Advertisers need to value data more

As the world of advertising shifts more and more to digital media, brands and their finance teams need to start to evaluate the value of their data. Just like other traditional assets on the balance sheet, brands need to put a value on their owned media and customer databases. In too many cases this is not happening. This is mostly due to a lack of knowledge about how customer data can be stored and used. Let me outline a playbook for both marketing managers and finance managers to use:

#1: Develop a customer Data Acquisition Strategy:

Identify various ways to capture customer data through an exchange in value. Ie: Ecommerce transactions, social Wifi, coupons, loyalty programs, customers satisfaction surveys and more.

#2:Value both types of data

1. Personal Identifiable data: (PII) This is data that is collected with the customers consent by filling in a form with their personal data such as Name, Email, Mobile, and more. Brands can also merge their sales data and link to their PII profile such as their email ID.
2. Behavioral data:  This is the data that is most often overlooked.  Behavioral data is collected the pixels placed on your website that allow a brand to collect and store the cookie data generated from a customers visit to your website.

#3: Consolidate all your customer data into one place

There are platforms today known as a DMP or Data management platform, which allows brands to store both their PII and data and behavioral data into one unified location.  This is where one of the most important assets needs to be stored.  DMP’s can be somewhat expensiie so if a Brand can’t afford a DMP, then at a minimum they need to use their own Accounts: Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Adwords Pixel and any other media platform