At Matterkind, we recognize the value of our employees and the talent they bring every day. Without the strength of our teams, we would not be able to grow into the thriving, diverse community we have established here today.

Every month, Matterkind spotlights individuals from across the globe who have gone above and beyond. These employees are known as our Ascenders of the Month, and you can learn a little more about them below.

Pablo Abreu, Director of Addressable Strategy & Activation
Pablo Abreu is the Director of Addressable Strategy & Activation at Matterkind, working on various accounts. Pablo loves “how bright and resourceful everyone is,” and the true sense of community at Matterkind. “I appreciate how we all support one another in so many different ways, everyone has so much to offer, and I find myself constantly learning.” Pablo thinks his coworkers would describe him as “thoughtful,” and if he could have any superpower, he would want the ability to heal others.

László Farkas, Head Of Technology for DE
As the Head of Technology for DE, László is responsible for the development and the maintenance of the in-house tech stack. He focuses on delivering quality, data-driven insights to his colleagues across teams. László constantly feels amazed by the thriving work culture displayed at Matterkind, and the different paths you can choose within the organization to develop a greater sense of ownership. He thinks that his coworkers would describe him as “detailed,” and if he had to describe his team in three words, he would say that they are, “such great people!”

Johanna Lavini, Managing Director
Johanna Lavini is the Managing Director of the Peruvian Market, and is just shy of celebrating one year at Matterkind! Above all, Johanna really loves the diversity here at Matterkind, as well as the shared knowledge around technology and data. When asked to describe herself in one word, Johanna thinks that “leader” describes her best, and that her coworkers would agree. She describes her team as “intrepid, enthusiastic, and curious.”

Akshat Singh, Programmatic Manager
Akshat Singh is the Programmatic Manager and has been at Matterkind for two years. He loves the breadth of learning that the Matterkind community offers and is focused on helping clients grow and succeed by engaging with their audiences. Akshat thinks coworkers would describe him as a “Jolly-Good-Fellow,” (which we love!). If Akshat ever writes an autobiography, he will title it Order in Chaos.

We believe we are so much more than the sum of our parts and believe in the strengths of each individual and every team. Our culture is built on lifting each other up, caring for our communities, and making a positive impact. Interested in joining our collaborative environment? Check out our open positions now.

In this latest Adweek article, our new application, Outcome Navigator was featured. Outcome Navigator is a collection of new applications focused on delivering business outcomes for brands, where only pay based on outcomes generated. This allowed for a low risk, fixed cost per action model that saves clients time and performance marketing spend dollars. Adweek goes on to discuss the client reactions to our new offering, the success seen, and the future of performance marketing budgets. Check out the full Adweek article here.

The trend for brands to internalize media management is one that waxes and wanes, oftentimes becoming a hot-button operations issue before returning to the back burner.

If your brand does consider making this move, the somewhat misleading phrase ‘in-housing’ will inevitably be mentioned, sending internal stakeholders and agency partners alike into a spin. There’ll be visions of having to develop an internal mini agency to manage everything from audience and data through to activation, optimization and analytics. Which is a tremendous investment.

The reality is very few brands actually want this level of internal media management. Even fewer have the resources and expertise to make it work. Most are looking for a hybrid situation, where they take a more hands-on role in the specific aspects of media that are really important to them, while leaning on managed support from agency partners for the bulk of their operations.

Far from being a choice of extremes between a fully agency-managed model or a fully brand-managed model, you can find a sweet spot that works for your brand on the vast spectrum between the two.

The Hybrid Approach Explained

A hybrid approach to media management can take a variety of forms. And it looks different for each brand, depending on goals and priorities as well as internal capabilities. You may want to just take on a small portion of the operation, such as segmentation, or you may want to internalize activation while your agency focuses more on education and strategy.

One of the more common hybrid models is to split the audience component and the activation piece, with the brand managing one and the agency managing the other. But even this model takes a variety of forms.

Some brands prefer to internalize intelligence and manage their own data, with the goal of taking ownership of the customer relationship. They may want to build and model audiences themselves, but then still push those out to their agency partner to activate. These brands don’t necessarily have the teams or core functionality to activate media internally, and often have no wish to do so.

On the flip side, other brands want to do the activation component themselves, with agency support for the data and intelligence piece. This is because brands often struggle with how to operationalize intelligence. They might get a seat on DV360 and hire an activation team, but still leverage their agency partner’s interconnected suite of applications to analyze audiences, derive insights, create segments, and syndicate these out to all the different channels and platforms.

A hybrid approach to media management is most effective when it takes workload off your brand’s internal team, allowing it to focus on the aspects you see as most important. Agency partners deliver valuable services and functionality to complement your efforts and support your goals.

There are several reasons why hybrid is a sensible approach to internalizing media operations. These include:

Ensuring Innovation Not Stagnation

Media and marketing move quickly, and agencies are set up to keep pace with new ideas and trends. But that isn’t necessarily the case with internal brand teams. When brands have a small, tight team working a particular way it’s easy to stagnate—with an immediate impact on performance.

If your brand does internalize some of its media management, there is still an important role for agencies in preventing stagnation and driving innovation. Agency partners can bring expertise around new and emerging trends or channels, provide ongoing training and support, or help with onboarding new technologies.

Internalizing some aspects of media rarely means an end to agency relationships as you’ll need to tap into those partnerships to stay fresh and relevant.

Reducing Financial Investment

One thing that is often overlooked when brands consider internalizing operations is the sheer cost involved. Particularly the amount they will need to spend on technology platforms.

Assuming you don’t already have demand-side platforms (DSPs), ad servers, audience management platforms, and customer data platforms (CDPs) in place, you’re going to have to either build these capabilities from scratch or spend a great deal with third-party providers to access them. Entering into costly bi-annual contracts and onboarding a huge range of platforms is often far less appealing from a financial perspective than making use of the technology suites your agency partners bring to the table. A hybrid approach, where you can still use your agency’s tech platforms, can offset a lot of the expense.

Getting the Right People for the Job

Of course, it’s not just technology that contributes to the cost of internalizing media management. There’s also the investment required to hire a whole team of people to support these activities.

These are highly specialized roles so your talent acquisition team will have to learn how to recruit for ad ops, campaign management and strategy, and data science and analytics roles. Attracting the right talent and keeping it can be a real challenge. Your internal team is a great environment for people to get trained up but, with a potential lack of upward mobility and opportunity, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay for the long haul.

A hybrid approach means your internal team still benefits from agency support and expertise. This could mean help with recruitment and training, or it could mean providing an overflow facility to ensure operations run smoothly if you have resourcing issues or team disruptions. And of course, the agency is also on hand to help with strategy.

The Many Faces of In-Housing

When the term ‘in-housing’ is used to describe internalizing media, it suggests an all-or-nothing proposition, but this simply isn’t the case. There are many ways for brands and agencies to share the workload.

A hybrid approach allows you to focus on the specific elements that are most important to you, while your agency supports and complements your efforts through a combination of managed services, people, or technology. It is a far stronger proposition than a fully ‘in-house’ model and allows brands and agencies to maintain productive, mutually beneficial relationships.

Marketing has changed dramatically in the last two years, especially when it comes to where and how budgets are utilized. Many businesses felt the financial squeeze of the pandemic, where tight budgets created limited advertising options. Additionally, the needs of the average person were changing—from in-store shopping to homebound online shoppers. We saw that what marketers needed during this time, and going forward, was flexibility above all.

With this shift in habits, we knew marketers needed more options, and we were happy to provide them. As everyone spent more time at home, marketing efforts and technologies were shifted to reflect that. Dotcom marketing, streaming video-CTV, YouTube ads, and QR codes transitioning from TV to mobile became the focus, all while still adhering to an audience-first approach. Rather than pushing struggling businesses into a fixed payment schedule, we encouraged marketers to explore our Outcome Based Marketing solution. With this measure, teams were able to feel at ease knowing they were only paying a single CPA, instead of separated CPM for display and CPC for search.

As marketers look at the rest of 2022 and beyond, there are three key technology trends that require special attention. These trends will shape the future of AdTech, MarTech, and marketing overall.

1. The Emergence of Retail Media Networks & Their Data

Most retailers are now offering media and purchase data to other brands. This data has now become “the gold standard”—opt in compliant, deterministic, new, active, and accurate. This kind of data is a goldmine for most marketers, and allows brands to engage with people in a meaningful way across channels to drive sales in store and online. In fact, more than 75% of brands have seen an increase in ROI thanks to retail media. Best of all, it is not reliant on cookies, allowing for a better method of compliant data collection to pave the way. Brands need data, and retailers have more than enough to spare. Read more about the shift to first-party data in blog post by Elizabeth Schwartz, VP of Commerce Solutions, here.

2. Total Convergence of TV and Digital
As people switch from watching on a TV, to reading on a tablet, to browsing on mobile devices, the transition between devices is becoming even more seamless. Newfound QR comfort following the pandemic has also made the shift from CTV to mobile even easier, as a unique QR code displayed on CTV provides a more streamlined jump that people are willing to make. As a result, single marketing strategies across TV and digital channels aren’t just possible, but thriving. This process also allows for more holistic, efficient marketing campaigns, as it dedupes the overlap between partners in the same channel, saving brands money and giving people a better experience.

3. Shift From Channel-Led Planning to Audience-Driven Planning
Leading with a people-first approach doesn’t seem like such a novel idea, yet many are only just starting to embrace it. This shift in planning has allowed for precise and consistent messaging across all channels, which allows for better personalization and reach of advertisements. Moreover, this provides people with a better overall experience and better brand perception This is one of the pillars of conscious marketing—brands must take a more respectful and people-led approach to communication, delivering the right message to the right person.

As we face a cookieless future, we know marketers will require increasing flexibility in their marketing tools. The ever-changing data and compliance landscape, evolving pandemic needs, and new technological advances, will continue to demand creative digital solutions. Observing and monitoring key industry trends like these will help marketers succeed and stay ahead of the curve.

Most brands accept they need to build out their first-party CRM database. But in the current climate, this is largely seen as a defensive move; a way to safeguard audience insight when third-party cookies make their much-discussed departure.

It’s true that first-party data does provide an effective safety net, and brands should certainly look at it that way. However, it also opens up a wealth of other possibilities and a chance to take ownership of the customer relationship, regardless of cookie deprecation. This opportunity is particularly exciting for CPG brands that have so far relied on retailers for customer insight, but really it’s something every brand should be doing.

The bottom line is, the world is changing and first-party data will help your brand change with it. An ongoing effort to maintain and grow first-party data won’t just protect your brand, it will also put you in a proactive position to stay ahead in the evolving landscape.

Connecting through an identity spine

In the past, there was a limit to what you could do with CRM data. You might be able to send emails to a customer, or potentially even an SMS, but that was about it. Now, in a world where ecommerce is exploding and everything is interconnected, the possibilities are limitless.

With first-party data, your brand can create a central identity spine, appended and enriched with second-party behavioral attributes. Every team within your organization can connect through this identity spine, enabling a more holistic media strategy. Your comprehensive media plan can encompass a wide range of channels, from social, search and digital advertising, to connected TV, email and direct mail—all built around CRM data.

Right now, distinct marketing teams like search and social are often disconnected, with their own tech partners, their own budgets and – most significantly – their own data sources. With first-party data you can address this disconnect. Everyone can operate under a standard key, such as a hashed email, so you can connect the dots between different departments—even outliers such as affiliate and direct mail. You can develop a cohesive plan where everything is trackable and data driven. It’s time to bring your marketing teams together and that means taking ownership of data.

Building out your own first-party data delivers:

Enhanced customer experience

If your teams work with distinct providers for individual marketing channels, and each one sources data from different places, it’s virtually impossible to control the customer experience. Valued customers and promising prospects are bombarded with repetitive, or even conflicting, messaging from multiple directions, quickly damaging their perception of the brand. When all parties can tap into a first-party identity spine, you have far more control over how many ads people are exposed to, as well as when and where they see them. First-party data puts you in control of communications to deliver more relevant customer experiences. When we talk about conscious marketing, these types of experiences are at its core.

Personalization opportunities

Unique messaging for each individual customer or prospect may not be a realistic goal, but marketing interactions do need to be as personalized as possible to forge strong connections and drive intended outcomes. First-party data gives you a far better understanding of your customers, enabling you to break out audiences into cohorts that can be pushed to activation platforms, so individuals receive more relevant and engaging experiences. This can be a gradual process, with your brand slowly building in a greater level of personalization over time.

Meaningful measurement

When your brand’s entire media plan is built around a common identity spine with person-level data, measuring the true impact and effectiveness of marketing tactics becomes far easier. Data across all engagements with a particular person can be used to analyze performance in real time. The powerful insights this uncovers can enable you to shift budget to more effective channels and tactics and optimize towards your chosen outcomes. You’ll be positioned to understand the impact of emerging channels—such as connected TV—as part of a unified media plan, rather than trying to measure their performance in silos.

The resurgence of lead generation

While the value of building out first-party CRM data is clear, getting started is often easier said than done. In a privacy-first world, where there is increased scrutiny of consumer data use, brands need to establish a proper value exchange for people to consent to sharing their personal information.

But there are still ways your brand can get going with this process. The recent focus on privacy has spurred a resurgence in lead generation practices as a way to accumulate customer data ethically, with full consent and transparency into what it will be used for. Possible entry points might include newsletters, or inter-brand partnerships with co-branded sponsorships and sweepstakes.

Some channels provide easier wins than others. Platforms such as Facebook and YouTube are trusted by their users, and lead forms in these environments can be pre-populated, making users more likely to share information. Embedded lead forms are becoming more prevalent in these spaces as the necessity of first-party data is increasingly recognized, with Google Ads lead form extensions being a prime example.

Ongoing effort is required

It doesn’t really matter how or where you get started with building out first-party CRM data. For most brands, it will be a case of learning to crawl and then walk before you can run. What matters is that there is an ongoing, evergreen effort to grow and maintain first-party data in a privacy compliant manner. This means implementing not just the mechanisms to collect that data ethically, but also the right tech partners to safeguard information in a way that complies with the relevant regulations.

We all know the importance of first-party data will increase with third-party cookie deprecation, but it shouldn’t be seen as a mere safety net to protect brands at that point in time. Building your entire, multi-channel media plan around a single identity spine, based on first-party CRM data, can allow you to take ownership of the customer relationship and deliver personalized, measurable experiences designed to drive your brand’s desired outcomes, regardless of the cookie situation.

With the approaching elimination of third-party cookies, some marketers may be feeling the pressure. An asset we’ve relied on for years to support and enable our data collection has now been pulled out from under us—but is it really as bad as it seems? Cookies have become the default solution for many when it comes to obtaining insights, but they can also be inaccurate, frustrating to individuals, and ineffective at measuring performance. While third-party cookie phase-out may seem like a catastrophe, it’s actually an opportunity to harness the power of conscious marketing.

Conscious marketing is both about taking an intentional, respectful route, and also holding your business accountable. Collecting data that’s necessary, rather than available, for example, or being honest and transparent in your communications. It’s about keeping both company goals front of mind as well as connecting in an authentic, relevant way with your audience. Conscious marketing also creates an excellent opportunity to reduce costs through more welcoming and specific messaging, by delivering the right message to the right audience.

The depreciation of third-party cookies may seem like a loss, but in many ways, is a gain to marketers everywhere. Learn more about our thoughts on conscious marketing in this blog post by Erica Schmidt.

Over the past year, I’ve seen a lot of exciting technology come together across Kinesso’s media measurement and optimization capabilities. One area that is particularly exciting is scaling experiments to drive incremental ROI optimization, and I hope to convince you to get excited about this area too. 

Experiments are improving

When I first started in media, it was difficult to garner excitement about experiments. They were often underwhelming on insights, slow, and expensive. Think back to those Spot TV DMA tests and how long it took to align on test parameters, wait for the test to complete, analyze the results, and debug confounding factors like localized promotions. 

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

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