Research in the Programmatic Age

Mike StevensMD EMEA, Vision Critical

What is

Programmatic

and why should

I care?

How is

Customer and

Audience

Insight

adapting?

What does this

all mean for

Insight

Professionals?

What is Programmatic and why should I care?

It is 15 years since Minority Report showed us the future of personally targeted, hyper-relevant

advertising.

In the year the film was made, Apple released the first version of the iPod …

… Google handled 10 million searches per day (today it handles that many every three minutes) ...

… and Microsoft finally killed Clippy the Office Assistant – one of the most irritating software features

of all time.

And in those early days of online advertising, brands and their media agencies placed most of their

ads directly with individual publishers. How things have changed.

Today, online advertising is increasingly supported by programmatic technologies and analytics – a

vast ecosystem comprising media agencies, ad exchanges, data management platforms and dozens

of three-letter-acronyms. It may not look like it, but we are firmly en route to Minority Report.

faster turnaroundlower cost

greater impact

The promise of this programmatic world is have-your-cake-and-eat-it – increased speed, improved

efficiency, reduced budget, greater relevance, better conversion …

… but when something looks too good to be true, it usually is; the promised returns from the

programmatic revolution are unevenly distributed.

Fraud, poor ad viewability and lack of transparency between the various players are all posing

challenges for the programmatic agenda.

But this hasn’t dampened brands’ enthusiastic adoption of programmatic buyng – with some aspiring

to buy 100% of digital media programmatically.

automated real-timeperson-

centric

There are three core principles underpinning programmatic’s advantage: automated buying and

selling of ad space inventory; real-time bidding to decide which ad is served in each available slot; and

and insights derived from mutiple sources of data about individuals users.

In this example, all three ads are retargeted to the user based on past behaviour (principally search

terms and sites visited): a graphic design site (already subscribed to), mobile phones (already

purchased) and garden furniture (based on prior search for garden sheds).

relevance

page load speed

annoying repetition

ad blockers

So the user experience of much programmatic advertising can be poor: re-targeted ads for purchases

that have already been made or are no longer needed; bloated ads that slow down the web; repeated

exposure to identical creative. Small wonder that use of ad blockers is growing sharply.

“Just because we’re doing it badly doesn’t make it a bad idea”

moments

multi-

platformmeasurability

In spite of the drawbacks and poor execution, programmatic has immense promise in three key areas;

research professionals need to be familiar with these concepts as they offer big opportunities for

consumer and audience insight.

moments

Marketing to moments rather than segments or simple demographics reflects how people can have

very different (often contradictory) needs and behaviours at different times. A regular gym-goer can

also eat at McDonald’s. Context is key; rich online data sources help to understand these moments.

moments

Google groups these data sources into audience, media and environmental buckets; within these,

hundreds of variables can combine to build a complex picture of an individual user at a given point in

time. This, in turn, helps to deliver highly relevant, timely, personalised brand communicaitons.

measurability

Programmatic regularly makes use of A/B or multivariate tests – among thousands or millions of

users – to identify the optimum creative execution. Google exemplified this approach when it tested

41 different shades of blue to determine the best colour for its ad links in Gmail.

$200,000,000

Benefit of choosing the right blue

measurability

Even though the variations in colour were barely discernible, selecting the best shade made a

staggering difference to Google’s revenues; operating at such a vast scale, even tiny fractions of upift

make a significant impact.

multi-platform

Programmatic platforms increasingly follow users across devices; user profiles on Facebook, twitter

and other platforms enable the re-targeting of ads and content on one device following behaviour on

another; search for sheds on your mobile and see gardening ads on your laptop.

multi-platform

Programmatic’s reach is now also extending to new platforms; Sky’s AdSmart, for example, allows

different ads to be served during the same TV spot to different households – based on hundreds of

profiling data points.

moments

More granular,

relevant, actionable

measurability

Faster and more

scalable

multi-

platform

More holistic view of

the consumer

So far, programmatic beats research …

From an insight perspective, the advantages of programmatic are clear; traditional research methods

will need to adapt quickly if they are to meet the needs of tomorrow’s marketers.

How is Customer and Audience Insight adapting?

The programmatic world is increasingly shaping marketer’s expectations beyond online advertising:

every kind of marketing platform or service is targeted to become faster, leaner, more actionable.

integration

automationconversation

The last few years have seen an explosion of innovation in customer insight. Improved integration and

automation are meeting the programmatic challenge head-on; new ways of engaging in conversation

will help insight professionals play a leading role in the future of marketing.

integration

One example of sophisticated data integration is from YouGov, whose Profiles tool (120k data points

on 250k panelists) can be used to enrich programmatic data management platforms – enabling ads

to be targeted using attitudinal data as well as behavioural or contextual insights.

integration

Using Vision Critical’s customer intelligence platform, a large software company was able to connect

metrics from its beta testing programme with insight from its global user community – integrating the

‘what’and the ‘why’ to provide developmers with clear direction.

confidential case study

integration

One of the world’s leading manufacturers of tyres built a panel using Vision Critical’s platform to

connect telemetry data (in-car devices to measure vehicle behaviours) with survey responses from

those same drivers.

confidential case study

automation

ZappiStore leads the field in insight automation. It offers fully automated, configurable online research

projects with turnaround times measured in hours. Large agencies are increasingly making their

methodologies available through the platform – to meet client demand for time and cost efficiencies.

automation

The winner of 2016’s Insight Innovation Exchange prize was Hearbeat AI – an artificial intelligence

platform that automatically classifies the emotional content of open-end responses into primary and

secondary emotional territories. Tools such as this will transform qualitative analysis.

Custom

Insight

Guided

Insight

Automated

Insight

Insight Acquisition Options

automation

At Vision Critical, we believe that automated insight will play an ever larger role in our industry. But we

also see a role for guided insight – configurable templates that don’t require ‘from scratch’ custom

creation; but also offer greater flexibility than fully automated solutions.

automation

The tools and templates to support both guided and automated insight are embedded in industry

solutions built on the VC customer intelligence platform – for retailers, sports teams, consumer goods

makers and many more.

automation

‘Automated insight’ capabilities using communities have been explored by a subscription TV operator.

Early users of the operator’s smartphone app were automatically enrolled into an insight community

and served research activities based on their app usage.

confidential case study

conversation

The third pillar of modern customer insight is a renewed emphasis on conversation. The Cluetrain

Manifesto (published just before the release of Minority Report) claimed that “Markets are

Conversations”; today, insight teams are finally delivering on the conversational marketing promise.

conversation

Social media conversations are now a core component of most customer insight programmes;

engagement and analytics platforms to support this are widely adopted.

conversation

There has also been rapid growth in conversational technologies to support primary research. Living

Lens is one example of a video management platform with semi-automated transcription to make

video content searchable; platforms such as this will revolutionise qual and quant research processes.

conversation

QVC’s UK insight community, the QVC Lounge, is a platform for conversation with its viewers;

community members have helped it to launch new ranges, co-developed sections of its website and

even visited its UK studios to take part in promotional videos.

conversation

The ESPN Fan Forum community engages Latin American sports fans in on-going conversation with

stakeholders. During the 2015 Copa América tournament, the Fan Forum fostered conversations

around digital behaviour, studio show content and the cultural importance of the tournament.

conversation

Adobe reinvented its business by shifting to a cloud subscription model for its applications. To

maintain subscription levels, on-going customer dialogue was critical; the Adobe Customer Advisors

community supports these conversations and helps it respond to any concerns in real time.

conversation

Finally, a prediction for the future of conversational research technologies: chatbots that mimic the

messaging interface of WhatsApp will increasingly be developed for customer insight. Today, apps

such as Lark (health) and Quartz (news) give a glimpse into tomorrow’s research and community tools.

What does this all mean for Insight Professionals?

Connect more

data

Insight professionals need to combine more data sources to deliver commercial advice. Today, data

can be integrated structurally through single sign-on, social authentication, cookie tracking, persistent

logins and dozens of other techniques; these ‘programmatic’ approaches need to be fully embraced.

Try more

tools

Customer insight is witnessing a thriving tech startup scene. Research professionals should set a

target to investigate at least one new technology each month to keep up with the pace of

programmatic change.

Tell more

stories

Insight professionals have a strong advantage to build on: they come closer to more customers’

stories than any other part of the organisation. They need to tell these stories more imaginatively;

combine them more creatively with bigger datasets; and use technology to land them more effectively.

Connect more

data

Try more

tools

Tell more

stories

www.visioncritical.com/customer-stories