The ‘Data’ Category
The IAB has partnered with Winterberry Group to author a new study on the practices "in data aggregation, management and deployment" called "From Information to Audiences: The Emerging Marketing Data Use Cases." According to a press release, four different use cases are used as a baseline for discovering how ad targeting data is being implemented today across online marketing programs and educating the advertising community at-large. Download the whitepaper.
IAB Patrick Dolan and Winterberry Group analyst Jonathan Margulies discussed the whitepaper and its findings.
AdExchanger.com: Looking at the study, what's the biggest surprise in your estimation?
Patrick Dolan: I'm impressed with how quickly a set of marketers and agencies have tapped into data to create better user experiences, harnessing newly available information to deliver a successful marriage of tailored content and relevant advertising.
Fully realizing the promise of "big data" will require both innovation from the industry plus coordination among industry organization such as the IAB to insure that the industry operates at the highest level of transparency, integrity and quality to continue to foster trust with consumers and legislators.
AdExchanger.com: Audience Optimization, Channel Optimization and Ad Sales/Yield Optimization all showed a "low maturity" level. Is it simply "early days" for the use of these data techniques in your opinion?
Jonathan Margulies: "Early days" is absolutely accurate, but I don't think it's fair to say that maturity levels are low just because we haven't yet had enough time to understand and act upon all that data can do to drive marketing performance. For those of us who are close to the ad tech world, the inherent long-term role of technology may be easier to conceptualize, but the fact of the matter is that a large portion of the advertising ecosystem—the preponderance, really—still look at data through one of two lenses: either as offline prospecting lists (which are effectively used as the fuel behind direct mail campaigns), or as the amorphous batch of quantitative reporting that comes back from Web analytics efforts, campaign management tools, media buying platforms and the other technologies that supposedly provide the "insight" to drive better spending decisions.
I think it's that second data "type" that's ultimately responsible for inhibiting broader data sophistication. At this stage in advertising's evolution, we're struggling with the fact that we can now access an abundance of raw, unstructured information—but we have no set of unified best practices around the channels, marketing applications and optimization approaches that best make use of it. Going forward, though, I think that presents a substantial series of opportunities: both for those advertisers who identify data as a core asset and can build the governance processes (and infrastructure) to support its use, as well as those data suppliers and technology intermediaries who can establish robust, best-in-class platforms for deploying data for use across execution channels.
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Eric Stein is Executive Vice President, Online Solutions, of Epsilon, a database marketing company.
AdExchanger.com: Can you give a quick background on the latest with Epsilon?
ES: We have a platform, assets and client relationships with which we're building an online business. Online Audience Central and other things that we've done over the past two years is just the start.
We've built a business using our data. We've now incorporated a platform so that our data can sit online in a more seamless and ready to use kind of way. Also, we now have a platform for our clients, in order to bring their own data online. That reflects the online complement of two of Epsilon's four main businesses offline. We have one of the largest databases of marketing service providers in the country. We run five out of the six top banks, nine out of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, etc. Having an online complement so that clients can use [offline] data that we've helped them collect and manage in the online space is what today's marketers and CMOs want to be able to do.
Through the acquisition of the direct marketing service of Equifax, which was about a year and a half ago, we have the largest in the U.S. and it is only two of its kind. It is the largest file of consumer information available in the country with demographics and other information. Then, we also own Abacus, which is the largest transaction co‑op in the country. We're the largest surveyor in North America. We send out 35 million five‑page surveys to people on an annual basis. Those three components taken separately are bigger than any of our peers. I would say we've been very deliberate in our strategy to build this online business. But, we’re confident in what we have and are committed to continuing down this path.
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On Wednesday, Hearst digital marketing agency, iCrossing, said that it had acquired data management platform, Red Aril. In the release, iCrossing identified the DMP as a key part of the deal as well as "a trading desk application, which leverages insights from the data management platform to execute and inform media campaigns across networks and RTB exchanges." Read it.
CEO Don Scales and CTO Peter Randazzo of iCrossing discussed the acquisitions and its implications.
AdExchanger.com: What was the trigger for you for acquiring Red Aril?
DON SCALES: If you focus on the iCrossing strategy, we've come forward in recent years with a view of connectedness and talking about connected brands. Up to this point, while I think we've been able to execute at a certain level around the concept of connectedness, we've in many ways been channel optimizers. We’ve been able to help our clients optimize around paid search and natural search, or whatever it might be. But, we didn't have the enabler that could help us to bring that connectedness to life.
The Red Aril opportunity allows us to bring the DMP into this so we can give one view of the customer across many channels to enable real‑time content optimization for our client. We think Red Aril is exactly what we needed at this point in time.
Can you speak to what this means for Hearst?
DON SCALES: When we look at it from the standpoint of Hearst, iCrossing is able to build solutions with a heritage of a large publisher, an agency like ours and a DMP like Red Aril. There's no other entity like that in the marketplace today. Hearst brings audience across a large scale and access to a large volume of high‑value customers to clients with a wide stable of premium properties today. That presents an opportunity for the brands to grow their audiences. Our clients will have an opportunity to identify and reach those customers across Hearst properties if they so desire.
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On Tuesday, sharing data company Clearspring announced the acquisition of Xgraph, a "data science company focused on modeling and monetizing the web-wide social graph." Read the release.
Clearspring CEO Ramsey McGrory discussed the acquisition and its implications.
AdExchanger.com: Why was this be the right time to buy XGraph? What was going on at Clearspring that made it the right time?
RM: There’s a lot happening in the industry and at Clearspring. We are in a triple growth market: Digital is a growth market within advertising. And then within digital, we have social and data‑driven audience markets exploding, both for advertising and for content management. Clearspring is at the nexus of these growth markets and growing ourselves. We acquired Xgraph for its data science technology and deep executive team.
If you look at the ad serving space in 2007, in the span of a year, all of the ad serving companies were acquired. And since that point, those different players – Google, and the combination of Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL, even more recently MediaOcean – are competing to build the tech stack and to consolidate media into their marketplaces. If you play that forward and they're successful, we will have three very large media marketplaces that need a massive amount of data to enable smart buying and selling. There are very few ‘big data’ players who can help them do this.
There are three fundamental data driven questions: a) what data do you have, b) how do you activate it, and c) with whom do you partner? Clearspring now has the largest multi-graph platform, a sciences team, and our partners are inviting us to help them activate it – for research, planning, targeting, measurement on the advertising side and content sharing and custom content management on the publisher side.
What exactly is the multi-graph?
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Lisa Hook is CEO of Neustar, a telecommunications company. Last Tuesday, Neustar acquired caller ID infrastructure and data company TARGUSinfo for $650 million. Read the release.
Hook discussed the TARGUSinfo acquisition and the strategy ahead - especially as it relates to advertising.
AdExchanger.com: What's Neustar's worldview on the opportunity in advertising and marketing?
LH: We recognize the potential in real-time marketing and analytics in this industry and this is a strategic reason for us making this acquisition. When we look at digital marketing and advertising in a world that is exploding with connected devices and multiple ways to reach consumers, advertising really has to change. It has to add value. It has to be appropriate. It has to be in context. As you know, people don't mind advertising as long as it is providing value to them.
How do you provide value to a consumer with digital advertising? You expose them to products and services that they find valuable. And the way to do that obviously, is to do audience analysis beforehand, to understand what type of content to serve up, and to whom. If I'm online or if I'm on my cell phone and I get an advertisement for football, I'm going to find it extremely intrusive because I have zero interest in football. But, if I get an advertisement for the latest pair of Jimmy Choo shoes, I'm not going to regard that as advertising, I'm going to regard it as value add. Our long-term view is helping the CMO and agencies deliver relevant advertising information to consumers based on what they value in an environment that makes sense to them.
We think the growth in digital advertising is explosive. I mean, truly explosive. The world is moving away, from non‑targeted media to a one-to-one relationship between the marketer and the recipient.
So why buy TARGUSinfo?
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Former Yahoo! and Right Media Exchange executive Ramsey McGrory has re-emerged since his departure only a couple of weeks ago to become the new CEO of Clearspring, a web content sharing tools and ad targeting data provider. Read the release. The company's former CEO and founder, Hooman Radfar, will become Executive Chairman at the company.
McGrory discussed his latest move, Clearspring's opportunity and the data ecosystem.
AdExchanger.com: What are some of the key learnings that you will bring from Right Media to Clearspring?
RM: I have an understanding of where the ad tech and data spaces are in their evolutions and what buyers and sellers need to run their businesses successfully. I also have an appreciation of the complexity of the current market and the need for simplicity and service. Also, I have seen firsthand the difference that effectively using data can have. When used correctly and appropriately, data can be leveraged to create huge advantages for buyers and sellers in media buying and content distribution. For buyers, data can and should be used for more than simply targeting. For sellers, data should be better leveraged to drive what content a user sees. Lastly and most importantly, real innovation comes when you stay very close to the market. Early innovations like dCPM and the RMX itself came from just listening to the market, responding and iterating.
AdExchanger.com: So, why Clearspring?
My father was an Episcopal minister and all good things came in threes, so three reasons:
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The world of data-driven display media is not just about non-guaranteed, remnant media. It’s about guaranteed, too.
Lowell Simpson, Chief Data Solutions Officer at GroupM media agency Mediacom, teamed with Yoav Arnstein of Legolas and discussed the world of data and online media - especially as it relates to brands - at last Thursday’s session of TARGUSinfo’s Interactive Insights Summit in Las Vegas.
Simpson crystallized for the audience a comprehensive list of challenges for remnant and guaranteed buying in combination with data to effect successful campaigns on behalf of brands - challenges that many of his competitors can likely relate to.
We list a few of them here for your viewing pleasure along with excerpts of Simpson’s commentary.
Minimal Reach and Spend Forecasting
"There are a lot of the limitations for our brands in terms of buying this way – in particular, minimal reach and spend forecasting is probably the number one. As you all know, margins have been decreasing. Budgets are as volatile as the stock market has been over the last couple of years. And, the first thing that gets cut when the economy is down is advertising spend.
(...) With our clients it's a procurement world. Nobody likes going back to procurement twice for that money. We try to do things on our side to stagnate that away. [Still,] this type of buying does give us a problem with our clients."
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Yesterday, media measurement firm comScore acquired ad verification firm AdXpose (formerly mPire) for $22 million. Read more.
Anne Hunter, VP, Ad Effectiveness at comScore, discussed the acquisition and its implications.
AdExchanger.com: This is a relatively small acquisition in terms of dollars. Why not build out versus buy AdXpose?
AH: The products available via comScore AdEffx and AdXpose are highly complementary, and after careful review of our options – both internally and externally – we came to the conclusion that this acquisition would best position us to achieve our strategic objective of becoming the industry’s most trusted source for advertising measurement and effectiveness solutions. With AdXpose's strong technology, client-friendly product features and global capabilities, it became clear that this particular company was the absolute best fit.
Will ad verification become a feature of comScore's own ad effectiveness products? Or a standalone offering?
The validation solutions that AdXpose brings to comScore fit very nicely with our existing AdEffx Campaign Essentials product, allowing us to offer a truly comprehensive, end-to-end validation solution. Ultimately, we will deliver a single offering from which clients can select varying levels of campaign validation measurement, including but not limited to, geographic verification, brand safety, viewability, engagement, audience demographics and even new developments for in-flight campaign measurement.
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On Wednesday, ShareThis announced that former Google AdSense exec Kurt Abrahamson (and most recently CEO of SocialMedia.com which was sold to LivingSocial) would be taking over as CEO and former CEO Tim Schigel would become chairman of ShareThis' board. Read more on the ShareThis blog.
Abrahamson discussed his new role and the opportunity ahead for the company.
AdExchanger.com: Some see the sharing space as based on the "Trojan Horse" model where transparency on use of data is not understood by all parties. How will you look to overcome this perception in your new role as CEO of ShareThis?
KA: Our view is simple: transparency and privacy are top priorities. We do not view the sharing space as based on a "Trojan Horse" model at all.
Allowing our users to set preferences for their data usage, providing publishers with a way to tap into the value of the data that users do make available and providing meaningful insight into the way people connect with other people, content and brands will enhance the entire online ecosystem. This "sharing economy" – as we like to call it – then takes on a kind of snowball effect. The more people contribute to it, the better and more valuable it becomes. But we respect consumers' right to choose whether they want to be a part of this movement.
We recently participated in Evidon Empower 2011, a great event that highlighted the myriad initiatives – both self-regulatory and government-imposed – that will affect the advertising industry in the coming weeks and months. It's events like these, and Evidon's GreenLight certification program, that help brands build relationships of trust and transparency with their customers, and we're happy to be shaping this discussion.
Looking one to three years out, between first and third-party data, what do you see happening as it relates to ad targeting?
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Ed Busby is Partner at Boston Consulting Group. He is finishing up a study on data strategy in the digital media space and presented some his findings at the BlueKai Summit in New York City.
AdExchanger.com: How do you break the data ecosystem down -and in layman's terms?
EB: We think about the various services in "stacks" based on the role they play in the process of using the data.
- At the base we have the raw data itself which we break down into its various components.
- Above that, we have the "marketplace" for the buying and selling of data including the aggregators and exchanges.
- Next we have analytic services that use that data including various ways of targeting specific users.
- Above that we have "data management," systems that allow marketers to manage all the different types of data. The systems often include some of the analytic functionalities as well.
- Finally we have the ad placement functions that match ads with appropriate content as well as performance tracking of those advertisements.
Going in, did you realize the complexity of the data ad ecosystem? Any surprises overall?
We did realize that the ecosystem was highly complex, but what was surprising was the dynamic nature of the marketplace. New services seem to be appearing almost daily while existing players are expanding into adjacent spaces. I suspect that this level of dynamism will only increase as we see an expansion in the use of different types of data in new and exciting applications, particularly in the mobile world.
How are cultural views impacting the use of online data and how do you see this playing out?
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