"Drowning In Data?" I Don't Think So!

Shoe leather and a nice tie. That’s what media sales used to be all about. You worked real hard, traveled, presented yourself nicely, talked a nice line. That’s what sold print contracts or even some other media before sales and marketing made it a fact-based process. Now that fact-based approach is starting to show some interesting signs of reconsideration. I don’t think Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was bemoaning that her company was “drowning in data” a couple of weeks ago, but she did use that phrase. Now I see even the medical profession is having a bit of a problem with the amount of data it has gathered. According to The New York Times on March 8, “statistical tools simply haven’t kept up with the massive amounts of data researchers now have access to. In medical (and economic) research, scientists claim a “statistically significant” finding if there’s a less than 5% chance that an observed pattern (between coffee and liver disease, for example) occurred at random. In the new age of data, that rule causes problems.”

Wow. Do we have too much data for our own good?

The short answer is no. I can identify with Carol Bartz, who was actually referring to a WalMart promotion that generated millions of responses. We’ve hosted and executed several such campaigns, and I still maintain that there’s no bad data, only bad analysis. Let me use the following example to illustrate.

Let’s say a CPG company runs a banner campaign promoting a sweepstakes on 10 different websites. The campaign has a reach of 20 million unique users. Now let’s say one million of those unique users completes a registration form to enter the sweepstakes, complete with permission for the CPG company to contact them with future marketing messages and offers. The number can seem to be overwhelming in some ways because now your sweepstakes is harder to administrate. But this huge amount of data does three things for the relationship between content provider and client. They are:

1. Strengthens client relationship. When we execute a successful customer data based campaign, I can’t wait to see that client again. There are so many innovative things a sales team can do to follow up with a client that has found that the Internet is still a customer and targeting based gold mine.

2. Takes focus off CPM and CPA. When a content company and agency or brand discuss customer data, less relevant metrics like last click attribution and “who gets the lowest CPM” find their proper perspective.

3. Updates targeting capabilities. When a client sees its database grow, the content company has to point out that it just gained a new ability to target the customers it finds truly valuable.

Let’s go back to the CPG sweepstakes. The CPG company doesn’t have to follow up with the entire one million new data points – it can slice and dice. If its next promotion is aimed at large households, it can target women, head of household, more than six people. One CMO told me, at the IAB Annual last month in San Diego, that his CPG company now has five different mom targets because of the diversity in his product mix. Bottom line, when it comes to generating data, it’s all good. It certainly makes being a sales professional a lot easier.