AMMAN — For Wavemaker Amman, the digital transformation in
media buying and planning was exactly what they’d been waiting for: For years,
the agency had been investing in digital tools, technologies, and resources,
all the while updating their capabilities and guiding their clients toward
innovative media solutions.
اضافة اعلان
But, as with any revolution, a certain tipping point needed
to be reached before the floodgates could open and change could be fully
realized.
Now, in the post-pandemic world, businesses throughout the Kingdom
have been dramatically shifting how they plan and allocate their media budgets.
As Wavemaker Amman’s managing director, Hani Dakhlallah, explains, this shift
has major implications—not only for brands and agencies, but for publishers as
well.
He has identified several key trends in the Kingdom’s media and
advertising landscape, and prescribes a number of ways in which all parties
involved can leverage these changes to their advantage.
Shifting to digital spaces and priorities
It comes as little surprise that companies are quickly
shifting their media budgets away from traditional media, and increasingly
investing in digital spending.
“Clients want to maximize their ROI, and online
media makes it easier to do that,” explains Dakhlallah. “In the past, brands
would make bulk deals with specific media outlets, like key newspapers or TV
stations.
With digital media’s more fragmented nature, clients can spread their
budgets wider.” Additionally, he says, businesses are able to avoid committing
huge portions of their advertising and media budgets to specific outlets or
campaigns — instead, they have the freedom to shift and play around with how
and where they spend.
Of course, brands haven’t completely abandoned traditional
media: According to the latest figures from McKinsey, 40 percent of global ad
spending is still happening in offline channels (with TV taking the largest portion
of these revenues), but the scales continue to tip in favor of digital media.
And
even if advertisers are still operating in both spaces, the rules of engagement
are changing drastically. “In the last two or three years, clients are
increasingly separating their traditional and digital media campaigns,” says
Dakhlallah.
“The creative implementation has completely split.” For agencies,
this means that the work is also being segmented: with many businesses now
issuing entirely digital RFPs, agencies that weren’t ready for the digital
transformation are finding themselves woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to
capture new business opportunities.
For Wavemaker, however, this digital shift is something
they’d been ready and eager to capitalize on.
Even before last year’s
rebranding (from MEC), the agency had been taking strategic steps to provide
clients with a well-rounded approach to media, content, and technology.
Now,
Wavemaker is wholly focused on provoking positive growth for its clients — which
means balancing advanced media technologies, world-class content, and
meaningful consumer insights.
Targeting quality over quantity
Advertisers have also become more discerning in how they
target consumers.
“Today, clients care more about precision than breadth,”
Dakhlallah says.
“They’re less focused on mass audiences and are shifting more
toward targeted segmentation.
” For forward-thinking agencies, this means
completely changing the media planning approach.
As Dakhlallah explains, “Our
approach to the planning process has become much more analytical and holistic:
we look at all elements and considerations before developing a clear strategy
forward.”
Like the agency’s clients, Wavemaker is concerned with successfully
reaching key demographics, which means being more discerning and
evidence-driven in their approach, in order to achieve the best possible ROI.
After all, brands are less concerned these days with the total amount they’re
spending, and more occupied with how far those dinars are going.
The value of good data
When your ad spending becomes less mass-oriented and more
targeted, segmented, and focused, there’s one factor that begins to matter
above all else: data.
“Data is king these days,” says Daklallah. “In the past,
clients would primarily ask about rates and costs — now, all they want to see are
stats and analytics.”
Advertisers are ultimately looking for digital media
channels that will allow them to reach the right audience: for publishers, this
means that investing in robust analytics tools is crucial when it comes to
attracting ad revenues.
And because digital media offers more diverse and
precise metrics for measuring the impact of online advertising, brands and
agencies can implement campaigns that are increasingly more intuitive,
intelligent, and cost-effective.
Similarly, finding strategic, value-added partnerships in
the digital media space can be a key asset for brands, agencies, and publishers
alike.
For Wavemaker, this has included cultivating a close, mutually
beneficial relationship with Arab Trade Desk (ATD), the newest innovator in
Jordan’s digital media sphere.
In addition to leveraging ATD’s wide-reaching network
of online and offline partners (complementing its own robust media network),
Wavemaker is able to provide its clients with additional data services that
allow them to maximize ROI more effectively than ever before.
More than providing rich insights and a solid return on
investments, the digital media spending revolution offers brands a kind of
agility and flexibility that offline campaigns don’t—and this agility is
especially crucial in unpredictable times.
“We’re living in a world where you
have to expect the unexpected,” Dakhlallah says, “and digital media allows
brands to adapt to these changes with much greater ease.”
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