• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, October 23, 2014

With data being labeled the new “currency” of digital media, data management platforms (DMPs) have become an integral part of companies’ “tech stacks,” with some, such as AOL, spending over $100 million to help build their own.

In a bid to help marketers properly step into the world of DMPs, AdExchanger Research, the research division of AdExchanger headed by former Forrester analyst Joanna O’Connell, has released a research report outlining the “three phases” of DMP adoption. Lizzie Komar, associate analyst, also contributed to the report.

The three phases, per Komar and O’Connell, are “requirements gathering, vendor selection, and deployment.” The report reads: “Though most marketers recognize the promise of a DMP, far fewer are prepared to effectively leverage the technology.”

The first step, the report urges, is for marketers (brands, agencies, or any other company using the DMP) to select a team or individual stakeholder to oversee the DMP's use. One U.S.-based women’s retailer told AdExchanger Research that the company was “so swept up” when it first began using the DMP that it overlooked the need to have someone oversee its use, noting that the oversight prevented the company “from realizing the full potential of [its] investment and made it hard to focus on the purpose of the technology.”

While an individual responsible for the DMP's success is better than no manager, the report, citing AudienceScience’s Director of Research Michael Greene, urges companies to make it a “team effort.”

Another piece of advice to help keep marketers from drowning in data the second they begin using a DMP: "Take a judicious approach to ‘data in.’”

The report notes that marketers should gradually scale data into a DMP, prioritizing the highest-quality and least expensive first-party before looking to second-party data partnerships, and to use third-party data sparingly.

“Many view third-party data as waning in importance and value as other data types are embraced,” the report reads. “It may be heavily relied upon in the early stages of DMP deployment to enrich existing first-party segments, or enable audience discovery, but marketers should plan on taking a hard look at third-party providers over time.”

AdExchanger Research’s solution to phase two -- vendor selection -- is a simple one, at least in theory: “do your due diligence” when differentiating between providers.

“The tricky thing about the DMP vendor category is that what the DMP is really depends on what the DMP does,” Daniella Harkins, director of digital sales strategy at Acxiom, is quoted in the report as saying. “Enterprise-level DMPs in the market are born of companies with different beginnings, competencies, and visions. Teasing out these differences and determining the type of platform needed to handle a resource as valuable as data is not simple.”

The report also calls on marketers to take a realistic approach to DMP selection, noting that they may not be able to take advantage of a DMP’s full suite of bells and whistles if their in-house analytics resources aren’t at the same level. “You need to select a DMP with analytics capabilities that match your needs,” the report says.

When it comes to phase three -- deployment -- the report again cautions marketers against a grandiose entrance to the space, saying that longer-term DMP strategies should be deployed in phases, and that existing relationships can’t be overlooked.

“When we invested in our DMP, I had to manage the expectations of a number of stakeholders who immediately wanted tags across all of our owned properties, existing customer data input, and APIs connecting the DMP to our demand-side platform, on-site personalization engine, and cross-channel campaign manager,” a U.S.-based retailer’s director of marketing is quoted as saying. “[T]hey didn’t realize that type of deep integration would most likely take three years, not three weeks.”

The full report can be found here.

"Data management" image via Shutterstock.