Friday, January 7th, 2011

Data and Media Are Better Together

Posted by: Vikas Sood

It’s fairly common to hear ad tech companies declare that data providers should focus on data and media companies on media.  At Media6Degrees, we believe that the combination of data and media is greater than the sum of its parts.

In the model where data and media are separated, a wide range of data providers use a wide range of techniques to build descriptive profiles of users (“Male” to “Credit Card Intender” to “Outdoor Enthusiast”) and attach those profiles to cookies.  These user profiles are then sold to DSPs who target media for clients wanting to reach people matching those descriptions.

Those data providers make their best effort to predict a descriptive label for an individual cookie, but since they do not run media, they never learn whether that prediction is accurate or useful in driving performance.  DSPs buy these best effort predictions without insight into the confidence level of the prediction for a particular cookie.  They run media, monitor performance to optimize the media buy (i.e., creative sizes and placements) and increase spend in the areas that appear to work.  That performance feedback, however, does not travel back to the data company that made the initial predictions.  When data and media are separated, the feedback loop is interrupted.

At Media6Degrees, we combine data and media to drive stronger campaign performance.  We apply our Social Targeting methodology to predict the likelihood a particular cookie will convert for a campaign, and manage our campaign bid strategies to target the best prospects.  As the campaign is running, we use conversion feedback to optimize the media buy — similar to a DSP — but we also apply that feedback within our targeting algorithms to further inform our targeting predictions.

Our view is that if you are in the business of making predictions, you should also be in the business of learning if your predictions are accurate.  Combining data and media into a single end-to-end marketing solution provides the closed feedback loop that enables Media6Degrees’ industry-leading performance.