Overwhelmed By Data? Here’s How to Tame It
The amount of data we can collect from digital interactions by consumers is staggering, and making sense of it can seem daunting. This needn’t be, though. You simply have to know which data are most relevant and how best to use them. With that in mind, here’s a quick primer on how to use data to drive your digital strategy.
Explore all available data sources and channels.
First-party, web-based data (the information you can learn about visitors to your sites) is often the most accessible and valuable. Visitors are generating useful signals with every action they take. These data sets belong to you, meaning you don’t need to pay third parties to use them and you may use them as fully as the rights you’ve secured through your user terms.
Start with an inventory of the audience data you’re generating through your sites; then identify how to grow and groom that pool. This will likely include adding more granular data collection, refining how you organize and segment the data, and incorporating tools for activating your segments (as I describe below). Data-management platforms (DMP) are available to maximize the value of this data.
Next, explore all the data-collection sources available, including customer-relation management systems, mobile sites and apps, and even offline transactions. Your mobile-optimized sites and apps will power cross-channel insights and targeting capabilities, while CRM data and offline transactions can provide additional attributes drawn from within your universe of first-party sources. All of this data can be combined in a privacy-friendly way, when properly de-identified in the process through which it’s aggregated into anonymous audience profiles.
At the same time, consider supplementing your first-party data sources with third-party data — you can learn even more by understanding how your consumers behave outside your domains. This data can both expand the size of the audiences you design and improve the performance of the advertising, e-commerce and content you promote to these audiences.
Read more: AdAgeDigital
What Data Buying Isn’t
“Data-Driven Thinking” is a column written by members of the media community and containing fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
Today’s column is written by Michael Katz, CEO of interclick, a Yahoo! company.
With all the great data that data providers are making accessible today, it’s possible to interact with consumers in ways that were never before possible. The tremendous breadth and depth of available data moves consumer views from one-dimensional to multi-dimensional, helping to paint a much more complete picture. The implications positively impact the entire value chain from the marketer all the way to the consumer. For all the progress however, we’re still very early on and there are still several misconceptions about the successful application of data.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that optimal data consumption is on an “as needed” basis since data is expensive and more data may not add incremental value. Utilizing data for targeting is only one of many applications however. One of the most important and innovative applications of data isn’t for targeting at all but rather enabling marketers to implement more effective customer segmentation strategies.
Many transaction-centric B2C companies rely on effective segmentation to align messaging with business objectives in order to maximize LTV (lifetime value). Successful implementation of segmentation helps these companies define business models, build customer loyalty programs, and further value proposition discussions. The exercise of creating an effective segmentation strategy should result in a comprehensive understanding of the various types of customers as well a coherent plan for achieving business results.
When helping marketers address their segmentation strategies, the first step is to understand what the objective of the marketer is. Typically objectives are either tactical or strategic. Tactical segmentation strategies typically encompass cross-selling and upselling opportunities. For a financial services client for example, it may involve messaging certain “gold” card members in order to move them to “platinum” card status which may yield much higher fees. Strategic initiatives are usually much broader and align to business objectives. For example, determining that users within certain segments may require less support than others would allow a company to deploy capital more effectively.
Read more: AdExchanger
The More Media Buying Changes, the More It Stays the Same
Ten years ago this month, I took over ClickZ’s Media Buying column, and I’ve been writing it every week since. There’s no question that looking back at the last decade feels surreal: so much has changed, both in my personal life (a marriage, a new country, two children, seven moves), and in the online advertising industry. And yet, much has also stayed the same.
What’s different is the “where” of placing digital ads. In the early 2000s, mobile marketing was in its infancy, blogs were largely perceived as a foreign concept with a peculiar name, and video advertising was only just beginning to hit its stride. The technology we now rely on was the stuff of dreams, the tools we use daily to plan campaigns, a fantasy. Throughout these critical developments, however, the “how” of digital media buying has remained surprisingly unchanged – three tenets of the business in particular. Not only have these endured, but they may be more important now than ever.
1. Research. In the days preceding media planning software, online marketing professionals spent much of their time scouring the web for opportunities befitting their expectant clients. Always reach and frequency were top of mind, but so too were the formats that were being offered. Making an informed decision about a potential media partner was about selecting a site that would effectively connect a client’s brand with its audience, but it was also about finding ways to reuse existing ad sizes, saving some room in the budget for experimenting with new formats, and taking calculated risks on sites we hadn’t worked with before.
The Evolution of Online-User Data
The gathering of online-user data is among the most exciting and controversial business issues of our time. It often brings up concerns about privacy, but it also presents extraordinary opportunities for personalized, one-to-one advertising. This article is the first in a series exploring the importance of personal data across different industries. It represents a joint effort of The Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, and BlueKai.
The Importance of User Data
The basic appeal is straightforward: the more a company knows about someone, the easier it should be to target relevant ads to that person. All the stakeholders in the digital-advertising ecosystem—from Google to ad networks to Expedia—are collecting as much information as possible about what their users are doing online.
Over the past five years, we have seen the development of a robust secondary market allowing the buying and selling of user profiles. If someone goes to a travel site to book a room in a Tokyo hotel, for instance, that site can then sell the user’s profile to an ad network via a user data exchange or an aggregator. The next time the user visits a website served by that network, an ad for the Tokyo Hilton might appear.
There are several underlying supply, that is, advertiser, trends that have driven interest in building these profiles:
A Shift in Campaign Strategies. Advertisers are increasingly moving away from campaigns based on cost-per-thousand data (the cost of reaching 1,000 page views) and toward cost-per-click or cost-per-action strategies, in which advertisers pay only when a qualifying action, such as a purchase or registration, takes place. Ad networks and agencies leverage user data to more effectively target ads in hopes of improving click-through rates, that is, how often a user clicks on an advertisement.
