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How Data Can Be Used For More Than Just Audience Targeting

Delphine Fabre-Hernoux, Amnet, senior director, audience insight, argues that people who say 'data doesn't work' are wrong, and how using the correct methodology data can be used for more than just targeting, and applied to generate genuine audience insight. 

We should all be proud to see how data has rapidly taken a very important place in the advertisers, publishers and agencies minds. We – as professionals of the ad tech, agencies, and data industries - have made a tremendous job of educating people about the data. However, we should also realise that at some point we have failed or maybe haven’t delivered the simple messages enabling to deeply understand the importance and the value of the data.

Today, I am always surprised and concerned to hear from other professionals in our industry bold statements like ‘data does not work’.

Before drawing this conclusion, it’s important to step back and consider different elements in the equation. What was the objective, what were the strategies from a bidding perspective, and what were the messages? But I would add that in a way, data always works.

My statement will probably be surprising for lots of people but I am a strong believer that data used from a targeting standpoint is just the beginning of the story, and represents the tip of the iceberg. Indeed the real value of the data can be found in the analysis done at the user level and this is why data always works.

For advertisers, data always brings value because it will help them get a better understanding of their customers and their consumer journey. That said it’s important to follow specific steps to deliver value and insights.

Indeed, the starting point is through the first party data collection that will finally enable to discovery of the users. To illustrate this point let me bring it to life with an example with a retailer who enables his agency to collect his first party paid, owned and earned data.

Let’s take for example a male user who lives in London, visits the retailer’s website twice a week and regularly buys red wine. We could stop there and consider that we have enough information to be relevant with this user while engaging online with him.

In fact, I definitely think that it’s good starting point but I also think that we could go far beyond if everyone realised that the more we use the data, the more we learn about the user.

Indeed, it’s because this data is used for various programmatic strategies that we have the ability to get more insights about this user. We will make him more human by adding additional attributes through the power of raw data.

Skewing first party data against other data sources can help us determine other aspects of this person, for example that this user is also a tech enthusiast, has kids at home, likes to visit sport news websites...

An approach like this represents a massive opportunity to have a deep understanding of different customer profiles:  not-interested, curious mind, prospects, intenders, clients, loyal customers, influencers … and to engage with the right message for each user at the right place and at the right time

Consequently, the data goes beyond its usage from a targeting standpoint because it’s by using more data that you will learn more and invest more strategically from a media planning perspective and from a targeting standpoint.

For publishers, beyond the potential revenue stream coming from the sales of their data as a standalone product, they equally have the opportunity to learn more about their users.

Indeed, by leveraging their data – known as second party data – they can benefit from additional insights enabling them to deeply qualify advanced information about their audience which they can then provide their sales teams with and better monetise their data.

For them, it is now all about finding the best partners to sell their data and get in return insights enabling to uncover additional information at the user level they could never have collected on their own.

Since data is now integrated in the digital landscape, I dream of the day where people will clearly see how valuable the data is.

Claiming that data does not work is just a narrow view, even if sometimes it does not help to deliver efficiency and better campaign performance.

That said, the value driven by the audience insights should be considered more importantly than the efficiency of the data used to target or retarget.

Obviously building meaningful insights is a complex activity requiring tools, data, and expertise.

But today, nobody should disregard this type of investments because it’s a game changer for each party within the industry.

For advertisers, it enables them to better understand customers. For the publishers, it enables to better know their audiences. For agencies, it enables them to drive efficiencies while engaging with audiences on behalf of advertisers.