Marketing Procurement

How ARM platforms use AI and automation to revolutionise advertising activities

More Bang For Your Bucks ($)

One telecommunications company [using MINTs Advertising Resource Management platform]…..was able to reduce its cost per acquisition (CPA) by 60%….enabling it to manage a $3.5m budget per FTE (full-time equivalent) compared to the industry benchmark of $1.6m.

Google’s choice to keep third-party cookies did not come as a surprise. Too much financial risk was involved, and they hadn’t identified a reliable replacement. Advertising strategy should not change much as a result, considering that a large portion of techniques now already operate without cookies.

However, many of these methods are increasingly subject to scrutiny by privacy regulators, adding complication. According to Gartner, more than 75% of the world’s population now have their personal information covered by modern privacy regulation, so compliance is a must.

Emerging technologies such as Generative AI and other types of Artificial Intelligence such as Large Language Models (LLM) and Machine Learning (ML) offer marketers the potential to boost efficiency and drive results, but come with a steep learning curve.

All this is happening against a backdrop of an already highly complex landscape, which is becoming ever more fragmented by the growing number of channels, platforms, and intermediaries involved. Not only is there a need to reduce this complexity and increase efficiency, but they still need to deliver great campaigns.

In order to support them, marketing procurement professionals need to carefully consider the different operating models and how they affect their overall strategy both in terms of advertising efficiency as well as governance and operational efficacy. As more and more brands are considering the in-house model versus using media agencies, having access to data to analyse and compare is of critical importance.

The Advertising Resource Management (ARM) solution

Where technology is concerned, the plethora of challenges facing advertisers has resulted in the development of an entirely new category of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform. Advertising Resource Management platforms (ARM) are designed to bring all of an organisation’s advertising activities into a centralised hub in order to improve governance, transparency and efficiency.

Other SaaS platforms such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), which has been a mainstay of finance and operations teams for decades, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management), typically used by sales and marketing teams to connect with customers, fulfil vital roles within most organisations. However, they don’t provide a way to connect to the wider marketplace that these businesses exist within.

The principle behind ARM is to function as an intersection between the ERP and CRM platforms and the marketplace; through carefully executed deployment, it acts as a bridge through which the organisation can link all of its media activities to existing processes and workflows.

With all advertising activities connected to the wider internal and external processes in the business, it’s possible to streamline operations and create a single source of truth that defines the strategic direction of the whole organisation.

At its heart, ARM is a solution created to help companies deal with the complexity of advertising, enabling them to become truly data-driven. For established businesses it is a transformation partner, helping to speed up the process of digital transformation. For the new generation of digital-first challenger brands, it’s a catalyst that will accelerate their growth.

Creating a holistic view of all advertising operations

ARM platforms are built on layers. The base layer revolves around data consolidation. Organisations have a flood of internal and external advertising-related data to manage across multiple different systems such as spreadsheets, presentations, emails, dashboards, media buying platforms, search engines, social media platforms and sales systems. By consolidating all of this information into a single system they can streamline processes.

For example, a leading live sports streaming platform had previously been using multiple tools to manage digital ad campaigns across eight different countries. Its objective was to combine this myriad of campaign information into a single system so it could compare the different planning strategies and results, while gaining a full view of each market, campaign and platform.

Since the implementation of MINT’s ARM platform, it has been able to consolidate all historical and current campaign information, as well as its entire multi-level and multi-country workflow into one single system, creating a unique source of truth.

Every team and department in the organisation, no matter where they are located, can get up-to-the-minute data about any previous or live campaign within a unified dashboard without having to send emails or messages to request access.

Management has a transparent view of all marketing spend and performance, enabling it to improve budget management through tracking of spend across different channels; achieve accuracy in invoicing; and use real-time data on media vendor performance to inform future negotiations with vendors.

Improving efficiency, ROI and insights

With the data consolidation layer providing a platform for streamlining processes, the second layer is what enables organisations to drive further efficiencies through automation. The simple truth is that for many businesses digital advertising is still underpinned by old-fashioned, analogue processes. Many advertising tasks are still carried out manually, with human operatives doing basic copy-and-paste jobs, populating spreadsheets and producing reports.

ARM gives advertising teams a way of automating these tedious, repetitive tasks, reducing human error and freeing up staff to focus on higher-level objectives. Better workflow management through automation can result in time and cost savings; since implementing its ARM platform, the live sports streaming service has reduced the time spent by staff on these tasks by between 30% and 40%.

The third layer of ARM platforms builds on the structured data and automated processes to utilise Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to generate campaign optimisation recommendations. This enables strategic decisions to be taken more quickly.

Through AI, organisations can access insights and forecasts that would otherwise take hours or days to produce in order to optimise campaigns and reach KPIs. For example, one telecommunications company that implemented MINT’s ARM solution was able to reduce its cost per acquisition (CPA) by 60% while increasing process governance and team efficiency, enabling it to manage a $3.5m budget per FTE (full-time equivalent) compared to the industry benchmark of $1.6m.

The fourth layer of ARM builds in yet another level of intelligence to the system; using Large Language Models – a machine learning technique – human operatives are able to interact with data, processes, and AI in a natural way. For example, they can ask direct questions to the ARM system about where they should allocate budgets for future campaigns and get a coherent answer in seconds.

Keys to seamless implementation

ARM is at the heart of the digital transformation journey and its benefits are manifold. Buy-in from senior management and a digitally mature organisational culture are key to seamless implementation and harmonising all advertising data and processes into a single platform requires committed and careful integration.

However, from a technical point of view, connecting an ARM platform to existing infrastructure is a relatively straightforward procedure, based on APIs (application programming interfaces).

In particular, businesses that rely on agencies to handle their advertising and marketing activities will recognise the benefits of ARM. One of the most significant advantages of ARM platforms is that they give brands full control over their advertising equity. All data, past and present, is held in the centralised platform, and even if the brand decides to change agency none of this information would be lost.

With 66% of brands now having established in-house agencies and a further 21% considering doing so, according to data from WFA and The Observatory International, many organisations will be looking for solutions to bring the operational aspects of advertising together – highlighting the need for the ARM category.

Takeaway: ARM can guide businesses through an ever-evolving advertising landscape

Procurement professionals must develop and implement a cohesive media procurement strategy that aligns with the company’s overall marketing goals. At the heart of this should be an ARM platform that reduces complexity.

The global advertising ecosystem involves many different technologies, devices, platforms and intermediaries, so software able to connect with every different data source and platform is a must. The ability to enable collaboration between all internal and external stakeholders is also key.

Automation and AI can drive efficiencies and lead to better advertising outcomes, but it’s also vital that ARM systems are effectively integrated with established ERP and CRM platforms that your business is already using.

What’s more, ARM software should also fit with established ESG policies and guidelines, helping the business to measure and understand the carbon emissions of its digital campaigns. Having full control over all advertising operations means taking full responsibility for all of their impacts, of course.

For driving efficiency, boosting transparency and enabling governance, ARM platforms can help organisations navigate the tricky media landscape of the present, putting them in a position to become more agile in the face of market changes.

About the author

Christoph Kruse, is Marketing Director at MINT