At this year’s Advertising Week in New York, there was much chatter about everything from OTT to industry diversity. But everywhere you turned, you couldn’t escape a conversation featuring data. Here are the four things we kept hearing throughout the week around data.
Forget about BIG data, we need actionable data.
If you collected all the grains of sand in the world you still wouldn’t come close to how much data is gathered daily around the globe. But how much of it is useful when it comes to building successful marketing campaigns? Technology is helping marketers distill big data into actionable data, but it’s happening at a gradual rate. So what’s required to pick up this pace? Education. “When I am asked how to get into media, I tell students they should consider a career in data science,” said Steve Carbone, Managing Director, Chief Digital & Investment Officer MediaCom during eBay’s Getting Ahead of Data Curve panel.
Currently, data and insights teams have the large task of unearthing new ways to make data actionable and effective for advertisers. Companies who sit on first-party real intent data like eBay are proving to be invaluable partners to brands. Knowing exactly how consumers browse, buy, and sell provides an unmatched level of granularity and precision to drive campaign performance and brand success.
“I’m a marketer that sits in an operations company. The numbers matter. eBay helps us uplevel the stories around the numbers.”
Andrea Derby, Director, US Advertising & Global Brand Management at UPS
Defined Audiences is Key.
With major investments in AI and data science, brands and publishers are close to reaching the right consumers at the right time, all the time, and with fewer errors. However, not everyone is there yet. eCommerce platforms like eBay have really been pioneers when it comes to defining audiences and making them actionable for brands. It was the ability to tailor messaging to specific audiences that helped brands like Synchrony see success in engaging consumers where they shop.
“Our test and learn budgets can earn their way into our bigger digital media budget simply by performing…and eBay performs.”
Chris Merrill, CMO at Synchrony
Audience segmentation allows the right consumer to receive relevant ads, thereby not disrupting their user experience (well at least not as much). eCommerce platforms continue to be leaders in this as they have a front-row view into 107 million hours of shopping data each month.
Data privacy regulations is an industry-wide effort.
“For those of us that have been in digital advertising for a long time, we’ve never talked about regulation. I can’t think of a panel in which I talked about regulation until the last 18 months but we’re growing up as an industry,” said Maggie Mesa, VP of Mobile Business Development at OpenX.
Regulation continues to be top of mind for every marketer and publisher. In fact, there were 16 panels on consumer privacy alone. Brands aren’t just following the strict measures set by government regulation like GDPR. They are acting proactively and evolving their businesses so they’re in line with future regulatory models. Brands, publishers, and eCommerce sites feel the responsibility to consumers and are doing their best to be mindful of their privacy while communicating the value exchange. “Privacy is a huge deal to us. It will always be at the forefront of everything that we do” said Parker Burgess, eBay Advertising Head of Client Insights & Strategy.
Cross-platform measurement is a MUST.
We can’t talk about data without talking about measurement. Cross-platform measurement is defined by the ability to “integrate measurement of online and offline media at both the aggregate and individual level,” according to the Advertising Research Foundation. This ultimately allows brands to effectively connect with consumers on their different digital devices and be able to measure the engagement holistically.
As mentioned by Bill Tucker, Group Executive VP of the ANA, “Marketers want to be able to establish unique, unduplicated reach. They want to be able to optimize marketing and media budgets across their portfolio. There is an inability to do that right now and it [requires] a complex solution.” Brands are fed up with poor media mixes and are at the brink of truly figuring how every dollar is working for them.
To learn more about how eBay Ads first-party, real intent data can work for your brand dollars, contact us here.