previous day’s sessions in which Boohoo’s Tom Binns and PayPal Ads’ Henry Stokes discussed ‘collapsing’ the shopping funnel with shoppable ads.
The conversation highlighted both advantages and drawbacks of this removal of friction – on the one hand, it can more effectively cater to consumers’ changing approaches to shopping. On the other, Binns noted that it could encourage more impulse buying of potentially unsuitable items, such as items in the wrong size or colour, leading to an increase in return rates.
Diageo saw ROAS results from ads that combine brand and performance
Rachel Morgan-Jones shared that Diageo has been testing and learning with different ad formats, and has so far seen strong results with ads that combine elements of brand and conversion.
For example, brand ads that incorporate interactive video cards: “So you are priming that user with your traditional brand ad – and then seamlessly prompting them within that environment to purchase in a really natural way.”
The brand has enjoyed 3X return on ad spend with ads that incorporate a prompt to purchase versus ads that don’t incorporate one. “Where we can, collapsing the funnel but having ads that are doing two very distinct jobs works best for us,” Morgan-Jones concluded.
RAAS LAB’s Thomas Ives stressed the importance of paying attention to all parts of the funnel and ensuring they work in concert.
“Ultimately, we see that the bottom of the funnel works well when you’re nailing the top of that funnel. You can’t … just focus on the bottom … and expect loads of customers to be there waiting for you to connect with them.
“You need to have done a job at the top of that funnel.”
Walsh agreed: “It’s brand and performance – it’s not one or the other. If you fully focus on brand, people might find you desirable … but are they going to do anything about it? Is there any sense of immediacy?
“If we’re just focused on performance – eventually, you’re just fishing in a smaller and smaller pool and the next [competitor] that comes along with the best deal – the customer will move.”
The need for discipline in measurement
Even as advertisers draw on different areas of the funnel in their overall strategy, Ives spoke to the importance of “discipline” in measurement and ensuring that KPIs that are more suited to different parts of the funnel aren’t mixed about – such as using CPA to measure the success of a branding activity instead of brand awareness or attention.
“Ultimately, if you look at the entire funnel, you want to compare how well that has performed as a whole versus a campaign that just sits in its silo,” he said. “And most of the time, you’ll see stronger return on investment where a full-funnel strategy has been considered.”
Building on this, Walsh explained that a measurement approach that draws together different types of long and short metrics can really uncover cause and effect in advertising campaigns. “Take econometrics, for instance – that takes into account lots of things; it takes into account incrementality, and we can calibrate that further by using things like multi-incrementality studies, overlaying things like attention.
“[This makes sure] that we’re not just saying, ‘We served some ads, and we saw some results’, it’s: ‘Did somebody actually see the ad and go on to do something?’”
Looking across the full media mix
Morgan-Jones detailed Diageo’s efforts to understand the metrics that truly matter by looking across the full media mix.
One revealing finding from a cross-media measurement study that compared the value of Diageo’s TV ads with its retail media ads showed that:
“Really interestingly we saw that our retail media – our point of sale in store, a big banner on Tesco.com or Sainsbury’s – delivered the same amount of reach that TV does for us.
“Obviously those channels are doing two very different jobs; [so] it’s really important that we understand that impact. Yes, they deliver the same amount of reach; but what is the consumer taking away from those different environments?”
One change that marketers should make to how they approach the funnel
Bacariza Perez concluded the discussion by posing a question to each of the panellists about what one change marketers should make as soon as possible to improve how they approach the full funnel and its measurement.
Ives put forward that “The best way to get performance out of all of the funnel is to think about your relevance” to the consumer – which means making sure that creative and targeting are both aligned and that teams aren’t working on these in silos.
Morgan-Jones’ advice was, “Don’t get distracted from what the job to be done is.” Brand-side marketers should consider: “What’s the single most important thing that that brief to that agency needs to deliver? The whole business needs to be aligned to that.
“They can go into their silos later, but it all needs to connect back to that single job to be done.”
Meanwhile, agencies should make sure they’re clear on what a brief needs to achieve and ensure they aren’t diverted from its core aim.
Finally, Walsh urged marketers to “Be absolutely customer-obsessed: If you really think about how you want to show up; how you want them to understand and feel about your brand, that will really help with your channel, your format, your tactics, your decision-making.
“And everything else falls in line under that.”
Read more of Retail Media Age’s coverage from Advertising Week Europe.
