Largely thanks to digital, advertising isn’t the only marketing genre with an identity crisis; the entire spectrum of the brand-consumer relationship is evolving, blurring traditional boundaries and established silos. Digital advertising is shopper marketing. Retailers are brand marketers. Publishers sell products. Media is “shoppable.” Among all this change, developing the right strategy to engage the right customers with the right message becomes harder for marketers without access to customer data.

But there are many that do have data. Retailers, armed with granular loyalty and transaction data, have the hard data to link digital advertising to consumer behavior and online strategies to sales. With their manufacturer vendors, retailers are delivering digital ads as personalized branded experiences, in the form of tailored recipes, helpful articles and imagery for products available a click away. These branded messages engage consumers with a “virtual endcap” when they are in the mindset to buy or browse. As a result, retailer-published display ads are less likely to be seen as annoying interruptions but helpful and engaging content. Amazon recently setup their own demand side platform to capitalize on this and is estimated to generate up to $1 billion in ad revenue this year, according to Baird Equity Research.

Not only is this new breed of digital “advertising” rewarding and relevant for the customer, it delivers clear ROI to the brand. According to Forrester Research, digital media will influence 53% of in-store sales by 2014. As this happens, the popularity of retailer-branded advertising is likely to continue to surge, giving brands the opportunity to measure what matters, sales over clicks, and improve campaigns overtime. Will this retailer-driven model eventually replace the publisher model digital marketers have come to rely on?

The advertising and media industry is on the cusp of a major transformation around relevancy and accountability. As customers continue to demand communications, products and services tailored to their personal needs, the publisher model of digital advertising and “spray and pray” methods won’t be sustainable. Retailers are definitely positioned to play a key role in this environment. Only retailers can truly “close the loop” to measure impact of marketing because they have shopper sales data. There is no advertising more measureable than marketing campaigns run with a retailer.

So, what does this mean for marketers? We need to expect more from advertising. Advertising can be personalized, engaging and measureable so that campaigns become more sophisticated and our understanding of the customer grows over time. We need let go of our definitions. The traditional, business-centric channels, budgets, campaigns, and marketing plans are no longer customer centric. Modern marketing is about the customer. The customer is our anchor to help us navigate all through the blur; a new digital ecosystem that is constantly influx.

-Allen Mason, Vice President, Analysis, Strategy and Planning, dunnhumbyUSA

Hear more from Allen Mason at the Digital Non Conference on “Are Retailers the Future Media Publishers?” on Wednesday, October 24th at 3:00p.m. at FB’s, 126 W. 6th Street.

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Allen Mason, Vice President, Analysis, Strategy & Planning, dunnhumbyUSA has spent his career on the cutting edge of brand management and digital communications, launching global digital strategies and programs for billion-dollar consumer packaged goods brands like Gillette and Pantene before joining dunnhumbyUSA. Mason leads the development of dunnhumbyUSA’s digital shopping and communication solutions, which enable brands and retailers to personalize their engagement with customers across channels. Mason spent over fifteen years in digital and brand marketing roles across multiple categories and markets at Procter & Gamble. He is a member of the Advisory Board for Total Beauty Media, advising on digital and business strategy for websites like TotalBeauty.com. Follow him on Twitter @allenrmason.

About Dave Dorr, Creative Consultant, Epipheo Studios

Epipheo Studios began in 2009 asking for an invite for Google Wave. They took a 90 minute developer video and turned it into a 2 minute video explaining why people should check it out. Google loved it, and ended up wanting more, which, as it turns out, is a nice way to start a business.

Ever since, we have been crafting ways to tell stories that get people to care about what companies do. Epipheo takes an idea and extracts the story and then uses a number of different mediums to get the story across in a simple, engaging way.

We are privileged to get to work with some of the top brands in the world from P&G, Visa, Microsoft, Amazon, to some of the most innovative new startups that are changing the way we live.

Dave began with Epipheo as a Creative Director and is now moved into the role of Creative Consultant — helping bring simple, engaging communication to the problems that companies and organizations face everyday. Dave’s clients include Visa, Hewlett Packard, and eBay.

Allen Mason, dunnhumbyUSA

More brands are rethinking their digital strategies and exploring new tactics that relevantly influence the right consumers with the right message to drive sales. In their search for clearer accountability, they are turning to retailer websites as viable alternatives to link digital advertising to consumer behavior and sales. Retailers are delivering branded digital ads on their websites that blur the boundaries of advertising, content and commerce, in the form of tailored recipes, helpful articles and brand imagery for products available a click away. Websites like Amazon.com are already serving 3x as many display advertising impressions on “virtual end caps” sponsored by their suppliers than they were a year ago. This presentation will explore the future of brand-consumer online communications and marketing tactics in an environment of big data, virtual end caps and acute competition. If retailer websites continue to expand from a sales channel into a shopper marketing channel, will brand marketers shift their digital advertising investments away from publishers? How will brick and mortar retailers evolve their business models, capabilities and cultures to cater to this new opportunity?

Jeanne Bernish, KnowledgeWorks

Non-Profit organizations are extremely active in the social media space yet measuring success or return on investment of social media efforts is not easily distilled into tracking transactional results. Many non-profit organizations simply seek to influence others and create a state of community. This workshop will lead participants through establishing benchmarks and measuring the squishy results of influence.

• Taylor Wiegert, Powerhouse Factories
• Emily Worstell, Powerhouse Factories

It seems that everyone from marketers to strategists to designers is obsessed with Facebook, and with 951 mil+ users, they have good reason to be. Facebook is the dominant social network, but users are increasingly spending time and attention outside of Facebook as they seek niche, interest-based social networks to set their online lifestyles apart from the crowd. Consumer behavior is changing, and as industries struggle to keep up with the changes, the rise of niche networks can be both a blessing and a curse for already overwhelmed social media teams. The panelists will illuminate what is happening, the opportunity and what can be done right now to anticipate changes in consumer behavior and leverage niche social networks to achieve business objectives.

In 45 minutes we will:

• Unpack the history and identity of niche social networks and show how they’re fragmenting the social media landscape.
• Reveal the opportunity presented by niche social networks.
• Identify action that can be taken to immediately leverage niche social networks.

• Brandon Dawson, Possible Worldwide
• Renee Human, NKU College of Informatics
• Daniel Koabel, NKU College of Informatics

Are you looking for your next animal wrangler? That’s the next generation job description and the type of requests employers are sending to prospective graduates. In today’s job market, employers are seeking transdisciplinary students that are taught from an all things digital perspective. Come find out how the College of Information @ NKU has developed curriculums that are helping meet the needs of the Cincinnati talent market. Hear and contribute to what employers are asking out of the next generation of graduating students. This will be a moderated panel.

Michael Loban, InfoTrust

Organizations often find themselves in a position of having different email marketing strategies working toward the same goal, but not being integrated together. Email marketing, social media marketing, search marketing, traditional marketing – they all help organizations sell more products and services. The challenge is creating and measuring an integrated strategy.

In this seminar, we will discuss how through the integration of marketing and sales systems, organizations can better measure and maximize their marketing ROI, and especially their social media ROI. This process will help organizations track what social channels bring the most traffic, leads and sales, and how social media can help with lead conversion and lead nurturing. We will compare numerous examples of how organizations’ use of social media helped them close more deals faster through the process of sales and marketing integration. In this session, we will also review how to use Google Analytics to track social media as a way to generate and convert website traffic.

Tim Metzner, SparkPeople

Creating great content that has a higher likelihood of going viral on specific social networks takes planning and intentional effort, but it can be scale-able and provide significant value.

Case study: how SparkPeople revamped our quote library to become highly targeted for Pinterest which resulted in visits from Pinterest surpassing that of Facebook.

Christy Belden, LeapFrog Interactive

Mobile marketing is experiencing tremendous growth. With growth comes opportunities to market to your audience in new and interesting ways. Enter SoLoMo – the ability to leverage social media, location and a consumer’s mobile phone to target your customer. The opportunity in this area is tremendous. We will discuss the implication and applications of SoLoMo as it applies to one’s business. Attendees will walk away with:

• A better understanding of SoLoMo
• Example of it in action
• Keys to implementing SoLoMo