In a world where the digital landscape is as vast as it is volatile, media agencies hold the key to shaping an ethical, diverse, and quality media ecosystem — all of which is under continued, growing threat.

In previous Media in Canada roundtables, discussions have focused on the declining health of local media and questioned how to get off this fast-moving train. In our most recent roundtable, we explore the realms that have been neglected in the wake of the industry’s digital fervor and source opportunities that are being missed.

To find some answers, MiC brought together media leaders and marketers including Caroline Moul, president of PHD; Shane Cameron, CSO, OMD; David Rusli, CSO and CDO, Publicis; Jonelle Ricketts, head of marketing, IKEA; Irene Daly, VP, marketing, Canadian Tire; Iain Beauchamp, formerly head of marketing at Six Pints; Lisa Mazurkewich, head of marketing, Subway, and Nadia Niccoli, head of marketing, Diageo.

Moderating the discussion was Jennifer Horn, editor and content director for strategy and Media in Canada. Also in attendance were Tracy Day, managing director, ad products and innovation at The Globe & Mail, as well as strategy and Media in Canada‘s publisher Lisa Faktor, associate publisher Neil Ewen, and MiC editor Greg Hudson.

This is the third and final installment of our discussion. If you missed the first and second parts, you can read them here and here.

Digital is precise, but it’s also becoming more limited. Policies are evolving and making it challenging for advertisers to go granular with targeting, particularly on social platforms. Facebook has been rolling out policies that make it difficult to target people based on ethnicity, for example.

So, is there a fear of missing out on untapped opportunities? Are you being more challenged with reliably reaching specific audiences in digital, especially within a multicultural Canada?

IKEA’s Jonelle Ricketts: This is a very relevant for me as we are right in the midst of that. I spent the last four years in the Netherlands, so coming back I’m trying to get familiar with what’s possible here now, what’s not, what’s coming, and all of that.

And I think that’s been a frustration for my team. There’s a desire to speak to certain communities, especially when you think about personalization and relevancy, and when you don’t have the data to be able to do that in the best way possible, it makes it more difficult. And then you ask, should we do this? Is it worthwhile? What if we put this message out and the wrong people are seeing it and then they don’t get it and it’s not relevant?

PHD’s Caroline Moul: And I think it’s going to get even more challenging. I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be a reset, or redefining of first-party data strategies. There is the risk of us becoming over-reliant on second-party data, which come from the big tech giants. And I think we need to be very conscious of what our data strategy is. We need to be testing and exploring different data segments that are out there and that are not cookie-reliant. Do we run the risk, as we did in the early days of digital, of chasing the wrong data sets just as we chased the wrong metrics? We should be very mindful of having a multi-pronged data strategy and a neutral measurement approach to validate it.

Publicis’ David Musli: You’re spot on. The challenge is going to be finding the new incremental audience as a result of what’s happening with the ecosystem of fragmentation. So there’s the Facebook, Instagram, and Googles of the world, but then you also have retail media networks. So what’s happening is that, instead of reaching incremental audiences, you’re actually just reaching the same audience four or five times across four or five platforms and you have no way of seeing it because all of these reports are coming back in a very disparate way. You’re not getting a unified view of customers.

That’s why I think it is super, super important to have a clear data strategy that doesn’t put a greater emphasis on the tech giants of the world. We’ve been investing money to build our own data solution so that we can actually be of service to our client without relying on the Google, the Meta, or even the Environics of the world.

Moul: I get really excited when I think of Canadian retailers entering into the media ecosystem and what that means from a data perspective, where you can test and explore and see the benefit.

OMD’s Shane Cameron: We’ll need differentiated data strategies because if we are chasing the same algorithms, then we’re all in the same spot. So we’ll all need really smart bespoke data solutions for when cookies go away.

At the same time, you can talk to niche audiences through influencers. Social platforms aren’t that social anymore. They’re broadcasters and the media suppliers are individuals. And there’s diversity in those creators, which has never existed in mass media before.

Canadian Tire’s Irene Daly: We actually we found this amazing influencer who just moved here from Ukraine and he was discovering winter for the first time. So we decided to send him a snow blower. He was waiting to use this thing all winter, and when the first snowfall, it was amazing. You don’t discover those stories until you get down to the nitty-gritty insights and start with the customer first.

We’ve often had the debate of how to retell a new Canadian story in a way that appeals to the masses, we actually said we could maybe do both. And in fact, you have the ability to tell so many stories. There’s a beauty in that anyone can appreciate starting somewhere new. You can take something very specific and make it more generic.

If you can leverage those insights as well as the potential targeting, that’s where you’re going to benefit from it, because the granularity of data is fantastic and it’s going to benefit and meet the needs of Canadians.

Cameron: As a marketer, you have all this info that there’s consumer interest and intent and then you have to figure out how to be compelling. I think we’re seeing more brands that are putting an emphasis on making sure that they have a loyalty program, for example, because then they can rely a bit more on their own data. Because, there’s a lot of assumptions and problems with the way that data is collected, especially as we talk about inclusive marketing. There’s a lot of really bad or irresponsible stuff and assumptions that somebody is a part of a certain group because of the data collect. We should be talking more about the biases that exist in data.