TORONTO – Real-time data about media spending have become more important to advertisers as they shift their dollars into programmatic platforms to reach consumers. Programmatic marketing firm MiQ, which helps advertisers allocate their spending among demand-side platforms (DSPs),relies on a continuous stream of spending data.
“What we do is help unlock some of the insights and analytics inside of a business, connect disparate data coming into those businesses and then use them to connect programmatic media campaigns,” Jason Furlano, senior vice president of commercial of MiQ, said in this interview with Beet.TV.
MiQ has 300 data scientists, analysts and engineers who specialize in programmatic media buying. Standard Media Index (SMI), which provides data on ad spend in media markets worldwide, is a key supplier of those data.
“We’ve spoken to our partners about what advancements that we need to make or what changes are coming inside the industry — we’ve made some assumptions as well,” Furlano said. “The reason we decided to partner with SMI was to have some actual tangible data and insights to begin to make some of those informed decisions.”
With consumers spending more time at home during the pandemic, their media consumption habits have changed. The shift in spending to reach target audiences has driven a need for real-time data.
“The value and need for us to have real-time spend data into our business is it allows us to be extraordinarily agile with the products we’re going to invest in,” Furlano said. “Having access to that allows us to be where our partners are, versus months passing and then only understanding there’s a massive need inside a specific channel. The reason that we chose to partner with SMI is that it was going to give our global regions and offices access to real-time data that were specific to that region.”
Cookieless Future
Search giant Google next year plans to end support for third-party cookies — the data files that websites put on web browsers to help track consumers’ online activities and to retarget advertising — in its popular Chrome browser amid consumer concerns about privacy. In response, media, marketing and advertising technology companies are working on privacy-safe alternative.
“The biggest opportunity — or challenge, because it is one in the same — currently facing the media industry is the removal of the third-party cookie,” Furlano said. “That means we need to be a little more focused on the consumers and a sustainable way to executing media.”
Google’s Ads Data Hub and the Trade Desk’s Unified Solution 2.0 are among the newer technologies being developed to track online audiences while protecting consumer privacy.
“We’ve looked to partner with offline data to help facilitate the removal of the third-party cookie,” Furlano said. “This is where the partnership with SMI becomes invaluable. What we’re looking at collectively is the impact or influence of omnichannel executions. The SMI data is helping us to inform how we’re going to go down that path.”
You are watching “Seeing Around Corners: Media Decisions During a Period of Disruption,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Standard Media Index. For more videos, please visit this page.
