It’s time brands used data more intelligently, industry warned
Jim Hodgkins, VisualDNA
A leading audience data provider has warned that brands are unlikely to invest more money online unless they can find better ways to “intelligently” use data to serve ads.
“The industry as a whole has not learned how to make the best use of data, or even make the best use of the medium to attract brands to spend big bucks online,” said Jim Hodgkins, MD of marketing services at VisualDNA.
For Hodgkins, who was speaking at a Mediatel debate on the future of programmatic, the evolution of online marketing – which started with search before re-targting became all the rage – is approaching a limit unless the available data and adtech is not employed to greater effect.
Hodgkins said having high volumes of programmatic inventory available at a relatively low cost has meant that serving up ads has become incredibly easy and efficient. However, because of fragmentation and and a lack of control, it has not been looked at as a “user experience” – and data has “not been used intelligently for the upper funnel ads”.
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“There’s a range of data used, but it’s either or,” he said. “What you haven’t got is a second layer of data to help adverts to respond to your motivations.
“Re-targeting is very functional but not really effective.”
VisualDNA combines data science, psychology and adtech to serve its clients. The company was made famous for asking online users to take free personality tests in the form of games, the results of which can better serve ads based on smarter audience profiles.
Many of the issues presented by Hodgkins could be viewed as the result of a teething process as all parts of the industry grapple with new programmatic technologies, particuarly as advertisers struggle to make use of overwhelming volumes of audience data.
The future, however, does look brighter. Marco Bertozzi, president, global clients, VivaKi, told Newsline he believes that over the next 18 months an increasing number of advertisers will engage with their own data management platforms and become more comfortable with their CRM data.
For Bertozzi, this will mean advertisers can begin to “lead the agenda” about what they need to do within programmatic.
“I think data in programmatic advertising is starting to mature in different ways,” he said.
“The primary way is the use of more valuable data; I think we have used lots of third party data which is great but it’s slightly commoditised – it’s hard to really understand what’s behind it – but now we are seeing really large corporations with incredibly rich data that we know are specific to individuals and their consumer behaviours.
“These companies are making it slightly more available and as that happens I think we’re going to see the sophistication of our media pivot towards those data sources – both in terms of targeting, but also importantly in terms of reporting.”