“You know, I think we already have enough consumer data, enough personalization in place, and enough advanced ad technology for programmatic media buying.” Indeed, this is something you don't hear very often in the marketing world.
Indeed, it is widely taboo within the industry to suggest that owning consumer data is not an inevitable progression towards hyper-personalized and targeted communications that are as valuable as their actual habits. It has been with. Suggesting otherwise shows you to be a backward Luddite who doesn't understand the power of new technology.
I have seen many senior global marketing leaders proudly espouse the importance of such measures in their companies' business strategies and approve millions of dollars accordingly, but It's hard to know how much you really believe this or just follow it. That way they won't seem like they're behind the times.
One of the biggest motivators I've seen is a universal feeling that there's more competition in this space and that your brand needs to catch up. Five years ago, I wrote an article comparing marketing teams' conversations about data to high school students' conversations about sex. Everyone talks about sex, but very few people do it well.
It remains widely taboo within the industry to suggest that we are not inevitably moving towards hyper-personalized and targeted communications.
When I worked at GSK, I remember several times when the business was shocked when board members, executives, and everyone around them suddenly asked additional questions about our data strategy. Masu. Usually, it was triggered by comments in the press or on earnings calls by companies like his P&G, which were making bold claims about their proprietary data approaches. At some point, we needed to focus on data acquisition, targeting, and personalization.
P&G certainly has a great approach to data. Some brands, such as Pampers, clearly have incredibly detailed data strategies and customer journeys aimed at tracking families from the moment of birth to every stage of a child's development. But when it comes to selling Tide laundry detergent to a large portion of the U.S. population, you can imagine the brand isn't too worried about data registration or hypertargeting.
less is more
I'm here to be a therapist who tells you that while it's clear that sometimes these things are important, it's also perfectly okay to say that sometimes they aren't really necessary. Personally, in my role, I wish I had been more confident in speaking against the tide when I didn't think some strategic decisions were really aligned with what would drive the most value for the business. I did.
At the end of 2023, the Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Report by US-based ANA showed that approximately one-third of the money advertisers spend on programmatic media will go to end consumers and publishers. It was done. A slightly higher percentage is completely lost in the system due to unviewable impressions, fraudulent impressions, or impressions directed to low-quality clickbait sites.
The final third is purposefully used for ad tech and data that enables programmatic buying and may actually add enough value to justify its existence. When you add in agency fees and tagging fees to your waterfall, the price you end up actually buying space with a publisher could be less than 20p per pound.
5 trends that will shape media in 2024
In most supply chains, such a breach would be a shocking revelation, but it caused only a small ripple in the media. Perhaps that's because this detailed report goes into more than a dozen nuances that are simply unacceptable. Perhaps that's because the numbers aren't actually new, he was simply repeating similar results obtained from ISBA a few years ago. Perhaps this reflects a broader blind belief that because everyone else is using these technologies, they must still have value in the end. . You might think that somehow his $22 billion efficiency improvement potential they identified would have gotten their attention.
If you give two-thirds of the media budget that's depleted in your system directly to media owners, they'll be happy to give you significantly better value, reach, and even some bonuses. Digging deep into supply path optimization for an owned media approach will help you identify partners and technologies that are of sufficient value and worth including in your plan, and identify good places to repair leaky buckets. Helpful.
Sunk cost of data
Similarly, the idea of capturing as much first-party data as possible to better understand consumers and make more targeted communications is very appealing. However, that discussion rarely takes into account the actual cost of collecting the data, let alone the significant sunk costs in CDPs and data infrastructure to collate and store the data. Kicker? The more data you add to your media buys, the more you pay per thousand impressions to reach the right consumers.
That's before you consider how quickly data becomes stale, irrelevant, or out of sync with the technology you're trying to leverage it with. And that's even before you start questioning how accurate the data is in the first place, or how misleading the signals we give are.
In my work with companies such as Mondelez, Diageo and GSK, I have consistently found that by the time you factor in all these costs, you can reach a more targeted audience by simply deploying a wider range of media. I've seen examples where it's cheaper to do so. Not only did I buy something that happened to include those things, but it also included countless other perks.
The more data you add to your media buys, the more you pay per thousand impressions to reach the right consumers.
Delivering the right message to the right consumer at the right time is a very attractive prospect. Most marketers wouldn't say no to that rich promise. The challenge is that there is not enough discussion about whether reaching more roughly the right consumers at roughly the right time is sometimes more effective. Especially if some of the extra attention you “accidentally” got ends up in the market for your brand a few months later.
One of the first references you can find online to a “big network” is a Guardian article I wrote in 2015 about Mondelez’s work with Facebook. Almost a decade later, this concept of moving toward highly personalized communications remains the North Star for many companies, but when interpreted in its most literal sense, it's actually quite effective. There is little evidence that this is a marketing tactic.
Partly because it's often done poorly, and the simple economics of targeting and reach are hard to get right, but also because it does some damage to the power of big, unified creative ideas. there is.
balance of possibilities
While I personally still believe in the great potential of following an approach that delivers personal connections at scale, I think there are many rich middle grounds that companies can explore away from the extremes. . This approach is certainly more subtle than just running one TV ad, but it doesn't actually require a personalized message for each consumer. Many brands rely on basic persona, such as exploring different passion points through contextually targeted creative, or speaking appropriately to diverse audiences through specifically targeted publications and news media. I haven't actually experimented with lization.
This doesn't mean that data-driven marketing, personalization at scale, and programmatic media are bad, but that you should always ask yourself if they're the right ones for the specific campaign and marketing goals you have in mind. means. .
As marketers in particular, and media professionals in particular, we need to understand that the answer almost certainly lies in balance. These new technology and data approaches are worth considering, but the true test of something is not just whether it works on its own, but whether it works well enough that other uses of the same money Or not.
Marketers prioritize first-party data as the illusion of control with third-party cookies fades
Despite the movement towards allowing traditional media channels to buy themselves programmatically, it is not inevitable that someday all media will be bought this way. Many of the forward-thinking companies I talk to through his WFA, or now through my own consulting work, have actually reduced the role that programmatic media plays in their corporate structures in recent years. Perhaps even the majority of large companies are turning away from true “open market” programmatic, where campaigns run across tens of thousands of unknown sites, and moving toward inclusion lists and private marketplaces.
Articles and presentations about it can be hard to find, but there are far more horror stories about failed CDPs and behind-closed-doors data strategies than stories of overwhelming success. However, under the right business conditions, such stories do exist. This article explores the true value of first-party data and is certainly worth a read for anyone looking to learn more.
It's safe to say that AI and other emerging technologies will continue to disrupt this sector for years to come. Many of them will move us closer to a world where the benefits of advanced purchasing and data approaches outweigh the costs and caveats. This is still not always the case.
While it may seem a bit old-fashioned and you may be worried that it's outdated and lacking in tricks, it's okay to question how much data and targeting you really need to get the best results. It's also safe to conclude that, given the right evidence, the answer for your business may be that it makes sense to use quite a lot, especially if you work extensively with performance marketing. It also makes sense that data and targeting may be more relevant for a very niche product (for example, a very premium whisky) than for something more mainstream (for example, a mainstream bourbon).
The great thing about looking back at a more “traditional” approach to media, which prioritizes partnerships, known media titles, and quality context, is that it avoids many of the broader problems faced by digital media. If you rely on targeting a broader audience or native partners, you will hardly notice the disappearance of cookies. Things like brand safety, media quality, and viewability can be managed with more control over campaign governance and setup, but without any of the significant risks that come with the open web. Many of these are very much in line with his new WFA Global Media Charter and the challenge to advertisers to rethink their media approaches and ecosystems over the coming years.
As a current free agent, I'm able to write this perspective without incurring the wrath of a company's PR team, but it's important to note that I truly believe in data and the power of it for future employers. I feel it necessary to conclude by emphasizing. Programmatically if done correctly. In fact, I once helped him create a training workshop called “Programmagic”. But this has led marketers to ask what is valuable, strategically or creatively, and what they should be pushing to deliver it with technology, and to explore the possibilities. I was able to avoid getting lost in my sexuality.
Gerry Dakin is a global media leader who has worked for companies such as GSK, Diageo and Mondelez. He is also a WFA Diversity Ambassador.
