Data-management platform (DMP) Lotame rolled out Wednesday its Mobile DMP suite to help businesses collect and manage audience data from mobile devices.
The product, which can be added to Lotame’s current DMP offering or used as a standalone product, includes several features designed to help companies monetize their mobile inventory and engage with consumers on mobile platforms using rich audience data, said company executives.
Among its features, the Mobile DMP suite lets users collect first-party audience data from mobile Web browsers using its Behavioral Collection Pixel (BCP) tags (lines of code that gather and analyze data), explained Lotame’s technology EVP Eric Hastings.
“Even if a mobile browser doesn’t allow for third-party cookies, our BCP technology lets us collect the first-party data automatically using the client’s own cookie [through Apple’s IDFA or the Android Advertising ID],” Hastings said. “We’re not gathering personally identifiable information, but as users move through a site, we can collect their comments, clicks, postings and other activities.”
The process is privacy-friendly, Hastings added, since consumers can opt out of having their data collected through Apple’s IDFA and the Android Advertising ID.
Users can also create audience segments for native apps to deliver targeted ads, as well as track the performance of mobile campaigns. “One way of activating audience data in a native app is as we see a user coming into a client’s app, we can create a profile of the user using key values and add those key values to an ad tag in the client’s ad servers,” said product management VP Kalyan Lanka.
The Mobile DMP suite also includes the ability to access behavioral and demographic audience data from mobile sources through Lotame’s partnership with mobile third-party data provider AdMobius.
“Admobius’ data is comparable to the third-party data assets that are used on the display ad side, which is a huge benefit for our clients since mobile data, especially within the app environment, is very limited,” Lanka noted. The company will soon be announcing partnerships with other tech vendors, he added.
Five clients have been testing the Mobile DMP suite’s ability to collect data from mobile apps and its other features. The Weather Company’s Weather.com is one of the clients testing the suite and the results are promising, according to Alex Linde, SVP of monetization at The Weather Company.
“The challenge with mobile apps is not necessarily what data is available, the problem is the ad systems are often not connected to that data, which makes it very difficult to reach particular audiences in mobile apps,” Linde said. “Lotame provides that link between the data we have in our applications and the ad servers.”
One of the benefits of the Mobile DMP, Linde added, is that it integrates easily into Lotame’s existing DMP platform and allows users to compare different data sets. “It doesn’t make sense for us to have separate platforms,” Linde said. “Right now we’re exploring separate data sets (mobile Web data versus mobile device data) within the DMP and Lotame lets you stitch together the data.”
Looking ahead, Linde said he would like to see Lotame and other DMP companies add more capabilities for managing location data and a more comprehensive view of cross-device audiences.
Few DMPs offer mobile-focused capabilities. In addition to Lotame, [x+1], Knotice and BlueKai offer varying degrees of mobile tracking and targeting capabilities.
In a recent Forrester Wave report, former Forrester Research analyst Joanna O’Connell (who is now AdExchanger’s research director) noted that most DMPs must “build out mobile tracking and targeting plus tight integrations with existing marketing automation platforms and offline systems. Only then will marketers find true end-to-end audience management capabilities.”
