Data driven advertising is becoming big news as word spreads that it regularly smashes the campaign results of non-data driven campaigns, often by 20 percent or more. If proof is needed of the rise (and rise) of data as a critical ingredient in media buying, look no further than this week’s industry conferences. On Wednesday, several hundred advertising executives gathered at ExchangeWire’s first Ad Trading Summit in Sydney to share views on the growth in data-driven media buying. Data-driven technologies also featured big at Ad:Tech where conference slots ran headlines like ‘From Madmen To Mathmen’ and ‘What Are You Doing With All That Digital Data?’.
As we fast slide towards a world where all media is digital media - and print more a tantalising degustation to digital’s main courses, spliced across the multiple platforms of the web, mobile, tablet, TV and console - data is set to become as important as media itself in media buying decisions. Data underpins digital and when used intelligently, as we’re only just beginning to do, it has the power to significantly sharpen campaign performance and results across every type of digital campaign, from video to display to search.
Of course, many roadblocks inhibit both brands and advertisers from fully capitalising on the rivers of data currently accumulating to help better shape and direct better ads to the individuals most likely to respond to them. Limited access to transparent third party data is one most of us point to. For data to realise its value in Australia, it needs to shift from being an in-house publishing asset to being a transparent commodity, where its merits can be independently weighted and assessed, as any tradable commodity must be.
Advertisers and agencies also need to be able to easily and in real time mesh their own first party data with third party data as part of buying media through exchanges. Currently it is mainly advertisers’ first party data that is behind the data-driven digital advertising campaigns we see yielding impressive results. It is not a given that more open access to third party publisher’s data will lift campaign results even further but it will remove some current blind-spots and give us greater confidence that our data is as sharp as it can be to drive better ad performance.
Also, we all need more ad inventory to go through exchanges or trading desks, not just the equivalent of the unsold book remainders we often see in Australian exchanges. Fears that exchanges will commoditise ad inventory will not be resolved by holding back perceived premium inventory and the rich data that goes with it. Quality inventory that provides value to advertisers will rise in value just as surely as inventory that is more about reach and frequency might not.
Inevitably these impediments to data driven advertising and others will fall away, bringing one of the most significant evolutions in advertising since the dawn of digital itself. Most of us acknowledge this, which is why many are proselytising on conference stages like messiahs heralding a new tomorrow. As in any prophesying, hyperbole can seem thick on the ground but within the hyperbole lays some truth.
The shift to data driven marketing will have a major impact on our industry. It will change how media inventory is made available and purchased, and where ads are placed and before which niche audiences. It will even impact on the types of ads we as an industry produce, as data-driven campaigns enable us to dynamically develop and serve multiple creative executions to more effectively reach far more granular audience sub-groups. It will also change what we come to accept as a successful advertising campaign, and the type of skill sets we need to attract into our industry. Math whizzes will need to be tunnelled to a world that traditionally lured mostly creative types, and we will need our tertiary institutions to do their bit in training them before they do.
Around the world, the wheels are in motion taking us toward this world of more data-driven digital marketing but we all know we’re not there yet. This is particularly the case in Australia, where we are well behind our colleagues in EMEA and the US along an inevitable road to a data-driven advertising future. But we are on an inevitable track and one that will require much more industry dialogue and attention along the way.
Carolyn Bollaci
Country Manager Australia and New Zealand
MediaMind
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