A Smarter Way to Use Third-Party Data: MarTech Series Features AdPredictive SVP Chelsea O’Donnell’s Perspective

The marketing industry has entered a more strategic phase when it comes to using smarter data to build better customer relationships. Initially triggered by the move to a “cookieless” world, third-party data has reached a crossroads, and now the industry is looking for more effective and integrated ways to identify who their customers are. As marketers increasingly question the value of third-party data, they are also re-examining traditional ways in which data is collected and analyzed. 

In a recent article for MarTech Series, AdPredictive Senior Vice President of Business Development Chelsea O’Donnell highlights some of the most pressing pain points marketers face—and a solution—when it comes to third-party data. O’Donnell addresses ideas including:

Getting around gaps in data visibility and accuracy.

“Cookies promised marketers a wealth of insight into consumer behavior and preferences across the global digital landscape. The abundance of this data made media planning a snap and the constant flow of campaign metrics further validated the strategies created by those handy metrics. That feedback loop short circuits, however, when marketing professionals try to wire the data – or its look-alikes – into their enterprises.”

The inability to understand who the customer is and what makes them tick.

“Consumer identities are rooted in our offline lives, perhaps more deeply than the connection with brands we buy or the media we consume. Data provider metrics may not factor in these attributes: family make-up, neighborhood, education, or religion. Audience personas can overlook income levels and employment status.”

The challenge of combining and connecting traditionally siloed first- and third-party data.

“Some enterprises collect valuable information about their customers directly. Unfortunately, the enterprise data usually sit in separate department silos across the operation. Finance may not share with Marketing, which doesn’t interact with Logistics and Shipping, while CRM systems don’t capture information from Customer Service phone lines, POS systems or website chats. For many brands, the work required to aggregate and distill so many inputs into a coherent and useful first-party data set represents a major strategic challenge.”

O’Donnell also shares a solution—mixing first-party and third-party consumer data through AdPredictive’s cookieless platform.

“The results are usually eye-opening. At AdPredictive, some clients have multiplied their audience attributes tenfold. Among those who mix their customer IDs with third-party profiles, match rates can be as high as 40 percent for hashed email addresses alone. More attributes vastly expand the options for slicing and dicing audiences and building targets that mirror current real customer attributes, from GenX churchgoers to boomers on fixed incomes. All of which is delivering a new level of precision and creative flexibility.”

Explore our website to learn more about how we support our clients with data and intelligence to better understand their consumers and drive smarter marketing in a cookieless world.