How does a publisher set up a data strategy that takes today's always-on environment into consideration? In the latest chapter of the serialisation of The Programmatic Handbook, published by the IAB UK, Emma Newman, UK country manager, PubMatic explains.
The change in consumers’ content consumption – what they consume, when, and how – means that we’ve seen the last of the days when publishers could simply plug their CRM data into a data management platform (DMP) to generate the insights needed to manage their businesses.
The proliferation of devices, and the 'always-on' nature of today’s consumer, mean that the ability to reach the mythical ‘segment of one’ across a multitude of devices is more important now than ever before. Publishers who use first-, second- and third-party data to its full capacity are able to deliver meaningful and brand-consistent messages to their consumers consistently and persistently, wherever they are and on whatever device they are using. This level of individual targeting will allow marketers to focus on driving loyalty and lifetime value, delivering a more relevant experience that deepens the engagement and, ultimately, bonds that tie consumers to brands.
Publishers need to ensure that whatever data strategy they employ will provide them with critical insights, garnered from a wealth of sources, required to deliver upon their strategic business goals. Most importantly, they will need to do this in a timely and, if possible, real-time, manner.
Once you’re clear on the data that you need to deliver upon your business goals, the next major step is to ensure that you have the appropriate internal resources and to choose the correct technology partner. There are numerous vendors offering a multitude of services. We recommend that, over and above everything else, you take into consideration the following three things:
- Will you receive your data in real-time? Programmatic is a real-time industry; even data that’s a day old might not provide you with the knowledge you need to optimise your business.
- Will you receive your data in a format that provides real actionable insight? If not, you may need additional in-house resources to ensure you are driving the highest return from your data investment.
- Will your data be an aggregation of all your disparate sources delivered in a single view? Having to sift through multiple data sets can be a time consuming and frustrating exercise.
Assuming the answers to the above questions are 'yes', one final thing to take into consideration is the whether your data strategy and data partner(s) are capable of accommodating your business needs as you grow.
Questions to ask yourself as you progress further down your strategic planning include:
In addition to accessing data about your own business, what specific areas of the overall market would you want to be able to benchmark against? For example, how important is it to see which advertisers are running campaigns on publishers in your sector, but not on your site, or do you have enough of the right audience to make your offering more attractive than that of your competitors?
What is the make-up of your revenue stream going to look like in the next 12, 24, 36 months? The consumer shift to mobile will have an impact on your business and your data strategy, especially when the majority of that mobile traffic is devoid of third-party cookies, resulting in a partial blindness.
What’s on your product roadmap and what’s the rate of innovation that you are expecting to experience over the coming months/years? Ensure that you factor this in when developing your data strategy, planning your resources, and choosing your partner(s).
Developing and managing a data strategy is a complex and time-consuming exercise. However, it’s an investment well worth making as getting this right more than pays off in the longer term. Having robust analytics will help inform your decision making in a multitude of commercial areas including, but not limited to:
- How to prioritise your deals
- How to price inventory across multiple channels
- How to optimise that inventory during the flight of a campaign
- How to allocate which inventory to which deal type, e.g. direct, private marketplace, or open RTB
Not having a robust data strategy is not an option if you are going to succeed in today’s digital publishing world. Get this decision right and you’ll not only secure the highest return on your digital assets, you will also ensure that you are delivering the greatest consumer experience for your audience and the highest ROI for your advertisers.
“If 2015 was the year when publishers enabled all their ad positions for programmatic buying, then 2016 will be the year when publishers need to demonstrate audience value. For publishers, being able to deliver audiences and data will become key tools to aid advertisers in discovering their inventory within the high-volume automated eco-system”, comments Ashu Mathura, DMP product director, Adform
Listed below are our recommendations on how to develop a data strategy that’s going to deliver what you need, both today and in the future:
– Choose vendors with the widest array of capabilities to answer your need for a complete set of data that includes competitive insights.
– Insist vendors update your data in real time and work only with those that do.
– Question vendor partners on their cross-platform and multi-format capabilities and how they can help you assemble your data to derive a holistic view of your business.
– Require that the analytics tools that your vendor supplies are easy to use.
– Drive vendors towards innovation. If you find you need something that your vendor doesn’t supply, don’t be shy – ask for it.
Finally, don’t find yourself locked in to any one solution. Test and iterate until your partnerships and strategy are tailored to your specific needs and you’ll find yourself with a data strategy that is fit for purpose today and in the future.