Advertiser Insights: The best data for targeting comes from the people themselves

Nowadays, almost all advertisers are data-driven and use the best data available to them. Nevertheless, there are hardly any advertisers who cannot report on campaigns that do not meet the desired KPIs. Advertisers who prioritize the success of their campaigns take a look at the quality and origin of the data used. AdTech providers have a lot of data on the usage behavior of their users, but does this usage behavior provide useful insights into which advertising is relevant for people? Only to a limited extent, because most of the data is misused for ad targeting and must first be derived and inferred for targeting purposes. How can advertisers obtain the best data for targeting? By allowing people to shape their own advertising consumption and providing the right information on advertising relevance at the advertising touchpoint.

What we can learn from Netflix & Co.

In order to make statements about people's different interests for marketing purposes, as many data points as possible are collected about them on the Internet. Every click is measured. Every trace we leave behind on the internet is tracked. Netflix and its competitors know exactly what their users' movie and series preferences are. These insights are good for suggesting which series they might like next. Spotify also knows best what music people are currently listening to on a continuous loop and can therefore put together suitable, personalized playlists. But why does this work so well? In the cases described, the data used comes directly from people about the behavior they are actually looking for. The data does not first have to be interpreted in order to apply it to their movie or music preferences.

How we can transfer the procedure to ads

Using insights from these and many other data sources for advertising targeting is rarely successful. The interpretation of data about people's media usage, travel or shopping behavior can rarely make a correct statement about which advertising is really relevant for these users. This is because accuracy is lost at every level of interpretation. This means that the further we move away from people and their actual usage behavior, the poorer the quality of the insights we can draw from the collected data. Added to this is the situational complexity and individuality of human behavior, which makes the data collected in the network less meaningful. The solution to this challenge is to use data signals that show, without interpretation, which advertising is most relevant to people at the moment the ad is displayed.

How choice-driven advertising solves the problem

The implementation is simple, because people know best what interests them and what is relevant to them. This is why Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) focuses on people's self-determination. They decide for themselves and directly which advertising is most relevant to them - and in real time, so that the decisions are always the most up-to-date and reflect the needs of consumers in real time.

The effort required by advertisers and media planners is also simple. Because the data signals come directly from people as first-party data and are updated in real time with new decisions, there is no need to create and maintain complex databases. This also drastically reduces data acquisition costs. Not only does not collecting data ensure that the data is always up to date, it also ensures a particularly high level of data protection compliance. This opens up target groups for advertisers that cannot be reached by user tracking.

The most valuable data in advertising always comes from the people themselves. Only they know what interests them and when it interests them. This means that every advertising contact is an important data touchpoint without the need for interpretation. An advertising approach such as Choice-Driven Advertising, which takes this into account, creates an important competitive advantage for its customers by always being able to use the most relevant and up-to-date data signals to play out their advertising to the right target group.