Amperity and the Power of First-Party Data
Amperity is a customer data platform that excels at helping brands unify and organize their first-party data using an average 30 different sources. Making sense of this data helps brand marketers understand when the same customer target shows up across disparate digital systems and lets them know the person is not three or four different people. “So, you get the richer profile,” according to Peter Ibarra, head of Media and Adtech Solutions at Amperity. “Our distinction lies is the fact that we are helping our customers and our clients maximize the utility of their data.” Ibarra talked with StreetFight about the importance of first-party data, especially if the cookie ever goes away, how data has made TV a performance-marketing channel, the use of first-party data in ad-marketing measurement, and AI as an impactful capability in targeting.
How does Amperity fit into the landscape of CTV ad spending?
Amperity sits within the customer data side of both of those kinds of ecosystems. Addressing the right audiences or reaching the right consumer across those channels at the right time. That requires having a deep understanding of your customers or the audiences that you want to target. Our work is on the brand side, helping them understand who are their best customers and the places that we should reach them. Are they high value? Are they potential repeat customers? Then we need to be able to distribute them out into the advertising ecosystem to target them and organize the first-party data so that brands can make it available for their supply partners or their advertising clients.
What are CTV executives asking for most when it comes to data?
We’re hearing the questions that their advertising clients are asking them: How do we know we’re reaching the right customer within your ecosystem? TV is generally viewed as an awareness channel. It’s not something that historically provides performance, but now it’s increasingly both. They want to know if this customer saw [an ad] and then a week later went into the store and made the purchase that they were advertising for. What we hear from our executive partners in this space is how can we really be doing a better job of connecting that customer story to that viewer story so that we can then go and tell our advertising clients that we are the right platform for you to be working with. We can target the right person in the ways that depending on what shows they’re watching and show you that it leads to the purchase.
So, TV is essentially now a performance channel?
I was in Cannes last week. Paramount positions itself as a performance channel. NBCU is talking about their new partnerships with measurement [companies] and the partnership with Walmart. Disney’s now doing the same thing across all of their ecosystem of properties. That’s just the natural extension of digital media. TV and streaming providers want to be a part of that, which means being able to at least speak to [advertising] performance.
How do you work with retail media networks?
They have a lot of customer data. They have loyalty systems and CRM programs. The work we do across the retailers is helping them create a more robust understanding of their customers. If they bought online or in store, how do you bring those worlds together? How do you have that true omnichannel understanding to make your retail media offerings more powerful? [RMNs] can really tell that true, full customer journey story to their advertising clients.
What are brands asking for in terms of customer data and how has that changed over the past three years?
The third-party cookie deprecation and the signal loss happening within digital media has been talked about ad nauseam. Brands are asking if they should segment their audiences in a different way. For example, can I think about and target customers less on the last purchase and more through things like holistic lifetime value. The most important one we’ve heard more is how can I start using this data asset that to fuel the next generation of what measurement looks like.
How will Amperity use customer data in marketing during the Olympics and the upcoming U.S. election?
AI is a strategic overlay that as a targeting strategy on top of these big events. Buyers will buy that 30-second ad slot at prime time, and it will reach all the people they want to reach. But now that they can make these ads available programmatically, it will allow them to let their advertising clients come to buying platform partners and say, ‘I want to target my best customers as they’re watching the Olympics.’ AI will lead to more granularity and more opportunities to target audiences. Our AI has been utilized to help us create that unified customer data foundation.
How does Amperity differentiate its customer data set and usage from that of a vast number of competitors?
We’re using a patented, AI machine-learning technology to help the client take the first-party data that they already have access to and really maximize the utility of it. So, we’re not bringing in our own data. We’re bringing our technology to enterprise brands to help them understand more across all their different customer touch points that are only becoming more complex.
Can you make any predictions about how customer data will be used going forward in a way that is not being used now?
AI is allowing you to scale and be even more personalized. With historical personalization you can think about four or five customer segments. AI allows you to scale and personalize. Instead of it being, four or five broad segments, marketers can think about micro segmentation or micro messaging/ AI not just for targeting and segmentation and creative message generation.
Privacy is still top of mind. Customers want to know how their data is being used and how they can have more control how.
