Welcome to episode No. 5 of AdExchanger Talks, a podcast from the AdExchanger editorial team on data-driven marketing. Let us know if you like it, and please subscribe via your preferred channel.
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Omnicom Group’s leadership credits the company’s analytics arm, Annalect, with helping it capture a bunch of new business in 2016. Procter & Gamble and AT&T were the two big media wins, both accruing to fledgling agency Hearts & Science.
And then there’s McDonald’s, a creative account that went to DDB. In the latest episode of the “AdExchanger Talks” podcast, Annalect’s North America CEO Erin Matts says the future of the company lies in business wins like that one.
“We’ve optimized the heck out of the media side of things for so long. Let’s go back and do that for the creatives,” Matts says in this episode. “That piece of it where data and analytics is reuniting media and creative … has been something clients really respond to.”
Annalect has plenty of work ahead to help creatives use data better. Media folks have known for a while that a good media plan requires optimization, but creatives still need to learn that mindset.
Even so, she says, “I give the creative agencies and creative directors a ton of credit. They’ve really changed the language they use. Data can help inspire a creative brief, rather than what the conventional wisdom told us, which is that all of this data is too prescriptive.”
The episode has plenty more on Annalect: its culture, new consulting practice, technology approach and obsession with cross-device identity in the age of walled gardens.
On that last one, Matts also reveals that Annalect is in talks with consumer platform companies (Facebook?) to find privacy-friendly ways to bring their unique data sets into larger measurement models.
“Once they started to realize that data set is one of their most unique and valuable assets … figuring out how to make it work for advertisers is in their best interest,” she says. “They’re recognizing that.”
This episode of AdExchanger Talks is sponsored by Google AdSense.
