Commentary

What's A DMP -- And Do I Need One?

by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, March 24, 2011

The data management platforms (DMP) is probably the least appealing and most misunderstood tool for online advertising. For starters, think of DMPs as a cross between ad servers and customer relationship management platforms. With data playing a more vital role in fueling online advertising, marketers will need tools to help manage of data assets. It's nothing new to business in general, though it may be new to advertising because of the newness of the medium. On Wednesday, BlueKai released a whitepaper on DMPs, explaining the type of products offered, as well as benefits and "common pitfalls" businesses can expect from such services.

The whitepaper explains what marketers should look for in a good DMP. For example, DMPs with advanced features should offer tag management, which lets marketers collect and organize audience data in one central repository, and classify data into manageable inventories. Advanced tag management also should let marketers set up privacy controls and measurement tools to share data, assigning varying rights levels to advertising partners, as well as protecting specific data from being accessed when companies don't want to share.

Advanced services also should include audience and advanced segmentation that goes beyond simple targeting to create thousands of relevant groups to reach consumers with the perfect message at all stages of the purchase funnel. Advertisers should use their own data first before tapping into another company's. A dashboard should allow marketers to analyze and sort first-party data by taxonomy, segment, campaign, and/or ROI, and then compare it against third-party data.

Then there's media integration, as well as campaign and audience analytics -- all of which can help advertisers make smarter media-buying and campaign-planning decisions.

behavioral targeting, data management

6 comments about "What's A DMP -- And Do I Need One?".

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Trine Buus from ad pepper media, March 24, 2011 at 11:12 a.m.
Thanks Laura. Do you have a link to the white paper please?
Reply

Christopher Brinkworth from Ensighten inc (acquired TagMan), March 24, 2011 at 11:58 a.m.

It’s GREAT that BlueKai are using their resources to push the Tag Management System terminology, but Im (I work for TagMan) unsure still on how it sits in the DMP stack.

I would like to see an update on Forrester’s papers on this. Forrester have two distinctly separate papers. One for DMP market and one for Tag Management System market. I assume, it’s because, like us – they see them as two very different topics and the TMS part is just a way to stay embedded on a page where there is a land-grab right now from many providers.

The challenge on Tag Management Systems is when you remove that agnostic part – you come up against hurdles. TagMan, remain the pioneering / leading AGNOSTIC Tag Management System. Because we do not get involved with the DMP stack, our 100+ enterprise ecommerce domains can use us to continue to easily deploy tools such as BlueKai’s new offerings - but also move from BlueKai, to eXelate or demdex or Red Aril or Aggregate Knowledge - by using the TagMan platform – without disrupting all their other vendor services such as LiveChat, MVT, Surveys, Analytics, Widgets etc.

I am still extremely interested in how the Tag Management part plays out when Adobe/Omniture/Demdex (interest also in Tag Management/Data) or IBM/CoreMetrics/(Insert Purchase Here) will feel about their tags being run through a BlueKai Tag Management System or vice versa. Wouldn’t these giants want to be in control of that part for obvious reasons - or am I missing something that BlueKai or others could explain to me here.

Chris Brinkworth
CMO
TagMan inc.

Benny Radjasa from Armonix Digital, Inc., March 24, 2011 at 12:43 p.m.

This is great Laura, please post a follow up article with the link to the white paper please.

Scott Pannier from DistroScale, March 24, 2011 at 6:30 p.m.

It's great to see articles about the DMP space, but there definitely is confusion about who has a "real" DMP versus a tag management solution. If Bluekai released a white paper on DMP's, one would assume they would put a link to it on their corporate website (I couldn't find a link, hope others have better luck). I have read and re-read eXelate's DataLinx press release, where they state to have 200 publishers and 50 buying platforms as clients, but I have been told that eXelate is more a tag management system than a fully baked DMP. Trine, send me your email address (scottp@47media.net)...47 Media is working with 1 of the companies that Chris Brinkworth mentioned above.

Stephan Pechdimaldji from Sports Illustrated, March 24, 2011 at 7:40 p.m.

for those looking for a link to the whitepaper here it is
http://bluekai.com/dmp/

Rowena Toguchi from BlueKai, March 25, 2011 at 1:05 p.m.

Chris,

BlueKai’s DMP solution includes a tag management service, which supports any data source or partner. The analogy is DFA and AdX. If you are a DFA client, you absolutely can buy from Right Media and Microsoft or any publisher; you are not required to only buy from the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. I have never met anyone who is confused about that or who claims that Google needs to sell DFA because it has AdX. Similarly, when someone uses BlueKai's Tag Management solutions, they can absolutely buy whatever data source they want. This comment is 100% FUD. Lets talk offline.