NEW YORK – Media agencies don’t have a lock on consumer data that informs their clients’ ad campaigns. And that’s a good thing to Shenan Reed, President & Chief Client Officer at Publicis Groupe.
“It is fascinating to me that the creative agencies really want to have access to the data, and as media agencies we want to give them access to the data. It’s only going to cause the creative to be better,” says Reed.
In this interview with Beet.TV at the 4A’s Data Summit, Reed discusses the excitement of using data to send clients down creative paths they might not otherwise entertain, and how a cleaner digital ecosystem will impact both ad inventory (lower) and CMP’s (higher).
While acknowledging that creatives “always have that beautiful instinct inside of them,” Reed says that good data brings a lot of possibilities to the table. “I can show you, dear client, why it’s the right strategy, not just because it feels right to me, but have the data to back it up and we can support them,” she says.
Along the way, things can get “really exciting” when an agency can craft a data story for a client “that may send them down an entirely different path that they weren’t already headed on, which could create something entirely new and interesting.”
After campaign execution, “We get to actually prove out that that creative work,” says Reed. The minutiae of creative iterations can range from “that creative with that talent versus that talent, that background versus that background, logo first versus logo last. We can start to play with all of those pieces and see the iterations and truly start to ladder up what’s going to work best.”
She predicts more progress will be made in cleaning up the digital advertising ecosystem, referencing a discussion at the 4A’s conference on the difference between transparency and trust.
“Transparency is the foundational layer of what we need to provide to our clients in order to then develop that trust. But trust is really the goal,” Reed says.
Specifically, trust that fosters good working relationships with clients, showing that “we’ve got their back. That we’re making sure that the data is correct. That we’re cleaning up the ecosystem.”
Among other things, this cleansing requires that demand-side and supply-side platforms “are actually giving us true inventory that’s real, that is human. I want to know I’m reaching you. Not the bot version of you. Because the bot version of you isn’t going to buy something from me.”
When the dust finally settles, the industry can expect a “step change in what the actual paid CPM is,” says Reed. “I actually think CPM’s will go up, but the actual available inventory is going to ultimately go dramatically down as we clean up this ecosystem.”
This video was produced at the 4A’s Data Summit in New York. Please find other videos produced at the conference here.
