That’s easier said than done.

While the market has come together to bring these historically siloed ecosystems together via cross-channel technology and universal identifiers, there’s still a lot of fragmentation.

Below, we explore how to speak the cross-platform language to your prospects and how you can leverage your fluency to increase your share of wallet.

The Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat of Cross-Platform Advertising

In Netflix’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, host Samin Nosrat makes it her mission to drive home that every recipe involves these four elements of delicious food in some capacity. It’s just a matter of striking a balance between them. With the right levels of each, amateur cooks and professional chefs alike can create the perfect dish. It’s that simple.

That way of thinking should extend to how advertisers think about cross-platform advertising.

What’s Cross-Platform Advertising?

Cross-platform advertising means you can build a stronger brand by delivering ads across multiple platforms, including search, social, display, OTT, podcasts, and other relevant channels to your target audience. A thoughtful cross-platform advertising strategy ensures a brand appears on all the channels and devices its target audience uses daily.

Nikki Gilliland at Econsultancy said, “As well as creating a single customer view, cross-channel advertising can also help brands to create and deliver a seamless customer experience – i.e., consistent and unified brand messaging across multiple channels and devices.”

Note two words: customer experience.

Today and every day in the future, consumers will put a premium on the experience brands deliver. According to PwC, 73% of consumers say a good experience is key in influencing brand loyalties.

At the same time, 77% of consumers say inefficient customer experiences detract from their quality of life.

So, yeah, the customer experience is a big deal.

Ads are a part of that.

But extending a marketing budget across multiple channels and platforms can prove difficult for brands with a finite number of dollars to spend.

The question then becomes: How can you help prospects build a strong cross-platform campaign on a budget?

Step 1: Narrow Their Channels (Salt)

Advertisers have been bullish on cross-platform advertising for years. In 2018, the IAB reported that 83% of advertisers see cross-platform measurement has improved since 2017. Since then, cross-platform advertising has advanced even more.

For example, The Trade Desk (TTD) recently debuted a tool to help advertisers activate first-party data across channels and devices.

Although brands are waking up to the idea of cross-platform advertising, many are keeping their campaigns in a silo. Some are ignoring channels altogether.

Consider OTT.

Despite OTT’s growth, only 3% of monthly digital ad spend goes to OTT.

Meanwhile, of the advertisers who invested in Meta’s ecosystem in 2022, 72% allocated ad dollars exclusively to Facebook.

This isn’t ideal, but it makes sense. The advertising world is complex—and with only so much to spend, it can be easy for brands to default to one or two channels. Or maybe stick to their tried-and-true channels, like Facebook, and neglect up-and-coming ones, like OTT.

While brands may want to land on as many touchpoints as possible, a cross-platform strategy isn’t “complete” only when they check all the boxes. A handful of relevant platforms absolutely meet the definition of cross-platform advertising.

To determine where a prospect’s limited ad dollars should go, take a step back to truly understand who they’re trying to reach and where they can get the most bang for their buck.

For example, a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand will likely succeed on social media platforms popular with Millennials and Generation Z—think TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram.

This handful of channels can make for the sturdy foundation of a good cross-platform campaign without overwhelming the prospect’s budget or brain.

Step 2: Take Time With Good Content (Fat)

The goal in advertising is to go from first impressions to conversion. But to get there, prospects have to take the ‘middle’ seriously. Good content is in the middle.

Getting many views on a social media ad won’t matter as much if there’s no clear CTA.

Landing a sponsorship on a top podcast won’t be as effective without a concise and engaging message to share.

Getting visitors to a landing page will go nowhere unless there’s interesting content there and around the site.

Good content can be at the center of the tapestry, with all the different media threads pulling to the same point.

This has less to do with staying under budget than using the budget effectively.

Take John Hancock’s #LifeComesNext campaign.

The insurance company began the campaign with a series of TV spots presented as short stories. The screen cut to black at pivotal moments in the dramas, replaced with a CTA, e.g., “Find out what happens next,” and a link to the website.

On the site, viewers could choose one of three potential endings and continue the conversation using the hashtag on social media.

The campaign wasn’t just cross-media. It didn’t just post similar creatives on different platforms. John Hancock placed a good story at the center and used multiple platforms to connect all the dots.

Here’s a more recent example from The Trade Desk.

The campaign, dubbed “What Matters,” delivered a compelling story across channels popular with its target audience: programmatic connected TV (CTV), digital out-of-home (DOOH), online video, and YouTube.

Step 3: Track Everything (Acid)

Advertising is long past the Mad Men age of throwing an ad out there and seeing what sticks. The days of throwing spaghetti at the wall are over. Advertising can be a science, and nothing will help your prospects maintain their limited budget like keeping a close eye on the metrics.

But not just any metrics. The metrics that point to tangible business impact. Impressions and clicks are great, but return on ad spend (ROAS) is even better.

This is not the space to dive into the specifics of advertising metrics (though it is worth noting that media companies dependent on multichannel distribution, like SlingTV and NBCU, are developing unified cross-platform metrics).

We will dive into some high-level steps you and your prospects should take to ensure they get the best return on their ad dollars.

First, start by developing relevant metrics for each platform. What are they trying to accomplish on each channel, and which metrics will help them measure that?

Second, develop a means of comparing successes that otherwise may look like an apples-to-oranges scenario. Remember: Not all metrics are created equal. A video view on YouTube is measured differently than one on Facebook, meaning you can’t simply compare the two platforms to determine where video ad dollars should go.

Finally, look at what works and what doesn’t, and then adjust accordingly. No need to stick to PPC when that banner ad is returning twice the conversion for half the price. A true cross-platform advertising strategy is built on a foundation of constant iteration and optimization.

Looking for some inspiration?

Digital natives like Warby Parker and Casper are experts. While digital channels and PPC may be their lifeblood, direct-to-consumer brands have done their fair share of traditional advertising.

More recently, Airbnb shocked the advertising world when it announced it was focusing on brand marketing and not search—a focus that’s working.

Chief Financial Officer Dave Stephenson said, “Our brand marketing results are delivering excellent results overall with a strong rate of return, and it’s been so successful that we’re actually expanding to more countries.”

And now for the pun-of-all-puns we’ve been waiting for: With the right channels, content, and metrics in place, you can bring the heat. Sometimes advertisers feel like deciding on digital ads vs. traditional ads is an either/or situation. But, with the right elements in place, you can have your Russian Honey Cake and eat it too.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

Direct-to-consumer isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it has plenty of room to grow in both market share and advertising spend.  

Earlier this year, we highlighted just how much advertising investment across TV, digital, and print has grown for DTC brands. From 2014 to 2018, ad spend grew by 50 percent. 

That growth is still going strong. From unique household names like 23andMe to niche home goods brands like Touch of Modern, major DTC players are still spending big to expand their piece of the pie.  

MediaRadar found that 800 DTC brands have advertised across online, TV, and print media in 2019 so far. DTC ad spend is up 15 percent compared to the same time last year. 

But who are the top advertisers — and what does their advertising look like? 

SmileDirectClub 

By now, SmileDirectClub has made a name for itself as an industry leader in the relatively nascent teledentistry industry. The popularity didn’t come out of nowhere; the DTC teeth straightening brand has spent heavily on advertising since it launched in 2014. 

This year alone, SmileDirectClub has spent over $150 million across all media.

Working with everything from OOH creatives to programmatic display ads, SmileDirectClub even has a large in-house agency to support its efforts. 

SmileDirectClub has held the top spot in DTC advertising for quite awhile — but that status may change in the near future. Fortune reports that a disappointing IPO and restricting California bill may stymie growth moving forward. 

Wayfair 

Something between a marketplace and a dropshipping home goods brand, Wayfair has spent heavily on advertising as it looks to compete directly with Amazon. 

Wayfair has spent over $100 million on advertising in 2019, placing ads ubiquitously if not judiciously. “Wayfair and its colorful pinwheel logo are seemingly everywhere these days: on boxes being opened by Bobby Berk in the most recent season of Queer Eye, hovering next to photos of your middle school friends’ kids in Facebook sidebar ads,” writes Cheryl Wischhover at Vox. 

Outside of customer growth, and to support all this spending, Wayfair has also added a new revenue stream in sponsored products. 

Jet.com 

Walmart-owned Jet.com has spent over $100 million on advertising this year as it continues to focus on growth over profitability.

The high level of spending is slightly confounding given Walmart’s announcement that it will fold the startup eCommerce platform into its own eCommerce offerings in the near future. 

“Over time, Jet morphed into a brand with a reputation of reaching younger, more affluent urbanites – not an existing fit with Walmart, but a potentially complementary one that could help Walmart grow beyond its core,” writes Stepehn Kraus at Search Engine Watch. 

Time will tell how this fit affects ad spend. 

Ancestry 

Genealogy site Ancestry.com has spent over $50 million in 2019 as it seeks to hold its own against newcomers like 23andMe. 

Despite facing backlash for a controversial video ad earlier this year, the site has seen an elevated presence across TV, online video and display ads as it expands its marketing mix.

“I keep hearing this debate around ‘brand’ versus ‘performance’. In my opinion, there’s no debate. You need to be able to do both,” Ancestroy CMO Vineet Mehra told Beet.tv. “You’re going to see more and more of our spend in video going into addressable TV, mid funnel digital video, which can solve a lot of the same problems we’ve tried to solve on TV, but in much more attributable, addressable ways.”

UNTUCKit 

Trying to stand out in a crowded apparel DTC market, UNTUCKit has spent over $25 million on advertising in 2019. 

While their advertising has spanned everything from print media to national TV, the brand has also made good use of ad tech to maximize their ROI. “Untuckit partnered with measurement and optimization firm TVSquared to measure its TV spots daily and optimize its campaigns regularly,” reports Chris Kelly at MarketingDive. 

14 percent may not sound like a lot — but what about $55 million? 

Last week, we asked whether or not B2B brands are buying both print and digital ad space in 2019. 

While the majority of B2B advertisers are still sticking with solely print or solely digital advertising, we saw a tick upward in those spanning mediums from 2018 to 2019. 

Of those advertising in print and digital spaces, a handful of B2B companies stuck out. The top spenders in print and digital advertising have spent over $55 million YTD. Here we highlight some of the major players in the B2B market, with a look at how they are executing cross-platform campaigns. 

GlaxoSmithKline

GlaxoKlineSmith, the parent company of Excedrin, has been promoting the brand in B2B publications aimed at convenience store managers. GKS has spent over $15 million on print and digital advertising so far this year.

In terms of both style and substance, the ads are virtually indistinguishable.  

In both versions the brand focuses on the small, convenient packs — which ostensibly make them better options for convenience store inventory. “Fast headache relief for fast-paced shoppers,” the headline reads. For the print version, the ad directs managers to the local Excedrin sales managers as well as local distributors.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon has put out a series of cross platform ads this year for its cloud computing platform, known by its acronym AWS. 

AWS has spent over $15 million year-to-date on print and digital campaigns combined. 

Amazon Web Services promoted towards IT professionals. Has spent over $15mm YTD on print+digital campaigns.

While the number is dwarfed by Amazon-proper’s $100 million spend, these B2B ads tend to reach more qualified leads. Both ads build on AWS’ recognition, direction to a landing page that focuses on use cases and case studies. 

Bayer

Bayer, the pharmaceutical company with major agricultural investments, launched a campaign around its insecticide Movento. 

Bayer has spent over $10 million on print and digital ads in 2019 across its products. 

The ads build off the same idea: highlighting how the insecticide benefits specific crops. The print ad includes quite a bit of product detail, while the digital ad directs to the website. 

Benjamin Moore

Benjamin Moore, the All-American paint company, has spent over $10 million this year on print and digital ads — including some targeting a B2B audience. 

In this campaign, the paint brand highlights its Spec Writer, which allows architects and designers to build out project specifications using Benjamin Moore products and colors. The print version includes a specific URL to spec tools. 

Verizon

Verizon has spent over $5 million on print and digital this year, including a push for its B2B solution for fleet management, Verizon Connect. 

The ads are aimed at both fleet managers and SMB owners, positioning Verizon Connect as a standalone platform. 

The question: are B2B brands buying both print and digital ads? 

The answer: they’re starting to, kind of. 

In our 2018 B2B recap trend report, we found that most B2B brands would only spend on either print or digital. Just 11 percent of brands bought both print and digital placements. 

By way of an update: not much has changed in the first half of 2019, but it’s enough to indicate a shift toward digital spend within B2B. 

For example, the number of digital-only B2B publishers remained consistent (with just a .1 percent drop), but the spend increased by nearly 60 percent year-over-year. At the same time, print-only B2B brands fell by 8 percent and spend dropped by 16 percent, year-over-year. 

The spending across both mediums is less significant: the number of B2B brands who spent on both digital and print remained consistent (less than a 2 percent change), while the amount they spent increased by just 3 percent, year-over-year. 

You can see a direct comparison to the chart below.

As you can see, there is a slight shift away from a single medium:

• 14 percent of B2B advertisers are spending on both digital and print, which is a slight increase. 
• 56 percent of B2B advertisers are spending on print only, which is consistent. 
• 30 percent of B2B advertisers are spending on digital only, which is a slight decrease. 

While only time will tell, we expect this slow-but-sure shift toward a combined effort across mediums to continue. By way of example, we need only to look to Pages, a new print trade publication focused on the digital-focused niche of search engine optimization.

MailChimp engaged in a round of gleeful weirdness in 2017, setting the bar high for creative B2B advertising. The email SaaS (i.e. “Software as a Service”) partnered with Droga5 (an independent advertising agency recently acquired by Accenture) to create a series of short films for with their “Did You Mean” campaign, designed to capture what people could accidentally type in when looking for MailChimp. In a similar fashion, HP took a relatively dry subject — enterprise cybersecurity — and encapsulated the dangers in a series of dramatic short films centered on an anthropomorphic characterization of cybersecurity threats, titled The Wolf.

While we think back on these impressive creatives and their lasting impact, we wanted to highlight some of the best creative B2B campaigns from more recent memory. Here’s what we found.

Monday.com

As Monday.com launched in the United States, they needed a creative way to stand out from the SaaS productivity apps already circulating the market. They found a one-two punch in a relatively unique 30 second video ad and a data-driven offline advertising campaign to go with it.

The video ad is comprised of two sections: one informative, and the other more creative. A short overview of the project management tool conveys easy organization and user-friendliness, along with the promise of a sense of satisfaction. Enter the creative portion, likening the feeling of using Monday.com to relatable daily victories — the satisfaction you feel taking the protective sticker off of an iPhone or throwing a wadded piece of paper into the trashcan on the first try.

The OOH (i.e. “out-of-home”) campaign took the form of awareness ads, with billboards asking “What is Monday.com?” placed strategically around New York’s subway system and city streets.

The question was answered with both the video ad and secondary placements that created a cross-platform experience that created a dialogue outlining the tool’s many use cases. “Our brand identity has evolved as we’ve scaled, and when faced with the pressure of expressing everything in a single campaign, back to basics felt right for us,” writes Head of Communications Leah Walters. “The ads were colorful, humorous, and reflective of our true brand identity.”

In the past 12 months, Monday.com has run online ads on over 759 different sites and their spending peaked in Q4 of last year. Their spending also spanned many different ad formats, including display, mobile, video, email and native advertising.

Accenture

Following its acquisition of independent ad agency Droga5, the consulting giant is expanding its portfolio of initiatives with a strong creative bent.

“Accenture’s deeper push into advertising reflects the ad industry’s rapidly changing competitive landscape,” writes Sapna Maheshwari at The New York Times. “The company’s marketing arm has grown significantly in recent years as broader shifts in consumer behavior have reordered what advertising truly encompasses. In the past, it was about coming up with attention-grabbing ads. Now, it is also about providing broader consumer experiences.”

With the JailBlimp video for MailChimp in its portfolio, Droga5 has displayed a knack for creating innovative experiences that it can offer to Accenture clients.

Accenture, too, has maintained a standard of creativity in how it markets itself for nearly the past decade. In the past 12 months, Accenture has run ads across digital, print and TV, including placements in over 35 print publications and over 200 websites. This dedication to visibility is only half the battle, strong branding and creative materials need to stand up to the challenge of maintaining brand awareness.

Accenture has built a visual brand around their consulting services, ranging from strategy to digital advertising. David Taylor writes that the visual branding has led to a memory structure over the past decade that is typically associated with direct to consumer brands. “Distinctiveness has been built through consistent use of the brand idea, and also the same logo and the little arrow that suggests progress and forward motion,” writes Taylor. “The campaign has also used the same basic executional structure, in landscape with the brand bottom right. It is interesting to observe how the campaign has been refreshed over time.”

Maintaining the same memory structure allows the brand to adapt the creative behind the logo across formats and target audiences.

UpWork

As a freelance platform, UpWork targets B2B companies with very specific needs in mind. Given that the platform’s freelancers offer a wide range of services and skills, UpWork needed to communicate its value no matter the niche.

It accomplished the message with its “Hey World” campaign from early last year. The campaign “offers some cheeky ideas to show how entrepreneurs, small businesses, large enterprises, and every organization in between can get more projects done with a freelancer,” writes Courtney Buchanan in the platform’s blog announcement of the campaign by using fictitious scenarios such as helping The Rock in a 2020 presidential campaign and helping NASA get to Mars. With the video, UpWork presented itself as a one-stop-shop for freelancers to help organizations of all shapes and sizes meet their specific needs.

Designed to accommodate an evolving B2B advertising landscape, Hey World is a multi-channel campaign for which UpWork has integrated digital, OOH and video advertising to great effect. The company aimed to maintaining a constant foundation of consumer awareness via frequent exposure in billboards and digital video. Concurrently with these visibility efforts, UpWork rolled out a strategically restrained approach to digital ad buying. The company placed digital ads on relatively fewer websites, but priotitized high-volume domains like the Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch. Most recently, UpWork has ventured into television advertising, the first of which appeared in early 2019.

The witty ad materials and a focused emphasis on brand recognition for the campaign achieved a significant awareness foundation without sacrificing information or interest. The Hey World campaign is an excellent case study in the benefits of combining meticulous attention to B2B campaign strategy with creatively ambitious ad concepts.

Oracle

Similar to Accenture, Oracle has created a memory structure with its “freedom” campaign – which looks more like a website feature than an advertisement. The messaging is targeted at mid-market companies in the APAC region, with distinct landing pages focused on the various benefits of the software.

The landing pages serve as a central hub for Oracle’s many advertising efforts – in the past 12 months, Oracle has placed ads on over 1,000 websites, 30 print magazines and 10 TV networks.

In the above video discussing the campaign, VP of the Business Development Group, Cath Hodgson Croker said that the idea was “born out of a digital first strategy. Where we wanted to change it up a bit was to just talk to medium sized business, which is not Oracle’s previous customer base.” In tracking the campaign leading back to the “freedom” landing pages, the Oracle team saw 32 million impressions in their target audience.