Ad Planning And Budgeting In 2023

The landscape of programmatic and traditional advertising continues to evolve rapidly. 

Digital ad spending worldwide is expected to amount to over 626 billion U.S dollars in 2023, and steadily grow every year to reach 835.82 billion U.S dollars in the next 3 years. 

These numbers indicate that brands and advertisers are increasingly recognizing the effectiveness of advertising online and how it can help them reach their ideal audiences.

On the other hand, the rise of new technologies and platforms, the increasing importance of data-driven insights, and the changing consumer behaviors all significantly impact how businesses plan and budget their advertising campaigns. 

In a recent interview with Adrian Ciesielski, Regional Sales Director, East & South Africa at Eskimi, we gained valuable insights into the importance of ad planning and budgeting and identified the most important things to consider to achieve your advertising goals.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the conversation.

Be clear on your spending

When it comes to budget planning, be very clear on how much you’re actually spending.

By having a clear understanding of all the necessary expenses related to advertising, you can develop a more accurate budget that allows you to better manage your finances, avoid overspending, and ensure you allocate your resources effectively to maximize return on investment (ROI).

Many different factors go into your “spending stack," like agency retainer fees, commission fees, and AdTech platform costs, to name a few.

Therefore, it’s essential to figure out exactly how much you’re spending versus how much you’re getting.

Once you have a clear understanding of your spending, you can start evaluating how different platforms can help you succeed. Place them side by side and compare them against each other to determine which one is performing better and can help you reach your goals.

Compare platforms equally

Comparing apples with oranges rarely gives you accurate results, and the process of choosing the right advertising platform is not an exception.

In other words, to be able to choose the option that best suits your needs, make sure you compare what you’re planning on one platform against the other and make it as equal as possible.

For instance, if you have an open budget on one platform, do the same for the others. If you have a goal or target CPM or CPX, make it consistent across all platforms.

By doing this, you can easily determine which platform is delivering the best results and make informed decisions about where to allocate more funds.

Test creatives and platforms

Agencies are meant to test platforms, push boundaries beyond benchmarks, and test creatives. 

To get the best results, doing so it’s essential as it can help you learn what works and what doesn’t and use that knowledge to make a positive impact on your ad planning and budgeting.

Rely on historical data

Given the current economic climate, relying on historical data is more important than ever. 

For example, if you had a CPM of 60 cents, use it as a guide for the future. Consider such things and what content worked from the seasonal perspective, e.g., Christmas or Easter last year. Think of how do you take what you’ve learned during that period and apply it to this period, and so on.

Overall, review everything you've done in the past, take the reports from your AdTech partners, understand what they’re trying to communicate, and use your findings to make informed future decisions.

Understand ad tech partners’ role

It’s also very important to understand that your AdTech partners are only assistants in your marketing plan. They’re not the ones who are going to bring the results to you.  

Your AdTech partners do their best to set up campaigns along their platform terms, but it’s up to you to take care of the rest. 

It's also up to you to ensure that your content resonates with your target audience or that your landing pages work, and it’s definitely up to you to ensure that your entire funnel, from A to Z, works from your side. 

Once everything’s ready, you use the right tool to get desired results at that funnel part. 

Combat content fatigue

Content fatigue is a real thing. It refers to the phenomenon where consumers become tired and disengaged with the content or the amount of it they see on a daily basis. And 40% of customers admit to having suffered from this in the past month. 

In fact, numbers show that the younger your audience, the higher this number is.

To combat digital fatigue, it’s essential to refresh your content regularly. 

If you don’t do this, your audience, who sees the same creative over and over again, will eventually start ignoring it as it is not appealing anymore, it’s the same thing, and they already know what to expect every time.

Even if you don’t have the budget to create new content, you can shuffle around your existing content to keep things fresh – this still can help your campaigns and give them a boost.

For example, change CTAs and placement types, or you can even alter creative types using the same creative formats to keep your content engaging and interesting to your audience.

Wrap up

Ad planning and budgeting are crucial elements of any successful marketing campaign.

Brands need to focus on creating a robust and adaptable strategy that caters to the evolving needs of their target audience while also optimizing ROI. 

Start utilizing data from your past campaigns, experimenting with different content, comparing different tools, and choose the one that can bring you the desired results.

Careful planning and willingness to embrace innovation can help businesses create effective advertising campaigns that will help them grow in 2023 and beyond.