Experts underscore role of data aggregation in IMC industry
By Abimbola Mohammed
Advertisers have long been collecting first-party data like website visits, email clicks, social media conversations, sales transactions, survey data, and more. But when big techs like Google and Apple started sharing their data sets, advertisers began to rely on those more than their first-party data.
With Google and what is happening with Apple on data privacy, marketers need to find alternatives as some have already found ways to reach their audience by returning to first-party data as their first choice for ad targeting.
However, to effectively address this growing complexity and decreasing effectiveness, marketers need to use data characteristics to define their choice of media, rather than profiling the consumers of media that have already been planned.
Speaking with MARKETING EDGE in separate interviews, some media experts pointed out that their agencies have gone beyond seeing accurate data as a challenge while a few noted that more could still be done in terms of keeping accurate data.
According to Emeka Okeke, Founder/Group CEO, Media Fuse Dentsu International, data is not a challenge rather aggregating data for future use may be a challenge in Nigeria.
“Data is not much of a challenge; it’s about pushing it together in one place to make it accessible. We have all kinds of pieces of data on a small, medium, and large scale. It’s about aggregating the data and making a sense of the future that matters, depending on the tools you are using and depending on who you are aggregating from,” he said.
Mr. Okeke added that aggregating data from the point of view of an advertiser will require looking at what other competitors are doing from the sale, innovation, and product development.
“But if you are aggregating data from the marketing point of view, you will look at so many things in terms of people’s behaviour in the media space, how they relate to each other, how they use technology and what their interests are, which age group is a concern and what the product is for them, and what consumption means to them and also who they are talking to,” Mr. Okeke explained.
Summing up his view on the issue of data challenge, he said: “So, it is not the lack of data in the marketplace, it is about the aggregation of data and what sense you make of it. Do we have platforms to aggregate data in the marketplace? Do we have one single space where we can get the data? That’s the question.”
For Dr. Ken Onyeali Ikpe, Group CEO, Insight Redefini, data stopped being a challenge for his firm over one and a half decades ago as his agency name, Insight Ridifini, implies.
“Some people consider it a big challenge but the group I work for has never seen data as a big challenge. In the last 10 years, we have always seen it as an opener. What we call our group is Insight; we go from hindsight, primary and secondary data to Insight which is today’s fact and foresight. So, without data, there would be no kind of transition. For us, in the the last fifteen years, data has always been the basis and reason for growth,” he revealed.
Austin Efienamokwu, CEO, Ubiquity Media Holding Limited believes that data and insights are pivotal to business outcomes. The media buying and planning expert identified the insufficiency of quality data as a major challenge.
“We live for data insights and innovative solutions. Business success doesn’t seem to be driven by size or scale as much anymore, the world is moving away from scale to strategic capabilities. Our strategic capabilities such as data, analytics, and tech get us to parity with the strongest players in the marketplace. If you have data and analytics, you have the power to give your clients advice around growth and to drive their business transformation.
“Most of these challenges stem from the fact that the most robust data sets available in the industry are still being tracked manually which has created difficulty in ensuring real-time campaign optimization,” he pointed out.
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