Survey of Over 150 Executive-Level Thought Leaders Finds Widespread Interest in This Emerging Technology; More Than Three Quarters of Panelists Expect DMPs to Play Major Role in Future Advertising, Marketing and Customer Engagement Efforts
NEW YORK, NY — As the promise of “Big Data” plays an increasingly significant role in the digital marketing landscape, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Winterberry Group released “The Data Management Platform: Foundation for Right-Time Consumer Engagement,” a white paper revealing that DMPs could potentially serve as a principal technology solution for multichannel data aggregation, integration, management and deployment. DMPs are technology tools that normalize disparate data sets so that marketers can better understand and utilize data from multiple sources.
The white paper is based on a survey of more than 150 senior executives from advertising, marketing, publishing and technology—including executive-level leaders at Allstate, Condé Nast, Discover Financial Services, IDG TechNetwork, LiveRamp, NBCUniversal, Razorfish, Sojern, Thomson Reuters, WPP Digital, Xaxis, Ziff-Davis and others.
The report explores the prospective impact DMPs could have on the entirety of the digital marketing landscape, and showcases the potential for marketers to take advantage of the emerging DMP solutions. Specifically, the research cites DMPs as a catalyst to empower the industry to:
- Unite the interests of advertisers, marketers, publishers and digital merchants around distinct, actionable audiences
- Present a foundational infrastructure for managing and optimizing, cross-channel customer experience management
- Promote the development of “Big Data”-level insights that could inform product development, customer service, resource allocation and a range of other business functions
- Manage complex data governance programs that seek to preserve privacy, promote transparency and choice, ensure the security of sensitive information and guarantee that the interests of the consumer are never subordinated to “real-time” execution needs
- Provide a foundation for assessing—and substantiating—the true value of advertising, marketing and media investments
The IAB-Winterberry Group survey of thought leaders found:
- 92 percent said their organizations’ or clients’ interest in DMPs has increased over the past year
- 77 percent said DMPs will play either a “critical” or “major supporting” role in expanding the performance of long-term advertising and marketing efforts
- 62 percent said their companies had already implemented a DMP plans to do so within the next 12 months
“It’s increasingly clear that data management platforms have the ability to play a ‘big bang’ role in the ‘Big Data’ universe,” said Patrick Dolan, Executive Vice President & COO, IAB. “With the insights uncovered in this report, the industry can now more fully understand how DMPs act as a digital dashboard of interactive advertising, helping to unlock opportunities afforded by the proliferation of relevant data sets.”
“Today, the online marketplace is only just beginning to grasp and appreciate the impact of ‘Big Data’,” said Jonathan Margulies, Managing Director, Winterberry Group. “We are seeing more data from more sources through more channels and platforms than ever before. Our timely white paper shows that DMPs could represent a real solution for marketers, publishers and merchants looking to put large-scale data to work in manageable ways.”
The report also drew several conclusions about the likely evolution of DMPs as underlying technology for marketing operations over the next 12 to 18 months:
- DMPs will expand in scope to support the aggregation and activation of more types of data, as well as the execution of a broader suite of data-centric advertising, marketing, media and customer experience services
- Analytics tools and support services will grow more central to the DMP offering, driving an expanded value proposition
- Solutions will grow more specialized as unique user needs demand focused tools that may not readily be supported by a “one-size-fits-all” approach
- Third-party DMPs will grow increasingly agnostic with respect to both data and media as they fulfill more central responsibility for the integration and optimization of those two fundamental inputs
- A new wave of consolidation will reshape the DMP developer landscape, transforming the traditional and digital marketing services industries in the process
- Marketers, publishers and other data users will initiate a series of large-scale organizational realignments to capitalize on the potential of their enterprise information assets
Premier sponsors of the IAB-Winterberry Group white paper include [x+1], Krux and nPario. Supporting sponsors include 24/7 Media, AT&T Adworks, BlueKai, Chango and Epsilon.
To read the full report, please visit www.iab.net/DataManagementPlatforms.
Methodology
Researched and written by the Winterberry Group for IAB, the white paper’s findings are based on the results of an intensive research effort that included phone, online and in-person surveys of more than 150 advertisers, marketers, publishers, technology developers and marketing service providers. The research was conducted between July and September 2012.
About Winterberry Group
Winterberry Group is a unique strategic consulting firm that supports the growth of advertising, marketing, media and information organizations. Affiliated with Petsky Prunier LLC—a leading investment bank providing merger and acquisition advisory services to companies in the same sectors—the Firm offers its clients strategic perspective that is unparalleled in its addressable industries, while PPLLC maintains exceptional relationships with industry executives and business owners. This combination of market intelligence, research and strategic operating experience (as well as the ongoing dialogue among buyers and sellers of marketing businesses) provides an educated outside perspective that we bring to each engagement. For more information, please visit www.winterberrygroup.com.
About the IAB
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 500 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.
