Why Do Marketers Need to Consider Using a Data Management Platform in 2017?

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How many times have you heard or seen the words ‘Big Data’? Probably more than you can count. The terms ‘Big Data’ and ‘Real-time Advertising’, have come to dominate the lexicon of the marketing press. Contemporary marketers are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of a data-driven marketing strategy in driving more engaging real-time customer interactions, and a much more valuable customer experience as a result. Consequently brands have allocated more and more of their budgets on IT infrastructure and digital media technology. In fact, research firm IDC forecasts the worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics will be $187bn by 2019.

But in reality, marketers are finding it hard to connect the dots. They collect data from different channels, such as website visitors, mobile app users, store visitors and call center inquiries, but they are struggling to build a single customer view. Seven in ten marketers have gaps in capabilities and effectiveness of their technology when it comes to creating a single view of the customer, according to Marketers Worldwide.1

A Data Management Platform (DMP) is the missing piece of the puzzle. Having a DMP allows you to break the silos and unify all the data in one place, so that marketers can get a single view of their customer across the entire buyer journey. But let’s start at the beginning …

What is a Data Management Platform (DMP)?Put simply, a DMP lets you collect and analyse data about your customers – including behavioural, geographic and profile data – from every digital touch point in one platform.

The result is an integrated picture of all your data sources, from both your own first party data and third party. You can then activate that data and use it target your audience to an unheralded degree of accuracy across a number of different marketing channels.

Furthermore, the right DMP lets you see how your resulting campaigns are performing in real-time and can let you optimise the media buy and advertising creative on the fly. For the first time, companies gain a true 360-degree view of how their campaign is performing – at reaching a specific audience in real-time.

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Break silos and unify all data in one place

1 Signal, “Preparing for Cross-Channel Success: Solving the Identity Puzzle,” March 24, 2015

Collect data from varioussources (online, o�ine, third party, etc.)

Create audiences

Push audiences to buying/execution points

Optimise results using look-alike audiences

Collect response data and repeat process

How does a DMP work?

In a 2017 NewVantage Partners study amongst senior Fortune 1000 business and technology decision-makers the business impact of big data was shown to be very positive. 2

More than 80% of the participants say their Big Data investments have been successful, and almost half say their organizations can measure the benefits from their projects. A variety of positive outcomes were mentioned, including cost reduction and establishment of a data-driven culture.

However, although the same study found more than 85% of the participants agreeing they started 'big data' projects, only 37% report success thus far.

Big data of course is simply generic technology, the real value lies in applying the right tools to fully exploit it. As the amount and complexity of the data companies are collecting on customers continues to increase, data management is becoming an increasingly important issue.

Here are the 4 key business drivers for getting a DMP in 2017:

1. Data OwnershipThe excitement over the potential of ad tech, or programmatic, advertising—using big data to deliver highly targeted communications to the most relevant audience—was clearly demonstrated with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) issuing guidelines to members on how to get the most from programmatic advertising. However, several key issues are still largely unaddressed by the wider marketing industry.

“a unified technology platform that intakes disparate first-, second-, and third-party data sets, provides normalization and segmentation on that data, and allows a user to push the resulting segmentation into live interactive channel environments.”

Forrester Research

Why do you need a DMP? 4 Key Business Drivers

2 NVP, "Big Data Executive Survey 2017, Executive Summary of Findings" January, 2017

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3 “WFA Guide to Programmatic Media,” World Federation of Advertisers, 2015

Advice published by the WFA spurred many headlines focusing on issues of transparency concerning agency holding groups’ media trading. It even generated headlines in national publications such as the Financial Times (FT). Some even questioned whether this lack of transparency lead the world’s largest advertisers to completely bring all their programmatic advertising in-house.

But away from such headline-generating issues, the WFA guidelines also presented possible hybrid models open to advertisers, primarily through the use of third-party marketing technologies in conjunction with their media agencies.3

This message appears to be getting through to forward-thinking marketers. The WFA document contained feedback from 43 of the world’s largest-spending advertisers and found that 36 percent of respondents were using a Data Management Platform in 2015 compared to 20 percent in 2013, to offset any potential risks around transparency and data protection.

“There are inherent conflicts between the goals of the advertiser, agency and DSP respectively when it comes to programmatic media buying, controlling the technology itself ensures that you correct this imbalance and are able to maximise your desired outcome” Dr. Boris Mouzianskii, IPONWEB, CEO

2. FragmentationOne initial headache for advertisers and publishers striving for real-time marketing lies with how their data is sourced, as well as how they monetise it, either directly, or using it to target audiences.

Both advertisers and marketers are increasingly looking at using different technology solutions to help collect their data and then realise its true value by centralising it in one platform, which they can then segment it to gain audience insights.

Mapp's DMP

Easy audience creation

Powerful look-alike generation

Choose from 30+ integrations

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For advertisers and marketers, it is about being able to access this data via a real-time dashboard with the ability to show information relating to touch point interactions across all channels along with advertising activity and customer segment breakdowns and an overview of which campaigns are meeting their goals.

For publishers, it’s about being able to gain visibility on their most active segments and how they can best use this information to monetise their data through making it available through a data exchange, or potentially bundling these insights into their inventory.

However, there are often difficulties in doing so. As companies aim to integrate all of their advertising and marketing operations, it requires the piecing together of multiple data sets. Many of which have historically been stored in different silos, often with internal teams, agency partners, and increasingly third party tech providers that would have previously worked in isolation.

3. Real Time MythsAnother issue affecting the ‘on-demand’ marketer is how quickly a technology solution

(whether ’open’ or ‘closed’) can access campaign analytics in real-time. This is crucial to provide advertisers and marketers with feedback mid campaign in order for them to make key adjustments. Likewise for media owners in order to see which inventory is performing well.

However, despite the phrase ‘real-time’ employed as a mantra by many in the adtech/martech space, few are able to provide analytics that would give the label any amount of credibility, according to many in the ad tech space. While many advertising platforms are able to bid on media in real-time (a process known as real-time bidding, or RTB) most cannot report back to an advertiser in real-time, thus stopping them acting on mission-critical feedback.

This is crucial if advertisers are running a particularly time-sensitive campaign, for instance a retailer looking to promote a sales promotion.

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Elsewhere in the industry, comparable platforms have vastly varying average reporting times; some platforms make advertisers wait as long as 24 hours for feedback.

Gathering the right data to generate the necessary insights is an important first step but true real-time advertising needs a platform that can automatically optimise the performance of resulting campaigns.

4. DMPs as the driver behind a truly omni-channel executionDMPs have created a reputation for using cookies in display advertising for re-targeting but in reality their capabilities vary depending on what the organisation needs them for. If a brand is looking to synchronise offline and online communication, then the DMP is

primarily used to merge with CRM data and use persistent IDs to deliver bidirectional campaign activity.

Many companies are already beginning to go ‘beyond the cookie’ with many brands are already using it to optimise channels beyond display. These channels include email, SMS, mobile, social and programmatic TV amongst many others.

This means brands can not only optimise their website content according to their most valuable segments, but also serve relevant, personalised content at the right time in the purchase journey. For many marketers, the ability to do this cross-device and cross-channel is the biggest change that they are most eager to see.

Data ownership, fragmentation, real-time advertising and omni-channel marketing are the key drivers for implementing a Data Management Platform.

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4 Steps for successfully implementing DMP in your organization With eMarketer forecasting that the programmatic share of digital advertising is expected to grow to 72% of total ad spending in 2017 4, the focus is on advertisers to improve the return they get from this investment.

To make the process easier, here are the 4 main steps you should take in order to evolve to DMP and realise the true potential of real time marketing:

1. Know your audience, create insightsMany marketers have heeded the calls to ring-fence their data, aware of the competitive advantage it poses when competing for audiences’ share of mind.

However, even as marketers and publishers look to take more proactive action here (using an in-house or hybrid model) they also need to ensure their data is liberated from its earlier silos.

With over 50% of companies surveyed by Industry Index now using DMPs the message that ‘data is the new oil’ is clear. In order to convert reams of audience data into customer insight, marketers need a centralised point of access to gain actionable insights, and then share them across their operations accordingly.

2. Choose a strategic blend of tech partnersAs mentioned above, it is highly recommended that advertisers and media owners take ownership of their own data, but this can be difficult to do 100% internally, meaning the vast majority of companies will need to outsource to a third party to some extent.

The digital marketing industry’s largest names are often eager to provide a full suite of such services – often at little or no cost – but those eager to protect their organisation’s long-term interests are best served to explore those solutions best suited to achieving their long-term objectives.

Many pure-play ad tech companies offer services built on top of multiple application protocol interfaces (APIs), giving marketers and media owners the option of picking a bespoke media stack. However, if a brand marketer signs up to a closed ecosystem, then they effectively play on a level playing field with all their competitors.

The only point of differentiation is how they use that technology. The big advantage of an open system is more customisation options. For instance, you can integrate your own CRM systems with data on surfing behaviour to help nurture a relationship with a customer throughout their entire lifecycle, rather than being faced with siloed touchpoints.

3. Assemble a data-savvy teamThe inability to operationalise data management is the leading cause of failure in the attempt to deliver a truly data-driven marketing strategy. Media professionals are living in an era when the ‘math men’ are now considered the equal of the ‘mad men’, if not more so as advertising agencies, brands, and media owners create new roles based on data, and the real-time extraction of it to generate insights, plus identify new target audiences.

You need to get the right team to play in this new programmatic battlefield. There is a completely new breed of trader that is very data-driven. Through the proper deployment of data scientists you can work out when to show which message to which audience, plus which amount you should bid for a certain audience-type, and when.

To be able to centralise, normalise and organise their data effectively in a DMP, brands need to have their data organised in the first place and the right teams internally, or through agencies, to help operationalise their data management programme built around the use case to support a DMP.

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4 eMarketer, "More Than Two-Thirds of US Digital Display Ad Spending Is Programmatic", April 5, 2016

“We saw a lot of companies with significant enough scale, but which still found the cost of building their own solutions prohibitive, now through using this technology we are able to generate income from our collective data (by making it available to other advertisers), as well as increase yield (from advertising revenues on their respective companies' websites)."

As a manager, consider hiring individuals who have not only a marketing background, but also a marketing analytics background so that they can help with defining success and output. Also, consider focusing on how you’ll grow adoption and evangelism of your data-driven marketing programme, This means developing a data management strategy that encompasses the needs of the whole organisation not just part of it, being sure to implement management that works across silos.

4. Use technology to create new revenue streams and build scaleAdtech has yet to be used in great volume by the SME sector, but some advertisers are using such technologies to identify synergies, and build new revenue streams.

Cupid, the operator of multiple online dating sites, built on top of Mapp's DMP to create apps which essentially enabled it to act as a data-sharing cooperative.

It partnered with companies, typically UK-based SMEs across a number of business verticals, to act in unison to offset the otherwise prohibitive costs associated with leveraging their data in order to create economies of scale, to monetise their data more collectively, according to Rory Paterson, Mimir MD.

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Why Mapp's Data Management Platform?

– Conquer your data challenge. With the explosion in email, web, SMS, digital, mobile, and social avenues, you have to find a way to unify data from each touch point to meet growing customer expectations. Just imagine it: behavioral, geographic, and demographic customer data all in one place so you can target your audience accurately and meaningfully. Wouldn't that be great? Our DMP centralizes data collected from your paid, owned, and earned channels, eliminating the need for you to build individual custom data platforms.

– Built for omni-channel. Our application stack is designed with omni-channel delivery in mind and to provide a view across all marketing channels not just advertising channels.

– Fully integrated solution. The DMP data layer is part of the Customer Engagement Platform enabling our clients to benefit from a consolidated data view and the benefit of being able to synchronise activity across all their digital channels.

– Scalability. As leaders in data-driven marketing, this is something you can rely on.

The DMP is built to grow as your business does across whatever channels your consumers engage with. Many DMP vendors simply are not built to scale across multiple channels.

– Strategy & Service support. 15 years in omnichannel data driven marketing has given us a great deal of experience and understanding of the transformative digital landscape. Our consulting, strategic and digital marketing services team help our customers adapt their business to the changing digital world and to ultimately use technology to solve business problems.

– Independence.

– Demand Generation: Our in-house digital marketing services unit, our Interactive team operates one of the largest lead generation operation, we provide brands the ability to grow their business. Our media network has been established over 15 years and provides us access to a granular audience base.

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Copyright © 2017 by Mapp Corporation    All Rights Reserved.    Produced in UK

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ConclusionAdvertisers and publishers that want to develop a true real-time marketing strategy need to undertake a fundamental shift away from a siloed approach to data management.

The optimal way real-time bidding or other forms of automated media trading can offer true real time advertising is by centralising all a company’s data – first and third party - through one platform, a DMP.

The future of real-time advertising is then though the use of bespoke technologies offering genuinely ‘realtime’ campaign optimisation. An open platform is important to let you a build a differentiated offering and avoid the pitfalls of a siloed approach.

At last DMPs have the capability to breathe new life into the ideal of the single customer view that many marketers feel are beyond their reach. In an era when minute-by-minute campaign reporting is possible, no brand can afford not to examine its potential.

To find out more about Mapp's DMP and how it can accelerate your digital marketing capability, please contact us for more details.

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