Centralized data access is emerging as a key strategy for advertisers. In our next Ask the Expert segment, we explore this topic further and discuss the importance of data ownership and the concept of audience as an asset.
We’re joined by industry leaders, Andy Fisher, Head of Merkury Advanced TV at Merkle, and Chris Feo, Experian’s SVP of Sales & Partnerships who spotlight Merkle’s commitment to centralized data access and how advertisers can use our combined solutions to navigate industry shifts while ensuring consumer privacy. Watch our Q&A to learn more about these topics and gain insights on how to stay ahead of industry changes.
The concept of audience as an asset
In order to gain actionable marketing insights about your audience, you need to identify consumers who are actively engaged with your brand and compare them against non-engaged consumers, or consumers engaged with rival brands.
Audience ownership
Audience ownership is a fundamental marketing concept where marketers build, define, create, and own their audience. This approach allows you to use your audiences as an asset and deliver a customized journey to the most promising prospects across multiple channels. With this strategy, you enhance marketing effectiveness and ensure ownership over your audience, no matter the platform or channel used.
Merkle enables marketers to own and deploy said asset (audience) so that marketers can have direct control over their audience. With audience strategy, you can tie all elements together – amplify your marketing reach, while maintaining control of your audience. Merkle connects customer experiences with business results.
Data ownership
Data ownership refers to the control organizations have over data they generate, including marketing, sales, product, and customer data. This data is often scattered across multiple platforms, making it difficult to evaluate their effectiveness. Alternatively, owning this data, which is typically housed in a data warehouse, allows the creation of historical overviews, forecasting of customer trends, and cross-channel comparisons. With advertisers and publishers both claiming ownership over their respective data and wanting to control its access, there has been a growing interest in data clean rooms.
Data clean rooms
The growing interest in data clean rooms is largely due to marketers increasing preference to maintain ownership over their audience data. They provide a secure environment for controlled collaboration between advertisers and publishers while preserving the privacy of valuable data. Data clean rooms allow all parties to define their usage terms – who can access it, how it is used, and when it is used. The rise in the use of data clean rooms strengthens data privacy and creates opportunities for deeper customer insights, which leads to enhanced customer targeting. Data clean rooms unlock new data sets, aiding brands, publishers, and data providers in adapting to rapidly changing privacy requirements.
Why is centralized data access important?
Centralized data access is crucial for the effective organization and optimization of your advertising campaigns. It involves consolidating your data in one place, allowing for the identification of inconsistencies.
Merkle’s Merkury platform
The concept of centralized data is a key component of Merkle’s Merkury platform, an enterprise identity platform that empowers brands to own and control first-party identity at an individual level. A common use case involves marketers combining their first-party data with Merkury’s data assets and marketplace data assets to build prospecting audiences. These are later published to various endpoints for activation.
The Merkury platform covers three classes of data:
- Proprietary data set – Permissioned data set covering the entire United States, compiled from about 40 different vendors
- Marketplace data – Includes contributions from various vendors like Experian
- First-party data from marketers – Allows marketers to bring in their own data
Merkury’s identity platform empowers brands to own and control first-party identity at an individual level, unifying known and unknown customer and prospect records, site and app visits, and consumer data to a single, person ID. This makes Merkury the only enterprise identity platform that combines the accuracy and sustainability of client first-party data, quality personally identifiable information (PII) data, third-party data, cookie-less media, and technology platform connections in the market.
End-to-end management of data
Data ownership and management enables you to enhance the quality of your data, facilitate the exchange of information, and ensure privacy compliance.
The Merkury platform provides a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for managing first-party data, all rooted in identity. Unlike data management platforms (DMPs) that are primarily built on cookies, the Merkury platform is constructed on a person ID, allowing it to operate effectively in a cookie-free environment.
A broader perspective with people-based views
The Merkury platform is unique because it contains data from almost every individual in the United States, providing a broader perspective compared to customer data platforms (CDPs) which only contain consumer data. The platform provides a view of the world in a people-based manner, but also offers the flexibility to toggle between person and household views. This enables you to turn data into actionable insights and makes it possible to target specific individuals within a household or consider the household as a whole.
How Experian and Merkle work together
Experian and Merkle have established a strong partnership that magnifies the capabilities of Merkle’s Merkury platform. With Experian’s robust integration capabilities and extensive connectivity opportunities, customers can use this technology for seamless direct integrations, resulting in more effective onboarding to various channels, like digital and TV.
“Experian’s role in Merkury’s data marketplace is essential as they are considered the gold standard for data. It significantly contributes to our connectivity through direct integrations and partnerships. Experian’s presence in various platforms and technologies ensures easy connections and high match rates. Our partnership is very important to us.”
andy fisher, head of merkury advanced tv
Through this partnership, Merkle can deliver unique, personalized digital customer experiences across multiple platforms and devices, highlighting their commitment to data-driven performance marketing.
Watch the full Q&A
Visit our Ask the Expert content hub to watch Andy and Chris’s full conversation about data ownership, innovative strategies to empower you to overcome identity challenges, and navigating industry shifts while protecting consumer privacy.
Tune into the full recording to gain insights into the captivating topics of artificial intelligence (AI), understanding how retail networks can amplify the value of media, and the growing influence of connected TV (CTV). Dive into the Q&A to gain rich insights that could greatly influence your strategies.
About our experts
Andy Fisher, Head of Merkury Advanced TV
As the Head of Merkury Advanced TV, Andy’s primary responsibility is driving person-based marketing and big data adoption in all areas of Television including Linear, Addressable, Connected, Programmatic, and X-channel planning and Measurement. Andy has held several positions at Merkle including Chief Analytics Officer and he ran the Merkle data business. Prior to joining Merkle, Andy was the EVP, Global Data & Analytics Director at Starcom MediaVest Group where he led the SMG global analytics practice. In this role, he built and managed a team of 150 analytics professionals across 17 countries servicing many of the world’s largest advertisers. Prior to that role, Andy was Vice President and National Lead, Analytics at Razorfish, where he led the digital analytics practice and managed a team of modeling, survey, media data, and business intelligence experts. He and his team were responsible for some of the first innovations in multi-touchpoint attribution and joining online/offline data for many of the Fortune 100. Andy has also held leadership positions at Personify and IRI. Andy holds a BA in mathematics from UC Berkeley and an MA in statistics from Stanford.
Chris Feo, SVP, Sales & Partnerships, Experian
As SVP of Sales & Partnerships, Chris has over a decade of experience across identity, data, and programmatic. Chris joined Experian during the Tapad acquisition in November 2020. He joined Tapad with less than 10 employees and has been part of the executive team through both the Telenor and Experian acquisitions. He’s an active advisor, board member, and investor within the AdTech ecosystem. Outside of work, he’s a die-hard golfer, frequent traveler, and husband to his wife, two dogs, and two goats!
Latest posts
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Marketers traditionally use income, net worth and income-producing assets to enhance their consumer targeting efforts. However, these data elements provide insight only into spending capacity, not how much is actually being spent. Consumers who appear nearly identical in terms of demographics may, in fact, vary widely when it comes to discretionary spending. Some are savers, some are spenders and some have more financial obligations than others. Experian Marketing Services offers data-driven marketers a way to cut straight to the chase when targeting consumers by out-of-pocket expenditures with the Discretionary Spend Estimate. This estimate is available for direct marketing applications to enhance marketers’ targeting efforts as well as an add-on to the Simmons National Consumer Study (NCS) providing marketers with the ability to evaluate discretionary spending against any of the 60,000 consumer variables measured in the study offered by Experian Simmons. In the new 2011 Discretionary Spend Report, Experian Simmons presents a vivid profile of American households by the amount spent annually on nonessential goods and services, including things like entertainment, dining out, personal care, etc. For starters, we report that an estimated 28% of Americans’ annual household spending is on discretionary goods and services. Specifically: The typical U.S. household today shells out $12,800 annually on discretionary expenditures Over half of households spend less than $10,000 on discretionary purchases each year, including just over a third that spend less than $7,000 annually Only 5.8% of American households spend $30,000 or more per year on nonessential goods and services, including 2.2% that spend $40,000 or more annually Distribution of U.S. households, by annual discretionary spending Furthermore, we estimate that, in aggregate, Americans spend $1.47 trillion annually on discretionary goods and services. Despite the fact that households spending less than $7,000 on nonessentials comprise over a third of all households, this segment of the population accounts for just 10.8% of total annual discretionary spending in the United States. Combined, households spending less than $7,000 annually contribute $158.3 billion in discretionary spending to the economy at large The top 2.2% of spenders (those households that spend $40,000 a year or more on nonessentials) account for fully 11.2% of the nation's total annual discretionary spending Households spending between $20,000 and $29,999 annually on nonessential purchases account for the largest single share of the nation’s spending: $305.1 billion Proportion of nation’s total annual discretionary spending, by spend segment Total annual discretionary spend contribution, by spend segment Understanding the pocketbooks of America’s spenders is one thing, but understanding what’s going on in their heads is another. Luckily, Experian Simmons delivers the mindset of the American consumers; below is a look at select attitudes that uncover real differences in personalities and lifestyles of Americans depending on their annual discretionary spending. Highlights include: 46% of high spenders say they often drink alcoholic beverages making them 77% more likely than the average U.S. adult to do so High spenders like to drive faster than normal while low spenders like to drive alone for a sense of freedom Low spenders say that “money is the best measure of success,” but they also say they “don’t want responsibility” High spenders say they are often chosen to be the spokesperson of a group Check back here for more posts on America’s discretionary spending habits and behaviors or download the full 2011 Discretionary Spend Report now.
The BRICs markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are becoming ever larger forces in the world economy. For some time their growth rates have been faster than those experienced in western economies, and they have borne the recent economic crisis with greater resilience. In many ways it's wrong to refer to the BRICs as "developing" markets — by some measures they can be considered just as developed as the "developed" markets. Manufacturers and service providers have to be interested in the BRICs. Their sheer size, allied with these growth rates, means they offer huge potential. Growth rates in the BRICs for a range of items have been rapid. Data from Global TGI, an international network of market and media research companies spanning over 50 countries and six continents, shows this very clearly. In this post we look at three examples in diverse sectors. These charts show the trend over the last decade in the ownership in the BRICs markets of cars, microwave ovens and bank cards. They are based on the total measured urban adult Global TGI population in all cases. We can also compare this with the trend in the U.S. sourcing data from Experian Simmons. Boom in car ownership There has been dramatic increase in the ownership of cars over the last decade in Russia (80%), India (90%) and China (200% growth). These rates of growth are a clear sign of how economic development spreads wealth and makes items affordable to increasing numbers of consumers. The exception to this picture is Brazil, where car ownership was considerably higher than in the other BRICs at the opening of the new century, and growth has been more serene. By comparison to the BRICs we see from Experian Simmons that in the U.S. (as well as Great Britain) there has been virtually no percentage growth — new purchases are largely replacement purchases. The microwave oven market heats up Purchasing a microwave oven for your home is by no means as expensive an undertaking as purchasing a car, but it requires the availability of sufficient disposable income. In this category we see from Global TGI significant growth in all the BRICs over the last decade — from a 50% increase in Brazil to over 700% in Russia. The growth story in Russia is typical of many categories in fast-growing markets: ten years ago a microwave oven was still an expensive item for most households given their purchasing capacity, and ownership was largely the preserve of the well-off. Subsequently however, it has become affordable as well as being regarded as necessary by most people, and penetration has grown dramatically. As with automobiles, growth of microwave ovens in the U.S. has remained flat with fully 89% of all American homes already owning a microwave. Financial sophistication The growth in ownership of credit and debit cards arises from people's need to manage money, and greater levels of financial sophistication. Clearly it also represents a huge opportunity for financial institutions. It has been striking across all the BRICS — and there is still potential for more, perhaps in India most of all. Again we see from very little growth over the same period in the U.S. and Britain, which were already saturated. Today, 83% of Americans have a debit or credit card, as do 90% of Brits. Consumer growth in the BRICs will continue Across many other categories the same picture can be seen, of rapid growth yet still much further potential. We can anticipate growth in the BRICs and other developing markets continuing to outpace growth in western markets across the full range of consumption categories. With economic growth happening at different speeds this trend seems likely to last for a long time. Furthermore, it's not only that they are growing faster. In population terms, the BRICs together represent 42% of the people of the world. Their large populations mean that they will increasingly dominate world markets in absolute numbers too. When this rapid macro-economic development is considered along with the sheer size of their consumer markets and the speed of their growth evident from these Global TGI figures, it is very clear why many manufacturers are focusing attention very closely on the BRICs. Learn more about how Experian Simmons and Global TGI can provide you with consumer insights across the globe with comparisons to the United States.