Retailers urged to get more creative with imagery to win search wars
Gaffney
The head of Adobe’s DigitalIndex research division has urged retailers to get more creative in their search advertising to stand out from the crowd.
Principal analyst Tamara Gaffney told Mumbrella there is an “opportunity” being missed by marketers with product images in search, with too many relying on the product image from the manufacturer so they “look just like everybody else”
She added: “The lack of differentiation happening in certain areas of creativity is problematic for brands because they’re limited on competing on price more often or how much they paid for the top spot on the search.”
Speaking on the sidelines of the Adobe Summit conference Gaffney, whose department fuses data from social media, research and the technology platform’s own marketing cloud to create trend reports, said this was especially apparent on mobile.
“They’re not adapting to it yet,” she said. “They can’t possibly keep track of that many images and get them out to the right place and attach them correctly.
“Being more creative is imperative but having the right systems in place capable of handling and including more creativity is the challenge. I think there’s a great opportunity in advertising to be more creative than ever before and win on something other than how much you paid.”
Last year the department was correct on eight out of ten prediction reports.
She also echoed comments made earlier in the day by ESPN research head of digital media research Dave Coletti over frustrations around advertisers and media agencies not adopting more innovative digital marketing strategies.
“It’s a bit disappointing,” she said. “The problem with everything is it’s still too complicated. That’s a technology problem but it’s also a people problem, and it’s also a process problem.
“When you start to get into the world of agencies, and I started my career in agencies, it’s actually much harder to find me Tamara Gaffney – mum – in this world today, it’s almost impossible.
“You can’t blame them for going with what they have and not branching out.”
She said agencies are not incentivised by clients to try new things, adding: “We saw this last year in our surveys that everyone says trying new things is one of the most important things to do, and yet very few of them do it and part of the reason why is there’s nothing but downside for them personally.
“Agencies, if they try stuff and it flops, they could lose the business.
“I’m really surprised more people haven’t moved to programmatic ad buying. It’s frustrating but not completely their fault.”
Alex Hayes
Alex Hayes is a guest of Adobe at the Summit Conference in Salt Lake City
