Azerion's Roxanne Harley Discusses Burnout from Fragmentation, the Key Omnichannel Strategies, and Active Implementation

In the ever-evolving world of advertising, Connected Omnichannel Advertising (COA) is making waves as the future of the industry. This innovative approach, which seamlessly blends science and magic, promises to ensure the right message reaches the right person at the right time, all while being sustainable and scalable.

According to Azerion, the four disciplines essential for making COA work are media, data, technology, and creativity. By connecting these disciplines, advertisers can deliver efficient and impactful campaigns that address the fragmentation issues prevalent in 2025. These challenges include long campaign planning times, lost brand messages, wasted spend, and audience bombardment.

COA is designed to follow the customer journey, with a strong emphasis on understanding people's mindsets and activating appropriate channels and messaging. Brand building, it is understood, is not one channel, one moment, or one metric, but the sum of orchestrated touchpoints over time. As such, brand building needs to extend across channels and time frames for effectiveness.

Research supports this approach, with brand preference, built over time, driving the majority of outcomes. Azerion's 'Memorable Connections' research, involving 10,000 UK participants, backs the importance of COA in creating memorable and relevant connections with audiences.

COA allows for more efficient and effective campaigns by reducing wasted impressions and providing a clearer read on what's working. For instance, unified activation in advertising, such as an auto brand's campaign, can generate significant results, including 865 dealership visits in just 14 days.

In the traditional funnel model, people's non-linear buying behavior has rendered it obsolete. Instead, advertisers are turning to COA to unify planning, activation, and measurement across all relevant channels. However, examples of unified activation in action are not provided in the given text.

Looking ahead to 2026, media, data, technology, and creativity will play crucial roles in executing unified omnichannel advertising campaigns. These elements will enable precise customer targeting, real-time trend detection, and personalized, innovative content creation, all supported by advanced digital tools and integrated IT architectures that overcome limitations of rigid systems.

In a recent study by Professor Felipe Thomaz and Stuart Boden, 84% of purchase decisions are made before active buying begins. This underscores the importance of reaching potential customers early and often in their buying journey.

Roxanne Harley, the head of growth at Azerion UK, is at the forefront of this revolution. As the industry continues to evolve, COA promises to be a game-changer, allowing agencies to spend more time on strategy and storytelling, while publishers benefit from higher-value campaigns across their inventory.

Azerion's Roxanne Harley Discusses Burnout from Fragmentation, the Key Omnichannel Strategies, and Active Implementation