in·ter·op·er·a·bil·i·ty
The ability to work with any platform without lock-in, and to interact with data across platforms, identity spaces, and marketplaces to put people in the center of your marketing.
This was the focal point of a recent webinar, “Connected Data in an Omnichannel World,” hosted by Adweek and featuring a fireside chat between Andrew Kasprzycki from LiveRamp and Josh Farbman from Annalect, a division of Omnicom Media Group. Here are some highlights from that conversation:
How do you define interoperability at Omnicom?
We believe interoperability is a requirement for effective marketing at scale, consisting of the ability to seamlessly orchestrate marketing efforts–from consumer and creative insights to planning, targeting, and measurement–across an increasingly complex data ecosystem, all while respecting consumer privacy. Today’s data ecosystem includes challenges such as walled gardens, the deterioration of third-party cookies, and the imperative for marketers to leverage first-party data across marketing channels. As a result, marketers are at risk of fragmented activation, disconnected consumer experiences, and diminished performance against business outcomes. Omni filled that gap, enabling our clients to connect data, Mar Tech, and owned cloud infrastructure across the campaign lifecycle through a unified workflow.
How does your philosophy of being neutral and interoperable help you be successful?
Our philosophy allows us to focus on empowering our clients to utilize the best data and technology for their business as well as get more value from those investments through integration with our marketing orchestration platform.
What are the advantages for an agency like yours working with partners who are interoperable?
Interoperability gives our clients incredible advantages–accessing the right inventory, opening new targeting capabilities, and enabling cross-channel attribution to optimize marketing. Our partners understand that brands now view these capabilities as integral to their continued investment.
What are the challenges you hear from brands when trying to activate their data?
Clearly, the challenges range by industry. There are verticals in which many marketers are still trying to figure out how to develop their first-party data strategy. Others have had a strong history in first-party data capture and are now looking for guidance on advanced data partnerships, first-party enrichment, and secure data collaboration via data clean rooms. They understand that their data should be a core element of not only their cross-channel marketing but also inform their business strategy.
What are the challenges you hear from brands when trying to measure effectively?
This varies by vertical. Many marketers focus on tactical, within channel measurement, but miss the big picture. The degradation of third-party cookie tracking and the rise of walled gardens has disrupted traditional multi-touch attribution. At the same time, marketing mix modeling is good for strategic planning but has limitations for tactical optimization. So, marketers are left with a gap in how to achieve a holistic view of performance. Brands need to understand what they’re getting for their investment dollars, which is why we’re so focused on building integrations that enable a single source of truth across their campaigns through clean room investments and partnerships with the likes of Google ADH, Facebook AA, VideoAmp, and other partners. Attribution is something that we’re very focused on as an organization and are constantly working to make better.
Are you approaching verticals differently? If so, how?
Absolutely, certain verticals have specific, endemic data needs. We’ve compiled a data set that is applicable to all clients and complemented that with vertical-specific data such as B2B, automotive, and health care. Furthermore, we’ve designed our platform to be flexible enough to work with client-specific data sets that uniquely benefit their business.
How do you feel brands are doing with adopting alternate strategies to cookies and mobile device IDs?
The ecosystem has clearly been placing greater importance on consumer privacy, and brands, much like everyone in this industry, need to prepare for the eventual deprecation of cookies and mobile device IDs.
That said, it can be overwhelming for marketers to navigate, leaving many to feel paralyzed, which is understandable given we’re talking about shifting the foundational infrastructure of the industry. This is made all the more complicated when brands hear differing perspectives from their partners across the ecosystem as to where to focus.
Earlier this year, a lot of brands were engaged with this topic and aggressively tested different types of alternative strategies. In the aftermath of Google’s announcement of delaying deprecation of third-party cookies, those efforts have shifted to a focus on building long-term strategies that are scalable, privacy-focused, and most importantly, ones that will successfully drive brand business objectives.
Watch the full replay or reach out to us to learn more about activating and measuring campaigns without the reliance on cookies or other device IDs.