“The Data Diet — You Are What You Eat”
Ted Smith, VP Sales US at adsquare
Having worked for nearly twenty years in advertising and technology, I’m recognizing an exciting evolutionary moment in the making, the likes of which our industry can draw parallels from the game-changing focus on quality of the farm-to-table movement in the food industry.
In looking at what fueled the growth of the Baby Boomer generation, one can clearly see it to be the proliferation of technologies developed during WWII and the subsequent decades that brought widespread distribution of food to the rampantly growing families suburbanizing the US. The war accelerated applications of freezing, drying, dehydration, concentration and packaging technologies developed in the ’30s. Big agriculture streamlined production and distribution, delivering food to families thousands of miles away — but at the expense of taste and local economy.
The iconic, emblematic and perhaps most nefarious of these food developments during these years of growth was undoubtedly…Spam, protein delivered to the shelves of countless countless grocers with dubious meat content in an opaque, tin can.In a reaction to this, an uprising started in with seemingly hippy ideals, in passionate foodie communities where they understood that quality in food is depleted in every step you take away from the farm and farmer from whom the produce originated. The farm-to-table movement, now widespread from Michelin starred restaurants to such fast-casual salad chains as Sweetgreen or Chopt, has transcended trend or diet to become a real cultural awakening.
I bring up the locavore movement because it’s an illustrative (dare I say digestible) example of a flight to quality that’s analogous to what we are seeing in the advertising industry’s appetite for data. Incredible technological development over the past decade have furthered the mass movement to online & mobile engagement. Applications of remarkable targeting capabilities that were developed in the first decade of this new millennium accelerated greatly with greater worldwide adoption of social media platforms, app marketplaces and the rise of programmatic advertising.
Marketers are by all measures well-fed on big data, but starved for truly enriching, actionable data and the means to assess its quality. In fact, only 33% of advertisers say they completely trust the audience insights they are using as derived from the data they use in their campaigns.*
What influences data quality the most is defined by one ingredient: transparency. Transparency is critical to the success of properly leveraging programmatic from for real consumer benefit, as well as for the industry as a whole. This is the main reason why transparency should also underline all aspects of the use of data, because it not only means using data more ethically but also brings value to all parties (vendors, advertisers, consumers)
Bringing Transparency To The Table
Having access to the right data empowers relevant marketing experience for the consumer and at the same time gives marketers a holistic understanding of their audience. Given the abundance of data out there from both 1st party and 3rd party vendors, it is becoming extremely difficult to differentiate between accurate and inaccurate data providers. When your campaign is aiming for both quality and scale it becomes even more troublesome.
Similarly to how the farm-to-table movement influenced the way restaurants communicate the value of their differentiated ingredients, as a data marketplace, it is our responsibility to aim for more accountability when it comes to the quality and sources data vendors provide. We are responsible to provide tools enabling transparency and putting advertisers in control. The way to do that is by providing marketers with access to more information about the data providers — their methodology of collecting data and the sources of their data.
Advertisers need to have tools in hand that give them different measurement solutions such as official industry benchmarks (e.g., Nielsen DAR), self-service platforms that enable them to take control by receiving estimated reach forecast as well as the potential to test different data partners. To win back trust from advertisers and to emphasize the high quality, adsquare is the first data platform that guarantees on-target-percentages that exceed the Nielsen DAR benchmarks for mobile in specific countries — UK, US, Germany, France and Italy.
Bringing Transparency To Consumers
When we talk about transparency, we should consider transparency for the industry and, even more importantly, transparency for consumers. When providing a personalized experience to consumers on mobile, data is a powerful enabler and solution, but if mistrust creeps in,very little potential is realized. So how do we serve these mobile-first, digitally empowered consumers? How do we provide personalized value that they demand?
It’s a challenge that we need to act upon. For the advertising industry one way to take action is to use data ethically and establish a higher level of trust between companies and consumers — further strengthening our data-driven economy. In order to win the hearts and minds of consumers and turn the challenge into opportunity, we need to meet and exceed their expectations while increasing awareness and trust. This can only happen by communicating to them on the relevant channels, in the relevant moments, and through the use of accurate and precise data. Smart businesses both on the supply and the demand side of the mobile marketing ecosystem should turn the compliance activities into an opportunity to stay ahead of the competition and to strengthen their customer relationships.
Legislations such as the new General Data Protection Regulation aim to return the control over personal data to European citizens and to simplify the regulatory environment in which international business is conducted. It’s important to take a step back and recognize the value that the new regulation brings. Much like the fall of processed food empire gave rise to the farm-to-table movement and changed the culture around how we eat, the new regulation protecting personal data rights of EU individuals can be a strong call to the advertising industry. Thanks to explicit consent GDPR will lead to an increase in data quality and give more accountability and visibility to the final consumers.
Savvy marketers should use this as an opportunity to dig deeper into the needs of their prospects and customers, by replacing the traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach to mobile marketing and embracing an approach that brings transparency back to the consumers’ table.
We can be the passionate advocates that bring meaningful change to the data diet and enduring health of our industry.
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*Source: Advertiser Perceptions “The State Of Advertising Measurement Report”, September 2017
