Commentary

Best Data Platforms Cut Through Clutter

It’s hard enough for publishers today to keep up with all the changes taking place around them. Media is fragmented; content consumption is evolving. So are the ways in which publishers monetize their audiences.  Gone are the days when a publisher can simply create content, build audiences and sell ads against that inventory and expect good results.

We live in a far more complex and data-driven world, where ad-buying technologies like ad exchanges, networks, demand side platforms and supply side platforms are fundamentally redefining the way media is bought and sold online.

Faced with these growing challenges, many publishers have lost control over their own inventory and monetization capabilities -- at the expense of these new technologies -- and have relied mainly on SSPs to help manage the media buying process for them.  These solutions have only begun to scratch the surface, but haven’t gone far enough.  

Many top publishers are now looking for tools that can help them navigate the complexities and nuances of today’s data-driven world. Their goal is to find a solution that can give them critical insights on their own first party data and help them manage that audience intelligence accordingly.  What publishers need is an effective data management platform (DMP).

For marketers and ad agencies, data management platforms have proven to be an effective tool in giving them the ability to make informed and better decisions on media buying, based on audience performance.  The same can be true for publishers looking to monetize and increase yield from their traffic while growing their audience and increasing ad revenue.  

With a rising number of technology companies claiming to offer data management platforms, it’s important that publishers cut through all the clutter and get the most comprehensive DMP on the market.  So what should they look for? Here’s a quick list for starters:

Easy Data Ingestion –- An effective DMP should give publishers the ability to bring all of their audience and ad data together in one easy-to-use, centralized location. This platform should be able to ingest data tightly from a publisher’s site and any affiliated partners allowing for sophisticated data classification and segmentation.

Data Portability and Control -– In order for publishers to gain maximum data control, a DMP should offer media-agnostic data portability.  In short, a publisher who works with multiple buy-side solutions needs a DMP that is pre-integrated into the media ecosystem and that can push and pull varying levels of data to and from all of these sources.  This can be used to create offsite inventory or custom data offerings for specific advertiser clients.  

Data Rich -– DMP should include access to third-party intent and branding data selected from millions of users across the Web, since this data is critical for building new, lucrative audiences, setting inventory pricing and analyzing audience effectiveness

Analytics -– Every DMP should offer robust data analytics to provide essential insights into how every audience segment is performing at any given time.  It should allow a publisher to measure how specific audiences interact across multiple properties, and generate reports showing all data attributes associated with a specific audience.

We live in a data-driven advertising world, and a DMP is an opportunity to uncover new revenue streams to new inventory, higher CPMs and larger audiences. Those who fail to understand these new realities, risk standing on the outside looking in.  

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