Beyond traditional brand tracking: Why telecom analysts need connected insights now

The world of telecommunications marketing is crowded, complicated and full of unrecognized possibilities. For brand analysts who work to identify risks and to make recommendations and predictions, it’s a difficult and treacherous moment in time. Some of the biggest pain points for brand analysts at telcos right now include: 

• Lack of consumer trust and loyalty

• Cybersecurity 

• Consumer demand for data protection

• Bundle battles

• Outdated, inaccurate consumer sentiment research models

• A shift toward DOOH and a lack of tools to measure brand perception outcomes

It’s not all bad news, though. New methods for measuring how consumers feel—and equally importantly why they feel the way they do—provide information that can help brand analysts working in telecom understand what’s happening and make predictions regarding customer churn, subscriptions and loyalty. 

With the right tools, brand analysts can: 

• Access continuous measurements of customer trust, satisfaction and loyalty

• See reports on sentiment trends in minutes

• Gain predictive accuracy 

• Move from data to decisions quickly

Let’s dive in! 

Consumers are concerned about data protection, and with good reason. Given their concerns and the steadily increasing number of breaches, brand analysts are faced with the task of quantifying how those concerns impact churn. How likely is a customer who is worried about data protection to move to another operator? What prompts switching behavior? 

Along with understanding the reasons for churn, telcos are struggling for market share amid intense competition that leads to lower profit margins. All of these issues make consumer sentiment one of the most important metrics for brand analysts to track. 

In 2023, Deloitte published the results of a survey regarding emerging trends in mobile communications. A few of their findings included: 

• 67% of smartphone users were concerned about data security and privacy

• 62% of smart home users were worried about data security and privacy on their home devices

• 52% of smart home users were afraid an unauthorized actor could control their home devices

• 48% of smartwatch and fitness tracker users were concerned about data security and privacy

As you might imagine, those concerns haven’t gone away. From the 2024 Deloitte survey: 

“In last year’s report, we discussed consumers’ growing concerns that digital activities put them at risk of security incidents and tracking by organizations or individuals. This year, the worries seem to be intensifying.” 

Even more concerning, nearly half of the respondents reported having experienced at least one type of security incident in the previous year—meaning consumer concerns are well-justified. 

And, it’s not just criminals and bad actors that worry consumers. They are also concerned about their providers. According to the report: “A majority also worry about potential data breaches or unauthorized use of their personal data within tech companies themselves.” 

The task brand analysts face is connecting these worries to behavior. A customer may be vaguely worried about data security, but are they worried enough to switch to another service provider? How can a brand reassure customers they are taking security and privacy seriously? 

It seems that advertising and brand messaging is one route telcos are exploring to help consumers feel more comfortable. 

Consumer package goods (CPG) and financial services are the top two biggest spenders when it comes to advertising, but telecom is one of the fastest growing. Experts expect ad spend by telcos will increase by 11.5% in 2025. 

In Q4 2024, AT&T reported surprising subscriber growth, likely due to bundling 5G and fiber. As companies work to differentiate their offerings and stand out in a crowded marketplace, these kinds of offers are likely to proliferate—along with ad spend to make sure customers are aware of appealing bundles. 

From a business perspective, big ad spend needs to be justified, which means that brand analysts need to track how increased visibility affects consumer sentiment. In an industry where customer loyalty and trust are low, consumer sentiment is an especially important metric. An additional challenge for brand analysts is that traditional models for measuring brand sentiment are no longer as accurate as they once were. The CFA Institute compared measures of sentiment and their underlying determinants from the 1980s to recent times and found that the models were less predictive over time. By the post-COVID era, “an increase in GDP did not lead to an increase in consumer sentiment,” and “an increase in unemployment also had no impact on sentiment.”  

Brand analysts need real-time, reliable indications of consumer sentiment in order to accurately assess whether or not increased visibility translates to improved consumer sentiment.

“The basic unit of competition among wireless and cable industry giants is the bundle,” writes Lisa Schwarz, senior director of global product marketing, Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit. 

But it seems that long-standing truism may be changing. 

With T-Mobile’s acquisition of Vistar Media, the telecom industry is moving into digital-out-of-home media (DOOH). T-Mobile already operates an in-store retail media network, partners with Plex and Uber, so the acquisition makes sense.

Understanding how exposure affects brand perception will become a key to making predictions about ad spend for telecom brand analysts. Telcos will be pulling every lever available to decrease churn, increase subscriptions and improve customer loyalty as the market continues to tighten. 

Both the failure of traditional measures of consumer sentiment the CFA Institute reports and the move into DOOH demand a new approach to measuring trust, satisfaction and loyalty among telecom customers. Zappi provides continuous, analyst-ready insights through its brand tracking system. 

Telecom is volatile. Consumer sentiment can change within hours, so real-time tracking is vital. Plus, simply knowing how customers feel isn’t enough. That information needs to be actionable, so that it can drive decision-making. Zappi’s AI Quick Reports surface sentiment trends in minutes, giving brands the ability to act immediately. In a saturated and volatile market, timing is a critical element of success. 

However, acting quickly based on inaccurate information leads to disaster, so brand analysts need to be able to trust the insights they’re seeing. Zappi’s model offers 60% more predictive accuracy than legacy brand tracking models. 

With the move toward DOOH, telco brand analysts will need to incorporate new metrics into their analyses and recommendations. Understanding the impact of exposure on brand perception is a must in order to measure how DOOH is going to affect churn, subscriptions and other factors that are directly related to the bottom line. 

Connected insights from a modern and accurate platform can serve as a secret superpower for telecom brand analysts. You can test, analyze, optimize and test again.

Telecom is a crowded and erratic market. Small sentiment shifts become market share losses in a heartbeat. Iterative development based on real-time customer feedback results in increasingly accurate predictions, giving brand analysts the ability to chart a stable course.