by Tony Evans
Nick just joined our advertising
company as a data scientist. In fact, he's one of the 50% of staff who
are data scientists. But what's happened to the chain-smoking,
Martini-swilling folk we see in Mad Men, who used to be the driving
force behind advertising? Data – and it has completely changed the way
that the online advertising industry works.
In a digital
environment like online advertising, data has always been used to
measure simple things like clicks and conversions and, more recently, to
deliver more relevant ads to web users. But technology such as real time bidding and
advertising exchanges that allow new ways to buy and sell advertising
has catapulted data science to the forefront of 'must-have' skills in
the industry.
Agencies and traditional ad networks suddenly found
themselves having to train planners, buyers and sales staff about
complex new technologies. But more than that, everyone needed to recruit
mathematicians and data analysts and, almost overnight, agency
recruitment companies flocked to universities in search of numerate
graduates.
The industry has been revolutionised. Besides an
increase in whiteboards and shorter lunch breaks, almost everyone spends
more time working with Excel spreadsheets and online data dashboards –
and those at the data deep end have had to get to get to grips with new
analytics software like Hadoop.
While access to vastly more user
data has given many agencies a boost, many still lack the skills,
resources and technology to use campaign data to its potential,
especially in their battle to compete with the likes of Google and
Facebook. Instead they have turned to technology companies to deliver
the specialist, data-driven campaigns and insights that many advertisers
now insist upon.
But what does this mean for advertisers? The
most significant change is that it has democratised online advertising;
businesses of all sizes can use new technology and get hold of valuable
campaign data – and this can all take place with their marketing budget
going much further. Display advertising is now a realistic prospect for
many businesses that were wholly reliant on search.
Retargeting techniques (displaying adverts to visitors after they
have left your site) have also become cost effective as site visitors
can be bought one at a time when they visit other sites – online cookies
also lead to the content of the advert being relevant to users'
interests.
Advertisers can also use a technique called 'lookalike
targeting' to target customers with attributes similar to existing
online visitors – and this, in turn, improves advertising efficiency.
Data scientists identify visitor attributes - such as interests,
location and demographics – before then delivering adverts to other web
users with similar attributes. Branding campaigns also benefit, avoiding
inappropriate site content and ensuring that adverts appear in the area
of the screen visible before you scroll down.
Data now allows
advertisers to see exactly what data variables – from individual web
sites, content type, user interests and, amongst others, location – are
most effective. By establishing what works best, this data can be
applied intelligently – and in real-time – to deliver adverts only to
those web users most likely to respond positively to specific messages.
But
advertising agencies still need humans to interpret the data and place
it in the context of the bigger picture. For example, a campaign might
be performing exceptionally well in a particular region, but could this
be because you just got some great local PR? What data science does best
is to give more control back to advertisers – it gives them the
information they need to make intelligent decision about where and how
to spend their marketing budget most effectively.
Source:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2013/nov/11/data-scientists-impact-online-advertising