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'It's like we're at war with our users' says LinkedIn's head of global advertising operations on ad industry tracking methods

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By Stephen Lepitak, -

November 3, 2014 | 4 min read

"It's like we are at war with our users," LinkedIn's head of global advertising operations, Carine Roman has stated while speaking about the perception of the advertising industry's methods of tracking, targeting and distribution.

Carine Roman LinkedIn

While speaking at the IAB Ad Operations Summit in New York, Roman discussed data perception, content distribution and the importance of identifying the right users through both.

She began by quoting Buzzfeed vice president of agency strategy and industry development, Jonathan Perelman who last year stated that "content is king but distribution is queen and she wears the pants" which led her to consider what distribution was.

"All over the world, distribution really starts with the user, but it has to be the right user,' explained Roman. "You will not create the same content aimed at a 17 year-old-boy as you will for a business professional in New York. There are millions of users out there."

This led Roman to highlight the power of social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook and subscription platforms where data could be gathered directly from the source. "It's your users or your members telling their stories...it's how they spend their time and they give us a tremendous amount of data."

She continued to offer up her first example of the presentation where she assumed that a brand or publisher had found the right user, then claimed that the next step in the process would be to "find the right venue," citing the "tremendous opportunities" being offered by publishers, especially premium platforms, however she added that the notion of premium was subjective should the brand be looking at a B2B or B2C platforms on which to advertise.

Following this she moved onto assuming that once the advertisers had found the right user and venue, then she said the following step would be distribution of the message but added that it was important for the brand to consider how to go beyond using "obvious data" and "obvious distribution formats."

Roman then offered an example of segmentation where she created a fictional 18 year old looking for a job in Texas, which she said could be found through self reported data, however brands could also use inferred data as a result of the initial data to serve moving company adverts to the person.

"We can become part of the experience," she claimed.

Roman continued to discus advertising distribution using the collected data, saying that data should be made "small' which could be achieved through effective staff training or hiring people who could "see beyond the obvious data."

She added that once the right pipes were in place, they had to be built upon, before warning "Don't be fooled. An ad server is not a data measurement platform. You need the right technology to go way beyond tracking the obvious signals. You need propensity models, attribution capability. You need the ability to really make data extremely small and manageable."

Next she advised companies use data everywhere within campaign optimisation and added that a company should know before a campaign went live what audience it was targeting to avoid wasting valuable impressions. "By leveraging data before you go live you should know what you want to achieve. You should have layers of data so that the advertisers are able to say, instead of guessing, which audiences and segments of digital websites they wish to target."

Roman advised that once all of this had been achieved, one last thing had to be remembered: "Data is the most valuable asset you own and behind every cookie is a person. We're talking about tracking and targeting - who wants to be tracked and targeted? It's like we are at war with our users. We need to show tremendous respect for our users as they are our most valuable assets...by using the right distribution we can put advertising back where is should be, which is being perceived as a very valuable piece of content."

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