Have you ever got chased by an ad of a particular product that you have viewed on some website? You have just shown interest in a product and tried to learn more about it using some other website on the internet. And here you go; an advertisement of the same product will be shown up, which entices you to buy that product.
So, how does this happen?
Since the technology started evolving and the concept of Digital marketing came into the picture, it showed the marketers a new way to advertise or marketize their product and services using digital technologies like the internet, mobile phone, display advertisements and many other such digital platforms. With time, these digital platforms are increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life. The reason behind this was;
- The increasing use of digital devices by people in their daily life.
- People started spending more time on digital devices to buy something, rather than visiting the physical shops.
Thus, digital advertisement has become more prevalent and efficient with the available options.
So now customers started connecting with companies through various digital platforms like, social media pages, mobile applications, etc., which started generating a huge amount of data. The new question arises as to how we should process these data and analyze the behavior of customers, to convert them into a profitable source for the company.
This is where DMP comes to the rescue.
What is DMP?
A data management platform (DMP) is a software unifying platform, which allows businesses to collect, store, organize and activate first party, second party and third-party audience data from various sources like website, offline, mobile data, etc. A DMP offers a central location for marketers to access and manage data like mobile identifiers and cookie IDs to create targeting segments for their digital advertising campaigns.
Simply put, DMP is a large database that stores processed data obtained by analyzing raw data. These raw data is collected not only from web pages, but it can also collect data from smartphones, smartwatches, social networks, CRM systems, or any other application where the user is interacting. This information could be about customer’s website visit or their other actions e.g., subscribing to a mailing list, downloading promotional material, downloading brochures, filling out registration forms, etc. So DMPs can solve the problem by putting cross-platform data together in one place, which companies can utilize for their profit.
What does a DMP do?
DMP collects and organizes data from a variety of 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data sources. These data can be further utilized by other platforms such as Demand Side Platforms (DSPs), Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) and ad exchanges. In other words, DMP provides data to these platforms, which could be used to perform the activities like Targeted advertisements, Personalization, Content customization, etc. based on the business use cases. This is how you get chased by ads after viewing some product on a website, you get targeted by advertisements related to that product.
How does a DMP work?
DMP can collect unstructured audience data from various sources including desktops, smartphones, mobile app, web analytics tools, Social media pages, CRM, etc. This data collection starts after inserting DMP tags on websites. Apart from 1st party data, most of the DMPs are capable enough to ingest 2nd and 3rd part data as well.
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First-party data are the data that you own and have collected directly from your own customers. These data are based on specific behaviors of customers such as clicks, downloads, which video the users have downloaded or played and if played does the viewed it completely or left in the middle, users' interest in a particular area, their demographic information, etc.
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Second- and third-party data are ingested from external sources, though there are some second-party data providers already present in some of the DMPs, so you also have the option to utilize their data if they are relevant to your business.
Once the data is collected in DMP, you can build segments for specific marketing campaigns. For example, you may want to target one specific ad for the male user of a certain age group while another ad may be focused on females who frequently buy some specific beauty products online. So, these audience segments created in DMP give power to data-driven campaigns.
And after doing these things, the Audience Profile Report can be used to get an in-depth view of interest and other characteristics of each “audience” that is present in DMP. Finally, after analyzing and doing the required integration of other platforms in DMP, these audience segments can be seamlessly transported to DSPs, SSPs, and beyond as per the requirement of our campaigns.
Which are the different DMP vendors present in the market?
Nowadays there are many DMPs present in the market, and as with other areas of advertising technology, there have been acquisitions of DMPs by large marketing platform providers like Oracle, Adobe, Nielsen, etc.
Some of the major DMP technology sellers are;
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Adobe Audience Manager (Adobe acquired DMP Demdex in 2011)
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Salesforce Audience Studio (Salesforce acquired Krux DMP in 2016)
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Oracle DMP (Oracle acquired BlueKai in 2014)
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eXelate (now owned by Nielsen)
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Lotame etc.
Which DMP is the best fit?
To find the best fit, you must check the following possibilities on the DMP platform;
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Product Experience Features: Some DMP tools include support for product experience management, allowing businesses to see how users are interacting with their applications. So if these features are the requirement of businesses then choose the DMP which is offering this facility.
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Specific Use Cases: Many DMP tools offer support for specific use cases such as marketing. So if the business goals are getting satisfied with those certain use cases, consider choosing a DMP tool that specializes in that arena.
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Integrations: Some of the DMPs contain built-in integration with popular sales and marketing tools, while requires users to integrate. So based on the business goals check for the integration requirements and choose the appropriate DMP based on that.
Who can get the benefits of using a DMP?
The basic business cases for a DMP can be separated into three groups: publishers, marketers, and agencies. So, these three groups are the most common parties who are using DMPs. It can also help Professionals and businesses in every industry in different ways.
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Marketers and agencies use DMPs in pulling data from in-house systems and third parties and use the data to build detailed customer profiles that drive targeted advertising and personalization initiatives. This helps
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marketers to create a lookalike audience base whose behaviors are the same as your valuable customers and increase the overall customer base.
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IT or networking professionals might rely on a DMP to maintain and operate a companywide system, gaining insights from the tool which could be useful to choose machines and software in the future.
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Upper management might rely on DMP to make more informed decisions.
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Publishers (who own and manage websites) use DMP to manage the audience data collected from all their websites and the data-driven advertising campaigns run across those sites. This also allows publishers to increase their CPMs, as publishers collect rich audience data from their websites, and many of them opt to sell customer data via a 2nd-party marketplace or a 3rd party data exchange.
How can Marketers benefit from DMPs?
With programmatic ad buying, advertisers can extend campaigns across a huge number of sites and apps through ad exchanges, ad networks and demand side platforms (DSPs). Data management platforms help marketers unify audience and performance data across all those sources.
A DMP enables advertisers to build audience segments — criteria can include customer information, demographics, household income, past browsing behavior, purchasing information, location, device and so on — and then it can analyze how those segments performed. Based on that analysis, the campaigns can be continually optimized to reach those audience segments that perform best.
The following ways you as a marketer can benefit from using a DMP:
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Centralize, activate, and protect all your audience data – all in only one place for a unified view of your customers. No more data in the silos! The pulling of all your data assets into one place gives you a unified view of your customers across screens and devices.
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You can build deeper insights into your existing customers and prospects. Learn who they are, what they like, and what kind of messages they respond to the most. Utilize these new insights to refine your messaging to increase engagement when you reach them the next time or build lookalikes to find more of these similar people and increase your overall audience size.
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You can increase the performance of your digital campaigns across screens. With precise audience targeting and data-led campaign optimization, you can refine your audiences so that you are spending only on those who will respond to your messages.
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You can use it to extend your reach. You can find audiences that look and act like your ideal customers by leveraging our global third-party data exchange.
So overall digital marketing is an actively growing industry, and it requires a multi-channel approach along with keeping eye on cross-platforms to actively communicate and interact with customers. Therefore, to effectively communicate with your audience, you must uncover the full potential of the data that you have already possessed or are able to possess. Data Management Platform, in turn, makes this possible.
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