For small business marketing, data continues to be a major buzzword. A recent article published by John Koetsier of Venture Beat asserts that when companies use their own data, this can make them up to 98 times better at driving conversions and reaching new customers.

This assertion is based on information contained in digital identity and data provider Neustar’s second quarter 2014 digital advertising report, which demonstrates that data provides one of the single most significant corporate competitive advantages at this time. Here are some key points covered in the Neustar report.

  • First party CRM (customer relationship management) data performed between 19 and 98 times better than the advertiser average in the Telco (19 times), retail (55 times) and entertainment (98 times) verticals. In fact, entertainment companies that relied on their own private data to steer marketing initiatives and digital ad campaigns saw an advertising conversion of almost 10,000 percent.
  • Third party data (based on analysis of customers categorized by different attributes such as demographic and intent factors) can also boost ad campaign relevance for those companies that don’t have access to data on their own consumers. Neustar’s report revealed that education companies that leveraged third party data were able to achieve a 26 times better advertising conversion, and Telco companies a 12 times better conversion.
  • Neustar also tracked digital ad spend against social channels, ad networks, traditional portals, and ad exchanges and found that digital advertising is a $43 billion ecosystem, with slightly less than half of this being search advertising. Of these advertising sectors, social media is the cheapest and most effective in reaching customers for the amount invested.
  • Ad exchanges deliver quality users, as they provide the capability for multiple brands to buy ads in a single place from multiple ad networks. Since users can be tracked across devices and platforms, this also enables advertisers to engage in a long term conversation with users.
  • Video is becoming more relevant, as companies are beginning to funnel more of their digital display budget to video channels.

Neustar’s digital advertising report assesses 220 billion digital actions initiated inside the digital campaigns of 1,800 companies.

Reference:

Barton, J. “Koetsier: Data Is the Key to Huge Marketing Successes.” Mobile Marketing Watch. 9/4/14.

Koetsier, John. “98x More Effective Ads? Owned Data Gives Digital Ads Seeming Superpowers.” Venture Beat. 8/26/14.