Moritz von Sanden, member of the IAB Data Council and head of sales at Audience360, says that while you might hear that “clients want cheap” they sometimes have no choice or that they don’t realise the value that good, transparent data can have — and it’s up to us to fix it.
I recently spoke at the IAB AdTech & Ops Summit about why accuracy and transparency is vital, to ensure digital media returns to a trusted marketing medium. It’s a topic that is under scrutiny and rightly so because, for me, when it comes to data in digital media, Schrödinger’s cat comes to mind. It’s often a black box where one doesn’t know if the data is good, bad or even real until checked – let alone if it’s contributing to business outcomes. In many instances, we have seen the paradoxical existence of ignorance, leading to a lack of trust.
Fortunately, we’re at a moment, as an industry, where the right questions are being asked. Now it’s up to us to work collectively to ensure digital media matures.
Transparency and accuracy are a rightful expectation by marketers and for digital ad investment to continue to grow in line with consumer adoption, I believe three key areas require our attention and collaborative effort. Target more accurately with higher quality, documented, vetted audiences. Measure using higher-quality data. Think about privacy compliance first to regain trust.
Audience Targeting
“Clients just want cheap” is something we all hear. It’s probably more complicated than that. Maybe it’s more: “Clients just want cheap because they cannot quantify the value of data.” Who can blame them? Lack of transparency in audiences often means that brands are buying cheap audiences containing big promises with the hope that amongst the data is the right potential customer. It is like trying to make apple pie and only buying recess fruit cups. Sure, they’re cheap to buy initially and there are apples in there, but you’ll have to buy a lot to pick them out. Chances are, even when you do, they’re probably not the best quality for your pie.
Transparency and accuracy of audience data is key to understanding its value. A lot of marketers probably haven’t heard of IAB’s Data Label -but they should expect a fully filled-out IAB Data Label for each of the audiences they use. It will tell them who provided the data signal. What the audience segment is. How the segment was constructed Where the original data is sourced?
Reaching the right audience at the right time with the right message is marketing. Beyond the obvious wastage a black box “trust us” approach creates, reaching an audience at a time with the message to measure clicks isn’t marketing. At best it is attribution gaming. It could be seen as being misleading.
Measurement
Digital media can give the illusion of complete measurability. Across spreadsheets, we often see one-to-one measurements of every impression served and how this directly impacted on the purchase. I don’t believe that’s how marketing works. In many cases, it’s not even how the technology works.
A challenge for any marketer is proving the value of their efforts to c-suite execs and decision-makers, especially when asked to provide predictable results in a world that isn’t predictable. On this endeavour, we seem to have lost the emotional element of marketing which is the traditional language to change consumer behaviour and instead have leant into “spreadsheet marketing” – often not even considering other factors such as creative. A greater level of transparency here will help realign digital media and cement it as part of the marketing mix.
It may add an extra step in the rush to respond to a client brief but considering the quality of the data and what we’re looking to measure with the data, it seems like a reasonable part of the planning process. Am I measuring business outcomes and change of consumer behaviour or clipping the ticket on someone who was going to convert anyway? Is the measurement inferred or deterministic?
Privacy Compliance
Regardless of the recent cookie deprecation discussions or consumers opting out, moving on from 3rd party cookies is almost a necessity to break the status quo. Putting aside for a moment the fact that targeting was usually not as accurate as claimed, privacy concerns are justified and should be supported by everyone. We know that without audience targeting, the value of digital inventory reduces leading to unintended consequences for those relying on advertising revenue to create and publish content as well as those consuming this content. Ensuring audience targeting remains in a privacy compliant way is not just important for our industry but for everyone as, advertising funds content and the internet.
I truly believe that transparency and accuracy of data is not a ‘nice to have’ when it comes to creating a privacy-compliant framework that works for everyone. It is a necessity. How and where data is sourced should be a minimum level of information provided to consumers. Without learning from the past and adopting a transparent framework, technical solutions like cleanrooms and universal IDs won’t live up to their potential of creating a better internet, a better industry and better marketing.
It is not the easy path to ask probing questions but the simple answer to how we can regain people’s trust. Maturing as an industry and as individuals is admitting that maybe we haven’t been paying as much attention as we needed to but, it’s not too late. As the great Peter Drucker said: “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence—it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
