Recently the IAB and Winterberry released “The Data Management Platform: Foundation for Right-Time Customer Engagement,” a whitepaper outlining the growth, possible evolution and hypothetical use cases for Data Management Platforms (DMPs). The report is insightful and well-organized, and overall, provides a pretty solid picture of where DMP technology is headed. However, I believe there are additional key points to be addressed.
Let’s first recognize that DMPs have always been around – even before they were called DMPs. The reason they’re attracting the spotlight now is that big data’s day is drawing near. To that point, what's happening on the frontier of big data is far more relevant for DMPs as well. The industry at large is starting to understand that DMPs can only do so much when they work in isolation. Far better analytics and insights can be drawn from data that's beyond the scope of a single DMP. By integrating more third-party data with first-party data, we can generate better results on most fronts.
To address another point, predictive analytics represent one of the biggest opportunities for big data in general. As an industry, we have barely scratched the surface of its potential, but the emerging innovation around predictive analytics is... Read more
Archive for February, 2013
DMPs and the "Big Data" Effect
Twitter Vs. Facebook: Which Offers More Company Perks?
We all have Twitter and Facebook accounts. For the millions of daily users, social networking sites are a big part of their lives. But what is it like to work for these companies? Along with dealing with users who are upset about layout changes and fixing the site when it gets to be over capacity, the employees at social media companies receive great benefits and enjoy a fun, positive workplace.
It's no secret that there are many perks offered by companies like Twitter and Facebook. They're generally fun places to work and treat their employees well. Again and again, these companies are top rated employers on reports done by organizations like Glassdoor.
- Perks offered at Facebook: There are many benefits to working at Facebook, a company known for their paid vacation time, free food and transportation for employees, dry cleaning, day care reimbursement, and even photo processing. All of these perks and more make Facebook one of the highest ranking employers around today.
- Perks offered at Twitter: Twitter also boasts a range of benefits for their employees, like medical and dentist care, lots of vacation time, paid maternity and paternity leave, free food provided at their San Francisco location, in-office yoga... Read more
Reinventing QR Codes
QR (quick response) codes have been around for nearly two decades. They were originally developed by a car company subsidiary to track vehicles during the manufacturing process, but over the last several years, QR codes became a popular component of marketing and consumer information campaigns, with big companies rolling them out as an integral part of their advertising strategy and millions of consumer scans recorded each month. And yet, for all their popularity and the investment major brands have made in QR code campaigns, marketing gurus frequently predict the end of QR codes, especially when a new technology emerges that is hailed as “the next big thing.” (The latest “next big thing” is NFC technology.)
Still, for all the talk about new technology that is going to make QR codes obsolete, the ubiquitous two-dimension barcodes remain hugely popular. They appear on everything from résumés to movie posters to olive oil bottles to restaurant placemats. Maybe the answer isn’t to find something to replace QR codes altogether: Perhaps the solution is to reinvent QR codes. By merging traditional QR code technology with new image scanning and recognition capabilities, it’s possible to create Visual QR Codes, which can revitalize the technology and open... Read more
The Best Lead Verification Methods
It’s no secret that low lead quality is the main challenge that many marketers struggle with. Due to complex interconnections and distribution models, lead quality has been steadily decreasing over the last couple of years. A vicious circle has developed in which declining lead quality decreases lead pricing and marketing spending, which in turn decreases lead quality. This has resulted in a situation where nobody is happy and most online lead gen players are suspicious of each other.
Good lead verification practices can put an end to this dilemma and improve lead quality. Although investing in lead verification methods may be more costly in terms of time, money and energy, good lead verification will have a positive effect on lead pricing and increase trust among players in the lead gen industry.
There are two specific things that do not demand much marketing spending, but have a tremendous effect on getting better quality leads: Having a good lead gen form, as well as internal and external data verification tools.
Having a good lead gen form is an immensely underestimated way to set high lead standards from the get go. A smooth and monkey-proof form is more likely to attract committed users who are willing... Read more
