Publisher data – an Indian railway system?
Andrew Bradford, VP client consulting at Nielsen, kicked off the MediaTel Group ‘First party data – the publisher’s black gold?’ event with a scene setter that helped us all understand the current state of play and how the opportunity around first party data could play out.
Is first party (or publisher) data the new black gold? Not surprisingly, Bradford compared the current status of online data sharing with oil. Yes it is a commodity whose price fluctuates on the scarcity of the resource. However, oil is refined, made into several different products but ultimately is standardised for global use.
The potential sounded great but the other comparison he left the audience with was that of the Indian railway system – not joined up and all different gauges – a sound bite of probably the current status quo of the use of online data.
And this is probably the main nub of the issue. Publisher data is not standardised, it is great data to the publisher but it is very siloed. There are many issues… one individual accessing one site via mobile, tablet and PC is counted three times (three unique browsers), for example.
There is inconsistency when certain data strategies require self-completion or categorisation. Each publisher has their unique way of collecting data. Data needs to have some level of comparability and is not always transferable – and for the advertiser and agency it has to be easy to use.
Bradford also highlighted the tension between internal and industry data. Everyone wants an impartial referee to create a level playing field. However, there is an increasing amount of new data available that aids our ability to target – but this is not without problems.
Bradford said: “Online data requirements for advertisers must be driven by business requirements and not the other way around. Don’t be caught by what gets measured is what gets done.”
Online data provides vast quantities of behavioural data – the who, what and when but misses the why. Bradford went onto stress that understanding this dynamic really unlocks the value of each and every audience.
After sharing a Nielsen case study conducted with Facebook around online campaign ratings, Bradford concluded that is wasn’t a question of having either/or 1st party or 3rd party data, but rather having both. Obviously Nielsen is a key player in the market in providing all of us with solutions to understand how to use both, separately and together.