Digital marketing data as a strategic asset – who gets it?
These folks behind these buy-side businesses get it (for simplicity, just 3 examples; yes, there are others):
- WPP’s Media Innovation Group
- Publicis’s VivaKi
- Havas Digital’s AdNetic
These sell-side orgs get it:
- AdMeld
- Specific Media
- eXelate
Ok, but, what about advertisers? The purse string holders? What are advertisers doing to create, own, control and leverage [digital] marketing data? To create a competitively advantageous [digital] marketing data asset?
Note: I have digital in brackets because marketing as a discipline ain’t nothing if it’s not in some way, shape or form, rooted in digital media. And digital = data.
So, I’ve heard a few times now, from leadership at several FTSE 100 advertisers, and I paraphrase, “Everyone seems to own the data except us”.
There are a number of valid, compelling and creative reasons why this is happening e.g. agencies need new sources of revenue/margin lift, media sellers are, many will argue, simply innovating to compete and win, and so on.
But where does this leave the advertiser?
Below, off the cuff, are a few things I’ve learned in my discussions with marketers in the past 18 months:
- Most advertisers have no idea how their digital marketing programmes, and the data borne from these programmes, contribute to and affect the data ecosystems created by the organisations listed above and many others like them (both on the buy and sell side)
- More specifically, they are completely unaware of the vast volumes of valuable data that flow out of their enterprises, every day, via each of their digital marketing campaigns; this is especially true for direct response advertisers who practice what I call “tagging for targeting”
- Advertisers have yet to start thinking about how to create and maintain a [digital] marketing data asset to, amongst other things, enhance competitive advantage
- Advertisers don’t have a [digital] marketing data strategy
Marketing communications is a dynamic, fast-paced, quickly-evolving discipline. When done well, it’s financially rewarding and award-winning. But this thing called “digital”, now 10+ years in the making, is creating a whole host of new opportunities, and they are steeped in data. Huge amounts of the stuff.
See original post on the LinkedIn Digital Ad Targeting Innovation Group: http://bit.ly/aFf2Kv
