With the growing complexity of digital media and the increasing creation and collection of user data, agencies, publishers, and markers need to find more effective ways of managing, selling, and buying audience information beyond standard analytic tools. But how can you capture the potentially valuable data, transform it into actionable insights, and achieve the desired outcome?
The answer is through the use of data management platforms. A DMP is essentially a unifying platform used to activate, organize, and collect audience data from various sources, including mobile, online, offline, and more. It’s the foundation of data-driven advertising and enables businesses to acquire unique consumer insights to draw and connect with prospects.
Big data is undoubtedly instrumental for effective digital marketing campaigns, but raw information can’t be used unless it’s transformed into usable forms. And this is why a data management platform is essential.
How does a DMP work?
Digital management platforms are generally used to gather unstructured data through different sources, such as social media, mobile apps, web analytics, television, and other channels. Therefore, all true DMPs must be able to collect user data deeper than the surface level, going beyond keyword information and URL to gather essential information.
Once the desired data is gathered, it’s then organized into segments referred to as hierarchies, which can and will change depending on the business model of the end-user. Sizeable publisher networks may have these hierarchies divided into buckets derived from every website they own. Agencies can have individual accounts for their different advertiser clients. Marketers can also manage other data separately but still have a holistic view.
When properly organized, data can help businesses understand their audiences, create more effective requests for proposal responses, enrich the target market, and extend your reach to meet campaign commitments. In other words, all data is gathered in a single place for easy and quick understanding of the intended audience, what content they’ll respond to favorably, and how to connect with them.
- Organization. The DMP organizes the collected audience data and puts them into taxonomies and categories specified by the end-user, who defines how to organize the information. This means that the end-user needs to define and understand what they’re looking to get out of the data before the platform’s deployment.
- Audience building and segmenting. After the organization of the data, the information can be used to support a marketing campaign. A retailer, for example, might target a specific demographic of women from ages 14 to 34. At the same time, another might concentrate on males who shop for shoes frequently over the World Wide Web. Regardless of the market, audience segmentation can power campaigns driven by data.
- Insight and activation. When all data is classified, it can be analyzed to identify consumer intent, trends, and patterns. With its integration with other platforms like open APIs, the data can be activated and used to guide actions.
Conclusion
It’s not surprising that DMPs are increasingly being used in business. After all, it can help generate and transform data to ensure that companies are able to make informed decisions that will help them draw in sales, increasing their chances of succeeding in the process.