A ‘Digital System of Record’
Published on Nov 18, 2015
Executing digital marketing campaigns has become a minefield of complexity and risks for global Brand advertisers. The emergence of programmatic has create new opportunities, but brought with it a slew of new challenges. Holding media sellers and your own agency accountable for their performance requires a centralized ‘system of record’ that can be the final count for billing purposes, as well as the hub for collecting, applying and distributing data. Sizmek started out as a 3rd party ad server – the system you rely on to deliver and count the ads, but today has evolved to also cover verification, viewability, attribution, dynamic creative, cross-device analytics, and so much more. Sizmek’s VP Product Strategy, Alex White will explain the importance of creating a digital system of record as the foundation of your advertising technology stack, including tips and best practices for implementing such as system, as well as maximizing it’s use both in your organization and your agency.
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
A Digital System of Record
Meeting An Unique Need of Global Advertisers
Where Are We Now?
GLobal Advertisers face unique challenges
Holistic
Omni-dimensional advertising
Digital Data Management
The DSR is merely the foundation. Some of the building blocks on top of the DSR include...
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Data Ownership
The Digital Representation of Your Audience
Your data informs what you buy and how much you pay. Your data is a digital representation of your audience. You should have final ownership of your data, and be the final decision maker on what platforms contain your data. Whatever is the final system for storing and counting should be directly within your oversight, which typically would include your ad server, and a few other key technologies.
Data Security
Your Core Platform Should Be Media Agnostic
Your core platforms should be media agnostic, to prevent against media companies using your data as a negotiation tool against you, or for the benefit of competitors or other advertisers served by your agency. Access to your data should be governed ultimately by you to protect against abuse.
Centralization
A Single Platform That Underpins Everything
Using multiple platforms and technologies is inevitable in today’s digital advertising ecosystem. Using all of these technologies enables you to use best available features to execute your media buy, but to avoid waste and inefficiency from negating your media strategy, you need a single platform that underpins everything. Silos create waste, as each silo will attempt to take credit for the same results. Any waste found in one platform could exist in others, and your cost of policing all the platforms is too high – so you need one platform that underpins everything.
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Data Portability
Your Data Anywhere & Everywhere
The digital ecosystem is fluid and so should your strategy. You need to select partners and technologies that allow you to take your data with you when you change agency roster, or to allow you to migrate from one strategy to the next with ease. You should never limit your media strategy because of being locked into a certain media execution platform. You need platforms that play nice with other platforms, allowing easy exchange of your data. At the end of the day your data is most valuable when it can be turned into insights and then activated, used for targeting and optimization- and so data should never be hid away under a mattress, but rather the fuel driving your media strategy forward.
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Data Quality
Compromising Brand Reputation
The biggest risk brands face are buying low quality media (paying too much, or compromising brand reputation) or being a victim of fraudulent advertising –meaning that no actual consumer had the opportunity to view the ad. Your agency and media partners don’t have incentives fully aligned on this, and it’s really best if the advertiser itself is making the final decision on how to verify that it is getting what it pays for from everyone in the chain.
Creating Your DSR
3rd Party Ad Server
The Foundation of Your Digital System of Record
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Intrinsic
Standardizing taxonomy for consistencies
Centralized digital creative assets, with standardizing naming taxonomy for consistency across geographies, agencies, et cetera.
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Consumation
Singular system to assess performance beyond impressions
A system to house all performance beyond the impression including clicks, engagement, post-click and post view conversions...
Investment
Storage of all media in one place
Dedicated platform to store all media costs associated with campaigns and placements.
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Verification
Standardized fraud protection
The base function of the DSR as discussed before is to count the impressions. That final count is used for billing, but also for much more. The counts are used to gauge performance, ROI, optimization decisions and more. So when it comes to verification, it’s a question of further evaluating impressions… not just which ones were served, but which were served to real people (not bots or other fraud), which impressions were viewable, and which impressions appeared in a high quality context.
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Methodology
Quality Control Across Entire Digital Buy
It stands to reason that the role of 3PAS needs to extend to include verification. It can’t be an outside provider, or “specialist” because then you end up with two data sets for counting ad serving and doing quality control. Often these outside providers have an incentive to flag as much negative activity as possible to provide their value. Verification and Fraud Detection are best kept as capabilities within an overall DSR, with ultimately control in the hands of the Brand itself on how much risk to take, and how much sensitivity to be used when monitoring quality.
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Research
Understanding & Execution
The final two items in the list are about making the DSR an open platform to ingest data, and to monitor data from other channels that are not necessarily available for “ad serving.” Having a single platform is critical to establishing a single cookie pool across your entire campaign, and using this you can later set up targeting, re-targeting, tracking uniques/frequency, frequency capping, etc…
Cookie
Enables targeting, Tracking, Frequency
Having a single platform is critical to establishing a single cookie pool across your entire campaign, and using this you can later set up targeting, re-targeting, tracking uniques/frequency, frequency capping, etc…
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Measurement
Nielsen & ComScore
Measurement providers like Nielsen and comScore offer valuable insights about the size and dimensions of the campaign audience. Their platforms themselves are not DSR because they are too far removed from execution. However it’s critical that the DSR have a linkage into these measurement platforms for advertisers that seek additional level of validation or measurement on campaigns.
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Toolsets
Connecting tools across A Single Platform
Analytics
Powering Tools for Decisioning
Media Analytics: Powering tools for decisioning and insights, leveraging this single source of truth.
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Data Sharing
Deliver to All Platforms Within Open Stack
Data Sharing: The ability to send data to other platforms, to enable all platforms within the Brand’s ad tech stack to see a closed-loop view on performance.
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Activation
Execute Strategy Across All Platforms
Data Activation: The ability to set audience targeting, media optimization, and other strategies in a centralized manner, and distribute across all media execution platforms.
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One System of Record
A Single, Impartial Global Verification Ad Server
