Despite the growth of programmatic and all its potential benefits, without accurate and transparent data it’s useless. Bad data negatively affects billions of dollars of marketing spend and results in people receiving ads that are irrelevant and often annoying. Consumers expect rich, free content on demand, on the device they use most - mobile. They expect value at every step of their journey. And like the device itself, a mobile user journey is exceptionally personal. Programmatic has the potential to positively change the way marketers connect with consumers digitally across their journey, which begins with smart data.
10. 84%
of consumers believe
that obnoxious or
intrusive ads give a
poor opinion of the
brands being
advertised
Bad data = bad results
Source: HubSpot
11. 47 times
per day is how often
people look at their
phones
Let’s get personal
5 hours
per day
is spent on
mobile
81%
of people have mobile
at arm’s reach every
minute of the day
Source: Deloitte
12. The mobile journey – it’s personal
Brands connect
with customers
Publishers
earn revenue
Users
receive value
Understand the
journey, reveal the
human
Good morning everyone, I’m Reia, the U.S. Head of Programmatic at Ogury. For those who are unfamiliar, Ogury is a technology company specializing in mobile journey marketing by using data to reveal user journeys to enable brands, publishers and consumers to make informed choices and secure their fair share of value in a complex and competitive mobile ecosystem.
And today I’ll be discussing why programmatic doesn’t have to be problematic and how harnessing smart data will result in smart campaigns.
You’re all here today because you understand the importance of data driven advertising and automation.
I’m sure you’re very well aware that programmatic is everywhere! It’s one of the fastest growing marketing channels and has become integral to the digital strategies of marketers all over the world.
In fact, eMarketer estimates that programmatic ad spend will reach $33 billion this year and will hit $46 billion in 2019. Pretty exciting, right? So what’s the catch?
Despite the growth of programmatic and all it’s potential benefits surrounding reach, efficiency and targeting, without accurate and transparent data, it’s not only useless, it’s detrimental to your business.
At its core, every programmatic engine is fueled by data. The effectiveness of any programmatic solution relies entirely on the quality of the data it is fed. As consumers we expect and demand a certain quality of ‘fuel’ when we fill our cars, but as marketers, are we truly confident about the quality of data that powers such a significant part of our marketing spend?
Optimization algorithms and artificial intelligence are certainly capable of making far smarter and quicker decisions than even the most skilled marketer. But, if the data that fuels the machine is inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date, then the technology might be efficient but it’s certainly not effective, and will lead to subpar results.
As our expectations and awareness about the quality of data rises, it is becoming more and more apparent that too many marketing technologies, despite their ‘intelligent’ capabilities, are simply being powered by bad and incomplete data drawn from disjointed fragments of user behavior that don’t reveal the entire user journey.
Even the giant walled gardens such as Facebook and Google, only see 30% of a user’s time on mobile. 70% remains a mystery. For any player outside of this, it’s often more than 95%
Incomplete data doesn’t provide you with your full audience profile and is often coming from unreliable sources. For example, if you want to identify mobile user behavior and you’re only collecting cellular data, you’re missing out on a massive pool of data as 3 times as much data is consumed on Wi-Fi networks on Android mobile phones in the U.S. as opposed to cellular networks. This also applies for other data sources. Bid stream data, location data, beacon data – you name it. Collecting data from these sources alone doesn’t allow visibility into the entire mobile journey and can result in unreliable and inaccurate representations of your audience which is detrimental to your business.
This is detrimental as bad data is extremely costly. In fact, IBM estimates that bad data costs U.S. businesses $3T per year.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, $611B of that is wasted in marketing spend.
Sadly, programmatic is no exception. As more and more marketers move digital spend from managed campaigns to programmatic, many have come to realize that they have lost a lot of control over where their ads are placed which can not only negatively impact your business, but also your consumers experience.
No one likes receiving ads. Which is mostly because they’re likely receiving the wrong ads. Not only does bad data negatively affect billions of dollars of marketing spend, it also results in people receiving ads that are irrelevant and often annoying.
Inaccurate data means that marketing messages are still not personalized, falling short of user expectations.
It’s important to ensure the people you reach with your brand messaging actually want to be reached by you, and have actively opted in to share their data so that they can receive more relevant content.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone - A recent study from Adlucent showed that 71% of respondents preferred ads tailored to their interests. Makes sense, right?
And according to a HubSpot study 84% of polled consumers ‘Strongly Agreed’ or ‘Agreed’ that obnoxious or intrusive ads give a poor opinion of the brands being advertised. It’s crucial that marketers listen to consumers and provide them with a more personalized, tailored experience.
And what’s the most personal device you own? Mobile.
Hands up who hasn’t looked at their phone at least once since I began this presentation? (not many hands go up). That’s okay, I’m not offended. Our phones have become a permanent fixture to our hands. In fact, on average people look at their phones at least 47 times per day.
Also, the average person spends five hours per day on their phone and 81% of people have their phone at arm’s reach every minute of the day. Not too surprising if you think about your own mobile behavior from streaming music on your daily commute to watching Netflix in your down time.
Mobile is no longer just how consumers communicate, it’s how they live. Mobile is very personal to users. They expect rich, free content on demand, but they also have a very low tolerance for irrelevant or disruptive ads.
In other words, they expect value at every step of their journey. And like the device itself, a mobile user journey is exceptionally personal.
The insight it provides about the consumer is unique. It tells an individual story of their journey across the mobile web and within apps.
If you can understand this journey, then you can reveal the human at the end of the screen. And if you can activate this understanding, then users don’t get intrusive ads, they get relevant, valuable, personalized recommendations.
This is the route for brands to connect with their ideal customers, and for publishers to unleash soaring revenue by making this connection possible.
Programmatic has the potential to positively change the way marketers connect with consumers digitally across their journey, but in order to finally deliver on its promise, a different approach is required.
This approach starts with data. Data that makes sense of the entire mobile user journey in real-time, and has the power to fuel programmatic engines with insight and intelligence beyond what is currently possible.
Programmatic allows you to be smart with your ad dollars. But to be really smart, you need to understand what data you should be using.
Here’s the checklist you should remember.
Ensure to collect real-time, high quality first-party user journey data in both apps and mobile web.
Only use data that understands and identifies individual humans, and doesn’t rely on broad segments.
With the demand for transparency, only use data that is GDPR compliant and only partner with companies who are 100% GDPR compliant.
Don’t rely on fragmented or latent input data.
Don’t be reliant on a 3rd party tech stack or reliant on the bid stream, and make sure to leverage 1st party signals that truly reveal a users entire mobile journey which will ultimately provide more valuable, personalized and contextual content to your consumer.
Needing to deliver this value isn’t new, and programmatic as a discipline isn’t new, however the continual consumer reliance on mobile and the ever increasing supply of bad data is challenging marketers now more than ever, particularly when activating programmatically.
But programmatic doesn’t have to be problematic when using smart data and when activating via smart platforms.
Shameless Ogury plug – we’ve created our own platform called Intelligent Deals with each of the checklist items in mind to help you solve your problems and ultimately deliver value to your end users.
Intelligent Deals approaches programmatic in a completely different way. It has been designed from the ground up to address the issues faced by programmatic marketers, offering a highly effective, transparent and labor-reducing solution, all based on exclusive first-party mobile user journey data.
This platform is the reason I joined Ogury and I can talk about it all day – which I’ll spare you – but if you are interested in learning more, please feel free to grab me during the coffee break or reach out to me directly with any questions.