...And the Race To Grab Consumer Data Heats Up!

Tim: Well, it's episode 50 of Thinking Caps and the race to grab consumer data heats up. There are three articles that were in Ad Age in the last few days. And if you have not seen them, I'm going to summarize them very quickly in 10 minutes or less. Let's dig in. We all know the death of the cookie is coming. You've heard it a million times and not only just from us. But the landscape is now shifting and growing because everyone's realizing they need data. What they used to do is just rely on publishers to match their ads and it magically happened. Google and all kinds of other publishing companies would track people and their behavior, package it up, make it really easy to traffic ads. It's all going away. So Let's dig in a little bit and see what these three Ad Age articles are talking about in the last few days. And first off, you know we've been beating this horse. You should be collecting first and zero- party data at scale so that you, the brand control your destiny, whether an ad disruption or publisher has a matching platform for you, bring your own data, Amazon, Google, Facebook, other publishers, Kana, Nas, whoever it might be. You need to get that data. So you've heard that from us before, but now there's some new middlemen, joining into the ranks and coming up with technology that's supposed to help you. But let me dig in. The first one is, this is actually a sponsored piece of content, which we do here at Cheetah as well. But I really like this one. This one is from Elizabeth Brennan. Who's the head of advertising strategy for Permutive. Permutive is basically an advertising technology, DMP, et cetera. And their article is titled, Why the end of third party cookies is good news for marketers? Strangely close to some things that we've published before. And you know, all good. I'm not saying that she's taking our strategy here, but I do want to quote" What we've seen of late when there are browser or privacy announcements is that the industry falls into disarray because many marketers are waiting for someone to present them with'the answers'." We agree. I actually wrote this in, I believe it was Ad Week, last month. And I noted it in my Harvard business review article about cookies, maybe two months ago. Marketers are just waiting for their agency or technology partners to figure out this cookie problem. Guess what? They are not going to figure it out. What you should be figuring out is how to collect as much data as possible, specifically zero party data. That's a contract between you and Jane or John DOE consumer. They don't have to be your customers. They could be your target audience. You could bring them into your database, give them some sort of value exchange, get some information on them and then have this giant briefcase that's just swelling with consumer data. The beauty of it, is every time you get that data through a tool that you control, that goes directly to your database, you have a smart contract. We're all hearing about this with crypto, smart contracts, Ethereum, et cetera, blockchain. It's the same exact mentality when you're collecting zero party data from an individual person, you have a contract with that person. Here at Cheetah Digital, we'll give you IP address, timestamp, all kinds of information that if you ever had to, would prove that you and Jane or John DOE are in a contract, they've agreed to your terms and conditions. They've agreed to allow to let you use their data in the way that you stated. That could be for advertising, remarketing, retargeting, personalizing your website, your apps, your emails, everything else. So number one, go good read, if you're an advertiser, you want to see how companies like Permutive are getting ahead of the cookie problem. Two, similar there's another article titled, Verizon Media prepares new ad formats for a cookieless world. Cookies, cookies, cookies. They're everywhere. They're in all these titles. It's click bait now, but a staff writer at Ad Age, Mike Juang, I hope I'm pronouncing his name, right? I probably butchered it. I'm sorry, Mike. But he writes that there are two formats that Verizon Media's in- house teams are rolling out as ad identifiers to customize creative and target audiences. So let's break that down for a second. They have two different ID types. So if you have your own first party data, and you're bringing that to a Verizon property, you can make the match. As I said, if you go and get Jane and John DOE into your database, you can go to Verizon and say," Hey, I know Jane DOE loves the mountains. Runs in the morning, has two kids. And she told me all these other great things. Her budget is X for running shoes or whatever it might be." You can bring that to Verizon and match the right ad to the right person. And by the way, Google also has said," If you have the rights to first and zero party data, you will still be able to bring that to Google to make that match." So it's a great investment to go get that data. But what Verizon Media has is ConnectID, which is a one- to- one ad targeting solution that uses sign- ins from Verizon Media Properties as identifiers. So if you have Jane Doe's email or mobile number and Verizon Media Property has the same and they're signed in, you can now make the perfect match, the perfect creative, the perfect ad to that perfect person. But you're relying on that person to log into Verizon Media. And as we all know, it's a cluttered landscape for consumers. Are they always logged into these publishing partners you're advertising on? Not sure again, own your own data, have your own email, SMS, in- app channels to backup your advertising efforts. The other one is Next Gen Solutions. And I think this is interesting. Next Gen Solutions that uses a broad context, like weather, location, data, all kinds of other things to provide targeted advertising. Now they may not know much about Jane or John DOE, but they know where they are from IP address or something else. So they're going to use weather or something relative that has context to that person, based on what they know about them in the moment. And what are they going to do? They're going to try and personalize an ad based on that context. Well, if you're trying to personalize, why don't you go get the information on John and Jane DOE don't assume they have$ 500 for your product. Go ask them. Again, we have a lot of information on how you get that zero party psychographic data, but it's good to see that Verizon Media and these other properties are trying to make the connection. If you have your own first party data, make that match, right? The cookies going away, but you can make those first party and zero party identifiers happen. Thirdly, which I think is probably the more interesting article for me in Ad Age the other day is also by Mike Juang, I'm probably butchering his name and I apologize. It is titled, Inside the data companies, rewarding shoppers for personal data. Key word there is rewarding. We've been talking about value exchange here at Cheetah Digital, for years, even before Cheetah Digital had the Cheetah Experiences platform, you have to give, to get. Give somebody something of value in return for their data. So what's happening here is Mike writes and you saw in last about two weeks ago, I was quoted in Ad Age and the Data Loosen article. Data Loosen is essentially allowing consumers to download their full browser history profile from Google, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, and then load up these giant potentially gigabyte sized files, and then share that with brands you like. Sorry, great idea. But my sentiment and my quote still stands. It's a horrible experience for consumers. I applaud you for the notion. Horrible. You get an F minus in execution. But there are new ones. In fact, there's one that's popped up. That's called, YouGov Safe, and YouGov Safe allows a consumer to add a Chrome browser extension to allow a YouGov Safe, to track their behavior where they go, et cetera, and then get rewarded in some way, shape or form, to share that information with brands. Again, the consumer has to download this extension and put it in Chrome. And then they, I believe they have to upload their history. Painful. Consumers are never going to do it. There's also something quoted in there that Accenture, the agency started, which is called Data Pro Quo. It's an actual physical vending machine that they can put in places where you can give some information as a consumer to the vending machine and get some reward, good luck scaling that. You're never going to hit the numbers that a major advertiser who's going to use those, that data to match. It's never going to scale. So YouGov Safe only has about 16, 000 users right now. It's still, it's not going to scale. But there's an interesting quote inside of that article. And this is from Jonathan Halvorson, the VP of consumer experience at Mondelez. He says," If I'm trying to acquire customer data, the equity of our brands plays a role. And I want that relationship to be as direct as possible." We couldn't agree more. That's why Cheetah Experiences platform lives. It gets you directly in contact with consumers, not even your customers could be unknown. Get it direct, have a contract from Jane or John DOE directly with your brand. I only have a couple of seconds left. We're going to be talking more about this. Build your own database. Come join us with Mike Robero a loyalty legend on June 24th for a live Q& A. He created the Hilton honors loyalty rewards program. He understands customer experience like no one else. And then we commissioned a white paper on the path to personalization with Ad Age, and that will be going live with a webinar on June 30th. So visit cheetahdigital. com. Follow us on LinkedIn, the Cheetah Digital page. We'll be posting all of this information. We'll see you next time.