When you are operating across multiple devices and channels to reach consumers that have fragmented in the last few years, you soon run up against a big problem.
Those devices each throw off different data streams. Add that to the unique data sets also created when you buy ads through multiple places. It’s enough to make a marketer’s head spin.
Cue the rise of the CDP. Customer Data Platforms are software that aim to unify those disparate data sets in to the best approximation possible of a single customer view.
“It’s easy if you’re talking about integrating one or two sources in to your analytics tool,” says Michael Katz, CEO of mParticle, a CDP software maker.
“The problem is when you have limited visibility in to your data – because you can’t ingest signals from these new or emerging touchpoints – or when your systems are disconnected. The answers you can get about your business hit a ceiling.”
That is why Customer Data Platforms aim to bring it all together in a single place.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Katz describes how a CDP can take incoming crumbs of customer profiles from “data exhausts” like Overstock, Venmo and Criteo, combining it and pumping it back out to new places where, enriched, it can prove more valuable.
“You can cut the data in different ways,” he says. “You couldn’t analyse that data in the same way before.”
Whilst Katz is a true believer in the power of the CDP, he also claims to be “agnostic” to one thing – the platforms customers take their data from or two.
“We do not own the data, nor do we want to own the data – we are a custodian of the data on behalf of our customers,” he adds.
“Our customers will use us to create a single unification point and push it out to lots of different systems.”
mParticle’s Criteo integration allows brands to connect their customer data from their mobile apps, websites and connected devices to Criteo’s platform. The data is then used to intelligently target users with personalised creatives to drive higher conversion rates.
This interview is part of a series titled Advertising Reimagined: The View from DMEXCO 2018, presented by Criteo. Please find more videos from the series here.
