Forrester

Consumers used to browse magazines and publisher sites for gift-giving inspiration, and brands would turn to publishers to sponsor those coveted gift-guide spots. This holiday season, influencers are taking on that role. They expertly thread the needle between entertainment and commerce, and they are supercharged by social media platforms’ powerful recommendation algorithms. In fact, TikTok’s survey found that 65% of people on TikTok say that they always rely on online reviews and creators to decide what to buy online. Additionally, over half of respondents in a survey conducted by marketing agency MGH said that they already found ideas for holiday gifts this year on TikTok while 39% say that they’ve searched TikTok for holiday gift ideas. Influencers will also transcend social media platforms and reach non-TikTok users: Publishers leverage TikTok influencer recommendations to inform their own gift guides. New York Post gift guide:   Social Media Platforms Incentivize Merchants And Creators Social media companies are trying to attract both creators and merchants to their platforms. TikTok launched an incentivization program for merchants to buy more Shop Ads with the 2024 TikTok Shop Holiday Emporium. Small- and medium-sized businesses can apply to become a part of TikTok’s gift-guide experience to elevate their brand’s visibility via featured videos and priority exposure. To be selected, however, businesses must commit to a minimum ad spend on Shop Ads during the holiday season.   YouTube and Shopify expanded their partnership ahead of the holiday season so that Shopify merchants can tap into creators via YouTube Shopping’s affiliate program. This partnership gives creators access to more products that they can tag in their shopping content and helps connect merchants more easily to creators to get more reach for their products. By fostering the relationship between creators and merchants more easily using technology, social media platforms are putting the plumbing in place to make their platforms legitimate storefronts. Social Media Platforms Resonate With Shoppers, More Than Traditional Media Forrester’s October 2024 Consumer Pulse Survey found that 43% of US online adults ages 34 and under say social media posts from a brand will most likely influence their winter holiday shopping decisions, and 25% said the same of social media posts from an influencer. These both rank higher than TV commercials, online video ads, magazines, or even podcasts. As we stated in Forrester’s 2025 media and advertising predictions, we predict that marketers will shift 10% of their global performance media budgets into social commerce. This holiday season is just the beginning of a real consumer shift into social shopping that we’ll see come to fruition over the coming year. Forrester clients, schedule a guidance session with me to discuss your social commerce strategy for 2025. source

What Happened? The announcement and abrupt nature of Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger’s retirement leaves many questions. What does this mean for Intel’s turnaround plan? Who is Intel going to get to tackle this complex situation? How is it going to impact Intel going forward? And how will it impact Intel’s partners and customers? Earlier this year, Intel had a strategy, separating its Products and Foundry businesses, as well as promoting an “AI Everywhere” message. Unfortunately, numerous issues have forced Intel into dire circumstances, and the existing turnaround strategy may be up for some changes. What It Means Tech execs need to pay attention to who Intel brings in as CEO. What the company does next will impact your purchasing decisions for your workplace, data center, and cloud services. Forrester expects that this news will have the following impact on Intel. Increases the importance of the Foundry business. Intel’s investment in the Foundry business and its importance to bringing back product manufacturing in house cannot be overstated. There’s huge risk in terms of the Foundry technology not panning out (see Samsung’s efforts in the US with two-nanometer as an example), but getting a technological advantage here would help drive more business and not just Intel’s own. There has been a push for Intel to spin off this business. This is understandable due to how different it is in terms of investments, time frame to see a return on investment, and risk profile. But there are synergies that can be leveraged with a healthy Foundry and healthy products being manufactured. Unfortunately, Intel is not yet there. Spinning off the Foundry business may also have complications due to CHIPS Act conditions for accepting funding and having foundries that may not be running at full capacity with customers. Be on the lookout for: Intel receiving the expected CHIPS Act funding and other government assistance to defray the enormous investments needed to regain the technological lead in semiconductor manufacturing and mitigate the risk of potential failures in converting research into production technology. How the incoming administration addresses the semiconductor industry and the importance placed on it versus other key US industries. Increases the importance of Intel’s data center products to gain market share from AMD and NVIDIA. Data center product growth, especially in AI with NVIDIA and now AMD, shows Intel falling behind in a rapidly growing market. Its data center CPUs are also behind AMD’s offerings, but the new Xeon 6 release following AMD’s latest processors is an opportunity to gain back some thought leadership and market share. Be on the lookout for: Gaudi 3 acceptance — AMD has been able to gain some market share from NVIDIA, however minor it may seem, so Intel needs to show the same. Xeon 6 acceptance — Can Xeon 6 stem the tide with AMD on the data center CPU market, and will its NPU capabilities and “AI everywhere” strategy help it with the acceptance of smaller generative AI models? For more perspective on this issue or other related issues, Forrester clients can book an inquiry or guidance session at [email protected]. source

Social media has become a critical channel for marketers. It intersects many teams, from social media managers to commerce marketers and care agents. These often siloed teams need technology to help them effectively collaborate and measure the impact of their efforts from one place. Forrester defines social suites as: Platforms that combine multiple social tech capabilities into a single unified offering, such as social content planning and publishing, social listening, and customer response. According to Forrester’s Q3 B2C Marketing CMO Pulse Survey, 2024, 83% of US B2C marketing executives indicate that they are trying to consolidate their social media tools into one place, and 81% plan to evaluate their social suite in 2025. Social suites are positioned well in a market where consolidation is critical to streamline workflows between teams and also gain a consistent data view across channels. As the social suite market has matured over the last several years, its core offerings have strengthened with unified measurement and better workflow automation. Providers differentiate with capabilities for new use cases such as employee advocacy, influencer marketing, and ratings and reviews management. Introducing The Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q4 2024 To help marketers vet the right social suite provider for their needs, we’ve published The Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q4 2024. Marketers looking for a social suite should consider providers that: Excel in task automation and reinvent workflows using AI. All vendors have invested in AI features, but those that differentiate are also using AI to imagine new workflows and have a clearly articulated approach and process for AI innovation. Prioritize the customer experience. A good onboarding experience and ongoing customer support were cited as top motivators for the customers we interviewed. Select a provider that considers customer service a core business value. Meaningfully invest in emerging use cases. Social media impacts so many different parts of the business, so you need a provider that can deliver beyond social media management. Prioritize the emerging capabilities (i.e., influencer marketing) that are most important to your business to determine which provider will most comprehensively deliver on your needs. Forrester clients can use this report for more insight into the social suite category and the seven vendors that matter most. Schedule a guidance session to discuss how to use this Forrester Wave evaluation, and read The Social Suite Landscape, Q4 2023, to drive your selection of a social suite provider. source

Predictions season is in full swing here at Forrester. As we do every year around this time, we recently released more than 150 predictions about what we think will happen in the coming year, and we invite both clients and non-clients to check out the wealth of materials we have to help you plan. But last year, we started a new tradition: something we called “anti-predictions.” These are our predictions about things we think won’t happen in the year ahead. It’s a unique take on our predictions, and based on the response we got last year, we decided to round up more anti-predictions for 2025. AI PCs Will Hit The Market, But Enterprises Won’t See Major Benefits Until 2027 AI PCs were the talk of most major tech conferences in 2024, but 2025 won’t be the year of their widespread adoption. Why? Simply, their usefulness is still limited to a niche set of personas. Despite increasing shipments of AI PCs and the expected uptick from Windows 10’s end of life, the benefits of using an AI PC today only apply to a small segment of users. On the enterprise side, it’s creative roles, designers, data scientists, and those using the ecosystem of applications that can utilize dedicated AI hardware who are most likely to see the value of investing in AI PCs. While the move to Windows 11 will undoubtedly drive some AI PC adoption, just 39% of decision-makers in Forrester’s latest Digital Workplace And Employee Technology Survey indicate that their company is increasing their refresh rate for PCs, with less than half of those doing so to take advantage of new hardware capabilities. We won’t see a consumer groundswell for AI PCs either: According to Forrester’s recent Consumer Pulse Survey, just 7% of US online adults say that their next PC purchase will be an AI PC, and another 67% indicated that they don’t use AI enough to require an AI PC. Still, tech leaders should begin piloting AI PCs for select users to prepare for a future in which a vast application ecosystem can take advantage of AI capabilities embedded in nearly every device, likely by 2027. AI Vendor Consolidation Won’t Occur Due To Sustained Enterprise Demand And Vibrant Startup Activity While we predict that some enterprises will scale back on AI prematurely in 2025, overall AI adoption is continuously growing. The AI vendor market is thriving with diversity and innovation, and we haven’t seen any signs of consolidation so far. The pace of innovation and competition is relentless, with continuously emerging startups and AI solutions further discouraging vendor consolidation. Moreover, there is high demand for specialized AI solutions in industries such as healthcare, finance, and banking to address their specific needs, fueling the growth of niche vendors. Lastly, with advancements in cloud computing (AWS, Azure, GCP), open-source tools (PyTorch, TensorFlow), and AI platforms (Azure AI, Hugging Face, IBM Watson, OpenAI), the barrier to entry for creating AI solutions is extremely low, enabling more startups to enter niche markets rather than consolidating them. Putting Ads Into Streaming Services Won’t Drive Upgrades — Or Cancellations Streaming providers that rolled out ad-supported options are not losing viewers. In fact, ad-supported subscription video on-demand use is growing up to three times faster than ad-free services, according to some sources. And the price hikes on most platforms are driving even more users into their ad-tier plans. For Netflix, currently more than 50% of its new subscribers have joined its ad tier, and that percentage will continue to tick up each quarter. Any concerns about ads causing users to cancel streaming services have been allayed — only 7% of US consumers polled by Forrester earlier this year canceled a streaming service because they didn’t want to see ads. So in 2025, subscription fatigue will continue to be a thing, but streamers with ads will have the least to worry about. I’ll close with a quick reminder that, if you’re a Forrester client and want to find out what will happen in 2025, you can check out all of our Predictions reports here. If you’re not yet a Forrester client, check out our complimentary guides and register for an upcoming webinar here to put our predictions to work for you in 2025. source

It’s autumn here in the US, and school is very much in session. Like my kids, learning has been top of the agenda for the past several months, as I heard briefings from and interviewed clients of the top customer experience (CX) strategy consulting firms in the world. As with the evaluation in 2022, the field was narrowed to vendors with a breadth of CX strategy-related competencies, a large global footprint, and a high amount of revenue earned from developing CX strategies. Without further ado, here are the top five things I learned over the last few months of conducting The Forrester Wave™: Customer Experience Strategy Consulting Services, Q4 2024. Lesson #1: As the market matures, it’s converging on a single spot. Right now, that spot looks an awful lot like a global firm that considers CX and ROI to be best buddies, that has strong business and technical expertise, and that is investing heavily in AI that advances both its own and its customers’ CX ambitions. This is great news for potential customers of these firms, because it increases the likelihood of getting access to a broad set of capabilities regardless of the firm they choose. It’s not great news, however, for the firms that compete in this market, because it creates more pressure for them to identify and communicate their differentiating factor. We’re not at total convergence yet; that said, I’ll be very curious to see if we observe another big maturity leap when it’s time to refresh this research in 2026 or if it’ll look more like the market took a smaller hop. Lesson #2: Specialties, particularly localization and language competencies, are a big deal for these firms’ customers. Many reference customers interviewed for this research cited the importance of their vendor’s local teams, particularly when the local team’s language skills enabled easier design and fielding of research, product and comms design, and collaboration with their own employees. Much like the difference between culturally competent translations and straight translations, these specialties make the strategy engagements sing instead of falling flat. Firms competing in this market should tout their global capabilities (or build them, if they don’t have them), and customers should ask for examples of work that demonstrate the most critical capabilities that they require. Lesson #3: Strategy consulting customers expect progress on meaningful KPIs. Every reference customer was able to cite the ways in which they wanted or expected to measure the value of the engagement, and the ones that had the most positive things to say about their vendor partner were those whose strategy consulting engagements achieved or beat those KPI targets. These KPIs ranged from financial goals, such as increased revenue, profit, or margin, to cultural goals, such as the adoption of new processes or standards. Reference customers who experienced additional benefits above and beyond what was originally scoped often cited those when speaking positively about the value of the engagement. Lesson #4: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Those famous words that guided a US presidential campaign 30+ years ago still ring true. Of the reference customers who had a clear sense of what their CX strategy consulting spend would look like over the next 12 months, an overwhelming majority said they would maintain or decrease their spend with their vendor partner. The often-stated rationale: Pressure from an uncertain global economy is limiting their ability to spend big on this next year. Firms competing in this market should redouble their efforts to explain the financial benefits that previous customers have earned from their strategy engagements, and potential customers should demand examples of prior such successes if they’re not offered right from the beginning. Lesson #5: Who you get on your vendor-side team will have a huge impact on the engagement’s success. While a good number of reference customers had positive things to say about individual members of their vendor’s team, some had legitimate complaints about how their vendor partner staffed their engagement and the resulting impact. The most common issue was vendors swapping staff around, whether due to rotations, attrition, or personality conflicts. Reference customers’ praise flowed for vendor partners whose teams communicated with them proactively, frequently, and transparently. Vendors that used “consultant-speak” or that the customer had to chase for updates got less rosy reviews from reference customers, and it often affected other aspects of how they viewed the overall quality of the firm. There are still more lessons to be learned from this year’s evaluation, so I recommend reading the full report — available to all Forrester clients now. Use the “Compare vendors” button at the top of the report to find your best-fit vendor based on the criteria that matter most for your firm. Still have questions? I’m happy to chat on a guidance session or inquiry about the results of this evaluation. And with that … class dismissed! source

The end of the year is approaching, and for many of us, that means holiday preparations. I’ve already seen some houses decorated with lights and trees, and I must admit, I’m enjoying them. For some of us, this time of year also means year-end reporting of financials and performance metrics. Included in that may be your annual customer experience (CX) relationship study key metrics such as Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS) or overall satisfaction (OSat). And if your dashboard includes results from other CX or voice of the customer (VoC) studies, you might see noticeably different results for your relationship study compared to your transaction studies. Are you prepared to explain to your leaders and business partners why the organization’s relationship metric (let’s say rNPS) is lower than transactional NPS (tNPS) scores for the same time frame or with the same set of customers? It’s a question I’m hearing more often. Here’s what you should know. You’re Not Alone We see this pattern not only in our own research but also in data shared by clients who are seeking help explaining VoC output. We see it across industries, across countries, and in both B2C and B2B measurment efforts. So this is most likely not a shortcoming in your own measurement program. It’s a broader phenomenon. The Survey Context Drives The Differences A transactional survey, when administered correctly, asks about a specific interaction, such as a purchase, delivery, or customer service contact. It covers a short period of time, typically one channel, perhaps one person, and is often tied to a specific need. This makes it easier for your customers to wrap their head around the experience and provide an evaluation. Recall is easier and ties their willingness to recommend more readily to that very specific experience. A relationship study, on the other hand, asks about a broader set of attributes, some less tangible that require more thought. It’s designed to assess the strength of your company’s relationship with a customer. The survey may ask about brand value statements (e.g., on attributes such as trustworthy or innovative) or about the relationship itself (Does the customer feel valued? Is that customer treated respectfully?). Experiences may have occurred further in the past, making them harder to recall. Both Types Of Surveys Play Important Roles Is one more important than the other in your CX efforts? No. Each has its own purpose for you and your business leaders. The relationship-level metric is key to demonstrating the linkage among customer perceptions, behaviors, and business outcomes. Transactional-level metrics are key in closing the loop with unhappy customers, identifying opportunities for coaching and channel improvement, and identifying cyclical trends or shifts in customer perceptions about that channel. The latter is likely more closely tied to business unit-level goals and objectives while the former supports organizational-level goals. (Note of caution: Because of the closer link to unit goals, transaction-level metrics are also more susceptible to manipulation, which would exacerbate discrepancies between the relationship and transaction scores.) What Should I Tell My Executives? With a lower relationship-level score, the story from the data is that there are specific aspects of the broader relationship that are (negatively) impacting customers’ loyalty and subsequent behaviors that are not being captured in the transaction surveys. One or more elements of the experience are of lower quality, are less effective at meeting the customer’s needs, or don’t make customers feel as positive overall as that one specific transaction measured in a separate survey. You may be able to look at performance across the attributes included in your relationship study that will help you pinpoint what is driving down scores. If it’s not readily apparent, you may need to add attributes to your survey in the next cycle. At the very least, it’s a message to leaders that your customer relationships are more than just the individual transactions they have with you. It’s thinking about the emotions that are inherent in relationships and the glue that keeps your customers loyal if one experience goes bad. So think of the difference in the results from the two studies as a new insight to share, not a problem that needs to be explained away. I might even stretch to say that it’s a gift to your business partners, an added perspective that helps them better understand customers — which reminds me that I should go unravel and test my lights. The holidays will be here in no time. If you are a Forrester client and would like to discuss this issue in more detail, please schedule time to talk. source

When it comes to defining a data strategy, the starting point is planning (client access required), which encompasses governance, compliance and technology. This in turn involves the critical task of selecting the right data providers to empower go-to-market strategy. The success of this selection process is determined by the clarity of requirements, flexibility of providers’ selection tools, and the granularity of attributes available in source databases. This means considering what the data is supposed to accomplish, determining relevant personas, and identifying where to find applicable data. Many of the issues that arise with data provider selection stem from a lack of alignment between the goals and plans of marketing and sales. The development of coherent and strategic plans across the revenue ecosystem avoids this tendency and drives a more thoughtful and long-term approach to data acquisition. Marketing and sales plans are further sharpened when brought together under a unified revenue plan that seeks to integrate and align fiscal revenue planning. The commitments by revenue functions to commercial objectives places further focus on how they will be achieved, and the necessary coordination required. This assessment is instrumental in guiding the selection of data providers capable of pinpointing the essential accounts, decision-makers, and buying signals that are critical for successful go-to-market execution. In our latest report on best practices for choosing data providers (client access required), Brett Kahnke and I discuss how to select the right partner. How though, should marketing and sales work together to make this decision? Drive coordination, expertise, and alignment to choose the right data provider Bringing the revenue ecosystem together to choose a data provider (or any other kind of decision, in fact) requires strong coordination across individual teams. This necessitates the deep involvement of operations teams to prevent misalignment, unnecessary expenditure, and extended timelines when selecting data providers. Leaders of operations teams have a number of ways to go about this: Evaluate the Revops operating model. Revops leaders must maintain a broad perspective, enabling them to effectively orchestrate delivery of technology, data, process, and measurement across the revenue ecosystem. An effective operating model transcends rigid structures and reporting lines, focusing instead on stakeholder needs, value delivery, capabilities, leadership, and governance. This model lays the groundwork for making informed decisions about data provider selection. Introduce a Data Center of Excellence (CoE). This is a dedicated team of data analysts, scientists, and other experts committed to leveraging data and analytics to spur growth and enhance business performance. Benefits include ensuring alignment with business objectives, improving decision-making, enhancing collaboration, and increasing efficiency by streamlining data management processes. A Data Center of Excellence emphasizes the importance of driving best practices in data selection and governance while promoting a data-driven culture. Identify the right marketing and sales alignment paradigm. Recent Forrester research has uncovered an alarming disconnect between the perception and reality of alignment across the revenue ecosystem. The pressures facing marketing and sales teams face are only intensifying, raising the risk that this misalignment will worsen. Addressing this challenge entails identifying the most suitable alignment paradigm for a business and working intentionally to apply it. Revops must play a role in this endeavour, together with wider marketing and sales leadership, laying the groundwork for data provider selection. Choose a data provider is just like choosing new technology The process of choosing a data provider mirrors that of adopting new technology. It necessitates careful consideration of how the provider fits into the technology roadmap and a thorough evaluation of the data itself. Pay close attention to the solutions under assessment, carefully plan the selection and implementation process, and prepare rigorously for how the chosen provider is adopted. And don’t forget, this approach applies equally to the selection of an individual data provider as to an over-arching data strategy, involving the entire revenue ecosystem. Time to get planning! source

As Q4 nears its end, companies reflect on their achievements and prepare strategies for the coming year. This reflection is critical, as Forrester’s CX Index 2024 shows: CX Index scores have dipped across the board. In this context, I urge you to remind everyone in your organization: “CX is not a project.” Projects end, but placing customers at the center of your business’ strategy, operations and leadership requires continuous commitment. Such a sustained commitment is exactly what Forrester’s Customer Obsession Awards recognizes. Nedbank Won Forrester’s Customer-Obsessed Enterprise Award EMEA 2024 At Forrester’s CX Summit EMEA, Anton de Wet, Nedbank’s Chief Customer Officer, and Derek Tedder, Executive CX Strategy & Culture, shared details on the bank’s sustained efforts over the years. BNP Paribas And Bank Millennium Were Award Finalists Those two firms stood out among the submissions for their programmatic CX efforts. We recognized BNP Paribas for its comprehensive work in managing and improving customer journeys at scale. The bank’s efforts to harmonize CX efforts across multiple countries, while catering to diverse customer needs, demonstrate the power of a well-coordinated, scalable CX strategy. We recognized Bank Millennium for its structured and customer-centered approach to elevating the quality of its customer experience. Its strategy, grounded in understanding and addressing customer needs, highlights the value of data-driven decisions and personalized improvements that resonate deeply with their audience. Magdalena Suchanek, the CX leader at Bank Millennium, expressed: “The scope checked in the application for the Award is comprehensive and multidimensional. It covers practical aspects of CX management, but also those related to leadership, strategy, culture, and results. The preparation of the application itself, and then conversations with analysts on this topic, are a good opportunity to review the organization’s efforts in being customer obsessed.” Congratulations again to Nedbank, BNP Paribas and Bank Millennium! As you reflect and plan… …consider these sources: As always: Don’t hesitate to be in touch. And keep an eye out for our call for submissions for the Customer Obsession Awards 2025. source

It’s been a busy news week on the advertising technology (adtech) front. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it is requesting Google to divest of the Chrome browser as the outcome of the monopoly trial that the search giant lost earlier this year. This news nearly drowned out other adtech moves from some of Google’s most significant competitors: The Trade Desk and Mediaocean. Despite many in the industry not knowing what comes next — including the outcomes of ongoing antitrust actions in multiple jurisdictions over its ad network and publisher ad server — these changes bode well for the future of adtech competition and consumer privacy. If Google Loses Chrome, It Will Gain Luster If the court agrees with the DOJ’s request, Google will be forced to sell or spin off the world’s most used web browser. It will also be forced to limit payments to Apple, Samsung, and others that collect billions to enable Google as the default search engine on their devices, OSes, and browsers. Google’s Chrome browser has historically played second fiddle to the needs of its massive advertising business, and advertiser needs were often critical to key product decisions within Chrome, such as the decision to allow websites to continue to collect personal data while browsing in “incognito mode.” An independent Chrome browser would make way for: Better privacy and more secure browsing for consumers. Unburdened of the needs of advertisers or the adtech ecosystem, an independent Chrome browser will need to make user-centric product decisions to compete with Safari and Mozilla (which have more privacy features available and enabled by default). Google’s Privacy Sandbox alternative was designed to appease advertisers but remains in negotiations with the UK antitrust regulator, causing Chrome to delay deprecating third-party cookies indefinitely. Still, data deprecation marches on, as Chrome users increasingly clear browser data and employ ad-blocking plug-ins. Functionality gains for Google’s other products. Without Chrome, all of Google’s products — from YouTube to its ad platforms — would be forced to function under the same constraints as its competitors: working with a constantly shrinking number of user signals, each with limited reliability. While this uneven playing field has historically worked to Google’s advantage, it also disincentivized Google from leading and innovating to the same degree as its competitors. Google may have to invest in partnerships and open standards to maintain competitive observability for its ad products — something it was able to do in the past through acquisition. The Trade Desk Pushes Into The Sell Side With TV OS Launch The Trade Desk (TTD) announced a CTV operating system as a challenger to Roku, Google, and Amazon. It will help TTD increase the footprint of Unified ID 2.0 in this environment, where today it is comparatively limited to specific connected TV (CTV) apps. But the competition in this category is already stiff. In addition to concentration in the TV manufacturing space, many of the existing OS players own streaming services or are deeply partnered with competing advertising platforms. To unhook those relationships, TTD’s Ventura OS will have to offer a better UX, stronger monetization, and better insights into customer habits than the competition. Longer term, enabling new content discovery and providing robust customization tools for developers will ensure stickiness with OEMs and their streaming app partners. The existing space for seller tools is quite robust, so TTD’s appetite for sustained investment in this area will ultimately determine its success over the long haul. Creative Adtech Consolidation Comes To Fruition With Mediaocean’s Move To Acquire Innovid Mediaocean’s announcement that it is acquiring and merging Innovid with Flashtalking resonates with analysis from The Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising Technologies, Q4 2024, which called for “creative adtech’s consolidation.” In this case, Innovid’s video capabilities and Flashtalking’s display capabilities are consolidating for buyers’ benefit. When merged, Flashtalking and Innovid will offer robust automation, activation, and iteration capabilities for static and video creative across the open web, CTV, and social media. Both products’ workflows will remain relatively separate for some time — integrating people and processes is always a headache — so the companies will continue relying on managed services to get to market. Don’t be surprised by more M+A in the creative adtech space — and adtech overall — as vendors seek to strengthen capabilities across channels. These massive multiyear investments from independent adtech companies such as Mediaocean and The Trade Desk highlight the fact that their position is bolstered by any structural change to Google’s adtech. To evaluate your strategy around Google’s fracture and the future of adtech, schedule a guidance session or inquiry today. source

Imagine trying to cook a complicated dish for the first time without a recipe, guessing at the ingredients and their proportions. This trial-and-error process is much like a B2B organization attempting to craft go-to-market strategies in absence of sufficient data and insights. Just as chefs rely on the right mix of ingredients and a recipe to guide the creation of a fantastic dish, portfolio marketers must leverage the right mix of data and insights to ensure that their organization’s go-to-market strategy is a recipe for success. B2B leaders should think of the Forrester Go-To-Market Architecture as the recipe for making smart go-to-market decisions. The Forrester Go-To-Market Architecture   But the right data and insights must be leveraged at every strategy level: Market strategy. Market strategy decisions set the direction for the entire go-to-market approach. Portfolio marketing leaders and senior management prioritize market segments and decide on the most suitable routes to reach them. Data and insights required include market sizing and forecasts, historical revenue performance (by segment), customer needs, and market trends. Reliable sources to leverage are internal systems (such as financial systems or customer data platforms) as well as market research or analyst firms. Buyer strategy. This level puts the customer at the heart of the go-to-market strategy. At the buyer strategy level, portfolio marketing and senior leadership determine the ideal offerings within the portfolio that align to customer needs and then prioritize the most important personas based on their role in the buying process. Qualitative data plays an important part at this level, including insights on buyer roles and the composition of the buying group, as well as an understanding of core business initiatives. Both internal and external sources help to paint the full picture; insights from analyst firms, industry associations, and customer advisory boards complement internal data extracted from sales and marketing systems. Engagement strategy. An effective engagement strategy is all about understanding buyers, including their needs, preferences, and behaviors. This level pinpoints where go-to-market teams will concentrate their execution efforts. A holistic view of buyers and their purchasing journey relies on both qualitative data (buyer initiatives, challenges, and preferences) and quantitative data (website traffic, conversion rates, and behavioral patterns). Ideal sources include direct conversations with buyers or customers (via interviews or focus groups) as well as industry or market reports. Third-party intent data and conversational intelligence support further understanding of buyer needs and behaviors. For a more in-depth read on the top data challenges that portfolio marketers face and how to overcome them by focusing on go-to-market strategy best practices, Forrester clients can check out the recently published report from my colleague Brittany Viola and I, Data And Insights For Smart Go-To-Market Decision-Making. And if you would like to have a conversation with me on how to make smart go-to-market decisions, you can request a guidance session or inquiry. source