Data-Driven Thinking Archives - Page 2 of 8

Balancing Accuracy, Richness And Scale For Effective Audience Targeting

Digital advertisers should be able to agree that there are about 345 million people in the US, making up about 133 million households. But, historically, media buying has been all about scale, even if it meant outrageously false population counts on audience segments. More recently, advertisers have started to accept that there is a correlation […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Advertisers, Brace Yourselves: The Era Of Paid, Ad-Free Social Media Is Here

Ad-free subscriptions are coming to social media. Snapchat was actually one of the first social platforms to offer a monthly subscription, starting in 2022. Its $3.99 Snapchat+ plan provides subscribers with exclusive, experimental and prerelease features (but still features ads). Snapchat+ had 11 million subscribers in August 2024, an increase of 6 million since September […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

CAPI Isn’t A Band-Aid For Cookie Deprecation. It’s An Essential Solution

With Google’s recent U-turn around third-party cookie deprecation, it’s easy to think there’s no rush to adopt alternative data strategies like conversion API (CAPI). But that’s a dangerous assumption. CAPI is a tool developed by platforms such as Meta, LinkedIn and Snap to help businesses track customer interactions and conversions directly from their server, bypassing […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

The Industry Pullback From Cookie-Based Tech Proves Cookies Are Already Dead

The cookie is already gone. The budgets have shifted. All the howlers screaming about Chrome’s road map for deprecation are akin to the last soldiers standing on the battlefield clinging to the flag of a fallen nation. In short, it’s over. But we can’t measure the downfall of cookies by looking at the bidstream. There […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Google Antitrust Drama: Why YouTube Will Thrive No Matter The Verdict

In its antitrust suit against Google, the US Department of Justice is portraying the company as a monopolistic giant, but the reality of Google’s ad tech business – and its future – is far more complex and evolutionary. The courtroom drama is drawing attention away from the real changes already reshaping the industry. These shifts […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

How To Make Google’s Network Business A Force For Good

For all the fireworks and detailed coverage of US v. Google – including financial disclosures that thrilled our analyst hearts – no one has yet suggested a sensible way to unpick the hideously complex “spaghetti football” of the world’s largest ad tech business. Closing arguments in the case aren’t until the end of November, but […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Breaking Up Google Could Hurt Small Businesses

I’ve taught digital advertising at a leading American university since 2013. Before becoming a professor, I spent 25 years helping businesses develop effective digital marketing and advertising strategies. I’ve closely followed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) current case targeting Google’s digital display-ads business and calling for the company’s breakup – and I’m worried by the […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

How Automation Can Make Performance Marketing More Efficient – Without Sacrificing Creative

Performance marketing has gone through a period of significant automation over the past decade. From advanced audience targeting algorithms to programmatic media buying across digital and traditional platforms, these advancements have created exponential value and performance for brands. The growth in performance media has also created a significant increase in the number of campaigns, and […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

ZIP Codes: The Simple Fix For Advertising ROI Measurement

One of the hottest trends in advertising effectiveness measurement, especially with privacy concerns killing user-level online tracking, is geographic incrementality experiments. These experiments are cost-effective, straightforward and reliable, if done right. Geo media experiments typically use large marketing areas, such as Nielsen’s Designated Market Areas (DMAs). Unlike traditional matched market testing, this modern approach involves […]

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Data-Driven Thinking

Predictive AI Can Unlock The Value Of Unpredictability

Campaign planners are the oracles of advertising, poring over prior results, designing A/B tests, identifying target audiences and crafting compelling messages to maximize the chance of success. Through well-honed hunches and cold hard data, advertising mixes art and science to peer into the future. Now, AI is ushering in the next frontier of brand-on-brand competition. […]

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