Marketing in 2023: 5 Big Bets For the CMO
Like Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” While other companies are battening down the hatches to weather the storm, we believe now is the time to plot out how your brand can not just survive 2023 but thrive in it. This report will show you how.
Introduction
The word of the year for 2020 was “Unprecedented.” In 2021, it was “Resilience.” For 2022, we’d go with “Chaotic.” And, if we had to guess how 2023 is going to shape up, we’d pick two very different words, depending on what type of marketer you are: “Survivor” or “Thriver.”
We will continue to see crises in 2023 – economic, political, and social. But as Winston Churchill said as he worked to build the UN from the burning embers of WWII, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
During periods of crisis, many people (and brands) understandably want to batten down the hatches and retrench in order to weather the storm. Instead, in 2023, CMOs should channel their inner Churchill. (Whether you want to don a one-piece siren suit is up to you, but we think it’s a great look.) It’s exactly when competitors are treading water that courageous companies should wade into the deep end and push off the wall with all their might. (This was true in 2020 and will be true again in 2023.) They will be the ones who find themselves ahead at the end of the race at the close of 2023. While everyone else is focused on survival, you instead can set your sights on how your brand can not just survive 2023 but thrive in it.
That said, while fortune may favor the bold, it also favors those who methodically carry out their strategy over the long term. As responsible performance marketers, we advocate playing it safe in areas that require orchestrating structural and organizational changes for success in 2024 and beyond.
We know it’s impossible to take advantage of every opportunity we lay out in the following pages. But maybe you can boldly choose one area to place all your chips (think hot tech stock), and another where you can help get your house in order for the long term (long mutual fund.)
We’re placing our Big Bets on Video, Retail Media, Measurement, Streaming, and Culture. If you’re looking to accelerate in any of those areas in 2023 we’ve laid out ways for you to do it. Why not take out your red pen and choose one for each category?
Big Bet #1: Video: Big Social Is Dead, Long Live Video
Video will replace “social” in the Triopoly of Meta, Google, and Amazon. Why? Because platforms that started out as social are growing out of that narrow categorization owing to their increasing dominance in video. Let’s take the current darling of the moment, TikTok, as an example. TikTok is no more of a social app than an iPhone is a way to make telephone calls or your laptop is a way to type up documents. Unlike other social channels, where your feeds include lots of people you know, TikTok is pretty much pure entertainment.
Therefore, it would behoove marketers to rethink TikTok (and future TikToks) as “video” rather than “social.” It’s not about the platform, it’s about consumer behavior on the platform — and consumer behavior on TikTok is about video, video, and more video.
Where it gets interesting is that when you look at “social” through the lens of video, it becomes clear that Big Social has a big problem (besides data privacy restrictions and Mark’s obsession with the Metaverse). Video is the most wildly underused format across social media. On Facebook, video makes up only 15% of all content posted. Instagram is 11% video and Twitter takes up the rear with 5%1. TikTok, in case anyone needs reminding, is all video, all day, all the time, always. More proof that TikTok isn’t a social platform is that it has never seen the Metas of the world as its competition but rather the Amazons (See Commerce section below.) Meanwhile, Meta has been altering its algorithms away from the social graph on which it built its empire and toward the mindless video distraction upon which TikTok built its empire. (Reels, anyone?)
“YouTube Shorts is well-positioned to take share away from Meta and compete with TikTok for eyeballs. YouTube is incentivizing creators with more favorable deal terms, which will lead to exponential growth in the content on the platform. More content means more opportunities to monetize and become more commerce-focused, just like TikTok.”
Kolin Kleveno
SVP, Addressable Media, Tinuiti
TikTok’s biggest competitor is not Meta but YouTube – the world’s second-most popular website, search engine, and “social” platform. Here’s another example of a platform being oh so much more than “social.” A total of 23% of YouTube spend for Tinuiti advertisers is directed to television screens. And yes it’s 2023 and you all know about YouTube, but is it still possible your brand is sleeping on it? It’s not unlikely, given that YouTube is leveraged by only 55% of marketers2. We are bullish on Google’s direct competitive product to TikTok, YouTube Shorts, as the entry point into social budgets that Google has long sought. But we are even more bullish on YouTube as a performance channel in general.
Even if you have tried YouTube before, consider looking at it again with fresh eyes. The channel is a great way to drive new audience reach and performance.
Drawing a clear line between “social” and “video” is not about semantics. That’s because words (and the teams and budgets they are named after) are powerful. Marketers thinking about a “social strategy” instead need to think about a “video strategy,” whether it’s TikTok, YouTube, or streaming TV. Why? Because at the end of the day, it’s all video, all day, all the time, always.
1. “The social media video statistics marketers need to know for 2022,” sproutsocial.com.
2. “2022 Social Media Marketing Industry Report,” socialmediaexaminer.com.
Ok, so now what?
- First, if you haven’t sliced and diced your marketing budget to look at how much of it is spent on video, please start there. Typical line items usually slated include PR, content marketing, social media, owned & online media, and advertising. How much of each of those buckets is related to video production and promotion? If you have no idea, time to do an audit.
- TikTok should be a big investment area for brands, even though many marketers still don’t consider it a performance powerhouse. But be smart and nuanced about its current limitations. Understand that video is not yet as measurable as social. That’s something TikTok is working to address. Case in point: its recent Salesforce Commerce Cloud and NFT Cloud integrations and new pay-if-you-engage tool.
- Consider (or reconsider) that YouTube performance marketers have long cursed their limitations when it comes to quantifying the exact impact of YouTube campaigns. Those days are over, however, because we’ve partnered with the Google team to offer our clients an ongoing view into the incrementality of their campaigns. This allows them to compare the cost of acquisition to their OTT video campaigns in an apples-to-apples way. This, combined with a more streamlined approach to audience targeting, has created successful campaigns where previous tests fell short.
Microbet No. 1:
Discourse Gets Real—The Search for Authentic Engagement
If you’ve got a 13-year-old in your life anywhere, you’ve probably heard about Discord, the community-building chat app. Since its founding in 2015, Discord has exploded to 150 million monthly active users3 and was one of the most popular social/communication apps downloaded in 2021. No longer just for gamers, Discord – a place for texting, voice and video calling, and chatting (with friends or strangers) – is chipping away at Meta’s messaging giants, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. WIRED magazine recently called Discord “a juggernaut of the social internet.”
People are searching for real places to have real discourse. In a word, authenticity. In another word, community. Tired of the slick influencers trying to sell them stuff, people want to connect with like-minded souls in a meaningful way in chat rooms and voice channels the app calls “servers.” These are pretty much like subreddits. With marketers everywhere freaking out about signal loss (while not doing a whole lot about it—see Big Bet #3 below), they shouldn’t overlook platforms like Discord and its older cousin, Reddit.
The future of marketing will involve less data scale, smarter data science and insights, and a crystal clear explanation of the value exchanged when consumers allow their data to be collected and used. Trust has to be at the core of how brands engage. Once surveillance marketing is finally kaput, Discord and Reddit are the kinds of places that are ripe for zero-party data acquisition through building trust and offering a clear value exchange. Of course, these are not places that play by regular rules and users have different expectations on Discord and Reddit than they do elsewhere.
Marketers need to show up differently on these platforms, meeting people where they are and building trust there. But it’s worth it. Community building will lower the cost of acquiring customers and help you retain them. Consumers with access to an online community feel more valued as a customer and more loyal to the brand.
3. “Discord Statistics 2022: How Many People Use Discord?,” thesmallbusinessblog.net.
Ok, so now what?
- Get your brand on Discord to start sussing it out. You can experiment with sharing the kind of content that builds your reputation and credibility while keeping your community members engaged through a branded experience. The importance of authentic representation cannot be overstated. Be sure to have representation on your team for the groups with whom you are having discourse – all the cultures, subcultures, ages, and races.
- Discord doesn’t offer native advertising – yet. But Reddit does. Its advertising offering is built out. Brands should be testing it out if they’re not on it. Is your brand there?
- At the very least, someone on your social team should be listening, observing, and learning on Discord and Reddit. Guaranteed, the audiences you care about most are having conversations about topics that are central to your brand. You just have to find them.
Big Bet #2: Cleanup in Aisle 2023–Aftershocks of the Retail Media Boom
Big facts: Retail media exploded big time in 2021 and 2022, but 2023 will be the era of bracing for the aftershocks of that glow-up. Retail media programmatic is coming in hot in 2023. And, if Amazon has its way, it’ll be its DSP and upper-funnel offerings specifically – all of which indicates a shift away from conversion-tactic-heavy sponsored products.
Tinuiti client spend on Amazon DSP rose 35% YOY compared to 24% sponsored products spend growth, more proof brands are leaning into building awareness and consideration. And, as more retailers (and the associated technologies) roll their shopping carts into this crowded space, the complexity curve for brands steepens.
Most retailers will have some sort of retail media by 2023, thanks to an aggressive push by DSPs like The Trade Desk and a crumbling cookie. But marketers, beware. Not all retailer first-party data is created equal. We’re going to need solutions like Amazon Marketing Cloud and Kroger Collaboration Cloud to avoid overlap, de-dupe, and protect and grow budgets for 2024.
All this plus another layer of complexity is soon to arrive in the refrigerated aisle near you. We believe digital out-of-home (DOOH) will be ubiquitous in most national chain stores by the end of 2024, with Cooler Screens and Quotient leading the field.
“Retailer 1P data exists in quality and at scale but needs outlets and controls, which many mature and new-to-market software platforms are rushing to provide solutions for.”
Elizabeth Marsten
Group Director, Marketplace Strategic Services, Tinuiti
With all these seismic-level innovations careening our way, marketers that don’t get their houses in order to reflect this new world are in danger of becoming a mess in Aisle 2 that someone’s going to need to mop up. We advise brands on retail media all the time and we think the biggest obstacle preventing them from capitalizing on these innovations is “the DMZ,” aka the de facto divisions dividing different teams on the brand side.
Almost 85% of retailer’s sales are still transacted in the physical store.
If brands were actually supermarkets, here’s how their stores would look: sales team slicing turkey over in the deli section while the account team piles up the avocados in produce and the marketers restock the shelves with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. And the retail ops folks? They’re out in the loading bay taking boxes off trucks. Everyone is doing their individual part to keep the store in business. But, there is little to no data-sharing or strategizing going on between them. In 2023 and beyond, these artificial boundaries will become fault lines – especially as offline and online sales continue to converge and more offline data becomes available.
Speaking of which, let us all take a beat and remember that retailers’ sales in the US are still 85%-ish transacted in the physical store. Therefore, retailers cannot continue to request, justify and demand retail media spend that can only be backed up *some* of the time to just 15%-ish of the traffic.
Until your teams and your data are actually organized and optimized around this powerful and quickly evolving offering, you’re placing an artificial ceiling on your retail media investment growth.
Ok, so now what?
- Smart brands will do the hard work of reorganizing internally to build bridges between teams to take full advantage of retail media—specifically, using KPIs other than ROAS for a single retailer or channel and incentivizing (i.e. changing the bonus or merit structure to reward) to embrace true omnichannel behavior/results.
- Similarly, astute brands will target investment to build out data bridges between teams, as well as extract missing details from their retail partners. (Keep your eyes on ecommerce insights platforms like Profitero in this fast-growing space.)
- Brands whose priority is to close the offline/online loop should keep a close eye on Target, which has an in-platform ETA of in-store sales tied to online search ad exposure in Q1 ’23. Similarly, Amazon Marketing Cloud is the bridge between on-Amazon advertising investments and their impact off and across Amazon, and vice versa.
MICROBET NO.2: The Rise of the Super App
What’s a Super app? Glad you asked. Super apps offer customers a complete ecosystem for managing many facets of their lives – sending a message, tapping off a work email, booking a flight, hailing a taxi, playing a video game, paying a bill, tracking a package, doing grocery shopping, or streaming a video. Most of the fully evolved super apps are overseas (WeChat/China and Gojek/SE Asia) and, make no mistake about it, they are Commerce Giants with a capital G.
Stateside, several financial apps have been explicit about their efforts to super-size themselves. Companies like PayPal, Affirm, and Klarna all have introduced commerce features into their payments and financial services offerings.
But the app that’s best positioned to morph into a super app is TikTok, which recently added an in-app shopping experience. Viral dance videos? Please. TikTok has opened fulfillment centers and has long said it doesn’t view Meta as its competition, but rather Amazon. It’s released its closed-loop shopping platform in beta in the hopes of replicating the commerce success it has seen in China with Douyin, just behind Alibaba. For so many years, platforms have been toiling to make TV shoppable. But TikTok actually has nailed the formula – video content that is mostly UGC (so it doesn’t have high production costs) driven by a highly powerful algorithm built on engagement and interest, while building out the logistics to streamline buying.
As bullish as we are on TikTok becoming a commerce giant, Tinuiti’s 2022 Consumer Privacy Survey showed only 3% of respondents chose TikTok as the social app they trust most to protect online privacy. So part of the equation is consumers warming up to platforms as places they trust with their credit card numbers instead of just having fun videos pumped in front of them.
Once that happens (and we think it will) just imagine the power of an app with built-in commerce capabilities that also knows its users’ preferences so well. Its ability to surface the next thing you buy, eat, try, or visit will be a greater force to be reckoned with than anything out there right now.
So why does the emergence of the super app matter to marketers? Remember how we used to have access to lots of consumer data that has now gone away – either lost forever or shut off behind walled gardens? Imagine becoming dependent on advertising on one super app and not being able to see or own the data, or connect it with what’s happening outside the ecosystem. That’s not a path any of us wants to go down again. But in our world of signal loss, this can be tempting for a marketer. Please don’t do it. Instead, keep your marketing portfolio diversified and avoid becoming too heavily dependent on any platform.
Ok, so now what?
- Hedge your bets, folks. Don’t go all in on TikTok as you did on Facebook and the same goes for these new super apps as they arise in the future. Regulation is a potential threat to the rise of the super app, owing to the ongoing struggle to prevent tech from amassing too much data and power.
- Look to influencers to usher you into the uncharted territory of the super app. They know the lay of the land, they have the audience, and they’ll be some of the first to help unlock the potential of the super app. Your existing influencer feedback loops and measurement solutions will allow you to participate responsibly without going all-in too early.
- As TikTok diversifies its ecosystem, consider the “TikTokability” of the various steps on your customer’s journey that could plug into these new services. Driving awareness (ads or organically) earns you the right to stay in the feed, hopefully allowing your intended audience to move farther into the funnel, ultimately leading to the frictionless super app experience the platforms are leaning toward.
Big Bet #3: Measurement–Marketers Got a Two-Year Stay of Execution (& They’re Still Gonna Blow It)
We’ve been yelling from the rooftops about privacy, the end of the cookie, and signal loss since around the time people started thinking it was a good idea to eat detergent pods. But sometimes (okay, a lot of the time), it felt like we were screaming into the wind. We get it. All this privacy stuff is technical, it’s confusing, it’s overwhelming, it’s boring. We would like to stick our heads in the sand right next to you. But we can’t because we know a lot about this stuff on both a conceptual and technical level, not to mention it’s our job to accelerate growth for our brand partners.
Google may have delayed its plan to phase out third-party cookies on Chrome until late 2024. Even with that extended timeline most marketers still won’t be ready for it from a business change perspective. We are thinking of Google Analytics 4 or GA4 as the next IDFA/ATT. In other words, a big deal.
“I see a world where centralized execution of all media channels will come back to play. “
Chris Chang
SVP, Business Development, Tinuiti
So here we are, climbing up to the rooftop again, and this time we’ve upgraded from a bullhorn to a wall of Marshall speakers: “Your brand needs to update its measurement framework in 2023!” Be the brand ahead of the curve instead of behind it. And, CMOs, we truly believe that the most expeditious and fruitful path is via your CFO’s office. 2023 is likely to be another volatile year and probably not a time when most CFOs and CMOs are looking to make big investments. Take this crisis and bring your CFOs into the process so they understand the investments you have to make now to combat signal loss. Educate them and collaborate with them to bring them along the journey with you. Make it your joint goal to get there by the end of 2023, ahead of the deadline, so that in a year’s time when most signals are all but gone, you can still prove out what effect your media spend is having.
Ok, so now what?
- Get a coffee date on the calendar with your CFO.
- Google’s Universal Analytics (UA) will stop collecting data on July 1, 2023 For six months after that date, you’ll still have access to historical data in UA. Then, that data will be gone, too. Google Analytics 360 follows not far after with a July 1, 2024 end date. After that, GA4 becomes the sole platform. The time to switch to GA4 is now.
- As your brand leans into 1P activation, think about creating a centralized audience team responsible for the development of audiences and reach out to your agency to see how it can help you with the strategy, development, and evolution of audience segments and how they are deployed/leveraged across all channels.
Microbet No. 3: Don’t Put Marketing Science on the Back Burner
With the walled gardens getting higher and the impact of non-clickable and non-trackable media becoming more impactful, we predict a regression back toward a world of less 1:1 precision and more reliance on assumptions validated by marketing science. Brands will walk away from agencies that don’t offer incrementality, mixed media modeling, halo impact, and the like. We’re also seeing increased modeling across the board directly in platforms. Case in point: Google includes modeled conversions when unable to identify the conversion directly.
“Privacy-by-default is here and there isn’t one silver bullet solution for measurement. Rethink your framework now. Modeling is the future, whether we as marketers like it or not.”
Liz Emery
VP, Mobile + Ad Tech, Tinuiti
We’ve also observed that the pressing need to update measurement frameworks is bumping into another reality. Increased automation, the evolution of social platforms, new channels like retail media, and YouTube are truly beginning to work their way into “social” and are going to spur brands into centralizing activation. Because audiences play so highly into this equation, they need to flow through all your media channels, not just live in a silo.
Loss of measurement also means organic matters (again) but even more so. We are bullish about seeing organic social, especially in the B2B/LinkedIn space, rise up to fill the need
Ok, so now what?
- The end of the push-button marketer is nigh. You need marketing science embedded in your brand and in your agency partner’s team.
- Spend time mapping out what a centralized activation structure would look like for your brand across all channel
Big Bet #4: Streaming – An Ad-based Netflix Opens Streaming Floodgates
Netflix’s new advertising-based offering will help unstick a bunch of brands that have been ginger in their approach to streaming advertising and downright stubborn in their devotion to linear TV. We predict an ongoing exodus of linear dollars to streaming but not much net-new spending because of the unpredictable economic factors going into 2023.
The situation is going to challenge traditional marketers to get more serious about their performance – which will in turn force them to (finally) shift some spend from linear to streaming. CMOs will be moved to bring those two parts of the business (and the budget) into one program.
But, even beyond that, the CMO needs to have a convergence mindset around video in general, whether it’s streaming, linear, or YouTube. (See Big Bet No.1) It’ll be good in 2023 for you to be thinking about how to manage your video program holistically rather than having your social team executing on TikTok, your Search team executing on YouTube, and someone on the traditional side of the brand team managing TV. At the end of the day, they’re all doing “video” and your brand will be stronger if there is cohesion.
Those D2C brands that have been giving traditional brands a run for their money over the past decade are now starting to struggle in the current environment.
This is where big brands can take a page from the D2C playbook. Those D2C brands that have been giving traditional brands a run for their money over the past decade are now starting to struggle in the current environment. If big brands can get out of their own way and think of video as part of a single program, they have an opportunity in 2023 to win back some of the territory they lost. Measurement for D2Cs is, of course, easier than if most of your sales are through third parties. However, with a significant portion of revenue now coming from ecommerce for even traditional brands, applying accurate measurement to understand video’s return on investment is easier than ever.
And, just because it appears we can’t make a Big Bet for 2023 without including TikTok, prepare for TikTok to muscle in on the streaming wars, taking on the ad-supported video-on-demand platforms (i.e., Tubi, Xumo, Crackle, Pluto, etc.) before coming hard at the Netflix, Hulus, and Disneys of the world. TikTok’s advantage is twofold in this space: a cost-saving formula of consumers and creators being one and the same, and its magic algorithms that require no “what should we watch tonight, honey?” debates. TikTok decides for you, which is something choice-weary consumers seem relieved to delegate.
Ok, so now what?
- We expect the creation of new streaming platforms to slow as consumers tire of subscribing to more and more services, which will be countered by consolidation (bundling of services people are already paying for) and publishers embracing the ad-supported model. On the advertiser side, consolidation allows marketers to reach a more diverse audience through one buy, and apply targeting without limiting scale. This, combined with more ad-supported inventory, makes 2023 an opportune time for advertisers to enter the space.
- Although it’s early days for Netflix advertising, for brands who are keen to act boldly in times of uncertainty, we suggest wading in early. You’ll come out ahead in the end.
- Start thinking about performance and brand budgets on video as one and the same. You’ll want to stay within profitability guardrails while ensuring you are hitting new and diverse audiences.
Microbet No. 4: D2Cs Swim Up Stream
Barring any unforeseen external factors, we think D2C brands will put their foot back on the advertising gas pedal after Q1 2023. The makeup of their advertising portfolios will be different, however. Many D2C companies have been dealing with tough YOY metrics in 2022 as their customers switched back to buying in person.
Our forecast is that D2C companies will shift spend from traditionally lower-funnel channels to more upper-funnel media such as streaming video and audio to ensure they’re reaching new audiences. The nature of those buys, however, is going to be more conservative than, for example, a large sponsorship that reaches everyone, and instead will lean toward utilizing first-party data for lookalike targeting and existing-customer suppression.
Ok, so now what?
- Calling all D2C CMOs! Pick up the phone and give us a jingle. We’re waiting for your call. (Seriously, Tinuiti acquired a whole streaming agency, Bliss Point Media, back in 2021 in anticipation of this moment.)
Big Bet #5: Culture – The ‘Post-Office’ World: Your Culture Revolutionaries May Be Hiding in Plain Sight
We know it’s a gross oversimplification, but we like to think of the world as divided between traditional companies that strive to innovate and companies that are built to innovate. However, the boundary is porous and businesses can shift across it. Nothing has made that clearer than the pandemic.
The winners will define what a “post-office” world is, while everyone else takes another decade to catch up to them.
Tech companies once thought to be cultural revolutionaries are forcing people kicking and screaming back into those offices long famed for being packed full of snacks and ping pong tables. While other forward-thinking companies that have long been at the forefront of culture are facing the hard, cold reality that working from home has become so commoditized, it’s no longer a unique competitive advantage in attracting talent.
At the same time, thoughtful leaders know that working from home isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be: WFH giveth and WFH taketh away. Workers love their new freedoms, but we also know many of them are lonely. And with good reason; they’ve basically been robbed of all the friendships and fun that the office used to provide. The truth is that no matter what your age or seniority level, when we get a chance to be around our colleagues, we all remember how much we missed it.
“At the end of the day, culture is connection. So as we sit here today thinking about how we can rethink culture with a tomorrow lens, we know for sure it is not going to be solved by having a few big city offices and we know it’s not going to be solved by Zoom. We will need to dream up new ways to create friendships, connectivity, collaboration, and fun that doesn’t center around the physical office or a screen.”
Zach Morrison
CEO, Tinuiti
We don’t know how it’s all going to shake out. We do know the winners will define what a “post-office” world is, while everyone else takes another decade to catch up to them. The new revolutionaries of culture will find out-of-the-box ways to build connections among its employees in ways that might not seem to have anything to do with the bottom line or even getting work done. Why? Because it helps with retention, productivity, and business overall.
That’s all good and fine, but you’re a marketer. You don’t work in HR. How is this your problem? It’s everyone’s problem. And not to toot our own horns or anything, but marketing teams are chock full of creative, boundary-pushing people who were born to think up new ideas. Why not propose a joint post-office culture task force to bring together the best minds to figure it out?
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