Anthony Iacovone, co-founder and CEO, Barometric
Accountability in business means every decision matters, and all decisions have consequences. The same is absolutely true in the sensitive ecosystem of advertising. The more effective, efficient and unified measurement is, the more accountable and transparent advertising campaign can become. And in today’s advertising landscape, the accountability process for consumers is increasingly complex.
The main mission of effective and accurate measurement across all advertising platforms is to achieve maximum performance and reach, while reducing the operational pains associated with targeted advertising campaigns.
Some recent background provides perspective as to how this process has been refined and evolved. Over the last five years, the advertising ecosystem has begun to recognize the need for increased transparency and accountability against the $250 billion spent in the United States.
The challenge, however, lies in tracking multiple environments where the need to unify consumer identity is only one piece of solving that massive puzzle. This has led to the emergence of cross-device tracking, which is quickly replacing cookies as a way to track specific consumer habits and trends.
Just like when air travel evolved to space travel, the final frontier now for advertisers is tracking consumers who fly between multiple devices on multiple platforms and still consume loads of offline media. Welcome to the advertising age of cross-tracking.
Put simply, cross-tracking is a term for the multiple methods for tracking and identifying web users across multiple devices and offline environments. Understanding a consumer’s identity across all digital and offline environments is key to reducing media waste and effectively optimizing marketing strategies.
There was a time not so long ago that those browsing the web spent a majority of their time on desktops and laptops. Tracking “cookies” were a simple way of tracking trends and habits. Now, those same surfers are far more likely to bounce from TV to computer, to mobile to tablet.
Futher complicating the measurement effort is figuring out which channel a user converts in (in store, mobile, online, etc.). And while there’s no guaranteed way to link the same person across those devices, the advertising industry has settled on two primary cross-tracking targeting methods: deterministic and probabilistic.
The more straightforward technique of “Deterministic Tracking” relies on logged-in user data to identify people across devices. Logging into Facebook or Google on your desktop and phone sends a signal on both devices that you are the same person. Any platform, or even publisher, that collects email addresses, or asks users to sign in on their devices, can use deterministic linking to target ads.
Tech companies, meanwhile, are leading the “Probabilistic Tracking” movement, a considerably more complex and involved method employing a mix of algorithmic acrobatics to track users across devices. As you might expect, probabilistic tracking leans heavily on probability. With firms like Drawbridge and Tapad gathering billions of data points, including IP addresses, browsing patterns and even device proximity before running predictive tests on them to determine whether the devices belong to the same person.
What’s most important to understand about proper measurement is this: Understanding and analyzing this data requires a holistic approach. Without an overarching solution to identify your consumer both offline and online any type of attribution you apply will be greatly flawed. Identity across all marketing, media and conversion touch points in key to marketing efficiency.
Today, the industry operates in isolated advertising ecosystems where audiences are defined by the departments (i.e. Search, Digital, TV) where brand and agency stakeholders assume they belong. The consumer is observed from different angles and perspectives in separation. For a seamless, holistic experience across all touchpoints, advertisers are finding more ways to distance themselves from verticals or silos, and are thinking more in terms of how to reach and measure a customer with multiple needs across multiple platforms.
The siloed ecosystem is the biggest hurdle standing in the way of a single customer view. To get that single view, advertisers need to integrate data from different data sources to harness its combined power and to develop profitable strategies. Silos not only include data in terms of media channels, such as digital versus traditional media, but also organizational silos, including the integration of departments within companies who take care of different goods and services for the same consumer.
Media measurement, at one point in time, was about reach and incremental reach across media channels. It was important to prove that the advertising had the desired reach within the desired target group with a certain frequency. It was also crucial to understand how different media channels supported each other with regard to the campaign delivery and determining the most efficient combination.
Now, agencies and brands have begun utilizing new measurement services in recent years tracking metrics such as fraud, viewability, physical visits and purchases in an effort to close the gap in accountability. However, for the most part, media channels, conversion environments and media metrics are measured in silos and then stitched loosely back together via agency analysts.
With these challenges comes the need to seek better measurement offerings focused on providing unified, media-agnostic measurement across channels, across environments and across vendors. The net result needs to be metrics offered at economies of scale resulting in accurate and actionable insights, all leading towards media efficiency, increased advertising performance and a decrease in operational headaches.
Spun off from advertising technology company AdTheorent in April 2018, Barometric specializes in cross-environment media tracking and measurement.
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