What traits should marketers who want to succeed in digital advertising today aim to embody? The Ozone Project's Craig Tuck shares his thoughts.

There were two key reasons driving Ozone’s headline partnership with The Marketing Society’s annual conference. The first was a clear-cut decision based on efficient targeting; where else could we partner with the leading global network of marketers and smart leaders who want to make a real difference to their business?

The second centered on the ‘Changemakers’ theme of the conference, a proposition that is very much aligned with The Ozone Project’s founding philosophy of creating positive change in the world of digital advertising - there’s more information about us at the end if we’re new to you.

While our advertiser-led, publisher-built platform and technology will really shift the dial in making the digital ecosystem work harder for brands (and indeed quality publishers), the other primary driver for doing things differently - and more effectively - is the marketer controlling advertising investment. And in the hundreds of conversations we’ve had with brand leaders since launching Ozone, we have witnessed a number of common characteristics that epitomise the type of marketer who is driving this digital change:

Those who care about where their ads appear

This might seem really obvious - a no-brainer perhaps? - but the huge expanse of poor quality, ‘made for advertising’ websites buoyed up by brand’s marketing investment would somewhat contradict this. However, the digital changemakers do care about a quality user experience and the halo impact this has on their advertising. This savvier marketer understands that websites creating premium, high attention content are most likely to generate high attention for their advertising. More attention ultimately leads to, and delivers, better outcomes for brands.

Those who desire a competitive, quality media environment

Smart marketers understand the part they play in maintaining a healthy media landscape through advertising investment that fuels their brand’s growth. They place equal consideration on their choice of online channels as they do their offline media. They are advocates for the free information economy and the role of editorial independence, regulation and the aforementioned quality user experience in making safer online environments for their brand’s advertising.

Those who value real-world measures of success

Many of the brand owners we speak to understand their digital toolkit and how different techniques can deliver different outcomes. The more sophisticated among them are increasingly focused on delivering business relevant outcomes - be that on a brand-building or action-driving basis - as opposed to the easily gamified ‘performance’ metrics that have fuelled much of the digital advertising market’s growth. 

Those who genuinely put their customers first

Most marketers would claim to be very consumer-centric, but the change makers in digital advertising will have a clear and constant eye on data compliance, privacy and a more ‘ethical’ approach regarding what they do with their customers’ information. One of Ozone’s key watch outs when it comes to data protection is ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’, a sentiment echoed by the most switched on marketers who don’t equate regulations in this space as carte-blanche to do whatever ‘is allowed’. Their decisions are fuelled by what’s right for their customers.

Those who power their business with first-party data

Our digital footprints leave a huge amount of information and intrigue about who we are, what we do and what we are interested in. While many marketers have developed CRM capability to capture and analyse these behaviours, the future-facing brand leaders are clearly those who are using this - in a customer centric way of course - to fuel insights and campaigns for business growth, or to drive collaboration with other relevant first party datasets. They intuitively get the differentiating value of relevant, consistent and high quality data collected at source.

If you recognise these characteristics in yourself, then on behalf of quality media channels everywhere - online and off - a massive thank you. The decisions you make day in, day out are the ones that are helping to forge a better, brighter and more brand-led future for digital advertising. And in my eyes, that truly is the sign of an industry Changemaker.

An introduction to The Ozone Project

Ozone’s founding publishers - in the guise of News UK, The Guardian, The Telegraph and Reach PLC - made the game changing move to join forces and create a digital advertising platform that delivers better experiences and results for your brands online. With a near universal reach of the UK population, our brand-safe solutions are powered by the nation’s most comprehensive pool of cross-publisher first party data from our founding publishers and a host of other premium websites, including the likes of The Independent, Evening Standard, Grazia, Stylist, City AM, HELLO! and Time Out.