While advertising as a whole has declined some this year as businesses feel the economic impact of COVID-19, digital advertising has experienced a surge in interest.
As consumers have been compelled to do more of their shopping online, brands have taken notice—and responded by taking “digital” into a realm where it now accounts for half of the world’s total advertising.
The biggest instigators of this behavioral shift are grocery shoppers, who have driven a 50% increase in online sales compared to last year.
One company tapping into the movement in a major way is CitrusAd, an Australian startup that treats product placements on the web like physical shelf space, allowing it to further monetize its advertising space.
In June, the performance marketing platform achieved 2,000% growth versus the same time in 2019. And more recently, it expanded its offering overseas; the organization now has 40 clients in 22 countries, including 10 of the top 50 e-commerce companies in the world.
Before CitrusAd could provide insights to its retail customers and increase the returns on their ad spends, however, it had to find a way to uncover insights from its own systems, which weren’t fully integrated.
Enter Domo, which took on that responsibility in May and had dozens of data sources connected and normalized for CitrusAd within a month.
“If we had tried to integrate our systems ourselves, it would’ve taken 6-12 months and we wouldn’t have gotten any rich insights for at least that long,” said Adam Skinner, CitrusAd’s chief technology officer. “With Domo, we were able to get up and running in just a few weeks, and our team can now focus on analytical insights and extracting value out of our data.”
The business can also now monetize those insights for its retailers and suppliers. That’s because, with Domo, CitrusAd employees can easily pull together up-to-the-minute reports and analyze data on the fly.
Furthermore, by having access to real-time information and the ability to set up custom alerts, CitrusAd’s account managers can detect issues—such as a drop in revenue—quickly, and take action immediately, from wherever they are.
“If it’s 2 a.m. here in Australia and they need to do something in the U.S.,” Adam said, “they can. They don’t need to wait until everyone’s online the next day.”
Soon, CitrusAd will be able to do—and offer—even more. Currently, it’s testing CitrusInsights, a proprietary tool designed to put the rich data it collects back into the hands of retailers—with even greater analytics.
All of this is part of CitrusAd’s broader, data-first approach that revolves around the value of analytics in a fast-paced, digital economy.
“Reporting and predictive analytics are going to be huge parts of this business,” Adam said, “and our partnership with Domo will help propel that strategy forward.”
To learn more about how CitrusAd is leveraging Domo to streamline media sales and ad serving for retailers of all sizes, check out the case study—or watch this video:
