Q&A: Why data providers and marketers are uniting to overcome signal loss

To that end, data providers are joining forces to help brands build effective marketing strategies now and well into the future, focusing on enhanced data, interoperability and data compliance. 

In this Q&A, Chris Moore, head of strategic partnerships at Publishers Clearing House (PCH) Media, and Scott Kozub, vice president of product management at Experian, discuss how connectivity paves the road to data-driven advertising and why collaboration between brands, marketers and data providers is essential to making that happen.

How can marketers combine first- and third-party datasets to better understand consumer behaviors and preferences? 

Scott Kozub: Combining these datasets improves data quality for rich insights that help marketers deliver more personalized messages, which drive deeper engagement and lead to higher conversion rates. Enrichment services append Experian’s demographic and behavioral attributes to clients’ first-party data; they learn more about their customers and run more precise campaigns, providing them with the rich insights they need. By focusing on the distribution and utility of our data and identity resolution capabilities, we support Experian’s mission to power data-driven advertising through connectivity. Our top-ranked marketing data can be consumed granularly or delivered as syndicated audience segments to major destinations. So, in whatever way marketers want to consume and use data, we have a solution for them.

Chris Moore: PCH Media can build and boost a marketer’s existing dataset based on reliable first-party insights. Our co-branded sweepstakes provides brands access to privacy-compliant datasets obtained with user permission — PCH’s users who have opted in to share their data — to overcome a brand’s lack of first-party data. PCH users are highly engaged and respond favorably to co-branded sweepstakes offered by PCH Media brand partners, and this data can then be transferred to other platforms for activation. 

Alternatively, PCH Media can field custom surveys to its existing database of known users to help build relevant audiences for partners based on their responses. In the past two months alone, we have added nearly 750,000 first-party attributes to our database from our Question API — including up-to-date demographics, political affiliations and purchasing behaviors.

Once marketers work with a data partner to enrich their data, how do they ensure that collaboration continues to be successful and secure?  

Chris Moore: Data partnerships can create an enriched data set by sharing first- and third-party data, or they might link disparate data sets to an identifier. With any data collaboration, interoperability is crucial. Interoperability refers to the ability of different systems and organizations to work together seamlessly—without it, integrating data from multiple sources becomes challenging and time-consuming.

Companies collaborating to establish data standardization and agree on common formats to address interoperability will find it easier to map, merge and integrate data across different systems. This allows the enriched data to power smarter marketing initiatives, like insights, activation and measurement. 

PCH Media is clean room agnostic, allowing partners to match our first-party data with their existing database quickly and easily. We also have hundreds of pre-built segments that live in LiveRamp, providing turnkey activation for clients by adding the accuracy and efficiency of our data from over 38 million consumers for their media campaigns.

Scott Kozub: We work with major platforms and agencies, which means we have partnerships across the ecosystem that brands can leverage to bring their data to life. Since our identity capabilities are baked into our partner integrations, customers achieve higher match rates that improve addressability. Additionally, Experian has a suite of collaboration solutions, including clean room partnerships, so that brands can match or join data sets with Experian and their partners in a secure manner.

Given the importance of security and data compliance, how are data providers handling privacy?

Scott Kozub: Data privacy is paramount for brands as consumers are increasingly eager to take control of their data. According to PCH’s Data Privacy and Ethics report, over half (58%) of Americans age 25 and older would stop interacting with companies with a bad reputation around data. 

Our deep roots in data protection and security, backed by Experian’s Global Data Principles, offer brands the most trusted way to match data and protect consumer privacy. Partnering with companies with access to datasets obtained with user permission, such as PCH Media, and using reputable collaboration solutions from companies like Experian ensures brands meet and exceed their consumers’ privacy expectations. For example, clean rooms also anonymize user data, allowing brands to match or securely join data sets across partners.

What does the path forward look like for marketers as they combat signal loss? 

Chris Moore: As brands and marketers overcome signal loss and focus on expanding their first-party and third-party data capabilities, working with partners who enable data-driven advertising will be crucial to their success. With a focus on data connectivity and interoperability, these partnerships will power privacy-centric data collaboration, leading to effective marketing and an advantage in a competitive landscape.

Sponsored by Publishers Clearing House Media