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Ever wondered how come martech is a US$700bn industry, but the ads you see are still crap? Clue – it’s because the data foundations are crap, says Brand Traction’s Jon Bradshaw. Following former UM privacy chief Arielle Garcia’s takedown of the “garbage” data broking sector, Bradshaw challenges industry to provide proof that data-driven targeting actually makes advertising more effective – or in fact makes it worse. He’s spoiling for a debate – and has three deep, recent studies that show: broad reach beats targeting for incremental growth; that the cost of targeting outweighs the return; and that second and third party data does not outperform a random sample. First party data does beat the random sample – but contextual ads massively outperform even first party data. And they are much, much cheaper. Now, says Bradshaw, let’s see some counter-evidence from those making a killing.
Show me the data
Targeting our advertising messages to the right people, in order to make the message more relevant, and therefore more impactful, and therefore sell more stuff, is an advertising idea as old as time.
Right person, right message, right time.
Right?
Or is it?
Even if you have some questions about that as a broad generalisation, surely it’s especially right for online and other “performance” ads where we are hoping to get an action, like a click, as a precursor to some form of “buy” action.
Surely, we can agree (or at least park the idea) that Byron Sharp’s sophisticated mass marketing, for long-term brand advertising might be right answer, but we segment and target for sales activation and immediate results. A little bothism, to quote another argumentative professor. And that to do that we need some data-driven clever approaches.
Surely, that’s right?
Surely?
Isn’t refined data-driven targeting the very point of digital? And CRM? And martech? And big data. And programmatic?
All the hoo-ha about privacy must be worth it because we get to do, right person, right message, right time – and that makes things more effective, right?
Right?
Surely, we are doing all those difficult, and contentious, and expensive things for good reasons?
Surely?
You’d be stupid to think otherwise.
Surely.
Mi3 two weeks ago unpacked what perhaps should be felt as jaw-dropping insights from Arielle Garcia. This poacher turned gamekeeper has a clear view on whether programmatic is a good thing (clue, reader, it isn’t) and why agencies and publishers and tech companies have been supporting it (clue, reader, follow the money).
Arielle, a former chief privacy officer at UM in the US, got her own data from a broker and found that she was in 500 different audience segments, both a man and a woman, worked in food service, agriculture, but was also a defence contractor, an engineer and was simultaneously below the poverty threshold and classified as high income.
Ever wondered how come martech is a US$700bn industry, but the ads you see are still crap? (Clue, reader, it’s because the data foundations are crap.)
Maybe jaws shouldn’t be dropping. Maybe we should be nodding sagely along, going, “well, yes, we know this”. These “revelations” last week, are part of a highly congruent series of findings and evidence about whether the data and tech dream for advertisers is realisable, sensible and profitable or not (clue reader, it isn’t).
Here are three such congruent studies that suggest we should perhaps not be surprised that the programmatic dream might actually be a nightmare.
Firstly, in “Overwhelming targeting options”, 2023, Ahmadi, Nabout, Skiera, Maleki and Fladenhofer, look at the increased impact targeted advertising needs to make if it is to offset the costs of targeting. Clue reader, it might be actually be more profitable not to target.
Secondly…
