ProcureCon Marketing 2025 Blog

With this in mind, leaders have to make a strategic decision about where to invest their budget across the next year. In a recent survey, WBR Insights asked the top marketing procurement professionals in Europe where they plan to invest in the next 6-12 months. A whopping 42% revealed that they plan to invest in social media and influencer marketing.

This surge in interest begs the question – is this a passing fad or the beginning of a major shift in marketing procurement strategies?

Programmatic advertising allowed Ben & Jerry's and BuzzFeed to ensure the adverts for the vegan products were aligned with content which would be relevant and of interest to vegans.

Adidas promotes practices where procurement and marketing works hand-in-hand for long term brand success and relations.

As experts in programmatic advertising, finance brand American Express had a great idea to make sure its own Pride campaign was seen by as many people as possible - and it wasn't through social media ads.

Marketing procurement teams are feeling the pressure to stay on top of all of the new and exciting possibilities that are available with AI, as the technology is quickly becoming ubiquitous.

In today’s competitive business environment, marketing spending is facing increasing scrutiny from decision-makers. To ensure a return on investment, marketing procurement must have up-to-date data and analytics to inform their decisions.

As businesses grapple with inflationary pressures, marketing procurement teams are faced with the challenge of developing long-term agreements with marketing service providers that can provide stability economically. However, they also must ensure those agreements have flexibility, should demand change over time.

Marketing procurement leaders, including those at major brands like Walgreens, have been taking a closer look at their agency mixes to find ways to optimize their spend and their marketing acquisition processes. Although many major brands are considering their options between large agencies, relying exclusively on traditional agencies may no longer be cost-effective—it could even be putting some organizations at a disadvantage.

In recent years, some large-name brands have experienced significant drops in sales and revenue due to public backlash over their influencer campaigns. This has had an impact on the way many organizations manage influencers in their marketing procurement departments. Many companies are also auditing their influencer campaigns to determine the benefits of the costs they are paying and to protect their brands from potential risks.

As marketing procurement teams begin the transition from cost savings to value generation, they can play an even larger role in helping marketing departments realize their goals. Overall, marketing procurement has taken on an increased responsibility in driving value from agency relationships, as well as a greater understanding of the value that must be generated for each project.

With the effects of man-made climate change now being felt increasingly keenly around the world, intense pressure is being exerted on global businesses to clean up their act and prioritize green initiatives across their operations. One of the most effective ways brands can increase their ESG credentials in the eyes of customers is by increasing transparency through intelligent use of data and marketing.

Demands being placed on marketing departments are growing and teams need to speed up the process of acquiring advertising while still keeping the organization in mind and minimizing risk. Through a deeper integration between procurement teams and the marketing department, pressures such as tighter budgets, leaner staff, marketing technology, and expectations of increased and tangible return on investments become far easier to manage.

Procurement teams need to find ways to demonstrate the effectiveness of their marketing spend and justify ongoing support from upper management and the C suite. One of the best ways to achieve this is through data and analytics. By leveraging the power of digital information, marketing procurement teams can deduce which areas of spend are yielding the greatest return on investment and which are failing to live up to expectations.

As the global talent crisis continues to bite, organizations the world over seek to find ways to, not only attract fresh candidates to their industry, but also ensure staff shortages in periphery businesses don’t have a negative impact on their own operation. Marketing procurement is not immune to this phenomenon and savvy brands need to be hip to the ways shortages are affecting the agencies it relies on and doing everything it can to mitigate the damage.

We are living in a time of sustained inflation. Global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are driving up prices. Naturally, this includes the procurement of marketing as the cost of doing business increases across the board. As many companies scramble to make savings in their operation, it’s important to remember that gaining real value from any expenditure is far more important than any cost cutting endeavor.

WBR’s ProcureCon Marketing conference is the leading event for forward-thinking advertisers. Here’s how event sponsorship can open doors for your organization.

To say that the COVID-19 pandemic had an immense impact on most industries would be an understatement. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the "Great Lockdown" that resulted from the pandemic caused the worst economic downturn since the great depression. Now, procurement leaders are assessing what the pandemic means for the function in the long term, especially as the world experiences a resurgence due to the Delta variant. Here are a few insights into how the pandemic affected procurement over the past two years and what it means moving forward.

To stay competitive, organizations must be able to manage their supplier relationships in an effective and streamlined way. This starts with identifying the best suppliers for the company's needs and building a working relationship with them over time. But to unlock the true value of a supplier, the company must have a healthy and long-term relationship that takes advantage of the supplier's full range of capabilities.

Marketing procurement used to be a driver of cost savings. Procurement professionals who could find the most affordable agencies to do necessary marketing work were recognized for their ability to keep procurement costs low and deliver value at a low rate. But cost savings alone are no longer the sole purpose of the marketing procurement function.

Businesses are increasingly recognizing a greater need for supplier diversity, not only because it's an ethical approach to procurement, but also because there are several business benefits to the practice. Here are a few steps organizations can take to actualize their marketing supplier diversity programs.

A formal assessment of marketing spending is usually the first step that can be taken to identify areas where agency costs can be pared back. It is also important to gather the data on spending that could eventually be used to make the case for enhancing in-house capabilities.

Marketers today are under pressure to keep pace with the expectations of their customers, all while going above and beyond to deliver innovative and memorable campaigns. This requires flexibility and access to the cutting-edge tools required to deliver personal feeling campaigns across all of the markets they serve.

Brand safety is a risk reduction strategy typically associated with advertising, and with programmatic ad buying more specifically. No company wants their digital ads showing up next to vulgar or offensive content, nor do they want their brand associated with fringe political content.

The agency model isn't dead; it's just evolving. Here's how technology and the rise of the gig economy is changing how brands procure marketing services.

Any procurement professional, CMO, or agency executive will tell you that organizations across industries are demanding a better ROI from their marketing procurement strategies. This has put pressure on the entire marketing procurement apparatus, as well as on agencies themselves.

Procurement professionals can use marketing benchmarking data for a number of purposes, whether they are looking for additional leverage before entering negotiations with an agency, attempting to set standards with an existing marketing supplier, or simply analyzing the current field of marketing options.

There are numerous benefits to developing a robust scope of work program to govern marketing relationships. For one, it enables the organization to specify what outcomes they expect from the marketing supplier's labor. It also proves the supplier with clear guidance around what work it so to be performed

We explore the business strategies your peers are using to better understand BPO trends in procurement.

The growth of spend in programmatic is naturally attracting a lot of attention from procurement, who is poised to take a leadership role in defining the strategic approach.

Marketing is often the largest indirect-spending category for many organizations

Marketing procurement teams continue to be measured on how efficiently and effectively they are able to drive costs down or out

Procurement technology vendors are developing solutions that bring AI into the realms of advanced strategic reasoning and strategic sourcing