‘The future is going to be modeled’: how brands can activate their data to drive value

Regardless of the quantity of first-party customer data a business holds, every brand can benefit in the privacy-first future – with the right foundations in place. By embracing a data-centric way of thinking and a test-and-learn mindset, advertisers can ensure that the data they have is actionable, measurable and meaningful.

That’s what leaders from Google, THG and EssenceMediacomX explored in a panel discussion with The Drum on how brands can drive quality performance and value from their datasets, regardless of the quantity they have. Watch the full discussion at the top of the page.

“Brands spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect set up; they want all their first-party data to be predictive to the nth degree,” said Danielle Fabrizio, data and measurement lead at Google. “That’s the aspiration – but make sure you are starting somewhere, getting something in the market now and testing to see what methods are successful.”

Embedding privacy principles from the top down

There’s a fundamental shift happening in the background around how organizations collaborate internally due to the changing privacy landscape, as marketing, customer and data teams come together with legal to work together in a different way to before.

“For many of our clients in the media world, this is totally new territory,” explains Fabrizio. “Privacy, historically a specialist skillset sat on a little island, is now a core competency that every marketer must be familiar with.”

Building this new skillset “can be exciting but also maybe a little intimidating for a lot of clients,” she says, stressing the importance of top-down sponsorship at the C-level to make privacy a business priority and support for an internal cross-functional group to rally around the subject.

This has been essential in THG’s privacy journey and the successful roll-out of tools across 30+ retail brands. Its group head of paid media Cal Salvaggio, explains: “A fundamental reason to create a central team was to help break down the barriers within divisional teams. This enables us to share learnings and fast track implementation whilst decreasing the risk of revenue loss to the business. The privacy groundwork is testament to that.”

From campaign metrics to business value

By investing in expertise in data marketing, technology and analytics as core disciplines, brands are in a much stronger position to make their customer data actionable, says Ryan Storrar, chief executive of EssenceMediacomX, who encourages this shift. “We do our best work with clients and brands who are really committed to becoming increasingly data-centric, and how they utilize advertising to engage and re-engage customers with meaningful experiences.”

Brands who have quality first-party data “are pivoting towards becoming increasingly predictive of what is going to be next most valuable for the end consumer, as opposed to historically reacting to what we last knew about a given user,” explains Storrar.

This is enabled by new data signals that haven’t necessarily been on the radar of marketers and used in campaigns previously, Fabrizio adds, highlighting an important shift from campaign metrics to business metrics. She says: “When we think about activation, it’s about the right signals. The big shift we’re seeing is bidding towards, ultimately, what the business cares more about – business metrics like revenue and profitability.”

Salvaggio explains how the group is utilizing first-party data to personalize ads and ensure it is maximizing engagement on ad copy. As a result, it has seen “efficiencies and return-on-investment improve as a result,” he says.

Getting over the industry obsession with first-party data

While first-party data is often considered the Holy Grail for marketers, it’s not the be all and end all, argues Storrar, who says: “There’s a bit of an industry obsession with using first-party data as a vehicle for personalizing – but we need to get over ourselves and accept that it’s not going to be available or directly applicable to every single ad we would serve to every single customer. And that’s okay. We still operate in an extremely data-rich space and there’s all kinds of signals that we can use for personalization in the absence of first-party data.”

This requires marketers to get comfortable with machine learning and automation to be able to lean on different technologies to find similar audiences in the absence of a first-party data point.

“The days of a silver bullet, one size fits all solution when it comes to measurement are behind us,” says Fabrizio. “Thinking about multiple technologies that gives a combination of durability and comprehensiveness of data is going to be increasingly more important. The fundamental principles that the future is going to be consented and modeled, will still apply to brands that are earlier on this journey, or have less data available.”

Salvaggio explains how the implementation of privacy-preserving technology like Consent Mode and Enhanced Conversions, alongside Google Analytics [to model audiences] has enabled THG to “bridge the gap” and “fuel the algorithm and the performance metrics we’re looking to drive.”

Customer value as the currency

And of course, the benefits of getting privacy right extend beyond just performance marketing or digital media KPIs – it’s what consumers are asking of brands.

“As we become much more privacy centric in how we engage consumers, the real opportunity is for us to start thinking about the value to the customer as the currency and the advertising experiences we’re delivering to those customers having a positive impact on the lifetime of their relationship with the brand,” says Storrar. “The more we get our customer data right, the more we’re going to be able to structure learning agendas that help us connect the dots across brand legacy metrics to end transactions within that loop for repeat purchases.”

In their closing advice for marketers, the panelists summarized their top tips:

1. Get the foundations in place: having a C-suite stakeholder to sponsor a cross-functional working group for privacy and first-party data is crucial to get ahead

2. Embrace data-centricity: consider your organization’s existing skills and partnership and the balance of internal and external skills where it makes sense to accelerate faster

3. Keep it simple: don’t overcomplicate things; pick the use case you will believe will be most actionable and impactful, build for that, move onto the next one and iterate

4. Test, learn and scale: start testing now; get something in market, see what is working, learn from it, then scale to maximize on the potential opportunity

5. Share insights across the business: think about how you can share enriched insights across teams to leverage the data surfaced from platforms to inform business decisions.

For more insights and advice on how to make the most of your data, watch the full panel discussion ‘The big data debate: volume vs value’ at the top of this page.