What is Big Data Advertising?

Digital advertising is still developing, but one thing is consistent, most businesses continue to struggle with effective strategies. The most widely used AdTech solutions leave organizations reliant on big tech with no clear understanding of the alternatives. The reality is that these walled garden solutions offer little transparency and control while overreaching in regard to data privacy.

These big tech options leave businesses stuck handling bots, click fraud, increasing prices and the negative brand reputation associated with annoying poorly targeted ads. While businesses continue to overspend in the walled gardens, more nuanced and potent campaigns can be executed using a big data advertising approach.

There is nothing new about analyzing large data sets to drive marketing decisions. However, within advertising the use of big data is still unfolding. There are three primary types of data, first-party, second-party and third-party. All of these data types are used within advertising, helping businesses gain critical learnings around consumer behavior, needs and preferences. Ultimately, big data makes it possible to optimize campaigns based on consumer interests and convert them with personalized advertising.

Moving your budget away from the black boxes of platforms like Facebook and Google and toward big data campaigns has the potential to transform any organization’s advertising. Big data is used as a driving force behind decision making to equip businesses to strategically approach advertising challenges and prepare for the future with deeper insights. Organizations that choose not to explore big data advertising are left to the mercy of the currently underperforming big tech platforms.

At the Mercy of Big Tech

Lack of Transparency

Walled garden platforms are the go-to for advertising campaigns, offering access to first-party data and the hope of new customers. However, these platforms provide very little transparency around the audiences you’re serving ads to. Often it isn’t even clear whether these audiences are new and aligned with your goals.

Audience data is everything, illuminating behavior and the most effective messaging and conversion methods. Walled gardens don’t offer most of this powerful information, leaving attribution a mystery in hopes of counting conversions as their own. Driving ROI is always challenging, but doing it blind is nearly impossible.

There are countless stories of Facebook claiming attribution for website visitors, when in reality these visitors were already activated and maybe even an existing customer. When this happens, Facebook continues to bombard these customers with ads every day. The result is the damaging of a brand’s reputation due to lack of transparency around audience data.

Big data advertising solutions on the open internet offer much more visibility. As audience segments are built, businesses deserve transparency around the data, including clear attribution.

Privacy Overreach

For many, walled garden advertising is the cookie-less alternative required for digital ad campaigns. The reservoir of logged-in users enables device tracking, as these first-party platforms don’t need third-party cookies. Because of this, these platforms are not allowed to share their data with advertisers unless ads are engaged with.

This dynamic seems fair given the importance of data security, however few understand how the walled gardens use their data internally. While businesses require consumer data to analyze motivations and behaviors to personalize messaging, walled gardens operate much like a black box. These big tech platforms want to carry out data analysis for businesses without clarity around the data being collected and used.

Businesses should feel an obligation to their audience in regard to data privacy, but walled gardens operate without providing an understanding of data algorithmic decisions. The result is potential brand safety and reputation issues, using blurry data to advertise. When the news is flooded with stories related to privacy overreach, platform governance concerns, and questionable big tech practices, their priorities should be called into question.

Why operate at the mercy of these platforms and risk brand reputation? Alternatives exist without the need to fund privacy overreach while delivering more potent results.

Lack of Control

It’s probably becoming clear that advertising with walled garden solutions can be severely limiting, removing critical components from your control as an advertiser. There is an inherent conflict of interest that exists at the center of walled garden business models. These platforms must act in the interests of both ad buyers and sellers, making it impossible to guarantee objective reporting.

Ultimately, it is impossible to know whether walled garden campaigns are driving ROI or converting new customers. The closed nature of these platforms provides no control over data, requiring a massive amount of trust on behalf of the advertisers. What gives advertisers faith that big tech platforms will act in the best interests of their business? Big data advertising across the open internet represents an entirely different model for businesses. A model that doesn’t rely on faith in closed platforms and delivers control over processes and outcomes.

Consider Big Data Advertising

Advertising Data Processing

Most reading this probably understand the time and expertise required to run successful social media and search advertising campaigns. Deriving insights from data to optimize and scale ad campaigns takes a little patience. Big data campaigns across the open internet are no different, however the results are much more precise and transparent.

With walled gardens you’re working with a black box and have no visibility into the data driving your campaigns, including how fresh and aligned it is. Big data advertising across the open internet offers much more transparency, and enables businesses to access real-time insights. Processing fresh data using a staged process makes it possible to drastically improve audience targeting and ROI of campaigns over a short period of time.

At ReverseAds, we’re keyword intelligence specialists, and it all comes down to the data. We process keyword data from millions of sites across the open internet every hour. We perform a full analysis of every word, image and video across major industries, as our algorithm assigns keywords to this content. The result is the ability to derive intent from keyword data, empowering businesses with data from the right audience at the right time.

Using this type of big data advertising, businesses know when audiences intend to purchase, where they are on the path to purchase, and how to personalize audience messaging. All of this enables cookie-less, data-driven marketing campaigns with more transparency around audiences while ensuring privacy.

Personalized Creative

Data will make or break your ad campaigns, and a critical component of this outcome is how the data is used to personalize your creative. Research from SmarterHQ found that 72% of consumers only engage with personalized messaging. This statistic demonstrates the relevance of dynamic data-driven advertising that accounts for specific locations on the path to purchase.

Consumers expect to be catered to, engaging with content that speaks to their unique needs at the right time. The only way to achieve a tailored advertising experience at this level is to use great data. Keyword data represents the perfect solution, telling businesses the exact terms being used and where. Using this information, advertisers can deploy dynamic creative with ad copy and visuals pulled directly from specific keywords being engaged with.

Captivating your audience becomes easier when you know more about their interests and location. Our algorithm assigns keywords to content based on where users engage with said content on the path to purchase. We divide this into four unique stages…

• Awareness: Consumers recognize they have a need and begin exploring potential solutions. Advertisers should serve content that addresses this problem, providing general credibility and building brand awareness.
• Research: As consumers gain a deeper understanding of their problem, they begin to compile the detailed information needed to address their needs. Advertisers must make the most of this opportunity by informing with valuable insight in alignment with needs.
• Comparison: Once options have been compiled, a deeper analysis is carried out by consumers aiming to make the best choice. Advertisers must gain the confidence of these consumers through more credibility and specific details related to their needs.
• Decision: Finally, the consumer is prepared to make a decision. By this point, intuitive brands have positioned themselves as the best choice by personalizing advertising experiences at each stage of the path to purchase.

As consumers traverse the path to purchase, big data advertising will help your brand speak to their evolving needs. Walled gardens claim to assist in these efforts, but their targeting will always remain a mystery to advertisers. The most effective personalized ad campaigns use data to drive the messaging, and keyword data optimizes this process in a secure and transparent manner.

Data Privacy

Top of mind for most internet users is data privacy. The increasing role of the internet in our daily lives has introduced new concerns for the security of our data, as it includes sensitive information. Big tech platforms are constantly pushing the limits of what’s acceptable in regard to data harvesting and monetization, turning platform users into the products themselves by selling off data to advertisers.

Big data advertising shifts the dynamic of data ownership, offering compliant solutions that ensure users are protected. This is partially made possible through audience cohorts that group users based on specific engagement and events. The ReverseAds keyword cohort does this using keyword engagement data. As users leave the walled gardens of Facebook and Google, ReverseAds anonymously groups them based on keywords assigned on the path to purchase.

As walled garden users are exploited for their data, with little to no control over its use, big data advertising presents a privacy-first option. The open internet hosts countless data points. Businesses that deploy campaigns with this data can generate strong results while putting user-privacy first.

Data Ownership

Data is one of the modern world’s most valuable resources, fueling revenue and growth for businesses across the globe. Not all advertising data is of equal value, with first-, second-, and third-party data all being utilized within digital ad campaigns. The first-party data collected by your organization is by far the most valuable, sourced from website visitors, email subscribers, social media followers, CRMs, and transaction records. In order to understand this value, let’s quickly look at all three types of data.

• First-party Data: Collected, managed and owned by your organization, you have total control over this data. It is exclusive to your company, providing a competitive advantage while remaining compliant and accurate.
• Second-party Data: This data is repackaged first-party data, resold by the company that owns it. This growing data segment provides deep insights into the target audience, being sold without a middle man to retain exclusivity.
• Third-party Data: The least accurate and exclusive data type, third-party data is purchased from a broker that did not collect it. This aggregated data is available in massive amounts, organized by audience segments, often lacking compliance.

Great big data advertising campaigns are fueled by first- and second-party data. There is no beating the accuracy that this data provides when compared to third-party data. Walled gardens enable access to their exclusive first-party data, with no visibility of the specifics. Organizations that deploy open internet ad campaigns using first- and second-party data have an opportunity to deepen their data ownership, collecting and managing valuable data sets to utilize.

Campaign Attribution

As mentioned above, transparency is not one of the walled garden’s strong suits. This results in inaccurate attribution, making it difficult to optimize overtime and increase ROI. Advertisers must know which strategies are working and which are not. The wide scale use of walled garden advertising has led to a miscategorization of success. These big tech platforms know what they are good at tracking and how to report this as success

In reality, walled gardens report this way because it makes them seem more effective, and advertisers don’t believe they have other options. This requires more faith on behalf of businesses that run campaigns, as they must trust that big tech platforms are optimizing and accurately attributing conversions. The conventional thought process here is that no alternative exists to compete against the massive amounts of data and powerful algorithms that walled gardens offer. This capitulation is unnecessary, as big data advertising solutions offer much more transparency and accuracy around attribution.

At ReverseAds, we bring blockchain technology to big data advertising. Our BlockID solution delivers immutable attribution for all advertising while maintaining 100% user privacy. We have replaced the 3rd party cookie with smart contract technology, improving attribution models for businesses while giving consumers options on how their data is used. As walled gardens continue to partake in shady data practices, we recognize that blockchain will transform data ownership for users and businesses alike.

The Choice is Clear

Many still approach digital advertising with a misunderstanding of options. Walled gardens are still the most utilized solution, but are clearly falling short in regard to transparency, privacy and accessibility. As the internet continues to progress and data becomes more valuable and more private, big data advertising on the open internet is becoming much more effective. From the quality and transparency of data to the personalization potential, ownership and attribution, the choice is clear. Big data advertising is the best option for businesses looking to drive real results through targeted and scalable campaigns.

ReverseAds is leading the big data advertising revolution, providing an alternative to the walled gardens. By powering your campaigns with our keyword intelligence, businesses gain all the benefits of big data advertising. Our technology is addressing the need for data-driven and privacy-forward solutions that deliver new advertising experiences across the open internet.