Why Smart Marketers Look Beyond The Leading Platforms To Deliver Outcomes | AdExchanger

"In this environment, platforms like Meta and Google dominate the ecosystem. Their unrivaled scale and AI-powered technology make them safe bets for marketing and user acquisition. But as these leaders push further into automation, they've reduced the manual controls that once allowed marketers and agencies to customize campaigns based on internal data and best practices. At the same time, the limited data insights these platforms provide into campaign performance make it harder to diagnose what is working, adjust strategies in flight"

"Though marketers and agencies themselves made the leading platforms dominant, there are ways to rebalance the media mix and improve marketing performance. No one doubts the effectiveness of the leading platforms. But data from ecommerce marketing measurement platform found that brands allocating 21%-40% of their marketing budget outside of Google and Meta achieved the best customer acquisition costs (CACs). In today's high-pressure environment, diversification is no longer experimental; it's a performance strategy."

"consumer app marketers improved their day 30 return on ad spend (ROAS) by 143% for health and fitness apps, by 153% for education apps and by 214% for shopping apps when they diversified their marketing media mix beyond walled gardens to the independent app ecosystem. With consumers spending 59% of their time online on the open web, this data isn't surprising."

Meta and Google hold dominant positions in the digital marketing ecosystem due to scale and AI-driven capabilities. Increasing platform automation has removed manual controls that allowed marketers and agencies to tailor campaigns using internal data and best practices. Limited platform-provided campaign insights impede diagnosis, mid-flight adjustments, and optimization for longer-term outcomes, creating challenges for agencies proving value. Brands allocating 21%–40% of marketing budgets outside Google and Meta achieved the best customer acquisition costs. Diversifying beyond walled gardens into the independent app ecosystem substantially improved day-30 ROAS across app categories while reaching billions of daily active users on the open web.

Read at AdExchanger