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
As the pandemic took hold of the country and stay-at-home orders were put in place, one of the consumer categories that was most adversely affected was the restaurant industry. But while sit-down restaurants were forced to pivot to curbside delivery and other inventive means to make ends meet, quick-service restaurants (QSRs) that already had a solid delivery program or drive-through in place saw a surge in new guests. “Dinner and a movie” took on a different meaning as people either picked up or ordered in to make date night happen, and QSRs rose to the occasion like never before. With some states beginning phased re-openings of non-essential businesses, some restaurants are now allowed to open so long as they follow social distancing rules or allow for outdoor dining areas. But that doesn’t mean consumers will be ready to race out and participate in this new dining experience. Many may remain apprehensive about safety and continue to “dine at a distance” until they’re confident that they can remain healthy, or until a successful vaccine goes into use. Even as states begin their phased re-opening plans, many continue to work from home—which has greatly affected both dine-in and QSR venues. Those who saw a robust lunchtime crowd probably saw a drop-off while business-based locals shifted their office plans. However, new opportunities have emerged for restaurants to reach out to their regular lunch crowd to offer delivery or attract a whole new lunch crowd who may not have thought to order from them before. Between the challenges of a post-pandemic world, a shifting of diner priority, and an uncertain future facing the restaurant world, it’s now more important than ever before to leverage an intelligent, data-driven marketing strategy to ensure your campaigns reach the right consumers, and also attract new customers to expand your customer base over time. All of this can be done using the power of data, but having the right data is key to making the most of your marketing efforts. As you’re crafting your current marketing plans, it’s important to look at all the variables you need to address to create more targeted messaging, thus helping you zero in on your most desired consumer base. The first thing to consider is, how well do you know your guests, and what do you know about them? If you have no insight into their dining habits or preferences, it will be challenging to come up with messaging that will speak to them. But with the right data, you can discover if they frequent your competitor’s locations (and if so, how often), which apps they’re using to order food, which days of the week, and even which meals they are most likely to order. You can also use this information to better understand how often you factor into your customer’s dining plans by understanding if they are beginning to commute again, or continuing to work from home, and if the latter, do they live near one of your locations. Data can also help you discover more about who they are, so you can even further tailor your messaging to their needs. Let’s say your target customer is married with children. Addressing their busy life as a professional and a parent, and sharing how you can ease the burden of dinnertime to make life easier for them, may be exactly the kind of message of support they need to encourage them to reach out to you. Using data based on demographics, lifestyle, behavior, attitudinal and mobile location data can help you cook up a marketing strategy with precision and success, resulting in more diners knocking on your door (or at least, calling for take-out). Another key component to consider is the use of mobile location data, which Zeta Global cites1 as being the most important data chain restaurants can use for their marketing plans. Not only can this data be used to better understand share of wallet and potential up-sell opportunities, but it can also be leveraged to reach out directly to potential new customers that have historically frequented your top competitors. You can also use mobile location data to connect with consumers who may be more drawn to your restaurant because of your delivery or curbside pick-up options, and craft outreach based on that information that will encourage them to order with you. As Hospitality Tech pointed out2, building trust in a post-pandemic world is key for QSRs who want to continue to encourage loyalty with current guests, and entice new ones to place orders. The key to making that happen is data. By deploying marketing messages that resonate, activating them on the channels your guests use most, then measuring the impact of your campaigns, QSRs can create more opportunities for success and customer connection that can translate into real, long-term results. Plus, the right data can help you increase store traffic with high value guests, reactivate guests who haven’t visited in a while and find new individuals who live nearby that closely resemble your current high value guests. Experian has decades of experience in helping organizations better communicate with their customers across all marketing channels. How can we help you? Find out more about our restaurant marketing solutions. 1https://zetaglobal.com/blog/chain-restaurants-need-customer-data/ 2https://hospitalitytech.com/new-marketing-communications-playbook-during-covid-19
2020 has been a year of change and challenges for businesses and consumers alike. With the global pandemic, we have seen stay at home orders put in place, a shift to work from home for many, major events canceled, schools shifted to online format, graduations and other end-of-year activities canceled, and more. As we move through the phases of reopening, everyone is figuring out how to navigate the ‘new normal’ in the wake of new safety requirements, businesses are working to determine what their day-to-day operations will look like as they reopen. The changing times have implications on how consumers act, what and how they purchase, and how they manage their daily lives. With these changing times, consumers are quickly adapting their lifestyles which impacts the choices they make on how they shop, bank and provide for their families. Businesses across the United States are trying to understand how consumers are feeling during this time and how that might correlate with their visitation patterns. Using Experian’s Mobile Location data, coupled with Consumer Sentiment data, we looked at foot traffic and sentiment trends in the retail space throughout the pandemic. As you can see from the chart, there has been a steady increase in household visits to retail locations since March that correlates with the rise in sentiment. Note the differences in visitation patterns across the regions. You can see some foot traffic spikes, which correlate to reopening phases in several states during the week of May 4th and Memorial Day weekend. However, you see a lower average of foot traffic in the Northeast U.S. where reopening phases are rolling out at a slower pace. It is going to be essential for businesses to craft marketing strategies on a regional level as guidelines for reopening are the state-level. This means that a business’s consumers look different based on where they are located and might require more targeted and sensitive messaging. For example, using Experian’s Mosaic segmentation, we further delved into what consumers look like today by analyzing those Mosaics who have the most positive change in regard to the pandemic, versus those that had the most negative. You can see in the charts that there is a significant difference between the Mosaics trending positively versus those trending negatively. Consumer segments have drastically different sentiment, and foot traffic patterns and understanding how your consumers are feeling and where they are shopping will help improve your ROI. Having a comprehensive and targeted marketing plan will be essential for companies as they navigate the intricacies of reopening. Experian’s Reopening Package allows brands to take a phased approach to better understand and reach both new and existing customers through targeting, analytics and key insights. Companies can analyze their consumers’ sentiments and visitation patterns during the pandemic, segmented by Experian Mosaic® lifestyle segmentation group. Businesses can then take those insights and apply them to other models, or create their own models, to build out and run effective marketing campaigns that target current and prospective customers. A successful long-term marketing strategy needs to be data-driven, leveraging data and analytics to help craft targeted messaging. We can see that consumers want to shop again – foot traffic patterns appear to have increased since June, and sentiment is up – now it is necessary to understand where your customers fit into the spectrum. Missed our recent webinar, How COVID-19 Has Shaped Consumer Behavior for Retailers? Access the on demand version here.
Overview Chartable leverages The Tapad Graph to improve cross-device attribution rates and remove non-addressable IPs for clients. Challenge Chartable needs to differentiate between consumer and potential business IP addresses to provide accurate household modeling and reduce excess data for their customers. Podcasting generally only has access to IP addresses as a form of digital ID which limits its ability to connect activity to individuals and extend it across all devices. The Tapad + Experian solution Using Tapad, now a part of Experian, Chartable is able to cut through the noise of IP data and discard any addresses deemed a shared IP or business. Then, Tapad + Experian connects individual users to their other digital IDs and users in their household; creating a richer attribution model for Chartable customers. Increase in podcast attribution rates Get started with The Tapad Graph For personalized consultation on the value and benefits of The Tapad Graph for your business, email Sales@tapad.com today!