BIG DATA ROUNDUP. May 2015

Transcription

1 May 2015 BIG DATA ROUNDUP From targeting to customer relationship management to attribution, big data has many uses for marketers uses that can help them achieve a wide range of goals more effectively. But there are also big challenges associated with big data, from collecting it to managing it to understanding it. emarketer has curated this Roundup of articles, interviews and key trends around big data to help advertisers and marketers put it to work for them. presented by

2 How Are Marketers Using Data? Data is a top priority among marketers this year, with many intending to boost budgets Data is changing the world. According to October 2014 research by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the greater availability and use of data in business can create a virtuous circle, with nearly two-thirds of executives worldwide reporting that information and knowledge were being shared more quickly and freely in their companies. Even though firms still report struggles and obstacles in dealing with large quantities of data, it s improving their businesses across a range of operational and strategic functions. And according to polling by Millward Brown for Kentico Software, big data was the No. 3 highest priority for US digital marketers this year. That priority is directly related to the perceived benefits of effectively using big data. According to December 2014 polling by Experian Data Quality and Dynamic Markets Limited, 58% of data management professionals worldwide said keeping high-quality data about customers increased efficiency, and a majority agreed they were making more informed decisions. And firms are, in fact, using data. November 2014 research from Teradata found that nearly two in five marketing and communications execs around the world were already generating significant business revenues by acting on their data, while another 37% were taking major steps to gather and analyze the info they had. December 2014 research by Econsultancy found that the most common use of data modeling was for attribution, among both client-side marketers and agency professionals worldwide, followed by calculating customer lifetime value. The survey by Experian and Dynamic Markets asked data management professionals worldwide about how they used a different data-related tool, predictive analytics. The most common purpose was Top Priority Areas in 2015 According to US Digital Marketers Customer experience 66% Internet of things 58% Big data in marketing 54% Moving software to the cloud 49% Crowdsourcing marketing content 38% Source: Kentico Software, "What do digital marketers really want in 2015?" conducted by Millward Brown, Feb 2, Channels from Which Data Management Professionals Worldwide* Obtain Data Sets that Are Essential for Marketing Success, Dec 2014 Physical store 53% Call center 48% Face-to-face 45% Mobile website 41% Mobile app 32% Catalog 25% Website 21% 4% Other Note: *includes Australia, France, Germany, Spain, UK and US Source: Experian Data Quality, "The Data Quality Benchmark Report: How Practitioners Today Are Managing and Using Valuable Data to Generate Actionable Insight" produced by Dynamic Markets Limited, Jan 29, to modify business processes, followed by entering new markets, driving marketing automation and predicting customer lifetime value. Problems remain. For example, the data that helps the most isn t necessarily the data marketers are collecting. Experian and Dynamic Markets found that websites were the most common channel data professionals used to collect information, followed by face-to-face and call centers. But when the same data professionals were asked about where they got essential data, their answers were different: Physical stores were most important. Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 2

3 Later research from Signal confirmed that other channels were more common in terms of collection. In March 2015, 88% of marketers worldwide said they were collecting and integrating data from the web, while just 22% could do so with data from the point of sale. In addition, Econsultancy s polling demonstrates another angle from which data-related efforts could improve. When client-side marketers worldwide were asked to rate their capabilities in various data-related areas as strong, average or weak, no activity rated a strong from more than 18. And the strongest areas both involved collecting data from online sources. When it came to integrating, modeling or otherwise using data, respondents were even more likely to say they were merely average or worse. Increasing budgets may help to boost these capabilities. According to Infogroup, 20% of US marketers planned to greatly increase their data-related marketing budgets in 2015, while another 44% intended to up their spending less dramatically. Extent to Which Their Company Has Capabilities in Select Data-Related Areas According to Client-Side Marketers Worldwide, Dec 2014 Collecting data about individual website visitors 18% 53% 23% 7% Collecting user data from CRM, POS or other online data sources 18% 38% 34% 10% Analyzing user data that come from different systems 11% 29% 47% 13% Collecting data about individual mobile app users 9% 26% 34% 32% Integrating user data from different systems into one profile store 9% 23% 45% 23% Modeling user data that come from different systems 7% 18% 48% 27% Collecting user data from reference data providers such as Acxiom or Demandbase 4% 12% 17% 67% Using cross-channel or cross-device data for real-time website personalization 3% 16% 32% 49% Using cross-channel or cross-device data for real-time mobile app personalization 3%12% 26% 59% Distributing profile store data to different marketing technology vendors 2% 14% 25% 59% Strong capability Average capability Weak capability No capability Note: n=108; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding Source: Econsultancy, "Customer Experience Optimization Report" in association with Ensighten, March 17, Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 3

4 Marketers Struggle to Map Multichannel Customers Journeys Marketers slow to connect the dots to track customers across channels How well do you understand the journey your customers take from awareness of your brand or products to conversion and beyond? Based on research by Econsultancy and ResponseTap, the answer may be, not very. The March 2015 survey, which was carried out among agency professionals and client-side marketers around the world (including a majority in the UK), found that only a minority of respondents were using some potentially key sources of data about the customer journey. While 80% of agency professionals and 76% of client-side marketers were using online analytics, for example, just 31% and 37%, respectively, were using call center data. And fewer than one in five overall were using mobile app analytics. The customer journey has become more complex since, first, the advent and rise of digital shopping and buying, and, more recently, the same phenomenon on mobile devices. Customers who begin the research process in one place may use several channels before finally making a purchase and may go on to use several more in the postpurchase phases of the customer journey, such as loyalty. Another question, about whether marketers were trying to connect the dots and help track customers across digital and offline channels, pointed to even more missed opportunities. Fewer than four in 10 agency professionals and three in 10 client-side marketers were collecting data about the customer journey at the point of sale, and similar numbers were using online-generated tracking codes to track offline purchases (or vice versa). According to research from Signal, this kind of fragmented data collection can seriously hinder marketing efforts. More than six in 10 marketers worldwide surveyed in March 2015 said it meant their marketing measurement was incomplete, and a similar number noted that it prevented them from doing the kind of personalization they hoped for. Meanwhile, 35% admitted it meant they simply did not understand the customer journey. Failing to understand the customer journey means marketers can t possibly be hitting their targets with the right message in the right place at the right time unless they happen to do so through sheer luck. Data Sources Used by Client-Side Marketers vs. Agency Professionals Worldwide to Inform an Understanding of the Customer Journey, March 2015 Agency Client-side professionals marketers Online analytics (e.g., Google Analytics) 80% 76% data 65% 66% CRM data 65% 54% Customer survey data 48% 55% Call center data 31% 37% Social CRM data 31% 29% Electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) 21% 16% Mobile app analytics 17% 20% None of these 3% 4% Note: n=699 agency professionals; n=886 client-side marketers Source: Econsultancy, "Understanding the Customer Journey: More Than Just Online" in association with ResponseTap, April 13, Ways in Which Client-Side Marketers and Agency Professionals Worldwide Connect the Dots to Map/Track Customers Who Are Engaging Both Digitally and Offline, March 2015 Agency professionals Client-side marketers Point-of-sale data collection 38% 29% Tracking codes generated online 37% 34% for use offline Offline codes or coupons redeemable 35% 28% online (e.g., direct mail offers) Loyalty card schemes 33% 15% Telephone call tracking 29% 28% Click-and-collect schemes 18% 16% In-store geotargeting technology 8% 5% (e.g., beacons) Other 11% 16% Note: n=597 agency professionals; n=741 client-side marketers Source: Econsultancy, "Understanding the Customer Journey: More Than Just Online" in association with ResponseTap, April 13, Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 4

5 Will Marketers Ever Find a Single Customer View Solution? Integrating technologies is key to overcoming data gaps Marketers are still struggling to integrate customer data, and in March 2015 polling by Signal, just 6% worldwide said they had a single view of all customers and prospects across devices and touchpoints, while one-third had nothing in place. For the most part, respondents were using fragmented, incomplete and complex approaches to building a single view. One-third of marketers used a combination of inhouse solutions, and the same percentage leveraged a mix of in-house and outside resources. Just 16% had built their own technology customized to their needs. Similarly, poor tools and technologies were a critical barrier to the formation of a single customer view. Just 8% of respondents who had a solution in place said they had a complete set of capabilities that were effective. Meanwhile, seven in 10 had tools with gaps in capabilities and effectiveness, with 8% saying these were major. As a result of incomplete solutions, merging profile fragments as data became available (57%) and collecting data across channels (55%) were the two biggest roadblocks to building a single customer profile. And unsurprisingly, this meant most marketers didn t get a complete cross-channel view. Just 15% saying they had coverage across all channels they wanted and collected sufficient data from those channels. In comparison, 30% said they didn t have sufficient cross-channel coverage but collected data where they could, while 25% had the reverse issue: coverage across all channels, but poor data collection. While it would be nice if there was one solution to save them all, Signal noted that single-view technologies are still siloed, meaning marketers must integrate various tools and build their own solutions that encompass everything they need. December 2014 Winterberry Group findings support this. Nearly 61% of marketers in North America said better integration of their existing tools would enable them to make better use of data technology, and the same percentage said improved processes for sharing data among various tools would do the same. Current/Preferred Approach to Building a Single Customer View According to Marketers Worldwide, March 2015 We're doing it in-house and integrated together multiple purchased solutions We use a combination of in-house and outside resources We're doing it in-house and developed our own technology 16% We're doing it in-house and purchased a single solution 11% We've outsourced it to a service provider 7% 33% 33% Source: Signal, "Preparing for Cross-Channel Success: Solving the Identity Puzzle," March 24, Capability/Effectiveness of Their Current Tools/Technologies in Building a Single Customer View According to Marketers Worldwide, March 2015 Our solution does an adequate job in most aspects, with minor capability or effectiveness gaps 33% Our solution has gaps in capability and effectiveness 29% We have a complete set of capabilities that are effective 8% Our solution has major gaps in most aspects of capability and effectiveness 8% Don't know, or neutral 22% Source: Signal, "Preparing for Cross-Channel Success: Solving the Identity Puzzle," March 24, Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 5

6 Can Marketers Earn Back Consumers Trust? Few consumers think companies are doing all they can to protect digital privacy How much faith do consumers have in companies when it comes to data protection? Not too much, based on Survey Sampling International polling for My.com among more than 1,000 US mobile device users ages 13 to 54 during October Around one-fifth or fewer of smartphone and tablet users from each age range studied said they felt that companies did enough to protect their digital privacy, and with the exception of those ages 19 to 22, respondents were more likely to flat-out disagree than agree with this statement. Still, about half of respondents from each group did think companies somewhat guarded their online info but that it needed to be more easily communicated, suggesting that clear privacy policies provided upfront are a must-have. November 2014 research by Accenture found similar results. Just 18% of internet users worldwide said they were always confident in the security of their digital personal data, no matter the website. And even among the websites they knew, just 28% felt that their personal data was protected. Marketers have heard consumers loud and clear, and they re taking steps to convert the skeptics, based on a March 2015 report from Infogroup. Among US marketers surveyed in October 2014, nearly eight in 10 said that taking additional steps to protect customer data and privacy was a 2015 priority, with half of respondents saying it was a top priority. If marketers want to get back in consumers good graces and retain customers they ll need to make huge strides in their goal of improving customer data protection and privacy before it s too late. US Smartphone/Tablet Users Who Feel that Companies Do Enough to Protect Digital Privacy, by Age, Oct 2014 in each group Yes Somewhat, but would like this to be more easily communicated No Don't know % 55% 23% 7% % 56% 18% 6% % 46% 27% 6% % 54% 21% 7% % 49% 30% 5% Source: My.com, "Millennials These Days: A Report on Evolving Mobile and Digital Habits" conducted by Survey Sampling International (SSI), Feb 26, US Marketers Who Plan to Take Additional Steps to Protect Customer Data and Privacy in 2015 No, it's not in the budget 7% No, it's low priority 15% Yes, it's low priority 27% Yes, it's top priority 52% Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding Source: Infogroup, "Big Data's Big Payday: Marketers Approach ROI Tipping Point in 2015," March 2, Those who don t take care of consumer information risk losing valuable customers if their lack of security comes back to haunt them. When AYTM Market Research asked 400 US internet users in January 2015 if they would stop using a website or app if it experienced a privacy breach, nearly six out of 10 agreed (23.7%) or strongly agreed (34.7%), and an additional 20.7% at least somewhat agreed. Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 6

7 Cross-Channel View Tops B2Bs Analytics Wish Lists As B2Bs spread efforts across a wide range of marketing channels, crosschannel view becomes critical Put simply, analytics are critical for marketing success, at least according to business-tobusiness (B2B) marketing execs polled worldwide by Regalix. The February 2015 study surveyed more than 300 senior marketing executives and business leaders around the world and found that 86 viewed marketing analytics as being very important to marketing success. Similarly, in September 2014 research by Salesforce Marketing Cloud and LinkedIn, 82% of US senior-level B2Bs said marketing analytics were absolutely critical or very important the highest response rate out of technologies studied. Regalix found that 84% of B2Bs were investing in marketing analytics. What did they look for when determining which tools to spend on? Demand was high for a cross-channel view of results, at 82. Predictive and prescriptive analytics came in second place, cited by nearly seven in 10 B2Bs, while dashboards rounded out the top three. A look at the marketing tactics used by respondents gave more insight into why a cross-channel view was so important. Usage was high across the board. All respondents said they used and analyzed marketing, while 86% said the same about content marketing. Just over eight in 10 implemented and leveraged social media marketing or search engine optimization, and websites and paid search were each used by over three-quarters of respondents. Even second-to-last-place display and banner ads were cited by more than seven in 10 respondents. than 10% of their marketing budgets toward marketing analytics, vs. 13% who put between 10% and 25% toward such efforts. However, 56 expected their analytics budget to increase over the next 12 months, vs. just 11% who foresaw a decrease. Most Important Capabilities When Evaluating Marketing Analytics Tools/Technologies According to B2B Marketing Executives Worldwide, Feb 2015 Cross-channel view of results Predictive and prescriptive analytics Dashboards Advanced customer behavior analysis 55% Integration of online and offline data 50% A/B and multivariate testing 50% Real-time reporting 46% Creation and testing of hypothesis 36% Integration with Microsoft Office apps 5% OLAP and ad hoc query support 5% 64% 68% 82% Source: Regalix, "State of B2B Marketing Metrics and Analytics 2015," March 5, Among Econsultancy and LinkedIn respondents, marketing analytics ranked as the second most effective technology, with 41% of senior-level B2B marketers saying so, trailing only content management. But despite marketing analytics huge potential, Regalix found that they grabbed a small share of B2B spending. Fully 87% said they allocated less Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 7

8 Why Marketers, Agencies Haven t Mastered the Customer Experience Customer experience presents exciting opportunity, but few use a single customer view for marketing activities Marketers are planning a customer experience makeover, and based on December 2014 polling by Econsultancy in association with Ensighten, those who are able to do so stand to reap plenty of benefits. Among client-side marketers and agency professionals studied worldwide, higher engagement and conversion rates were far and away the top business benefits of customer experience optimization. Better brand perception and loyalty were the second-biggest benefits for both groups, while renewals, cross-sells and upsells rounded out the top three. All of the top three benefits were more important to marketers than agencies, while the latter group was more likely to cite financial-related benefits, such as increased average order value, than the former. A single customer view is critical to providing a personalized and thus better customer experience. However, the study found that few respondents leveraged these for all marketing activities. Less than one-fifth of respondents (18%) in both groups said they or their clients used a single customer profile for all marketing efforts, vs. 45% of marketers and 33% of agencies who didn t. Forming a single customer view and improving the customer experience require data integration, and further results indicated that most respondents still struggled when it came to this. Just 10% of marketers and 8% of agencies had tied together customer data across channels, tools and databases. Since nearly all respondents in each group placed some level of importance on customer experience optimization, the large majority had at least started to integrate data, but admitted they had a long way to go. Other research highlights the buzz around the customer experience as well. In a January 2015 Econsultancy study in association with Adobe, client-side marketers worldwide ranked the customer experience as the single most exciting opportunity in Similarly, customized Benefits of Customer Experience Optimization According to Client-Side Marketers and Agency Professionals Worldwide, Dec 2014 Client-side marketers Agency professionals Higher engagement and conversion rates 94% 79% Better brand perception and loyalty 66% 47% Renewal, cross-sell and upsell 50% 41% Increased average order value 22% 29% Increased return on ad spending 19% 20% Reduced marketing and advertising costs 13% 17% Other 2% 3% Not sure 0% 3% Note: n=256 client-side marketers; n=197 agency professionals Source: Econsultancy, "Customer Experience Optimization Report" in association with Ensighten, March 17, Extent to Which Client-Side Marketers and Agency Professionals Worldwide Integrate Data for Customer Experience Optimization, Dec 2014 Tied together customer data from multiple channels, technologies and databases 10% 8% Started to connect dots, but have a long way to go 70% 57% Considering, but don't know where to start 15% 29% Already tried and failed to bring together all data 2% 1% No plans to integrate data across channels, technologies and databases 3% 5% Client-side marketers Agency professionals Note: n=232 client-side marketers; n=179 agency professionals Source: Econsultancy, "Customer Experience Optimization Report" in association with Ensighten, March 17, Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 8

9 messaging and a personalized customer experience ranked as the leading marketing priority for 46% of marketing and communications execs polled worldwide in November 2014 by Teradata the No. 1 response. Furthermore, September 2014 research by Gartner and The CMO Club found that this was one of the top marketing areas that would see more dollars come in. Among US CMOs, the customer experience ranked as the second-leading marketing area for investment in the next two years, cited by 40% and trailing only digital commerce (46%). Digital Marketers Continue Love Affair with Data Data-driven marketing spending, revenues and profits will continue to rise Data-driven marketing (DDM) spending will continue on an upward growth trajectory this year. In a January 2015 study by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Winterberry Group, nearly four in 10 US marketing professionals expected their companies investment in DDM to increase between Q and Q1 2015, with about one-quarter of that group estimating a significant rise. This was nearly 12 percentage points higher than the share of respondents who said the same about spending growth between Q3 and Q October 2014 research by Infogroup found even more optimism when it came to data-related marketing budgets for the entire year. Here, nearly two-thirds of US marketers expected DDM spending to rise, with one-third of these respondents saying it would increase greatly. Fully 62% had invested in data solutions, vs. 54% in 2013, and an additional 26% planned to do so over the next two years. Looking further out, 79.0% of US marketing execs surveyed in October 2014 by Forbes Insights expected DDM usage to grow over the next three years. Increased spending and usage makes sense when one considers the success marketers have seen with DDM. Among DMA and Winterberry respondents, 40.3% said their DDM-related revenues had increased quarter over quarter in Q4 2014, and an even more impressive 56.9% expected this to be the case in Q Respondents also forecast continued growth in DDM-related profits. Nearly Change in Revenues Generated by Data-Driven Marketing Activity According to US Marketing Professionals, Q4 2014* & Q1 2015** Decreased significantly 1.9% Increased significantly Decreased somewhat 8.5% No change 49.3% 5.6% Increased somewhat 34.7% Decreased somewhat 8.5% Decreased significantly 4.2% No change 30.5% Increased significantly 9.9% Increased somewhat 47.0% Q4 2014* Q1 2015** Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding; *vs. Q3 2014; **expected change vs. Q Source: Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Winterberry Group, "Quarterly Business Review: Q4 2014," March 5, half (48.8%) expected a quarter-over-quarter gain in Q percentage points above the still-impressive 38.2% who said the same for Q Personalization is one of the key goals of DDM, but despite large uptake, marketers still aren t taking full advantage of customer information, according to Infogroup, which found that just 12% always customized messaging for each channel based on data insights. Promising, though, were the 42% who often did so. Meanwhile, 46% rarely or never customized messaging for each channel. Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 9

10 Marketers were most likely to personalize and direct mail campaigns, each used by nearly two-thirds. However, popular channels such as websites and social media were used far less frequently, and display and mobile ads didn t even break one-fifth of respondents. While marketers are certainly getting better at leveraging DDM, Ascend2 found in November 2014 that marketing professionals worldwide weren t fully satisfied with the results yet. While nearly all respondents said they were successful at DDM, they were more likely to be somewhat successful (57%) than very successful (39%). Channels Where US Marketers Are Executing Personalized Marketing Campaigns, Oct % Direct mail 63.5% Website 40.4% Social media 26.7% Telemarketing 18.8% Print 18.2% Display ads 17.6% 13.4% Mobile ads/apps SMS 11.0% 5.7% None of the above Note: based on segmented customer data Source: Infogroup, "Big Data's Big Payday: Marketers Approach ROI Tipping Point in 2015," March 2, Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 10

11 Cracking Cross-Device Key to Attribution Success Nick Jordan Senior Vice President, Global Strategy Tapad As the senior vice president of global strategy at cross-device services firm Tapad, Nick Jordan oversees product decisions and works with advertisers and publishers on broader initiatives. Jordan spoke with emarketer s Lauren Fisher about the close relationship between cross-device attribution and device identification and about the future of advanced attribution practices. emarketer: Your company focuses on facilitating a crossdevice approach to marketing. How critical is this approach when looking to do true cross-device attribution? Nick Jordan: We think it s a core piece of it. Until you have a unified view of someone across all those channels and all those devices, it is bad data in, bad data out. Yes, you can look at some correlations and make some assumptions, but if you don t know that it s all one consumer, the data starts to degrade pretty quickly from a utility perspective because you re only attributing on a portion of someone s daily life, not the entirety of it. emarketer: Certainly the focus paid to attribution by some of the biggest cross-device players today illustrates the tight alignment between both device identification and attribution. You have both AOL and Google acquiring attribution firms last year, in addition to Facebook moving forward building out Atlas cross-device capabilities. Do you think that such moves will help to bring about greater adoption of cross-device attribution? Jordan: In many cases, I think multichannel, cross-device attribution is still largely a talking point. But with companies like Google, AOL and Facebook hopping on board, adoption should hasten at least a little bit. I think multichannel, cross-device attribution is still largely a talking point. But with companies like Google, AOL and Facebook hopping on board, adoption should hasten at least a little bit. However, one remaining challenge we have is that buying is still often done in silos. The folks at agencies who buy display and mobile still think about their attribution needs from a display and mobile context. The same goes for the search and social teams and the television and offline teams. So, when you start to intermix those teams, each one still has their own tools that help them to be smarter with how they attribute. But that attribution is still mostly done in their own silos. Those individual buyers and teams are largely incentivized by the budget they can spend. So you end up with folks internally that are more interested and incentivized by their own channel and not the larger marketing program. What buyers are going to have to do is find a way to incentivize all those teams to do what is right for the brand at a macro-level instead of the micro-level they re currently focused on. To really look at cross-platform attribution, you need to see how all those channels interplay with each other. If you accept that there is a traditional marketing funnel, television is moving people down from an awareness perspective. Display and social might be driving a lot of the discussions surrounding specific offers and products, and then search might drive people to the last piece once they ve decided to buy. If you re just looking at the bottom-up model, then search looks amazing and everything else looks OK. But I don t think that really gives you the full view. The marketing mix model, which is all top-down, might give you a better view, but it s really hard to do any intracampaign optimization. Ultimately, what marketers need is a data-driven method of tying both approaches together to really get the results they are looking for. Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 11

12 emarketer: In speaking with a host of attribution firms and agencies, it s clear many are already attempting to build such a model. However, there is no shortage of limitations in making a model 100% complete in terms of all data points required, let alone making the model truly actionable and capable of real-time optimization. Do you think we ll ever reach the point where we truly have this type of solution? Jordan: What we re trying to do in advertising is to influence people, change their minds and make them brand ambassadors or buy a product. That s never going to be a simple equation. Over time, with the amount of data that we have and the amount of technology that we have to tie that together, we will get much better at attributing the value of marketing and advertising. But it s never going to be a fully solved, perfect science equation. But I do think we can do better as an industry than we re doing today. Display and social might be driving a lot of the discussions surrounding specific offers and products, and then search might drive people to the last piece once they ve decided to buy. As channels like television become more addressable and potentially even programmatic, there might be a consolidation of the technology stack where you would have search engine marketing (SEM) services and demandside platforms (DSPs) for both display and video in one platform, even social. All of those platforms start to have some commonalities in terms of how they buy and measure effectiveness. We could eventually see a unified platform that ties all those things together and can actually manage the fluidity of budget and manage how the optimization and postcampaign attribution actually work together. But this isn t a 2015 thing. And it s not a 2016 thing, either. We might see gradual steps in this direction, but we re probably looking at more of a 2020 thing if I had to guess when we might see such an all-digital/media mix modeling tool capable of truly holistic, cross-channel, crossdevice attribution. To Properly Attribute Mobile Ads, Kill Last-Click Models David Shim Founder and CEO Placed David Shim is the founder and CEO of Placed, a location-measurement firm focused on pairing consumer behavior in the physical world with advertising exposures. Shim recently spoke with emarketer s Lauren Fisher about brands pressing needs to bring offline sales and in-store data into attribution models and why doing so is critical to proving mobile s value in the crossplatform equation. emarketer: How would you describe the current state of cross-platform attribution? David Shim: The state of attribution is really not that great. In 2013 and early 2014 we found that most people were still optimizing either off of clickthrough rate (CTR) or app installs. Everyone knows CTR is a horrible metric to utilize on desktop, but when you go to mobile, it s the easiest metric to measure and optimize against. But if you look at conversions that occur after a click on a mobile device, there s not much meat there. If you see an advertisement for a sweatshirt on your smartphone and click on a banner ad, are you really going to buy that sweatshirt on your mobile web browser? The answer is no. Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 12

13 What we ve been finding is that campaigns like this aren t even generating one-for-one in terms of return on investment (ROI). So for every dollar spent, you can t generate a dollar in revenue if you re a retailer measuring mobile off of CTR. Everyone knows CTR is a horrible metric to utilize on desktop, but when you go to mobile, it s the easiest metric to measure and optimize against. But what we ve seen in the second half of 2014 and into 2015 is an upswing in terms of clients wanting to know more about mapping mobile to in-store, and doing so at scale. That includes scale in terms of reporting as well as the ability to work across partners. It s that scale piece that really points to something that that industry is missing at this point, which is a common currency. We ve got companies like Datalogix and dunnhumby, but their purchase data is only tied to loyalty cards. So with purchase data being so fragmented, it s hard to decide how to attribute. Clients really want a common currency that works across all properties and sites. For retailers anyone that has core business in the physical world mobile can be a direct-response channel. To give you an example, we worked with a fashion retailer that was optimizing off of CTR with a secondary goal of clicking on find-a-store listing mobile pages. They knew they needed to increase their mobile budgets because that was where their audience was, but they couldn t justify the spend because they weren t converting on that digital device. They wanted to know if instead, they could map their mobile ad exposures back to whether or not someone entered a physical store. The retailer actually went as far as to build a revenue model off of those store visits, assuming a certain portion of visits resulted in a sale and what they knew about the average order size. So internally they were able to justify what ended up becoming an 800% return on ad spend. They were then able to go back to their marketing team and show they were actually making money, not losing money on mobile as they previously thought. Over the next year, we saw their budgets increase by two to three times. emarketer: How influential has mobile been to driving attribution forward in the last couple of years? Shim: Very. Mobile is what is driving store-visit attribution beyond loyalty card data. There are a lot of places that don t offer loyalty cards, so it can be difficult to understand who visited those stores. Mobile can prove the missing link because it can tell you where people are going in the physical world and what they re actually doing. With it, we can now connect the dots all the way from digital ad exposure to the store someone visited to the items they purchased. emarketer: What are marketers learning from this? What are some of the big insights they re getting from this more complete attribution picture that they weren t before? Shim: For retailers anyone that has core business in the physical world mobile can be a direct-response channel. By linking mobile to in-store performance, retailers are finding positive ROI vs. before, when they were attributing on CTR. It s really changing the way people think about mobile. Big Data Roundup Copyright 2015 emarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. 13

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