Daniel Henriksen - Xaxis

Engineering your advantage

Daniel Henriksen — Sat, 04 Apr 2020 19:00:07 +0000

AI is no longer just a Hollywood vision of the world in 2050. Machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP) and robotics are already all around us, impacting our daily lives in unnoticeable ways, and transforming organizations’ ability to make smarter decisions.

The applications for these technologies are far-reaching. AI has been applied by Google and Facebook to counter growing concerns among marketers about sophisticated frauds perpetrated against their brands and potential association with undesirable content.

A notable example of how AI is being applied relates to more effective detection and removal efforts of violent and extremist content. In 2017, in response to rising awareness and frequency of offensive content, YouTube announced that they had succeeded in removing over 75 percent of a month’s worth of offensive content before it was flagged by a human. This was only possible through increasing investment and focus on the application of AI, and ML/NLP specifically. This example shows how brand marketers, agencies and technology providers can leverage the power of AI and data to “engineer an advantage.” Luckily, a host of cost-effective, cloud-based solutions for storing massive datasets have emerged with the proliferation of data in organisations. Most importantly, even the non-tech savvy have access to better-automated technologies and simpler methods of data processing than ever before.

Making decisions enabled by data a top priority

Regardless of industry or business type, using data to make better decisions, and automating this process through the use of technology, are top priorities for most companies today. In a studyconducted by Altimeter Group on the state of digital marketing in 2019, 50 percent of respondents prioritised “investing in technology that enables real-time delivery and personalization of data” above all other initiatives, and 41 percent viewed integrating “multiple software systems to share customer data” as the most important initiative they would pursue over the next 12 months.

This shows that brand marketers are focused on bringing together all of their customer data residing in different areas of the business. A better-structured repository of customer and first-party data will enable them to deliver customised content in real-time, enhancing customer experiences and extracting more value from their marketing and advertising investments. As the importance of data becomes clearer for marketers, their next question is: How should I start this journey?

Adobe and Econsultancy research uncovered that starting this integration journey may not be as simple as it seems. Marketers were asked about the biggest challenge they were facing last year and 44 percent pointed to difficulty getting a holistic view of customers across all interactions. Additionally, 33 percent cited a lack of marketing technology integration as a key barrier to achieving this holistic view – which is essential to better marketing decisions.

The first step should be a comprehensive five-step marketing technology stack review. The review starts with making a plan. First, we conduct an audit of existing technology and perform discovery of essential data needed for marketing decision making. Next, an assessment of alternative marketing technology and data infrastructure needed to fill potential discovered gaps is completed. Finally, the marketing team develops a recommendation and action plan as to what the ideal marketing technology stack should look like, in order to make better marketing decisions.

Get an edge with algorithmic design-thinking

In a survey of global marketers about digital media spending, including professionals in China, India and Singapore, Xaxis found that 71 percent agreed it has become more difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of digital media investments in recent years, and 81 percent said that it was essential for digital campaigns to have a direct correlation with business results. Instead, they are reliant on simple media metrics like CTR or CPM as indicators of media performance and marketing value. This is concerning because of the limitations of these metrics to measure and evaluate the true effectiveness of digital media, which then makes it difficult to translate into business outcomes.

When these metrics are being used to fuel the algorithmic features of today’s advertising technology, the resulting decisions about digital media investment are subpar and do not align with business goals.

It is time for all of us to rethink how AI is used to drive true business results. How can marketers work with their agencies and media partners to uncover the data assets and sources available to them to “engineer an advantage” that enables them to evaluate the true business value of marketing and media investments?

For Xaxis, transforming media into business outcomes is a bespoke process. It begins with a review of the marketer’s success metrics and goals, then an audit and analysis of all available data assets and sources, and finally establishing the appropriate business outcome indicators. These indicators inform our proprietary ML capabilities and custom algorithmic models, giving our clients’ media and marketing investments an unfair advantage. This standardized approach yields solution and algorithmic features customized to every brand and its market circumstances.

Driving custom business outcomes with AI

This approach has been shown to be effective in our work to increase purchase intent for our global client Ford. This unique metric quantifies the value of key website actions in terms of their impact on offline sales. The UK results were outstanding and show that AI is unquestionably the future of advertising. The combination of the Xaxis approach with proprietary AI capabilities, Ford saw a five-fold increase in test drive requests, a two-fold increase in dealer locators and about 25 percent reductions in cost per purchase intent (CPPI) and overall savings on non-branding display investment.

Brands in Asia Pacific need to embark on this next step of the digital maturity journey, accessing all the data available today and amplified by intelligent advertising and marketing technologies. This approach will “engineer an advantage” for brands that deliver better ROI on digital media investments, and demonstrates the value of marketing in contributing to business outcomes and sustainable growth.

Originally published on Malaysia Business Insight

Why advertising needs to be a two-way game

Daniel Henriksen — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 17:51:56 +0000

Daniel Henriksen, Head of Outcome Media Planning, APAC

Originally published on Campaign Asia

In any business relationship, the sustainability and success of the relationship is the value created jointly by customer and suppliers, and where the cooperative business relationship takes input from the customer’s perspective and the supplier’s perspective, finding an equilibrium where both are satisfied with the outcome of the relationship. In sociology, this is defined as the ‘Dyad Perspective’, which in Greek describes ‘dyad’ as a group of two people and their interactions.

Why do I think this is important to resurrect this relationship in today's day and age?

I believe the idea of ‘mutual value’ has been eroded by a general ‘abundance mentality’, both in personal and professional settings. We’ve become prone to simply wanting more for ourselves, and to make reference to the mathematician John Nash and his discovery of ‘Game Theory’.
We’ve also forgotten that business interactions and social games can be cooperative, where participants negotiate binding contracts that allows them to plan joint strategies maximising the payoff of each player.
The media and advertising is, unfortunately, not immune to this mentality - and perhaps more so. After, all, with so many players interacting in the 'advertising game', it seems inevitable that cooperation is challenged by the misalignment of objectives, disconnected communication flows and sub-optimisation. These inequalities and disconnects have resulted in a race to the bottom, where everyone is trying to get more for less.
This is obviously not sustainable in the long run, and worsens the pay-off for each player. Marketers see less return of their media investment, leading to greater scrutiny and lower pricing. That means agencies are less able to invest in talent and technology. Advertising technology players will have difficulties innovating, and publishers will not be able to invest in great content and journalism.
It’s very clear. We have reached an unsustainable point, and there is no longer an understanding of mutually beneficial creations in the media and advertising industry. Unless everyone in the ecosystem collaborates to find win-win solutions that create mutual value for all 'players' in the 'advertising game', in other words, we will all lose and worsen our long-term pay-off.

The question is, how do we get started on this journey?

As an outcome-driven media company, we believe that first, we need to define the success metrics that connects directly with our clients’ marketing and business goals. When clients are assured that every dollar spent is delivering measurable results allowing them to grow their business, it will in turn allow us to continue investing in the best people, technology and data, and publishers to invest in great journalism and content creation.
We will all be able to continue innovating and continue to maximise the value we deliver to our clients’ in the next three, five, 10 and 20 years.
Only by acknowledging and respecting that all 'players' in the 'advertising game' needs to get value in return from their investment will we be able to ensure that outcomes each player get are aligned with their ultimate business goals, and business relationships remain sustainable.

Have you read the
Outcome Media Report?

We surveyed almost 5,000 marketers across 16 key global markets and unearthed some fascinating insights into how the industry thinks about digital media success measurement and its priorities for this year.

Download the report

Why outcomes matter, not just to the CMO

Daniel Henriksen — Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:15:26 +0000

This article was originally posted on Campaign Asia | November 14, 2018

Every leader and company know what they do, but very few understand why they do what they do. Inspired by Simon Sinek, the power of starting with why is what makes leaders and companies great, and within the Xaxis organisation, a movement has been started with our new outcome-based approach, where everything we do and deliver as a company needs to deliver true value to our clients and help them achieve their goals and objectives through digital transformation—ultimately getting closer to their why.

“Not enough advertisers know what value means beyond pricing and therefore can’t understand how media can drive growth in their business.”

Inarguably, CMOs and their underlying organisation are the ones in the absolute spotlight when it comes to ensuring continuous business and market share growth. With these objectives at hand, they look for marketing and media partners who are able to deliver the highest value on the basis of their overall marketing strategy and investment. However, perhaps the pressure should to some extent be liberated from the CMO, as it should be in the best interest of all business functions to become more outcome-driven—working collectively towards the same goal. As a result of this change and transformation in thinking, some business functions beyond just marketing can be positively impacted by adopting an outcome-based approach.

PROCUREMENT

Traditionally, the main responsibility of a procurement department is the process of selecting vendors, establishing payment terms and negotiating contracts regarding the purchase of goods and services. This used to be a “simpler” task in the offline world, but it has become more difficult to navigate during the digital transformation that most industries have experienced, on account of the technology and data infrastructure that particularly goes into marketing and media investments today. Despite this transformation, their main goal has not changed—finding more cost-efficient ways to drive value for the business. So, when it comes to procurement of marketing and media services, rather than evaluating cost metrics that are somewhat irrelevant and arbitrary, imagine how their jobs would be much easier if marketing and media partners actually offered guaranteed outcomes, catered to them and tied them to their business goals.

ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE

With increasing investments going to marketing and media services, and the underlying technology needed for a CMO to deliver continuous business growth and prove ROI, it is inevitable that more and more invoices start sliding under the door of the finance department. Without specific knowledge in this area, it can be hard to decipher various infrastructural media costs and the importance of media partner payment terms. They are usually familiar with more traditional goods and services, but with marketing and media services, they have to understand that many stakeholders are reliant of timely payment to keep the lights on in the growth engine.
The supply chain is much more complex than with most other suppliers: DMPs, DSPs, data partners and media owners to name a few. Without actually understanding what you are paying for, it is understandably challenging for most finance departments to decipher all of these costs, especially when looking at arbitrary media metrics such as CPM, CPC or CTR. Changing to an “outcome-currency” can help demystify invoices coming in from these services, and make finance more comfortable when understanding the services they are paying for and the actual value they get in return.

HUMAN RESOURCES

Recruiting and retaining top talent is a difficult for most companies, and today’s workforce is no longer just looking at salary, retirement plans and other perks when evaluating job satisfaction—they are looking for a purpose. Spending more than a third of a lifetime at work, it is important for many to have an objective or goal with what they are doing on a daily basis, and how it contributes to the overall mission of the company. Transforming a company into being solely focused on that purpose—and the outcomes which will help them achieve it—will not only retain talent, but also help to recruit top talent by showing how job functions and specific roles will contribute to the greater purpose of the company.

START A MOVEMENT

The CMO is obviously not someone who alone can change the culture or mindset of an entire organization. But, by becoming more outcome-focused, and pushing increased accountability and measurable value towards the main business goal, its one step in the right direction. As with any movement or change, it needs to start somewhere, and it has the potential to transform most, if not all, business functions.

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