As consumers increasingly adopt new technologies and platforms into their day-to-day lives, developing a consistent, data-driven omnichannel marketing plan is one of the biggest challenges most advertisers face.
A major part of the reason omnichannel marketing still proves challenging is the fact that data remains siloed as marketers struggle to juggle multiple channels. In fact, according to a recent study by Marketing Sherpa, accessing data across channels was the third most significant challenge to omnichannel success, right behind a lack of personnel with omnichannel know-how and budget concerns.
However, many advertisers increasingly circumvent these challenges by adopting walled gardens into their omnichannel marketing plans. The term “walled garden” refers to giant publishers, such as Google, Meta, and Facebook, that offer advertisers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted native advertising to audiences of millions. Walled garden advertising might be the solution for those struggling with data, personnel, and budget as they develop an omnichannel marketing plan.
In order to better understand how marketers are using walled garden advertising, Skai recently surveyed 117 U.S. marketing professionals. In that survey, we found that the most successful marketers are overwhelmingly relying on walled gardens to unify their omnichannel marketing plan. Our survey found that 88% of respondents plan to devote more or the same amount of their advertising budgets to walled gardens in the coming year, and 81% of our respondents prioritized third-party platforms with omnichannel tools for a performance overview across channels.
Nearly four out of five U.S. digital advertising dollars are spent with walled garden
publishers such as Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple.
To better understand how marketers consider and use walled garden advertising now and in the future, Skai surveyed 117 U.S. marketing professionals. Questions included current and future spending trends, perceived strengths and weaknesses, and considerations for strategic decision-making.
Learn what we found in our survey within this new report that helps you maximize your walled garden advertising investments.
Here are a few of the reasons walled gardens are the first step toward a successful omnichannel marketing plan:
Walled gardens act as the tip of your omnichannel spear
All marketers know that their entire media — online and offline, paid and organic — work together to impact and influence sales and revenue. The hard part is knowing how to do it right.
But, for those forward-thinking pioneers who take on this challenge, omnichannel marketing represents an opportunity to drive performance and take market share away from competitors. They see the potential for tapping into the synergistic potential of planning and managing channels together rather than today’s siloed and separated approach, which may limit total program ROI.
Walled gardens are a major part of an omnichannel future
Today, digital advertisers are already spending heavily on walled gardens. As we learned in our survey, they plan to spend more on it next year, would likely allocate incremental budgets, and believe third-party technology should be used to unlock its total value.
As practitioners explore the opportunity of a more holistic, omnichannel marketing approach, walled garden advertising may offer the very best starting point for this new direction. After all, omnichannel marketing inherently requires more data connectivity, which the logged-in users of walled garden publishers can offer better than any other online ad inventory source.
Walled garden advertising is evolving to meet advertisers’ needs
One major benefit to the influx of ad dollars going into walled gardens is that those publishers are more incentivized to adapt to the new needs of marketers to keep those investments coming their way.
A great example of this is just a few short years ago. Google and Facebook changed their policies to enable ads to be directed to retailers rather than forcing advertisers to point ad traffic to their owned properties. Shortly after, Amazon launched Amazon Attribution, which allows marketers to measure the impact of those search and social ads that drive to its store.
These two innovations are changing the way advertisers are approaching online commerce marketing.
As marketers continue to evolve to the omnichannel approach, walled garden publishers will find ways to enable the functionality required to make it a reality. They have the resources and expertise — and the fiscal motivation — to do so.
For marketers looking to explore how omnichannel marketing can help their organization, walled gardens will continue to be a core part of media plans to help make this journey a reality. If you’d like to learn more about how walled gardens can help provide the insights you need to unify your omnichannel marketing plan, read our full report here.
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