Every day, the advertising world faces new challenges and opportunities. New platforms, mediums, M&A activity, privacy rules and ever-changing consumer behavior can all wreak havoc on the digital landscape. However, companies that are prepared to seek out these moments of change will be well positioned to capitalize on the opportunities produced by dynamic shifts.
Most recently, media technology stocks have become highly volatile for a host of reasons. While many marketers are reallocating budget away from these platforms, and prioritizing more stable channels like Google Adwords and Amazon Marketing, there are always new opportunities born of shifts in the market.
For example, the dip in Meta’s customer acquisition performance has enabled ad sales on TikTok to be expected to triple to more than $11 billion in 2022, which exceeds the combined sales of Snapchat and Twitter.
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For CMOs and early-stage tech founders, all this upheaval may feel like a shock, but the truth is that the digital advertising world has always been evolving and changing, often in unpredictable ways. This constant change is an opportunity to create value, but only if you take calculated risks, stay agile and be prepared to act.
In the long run, this volatility is better for founders, because forced innovation makes for a more competitive environment.
As the major platforms are forced to innovate, advertisers who are willing to “be like water” and flow with change are going to come out ahead.
The short and long-term impact of stock price volatility
Stock price volatility applies pressure on publicly traded social media ad platforms, which motivates them to build new features, lower their rates to attract spend and experiment with new business models. For example, Twitter is contemplating a subscription model.
In the short term, this means that CMOs and tech founders will need to hustle hard, and experiment with many platforms in order to maximize return on ad spend.
In the long run, this volatility is better for founders, because forced innovation makes for a more competitive environment — one where everyone is committed to winning advertising dollars.
Here are five tactics for capitalizing on the turbulent advertising environment:
Get in early
Whenever new advertising platforms arise, they attract testing budgets because there is typically a lot of untapped media with minimal knowledge in navigating the channel. This provides a huge opportunity for early movers that are able to “hack the system” before the masses.