There is no doubt that the Australian advertising and marketing landscape is under pressure, facing challenges like intense brand competition, low ROI on ad investments, decreasing ad spend and a highly fragmented audience.

According to Next&Co’s quarterly Digital Media Wastage report, advertisers wasted a staggering $123.1 million in digital advertising dollars that failed to achieve objectives in the second quarter of 2024, which was $50 million higher than wastage for the same period in 2023. 

With marketing teams under pressure to cut through the noise and stand out amongst fierce competition, brand leaders have put the focus on creativity, while ignoring the powerhouse that enhances creativity: personalisation.

When driven by data, personalisation is the secret sauce that can drive more creative and powerful campaigns, boosting marketers’ ROI and driving needed business outcomes.

Why creativity needs personalisation

Consider this: without the right personalisation, even the most creative and expensive ads can come across as generic and out-of-touch with individual consumers.

Fortunately, with the ecosystem’s shift towards first-party data, brands have all the tools they need to understand what consumers find engaging and valuable. As brands leverage the information that consumers share about themselves, as well as continue to deepen the relationships with experiences and services consumers find most valuable, they’ll benefit from detailed insights into what consumers want from their brand.

In today’s data-driven marketplace, brands also have more tools to deepen their insights into consumers than ever before.

By leveraging data collaboration, stakeholders are able to collaborate in closed environments to preserve consumers’ privacy, all while surfacing previously hidden or unobtainable insights. Brands can find collaborators from other parts of the customer journey, such as retailers, to generate more insights into how consumers are converting and purchasing their products. Or, they can collaborate with brands from entirely different sectors, to discover new details about their customers that can then be used to enhance personalisation and drive more meaningful marketing.

Personalisation alone isn’t enough

Understanding your customers’ preferences and knowing what they want from your brand, in addition to properly personalising your content, still leaves one piece unsolved: how to get your creative, personalised ads in front of your target audiences. 

First-party data and data collaboration, again provide powerful solutions here. Understanding your customers and using identity as a spine across the platforms and publishers your audience uses, will help to create a detailed picture of where your audience is spending their time. Using these insights in conjunction with your understanding of each consumer’s journey, you’ll be able to get the right message in front of them at the right time, on the channels they actually use.

Leading data and data collaboration solutions help with this last part. In addition to providing a powerful, privacy-conscious platform to leverage data and generate insights, cutting-edge solutions enable seamless activation across the ecosystem, addressing everything from segmentation and targeting to activation, measurement and enabling powerful omnichannel marketing that drives results.

Where clean rooms come in

Data clean rooms are the safe and neutral spaces for data collaboration, which enable collaboration and partnerships without either party (or parties) having access to the other’s data. These clean rooms provide a critical, privacy-protecting starting point for data collaboration, and whether companies pick clean rooms or another solution for data collaboration as their starting point, they’ll be able to start reaping the benefits of a data-driven approach to marketing.

As we navigate the media landscape in 2024 and beyond, it is clear that data and personalisation are critical to underpin the creative work your brand is doing. By leveraging data to inform and enhance your creative strategies, you can develop campaigns that not only stand out, but also drive meaningful engagement and returns.

Melanie Hoptman is the managing director for LiveRamp Asia-Pacific, with more than 15 years of experience in operational and commercial leadership. At LiveRamp, she oversees operations and drives growth opportunities across the APAC region. Passionate about building relationships and fostering innovation, Hoptman is committed to helping brands unlock value through data partnerships while re-establishing consumer trust.

Also, read about why first-party data should be marketers’ main focus.