#FutureFit Yourself: How to choose your DMP w/ Wayne Hull

The below image will give you an understanding of how difficult it becomes to assemble a technology stack and the DMP decision becomes more complicated as the tech stack grows.

Figure 1: Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2018)

Source: Chiefmartec.com.

Recently I have been approached by so many businesses asking about the decision-making process for the right DMP.

I couldn’t think of a better person to shine a light on this topic. Wayne Hull, managing director and board member for Accenture Digital, Africa. This is a very valid question and not something to take lightly in the “New Moore’s Law of Data”.

Wayne Hull, managing director and board member for Accenture Digital, Africa.

Wayne answers some of the questions that emerged from a recent survey I conducted to give more clarity and what businesses should take into consideration when choosing a DMP.

Why should businesses invest in DMP’s?
Wayne: A business should invest in a DMP as it allows for a place to organise, process and return valuable yet actionable data about ideal customers, and then actually send the data elsewhere to reach those ideal customers. Basically, DMP’s allow businesses to acquire, retain and upsell the most valued customers on their base. It’s a formalised iterative and optimal propensity model” tool in my opinion.

Reducing added cost overheads from their marketing spend by cutting out the middleman is an obvious evolution to building efficiencies in Marketing Spend, especially when businesses find themselves demanding an additional return for their spend. It gives them bigger control, more transparency, and speed.

How does a company decide which is the right DMP for their business?
Wayne: I think this DMP choice decision would be impacted by whether a company is a business marketer, agency or publisher as a DMP will have slightly different focus depending on the company objective.

What are the top things to look out for when choosing a DMP?
I. Consider ROI: Make sure the DMP has real measurable ROI eg: by connecting data sources, adding structure to the data based on the publisher-specific business rules and helping make the data actionable the DMP creates higher revenue, better insights and ultimately better business decisions.

II. Data collection: What kind of data can a DMP handle and how is it organised and structured? This is very important to consider. Most DMP’s will aggregate first-party data from any source, but will a DMP also allow easy access to third party data? Also, you need to consider integration into other platforms (technical architecture consideration) and if there are limitations on collecting data from certain sources.

III. Parent/child architecture: You need to consider whether the DMP allows for a Parent/Child Architecture which may or may not be important depending on the business eg: a Unilever has many subsidiary brands and may want to keep a brands data separate.

IV. Audience insights: All DMP’s offer different types of insights, some have insights before a campaign runs, some only after, also some provide automated reports, some do not.

V. Campaign optimisation: Some DMP’s allow for manual optimisations while others don’t- a business must assess this need case by case.

VI. Second-party data: Some DMP’s offer second party data, while others don’t, again this needs to be considered by the business case by case as a necessary requirement.

VII. Third-party data access: Some DMP’s provide greater access to extensive data networks which can include billions of profiles, customer insights, and general business opportunities. Depending on what your business needs are, this enriched data may help a business get better ROI, especially if their own data is not that rich, to begin with.

VIII. New features of DMP: Then there is also the consideration of how frequently each DMP release new features and map the previous release of competitors- as I say, this is where the effort gets exerted for a client wishing to invest in a DMP.

What is the consequence for companies that fail to choose the correct DMP?
Wayne: There could be multiple consequences depending on the specific circumstance, based on the above points I rose in how to consider a DMP- it could be anything from difficulty in integrating with existing architecture to poor quality data and limited access or integration into 2nd and 3rd party data or poor reporting and insights visibility.

When investing in a DMP, does it require specialised staff?
Wayne: I think a DMP tool would require a data team in collaboration with a data and marketing specialist team to run efficiently and effectively to ensure that the tool delivers targeted, focused and measurable ROI for the business.

What is the difference between a DSP and a DMP and do you recommend DSP’s?
Wayne: A DMP is used to store and analyse data, while a DMP is used to actually buy advertising based on that information. Information is fed from a marketers DMP to its DSP to help inform ad buying decisions, but without being linked to another technology, a DMP can’t actually do much.

There is a common confusion point for those new to this space, trying to understand the difference between DMP’, CDH (which is the tool having arguably the most overlap) DSP’s, SSP’s, RTB, programmatic which are not really relevant in terms of overlap, but highly relevant to the environment in which a DMP would likely work – defiantly worth unpacking what all the associated pieces of tech are, how they interact and what roles they play.

Wayne says, in most cases, there is little doubt about whether a DMP is required and whether it useful because of the single view of customer, data enrichment, audience segmentation, targeting and personalisation is generally accepted to be the way forward with data-driven marketing being a requirement just to get a ticket to the game.

Cookie matching

Companies should consider “cookie matching”, which enables a buyer to associate and match buyers. This becomes highly relevant and an essential consideration from PoPI and GDPR perspective to ensure User Privacy Protection, Opt Out compliance, right to be forgotten etc. as this is highly relevant and usually left until it becomes a sticky point.

Wayne Hull has given businesses so much to think about. What we can gather from this interview, is one thing, don’t take DMP’s lightly and really understand what you need to get out of a DMP.

In closing

Wayne Hull has given businesses so much to think about. What we can gather from this interview, is one thing, don’t take DMP’s lightly and really understand what you need to get out of a DMP.

We live in the age of data obesity. Too much data, and too little insights. Extracting value from structured and unstructured data becomes an enormous challenge and this is why it’s essential for businesses to do a data cleanse, fix the broken data and remove all corrupted data and enrich it. You don’t want to put the cart in front of the horse. There is a saying that goes, “Garbage in, Garbage out”. If you don’t want skewed results, this should be your first starting point.

Invest in a DMP, but don’t do this in isolation. Consult with experts that can guide you independently to help inform you to make the right decisions, not only for your current needs but for the future needs of your business. This is not a decision to take lightly, and there needs to be a commitment to keep the data squeaky clean and see it as the engine room of your business to build connected customer experiences.

I hope that you have found this #FutureFit Yourself interview useful and see the importance of treating your data sacred and investing in the right technology to support business growth and optimisation.