The data generated and collected from smart devices, laptops, wearables and even consumer appliances is mounting. The volume of data collected is outpacing organizations’ ability to timely evaluate, measure and react effectively. Organizations are struggling to gain optimal, efficient results that permit them to take effective advantage of critical opportunities. Fractured data, collected from numerous silos, can impact a company’s ability to respond to consumer trends and can result in inefficiencies in delivering consistent brand messaging across marketing channels.
A recent study conducted by the Winterberry Group entitled “The Data-Centric Organization 2018” found that marketing media and commerce are becoming more focused on centralizing marketing data functions to take full advantage of efficiencies in campaigns and cost. According to McKinsey & Company, centralized marketing analytics will save 15-30% of an organization’s marketing budget.
Centralization of data collection and management can reduce reporting times by 80-90 percent and may result in a more consistent stream of reporting. A centralized approach will eliminate unnecessary task-oriented labor and will provide more time for marketing professionals to focus on creative and strategic functions, leading to more effective and responsive campaigns. According to the Winterberry Group study, data centricity will improve team collaboration, more effectively direct segmentation and result in better brand messaging. In organizations where marketing is identified as a cost center, return on investment (ROI) will be more easily measured.
Achieving centralized marketing data allows a company to take advantage of technology and create additional opportunities to grow the business. “Nearly 50% of the marketers, publishers and tech developers in North America surveyed by Winterberry Group in 2017 said that centralizing ownership of data would be one of the most important changes that their organization could make to derive value from their data.”
“Centralizing data ownership has been a big focus as advertisers take programmatic and data management contracts in-house to gain a complete view of their consumer,” said David Lee, programmatic group lead at ad agency The Richards Group. “This has allowed clients to see where the gaps in their data are.”
With programmatic advertising predicted to account for the majority of advertising spend by the end of this year, taking ownership and streamlining data management has become a key objective for organizations across the industry spectrum.