There was an interesting article on Mediatel on the Channel4 ‘upfronts’ this week, and the process of upfronts for investment in TV fascinates me. I am fascinated for several reasons, but mainly as broadcasters are embracing technology platforms for managing their audiences, even if they approach programmatic with very justified levels of scepticism given what happened to digital from programmatic.
But this blog is not about the upfronts for TV, it is about a report on the growing importance of SMEs to the digital advertising ecosystem* – some 41% of all SMEs now advertise online, mainly to drive ecommerce sales as the UK has the highest ecommerce participation rate in the entire G20 group of economies.
We view this as important for two reasons, the first is that markets like LMX can significantly increase the return on ad spend for SMEs when they make digital investments – we do this by giving them a simple way to select and buy the contextual audiences that they need on premium media partners at a price they agree to.
Secondly, we do this whilst giving them maximum flexibility and agility as to the media investments they make. We all understand that plans change, frequently in some cases – having the ability to potentially resell a media investment is a key way to de-risk any media buys, regardless of size of the buy or size of the client. This in turn boosts overall confidence in investing in digital and this can only be a good thing for everyone.
We are open for business to support SMEs make the right media investments. We’d love to speak to the 59% that don’t yet advertise online
*Click for the full article, with obvious credit to Mediatel – worth a follow on Twitter if you don’t already follow them.