When Oracle announced it was sunsetting its advertising business, a flurry of articles related to the negative impact it would have on the adtech industry swirled, creating a temporary state of curiosity about the change's impact on the market. If you haven't heard anything since the news first broke, you are not alone, and the reason why is not rocket science, though it is worth repeating and correcting.
The data market is now more mature than it has ever been and more important to marketers as well. This is especially true as the pace of third-party disintermediation speeds up, zero and first-party data are more important than ever, and the majority of buyers who tap into resellers that are not highly differentiated find their way to the sources.
Don’t get me wrong, Oracle Data Cloud was certainly vital to many marketers for many reasons. But, if anything, its farewell at the end of September isn’t hampering its top data partners like us, it’s actually flooding our business with direct requests for very fundamental market reasons.
First and foremost, premium data remains today’s industry optimizer and accelerator. Without it, every single brand would freeze. That fact, coupled with the decline of the third-party cookie, creates a healthy tension in our ecosystem that forces companies like ours to constantly double down on our zero- and first-party data models to deliver on the top three needs that the majority of modern marketers demand: precision targeting, enhanced ROI, and consumer insights. While those three needs sound simple, the type of data and data science that’s required to ensure a marketer’s message is getting to the right audience, is being used hyper-efficiently, and provides the best lens and analysis of consumers is never easy, always changes, and, today, is using more advanced applications of AI and data science than ever before to remove biases and historical challenges of the past. Like medicine and other sciences, it is a practice that never perfects and always evolves.
One bridge from the past to the present that has helped unite the industry and is determining which players survive and which ones thrive in today’s market is identity graphing. In our case, our model of connecting IP addresses, emails, physical addresses, and mobile IDs to extensive data, including demographics, financial status, media usage, and buying behavior, while adhering to privacy standards like Universal ID from TradeDesk (UID 2.0), RampID from LiveRamp and encrypted data sharing attracted many to us.
With Oracle shuttering, the demand for audiences is also greater than ever. Again, in a scenario like Oracle’s, marketers aren’t simply willing to forego audience reach, especially with a busy holiday season ahead and optimism spiking as it always does pre and post-election. Without access to those audiences, there’s a lot they lose, particularly the abilities to optimize campaigns, increase engagement, and measure success.
Finally, for more sophisticated marketers, it’s always all about understanding consumers. On that front, to go dark because one partner has exited the stage in today’s market is simply a non-starter. Those marketers have a deep desire to truly understand the socio-economic behaviors of their shoppers, to decode multicultural preferences and insights into the financial and communication preferences, habits, and behaviors that drive us all from ad impression to purchase.
If Oracle’s exit has reinforced one thing, it’s ultimately that the ad world we currently live in is hungrier than ever for high-octane data, and those that offer it are set to boon.
Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.
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