Digital Media News

James Curran has spent the last decade working in and building ad platforms. As former product and business development lead for Lotame’s Data Management Platform and a product manager for Advertising.com, James has seen a historical trend in the use of multiple ad platforms by companies and believes it points to where they will be taken in the future. His new company, where he serves as CEO and Co-Founder is called STAQ, which he believes is the catalyst in making them working together.

Tim Nichols: Integration of ad technologies. How and when did you come to this as a solution to offer?

I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Kirby Winfield, the SVP of corporate development at comScore, Inc., (now the founder of vacation rental mobile app Dwellable) and ask him a few questions about consumer data and data in general.

Tim Nichols: What is the biggest mistake marketers make when purchasing and applying consumer data products?

Kirby Winfield: Not going in with a clear sense of what they’re trying to measure, and why. It’s easy to get lost in all the data when you don’t go into it with an understanding of what your marketing objective is. For example, are you trying to optimize your TRP, or are you trying to lower your cost per lead? The same data can be applied in very different fashion to achieve those distinct objectives. When you have a clear sense of purpose up front, it makes the data a lot more manageable.

“Do Not Track” supporters listen up. I’ll admit it, I can be a bit self-centered sometimes, but I’m going go out on a limb here and suggest that so are most people. I’m not the first person to say it and I won’t be the last: people are very into themselves. We like to think that the world revolves around us. Perhaps it’s a biological thing? Maybe a feature that sets us apart from other organisms on the planet? Whatever it is, this idea of us being into ourselves shouldn’t be ignored, especially when discussing online advertising and the highly debatable topic of “Do Not Track”.

Moderation in almost anything in life is advised; in many cases it should be a requirement. I’m currently in Erkheim, Germany, a lovely town about 60 minutes west of Munich. Almost anyone I share this fact with is intrigued and tells me how lucky I am to be working in Europe. In many respects they are correct, except my travel schedule hasn’t had any moderation as I have visited five countries in the last nine days and have had way too many work meetings. As a result, the quality of my current experience is being degraded due to an overload of what should be more enjoyable pastimes.

The key is moderation. A lot of buzz and discussion is constantly going around the ad industry about data, including behavioral data, first-party data, third-party data, contextual data, retargeting age, demographic data, remarketing data, and so forth. There are too many conversations about wanting to utilize more and more data and media planners just blindly applying one data layer on top of each other without actually analyzing the quality, consequence, overall worth, and return on investment (ROI) of the different data layers.

The moment I even thought about writing this column I knew it would be criticized. Not because the column is offensive or insulting but because it challenges the usefulness, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness of a targeting methodology (behavioral targeting) that generates a lot of revenue and makes a lot of people a lot of money.

Online advertising could use some simplification. Anybody that has spent more than two months working in the online advertising space will tell you that it is a fast-paced, complex, confusing, always changing, and exhausting industry that has few, if any, dedicated rules, set procedures, or processes that everybody agrees with and follows. Even companies offering the same services use different names to refer to the same thing: online advertising, Internet marketing, display advertising, and so on. Luckily, some companies are dedicating themselves to making certain tasks a little simpler. San Francisco-based start up Canned Banners is an example of such a company, not to mention their expertise in dynamic ads.