The pandemic has had all kinds of effects on consumers, and in turn, on how they interact with products and services. eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin speaks with fellow principal analyst Andrew Lipsman and forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom about what happens when business metrics go haywire, including at Walmart, Nike, and Peloton. They also talk about Facebook's narrowing attribution window, Prime Day finally happening, and Samsung Ads' new self-serve demand-side platform option.

In fact, some 80% of today’s B2B buyers prefer remote, digital, and self-serve interaction models, according to an October 2020 McKinsey & Company survey. And that number is only growing. How can marketers meet this dramatic shift in the way buyers make decisions with their existing stack, budget, and data?

The vast majority of digital budgets go to walled gardens because they deliver performance at scale and provide accessible self-serve buying and measurement capabilities at any budget. But social ad platforms are built on a mostly unregulated flow of user-generated content that creates a contextual environment that is unfit for many brands.

Spotify expanded its video products by adding video ads to its self-serve platform. It also launched video podcasts around the same time that it signed exclusive podcast deals with well-known figures such as Michelle Obama and Joe Rogan. These moves give the indication that Spotify is trying to tap into more video advertising dollars.

Advertisers and agencies can access YouTube inventory in a few different ways: by making a bid through Google’s self-serve buying platforms; making a reservation buy through a Google sales rep; or making a direct buy with a YouTube partner. Self-Serve Programmatic.

An intelligent chatbot directs customers to the right team and also supports by directing customers to self-serve options, such as online claims reporting portals. AI Use Cases in Middle-Office Insurance. Insurers are applying AI to risk management, a middle-office function that directly affects the customer without being entirely consumer-facing.

TikTok has also made several advances in its ad business, including launching a self-serve ad portal and a marketing partner program with nearly 20 certified and approved TikTok partners.

Social media platforms typically offer ads through programmatic direct transactions, often via self-serve buying interfaces. The skew of social networks toward both direct, API-based transactions as well as mobile impressions is why mobile is even more dominated by direct transactions than the overall programmatic display market.

Amazon’s self-serve, cost-per-click-based ad console forms the core of the offering and includes Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads. Amazon DSP is one of the leading demand-side platforms (DSPs) in the programmatic display market and allows advertisers to buy ads both on- and off-property.

Banks have seen customers rapidly shift to digital banking in record numbers: BMO’s self-serve transactions surged to about 95% of overall retail transactions as of late April—up from just under 90% before the pandemic—and saw the weekly rate of customers signing up for digital banking spike 300% between late March and late April.

Spotify recently expanded its video products by adding video ads to its self-serve platform and launching video podcasts. Spotify makes most of its money through subscriptions, with advertising accounting for about 10% of its overall revenues worldwide. Measurement remains a chief challenge for audio advertisers. Software maker Autodesk tested digital audio to acquire new customers.

Social media platforms typically offer ads through programmatic direct transactions, often via self-serve buying interfaces. Programmatic direct transactions are particularly dominant on mobile—not incidentally the source of 96.1% of Facebook ad revenues, which is heavily tipping the scales here. Outside mobile, it’s a more even playing field, though the same order of precedence holds.

Another point to consider: During the 2007–2009 recession, Facebook was able to build revenues by offering services for small businesses to create profile pages and easily buy and target ads on a self-serve basis. This time around, the dependency on small business may end up being a weakness. Ad Prices Cratered. As ad demand evaporated, the cost of advertising in social media fell dramatically.

For example, Douyin is building out its advertising operation and automating it gradually, including the launch of a self-serve advertising platform. Still, the portion of video ad inventory that is traded programmatically is difficult to pinpoint. Experts interviewed for this report gave varied assumptions as to the portion of short-form video ad inventory that transacts programmatically today.

It’s enabled by self-serve advertising tools, known as ads managers, that allow media buyers to use a publisher API to set parameters for ad buys including price, frequency and other criteria. It enables buyers to test targeting criteria and fine-tune the parameters to gain optimal results.

Partnerships with agencies and technology providers that offer Amazon-specialized services—including self-serve ad buying and managed services—are important for advertisers wanting to get the most out of Amazon’s offerings.

For example, Roku acquired demand-side platform dataxu to bring a self-serve buying platform to the OTT streaming service. In other cases, ad sellers, including the Washington Post and Vox, are building out their own publishing-focused ad tech to benefit from more digital ad-related revenue streams.

But Snap also has focused on offering unique ad products that involve AR, and it has made it easier to buy those types of ads on a self-serve basis. User growth was strong, and engagement was up as well. Snap reported another strong quarter of user gains; Snapchat had 229 million worldwide daily active users (DAUs) in Q1, up 17% from Q4 2019.

They don’t even use self-serve checkout lanes! As part of a multi-country study of affluent shopping habits, YouGov surveyed more than 2,700 consumers in the US whose income fell in the top 10% to 0.5%. Of these upscale shoppers in the US, 19% said they don’t use any technology in-store at all.

Relevant to the size of its audience, Snapchat is underutilized, and they only added the ability to run self-serve ads about a year ago, so there is significant opportunity for that part of their business to expand.

In July, AdExchanger reported that Hearst was building a self-serve ad platform.

And despite the rise of digital customer service assistance, whether self-serve FAQs or artificially intelligent bots, on average, speaking on the phone is still the most popular way to connect with customer service for dealing with payment or billing issues (56%), resolving a problem (54%) and making account changes (43%). These analog attitudes are changing, though.