Advance Programmatic Advertising: Put First-Party Data First

According to eMarketer’s latest estimates, programmatic is on the rise with digital display advertising spending in the United States expected to come in at 32.56 billion, 78% of total digital display ad dollars in 2017 and then swell to 84% of the pie by 2019. More advertisers are becoming familiar with programmatic advertising and seeing its benefits, so how do you stay knowledgeable and stay ahead of the competition? Put your first-party data first. This is precisely what Goodway Group COO Jay Friedman recommends in this excerpt from eMarketer’s recently released report, “Advancing Programmatic Advertising: Buyers and Sellers Seek Greater Control Over Ad Campaigns and Audiences Reached”: “For 2017, what we’re pushing marketers toward is thinking about first-party data first,” said Jay Friedman, partner and COO at programmatic media buying and planning firm Goodway Group. “Starting with the question, ‘What data do I have?’ and then how do they use it and model it to create their own universe. From there, we’re asking them to focus on better identity management, which involves cross-device management and tying it to your first-party data.”

First-Party Data: What Is it?

  • This is data you already own.
    • It’s free, it’s accurate and it’s safe. It’s all the valuable information you’ve collected about your audience – your customers and prospects – such as contact info, behaviors, past actions and purchase history, from the following sources:
      • your website
      • your customer relationship management (CRM)
      • your subscriptions
      • your mobile web and apps
      • your social media data

First-Party Data: How Can It Benefit You?

  • First-party data is effective because it can automatically tell you who your “perfect fit” customers and prospects are.
    • Since you already know who is interacting with your brand, what type of person is interested in or using your product or service, it takes the guesswork out of targeting.
      • Instead of simply hoping you pick the right third-party segments, you can build look-alike models from your first-party data to accurately scale and extend your audience.
      • You can segment your first-party data based on your unique business needs instead of relying on “off the shelf” third-party segments, which could end up being too broad and generic.

First-Party Data: How Can It Help You Succeed?

  • When you use your first-party data to the fullest and then connect it to second-party data (just first-party data from another source) or any third-party data (aggregated data from an outside source), then you can see your audience holistically, from all angles.
  • Data – owning, connecting and understanding it – is how you better connect with your target audience and win today.
    • It can help you run programmatic advertising campaigns more efficiently and effectively and with greater success.
    • It can help you get to know your target audience better so you can more precisely target, personalize messaging and foster deeper relationships with current and potential customers.

Harnessing data and running data-driven programmatic advertising campaigns are top priority at Goodway Group. If your clients are just getting started with programmatic, download our free programmatic slides or watch our programmatic 101 video to learn more. Or take your programmatic advertising to the next level, contact us today.