By Graham Tricker, VP of Sales UK of LiveRamp
In lockstep with the rise of e-commerce over the past decade, consumers have shown an increasing tendency to start their festive spending and end-of-year preparations earlier and earlier. Reinforced by seasonal discount-themed retail events, including Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, many consumers use such moments for efficient gift-buying. This effectively kicks off the all important three-month run to Christmas and New Year, aka the retailer ‘Golden Quarter’.
The clearest way for a brand to capitalise on this period’s opportunities is by boosting its ad spending across the three months. However, other brands will be in fierce competition to target customers, who meanwhile are optimistic heading into this period but are still discerning in their purchases thanks to the lingering effects of the cost-of-living crisis.
Brands should therefore prioritise the optimisation of their digital media, to reach the right customers in the right mindset with the messages that resonate with them. But how can they do this?
The answer lies in brands utilising the available customer data around the event, to gain a comprehensive understanding of their target audiences and the advertising experiences they respond to. This includes touchpoints within key e-commerce environments like Amazon, but also outside of their walls, such as various cloud services and third-party data clean rooms.
Making sense of these datasets for actionable insights requires data collaboration. This means leveraging advanced technologies that can in a privacy-centric way connect all these environments, from programmatic and other media channels as well as walled gardens. The result will be that brands will enjoy more sophisticated, cross-channel measurement capabilities, campaign incrementality as well as journey-based affinities.
Data is the Golden Quarter king-maker
Some brands may already be in a strong position to understand their audiences, having access to a wealth of first-party customer data that can be analysed and utilised to identify valuable customers and their interests. This enables them to create targeted ads that resonate with these individuals and similar audiences. However, many brands, particularly consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, do not have extensive customer data at their disposal, as their consumer relationships are often managed through third-parties, like retailers.
E-commerce platforms have recognised this challenge, including Amazon, which has historically provided advertisers access to its extensive first-party customer data through its AWS clean room, enabling more precise ad targeting and enhanced advertising efficiency. While useful, more opportunities are now available thanks to advancements in data clean room technology, allowing brands to seamlessly integrate datasets and gain unique insights from various clouds, data warehouses, and clean room environments.
This includes valuable retail metrics such as consumer buying behaviour, price sensitivity, and responsiveness to promotions, which help enhance activations, inform media planning strategies, as well as identify new, valuable audiences to target in the future. Moreover, through better permissioning and control of data movement within these clean rooms, businesses can also ensure that these insights are immediately translatable, costs are kept low, and media is running as efficiently as it can. This is alongside fostering stronger, more direct relationships with their customers.
Technology and Talent
Achieving success in data collaboration takes time. This includes developing the necessary soft skills across the organisation to make it effective. Educating staff in using data collaboration technologies, as well as championing those skilled in data science who can best leverage it and evangelise the business are key. This also means working with the right external partners, making meaningful investments in data collaboration technology and running continuous testing.
For those looking to maximise opportunities during this retail Golden Quarter, it’s important to strategically enhance the business’s ability to engage in data collaboration. This will allow them to fully access customer insights available within privacy-focused clean rooms and across the full variety of channels and data environments. Securing long-term and effective outreach to high-value audiences in the run-up to Christmas and beyond.
