Stand Out in a Sea of Sameness (jschmid.com)

Adobe announced the next generation of its Real-time Customer Data Platform (CDP), the only enterprise application architected from the ground up for first-party data-driven customer acquisition and engagement. Adobe Real-time CDP helps brands activate known and unknown customer data to manage the entire customer profile and journey seamlessly in one system, without the need for third-party cookies. The relationship between consumers and brands is rapidly evolving. Consumers today are more attentive to the data they share, which has resulted in a patchwork of privacy regulations globally. At the same time, expectations for personalized brand experiences remain at an all-time high, while third-party cookies, which marketers have historically relied on to track unknown visitors, will no longer be supported in browsers. This means brands will have to contend with reduced insight about unknown visitors to their digital properties while still trying to provide a compelling customer experience.

Bauer Media has today announced the expansion of Bauer Illuminate for the automotive market, allowing auto advertisers to accurately target audiences at different stages of their car buying journey, using unique and invaluable first-party data gathered from Bauer’s network of high quality, brand safe automotive digital platforms. This first-party information aids brands to send targeted messages to relevant automotive cohorts at key stages of the car buying journey, increasing efficiency and engagement. This includes audiences looking at general car buying advice at an early stage (‘Awareness’ phase), to those further down the funnel and looking at certain body style or fuel type (‘Engagement’ phase), to consumers who are in deep research stage and typically eight weeks away from purchase (‘Intent’ phase). Early trials have shown that when targeting users during the ‘Engagement’ stage using Illuminate, dwell time increased by 50% and the number of users that engage with car adverts by 13%. The introduction of the service follows the launch of Bauer Autoventure in 2020, which married Bauer’s Automotive titles such as Parkers, Car, Fleet News, Automotive Management, Classic Car and Practical Classics with its market-leading audio business, providing automotive brands creative advertising solutions. With the expansion of Bauer Illuminate, auto brands will now be able to benefit from both Bauer’s creativity and insight to create campaigns with impact – especially as the industry rapidly moves to a cookieless world.

The U.S. ad market expanded for its 13th consecutive month in April, rising 9.1% over the same month in 2023, according to the latest installment of data from Guideline's U.S. Ad Market Tracker. April also in the first month in quite some time to post an increase on top of a prior year increase, albeit a modest one: April 2023 was up 0.7% over April 2022. That said, the data indicates the U.S. ad market is well past its recessionary period and fully into an expansionary mode, with recent months rising at high single-digit increases or approach of surpassing double-digit ones.