Question for Dominic Trigg, Rocket Fuel / Why are you so certain about the growth in video?

Five Questions for Dominic Trigg, Rocket Fuel – Exclusive to theMarketingblog

1. Why are you so certain about the growth in video and what role do you see the creative directors playing?

2. What are your thoughts on the cookie issue and how will Rocket Fuel handle any challenges in that area?

3. Why have you majored on customer service?

4. Why do you place so much importance on customers who come back?

5. Crystal ball time. What’s going to happen in the mobile area over the next year?

1. Why are you so certain about the growth in video and what role do you see the creative directors playing?

I’m a big fan of video. Right now we see a huge amount of pre-roll inventories sitting in the digital space – on mobile and desktop – and we think that is very exciting. You’ve only got to take a look at the numbers to see that video is going to play a huge part in digital advertising. Last month we saw over three billion pre-roll inventory impressions available to buy in Europe, with 700 million impressions in the UK alone, and this continues to grow each month. Our job is to make choices as to which of these impressions are going to provide the greatest performance.

A great thing about online video advertising is that it allows brands to test their creative before investing heavily in TV. For example Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ campaign got 56 million views, spurred additional viral content and it didn’t even run on TV. This speaks volumes about the impact quality online video advertisements can have. However, good creative can be impactful on any screen, so there is a real opportunity for us. Rocket Fuel can complement what is happening in the TV space and drive further engagement and drive purchases online.

Why are you so certain about the growth in video and what role do you see the creative directors playing? http://t.co/Et4DHOib6r

— Will Corry (@slievemore) November 23, 2013

2. What are your thoughts on the cookie issue and how will Rocket Fuel handle any challenges in that area?

At Rocket Fuel, we use our data to inform our models and are always adapting to whichever metric can best inform our campaigns. Decisions are made intelligently via self-learning algorithms that use granular and insightful data to provide a greater impact. As long as data is available to inform these models, and we continue to adapt, there will be less impact than people believe.

Advertising models will continue to evolve and will be powerful using whatever data is available.

3. Why have you majored on customer service?

For me, return business is absolutely the key to success. And you don’t get return customers if you’re not delivering great customer service. We’ve got a dedicated account management team who constantly communicate with our clients. We continue to invest heavily in making sure we have the best people working for us because in this business reputation counts. We want our clients to be shouting from the rooftops about just how good the people at Rocket Fuel are.

As we branch out into new markets we have to prove ourselves every time. And being able to say that our customers stay with us and continue to increase their budgets is a great way to show we’re providing excellent ROI.

4. Why do you place so much importance on customers who come back?

Almost every time we start talking with a new customer it is incredibly likely they are considering us against multiple competitors. The market place is tough and is growing at a fast pace and one of the best ways to grow our business is to increase the spend of our current customers. We have a strong commitment to the level of service we offer our customers and making sure they are 100% happy with our performance is how we keep them coming back and investing more in our products.

5. Crystal ball time. What’s going to happen in the mobile area over the next year?

Mobile has been a huge growth area and this is not going to slow down – particularly in terms of content consumed on iPads and other tablets. Understanding how people interact with these devices is critical to our success and being able to garner insights into consumers purchase behaviour online is the way to do this.

A big part of the mobile market in the next year I think will be focussed on second screening. Research conducted by eDigital Research and IMRG found that 80% of smartphone owners, 81% of tablet owners and 73% of laptop owners use their devices in front of the TV. 41% of people have used one of these devices to browse for a product after seeing it in a show or advert. We all know a large amount of TV viewers are now also using tablets and mobiles while watching their favourite programs, but I’m not sure marketers have really taken advantage of the full potential  here.

There is a lot to learn about second screening, however, it is obvious there is big potential for the synchronisation of multiple mediums. While TV is a passive experience for viewers, mobile and tablet users are consistently interacting and engaging with brands. This creates the unique opportunity of allowing consumers to experience and engage with a brand simultaneously, which results in an accelerated path to conversion. By reducing the purchase cycle marketers will see economies in media buying.

Marketers need to reach customers at a time when their minds are most receptive. If we can reach people in the context when they’re receptive (ie. showing advertisements for flights on a mobile while someone is watching a travel show and dreaming of their next holiday then the influence of advertising is much greater. This will turn advertising on its head – being able to show that ads are reaching consumers when they’re most receptive is a game changer.

Dominic Trigg is a digital advertising specialist responsible for spearheading the European business at Rocket Fuel.

In just two years he has successfully established new offices in London, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Paris with plans to grow the business further.

Rocket Fuel delivers a leading programmatic media-buying platform at big data scale and employs over 512 people in 19 offices worldwide including New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Hamburg.

Dominic joined Rocket Fuel in 2011 from TradeDoubler, Europe’s number one affiliate network, where he was Vice President of International.

With a proven track record of success in the advertising industry, Dominic has also held a number of senior management roles including Managing Director for Infospace, Director of Yahoo’s Ad Operations in Europe, and Advertising Director for MSN UK, Hotmail and Expedia at Microsoft’s then fledgling business.

About Rocket Fuel UK
Rocket Fuel is the company bringing rocket science to digital advertising. With its advanced technology, the company is helping marketers reach their brand goals quickly and easily, anywhere in the purchase funnel.  Over 150-million people a month see ads from its Rocket Fuel Network, which combines behavioural, contextual, geographic, demographic, and many other techniques to yield results far more powerful than any method could on its own. Rocket Fuel automatically adapts advertisers’ campaigns in real-time to optimize towards their goals – whether brand-oriented or performance driven. If you can measure it, Rocket Fuel can optimize it. The Silicon Valley-based company was founded by veterans from NASA, Yahoo! and DoubleClick. Rocket Fuel was named Best Start-up of 2010 by the San Francisco Business Times. In addition to its UK operations, Rocket Fuel’s corporate headquarters are in Redwood Shores, California. http://emea.rocketfuel.com/