According to a 2024 RSW/US study, almost 50% of agencies said their overall business performance in 2023 showed a slight decline or was significantly worse than in 2022. Per their 2023 report, 58% of agencies said it was harder to obtain new business in 2023 versus 2022, and 38% of ad agencies reported a decrease in new business opportunities in 2023 — up from 26% in 2022.
To help agencies compete in this complex landscape, we’ve developed Media+, our full suite of services for agencies.
These services were created to give agencies access to the much-needed breadth of marketing strategy, consulting, media activation, measurement and optimization capabilities needed to cement their long-term success in a crowded marketplace.
We refined these services based on the challenges hundreds of brands have so that agencies can help their clients move marketing to the top of the boardroom agenda.
Media+ In a Nutshell
Media+ gives agencies services to develop a competitive advantage and pitch, win and retain clients at a higher level.
For agencies who partner with Goodway, our services go beyond media to support a wider, more comprehensive range of services to build upon the talent, tools and resources you may already have in-house. This gives you flexibility to overcome the volatile job market, better cover your clients’ needs, and both complement and compound on the strengths and expertise of your current team.
Our goal as your media execution and analytics partner is to give you access to additional services you can pick and choose from to enhance your agency. Here’s an overview of Media+.
Table of Contents:
- Research and Insights
- Audience and Investment Strategy
- Cross-Channel Activation
- Optimization
- Agency Acceleration
Category and Competitive Intelligence
Instead of frantically rushing to download a few Forrester industry reports the week before a pitch, a Goodway partnership arms you with additional real-world expertise across your new and existing verticals.
With our category and competitive intelligence for agencies, you can develop great insights to define the best strategy for your campaigns. We’ll help you uncover key client, category and competitive intelligence by analyzing PESTLE, the share of wallet of brands and their competitors, category data, consumer insights and more. You can then use these insights to bring your clients innovative thinking about their category, competition and their brand.
Measurement Strategy and Implementation
Goodway’s analytics team is solely focused on measurement, strategy and creating new solutions to common industry challenges, like the upcoming transition from third-party cookies. This adds one additional tool as agencies seek to grow current accounts and build relationships with new prospects.
Through our measurement services, Goodway routinely identifies gaps in marketer measurement by looking deeply into the data, finding problems and opportunities previous agencies haven’t found. You will also be able to connect disparate data together and show how your campaigns are driving business outcomes.
Vertical Expertise and Support
Vertical specialization with support from outside partners like Goodway enables a deeper grasp of each client’s standing within their industry category. Working with us, you’ll partner with tenured experts utilizing category tools, audience intelligence, measurement and insights across 18+ verticals including agriculture, healthcare, CPG, B2B, quick-service restaurants (QSRs), finance, multi-location, automotive, entertainment, telecom, retail, tourism and more.
You’ll also have a better understanding of target audiences, desired business goals and competitive landscape opportunities. We integrate with over 60 platforms to ensure we recommend the optimal solution tailored to your client’s needs, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. That way, you can not only win new clients (and keep them, of course), but continue to win work more from customers in the same vertical and develop your own expertise in that vertical simultaneously.
Persona and Consumer Journey Mapping
All brands and their products have multiple types of buyers whose path to purchase and ultimate use of the product vary significantly enough to merit different media planning efforts. That’s why Goodway goes beyond total addressable market (TAM) and demographics to understand how slices of a potential audience can be stack-ranked to deliver optimal results at the lowest spend levels first. Instead of relying on demographics, we identify the audience most likely to convert in slices. Then, we balance “slice selection” with the required business planning so you can fully match your clients’ media to their various audiences.
Our persona and consumer journey planning takes into account all devices, all purchase points and the profitability these create for the marketer. You can balance brand and performance, build your audiences so they’re focused on the clients’ business outcomes, and go beyond indexing target audiences to buying audiences by cohort.
Identity and Audience Planning
Goodway has created Passport One™, a customized audience discovery tool that maximizes the impact of first-party data in a post-cookie world. Part of Outcome Engineering™, Goodway Group’s unique philosophy and process, Passport One combines audience research, behavioral trends and personas to apply to first-party data (or in lieu of it). Passport One enables the creation of custom segments deployable across the digital ecosystem.
As an example of its efficacy, Passport One outperformed an auto client’s first-party data in 50% of head-to-head tests.
Goodway combines research, strategy and data into one package, which is typically offered in single-point solutions without the consultative benefits. The closest alternatives, typically offered by Holdcos, are price-prohibitive for non-Fortune 500 advertisers.
Vendor and Landscape Discovery
With 50+ vendor partnerships, cut through the clutter to get objective POVs on vendors, publishers and platforms to better inform decisions by partnering with Goodway. Contrary to other advisory services, Goodway is also a client with first-hand experience.
We’ll help you navigate all the new vendors and platforms that enter the market weekly in a complex digital landscape.
Access to Hundreds of Buying Platforms
With Goodway’s expertise and offerings, extend your audience reach at scale with the ability to buy media in desired platforms. Create trust with consumers by meeting them where they are most and delivering cohesive messages. Our reputation and scale allow us to gain access to every platform and partner in the ecosystem and quickly bring the most innovative opportunities to our agencies and their advertisers.
Expert Activation Across All Paid Media With Algorithmic Decisioning
With our media services, Goodway has the processes, technological safeguards and people who are hired because of their strong attention to detail and perfectionist tendencies to see the plan to execution. We also have preferred rate structures with most major platforms and access to early beta opportunities that can give your clients an advantage in the market.
Goodway’s RealValue® Platform DSP Technology analyzes API log-level data and approaches every user individually, to bid the right price for the right impression on a per-user basis.
Also, in one test, our proprietary bid-optimization algorithms significantly reduced acquisition costs, delivering a 36% lower cost per acquisition when employing multi-touch attribution modeling, and an impressive 63% reduction in cost per acquisition with last-ad-seen attribution.
Performance Creative
Through our partnership with Tuff, a Goodway Group brand, and our in-house creative team, we deliver the production, implementation and optimization of creative assets to KPIs. Leverage data to create audience and intent-based creative dynamically.
Benefit from creative iterations through a test-and-learn approach that puts performance at any stage of the funnel in focus — and cuts down significantly on development time. Tuff also offers consultative services to hands-on creative production and implementation.
Advanced Analytics
At Goodway, we make the triangulation of media mix modeling (MMM), incrementality and multi-touch attribution (MTA) possible to offer a full picture of marketing performance. You can measure and inform investment decisions through all three and also, economic modeling, cross-channel analyses, regression analyses and more, powered by data science experts. Goodway has led in championing the need for a scientific transformation in marketing measurement.
If you’re skeptical of the metrics you get from platforms, we can help answer key questions to solve client problems and achieve results. You’ll also be able to deliver provably better measurement solutions to your clients.
Customized, Dynamic Reporting and Dashboards
With Goodway, enjoy streamlined reporting views and processes. We offer meaningful, insightful storytelling, moving past proof-of-life reporting. Our predictive forecasting tools and performance management solutions empower you to take full control over your media investments. Leverage advanced analytics to precisely predict the ideal spend levels that will maximize your return on investment. Go beyond simplistic metrics to optimize towards your true business objectives — whether profit, ROAS, CPA or any other customized KPIs.
With unified visibility across your entire media portfolio spanning multiple brands and geographic territories, you can prescriptively determine the optimal allocation strategy. Our solutions allow you to rigorously model scenarios to pinpoint where to strategically invest more and where to trim excess spend. Precisely align your budgets and tactics with your overarching financial goals and growth targets. Then, reduce the time to activation. You’ll also be able to leverage the buying power of many to reduce your costs and increase efficiencies.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Working with Tuff, you can take advantage of a fully integrated search engine marketing (SEM) strategy — both paid and organic — and full-funnel content development.
We’ll optimize your client experiences and content through SEO and CRO to drive the performance of owned and earned assets. That way, you can increase your media efficacy and efficiency.
Data Warehousing and Management
Alleviate and automate data warehousing and actionable delivery with Goodway. This will give you a way to offer a sticky data warehousing capability to advertisers.
Our services enable cross-platform reporting and visualization. Plus, everything is portable — both agencies and clients own the data. If your clients are looking for a partner to alleviate and automate data warehousing and actionable delivery, we can help you be that partner to them.
In-Housing Consulting and Advisement
In collaboration with the Goodway Group brand CvE, we create a customized approach to your in-housing journey, which includes training and coaching on relevant tech and techniques. Our Growth Sophistication Model is the gold standard for measuring marketing maturity and consumer experience. It evaluates each of the core competencies across your entire marketing operation, assessing your existing capabilities and developing your roadmaps, to transform your agency into a world-class, incremental growth engine.
We separate key marketing operations by the components that will ensure a best-practice setup. Assessing your company’s readiness is an incredibly valuable step. By using our framework, we help you can create your action plan and understand how your agency can compete and win in an ever-demanding marketing ecosystem.
Commerce Media Consulting
Looking to grow existing relationships with clients in, gain new clients in or expand advertising strategies in the commerce space? Goodway has years of expertise helping agencies and brands alike with retail media network (RMN) strategies, execution and optimization. We help build RMNs and maximize advertising dollars on RMNs for brands in both the U.S. and the UK. You can also extend beyond RMNs to upper-funnel tactics across the open web, social media and streaming TV for your commerce clients.
Use our commerce solutions — powered by the Goodway Group brands GRADIANT and G-Comm — to increase revenue for your clients via cross-platform, multi-channel media campaigns. Whether you work with retailers or direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, we’ve got you covered.
Leapfrog Past Your Competitors by Integrating Goodway’s Media+ Capabilities Into Your Own
The difference between your agency pitching and winning larger and more numerous accounts may be your team’s ability to level up in a few core areas. Goodway is a trusted partner for agencies to expand their capabilities so you can turn the tide on your business growth.
To learn more about Goodway’s Media+ capabilities, the three flexible service models available to you and how you can accelerate your business, get in touch today.
Amy Krauss is the executive vice president and general manager of Goodway. A customer-centric, results-driven executive with a passion for leading teams and creating operational excellence, Amy brings expertise in delivering digital marketing solutions that strengthen brands by leveraging consumer insights and performance channels. She specializes in business strategy, organizational planning, resource management and client management/customer success.
Amy has experience across a multitude of verticals (retail, financial services, CPG, etc.) and Fortune 100 companies. Before joining Goodway, Amy worked at Persado, Publicis Media and Performics. She has a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Miami University and lives in the greater Chicago area.