How do marketing and environmentalism effectively co-exist? It’s a question I’ve grappled with for a long time, especially now, as the future of the two are inextricably linked. By definition, marketing is “the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service,” (Merriam Webster). Environmentalism is the “advocacy of the preservation, restoration, or improvement of the natural environment” (Merriam Webster). 


Kinesso is our partner and parent company. Read the original article on Kinesso.com

We live in unprecedented times. And with all that’s already happened across the globe in 2020, it’s easy to forget that we’re only halfway through the year. But one thing has remained constant and is more true today than ever: the need for advertisers to deliver actionable change.


Brands can no longer use traditional media as vehicles to simply exist in the marketplace. Instead, brands must evolve to live out and act on their values within these platforms.


What this means is simple: Brands must consider, absorb, and reflect the real-world experiences and events that surround them. This requires brands to continuously evolve and respond to the new normal through action grounded in the values that they espouse, promote, and stand behind.


Where can brands even begin?


Read the full article featured on Think With Google.

Innovation is a concept that engenders both universal alignment and universal confusion. We all agree that innovation is necessary but can’t agree on the right way to get there. We share concerns that we must continue to evolve our business but are equally concerned to execute on new ideas because of the downside risk. When we put innovative ideas through a SWOT analysis it seems that the weaknesses and threats weigh more heavily than their counterparts.


“To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.” – Steve Jobs


Innovation shouldn’t be an aspiration, it should be a goal. However, the challenge of setting it as a goal is figuring out a plan to achieve it. We are living during a time where a pandemic has forced businesses around the world to evaluate their value proposition, discover new ways of earning revenue and at the very least weather the financial difficulties. Articles that espouse the need for innovation today are preaching to the choir. The focus becomes how brands can take that first step. So how can it be done?


There are many ways to be innovative. This article is not about listing all the ways a brand can innovate. Original ideas are not cookie cutter, and I’ll defer to the more capable people who understand their particular brand’s challenges to come up with better ideas than I ever could. What this article hopes to achieve is to help brands set a framework to properly test and execute against innovative ideas. It may be an oversimplification to some. But to others, it could be a good starting point to integrate into their strategic planning.


The 90/10 Approach


It’s ok to be conservative when it comes to innovation. If there’s no proof of concept, no case study or no historic success to learn from, it’s completely justified to want to take a conservative approach. This is where the 90/10 approach fits in.


Make the 90 Work Like 100


Brands should actively find ways to set aside 10 percent of any investment to solely focus on innovation. The thought process behind this is that as long as the 90 percent is being managed properly, you can achieve near similar or the same results. So the very first step is to optimize and refine the 90 to work as if it were 100. Can you limit cost? Can you refine process? Can you discover new efficiencies that streamline operations?


Stay Conservative


Creating a conservative foundation is important because it still maintains control of the existing needs of the business while creating a designated space for originality. 90/10 is a starting point. Is the downside risk on 10 percent too high? Brands should consider what acceptable downside risk they are willing to take. It could be 5 percent, it could be lower, but it should never be zero. If a brand is closer to zero, it should be an indicator that the current initiatives, programs and investments should be working harder and better.


Be Aggressive and Accept Failure


A brand should be as aggressive as possible in that designated space when determining the overall structure. Failure should be an acceptable outcome. The beauty in innovation is that it only takes a few ideas (or maybe just one), executed properly, to change a business. It is a continuous test and fail approach until that idea comes to fruition. When failure becomes simply part of the process, a brand creates and fosters an environment of creativity. Experimentation becomes the part of the norm. Creativity plus experimentation equals innovation.


Incorporate the Downside Risk


This comes down to matter of perception, but the 10 percent a brand sets aside for innovation should always be incorporated as a downside in the overall performance outcome or analysis. That carveout never contributed to the main business objective and therefore should be shown as a downside.


Why does this matter? When innovation budgets are looked at in isolation, the ROI isn’t going to be great. Innovation is essentially a system designed around failure, so it’s never going to look great on its own. Nested into the greater objectives of the business however, innovation is the acceptable downside brand should have originally carved out and accepted.


If this seems to be trivial, ask those brands and business that cut R&D budgets the reasons behind why they did it. When brands significantly reduce their investment in innovation, it reflects a set of unrealistic expectations originally set forth.


Build a Pipeline To Play the Long Game


Innovation is never about going after low hanging fruit. It is a continuous investment over time testing idea after idea to future-proof a brand’s business. Sometimes it takes years for a brand to discover an innovation that evolves their business.


In order to play the long game, brands should look to build of pipeline of new ideas from every possible source—from their own employees, their competition, or what they may read about in their industry. All ideas should be considered. Sometimes it will take 100 bad ideas to uncover that one great idea. Having no idea is the worst-case scenario. As long as an idea is technically feasible and financially affordable, it should be evaluated and put into the pipeline to experiment.


Dream Big


Last but not least, dream big. Innovation in and of itself is rooted in unadulterated ambition. It is achieved by making the impractical become realistic, making the impossible become achievable. It is meant to change the world, so to accept any less of a standard than that limits its potential. Set lofty goals and fail over and over again until it is achieved. Once an idea comes to fruition, no one will remember all of the failures. If the outcome prompts significant capital, the payoff will further validate the journey.

In 2009, through a bit of odd inspiration, an intern at Yelp created Yelp Monocle, the first Augmented Reality (AR) app released for the iPhone. By that time AR had been around for decades, allowing us to use computers to modify and enhance our view of the real world. But this app was different. For the first time millions of consumers had a device in their pocket capable of augmenting their world view wherever they had cell reception.


Kinesso is our partner and parent company. Read the original article on Kinesso.com

Apple recently announced several new features in their upcoming release of iOS 14. Of note to the advertising world were several announcements around privacy that are likely to have long term effects on the large mobile advertising industry. These updates are in keeping with Apple’s decision to help give consumers the tools to manage how their data is used in the mobile ecosystem and providing them the ability to give explicit consent in regard to tracking behaviors and location across multiple applications by third parties. The changes also align with core aspects required by GDPR and other privacy and data protection laws, requiring controls for people and transparency of data practices.


Kinesso is our partner and parent company. Read the original article on Kinesso.com

“(Digital) Audience buying (used interchangeably with programmatic and self-service buying) has been around since the early 2010s, however it still remains a complex concept. It goes well beyond the typical contextual targeting tactic, which targets consumers based on assumed content consumption but, actually targeting consumers based on their internet browsing behavior and beyond. Within the past 10 years, as technology continues to advance, the mechanics of purchasing digital media has too. Participating in and observing the progression of media buying has been quite the ever-evolving adventure.”


Kinesso is our partner and parent company. Read the original article on Kinesso.com

Although the frenzy of platform acquisitions and mergers has died down it is still a constant challenge to navigate all the new players and offerings. It helps to bucket the buying platforms into two main categories, “omnichannel” and “specialized.” While omnichannel DSPs are awarded most of the budget and thus steer the industry, specialized DSPs continue to fill gaps such as heavily-nuanced client verticals (pharma, travel) and specific media types (native, social, direct mail).


These days omnichannel DSPs have very similar capabilities and most are open to leveraging their formidable engineering resources to solve any missing integration or UI nuance that is acting as a blocker to potential adoption. Therefore, the main differentiator across this category has become what unique data and/or inventory they offer. This is why these precious assets are usually locked behind walled gardens.

Omnichannel DSPs that lack unique assets are in a very tough spot, particularly for two reasons:
  • The impending death of the cookie and continued scrutiny of 3rd party data are making proprietary 1st party assets more important than ever.

  • Although they lack walled garden assets and their once-unique bid factors have been adopted by most of their competitors, The Trade Desk have continually increased their share of global industry adoption by maintaining incredibly high standards for customer service, 3rd party integrations, and UI flexibility. For these reasons many in the industry consider them to be the leading independent platform and a yardstick by which to measure others.

Thus, the decision process for selecting the right DSP for your campaign in 2020 tends to go something like this:


With DataXu’s recent sale to Roku there aren’t many independent omnichannel DSPs left. The only survivors will be those that can find a competitive angle that buyers respond to, like AdForm’s complete tech stack or Amobee’s Brand Intelligence planner. Flexible rates and promotional pricing will also be key.


Regardless of what classification a platform may fall under, the war for differentiation will continue to drive competition and innovation amongst our partners. Our responsibility, as always, will be to track all developments, evaluate through RFIs, betas, and bakeoffs, and recommend the best fit for each client campaign.


Category Examples:


Read the first article, Part 1, Overall Trends, to learn more.

Harnessing your first-party data to drive decisioning and to use for Marketing, Personalization and Analytics isn’t easy to employ, and it requires curiosity, rigor and cohesiveness.


A brand that is intent on using and activating this data should be knowledgeable about their first-party data and the resources available within their organization for cleaning, segmenting, usage of data on file, and portability. This work will likely require an investment and  numerous internal resources, but it will pay off with tremendous benefits to the bottom line; increased sales, decreased overall marketing costs and a better customer experience.


To accomplish these goals, brands need to invest in and build out their Martech because it takes people-based technology to support data management, insights, segmentation and activation. The customer data from disparate databases within the company, from all groups, should be integrated into a single, centralized data warehouse. And then, the data must be cleaned. This includes accurate identification across all devices, households and addresses as well as deduping in order to understand unique profiles. Cleaning data is a big, yet a critical task that needs to be accomplished when combining data sets. That includes (but is not limited to) standardizing the data across all fields, eliminating duplicate instances of the same customer (for example across emails), filling in missing data (like zip code attached to postal address), and creating a data map so that data stored in separate places can be pulled into the new data warehouse in an organized and uniform fashion.


Once the data that is being pushed into this centralized database has been standardized, one must develop a procedure for aligning data collection methodologies and capabilities across all ecosystems within the organization for continuous use and development. This gives you the ability to create single user profiles with all attributes appended to the individual within the database. This is important for truly understanding the customer, how she interacts across channels, how she has interacted with your brand over time, what she likes and dislikes, what devices she uses for different functions, what she purchases and more. This data will power cohesive and authentic interactions with your customer and will inform future tactics to her and others who act like her, across touchpoints.


While cleansing the data is important for identifying customers and for portability purposes, you must be aware of how your first-party data has been obtained and ways in which you are permitted to use it. The first question to ask is where the data originated, how it was obtained and for what purposes. This starts with checks and balances around whether the audience has opted-in and consented to receiving messages. Further, what type of marketing they have opted- in for and if they can be messaged by you and/or your partners. If you are using second- or third-party data to enhance profiles, to expand reach or for measurement, you should receive assurances that you have permission to use that data for these objectives. Also, clarifying the commercial model around that data usage will be important for determining the amount of data that you use and if it is efficient. For example, do you have to pay for the data each time you use it or is it a one-time fee? Also, understanding the data collection methodology gives you insight into the freshness and accuracy of the data and audiences.


Once the data lives in this warehouse it is time to put that data to work! Data segmentation can be done in order to ensure that you are grouping like audiences together for ease of portability and activation. There are several ways to do this and the types of segmentation done within an organization will definitely change over time. For ease, though, and when there aren’t multiple resources to perform this work, the framework should not be over ambitious-it should start out simple.


Having time stamps against profiles will help this process. These can inform of the last time a consumer interacted with your brand, purchased, etc. This allows you to build your segmentation into groups around recency and frequency as well as dormant, lapsed, recurrent purchasers or high-value customer. You may also want to group your audiences into demographic criteria, psychological criteria such as lifestyle and hobbies, and behavioral criteria like loyalty. Segmenting your customers based on her channel of interaction is a great way to continue engaging with her on this channel and it can be helpful for informing and inferring other behavioral actions that can take place on this channel. Lastly, develop thresholds for sizes of these segmented audiences so that you can ensure that you have a scalable segment to reach or to be modeled. This approach will help a marketer meet customer demands efficiently and effectively by delivering relevant and consistent messaging, communications and interactions.


Now that your data is clean, accurate, compliant and segmented, you can migrate it to different platforms for modeling, suppression and activation. This process of porting data from one application to the next is imperfect, though, because the nature of the process means that data gets lost during the transfer process. Therefore, you must choose a data matching and syndication partner who has a scalable identity graph that is not solely dependent on cookies and that can show you high match and reach rates. In the next part of this series, we will review a method for defining needs for onboarding while evaluating differences in matching partners.


Check out part one in this series, Understanding Data Activation and Data Matching.

In this article, discusses data defined in terms of veracity and value as it relates to a business. Specifically, he shares how focusing on Veracity & Value in the lens of deploying a self-developed smart home improved his overall skillset as a data scientist. “The technology and products we develop shall be smooth and easy to use, meet expectations of our users and integrate seamlessly with existing tech stacks, workflows and all channels involved.

Kinesso is our partner and parent company.
Read the original article on Kinesso.com

In this article, Genevieve discusses how the biggest opportunity for advertisers in 2020 is optimization, specifically dynamic creative optimization (DCO). “Data has been a notable topic of discussion the last few years, including how it will transform ad tech. But DCO is one of the first truly tangible examples of data powering technology in real-time for hyper personalization,” she states.

Kinesso is our partner and parent company.
Read the original article on Kinesso.com