Data Management Platforms for Dummies
Let's first start with answering the obvious question: What is a data management platform (DMP)?
Simply put, a DMP forms the backbone of all online advertising operations for a business environment that is becoming increasingly more digitized. A real DMP provides marketers with centralized control of all of their audience and campaign data. It helps them manage and analyze this data to craft, target, and optimize campaigns that reach more of the right people and drive improved ROI from their media spend.
A centralized data management platform allows you to create target audiences based on a combination of in-depth first-party and third-party audience data. You can more accurately target campaigns to these audiences across third-party ad networks and exchanges and measure with accuracy which campaigns performed the best across segments and channels to refine media buys and ad creative over time.
Using a DMP as opposed to a spreadsheet, a marketer or agency account manager can manage the day-to-day plumbing of all online advertising campaigns in one dashboard from campaign creation, audience profiling, media buying, and targeting to optimization, measurement, and reporting. An enterprise-class DMP can scale to billions of data points. This enables marketers to get high-level and granular insights into campaigns that are working across various channels, understand which exact audiences specific campaigns are reaching, and determine what changes to make to be more effective.
But more importantly, let's look at what a DMP can do for YOU:
Marketers and agencies are always working to better understand their customers. They are constantly asking the following key questions: Who are your customers? What attributes define them? Which exact products are they currently in market to buy? What are they likely to buy next? How do you reach more of them? How safe is this customer data and are you leaking gold without knowing it?
A DMP can answer those questions. By analyzing a wealth of both first-party and third-party demographic, contextual, and behavioral data about customers and campaigns, you can answer these questions. Marketers, agencies, and publishers can use this data to deliver targeted, one-to-one messages to consumers at the exact moment in the purchase process that customers are ready to buy.
In a nutshell, data management platforms can perform a number of key functions:
- Retargeting: Easily implement customized retargeting campaigns based on specific activities and behaviors taken on or offline.
- Prospecting: Seamlessly integrate with third-party audience data sources to acquire anonymous data to achieve higher precision and scale with targeting campaigns.
- Site Optimization: Use first- or third-party data to determine customized content for different consumers when they come to your website.
- Audience Intelligence: Contrast your site audience against third-party data sources to learn more about specific audience attributes to target more likely converters.
- Better ROI: Use centralized media performance analytics to determine which audience performed best and where to focus in the future.
Let me know about your experience with DMPs or reach out if you would like to find out more.
Thanks for your interest,
P.S.: Click here to find a detailed whitepaper on this topic