What Is Digital Marketing? Not Everything on a Screen Counts
- Vanessa Marquez-Kramme
- Jan 29
- 11 min read
🎧 Prefer to listen? This blog post is available in audio format below.
Note: This audio was created using AI voice technology (ElevenLabs) as part of my commitment to accessible content. I wrote every word, but used AI to narrate it so I could offer this format without burning out.
Before We Begin...
Hi there, I'm Coach Nane (Vanessa Marquez-Kramme). If you want to learn more about who I am and what I do, you can head to my About section. But in short, I'm a multi-hyphenate human, passionate about helping people and brands tell their stories authentically. In a former life, I was a hospitality professional managing restaurants in country clubs and casinos, and that really taught me a thing or two about creating wonderful experiences, which I carry with me whether in my coaching or in my marketing world.
Currently, I'm studying Integrated Marketing at NYU SPS and working as a Senior Social Media Specialist at NYU Steinhardt.
This blog has been here for a while, mostly for coaching, but the new marketing portion is proudly sponsored (ok, required) by Theodore Davis's Digital Marketing Class at NYU SPS.
Here, I'll be exploring marketing concepts throughout the semester—and hopefully beyond.
Today, we’ll start with the basics...
What Is Digital Marketing, Really?
To talk about digital marketing as it stands now, we first need to understand what digital marketing actually is (and that's trickier than it sounds).
I went looking for definitions and found that while everyone agrees digital marketing involves screens and the internet, the specifics vary:
Source | Definition | Key Elements |
Any marketing method conducted through electronic devices which utilize some form of a computer, including online marketing efforts conducted on the internet | Electronic devices, computer-based, online focus | |
Uses online channels like websites, social media, search engines, and email to promote products, connect with customers, and build brands, leveraging data for targeted, measurable campaigns | Data-driven, targeted, measurable, digital journey | |
Use of digital channels to market products, boost brand awareness, drive traffic, and hit marketing goals through search engines, websites, social media, email, mobile apps, text messaging, and web-based advertising | Multiple channels, consumer data, target audience, relevant messaging |
Looking at these definitions, a pattern emerges: digital marketing isn't just about having a screen. It's about leveraging data to target audiences, measure results, and optimize campaigns. This is what separates digital marketing from just... marketing that happens to use digital tools.
The Diesel Billboard Problem
In class, we had this debate that I haven't been able to let go of. Prof. Davis brought up an example of Diesel (the fashion brand) paying for billboard placement in a PlayStation game. As you're driving your virtual car through the game world, you see this Diesel billboard. The question: Is that digital marketing?
The class consensus was yes; it's basically like putting a banner on a webpage. But I wasn't convinced. With a banner ad, you can click through to the advertiser's website. They can track whether you clicked, where you went, and if you bought something. The whole funnel is measurable. The Diesel billboard in the game? You can't click it. You can't interact with it. And critically, Diesel has no way to know who saw it or what they did afterward.
By the way, Diesel seems pretty connected to the PlayStation universe; they've had partnerships with games since 1999. More recently, they partnered with Days Gone. But even with that history, I'd argue these placements likely weren't digital marketing in the truest sense—at least not the static billboard versions.
This debate sent me down a research rabbit hole, because I needed to understand: what actually makes something digital marketing versus just marketing that happens to appear on a screen?
Unraveling the Definition
When we debated the Diesel/PlayStation question in class, I couldn't let it go. If I'm arguing that a non-clickable billboard in a video game isn't digital marketing, what about TV ads on Netflix? Those aren't clickable either. Are they digital marketing or just TV commercials on a different screen?
So I started searching.
First stop: What is connected TV advertising?
Turns out CTV advertising is a yes for digital marketing. Platforms like Netflix and Hulu use sophisticated attribution models. Sure, they can't track a click on your TV remote, but they can do something almost cooler: match your TV's IP address to the IP addresses of your other devices. If you see a Nike ad on your smart TV and then visit Nike.com on your phone an hour later, the platform can connect those dots through something called cross-device attribution.
CTV also uses programmatic buying, household-level targeting based on first-party data and viewing preferences, and real-time optimization. You're not just blasting the same ad to everyone watching a show. Different households get different ads based on their demographics and behaviors.
Then I wondered: what about those fancy Times Square billboards that change based on the weather? Are THOSE digital marketing?
Cue another rabbit hole: programmatic digital out-of-home advertising. This is where it gets wild: Advertisers use real-time bidding to buy billboard space in literal milliseconds (OUTFRONT Media says about 100 milliseconds). These billboards change based on temperature, time of day, traffic patterns, or even who's in the area based on mobile location data.
McDonald's, for example, shows ads for frozen drinks when the temperature hits 77°F. Douwe Egberts put facial recognition kiosks in an airport that gave you free coffee if you yawned at the camera. Black Mirror vibes for sure, but also undeniably sophisticated marketing.
The real breakthrough in my understanding came from learning about footfall attribution. Programmatic DOOH uses mobile location data to track whether someone who saw a billboard actually visited the store afterward. According to OUTFRONT's data, 51% of people who saw DOOH ads with directions visited the business, and 93% of those made a purchase. That's measurable, attributable marketing, even though there's no click button.
Now, in class, Professor Davis made the point that digital out-of-home is really just traditional advertising on digital screens. At the time, I agreed. A billboard is a billboard, right? But after diving into all this, I'm not so sure anymore.
Traditional billboards are static: same message, same audience, no data. What I just described —real-time bidding, contextual triggers, and footfall tracking—is a completely different infrastructure. The consumer experience might feel the same (you're still walking past a billboard), but from a marketing perspective, the ability to target based on location and context, measure store visits, and optimize in real-time? That sounds like digital marketing to me
So here's where I landed: the screen itself doesn't make it digital; the infrastructure behind it does. I walked out of class thinking one thing. After this research, I'm thinking something else. The line's blurrier than I gave it credit for.
The pattern I noticed across all my research:
Digital marketing requires more than a screen. It requires data-driven targeting, measurable attribution, and optimization capability.
Digital Marketing Has Levels
Based on what I learned, I think digital marketing exists on a spectrum. It's not binary. You're not either "digital marketing" or "not digital marketing." Instead, there are levels based on how precisely you can target and how clearly you can measure results.
Macro Level: Large Segments
Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home sits here. You're targeting broad audience segments (commuters, gym-goers, airport travelers) based on location, time of day, and contextual data like weather.
Attribution at this level: Footfall tracking, lift studies, correlated search volume. It's not as precise as digital channels that track individuals, but it's still measurable.
What makes it digital: Automated buying, data-triggered creative delivery, and the ability to measure outcomes and optimize campaigns based on what's working.
Group Level: Household Cohorts
Connected TV advertising operates here. You're targeting households using demographic data, behavioral patterns, first-party data, and streaming preferences.
Attribution at this level: Cross-device tracking, pixel-based conversion tracking, and view-through attribution. The platform knows if a household that saw your ad later visited your website, even if they used a different device.
What makes it digital: Sophisticated targeting based on data, a closed attribution loop that connects exposure to outcomes, and real-time optimization of campaigns.
Micro Level: Individual Personalization
Search, social media, display ads, and email marketing live here. You're targeting individuals based on their specific search history, browsing behavior, CRM data, and engagement patterns.
Attribution at this level: Direct click-through, conversion pixels, email opens and clicks, retargeting across sites. You know exactly who saw your ad and what they did immediately after.
What makes it digital: One-to-one targeting, immediate interactivity, and precise attribution at the individual level.
The (Other) Gray Zone: When Screens Don't Make It Digital
Product placement without tracking:
Not digital marketing. If a podcast host drinks a Monster drink in his show (I’m looking at you, The Nine Club, with your flawless product placement) and there's no way to measure who saw it or what they did afterward, that's product placement in a digital medium, but not digital marketing.
Static In-Game Placement: Not Digital Marketing
Here's the thing about that Diesel billboard in PlayStation: I don't actually know how it was set up. But if it was a static billboard baked into the game during development—the kind that every player sees regardless of who they are or what they do—then I wouldn't qualify it as digital marketing. If there's no targeting (everyone sees the same ad), no tracking (Diesel has no way to know who saw it or what they did afterward), and no optimization (the placement is permanent and can't be adjusted based on performance), then that's just product placement in a digital environment.
Modern In-Game Advertising: Actually Digital Marketing
Now, if it's a newer game, it might be a completely different story. Pnow exists, allowing advertisers to serve dynamic ads within games with sophisticated tracking. Companies like Anzu and Gadsme use QR codes, probabilistic matching, and console advertising IDs to create attribution even for console games.
Attribution methods now include cross-platform tracking (ad view on console → conversion on mobile), location-based attribution (footfall tracking to stores), and even DSP attribution using tracking pixels.
What About Referral Codes?
What if a podcast, or a social post, or a newsletter includes a referral code? Does that make it digital marketing? I think it does.
Referral and promo codes are a form of "clickless tracking"; they provide attribution without requiring a click.
Each code is:
Unique to a source
The show, the influencer, the affiliate.
Tracked at checkout
The system knows exactly who sent that customer
Data-driven
Brands can measure conversion rates, calculate ROI, and optimize which partnerships are working.
Platform agnostic
Works in podcasts, video, print, TV—anywhere a code can be shared.
According to performance marketing platforms, promo codes are essential for measuring campaigns where tracking links are ineffective or impossible to use. You can mention a code on a podcast, in a TV commercial, or even in person, and still get full attribution when someone uses it at checkout.
So as we can see, the line—unlike love—is indeed blurry.
Digital Marketing Today: Evolution and Ethics
We have seen significant evolution in digital marketing. The term was coined in the 1990s by Alan Emtage, who created the world's first search engine. From then til now, we've seen the internet (do you remember the sound of connecting to the world? Because I do), Google, ICQ, MSN, Facebook, texting on cellphones, the first phones with emails, Instagram, smartphones, a pandemic that connected us to our devices even more, and now, AI.
In roughly 35 years, we have quantum leaped time and time again, creating such granular data about every single one of us that companies now have the ability to reach us not only where we are, but with ads that speak to our specific problems, hopes, and aspirations in a way that is both super efficient and creepy (from the consumer perspective).
This granularity is only getting more sophisticated. ChatGPT is about to start trying paid advertising. Not only is that going to change the game for how companies can present themselves to potential customers, but it is also going to change the game for consumers. I have concerns about privacy and whether a chat tool that people use for everything from homework help to therapy is the right place to place an ad. I would love to see how this can be positioned ethically, though I don't have much hope it will be.
Digital Can't Stand Alone
Digital, however, can't stand alone. It is a powerful force, but it needs to be considered as part of a broader, integrated marketing and operational strategy. Otherwise, the customer will feel a disconnect between the digital brand and any other interaction they have with you.
There are so many ways to "go digital" from a brand perspective. So many channels and tools. Here's what I've learned from working at places where marketing and communications need to be scrappy and resourceful:
When you have zero digital presence, there are two things I'd prioritize: a responsive, mobile-first website and at least one social media presence. This helps address the loop between folks discovering you (through SEO, but most relevantly now through content) and vetting you for legitimacy. I don't know about you, but I still feel like a good website makes or breaks my trust in a company.
Using The 70-20-10 Rule to Set Up Your Digital Marketing
As someone entering the industry today, I think digital marketing should be a mix of playing to your strengths and experimenting with new channels or strategies. But you need a solid foundation and to take care of it in order to keep the wheel turning.
The 70-20-10 rule, used by companies like Coca-Cola and Google, breaks down like this:
70% of your budget and effort goes to proven channels and tactics.
These are your bread and butter, the things you know work. For most brands, this might be SEO, email marketing, and your core social media platforms. This is where you execute consistently and optimize constantly.
20% goes to emerging or adjacent opportunities.
These are things that show promise but aren't yet proven for your brand. Maybe it's testing a new social platform, trying CTV advertising for the first time, or experimenting with programmatic DOOH in your key markets.
10% is pure innovation and experimentation.
This is your "what if" budget. What if we tried ChatGPT ads? What if we partnered with that micro-influencer? What if we launched that podcast? Some of these will fail spectacularly. A few might become your next 70%.
With all the evolution and complexity in digital marketing—AI search ads, hyper-personalization, new platforms launching constantly—it's tempting to chase everything. But the 70-20-10 rule keeps you grounded. Master your foundation (the website, the core social presence, the proven channels), THEN experiment strategically with the 20-30% you have left.
Even with AI search ads and hyper-personalization on the horizon, the foundation matters more when it's content AI can actually crawl and understand. AI agents and LLM crawlers now account for roughly 33% of organic search activity—and they're looking for content they can crawl, understand, and cite. That means optimizing your owned content for intent and context is key. You want content that AI can find, that answers actual questions people are asking, and that leads them directly to you.
This applies to your social captions, too. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn are now indexing caption text or in-app search. And in some cases, like TikTok, that content also appears in Google searchresults. Keywords in your captions, on-screen text, and even spoken audio help the algorithm understand what your content is about and who should see it. Social platforms have shifted from hashtag-based discovery to natural language keyword matching, which means how you write your captions directly impacts whether your content gets discovered—both within the platform AND in traditional search results.
So the real foundation: a mobile-optimized website with content structured for both human readers and AI systems, and social content that uses searchable, intent-driven language in every caption. Master those, THEN experiment with the new stuff.
What I'm Here to Learn
This framework is still forming, which is exactly why I'm in this class. I'm excited to move from theory to practice (particularly around ad buying, where I've winged it professionally but want to understand the mechanics and strategy behind the spend). Even more, I'm looking forward to the conversations. Digital marketing moves fast enough that we're all learning together, and I'm betting the debates (like the one about that PlayStation billboard) will sharpen how I think about this work.
If you've made it this far, thank you for coming along on this journey with me. I'm excited to continue exploring, questioning, and sharing what I learn.
Where Theory Becomes Practice
Want to see how I’m applying what I learn in this and other classes to projects and client work? Explore my portfolio to go behind the scenes of the strategies I talk about here.
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