AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. This episode of AdExchanger Talks is supported by Exponential.
Josh Palau, VP for digital strategy at Bayer Consumer Health, spent years in agency land before going over to “the client.” In this week’s podcast, he describes how moving in-house (he has worked at brands like Comcast and J&J) taught him to focus on the numbers.
“Literally I’m in a sales meeting every morning talking about where the channel mix is going,” Palau says. Being on the inside also means dealing with factors that are invisible to agency partners, like IT constraints and internal politics. “It helped open up my mind about all the things that happen.”
In this episode he talks about the changing rules around media and, especially, data. He cites ongoing concerns around third-party audience data, including accuracy and cost issues. But he’s still a believer.
“The way we’ve tried to position programmatic is really about the data targeting,” Palau says. “I’ve used third-party data throughout my entire career. I’m not negative on that.”
Meanwhile first-party data, often held up as a gold standard, has its own perils. For instance, “The people that come to our websites, are we sure they’re the ones we want? We need to make sure we’re not building lookalike segment around coupon seekers, because that’s a really cheap segment to go get.”
Also in this episode: Brand building in the programmatic age, the persistent appeal of the Duopoly and slow growth of ad budgets.
