Reconciliation between Advertising and UX in Digital Marketing: Ad-centrc vs. Site-centric

In recent years, digital marketing has gone through a rapid transformation period, marked by significant technological innovations and a constant evolution of consumer behavior. The digital advertising market is no exception to this evolution.

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On the one hand, paid media traffic teams focus on The technological innovations that are redefining online advertising, managed by giants like Google and Meta, on the ad-centric side.

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At the same time, the teams dedicated to websites are striving toimprove the user experience in order to boost conversion and engagement rates, on the site-centric side.

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However, despite this progress, the lack of collaboration between these two spheres creates operational silos that hinder the effectiveness of digital acquisition strategies.

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This compartmentalization, often accentuated by divergent technologies, varied KPIs and distinct challenges, calls for a more integrated approach.

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This article explores how breaking these barriers to achieve greater synergy, considering strategies that could unify these parallel worlds in a concerted effort to optimize advertising performance and user experience.

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The evolution of advertising performance and its impact on CPC

Digital advertising has undergone significant transformations, particularly dominated by Google and Meta. Today, for every three euros spent on advertising, two euros end up in the coffers of these giants, according to the SRI Barometer in December 2023.

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While platforms like Amazon Ads, TikTok, and Pinterest are also evolving, Google and Meta remain the pillars of digital advertising.

Google also had the highest growth rate in 2023, according to the SRI Barometer studies of December 23.

The age of automation on Google Ads:

In the late 2010s, Google initiated significant changes with the introduction of Smart Bidding, culminating with Google Performance Max.

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This innovation marks a significant evolution compared to traditional advertising methods (Search Engine Advertising) or SEA. Advertisers then had to manually select keywords, set CPCs, choose budgets, and set up landing pages.

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The Google Ads interface of the past was like an airplane cockpit, where every aspect of the campaign required manual management and detailed strategic decisions.

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In contrast, the current model with Performance Max is fully automated. Advertisers no longer have to worry about keywords, CPCs, or landing pages — these elements are now managed by Google's algorithm.

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Meta and the Advantage Plus:

Meta has followed a similar trajectory with Advantage Plus, automating many aspects of advertising configuration to maximize campaign effectiveness according to the goals set by advertisers.

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How do you optimize advertising effectiveness in the age of AI and automated ads?

Like many digital marketing topics, the key lies in data.

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THEstrategic use of data from your CRM and Analytics tools is crucial for refining the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

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This first-party data, also called 1P data or proprietary data, is all the more relevant today to create a valuable exchange with your audiences. In exchange for their consent, you can collect critical data that will help you better understand and engage your customers.

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The arrival of the Digital Marketing Act (DMA) highlights the importance of these practices.

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This European regulation aims to strengthen transparency and control of data by users, limiting the use of third-party data and pushing companies to invest more in the ethical collection and use of first-party data.

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With DMA and the disappearance of third-party cookies, it is becoming imperative for brands to build marketing strategies based on a relationship of trust and transparency, where the protection of personal data is a priority.

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E-retailers must now adopt a more frugal and ethical approach to exploiting data, by focusing on less but better.

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👉 Learn more about the impact of DMA on advertisers in this article on the Dataïads blog.

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By using first-party data to fuel your algorithms, you can predict the future and identify which audiences are most likely to convert, increasing advertising effectiveness.

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Despite these efforts, it's important to note that cost per click (CPC) has tended to increase in recent years, according to 71% of e-retailers observed and questioned by Dataïads.

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Between March 2023 and March 2024, the average CPC increased by about 10%, with significant increases in sectors such as DIY and the home. This trend can be explained by several factors:

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1. Market concentration : In a context where a few players dominate, prices tend to be high, which complicates the management of advertising costs.
2. First-party data maturity : Although the exploitation of this data is progressing, there are still many opportunities for improvement, especially with regard to the quality of product flows, where there are still many areas for optimization.

3. Increased competition : The emergence of new players, especially Asian ones like Temu, Shein and Aliexpress, has intensified competition, pushing CPCs up in many markets.

Here are the challenges and changes that the ad centric side faces. Now let's look at the user experience side, or site-centric.

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👉 Discover the advice of our partner Feed Manager, experts in Product Flow Management, in this Webinar and replay.

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The inertia of the on-site user experience and the stagnation of conversion rates

Although websites and especially e-commerce have evolved considerably over the last 15 years thanks to technological advances, they are often faced with inertia due to the rigidity of CMS and the increase in bandwidth on the IT side when it comes to making optimizations.

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In response to the need to adapt quickly to changes in user behavior, various overlayers have been developed to bring more flexibility and performance to e-commerce teams.

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1. Among them, conversion rate optimization tools (CRO) allow for on-site customization, although they are sometimes expensive and can weigh down pages due to their superficial integration, which does not always attract the attention of media teams.
2. In addition, on-site recommendation and research tools, despite their complex integration, often lack a holistic view of the customer experience (CX).

Although these solutions can improve the overall conversion rate of an e-commerce site, are they really enough?

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‍Our studies, interviewing around 400 merchants annually, show that The average conversion rate remains around 1% (2023), a figure that has unfortunately been constant for years.

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This stagnation could be explained by increased competition and increased sophistication of online consumers, who are better equipped and more informed.

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By examining digital advertising traffic in more detail, which often represents 50% of total site traffic, conversion rates are even lower, often under 1%. This highlights that, while conversion is crucial, it is often overlooked in the media context.

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Faced with this overall increase in CPC and the stagnation of conversion rates on site, we Let's see an increase in acquisition costs, which underlines the purpose of this article.

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The objective is to bring these two very complementary worlds together: optimizing the user experience and optimizing traffic acquisition. This collaboration is essential, even mandatory, given the optimization possibilities increasingly limited by advertising platforms, as mentioned in the previous part.

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In the majority of large organizations, 90% of cases show that acquisition and e-commerce teams operate separately with different goals, tools, and partners.

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This lack of collaboration, especially in a market under pressure, must be addressed to improve value creation.

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The evolution of Google and Meta's advertising formats should theoretically accelerate this necessary collaboration.

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This division may prevent effective integration of strategies that optimize both acquisition and user experience, underscoring the need to restructure these interactions to improve overall performance.

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Reinventing the user engagement of advertising traffic: Media-Site synergy and the post-click experience

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With the emergence of product formats on advertising platforms, which can constitute up to 90% of advertising investment, the user journey has changed considerably.

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Let's take an example: if a user wants to buy a new pair of shoes, they could type “buy women/men's shoes” into Google.

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Without specifying the price or the type of material, Google will automatically choose a page from the catalog of one of the thousands of advertisers to promote in the results. Arrived on the product sheet, the drama begins for the e-merchant: a only product is shown with maybe a few similar options below.

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Most of the time, the user returns to the search engine to continue looking for competitors. In fact, our data shows that 7 out of 10 users who click on a Google Shopping ad return to the original platform to click on other ads, often from other merchants.

We call this phenomenon the”Fitting room syndrome“.

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It is as if, when entering a store through an advertisement, you were directly led to a fitting room with only the item in question.

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If you want to see other products, the easiest solution is to Go out and go back to the mall and check out competing stores.

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To solve this problem, at Dataiads, we create a synergy between the media and the e-commerce site with our technology.

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Our platform generates with AI pages designed to better welcome paid channel visitors, with the simultaneous creation of one to four different pages, adapted to the user's context, such as the platform or the category of origin.

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This approach does not require no major IT intervention, but simply a subdomain delegation. And more importantly, while using first-party data through a simple connection to a product feed.

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The platform does not touch the site and pleases the acquisition teams: no time spent in IT and plenty of time to generate personalized and efficient post-click experiences.

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Thanks to digital marketing experts and CRO, or our dear media scientists, we let's work on UX, by integrating navigation keys, by valuing and testing various calls to action (CTAs) through A/B tests.

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We also improve product recommendations through algorithms that suggest similar or complementary articles, and we optimize page load times and core web vitals.

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Finally, once we've improved the landing on these pages, we're redirecting traffic back to the main site. This practice, which we call the Post Click Experience, is creating a new category in e-commerce and digital marketing, reconciling ad-based and site-centric worlds.

Discover how Darty increased Google Shopping ROAS by 28% with Dataïads while reconciling acquisition and optimizing on-site conversion.

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Both worlds, ad-centric and site-centric, must find common ground to maximize not only ad spend but also to improve engagement of users and conversion rates.

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Innovations like the Post Click Experience illustrate the potential for a successful synergy, where advertising technologies and strategies are integrated with targeted improvements in the user experience to create a more consistent and satisfying customer journey.

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This integration requires not only technological evolution but also a change in mindset and organizational culture. By breaking down barriers between teams, sharing knowledge, and aligning goals, businesses can truly transform current challenges into opportunities for a more connected and successful future.

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By effectively reconciling these seemingly disparate areas, we can hope for an era of digital marketing where advertising performance and user experience work hand in hand towards increased efficiency and increased customer satisfaction.