Business Priorities in 2023

Economic uncertainty means brands  have to anticipate people’s needs and interests. Until now, advertising based mainly on third-party identifiers — cookies — was the common mechanism for this; however, due to the priority that people have placed on privacy, this practice will gradually be left behind.

As a result, companies, their teams, and marketing specialists must find new ways to boost their businesses from first-party data, which clients — aligned by convenience — have agreed to share with a brand. These will allow them to develop strategies that take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) because the message must be taken to where the consumer is. Knowing how to reach the most valuable customers and others like them at scale is a powerful growth multiplier. 

The internal or first-party data strategy allows for adding value to marketing efforts, improving campaign performance, and deepening the relationship with consumers, enabling companies to find points of interest to improve the approach to their clients. 

For example Nestlé, a company with a broad portfolio of nutrition, health, and wellness products and a global presence, used first-party data to create dynamic, creative ads that better connect with consumers during special moments and occasions. Adopting this first-party data approach, the Maggi product line team improved their ad investment return by 25%. The first-party data is part of its strategy and will be one of the resources that will allow Nestlé to reach 400 million clients by 2025.

AI allows brands to aim their campaigns toward buyers who are most likely to purchase one of their products. It becomes even more powerful if first-party data is added to build a target audience of already interested people.

As an example, NEOSTRATA, a global brand focused on skin regeneration, used Google's Performance Max Campaigns, which allows access to the entire Google Ads inventory with a single campaign, as well as the Google results pages, where 8 billion searches are done every day, YouTube, the platform for which 8 out of 10 Gen Z users agree has the most content, and other services, such as Maps, Shopping, and Blogger. These allowed them to automate their Google and YouTube campaigns in real time and identify the right creative process and space to reach their audience. The results led the company to a 91% increase in profit at a 65% investment cost while increasing efficiency by 16%.

When people reconsider their budgets, the brands must do the same. In Mexico, 86% of buyers are being more intentional in their decision making. The bet on a first-party data and AI strategy will be key to maintaining an agile business and being ready to react to changes in real time, allowing it to navigate even in the most challenging scenarios, while also generating loyalty in the short, mid and long term.

The Future of Measurement

People spend more time researching purchase decisions than they once did, and they are conducting this research across several platforms. With this change, AI tools have become a more critical way for brands to meet their customers across these digital touchpoints. 

At Google, we have focused our efforts on improving programmatic technology, integrating the power of AI into it to develop solutions that help marketing and data specialists reinvent how they reach their audiences and clients. As we can see, companies like Nestlé and NEOSTRATA went ahead and adopted them. Today, they have already registered positive results in optimizing their budgets and income, a key point from a high competitiveness point of view and digitization among their clients. 

To boost more accurate measurement, this year, we will focus our efforts on supporting brands and agencies during their migration to Google Analytics 4. The sum of first-party data with this powerful tool, which puts users' privacy at the center, will make it possible to have a complete view of consumer behavior throughout a website or mobile app. These new solutions give rise to different opportunities. Developing clients' trust will strengthen the brands during their economic recovery.  

The use of data to deliver personalized and more useful ads is here to stay, but the way advertisers build audiences will need to be fundamentally reinvented. It will be important to combine investments that support growth with new knowledge and technologies, like AI. This kind of focus will give place to creativity and agility, allowing businesses to keep on track during fast-paced changes in consumer preferences. Also, the data will provide an efficiency gain that will translate to teams as more time to execute planned tasks or strategic plans. 

At Google, we believe that this diversified approach to audience development technologies is the way to offer consistent and scalable performance in an ever-changing world, deliver reliable results, and drive long-term growth, no matter what disruptions surface. Finding the right balance between tested strategies and tech innovations can revitalize marketing approaches to drive success.