Performance marketing is becoming an increasing priority for brands, according to a new report from consulting firm Winterberry Group.
The research surveyed over 250 U.S. advertising and marketing professionals, and found that 71% of respondents’ organisations have placed greater emphasis on performance-oriented marketing in the last three years. Here, financial services, retail, B2B technology, healthcare and CPG emerged as the verticals where this shift was most present.
Within this trend, the report showed that online display advertising, paid social, direct mail, and paid search continue to rank as the most popular channels, while retail/commerce media surfaced as a key performance channel for 37%.
Direct media
And against the backdrop of AI disruption, marketers are placing greater value on channels that deliver “tangible, credible forms of engagement,” the report found, with direct mail used as a vehicle to address that.
Indeed, the report showed that online display, paid social and paid search see the most benefit when used in conjunction with direct media.
In tandem, brands are evolving their use of AI to support performance marketing, it shared, with a focus on effectiveness gains (63%) and campaign efficiencies (62%).
AI potential
According to the Winterberry Group report, looking ahead, marketers are optimistic about AI’s potential to drive performance marketing gains over the next two years: 70% expect clear effectiveness gains, and 58% expect efficiency gains.
Meanwhile, 96% have used AI tools to support the deployment of their direct mail programs, and nearly 89% expect to expand their deployment of AI in support of direct mail, with efforts zoning in on content personalisation and response rate optimisation. Of those who have already begun this work, 93% reported efforts as delivering “moderate” or better value.
At the same time, the report revealed that the biggest challenges in leveraging this include integrating AI tools with existing systems/workflows (37.5%), high implementation costs (35.9%) and data availability and quality (33.1%).
Commenting on the findings, Jonathan Margulies, Managing Partner at Winterberry Group and report author, said that brands are now adopting AI data-enabled techniques in strategic planning, targeting, reporting and analysis to increase marketing and media effectiveness across all channels.
“The goal is to achieve greater omnichannel marketing prowess—understanding the contributions and performance metric of each marketing effort, working in concert with others,” he added.
